What, me worry? Flooding a minor inconvenience when your home floats
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| Submitted photo This photo was taken at the river's high-water mark last month. Notice the steel beam, which has the TV dish on it, compared it to how much of the beam was visible this week in the other photo. Although the photos show different ends of the barge, the beams, or "spuds," are about the same length. |
But no. It was a "minor inconvenience," says Stephen Hoffmeyer.
"All I did was party, frog gigging and fishing," he says.Since March, Hoffmeyer, 52, has lived in a 2,000-square-foot house that he built with his own hands. The house is on a 60-foot barge a couple dozen feet from land owned by his buddy, Richard Goslin.
To get to his place, Hoffmeyer offers these directions: "Take Huster Road north until your bumper is sticking out over the water."
Here's why his barge home didn't float away. Two steel beams rise from the riverbed and pass through openings made at each end of the barge. So as the river rose, so did the barge. Hoffmeyer went up as the world around him went under.
Of course, he says, he worried about his neighbors. But his biggest personal disruption was taking his small boat to his truck, parked on dry land a half-mile away. Asian carp would spring from the water and either hit him or cause a ruckus in the boat.
"They're huge," he says. "There's no warning."
In the month before June 28, the day the river crested, Hoffmeyer's house lifted 12 feet. He drew a line on one of the steel beams, or "spuds," to indicate the high-water mark.
At the river's highest point, he had a little more than 6 feet of spud left. He says never worried the water would lift his home free of the spuds. If it got to that, he says, he'd be ready.
"I'd just take out my welder and add more steel," he says.
The same anchoring technique was used when his barge - before he owned it -- was used in Grafton as a place where boaters could refuel. Prior to that, it hauled rocks.
"I was really proud of the way my boat came through all this," he says. "It came through unscathed."
It was a simple design and it worked, he says.
"Sometimes simple is the best," he adds. "Except when you're dealing with a woman."
Perhaps not surprisingly, Hoffmeyer is single. His marriage ended in 1983. There were no children.
"I learned a long time ago I was not cut out for that way of life," he says.
Hoffmeyer has a male renter on the barge, a man who works construction and often is out-of-state.
The only women aboard on this day are mermaid figurines. His house has two stories and his favorite spot is at one end, on the upper deck.
This is where he watches bald eagles and pelicans in winter. This is where he watches Purple Martins skim the water, ridding his "yard" of mosquitoes.
He fishes from here. He drinks beer here. In fact, he cracks open a beer this afternoon. Or two.
And it is from this perch, on summer weekends, that he watches a cavalcade of boaters launch from a small dock. Many are women. Some wear bikinis.
He says he rings the ship's bell to encourage them to take off their tops. Sometimes he is rewarded, he says.
His T-shirt, on this day, reads in part: "All you need in this life is a tremendous sex drive and a great ego."
It's a quote from a guy who owns a Key West bar. That's where he bought the shirt. No, he says, it's not his motto.
Hoffmeyer sits in his favorite spot and recites a poem by Robert Service, who died in 1958 at age 84. Service was known for writing poems about the American West, Alaska and Yukon gold miners. Years ago, Hoffmeyer spent two summers in Alaska, where he fished and panned for gold.
The poem is "The Men Who Wouldn't Fit In." Hoffmeyer delivers it from memory. It is not a short poem. This is the opening:
"There's a race of men that don't fit in,
"A race that can't sit still;
"So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
"And they roam the world at will."
Is that his motto?
"The restless part is," he says.
Hoffmeyer is a union roofer. His father, who died some 10 years ago, was a union carpenter. The son learned many of the skills he needed to build his barge home from his father.
The house has a bathroom and four bedrooms upstairs, including his - the "captain's quarters" -- and a bedroom he calls the "drunk tank." It's for friends unfit to navigate.
Downstairs, there's a pool table in a large room with a river vista. Passing jet skis don't budge the barge. But larger boats do.
Nearby is a poker table Hoffmeyer just made. He has crafted most of the furniture in this home. He has a small workshop on the boat.
His two bathrooms are Coast Guard approved, he says. And he uses river water for drinking water. The water goes through three filters and is treated with ultraviolet light, he says.
He says he has sought and received each and every permit required - from the Coast Guard to the Army Corps of Engineers to St. Charles County.
There's one issue Hoffmeyer won't discuss. He won't reveal how much he paid for the barge or how much he believes his home is worth. He has it insured as a boat, not a residence, and does not have flood insurance.
In his view, because he lives on a federal waterway, he shouldn't have to pay a cent of county taxes. He has acquiesced, to a degree, but plans to resume the debate, he says.
Scott Shipman, the St. Charles County assessor, says that to the best of his knowledge there's no one else like Hoffmeyer in St. Charles County. There are three "boat dock-houses," he says, which are living quarters on docks. Only Hoffmeyer lives on a barge.
The house-barge is on the tax rolls as "personal property" as a boat, not a residence, Shipman says. The county has assigned it a market value of $90,000. As personal property, it is assessed at 33 percent of market value. Residential property is assessed at 19 percent.
Hoffmeyer loves the river.
"It's a big muddy monster and you take what it gives you," he says.
Neighbor Mike Stock can't help but be a bit envious.
"It's kind of neat," he says. "There's no grass to cut."
Six more years to retirement, Hoffmeyer says.
And then what?
"I just plan on traveling to see the world," he says.
Should someone want to buy his unique home, he'll be ready to sell. After all, when you live on a river there are no roots.
"I just like moving," he says. "I just like to go!"
