Taking the Tour, Part 3

The two other houses I toured yesterday included this Bed & Breakfast that has recently undergone a change of management. The three suites upstairs are beautifully appointed. If anyone needs a place to stay in Bastrop, this looks like a good choice.

This second of the two was just across the street from the restored Victorian shown in the previous post. I kept wondering why I did not remember this house and grabbed an opportunity to quiz one of the docents. He explained that it had been moved to that lot from a lot that was now the parking area for the public library and that the second story was a new addition to the original building.

That's when it hit me that this lovely house started life as the old falling-down house that sat behind the Episcopal Church and was owned by a hippie couple back in the days I had known it. Before its current incarnation, the dog trot was still open to the back yard and I had sat on that wide porch and interviewed the owner for a college project in about 1975. He was a character who had a substantial income from inheritance, but you would never have known it by looking at him. My purpose in interviewing him was in connection with a research project for my marketing class. He owned an antique store downtown and my project involved determining the climate for a new antiques business in a small, historic town like Bastrop.

The house sat boarded up for a long time after the couple moved away and the property was eventually tapped for the library's parking lot. I had presumed the house had been razed. As it turns out, a local couple who has made a hobby of buying old tumble-down houses, moving them to new locations and restoring them worked their magic again. This one they chose for their own residence and still live there.

You would never guess this was the same house. Some people have vision and can create works of art from someone else's discards.

LSW