The early years

So Bill and I moved to southern Indiana back in the summer of 1994. No, we didn't have jobs or any compelling reason to come here, but we had reasons to leave Atlanta.

First, the Olympics of 1996 were coming. Scary scary. Also, we had looked at property and it was totally priced out of our range and we didn't want to owe our souls to a bank for the next 20 or 30 years. Then, we were burglarized three times in four months. Very scary scary. We wanted to leave the rat race asap.

We had a little bit of money from his dad, and I had saved a wad from working on TV shows and movies. We had visited this area,  (I grew up in Indiana, albeit the northern part,) and I had a childhood friend who lived here in Harrison County. She sent us real estate ads from the newspaper and in the end, we packed up a U-Haul trailer and came north.

It was hard for me to adjust, as I had been working 14 hour days in a busy metropolitan area. I left it all behind and suddenly, I was sitting on a quiet deck and listening to cows and birds and trying to slow my brain down. I had to reinvent myself, and it took a good six months.

In the meantime, Bill got a job with a paycheck and we commenced to looking for a home. There was one place in Crawford County, a house and 23 acres, to be had for a song. When Bill saw the property, it was like, where's the house? Um, there. No, that's a falling down shack. No, that's the house.

We picked up a million ticks that day, and we didn't buy.

We rode around with various and misogynistic real estate agents, we drove our own selves around, we looked and looked, and then one day in the newspaper, there was this ad: Always wanted a big house but thought you couldn't afford it? Large home on corner lot..... I cut that ad out and saved it, because when I first saw The Old Hurst House, I was in love. The second I stepped foot inside this place, I knew we would buy it.

There was a ton of work to be done before it could be livable. Ah, but we were young and full of energy back then.