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Contrasting Houston

Texas 2002 Stories

The Beer Can House. From RoadsideAmerica.com.The Beer Can House on the northwest side of town was built by John Milkovisch starting in 1968. Over the next 18 years he drank a six-pack per day to furnish and adorn the house with almost 40,000 cans.

Meanwhile, on the southeast side of town, Cleveland Turner looked to God to help get him off the sauce. As thanks for his salvation and sobriety, he gathered up all the trash in his neighborhood, painted it, and arranged it to look like flowers.

Both houses are magnificent monuments to the power of alcohol.

The Flower Man's House. From RoadsideAmerica.com.Of course I had to go looking for them during my recent trip to Houston.

The Beer Can House might be what you’d expect for something featured in Ripley’s Believe it or Not (and it was). But the Flower Man’s House is rather more engrossing. The adventure of finding the Flower Man’s House is mare taxing than the Beer Can House, and once you do find it, you’ll learn that Cleveland Turner is still alive (unlike old John Milkovisch).