By: Duane L Herrmann

    The young man was eager to buy his first house. He had heard that you could get a good deal at a house auction. The house might need work to fix it up, but if no one else at the auction wanted to do that, you could get a good deal.

     He went to one such auction, looked at the houses online, and realized they were all beyond his budget. He had saved money for a down payment, but not as much as the low bid limit for this batch of houses.

     At the third auction he felt better. This group of houses were in his price range. All needed work, but he was ready for that too. He was eager to make some place his own. He bid on three houses. The bid for one of them was accepted. He was ecstatic! He now had a home. At least, it would be a home when he finished repairing it.

    The day after the final papers were signed, and ownership was his, the young man went to see his “new” house. On the front door was a piece of paper that had not been there the last time he’d driven by. When he read it, he discovered it was a notice from the city stating that he, the owner, had thirty days to mow the yard around the house because the height of the weeds and grass were in violation of city health codes. It was dated two weeks earlier, so he had only two more weeks before that deadline.

    Two weeks!

    The grass and weeks were waist high. There was no way!

    He called the city to explain the situation. The person who answered did not care and would not extend the deadline. There had been complaints. If he didn’t mow it, the city would do it and charge him for it. The price was astronomical. He slammed the phone down in disgust.

    The next day, he rented an industrial size mower and began mowing. He mowed after work and into the evenings until he was so tired he couldn’t sit up in the seat.  He knew he shouldn’t mow after dark, then it would be impossible to see if there might be something on the ground he could hit. He didn’t want to damage the mower. He eventually managed to convince his boss that he needed a day off from work to be able to finish the mowing by the deadline. He had no money to pay any kind of fine.

    When he was finished, the lawn didn’t look pretty, but at least the place did not look overgrown and he was thankful he hadn’t hit anything with the mower.  He began to imagine possibilities with the outdoor space, where some plantings would look nice. The other people had not done anything outside. He wanted some kind of shelter for the front door, and bushes around it. In the back he wanted a patio with a fire pit and there was a space for a pergola. He wanted a screened space to get away from insects. And trees. The house needed at least a few trees. But all that could wait. He had to be able to live in the house, even if he had to camp in it. Now, he could turn his attention to the inside of the house.

    An older couple had lived in the house for a long. long time, several decades, at least. They left a lot of stuff behind. It looked like junk! A lot of work was needed on the house, but most of it was just cosmetic, like paint, or routine maintenance they’d not done, or couldn’t have afforded to have done.

    During brief breaks while mowing, he moved a few things around inside the house to get more of an idea of what the interior was like. He discovered that he could actually live in it immediately. That would help his finances – he wouldn’t have to pay rent at the same time, but he needed space for his stuff and for the supplies he would need for the renovations, so he arranged for an industrial size dumpster to be delivered to the house.

    That came the day after he had finished mowing. He wasted no time in filling it, the mowing had taken time that he hadn’t expected to loose. He began throwing in box after box of junk and trash, old furniture that was no longer usable, etc. When the dumpster was filled, he called for it to be hauled away. The house was much emptier now and he had space to move around and live and work in. He could begin to breathe and feel the space was beginning to be his own. There was still some of the former owners stuff, but that could gradually go out with the normal garbage. There was no rush now.

    He began to clean and make usable spaces – cooking and eating space in the kitchen, space for his bed and clothes, space to relax and watch TV. And a utility room to do laundry in. He had carved livable spaces out of the chaos of the other people’s clutter. He had even begun to paint the walls of one room which didn’t need any repairs. That brought him a great deal of satisfaction, finally the house was beginning to be his!

    One day, while moving a box out of the way, he noticed a pair of gloves on top and wondered if they might fit him. When he put on one glove, he was surprised that his fingers would not go inside the space. Something was already there. This mystified him. It felt like rolled up paper. That was odd. He spent some time to pull out the paper. Out came a small roll of one hundred dollar bills! Each finger of the gloves was filled with a roll of hundred dollar bills.

    Now, the young man looked more carefully at the other contents of the box. A cardboard cigarette case was also filled with carefully wrapped hundred dollar bills. A razor case was also filled with hundred dollar bills. Every item in this box had been filled with hundred dollar bills. He was amazed and mystified. What was going on?

    He began to look in the next box of old junk. Every item in that box was also filled with carefully rolled hundred dollar bills. He then looked in another box. Everything there was filled with money too. Each box he looked in had money stuffed in everything. There were thousands of dollars on the floor around him now.

    The older couple, as happens some times, must not have trusted banks and kept all their money at home, as cash, hidden away.

    Then he realized that everything in all the boxes he had had hauled away also likely had been filled with money – there could have been hundreds of thousands of dollars – all now long gone and buried in the garbage dump!