1967-69 Mandeville Canyon

Mandeville Canyon was a Dream

An odd "bungalow," very California, open all around, shoddily constructed of cinder blocks and wood with open beams and a one-inch-thick ceiling. One could hear the patter of the rain on it like in a tent. But it boasted forced-air under-the-floor heating - into which Cornelius' guinea pigs occasionally disappeared.... Each of the bedrooms had a French door to the garden and none closed tightly. In winter we had to keep a huge bonfire in the fireplace from driftwood collected at the beach to keep warm. The bedrooms (on the left) and the living room, from where this picture was taken, looked southeast into the garden, camellias, a eucalyptus tree, birds of paradise, and a few neglected roses. Barbara planted Iceland poppies and stock during that first winter of 1967/68. They would never again be so beautiful.

 In April 68, around Easter Nancy and Jerry Bott, who was now working with me at Aerospace Corp, and little Sarah spent a blissfully suspended day with us. Time simply stood still....

I made a big slide for the children, and one day Cornelius, fearlessly climbing it and sliding down, fell through the window into the hall way and badly cut his ear! In panic Barbara raced him to the doctor who sewed the ear together again.... For several weeks his ear had to be held down with adhesive tape for fear that he would get lopsided - but no one can see this damage.

High Sierra and Northern California June 1968

In June 1968 the Lewis' invited Susanne to join them at a camp in the High Sierra where Margie, who was somewhat retarded, could ride horses. We drove with Cornelius to Toluolumne Meadows, the upper part of Yosemite National Park, to pick her up.

Afterwards all four of us camped for a week in Bliss State Park on Lake Tahoe, one of the heavenly places in California. When we reached the Pacific after an engine breakdown on Mt. Lassen and an adventurous 60-miles dirt-road drive through the hills near Covelo, the coast at Fort Bragg was in deep fog and so cold that we had to wear wool caps and mittens. We camped at Bodega Bay. For dinner we had bought a goodly piece of fresh salmon. A sharp wind blew the fog away but created such a sandstorm in the dunes, that we had to boil our salmon in the back of the open car. And then the gasoline for the stove ran out before the fish had finished cooking. What to do? We let the fish stand in the tepid water - and eventually discovered that this was the best method to cook salmon. It was simply gorgeous, half raw, soft, and tasty.... Next day we found a sunny beach on Point Reyes and stayed there for most of the day.

July-August 1968 Trip to Lake Michigamme

For the summer Julia Euling invited us to her parents island in Lake Michigamme in Michigan just south of Lake Superior. We hired Christine Starke from Fritzie Kulick in Pasadena for the duration of the trip to help take care of the children. Once more we drove half-way across the continent.

On the Island Julia's father had had a local Norwegian carpenter build five or six log cabins, a common dining-living room, and a kitchen facility. There were bottled gas and kerosene lamps but no electricity, and Julia's father studiously saw to it that life was kept primitive. Julia's parents were also there. Every family member and visitor had his own cabin - including an out-house with a view - if you left the door open.... And God have Mercy upon you, if you used Grandma's outhouse in an emergency. One could wash oneself in the Coca-Cola-brown water of the lake or take a swim in a secluded spot below one's cabin. Rumors had it that people bathed in the nude.... although I never came upon anyone without bathing trunks - after all this was Midwestern America. There also was a goodly amount of drinking and eating Wisconsin cheese going on every evening.... - And the mosquitoes.... millions of them in August! - Not my paradise - but Barbara loved it, and the children enjoyed their freedom. Susanna had learned to swim well in Traudel Friedmann's pool and Cornelius was shadowed by Christine. I flew back early, I had started a very exciting experiment - the first continuous chemical laser - at Aerospace Corp. - I was needed and our group was getting famous - and soon would be "classified" by the Air Force.... Barbara and Christine drove the children home two weeks later.

Christmas 1968, my parents visiting us for the first time

My parents came by charter flight to Long Beach airport. Barbara took them around, and we even went to the desert with them and to the beach and to our favorite camping places. Our environment was strange for them too, especially father found innumerable "strange" plants and animals he did not know. But mother got to know and love Barbara and was happy to be with the children. They came with less prejudices than Barbara's parents and would come back a second time.

Gold Necklaces and Rings 1959-80

To compensate for the high-strung work at Aerospace I made many pieces of jewelery during these years, some of them very beautiful and not only for Barbara. It all started with Tante Alix's Mandala for Barbara and the necklace I saw in New York. My 1964-version of it you see below. After the experience with Lenny I charged only for the materials and retained the right to design pieces that I thought would fit the woman in question. I reinvented the age-old technique of making granulation, and for a while this was my special preoccupation. That and "black"opals for Barbara. The pearl cuff-links for father Lattmann were a great success, and the earrings the prongs of which reached into the folds of Barbara's ear were gorgeous to behold. Unfortunately we lost them at a midnight romp on the beach....

I searched for variations of Barbbara's gold-necklace. Anik's necklace was a simplification, but Tante Alix's necklace - 38 simple, hammered gold ringlets - which she had made for Barbara's wedding was so minimal and perfect, that I soon gave up my attempts at inventing simpler links. Slowly the shape of my necklaces became more intricately convoluted. Lilo's necklace was the first variation, Fritzie's the most complicated one.

For my mother I needed a different design, and since from the very beginning I had searched for a very fluid necklace, here was the opportunity. I "knitted" a string from interlaced shapes. - But it did not satisfy me, it never hung well, and I returned to the intricate mandalas. Its culmination was a variation in Sufic-writing spelling BARBARA in regular and mirror-imaged Gothic capitals. A rather spectacular piece - which very few people could decipher.....

A Strange Happening, 7 January 2003

In 1989 when we went to Ladakh, Barbara put all her gold-pieces into our safe deposit box. On our return she picked up the little box and took it home. That day we had a troop of relatives of Elsa, the cleaning lady, washing the windows. A month later Barbara confessed that since that day the box with its precious content had vanished. Elsa's daughter was the suspect. I was inconsolable, how could all my declarations of love be lost. I have not been able to touch gold again, my hands would tremble. I left the gold work to Peter Grohs, who had become a professional goldsmith..... Today something very strange happened. Barbara looked for some paperwork in the safe. It jammed. Together with a bank clerk she retrieved the very box, the culprit of the jam. In it were all the missing pieces.....

Since the loss I have only made a few bead necklaces, of which the Chinese necklace is the most ornate and the Afghan necklace is the most meaningful, because of its mythical origin - imagine the beads to have been worn by a beautiful Hellenistic-Buddhist woman.....

Moving to Kingsport-Drive on Malibu Mesa 1969

During the third winter in Mandeville Canyon it rained for weeks like never before. In March the brook in the canyon overflowed and the road became impassible for several days. One night a house close to us was buried by a landslide. Two people died in that accident. Because we were high above the canyon floor we were not swept away, but the Hoffmans were worried that the house might start slipping - as had happened ten years earlier. The repairs required to stabilize the hillside on which it stood had swallowed thousands of dollars. - But we were ok. A greater problem was that the Hoffmans were on their way back. The Kennedy years were over, Fred Hoffman was no longer needed in Washington. Barbara started to look for a new house. By now we were ready to buy our own - but finding something was not so easy. As long as it rained so badly no lender would give us a loan.... We bid on three cheap, problem houses, but thank God all three fell through for different reasons. Eventually Barbara came back with The Find, the house on 15480 Albright St in which we still live.

But the escrow took time - the owners and Julia each lent us $5000 to cover half of the down-payment and we scraped together another $10 000 from our savings; we bought the house - which today is worth around a million - for $55 000....