PREFACE

Pacifica is a sadly flawed community on the Pacific coast about five miles south of the city of San Francisco. Created in 1957 by combining a string of tiny towns along the coast, it is a location that could have been a place of rare scenic beauty with advantageous proximity to a major metropolitan area and its extensive suburbs. It could still become one, if the citizens were to come to their senses and elect and maintain a city government with vision and chutzpah. Instead, it stands as living proof that you can make a sow's ear out of a silk purse. A few decades ago the coast highway, California Highway 1, rolled through like a pizza cutter, splitting a strip of coast from the majority of town residents. But, symbolic of Pacifica's failure to do anything-good or bad-to completion, the freeway coming south from San Francisco peters out halfway through the city to become a four lane strip that goes past ugly, unkempt shopping centers.

Yet Pacifica, if you put on blinders and look narrowly here and there, has its charm, spots of intense beauty, and even little magnificences. Walk along the rocks at the south end of Linda Mar beach at low tide in the early morning light. Go as far as you can go, then look across Shelter Cove at the diagonally striped rocks off Pedro Point, the tops shining brilliant white in the early sun. It is an inspiring sight, as beautiful as anything on the west coast of America. As you might expect for Pacifica, the dazzling white you see is guano (bird droppings), and the decorative stripes result from of the massive restructuring of the earth that signals its ongoing process with occasional devastating earthquakes. The views of San Francisco, Pacifica, other nearby towns, and the Pacific Ocean as seen from Montara mountain, an easy climb of some 2000 feet along groomed trails, are stunning. Except for the perpetually problematical and leaky sewage outfall pipe at the municipal pier, there is little pollution, the air is usually clear of smog and other signs of civilization. The clean air is due to the winds that blow in from the ocean most of the year. The climate is very temperate, without extremes. Three or four times a decade you might find a bit of ice on a puddle in the morning. It will be gone by noon. A handful of sultry days each summer will be in the high 80's or low 90's, but by nightfall the heat will evaporate.Summer is usually spent in the 60's and 70's. Pacifica people are like people everywhere, the ones we have met range from selfless saints, to family folk, to real rotters, and everything in between.

The city government, more so than some others I have seen, is one of petty cliques and ad hominem rivalries. It often behaves like a dysfunctional family, yet (echoing the town's schizophrenic character) it has its moments of wisdom and dignity. Few of the council's decisions are made on rational grounds. To give you its flavor I can do no better than to quote the absolutely perfect lead in the weekly Pacifica Tribune written by the paper's talented reporter, Elaine Larsen: "Whatever semblance of congeniality City Council was struggling to maintain shattered Monday night as members went head-to-head in a bitter confrontation over whether to hold more conflict-resolution workshops."

The geography of Pacifica makes it ideal for tourism and recreation, stores fail right and left since the population centers of the San Francisco - San José corridor are four or five miles away, making stores just over the hill that separates us from the rest of the peninsula far more profitable. Yet the city fathers (or mothers; the city made headlines recently when we elected the all-female city council referred to above) have no more wit than to try to encourage more stores to come into town to "improve the tax base." The public school system is underfunded and generally atrocious, a typical Pacifica institution. The schools' few bright spots cannot lift the overall pall of mediocrity.

My family and I moved here to be close to where my wife was going to school in San Francisco, yet where I would have ready access to Silicon Valley. We chose a house on a high point of Gypsy Hill. Gypsy Hill is (of course) not a hill, but a ridge that runs roughly east to west, along the crest of which is a private road. The dilapidated road has lovely views overlooking the ocean, as does our house. The hill is sort of outside the town, and we send our children elsewhere for their schooling. But enough introduction to Pacifica, the rest of the tale will tell itself.

This is based on a collection of columns that I wrote for the Pacifica Tribune between 1988 and 1997. Most were published there, in some cases I've remembered to list the publication dates. A few were never published for lack of space that week or because I forgot to submit them--or because the editor thought they shouldn't be published (sometimes a wise decision). I am not sure why I started writing them; it was a moment's impulse after my first idea of doing a column of restaurant reviews was turned down (for fear of offending potential advertisers; the management of the paper must have feared I would tell the truth about some of our eating establishments.)

I can say almost anything I want in these columns since, from all the reaction I usually get, I am sure they mostly go unread. Yet every now and then somebody will stop me in the street and tell me how much they like my writing and how one of my columns affected them; on the other hand I have also gotten anonymous threatening calls and unsigned letters in reaction against what I said, or, more often, to what someone misread me as saying. The concept of free speech has not been well conveyed to all our citizens. That, and the level of literacy is not particularly outstanding.

Before living in Pacifica I lived in another unique community in the area, Brisbane. Brisbane is to the Bay what Pacifica is to the Ocean. To set the scene and for contrast, I will start with an essay adapted from letters I wrote to my parents about Brisbane.

Brisbane in 1974

The peninsula south of San Francisco is one of those residential sprawls that surround our cities. Passages of tract housing mingle with ever-decreasing moments of rural charm. Along the Pacific coast runs a chain of mountains, on the east side of the peninsula lies San Francisco bay. Along the bay the land is flat, a boon to the salt industry, tilt-up industrial complexes, and smelly marshes. The winds from the ocean perpetually rush across the peninsula in summer, spoiling the baseball games at Candlestick park and carrying the fog from the ocean to the bay over Daly City. Daly City is mostly unattractive rows of identical structures so extensive that they become interesting in aggregation as they march over the hills in unexpected lines. South San Franscisco is south of Daly City and is called, with justice, "the industrial city." This slogan is written on nearby Sign Hill in letters of concrete set into the sod. They can be read from twenty miles away.

The winds seem to have carried not only the fog across the peninsula from the ocean but a mountain as well, for on the bay side of the peninsula there stands a lone, tall, domed mountain of bedrock peaked with radio towers. San Bruno mountain is generally uninhabited except that on its lee side, in the very center of the mountain's eastern flank is a valley, miraculously protected from the wind and the fog. Except for this valley and a few hollows on top, the San Bruno mountains are covered with grass. This is California grass, golden tan most of the year and black where grass fires have bloomed in irregular patches. The vally, in surprising contrast, is full of trees and a few hundred houses perched vertically on the slopes. The winding roads are picturesque, and every turn brings a new view.

The views are of the bay, the far side of the bay, the mountain itself, and-less than ten miles away-the skyline of the city of San Francisco. The community was so small then, four thousand, that there was no bank or police station. There was a fire department, a post office, one realtor, a hardware store, one motel, two saloons and a café, but no supermarket. It did not take long to find this out for the business district had accumulated at the bottom of the valley, and the people lived on the hillside. Protected by the mountain, and accessible by only one road that runs from north to south (and the other way too) it is almost unknown. Now there are stores and other signs of habitation at the main entrance to town, but back then you turned into a road that seemed to lead nowhere. When you mentioned Brisbane even the San Francisco natives would ask "where is that?" Or they might say, "I've seen the exit somewhere, but I can't remember just where it is right now." If you were to ride up or down highway 101 you would find out why. Brisbane had one exit, and even on that sign the town took second billing to the nearby Cow Palace. This is right and proper: the Cow Palace will hold a lot more people than Brisbane does. People in Brisbane know where Brisbane is, but even my friends in South San Francisco (SSF), which borders San Bruno mountain on the south and west, usually think that it is somewhere else.

It took a thousand pounds of glue to help me discover Brisbane. I worked for a company called the Box Factory in SSF and I was driving a truck from SF, full of glue for making cardboard boxes, down the Bayshore freeway (U.S. 101). 101 misses Brisbane by shooting across a segment of the bay on a man-made causeway. Though I had driven this route before, this time I noticed-through the thick hedge that lines the highway-a community on the hillside. I asked Dennis, the company's regular driver whose hair and clothes were late fifty's rock, what it was. "Brisbane," he replied.

A few days later I found out how to drive there. Old 101, or Airport Boulevard was the only route, there being no roads over the mountain. I found this out by repeated failed attempts. To have used a map would have been cheating. I discovered that Brisbane's winding roads and sharp switchbacks-some requiring a complete stop and back up to go around-were quaint, quiet, and attractive. I resolved to live in Brisbane.

My First House in Brisbane

It is curious, as a friend of mine pointed out at the time, but Brisbane seemed to be a place that I had been seeking for some time. While driving through Vermont I mentioned that what I wish for is a warm place near an ocean, near a big city (SF is one of my favorites) but still a small town isolated from traffic and other noises of civilization. A place where the sound of jets does not intrude, at least not often. I remember visiting the beautiful gardens at Windsor Castle and Hampton Court where the incredible long greens and exquisite rose gardens were shattered by the noise of planes executing the landing patterns of Heathrow and Prestwick. Cutting down the ancient trees would have been less devastating. But while SF international airport is visible from the southern slope of San Bruno mountain. it cannot be seen from Brisbane. The planes avoid the mountain altogether as its presence and the curling winds in its wake menace aircraft. The skies over Brisbane are empty and silent. It was a small miracle of a place, yet had a slightly run down air, so that land and houses are inexpensive. Not if you just arrived from the midwest, but relative to the rest of the peninsula and the city. Forty miles south or north the prices were similar to Brisbane's. Forty miles is a long commute yet many do it to live in a place they can afford. They all missed Brisbane. Of course up on the hill, above the hoi polloi, the prices grew with altitude. My house is near the top of the southern ridge, at a middle altitude for Brisbane.

141 Lake street was the oldest house on the block and was set way back on its upsloping lot. Therefore it sat about twenty feet above its neighbors. It was built, I was told, by an eccentric contractor before World War II. Its blank white façade rises two stories. Since the lower story is blank-faced and the upper is equipped with a pair of jutting windows that look out over the town, it looks somewhat like a frog perched there. Looking out the windows when I first visited the house, I saw a very pleasant view of the mountain, the skyline of SF, and the distant trainyards of the Southern Pacific. The front room had been a living room and bedroom but the wall between had been removed. This made it a perfect music room for me. There was an ample master bedroom in back with a window that looked out on the rampant vegetation that crowds the house. The kitchen, also in back, was roomy, suitable for dining and cooking. I did not envy the piano movers who were going to have to negotiate the long, thin steps with my Mason & Hamlin 50" upright piano, nor myself when bringing in the groceries. I got into fine physical shape living there.

The cellar was hewn from rock, and there was a central air distributed heating unit there, built in clothes washer and dryer, and a work space. At street level was an unattached garage. When I moved in it was filled with a neighbor's motorcycles as the previous owner (Mike) rented it to them for that purpose. My first unfriendly act in this city, I thought at the time, would probably be to appropriate the garage for my own use. It looked like a good place for a bicycle and a street level freezer.

I did not immediately sell my house in Solana Beach, near San Diego. It was rather elegant to have a home at both ends of civilization in California. But I did rent out the southern one. The new house had many large closets, one big enough for a queen-size bed, and I decided to make that my bedroom. There was too little paint on the outside walls, but the roof was sound. Above the house, in back, was a garden with its own wonderful view of the bay, and there was a large tree shading it. Alongside the house a fishpond, with goldfish and catfish, was an added attraction. Mike said that it was raided occasionally by a local snake. It is fascinating to watch a snake fish, he told me: the snake just hangs over the edge and when the fish come up to see what is going on, it eats them. But the snake never performed for me.

From Brisbane it was an easy bike ride into the heart of SF, and a trivial ride to SSF where I worked for a while as a box designer. It only takes 20 minutes to get to Silicon Valley (the Palo Alto, Sunnyvale area where the electronics and computer industries were and still are centered) and half hour to Berkeley-by car, of course. I multiplied by 2.8 to get the bike times in those days (if you could get there by bike at all). Now it would be 5. Brisbane was also 20 minutes from Stanford University where I had a lot of friends.

One can usually find Brisbane on a map of SF, though some omitted it, which I saw as a benefit. I looked forward to moving in. One annoying wit at the Box Factory, on learning where I was going to live, insisted on calling me the "brain of Brisbane," but with my incessant piano playing I may well become the bane of Brisbane.

The Scene of the Crime

In Part I I told you about discovering Brisbane, that pretty little town nestled in a valley on the eastern slopes of the largely unspoiled San Bruno Mountains, the place I planned to move. The population was about 4,000 at the time and due to historical and geographical singularities has managed to retain a small town feel-very unlike the rest of the San Francisco peninsula which, except for what I knew of only as "the fog-bound western coast", had become a suburban area indistinguishable from the suburbs of any major city. Brisbane escaped this fate even though it is just south of the city itself. Due to a meteorological peculiarity the climate of Brisbane stands in strong contrast to San Francisco's. Even the Daly City area less than a mile away has a very different weather pattern. The prevailing breezes and San Bruno Mountain conspire to make Brisbane a warm and sunny place, the perpetual fog that sits in certain seasons on San Francisco has a hole in it. It is difficult for San Franciscans to believe that this one tiny area, about a mile across, could be that different. It is a classic example of a microclimate.

So Brisbane is beautiful, and housing was inexpensive. Considering the climate and location this seemed puzzling until I went to the library and read up on the history of Brisbane. It all had something to do with Brisbane's being started by immigrants, subdivided by a developer in the 30's into 25 foot lots (he went broke), and having a reputation as an industrial town built on a garbage dump. The industrial section is built on a dump and landfill that has pushed away the bay. Once upon a time, I am told, the bay's gentle waves lapped directly on the base of San Bruno mountain. Now they beach themselves a half mile closer to Oakland. The industrial area is away from the residential portions of town and is hardly visible. You could not hear or smell it at all from my house.

I have said the house was about halfway up in altitude; it was therefore above about three quarters of the city's houses. In the foreground view from the two large, frog-eye, picture windows you could see the town, it's as if you were sitting up in bed, looking at a quilt descending toward your feet. There was a school three blocks away; from time to time the laughter of children drifted up to the house. A few hundred feet behind the house is the fire station which as a public convenience signals high noon each day by deafening everybody in a half-mile radius. In the background the brown mountain was a uninhabited and wild. You could follow the line of the ridge to the peak which bristles with radio and television towers. In fact from my front window you could see every nearly radio and television tower in San Francisco including the massive Sutro Hill erection. I did not need a radio receiver to listen: I just attached a wire and a diode to an earphone. Sometimes it worked without the diode. The telephone was also a fine radio, since it is in fact an earphone connected to a long wire, and when I left it felt strange to have a telephone conversation without KCBS in the background. But I drift from my subject.

When I bought the house it was especially cheap, being unpainted, rundown, and the garage front was rapidly decaying, having been hastily constructed. Adjacent home owners seemed part of a conspiracy to lower real estate values with matching decrepitude. I promptly began to upgrade the neighborhood by painting the house, undertaking minor repairs, and having the front of the garage shingled. I purchased new doors for the entire house since only one exterior door worked when I bought the place. The grounds had all the aspects of the trash bin of a mad carpenter. As I cleaned I disposed of old boxes, garbage bags, and at the bottom of one smelly pile, a dead cat. My efforts even inspired some of the neighbors to do a bit of touch-up on their places.

The locale is well established, and you know who the good guys are (me) and you're getting tired of reading about the scenery. So let's introduce some actors and let the plot thicken.

Permititis

My realtor, Eero, was a helpful and friendly citizen. Knowing that while I liked my first house, I found it a bit small, he was helping me find a larger one. One of the things he did was introduce me to a local building designer and contractor, Ron Olsen, when I mentioned that I needed some work done. As a result I was introduced to Marc Salmon who, he said, does good work at fair prices. So I called up Marc who came over with his co-worker Russ. They began to do the necessary work with diligence and competence.

With the house under control, I started my Music School by announcing in the local paper that i was giving a free series concert. Brisbane did not offer much in the way of concerts and other arts, and I have always felt that it is a civic duty to provide music to the public. It is a tradition that my home town piano teacher, Mr. Walter C. Schad, believed in (though I wonder if his students or the audience suffered the most). He was a refugee concert violinist from Europe who had been injured in such a way that he could no longer play the violin; rather than give up he started over and became a concert pianist. I studied piano with him. He was also an amateur astronomer and telescope builder, and while he had many piano students, I was his only dual major and would return to his house at night to learn about the stars and planets. I digress again, and will return to the city's reaction to my concerts, but first the city reacted to my home improvement.

One day a Mr. Tibbs stopped by and told Marc that unless I got a permit he will have to issue a Stop Work Notice. Marc told me, when I got home, that he seemed quite friendly. I had not heard of having to get a permit for a mere repair, so I ask Eero and a law student that I know what they think. I also asked Ron who had been building in Brisbane for a decade. They all say that permits for such repairs are unheard of.In fact, just a few months earlier Marc had replaced an entire roof for one of the local firemen and no permit was required. They also pointed out that building inspectors do not just accidentally stop by: someone must have complained. Various suggestions were made as to the possible basis of the complaint. I might have offended by beautifying Brisbane and increasing property values. Maybe somebody didn't like my free concerts of Early Music. Eero wondered about whether my beard might have been found offensive (he had a beard).

The next day Mr. Belluomini, the senior building inspector for San Mateo County, stopped by. This time I was home to meet an inspector. He let it be known that city hall is upset (upset? what had we done?) about what is going on with this construction. He wouldn't make us stop work right then, but he said we'd better get a permit. He smiles when I tell him what the local experts told me, and simply repeats that I must get a permit. So I excused myself and ran down to city hall where I applied for a permit. When I got there I learned that they wouldn't accept cash for the permit. I pointed out that it says right on our money that cash is "legal tender for all debts public and private" but in spite of this I had to drive home for my checkbook. I applied for two permits: after all he was the senior inspector and I wasn't sure that one would be enough for him. Actually, I wanted to retile around the bathtub, replace one of the steps leading to the house, there were loose nails here and there that needed banging in, and there were some broken windows to be repaired. The helpful people at town hall thought that two permits would cover it.

The next Monday I came home to find a Stop Work Notice posted. By Mr. Tibbs. His handwritten note (attached to the notice) said:

You were informed last Thurs. to get a permit and that a garage would be required (undecipherable word) plans to Redwood City Office within 5 days.

T. R. Tibbs

I called him to find out what was up and he told me that he had gone to city hall in Brisbane. They had told him that I had not filed an application for a permit, thus he issued the Notice. I told him that the permit application had been filed the day after his visit, and that his boss, the senior inspector, was aware of it. He said that his boss had told him to keep on the case and had sounded impatient. Later that same day I got a call

"Is this the Music School?"

"Yes" I replied

The voice then informed me that it was the Police, and asked if I knew that I needed a business license? I told them that I did, that operations as a school wouldn't begin until I had one, and that one was in the works. And indeed I was in the process of finding out exactly what kind of licenses were required.

In the meanwhile the Stop pork Notice stood, my house wasn't getting repaired, and business (such as it was) conducted at my own peril. Not that we are generating any revenue. Our neighbor who keeps two pieces of heavy equipment and their trucks and trailers on the street and repairs them (noisily) outside our house doesn't have a permit or license. You can see their backhoes from all across town. The police don't mind. I don't mind much, even though heavy equipment isn't the most aesthetic thing to have out your front window.

I spent a number of sleepless nights asking why I was being singled out for all this civic attention? I invented a number of theories.

1. The inherited hatred theory. This house used to be owned by Mike Moeller, a DJ who was busted for growing pot in the basement. This theory has city hall believing that I am a friend or crony of his. Either I purchased his aura with the house, or they were visiting their wrath on me since he moved away, depriving them of their target. A sub-theory is that they think I am him.

2. The town politics theory. The last mayor, a Mr. Salmon was recalled by a special election which established Ms. Miller as the mayor. Marc Salmon, who is helping me rebuild is the old mayor's son. By stopping the work they get at Marc by depriving him of revenue, and thus indirectly attack his father. Once on my case they continued harassing me since by hiring Marc I "proved" I was a friend of the old guard.

3. The "you are not the target" theory. We invited the mayor to our free concert (nothing illegal here) and the letter got to the city manager and he is just making sure everything is on the up-and-up. But this theory doesn't explain the flood of building inspectors, and especially Inspector Belluomini's comment that someone at city hall was very annoyed .

4. The mayor hates classical music theory. I had to include this for completeness.

The city may not have known that Mr. Moeller and I had a slightly antagonistic relationship over the purchase of the house and otherwise I don't know him at all. But that might all be irrelevant. And I didn't know about the relationship of Marc's father to town politics. I wouldn't have cared if I had known. I didn't care to believe that the Brisbane bureaucrats were so petty-but someone blew the whistle. I decided to try to use the situation to get some PR.

Backwards Brisbane

At this point I'd spent six months in Brisbane, otherwise known as Bakersfield West. There is no question that it thinks of itself as a cow town, a country-and-western island of conservative politics, where the big rigs stop for a bite. They pretend that San Francisco, the big bad city, is half a day's ride by stagecoach to the north, and the stage just don't run that often. City hall would like to see Brisbane a high class town, like Sausalito or whatever, but the inertia of the residents was keeping the lowest common denominator fixed. Brisbane itself is just a burr in the tail of Daly city, a thorn in the side of South San Francisco, and a flea on the back of San Francisco. As those larger planets turn, this satellite gets thrown about and its plans have as much weight as the wishes of a navigator of a walnut shell on the North Atlantic. Brisbane is also the forgotten corner of San Mateo County, the rest of which lies to its south. The town, by historical and economic ties, really belongs to the area to the north. Brisbane is a misfit.

You can get some idea of the insularity of the place by joining me at the town's largest food store, nearly a supermarket in size, and look for some Japanese ramen noodles. They only had one brand, a domestic variety, full of the things that have made America great: preservatives, artificial flavorings and colorings, mono- and di-glycerides, emulsifiers, and more. Somehow the authentic Japanese products I can buy in Daly City or SSF manage to keep well and taste better without all of it. I asked if the store would consider getting some of the brands that I prefer. The clerk at the register raised himself six inches taller than usual and informed me that no imported foods were sold at this store. By tone of voice and glance of eye he told me that I must be second cousin to a skunk, and a red communist skunk at that, to even think of eating foreign food and I'd better shape up if I wanted to shop there in the future.

Next door to the aptly named Midtown Market was the library. I'm a great lover of libraries, but this well-meaning institution had had its mental development arrested at the eighth grade level. It was staffed with non-professionals headed by a librarian whose sense of decor was inspired by a grade school homeroom. At Halloween, witches and pumpkins of paper adorn the library, on Washington' s birthday it's cherry trees of paper, at Thanksgiving turkeys and so on through the school year. I ordered a rather technical book on aerodynamics through the library but a high school text with a similar title came through with the note "the book you requested is highly technical, the patron probably intended this one." Apparently, my view of the intellectual standing of average Brisbanians at the time was shared by the County Library system.

Getting Building Permits

In an earlier installment I mused over the reasons for my being hassled about a building permit. Well, that business went on for quite a while. Ignoring the usual language about grandfathering I was told I couldn't get a permit because the code requires that each house have a two car garage. My house had none at all. Therefore (and I use that term advisedly) I could not repair the front to the storage building. So I had to get a Use Permit to allow me to continue using the storage building as a storage building. Once I had a use permit, then the storage building could exist legally without being a two-car garage (though why, say, the bedroom could not equally well get a use permit and thus count as a two car garage was beyond me). Since once it had a use permit, I was told, and it thus had a legal existence, I could get a permit to repair it, which is what I was in the process of doing.

The planning palming commission is the dispenser of Use Permits and I attended the meeting where they were to discuss my petition. I brought slides of the house before and after I had purchased it and fixed it up, and the city's Planning Director spoke in favor of granting the permit. A very welcome and unsolicited testimonial came from a neighbor who said that I had "really improved the appearance" of my property and that all the neighbors appreciated this. Finally everybody approved and they voted me a permit when a young stand-in for the city attorney stood up and said that he wasn't sure that they had the authority and jurisdiction to grant me a use permit so they unvoted it and told me to come back in two weeks.

The city called me the next day to tell me that the real attorney had returned, reviewed the minutes of the meeting and declared the commission empowered to grant me the permit after all. I didn't go to the next meeting thinking that all was settled. I was wrong of course. One of the commissioners had just one further question he would like answered and without me to answer it nothing could be done. Another couple of weeks passed and I went to a planning commission meeting again. The question was based on the fact that the commissioner had heard from one of the children in the neighborhood that I held concerts in the storage room. I said that I held concerts in my living room. The Use Permit was granted. Then I applied (actually re-applied) for my building permit. The old application, and the check for the fee, had been lost by the Brisbane City offices. Really lost. So I re-applied. It was a measure of my growing status in this city, or of the forgetfulness of the vengeful gods, that I received a full-blown final permit to fix my storage room a few days later. It was marked "PAID". although they still haven't cashed that lost check. I recalled that the check was not enough to cover the cost of the permit (it was just the application fee). Well, I figured they'd get me sooner or later for it. In the meanwhile I got to fixing the storage room, though my enthusiasm for the project had somewhat expired.

After a while, both the ex-mayor and the new mayor (each a case-study in themselves) both became acquaintances of mine. The ex-mayor's wife had been a jazz singer, but was profoundly unhappy and often threatened to kill herself. The ex-mayor's son Marc, excellent if unreliable carpenter that he was, became a friend, his youngest sister became a recorder student of mine, and her sort-of boy friend became another student of mine. I was dating another sister of his, and she was sitting at my kitchen table as I wrote the first draft of this (which was a letter to my parents). A year or three later Marc was to get married, and then abandon his pregnant wife. She became a friend of mine. As I re-read this, over a decade later, her daughter is taking music lessons with me. Such is soap opera life in a small town.

The rainy season arrived in Brisbane. Now I know why my block is called Lake Street. The backhoes are still parked under my windows. The mountains have lasted yet another few months in the face of impending development, and for the time being it is still beautiful Brisbane.

Good Backhoes Don't Make Good Neighbors

It took only a year before I began to feel like an established resident. Employed by the city's recreation department, I represent the city at the county Bikeways planning Commission. I owned over 5 acres of land at the very top of town, and had bought my second house. I was working on my third. Lines of communication were open between me and the city, and even the neighbors a door away found it easy to express their differences in a direct and unequivocal manner. For example, by smashing open the side of my car with their dump truck. Allow me to introduce them: next door but one from me live a fine American Family, the Hattons. Jack and Shirley, married for at last a quarter of a century are pleasant and friendly people. Three sons live with them. Doug, the eldest, makes his living as his father did, by renting out his services with a backhoe. The backhoe is a medium-size earthmoving device with four wheels, two small ones in front and two very large ones in the rear, a plow on the front and a digging arm cum crane on the rear. The back is a very versatile piece of equipment, capable of precise and delicate operations yet very strong, able to lift and move thousands of pounds at a single go. The next son, Len, is in the same business, and keeps his backhoe alongside his brother's across the street. He has also learned of the dangers of repressing one's hostilities, and demonstrated his mastery of his backhoe by running it at me about a week ago. At first I thought it might be accidental, but when I dove out of the way, he adroitly swing the machine around to keep coming at me. When I had, by running behind my truck, eliminated myself as a contestant, he drove toward my friend Pam, who also declined to attend the demonstration passively. We dashed up the stairs to my living room, slightly scared and very much put out: we didn't have a backhoe.

The third son, Don, was much younger, in high school, and a member of the model airplane club that I run for the city of Brisbane. Don shows good group identification by calling those not of his race as "niggers" or "mexes," and refers to Jews as "kikes". He was by far the best model builder in the club. He and the other male members of the family display excellent mechanical aptitude and ability.

I think that it is entirely my fault that the brouhaha got started. Due to my unreasonable insistence that a residential neighborhood be acoustically gentle, aesthetically pleasant, and the roads be unobstructed, I had from time to time mentioned directly to one or the other of the brothers that I thought the backhoes, dump trucks, old oil cans, parts from the backhoes and dump trucks, spills of oil from oil changes, piles of dirt and debris dumped from the dumptrucks, the trailers that the dumptrucks use to transport the backhoes, parts of the trailers, tires from all of the above, and the large patch of bare dirt that they rest on and stir up did not fit into the residential character of the neighborhood. They disagree. After a few tries, I stopped complaining.

My silence was broken one day when they dumped, amidst a loud clatter that had me out of my chair and to the window in a second, an old windowless hulk of a dumptruck in front of my house. Did I mention that they kept all their paraphernalia in front of my house and not theirs? For me, this was the last straw. Full of (repressed) anger and fury I ran down and asked merely how long they thought they would have the wreck around. They rightly took my query for disapproval and answered sarcastically, in terms of years. They took the opportunity to question severally my parentage, virility, sanity, appreciation of the finer things in life (e.g. backhoes) and my right to exist. I had to admit to myself that before coming to Brisbane I was unaware of the multiple virtues of backhoes.

The old dumptruck was bought to supply parts for adding a dump feature to Len's non-dumping truck. I was impressed by their consummate skill in dismembering the old and grafting it to the new. The dump box was hoisted by the backhoe and moved with grace and exactitude as required, clanging loudly against its chains as it went. They started work promptly about 6:00 AM each day. I don't. In fact this has been one of my main gripes all along, although I did not tell them of this in my attempts at showing toleration. Almost every morning (except Sunday) they drove their backhoes up the trailers's ramps, rattled some chains until the backhoes were fastened in place, warmed up their grumbling diesels, ran their whining hydraulics back and forth, clanked their tools, tested the all-important double air horns on the tops of the cabs, yelled instructions to one another, and-so that they could enjoy all this work-they played the radios in the cabs loudly enough to be heard amidst all this activity. Each son has his favorite station.

On returning from a morning walk one day, we discovered some damage to our car, so I called the police to report a hit-ad-run accident. I suspected that one of the Hattons might have had something to do with it, and conveyed this weak suspicion to the officer. He said that he'd be back later to check on Doug's truck. He did not come back. I came home after work late that night: it was about 9:30. I got a flashlight and inspected Doug's truck. The bumper was in two parts, one of which was an inch higher than too other. The gashes in my car were double, one an inch higher than the other. The heights of the gashes above the ground equalled the heights on Doug's truck. There were some dark green paint the color of his truck scraped onto my car. So I called the police again. An officer came and measured, scraped samples, and took eight photographs. I also took some photos. The officer concluded that Doug's truck hit my car. I asked the officer if I should speak to the Hattons and he nixes the idea. But as we spoke, Shirley Hutton, attracted by all the flashing strobes, comes out and asked "What's all this?"

The policeman calmly explained. Shirley reacts angrily.

"You're sure a sneaky son-of-a-bitch!" she said "You should have just told us. Why did you go to the police first? You had no call to do that since you ran into our truck!"

I said that my insurance requires that I notify the police, besides, I hadn't known it was their truck that did the damage when I called the police in the morning. She goes to get her son Doug, who I learn is also called Jack Jr. The officer, Pam, and I go to their house and by and by Doug comes down, shoes in hand, looking suitably sleepy. The policeman gets his name, driver's license number and asks him if he hit my car.

"Nope."

The policeman then asked him if anybody else drives his truck.

He answered, "Nope."

Jack Jr. suggested that probably I drove the car into the truck. We trotted out the evidence, such as tire skid marks, which showed that my car was pushed dead sideways six inches. Nonetheless, he still liked the hypothesis that I drove the car into his truck. The policeman pointed out the difficulties in this theory, but he remained unconvinced by mere evidence.

As we left he asked why I waited until it was so late (about 10:00) before making a ruckus. I told him that I just gotten home from work.

"You work?" he asks, with evident amazement.

The next day, to be unsneaky and neighborly, I called Doug (only his mother calls him "Jack") on the phone and said that I appreciated his mother's idea to settle things amicably. I told him that the repair estimate was $311.38, and we arranged a time to go out and look at the car the next day.

Next day came, and when I called him he had a stomach ache and didn't to walk in front of his house to look at my car. I felt like telling him that if he didn't come and look at it he'd have a bigger ache with the police, but refrained. Two days later, as Pam and I came home from a bike ride, I asked him if he wanted to see the evidence.

"No." he replied, "my insurance company will pay the [expletive deleted] $311.38 that you say it will cost." Shows you how friendly neighbors can be. I am glad that I am moving across town to Brisbane house #2 in a week or two, in spite of this display of friendship. I never will know just who set that fire that nearly burned down my house a few days later. While I was buying house #2, I had purchased some land, designed a house, and was planning for house #3; the house I really wanted with a big central music room.

The Sewer Line

Building a house involves a lot more discussion with the city than a mere repair. One of the stickier points was how to connect to the city sewer system. The town meeting at which the sewer for my #3 house was held on a Monday night. again. Fortunately, the length of my work day meant that I arrived an hour late. The sewer was the first item on the agenda, and was still going strong when I arrived. There was a man in the back row with a pipe who got up and in a dignified fashion asked whether the sewer was to be public or private. The answer was batted around by the city attorney, the city manager, and the council. Their answer was that it was to be part of each, where the sewer lies on public property it will be public and where it lies on private property, it will be private. The owner of the adjacent property, Walt Bednar, got up to say that the town could not have a private line on public property. This engendered another long discussion, and it was concluded that the private part would be on private property, and the part on public property would be made public. Mr. Bednar again got up and asked if this was going to allow development on the mountain above his house and he was told it was irrelevant. He said it was relevant, and spent about 15 minutes defending the relevance. A dignified man in the back, smoking a pipe, got up to ask if the sewer was to be public or private, and a small discussion ensued, and it was decided that the part on private property was private and where it entered public property it was to be public. I am not repeating myself, just telling it like it was. I took notes. Then Walt Bednar got up to point out that the real problem was that you couldn't have a private line on public property, and a discussion ensued wherein it was pointed out that the city could grant such an easement if it wanted to. The city attorney said that there were precedents but that this wasn't one of those cases, as the part of the sewer line on public property was to be dedicated to the city. The dignified gentleman in the back smoking a pipe got up to ask what the precedents were, and was given a few examples. A discussion ensued as to whether the examples were, in fact, examples and whether the city should have granted such easements. Mr. Bednar got up and asked if the line was usable by property owners higher above his house, and a discussion ensued, and the mayor said that all that was up to the owners of the sewer line as it was private. So Walt said that if it was private then it couldn't be on public property. A pipe-smoking man, sitting in a dignified way in the back row, asked if the sewer was going to be public or private. This matter was discussed by the council, with a counterpoint of Mr. Bednar's explanations about the city's responsibilities, the mayor gaveling Mr. Bednar down and telling him that he was out of order, and a councilperson obligato in counterpoint with a discussion of the difficulties the city has had with private sewer lines. This last point was answered an octave lower by the city engineer who said that the line, even though not a city line, was to be built to city standards and inspected by the city. A man, smoking a dignified pipe in the back row, asked if the line was, therefore, to be a public one or would it be private. Being on the agenda, the point was argued enthusiastically by all the above-mentioned participants. I took notes.

Finally, the motion was called by the mayor. It was pointed out that there was not yet a motion on the floor. This matter was discussed and someone proposed a motion that permission for a private sewer line be granted, providing that it was to city standards. This led to a discussion as to whether the line was private or public. A man smoking a pipe in the dignified back row asked if the line was to be public or private. The answer that developed was to the effect that the line would be part of each. Walt Bednar asked which part was which, and was gaveled down by the mayor. The motion was reworded three times, and then one of the councilmembers asked to have the motion re-read, but the secretary read the first version, so the matter was re-amended. Now that a motion was on the floor, it was open to public discussion. I stopped taking notes.

Two hours later the motion passed when someone discovered that there was an error. The wording said the line was to go "up to Margaret Avenue" and the plan had the line going across Margaret Avenue, where my house was to be. A new motion was made, and discussed and you can re-read the above if you wish to know what was said. When it was all over, the line was approved and the meeting was about to move on to the next item when the mayor put in the last word:

"Do you realize that we have spent the last three hours discussing a pile of shit, and how to move it from one place to another?"