What's in a Name?

The original name for our place was GOSHH, an acronym for Green, Organic, Sustainable, and Healthy Home. You can read more about why we wanted that name on another page.

During escrow, we studied the soil surveys for the county and found that the soil on our parcel was "Ruch Gravelly Loam." When I dug the soil to get it analyzed, I did not encounter any large rocks. Little did I know that I had managed to avoid the larger stuff that would plague us later.

During construction, we discovered that "gravel" was a very general word. (I had never seen gravel the size of basketballs. Those are ROCKS to me!) Excavation was difficult at best. And the outbuilding that was supposed to be a pole barn ended up having a footing and solid wall construction because the auger couldn't drill the holes for the poles.

Back to the name, I was telling a colleague back East the story of the utility pole auger coming to our construction site to drill the holes for the poles. The driller started his rig, and after a few feet he hit rock and the progress of the auger stopped. He said, "Don't worry, this happens a lot," and moved over a few feet.

He started drilling again, and the same thing happened. He said, "Not to worry," moved over another few feet, and again, started drilling. After several more tries, he looked at our builder and said, "This just is not going to work!"

My builder called us, and we had to make a decision right there, so the builder poured a footing and built a conventional structure. It does, however, have a large opening on one side with a post holding up a huge laminated beam, so I guess we do have a pole barn after all.

Back to the name--again. When I told my colleague what had happened, I said, "And the rocks just looked up at the driller and laughed at him." My colleague exclaimed, "That's a perfect name for your place!" and that's the story of the name: Laughing Rocks!.