2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season Running Thread

If y’all don’t mind, I’m gonna refer to Tropical Storm Rafael as “Ted.”

 

Cancun expects an indirect hit.

 

I'll put this here, not because it belongs, but because it's as good a place as any (and obsessing over hurricanes is better for my blood pressure than politics).

@tea and ease asked about my great grandfather and the family farm.

He bought hundreds of acres sometime around 1900... pasture, timber, springs, creek, etc. At age 42, he was working in the field near the creek, drank from it, got typhoid and died, leaving my great grandmother with all that land and 10 kids.
The farm eventually got split up between the kids. As time went by, everyone sold out but us. One of my great uncles sold his share immediately, and according to my mom it created an uproar. He flat out told everyone, "I don't want to be a farmer. I'm moving to town." We were the last holdouts entirely because of my dad. It was inherited from my mom's side and technically belonged to her, but my dad liked farming. She would have sold it and moved 20 years ago if not for him.
When my dad got down in 2022, that left me to take care of the farm, my parents house and yard, and my house and yard. Taking care of it has dang about killed me, too, because like my great uncle I never wanted to be a farmer, either. When my dad died in '23, mom and I put the farm property up for sale soon after. I don't know how many people have asked, "Don't you feel bad about selling the last of your family's farm?"
"No. Not the least."

 

My family history parallels that in a way.

At some point in the 1840s, the King was offering land in Ontario to Irish and Scots who wished to move to Canada. I don't know if the potato famine was a factor, but certainly the idea of a fresh start away from the U.K. was.

Each family got 160 acres but the catch was you had to clear the land of trees (the bush, as my grandfather called it), build a homestead and farm it. Well, their property was northeast of Durham (Ontario, not N.C.), and after the arduous task of clearing it and building a log house, my GG-grandfather and G-grandfather realized the land was nearly all stones from the previous Ice Age with the barest amount of top soil. They subsisted on what they could grow, but not enough to be able to turn a profit.

Thankfully, my GG-grandfather had been a weaver in Ireland and somehow brought his loom -- or manufactured one -- so made enough money weaving blankets and clothing to support the family. At some point before 1880, a two-story stone house was built (no running water but a cistern in the basement), and my great-grandfather raised eight children. So 10 people were living there at one time around the turn of the century.

My grandfather was born in 1889, the oldest son. He talked about walking the mile to the one-room schoolhouse and back every day, then walking behind the plowhorse and picking up granite stones every afternoon. By the time he was 14 or 15 -- and had gotten all the education he could -- he and two friends took the railroad west to Calgary, where he found work as a carpenter.

Knowing he would inherit the farm at some point, he opted instead to emigrate to booming industrial Detroit sometime soon after 1908, along with thousands of other rural Canadians, where the lure of better jobs awaited. He was a very successful home builder and built both the home my mother grew up in and the one I remember after he retired. He went back to the farm often to visit his parents (and my mother would spend her summers there as a child), but never regretted inheriting it. When my great-grandmother died a month before I was born, none of the eight children wanted it, so it eventually was sold a few years later. My grandfather died in April of 1976 but I was old enough to hear some of his stories.

However, I never visited the farm until many years later, when mom suggested a trip there. The first thing I noticed when we pulled into the driveway was a massive pile of round, gray stones against the wall of the barn. How many of those were placed there by my grandfather, I don't know. But I took one -- and it's on the fireplace hearth right now, no more than 10 feet from where I'm typing this. No one was home that day, so we didn't get inside. We did go to the Zion Church down the road, where everyone is buried. With my mother and I standing there, that's five generations in one spot spanning nearly two centuries.

The farm now owned by an artist couple from Toronto who use it as a weekend home. When we were in Markdale a few years later for my grandfather's youngest sister's 100th birthday (my grand aunt?), we were graciously allowed in. It has running water and electricity now, and they extended the back of the house to include a new kitchen, bathroom and studio area.

The walls are at least two feet thick -- insulation for long, cold winters -- and the idea that four daughters and four sons all shared two bedrooms is mind-boggling and a bit claustrophobic, to be honest. I can see why all the children thought there were better options, either in Detroit or Toronto. And like your family, no one second-guessed the idea of selling the property.

 

One thing I can pass along from my experiences over the last couple of years dealing with a large family tract of land, two houses with attics and basements, a barn, milk barn, multi-bay shop, and multiple storage buildings:
If you've got a bunch of stuff that's just "stuff" - do your family a favor and cull it. If it's something you hold dear, use, or has literal or sentimental value, that's awesome. But if it's just "stuff" that you don't want to get rid because you might want it some day, get rid of it.
From June 2022 up to and including TODAY, I have killed myself selling, giving away, donating, trashing, burning, begging people to take more than a century of family "stuff."
I had to burn a GD piano because I couldn't give the thing away! Someone told me, "You'll have to pay $2K to have it hauled away." "No, I won't. I dismantled it, took the pieces out back, and set it on fire like I was Jerry Lee Lewis."
This afternoon I had a neighbor ask about one thing, and I said, "Yeah, you can have it, but you have to take that and that with it" just so I could get rid of it.

 

I have a question about "stuff."

I have photos of people from over a century ago. I have reels of film I don't even know what I would show them on. I have my father's Navy uniform, his BUD/S class photos, his certificates. I have my grandfather's last wallet with his 1980 New Jersey PBA card, which I am going to whip out when I am pulled over in New Jersey.

I also have a flag, and a book from the ship my grandfather served on. These aren't things I can throw away.

 

The real question is do you have anyone to leave it to? If so, that's different. I don't. When I talk about "stuff" I'm not talking about anything valuable or useful.
If it's say pictures of great great grandparents, unless they are the Wright Brothers or Joe Dimaggio, eventually, no one is going to know who they are or care. If you have someone to leave it to or extended relatives willing to take it, cool. Otherwise, when you're gone, it's going to get tossed. I have allowed myself one plastic tote of keepsakes that were my dad's. They are important to me and stuff I just don't want to get rid of right now. I have told my nephew, who is executor of my will, when I'm dead, just throw it away. Don't even open it or look inside. There is nothing in there of financial worth or of any value to anyone but me. It's just stuff.

 

The only direct relatives would be my nieces who were born 25 years after my grandfather died. My sister doesn't seem to care much about taking my father's stuff.

I just can't throw a Navy uniform in a Goodwill bin. I don't want to dump photos of men who did what they did in my garbage can.

 

I have never ever be4en able to throw away a book in my life. My surviving family will not think of fondly of this when I pass.

 

Can relate so much.
My late mother was a hoarder. I spent weeks worth, maybe months, of hours going through stuff.
It was, at times, overwhelming.
Then, I did what you described as the Jerry Lee Lewis thing. Burned, burned and burned some more. Fortunately, it was out in the country.
On a somewhat funny note, I learned after the fact what happens when you burn too many tires at the same time.