Once the junipers were dead and gone it was time to enter the house. Unoccupied for three years and fairly neglected for at least a couple decades, the first chore was to undo what 60-plus years of living had done. This included wading through and sifting, sorting, dumping, recycling, repairing, and organizing everything from furniture to clothing to books, kitchenware, appliances, food, plants, hardware, and much, much more. Some things were sent straight to the dumpster, some were piled together for relatives to claim, some hauled to charity, some were claimed for ourselves.
A classic Mormon pantry: bleach bottles filled with water and a five-gallon bucket of (now) crystallized honey in case of a nuclear disaster or the Judgment Day, whichever comes first.
Those who experienced the Great Depression learned not to waste. You never know when three cubic meters of grocery bags might come in handy. Interestingly, the grocery bags were stuffed in the 50-pound flour bin while the flour, maybe 20 pounds, was relegated to a smaller drawer in the pantry.
An International Harvester deep freezer, no longer running but stuck inside of a pantry when new cabinets were placed in front of any exit space.
But you gotta make lemonade out of lemons so the new job of the International Harvester will be to store wine at a respectable 60 degrees and 65 percent humidity.
Eveready cell batteries for a telephone line found in the cellar.
Joys of Jell-O, an undated recipe book published by the General Foods Corporation, and glazed ceramic pots.
A C. Kurtzman & Co. upright piano circa 1915 (?) and sheet music for Marty Robbins' "A White Sport Coat (And a Pink Carnation)" and Bob Wills' "San Antonio Rose".
Some asshole made a killing in the '50s and '60s selling these hideous creatures that populate the suburban and rural streets of America. I must harbor some posttraumatic stress--like maybe I lost my favorite stuffed animal in one or the neighborhood bully forced me to seek refuge in one as he belted me with a barrage of dirt clods--because every time I see them I want to kill them. And kill them I did. Before I even considered working inside the house I knew the shrubs must die. How could I think about painting or cleaning or repairing the house when those filthy monsters lurked outside nearly every window?
Thanks to the good folks at the Priest Lake Idaho Department of Lands I honed my skills with a chainsaw. Still, it wasn't easy. Like cutting into a spider web of death amid a dog-haired forest of doom I ran the chainsaw for three straight days before seeing light on the other side. Decades of dust, insects, decayed leaves, gasoline, and bar oil filled the air and coated my clothes, hair, and skin. Inch by inch and gnarled, mutated, twisted branch by branch, I hacked that crap out of my life and stacked the remains in award winning funeral pyres to be burned at a later date when the sky is gray and looming and full of moisture.
And now I can breathe easier and at least recognize the house as a house and not some sort of cursed, child and small animal devouring horror home.
The awesome beauty of a good stump grind and new plants in waiting. Now then, where were we?
This is the house of my future. It is an old house and it needs serious attention, some of which I will give myself, some of which I won't have the patience or skill and so the attention will come from other sources. It is an old house and it sits on a beautiful lot and that beautiful lot might be the first and foremost reason to give the house the attention it needs.
The house stands as a threshold between the Great Rift Desert of Idaho (now protected as the Craters of the Moon National Monument) and the foothills of the Pioneer Mountains, a marginal space best suited to coyotes, sagebrush, broken hay derricks, and long sleepy afternoons. It's quiet here. Slow.
This is an attempt to document the progress of the house and some of its surrounding property. The house is attached to another 65 other acres of hay fields and in time those fields might be my future, too. But now is not the time.
The title of this documentation project is named after a song from 1967 by a band named Love. The song has nothing to do with renovating an old home in south central Idaho. It's a scary song and it's also beautiful, and faced with the frightening but inspiring prospects ahead of me it sounds about perfect. The title also offers two opposing ideas, that of permanence and transience. A house is not a motel. After ten years and eight houses I look forward to the task of building a house.
