Requiem for a Lightweight

I had expected to live out my life in Altadena driving across Altadena Drive to get to anywhere in the leafy progression of differing forests, past magnificent and ordinary well-loved and cared for homes full of cranky, odd, eccentric marvelous Altadenans. My people. People who lived here a long time and understood that our place was different and yes, better than anywhere else in Southern California and perhaps the world. Altadenans were and hopefully still are, the last real Southern Californians. Bohemians, not necessarily measured by wealth, not by oddness of dress, but by an independent open minded free spirit that has people tend to create lives that are themselves works of art, often surrounded by art.

Jeanette and I had our own (as is the Altadena case) life that was a work of art. We lived in the last remnant of the Carl Curtis Ranch by the Craftsman Architect Louis B. Easton. It had been a bunkhouse made of 1 1/8” x 12 1/4” inch redwood boards covered by 1 1/4"‘ x 3” redwood battens. When the Chinese cook got married the Curtis family added our kitchen and the room that was our bedroom and gave him our property. Tim Andersen the owner two before us and Author of California Design 1910 called it “The Honeymoon House” For us it was that.

We separated acquaintances with our house. SOME people would come in and I would explain the structure of our little house with absolute delight. Some people would raise their eyebrows and say “You LIVE H E R E?” in a tone of restrained horror. Those dullards were never seen again. Most of the people who became friends walked in and said something like “Wow, your house is SOOOO COOL!” That little redwood house was a marvelous filter. She strained out the conventional dull people.

We adapted ourselves and our lives to that house. Yes , she tended to be cold. In the winter we heated our bedroom, wore lots of sweaters, and covered our legs at night with blankets. We baked a lot keeping the house warm. It didn’t seem like a sacrifice;

Gov. Gavin Newsom with fire behind him

we were living better than people had in all time until the 1930’s. The Gas Company would send us notes in our bill saying how far below normal our usage was.

Before we owned our little Louis B. Easton jewel box for living, we collected Stickley furniture. We filled the house with Stickley for almost forty years. We collected California made pottery and conversely Czechoslovakian lusterware. Two expressions of the same art could not be more different. We searched for some things literally for decades. Ten years ago, after searching for thirty-five years, I found a Stickley Willow floor lantern. I had only seen one other one, in Johnny River’s house and it had been painted white. Ours had its original finish and pale pink pongee silk liner. Every time I glanced upon that lantern, I had a sense of joy and triumph.

Our house was full of Native American rugs and baskets collected by members of my family for three generations. I had treasures of literally no financial value like the pen tray and taboret made by Helen Lukens when she was a child at Throup. Their history made them to me, priceless. There were books. THOUSANDS of books, old and new and some purchased new, now old. A library on Art, Medicine, Policy, Economy, Technology and History. The Bound complete library set of the Craftsman Magazine. Our thousands of paper friend who I fretted over, not being able to find a library that would take and keep them all.

We had 120-year-old orange trees, an avocado tree that Pompanoe had given the first owner of the ranch, Carl Curtis, because the skins were too thin to ship and the fruit small. The flesh of those avocados was dense and had a deeply nutty flavor. A Carob tree with a gigantic canopy, a huge pomegranite, and all of Jeanettes orchids, half of whom were rescued from my father’s collection as he became too feeble to care for them. Many of those dad had collected in Baja California in the 1940’s.

I had a shop and drafting room full of tools. The general rule I had was to attempt to only buy tools that were made before I was born. So, I had a 1939 Delta Unisaw that had a motor rebuilt by Mr. Pompei the last living apprentice to Tesla. That saw would cut 4” rock maple like butter. My Radial Arm saw was bought surplus from the PUSD out of Wilson Jr. High School. John King tool refurbished it. That saw was used when he was a kid by my Grand Uncle J.O. , my dad, and my mother’s brother and me when we were kids in school. I had taken a panel scraper to it’s cast aluminum blade cover to learn the style of metal finishing used by Bugatti. I did pretty good the third time. My drill press dated from 1928. I had a belt sander that looked like Flash Gordon’s spaceship. Tools. I had a hundred year old drafting table and wooden triangles that my mentor James De Long had been given by his mentor Sylvanus Marston. I had a compass that had belonged to Lloyd Wright. I had ancient brass drafting templates. Some new tools, yes, but I was always on the lookout for old ones and would pay as much or more for an old one as a new one. I figured if a tool had lasted one lifetime it would last another, or two.

It wasn’t just for the sake of pretty good-looking well-made things. It was because part of the art of my life was to leave as small an impact on the planet as possible by the things I owned. A table saw that had it’s iron and copper mined smelted and formed before I was born had a lower cumulative environmental impact than buying a new one. Unlike today’s ecological conspicuous consumption, We still believe this way of life done by choice can be artful and is the kind of thing that will REALLY save the planet. Jeanette and I lived out this idea of an artful nondestructive to the planet life in Altadena for thirty-seven wonderful years. It was a long honeymoon in the honeymoon house.

A fire caused by a poorly maintained set of utility equipment in a poorly maintained forest during our devil winds swept all of that away. The utility had so many green mandates by the state and county to pay for that in spite of California’s highest in the nation electricity prices, the utility couldn’t pay for those “Green" mandates and do maintenance. Green mandates were required by law, somehow maintenance became an option.

Over nine thousand homes have been damaged, most of them lost, forever by the Eaton fire. Lives, collections, irreplicable touchstones of history, have been lost to a “green” religion that has infected every hall of government and that will not stand for something resembling a cost benefit analysis. The environmental cost of rebuilding those nine thousand homes with new ones that meet all the latest and greatest “Green” codes is staggering. The amount of Timber that will have to be sourced, and sheetrock and copper is off the charts. all of the rare minerals that will go into sensors, and mercury. The diesel to transport it all - an ocean. The green Built Back Better LA Politicians are promising to impose upon us mandates that will have an ecological footprint hundreds of times the size of the original homes when built and will not get to ecological break even for another sixty years. All to force people to buy solar panels.

Amazingly enough, Los Angeles County in its Building Code specifications DEMANDS all new and remodeled homes be prepared for electric ranges, water heater and heat pumps, if they use them or not, ahead of anticipated state and local mandates. Thats right, Edison can’t handle safely delivering the load on it’s system now so the plan of our Building and Safety agencies is to require home to be built for a load double the existing, you know to “Save the Planet” and “For Your Own Protection”.

My former business partner Bill Dancey, used to have a saying about people who insisted on making the same mistake over and over and over again “Some people just will NOT be educated.” Tragically, in California those people work in our government.

There now will be no lightweight life in Altadena.