They don’t make them like this anymore. People say, “This is the house that Jack built!” remembering the old Mother Goose rhyme, first published in 1755, although it is probably much older than that. This certainly is the house that Jack built. In fact, I personally know of several of these houses that Jack built here in Maine, and I lived in one myself for a very long time.
The first thing you should know about Jack is that he was
not an engineer or an architect. He
never took a “shop” class. Most of his
tools were handmade and handed down to him by his father. Jack did not belong to a carpentry guild, and
he didn’t know anything about building codes.
He had never seen a level before and wouldn’t know what one was if you showed
it to him. Consequently, Jack's houses
have always had a tendency to roam here and there in random directions.
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| This is the house that Jack built. |
But Jack sure built a lot of houses around here. He always started with the house as you see
it up in the front on the right of the photo.
Simple, basic, large, and airy.
Plenty of windows to let in the natural light. There were loft areas upstairs for sleeping
and/or storage of dried foods. There was
often a crude mud floor basement, or as Jack called it, the “root cellar.” That’s where many people stored their root
vegetables, apples, lard, and pickles.
The house extends quite a bit beyond on the other side, but alas, I
couldn’t fit it in the photo.
By and by, the family would grow, and Jack would need more
room. See that small section just in
back of the house, in the middle of the photo?
With the two windows? Jack put
that in to have extra bedrooms. He just
kind of tacked it on to the main house as best as he could, and everyone was
happy. But the family grew
again--children, grandparents, relatives in need, etc., and Jack built the back
section. It was as long as the front
part of the house, although not as high, and he put another chimney in to help
heat the place. (Jack’s houses are known
for being drafty.) This gave everyone a
lot more room, sort of what we’d call an “in-law apartment” these days.
Jack built sheds and barns, too, when he wasn’t busy
farming, but he sure was busy farming.
The farm was how Jack supported himself and his family because he didn’t
have an office to go to. If Jack didn’t
farm, if he didn’t grow vegetables and raise meat, he and his family would have
perished. There was no safety net for
Jack.
So I hope you will forgive his meandering homes, running
willy-nilly here and there, oftentimes wandering off in bizarre directions. He often took his cue from the shape of the
Earth and the weather patterns. I hope
you’ll forgive the sagging lines and slightly crooked doorways and windows. And please also forgive the lack of artistic
style because Jack was a very plain and practical man, not given to fits of
fancy or finery.
Here in Maine,
we have always loved an old place like this despite its plainness and sometimes
odd shape because this is the house that Jack built, and as anyone can tell
you, that means many people will come and go here, many things will happen
here, and many adventures will take place here.
This is a special house.
