It was literally years that we dreamed of moving to the country.  So when it finally became reality – I was beyond thrilled.  Busting at seams you might say.  You name the euphoria and I had it.

Only the problem was that I had a terrible addiction.  I was addicted to wearing my rose colored glasses.

“How can that be an addiction?” you ask.

It’s hard to identify, as it can be different for each person, but my addiction most likely evolved from wanting to believe that the rest of world is just like me and seeing only what I want to see both in the world and in people as well.

This is also known as a condition called:  Naïveté`.

During the time that we were building here on the dirt road, a local resident of our future neighboring hometown – some seventy-odd years of age and retired – sort of “took up” with us.  When we would drive over each week to check the status of the building project, he would, more often than not, stop by and visit while we were here.

“Bless his heart,” I always thought to myself, “he is such a dear old man.  How blessed we are to already have such a great neighbor before even move here!”

After we moved in, our new friend and town neighbor would stop by usually once a week to talk and talk.  He definitely could talk.  He had lived here all of his life, as had his wife, he owned a fair amount of property in the downtown business section and he knew everyone.  Our first Christmas, he brought us homemade relish he and his wife made.  He made sure we knew all the latest happenings from town and he was never short on stories.

Nearly four months after our move, our retired friend stopped by to drop off tickets for a barbeque – he especially wanted our sons to have them.  On another visit, he mentioned that we should visit the church where he attended in town and had told his minister all about us hoping he could bring him out to visit.  I told him that he and the minister could come out anytime – just make sure we were home so as not to waste the minister’s time.

Another week passed and the first spring weather was beginning to reveal itself.  I was in my husband’s office waiting to speak to him after he finished a telephone conversation.  During my wait, a vehicle on the bridge down at the creek caught my eye from the view in my husband’s home office.  I could tell that someone was out of the vehicle and looked to be throwing something or some things into the creek.

Insert Note:  Our house sits not quite a hundred yards from the creek that borders the eastern boundary of our farm.  In fact, our property line extends halfway into the creek as well as to the middle of the wooden bridge that crosses the creek essentially becoming the southeast corner of our property.

I was, as you can imagine, furious.  Our creek is a protected watershed and someone was littering the creek with who knew what.  I flew out the front door and ran out to the fence line at the road fronting our house in an effort to get a better view of who was on the bridge as well as try and see what they were doing.

It was our retired neighbor who we believed was our new found friend!  I couldn’t believe it and didn’t know what to think.  Worse than that, he was now back inside his vehicle, backing up to turn around and would be passing me any minute.  Stunned with the reality that he was polluting the creek with his trash and uncertain how to react – I ran and stood behind a huge brush pile we were accumulating to burn.  Who was I to chastise someone – my senior – who had lived here all of his life?  My mind was racing all the while I was still angry.

After he passed the house and had driven out of sight, I stormed back into the house to get Alan who was still on the phone.  I was huffing and puffing in the background of his conversation in an attempt to hurry him off the phone.  When he finally hung up from his conversation, I launched into my discovery.  He suggested we go down to the creek to see what he had thrown in.

“Good idea,” I thought.  “Why didn’t I think of that?”  Little did I know, I was nowhere near prepared for what we were about to discover.

We pulled on our rubber boots, grabbed a walking stick and walked down our road to the bridge.  I got to the bridge first as I was nearly trotting from my anger.  Upon first glance into the water, I saw what looked like paper trash, envelopes, etc.  Then I began seeing small digest sized books or magazines.  Alan and I walked down the slope next to the bridge leading to the water.  I walked out onto a fallen tree and began pulling the books out of the water….

I could feel the color leave my face when I turned the first book over: it was pornography.

Really, really bad pornography.

The kind you have to go into a city to one of those nasty and sleazy adult stores or places to buy.  There was even some borderline child pornography.

I was screaming and crying.

These books were floating everywhere.

All I could think about was how often our sons played in the creek under the bridge – this very bridge where we stood pulling this horrific collection of perversion of out of the water.

What if I had not been in Alan’s office at that exact moment and time to see someone on the bridge?

What if that man’s act had gone unnoticed and later on this warm spring day, our sons went down to play in the creek and found all of that?

This was one time I was truly thankful that the boys were in the basement playing video games!

My mind was spinning and I was devastated.

I nearly vomited where I stood.  We had been betrayed by the most unlikely of people: an elderly retired man who had befriended us long before we had even moved to my Mayberry.

By the time we had finished cleaning out the creek of all the trash – and I do mean TRASH – we had filled up two 50 lb dog food sacks full of pornography that the man had tossed into the creek.  To add insult to injury, the man had also tossed out various pieces of personal mail that had his name and home address on all of them.  So clearly, he wasn’t trying to hide his identity from the other materials he had thrown into the creek.

What did all of this mean?  I was enraged.

As far as I was concerned, Satan had been visiting us in the form of a retired old man.

The aftermath was complicated and an emotional roller coaster at best.  We consulted with legal counsel and other professionals to properly deal with the situation.  We also had fears of potential “Walking Tall retribution” as well.  I sank into a deep depression for weeks.

How could this have happened in my Mayberry?

The rose colored glasses had come off but not without a painful lesson: Mayberry does not exist and the World sets up shop even in the smallest of towns.

The reality: we did not move to this town – we moved to this land that the Lord had prepared for us to live on and steward and live a life He made possible for us according to His plan for our lives.  All the while, He was protecting our children that day by having me in the right place at the right time.

We continue to have unique experiences – to say the least.  But I remain steadfast and grounded that we are here because the Lord wants us here.  However, our move was to our farm here on the Dirt Road – not Mayberry.

Harriette