Places Where I've Lived: Ferndale, 1

It was D who told me about this place, just after moving in with me October, 1987.  He said that his sister knew some people who were looking for a tenant for a rundown farmhouse on an acre they had bought in Richmond.  I was cool to the notion, not wanting to work my fingers to the bone making a shack liveable and having to clear and cultivate land.  I did want to move.  I more than wanted to move.  I was feeling called out of where I was living.  I also had a strong desire to work hard with my hands.  I couldn't dismiss the thought.

A couple of weeks later I took the bait and D gave me the landlords' contact info.  They were a married couple.  The husband I knew when we were both teenagers, but not very well.  I was in a couple of classes in grade eight with his best friend.  He was just in his early thirties, like me, but had changed a lot.  There was something now vaguely unpleasant about him but I was still glad to take on the challenge.

My first visit to the house occurred in mid-November.  It was a very sad, ugly and forsaken place.  The house itself was completely disheveled.  I could only see it from outside but it looked tragic.  Still, there was a hidden beauty or charm there and I felt a growing desire to see if I could summon it forth.  The property was a huge overgrown mess, a long acre with trees and meadows and many piles of rubbish and crumbling sheds and outbuildings.

Less than a week later I met the owners and we had a tour of the interior of the house.  It was a rambling one storey farmhouse, perhaps built in the Twenties or Thirties.  There were some remnant sticks of furniture and makeshift shelves everywhere.  It was full of dust.  I began to come every day, tearing out wood and shelving and pounding nails and cleaning.  I also tackled the grounds, clearing wherever I could and making trails in the back.  This felt like a labour of love.  I crowbarred, hammered, nailed and painted and cut and pruned and cleared.  I felt often exhausted.  I felt wonderful.

By mid-December it was ready for occupancy.  So began one of the most bizarre chapters of my life.