An interesting request for my services showed up in my mailbox. So far, in my somewhat fledgling business, all my new customers had called me on the phone to request an estimate or make an appointment for me to work for them. This was the first letter I'd received . . .
Dear sir,
I live off the grid in the far north-eastern
part of the County. If you are willing to work
this far from the city, please write back to me.
I have no electric, phone or email.
Thank you,
Jeanie Wills
I was intrigued, and work was a little slow around town, so I wrote back telling her I'd be happy to drive up and see her. I told her my labor rate, gave her a few dates and times to pick from, and after receiving another note from her I was off, driving into a deeply forested area about thirty miles from the city.
I located the mailbox with her name on it and turned onto a rutted dirt driveway. It rose gradually through the dense forest to a large clearing on the top of a hill, with beautiful views in all directions. The Wills homestead looked like it was right out of nineteenth century Appalachia — a small cabin with unstained rough-cut siding, a rusty metal roof, even the doors and windows looked like they were hand made long ago. The cabin was surrounded by homemade fences corralling a shaggy old horse, two goats, and some pigs. There was a small barn, and gardens on either side of the driveway — a massive vegetable garden on one side, and a huge field filled with flowers on the other. Chickens were running around everywhere. They scattered as I drove in.
I parked next to a rusty thirty-year-old pickup truck, and a scraggly looking but friendly cat greeted me as I stepped out of my truck. It was a beautiful sunny day, and the air was perfumed with a mix of flowers and manure. It was strangely intoxicating.
"You must be Steve. I'm Jeanie Wills," I heard a woman's voice behind me say.
Jeanie had emerged from the flower garden with a wheelbarrow piled high weeds. She parked it next to me and extended her hand.
"I see you've met George," she said, looking at the cat rubbing all around my ankles.
Jeanie looked serious, but had a kind looking face, with big ice-blue eyes set off by sun-bleached blonde hair and a dark tan. There were prominent streaks of grey in her long hair, and she had it pulled back behind her ears. She was wearing a halter style top that looked a bit like a bikini, an ankle length skirt, and old sandals. The clothes looked homemade but fit her well, and she was adorned with an interesting looking beaded necklace and silver rings on several on her fingers.
"It's nice to meet you Jeanie," I said as I shook her strong hand.
"Well it's awfully nice to meet you too. I've had a heck of a time gettin' anybody to come out here to work for me," she said. I detected a down-state accent, or maybe New Jersey. "Ever since my arm started acting up, I've had trouble doing everything around here," she said, holding up her bandaged left wrist. "I hired a couple different local guys to do a few things, but they turned out to be dumb rednecks, just tryin' to get in my pants the whole time they were here. If they were good lookin' I wouldn't have minded so much, but...they weren't." She laughed, and it lit up her tired face.
"Well, I'll be glad to help you out with whatever I can," I said. "Work around town's kinda slow at the moment, so this is a nice change of pace."
"I don't want to waste too much of your time, so let's get right to it," she said.
Jeanie brought me into her cozy home and showed me some plumbing issues. She had a solar heated rainwater collection system piped into the kitchen and bathroom, and she had some leaks and the drains had never worked properly, due to some venting issues. She also mentioned a problem with the big gate on the horse corral that was to much for her to handle by herself. As I worked she helped me out and chatted.
"I sent out letters to every handyman in the city phonebook, and you're the only one who responded," she said. "I'm awful glad you did . . . my wrist has been acting up for months and I finally had surgery on it three weeks ago. It's been rough keeping up with the old place. I just need another set of hands once in a while. I wish I could find a local kid to help out, but the young one's parents think I'm a sex crazed hippie, and the older ones are all goin' to college these days."
"So are you?" I asked.
"What...a sex crazed hippie?" she laughed. "I used to be, I guess. Long time ago though."
She proceeded to tell me the story of how she ended up there, on that beautiful hilltop in the middle of nowhere. She grew up on Long Island, within sight of Manhattan, and went to art school at Syracuse. She was already a Dead Head before she got there, and hooked up with a boyfriend who was into the same scene. When she turned 21 she inherited a bunch of money and the two of them followed the band for a few years. Eventually they decided to try their hand at homesteading and somehow found this land. That was twenty-five years ago, which would put her in her mid-forties I guess. She didn't look it — except for the smile lines on her face and the streaks of grey in her hair she looked more like mid-thirties. About five years ago her man died of lung cancer. Probably smoked too much reefer, she said sadly. These days she sells vegetables and eggs and flowers at the farmers market, and still has some investments that keep her going.
"So I think you skipped over the sex crazed part," I said with a wink.
"Ah, so you're one of them detail oriented guys, huh?" she laughed. "Okay, well, let's see. A bunch of our friends lived here with us in tents when we were building the cabin and the barn. Lets just say it was a bit of a 'free love' situation that summer, and I guess word got out to the locals. Oh, and I worked my way through college as a dancer. That club on the North side. It was still there last time I looked."
"Yup, it's still there. Pretty nice place compared to some of 'em," I said.
"It sounds like you're a connoisseur of the naked arts," she said with a grin.
"Let's just say I appreciate the female form, in all stages of dress," I said.
"Or undress," she added, and we laughed.