Mel and Ann

While driving near West Fork recently, I stumbled across this fascinating ruin of someone's love, creativity, and resourcefulness.  Much to my daughter's chagrin, I just had to stop, jump out of the car, and take pictures!

It seems that Mel was pretty fond of Ann (or, conceiveably, Ann was very fond of Mel, but, for the sake of simplicity, we'll assume it was Mel!).  And Mel also seems to have been a pretty handy guy.  Perhaps, also, Mel knew that immortality is most effectively achieved in stone!

I love that Mel just foraged around on his own land and found the majority of the materials he needed to build a house!  I guess that's what people used to do all the time but the concept seems so foreign to methods of modern construction.  Knowing Mel, like I think I do, I bet there's a story about where the windows came from and I'd imagine that he scavenged the materials for that second floor addition that he never finished as well. 

I imagine the Mel and Ann were very happy here when the place still had a roof!

Also fascinating to me, if you can make them out in the photo, are the stone shelves that Mel built into the wall.  I'd bet that this was a pretty cool house in it's day.

This just makes me want to go out and gather stones!  I'm pretty sure, however, that after picking up fewer than a dozen stones, my enthusiasm would wane.  More kuddos to Mel who actually followed through with a big job!