Midnight, Dark Road

Moving to a rural area after living in the city for way too many years brought some changes to our way of thinking, as I've alluded to in previous posts.

I was thinking back to the time between when we made the offer on our first house in Bass Lake and when it closed escrow. Farida and I made several trips up here before the house officially became ours, and on several occasions we took the opportunity to check the new house out in the evening. After dark.

In Orange County this wouldn't mean much. There's traffic all night long on the street where Nasreen lives. What we didn't realize--until after we'd moved into the Bass Lake house--is that traffic, especially after, say, 9:00 p.m., is cause for questions.

The street on which that first house is located is a circle, situated off Road 221 (otherwise known as Crane Valley Road, but that's a whole other issue), and it's not someplace you'd generally go unless you meant to. That means that any strange vehicles are likely to attract attention. Those that cruise the area after 9:00 or 10:00 p.m.? A full-blown alert. Because it just doesn't happen. Farida and I had a good laugh over the stir we must have caused the night we cruised the circle close to midnight, just 'cause we wanted to see how the house looked late at night.

That difference was brought home even more noticeably one night not long ago when I was visiting Farida at her house in Cascadel Woods. The traffic within CW at night, especially in Farida's isolated location, makes our original house in Bass Lake Annex look like the 55 Freeway at rush hour. Imagine our surprise as Farida, Hunter and I were enjoying a quiet evening--and there was a knock on the door.

There is NEVER a knock on that door. NO ONE comes to that house without an invitation and without our knowing they're coming.

Farida and I looked at each other.

"What the . . . ?" we asked each other.

"Who the . . . ?"

The knock sounded again.

Luckily there's a window right next to the door, so Farida didn't have to open it.

Farida looked out, and I peered over her shoulder. A strange man--at least one neither of us knew--stood there.

"Is this the Hansons' house?" he asked.

"No."

"Never heard of 'em," I chimed in, with emphasis, waiting for him to turn and walk away.

He persisted. The man seemed perplexed, but not nearly as mystified as we were. Who was he? Why was he here? In the middle of the night? (It was actually about 6 p.m., but it was pitch black outside.)

He tried again. "Is this Cascadel North?"

"This is a driveway. You're not on the road."

"I know, but am I on the right road?"

He obviously didn't get the message that I--even more than Farida--wanted him gone, and NOW.

"But they told me they lived at the top of the hill."

Farida really tried to be polite, but I was getting nervous. "They don't live here, and I've never heard of 'em." If my voice could have underlined the words, it would have.

After a couple more halting attempts, slowly, reluctantly, he turned away. We couldn't see where he was, and we hadn't heard a vehicle come up the driveway, so we had no clue where he'd headed. I looked out of one living room window, Farida looked out another, and Hunter was really curious about all of this. In his innocence and youthful exhuberance, he was ready to run right out there and try to help this guy, but we held him back.

Finally, after what seemed an etermity, we heard an engine turn over, saw headlights come on--right at the foot of the driveway to our house. How could we not have heard him drive up?

I, for one, breathed a sigh of relief that at least now we knew where he was and didn't have to worry that he was an axe murderer hiding out in our basement just waiting for all the house lights to go off so he could attack. (It didn't occur to me until now that he could have dropped off an accomplice.)

For those of you who think this was clearly an overreaction to an very ordinary situation, I lived in this house for 8 years before Farida and Jason moved in. In all that time I'd had only one person who didn't live on the property knock on the door--and that was in broad daylight. We don't get and don't want unexpected visitors.

Such is the joy of country living.