Blog 3707 – 12.29.2025

The House That Jack Built 

Today’s title comes from a poem that I read over and over one summer as a boy trying to improve my reading skills. Today’s picture is of a house that a man named Alton Mitchell built by putting two single wide trailers together and lived in on his almost five acre ranch till his death in 2013. Alton’s friends called him Jack.

Since Jack’s death trees had grown up and hidden the house from view. Trespassers and looters broke in the doors front and back, broke several windows, and strewed litter all throughout the house looking for anything of value to steal. But time more than trespassers has left the place in shambles. I purchased the property a couple of months ago as it is adjacent to thirty-one acres of timber land that I already owned with a small camper on it.

The camper is located about a hundred-fifty feet from the house that Jack built. I had originally thought that the house was not worth saving, yet after spending several hours clearing fallen tree limbs off the roof and filling twenty or more contractor bags of trash and taking them to the Newton County Waste Site, I have decided to restore the house that Jack built making it even better than it was before.

I have my work cut out for me, but I have a dream of a small ranch with a lovely ranch house and a big barn with pasture for horses and a couple of cows much as Jack had once only better.

I have already written here much of my adventures on the property in Bon Wier, Texas. For the foreseeable future I expect to continue living in two worlds, dividing my time between our home in Houston and our second home in Bon Wier. My wife and I have made weekly trips to Bon Wier since August when I was able to park the camper on our campsite with utility connections. Linda Lee grew up on her dad’s sixty acre farm in South Carolina and as a girl loved walking through the fields and woods of her daddy’s land. I think she already feels at home in Bon Wier. I certainly do and someday I expect to make our singular homestead in our renovated, restored, and remodeled version of the house that Jack built.

Check back for updates on our progress of realizing our dream.

Your friend and fellow traveler,

David James White