Excitement on the rock . . .

I was taking my usual afternoon walk down to Barges Beach yesterday when I noticed a piece of the modular home that had been sitting  by the side of the road since I arrived was gone.  The wind on the beach was sharper than I had expected, so I decided to head up the hill and watch the show.

There were only a couple of people leaning against the wall when I arrived.

I'd missed the preshow, all the excavation had all been done earlier and the basement foundation was in place.

Either the crane is too large to fit upright in the picture or I can't get it to rotate. Your choice.

The crane was there, though, so I was sure the  real excitement was going to start soon.
Apparently, I was not alone in this assumption.

I was talking to Kris, and she said she was pretty sure this was the first complete modular home to be brought on to the island.  A number of homes had been built with prefab walls that were brought over by barge, but not whole sections complete inside and out like this house.

 The crowd began to grow.  I suggested to Arnie that we were the reincarnation of Jack and Oscar.  They were the old timers who would stand watching and "supervising" any time I undertook an outside project on the Allen House.  Which was pretty much every day in the spring and fall.

Here we go . . .

Easy now . . .

And there you have it, part 1.

That was thirty years ago.  Long before that, several houses had been floated over from the mainland, either complete or cut in half.  You could recognize them because they were the only houses that had actual house numbers still on them.  

Our own Annex had been rolled on logs and pulled by mules from the West End of the island to its current position, and the Coast Guard building floated over from the neck.

 can you imagine rolling a two-story building on logs over this?

After that, everything was stick built from the ground up for years until the newfangled idea of bringing whole walls over on barges was tried.  

Now we have come full circle, bringing over houses just about complete.  And I have come full circle too, no longer the laborer, but the watcher.