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The Editor of The Chronicle dug it up and took pictures of the archived edition.



This story was originally published just 45 days ago, and it tanked.
It’s one of my best stories, and now I have proof that it actually did happen.

Storytime With Uncle Custer
That time I knocked my house down a hill…

First time out to Oregon I got into a small rental in Columbia City, named for the river, about 35 miles downstream from Portland. Originally built as a ship builders supervisor’s shack, on a steep hill, the front porch was ground level but the back of the house was up eight or nine feet, and had a rickety staircase out the back door.
Under the little house was dug out square like a dirt basement, with the house on stilts. The bottom of the house looked like.. you ever see a skeleton of a burnt out beached ship, with the center keel and the ribs sticking out of it? Well, underneath my little house it looked like that but upside down. The keel and beams were good, but bent. The outer rows of support posts were deteriorated from dirt, and even though they used to be pieces of ships’ masts they were trash now. My house was high in the middle and sagging along the sides.
So I showed the landlord, who was also my boss (and future business partner), he got me an open line of credit at the supply store… I rented house jacks, bought nice new 4x4s and big cement blocks, and went to work.
I had no clue what I was doing.

They got sheet metal braces you put where you do any joints, I had no idea. Didn't have those, just toe-nailed the top ends of the 4x4s in place. Looked good.
Pounded the dirt down real good and set the cement blocks in place-- they got a hole in them blocks, ya know why? You're supposed to drill out one end of the 4x4 and implant a hunk of rebar, then that goes through the hole in the block and into the ground a bit.. which I didn't, and the 4x4s just magically stood there on the cement blocks. I replaced 15 of the 24 original support posts, and added a few.


This is pretty close to the river, and on bedrock, so you can feel the freighters' propellers rumbling up the river. Little earthquakes from Mount St Helens, too. Then there's thunderstorms– boy, you could really feel those. And we had a big one, so big it washed out the front dirt wall in my newly propped up basement. Took out three front posts and two more a few feet in-- we heard the lumber clattering around downstairs. The house started moving... like a house of cards on toothpicks.

I had company over, celebrating the job well done fixing my beams downstairs. I’d even put in extra poles to support my brand new waterbed. When we filled the bed you could see the beams flex and the house straightened out some.. I was so proud. So me and Larry and Vern are sittin' around playing cards and talking about the storm and how it really does shake the house.. and we felt a shift.. It wasn't a shake, it was a shift, and then it stopped.

Well, it was clear that the house wasn’t where it was supposed to be. Vern tossed Larry off the porch as the house moved backward, exposing the nine foot drop which now ends in a mudslide, then he turned to face me.. He was in the doorway when it went diagonal, then he turned and leaped into the stormy darkness.
Of course I figured if I could just get the weight of this waterbed out of there it might all stop. So I slashed the bed and it blew open and emptied into my dresser, which surprisingly didn't help at all. By now the house is in full motion and I head for the door. The porch is dangling and the gap was at around four feet and growing..
Let me tell you I was once proud of my standing broad jump but not that night. I hit that dirt wall, fell six feet down into three feet of moving mud, and watched my house from that odd perspective of going…
from just over my head…
to… down the hill a ways.

That old shipbuilder's shack hit the ground with a Whump! and slid down that hill till the back edge dug two feet into the ground, maybe twenty feet from the railroad tracks. It looked like a crazy wooden carpet that conformed to the terrain, with a bashed up little doll house dropped haphazardly on top of it. That shack rode down a hill and was broke as hell, but it didn’t fall down.

The power line was still attached, stretched tight, and the electric water heater may or may not be still connected under the wreckage, so we called the Fire Department. They come from the next town over, and it was raining, so in twenty minutes or so they park their vintage 1950s tanker truck up on the little bridge overseeing the scene.. Captain says there’s no fire. I say but there could be. He says call us back when there’s a fire. I called the electric company and they came out the next day to throw the line down off the pole.

Called the landlord, he said the lady next door owed him rent and she has to take me in till I get straightened out. Which led to the commune house in St Helens with the waterfall in the basement, but that’s another story.



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Storytime with Uncle Custer
The Little House Story w/Pictures
https://www.erepublik.com/en/article/2764992

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Old Man Custer, a writer, and President.







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