The River House

I moved houses all of my life from the day I was a teenager. After my Dad passed in 1975, my brothers, George, John and Dennis and I kept the business going (I retired in 2000). During all of these years I came upon many incidents and experienced many episodes.

The following is but one: My brother, George, is five years older than I. From the start, we all agreed that he should be the “boss.” He did all of the leg work in getting all the jobs lined up for us to do. On this day we took three house moving trucks and followed George caravan-style to the job site. As we neared Smithville, we veered to the right in the community of Kirtley, crossed the railroad track and headed toward the Colorado River. As we came to the road’s end, there before us was a sight to behold. There before us was a five room house sitting on a sand-bar near the waters edge. One edge of this building was sitting on the sand-bar and the other end was resting 14 feet in the air on a clump of willow trees. According to the owner, a recent flood over-ran the second bank about ½ mile upstream and gently picked up his camp house and left it sitting intact. After the water resided this owner was notified by his neighbor that the house was sitting on his property.

The house was only accessible from one side. After studying the situation, we pressed one of our long beams under the house that was sitting on the ground; situated it tight and blocked it with cribbing. The other I beam was placed parallel to the first beam and put cribbing under it. We pushed our dollies under the beams and set them in place. We also hooked up the “pull” truck to the beam. So we had the trailer made and it was ready for the load.

Now, how in the world are we going to get this house down off the treetops? After studying the situation I told the brothers to take a break. I was going to start cutting the willow trees that were holding the house one at a time. Sure enough, after each time I cut one 6” tree, the house went down a foot or so. The next thing you know the house was settled on the beams. After we cleared off some of the tree tops, we were ready to take off. Being that this was on a sandbar, the truck started spinning so I had to anchor my tool truck in front of the pull truck and help him along. After crossing about three fence lines we relocated the house and set it down in the original spot it was in. So ended another day.

In my line of work, I never knew what tomorrow would bring. One thing I knew: it was never boring.