My Beef With Miami Coming to an End

Good news on the housing front. I am putting in an offer on a second house in northern Florida. I can’t steal Internet photos of it and put them up, because nuts would be able to search for the photos and find the address, but I can use some shots they can’t track down.

That’s the workshop. Here is what I like about that, apart from the fact that it’s a big honking workshop: it has a porch. A SHADED porch. Okay, so you spend your morning breaking things, failing to use tools correctly, making a mess, and sustaining minor injuries. All the things guys like to do in their shops. Then in the afternoon, you open the side door, lift the lid on your cooler, grab a Sierra Nevada, and sit in your swing, staring at the confused steers that ground your agricultural tax exemption.

That, my friends, is living.

Here’s another interesting shot.

That is the “wet weather pond.” The listing agent claims it’s a feature. I would think of it as more as a pedestrian hazard/snake and mosquito breeding pit, but then I am a suburb person. There is a big berm right near it, and I’m guessing the berm came from the pond, so that would mean someone actually built this hole deliberately. I don’t know about that, but I know what a berm means: no gun range fees.

Here is a partial view of the cleared side of the property. Here is what it contains, that I like: distance. I can be on this lot, a minimum of say 120 yards from anyone who is a) yammering in Spanish and angry with me for not speaking a foreign language in my own country, or b) just generally being rude to me. In practice, that distance would typically be more like 175 miles, but 120 yards is about as small as it could get in a worst-case scenario.

Here’s another great shot.

That’s one of my driveways. Notice that it does not go anywhere. That’s the beauty part. Aggravating people will make it 15 feet down the driveway and then find themselves in dirt and leaves, behind a gate which I will probably have welded shut. There is a gate that works, up by the house. I may weld that one shut, too.

Now I know what to call the place. “GET THE HELL OFF MY LAWN FARMS.” If not that, then “GRAN TORINO ACRES.”

“No. I don’t believe Steve is interested in buying any Girl Scout Cookies.”

Why do people name their farms “farms”? If you have one farm, it’s not “Sunny Hill Farms.” It’s “Sunny Hill FARM.”

I am hoping I may be able to retain the farm’s staff. Here they are on a break.

Actually, they may be working in that photo.

The lady who showed us the property called those creatures “bulls,” but I suspect they have had some minor surgery, along the lines of what Bruce Jenner recently had. It would be a little odd to put two bulls together on one lot, even in 2017. I have spent most of my life in the suburbs, but I am pretty sure bulls hate each other.

My grandfather had two in one herd, though. I guess I don’t know everything.

This ought to work out. The appraisal came in close to the asking price, so the owners aren’t living in a fantasy world. I want a little money off, because the place has been on the market for 400 days, but I don’t expect them to give it away. With God’s help, we will have a contract next week.

How do you get a property inspected from 300 miles away? I guess the owner will deal with the inspector. They always miss things, anyway. Inspectors make you feel good, and then they leave you holding the bag. A lot of the money we pay to professional people is mainly intended to make us feel good.

Getting out of South Florida is like being released from hell. By that I mean I felt like I was trapped here. My dad agreed to get out four years ago (when I started looking to move and leave him here), and then reasons to delay kept coming up. Then he forgot our agreement. Now he’s all about leaving. He hates Miami. It’s like it was his idea to leave.

I’m going to sell every last thing we have here, as soon as tax considerations permit, and I will cut every remaining tie. After that, forget this place. Let global warming come and drown it. I’ll be safe and secure, at a lofty elevation of nearly 80 feet. Like the Grinch on Mount Crumpet.

“MOUNT CRUMPET FARMS.”

If, for some reason, this place doesn’t fall into my hands, I have another one lined up, and it’s even more rural. I’m talking Deliverance without the perversion and inbreeding (I assume). That place will suit me just as well. It has a workshop you could build a space shuttle in.

I’m thinking of getting a remailing service. The Florida Bar requires me to maintain a mailing address, but I don’t practice, and I don’t want spammers and idiots bothering me. For $15 per month, you can have your mail sent to a service, and they scan it and send you pictures. Then you tell them to throw it out.

Hannibal Lecter used remailing services. How could I ask for a better referral? I’ll see if I can have my mail sent to “Get Lost, Florida.”

It’s an exciting day. God really comes through when you start getting with the program. Unfortunately, most people can’t do that, because no one is telling them what the program is. Preachers just beg for money and drive people into bankruptcy.

I hope soon I can post a photo of me enjoying a beer with my staff, either on the hoof or medium-rare with Bearnaise sauce. Pray for me.