A Man's Home Is His Goose

Tradition holds that in old England freedom and land ownership was valued above all else, and Feudal customs arrived that a Man's home is his castle. In early frontier days many customs came across the Atlantic Ocean, then across the Appalachians, and took up residence in Kentucky. Early settlers' homes were more often than not primitive structures constructed of the most plentiful resources available--logs and wood . Nevermind that most experts attribute the log cabin to Scandanavian influences, most of the pioneers were nevertheless sturdy settlers of British descent. Many battles were fought with Cherokee and Creek Indians with only thick poplar and chestnut logs shielding the newcomers inside from the sharp tomahawks and scalping knives of the native Americans. Forget about the Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf. These Indians huffed and puffed , but they couldn't blow the log houses away. Today the old Wilderness Road still transverses Kentucky, but the Cabins are all but gone, save the occasional modern tin -roofed affair with triple car garages abounding with new Escalades and Denalis.Yes, just go through Eastern Kentucky to see what the modern dwellers have concocted to live comfortably from mother nature. Some of the houses are prominently displayed atop flattened mountains, or nestled up some hollow or cove, as the old timers used to say. The writers of the old West used to say that God Created man, but that Samuel Colt created them equal. I venture to add that Frank Lloyd Wright helped create American Architecture, but that Mr. Caterpillar made it possible in Eastern Kentucky.After working many years in the mountains I have resolutely come to believe that it should be against the law for rich people to build houses without some kind of guidance.The nouveau riche have the tastes of drunken cockroaches, and the old money is no problem because they won't spend a penny on anything. I've worked on 45,000 square foot monstrosities with commodes carved out of solid marble, or with swimming pools and miniature golf courses in the basement. One has a huge basement basketball court under the garage.I often wonder at what point a rich man wakes up and is beset with a vision? What person needs 5 plasm tv's in one bathroom? I've seen it. Or what lady needs a commercial dry cleaner's motorized clothes rack to bring her clothing to her at the touch of a button?One wanted storage for 200 pairs of shoes(per season of course), and the showers? Man the last big house I worked on had a glassed in shower with assorted stations where 5 people could take showers at the same time. This area was next to a sunken spa and another glassed in shower the size of my garage. I believe this couple must be the cleanest people alive ,or the dirtiest;maybe both at the same time. All of this laborious one finger typing is leading up to an inescapable fact that this craziness in home building is nothing new. That little perverted Vanderbilt geek built Biltmore around the turn of the century, and some Nimrod built the Goose House in Hazard, Kentucky. One look at the Goose House dispels all notions of the sanity of mankind. From its round ,stone ground floor to the towering green neck with the yellow bill, the Goose house screams out in anguish at how troubled the human mind can stray from the norm. What possessed some otherwise sane human to awake one morning and decide to build this house?? It has been in numerous travel magazines, and is often viewed by tourists off the beaten path. It has been there so long that the average citizen of Perry County no longer think of it as an oddity. I often wonder that if fate played a cruel trick on humanity and wiped everything out but the goose house how future travelers or civilizations would perceive earthlings? Wouldn't it be apt if such wonders as the Guggenheim or the Chrysler building were destroyed and mobile homes and the Goose house survived? Thats not far fetched because it has been postulated that the only thing to survive a nuclear holocaust would be cockroaches and rats, and probably the goose house.I'm apologetic that I have wasted this much time typing one-fingered and single paragraphed into such drivel in a time of global warming.