Baird

Fernandina Beach Public Library
December 6, 2005

A great benefit of this life style is that we get to meet so many nice people and so many interesting ones. Most interesting are the free spirited nonconformists. Come to think of it, we qualify for that description now. At home in West Charlton there is only one person I know who I would call free-spirited, nonconformist and unpredictable. I won't say who, guess yourself.

This weekend we met a truly interesting free spirit here in Fernandina Beach, his name is Baird. Baird is single. He has a 40 foot ketch. He has a history of building unconventional houses. He says that he is the king of straw bale house construction. He says he built a three storey house in Taos New Mexico entirely from glass shower doors that he bought from Good Will for $1 each. Baird said that the Taos house was featured in Cosmopolitan Magazine in 1985.

Today, Baird lives in a shack that he designed and built himself. For starters he bought a two acre lot of land at the end of a dead end street in a bad neighborhood. That make the property cheap. The lot is beautiful. It is densely wooded with palms, live oaks, pecan trees, and exotic tropical species I don't know. One side of the lot fronts a salt marsh, that's part of the estuary.

Baird's shack is 16x20 feet, a single room surrounded by covered porches on all four sides. It's completely charming. A resort hotel would call it a jungle bungalow and charge a fortune to rent it. The jungle comes right to the edges of the shack. He has a non-attached bathroom. Baird built the foundation from telephone poles. He built the doors and the windows. The sinks and toilet are made from brightly colored Mexican pottery. Everything about the house is original, and unique and charming.

Behind the house is a 20x40 building Baird built as a workshop. He earns his living doing projects for people.

Baird should have built his house in Sedona, Arizona, or Oregon. If he built it in Fairbanks, it would fit right in with the typical iconoclast architecture. In Florida, on the waterfront things are different. Baird ran afoul of City Hall. He had no permits, not environmental impact statement, and he ignored each and every building code ever invented. The city of Fernandina Beach had no mercy for Baird. Someone else could have built a multimillion dollar palace on that land and generated lots of taxes.

The city is cutting off Baird's electricity and water and boarding up his house tomorrow. They treated him like dirt. Baird has little hope of stopping it. Baird will have to adopt our life style and live aboard his boat. I'm sure the free style of the cruising life will appeal to him, but he'll be limited in the number of building projects he can do to satisfy his creativity. A realtor told him that the land might be worth as much as a million dollars if the buildings were bulldozed. I hope he succeeds in getting it.

What a dirty shame that our modern world is so hostile to free spirits.

p.s. This is project week. We replaced a chain plate. We refinished the bowsprit. We're installing a cabin heater (that's what Libby wanted for her birthday.) We're also spending a bundle to have a new dodger and a bimini and sunshade made. It's a lot of money but Tarwathie is our home. We need those things to live in the extremes of hot and cold weather.