Monday, February 6, 2012

fantastical

fantastical:def., may connote unrestrained extravagance in conception or merely ingenuity of decorative invention.
i would assert that here; the shoe fits.
i stumbled across this article today. the cockamamy 
house first caught my eye and then i read about the man, mr. smith,and the family behind the house and that's what really left an impression. he died from a fall off a high balcony during the perpetual construction. the house still has sculptures he built, left behind, undisturbed.  
he hauled every bit of that wood himself in a horse trailer. those aren't small timbers. 
that brought back a memory of a place in utah with the inspired name, 'hole in the rock'.  i was moving a friend
to seattle from texas and we were in no hurry to get there.
we stopped and took the two dollar tour.  a man named albert
spent 12 years dynamiting a 14 room home into the rock.
like mr. smith, he died during and from the everlasting 
building of his home. it was a couple of decades ago, but
i still remember a creepy doll collection and that 
albert was an amateur taxidermist.  there was a stuffed
donkey standing next to me during one of the longer 
recitations from the tour guide.  it's bottom had this 
little oval leather patch over it with a slit.  
maybe that's how they filled it with 'stuffing'?

fire damaged timbers mr. smith gathered and hauled to 
the house site with a horse trailer.
a sculpture left in the house by mr. smith.

1 comment:

  1. Oh my gosh, what a place! I can imagine there are thousands and thousands of these unique places around the world but we have just never heard about them. I wish there was a book (or a website) about all these, so I could ooh and aah over them every time my life would start feeling a little boring!

    Thanks for leaving a comment so I could find my way here! :)

    ReplyDelete