> There is a large, two-story house near here that was built over 100 years ago. Back in the 1940's the highway was relocated from the front of the house to the back. (They were straightening a curve.) The owner considered jacking the house up and turning it 180 degrees so that it could still face the road. But then he had a better idea.

For some reason, this reminded me of the "travelling pub" story I heard on my last trip up north. You see, back in the old days, there was this pub building on the west coast of Northland (in New Zealand, for those who don't know me). This was at the time when there was a "gold rush" type thing up there for kauri gum - fossilized lumps of sap from prehistoric forests of kauri trees, which was quite a valuable commodity. People went rushing up to the gumdigging areas to dig it out of the mud and get rich quick, although not as quick as they got tired and muddy.
So there was the pub, on the rapidly emptying west coast, and there were the gumdiggers, on the east coast. What to do? Shut down the pub, move east and build a new one? Nah. They dug the whole building off its foundations, put wheels on it, hitched up as many horses or bullocks as it took, and off they went.
It took a while to get there so they took all the booze with them, and opened for business every night wherever they camped. The travelling pub's triumphant final resting place can be seen on the east coast today, and it's probably even more deserted now than it was before they moved it. Oh well. Gold and kauri gum takes a *long* time to grow back once you've dug it all. Maybe they should load up again and haul it down to Auckland. At least there's a road now.

Brunnen-"the days when men were real men, women were real women, but there was so much mud on both of 'em you probably couldn't tell the difference"G