May 1, 1989: A Change Is Gonna Come
The change that’s coming over the land around the town where I work is that houses are going up. Not subdivisions of houses, not that at all, but a house in this field and a house in that field, one at a time, here and there over the territory. The woods are good woods, deep and shady, maples and oaks, no plantation-pine trash, but no one builds in the woods for some reason. Maybe the old farmers selling the land don’t want to sell the woods, want to keep them for deer stands and maple sugaring and just because they like the looks of them. Farmers around here have more soul than most people realize, especially when it comes to the woods where maybe they’d hunt deer with their dad or haul maple-sap buckets down to the big evaporating pan. Fields they’ll sell, especially the rolling, rocky fields that bend a plow 90 degrees as much as look at it, and so people buy the fields and put up their houses, like I said, one at a time, here and there over the territory.
Don’t know who exactly is building these houses. Number of people in town is same as it ever was, no vacancies there, apartment houses are all full, mobile-home parks the same, and the county comes out with its population numbers and says population out in the townships is stable, so I don’t know where these people are coming from buy the land in the fields and build their houses. Figure one of those areas would start running a deficit after time.
What got me thinking about the houses out in the fields is I took a different way into work one day. Lots of different ways to get from where I live to where I work. Small back-country roads, most of them, but they have character and they have life crammed right up to their edges. They don’t make life back away the way the highways do. If a place has eggs for sale the sign’ll be right in your face; you’ll know it. After a spell on the four-lanes, run down to Madison or what have you, it’s getting back on the country roads again makes you feel part of where you’re traveling, not just where you’re coming from and getting to.
This country road had the nice woods I was mentioning, the stands of hardwood where the shade turns almost black in the summer, and it had the hilly, rocky fields. One of these fields had a house like the kind you see built out in these places, a biggish ranch thing with an extra garage for the four-wheeler and the boat and the things people who build in fields generally have. Thing about this house was it had brickwork over most of its front like you don’t usually see, and laid in brick above the main garage was a big G – Green Bay Packers G. Big brickwork, nice brick from what I could see, and fancy. Must have cost $1,000 at least to put up there. The other thing about this house was it was kind of deserted – grass starting to grow up in with the shrubs, no four-wheelers or boat trailers out and around like you’ll see, no basketball hoop.
I know Little T back in the mailroom knows everyone and everything down on the rural roads from having grown up here and hunted all around here and even run the rural mail route around here on occasion, so because I’ve got packages to mail I go back to ask him about the house and the G and why it looks deserted.
Everyone calls him Little T because his dad, Ted, is Big T, but his real name is Travis and he goes about 6-3 and 230. Nice guy, good to have on your side in a softball game or bar fight, or both.
“Sure, I know the place,” Little T says. Knew he would. “Nice place. Been inside. Real nice. They got one of those sunken bars in the lower level, big room with a pool table – had a pool table when I was in there – big TV, all that. Real nice place.
“Guy from over in Appleton built it – Van Voorse or something like that. Dad ‘n’ mom used to live somewhere around here they said but I never remember ‘em. Musta been one-a those short-timers. Big Packer fan, built it so everyone would know he’s a big Packer fan, like the Packer wind socks and Packer mailbox and signs and blankets inside and all that Packer trash wouldn’t give him away –”
“And like no one else around here is a Packer fan,” I say.
“Yeah, like no one else around here is a Packer fan and ya gotta stand out. I mean, he even bought all John Deere stuff – lawn tractor, four-wheeler – not because he cared anything about John Deere but just for the green 'n' yellow. Left ‘em get muddy and full of oil and stand outside in hopes the green ‘n’ yellow would start lookin’ more like green and gold. Can’t say worked all that well.
“Anyhow, he musta spent I don’t know how much puttin’ up that big G top of his garage, but then the funny thing is he didn’t spend two months in the place. Came home sick from work one day and found his wife sharin’ space with her CFO. Not office space, either. Okay, so he takes his stuff and bolts to his huntin’ shack, divorces her, and she marries the CFO. Only thing is, it’s not another two months that she dumps the CFO and runs off with someone –”
“CEO, probably.”
“Yeah, probably the CEO. Workin’ her way up the ladder. Or maybe workin’ her way down. She never struck me as someone who thought much about money or titles – or thought much at all, when you get down to it. Just kinda reacted. Strange for an accountant, or whatever that thing was she was. Woulda run off with the cleanin’ lady if that struck her as the thing to do at the time.
“So the guy who built the house is gone, the wife who lived in the house is gone, and the only guy left with the house is the CFO."
“Okay,” I says, “what’s the trouble with that?”
“He’s not a Packer fan. Not at all. CFO, up from Chicago like a lot of them CFOs, he’s a Bear fan. Big Bear fan. Doesn’t want to pay to have the G yanked out from up on top of the garage, so he figures he’ll show contempt. Show contempt for the Packers by letting the place go. He splits time in Chicago anyhow and isn’t back up here more’n two days a week, so nothin’ lost by him not mowin’ the lawn or washin’ the windows or cuttin’ back the bushes.”
“Why doesn’t he just sell the place and move on?”
“Contempt. You know, he’s gotten to kinda like the idea of runnin’ down the Packers by lettin’ his house run down. Kinda contempt for the lady that left him, too, but I think he’s over that a lot more than gettin’ stuck with a house with a big brick Packer G over the garage. Plus he can afford it. I’d guess he’s not lettin’ anything go that would take a lot of money to fix, just the cheap obvious stuff."
“So what made you ask about that?” Little T says. “You take a different way into work today?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Didn’t think it had been that long since I came in to work that way.”
“Only been about six months all this happened,” Little T says. “Things can happen fast out in those fields. You think everything’s out in the open, but it’s just the opposite. You want these to go UPS?” I tell him yes and that’s the end of things.
The change that’s coming over the land around the town where I work is that houses are going up. Not subdivisions of houses, not that at all, but a house in this field and a house in that field, one at a time, here and there over the territory. The woods are good woods, deep and shady, maples and oaks, no plantation-pine trash, but no one builds in the woods for some reason. Maybe the old farmers selling the land don’t want to sell the woods, want to keep them for deer stands and maple sugaring and just because they like the looks of them. Farmers around here have more soul than most people realize, especially when it comes to the woods where maybe they’d hunt deer with their dad or haul maple-sap buckets down to the big evaporating pan. Fields they’ll sell, especially the rolling, rocky fields that bend a plow 90 degrees as much as look at it, and so people buy the fields and put up their houses, like I said, one at a time, here and there over the territory.
Don’t know who exactly is building these houses. Number of people in town is same as it ever was, no vacancies there, apartment houses are all full, mobile-home parks the same, and the county comes out with its population numbers and says population out in the townships is stable, so I don’t know where these people are coming from buy the land in the fields and build their houses. Figure one of those areas would start running a deficit after time.
What got me thinking about the houses out in the fields is I took a different way into work one day. Lots of different ways to get from where I live to where I work. Small back-country roads, most of them, but they have character and they have life crammed right up to their edges. They don’t make life back away the way the highways do. If a place has eggs for sale the sign’ll be right in your face; you’ll know it. After a spell on the four-lanes, run down to Madison or what have you, it’s getting back on the country roads again makes you feel part of where you’re traveling, not just where you’re coming from and getting to.
This country road had the nice woods I was mentioning, the stands of hardwood where the shade turns almost black in the summer, and it had the hilly, rocky fields. One of these fields had a house like the kind you see built out in these places, a biggish ranch thing with an extra garage for the four-wheeler and the boat and the things people who build in fields generally have. Thing about this house was it had brickwork over most of its front like you don’t usually see, and laid in brick above the main garage was a big G – Green Bay Packers G. Big brickwork, nice brick from what I could see, and fancy. Must have cost $1,000 at least to put up there. The other thing about this house was it was kind of deserted – grass starting to grow up in with the shrubs, no four-wheelers or boat trailers out and around like you’ll see, no basketball hoop.
I know Little T back in the mailroom knows everyone and everything down on the rural roads from having grown up here and hunted all around here and even run the rural mail route around here on occasion, so because I’ve got packages to mail I go back to ask him about the house and the G and why it looks deserted.
Everyone calls him Little T because his dad, Ted, is Big T, but his real name is Travis and he goes about 6-3 and 230. Nice guy, good to have on your side in a softball game or bar fight, or both.
“Sure, I know the place,” Little T says. Knew he would. “Nice place. Been inside. Real nice. They got one of those sunken bars in the lower level, big room with a pool table – had a pool table when I was in there – big TV, all that. Real nice place.
“Guy from over in Appleton built it – Van Voorse or something like that. Dad ‘n’ mom used to live somewhere around here they said but I never remember ‘em. Musta been one-a those short-timers. Big Packer fan, built it so everyone would know he’s a big Packer fan, like the Packer wind socks and Packer mailbox and signs and blankets inside and all that Packer trash wouldn’t give him away –”
“And like no one else around here is a Packer fan,” I say.
“Yeah, like no one else around here is a Packer fan and ya gotta stand out. I mean, he even bought all John Deere stuff – lawn tractor, four-wheeler – not because he cared anything about John Deere but just for the green 'n' yellow. Left ‘em get muddy and full of oil and stand outside in hopes the green ‘n’ yellow would start lookin’ more like green and gold. Can’t say worked all that well.
“Anyhow, he musta spent I don’t know how much puttin’ up that big G top of his garage, but then the funny thing is he didn’t spend two months in the place. Came home sick from work one day and found his wife sharin’ space with her CFO. Not office space, either. Okay, so he takes his stuff and bolts to his huntin’ shack, divorces her, and she marries the CFO. Only thing is, it’s not another two months that she dumps the CFO and runs off with someone –”
“CEO, probably.”
“Yeah, probably the CEO. Workin’ her way up the ladder. Or maybe workin’ her way down. She never struck me as someone who thought much about money or titles – or thought much at all, when you get down to it. Just kinda reacted. Strange for an accountant, or whatever that thing was she was. Woulda run off with the cleanin’ lady if that struck her as the thing to do at the time.
“So the guy who built the house is gone, the wife who lived in the house is gone, and the only guy left with the house is the CFO."
“Okay,” I says, “what’s the trouble with that?”
“He’s not a Packer fan. Not at all. CFO, up from Chicago like a lot of them CFOs, he’s a Bear fan. Big Bear fan. Doesn’t want to pay to have the G yanked out from up on top of the garage, so he figures he’ll show contempt. Show contempt for the Packers by letting the place go. He splits time in Chicago anyhow and isn’t back up here more’n two days a week, so nothin’ lost by him not mowin’ the lawn or washin’ the windows or cuttin’ back the bushes.”
“Why doesn’t he just sell the place and move on?”
“Contempt. You know, he’s gotten to kinda like the idea of runnin’ down the Packers by lettin’ his house run down. Kinda contempt for the lady that left him, too, but I think he’s over that a lot more than gettin’ stuck with a house with a big brick Packer G over the garage. Plus he can afford it. I’d guess he’s not lettin’ anything go that would take a lot of money to fix, just the cheap obvious stuff."
“So what made you ask about that?” Little T says. “You take a different way into work today?”
“Yeah,” I say. “Didn’t think it had been that long since I came in to work that way.”
“Only been about six months all this happened,” Little T says. “Things can happen fast out in those fields. You think everything’s out in the open, but it’s just the opposite. You want these to go UPS?” I tell him yes and that’s the end of things.
posted by Kit Kiefer | 7:30 PM
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