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Our fifth baby arrived the same week as the sale of both houses, our second daughter Sarah. Naturally that kept us from doing much serious househunting for a time. Our plan was to build a house, our dream home. We'd spent the better part of a year sketching and changing the design of this house. Four bedrooms, two full baths, laundry room on the main floor (instead of the basement) and a big front porch with a porch swing.
We decided it would be wise to rent for a year or so while we built the house. Scanning the classifieds each day in our local paper, I was surprised at how few rentals there seemed to be. Very few houses, mostly apartments. With five kids, an apartment wasn't an option! One Sunday we went to check out a large farmhouse that was for rent. It was old and not in very good condition...still had the original wallpaper from the 1920's, I think! We felt pretty sure it was not a good option, so we headed home. And as we passed one street, my husband noticed a red Suburban with a for sale sign. For two years he'd been dreaming of a four-wheel drive Suburban, a diesel-powered one. He wanted something to handle rural terrain, and he liked the economy of a diesel. But they were fairly pricey, a new one was about $25,000! Way too much for our budget! But we felt that being debt-free, we could handle about $12,500 for a vehicle that should give us good service for a number of years. This pretty red Suburban was a late model, maybe it was affordable. Driving past the truck to get the phone number, we realized it was at the bottom of a driveway. At the top of the driveway sat a woman in a lawn chair. Jerry got out and went up to talk to her about the Suburban. It was only two years old and looked to be in beautiful condition. The woman said she'd never learned to drive, and her husband of 40 years had passed away recently. The Suburban had been his baby. When Jerry asked her how much she wanted for the Suburban, she said, "$12,500 for you." We looked at each other, surprised. She said, "I don't know why that figure came out. I've been asking $14,500 for it in the paper. But my husband loved kids, he would have loved for a family with kids to get that truck. I just felt like giving you a better price." After test driving the Suburban, I knew it was a done deal. It was exactly what he'd been looking for, and was very roomy and could hold nine passengers. So we could take our family and a couple of extras besides! So we bought "Big Red" and brought it home to be part of our "Great Adventure." We were also driving a nearly new Toyota minivan. The folks who bought our house (the second house, the one we lived in) offered to buy the minivan (another debt gone!) AND to keep our family dog Sandee Britches. They said the neighbors would never know we were gone...the blue minivan would pull up in the drive, a pile of kids would come out and the dog would run over to greet them like nothing had changed. So now we were debt free, completely debt free. What a feeling! But we still needed to find a place to live... (To be continued)
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