The Wrong Lot, part 2

 

 

Looking toward the lot next door

Did you sleep well last night? Here's the conclusion of yesterday's post! 

Instead of commuting to work, my husband took the morning off. We were just waiting for the phone to ring. Thankfully it wasn't a long wait. 

The lady on the other end was laughing in an embarrassed way... she was indeed the owner of the lot next door, but she had never known it. 

The tax maps had convinced her at last. 

She explained to us how her mistake must have happened. At the time they bought a lot up here, there were very few houses. A man in charge had brought her family up to the top road and just waved his arm in the general direction of the bare land full of dry grass, juniper and sagebrush to a lot they had bought. He mentioned that their lot was next to the house that was up there (it wasn't quite!). Using the one house close by as a reference, they staked out what they thought were their corners and came to the lot as a recreation place for years. 

(The surveyor we had hired before buying our lot told us that the small metal signs or flags stuck in the ground were not our corners, actually they were quite a bit off. But now the mystery of those metal markers was solved!)

We were hugely relieved that we had been proven correct. We actually got to chatting and enjoyed our talk with her. She said that she had a three-story house plan already approved by the county to build, but had never gotten around to building it (This is, of course, the very reason we built our house away from that side of the property, and closer to the smaller house. We just had a feeling that someone would build a huge house next door someday!).

We mentioned that the view on her real lot might even be better than ours. But I'll never forget her phrase, "the dream is dead." She did even want the lot that was hers. Perhaps it was because of our house being on the hill now. Perhaps it was because if it wasn't the one lot that her family had affection for, nothing else could really substitute. It was a pity in a way, because when we were done talking with her we agreed that she would have probably made a very good neighbor. 

"I will sell you the lot," she said. 

We waited, but never got word from anyone about it. Perhaps the lady had changed her mind. Then one day much later, we saw people on the lot next door looking around. On another day soon after, someone different was stepping it off, as if to measure. Since my children were out playing, I was mighty uncomfortable with a stranger so close by! By then we realized that it must have gone up for sale and we didn't know it! A quick look on the internet confirmed this, and we called the realtor, who seemed to know who we were and advised us to a lower price. 

Thanks to a long-ago mistake, and a gift from my in-laws, we now own the lot next door. But we will never quite get over that feeling that courses through us when we think of the silver truck- or black SUV- that pulled up that Sunday afternoon!