Yesterday I got a call from the realtor I do odd jobs for every now and then. He said an old couple needed help moving things from high shelves, which, to be clear, is about exactly my skill level. So I loaded up the ladder, stuck the work gloves in my back pocket, and headed on over.
The pair, in their mid-80s, lived in a nicely redone two-story. It wasn't the kind of Magnolia-themed remodel you see today. Small rooms, lots of built-in bookshelves, and angles to expansive views out every side. The main room upstairs was a giant office-living area when not succumbed to the chaos of piles of boxes, I'm sure carried with it a warm, productive aura.
Quick introductions were made. The man barely spoke. He was in that mode of decline where his cheekbones cast a long shadow and almost make you believe he's already an apparition. The woman, his wife of 52 years, was hobbling around without her walker. His and hers (with the handbrakes) were folded and stashed in the corner. "You'll have to excuse me,' she said, "We're having a tough time navigating through all this mess."
"The mess of a half-century turns out," he said quietly as he sat on his bed facing away from us, one cat circling each ankle.
The process was a slower one than I had imagined. Each artifact to come down off their top shelf, about sixteen feet high, deserved an explanation, an acknowledgment. From the prized piece, a bleached skull of a bison shot on Ted Turner's ranch, to some of the lesser wares, a Peruvian blanket provided by one of their children's former in-laws. Lots of native baskets bought up from roadsides in New Mexico, Arizona, and Oklahoma, and even a hollowed-out gourd painted like Santa that had rolled and tumbled to still in the far corner, forgotten for Christmases on end. "Oh, look who it is. I guess we'll have it for next year."
The main room fed back into the art room. She, a former interior designer turned needlepoint tapestry maker, and him an office manager turned photographer, had a bright white studio that invited in views of the nearby mountain peaks.
By this time, she knew my clumsy hands had passed the biggest tests, so she relaxed a little and decided to tell me about her journeys; from art fairs to the Midwest and back in her old Ford 350 Super Duty van, to his century rides up and down coastal California. "You couldn't get him off his bike. We met lovely people and always had a nice time."
She recalled a favorite event, "They called it the Amtrak ride. They'd start at the Irvine Transportation Center and roll through Southern California to San Diego; then, we'd all take the train back up. It was quite fun."
There were three cats darting around the home and the favorite she kept watching closely; a ten-minute interruption in the action occurred as the aging feline with the one eye permanently shut moved her bowels in a giant container of litter conveniently placed in the middle of the room. "Oh good," the woman looked on encouragingly, "she's having surgery on Friday and was a little backed up. I think the move's making her nervous."
I heard about that cat, before turning blind and arthritic, who used to be an acrobat, leaping from high shelf to high shelf, down off an arch and on to the couple's bed in the mornings. "It was our wake-up call," she said. "She knew just when it was time to start the day; she reminded us to do it in the most dramatic way imaginable."
A turn through the guest room and the laundry to get some wicker stuff and decorations down and moving the washer and dryer so it could get cleaned up back there and my work was done for the day.
She thanked me for coming over. In the whole time, 90 minutes together, all told, not once did aI field a question about myself. All the better, I suppose. In moves especially, folks don't have the capacity to see beyond what's coming down right in front of them, and I supposed even that is too much. "This is our last move," she said, and out of earshot from the other room came her husband’s voice, "Thank goodness for that."
445 Hot Springs Rd Santa Barbara, CA 93108
Before we get to the house, I have a little announcement. Effective Monday (Jan. 10), I will be the new Central Coast contributing editor (Monterey to Santa Barbara) for SFGate.com (Hearst's online sister publication of the San Francisco Chronicle.) Growing up, the Chronicle was my hometown paper, and my earliest and fondest memories were getting clips sent to me in the mail from my paternal grandmother, a strident reader of THE CHRON.
When I began my career in print journalism almost a quarter-century ago, it was always a singular, if not pie-in-the-sky, goal to make it into the newsroom at 901 Mission Street. Over time, with the absolute decimation of the profession and in conjunction with bad career choices, that dream went away—even a tour through the building seemed beyond my reach.
It's been a long road full of dead ends and breakdowns in a profession that I'm now re-entering as an elder statesman and somehow with less experience than the reporters and editors a decade my junior. Though I do carry with me something special, the ethos of my first editors and publishers, many of whom were Great and Silent Generation holdovers. They didn't always do things the right way, but they knew The Right Way to Do Things.
So I hope, along with a willing heart and a steady and faithful temperament, I can bring a little bit of whatever that was back to a newsroom that relies heavily on page counts and readers' eyes to determine what, exactly, is the way through.
This column will continue with the frequency of 1x/week. If I miss once in a while, I apologize in advance. I appreciate the support and the shared intrigue in homes that have their own stories—waiting for what's next.
I chose this home in Montecito even though it far exceeds the usual budgetary constraints (under $1 million, preferably under $500k) and comes far short of the baseline requirement for something architecturally notable. I chose it for its ordinariness.
Built in 1955, the prime time post-World War II sweet spot, this home was a middle-class one-acre compound for a family that I'm sure had means at the time, but not ridiculous wealth. It was a little out of reach for the rest of us, surely but still attainable in some form.
Not much has changed through the years structurally in the place. Some carpets swapped out, a bedroom turned into a home artist's studio, an ill-advised red wall here or there—and requisite bad kitchen cabinetry installed in the early ‘00s. But mainly it's the same understated home tucked into outsized grounds.
I can only imagine that for the money it's being sold as the lot, and whatever 14,000-square-foot Tuscan fever-dream monstrosity, or contemporary glass-and-steel-beamed post-industrial yet seismically sound cube gets plunked in there won't ever hold a fraction of the laughs and tears and holiday cheer and arguments that never had a fitting end that this one does Oh, if only that bathroom vanity could talk.
This one wouldn't make a good Airbnb; it isn't a showpiece, nor meant to be one. It's a home for living in, with room for all the fraught heirlooms and reminders of places visited but not really remembered perched high on the shelves, out of reach and ignored, but still there—proof of a life that was.