At our rap session in Mr. Carruthers’ office today, we talked about the fact that we were calling him “Mr. Carruthers.” Mr. Carruthers said that he imagined someone named Mr. Carruthers as a hunched old guy wearing a brown blazer who remembers back when nice houses were going for $50,000. He remembers when this town was just a train stop on the way to somewhere else.

We also got the address for a property in the same general area as the Crazy Tenant House. The area used to be part of a ranch, and it turned out the road wasn’t paved. Baby Biv was getting ready to scream. This property was next to pens that held a flock of chickens and a couple of longhorn sheep. The neighboring house seemed to have sprawled out of bounds. It looked like a high school with a big Ag program. The place we went to see must have been someone’s guest house. Real estate’s booming—split off the lot, slap on a couple of extra rooms using cheap siding and, inside, a style that should be known as Home Depot Bubble Generic. Then the market pops. The house looked distinctly uncomfortable, like we were the mailman, and we’d caught it slouching around half-naked.

If we could pick this place up for 150k, hire an architect--but the owner probably owes 230k on it.