1. What is the weirdest thing you’ve seen or experienced in someone else’s home?
We took up this terrible task once and initiated home inspections of our work at home teams (this was years before COVID lockdowns.) One of the employee’s home we visited had a nice little home office – but there were gallon’s of used milk containers full of urine lined up along a wall. It was pretty unsettling and my co-inspector (I guess that’s the term) and I were som put off by that we didn’t even bring it up.
2. What is the weirdest thing you’ve seen on someone’s lawn or adorned to the outside of their home?
The Rev. Ed and I took to collecting these years ago in th late 90s and early 00s in Denver. There was bird house front lawn up in North Denver Park Hill Neighborhood that comes to mind.
3. At your house, what things lie around that are useless and just for whimsy?
I have too much clutter and need to rid myself of things that are useless or no longer work. But my little wooden sculpture of a Chicken cock, named Clarencce is useless and whimsy and is going no where anytime soon.
4. Where should you never build a house?
We had family friends that lived waaaaaaaay out in the middle of nowhere in Moffat County on the far northern part of the county in the Great Divide area. Neighbors were miles and miles away. No running water. They were renovating an old abandoned prairie home and electricity was years away from being affordably installed. No gas. Only pumped well water and heated with coal and wood burning stoves. There was a chimney fire that burned the house to ground — the fire department took nearly 30 minutes or more to arrive on the scene and the house was gone by then. Don’t build a home that has no societal infrastructure.
5. What is something that used to be in homes but has vanished and needs to return?
The landline phone on the wall in the kitchen with the long ass cord dangling that you could curl in your fingers why chatting away. For bringing communicites badk together we need the old phone call – connecting people instead of the passive texting and call screening.
1) Other people’s houses always have some weirdness unique to them. We all become so used to our weirdness, that it doesn’t strike us as weird when we have visitors. That said, an elementary school friend from the small town of Morrison lived in the Cliff House, a historic old hotel in the center of town, which is now a B&B. They only lived on the main floor because the top floor and attic were full of bats. That was fairly weird. His father also delivered the newspapers around the area and only had one arm. It was also weird to ride along with him on those routes. I think his name was Lefty…or Righty…not sure now.
2) In the larger towns in Mexico the well-to-do folks usually have broken glass and broken bottles laid into the cement walls and around windows to ward off intruders.
3) Not much of a whimsy kind of guy. Just got to focus and get rid of the useless shit around. I suppose the newer expensive telescope I just bought might count in the whimsy category.
4) Don’t listen to Madness and don’t build your house in the middle of the street. Friggin’ Limeys.
5) In our house from the 50s that I grew up in there was a built in intercom system. It was kind of fun and I kind of hate the smart speaker versioning of it. Let’s go analog!
1. I come from a family of hoarders, so I tend not to be too judgmental of peoples’ living situations. What always knocks me over is the initial smell of many homes; that essential odor that the occupants have learned to ignore. Smell is the quickest of our senses, and has the best memory. And oh the things I have smelled.
2. Roy was alluding to the “Bird House House,” in Park Hill. Alas it has been dismantled.
There is a house in the Swansea neighborhood that has a small glassed-in illuminated shrine beside it. Most of the year, the Virgin Mary peers out from her plexiglass pane. But at Christmas, she is replaced with a 1950’s light-up snowman sculpture. Take that Christ!
3. Me. And Kitty.
4. Houston.
5. Central vacuum systems. What a dream to be able to vacuum any room without dragging out a vacuum.
1) My home oddity/ horror stories are all from my days on the ambulance. Had one home that gad converted the garage into a sex dungeon. One that had an entire room that was dirt and they threw chicken bones and food scraps into it. Discovered later that was their big worm or bug farming.
2) There was a house in lower Alabama that had giant metal sculptures of spiders and scorpions on its lawn.
3) I’m much more of a minimalist guy when it comes to chotchkies. Any that can be found in my home are my wife’s and I am not allowed to alter that.
4) Anywhere in a known floodplain, or near large bodies of water if it’s below sea level. IE: New Orleans
5) A good conversation pit.