When I first got the property in '66, there was nothing up here. A forest fire had burned down the few vacation cabins that existed in 1965. That was one of the reasons why I built my house of asbestos, all exterior walls and some interior walls in furnace area and kitchen.
In my earlier days, I did everything from work for a bookseller, to typesetter (hot metal type), to running printing presses, to electronic technician. I also worked as an optical physicist specializing in LASERs for a company that built automated inspection systems. At one point, I worked for a company in the publishing dept as a technical writer. That was the early 80s, and I was one of the first to train on using some newfangled device called a "word processor" consisting of 8 molded plastic CRT terminals with keyboards and a CPU and hard drive the size of a washing machine. Then I saw my first Xerox Laser printer and that ignited my interest in typography. Then some tough times hit, I spent a few years battling alcoholism, lost nearly everything. In desperation, took a job at a paper mill in town for 3 years. Learned more than I ever wanted to about feminine napkin manufacture. Learned to drive a forklift at that job.
One day, I got bitten by their attendance policy and so I quit and decided to start my own typesetting business. For the next 6 years, I struggled to make a few thousand a year. Got one or two decent clients, and one of them was earning me $6400 a week, until they went bankrupt and left me out to dry. By the mid 90s, revived my old pirate radio hobby and started broadcasting Japanese music on FM. I was on AOL at the time and a local radio disc jockey was a listener and we became friends. He introduced me to a station cluster owner about 25 miles away. That guy had been listening to my station from his home in Wilton and was impressed with the technical performance of the station. We too became friends and he said, after seeing my home built transmitter, air chain, signal processing gear in person, that he knew a few station owners in need of a good engineer. So that started my broadcast engineering career for the next 17 years, in which I would put 80K miles a year on my car just servicing stations throughout New England.
In 1976, a development went in east of us. In 1991, someone built a house down the end of our private dirt cow path. In 2007, an elderly lady on the main road with 4 acres adjacent to me was tax foreclosed and the land sold to a developer for $50K in back taxes. He proceeded to bypass 2 acre zoning by making two of the five homes he was building "affordable" housing per state law. Those "affordable" homes were priced at $395K in 2008 when completed. Then some kids set the cottage across the road from me on fire. Eventually, the developer wanted that land too. He ended up buying that lot and building 3 more McMansions. Ugly things, very unsightly. The first people that bought the house across from me were trust fund babies, son of a CEO of a major big pharma company in Stamford. Kid had no visible means of support, didn't seem to ever go out/leave the house, drove a Tesla model Y when he did go out shopping. Figured the parents bought them the house to get them out of their hair.
My wife and I spent two years looking for another good deal on a used Mazda, like the one we got for my daughter 5 years ago for $5300. Have not been able to find anything like that since. Then the transmission went out on her 20 year old Explorer. The underside was rusted badly, and the mechanic told us it would be over $3K to fix the transmission, not worth it because too much other stuff about to fail on the vehicle.
At that point, she was in a panic to find another car, so we spent two weeks shopping for a reliable used car. Apparently Cash for Clunkers got rid of the good used cars. All that was available were used cars with price tags north of $30K. We looked at some Acuras (requirement of AWD and room for our family of 7 (inlaws plus us). All of the used cars we looked at didn't seem right. We shopped in two states and went to numerous dealerships, and also private owners.
Looked at Hyundais and Kias as well. Nothing felt right.
We were exhausted, sitting in the lot of a Hyundai dealer, and next to a Mazda dealer, when the wife said, "lets test drive a CX90" and so we did. And it was the first car we'd driven in 2 weeks of test driving countless cars that just felt right. Also, it was new, with a warranty, which meant she's not likely to get stranded on the side of the road and end up with towing and huge unplanned repair bills. I can't tell you how many times I got a call from her either on the way or coming home from work, "dear, my car stopped" and I drive out there to find out the timing belt broke, or the transmission won't go into gear, etc. Plus, at her age, I wanted her to have something nice for once. I remember 50 years ago, my mother lamenting to my father about driving around in old broken down cars all her life, and her mental health failing because she realized that things weren't going to get any better. I didn't want my wife going through that loss of hope. A nice car was the one thing she could enjoy in life. And with use not spending $7K a year on electricity, due to my DiY solar power generating system, we figured she could manage the payments as long as her job holds up.
Then I continued to have medical issues and new hospitalizations.
Then this revaluation came along, and, well, you know the rest.
I'm the sort that would go out of my mind if I were in an assisted living facility. In my mind, I'm still 16, if you know what I mean, I have the desire to build big subwoofers, shake the ground, play loud music, especially if it's pipe organ with 32' stops, and I like to create music and multimedia stuff. In 2009, I converted my listening room to a home theater. These things are close to my heart and are the things that keep me going, giving me reason to live.
Besides, assisted living is for well off people with a lot of savings. Mine were drained over the last 26 years by the tax collector.
