Luther Warner’s house in 2013.

Moving a House with Logs and Mules

I grew up in a house that belonged to my great grandfather.

Two storied with gabled ends, and a large porch with four columns and a bricked crawlspace beneath — these red man formed stones seeming to invite you from a distance — these bricks surrounding a concrete porch covered by the overhang of the second story front gable, and three steps up to the front porch at the terminus of the sidewalk. The siding, layered and painted white, and the shingles black, and a window looking out from above the porch and over the front yard, its trees all old and the grass green and the driveway, as I enjoy remembering it from my early childhood, a dirt loop.

Originally, the house rested an quarter of a mile or so to the west, but my great grandfather, realizing that his late father’s empty houseplace to the east, with its oaken lawn and ample shade, was superior, he decided to move the house. So, he hitched teams of mules and (or?) oxen to the eastern gable of the house, which he, for the occasion, placed atop round logs, pulling the home to its new site, rolling it across the logs, resetting the free log at the back end to the front, and then whipping the team forward and repeating the process. I can only imagine the process took awhile, and it would be wonderful to know if they spent the night in house in the middle of that field with the logs underneath it.

Luther’s house before being moved and remodeled. I’ll need to have a family member remind me which child is which, but one is my grandfather.

Once the house rested where he wanted it, then came the task of expanding it. He built another bay of rooms to the east, and then added the upstairs and the front gable with it’s big window. Another column was added out front to create four evenly-spaced columns, making the house symmetrical, stately, and turning it into a necessary landmark for folks to use when giving directions. “When you get to Luther’s house, just keep on going,” they would say.

Until I married, his was the only house I had ever lived in, so for years I regarded it only in relation to myself. This was my house. I lived there. It belonged to me.

In fact, my great grandfather only existed for me in name, and until recently I only thought of him in terms of his role as father to my grandfather. He died years before I was born, so the lack of immediate connection to him made him something less than a memory. A figure, no different than some far away judge appointed to some low-level court whose name I perhaps thumb across once or twice while reading the news.

My great grandfather Luther Warner, his wife Mary Elizabeth Stuckey, and daughter Eva Bode.

I recently discovered that part of the reason that lack of connection existed was because until last week I had never even seen a picture of him. Maybe that’s not exactly true: I had seen his portrait from his time in the Navy, but as with portraits, it didn’t tell me much.

So we rummaged through some old photo albums and found pictures of him later in life, as a young father and in his middle years, donning a suit and tie, and finally as an old man and grandfather. He finally felt real to me. I sensed a connection to him that I hadn’t ever felt before.

And then I noticed that many of those pictures of him had been taken in my old house. Suddenly a long, red arc was drawn somewhere between the knowledge section of my mind and the part of the soul that senses familiarity among people, or that breeds it between friends who have never met but become themselves the golden union of one soul — these parts somehow connected within me, and my great grandfather became my great grandfather, and the house became his house.

My great grandfather, in his house, holding my oldest brother. This photo was taken a few months before his death.

And across the last week or so, I have carried this desire to know him more, to seek what information I can about him, even to become him, though the great divider of the kindred — death, all of it as final as we refuse to admit — has forced me to know him only as memory.

The house, though, has since been sold, but to a person who I’ve understood is sensitive to the richness of its history and meaning. Soon I will call him, and I will pay the house a visit, and for the first time in my life I will try to know it in terms of my great grandfather, and hopefully I will try to get to know him a little better through it.

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