A postcard arrived in the mail. One of those gimmicky ones made to look like real handwriting. It said, \u201cI\u2019m interested in buying your house \u2026\u201d<\/p>\n
My wife always takes great offense to things like this. We get them every once in a while. Part anger, part sarcasm and part joking, she said she wanted to contact this person and tell them we would be happy to sell \u2026 for a price that was three times what the place is worth. <\/p>\n
\u201cActually, could you imagine that?\u201d she said. \u201cWe could buy a huge lot somewhere and build whatever we wanted.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYeah,\u201d I said longingly, picturing never having to nail down a loose porch floorboard or fixing another termite-eaten piece of siding on the century-old downtown house. \u201cI can imagine it!\u201d<\/p>\n
My daughter wasn\u2019t so amused. \u201cWe\u2019re not selling the house,\u201d she declared at dinner. \u201cNot for any amount.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNothing?\u201d my wife asked.
\n<\/p>\n
\u201cWorld peace,\u201d she replied, which I thought was an incredibly thoughtful and inspiring thing for a 10-year-old. (Even if it did just mean, \u201cinfinity!\u201d)<\/p>\n
The kid must like the house. <\/p>\n
I do, too. And most days I can\u2019t figure out why. While the back is a relatively new addition with the creature comforts of modern construction, the front is still the same cottage that was already having issues when the Spanish Conquistadors pulled in to St. Augustine to take in a movie at the IMAX. <\/p>\n
I was working in the front yard the other day and a couple walking by stopped to tell me how much they\u2019ve always loved my house. \u201cYeah?\u201d I said, scratching my head and wondering what they saw in it. Did it conjure up some kind of mirage or optical illusion? <\/p>\n
It\u2019s a great house, but it comes with its share of issues. The walls have all the insulating properties of a handkerchief. The windows stick when you try to open them, and they fall like guillotine blades if you pry them free. The kitchen might be shearing off like a tectonic plate \u2014\u00a0that\u2019s my theory for a small crack running along some moulding \u2014 and the floors creak and give so much that you get sea-sick walking across them. <\/p>\n
As old houses are known to do, mine has come in for a patch of minor repairs and little fixes that always come in swarms. A kitchen faucet went bad. Touchups were needed to the front porch. Some wood over there is rotting. I\u2019m expecting any day to discover a family of badgers living in the attic. <\/p>\n
So what is it about old houses that we love so much? The look? The quaintness? The connection to a long-gone time? Tetanus? <\/p>\n
And yet, there\u2019s no place I would rather be. We\u2019ve owned it since 1997, and put more blood, sweat and tears into it than I thought my body had to bear. So no thanks on the offer, computer-generated postcard. We\u2019ll take the sea-sickness on the floors and the windows that come crashing down. At least until world peace is on the table. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
A postcard arrived in the mail. One of those gimmicky ones made to look like real handwriting. It said, \u201cI\u2019m interested in buying your house \u2026\u201d My wife always takes great offense to things like this. We get them every once in a while. Part anger, part sarcasm and part joking, she said she wanted to contact this person and tell them we would be happy to sell \u2026 for a price that was three times what the place is worth. \u201cActually, could you imagine that?\u201d she said. \u201cWe could buy a huge lot somewhere and build whatever we wanted.\u201d \u201cYeah,\u201d I said longingly, picturing never having to nail down a loose porch floorboard or fixing another termite-eaten piece of siding on the century-old downtown house. \u201cI can imagine it!\u201d My daughter wasn\u2019t so amused. \u201cWe\u2019re not selling the house,\u201d she declared at dinner. \u201cNot for any amount.\u201d \u201cNothing?\u201d my wife asked.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[554,563],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1527","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-nutshells","category-houses"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1527"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1528,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1527\/revisions\/1528"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1527"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1527"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nutshellcity.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1527"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}