Winnie-go-house

The title of this blog post may be confusing -- you may be thinking, didn't she mean Winnie the Pooh? Or... something else? Actually, what I should have called it was "Wizard of Oz House" but Winnie-go-house is what the twins call it, so I'll call it that too.

Winnie-go-house is a large interesting house at the corner of Downs and Church Streets in Ridgecrest. It's red, shaped like a caboose -- I've heard it called the Caboose House, so maybe it even really is a caboose? Or it's a caboose attached to a regular house? Anyway, it's interesting all by itself, but around Halloween each year, or at least last year and this year, which is all we know about, the owners transform it into a Wizard of Oz fantasy. And it stays up past New Year's! They put up lights, and lighted signs that say "OZ" and set up life-size figures of the characters from the book/movie. Last year the figures were all on the roof of the house, but this year only Glinda, the good witch, and the Wicked Witch of the West (who I can't help calling Elphaba, from Wicked) are on the roof. Dorothy (with Toto in basket) and the Scarecrow are on one side of the yard, and on the other side you've got the Lion in a tree and the Tin Woodman beneath him, with a Flying Monkey in another tree, and yet another version of the Wicked Witch/Elphaba inside a house.

I worried about the figures last year, sure that our terrible winds were going to blow them off the roof. They never did blow down, but I wonder whether the homeowners thought they'd be safer down below and that's why they moved them. Or maybe they just wanted to expand the decorations in their yard.



I have to apologize for the quality of these photos -- my camera doesn't take very good night photos. I should take some daytime shots and add them to the post later. I'll have no trouble finding the time to do this, because the twins and I drive by Winnie-go-house EVERY FRIGGING DAY, usually two or three times. Every time we get in the car they start yelling "Winnie-go-house! Winnie-go-house!" The homeowners must think we're planning something nefarious, the way we're around all the time.

I shouldn't complain. I love the house too. I never get enough of it (though I think that this year, by New Year's, I will have had enough of it). I play the CD of Wicked as we drive by.

I can't help wondering why the local newspapers don't do a big story on the house. Even if they've done them in past years (and I do remember a very short, uninformative article last year), the display is different this year, so why not do an update? And fill us in, we newcomers, on what the heck is going on with the house. Why do the homeowners do it? Do they just love L. Frank Baum's work?

Sadly, though, the local papers (especially the daily paper) never seem to cover what's interesting, and they NEVER NEVER NEVER fill in the blanks for those of us who just got here. I remember soon after we moved to Ridgecrest the local paper started writing stories about the closure of a local housing development? apartment building? some kind of place where people live -- called La Mirage. Never did they say where this group of dwellings was. It was at least a year after the whole mess was resolved that I finally stumbled across La Mirage -- former base housing converted to low-rent housing. Of course everyone who's lived here for years and years knew that already, but I didn't.

But I'm not the Daily Independent's intended reader. I read the paper obsessively, but it is not written for me. Nor is the News Review intended for me. Still, I wish one or both of them would write about Winnie-go-house. I'd love to know more about how this enchantingly goofy house came to be.