Page Two of A Retirement Odyssey
I got a little sailboat. Christa created a beautiful tropical garden and joined a group of volunteers making stained-glass windows for the local church. I joined the board of the Florida Keys Children’s Shelter.
We became Florida tax residents, carefully limiting our summer stay in Mt. Vernon to less than six months each year. We found it increasingly tiresome to shuttle back and forth every six months, trying to maintain friendships in both places, always leaving just when fun things were happening, and not feeling settled in either place. Christa, who had grown up in the mountains of Southern Germany, began to have recurring dreams about a yellow house with a white picket fence and a nice garden, just on the edge of a small town somewhere in the mountains.
Then we got a real wake-up call from our next-door neighbor in Florida. On September 25, 1998, Hurricane Georges scored a direct hit on the Keys, with 105 mph winds and a twelve foot storm surge.
We headed south to survey the damage as soon as they opened the road. When we got there, we found our driveway blocked with fallen trees and debris. We had to cut our way into the house with a chain saw. Christa’s garden was a total loss, but the only damage to the house was a piece torn off one corner of the metal roof. Others were not so lucky, and many houses were totally destroyed, their retiree owners looking for shelter. We decided we wanted no more hurricanes and sold the house, boat and all, ending our Florida experiment.
With two of our three houses sold and money in the bank, we spent several weeks in August, 1999, looking at property within a thirty-mile radius of Asheville, a well known center of the arts and counter-culture haven. We vacationed there years earlier and always hoped to return someday. We wanted to find a fairly level lot with a stream or a pond –— a good place for a garden –— on the edge of a small town in the mountains. In other words, Christa’s dream.
We learned that a lot of New Age 'crystal' people from places like Sedona were relocating to the Asheville area in search of its strong, high quality qi earth energy. The area is rife with magnetic leylines and vortices and contains the oldest mountains on the planet, including Mt. Mitchell, the highest east of the Mississippi, and Shining Rock, a peak of solid quartz crystal. We sensed the wonderful energy of the mountains as we searched the area for our spot to retire.
Just beyond our thirty-mile limit to the west of Asheville lay Haywood County, last on our list to visit, with its charming little county seat, Waynesville, nestled in a valley between the Blue Ridge and the Great Smokies. There, on Labor Day, 1999, we finally found our dream lot, including both a stream and a pond. It’s on the outskirts of town within walking distance of Waynesville’s wonderful Main Street. We built our yellow house there seven years ago, and Christa made a wonderful garden, complete with the white picket fence.
We still love it.
Born in Sewickley, PA, a small town on the Ohio River, fifteen miles downstream from Pittsburgh, John Malone says he has “ Ohio River water flowing in my veins.” He was educated at The Hill School, Yale, University of Pittsburgh and London School of Economics.
John retired after thirty years as a career officer in the World Bank, including eight years living with his family in Africa and S.E. Asia as the World Bank’s representative in Ethiopia, Indonesia and Malawi. Living in Waynesville, NC, nestled between the Blue Ridge and the Great Smokies. He's had a longtime marriage to Christa Waibel and they have five children and eight grandchildren.
John welcomes your comments at johnmalone@charter.net
