Recently, some grading has been done on the nearer of the two lots. I expected that construction would soon begin there. Tuesday, I noticed that a bed of gravel had been spread on part of the lot. Today, as I walked along the road, and the vacant lots came into view, I was surprised to see that a house had appeared overnight.
Manufactured houses are not uncommon here. In fact the street behind mine has six of them. But I was not expecting one to be set up in the middle of a row of site-built houses. As a rule, things change slowly here. In the last 15 years, only eight new houses have been built in the neighborhood, all of them of traditional construction. I enjoy watching them take shape. The foundations, or a slab floor, will be poured. The carpenters will raise the walls and rafters, and deck the roof with sheets of plywood. Roofers will come and put on roofing, plasterers will plaster, glaziers will install windows. It is a process which has always fascinated me.
Now, suddenly, a house is there. Just there! Not a bad house. Not an interesting house. Just an ordinary house, but one built somewhere in a factory and then hauled in by a truck and stuck over a bed of gravel. All that remains to be done is for the two halves to be permanently attached to one another, and some sort of skirting to be installed, concealing the piers on which the building rests. And, somehow, I feel cheated. It is like seeing a movie trailer that gives away the ending of the movie. Crap! I wanted to see that house get built!
