The Ransom Strip

It must have been a coincidence or fate but I don’t believe in either. Maybe fortune which is easier to explain and comprehend. Let me explain my predicament or good fortune. Twenty years ago, give a day or two, a sign appeared on a strip of land along the roadside leading to my home in the country. It was a thin strip, about one to two miles long, between the road and a railway line. A scrubby piece of land which occasionally caught fire from sparks from the engine of the steam train taking tourist and train enthusiasts on jolly trips. I was attracted to this strip because at certain times of the season it was covered in beautiful yellow flowers of the Liverwort genera and in my mind, I wanted to save it from future road widening.

I’m Jack Walker and twenty years ago I was happily married to a school sweetheart and living in my parents’ huge house which was part of a private junior and infant school run by my parents. Maria spent many hours helping with kids at the school and had set her heart on being a teacher, going through high school and college to be fully qualified to take over the school when my parents retired. I was less ambitious and left school at sixteen as quickly as possible to take up a career, if you can call it that, as Jack of All Trades. I was successful at that during my senior school years, showing off my accumulated wealth by driving to school, having picked up Maria, in a showy Mustang. I decided that I could make a very comfortable living in the various side hustles I had begun at school. Also, I had a very profitable hobby, encouraged by my grandfather, in buying and selling old stamps and coins. As the saying goes, “I was coining it in by the boat load.”

I rang the number on the sign and a farmer who I vaguely knew, answered. Derek owned a large farm the other side of the railway and this strip was of no use to him. His first question was why I wanted this waste land and when I told him of the Liverwort and he laughed, saying I was too sentimental. We negotiated a final price of a thousand dollars which was quite expensive but he would fund the costs of setting up the deeds and transfers. The deeds were deposited in my grandfather’s safe deposit box in the local bank, along with his valuable stamps and coins. Derek the farmer, told me an interesting story about the name of our local town of Silver Town or Silverton, as it was currently called. Apparently, it used to be called Liver Town because of the abundance of the yellow flower Liverwort. As the town grew the mayor changed the name to Silver Town. A much grander name than Liver Town to the applause of the populists.

When I left school, my grandfather reduced the size of his farm to a small holding which he could manage with my help and that of paid labour. I learned a lot from him. Repairing engines, general engineering, farm management, woodworking skills and electrical skills. A valuable set of skills for a Jack of all trades. I took over the maintenance at the school and my parent’s house plus many neighbours. They paid me the hourly rate I quoted but they all seem to take pity on me and added a hefty bonus which would have been rude to decline. My grandfather’s health was deteriorating rapidly and he needed all day round help. My parents retired early and moved in with him to provide the care. When he passed away, he left all his monies and investments to my parents who promptly moved to California. I was left the small holding and the contents of the safe deposit box which held my deeds. The other contents, the stamps and coins were considered inconsequential by my parents and they didn’t contest the will, not understanding the value of these contents. Petty hobby items they called them. I moved my family into the old farmhouse. By now I had two thriving daughters who took on the responsible role of ruling the chickens, or at least collecting the eggs and recording the yield, occasionally feeding them with supplement.

I quickly settled into a routine. Make breakfast, get the girls ready for school, drive them all to school then onto the library where the WiFi was better to check my website, email and consider the sales of stamps and purchase of coins. I was also digitally cataloguing Grandfather’s stamps using the US version of Stanley Gibbons catalogue to check their worth, which was considerable. At lunch time I picked up a retired gardener and took him home to help with the farm work. For a sandwich and a few beers, he was happy to potter around and keep the garden and orchard shipshape. I was grateful to him and occasionally he brought his mate to help. We were in a semi desert area which was very dry. Apart from a windmill which pumped water up for irrigation, Grandfather had discovered and ancient Indian method of conserving water. He dug strip trenches with the backhoe on the tractor and filled them with organic waste, rotting wood, leaves, branches, charcoal and chicken droppings, covered them with soil and vegetables thrived with minimum watering. I just kept extending the trenches ending up with a surplus of food which ended up at the school for the kids’ lunches.

For twenty years or so this was my daily routine, interspersed with visits to the Auctioneers where I presented various refurbished bits of furniture which I had upgraded in the large barn adjacent to the farmhouse. The auctioneer would put me in touch with people who needed a house clearance. I would arrive with a trailer and a young lad who regularly provided the muscle for a few dollars and some beers. These were brought back to the barn for sorting. Toys, particularly plastic outdoor toys would be refurbished, cleaned and taken to the school. I perfected a technique I learned on YouTube of torching the plastic with a hot flame, which brought the colour back to new, clever eh? Books would be sorted into: - suitable for school, charity sale or disposal in the trenches to mulch down. Furniture again was sorted for refurbishment, Auction house, burning for the ash to be scattered in the trenches. This kept a regular flow of cash into my coffers with relatively little effort. I was more selective with my maintenance work, only for long term regulars which were slowly passing away. My lucrative work was cataloguing the stamp collection and auctioning off a small number of valuable stamps at a time on my website. I had quite a following of regulars who normally bought well above the catalogue value. The proceeds were invested in purchasing commemorative coins for the long-term gain. These usually doubled in value every couple of years. I followed Grandfather’s advice and only bought commemoratives on the safe side. The buying of old coins was beyond my skills and too risky.

When my parents retired, Maria took over the running of the school as Head Teacher. She extended the school to accommodate more children and extended the day, running an after-school club which was welcomed by working parents. Many would request that we shipped the children back home for them. This was another sideline for me. I hired a small bus long term so at the end of the day I taxied the children home and picked up mine on the way home. As my daughters outgrew the primary stage, they walked back and helped mum running the club. We were a busy household since my daughters’ friends would love to come for sleep overs and feed the chickens and animals. As they grew, I got them ponies which attracted a lot more friends. Once a week I would hire a riding instructor to teach mine and other girls. The instructor would trail in a further two or three horses. I fenced off a paddock and created riding routes beyond my small holding with the permission of local landowners. This neatly linked in with my other businesses and time. In the evenings we would often have a dozen parents and children at the barbeque. Again, I wouldn’t charge for this pleasure, so the parents insisted on bringing supplies of beer, wine, food which kept the family and workers fulfilled throughout the week. We made a lot of friends and the networking helped with the school business. Word of mouth is priceless.

This brings me to the recent chapter of my and my family’s life. My lovely daughters were off to prestige universities, Maria’s business was thriving so well we were taking a lease on larger premises and I was slackening off on my side hustles other than the stamps and coins. Then suddenly the environmental department pounced on all the surrounding farms including me to check on toxic run-off. The inspector ruled that my cesspit which took all the human waste was not up to standard and I would have to either replace it or link into the communal sewage system. Having consulted the experts, the conclusion was very expensive. I was already burdened with two college fundings plus the new school buildings, my savings hardly matched the costs involved.

Pondering over the issue whilst driving home, what did I notice? Was it a coincidence, fate or fortune. Along my strip of land, a notice was boldly planted requesting that the owner of the strip should contact this number urgently. At first, I thought it was the local council possibly wanting to acquire the land for road widening but my call was answered by a receptionist at a large county development company. My next call was to my Auctioneer friend who laughed heartily and told me I had a Ransom Strip that I wasn’t aware of and explained the significance of it. The railway had long been abandoned and been bought including the farmland for development of a large shopping mall and I owned the only feasible access. He told me in no uncertain terms to call on him the next day and plan our strategy for the sale.

The next day I drove past my ransom strip and found it had nurtured six more signs.

I stopped and recorded each one on my phone. On arriving at the office, the auctioneer was quite animated and introduced me to a legal fellow. We sat down and discussed the implications of the matter and came to the conclusion that I was sitting on a gold mine. The lawyer explained that the development company was sloppy and should have consulted the local land register and got my name and come to me direct. As a local yokel I would have bowed to their generosity and handed over the deeds with a smile. Instead, they had started a bidding war which in the end would cost them millions to sort out.

The auctioneer started with half a million dollars for a strip of waste land which made my breath gasp. No takers, then his secretary whispered that a three hundred thousand bid had been made online. The bidding suddenly increased in hundred thousand increments until it reached eight hundred, then there was a pause. Then it rose by fifty thousand increments then suddenly stopped as a one point three million bid came in online. That was the final bid and I was aghast. The buyer wasn’t the development company but and investment company. The developer pulled out of the development until the council stepped in ordered a compulsory purchase on that land to save the development. The investor wanted the deal to be secret until the development was completed. I got my state of art cess pit, approved by the environmental agency and as a family we got a month’s trip to Europe, First Class.