Most people leave this world having never spent enough time doing what they love most.

Union Parish native Jimmy Dean, on the other hand, wants to go with no regrets.

This Jimmy Dean hasn’t performed any Las Vegas stage acts, nor had grocery store sausages named after him. But Dean, 66, a lifelong Haile resident, may as well be a celebrity in his own right.

Dean spends the bulk of his retirement years using scrap lumber to build and maintain more blue bird houses than the average person could possibly keep up with.

In a reflective mood, Dean nestles comfortably into his living room recliner, or, as he prefers to describe it, his "Archie Bunker chair."

"I have a problem with anything I start to do. I sort of get addicted to it," says Dean, whose other hobbies include collecting military rifles and antique bottles.

But Dean’s passion for building blue bird houses stretches all the way from Sterlington to the Arkansas state line, where any one of the numerous houses can be found.

"It’s just enjoyable to drive out there to that box, open it up and see the little birds with their heads sticking up," Dean remarked.

Dean’s spiraled green notebook contains records as detailed as those found in any professional office: the location of each of the houses, when they were last checked, as well as what was found during his last visit.

According to his latest records, Dean has exactly 1,148 blue bird houses put up throughout eastern Union Parish. Dean figures he’s built at least 3,500 of the houses, many of which he’s simply given away.

Most people would consider building that many houses to be a chore in and of itself. Yet Dean still spends six hours of his day dropping by to see them. He even boasts of opening and closing 270 blue bird houses in one day.

"I was three years younger than I am now and was completely whipped," Dean says of the experience.

So numerous and spread out are Dean’s blue bird houses that two weeks pass before Dean can come back to any given one.

No one can dispute Dean’s devotion to the blue birds.

"I went out the other day to see the birds, but snakes had gotten to them. I was so disappointed. I mean I was down in the dumps," Dean said with a wisp of sadness in his voice.

The snakes later faced the wrath of Dean’s Kaiser Blade.

"The next day I went out to another location, and I found some birds that hadn’t been bothered by the snakes. It got me going again," Dean says, his voice now animated.

As Dean tells it, building blue bird houses was a hobby years in the making.

The notion of building blue bird houses occurred to Dean as far back as 1978. Using material from a house he had torn down to construct a home of his own, Dean realized much of the material was too short for him to use.

Not wanting to waste the material, Dean resolved to one day use it to build blue bird houses. The material sat useless in his father’s barn until 1992, the year of Dean’s retirement, before finally being taken out and put to good use.

Traveling in a rusty pick-up truck, Dean drives through a remote area off any of the main roads and proudly shows off his handiwork.

Dean gets out of his truck and swings open one of the houses, revealing a flock of baby

blue birds.

"Hey there little fella," Dean says to one of the birds, the only one perching its tiny head to greet him.

"This little one’s mama is probably off in the distance somewhere watching us," he says, looking off toward the afternoon horizon.

Dean treks through the difficult terrain to the next blue bird house, which doesn’t have any baby blue birds, but does contain six unhatched eggs.

"To have more than four or five is unusual," a very surprised Dean observed.

Dean said the day when he has to give up his hobby will eventually arrive. For the time being, though, he has lots of energy left to spare.

"I have had an interesting life," Dean says of his hobbies.

"I retired at 55. Too many people work to retire at age 65 and don’t live two years after that. If I don’t make it through the night then I’ve had some good years."