Working at the House on the Rock (Before I Knew What I Was Seeing)
Another adventure
I was still in high school when I worked at the House on the Rock on Sundays. At that age, a job is just a job. You show up, do what you’re told, collect a minimum-wage paycheck, and move on. I didn’t expect it to be anything more than that.
The work itself was ordinary enough. I directed cars in the parking lot and helped watch the house as people passed through. Some routines didn’t take long to learn, long hours on your feet, and the quiet understanding that you were there to keep things moving. Visitors came and went in a steady stream, wide-eyed and curious, trying to take it all in. For them, it was a destination. For those of us working there, it was just where we spent our days.
But even then, something about the place felt different. There were the smells — old wood, dust, and countless antiques — and the constant sound of the carousel and the motorized musical automaton bands. Not dramatic or frightening… or maybe just a little. Mostly, it felt off in a way I didn’t know how to describe. The scale of it all — the old guns, the dolls, and endless collections of things. Rooms that seemed to lead into other rooms, without any obvious end. The feeling that the place had been built according to an internal logic that wasn’t fully shared with the rest of the world.
As a young man, I didn’t question it much. You assume adults know what they’re doing. You assume there’s a plan. If something doesn’t make sense, you figure that’s on you.
Working there meant seeing parts of the House most visitors never noticed. Hallways that weren’t meant to be admired. Spaces that existed only to support what the public saw. The illusion was held together by a lot of unseen structure. That alone was a quiet education — learning how much of what people experience depends on what they never see.
It was during that time that I met Alex Jordan.
I don’t remember a dramatic introduction. No speech. No announcement. Just the sense that when he was present, the air shifted slightly. People noticed. Conversations adjusted. You could tell, even without understanding why, that this was the person around whom everything revolved.
He would fly over the area in his plane from home and land at the airport near where Rule Excavating is now, by the Don Q Inn. From there, he would drive in. I remember noticing that he had a telephone mounted on the dash of his car — non-working, of course — but it made a statement.
At the time, I didn’t think in terms like genius, visionary, or eccentric. Those are labels you apply later, once history has done some sorting. To me, he was simply the man who had imagined all of this into being. That alone was enough to set him apart.
I had heard the story of how, when he first began building, he carried materials up onto the rock on his own back. What started as a personal getaway eventually became something people wanted to see. Then came admission, and then growth — steady, relentless, and unlike anything else around it.
What struck me most was not anything he said, but the fact that the House itself seemed to speak for him. Every corridor, every collection, every deliberate excess felt like part of an ongoing conversation — one that hadn’t ended just because the doors were open to the public.
Still, I was young. I didn’t analyze it too much. I didn’t try to decode what I was seeing. I had homework, farm work, and the quiet impatience of someone who hasn’t yet learned that moments don’t always announce their importance.
Looking back now, I realize I was standing inside something that required more life experience than I had at the time. Some places ask more of you than attention. They ask for perspective — and that takes years.
I didn’t have the words then. I barely noticed the questions forming. But they were there, waiting. And they would come back to me much later, when I finally had the distance to see what I had been near.
My next one will be about what I noticed years later about the House on the Rock.