This was for fun but also to save money to finish high school. Later he was hired as an instrumentalist with the official folk ensemble in Baia Mare. But he continued to sing and play at village dances, weddings and other parties in the village and the region.
Popicu met Anuta; they married and settled in her father’s house in Hoteni. His name was Ionu’ Diacului (Johnny the Scholar’s Son). But they wanted a house of their own, one made of timber, with a verandah on both sides, an old-fashioned house of a kind that villagers do not build anymore. So they looked around and found a semi-derelict inn, whose framework was still sound. Moving wooden houses by dismantling them, log by log, was common practice in Maramures, and friends helped them transport it to Hoteni and erect the skeleton on their land. The Pops installed running water, a heating system, a telephone, a computer, a film projector and audio systems.
The Pops’ bizarre idea puzzled their fellow villagers: ‘What on earth are they doing? They are educated, prosperous people and they could afford a brick house like the well-to-do…’ But Ioan and Ana did not listen to the gossip: they had far too much on their minds. Some of the wood had decayed and had to be treated; the mainstays had to be replaced, the roof shingles needed patching, the window frames were falling apart…Before being reborn as the architectural masterpiece it is today, the house gave the Pops a lot of headaches. When it was finished, the villagers called it a museum.
