We saw, at the end of a dirt road at the very edge of Spur, an object that seemed to be a tall tool shed. And when we investigated we discovered that it was a SMALL HOUSE, newly constructed, probably with a footprint of no more than 100 square feet. And it rested on a small trailer. The owner, a young guy in camies with a boonie hat on his head, with a huge truck and a lot of dogs, was outside, working in his lawn. We had to wonder where those dogs lived-- surely not in the house with him, because the house was smaller than some sheds I've seen in backyards to store garden equipment. I spoke to him from the safety of my car, and learned that several people had driven by to gawk at his small house, and he wasn't very happy about the attention. I apologized and got us out of there.
Denizens of Spur appear to be unfettered by zoning restrictions or code enforcement. You can have your own private junkyard just a few blocks from the middle of town!
I
Before we found a small house, newly constructed according to the modern pattern, we found what looked like an old, tumbled-down, Bates Motel.
The stories these walls could tell! We really had no idea what it used to be. An apartment complex?
Whatever it was, once, it is uninhabitable now.
It seemed to have been constructed with no regard whatsoever for anything like habitability, in fact. Basic structural engineering principles seem to have been the farthest thing from the builder's mind. You find this a lot in small towns in Texas, where everybody does as they please with no regard for the common good or even simple physics. Don't you ever try to tyrannize a Texan with talk of a "common good", or about the existence of basic, objective, physical laws-- you are likely to get shot.
Next time, I'll tell you about the one small house we found, and why I did not include a photo, why we passed it over and went on to photograph yet another private junkyard. I will tell you what we think of the small house revolution in Spur.
Small houses were the reason we were IN Spur that day; the Lubbock Avalanche-Journal (stop laughing) did a story on small houses in Spur. My wife read the article and we were interested. We wanted to see these things. The AJ described one as having "98 square feet" of living space. That seemed a bit tiny to me, and I thought it had to be a misprint. 980 square feet seemed more reasonable. A factor of ten error is perfectly reasonable for the local paper-- better than average reporting, in fact. So we were looking for something about that size.
We were finding plenty of ruins and relics, but no new construction.
But we did, finally, find one of those small houses, one of those revolutionary small houses...
So far, we've been searching for signs of small houses, and we have not found any. We were wondering where they might be. Of course, they are SMALL... just how small are these things, anyway? Should we be revising our search methods? Have I, in my ignorance, already STEPPED ON a small house, and caused untold damage and hardship?
Oh, clumsy me! Cloddish and clumsy creature of the Earth! I've been stomping around with my camera, crushing entire neighborhoods, entire cities, into the dirt, and have not even noticed! No, surely not.
We've driven here, and driven there, we dined in a local restaurant, and I even went to the restroom in a big convenience store on a hill, in desperate need to expel that which I ate, and still no sign of the big small house revolution. We were determined not to return to Lubbock until we had gotten to the bottom of this social upheaval.
Denizens of Spur appear to be unfettered by zoning restrictions or code enforcement. You can have your own private junkyard just a few blocks from the middle of town!
I
