San Jose CA

While Dad went to school on yet another Saturday, Mom and Linnaea decided to go to San Jose for the day last weekend.

First, they went to Santana Row, a popular outside mall, to do a little Christmas window shopping. The area was decked out for the holiday season. The mixture of palm trees and Christmas trees makes me smile because they just sort of look funny together.

For lunch, they ate at Roux Louisiana Kitchen. Mom and Linnaea thoroughly enjoyed their seafood gumbo and po'boys.

Next on the list was to see the Winchester Mystery House. Mom has been wanting to visit this unusual home after hearing about it from a co-worker.

This unique mansion includes many outstanding elements of Victorian architecture and fine craftsmanship along with some bizarre features such as a staircase leading straight to the ceiling and doors opening onto blank walls. One door opens outward to an eight foot drop off!

Construction on this home began in 1884 and continued nonstop 24 hours a day for 38 years until Mrs. Sarah Winchester died in 1922 at the age of 82. This continual building and remodeling created a 160 room structure with 6 kitchens, 13 bathrooms, 40 stairways, 47 fireplaces and 10,000 windows, costing a grand total of 5.5 million dollars!

I asked Mom two questions.

Why did Mrs. Winchester build such a ridiculously large home?

After the death of her baby daughter and her husband dying from tuberculosis, Mrs. Winchester believed that continuous building would appease the evil spirits and help her attain eternal life.

How could she afford it?

When her husband, the son of the Winchester Rifle manufacturer, passed away, she inherited 20 million dollars cash immediately plus she earned an additional thousand dollars a day for the rest of her life.

However, all of this money could not buy her common sense. There are lots of beautiful stained glass windows throughout the house, several purchased from Tiffany's of New York. The most expensive of these windows was placed on the North side of the home, never receiving direct sunlight. And, during her building frenzy, Mrs. Winchester had a new portion of the home built in front of this window, blocking all sunlight.

Also, all of this money could not buy her friends. These $3,000 European front doors did not welcomed ANY guests into her home. Theodore Roosevelt knew Mr. Winchester and came to visit Mrs. Winchester unexpectedly. When one of her workers asked him to use the servant's entrance, not recognizing him, the President was so offended that he decided not to visit her at all.

Could you imagine having this huge home with no one to enjoy it with? Mrs. Winchester's niece lived with her and her servants and workers were around - but still.

What a lonely life that must have been!

Last but not least, Mom and Linnaea went to the Rosicrucian Egyptian Museum and Planetarium. This museum houses the largest collection of Egyptian artifacts on exhibit in the western North America

Here they learned about how Egyptians were one of the first civilization to develop ways of writing. Initially, they inscribed certain characters on soft clay tablets or bricks and baked them in order to document religious writings, receipts or medical texts.

Then, they came up with a way to make paper.

Next, Egyptians developed these "stamps" used as an official signature to prove that documents were genuine. Rolling this cylinder with your family seal across a piece of paper would be the same as signing it. This was often used as a way to mark one's property or placed on jars or containers to guard against theft or tampering.

Egyptians, like Mrs. Sarah Winchester, spent a lot of time and energy focusing on their afterlife and warding off evil spirits while trying to please gods and goddesses.

Upper class women often had gazelles as pets and hand fed them. Their family members would place the beloved animal in these women's tombs to keep them company during their afterlife.

The jackal god, pictured below, was also placed in some Egyptians tomb for protection and to ensure successful passage to the afterlife.

I think that this god resembles a sight hound! What do you think?

All of Mom and Dad's adventures sure have taught me a lot of things while we have been out in California. Maybe I can get a job as being a tour guide!