MEET THE DRAGON AND AN UPDATE.

December 13, 2014

My son is an excellent builder with vast experience, so it was a natural to have him build my house in Oregon. We got a late start in September with hold-ups from the building department, including mis-filed paperwork, lost paperwork, demands for tests that were not required-not exactly an efficient system. The delays put us in the rainy season.  And, now that the building is in progress, the rain makes things difficult and slows down everything. There are days when I’m hanging on-line or hanging next to the phone. Our roofer, expected to arrive yesterday, had to bail. Hours of phone calls, I got another roofer and it will be finished today, one of two clear days.The plumber comes in on the 20th.
So, I’m still necessarily absent from this blog a lot, but here is a progress report:

The foundation was set in late September.

The West end of the building. It is under 1,000 square feet. But the gutters are on, the rooftop is up, papered and ready for shingles.

The East end of the building. It was necessary to design a small building, long and narrow, in the same shape as the mobile that was destroyed by an inside flood. We learned the cause during the take down. A tenant had hot wired the electrical and when he left, a pipe inside froze, and the well, still hooked up to the electricity, kept pumping water into the place.
My property has a river running though it and it has flooded twice since 2001. Not at the building site which is considered part of the 100 year flood plain. (I learned a lot about flood plains.)  So, my building site was restricted to the same area where the mobile was. Doug has built it as a one man project. The subs are roof, electric and plumbing.

The north side of the house faces the road. the window openings are covered with plastic to keep out the rain.

I did a walk through with the plumber and electrician before Thanksgiving. The windows are now in, the showers/tub, arrived on Thursday after a long wait. I’ve designed this efficient little house to be wheelchair accessible with handicapped bathrooms. Now that these special units are inside the framed building, the sliding glass door can be set in.
My Oregon neighbors tell me it looks great with the siding on and the windows in.  Doug didn’t expect to have to stay in a 5th wheel so long without a break to come home, but he is dedicated to the job and will stay until the plumber and electrician are finished. He didn’t make it home for Thanksgiving. But he will make it home for Christmas.
The fifth wheel he has been living in, the bathroom is so small he can’t use it, he has a porta potty on the job. He is unable to shave in the mirror because his arms hit the walls and he can’t get to his face.  Not a good choice on the 5th wheel, but it does give shelter and laughter.

Now, meet the dragon. When I first began traveling back and forth between Murphys and my place in Oregon, I enjoyed a roadside sculpture of a bull. Not to be outdone, another rancher set up this marvelous dragon to entertain we passersby. He doesn’t fit well in a single photo. He must be 25 feet long.

The other joy is majestic scenery. Mt. Shasta is visible in the distance, but she was obscured by clouds when I was at the optimum place to take a photo on this trip.

A handsome devil, wouldn’t you agree?  My next trip up, early January, hopefully, I’m going to attempt to photograph the bull up close. Hmm!  With those eyelashes, he might be a she.

MORE RUMMAGING THROUGH THE PAST YEAR

My house burned down to the ground while I was at school in 1947. The bus driver drove up to the still smoking coals of what had been a two room log cabin in Hardwood, Michigan, looked at it from his driver's seat, than drove back to the bus stop at a cross road, about a half mile in the direction we had just come. He dropped myself and my siblings off on the road, and drove away. Neighbors Bernice Cousineau and Patsy Robinson were also dropped at that stop and I flew down the road to Cousineau's, bravely ignoring their bull, which terrified me, waiting for no one. My siblings opted for Robinson's house. It was a traumatic time and we soon removed a couple days later to Massey's place, a tiny two room shack with a chicken coup my dad turned into a bedroom. From there, he sold our land and got a job in the city of Escanaba and I never saw my childhood friends, Bernice and Patsy again. However, after several years of trying to find me, out of the blue several months ago, I received a call from Patsy Robinson Whitfield. She and Bernice were determined to track me down and finally succeeded. What joy and happiness that call gave me. We will meet again in September of 2009. What they conveyed to me is that the event was traumatic to them as well, for they had a friend and it was as though I had disappeared, as I truly did, and they always wondered what ever happened to me and my family. Interestingly, I had never considered the perspective of my young friends. I imagine there was a bond to this event that kept them considering after 60 plus years. And I, too, thought many times of them. Our friendship can pick up where it left off, those many years and miles ago.

On the ramblin front, Jim and I biked on the canal now that the weather is clement and we spot these peacocks along the road periodically. Beautiful, aren't they?