That's Incredible



 It was 1984, I was making a delivery to the small coastal town of Ozona, Florida, it's population at that time about 300.  I noticed a hand painted sign, "Lot for Sale", on a heavily wooded lot.  Ridge Road, just about a block from the Gulf of Mexico and one of the highest lots in Ozona.

I called the number and talked to Margaret Lawson, a retired teacher and author of many books about living in this part of old Florida.  Her father had left her 10 lots on Ridge Road and the sign was on one of the two lots that she had left.  Linda and I visited her and agreed to buy the highest lot.   Mrs. Lawson offered us the two remaining lots for $18,000.00 or one lot for $10,000.00.  We declined the second lot.  FYI.. there are very few lots left in Ozona now and it would cost over $100,000.00 to buy one.

Next step was to find a builder that would build a house and allow us to do a lot of the work ourselves.  There was a TV show on at that time called "That's Incredible".  We happened to watch a segment about a home builder, Leon Wysocki, who was building houses in Florida.  Leon was totally BLIND.  Leon had designed all models he built and all of their specs were imbedded in his head.  He was building models in Spring Hill, Florida at that time time and had a model there.  We made the 50 mile trip to take a look.


We loved the Spanish Style Florida House with concrete block construction, a red tile concrete roof, white cabinets with yellow formica kitchen and sunken living room.  This house said "Florida".


Mr. Wysocki agreed to let us do work on the house as long as we did not interfere with the building schedule.  Linda and I stained all interior doors and trim, painted the interior and exterior of the house and I sodded the yard and did exterior landscaping.  We built a hurricane proof house in Florida, one block from the Gulf of Mexico for $60,000.00, including lot.  And....a blind guy was the builder who worked with us like I never expected.  
We lived there 28 years

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