The U.F.O.

House

Built on an island not that far, far away, is a house - but not as we know it.
That is because with its blinking, strobing, technicoloured lights, the metal
saucer-shaped home of retired industrial arts teacher Roberto Sanchez Rivera, 58,
is meant to look just like a grounded UFO.
Resting on the slopes of Juana Diaz in Puerto Rico, the otherwordly house
exists only to prove a girl wrong after 40-years, and all because Rivera suffered
the same fate of many geeks across the planet - he was dumped.
As a love-struck teenager, Rivera was an artistic student from a poor family
and he would send his girlfriend love notes with little UFO's drawn round the side.
He promised he would one day build a home for the two of them that
resembled the flashing flying saucers of the B-movies that they used to watch in
the local movie theater.
Scrimping and saving over the ten years it took him to build the house,
Rivera fitted out his home not with expensive high tech appliances, but with
dollar-store ashtrays made to resemble antennae and used $1.99 salad bowls for
his flashing light fixtures.
Rivera spent ten years and $150,000 constructing his unusual futuristic
home-even wiring it up to emit the famous five tone signature theme from Close
Encounters of the Third King.
The spot he picked is visible for miles around by drivers on the passing
highway and Rivera intentionally chose the hillside so that the unnamed girl who
broke his heart would see the UFO home and know that he had amounted to
something.
He built the cupboards by hand and even fashioned the toilet seat in his
flying saucer house to match the alien surroundings that he wanted to create.
Most of the furniture in the home is raised off the ground - Rivera says this
reminds of him living in the barrio and having to lift furniture to keep the home
clean and tidy.
Satisfied that he had completed what he promised himself he would, Rivera,
who claims he has no interest in science-fiction has advice for anyone who finds
himself in the same predicament.
You should never say to any human being, 'You can never accomplish
something in life.'