The Myth of Wile E

The Price of Eggs

So, the old couple took their insurance money and fled to Santa Fe, New Mexico, before anyone could make them pay to have their house moved. You see, the spot where the house had come to rest was someone else's 1/3 acre lot. It was an unwanted lot that had been for sale more than sixteen years with not one person coming to look at it, unless you count all the people who came to take pictures of the giant snowball. Some luckless guy named Ed had inherited the 1/3 acre. (His younger brother Dwayne had gotten a '53 Corvette and a Mickey Mantle rookie card. Go figure.)

The land was very cheap and all ready to be lived on. Ed had tried really hard to sell it. He'd had the septic dug, and also a well. He'd done a bit of landscaping, too. He'd placed ads in the local paper, and then every paper in the state, and then every PennySaver in the country. He may even have placed some ads in Canadian papers. But it seemed nobody wanted a mere 1/3 acre lot at the bottom of a hill near a coal-burning power plant. And since possibly God, of all people, had smote a rhombus-shaped mobile home onto the lot, the land was wanted even less.

And that's where I came in. I bought my lovely lopsided home, and its little piece of unwanted land, for basically the price of eggs.

What I mean is, if you're like most people you probably buy a dozen eggs every week or two. Well, multiply that to determine what you'll spend on eggs in your entire life, using current life expectancies, and that's about how much my house cost. It's shocking how much that seems like when you're talking about eggs, and how little when you're talking about houses.

So I got the house all hooked up with electricity and such, and moved in a few years ago. It's really quite cozy. The curtains came with it. And I've even made my own wallpaper out of 288 nearly identical thank-you notes I've received from all over the country (though mostly New York). But that's a story for later.

Don't you think it was nice of the old couple to leave the curtains? I sure do.