August 2020 – Loogootee, Indiana

Just a short drive down the road from the Dodson Family Camp in Loogootee is quite an interesting place and person to visit. Bill Larkin lives in a geodesic dome house and absolutely loves to build birdhouses, and I mean LOVES to build birdhouses.

The yard around Bills home is literally covered with birdhouses of all shapes and sizes and those are accentuated by loads and loads of brilliantly painted rocks and various sorts of statues. It is an annual field trip for us when we are back home again in Indiana. This year, Eric, Jody, Jude, and Brody went along with us. I think the grandboys were overwhelmed, to say the least.

In addition to the huge display around the outside of Bill’s house, the inside is also festooned with birdhouses and thousands of twinkling Christmas lights. Bill always gets a kick out of watching the kid’s eyes light up when he claps his hands loudly and the house is filled with the sounds of chirping birds coming from hundreds of mechanical birds spread throughout his house.

Bill hosts visitors to his small home on a nearly daily basis, including busloads of tourists who have heard about his display somehow. He not only does not charge a penny to visit, but he also gives all his visitors a small hand-painted birdhouse to take with them as a memento of their visit.

I would say that Bill Larkin is certainly a “one of a kind” fellow. At least I do not know of anyone else who is so steeped in a similar life mission and he seems happy about life in general.

(I enjoyed this video that someone put together a couple of years back and posted on YouTube.)