Well, that is exactly what they did. It was definitely the middle of nowhere, miles down a narrow dirt road, 50 acres of mountain land. It had a house already (a real fixer-upper). The house had 4 rooms - two bedrooms, living room and kitchen. No hallway, just the 4 rooms in a square with a door going between each one. It was late November when we moved.The Army had packed up all our stuff and moved it for us via the Bekins Moving Lines. Everything we had was in Bekins boxes and everything had a green Bekins sticker on it somewhere. For years we would still find those stickers on lamps and furniture. Anyway, the big tractor trailer left our duplex in LA, packed full, and headed to the mountains, following our directions. When the truck finally got to our driveway, it was probably a shock to the driver that making that first turn was not going to happen. It was a pretty sharp curve, but not really that noticeable in a car. It took about 5 hours of cutting trees on one side and laying them down on the other side before the truck finally made it to the little house. Then the fun really began, 8 rooms of furniture into the 4 room house.
There was a little cast iron heater in the living room that burned coal to heat the house. There was cold running water in the kitchen sink, running gravity from a spring up the hill. There was the outhouse up by the barn. There was a bathtub in the kitchen which we could fill with water heated on the stove. We spent that first winter without an indoor toilet, and as soon as it got warm enough, my dad closed in the back porch for a bathroom. The story goes that we were living on $250 a month Army retirement pay. My folks had to draw upon knowledge and experience from their childhoods and we soon had a garden planted, corn, beans, tomatoes. Cows in the pasture and chickens in the yard. It was like going back in time, not just the home life of farming, gardening, canning, etc., but life in the small town and school had the same time warp feeling.
I will never forget my first day at the new school, the kids were all gathered around me to hear the way I talked (you should have heard their accents) and when they heard that I had moved all the way from Alabama, they couldn't believe it. I said it's not that far, just the neighboring state, you know, right next to Georgia. I later realized that the majority of these kids had not been out of the county, much less the state. I was the new kid in school for about 4 years, until we went to high school.
The memories and experiences I left behind in LA were nothing compared to the ones I would have here in the mountains. The solitude and beauty of the country soon won me over, making me wonder why I ever wanted sidewalks or rows of neighborhood houses to live next to.
