The House on Haunted Hill- loss and redemption*

 * There's no redemption really, but when you go to a third or fourth sequel, you really need something to grab the audience's attention to get them in the seats. What this is really about is loss of treasure and the quest to find more, hey, that's not bad either.

The opening scene: the family is tired of  the constant banging (not the good kind) around the house. The three siding guys are nice and friendly, as friendly as you can be when maybe one speaks english. No matter, their job is good and details like clean up every day are excellent.

Scene two: a flash back to Joe working on the mud room back several years ago and he discovers a horseshoe nailed above the back door. He is concerned because it is nailed pointing down and all the luck is running out of it. He gently pulls it off the cedar shake it's nailed to and dust it off and nails it right side up. The house again has luck, You can feel the luck the horseshoe generates. 

Flash forward to the present, the house construction, it's a Saturday. The guys are ripping off sections of the cedar siding. They move to above the door and work gently around the cheap piece of crap broken Home Depot light, missing the horse shoe and it falls to the deck below in a pile of debris. It's then shoveled into a wheelbarrow which is dumped in the forward section of a thirty yard dumpster (that's a real big one). At end of day the dumpster is a third full. Our hero, Joe (yes, he is a flawed hero, but well suited to his role in this picture) comes home and know he should have removed the horseshoe along with all the other hanging items on the outside of the house, but didn't. 

Sunday morning same scene: Our hero and his faithful companion Nastia trek into the dumpster to look for the horseshoe. The dumpster is only a third full it will be time consuming, but ultimately successful. A gentle rain falls damping the dust of the last few days of construction. They enter the dumpster and start to shift through bits of wood and cardboard. Then disaster strikes our hero's faithful companion Nastia steps on a board with a nail sticking up, oh no, the humanity! Our hero performs field surgery (he pulls the board with the nail from her shoe before she can step down again and drive it into her foot. For all you mommies out there the nail was rusty but didn't puncture the skin ) No need to risk further peril without proof the horseshoe is there. Our heros exit the dumpster. He texts Empire Construction and is assured that the horseshoe is safe.

Scene three: the big twist(dahnnn, dahnnn, dahhhhh that's foreboding music) At six-thirty our hero receives a text telling him the treasure is missing and had never been in the possession of the Empire Construction people. (oh a back breaking twist!!) Devastated (really just a touch sad) our hero races home (when you can do 80 on the thruway during rush hour who wouldn't) to be confronted by a completely full dumpster. The Empire boys had been earning their dough that day!! A distraught (really just sad)  Joe texts Empire construction and tells them the bejeweled horseshoe (really if it was that valuable you might have considered taking it down in the first place.) must be found. Dead silence is their response. 

The scene shifts to Monday morning, it's late August the mornings are starting cool and The Empire Construction boys arrive a little before eight. The foreman and another climb the dumpster's side. Our hero witnesses this and has been convinced the historical artifact is gone and will never be found by his loving and loyal wife (played to perfection by Ms Theresa Ann Muller, boy has her name gone WASP. We'll have to change her stage name to reflect the intensity she brings to life and her role in this drama She will forever be known, at least in this drama as......Mona Lisa Vito and we'll get Marisa Tomei to play her in the movie version- My Cousin Vinny reference) Our hero treks out to the two prospective dumpster divers to tell them their mission has been scrubbed. The treasured horseshoes long stay on this house has ended. It's existence has been scrubbed clean from the house. No one except our faithful readers will know of it ever existed over the door of in this neighborhood, in this state. How long it

reigned over the doorway can only be guessed. The Mudroom was made with round nails, but full sized two by fours. The foundation was not poured as much as just slopped together. It was most likely put up originally as a temporary structure. I would ballpark the construction to maybe sometime in the late 40's early 50's. We cut down a pine tree on the northside of the porch when we moved in in 2004. I counted the rings and it dated to 1948, so that is the date I use for changes like the addition to the kitchen, the addition of the mudroom and the back bedroom upstairs. For a ballpark estimate I think that works.

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