[jazzy music] [jazzy music continues] - [Buddy] It was not in my vision for it to turn out that way.

It was only supposed to be one room.

[jazzy music continues] When I try to tell people, they ask me, you have a tree house?

I say, yeah, well, I don't try to explain to 'em about the tree house because I can't.

'Cause in your mind you have a picture of a tree house, and that's far, far from this, so there's no reason.

I just say, you need to come and see it.

[jazzy music continues] My name is Willie Melvin.

Most of my friends call me Buddy.

At the beginning, the tree was in a garden.

My daddy had a garden out there.

One day I just said, I believe I'll try to build me a tree house, and I was grown, so I said, "Well, I want a tree house for grown people.

I ain't want a kids tree house."

So I asked this lady for a tobacco bar, and she said, yeah, and that's when I started.

I built me one room.

[jazzy music continues] Tree room first, that's number one, then I built the kitchen, which is number two, and then I built the pool room and the dance floor.

I do think that I have a gift that I can see stuff in my head, out in front, and sketch it on paper and I know what it's gonna look like before I finish it, and that's probably hard to explain to somebody that can't see a little ahead.

[jazzy music continues] The tree is probably 80 years old, but the reason it's as large as it is is because of there's an underground stream coming through here, and it feeds, it's constantly getting water.

We had a store.

It was called Melvin's Grocery, and that's the sign.

[jazzy music continues] The people in Roseboro remember that.

[jazzy music continues] The score clock came from my high school.

The score malfunctioned, and they had to get another clock so they were going to throw it away, so I got it.

I said, Mike, Mike, come on there.

[sign buzzing] [jazzy music continues] This is my life-size poster of Obama.

But you can see I'm taller than he is.

[jazzy music continues] But he's the president, I'm not.

Everybody that comes signs the wall, ones on the wall that's highlighted are the people that have passed, and I got 'em highlighted like a memorial.

This is my mother's.

That was my mother's signature right there.

My sister's is over here.

She passed too, Veronica.

[solemn music] My great-grandfather who was a slave, his father was Frank Melvin, my daddy who was Albert Melvin, and that's me, and that's my son.

The ones with the star on them, they died.

It was my cousin.

This was one of my friends who played baseball with me, and he used to be the policeman in Roseboro.

[solemn music continues] [solemn music continues] [solemn music continues] I spend a lot of time out here alone by myself.

[solemn music continues] [solemn music continues] It's peaceful.

It's my getaway.

Sometimes I wonder how I've done it, all this work.

50 years from today, if a person was to happen to come to the tree house, I would hope that they would feel the freedom and the atmosphere would be to a point where they would want to come back.

And I know it would be a place where they hadn't seen anything like it before, but the inspiration of a person to have thought of something like this and built it, that's what I would hope they would get from it.

[solemn music continues] [upbeat hopeful music]