Finally, I have admitted that I am not going to hire employees and run a business for the rest of my life. While I am thriving doing the things that I enjoy, it is time to sell my true treasures from the past.
NOV 02, 2024
Being born a poor and crippled child in my youth, I did well for myself after reaching my thirties and giving up on working for anyone for long. After 30 jobs, including my stint in the US Army after high school, I got my VA benefits. I was a child of the Army life, traveling most of it away from the USA in Bolivia and Germany, and only in our country for the times my father went to Vietnam. I missed much of the American Pie era, and by the time Woodstock came, I was working after school and on weekends to have jeans and afford anything. Eventually, I could only be a Yippee, a working hippy, which led to my being titled the Willy Wonka of Tiny Houses. I wonder why?
As I decide what to do for the next few decades, I want to travel again after 20 years of not leaving my homemade ashram to where I was dedicated to doing what it would take to show what Salvage thinking can Create. This will become an embassy for salvage learning and growing intentional communities. Still, the time has come to pay off the lingering debts, empty the buildings, and take them down to transform them into many homes, community houses, libraries, and other parts of tiny intentional communities that I believe will evolve. I feel it is being driven by the separation between those who want babies exposed to technology from birth, cellphones, TV, and public schools that do not seek to create all geniuses by maximizing potential instead of quieting those who excel get bored by being unchallenged and want to learn more.
I finished college and came to Texas, living in a School bus conversion in 1984, believing Big Brother was much further from our front door than the book foretold by that time. I had $640 to my name, a dream to make a million so I could write without worrying about making it pay. Say what I had to say. It took nearly 30 more years of higher priorities, of being a father, working endlessly to make the millions it truly took to get freed, but in the 25th year, I lost my son, my identity, and my drive to succeed financially for the sake of leaving my legacy. It’s been a while, though the time went fast, and my sabbatical from business will likely last, so I must divest myself from things I saved to build my dreams; too many for one man, and so I plan to share and then will see. What will others do with the treasure I found as I hunted on the days when there were not many other salvagers around?
Since then, everything has changed, and I am not happy with the products our society is manifesting at this stage. I think I will continue dropping out to form again, but to do so this time, I will have to clear some shelves, free up cash to cancel debts and leave a trust that can teach others this stuff with what Wii can put together on the way. Wii are the ones who can see that the need is here and clear. Tinier healthy houses that could be transported or stay near, but for all the best reasons, built sustainably, are clear. NO imports or Toxins were constructed into the home to start, but seasoned wood and windows that stood the test of a hundred years and prove that they are still apparent, not a single one fogged up, and the energy saved by not making glass every few years is far more than the E-glass is worth. I swear that in the last eleven years of living in my Tantra Temple, the discipline of my salvage-minded lifestyle has paid off with a youthful body and mind.
There are so many ways to create new housing, and I have proven it can be done with as much as 95% Pure Salvage, and look beautiful, be fun, and last throughout a lifetime through the cold and heat of our hottest sun. Please consider sharing and promoting Outposts Co-ops in your town to teach the others who want to build these fantastic tiny homes and larger ones that will work when done for the gatherings and more, the community that works together and becomes more robust and confident, empowered for the skills and the respect thanks to the elders knowing how people built houses in the past, a genuinely unmatched treasure trove. Can the people see the ways to make our way into a phase where the cost of housing drops because we change the way we create it all? Stop the madness of McMansions and concrete on the ground instead of lawns, let gardens flourish, and reduce the hunger for all.
This is part of the Pure Salvage Living ethos that seeks to show how to grow a community from the treasures right on hand instead of importing unhealthy products from the pollution to the chemicals that they bring for you to inhale. It’s nasty, but the profits are good enough for marketing, shipping across oceans, and paying those who carry and sell parts. Why not cut out all that stuff and salvage mine or build with the parts and pieces all around, like we once did and could still do? Few remember when we built with salvage materials, but the national code created by the lumber barons forced the new construction to use only new wood, thus the death toll. The salvage business died, and they thought it went to Hell, but the cost of the alternatives has opened up the door.
Rather than one guy working 80-100 hours to make millions over a couple of decades, I recommend using the opportunity for salvage to benefit many people working together rather than one and splitting most of the profits up with those who do the work. The employee model needs to be put to death, and a path to producing to get paid, and if you produce more and better, get paid more and better because that is how it is established, not wait for a raise. The more people who build an organization and make a great living, the more significant that industry can grow. There is so little competition for building quality and tinier housing than the giant subdivisions that want giant profits and work with banks that do not want tiny loans. I worked my son’s childhood away to create a legacy he did not live to see and to learn there is a better way to live and manifest this dream. It can not be done alone, but with hundreds given the chance, the good people who will be honest and create art houses for those they love and care about for all the right reasons. They will do well as the demand exceeds any hope of the supply coming along unless local Co-ops form to teach easy new skills to the masses who do not have them due to losing jobs they had for decades, leaving them without hope of finding the same again, especially if over 50.
Anyone can build tiny organic houses that will give them and others excellent shelter and a home to live in until the day they die. Extra houses for the others in your life can be nearby, as many as seven on an acre, and hardly see each other with gardens to share and other spaces like the library for Wifi or other gatherings. A big kitchen and place for relatives and friends to visit but not for the masses to fill in the beautiful space left for the birds, beavers, otters, fish, possums, and other critters of nature living alongside. Chickens for eggs, animals that feed on the grasses and leaves, each giving back to balance out what we need to create a tiny community. A model is what I dreamed of, but where and how to do, except to now sell nearly all to pay off the land and build what Wii can do, the few that choose to steward Salvage, Texas when I am gone and inhabit it when back from traveling to share this lifelong song.
I sing the Song of Salvage, the one I shall pass on to the voices and the hands of those passionate about going on and saving the best to create the nests that our families can live on. Please consider sharing and suggest that others buy the parts and create Co-ops so that others can build nearby and carry on this legacy that I have no one to give life to except the generation my son lived in for a while. He left his version in a song of the Poem I wrote just before he was gone. It was not produced to be a global star, and the creator of the music died in Paris, so it is just a song to share where no one gets rich or cares if others are willing to carry on and create more versions of the Song of Salvage before I am gone. Some will mock my work and think it does not mean much on the scale of all the housing needed. I agree that this is just a niche, but what it offers could be a way for some to live organically and have their houses made from the cells of giant trees in stasis, with them loving and still communicating.
Live in a wooden house instead of concrete or glass, and see if you do not sleep. Live much better, grounding through your feet with glass handblown to let light in and protect you from the storms. Unlike all the other choices that often lead to strife, why not live in a luxury that is truly built with simplicity and the promise it will last for life? Renting leads to nowhere but its true most have to do unless you leave the city life and change your future route, it will be hard to live that dream or ever get a start. Share with others who can do and prep the country life for you to join later and help to form the intentional community that may become the norm for the people who want to stay free of dictates and possible wars.
Once again, the New Year comes, and I face the leap that requires me to give up the luggage from the past and leap the Chasm that comes ahead. This challenge has come: the choice to go back or forward again. Join Mii in sharing the bounty of my past and help me feel free, knowing I stewarded with care the solutions that so many need now that the times have come at last. This is part of what I saw so long ago in dreams, yet now it is my reality, and this is what I have to give. I came to do what must be done and believe Wii will have won when it is done. Keep the faith no matter how hard the leap may be to become the best that you can ever be.
See the light and leap with faith to become the star and lead. Grow the Outpost for those who choose to live out where the animals and birds share the trees and still fresh air. Join Mii in developing the places to leap to once the others see the Chasm must have leaped to reach their Truths. Prepare the path, be the example, and let everyone know that the path you pick to grow solutions is the best that Wii can show without Global Intervention and their corporate feeding codes. Build with DC, use the sun and wind to live near free, by building livable houses without turning on the AC. There is so much to learn that can be done to create a better world. This is what I wish to leave, may you share and live well too. It could have ended long ago, but an Earthworm changed how things would go. Who knew God could look like anything with no rules?
Wii can come so far to do so much and become what Wii can not imagine when young. Do not fear change, but always consider being different is a way to live well, not just normally. I plan to free up the opportunity to establish a trust with the funds generated from the Living Estate Sale; even if it is my favorite thing in life, I am hoping that together with others who love salvage building, Wii will get it into the right hands before I am done.
Savor the dayz kids.