Burdette Dunn Interview

--(Interview begins)--

REMAK: This is an oral history interview with Burdette Dunn in connection with the special Mountain Drive Project. It is taking place at his home in Mountain Drive. It's Saturday, January 10, 1987. And this is Roberta Remak. Why don't I start way back in the beginning and ask you how long you've lived in Santa Barbara?

DUNN: Since 1937.

REMAK: I see. How did you happen to come here?

DUNN: To go to school at the State College.

REMAK: Right. Where was it located?

DUNN: It was up on the Riviera.

REMAK: I see. Now, have you lived up here in this house for a long time?

DUNN: Oh, for about 25 years.

REMAK: I see. And, you built it yourself?

DUNN: Yes.

REMAK: What did you do while you were building it? Did you live on the property?

DUNN: A couple of years before we moved in here, we lived over on the east end 00:01:00of Mountain Drive in what's known as Hyde Park or Hydeville now. We were about, we were working here about four years before we moved in. It went very slowly, one of those things that was done out of income and not much income.

REMAK: I see. Well, were you living in somebody's house?

DUNN: We were living in one of Bobby Hyde's rentals. Actually, it was a house built by his son, Gavin. Gavin would build it more or less on speculation, but he didn't want to sell it, so there were a series of people who lived there over maybe ten or fifteen years that we knew. We were one family lived in it. It was sort of a stepping stone. It would serve as a rental unit, that is, it would 00:02:00serve as a place where you could live in a sort of minimal living conditions while you were building a place of your own.

REMAK: Who were the other people who lived there? Do you remember?

DUNN: There were some people named Beaveroni from Switzerland and they decided not to build there and they went on back to Switzerland. Then the Macys, Bud and Susie Macy lived there for several years. I don't know who lived there after we left. There have been a long series of occupants since and I believe finally it was sold to someone who's been living there for quite a while.

REMAK: It's still standing?

DUNN: Yes. It's the first house up above Mountain Drive.

REMAK: Right next to the mailboxes?

DUNN: Mm-huh.

REMAK: Okay. How did you happen to get up to Mountain Drive, Hyde Park, if we can call it that. Did you meet some people?

DUNN: We'd known Bobby for a long, long while. Since my wife is practically a native Santa Barbaran and her, my wife's sister has a distant relationship by marriage to Bobby's family.

REMAK: Which part of his family? If you can't remember, that's all right.

DUNN: I can remember it if you can unscramble it. Bobby's first wife died in childbirth. That child is Susie Macy. Let's see. My sister-in-law's husband is 00:04:00Susie Macy's uncle because Bobby's first wife was my sister-in-law's husband's sister.

REMAK: Okay. Thank you, I'll try to unscramble that later. When did you first meet Bobby Hyde here?

DUNN: Oh, sometime in the, I guess, maybe mid-forties.

REMAK: When he was here in Santa Barbara?

DUNN: Oh, yeah.

REMAK: Why do you suppose he bought all that land there?

DUNN: Well, he bought it because it was cheap land and he wanted to build a 00:05:00place. Then he realized he had more land than he could build on. He wasn't a developer. He didn't want to become a developer. And, so he thought it would be an opportunity for people to come in and experience building a house, making a home for themselves. So, he would survey off an acre, sell it to people he thought wanted to build, people he thought were probably his kind of people, so to speak. Sometimes he was right; sometimes he was wrong.

REMAK: What happened when he was wrong?

DUNN: Well, the people took off.

REMAK: What were your first impressions when you first met him?

DUNN: Well, I found him a very interesting person. He was very literate and he knew a lot about writing and he read quite a bit. I found him interesting in that regard. His wife is a very interesting person too, and his children are interesting, also.

REMAK: He seemed to have known an enormous number of people.

DUNN: Yes, he had lived on the East Coast and he built a house there on the Hudson River which is still there, I guess. Wherever he went, he built 00:07:00something. So he'd met a lot of people in various walks of life.

REMAK: Did he ever express his philosophy about the building your own home, the living close to the land, living naturally?

DUNN: Well, that's the way he lived, but he didn't formalize a philosophy about it. He said if you wanted to live cheaply and comfortably, you can by building your own house. It was still possible with the construction ordinances of that time. He said, "This is how you can do it. I'll help you get started if you want 00:08:00to do it." He made the assumption that anyone could build a house, including widows and orphans, but not all of them could. Most of those who tried seemed to have accomplished it, some of them quite well. He wouldn't sell a piece of land to someone who wanted to come in and get a contractor and build a fancy dwelling and then put it up for sale. That's why he searched out people who he thought would build and live there. In many cases, that's the way it turned out. Now these were often young people, with infants in arms. It was very difficult for 00:09:00many of them. There were only one or two who had any amount of money, really.

REMAK: Sort of like pioneers?

DUNN: Yes, it was that sort.

REMAK: Did he help you build this house?

DUNN: He came one day with the bulldozer and we scratched out this little shelf that we live on here. That's the only work he did here. He didn't want to work outside more than he had to, to occasionally get some money.

REMAK: I guess we ought to make clear that you're about a mile and a half away from the junction of Coyote Road and East Mountain Drive.

DUNN: Bobby had said he always coveted this land up here, but it was never for sale. It was another friend of ours discovered once it was for sale, our friend 00:10:00grabbed it up. Bobby was always kind of disappointed because he would liked to have been in here. He would work out of his own home occasionally because he was a first-class mason. He could build most anything with stone or with concrete. I've seen some nice work that he's done. He could lay brick; brick floors, brick walls, anything in masonry. But he wouldn't do that very often. He wanted to give his time mostly to writing.

REMAK: Was he independently wealthy?

DUNN: Oh, I don't think there was any real wealth there. He and his wife were 00:11:00never uncomfortable. But they lived pretty close to what they had. When he sold the land off, he would, it was almost always sold with a little down, a little now and then, so he never got big chunks of money out of it, not until near the end there I guess did they sell off anything for a large amount of cash.

REMAK: When you say, "near the end," is that after the fire that destroyed...

DUNN: Yeah, mostly after the fire.

REMAK: Well, you knew a lot of people having lived up there. You knew a lot of people who continued to live in the Mountain Drive community. Did they mostly... 00:12:00start like you did which is to rent a place or live in it?

DUNN: Some of them actually lived in tents. I can remember two or three who lived in little trailers, but the trailers weren't as large then as they are now, that is anything you could afford. So, there weren't many trailers around. You could put a roof over your head and wall it in in a couple of weeks' time and live in that while you're working on the rest of the house.

REMAK: Were there utilities up there?

DUNN: More or less. No gas over there at that time. I guess there isn't now. But 00:13:00there was water of a sort. It's on the Montecito water system and at that time there was only one meter. Bobby would send out small laterals here and there to feed them. So if someone turned on the sink in one house, you can be sure you wouldn't have much water in the next one.

REMAK: It must be tough to schedule showers.

DUNN: Oh, yes.

REMAK: When you came to build your house here, did you have people from Mountain Drive come and help you, with the roof and all that sort of thing?

DUNN: No, we mostly did it alone. My brother-in-law came several times to work with me.

REMAK: What about the people of Mountain Drive? Was there some sort of tendency for communal...?

DUNN: Oh, yes. I remember when one of my friends over there was about ready to put the roof on his living room. He'd been living in, just a... first in a trailer, then in a... in what was to be the kitchen.

REMAK: Who was that?

DUNN: Eric Maurer.

REMAK: Oh, yeah.

DUNN: Eric had gotten most of the living room walls up and was getting ready to roof it and he came up with a bad back. He was severely incapacitated and 00:15:00several people rallied around him and Frank Robinson[1] among them and Bud Macy[2] was there, I believe, put the roof on his house. I did some work over there on a couple of those places because I knew electricity and so I did some wiring for some of them. There was quite a bit of shared work over there. Bobby was often in it. It was his, that was one of his pleasures was to watch someone get going. He would come around and pitch in whatever the work was and help out.

REMAK: And he had the heavy equipment?

DUNN: Well, the heavy equipment in those days consisted of a tiny little 00:16:00bulldozer, had a blade only four feet wide. It was a kind of a toy and he would go around with that and we'd chisel out these little shelves. I helped on a couple of others. His philosophy about machinery was that the bigger it gets, the more you're going to disturb the earth. It's a temptation, but stay away from big machinery. But as time went on, he fell into his own trap. He got a monstrous bulldozer finally and used it up at Painted Cave where he had a lot of land up there in his later years. But, he was always sorry that he had that machine, I believe, because it did more than he wanted to do to the earth.

REMAK: I see, I see. Did the people who lived up on Mountain Drive want to live 00:17:00off the land necessarily?

DUNN: There wasn't enough land to live off, of course, if you mean farming. But some of the early people up there started vineyards and unfortunately the phylloxera got it but Bill Neely had a nice little vineyard for a while and making wine, but that's about all you could grow on the hillsides over there, except later, Bobby put in some avocados down below.

REMAK: Are they still there?

DUNN: I don't know. I think some of them may be. That was the only crop if you can call it a crop. There was one time, quite a little marijuana growing but 00:18:00that was grown all over in those days.

REMAK: My next question is sort of social life. I understand there was a great deal of informal visiting that went on. People gathered casually, for no particular reasons.

DUNN: That was almost the only form of gathering and nothing formal, there were parties for one reason or another, usually if a writer were in town; I remember Dylan Thomas was up there one night. I saw him there. When someone showed up, 00:19:00had some connection with the arts, usually Bobby would know them, would be, have some connection with them. They'd get together and socialize if the artist or writer were that kind of person who wanted to socialize.

REMAK: Well, weren't your certain annual festivals, I'm thinking of the Christmas Eve Pageant that was put on for the children and Twelfh Night.

DUNN: Those things happened regularly. I didn't attend many of those. It was usually one small group among the whole community that worked with those. Those 00:20:00were the people who could play instruments. There were dancers like June Lane, [3] and they put on most things which were a lot of fun.

REMAK: With costumes and...

DUNN: Oh, yes. But I didn't see many of them, so I don't recall.

REMAK: What was your major connection with them, the community?

DUNN: Well, we just seemed to all have gotten started at one time building and then we all knew Bobby and his family. That was the nucleus of the thing.

REMAK: Did you, later on you ran the bookmobile out there.

DUNN: Yes.

REMAK: I was surprised that the bookmobile would go to such a small community. 00:21:00How many families were up there?

DUNN: At the time we had the bookmobile up there, there were probably a dozen or more. That's not a small community for the bookmobile, if the bookmobile is doing what it's supposed to be doing.

REMAK: Oh, I see.

DUNN: That was in 1953, 54, 55. It was isolated up there. This part of Mountain Drive wasn't paved and the people up there had no library service except the bookmobile if they couldn't get downtown. Many of the women were at home with infants and without an automobile. It was a, I think, useful service at that time.

REMAK: How often did it go?

DUNN: Once a week.

REMAK: Did the people out on Mountain Drive make a special effort to expose their children to art and music and...

DUNN: Some did. Some did, because there were artists in residence up there. But most of them were Cold Springs School children which was quite a good grammar school. There was a very cohesive group in terms of the arts and the community. I think Cold Spring recognized that, although it never did anything much about forwarding anything in that direction. It was a good school.

REMAK: How did the children get there?

DUNN: They were driven there. Some walked. At one time, you could walk to school 00:23:00down through what is Westmont campus, across through there. There were trails where the children could get to school safely, but most of them were taken by their parents.

REMAK: At least one parent worked downtown, I suppose.

DUNN: Oh, several.

REMAK: No, I mean of each family.

DUNN: Well, yes, when there was work available. There were schoolteachers and there were truck drivers and there were librarians.

REMAK: Were all the people who had regular jobs, like I heard of someone, I 00:24:00forgot who it is now, who was a sheriff's deputy. Were they also poets or painters or musicians? Were these jobs not, were these jobs sustain them not a career?

DUNN: I don't recall that person specifically, but, well the schoolteachers were, of course, professionals and that was their livelihood and their profession. Others, the musicians, the painters, of course, had to make a living the best they could because it's not a great town for music. There wasn't then and it's hard enough to make, to sell paintings anywhere, so they worked 00:25:00part-time jobs. I know one musician over there worked for Seaside Oil Company part time.

REMAK: Do you know who that was?

DUNN: That was Eric Maurer.[4] There was a potter, Gerry Friedman, he, I think he did fairly well in his potting and Bill Neely did fairly well with potting. But it's only that sort of thing that could bring in money in terms of cottage industry; otherwise, you'd have to go outside to make money.

REMAK: Speaking of pottery, what about Pot Wars? When did that start?

DUNN: Oh, that started, it wasn't going on when I was living there, but I think 00:26:00it started sometime in the early 60s probably.

REMAK: Did you go to them?

DUNN: Oh, yeah, we'd stop off...

REMAK: Describe one to me. I'd heard that they exist but I'd love to get a picture of what they...

DUNN: Well, it was simply a roadside pottery sale and they're mostly...

REMAK: Not down on Mountain Drive.

DUNN: It would sometimes, it was the top of the road and then it would be farther down in. But since there wasn't a lot of traffic along Mountain Drive, you didn't necessarily locate along the road, but frequently that would be the most convenient place for it to happen. There were mostly local potters. Some of them brought things from outside. But there was some really excellent work there.

REMAK: What else besides pottery?

DUNN: Nothing much comes to mind. You mean, in terms of products?

REMAK: Uh-huh. Anybody do any weaving or jewelry making or things like that.

DUNN: Yes, there was some jewelry making. I think, oh, Greyson, [5] still makes jewelry over there, but he wasn't living there then when that began. But, he's been there quite a while. I think pottery, jewelry, a bit of wine and, nothing else comes to mind. There were paintings, of course, and sculpture, some good, some bad. Painters have come and gone over 00:28:00there. I knew several. I don't know of anyone right now.

REMAK: Who was the most famous artist over there?

DUNN: I think Bernhardt was probably the best one; painter.

REMAK: What was his first name?

DUNN: Oh, it doesn't come to mind. I'll recall it in a moment.[6]

REMAK: What sort of things did he paint?

DUNN: Well, he was doing abstract, as I recall, when he died all too young. John 00:29:00Lazell was painting then and there was, see, Joan Coppersmith[7] was working, she's dead though.

REMAK: What did she do? Was she a sculptor or painter?

DUNN: No, I believe she was painting. It was so long ago, I've forgotten.

REMAK: One of Hyde's children was a sculptor, was he?

DUNN: One of the Hyde children?

REMAK: Uh-huh.

DUNN: Oliver Andrews,[8] Bobby Hyde's eldest child, he was a painter and worked in several art forms actually. Finally, I think 00:30:00sculptor was what he wanted to do most. But he'd become an academician having, had gone to work at the university, at UCLA, so he wasn't part of the crowd up here. But while he was living up here he was doing a lot of the things; great, fanciful, interesting things. Then almost everyone up there took a crack at writing something. I guess there still is quite a bit of writing. That was Bobby's love, was writing. He would push people into it, whether they wanted to do it or not, encourage them.

REMAK: Was there a writing club or something like that?

DUNN: There was off and on, there were writer's groups. They would meet there frequently.

REMAK: These were the grape harvests, right?

DUNN: Yeah, they start in the mid-afternoon when, the couple I saw, and we start, I think, maybe mid-afternoon when the truck came from over Santa Ynez Valley with the grapes.

REMAK: You didn't go with them to pick the grapes.

DUNN: No. Someone has to be at home. There'd be a crowd of stalwarts who would pick the grapes and bring them over in the truck and then there'd be an old stock watering tank, maybe two or three feet high, three feet high, perhaps ten feet in diameter and dumped the grapes in there and we'd get all the maidens, 00:32:00quote unquote, and dancing on the grapes in bare feet.

REMAK: Was there music along with it?

DUNN: Not very often. It was fortunately, before the days of the ghetto blaster. There might be someone there with a guitar or maybe some of the brass people in the neighborhood; usually some drums, but not any, no big bands.

REMAK: How long did this take?

DUNN: Well, it took a long while for some people and not very long for others. A good party would go on most of the night. Then it would be everybody into the 00:33:00pool, if Bobby had put water in the pool.

REMAK: Oh, yeah! He'd already built his pool. Is that the one with bottles?

DUNN: Yeah, that pool had been built a long before me, ten years earlier. But most often, it was dry. But Bobby remembered to, or thought about putting water in the pool, why, then, everybody would be invited into the pool.

REMAK: The water must have been pretty pink.

DUNN: The water was pink and cold.

REMAK: That's before the hot tub.

DUNN: Long before the hot tub.

REMAK: Sounds like great fun. How long was it before the wine was drinkable?

DUNN: Well, some of it never became drinkable as far as I'm concerned. Some of it wasn't too bad. It would be bottled and drunk over the next year.

REMAK: Anybody in particular had charge of that?

DUNN: Well, I guess Neely was as much the vintner as anyone. Frank Robinson had a lot to do with it, usually. I don't recall the others.

REMAK: They were both there when this wine-crushing event took place.

DUNN: Yes.

REMAK: How many families would you say there were up there at that time?

DUNN: In residence up there?

REMAK: Yeah.

DUNN: There were, you'd almost call it two communities. There were the people who lived above Mountain Drive and the people who lived below Mountain Drive. There were about eight dwellings above Mountain Drive and I would say about two 00:35:00or three of the families in those dwellings had anything to do with the gatherings that occurred on lower Mountain Drive. Most of the spontaneous activity was through lower Mountain Drivers because that was where Bobby lived, and that was the focus of these things. Below Mountain Drive, there were...

REMAK: ...you mean above, spontaneous things were on the...

DUNN: ...on Bobby's side...

REMAK: ...on Bobby's side?

DUNN: Yes.

REMAK: Down? And Bobby lived down from the...?

DUNN: He lived below Mountain Drive. As I say, it sort of, it finally resulted in, it seemed to me, two different communities. But, I don't know now what it was all about. But most of the partying went on on lower Mountain Drive.

REMAK: Were you a member of the Go Society.

DUNN: No. I would drop in once in a while and watch Bobby and someone else playing Go, and then there would later there would be three or four boards going at once, but it wasn't a game I was particularly interested in. Earlier, there used to be a lot of chess playing and I played chess with Bobby sometimes. He was an awfully good chess player; very hard to beat. I never beat him. Not that I am particularly good, but he could take on most anyone, even some of the professionals, but he gave up chess in favor of Go and I guess that was mostly 00:37:00his fun with games from there on. Although I didn't see much of him in his Go-playing days.

REMAK: Did you ever go to a Twelfth Night?

DUNN: No, I don't recall any Twelfth Night.

REMAK: How about Bobby Burns' birthday?

DUNN: No, I never did one of those. Those were sort of latter day occasions...

REMAK: What would you say when they...

DUNN: Well, that's after we had moved over here. Before we moved up to Mountain Drive, we were often up there for gatherings, but they were almost always informal things. There were no theme parties or that sort of thing.

REMAK: Did you subscribe to the Grapevine?

DUNN: No, it would appear occasionally. I guess I'm wrong there. I think I did subscribe to it once. Then it sort of disappeared, then it came back again. I haven't seen it in a long while.

REMAK: Do you remember when it was being run by the Rodriguez children?

DUNN: Yes. I think that's when we first subscribed. We wanted to get them started. And they had fun with it. It was some rather interesting stuff. I can't remember anything specifically, but they were deep into gossip. There were many schisms, as you would expect in a community like that. And they would report those.

REMAK: Were there any performances that you can remember?

DUNN: There were poetry readings and there were musical performances...dancers.

REMAK: People exclusively from Mountain Drive or would there other people who would come up...

DUNN: They were from all over. Of course, there was the group from Ojai; Ojai Players. They were, a lot of them were friendly with Bobby. They came over from Ojai. I remember Bobby tried to get Iris Tree to build over in his place, but she wasn't interested in that.

REMAK: Where was the place big enough to hold these performances?

DUNN: Some of them were outdoors. When people were dancing, they'd be outdoors. 00:40:00One of Bobby's, that is, one of Floppy's sons built a big barnlike structure. Joel Andrews[9] is a harpist and he built a performing studio there on his place. He had some interesting music there. June Lane had a nice dance studio, her place above Mountain Drive, where Merv[10] and Peg[11] live now.

REMAK: Maybe you can tell me about one of these people you've been mentioning. You mentioned June Lane. What was she like?

DUNN: In what terms?

REMAK: Oh, I don't know...

DUNN: I'd say she stood 5'3-1/2", very trim figure, taught dance at the high school.

REMAK: Santa Barbara High?

DUNN: Yeah, when it was still then within the P.E. Department.

REMAK: Was she a lively person?

DUNN: Very lively: very pleasant gal. She had a daughter who was a very good friend of my daughter. Their mothers would trade off taking them to school. They were then perhaps 6 or 7 years of age.

REMAK: What about Merv Lane? What was he like in the early fifties?

DUNN: I didn't quite know what he was doing then. Like most of us, I guess, perhaps he didn't know either. Before he went back to school, he was a musician; 00:42:00quite a good one, reed I believe. Very intense guy and he decided he wanted to teach and got a degree at the University and went on to the City College.

REMAK: But did he change his field?

DUNN: I believe it's English. I don't think it's music.

REMAK: I think I remember Becky Rodriguez[12] telling me they took recorder lessons from him?

DUNN: Yeah, that sounds likely. He's quite a good musician.

REMAK: What about Gill the Gardener, Gill Johnston?[13]

DUNN: He'd... I never saw much of him. I really don't know.

REMAK: And, of course, the one person we unfortunately can't interview is Bill Neely.

DUNN: Yeah. There were old-timers that, who went on, Tom Arnold was one of the very earliest. There were three or four who weren't communal types, so they never entered the community things, really. Alistair Miller was one, Tom Arnold, Bill Delaney. They were some of the originals.

REMAK: Are they still in Santa Barbara?

DUNN: No. They're all gone. Mean, they're, I think one or maybe two of them are 00:44:00still alive, but they're not here.

REMAK: They were there among the original settlers that were there. What about Jack Boegle?

DUNN: Jack very early, he was a telephone repairman, I think, or did something for the phone company, some technical work. He built fairly very early on and used to see him frequently.[14]

REMAK: Where, does he live in the Castle?

DUNN: No. That was built by Tommy White. And Tommy's a distant relative of Bobby's.

REMAK: Why is it called Castle?

DUNN: Oh, I guess for want of a better... He's sort of a madman. He had quite a bit of money. He could buy more wharf timber than all the rest of us. He bought a lot of wharf timber and he stood it up on end and he hung one piece on another and built that monstrosity up there which is entirely unlivable when he first built it. I don't think it could ever be made a satisfactory kind of habitation.

REMAK: What's wrong with it?

DUNN: You've seen it, I suppose?

REMAK: No, I haven't.

DUNN: I haven't seen it in a long while. But, well, it's a madman's house.

REMAK: I did hear someone say, one of the other interviewers, that she'd been taken on a tour of it and there was a sort of, I think she said a spiral staircase that had no railing on the outside and you climb it hugging the wall?

DUNN: It's just a... almost ladder like staircase and when you reach the top, there's a platform about 15 feet above the ground floor. There's no railing on that either. It almost lost a couple of people. Fortunately, there were kids who bounced pretty easily. I guess no one was ever seriously injured, but I'm not sure. Some friends of ours lived there later on and they did some work on the 00:47:00place and, well, Natalie Daily[15] used to live there.

REMAK: Yeah, oh, she did. I didn't know she lived there.

DUNN: They lived there for two or three years.

REMAK: What's her husband's name?

DUNN: Gus.

REMAK: Gus. Is he still alive?

DUNN: He's in Los Angeles. We see him only rarely.

REMAK: We were told that the hot tub was invented by Mountain Drive, whether it really was or not. Do you have any opinion about that?

DUNN: It might have been Bill Neely in search of a bathtub.

REMAK: Was the water hot?

DUNN: Oh, I guess the water was hot enough until it cooled off. But, by that time, everyone in it was so full of sour wine that they didn't notice the 00:48:00temperature of the water.

REMAK: That was a good way to end the party; everybody jumping either in the pool or the hot tub.

DUNN: That would end it, yeah, the hot tub, the way to go. I don't understand the philosophy of the hot tub, really.

REMAK: Did you enjoy it?

DUNN: Not particularly, no. I like the shower.

REMAK: Do you remember any, you mentioned a few, well-known people, nationally well-known people, who turned up from time to time at Bobby Hyde's place?

DUNN: I wouldn't know them as well as, say, Gavey Hyde[16] would or Joel Andrews, would. I only saw a few, but they were there.

REMAK: Any particular people you knew.

DUNN: Well, Iris Tree was there, and Dylan Thomas was there. William Carlos Williams was out here once and he spent the night in our place where we were living on Padaro Lane and I kind of think that he went to a party up there, but I'm not sure. Anyway, he did a lecture poetry session at the Lobero and went on from there and I'd forgotten whether it ended up there or not.

REMAK: Any idea what year that was?

DUNN: Oh, probably 1955.

REMAK: Were you up here when the Coyote Fire occurred?

DUNN: Yes, that was 1964.[17]

REMAK: What happened to you here?

DUNN: Well, we didn't burn out, obviously, but we were completely surrounded. We had fire on three sides and our neighbor up above, who, there'd only been one dwelling in the canyon, that was ours, and our friend was building up above us and he burned out. Our only other neighbor then, down below us there, had a bad time. They lost the carport and some smaller structures, but he salvaged the place.

REMAK: Did you have water power here?

DUNN: Water power?

REMAK: I mean, did you have water coming out?

DUNN: We had water until about 3 or 4 in the morning and the Forestry Service had decided to cut a fire break up above us from Gibraltar Road and in so doing knocked out our pipeline, so we lost our water, I think, along about 2 o'clock probably. Fortunately, the wind had gone down by then so that we were out of serious danger by then.

REMAK: You never evacuated then.

DUNN: The first night, we all went up and spent the night down with Laura's sister.

REMAK: Who is that?

DUNN: Polly Hamilton. The second night, well after the first night, we came back up the next day. And the fire hadn't burned all the way to the house. It was down in the canyon down below. The Forestry Service and the local fire people, County Fire people, came in and said they were going to stay. So, we moved back in and then the wind came up, about 5 o'clock and our neighbors up the hill, who were living in a barn up there while they completed their new house, came down 00:52:00and had dinner with us, and the wind came up about 5 or 6 o'clock and the side of the mountain began to brighten up with hot spots. Pretty soon, it came together in a big mass of flame and the Forestry Service and the Fire Department just disappeared, went down the road, telling us to get out. Well, we loaded up everyone and went back to Laura's sister's. Then I and my brother-in-law came back up to see what we could do. We had water. So we kept watching it and where it would come nearest the house, we would get it, spray it down. And we managed 00:53:00to do that until the water ended.

REMAK: Was the air all hot around you?

DUNN: Oh, yes. There was winds blowing constantly and in gusts maybe 40 miles an hour. It's kind of pointless to wet down a roof because, as we discovered, the water just evaporates almost as soon as you put it down. So, it's best to save your water for when you could see where the immediate danger is. If you want to do that sort of thing, I wouldn't advise anyone to do it.

REMAK: It can move awfully fast?

DUNN: Oh, yes. I saw it burning downhill just as rapidly as it would burn uphill. I thought as long as the fire didn't get below us, we would be alright. But, one point when I saw it burning downhill through the olives, on the ridge 00:54:00over behind, the olives just popping, flares, they burned so beautifully. First thing I know, the fire was down below us. Then the wind dropped; just about the same time we lost the water.

REMAK: Did you ever think you might be surrounded by them?

DUNN: It began to look like we might be, yeah. We had brush all around us. It was, it's our own doing. We took the chance when we moved up here. And I don't regret that. But, many of our friends over on the other end there, were pretty badly stuck. Two or three of them burned out. It wasn't anything like the Sycamore Fire for property destruction, but it was a larger fire, a long one...

REMAK: I talked to the Maurers yesterday and they had houses burning around them...

DUNN: Yeah, there were two of them right near there.

REMAK: To just sum up, really, what do you think the biggest changes have been in the Mountain Drive community since the time when people first came in the early fifties, let's say, and...

DUNN: I think the principal changes is since demographic. The people are older, so that there are fewer young families. And I suspect that's the status now, because no one can afford to give up their home and go someplace else.

REMAK: Even though, they might want to.

DUNN: And it's all built as heavily as it can be built under the present ordinances, so that I wouldn't expect more building. That, I think, is the principal change. The other is, that, this area, immediate area in which we live, is now beginning to be developed, but it will be developed not by families, young families who are going to stay. It will be developed by builders or families, very affluent families, who can afford large piece of land, large dwellings. So, it'll be quite a different picture that develops from here on, but it won't be developing as rapidly as it did.

REMAK: What about the sense of community that people felt existed on Mountain Drive?

DUNN: As I say, there, one time it appeared to me that there were two communities; one upper Mountain Drive, one lower Mountain Drive. Most of the communal thing occurred in the lower Mountain Drive although there were many people from above who did attend the gatherings. Then I noticed a while back when the entire community was beset by the county because of code violations, one sort or another. It seemed to bring people together, in a way they hadn't been brought together before. At the same time, the schisms still continued. But, I saw a lot of people at two or three of the gatherings that we had, who I 00:58:00hadn't seen in a long, long while, at, in any group. I think when the community is under pressure like that, it tends to come together.

REMAK: Do you feel that your life has been affected by knowing Bobby Hyde, and coming up here and building your own house in this area...

DUNN: Oh, yes. Very much so.

REMAK: What do you suppose you would have done as an alternative?

DUNN: Well, we would have done, since we didn't do the thing that Bobby Hyde wanted us to do over at his place, we did a similar thing where we are now. We almost purchased a piece of land from Bobby and then I looked at it more and 00:59:00more and began to wonder if that's where I wanted to be. Seemed to me there, the community was closer than I wanted. And the idea of a bit of insulation, not isolation, but just some insulation, seemed to me, that's probably what I wanted. For a long while, well, we still have quite a bit of it here.

REMAK: Was Bobby Hyde rather sort of a patriarch?

DUNN: Yeah. He didn't...

REMAK: ...enter into people's...

DUNN: He didn't view himself that way, but many of his, many of the community did think of him that way, and even more now since his death. He was much older, 01:00:00of course, than most of the people who would come to build there. And they were mostly very ignorant, in terms of building. And they depended on him, almost entirely, for his views on building and, so many structures reflect that. Later, as they became a little more knowledgeable, they tend to move away from his philosophy and do their own thing. But they all started out pretty much doing as he instructed them.

REMAK: About Santa Barbara... has Santa Barbara profited in any way from having a community like this, up here?

DUNN: Oh, I think so. It's been a home for several creative people and it 01:01:00continues to be that. I notice the local radio stations speaks occasionally of the varied lifestyle of Santa Barbara. Well, it's varied if you want to look for it, but it's a little hard to find. You have to come to communities like this to find it. I'm afraid the county would like to knock it out.