Home | Message Boards | Classifieds | Site Map

The Mother Goose House
by William Jeanes

In Hazard, Kentucky, there is a house built in the shape of a goose.  News of this curiosity had appeared in the New York Times, which had published a photograph of the peculiar dwelling.  I had not been the same since seeing it.  We moved south and east from Akron into the hard-scrabble mountains of Eastern Kentucky, a province of lean-necked men and woman who work harder for their daily bread than just about any other people you'll ever encounter.  Just before midnight we rolled into Hazard, it's rain blackened streets empty, save for a few late-night beer drinkers.  Into the dim, musty Grand Hotel lobby we clumped, finding a huge night clerk sitting as motionless as the sailfish trophy that hung opposite him.  Stirring into reluctant but friendly action, he assigned us to Raymond Chandler rooms that overlooked a street from Coal Miner's Daughter.  We looked up the stairway as if expecting Norman Bates to burst forth shrieking and slashing.  The next morning, in sunrise fog, we drove to the suburb of Hazard where the goose house stood and people were living inside.  The house is built on an oval fieldstone foundation, and the gooselike portions of it are formed of roofing material spread over a wood frame.   The occupants had not yet stirred, so we contented ourselves with photographing their goose house before aiming toward Nashville.

Home | Early Years | 30's & 40s | 50's & 60s | 70's & beyond