Hey, House, Wait For Me!

The year was 1949. I was about six years old at the time. My dad was a house mover and in the summer he let me come along to help move the buildings. I helped by staying at his side and bringing him tools, pieces of wood, etc. as he needed them.

When we got on the road with the house, there wasn’t much I could do except ride along. On this one move, I chose to ride in the back of the house. One of the iron beams that supported the house was too long and stuck out about six feet from the back of the house, which made a nice seat for me to ride on. We were moving this house from the Holman community to Weimar. At that time, there were a lot of narrow bridges we had to cross. Each time we came to one of these narrow bridges, the driver of the house-moving truck had to slow down almost to a stop and very carefully proceed between the banisters to get across.

One of my money-making ventures was to collect empty soda and beer bottles for which I could get a five-cent deposit per bottle. I noticed there were always empty bottles thrown into the ditches before or after a bridge, having been tossed there from vehicles passing by. When the moving house stopped upon approaching a bridge, I jumped off the beam I had been sitting on and checked the ditches for empty bottles. As the house started moving again, I chunked the empties into the open door of the house, jumped on that beam and rode on.

On this particular occasion, I happened to find a lot of bottles which took longer to pick up and cradle in my arms. I was still in the ditch when the house started moving again. I ran to catch up with it but by the time I threw the bottles into the back door, the house was moving a bit faster than I could run. After one or two failed attempts, I managed to jump high enough to land my belly across that beam and squirm into a sitting position. I can’t imagine what would have happened if I was left behind. No one would have missed me until they got to Weimar. I guess I would have had a long walk to town. I did not know where in Weimar the house was to be situated and would have felt pretty foolish asking door to door, “Hey, did you see a house go by and if so, which way was it heading?”

In this case I didn’t run away from home but the home ran away from me!