Sometime around 1940, Grandpa bought a couple hundred acres from Great-Grandpa Brown, just a stone’s throw from the Osage River. He and Grandma built a house, raised four boys, tilled the rocky land for a garden and ran pigs and cows in the fields and forests.
They’re gone now. And while life’s paths routed Dad and his brothers away from the Lake, some of us eventually came back. Now I’m raising my children on Grandpa’s acreage – though diminished in size, it’s still plenty for deer hunting, mushroom hunting, and wandering through the woods – and in the house he built in the early 50s, where my dad spent his childhood.
Then, in 2023, I convinced my parents to build. Somehow I ended up as a general contractor, and the next 2-1/2 years comprised one of the most unique (and sometimes frustrating) learning experiences of my life. As of this writing in late-2025, the house is pretty much done. It’s perfect, more luxurious than what we set out to build — back when we were planning a “cottage in the woods” — but filled with special touches. The master bedroom wall consists of tongue-and-groove oak flooring I pulled up from my attic floor. Because apparently when Grandpa built this house in the 50s, they were using tongue and groove oak for attic floors. The front and back porch ceilings are covered with tongue and groove flooring salvaged from my parents’ church back in south Texas, where I grew up. That church had been demolishing a very old building that had served as an army barracks nearly a century ago. Mom and Dad hated to see those beautiful centenarian floors go to the dumpster, so now they’re here. The fireplace mantel and wooden treads on the spiral staircase I milled from a walnut log, harvested not too far from here.
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