My dooah-yahd is...
BubbaBob
>...over a thousand miles north...LOL
I actually did have the car on blocks thing going one time. I owned a house that was in Gwinnett Co, GA, at the time one of the 10 fastest growing counties in the US. The house was an old farm homestead in the last rural part of the county. My neighbor, a farmer, died and his kids started talking about selling the farm (they were greedy and had moved to the city years before so the land meant nothing to them).
Well, when the inevetable began to happen and they were about to close with a developer who was going to put in a subdivision with half acre lots and 300K homes, I went to the developer and suggested he might want to buy me out. He declined because my house was across the street from the soon to be his land. I told him he would buy me out at MY price before it was all over.
Land sale went through, and development began. As soon as roads were in and houses started and it was too late to change plans, with the entrance to the hoity-toity gated community directly across from my house, I quit cutting the grass, hauled in two rusted out cars and a rusted out pickup from the junkyard, put all three up on blocks, and spent each day sitting in my lawn chair in my bib overalls, in the yard, watching the goings on, drinking beer (and throwing the cans in the yard instead of the trash).
The developer held out longer than I expected, but on day 11 he came over and said he would buy me out and give me x dollars for my place (about 10% higher than what it was worth). I told him that would have been fine when I offered to sell, but now my bottom dollar was 3x, and I asked how well he expected his houses to sell with a drunk redneck yelling hello to everyone coming to look at houses, and the pile of beer cans growing daily (I was hauling in a trash bag a night from a friends bar to add to the pile).
Three hours later he was back...with a contract and binder check. The amount was 3x plus $10.00 just to be sure he wasn't short so I'd go up again.
Funny thing...he became a friend and comes up here to the mountains every month or so and LOML and I have dinner with he and his wife...but I have to remind him occasionally what happens if he even LOOKS at the land across from me...
BubbaBob
