The Incredible 25,000-Gallon House

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I thought, on first reading the advertisements, that one of the containers might make an ideal homestead irrigation reservoir. But the asking price was $3,000 . . . which was well above what our budget could bear. So I forgot the whole issue until about a month after we'd moved, when I saw an ad again. This time only one tank was advertised . . . for $3,000 or best offer. Kaye and I figured $1,500 would be a fair price, and—much to our surprise—the bid was accepted. That's when our troubles really began!

The entire gigantic cask had to be loaded (somehow) piece by piece and (someway) transported across Oahu's mountains to the docks in Honolulu where somebody (me) had to put the boards on a barge (with no help), strap them in secure bundles, and ship the entire ponderous cargo 200 miles to our island . . . where—you guessed it—the whole board'by-board process had to be reversed until the clanged thing finally ended up on our property. Auwë! (That's the Hawaiian equivalent of "Oh, brother!")

I'll spare you the horror-by-horror description of the two days I spent getting the chore accomplished. I won't tell how I felt when I arrived to pick up my purchase, only to find a stack of insect-eaten planks festering in the damp confines of a banana orchard . . . nor will I relate how I trekked, late at night, across Oahu's rainy high country in a rented flatbed truck piled high with unwieldy lumber. I won't even burden you with the story of the countless hours I spent getting the shipment off my vehicle, onto the boat, and prepared for transport.

What I will say is that I never could have got the job done without the help of some good-hearted people—such as the sellers, who lent me a hand with the initial loading and gave me some spare slats—and without Lady Luck herself . . . who seemed to intervene in my behalf at just the right time (such as when I ran into a friend who just happened to have a banding machine that I could use to package the planks). And then there was my neighbor Harvey, who spared me much work by very graciously contributing his time, his ten-wheel-drive logging truck, and his forklift . . . to help me move the cargo off the barge and up a 2,500-foot rise to my property.

After that, I spent an entire week shuttling back and forth in my old pickup . . . toting precariously balanced loads of components—braces, beams, flooring, ribs, and bands—farther up our inclining acreage to a spot next to our camper.

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