Stan Hill Interview

--(Interview begins)--

BENET: Hello, this is Friday morning, January second, 1987. The new year. And I'll be interviewing Stan Hill for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art's Oral History Program on the Santa Barbara Mountain Drive Project. First, Stan, I just want to ask you what you do now in Santa Barbara before we get into the meat of the questions.

HILL: Lots of stuff. I'm a semi-retired optometrist, but I don't really identify a hell of a lot with that. It's something I do about three days a week, and when I'm doing that, that's who I am. I get at least as much kicks in just maintaining the place up here--there's an acre or so of avocados, keeping the place in firewood, doing enough work around the place to keep Sandy from pushing 00:01:00me into doing more of it. Everybody does it. The aircraft construction, the usual stuff, you know.

BENET: So you're divided about three or four ways?

HILL: Oh, at least.

BENET: And if I remember correctly, you always had strong other interests beside optometry.

HILL: Oh sure. For a while there was the winemaking, which is one of those things that went by the boards when it got uninteresting. Somewhere down the line I learned that that was kind of thing that went back to a 13th century winemaking experience in Bordeaux, kind of a little relight of it. It was nice. Everybody on the Drive here at one time or another had a major part of their 00:02:00lives tied up in house construction--getting the land into a shape to be acceptable to whoever decided it had to be acceptable to them--the County one way or another. Brush to remove, brush to be kept removed, proper septic systems, all that.

BENET: When did you first come to Santa Barbara itself?

HILL: Santa Barbara? We came in '41. My dad bought a practice up here in '40. I graduated from high school at '41. I think the other kids were graduating from lower levels of school, so it happened to coincide that it'd be better if we stayed in the hometown Santa Paula one more year.

BENET: Were you born in Santa Paula?

HILL: Yeah. And so I came up here after high school in '41. Lived out in San 00:03:00Roque, yeah, about that.

BENET: How many children were there in the family?

HILL: Three. I was the oldest, a sister now lives in Carmel Valley and a brother living in Lafayette.

BENET: What was your father's name?

HILL: I think there's a cat trying to get out. Usually referred to as J. D. Hill.

BENET: That's how I remember it.

HILL: Yeah, right.

BENET: What was your first impressions of Santa Barbara?

HILL: Oh, of course I'd always known it because we used to come up here when I was very young child. In fact I remember eating in a restaurant somewhere on State Street, lower State, and seeing streetcars and seeing streetcars over by 00:04:00the Oak Park. We use to come up to Oak Park for a picnic occasionally, and that was really about the extent of it. In fact, I recall going to, out East Valley Road, there's a side road coming into East Valley, not far from Toro Canyon, called Feather Hill Farm. And it was a private zoo. And a lot of the old zoo buildings are still there. You can see them as you drive by.

BENET: Not connected to the Childs estate.

HILL: No, no, no, way, way, way, way, back.

BENET: Do you remember the name?

HILL: It was referred to as Feather Hill Farm. I was young enough then, and I was being carried and I recall reacting, felt like I hid my face somewhere. 00:05:00Well, in response to either a black leopard or a lion roaring in the... it was quite a zoo. We had stuff like that. It was well known.

BENET: So you remember Santa Barbara as being different and less developed?

HILL: Well, Santa Paula was a damn sight less developed than now. Geez. Any comparisons I can make then were to Santa Paula, which was a little 5,000 population country town and this seemed rather large by comparison. Well, when we came here in '41, for instance, Goleta was, I mean, a little crossroads thing out there. It was, Goleta's agricultural, and that was that. So we were here for 00:06:00the, to see the, all the postwar heavy buildup. It's just swallowed Goleta. I still deplore it. I got really like, because I drive down to Santa Paula now, and I do fairly frequently. I'm just checking at the airport, it's still a great little thing. But there's a rise just west of Saticoy and you turn to see the valley before even all this nice orderly, peaceful agriculture and just a nice feeling that goes with it. Goleta used to be like that. It was neat.

BENET: What was the San Roque area like?

HILL: Not terribly different than now. A little less buildup, but not hugely different.

BENET: Similar feeling?

HILL: Oh, yeah. Yeah, the feeling was much as it is now. But there's it was 00:07:00almost any place you could name around Santa Barbara was less built to the limit. For instance, State Street stopped at Constance. And when they pushed it through and connected with Hollister, I believe it's Calle Noguera. I could be wrong about that. Uh, well it's about a block from my office. Where Longs Drugs is now. The connection was made there. And then, what was Hollister became outer State Street. But Hollister came that far in those days.

BENET: Just to get your dates right, what year were you born?

HILL: Twenty-three.

BENET: And when did you start high school? What year did you?

HILL: Thirty-eight.

BENET: Which school did you go to?

HILL: Santa Paula Union High School. You know, Union, because it was a country 00:08:00town and it was a coalition of school districts for that one high school. A lot of people came by bus being a farm town.

BENET: What college did you go to?

HILL: First, I think, yeah, I went to then known as Santa Barbara State College for a year and a half, maybe two years. I'm not dead sure of that. One tends to lose this stuff.

BENET: Yeah, that's just fine.

HILL: Yeah, right. And then I went into the service. Yeah, it was only a year and a half.

BENET: When did you enter the service?

HILL: Forty-three.

BENET: What branch?

HILL: Air Force. Well, Army Air Forces in those days. It didn't become the Air 00:09:00Force as such until '46.

BENET: Were you a flyer?

HILL: I sure as shit was.

BENET: Right.

HILL: That was the whole... yeah. Santa Paula, we have to get back to that because it was, is unique in its airport. You know, I ride down there on my bike when I was a kid. There was a lot of interesting airplanes. Even in those days, Santa Paula had the highest aircraft registration per capita of any place.

BENET: Oh really.

HILL: And I suspect it might well still be. I'm not sure. But the airport is unique in that it's operated privately, but, to really encourage people who love aircraft and want to work on them themselves and not do a big expense number in doing. So being brought up in a town that, I suspect of my choosing in that town 00:10:00to be born in, had something to do with that airport. You with so many things I could say that have to feed into them. But we won't get into it. We don't have the time.

BENET: Did your dad have an interest in...?

HILL: No, no, not really. He knew some of the people who were involved early on in the airport. In fact, that airport was I had my first flight in an airplane. There's no Ford Trimotor on my seventh birthday, it was my birthday present. And that was the day they dedicated the airport there. And interestingly enough, when they had their 50th anniversary of the airports being opened, we went down there and kind of took part in things and I flew a home-built airplane.

BENET: Your own home-built?

HILL: Yeah, in the show. In fact, it was the first one we did here at the Mountain Drive Aircraft Factory. Those of us who participated in it referred to 00:11:00it as that, anyway.

BENET: How many planes have you built?

HILL: This is the one I've just about finished now is the fourth. It's sort of a fly-by in the show. I'd like to have done more, but I was pretty minor part of the thing. But just to have had this little 50-year thing, my whole flying thing kind of started there at that place on the day it started. And then just had a little present day connection with it.

BENET: How long were you in the service? The kitty's being very cute.

HILL: Yeah. Let's see, about three and a half years.

BENET: Where did you fly?

HILL: Oh, I, the usual training in the States, Western Air Command, which meant it was California and Arizona pretty much for the training. Went through single engine advanced and T-6s, which kind of meant that you, in your heart of hearts are aiming at flying fighters. And this is something that I can't ever be really explained in fullness to somebody who ain't there. But it's not what you're flying, it's a whole means of expression. It's kind of like dances to a dancer. You can do stuff in a fighter that you can't even think about in other things. And if flight is a way of expression to your very soul, which it sure is 00:13:00with me, then by God, fighters is where it's at for you. Fact there was a little story there. It had nothing to do with Mountain Drive, but it's mine. When you finish flight school, you sit around in a pilot pool. There orders come through from various places for, you know, they need so many pilots for say, B-25s, which were light bomber, heavies, B-24s as or 17s, abhorrent to somebody who wants to fly fighters because...

BENET: Too big?

HILL: Yeah, you can't do those things. You're flying a machine. It's like driving a very complicated bus. The fact that you're in the air has little to do with it. You don't express yourself a bunch in those. If you feel exuberance, you don't do rolls, you know? And it was kind of a matter of pride with me that 00:14:00if it was physically possible to do a roll at all in any flight, I'd do one. Still do. I like it, it's fun. Besides, it's pretty mild aerobatics. It's no great shucks. It's a kick. But anyway, back to the yarn. We were in this pilot pool and the military had three categories of, classification for orders. Restricted, which didn't mean a damn thing. Anybody didn't have access to them. Confidential, a little tighter than Restricted, and then there were Secret orders, but were truly secret. For instance, if a Secret order came through, it was likely to be a damn good assignment. They were making up the very first jet outfits at that time and they had a couple of Secret orders come through and the 00:15:00jets were secret in those days. This was still in the time when everything else flew around with these big fans on the front. Well, the upshot of it was that they were kind of nothing orders coming through. And most of those large orders were for the heavy bombers. And we didn't want any part of that. And then finally one day came an order through for a large number of pilots that were Secret, which means they couldn't tell you what it was for. And we see a Catch-22 coming here, you know, So, "God damm, they're really getting into the jet stuff." So I rushed out, signed up, got a bunch of my buddies to sign up, you know, "Secret orders, man. Let's go do it." And the procedure is, once you've gotten orders to go to someplace different, you have to, there's a lot of paperwork referred to as, "clearing the base." And they finally got us all 00:16:00cleared, and we're getting in busses and ready to go, and they got us all in the base theater. And the base deputy commander got up and said, "Well, fellas, these really weren't Secret orders, they were only Confidential. But if we told you you were signing up to fly gliders, you wouldn't have done it." I mean, there was a big collective moan went out. There was nothing, absolutely nothing, lower than, especially in a fighter pilot's mind, than flying gliders. Besides, you could get killed real easy in those things. But there was there was such a collective pissing and moaning going on about it that General Hap Arnold, who was the head of the Air Force at the time, the Air Corps, said he would personally court martial anybody who tried to get out of it.

BENET: Wow.

HILL: So that was the end of that. So I went to North Carolina, got a very short 00:17:00course in glider training, which I really enjoyed simply because it was different. I like flying damn near anything just because of its being different, than what it was. Fortunately, the, got sent overseas and got into a troop carrier outfit and immediately was assigned as a copilot in C-47s. Same as the old DC-3. It's a still a glorious old thing that flies over at 5:30 every day, Vandenberg. Very, it's an airplane that really changed the nature of flying. It was the first airliner that really paid its own way because it carried enough people without costing too much, good old bird. And I flew in those things as copilot for a while and I only flew gliders one more time, a little training 00:18:00shot in France. But we had commandeered some, stole is what it was, some German light training gliders and brought them back, which were flew for fun and had a lot of fun flying the things. This was at Pau in France.

BENET: What year was that?

HILL: Forty-five.

BENET: Was the war over?

HILL: No, no, no. It wasn't over yet, because we, in fact the one honest to God combat mission I ever flew in was the Rhine crossing at Wesel. We towed in gliders. I went again, Lady Luck was, some Guardian Angels or something, working for me. The tent I lived in, there were four of us. The other three guys flew the back-end of the rope. They flew gliders going in on the Rhine crossing and 00:19:00was one who flew as copilot in the tow ship. And it was kind of awesome. There was a huge smoke screen set up to screen the operations and we circled kind of waiting our turn on our side of the Rhine at the time. I remember seeing a squadron of fifteen C-46s going in to drop paratroops and go in and then come out in fairly short order. They weren't going deep behind the lines, just over there and back. I mean, sixteen of these guys went in, two came out. Sheee-it. You know what's that like? Well, I know what it's like. It can happen that fast.[1]

BENET: Wow.

HILL: Anyway, our turn came and we went in and we kind of hunkered down small 00:20:00behind the what little bit of armor we had in those things. And bless the German's practical hearts, they shot at the gliders. Because that was what was going to get to them. The gliders are just, because, when you drop gliders you do it low, 600 feet. We just knew practically they were going to shoot and what was going to give them trouble. The gliders were already there. They didn't, they could care less about the tow ships. I think we had two bullet holes in the whole squadron of, oh I don't know the numbers, probably sixteen tow ships. But the gliders were just, as I said, being hosed all the way in.

BENET: How did you feel?

HILL: I wanted the fuck out, fast. But you still just, with the military discipline instilled into you, you did it. And until it happened to you personally, there was a certain immunity.

BENET: Right. It was later.

HILL: Yeah. But when I heard the stories about these poor bastards in the gliders from those who did come back. And of a three in our tent who went in on the gliders, only one of them came back. The other two weren't killed, they were wounded. Not badly, but enough that they went directly home from there. It was kind of humorous, however. One of them was, he was a bit of a lard ass, and that was what, he didn't stick down deep enough in the foxhole. And that's where he got hit. It was appropriate. Nice guy.

BENET: So did you...?

HILL: Yeah, but right after that. When we got, they were kind of preparing for the possibility of a second glider tow. That orders came through for, God, 00:22:00wonder of wonders, transfer to a fighter outfit. I ran, I fucking ran down to operations to sign up. And this time I also got some buddies in with me.

BENET: They believed you?

HILL: As I recall I hollered something like, "Transfer to a P-47 outfit and, no shit!" And then, VOOM, I hit another and I had lots of company and a bunch of us transferred out because the war was winding down at that point and the fighter outfits were shipping home some of the old personnel, but they had to keep their strength up because the thing wasn't over yet. And we transferred into this P-47 outfit. It was right on V-E Day and gung-ho types wanted to get out there and 00:23:00make like a fighter pilot and shoot somebody down and all that. And it was a little bit of a comedown. But it was a whole lot better than what we were doing. In retrospect, I realize now it was just right. It was perfect. I could go fly the lovely machines and have a ball and this nice 2,000 horsepower handle in my hand. Really learned to enjoy flying and express myself in a way that couldn't have been done any other time, any other place. It was really unique and a great time and nobody shot at me and I didn't shoot anybody else. That was neat. I wouldn't have wanted the com anyway.

BENET: So after the war experience, did you come back to Santa Barbara?

HILL: Yeah, I stayed over there flying those things for, 'til, I think it was 00:24:00August of '46. And at that time, it became more and more obvious that it was kind of a dead end. There was a very conscious decision that, you know, I can stay in the aircraft business and wind up, you know, whether it is civil or military. You tended to be in kind of godforsaken places like Kansas City or Seattle or L.A. and then maybe you come the Santa Barbara to retire someday, well, it was a different route. I could go there right in the first. And that's what got me into optometry. It was what my dad was doing, and it seemed like a nice, clean, quiet way of staying where I wanted to stay, and perhaps someday I can afford to do something with an airplane. But it made sense to go there now 00:25:00rather than later. So that's what got me to Santa Barbara and just presumably back on the Mountain Drive track.

BENET: Well, no, it's all the same track. Did you go to school in Santa Barbara?

HILL: That, as mentioned, I went to Santa Barbara State for a year and a half, then into the service and then that closes this little loop.

BENET: Right, your optometry career.

HILL: Yeah, that I went, I did a couple of years of pre-optometry here and then by that time it had become a branch of the University of California, or UCSB. Here for two years in pre-optometry. Then I went down to LA for three years for, of optometry school.

BENET: You lived in LA?

HILL: If that's what one does down there? It was an interesting experience. I wouldn't want to do it again. I didn't choose to do it then. It's just where the 00:26:00damn school was.

BENET: Where did you return to Santa Barbara.

HILL: Fifty-one. We lived for a while in a little rental, which is now part of the Sumida Nursery out off of La Cumbre Road.

BENET: When you say we, were you referring to...?

HILL: ...Sandy and I. And by then, well, we had one child when I was, when we were still going to school in L.A., Leslie. She was born in '49. We were married in '48. July 2nd, to be exact. And then Randy was born in '51. Shortly after, we would come back to Santa Barbara. Erica showed up quite a bit later. What year was Erica born in, Sandy? She's not here. '57 perhaps, later. Anyway, little 00:27:00bonus baby.

BENET: When did you first become acquainted with the Mountain Drive area?

HILL: The Mountain Drive connection began when Sandy[2] realized that there had to be more to life than hanging around the house and taking care of kids and took a pottery class from Bill Neely.[3] Met a man there, Gerry Friedman,[4] who was also in the class. Well he was doing commercial cast pottery at his house up here on Mountain Drive. The Friedmans were really our first Mountain Drive connection. They told us about this...well, we came up here to visit them. In fact I think it have been my first visit up 00:28:00there to their place, or shortly thereafter... I mentioned earlier meeting Mervin Lane for the first time, but I didn't meet him. Merv didn't have a phone at the time, and he had an arrangement with the Friedmans to use theirs. But Merv being, you know Merv, unique, anyway. We were sitting around the Friedmans place, having some tea or something--Constant Comment, probably--and Merv came in, didn't knock, went straight to the telephone, which meant walking across the living room, had his conversation, turned around and walked out. He didn't acknowledge anybody, or say thanks for using the phone, or anything. You know Merv and this New Yorker's way of maintaining privacy; just don't acknowledge anybody. I had Mervin explained to me a little bit then, and I'm not sure I know him yet. But Merv's like that.

BENET: What year would you say that was around?

HILL: Fifty-five. Yeah, '55. We were intrigued by this. We kind of liked the place. It beat the hell out of downtown. We were told that well you had to meet Bobby Hyde, and he had to like you. Like I said, Bobby had bought this land in the forties when it was burned out after a fire--got it cheap--and thought it would be kind of nice to surround himself with family and friends of like turn of mind about many things. It meant that you were an individual and tended to want to do things your own way and were capable of doing your own everything. All of his kids had separate houses around here. Gavin. None of them do any 00:30:00more, by the way. Joel, Susie--Susie Macy, actually, she'd been married, Oliver. All those places have been sold to somebody else now.

BENET: Stan, we were pausing to turn the tape over. Could you continue with the Hyde children?

HILL: ...and they were as individual in their ways as anybody else up here. The fact that they were Hyde kids didn't give them a hell of a lot of common ground. I mean, they didn't have the same mother to begin with. They didn't even look a whole lot alike. But, what the hell. And I'm not sure, I don't know all the details of that.

BENET: What was your relationship with Bobby?

HILL: Well, in the first place, in order to... you had to be somewhat 00:31:00interesting to Bobby, and it helped a whole lot to have a wife that was interesting to Bobby. It helped more than most people were quite willing to admit to themselves.

BENET: As I know, your wife is very beautiful.

HILL: Well, it didn't hurt. Whatever it took to get here, that's what it took.

BENET: What other things was he interested in you?

HILL: In me? I don't know. It was more Sandy than me, I'm pretty sure. I think he assessed that we could build a good part of our own house down there, and we were attracted to this. We were willing and capable of doing what had to be done up here. That was probably my part of it.

BENET: What was your goal at that time?

HILL: Just to build something of our own and to be individual, to be our thing done our way. We were quite a while getting around to building on it.

BENET: When did you purchase the land?

HILL: We started the purchase in 1956--$2000 an acre, $50 down and $50 a month at 5 percent.

BENET: Have you paid it off?

HILL: Long since, long since. We paid it off before we ever started building. It seemed like something that would take forever at the time, but it passed rather quickly. We didn't start building this house until the early sixties. It wasn't too long.

BENET: Where were you living while you were building?

HILL: About a mile south of here on Dawlish Place. We had a little 00:33:00finish-it-yourself kind of house called a Nelson Way. It was cooked up by a fellow called Les Nelson, a friend of ours. In fact Frank Robinson, who's one of the old Mountain Drive heart group, worked for Nelson Way at the time. I recall seeing Frank out there knocking together frames.[5] The set-up was you had the land, they would put down the slab, put up the walls, the roof, plumb it and wire it, then you would finish it off, doing the finish carpentry and the wiring and painting and wall-boarding and all that. We had an extra break. Ours was one of the very last being done at the time the Nelson outfit was going out of business, and it was worth it to them to some of this 00:34:00for us. So we got through a little easier and a little faster. But at least we had a taste of our own construction.

BENET: You and Sandy?

HILL: Oh, yeah. We worked on it ourselves; the two of us. The kids weren't big enough to get involved in that then. And it was very satisfying. We enjoyed it. We did it on Cal-Vet which was cheap, again, it was $50 a month and some percentage interest on the Cal-Vet loan but it was so low it didn't even count; like two percent or something like that. It was very handy, very handy indeed. Having done some degree in building, it gave us an idea more of what we'd like. And coming up here and seeing Bill Neely's charming adobe, which had lots of charm, 00:35:00but I wouldn't want to be in it in an earthquake. All charm, no steel. But it changed our thoughts a bit about the kind of thing we wanted to do. For instance, down there on Dawlish Place, whatever we did everybody wound up in the kitchen. So in this place, we designed it around that, with the kitchen as part of the living area.

BENET: Did you design it by yourselves?

HILL: The basic layout of it, yes we did, and then turned it over to Frank Robinson to make it conform to building codes and adjust window sizes to brick size and material--the engineering side of it. In fact, we wound up reducing the window sizes almost all around the house over what Frank had called for because, well, we live in earthquake country, and wanted a little stronger house and 00:36:00didn't need the windows that big anyway. Besides, it's a little inconsistent with the feel of an adobe place to have great big windows.

BENET: Did you have any cultural ideal as far as the house goes?

HILL: Yeah. There were three books, probably within my reach here, by a couple--the last name was Shipway--Mexican Houses, interiors, exteriors and everything. Three really good volumes. We picked up a lot of detail work and getting the feeling of it from those. In fact that fireplace in that corner over there, that nice punch-out doorway back in the bedroom and the little fireplace there are direct steals from that book.

BENET: Did you go to Mexico to get any ideas?

HILL: We went to Mexico to get a lot of tile. Certainly some ideas came out of 00:37:00it. In fact, the house literally is Mexican. All the bricks came from Tecate, the brickyard on the border, the floor tiles from the same place. Primo's brickyard--Primo Garcia Solis--was the source of a lot of construction on Mountain Drive.

BENET: Who was the contact to him?

HILL: Probably Frank Robinson--very probably. If I thought about it enough it might come back to me. Very probably Frank.

BENET: Were those fun trips down there?

HILL: I never went. We contracted. We'd find an independent trucker--God, there was this jerk. I think he was from Riverside. The most devious son-of-a-bitch. 00:38:00Well, you know, he was a good person, but devious, devious. He'd come up here with a load of bricks--we'd get a full truckload at a time. In fact that was the way the house was done, we'd get in a full truckload of... we'd get an independent trucker and work a little one-man mill up in the Santa Cruz Mountains for our redwood.

BENET: What was the name of the mill?

HILL: It may come to me. It's been a few years since I was involved with it. It was probably illicit, very probably. But the prices were great. But this trucker I was speaking of, he'd bring in a load of bricks, and we'd help him unload the things--which would last well into the night because something always went wrong 00:39:00with his damn machinery. He was no more prepared at that than he was at anything else. A brake lining going out or something else. He always managed to find need to go by a girlfriend's place on the way. He was married and all that, but it didn't change the thing. But he'd arrive with this truckload of bricks, and we'd unload, and we'd be tired, he'd be leaving, it was the middle of the night sometimes. And then I'd ask him, "Well, how much is it going to be this time, Mark?" And then I'd get this great litany of all the problems he'd had with his truck, his girlfriend, the brickyard, on and on. I could not squeeze an answer out of him about how much I owed him for the bricks--and this is no exaggeration---minimum forty-five minutes, maybe more like an hour and a half. 00:40:00It got so bad I hated to ask the question because I just knew what was going to happen, but that's the way it was. At least his prices were good. A little higher every time, but it was still in those days very good. And it was a neat thing just getting involved with the design, the construction, the whole creative process of how you do it.

BENET: Were yours one of the last houses?

HILL: Yeah, we were one of the later ones. There were a lot of gaps in the Mountain Drive area where property was bought after we got ours and houses built on them prior, like Gill's[6] and Ed's.

BENET: Do you have any photos of the construction? We would love to have, maybe copies of.

HILL: I'll just scrounge around and see what I can find. But there are some for 00:41:00sure. And this goes back--it's almost at the basis of what we were doing here. I was told by a number of psychics and repeatedly and in detail by Margery Wilson that our doing this very thing here, this construction, had to do with a life in China as an emperor who had unlimited power and wealth and could have pretty much was desired by indicating your desire, you know--snap your fingers and somebody produced. Well, that doesn't teach you diddly about the creative process, which is pretty much first doing it in the mind, visualize what you want, then start. Do something, it doesn't matter much what, whether it's 00:42:00drawing plans or getting the shovel in the ground or whatever. But do it. I know people who are very good on the head trip side of this, but maybe got too many of their planets in their Aries signs. There are no Earth signs involved. It's hard for them to pick up the shovel or the brick or whatever and get going on that part of it. But really learning the creative process and putting it into action in this life is in very large part a follow-up to this life where you could have anything but you learn nothing about creation itself. And that's really a big part of the Earth-school trip is, being part of the creative act.

BENET: Did you feel involved with that?

HILL: Sure as shit, yeah. We built our own automobile at one point, a dune buggy, which we rebuilt...

BENET: Who is we?

HILL: Well, it was my son and me in that case, mostly. There's the aircraft. There's the other house, there's this house. All along it's been a do-it-yourself kind of thing. Certainly there's been the aspect of it that you can afford more doing it that way. But that wasn't the whole shot by any means. It was little things like doing the house as we did it. You could pay for it out of pocket about as fast as you could do it. If you get a lending institution involved they start dictating as to what's built, because they're thinking more of an average kind of market and resale. Well. Mountain Drive ain't resale territory. At least it wasn't then. If you want something that is specifically 00:44:00an expression of some part of you, it's got to be suited to what you want, truly what you want, and then this do-it yourself thing is magnificently set up to handle it. It did work out really well, and we could afford the materials about as fast as we could use them. It wasn't too fast, but it was, you know...

BENET: How long did it take you?

HILL: About eight years, I think.

BENET: For this house?

HILL: For this house.

BENET: What about the other house down below?

HILL: That was sandwiched in between. That piece of land and this are really one, and there's a canyon on each side, but they were two pieces of property. One was within the original Mountain Drive 40-acre plot that Bobby bought. This two-acre piece is part of a second purchase that came later. We got this one in 00:45:001956 and the other one... Lord, I'd have to go look it up. It was an acre and a half and included just a hulk of a house. It had been really run down, and when the owner, who lived in France at the time, saw the condition of it, she let us have very reasonably. We got the acre and a half and the house for I believe $11,000--which is about what it was worth at the time. The values are--they're not even values, they're numbers that exist now, don't relate to anything but what the market will bear. It's not what they're worth, for Christ's sakes.

BENET: So you remodeled that place?

HILL: We took her down to bare shell. I won't go into the mess, but it was considerable.

BENET: Who had built it originally?

HILL: It was built by... Benedict. Rehlein White, or then White or Renata. 00:46:00That's her name. It's called Rehlein Benedict.[7] She and her husband were building the place and were helped by Tommy White. The relationship grew and Benedict went away and Rehlein married Tommy and then they built the Castle up in the upper part of the Drive.

BENET: So they built this one first.

HILL: They built this first. Yeah. And it became a pretty marginal kind of rental property for years rented to a succession of people and there's a story in each one of those. And I kind of hankered after the place because it really 00:47:00was part of this. At times there were a couple of people in there at one time or another who, I mean, they weren't the choicest of neighbors. If I had control of it, at least I could say who was there, kind of like Bobby, you want to choose your neighbors. Get compatible people in there. So eventually we bought it, rebuilt it. It's a nice little rental. We've always rented it for quite cheap; our idea was to have the place rent for enough to pay for improvements on the road, on the place itself and pay the property tax for the two of them. Beyond that, I rent it now for, oh I dare say, less than half of what market would be. I don't even want to know what market is on it. We rent it for two and a quarter, and I'm sure it could be rented for five, but I wouldn't feel right 00:48:00about doing it. I'd become part of the real estate, money-mentality thing, and that's not why I'm working.

BENET: So when you were building, did you think about the other houses in the community?

HILL: Certainly we considered what the other places were and how they were done.

BENET: Had you contributed to any of the other buildings?

HILL: Yes. There's always been a... in the early days of Mountain Drive there was a much stronger sense of community than now. If a slab was to be poured, there was a lot of falling to and helping. You brought your wheelbarrow and your rubber boots and all the trowels and equipment you had and get out there and helped. It was just done. There was no particular consideration ever given to 00:49:00paying your neighbors. It was just done. Your pay would come when you did your slab.

BENET: What else did this sense of community extend to?

HILL: Well, there was a lot of socializing as part of it. Bill Neely was kind of the acknowledged social leader of lower Mountain Drive.

BENET: I know you're considered quite a leader. Your name's come up a lot.

HILL: We'll get into that. Somehow, one can never assess his own role very well anyway. When you're in it, you can't see it.

BENET: What about your role as a winemaker?

HILL: Well, that started with the old Mountain Drive Wine Stomp, which was really Bill Neely's creation. He was very devoted to wine and all that came with 00:50:00it; too much so, because it killed him. You can count among the old Mountain Drivers those who were able to make the change and get out of their alcohol problems and those who were swallowed up by them. Bill got swallowed more than anybody. But the Wine Stomps were a great thing. It harked back to something real--the harvest festival--and again the personal involvement in picking the grapes. Just this great feeling of community and getting out there and doing it. Personal involvement from the bottom clear up; making the wine, cleaning of the 00:51:00equipment, mistakes that could have been improved upon.

BENET: Where were the grapes picked?

HILL: The first ones were picked at the old Kinevan Ranch on San Marcos Pass, which pretty much meant Mission grapes--severe limits on what you can do with them. But still, the process was pleasant, even if the wine wasn't necessarily. Mission makes a pretty rough wine. I still remember pleasant times sitting out on Neely's porch and, some Kinevan would be poured, and Frank would hold up a glass and say, "Ah, old Schloss Kinevanberger."

BENET: Where did you get your wine training?

HILL: There was a lot of just doing it here, with Bill and the other Mountain Drivers. Being of the turn of mind that I am I got books and read and learned, 00:52:00because the way the wines were being made here was too haphazard. It was a hell of a lot of fun, stomping around in the vat with a bunch of naked cuties didn't hurt, but it doesn't go terribly long into the process of making good wine. There has to be a certain amount of, here... wine does make itself, but you have to leave it alone in a particular kind of way and in a particular environment. You set up a series of environments for it. Keeping it away from air as much as possible, keeping the cooperage clean and in good shape, and using enough sulphur to beat down the bacteria, or the yeast that you don't want and introducing yeast that you do like and trying to get into good winemaking 00:53:00procedures. And that just grew. I did a certain amount of winemaking at home in addition to participating in the central Mountain Drive wine festival. I should back up a little bit. You asked about grape sources. The first--this was pretty much Bill and Frank and Jack Boegle and that bunch--from the Kinevan place. Later we got grapes from this marvelous old guy in what is now part of the Casitas Recreation Area, Lester Perrano. He was a wonderful, green-eyed Italian. We could drive up to that place at any time at all and Lester was out there in his pickup talking to the neighbors. He had a good variety of grapes there we could 00:54:00get. Of course, there was always Zinfandel, kind of the mainstay. But Grenache, several good white grapes, Muscat Canelli. Bill made one batch of Muscat Canelli from Lester's grapes that was just lovely stuff. It's still hard to find Muscat Canelli, but there are a few wineries that make it. This is the grape of Asti Spumante--that's a champagne made of the Muscat Canelli grape--it's the great white Muscat. Then they had there also the one great, well, maybe great is a little overdoing it, but the best red Muscat... Aleatico. Bill made some very nice 00:55:00Aleatico. There's a grape grown in Germany, which I'm convinced is the same one. Germany is not a red wine producing area, but they do make a wine called Muscat Trollinger. Which is the same, I'm dead certain. We had some visitors here, German students traveling through. I gave them some of this, that we'd made, and immediately said, "Ah, Trollinger." One of the owners of the, some of the vineyards in the area that produce this red wine in Germany is a doctor here in Santa Barbara. In fact, Brigitte[8] used to work for him. I don't recall his name at the moment. I used to have some sent over occasionally. It's a most unusual wine. Damn near as unusual as Retsina. Which 00:56:00is pretty unusual. Little weird, but good stuff nonetheless. Especially if you've gotten a bit used to it. I'd break one out if I had it anymore, but I don't. We never had that much. And the vines didn't last long. In fact, at one time my planting of about an acre of good quality varietals, mostly Cabernet, we had a few others, some Pinot, Pinot Noir, was the biggest planting of good varietal grapes in Santa Barbara County.

BENET: Where was that?

HILL: Just on the lower end of my property here. Now we've become a significant wine producing area in the County now, and that had just a need to be in a place where--at a pivotal point where some little, very tiny act on your part can be 00:57:00the thing that really triggers something. There are a couple of events like that that figure in here, and one was the whole Santa Barbara County wine area thing. After doing some of this wine making for myself, and somehow connected up with Pierre Lafond,[9] who was then an architect. He really was a merchant at heart, and he was left a liquor store on the Mesa by his father. One thing led to another and he wanted to start producing some wine. He couldn't afford a professional winemaker at the time, and I wound up being Pierre's winemaker, and was so for five years, or something like that. This was in 1965. At one time Pierre had a wine store adjacent to the El Paseo 00:58:00Restaurant. I used to hang out there occasionally. Hanging out there one day just shootin' the breeze with the guys... Bob De Mattei,[10] who was a table grape grower, successful in that he had money to invest, from Modesto I believe, came through and was asking for information about a place that might be suitable in Santa Barbara County to set up some proper wine grape growing area. He grew table grapes for profit but he really wanted to do wine grapes. I'd spent the summer of 1942 in the Forest Service on a little peak about ten miles due east of Santa Maria, directly above 00:59:00the, well, Tepusquet Canyon. And where that enters out into and adjoins the Santa Maria River, there's a nice south facing shelf. Has the proper sun exposure, I knew from the summer that I'd been up there, that it's foggy most summer days up until about 10:00 there, and then the fog burns away. In short, you're not going to get mildew. It has the right sun exposure, the river being close, they can get wells and have good water. I felt it would be a good place for wine grapes. And I told Bob that. Viognier. Yeah. And bingo. Next thing I knew, he had 100 acres in there. I mean, they really jumped in with both feet and a bunch of money. And his success was, the grapes were good. It was, it was ripe. It was really neat to have been in just the right place at the right time 01:00:00with this tiny little effort to influence the right person to get this whole Santa Barbara wine industry kicked off the way it was.

BENET: Did you continue with this?

HILL: No. After a while I really got philosophical differences about what we ought to be making and how we ought to be making it with Pierre, and the construction of the house was taking more and more of my time, and it seemed a convenient thing to do to just step out. Pierre has since come a whole lot closer to the point of view I held about it--mainly make good wines instead of a lot of wine for anybody who wants to buy it. He's got a proper winemaker down 01:01:00there, a nice guy, and they're doing good wines. It's great. I'm glad they've come around to it. Again, it was nice to have been in the beginning phase of that, this whole do-it-yourself number I seem to have been involved in in this life. It was very much part of that. You know, there was a lot of equipment that we just thunk up ourselves. From scratch we made a thing that tore apart apples so they could be pressed and make apple wine. I don't think Pierre makes it anymore, but at the time he really wanted to do that. And we made our own--we took an old hand-corking machine, bought it for thirty-five bucks, right over here on Coyote Road, and attached, rigged up a hydraulic unit to it so that somebody could sit there and ram corks all day with the thing. It was pretty 01:02:00rudimentary, but it suited the thing at the time. Now he's got fancy equipment that does all that; he couldn't have afforded then anyway. It was just neat to have done all that early do-it-yourself beginnings of the winery. It's a kick now fly over Santa Ynez Valley and Los Alamos and see all the wineries out there. They're making good stuff, gee they're making good stuff. And I know I wouldn't dream of going out there and, sort of dropping the word that, in a loose sort of way, I was the father of it all. Well, I suppose, yes, but I want to avoid that kind of ego trip. In fact, the, father-of-it-all thing here should not appear. I don't want it to. But it was nice to have been involved. The other 01:03:00thing, hot tubs, got started on Mountain Drive here, too, in much the same sort of way. A bunch of used to go to Las Cruces Hot Spring...

BENET: Where is that?

HILL: Near where Highway 1 takes off from 101. There used to be an old Las Cruces store there. And up in the Hollister Ranch about a mile or so up into the hills to the west, east of there, there's a hot spring, nice hot spring. A bunch of Mountain Drivers used to caravan up there, have picnics with all the kiddies. We had a great time. Eventually, it became unavailable to us---besides we also got kicked out--another story. The hot springs on Hot Springs Road here is Santa Barbara 01:04:00which John Stack had caretaken for a while was available to us, and then the Coyote Fire[11] burned that out. In short there were really no hot springs available to us anymore, and by that time we had become addicted to the whole kind of hot spa scene, in a back country rudimentary kind of way. It was a lovely social occasion. Somehow, no clothes among a bunch of friends removed a lot of artificial garbage. It was neat. Anybody who had any ideas about anything sexual lost it pretty quick, because it wasn't. It was just nice. Anyway the upshot of the loss of these springs was that the idea surfaced, and I don't truly recall that it anybody's in particular, it might have been 01:05:00mine, I just honestly don't remember, and it's not important, like making your own apple-crushing machine, your own dune buggy, your own airplanes, we could make our own hot tubs. And everybody was into it. There were solar rigs. Bobby had coiled black hose on the roof of his house--terribly inefficient, but it worked. In fact, Bobby had one of the neatest hot tub things you ever saw. He'd been left an old defunct oil well up in the hills behind Summerland. It produced no oil, but it produced gas and water in a frothy mixture. He had a neat, neat set-up, a fifty-gallon drum and he'd valve water into this thing, water 01:06:00containing natural gas, and if you valved it in slowly enough, the upper part of the tank would be gas, and it would separate in there, and the bottom part would be water. He had an old instant water heater and used the gas to heat the water. Perfect! Out of this one source came everything. Typical Bobby deal, though. It wasn't well managed, and pretty soon the level of water would come up in there and water would get into the heater and snuff out the fire and you'd have to start it again. But basically it was fantastic. We only went there once. I don't know of any other real Mountain Drive trips other than this one, but we did have a hot bath over there. But hot tubs were, really started with my connection with the winery in part, because I had a source of old redwood vats. We started 01:07:00rigging these things up into tubs. There were a lot of wood-fired ones. It eventually became more and more sophisticated...

BENET: You still have one?

HILL: I sure do. And types whose mind-set is more commercial and developmental started doing things, and there became a hot tub industry. And Jesus, it's really spread.[12] We didn't exactly invent hot baths, but in the form it's now being done, we did. Yes. And nobody gave a damn about having them invented, we just wanted some old social bathing, is what it was. And it's still going on. The first really constructed one that I know of that wasn't just a half-ass 01:08:00connection to some way of heating a bit of hot water, was, where it was done in an informal kind of way was Dana Smith's place off Gibraltar Road.[13] Did you ever get up there?

BENET: No, I don't think I have.

HILL: He and Judy were still married then. Ed Schertz[14] was pretty much the builder of it. And all he did was have this small swimming pool, with the usual heater and filter and all the stuff that went with that, and he just rigged a tap off the pool heater to take all this heating capacity and run it into a very small tub that was built, hot enough.

BENET: What kind of tub?

HILL: In this case, masonry. It was under an overhang of the house overhung this 01:09:00and then the main pool was just below that.

BENET: Who had done the masonry?

HILL: I think that was mostly, Ed Schertz was involved with it. Beyond that it's hard to say. Ed could tell you. He did some nice art work where some of the water could be diverted to kind of flow into the thing in a splashy, interesting sort of way. As I recall it was known as the Schertz-a-fall.

BENET: The what?

HILL: The Schertz-a-fall.

BENET: Excellent.

HILL: Nice place. That was the first true formal hot tub with a proper, thunk-out, heating system. The others weren't terribly different from building a fire under a tub.

BENET: I'd like to ask you a little bit about the actual Mountain Drive Road and 01:10:00environment. Can you say something about that?

HILL: Yeah, all the original road work here was done by Bobby Hyde with his bulldozer. Bobby... a smallish bulldozer. Bobby was absolutely terrible with machinery. He had no understanding of it. He used a hell of a lot of it. He used it badly. He'd tend to run all machinery at idle. It was just maddening to watch Bobby do bulldozing. He did our first clearing of the land for us, as part of the deal when you saw... no, I should back up to this other thing we were speaking of because it does fit in here. When Bobby finally decided we were interesting enough to consider as Mountain Drivers we went around and looked at the available pieces of land. One of them was up near where Marty's is, way up in the northeast corner of the property. And we hiked up there amongst the brush 01:11:00with him, and he said, "I remember around here somewhere there was a circle of rocks that had to be an old Indian thing." We didn't find it. Later on, after the Coyote Fire in '64, I was looking at this ridge up there in that area and I could see what looked like cut stone. "Hey, that's interesting." And I went up there and, sure enough, here was a rude but obviously man-made little terrace. The stone wasn't cut, it was simply found stone and moved into place. It was a bit of a terrace on a slight ridge above Chili Morgan's place, up in there. It 01:12:00had been a... I'm getting into another story here, but it fits. I took George Daisley up there. He's a well-known psychic. He was curious; he wanted to see it, and see what he could pick up about it. We had used this place back in the days when, my God, LSD was legal. I was drawn to it like somebody had a grip on my nose and I was being pulled up there. It was a wonderful place to go for inner explorations--lie down on that spot which had wonderful vibes.

BENET: Is it still there?

HILL: Oh yes. And there's another one just up above it.

BENET: Whose property is it on?

HILL: This one is probably just outside the Hyde rectangle. And then on up the ridge from that, on top of this little rise directly above Marty's is another 01:13:00spot, oh, half a dozen very large stones right on the top of this rise. These are brought-in stones. You could see where they were brought in from. It wasn't far. Somebody had to bring them in. They didn't just happen in this spot; they were arranged in a circle, almost like a little council spot. These two places were, I think, part of the same thing. Anyway, as I said, it was a wonderful place for these inner explorations. The vibes were right, and I think that's why I was led there. I took George Daisley up and got a reading on what he was getting messages about and said, "Well, I am told this was a spot of Indian worship." What they did, the Indians had an intact, operative religion when the padres came here. It disturbed the padres somewhat because they felt they had it 01:14:00and the Indians didn't. So what the Indians did was find places they could go to to practice their religion. They were close enough to the Mission that they could--it was in reach, and it was far enough away that they weren't going to be traced out here and they were going to do it. These two spots up there were theirs. It was a wonderful place for what we were doing. There were a few years that, when LSD was legal, although its legality had nothing to do with it. I was reading an article in Scientific American about it, I think it was '64, "Hey, man, these are smart pills. This is going to be interesting." It wasn't too long thereafter that it became available. And we did it right. Bless us. We would sit around Jack Boegle's Sunset Club--somebody's got to cover Sunset Club.

BENET: Ed, went into the Sunset Club. But you can add your...

HILL: Oh yeah, good, right, we would be sitting out in Boegle's terrace there, pre-dawn, and that started... one thing leads to another, doesn't it... with the Comet Ikeya-Seki, which was the grandest comet that's been around for a long time, probably since Halley's in 1910. We'd go up there pre-dawn and watch the comet, and then the colors of the day would come on. It was a lovely way to start the day. It was October '64. Sixty-four? Yeah, sixty-four.[15] It was warm, just shirt-sleeve warm up there, with the inversions. One of those Mountain Drive magic nights because of the inversions. Nobody really gets into inversions, but they should be. It's an 01:16:00absolutely essential part of Mountain Drive, this thing of our being up in the 800-foot banana belt where it's quite a bit warmer than it is downtown. Early October it tends to be like that, clear and warm all night. Really lovely. We'd watch the comet and watch the day come on. And then during that two-week period when we were watching Ikeya-Seki--this was a comet spectacular enough that you could photograph it with a Polaroid camera. It was a goody. Somewhere around here I've got a picture of that, too. Some of the original Sandoz LSD showed up. We'd been, at least I had, been reading about the stuff, and I had a clue about its potential. It wasn't haphazard acid dropping. It was, there was individual 01:17:00preparation ahead of time, a realization of some of the potential. I wanted to perceive my unity with the universe for gosh sakes. I wasn't "tripping." Most of us were working on pretty much that same aspect of it. And those Indian religious spots were absolutely the place to go. I don't know that many went up there for it, but when I was lucky enough to guide somebody in this experience, that's where we went. It was uniformly magnificent for everybody who did it. The way people's eyes would open up there. On the way up there was a little patch of native bunch grass. And as we would go through this little patch on the way up, people weren't all the way "up" yet. They had taken a pill down below, but it 01:18:00takes forty-five minutes or so to come on, I shouldn't tell you--

BENET: I've actually never had it.

HILL: No shit. All right, well...

BENET: But I understand the mechanism.

HILL: We won't get into that. I haven't had it in years myself. Well, I would ask them, "Look at this spot, what do you see?" "Grass." Some of them would have their eyes open wide enough to say, "Oh, native bunch grass." Then we go on up there and trip for several hours, and have them look at it again on the way down. "Wow!" Because it was like city streets, big thoroughfares, little streets. The field mice--I don't know what kind of creatures they were because I 01:19:00never saw them--but there were little beaten down paths in there--big paths, little paths. It was like a city. It was just amazing. At first they'd just categorize it as grass, and then their eyes were open and they'd see. It was neat. Anyway there were these nice spots up there, that the Indians would have. We did get a... whether someone hearing this material buys that source as valid or not, I couldn't care less. It makes sense and I buy it. Because nothing else makes sense.

BENET: Could we spot them on a map?

HILL: Sure, I could take you there. Wear something that won't get snagged in the brush because it's overgrown again now. This was discovered after a fire, and it was cleared. In fact, the second one up higher on the top of the rise was 01:20:00discovered after a fire that Marty[16] inadvertently set a few years ago. And Audrey was climbing up the ridge, and she found this other one. So there are two known spots...

BENET: But not a big fire?

HILL: Oh no, no. It was put out rather quickly. Marty was rather chagrined. Nobody likes to start a fire.

BENET: Well, we should talk about fires. I know you've had a lot of experience with them.

HILL: Oh, every time there's a fire there's a big shake-up. In fact, after the Coyote Fire it was amazing how many... Everyone tended to stay within the community, but there was some shifting of partners. The fire seemed to be the grease that loosened it all up and allowed it to happen. You know, there was pullings away, oh, everybody finds gems, nobody stays on the same parallel trips. And when the Coyote Fire came through it loosened up a few things and there was some shifting. But you know, they're all here yet.

BENET: What was the first fire experience you had?

HILL: Coyote Fire. It was started near the top of Coyote Road. It was unusual in that it started with a strong west wind. Burned, and at that time the ridge above our place was brush land. The fire burned across from west to east through the Mountain Drive community and on up into the hills, kind of towards the Bothin property, which left a burned-off fire break above us. Then it turned around during the night and came back, when the wind shifted around to the northeast, and came back on down through the Mountain Drive area. And burned, oh gosh... geez Louise Casey's house went, Bobby's house went, Tom Arnold's house went, the house we mentioned as the first one that Bobby built, later rented by Ray Bradbury, that one went. There was one just below the Castle which hasn't been rebuilt, the property that Mario Roman had.

BENET: Right, what was the date again of the Coyote Fire?

HILL: September '64. Is that possible? Sixty-four, was that the Coyote Fire, Sandy, or was that '65? Any of these dates, give or take a year.

BENET: Right, I can look them up.

HILL: Sure. That was, setting a fire up here is not an "if" situation, it's a "when" deal. I guess historically, back before man came around to try to interfere with fires, I guess it was determined that a fire about every seven years was the norm. It kept the brush down and the trees in fairly good shape. It tends to be more of a grass and trees kind of thing, the frequent fires. When the fires are infrequent, the fuel build-up is so great that it burns hot and it fries everything. So frequent fire is something the oak trees can stand. Infrequent fires is bad even for them. My grandfather, who was born in Saticoy and grew up in the Ventura County area, used to go up and hunt in the Sespe country above Ojai. It was very common in those days when they finished their 01:22:00deer hunting, this would be in the fall, to simply light a fire and let it go to burn off the brush. It was just done, but it was done so frequently that the fires weren't that big. It wasn't that big of a deal. It never built up to heavy enough fuel that the fires were immense. Of course, I doubt if they did it during in a Santana condition, either. After all, that's when fires are dangerous, and only when they're dangerous. Every time you've had a good fire it's been in a Santana. The one in, the Sycamore Fire in '77--quite sure about that date because we were building the first airplane at the time. I recall, I had the belt sander in my hand and I was buzzing off the bench in preparation for the next step of construction, and I heard this zap of a transformer going out, the power went out on everything. I stepped outside to see what had 01:23:00occurred and she was already started. She took the ridge from us. By the time I got my shoes on--it was a hot night because of the Santana and I was wearing sandals. Sandals are no good for being in a fire in--got the boots on, by then the fire was down here at our place. This was the first house that it came to. Well, we knew we lived in a fire area. Any other outlook is simply, got blinders up. We maintained good clearing down here; it did us more favor than harm. It removed fuel down in the canyon on the west side that was so thick I couldn't get to it, couldn't handle it, and if you cut you didn't know where to put it, so much. We had good clearance and there was really no damage here. Not to say there wasn't plenty elsewhere. But those have been the only two fires that have really 01:24:00touched us here and come through the property. There have been others. There was one that came up through Westmont. It did a little burn in the property south of us. I barely remember it, because it was just not significant. Others nearby, but they didn't directly affect the local place. There were only those two, unless I count the original one that allowed Bobby to buy the place in the first place. I guess that was a goodie. That burned...

BENET: What was that called?

HILL: I don't know. I was in the service at the time. So I didn't even know of it.

BENET: How much area did it clear?

HILL: I guess all of the local area, the Mountain Drive 40-acre rectangle. I understand it burned down Cold Spring Road to, possibly as far as Sycamore Canyon Road, I 01:25:00don't know.

BENET: Could you talk a little about the Mountain Drive Fire Brigade, if that's its title?

HILL: Yeah, that'll do.

BENET: I know it has an amusing symbol.

HILL: Yes, that was Audrey's.

BENET: Could you describe the symbol for us?

HILL: It has a dog doing the right thing. He's pissing at the base of the flames, which is where you do it, and which is about as good as the Mountain Drive Fire Company ever was. More than anything else was, people were frustrated at being kept out of Mountain Drive--say you were in town and the fire started and you couldn't get up here to protect your place. Well, if you didn't do it, nobody else was going to. There was plenty of evidence of that was the way that was. And this was a gimmick to form some kind of means whereby we each had a 01:26:00card that we could show to the guys on the fire line that would allow us to get through and protect our places. It's not that there may not have been serious thoughts on the part of several people to really form some kind of firefighting organization. That would demand a level of cooperation and one-mindedness that ain't ever going to happen here. No way. No way. And it didn't. We tried to promote a certain amount of good brush-clearing practices and having water tanks with a standardized fitting to receive hose so that there would be something there to fight a fire with should we have one. But I think the only person who 01:27:00ever put up such a tank was Arnie, and he's got a good one. Arnie's done a nice workmanlike job over there.

BENET: Well he's really out on the point.

HILL: Right. He's all by himself and he knows it. One thing for sure, when a fire comes through you don't count on any, the firemen, you don't count on the water being available because it's going to be sucked up into hoses going somewhere. Almost certainly you're going to be in a condition where there's not going to be any electricity. So you're on your own. You really are on your own. And Arnie's done a darned good job of realizing that doing something to work with. He has a gasoline-powered pump, oh, here’s one, 800- to 1000-gallon tank of water. Good, you’re independent, you can do something with it. But people have done a pretty good job of clearing brush better than before. Every time the fire comes around it tends to promote a little more of that. Reminds me of a story of 01:28:00a guy who was a glider pilot. It was in a troop carrier outfit. I was involved in the infamous landing at Arnhem. And this was, it was night and it was rocky soil, and it was it was just a bitch for digging foxholes is what it was. So they, they weren't digging as much as they could, but every time an enemy shell would come in and go, he said he couldn't see anything because it was night... but you could hear click, click, click, click, click. And just noisy. All these shovels digging in this rocky soil. It's kind of like fire and brush clearing and Mountain Drive. The fire comes through and more brush gets cleared. But, it's like an enemy shell coming in and deciding you need a deeper foxhole. Same principle. Say, we needed, somewhere we'd gotten on to Mountain Drive roads. All 01:29:00of the roads, here by the way, were done by Bobby, as I said, in a frustrating, winding sort of way. Bobby's criteria for the location of a road was affected by all sorts of practical things such as big rocks. But if there happened to be a tree with a nesting bird in it and a family of young ones, that portion would be postponed until later or the road would deviate around it.

BENET: So the property was private then?

HILL: The original 40-acre piece Bobby got as a single purchase. Then he surrounded himself with--it was divided up into principally one- and two-acre parcels. There were some larger, depending on the location like where the land is pretty steep, for instance...

BENET: Was the Mountain Drive Road through there?

HILL: Oh, Mountain Drive existed, yeah. That went way back into the last century. But all the local roadways were cut by Bobby. This photograph that I was speaking of that was taken about '62 shows a lot of terracing that is not apparent now. It wouldn't be except after a fire. Bobby ran all over this dang property with his 'dozer.

BENET: Clearing pads?

HILL: You know if someone bought a piece of property he'd make a pad, cut a road, whatever. He did it all. He wanted it under his control, and besides, he was cheap--if inefficient. I'm sure hiring a proper bulldozer operator would have been cheaper, and probably have done a better job, but it wouldn't have had the charm.

BENET: So are the roads officially approved by the County?

HILL: There ain't nothing up here that's officially approved by the County. Bobby had a--and this isn't Mountain Drive but it's part of it--Bobby was always property poor. That can just ring. He bought some land up in Painted Cave--after the Mountain Drive area--and somehow or other he wound up getting 51 percent of the Painted Cave water rights. It shook the shit out of the citizens up there because; "What's this crazy man going to do?" But Bobby came up with the ultimate way to foil the County Housing Department, Building Department. He made about a one-acre pond up there and pumped, naturally very inefficiently through a garden hose, water into this pond. Well, it worked, and he got the water up there. And it was a lovely little place. He built a houseboat on it, and the 01:30:00Building Department couldn't touch him. It wasn't a house, it was a boat. Well, it wasn't a very good job of either one. But it absolutely was something that was, nothing they could touch. They are so bound by regulations, and it didn't fit any of them. You know, when you think about it, if you wanted something that is really good and earthquake-proof it might be a good way to go. Dig a big but shallow pool, make a house that floats and you can just ride with it. It has its merits and its problems. Bobby did a lot of unusual stuff and that was one.

BENET: Did he live in it?

HILL: It was something you could have a picnic in. That was about the size of it. It was made of a number of old steel drums for flotation. The base is made of, he got a quantity of old doors of various and wondrous colors, and I think that was 01:31:00the floor and the walls and the roof of it. It had a pot-bellied stove in there and something to sit on and kind of a table sort of thing, but that was it. He had people really upset in the Painted Cave area because they could envision this pond breaking loose and coming down and inundating somebody. The County did go up and look at it. There wasn't anything they could do about it. And, oh sure, it died, but that was another aspect of Bobby.

BENET: Did you go up to his house much, Stan?

HILL: Fairly often. It was kind of the social center of the Drive. They had this large driveway and turnaround in front, and there were some Pot Wars--Ed Schertz and Bill Neely and Gerry Friedman were active potters. Usually about 01:32:00pre-Christmas, you know a sales gimmick come up. Like a Gas War there would be a Pot War. That refers to pottery, by the way. The other thing existed up here too, but not until later.

BENET: Oh, really. It was after that time?

HILL: Oh, yeah. Marijuana had hardly been ever mentioned. In fact I remember--I mentioned the first LSD stuff at the time of the Comet Ikeya-Seki, I believe '64. I remember shortly thereafter peyote, Don Juan, got hold of a bag of it. It was legal; he got it mail order from New Mexico. At this time Ed Schertz was renting Jack Boegle's house. Boegle was on his world tour then. He was renting 01:33:00Jack Boegle's place, and Dianne had brought up a bag of peyote buttons. Somebody had heard that this stuff was terribly bitter, hard to get down, and maybe if you mixed it up in a blender with some Kool-Aid you could probably choke it down without throwing it up. Which is what we did, we mixed it with Kool-Aid.

BENET: Sounds pretty bad.

HILL: It was! God, it was bitter. Terrible. We sat around for hours waiting for something to happen. We didn't have no idea how to use the stuff.

BENET: You weren't Indian.

HILL: Right. Not that anyway. Gee, we kept waiting for something to happen, but then we all went home, everybody went home and whatever happened was later. Very subtle. I remember only two things: I was lying in bed when I got home and I was sliding my feet like this and they felt as if they were each about a yard long. And I could hear a train down the coast, and it sounded like it was going to come right through the room. That was it. Big deal, you know. Hardly worth it. Never did it again.

BENET: What were the festivities like up at the Hyde house?

HILL: The Pot Wars, as I mentioned. And occasionally there would be in the spring a kite festival. Frank Robinson used to be into that. Frank is a damned good kite flyer and kite builder and Frank usually won. A lot of fun was had by all. There were occasional plays put on by Betty Ridenour--she's Betty somebody-else now, and her group. They did some really good stuff, really nice things. That was quite a bit more recent, of course.

BENET: Stan, before you go into that, go back to kite events. Since you're interested in flying, did you make some kites?

HILL: Sure. We've done well. I still have a couple upstairs that worked well. I used some model airplane construction techniques on a couple and made them exquisitely light. If you have one of these kite days when there's no damned wind, it takes a feather-light kite to be able to do it at all. We made a couple 01:35:00of especially light ones of balsa wood and Japanese rice paper and flown by a single thread and we could get up when nobody else could do anything.

BENET: Did you use a lot of oriental designs ideas?

HILL: Oh, to pretty them up, but we didn't get very elaborate. An elaborate kite takes wind. We made some elaborate ones. I made one of these--it was a kit thing--it looks like a clipper ship. It took a damned gale to make it fly. It looked good up in the air but not practical, not practical at all. There were some pretty adventuresome kites. Scott Sheldon was a damned good kite builder. I didn't mention the Sycamore Fire was started by a kite that got away from Scott. Poor guy, he was flying it and the first gust of a Santana came up while he had his kite in the air. It just snatched it out of his hands. It went on down the 01:36:00hill a couple of hundred yards and the reel, which was still attached to the kite, got hung up on some wires and pulled some wires together and shorted them. That was the Sycamore Fire.[17] The cops advised Scott to get out of town for a few days until things cooled off. There was probably somebody out there who wanted to lynch him. There were a couple of hundred houses burned down. People were willing to do about anything. Scott feels, certainly a feeling of guilt, but then again he isn't overburdened by it either. He recognizes it for what it is. The first thing he did when it started was to come down and start helping us and worked his tail off. As it turned out, we 01:37:00didn't truly need him. I had more help than I wanted. I had to stuff here I wanted to burn and people kept putting it out. But that's about it from kite flying. There were any number of largish social get-togethers that tended to happen out there on the Hyde turnaround. Of course those days are gone now because the ownership of the property around there has just changed enough that that really isn't available to us. That property has been passed down to some of the Hyde grandchildren who aren't anything like Bobby. I won't elaborate on that, but let's just say they're not like Bobby. More's the pity.

BENET: When was the last time you saw Bobby?

HILL: I accompanied him to Santa Barbara National Bank, an occasion that really pissed me off. Bobby had had a stroke by then and diminished himself somewhat.

BENET: What year was that around?

HILL: I wish I could tell you. He wanted to get a loan in order to run a water main down about as far as Laura's in order to split off this lower four acres of property, where Henry Child has now. It was going to take something like $11,000. They just mostly ignored him and left him sitting. We were sitting there talking to the president of the bank and he got up went off to do something else and kind of just left him. It was really kind of an egg-in-your-face rejection thing. It was very badly handled by the bank. If I remembered the bank officer's name I'd say it, but I don't. Well, it's not important. But Bobby was, after he had that stroke, he was less than he was.

BENET: How old was he around then?

HILL: I would kind of think seventyish, I might be wrong about that, but that's close enough. Angy can tell you. Not terribly long after that he died, just sort of withered and went away. It was no great dramatic thing. You kind of sensed that he was on his way out, as it was with Bill Neely. You know what is coming.

BENET: Did you have any kind of special celebration after his death?

HILL: You know, I don't think there was. Undoubtedly there was some kind of get-together, more like a wake than anything else. That's all anybody's ever done up here after a death situation. In fact the nearest thing to a formal funeral we ever had was when Bill Neely died. There was a memorial service down at All Saints by the Sea. But Bill, towards the last, as he knew he was on the way out, kind of got some conventional religion, and this was kind of a piece of that. It was associated with it. What's not to put down the event. It wasn't, it wasn't that, it was it was well done. It's just where it was done. That was, I was going to say a little unexpected, but knowing Bill and the way his life had changed toward the end, maybe not. Maybe not. But for instance, oh, when... It 01:38:00was, I'm getting forgetful, you're getting this stuff in time. Bill English, he used to write for the News-Press. He was from Canada.

BENET: Bill Richardson?

HILL: No, no, no. Little short guy. He was kind of a firebrand when he was at The News-Press.

BENET: I'm not sure of the person.

HILL: It'll come to me sooner or later. He died. Something like a year ago. Another one who the prime cause was alcohol. He was living in Carp at the time. And when he went, there was a kind of a memorial, get-together down on the beach in Carpinteria, where he was living at the time. Recently, a very similar thing was done for Dan Cummings, another guy who went out early for the same reason, alcohol. I didn't realize Dan was only 42. Shows you what alcohol will do.

BENET: I'm surprised.

HILL: Yeah, I was, too. I missed that because I was down at Sansum that particular afternoon having some stuff done. Interesting stuff. This isn't for the tape, but because of my age, 63. The guy who did the hernia surgery said, "Well, you ought to have a flexible sigmoidoscopy because of your age." This was fiber optics thing, they stick it up your rear and first they clean you out, stick this thing up there and blow in some air so they can, so it isn't all 01:39:00closed up and they can see. But the interesting thing is the hand you the eyepiece. Here you are... I've never even seen my own asshole, and here I am looking 18 inches up the thing with perfect clarity, you know. Wow.

BENET: Well, that sounds like Mountain Drive.

HILL: That's how come I missed Dan's memorial. I had my own little show. That's an experience. Curious.

BENET: Not to get off the track, but I did want to ask you...

HILL: Is there a single track to this?

BENET: No, I have, for myself, too, I'm very interested in how you combined the straight job of being an optometrist and working downtown with living up on Mountain Drive.

HILL: I think some of this possibly comes from... pusher airplane. Hear that funny prop sound?

BENET: Yeah, in the background.

HILL: Yeah, the wind kind of slapping up against the..., it’s a pusher. I started meditation in '67, which has been 19 years now. There is a great change in perspective and priorities that comes with it. Nothing sudden at all; it comes slowly. But there tends to be far less confusion about what you do and what you are. I am I, but I tend to do a lot of stuff: When I'm flying I'm a pilot; When I'm "optoming" I'm an optometrist; When I'm digging ditches I'm digging ditches, or cutting wood or whatever those. The fact that I happen to have a doctor in front of my 01:40:00name--that's nine to five. It isn't even that anymore. That just goes with the job. I never let myself get confused about that's what I am. That's one of the things I do.

BENET: So you're always in comfortable about having...

HILL: Well, yeah, right. It's never gotten my way. That's just getting so confused with the roles you get to thinking that's you. And that's inevitable to anybody.

BENET: Well, you know that some people on Mountain Drive sometimes have a certain amount of antagonism toward the downtown.

HILL: Oh, sure, sure, the "straights."

BENET: I've never felt that from you.

HILL: No, I live both, but I've never identified with it so much that I felt I was a flatlander. But that's just an attitude. It's not where you live. If you're hung up on the keeping up with the Jones kind of garbage and all that, 01:41:00that goes with the flatland attitude. You don't see it up here. It just doesn't exist. Everybody is doing their own thing. They don't give a damn what anybody else does as long as it doesn't drain down on them--then fix your damn tank.

BENET: How would you describe how the Mountain Drive area fits into the larger Santa Barbara community?

HILL: Well in the first place, I doubt if there are many people down there that understand it. Some do, and envy our freedom. They're just as free as we are; freedom is attitude. It doesn't include freedom to flaunt laws--too much--not that you can do without stirring anybody up. Go ahead. I'm sure there is still a modest amount of individual marijuana growing up here. I don't know who or where 01:42:00and don't care. I don't do it any more myself because I don't use it any more. Frankly, when I did, I got tired of being ripped off. So I stopped. But that was again that was part of the Mountain Drive attitude of being self-determinant. If you wanted to do it, and it wasn't going to harm anybody else, go ahead. Who's to stop you if you're cool about it.

BENET: But you felt very comfortable in the community with all those feelings?

HILL: Sure. There's always been certain common activity here in the neighborhood that requires a little pulling together. It's never been easy. I remember the toughest one was when... well, Henry Child bought the lower four acres of the 01:43:00original Hyde... See Hyde kept ten acres central to the 40-acre parcel for himself and family. And when Henry Child--after Bobby and Floppy had died--bought that lower four acres, the sale was contingent upon there being a fire hydrant just opposite Laura's. That had to be... I don't even know who paid for it. I think it was Hyde estate, probably. But it meant tearing up a lot of road, winding road and repaving over it in a patch sort of way--which was what was going to be done. It seemed to me to be the only opportunity to... for once and for all get a proper paving job on that road. When we came up here most of that was, oh just earth. Oh, it had what's called an armor coat over it, but 01:44:00that's...

BENET: Like a grease?

HILL: It’s a..., they put on a tar and throw gravel over that and that's it. But that had broken up pretty much. Nobody else was quite willing to do it, so I just accepted the job of figuring out who used how much road for each house and what their probable share would be. I proposed that we have the road 01:45:00properly paved with hot mix, do it right and have a decent road that we could live with. The old one, that sucker would tear up transmissions it was so bad. Ask Ed. He's done it. In the main most everybody cooperated pretty well. Bill Neely, who was known to be stingy, especially, his declaration at that time was, "Well, I'm against progress." "Well, fuck you Bill Neely, I'm going to pay your share myself and we'll have it anyway." It wasn't that he was against it really, he was against paying for it. His portion of it was a piece of the shortest section. I think that he was only responsible for maybe 200 bucks worth, out of a few thousand. "Fuck you, Bill Neely," which is a password around here; everybody's said it at one time or another. And it was done. But everybody else paid. Some of them took a little time to do it, but we did cooperate and get together and do a proper thing. There've been less extensive cooperation on water lines and ditch-diggings occasionally, and most of those things tend to come out being a really neat kind of social occasion. Mountain Drive will always do that to it. We have a dandy road which dates back to that effort. However, upper Mountain Drive is almost a separate kind of thing in many ways. It's a different lay of land up there, not as flat. They're all on pumps to bring the water up. The road's a little more winding, involved. It's just kind of like a separate, but closely associated organization.

BENET: Right.

HILL: Next subject.

BENET: So the sense of cooperation in the community is...

HILL: Oh, it's there, but it's not as close to the surface as it used to be. In the older days when we were all more involved in our own construction projects, it wasn't that much more of a shift to slide over a little bit and redirect it to a community project of some kind. There were quite a few things that were proposed that never came off like--I had got a large redwood tank from the winery and we were going to put it in Bill Neely's place. I think it was really an extension of Frank Robinson's property. There's a spring--one of the old horizontal wells--off the edge of Frank Robinson's place, and we were going to tap into that and make it a secondary water supply for at least lower Mountain Drive. The tank eventually wound up being a big hot tub down at Mills'. It was one of those things, a project that died a-borning. There have only been a few things like that. Mostly the community projects have come along well, but almost always over someone's dead body. But where isn't it like that?

BENET: Well, I'm going to maybe stop it here.

HILL: Right. I think we're about bottomed out for today anyway.

BENET: Okay, and we've covered a lot and you've been really terrific on memories.

HILL: Well, I'm frustrated for the things I couldn't recall.

BENET: It's been great. So let me thank you for that, Stan.

HILL: Thank you.