Aunt Minnie’s House

When we began to build our house at Belmont, our closest neighbour was Mac’s God-mother, Minnie Hazell.  Aunt Minnie was a sweet lady who lived in a small house with her rather eccentric cousin Arthur, and happily minded her chickens until they began to mysteriously disappear thanks to our dog! Mac arranged to buy a little over 9,000 square feet of land from Aunt Minnie so that we could access our property, giving us a larger front yard than originally planned.

When Aunt Minnie died (Arthur having passed away earlier), she left her house and land to a niece named Christine, a relative who lived abroad. I didn’t know Christine, and wondered what she would do with her inheritance. Mac figured she would want to sell the property, and worried a bit about who we might end up with as neighbours. We would have liked to buy the property ourselves, but were not in a financial position to do so at that point in time.

Shortly after Mac’s funeral I received an overseas call from Christine, who claimed that Mac had made a deposit on the land, and that she wanted to be paid the balance right away. A deposit? Mac? This was news to me, and I told the lady I knew nothing about any payments and would have to get back to her. Christine told me that if I didn’t pay the balance she would be forced to sell to someone else, and that would mean forfeiting the deposit.

I went to see Son Mitchell. I was quite disturbed by the possibility that Mac had made arrangements to buy land without discussing it with me, and where had he acquired the money for the deposit? Son knew the answer, evidently Mac’s friend Nik wanted to buy Aunt Minnie’s small house, and had asked Mac to send a down payment to Christine on his behalf. I was upset and rather embarrassed that this had been done without my knowledge, Mac should at least have mentioned it to me!

Nik’s tug and barge were in port, so I went to see him. Sure enough, he DID want to buy the property, but to do so he would need my help. Nik wasn’t a citizen or resident of St. Vincent, and would not be able to get a mortgage from the bank to pay Christine the balance of what he owed. He also didn’t have an alien land-holder’s license, a necessity for non-nationals wishing to buy property. Having known Nik for a long time, I agreed to own the property on his behalf. It was a relief to know that Minnie’s house would be owned by someone I knew and liked!

Nik and I went to St. Vincent and made the necessary arrangements for the mortgage, and with cheque in hand we met Christine at a lawyer’s office to finalize the transfer of the deed. Once the transaction was over and Christine had left, the lawyer smiled at us and said, “you two must really trust each other!”.  He pointed out that Nik had to trust that I would not claim the land for myself, which it dawned on me I COULD. He also pointed out that NIK could renege on the monthly loan payments, a loan that had been taken out in my name. THAT was a scenario I had not even considered when signing on the dotted line!

I DID trust Nik. He had been a good friend of Mac’s, but until the land transaction I didn’t know that he was German by birth (for some reason I had assumed he was Dutch!). He was just a very nice and caring man known locally as “Stratmann Nik” or “Captain Nik”.

Yes, I trusted Nik, and was glad he was going to be our closest neighbour.