Welcome to Arkansas, the Natural State.
“It would make a kick-ass deer camp.”
And with those words decades of neglect and inertia were whipped into a dust devil and swept out the door. Years of idle talk, daydreaming, half-baked ideas—it was put your money on the table time. I was terror-stricken.
“It’ll need to be a little more than a deer camp if you want my help.” I replied to the Great White Hunter.
My calm reply belied my sense of dread. I knew about renovation. The house we live in was once my grandmother’s, built in 1928. And although 1999 was a long time ago, it’s not quite long enough to erase the memories of a six month project turned into sixteen, contractors that would show up late, hung-over or not at all, the stem wall pour gone awry, the tile job that had to be ripped up 3 times before it was right, I could go on but you get the picture. And this was a house in town, on a paved street, near running water and utilities.
“How about a lake house without the lake?” I asked. As I made the proposal my stomach had the same simultaneously sick/exhilarated sensation as when I took a blind leap off the high dive as a kid.
“Yeah,” he said. “That could work.”
And so begins the saga of Jane Doe, a sturdy little under-appreciated farm house on a ridge in central Arkansas. Built at the turn of the last century, Jane has been uninhabited for at least 45 years. A white-framed square with a pyramidal tin roof and a wrap-around porch, her four rooms were once home to a widow and her six children. More recently she has been used as a make-do workshop and storage, or as I affectionately call it, a warehouse for crap.
You have to go far off the beaten path to get to Jane. At least a mile and a half from any paved road. Fifteen miles from the nearest city of any size. She sits smack in the middle of 900 beautiful acres. Our adventure begins in February, 2011. Hop on the back of the four-wheeler if your want to come along…
at the end of the dirt road
natural state of insanity 