Building_My

I have lived here almost like a pioneer, constructing board by board the house I live in, without the modern luxury of running water. Although I did not really want electricity, it was cheap and easy, so I got plugged into the system. I am glad that I have it now, because I enjoy my refrigerator and my electric lamps at night. What I really wanted though was a natural water supply, a river or stream, with a log cabin built in the middle of at least five hundred acres. I wanted to return to the land and live totally pioneer style: kerosene lanterns, fruit cellars and everything else that goes with the lack of electricity. But there is no river frontage to my land; the only water supply is the rain that collects in my cistern from my roof. And I settled for building a house that I am covering with cedar shakes for a rustic cabin look. I'm building it on only five acres instead of five hundred; although, with all of the uninhabited land, I have had hundreds of acres of privacy--up until the last few years. Civilization is moving closer. I have new neighbors every year. They find out quickly, if they explore the area, that the woman at the end of the road--me--does not appreciate uninvited visitors. As a mater of fact, they probably notice (because everybody notices out in this sparsely inhabited area) that less than half a dozen vehicles drive all the way to the end of the road in a years time.

Everyone who has driven to the end of this dirt road to visit me expresses in almost the same words, "How can you live way out here all alone? Aren't you afraid?" or Don't you get lonely?" The answers to these questions are, "Yes, I am afraid once in a while," and "Yes, I do get lonely too, sometimes; although, most of the time I love the peace and solitude and the ability to fashion everything as I wish." I admit proudly that I am a bit eccentric. I never have wanted to be what people consider "normal."

I have prided myself on not fitting the mold society has presented for me. I used to break the rules just because most of them didn't make sense to me. The clothes that you put on your body, the way that you wore your hair and the way that you spoke supposedly told everyone if you were good or bad. Knowing that I was intrinsically good, I tried to reflect what the establishment judged as bad; I was a rebel. I started off as a young woman in the sixties. So revolution was in the air; I was not alone.

I did things wholesome women weren't supposed to do: I drank alcohol, I cussed on a whim, I smoked cigarettes (for a short while), I played pool in the pubs, I wore revealing clothing, and whatever else I could do to shock. Later I gave up wearing makeup and bras, and stopped using hair curlers and shaving apparatuses. I hitch-hiked around Austin with long frizzy hair wearing men's tie-died undershirts and baggy cutoff jeans with my boobs bouncing and the hair on my legs and underarms blowing in the breeze. Sometimes, I carried a bottle of whiskey in my back pocket. Of course, smoking pot was also a big entertainment in my life. I couldn't understand why marijuana (the lesser of two evils, as far as I am concerned) and not alcohol was illegal. I was breaking laws, not only social rules.

I tried hard to get unconventional jobs for women: service station attendant, carpenter's helper and road construction worker. Eventually, after years of working indoors, I figured out that some of my rebellious notions did have real substance. I liked working outdoors, but there wasn't much work, in the way of employment, that a woman could do outside.

I finally got a job in a garden center! Later this led to landscaping jobs where I did unladylike work such as cracking rock with my sledge hammer at a quarry, breaking out unwanted cement patios with a jackhammer, and digging large holes through clay and rock with a pick and shovel to plant trees. I loved it; it was hard but rewarding work, and at times even artistically challenging. I had several opportunities to design lovely gardens and leisure areas. I built rock walls around berms that I designed flora art within. I was able to design puzzle walkways and patios from flagstone in the shade of giant Live Oak trees. Splashing color around the areas with ornamental shrubs and perennial flowers. It was a very special job, creating little gardens for people to enjoy.

I did also get a chance to work as a carpenter's helper for a few weeks but found it too brutal in the Texas heat. Hours of sawing 2x4's into 8-foot lengths turned into days of working monotonously in 100-degree weather with only 15-minute breaks and 1/2-hour lunches. Blistered hands wrapped with tape, dehydration from sweating more than I could drink, and total, utter exhaustion forced me (for my health's sake) to quit. I did gain enough knowledge through this experience to do a lot of my own labor in constructing my house. I know the true meaning of the cliché "blood, sweat, and tears." I have put a lot of those three elements into the structure that I call my house.

Then after a string of indiscriminate or very macho jobs, I began earning money in a way almost unique to woman: I was a belly dancer for a few years. I had a booth in an antique mall from which I sold collectibles and handmade items; I also had a balloon delivery business stationed there that sent out belly dancers, clowns, Peter Pans and a few more characters. I was all of these at one time or another, but the belly dancing was a part of my real character and the main reason that I started the balloon delivery business. I became a member of A. B. A. (Austin's Belly-dancers Association), and I danced in a few parades, at several festivals, and at numerous parties. Although not as unacceptable as topless dancing, belly dancing was not an honorable occupation as dictated by society. By the time I was engaged in this improper profession, I understood that it was not an act to shock, but an expressive art for me. I loved to dance, and creating the elaborate costumes was an artistic outlet as well. At that point, I was breaking the rules for fulfillment; no longer was I rebelling to show how the standards were unjust by not abiding by them.

About fifteen years ago, when I moved to Bastrop from Austin and started building my house, I got a job driving a school bus. (This was a part time job, and my balloon delivery business came and went within this same time frame.) I didn't want to drive into Austin every day and fight the city traffic, and there weren't many job opportunities in this rural area. I enjoy driving the country roads and watching the sunrise every morning. I drove a school bus for many years, so that I could have the summers off and have the opportunity to do what I really love--travel. My son usually stayed the summer months with his father or his father's parents, so I was free to roam. I never had much money but I managed to do a lot of traveling on shoestring.

One year I took a car transport to Florida with a new-found friend, Maggie, and her baby boy. They were moving back to that state from an extended visit in Texas with her sister Mary Beth. We got to inland Florida and then had to hitch-hike to the coast where all Maggie's friends were (with a baby and a mountain of luggage--I can't believe we did it now.) Anyway, she knew lots of people, so we always had a place to stay. Once, we stayed for a week on an island called Soldier Key, a privately owned piece of land. We got there on a catamaran, sailed by an old friend of Maggie's. The caretakers of the island were her friends also; the owners visited rarely. I had my own little tree house to stay in that had been built over the ocean water; but instead of being in limbs, as most tree houses are, it was built on the roots of Mangrove trees. This is only part of, just one of the adventures that I had during the long summer holidays of my school bus driving years.

Nowadays, my life is much more settled. I gave up smoking pot a long time ago, and I rarely drink alcohol. I haven't traveled much in the past few years, and of course I don't hitch-hike at all. My macho jobs and curious and unfeminine behaviors are largely accepted now. This is good for me at this point in my life, because I still like unconventional things, but I have no need to shock; I only need to fulfill aspirations.

The actual hammering of nails into 2x4's I do only because I can and it saves me money. The clearing of brush and the landscaping I do to revel in nature and forge my little piece of earth into my own personal garden refuge. My artistic talents--dancing, jewelry making, painting, etc, I develop to celebrate the human dwelling place of my soul.

I sit here, outside my house in the silence, except for the harmony of the birds' songs, and I contemplate. I look up through the winter-bare oak branches into the blue heavens. And I consider all the luxuries that I do have: fond memories of travels and risks I have taken, freedom of artistic expression, kinship to and love for the natural environment, and even a little piece of it to call my own. As I gaze through memories while I write, a beautiful moth flutters by, then it flies back again and lands on my notebook, and I realize what a short lifetime it has been building this house.

VCW