'CAPED MAN WITH A CANE'

Mae Neubauer's grandson, Mark Zimmerman, and his wife, Laura, were at Wright's Taliesin III recently and took the accompanying photographs for Neubauer.

Mae Neubauer grew up on a farm in Spring Green, Wis., owned by a man the children called "The Shepherd" because he walked the land using a shepherd's cane.

He wore a funny little cap and a cape and was friendly to Neubauer and her brothers and sister. He lived in a building they called "The Big House." Neubauer's father, the caretaker, grew corn and oats and operated the dairy.

Neubauer and her family moved to the farm in 1921 and left in 1928 when she was 13.

Only years later did she realize that The Shepherd was one of the world's great architects, Frank Lloyd Wright.

And the Big House was Taliesin, one of the most famous residences in America.

"I just knew he did a lot of architecture and had a school," the Scott City resident says. "I had no concept he was the person he was."

Indeed, Wright was known for his stagy dress. He named Taliesin for a Welsh poet. The word literally means "shining brow," a reference to his belief that houses should be built into the brow of a hill, not on top.

Wright founded the Taliesin Fellowship, a school for architecture students who paid to live and work with him, there.

Neubauer's playmate was a girl named Svetlana, who was the daughter of the woman who would become Wright's third wife, Olga Lazovich Hinzenburg. Neubauer recalls playing with Svetlana in the drawing room among big easels.

Every Christmas the family went to The Big House to receive gifts from Santa Claus.

"We never knew who was Santa Claus," she says. "Everybody else seemed to be there. We never knew, but we had our suspicions."

Neubauer's family left Taliesin in 1928 to live on another farm 15 miles away. Eventually they moved to Hebron, Ill., to another farm.

She occasionally saw Svetlana, who drowned in her 20s.

Neubauer married and had children, then went to work for the Admiral Corp, becoming a foreman.

After her second husband died, she moved to Scott City in 1975 to be closer to a daughter, Geraldine Zimmerman.

Now 83, Neubauer remembers a Taliesin that actually is Taliesin III. Two previous versions burned, the first in an arson fire and the second due to faulty wiring.

The 37,000-square-foot house and the 600-acre estate are now a National Historic Landmark where tours are conducted at $60 per person.