Working

This may be the main difficulty in living in the Poconos - finding a good-paying job. The tourist industry is big, but it does not pay very well, unless you are working to get tips. The 'life span' of these jobs can be a little disheartening, as tourist season is pretty well defined as being summer and ski season. Really, I wish people took more advantage of the beauty here in the spring and the fall foliage, but the traditional summer vacation is still king.

The people up here as a resourceful lot, as mentioned before. If they have a skill such as being handy around the house, they market it to the fullest extent. We have a 'guy' who works for the county during the week, but on weekends and evenings he is doing electrical, plumbing, roofing, etc. If you are good at what you do, the word-of-mouth will get you more jobs than you can handle.

Most people seem to have at least two jobs in order to make ends meet. My husband has joined that brigade, working at a tourist destination and a local restaurant. There is also a large contingent who commute to NYC everyday to get the higher-paying jobs. Really, a bear of a commute, but to some people it is worth it. Ironically, this area was populated by many coal miners to supply the railroad industry, and many of the innovations in railroading were developed here, but the passenger railroad was abandoned in the 1970's. I know those people who commute each day would welcome a train, but now we have to get approvals, etc., to start the lines up again. And the rails are already there, being used for industrial shipping!

In spite of all that, the living here is worth it. The cost of living is lower, the stress is less, and the people are friendly.

Spring at Last

One day you are getting ready in the morning and you realize that you do not need to put on a sweater or a jacket. That is my new definition of Spring! You ride down the roads, which are riddled with potholes, (another story there) and the trees are many shades of green and the flowers are little bright spots of color on the roadside. The nights are still crisp and cool - jacket worthy, actually - but the days are bright and warm. The rain is refreshing and when it leaves, there are rainbows. (However, for the life of me I cannot get a picture of a rainbow - do I have to glue a camera to my hip!)

So, of course, the one time of year when you want to drive around and really get an eyeful (okay, autumn you want to drive around, too), gas prices become so high that you really feel that it is a waste on money. We sincerely try to bundle trips - to the store, and the bank, and the cleaners - but now we also try to appreciate the beauty around us as we do our errands. We have even added a picnic at the local state park as part of our errands, to try to enjoy the beauty.

Speaking of gas, PA has pump-it-yourself gas stations, so when we pulled into a small station two towns over, we were surprised when the owner comes out and starts to pump the gas. My husband asked him why and the gentleman said that it is easier for him to do it, less hassle to clean up afterward because, "after all, there is a limited gene pool up here and they get confused easily." We did not know if he was kidding, but he looked serious about his comment. We came to the conclusion that he was having a bad day.

Pocono People

This past winter gave us a true idea about the people who live in the mountains year around. Because the winters can be rough, a self-sufficiency is developed. We have one neighbor who will drive to the store on his tractor when the roads get too covered. Pretty inventive, especially when he is wearing his bright yellow rain suit over his winter clothes - on his bright blue tractor. At least he is visible and he is not going to let a little snow keep him home! I see that this is where a four-wheel drive vehicles were developed to be used.

The common point of conversation becomes "How about that snowfall?' or "How did you make out driving in that weather?" or "Any damage to your (choose one or more) house, car, boat, shed, truck, etc?" We wanted to get inventive this year and use our old Volvo, which could not pass inspection and should not be driven on the road, to plow our driveway. We had a large sheet of heavy aluminum left out by our barn, so we thought we could tie it to the front of the vehicle and plow - right! That so did not work the first time, so my husband went to the local hardware store to get something stronger to tie the metal to the car. Two hours later he came back from the hardware store with so many ideas he did not know which to try first. The concept intrigued the salespeople and most of the customers in the store - it became a real brain storming session! For months afterward, anytime my husband went into the store, he was asked if the concept worked at all (it didn't) or did we try another way (we did). We ended up selling the Volvo - we still see it being driven by a guy who was willing to put in the time to get the thing to pass inspection - or something like that.

A little thing can become a big event, especially during a dull winter. My car was totaled after sliding on ice and banging into a rock and a tree on my husband's ride back from the closing on our old house in NJ; he was just three miles from the new house. Fortunately, someone was riding by the accident when my husband was getting out of the car and stopped to help.

This was a strange phone call for me to receive:

"Hello, your husband just had an accident with your car and he asked us to call you to come get him."
Excuse me?
"Your husband asked us to call you to tell you to come get him."
Why didn't he call me?
"No cell phone signal where he was, so we rode down the road so we could call you."
Thank you and I guess he is okay?
"Oh he is fine, but he is afraid of how you will react."
Right...

I never got the woman's name who called, but thank goodness she did. By the time I got to the scene, there were (no exaggeration) 8 cars of first aid and fire volunteers, 5 cars of looky-loos and a state police cruiser. It was like everybody came look at the excitement of a car wreck on a Tuesday night! And I show up - in my nightgown with a winter coat thrown over top! But really, everyone was so kind and concerned.

Weather, continued

We lived through winter, so we expect spring to be absolutely fantastic. And, to my mind, it is - the trees are blooming, the grass is getting green, the snow is coating the ground... Well, we should know better, since one of our biggest snowstorms came last April - 6 inches on the ground and the temperature went up to 60 the next day. Really, winter and spring starting dates are relative. As the local weather casters say "we have had snow as late as June.' Please!

This year we were living on borrowed time with our heater and the time ran out 2 weeks before the temperature hit 50 for the first time. The heater/boiler has been in use in this house since the 1930's - a good long run, I think. So we have been using electric space heaters when it gets too cold and we are back to wearing layers. Still, I cannot complain - the flora and fauna believe it is spring and winter is over. The bugs say its spring, too. No mosquitoes yet, but annoying little gnats and flies.

If summer is anything like last year, we only needed air conditioning about 2 weeks out of the whole season, when it hit about 85-90 degrees and was humid. We ran our AC from May to September in NJ, so this is great.

Weather

Okay, we are in the mountains, so a person should expect some drastic changes in the weather, right? And we were prepared, since we had a vacation home up here for the past 5 years, right? Well, not quite....

It turns out that our little house on the hill is higher than much of the area, so we do get some interesting weather patterns. The sunrises and sunsets are gorgeous, and the clouds are so close and easy to observe. (Okay, we are not that high. But compared to NJ, we are.) It also turns out that we are on a weather line, which means that it can be sunny in the front of the house and snowing/raining in the back of the house. Remarkable! When we watch the weather on TV, we have to take an educated guess as to what we will get. I do know that whatever temperature they predict, we can usually subtract 10 degrees.

So how do you prepare for the weather? I know we have more sweaters in use than before, and dressing in layers becomes a fashion statement of necessity. I used to laugh at the locals who walk around in shorts and t-shirts as soon as the weather hits above 50 degrees. Now I understand - you really want to get out from under the heavy clothes by the end of a long winter. And, yes, you do get used to the cold. Not that you don't feel it; but it does not hurt so much, and when you go to warmer climes, you now laugh at the people bundled up! (It's only 45 degrees, so I don't need the coat with the sweater!)

Moving In

We decided that we should move up here as soon as possible after closing so my husband could start a job that he had managed to find in-between looking for houses. Have I mentioned that we have cats? I will not tell you how many, but enough that moving takes the planning and coordination of starting a new company. Certain members of the feline family are okay with the moving process, (the 'zen' cats), while others feel that any movement away from their usual spot is an affront to their whole well being and must be punished by any means possible. So we loaded them into their carriers (That was fun! When one sounded the alarm, they all hid!), buckled them into our cars and headed off for three hours of the most ear piercing cries and moans that humans were ever meant to hear. And crying is not the only means of expressing displeasure, and it goes without saying (but I will) that much cleaning had to be done to the interiors of the cars!

So why move them out of the old house first? Because the realtor selling the NJ house said that the only way to get the house sold was to de-cat the house. Now, I kept a very clean house, but we did have litter boxes that some people found objectionable and I understood that. So, welcome to your new home kids!

The Mechanicals and Fix-ups

The house was really move in ready, but everybody who moves into a different house has to put their imprint on it. That means paint, clean, and fix the flaws as you see them. The house when we first moved in had one very small bathroom, so we knew that we would have to add a bath and remodel the original bath to make it a little more 'roomy.' The heater worked, but needed oil. And the previous owner left a washer and dryer in the garage, which worked but had to be dragged back into the house and hooked up.

Quite frankly, there was no real rush to get anything accomplished at the new house - the one our realtor said needed a lot of work - so we concentrated on getting the house in NJ sold. We had to paint that, do some minor repairs, stage the house to sell - and then wait a year to get someone to buy it. What housing downturn? I week after we had listed it on the market, we had an offer from a business man from Guatemala - who promptly disappeared! So our lives for the first year here consisted of shuttling between NJ and the Poconos.

Moonshine House

There were other houses that we looked into besides the ones I reviewed in the previous blogs, but sometimes you see a house and the potential as a home is there in your heart. Let me say here that the potential was not entirely 'visual' by any means, especially in the snow and the cold weather, with very little light inside and the remnants of whatever was left behind by previous owners. But something hit my husband and I as we pulled into the driveway of "The Moonshine House."

I had seen this listing on-line, and had asked our realtor about seeing it, but he seemed to feel that it did not meet our criteria and showed us quite a few other houses first. But one day he was showing us another listing on the same road and offered to let us see for ourselves that this house needed too much work. The long driveway went up a hill to a modest little house with a two car garage - so far, so okay. We went inside and it was like a time warp to the 1930's - even the phone was a rotary dial wall phone. (By the way, try making a call to an automated system with a rotary phone - the system does not recognize the number you are dialing and hangs up on you!) Paneling was the decorating style of choice for the couple who had lived here - dark paneling. Initially we called the house 'the dark house' but the moonshine house soon seemed a better nickname. We think - educated guess - that the previous long-term owner, the family who built the house - made their own wine. We found wine jugs, wooden baskets, remnants of a grape trellis, etc. So, Moonshine House! That and there was a flower vase out on the side yard that, for all intents and purposes, looked like - a butt! We all saw it and thought the same thing! Oh, and the moon shine comes in the picture window in the living room.

So we put in the offer to the owners, who had just purchased the property 6 months before but then found out that the husband was being shipped out to Afghanistan. They were just starting to renovate when they received the news, so they had to sell. Unfortunately, their renovation left a lot of garbage in the garage that we had to get rid of. So we paid pretty much what they had paid and moved in April 1. Profound.

The original owner had been a caretaker for one of the big resorts in the area and had been very selective in his plantings, besides the grapes. We could tell that there had been love in taking care of the property, as well as the finish details in the carpentry. The place had good bones, but needed work to bring it into this century. And so the story begins.