Long Search Leads To Home
People don’t shower real estate agents with the respect they pay psychologists and teachers, Linda Schrimsher found out after she switched careers three years ago.
“It was a big ego change for me, but it was going to get me West so it was worth it,” Linda says now. She smiles as she collapses in a relaxed heap on an ottoman in her Coeur d’Alene living room.
She’d wanted mountains and trees since her Missouri childhood in the 1950s. But practical thinking and her career stood in the way for four decades.
She took her first teaching job in St. Louis. Then, she used her psychology degree to develop her own business teaching corporate workers all over the nation how to work together.
Dallas was a central spot from which she could fly to seminars, so she moved there and married Bob. But Dallas was a concrete oasis among drab flatlands. They moved to Nashville.
When their Nashville house sold in 1983, the Schrimshers toyed with buying a motor home and traveling for a year with their baby son. But they bowed to responsibility and instead moved to a nice neighborhood in Atlanta.
Their dislike for Atlanta finally prodded them to act on Linda’s dream. They needed jobs they could do anywhere, so Bob earned a real estate sales license. Linda helped him start his business, then quit her 23-year career and earned her real estate license in 1993.
Atlanta’s housing market was so good to the Schrimshers that it tempted them to abandon their plans to move. But they kept looking - Santa Fe, N.M., Flagstaff, Ariz., Jackson, Wyo., Kalispell, Mont.
In September 1994, after a man unexpectedly offered to buy the Schrimsher house, Linda decided to check out Coeur d’Alene. She remembered visiting the town in 1971.
She returned for Christmas with Bob and her two children. Last year, she bought a home on 20 wild acres atop Mica Hill. She already feels embraced by the community and doesn’t bemoan a slowing real estate market. Her family can make a living without over-populating the town, she says.
“We’re ecstatic about what we’ve done,” Linda says, gazing out her living room window at the aspen grove she watches change with the seasons. “This is what I’ve wanted for a long time.”
Down and dirty
No space is no excuse for no garden this year. North Idaho College’s community garden has space for the public at no charge for posies and veggies. It has raised beds for gardeners with stiff backs. NIC even has the seeds.
All you have to do is show up sometime after noon on Saturday, April 28, at the garden on the corner of Hubbard and River with trowels in gloved hands. Take it on as a group project or a personal hobby.
Soup’s on
Tensed’s Christina Crawford probably is the nation’s best known child abuse victim. She’s written books about her life as actress Joan Crawford’s daughter, and worked for children’s rights for years.
She opened her Seven Springs Farm bed and breakfast three years ago on a rolling patch of forest and farmland six miles south of Tensed.
Now Christina’s branching out into the dinner scene, which is good news for her stretch of Palouse. There are only two restaurants within 20 miles of her farm.
Christina’s international dishes with fruits and vegetables fresh from her gardens are good reason to risk a trip along U.S. Highway 95. Her bistro is open Wednesday through Sunday.
Who do you know in the Panhandle who survived a rocky childhood to blossom into an admirable adult? Brag about them to Cynthia Taggart, “Close to Home,” 608 Northwest Blvd., Suite 200. Coeur d’Alene 83814; fax to 765-7149; or call 765-7128.
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