mirror ball 87: little houses

A tree house,
A play house,
A doll house:

is there a little house that is significant to you, now or in your past?

Dan:
Growing up we lived in a old english tudor home on an acre of land, that had pockets of areas to play. One area – the lowest part of the terrain of the yard - in the twenties had once been a pool - that was filled in before my family lived there. Beside the fence was an area we all called the "rock garden" - it had all kinds of rocks - some had been used for the building of the house - in amongst them were day lilies all under an huge elm tree. 

There were two rocks one square with a pointy top and a round notch at the bottom that looked like a door, the other shaped like a loaf of bread with a very round top - that I would play with for hours. I built towns around them with the other rocks. Destroy the towns with floods - since it was the lowest area of the yard - water would always build up and i would create a river going through my town. This was my play area for years.

I saw myself in that square little rock with the pointed roof – safe, solid and defined. No matter what went on in the big house on the hill or outside the confines of our yard - I always knew what I was doing in the rock garden – being me.

Steve:
When I was in elementary school my next door neighbor Tracy had a play house in her back yard. I don't think I spent a lot of time there, but I do have a memory that in this little house there was a poster on the wall, "The Land of Make-Believe". Over the years occasionally I have remembered that poster, mostly its black and green colors and the scale of its many curious figures and buildings. Thanks to Google I recently found an image of it.

I like seeing it again and remembering being a little kid taking in all the strange details. This illustration is also typical of many of the images I found most interesting and evocative when I was a little guy-- drawn in a style already several decades out of fashion, and so somewhat mysterious.