Seymour Perkins -- homeless

Seymour Perkins has battled his neighbors and the City of San Antonio to keep his house from being torn down. I even speculated that the house would not be destroyed until after the man had died.

I was wrong.

The Express-News reports that Perkins's house has burned down.

Seymour Perkins, the eccentric East Side folk artist at the center of a battle to save his house, lost it in a fire early Tuesday.

On Tuesday afternoon, Perkins, who was wearing overalls with a small patch of singed material, was sitting in front of his home at the intersection of South Hackberry and Nevada streets, talking to passersby about the fire that gutted his home.

The self-styled preacher escaped the fire unharmed. He said the fire had been started by a candle, which he had been using to light the home. Perkins said the city had turned off his electricity in an attempt to drive him away from his house.

If Perkins hadn't admitted that his candle started the fire, I might have suspected a little foul play.