WHILE THE KETTLE BOILS

New Zealand Listener, Volume 2, Issue 37, 8 March 1940, Page 43

WHILE THE KETTLE BOILS

Dear Friends, What is the meaning of a good Samaritan? Possibly we all have our own definitions. Anyway, I know, for I’ve just been one-with dire results! Just recently a friend of mine begged me to go house-hunting with her. Now I’ve done a lot of that in my time-and I knew just what was ahead of me. But my friend was so insistent, that, in charity, I agreed to accompany her. We started out early one morning, and at night we arrived home-physical wrecks; our nerves razzled by the harrowing experience. Maybe it is all right taken in small doses-but a whole day of it! We tramped or were run from suburb to suburb. We went armed with glowing advertisements that turned out to be shameless hoaxes; we climbed up hillsk-and stumbled down them again; mounted innumerable steps of promise-only to find in the end disillusionment. I have a peculiar "sense" about houses-par-ticularly empty houses. They affect me pleasantly or unpleasantly immediately I enter. A home. that has been loved and peopled with sunny memoriesthat once echoed to the sound of children’s feet and their happy laughter-leaves a kind of aura behind it. I can almost feel it. It seems to cling to the house like a persistent echo, But a house that has held gloomy influences leaves me with a morbid sensation of discord. So most of that day I alternated between fits of depression and lifts of brightness. My friend, however, was enabled to make a decision. She has decided to take a flat! All this business of house-hunting reminded me of some interesting notes I once collected on queer houses. Surely the House That Jack Built could not have been crazier than this one: A wealthy and neurotic American widow was advised by her doctor to build herself a house without the aid of an architect. It took 36 years of her life to build, and is still uncompleted. Workmen, whom she had originally hired by the day, found themselves on a steady job for 20 years-and some of them made enough money to retire on. The house cost 5,000,000 dollars and rambles over several acres of land. It is a maze of 160 rooms-and there are 5 different heating systems. The widow’s bedroom is another jig-saw puzzle. It has myriads of gongs, push-buttons, wires and signals-all so mixed up that no one has ever been able to find out what they are for or where -they lead. . Another unique house, also belonging to America, was created by a Mr. Stenman. This gentleman had a rooted dislike of throwing away old newspapers, and in his spare time perfected an invention that enabled the paper, tightly rolled, to ‘be fashioned into panels and pieces of furniture. So successful did this prove, that Mr. Stenman went ahead and built his own home. It is fashioned of 100,000 separate newspapers. Except for wooden doors, window franies, roof and floor, he lives in a complete paper house. At least, a house-hunter in New Zealand is spared some of these shocks! .Till next week, Yours cordially,

Cynthia