No Strings Attached: Sleeping In

child of ten would run round the house and look at the trees, and the implement sheds, and sit in the old car in the garage, and climb the bales of hay in the barn, and try to see everything all the first five minutes. They would rush up the stairs of the new house and look into every room, and slide down the banister, and shout about what they had found and there would be very few secrets left.

But Mick MacMackie was not that sort of boy. He was a ho-hum, pass-the-sweets, can-I-tum-the-TV-on, life's-boring sort of kid. He couldn't care less whether the house had one room or one hundred rooms. He didn't want to know if the farm was alive with rabbits and streams and trees to climb, or whether there were tracks to follow, and caves to look into. All he was interested in was a good place to lie down and something to eat and what was on TV, and well ho-hum do I need to say more?

His father lugged the furniture into the house and set things in order, while Mick made himself comfortable in the living-room. He lay on the couch and chewed on some gum while his father climbed about on the roof, trying to set the aerial in place. He yawned and threw his gum-wrapper across the room as his father plugged the TV in and tuned it correctly. And when everything was going properly, Mick asked his father what he could expect to eat for lunch.

And after lunch, Mick lay on the couch until evening and had his tea, or dinner, as some people like to call it, then he went to his bedroom and got into bed without bothering to change into pajamas, and there he slept, as peaceful as a cow in a sunny paddock, with a mouth full of daisies and a warm skin, until the next day.

But the path of life doesn't always run smoothly, and the very next day Mick MacMackie's father, worn out from carrying everything, and suffering from a number of diseases which he found difficult to pronounce, collapsed and died.

The funeral went very well, and a small crowd of hungry guests helped clean up the food at the reception afterwards, then the matter of the house came up and several bright-eyed real estate agents suggested that they try to sell it for whatever they could get. The lawyers were consulted, the will forgotten, and the bidding began the next day.

The house was sold for a few hundred dollars to a collector of old houses. Mr. Jamie Blavitt drove up to inspect it in great detail the same day and decided that, rather than repair it where it was, he would completely dismantle it and fix it at a place nearer to where he lived. This would, of course, mean cutting the house into sections and transporting it, like a huge jig-saw puzzle, down the road and into the far-away town