What a rude turn of events. The house known as Alice was in a predicament. The land that she occupied in the small town of Baldwin, Louisiana, somehow sold itself right out from under her to a group of developers. In a case like this, what is a girl to do?
Can't speak for the others, but this one decided to go for a swim. And seven miles up Bayou Teche, she found herself a new home just outside the town of Jeanrette.
Having been built in 1803 by a man named Agricole Fuselier de la Claire, the house had already withstood 158 years worth of everything Louisiana had to throw at it when the dust-up with the developers happened in 1961. The beaded cypress walls were insulated between the studs with a local insulation known as bousillage, a very study mixture of clay and Spanish Moss, and the entire thing stood on a raised foundation of handmade local brick.
The rescue crew that accomplished her escape lifted the house off of the foundation and onto a barge for the voyage up the Teche. The brick foundation was then dismantled and rebuilt on the new site, and after a bit of maneuvering, Alice made landfall and was reunited with her footings.
I discovered it two years ago while in Louisiana on our book tour. The soft evening light probably didn't hurt, but it really did look as if it had been sitting here all along, proving, I guess, that misfortune is what you make of it, and a rude beginning can sometimes come to a happy end.
Can you get anything you want?
I love your stories