Dear Squire Finlayson
No, the letter is not addressed to me. I am not the *Squire* of anything! More like the Duchess of Dungeon, the Landfill Dungeon, that is.
I have had some interesting experiences since I’ve been receiving The Commander’s mail here at the Landfill. My goal is to snag anything financial and re-jigger it so that it comes to my address permanently and/or gets paid automatically online. Easier said than done and, yes there have been a couple snafus and I won’t go into the gory details of those except to say that I doubt that The Comm has *ever* missed paying a bill or even been five minutes late *ever* before and believe me, she is *still* well aware of what needs to be paid and when. Fortunately people have been very understanding when I ‘splain things and apologize for my klutzi-ness.
Some of this stuff is easy to switch. I can just log in to a website *as* The Commander and re-jigger things. Sometimes I have to make a phone call. Sometimes that’s easy and sometimes I am apparently taken to be a denizen of the planet Zephron III and I get some inscrutable form in the mail that has to be signed by five witnesses and notarized about a dozen times. With this or that document attached in quadruplicate. Noooooo, I just want the *bill* to come to my house. That is all I want to change. For now.
And then there was the letter I got today. Dear Squire Finlayson… My dad actually owns a piece of land down there in Tennessee. Lynchburg to be exact. So, this letter comes to my house with a request from some unknown “squire” with land adjacent to my dad’s land. It seems that this squire’s wife grows watermelons but raccoons and deer and pigs and whatever have been eating her melons and depositing the seeds on my dad’s land as they make their escape. So now, there are watermelons growing on my dad’s land and this guy wants permission to pick those watermelons…
Yes. My dad owns(ed) one square inch of land in Lynchburg, Tennessee. There is a certificate of ownership mounted on the wall upstairs in the moomincabin. Y’all know what comes outta Lynchburg Tennessee, don’tcha? Well, okay, fer you teetotalers out there, it is good old Jack Daniel’s Whiskey. (The GG and I just had a lot of discussion and some googling about whether it was Jim Beam or Jack Daniel’s. I never knew that bourbon was only made in Kentucky. Right?) Anyway, this is a really weird letter and I don’t really know what to do with it, although I think it’s some kind of a joke. Maybe The Old Coot gets it better than I do… Maybe he and The Engineer are hee-hawing somewhere out there.
I guess The Commander owns the Lynchburg property now. I think she’s going to live until 110 but in the event that she does join all of those on the other side some day in the distant future, I can just envision us who are left all scrambling to own this loverly watermelon, raccoon, deer, and pig-infested piece of property.
October 11th, 2011 at 7:33 pm
Doug owns a square inch of property in Lynchburg too! It is the home of Jack Daniels. They can’t give out samples because it is located in a dry county, so I guess they give out square inches of land. We used to get letters and such before we moved. We also used to get a calender each year with pictures of the local residents, and sometimes there would be a picture of someones pig or hound dog etc. It was cute. They sent Doug a shot glass one year too. We would get news about how the property was getting overgrown with weeds and some neighbor was going to mow it at no charge to Doug. (I would let the squires wife go ahead and pick the watermelons.)
When we moved, the news of the square inch of property did not get forwarded to Doug and we have not received the calender, which I miss. I wonder if those watermelons are growing on his property…
October 11th, 2011 at 7:40 pm
I shouldda known that The Lord of Linden would own a bit ‘o land down there too. LOL!
October 11th, 2011 at 9:01 pm
That is a very strange letter! I would like to visit there, just because it sounds like such an interesting place. (or not?)
October 12th, 2011 at 6:52 am
Jay and I* each own a square inch of property somewhere near Dawson Creek, I believe. (Maybe Bubs can clarify?) I believe these were giveaways of some sort. When I learned of these properties as a teenager, I wanted to plant a Monopoly piece on mine.
*Sorry, Jane, you weren’t around yet.
October 14th, 2011 at 6:27 pm
I must really be getting old. I don’t even remember that property. Mom