If you have been reading some of my recent posts, you are probably aware that I have been talking about some of my exploits and experiences after being assigned to the Joint Interoperability Test Center (JITC) at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. My story today centers around a subject that is near and dear to my heart, but it is not hunting or running. Sorry to disappoint, if that is a topic you were expecting. But hopefully, my subject will still offer you some enjoyment. Today, my subject is about building a custom home. Previously, I talked to you about retiring from the Army and my logic for retiring from the Army. Sure. I could have stayed on beyond twenty years of service, and I could have been promoted to Lieutenant Colonel. However, I would have ultimately been forced to retire at thirty years of service. Well, then came 9/11. But nobody could have foreseen that coming. I certainly couldn’t. Had I seen 9/11 coming, I would have been extended on active duty, and I would have been selected for full Colonel. But nobody can foresee the future. I certainly can’t. As a result, I retired at twenty years of service, and I didn’t look back. If I had extended in the Army, I would have integrated into the regular Army. Then, I would not have purchased the one-acre plot of land in Sierra Vista that I purchased. Additionally, my family and I would not have tried to muddle through ten years of living in the greater Fort Huachuca-Sierra Vista community. We would have moved on to greener pastures, both literally and figuratively. Cuz you have to remember that that region was a desert. There was another factor that I never really considered. The other factor was that I never considered just exactly how difficult it would be to get hired as a contractor after I retired from the Army. Everybody always told me that it was sort of automatic. As a result, I just kind of expected one of the government contractors offering employment in the greater Fort Huachuca-Sierra Vista community to hire me. But it never really worked out that way. Meanwhile, I had entered into an agreement to build this huge fancy custom house on a one-acre plot of land that I had purchased with cash. I didn’t know how I was going to make the house payment. Sure. I would have my military retirement check, and I was pretty sure that I would get Veterans Administration (VA) disability compensation awarded to me. But I didn’t know how much that would be, and when it would start. I filed the paperwork for VA disability compensation immediately upon discharge from the Army. As a result, the process moved pretty quickly. And I had some savings built up, but that savings would not last forever. I was receiving a lot of interviews, but I was not getting offered any jobs. Meanwhile, my family and I would go out to the construction site to visit our soon to be new custom home. I noticed that the building contractors wasted a lot of good lumber. They were throwing four and five-foot lengths of two by fours and two by sixes onto the scrap pile. I picked out a spot in the backyard. That was away from the construction area to make a lumber pile of my own. Then, I started sorting two by fours and two by sixes out on the scrap pile. Every once in a while, as I was grabbing pieces of wood off of the scrap pile, I heard this slight rattling noise. But I didn’t hear the rattling noise very often. Thus, I ignored it. Cuz I figured that the rattling noise was caused by the wind blowing through the dried out weeds. There is a certain weed that grows in the desert that has little bulbs filled with seeds. That weed blooms during the summer monsoon rains, and then it dries out in the desert heat. When the wind blows through that plant, the plant shakes and those little bulbs shake so that the seeds inside sound like a baby rattle when it is shaken. From a short distance, the rattle produced from the seeds of that plant can be mistaken for the rattle of a rattlesnake. As a result, when you are out and about hiking in the boonies, you have to be very alert. Is that rattle coming from a plant or a snake? Since there were so many of those particular plants in the general vicinity of that woodpile, I didn’t give it a second thought. Additionally, the wind is always blowing in Arizona. Well, one day, about a week or two later when I came out to pull wood off the scrap woodpile again, the construction foreman warned me to be careful of rattlesnakes. Naturally, I asked him why. He told me that his guys had killed a five foot rattlesnake that had come out of that scrap pile two or three days earlier. I thought to myself, “Shit! All of those rattles that I was hearing were coming from a rattlesnake. Damn!” I chalked that one up to live and learn. The rattlesnake in the woodpile was just the first nightmare that we experienced with our custom home. In my next post I’ll talk about more nightmares about our custom home after we moved in. But during construction of the custom home, I escaped the only exercise in futility with no others encountered.
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