The Slice: Welcome Wagon comes with bath towels

On the day you took possession of your house …

“After an 11-day trip from Clemson, S.C., driving all the way with three small children, we arrived in Pullman,” wrote Dave Hutton, recalling 1981.

The plan was to pick up the key from the next-door neighbor, who would be expecting them.

So they knocked on their new neighbor’s door. “We were met with a man who got out of the bathtub to greet us, dripping wet.”

Still, he was glad to see them.

“He, Gordon McCloskey, was the most gracious host we could imagine.”

It set the tone for an enduring friendship.

“We are now blessed with his daughter, Elinor, as our next-door neighbor.”

Tom Schaaf’s story is also a happy one.

“The day we moved in to our house in the Comstock neighborhood six years ago, I pulled up to find an unexpected ‘jumpy castle’ in our front yard.”

It seems the neighborhood throws a number of block parties and it was a tradition for the inflatable amusement to be set up in the large front lawn of what was now the Schaafs’ place.

“I think my wife knew about it and just hadn’t mentioned it to me.”

But he was all for it and took it as a good sign.

Of course, not all “the day we moved in” tales are like that.

Larry Parker, his wife and their two children were living in Minnesota when they bought their first house.

Someone he worked with was all lined up to move into the home the Parkers had been renting. That family was going to move in the same day the Parkers moved out. “We had arranged to help each other.”

So eventually the time came for the Parkers to drive the rented truck full of their belongings to the new place.

“We pulled up to our new home and unlocked the front door and entered. The people we bought from were sitting at the kitchen table with company they had visiting. Said their new home was not done being built yet and they could not move.”

Oh. It might have been nice to share that information.

“Long story made short. We spent two weeks with all expenses paid including meals at a very nice Holiday Inn and the Realtor paid rent on the moving truck for two weeks.”

Today’s Slice question: What’s your record when it comes to predicting divorces?