Our Story/Our Home

My husband and I were certain it would be financially imposable for us to ever own our own home. Still, we wanted it desperately and saved for years, working several jobs at a time in order to save.

For 15 years before we married, I lived in a small attic apartment in East Boston - right near the airport. The evening I moved in the landlady came out to talk to me. She was yelling something, but I couldn't hear what she was saying over the roar of a jet engine on the runway. When I got close enough to understand her words, she was saying, "You're going to like it here. It's a nice quite neighborhood."

The neighbors were quite for the most part, however Logan airport was not. The cargo planes would start up at 5:00 am and planes would fly right over my roof, with the landing gear almost close enough to touch. In the summer there was no air conditioning, so it meant living with the noise through the open windows. One night I was coming home when a plane flew very low over the car. For the rest of that night and 1/2 the next day, everything I heard had a strange echo to it and an odd metallic ringing sound.

The airport was there before I moved in and I certainly knew about its existence before before I rented the apartment. The rent was affordable for a nice apartment and that was the trade off I knowingly decided to make.

Latter, my husband and I moved to a different apartment. Housing in Massachusetts is expensive and decent housing (someplace that doesn't look like it should be condemned) is very hard to find. After an extensive search, we thought we had found the right place. The first night we slept in the new apartment, we discovered that the realtor and landlord had neglected to tell us about the freight train in the back yard. It came by 3 times every night- at midnight, 3:00 a.m and 4:00 a.m. The entire building would shake. Items inside would topple and break. The bedroom would fill with light and noise and then the train would start to blow its whistle. It sounded like it was right next to us - and it was- just on the other side of the wall. I developed sleep problems and for years after we moved I would wake up every night at 12:00, 3:00 and 4:00 a.m.

When we finally had the down payment for our own house and interest rates were low, we looked for our home for over a year to find what we wanted. During that year we looked at a lot of dumps and got outbid on several houses in a very competitive sellers' market with many buyers competing for each home. By the end of that year, we had to give notice on our apartment or take another year's lease. Staying there wasn't an option as I had changed jobs and the commute from the apartment to the new job wasn't a realistic possibility. We were close to becoming homeless with money to buy a house but no house to buy. To get our current home we had to significantly overbid above the asking price of the home.

The seller's realtor treated us and our home inspector rudely and made every part of the transaction unnecessarily difficult, putting unusual clauses into the purchase and sale agreement and making the sale of the house contingent on these clauses. What is a purchase and sale agreement if it does not say that they are selling the house and we are buying it? We had to hire a lawyer and fight the realtor to get the sale to go through.

We wanted to get away from the city and live in a country setting. We wanted to live in the woods, where we could enjoy feeding and watching the birds and seeing wildlife. After the airport and the train, the one thing I really wanted most was a quite place to live. We both wanted some land as living in apartments, we had not had our own yard. I love to garden and wanted to have my own gardens. We looked the property over carefully. We looked at what was around it. We examined the neighborhood. We asked what was behind us. We asked what could be put in around us in the future and checked the zoning laws. There was no quarry when we bought our house or for the first 8 years that we lived here.

For 8 years we were ecstatic. We had to use all of our savings and cash out my retirement to get the house. We are not a young couple-it has taken us half our lives to get into our own home. It took every penny both of us earn to keep the mortgage paid. Since we got the house we have not traveled on vacation and have made several other personal sacrifices to keep the mortgage paid. But to come home to this house and this yard in this town was always worth it. Until now. It is not a big or elaborate house. It is small and simple, but in good condition and just what we wanted.

And quite? The first night we moved in we listened to the frogs and crickets instead of sirens and trains or planes or people partying in the street. I told my husband it sounded like when we went camping, only we would get to live this way every day now. On summer nights we watched the fireflies in the yard and could see the stars. I planted a huge organic vegetable garden and flowers everywhere. We had fruit trees in the yard. We began planning a large flower garden for the back yard. I got all kinds of birds at my feeders and would sit and watch them every morning. I planted flowers to attract specific birds and it worked! We invited family and friends to enjoy BBQ's in our yard. We had fox, rabbits, deer, wild turkey and other wildlife in our yard. We bought our first outdoor furniture.

Then came the quarry - 8 years after our purchase - not before. It wasn't like the airport, where I knew it was there and decided to live with it anyway. Had I any idea that there would be a quarry here, I would never have bought this house. I can't stand being in the yard I used to love because of the noise from the quarry. My house shakes and could become damaged from the blasting. Our health could be compromised. My home that once brought me so much joy and peace is now a source of constant stress because of the quarry. Our peace and quite is gone. Our peace of mind is gone. Our financial investment in our home is ruined as the quarry devalues our property in the market. We bought this home intending to pay it off and live here the rest of our lives. This home would be our retirement. It was everything to us. We miss what our home and yard used to be for us before the quarry came and worry about staying in an intolerable situation that will only get worse if the quarry is allowed to remain and become larger and closer to our home.

My heart is broken.