Free The Big Tiny: A Built-It-Myself Memoir by Dee Williams Page A

asked him a few questions about the house, what it cost and how long it took to make, and then we had made a tentative plan to get together if I ever came to town. We had laughed a lot, and I’d hung up incredibly satisfied with myself. And then I bought a plane ticket.

Tiny House Man
    I am not a graceful traveler. I am frenetic. I constantly search my pockets for my boarding pass. I give myself a little pat-down as I stand in line at the security gate, and then again as I race from one monitor to the next, where I mumble the gate number and my brain goes
ding
like an oven timer, and I check for my boarding pass again. I was particularly goofy en route to Iowa, and left my wallet in the bathroom, which meant I had to trek back through the terminal, around suitcases and wheelchairs, and past annoying people wearing smug “I know exactly where my boarding pass is” looks and irritating people bottlenecking the corridor, making it nearly impossible for me to get to my wallet, which, as it turned out, was in my hand the whole time.
    The truth was, regardless of my usual worries, I wasincredibly nervous about meeting Tiny House Man, and I wasn’t sure why. I had called my brother Doug, who also happened to live in Iowa City. I explained why I wanted to visit, and he had purred little questions into the phone like a therapist. “So you want to find the Tiny House Man and build a tiny house?”
    “Yes.” I curled my arms reflexively over my head and cradled the phone to my ear, wondering what Doug was thinking. Did he think I was crazy, behaving irrationally, or headed for some terrible crash landing?
    “Okay,” he whispered back. “We always seem to figure it out.”
    So, just like that, I had enlisted my brother. I explained that Jay had invited me to come visit, and Doug was game for the adventure.
    Growing up on our farm, Doug had been my accomplice in a number of backyard experiments and building projects. We built hay forts and made hidey-holes, and crawled through the attic looking for treasure. We caught tadpoles and fireflies, and lay out on hay bales, staring at the sky, daydreaming about the candy we would buy (M&M’s, Jujubes, or chocolate bars) when we were “old and rich.”
    As the eldest sibling, I was typically the instigator of our shenanigans, suggesting for example that we make a catapult to throw each other across the yard. Doug, who was nearly as big as me even though he was five years younger, would usually team with me to take care of business, to (for example) workwith me to bend a tree sapling into a tight U-shape as a perfect catapult or slingshot. We would then usually enlist our younger brother, Mark, to support our brilliant ideas, asking him to sit at the whip end of the tree (again for example) with a soup kettle on his head for protection. In the case of the catapult, we were ultimately foiled; the thing didn’t shoot straight because the physics were off (Mark was too heavy, he wouldn’t sit right, and he appeared to be crying), and besides, the tree was too scratchy and my mom screamed when she saw what we were doing.
    Another time, my brothers and I convinced ourselves we were kung fu masters. I still have a lump on my leg from the day I attempted a complicated ninja move from the barn loft, where I had tied an extension cord (the closest thing I could find to a rope) to a rafter near the peak of the roof. I figured I could swing out the second-story window, turn around in midair, and fly right back into the barn, where I’d land catlike on the floor, somersault, and come up with my hands poised in a karate chop. I imagined this would be my coolest trick ever, and I think I yelled “Hey, watch this!” to my brothers as I grabbed the cord, took a running leap, and shot myself out the window into the blank airspace above the cows.
    Moments into the ride, I felt the rubber cord stretch with my weight, and the knot loosening as I hit the farthest point on my swing. I flailed my legs