The following was written by my late wife Elaine. She wrote a long book, a diary really, from which this is one passage:
Final Move, to Union, West Virginia
Warrenton was growing fast, as more people moved farther out from the city (Washington, DC) causing heavier commuting traffic, plans for new highways, and all changes that come to expanding areas on the fringes of big cities. Dave was retired, didn’t have commuting worries, and wanted to move even farther out, preferably with views and privacy and low population. He found our mountaintop advertised in the Washington Post on February 27, 1977: “538 ac. w. new 3 rm. hunting camp, $225 per ac.”
A few days after seeing the ad, he drove to Union and stayed overnight in Alderson at an old hotel on Main Street, and spent the next day walking over most of the 538 acres. He loved it from the start, looking toward the mountain views through the bare trees and he could visualize the best homesite, how the driveway would face south so the winter sun would melt the snow, where the living room would be, the kitchen, etc. He was impressed with the land, the cave (an interesting fringe benefit), the friendly people and well-behaved children he saw in Union’s stores and a couple of schools he visited and he was anxious for the rest of us to see everything, too.
Introduction to Tobacco Spitting
A few weeks later we all went to see the property with the real estate agent, following them in our car. Their driver’s side door opened and closed every few minutes and I couldn’t see what was happening, but later caught on that the driver was spitting tobacco juice out the door, something new to me.
The Little Red Cabin and the Camping Trailer
While we built our house, we assumed that we could rent a house nearby until our new house was ready to occupy. Not! There were no rental houses in the Union area, and we didn’t want to go as far as Lewisburg because we all planned to pitch in building the house, doing whatever we each could do every day, and didn’t want to waste time driving back and forth. So we took another look at the red cabin in the valley (the “hunting camp” in the ad). Since it had no bathroom or hot water, we decided to buy a small second-hand trailer with a hot water heater, bathroom, small kitchen, and some additional sleeping space, and we set it up in front of the cabin. The trailer and cabin combined gave us plenty of room until the new house was ready to move into.
Meanwhile, Dave had arranged to have a steel building erected near the house site and when the building was ready, we hired two drivers and rented two U-Haul-it trucks, and the drivers moved us from Warrenton to Union and unloaded all our stuff into the steel building, and from there we took things we needed down to the valley to the red house.
To be continued…
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About the Author: RD Blakeslee is a nonagenarian in West Virginia who built his net worth by only investing in that which can be enjoyed during acquisition and throughout life, as opposed to papers in a drawer, like stocks and bonds. You can read more about him here.
Photos: Courtesy of the Blakeslee Family
Now, 47 years later, I remain where I landed, to live out my life in peace. Memories of Elaine comfort me.
Thank you for sharing Mr. Dave. Peace and happy memories are priceless.
You are right, Bill. These blessings are near the end of a life-long philosophy of action, privately executed.
538 acres! I’m jealous. I thought I was doing good growing up in a 100-acre playground. Mind you, my father dominated parts of it after he bought that big grader. Where the ground tended to be soggy, he graded in a few ponds. And yes, we had the big one for swimming, basically, for the whole town. Dad put a pump in it and ran pipes to our house – and to a couple neighbors who were interested. We just swam.
Gee, it used to be that 538 acres of mountain land in WV was pretty low priced – $225/acre in 1977.
Now, it’s getting snapped up by “big money” at thousands per, but that will end in the next recession/depression, IMO.
Your experiences on large acreage are enlightening and inspirational!
Young people today can start now and enjoy life that way, if they have the guts to take it on.
In my experience selling my house, young people today don’t want to do anything to a property. They want to walk in when everything’s finished. I had prospective buyers asking us to do an amazing number of things, including repainting some rooms – in different colors. We refused.
I think the whole concept of sweat equity is lost these days.
Gee, I think the very concept of “sweat”
(physical exertion), except at fashionable physical fitness gyms, is passé.
A 70-year-old, good ol’ “country girl” with the work ethic now largely lost in our “woke” world, was a Godsent find for our household.
One enlightened cleaning lady we tried found a dead mouse under a stairwell and told us where it was so we could put it in the trash!