The Cliff House

For weeks expensive flyers have been showing up around Branson beckoning the public to show up at a "no reserve auction" at which a multi-million dollar trophy house will be sold in early September.  Today was an "open house" at which those of us planning on attending the auction might get a careful look at the muti-level posh digs of someone who indeed had built an extraordinary residence out off of Fall Creek Road on a bluff overlooking the upper end of Taneycomo.  Personally, I would have liked to report that I built the house.  I did not.  It was one of those precipice dwellings where expensive windows are can til eve red  from walls rising hundreds of feet above sheer cliffs and the interior is all about spacious marble trimmed in teak.  I would not like to report that I had commissioned such a residence to be constructed, even at what would have been a lesser cost during the 70's or 80's when, I guess, the project took place.  It was just so poorly scaled for any lifestyle that might actually reside at the house.  Coughing up the presumed $1,000,000 plus price will be nothing in comparison to the  new owners anguish in keeping this place in reasonable condition.  He/She will have to hire a full time person to hire and fire a procession of "opportunistic residential services professionals" necessary for the place to just stay habitable; not to mention that it will then still be on a marginal subdivision street lined with modest ranch houses, many of which are vacant, in of course, Branson.

 I can imagine two story lines  behind The Cliff House.  The first is that I hope that it was not the life long dream of someone who loved what they had imagined and made a reality, only to be forced to leave it behind when they could no longer sustain the economic "tug-of-war" necessary to "finish at home".  Second, I hope that it was but a thing conceived by a distant architect in response to some rich dude's whim commission, and that indeed, it was never really anyones home.  Either way,  The Cliff House was a rather sad expression on a beautiful early fall day.