2003-07-21 - 11:54 p.m. - the self-cleaning house tour

"PLEASE DON’T TRAMPLE THE POISON OAK OR FEED THE BULL" was the sign that greeted us at the fence to the yard of the self-cleaning house. Ole, Ole – wasn’t the running with the bulls yesterday??? There were no bulls to be seen and there seemed to be just dried out grass that lead up towards the house.

An elderly woman sitting by the window beckoned us to come. Her name is Grace Gabe and she is the inventor, builder and current resident of the world’s only self-cleaning house. And to think that it’s less than an hour’s drive from Portland in a town called Newberg! Given that I don’t have much money to travel very far this summer, and given that Chuck Palahnuik just came out with a guide to Portland, I plan on investigating as many odd-ball places as possible that are written about in the guide book. This house is the first.

I was with four friends of mine and we arrived at our scheduled tour hour of 2 p.m. We made our way up to the door, and her dog, Molly, a cute black mixed breed, had to first sniff us for a while so she (the dog) would know we were welcomed into the house and were not there to clean the self-cleaning house. That would just be so wrong.

We first entered a small family room – it was suppose to have been the dining room, but since the rest of the house hadn’t been finished, it was substituting as the family room. The first thing you notice are the walls – they are made of concrete blocks – larger versions of the ones you used to hold the shelves of your self made book case in college. The large openings were covered on both sides with Plexiglas to let light through, and in the space between the two pieces of Plexiglas in some of the openings were little knickknacks – forever clean, yet trapped in their little space and staring at the plastic skies.

Grace had put a special finish on the wood and fabric coverings of the furniture to make it waterproof. She also had waterproofed the electronics so the only thing you had to remove when it came time to clean the room was the rug. A sprinkler head rests in the middle of the ceiling and when you turn it on, it showers water all over everything. Add a little soap through a special pipe in the plumbing and you had suds galore. The soap run ends and the water continues to spin out through the sprinkler to rinse everything. Because the floor is slanted slightly, all the water runs out the fireplace into the valley. She didn’t get into this detail, but Chuck’s book describes the drying process as the simple step of turning on the heat and a blower. Presto – everything is washed and cleaned. She said at the moment, it isn’t working in the family room – only in the kitchen. The "spring break" earthquake that happened in the late 90’s caused some damage in the roof, and when the contractors came to fix it, they didn’t do it according to her specifications and so presently it isn’t waterproofed.

Some decorative large jars had special grooves at their mouths, right under their lids so water wouldn’t be able to leak into them. It keeps things like sugar and other items waterproof yet still easily accessible.

She said when it was working, she would run it about once a month or so. Some people would have to do it a lot more if they had young children or a lot more people who would cause the house to become dirtier quicker.

The kitchen system still worked, and she had installed special cabinets with plastic grating for shelves so the water could run over the dishes and out of the cupboards. She asked me to push this button on a piece of Plexiglas by one of the openings in the cinder block walls. When I pushed, the Plexiglas opened to the outside – it was the "garbage disposal" – the can was just below the "window" and would collect any garbage you threw out. The floor was cleaned by water shooting out tiny holes in a PVC pipe that ran along the floor under the counter.

She had a couple of interesting tables – one was made of extra wooden pieces that the forest services was suppose to not throw out but somehow use. Another table had a top that was a mosaic she had made of various gemstones. It, too, had a layer of Plexiglas on top to protect it. She said that whenever people came across things they didn’t know what to do with, they’d bring it to her…"Grace will find a use for it!"

I was allowed to take pictures of anything but the patent she had of the house design hanging on the wall in the family room. If I had any computer literacy, I’d post them here, but then again, the most interesting part of the trip was not so much the house, but Grace herself.

She told us that her stepmother hated her, so her father took her to work with him from the time she was two years old. He owned and ran a construction company, so by watching, she learned a lot. Later one when she was married and on her own, she and her husband started their own construction company. She went on and on about he would always be calling her asking her questions about stuff and often she’d have to go out to the site and fix the problems he had created. She eventually go so annoyed with him that she asked him to leave. But because he was so helpless without her and the fact that she felt sorry for him, she let him live in a trailer on her property. Despite her instructions to leave her alone at the house, he was always coming and knocking on the door for one thing or another. I asked her why she married him in the first place. "I was only 17 – I didn’t know any better at the time! And he kept asking and asking and asking me!"

When Grace was a little older, she asked an aunt of hers why her stepmother hated her so much. Her aunt explained that her stepmother didn’t hate her but was jealous about the fact that she could do just about anything. Grace said that many psychiatrists had told her that she was one of the most brilliant people on the planet – the world was hers for the taking. Her IQ must have be off the charts.

When she first started talking about the construction of the house, she said that it was God that was telling her what to do. She also had a couple of angels who would help her, but it was God – not Jesus Christ – he’s just the son of God but not God, telling her what to do next. She said all’s she had to do was listen. She said if we would all just shut up and learn to listen, we’d be able to hear Him, too. I started to think, "Oh boy, this is going to be a Holy Roller type of deal – what have I gotten us into??" But she didn’t go on to much longer about that. It does make me wonder, though…..

She has a couple of scrap books in which she has newspaper clippings dating back to the 70’s when her house was in the design mode but not yet built. She also has notes about the hundreds and hundreds of radio interviews she has done over the phone. She also has made numerous television appearances – she used to go to the station, but now they come here to the house since she cannot move far without the assistance of her wheelchair. When my friend went to pick up one of the scrapbooks, Grace yelled at him for not holding it the right way because a few clippings were starting to slide out. Now my friend is 58, and he is the type of person who is always joking and teasing people (in a fun-loving way); to hear him get yelled at by this woman was enough to get me ready to fall over laughing. It was all I could do to suppress it.

The other incidence of suppressed laughter occurred when she gently slapped the hand of my other friend who was touching the pages in her scrapbooks after she had already told him to keep his hands off. "The oil in your hands will ruin the pages!" We joked later that his hands were self-cleaning. My third friend got reprimanded for not stacking the magazines correctly on the table – "straighten out the one of the bottom – it’s crooked and the pile will fall over!" There were only two of us, myself included, who did not get yelled at or gently slapped. Grace does not have much patience for types like us, but for the most part, she was a most gracious host, and her eccentricities made her all the more endearing. Needless to say, it was a most interesting afternoon.

The evening was topped off with poetry reading with another set of friends – it felt like icing the cake and a wonderful way to end such an interesting day.

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