Lightning Rod's Hobbit House
They say that a man is not complete until he has sung a song, written a book, fathered a child, planted a tree and built a house. I guess I'm lucky, all these things are in my resume.
Here is a picture of the house I built with minimal budget and the simplest of tools. The dome is made of cardboard and the front room is made of granite tombstone tailings. There is some barbed wire in there somewhere, but I don't think that there was 47 miles of it. There was a rattlesnake hide mounted on the roof beam, so I felt right at home. I lived in this house for three years. It was very comfortable.
This was my experiment in affordable housing. I asked myself, "how can a person with limited means make a shelter using the most accessible materials?" Most everything in the dwelling was salvaged. The cardboard for the dome came from dumpsters. The granite blocks came from the landfill behind a monument company.
The tax assessor came out with his clipboard one day. He walked around the dome and scratched his head and then he asked me, "How much to you figure this place is worth?"
I said, "I can tell you how much it cost to build it."
"How much?"
"Fifteen hundred bucks." (this was only true if you didn't count the labor costs.)
"OK." He wrote it down on his clipboard.
My school taxes were six dollars per year.
-----
I walked 47 miles on barbed-wire,
Cobra-snake for a necktie.
Built a house by the roadside,
Made of rattlesnake hide.
Brand new chimney up on top,
Made out of human skulls.
Come on baby take a walk with me,
Tell me who do you love?
Who do you love, now?
Who do you love, now?
Who do you love, babe?
I say: who now, who do you love?
Tombstone head and a graveyard mind,
Just 22 and I dont mind dying.
Rode around the town with a rattlesnake whip,
Come on baby dont give me no lip.
Who do you love, now?
Who do you love?
Who do you love, child?
I said: who, baby, who do you love?
Doors
