The biggest thing going on at Marylake this winter is the construction of a new house across the street from the Monastery. Back in the '80s, after our groundskeeper Jess Spann died, I invited Bob Pilkington to move into Jess' house up the hill from the Monastery. Bob married Mary Lou, [here they are in their new garage] and they had two children, Julie and Robert. Bob has dreamed for years of building a house of his own. We had a house, perhaps we should call it a shack, on the other side of the street from the monastery. It had been there since God knows when. In the '30s club days, they called it "the Bull's Pen," because while the ladies were socializing in the Country Club, the men would gather across the street and to drink Whiskey and smoke and do all those other things you weren't supposed to do in an Arkansas Christian County like Saline. In the '70s, Ada Faye Gwin and her husband moved into the house. It wasn't much of a home, so they didn't stay long. The last person to live there was Troy Spann's son Shawn. He was not much more than a teenager at the time, and we always suspected he liked the tradition of the old Bull's Pen. The house barely existed for the next ten years, home only to rats and other vermin.

The last use of the place was as a Haunted House for Halloween of 2003. Frs. Bonaventure and Raphael went over to check it out. As they stood in line to get in, the couple in front of them was wondering out loud how spooky the place really was. Precisely the thoughts of Bonaventure and Raphael. One said, "The thing that really spooks me is those guys who live in that monastery across the street." This is the middle of the bible belt, by the way. Catholics are a oddity, especially out here in the rural backroads of Arkansas. Bonaventure chirpped up: "We are those guys! Boo!" Well that put the fear of the Lord in those within earshot as they entered the haunted house right in front of those spooky guys.

Bob finally tore down the shack last year, and about 300 feet to the north, began construction of this new home. Of all the nice features of this home, the one Bob and Mary Lou seem to pin more hopes upon is the two vehicle garage to the left in this photo. It has a big attic Bob has his eyes upon as his hermitage retreat. As I was given a tour of the place this morning, Mary Lou pointed to that attic and called it, "my attic." Uck Oh! I see trouble brewing. I told Bob, "I guess you'll just have to build a Bull's Pen out back."