"Still Mine"
A little film that will touch your heart
Living in a hand built home, I especially related to the small gem of a movie “Still Mine”.
Chuck and I might be considered pack rats with all the old house parts we’ve collected over the years! When we sold our last “handmade home” and moved across the fenceline, we used our log cabin as the anchor building, a living room and upstairs bedroom.
We added a stone kitchen to the back and a covered porch to take advantage of the hilltop view in the front.
We still have plans and the foundation ready to go for a grand master bedroom and library, someday. I have “prayed circles” around that concrete pad, but it seems that the time is not yet right. We’ll still climb the narrow stairs up to our cozy bedroom.
By building one section at a time, we have not signed a mortgage, literally, the Old French derivative of “death pledge”since it takes just that long to pay it off most mortgages.
“Still Mine” tells the true story of an 87 year old farmer and his struggle to build a handmade home on their 2000 acres, better suited for he and his wife’s changing needs. He is shocked to learn he needs a permit and numerous inspections on his own land that has been passed down for generations. Unreasonable and intrusive bureaucracy, standing on the letter of the law, not on the spirit that it was based, combine in an epic struggle.
With the world has changing around them, Craig ( James Cromwell ) worries about their future. Their seven children have decided they want mom and dad to move into a retirement home where they will be safe since Irene ( Geneviève Bujold ) is gradually developing Alzheimers.
Craig is steadfast in his goal to care for his beloved wife of 61 years, and they both want to finish life together on their own terms, surrounded by friends and family, who all voice their own ideas.
Every corner that Craig turns, he runs into road blocks and unrelenting red tape, Even selling his handpicked strawberry crop, as he has for his whole life, is a fight. Caring for Irene and patiently dealing with her memory loss is exhausting. All of these challenges are exacerbated by the ridiculous rules and regulations of a governmental building department that represents the audacity and arrogance of typical bureaucratic individuals who - because they can and because of their power - lose sight of their purpose.
“ A professional home builder, Raymond Debly, volunteered to do an independent inspection. He determined that the house exceeded the requirements of the National Building Code. It was “built like a fort.” The lumber, old-growth spruce, was superior to any lumber on the market. “Some stamped lumber,” he said, “shouldn’t be used to build a doghouse.” The floors were double strength. “You could walk an elephant across them.” And the trusses were fine. “They were built the old-fashioned way,” said Mr. Debly, himself 80, “the way we did it in the ’60s.”
At one point the daughter helpfully suggests that Craig call her husband to help him finish the framing, in “two or three weeks”. Craig replies, he doesn’t care if help would make it faster, he WANTS to be out in the sunshine cutting and hammering or in his shop waxing his custom crafted timber doors
Isn’t that the way it is? Somehow your kids try to become the parents… the Bible says it like this:
John 21:18 (NIV): “Very truly I tell you, when you were young you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.”
Rotten Tomatoes gave “Still Mine” a rating of 93%, which I think it deserves. We did fast-forward one scene where it looked like they might be heading to nudity (gratuitous and unnecessary for the plot), and there was distressing profanity which really distracted from the story. And I just discovered it on Angel Studios which has probably been edited, so check out their version.
It was our quest over many years to own our little slice of heaven, and we want to stay without anyone telling us we can’t. After living in California and experiencing, firsthand, government officialdom run amok, we were happy to come home to Texas, outside the city jurisdiction where there are NO building permits, only well and septic permits.
We have plans and the foundation for a large master bedroom/ bath and sunroom on the first level, more convenient for graceful aging. The barn is another unfinished project with plenty of room for a sunny apartment upstairs and an art studio on the “cowside “ as we call it.
Things aren’t perfect, my laundry room is a stroll past the horses in the barnyard and closet space is limited, but it’s ours!
Start small! Go with a home that you can finish, then add in sections as you can afford it, hopefully with little or no debt.
Hold fast to dreams,
For if dreams die,
Life is a broken-winged bird
That cannot fly.
Hold fast to dreams,
For when dreams go,
Life is a barren field
Frozen with snow.”
(Adapted from Langston Hughes)
Share the news!
Grand advice! Start small and build as you have the money and time. Thanks for the movie recommendation, too!
I've watched that movie and, as a former rural County Commissioner that fought the mindless bureaucracy, understood completely how stupid we have become as a culture anchored in arbitrary rules and regulations that accomplish nothing but control over people that are perfectly capable of running their own lives without the "help" of a technocrat. God Bless you and Chuck for tackling a hand built home so late in life. I look at our hand built log home and know for a fact that I would have zero chance of ever replicating the work that took me 2 years of 12 hour days 6 days a week to build when I was still in my 40s. I love your tenacity and the genuine goodness of your souls!!