In September 2001, I bought the lot, covered in trees and so thick with brush you couldn’t walk through it. I cleared the land myself. We built the house in 2002, moving in on Labor Day. The columns on the front porch were my ex-wife’s excellent idea. My father died four days after we moved in and I never got to show it to him. My oldest daughter, age 11 when we moved here, entered adolescence and then womanhood in this home. I met her nervous first dates on that porch. When my youngest daughter was born, I carried...