Here’s the next (and next to last) in my series about the places I’ve called home throughout the years. It’s kind of bittersweet, so again, bear with me.

Hubby and I had been wanting a place of our own every since we got married. We had saved up a little money, and I picked up the local trading post publication just to see what I could find. It was something that I didn’t do often, but I just took a notion to look one day. I saw a listing for a used mobile home, as well as one for a private lot for rent. I took it as a sign and called about both.

Hubby and I looked at the mobile home first, and it was in pretty good shape. It was an older model, but it had been well taken care of. So we went to look at the lot. We talked to the man who owned it, and he seemed pretty reasonable. It was a little close to his house and another that he was renting, but I liked it. It symbolized freedom from having to deal with landlords who didn’t want to fix anything (except that we would have to depend on them to keep the water and septic up). I talked Hubby into going for it. If I hadn’t, we never would have gotten the mobile home, because the only other lots we could find were in trailer parks. And Hubby refuses to live anywhere that he would be that close to the neighbors.

We ended up having to fight for both home and land, but eventually it all came together. But no sooner than they pulled the trailer onto the lot, the landlady’s evil side began to show. Her husband had told us that we could use a bunch of cinderblocks that were piled up on the lot, and when Hubby mentioned using it, she started cussing up a storm. But it was too late to back out by then.

We got along with them for about a year, at the expense of their other renters. When we first moved in they kept telling us how great the landlords were, but they quit getting along shortly thereafter. But things were pretty good for us, until a few months after the other renters moved out.

The landlady was hateful to the new renters from the get-go, but still got along with us. Until, that is, we started hanging out with those new renters. It was like she only rented those places out so she could have her own personal war going on between the inhabitants. She started being a little nicer to them, and was downright nasty to us. I guess she thought that would cause a rift between us, but much to her dismay, it didn’t. So she resumed hatefulness toward them as well.

They moved, some other people moved in, and it all started over (with us still the bad guys). We just kept to ourselves as much as possible, and ignored them (which further infuriated her). She finally told us that we would have to move our mobile home.

We were devastated. We were going through a very rough time financially, and we knew there was no way we could move it. And even though it wasn’t much, it was the first place that had truly belonged to us (even though the ground beneath it didn’t). We had been trying to save up enough money to buy some land to put it on, and that might have happened if we had had more time after Hubby went back to work. But we were broke. So with heavy hearts, we put it in the “For Sale” section of the paper and started looking for a place to rent.

Fortunately, we didn’t have to rent again. We found a place to buy. If you’re a regular reader you already know about that, but I’ll discuss what makes it home tomorrow.