The ranch house had been sitting empty for about five years when we moved in.
- I can’t get into the specifics of the deal, because we were living off the grid.
A friend of a friend offered to let us stay in an old, abandoned family cabin while my legal troubles blew over. The ranch house was actually pretty nice, although quite dusty and possessed of a very foul odor, but nothing I couldn’t handle. I needed a quiet place to hide for a few weeks, so I had to make the best of it. It had power and plumbing, which was good, but the HVAC system had not been used in five years, and didn’t want to wake up. I went down into the basement, where I found an ancient furnace, and something that I assumed was a water boiler. I have always lived in rentals before, so I don’t know the first thing about water boilers, or antique furnaces. It didn’t matter that much, since it was so hot outside I would not need a furnace for quite a while. I looked everywhere and could not find where the air conditioning unit was located. I came to realize that this place had no central air conditioning system. The best thing I could find was an old, dusty air conditioning unit up in the attic. I mounted it in the bedroom window and tested it out, and surprisingly the old A/C unit worked a little. It wasn’t very strong, and the air vent was stuffed with acorns, but it was better than nothing.