Dear Lord, help me to remember to make my words sweet and kind today, for tomorrow I may have to eat them.
Okay, nobody signed up to cover today so you’re all stuck with one of my rambling shaggy dog stories as a placeholder til LIMike starts his series either tomorrow or Wednesday. Huggss to all the Krew and here's hoping that Crissie and her family are having a wonderful vacation.
I used to have a 5 acre ranchette out in the boonies just east of Palm Springs. Purchased right after I finished nursing school as bare land, I cobbled things together as I had time and money. But it was pretty, well, unimpressive is probably a polite way to put it.
Hardscrabble is probably closer, especially for the first couple of years. But it was mine, and the first property I’d ever owned at almost thirty, so fairly early on I stepped it off and found all the corner markers so I'd know what was mine.
Good thing, because the road we all used, in spite of being partly paved, hadn’t been surveyed and placed at the edges where it should have been, it was about 30 feet in from the property line. So I put a pipe corral for a couple of horses on the other side of the road at the upper corner, close to the edge.
I suppose you always have to have one neighbor who’s a real jerk, and I did, the guy adjacent on the main road side. Not long after I put the pipe corrals up he apparently called one of the big local hospitals that happened to own 80 acres across from the stack of little 5 acre parcels that we all had, and told them that I had put up corrals on hospital property. Probably made noises about liability and potential lawsuits for the hospital.
On the other side, the neighbor two parcels up was a great guy, a very nice, talented, hardworking, ‘live and let live’ kind of person. Max restored classic cars, and did a really good job, so there were often expensive cars that came out and toodled past me to see Max about a project. And often the new customers thought they were lost the first time and would stop & ask directions to Max's.
I was out working on a fence one day, grubby and sweaty in ratty barn clothes when this gorgeous, brand new, dove grey Jaguar came down the road, hesitated when it came to the end of the pavement just before my place, and then crept along very slowly so no rock would jump up and chip the paint.
Instead of going to Max’s it turned in to the upper entrance of my place, so I headed over, expecting to give him directions. But when he rolled his window down, he asked me if I was who I was, and, puzzled, I said yes.
So he got out of his car, introduced himself, and to make me feel less intimidated by the obvious splendor, he took off the jacket of his $1,200 suit and set it back in his car so that he was, in his button down and braces, less formal. We chatted for a minute or two and he finally got around to asking me if I knew that the 80 ac property across the way was owned by the local bigwig hospital. I replied that I did, and had in fact taken some of my training there & had worked for them for a while.
But as soon as he said who he worked for I knew what his visit was about and what the jerk-off neighbor had done. Sure enough, the next thing out of the nice lawyer’s mouth was was a comment about my corrals being on hospital property.
So I told him about how the road, (track really), had grown from use rather than having been placed where it belonged and offered to show him the corner marker designating my property line. But he waved his hand and said it wasn’t necessary; but oh, if it turned out that the corrals were on the hospital’s property, I’d move them, wouldn’t I, and I calmly said yes, of course- knowing full well where my lines were. So we chatted for another moment or two, then he put his jacket back on, slipped into his beautiful car and toodled very slowly back out to the pavement and was gone.
Fast forward two days: A six(!?!) man survey crew shows up to shoot the property lines, managing to stay out of the reach of the two curious young geldings in the pipe corral. I smile and wave, chat with them for a few minutes; grin to myself and go about my chores.
Fast forward two weeks: I receive a letter, on hospital letterhead, with a very different tone. Full-on, fire breathing, we’ve-got-tons-of-money-and-we’re-gonna-make-you-sorry-you-ever-breathed-if-you-screw-with-us lawyer speak, with a plat map stapled to it, (upside down), showing the property lines and meticulously showing each and every angle of the corral panels.
To be fair, upside down and at a glance it did appear that the corral was on the west side of the property line- if you ignored the relative size of the parcels.
I grew up in a contractor’s family, so I know how to orient and read a plat, and the map did show that the horses had pushed one post of the corral about a foot onto the hospital’s side, so I went up and leaned on it and put it back where it belonged.
And sat back to wait and see whether he was going to figure out his mistake or pursue it.
‘Bout a month later, here comes the Jaguar again, creeping along the track and drive, so I smiled and walked out to meet him. And again he was civility personified, took noticeable pains to make sure I wasn’t feeling pushed or cornered, chatted politely after having removed his jacket to be less intimidating to the sweaty, grubby woman on her little rock and sand patch.
We chatted for a minute or two before he got around to asking if I had received the letter with the surveyor’s map. I replied that I had, and offered to go get it, but he waved his hand and said it wasn’t necessary, he happened to have a copy with him.
Now, I grew up with an alcoholic carpenter who didn’t need to be drinking to be a vicious, violent prick, so frankly it takes more than an expensive suit and a very nice car to intimidate me, especially when I know I’m in the right. But he had no earthly way of knowing any of that, so I give him full marks for consciously working at not being a bully.
And that’s what guided my tone and choices from that moment on.
He handed me the map, still upside down, and pointed at the meticulously drawn image of the pipe panels on the corner of my place. I nodded and took the map; looked up and identified the mountain to the north of us as being so and oriented the map correctly.
I then, (being the nice person that I can sometimes be), totally deadpan, pointed to the one section of the corral that had gone wandering and told him that I had adjusted it the very day I had received his letter, so my corral was no longer on the hospital’s property. He blinked. Looked at the map. Looked at the mountain north of us. Blinked again. Looked back at the map and the little arrow with the N that was, (quite incidentally, I assure you), right next to my thumb.
And maybe he noticed that eighty acres is a lot bigger than five acres, maybe not. In any case, after blinking once or twice more, he thanked me very much for having dealt with the issue to the satisfaction of both parties, shook my hand politely, replaced his very nice jacket and drove off, probably swearing at someone or something.
Or maybe just thinking he had dodged at least part of a very embarrassing bullet and being grateful there hadn't been an audience, who knows.
But because he had been conscientiously and unfailingly polite in person the whole time, I waited until he turned the corner and was out of earshot before I started laughing.
For the same reason; as many times as I have told that story over the years, I have never told anyone his name. I remember it. If I close my eyes I can still see his handsome, elegant signature on the letter. But his courtesy bought that much of my silence, I never will tell on him.
Besides, I figured that in this age of overspecialization that’s why lawyers hire architects and contractors, to make sure the little arrow points in the right direction. ;-)