On To Arizona

Even though this post will bring you close to the "current times" in my life and career, it won't be the last. Do I know what I will write about? Heck no!

Sometime in early 2000 I received an e mail from the daughter of a long time friend of mine who's family had moved to Arizona in the late 60's. Over the years as they would come back to Pa to visit relatives I would have the chance to see them. But as happens all too often I lost track of them so the e mail was a shocker. Anyway, to make a long story short there was the usual pleasant exchange of e mails, some of them containing my complaints about the Pennsylvania weather. It was from them I learned that Arizona is not all flat and desert, but had beautiful hills and places where there was a moderate change of seasons. As luck would have it I had some airline miles due to expire, so I decided to come out and take a look around. I was amazed at the beauty of the desert and found out that it did not look like a set from Lawrence of Arabia, but it had color, vegetation and more. The drive from Phoenix to Payson had me saying "wow" a lot. Magnificent mountains deep valleys and a constant change in vegetation. This was the first week in April of 2003, and I spent some 5 days roaming all around "The Rim Country." During that time I talked with my wife back in Pa, she was unable to come along because she was taking care of her elderly father, and one day I was sitting in the sun at Roosevelt Lake, about 40 miles S.E. of Payson, the temperature was in the mid 70's and there were boats on the lake. At the same time Pennsylvania was getting hammered by a snow storm that eventually left over a foot of snow on the ground. It was then the decision was made to "head west old man."

It all sounded so simple, until you consider I had a successful business, a house in which my mother was my tenant, my son was at college in Allentown, and none of us had a job waiting in Arizona. But we were determined to figure out how to make the move. My mother was needless to say rather upset that we were planning on such a move and told us quite firmly she was going to stay in Pennsylvania. Fortunately in Canton there is a nice senior housing project owned by the Yoder Brothers of Turbotville. I had known the Yoder's for many years as they at one time were the dealer/builder for Ridge Homes and had been one of my advertising accounts on WMPT. I checked out some of there other projects and talked to the local officials in each area they had apartments and as expected the Yoder's got a great recommendation. So mom's name went on the waiting list, and in January of 2004 she got her apartment.

It was about the same time that we were able to place my father in law in a nursing home as he was getting too much to handle, my son finished college and moved back to Canton to help us prepare for the move. The house was on the market and I very quietly went about selling my company. I felt that a customer would be a logical choice since they were consumers and liked the products. I pared my list from 12 names down to five and sent them each a letter with the offering. Several expressed some interest with Carl and Linda Cox of Knoxville in Tioga County, the most interested. Carl had been a customer for well over 10 years in his capacity as Public Works Foreman in Knoxville Borough. We met with them and a deal was struck. Now the house, it had been on the market for several months but with very little action, so I decided to take a rather radical approach to selling it. Each Monday I reduced the price by $2,000 and stated that would happen every week till the property was sold. As luck would have it during a yard sale, Gary Wright, who I had known for years and his wife appeared at the sale. I had worked for Gary for a period of time as a salesman for his wholesale flower business in Wlliamsport. Well anyway Gary was looking for investment property, knew the house and was impressed at the improvements we had made. I took him through that day and he made and offer the next, I countered and it was sold. Early on we thought it would make more sense to sell most of our furniture and buy what we needed when we got to Arizona so we scheduled an auction two days before we were scheduled to leave. All the time we had been packing boxes and stacking them in a designated size area. The auction went as planned the 'Budget Truck From Hell" was packed, and we started off across country with Carol, Karl and two dogs in the van and me with the rental truck and a trailer towing my sons vehicle. Bad roads, one run out of gas, a blowout of two tires on the truck and several episodes of the truck just plain quitting and we arrived at our new digs in Payson some 5-1/2 days later. Karl and I had been out to Payson early in the month and had rented an apartment and had all utilities ready and even made arrangements for the truck to be unloaded. Even though the trip was tiring and stressful it was good to be in Payson.

Next time jobs, where do you find them?