Tender Goodbye to Special House

They’re moving out today.  

For the past year they have occupied the once elegant, Spanish-influenced bungalow that was built for William and Filomena Dutra, who arrived in our small burgh on the edge of Monterey Bay in 1938.

We’re going to miss these guys.  A “hippie rocker” and his 17-year-old son moved into the house next door a year ago understanding that it would be demolished in 12 months by the new owner. 

It’s been a temporary pad for the father, his son and a revolving door of teenagers who arrive at all hours, bringing more and more stuff: an old wood sailboat, various trucks and vans, mountains of bricks and concrete, piles of old furniture, surfboards, wetsuits and two large, shaggy white dogs that occupy the front porch and howl harmoniously like coyotes. Inside, they’ve set up a rock ’n roll music studio.

Being good neighbors, they always warn us when they will be recording, even cover the front windows with thick boards of sheet rock to contain the amplified music.

Brett moving out

The group put life into a house that had been fallow for several years since our original neighbors passed away. Today they’re moving out. That is, if they can get rid of all their stuff. If they cannot, soon the house will be gone, and I assume anything remaining will be bulldozed, scraped and hauled away. The end of an era.

I can still see Beulah and Lee, our first neighbors, in the corner window sitting at a table drinking coffee, enjoying their view and waving to us when we passed by. The wood-framed windows face southeast with unobstructed sightlines to the bay and the Santa Cruz Municipal Wharf.

They were retirees, had purchased the house from the Dutras so that they could spend their golden years near the ocean, absorbing the sea breezes and inhaling nautical aromas wafting from the wharf where a group of Italian fishermen and their families had for years tied their boats, operated fish markets and seafood restaurants.

Beulah and Lee loved tending to their gardens that surrounded the house. The flora included fruit trees: citrus, apricot and apple, strawberries, various flowers and shrubs, and a liquid amber tree whose leaves changed from green to dark bronze with the seasons, filtering morning sunlight from the east that washed into our kitchen.

I remember the day I looked out the window and saw Lee hanging from his apple tree. His ladder had fallen. I ran over, set the ladder up and helped him find his footing to safely get down.

“I owe you, Kevin,” he said, his voice a little shaky.

Lee was a retired butcher. When he got started on a tree-pruning mission, the result could be devastating, not necessarily for him but for the tree.

“I just can’t stop him,” Beulah once remarked, shaking her head.

Beulah outlived Lee by several years. Lee died on my 56th birthday, which I’ll probably never forget because of the date. He had been ill. It wasn’t a shock to his family. We attended Lee’s funeral at a local church. Dressed in black and white, with pearls, Beulah was the most beautiful woman, with a kind, loving spirit to match her physical radiance.

When our daughter Bryna was 12-years-old, she pronounced that Beulah was the “coolest” person that she knew. She was never one to fall for phonies. They had a solid friendship.

With Lee gone, Beulah remained in the house by herself, with the help of a string of young care-givers whose stories were so varied and unique that you could develop a Netflix mini-series about them, from a young male cartoonist to a troubled crackhead to a Native American rights advocate. Beulah became friends with each of them.

A tiny but well-appointed studio still stands, attached to the back of the garage. For many years, until a week or so ago, the studio was the home of a single man and longtime character of Santa Cruz known as “Automo-Billy.” A motor-head, Bill at one time ran a popular European car repair shop in town.

Bill can bear witness to the past 15 years of changes at the Dutra House. The recent mountain of materials between his studio and his automobile parked on the street evoked this comment:

“I’m walking through Dogpatch,” his Philadelphia accent lending a nice twist.

He has found a new apartment in Soquel. “I’m the perfect tenant,” he says. “I’m single. I don’t cook and I don’t have a pet.”

As for Beulah, she survived in the home into her early 90s.

The adult children of Beulah and Lee inherited the house, whose value had immensely increased due to its location and the generous size of the lot. Finding agreement about what to do with the house was like attempting to herd feral cats, of which there were many in the neighborhood. The family ended up selling the property for $2.2 million to a Silicon Valley executive who assured them that he would not destroy the beloved house of their parents.

 
After about a year of struggling with permits and design alterations, the new owner decided , instead, to sell. He said it was going to take him five years to complete his remodel. He claimed he had found his “dream house” in Marin County.

For several years, there had been no yard or house maintenance and the “Dutra House” had gone to seed.

A new buyer, also from Silicon Valley, snapped it up with plans to demolish the house and split the lot in half, build two two-story houses.

A 1500-square-foot house sitting on 14,000-square-foot lot is sinful to the modern developer, money left on the table. The pleasant open space surrounding the structure must be occupied by buildings, traded for dollars.

The city says it needs housing. The developer says he will provide it. The reality is the two new houses will be multi-million dollar homes out of reach of the once-typical Santa Cruz family. The new houses will likely be second homes of wealthy buyers and sit vacant part of the year. I could be wrong.

I can see a tear drop trailing down Beulah’s tender cheek.

The new owner did a simple clean-up, held an “open house” in order to rent the place for a year while he put his “ducks in a row” before demolition. Walking through the former residence of Beulah and Lee, and the Dutra family of years ago, I was moved by the simplicity of the house, only two bedrooms, one bathroom and small kitchen. The hardwood floors worn yet firm and natural, the living room spacious, where Beulah would sit and read by the fireplace, with a large picture window facing the street. A comfortably-sized dining room with a large front-facing window separates the living room and the precious corner nook off the kitchen facing the ocean.

Years ago, Barbara and I were driving through the neighborhood dreaming about the perfect place to live. On a side street a half-block from the ocean, I spotted a tile-roofed house with a long, expansive covered front porch with terracotta tile floor.

“That’s my perfect house,” I said.

Little did I know that one-day we would own the small house next door.

Today the two large, shaggy white dogs were howling again, perhaps lamenting that they will be moved out by day’s end. The hippie father, a builder himself, and I have developed a friendship, as I have with his son. They’re down-to-earth people. He says they found a place to rent nearby, but not as close to the water. He’s started to surf before work. He glows when he talks about his new ocean discovery.

Maybe the occupants of the two new houses will have the same revelation. Maybe it’s all going to work out for the better.

One thing for sure, when the liquid amber tree is cut down and a two-story building takes its place, I’m going to miss the many branches of pointed leaves that change color with the seasons.

From Silence of the Oranges ©2019 Kevin Samson, a working title memoir

Ruminating on a Winter Solstice

Today, as I write this, is the Winter Solstice, shortest day of the year. Tomorrow the days start to become longer. It is the pivot point on our planet when rotations of Earth and Sun change directions, north and south. We also have a glorious full moon, all resulting in extreme, or, king tides.

I entered water yesterday, paddled out at Cowell's on a day that appeared as though it were 1996, 2016 or perhaps even 1886: low tide, no wind, waves breaking at various peaks maybe up to 6-ft at times, and major sets washing through at longer intervals, carrying riders all the way to the beach in front of the Dream Inn.

The references to 2016 and '96 are years when so much sand washed in from farther up the coast during winter swells that you could stand out in the middle of the water at low tide and see your knees above the drink.

The 1886 reference is the year following the introduction of surfing to the mainland by three Hawaiian princes, at the San Lorenzo River Mouth which is part of the same Santa Cruz main beach cove; the timelessness of recurring tides and spin of the planet.

The shallow sand bottom is key to making waves, and it's been a couple of years since the ocean gods have bequeathed to us this gift, the notion of a perfect wave.

It's not that good yet, but if the sea continues to churn with strong winter swells it might well be epic.

I saw friends in the water yesterday whom I hadn't seen in a while, riding along on waves that just kept coming. The mood is, be here now. Tonight you can relive the experience, talk and think about it, but the moment, that precise convergence of action and experience will be gone, in some ways as if it never happened.

The stoke lasts, echoes of those moments, for a while. If too much time is unfulfilled between sessions -- weeks seem like months and months like years -- you forget, you lose the sensation of being stoked. You wonder if you can still do it. Still catch it, then hold on to it.

I think this is the purpose of surf movies, to remind us, to feed us the feeling through vicarious observance. The speed or glide, the footwork, the immersion of "man" and ocean, oneness with the wave.

On the other side we remember the wipe-outs, the hold-downs, the cuts and bumps and broken bones,  the collisions with other surfers that could have been avoided. The more experience the less chance of  these encounters.

Surfing at its core is a respect for the ocean and waves, a savvy that you learn of how to stay out of trouble, maintain yourself in the midst of a roiling and ever-changing sea that is indifferent toward you, yet engaging with you.

Forty Years in Santa Cruz

Vanessa and Molly on our front porch on Walk Circle

Forty years in one place. That should be some kind of record. It is a bitter-sweet story.

August marked the 40th anniversary of my residence in Santa Cruz: 1978-2018. Forty years ago I pulled into what was then a small beach town in a Volkswagen bus, the most ubiquitous vehicle in town, with two daughters ages 8 and 3. I was 31.

Their mother had died in an automobile accident two years before. I was a single father. My move was a break from my past. I literally isolated myself from a community of friends that were tied to my life growing up, a complete reboot.

The number forty has stuck to my brain ever since Sister Gualberta explained to our fifth grade class that it was a recurring and significant number. Jesus fasted for 40 days and 40 nights. Noah was afloat on his ark for 40 days. Forty is the traditional Hebrew number for a trial duration.

If the last 40 years were a trial period for living in Santa Cruz, I would have to claim success. I'm still here, although my two daughters, Molly and Vanessa, who arrived with me have moved on. So has their younger sister, Bryna, who was born in Santa Cruz.

They have found lives and started families of their own elsewhere. But they grew up, were raised in the same neighborhood where I put down roots in the Westside of town. My parents moved eight times while I was growing up. I was searching for a place to stay.

At Linda's funeral, I requested that Jackson Browne's rock n' roll dirge, "Before the Deluge," be played in the church, Our Lady of Assumption in Claremont. That is where we had taken our vows eight years before at the young and idealistic ages of 21 and 20.

Now let the music keep our spirits high 
Let the buildings keep our children dry
Let creation reveal its secrets by and by
When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky

Idealism is a powerful attraction that initiates most of the pure and better things that happen in the world. It seems to be the property of youth. We were young and we were idealistic, and yet I found myself on the verge of fainting into the front pew when Linda, in her white gown and deep-set blue eyes directed toward me, came marching down the aisle clinging to her father's arm, organ music at crescendo. What was I doing?

Ours was not a perfect marriage though we were together since age 15 through a tumult of adolescent passion, fun, furry and break ups. If she were still alive I know we would be close friends, even if our marriage had not lasted. Based on the first eight years, I fear it may not have.

It's one thing to lose a spouse and quite another to lose your mother at a tender age. I can remember the joy and struggle of a young couple trying to find their way, sharing and confiding, loving and arguing. Linda's daughters, Molly and Vanessa, were robbed of memories of her due to their ages of seven and two.

This was not altogether clear to me at the time, as were many things. Looking back, their loss seems more tragic than mine. My heart aches for them. Linda would be so proud of them.

I did learn quickly that a single father receives far more compassion and assistance than a single mother. I was an anomaly to be pitied. A young man with two daughters. I found more help than I wanted, not to be ungrateful, but it was obvious.

One year after Linda's death I found myself backstage for a Jackson Browne concert in San Jose. He is a small, wiry guy, intense. He was about to go on stage dressed in a long-sleeve shirt, Levis and sneakers, just him and his piano.

I wanted to tell him about Linda and his song being played at her funeral. I had learned that his wife had committed suicide the same year. "Jackson Browne," I said. He looked at me and I raised my hand for a bro handshake. Our palms clasped right before he walked from behind the curtain onto the stage.

I was a distraction. He had a show to perform. Although I wrote an extremely positive review of his concert, I wished I had been in the audience to receive his song facing him instead of from the wings of the stage. I wished Linda could have been there, too.

The following year I made my move, which I consider my best one ever. I rented out the house that Linda and I had purchased, at her insistence, in San Jose. It provided a small income for me.

I pointed my life toward the coastal mountains, a dividing line between what would become known as Silicon Valley and the Monterey Bay, the oldest natural harbor refuge in California, a mere 30 miles distance through winding forested mountains, to a nearly 100-year-old enclave of mostly rundown beach cottages on narrow streets of concentric circles.

Within those circles, literally on the very same "curve," so near that one could practically hear a whisper from one house to another, I would unexpectedly meet the woman who would save my life, become the mother of my two daughters, and with whom I would have a third child and spend the rest of my life.

The first local piece I wrote was about my new neighborhood whose history tracked a record of old Santa Cruz from the early 20th Century. The "circles" were designed for an annual religious retreat. Nearby is where the circus pitched its big tent when it came to town. A lost elephant was not uncommon. Today I attest that love can be found there.

My second piece was an assignment for Good Times, the popular entertainment weekly. I was asked by the editor, Mark Hunter, to write about my experience as a single father. That was probably the first and only such article I have ever penned on that subject. I had an unfair advantage. Too many women are abandoned with their children and not recognized for their strength and courage.

That was 40 years ago, a new beginning of a lifetime.

Note: Linda Lombardi Samson passed away 42-years ago today, Sept. 13, 1976. She was 29 years old. She died in an automobile accident on her way home from Lake Tahoe. There were five people in the car: Her husband Kevin, daughters Molly and Vanessa, and her friend Jenny Mackintosh. All survived except Linda.

From Silence of the Oranges ©2018 Kevin Samson, a working title memoir

Rain from Lane Keeps Fallin...

Hanalei Bay August 24, 2018

Rain was heavy last night and early this morning, lingering tropical moisture stirred up by Hurricane Lane. Islanders here on Kauai were wearing smiles of relief.  Lane, at one point a category-5 hurricane, threatened their homes and livelihood but turned southwest just in the nick of time.

"We had our windows boarded and were ready," said Leonard the plumber who lives in the community of Lawai. He was inside that same house, which belonged to his grandfather, when Iniki stormed the island in 1992. "The roof blew off," he said. 

The island came to a standstill on Friday as just about everything closed down except gas stations, the hardware store and super market. Government employees were told to stay home with their families.

"You have to have your priorities," says Leonard. "I'm not going to work in this situation. The company may not be here tomorrow but my family will."

The family tradition is deep here on Kauai, although things are changing. Leonard's 24-year-old son moved to Oregon for college and job opportunities on the mainland, as many children of islanders must do.His son had never experienced a hurricane while growing up on Kauai. The islands have been lucky. The combination of high mountains on the Big Island and Maui and the northwesterly Tradewinds have helped deflect and degrade Pacific hurricanes.

But as one old-timer who has resided on Kauai since the early '60s noted: "You never know."

The state of Hawaii to date has received more than 50 inches of rain from Hurricane Lane. That is the third highest volume of rain from a cyclone ever recorded. Most of the rain has fallen on the Big Island.

More rain, heavy at times, is forecast for today, 30-percent chance tomorrow. The residue of slow-moving Lane is still with us.

A Real-Deal Hero

"We admire them, we envy them, for great qualities that we ourselves lack." Mark Twain about heroes.

John McCain was a hero for the United States of America. The maverick Senator from Arizona was destined for that moniker from birth. He came into the world wrapped in a Navy blanket. He cut his teeth on toy anchors. His first word was "service." The US Navy lineage of his ancestors goes back to the pre-Viking Period.

As a Navy fighter pilot in Vietnam his motto was "one more sortie." Regardless of how many missions and strikes he had performed. Just one more, he figured, he hadn't yet given it his all. He was still conscious.

As a prisoner of war he refused release because he had buddies who were still in cages. He was tortured to unconsciousness by the enemy for his guile.

As a US Senator he crossed the aisle to make deals. He was always expected to do the unexpected. A principled maverick. He made close friends and familiar enemies and could still spin a good yarn and laugh about it afterward.

As a candidate for President of the United States he demonstrated his quirkiness by choosing a loud-mouthed cheerleader from Alaska as a running mate -- a real yahoo doozie. He later regretted it and admitted his error.

He lost his run for President to Barack Obama, whom he looked upon as a rookie who hadn't put in sufficient service for the office. Yet he stood up for Obama when others challenged his character, setting the record straight and defending his opponent as a decent family man.

The low point came during the 2016 Presidential race when one of the candidates from his own party said McCain was not a war hero, because he was captured by the enemy. This candidate had never served his country in the armed forces, or anywhere for that matter. A typical chicken hawk.

This candidate, regardless, was elected President of the United States. Perhaps because he is a maverick. Americans like mavericks. Not all mavericks are heroes.

McCain's final days were spent imploring his colleagues in Congress to work together. For the good of the country. To accomplish something. Friends, he said, we're not getting anything done.

I didn't vote for John McCain, not just because of Sarah Palin although that was good enough reason. Yet if anyone exemplified the qualities of a true American hero, he did. He certainly had great qualities that most of us lack.

Thank you, Senator, for your service.

Kupuna Means Wise Elder

Kupuna is the Hawaiian word for elder. It actually means more than just being a senior member of the family. Kupuna also denotes wisdom from life's experiences and it's a title of respect. Where I come from, an elder male is considered a "curmudgeon" or, if you're lucky, a "geezer." An elder woman is simply an "old lady," who is probably driving too slow in that Cadillac in front of you.

Believe me, I have at times earned the curmudgeon title and have made a point of attempting to not fall into the habit of complaining about everything from the latest political spat to whining about my sore lumbago.

Here on the island there are many advantages to being kupuna. The state gives handsome discounts to senior residents for taxes and other government-sponsored charges, including golf at municipal courses ("munis"). Foodland, a major grocery chain on the islands, offers a 10% kupuna discount on Thursdays.

A couple of months ago I was checking out at Foodland in Princeville early on a Sunday morning. I turned my head and the dark-skinned kupuna gentleman behind me said to me: "Happy Father's Day." It was the first acknowledgment of Father's Day to reach my ears.

That made my day, one kupuna to another. "Same to you," I said. We were both smiling and the lady at the check out was wearing a big smile, too.

"Ohana," the Hawaiian word for family, is a familiar majorative word on the islands. Families are celebrated daily when referring to the people, older and younger, in your circle of friends. "Uncles" and "Aunties" are not necessarily kupuna but familiar adults. Kids are called "keiki" which has a friendly ring.

Following a surf session recently I was talking story with a fellow kupuna surfer who was born on the island. I told him that our daughter and two grandchildren lived here, and we were considering moving here permanently. He said his daughter could not afford to live on Kauai any longer because of the rising price of homes and that he and his wife were considering moving to Oregon where his daughter and grandchildren now resided, the exact opposite of what we were considering.

As I sit back in my beach chair beneath the monkey pod tree, I reflect on the concept of family. Our children are like seeds that sprout and grow into their own person. Some seeds grow nearby, others are spread widely seeking their own fertile ground, creating Ohana with their friends as I did.

We want to be close to the children of our children because they are special in that they come from our seeds that we have nourished and we want to see them grow and flower. We all cannot live on an island but we can live in our own paradise. And there are many ways to stay in touch.

My kupuna wisdom may be faulty but my intention is sincere. My resolution is to not bark and complain about the tailgater driving behind me. Just pull over, take a deep breath and smile.

Dodging Hurricane Hector

So Hector came and went. He barely missed the islands coming within 200 miles of the big island of Hawaii. He was a category 4 hurricane at times spinning across the Pacific Ocean with winds of up to 155 mph.

We all watched the satellite feeds daily as Hector tracked on an eastward path toward the Hawaiian islands. We knew it would be close, especially for the people on the Big Island who were already dealing with the continual eruptions of the Kilauea volcano displacing many from their homes. If Hector was going to inflict damage it would be on the southern most island of Hawaii.

"Are you prepared?" The question came from television newscasters and front pages of all the newspapers across the islands.

Prepared means you have 14 days worth of nonperishable food and two gallons of water per person. Expect island-wide power outages. Have a safe place to go. A flashlight. Stories still circulate here on Kauai about Hurricane Iniki in 1992 that literally tore up the landscape and coastal areas of parts of the island.

One condo resident talks about how her window curtains were sucked outside the windows by the hurling high winds.

"It looked like it was going to miss us," says one old-timer, "then it turned south at the last minute and hit Kauai."

"Many people evacuated the island," says another. "The only store open immediately afterwards was a hamburger stand."

These islanders remained and are here to this day. And doubtless so are many others. It's one of the hazards of living out in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, on the farthest archipelago from any continent in the world. It's more grist to share when you talk story about it later.

Study a map of the mighty Pacific and the Hawaiian islands appear as a row of tiny dots on a huge mass of water. You wouldn't see them if they weren't labeled.

As Hector approached we checked our inventory of nonperishable food, which consisted of a few cans of tuna and beans. I picked up six gallons of water on one errand-run across the island. If I pick up something every day our stock will accumulate.

Because of the excellent weather news forecasts and satellite technology, we pretty much figured it was not going to reach the islands unless... and with Mother Nature there's always that "unless," something strange happens, as it did in '92.

The day of Hector's potential arrival the sky over Kauai was clear and blue, more so than in weeks. It was a beautiful day. It reminded me of the day following the 7.9 Loma Prieta earthquake on October 11, 1989 that destroyed downtown Santa Cruz and parts of the greater San Franciso Bay Area. That following day the weather was gorgeous, albeit there was a ton of open cracks in the Earth, collapsed buildings, piles of rubble and people displaced from their homes.

You could say we dodged a bullet. You could also say that everyday that we survive we dodge a bullet. Life really is that resilient and that fragile. The horrifying fires back in California no doubt caused more damage this time, with less warning.

We were lucky out here in the middle of the Pacific. This time. It's hurricane season and there are currently two new storms building in the low western Pacific.