My Southern California Life

I've been away. At the end of every summer, in the days between the last day of summer school and the start of the fall semester, I get to go away. To my best friend Mary's house. We've been friends for thirty years now, because a guy I was dating kept telling me, "You really remind me of someone. You really need to meet this person." 

Although nagging your new girlfriend about how much she needs to meet your old girlfriend may not be everyone's idea of ideal dating strategy, I did go to meet her. We have been best friends ever since. We always know what the other one is thinking; finish each other's sentences with about 98% accuracy; and agree that a great friendship is one in which you might not talk for many weeks at a stretch but when you do, it's as if the conversation has never been interrupted. I bought my first house in Austin because the street name was the same as the street on which Mary lives, where she has lived most of her life.

Lots of people find it hard to believe that anyone can love San Pedro. Santa Barbara, San Francisco, San Diego, Carmel - lots of people love lots of places in California, but not that many people love San Pedro. It's the Port of Los Angeles, the end of the Harbor Freeway, hotbed of shipping, plagued by poverty and crime, appreciated mostly as a place where you catch a boat to go someplace else.

In a 1940's film noir, or a Perry Mason episode, San Pedro would be where you'd find the shady stool pigeon in a stained fedora. Or the dead body. Or both.

When I first visited San Pedro back in 1983, the waterfront areas were rough indeed. No problem summoning up images of sailors on leave looking for trouble to get into, or longshoremen looking for work. You certainly didn't venture down "below Gaffey," or heavens forbid "below Pacific" at night.

All I saw was a San Francisco in the rough.

Since then a great deal of gentrification has taken place, San Pedro being a location where southern California home prices are relatively reachable. Not reachable, relatively reachable. The waterfront area has turned itself inside out to attract visitors, without a great deal of success. This is sad in a way,  but it leaves Mary and me with some very pleasant bike rides along the wharves where fishing boats occupy the berths they've held for decades. 

And through the marina where luxurious yachts await their busy owners, and many slips await more boats.

When I was a child we had a cottage in a small Connecticut town on Long Island Sound, so many of my spring and summer memories are associated with salt water, old houses, and somnolent "downtowns." I was just looking on that Facebook place where people reminisce about their hometowns, and saw how people still have to explain little Westbrook as "right next to Old Saybrook." 

Maybe that's why I understood San Pedro right away, and felt sufficiently at home there to take on Mary's house as if it had been my own. (During the first summer we visited, my daughter and I took up all the wall-to-wall carpeting one day while Mary was at work. Another year, I painted the inside of her house and did the trim in unmistakably '80's colors. I could go on.)

San Pedro also has retail areas that look like the 1950's are still alive and well. Mary remembers these stores from childhood, and the merchants up here know her, too. 

San Pedro's main retail center is not up here on Weymouth, but is down there "below Gaffey." It was where you went for school shoes, Scout uniforms, books, fabric, and art supplies. Remember the unmistakable smell of an old department store, with its creaky wooden floors and hosiery presented to you in a flat box the saleslady drew from beneath the glass display case?

Unlike my home towns of Hartford and Austin, San Pedro has preserved many of their vintage buildings with their characteristic mid-century entryways - like these zig-zag display windows:

Imagine the name of your store - your name! - set in stone in your entryway. A proud statement back in the day, but almost unbearably poignant in a largely abandoned downtown.

Rather than make ourselves sad about a way of life that hardly exists any more, Mary and I spend most of our time paying attention to the things that won't change a whole lot in our lifetimes. There are many trails between San Pedro and Palos Verdes, and we have walked many of them in our time.

Oops, just as I was talking about things that won't change much in our lifetimes, here's a piece of road that, um, fell off last year:

Not Here Any More

Maybe part of the appeal of So Cal is its transience. I've experienced four minor earthquakes and feel very fortunate to be able to regard them as merely interesting. Many people haven't been so lucky.

Sometimes Mary and I drive to one of the fancy golf resorts on the peninsula, park her '92 Civic in one of the six free spots they so generously provide for hoi polloi, and hike down to sit near the rich folks' Pacific.

Once you bring your damp treasures home, you can't really tell whether they came from the rich peoples' beach or the beach that belongs to all of us. Treasures accumulate on the sunroom table.

Long ago, back in the spring of 1983, I spent a few days at Mary's house getting to know this former girlfriend of the guy I was seeing. At the end of the visit I cried, unable to believe I had to leave. When the relationship with the guy came to a tumultuous end, Mary said, "This is my fault. I should have killed him that time with the wooden recipe box." Our friendship survives and thrives, and San Pedro still feels like home to me. I don't know why it hasn't caught on like the swishy seaside communities nearby, but I love it in all its shabby, struggling glory.

A note: I am proud to know that my own book has been on the shelf at Williams' Book Store, and deeply saddened to know this is truly, finally, Williams' last year in existence. We shall miss it.

Updates

You can imagine how happy I was to see this in this morning's NY Times, and not just because I'll be living right next to Long Beach all next week: Towns Crack Down on Lawns

The article is a little too lenient on Austin, making it sound like enforcement officers driving around all day meting out fines to sprinkler offenders is as good as a truly sensible water use policy regarding lawns (i.e., prohibiting them). Last week Austin's City Council made it official that Homeowners' Associations in town cannot prohibit xeriscaping, rain barrels, or composting - a step in the right direction, but nowhere near enough.

I do wish to announce that the front yard river rock project has reached completion, much to everyone's relief. It only took two weeks, all told, but the effort was intense. Yesterday one neighbor walking by asked Floyd if I was all right. Was he worried about my aching muscles, or did he imagine I had been suffering a bout of mania? My mind is as intact as ever (!), but my left elbow and right quad are angry with me. Sorely angry, I could say. That's fine, because now I'm mad at them, too.

But check out the results!

In these first two photos I am standing at the end of the driveway. Below, that huge rock Floyd worked so hard to stand upright for me, her profile obscured by a salvia whose dark purple flower spikes are much loved by honeybees. I think the big rocks will really come into their own when winter decimates the landscape and there isn't much greenery to look at.

I can't imagine what people do without their own dear welder to make lovely fitted corners.

This cool parabolic curve came about because Floyd often thinks about drainage. The curvy column of rocks on the left is designed to send overflow away from the house and toward the sidewalk. Words cannot express how eager we are to see whether it works.

Every sharp corner was cut away and rounded.

Below, the stepping-stones across which you will glide to leave your chariot behind and enter our rarified universe, where you will be served luxuriant food and drink and a charming border collie will drop tennis balls at your feet:

Well, the part about the border collie is true.

This bench will soon be replaced by one made of metal and ipe ("ee-pay"), a beautiful wood so dense it sinks like a stone. The metal will either be steel, or aluminum tubing. I saw one online recently for almost three thousand dollars, but Floyd indicates I might be able to get a discount. 

Now I think of it, aluminum would probably be best, eliminating the need to have the bench put in place by a crane. I want a plain, backless bench six feet long so I can carry out a pillow, a book, and a drink and catch whatever breeze may be going around the 'hood. Working on this project made us both sharply aware of how pleasant shade + breeze is in the middle of summer, and the advantages of a corner lot when there is any breeze to be had.

The "warning track" of mulch will be taken over by the weedy lawn in no time. Or not. If any part of our yard will receive water as long as I have hose, rain barrel, or leftover cooking water, it will be this corner, where our wondrous live oak resides. 

Never happy to leave well enough alone, I am using some of our leftover stones to add bits of color to the big rocks we hauled from our neighbors' yard a few weeks ago.

I like to think there's some room, even in the suburbs, for whimsy.

PS: Remember 

from "Bud Love?" I wasn't able to catch that bud doing what makes buds worth waiting for; but this morning the cactus near the corner bench had done it again.

A Math Problem

Here's a math problem for you: The Unruly Gardener is 60.25 years old. She has four bins of 2.5" river rock weighing a total of 7.0 tons. Using a shovel, a wheelbarrow, and her 2.0 hands, she moves 2.33 of those bins to the landscape in 1.5 days, working from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on the first day and from 8 a.m. to noon on the second day.

Question: Keeping sheer survival as a minimal outcome, how many pain pills will the Unruly Gardener need?

I realize that this is not a fair question. Many variables have been omitted, such as the Unruly Gardener's insanity. Other medications should probably have been taken into consideration. But obviously the Unruly Gardener is not on any of those medications, or else why would she have decided to redecorate her front yard in the first place? Not to mention that it's August in Texas; if a project were needed, couldn't she have just painted a bedroom or something?

It must be that our recent rock adventures stirred up the longing. The large rock adventure is understandable, since by this time in the summer I am generally ready to replace every growing thing in our yard with inanimate objects made of stone and steel. But I've also begun to notice and appreciate how beautiful rocks are. I don't know how I missed this for so long.

For the past several years I've had to pack lightly for my annual visit to my friend Mary's, because I know I'll be coming home with ten or fifteen pounds of beach rocks. While Mary is a born geologist, with geodes and malachite and who knows what all else on every flat surface of her house, I came to rock love very late in life.

Also, the ever-worsening drought in Central Texas has inspired more and more landscapes that require less and less water, which is a good thing. Even in our relatively conservative neighborhood, people are becoming very creative with pebbles, rocks, and boulders. Some yards are decorated with bits of colored recycled glass that have been tamed of their sharp edges. They sparkle nicely in the sun.

I am not helped by the fact that Floyd's welding shop sits on property belonging to a stone merchant, making it way too easy to indulge in rock daydreams. Just about every week for a year I've been hinting that he should bring me home more treasures from Daniel Stone. (When I go there myself I am careful where I walk. Not only is the terrain naturally jagged; not only do I imagine venomous snakes under every pallet; but when you walk on a steel path here or there it may well be a giant scale. Your weight will be displayed in large bright red lights for anyone to see.)

In any event, about a week ago we ordered seven tons of river rock that were delivered to our driveway bright and early on a Monday morning. Coming home from work I had one of those "Yikes!" experiences as I drove in. Obviously, something had to be done with them.

I would like to point out that the wheelbarrow belonged to Floyd's grandfather, and Floyd's dad replaced the handles with the ones we now grasp - thinking of him every time we use this venerable 80-year-old workhorse. Do you imagine your grandchildren will be doing their heavy yard chores with the wheelbarrow you bought at that big box store?

When we first moved into this house, a good chunk of the front yard and a long stretch between the front sidewalk and the curb were a foot deep in Asian jasmine. The fat notebook left by the house's first owner indicate that she ordered 300 jasmine plants, and I wouldn't doubt that for a second. It took me two years with shovel, pitchfork, clippers, and an impressive vocabulary to get that noxious weed out of there.

Under the big live oak, I replaced the jasmine with a layer of landscape cloth and some nice dark mulch. Between the sidewalk and the curb went pink granite and some stepping-stones. I can't really explain why I went that route, when what I'd really wanted for both locations were river rocks. I can't explain why I decide things in the first place, let alone why I change my mind. The little stones were annoyingly difficult to clean: sweep and you sweep them away. Use the blower, same problem. Try the milder yard vacuum and achieve zero results, leaving sticks and dead leaves right where they fell. Unacceptable.

Ultimately, this entire project could be characterized as an object lesson in landscaping: Do what you really want to do in the first place. It may save you quite a bit of effort later.

It took me a couple of weekends to do the prep work: removing the old mulch and landscape cloth from under the live oak; shoveling up this expanse of pink granite and sifting it through a screen to separate it from the more decomposed granite beneath;

The old pink granite and stepping stones

and sending huge buckets of the remainders to fill big divots in the driveway at the welding shop.

Just as tedious prep work gives way at last to the fun of actually painting, it was very pleasant to start placing the rocks.

The new river rock - see the steel edging?

On the negative side, I spent half of the first day struggling to dig rocks out of the four-foot-high chicken wire bin - and I have the arm-scratches to prove it - because I thought Floyd meant to return the pallets and the intact bins to the stone store. Although I like to tell people I'm 5'11", in reality I am not, so digging into those containers was really difficult. When I asked Floyd what the secret to digging rocks might be, he said, "Brute strength," leaving me pretty much in for a very long and tedious few months. Loading rocks onto a shovel by hand is a remarkably slow method.

When he told me I should just cut the wire to make a funnel, I was too grateful to even be annoyed by my misunderstanding. It's still not exactly a walk on the beach, but pushing rocks out of the bin is about a thousand times easier than trying to scoop them up at chest height. Once the funnel was below wheelbarrow level, I was able to make much better use of the shovel - it's a lot easier when you can push a shovel with a foot rather than just your hands. Go figure.

Here, Floyd and Travis are measuring and cutting steel to line the area between the sidewalk and the curb. Floyd wanted to match the look of the sidewalk garden, and that little lip of steel prevents a whole lot of rock escapage. Not to mention that it looks spiffy. Although his feelings were hurt by the lack of fetch play, Travis was very cooperative about getting far away when sparks were flying or welding was happening.

Little by little, shovelful by shovelful, progress:

One aspect of this task that kept me in a buoyant mood all weekend was washing off the rock dust. These new river rocks, even when dry, are very pleasant to look at:

When wet they are breathtaking, to my mind. Another reason to celebrate rain!

I have to be honest: I have thoroughly enjoyed moving all those rocks. It's been a treat for my office-and-classroom-bound body to work that hard in the ridiculous August sun. I strapped on my new iPod, set my bicycling playlist on "Shuffle" and did a fair amount of dancing in the yard. Sorry, neighbors. Evidently I even sang quite a bit. Although one woman walking by was very kind about that, I'm still almost embarrassed. I say almost because by the end of the second day I had transcended shame: I didn't care what I looked like, smelled like, or sounded like any more. Kind of like the way you feel at the end of a hard athletic event.

If you haven't spent much time playing outside in wicked heat, you should probably be very cautious about tackling a heavy chore like this in summer. I made sure to drink water by the quart, take in a fair amount of electrolytes, go inside periodically to cool down, and pay attention to my body's signals. I kept sweating profusely (good sign), produced reasonably clear urine the whole weekend, never had a headache (good sign), never felt dizzy, nauseated, or chilly. As a matter of fact, ibuprofen was all I needed at the end of the work days; and although my body was fatigued on Monday and Tuesday, I was astonishingly free of pain. Thank you, body!

I was chatting with a friend who'd been watching me work while Floyd took his usual Saturday and Sunday morning bike rides, implying that fur would have flown at her house over something like that. But not only has the physical challenge been very - good gravy, I was about to say "uplifting" - gratifying, I also have a slightly odd marital problem. 

You see, Floyd was raised by a wonderful man I'm sorry never to have been able to meet. A man who set a sterling example in doing for others and making a wife's every wish come true. My mother-in-law Marye tells wonderful stories about her late husband - like the time they were at a fair and a certain tea cup and saucer caught her eye. She wanted it for her collection. Charles just sort of lead her away, letting her know she didn't really need any more tea cups and saucers. This was very annoying to Marye.

Somehow in the course of the day Charles managed to slip away, and at the end of the day, of course, he put the cup and saucer into Marye's hands.

I try to be very careful about asking Floyd to do anything, because I know he will go above and beyond the call of duty, putting in more time, care, and energy than I would ever ask. So I try not to ask him to do much. 

At least, that's my view of the situation. You'll have to ask him his opinion.

Dear Floyd,

Happy Anniversary

It's eleven years since our first date

And I've treasured every adventure we've taken together.

Here's wishing us many more.

6 August 2013