October 2002 – June 2003
The hills of West Virginia were awash in the warm tones of autumn—burnt orange, rusted red, golden yellow. The air was crisp, the kind that wakes you up and makes you reach for a jacket. The farm was quiet, peaceful, and the house—though livable for the moment—looked like it hadn’t been touched since the 1940s.
My parents wasted no time settling in. The first thing my dad did was drive to Thompson’s Supply and buy a Kubota MX5000 tractor with a brush hog. I still have a photo burned in my memory—my dad standing tall on that orange tractor, arms raised like he just conquered a mountain. His face beamed with boyish joy. That tractor wasn’t just a machine—it was his declaration: “This is real. We’re here.”
To him, having that tractor made it official. It meant the land was his to care for, to reclaim. Aunt Mary had previously paid a neighbor on the other side of the hill to mow the fields, but now my dad could do it himself. The first few times were memorable, to say the least. Uncle Jim, my dad’s brother, had visited the farm not long before and practiced his golf swing in the field. What none of us realized was that his golf balls were still hiding in the grass.
So there my dad was, taking the brush hog for a spin, when—P-TING!—a golf ball shot out like a missile from under the mower. White projectiles flew across the field as if launched from a cannon. He thought it was hilarious. “Guess I’ll have to mow the back nine more carefully next time,” he joked.
Their next big project was the farmhouse renovation. The plan was extensive: gut the house, add a two-story extension, and alter the roof to build a third bedroom upstairs. Since the house wouldn’t be livable during construction, they rented a small one-bedroom apartment in Shinnston, just ten minutes east. It was modest—an addition on the back of an older home—but it served its purpose. When I visited, I’d crash on the couch.
They started calling around for contractor bids and eventually went with someone local and cheaper than the rest. He claimed he could start within two to three weeks. My parents gave him a down payment, and they waited.
Three weeks passed. Then another. The contractor called and said he needed more time. My parents started digging into his background and found charges in both Monongalia and Harrison County. Concerned, they called him and asked for their money back. He agreed to meet and explained that the charges were just “bad luck.” He was trying to turn things around and this job would help him do it.
Here’s where I sometimes get frustrated with my parents. They’re the kind of people who take everyone at their word. My dad used to run his own car audio business and always said, “You’re only as good as your word.” As Christians, they believed in the golden rule—treat others how you’d want to be treated. They had been burned before, like the time a house they were trying to buy was sold out from under them. Still, they wanted to give the man a second chance. “He has a lot on his plate,” my mom said. “We can be patient.”
If it were me, I would have demanded the money back with no compromise. But they gave him a chance to redeem himself.
The farmhouse was gutted on January 9th. After that, almost nothing happened. Sometimes the workers didn’t show up at all. When they did, the quality was so poor that my dad had to redo their work himself. The addition was never started. The framing for the third bedroom was so unstable you could feel the floor wobble when you stepped on it. Meanwhile, the contractor kept asking for more money.
I came up to visit for spring break in March. The inside of the house looked like an abandoned project—just raw beams and old wood, coated in sawdust. I’m no expert, but I could tell immediately that something was wrong. Once I sat down and got the full story from my parents, I was livid.
“This house has stood for over a hundred years,” I told them. “You need someone who can make it stand for a hundred more. Sometimes you have to hire professionals to do a professional job.”
I wish I had been there sooner. From South Carolina, all I got were fragments of the story over the phone. I trusted my parents to make good decisions, and I knew they meant well. But this was the first time I truly thought, I wish I was up on the farm.
By April, the pressure was mounting. The contractor promised the house would be completed by April 24th. But, unsurprisingly, it wasn’t. The final straw came when he told my dad he’d placed an order at Marsh’s, the local lumber store. When my dad called to confirm, Marsh’s said no such order had ever been made. More lies.
That’s when my parents told the contractor they were suing him for breach of contract.
I came back up to the farm in early June. The house still had no siding. The front porch had been ripped off. Inside, it was all framework and dust. But I could see the signs of my dad’s hard work. The new staircase was redone—solid, not a single creak. The third bedroom was reinforced and ready for drywall. He had done it himself. Every beam, every screw. I was proud of him—but also ashamed. Ashamed that he had to do it alone.
Later that summer, I went with him to a meeting at the county courthouse. We were meeting with the new prosecutor, Patrick Wilson, along with several other victims. Most of them were elderly. That made it worse—the man had been stealing from old folks who would likely never see their money again.
Prosecutor Wilson laid it out plainly. We had two options: pursue a civil case and try to recover some of the money, or press criminal charges and send the man to jail. He told us that recovering money would be difficult, if not impossible. My dad and I looked at each other, and we both agreed: he needed to go to jail.
He was convicted and served time for running a scam across multiple counties. Taking money, spending it on drugs, robbing Peter to pay Paul.
What happened with the contractor was just the beginning. It was our first real taste of what can happen when you trust the wrong people. But in a strange way, it also reminded me of the kind of people my parents are—compassionate, forgiving, and loyal to a fault.
My dad wasn’t deterred. If anything, he was more resolved than ever to make the farm his home again. He had grown up here, and now he was reclaiming it board by board, screw by screw. I saw that house start to come back to life under his hands.
That summer I learned two things: trust, but verify—and no matter how careful you are, sometimes you’re still going to get punched in the gut. But you don’t stop helping people. You just get smarter about how you do it.
And as for the shady businessman lurking around in West Virginia? That was just the first. Turns out, they have a way of finding you.