Old Guy has been living in the Town of Rome about as long as God has, if you figure God arrived sometime in the late 1970s. (And by my figuring, that’d be right.)

    Of course, I wasn't an old guy then. Newly married for just over a year, Young Guy and his Young Bride thought the town of Rome looked pretty good. And when that brand-new spec home became available on St. Andrews Trail, well, it was too good to be true, wasn't it? With 1,500 square feet and a two-car garage in the midst of the sandy pines, the foreclosure sale just didn't make sense.

    But who were they to argue with good fortune? So what if the Royal Crest development had gone under and the homebuilder had walked away? Didn't that just mean that they would enjoy their wooded privacy even more?

    So, on November 1, 1978, that little home of their dreams disappeared from the market faster than flapjacks in a firehouse. And that's when their Roman holiday began.

    That first winter came knocking before their furniture arrived—what little furniture they had. Their only new possession was some new, space-aged cooking gizmo given to them by Young Bride's parents as a wedding present. That first microwave oven from Sears took up half the counter space in the kitchen. But, boy, could it cook—I mean, heat up. Young Bride did the cooking! And she appreciated her Young Man's appetite for all things food.

    The molecular dance the Young Man's dinner performed inside that electronic oven was equaled only by the ferociousness of the raging storms pummeling their little home week after week during the winter of 1979.

    Staying warm was a major task for the young couple, as the house was only equipped with electric heat. Suffice it to say that, what with the rising nature of that heat, the couple kept their finished basement’s thermostat set at 80+ degrees. Even so, like moths to a flame, they spent many an evening hovered near the stairwell opening, reading wood-stove catalogs while attempting to absorb what little warmth radiated from the electric coils below.

    As the only house on the block (or within a mile of the Lake Arrowhead entrance), Young Guy was required to place the couple’s mailbox out on Highway 13. This proved to be a daunting task, one that was accomplished only with repeated blows to a makeshift post that eventually broke through the ice and frozen-rock layers, plunging into the sand that lined Highway 13—a cold shoulder indeed.

    Young Man’s weekdays were spent fashioning all types of advertising for Johnson Hill’s Department Stores; Young Bride began her social work career at the Opportunity Development Center. 
    But always they returned to their cool-but-cozy home in the woods of Rome each evening, stoking the electrically heated fires of their love with the hopes and dreams of all young couples—to be happy ever after.

    And so it came to be.