Thanks to the quake the bottom fell out of the real estate market, as well as my direct mail marketing to new home owners. Closings were down by almost 75%. Fortunately though, I had added the peninsula to my label subscription, opening up that large territory that I had yet to tap, because up until buying the house, that area was about as inconvenient as Marin County was becoming; although I would never give up marketing in Marin.
As had been my tradition, I always closed the business between Christmas and New Year’s, and planned to do so for the 1989 season as well. To that end I told my secretary, Phyllis, not to book any appointments for me during that time. Imagine my surprise when I went into the office the next day, and discovered that she had me scheduled for a 10:00 a.m. on December 26th. It is fair to say that I went ballistic.
When confronting her I asked, “What part of NO APPOINTMENTS between Christmas and the New Year’s didn’t you understand?” “Well, I didn’t want you to lose the business.” “Not an excuse. Do you know what I am doing for the Christmas holiday?” “No.” “Then for all you know, I could be going to Mexico or back east; how do you expect me to keep this appointment, if I am 3000 miles away?” “Well, I see all the bills coming in, and I didn’t want you to lose the business.” “Phyllis, your job is to do what I tell you, not to evaluate the company’s financial stability (about which you know nothing) and make independent decisions.”
Truthfully, hiring Phyllis was not one of my best moves. It was charity, not good business sense. She was in her mid-seventies, and seemed desperate for the job. A mistake! First of all, she smoked like a chimney. Being that smoking was taboo in my showroom, most of the time that I was not there, she was out back on the patio puffing away. She could open the mail and sort it properly, not that one needed to be a mental giant to handle those six to ten pieces a day. Other than answering the phones and taking messages (which she couldn’t do out on the patio), her primary task was to label the flyers.
Being that all of the labels came in order of zip codes, one would think that it would be pretty easy to keep them in that order while labeling, but by the time Phyllis finished the zip codes were all mixed up. On to the count! A minimum of ten pieces per five digit zip code was required, and 200 pieces per three digit zip (e.g., 949xx for Marin, 941xx for San Francisco).
Once Phyllis finished the labeling, all she had to do was to count the flyers in each packet of ten to thirty, and then add those totals together. She could use the calculator for the adding. By the time she was finished though, I’d have to recount everything, and reorganize all the flyers by zip code, which took more time than it would have taken me to just do it all myself to begin with.
The day of reckoning was upon me. My plans for an expanded Western Window Design, four or five shops, maybe franchising, were merely a fading delusion … if for no other reason than the fact that dealing with employees was proving to be an expensive pain in the ass. I had already had my fill of the corporate world at Puritan Life, why did I think I wanted to create my own miniscule version of that? So despite how exasperating it was to deal with Phyllis, her days were numbered, and I let her go right after the New Year. She was happy; she had worked long enough to collect unemployment.
Vince was still doing well health wise, but time was not on our side, and I thought it was prudent to retrench a little … to ‘downsize’ was the popular buzz word of the day. Stay close to home. The building that was attached to the very back of #50, but only accessible from the back yard was about 17’ by 14’ and while the rest of the house hugged the south side of the lot, it hugged the north. So my six foot wide side yard ended at a six foot section of the front wall of that building. All I had to do was put an entrance door there, and it would make a perfect office, separate from the house and accessible from the front gate without having to go into the house.
First I contacted my real estate broker, and told him I had to get out of my lease, which had three years to go. He got a new tenant quickly. I put the Chevy Astro mini-van out at the edge of the parking lot with a sign on it, and sold it in a day. Then I packed everything up, and scheduled a mover to come and do the job. All I had to do was put that new door in at #50, so that they would be able to move things in directly, rather than going up the stairs, through the house and out the back door. With only one day left to get that done, I woke up on that rainy morning with a temperature of 102° … it still needed to be done, so I did it.
Working out of the house without employees made life ever so much easier, and it freed up a lot of time that I could devote to the renovations. I had to look at that flat ceiling in the old kitchen soon-to-be living room for a long time, trying to convince myself that it was okay as it was, that I didn’t have to go through all of the work of tearing it out, and sheet rocking up to the peak, but it had to be done. The room was only 12’ by 14’ and the vaulted ceiling made a world of difference.
Although I had always planned on eliminating the three cross beams, between the planning and the doing we had had a little event called the Loma Prieta Earthquake, so rather than pulling the beams down I reinforced them with double two by eights, and bolted everything to the walls. It was a blessing, really, as the beams added an important element of architectural interest. By April the living room was finished.
Work was progressing slowly but surely, according to Vince more slow than sure, but as I had explained to Peter Pulaski and the bouquet bomber, some people can never be satisfied. Once the room was finished I built a wall unit at one end, upper shelves with an alcove for our favorite painting, and cabinets below with sliding doors for the stereo, records (Vince had a big collection), and whatnot.
This unit proved to be the absolute best cabinet making that I had ever done. The skylights went in during May, and in June I re-roofed that 12’ by 14’ building that was now the living room, again doing all of it by myself with no help. That was to be the last of the roofing for me though, I hired our contractor neighbor to roof the front 20’ by 20’ building, the bedroom and kitchen.
By then it was time for a break, so we went back east for two weeks in August. One week we spent at sister Cheryl’s in Schenectady, and the other in Newport, Rhode Island, where we had booked two one-bedroom timeshare condos for the same week, so that we could have lots of company. My niece Jayna and her husband Tommy came for a couple of days; Cheryl and her family for some, cousin Bart and Tina and their gang for others. We had kids sleeping on sofas and the floor, and everyone had a ball.
One day they all took the ferry to Block Island, and I did some of my own visiting: Marion, Ray and Mal, Bob and Deb. When the Block Island crew returned Vince was the poster-boy for sunblock, having spent much of the time there on bikes or motorbikes, I can’t remember which, with no sunblock what-so-ever. The three adults were nurses! Scary!
One night we went to see the movie “Ghost” and at the end everyone filed out but Vince and me. He didn’t want to leave until he stopped crying. The scene that got him was when Patrick Swayze’s character came back as a ghost, and was holding Demi Moore’s character as she worked the potter’s wheel. Didn’t have to dig too deeply to know why that hit him so hard.
Once home it was back to more work on the house, and by November I had finished the remainder of rewiring and new wiring on, including my new office, so I finally had heat back there. Petals and I celebrated our mutual birthdays on November 20th. She was two and I was … older than two. And then came Thanksgiving and Vince planning another dinner party.
He did not, of course, cease to be obsessive and compulsive about all of the preparations, especially about making the pies. “Vince,” I said, “Calm down.” “Well, I’ve got to do this and that, and blah blah blah, and I have to make all these pies to make.” “Vince, there are only four of us for dinner, we don’t need five pies!!!” Some things never change. Not that I didn’t love his pies though, especially his pumpkin chiffon, and his ever so special Kahlua pecan, it was out of this world!
Christmas came and went and before we knew it 1991 was upon us. Business was still chugging along, but financially speaking it was good that I had downsized when I did. It goes without saying, especially with Vince as a taskmaster, that work on the house continued. One Saturday morning when I got up at ten, he said, “You know … you could get a lot more done if you’d get up earlier.” And I countered, “You know … there are only so many hours a day that I am willing to do this kind of work; whether I get up at eight or ten or noon, you‘re still only getting six hours out of me!” Much was accomplished within those six hours though. After finishing odds and ends inside I moved outside. but first it was time for a little vacation.
The timeshare had turned out to be quite a blessing – despite the times we wished we had never bought it, mostly when we were still paying for it – because it was a forced vacation, and I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent browsing the RCI catalog, dreaming about exotic locations, and planning trips. One of which was a week in New Orleans in March, where we had a lovely condo on the streetcar line in the Garden District. The time share was also a blessing because it was a one bedroom. Vince spent a fair amount of time sleeping, and it was much more comfortable for both of us having the separate rooms.
We saw all there was to see of the French Quarter, where one evening I was given a citation for not partying hearty enough. A gimmick to get ten dollar donations for a charity, or I got fleeced, I was not sure which. We did a walking tour of the Garden District, seeing all the lovely homes, and then took the streetcar to Tulane University and checked out the campus. One day we took a Bayou cruise, which I loved, especially going through the locks on the Mississippi. Vince was not impressed and stayed in the cabin the entire time reading.
We rented a car for two days and I drove north along the Mississippi to Baton Rouge. Visiting some plantations along the way: the oldest, the fanciest, the largest, and the one in “Hush! Hush! Sweet Charlotte!” Spent the night at another old plantation, which had been turned into a B&B. Our accommodation was in one of a few cute and cozy little cottages, which had apparently evolved from earlier slave quarters and/or share cropper cabins.
It was just about twilight when I walked across the road to the levee and river, which in a bit of a haze was quite surreal. Looking north the view was pristine, I am certain it looked the same as it did in Mark Twain’s time, and I wouldn’t have been surprised to see Tom Sawyer or Injun Joe gliding by on a raft. Quite a contrast to the view south, where less than a mile down river the hulking silhouette of a refinery hugged the embankment, its lights twinkling in the mist.
The next morning Vince stuck his hand into his satchel, and sliced it open on his razor. The innkeeper had precious little to bandage it with, but we did the best we could, then departed hastily to the nearest pharmacy in the nearest town, which was twenty-two miles away. Afterward we made our way to Baton Rouge, but Vince was not up to any sightseeing, so we stopped at a self-service for gas.
After searching high and low I could not find anything that resembled a gas cap, or a door to one, and nowhere inside was there any evidence of a release lever. The two high-school girls at the cashier kiosk were no help whatsoever, so we went to the next station. They opened the glove compartment, found the lever, and when they pulled it the back rear license frame dropped down and revealed the gas cap behind it. Who knew?
Naturally Vince had a list of all the fine dining venues in New Orleans, and he had even written down some addresses … a very unusual attention to detail for him. One evening we took a taxi, and headed to Christian’s. Before we knew it were on the highway heading north, and at one point we felt so led astray that we wondered if we were being abducted. Finally though we pulled up in front of a church … Christian’s!!!
The owner/chef was named Christian, and he must have been thrilled when he found this property available. Both the exterior and interior had retained most of the church look; it seemed as though they only removed what would have been blasphemous to keep. The original pews lined the perimeter, comfortably cushioned, and fronted by tables and very church-ish chairs; as were the chairs at all of the tables throughout the rest of the dining room. All in all it was quite an impressive venue, but in my opinion the food was not much more than mediocre.
We had saved the best restaurant for our last evening, and it was located in the French Quarter. They accepted no reservations, so we stood in the very long line outside. After about an hour of waiting we got close enough to the door to read a sign … a sign that said, “No credit cards accepted!” Oops! We combined our resources and only had enough cash for a couple of Big Macs! We ate elsewhere, it didn’t matter where, because for Vince the evening was completely destroyed.
Speaking of slavery, back home it was back to working on the house for me, with my little slave-driver keeping track of my hours and inspecting my work. No comment. I tore down the old front stairway and turned the landing into a balcony, with Victorian styled scrollwork balusters that I made myself. Then I put a weathervane on the front peak, added scrollwork within the peak, and more along the horizontal overhang, all more of my own handy work with the jigsaw.
Next I painted the exterior front and north side of the house. Vince wanted light blue with dark green accents and white trim. I wanted light grey with dark blue accents and white trim. We both picked the same colors. He thought they were light blue and dark green, and I knew that they were light grey and dark blue. The finishing touch was a white picket fence enclosing the front yard, which our mortgage broker had insisted that we must have. And yes, the pickets were all handmade by me.
That was followed by work on the new main entrance, which was on the side of the house because the old kitchen was now the living room. I tore down the old (3’ x 6’) porch and replaced it with a foyer addition (7’ x 8’) which included a closet (3‘ x 7‘), and then built a new porch of about seven by seven. The new stairway was constructed on the wall below the dining area windows. Again, all of the work down by me, alone, from the ground up … digging the foundation, building the frames for the footings, mixing and pouring the concrete, and all of the carpentry, door hanging, sidelight installing, interior sheet rocking on up to the roof and the roofing, all done with my hands … alone.
While doing the taping and plastering in the foyer, I kept looking at the living room in amazement … finding it difficult to believe that I had actually done all of the same in that room as well. Just as the vaulted ceiling with beams and skylights really made the living room, the foyer was a fantastic finishing touch. Its opening to the living room was about four feet wide, which served to expand that otherwise small room. The foyer also had a slightly vaulted ceiling and a skylight which. along with the sidelight by the door, made that a very bright space with plenty of light leftover for living room.
Everything that I did on the house was in compliance with code, but without benefit of permits, and I had a pretty good system to keep from attracting the attention of any building inspectors that might be lurking about. With the porch and foyer work for example, the foundation, flooring and stairs were easy because they were all concealed by the front fence. The balusters (more of my own scrollwork) and banisters were all made in the basement and all pre-painted, and on the weekend I installed them. (The front main/original 20’ by 20’ section of the house had a basement just high enough for me to standup, but I had to cover the beams with foam rubber.)
For the foyer itself, I built all of the two by four wall framing in individual units, painted them all white, ‘finished’ them by adding lattice painted grey – screwed on so that they could be reused later – then on the weekend I put it together. Same with the roof: white painted rafters installed one weekend, sheathed and shingled the next. All of the exterior siding and trim was also cut to size and painted during the week, the lattice removed and all of that installed on the weekend.
The installation of some of the sidling was a bit tricky, but I managed to do it without any help (as always). On the side I was using the 4’ by 8’ panels horizontally (mind you, 4‘ x 8‘ plywood siding 5/8“ thick is a tad heavy), and the first one was going up to the edge of the roof, fourteen feet from the ground. I drilled a small hole at each end of the siding at the top, and then screwed big hooks into the roof rafters on each side. I tied a rope to each of the holes in the siding, then strung the rope through the hooks on the roof, and hoisted each side a couple of feet at a time, until the panel was aligned. At that point I went up the ladder, inched it into place, and leaned on it while I nailed.
In August my niece, Jayna, came to visit for a few days … celebrating her 30th birthday and recovering from her divorce, or vice versa. The two of us spent a day in Sausalito, another in Calistoga, and we shopped till we dropped; she in particular looking for a ring to fill the empty space on her third finger, left hand. Vince and I took her to dinner at Alice Waters’ Chez Panez in Berkeley one evening, another night to a concert at the Warfield on Market. Later her friends would think it very cool and surprising that her old uncle took her to an EMF concert.
On Market Street that night the panhandlers were thick as thieves, as usual, and this one fellow came up to me with his new gimmick. “Honesty is the best policy,” he said, “will you give me two bucks so I can go buy a beer?” I just smirked at him. “Come on,” he said, “two bucks for a beer. I’m being honest, you know that’s what I’m going to do with it.” “No,” I said, “that’s what I’m going to do with it!”
We had a couple of partly sunny days while she was in town, but mostly it was dripping wet, pea soup fog, as it was from July 4th through October that year. It made painting the house a real chore. On the new stairway I painted the steps grey, and the risers dark blue, but by morning the blue had run down on to the grey steps. That happened about three times, and I ended up tenting the stairs so they would stay dry.
Living with AIDS was a perpetual state of waiting for the proverbial “other shoe” to drop, and ours dropped in September of 1991. There would be more. Vince’s ARC diagnosis had progressed to AIDS, and he left work at the end of that month on medical retirement. October was mostly a rough time, but then things leveled off a tad, but it fluctuated … good days, bad days, good weeks, bad weeks. Fortunately his benefit package was excellent, as was his health insurance (until it came down to getting the insurance company to actually approve and pay for anything).
While at General Vince had become friendly with another research nurse, Linda Johnson, probably because they spent a lot of time together … out on the fire escape smoking cigarettes! As it happened, Linda lived just a block and a half down the hill from us, and after Vince left work she would call and leave messages but he never seemed to call her back.
Then one day we got a note in the mailbox from her, saying in so many words, that this was not going be one of those office friendships that fade away when one leaves, and that if she didn’t hear from us soon, the next time she came up the hill she would climb over the fence. No fence climbing was necessary. Linda became a very dear and important friend to both of us, and one of the three best friends of my lifetime.
One bright sunny day in October, Vince and I were down at Sloat Nursery near the zoo and the beach, when this huge black cloud slowly came in from the east and covered a vast area including where we were. The sky became very dark. It was ominous. As we would soon discover, this was from the Oakland Firestorm, which killed twenty-five people, injured 150, and consumed 1520 acres, including 3354 single-family dwellings, and 437 apartment and condominium units.
When we returned home our yard was filled with so much ash that it looked as though it had snowed, all of which had traveled about twenty-five miles from the hills and over the bay. Some were partially burned pages from books, driving home the reality that these were all that was left of some people’s homes.
We had a timeshare booked for the first week of January 1992 in Princeville, on the island of Kauai, Hawaii, but we had another week that we needed to use before then, use it or lose it. To keep it cheap I booked my birthday week in November at a beachfront resort in Oceanside, California, just north of Carlsbad, and I drove there. Vince was not his usual self, and he had not prepared an extensive itinerary of eating venues. So fine dining was not a part of the experience, and it was so bad that we actually had my birthday dinner at a Red Lobster.
We did the usual sightseeing: San Diego, La Jolla, Del Mar, and spent a memorable day in Laguna Beach shopping. On vacations Vince would often see something that struck his fancy, and I’d finagle a way to get back to the place without him knowing, and buy it. Then I’d give it to him on the next gift giving occasion, and invariably he would say, “Oh, you bought that?!” Obviously having long since lost interest in it and forgotten all about it. Ultimately I didn’t bother any more.
While in Laguna Beach he saw this sterling silver pin of a cartoon like man’s head and shoulders, with the fingers spread wide and the hair standing on end. He really liked the pin and said that it fit him perfectly … it was called ‘Scared Guy!’ Naturally I figured he would forget about it by the next day, but he didn’t, and even back at home he was still talking about it. Wouldn’t you know, the one time I didn’t buy what he liked. Needless to say, I had to get that pin for him – but how?
Although I didn’t remember the name of the shop or have an address, hell, I didn’t even remember the name of the street it was on; I did have a visual in my head, and when I studied a map of Laguna Beach I figured out which street. I remembered a couple of other businesses on that street, and how they related to the shop‘s location.
So I called the phone company to get a Laguna Beach phone book, saying that WWD was interested in opening a shop there, but because it wasn’t the same phone company as mine, I had to pay $25 to get the book sent to me. Once it arrived, I called a few places on the street, and by the process of elimination, I found the shop with the pin and had them send it to me – air express so that I would have it by Christmas. Now that’s love!
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