The Little House on the Street - You gotta live this town

I have blogged before about moving houses. You know, where you jack the entire structure up on rails and use big trucks to haul it down the road. Sometimes it becomes eventful, like when the structure snags telephone lines and one's father gets up in the middle of the night to deal with the situation. Or the building being moved is a story in and of itself. Those stories are here.

The latest house-moving adventure hereabouts started last Friday night when a company attempting to move an old house from Austin to Lockhart neatly lodged the building between a tree and a utility pole, sticking it well and true.

At that point, one of three things had to give: the tree, the utility pole, or the house. But this is Austin, and one does not simply cut down trees (though the mover tried, before the homeowner called the cops). The utility pole presented other jurisdictional issues, so that left the house.

But, did I mention this was Austin? It seems you need a permit to work on a house parked in the middle of the street. And a permit to block a street. You can't make this stuff up, folks. So the mover set out to get properly permitted, but, as I may have mentioned, this is Austin. Children have been born, raised, married and become parents themselves while the permit process grinds on.

So, here it is, late Tuesday, and the house is still stuck in the middle of the street.

And now, of course, the house has its own Twitter account: @StuckHouseATX.

 

On the bright side, if the house is still there on Halloween, they can claim it's haunted and charge admission to help pay the fees and fines.