Selecting a property, as you probably know isn't an easy task. We knew the area we wanted and sent detailed discriptions to several realtors in the area. I guess some realtors can't read. Some insisted they had exactly what we wanted. One became very
irate when I wasn't interested in the property he showed me. Can't believe that they wasted my timeand theirs showing me parcels that were not the acreage we had stated.
Such is life. The choices weren't that great. I knew what I wanted and finally found the property pictured above. It's about 30 acres. There was one immediate problem. Have you heard of poison oak? Well its a nice looking bush that is poisonous to most. Much worse than poison ivy. The property was covered with it. You couldn't see the ground, especially where the building site was planned. I obtained permission, at our expense, and hired a local to clear the brush around the proposed building site before showing it to my wife, Midge. The picture above is the before and just below is the after. The time was at hand to show Midge the
property.
She drove to Orgeon the following weekend. We decided to make our offer with a contingency that if we drilled for water and it
produced less than 3.5 gallons a minute we could walk away from it. We had been warned that water is a problem in the area. The offer was finally accepted and I moved onto the property to oversee the drilling of a well. If you look closely you can see my home away from home on the top of the hill.
I contacted a well drilling company and the rig was soon erected on the property. Being a city slicker I had never seen a well drilled and the questions flew. I watched as the dollars seemed to disappear down a deepening hole. There wasn't a traceof water till we had gone down 250 foot or more. The cost in 1989 to drill was about $10.00 a foot. They finally had a trickle of water around 300 foot. Panic started setting in. I decided that the prospect didn't look promising for water. The realtor contacted the owner of the property and relayed to him the results. The owner decided he would pay for drilling 50 foot deeper. The hole sunk to 355 foot and I stopped.
We checked the flow and it was less than 1 gallon per minute. I had decided that the best thing to do was cancel the contract and lick my wounds. I called my wife and headed home to talk things over.
My trip home was filled with thoughts about how I would tell Midge that I had made a mistake and we should cancel the offer to purchase the property. This meant the loss of the $3000 we spent on the well, all the other expenses invloved and the 3 months
effort we had invested. I arrived in San Jose, California very depressed about the entire venture. We discussed all the pros and cons imagined and real. I still felt the best thing was to extricate us from the offer. Midge felt differently. She wanted to continue on because she loved the place already. We heatedly discussed the decision for several days. I finally called the realtor and gave him our decision. Good, bad or indifferent we would buy the property.
Well if I haven't bored you to tears continue on to the next sequel
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Moved into FortuneCity
December 4th, 1997
Updated July 9th, 2002