12. Serendipity

ser·en·dip·i·ty
/serənˈdipədē/, noun
the occurrence and development of events by chance in a happy or beneficial way

The past week was a bit odd, to say the least. Monday evening I rushed to walk my dog before meeting a friend out for a drink. It was hot. The air was thick and still, and my dog was not terribly cooperative, pulling this way and that. I stopped to catch my breath in front of the Burnham Mansion, the current subject of a fairly contentious debate in our town. Most people who live around here have heard news of its imminent destruction for remodeling and expansion of the old high school (which itself was a subject of contentious debate between those who preferred the high school remain centrally located, and those who wanted the opportunity to almost limitlessly expand on the outskirts of town). More recently the property was saved by a gentleman who offered to buy and move the house, thereby preserving a bit more of Champaign’s architectural history. It’s a beautiful house, white and sprawling, with a turn-of-the-century porte cochère, and a tall wrought-iron fence which borders Church Street and encircles the other three smaller white houses from the same era on the property.

As I walked towards West Side Park, I saw a woman holding a camera over her head, pointed towards an empty lot facing the park. I kept trying to get out of her frame, but she waved me back in, saying, “it looks better if there’s a person in the photo.” I wiped my sweaty forehead with the back of my hand, realizing at the last second I was still carrying my dog’s poop bag. Ugh. The last thing I wanted was to be in someone’s random photo, looking like I’d been dragged through a rainstorm pulled by a 70-pound dog, and carrying a poop bag.

She continued snapping photos. It seemed I had little to say about it, being in a public place and all. “Well, as long as it doesn’t get into the papers,” I joked, as I trudged down the sidewalk towards her.

The camera came down. She didn’t smile. “Well, actually, I’m with The News Gazette.” She whipped out a small notebook and pen. “Could you spell your name for me, please?” I sighed, launching into my “two last names, not hyphenated” spiel, but I actually had a small hope that she would get it correct, this being a newspaper and all. She went on to explain that the Burnham Mansion would be moved here, a mere block away, if all went well. I was suddenly cheered to be part of delivering that good bit of news.

The next day, a friend posted my picture from the newspaper. A few people commented. The ladies at the locker room at the Y teased me for making the news. I asked a friend to save me a paper, since we don’t have a subscription.

And thus began and ended my 15 minutes of fame.

The following day I was in the same neighborhood, picking up a transcript for my son from the high school. As I walked back to my car, I noticed a young man pulling up the iron fence posts from the fence encircling the properties adjacent to the Burnham Mansion and putting them into a large trailer. Curious, I ventured over. “If I may ask, where is that fence going?”

He smiled. “Peoria Architectural Salvage. We got the bid to salvage what’s in these houses.”

“So, it’s going to Peoria?”

“Yes. Well, unless it stays here…” He raised an eyebrow, questioning.

My mind reeled. If you know my husband and me at all, you know that we take our “reduce, re-use, recycle” fairly seriously. My husband used to work with PACA, the Preservation and Conservation Association, very closely. Our two-story garage was almost completely finished with salvaged materials that he had removed personally  from their original locations: windows from several sources, 19th century pocket doors, oak flooring from an old farmhouse in Mahomet, brick from a farm site in Monticello. Same for our landscaping, a retaining wall made from street pavers. Our raised vegetable bed is re-purposed from an old Ford pickup truck bed’s wooden sides. The large gate to our back yard is from a pasture. I love the history in each item, and finding new ways to incorporate the old in a new way. And it’s a very big part of why I will miss this house so much.

So it was a natural instinct to want to have the opportunity to repurpose this fence, this piece of downtown Champaign’s history. We needed a fence for our new house, one that wouldn’t spoil the view of the pond and trees, but would protect the dog if we let her out at night. It seemed like it was meant to be.

“How much will you sell it for?”

He named a price that was probably less than one-sixth of what a new wrought iron fence would cost. I told him I would have to think about it. I got in my car and texted my husband. No answer. I went about my business, running errands, chatting with friends at the downtown farmer’s market, then headed back home. My husband finally called, scolding me for not acting without him. “But how much fence do we need?” I asked.

I turned the car around as he calculated, my vegetables wilting in the hot car. I crossed my fingers that the guy hadn’t left for Peoria already. I turned the corner just as he was loading the last of the sections of fence. We needed 200 feet of fence. I asked him how much there was. He had 30 sections of approximately seven feet each. Could it be more perfect? I gave him directions to our house, where he came and unloaded ¾ of a ton of iron fence, plus posts. I gave him some ice water and a hefty check, and he left with an almost empty trailer back to Peoria.

Now, I know what you’re thinking—we’re supposed to be getting rid of stuff for the move, not adding a ton of metal. And...you’d be right. But there was something so tempting, so completely inevitable about buying this fence. Sure, there are some missing finials, and my husband will probably have to do some welding to lengthen a few of the posts, but, like any material salvaged from someplace with history, it’s part of its character. Its story. And, hopefully, its story will live on as we take a little piece of old Champaign with us to a tiny corner of Oklahoma.