I know that some of you have had your own projects here lately and I’ve read 

about them and prayed for all of you when you’ve had difficulties with those projects.  I guess it’s about time I told you about my wife and my lifelong dream. My wife being of German descent loved to see the German alpine log cabins when they would visit her parents’ homeland.  She always had, in the back of mind, the desire to live in a log home.  I had also helped my uncle build a log cabin at Enid Dam near Water Valley, Mississippi and fell in love with the thought of living in a log home.  There was a time after my mother had died that I was homesick. I was missing my family and friends and it was a 17 to 18 hour trip back to Memphis. Even on a long weekend, this was getting to be excruciating. My wife in her wisdom could see how much I was hurting and we were ready to move and couldn’t find a place that we liked in Oakville, Ontario where we lived at that time.  We had a little 1100 square foot home that was two stories and had a garage.  I dearly loved that little home with all my heart, but we felt like we were out growing it and the economy was getting

bad in Canada. We made the decision to pick up and move to Tennessee to be nearer both our families as it was halfway in between both, well OK, maybe a little closer to Memphis.  We sold our house in Canada and went on the hunt for a place in North Carolina, but there were absolutely no jobs to be had at that time in North Carolina so over the mountain we went to East Tennessee.  On our first trip we didn’t find anything we liked, but on our second trip I found three that I liked but my wife did not like any of them, so we were headed back to the expressway to get back to Canada. I was disappointed but on our way we found this corner lot in Kodak near Highway 70, yes the same 70 that runs through Memphis, better known as Summer

Avenue, and it was also better known as Thunder Road where, during prohibition, moonshiners would transport their white lightning in hopped up hot rod jalopies from Cocke County, to the rest of Tennessee.  I liked the area because it had a great history, it was in Sevier County, home of Dolly Parton and Tennessee’s first governor John Sevier and where the Cherokee Indians signed the Dumplin Valley Treaty that started the Trail of Tears right here in Kodak.  It is a mountainous area to say the least and “too rocky by far” as the song says.  We had enough savings from our house in Canada to build this house, so we thought.  I don’t really know if we were taken advantage of or if it was just our stupidity but, when you build on rocks, it’s not an easy proposition.  As always, there were cost overruns and we had to make compromises on our dream.  Let me explain some of the experiences we had building our dream home.

I knew we would probably have to make some compromises to live in the Great Smoky Mountains but I knew it would, sooner or later, be worth it.  We moved in with a friend of Ursula’s parents and that was alright for a short period of time but the drive from North Carolina to Kodak was just too long. Some very nice people that Ursula was working with let us move in with them for short period of time and we were kind of like a badminton birdie going from one place to another with all of these very kind and generous people.  Both Ursula and I put a lot of hard work into it.  I was involved in over 99% of the work, doing all of the electrical and plumbing myself with the help of a very special friend named Mike that I met through the hotel my wife worked for.  The type of log home we built is called an Appalachian log home. It uses a square log with dovetails with an opening between each layer of logs that you would, in the old days, have put mud and thatch between the logs.  That would not be very practical today because of electrical and plumbing that needed to run in between these logs and also through them.  So in our modern times you would put a piece of spline board on one side then insulate it and put another piece of spline board on the opposite side.  After securing the spline board you would have to use mastic, or what they call chinking, to make it look like it was rough concrete.  Now we had gotten to the point that we were out staying our welcome with every  wonderful person that would have us, so we needed to get into this house. I was

working day and night to at least get the outer spline board on all of the logs and the doors and windows in so that we could lock it up and go to Canada for Christmas. The truth of the matter was, we had all materials that we needed but we were almost completely out of money.  There was so little or none set aside for such extravagances as a Christmas tree. It was the night before we were to leave to go to Canada and I only had the upper floors spline boards in but even the first floor was too high for anyone to reach without attracting attention and I don’t believe anyone could have gotten through the small crack between each log.  I had to make a run before Ursula and I could go to bed that night and pick up a plumbing part so that I could shut the water off and not be afraid of it freezing.  I went to a hardware store to pick up the part and, somehow or another, a wonderful man that worked there asked me if I needed a Christmas tree and I told him I could not afford one. He told me it didn’t matter, he was going to give it to me for free anyway.  The generosity of that man has never left me. How he knew that my wife and I had no money for such a thing as a Christmas tree I will never know.  I tied the

Christmas tree to the top of my Bronco II with his help and drove to the construction site that we were now living in with no heat, no water and no spline boards in the area in which we had to live.  I dug through boxes until I found our Christmas tree stand. It was getting late and Ursula would be home from work soon. We had no time to decorate the tree and we had to go to bed so that we could make our trip to Canada and back before she had to go to work in just a few short days.  When she came in the door, I grabbed her hand and pulled her into the living room where our very first Christmas gift, a tree, was standing in the middle of all our unfinished, freezing cold living room in our dream home.  I told her of the generosity of the man at the hardware store and she and I stood looking at that Christmas tree

bawling like too little babies.  We were graced by the kindness of others to get this far.  They will probably never ever know what they mean to us.  I could never even begin to thank them enough, but in one way I have tried my best to help anyone that needs a helping hand to be there and help them.  The only way we could keep warm that night was to put numerous blankets on our bed and pull it as close to the fireplace as was safe to do.  That December was one of the coldest that I could ever remember and the wind just howled through the openings between the logs but my wife never complained. She would help me any and every way she could, she even did too much at times but we only had each other to depend on most of the time.  It was a long haul from a wooded corner lot to this wonderful log house we have today. Yes, it was a struggle and, yes, I shed blood, sweat and tears and unfortunately lost a little of my religion building this home.  My wife Ursula did things that she probably never thought she would ever do in her entire life, if she even knew what those things were back before we did them.  My daughter says I don’t praise my wife enough and she is right. I see the spirit of the early pioneer women in her when she’s trying to move a boulde

r that weighs twice her weight and is four times her size, doing everything possible she knows how to move that huge rock, but with my help and us working together, we have literally moved a mountain.  There are so many other stories of building this house that it would take me years to tell you all of those stories.  The one thing I would like everyone to understand is, my wife

and I built this house and officially moved in without heat or running water, nor did we have the carpeting in or the bathrooms or kitchen finished,  but it was livable and we both loved it and still do today, even though we’re getting to the point that it’s hard for us to keep up with the weeds and the maintenance on this log house. We had talked about selling everything and moving to Germany but, truthfully, I don’t know if I could part with this house. It’s worth more than money to me to remember my wife picking up a log and trying to bring it to me. I don’t mean to make light of her accomplishments on this house. I could not have finished it without her help and her love. You

truly know you’ve found the right partner when they are struggling as hard and working as hard as you are to get the job finished. The memory of that Christmas tree still makes us both cry to this very day. It seems that the saddest of memories can still bring tears of joy.