Big Houses

Over at Rob Hardy's Rough Draft, there has been some discussion of so-called McMansions -- huge new houses on the edge of town that seem ostentatious, super-sized for no good reason, and mismatched with the landscape.

My grandmother owned an eight-bedroom brick house on Buzzard's Bay. Every bedroom had its own bath. There were servant's quarters on the third floor, a butler's pantry, a sun room, a large formal dining room, a long porch overlooking the bay. It had a detached four-stall garage with a two-bedroom apartment above it. To complete the picture, it had a circular driveway. (For some reason, the driveway was the one feature that, for me, distinguished the place as a mansion and not just a big house.) In the picture of Sias Point, you can see the house on that large lot near the top left (the copyright mark is on the north border of the property). When my grandparents lived there, the pointy part of Sias Point was empty because the houses had all been destroyed by a hurricane.

My family made the long drive from Indiana to "the Cape" every summer when I was growing up. We very much enjoyed the house and the beach. My grandma and her hubby (step-grandpa) didn't own a boat, didn't swim, didn't fish. They bought the house for several interesting reasons.

My step-grandpa was a wealthy businessman and wanted a house to match his economic and social stature. He was a little like the character played by Anthony Hopkins in "Meet Joe Black." His peers all owned houses on or near the Cape.

My grandparents had grown up poor, she in a rough neighborhood of Baltimore, he near the shipyards of Maryland's Eastern Shore. They liked the house because it represented a prize for a lifetime of hard work and persistence, though Grandma was also slightly embarrassed by it, reminding her grandkids often that life was not about money and big houses.

And the house was a bargain (relatively) because it had been abandoned after a hurricane. My grandparents bought it and fixed it up, partly with their own hands. A smart investment.

As my father would say, I feel very strongly both ways.

On the one hand, people who can afford such houses (old money, new money, whatever) should build them or buy them if they want to. Just because I can't (or won't) doesn't mean they shouldn't. You work hard, get through med school, pay off the student loans, save up for a few years, set aside money for the kids' college fund, and build a big house. It's the American dream, people!

On the other hand are all the arguments about waste and the environment and the yawning chasm between rich and poor. Oh, yes, it would be so nice if those rich folk would give away more of their money and live modestly among the rest of us. They really should, shouldn't they? Or we can pine for an economic structure that spreads rewards in a more equitable way. Why is a doctor's skill so much more valuable than, say, a highway engineer or a high school teacher?

Well, friends, I do not know the answer. Which reminds me of a poem by Richard Brautigan (from "All Watched Over By Machines of Loving Grace.")

Let's Voyage into the New American House

There are doors

that want to be free

from their hinges to

fly with perfect clouds.

There are windows

that want to be

released from their

frames to run with

the deer through

back country meadows.

There are walls

that want to prowl

with the mountains

through the early

morning dusk.

There are floors

that want to digest

their furniture into

flowers and trees.

There are roofs

that want to travel

gracefully with

the stars through

circles of darkness.