From David: We’re back from Table Rock with lots to tell you. Ben and I will both write parts of this and we promise to keep it as short as possible.
It was a splendid weekend with lots of sunshine, warm temperatures and a good time with our friends.
It started early Friday morning with Ben, Keon, Rick and me (plus “Buzz and Max) heading to the Lake (in two cars). We’d gotten a call from “Jim” concerning the property behind (and joining) our lake lots that was about to be listed for sale with a local realtor. We got to our cabin about 10:30 and found Jim and Carol waiting for us. Jim said he’d had a chance meeting with the owner and was very concerned. He said “You know, there’s a ton of “right-wing evangelicals around here and if the place was to sell to one of those “wing-nuts” it’d be really bad news.” The owner – a guy named “Phillip” showed up at 11:30. Since I promised to keep this short… I’ll summarize. The property is 16 acres of mostly timber with a small a-frame cabin. After introducing ourselves, we all went up to the cabin. “Phil” told us it’d been left to him by his father – “A man I barely knew and haven’t seen for years.” His father had lived in the cabin until a few years ago when he moved himself to an assisted living center near Denver. He had left before Jim and Carol bought their home at the lake so they never met him. “Phil” had a copy of the plat with him as well as an appraisal he’d had done last month. We looked over the appraisal and thought the amount sounded about right, based on what we’d paid for our cabins. Ben, Keon, Rick and I talked for a long time and then I told “Phil” we’d buy the place for it’s appraised value. That way, he wouldn’t have to pay a real estate commission. He thought about it while we looked through the cabin… and finally said “Deal.” I gave him a $1,000 earnest money deposit check and Ben called the local attorney who had handled the closing on our cabin purchase. The attorney agreed to meet with us at 10:00 a.m. Saturday. After “Phil” left we all went back down to our cabin – where we popped open some beers. Ben (who was clearly in shock) looked at me and said “My God, David. What have we done. I mean, seriously. What the fuck have we done?” I just shrugged and said “Babe, under the circumstances, we’ve done the only thing we could do.”
Anyway, everyone started arriving and we had a kind of Northland gang meeting about the cabin. Keon and Rick absolutely loved the place but thought the price was more than they could afford. So we all talked and came up with the idea of splitting up the property. Ben and I would buy 3 acres and Cal and Alex 3 acres… which would make us each a total of 5 acres with our cabins. Scott and Denise volunteered to buy 5 acres “as an investment” and that would leave Keon and Rick their cabin and 5 acres. Of course, that’d involve re-platting and all that, but it got the price of the cabin down to an amount the guys were comfortable with.
I called our banker at his home and he agreed to a “bridge loan” until we can get everything finalized.
We met with “Phil” and the attorney Saturday morning and got all the legal details worked out. Pending a satisfactory title search and all the associated details, Rick, Keon and Travon have a new cabin – we have new neighbors – and we won’t be bothered by having any “evangelical wing-nuts” next door. We’ll tall you all about the cabin in another post in a couple of days.
From Ben: David has already told you about Rick and Keon’s new cabin, so I’m going to move on to the rest of our weekend. I thought I was gonna have a stroke or heart attack or something when David told “Phil” we’d buy the place, but as it’s worked out, adding 3 acres to our lake property and having our best friends close-by is about the best thing I could imagine.
Anyway, Chad, Raef and the boys got to the cabin about 6 o’clock. They’d caught 28 crappie and cleaned them – so there were 56 fresh crappie filets. We froze some and grilled the rest and they were delicious. Chad said they’d gone up to the “Long Creek arm” of Table Rock and located some underwater brush piles with the boat. Then they got out on the bank and Dub and Travon “jigged” for the crappie. He said the first ones the boys caught were small (less than the 10″ limit) so they threw them back. Said it really pissed Travon off. They kept telling him they were little and needed to grow up so we could catch ’em next year. They finally got into “3 or 4 bunches of big, black crappie” that were “keepers” so the boys were happy about that.
We spent the rest of the weekend boating and just “hanging out” with our friends. We all went to a Sunday morning “Sunrise church service” over by Branson and that made the holiday all the better. It would have been a perfect holiday weekend if Ty, Damien and Austin had been with us, but we all understand they needed to be in Houston with Ty’s family.
We’re back in school now and the boys are counting the days till summer break gets here and we can spend lots of time at the Lake. We’ll give you further updates and tell you all about Rick and Keon’s new cabin later on this week. We hope you guys all had happy, safe Easter weekends. It’s time to celebrate. The long cold winter is finally over.
xoxo Ben and David