In the distant past people paid for their small homes and then added
rooms onto them as they had money. This fell out of style when it
became desirable to have a house with no character devoid of any
spark of creativity, unless you consider choosing a different style
of brick or stone for your half-rock, half-stucco house stylish.
Houses have also tended to become unnecessarily large as a show of
opulence that other people can covet. Never slaves to fashion and
blissfully unaware of the zeitgeist my family did not participate in
this budding trend with our home. We lived in a mobile home that we
brought across town from the trailer park and parked it permanently
in the middle of our acre making it a stationary home. After a few
years we took off the tongue and wheels. Then, as the family was
getting too large for a three bedroom house my dad decided to add a
laundry and utility room and a large master bedroom. The master
bedroom would have the houses second bathroom which we were really
starting to need with four kids getting ready for school and church
were starting to strain the one we had. It would also have a loft
which at first was just a platform in the air with no rail that will
figure in a upcoming story. My dad hired some young men from town to
frame the add-on while he would be a way at work and because we were
home-schooled we would go and bother them all day long. They taught
us some valuable lessons about wearing safety goggles. It was vital
when using pneumatic nail guns to keep your eyes protected especially
if you were defeating its safety to shoot nails at your brother.
Those super cool dudes let us use their nail guns to try and shoot
each other every time they had a little break. That is the simple
milk of human kindness that we have lost touch with in our overly
protective and hyper-litigious society.
