The Purchase
In retrospect what felt like forever was really just a few quick months, but in the moment it felt like we would never get the hall.
We first visited the hall on April 13th 2024 and wouldn’t hear back from the seller until mid-May. When I say hear back, that’s not quite accurate. She is an extremely busy business woman with many pots on the fire, and was in the midst of trying to offload different parts of her salvage empire to prepare for retirement. We knew we had to move quickly and we knew someone else might make her a better offer. Lee called and texted several times each week after our initial “viewing”, but he never got a response. The weeks went on and we started feeling like the dream was slipping away. Who were we to think we could be the people to bring the hall back? It started to feel like we should move on. Maybe she had sold it to someone else already? She had mentioned to Lee in their first phone call that some out of state buyers were considering buying all her business assets in one large sale. Was it already gone?
When something is bugging me, I just can’t sleep. So, being so bent out of shape about the mystery of why she hadn’t called us back, I couldn’t sleep. I got out of bed at 2am and started writing a letter. I thought, maybe if she knew a little more about our story and our “why”, she would be willing to talk. I wrote from the heart and decided to bring it to her business the next day. It’s not like she’d be there… on a random Tuesday…. While trying to retire…
The next day I gathered my courage and drove to Portland. I envisioned handing the letter to an employee of hers with a short explanation, saying thank you, and heading to my doctor’s appointment. I walk in and the first person I see… you guessed it. Starting to feel a little clammy, I walk over and introduce myself. “Hi! I’m Katie Hoagland. My husband Lee and I would like to buy the hall in Hollis. I wrote you a letter. Here it is.” Awkward.
She couldn’t have been warmer and friendlier. She invited me to stay and chat. Several times she was pulled away by employees and customers, and because we were sitting behind the register area, other customers started asking me questions about prices and whether we sold such and such piece of furniture. Though interrupted, it was a great conversation. We got to chat and she got to meet one of us. We were no longer strangers. I left the letter with her and headed out feeling giddy.
By that Friday she had verbally promised the hall to us. She said she knew we were the right people and she believed in us. She was touched by my letter and was keeping it on her coffee table to reread. We were on top of the moon. It took a few months for us to do our research and gather our money together to make the purchase.
On August 6th, 2024, we closed on the hall! It was joyful and warm. I brought the seller a bouquet of flowers from my flower farm as a small token of thanks, and she brought us a piece of Oddfellows memorabilia, a carved and painted wooden emblem. We went home and I made us a celebratory meal of yellow tomato and peach gazpacho and a thick, juicy steak. We did it! The hall in Hollis was ours!
Big thank you to our neighbor and friend Jim (James) Haddow, a skilled and generous lawyer who helped us ask the questions we weren’t thinking of and make sense of the documents.
I mentioned the Oddfellows who built the hall in the first place. What’s an Oddfellow you say? Stay tuned for the next blog post where I’ll try to give an overview of the Oddfellows and a brief history of the building.
