Country Road Take Me Home

Kel had a dream. To quit city life. To buy a country home, avec acreage. To raise our city kids as country kids. To have a hound or two and a horse or two -- maybe even some chickens -- right on the property... To kick-start the search for a country home, we investigated a handful of Old Farmhouses.

“Old Farmhouses are the best,” Kel effervesced as we snaked out of civilization and into the boonies, via perilous rollercoaster rural roads salted with cyclists and peppered with roadkill. “They have all kinds of history and charm.” I can’t say that I bought into the premise or was at all effervesced. And the kids in the backseat? Well, they weren’t even listening to their mother. It was 2003. The young bucks were goofing on their Gameboys and taking care of their Tamagotchis and tolerating this family outing solely for the sake of the ice cream we promised to procure on the drive back home.

Regardless, we soon determined as a family that history and charm aside, Old Farmhouses are fraught with drawbacks, disadvantages, and dangers… One of the biggest issues with Old Farmhouses is that, unsurprisingly, they’re old. Foundation to roof, old. Expenses, accidents and untold aggravation just waiting to happen. Old heating, old plumbing, old electrical, old insulation, old (or non-existent) amenities.

“A bathroom? Nah, but there’s a perfectly good shitter out back!”

Inside these houses it always seemed dark and depressing. Because they were constructed before air-conditioning; thusly, prudently, literally built to block out the sun. I need the sun – and walls of windows welcoming that sun into my daily life. I can be dark and depressing all on my own. I don’t need any help at all from my home.

What made these old abodes an absolute no-go for our suburban kids were Old Farmhouse basements. Cramped, low-ceilinged, dank, dark cellars where spiders and snakes and mice and rats shared dusty cobwebbed space with black mold and the skeletal remains of murdered farmhands. Talk about history and charm. How bad were these cellars? Unless nudged by an overzealous realtor, the kids refused to even go down to take a peek. Couldn’t blame them. I personally could not envision us as parents ever sending them down into one of those dungeons to play hunched-over ping pong, or hunched-over pool, only to sit upstairs gnawing fingernails to the quick, fretting, and wondering: would the munchkins ever make it back up the creaky stairs? Or would they be eaten alive by critters? Or scared to death by ghosts?

Kids: “Those are our options?”

“In an Old Farmhouse? Yes, those are your options. Actually,” I reconsidered, “you could also get Monkeypox, Rat-Bite Fever, Hemorrhagic Fever, Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome, or Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis. Not to mention, plain old poop on your shoes from the rodent droppings.”

Real fun shit.

“Rats are no problem,” a creepy Old Farm Lady at a creepy Old Farmhouse creepily insisted. “We use The Bucket of Death.”

“The what of what?”

“Bucket. Death. You just get a big bucket full of water and glob peanut butter here and there around the bucket and up on the rim as a lure. Rats take the bait. They climb, fall into the water, then drown without much of a struggle. Simple as that.”

Simple as that. Without much of a struggle?

The Bucket of Death?

“Kids, get in the car. And don’t touch anything on the way out…”

On the drive home, we ate ice-cream as a family and promised each other that there would be no more Old Farmhouse forays. I took this to mean that we were no longer considering moving to the country, that we would maintain the status quo and live quite happily ever after in Oakville, until death do us part. Kel took it to mean that we would have to double down and find a brand-spankin’-new, modern city home – with abundant amenities and copious conveniences – located in the country. At times I think, to borrow a Bushism from George W., I misunderestimate my wife’s determination to get what she wants, to bring a dream into fruition. Kel and I speak entirely different languages. And oh, so much gets lost in translation.