The Drama Of Moving Again
From James Donahue’s Journal
I was still in a cast and recovering from my broken leg when Doris discovered a “fixer-upper” rural house on the market near Applegate that could be purchased for a very low price. She did a drive-by and got all excited about taking on this house as another project. We talked to the realtor that had the house listed and arranged for a tour.
It was a large four-bedroom farm home on Elk Creek Road, a dead-end dirt road that stopped where a bridge was out over Elk Creek. Living in the house was an older handicapped man confined to a wheelchair, and a retarded daughter who was doing her best to care for him. The house was solid but in a serious state of disrepair. Some windows were broken, the roof was starting to leak, there was obvious water damage to some of the upstairs rooms, and the house was filthy. Cats and other animals were living in the place. It was a massive home improvement project, but the price was so good and the location so good we decided to take it on.
Our offer to buy was contingent on the realtor first selling our property. It didn’t take long before we had a buyer . . . a Polish couple right from Hamtramck that was looking for a rural house to retire to. We advertised the property just as it had been sold to us, a house with five acres of property. These people made an offer and we accepted it. Closing was set for the next week. All of this was happening at about the time I was getting my cast off. The doctor said I could now bend my leg enough to drive our car, but I was not to put any weight on the leg until the X-ray showed my leg was completely healed.
In the meantime, Aaron had a job at the Sandusky A&P grocery store. He was driving the pickup to work nights after school to and from his job. Thus the stage was set for the fantastic drama that was about to befall us.
Before they would sign on the house, the Polish couple insisted that we have the property surveyed. They wanted to know exactly where the property boundaries were. We shared in the cost of the survey. The surveyor discovered that the property we had and the property we were supposed to have had were two different things. We had been scammed by the Mezzos and the “Christian” realtor who sold us the property. What we had was about an acre and a half of property. The land we were supposed to have bought was part of the land still being used by the Mezzos. We had no idea just how large an acre of land was, and it never occurred to us that our property, which looked quite vast to us, was not the full five acres that we thought we bought.
This news hit us all on the day of our closing. When we arrived at the Realtor Clair Wait’s office to sign, the Polish family balked. They said they would not sign because we were cheating them. They also accused us of removing some kitchen cupboards that were never there. They did all they could to force me to come down on our price for the property. It looked like all of the work of getting papers ready for a double closing was for naught. Wait did some tall talking and tried to get me to come down on the price of our property. I refused. We needed that much to pay off our mortgage and have enough left to close on the other property and get moved in. Any less and we couldn’t make it work. Rather than lose the deal, Wait paid the difference out of his own pocket and said I could pay him back later. At the time I agreed, but later, after thinking about it, I thought better of it. It was my opinion that the house was being sold at a fair price, even without the extra land. I had not agreed to the reduction in the sale price. Wait did that without my approval. That led to some problems between Wait and me later and I had to use some trickery to get out of that situation.
The date was set for us to be moved out of our house. But we had to wait for the house on Elk Creek Road to be vacated. Those people didn’t move until a few days before we were supposed to move in. And they left it in such a mess we did not want to move into it in that state. I called my brother, Steve, who was living at Port Hope then. He and Paula came down and spent a few days helping us clean, paint and do what we could to make that house as livable as possible. Since I still could not walk, and still was on crutches, the best I could do was sit in a chair and paint things within reach. I couldn’t lift or carry anything. I was going to be totally incapable of helping in this move.
We were working long hours at the Elk Creek Road house. One day at about noon, Steve and I decided to drive into Sandusky and get hamburgers and French fries for everybody. We got in my old maroon Oldsmobile and started out for town. About the time we got to the corner and turned toward Sandusky, a State Police patrol car began to tail us. I thought it strange to find those police on a county road. When he turned on his flashing lights to stop me, I thought maybe there had been trouble at home. The older kids were there that day with Jennifer and there was no telephone yet hooked up at the place where we were working.
Once I stopped, both Steve and I opened our doors. I reached in the back seat for my crutches, expecting to step out and visit with the trooper. I knew all the officers in the area and was not expecting trouble. Just then I heard Steve shout: “Don’t shoot . . . he’s on crutches!” I froze in place and slowly looked around. I did not know this patrolman. And he was in an attack position, his holster open and his hand on his gun. He finally approached the car, saw my crutches, let me get them and get out of the car.
It turned out that the Applegate bank had been robbed a few hours earlier by two bearded men who fled in an older maroon car. Steve and I both had beards and our old car was maroon. We clearly matched the description of the bank robbers. Once we explained who we were and what we were doing, and once the officer radioed the desk sergeant in Sandusky, the heat was off. The police in Sandusky had a good laugh over their new guy confusing the Times Herald bureau reporter for a fleeing bank robber. This officer later became the post commander. He and I got to be good friends and we always laughed about the day he almost shot me.
At last moving day arrived. We were relying on our pickup to get the job done, but the night before the move, vandals poked holes in the radiator while Aaron had it parked in the A&P lot. The truck overheated as Aaron was on the way home and we thought the engine might have been damaged. We had to rent a U-Haul truck to make the move. That delayed us by about half a day. With Aaron, the girls, Steve, Paula and Doris working as hard as they could, we were still moving long after dark. We tried to get our buyers to give us an extra day to get moved but they refused to budge. They wanted us out by the next morning because they were moving in.
We didn’t get all of our things moved. And Doris didn’t have time to clean the house. That was the only time we ever moved out of a house and left it in that state. I was so mad about the cold heartedness expressed by those people I accidentally forgot to tell them about the water bucket in the attic that always had to be dumped after a rain. I felt our haunted house was the perfect home for them.
I think it was early the next morning before we were settled in enough and had beds up so we could get some sleep. But we were at last moved into the old house on Elk Creek Road.
From James Donahue’s Journal
I was still in a cast and recovering from my broken leg when Doris discovered a “fixer-upper” rural house on the market near Applegate that could be purchased for a very low price. She did a drive-by and got all excited about taking on this house as another project. We talked to the realtor that had the house listed and arranged for a tour.
It was a large four-bedroom farm home on Elk Creek Road, a dead-end dirt road that stopped where a bridge was out over Elk Creek. Living in the house was an older handicapped man confined to a wheelchair, and a retarded daughter who was doing her best to care for him. The house was solid but in a serious state of disrepair. Some windows were broken, the roof was starting to leak, there was obvious water damage to some of the upstairs rooms, and the house was filthy. Cats and other animals were living in the place. It was a massive home improvement project, but the price was so good and the location so good we decided to take it on.
Our offer to buy was contingent on the realtor first selling our property. It didn’t take long before we had a buyer . . . a Polish couple right from Hamtramck that was looking for a rural house to retire to. We advertised the property just as it had been sold to us, a house with five acres of property. These people made an offer and we accepted it. Closing was set for the next week. All of this was happening at about the time I was getting my cast off. The doctor said I could now bend my leg enough to drive our car, but I was not to put any weight on the leg until the X-ray showed my leg was completely healed.
In the meantime, Aaron had a job at the Sandusky A&P grocery store. He was driving the pickup to work nights after school to and from his job. Thus the stage was set for the fantastic drama that was about to befall us.
Before they would sign on the house, the Polish couple insisted that we have the property surveyed. They wanted to know exactly where the property boundaries were. We shared in the cost of the survey. The surveyor discovered that the property we had and the property we were supposed to have had were two different things. We had been scammed by the Mezzos and the “Christian” realtor who sold us the property. What we had was about an acre and a half of property. The land we were supposed to have bought was part of the land still being used by the Mezzos. We had no idea just how large an acre of land was, and it never occurred to us that our property, which looked quite vast to us, was not the full five acres that we thought we bought.
This news hit us all on the day of our closing. When we arrived at the Realtor Clair Wait’s office to sign, the Polish family balked. They said they would not sign because we were cheating them. They also accused us of removing some kitchen cupboards that were never there. They did all they could to force me to come down on our price for the property. It looked like all of the work of getting papers ready for a double closing was for naught. Wait did some tall talking and tried to get me to come down on the price of our property. I refused. We needed that much to pay off our mortgage and have enough left to close on the other property and get moved in. Any less and we couldn’t make it work. Rather than lose the deal, Wait paid the difference out of his own pocket and said I could pay him back later. At the time I agreed, but later, after thinking about it, I thought better of it. It was my opinion that the house was being sold at a fair price, even without the extra land. I had not agreed to the reduction in the sale price. Wait did that without my approval. That led to some problems between Wait and me later and I had to use some trickery to get out of that situation.
The date was set for us to be moved out of our house. But we had to wait for the house on Elk Creek Road to be vacated. Those people didn’t move until a few days before we were supposed to move in. And they left it in such a mess we did not want to move into it in that state. I called my brother, Steve, who was living at Port Hope then. He and Paula came down and spent a few days helping us clean, paint and do what we could to make that house as livable as possible. Since I still could not walk, and still was on crutches, the best I could do was sit in a chair and paint things within reach. I couldn’t lift or carry anything. I was going to be totally incapable of helping in this move.
We were working long hours at the Elk Creek Road house. One day at about noon, Steve and I decided to drive into Sandusky and get hamburgers and French fries for everybody. We got in my old maroon Oldsmobile and started out for town. About the time we got to the corner and turned toward Sandusky, a State Police patrol car began to tail us. I thought it strange to find those police on a county road. When he turned on his flashing lights to stop me, I thought maybe there had been trouble at home. The older kids were there that day with Jennifer and there was no telephone yet hooked up at the place where we were working.
Once I stopped, both Steve and I opened our doors. I reached in the back seat for my crutches, expecting to step out and visit with the trooper. I knew all the officers in the area and was not expecting trouble. Just then I heard Steve shout: “Don’t shoot . . . he’s on crutches!” I froze in place and slowly looked around. I did not know this patrolman. And he was in an attack position, his holster open and his hand on his gun. He finally approached the car, saw my crutches, let me get them and get out of the car.
It turned out that the Applegate bank had been robbed a few hours earlier by two bearded men who fled in an older maroon car. Steve and I both had beards and our old car was maroon. We clearly matched the description of the bank robbers. Once we explained who we were and what we were doing, and once the officer radioed the desk sergeant in Sandusky, the heat was off. The police in Sandusky had a good laugh over their new guy confusing the Times Herald bureau reporter for a fleeing bank robber. This officer later became the post commander. He and I got to be good friends and we always laughed about the day he almost shot me.
At last moving day arrived. We were relying on our pickup to get the job done, but the night before the move, vandals poked holes in the radiator while Aaron had it parked in the A&P lot. The truck overheated as Aaron was on the way home and we thought the engine might have been damaged. We had to rent a U-Haul truck to make the move. That delayed us by about half a day. With Aaron, the girls, Steve, Paula and Doris working as hard as they could, we were still moving long after dark. We tried to get our buyers to give us an extra day to get moved but they refused to budge. They wanted us out by the next morning because they were moving in.
We didn’t get all of our things moved. And Doris didn’t have time to clean the house. That was the only time we ever moved out of a house and left it in that state. I was so mad about the cold heartedness expressed by those people I accidentally forgot to tell them about the water bucket in the attic that always had to be dumped after a rain. I felt our haunted house was the perfect home for them.
I think it was early the next morning before we were settled in enough and had beds up so we could get some sleep. But we were at last moved into the old house on Elk Creek Road.