The story behind Hexemaus Farms is a long one. There is simply no way to tell the whole story in a single page. But here are the highlights…

How It All Began

In the early summer of 1991, I met a guy. His name was Frank Johnson. He was a tall, cocky German guy with one heck of a chip on his shoulder. We worked together. In fact, he was dating my babysitter. He came up to the job one day, with my then two year old daughter in tow. He says to me “You can’t have her back. I’m keeping her.”

Roxie, my oldest daughter & the only child from my first marriage, peered out from behind him…took a step forward…smiled her little crinkly-nosed smile, and proceeded to grab his leg in a bear hug saying “My Fank. My Fank.”

We still joke that Frank didn’t fall in love with me. He only married me for my daughter. To his credit, and the credit of his family, Roxann was never a “step” child. She was his daughter as much as mine…much to her father’s chagrin.

The Family Begins

Our daughter, Amanda, was born the next year in March of 1992. The following year in September, Mike. And the next year in October, Josh. In 1996, we kind of figured it was time to get married. We had our wedding on Easter Sunday, in the middle of our living room, complete with Mike driving his toy cars over the minister’s feet during the ceremony, and my newly-minted father-in-law video taping my butt instead of the wedding.

With four kids, two jobs each, and numerous pets, life was never dull. We had our ups and downs. We lost jobs, we found new ones. We went through cars like they were made of water. We moved. We struggled. We fought. We tried again. There were children. There were jobs. There were cars. There was drama. There was even a divorce. Someday, I’ll write a book about it all…but I’ll have to claim it as fiction because no one in their right mind would ever believe the story was true. As the World Turns and General Hospital ain’t got nothin’ on the 20+ year history of this family. I promise you that.

The World Turns Upside Down

In August, 2006, life for this family was turned upside down. Frank worked for the local newspaper. It was his job to make sure the paper carriers for his district showed up for work every night. It was his job to make sure problems with customers were dealt with on a personal level. That meant going into work at 2 or 3 in the morning and not getting home some days until 1, 2, or 3 in the afternoon. On that fateful night, Frank was running what they referred to as a “down route” – a paper route that was between carriers. Someone had quit, not shown up for work, or for whatever reason, was not available to deliver papers. It was Frank’s job to make sure it got done in the meantime.

As he was driving down Highway 25 to the route, loaded down with papers, probably sipping his thermos of coffee, some gooberhead drunk ran a stop sign at a high rate of speed. It was after 3am, on a dark stretch of highway between Augusta and Waynesboro. Frank was driving my SUV (our daughter Amanda and I were filling in on another route elsewhere in Frank’s district that didn’t have quite so many papers, so we had switched vehicles.) The drunk t-boned him on the driver’s side of my old GMC Jimmy.

By the time the truck stopped spinning and flipping, Frank was trapped inside the Jimmy, laying on the driver’s side in a ditch. The sole witness to the accident and the deputy who arrived on the scene had to climb on top of the passenger side of the Jimmy to get to Frank. He was airlifted from the scene. His heart stopped mid-flight. They were never able to revive him.

The Phone Call

Meanwhile, Amanda and I were throwing the other down route. When we finished, we were supposed to meet Frank for breakfast & to trade back into our respective cars. As we neared the end of the route, Amanda tried to reach her father in his cell phone. We knew he got spotty signal way out there in the boonies, so she kept trying, hoping she’d catch him in a spot where he could get a decent signal.

No response. She called, and called, and called. No response.

As we headed back towards Frank’s office to wait for him, my phone rang. It wasn’t Frank. It was a nurse from the hospital. They had heard his cell phone ringing over and over and over again. They knew someone was looking for him. All they would tell me was to come to the hospital, he had been in an accident. I didn’t know until I arrived at MCG that he was already gone by the time they called me.

At that point, everything stopped. Life. Just. Stopped.

Legal Battles Galore

The next two years were a blur of court hearings, meetings with lawyers, legal briefs, fights with insurance companies, fights with worker’s comp, law suits against the worthless piece of crap that hit Frank, criminal cases, and a litany of petitions, court filings, and technicalities.

In the end, the kids got their father’s worker’s comp. They got his Social Security. The gooberhead went to prison. We won our civil suit. I was just happy that the gooberhead wont have 2 pennies to rub together by the time he gets out.

Winning the War

As part of the civil suit, we were awarded a house on 8 acres and a remainder life estate of 172 acres. It was what remained of the gooberhead’s grandmother’s farm that he inherited. It had been in his family for 3 generations. I thought it was kind of fitting, since he stole my children’s legacy by taking their father. In terms of karma, dogma, and all things universal, it seemed fitting that he be stripped of his.

In the beginning, we didn’t know what to do with the place. We had a house. What did we need with another one? Especially one in such bad shape. The place had been neglected for years. There was trash everywhere.

The Dream

But you see, Frank and I had this dream when we were younger. We wanted a place big enough to have horses. We wanted a weeping willow tree in the front yard. We were going to put our rocking chairs under that tree and watch our grandkids play around us. In our dream, we bought an old farmhouse. The difference being that we (in our dream) bulldozed the house and converted the old barn into a loft-style home.

We had plans to create something we could pass down to our children and grandchildren. We had this idea that our legacy would live on in the form of our little barn-turned-home.

We thought that dream died with Frank.

I like to think of this little farm as Frank’s last gift to us. In an effort to make up for what was taken from us, the Fates stepped in and paved the way for us to still have that dream. It’s not quite the dream we had planned, or how we planned to get here, but here it is, all the same.

Frank’s dream of a homestead where his grandchildren play under a canopy of weeping willows, on enough land to have horses, is alive and well. We hope he’s watching. We hope he’s proud of what we’ve done with his dream.

The Name

We get a lot of people asking about the name of our farm. Hexemaus is a nickname Frank gave me years ago when we were just dating. First it was hexe augen (witch’s eyes,) but later he just called me hexemaus. He was German, although most of our friends never realized he wasn’t a native-born American. English was his second language. (He actually had to repeat kindergarten when he started school here in the States, because he could not speak enough English yet.)

So what does Hexemaus mean? If you want to get literal, “hexe” means witch and “maus” means mouse. So literally translated, it’s witch’s mouse. As we all know after watching Harry Potter, the magical folk don’t always have cats for familiars. So in the States, calling me “hexemaus” would be the same as calling me a black cat.  

You see…I’ve always had long, dark hair. My green eyes have drawn comment since I was too little to know. And in Frank’s words, I’ve always had a little streak of evil. I prefer to think of it as sass…moxie…a kiss-my-ass-I’ll-do-it-my-way, attitude. (No comments from the Peanut Gallery, please. <<< DAD. >>>) Anyway, Frank always thought the combination reminded him a lot of a sleek, crafty, self-reliant black cat. (Although I think sometimes he might have meant something a little less flattering in terms of commenting on my catty similarities…hmm…)

But it was a nick name I always cherished. It was something meant just for me. It was something only he would ever call me. (Friends would call me Hex, but never Hexemaus.) It was just one of those little things husbands and wives have between them…something little that carries a special meaning, if only to them.

In tribute to him, the kids and I chose the name Hexemaus Farms. This place was his dream too, so we felt it fitting to use the name he always used for me, because this is something special too. This place carries special meaning for all of us, too.

Hexemaus Farms, the Prequel

(Roxann will say I have to tell you guys this part because you have to know The Fairy Tale stuff.)

I should probably tell you this part now…this is the best part of the story…now that you know the rest of the story.

Frank and I were dating for two weeks before we realized we had met before. Five years earlier, in 1986, Frank was stationed at Ft. Hood, Texas. My best friend Becca and I had run away from home, stealing her mother’s car to drive all the way from Alabama to Texas. I don’t even remember the name of the kid we were going there to meet, or where we had planned on going from there. But somehow, we found ourselves at Temple Lake, just outside of Kileen, Texas…the town where Ft. Hood sits.

As Becca and I drove through the parking lot at Temple Lake, coming up a hill to get to the next level of parking, a bunch of GIs drove by in an ugly old van…two of them wind surfing on the roof of the van as it drove down the hill. Our first thought…”what a bunch of nut jobs!”

Later, when we came back down to the lower parking lot to park the car and go swimming, lo and behold, who is parked next to us? Yup. The idiot GIs who’d been wind surfing on the roof of their van. For those who remember Fast Times at Ridgemont High…think Spicoli’s van, but full of GIs.)

I met Frank that night when we followed the guys back to the barracks for a party. A few nights later, I cut his hair to help him get ready for a date. A week or so later, we all went back out to Temple Lake, Frank tagging along with everyone else.

Eventually, Becca and I went home to our parents. My little runaway adventure to Texas, along with a lot of other instances of extreme teenage rebellion, aren’t really discussed much…even all these many years later. Frank was eventually released from the Army & even moved back to Germany for awhile.

In 1991, when we met, he had only been back in the states for a few months. Neither of us had ever heard of Augusta, Georgia before we moved here. I moved here from Jersey to be closer to my parents & to take advantage of the cheaper economy. He moved here because his dad was retired to Ft. Gordon. Had it not been for both of us getting the part time jobs we did, we might have lived in the same town for years without ever knowing it.

But I’ll never forget that afternoon, sitting in my dinky little kitchen in my teenie-weenie little single-wide rental trailer, a whoppingly mature 19-almost-turned-20 divorcee with a toddler, having coffee with my new boyfriend. He started talking about when he was in the Army.

He mentioned Ft. Hood.

I mentioned having been there in my wilder days.

He asked when.

I asked did you know so-and-so.

And then all of a sudden, like we’d both been knocked upside the back of the head with a heavy book…

…that lightbulb moment!

WE KNEW EACH OTHER BEFORE!!!

We met in Texas when I was only 15, and he was only 18. In the five years between the time we first met in 1986 and meeting again (in Augusta, GA of all places) in 1991, I had gotten married, had a daughter, and gotten divorced. He had moved across the globe back to Germany & tried to launch a courier business, only to move back to the States when his Dad retired. Through a twist of fate, last minute plan changes, and snap decisions, we had both wound up in the same place, at the same time, having not seen or heard from each other in five years.