Modular.

My house — the one that’s to be put up in the side yard — is a little bit unusual.  Outside I can hear the hammers as five men assemble the forms for the basement walls. 

But the house itself is already finished.  The Norse Homes website promises that it enjoys climate-controlled comfort on a factory floor in Ladysmith, Wisconsin, while it awaits its final resting place here in Minneapolis.

Yesterday when the housing inspector pulled up to discuss something or other with the men about to pour the concrete, I popped out to say hello.  Hi.  I’m the homeowner.

The inspector looked from me to the house I’d just come out of to the hole in the ground next door.  Of that one, or that one?

Both.  We split the lot.

He looked down at the plans and muttered, It’s a plop ‘n’ drop.

I knew what he meant.  Everything okay?

That’s just what we call these things, the ones that aren’t stick-built on site.  By carpenters. He looked at me with a tight smile.  I just personally get offended when people take the jobs away from the local carpenters.

I shrugged.  I couldn’t afford it otherwise.  Put a modular home factory in Minneapolis, and I’da hired Minneapolis carpenters.

It’s true.  If it weren’t for the modular housing option, we wouldn’t have built the house, and the five men outside wouldn’t be working on it, and the dozen men who were there yesterday morning wouldn’t have been working on it, and Archie who drove the excavator wouldn’t have dug the hole, and our neighbor Rich wouldn’t have had the chance to bid on our new fence, and whichever local carpenter we hire to build the porch wouldn’t have had that job either.

Anyway, last time I checked, carpenters in Wisconsin needed jobs too.