In the spring of 2016, after a couple years of discussion, my wife and I agreed to move to Texas in hopes of continued employment. My director had been pressing for me to make the move pretty much since I’d been hired for my current position and reading the writing on the wall, I finally committed to a move date. In May, I arranged for us to travel to the Austin, Texas region to house hunt. I’d coordinated with a prominent real estate agent to help in our home search only to receive a vague text message the evening before we were to begin the search handing us off to an associate. Welcome to Texas!
To save on vacation time, I worked things out to work locally (I’d been working remote only for 3 years) while my wife Anna, looked at possible houses with our new broker Leisa in the Austin metro area. Things got off to a poor start the day prior when Anna and I looked at some open houses trying to kill some time and got our initial homebuyer shock. Following signs to an open house like kids following the sound of an ice cream truck on a hot day, we entered a nice-looking neighborhood thinking this looked promising. With each turn and the next sign, the streets looked older and dingier. Finally, deep in the neighborhoods, we find the home for sale and it was depressing. The house was three bedrooms and two baths and was built in the early 1980’s. It looked tired and beaten up and a quick walk through indicated it would need forty thousand dollars to bring it up to snuff so we quickly decided it was an unlikely option. A brief talk with the selling agent confirmed that thought when he revealed that this disaster of a home was listed at $205 thousand dollars and had five offers over the list price. We had until midnight to bid. Welcome to Texas!
One of the other things we notice while we are looking around at areas we are interested in is that all these neighborhoods have wooden privacy fences. All these fences look like crap! None are stained or treated to protect them from the weather. Most with any age have warped boards and are leaning because the posts were not set properly. Nails popping out all over because apparently no one has ever heard of screws. And best of all, the wood used on all these fences is sub-par crap I wouldn’t use to build a doghouse out of. Did I mention Anna really dislikes wooden fences? Welcome to Texas!
As it turned out, working with the realtor the next day wasn’t much of an improvement. Anna and Leisa looked at five or six houses. Either the houses were in really bad condition, or they already had competing offers above the list price, some in such bad condition Leisa wouldn’t even show the house. Twice, after leaving a house that might have some promise and calling her office to see what else was available they learned that the previous house already had multiple offers. Welcome to Texas!
In the evenings, I would join the party to see the houses that made the short list. Well that was the plan. Monday was a bust as there was no short list to look at and Tuesday had been an abbreviated hunt as Leisa had a closing. I came up with a prospect that we’d seen on the market weeks before, but the listing had been pulled by the seller for some reason. The house had just come back on the market (205 Dana Drive) and we asked Leisa to show it to us. The house was far from perfect, and it was about fifteen thousand more than we really wanted to spend, but we decided to make an offer and Leisa gave us the disclosure documents to look over while we discussed what we wanted to submit as our offer. Late into the evening, Anna was re-reading the disclosure and discovered the reason the house had been off the market, it had caught fire. With this revelation, and a lack of response from the selling agent for more detail of exactly what happened, we withdrew the offer and started the search again. Welcome to Texas!
I took the next day off work just to help with the house hunt as things were looking bleak and Anna wanted me to be with them as it had become quite apparent that things had to happen fast. We also shifted from looking at existing homes to looking at builders to see what we could get built or buy already built in the area. What looking somewhat promising in Hutto soon turned sour when the build options were already over budget and had all gas utilities with no electric option and Anna disliking gas. So, the Hutto builder was out. Leisa showed us a neighborhood in Taylor that she was reluctant to show us because of the distance Taylor was from the Austin area but I convinced her that the drive wasn’t an issue. We get to the site and there is no sales agent, the building is locked and no one to be seen. After twenty minutes of calling and texting she finally gets a hold of someone and we learn there is a house already built that they have for sale and it is just down the block. We go look at it and Anna suddenly looked at me and say that we better buy it, as it appears to be the best option we’re going to get. (I was shocked as it was a lot of things we didn’t want.) But at this point I’m game as I’m seeing we don’t have a lot of options. Leisa coordinates for Anna and I to come back the next morning to meet the salesman and coordinate the contract.
We meet at ten o’clock the new morning with Marcus. He explains all the details of the purchase and encourages us to make a critical walk through of the house again and gives us tape to mark where we find problems in the house to be repaired before closing. It is already getting hot and while walking through the house Anna starts feeling ill. No toilet paper in the house of course but I have tissues in the car so I got get them and Anna goes off to the master bath. We find issues and mark them, Marcus joins us and we personally point out the big issues. He heads back to the office to start the contract paperwork and we get ready to follow when Anna started feeling nauseous. She goes back to the bathroom and loses her lunch and we are suspecting it is the heat (95+ outside) and head up to the office. We spend the next two hours signing the contract with Marcus and Anna excuses herself about every fifteen minutes to go to the bathroom. Yep, she’s sick. We finally get finished and I head us back to the room just barely making it before she again races to the bathroom. Knowing she needs meds, she sends me to Sam’s Club to get a refill on one for her prescriptions and I raced there and back to get home she can get her stomach settled. Welcome to Texas!
With a closing date and a contract, we headed back to Tennessee and start packing with a vengeance. We also coordinated with our bank to have as much paperwork done as possible to be ready to close on the house in Texas. We’d already sold our house in Tennessee and were renting it from our buyer until we could move (Our buyer was one of the greatest things that happened in this whole process.) We get a call from Marcus, saying he goofed and the closing date has to be moved up ten days. We said okay even though it was causing us a bit of grief on our timeline for packing. We also confirmed that the punch list of the house was being worked off so that everything would be on our closing date. We also coordinated for a home inspection on the fifth of July at nine o’clock in the morning and Marcus assured us that the house would be ready and that someone would be there to open it up when we arrived. With the modified closing date, I now have to scramble to get a hitch installed on my car so I can tow the initial trailer full of items to Texas. It wasn’t easy, and it took some shucking and jiving, but I managed to get it done in four days through the wonder of mail order via the Internet. Welcome to Texas!
As the closing day approached, we made the drive to Texas again and setup shop in the same Red Roof Inn we’d stayed at six-weeks earlier. We are up and out early the next morning and we arrive at the house and meet the inspector. No one is there from the builder. I go down to the sales office, no one there either. Finally, the builder representative (DJ) shows up and lets us in. The first thing we notice is that only one item on the punch list has been addressed in the past six weeks. This is a bad omen. The inspection shows several items we’d missed, but most of these items are cosmetic. Only one big issue comes up and that is a missing brace in an attic truss. This is problematic as the truss company has to make the repair, not the builder and then it has to be certified by their engineer. This means delays and our Tuesday closing a week out is not looking good. Welcome to Texas!
I spend the next few days having several discussions with DJ about repairs and their progress (Mostly the lack of them) As the excuses pile up, I get more and more convinced that Tuesday is not going to happen for closing. Finally, DJ assures me that Thursday afternoon, we can get the final inspection finished and close that afternoon. This is important as we have to go back to Tennessee and finish packing and coordinate the truck and my son and daughter-in-law to help us with the move. The time line is pretty fixed and DJ promises again and again all will be ready. While I’m dealing with DJ, I’ve been working with the mortgage company about documents needed and I’ve grown very frustrated with them too. I literally spent over five hours on the phone, had to write letters to my bank, fax documents and all kinds of hassle over the stupidest of things, the earnest money check. The frustration over this check almost caused me to opt out of a mortgage and just buy the house outright. One bright side to all these conversations was I asked a question about wire transfer during closing and the mortgage banker referred me to the title company for the details. They in turn told me what I needed to do and gave me account numbers and such so I could contact my bank. I then called my bank to coordinate the actual transfer (I’d talked to my bank in person three weeks earlier about it, you know.) and learned that I had to sing for the transfer, in person, in Tennessee. Welcome to Texas!
I’m transferred from my local branch to the main branch and every person I talk to tells me the same thing, I have to do the wire transfer in person. A quick search of the internet shows the nearest branch of my bank is in Little Rock Arkansas, an eight-hour drive away. The main branch refers me to the national number for the bank and I call it. Twice I get hung up upon by their computer. Finally, I get a human voice. Not only a human voice, but one with a brain. I patiently explain my situation and she listens carefully and starts working on how we can get this issue resolved. No excuses, she just knuckles down and starts working on how we can get the mission accomplished. It is a daunting situation and she finally determines that the only way this can be resolved is through the local branch where I was first told this couldn’t be done. She warns me that I might be on hold for several minutes and then I’m waiting to hear that it can’t be done when she comes back with good news. I’ll be getting a call from the branch manager in less than five minutes and we can do the transfer. As promised, the call comes and I’m able to make the transfer happen. Mostly it seems from my wife’s relationship with the bank tellers and manager and the good reputation she has earned with them. The money is transferred and closing can take place. Welcome to Texas!
Closing day came and time to inspect the house. So much for DJ’s promises. We do the walk through and the truss is fixed and we have the engineer’s documentation. A good fifty-percent of the inspection items are unfinished and now we have to make the call. Complete the contract or cancel it and walk away. With our backs to the wall and zero faith in DJ, we accept the inevitable and agree to close even though the house isn’t ready. Welcome to Texas!
Closing is at a title company forty miles away. Incredibly, I manage to get there on time even though I have to fight rush-hour traffic to get there. Tired, frustrated, thirsty and exhausted, we finally make it to the title office. Liesa meets us there a few minutes later and we finally meet the closing attorney. The first surprise was that she was a good five months pregnant, but after that minor surprise, everything else went superbly smoothly. The last item in the closing process was a survey for the builder. I spend forty-five minutes detailing the cluster-fuck that the process has been and how unhappy I’ve been especially with DJ and finally quit writing out of sheer exhaustion. We are given the keys and are assured that we have been given them all. On the way back to the motel, I stop at Home Depot and buy three sets of new locks with matching keys. We haul our stuff to the house the next morning and I change the locks and DJ calls wanting to know if he can make the repairs to the house while we are gone, I tell him no, he doesn’t have access and he tells me he still has a key. Then I point out he does, but not to the new locks on the house and that we’ll deal with him after we move in. Welcome to Texas!
We return to Tennessee with our timeline for things we wanted to accomplish in Texas in total disarray due to the failure to get things fixed in a timely manner. Now U-Haul starts to become a pain in my ass. I contracted to pick up a truck three miles from the house and they call wanting me to pick up at an alternate location sixty miles away and offer me a free 100 miles and fifty-dollar discount. I counter with make it one-hundred dollars and 200 miles and we come to an agreement. I get a confirmation call from the lady running the location and make arrangements for the pickup of the 26-foot truck and a car carrier. When I explain I’m towing a 1968 mustang on the car carrier she tells me she will personally make sure everything is good. I was pleasantly surprised not only to get an almost new truck (Less than 50 thousand miles and awesome AC) but she’d had all four tires on the trailer replaced because she said; “they didn’t look good”. Welcome to Texas!
Loading of the truck and the final packing of items was greatly enhanced by the buyer of our house assisting us in loading the truck. Unfortunately, as I expected, we had cubed out the truck and pretty much filled the car on the trailer so I know that I’d have to make one more trip. But the house buyer let me store stuff in the garage and was in no rush for me to come back and get it. (I flew back about six weeks later and finished the job.) Loaded we headed to Texas in a little convoy with a U-Haul towing a car carrier, my son driving my car and my wifey driving hers with our resident kitty (Pixel). We had one stop over in Texarkana, AR for the evening and made it to Taylor the next day. It was 98 degrees in the shade when we arrived so we opted to start unloading after dark. Welcome to Texas!
Nothing of great note on the move in, it was painful like all others. We’d been in the house a few days and were setting up, unpacking, arranging and getting little chores done like turning in the U-Haul, moving some stuff to and from storage and just spending some time visiting, then we noticed the fire ants. It seemed that fire ants were now invading the house and we first noticed them on the living room floor. Welcome to Texas!
The fire ants were brought under control with help from the builder and the local pest control company. Now, we are getting on with life and life keeps putting little obstacles in our way. About two weeks later I’m coming home from work and the serpentine belt on my little Pontiac G6 fails. I managed to get it home and the next morning just barely make it to a local car repair (City Auto) to get it fixed. It is repaired that afternoon and when I pick it up the bill is only $240 instead of the original $333. It seems there was a double quote for labor in the estimate. Welcome to Texas!
Next was tagging the vehicles and drivers licenses. I had to tag the vehicles within thirty days and one oddity I found was that to tag a vehicle in Texas, it doesn’t have to be titled in Texas. That is different than any other state I’d ever lived in, but who am I to argue. The hitch was to get tags, the cars had to pass emissions testing and my car had a check engine light for the catalytic converter. I’d replaced the cat on this car 150,000 miles ago and that was quite a chore. I didn’t have facilities so I took the car back to city auto and let them have a crack at it. $900 later, and two cat replacements later, the car passed emissions and inspection so we were off to get our tags. Welcome to Texas!
The county clerk’s office is next to the post office where we have a post office box, so that was convenient. They even have an online sign-in so that you can make an appointment and get a text when it is 15 minutes out. Wifey and I hall down to get the tags and sign in on the computer in the lobby and almost immediately are called to the window. I’d done some homework and learned that there are some very veteran friendly things here in Texas and one is the license plate for my car was free because I’m a disabled veteran. I did pay an extra three dollars for having the air medal on my plate and they accepted my VA disability paperwork without an issue. Even handicapped placards for both cars since the VA doesn’t recognize a Disabled Veteran plate as a handicapped plate (Go figure). Then we got to talking about money and that was the big shock. It seems there is a $90 PER VEHICLE new registration fee, and all the other fees for my wife’s car ended up with a $333 bill to register and get plates for both cars. Welcome to Texas!
Next on the agenda was driver’s licenses. The Texas department of public safety office is adjacent to the county clerk, handy. This is where we learned that not everything is customer friendly when moving to Texas. I got my license for free, being a disable vet, and having photocopies of my VA disability and my DD214. No questions, no hassles. Getting my wife’s license, not so easy.
It seems that Texas doesn’t have reciprocal acceptance of Tennessee (or any other state for that matter) on a driver’s license as proof of identity. Anna needed her Social Security card (In a lock box in Tennessee) her Tennessee License, a copy of our marriage license (with seal) from the county where we were married and her birth certificate. (Again, a certified copy from the state of Kentucky.) We’ve been married for 37 years and had never encountered such blatant idiocy. It is obvious that Texas does do everything possible to make becoming a Texas citizen as hard as possible for women. I got my license with 2 random photocopies, she needed documentation from hell. Welcome to Texas!
I ordered birth certificates from Kentucky for both of us. Kentucky has a web portal and makes it easy. The social security card was simple as the Social Security Administration accepted my wife’s Tennessee driver’s license (Homeland Security compliant, Texas DL is not) as proof of ID and our mortgage paperwork as proof of address, then new card came in ten days. (I found great irony in using a form of ID Texas wouldn’t accept but SSA would to get ID that Texas would accept.) The birth certificates arrive shortly thereafter. The challenge was the Marriage license. We were married in Clark County Indiana and there is no way to get a copy via mail or internet. My cousin Sue, who lives in Jeffersonville, IN., came to the rescue and was able to get the certified copy from the clerk’s office and overnight it to us. Now armed with all this ridiculous documentation that cost well over $100 to obtain, and a $26-dollar license fee, my wife got her TX driver’s license. Welcome to Texas!
Now while I complain about some things in Texas, they also do many things right. They do a pretty good job appreciating veterans. Many other states have veteran discounts, but they usually reserve those for 100% disability. Texas, 50% VA rating will do for almost any veteran benefit. I get a $12,000 reduction in my property tax appraisal, many tollways are free for DV plates (This is inconsistent based on the toll authority that administers the toll road, but handy for me, most local toll roads are free.) Almost every store has some kind of military discount and veterans are almost universally included. Welcome to Texas!
Now that we are settled in, we are adjusting to life here. Some things are good (electric bill highest charge has been $80.) some not (property taxes are 300% higher and the average on water/sewer is $110/mo.), but we are getting along well. We miss Kroger but H.E.B. isn’t bad. WalMart is close and my commute to the office is half of what is was in Tennessee. Regardless, the plan is to go back to Tennessee when I retire and once again enjoy seeing Texas in my rear-view mirror.
To save on vacation time, I worked things out to work locally (I’d been working remote only for 3 years) while my wife Anna, looked at possible houses with our new broker Leisa in the Austin metro area. Things got off to a poor start the day prior when Anna and I looked at some open houses trying to kill some time and got our initial homebuyer shock. Following signs to an open house like kids following the sound of an ice cream truck on a hot day, we entered a nice-looking neighborhood thinking this looked promising. With each turn and the next sign, the streets looked older and dingier. Finally, deep in the neighborhoods, we find the home for sale and it was depressing. The house was three bedrooms and two baths and was built in the early 1980’s. It looked tired and beaten up and a quick walk through indicated it would need forty thousand dollars to bring it up to snuff so we quickly decided it was an unlikely option. A brief talk with the selling agent confirmed that thought when he revealed that this disaster of a home was listed at $205 thousand dollars and had five offers over the list price. We had until midnight to bid. Welcome to Texas!
One of the other things we notice while we are looking around at areas we are interested in is that all these neighborhoods have wooden privacy fences. All these fences look like crap! None are stained or treated to protect them from the weather. Most with any age have warped boards and are leaning because the posts were not set properly. Nails popping out all over because apparently no one has ever heard of screws. And best of all, the wood used on all these fences is sub-par crap I wouldn’t use to build a doghouse out of. Did I mention Anna really dislikes wooden fences? Welcome to Texas!
As it turned out, working with the realtor the next day wasn’t much of an improvement. Anna and Leisa looked at five or six houses. Either the houses were in really bad condition, or they already had competing offers above the list price, some in such bad condition Leisa wouldn’t even show the house. Twice, after leaving a house that might have some promise and calling her office to see what else was available they learned that the previous house already had multiple offers. Welcome to Texas!
In the evenings, I would join the party to see the houses that made the short list. Well that was the plan. Monday was a bust as there was no short list to look at and Tuesday had been an abbreviated hunt as Leisa had a closing. I came up with a prospect that we’d seen on the market weeks before, but the listing had been pulled by the seller for some reason. The house had just come back on the market (205 Dana Drive) and we asked Leisa to show it to us. The house was far from perfect, and it was about fifteen thousand more than we really wanted to spend, but we decided to make an offer and Leisa gave us the disclosure documents to look over while we discussed what we wanted to submit as our offer. Late into the evening, Anna was re-reading the disclosure and discovered the reason the house had been off the market, it had caught fire. With this revelation, and a lack of response from the selling agent for more detail of exactly what happened, we withdrew the offer and started the search again. Welcome to Texas!
I took the next day off work just to help with the house hunt as things were looking bleak and Anna wanted me to be with them as it had become quite apparent that things had to happen fast. We also shifted from looking at existing homes to looking at builders to see what we could get built or buy already built in the area. What looking somewhat promising in Hutto soon turned sour when the build options were already over budget and had all gas utilities with no electric option and Anna disliking gas. So, the Hutto builder was out. Leisa showed us a neighborhood in Taylor that she was reluctant to show us because of the distance Taylor was from the Austin area but I convinced her that the drive wasn’t an issue. We get to the site and there is no sales agent, the building is locked and no one to be seen. After twenty minutes of calling and texting she finally gets a hold of someone and we learn there is a house already built that they have for sale and it is just down the block. We go look at it and Anna suddenly looked at me and say that we better buy it, as it appears to be the best option we’re going to get. (I was shocked as it was a lot of things we didn’t want.) But at this point I’m game as I’m seeing we don’t have a lot of options. Leisa coordinates for Anna and I to come back the next morning to meet the salesman and coordinate the contract.
We meet at ten o’clock the new morning with Marcus. He explains all the details of the purchase and encourages us to make a critical walk through of the house again and gives us tape to mark where we find problems in the house to be repaired before closing. It is already getting hot and while walking through the house Anna starts feeling ill. No toilet paper in the house of course but I have tissues in the car so I got get them and Anna goes off to the master bath. We find issues and mark them, Marcus joins us and we personally point out the big issues. He heads back to the office to start the contract paperwork and we get ready to follow when Anna started feeling nauseous. She goes back to the bathroom and loses her lunch and we are suspecting it is the heat (95+ outside) and head up to the office. We spend the next two hours signing the contract with Marcus and Anna excuses herself about every fifteen minutes to go to the bathroom. Yep, she’s sick. We finally get finished and I head us back to the room just barely making it before she again races to the bathroom. Knowing she needs meds, she sends me to Sam’s Club to get a refill on one for her prescriptions and I raced there and back to get home she can get her stomach settled. Welcome to Texas!
With a closing date and a contract, we headed back to Tennessee and start packing with a vengeance. We also coordinated with our bank to have as much paperwork done as possible to be ready to close on the house in Texas. We’d already sold our house in Tennessee and were renting it from our buyer until we could move (Our buyer was one of the greatest things that happened in this whole process.) We get a call from Marcus, saying he goofed and the closing date has to be moved up ten days. We said okay even though it was causing us a bit of grief on our timeline for packing. We also confirmed that the punch list of the house was being worked off so that everything would be on our closing date. We also coordinated for a home inspection on the fifth of July at nine o’clock in the morning and Marcus assured us that the house would be ready and that someone would be there to open it up when we arrived. With the modified closing date, I now have to scramble to get a hitch installed on my car so I can tow the initial trailer full of items to Texas. It wasn’t easy, and it took some shucking and jiving, but I managed to get it done in four days through the wonder of mail order via the Internet. Welcome to Texas!
As the closing day approached, we made the drive to Texas again and setup shop in the same Red Roof Inn we’d stayed at six-weeks earlier. We are up and out early the next morning and we arrive at the house and meet the inspector. No one is there from the builder. I go down to the sales office, no one there either. Finally, the builder representative (DJ) shows up and lets us in. The first thing we notice is that only one item on the punch list has been addressed in the past six weeks. This is a bad omen. The inspection shows several items we’d missed, but most of these items are cosmetic. Only one big issue comes up and that is a missing brace in an attic truss. This is problematic as the truss company has to make the repair, not the builder and then it has to be certified by their engineer. This means delays and our Tuesday closing a week out is not looking good. Welcome to Texas!
I spend the next few days having several discussions with DJ about repairs and their progress (Mostly the lack of them) As the excuses pile up, I get more and more convinced that Tuesday is not going to happen for closing. Finally, DJ assures me that Thursday afternoon, we can get the final inspection finished and close that afternoon. This is important as we have to go back to Tennessee and finish packing and coordinate the truck and my son and daughter-in-law to help us with the move. The time line is pretty fixed and DJ promises again and again all will be ready. While I’m dealing with DJ, I’ve been working with the mortgage company about documents needed and I’ve grown very frustrated with them too. I literally spent over five hours on the phone, had to write letters to my bank, fax documents and all kinds of hassle over the stupidest of things, the earnest money check. The frustration over this check almost caused me to opt out of a mortgage and just buy the house outright. One bright side to all these conversations was I asked a question about wire transfer during closing and the mortgage banker referred me to the title company for the details. They in turn told me what I needed to do and gave me account numbers and such so I could contact my bank. I then called my bank to coordinate the actual transfer (I’d talked to my bank in person three weeks earlier about it, you know.) and learned that I had to sing for the transfer, in person, in Tennessee. Welcome to Texas!
I’m transferred from my local branch to the main branch and every person I talk to tells me the same thing, I have to do the wire transfer in person. A quick search of the internet shows the nearest branch of my bank is in Little Rock Arkansas, an eight-hour drive away. The main branch refers me to the national number for the bank and I call it. Twice I get hung up upon by their computer. Finally, I get a human voice. Not only a human voice, but one with a brain. I patiently explain my situation and she listens carefully and starts working on how we can get this issue resolved. No excuses, she just knuckles down and starts working on how we can get the mission accomplished. It is a daunting situation and she finally determines that the only way this can be resolved is through the local branch where I was first told this couldn’t be done. She warns me that I might be on hold for several minutes and then I’m waiting to hear that it can’t be done when she comes back with good news. I’ll be getting a call from the branch manager in less than five minutes and we can do the transfer. As promised, the call comes and I’m able to make the transfer happen. Mostly it seems from my wife’s relationship with the bank tellers and manager and the good reputation she has earned with them. The money is transferred and closing can take place. Welcome to Texas!
Closing day came and time to inspect the house. So much for DJ’s promises. We do the walk through and the truss is fixed and we have the engineer’s documentation. A good fifty-percent of the inspection items are unfinished and now we have to make the call. Complete the contract or cancel it and walk away. With our backs to the wall and zero faith in DJ, we accept the inevitable and agree to close even though the house isn’t ready. Welcome to Texas!
Closing is at a title company forty miles away. Incredibly, I manage to get there on time even though I have to fight rush-hour traffic to get there. Tired, frustrated, thirsty and exhausted, we finally make it to the title office. Liesa meets us there a few minutes later and we finally meet the closing attorney. The first surprise was that she was a good five months pregnant, but after that minor surprise, everything else went superbly smoothly. The last item in the closing process was a survey for the builder. I spend forty-five minutes detailing the cluster-fuck that the process has been and how unhappy I’ve been especially with DJ and finally quit writing out of sheer exhaustion. We are given the keys and are assured that we have been given them all. On the way back to the motel, I stop at Home Depot and buy three sets of new locks with matching keys. We haul our stuff to the house the next morning and I change the locks and DJ calls wanting to know if he can make the repairs to the house while we are gone, I tell him no, he doesn’t have access and he tells me he still has a key. Then I point out he does, but not to the new locks on the house and that we’ll deal with him after we move in. Welcome to Texas!
We return to Tennessee with our timeline for things we wanted to accomplish in Texas in total disarray due to the failure to get things fixed in a timely manner. Now U-Haul starts to become a pain in my ass. I contracted to pick up a truck three miles from the house and they call wanting me to pick up at an alternate location sixty miles away and offer me a free 100 miles and fifty-dollar discount. I counter with make it one-hundred dollars and 200 miles and we come to an agreement. I get a confirmation call from the lady running the location and make arrangements for the pickup of the 26-foot truck and a car carrier. When I explain I’m towing a 1968 mustang on the car carrier she tells me she will personally make sure everything is good. I was pleasantly surprised not only to get an almost new truck (Less than 50 thousand miles and awesome AC) but she’d had all four tires on the trailer replaced because she said; “they didn’t look good”. Welcome to Texas!
Loading of the truck and the final packing of items was greatly enhanced by the buyer of our house assisting us in loading the truck. Unfortunately, as I expected, we had cubed out the truck and pretty much filled the car on the trailer so I know that I’d have to make one more trip. But the house buyer let me store stuff in the garage and was in no rush for me to come back and get it. (I flew back about six weeks later and finished the job.) Loaded we headed to Texas in a little convoy with a U-Haul towing a car carrier, my son driving my car and my wifey driving hers with our resident kitty (Pixel). We had one stop over in Texarkana, AR for the evening and made it to Taylor the next day. It was 98 degrees in the shade when we arrived so we opted to start unloading after dark. Welcome to Texas!
Nothing of great note on the move in, it was painful like all others. We’d been in the house a few days and were setting up, unpacking, arranging and getting little chores done like turning in the U-Haul, moving some stuff to and from storage and just spending some time visiting, then we noticed the fire ants. It seemed that fire ants were now invading the house and we first noticed them on the living room floor. Welcome to Texas!
The fire ants were brought under control with help from the builder and the local pest control company. Now, we are getting on with life and life keeps putting little obstacles in our way. About two weeks later I’m coming home from work and the serpentine belt on my little Pontiac G6 fails. I managed to get it home and the next morning just barely make it to a local car repair (City Auto) to get it fixed. It is repaired that afternoon and when I pick it up the bill is only $240 instead of the original $333. It seems there was a double quote for labor in the estimate. Welcome to Texas!
Next was tagging the vehicles and drivers licenses. I had to tag the vehicles within thirty days and one oddity I found was that to tag a vehicle in Texas, it doesn’t have to be titled in Texas. That is different than any other state I’d ever lived in, but who am I to argue. The hitch was to get tags, the cars had to pass emissions testing and my car had a check engine light for the catalytic converter. I’d replaced the cat on this car 150,000 miles ago and that was quite a chore. I didn’t have facilities so I took the car back to city auto and let them have a crack at it. $900 later, and two cat replacements later, the car passed emissions and inspection so we were off to get our tags. Welcome to Texas!
The county clerk’s office is next to the post office where we have a post office box, so that was convenient. They even have an online sign-in so that you can make an appointment and get a text when it is 15 minutes out. Wifey and I hall down to get the tags and sign in on the computer in the lobby and almost immediately are called to the window. I’d done some homework and learned that there are some very veteran friendly things here in Texas and one is the license plate for my car was free because I’m a disabled veteran. I did pay an extra three dollars for having the air medal on my plate and they accepted my VA disability paperwork without an issue. Even handicapped placards for both cars since the VA doesn’t recognize a Disabled Veteran plate as a handicapped plate (Go figure). Then we got to talking about money and that was the big shock. It seems there is a $90 PER VEHICLE new registration fee, and all the other fees for my wife’s car ended up with a $333 bill to register and get plates for both cars. Welcome to Texas!
Next on the agenda was driver’s licenses. The Texas department of public safety office is adjacent to the county clerk, handy. This is where we learned that not everything is customer friendly when moving to Texas. I got my license for free, being a disable vet, and having photocopies of my VA disability and my DD214. No questions, no hassles. Getting my wife’s license, not so easy.
It seems that Texas doesn’t have reciprocal acceptance of Tennessee (or any other state for that matter) on a driver’s license as proof of identity. Anna needed her Social Security card (In a lock box in Tennessee) her Tennessee License, a copy of our marriage license (with seal) from the county where we were married and her birth certificate. (Again, a certified copy from the state of Kentucky.) We’ve been married for 37 years and had never encountered such blatant idiocy. It is obvious that Texas does do everything possible to make becoming a Texas citizen as hard as possible for women. I got my license with 2 random photocopies, she needed documentation from hell. Welcome to Texas!
I ordered birth certificates from Kentucky for both of us. Kentucky has a web portal and makes it easy. The social security card was simple as the Social Security Administration accepted my wife’s Tennessee driver’s license (Homeland Security compliant, Texas DL is not) as proof of ID and our mortgage paperwork as proof of address, then new card came in ten days. (I found great irony in using a form of ID Texas wouldn’t accept but SSA would to get ID that Texas would accept.) The birth certificates arrive shortly thereafter. The challenge was the Marriage license. We were married in Clark County Indiana and there is no way to get a copy via mail or internet. My cousin Sue, who lives in Jeffersonville, IN., came to the rescue and was able to get the certified copy from the clerk’s office and overnight it to us. Now armed with all this ridiculous documentation that cost well over $100 to obtain, and a $26-dollar license fee, my wife got her TX driver’s license. Welcome to Texas!
Now while I complain about some things in Texas, they also do many things right. They do a pretty good job appreciating veterans. Many other states have veteran discounts, but they usually reserve those for 100% disability. Texas, 50% VA rating will do for almost any veteran benefit. I get a $12,000 reduction in my property tax appraisal, many tollways are free for DV plates (This is inconsistent based on the toll authority that administers the toll road, but handy for me, most local toll roads are free.) Almost every store has some kind of military discount and veterans are almost universally included. Welcome to Texas!
Now that we are settled in, we are adjusting to life here. Some things are good (electric bill highest charge has been $80.) some not (property taxes are 300% higher and the average on water/sewer is $110/mo.), but we are getting along well. We miss Kroger but H.E.B. isn’t bad. WalMart is close and my commute to the office is half of what is was in Tennessee. Regardless, the plan is to go back to Tennessee when I retire and once again enjoy seeing Texas in my rear-view mirror.
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