I was thinking about that Dario story.  I think if you’re someone like me it doesn’t matter what you do… life (and often trouble) finds you.

I moved out to that house in the middle of nowhere when I was 24. It really was in remote… there was a woman in her 80′s that lived on an 80 acre ranch across the street and that was it. I saw her at the mailbox(es) sometimes – she was armed and dangerous. Yeah, she could shoot a gun but was a lovely neighbor anyhow and all together, I guess there were about 30 people who lived our town.  And you’d think nothing would go on out there but it was hoppin’!

It was out there, the double Scorpio broke into my house and got in bed with me.

It was out there… I went out and got my mail to find someone had inexplicably mailed me a gun and bullets in an unmarked package.  Now how is that for Mars (gun) Mercury (mail)? It was a gift (apparently) so I guess that would be the 9th house.  Has anyone ever mailed you a gun out of the blue sky? I’m guessing not.

I got broken into 2 other times which made me threaten to cover my windows with “make my day” posters  that were popular in the era and in fact I had 100 of them copied for exactly this purpose before a cop talked me out it.

“Don’t do that. Don’t cover your windows with guns pointing at people,” he said. “Elsa, you don’t want to do that.”  They all knew me, see. I was the speeding Frito Girl.

“Why not? I think it will work. Don’t you think it will work? I think if you walk up to a house and see the barrels of 100 guns pointing at you, you’ll pick another house.”

“People will think you’re crazy.”

“So? I think people already think I am crazy,” I said laughing manically. “As it is I am a sitting duck. You know as well as I do I am going to get in that truck and go to work and once I do, everyone knows there is no one home.  What am I supposed to do? Get broken into once a week but have people think I am sane? Tell me that 100 gun barrels pointing at you is not intimidating. Who is going to come through a window looking at all those gun barrels. I think I am better off they think I am crazy then think I am not.”

“You’ll block the sun,” he said. “No sun will come through your windows if you cover them with those posters.”

“Well that sounds like an added bonus! This is the desert and it’s hot enough!”

I eventually married when I lived this house and it is also the house where the old man showed up and bought the house and everything in it on a whim at my Saturn Return. (video below)

I mentioned the rock mason… well this house was on two acres and it had a rock fence around it, 6 feet high! It was just epic. Then there were the patio(s) in the back made of stone and also a stone room with fireplace.  So one day I came home and there was a guy standing in the yard.  I pulled in through the pillers (complete with lights on top) that marked the drive through driveway and popped out of my truck to say hi.

“Hi,” I said.

“I built this,” he said.  I was stunned.

He told me his mother was in the hospital dying and he’d traveled from Germany to see her.. He had not been home in almost 20 years and drove out to see his wall.  “I just can’t believe I did all this,” he said. “I was a young man,” he explained, lifting his arms up to show me his muscles.

I just stared. The guy was notorious. The house was notorious due this mammoth wall (boundary / Capricorn).  “They still talk about you around here,” I said.  “You’re like a fable they tell.”

He looked almost teary.  He was inordinately manly but his mother was dying, see?

He said he didn’t really know why he built the wall other than he was insane. He said he had no truck so he had to haul the rocks in the back seat and trunk of his car and could only take a few at a time… 5 at the most because of the weight.  He said he worked in town and would go on his lunch hour, hike and get the rocks and then come home and set them…”

That was a day and I also met Ronald McDonald while living in this house right before his sister killed herself but here is what I am trying to say:

When you are a storyteller the stories come to you.

Any other storytellers out there?