06 Albatross

I've lived in Palouse Washington for 20 years now. Here's how I arrived here. When Ruth Ann and I separated in the Fall of 1988 (Logan, UT), I went to Salt Lake City in November under the guise of finding marketing work. But I didn't have the capacity and mostly it was a time of depression, some healing, and just waiting out a very hard, bitter winter. In May, I headed north toward the 10 acres of land Grandma Teare gave me when I was a teenager.

When I arrived in Idaho, I was homeless and broke and lived out of my wrecked van. I stored a bunch of my stuff in the cabin that Brad (my brother) and Joe Hebert built on the land when he was 18. Later, Brad admitted this squatting was an act of defiance to some degree like a dog marking his territory. It made it so I could never sell the land. When the cabin burned down in 199X, I finally sold it for various reasons. Mainly, it had become an albatross around my neck. Converting it to cash solved many problems.