CaldwellCollectibles

Tempted to just buy a tiny little old house by the railroad tracks on a tired old, pothole-filled street in a post-industrial city in Upstate NY. Build a rosary garden, fill the house with books, add a fireplace, walk to Mass every morning. No car, bunkbeds for the kids. Could sit on my back porch watching the trains go by in the rain, drinking Utica Club, playing polka on AM radio. Might become a Third Order Franciscan and maintain a devotion to Saint Marianne Cope, work at the soup kitchen, take guests from all around, grow tomatoes on our postage-stamp-sized lot -- and just about disappear from public life. Yeah, I might have to lock my doors. The gloomy weather and rust and decay might get me down sometimes. But we'd be a happy little family in our house by the railroad tracks, there in our little neighborhood of our little city that time forgot. It really does sound like just the kind of life for us, and if I had to bet on "the type of house I ought to buy for our long-term contentment," I'd probably bet on a tiny old bungalow by the railroad tracks in some tired old Upstate town as being just what we'd like best.