Kevin Standlee: Fandom Is My Way of Life

Some of you may recall my writing about my grandparents' house in my home town of Challenge, California. I consider this my childhood home. My grandparents moved to Sutter years later, but retained ownership of the house, which went through a series of renters who were... not kind to the place. Here's a Google Street View from 2012 that showed what it looked like at the time.

As I recall, this was taken at a time when my nephew was trying to clean the place up, an effort that fell through and the place was left to rot.

I inherited the property through my mother, who when my grandfather died, told me she did not want it, and gave it to me. (It took a bunch of legal fees to make that happen.) I did not really want the place either. At one point I thought I'd found a buyer, and because we were working on getting clear title, I rented the property to the prospective buyer at peppercorn rent as they tried working on repairing the deteriorating property. About the time I actually got clear title, they had to pull out of the sale because the money they'd been saving for the down payment had to go to pay catastrophic medical bills.

( It Got Worse )

I'd been hoping to do something about the junked cars at least this spring, but the lockdown came and shut down everything. As things started to open slightly, I was contacted by someone who was interested in salvaging the lumber in the old garage. (How that building, which was leaning when I was a child, was still standing, I'll never know.) He offered to deal with removing the trash from the property and to deal with getting the junked cars removed in return to the right to tear down and salvage the garage. I agreed to that, but I also asked if he might be interested in the buying the property outright. After a bit of back-and-forth, he made an offer for about 40% of what the probate referee (part of the title clearance, not the value for property tax purposes) assessed the property to be worth. I agreed, as long as he bought it "as is" and paid all of the closing/title costs. As he is a semi-retired property developer, that was relatively easy for him. He's also purchased several other lots in that area.

We agreed to a bill of sale pending title reporting and clearance, which came through a few days ago. He proposed that we meet in Truckee, roughly halfway between where he lives down toward Grass Valley and where I live in Fernley. So I took a half-day off work yesterday and Lisa and I drove to Truckee. (We remembered our face masks.)

We met at an office-services shop in a shopping center at which Lisa and I have stopped many times before. Lisa and I had to have several documents signed and notarized, which is why we went to that shopping center. It was also convenient both to his bank and to mine. As a "just in case," Lisa signed a quit-claim to any title she might have had in community property, and I signed the other necessary documents, and we had them all notarized. I sort of wish I'd known that he didn't have to have anything notarized, because otherwise I would have had us go get the documents notarized here in Fernley, as Nevada's fees are lower, but never mind. I of course kept photocopies of the documents for myself. I had already long ago scanned all of the relevant title documents for the property for my records.

I gave the buyer the notarized original documents, he gave me a certified check for the agreed amount, and I handed him a folder with the original chain-of-title documents dating back to 1943, when the person who sold it to my grandparents bought it from someone else. We did not shake hands given the current environment, of course, but I wished him well, and hope he's able to redevelop it and find someone who will love it once again, the way my grandparents did. Lisa and I then went across the street and I deposited the cashier's check into my bank, and we drove back to Nevada, stopping at Reno to do grocery shopping before going home. For all that it had taken years to get to that point, the actual exchange took only minutes. We spent more time getting our signatures notarized than doing the actual sale.

I did not realize a huge amount of money from the sale. Indeed, the probate referee's assessment was less than the inflation-adjusted amount my grandparents paid for the property in 1956. (The person who sold it to my grandparents was the Postmaster of the Challenge post office. My grandmother was the clerk — the only other employee at that office.) I think I may have gotten back the legal fees I paid to get clear title, the property taxes I've been paying on the property since my grandfather's death, and maybe a little bit more, but not a whole lot more than that. But I'm also rid of a real potential liability, such as someone breaking into what's left of the place, getting hurt, and suing me, and for that matter the risk of fire, as the forest is all around the place.

There was no good reason to keep that property, and lots of good ones to sell it (we should have done so twenty years ago; I think we might have gotten at least the inflation-adjusted value out of it). Yet I do feel sad about the whole thing, illogically so. That is the first place I really think of as home, even though my parents' home from my age 0-5 was actually a short walk away. I probably spent far more time that house awake than in my own home. There are ghosts of memory, such as it being used as the base of operations from which my uncles and aunts and cousins would come to the mountains and go deer hunting, ending the day with a big family meal, filling the small house to bursting with relations of the Reynolds Clan. I have the memories still and always will, but the house was gone in practice and now it's gone in fact. So now I think of a childhood more than forty years past and apologize to the spirits of my grandparents for how badly I managed their property. But it's time to move on.

This afternoon, we were on our way out to Fernley to have a look at the house we still want to buy if we can swing the private financing. (And it looks like we might be able to make it happen, particularly if there isn't really anyone bidding against us, just a 'bot, so the bank just gets its asking price. Woe unto us; had we started this search a month sooner, we would probably have been in business by now.)

( Then my van broke down on the freeway )

We got back to Reno too late once again to go to the Nugget for dinner, and after dealing with a day's accumulated mail, we didn't actually get to dinner until about midnight. We initially were going to go to the 24-hour restaurant in the Silver Legacy (Circus Circus appears to no longer have a 24-hour restaurant), but the booming music from the nearby Rum Bullions bar drove us away and into the adjacent El Dorado (the three casinos are interconnected), where we had a very nice, quiet dinner. The server made a slight error on my order, and to apologize gave me a slice of sugar-free cheesecake for free. I appreciate the service.

There's a chance I may have to stay over several extra days in Reno waiting for my van to be repaired, but I have no time off days left. Fortunately, I think I could "work from home" in the sense of working from the hotel room. With the mechanic's shop just a few blocks from here, it would be easy to collect the van once it's ready. Circus Circus also has "half-day" rates, so if I have to stay until, say, 6 PM, that might be doable. There's certainly no danger of the place filling up. Reno is very quiet right now.

If I have to stay more days, my AAA trip-interruption insurance should pay for the extra hotel nights and meals beyond those previously planned. I hope there isn't some clause that says if you claim beyond a certain threshold your insurance is cancelled, because this would make it the third straight July in a row that I've had an interrupted road trip due to vehicle failure. And it has been a different vehicle each time!

It's never really a good time to have to do semi-emergency auto repairs while traveling, but if you must do so, today was pretty good. It didn't rain or snow, the sun shined all day long, and at least when you were out in the sun, it wasn't that cold as long as you wore a jacket. Lisa was confident that replacing the starter motor would be pretty easy, so we did not rush. We walked the 2 km or so from our hotel down to the Silver Legacy hotel and had their weekend brunch. Of course that's too much food, so I didn't mind walking back. Indeed, I would have liked to have walked even more, especially as the cold-but-dry-and-clear weather was nice for it, aside from the ice patches.

( Trains, Auto Parts, and Real Estate Scouting )

It is very dry here. This makes Lisa, who is waterlogged from too much time in Oregon, very happy, but in my case my eyes hurt a lot. The smoky casinos don't help. Must drink more water.