I couldn't help but think he looked like a Hobbit, which happens to be one of my favorite Tolkien characters. He was extremely short, gnarly of face, bald as a boulder, and often as grumpy as all that. He was a client, referred to me by a friend. He had lost his dear wife and wanted to sell his home. He could barely tell me what had happened to her, even though it had been a long while. His gruff exterior was in sharp contrast to the tender heart within. We signed up the house, which quickly went under contract. Job One became finding him another one, and he had only Alabama on his mind. He greatly preferred that I pick him up and drive him everywhere, even though nobody does that anymore. I think he was pert-near blind, if you want to know the truth. The socially correct form in real estate these days is to "meet up" at the chosen houses, all parties using their GPS devices to get there. I'm not sure he knew what a GPS was, but I began to suspect he just liked the company.
Thus began the addition of hundreds, if not thousands, of miles on my new(ish) Ford Explorer. And we did indeed explore. The back roads and byways of Alabama became very familiar to me. I began to love the kind people of that fair land, with their slower pace and less-than-concerned rate of stress. The agents might or might not call you back right away, but they would call you back, always with a slice of courtesy. Sometimes we'd pick up his girlfriend. She was twice as tall as him and an angel. They met at a VFW dance, where apparently he had dated one of her friends but then switched to her. I found out that there are whole swaths of really old folks who still go out dancing on the weekends. Who knew? They told very entertaining stories as we rolled along. One day, after we dropped her off, he told me that he had asked her to marry him but that she wouldn't...because she was all tied up with her kids and didn't want to get married again. But oh, the dancing...
During this period of time, I would get random calls from the secretary at our office: "Rose, Mr. ______ is here waiting for you." This, when we had no appointment or had had no discussion of getting together that day to look at houses. I might be in outer Mongolia and Mr. Hobbit Man would be expecting me to just be waiting there, at our Villa Rica office, just in case someone dropped by and needed to look at houses. I guessed maybe that's the way they used to do it. He thought I clocked in every morning at the office and waited, or something like that.
We finally narrowed the many houses down to two -- one was a house that had two stories. It would require going up a flight of stairs to get to the main floor, with a great big yard, complete with a barn and an orchard. The other house was a converted garage, with foot-thick concrete walls, concrete floors and was basically maintenance-free. It was gorgeous, with swirled stained concrete floors, granite countertops, beautiful lighting and tons of storage. To me it was a no-brainer, but he wasn't convinced. Between his girlfriend and I, we talked him into the rancher, but we were sweating it. I think the problem was that it wasn't actually in Alabama, though it was on the outer limits of Carrollton, which might as well be Alabama as far as I'm concerned. There was a lot of drama afterwards, about the guy who built-out the thing not getting a certificate of occupancy, and other such "trivial" matters, but eventually I lost touch with my Hobbit friend.
Until last week. A man called and was talking quickly...I didn't catch on at first, but then realized he was discussing his old relative, who had died a few months back. Yes, it was my friend who had passed, his numerous health issues and Covid reaching in for the final say. I shed a tear then I smiled at the memory of our short but very memorable saga. I still have a picture of him. I'm hugging him and he's literally half my size, grinning and looking just a bit naughty and somewhat like Gollum. I do hope he's up there doing a jig.
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