We landed at Salt Lake and drove and drove. Past the Evanston (Wyoming) a hundred miles sign and to the house near where Richard’s mom’s family was from.
Old farm country was clearly rapidly turning into nice homes. I wondered how many were for vacations only. Winter is not gentle above Salt Lake.
I asked my sister-in-law in the kitchen of her new house if there were a lot of people in her neighborhood who lived there year-round vs the snowbirds.
She mentioned in particular that the neighbors straight up the hill were here all the time–and that they used to live in California.
Then she mentioned their names. I was stunned.
I’m sure the story’s on the blog somewhere, but. We had old friends back in New Hampshire who, when layoffs looked imminent there and we had already moved to California, Richard helped V, the dad, land a job with him, and so, they followed us out there.
A few years later, DEC disappeared and the jobs moved on. We had gotten together a few times but not in probably ten years when V and his wife called one day and invited us over–but gave us their new address. They had moved.
It sounded really really familiar.
We pulled in that driveway, knocked on the door, and when V opened it Richard asked, So does it still have the projection room to the left at the end of the hall?
Wait, *what*? He was stunned. How did YOU know?!
It had been the Z’s house. We knew them a little and their kids a lot, who used to entertain in their folks’ big place. The parents had moved to somewhere that sounded like the middle of nowhere in Utah in their retirement; why, we didn’t know. Why age where the weather is heavy and must be lifted and moved out of the way for months every year?
Their new house looked very much like their old one: had you asked me whose house it looked like I would immediately have told you the Z’s. It’s in a beautiful part of the world, very green with a river running nearby; I saw red-winged blackbirds, magpies, swifts, and someone had built a tall wooden pole with a platform next to the road on our way up into the neighborhood and it had clearly become a raptor’s nest. Someone there loves the birds.
As does my sister-in-law.
And now I know the Z’s have good neighbors again.