Thank You Joe

I want to share a moment with you. Just one moment. It speaks loudly about the kind of people some people are.

Yesterday afternoon my buyer and I were doing the final walk thru of the house my buyer and his wife closed on today. She had to stay at home and tend to important matters up north. And he came down to take possession of the new, but very "old" home in Old Town Key West. We had looked at many houses over the past two years. They made several trips. They decided the house on Ashe Street was to be their place in Paradise.

The seller (Joe) explained the intricacies of the old place. He related the histories he discovered as he rebuilt the house over his years of ownership. I won't bore you with the details (even if I could remember them). The seller's gentle tone spoke loudly as he educated the buyer about the lore of the house, the neighbors, and the quaint little Key West neighborhood that most vacationers don't even know exists.

I can see you sitting there reading this and thinking lots of people go through the same experience all of the time. Some do, that is true. But what happened next is something I will always remember.

The seller had a large shopping bag filled with papers related to the house, the Sandborn map,"historical" documents, and a disc containing hundreds of photos (historical and recent pics he took that documented the renovations he made). Then he pulled out a small rectangular box. No labels on it. You wouldn't think it important. He held the box in one hand and gently patted the top with the other as he said "These are the historical artifacts I found in and under the house over the years....They belong with the house." My buyer got a twinkle in his eyes as the seller placed the box in my buyer's hands. My buyer promised "They will stay with the house"as he acknowledge the importance of the gift. In that very instant my mind darted to the final scene in "To Kill a Mockingbird" when we get to see the box of treasures Boo Radley had saved over the years that chronicled the young lives of Jem and Scout.

Little things can mean so much. Thank you Joe.