I finally got around to that trip to Missouri to pick up the rest of our belongings out there. What was originally planned for March just kept getting pushed back until it finally happened in late September.
Things only fell into place at what felt like the last moment. I only knew the exact date I was going to leave a couple of days in advance. But, eventually, I did get on a plane and headed East.
The Travel
You might say I’m not a big fan of strangers. And being couped up with them for hours in a plane is as far from enjoyable as it can be. Thankfully I was able to snag the front row of both planes I got on, window seat, and so I only had one neighbor next to me and nobody I had to see in front of me. It made it more emotionally manageable.
My 2nd flight ended in St. Louis, which is NOT my favorite place on earth. I caught a cab to the Amtrak station for the next leg of my journey. The 10 minute ride to the station cost more than the 4.5 hour train ride to Walnut Ridge, AR. This was my first time on an Amtrak train. Not a bad experience if you don’t mind the time it takes to get from point A to point B.
In Walnut Ridge at 12:40am I was met by my parents who had arrived a few days earlier in their car. They picked me up and we drove to Thayer, MO where they had rented a place for a week.
The Work Begins
At first light the next day I was up and out to the farm. We had left our Tahoe in MO, and so it was waiting for me and ready to go. I left my parents asleep and headed first to the neighbors, Norman and Mark Rizner, who had been babysitting my tractor since we left. They, with my Dad, had made sure it was up and running and ready for me to arrive.
It was emotionally taxing to be here, but this machine made it much easier. When my therapist has me working on a “safe space” to think about during panic attacks, my tractor is my frequent choice. I just feel at peace and calm when I’m working with it. Good thing too.
This is what remained of our driveway. The weeds had grown completely through the rock and completely obscured the remains of the house. From here, I was only about 300 feet from where the house stood. The kids swingset is under that oak tree just left of center of the photo.
The entire yard had turned into a jungle. Waist high (or taller) weeds were everywhere. What was once a well manicured yard had been lost to nature in less than a year. It was heart wrenching to see and contemplate. To witness the change to what we had labored to maintain and care for was difficult for me.
When you got close enough to the foundation you had this out of place concrete in the middle of the jungle.
I spent the entire first day there, Wednesday Sept 27th, mowing down the weeds with the brush hog, pushing the house debris up right next to the foundation, and cleaning off the garage area.
This is what that garage area was when I started. You can see the garage door in the front, and in the back you can see the brick that had been the back of the garage on the deck side. I used the tractor to push it all to the back and scooped it all over the edge into those tall weeds you can see.
The basement was obviously full of ash, appliance remains, brick that fell inward, etc. This used to be our home. It’s now 2500 sq. feet of mess.
This area on the left is the storage room roof. It doubled as our tornado shelter, and so it was completely concrete encased with a metal door. So, surprisingly, everything in there survived the fire just fine. Much of it didn’t survive the rodents or moisture that came in due to its neglect, but there is no sign that the fire produced any heat in this room, nor any smoke stains.
Day 2
I spend day 1 almost entirely alone on the tractor doing work. Day 2 was spent almost entire with Darian Walters (who I entirely failed to get a single photo of) and my Father. The task for the day was to shovel a path from the storage room door to the closest window. We needed a clean path to unload all of the stuff from the storage room.
Because of the work we were doing I kept forgetting to get good documenting photos. But this shows the work we did to clear that path we needed. We also spent time moving items out of our 40ft shipping container so that I could go through there and determine what was garbage and what was coming home with me.
This is an ‘after’ picture. This was jammed full of items that we shoved in there before we left to Utah. We cleared a path to the back of it so that I could get in and see everything and decide what to haul out or leave.
Also on the days list was to set up our Taj Ma-Tent. CRDN was scheduled to return the items they had collected from us last October and I needed a safe dry place to store them. The tent provided a nice location.
This beast of a tent can easily sleep 16 people with cots, and more with just sleeping bags.
Day 3
Friday. Three people from church showed up to help unload the storage room. 
We carried all of the items out of the storage room and put them on pallets next to the window. Then I’d pick up the pallets and move them up onto the driveway. Items included glass jars, jars with food, 5 gallon buckets of flour/sugar/popcorn, #10 cans of food, a washer/dryer, a freezer, and a safe. Thank goodness for the tractor because it did all the heavy lifting.
All of the clothing items in the storage room were wasted. Mice had gotten into them and they were beyond saving. I picked up one bag and moved it out the way; two mice ran out of it when I set it down. We also found 4-5 snake skins in there. They seemed to get bigger each time we found one, so it must have been having a great time with all those mice. The mice found plenty of food among the items that were in cardboard, such as pasta.
All of the small cans of food were unsalvageable as well. The moisture had really gotten to them. Almost 1/2 of them were already empty because they had swollen and burst. The rest were so corroded that there was no way we would risk eating the contents. It was all left in the basement ash for the critters to eventually eat.
With the items from the storage room and shipping container all staged, we were ready for loading a Uhaul on Saturday. This was all much faster than I anticipated. I thought I’d need a week to get ready, but thanks to all the help of all the great volunteers everything was done quite quickly.
The Freezer
Words won’t do justice to the deplorableness of this task. Emptying that freezer was just flat terrible. There is no way that I’ll be able to describe the smell. You should be glad of that.
We always had a good supply of frozen vegetables in the freezer, as well as things like butter and cheese. About 2 months before the fire(s) we had slaughtered a pig, and we had a fair amount of chicken as well. So this freezer was fairly full.
And then the fire… and the accompanying loss of power… to the freezer. That was 10 months ago. Just imagine what happens to frozen meat after 10 months of neglect! Yes, you can pause reading and say a prayer of gratitude that you didn’t have to smell it. The putrescence was unbelievable. To call it pungent would be a massive understatement.
Thankfully the freezer remained closed, so there were no flies and no maggots, but the smell alone would kill a zombie. It almost killed my friend Kevin and I. I’m not sure how neither of us vomited. The smell of vomit would have been an improvement.
It didn’t bother Dad much though. He took a hatchet in the forehead as a kid that severed his olfactory nerve, so he can’t smell anything whatsoever. Lucky guy! The pic above was us cleaning the freezer after emptying it. This was a piece of cake comparatively.
We took the freezer baskets, grabbed handfuls of rotting meat/cheeses/butter/veggies/etc to fill them, and dumped them into the loader of the tractor. When it was full I drove it to the far reaches of the 120 acres and dumped it for the animals to have.
After that we moved the freezer out of the basement using the tractor again. We splashed as much bleach as possible all over it and tried to do our best to alleviate the odor. It was much, much better by the time we unloaded it here in Utah, yet was still a subject of discussion by those who helped unload.
Here we dumped two full gallons of bleach into it and filled it to the brim with water. We let it sit for 4 days and then emptied it and scrubbed it down again. It still retains some odor, but we’re hoping some baking soda and another bleach bath will rid it entirely. I just hope after all this that it will still work when I plug it in.
Day 4
Saturday. Because everything was done so quickly I hastily arranged for the Uhaul for Saturday Morning. I picked it up in West Plains, MO at 6am to begin the 5 day rental. A group of volunteers showed up at the farm around 8am and we started loading immediately. I worked the tractor and Paul Murray (who I also failed to get a picture of) took charge of getting things loaded securely.
Most of the crew left around 10:30 to catch that Saturday sessions of LDS General Conference but we were mostly done with the loading so it was fine. The remaining bit did take most of the rest of the day. But before dark came we were completely done and relaxing.
Sunday – Departure Day
Sunday morning my friend Kevin gave me a lift to the farm where we had left the Uhaul. The only thing to be done was to load the tractor onto the trailer. That didn’t take too long to accomplish and after a few moments of talking it was time to leave.
I had arrived on Wednesday, and by Sunday morning I was ready to go. The only problem was that I didn’t want to. I had already driven away from Kevin, Patty, church friends, and my farm once and I didn’t want to do it again. It was hard on me to climb into the truck and drive away.
Julie and I love and miss the people we met in the Myrtle/West Plains area. This felt like a final goodbye from me, and I didn’t like it. My eyes were moist as I drove out of the farm, away from friends, and headed back to Utah. I hadn’t once visited West Plains during normal hours and hadn’t visited anyone there. I only got to visit Patty briefly in a parking lot on her way to St. Louis. Because of Conference weekend there was no church to attend to give my thanks and say goodbyes. The trip was over much faster than anticipated and faster than desired.
The trip home took 3 days – about 33 hours of driving – instead of the 20 it normally takes us in a car. I made it home safe and sound.