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Day in the Country

By PAT WICK

© Another Day in the Country

I can hear the motor on the old white truck revving across the street. He's still at it! Jim is working on the original property that first caught his eye on the Internet a year or so ago. The charm of the very misleading photograph first caught his attention. The price tag seemed amazingly inexpensive by California standards. The land had allure. And the next thing you know they were in Kansas. To make a long, sad story shorter and more hopeful, Jim tried, felt defeated by the shell of a house he'd found on the property, let the property go, someone else bought it, felt the same and offered it all back to Jim, who took them up on the now-much-sweeter-deal.

This man's been around the game board once and he's back at square one. So, to spruce up the property and please the city, he's tearing down an abandoned building on the corner that used to be Mr. Sader's workshop where he repaired small appliances.

My neighbor has never torn down a house before. I don't believe he's ever built one either — but he figured that ingenuity must count for something and what goes up must come down, eventually. About a week ago, I heard an engine gearing up in the tall underbrush in the vicinity of Mr. Sader's shop. "Rudnghhhh, rudnghhhhh," went the motor and suddenly Jim, riding the old white truck like a bucking bronco, came flying out of the weeds, chained to the house. There was a resounding, rather satisfying crack, but the house did not fall — only a few boards flew.

Again and again, the truck was attached to different vital parts of the house after they'd been weakened with a chainsaw. Again and again the splinters flew, but the house did NOT collapse. There's an old country adage that says, "Where there's a will there's a way." And my neighbor has certainly exercised that axiom to the nth degree. He's been flying out of the bushes, sometimes with the back of the truck several feet in the air, broken his chain, dented the truck, broken a window on the truck, lost the muffler system, and had a flat tire — but he keeps on working.

"RUDDDNGHHHH, RUDDNGHHHH," goes the white truck, now sporting a longer chain. You know in a small town like Ramona there can be more sidewalk superintendents than worker bees. However, today, it's only the children from the neighborhood sitting on the side of the road, watching from a safe distance, chanting, "Bring it down, bring it down."

While the old building sat abandoned for at least a decade, with one window broken out and everything sagging, its underpinnings are strangely, stubbornly secure. "The back side was completely full of honey bees and the exterior siding was rotten to the core and still it stands," says Jim, whose children are excited about a place to play, a spot for tree houses and bike paths; but for the old timers in town, who remember the house when it was in pristine condition, it's the finale of an era.

"That old house has been setting over there with one eye open," says my mom who lives across the street in her brand new home. "While it was a terrible sight, I think I might miss it."

The house finally toppled and piece by piece my neighbors are burning the wood in a little bonfire as I sit on the porch and watch small-town entertainment. It's my birthday and while we're freezing homemade ice cream, I'm thinking how similar to a house is the body we inhabit.

The years march on and at times I wonder if someday I'll end up like that old home with one eye open and a really flimsy exterior — all in all, rather useless. I do pray that my super-structure is as tough as Sader's old shop and that I'll stubbornly stand until the last of my timbers are relinquished to the fire. Then, I hope there are still loved ones around to remember who used to lived in that house and what fun we had while this was our habitation — here on yet another day in the country.

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