00:00:00--(Interview begins)--
BENET: Can you describe your botanic background?
LANE: Well, it was later, but I started with a home garden when we built our
first house, my first husband and I built on East
Mountain Drive. And I planted a lot of things and I got so excited when the
seeds would germinate and things came up (said with laughter at the memory). But
I realized I loved that.
BENET: Were they things to eat or to smell?
LANE: Both, both uh-uh. But I especially liked flowers.
BENET: Did you plant an organic garden at the beginning?
LANE: Well, it's organic in the sense that I never have used any sprays, but
00:01:00I've never composted. I keep saying, when I retired I'll start composting and
really grow good things to eat and beautiful flowers.
BENET: What were your favorite flowers and plants?
LANE: Ummm, I don't know. I don't think I have a favorite.
BENET: I know you have other interests to, writing and...
LANE: No, (with emphasis) not writing. Music, painting, drawing (laughing).
BENET: Do you like to draw your plants?
LANE: Yes, I do.
BENET: Have you been doing any water colors with them?
LANE: Yeah, Yeah um-hum. Not, as much as I should. But I've -- it's been a busy
time. It's suddenly all came up, you know all these things to do. And also I
fill up my extra time too much. I really fill it up with things I want to do.
BENET: Also Peggy, you've lived in Santa Barbara for a long time. Could you
00:02:00describe the development of the Mountain Drive area?
LANE: Somewhat. I was not among the very first, but there were not very many
houses there at the time.
BENET: Would this be around the mid-fifties?
LANE: It was 1950 when we moved to Mountain Drive. We'd been living on a boat in
the harbor with our first child -- a sail boat -- you couldn't stand up in it
(laughter). We sold the boat and we bought an acre above the road on East
Mountain Drive from Bobby Hyde.
BENET: This is you and Frank Robinson?
LANE: Yeah, Frank Robinson and I, from Bobby Hyde. And the terms were $50 down
if you had it, and $50 a month, if you had it, and he'd show you how to build
your house (laughter). And that's what happened.
BENET: That sounds like a good arrangement.
LANE: It was very good. And there were a lot of other people doing the same
thing, so there were several houses that sort of went up near the same time. And
Bobby and Floppy were fascinating people, just fascinating people. They were
00:03:00members of the American Nudists Association, so it used to be called the "nudist
camp," that was one of the names for the area. And "Hyde Park," was another one.
He would just sell to the people he liked, or, no, I won't say that he would
sell to anybody that came up and offered him $50 down and $50 a month if they
had it. But if they didn't have it, or they didn't really like it they would
just drift away. No papers were ever exchanged; it was all word of mouth. So
some of the people actually started houses and then moved for one reason or
another; they had a job somewhere else or they had to leave. And some people
never paid anything because they didn't have anything.
BENET: Can you describe the flora at that time?
LANE: Well, I knew it was chaparral, but I didn't know what that meant. But
there were definitely -- well, it's the same things that are on our hillsides
00:04:00now, and they're still all around our houses.
BENET: But people planted a lot of things?
LANE: Well, we planted flowers and vegetables and not too many trees. The wind
breaks were eucalyptuses. They were there before we came, and there's one way
down past Frank's house. That's right I got it mixed up -- I've been with
Mervin now for 20 years and I said "above the road"
because we live above the road. Frank's house was below the road on a canyon
that goes down through Westmont, and there's a long line of eucalyptus wind
break, but everything else is oak trees and scrub oak and ceanothus, adenostoma, cercocarpus.
BENET: Can you describe the 1964 Coyote Fire?
LANE: Aahhh too well, yes. Well, I was home doing my math homework paper
BENET: Was this for the botany...
LANE: No, I was taking a class from the University of California, a mail order
00:05:00class -- I had a lot of children so they were still young -- and one of them was
home still not in school. And we heard the fire engines and the fireman came
running down my driveway and told me that I had to leave. And so we got the pets
and the business records, Frank's business records, and that's all we got out at
that time. And took off. And the fire went through and didn't hit our house. And
then we all got back in and we were sitting around a neighbor's front porch that
has a wonderful view south watching it in the distance, and it turned around and
came back. So we went down and started wetting things down. But the water
pressure drops in our area because of Westmont being right below, they had
everything on, and we just didn't have the water to fight anything. And it came
00:06:00back and we just jumped in the car, Frank and I and our oldest boy Robbie. And I
was afraid my hair was going to catch on fire. There was just fire everywhere.
And I was afraid the gasoline in the car was going to catch, and wanted to get
Robbie out of there so. We went down to Sandy and Stan Hill, who lived below
near Cold Springs School, and then Frank and I heard from someone that had not
left when I'd had to leave that it still hadn't caught. So we decided to go back
and try to save it. So we rushed back and the house was burning, the roof was
burning the second story had burned off. We tried to stop it but we couldn't; we
didn't have any water, really, even though we were below the road. Finally a
fire engine came along, and we just got out in the road and stopped it. They
00:07:00weren't going to stop, but we stopped them and they put it out. And it was an
awful mess, really awful. A picture appeared on the front of the L.A. (tape ends
in mid-sentence)
BENET: Peggy we just got cut off at the end there, you were describing it was an
awful mess.
LANE: Oh, it was a terrible mess everything was totally black all the clothes,
all the dishes, the refrigerator, everything was burned up because it had burned
through the roof and the roof had fallen in and burnt the whole kitchen,
bathroom end of the house, and part of the roof off the living room which was
not so bad. The living room wasn`t so bad, but since the piano was in the
kitchen at that time, and all the baby pictures, and everything, all my music,
just everything, all the books, everything was in there. We had started the
house with the kitchen and that's the part was most damaged.
00:08:00
BENET: Just as an aside, what kind of music were you involved with?
LANE: Singing. I used to sing for Erich Katz Collegium Musicum.
BENET: Do you still sing?
LANE: Just for my own pleasure. I also used to sing with I. Newton Perry, for
dances with a band. And Erich's was early music and baroque music, medieval and
baroque music. And then I sang in a bunch of opera guilds, and we had a
Montecito Opera Workshop and I sang for them for years and we had a lot of fun
with that. It was a small group and a lot of church choirs.
BENET: Right, ok. So when your house burnt down were you aware of how many other
places were going on or had partially burned down?
LANE: Yes, because we had all gotten together up at Jack Boegle's who was one of
the early people on Mountain Drive, too. And we were
sitting on his porch and we were talking about it all. Mostly they hadn't
00:09:00caught, when it came through, but then on the way back it was obviously going to
catch a lot of places. We couldn't really see who was burning, but several
places did burn.
BENET: What was the area like right afterwards?
LANE: Black. (said very softly and reverentially) Really black. And then when
the rains come it's vividly green with new growth immediately.
BENET: What did you think of that?
LANE: I was amazed. I didn't realize. Since I wasn't in botany then, I didn't
know how fast it comes back in that chaparral community. It's amazing.
BENET: What do you thing about fires now?
LANE: Well I think they are natural, there. At the time we never gave them a
thought. But the cycle is very clear, it burns off and all the little flower
seeds that have been lying there for years and years and years, like 50 years
sometimes, all the wildflowers come up and pretty soon the shrubs sprout.
00:10:00Mugwort is one of the first things up and old man sage, and they just come
bounding back. And in ten years you would never know there was a fire except
that usually you can see some burned tops of old chaparral, but just the woody
part sticking up.
BENET: Do you do any preparations for fires now?
LANE: Yeah, we do. We have a long list. Because when I tried to remember what to
take the second time around when the fire came back, I couldn't think. I just
couldn't think at all. I got one thing, I got my amber beads that belonged to my grandmother.
BENET: Did they have a little insect in them?
LANE: No. Oh they are lovely, they are so pretty. It goes around three times and
they are still long. They are a beautiful strand.
BENET: So did you have to rebuild?
00:11:00
LANE: Yeah, well, we had to put the roof on. The house was adobe with a tile
floor, and really the bones of the house were right there. The second story had
been wood, so we lost that.
BENET: Had you built the house?
LANE: Yes. It wasn't quite finished but it was mostly finished. It was certainly
-- we have a huge living room, and three bedrooms and bath and kitchen,
hallways, big porch.
BENET: Did you change it? When you rebuilt?
LANE: No, not much, cause we really liked it. He still lives in the house. It's
really a beautiful house. He finished off the second story after we parted and
the other end of the house there -- with another couple of bedrooms.
BENET: Do you still live on Mountain Drive?
LANE: Yeah, I live above on the same canyon now, but up the hill.
BENET: Did that house go through the fire too?
LANE: Yeah it did but it didn't catch.
BENET: What about the last fire?
00:12:00
LANE: The Sycamore Fire. Well, that started down on
(the) right on the road, and the winds were such that they blew it downtown.
That's what caused so much damage. If it had gone up, there wouldn't have been
so many people with burned homes. But it was just the way it was, the wind blew
down so we didn't suffer that time. Some of the people on Coyote Road certainly did.
BENET: So do you try to plant differently for that, further from the house?
LANE: No. That's probably stupid, but I can't, I just don't want to cut down
trees. I like them too much. We do, I do clear the brush around the house, we
have to do that and we do that. That's required by the forestry.
BENET: Besides the Mountain Drive area you've lived in Santa Barbara a long time
00:13:00and I wanted to ask you about some of the natural beauty spots in this county. I
have a list that I will show you and we can talk about them. (Tape is turned off)
BENET: We wanted to go a little bit over the Coyote Fire in more detail, Peggy,
do you have any more memories concerning it?
LANE: Well, it's not really botanical. But one of the interesting things that
happened after the fire; our house was one of the ones that people saw because
it appeared in the paper and on television. And I don't know why that was and it
made me furious I really didn't like that. And I was objecting and Frank, my
husband, was shutting me up in the background because I was really furious at
00:14:00their. You know, we were standing there...
BENET: Like an invasion of privacy?
LANE: Yes, it was. Looking at our burnt out house in the night, you know, and
the television crew comes up (with descriptively patronizing voice) "How do you
feel Mrs. Robinson when your house has burned down?" I just wanted to hit him.
Anyway. But, as a result of that there were -- everybody in town tried to help
us. We had five children so we had lost all the children's clothes that they
weren't wearing, and all their toys, and all of our dishes, and everything. And
people started donating things. It was just impossible eventually. We were the
only people they knew about really, because of that interview. So Mervin and
June, Mervin, my current
husband, had opened up their studio for a depot for these things. There were so
00:15:00many things we couldn't get them in anywhere. And it filled up the studio. It
was amazing!
BENET: So you gave them to the other neighbors?
LANE: Oh, absolutely. It was like a place you could come to find things that you
needed. And there were things -- some people brought really funny things, like a
bowling ball. (laughter) But there were some really wonderful things, like
somebody donated a bicycle to Robbie because his new bike had burned up in the
fire. That was wonderful, things like that. And clothes, we needed clothes, we
all needed clothes; I only had the shoes that I was wearing after that fire, and
my dress, that was about it. So we all needed clothes and the children just
needed everything, and the dishes and the works. And that was really very
heartwarming that that happened. But it was also impossible. (laughing) You
couldn't even keep track, and...
00:16:00
BENET: So you just felt it was odd that it was so public?
LANE: Well, I think that's the reason why everything was addressed to us,
because -- unless other people knew somebody they didn't know who to send it to.
So, it sort of came on us, and it was an immense amount of stuff.
BENET: What did your children think?
LANE: (hearty laughter) I think they got a kick out or it.
BENET: What did Frank think?
LANE: Oh he got a kick out of it. He likes publicity (laughing) Oh, please leave
that out I don't like to say that.
BENET: What did Merv and June...
LANE: Well, Merv couldn't stand it after a while. But June told her people at
the High School, there were several needy students in her dancing classes, and
so we opened it up for them, too. I mean, they had nothing to do with the fire,
but there was so much stuff that anybody that needed it was welcome to come and
look through.
BENET: How long did that go on?
LANE: Oh, it went on for a couple of weeks, and then three weeks maybe, more, I
00:17:00don't remember. But eventually we gave it all to the La Vista Club, and they
came up with a truck and took it away. (laugh) But of course we did get a lot
that we needed, and we were really grateful for it too. But it was funny, things
like bowling balls.
BENET: That's a great item.
LANE: Somebody might have lost a bowling ball and wanted it, you never know. (laughter)
BENET: Ok, well thank you again.
