Jack Boegle Interview

--(Interview begins)--

GASSER: It is now five o'clock in the evening, on the twenty-eighth of February, 1988. This is an interview with Jack Boegle for the Mountain Drive Project. The interviewer is Teddy Gasser. We are at his home on Mountain Drive. Great Jack, it's nice of you to let us interview you and I'd like to start out asking you. You met Bobby Hyde at a badminton tournament, could you describe that?

BOEGLE: Well after it, yes. My friends introduced me to him and we met at his house. It was a new environment and pretty far back in the hills but now it doesn't seem so far.

GASSER: Was that the home on Sabado Tarde?

BOEGLE: No, that was his home right here on Mountain Drive about 200 yards down from where I live. He parceled out his land into acres and was selling them acre 00:01:00by acre. And he had quite a few parties that were very novel and interesting and I got enthusiastic for his philosophy and bought an acre from him on time payments.

GASSER: What was his philosophy?

BOEGLE: Who can say, it was a freewheeling, liberal as anybody can imagine. Free love, equal sex, except he was dominant. And he wanted everyone to come up and live their own lives, and do what they were talking about in the sixties, "realize themselves," and a lot of people took him up on that and that's the way he got the neighborhood together.

GASSER: But this was in the fifties. When did this badminton tournament take place? What year was that, do you remember?

BOEGLE: 1950.

GASSER: So would you say he was ahead of his time?

BOEGLE: Oh, yes, at least 10 years probably 20.

GASSER: Do you know where his ideas came from? Did you ever talk to him about that.

BOEGLE: No, he came from a fine old Montecito family and so did his wife, and they developed their own philosophy. They wanted to live out in the country and do what they wanted to do and wanted to encourage everyone else to do the same thing, build their own houses.

GASSER: What do you remember about Floppy? Your first meeting with Floppy?

BOEGLE: Well, she was the gracious hostess, and didn't take command but she was always there doing the right thing. A very forceful, intelligent woman. She ran a lot of parties for Bobby and had to carry the burden especially when they 00:03:00adopted more children and built up the family. She did the hard work. But they both were very happy together.

GASSER: Did Bobby Hyde take part in the badminton tournament?

BOEGLE: No, no he was considerably older than me and he wasn't into athletics he was driving bulldozers around clearing his land. Pardon my shaking hand but I have Parkinson's disease.

GASSER: Yes, I know that. How long have you had Parkinson's?

BOEGLE: Six years.

GASSER: It doesn't bother me at all Jack at all, so don't, don't...

BOEGLE: It's not fatal.

GASSER: It's not fatal, no. Why do you think Bobby Hyde was attracted to you?

BOEGLE: Well, we were just introduced as friends. He didn't know me or my 00:04:00friends very well. But we got well acquainted over his usual cocktail parties. And when he understood I was interested in buying an acre of land he sold it to me.

GASSER: What were his usual cocktail parties? What occurred?

BOEGLE: Oh, at least once a week. And it was just wine and a jug and friends dropping in and a fireplace glowing. And he had a big comfortable adobe house.

GASSER: So what was a typical evening? Did you have to make arrangements were you invited?

BOEGLE: It was typical for him. My friends told me to come up to this party, it would be great. And they were right it was great.

GASSER: Tell me exactly what happened? Can you still remember? From when you first...

BOEGLE: Fairly well, Floppy introduced us to different ladies and we got acquainted. There was no dancing or singing but everyone enjoyed themselves. 00:05:00They all seemed very intelligent people -- it might have been the wine. We had some more parties later, but that was when I decided to buy an acre up here. It was $50 down and $50 a month.

GASSER: How did you choose that land?

BOEGLE: Bobby led me around and showed me a few acres he had available. I wanted some high up in the mountain thinking I could do this guru scene but it was saved for his son who built there later.

GASSER: Gavin?

BOEGLE: No, that was White. Different name but one of Bobby's offspring.

GASSER: Tommy White.

BOEGLE: Tommy White, yeah.

GASSER: The piece that you had wanted was the land the Castle was on?

BOEGLE: Yes, and he was saving that for his son.

GASSER: So who were some of the other early people that were here when you first got here in 1950, did you come in 1950 or was that...

BOEGLE: 1951 I got here.

GASSER: Who were some of the other people?

BOEGLE: The one I met working on his house up here was Frank Robinson. And shortly after that Bill Richardson, and there weren't many others. There were just a few pioneers starting to build up here. They were all gung ho, hardworking and we all built our own houses.

GASSER: When did you first start building your house?

BOEGLE: 1951.

GASSER: Did anyone help you, did you have building parties?

BOEGLE: No, I was sort of stubborn and wanted to do it all myself so I put everything together -- took a little longer but I got together. Now, I look back I don't know how I ever did it. I couldn't even take it apart now.

GASSER: What arrangements did you make? Could you describe how you first began?

BOEGLE: Well, you scrape up a lot of dirt from the ground, and put it in square boxes and make adobe bricks and leave them out in the sun to dry, and then you've got a lot of dried adobe bricks.

GASSER: How long does that process take?

BOEGLE: A few sunny days, like three of four, hot days, or a week. I put in stone foundations with some advice from Bobby. He gave me a lot of advice on building. Not all good advice, but still it worked. So with stone foundations and adobe bricks the house went up and finally got completed.

GASSER: How long did that process take?

BOEGLE: Oh, a few years. I had one room built fairly fast, long enough to live in. But one room wasn't enough I added another, then added another and now I have three rooms.

GASSER: So the room we are sitting in now was your first room?

BOEGLE: No, the kitchen was the first room. I thought that was big enough but I found one man has to have a little space to swing a cat.

GASSER: Don't tell me you've swung cats in your life. I'm a cat lover you see. Did you have any kind of house flag, or personalized -- I've heard about the house flags that Neely had -- did you have a house flag?

BOEGLE: No, I didn't, no -- Neely had one.

GASSER: Did anyone else have a...?

BOEGLE: Robinson, I think, had a house flag that's about it.

GASSER: You were born in San Francisco, could you tell me a little bit about your family?

BOEGLE: Well, they moved to Berkeley, and I was raised in Berkeley and went to all the schools in Berkeley grammar school through college UC at Berkeley. And was a nice quiet town, and then when I worked in San Francisco I could commute across from Berkeley and still live there.

GASSER: What did you major in at Berkeley?

BOEGLE: Economics, that was just before the crash in 1929, and that, so much for that economics. Then I found this opportunity in Santa Barbara and decided to get some land and build a house here.

GASSER: Could you describe that decision making process? Was that difficult to leave the place you grew up in?

BOEGLE: Well I was playing badminton with a group at the Berkeley Badminton Club which was a very small outfit. And we took trips around and one of them was to Santa Barbara and we came here a couple of times and it seemed attractive and I liked the climate, because the Bay area is so cold and foggy and it rains forever up there sometimes. So I came here where it was sunnier.

GASSER: Could you describe the Sunset Club to me, whose idea that was? How that first came about that the Sunset Club organized?

BOEGLE: Well, a number of us were building our houses here. Fairly young, healthy guys and we worked hard all day. And after a hard day's work we wanted to get together and have a drink which we had in cheap wine and a lot of fun. 00:11:00And we did it out here where I had a little brick terrace. And at first it was all men because the wives were at home fixing the dinners. They didn't particularly like Sunset Club, I can't imagine why, but one of them heaved a brick through that window right by your elbow there, and a note on it said, "Dinner is ready!" That was Stanley Hill, was supposed to come home to dinner.

GASSER: Sandy didn't like, got impatient. How long did these meetings last?

BOEGLE: Well, the sun set on schedule, and when it got fairly dark -- I didn't have any lights at the time -- we'd all scatter to our homes and have a good dinner. I'd eat with some friends usually, or we'd have some more wine.

GASSER: Did you have, what were the schemes that you cooked up? Could you 00:12:00describe sort of a typical meeting and the schemes that got cooked up at Sunset Club?

BOEGLE: Well, I couldn't do that as well as Robinson could. He's got a good memory for that stuff. We didn't scheme very much except we had a yachting club -- I forget what we called that one, you probably have it in your notes.

GASSER: The Regatta -- the Regretta it is -- the New Year's Day Regretta.

BOEGLE: We had that and we had a kite flying contest -- And Robinson won that, too. He was pretty good at making kites. And I understand, when I was not living in this house, the guy who was, had evening sessions where they sent up gas 00:13:00filled balloons. And they were these long weather type balloons and they sailed them up from here and light a fuse under them so that they exploded up in the air. This was any time of year with dry grass and everything, I'm glad I wasn't here to see that.

GASSER: Who was that?

BOEGLE: Well, Stan Hill[1] was a very inventive mind and he probably organized it, but I wouldn't put the blame on anybody.

GASSER: But who had you rented your house to at that time?

BOEGLE: Ed Schertz. Ed Schertz[2] was a local potter and a very good one. And he's still operating. He's a professional and he taught at the school down there, the extension school. And he was the best tenant I ever had. He took care of the house and enjoyed himself.

GASSER: Was this when you went away to Japan?

BOEGLE: Well, among other things, yeah.

GASSER: What were the "among other things"?

BOEGLE: Well, I went on ships wherever they went. I started on one and went down to Panama and then I went around. I did a little tour on the Caribbean, went to Havana a checked out on the communists, and, just as a tourist. And came back to catch a French ship to Tahiti. Finally came to Japan for a short vacation before I went to India. Trouble is I never got to India because I met a Japanese girl. In fact I never got out of Japan.

GASSER: How long did you stay in Japan?

BOEGLE: Year.

GASSER: Why did you travel? Did you travel as a merchant seaman or did you travel as a passenger?

BOEGLE: Just for pleasure. I like to travel. And I rented this place and I had another little duplex in Isla Vista, and the rent from those two places paid my way on cheap freighters to travel around. And I'd wait in some local native hotel until I got enough money to take a freighter to go somewhere else. So it was a third-class world voyage and very pleasant. I enjoyed it.

GASSER: How much did you have to pay on those freighters?

BOEGLE: Well, I figured handing over six dollars a day was too much, but I was probably paying ten a lot of the time. But you could get in a native hotel in 00:16:00those days for five or six dollars. Like Singapore.

GASSER: During what years was that?

BOEGLE: Darned if I know. That was the late fifties I guess before I got to Japan.

GASSER: What was your favorite port of call?

BOEGLE: Well, I had a fine time in Tahiti. Because a year there is very rewarding, and in those days it was not too expensive, and people were very friendly. We'd have beer in the evenings, in Quinn's Café, breakfast in the morning. They were making Mutiny on the Bounty while I was there. I could have gotten a job as 00:17:00an extra but it would've interfered with my beer drinking.

GASSER: How long did you stay in Tahiti?

BOEGLE: A year. The natives were very friendly, you might say. The girls who went to Quinn's Bar were lovely girls, Tahitians all, and they weren't trying to profit from the tourists, or do anything like that, they went out just for a good time. And when the evening was over they started back to their home village which would be up the road about ten miles. And on the way they'd stop in my hotel and look for a place to flop out and crash, so they'd be on the floor. And I'd have Tahitian girls in there resting hither and yon and making me very nervous. In the morning they'd all get up and be gone and take their laundry home to 00:18:00their mothers. And then we'd meet again for breakfast later.

GASSER: So after, were you on your way home when you stopped in Japan and got waylaid for a year?

BOEGLE: No, you're right about getting laid. I was aiming at India. But this young woman[3] had a very attractive house with another couple in it. And we all moved in together and Yokohama was so pleasant that I spent some months there, and then the rest of the year down in the southernmost island which I think is, Kyushu, yeah, Kyushu. I tried to learn to speak some Japanese, but they laughed me off the books. I couldn't even come close.

GASSER: What made you decide to return to Santa Barbara?

BOEGLE: Well, we'd lived together a year and everything seemed so connubial that 00:19:00I thought she might like Santa Barbara. So I brought the subject up, but she didn't particularly want to go to America because she had friends there. And her friends told her she shouldn't miss an opportunity like this with a rich American -- she knew I wasn't a rich American. So we went around and checked out the different Japanese freighters and found that we could get a passage back to Santa Barbara by way of Long Beach so we did.

GASSER: When was that?

BOEGLE: Gee, I don't know. All this "when" stuff when you've got 80 years to try to remember, you know.

GASSER: It's hard I know.

BOEGLE: I got divorced in 1965.

GASSER: So it was before 1965 that you came back.

BOEGLE: Oh, yeah. The end of the 1950s, I guess.

GASSER: Had things changed?

BOEGLE: Here, no. The house looked a little different with other people living in it. And, we'd been married in Kyushu, and my wife couldn't really believe when I said I lived in a mud hut made out of adobe bricks. But when she saw it, why she started cleaning it up, but you can't clean adobe bricks. And from then on we spent six years here and we were very happily married. We had our Sunset Clubs, and all the usual.

GASSER: What happened when she tried to clean the adobe, what did she do?

BOEGLE: She left it alone. She just cleaned the bricks and the tiles. I bought 00:21:00her a wash tub and a scrub board; I thought that was very generous of me. But some traitor among our neighbors told her about washing machines so after a while she took the wash out.

GASSER: How did she like the other Mountain Drive community? How did they accept her?

BOEGLE: Fine, fine, she had a ball and they liked her to. She went on a trip to Mexico with one of them, George Greyson and his wife. She went with Bobby Hyde up to see his houseboat; he had a lake up in the mountains. She had a real enjoyable time. And I think I was working at the time.

GASSER: Where?

BOEGLE: That's when I worked in the wine cellar because the new bride says, "Get 00:22:00out of the house, you're under foot all day." So I got out. And the wine cellar went very well. We had free samples, those went very well.

GASSER: To other Mountain Drivers?

BOEGLE: And me, yeah.

GASSER: How did it come about that you took on the job at the wine cellar? Was that Pierre Lafond's wine cellar?

BOEGLE: He had a manager there who won the state lottery, and he had so much money that if he worked for a salary he'd have to give up the whole salary to the IRS. So he said, "To heck with this job," and he quit. And Pierre Lafond hired me to run the wine cellar in his place.

GASSER: How long were you Cellar Master?

BOEGLE: Three years.

GASSER: And did all the people from Mountain Drive visit the El Paseo?

BOEGLE: Every night at 5 o'clock, yeah.

GASSER: Describe one of those evenings and your job as Cellar Master?

BOEGLE: Well, we had what we called a tasting; whatever I had opened we'd taste it. One night our friend Dick Johnston[4] who lived in, well he worked in the radio station[5] up in the second floor of the El Paseo right opposite the patio where I was. He came rushing down and says, "Mountain Drive is on fire!" And I got a call from, on the phone, so I hung up a sign that said, "Closed on account of house on fire,"[6] and left. And we all came home about the same time and watched it burn because the firemen were all here doing their job.

GASSER: Could you get very close to your property?

BOEGLE: Yeah, I got inside the house. And it was full of smoke. I didn't know whether to put on work clothes and go to work or get in my car and go downtown.

GASSER: Get the hell out of here!

BOEGLE: I stayed up here but the firemen had things pretty well dampened down. And they certainly saved my house.

GASSER: But Frank who lives below you lost his?

BOEGLE: Not that first round. It went right over us and didn't do a lot of harm, but got a couple of houses. But in the evening we were all out on my porch celebrating, and drinking wine and beer, lots of beer, we thought we'd get the smoke out of our lungs with beer, it doesn't work that way. Then we saw the fire coming over the hill up on the east side there and all the imported firefighters 00:25:00from, Indians down in Texas or wherever they came from, were filing down one by one in a great silhouette coming down the path, they were leaving that fire and getting away from it. And when we saw that we all rushed back to our homes and started wetting down the roofs and everything. Frank[7] lost his and I was just lucky I didn't lose mine.

GASSER: That must have been very frightening.

BOEGLE: It was and still scares us.

GASSER: What precautions do you take now?

BOEGLE: Oh, we cut all the brush and grass we can get hold of. Marty's one of the best of that.[8] He clears all around his house and...

GASSER: Good for you, Marty.

BOEGLE: So does Robinson, hires some people now, and he puts in a fire pump and 00:26:00a few things.

GASSER: How do you feel the Coyote Fire changed Mountain Drive?

BOEGLE: Well, it sure cleared out the underbrush you could see for miles. But, everybody got the message and you get instant attention up here now when you talk about fires. And that was only the first one then there was the Sycamore Canyon, fortunately that went downhill and didn't come up and bother us.

GASSER: Was this the reason that people became interested in running for city government? Could you describe how you got involved with running for the Montecito Water Board?

BOEGLE: Well, I wasn't very involved, that was an abortive effort. I tried it for about a month going around pushing door bells and I got bit by a dog once 00:27:00and I gave up. Oh, Frank, come on in. We're just finishing out.

GASSER: We're just finishing up, we're talking about the Water Board.

BOEGLE: So I came in fifth in a group of seven in the Water Board. And Frank did better, he came in second in a group of two. That's the way it was.

GASSER: For the Fire, Fire...

ROBINSON: Fire Commissioner.

GASSER: ...Commissioner.

BOEGLE: Yeah, he was going to be Fire Commissioner. That was the end of our public works efforts. Except we tried to fight Westmont off, unsuccessfully. We tried to keep them down to a couple of hundred, and they're up to twelve or fourteen hundred now.

GASSER: The political activity, do you feel you accomplished anything by your efforts?

BOEGLE: Absolutely nothing, I just alienated a bunch of real estate people because I said we ought to stop growth.

ROBINSON: I got a job out of it. Dana Smith[9] thought I sounded pretty good and my arguments to be city councilor for Montecito.

BOEGLE: In case Montecito was a city he'd be the councilor. Well, that brings us up to date, I would say.

GASSER: That brings us pretty far. I still wanted to ask you a few more questions. I wanted to ask you about your editorship of the Grapevine, but I think we should adjourn for this meeting and maybe

BOEGLE: Yeah.

GASSER: if you'll be so kind maybe I could come back and do another really short, short session with you?

BOEGLE: Or we could do it on the phone.

GASSER: Oh no, no. I'll bring you another bottle of wine, Jack.

BOEGLE: Well, it was nice of you to bring that. I'll take these fellows out, and we'll set up our evening.

GASSER: Ok, we'll close for now, thank you very much.

GASSER: This is a follow-up interview, a second interview with Jack Boegle at his home on Mountain Drive. This is March the 13th, 1988, and my name is Teddy Gasser. Do you see any parallels between Tahiti and Mountain Drive?

BOEGLE: No, not even remotely, no way. We had musical wives up here and things like that, but these people were not thinking in terms of marriage.

GASSER: Were there any similarities between your stay in Japan and Mountain Drive?

BOEGLE: None that I can think of not even remotely. We lived very simply. We were in a bare bones sort of apartment set-up. And that was similar. But Sue had a background of fishing village and country living and I thought she might be 00:29:00able to put up with Santa Barbara. So we talked about it and we had a year to decide what we wanted to do, and we finally came over here.

GASSER: After you got to Santa Barbara what was her first reaction on seeing this place and Mountain Drive?

BOEGLE: Well, I was trying to carry the bride across the threshold but this is a mud house and the Japanese are not used to mud houses. They have ranch houses made out of stone but they don't have adobe bricks. And I think her first reaction was, "My God, how am I ever going to clean this place?" My tenants weren't all that tidy. I had an artist here.

GASSER: After you came back to Mountain Drive you had a wife. Did this change your feelings or your status on Mountain Drive?

BOEGLE: It certainly did. This was a new experience to me. I never had one. So I adjusted and took everything in stride, and took it very slowly. We had no friction of any kind. We contemplated adopting children, but it just turned out to be too large a, very big thing to do and, well it didn't make that much sense to us anyway. We weren't that interested that much. And we lived quite happily here for six years.

GASSER: Did she help plan parties or keep up Sunset Club or...?

BOEGLE: Yes she did. Anytime we wanted to do something, or have anybody over for dinner, or have Sunset Club going, she was glad to get things out, she liked to do that; dishes and glasses and wine and all the things necessary. She was a 00:30:00very good cook, too.

GASSER: But she had no, no feelings against Sunset Club, and your evenings spent...?

BOEGLE: Well, she spent them with us. She was one of the first ladies allowed in there. She poured wine, and had fun, and talked to the men. And the men liked her.

GASSER: What would you consider the unifying factors on Mountain Drive?

BOEGLE: Well, the fact that we started, all of us with Bobby Hyde and his land and build our own places. I think, all the fellows I can think of around here either built their place or helped build it, and that's a very unifying factor, because we were none of us house builders and we learned as we went. And it's a very rewarding experience to find out you can do something with your hands you 00:31:00didn't know you could do.

GASSER: Did you help anyone build their house?

BOEGLE: Not seriously, no. Maurer[10] up the hill a little bit. We'd usually stand around and talk to them while they were building. We didn't do much teamwork stuff.

GASSER: Could you tell me a little about the different features of your house, the tile work, who made your tiles? And could you give me a brief description of...?

BOEGLE: Well, the floor tile came from Coleman's Building Materials, which was a big outfit downtown at that time. And he gave me a price on them as second hand or damaged tiles, so I got a half price on them and I used them for my floors. And the bricks I made up where I had a garden later a flat piece of land a lot 00:32:00of sunshine, just made mud bricks and laid them out in the sun. And built the house up from there. I was learning as I went.

GASSER: But I notice some decorative tile here as well.

BOEGLE: Well, that came from Bill Neely.[11] And there were a number of good potters up here. Ed Schertz was another. He lived in my house when I went to Japan. And these fellows threw off things like little tile decorations just for kicks. They were into more serious stuff. They did pretty good tile and art work for places downtown.

GASSER: Did Ed Schertz add anything to the house when you were gone?

BOEGLE: No, not deliberately. He left a few pots around that he didn't like very 00:33:00much. He didn't build on the house, or do anything any different. He just enjoyed it for a home and entertaining ladies.

GASSER: Do you remember which tiles belonged to him and which ones to Bill Neely?

BOEGLE: I don't think Schertz gave me any tiles that I used in the house. These are all Bill Neely's.

GASSER: How would you best describe Bill Neely?

BOEGLE: Well, he was a very complex person. It was sort of a love/hate arrangement with the rest of the people. A lot of them loved him, some of them thought he was terrible. But he was a very forceful leader type. He was a ranger up in Yosemite. And a good potter down here. And he divided his life up in the 00:34:00outdoors he didn't ever go into an office, I don't think.

GASSER: What were your feelings about Bill Neely?

BOEGLE: We were very good friends. I went down there frequently, and had dinner with him and his wife, Barbara, and he'd come up and kid along when I was building. We were very good friends and I admired him. He was a real genius, and erratic as geniuses go, but he was a very good artistic genius; and smart in a number of ways. For instance, he went into flowers and vegetables and growing things like trees, he gave lectures up in Yosemite on all the flora that they 00:35:00had in the summertime with groups of people. And he was smart enough in World War II to tell them he could speak Urdu so they stationed him in India where he ended up on a tea plantation in Ceylon. He always landed on his feet, and became quite a character wherever he lived.

GASSER: What do you thing his main contribution was to Mountain Drive?

BOEGLE: Well, he was sort of the salt of the earth. He kept people on their toes, and he joined in our celebrations. He had a heavy ego and some of the other fellows did, and that was where the conflicts came. When he wanted to, he joined in with us. He used to go up to Yosemite and carry a bunch of beef jerky that he'd dried out in his yard. And he'd live on a hillside in a tent and these tourists around Yosemite would come over and see him, especially the ladies. And saying, "Oh my goodness, you have to eat that stuff?" "Well," he said, "it's all I've got." And of course he had money, too. But they'd invite him over and he would get a good dinner at somebody's house. He worked that gig for a number of years.

GASSER: With whom did he have most of the controversies?

BOEGLE: Well, he and Frank Robinson liked each other very much, and they also 00:36:00fought a bit because of the ego scene. But he was a very independent, Bill was, he was not a social animal exactly.

GASSER: And yet he enjoyed parties?

BOEGLE: Oh yes, we had innumerable things, like this one coming up. An Irish celebration; St. Patrick's Day. We had a long list of parties you can get out of the Grapevine that we used to publish.

GASSER: What was your favorite party?

BOEGLE: Well, I liked the storming of the Castle, because that was Bastille Day, and having been in France I attached a little importance to it. And the peasants outside would storm the castle with the nobles inside, and interfere with their dinner. And we'd just have ham sandwiches out there and fire water guns. It was a nice little battle scene, the 14th of July.

GASSER: What was your role?

BOEGLE: Well, I usually went on the peasants' side. Neely and some of the other fellows were on the inside acting as lords of the manor. But the peasants overcame them so we always won.

GASSER: Did you behead any of them?

BOEGLE: Yeah, we had a guillotine and we did behead a couple. We had this cardboard guillotine rigged so it stopped short of the guy who would be in it. But there weren't many volunteers to try it out. We just went through some motions and had a lot of fun with it, the guillotine.

GASSER: How would you best characterize Frank Robinson?

BOEGLE: Well, he had a genius for being pretty successful. After building his house he went into a contract with McGeorge. [12] They became building contractors and put up some buildings of their own design, like places like Goleta. And he moved on from there to become a house designer and finally an architect. And he put his finger on things to become a success quite well. He went to Mexico and tried to get into competition down there but they 00:37:00were too devious for him and he had to give up on that.

GASSER: What do you think his main contribution is to Mountain Drive?

BOEGLE: Well, he was one of the stalwarts and one of the originals so he commanded quite a bit of respect. I learned a lot about building from him because he was ahead on his house by a few walls and brick making and showed me the tricks.

GASSER: Can you remember any particular tricks?

BOEGLE: No, nothing special. We started Sunset Club because we all worked so hard all week. We thought we ought to get together one night and celebrate and just drink and we did that. It was a general get together of the fellows around here.

GASSER: There were a lot of children on Mountain Drive. Did they ever come to visit?

BOEGLE: Yeah, there were. No. No, they were very small infants in those days, and we see more of them now that they are grown and having their own children.

GASSER: What was your least favorite party?

BOEGLE: Least favorite. Well, trying to eat some of the haggis at Robbie Burns birthday party. The haggis was pretty good, as a matter of fact, but it was hard to think about when you're thinking of everything they put in it. And they had the bagpipers which filled the Castle and made so much noise you had to go out 00:39:00the door. But it wasn't the least favorite it was a lot of fun. All our parties were good fun.

GASSER: There was never a party you chose not to go to?

BOEGLE: No there wasn't, we went to everything.

GASSER: How would you describe the drinking habits on Mountain Drive?

BOEGLE: We stayed with wine almost exclusively, some of them had beer. But there were no hard liquor addicts, except once in a long while we'd have a special banquet or something. But the wine we got was the cheapest we could get, by the barrel, and it was called York Mountain Wine. And it started about $6.00 a barrel and went up to about $10 which seemed quite a lot, for that you get ten gallons. And -- I think it was ten. And the barrel was delivered to your house. And you could uncork it and bottle it or you could drink it out of the barrel. 00:40:00We did a lot of that. And all of us had wine with our meals. But there were no drunken parties really until we settled down for a fun party and then everybody could abandon themselves.

GASSER: What was the source of this York Mountain Wine?

BOEGLE: It came from up north. Somebody's vineyard, I can't remember right now. And he made it rather carelessly and primitively but he got it to us at a good rate. We'd go up there and for a while Ed Schertz was going up and getting the barrels and distributing them and then for a while Neely did it. And they were heavy barrels to carry around.

GASSER: How many did they take at one time?

BOEGLE: Well, they delivered five or six or eight people down here; a barrel a piece.

GASSER: And how long did that last?

BOEGLE: Oh, I don't know five or six years.

GASSER: No, one ten-gallon barrel, how long did that last?

BOEGLE: Oh, I think it was more than a week, I think you could get pert near a month out of one, I don't remember exactly.

GASSER: Do you think the drinking had any ill effects on Mountain Drive?

BOEGLE: It made our teeth black. That's the only effect. I think it gave us longevity.

GASSER: So we've flipped the tape over and we were talking about drinking habits and I think we can move on to perhaps the Grapevine. How did you manage to become editor of the Grapevine?

BOEGLE: Well, it sort of circulated around. Different ones took a whack at it, I don't remember where I inherited it, but I kept it for only about a year. And my sources of gossip weren't as good as those who had big families and kids going around. Gill Johnston did a good job on that because he had some kids while he associated with them, too. And he got gossip direct from the families. And we just kept it as a weekly newsletter and recited the parties we had and the people that were there. And of course like anything in news, the more names you mention the happier people are, so we mentioned everybody that went to every party. And we made a lot of fun things out of it, enjoyable. The epic number I 00:43:00got out was 1964, the Coyote Fire, and I interviewed different families up and down, and got quite a story out of that. And that went about five pages. But that was the most serious endeavor and it was a serious affair.

GASSER: Was it had to get people to contribute?

BOEGLE: Yes, it certainly was. You had trouble getting anyone to contribute anytime. But it wasn't that big a paper just a couple of pages.

GASSER: Did you have any tricks to extracting news stories?

BOEGLE: No, just pour some wine and listen.

GASSER: Who helped you?

BOEGLE: Nobody helped me when I was doing it. And I typed it out on an old typewriter I have. Then we ran off copies. I forget the details exactly.

GASSER: Was there an editorial policy?

BOEGLE: Well, more or less, I think we had something about it, "None of the news that fit to print," or something like that. Nothing -- oh, I did have a couple of sub-editors who got named in the masthead. Yeah, it was sort of a group effort; I had a little help from other people.

GASSER: But your main issue that you can still remember was the Coyote Fire issue.

BOEGLE: That was the biggest thing I turned out and the most serious one. It 00:44:00seemed a good time to get the facts straight and all down while the ashes were still warm. And it came out pretty well. But I turned all my copies of the old numbers over to Gill Johnston[13] as a keeper of the records.

GASSER: Why did you give up being editor?

BOEGLE: I don't know, I can't remember exactly. It just seemed a good idea to pass it on to somebody else.

GASSER: I'd like to talk a little bit, too, about the County intervention that has been recently in the news. Have you had any problems?

BOEGLE: No, I can't help you much there because I'm very much out of touch with these other fellows and their problems except second hand I hear that they are having trouble with the building department. Mainly, the Planning Department. The lady, Savage, who was running a one-woman show at the time, came around to see my place and gave me a clean bill of health and said I was alright. But not everybody got off that easy because quite a few were renting rooms and where you did that it was sort of illegal. So they got corrected or reprimanded or changed their systems. But I haven't the details on everybody's house that that happened in. They didn't like her much, but she didn't give me any trouble.

GASSER: How do you feel about that?

BOEGLE: Well, I don't mind people renting rooms and building a small shack for somebody to live in. But, I suppose it could lead to overcrowding and problems, and certainly septic tank problems, water problems, but I wouldn't condemn it entirely because these people were trying to be harmless and didn't want to cause any trouble.

GASSER: Do you think that's affected the community on Mountain Drive?

BOEGLE: It is now. Quite a few people are alarmed because they are pressuring them to change or remodel or tear down their place which is a very drastic thing to say. Savage has some helpers now and they're covering the water front pretty thoroughly. All I get is second hand rumors on this.

GASSER: If we could for just a moment if we could go back in time, could you describe when you were first -- when you were with Bobby Hyde and he was showing you the different pieces of land, could you describe how this piece of land looked?

BOEGLE: Well, the view was tremendous then, because all we had was sagebrush and there were no trees planted. I planted all my trees up here and it must be a couple of dozen of them now, and they are blocking the view. But in those days you could see all the way down to Coyote Road, Eucalyptus Hill, and there were no houses in view. And, if you bought a piece of land you just had to imagine what you could put up on there, had to stretch your imagination. And Bobby was very helpful because he wanted to see everybody build a house and do it themselves and he didn't care how they'd do it. He'd like to see them all do different, concrete, adobe, anything. He did a lot of that himself, too. He was 00:45:00continually on his bulldozer going around opening new roads and opening new pieces of property. Down the County, the called it the "Hyde Tract," as if he were a house builder or something. But he was quite inspirational and he helped us all a lot.

GASSER: How did he help inspire you? How did he help you stretch your imagination?

BOEGLE: Well, he had nice parties at his house where we all got together and talked about things. Not necessarily problems. But he was just that quiet, inspiring type of person. Whenever you talked to him you felt confident and felt better and if you wanted to do something he'd encourage you to go ahead and do 00:46:00it. He was all for progress in the individual way.

GASSER: Can you describe any personal encouragement that he gave to you?

BOEGLE: No, it just came through, sort of absorb it. I saw him fairly often and he was always encouraging. You couldn't beat his terms, $50 down and $50 a month, till you get the place paid for.

GASSER: What comparisons would you make between then and now?

BOEGLE: Well, there were different generations then. We were considered to be either an artist's colony or a bunch of nudists or something very weird up here. That's the way that it appeared in the News-Press and it's the way people thought of us, but we were only nudists when we went swimming. The artists we had were potters. We had a couple of school teachers, and a carpenter or two, a cabinet maker. Venable was the cabinet maker; he disappeared in the South Seas.

GASSER: Do you know anything about his disappearance?

BOEGLE: Nobody does. They found his boat run a shore on an island with everything in order; they don't know what happened. His wife still lives up here, his ex-wife. And they've never figured it out either.

GASSER: I broke your thought and I've forgotten now what my own question had been.

BOEGLE: Well, he was a carpenter and a cabinet maker. Frank Robinson worked down at the Harbor Master's office, and he was assistant Harbor Master. Going around pulling people off the sandbar and things. And it wasn't till later on when they let him go that he got into the building trades thing and made pretty good success of that.

GASSER: How would you like to be remembered as a person?

BOEGLE: Oh, my goodness, I don't know. Remembered... Well I liked to be remembered as more or less friendly and cheerful which is not what I get as I pass on in my later years. Once I passed 70, 75, I got less agreeable and more crotchety in my ways. But I would like to think that will not be the biggest memories. And one of the things that binds us all together up here and I think made me very happy was our close friendship. You could go into anybody's house any time of day or evening and they give you a glass of wine, and sit down and talk. And that went for about twelve or so houses around here and we were friendly. It's not that way now because just because we don't visit much, but we're still the same friends we were then.

GASSER: What would you like to be remembered for on Mountain Drive?

BOEGLE: Well, nothing particularly. I don't think of anything I want to be 00:48:00remembered of.

GASSER: Well, what would you consider your main contribution to Mountain Drive?

BOEGLE: My only achievement in my adult years was building a house. It's the one thing I did right and I did it okay. Quite a bit of travel, and some odd jobs downtown.

GASSER: Are there any areas I haven't covered?

BOEGLE: None that I can think of. You can get a background of all our social life and our festivities from the Grapevine that are in Gill's possession, and it would be much more detailed and interesting then talking about them here. No, I think you've covered everything in life right up till now where we're into the third generation. Robinson's got grandchildren and so has Dana Smith and other 00:49:00people around and I think we moved on into the elderly senior citizen thing now, and that's the only change up here, but it's pretty substantial we're all retired and taking it easy. Oh, Gill...

GASSER: Do you think Mountain Drive will continue?

BOEGLE: Yes, the younger generation is hanging around. They're not leaving too much. And they are showing promise of taking over houses and continuing.

GASSER: Come on in Gill.

BOEGLE: Hi, Gill, we were just talking about you and the Grapevine.

GASSER: Which I have by the way, which are in my possession. No, no sit down we're almost finished, I'm finishing up for Sunset.

BOEGLE: Yeah, we're about finished.

GASSER: I wanted to know if there were -- just one last thing I see here that I didn't ask -- were what characteristics do you think were needed to survive on Mountain Drive?

BOEGLE: Well, you don't need much of anything. The whole outside world seems to 00:50:00want to move up here and so it must be a good place to be. And I think the younger people that are taking now respect that and they are going to hand on to it and they aren't going to give it away. I think it will last as long as the younger generations want to keep their houses and enjoy life up here. No reason they shouldn't.

GASSER: Do you think they will be able to avoid the developer and the high prices real estate brings?

BOEGLE: I hope so. I don't think they are greedy.

GASSER: Well, Jack I want to thank you very much for your time. And I've really enjoyed this interview this is a wonderful interview and I thank you very much and I hope that if I have any follow up question you'll allow me to come back and do some more. I certainly do appreciate it, thank you very much.

BOEGLE: You're welcome.