The interviews in this section are part of an oral history project I began with my middle school students in 1996. Our idea was to talk to the elders of the community, particularly the ranchers and long-time residents who seemed to have a special connection to the land. We discovered that something different happens when people talk to kids. The old-timers remembered things they hadn't thought about in years -- important things like rainy Christmas mornings, the best spots for catching steelhead, and what it was like riding along the muddy roads to school in a horse drawn sulky cart. We began to see ourselves as the gatherers of stories that would otherwise be forgotten, and this became an ongoing labor of love continued by students each subsequent year.

"Everyone lives a story," said one of our first interviewees, Caroline Henning, a woman who made her home in Gaviota's local mountains for much of her life. And indeed, as time went on, we discovered that many people we knew and worked with every day, both young and old, had unique perspectives and remarkable experiences to tell about. The age of our subjects suddenly seemed much less significant than their willingness to talk and share. Our own lives grew rich with new memories. Borders blurred as we wandered through time and place, learned of work and wisdom, and vicariously faced adventure, both epic and small. We taped everything, and I typed it all.

The result is an eclectic collection of conversations with all kinds of fascinating people - from a cowboy to a Congresswoman and everything in between. What do they have in common? First and foremost, each agreed to sit down and talk with a group of middle school students; that in itself is a special kind of graciousness, though I have yet to meet anyone who was not afterwards glad to have done it.Beyond that, what they share is incredible passion and spirit. They have taken vastly different paths, but each one tells us, in word and deed, to find our own mission and embrace it fully.

"What will you do with your one wild and precious life?" asks the poet Mary Oliver. Be open to the answer. And when you do it, do it well, with all your heart.

There’s no magic without the kids. Almost all of these interviews were done with the help of students from Vista de las Cruces or Dunn Middle School. I thank every student who participated in this project over the years.

There are additional interview-based stories and articles within the blog, Still Amazed. And I have also compiled a website exclusively devoted to interviews, profiles, and story-talking, called The Living Stories Collective .

Look around. Linger awhile. I  hope you come upon people and places that interest you.

Even More True Now: Time With Jackson Browne

Jackson Browne needs no introduction. Justly famous as a songwriter, musician, and human rights activist, the following musings, recollections, and advice from Jackson reveal that he is also gracious, humble, and funny. This conversation with middle school students (our leadership and oral history groups) took place on a rainy afternoon at the Hollister Ranch, leaning snugly against "the cheek of God."

"I started playing the trumpet when I was about eight. I took music lessons, learned to read, and my father was into Dixieland jazz, the kind of music that was made by Louis Armstrong, the kind that was popular in the 20's and 30's. So I started playing the trumpet, and I lost interest in that and started playing guitar when I was about 12 or 13. I told my father I wanted to play the banjo, and so he saved the money and got ready to give me a banjo for my next birthday, and between that time and my birthday, I lost interest in the banjo and was playing guitar. I just borrowed other people's guitars."

"There are a lot of musician jokes in the music world. Musician jokes are a kind of joke that usually have to do with how much money someone makes. Musicians are always starving, so they're really mean to each other about who makes what. Like, What is the least often heard sentence in the English language? That would be: Say, isn't that the banjo player's Porsche parked outside?"

"Now, when there's so much electronic music being made, a lot of people who make great music don't actually play an instrument; they program the beats on computers and stuff, but there's a joke that goes: A car full of trombone players are driving along, and they pass a car full of frogs going in the opposite direction. What's the difference between them? Well, the frogs might be on their way to a gig. The trombone players? They're definitely not working."

"Right when I started playing guitar, there was a thing called a folk revival that happened about the end of the 50's, beginning of the 60's, and I got swept up in that. People were learning to play traditional music, folk songs, and that's a big field - that's everything from blues to Appalachian music. All the people who came to this country brought musical instruments, and a way of playing. Right around the end of the fifties, college students and young people in general, began to realize that this music was almost like a history of our country - this music contained the real history of the people of this country. Not so much in terms of where this battle was fought, or when this declaration was signed, but about where these people were from. These songs that were made up and passed from person to person comprised a valuable history. It's an education of sorts."

"And the main thing is that it was acceptable to change these songs, so that people began writing their own versions of these songs. I've written many extra verses to songs that I learned to sing - an extra verse about a friend, or just add some verse - and that led to writing my own songs. So what I do, more than play any instrument -- I mean, I love to play -- but more than that, I write songs. Songs that are about living, about what it's like to be going through all the things that people go through in life."

"I wrote songs about girls that I was interested in when I was in high school. I was at my high school reunion not too long ago, and I saw this girl that I had written a song for, I had literally made her sit and listen to it - it's embarrassing now, because it's a pretty corny thing to do, I guess. But at the time, I was really earnest. It didn't work. I think it might have been a little bit overwhelming."

"I was taking her to the drive-in. I was such a bad dater! I had no idea what to say on a date, and when her father asked me, 'Where are you going?' I went, 'The drive-in?' 'What are you gonna see?' I didn't know what was playing. So it was just such a bust. 'I don't know.' He could tell I was just gonna get next to his daughter…"

"Anyway, that's the thing I'm supposed to be good at --writing songs. I never was a very good singer. That folk music led to learning to play, and making things up led to what turns out to be the most lucrative part of the music business -- writing, because you get paid every time that song gets played. Also, right at that particular time in the music business, because of people like the Beatles, people began owning their own publishing. I'll just say this really quickly --they used to divide the money for the music that was written in two, just equal halves. One was the money for the publisher, which was a company that licensed everyone else to use it, and the other half went to the writer. If there were two writers, they split that half in half. There were what we called 'two pennies'-- a publisher penny and a writer penny. Every time the song got played on the radio, there would be two pennies…"

"Right around the time the Beatles began to wow everybody with these amazing songs they'd written, they began to decide, 'We don't need a publisher to tell everyone to listen to our songs. People are gonna listen. Let's just be our own publishers.' We began to keep all the money. Pretty good deal. It was a great time to be born, because I got to have my own publishing company right from the beginning, so I made more money than somebody would have doing what I did ten or fifteen years before."

"I'd have to say that my favorite thing is writing a song that really says how I feel, what I believe - and it even explains the world to myself better than I knew it. It's a way of examining my feelings and my perceptions and my situation and coming up with something about it, like saying where I am in the world in relation to those things. And some of the songs I wrote when I was really young are some of my best-known songs, and other people still sing 'em, I still sing 'em. The idea that I wrote something that stood for the way I feel about things, and that it lasts, that's probably my favorite thing that I've done"

"I've also gotten to play in front of a million people in Central Park when there was a grass roots movement calling for nuclear disarmament - it was about 1982 -- they called it Peace Sunday. There was one in L.A., and there was one in New York, where a million people came to Central Park. I got to play there. I sang with Joan Baez, and Bruce Springsteen, and Orson Welles spoke - he spoke directly to the president. That was an amazing thing to do."

"As far as those kinds of things, I also played at the concert to call for the release of Nelson Mandela when he was a political prisoner in South Africa. We were celebrating his 70th birthday and calling for his release. Then, a year and a half later, I played at the same place when he was there with us, and he had been released. That was a magnificent thing to be a part of."

"And then to be backstage in this area where they had trailers, and everybody was together, and Nelson Mandela came and sort of addressed these musicians who had been so instrumental in focusing world opinion about South Africa, about his situation, and to thank us. It was really something …I mean, he had been in prison. His is a very interesting life; he is a very big inspiration."

"People had written songs about what was happening in South Africa. I don't know if you know the Peter Gabriel song, Biko…Unfortunately, this is something I'm glad I have the opportunity to tell you about, not because it's a happy thing, but because it's something important for you to know about. This event was seen by two billion people around the world on television, and it was seen in this country, but it was censored in this country."

"It was sponsored by Coca Cola, and it was seen on the Fox network, and when I came back -- it was held in England -- people said, 'Hey man, I saw you on television! That was cool -- what was that?' And they hadn't seen the introduction to Biko, where Peter Gabriel spoke of the death of Peter Biko, and his murder in detention - they didn't see the introduction that little Stephen Van Zant gave to his song, Sun City in which he talked about Shell Oil and all the multinational corporations that were really propping up apartheid in South Africa. They didn't even see the introductory speech by Harry Belafonte talking about Nelson Mandela. They literally didn't hear a word about Nelson Mandela!"

" And that's a kind of censorship that exists in this country, because the sponsors of the television show have the legal right to do that. There was a delay. It went out live to most places, but the United States is eight or nine hours difference, so in that time, they edited it. That way, Coca Cola would not have to be involved in sponsoring what was essentially a political event calling for the release of this man. So I gotta tell you that it's been part of a long, slow realization for me that censorship exists in our country."

"Now it's not the kind of censorship that may have existed under a despotic rulership like the Third Reich or some of the other dictatorships. We have an open society. No one will come and take me away for saying what I am saying. But they don't have to, if they can control how many people hear it. And that's how they do it."Family Background"I was the middle son. I have an older sister and a younger brother. Everybody played. My father was a pianist. While he was not a professional musician, he was very good. When I was first starting out to play, he told me, 'Don't worry about getting paid. Let everybody use your stuff. Don't worry about that.' When he was young, he had written an operetta, and the community theater in Pasadena wanted to put it on, and he wanted to get paid, but they didn't have the money to pay him, so they didn't do it. And he felt that he really missed getting an entrance into a more professional music life."

"But he played every weekend, in Dixieland bands. We'd go down from where we lived in Los Angeles, in Highland Park, we'd drive down to see him in Hermosa Beach play at a place called - I don't think it was the Lighthouse - I think it was The Saints, or something. And he'd play in the afternoon. He also played in the evening, but we'd go hear him in the afternoon. We were allowed to sneak into the back of this bar and we'd hide ourselves. We weren't gonna drink, but it was against the law. We felt very special."

"And my dad wanted me to play the trumpet because that's what he liked. His idol was Louis Armstrong. My dad thought my teeth came together in a way that was perfect for playing the trumpet. Not perfect, but better than my brother's -- he had an overbite, so he was supposed to play the sax or the clarinet, because if you had an overbite, it's not supposed to be good for the trumpet. None of these things have to do with what you like. This is what your parents think. So I had a couple of years of playing trumpet. I really enjoyed it, but it was not the kind of instrument you could whip out at a party. Let's face it."

"Now, guitar was pretty cool. Everybody knew something on the guitar. So I wanted to play guitar, but I told my dad if he wanted me to keep studying something, I'd like to study piano. He wanted me to stick with the trombone - he just didn't think I should switch instruments. To this day, I still have this problem, this bone to pick with my dad. I cannot believe that he wouldn't let me study the piano! I taught myself to play the piano, because I wanted to play it. By the time I did, though, I wasn't living at home, and I 'd moved on."

"I think my dad was proud of me, but I don't think he got what I did. When I was twelve, I really liked singing in the chorus and singing musical comedy. I came home and told him I had joined the chorus in school… to him, it just wasn't as cool as playing the trumpet, 'cause that was his generation. That's all. So when I started playing guitar and writing songs, I know that he struggled to try and find a way to compliment me, because he was very supportive of me, but I realize now that he just didn't get it. I mean, he even saw my success, and I just think he thought, 'Wow. Isn't that amazing? All these people are listening to what he has to say…'"But he raised me to love words. I grew up reading Shakespeare and Mark Twain. And he was the kind of person that no matter what you'd ask him, he'd give you an answer with double meaning, at least two meanings. One meaning would be the specific, humorous answer; the other would be this whole other ironic double entendre - he'd just enjoy that. It was what he loved about literature, and I got that from him. So, I know he liked my lyrics."

"When my kids listen to house music, to me, it's like going to the dentist, though parts of it are pretty interesting. And now my oldest son -- he's been listening to electronic music for a long time -- and he's starting to make really interesting music, stuff that I find interesting, so, you know, I think the point I'm trying to make is something about authority. You can take as much as you can from the generation that has preceded you, but then it's up to you to make something new. That's maybe the most important thing each generation does, is to break a lot of rules and make up their own way of doing things."What Music Did You Listen to as a Teen-ager?I listened to rock & roll on the radio, and I listened to the music my dad listened to. My sister loved this doo wop - girl groups singing doo wop…you would hear a lot of this stuff if you listened to those oldie stations. My brother was a big fan of Elvis Presley. I liked him, too, but I liked comedy records. I liked these Stan Freidberg records, or satirical records making fun of some other artist…"

"When I really started liking music was when I could play some of it myself, and after a couple of years of playing folk music, I kinda rediscovered those hits that were on the radio all the time when I was a kid. I remember when I first learned to play a Chuck Berry song like Johnny Be Good -- you've heard this…or Sweet Little Sixteen …that kind of rock and roll, you can play that with one guitar and it sounds pretty good. I remember when I realized I could do that. I'd never sung those songs, and we started singing those songs, and I realized I knew them, and I could play them and I'd never tried. I'd never used my guitar and my voice for that. I had developed playing folk music and stuff, and by that time I was also writing songs So all the music you take in now is really a part of you. It's in there. Human beings are like recording devices. You have a memory. You can program yourself to play it back, to change it, to do something different with it…"

Getting Started

"There was more nurturing going on in the sixties, because everyone was under the spell of that -- all the changes of the sixties, all kinds of awakenings and revolutions-- spiritual awareness, civil rights, political change, opposition to the war, sexual revolution -- all these things were happening. It's almost as if they've gone away now. Things have returned to a sort of material order. But I got the friendship and interest of people back then who saw some potential. They encouraged me and helped me along. And I gotta say I was happy to just coast along and work to develop myself. I wasn't in a big hurry. I made my first album when I was about 22 or 23. A lot of my friends made records when they were 18 and kind of made them before they should have."

For A Dancer

"I wrote the song For A Dancer for a friend of mine who died in a fire. He was in the sauna in a house that burned down, so he had no idea anything was going on. It was very sad. He was a really interesting guy. Besides being a great dancer, he was an ice skater -- he had a job in the ice follies; and he was a great tailor -- he would make his friends clothes. One time he invited this girl to the ballet, and he not only made her a gown, but he made himself an amazing suit. And they just went -- in a way, it was his way of competing with Rudolf Nureyev and Dame Margot Fonteyn. They were the ballet. He had this great spirit, and when he died, it was a tragedy to everyone that knew him. He was a painter, too, and a sculptor. He was a Renaissance man. When I wrote him the song --it's a song I've sung many times, other times when people have died -- but I was making a metaphor out of the dance. Just the idea that your life is a dance. And there's a line in it 'In the end, there is one dance you do alone.' That's one of the songs I've sung all through the years, and for me, it's like going to that place, and dealing with the fact that life will end. It's a sad song, but at the same time, it feels good to sort through that reality and touch base with it, and then go on."

"Music relaxes me. I love to read. I love to stretch. In the morning, I get up, and if I'm not in a hurry, I will lie on the floor on a rug, look through some books and magazines, and maybe listen to music and try to do stretching exercises to tune up. And I like to surf. Music itself is a great source of relaxation. Parts of it anyway. Working in the studio, that's not relaxing, but playing an instrument that I don't know how to play is unbelievably relaxing, because I don't have any pressure on me. I've played with some of the great slide players of all time, and it's a hard thing to do because I'm not very good at it, but I love to do it. Like surfing. I'm no good, but it's fun."

"The biggest influence? I've had several at different times - but the biggest for me was Bob Dylan, who was a guy that came along when I was twelve or thirteen and just changed all the rules about what it meant to write songs. He sounded like an old hillbilly. He wasn't a matinee idol looking guy - -there were times in his life when he was an incredibly romantic looking figure, and actually pretty handsome and interesting looking, -- but really, he was kind of scruffy, tons of attitude, a brilliant writer, and one of the most influential writers and thinkers of the century."On Writing"You know, you have a conscious mind and you have an unconscious mind. And there's the stuff that you think when you're using your head, as they say, and there's the stuff that you think when you're not using your head that you are nonetheless thinking, but it's just below the surface. And so much music - especially the truthful stuff -- comes not from the mind that works out equations or thinks of what you're gonna do, but from the depths of your subconscious. When I write, I might trick myself by playing an instrument I don't know very well, or a new guitar. I have a lot of guitars, because each one of them makes me play somewhat differently, so I'll be playing, and when I realize I'm getting into something I like, I just turn on one of these handheld tape recorders, and then I forget about it. I just forget it's on. Occasionally, it's run out and I haven't noticed it and I just turn it back on, but basically it's like this -- harvesting ideas. And later, I usually remember what I was doing, but I'm sometimes surprised by playing back that tape. I always play it back, 'cause you never know. Sometimes, I go, 'Oh,' 'cause the mistakes are just as interesting as what I was trying to do. You go, 'Oh, that was interesting.' And I might have to listen to it over and over again to learn how to do that little mistake."

"Or, I just got through recording a song with a band, and it really changed a lot when I started playing it with musicians. I was playing this really simple, very infectious rhythm thing, and I was singing, but when I played with the band, my rhythm thing on my guitar didn't sound very good, and it just sort of became superfluous, and we threw it out. And then other things happened, because I kind of write in an ensemble that way, collaborating, really, and the song was finished. But then I heard this old recording of me trying to play it by myself, and I kind of liked that better. So I might actually do a version that's unlike the band version, but has stuff in it that came out of the band version but is more like the way I played it originally. I might do two versions of the song."

"And some stuff just didn't work at all unless I play it by myself. So the writing process is…it's all about trying to get to the truth of something and then in the end the song reflects that search for what you really think. You could surprise yourself. You wake up in the morning, and look at what you were writing that night, and…"

"Once I woke up and I looked at something I had written, and I thought, 'No, I can't be writing about this. I don't wanna be talking about this.' I'd been reading about this and it was about U.S. foreign policy. The song is a political song. I thought, 'I just don't know if people wanna hear about this.' It was full of references to a really hard-to-take aspect about what goes on in the world, about third world economies, and imperialist countries. But in the end, I had to admit that this is what I was dealing with, what I was thinking about when I sat down to play. I wasn't trying to write a song about that. It just came out. And that's a good way of finding out what you really think. Just write and write."

"Some writing teachers, when they're talking about how to write words, prose, have an exercise where you just write, you sit down and start writing, the thing is to not let that pen stop, even if you say, 'I don't know what to say..' if you just keep the pen moving, you'll be united with that flow of what you really think. We all have a way of censoring ourselves, of saying what we think people want to hear, or what we think people will want to buy, what will make me look cool, what will make this girl want to go out with me, what would be a cool stance - all these manipulative things that the conscious mind thinks of…to be loved, I think, to be adored."

"But the truth of things is a little bit deeper. Sometimes you have to dig a little bit more. And I became quite a good editor. You let all this come out, and then you sift through it for the stuff that tells the most truth and is the most meaningful."Running on Empty"That came more or less from the music first. It didn't start out with an idea I'm gonna write a song about touring. I was touring at the time, and I don't really remember coming up with that, what happened first with that…Running on Empty was an album that was much more successful than I thought it would be. It's kind of a -- one of the more famous records that I made, and I was just stalling for time while I wrote my "important" songs, what I thought of as my really significant contributions. I had this idea for a touring album that would be a bunch of songs about being on the road. It turned out to be much more interesting to people than what I thought of as my "important" stuff. So we went out and recorded this album live. It had stuff recorded in hotel rooms, on the bus …and I got to do a couple of other people's songs, songs that I didn't write."

Late for the Sky

"No, I was trying to think of something that began with just an idea and then became a song. Oh, here's one. Okay. I have a song called Late for the Sky and it's something I said to somebody once. I was trying to say good-bye to somebody that I had met -- I had to go 'cause we were leaving on a plane -- and I said this thing -- it's maybe a little corny -- in a conversation; maybe very corny if you said it now, 'cause there's a song by the name -- but I said to this girl, 'Well, I have to go. I'm late. Late for the sky.' It was at a party, this little romantic encounter, and it's like 'I gotta go.' And it sort of stuck in my head."

"Well, I have a memory like an elephant, and it stayed in my head for a long time. I eventually started writing a song, trying to get to say that. I wanted to say 'late for the sky.' And between the beginning and end of the song, I wrote what I consider one of my best songs. Really. It was about a lot more stuff. There are some passages in that song that I'm really -- I'm proud of."

"Years later, while I was writing the song, my wife asked, 'What is this song called?' I said, 'Late for the Sky.' And it wasn't finished, but she'd been listening to me work on it, and she said, 'Late for the sky? What does that mean?' I said, 'Well, you know -- when you get to the end, and when I say it, it'll mean what I got it to mean.' And it really works that way. It goes through this whole long song, and it builds into this big emotion thing, and the very last words you hear are 'late for the sky.' And it really does mean something. It doesn't just mean that I'm late for the plane. It means that in this whole relationship that I was in, there was something that I yearned for, we never achieved-- and I may be leaving the relationship because the relationship isn't giving me that thing. It's really about breaking up, and there are passages in it that I think are -- well, if I were with my friends I'd say, 'lucky lines' -- I came across some lucky stuff."

"I'm proud of those passages, what I was able to get out of this metaphor. The idea of the sky. As a matter of fact, I've forbidden myself to use it anymore because I use it as an all-purpose metaphor for something, maybe some sort of spiritual fulfillment, or awakening, or the idea of homecoming, or something, but "sky" became this sort of word -- I mean, there's a moratorium on it now -- I can't say it anymore. I can't use it in a song because I've used it too often to mean something indefinable about reality, the reality of being. This chorus says:

How long have I been sleeping?

How long have I been drifting alone through the night?

How long have I been dreaming I could make it right

If I closed my eyes with all my might

And be the one you need?

And the last time it says:

How long have I been sleeping?

How long have I been drifting alone through the night?

How long have I been running for that morning flight

Through the whispered promises and the changing light of the bed where we both lie…

Late for the sky."

"I should say that one of my favorite things about any music is ambiguity. Most people will tell you, especially in high school, 'Be clear.' But ambiguity is a wonderful thing about art. It can mean this, and it can mean that. It can mean much more than you think it means even when you write it. This may sound like cheating, but I actually find new meanings in my songs having lived longer now. I'm in my fifties, and some of the things I said that were true, are now true in a different way, even more true."ReligionI'm not a member of an organized religion or faith. My grandmother was Lutheran. My mother belonged to the Unitarian Church, which is a church that some of the Transcendentalists like Emerson and Thoreau were involved with, and it's a way of applying progressive ideas, social ideas, ideas about society, to the form of worship.

But the truth is, I am religious. I think I practice a kind of religion, though I don't have to say that I do at all. A friend of mine is director of the gospel choir of a high school l go to sometimes. He lets me come, and I love this music -- these kids are so amazing -- as a matter of fact, if you could ever get Fred Martin and his kids to come to your school, any way to make it happen, I would try to sponsor it. This music is a tremendous force in their lives; it comes from the Baptist tradition, a certain ethnic place in our culture. They're definitely singing the praises of God. But one time Fred wanted me to sing in church with them, and I said, 'I'd be very happy to. I'd like to, but you know, Fred, I'm not really a Christian exactly.' He goes, 'That's okay. That's all right.' So he gets me up there in front of the church, and I'm wearing a suit to perform one of the songs I perform with the choir, and he says, 'Now Brother Jackson here says he's not a Christian.' There's a big silence. Then he says,'Yet!' Everybody applauded."

"Later, another time, we're walking down the street, and he says to me, 'I don't get you - why you say you're not a Christian. 'Cause you do what Christians do.' He was talking about my activism in human rights, the environment, and especially for social justice, you know, working for kids, and I just believe in a kind of ... but I said, 'Fred, you know, Hindus believe in what I do, too.' And so does Islam, actually. Islam was founded by a prophet of God, like the prophets in the Christian religion. One of the tenets of Islam is to start taking care of the orphans, the widows, and the poor instead of having this entirely material view of life. So I said, 'Fred, yeah, it's true. I do the same things that …I believe in the teachings of Christ…but these same beliefs are held by others.' One of the things that Christianity believes that I can't really adhere to is the idea that unless you are a Christian, you won't go to heaven. That's leaving an awful lot of people out.”

"The closest thing I belong to that's like a church is a group of friends that over the course of twenty or thirty years have probably done hundreds and hundreds of benefit performances to raise funds for a variety of causes. There's no name for us. We call ourselves 'the usual suspects' or funny names like 'the bleeding hearts' -- we know about each other because we're always asking each other to do things.

Favorite Place

"My all time favorite…that'll be hard. And it depends on whether you mean places to visit, or places to live. For instance, the Plains Indians didn't live in the Black Hills. They'd just go there. They would go there at certain times of the year to do certain things. They were nomadic people. I kind of aspire to live a nomadic life. I won't go on an on about this, because it would take too long, but living in one place is only a relatively recent thing for humans…the main thing about being nomadic is you can't really accumulate too much stuff. You trade your stuff, you don't hoard well -- which we're all good with. I know I hoard guitars. Or musical instruments."

"But to try to answer your question, I think this place. Right here. This part of California is one of my favorite places that I've ever been. I've had a place here for twenty years, but I don't live here -- I come here. And a few years ago, I made my house bigger so I could be there with friends. It used to be one big room, with a loft, and a downstairs and upstairs - like camping, you know. But once your kids grow up, everyone wants to have their own room. It's not that comfortable to be all together. So we've made an addition, and now it's a great place to come with friends, though it's still quite small. Sometimes I come up with a group of people I want to relax with -- we have a meal, we talk, we play music -- or I come by myself. Maybe the most renewing kind of thing is to be by myself at the Ranch and to spend a few days just thinking about things."

"The natural beauty. A friend of mine had a phrase for it. She said, 'That's called leaning up against the cheek of God.' I was trying to explain to her that when you come to my house --I keep telling you how beautiful it is, but I'm not telling you about a fabulous house. I'm telling you the house is beautiful because of where it is."

"Ah, those places! Those places where the house is built to see the nature. My house here was designed by an architect - a friend I've known since I was twelve, and when he and I were twelve, we used to go to Gaviota State Park with our families, and we used to dream about getting into the Ranch and going surfing. He was a little more serious than I was and would try to make it up the tracks before he was turned back by the Ranch foreman. He went to Hawaii to surf. He was serious. So when I got a place here, I called him, and said, 'Guess what I got?' So we'd go surfing here, and he became my partner, and he was the architect. So I'm living in a house built by my childhood friend and me, and that's one of the reasons I love it so much. It's just this thing we did together."

"But I grew up in a house that my grandfather built with his friends. And when he built it, there was nothing around there. It was a house in the country, but now it's in the middle of L.A. It was halfway between Pasadena and downtown L.A. along Figueroa Boulevard -- well, it wasn't a boulevard, it was a dirt road, and you could go about ten miles an hour in those days in a Model T. As a matter of fact, he and my dad used to camp in Gaviota Canyon… so when my dad saw where the ranch was, and where I bought, he said, 'This is where my father and I used to camp,' and they'd drive up the coast to look at the missions. That area where the State Park is was something that he named 'Browne's Pass' when he was about twelve years old. So we have some history with this area, loving this part of the country, and I'd say this is my favorite place - this is where I want to be an old guy surrounded by my kids and their kids."

"I've had a place at the Ranch for 22 years now. Practically the first money I made that I could keep, that wasn't to be used to invest in equipment or something like that, I bought a parcel here. That was in 1978. My business manager told me, 'Don't do that. Land is a terrible investment.' From his point of view, the idea was to make more money with that money, to invest, to build. He said, 'You can't just run out and buy something that's just gonna sit there.' I said, 'Watch.'"

"In my opinion, it's a great investment. Even when I was younger than that, I thought it would be great to go out and buy land and not do anything with it, because so much of the land is being developed. I thought 'I'm gonna buy some land that no one will ever do anything with,' and I found that people were basically doing that here --. restricting its uses so it would stay in its natural state. It's great. More than being neighbors, aside from being near each other, the people up here at the Ranch share a similar philosophy."

"You all live in a beautiful place, too. Santa Ynez Valley is one of the great places on earth."

Ever Get Tired of Your Songs?

“Yeah. I do. Well, I'm lucky because I actually made sure I don't tour year in year out. I get to be my own boss about this. I've had enough success to say when I'm gonna tour and when I'm gonna take time off. I made sure not to get on that success treadmill. I define success in my own terms, in terms of what I do with my time."

"For instance, this last year, I went out without a band quite a bit. Because I was writing new songs, I didn't want to tour very much, but I'd go out a week at a time on tour and play four or five shows and come home. By the fifth show, I was pretty sick of myself. No other instruments out there, no other band, just playing by myself. That's a challenge, playing these songs. It helps that some of these songs are pretty well known, and people are interested in hearing a cut-down, simple version of it -- that might be interesting to my biggest fans, my most dedicated fans. But really, to sit and listen to myself sing two and a half hours, three hours, for five nights -- that's just too much of me. I'd much rather have a --I have musicians who play with me when I play with a band, and they have fun with it, they change it around each night. They express themselves differently. We have a team, like a basketball team with certain kinds of moves they try to pull off, and someone will do something different, and they have to respond -- that's one of the biggest joys in music."

What's a Good Fan, and What's a Bad Fan?

"No one has ever asked me that. But there is a difference, and it's interesting to me that you realize that…"

"A good fan is somebody that really --okay, this is such a guilty pleasure, but it's somebody that really knows everything about, makes it their business to know everything about, knows all your music really well -- just listens to it. Really listens."

"And I think a bad fan is a kind of stalking fan. Somebody that needs something, needs you to really know about them, needs to know everything. It's almost impossible to admire somebody the way I admire the people I admire without wanting to let them know. And that's not the kind of fan I'm talking about. Like the first time I met James Taylor, he was really famous, and I wasn't. But I thought that he knew something about me because we had some friends in common, and I knew guys that played with him in his band, and they said, 'You know, James knows about that song of yours. He knows who you are.' I said, 'Really? Cool.' You just had to tell me that."

"So I saw James at this club, and I went up to talk to him and say, 'Hi, glad to meet you. I know Danny and Joel.' It was like talking to a post. The guy was looking everywhere beyond me. He was like, 'How do I get out of this? How do I get out of this?' And I noticed it right away. I'm like, 'Oh. I just wanted to say hi' but he wanted to split. You know? It wasn't about me, but he was in a very public place, in a club he was playing, and what happened was that somebody from the audience was comin' up to him, to probably pay him a compliment, or in some way talk to him about how much he means to them. It's a natural thing to wanna do. But there's a time when that might work, and a time when it won't. And it wasn't working."

"I'm sure he wouldn't even remember that. I wouldn't bother to tell him, 'Oh, yeah. The time I met you, man, you really dissed me - what's up with that?' But now we know each other. We're friends. A few years later we met in some circumstance in which there's a chance to become friends, to know each other. But the fan that really needs to get something, get your attention -- I don't believe in that. I would think the music should be enough. You know?"

"And I always felt that way. When Bob Dylan was the most important person in the world to me, I remember reading something. I read everything that I could about him, and one of the things he said was how people shouldn't put anybody up on a pedestal. Really, that's an unfair thing to do. I wouldn't want anybody to do that to me, and I wouldn't do that to the people I admire. You wouldn't idolize him. Don't make him into a hero."

"So every time I met Bob Dylan, and there was a bunch of times, I just really made it a point not to fawn over him or even tell him that it was a big deal. It was a big deal. It was a big deal for me. I think now that I was kind of a fool about this. I should have at some point said something, or done something to become friends with him. Even though I kinda knew from the beginning it was impossible. This is a guy that was like the voice of a generation, an icon…no, I don't think I can; we're not gonna become pals or something, you know…"

"One time I was even in a place -- this was years later, I've met him so many times now -- he's sitting in this place, we were both at this party, and I was just lookin' at him, and I was talking to this guy who works with him, and he's saying, 'Do you ride a motorcycle?' I said, 'No.' He goes, ''cause you know Bob rides a bike, and I'm always kinda lookin' for someone to go riding with Bob.' I'm just lookin' at him, and I said, 'Do you think he would wanna hear just how much he's meant to me over the years?' The guy looks at me like…'Don't do it, man. Do not blow it. 'Cause he's comfortable right now. He's having a good time. He's watching something else go down, and he's included here, and he's not up on some ridiculous plateau that people put him on.' I said, 'Of course, you're right. What was I thinking?'

"It's been that way for me many times. And just recently I had a stalker situation where somebody had built me up to a place in their mind, and it became a problem, actually. It was a person who is mentally ill. It involved the police and stuff. Yeah. The fans who want more than the actual work. It's a mistaken notion to become obsessed with another person's life."

"But you see, we live in a time when that's encouraged. The celebrity industry. The tabloid media and all the celebrity shows, Lifestyles and the Rich and Famous -- when you think about it, probably more than half of what's on television is selling you some notion of 'there are some beautiful people someplace, and you can find out about them, and you can be like them if you tune in, and you can buy stuff that they buy, be where they go, go where they go…' That's all crap. That's complete and utter crap. That's to say that their lives are more valuable than yours. They are trying to convince you that you don't really have a life unless it's on television or in some way viewed as a famous thing-until finally, you have people that are merely famous for being famous rather than for some real contribution that they've made. There's a lot of that."

"Anyway. Good fan - Japanese fans. Japanese fans because if you're a fan of mountain climbing, and you're Japanese, you know everything about it. There's something about that culture - they make it their business to know everything. There are blue grass groups in Japan playing banjos and mandolins and wearing country clothes, and they're playing faithfully executed blue grass. They are a country of people who go collect things and bring them back. And so there's a Japanese equivalent to most famous things in the world. I know the guy who used to be the Japanese Jackson Browne, and he and I are friends now. He moved on. He became the Japanese Bruce Springsteen after awhile, which meant he imitated me for a time, then decided to go imitate Bruce. I think he may have become himself eventually, because it isn't as if they don't understand what it means to be original -- Japanese culture is full of things that are very original! It's just that it's okay with them to be a disciple. They have masters - they say imitation is the greatest form of flattery, so there is a period of time, when might be more humble to say 'I am just an imitator' when you actually are quite good. They might think it audacious or wrong to aspire to being a creator. That might be a little too full of yourself. So they're serious about stuff like that, and when they appreciate you they really treat you with the greatest respect and the most gracious acts. It's awe-inspiring to go to a country like Japan and be treated like an artist, when in the United States you're kind of treated like a commodity, something new, a fad."

Have You Ever Felt Embarrassed About Being On Stage?

"I'm not really nervous about going on stage. I stopped getting nervous. It's rare now. As far as embarrassing, all kinds of embarrassing things happen. But the best you can do is put those feelings aside, because what makes performances really good is when you erase the barrier between audience and performer. For instance, I don't know if you can imagine singing a song that you wrote, and getting to the middle of the song and not be able to remember the words, especially in a really climactic emotional moment. You get to this part where everybody knows the song, and you just stop because you've forgotten the words…that's embarrassing! That's happened to me."

"But actually, the audience loved it. They thought it was so funny. You can't do it a lot, but audiences like it when you turn out to be kind of human. You goofed up. If it really made you uptight, that would mean you wanted not to be human, you want to be perfect. It's better to be imperfect. Then you're in the same place together. Then to forget something is not a big deal. You have more intimacy.

"There's funny embarrassing, and then there's other kinds. My mother gave a bunch of my baby pictures to an unauthorized biography once. This guy lied to my mom, very shameful. Bad guy. He lied to my family, saying he's writing this book with me, and they just believed him. They didn't call and ask, 'Hey, you want us to cooperate with this guy?' They just did it. So that was a deeper kind of embarrassment. Because it was like they gave some sort of family approval for what was really a very badly written book, and when I would try to explain how that happened, I had to deal with the fact that I wasn't very close with my mother and my brother at that time in my life. That was deeply embarrassing to have to say, 'My mom and my brother didn't know enough to ask me about this, and I haven't seen them in awhile' That's terribly embarrassing to me. I remember really being unhappy. I said, 'I can't believe you did that!' But we got through it all right.

Advice for Kids

"I'm honored to be able to speak to you-- you're future leaders; you're already making decisions, taking initiative. Keep doing it. Ask a lot of questions. You have every right to ask. Don't be afraid of asking the wrong question. You have to ask the questions. I would encourage you to examine everything, find out for yourself. Other than that, I'm pretty unqualified to give advice."

"My generation made a lot of mistakes, but it was all part of the same impulse to be the one to decide, and a reaction against the kind of strictness we were subjected to. Question authority. Just ask the question. Don't always do the thing you're told, because they will take advantage of you -- "they" being political leaders, businesses, corporations. They prey on the people who just do what they are told. They want obedience…they want to convince you that you are not even a person if you don't buy whatever it is they are selling. And they are very cynical about it. Corporations have no conscience about the environment, human rights, rights of consumers…they do it because they can get away with it. As much as I love the world, I know it's also full of people who think they have the right to do that. There are fights in the world. There are some fights that are coming your way. Don't back down from what you know is right. In the end, you are the one to decide what's right and wrong."

LoisGene Kinevan: The Toll Collector’s Granddaughter

I have fond memories of the times Loisgene Kinevan allowed our students to hike on her property near the San Marcos Pass, giving us a handwritten note in her exquisitely old-fashioned penmanship to present as a pass if ever our presence there was questioned. We sampled apples from the orchard her grandfather planted, saw the paintings left by the Chumash Indians who once lived there, and sat in the sun drawing and writing in our journals. It was a place of spirits, legends and wonderful tales, and Loisgene -- who died in 2004 -- was a link to many of these. One bright September day in the early 1990s, she came to Vista de Las Cruces to tell us the stories she heard in her childhood, and to share her own memories of this good land. A warm and gracious lady, she wore a bright rainbow-hued sweater and carried a stack of pictures of the Indian paintings and the Kinevan ranch house to distribute to the students. We gathered around excitedly to be transported back to the old stagecoach days of Santa Barbara.

Loisgene's grandfather, Patrick Kinevan, was born in Clare County, Ireland, and emigrated to America during the great potato famine. He landed in New York in 1846, and in Washington, D.C. he met Nora, the woman who would eventually become his wife. In the 1860's, he joined a Civil War regimen; he fought at Gettysburg and other battles. After the war, he decided to go to California -- in particular, he wanted to see San Diego.Getting to California was not easy in those days! Grandfather traveled for three or four years on horseback and by stagecoach, and he was in several Indian skirmishes along the way. An arrow hit him in the back and was lodged there for the rest of his life.

While traveling by stagecoach, he sat up front to chat with the driver, who mentioned that there was a need for a toll collector along the San Marcos pass near Santa Barbara. The San Marcos pass had been built by Chinese "coolie" labor paid for by two businessmen, Bixby and Flint. Grandfather applied for the job, and was hired by Bixby and Flint, who provided him with a cabin, a tollgate, and a Chinese cook. Twice, when the road was realigned, he moved his base, but he had found a home. He wrote to Nora in Washington, D.C. and invited her to come out and marry him.Nora's parents would not allow her to go to California, so she ran away from home. The two met in San Francisco at old St. Mary's church and were married there. They returned to Grandfather's station along the Santa Barbara stagecoach route, and began a life together. Grandma cooked breakfast for the travelers, and Hom, the Chinese cook, baked bread. Hom's bread was so delicious that he demanded everyone to leave when he baked it, in order to keep his recipe a secret. Alas, no one ever did get that recipe -- it is lost for all time.

And so the old stage would clamber up from the turnpike, over Slippery Rock to West Camino Cielo, and down to where the Kinevan ranch was. When the horn blew, Grandma and Hom would start breakfast, and at the barn, twenty fresh horses would be ready to hook up. The passengers would eat breakfast -- occasionally, some would stay overnight -- and then they would board the stagecoach and travel on to Mattei's Tavern, the lunch stop.

Loisgene and her brother were raised in Los Angeles, where her father was a policeman. She did spend time at the ranch, but not as much as her brother, who, because he was a boy, got to spend entire summers there. It wasn't very fair. She recalls that her brother had a big white horse, and she had a little brown one. But, oh, how she loved the ranch! They had chickens, pigs, cows, horses... and so many wonderful memories.Unfortunately, Loisgene never knew her grandfather. All of the stories are from her father's recollections. Patrick Kinevan died in 1911. He had been running cattle over to the Santa Ynez Valley and died of a heart attack while chasing a maverick.

We've heard stories about Fremont's cannons and buried treasure hidden there at the ranch. What do you know about these?

There is indeed a legend that $50,000 in gold bullions were hidden on the ranch. Three men had robbed a ship in the harbor, and fled on horseback through the pass with a posse behind them. They stopped to pay the toll, and one was shot. The other two were put in jail in San Luis Obispo. One died shortly thereafter, but the third wrote to Sheriff Broughton, a one-armed sheriff in Santa Barbara, offering to tell where the gold had been hidden. Broughton got on his horse and rode up to San Luis Obispo and was told that the loot was at "Pat Kinevan's flat at the fork of the creek under the oak tree." No one ever found it. People still ask for permission to search.Loisgene's Uncle Tom did find several Spanish gold coins in the orchard, not far from where the Indian paintings are. He gave these to the mission.

Did you have a special place on the ranch where you used to go when you were sad?

Loisgene liked to hike up towards the Indian caves, where the big rocks are, just before the trail down to the paintings, a spot overlooking the orchard. That is her special place. In the wintertime, there is a pond there that is full of frogs.Did you hear stories of robbers and accidents on the stagecoach?There were accidents occasionally, and robbers frequently. Grandfather himself was on the stage to San Luis Obispo once when they were stopped by robbers. All the passengers had to get off, were blind-folded, and then made to sit down. The robbers were actually waiting for the Wells Fargo stagecoach that would be coming along, for it was carrying money. Grandfather had packed a chicken lunch, which was offered up to the people. All enjoyed lunch while waiting, and the Wells Fargo coach was robbed when it came through.

Grandfather was also captured at one time by a well-known bandit named Joaquin Marietta who kept him in a one-room cabin for several days. Marietta had a hide-out in Gaviota Pass.

What kind of people rode the stagecoach?

They were regular, ordinary people who had to get somewhere. They would come from Santa Barbara on their way to San Luis Obispo where they would catch the train. This stagecoach line ran from about 1872 until 1903 -- it was the last stagecoach service in the country. The railroad was built by the hard labor of Chinese workers, and Irish, too, and when the railroad came down to Santa Barbara, Bixby and Flint sold the route to the county. There just wasn't much business anymore.

Were there different classes on the stagecoach, for rich and poor people?

There were no special classes, and it was a pretty rough ride for all.

Are there any stage coaches left?

There are a few left. Loisgene remembers that there was still one in the barn at the ranch when she was a child. Now, you can see some at the Carriage Museum in Santa Ynez, or on the grounds of the Court House in Santa Barbara.

Did the stagecoaches make a lot of stops?

They made a few stops, but they passed through many places. There are now fifty-two commemorative plaques along the route they traveled, from the Arlington Theater in Santa Barbara all the way to Buellton. The toll gate at the Kinevan ranch was the first stop after cresting the mountain.

Tell us more about your grandfather's job.

He had a big oil can in the living room. Every Sunday he would count the money. He often had to get out of bed in the middle of the night when a stagecoach would arrive at the tollgate, which was locked at night. During the day, it was unlocked, but he always had a fast, fresh horse saddled and ready to go just in case he had to chase down a stage that tried to avoid paying. He always caught them.The toll was 25 cents on horse, 50 cents with a wagon. Often, men would come over the pass with sheep, one black for every hundred white. One fellow tried to misrepresent the number in his herd by taking out a few of the black sheep. Grandfather was not fooled.

In those days, you could "homestead" -- if you were living on land, you could "patent" it, thereby claiming it as your own. Grandfather patented the first hundred acres of the property that is now the ranch. When his sons came of age, they patented additional land. It was free! The Kinevan ranch is now 500 acres.

Life on the ranch was very self-sufficient. There were animals, and a lavish garden. Grandfather was quite a grower. He planted apple orchards, olive trees, and pear trees. Many are still there.

Is the tollgate still there?

Loisgene confessed that it was she who broke the old red tollgate. She was riding on the running board of a truck as a child. "Loisgene," someone shouted, "close the gate!" She thought she'd pull it shut as she went through, but it broke. No one was too upset about it at the time. Only years later did she realize its value and uniqueness, for the memorabilia of the stagecoach days are precious and scarce. At one point, she was going to open the ranch house (built in the 1870's) as a museum. She had gathered many record books and artifacts into the house. In l972, a terrible fire destroyed the house and everything in it. Nothing survived but a few Indian bowls that had already endured through the ages.

One last story?

Two Chinese men (their names were something like "Agee" and "Avay", spelled phonetically) worked for Grandfather at the ranch. They lived in a rustic little cabin that they built in the orchard. It must have been drafty and leaky and humble indeed, for within the cabin, there was a tent. The two men cut wood for Grandfather and were paid by the cord. They had a garden, spoke virtually no English, and oddly enough, they slept until noon every day. But for twenty years they dutifully worked and lived their quiet lives on the ranch. They must have saved every penny, for they had what they needed and almost never went anywhere. One day, the pair walked the two miles down to the ranch house and knocked at the door. In broken English, they told Grandfather that they were going back to China. They walked away. That was the last Grandfather ever saw of them -- two lone figures, walking down the road, heading back to China. 

Richard Cunningham has been an inventor since childhood. His irrepressible spirit, love of life, and stunning creativity have led him through colorful adventures involving airplanes, motorcycles, bicycles, horses, journalism, bad guitar playing, and plenty of pain and ecstasy in the great outdoors. In 1981, he founded his own bicycle company, Mantis, whose bikes are well known for the "magic feel" of their ride. Richard is currently the editor of Mountain Bike Action magazine. In his spare time, he has been building an airplane - it's almost ready for its first flight. Here he is, in his own words:

Airplanes are my first love. My mom told me she'd give me fifty bucks if I could build an airplane that would fly. I had no idea what it would take to build an airplane. Actually, I did have an idea, but it wasn't right. I made all sorts of contraptions with wings, and I covered the wings with old shower curtains, and I used skateboard wheels, which at the time were made out of steel. I took all this stuff to the largest hill in the city of Fullerton, where I lived, and then I would sit on it and go down the hill and bounce up and down, but I never took off.

I was always picking through the trash on my way to school to find parts for an airplane. One day, I found this huge patio umbrella. It was made out of lightweight cloth, and it had a bamboo handle and steel ribs that came out from it, so I took it and stashed it behind the school. After school, I bent the front to make it look like an airplane wing, and I broke the handle off, so it was really little, and I could hold the handle with my legs, and the top of the umbrella was right above my head.Fullerton is in the north of Orange County, right at the mouth of a canyon, and we had these incredible Santa Ana winds. You know when they build new homes how ugly they make everything with those huge embankments? Well, behind my school, we had one of those that was probably 200 yards long, and the wind blew right up against it, howling. I went up to the top of the hill, and I knew. I knew I could fly. I knew it would work. I would run as fast as I could and jump off the top of the hill when the wind was blowing. But I just crashed my brains out all the way down.

Then on my fifth try, I caught one just right. I was a little kid -- it picked me up, and I stayed about this high off the hill almost to the bottom. When I hit the bottom, I landed on the umbrella and cut myself to pieces, and the umbrella was shredded, but that was the first time I ever flew. I was so excited! I went home and told my parents, and my mother never did believe me.

But I've loved airplanes all my life.My dad worked in aerospace in secret projects back in the days everyone thought the Russians were going to drop a nuclear bomb on us. His life was entirely secret. He would go, he would come back, and he would work with slide rules (this was before computers) and draw things, but he could never talk about it, not until much later in my life, when I was in my thirties. That's when my dad built a little airplane, an ultra-light. You don't need a license if you make an airplane that flies slow enough, only takes one person, and weighs less than 250 pounds, so he built one. None of us knew how to fly. But we went out to this big dry lake, and we'd just sit in it. Sit in the airplane, hit the gas, and just try to fly level with the ground this high until you feel good about it, and then you take off and go.

So I learned how to fly just like the Wright Brothers. I didn't have flying lessons. Once you take off, once you pull back on the stick and it goes up in the air, it feels like the ground falls away. Anyone who's ever flown on an airline knows how that feels, except that the pilot on an airliner knows what he's doing.Anyway, the dry lake is perfectly flat…as flat as the flattest freeway…six miles long and two miles wide. But at seventy miles an hour, you run out of six miles really fast. And I didn't know how to turn, and my runway, this giant runway, was behind me, which is bad luck in flying. So I just tried to remember what I'd read in the book - ten miles, it took me ten miles to turn around- and then, when I saw a beautiful lake below, I thought, "That's really cool!" and just when I got all relaxed and thought I was gonna land, I passed it again. Ten miles, 400 feet above the lake, and I couldn't tell where we were parked. All I saw below were motor homes with motorcycles next to them. They all looked beige from the top, and very tiny. But after awhile, I made this perfect landing, and that was it. I was thirty-five. It was the scariest and most beautiful moment of my life.

The bicycle is the closest you can get to an airplane. If you can ride a bike -- you know how you lean and turn? -- you can fly an airplane.But the reason I got into bicycles is like most kids. It's the first thing you get that gives you the freedom to leave home and go just about anywhere in the city. When you get your first bike, and you realize that in fifteen minutes, you can be five miles away, that's a huge distance. I don't know if any of you guys ever went cruising around on your bicycles and just exploring, but when I was a kid, where I lived in Orange County, it was like here in the Santa Ynez Valley. Now it's covered with homes and the Disneyland Matterhorn is visible about fifteen miles away…but in those days, it was all orange groves, and little tiny paved streets, and dirt roads, and hills. I was pretty much a solitary kid, one of those boys you see all by himself playing in the dirt somewhere. That was me.

So when I got my first bicycle and my parents would allow me to actually leave the street, it was freedom. I rode for miles. That's the reason I like bicycles so much. It's just you and the road.

Bicycles were the first non-powered things I fell in love with. My entire life, even as a child, I loved anything that had an engine and wheels on it. I built go-karts from old lawn mowers that were just pieces of wood with sticks and wheels nailed onto them and fan belts to get 'em along. I crashed my brains out in a million different ways. And back then, police didn't give you tickets for riding on the street, so I built race cars, and hop-up stuff for race cars - I had everything you can imagine.

One day I went back to that same hill where I used to take my airplane. I figured I could just roller skate down this entire hill. Everything seemed perfect. Of course I can do this! It just seemed so natural. Back then there were only two kinds of roller skates: the kind that had clay wheels that looked like plastic, and the kind that had steel wheels. I had the steel wheel kind. So I tightened them up and went way up to the top of the hill. All of my friends showed up - I thought they showed up to see this miracle high speed run I was gonna do, but really, they only showed up because they knew I was gonna eat dirt.I had a red scarf that I'd made out of torn sheets, and I was so confident that I would just fly down this thing. I started off nice and easy, going pretty good, my feet were kinda moving a little bit, but I was still okay. Now I start going really fast, and now I'm beyond the point where I can fall, and I can't run. I'm really beyond anything. I knew I was in trouble. The skates were steel, and on the asphalt, they vibrated so hard, it hurt my feet. It was like somebody was pounding nails into the bottom of my feet.It's getting worse and worse, and I'm going too fast. What am I gonna do? I'm not gonna make it to the bottom. I was gonna crash in a second. So I was gonna jump. I just leaned a little bit.

But ever feel so afraid that you just lose all power in your body? It feels like somebody stole your ability to move, like in a bad dream. That's it. I hit the curb with my skates at an angle, bounced off the roots of a big tree, and just sailed into the parking lot of the Catholic school.It took me months to heal. I stuck to the sheets for months. Every part of my body was dripping.

I had a lot of little crashes, but that's my first good one. Later, I broke my hip testing motorcycles. You had to test every kind of motorcycle that was ever made. I was racing through the roads around town, and I just fell. The motorcycle was sliding and skidding and it slid and pinned me between the curb and the motorcycle and it cracked my hip, and there's nothing you can do for a cracked hip but just heal. I was on a cane for almost two years.

I raced motorcycles for many years, up to the time I was about twenty-two, I was racing them on the dirt. I loved it. I used to go trail riding in a certain place in the desert. When I first went to this place, it was beautiful. There was a creek over here, bushes everywhere, and a little place to park your car. Well, I kept coming back as time passed, and thirteen years later, it was just a couple of bushes and all dirt. One day I realized that we had done that. We had ridden our motorcycles around the bushes to the point where those got destroyed, and everything just became dirt. And I thought, "You know? I've spent most of my life making race cars, building motorcycles, and making motorcycles faster. But there's got to be an end to this. I'm not doing something that's making the world better. It's making it more fun, but if you look at my space…I went here because it was beautiful, and now it's denuded."

This was an important realization for me, and it involved my livelihood. I had a shop, I worked for other people, this was my living. But I kinda started thinking about it then. And several months later, I was under an expensive race car welding little exhaust parts onto it, and a ball of metal that came off the weld fell down and landed on my private parts. Now when a hot ball of metal lands on skin, it bounces around and leaves thousands of little pock mark burn holes, and I couldn't just run away, I was under a car, and I had a welding torch in one hand, and I just had to wait it out. And that's when I knew that I didn't want to participate in this world anymore. There are enough people who make cars, enough people who think cars are the coolest things in the world. I wanted to do something that made a better world.I kept my shop, but I closed it up, and I went rock climbing and mountain climbing for a couple of months and just did nothing, and when I came back, I got a job in a bike shop. I still loved bicycles. And that's how I started out. I worked for a dollar seventy-five an hour or something like that assembling cruisers with air wrenches in the back of a Schwinn shop. No one ever saw me. I was just a noise in the back.

So I went from being this guy that had his own business, to the lowest of the low at this cheesy bike shop in Fullerton, but I loved it. And some time later, I got a job at a place called Medici Bicycles, and they made custom road racing bikes. I started riding road bikes and ten speeds, and I even wore the little fruit outfit - like is that a real man, or is that a fruit advertisement? I loved it, but eventually, I ran out of places to ride on the road, for a hundred miles in every direction. 'Cause once you're fit - I was riding 200 or 300 miles a week during the hot season - once you're that fit, you've ridden everywhere there's pavement for a hundred miles in every direction.

Now I started connecting the dirt roads with a road bike. I'd go over the mountains on these skinny dirt roads and I found out I liked that even more. But the whole time I was going down these sandy fire roads on these tiny little road bikes in my fruit outfit, passing four wheel drivers and motorcycles, I was thinking wouldn't it be cool if I had big tires and motorcycle handle bars and all the other stuff? And then years later, I heard of this guy named Monte Ward who had gotten one of the first mountain bikes from Northern California. He was riding on all the dirt roads. So I thought, "I'm gonna build me one of those things."

When the right rims and the right tires came out, I was already working at a bike company. I just went back to my shop, and I made my first mountain bike, the first Mantis. It was 1981. From then on, I never rode the road again.That bike looked great, but it needed to be taken for a real ride. Monte was going out to do what at the time was considered one of the hardest climbs in Orange County, and this was a good opportunity to ride along with him on the beautiful red Mantis, but I was totally out of shape, so I wanted someone else to ride. I didn't believe I could stay with the mythic Monte, best climber in Orange County, the man everyone deferred to when it came to mountain biking. I had heard so much about this guy. When I met him, I was completely intimidated. I think we had three words, and then my friend rode up there with him and came down and said that my bike handled the worst of any bicycle he'd ever ridden in his life.

Eventually, I started riding with Monte, and he basically took me on my first awesome mountain bike ride. We climbed a lot, we carried a lot, and got back at night, so I think I learned that through Monte. We eventually became friends, and that will probably last for the rest of our lives.

I don't own that first bike anymore. I was so poor, that I sold almost everything I had for the first ten years. Everything I could sell. I sold a '56 Ford pick-up truck, which now would probably be worth a hundred thousand bucks because they're the vintage, "must have" truck. I sold it for $300 because I had to pay rent. So then I didn't have a car, and I rode my bicycle, and then I needed to pay rent again, so I sold my mountain bike to pay rent for that day. When you're in business, and you're barely making it, you have to have money, so whatever it takes. Basically, if you were my children, and you weren't working at the bike shop, I would consider selling you just to pay the rent.

But it was an exciting time. Have any of you been part of a new sport, something that just starts out? Like snowboarding, or something like that? Here's the deal. When a sport first starts out, it's so new, just doing it is really fun. When I first started making mountain bikes, there were no boundaries. A mountain bike could be anything you could ride on the dirt. Nobody knew what made a good mountain bike, or what made a bad one. So I had a chance to experiment with different tubing, different types of arrangements that made a bike go faster or climb better, and it made a big difference each time I discovered something new. It made a huge difference in what you were able to do. If you bought one of my bicycles in comparison to the other ones, you might find that this thing climbs better than some other cheesy brand, or maybe it goes downhill ten times worse than Tom's bike.

But each bicycle has its own personality, and it's in the technology. That's what I was participating in. It wasn't just bicycles. I was participating with a very small group of other men and women who were making bicycles all over this country. We were creating a new sport. It was like we discovered gold in California and nobody else knew about it. So the fun was in the making of the bicycles and the building of the sport.We went to all the biggest bike shops from Santa Barbara to San Diego trying to sell our bikes. And you know what they told us? We can't sell a $1200 beach cruiser. And they threw us out. We didn't sell one bike. And these are the bike shops that are now considered the mountain bike centers of their communities. That's how new it was back then. So we put on slide shows just to sell bicycles. There were slides of us riding downhill, and standing next to sunsets and stuff. They would look really goofy now, but we actually did slide shows to tell people about mountain bikes.

But the reason I stopped making mountain bikes was because at that time the small builder- designer-engineer guys began to have less of a role to play. Here I was making maybe 500 frames a year, and companies like Specialized and Nishiki are making 20,000 and 30,000 bikes at a time. So there wasn't as much need for a small manufacturer like me as there was for a large manufacturer to produce big numbers for less money. My bicycles cost at the time $2500 each and you could buy a fully equipped bicycle with the same amount of parts for about $700 or $800. So I looked at it and I went, "You know? It's time to do something else."

The editor job came up when I still had a bike company. My friend Zapata Espinoza quit his magazine job and moved to another magazine. My wife said, "You've been looking for something to do. You should try for that job."

This is really funny, too. I didn't know how to type. I got Fs and Ds most of the time in school. I don't know how to spell. I didn't know how to use the computer. All the skills an editor needs to know. But I did know a lot about mountain bikes. So I called up the magazine and said, "You know, Zap's leaving. Why don't you put me on the list?"

And the next day I got the job. Now I had a company to sell, and I had all that stuff to learn, like how to write stories without knowing how to type. In one year, I had to learn everything about magazines, how to use the computer, and all the stuff that went with an entirely new job. I think it was the biggest change I've made in my life in any one day…other than being born.

I've been there for eight years now. It's the greatest job on earth. I get to ride bicycles and travel all over the world to do that, to ride bicycles in the national parks in Switzerland, or somewhere in Brazil. I can go anywhere I want, pretty much, wherever they ride bicycles, and then I can just go home and write stories about it, and I get paid to do that. It's a great job.It's easy to write about bicycles. You see a bike, you ride it, and then you talk about it, or type about it, like you were telling your best friend. That's the easiest way to write a story, like you're writing to your best friend. But in my own column, the first page of the magazine, you're supposed to be brilliant in just one page. And sometimes, I just don't have anything to say, so I break it up. For two times, I talk about something that's important, or something technical, something I like or something I hate -- that's kind of political-- and the third time, I just tell a cool story. The last story I wrote was about me when I was about four and a half feet tall, digging through the trash and getting in trouble in Catholic school, and having the nuns yell at me.It's challenging to try to write a one-page story because you have to take out a lot of stuff that you think is important. It's easy to go on and on like I'm doing right now, boring you to death, but if I had to say everything in one paragraph, I'd really have to think it through. So that's it. A one-column story is a lot harder than anything else to write.

Mountain bikes are just about enjoying yourself. A new generation has discovered mountain bikes now and just uses them for localized stunts and fun stuff. It's like the skateboard crowd where you just hang around a certain area and do like drop-in and all that stuff. They do the same thing but on more natural terrain, and that's the cool thing now.Free ride is the hottest thing in bikes today. It's a heavy-duty mountain bike with long travel suspension, primarily used for downhill, but you can still pedal it when you have to. It's popular for same reason as snowboarding. You can do all sorts of tricks, ride difficult terrain, and even though you can't use it for extended cross-country, it allows someone to just go out and play.Where are bikes headed? Forty or fifty years ago, there were the old Schwinn cruisers, no gears. We're kinda going where it was back then. At one time the mountain bike was the coolest thing in the world, not because you could ride on the dirt. It was because when you went to a bike shop and asked for an expensive light weight bike, they used to give you a 10-speed with stupid handlebars and a little skinny seat that was more like a butt wedge, but that was the only place you could sit. And the tires were so skinny that the first time you dinged 'em they would go flat. So what happened was you had a bicycle that was uncomfortable to ride, everybody hated it, and it was stashed in the garage because it had flat tires.When mountain bikes came out, they had upright bars, comfortable seats, and the tires were big so if they had a leak it would still hold air for awhile. So suddenly, everybody had the bicycle they were begging the bike shops for, even though they never rode them in the dirt. Now mountain bikes have been around for a long time, and they really are bicycles for the dirt, not just ten-speeds with fat tires.

So when you go to a bike shop, they don't say, "You need a mountain bike." They say, "What are you gonna do with it?" So you say, "I'm just gonna ride on the board walk and pick up chicks."

So they say, "You don't want a mountain bike, you want one of these comfort bikes. They look kind of butch, but they've got skinnier tires, the seat's comfortable, and the handle bar's even higher."

Mountain bikes spurred everyone to go out and reinvent cycling. And rediscover it. But now that everyone's riding again, they don't necessarily want a mountain bike, and mountain bike sales have gone to one third what they were. (And so have the sales of my magazine, by the way.) Everyone realized they don't want to go out in the dirt; they just want a cool, comfortable bike. The market realized that, too. It's specialized. You can buy a bike for any purpose.

As you get older, you have a higher tolerance for pain, so you can do longer and longer rides because you know you're not gonna die. The hardest thing I ever did lately was a twelve-hour ride in the Los Padres forest. The trail I was looking for was mis-marked on the map. I missed the junction I was supposed to take, and I ended up climbing through the bushes for four hours. It was dark when I got back onto the ridge. On the way back, the short way was to the right and the long way to the left. I met a Jordanian man with his child on the dirt road, and I said I was going to the right, and he said, "No, you do not want to go that way. It is very steep."

But I said, "I know, but I just climbed up an entire mountain carrying my bike."

He says, "No. That may be a road on the map but it is very steep."

I was with a friend. I said, "We're gonna do it anyway."

He said, "Is okay with me, but now you will know the meaning of steep."

So I walked up the steepest road I have ever been on in my life. There were motorcycle tracks that went off the road and into the forest because it was too steep for motorcycles. I was so tired. And when we got back to the car, my friend had forgotten the keys to the car! We'd started twenty miles away; we were supposed to end up at this other vehicle. No keys. We had to call a locksmith and have them make the keys to get into the car. We were starved, we were cold, we were in our shorts, and it was the middle of the night.

I only have three friends who will go out on rides with me anymore. The rest of them say no. They call it a "Richard ride." It isn't a Richard ride unless it's dark when you get back, and you are lacerated by bushes. There has to be a considerable amount of pushing, and you have to get lost at least once. I used to think that was a joke, but when I look back on all of my favorite rides…they are like that.

That's the whole thing about being outside. No stores. When something goes wrong, if you don't have it in your bag, you walk or you spend the night. But you really explore. You see a lot of stuff that you'd never in your life see, even when you're miserable. It's cool.

One time we were carrying our bikes for twelve miles into a canyon near a creek, one of the most spectacular places I've ever been in my life - at every bend, a swimming pool with waterfalls, piles of turtles on every rock, and a bear ahead of us the whole time. His footprints were filling up with water when we went through the crossings. The water was so deep, we had to carry our bikes over our heads, or we had to swim across. It took us twelve hours to get through the canyon, but that was one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen in Southern California. There were Indian caves with all their stuff still there, the rocks they had used to grind acorns, totem rocks, everything still arranged like they had just left yesterday. It was unbelievable.

There's no such thing as modern times. Less than a hundred years ago, the last of the Chumash Indians were driven from their ancestral villages. They were stone age people. They didn't have clay pottery - they wove their baskets and carved everything out of rock and they had flint tools all the way into the era of steam engines, and when the Wright Brothers were flying their first airplane. And when they grew up, they wanted the same things we want: they didn't want to die without making a difference in the world, they wanted to be loved, they wanted to have babies, and do the stuff we do, just in a different form. They had the same questions. So there's no such thing as modern times.

My advice…and I'm still struggling with it a little bit…is that there's a lot of stuff you're expected to do but you should really concentrate on what you want to do, what really makes you the most excited about life. And if that means getting fat and having babies and raising kids, or if it's putting roofs on houses, that's fine - because there's honor in doing what you want to do and doing it well.I really wanted to make bikes and get a job in the bike industry and make a difference by doing this, and the whole time I was at Mantis, for the first ten years, I never made more than ten thousand dollars a year. I was poor the whole time. And my dad and my friends said give it up. You've tried hard; you've done a good job; just give it up. But I really wanted to do it. And somehow, because I just kept working at it, I found an angle that worked, and it was really fulfilling.

So never downplay something you really believe in, something that really makes you happy, because that's where you're the most creative. When you're doing something you really enjoy, you get that spark of creativity, and that's what drives the human soul. Make a difference, and feel good about it. Don't lose that one thing, even if it's contrary to everything that everyone else says -- keep it alive, and you'll find that it will take you to the next step.

And the other thing is I'm not telling you to only do things that come easy, because I would have never gotten the job at the magazine if another thing hadn't happened shortly before, and that is a guy named Jay who had a bike shop walked into my shop at Mantis and gave me a Fender telecaster electric guitar. Now I can do a lot of things really well, but I suck at the guitar. I have no rhythm, I sing like a crow, and my fingers don't fit on a guitar. Suddenly here's this instrument, and it was beautiful. It was the most gorgeous guitar I've ever seen, and I've been around music a lot, and I sat down and started to play it, and I was horrible. I had to buy the lowest level books, and I had to go through them and work really, really hard just to play bad, and it was humiliating. It was humiliating to be so bad, because some of the guys at Mantis, like Eddie, the tall guy, were musicians, in a band, and it came easy for them. It was humiliating to learn something from the ground up at thirty-nine years old that everyone around me knew really well, and then to have to work hard just to be bad at it. These guys were singin' and jammin' really well while I was just figuring out the chords.

So then, when it came time for the magazine job, the editor job, which was really a cool deal, I didn't know anything about computers, and I didn't know how to type, I didn't know anything about the magazine, but I'd just learned how to play the guitar. And I realized that day that it wouldn't be any different. I'd just go in and start with the basics, and learn it, just like I'd learned the guitar, and it led to this.

So I'm not telling you to do things that come easy for you. I'm just telling you to follow your dreams and do whatever it takes to be able to do what you want to do, even if it means humiliating yourself and learning something you're bad at. And I still love guitars. I play every day, and I still suck.

Remembering Ray Kunze - October 2, 1936 - November 4, 2004

I figured Ray would always be here, dispensing stories, wisdom, and opinions. I loved his easy smile and gregarious personality and the way he called the ladies sweetheart when we came through the gate. Ray was loud and expansive, robust and good-natured, optimistic and resilient. He had a colorful and remarkable history but was fully immersed in the present. He had a definite sense of the way things ought to be (and wasn't shy about telling you) but he never stopped learning, either. He had devoted friends all over the world but was so much a part of the Hollister Ranch it is impossible to fathom his absence. Ray slipped away suddenly, and some of us wish we had paused a little longer the last time we saw him to chat or grouse or remark about the day. Too much love remains unspoken as we hurry along in our routines; now and then we are stunned into seeing that we really should slow down.

But Ray knew where he stood with the world. He simply held his strong arms open to the amazing experience of life and embraced it completely. "Your life is your art," he famously proclaimed, and that's the way he lived. He started out body surfing as a young boy in Hermosa Beach. In 1948, on a trip to Doheney Beach, he saw someone stand up surfing, and he thought he'd like to try it. Large, powerful, and a supremely gifted athlete, Ray became a well-known figure at Malibu in the '50s and '60s along with the likes of Dora, Doyle, and Mysto George.

"Great surfers?" he once said, "I've seen them all. But the best surfer is the guy having the most fun out there." And Ray always had the broadest smile of all.

Ray did a stint in the army in the early 1960s and was proud to have been an L.A. County fireman for 25 years. He was physically active all his life, even playing professional baseball for a time, but he was perhaps best known as The Malibu Enforcer of the surfing world. "I got that name from John Milius." he explained, "He's a famous movie producer now, but when I first knew him he was a young boy at Malibu. I was like a big brother around the beach; I had just come from the army and was trying to get back into surfing, so I spent a lot of time at Malibu. And I used to try to keep kids from getting in trouble or fighting. One day, John showed me he had a handful of pills, and I made him throw them away. Then I made him stay out in the water until dark -- I wouldn't let him come back in. He told me about this years later, and when he made the film Big Wednesday, he had a character called The Enforcer and that was supposed to me."

According to Ray, surfing was not so much about the waves you rode as the friends you made. "I've made lifelong friends everywhere I've gone, and that's a gift," he reflected. He recognized the exhilarating and addictive nature of the sport, but he was modest about his own impressive achievements and he knew that a life needs balance.

"Think of a good life," he told a group of middle school kids, "Think of yourself becoming something. Everyone should help others and contribute to the world."

Ray was as good as his word. He was a champion helper of others and was profoundly loved by countless friends, many of whom gathered at Big Drake's on Saturday to remember him and celebrate his life. It was a grand day, epic and Ray-esque. The sun shone and the water sparkled, and two hundred surfers, young and old, gathered in the water and formed a circle at the place they knew Ray would have been, scattering ashes, flowers, and prayers. A pair of dolphins joined them.Afterwards, friends and family lingered on the bluff, remembering Ray with laughter and tears. A small plane inexplicably dipped and whirled in the empty sky above the Ranch, a strange ship passed, someone played Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's Hawaiian-style version of Over the Rainbow, and a shiny fire engine led Ray's last procession through the dark. It was a wondrous thing.

****

Legendary surfer and colorful local guy, Ray Kunze was known as much for his good nature and easy smile as for his skill in the water -- definitely not your average senior citizen. When we interviewed him, probably around 2002, he was robust and gregarious, as always. No one could have possibly imagined that we would lose him just a year or two later. Here's the interview, in his own words, Ray Kunze:"I started out body surfing as a young boy in Hermosa Beach. Then I went to paipo boards, which were just a piece of cut plywood, shaped almost like a boogie board. I saw someone stand up surfing in 1948 at Doheney Beach, and I thought I'd like to do that. I'm 65 now, and I still surf. I surfed yesterday, and will probably go surfing after this."

"The surf is real big today, and kinda crowded. I'm waiting for the crowd to dwindle. It's not the size of the surf that matters -- it's the lack of crowd, and the wind conditions. Big isn't always better; sometimes small waves are a lot more fun than big waves. It's always different. Sometimes it's just exercise, sometimes it's thrilling, and sometimes it's scary. Surfing has a lot of facets. That's one reason it is such an addictive kind of sport -- it changes all the time. Not like basketball, where the hoops are always the same, the court is always the same -- the waves are changing all the time."

"I've been a Californian most of my life, except for a short period of time when I was in the army. I've had some sponsors and gotten free boards, but I've never been a professional. I was too old by the time there was any money."In the early days of surfing, a lot of surfers were really into water activities other than just surfing -- we went diving, fishing, boating, sailing, canoeing, catching lobsters. We enjoyed the idea of living off the sea. It was a lifestyle within a life."

"When I started surfing, boards were all made of wood. Now they're plastic. They've changed from big heavy boards to lighter boards. The weight is different, and the craftsmanship is better. Things are better in a lot of ways. In other ways, we are losing some things. But remember, every day is the good old days. All of us are artists, and we can paint a good picture for ourselves, or a bad one.""Surfing really took off between 1962 and 1967. In the fifties, when I was a surfer, there was more of a mystique. We were like beatniks with boards, beach bums, the first hippie types. It was a counter culture. Then, in the 1970's, there was lot of turmoil. It wasn't all good: there was a lot of bad drug use, and it got into surfing and gave surfing a bad name. Drugs are not the way to go. You're a pretty bored person if all you can do is abuse drugs.""I got the name The Enforcer from John Milius. He's a famous movie producer now, but when I first knew him he was a young boy at Malibu. I was like a big brother around the beach; I had just come from the army and was trying to get back into surfing, so I spent a lot of time at Malibu. And I used to try to keep kids from getting in trouble or fighting. One day, John showed me he had a handful of pills, and I made him throw them away. Then I made him stay out in the water until dark -- I wouldn't let him come back in. He told me about this years later, and when he made Big Wednesday, a surf movie, he had a character in there called The Enforcer, and that was supposed to me."

"I was there while they were filming that movie, coaching this guy on how to be me. Part of it was filmed at the pier at Gaviota. I was there one night when a boat broke loose. I swam out after it, and then I got it, but I couldn't pull the thing in, and nobody would do anything. The wind was blowing. Finally, I said, 'If nobody's gonna help me…' So I let it go of the rope."

"You have to be in good condition to surf. Never go over your limits. If you're starting out, you should be surfing at Refugio or Leadbetter's, somewhere soft and nice. Then, as you get better, you can go somewhere and take on bigger waves - Jalama, Hawaii - places with a more powerful wave. But remember you have fear for a reason. Fear is to save your life. Fear is not bad. It's like a door. When that door closes, and you're afraid of something, back off. Take a step or two back and make a good decision."

"I've been held down, and it's scary. But I started out as a young person in the ocean, so I'm not as frightened by the ocean as I am by some of these drivers on the road heading to the beach. That's the scariest part!"

"Sometimes I go back to where I was brought up, down south to the beaches I used to like, and I see all the condos, all the traffic and stuff, it really depresses me. But you have to keep a positive attitude…"

"I started going to the Hollister Ranch in1964 by boat. It cost a quarter to launch at the Gaviota pier. My friend was a teacher, and I was a fireman, so during the holidays, we would boat up to Government Point, or Cojo, or Rights and Lefts. This was before it was the Ranch as we know it today. Seals would haul out at Little Drakes and sit on the rocks. Even deer would swim out sometimes to get ticks off themselves. You'd always see some kind of wild animal."

"I've seen sharks and had to leave the water. I've also been right next to dolphins and sea turtles. It's really a beautiful environment when the water is crystal clear and the sun is shining.""On the other hand, I've had skin cancers, and had my ears drilled because I didn't take care of myself when I was young. I started surfing in the days when we didn't even consider skin cancer. We just wanted to be blonde and tan. Now I'm gray and tan.""I've traveled a lot because of surfing. And I've been a lot of places where I go away on a nice big surf trip and I have great expectations and when I go home I get better waves in my own backyard. But the trip was well worth it because I may have gone to a museum or a library or met interesting people or got to go on a boat ride somewhere -- something other than the surf. I went into the backcountry of Australia one time, and they took me to all these beautiful waterfalls. And I swam in the rivers and had a great time."

"So when I go somewhere, surfing might only be two hours of the day -- there's all that other time to intermingle with people, and shop, and look and see the different things that different cultures have. It's fun to try different kinds of food when you travel. You should always try something. You never know if you like it until you try it.""Surfing has taken me to Tahiti, Australia, Puerto Rico, New Zealand, Trinidad, Tobago, Nova Scotia, up and down California, and the eastern United States. I've had the chance to meet a lot of nice people. That's the thing in surfing -- not the great waves you ride, but the great friends you make. I've made lifelong friends everywhere I've gone, and that's a gift."

"I guess my favorite place is Hawaii. I'm thinking about moving to Waikiki. It's overbuilt and everything else, but there's something about it that never changes. I love it. There's an exotic mix of people in Hawaii, also; the history includes Mexicans, Japanese, Filipinos, Chinese… all kinds of people. And you can find waves in Hawaii that fit any ability. At a certain age, you can't take the beatings you can take when you're young. The water there is effervescent, soft, and warm.""Think of a good life. Think of yourself becoming something. Some of these kids I knew who were surfers and never did anything but surf, they put too much time in. It can be kind of addictive. Now they don't have a house to live in. And if you need your hip replaced, you're sure not going to Kelly Slater to have him do it. You're gonna go to a doctor. Thank God lots of people go to school and learn how to do things and help others. I think helping others is a real important part of life.""It's all a matter of balance. You can have a lot more fun if you work. By working, you have days off, and you appreciate your time to relax and have fun. You don't want to be a workaholic, but you don't want to just play all the time to the point where you wake up some day and you're old, and you don't have any security or comforts. Get a good balance in your life."

"Great surfers? I've seen them all. From the early days, I've seen Whitey Harrison, Mickey Dora… and I've seen Kelly Slater -- he's probably the greatest in the magazines. There are others. But the best surfer is the guy having the most fun out there. If you're out there having a good time, you're the best in the world.""A lot of people go dancing, and they don't look so good, but they're having a lot of fun. Some people get paid to dance, but are they having as much fun? That's like some of these professional surfers. I don't think they're having as much fun as Joe Blow at Refugio. He's gonna go home happy and have that great feeling, those endorphins through his brain, and he's gonna get a good night sleep."

"I used to run and ski, and I played football in college. I was a professional baseball player, and I've done some mountain climbing. I fell down in the mountains, actually, and injured my arm; that ended that. I couldn't move my arm for a year, and it made me realize - when I get well, I want to have fun, do stuff, try things I've never tried."

"I mountain bike now, but I stay on paved and dirt roads, not single track. I don't like to fall down. But I go uphill. That's the way to stay in shape. I see your teacher doing that on the weekends, heading up and down the Ranch roads. It's important to study and exercise your brain, but you also need to exercise your body. Get into good habits. Form them soon. If you're not in shape, you don't have as much fun, and eventually, you're gonna have problems."

"I'm actually a Vietnam veteran, but I was in just before it got to be a shooting war. They were sending in advisors. I got extended because of the Cuban crisis. I was in during that time - 1960 to 1962. I was drafted. I definitely didn't want to be in the army, but now that I've done it, and I've been out for so long, it doesn't seem like it was that bad. It helped me a lot."

"In my generation, at about 18, you had to start thinking about what you wanted to do. It made boys grow up fast. You would get drafted. And once you were there, you had to do what they told you. I don't think it was all bad. You learned respect and discipline. You learned how to take care of yourself. You were forced to become a man and learn how to do things."

"If heaven exists, I hope to find Ralph there. He was my surf dog, my constant companion. He went everywhere with me. We even drove all the way to Nova Scotia together, and all the way back. I found him when he was eight weeks old; he was an abandoned puppy, and he hadn't been treated very well. But he lived to be eleven and a half. He just died in November of a heart attack, right in front of my bed. But he was a very nice dog his whole life. He was great. I miss him a lot. He amused me and amazed me for the whole time I had him."

"I can learn from you guys as much as you can learn from me. And I can probably relate to you better than I can to most old people. People that haven't taken care of themselves -- they're so grumpy, and no fun. If you don't use it, you lose it, and that applies to mind and body. So don't spend too much time sitting there watching television. I'm not saying kill your TV - there's a lot of good, educational stuff on there. What I'm saying is kill some of it; be selective."

"Surfing is fun and great, but you have to do something else with your life. Some surfers woke up a little too late; they don't have anything, and they're not contributing. Everybody should contribute something to the world one way or another. At least that's the way I see it. And you need to have a job so you don't have to depend on other people. That's the ultimate, -- when you're in charge of your own life."

"I'm always amazed at people who do things well, but remember, your life is your art."

November's slightly breathless light drenched the hills and fields that morning as we drove along Highway 1 towards Lompoc. The sixth grade students of Vista de las Cruces School were about to meet and interview the legendary A. Dibblee Poett at the Casa San Julian. One of the few Spanish land grant ranches still owned by its founding family, San Julian Ranch is located just up the road from Las Cruces, where the Santa Ynez Mountains become the Santa Rosa Hills.We turned off Highway 1, rattled along a dirt road, and parked in front of the casa. "Dibbs", as he was affectionately called, pulled up in an old Mercedes, his dog by his side. He wore a straw hat, tweed coat, and gray flannel trousers -- rather dapper, I thought. Walking carefully with a cane, he led us into the house.

Those of us who live in the embrace of this nurturing land need to know its history, hear its voice. The ninety-year old Dibblee Poett is a part of this history, and our students recognized the importance of the stories he might share with them. They had come prepared with questions -- kids' questions about best friends, Christmas mornings, school, and special places."This is my special place," said Dibbs. "The old house. It has so many memories. When we were children, my sister and I used to ride a lot here. We rode bareback-- very light-- and the horses used to get over the hills very easily. As we got older, we had to put on saddles, and so the hills got steeper than they were when we were young."

We sat in his favorite room, a room lined with books and paintings and old photographs, a room filled with the past. Pale sunlight streamed through lace curtains and lit upon the flowered wallpaper. There were Victorian chairs with carved wood frames and red upholstery, Oriental rugs worn to threads, and an eccentric chandelier -- "a relatively new addition" -- adorned with crystals in colors like amber and green. There was nothing fussy or proper about the room, and it lacked the muted sadness that one often senses in such places. Yesterday could laugh and linger here, feeling safe.

"It was too cold to live here in the winter," Dibbs went on, looking fondly about the room."A man used to bring in wood. He spent most of his time cutting and hauling and bringing in wood for the ten fireplaces and emptying the ashes out. It took a while to get the house warm because the ceilings are so high, but once it was warm it would stay warm because the walls are so thick. We did stay here in the winter of 1918 during the war when there was an influenza epidemic. People thought they'd come to the ranch to escape the influenza, and then one of our tenants down the road died from it because he couldn't get to the doctor... so we figured we'd better get back to town."

"The ranch is about 16,000 acres now," he informed us. "It was 48,000 acres when it was deeded to my great-great-grandfather in 1837. Then they lost it in 1862 after the big drought. It didn't rain for two years, and all the cattle died, so the sons lost the ranch. Then Mr. Dibblee and Mr. Hollister came along, and Mr. Dibblee married the granddaughter of the original owner, so it came back into the family again."We were all a little awed by the old man. We had been forewarned that he could be cantankerous, but we found him to be gentle and patient. His voice was tremulous at times, and he frequently asked the children to repeat their questions, but he seemed genuinely eager to talk. When he spoke of his childhood, his angular face would visibly soften; he seemed to savor the details of those fine days, as though reliving them in the telling.

"Oh! We climbed trees," he told us, " That was one of the things we liked to do, and we never fell. Yes, we used to climb trees, my sister and I, and we would go barefoot, believe it or not, all around, all the time. After awhile your feet get calloused so you can go almost everywhere. We wore great big straw hats, and one day we were walking along and we happened to get into the middle of a patch of little prickelotas ---somehow before we knew it we were into it-- so we had to throw our hats down to get out."

"And we used to ride a lot when we were young. Nan and Frederica and I were each given a horse, horses that were not very good for the ranch hands because they'd been cut in the wire, or something like that. I had a horse once and he had a wire cut, and whenever he was going from home he always limped, but on the way back he never limped."

"One day we were riding and we got into a nest of yellow jackets, and they got all around us. I jumped off the horse and was running around a bush about the size of this room. The bees were following me, and the horse was following me, and I couldn't get away, so I jumped into the middle of the bush!"The kids wanted to know what kind of wildlife Dibbs has seen on the ranch."You name it," he replied. "We've got skunks, coyotes, coons, bears, lions, all kinds of birds, though no more condors, deer, possums, badgers -- everything you can imagine, almost everything. Lots of birds. The animals like the creek -- habitat, water, protection from their enemies."

"Are there fish in the creek?" asked one of the boys.

"There used to be. In the old days, there were a lot of pools in the creek, and there used to be the brook trout, which was very good to fish and eat. We used to like to do that, but they started farming the hillsides, and the pools got filled up, so there aren't many left. They've been bringing in other fish like the rainbow trout, and the rainbow trout kill the brook trout."

Many of the Vista students themselves live on ranches, fish in creeks, and dwell in the warm shadows of these grass hills. They felt a connection to this man; they recognized the places he has loved. The questions began to come more freely.

"How long did it take you to get to school?""It took me - well, we lived in this house, and the school was right down here about a half mile, right there where old San Julian schoolhouse is, so it didn't take very long. My brother used to ride to school from Yridises and it took him about an hour. He'd have to go out to catch his pony, saddle it up, and come to school, so he rode five miles to school every day, and was there on time. Then we moved to Santa Barbara. We lived within a half mile from Roosevelt School and he was always late for school."

"Was Vista around?"

"No. Vista didn't exist when I went to school. It started when they consolidated the county schools. Long after my time."

"How many kids were in your class?""I think there were eight, probably eight or ten. It was a one-room schoolhouse. The school grades were not segregated. It was just a great big long room and the grades were seated all together, each in logical order. There weren't many young children. There were kindergarten, but I don't remember anybody under the age of three or four years old. But the children who came here had to come in buggies and on horseback. There were no automobiles. They used to come from over the hill that way, way down from Los Amoles, El Jaro, Yridises, La Golondrina..."

He spoke the lyrical Spanish names like a chant."My sister and I used to come to school from Yridises on horseback and we'd meet friends at the alamo and race with them. We had a sulky cart and the horses pulled it, and we would go along at a fine pace. We used to race the others who had a buggy and couldn't go so fast as we could."

"Were you a good student?"Dibbs laughed and said simply, "No."

"Who was your best friend?"

"When I was going to school in Santa Barbara, a private school in Montecito, my best friend out there was a man named Teddy Greenfield. He always beat me in the shooting matches. They were NRA shooting contests and Greenie would always beat me. He'd win the state title and I would be second. But he was my best friend. He later went on to become D.A. in Sonoma County. One day he was driving along the river and his truck turned over and hit him and after that he wasn't very good at the law profession. He had to sell all his books, and later he died."

He paused for a moment."I had a lot of good friends, though."

"What was Christmas morning like in the old days?" one of the kids wondered.

"Let me tell you a Christmas story about my father. My father worked in Santa Barbara while we lived here during 1917 and 1918, during the war; he left Santa Barbara on the train and got off at Gaviota. It was raining, and he walked from Gaviota to here in the dark with his pack of toys on his back. It was a canvas bag -- they didn't have plastic in those days. And so he was walking along, whipped by rain and wind, the bag soaked through, and he was just across the creek down here, and it was very dark. He walked along, and he stumbled over a bull. All of the toys got scattered around, and the bull went one way and my father the other, and so that was our Christmas. We didn't have any Christmas when he got home. All the toys were scattered in the mud."

"How were the roads between Santa Barbara and San Julian?"

"Well, I'll tell you," he said with a chuckle. "It was a winding road. They didn't have any heavy equipment in those days, and all the work was done by horses, so whenever a canyon came, you had to go into the canyon and out, into the canyon and out. And at Arroyo Hondo, where J.J. Hollister lives, the road went way down the canyon and around that way. It was a dirt road. You couldn't go more than twenty-five or so, and it was dusty -- there was no cement on the road. So it took a long time to get to town from here. We had the Model T Ford; the Model T was about the only car that would navigate through the mud. And the roads were all muddy, no cement or gravel or anything. Oh, it was awful!"

"How did the ranch get that red 1950 dump truck?"

"I went east and bought some bulls and bought a long bed cattle truck. I bought it in Michigan and drove it back. It took about a week. Then later on, we took off the cattle bed and put on the dump truck bed, which is more useful here because we have to haul rock and gravel and things like that."

"Do you have any memories of the Hollister Ranch?"

"Some. In the old days, we used to ship our cattle from Gaviota when they had to go to market. We'd drive down the road, which is now the highway, and drive our cattle down to Gaviota Station. A man was supposed to ride ahead with a red flag. Well, there was a Greyhound bus, and the driver wouldn't stop, so the bull and the bus had a conflict. The bus ran into the bull and the bull stood its ground. The radiator got busted and the bus stopped and a woman fell out of the front seat. The Greyhound people sued us but we won the suit because we proved we had a driver with a red flag."

"After awhile we were not allowed to drive cattle down there, not because of this incident, but because there was so much traffic there through Gaviota Pass. Instead, we had to drive our cattle over the hill to the Hollister Ranch. They had a station called Drake. So we drove our cattle over and shipped them from Drake. There was a big corral near the railroad and a chute that went up to the cars. We would manually load the cars. It took quite a long time, but it was a lot of fun. We were always good friends with the Hollisters. Jim Hollister was a good friend of ours and let us drive our cattle over the hills."

"What was it like during the Great Depression?"

"It was terribly gloomy. Oh, it was awful! Cattle prices dropped to almost nothing. Believe it or not, I sold cattle for a cent and a half a pound. Whereas now they sell for 75 or 80 cents a pound. Then, later on, prices went up a little bit, but even up to the time we went out of the cattle business in 1969, we were only getting about 18 cents a pound for beef, and so it wasn't worth our trouble, raising cattle. Too many men, too much trouble."

"How did World War II affect ranch life?"

"All of a sudden the war came along and they needed beans -- navy beans, small white ones, so we started raising beans. And the horses pulled a big tractor. That's what started farming on the ranch -- the war," said Dibbs.

I pictured the men out there planting beans while bus loads of soldiers passed on the old highway heading for Camp Cooke. My father was one of those soldiers. I still have the tiny yellowed snapshots he took from the road of pastoral hills and twisted oak, of cowboys and cattle, of wooden fences and a railroad bridge. They all look so familiar to me now. When the war ended, my father went back home to Brooklyn, New York, but for the rest of his life spoke wistfully of those Santa Barbara places.

"Are there any other questions?" Dibbs asked. He was enjoying this."Why did you close the kitchen?" someone inquired.

"The Chinese man died over there. He died in his room one night. After that, we could never get another Chinese cook because word got around that a Chinaman had died there. We couldn't get any good cooks. The Chinese cook used to have opium poppies growing right out there. The Chinamen used to come and get the milk from the poppies and smoke it. It had kind of a sweet smell coming out from the kitchen, but we didn't know what it was!"

Speaking of smoke, we asked if there had ever been a fire at San Julian.

"Yes." he replied. "There have been fires, but not very many. A lot of times, the train that goes through Hollister Ranch would throw ashes. They couldn't sweep out the chimney because they used coal and the coal caused a lot of ashes in the flume and the flume would get plugged up, and so they'd throw sand in and scrape out the ashes and the ashes would start fires along the railroad. And so one time, around 1926 a fire started at the railroad and came all the way over the hill and stopped beneath the big creek. It couldn't cross the creek down here."

"Sometimes fires are started by lightning, sometimes by bottled water. You take a gallon bottle of water and you leave it out in the summertime and it can start a fire because the sun is magnified by the water. I went down to my farm house and my truck was smoldering from a bottle I had left there. I told one of the tenants to be attentive about it and he didn't believe me. He left a bottle of water on a big stack of new gunnysacks and it set fire. There are a lot of ways to start a fire. Sometimes fires would start from old wine bottles. A few started from lightning, but sometimes the rain would put out those."

'How much of this land have you personally walked and mapped?" asked Natalie Wong, a friend and neighbor who had joined us. Natalie is curious about such matters -- she loves to take long walks at Hollister Ranch.

"I'd say about 60 or 70%" Dibbs replied. "I used to walk a lot. I used to poison squirrels. They were terrible in those days; they were all over the place, and they used to eat lots of feed. So we started a program in about 1930, poisoning the squirrels. There was a blacksmith down here, and when he wasn't shoeing horses, he'd poison squirrels. He used to take strychnine and mix it up with barley, and he would taste it to see if it was bitter or not. Then he'd spit it out. He never swallowed it, and he never got poisoned."

"So I used to walk all over the big hills over there towards the Hollister Ranch, and everywhere, poisoning squirrels. I used to walk a lot. Maybe that's why I can't walk very well now."

Dibbs also covered a lot of ground when the gas line came through in 1926.

"I was appointed inspector," he explained, "to see if they were digging deep enough. That was my first job. The pipe had to be buried four feet deep because they didn't want any plows or anything to hit it. I thought I was very important then. But my main job was to fix the fences for them when they'd go through a fence. And all the way between Golondrina and Las Cruces the digging had to be done by hand because it was too steep for a machine to dig it. So they had Mexican laborers dig the whole ditch with a pick and shovel -- and that was a job!"

We were planning to go outside and have lunch beneath the arbor. The day had grown brighter. The leaves of the sycamores were yellow, and there was a stirring autumnal feeling to the air. I asked Dibbs which time of year was his favorite.

"I guess springtime," he told me. "We always liked the springtime, and then we were always sad when the grass dried up. Then my aunt showed me how pretty the dried grass is in the summer, and it is. But it's always the springtime that I love, when the grass is green. And I used to love the winter, too, because I didn't mind the cold so much in those days, or the rains. I'd get out in the rain, because when the green grass came, that's the time I liked the best."

The arbor behind the casa was built in 1910, and Dibbs said that he can still remember being outside with his mother when it was being built. Beneath the arbor, now covered with grape leaves, are long tables, and in this area the family has had many barbecues and festivities over the years, most recently Dibbs' ninetieth birthday celebration.

"One year I had a big barbecue," said Dibbs mischievously, "and the grapes weren't very good, so I went out to Lompoc and bought a crate of emperor grapes and hung 'em up!"

"In the summer, the wisteria will take over the arbor," he continued. "They're stronger than the grapes. But the wisteria is beautiful."

Before us stood a tall straight sycamore, which Dibbs referred to as his twin. "That tree was planted the year I was born," he explained. "I don't know whether it's a girl or a boy, but it's my twin."

Both twins are firmly rooted to this land.

There was an enchantment here. We all felt it. A sense of timelessness and perfection. The kids ran off to play, as Dibbs would no doubt have done with his sisters in 1915. We had a lunch of soup and snacks prepared by Maggie West and Dorothy Schofield, both of whom live at San Julian and are parents of Vista sixth graders.

After lunch, Dibbs sat in the sunlight in front of the porch, on an old wooden bench that had faded like driftwood. Maggie and Dorothy led us on a walk.We came upon the schoolhouse, just as Dibbs described it -- a white, one-room building less than half a mile from the casa. We climbed the steps and peered into the windows, but the doors were locked. We went into barns filled with antique carriages, dusty and ghostly, and old farm equipment, long unused. Ted Martinez, our driver and good friend, admired a 1940 Chevy like one he had once owned. Threads of white clouds wisped across the broad blue sky, and the land seemed yellow and dappled with sun.

I thought of how we take our places in its endless cycle, turning back sometimes if we are wise, to listen and remember.

Earlier, we had asked Dibbs what he is most proud of, and he had said, "I would guess it is the fact that we've been able to hang onto the ranch and the house. There are not many places where the old houses stand and the old families still own the place. So I think that's it. We've been able to hang onto it. We all love the ranch."

That love is palpable, and we understood fully why it matters so much. How do we express our awe and gratitude at having come tumbling out of a school bus to find ourselves in the nineteenth century? It was as if we had found a path we had not known we'd lost. How do we describe the delight and relief? It is with me still.

"Do you think the children know?" Natalie whispered. "Will they remember this?"

"Some will," I mused, sounding like a teacher. "It's like sending out a message in a bottle. One never knows if it will reach the other shore."I felt pretty hopeful, though.

We walked back towards the house. Dibblee Hoyt sat astride a tractor, readying a field for its next use."Come visit again," he called. "Dibbs might live forever, but you never know."

I hope we will return. I want to hear more stories. I want to sit beneath the arbor when it's dripping with wisteria. I want to see that curved wooden bench bleaching in the sun like an empty boat on a sea of light.

- Cynthia Carbone Ward

Author's note: This interview took place in 1997. Dibblee Poett died in November of 2000, at the age of 93.  He had spent all but the last two or three years of his life at Rancho San Julian, living the life he loved. The photo above is by Dibblee Hoyt.

Doin’ What’s Right

Everyone who ever came to Dunn Middle School during the years when Lynne Castellanos worked there knew her as the amazing woman they encountered in the front office. No sense trying to describe her job -- she pretty much took care of everything and everyone, and she did it all with competence and love. It is impossible to exaggerate the affection and respect Lynne engenders. Most of the kids described her as their mother at school, and their love for her was evident. She has since moved on to other kinds of work, but everything she does is consistent with the values she has always espoused. It is an honor to be Lynne's friend.

My full name is Lynne Charrisse Weston Castellanos, and I was born in Virginia on July 8, 1959. But when I was your age, I spent most of my time in Germany in little towns near the Czechoslovakian border, mostly. My father was a Lieutenant Colonel in the Air Force and a base commander a lot of the time. We had to move about every two or three years. I started first grade in Germany, and after about three years, we went back to the United States. Then we went back to Germany when I was in ninth grade. I became fluent in German. In fact, my sister, who started school in a German kindergarten, could only speak German. She was the only American in the kindergarten, and after about three months, she couldn't speak English anymore. She basically thought she was German. But when we came back to the United States, she couldn't continue studying the language, and so she's since forgotten it.

We did a lot of unusual things in Germany. My dad was the commander of the base, and we were always on small bases near the border, because he worked as a radar controller, so his job was to have his crew monitor the air space and make sure there was no enemy aircraft coming into the American-controlled part of Germany. So we were in small towns, and although we lived on base, we would always eat downtown and take advantage of the culture.

I didn't have a horse, but we went horseback riding. My dad knew that if we had a horse, we would insist on taking it home with us, and it would be very expensive to ship it. So we took riding lessons but we didn't get to buy a horse. We rode at an old castle that was kind of in ruins, and there was an indoor riding arena. It was really pretty. We were the only Americans who rode out there. Everyone assumed we would be cowboys, so we worked really hard to prove that wasn't all America was. I was about twelve then. It was in the early sixties.

Both of my parents were from the South: mom was born in North Carolina and my dad was born in Virginia. My mom went to a private girls' college and she was the youngest of four kids and the only girl in her family. At her college, you had to be very lady-like and wear white gloves and a hat when you went outside. If you did anything wrong, the punishment would be you had to polish all the brass railings in front of the school on a Saturday— when boys from other schools might be walking by. That was considered a huge embarrassment. Obviously, she grew up very differently from the way things are today.

My dad was at another college and they met while he was in R.O.T.C. My dad knew from the beginning he wanted to be an officer, so he did special training to become one. He went into officer training school right away after college. I think he was a Major the first time we went to Germany.

I was proud of my father, but I thought it was normal. It wasn't anything really special to me, but looking back at it, it was strange how I'd be walking down the street with my dad, and everybody saluted him. Everyone on the base worked for him, so walking even from here to the office, there might be fifteen people saluting him. It was a little weird.

And it was a little bit hard sometimes as a teen-ager, growing up with your dad as a base commander. All around were soldiers, G.I.s, younger guys, but we weren't officially at war, and things were pretty relaxed. So anything I did got reported to him immediately.

Christmas in Germany was wonderful. There was usually a lot of snow. We had two Christmas trees - one was the kids' tree, and the other was my mom's perfectly decorated tree -- and there were a lot of parties. My mother had to entertain because she was the base commander's wife, so she held parties, and there were dignitaries from foreign countries. They were just normal people.I want to go back someday. I don't know what it's like now, but when I was there, sometimes we would go places and we were not welcome because we were Americans. We were in somebody else's country and in a strong position—we meant well, but you don't want someone else running things in your country. And sometimes Americans aren't willing to change our own ways, and we don't adapt well to other cultures. So it took us a while to show the German people that we wanted to visit their homes, get to know their ways, and be like them. A lot of military people would stay on the base and never venture out into the rest of the country.

It was a military life. Every two or three years, everyone around me would move. Sometimes it was hard. My best friend stayed in Germany until two years ago. The last time we lived in the same place was when we were in eighth grade. We still see each other about every seven or eight years. She moved back to the United States two years ago and got married, and now she lives in Virginia.

We traveled all the time when we lived in Germany. You know how your parents come home and they might say, "What do you want to do this weekend?" Well, my dad would come home and say, "Do you want to go to France this weekend, or do you want to go to Spain, or Greece?" I thought that was normal. I thought that's how everyone grew up.

I liked Spain, although I don't remember it really well. I wasn't looking at it the way my parents wanted me to. They wanted me to see the culture, and we went to all the castles and art galleries and museums, but I didn't think it was anything special, so I treated it kind of like you would treat a trip to Santa Barbara. I just liked it.

I have one "real" sibling, my sister, and she's three years younger than me. But my parents are really open and their home is always open to people who don't have families or who are away from their families. So I have an unofficial brother named Tom who takes care of my parents when I'm not there, and another brother named Clyde who also takes care of them.

My sister lives in Sacramento and works for the youth authority. My parents live in Elk Grove, very close to Sacramento.

My parents are my heroes. They worked really hard to get where they are, and it's hard for them to see how the world is changing. Chantalle is their only grandchild, and they would spoil her if they could. But they see her snowboarding and doing judo, and doing so many things girls didn't do when they were young, and it makes them nervous. I admire them for supporting us and trying not to show their worries so much.

I was going to be a veterinarian. I made up my mind. I knew what school I wanted to go to, and didn't even apply to any other schools. If I had completed the whole thing, it would have been four years of college, and then vet school. But I realized along the way, that I didn't really want to be a veterinarian. I just wanted to work with horses, and they were telling me I had to take classes about pigs and cows (and I'm afraid of cows because they don't listen to you) so I decided that wasn't really what I wanted.

I was going to school at U.C. Davis, so I switched my major and was no longer pre-vet. Instead, I did Animal Science and Genetics, and I graduated from Davis, and I wanted to get a job on a horse farm, on a breeding ranch. So I graduated, but I didn't really know how to get a job. But because I graduated from a good school, I had a lot of offers from all over the country. One farm called me from New York and wanted me to come out for an interview. But I was only nineteen. (Don't hurry through school!) I didn't have the money for plane fare just to see if they liked me, and I was getting really discouraged, but two farms in the Santa Ynez Valley called me the same weekend and invited me for an interview. So I said, "I'll just take one of those jobs." And I got both of them, so I picked the one I wanted.

I got out of the horse business because it's really hard. It's twenty-four hours a day. And Chantalle was two and a half, and I was working all the time, and she never got to do anything with me. So I quit. My boss made me really mad one day, and I quit.

Then I had a store in town for a while. Kid Stuff. I dressed most of you when you were babies. I couldn't find clothes I liked for Chantalle, so I opened a store.I sold that business and retired for a while. I did some volunteer work at Los Olivos, and then Chantalle was coming to school here, and Ben asked me to take a job here. So I was a parent here before I worked here.

I met my husband, René, on a horse ranch. Remember, I came from a very traditional background. One day, this old beat up car drove onto the ranch, and these three guys got out who looked just horrible. They looked like they had just come in from downtown L.A. and robbed a store. Their car had run out of gas someplace on 101. They came to the ranch to do some odd jobs to get some money to put gas in their car and go up to San Francisco. The two guys who were with René spoke only Spanish, but Rene spoke English and Spanish, so they hired him right away, even though he didn't know a thing about horses. Once they drove up, everyone on the ranch thought it was time to start locking our doors at night. The other two took off, and René stayed, and he loves horses to this day. So he worked for me for a while.

I am a stubborn person, but I'm trying to get better. I'm persistent, I'm determined, and I have integrity. I try.

And I read a lot, but I don't have any hobbies. I'm so busy with Chantalle, and taking care of things at school. A perfect day? I guess it would be to wake up really early, have a good cup of coffee, go back to bed, and read some books. I like having nothing to do.But what makes me happy is seeing you guys every day.

My advice: Always do what you know is right, even when no one is looking. It's really hard sometimes. But you have to do the right thing no matter what.

And don't be mean. I try to follow this in my own life. I try not to do mean things to people, or be unfair, and then I never have to worry about being caught or about people saying things behind my back.

The children here are very forgiving. I've known a lot of these kids since they were little. Some of them came to my house for reading group. I used to do tutoring, too. In fact, I still have one student, who's in seventh grade now. To be honest, I don't think he needs a tutor anymore, but he thinks he does. He likes the cookies and the cheese bread.

Almost every day at work is a good one. And when I leave here, I want to do more to help kids. I think you guys are really fortunate to be here, but I want to help kids who are not as fortunate. I want to do something more with my life after I retire.

(And she did! Ten or fifteen years after this interview, Lynne and her daughter Chantalle started another meaningful endeavor together. You can read about it here:

Every Day Was An Adventure

Kathryn H. Dole lived in the Hollister House for more than ten years, beginning in the late 1950's. Clint and Becky Hollister had initially offered her the house for the summer in exchange for cleaning it up. Summer somehow turned into a decade in which "every day was an adventure and every night was Halloween". On a recent afternoon, I had the pleasure of recording Kate's impressions as she revisited the house and recalled what life had been like there with her husband Bill, seven children, and a delightfully madcap assortment of visitors and friends. - Cynthia Ward

"It was a very wet spring when I arrived, and this front yard was grass to my waist. The wisteria completely covered the front of the house. You couldn't go in two doors because you couldn't get through the wisteria. But it was so beautiful -- so beautiful! I fell in love."

"We didn't stay here full-time at first. For the first two or three years we drove back and forth on weekends. Then we discovered that my weekends were starting on Thursday night and ending on Tuesday morning. When I first came up, I had a little wrench and a little pair of pliers. I was in sandals and shorts and a sleeveless tee shirt. After I'd been up here a few years, when I got up in the morning I'd put on the sturdiest blue jeans I could find, wool socks, boots, a long-sleeved shirt, and heavy-duty gloves. My pruning shears went from miniature to grand. The first chain saw I bought was so big I couldn't pick it up!"

"I love the way it's painted now; they brought out the architectural details. It was so messy when we arrived. For instance, you couldn't see this path here at all-- it was all overgrown."

"The swimming pool was there, and it was totally black It all looks smaller now. And there's a tea room out there that had a shale bedstone wall around it and a little stone table. It was completely hidden -- we often had tea there. There's also a lily pond that we discovered was eight feet deep when Bill's mother stepped backward and fell into it."

"The pool water was pitch black because the lithium in the water up here, combined with the oak leaves -- or bourbon -- turns black. We used to fix somebody bourbon and water, and it doesn't happen instantly -- they'd have a few sips and set it down on their arm chair, and all of a sudden, they'd look at their drink and it'd be just black."

"Water was always our major problem. And it wasn't the color, it was the lack of it. We were without water for at least one month out of every year. Thank God for the swimming pool, or we couldn't have done it! We kept buckets in the bathroom to flush the toilets with, and the rule was, when you used that bucket, you filled that bucket up. So we filled up the buckets from the swimming pool, and there would be occasional screams of 'Argh! Frogs!'

There were snakes, too. It was always wise to tap the water before you jumped in the pool, so everything could go to the bottom -- you hoped."

"Oh, those were wonderful years! Every day I would wake up and wonder what adventures awaited."

For more of Kate Dole, you can read her interview (with audio-clips) on The Living Stories Collective, at this link.

J.J. Hollister was born in San Francisco in February of 1932 where his father had been in stocks and bonds. As a result of the Depression, the family relocated to to the Hollister Ranch, where J.J. spent much of his childhood. At the time of this interview, J..J. and his wife Barbara were living in the old adobe at Arroyo Hondo, a 782-acre ranch a bit east of the Hollister Ranch off the 101 between Refugio State Beach and Gaviota State Park that the Hollisters had purchased from the Ortega family in 1910. A few years after this interview, the Hollisters sold Arroyo Hondo to the Land Trust for Santa Barbara County, where it will be forever protected and managed as a natural and historic preserve. J.J. has a deep respect for the history of this land and speaks knowledgeably of the people who have lived here, from the earliest Indian cultures to the Yanquis. He knows full well that he shares the ranch with many ghosts.

We are invited into the adobe for a tour before the interview. It is a compact little dwelling that was built in the 1840's. J.J., who is absolutely brimming with stories, points to the head of a large-antlered buck mounted on the wall near the mantel and says, "Vicente Ortega was still living here during the earthquake we had in 1976. We came over to see if he was all right and found him somewhat agitated.

'The buck nearly got me this time,' he said. I thought it rather strange to find him talking about an animal. 'And where is that buck?' I asked. It turned out that this buck head had fallen off the wall. It must have given Vicente quite a scare."

During the Mission period, Ortega's ancestors had been granted land all the way from Refugio to Point Conception. Much of this land was later bought by J.J.'s great-grandfather, in partnership with the Dibblees. The Ortega family was allowed to stay on the land and had a lasting friendship with the Hollisters.

Arroyo Hondo has always been an important site. Much evidence of early Native American cultures has been found here, some unearthed during pipeline digging. At one point, it was a stagecoach stop, and travelers from Santa Barbara to Lompoc would pause at the adobe for lunch. Today it is within the sound of a steady stream of traffic along Highway 101, a busy artery for commerce and tourism.

J.J.'s great grandfather was a key figure in the development of this area. In the 1850's, he had bought agricultural land near San Jose, drawn up a plan, sold lots to build houses, and created the town of Hollister. When he came down to Santa Barbara, he had a similar vision, and thus created the town of Lompoc. With a chuckle, J.J. points out a curious irony: "My great grandfather chose interesting sites for his towns. Hollister was built on the San Andreas fault, and Lompoc on a flood plain!"

The influence of J.J.'s great grandfather in Santa Barbara and its northern outreaches is apparent today. He had not come to California for gold. He envisioned communities, and was interested in encouraging both agriculture and tourist trade. He built the pier, a hotel, schools. The family had a home in Winchester Canyon. People passing the Glen Annie exit on the freeway through Goleta might be interested to know that "Annie" was J.J.'s great grandmother.

Interestingly, J.J.'s great grandfather actually risked his life to promote agriculture. While living up north in Hollister, he became concerned about cattle roaming everywhere and trampling crops. He proposed fencing regulations which would require cattlemen to fence their herds from the agricultural plots -- at the cattlemen's expense. A group of angry cattlemen chased him through town with a rope to hang him! He ran up the courthouse steps and somehow managed to talk them out of it. The fence laws endured and the farmers prevailed.From 1863 until 1968, the Hollister family owned the Hollister Ranch, then called Santa Anita Ranch. (Jane Hollister Wheelwright, whom Elise previously interviewed, is J.J.'s aunt, his father's sister. J.J. says that she lives in the very place she dearly loved as a child.) We are interested in hearing some of J.J.'s childhood memories of the Hollister Ranch.

"There were little telephones with cranks when I was young," he tells us. "There was one line, and there would be a certain number of rings, and we would connect to the Gaviota store from which there was a connection to Santa Barbara. You had to shout to push your voice through the wire to the store, and then shout even more to push it hard enough to get it all the way to Santa Barbara. To this day, when someone calls me up long-distance, I shout into the phone."

"One day, my father rang the Museum of Natural History to tell them that there was a sea monster out on the beach at Santa Anita. He told them it was important that they come out and see it.""Now in those days, everyone would amuse themselves by listening in on other people's telephone conversations. And as you can imagine, news of a sea monster was a big deal. You can just hear all the little clicks along the telephone line -- everyone panics! Oh, we were so excited!"

"We went down to the beach. There was the sea monster -- it was very long, and had a great big head, and it was dead. We waited and waited for the museum people to get there. In the meantime, everyone else had come to the beach. We had a little village down there by the time the people from the museum arrived."

"It turned out that the sea monster was a boa constrictor. It must have been put on a ship, died, and was pitched overboard, where it drifted to the shore. Mystery solved."J.J. tells us another great story about a lion hunter named Charlie Tant, who had a bunch of dogs, and made his living by hunting mountain lions around Las Cruces. There was a bounty on the lions because they used to ravage the livestock. Charlie would go out into the mountains and stay for weeks, not returning until he got his lion. Finally, he would bring his kill to the fish and game department, collect the bounty, and move on.

One day, Charlie captured a big old Tom bobcat. He and a friend stuffed the bobcat into a leather suitcase. "I don't know how they managed this," says J.J. "The cat could take you apart." Anyway, they stuffed the bobcat into a leather suitcase, took the suitcase into the Gaviota Pass, left it there, and stood back to watch the fun. Very few cars came through in those days. Finally a big station wagon type car with five or six people in it screeched to a halt. One fellow jumped out, picked up the suitcase, and threw it into the car. Charlie and his friend could see the car suddenly begin to zig zag. Now it stopped, all the doors were flung open, and everyone jumped out. The last one out was a very bewildered bobcat who took off and disappeared into the hills.

In the days when J.J. lived at the Hollister Ranch, there was no electricity, and water came from a well and into sediment tanks. J.J. tells us that folks liked to take a snort of bourbon with water now and then. One day, a fellow at the house was about to do so, but when the water poured into his glass, out came a rat's tail along with it! All the rest of us figured that if the rat's tail had come through, we'd probably each had a little of the rat."

Brooke asks about fires: 

"The train would come through and throw out sparks. This was a big danger, especially when the wind was blowing, but I got to help. We would grab gunny sacks, get 'em wet, and our job was to beat the fires out. This worked well on the open places along the tracks, where there were few trees."

"The worst fire I ever recall was the 1956 Refugio Fire. Arroyo Hondo was completely burned out. The trees were just black stalks all the way down to Winchester Canyon."Brooke asks J.J. about the kinds of pets he had: "My best pet was caught in the wild by Fred Haught. He caught three raccoons, and one was for my sister and me. We named it Freddy Coon, and he was our favorite pet. He lived with us for three or four years, just like a dog or cat. In the late 1930's we even took him with us in the car to visit my mother's family in San Rafael. At some point he got to biting. We took him back to the ranch and turned him loose at La Cuarta. We cried all the way back to Winchester Canyon."

"Another interesting pet was our pig. My father was out in Bullito Canyon and there was a wild mother pig with a bunch of little babies. The little ones are striped, almost like chipmunks, and so cute! My father rode the mother down, and the baby pigs scattered. He grabbed one of the babies and just barely managed to get back into the saddle with the mother pig chasing him. He put the little pig into the gunny sack he had with him and brought it home. We took it to Winchester Canyon and it became very attached to my sister. She was like its mother -- it followed her everywhere, and became very upset whenever she left. The pig's name was Chipmunk -- we called it Chipper."

"Well, my family was often visited by fancy people from back east in those days who would come to Santa Barbara to escape the east coast winters. One day, one of these friends called and was in the process of making arrangements with my mother to come out for tea. My sister had just left, and so the pig was squealing. Mother said, 'Excuse me, ma'am. I have to put the pig out. It's making too much noise.' When she returned to the phone, the caller said, 'Never mind. I think we'll be busy that day.' The lady must have thought we lived with pigs in the house. I guess we did."

Adele asks J.J. what school was like at the Hollister Ranch: 

"They had the 'Drake School' at the Ranch, and the building is still there, close to the creek, only now it is called the bunk house. There were only eight to twelve students, from first grade to eighth, all in one room -- every size, shape, and form. It was five miles to the school, and it started at eight o'clock. We rode horses sometimes. For the winter, father built a shelter we could sit in, and he'd come for us with a tractor. We had one wonderful teacher. Her name was Ruthie, but she married my uncle and stopped teaching. We used to go down to the beach for recess. Of course, we could never hear the bell from the beach."

Funny thing, we point out -- our kids never hear the bell, either.

Adele asks J.J. what he did for recreation: 

"On weekends and summer, we'd spend a lot of time at the beach. No one had a bathing suit. We were all stark naked, riding the waves. And there was hiking, of course. And riding. My grandfather gave my sister a horse when she was very young, and she liked to ride. Still does.""I liked to do other devilish things. I liked to get in the barn, and climb up on the haystacks. There was a big dairy bull. He had a ring in his nose -- and he was so mean! I used to tease him. I also used to hunt for arrowheads at Bullito Beach -- I would spend hours doing that."

"The railroad was fun. If we wanted to get on board we could stop the train by waving a red handkerchief. One time I got to be the one to do it. I remember it coming around Coho and onto the big straight, coming closer, and then I waved the handkerchief, and it was so much fun to see that big thing stop."

"Once a month or so, the kids would get to go to town. We would clean up and dress up, slick as a whistle. I remember once on the way to town, between Cuarta and Alegria, we came upon a cow with bloat. There was my father and all of us in our clean white shirts, but we had to stop and take care of it. We had to stick the cow to let the air out -- not a thing to do in a white shirt. But that was often a part of the journey to town, stopping along the way to care for the herd."

"In 1936 we all decided to ride in the Fiesta parade on our little horses. It was grand. But what I remember most is coming back, late at night, going down Alegria. In front of our headlights, a figure suddenly appeared, and he was running as fast as a person can run. Then he tripped, rolled down the hillside, and disappeared into the night. We didn't know what to make of it."

"We were isolated at the Ranch, and news reached us late. A day or two later, the sheriff called my father, who was a deputy. The sheriff said, 'There is a hangman in Alegria Canyon. We need your help.' The hangman, whose name was Lee, had come over from the Gaviota store and hung himself with his belt from an oak tree. He had been discovered by a railroad worker. This worker had a lot of dogs, and he loved to go after raccoons at night. That's what he was doing when he bumped into the hangman, who swung back and knocked him down. He was scared out of his wits and took off running. That's when we saw him in our headlights. Well, that solved a great mystery."

"My father had to build a little coffin for Lee. He took his favorite horse, Oso, up to where the hanging was, and Oso was so spooked by the dead man that my father had to lead him back down. This was all big news for us little kids on the ranch."

Brooke asks J.J. what other memories he has from the days of the Great Depression:  

"I was little, but I felt the Great Depression through my folks. My father was in stocks and bonds. That was one reason we came down to the ranch. The Depression was just what the word said -- people were down, depressed. There were hoboes everywhere. They would get off at Drake or Bullito and my grandmother or the Chinese cook would give them a sandwich. It was a type of fright that lives with you night and day. There was no government help in those days. People were despondent. It shaped my father's life."

Elise asks J.J. what his special place was as a boy at the Hollister Ranch: 

"There was a little tree on the side of the road near the big house. I found a rope at the barn, tied it onto the tree, and I swung. Whenever a car came by, I could sit up there and watch. Whenever a car came across the wooden bridge, it made a lot of noise, and Grandpa always looked to see who was coming before they arrived."

"And I loved barns. The barns were full of bats, bats in every corner. I loved to throw a rock and get them to fly."

"Sometimes butterflies would fill the eucalyptus trees near where the office now is. I would toss a stone to make them fly. It was so beautiful."

Brooke and Adele wonder whether J.J. had a best friend:  

"My best friend was my sister. She was three years older than me, and oh, such a tyrant, as older sisters are! But it was just the two of us, most of the time."

Our interview has come to its end; J.J. has a noon engagement and it is almost time to go. He leads us first through the citrus orchard, lush with fruit. He points out a bench made from the wood of the tree he and Barbara stood beneath when they were married. He shows us a mortar and pestle left by the Indians, and a nineteenth century dagger found in the stream. He lavishly bestows avocados upon us, enormous round ones, ripe and creamy inside. It has been a wonderful morning.

To make a reservation to visit the Arroyo Hondo Preserve, call (805) 567-1115 or email arroyohondo@sblandtrust.org.

A Little Bit Adventurous: Marjorie Scribner

Marjorie Scribner was a woman of extraordinary eloquence and vitality who worked for good causes throughout her life. She visited our classroom at Dunn Middle School on January 17, 2003 escorted by her grandson Jacob Grant, and her warmth and personality are evident in the words that follow. She died a few years later, in 2009, at the age of 101. Her zest for life was inspiring.

I was born Marjorie Pérez on December 5, 1908. I think the only Pérez in the Manhattan phone book at that time was my father's office and a cousin. My children's last name is Grant, and my last name now is Scribner.

I'm 94 years old, and probably more changes have happened in this past century than in twice the time before. So many things we take for granted have only recently happened, and a lot of it was with no fanfare, no excitement, so you probably don't remember that it was ever different. And there have been two horrible world wars in my lifetime.

World War I, which began in 1914, was supposed to be the war to end all wars. I was aware of it. I was a small child, but we were living up in Alberta, Canada, a part of the British Empire, and the war was dramatic. Some people viewed it in a romantic way, and I'm sorry to admit that I did, too. There were a lot of Scottish people in Alberta, and there was a regiment of Scots there, and they had bagpipes. I was about five years old, and I thought it was wonderful! I'm ashamed to say that I would pray that the war would last long enough for me to grow up and be in it.

I think people now have a much better idea of what war is like, and in spite of President Bush, I think and I hope we're not going to war. I'm told there's a big demonstration in Santa Barbara this weekend. They've already had one, and that's a good sign. People are much more realistic.

A lot of the changes that I've seen were important things like airplanes. I can remember when a plane flew over, you'd hear it and you'd run out, and you'd look up because it was so exciting to see.

You never used to be able to go to Europe so easily, or even places closer, because you couldn't go long-distance flying. If you wanted to go to Europe, you'd go on a boat. It would take five or six days on a fast ship, or longer. And it was very nice, but you couldn't do a lot of the things you do now. The map was very different, too. European countries still had their colonies. There weren't so many small independent countries as there are now.

And a lot of the things aren't world-shaking but they really changed our lives. For example, cars are much more common, they go much faster, and many people have them. And the basic mechanics of living are much easier. When I first got married, we would have tea for breakfast because I didn't know how to make coffee, and there was no such thing as instant coffee. That came later. And all the frozen food, all prepared! You didn't have that. Or the canned things, which aren't nearly as tasty or good…

Simple things - movies, for instance, didn't have sound, and you'd have a piano player in the theater playing an accompaniment to the movie, whatever he or she thought would set the mood.

And telephones. The family would have a telephone, maybe even two, one upstairs and one downstairs. But you never took for granted that you could talk to people who were awhile away! My mother was a Californian and my father was a New Yorker, and when I was a child, we'd come out to California and spend Christmas with my grandmother. And they were all together one evening, family and friends, and I was in bed asleep because it was late when the phone rang, and they woke me up because somebody from New York had called on the telephone. This was such a world-shattering event! It's just as if somebody called you from Mars!

Christmas. We had candles on our tree and little cups that would hold a tiny candle and you bought lots of candles in all different colors and you clipped these onto the branches of the tree. You kept a bucket of water handy, although I never heard of a tree burning from the candles. But every Christmas there would be some fire from an electrical blow-up!

I always liked to read, and I read a lot, but I don't think I had a favorite book. I must tell you one book I thought was wonderful when I was little: Black Beauty. But I read it again just a few years ago and I never read a duller book! When you read it as a child, your receptivity is exactly right for it, but when I read it the second time, I'd read too many other books, spent too much time thinking about horses.

We didn't have games like you have now, but we had one game that had a board and you could manipulate the players with rods so it really did take some skill and some practice. We had to make more effort, I think, than you do now. And we did try.

When the Depression came in 1929, it was a dreadful, dreadful thing. You didn't have what you have now, unemployment insurance and the safety nets you now have. It had been a very prosperous economy, and suddenly it wasn't there anymore. Hoover was president and he didn't do anything to make it easier for people, but Roosevelt was elected, and he instituted a lot of reforms. You got things like unemployment insurance, and life became much easier. Little things you could see. Changes.

But there was also big opposition to Roosevelt as president. There were some people so opposed to him and what he was doing that they'd blame him for everything.

Some of the things that Roosevelt instituted were also communist ideals, but he was never a communist. There was never any thought of a communist government in this country. But because there had been no support from the government in the Hoover administration, a lot of young people became communists. A lot of them left the party when it became so oppressive, but a friend of mine went to jail because he would not inform on a friend of his who was a communist. The government wanted his name and would possibly have prosecuted him, so my friend went to jail, but he didn't join the communist party. I might have joined the communist party myself because of some of the ideals, but I never wanted to be part of any party as repressive as the communist party.

During this period the Fascists rose to power in Italy and Hitler rose in Germany, and I think when World War II finally came about, there was no doubt that this was a war that had to be fought. Hitler was so horrendous, and the Holocaust was worse than anybody could have imagined. But after the war was over, there was a time of relative peace, and now I'm afraid we're coming out of the wrong side again.

I certainly hope we don't go to war. Violence just breeds violence. A diplomatic solution takes more thinking, more doing, more planning, but then it's over and you don't have thousands of people dead and an even worse situation than you started with, because revenge is a terrible emotion. It doesn't lead to any good thing.

President Roosevelt's wife, Eleanor Roosevelt, was a woman with a wonderful social conscience. She herself made many changes, and I admired her from afar. She worked for women's rights and humanity. She had many admirers and was very charismatic.

I had a chance to get to know her a little bit one time, when I lived north of New York City, in Westchester County. It's a prosperous county with a lot of different communities in it. The Red Cross was very active in the war years, and there was a Junior Red Cross in the high schools. I was the chairman of the Westchester County Junior Red Cross. We were going to have a seminar one weekend at Vassar College. Their alumni house had meeting rooms as well as rooms where students could live for a few days. And we had the idea of asking Mrs. Roosevelt if she would come and be the chairman of this event. We didn't know her. We just called. But she couldn't have been more gracious. Yes, she would come up there. And she did.

And then came the day that she was going to speak to the students. There they all were, several hundred in a large room. She said she was slightly hard of hearing, so when a student spoke, she would walk down the aisle to wherever this student was and make sure that she understood everything that was said. She was just so outgoing and so wonderful! She was very, very good with all of the students, and later, she said she loved it.

I became an editor at Reader's Digest and their office was north of New York City in a country environment, very pleasant. But I like the city! When I got old like this, I liked New York City because it's very easy to get around in. There's good public transportation, and it's laid out in grid patterns so you don't get lost. And there's so much to do. Wonderful museums. The Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art - both are world-class museums. And the New York Public Library! If any of you have been to New York, it's a great big building on 42nd Street and 5th Avenue and it has wonderful collections and exhibitions. I was a volunteer and docent there.

There's a beautiful park, Central Park, in the center of the city, and a number of small parks…and you can walk. Sidewalks are a great invention! Right now, New York has the lowest crime rate of any large city. There was a time when people were afraid to go out at night, but you don't have to be. Better to be a little bit adventurous.

I volunteered at a shelter in the church - St. George's Episcopal Church in Manhattan. I didn't know it would be so rewarding! There were so many different kinds of people. They didn't just come off the street; they were screened. But all kinds. There's some people who are chronically homeless, people who for one reason or other can't hold a job, but so often, it's just people who are down on their luck.

There was a French couple in the shelter. The husband had gotten an eye infection, and they'd gone to a hospital and he was given some medicine that was too strong, or a prescription that was mis-filled, and he became totally blind. They both had worked. He was a chef and she worked as a waitress in the same restaurant, but now she had to take care of her husband and couldn't do anything. They lost their apartment and were totally helpless.

Some people who came to the shelter even had jobs, but to get an apartment you need first month's rent and usually next month's rent as security and it's very hard if you have a minimum level job to accumulate any money. One man had a job working for a tailor and he came one night with a wonderful box of chocolate-covered strawberries to bring to the shelter. You just live from day to day, and so we'd have people in the shelter you wouldn't expect. We'd give them coffee and something to eat before they went to bed…wonderful people.

I broke my leg when I was out here, about four years ago. And when I got back to New York, I would go to a museum and get a wheelchair and wheel myself around or push it and sit down when I needed to, and I miss that kind of thing here.

But I love being here now and if I were in New York, I probably wouldn't be able to do a lot of things. This is a beautiful valley, and I love the mountains and I must say that I don't mind the climate. I miss New York. I miss the city, and I miss my friends. But this is the next best place.

I have three children. Jacob's father is the youngest. My daughter Jennifer is the oldest. I thought it would be nice to have twins, but that didn't happen. Her brother Jeffrey is just thirteen months younger. This was the beginning of the war and Hitler of course was frightening, and I thought a child shouldn't grow up alone 'cause your parents are going to die eventually and you need someone of your own generation who is close to you. It's insurance for a good life. So I had Jennifer and Jeffrey and I thought two children, a boy and a girl, was just right. But when they got older they began to think it would be nice to have a baby, and they finally persuaded their father, and then they all persuaded me. So I thought we'd have a very tender scene when I told them we were going to have a baby. And when they were getting ready for bed one night, I told them we were going to have a baby, and they exchanged glances, and Jennifer said, "Mom, we'd rather have a mouse." They'd been reading Stuart Little for a bedtime story. So here was my little announcement deflated. I said, "You may have a brother. You may have a sister. You will not have a mouse." And he didn't turn out to be a mouse. He was Philip, Jacob's father.

My birthday this year was wonderful because Philip and his wife Cassandra gave me a glider ride as a present. It was a small glider. I was in the front and the pilot behind me. We took off from a field close to the airport, but not the airport, so it was just us. It was very nice. The plane went up over the Valley, but high enough that I could see the ocean, and looking down was like looking at a map. Anytime we had driven we'd always go a different way, so I never could sort it all out, Solvang, Los Olivos, one from the other, but looking down from a glider, going more slowly than a plane, was like looking at a map. You could see the relationship of one community to another.

For my next birthday, I'd like to go up in a glider again. I like the feeling of going along with quiet, and when you're cut loose from the engine, the only sound is the sound of the wind.

There are so many things I'd still like to do but I can't now…

They say if you see a shooting star and wish on it, your wish will come true. If you see the star for just an instant, and you can think of what you want in that instant, if it's at the top of your mind and it's something you're really working towards, I believe it. If you choose what you want to do and then really work for it, it will happen.

In some cases things look worse today, but as long as people are concerned about them, they're gonna get better. I think people are more involved in some ways than they were a couple of generations ago. There are human rights organizations like Amnesty International. And there are various organizations working to preserve the planet, not destroy the environment. I'm opposed to President Bush because he doesn't seem to care very much about this.

The Civil Rights Movement? Yes. I remember. There used to be lynchings. There used to be absolutely no chance for a black person to achieve what a white person could. And while I think it may still be harder for a black person, it's not all impossible. In fact, sometimes the black person gets chosen for visibility. But the Civil Rights Movement had some terribly sad moments, like the Birmingham little girls, and the Till murder. I think people are more aware than they were a couple of generations ago.

And you organize small groups. That's how it starts. Just two people. One person speaking out, and there you have it.

But people are good. You know, it's that old story. Dog bites man doesn't make headlines. Man bites dog would. Because how often does that happen? There are far more good people in the world than bad. We have to seek them out.

And there are so many different things you can do. It's an interesting time for anyone to be alive because there are more choices. That makes it difficult sometimes, but easy has never been the best.

Just be open to everything. Don't be afraid to try anything. When I went up on the glider ride, I was thrilled, and people said to me, "Aren't you afraid?" Why would I be afraid? A big truck is much more dangerous.

So embrace the new. You don't have any choice, actually.

Reporting for Duty (Lois Capps)

Tall and elegant in a crisp blue suit, Lois Capps looked like a Hollywood film version of a Congresswoman when she came to talk to the sixth graders of Gaviota's Vista de las Cruces School in 1998. She  began the conversation by explaining to the students that she worked for them and was eager to hear their questions. (There was a study in progress at the time evaluating the feasibility and implications of  designating the Gaviota coastal area as a National Park, and this is reflected in some of the discussion that follows.) She also mentioned the difficult way in which she was led to the job: her husband Walter had been elected to Congress but died suddenly of a heart attack after only ten and a half months in office.

"Then I had a big decision to make," she explained, "because they needed to have an election to replace him. I decided to try. My main reason for wanting to run was that I loved how Walter chose to serve - he used the phrase 'citizen representative' which comes from Thomas Jefferson. He had the idea that democracy should be made of representatives from all walks of life, and Congress, with its 455 members, is the people's house. It's where we all come together with passion and hard work on behalf of our constituents. We put all our views together and compromise - and in the end, we settle on something in a fair way, a consensus. I liked how Walter did this, and that's why I decided to try."

"You know I work for you?" she asked the students. "So here I am -- reporting for duty."

Chelsea asked Lois what she believed were our biggest concerns as a nation; without a moment's hesitation, Lois mentioned education."One of the key ways to ensure that our wonderful way of life continues," she explained, "is through our schools. Many people face barriers - but in schools, everyone has a chance. If you have an opportunity to learn, you can do whatever you want to with your life. My goal is to keep that opportunity there. Schools are the best thing we have in our country -- I literally believe that -- and that's why I work so hard for our schools in Congress. We all have to pay attention to our schools because that's the secret to success for our country."

"Of course there are other concerns as well. We also need to have a defense system in place to protect our borders, and we need to make sure we have support for highways, libraries, hospitals - it's amazing how many things we depend upon. Government doesn't do all of that, but people like me have to make sure there are programs in place to keep the infrastructure going."

Nole and Trevor asked about Congress' role in funding research for diseases such as Lou Gehrig's disease and diabetes. Lois was sympathetic and supportive.

"There's so much work to do, and I am working on a bill for this. We want to set aside money to do research, and also to keep Medicare in place for older people, and make sure it covers the medicines that are available. When people in our own community are suffering, my role as your representative is to go to my colleagues in Congress and ask them to help out and get this bill passed. I have to work hard and get good ideas passed into law."

"How do you find out what the people in your district want you to do?" asked another student.

"I'm doing it right now. My job is to listen really carefully all day, every day, about what people think I should be helping with. Then I go back to Washington D.C. - with a great staff to help - and work on it."

Frannie asked if it was hard.

"Yes, it's a big job," replied Lois. "It's exciting, but it's also very humbling. I have met a lot of really interesting people who care about the country in the ways that I do. I've learned from them as well, and I've had the chance to do some really good things, too. I feel grateful for the opportunity. It makes me want to work very hard and do the best job I can."

Crystal asked Lois how she unwinds from all this pressure. "I have always loved going for a walk," Lois replies, "and at this point in my life that's my favorite thing to do when I am alone. I spend a lot of time on airplanes now, so for me to take a walk all by myself is fun. We live in a beautiful place! I love to walk on the beach or in my neighborhood, early in the morning -- it gives me time to think and get my priorities straight. There are a lot of things to sort out. Being outdoors helps me -- I can never do it quite as well inside."

"But I'm happiest of all when I'm with my family. I have two grandchildren; one is five and one is one. And I think about them a lot. I think the children of our district are the most important people."

Lois had loving advice for the sixth grade children.

"You don't get to be a young person forever," she told the class. "There's nothing better than a day like today to play and do whatever you want to do. So go out for recess and just run like crazy. Be healthy. Use the knowledge you have about what's good for you to do or not do. you are at an age when you are no longer a little kid; you're getting into that age where people are expecting things of you. It's hard, isn't it? Hard to grow up. So another tip I would give you is to find someone you can really trust. Maybe a parent, a relative, a teacher - and use that person."

Before leaving, Lois asked the students what she should work on when she gets back to Washington. The kids express concerns about the Tajiguas dump, and about cleaning up the creeks and the ocean.

"Okay," Lois said, "I should work on pollution and the environment. But that's gonna mean changing our habits, too, and taking things like recycling very seriously."

"And we're concerned about public access to the Hollister Ranch and all the talk we've heard about turning this whole area into a national park," Nole told her, "This is not a good idea. We don't want to see it ruined like everything else."

"The Gaviota Coast is the largest remaining stretch of protected, still beautiful coastline in California from Mexico to beyond San Francisco," said Lois. "By keeping it in ranch and agriculture, we still have an opportunity to do something to protect it ... but I'm counting on you to help me out. We all have the same goal."

These kids knew and loved the Gaviota land as well as anyone, and they suddenly became very animated. There was understandable uneasiness about government involvement here, even in the form of a "study," and even when presented by someone as well meaning as Lois Capps. The land has been preserved for generations by careful use and private stewardship, not by accident, but by the self-restraint and conscious choices of those who know it best, and it has obviously worked. The evidence is in the beauty and viability of the natural surroundings, the very reason it is now drawing attention.Lois was clearly energized by the discussion. 

"I want to learn exactly why and how we can keep this coast for the future. I'll be back, I promise you. I'll be back."

In 1996, the Vista Volunteers decided to honor Ted with an album from the children and a certificate of recognition for all the things he did  for our school. What a struggle it was to find the right wording for that certificate! Ted functioned in many capacities and always transcended their usual scope. He was, among other things, a bus driver, custodian, musician, singer, cook, and counselor. What we finally came up with to describe him, plain and simple, was friend. And because Ted was one of the people who made Vista a unique and special place, we decided to include him in our oral history project.

_______

Ted was born in St. Joseph, Missouri and lived there until 1942, when his family moved to the east side of Santa Barbara, near Milpas. Ted was about nine years old at the time. He attended Catholic school from fourth to eighth grade, and then went on to Santa Barbara High School.Music has always been an important part of Ted's life. As a kid, he sang in the church choir, and he enjoyed Mexican and country music.

"Growing up with music was very natural," he says, "Everyone in my family played. For as long as I can remember, there was guitar, mandolin, violin..."

As most folks at Vista know, Ted plays guitar and bass, but, as he points out, "not at the same time." His true favorite is the bass, but he never could afford to buy a large bass, so he learned guitar, which was more popular anyway. He became especially motivated when he realized how much the girls liked guitar players.

Over the years, Ted has played in several bands. One in particular was a group of "old men" from Santa Ynez, who called themselves the Shinkickers. They would get together once a month or so and play at weddings or barbecues.Ted first came to Santa Ynez after being in the service, when a friend invited him to come up and look for work there. He found a job at the golf course at Alisal Ranch, where he worked for about four years. He has lived in the valley since 1960, more than half his life.

But Ted enjoys reminiscing about Santa Barbara. "Santa Barbara used to be a super fun place," he says. "The area I remember fondly is the stretch of lower State Street, from around Cota to Victoria. Back in the forties, in the summers, when the Spanish fiestas were held, it was the most beautiful place for a young boy or girl. Parades used to go from Victoria to Cabrillo Boulevard along the beach. Between Cota and Carillo, kids gathered, and people would stand on top of the buildings to look at the parade, and they would throw candy down to the kids. I think that was the most exciting part of the fiesta for us."

"In 1943, a movie company came to Santa Barbara to film a cliffhanger serial called The Masked Marvel. I got to see them filming. It was not far from Stearns' Wharf. I can point out two places in town where we stood. I remember it so clearly!"

"In those days, there were hoboes who would jump off the train and camp among the eucalyptus trees near Cabrillo Boulevard. We used to call it Hobo Jungle. These guys had names like Boxcar, Tin Can, Bo, and Charlie. I never heard their last names, and they didn't seem to have families. They were not uneducated or ignorant, and they harmed no one. They just lived a life of wandering.""One of the hoboes would tend the camp and the others would disperse throughout the neighborhood doing yard work and odd jobs. They knew the area very well. They knew where all the bakeries were, and all the good Mexican places. And there were codes on fences and things that showed who was friendly. Anyway, when they came back, the guy tending the camp would have the fire going and they would make a big stew. I used to bring 'em potatoes in exchange for tobacco sometimes. I'd stay with them all day -- we'd take a BB gun and pop a couple of seagulls, and they'd boil 'em all day to make 'em tasty."

"There was a large lemon-packing house nearby -- Johnson Food Company -- and we kids would gather lemons that fell off the loading dock and bring 'em to the 'boes, who would get clean drinking water and make lemonade."

"This was during the war. These guys could be from the Texas Panhandle or Upstate New York. Sometimes I'd hear them playing harmonica over there -- blues, mostly, or an old gospel song. I want to say that I never once felt any fear around these men -- they just shared their adventures and taught me about life. As a kid, I felt there was a kind of mysticism and romance about their ways."

One of Ted's most powerful memories is of a day in 1945 when he was selling newspapers on State Street. The war had just ended, and the headlines said so.

"There was absolute euphoria among young and old," Ted says, "People were hugging total strangers. It had a dramatic effect on me. After four long years of war, people were crazy with joy. I'll never forget it."

Ted knew every square inch of Santa Barbara, and it was the setting of many adventures for him. He used to enjoy body surfing on East Beach, about a half a mile south of the pier, even though the water was dirty. On occasion, he would use an unorthodox way to travel downtown -- he'd jump on a slow-moving freight train at Milpas and get off at State.

"As I got older, I had a different kind of fun, like playing music at State and Canon Perdido. I'd sit with my cousin and brother and we'd play guitars, and tourists would give us money."

Ted's favorite old-time singer is Hank Williams. And his favorite contemporary singer is Mark Chestnut, because he sounds more like the old-timers. One recent song he likes is called Brother Jukebox.

"Juan," he says, turning to one of our students, "do you remember when I drove the old #1 school bus? I used to play the Ventura station, and that's where I first heard that song. In fact, you probably heard it a zillion times, because it was on that old tape I used to play. The Refugio kids have probably heard all of my favorite songs!"

When asked how he feels about his job at Vista, Ted says, "I don't mind the work, but it's the people I enjoy most. The kids and the teachers. I've been very lucky. I've met some fine people here, and that's mostly why I've stayed. I could go somewhere else if I wanted, but I think that the relationships I have had and the friends I've made here are what make it special. I've watched the youngsters grow. It's kind of like watching your own kids grow."

"I have so many fond memories of this place - barbecues, conversations, field trips, music, and good friends, particularly among the kids. One in particular comes to mind -- he's up in Canada now -- a big kid named Brad Morris -- he calls me all the time, and we've become good friends. When he was in fifth grade, I remember wondering if he'd ever make it to eighth. He was a little different, bigger than the others, and he loved to horseplay. I was always afraid somebody would get hurt. But he turned out fine, and we got to be friends."

"I remember the first field trip I drove. We went out to the Hollister Ranch tide pools. Mrs. See's little girls were small then. It kinda sticks in my mind. Standing there, watching the kids at the beach, it's like a snapshot. I got to love that family, too -- the Sees'. Like I said, it's the people..."

In addition to his Vista family, Ted and his wife Angie have four grown kids: three daughters and one son. His son, the youngest, works as a media analyst in Goleta. Ted's oldest daughter lives in Nevada, about 60 miles west of Las Vegas. His youngest daughter works in a hotel casino in Las Vegas, and his middle daughter teaches first grade at Los Alamos School. Ted also has three granddaughters.

An Afterword:

In 1997, about a year after this interview, Ted retired from his job at Vista de las Cruces, but he still took the time to visit with the children he loves so much. The school's beautiful auditorium was christened "The Ted Martinez Auditorium" in his honor, and the following words are inscribed on the plaque which bears his name: Acciones, mas que palabras, son las pruebas de amor.(Works, more than words, are the proofs of love.)Ted passed away on November 8, 2009, and I still miss him.  He remained my dear friend long after we had both left Vista de las Cruces. For more about Ted Martinez on the Still Amazed blog portion of this website, click here, or you can read a tribute I wrote in his memory for the Santa Barbara Independent.

Barefoot Summers At Las Cruces

We interviewed James Howerton and his sister Margaret on a warm September morning in our sixth grade classroom at Vista de Las Cruces School. Both Jim and Margaret were born in Lompoc, he in 1925, and she in 1919. They spent their childhood years at Hollister Ranch and Las Cruces. The area around our school is as familiar to them as their own backyard, because, in a way, it was!

Living at the ranch was great in those days, although the road was not paved, and in the winter, the cars went as far as they could go, and then people walked in the rest of the way.

"We rode horses down to the barn by the adobe," Jim tells us, "and then walked over to the Las Cruces store to catch the bus to school."

Margaret explains that her family lived first at the Hollister Ranch up the coast from Gaviota in an adobe house located at Santa Anita Canyon. In 1925, the Santa Barbara earthquake left large cracks in the house, and a snake crawled right through and came inside.

"Mother said, 'I'm not living here anymore!', and we moved. Dad (William Frank Howerton, who was known as Bud) was the ranch superintendent and so we got a house at Las Cruces. We lived there from about the time I was five to the time I was seventeen, and then we went down to Tajiguas."

Both Jim and Margaret attended school at Vista del Mar. At that time, there were only two classrooms, one for grades one through four, and the other for grades five through eight.

"First you went from the little room to the big room," says Jim, "and then you got closer and closer to the window. By the time you were an eighth grade big shot, you were always watching the ocean."

The principal, Jim recalls, was a woman named Mrs. Gann. She was one of the most influential people in his life because she was also a dedicated teacher, and she taught him how to read.

"I couldn't read until the sixth grade," he explains, "and she gave me books, and I guess I was ready, because over the summer I learned, and I did great."

When Mrs. Gann was the principal, her salary was only about $1,600 a year, but she got a place to live at the "teacherage." There was one teacher, Miss Letman, whom Jim describes as having been "a great beauty" -- all the boys noticed. And another one of his teachers was Caroline Henning, whose granddaughter, Lisa is in our class today.

Both Jim and Margaret wore bib overalls to school. In the summer, they ran around barefoot. "We gave up our shoes so we wouldn't wear 'em out," says Jim, "and we'd get new ones when we started school in the fall."

There was always a picnic at Refugio Beach on the last day of school, a Vista tradition that continues to the present. One time, Jim reports, a child almost drowned. One of the older boys saved his life.Summer days were very hot in the canyons, and the Howerton kids enjoyed going to Gaviota Beach when they were done "bailing hay or thrashing beans." There were cabins there that you could rent for about 50 cents.

And Jim describes another trick for staying cool: he would pick a watermelon and place it beneath a big black fig tree in the yard. Water would drip from the tree onto the melon and evaporate, cooling it off like a refrigerator until it was cold and refreshing to eat. Other times, the kids would go to the hot springs, sit in the warm water for a long time, and see who could most bravely face the chilly feel of the air afterwards.

"It was so clean at the hot springs," adds Margaret, "before it was a state park -- there were picnic tables, but people started to leave trash.

"Winters were wet, and when it rained in the mountains, you didn't get out for two weeks unless you walked or rode.

"One time a semi ran over the pass," Jim recalls, "and all you could see was the smokestack.

"Christmas was always a rainy time. "One year," says Margaret, "it rained so hard, we had an oak branch for a Christmas tree.

"Presents were clothes, mostly, but once their brother Bill got a balloon tire bicycle!"It was raining like the devil," says Jim, "but we had to try that bike, rain or shine. I remember going beyond the big pepper trees in the wet adobe earth. The mud was so thick, we had to push the bike back home because the wheels wouldn't turn."

Toys in those days were homemade affairs. The kids used a corn cob for a football. Sometimes they would take a stick of redwood, whittle a handle, and take turns hitting a tennis ball with it. From these humble beginnings, Jim's brother Bill became a major league baseball player. He grew up to play for the St. Louis Cardinals.Kids played baseball, soccer, and a game in which Margaret says "you sat in circle and someone touched you, and you had to catch the person." (Our students recognized this as Duck Duck, Goose , which they still play.)

There was also a game called Red Rover, Red Rover, which involved throwing a ball over the house.Jim remembers that there was a bull pasture near the school, and whenever someone hit a ball out there, he would be the one to go over the fence and get it.

"Everyone thought I was very brave," he says, "but I knew those bulls were too lazy to chase you. They'd just look at you."

Growing up in Gaviota was like paradise for kids. Margaret describes her special place -- a little spring behind the ranch house upon whose banks grew wild violets and ferns. Jim used to climb an oak tree on a hill in front of the house and lie on its branches. "That tree is probably still there," he says. (The house was later occupied by Jay Johnson.

)"A lot of times, we'd just fool around by the crick. I found the perfect arrowhead once in one of the washes. It was a beautiful arrowhead. I wish I knew what became of it."

"And we rode horses, of course. Our horses were named Chico, Chapo, Cholo, and Little Red. Cholo was the best stock horse that ever lived. My father won a hand-tooled saddle on him at the fiesta -- it was probably worth about a hundred dollars even then, a couple of thousand today."

Bud Howerton won a total of seven Fiesta saddles in all. He was the 1974 Fiesta Vaquero, and in 1980 he gained entrance into the Horseman Hall of Fame.

"Before the fiesta, my brother and I would ride in the mountains behind the ranch to get the horse in good shape," Jim tells us. "We'd ride double. And sometimes we'd play cowboys and Indians and get the horse going as fast as we could, and then we'd fall backwards off him into the hay. If my kids had done that now, I'd kill 'em."

"It's funny," Jim reflects, "how much I hated to get up on school days, but on Saturday, I'd rise at 5 a.m., take the dog and a box of 22-rifle shells, and be gone all day. When I got hungry, I'd just kill something for lunch."

"We were poor," adds Margaret, "but we didn't know it. We lived on wild game -- venison, quail, fish."

"A lot of steelhead used to come up the crick." says Jim. "They're now endangered. We'd sit on a boulder and watch them spawn. And on the first day of trout season, they'd close school. It made sense, since no one would be there, anyway."

"One time I was supposed to pull my little sister Elinor in a wagon, and I tipped the wagon and pushed her out," Jim recalls. "I got whipped for that. Another time, my mother was going to spank me, so I put a book in my britches. She started hitting, and I started laughing."

Jim's best friends were his dog and his brother, but sometimes he would go up the canyon, past the store and play with the Ortega kids. "One time," he says, "I went over there to get my brother Bill, and Mr. Ortega grabbed me and threw me behind the door. A big billy goat was chasing the kids right through the house. They ran across the bed and jumped out the window! Mr. Ortega finally managed to hit the goat with a washtub and slow him down."

Peggy and Stan Humphries also lived nearby in the 1930's, "across the bridge and on the right." The Humphries' had two daughters, and whenever they wanted the girls to come home, they would ring a big bell in the backyard.

"You could hear that bell ringing up the canyon," says Jim.Margaret feels that although this area is still beautiful, it has changed drastically.

"You have a nice school," she says, "and it brings back a lot of memories, but it's hard now to locate exactly where certain things were."

She recalls the store and Las Cruces Inn.

"Dinner at Las Cruces Inn was a big deal," Margaret says. (It had been part of the old stagecoach stop -- Jim and Margaret's great-grandfather, incidentally, was the last of the stagecoach drivers.)

And there was a garage run by Eugene Hess, the best mechanic in the area. During one big holiday in the late 1930's Hess pumped 800 gallons of gas in one day, which broke all records, and was perhaps a harbinger of the eventual growth in traffic and population.

"Too many people," concludes Margaret, "but you can't stop progress."

"When we were little," she continues, "there was no television. The first radio was a big deal. You could barely hear, but we all sat around listening, spellbound."

"We also listened in on everyone's telephone conversations! There was a main switch at the store and we were all on the same line."

Jim and Margaret remember that one time, shortly after 1927, a sister ship of the Spirit of St. Louis made an emergency landing in a Las Cruces bean field. "Mr. Mendez was so upset," says Jim, "but everybody thought it was very exciting. It didn't hurt the plane at all, just the beans."

Jim and Margaret's father played semi-pro baseball in the 1930's, and sometimes the family went to his games. Bud Howerton's semi-pro career had an interesting start. He was sitting in the stands waiting for the game to begin, but the pitcher did not show up. Asked if he would pitch, Bud replied, "Sure, but pay me whatever you pay the regular pitcher." He went on to pitch a shut out, make a home run, and earn $25. He signed up with "The Buicks" and played ball on Sundays in places like Goleta, Santa Barbara and Ojai.

One of our students asks Mr. Howerton if he has ever met anyone famous.

"It depends on what you call famous," he replies, "I about got run over by President Reagan on Refugio Canyon Road once, if that counts."

We ask about the cattle operations at Hollister Ranch.

"They drove the cattle from one ranch to another down the highway," Jim tells us. "Early in the morning, the highway patrol would stop the cars. There was no tunnel then; it was a two-lane road. They'd drive the cattle to Hollister Ranch, or back the other way."

"There was a ranch on Santa Rosa Island, too," he continues, "and the cattle would be brought on a barge across the Channel to Santa Anita Ranch (Hollister Ranch). They would anchor the barge just beyond the breakers, and the cows would swim in to the shore. One time, one of them turned around and started heading back to the island. We lost sight of her after awhile. We figured the sharks had a good feed that day."

The kids ask Jim and Margaret if they have a favorite book. "I don't have a particular favorite," replies Jim. "As I told you, I was a late reader, but once I got going, I loved books. Even today, I take a notion to read and sometimes I'll read half a dozen books in a week, then I won't for a while. But when I read, I like mystery, action, adventure."

"I enjoy history," says Margaret, "particularly local history. I don't have much of a library because my husband and I live in a motor home. We travel between Oregon and Arizona and I can't carry too many things."

Jim's wife, Barbara Rey Howerton, has brought a carton of photo albums and memorabilia and is herself full of stories. (Interestingly, she says she used to babysit for Gretel Ehrlich, now a well-respected writer.) The students gather round to look at exquisite sepia-toned photographs of ranchers, family members, and local landmarks. There is an old menu from the Gaviota store, where the Trucker's Special was soup, sandwich, and coffee, for $1.25, and REALLY GREAT chili was 65 cents, served all day and all night. We see a glossy autographed photo of Bill Howerton in his baseball uniform in 1950, newspaper clippings of Bud riding Cholo, and my favorite: Margaret at about thirteen, rifle in hand, looking competent, cool, and content. There is something about her spirit that is tangible even today.

Sometimes in the morning, as I drive to work at Vista de las Cruces, a slant of white light breaks through the mist over the mountains, and our little school simply shines. There is magic here --the oak trees, the creek, the old adobe. It has been changed but not consumed by the rustle of time. And there is a personal dimension, now that Jim and Margaret have shared their perspectives. It isn't hard to imagine the bell clanging up the canyon and the shouts of barefoot children. There is something familiar in the voice of the wind.

Cynthia Carbone Ward

Going Beyond What Seems Possible (Dr. Arthur Hicks)

Art Hicks grew up in the segregated South, served with the Tuskegee Airmen during World War II, and has worked as an educator and human rights advocate. But that doesn't begin to tell the whole story. His life has been about working for change and transcending limits.  In 2009, just a few years after he came to talk to our Dunn Middle School oral history class,  he went to Washington D.C. to attend the Inauguration of President Barack Obama. ("What a day that was!" he told me later. "You cannot imagine how it felt to be there.") It's hard not to be inspired by this kind, spirited, and dignified man. 

My full name is Arthur Norris Hicks and I was born in Sparta, Georgia on November 21, 1922, and that's a few years before you were born!I intended to live a long time so I took care of myself and didn't do those things that would have a negative effect. I've been careful to do things with moderation as opposed to going to extremes … although there are people who would say that my actions with regard to social events are extreme. I'm a person who works for change.

I grew up in a very segregated area of the South. This segregation was based on hatred, and I mean absolute hatred. You ever hear the term "lynching"? It's the execution of a person, usually by hanging, without a hearing, without a courtroom, nothing to determine whether or not the person was guilty or not. That's the kind of condition that existed. And there were other more social types of segregation or discrimination: the back of the bus, the separate drinking fountains, separate waiting rooms in train stations, separate seats in trains. If you went to a store to try on shoes, you had to first buy special socks to put on, or if you wanted to try on a hat, you had to wear some sort of cap over your hair, and in many places, they wouldn't even accept that. Schools were segregated. The materials and equipment in the black school were books and materials that had been discarded by the administration of the white schools, so the education was of course inferior.

Even as kids, we understood. We understood quite well. And in case we didn't, they frequently reminded us by throwing rocks through our windows and driving through the neighborhood yelling, "Niggers, move out!" So, yes, we were frequently reminded and we were very conscious of it.How did we feel as a result of it? Angry. But there was nothing to do. It was anger that had to be subdued. We were continually reminded that we lived under conditions that were not acceptable, but there was nothing we could do about it. So maybe you can imagine how one felt, the constant frustration one might feel.

And it isn't all of us who withheld action all the time. Some of us broke out and we did things to express our disgust for these types of conditions.In order to go to the grocery store, we had to walk through a border with the white neighborhood, and on occasion a gang of ruffians would confront us and we had to run. But one day I out-ran most and then intentionally allowed the person who was closest to me to catch up. That's one time when I expressed my anger. I beat him up.And this was the type of thing one had to do in order to survive, to retain one's mentality.There were nine of us in my family: four boys and five girls, so I was a pretty socialized person. I had to learn to get along 'cause I was right in the middle. I always had somebody up here who could handle me and somebody down below that I had to take care of.

People frequently ask me what is meant by Tuskegee Airmen. What makes the Tuskegee Airmen story a significant story? The Tuskegee Airmen are a group of people who became pilots during World War II. Well, lots of people became pilots during World War II. What's so significant about that? Well, in the military, all the pilots were white, and for the most part there were no Mexicans, and no other minorities, and as such, the armed services were very segregated with respect to aviation. This was even supported by a body of so-called scientific data that said that blacks were incapable of learning complex material, incapable of flying a plane, incapable of carrying out military missions.

But in World War II the nation was hurting for pilots and other technical types of skills. This was an opportunity for the black press and black organizations to convince the War Department and the President to open up these opportunities for black men. (It would have been a good opportunity for women, too, but women were generally not considered in that context at the time.)Well, Eleanor Roosevelt was a very forward-thinking First Lady. There was a training program for black people to become pilots down in Tuskegee, Alabama, associated with a school founded by Booker T. Washington. Have you heard of him? He was an educator who founded a school that trained black men and women to do different types of skills. Many of them were menial, but at least they were structured and they taught people to be responsible and accomplished.

Anyway, there was a pilot training program at this school in the late 1930s. In 1939, the British were under attack by the Germans and there was a great need for pilots. In fact, some blacks did go overseas by way of Canada and participated in the war before the United States got into the fight.Well, Mrs. Roosevelt used to travel around the country looking at programs and conditions and making recommendations to the President and to Congress. In 1941, she went down to Tuskegee on one of her tours. She had been informed of this flying program that had been created after pressure had been put on Washington by the "Negro press', and she became very interested. So when she visited Tuskegee, she said, "I want to ride with one of those people."

The secret service almost fell apart. This wife of the President is going to get into a plane flown by a black pilot! It was unheard of at the time. And after they complained for awhile and stamped their feet on the ground, she simply told them, "I'm gonna ride in that plane."

Chief Anderson, an icon held in high regard by all of us, was the pilot, and he gave Mrs. Roosevelt an orientation ride around the area. She came back and said, "Well, he flies all right as far as I'm concerned." And sure enough, the program became the beginning of a permanent practice in the military.

In World War II our skills were such that in escorting bombers deep into Germany, we never lost a single bomber while they were under our escort.In fact, I recently heard a talk by retired Colonel Pete Knight, who holds a world speed record for aircraft he flew out of Edwards Air Force Base back in the experimental days. He spoke at Vandenberg recently in celebration of the 100th anniversary of flight. He described the Tuskegee Airmen as heroes of aviation because it was thought that they could not fly and yet they went on to establish a record in the air force that has not been bested.

But many black men came back after serving their country only to be refused service at the lunch counters in their hometown. Absolutely. That type of experience continued for an additional fifteen or twenty years. Troops came back in 1945 and it was not until the mid-sixties that laws were passed prohibiting discrimination in public activities, particularly those facilities founded under state or federal laws, like schools.I was in the military for the most part, so I could not publicly demonstrate, but there was discrimination even on the bases. As an example, when the armed forces were desegregated, meaning there was equal access to jobs and housing, that sort of thing, I was transferred to Murfreesboro, Tennessee.

At the Tuskegee base it was all black, and under the control of black commanders, so it was a separate society, a separate entity that offered certain opportunities for skill development and accomplishment. But we were small and self-contained, so there were relatively few positions. Meanwhile, there was a larger pool of people out there competing for opportunities that could not exist within a small group. So when President Truman as Commander in Chief abolished segregation of the military bases, a larger pool of possibility opened up to blacks.

But when I was transferred to Tennessee, I discovered that blacks were kept in one corner of the base. We would go to work in an integrated environment, and then we went home, we were in a segregated environment. When it came to utilizing the social facilities: swimming pool, barber shop, chapel, whatever, it was for the most part a segregated environment. Blacks could only use the swimming pool on Wednesday. On Wednesday night at closing time, the pool was emptied, scrubbed down, and refilled, and blacks couldn't go into it again until next Wednesday. This is the kind of thing that existed.

So I complained about that to the base commander.Well, I was not a very well liked person after that, but these kinds of things existed, and it was necessary to speak out. Even in the 1960s, when I first got to Vandenberg, there were undesirable conditions for blacks. In fact, one of the persons I associated with became very vocal about it, and the base commander had him transferred to a psychological ward in Texas. He was there for several days and since no one was able to find anything wrong with him he was allowed to come back to Vandenberg. There were other instances of segregation and discrimination, and I was very vocal about these things.

One time I was down in Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama, and a friend and I were going to Washington and we were looking for a ride as passengers in one of the planes that frequently went back and forth. We had to stay overnight at Maxwell and we went to the billeting office and we asked for a room. We were told we'd have to go across the runway to the area where the black troops were.I was about 120 pounds at the time, a brand new second lieutenant, a couple of inches shorter than I am now if you can imagine anybody being that short. The manager says, "Sorry, we can't give you a room here." And being a brand new second lieutenant I thought I had all sorts of authority, so I wanted to talk to his boss. "Who's your boss?" I asked him. He called his boss … and it was a colonel! You know what a colonel is? He's a person who wears eagles on his shoulder! He's one step below general!

So this colonel came in and said, "What's your problem?" I told him, "We don't see why we have to go across that runway and have billeting with the black troops. " Well, he stamped his feet and walked around in circles a bit, and then he went back to the manager: "Give these people rooms."But I think they had their retribution. When I left the service as a pilot in 1946, I was never recalled as a pilot. I think they sent my name and serial number to Washington, to the personnel division, with instructions never to recall this person to commissioned status -- he's an absolute troublemaker.

I decided to come back to the service as a maintenance supervisor and I remained in until 1971. I stayed in for 28 years. And what did I do in those 28 years? I worked on the B17s, the B47s, the B25s. Do any of those mean anything to you? They're planes. At Vandenberg I was the missile guidance superintendent, taking care of the guided system for the Titan II, which was a very big missile. We used to launch one of those per month out of the sites at Vandenberg, and you can imagine what it cost to bring one of those things up ready and to launch it.

Back to the Tuskegee Airmen: even as recently as the late 1960's, we didn't have any kind of an organization, and many of us were still in the armed services. I guess we were conditioned not to do things that upset the power structure. So we began an organization in the 1960s, and one of the things we did was create a scholarship program that has grown to have an endowment of two million dollars. I'm the selection chair for that organization, and each year we award scholarships of $1500 each to deserving students across the country. It's not a tremendous amount, but we give out $60,000 a year, and it's a very rewarding thing.

I'm a former teacher. After getting out of the service I taught at Cabrillo High School. I had been in the area of education in the military, through supervising people, seeing if they were brought up to the skill level needed. After having worked on machines for a number of years, I decided this is enough. I wanted to do something that had more to do with people. Most of my studies were in the area of social subjects, such as sociology, psychology, and human behavior. I thought that I would enjoy doing that type of thing in the classroom and I felt that my experience in the military would be beneficial to the students -- I looked at it from the standpoint of discipline and orderliness. Well, my first two months in the classroom were the most frustrating of my life because students just don't respond to discipline that much! I had to backtrack out of my training mode. But after I made some adjustments and went through some workshops, I was well adjusted and things went much better.I want to tell you another story.

Ever hear of the Elks? In 1989, I read the paper one morning and noticed that the Elk's Lodge in Lompoc was having a big brouhaha. Several prominent people were punched out, and the school board president was in a fight, and there were almost 160 people present that evening -- one of the issues had to do with admitting people for membership. It turned out that one of the people being considered was a retired policeman who had worked with the Elks in the kitchen and on the barbecues, and he was rejected because he was black. Five people voted against his admission, and 155 voted for his admission, but the five prevailed. This was the rule at the time. Only three people were necessary to reject something if they voted against it, regardless of the number for it.

Well, I started a letter-writing campaign to social organizations, church organizations, school boards, city councils, as well as State Senator Gary Hart - we covered the entire spectrum , and my wife, my son and I generated these letters on our primitive Apple computer. We had the support of the Lompoc Record and the Santa Barbara News Press. The Santa Maria Times reported things but they didn't take a position.

The Lompoc Elks Lodge got much of their money from catering and parties, and they almost went broke because people stopped supporting it after all this bad press. The head of the Lodge said, this is not something we can do anything about. It's the responsibility of the national organization.So we went to the regional person, and we went to Senator Gary Hart, and by now we needed a lawyer. This had reached the Santa Maria lodge and they were complaining because people were beginning to withdraw from them, too. So Senator Hart said, "I can suggest an attorney. I want you to call Mike Balaban, see if you like what he has to say."

I called Mike Balaban. Mike is a neighbor of yours - he's in Santa Ynez. "We'll mediate this," Mike said. He began talking to the leaders of the Elks organization and they told him they could not do anything about it because it was a national problem. Our Congressman got involved in it because people were complaining to him about what was happening, and they didn't want it to spread across the country.Finally the regional guy said, "I'll take it to the convention in New Orleans and we'll see if we can't get these rules changed."

And they did. And now if 55% of those voting agree then it becomes law.So even in this late date, some dramatic changes can be made if we approach it in a way that doesn't entirely inflame or upset. This almost upset people, but it worked, and I was really amazed, and Mike Balaban was really amazed. So I've been involved in some things.

You never know what life can hold for you. Don't limit yourself only to the goals that seem possible. Tuskegee Institute had a very good vocational program and I got there by way of a poster ad I saw in a post office in Atlanta that said mechanic trainees were needed for the war. I applied for it, got it, and received the orders to go, but they sent me to the wrong school. Instead of going to Alabama, they sent me to a school in Tennessee, outside of Memphis. It was in January. I'll never forget that January. It was cold, and I had used all of my money on bus fare to get to this school. I was told, "You're in the wrong place. This is for white boys! We'll see if we can't find out where you're supposed to be."

Then they find out Tuskegee's the place. The problem is: how do I get there? I don't have any money. I didn't have money for transportation, or for room and board. It was suggested that I go to a traveler's aid society, and there I was given the address of an elderly couple. Most hotels didn't lend themselves to black people in those days, especially in the south. So I stayed with this couple and I worked as a bus boy and I earned the money, got the transportation , and went on to Tuskegee. So that's the start of my education. I was a high school graduate, didn't have much hope of getting into college, my family was very poor. But I got my start there.

In Tuskegee, I went through several courses related to aviation instruction. In later years I took courses with Alan Hancock and the University of Nebraska, and graduated eventually in Omaha. After that I went to Cal Poly, earned a masters degree, and taught for Alan Hancock and Chapman College. I worked on a PhD for the United States International University in San Diego and did all the work except for the dissertation. I never could have imagined I would come this far.

My first solo flight was the most exciting thing I think I have ever done. I was about twenty years old, and I was in a Piper Cub. Are you familiar with it? It's a little yellow plane. That's what I flew initially. And to understand where I came from, what I had accomplished, and what hopes I had achieved…it was indescribable. Aviation had always been one of my dreams. My home in Atlanta was in the flight pattern into the Atlanta airport, so I was exposed to this every day, and I had a huge desire to be a pilot.But solo -- to fly it alone. You're away from the ground, you're away from people, and it's just you and that airplane.

I was exposed to despicable things early in life when I could do nothing about them. But I found much satisfaction after I discovered that I COULD take action and help create positive changes. So I've worked in the area of human rights and tried to speak out for justice. I've also found determined people like Mike Balaban who could easily refuse to be bothered but who instead stand up and take on the task.

My advice to you? Life is long and it's short. It depends upon the collective group of which you are a part, and the group might be as large as the world. Find it within yourself to contribute to the whole. We can most effectively do that by first making the best possible contribution to our own selves: through education, through questioning, through personal growth. In my life, achieving some degree of education has taken unusual effort over the very long haul, while I imagine you will have no problem going on and doing whatever is necessary. But I would encourage you to look to the goal that is so far out of reach you cannot even imagine what it is at this point in your life. We don't know what we will do, what we will be, as we go through life.

I received a photograph from my daughter and her family yesterday. She's an attorney. Her husband's an attorney. They have two kids in Harvard. It's probably difficult for you to even imagine how I feel as a grandfather. I also have a son who is making a tremendous contribution as principal design engineer for a firm in the Silicon Valley.

So that's the type of story I would like to leave with you. It's about what can be done if we look forward to distant goals and stay on the path that leads to them. 

Inside, Looking Out (Nan and Lynn Cadwell)

Nan and Lynn Cadwell came to our classroom together one spring afternoon, and so this visit was a double treat. An elegant and witty couple, the Cadwells have deep California roots and fascinating stories to share. In addition, Nan showed us the remarkable drawings and journals that her Aunt Mildred Nosser kept as a young girl growing up at Nojoqui Falls in the early 1900s. The Cadwells reside in Santa Barbara. Their daughter Hilary works in the Bay area, and their son Chris grows incredible organic produce on his farm in Lompoc.

 LYNN: I was born in Santa Barbara in 1922. Nan was born in same hospital, on the same floor but much later. I lived in Carpinteria, which is where my great-grandfather came in 1867. He started out as a farmer up in a place near Napa called Lake County. In Lake County, it would freeze in the wintertime, so he decided to go someplace where things would grow better. He gathered a huge load of budding grafting material for fruit trees and headed south on a stagecoach. But he had to water these things or they would die, and they wouldn't stop the stagecoach for him. He got off, watered his plants, and walked for a long distance until he came to a town, where he got on another stagecoach. That's how he happened to end up in Carpinteria.

LYNN (continuing): Nan's grandparents, the Nossers, used to live at Nojoqui Falls. Nan has some interesting journals her Aunt Mildred wrote that she started at age eleven. Mildred Nosser was born in 1899, and her journals give you an idea what it was like to live at that time, watching for the stage coach, riding horses, acting out plays, lighting candles on the Christmas tree...

We looked through the journals, with their exquisite pen sketches and charming entries. Here are a few random excerpts:

February 11, 1913 Nothing happened today, except that Dolly got scared at an auto, and I met the surveyor this morning, and we practiced my wonderful play.

February 13, 1913 Nothing happened today. It was so foggy this morning, I could hardly see ten feet in front of me! I met the surveyor's wagon this morning with one man in it, but I didn't speak because they haven't got any sense. Wonder if he noticed it. Something is the matter with my candle now, it flickers so I can hardly see. Well, my thoughts tonight are far a'flight, sailing away like some little kite.

February 14, 1913Today was St. Valentine's Day. We had lots of fun with our Valentines. Met the surveyor again today. Oh, dear! It is so perfectly lovely outdoors! Dorothy came home today. I don't think she will be cross if mama don't scold. Well, I am rather sleepy, so will discontinue.…If anyone should read this, they'd think I was perfectly crazy about the boys! But I'll have to tell you, reader, that I simply hate the boys - can't seem to understand them.The person that reads this will think me fibbing, but he gave me two tennis balls. And the way he called me Baby, so tender, not a bit like he was making fun of me!!

In addition to entries of this sort, Mildred's journal includes stories she has written, favorite quotes and poems, and excerpts of school lessons. A clipping entitled "Women's Rights" (from the Boston Globe in the days before the 19th Amendment) lists romantic rights such as these:

A right to love one truly

And be loved back again;

A right to share his fortunes

Through sunlight and through rain;

A right to be protected

From life's most cruel lights

By manly love and courage -

Sure these are women's rights!

And Mildred had a flair for art. The journal is lavishly illustrated with drawings of stylish ladies carrying parasols, a man in Renaissance attire viewing the future through a telescope, a young girl with upswept curly hair… On one page, an old man wearing a banner reading "1914" is yielding to a "1915" baby; a large question mark looms ahead.

But now we returned to the present, and our interview.

We asked the Cadwells how they met:

NAN: Lynn became a friend of my brother's and so he was at my house all the time. I was about fourteen.LYNN: Nan lived in a part of Santa Barbara called The Riviera. She went to Santa Barbara High and was the May Queen in 1943. Our families knew each other. Not really well, but they knew each other. Nan's father had his own company for a while. He was a road builder, an engineer, so he would build these roads, like Highway 101.NAN: He did Highway One at Big Sur. He was an engineer when I was growing up.

LYNN: Nan's mother and father went to Big Sur around 1920 or 1921, somewhere in there, and they started the road for the first time from Big Sur to the south and they only had enough money to build three miles of road. And one of her father's memories about that was a huge steam shovel -- usually they had only mules or oxen to pull these graders -- but they got a steam shovel to speed up this work. And he remembered seeing the driver on this steam shovel yelling, and the whole steam shovel went over the cliff. Amazingly, his life was saved because he was very quick, and he managed to jump off. Usually they were killed.But her mother and father had a tent there in the Big Sur campground that was boarded up around the sides and had a wood floor, so they lived there for about three years. Nan's brother was living at that time, so he enjoyed the Big Sur River, and they had one chicken that laid an egg every other day.

NAN: That chicken appeared from nowhere.

We asked if the war changed the high school experience for the students.

NAN: Oh, yes. Oh, it certainly did. But I enjoyed high school very much. There was a war on, but it was still high school. There was a school band that played every lunch hour and we all went in and danced madly. We could hardly eat our sandwiches. We just wanted to dance!

LYNN: They had what they called "bobby soxers" - everyone wore bobby sox and then they would dance jitterbug.NAN: We had a lot of fun, and I think all of us, all my friends, realized even then how lucky we were.

When did you live at Big Sur?

LYNN: We were in Big Sur in 1962 and I taught school there for three years. The school was a tar paper shack that was a little wider than this room and about forty feet long. I had fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth grades, and the first thing the children had to do when the bus dropped them off at school in the fall and winter was get the fire going. They got the fire going, and then we could start school. Because of the age spread of the children, I would work with one group at a time, and then the oldest children would help the younger, and so the students were really the teachers. We had just enough boys and girls to have two teams for baseball or soccer. Everyone had to finish their lessons before they went out, so they were very motivated. Once again, the tutors would be the older children, and they were great helpers.

Was this during the time Henry Miller lived at Big Sur?

LYNN: Yes. Henry Miller was a very popular writer who wrote sort of racy things. But he went to France during the thirties and then came back here when the war had started, and he moved to Big Sur and was cut off from all the money that he would have had from the books. He couldn't get it because the war was going on. So Henry Miller was very poor during the forties, but when the war was over, he found out he was a very rich man. His books had been selling. But he told his publisher that he couldn't go over to France because he didn't have any money. Suddenly a telegram arrived, and his agent had invested all his money, and there was a stock failure, and he lost it all just when he found out he had it. But Henry Miller made a lot of money after the war, and we got to know him because we lived on the same hill, which was called Parrington Ridge. We even had him as a babysitter. He was a very kind man, so he babysat for our kids.

So Chris and Hilary had Henry Miller as a babysitter?

NAN: Well, we were in a play, and the show must go on. We desperately needed someone.

You performed in a play?

NAN: Yes, everybody that lived up there was involved in a play. If you weren't actually performing in the play, you made costumes. It was a wonderful way of getting to know people up there. Otherwise, we were all so isolated. We had a couple of musicians up there who would go back to New York and go to all the shows and pick out songs. So we did musicals.

Were you in them also, Lynn?

LYNN: Yes, unfortunately. They had what they called the Big Sur Potluck Revue. It was made up of a dinner where everyone brought something, and then a play afterwards. Everyone loved it. They would come from San Francisco and Los Angeles. And the money raised from this event supported the school and the grange hall where everyone met and had the plays.

NAN: We lived up there year-round for three years in the early1960s. It was wonderful. After that, we went to Berlin.LYNN: I taught in public schools in Santa Barbara for a couple of years. We had the little school in Gaviota - Vista del Mar. I was there around 1965. They had a fighter plane in the schoolyard for the kids to climb on and play on. The movie companies used to come by and they would see that jet and they wanted to buy that because there weren't many left. I always had to say no. It was from the Korean War, the best jet we had.When I got to that school, there was a lack of good books, but we had a lot of terrific parents there. One of them was Dee Mease. Mrs. Mease loved books, and she would give books to all of her many children. She was a lovely person. We had no library in the school at all, so we got these mothers together and blocked off part of the hallway, and that was the library. They were good people. We all got into the fun of choosing the books.We only had about sixty boys and girls from kindergarten through the eighth grade, although we didn't have a kindergarten when we first started. Most of our kids went on to Santa Ynez High, but some would go to Dunn or Midland. The greatest thing about the boys and girls that went to Vista was that they loved to go to school.The old school is near the oil refinery. The building is still there, though neglected. The new school is Vista de las Cruces.

Have things changed a lot in this area over the years?

NAN: Oh, we've seen huge changes.

LYNN: But the amazing thing is, you know how your mind is now? How you're thinking and what you are aware of around you? Your mind never changes. You learn more. You're affected by more. But your mind is the same. You can remember old times. For me, that's almost eighty years ago, but I DO remember. And inside, looking out, you're the same person you always were.Nan's father, who lived to be just four months short of a hundred years old, and was a very bright person, his mind stayed just like it was. He didn't realize he was really old until he fell down one day…

NAN: No. He got in an accident and was pinned under a car, and this young boy said, "Are you all right, Pops?" He thought, "Pops?" Then he got home and looked in the mirror and said, "Yeah, I am really old." 

I’ve Tried To Be A Cowboy and I’ve Tried to Be A Good One (Jake Copass)

An Interview with Jake Copass

My students and I had the privilege of interviewing Jake Copass on the campus of Dunn Middle School several years ago.  In his ever-present stetson hat and western boots, he looked like a Hollywood version of a cowboy, and he had played the role in movies and commercials - but he was the real thing. He began working as a wrangler at the Alisal Guest Ranch in Solvang in 1946, and in addition to his ranch skills, he made quite a name for himself as a cowboy poet. He had a kind heart and a great smile, and he possessed the integrity and grace of a man doing what he was meant to do. He died on June 8, 2006 after a brief bout with leukemia. I wish you could hear the words that follow in his own wonderful Texas twang:

"I'll start out and give you a little history on myself. I was born on a little farm in Texas way out in nowhere, way out in the sticks. There was eight of us kids. In those days, when you had a big family, the oldest kids, they was the boss of the younger ones. When the moms and dads was gone, the oldest kids was supposed to take over, or they thought they was. So they'd kick you around, make you do your chores, and theirs too."

"I been a cowboy all my life. I was a farm boy, and I grew up in a ranching area, kinda like the Santa Ynez Valley used to be - 'cause we all know they goin' by the wayside. But like I told you, I started in Texas. And you never know when you're young what's gonna happen. I was always an ambitious kid, believe it or not; I wasn't lazy. I always loved horses and cattle, and bein' in a ranchin' area give me exposure to people other than my family. My brother-in-law worked at this big ranch, a big workin' outfit, and they had this little colt that had lost its mother when it was born, but they didn't have time to raise it. My brother-in-law asked me if I would be interested in raisin' that little colt for him, and so naturally I was."

"About two years later, a guy come by and bought the horse from me. Horses weren't worth much in those days. This horse was two years old, and he offered me $85 for it. No one had heard of a horse bringin' that much money, so I sold him, no questions asked. Well, my brother-in-law couldn't wait to tell the people at the ranch how much I got for the colt! So this colt was responsible for me gettin' a job at this ranch. Little things can sometimes turn into big things. They said, 'If he can sell a bum colt for $85, he can come down here where he can work with some good horses.' So it's funny how things in life just come around. You don't go out seekin' these things, but when they show up at your front door, you gotta recognize them."

"Later, when I went in the service, I was attached to the calvary, and I was transferred to the veterinary corps. The veterinary corps was responsible for all the food movement in the service; the meat and food had to be passed by the veterinary. They were shippin' a lot of food over to the front lines that wasn't eatable. More people was dyin' of ptomaine poisoning than was gettin' shot by the enemy. So I learned the veterinary corps business and food inspection and got shipped overseas."

"I was overseas for two years. There was three guys in our outfit that was gonna get to come back to the states. One guy went AWOL, so I got to replace him and come to the states. This is another one of those circumstantial things… the orders said, 'Santa Barbara, California'. The only thing I knew about Santa Barbara was a song I'd heard that was written about it after the 1925 earthquake. So they shipped me to Santa Barbara in 1944… and I don't think you guys can remember that like it was yesterday!"

"Close to where Cutter Motors is now, there was a dairy. They put up some temporary buildings, and they had a hospital for the soldiers. Then they leased an old trottin' horse stable up on a hill close to the golf course, near the bird refuge, and we had forty head of army horses. I happened to be the first guy come along who could run a stable. So wantin' to get back in the cattle business, and seein' where you could grow green grass in the wintertime - I'd never seen that before - well, you guys have been stuck with me ever since."

"I was in the cattle business for about forty years. I shod horses, made saddles, and did whatever I had to do to make money to get into the cattle business. And if I had to do it all over, I'd probably do the same thing. It's a lot of work, and there's no real end over the rainbow when it comes to makin' money in the cattle business…but it goes back to doin' what you wanna do."

"I just turned eighty years old, and a lotta people who turn eighty years old, if they even get to bein' eighty years old, they can't even get up in the morning. I'm thankful. I been blessed, 'cause I been healthy. I just had a birthday party at the Alisal. There was over three hundred people showed up. There was twelve people flew all the way from England just for my party, so that makes me feel pretty good. I never done no particular things to make friends. I'm kinda what I am and they have to accept me for what I are. But I've made a lot of friends."

"And I'll tell you why the people came from England. In the 1940s, when the guest ranch opened, this guy came as a kid, and when he grew up, he ended up in the movie industry, and got acquainted with these people over in England that was in the movie business. They had two kids, an eight-year-old boy and a four-year-old. The eight-year-old boy had leukemia and the doctor gave him four months to live. They asked him, if he had a wish, what would he like to do, and he said he would like to go to America and see real cowboys. So the guy who had come to the guest ranch as a kid wrote to the Alisal and asked if we would consider the family coming and staying there. It's maybe not the best cowboying outfit in the world, but he figured it's someplace to start. And at first they turned him down, but I conned them into lettin' them come. It's just something that kinda hits you and gets you thinking about it."

"So the little boy and his brother and mom and dad, his two grandmas, and one of his grandpas, all come and stayed at the Alisal. He was told that one of the guys in charge was Jake Copass, and he figured if he was gonna fly all the way across the ocean, he was gonna see the best cowboy in America, so I was supposed to be the best. That's kind of a hard deal to live up to. So we rode in the rain; we roped and reined; we did everything while he was here."

"The boy lived about the four months that they give him to live. His parents decided if they was gonna sacrifice their child, maybe they could do somethin' to help other children, so they had a big benefit, and the first time around, they raised 350,000 pounds. Now they have a hospital in England that's named after this little boy. Not only that, they found out while they was here that his mother was pregnant with a new child. They named him Oliver Jake."

"It's just somethin' I was intended to do, I suppose. Now they're talkin' about makin' a movie about it. Just to know I had a little bitty part of it, I feel good about that. You're supposed to help somebody if you can. I feel fortunate that I could.""The poetry thing kinda changed my whole life. Cowboys had all done poetry at one time or another. There was very little transportation, and when you was there at the ranch, you weren't gonna go anywhere, and you had to make your own fun. Most of your fun was takin' pranks on somebody. And maybe once a month or so you'd get to go into town. So a lotta guys would set around and play dominoes, or cards, and a lotta guys'd jest doodle or make pictures, or do leatherwork on their own saddles. Everything was self-supportin' at the ranch. They fed you, you slept there (but you didn't get much sleep) and you worked. In the evening you sat around the bunkhouse, and I've seen great art that was burnt up because people did it just for pastime and a lot of folks didn't realize it was great art, and they just burned it when they cleaned up the place. And a lot of folks would tell stories."

"So about fifteen years ago, cowboy poetry started up in Elko, Nevado. Some friends of mine knew I had written some stuff, and they conned me into goin' out there, so I signed up. They had a deal they would give you fifteen minutes."

"When I really started writin' poetry was in the service. If I knew you before I went into the service, and we'd worked together, and you had an anniversary, or a birthday party, I'd write a little short poem. Instead of writin' a letter, I'd write some little silly poem. And the most of 'em that I wrote, they probably went in the outhouse."

"But these people asked me to go up to Elko, and I went, and I was surprised. I was invited to go to Durango, Colorado for a show, and they were gonna pay me for it, and I said, 'There's nothin' to this.'"

"When I went to Durango, they asked me to go talk to some kids in school and do a couple of poems, and Pat Murphy wrote a little thing in the paper-- if it's good for Durango, it oughta be good enough for Solvang, and pretty soon the phones are ringin' and people are wantin' me to do poetry at the schools. And through that, I found out that a lotta people, kids like you guys, are wantin' me to do poetry. So it just give me an incentive to keep doin' it and tryin' to encourage kids to do it."

"You can write things with a pencil that you might not say otherwise. Some of the best poetry I've ever heard was written by fifth and sixth graders, and kids are my best audience, believe it or not. We have breakfast rides, and I give them a little bit of history on the ranch. The kids are so much fun."

"If you decide you want to write something, sometimes it just takes one word, one name, or something at the right time. Me? I wake up 2 or 3 o'clock in the morning. That's when I wake up and have all this stuff running through my head. But I've pulled off to the side of the road if somethin' impressed me, and you can sit down and write a few little words so you can remember what you're writin' about before you forgit it. And then go home and start it over again. I wrote two poems one morning in about five minutes along side of the road in Ballard Canyon. I got enough of it down to know what I wanted to talk about, and then when I got home, instead of making one poem, I wrote two."

"But all the stuff I wrote is just about experiences I've had. Before I actually went to work at the ranch, I used to sneak off and go there. In those days, they didn't have trucks to drive cattle to the railroad, and the railroad was about ten days up the country. So they used to drive these cattle to the railroad. (Cattle used to be drove even from here to San Luis Obispo. It's hard to visualize to see 'em drive five or six hundred or a thousand head of cattle up 101 to Paso Robles, but that's what they used to have to do.) Well, they didn't want to worry about me --I was about ten or eleven years old, and they said I could go but I had to drive the wagon for the cook. We was gone about ten days. You have a little bed roll, and you just roll your bed out on the ground. First time I rolled it out, I didn't pay no attention, and this poem is the deal that happened to me."

Did you ever lay down in your ole bed roll?

to get some much needed rest

Just to be woke up in a little while

In the middle of a red ants' nest?

Bare foot you hobble through the thorns

Pull your bed out to the side

Soon you find out, that don't help

You just gave those ants a ride.

Then you hear some ole cowboy say,

'Kid, why don't you be quiet?

Them damn ants they won't eat much

You just got them on the fight.'

You think you might as well get up.

It seems your only chance

It don't take long to figure out

There's more roosting in your pants.

Now all of you young Waddies

Just remember what I said…

You better do some scouting

Before rolling out your bed.

Now if you think I'm fooling

Go on and take the chance

But don't be howlin' out for help

When those red ants are in your pants!

"We got a lotta turmoil in the world today, everybody fightin' everybody else over one thing or another. They can't even agree on who they wanna vote in, and they're havin' a big fight over that now, 'cause somebody goofed up. It'll be up to you kids to run the country one of these days - all these other people, they done it - and they never gonna make it any better. We gotta rely on you guys to make it better. So if I do nothin' else today, maybe I can make you understand that you can do anything that you want to if you make up your mind."

"When I was young, I wanted to be a cowboy. If that's what I wanted to do, my mom and dad supported me. And it's up to you to make up your mind what you want to do when you grow up, but if you get kinda deviated off this way and off that way, don't worry about it. They got all kinds of school systems that tells people what they should or shouldn't do and a lot of people tellin' you what to do that don't know any better than you do. It's up to you to set your own destiny, let your heart be your guide, and do what you wanna do. It don't make any difference what anybody else thinks as long as you do it and show respect to your fellow man. And that's the bottom line, as far as I'm concerned. You don't run over anybody to do what you wanna do, but when you set your target to go someplace, don't let anybody tell you to change your direction. If you do something you don't really have your heart in, you're not gonna be very good at it. So do what you wanna do, and do the best you know how without runnin' over anybody else, and people will respect you."

"I've tried to be a cowboy, and I've tried to be a good one."

Being The Bot (Greg Winterbottom)

My irrepressible friend Greg Winterbottom grew up in a working class neighborhood where drinking and domestic violence were the norm and aspirations were low. He decided early on that he would have a different kind of life. In this interview Greg candidly discusses his childhood, talks about the 1966 accident that abruptly changed his world, and shares his reflections about the path he has taken. Known affectionately as The Bot, Greg has spent three decades in public service and is currently on the board of the Orange County Transportation Authority. People may notice his wheelchair but very few are aware of the continual pain that he endures, and even so, it's hard to keep up with The Bot. He is generous and outrageous, inspiring and opinionated, an indomitable soul who will never be defined by disability. He calls himself a cynic but none of us believes that.

My name is Gregory Thomas Winterbottom, and I was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on May 7, 1947.My parents were born and raised in Philadelphia - Lansdowne, actually. My mother's family actually had money before the stock market crash, and they lived in a big house, a mansion. My grandfather, known as TJ, was a rumrunner, I think, as well as an alcoholic and a womanizer. They had no class even back then.

On my dad's side, the Winterbottoms, I don't know anything about them except that my grandfather was 58 when my father was born. They used to lock my father in the closet -if claustrophobia can be inherited, I think that's where I got it.My father out of high school was a very good baseball player. He played catcher and had a lot of potential, but he got caught drinking and was kicked out of school and that ruined his life. He died in 1984 when he was 68, which is basically ten years older than I am now, and he just looked so old. Alcoholic.I was a year old when we came to California. It was May of 1948. As the story goes, my mother said to my father, "I'm leaving. You can either come with us or not."

Her whole family was already out here …Nina, Jimmy, Uncle Tom, Aunt Doll…everybody except for Aunt Sis, who went to Florida. They had all come out during the war. Nina is my mom's sister, and she was married to Jimmy. Jimmy was in the Navy and Tom was at Fort MacArthur.My father was not present during my growing up. Several times he'd come home after being in a bar fight, and my mom would put him back together. And I remember being sent to his apartment to get money from him. My mother would wait in the car and send me upstairs. But they never divorced. Nana lived with us the whole time.

My Uncle Tom lived up above Fort MacArthur. At one time I thought I'd pattern my life after him. He was a shipping clerk for the government; he wasn't anything, really, but in our family he was held up as the guy who made it. I remember he would whistle to call his wife, and she'd get her coat, and out they'd go.

Anyway, Uncle Tom lived up on a hill and we always had these cars that could barely make it. We never had cars that ran. Our cars had no brakes and they always over-heated. It was just the worst stuff, always somebody's hand-me-down. So I had the idea that if the car stalled, I would hold it while Nana, my mother, and Joanne got out. Eight years old and I thought it was up to me to keep the car from rolling.We were living in Torrance then. We moved to North Torrance in '56. We moved in with Nina and Jimmy when we first came to town, nine of us living in a two-bedroom house. That was in Old Torrance, which was a real bad area.Our entertainment was watching the tank farm blow up and looking at the oil derricks. We had grass growing through the pavement in the driveway, and broken screens. Timmy and Teddy Carter lived down at the corner right near the tank farm and they had an old wringer kind of washing machine on the front lawn we'd play in. We were the only family without a man - everybody stayed married then, regardless. And Nana was sort of like the neighborhood midwife. She'd put these women back together whenever they'd been beaten by their drunk husbands.I didn't like my mother of course. As a matter of fact, I disliked her immensely. When my sister Joanne was first divorced, she didn't make much more money comparatively than my mother had made, but they had a house, and they had nice things. We came to the conclusion that our mother was very self-centered. My sister couldn't go to her "pink ladies" club until Mother's snack was made and dishes were done, stuff like that. I've seen even homeless people with their little kids skipping across the street having fun, whereas we weren't allowed to open the refrigerator. They turned the electricity off.

Joanne and I looked forward to going to the Pike even though it was the vomit and urine haven of the world. Tattoo parlors and prostitutes. I didn't know it. I remember one weekend we were planning to go, and Joanne had turned thirteen and her idea was not to wear lipstick so she'd still look twelve. Of course it was up to me to find my father to get the money, and he said no, so we didn't go to the Pike that day.Jimmy used to come home and beat Nina. I'd be over there on weekends because they had food. I'd open up the goody cabinet and there were potato chips. To this day, every time I see a Butterfinger and smell Dial soap I am immediately rushed back to Lincoln Avenue.They had all the food you could eat, but it came with that life. I could not understand it. I would rather kill myself. I would rather not live if that was all that was going to be.

And I decided I just would not be like them. In a way, that made me stronger.

High school was the best time of my life. I loved high school. I went to North Torrance High School, class of 1965. We had a four-year high school, grades nine to twelve. I started playing football right away and lettered for all four years. I was really kind of small: 5'10" and 160 pounds, but strong. I played guard and linebacker. As a matter of fact, I came across my clippings the other night. It was so cool to look back.I worked during high school too, starting at age fifteen. A lot of people did. My reason was actually to get food. I worked at MacDonald's, and you got $1.05 an hour, and they took ten cents out for food, so you got 95 cents an hour, but they lost money on me 'cause I'd eat so much. I even took food home with me.

Nobody even suggested college, and Vietnam was really starting to heat up then. I remember when my cousin Buddy got his draft notice. He was Jimmy and Nina's boy, and he was only six months older than I was. He almost didn't get in because Jimmy had deafened him in one ear by beating him, but he went into the Air Force.So I figured, "I'm next." I went down, signed up and sold everything I owned, and then they wouldn't take me for six weeks because I had appendicitis.

But on February 14, 1966, Valentines' Day, I went off to the war. I was supposed to go to Fort Bliss, Texas. My job was going to be helicopter mechanic, and I figured, "I'll get a good job with Hughes when I get out."

But actually, I was planning on getting killed. I didn't really think I was gonna come back. And they didn't take us to Bliss; they took us to Fort Polk, Louisiana, which, according to the rumor mill, was the stop before Vietnam. And the rumor was true: it was tiger land. It was raining and miserable when we got there. I would be nineteen in May.I was given an opportunity to take the Officer Candidate School test and I did. I got a very good grade, the highest in the brigade. So I went straight through from basic to advanced training at Fort Knox, and I was an armor OCS. It was funny because I do have claustrophobia, but I was a tank commander, so I was either up top or driving around, and either way you can still see out.

Now I was a senior candidate. People had to salute me. I already had my orders cut for Rucker. I was gonna be a helicopter pilot, a co-pilot; first lieutenants were co-pilots. I went straight through and I would have graduated in January.

I was hurt on December 19, 1966. The accident certainly changed my life; maybe it saved my life. But I don't know if I wouldn't have come out the same way had I served. It's difficult to say.

Tina and I had been married since July 26, 1966. When I was a senior candidate I could get off post a little more, and we rented a basement in Elizabethtown, Kentucky with no running water and a walk-through bedroom. We'd gotten married in the courthouse in L.A. and spent our honeymoon at a hotel in Santa Barbara; our honeymoon dinner was Jack-in-the-Box. Looking back on it, it was funny. We got one of those vibrating beds and I had set down my root beer and it bounced off and was all over and soaked us. We had two nights 'cause her parents were gone. They didn't know we were married for about three months. One of our friends invited us over and took off so we could have time together. And I saw her I think three times before my accident. That was really the only time we had. We weren't allowed to live together, and she was not allowed to come back until the twelfth week.

So we were driving home for Christmas leave, from Fort Knox to California. I was real sick, extremely sick. I drove as much as I could, but I was running a very high fever and I just didn't feel well. It was December 19th and we were between Gila Bend and Yuma on Highway 8 in a little '66 Bug- the wind blew in from down the road and the Volkswagen overturned. I remember rolling and stopping. One leg stuck on the door and the other across the roof. We were actually up side down. Tina was kneeling on the roof. She hurt her shoulder blade or something -- that was all.

I wound up out through the passenger window. Somehow I'd cut my head and the blood was coming out through my ears. I thought I was gonna bleed to death. We were in the middle of nowhere and I was in excruciating pain. I lay there for about two hours before the ambulance came. Some truckers called, and they sent a '57 panel wagon.

My injury is not exactly level - I'm higher on one side than the other. I describe it as the sash that Miss America wears. I remember when they picked me up, they lay me on my back and I was just screaming, so they turned me on my stomach. That's all I remember until after the first of the year, so for almost two weeks I was in and out of consciousness.Poor Tina. I was in Yuma at the Presbyterian Hospital, so they sent a little plane to pick me up, a Piper Cub, and I didn't fit in it, so they had to place the litter sticking out of the door, and Tina, who's scared to fly anyway, had to fly with the door open and me hanging out. She was 18 years old. Then she lived in this rat hole in San Diego that the Red Cross got for her. My mother went down and lived with her for a little while.I feel so badly when I think about what that time was like for Tina.

I never really faced it until 1984, when we split up. I always had Tina or my son Steven to be my legs. Anything I wanted done, they did it exactly as I wanted it. I was just the worst. I was a jerk. There's no reason that she had to face the brunt of it, and I will always give her credit.

The way my mother raised me was that we were victims. If we were going somewhere and it rained, it was "Of course it has to rain; we're going somewhere." I don't accept that anymore; it's not my lifestyle.

People need to accept personal responsibility. I will not allow myself to blame anything on anyone else for which I should take responsibility. Personal victory. That's the key - it's about the individual battle. You define your own limits. This is still the best country in the world, and anyone can do anything he or she wants. That's what bothers me about the "woe is me" attitude; get over it. People from all over the world are coming here by choice. We do live in best place on earth.I've been taking stock of my life lately and I feel good about my accomplishments. I am the only college graduate in this end of my family. I refuse to wear sweats and I won't wear a t-shirt.

I became sort of an advocate/activist for the handicapped, which is ironic because I don't like cripples anymore than I like old people, but some people get lost; they just disappear. I founded the Dayle MacIntosh Center to help foster independent living, and in 1977 I was involved in bringing the first 16(b)2 vehicles into Orange County. There was no transportation for elderly and handicapped people before then. When I worked for State Senator Paul Carpenter's office, we were like low-paid psychologists; people would call with the most inane problems, but we helped everybody.

I was on the Board of OCTA a year before becoming Vice Chairman; I was Chairman in 2004, and I'm still the public member. I felt especially good about my chairmanship and accomplished a lot of what I wanted to do, such as keeping Measure M in the forefront.

I guess what I value most are my relationships with people. I'm proud to have an incredible group of long-time friends, and the social discourse in which I can engage is just marvelous. There's Daly and Greg Sanders, and Lyle and Stan … brilliant, educated people. Our friendship is a constant; I'm like the hub, and the spokes go out from there; my friends recognize how much I value them. I have also experienced a great romance in my life, and I know it's better to have loved and lost than never loved at all.I guess you have to be realistic and brave enough to face hopelessness.

But I won't allow the dark side to win out.

Howard Sahm has lived in Los Olivos his entire life, and was kind enough to share his memories of the good old days in the Santa Ynez Valley. He and his wife Ruth and their daughter Kathy welcomed us to their nineteenth century house, tucked on a back street of Los Olivos where time seems to have paused.

_________

I was born on June 30, 1926, and I've lived here all my life. My mother was born in this house - it's a hundred and sixteen years old. My grandfather, Frank Whitcher, built this house; he also built the main house at Midland School. And this was all our dairy property, operated by my father and me until 1964. We had prob'ly 65, maybe 75 cows. When we sold, we were milking 130, 135.

My father came here as a relief mail clerk on the old narrow gauge railroad. My mother and grandmother had a store and post office over where the deli now is, and Dad used to have to bring down registered mail, certified mail, and so forth. That's how he met my mother. Then they moved to Nevada, and they were up there for a year until he contacted typhoid and had to come back.

My uncle, Charlie Whitcher, was up at Midland School at the time, so Dad did R&R there for a spell and then worked with my uncle.My wife Ruth is from Michigan. Her first husband, Nat, was the principal up at school. She used to come down and get milk, and I'd lock her in the ice box. Then, after Nat passed away, well, then she moved back to Santa Barbara for a couple of years. We got together and I brought her back to the Valley.

When I went to grammar school, there was four grades, first through fourth, in one room, and then sixth through eighth, in another, with two teachers. I don't remember what the attendance was then, but maybe fifty or sixty. We used to walk to school, and up there on the corner near the school, why, we'd stop and have a marble game.

We didn't need anybody to tell us what time it was. A certain time of the year, the kites came out, then the marbles. In the spring, it was the kites. To make kites, we'd use newspaper, some slats about yay wide, and some string -that's what we did. You can get the slats at a store. Then get some little rags, and tie 'em in knots for the tail.

The school was up there across the street from the present school. It burned down. There was gravel roads for a number of years, and then in the 1930's they put down the black top.Where the art gallery is, next to the post office, that building was there. The corner store was there; it burnt down and was then rebuilt. Across the street, there's a service station -- that was there.

Over on this side of the street, Uncle Tom Davis had a little one-room store, kids would go in there and get a penny jaw breaker and a five cent package of gum. Then there was another building that used to be a meat market, but it's since been torn down. And there was a general mercantile store, and past that, there was the old theater building. The screen is now over at the historical society museum. And the church was over on the corner, across the bridge. There was another church in Ballard, and there was the mission in Solvang, and of course, the Danish church. There was also Mattei's Tavern. We supplied milk for Mattei's Tavern, Midland School, Dunn, the grammar school some…

In later years, if we wanted to go to a movie on a Saturday afternoon, we'd ride our bikes into Solvang. There was a theater there where the Bit O' Denmark is. And there was a bowling alley next door. Solvang used to be Nielson, Peterson, Rasmussen. You could go down there at ten o'clock in the morning, to the corner of Alisal and Copenhagan, and all the people would be in the back room having coffee and Danish. Nobody'd be in the store. You'd walk back and join 'em. You'd see 'em in the afternoon, two thirty, three o'clock.

I delivered papers with my bicycle, when I was in sixth or seventh grade for a penny a paper. I went five, five and a half miles every day on my bicycle, out to the store, by the schools, up Figueroa Mountain Rd, down to Hollister -- 35 cents.During the Depression, everybody was in the same boat. They didn't have any money. You could get a good hired man for a dollar a day and room and board. With World War II, the wages started going up, but up 'til then, a dollar a day was good money.

There was a hobo camp up by the bridge at Mattei's. The kids would go down there. There'd be four or five of us boys. We'd share their hobo stew with them. Road kill, whatever. They'd come here and ask my mother for a potato. She'd say, "Okay. If you wanna chop some wood." They'd chop up a half a dozen pieces of wood, and she'd give 'em a potato, or whatever. I don't think anybody ever got turned away from here. If they were willing to chop up three pieces of wood, they would get something. But she wouldn't give it to them just for nothing. They had to earn it. The work gave them dignity.

I wish I had a video of some of the characters we used to have here in Los Olivos. At the post office, they had a big bench out there, and they called that the spit 'n argue club. Those guys would come there in the morning, waitin' for the mailman, sittin' on the bench, and they'd tell stories: the biggest fish, or the biggest spread of horns on the deer. There was a fellow who lived up there, Frank Cooper - staunch Democrat - and George Harvey had this station across the street, and Mr. Galupin's father-in-law was a little bantam rooster kinda guy. If he thought you were a Democrat, he'd argue Republican. If you were a Republican, he'd argue Democrat. He'd be struttin' around, chest forward, rooster-style, arguing. Well, they were over at the station this one morning, and he made some crack about the Democrats, an' old Frank Cooper, he says, "Well, if you weren't such an old guy, I'd swatcha in the mouth."

He says, "Be my guest."

And he fought little Frank clear across the street.

When I was in high school, there were maybe a dozen cars on the campus. A few of the teachers had cars, and I had my brother's car, a 1936 Ford coupe, but most of the time, we had to ride the bus. Later, when I got to driving, after I became sixteen, there'd be a dance every week. Usually, we'd go to the dance every Saturday night. They had an old time dance here at the grammar school or Santa Ynez, and then the regular dances down in the Vet'rans Hall in Solvang. As for dating, well, it was prob'ly no different than now.

We listened to some of the Big Band type of music. Our band instructor was Bob MacDonald, and the principal, Hal Hamm, he played the clarinet, and then there was a man and a wife, Ivan and Ellen Sorenson, he played the fiddle and bass fiddle, and Ellen played the piano. And that was our music. We had live music, not albums. For the dances up here, it was Edna Craig, Charlie Murray, Rosemary Hardwood … banjo, fiddle, piano….square dancing.We danced with everybody - two-step, fox trot, polka. Girls asked boys, too. We liked Melancholy Baby, Puttin' on the Ritz, Let Me Call You Sweetheart…songs like that.

Ruth and I used to dance and we never missed a polka, but then I had the stroke a number of years ago, and my right foot just wouldn't quite track. And now I wouldn't have air enough to polka.

I was draft age during World War II. My brother was a Naval Air Corps. I had to stay home and help Dad milk the cows. We'd look out and down there by the creek, there'd be half a dozen or so jeeps, and the guys would be on maneuvers. They'd pull in there under the willows, some of them. You wouldn't ever know when you'd see a bunch of those jeeps…

We furnished milk to Camp Cooke and we furnished milk to the creamery in Santa Barbara, and they in turn furnished it to marine bases, hospitals…

Operatin' the dairy was hard work. Nothing was easy. We had registered Guernseys, so they all had names. In later years, we put in some Holsteins with them - a little more volume, less butter fat. They were all different. All of 'em had names: Bossy, Opal, Suzy, Fanny, Petunia…We had one that always had twins every year. It was easy to tell 'em apart. Even the Angus, when I worked over for Mr. Lushon - black as shoe leather, but every one of 'em was different.Before we sold out, our contract was big enough for one man, but it wasn't hardly big enough for two, yet it took two to operate. Then they closed the plant down in Santa Barbara and started shipping our milk to Los Angeles. That increase in the freight, and the contract and all that, was just economically hard for us.

You see, at one time, it used to be twelve or fourteen dairies right here in the valley, and about 55 or 60 in Santa Maria. Now there's one here in the Valley - Jacobsen's out on Baseline Avenue - and one in Santa Maria.

So the late fifties, early sixties was time to think about selling. It wasn't easy. One of the dairy men over in Buellton bought the cows. Yes…It wasn't easy. You know, you're born and raised with somethin'…

Back when we was operatin', my mother, you know, you had to cull a cow sometimes. It didn't bother her; you'd come back, there'd always be one to take the place. But the last day, it was…it wasn't easy.

So you just work hard. My dad always had a philosophy - never ask a hired man to do something that you wouldn't do. And it stands true.

An afterword from Cynthia: I recently came upon this item in the online archives of the Santa Ynez Valley News:

SAHM SERVICE SET A graveside service for Howard Sahm of Los Olivos, who died July 2, is scheduled for 11 a.m. Friday, July 22, 2011 at Oak Hill Cemetery in Ballard. Sahm operated a dairy in Los Olivos for many years and had celebrated his 85th birthday on June 30. His daughter, Cathy Garley, said his heart gave out and he passed away peacefully at home.With his wife of 55 years, Ruth, he had five children, three girls and two boys. Sahm was a tireless volunteer for the Santa Ynez Valley Elks and Valley Youth Recreation. The Sahms’ home served many times as the Youth Rec campaign and ticket headquarters.

Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground. - Rumi

Living Where the Pavement Ends (Lou Netzer)

I was lucky to have known Dr. Lou Netzer, even from a distance. In a time that so wants a hero, he was very close to being one, although I am sure he would have rejected the title. He often claimed that he was motivated more by adventure than altruism. But his compassion, intensity, and greatness of spirit were evident in every adventure he chose. Lou simply had a bigger view than most of us about the possibilities contained within a lifetime. His love seemed limitless. He gave his heart to a small community, but he moved beyond borders, beyond possessions, beyond ego, toward what Gary Snyder calls "the true community of all beings." Lou Netzer embraced the world.

Lou's contributions to the Santa Ynez Valley are legendary. He was medical director of the Lutheran Home in Solvang, and he was an old-fashioned country-style doctor to hundreds of local families who loved him dearly and forever. He was instrumental in starting Family School, the Country Medical Clinic, Friendship House, including the Alzheimer Residence, and the extraordinary Side Street Café. Then, already in his late fifties, he moved to the rain forest of Bolivia and established the Rio Beni Project, a medical clinic for the remote Indian villages along the Amazon.

"The project is basically a boat and a motor," he once quipped, but its impact on many lives has been profound. Lou cared deeply about the indigenous people of Bolivia. He was acutely conscious of the frailty and interconnectedness of our world. He saw plainly that human lives are everywhere linked, and that our actions can have an impact. Start anywhere.

In order to support the Rio Beni Project, Lou returned to the Valley for two months each year to raise money. During one such visit, he agreed to be interviewed by a group of my students at Dunn Middle School. I knew even then we would never forget that gathering on the deck in the late winter light. He spoke of sunsets on the river and fluorescent blue butterflies, of living by candlelight and kerosene in a thatched hut, of the beautiful simplicity of his life. He also talked with honesty and intimacy about his past, his family, his concerns and his dreams. He was a thin, soft-spoken man, and in his long wool overcoat, he looked like a character from a nineteenth century novel, oddly out of place.

And I think he was out of place. He was baffled by technology, newly astonished by the material wealth around him, and had rain and river in his heart.Within a year, Lou learned of his illness, but he met his fate with eloquence and courage, graceful as a dancer. His greatest concern was still for others. Friends and strangers sought to ensure that his work would continue. Everywhere there were outpourings of praise and affection, and he surely knew how loved he was.

Lou Netzer lived a life of intensity and passion, but was modest, flawed and funny. He cared about people and experiences, not money or things. He was a writer and a poet whose message was love. He was a shining soul, and he knew to the very core of his being that each of us is a miracle, and that life must be a hymn of gratitude. I even think that Lou was crazy, crazy in the way of someone who lives out all his dreams and refuses to understand that this cannot be done. We must see not emptiness in his absence, but an infinite space for hope and possibility.

It was in February of 2001 when Dr. Netzer came to Dunn Middle School to be interviewed by our students.  Just a few months later, he learned of the cancer, and he died on October 10, 2002.

We publish the interview here as a loving tribute to a great man.

Living Where the Pavement Ends: An Interview with Lou Netzer

Lou Netzer is an inspiration and a hero whose life has touched many in the Santa Ynez Valley and the world beyond. His contributions to the Valley include Family School, Friendship House, and the dearly missed Side Street Café. At an age when many physicians begin to contemplate a leisurely retirement, Lou gave up material comforts and relocated to Bolivia, where he started a health project for the Indians along the Amazon River. There is no way to explain this complicated and remarkable man. Just be thankful and amazed that he exists. And here he is, in his own words:

"I just turned 60, which was an interesting experience. I was born on July 15, 1940 in Washington, D.C., but a lot of people know me here, and the Valley is the home I come back to. I lived here and was a doctor here for thirty years, and I was very involved in the community. Now, for the last five years, I have lived in South America -- in Bolivia -- and I started the Rio Beni health project working with the Indians in the Amazon. I come back here two months out of every year to give talks and raise funds for the project. I'll be going back in March."

"My big dreams early in life were to either be a doctor or a writer. I decided to be a doctor because I felt that doctors were out doing things, and writers wrote about them. I didn't make the decision between the two until I went to college. I went to Duke and I majored in English because I liked to write. I was really in a hurry to get out into life, and I left Duke after three years and went to medical school in Chicago."

"I absolutely love being a doctor, and there are two reasons: one is that you have the privilege of being with people at the most intimate times of their lives. You are with them when babies are born; you are with them when they die. You are with them when they are ill and vulnerable. You get to be a part of it all. In a sense, you are the honored guest."

"The second thing that is fantastic about being a doctor is that you can do so many things with it - you can practice anywhere in the world; you can teach… you have so much choice."

"So I decided to be a doctor. But I also write. My poetry is very personal. If I'm going through a period of self-doubt, I write about self-doubt. If I'm madly in love, I write about being madly in love. I don't just write about the scenery or nature, I write about my inner life. For example, I wrote a poem about sitting in a restaurant with my son -- being disconnected and far away, and then connecting with him, drinking a beer together before we separate again. We sit and talk and try to catch up on all that's happened in our separate lives, and then say good-bye. There's a misty rain outside the restaurant, and he turns and waves, and yells, 'I love you.' Those kinds of things…"

"I'm very close to my kids - my daughter is thirty now and finishing medical school, and my son is twenty-three. I miss them terribly. If someone were to ask what is the saddest thing about my life, it's the fact that I'm far away from being involved with my kids."

"My parents were both from Eastern Europe and couldn't read or write. I was one of two children. My brother, who just died a few months ago, was older than I was. I was my mother's shining light. She loved me very much. My father, on the other hand, was distant. I was never beaten -- he was okay -- but we just weren't ever very close. I don't really think he knew how to love a child."

"I was born Jewish. I don't have any prejudice against religion, but I don't practice religion. I'm not sure if I believe in God, but I have a lot of faith in life."

"My mother died fifteen or twenty years ago, and we always had a very good relationship. But I am embarrassed to say, as close as we were, I never thought about her again after she died. Never. It amazes me. And I'd say that I feel badly about it, except that I don't, because I know that we really loved each other. Maybe it's about my level of being detached. I don't know. I took care of her when she died. But I never, ever thought about her again. It was a very complete ending."

"But the last little bit of the story is that just about three months ago, I had a vivid dream in which she appeared -- first time in twenty years. I asked her, 'Mom, do you mind that I haven't given you any thought?' She said, 'It's no problem, no problem.'"

"The story about my dad is that we were never very close. We weren't rich, certainly middle class, but my father was a greedy man, or at least that's the way I saw him. He came over from Europe very poor, and he made some money by buying some land and building some little shops. But I think that what I learned from him when I was young is that money is evil -- which is obviously not true, but it's the message that I got. I f you had money, you became bad. So I have been involved in so many things in my life, but every time I get close to making money, I always choose to back out."

"But there's more to the story about my father. One of the things I started when I lived here in the Valley was Friendship House, and then, a few years later, we added the Alzheimer's residence. My father was living in Florida at that time, and he had no one to take care of him. He had no friends. I went to Florida and brought him back here to Friendship House. He lived there for seven years, until he died in 1990, when he was 90 years old. And after all that time, we got to be best friends. We had so much fun together in those last seven years! It was wonderful. When he died, my life with him was very complete. It was a great ending. And what we both realized was he thought that I was crazy, and I thought that he was crazy, but we could still love each other anyway. It was a marvelous ending."

"I used to own a café in Los Olivos called Side Street Café, a wonderful little place that was really popular. About five years ago, I sold the café, and I sold my practice of medicine, and I set out to travel the world. I went to South America and fell in love with Bolivia, so I never made it around the world. Bolivia is the only country in the South America where the majority of the population is Indian, which makes it interesting, although it's a very poor country. The place I was drawn to is like a town out of the old American West, very rugged, very vibrant, very exciting. And unusual people come through there from all over the world, so it's a remarkable community in a remote part of the world - it has its own magnet of attraction. But I don't live in the town; I live in the jungle, about an hour and a half by boat. I built three thatched huts, and one is my house. Medical residents, doctors, and friends occasionally come down and stay in the huts with me, and there's a big dining hall, and a kitchen. And there have been many, many times when the Indians have expressed thanks and gratitude. The people are great. They love the project; they love having an American doctor there."

"I wanted to live in the jungle by myself for awhile. I wanted to play Thoreau. I wanted to write for awhile, and then start the project. I love living a simple life. The diet is rice, meat, and vegetables. I have a little gas stove - I live by kerosene and candlelight -- but I have a gas stove and fridge, and in the evening I have a beer, listen to the birds, look out over the river, and watch the Indians going up and down the river as the sun sets. The thing that is most amazing is the diversity of animals and plants in the Amazon. Butterflies --you see butterflies like you would see in a psychedelic movie show, gorgeous, fluorescent greens and blues. And once I saw a panther. That's the most wonderful thing I've ever seen. He was down by my shower one afternoon, and he was magnificent. He was long, black, and so graceful."

"There are snakes and spiders, too. Unfortunately, a lot of the spiders are poisonous, and that gives me the creeps because I'm not a very brave person. One time I actually found a snake in my cabin. It's a good thing I was alone, because if you had taken a movie of me trying to get this snake out, it would have been a comedy. I haven't overcome my fear of snakes; I just try to avoid them."

"The walls of the huts are of bamboo, and the roofs are thatched. The roof is the most important thing because of the heavy rains. The quantities of water are unbelievable. 20% of all the fresh water in the world goes through the mouth of the Amazon every day. The rains are heavy, and they last so long! As a matter of fact, I just spoke to my friend Antonio this morning, and my clinic is under water right now.""There is only one road in northern Bolivia leading out of La Paz, the capital. It's a steep, dirty, pot-holed one-lane highway that goes underneath waterfalls. The tour guides call it 'Death Road.' It was in such terrible shape where it enters the town, the mayor decided to close it until the government fixed it up. So they put up a barricade and blocked the road, and people were just ranting and raving. I had two medical students with me at the time. I go up and down the river on a boat every other week, and alternate weeks, I go up and down the road in a four-wheel drive vehicle. And we drove up to the blockade and the mayor of the town announced that ours would be the only vehicle permitted to go through the barricade to get to the villages. All the people cheered as we drove through. That was a wonderful feeling. There have been many beautiful moments."

"You have paved roads here. You have no idea what cement means in Bolivia! Imagine a life without cement. When they build a little piece of a road or a piece of a bridge, they hire a hundred Indians and get wheelbarrows, and mix the cement, and they're like ants working. It takes months to build a little piece. Then I arrive in the airport at any city here, and here are these freeways and bridges, all of cement, and I stop and ask myself, how many Indians would it take to build that? You have no idea how much we have!"

"Thievery is definitely a problem there. Once I had my motor stolen, and the people in the village were upset and offered a reward to get it back. Because there was a reward, people were very motivated to find it for me, and they went to the shamans for answers. Somebody brought me a plate, and a shaman put some coca in the plate and boiled it, leaving an imprint of the coca leaves on the plate; then the shaman read the markings. There was a little circus in town, and the shaman said the motor had been stolen by the people in the circus. There is the tent, she said, and if you go to it, there will be a big truck in the corner, and inside the truck is the motor. Antonio and I snuck around, and sure enough, just as she said, there was a truck. We opened the truck, and there were two huge, voracious lions. No motor.""On the other hand, the shamans have done some rather remarkable things. I have an Indian who collects medicinal plants in the jungle, so I can offer people either pills or medicinal plants. I've seen them do some pretty amazing things, but I don't have a strong opinion one way or the other. It's part of the culture, and I support it."

"If you were to ask what is the most wonderful thing about being there, I would say 'simplicity.' I love living a simple life and I am always amazed now when I come back here to see the difference. This valley is so beautiful, and life is so easy, and here we are with an energy  crisis, and yet your lights are on, you have hot water, you have all this stuff. My life there is simple. No telephone, no electricity, no credit cards. I miss some of the comforts periodically, but I love it.""The people in Bolivia live a very simple life. Very few have jobs. Most grow their own vegetables, hunt and fish for their own food, and that's what they have. They aren't lazy; there are just no jobs. It's changing a little; tourism is beginning to make a dent, and that gives people jobs. Everyone wants to learn to speak English."

"I don't want to give the picture that they're all happy people. The young boys are like Tom Sawyers. They sit by the river, they fish, they hunt, they crawl through the dirt and play with knives. They truly have a wonderful time. At some point, they reach the age where they have to work --whether it is nine or ten, life gets to be very hard. But I don't think the people there are any sadder than we are, and they certainly don't have any more problems than we have here. So the point is that having all this stuff, we're as happy as they are and they're as happy as we are, so having things has not made us any happier. It's just made life easier. It doesn't affect our minds and our spirits."

"The Rio Beni project is essentially a boat and a motor. We go up and down the river and visit villages about six or eight hours away. So we do that two or three days a week, and every week I have a clinic in the town, and then every other week we go by four-wheel drive vehicles up and down the road. It's basically about being a doctor, but in truth, just being a doctor by myself would have very little effect there -- you save a few lives, but you don't do a lot in the long run.""Fortunately, we've been very successful getting support. This next year, an organization will be sending someone down to teach the villagers how to teach health care. Every place will pick out two of the Indians, and these Indians will be taking a course about how to administer their own health care, and basic principles of health and medicine. Just the simple act of washing your hands! If they just started washing their hands after going to the bathroom or before eating, they'd probably eliminate 20 or 40% of the problems. Little, simple things like that, and yet it is like pulling teeth to get them to change. They are very earthy; they are outdoors all day long. Just teaching prevention and how to diagnose things on a simple basis is going to have a more lasting effect."

"Another organization has donated funds so that we can send one Indian a year to medical school in La Paz, and three or four to be trained as nurses. There is also an emergency fund so if people need to have an operation, they can get to La Paz, which is 200 miles away.""The most common diseases are infectious diseases. Their water supplies are not very clean; there are diarrheas, amoebic dysentery, staph infections, all kinds of parasites, and many people have worms. Tuberculosis is very common also."

"The worst thing I had was heat stroke. I am out there with a machete almost every day -- the jungle grows very fast so I have to cut it back to keep it out of the garden. The Indians there were helping me build a field to grow rice and bananas, things like that, and I was chewing coca. The coca plant is a marvelous medicine -- it's not dangerous or addictive at all. The Incas called it the plant of the gods, and it has remarkable effects. It helps you concentrate, and you don't feel the heat -- you just work, all day long, all day long; you don't have to stop. But I forgot that living south of the equator in November, it's summertime, and so I worked all day for a couple of days in the field, and that's how I got heat stroke. That was the worst, I was down for four days with a high fever.""I think the most profound change I've seen here in the Santa Ynez Valley, aside from the fact that there are a lot more grapes, is the level of materialism. Everyone has so many toys, from computers to cell phones --everyone's on e-mail, everyone has big televisions, DVD, and stuff -- it's unbelievable to me to see the level of wealth here. And I don't think it's making anybody any happier. People are doing well, everyone seems to have a job -- it's great in certain respects, and I'm not saying it's bad. But it's the difference that I perceive."

"To give you an example, when I was living here, if you had a magazine about Santa Ynez that put people on the cover, they would have had the head of a vineyard, or they might have had a farmer, or the mayor. Now, on the cover of the magazine you'll see Fess Parker, Kelley LaBrock, John Forsythe.. relatively well-known actors and entertainers. So what I see about the valley now is a lot of more glitz. It's acquired a little of Los Angeles or Hollywood-- maybe that's what the valley represents now, and maybe that's what it wants. I don't have a great feel for it, but I know that land is certainly much more expensive!"

"I'm part of the culture. If I lived here, I'd probably have some of the same toys. But I am a little intimidated. And as for computers, I'm basically a non-technological person; I barely know how to turn one on. I think technology is fantastic, and you need to move ahead with it, because it offers so much…but I also think that as human beings we have a tendency to bring out the worst in things. Science discovers nuclear energy, and the nuclear bomb appears. Televisions are developed, and look at some of the crap that's on. Computers? They're fantastic, but then young people are figuring out how to make bombs and get guns and things like that. That's a real problem. I worry about what is on the Internet. I'm not a close-minded guy, but there is some awful stuff. The issue of freedom of communication is a complex one. We live in a country that is so free, and so individualistic, but you have to be responsible for that in some way. I sometimes think that what our country and our culture has done is give a lot of freedom without the sense of being responsible for it.""I happen to think that relationships between people -- from friendships to love-- is far and away the most important thing in the world. With all the good that computers do, I'm concerned about people having dates on the computer, getting married on the computer, having sex on the computer…Maybe for somebody who is shy, that's great, and there's a lot of good to it, but I would be very afraid that people are gonna start having their relationships more on a machine than face to face. I think that would be a huge loss. Not just you, but your kids, I wonder how they're gonna have their relationships."

"I'm a mild-mannered person. I never get angry, but when I have an idea, I am very determined. We started Family School because my daughter was bored. My wife and I wanted her to go to a truly great school that was out in the mountains and focused on the environment, and so we created one. I felt that older people needed a neat place to go instead of a nursing home when they could no longer live alone - and so we created Friendship House. Then we started the Alzheimer's home, because if you mix people with Alzheimer's disease and regular people who are just old and frail, it's a disaster -- the old timers look at the people with Alzheimer's and it's terribly depressing to them because they mistakenly assume that's the next step. We were one of the first to put the people with Alzheimer's in a special home, to acknowledge that they needed to be by themselves, but to create a place where there was a lot of love and caring.""I started Side Street Cafe because I have a passion for democracy, and I feel that people were getting all their information from television and radio, which are biased -- people need to have more human interaction with each other. I have no interest in the restaurant business. The main idea was to create a place where there would be forums, discussions and debates. I knew a lot of people at the University of Santa Barbara, and I knew people from Hollywood, and so in the little town of Los Olivos, we had all these fascinating people and great stars coming and talking about everything from love to terrorism. People loved it! They loved to get together and share ideas. High school kids would come once a month and have a debate. It was absolutely great. Some of the debates were about sensitive things like marriage and divorce. People talked to each other about what marriage meant to them, what divorce meant to them. Sometimes they got mad. But they talked to each other. It was wonderful."

"I'm obviously project-oriented. I like being on my own. This project in Bolivia…even though there is an organization called Direct Relief that helps me a lot, I'm still on my own. I don't have to do any paperwork, and I don't report to anyone. People know me here, and I can come back and give talks, and they donate money, so the project goes on. The valley is wonderful; people are well off, and so willing to share what they have. I don't think the population of Santa Ynez is particularly interested in Bolivia, but they know me, and they know I'm relatively honest -I have been known to lie occasionally -and it's a great time to be doing something like this. I can take advantage of my past."

I Didn’t Like Being Indoors (Jon Brough)

Jon Brough was born in Connecticut, moved to California at the age of five, and first set eyes on the Hollister Ranch when he was nineteen. He worked as an abalone diver in the Channel islands for fifteen years, and at the time of this interview was earning a living day-cowboying at local ranches.

"When I was diving, I got to see the Channel Islands and go surfing out there. I spent years out there; that was a real treat. I dove near San Miguel Island, which you can see on a real clear day, and San Nicolas, which is the furthest one out in the chain of seven islands. I used to hike down and could see where Indians used to live -- back then you used to be able to just walk around -- and there'd be kitchen middens -- big piles of abalone shells -- bowls, and lots of artifacts lying around at the camps."

"The diving was not really hard work, although you'd spend seven or eight hours underwater -- you don't make a lot of money sitting out on the boat. Usually there would be a deck hand and two divers."

"We'd use 600 feet of hydraulic hose and an air compressor on the boat, so we didn't have a big tank on our backs, just a face mask and our wet suits and swim fins. Sometimes a deck hand might forget to turn the compressor on, or sometimes they would move the boat and the hose would wrap up in the propeller, so your air supply would be shut off, and then you'd just have to remember that you're underwater, and it's okay, and what you would do is come up slowly. If you come up too quickly, you get nitrogen bubbles in your blood, and they lodge -- it's called embolizing -- and it could be real serious, so you always have to exhale, because when you're down below, the air compresses. If you took a balloon down there, it would be this big, and then when you came to the surface, it would be much bigger, so you always have to remember that. If you held your breath when you were fifty feet down and swam to the surface, your lungs would blow up. So be exhaling when you return to the surface."

"When the black abalone were healthy, there was a daily limit of twenty dozen, sold as a live product to Los Angeles and flown to Japan. With red abalone, we were allowed between two dozen and five dozen a day - the price started out at $90 a dozen, and went to $450 a dozen. They also went to Japan -- the yen was more valuable than our dollar -- it didn't seem like a lot of money to them, but it gave us a lot of money."

"The state of California closed abalone diving temporarily to study a disease which pretty much wiped out the black abalone. There are three different types that were commercially harvested: black abalone, pink abalone, and red abalone. There's some white, like a pink. The abalone developed a disease or virus and they all started dying, so the state shut down the fishing for commercial and sport use in order to study the results of the disease. There's no real cure for it, and it hasn't really stabilized much, and they are not really sure where it came from, although they think it might have come from Korea when they were bringing oil platforms out on barges."

"Before I became a diver, I was a sword fisherman. I'd go out on long trips, sometimes two weeks at a time. Abalone diving was just an overnight trip -- you'd get to come home a lot more. The money was good, and when there was surf, you could go surfing, because the water would be too dirty to go diving. So when the surf was up, you couldn't go to work -- you had to surf -- that's my kind of job. It worked good that way."

"When I was in high school I did a lot of ceramics and became an apprentice for a guy who was the head of the UCLA art department. He let me work in his studio and I went into business on my own. I made a lot of ceramics and sold them, but after awhile I didn't like being indoors. I'm more of an outdoor person. That's when I started commercially fishing."

"I didn't start horseback riding until about seven years ago. A friend of mine at the Ranch let me ride his horse, and I thought it was kind of fun, so I bought one. There weren't many people on the Ranch who had horses then other than the cowboys, so I started riding with the cowboys, like John McCarty and Justin Cota and those guys. That's when I started learning how to be a cowboy."

"It's all seasonal work. Right now the cows are calving, so there isn't a lot of work to be done. In January, we'll bring mother cows in with calves and start branding them. The brand is identification so they don't get mixed in with neighbors, or for selling them. When we brand them we also vaccinate them and give them all the medicines they need so they don't get sick."

"The brandings are almost like a little rodeo, because we rope all the cows to brand them. One person will rope the head of the calf, and wrap the rope around the horn of the horse, and then you'll rope the heels of the calf and stretch it out, and that way the calf can lie on the ground and you can give it its medicines and its brand and whatever it needs, then send it back to mama."

"Next time, when they are bigger, you get them ready for shipment. You gather them again, give them vaccinations, separate them from the mother, then run them through scales, weigh them, and load them onto trucks. They get sent either to a feed lot or out to Nevada or Wyoming or someplace for the summer grass, because when we have grass out in California, they have snow, so we get some of their calves to graze out here. When our summertime comes, they have grass, so we ship our calves out there then."

"It's a fun job, out by yourself; you spend a lot of time outdoors; you see a lot of wildlife. I get to ride different ranches and go into the hills with my horse. I've worked at Cojo, a couple of ranches in Los Alamos, Lake Cachuma, San Fernando Rey, sometimes Simi Valley, and of course, Hollister. I see different views of places you never see from the road. And I get to do work that I like doing."

"I enjoy our house and our canyon most of all -- it's my favorite place to come at the end of the day and get something to eat. But the whole Ranch is a beautiful place."

"I've liked all my jobs. Everything is always work, and if you don't enjoy your work, you're not going to enjoy your life. There's gonna be bad days and good days, but if you basically like what you're doing, it makes it worth it."

"As a boy, I liked to hike down cliffs and play in tide pools. I started surfing when I was eight years old and spent a lot of time at the beach. I liked to slide down the hills on cardboard through the mustard when it was dry and sticks. We made big tracks and slid down hills on them, mostly playing outdoors, getting in trouble outside."

"My advice to kids is to remember there are all sorts of aspects of life. You don't have to make any decisions for your entire life at age eighteen. Just stay in school, make it through high school at least, then decide what you want to pursue after that. Maybe you'll want to further your education in college, but not everything is offered there. Find your passion."

"Look how many times I've changed jobs. The main thing is to pursue what you like. There's no reason why you can't do what you want to do."

You Have to Say Yes to All of It (Dorothy Jardin)

A beloved teacher, counselor, poet, and dancer, Dorothy Jardin is an artist in every way, especially in how she lives her life.

"My name is Dorothy, but when I was your age in school, everyone called me Dottie. Do you ever think about your name? My middle name was my grandmother's name, and I was embarrassed by it. For a long time, I wouldn't tell anybody, but now I like it. It's Eda. It could have been Ida, but they said it in a French way. My confirmation name was Catherine -- Catherine of Sienna."

"My family name is a French name -- Gagner. It's not a pretty name, but that's it, and so I was Dottie Gagner. Then, when I was twenty-three years old, I married a man whose name was Monahan, an Irish name, and for many years, my name was Dorothy Monahan. Later, when I wasn't married to Michael Monahan anymore, I didn't know what to do - -now what should my name be?"

"I thought about being Gagner again, and I tried spelling it different ways so people would say it differently. But finally I decided I would pick a name I really like. I chose the name jardin. It means garden. I loved how it sounded and how it looked, and I love the idea of a garden. All my life, I think that I can feel related to the idea of a garden. It's a metaphor. And I thought, 'That's my life.' I am a living thing, and I like beautiful things."

"My father felt insulted, and my best friend, whose name was Marilyn Pink, of all things, said, 'You can't just change your name!' And I said, 'Yes, you can.'"

“For twenty years now, I have a very nice husband whose last name is Ryder, but I had already figured out what my name should be, and I didn't want to change it when I married him. That was okay with him, but my mother calls me Dot Ryder! I think she wants to see if I'll get mad, but I won't."

"I picked Jardin because of the metaphor, but also because it sounded like Jordan, and Jordan is a special name to me. I'll tell you why. When I was a kid, I liked dancing, but I didn't take many dance classes until I was thirty. For a dancer, that's old, and I was already a mother. Then I heard there was a really good dance teacher in this town where I lived --Chico -- and I went to her, and I said, 'Do you think I'm too old to learn to dance?' Well, guess how old she was? She was in her seventies when I met her! She was fantastic. And her name was Elsa Jordan. She was important to me in my life because she was a dancer."

"In the little town I grew up in, there wasn't much happening for the arts. I think that's part of my story. It was a small town in northern Minnesota. It had a lot of things that were good, but it lacked many of the things I loved. Even as a kid, I loved dancing, and I loved music, and I loved art. I didn't know a lot about these things, but I knew I loved them."

"My parents didn't oppose this, but they definitely weren't 'into' it. So I didn't have any dance classes until I was thirty. I was too old to start ballet, so I did modern dance. And I was a dancer for many years. I still love to dance. "

"What I did a lot growing up in Minnesota was ice skating. I started when I was very little; I can barely remember the difference between walking and skating. In fact, I've been tempted to get roller blades, 'cause I bet it's similar."

"We had outside rinks, and all the boys would play hockey. They had these sticks and they were always trying to slam the pucks into something, you know how guys like to do that kind of stuff. Meanwhile, the girls are into spinning around, doing swan dives, glamorous things... "

"It was a fun place to grow up because we were very free. No one worried about anything except drowning in the river. A beautiful river went through the town, and there were bridges over it. The river would freeze, and suddenly, the ice would crack. The ice was thick, and in the ice there were all kinds of junk that had fallen in --branches, leaves, a crumpled up newspaper, an old shoe. Then the ice cracks and it starts moving. These big chunks move and clog up and bang into the bridge. It was very exciting. People would go out and stand under the bridge to watch it.""My life was involved with water. There is a lot of water in Minnesota, land of ten thousand lakes. There was the river, of course, and in the summer, my family would go to the lake. We'd go fishing, water skiing, or just wandering around. We spent a lot of time in boats; my dad loved to fish."

"I have a sister who is one year older than I am. She's a tall sister, almost six feet tall. Her name is Sally and she is a nurse in Minneapolis. All of my family still live in Minnesota."

"But I was actually born in California! It was 1943, and we were in the middle of World War II. My family moved to California and my father worked building battle ships. The war ended in 1945 and we moved back to Minnesota. I didn't have any clear memories of California, but after I finished college, guess where I went? California."

"The first college I went to was an all-women's college called the College of Saint Therese and we had to wear nylon stockings and hats sometimes. It was before women's liberation. But it was a good school, and it had a lot of smart women in it, and I liked that. But I only stayed one year because there weren't any boys, and that was weird. Then I went to the University of North Dakota. It was a great school -- they had everything: a law school, a medical school, now there's even an aeronautical school. I was a sorority girl. We lived in a nice fancy house. There was a cook, and we did a lot of singing. I liked the pin; it was an arrow. Pi Phi. An old sorority."

"In college, and in high school, I was a cheerleader -- for football and hockey. We did our cheers wearing ice skates. I was an ice hockey cheerleader. We were so slick! We wore blue corduroy pants with a white satin stripe."

"Even though you might start out in a small town somewhere, who knows where you'll end up in your life? ""When I graduated from college, I came to Lompoc and was a teacher. I was hired over the telephone to work at a brand new school - Cabrillo High School. I was twenty-one years old. Before I left, I looked at a map, and Lompoc looked like it was a beach town. It's cold and foggy there, but when I looked at the map, it seemed like a nice place."

"I had great colleagues, and a wonderful mentor -- Barbara Whelan from Boston. There was great literature to teach, and kids from all over the country who called me M'am because they were military kids. Yes, M'am. No sir. And they meant it. I was Miss Gagner, and Yes, M'am."

"My students loved me because I was a young teacher. I was cool. I had long brown hair, parted down the middle. It was 1965. It was just the beginning of things that were really changing in America, and especially in California. I loved being in California. I loved going to Santa Barbara and San Francisco. And I had a Plymouth Barracuda. I wanted a T-Bird or a Mustang, but I got a Barracuda because it was what my father wanted. It was a guy car, a muscle car -- it had this big muffler thing and made so much noise. But all the boys at the high school who liked cars really thought it was cool. The English teacher with a Barracuda!"

"I came to Dunn Middle School twenty years ago. It was the second year of the middle school. There were nineteen kids in the whole school. I think our first year we were all in the Humanities house, and I taught in Linda's room, the living room, but it had a divider and bookshelves. Jim Brady was the math teacher and he was in the kitchen. We'd meet in what is now Cynthia's room, for G.M. -- general meetings. All of us, the entire school. We'd talk about a lot of things. We'd have long discussions. Every Friday we did a field trip. It only took two vans. Jim would drive one, and I would drive one. If there was snow on the mountains, we'd say, 'There's snow on the mountains! Let's go!' And we would drive up and play in the snow."

"It was very different for me because I hadn't taught full time for nine years. I had gotten married after two years to an art teacher, whose name was Mike Monahan. We moved up to Seattle; I taught one year there, and then we came back, and I taught again at Cabrillo High, while Mike went to UCSB and got his master's degree. Then we went one year up to Humboldt County, where the redwoods are, and Mike taught art at Humboldt State. That's when I had my son, Matthew."

"I had a kind of epiphany after my son was born. Epiphany. I imagine a lot of light when I think of the word. Your world gets bigger; you get a different understanding of something. I had such a moment when my son was born. I was still in the hospital. I really wanted to have a child, and I was happy to be pregnant, I was 29 years old, happily married, and had a very good delivery -- April 29, 1972. It was a big deal to have a baby. I got up from my bed and went to look at my son. I went down to where the babies were, and he was in his bed sleeping."

"It was his first night. His first night out in the world. The nurse who was with me had just come out from delivering another baby, and she said to me, 'My daughter is 21 years old today.' So her baby was 21. That's a pretty important age. She and I stood next to each other. There were just two babies in there, and I sort of had a feeling of a big circle. Have you ever heard the word, mandala? It's a beautiful word, too. Within that circle, there were many pictures -- pictures of light and dark, day and night, happy, sad, high, low, birth, death, opposites, and it was -- to me, what it said was: This is life. You choose it all. If you're gonna live, you have to say yes to all of it. That was kind of an epiphany. It came from having a child, and the love I felt immediately was so big, so big that you could cry all the time."

"So I was feeling very big. And the feeling was, 'You can't just choose to have the nice, but it won't be only hard either. It's all life.'"

"It was a moment of great joy for me, but there are people who die in the hospital too. The best thing in a hospital is babies being born, but there are people on their way out, also.""I've always been a fussy person, a little timid, and suddenly it was, "'Okay. I'm ready.' Being a parent is hard business. Children are not just going to be little and cute. But I think I was given some clarity about: You've got to say yes to all of it."

"Later, we moved to Chico and we lived up there for nine years, and I came from Chico down to here. Chico is where I started dancing with Elsa Jordan, and I also started playing the flute, 'cause I always wanted to play the flute. And I had a chance to do some different things that I hadn't had time to do when I was teaching English all the time. I started writing poetry. I was very involved with artists because my husband was in the art department."

"Then, I moved down here and started teaching at Dunn Middle School. One year went by, and then two years, and before I knew it, it was twenty years that I had been teaching at Dunn Middle School! Matthew went to the middle school, and I was his teacher for three years. I liked being my son's teacher. I didn't miss out on any of the fun stuff that he was doing."

"I taught in several different classrooms at the middle school. I had to move my books around a lot there! We kept growing. But now the school is the biggest it's ever been, so it's very different this year.""Jim was a math teacher, and I was an English teacher, so the kids got an awful lot of math and language arts. So much so, that we would often use that G.M. time to do some science or history. We also talked a lot about world events. We'd bring in the newspaper, talk about things in the community, and in the school. It was like a big family meeting. We didn't give letter grades. We had progress reports. We would write a lot about the students, but we didn't have grades."

"Through all the changes, one thing that is absolutely constant about Dunn Middle School is the kids. Being 11 or 12 or 13 or 14 is what makes it a middle school. We have kids who are shy, loud, athletic, artistic -- they are all kids of middle school age.""Middle school kids are changing. Their bodies are changing. Their feelings change; their thinking changes. They get excited, and they're curious. Middle school kids want to know stuff! Things are interesting. There's a lot of feeling about things. It's so exciting!"

"The other thing about the middle school is that people are very creative. They get all kinds of ideas and they like to create stuff. Kids at your age (middle school) aren't as afraid of some things as older people are. You haven't decided yet who you are. You still want to try things. Kids can be everything. Little kids can turn into anything -- a wild horse, spider man, a dragon! And middle school kids are not that far from that. As a middle school teacher, I worked very hard to keep the doors open, to keep the imagination going. And physical activity is important, also. 'Cause kids of your age have a lot of energy, and you can do almost anything with your body. Your bodies really work well. You are flexible in mind and body, so it's really fun to teach kids your age."

"And that's why DMS will always be a good school -- because kids are great at your age.""I also got to work with wonderful teachers like Marc Kummel and John Boettner. John was like the giant -- 6 feet 8, really nice guy, with curly black hair. The kids adored him. He drove an old VW convertible. He'd get out with his long legs, and he'd be carrying a milk crate with all his school stuff in it. We had great teachers, and we kept giving kids problems and projects and books to read. We did a lot of acting, too. We'd get costumes; we'd make videos. It has developed into a fantastic school, very creative with lots of challenges, which is what you kids deserve.""After a while, I thought, 'It would be nice not to grade papers.' So I'm taking a little break from that. I'm the wellness coordinator at the upper school now, although nobody really knows what a wellness coordinator does. When I left the middle school, the kids gave me a magic wand, and that reminds me that I'm still making things up. There's still magic involved. Being a wellness coordinator generally means I go around and pay attention to how people are feeling. What's your stress level? How are you getting along? How's your love life? Sometimes they make an appointment; sometimes they just drop in. Sometimes, I just say, 'Can we talk?'"

"My husband and I are now building a home in Baja, Mexico. I love it there. I love to travel. I like to go to Europe because my son has been living there. One of the farthest away places I've ever been is Bali, in Indonesia. In Bali -- talk about dance! People will work all day in the terraced rice fields, but at night, they start dancing, and they play exquisite music. They move so beautifully, and I never saw anybody angry there. I wanted to go to Bali ever since the song, 'Bali Hai.' But I want to go everywhere. I'd like to travel around the world. And I like to travel in my mind, too, through books and movies."

"Books are very important to me. Every book influences me, even if it's a book I don't like. Every book allows me to travel outside myself. I couldn't even tell you my favorites --if I had to take ten books off my shelf, I'd have to spend days deciding. The only thing I know for sure is I would bring Rilke."

"I love music, also. My favorite sound is silence, but it's never totally quiet. If I could only listen to one composer, it would be Bach -- I love the cello suites. I've played the flute, the clarinet, and the recorder, but my favorite instrument to hear is the cello. Now I'm learning the keyboard --last Christmas I got a keyboard, and a beginner book. The piano is a favorite, too. If I keep plugging along…"

"I have a studio in my house. I live on Figueroa Mountain road. And I have a big room that's mine. I can go in there and shut the door. That's where I do music, and paint, and dance. I walk up the road a lot. My favorite season in the Santa Ynez Valley is fall. The light is so exquisite, so clear -- blue skies and yellow leaves… And I love to go to the beach. I look at the sky, and I look at the water. The ocean is always special. We are really lucky to be living here."

"The main thing in life is to keep interested. Keep finding things to be interested in! Know that you are here for a reason. The odds of anyone simply being born at all are pretty amazing. That we ended up being here, and we ended up in the form we are in? Everyone is born for a reason, and I think it's our job to figure it out. And the way to figure it out is to watch what you love. Watch in yourself what you really love, what you really get excited about, when you feel most alive. When you feel big and most alive, pay attention to that. That indicates what you really ought to do. If you're finding that you feel kind of dead, and nothing is any good, you better look around some more. What we are is mostly light. We're made of the same stuff as stars, and quantum physics talks about that. We're mostly light. And we are all connected."

"Sometimes there are hard parts in life, when your light gets low. Learn how to take care of yourself. Learn what makes you feel better. For me, it's good people, beautiful things, and books. If you get kind of stuck with yourself and can't quite know, go to each other other, or go to some flowers, or go to the mountains where it's bigger, and there's light, and energy, and let it help you. Bring it back into yourself."

"And don't be afraid to do things that you're not very good at. I always wanted to paint. I finally started. You're not going to be good right when you start. And if you love it, do it anyway, because you don't have to be good at everything you do. Forget about being perfect. Everything teaches you something."

Tony Ochoa was born on October 24, 1925 in Santa Barbara on a little street called Transfer Avenue, not far from Mission Creek. His father had come from Mexico in 1914 and started working at the Hollister Ranch. Tony had brothers and sisters, but his parents divorced, and he was raised by his father at the ranch. "It was just Dad and me," he says.

For awhile, Tony lived in a residence at the main Hollister Ranch headquarters, at the south end of the orchard. When Tony reached school age, his dad considered leaving the ranch so that Tony could attend school in Santa Barbara. Instead, a house was built for them at Gaviota, right by the beach.

"It was a nice big house," said Tony, "and that's why Dad remained on the ranch, and I ended up going to Vista del Mar."As you are driving from the beach back onto the highway, you can still see a palm tree that Tony Ochoa planted near his house many years ago. "I brought that palm tree up from the main ranch when it was just a little seedling," he told us. It still stands, tall and strong.

We asked Tony what changes he has seen in this area, and whether there are things that still seem the same. "How has it remained the same? Hardly at all. The store is gone, the railroad station is gone. The park area has changed. Of course the freeway is one big change. And there was no tunnel. There used to be an iron bridge before the tunnel was built. It was a landmark, but it was torn down. Even the course of the creek was diverted to make way for the freeway. They straightened it out so it kind of parallels the road now."

"This is the first time I've been to your school, and it's nice. I'm afraid the other changes do nothing for me."

The kids wanted to know what school was like when Tony was a boy.

"It didn't look like this," he replied, gesturing toward our lovely Vista de Las Cruces campus. "It was small, but it was a good, sound, well-built school. The upper and lower classes were all together in one room. Sometimes, when the crops came in, the children of the migrant laborers would join us, and the school got really crowded."

One of Tony's teachers was a lady named Irene Sawyer, who was, as he put it, "a beautiful person".  Another memorable teacher was Mrs. Gann. He also mentioned a man named Newt Moffit, who ran the Gaviota store for awhile and was the school bus driver and custodian. His wife was, in Tony's words, a "learned woman" who used to sub if one of the regular teachers was out.

He showed us a photo of a group of children taken in front of the school in the early 1930's. He is the small boy in Huck Finn overalls with a very somber expression on his face. In the background, we recognized the old wooden door which we could still glimpse when driving past the now-vacant school on Highway 101.

"My childhood nickname was Chico," he told us. "All my friends called me that, and that's how I was known all through the service. To this day, I still have two people who call me Chico."

We asked Tony about his childhood at the Hollister Ranch. Where would he walk? Did he have a special place he enjoyed visiting? Did he have a best friend? "My best friend was a boy named Isquil Valdez -- I called him Essy. His father worked on the railroad near Gaviota, and he was my nearest neighbor, a mile away. I'd walk over to his house and say 'you wanna play?', and we'd go down to the beach or someplace. Maybe we'd throw rocks at birds or go fishing off the pier. Maybe we'd walk along the railroad for a ways, or climb up to the chicken caves."

"No one ever said, 'Don't go here. Don't do that'. I would do anything I wanted. By the time I got to the creek, that's when I'd decide -- east or west, beach or railroad."

"I loved to go fishing at the pier, which wasn't in the same spot then -- it was about a mile down towards Santa Barbara. I'd fish until I was tired. Then I'd stop and pluck some big mussels off the rocks, take 'em home, and boil 'em."

"Oh, the fishing was the best. You didn't even have to know how to fish! You could catch fish from a clothespin with nuts from the railroad as sinkers. There were what we called Spanish mackerel, and there were perch as big as halibut, and there were halibut beyond the waves."

"The creek used to get so big when it rained that it would fan out, fed from tributaries, and when it flared around, the water would jump its bank. Most exciting, after it rained and flooded, the water would recede and deposit bodies of water filled with fish -- huge fish!""There were salmon and steelhead under the trestle. You could look down and it looked like a hatchery. The waves would come in after a storm, and the fish would be locked in."

"Of course, we played in the water, too. There were no surfboards. Body surfing was all we did. The bigger the waves, the better. But we knew to avoid the breakers that crash. We rode only the ones that crumble. Those were the beauties."

"One winter -- it must have been in the thirties -- it rained so hard, if you looked down toward where the Gaviota rest area now is, it looked like an ocean. Dad was across the creek on the other side and had to get back home. His horse brought him across! He grabbed his horse's tail and told him to go. You could just see that horses's head lunging through the water. Finally they came out safely on the other side."

"There were very few people living on the ranch in those days," said Tony, "and the road was just dirt. There was no paving whatsoever. When it rained, tires would spin, sink, or skid. It was foolish even to get on the road. The way we went from the ranch to school at Vista del Mar was usually by horseback or walking. Sometimes I'd go in a two-wheel cart pulled by a pony!"

Tony's favorite childhood toy was a bicycle given to him by one of the Hollisters. Other than that, he had no toys, or made his own. He enjoyed games such as soccer and football, "but we got knocked down a lot, and there were no soft lawns to fall on. It hurt. There was always gravel and rocks imbedded in our knees."

One of the students asked Tony what kind of music he used to listen to. "Music?" he replied, "I loved everything that had a rhythm. I didn't even have a radio -- only what we used to call a crystal set, and I'd listen to whatever I could pick up on that thing. Mexican music, whatever I could get. I always loved music. As a little fellow, I'd go down to the beach and ask people, 'You wanna hear me sing?' I'd sing 'em a Mexican song, and they'd pay me! I'd pass a hat and come home with my pockets heavy with coins. Then I'd go to town and buy candy for my friends. When you buy candy, you have a lot of friends."

"Christmas was the very best time of year, when we got all the good things we didn't usually have. There was lots of good hard candy, and a big red apple, and a Christmas tree at school."

"Most of the time, the natural things were treats for us. Over by the adobe right across the road from your school, somebody planted some cactus, which grew to enormous size. Well, we'd pick the prickly pears from the cactus and scrub off the thorns. We didn't have refrigerators in those days, so we'd put them into gunny sacks and leave 'em in the cool stream for awhile to chill. Then we'd take out that bag of prickly pears, take the skin off, and eat them like candy. They were so sweet and delicious! To get the really red ones, we'd go to the Hot Springs, but the sweetest ones were at the adobe. Sometimes we fried cactus succulents to make a nice dish, too."

"There used to be an orchard nearby, too. It was owned by Helen and Charlie Nichols. We'd get peaches, apples, pears. Vicente Guevara had an orchard also. We'd just rove around looking for good fruit.""The Depression was hard times for people in town, but for us, it wasn't so different. We didn't have money, but we grew our own food, so we had what we needed. There were two cows just for Dad and me. We would barter and trade for what we didn't have. We'd take eggs, chickens, ducks, and cheese to friends in town, and to reciprocate, they'd give us Argentine beef in cans. We never had canned food -- everything we ate was fresh -- so to us, the beef in tins was a treat. Sometimes, I'd go down to the beach and sell fresh eggs to people. I'd sell 'em eggs and sing to them!"

"During the 1930's, fishing camps sprang up by the old pier. There was one at a part of the coast called Alcatraz, where the oil storage tanks are. There were Italian and Portuguese fishermen there, living as squatters. The Castagnolas would buy fish from them to sell in town."

"I don't know if you can ever get in there now," he continued, "but there must have been an Indian village there at one time. I'd find arrowheads there a lot. I'd bring 'em to school to put on display. I think there was a camp or a burial ground just before the turn-off to Gaviota Beach, too. And at one time, there were the remnants of an old adobe at Gaviota. The freeway covered everything."

"Once I even found a gun. I wish I had kept it. It was a lovely little gun with a pearl handle, just like you see in the movies. Some fellow said, 'Let me take it into town and see if I can find out how old it is.' He never came back."

The kids want to know if Tony had any special pets. He tells us about his horse, Sam, whom he dearly loved. Sam was a gentle bay with a white line on his forehead, and one white leg. Tony still remembers how terrible he felt when Sam died:

"If you could imagine what it would feel like to lose a buddy, well, that's how it was. There was nothing Sam wouldn't do for me. He would ride through anything. He was always there for me. I grew very close to him."

Tony also had four or five faithful dogs. "They always waited for me, wagging their tails, fighting to see who'd get to greet me first. They somehow knew when I would be coming home, and they watched for me."

One dog in particular was extremely loyal and intelligent. His name was Shep, and he was a "police dog". 

"I'd tell Shep to go get the cows or the horses and he'd round them up. I didn't have to do anything else."People along the coast had the newspaper delivered by train in those days. The train would pass through the ranch, and a man would toss a newspaper out at the canyon of its recipient. One of Shep's regular duties was to pick up the paper and bring it home."

One day the fellow on the train decided to tease Shep. Instead of throwing the paper, he held it back, and Shep kept running to get it.

“It was a sad day. Shep was killed by the train. I'll never forget it.”

For a moment, we all felt a sense of sorrow (and a little outrage) about Shep's fate. But Tony Ochoa is not a man who dwells on sad memories.

"My past is like a treasure to me today," he said, "I draw upon it still. There was so much to do! I never became bored. My life has been filled with adventures."

"When I left the ranch," he continued, "the whole world was an experience. I have been to Europe, Mexico, England, Canada... I flew with the 8th Air Force during World War II and got shot down over Europe. I landed in Belgium, in Brussels."

Tony has carried this sense of wonder with him to the present. He is highly regarded today for his work restoring antique furniture. (Author's note: he has since retired.) He spoke with deep appreciation of the beauty and workmanship of the fine pieces he works on, some of which are over two hundred years old.

"These were put together by artisans," he said. "Their tools were patience and determination."Tony's shop is in Santa Barbara, and on his walls are framed photos from his ranch days. Those pictures mean a lot to him.

"I left the ranch," he said, "but after all these years, the ranch has never left me.""These kids will one day leave, too," he went on, "but the ranch will be there. It's engraved in your heart, somehow. They don't know it now, but it will be there."

We asked Tony if he has any advice for the kids. "Don't play hooky. Listen to your teachers. Do the work even if it's hard."

Tony Ochoa has a dignified bearing but a twinkle in his eye. Not playing hooky must have been tough.

Linda Smith has been described as an icon in the Santa Ynez Valley. As the much-loved director of Dunn Middle School as well as a dynamic language arts teacher, she goes beyond the call of duty every day, inspiring those around her, both young and old, to be the best they can be. Linda has developed several educational programs, including the Alternative Program designed for gifted and at-risk students. She contributes untold hours on behalf of others in community service, in particular helping victims of domestic violence. Her unofficial nickname is the Princess of Possibilities, and anyone who knows her can see why.  (In 2010, after ten years at Dunn, Linda moved on from her role as director of the middle school and will be involved in development of an online "distance" learning program, among other new adventures.)

I was born in Chicago in 1956. In fact, a few years ago, I went back to see where I was born. My parents lived in the garage of a house, as strange as it sounds. They got married when they were eighteen and had me when they were nineteen, so there was no time in between. My dad was working two jobs and they really couldn't afford to stay someplace nice. Their families were very angry with them for getting married. They wouldn't support them. They said, "You're on your own."

We lived there for a year and then moved to another kind of garage apartment. They're not unusual in that part of Chicago. It was a tiny place, and I still have vague memories of it. But I have the strongest memories of the neighborhood in Chicago where I lived afterwards, until I was about seven. Our family of five kids was the smallest in the neighborhood. Most of the families were Catholic and they thought it was good to have a lot of kids. There were anywhere from eight to fourteen kids in every house.

My mom didn't work. She got pregnant right after they got married and then had one child every year for five years. I think when the third child was young she went to work for Cook County Hospital for a while but she didn't work again until I was in junior high.It's intriguing to me that my family struggled so much. So many kids, so little money, and rejected by their own family. At one point, my dad was desperate for money, and he didn't know how he was going to keep his family alive, so he went to his mother-in-law and asked for help. She said, essentially, "You got yourself into this pickle; you're gonna have to figure out a way. I have one solution: you could stay married to my daughter, successfully, just the two of you, if you put the kids up for adoption."

She was quite serious about that, and it's so strange. She herself had only raised one child, and was a somewhat angry and resentful person.

When we left Chicago, we lived in a suburb, and that was exciting. I was ready to move out of the city. My family left the Catholic Church when I was in kindergarten. This was a big deal; our whole family was Catholic, and it was very important to them. But my family chose to leave the church because they didn't understand it anymore. They felt very strongly about this, and didn't make the decision lightly, but it disgraced our family. Friends of mine in school talked about the fact that I was going to go to hell. I felt ostracized. So in a way, when my parents eventually decided to move, I was glad. This would be a clean break.

It would be one of many moves. If you talk to different people in my family, we all have different memories about this. I remember being sad about leaving friends, but I never cried. It felt like Linus where he's looking at the dryer, watching his blanket dry. I felt like that. The old stuff was comfortable for me and I didn't want to let go of it, just as Linus didn't want to let go of his blanket. But the idea of a new opportunity was always exciting to me, especially in junior high, because I wanted to reinvent myself all the time. I felt like I could be a completely different person and no one would know. It never worked out, but I did change a little every time I moved. I remember when I went to Texas and said I was from California, everyone just assumed I lived around movie stars.

When I moved back to California after living in Illinois, they thought I was insane because California was going to fall into the sea from the earthquake. It's fascinating how California is viewed by people who don't know it.I had two special places while I was growing up. In one home, there was a stairwell, and there was a door in the stairway, but it wasn't really a finished room. It was just there. My mom let me own that place. I was the oldest girl, and I loved to read, and she felt that it was important for me to have my own space. I loved keeping things in boxes. That room looked like a storage area, because I had all these little treasures in boxes, but it was really important to me.

My other special place was the North Shore Baptist Church. It was a huge neighborhood church that we joined after we left the Catholic Church. And it wasn't just the main part of the church, although that was certainly beautiful. They had a basement; they had a bowling alley in the church, a basketball court, a gym. They had a youth group room with ping pong tables. I have so many pictures of Halloween festivals and roller skating -- yes, there was a roller skating rink in there! They really tried to make it so that inner city kids would have a place to go. So a lot of my earliest memories with friends were at church, and that became very important to me. That church felt like an island. I can't think of any other way to describe it. I loved that place.

I had a lot of different kinds of friends in Chicago. My best friend was Japanese. My mom thought that was so unique, because it wasn't any part of her experience. But the city school that I went to was becoming much more of a mixed culture school. As a matter of fact, it actually has very few white children today. But I loved this girl, and I loved going to her house. She was the only child in her family, and they had white carpeting. I thought that was remarkable. It was so thick, too! I just wanted to lie in her carpeting. They must have thought it was very odd that this girl comes to their house and just wants to lie down in the carpeting.In third grade, I had the strangest teacher I ever had, and her name was Mrs. LaStrange. I thought it was the coolest name, and she lived up to it. She was odd. She had dark hair and wore dark clothes all the time. She kept the drapes in the classroom pulled so it was always dark in the room.

There was a boy in there that later went on to become a newscaster; his name was Lloyd Bennett. He was the first boy who ever kissed me. In Chicago, the old classrooms had coatrooms in the back. You would open the door, and there were hooks for your coats, and you'd put your lunches in there, and you'd take off your boots and leave them there to dry out. Mrs. LaStrange always kept the coatroom closed, and it was not unusual for Lloyd to try to grab me in there. He was very precocious. I think coatrooms are legendary for this.We moved a lot when I was growing up and we went to churches around the country - Chicago, Texas, California - -then back to Chicago, and back to California. We'd always check out Baptist or Methodist churches. When we went to Texas, it was a different kind of Baptist church, so we left. But when we moved to California, we decided to try the Baptist church again. I was nineteen years old. My parents had gone to this church before and they said "Why don't you come and visit the church with us?"

I didn't want to go. I was working a lot. When I wasn't working, I was working out. I went to a gym and I loved that part of my life. I just wasn't into meeting new people; I had recently left my boyfriend back in Chicago and was talking to him regularly, and that's what was interesting to me. But they talked me into visiting church that Sunday, along with all my brothers and sisters. Then someone asked if there was anyone new visiting the church. My parents had already been to the church, and they started elbowing me, "Stand up, stand up." So I stood up, thinking all my brothers and sisters would stand as well. But they didn't.

So I stood up by myself. I'm like rolling my eyes, "My name is Linda, and these are all my brothers and sisters: Marty, John, Judy, Curt…" Let me just die here. So meantime, this guy Doug is turning around. He's a part of the college youth group there, and he just sees this new girl. Doug's dad had been the minister of that church and his mom was the organist. I didn't know that at the time. Afterwards, he came up to invite me to the youth group. I looked at him, and he looked like a gigantic football player to me, and I mean truly, it was one of those experiences, and I thought he was the most gorgeous guy I had ever seen. But he would never be interested in me, not at all, never. I just couldn't even imagine that. So he invited me to the youth group, and I was too embarrassed to go, and I didn't go. And he was counting on me going.He called the next week and invited me again. But this was really weird. Just before he called, my mom said, "I wish that nice boy Doug would call you and ask you out."

The phone rang. And it was him. I thought she must have paid him. "Would you take my daughter out? 'Cause otherwise she's gonna marry this Italian boy in Chicago."

I was only twenty when I met Doug, and I was twenty-one when I got married. But it always felt right. When Doug asked my father if he could marry me…there was a beer commercial at the time that said, "When you know it's right, it's right." And my father said to Doug, "When you know it's right, it's right…and this just seems like one of those marriages." We've been married twenty-five years, and I adore him.

I feel so blessed in my life. I look back on it and ask these questions many times because I have been raised in a religious home, but I look back and ask if this means there is a plan for my life, God's will…and I don't feel comfortable with that because it doesn't explain why such bad things happen to some people. But what I do feel is an unbelievably strong sense that some things were just handed to me. It just seemed so simple to go to college when I finally made the decision, because Doug was going to college. When I hear about people that dropped out, I can understand why they did, but it seemed so simple to me to change my life when I made that decision.In retrospect, I can see that church has been the center of my life. I met my husband there, and so many things in my life revolve around church. Church was so many things for me. It was spiritual, social, good people that were role models - that's a big part of it.

Anyway, I thought I was gonna be a secretary for the rest of my life. My big goal was maybe to be a legal secretary. When I was in high school, I worked as a switchboard operator, and I worked in some ice cream places and ate a lot of ice cream. I started out as a secretary for Santa Fe Railroad in the late 1970s. Women were being promoted in business rapidly; people wanted women to be in management positions. There were very few women, and I wanted to be someone important. I started dressing up big time, looking serious. They could see that I wanted to succeed and would do whatever it took. It was exciting for me because they offered me the chance to be promoted rapidly. I became a claims investigator. When accidents happened, I would try to determine whose fault it was. That was interesting.

I eventually left to go back to school for a while. I worked for ten psychologists as office manager. Then I left that job and worked for a company that studied junior colleges, and eventually went to work for a disk manufacturing company. Having someone believe in you can make all the difference. My boss was an eastern Indian named Mohammed Sheik, and he believed in me in an enormous way. I was able to write their tech manuals so that people could understand in simple terms what they needed to do with their computers. Most of the engineers were not very social, didn't work well with the public and couldn't write very well, so he started relying on me for that sort of thing. I did a lot of computer shows, also, traveling a lot, taking our product across the United States. Doug and I were married at the time. Some of the places I had to travel to were fun, but there were a lot of things I didn't like. After awhile, I didn't like hotel rooms. And I was young and married, and men came onto me a lot. This was a very uncomfortable part about being a secretary and a businesswoman. Things have changed.

One thing I loved about moving and traveling is that I have a mental picture of so many places! When people say something about Texas, I know what Texas looks like. I know what Kentucky looks like. I know what most of the United States looks like.And the different kinds of people you meet! I remember when I was in high school, we went on a camping trip, and I went for a hike with one of the boys and we got lost. It was in a backcountry part of Illinois. We found an old shack where a man and a woman lived, and I'll never forget this feeling, "Nobody knows these people live here."

They were the strangest people I had ever seen in my life. We were starving, and they brought this gigantic jar of purple liquid, and inside the purple liquid were hard-boiled eggs. Pickled eggs, which I didn't even know existed. They boiled the eggs as the chickens laid them and then preserved them in this way. This is what's cool about living in different places. You meet so many different people. I didn't actually eat any pickled eggs. I tasted one and it reminded me of beets.A lot of people told me I should be a teacher, all my life. I always found that to be flattering, but I don't think I ever felt confident enough to consider teaching. In one of the houses we lived in while I was growing up, we had a basement, and my mom let us turn it into a classroom. At that point I thought being a teacher was really fun, partly because I've always been bossy, and I thought the main job of a teacher was to be bossy. (Actually, I've lived up to that.)

And I loved school. I think a lot of people who become teachers are like the schoolgirls and school boys. They enjoyed it, they did well, and they got reinforced for it.So being a teacher sounded intriguing, but I couldn't envision myself doing it. Nobody in my family had ever gone to college or had a professional career. You hold those people up as something really, really special. I could easily imagine doing other things, but not something professional. I became a teacher just ten years ago, when I was 35.When I had young children, one woman in particular knew the books I would buy for my children and the activities I would plan for them, and she kept encouraging me to become a teacher.

But I didn't like working with young children. I loved working with junior high and high school kids. I used to do classes on creative dating. I did conventions with 2,000 kids at a leadership conference and we'd talk about how to go out on a date and have a fun time in a really creative way. Those kids laughed at what I had to say, and little kids never got the jokes.

But teaching was always being brought up to me. When I moved to the Santa Ynez Valley, I looked into the possibility of home schooling. But the more I looked into it, the more I realized that what I wanted to do was teach. So I did it.I began working with People Helping People while I was a teacher at Santa Ynez School. They were starting Healthy Start Program, and as a teacher, I let them know what some of the needs were. We helped get that off the ground. I became a board member for about a year or two, and then I didn't do anything with them for a long time. But I had a friend named Luanne Palius. She told me that one way she was involved was through a program that she helped develop that dealt with domestic violence. She was in desperate need of volunteers to help out, and she had trained a lot of people. People heard about the program and were interested, but they got kind of scared when it came down to actually going out on a call and being on their own. I was kind of the opposite. The more she told me, the more I wanted to do that.We don't know why we enjoy the things we do. It isn't as though I stop and say, "Oh, I want to help someone."

Some of these things just sound exciting to me, and this one felt like something I wanted to do right from the beginning. There's forty hours of training, and the very first hour, I knew I would do it. I love it. It just landed in my lap. I think you find the thing that best suits you.I'd also had a number of students who were abused, and I think that's one of the reasons why I was so drawn to this work. I couldn't stand the fact that I had kids with bruises on their faces and their arms. I had heard a few stories from students that were so horrendous I almost wish I never knew the stories, because I didn't know what to do. There was only one thing I could legally do, and I had to, which was to report them to an agency called Child Protective Services and hope they would take care of it. That's a horrible part about being a teacher.

So when this program came along, I thought maybe if I stop the mom and dad from fighting, maybe the kids won't get beat up.Ever get a call in the middle of night? I don't know how to describe it, but when that call is dispatched, my pager goes off, and I have to get up and call dispatch. At that moment, I'm not very energetic. But the second I'm talking to dispatch, and they tell me what the story is, I'm wide awake. And I know that it might not be serious, but it could be, and suddenly I'm not tired anymore. And I'm never even tired the next day It doesn't tend to be a big deal.

There have been times when I left a call just before coming to school, and I really want to talk about it, but it wouldn't be appropriate. Sometimes I do share stories, because it's overwhelming to me that people don't ask for help more. There are so many women and even men who have been abused who don't know how important it is to ask for help. I think that starts even now.

Think of the times you've felt lost at school and didn't ask your teacher for help. Or things have not been going well at home and you just want to run in your room. I think we all do that, but you need to know you're not alone.It is overwhelming to me that these people have literally been physically hurt or told they're idiots, or someone swears at them and calls them every name in the book, and they just think they can handle it. And they never believe that the police or anyone could really help them.

Another hard part of my job is the realization that there are so many women who don't speak English, and so they don't even know that this is unacceptable in our culture, and that when your husband is beating you, it is illegal, it's a crime, and there are people who can help. So we try to get the word out.

People compliment me about this work, and I feel uncomfortable because I really feel so good about doing it, I feel selfish. If you have a chance to help, you help. It isn't a big deal.People tell me I really jump in. Well, that can bite you in the rear end. I don't have much of a filter in my head. What I'm thinking is what I say, and that can get you into trouble sometimes. If I think someone is being unacceptable, or a jerk, I'll say it. But letting people know the best things about them is also important. Remaining calm helps me a lot, too. I have learned that getting angry or crying a lot doesn't do much good.

One thing I truly feel passionate about sounds stupid, but I have to say it. My life truly changed when I began to see that if you try to find the best part of a situation, you really do find the best part. You know how some people in line start getting angry and anxious, and mad? They're annoying to be around. Then there are the people who instead focus on the positive things and start talking to people next to them, and making friends. It's as simple as that: focusing on the positive things makes your life a whole lot better. This realization completely changed my life.

And I have so many dreams, it's insane. If there is one thing I'm addicted to, it's dreams, and it gets worse every year. I think I need to start a list, because it's getting out of control. I want to meet Johnny Depp. I want to see the Iditarod. I ran in a half marathon once, and I'd like to do that one more time. I love traveling, and I have a list of places I want to go.

And sometimes I love to stay in bed reading. I am a binge reader. I read everything. Sometimes I wonder, "Why am I reading this?" I read cereal boxes top to bottom. I read everything that comes in the mail. Everything! I don't remember most of it, but I read it.I also like the idea of doing something you really don't expect yourself to do.Some of my dreams have come true. Long ago, I dreamed of sitting in a gondola with someone I was crazy about, and I recently did that with Doug. I had to keep saying to myself, "I'm doing it. I'm doing it."

I know I'm appreciating it while it's happening, but I am also aware that I will appreciate it even more over time. I will savor it and tell the story. I love to tell stories. And someday I'd like to be a public speaker; I like the idea of working with my husband and going to conferences and speaking to people.

Some of my best moments are vicarious ones - -the dreams and accomplishments of people I care about, like Cameron and Carly, my kids.Working at Dunn Middle School marks a time when everything in my life is coming together. All the different kinds of people that I am, I can be here. One of the reasons I'm happy here is that the teachers that work here really believe in me and have made that clear. There is nothing more addictive than having the people who work with you believe in you.

I've had so many cool experiences in my life, and my hope is to make that contagious for our students. We really work hard to offer you guys a lot of different experiences and to help you find something socially that you care about. We want to be the teachers that you know believe in you. If we convince you there is something you are capable of doing, and you had no idea you were capable of doing it, we'd really get off on that.

I was born on a farm in Colorado in 1913. I moved to California in 1941. In the meantime I had married and had my daughter Joyce, and I went to work at Douglas Aircraft in l941 in El Segundo, California. We made the Douglas B-2 bomber that helped to win the war. It was the most outstanding airplane during the war. They did a lot of bombing with the Douglas plane. Then I retired.

We moved here from a farm in Eaton, Colorado in Well County. It was maybe ten miles over to the foothills. We used to go over to the foothills to fish and to camp. We caught trout. I didn't know there was any other kind of fish.I was the oldest of nine girls, and I had two older brothers and three younger brothers, so we always had a game of some kind going. The neighbor kids would come and we'd play ball. I had lots of friends, neighbors' kids' friends, and friends at school.

My best friend was named Margaret. She was kind of a tomboy. She was fun. She and I played baseball or softball together. My favorite thing was to play games with my brothers, I guess. I sure didn't like paper dolls!We could dance at home to the phonograph, but we did not dance in school because the school board was made up of men who were anti-dancing. You were not allowed to dance at school. I liked western music, hoedown music.

School was probably just like it is for you. We had good days, bad days, and mostly wished we could stay home.We walked to school or rode in a horse and buggy. My older brothers had their ponies they rode, but they had to take turns driving the buggy to take us to school. And I'm telling you, sometimes we caught it all the way to school. They were not happy to have to drive the buggy. And I had two sisters with long, curly hair. And at the last minute, sometimes Mom was still curlin' hair, and my brothers would have to wait. So all the way to school, we'd get lectures about being ready to get to school on time. Younger sisters can be a real aggravation.

I had to hoe beets and pull weeds, I didn't get to drive the tractor or anything like that. I did the manual work. I was the oldest of nine girls, so there was always someone to take care of. I shared my room with about three others. I even shared my bed. When you have eight sisters and five brothers, I don't think there's any place you can go to be alone.We had to harvest beets and potatoes. There was a machine that would go down through the field that would loosen the potatoes in the ground and leave them lying along the road. We had to go and pick up those potatoes and put them in a basket, and then the horse and buggy come along, and when we got the basket full, we'd drop the potatoes in the wagon, and we did that all day long. Poor back!

We had horses to pull the equipment through the fields, and horses to ride. We had milk cows and little calves, and big pigs and little pigs, and chickens, and turkeys, and you name it we had it. I never had to milk the cows because I couldn't. I would squeeze and squeeze and squeeze, and nothin' would happen. My sister - she was younger than me - she was good at milking. She tried to teach me how to do that, but I could only do this, and it didn't do any good.

I went to a Baptist church. I still go to a Baptist Church. They probably had more potlucks and socials than I got to go to. Anything they had, my dad would have to take me, and he wasn't too good about that. It was about two and a half miles into town. Walk, walk, walk. It was just a little country town with a park and a street with stores on both sides. There was a big high school because it was a consolidated area and high school kids came from the surrounding area. My mother didn't always have food handy to pack lunches for us, so dad made an arrangement that we could go to the grocery store and buy our lunch. And did we ever splurge! Candy bars, candy bars, candy bars!

I'll tell you how I learned to drive. Anyone know what a potato cellar is? It's a long cellar, dug-out. My father used to park the car in there, and my sister Georgie and I would go down and it had big double doors and was quite long, maybe half a block or so and we'd get in the car and we took turns, and we'd drive to the end of the dug-out, and then back up to the doors, and then it was my turn, drive to the end of the dug-out, back up, and then it was Georgie's turn. That's where I learned to drive. My dad opened the door one day, and we thought, "Oh, boy. We're in trouble."

He said, "What are you kids doing?"

"We're just driving."

He says, "If you're just driving, why don't you get that car out in the field and drive?"

So we got out in the field and drove the car around and around the field. We thought he'd be mad, and he wasn't mad at all.

Christmas was terrific. We didn't get a lot of gifts, but the relatives would all come to our house. The grandparents came… we had turkey, of course. Mom raised them, and we ate 'em. We had a tree. We'd go to bed at night, and there'd be no tree. We'd wake up the next morning, and there'd be this beautiful tree, all set up. In the later years, my brother-in-law worked for the forest service in the mountains, and he would bring us down a tree.

My mom baked all kinds of pie. She raised pumpkins, so we had pumpkin pie. We had an apple tree, so we had apple pie.Sometimes we had snow so deep we couldn't get to school, but we didn't think that was so awful. Eventually somebody with a horse and buggy would go through and make a track, so then the car could follow those tracks. But the snow would be so deep, the car couldn't get enough traction, so the wagons would go through and kind of pack the snow down. I didn't do any skiing, 'cause it was flat land, but we used to have snowball fights.It was hard to leave Colorado, but my husband never cared for farm work. He was a real mechanic, and this is what he wanted to do. He already had a job when we left. A man had come to Denver seeking aircraft workers. He was really happy to get a job making airplanes.

So we moved to California. First we lived in Alhambra for a little while, then we moved down to Inglewood.I remember the drive from Colorado to California. We stayed two nights at motels along the way. We could have made it faster, but there was no hurry, and my husband wanted to kinda look at the country.

I felt very proud because Douglas had a plant in El Segundo, one in Long Beach, and one in the desert at Edwards Air Force Base. And I was the first woman to make lead woman in all the plants. It means I had several women working under me, and they came in not really knowing much about aircraft. It was my job to teach them how to run a rivet gun and assemble things.The work was different. I was used to pulling weeds and hoeing beets on the farm. This was a drill and a rivet gun, an entirely different thing. I had a man boss, of course. But it was enjoyable work. I was proud of it. I worked night shift, and my husband worked days, so he was at home with Joyce at night.So I was Rosie the Riveter. And I had lots of friends. I made friends with everyone in the plant.

The day the war ended? How could I say how I felt? Up. I had lost a brother in the war. That was devastating. He was two years older than me. And I had two more brothers still in the service. I had three sisters who were married to boys in the service, too. So we had a lot of anxiety. I was so thankful it was over and those still there would come home safe.

Let's just hope we don't get involved again. If people want to fight, let 'em fight. Let's stay home and mind our own business.I worked until the boys started coming home from the service. It bothered me. I was the lead woman and had girls working under me, but these boys came back from a war and some had worked at Douglas before they were drafted into the army, and when they came back, they should have their jobs back, but here was a woman bossing them around, telling them what to do. I didn't like that. That wasn't my role. I didn't want to do that.

So I quit working. Some boy could have my job.

There's really nowhere else I'd like to go, except maybe back to the farm…The Lord has been good to me. I have a great family, and I've had a great life.

My advice is this: Live every day to the fullest, and have fun, and if your parents are still living, praise them.

Cowboy Dreams

Clark Emmons was born in 1919 and grew up on the south side of Lompoc, almost at the entrance of Miguelito Canyon. He shared a room with his older brother in his family's comfortable old house; electricity arrived in 1926. Clark loved living on the edge of town.

"I could roam around in the hills, wander along the creek, just go out and do things," he says.

Getting out and about was important to Clark. As a child, his favorite toy was his bicycle, and he always dreamed of becoming a cowboy and a rancher someday. At sixteen, he got his first horse, a little quarter mare named Peggy. That was a great day for Clark.

Clark's best friend in high school was Lincoln Reed, who had a ranch in Miguelito Canyon. They went to school together and both played on the high school basketball team. School in those days was small, and it was a place of fun and friends. Clark has especially fond memories of his favorite teacher, Mr. Hapgood.

"He was an old-time teacher who taught at the country school, then middle school. He could straighten you out in a hurry if you did something wrong, but he was somehow gentle, too."

Clark's parents had originally settled in a little town called Bicknell, near Orcutt. "It isn't even there anymore," he says.

His father, who died when Clark was only two, was a teamster for the oil company.

"I lost my father at an early age," he tells us, "so I give a lot of credit to my mother. My brother and I wanted to quit high school and help out, but she made us graduate. She placed a lot of value on getting an education. I don't think I would have stayed in school if she hadn't pushed me."

We asked Clark what life was like during the Depression. "Everybody was very poor," he replied, "and so everybody worked, even young people. Kids had to help their folks make a living. No one had a lot of money, but we all stuck together."Even during those hard times, Christmas was a great family affair. "All the neighbors would get together, too. It was a very special, happy time."

Clark's nickname as early as fifth or sixth grade was Snuffy, drawn from a character in the Katzenjammer Kids comic strip.

"Snuffy was sort of a mountain man," explains Clark, "and so was I. I was always in the hills. I loved to hike and hunt -- deer and quail, mostly. I was so lucky to grow up in such a great place."

Someone wondered if he ever saw any mountain lions. "I've been in the hills all my life," he replies, "but until they put the moratorium in place, I had only seen two mountain lions. In 1993, I saw five on the ranch in one year!"

Camping and fishing have always been important pastimes to Clark. One time in 1956, he went camping with Walt Spanne at the Hollister Ranch. They waited until the tide went down, set forth in a little 12 foot fishing boat, and rounded the point at Drake. From the boat, they watched as a train went by, which shot off some sparks and started a fire.

"We were terribly upset and wanted to help," he says. "We came in through the breakers and capsized the boat! Fortunately, by this time, Frank Pacheco (the ranch foreman), and several others had arrived at the scene. The fire was put out, but we lost all our fishing gear."

We asked Clark to reflect on how this area has changed."Well, to start with," he says, "the Las Cruces store is gone, and there's a freeway here. The Loustalots used to run a store by the entrance to the canyon. I remember one time I got a ride from a truck driver to the store. Then Frances Matis and Bob Scuyler picked me up at the store and gave me a ride to the ranch in a wagon. Finally, they took me to town in their car. And another time -- January 12, 1949, to be exact -- we had the biggest snowstorm ever. They closed the Nojoqui grade, and Mrs. Loustalot sold out everything in the store, even the candy."

"Near the old adobe, there was a restaurant, and a bar. Jake Stine ran that place. It was just a small place, you could get some groceries and visit with folks."

"There have been a good many changes I don't like," he continues, "but we have to put up with it and go along with it. The world is changing in every respect."

During World War II, Camp Cooke was developed (where Vandenburg now is), and there was a lot of military activity on the coast and inland. Clark joined the army and was stationed for a time at Camp Edwards in Massachusetts. There, on June 14, 1943, he married Dorothy Cooper, herself a native of Lompoc. The two returned to Lompoc to make their home.Clark has been a rancher all his working life. As a young man, right after high school, he went to work on the Sutter Ranch in Jalama. Later, he was hired at Jesus-Maria Ranch, now a part of Vandenburg. And for forty years, he has been at Rancho La Viña on Santa Rosa Road, on the south side of the river.

"I've worked with the Poetts and Dibblees," he says, "the Pedottis, the Isaacsons ... all good people, good people."

"And I've made several trips to Fort Bidwell, in the northeast corner of the state, working cattle with Kim Perkins."Clark has fond memories of the old cattle round-ups. "We used to drive the cattle right down the county road," he says, "for eight or ten miles, and there'd be no traffic."

Clark remembers seeing Yvonne and Virginia Dibblee helping with the branding. "That was the first time I ever saw girls helping out at a round-up," he tells us. "It was unusual for those times."

Once, at the Jalama Ranch, Clark had an opportunity to meet Will Rogers, who was well known for his rope spinning and dry humor. "He was a great man," says Clark, "a great humorist, as nice in person as you'd expect."

For recreation, there were country western dances; quite a few were held at the old schoolhouse at San Julian Ranch. Another favorite hang-out for cowboys was the Yellow Jacket in Buellton.

"Over the years," Clark tells us, "I've met great people and made a lot of friends. I've had 54 years of marriage to the same lady. I've had the privilege of being an honorary vaquero in 1994 at the Santa Barbara Fiesta. I used to watch westerns and dream of being a cowboy, and I've lived the life I wanted."

We ask Clark if he has any advice for young people today. He doesn't hesitate:

"Respect your elders. Obey the law even though it may sometimes seem against you. And above all, keep a good, open mind."

(Author's note: Clark Emmons passed away peacefully at home on March 13, 2011.)

The Dunn Middle School Students Talk to Reza Aslan

Reza Aslan, an internationally acclaimed scholar of religions, paid a visit to Dunn Middle School on Monday afternoon, February 6, 2006. Reza believes that Islam is undergoing great changes and that the real conflict today is not between Islam and the West, but rather between modernists and traditionalists within Islam. Excerpts of the interview follow.

Reza: You already know a lot of things about Islam. Now the question is how do we make sense out of it, how do we put together these words we hear all the time to understand what Islam really is. There is a tendency in the United States to somehow think of Islam in a different way from other religions. We forget that the second largest religion in the world - and in the United States -- is Islam, so the largest religious minority in this country are Muslim Americans. Islam is very much a part of the strong Biblical tradition that many of you are familiar with. In fact, the Qur'an thinks of itself as a continuation of the previous scriptures of Judaism and Christianity. So you know how the Bible is separated into the Old Testament and the New Testament? Well you can kind of think of the Qur'an as the new New Testament, or the newest testament, because they see it as the continuation of the story and that Muhammad was the end of that story. So that shows that there is this real connection, one giant faith separated into three different versions: the Jewish version, the Christian version, and the Muslim version. And when it comes down to the beliefs and ideas of the religion, they're all pretty much the same. I mean there ARE differences, there's no question, but they are very much a part of the same Biblical, prophetic tradition that a lot of us are already familiar with.

Student: How do you think Islam has changed through the years?

Reza: That's an excellent question. Islam is no different from any other religion in that it is constantly changing. Most of us know, for instance, that Christianity today is a lot different than the way it was a thousand years ago or two thousand years ago. Religions change as people change, and the same thing is happening with Islam. At first it was a desert religion of mostly Arabs in the Middle East. Now, Arabs make up just a small group of the world's Muslim population. Does anyone know how many Muslims there are in the world? It comes to about 1.2 billion Muslims. That's a lot. And of course they all believe differently, they all behave differently, they have their own traditions, and they have their own ideas about what Islam means.

Student: Do you base your life on the Five Pillars?Reza: I try to live by the Five Pillars. Most people try their best to follow their religion as well as they can. And we're all going to fail. I could definitely be better. I could definitely give more money away. I don't. I could definitely pray more. I don't. And sometimes during Ramadan, I just get hungry. You know? And there are people who are better at it than I am and people who are worse at it than I am. It's like anything else.

Student: Do you think Jews, Muslims, and Christians in particular are focusing too much on their holy scriptures and not on becoming a good person?

Reza: I think you're absolutely right, and that really becomes the problem. You know what? It goes back to this question of what is religion. Have you ever thought about it? What is it? Are religion and faith the same thing? Can you have faith without having religion? Maybe you can't have religion without faith but you can certainly have faith without religion, so faith must be bigger than religion. In a way, religion is a way to talk about faith. Right? You start with faith.So I have faith in God. What does that mean? How do I describe it? How do I talk about it to other people? With religion! Religion becomes the tool that we use to talk about God, or like a language that we use. People may be talking about the same God; they may be talking about the same faith, but they're talking about it in different ways.But what happens if you forget that that religion is supposed to actually point you to faith? What happens when you think that that religion is everything, that there's nothing beyond that religion, that religion is faith? What happens when you forget that religion is a tool in order to get something, not an end in itself? It's like having a hammer. The purpose of a hammer is to hammer something in -- right? But if you don't hammer something in, what good is a hammer? Nothing. It doesn't mean anything. You're walking around with a useless hammer.

So I do think in that way what you're saying is true. A lot of people really forget that religion is supposed to be the language that you use to express your faith, and the important thing is not religion, but faith. When people forget that, they think religion is all that matters. And if you think that religion is all that matters, then it's very easy to start fighting with one another. My religion is right. Your religion is wrong. My religion is going to destroy your religion. You forget that these are both talking about the same exact thing.Student: Were you raised as a child under the Muslim religion?

Reza: I was raised in it the way a lot of people are raised in a tradition. Maybe your parents go to church on Easter and Christmas, and so do you, and so you call yourself a Christian. I'm the same way. My parents went to mosque on Ramadan and on the Prophet's birthday and we called ourselves Muslims. That's all that mattered. It was only as an adult that I made a conscious decision to actually go back to my faith. My parents don't really care; they're not very religious. If you're going to follow a religion, I think it's important for you to make that decision for yourself. It can't be your mom's decision; it can't be your dad's decision. It has to be your decision; otherwise it doesn't mean anything.Student: What do you think about the drawings that came out in the paper in Denmark and the response of Muslims?

Reza: Some of you know there are these cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad that came out in this newspaper in Denmark and it has sparked all of this rioting and anger among Muslims. Part of it is because in Islam there is a tradition that you're not allowed to make any kind of picture or portrait of the Prophet. But that's actually NOT why there is so much anger. If you look at these particular drawings, they were really, really offensive. Like in one of them Muhammad has a bomb for a turban, so he's a terrorist. I think it's important to understand that it's not just that these drawings came out; it's that they were so deliberately offensive. Even with freedom of the press, there must be some attempt made to not intentionally provoke people, to not try to fuel tensions that people are already struggling to contain. It also feeds right into the hands of extreme groups. So it makes me angry because I feel as though the purpose was to deliberately provoke Muslims. I'm angry about the motive; these were meant in no other way but to offend.

Student: Do you think terrorists automatically become non-Muslim by their actions?

Reza: Did Timothy McVeigh's actions make him a non-Christian? He's the guy responsible for the bombing in Oklahoma City that killed a lot of innocent people. He was a Christian, or he thought of himself as a Christian. You can rationalize anything, whatever your religion or what you call yourself...

Sadly, our tape ran out, but in other talks Reza has referred to religion as a language that is subject to interpretation, pointing out that extremism is the loudest voice and the interpretation that gets our attention but it is not necessarily the most representative perspective. His views on this subject are reflected in his widely acclaimed book, No God but God in which he refers to those "who have replaced Muhammad's original version of tolerance and unity with their own ideals of hatred and discord." He has suggested that even the rise of fundamentalism may be a reaction to the greater rise of reform, rationalism, modernism, and progress. Reza believes that an Islamic Reformation has already begun, one in which peace, pluralism, and inclusion will overcome bigotry and hatred. "The tide of reform," he says, "cannot be stopped."

I Am The Captain of my soul

A math and science teacher at Dunn Middle School, Donna Frost is one of those people who seem able to do anything. Her remarkable story is one of inspiration and courage.  I'll let Donna tell it:

"I've been living in this area for seventeen years, and before I moved here, I had been everywhere imaginable. But today I want to tell you about one event that changed my whole life forever. Interestingly enough, the beginning of the story was when I was in sixth grade. My teacher had the entire class memorize a single poem. It was called Invictus. I still remember it:

****

Out of the night that covers me

black as the pit from pole to pole

I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul

In the fell clutch of circumstance, I have not winced nor cried aloud

Under the bludgeoning of chance my head is bloodied but unbowed

Beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the horror of the shade

And yet the menace of the years finds and shall find me unafraid

It matters not how straight the gate how charged with punishment the scroll

I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul.

*****

"You might think that's a grim poem for sixth graders. It talks about times when life hands you very difficult things to deal with. Your life may not always be happy and bright; there may be hard times to get through-- but the message of the poem is that you will be strong enough to deal with these things. But it's your decision to make the best of what you've got; you are the master of your fate and captain of your soul. So when it comes down to it, no matter what happens, you have it within yourself to make the best of it and maybe even emerge with a positive outcome. I had to memorize that poem in sixth grade and for some reason, it stuck with me. Then, when I was 16 years old, it really came into play in my life. That's mainly what I want to talk to you about.

"My life dealt me a tragic, sad, and difficult blow when I was sixteen. I was just finishing my first year of high school, and I was in a very bad car wreck. There were four of us kids in the car, and we had a horrendous crash. It only involved our one car, but our car went completely out of control, flipped over, skidded against an embankment, smashed on the side of a mountain, rolled back over again, and it was a horrible wreck. It killed the driver. He was a friend of mine."

"The driver's side of the car was smashed horribly, that's how the driver died. And I was in the back seat behind him. My neck was broken. I was completely paralyzed. I had no feeling of anything below my neck. As I lay in the ER later, I thought maybe I was decapitated, because it wasn't just that I couldn't move anything -- I actually couldn't feel anything from my neck down. The doctors were all rushing around, and it was very traumatic, very scary. My parents were called and came to the hospital, and I heard the doctors telling my parents what happened.""

'See here on the x-rays?" they said, "The bones in her neck are totally crushed, and her spinal cord has been injured -- she is totally paralyzed.' It's called quadriplegic - all four of my limbs were paralyzed. My mother started crying. She said, 'She'll be okay; won't she?' The doctor said, 'We expect her to live, but she will never walk again. If she's lucky, she will be able to have some movement in her arms, but she will have no movement from her shoulders down. She will never walk again.' And my mother burst into tears."

"And then they wheeled me off and started doing all these things, putting me in traction, and trying to repair my neck. It was very difficult those first several days in the hospital. Everyone was very sad for me. Everyone that came in cried. It was very sad."

"There were two vertebrates in the middle of my neck that were totally crushed, pulverized. I don't have those two bones anymore; the doctors had to scrape them out. But if you don't have two vertebrates in your neck, you can't hold up your neck. So they cut off the top of my hip bone and molded it into the shape and size of the two vertebrates. Then they stretched out my neck, cleaned out the old vertebrate and dropped the bone from my hip in the space where they had been, and stitched me up. So I can hold up my head today because I have a big chunk of my hip in my neck!"

"I remember the last moments before the wreck. The driver was traveling too fast. The other people in the car said, 'Kevin, you better slow down. You're going too fast.' And then there were some headlights and a lot of swerving. The next thing I remember was weird. It was like those scenes in movies where things go in slow motion -- you might see little pieces of shining glass from the windshield just floating through the air in slow motion, and even the dust is suspended there - they do it as a special effect sometimes. That's exactly what happened. I was initially knocked out, but then as I came to, I could see that. The next thing I remember was someone looking in through the back window talking like a record on low speed. All in slow motion. Then I passed out again. I was in and out three times. And then they had to do the whole thing with the jaws of life, covering me up with a welding blanket and cutting with the torch. The seatbelt saved my life. We were all wearing seatbelts. I had bruises on my stomach for six months from that seatbelt."

"It had been a double date -- a road rally. The other guy was the navigator. The two girls would sit in the back, and you'd go on this course in a certain amount of time, but no one was supposed to speed. The other girl in the back seat with me was in a coma for two weeks but then she came out of it, and she was almost able to be back to normal. The other boy just had a cut on his face. The driver side, the side I was on, took most of the damage. But I had absolutely no pain. I felt nothing. That was the one benefit."

"When I was in junior high, I was really involved in the band. There was a large music department, and we had a marching band and a performing band, and it was a big part of my life. In fact, the band connection is a very important one in my story. I've told you the ugly part, but from here on the story is inspiring and funny.""Let me back track to before the wreck -- I brought some pictures. Here I am in 8th grade, playing the clarinet. Here we are in the red uniforms; this is my junior high marching band in a parade. And here I am as a drummer. I loved playing the drums. Some of you may be involved in soccer or another sport or hobby that is the most fun thing that you do. For me, it was music and the band.""When I went to high school, I was the drummer in a very large marching - the Patrick Henry band, and we would go to lots of parades where we would compete against other bands. It was a very proud thing to do well at a parade and win. I had decided that it would be the biggest thrill I could think of to become the drum major. You had to learn all the commands, the twirling of the baton -- you had to work all year on learning how to be the drum major. I entered a competition, and it was announced at a banquet on June 7 that I had won. That was Wednesday night. The following Friday, on June 9, I was in the car wreck. So there I was, two days later, totally paralyzed in a hospital bed. I was on the critical list for three weeks; they were worried that I couldn't breathe on my own."

"Everyone came to visit me, not knowing what to say, and just crying. I could not move anything. I just lay there. Do you know how long a day is when you cannot move and you're just in bed staring at the ceiling? The people in the band would come in and say,'Oh, man. This is really bad. Really sad.' And no one would say anything about the drum major thing."

"I figured my band director, Arne Christiansen, would come in and say, 'This is sad, but we're gonna have to move on. We're gonna have to let the person who came in second be the major. It's really too bad what happened to you.' And I was thinking, 'Oh man. That's gotta be really hard to tell someone.' But I knew it was coming."

"Three days after the wreck, Arne came into the room, and he had this little stuffed tiger that he had picked up from the gift shop. He set it on my chest, and he said, 'I got you this because I know you're a fighter, a tiger.' He asked a couple of polite questions, and then he finally got around to it. 'Well, about this position of assistant drum major.' I'm thinking, 'Here it comes.' But he said, 'I fully expect you to be there in September to fulfill that position.' And I thought 'Is he nuts? Hasn't anybody told him?' But I didn't say anything."

"And then it dawned on me, 'Why not? Why not?!" So I looked at him and I said, 'You got it. I'll be there.' He said, 'Good -- that's what I hoped you would say.' And he left.""I hadn't moved. Still couldn't feel anything. I started thinking, 'Wait a second. Who is it that's telling me I'll never walk again? It's the doctors. Well, I respect the doctors, sure. But I'm also sixteen years old; I'm a little rebellious. What do the doctors really know? I had a lot of time to think. They came to this conclusion based on what? It had to be based on other people with the same injuries as me. Well, how many of those injuries have they seen? A hundred? A thousand? How many have they seen exactly like me? Maybe the chances are one in a thousand that I'll walk again; maybe the chances are one in a million. Have they seen a million of these injuries exactly like me? I don't think so. So maybe they don't know. Maybe the doctors don't know for sure.'"

"And that's all it took. The band director saying 'I expect you to do it.' So I just lay there, concentrating, trying to move anything. I kept bugging people, 'Is anything moving? Is anything moving?' They'd say, 'No. Nothing's moving.'"

"But then, 'Wait - that was your right toe. Your right toe just moved!'""'Really? Is it moving now?'"

"'Yes. It's moving now.'"

"And suddenly I could move my right toe. And then I would just keep trying, and little by little, I was able to move more and more. The doctors still kept saying that I'd never walk again. But it was one of those things that once you got going, nobody could tell you that you couldn't do it."

"And that's when that poem came back to me. I am the master of my fate. I am the captain of my soul. It gave me the knowledge that I could only accept something for myself that I truly believed. If you decide that something is all you can do, or the best you can do, then it is. When you decide that it is your own destiny, it's true and acceptable to you. But don't let anyone tell you what your destiny is. Because your destiny comes from inside you."

"They needed to do surgery to fix my neck or else my head wouldn't stand up. Normally they would do that as soon as possible, but two days after my band director came in, I was able to start moving my right toe and right ankle, and the doctors came in and they couldn't believe it. 'What is happening here?' I said, 'I'm going to walk again.' And they said, 'Besides that, what is happening here?' My doctor was caring and sensitive enough to say, 'Hold it. We don't want to go in and do this surgery yet because there is something happening there and we don't want to upset it.' There was something going on between my brain and the nerves in my spinal cord that the doctors didn't understand and so they decided to wait to see what would happen, and as they waited, I got to move a little more every day."

"I concentrated so hard. It was dead of night, and I'm lying there in the hospital, trying desperately to move something. All of a sudden, one of the times that I stopped trying, something smacked me right in the face, and scared the crud out of me. So I'm lying there in the dark, gasping. I couldn't move anything, couldn't even push a button to call a nurse, but I had this rubber ball that hung by my cheek, and I had to move it with my mouth. Finally, the nurse comes in, and turns on the lights, and looks at me. 'It's your hand! It's your hand!' I had no idea what I had done to get it there. In my intense concentration, I had somehow managed to get it up and wave it about, and when I quit trying, it fell on my face."

"'Get it off,' I said."

"So she picked my arm up and got it off my face."

"But the exciting thing was I had somehow gotten my arm up in the air, if only I could remember what I did. From that point on, my mission was to figure out how I had done that. So in the daylight, I decided to try again, and sure enough, all of a sudden, it worked.""Can you imagine having to relearn all those pathways in a different way? So I could move my right leg some, and now my right hand some. They didn't understand, but they decided to hang back and not rush in and mess anything up. They waited for three weeks and then they said we have to go in and fix your neck. I said no, but they said they had to, so they went in and did my neck. They looked at my spinal cord and there was a cut nearly halfway through it. They told my mother, 'We have seen the cut in the spinal cord. It's amazing that she has some movement, but that's it. Nothing else is going to come back.' ""One week after I had my wreck, a fourteen year old boy named Brian dove into a pond of shallow water and broke his neck. He was very seriously paralyzed. His cord damage was up so high, there was no way they could fix it. They put us in a large hospital room together because we were both about the same age, and we were both paralyzed, so we would lie there and talk for hours, because, as I said, there's nothing to do when you can't move at all. And we became good friends."

"There was one night when I was just starting to get a little better - I had gotten my right side back, and I had just come out of surgery, and they told me that was it. I was lucky to have my right side back, but that was it, done, all. Brian, meanwhile, was very, very sick. He had a bad ear infection and a high fever, and he was delirious. He was screaming, and he was in pain all through the night. The nurses rolled me out of the room and into another part of the hospital because they were afraid his screams would be too disturbing to me."

"So they took the little bed that I was strapped to, and they wheeled me out into this other room at the other end of the hallway. It was about three o'clock in the morning, and I was still able to hear Brian screaming. He was in so much pain and delirium, and he was hallucinating that horrible things were happening to him. His screams were echoing throughout the hallway. I thought, 'If I get through this, it's gonna be because of my faith in the Lord, and the man that gave me the inspiration to try -- Arne.' And I figured the combination of those two things was probably gonna get me through. So I'm lying there, hearing Brian scream, and I thought, 'I better pray.'"

"I said, 'Lord, you have given me back so much already, I know you're looking after me. I know you're helping me. So, please help Brian, because he's in so much pain, and his brain is telling him that terrible things are happening to him.' And, crazy sixteen year old, that I was, I said, 'If it's too much for you, Lord to take care of both of us right now, could you please forget about me for awhile? Take care of Brian instead, 'cause he really needs it.'"

"It was the first time that I had ever put someone else in front of me and made another person more important than me. The very next day, I could suddenly start to move my left ankle, and the day after, my left foot, and then my left leg started coming back, and within two weeks, this huge snowball of all of this movement started coming back, and it truly was a miracle. And I know this moment had something to do with it -- the moment that I actually put someone else ahead of me in importance."

“The feistiness of a sixteen-year-old -- the whole time that I was getting better, all the adults around me were saying, 'This isn't going to work.' For a time, they wanted to send psychologists in because I was denial, unable to accept the fact that I was going to be in a wheelchair for the rest of my life. And so they sent psychologists in to talk to me. And they sent in other people in wheelchairs to talk to me and tell me that life was gonna be grand in a wheelchair."

"This was at the end of my first year of high school, and I had been nearly a straight A student. They sent a tutor in to tutor me in the middle of the summer. I said, 'A tutor? It's summer.' And they said, 'You're going to rapidly fall behind if you can return to school.' This was before there was a lot of awareness about the rights of disabled people. They told me that I was going to go to a school for 'crippled children' and that I couldn't go back to a regular school. At that time, if you were in a wheelchair, you went to a special school, and you were treated different. And so I told them, 'You know what? This is all silly. I am going back to school on the first day of school because I am going to be the drum major.' They were very worried about my psychological health."

"I did go back to school on the first day. I was in a body cast, and I was pushing a wheelchair around. I was still in traction. They had to keep my neck straight to heal, so they put a metal band around my head and they screwed screws to my head and put me up to a big rack and hooked it to a body cast. You haven't lived until you've heard screws going into your skull. It sounds like torture, but I decided it wasn't gonna stop me. I went to the band camp and played the drums, and I went swimming with this contraption on. They even toilet papered me!"

"So I did indeed become the drum major of my band. And so much more."

"I've done a lot of things. As part of that wreck, I also messed up my shoulder. My doctor, a carefree guy, said , "We'll have to do surgery on your shoulder so your arm will stay in the socket." A year later, I'm riding a horse, and the horse goes into a riverbed on all these rocks. I fall off the horse and bruise my shoulder. I go to the emergency room, and they do all these x-rays, and they tell me, 'Okay, your shoulder's fine, no broken bones - but what's this staple? You've got two metal staples in your shoulder.'"

"'I do? Where did they come from?'"

"So I went back to my orthopedic surgeon and I told him I had fallen off a horse and hurt my shoulder. He said, 'What were you doing riding a horse? Are you crazy? You had a broken neck!' I said, 'I don't care about that. Why didn't you tell me you put staples in my shoulder?!'"

"I have done a lot of horseback riding, downhill skiing (which also terrified my doctor), hiking in the Himalayas, and all sorts of things -- let alone walking, which is something that people thought I'd never do again."

"I showed the doctors, and it goes right back to being master of my fate, and captain of my soul. It is about who you are, and what you feel about the powers that are around you. The powers that are around us are amazing! When we consciously tap into those powers, anything is possible."

"And sometimes all it takes is one sentence, one word of encouragement, someone believing in you, to make the connection to all that power within yourself and around yourself. And you know what? Any of us can do that same thing for someone else. A simple word of encouragement to one person-- you never know what a difference that might make to that one person."

"They came in one time and said, 'We have great news. You're gonna walk again.' I said, 'I know that.'"

"'But it's gonna be with leg braces on both legs'."

"I said, 'Drum majors can't wear leg braces.' I just kept working and working and getting stronger and stronger. Right leg doesn't need a brace. Left leg will need a full leg brace. They measured my left leg for the full leg brace, and two weeks later, when the brace was ready, my leg was so much stronger, I didn't need a full leg brace. So they measured me for a half leg brace, and I said, 'If you feel you must,' and by the time the half leg brace came two weeks later, I didn't need the half leg brace, and they said, 'Well, you will need an ankle brace.' (Yawn.)"

"I learned how to twirl, too. It's amazing what you can do if you want to do it badly enough. I was able to twirl it by using the left hand as little as possible and the right hand a lot. I practiced until I figured out a way to make it work. I also played the saxophone in a jazz band and I figured out a way to get this hand to work the keys. It worked beautifully because I wanted it badly enough. I didn't need a perfect left hand. It wasn't critical to me beyond that. I accomplished my goals.""It was all on TV and in the news. 'Girl Overcomes Doubts to Walk Again!' Doctors still shake their heads and say that they don't know how it happened."

"You make your decisions. You make the decision and if that's your destiny, you determine how to achieve it, and you find comfort in it. The big message isn't that you can go out and conquer the world - it's about being at peace with where you are in it."Music was my major interest. Music and marching were my passions. Focus the energy towards the passion! If there hadn't been the focus of the music, there would have been a different focus, but the band director inspired me, and my drive was the goal of being able to be in the band."

"But my first career was in geology. When I took a geology class, I loved it because most of the work was outdoors, and to me, it seemed logical and easy. When you have melted rock, and suddenly the rock above it is cracked open, then that melted rock will shoot out and cool -- and that's how a volcano forms. I thought, 'that makes sense.' It makes very real sense. Then the sandstones form little sediments, then heat builds up, and pressure builds up, and they become another rock. 'I get that.' Very easy and logical."

"The earth can be read like a book -- a book that's been torn, some of the pieces blown away, partially burned here and there, and all the pages shuffled. Sometimes you can see a page number and sometimes you can see a character's name. I guess it's a combination of a puzzle and a book."

"I come into teaching later in my life. But it's a choice that comes from a feeling of wanting to give back, wanting to inspire young people, and trying to make the world better in this way."

"Two years after the accident, Arne asked me an interesting question. We were on the bus going to a band competition, and he said, 'Given all the events of these last two years, do you consider yourself a fortunate or unlucky person?' "

"I was quiet for a moment. 'I find myself to be very fortunate.'"

"'I thought you'd see it that way,' he said."

We gather on the patio of Esther Isaacson's house at El Chorro Ranch on a bright April morning. There is a springtime intensity -- the sun is almost too warm, the earth is humming, but mercifully, the wind has settled. Esther has lived in this house since 1941, but perhaps to put our presence into perspective, she points out an oak tree that's at least five hundred years old.This beautiful land, located midway between Gaviota and Lompoc, belonged first to the Chumash Indians and was later a part of La Purisma Mission. It was subsequently obtained by the Santa Barbara Presidio to provide beef for the soldiers -- at this point it was called Rancho Nacionale. Later, it was renamed Rancho San Julian and was acquired by Jose de La Guerra, part of 50,000 acres which stretched from Vista del Mar to Jalama Beach. Baine Isaacson, Esther's husband, bought several hundred acres from Bill Dibblee in 1939. This was El Chorro Ranch. Two Clydesdale horses and a kerosene stove completed the picture.

Esther speaks of a man named Frank Beggs --he was of the generation of Dibblee Poett's mother -- whose father had been manager of Rancho San Julian for several years. Young Beggs went to school on horseback, and could be seen riding adeptly through the hills without a saddle. He made the acquaintance of Fernando Librado, an old Chumash who used to live in a cave near what is now Vista de las Cruces School. Fernando told him that he wanted to hitch a ride with Beggs to go to Mt. Tranquillon, an extinct volcano (on what is now the south part of Vandenberg Air Force Base.) He wished to obtain certain plants and herbs which only grew in the rich volcanic soil. Beggs agreed to take Fernando partway to the mountain, and he did so more than once. The two became friends, despite the chasm of culture and age. It is interesting to imagine these unlikely companions traveling over the hills, perhaps more alike than not.

Esther seems as rooted and right as the oak tree here. We ask her where she grew up. "I am a local yokel," she replies. Her father, Anton Ibsen, was one of the original builders of Solvang. He arrived with a group of Danes in 1910 who purchased land to establish a community where their language and customs would be preserved. The only structure there at the time was the mission.Esther was the second baby born in Solvang to a Danish family. Her childhood was wonderful. Solvang was a village where, as Esther puts it, "Everybody did everything together, and they made a great occasion of it!"

At Christmas, there would be an enormous tree with live candles. Men would stand by holding long sticks with wet rags around them just in case a branch caught fire. There was no Santa Claus, but there was candy for the kids, and Scandinavian folk dances. "It was a matter of getting together with everyone. That was the fun of it," says Esther.Esther attended Solvang School and Atterdag College, both of which have since been torn down. "I can't even prove I've been educated," she jokes.

She remembers playing "kick the can" as a child, and another game called "Alley, Alley Olsen Free". In the latter game, a ball was thrown over the schoolhouse; then one team tried to get to the other side of the school house without being caught by the other team.There was one place in town to see movies, and in those days, they were all black and white and silent. You had to be able to read the words to understand what was going on.

"I learned to read at four," Says Esther, "so by five, I was the expert. Some of the others couldn't read, so they always wanted to sit near me."

"There was a young boy who played piano for the movies. That was the only noise in the theater, except for the laughter. If the movie got very exciting, he would just forget to play! Then there would be no sound at all."

"One time, we had just seen a movie called Covered Wagon, which was about the old West, cutting down trees, clearing the land. My cousins and I were inspired by this. We decided to use my uncle's cornfield. We took our little wagons, and we brought saws, and we chopped down stalks and cut beautiful roads all through the cornfield. My uncle wasn't too happy."

Church was an important part of life in Solvang. There was also a gymnasium where people gathered and "that's where all the celebrations took place."

Esther became a schoolteacher and taught several different grades. "Some of the kids could not afford shoes," she says, and "they had to walk a long ways. There were no buses."

Several of Esther's students came from Los Olivos. There was a blacksmith who lived there whom everyone thought was a terrible man. One day he was killed in a mysterious explosion that "blew him through the roof". The cause of the explosion was never explained, and no one seemed to care. The only thing Esther remembers is that none of her Los Olivos students came to school that day.

Esther had dreams of travel. "I was never going to be a farmer's wife or a rancher's wife," she says emphatically, "That would be the living end."

Life, of course, doesn't always work out according to plan. Esther met and married Baine Isaacson in 1939. She tells an amusing story of her first experience at the ranch."The first time I came here, there had been sixty-four inches of rain. It washed out this road completely, and we had to walk very carefully across the slide. My husband wanted to show me how wonderful it would be. As we came to the gate, he said 'I bought a new Caterpillar tractor, and I'm proud of it.' And then, 'Oh, no!' All you could see was the smokestack and the seat. It had all sunk down in the water. Now it was up to me to cook the dinner, and there was that cursed kerosene stove. I didn't know how to use it. And my husband couldn't get that tractor out of the mud for several days."During World War II, the house was kept dark at night with black-out curtains and drawn shades.

"My husband had to check the beaches at night," she says. "One day, I actually saw a little submarine."

There was no telephone when the Isaacsons first moved to El Chorro. Baine finally built eight miles of line and let people hook up. Thereafter, whenever someone had a problem with their telephone, he would fix it for them. He did it as a service and never got paid. "He was a very nice man," says Esther.

Esther learned to love life at the ranch. She visibly brightens when reminiscing about the days she spent here with her husband, raising their three sons. Her youngest son, Bob, and his wife Sally, are spending the morning with us. We ask Esther if she has a favorite spot on the ranch.

"I guess it's kite hill. There's a special place for kites right up on top. It overlooks a big puddle...when it rains it fills up to make a nice lake. We used to have a kite-flying day. There'd be as many as forty-seven kites flying at one time from that hill."We linger on the image of forty-seven kites dancing in the wind. As if that weren't joyful enough, she talks of treasure hunts to which she would invite all the children. She would spend a month preparing -- digging a hole, burying a chest (but not before applying red paint here and there to look like blood), mounting old cowboy hats with arrows to trees, leaving clues all over the ranch. The kids would have the time of their lives following the clues and unearthing the treasure.

Baine loved steam engines and built four or five of them, so the ranch even had its own miniature railroad. The kids enjoyed riding around on what Bob fondly refers to as "El Chorro Railroad".

Bob brings up yet another unusual memory. When Vandenburg Air Force Base first started shooting missiles off in the 1950's, they would often blow up in the air. He recalls seeing huge green explosions at night. This was all very exciting to the kids, for whom it was a veritable fireworks show.

After Baine passed away, Esther took some time to travel. She has been to Greece, Spain, Portugal, France, Indonesia, Australia, Mexico, and Alaska. "I liked it all," she tells us. "I love people. I love strange places. People were so interesting, so friendly."But there's no place like home. Esther's love for El Chorro Ranch and the memories it holds is obvious. She wonders aloud if the children know how lucky they are to live in the country.

"It is a privilege to be here," she says. She rises from her chair, leans on her cane, and goes into the house. She returns with three boxes of popsicles.

Author's Note:The visit described above took place in the 1990s with students of Vista de Las Cruces School. I returned by myself to visit Esther about ten years later, in 2007. For a write-up of that subsequent visit, see "The Lady of El Chorro" on the Still Amazed blog portion of this website right here.

Get Ready For Change

Stephen Chiapella grew up in a Spanish-speaking household in Los Angeles, and did not speak a word of English when he started school. The colorful story of his family's adventures in Mexico and the United States is a classic California saga. It's about ethnic diversity and the need to accept and embrace change.

"I'm 75 years old but I don't feel as though I am old. If I had my way, I'd live forever. I'm here because of modern medicine - if it hadn't been for modern medicine, I think I would have died about two or three times already. But you guys will probably be living up to a hundred and fifty years old because of good medicine, good food, good environment, and especially genetics. Scientists are learning how to modify genetics and they're figuring out what makes us get old. Scientists are asking the questions and going after answers."

"I was born in Los Angeles, but I wanted to tell you about my parents, whose story is an interesting one. On my father's side, I have Scotch, Irish, French, and English; my mother's side is Spanish, French, and Austrian. My mother was born in Mexico and my father was born in New Orleans, and they met in a little mining town in northern Mexico. My mother was lucky; her father owned a big silver mine, and she lived a very privileged life. She wore French gowns. She didn't even know how to comb her hair when she first got married, because she had always been dressed by servants, and one of them would comb her hair. Her family hired peons --actually, they were slaves. That's why they had a revolution down there. Mexico had two kinds of people - the very rich, and the very poor. My mother's family was the cause of the revolution, at least in part."

"So how did it come to pass that my Spanish great-grandfather had a silver mine in Mexico, and was married to an Austrian woman in Mexico? His family probably came to Mexico around the mid-1500s, and they went north from Mexico City in the 1700's. Most of the people in my family came to the New World very far back. My great-grandfather traveled north in the 1840's to be a cattle-raiser, and he established a huge hacienda, a huge tract of land. But he had to go to Mexico City in the 1860's for business, and he got caught in an invasion of foreign troops into Mexico. These were United States troops. So he was on a stagecoach in Mexico City and a lot of people were evacuating. While we were busy fighting the Civil War, Napoleon had sent a contingent of troops over and set up an emperor. He was an Austrian, and he and his wife brought a lot of people over from Europe to be in the court."

"When the Civil War ended, the United States went down and invaded Mexico City, and drove out the Austrian emperor and his court. The French were so tied up in Europe they couldn't help, but the Europeans who had come over there began to leave. There was a big flow of people streaming out, and this young Austrian girl asked my great-grandfather to help her. He helped her by marrying her, took her to northern Mexico, and they had a daughter, who was my grandmother.""They set up camp in a little town. After kicking the French out, Mexico became self-governing, and sold land to anyone. It was blatant. My grandparents stumbled upon the silver mine and made a lot of money from it. My father came down to help run that mine in 1910, and he met their beautiful blue-eyed daughter, whom he married. Meanwhile, the country was being given away. There was a revolution and my parents were caught right in the middle of it! Pancho Villa would come in and shoot up the town, and finally they decided that it was time to get out."

"My mother was a fantastic storyteller. I don't know how truthful they were, but they were good stories. She told about the revolution in Mexico, and how Pancho Villa came by and shoot up the town. Pancho Villa wanted to marry her, but she said, 'No. I'm married.' He said, 'I don't care. You're mine from now on.' My father had to come down with guns to take her away from Pancho Villa. At least that was her story."But she really did meet him. There was a young American selling machine guns to both sides, and he got caught by revolutionaries in her town. Pancho Villa got the whole town outside and executed the American right there on the spot. That's when my dad decided to leave. It was getting out of hand. The only law was a gun."

"Prior to that, my father had been chasing bulls in Peru and he contacted yellow fever and was given up for dead. Three men with him all died, and he managed to crawl back and survive. When he got well, he set out for Mexico. He was taking a stagecoach on dirt roads in the high desert, where there are flash floods. Everything was absolutely dry, but then a huge wall of water came down. He was with eight other people in the stagecoach, and he was sitting on top because he wanted to be outside and get some air. This enormous wall of water came and tumbled the whole thing over and killed everyone but him! He led a charmed life.""This was my father - an awesome person, little guy, spindly legs, never said a swear word in his entire life; I know he knew them but he never used them. He was amazingly resilient and strong. Okay-- that was two brushes with death. Then, when things got so bad in northern Mexico that he could no longer ship the ore out, he decided he better leave, and in the short time that he made that decision, Pancho Villa came in and demanded everything - all the gold, all the ore, everything of value. Through a little diplomacy, my father got safe passage. If you were an American, you were dead, but somehow, he and my mother managed to leave. They left everything behind, but were glad to get out with their lives. All they had was the clothes on their back."

"They were put on a train and they had to sleep on the floor in the dark because bullets could go through the windows. They arrived in El Paso in 1911, but my mother didn't like it. They went to Hollywood, where my father had lived earlier. It wasn't even a town then. My grandmother had a house on Hollywood Boulevard and my dad used to shoot rabbits from the front porch. One thing I want to impress upon you is how much in my short lifetime things have changed -- dramatic change. You guys are going to have to get used to it, because things are going to change even more dramatically.""Always be careful of old people giving advice, but if I could give you any words of wisdom, it's this: be ready to accept change, rapid change. Things are going to change dramatically, whether you like it or not. Don't have the attitude, 'That isn't the way I did it yesterday.' Sure --look at the way things were done yesterday, but if someone has a better idea how to do it, latch onto it. Learn. Be ready to change."

"Anyway, back to my father in Hollywood. There were no paved roads, only dirt. My grandmother owned the first automobile in Hollywood; it was a 1911 Oldsmobile. My dad used to ride his bike to go to USC, a long ways away. He went there for one year, then transferred to the University of Arizona in the school of mines. My mother's father was English. She was born in Mexico because he, too, was over there robbing Mexico. So my father met my mother when he went down to Mexico as a mining engineer, and they got married. And eventually they moved to Los Angeles, which had once been home to my father, and that's where I was born."

"My three older sisters spoke English at home, but until I was five, I stayed with my aunt and my mother, and all they did was speak to me in Spanish, so I learned only Spanish. When I went to kindergarten, it was culture shock. I didn't know what the teacher was saying. I didn't know what Ring Around the Rosie or London Bridge was. These were not in my culture. I felt very left out. I didn't know what was going on. I immediately rejected everything about my Hispanic background that I got from my mother because that made me different.""Books changed my life. I had dyslexia. It's when you look at print, and the words are there, but they are kind of backwards, and they don't enter your brain. When I first started to read, I had this, and I couldn't enjoy reading. Then, I don't know what happened in second or third grade, but all of a sudden everything just popped into place. Now I am a compulsive reader. The first book I read was Dick Tracy. I loved it. My first hard cover book was Gulliver's Travels by Jonathan Swift. I was nine years old, when I read that, in fourth grade, and I had an epiphany. I came upon this statement: 'Nothing is large or small, other than by comparison.'"

"That was a revelation to me, because when you extend it, nothing is good or bad, other than by comparison. What is perceived is perceived only in the eye of the perceiver, and how you perceive it is based on your own experience. You are looking through your own eyes. It may not be the way it is, but it's all you know. And that's true of ideas as well as physical things."

"As I got older, I realized that I had rejected an awful lot when I abandoned my Hispanic heritage. I went to Stanford and did Hispanic studies, and I became an expert on Latin American history. I wanted to go into diplomatic corps, but somehow or other, I learned that it is a zoo. You become a little clerk down in the bottom of some Podunk town in Honduras and you slowly work your way up, and the guys with the big jobs have all the money in the first place. I got discouraged. I met my wife, and she didn't want to do this either. I worked for a music company in San Francisco selling pianos and organs; it was a fun job. Pianos were big things in the days before television."

"My family owned an entire block along Hollywood Boulevard. There were no signals or stop signs in those days. People just drove slowly and carefully. I remember watching the Santa Claus parade from the rooftop. And I remember coming to the fiesta in Santa Barbara in the 1930s. I was about eight years old, and I got totally lost. My folks couldn't find me, and I couldn't find them."

"Where I was born in L.A. is now an industrial site. Later, we moved out to West Adams, which was pretty much what California is becoming right now. There were all kinds of nationalities. My best friend was a young man named George who was Japanese. His mother made delicious rice cakes. The kid across street was Jewish. My sister's best friend was Irish. We never worried about who was Jewish, who was Irish, who was Scotch, who spoke Spanish, who spoke Japanese, who spoke Chinese at home. The only questions we asked a guy were, 'Can you play ball?' 'What kind of an arm do you have?' 'Can you hit?' 'Do you have a cute sister?'

"Los Angeles is much more of a melting pot than New York ever was. I was right in the middle of it. I still bear no prejudice. I look at everyone, and they are just people."

"Of course, this was the Depression. We were all in the same boat. Everyone was struggling just to stay alive and make ends meet. It was kinda fun."

"I volunteered in World War II right out of high school, 1944. War is scary and horrible and you want to forget it as fast as you can. I took my basic training in field artillery in Ft. Sill, Oklahoma. I was a 'foreign observer' in the Philippines- I go out in front and say, 'Hey. There are people out here we need to drop the artillery on.'

"We landed in a large southern island and fought a lot of little battles in the Philippines; it would be very intense for a couple of days, and then you do nothing. Know why young people are drafted to fight wars? Because they are fearless. They think they are immortal. My son said we should pass an international law that you have to be 65 or over to be in the armed forces. It would eliminate war. Young people become warriors because they are fearless. I was fearless."

"We had come into a town with no intelligence at all; no one could tell us what was going on -- it was a town about the size of Santa Ynez. I looked down the street; there was a sugar cane processing factory. I didn't know what was happening. We were a little foreign observer unit: a radio man, a sergeant, a telephone man. It was quiet. I just walked into town, down the middle of the street, and then I went back and went to the colonel and said, 'There's nobody there.' So they called me the liberator of the town. It was really nothing. Sheer stupidity. I walked in and found there was nobody in town."

The following interview was conducted and written up by Elise Cossart, then a 6th grade student, in 1997. Since that time, both Jo and Jane have passed away. Jane left the Ranch and moved to Santa Barbara after Jo's death in 1999, and she herself died on April 27, 2004. I remember thinking about her as I drove home that afternoon: the hills were yellow with mustard flowers, the sky was blue and clear, and the wind was sighing. It seemed to me an era had ended. - Cynthia

I woke up to a beautiful day and a knot in my stomach. Today was the day that I was going to interview Jane and Jo Wheelwright, probably the most well-known people on the Hollister Ranch. Jane moved to this ranch nearly ninety years ago, and grew up here in a house now called the Hollister House. Jo grew up on the East Coast and moved to the ranch after marrying Jane.

Before my dad and I left our house, my mom picked a huge bouquet of flowers for Jane and Jo. As we drove up the winding dirt road, I worried. A million anxious thoughts crossed my mind. What if they don't like the flowers? What if they don't want to be interviewed? We reached their driveway at last, and the knot in my stomach grew even bigger. We parked our car and walked down a ramp to their kitchen door.

My dad knocked very loudly about five times, and finally, Jane answered the door. She is a small lady, no taller than I, and was wearing a bathrobe. She let us in and led us to the living room. Jo stood when he heard us coming. He is an enormously tall man -- about six feet five inches.Jo and Jane seem to be complete opposites at first sight. Jane is rather small and reserved while Jo is quite tall and gregarious. But after talking to them awhile I realized that that they share one common interest: a love for this area.

We sat down and I gave them the flowers. Jo , who is blind, told me that he could sense that the flowers were beautiful. Then we began the interview.Jane Hollister was born in Sacramento in 1905. When she was three years old, she and her family moved to the ranch, which is located on the California coast near Point Conception. Her family began construction of the Hollister House in 1908; during its construction, they lived in what is now called the "green house". The Hollister House was finally finished in 1910.Jane didn't begin school until she was eight years old because there was no school nearby, and there were no paved roads back then. The only transportation was the train, and it took seven hours to get to Santa Barbara. Eventually, Jane went to a boarding school called the Santa Barbara Girls' School.

Jane's favorite childhood memory was when her pony arrived. Her family went down to San Augustine, where the train stopped. When Jane saw the pony coming down on the cattle chute she was very excited.

"It was a beautiful Indian pony," she recalls, "much bigger than a Shetland. It came, and there I had it, my own pony!"

Jane's brothers, Clint (her twin) and Jack, met Jo Wheelwright at Harvard and invited him to the Hollister Ranch. During his visit, Jo saw Jane on horseback and says he didn't know where Jane began and the horse ended. He thought, "Look! Some goddess is running around on earth." Then his heart skipped a beat and before he knew it, he was in love.

Out of all the places in the world, Jo and Jane chose to live at the ranch because it was, and still is, beautiful. Jo calls Jane and himself "nature freaks", and they love living out in the wilderness, as isolated as it is.

"We are very happy here with the view and the animals," Jo says, ending our interview.I thanked them, and they thanked me. We gathered our things and left. My father and I drove back down the road, closing an hour in my life and opening a chapter of memories. 

The legendary science teacher of Dunn Middle School, Marc Kummel, otherwise known as Treebeard, resembles a wizard as he strokes his white beard and reflects upon his life. An unassuming genius, he seems always to have been propelled by a profound sense of wonder and curiosity, a fierce need for autonomy, and above all, his love for music.

"I come from a musical family. My mother is an incredible musician. She can play any instrument, any song, any key, just by ear. She played six different instruments in high school. If they had the band set up and they needed a bassoon, my mother would learn to play the bassoon. But mainly she plays piano. She actually played once with Lester Young when she was in high school. She had records of Billie Holliday, Duke Ellington, Count Basie… not many white people were listening to music like that back then -- music was a lot more segregated. So I grew up listening to some of that. I took piano lessons, too. I played until seventh grade, and that's when I started playing guitar."

"I was born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1947. For awhile, we lived above a delicatessen in Racine, Wisconsin, in a neighborhood that was half Danish, half Polish. One of my earliest memories is of seeing wild asparagus growing in a field on the way to school. I picked it, brought it home, and my mother cooked it. I can also remember my dad going out on an iceboat -a little boat with skis on it and a sail. He'd take it out on Lake Michigan and try to let the wind blow him around. I didn't get to do that 'cause he used to crash. It never worked very well."

"As kids, we never fully understand what our parents are going through. My dad had been in the infantry during World War II - he actually walked all the way to Germany from France. He married my mother right away after the war, and I was born nine months later. He was going to school and working nights in a steel mill, which I can't even imagine. The first thing he tried to do when he got back from the war was to write a mystery, but it didn't get published, and he had to work. He went back to school and kind of worked towards becoming a lawyer, but he also took engineering courses. He was always an interesting person, kind of an inventor, so he got into the legal end of inventions. He worked at a firm called Case, which builds giant farm equipment. He finally made it through school and became a patent lawyer at Case, and then was offered a job at Carnation Milk in California. So my parents packed up everything they owned, withdrew their life savings of about $500, and found an apartment in Santa Monica. It was a big move."

"We lived three blocks away from the beach in Santa Monica. I became a surfer kid, and I attribute everything I am to that. It was absolutely the best way to live. We were on the beach every day. I didn't have a lot of friends in school, but when you're surfing, it doesn't matter. The thing about surfing is that we were self-contained. And once we got old enough to drive, it was great. We came up to Ventura almost every weekend. We never went to Santa Barbara. It was like the waves stopped at Rincon. Once you got past Rincon, there was nothing, but the other side of Rincon, especially Ventura, at California Street, was great. We'd get up at four in the morning Saturday and Sundays so we could be up there for sunrise, get home in the dark and fall asleep. But we were on our own. We were kids. Our own country."

"I had the run of the town when I was a kid. I could go anywhere, and I didn't have to ask anyone to take me. I walked to school, about eight or nine blocks, and I always used to walk through the alleys , where you could find neat stuff. My best find was a crank-up Victrola record player. I took it home and my dad and I fixed it up, sanded it down, refinished it, got it working and gave it to my mom for Christmas. And I played my mom's incredible jazz collection, those old 78s."

"So I lived in Santa Monica through high school, and then I went to Harvey Mudd College, which is a really good school, and a hard one to get into. When I was there, they only had a hundred and fifty people in the entire school. They offered four majors - math, chemistry, physics, or engineering. It was fine, but it was also 1965, a tumultuous year. Suddenly hippies appeared on the scene, and suddenly we were at war in Vietnam and protesting, and suddenly you could be driving your car and hearing Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles' newest songs on the radio. It was a great time to be alive. It was real exciting. But it was hard to stay focused in school. With everything going on, I became less and less interested in engineering, physics and chemistry."

"I transferred out and ended up in Santa Barbara thinking that I could study marine biology and be right on the beach so I could still go surfing. But you had to take Biology 101 or something - a full-year class of just memorizing. It was the worst class I ever had in my life, and it drove me out of biology. At the same time, I was taking a class in the history of philosophy, and it was the most interesting class I had ever taken in my life! By the end of that year, I had given up on biology and figured I was in philosophy, and stuck with it. I was there for three years, and then I took a year off, and I went to live up in the Sierras."

"I worked as a bartender in the Sierras at June Lake at a big ski resort where I got paid $30 a month, but I got room and board, a lift ticket, and a car I could drive. What else do you need? So in the fall I cut firewood, in the winter I tended bar, in the spring I went backpacking, and it was a great time. I went back to school as a grad student in philosophy and lived in Isla Vista for awhile in an old farmhouse. It was a beautiful house, but I was sleeping on the sofa, and I couldn't go to bed until everyone else did, so I moved out."

"I had an office on the top floor in Ellison Hall , so I lived in my office at UCSB for three months, and that was a pain, because the cleaning people came around after midnight to clean out the rooms, and you weren't allowed to sleep in your offices, so you had to be awake looking like you were doing schoolwork, until the janitor people came by, and as soon as the janitors were done, you could turn out the lights and go to bed. There were twenty or thirty of us in that building who were doing that. And there were stairwells in that building, the emergency stairways -- I'd be sitting there late at night playing guitar, and the echoes for playing guitar in that space were really incredible. I actually got to know people that way. I'd be on the top floor, taking a break from studying, so I'd go sit and play some blues in the stairwell, and suddenly someone three floors down would start jamming along, and we'd have these great music jams, and you didn't even know sometimes who you were playing with."

"But finally a place opened up in the mountains. It was on Kinevan Ranch, an old house with a horse corral, and somehow, we had seven different people living at this place. My room was the tack room…a tiny space with a dirt floor. I built a floor in it, and had a little porch out in front, and in that room, I had my bed, all my books, all my records and comics, a desk for writing, and a wood-burning stove that I ordered from a Sears catalog. That place was tight! But it got me up in the mountains. I loved being in the mountains, because I could go out the front door and be out in the woods.""So I lived in this little place on Kinevan Ranch with seven philosophers. It later became known as Zucchini Ranch and became kind of a hippie commune after we left. But for now I had my little tack room, and I worked really hard at philosophy, and that was when I met my wife Julie. Her VW bug got stalled, and I helped her. We've been together for thirty years. It's amazing."

"Living up in the mountains was a little like being a surfer. It was just you. No one's telling you what to do. Live with the consequences. Go out in waves too big? Deal with it. But there's nobody telling you not to. It was that way up in the mountains. It felt like our own little country. (See? There it is again.) And it still does."

"Meanwhile, I was officially writing my thesis, and teaching at the same time. But they never teach you how to teach. You spend all your time taking classes, and then all of a sudden, they say, 'You're teaching three classes, starting next week. Get ready.' You don't get any help. So, I did that for a couple of years, and then I stopped. It was time to focus on my thesis. That's when you've done all your schoolwork, and all you have to do is write a book, an original piece of work. And they test you on the book to see if you understand it and to make sure you really wrote it. And then you get a Ph.D. I was at that point. I had an idea, and I got it kind of half-finished, and I had this big milk crate full of papers - I still have it -but it just got harder and harder to sit and work on it."

"So one night I was hanging out at Cold SpringsTavern, which is right near where I used to live. During the week, it was a nice, quiet, mellow place. This particular Sunday night, I got to talking to a neat group of people, and it turned out they all worked at a place called the Outdoor School over at Cachuma church camp by Lake Cachuma. They needed a substitute, starting tomorrow, which was like, in five hours. So I said, 'Sure,' 'cause I wasn't doing anything except writing my thesis and getting unemployment - I had been teaching long enough that when that job ended, they paid me for not doing it, which was really nice. So I took a job as a substitute taking sixth grade kids on nature walks in the woods."

"Whenever someone on the staff of the Outdoor School was sick, or if they had a really huge group, I would go. That's where I got the name Treebeard. And after three years of being a substitute, I started working there full-time. So you see, I never really decided to teach. It was all just by chance. And then, one of the groups that came to the Outdoor School was Dunn Middle School, which at the time was headed by Jim Brady, someone who had, a few years before, been a philosophy student at UCSB and been in a few of my classes. Another weird little twist! Jim offered me a job teaching at Dunn."

"By now Julie and I had our two sons, so the timing was right. We were living in this little cabin with no electricity, and holes in the roof, but it was paradise. It was completely self -contained - had its own little artesian spring for its water source. We had a privy up the hill, a big garden, three goats, geese, and a Chumash painted cave just beyond the spring. It was a sacred place. But with kids in this house, it got a little hard. Julie and I started thinking about finding a new place to live."

"Everything came together by chance, a lot of big changes. My parents and I had earlier had a falling out, but we had made peace when they became grandparents, and they loaned us money so we could buy property. At the same time, I was about to take a new job at Dunn Middle School, where I'd have a new name - I used to be Treebeard, and now I'd be Marc - and basically, a new identity in a whole new world. But I'm still here at Dunn, twenty years later."

Marc is known at Dunn for his eclectic approach to science and life. He engages kids in fascinating science, computer exploration, weekly hikes into the remote reaches of Santa Barbara County, even an elective in model-making, where he and his students can be found contentedly piecing together plastic models of miniature airplanes, ships, and various other constructions. As they work, the sounds of classical music, blues, or surf guitar flow from the speakers and fill the sunlit rooms.

"More and more, I'm getting where I don't like homework.. I don't like getting it, and I'm not crazy about giving it. It has to have a real purpose. It gets in the way of too many things."

For Marc, these things include creation of a computerized data base of Santa Barbara flora, watching old black and white movies on television, and hiking - his favorite walk is a five-mile trail that starts right outside his door.

"My current state of mind? Relaxed. I'm interested in the same things now that I was twenty forty years ago - maybe it's a reawakening, or maybe I've never left them, but just out of the blue, I see that those are the things I'm still interested in. Very specifically, I'm trying to do a book on trees and shrubs, which is something Julie and I wanted to do before our kids were born. Couldn't do that and raise kids at the same time. Now our kids have moved on, and I'm doing just that. There are a few things like that. It's as if they were just interrupted, and now I've come back to them."

"There's music, of course. Music never went to second place. It's always been number one in my life. Always. Music lets you instantly connect with someone. You may have nothing else in common, never seen them before, you don't know who in the heck they are, but you can say 'Charlie Parker' and they light up. You have this incredible communication. Lately, I'm really enjoying listening to jazz and classical. If I had to choose one favorite composer, it would be Schubert. I listen to him over and over. Totally amazing. For a long time, I was listening to rock and roll. We even had a band when I was in college -we weren't very good, but we had a lot of fun. And surf music is still some of my favorite music. It's alive and well right now. There's a great show on KCSB that starts on Friday at 3 p.m., which is when freedom comes. I always listen to it as I'm going home for the weekend."

"One of the best parts of being a parent and having kids is being able to share music for a while. I used to take my kids to the Underground in Santa Barbara and the Living Room to hear their music. I remember we went to see Fishbone, one of the early ska bands - serious punk mosh scene. I had never seen anything like that. I looked up and there was my son Ewan jumping off the speaker. That was so much fun. Both of my sons are good musicians now. The high point of the year for me is the Live Oak Music Festival at the beginning of summer. Three days of music, staying up all night, playing music in the campground, you never sleep. It's just phenomenal. I come out of that three days with no sleep, tired, feet so sore from dancing I can hardly walk, takes me about a week to recover, but it's just so much fun - you spend three days playing music with strangers. Music is a common language."

"I consider myself incredibly lucky because I've gotten away with a lot of things that others don't get away with. My father had to work twenty years before he got two weeks' vacation. I can't imagine that. Two weeks over Christmas, and I just start to get relaxed, and that was his whole vacation. I get three months off to go live a whole 'nother life. And that's pretty lucky. Or it could be more than just luck. The option came along, and I took it. But no, I really think I've been lucky. Whenever I've needed something, something has come along. Maybe we're all lucky, though. Maybe the whole secret to luck is just taking it when it comes along."

"So I get to live in the mountains, drive to school, one stop sign each way, no stop lights. I think I do an honest job. I'm not ripping off anybody, and it's such a blessing to be able to say that about yourself. A lot of people can't say that."

"It's so cool when students come back to visit. So many kids drop by the middle school just to say hi. It's an incredible network of good friends. Great people. It's been almost twenty years here, and ten years before that at the Outdoor School, and a few years before that at UCSB. That's a lot of time. A lot of time in the saddle. A lot of kids going by. It's been wonderful."

"Hangin' out in Cold Spring Tavern is what got me teaching kids. So here's my advice: hang out in bars, listen to rock and roll, and something will come along."

A proud member of the Chumash tribe, Reggie Pagaling is a self-employed entrepreneur who has worked in many capacities, including archaeological consultant, and gaming commissioner for casino operations. He was born in 1954 in Santa Maria, California, attended Guadalupe High School, and moved to Sacramento in 1976, eventually returning to his local roots. He spoke to us about his Native American heritage and the lessons life has taught him.

"During late 1960s, the Native American community was becoming quite active. My mother was involved with bringing fresh water and a sewer system to the Santa Ynez reservation, to make it livable again. This was an interesting time to find out about my heritage and go to meetings and hear the elders argue about the structure of the reservation. They lacked a formal education, but they knew what was right."

"One of the things I've learned is that it is real important to know how to speak well and present yourself. When it's time to be a duck, then dress like a duck, walk like a duck, quack like a duck. When it's time to fly like an eagle, fly. I have learned live in two worlds, to cross over."

"I had an opportunity in the 1970s to see the transition to where Native Americans were going. I've been active since then in Native American programs. Some of these programs provided services to families that needed food, jobs, health care, eye care, dental care…others were to help Native Americans get education."

"I've been to reservations in the Dakotas and other places, and I've been fortunate to see where some other Native Americans live, and what they have gone through. It's been eye-opening, shocking, sometimes. I've been to one recently that still looks like a slum and a ghetto. One of my early mentors was an ordained priest, a very Christian man, who ran a health program for Native Americans on reservations throughout the state. We would drive twelve, fourteen hours together, and during that time I learned so much about trying to be a better person, about how neighborhoods work, and how to value someone else's experience in life, what they learned, what they did..."

"And I had no idea there were so many Indian people that needed so much help. I was very fortunate to have this experience with my mentor. It gave me a real understanding, not only of what it was like to be Indian, but to be better educated, to be a better person. It allowed me to fill my picture, and I understood I could be a better person myself, if I would be open and listen."

"One thing that makes me proud to be a Native American is the ability to maintain an identity with my culture. I went to a conference once where they talked about language and they said that the Chumash were extinct as far as language was concerned. So very gently, I said, 'Haku.' They said, 'What does that mean?' I said, 'Well, you list Chumash as being extinct, and Haku is a greeting in Chumash, so it's not extinct if I can still speak my language.' Is it spoken fluently? No. Is it still spoken? Yes."

"I am careful about how I approach someone else's language. I don't want to offend them. I have learned to be very careful about asking. If I am going to say something or ask for something, I need to ask if I can say it from their language. I want to show respect before I speak someone's language."

"I've learned storytelling from other storytellers, and I know songs. To both my daughters, when they were still within their mother's womb, I sang songs that I was taught by my leaders. And when they were born, I wanted a Chumash greeting song to be the first thing they heard when they came out into this world, so I sang that to them. It is a repetitive, monotone welcoming song. There is a calmness to it. I wanted them to know this is their foundation, their base. Although my wife is not Chumash, I want my children to know they are. "

"And I know how to bless in four directions, but it's hard for me to do this unless I am actually standing and grounded. It's usually in prayer, to bring myself back to the center. I try to come from a good place in my heart. You need to have spirituality and balance in your life. Which religion? It doesn't matter to me. I just want you to have choices, and I just want to make sure you never insult another's spirituality. Respect people's space, their beliefs, and their spirituality. There is no set place you need to be. I went to church on Christmas Eve. It wasn't my church, but it was a church. When I was in South Lake Tahoe a week ago, I went to a different kind of church - I walked in the forest with the snow and the quietness, talking to God one on one. That was a church to me."

"I can still walk in the hills here and feel very strong power places. Many spiritual people walk in the hills and know there are still medicine spirits there. In some of the painted caves I go to around this area, without a doubt, without a doubt, I can feel the presence of others. I have sung a song to the presence at the caves.""And there are some places I won't go, like the Santa Barbara Mission. Even from the museum, I can still feel that power from the Mission. I'm not supposed to go there. I won't. And I won't go to Fiesta Days, when they have that celebration there in front of the Mission there. I won't go to that."

"The mission system was an attempt to show the heathen Indian savages that this is the only way. The Chumash revolted against the La Purisma and Santa Ynez Missions in 1824, led by a strong leader who had grown up in the mission and realized it was wrong. But the leaders were separated from their tribes, and lack of ability to communicate with other Chumash at different missions prevented success. The mission system became, in a sense, a prison system, a way to disperse our people and separate the strong leadership from the people."

"I've heard many stories about Indian people being imprisoned in the walls in Santa Barbara. I do believe that the bodies of Indian people are buried in the missions. Personally, I won't go there. Anthropologists have had questions about this, and many suffered very bad dreams. The missions were painful places for many of the tribal people, not only Chumash, but all the tribes."

"My father came from the Philippines to this country. He said to me, 'I never want you to go back and work in the dirt.' He drove tractors and farm machines. At some point, I realized that what he was saying was he wanted me to go out and get an education. And now I work in the dirt in archeological sites, but I do it in education, and I know what I'm looking for. Big turning point."

"My brother died in Vietnam at the age of nineteen. He had not even been able to vote, and here he is, giving up his life. For what? The last image I can recall of him is when we went hunting. I watched him bring down a deer with a small rifle. I watched him running up a hill. He was of a much smaller frame than me, but he was very fast. I remember him chasing a rabbit down with a stick…"

"I had a sister who died of cirrhosis of the liver. I had realized my mortality as a young boy. I knew I was going to die. But I've learned that I can prevent hurting myself and my family by not being an alcoholic, not drinking to the point where your liver becomes bloated and extends out of your body. I had to help my sister out of a tub, and I could literally see her liver protrude from her side because of the alcoholism in her body, and then she would want another drink later that night. She died on the same day my wife came down from northern California and announced her pregnancy for our firstborn. This showed me the circle of life. As one leaves, another enters. This helped complete the circle. We are all part of one."

"The last realization, the hardest, had to do with my other brother. He was a truck driver, big semi. He had a mental breakdown on the road from Utah. He was driving through stop signs, like in a movie - you can't stop those big trucks. He came back here and was medically treated, sedated. He was given two drugs, one designed to kick you up, give you energy, then another to bring you down. You're flying high and you're crashing at the same time. Your body is never balanced. My brother eventually ended up killing himself, and there was nothing I could ever do to help him. I learned not to trust pharmaceuticals to control one's attitude and behavior."

"These epiphanies, these points of turning around in my life - each had something to do with my perspective on how I see myself, how should take care of myself. Sure, I drink wine, but not to excess. It's a matter of moderation. Balance. Understanding alternative medicine as well as western medicine. These experiences all added to all my beliefs."

"My advice? Ask questions. Never stop learning. Speak well. Read. Read a lot. Imagination will get you farther than reality will ever take you, and reading gets you there faster. If you work hard enough, everything else comes. And if you have a fear, don't let anyone else see it. The biggest fear you can overcome is fear itself. Even if the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, face it, get through it."

"I think the most important goal in life is to leave a legacy to the kids. Help people who need help. Maybe not monetarily, maybe just listening, being a friend, helping them in a way that means something special to them."

"And have a conscious sense of respect for those who came before you. Take the time to pause and reflect on what has come before, and the gifts we are given. Center yourself. Come from a good place in your heart."

A well-known landscape painter and teacher, Michael Drury grew up in Santa Barbara and has been painting professionally since 1970, when he met his mentor, Ray Strong.

"But really," he says, "I always painted, always loved to push color around. My father was an amateur painter -- a pretty good watercolor painter -- so I always had the materials around the house, although my parents thought I'd be a teacher of literature."

"When I was a kid, I had a paper route and gardening job, and when I went to put my money in the bank, I noticed that there were six big paintings on the wall behind the tellers' cages. They were by a man named Fernand Lungren. I didn't know who he was -- all I knew was that those paintings really spoke to me."

"Then in 1963, after I graduated from high school, I went to the Impressionist Museum in Paris, and I looked at the paintings there, and I knew right away that's what I wanted to do with my life."

"When I had admired the paintings in the bank as a kid, I hadn't consciously thought I could ever do that. It seemed like some sort of adult thing. But when I saw those paintings in France -- and they were little paintings -- I could actually see the way the paint was put on, and that's when I realized that someone actually did this, somebody had taken a brush and stuck it into paint and made these marks on the canvas! That's how it all started."

"Everything from that point on was about figuring out how to become not only a painter, but an open air painter -- a guy who goes out with his paint box and easel and paints right outside. So I bought a paint box in Paris and started making these horrible little paintings right then. My best friend who was traveling with me still has the first one, and he won't give it back to me, so I can't destroy it."Michael's favorite places to paint are the Gaviota Coast, Big Sur, and northern Nevada. He also enjoys painting in Ireland -- he and his wife Diane honeymooned there five years ago and have since gone back several times.

"I have painted certain places often," he says. "I can start at a place I know well and finish at home from memory, because I never use photographs. I remember the first time I painted a picture completely from memory . Larry Iwerks, an artist and friend of mine, needed a painting from me right away for a desert show. I didn't think I could do it. I went over to Ray Strong and I said Larry wants me to do this painting, and he said, 'You've been painting the desert for thirty years; you should be able to invent a painting,' and so I put this canvas up on the wall and started thinking about what I wanted to paint and I made a painting of a volcano that's about fifty miles north of Mojave, with a big cloud formation over it. That was the first time and one of the few times that I just stood in the studio with my music on and made a painting from memory.

Most of Michael's paintings are done outdoors, and he has to paint quickly before the light shifts. "Normally you paint in sunlight," he explains, "and even on a foggy day, the light changes, so really, to be consistent you only have about two hours in the morning, and a little longer in the afternoon. At noon, the shadows disappear. So at the most, I spend three hours working on a painting, and that means I'll probably come back to it the next day, although it also depends on the size of the painting. And a lot of it depends on how much I thought about the painting and how well I know the spot."

"I like oil painting the best because it has weight out of the tube. When you are pushing it around on a brush you can actually feel the paint. With watercolor, you have to be very delicate because it is really just tint. But oil paint has some stuff in it."

"Occasionally, I've done little pastels from memory. I just think to myself, 'I want to do the hill behind Agua Caliente after sunset.' And I remember how the hills become big dark shapes, and the way the road is cut. I did a whole series of those, and they were really fun. I didn't have to prove anything because I was doing a medium I don't normally use, so nobody expected anything in particular. People bought them up!"

"I enjoy getting compliments, and people come up while I'm painting, and they're mostly very nice. Once I was in a place called Upper Sardine Lake which is near the Sierra Buttes way up above Lake Tahoe. Glacier lakes and big cliffs -- really spectacular. I was there on a fall day painting this place. The guy who was the caretaker for this lodge was standing behind me, and after awhile he says, "It don't look like that to me," and he walked away. It brought me to earth. Here I was feeling pretty good about my painting, and the guy who actually lives there says it doesn't look like that."

But such moments don't discourage Michael for long. He is a man doing exactly what he loves. "I can't think of anything else I enjoy more," he declares, "It's the most fun you can ever imagine."

Michael's paintings sell from five hundred to a couple of thousand dollars, depending upon the size of the canvas. "It's weird," he muses, "because when you think of what a painting is, all it is is a flat surface with some colors pushed on it, so in terms of its physical worth, it's maybe five dollars worth of materials. But what people are responding to, hopefully, is that I'm communicating the emotion of how I feel about what I am painting -- and thirty some years of painting experience."

"I paint, I teach, and I surf. That pretty much takes care of the day. I get up way before sunrise and I go to bed at 8 o'clock at night, so I don't have any extra time."

"But you always have to look at stuff to figure out how to get better. If you're a surfer, you look at videos of surfing to get better. If you're an artist, you have to look at paintings. In terms of the subject matter of art, there's really nothing new. The visual world is unchanged from the way it was a million years ago. Light still hits trees, plants and animals the way it did all that time ago. It's just putting all those things together in a different way, in your own language -- that's how you make it art. So I look at paintings, I look at books, I go to museums. I look at stuff all the time."

"My advice would be to listen to what your heart tells you - not just your intuition - your heart will tell you what you need to know, and you really should listen to it."

"In the meantime, read! Turn off the television and read, because there is nothing better than reading a good book. The TV gives you stuff but very rarely asks anything of you. It's giving you all this imagery but it doesn't ask you anything. A book asks you to use your imagination, and imagination is like a muscle -- you have to exercise it. It's like if the surf is flat on the Ranch and you don't get out and paddle around in the summertime, then when it finally gets big, you're out of shape. The brain is just that same way, if you don't use your imagination, it becomes a limp muscle."

"So listen to your heart about what you want to do. You don't have to make any decisions now, but the one specific thing you can do is read good books. And your teacher didn't tell me to say that."

The Hope and The Drive

Arcelia Sencion's immigrant parents set an example for their family of hard work and integrity, and she has always tried to uphold those values. At the time of this interview in 2001, Arcelia was Dunn Middle School's inspirational Spanish teacher; she has since given birth to a second daughter and moved on to new endeavors.

"I was born in Los Angeles in 1970, but I have a lot of memories of going to visit Mexico. We made that trip every summer until I was about fifteen. And it wasn't only my parents and immediate siblings, it was my aunt, my cousins, my grandmother--we would all pile into my dad's orange station wagon and make this thirty-hour journey down to Mexico. I used to complain about it. We were crowded. We couldn't move. When I talk to a lot of my friends now, it turns out they had similar experiences of going back to Mexico for the holidays and during the summer. But now, as an adult, I want to make that journey with my daughter. It's important to me. My husband and I have driven to Mexico for the past five years. You get a different sense by driving, making that journey back, visiting all the towns and places."

"My parents only speak Spanish, so Spanish is my first language, my native tongue. When I began school, it was only Spanish, and I was not immersed in English until the fourth grade. It was difficult. I remember my thought process was one thing, and being able to articulate was another. Also, it was hard because my parents didn't speak English, and so they couldn't help me with the difficulty I had in learning the English language. But I felt like I learned it quickly, and I was never really behind.""Today, I think there are more resources. My generation is making a conscious effort -- we want our children to learn Spanish, we want that native tongue, but we know English as well. We can communicate with teachers, friends, and family, and have that support. When I was a child, I felt like I didn't have that support at home, and my parents didn't have that support from the teachers, so it made it difficult."

"I was the oldest, so it was my responsibility to translate. I hated it. I hated it. Even now, when we go to the supermarket, my dad still wants me to write the check for him. I say, 'Just write it in Spanish; the numbers are universal. It's fine.' He says no. So to this day, my brothers and sisters and I, whoever's around, have to write his checks, and translate any mail correspondence. It's not a big deal, but when I was younger, a part of me wondered, 'My parents don't know English. Why?' I didn't like it. "

"Now I realize my parents are heroes. Yeah, my parents. They've worked hard all their lives, and they've created inspiration in my brothers and sisters and me, and that's what keeps me motivated. My dad has been in this country since the late 1940's, and he's worked. Hard work. Physical work. He was a farm worker for many years, and then when he moved to the city, he worked in slaughterhouses. He was a butcher in the slaughterhouse, and it's very risky and dangerous. Usually he'd get home around four or 4:30, but now and then I'd come home from school at 3:15 and see his car parked there, and I'd know there was something wrong -- a cut on his hand, his face, something. So if I saw his car there early, it was not a very good feeling. Mostly, I have images of him coming home tired, dirty, sweaty, just sitting at the kitchen table, too weary to move. I ask myself, 'Where did he get this drive? To continue working like this, day in, day out, for more than thirty years?' I respect my parents greatly."

"For many years, my parents did not contemplate becoming American citizens, but then there came a time when it seemed there was growing opposition to immigrants, expressed in ways such as Proposition 187. This prompted them to revisit their status in this country and their place in it, and to think about all they had contributed. It was so hard for them. They would have long talks with us and with their family in Mexico. They feared that they were abandoning Mexico, that they were betraying their place of birth. But they decided to become United States citizens. The day they became citizens was an inspiration to me. It was a very moving event to see them taking the oath. They still feel loyal to Mexico, but this is their home. This is where they have made their lives, and where their children were born, and so it felt right to them. And although sometimes they still feel that pain, they believe that they are contributing more as citizens. They are more involved in the political processes, and they are very aware in terms of candidates and issues. In many ways, they've always been involved, but they never recognized that they were activists in their own community. Now it feels legitimate to them."

"It is amazing to me that with so few resources, my parents were able to give so much to their children. They believed in education. They wanted us to go to school, despite the fact that they didn't really know what that meant or what that looked like, or what the struggles had been. They just wanted us to do well in school. They encouraged me to go to a four-year college, although there was a little clause in that: my dad did not want me to go away. He wanted me to go to school in L.A., and that has to do with his generation and culture. But I ventured two hours away, and that was a big step for me. My father is proud of me, of all of us. To him, as long as we finished school, he feels that he has done his job. That's all that my parents have asked of us. And they supported us along the way."

"The movie Stand and Deliver had a big impact on me. I was a senior in high school, and up on that screen I saw an image about my peers, about me. It made me really sad. It was like looking at a different perspective. I didn't realize all the problems that existed, and how little support we had. I got a glimpse of racism. It was somewhat symbolic because that fall I would be going off to college, and I think it helped prepare me. I had been protected because I grew up in East L.A., where 95% of the community is Mexican. I never ventured out of those parameters. There was never a need to do that. I remember one teacher rented a bus for his economic students, and he took us to the Mann Chinese Theater, the Brea Tar Pits, Beverly Hills… we were all in awe! None of us had ever been to that part of town. My senior year was an eye opener to what I would face when I went off to college. So Stand and Deliver was an important movie to me - not just that it was about my high school, but it represents my first exposure to the differences and inequities that existed."

"I went to UCSB. It was a culture shock. I was really having difficulties in an economics class, and when I went to ask for help, the professor said, 'You all have a hard time in this class.' You all. When he said that, I started crying, and I just left. I didn't complete that course just because it was so difficult for me to see him. It was painful. And it seemed every now and then something like that would happen. It was just words. But that's why I always talk to my students about the choice of words that we make, and how words can hurt. I could not take that class, so I couldn't major in political science because I needed that course to fulfill my degree, and he was the only professor that taught that class. I could not sit down and see him. Even when I asked for help, I felt that it was not available for me, so I decided not to pursue that major. I couldn't."

"Different things that I saw at the university were painful. But I was able to channel that pain by becoming involved in El Congreso, a group that began in the 1970's during the civil rights movement, but it was college-based. I was active in that group, and at the same time I became aware of my feminist views, and I was involved in an organization called M.U.J.E.R. (Mujeres Unidas en Equida y Revolucion). So I was able to channel that pain and anger in positive ways by becoming involved, speaking to high school students, going back to my community, speaking to family and friends, and encouraging them to pursue a four-year education. But I didn't realize until this moment how much pain I still have from that. Just speaking about it…"

"I began teaching at Dunn Middle School only two years ago, but I used to work at the Santa Barbara Rape Crisis Center, and in many ways that was a teaching job, too - talking to women, providing resources, providing education. So it is very similar to teaching, which I enjoy very much. I first came to Dunn because Ben Wheeler (former director) called me and asked if I was interested in teaching there. I had stopped work at the rape crisis center and had no plans. Ben and I talked for a long time. I had not been a teacher before, but he really believed in me. He had faith in me. He must have seen something, and teaching really feels right. I'm fortunate because people have given me the opportunity to try something new that I had never done. I'm aware of that, and I'm thankful for it. I feel that you get to places by people opening doors, by people being there, and that has happened to me quite often. But you have to be willing to walk in. And I love it here. I love the students, the energy, everything that goes on. There's a sense of community, and that's important to me."

"But I still call East L.A. my home. That will never change. I drive down there every two weeks. I haven't been able to separate myself. I am thirty years old, and I have my home here, but that's still home to me. East L.A. went through its periods. In the late 1980's, when I went away to school, there was an increase in violence. I remember when I went home, I'd hear the choppers and see the lights reflected in my bedroom when I was trying to sleep. But just this past weekend, I told my sister, 'I haven't seen a helicopter in a long time.' And she said, 'No, there haven't been.' There's not a lot of crime right now. Things are getting better."

"My neighborhood feels the same to me. My parents live in the same place where I was raised. But there are a lot more people. When I was growing up, there were three houses filled with kids, and the rest were elderly couples. Now there's a new generation of new families that have moved in. It's lively, there's music all the time. You see the street vendors, the taco trucks, the ---people selling ice cream…you don't have to go to the store because people are always cruising around. My daughter loves it. She hears the ice cream truck! 'Mammy, yo quiero!' And the food. Barbecues. There's some food you can't get here. There's a lot of life and movement. Kids play in the street. It feels alive. It feels like there's a beat to it. That feels like home to me. And it is home.""What gives me joy is my daughter. She will be three in March. I look at her and I feel that she's in a very different place than I was in. I feel that even right now she's bringing upon change, even in her own little school. I feel that is important. Right now her primary language at home is Spanish, but she's learning English at school. It's amazing. She's able to connect who speaks what language, and she'll switch to the right one. Sometimes she'll ask, 'Do you speak Spanish?' And if you say, 'No,' she'll switch to her English. She'll make that effort. She's already starting to blend both languages, which is okay. Often you hear that children who know two languages are behind, and sometimes their language development is delayed, but I think she's doing wonderfully. My daughter gives me that hope and that drive to continue."

Dream A Lot

A Conversation with Kate Firestone

Kate Firestone's life is much too fascinating for one conversation. A philanthropist as well as an elegant and beautiful lady, Kate regaled us with tales of her childhood in India, her years as a ballerina in the Royal Ballet, and other grand adventures.

My name is Catherine Firestone. I was born in 1935 in India in the foothills of the Himalayas on the east end of India, but we soon moved down to Calcutta.Calcutta is very often looked on as a problem area of India because it has more people living in less space, and so much poverty, but at the same time, they are trying to come out of that and make something of themselves. It is quite impressive.My father was an Anglican minister in the Church and he was in charge of the cathedral in Calcutta. At that time, India was under the British rule -- what was known as the Raj -- so they needed people in the church to minister to the local population, but also of course to the British that were living in India.It has changed quite a bit. I went back for the first time two years ago. I hadn't been back since I left in 1945. What had happened in the meantime was the partitioning of India, so all the Europeans left and the Indians took over self-rule. Then followed quickly the partition of the Hindus and the Muslims, which was a horrendous moment in Indian history. The bloodshed was gruesome.What happened in Calcutta was that in a matter of about two months, close to three million people moved into the city. They were already overpopulated. They came in from the countryside and from other cities around India where they were living with people who were Muslims, and they moved back to Calcutta because that was Hindu.

Yes, Gandhi was the buzz of the town during this period. My father met him. My father had quite a lot to do with the viceroy in Calcutta, so he went to a meeting at which Gandhi was present. Other than the war, the partition business and self-rule were the big topics in India. I think it was quite evident that Gandhi was a man of absolutely extraordinary power and conviction. No doubt about that.

So what I saw when I went back to India two years ago was that there were layers upon layers of people living in the street. The houses that had been owned and built by the Brits used to be nice Victorian villas with gardens around them, and there was always a gate man with a turban, very elegant. His only job was to sit at the gate and let people in or not let people in, and this for a single dwelling, not like a gate man here for a hundred houses in a gated community. But every one needed jobs, so you could get a man to sit at your gate for a very small amount of money. All the English people had several servants looking after them, bearers and cooks and helpers for the children.

What happened when the three million people moved into Calcutta, was the Brits were gone, and there were these houses, and they became filled up with people. Then the gardens became filled up with people building little shacks out of canvas and tin and cardboard boxes. The bigger shacks would be built in the back, and others right down to the pavement, to the sidewalks, to the actual road, until you've got people living and sleeping in the street, some with nothing more than a piece of material which they put over themselves at night, maybe they're lying on a newspaper or something. It's incredibly hand-to-mouth living in that area.Of course it looks very, very dirty, but I have to say the Indians are very clean people and every day they go either to a public spigot and they will wash their feet, wash their hands, a wash while they're still wearing their clothes, because obviously they don't strip in the middle of the street. Or they'll go down to the Ganges, the holy river of the Hindus. It is the filthiest, most garbage-strewn body of water you could ever hope to see. There are carcasses of animals, and further up river, not in Calcutta itself - you'll find dead bodies because people get thrown in after they die. This is considered a good thing, because this is the mother Ganges; it's very holy, and as long as you get into the Ganges when you die, you will be absorbed into the great hereafter.

So they will go to the Ganges in the morning, say their prayers, they'll wash in this filthy water, they'll clean their teeth in this filthy water, and they will come out of this water - we've watched them - looking and feeling like Venus coming out of the waves. Clean and fresh and sparkling as though they had been in a really clean bath! Somehow they must have all the antibodies that fight the germs that must be rampant in those waters. They don't seem to get particularly sick. Some are very thin. You don't find many fat people there, a few who tend to ride in the rickshaws and have other people do things for them, but the majority of the population is quite trim from hard work.

Yes, I've seen the Taj Mahal. It is magical, absolutely magical. It's built of translucent marble, and quite crystalline on the outside. Because of that, as the moon goes down, when you go to it early in the morning, it just seems to float -- it seems as though it isn't even touching the ground. It's gorgeous! It was built in the 17th century by Emperor Shah Jahan as a mausoleum for his wife Mumtaz Mahal, whom he absolutely adored. She died in childbirth, and he was totally distraught. Eventually, as I understand it, he built a palace for himself across the river and locked himself in so he could see it for the rest of his days.I have three sisters and a brother. Three comprised the first half of the half dozen, then there was a gap of seven years, along came two more, and then we adopted another. So my older sister, then myself, then my brother, we all had the India experience. We were children in India, caught out there by the Second World War. Usually, when the children were old enough to go to school, they'd be shipped back to England, but in our case we couldn't, because the war was all around. But in fact it was very exciting because during the war we were in Calcutta and Calcutta became a big staging post for the Allied troops. There were two enormous encampments filled with jeeps and gun carriages and I don't know what all the stuff was, but it was quite exciting.

We left India in 1945, at the very end of the Second World War, and we went by ship, of course. We traveled for six weeks in a freighter boat that was carrying cargo -- peanuts and jute! The ship was owned by the Scottish fleet, but it was called The Chinese Prince, and we had all Chinese sailors on board. There were forty-eight passengers on a ship with twelve cabins built for first class businessmen going out from England to India. They made all these little cabins into foursomes, so my mother, my brother, my sister and I each had a bunk, and our baby sister was in a basket, and we lived in that little space. The boat had no amenities for passengers, no decks. We would go sit on top of the hatches under which were stored all the peanuts and stuff. There were submarines and German u-boats still cruising around. We had to go in blackout and have our life jackets with us at all times. My mother was told she better sleep in hers, because she wouldn't have time to put it on and get hold of the baby if there was an alarm. And sometimes the ship would send out deck charges, underwater bombs. It was an exciting journey.So we went back in 1945 to England to find an England that was quite tired. It had had war since 1939 - heavy bombing, very short rations for everybody, but still, for us it was exciting to be back to what we had always called home, though India was all we had ever known.

I wasn't quite ten, and I went to a regular school, but that school is where I met the dancing teacher who encouraged me and eventually led me to an audition at the Royal Ballet School. I went for the audition when I was twelve, but my father said, "No. You go back to school. Finish your education."

He insisted I get my high school graduation. At that time, you could do it whenever you could do it. You didn't have to wait for an age point. So I was fourteen and a half when I graduated from high school, and then went on to the ballet school when I was not quite fifteen.

What did it feel like to perform? Oh, it was very good. Very exciting. And the Royal Ballet was truly marvelous. It had become an institution. After the war, people flocked to the ballet because it was something beautiful, something with color, music and movement. Throughout the war, there were theater performances of different kinds but people attended with a great sense of stress. You never knew when the theater was going to be bombed or whatever. So finally when that was all over it was very exciting, and from the end of the war up until I got there, the company was gathering strength and becoming better and better.

Was I nervous ever? Oh, yes. Butterflies! Immense butterflies! However, it's quite a funny story, because the first time I was on the stage, we were extras for the opera, the famous grand opera at the Royal Opera House. (Extras, for those of you who don't know, are people who don't really do anything except they're there.) Then the very first time I actually went on was as a page in an opera. It was my first year in the Royal Ballet School. I'd come up from the country and I didn't know anything, but we were chosen to be pages. We had to hold a candle, and that was easy, and we had to walk, that was easy, everything was easy, right up until I had to put the prescribed wig on my head. It was a pageboy type wig, of course. At that time, however, I had two very lustrous, thick pigtails, and all the hair that went with them. I could not get it all piled under this wig!It was the dress rehearsal. We hadn't seen these wigs before, but we had to put on what they gave us. Well, I couldn't. In the end, I had my own hair showing about this much in the front, and I had pieces of my hair coming out in the back. I was so mortified. So embarrassed. The performance was going to be the following week. I had a weekend in between. I rushed down to my home in the country and I said, "I'm going to get my hair cut off." Early that Saturday morning, I was in the barbershop. All my hair right up to here, chopped off. So I could get my wig on.

The first thing I did for the ballet was also quite funny. I saw my name on the notice board and it was for The Sleeping Beauty. I rushed to the telephone to tell my parents that I was going to be on in the ballet at Covent Garden. My mother said, "Wonderful. What is it you're going to be?"

"I'm going to be a rat," I replied. That fell rather flat. But it was quite exciting because we had to pull along the wicked fairy's coach.From there on we did other things and got more used to it, but always the butterflies, always nervous.Did I ever perform for the Queen? Indeed. Several times. The heads of state from different countries would come and the Queen would put on a big gala, and we'd dance. We had a performance on the night that the Queen was crowned, a coronation piece for her, so that was quite exciting.

And of course there were the two American tours that were very exciting. I went to America and performed at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York. Also, we were doing a television performance of a short ballet, and after that, we came onto the Ed Sullivan Show! We just lined up and he interviewed the ballerina that was with us. We also did a full-length ballet on television for CBS. We did Cinderella. That was fun.We toured. On one tour, the second one, we toured for four months and went to forty-eight cities throughout the United States. We'd go for two nights and move on. I would escape whenever I had time. I always loved to see the art galleries. I'd go bustling off to whatever the art gallery of the city was. And sometimes as a group we'd go off and take a side tour if we had a day off.One thing I absolutely refused to do, I thought, was marry an American. And where do you suppose I met Brooks, my American husband? At the stage door of the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. He was with two friends and they wanted to meet some dancers, and there we were. It was a little confusing. On the one hand, I somehow knew on sight that he would be the man I would marry. But I was not interested in being married at that point. I had a career, so I brushed him off. He also seemed to have that idea.

I came back to America two years later on another tour, and there he was again. And so it worked out.

Sometimes there were tours in America where you'd have Saturday performances and Sunday performances, and you'd have a matinee on each day, so you'd have four performances, and they were all Swan Lake in some places, so you'd have two acts of being a swan in each show, because the second act was swans and the fourth act was swans. So by the time you came around to your eighth act of being a swan on Sunday evening, you'd had enough. But it was fun.

One's feet do hurt. There's no getting around that. Do you know about that? Are you a dancer too? Well, let me share my misery with you. My major problem used to be strains and sprains. I have very loose joints so I could very quickly sprain or strain if I didn't go up on my foot in the right direction exactly. I could pull it and strain it. I didn't break things. My toes are actually not too bad. They seemed to work out okay; they got hardened. But my ankles are what would give me trouble. It's a very unnatural situation to be in.

And there were some funny times. One time I was getting ready down in the dressing room. The ballet on stage was all about white sylph-y creatures with very white faces and white dresses all dancing around in the moonlight. I used to do a solo in that, but I would share it, so one night I would do it and another night somebody else would. On this particular night, I wasn't doing my solo. I was down in the dressing room getting ready for a Spanish ballet, so I was putting on my wet brown, very tan. And the music starts out and all of a sudden a voice comes over the loud speaker: "We are one sylph short. We need a sylph. Send up a sylph."

And I'm the only one in the dressing room who knows this ballet.Two friends rushed at me, started taking off the brown, patting on the white powder, and fixing my hair. I got my tights and shoes and dress on, and onto the stage I went. However, the face was still a little ruddy to be a pure sylph. The others on the stage had no idea that somebody was missing, at least most of them didn't. I appear on the stage. Nobody has told me, and nobody seems to know who I am replacing, so I don't know where in the stage groupings I'm supposed to be. I have to figure it out. So I'm floating around and I find someone and I kind of go up to her as though I'm going to go into the pose, and she looks at me in horror. "Not here!" Nobody wanted me. So funny!

Various things happen like that. I was there when Margot Fonteyn fell flat on her butt. That was a big gasp. She said a couple of words that she probably didn't want reported.

We had to practice every day. Except Sundays, or if we were dancing on Sundays, we'd have a different day off. Every day we would have a class for an hour and a half in the morning and follow that up with either a rehearsal or we'd work on a piece, or whatever. If we were dancing at night, we'd rehears and practice probably from about nine o'clock to about two, and then we'd have a break, go to the theater, do another warm-up before the show. If we didn't have a show, we'd work all day.

We were like a family, no question. And it was a very different experience from what you sometimes hear in other companies because there was no jealousy, no back biting, no people trying to stab each other. It was very cooperative and supportive.The friendships continue. I am about to go and stay with my best friend with whom I shared hotel rooms and everything. She has a house in Antigua in the British West Indies. She lives in London and she's a very celebrated person now. Lady Anya Sainsbury.

And I've kept in touch with several others. Tomorrow I'm going to go see a man who is also very celebrated and was a dancer with me. He lives in America now, down in Agora; he is having a celebration and a ballet studio is being dedicated to him. His name is Stanley Holden.

All that was great fun and very different from where we have ended up now. I was living in London, I met this American man, got married in England, came to live in America.Once I stopped dancing and got married, my life changed in so many ways. I did some directing of ballet, some teaching, but I was no longer performing. I made that decision. It was a hard decision in a way, and yet in a way I was quite clear about it in my own mind.After we were married, we were transferred to Italy with the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company. I adored Italy. Back when I was dancing, we had gone on one tour where we danced at the Paris Opera House, the La Scala in Milan, and the Rome Opera House. It was the most amazing experience. That's when I fell in love with Italy. And now, we were able to live in Rome. Then we were transferred from Italy to London, which wasn't too shabby either. We were there for five years and during that time I did quite a lot of fund-raising and things like that for the ballet.

Heroes? I looked up to and adored Margot Fonteyn because she was just such a wonderful person.Another person I admired was Kathleen Ferrier. You may not have heard of her, but she was an opera singer who started as a telephone operator. She was persuaded by someone in her office to go in for a competition. She had this great contralto voice, a mid-range voice. Anyway, she ended up being one of the foremost singers of her time, an absolutely incredible voice. Then she got cancer. She was singing Orpheus at Covent Garden in 1953. Just beautiful! You could see her in the rehearsals, she would sort of limp, but she would sing like an absolute angel. The very last performance that she sang, we knew she was dying. You could tell. The whole audience could tell. And she didn't quite finish the performance. But she was just extraordinary woman. Such guts.

Heroes of right now? I might have to come back to that because my mind is focused on the past.And haven't even got to the wine era yet. It's been very fortunate. I could never have dreamed that we would end up in the Santa Ynez Valley with a winery. That's also fascinating because we were in London, and my husband was working for the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company and he realized it wasn't right for him. He's a person of too many of his own ideas. He gets very enthusiastic and excited about things, and he sees down the road - he's a person of vision. And they didn't want that in the tire and rubber company, so he was always up against a brick wall with them. He gave them all kinds of ideas that they turned down only to find that those were what they actually should have done. He decided to do something on his own and came over to America again, obviously to California since that was home, and started looking around. His father had bought land here in Santa Ynez, and grapes were the big thing at that particular moment in 1972. So his father had decided he would like to plant grapes, and Brooks said "I think you'd be better off making wine, and not just growing grapes."

And so we built the first winery in this valley. People at that time thought we were absolutely barking mad!

I'm now on the Board of Directors of an organization called Direct Relief. It's a fabulous organization. We collect medical supplies either from drug companies or hospitals that are upgrading -- things like wheelchairs, dental chairs, beds, all the kinds of things that have to do with medical needs. And we receive a lot of medicines from pharmaceutical companies. We package it all, have it ready, and if there's an earthquake somewhere, like in Mexico yesterday - they tell us precisely what they need. For example, during the big earthquake in India a couple of years ago, they wanted painkillers so people who were pinned under great concrete blocks could last until someone could lift these concrete blocks off them. We send supplies to clinics around the world, to keep them working. There are native doctors who go get their training in Europe and go back to practice and help people, but there's no money for medical supplies. So we give them the means to practice in their own country.I love this work because it's so immediate. You see boxes of supplies all ready to go with names on them like Rwanda. Our overhead is less than 2% of what we collect, so 98cents of every dollar goes directly to the people. When I went to India, we went to a clinic, and you could see what we've been doing. We have a contact so the stuff we send doesn't get scooped up for the black market. It's a great organization.

My advice? Dream a lot. Know that nothing is impossible. There's an awful lot of luck, but a lot of what happens is what you can envision. And I think one of the things I would say is be adaptable. Stay flexible, and be ready for what comes down the path. Don't be afraid of making changes and changing direction. Look at it carefully, of course, but there are so many different turnings in life, and I'm here to tell you that only makes it more wonderful.

Bruce Edkins Macomber, affectionately known as Doc, is a living legend at Dunn School. Born in Illinois on August 22, 1930, Doc grew up during World War II and discovered a love of learning early on. He became a geologist and worked for several years with the Shell Oil Company. Fortunately for all of us, Doc found his true calling and became a teacher in the early 1970s. Doc's life and the history of Dunn School have been intertwined for three decades. Doc arrived for this interview carrying scrapbooks of photos and clippings to share with the students.

I was born in Evanston, Illinois and lived most of my life until college in a town called Winnetka.

I went to a public high school, and then I went to Princeton, and after that, I got a master's degree at Northwestern, and I got my last degree at Rutgers -- always in the subject of geology. After getting my doctorate, I spent eleven years with the Shell Oil Company as a production geologist.I went out in old oil fields to find new places to put wells and get more oil out of the ground. After eleven years of that, I decided I wanted to try teaching, and so I came to Southern California.

My first year of teaching, I taught at the Howard School in Montecito, and after one year there, I heard that Bill Webb was looking for a math tutor at Dunn to go with his learning skills program, which was the first learning skills program in Southern California. Mrs. Roome started the reading and writing side of the program and they realized they needed someone to teach math, too, so I became a math tutor. Next year, the science teacher quit, so I got that job teaching chemistry and physics. I did that until I retired, which was about 1996.

I started at Dunn in the school year of 1974-75. The school was very different then than it is now, and the difference is due to the efforts of an enormous number of people. It's very impressive to realize what human effort it takes to change a small school or a small business. I think one of the nicest things about my teaching career has been watching Dunn grow from this little converted farm with dirt roads to what it is today. There was one soccer field where the old grandstand used to be - I remember there was one grounds keeper who worked all the time trying to fill in gopher holes. Then several headmasters went by, and when Ed Simmons became headmaster, he began to raise money, and the first thing he did was build a new science lab, and that was a real surprise for me. Up until then, I taught in an old Quonset hut from Vandenberg Air Force Base that Tony Dunn had bought to use as a science building. He had two of them, one for biology, and the other for physical sciences, and I figured that'd be where I'd spend my career.

It was dirty. Every day at exactly the same time, a garbage truck would come by the entrance to my labs, and the door was always open for ventilation, and all these clouds of dust would come in. It was always very dusty and dirty. Usually when we were having meals in the dining hall, a huge truck would roll by and then all this dust would come in. It was dust all the time.

One thing about the school's growth has been the effort to cover all that dirt with grass. You might take that grass for granted nowadays, but to put all those grassy fields in there, it takes an awful lot of work on the part of more than one fellow. I suppose Mike has five or six men working with him and they work on keeping the place beautiful all the time. That's what all the alumni remark about the first time when they come back. "Boy, has this place changed!

"I got my nickname "Doc" from Ed Simmons, who was headmaster here for about ten years in the late 1970s and 1980s. It was because I have a doctorate degree in geology. I never had a nickname before in my life and he started calling me that in assembly, and the students picked up on it. I've been Doc ever since. It certainly is easier than pronouncing my last name.

The main reason I retired from teaching was - well, I was too old to continue teaching. For one thing, my hearing was beginning to go, and I now have hearing aids. But they still needed someone to drive the buses, so I drive the two buses now. And even there, we're getting bigger, because we have an assistant bus driver now. I hope we never have to have more than that! Driving the buses is a lot of fun. Beautiful countryside…

And one story that I've written about for the Dunn Journal is on the subject of team screaming. It involves girls. What happened was that Midland girls came down here for the first of two games for the Munger cup. And they beat our JV and tied our Varsity. And apparently they hadn't had a terribly good season, so that got them very excited. Well, when they have a game down there, they usually ask me to come up with a big bus and bring their teams down, 'cause they only have vans and they'd have to do a shuttle, and so I brought them down. They piled aboard all excited, and when they got to the driveway, they said, "Doc, please beep the horn."

I'd done that before - it's the same tradition we have here, beating the horn when you have a victory. So I got to the Midland driveway and started beeping the horn. It was cold outside. All the windows of the bus were shut. And these thirty-five girls swelled up their chests and let out the loudest noise I have ever heard.

When I was in the Navy, after my first four years of college, my position in a combat drill was right next to a pair of 40 millimeter anti-aircraft guns, automatic machine cannons. That noise is incredible if you have to stand next to it. The gunners all wear ear plugs. I figure that's where my hearing got damaged the first time.

Anyway, here I am driving along the Midland driveway, and they let out this unbelievable team scream. The windows are all closed, and so the sound is confined, and I can't take my hands off the steering wheel to turn off my hearing aids. They kept it up until we crossed the little bridge. The next day my ears were still ringing.

So this last game on Wednesday, I told the Dunn girls, "If you guys win, as we come back, you can see if you can scream louder than the Midland girls did." Well, they didn't win, but they tied, which meant that we keep the Munger cup. And so when we got behind the gym up here I started beeping the horn, and they made just as much noise as the Midland girls, but they kept it up longer. So they were really kind of the winners of the team-screaming contest.

The name of the trophy is the Munger cup, and it was given by our headmaster Jim Munger. For that game, his parents were there. Jim grew up on the Midland campus and the two schools are really tied quite closely together. His father and mother, who were headmaster and headmistress when I first came to teach here, were there for this game. When the game was about to start, the Midland girls lined up in a row, and all thirty of them gave Mrs. Munger a big hug and a kiss on her cheek. It's not something you see at an ordinary high school soccer game!

So that's the other side of my life. Driving the buses. It really is fun. In the old days, I had to sit at a game after driving the kids to the opposing school, and a lot of the time I didn't watch the game because I had a stack of lab notebooks this high that I was scoring. So there I'd be correcting these with all this yelling going on. Now I don't have to do that. I sit there and enjoy the game.When I first started at Dunn, we had about twenty day girls and a few day boys, and about ninety boarding boys. We were just a little larger than Midland, not much. There's been quite an expansion with the dormitories built, and now we have boarding girls. I think that the quality of the students at Dunn improved as the school got bigger and started looking better.

One reason we wanted girls is because we were missing out on half of the good minds, and there were some boys who wouldn't come to a school without girls. And the boys mainly worked on their pecking order all the time. It was very aggravating. There was a certain amount of hazing. They'd wake someone in the middle of the night, spray shaving cream all over him, throw him into the swimming pool. If you reacted positively, you were okay. If you resisted or told, the seniors would make life miserable for you. A lot of that element.

When the girls came, the boys looked around and concentrated on making points with girls instead of being the big man in the pecking order. It always reminds me of fighting bulls. The steers calm the bulls down. So after we got some money to build girls' dorm, it became much more pleasant to teach here.

I do remember students in the earlier days as being a little tougher, maybe because the conditions were much rougher, so much dirt and dust. The fields were not as nice. And the food in the dining hall was very plain. Pam has worked miracles! One year we had a guy who fried everything and wasn't even very good at that. Mr. Simmons loved ice cream, so every night we had ice cream in the dining hall.I come in the morning with some kids from Santa Maria. Then I have all day long. I live in Lompoc, and I used to go back and have lunch with my wife, but she got very busy selling houses, and it was kind of tiring to drive back and forth, so I started staying here, and one year I tutored a couple of kids who were being home-schooled by their parents. I tutored them in chemistry. We did the lab exercises right on the kitchen table. I stopped doing that when they moved on.

I enjoy walking. I go back and forth to Los Olivos by the back road, Park Avenue, or I do the circle. In high school I was a distance runner. I ran cross-country and track.. Eventually I started to get a pain in my hips. I stopped running, but I kept up walking. You have to walk pretty fast, not just a stroll. It beats running on a treadmill in your garage.

And in the last several years, I've been putting together a history of the school. It really involves gathering all the papers - the journals, the student newspapers, the photographs that are left over after the making of the yearbook.I've got several places marked off here about the middle school. For instance, in winter of 1979, there was an article - Ed Simmons invited anybody in the valley who had middle school age children who were interested to come to a meeting and they would talk about what parents expected in a school. So this little article is about the first step in the building of the middle school.

And here's a picture of house coming up a driveway. It became the third building in the middle school. The caption describes it as "Old Man Block's former home that stood at Mission Drive and Atterdag in Solvang since 1912."

At first it was a faculty home. Don Daves, the history teacher, lived in it his first year. Then we got some more faculty homes and the middle school was expanding and needed more room.I have a similar picture of the music building coming up the same driveway, missing its bell tower, 'cause that had to be taken off to get under the telephone wires.

This picture is Mr. Simmons addressing the student body of the first middle school, and here is the interior of the first building. I'm pretty sure this is the building we are in right now. I'm not sure you could recognize it now. This was twenty-two years ago.Here - this is what Dunn Middle School looked like. There were two buildings -- the office, and the one we're in.

Look. There are the swings. And here they are having a Roman Festival. Bicycling trips were very popular, also.

And this happens to be a picture of my own wedding. My wife and I got married outdoors at an Arab horse ranch in Santa Ynez.

Anyway, that's what I do. I'm taking an awful lot of time with this, but I just wanted to show you what I'm doing as school historian so alumni can come back, thumb through this, and see what it was like. What was frustrating at the beginning was that the school yearbooks were collections of photographs, and some were very good, but if you wanted to know who was in the photo, it was very difficult to find out. There were no captions. So now there are boxes of photographs, and I take the yearbook, and the class list, and sometimes I consult with teachers and try to figure out who the people are. It's like piecing together a story.

For my own education, I went to public schools, and by some quirk of fortune, I grew up in a community that really wanted the best education they could get for their children, so we had schools that were always warm in the wintertime, with excellent teachers, good books. I lived in a place where I could walk to my grade school and the junior high and the high school, all kind of a circle not far from where I lived. It was near Chicago, and sometimes the snow was kind of deep, but it was fun. I didn't go away to school until I finished high school and then I went to college.

There were differences, of course. I think you would have laughed at the clothes we wore. We dressed up a little more. Not with coat and tie, but in lower grades we always wore shorts until we were forced by the cold to put on longer pants. When I first started school, it was the era when boys wore knickers, and then you had heavy socks that covered your calves. But that soon passed, and we got to blue jeans. In high school the boys wore lumberjack shirts and khaki trousers or blue jeans, and the girls - it was the era in which they wore sweaters, skirts, and bobby sox with loafers, The girls wore loafers, and you put a penny or a dime in your loafer. As for the teaching, you would probably think it was a little more like lecturing. But all teachers love to talk. They need brakes to slow themselves down.

The reason I am here now is probably because of a woman named Louise Mohr. She was my advisor when I was your age. Like most female teachers in those days, she was not married. There was nothing in the school regulations that said they could not marry, but it was something most of them never got around to. Anyway, back to Louise Mohr - I took a home economics course in the 7th grade. You made brownies and learned to sew. But my cousin and kind of sparked off each other and I didn't behave very well, so I had to be moved. Miss Mohr said, " I know just where you're gonna go. You're going into my public speaking class."

It gave me the chills to think about it. To stand up and give a talk in the seventh grade! For the last half of the year, I took this public speaking class, and it was a sweat every time I stood up to talk , but at the end of it, I had shown enough progress that she said, "Okay. There's no second year of public speaking, but I want you to be in my play."

I didn't enjoy this very much at the beginning, but once I got my lines memorized and we began to act, it was a lot of fun. And I always think that taking that public speaking class and being in that play - later in high school, I was in a Gilbert & Sullivan operetta - may have had a lot to do with my becoming a teacher later on.

I was in school during World War II. My older brother fought in the war. He got killed. I don't think anyone at home can really claim to have suffered during World War II unless they lost somebody. When my brother got killed, it was terrible. I don't think my parents ever really got over it. They lived for a long time after that, but they never got over it.

But until that time, the war at home basically meant that my dad had to do with less gasoline in his car. You had a ration card that was stuck to the window of your car and you presented that every time you went to get gas. Our diet was circumscribed a little bit. I happened to be a banana lover. I remember when my older brother graduated from junior high school, the family took him down to the drug store and bought him a banana split. Well, when my turn came, they took me down there, too, and woe is me, there were no bananas. The bananas all came from Central America, and German submarines had sunk all the banana boats, and so there were no bananas. We did without 'em. And we didn't eat quite as much meat, either.

It wasn't until 1949 - four years after the end of World War II - that the English gave up meat rationing and could eat as much as they wanted. The English really suffered. Great deprivations. But I don't think Americans really did. There were no bombing raids here. The Germans tried to land spies on our East coast but never succeeded. The spies were caught right away. And a Japanese submarine came up at California and scared everyone to death. In fact, a friend of mine had neighbors who moved from California back to the Midwest because they were so scared of the Japanese army landing on the Pacific coast. The Japanese had no plans to do that. Once they had bombed our fleet, they wanted the war to go away so they could enjoy their empire, but we didn't let them. So the Japanese subs scared Californians, put a leak into a couple of oil tanks, and that was it. I don't think we underwent any serious deprivation.My brother was in Europe, in Patton's third army. It was terribly sad because he had survived the Battle of the Bulge and the campaign just before that, with Patton's army, and then I looked it up in the 87th Infantry Division record, and it showed that he was the last man in his battalion to get killed. Very soon after he got killed, the German army fell apart, and it was just a matter of getting into trucks and driving down the road in occupied Germany. He was the last man in his company even to be injured. He had survived an awful lot.

But discussion of war's impact would be incomplete without some mention of the way it changed the role of women. In the 1930's, our family included from two to five domestics, most of them young women for whom life on the family farm had become isolated and unappealing. They weren't paid much, but the got room and board while biding their time for better jobs and enjoying the social life of a town not far from Chicago. When war came, they quickly departed to jobs in factories or enlisted in the WACS or become nurses, and my mother found herself having to do much of the work of running a household. (Of course, I was old enough to help. My job was to fill the stoking machine in the basement with coal twice a day to keep the house warm.) At any rate, the war showed women they could do men's work, and they have never looked back.

Because of my older brother's tragedy, my father made me take ROTC when I went to Princeton. The Navy would pay me a small salary and you take one course a semester in Naval science or Naval engineering, you took a midshipmen cruise, then after you graduated, you were commissioned as an ensign in the US Navy and you were assigned for two years to a ship or shore station. Then you were free to continue in the Navy or leave the service in the reserve. I did my two years during the Korean war, a war that was fought mainly by the Army, and the Air Force to a lesser extent. But the soldiers are the guys that had to fight the Koreans and later the Chinese. And it was just as brutal as any war ever fought. But I think unlike Vietnam, we all believed it was the right thing to do. We were quite patriotic. World War II was only a few years back. The North Koreans had invaded South Korea and it looked like a giant beating up on some poor fellow. The government felt it was a ploy on the part of Stalin and his Communist regime to extend the Communist system all over the world. We felt we had to stop it.

Anyway, I was in Navy for two years. The Navy was not really involved in combat. The closest I got was when we were made the station ship for a town on the West coast of Korea. Soon after our ship came back from the Far East, I was sent back to the reserves, no longer part of the Navy. But the Navy was a very good place to be in that war, cause you got close to what was happening, but you didn't have to participate. We went through all kinds of exercises, but fortunately we never had to do any of it in actual combat. It was always exciting, riding in little boats to the beach, but not getting shot at.

I know that in growing up myself I was very shy and not a particularly good athlete, one of these bookish types. I always felt a little inferior because of that. You are bound to be hit by disappointment at one time or another. But the memories of the bad times begin to fade, and what sticks in your memory are the good times. Your problems look monstrous when you're growing up, but you look back and wonder why you were so upset. It's educational, or a mild ripple in your lifetime.Talk to people about something that's worrying you. That's one of the greatest problems with boys. Girls do like to talk. They settle problems by talking. Boys tend to settle things physically or put things away without telling people - they sort of gunnysack things. Don't gunnysack. Talk to your friend first, or tell a teacher.

Come and visit. I'm in the library almost every day. Come and ask questions about school history. I'd be happy to see you.

The vibrant and lovely Holly Delaney is a familiar face in the Santa Ynez Valley. She owns and manages two popular businesses in Solvang: Bellagio, a chic women's apparel store, and Back Door, the only real surf shop for miles. But Holly is more than just a savvy entrepreneur. She is a caring neighbor who has mentored dozens of young people, organized surf contests and snowboard excursions for local kids, and worked tirelessly for seven years to help turn the dream of a community skate park into a reality.

I was born in San Diego on December 10, 1961. I lived on Balboa Island in Newport Beach for five years and then we moved to Back Bay in Newport Beach until I was twenty-one. I got married, lived in Orange Park Acres for seven years, and moved to the Santa Ynez Valley in 1990.One of my earliest memories is living on Balboa Island and figuring out that if you started in one place and kept going, you ended up where you started. I was just a little kid, but when I figured it out, I took off. I walked the entire circumference of the island, on the sand and underneath the piers, and it gave me such a sense of independence. I loved that time period. There was a sense of safety back then that we've lost today. We used to play hide and seek all night long. Now there's more fear, and the sadness of it is that it's shut down some freedom.

I was lucky enough to be raised with horses. If I needed to go and think, I'd go riding. There were a bunch of trails, and I'd ride around Back Bay and whatever was bothering me that would pretty much cure it.

But as the saying goes, happiness is a state of mind, not a point of destiny. I've always looked at life as: "I am a happy person and I'll make this day great regardless of what is happening…or at least I'll do my best."

My dad inspired me. He was always a "can do" kind of guy. From the time I was five until I turned twenty-one we lived on half an acre near the Back Bay. There were wild ducks, six horses, dogs, chickens, a green house, and tree forts… Dad was an early riser, and I loved waking up in the morning because there was always so much going on. I was out there with him catching chickens before eight o'clock. I had stalls to clean before I went to school And he grew orchids: he taught me how to take the orchids and split them, and put them into new pots. It was all fun for me. No problem. I was always the head pilot.I was very athletic. I rode horses, played volleyball, and I high jumped in track and field. When I was in sixth grade, I jumped 4'11". Someone told me that was a world record, which got me real inspired.

I used to watch the Olympics and read profiles about successful athletes and how they did it, what they ate, and what their exercise regimen was. Going to the Olympics was always a dream for me.

From 1983 to 1990, I worked for a surf and ski shop in Corona del Mar called Hobie Sports. I was a buyer, so I got to know all those reps - they were friends. A rep is somebody who brings in their line of clothing, like Volcom, Quicksilver, Roxie; they bring in all their clothes and I choose what we want in the store, they write down the order and ship it. When I moved out to the Santa Ynez Valley we found the Bellagio store, and I asked the owner if I could buy her fixtures and her inventory. It was upper end ladies' clothing, so we put that in one half and then in the other half we put in guys' stuff. In 1997, we moved downstairs and across the street. Bellagio was in the front and we called the back part Bellagio Beach.

One of the great days in my life was when a bunch of my friends and a couple of kids who worked for me suggested that we put on a surf contest. I hadn't been to many surf contests. I didn't even know how to surf; I would play volleyball on the beach. But I always sold the clothes, and I always had a couple of wetsuits, and we carried a box of wax, so the kids encouraged me to put on a surf contest. Down in Orange County there are tons of them but this was unusual up here. All my reps went crazy and started to give me stuff to give away as prizes. Suddenly I had this room full of hats, t-shirts, bags, and all kinds things.

So we put on a surf contest. I thought maybe twenty people would show up. A hundred and fifty people showed up! It was sunny, and there were perfect waves, and it was just the ideal day for a surf contest.As a result of that contest, I said I would sponsor five guys on a surf team. Now we had a surf team. One of the guys on the surf team was Miles Wallace, and I hired him to work in the store as a manager. That was in May. Around September, he said, "Can't we open up a real surf shop? All my friends think I work for a chick shop, cause it's Bellagio."

Well, there was a 1200 square foot space available right across the way, so we moved in there and started the Back Door Board shop.Getting the skateboard park? It was one of the most momentous things in my life. It was really hard, but it wasn't hard going into it. There just wasn't enough for kids to do around here or in downtown Solvang, and that is a necessary thing. There's this great saying: How do you eat an elephant? You eat it one bite at a time. When we first tackled it, I just figured it might take time, but I also knew I had the longevity to continue it; I wasn't going anywhere. I didn't know it was going to take as long as it did, but I was committed for the long haul. It took seven years. I went to seventeen city council meetings and we raised over $400,000. You just keep knocking on doors and get through it somehow.

The big thing in my life is God. I really believe in Jesus Christ. I really believe you should "Love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind and soul" and "Love your neighbor as yourself."

So I took that basic thing: how can I love my neighbor? What can I do? The "neighbors" that I was associating with happened to be the kids who came through my store. I would hire kids, work with kids, and talk to kids. I was also dealing with the parents of kids. The constant cry was that there was nothing for these kids to do.

There was open rollerblading in Solvang at one time. Anyone could rollerblade anywhere, and at night the streets got crazy. One girl went through a plate glass window downtown. The city officials went nuts and closed it all down. First it was no skating in Solvang proper. Then it turned out there was no skating in the whole valley. Can you imagine? There was no legal place to go skateboarding. It was ridiculous. Meanwhile skateboarding and BMXing and all these cool individual sports were starting to happen all over the place. The kids were crying for it here. They were being shown this stuff on the media -- look what's going on out here -- and in our own valley there was no place to skate legally. So it was a worthy fight. Okay, there are other things, such as freedom for your country, that are REALLY worthy, so maybe the skateboard park for Solvang isn't the most important thing of all, but I found something I could do. How can I love my neighbor? How can I love my community? I ask around and see what people want.

And bring enthusiasm. Bring enthusiasm.But you don't do it alone. Wise men seek wisdom. Choose a "board of directors" for your life - some people who are older and smarter. Bring the best people you can find to come into your life. You are what you consume. If you consume knowledge from people who have no enthusiasm, who are depressing, who are sad, who are not taking care of their bodies, well, that's what you're gonna start becoming. Hang out with the people who are wiser and smarter and can help you get something done. That's what YOU will become. Be a sponge for knowledge; that's really smart. And remember that nothing that is hugely important is accomplished alone.

But you have to keep going and have faith that God will help you. You can learn from your mistakes and failures too. A knock down is not always a bad thing. You see that that isn't necessarily the way to go and you find another way. One bite at a time…It was that way with the skateboard park. The city wouldn't do it, so we said, "Let's find a nonprofit organization."

All of a sudden we met this whole group of people who were willing to help us with money. The Chumash gave us $50,000; the Elks gave us $100,000…and as long as we didn't go through the city and it wasn't a public works project, we were exempt from a lot of expensive requirements. At one point we ended up giving money back to Gail Marshall so we could stay private. So that was a whole year of my life, getting knocked down, hearing no, and just chipping away.I love to go to the skatepark. That's the best part, especially watching someone whose really good, like Glen Ditmar. He's 38 now, and one of the most insane skaters. He's been with me all along. We didn't just want a rinky-dink skate park. In fact, if we'd put it in seven years ago, it would have been a mediocre place. I think God made us wait. By having to wait, the building people got a little braver, and the design became deeper, steeper. Beginners can stay at the bottom and practice, and as you get good, you start going higher. I didn't realize that because I wasn't that much of a skater, but now I know that beginners and advanced skaters can be in the same park if it's a good park. One of the biggest joys is to go there and watch people skating.

My hero? A hero can also be a mentor. My number one hero is Jesus Christ. I took it upon myself to figure out what God meant to me personally. I spent a lot of time reading the Bible and reading other religious books, and trying hard to figure out who is this Jesus Christ guy. I have to say that's number one for me.

But then there are the people that God put in my life. People like Cynthia, teachers who do what she does -- to me, that's the coolest thing. I can't even tell you. I was at another school recently and the kids seemed sad, and bored, and depressed, and just looking out the window…I felt so sad. You guys are looking at me. You have a great attitude. You don't even know how many kids I work with! For the skateboard park alone, I signed up over a thousand kids. I see a lot of kids who come into the store with their parents, I work with kids, I do field trips and fashion shows. Watching how you guys interact, you don't know how cool that is! It's a beautiful thing.

Another person who was one of my heroes was Ray Kunze. He sat in front of my store pretty much every day and became family to me. He would come to our Thanksgiving, our Christmas; we would make sure he got to the doctor; he would take us surfing. My husband and his dad don't see eye to eye; I really feel that God brought Ray into our life, and he was kind of a substitute dad for my husband. Ray had great wisdom. He was tough, he was funny, and he was sixty-eight years old and still surfing. He didn't let age take him down. Ray was never like that. He was always out there surfing, going on trips, doing stuff. He would drive across country for five days to Nova Scotia, then surf out there for two months, camping out.

That's a hero to me: someone who doesn't let anything take him down. Don't become a victim of things that are inevitable, such as aging. All of us are getting older. I can't do some things that you guys can do. You can bend in half like pretzels; I sure can't. You have to accept there will be some things you can't do, but don't become a victim of that. Don't let the things that you can't do keep you from doing the things you can do! That's a huge principle in my life, and it's something that Ray taught me.Ray passed away last year. This is the picture celebrating the groundbreaking ceremony for the skateboard park. As you can see, it was a team effort, and it was really fun to be a part of it. There's Ray, standing right there. Ray came to pretty much every city council meeting I had to attend. He was always there to back me up 100%

And Ray was a surfing legend. If you look him up on the computer, you'll see articles about him. There's one in Pacific Longboarding magazine where he said, "Drugs have always been a part of the surf culture, but it was never the best part; it was always the worst part." Ray had the creativity to enjoy life; he knew what was important.

Who taught me how to surf? Ray, and Miles, friends, reps…whenever the door opens, I'm there. Half the thing in surfing is just making sure you're there when the waves show up. It's unlike any other sport. You may find you have the time to surf, but if there are no waves, you're not surfing. It teaches you patience. And readiness. Let everyone around you know that if anyone is going, you're going.

I have a book that's important in my life called A Touch of Wonder by Arthur Gordon; he's a great essayist. There's this one essay that says: "If you are bold, bold forces will arise to help you." And that has been absolutely true in my life.

Don't get discouraged. Even when it's the worst day ever, and you get yourself knocked down, stand up and learn the lessons from it. Keep your enthusiasm. Be bold. And bold forces will arise to help you.