Howie

I've mentioned him occasionally in my posts, but never introduced him.  Howie is the name I use for one of the early owners of our house.  When he bought it in the 50s, the house was on nearly 40 acres, and there wasn't much in the way of development nearby.  Howard D. was a builder by trade, and the room above the garage was his office.  There is a long, narrow closet that he stored blueprints in.  He partitioned the property of the house off into parcels and built houses on all of them.  He had two new streets put in along the edges of the property and named the streets after himself; apparently he had a bit of an ego, too.

Howie was also a craftsman.  He built the cabinets in the kitchen, as well as the vanity in the bathroom and a hundred other things.  I see his handwriting all over things all the time.  The bottom of drawers, the innards of the cabinets, the inside of walls; they contain his measurements or hastily scrawled notes to himself.  I've also found a tool or two of his in the crawlspace when I was spending way too much time in there working on the radiant floor.  The previous owners of this house never used the barn for more than storage, and there is a lot of lumber in there from him that has now found its way into various projects of mine.  Working in this house is like stepping in the footsteps of a man I never knew, but I'm getting to know.  It adds some level of sacredness to projects that makes me more careful.  I want to respect his legacy, as I hope someone someday respects mine.