Start as you mean to go on

I've been tossing around the idea of a blog for a while now.  Picked a name & started the setup, then chickened out without posting.  As one of my New Year’s resolutions, I'm biting the bullet.  Will I be a super blogger right of the bat?  Probably not, but if I don't jump in whether I'm ready or not, I never will, so here goes.

I'm so glad that 2012 is behind me.  Lots of challenges over the last year.  First, my mom & I had to come to grips with the fact that my father has Alzheimer's.  It's a horrible, cruel disease & we've already watched it take his mother, so we really didn't want to believe he had it too, but his memory issues finally got bad enough that we couldn't ignore it anymore.  This required us to face the fact that we couldn't count on him to help us run the family business anymore.  

The family business, Berrien Buggy, was started when I was 3 years old, and over the next 44 years, grew from selling parts out of a one car garage to a sprawling manufacturing complex in SW Michigan.  It has been a major part of my life & identity for as long as I can remember.  Could we sell it as a business or would we have to close & liquidate?  Neither option would be easy & we didn't have any idea how to start, so we began praying.  God rewarded our faith & led us to the one customer we hoped might be interested in at least part of the company, then they surprised us by agreeing to take it all.  We first talked to Acme Trailer Works about the possibility of them buying us out in April & by the end of June, it was a done deal.  Acme took most of the equipment & inventory from our headquarters in Michigan to theirs in Pennsylvania.  This transition was far from easy, but it is a relief to not have to worry about the business anymore.    If you or anyone your know has an old air cooled Volkswagen or a recreational vehicle that uses the drive train & suspension from one, please visit www.berrienbuggy.com when you need parts & tell them that Kathy says hi.

Since Acme relocated the business, we were left with a very large commercial building & a house on 5 acres.  The progression of dad’s illness made it impossible for us to stay in the house he & mom had lived in for more than 40 years.  On more than one occasion, he became disoriented & lost on the property.  Also, we knew it would be hard to rent the building to another business & keep him out of it, if we continued to live next door to it.  After discussion with other family members, the decision was made that we would move to NW Nebraska to be near my oldest brother & his kids.  The sale of the business, enabled mom to buy a new house in Nebraska without having to borrow any money or dump the property in Michigan.  At present, she is able to consider short or long term rental, while wait for the right buyer to take it off her hands.  Another prayer answered.

 Previously health concerns of my own had necessitated my moving back home, which left my own home empty & deteriorating for almost 2 years.  With everything happening with the business & dad, going back to my own home was no longer feasible, so I made the decision to sell it.  My uncle saw potential in it, even though it was in pretty bad shape & took it off my hands for a little more than I still owed on.   In today’s economy, being able to walk away from a home with any cash in your pocket is a blessing. 

From June to October, we went through over 40 years of junk from two households, deciding what to keep, sell, give or throw away in preparation for the big move.  Not having the luxury of time, more stuff got thrown away than probably should have & a lot of perfectly good office furniture got sold for scrap.  But finally the building was cleared out & we had a 4-car garage full of boxes waiting to be loaded on a U-Haul truck for the drive to Nebraska.  Those last few days before we drove away from Michigan were full of hard work & lots of tears.  I cannot thank enough the family & friends who devoted hours of their time sweating alongside us as we packed & hauled, filling the U-Haul truck, a pick-up & car hauler, plus my car to capacity.  1000 miles later, we unloaded everything at our new home in Chadron, NE.

What about 2012 are you glad is behind you?