So the house was hacked up, jacked up, put on a trailer, and moved out to the edge of the field, next to the street. And there it sat. Month after month after month.
What Sissy and I learned through various channels, including Habitat for Humanity and the man on whose trailer the house sat, was this: the original plan was to move it to an empty lot adjacent to the field. This would have been relatively easy. The Trailer Man donated the materials needed to get the house ready to move, as well as the trailer, since it wasn't supposed to be a long and involved process. But then the person who owned the empty lot reneged on the deal. And there the house sat, all jacked up and no place to go.
Every lot that was investigated had one issue or another that prevented it from being a landing pad for the house. And as Trailer Man tried to tell everyone involved, moving a house isn't the same as moving a mobile home. It would require street closures and a police escort.
True to form, once donated, Coach washed his hands of the problem and started harassing Trailer Man about getting it off his property. The police harassed him, too, no doubt at Coach's "suggestion."
Of course, it's not like Trailer Man was in charge of, or responsible for, the situation. He wanted to get the house off of his trailer. He was losing money every day he couldn't use it. But Coach didn't care. So Trailer Man was left to his own devices in terms of finding some place where he could put the house, at least temporarily.
Then one day, the house was gone. I soon got word from a friend that she saw it sitting out in front of the farmer's co-op, down on 411. Sissy and I immediately went to see for ourselves. There it was. Sitting in the parking lot, next to another abandoned building. It looked forlorn. A perfectly good house sitting empty and unused. It pissed Sissy off.
And there it sat, for months, the Tyvek wrapping eventually starting to peel off, other little things beginning to fall apart. Fading, fading...
Fast forward.
One weekend, Sissy was supposed to drive over to Knoxville and we were going to hike out at Seven Islands. But when I woke up, I decided I wanted to go out to the trails at Tellico Lake instead. I hadn't been there before and even though she and Mr. Wizard had gone once, briefly, she wanted to explore the area more thoroughly. So I called her, changed plans, drove to Maryville and picked her up, and off we went.
Down 321, following directions because she and Mr. Wizard had come in from 411. We turn off 321 onto a road that cuts across between 321 and 411. We haven't gone but maybe a mile when I see a police car blocking the road up ahead. "Dammit," I say, but Sissy doesn't hear me. She's looking at the directions. "There's a police car blocking the road, Sissy. We can't go this way." She looks up and both of us, at the same time, see this:
What the...?! We know immediately that it is The House.
We gawk for a minute, and I take this photo. Sissy calls Mr. Wizard. "You'll never believe where we are and what we're looking at!" We marvel at the fact that the house had been moved from all the way over on 411, down and around to 321, and is now being moved back toward 411. We can't fathom how long it must've taken to get this far. Hours and hours, for sure. And now here it is, and here we were, staring at it.
I turn around, stopping next to the cop. Sissy rolls down her window. We ask what's going on. He doesn't know much, except that it's The Coach's house and it's getting moved down by the quarry. Sissy, bless her heart, says, "Actually it's our house. Our grandfather built it. We sold it to the Coach."
So, what do you think the chances were that we would end up at that particular place at that exact moment?
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