Life Among The Cactus
By Sharon Haney
Are you crazy enough to
buy a house outside a small
desert town after a brief stop
at one of its local lunch
spots? Maybe you would
want to invest in a nice
leisurely dinner to be certain
that you are keen on the
area and its food. Even the
original cowboy settlers
confirmed that the land had
water and cattle fodder
before settling in. Such a
spur
of
the
moment
decision—would you do such
a thing?
We did.
Thinking we were an
anomaly, my husband and I
were astonished to hear of
other adventurous couples
who, like ourselves, traveled
to the Big Bend region then
returned home only to pull
up roots and move there. For
what?
Climate.
Scenery.
Serenity. The nightlife? The
cactus?
The road trip that brought
us out west was partially
due to feelings of guilt over
never taking our children to
the Big Bend National Park.
Now that we were empty
nesters living forty-five
minutes west of Houston in
an expanding town called
Fulshear, we thought it
would be a splendid idea to
see what West Texas was
really all about. So, in May
of 2015 we rented a little
adobe house in Marathon for
a week. One of those days we
made a trip to Alpine for
brunch at Judy’s Bread and
Breakfast, as we wanted to
investigate this western
town with a name that was
definitely Sound of Music—
12
worthy and oozed the
promise of surrounding
mountains. Being a licensed
real estate broker at the
time, I perused the local real
estate pamphlets wherever
we traveled, and this time
was no different—well, it
was a little different because
we actually went to see one
of the homes. This particular
house looked like our style: a
low slung, brick ranch on
acreage close to town with
vista views and in dire need
of tender loving care (to be
honest, it needed oodles of
tender loving care).
We bought it.
It was the most impulsive
purchase we’ve made in our
thirty-six years of marriage.
Wildly freeing. Though it
meant two years of nine-
hour drives from Houston to
Alpine for remodeling work
on weekends and vacations,
we have never regretted our
decision. Once the interior
was close to completion, our
many working trips out to
West Texas involved me
driving a car and my
husband driving a U-Haul
truck with various furniture,
boxes, bags, fishing kayaks,
stained glass lamps, quilts
and our precious rugs inside.
I lost count of the number of
U-Haul trips we made, but it
was enough to make our
neighbors, who work for the
border patrol, suspicious. We
were like a well-oiled
machine—backing the U-
Haul up to our garage door
in the evening and then
efficiently removing it by
mid-morning. We eventually
made enough trips to
relocate
our
entire
household without hiring
professionals. It wasn’t easy,
but it was a good exercise in
time
and
money
management.
In the beginning, having
no family or friends in the
area to rely on meant that
we didn’t know who to call—
and more importantly who
NOT to call—for household
projects. Since we moved in
before the remodeling was
completed and after a few
subsequent
years
of
investing our own labor, we
have become DIY pros. One
of the biggest projects
beyond
the
painting,
rewiring the disastrous
electrical job done on the
house during the remodel,
installing all the baseboards,
window trim, oven, range
and hood, toilets and sinks,
was our patio and gabion
wall—the first of its kind to
be built in Alpine as far as
we know.
For this project, we were
Big Bend Real Estate Guide • March 2020