Frank Robinson Interview

--(Interview begins)--[1]

GASSER: So how did you meet Bobby Hyde and become involved with Mountain Drive?

ROBINSON: Well, I always took art every semester, and music every semester but I'd taken all the math I'd needed so I didn't have to take that, I took all the science I'd needed so I didn't take that. Instead I took philosophy, literature, art, and music. I was also in the a cappella choir and the glee club. At the time we were putting on The Gondoliers up at the college and I was in the chorus 00:01:00as a chorus boy in The Gondoliers... it's a lot of fun. It's a good show. We had a great time in that. I remember the Duke and Duchess Supositorio were Peggy Brooks and Joel Andrews. Joel Andrews was the son of Floppy Hyde who was Bobby Hyde's wife.[2] Peggy Brooks and I got to know each other and later married. So one night we were up to another friend's house for dinner and Joel said, "Come up and meet my mother and father." I guess it was ten or 00:02:00eleven at night. He said "No way, no problem." So we went up and it was very pleasant. This was in Bobby Hyde's adobe which at that time had a dirt floor. A couple of years later after Peg and I were married we were shopping down in the basket district, along where the Plaqua is now. We met a mutual friend from college driving his Model A Ford. That was Bill Richardson. Bill said he was building a house. We asked him where? He said, "Oh, up there," and he pointed at the mountain. He invited us up to dinner. So we went up to dinner. By that time we had ten month old baby we were all three living on my boat. My boat wasn't 00:03:00all that big.

GASSER: How many feet was it?

ROBINSON: It was twenty-two feet. I was working at the Harbor office as harbor patrol which was kinda handy. At the time the baby was trying to walk and a twenty-two foot boat is small. My boat wasn't in a mooring either, one of those nice docks and everything. This wasn't on a slip you know. This was on a mooring where you rowed back and forth to the beach. So we went up there for dinner, up the road, up mountain Drive in Bill's Model A. He showed us how he'd built it. It was an adobe. Then we walked down and looked at a couple of places that were building sites. I stood up on one and yelled down to Bobby Hyde, "How much is 00:04:00this acre? And that one we can see way down there?" Bobby says, "Oh, two thousand dollars." Then I asked, "How much is the one in the canyon?" "It's two thousand dollars," and so I say, "Okay, I'll buy that one down in the canyon." So the next morning I came up with 50 dollars which was the standard down payment and because I was a friend of Richardson there was no questions and it was fine. A couple of days later I was up making adobe bricks. So that was neat and that's where I really got to know Bobby Hyde. Of course and I didn't know anything about building. Sure, I knew math and I knew engineering, and I knew stress and strain. I knew how to calculate beams and things, but I didn't know zilch about building a house. I asked Bobby Hyde and he said, "Well, I'll tell 00:05:00you how to build a house." The more he told me, the more I realized he didn't know zilch about building a house either. He'd done it but I was a little more methodical than he was. Bobby Hyde was pretty relaxed and easy going. When he builds a house he looks at place, then he gets his little bulldozer and he carves out a little pad. He says the house will be nice here and face it that way and sticks the stick in the corner and down the side. "Well, that's about square, you know." Then he puts in a little foundation and pretty soon he's got a little house there. Ok, still the house doesn't last very long but it gets done, too. It'll last. While I was still working at the Harbor office, I got 00:06:00books on the subject. I read everything I could find on building a house and masonry because I wanted to build an adobe house. So I started building my house. I laid it out according to the book, but I still didn't know much about it. A friend of mine with whom I'd also gone to the college was living across the street. He had built a house. While I was building forms one day or trying to, he came down and he says, "Ah, Frank, you're doing it right but you're doing it all wrong." I knew what to do but just not how to do it. After he came down within an hour the two of us had done twice as much as I'd done the day before.

GASSER: That was making the bricks or laying the bricks?

ROBINSON: I was building forms and foundations. My wife and I had been making 00:07:00bricks and had (mumbled). We had Bobby Hyde's cement mixer which we had borrowed. We had the brick forms and everything and we could make about thirty bricks working two or three hours in a morning. Ah, it's just production (very unclear). One day I encountered Pete Agular over on the Mesa with his crew making bricks. I watched him for about twenty minutes and I picked up (snap of fingers) enough there that the next day we made a hundred bricks in four hours.

GASSER: Wow, what was the key?

ROBINSON: Ah, the key was never handle mud. Never lift mud!

GASSER: A simple principle.

ROBINSON: You lift dry dirt, earth, into your mixer, you squirt water into it from the hose and you throw asphalt in there. Then you dump the mud from the 00:08:00mixer to the wheelbarrow, you dump the mud from the wheelbarrow to the form, you punch it down in the form. Of course you have a form right behind it that's also important. The form makes three bricks and you lay them one behind the other. You dump the mud from the wheelbarrow into the form, dump the excess mud from that form into the next form, pull the first one and put it behind it. You just work backwards kinda of leap frogging your forms and dumping the mud in (mumbled). You never shovel mud, we'd been shoveling it out of the wheelbarrow. (background interviewer wow) You know you never shovel; you know you just lift mud. That still stands me in good stead, I've made thousands of adobe bricks since then and this is what I tell people when they first try -- never lift mud!

GASSER: What is the formula? Is there a particular formula?

ROBINSON: Sure, you put some water in the mixer, then you put in a little asphalt emulsion, then you put in a lot of dirt, then you put in enough water until it looks right. (laughter) Then you dump it out. (laughter)

GASSER: And how long do you have to wait for them to dry?

ROBINSON: Well, you take the form off right away but they're dry enough to turn up on edge in about three days. You turn them up on edge so there is a good deal more exposure to the air. In this sort of weather (it was a hot sunny July day) they'd be dry enough to lay on the wall in about ten days, two weeks.

GASSER: So when did you start building your house then? When was it finished?

ROBINSON: Well, I started in the summer of 1951 and it still isn't finished. 00:10:00(laughter) It isn't quite that bad, it's practically finished. For some reason when we started out I built the bathroom and laundry room first (mumbled). I bought a little plywood hut from Bobby which we dismantled and moved on to my property. We set that up and we took about three months to make that habitable with plumbing and wiring and all that stuff. But then we needed a bathroom. We didn't have a toilet so I started to build a bathroom. First I built the bathroom walls then I (mumbled). Then I realized that that wasn't all that 00:11:00important (chuckled) and I built other things next. We gradually built rooms and moved into them. That's what happened until we no longer needed that hut and sold it. Eventually we had it all sort of built until 1964 when the Coyote Fire happened.[3] It gutted the house. The adobe was left but little else. The foundations (mumbled). It was about a fifty percent loss, I guess.

GASSER: Did you have to demolish the house?

ROBINSON: No.

GASSER: Did you rebuild?

ROBINSON: In the county at that time... I started building this house before there was a building code. So I hadn't followed the building code. I'd followed the practices. Because it was declared a disaster area they allowed people that 00:12:00had lost their houses to rebuild them as they had been without a permit. So we did that. It was kinda great! We came back here one morning and the roof tile (had) fallen in on the kitchen and the kitchen floor was about two feet deep in debris and tile. The refrigerator burned out was lying over (?) in a dead hulk. There was nothing left (of) the piano but the harp. We were very discouraged. (Then) a bunch of young students, five or six students from UCSB showed up in a 00:13:00pickup truck. They said "Can we help?" I said "Jesus I don't know what we can do!" They said, "Well, we can clean it up!" So they got in there with shovels, and they took about four loads to the dump. By that afternoon it looked possible that we could do it. So we did it. And at that time I was actively building houses. I was a contractor and designer, too. So I had lots of friends and, geez, uh, Ambrose Lumber called up (and) said, "Frank you've got two thousand dollars credit for lumber down here. Use it." Economy Supply Company called up and said, "Just come down and order any plumbing you want. It's yours." and (Addins?) Paint called up and said, "Come down and get all the paint you want." 00:14:00Somebody called up and said come down and get all the wallpaper you want. Well, I didn't have wallpaper at my house. A friend of mine, a framing contractor, who I contracted with to do some jobs, came up with his son and his equipment. Other friends and neighbors came over. We had the basic wooden structure reconstructed and a roof over it and were back living in the house within three weeks.

GASSER: Was that due a lot to the help that you got from the Mountain Drive residents?

ROBINSON: Oh yeah, yeah the Mountain Drivers and just the business community that I'd worked with.

GASSER: Did they spring in as well for any of the other people on Mountain Drive? There were six of seven that lost their houses?

ROBINSON: Uh, I think there were eight or ten. I don't know. But nobody else 00:15:00rebuilt that fast. I had five kids by then and when I realized there was all this goodwill here and (I'd better) use it because it's going to run out if I don't, you know. I (? mumbled, mumbled ?) you know and worked with a beer and wine. People were very helpful and nobody had to work very hard but everybody worked and helped (us) rebuild. This is sort of a tradition on Mountain Drive, actually. We've done this thing a couple of times before, several times really. Once, when one of our neighbors was building his living room. I think he had 00:16:00(already built) the kitchen and the bedroom. His was a growing family, and he hurt his back in a car accident, he couldn't really work.

GASSER: Which neighbor was this, do you remember?

ROBINSON: This was Eric Maurer. So we organized a work party. My building partner and I figured out his lumber list and ordered all his lumber and got everything delivered. Everything he needed to do it. He was paying for it, but we did the work, organizing and getting people up there. We got the neighbors up there and we rebuilt his house on the weekend. We did that again for Ray Hawthorne who was the local mechanic. Ray Hawthorne fixed everybody's cars on Mountain Drive.[4] He was an old friend of Bobby's and he 00:17:00fixed Bobby's tractor and he fixed everybody's cars. He only worked on old cars; he didn't want to work on new cars. Fortunately, Mountain Drivers had mostly old cars so there was no problem.

GASSER: So the recompense was basically a trade arrangement?

ROBINSON: Oh, it wasn't a trade arrangement it's whenever the need arose. He had started to build a house and he was going to do it himself. He hired some people to put in the floor, but he realized that if they fussed around so much that they'd never get the house built. But he didn't know what to do next. So there again my partner and I made a lumber list, and got the lumber delivered, (and we) got people, and we built his house on the weekend. (pause) The whole house, got the roof on and even the side walls on.

GASSER: This was for Ray Hawthorne, for "Popeye," I believe?

ROBINSON: Yeah, he was sort of a Popeye character, yeah.

GASSER: So from that first building experience you decided you would become an architect? Or, how did you...

ROBINSON: No, no long before in 19... (fades out can't remember). I was working as a carpenter after I left the Harbor office. Soon after I started building my house I went to work as a journeyman carpenter.

GASSER: Who for?

ROBINSON: Well, I went to work for Nelson Way Homes out at the airport. They were a factory which built pre-fab houses. They were pre-fab in the sense that they were pre-planned. You'd get a stack of wall panels delivered to your site. They (mumbled) and they got contracts for a lot of houses. So I learned how to swing a hammer out there. (?) I drove maybe three or four thousand sixteen penny 00:19:00nails in a day. That's all the carpenters did. The laborers laid these things up on these tables and the tables were just about (four feet? high) (just the right height) where you could swing a hammer at them. And you'd go down the line and wherever you saw a stud up against a plate you'd drive two sixteen penny nails. And just blam, blam, blam, blam, blam, blam, blam, blam, blam, all day long. The first week I worked there my arm got so sore and my fingers were so sore that in the morning I had to uncurl them and wrap them around the steering wheel of my car to drive to work and then (I'd) get to work and wrap them around the hammer. It's all you use in this (?) was your hammer and occasionally a try square and occasionally a saw but...

GASSER: It sounds like a very primitive, uh, experience.

ROBINSON: Yeah, well it was it was kinda of (?), but it was a very good experience. Actually, I never worked really as a carpenter. I got a little experience on my own house, but I managed to con my way through the local union (exam). My friend gave (?) me help with the forms. He told (me) how to do it. How to build a house(?). That would be one of the questions. (Let's) say the foundation is in. Of course, you don't say, "Well you lay out the joist and nail them down and then you cut the fire block and lay it between the ends and the (?) points and then you get your floor down and you lay (?) ...and all that." 00:21:00No, that isn't the way to do it!" He said, "You stand there as though you can't wait to get to work. Then you tell him, "Oh, well, gee, you got your foundation, slap in you plates, bolt them down, you lay out your floor joists slap them down, slap in the fire block, run in the sheeting, frame up the walls, and run the roof and the ceiling joists across it, you see I stumbled a bit, and lay the rafters and the roof sheeting, and there you've got it." (laughter) Then they ask me a question like, "What is a facia?" you know. Well a facia is one of the most (?) things that you learn. I didn't know (?). Where do you locate the hinges on a door when you're hanging it? Ah, I said, "About a third of the way down from the top, and about a third up from the bottom, I guess." (laughter) Geezus, think about that (laughter) you get the hinges pretty close together. 00:22:00Well, I wasn't right, but they discussed it amongst themselves, and said, "Well, he doesn't know this and he doesn't know all that, but he sure knew how to build a house, how to frame a house." and so I went to work the next morning with this (?)

GASSER: As a what?

ROBINSON: At this house factory. In those days they'd hire ten men on Monday and lay off five of them on Friday. Well, I lasted through the Friday lay off. (Since) I didn't get laid off, I was in. (telephone ring) But I didn't work there forever. I worked in the first buildings at UCSB. I was making so much money I only had to work half the time. So I'd work a month and lay off for a month and work on my own house. I was earning $1.90 an hour. It was just 00:23:00fabulous money. Then, when I needed a job, my wife would pack me lunch. I'd put my tools in the car and overalls on. I'd go out to where I'd see a house just starting to frame where they (had already) got the floor up..., you see I didn't like concrete form work very much. So I knew that's when they hired more men, and I almost never got turned down. When a man shows up and he's got his carpenter's overalls on, and he's got tools, and his lunch with him, they say, this man's serious; and I always got work. Along about this time I did some drafting for this house factory. I'd done some architecture drawing, I'd done a lot of drafting. I'd had some architectural courses, so I was interested in architecture. Then when a friend of mine, -- uh again connected with Bobby who lived on Banana Road (this) was Gene McGeorge.[5] Bobby 00:24:00had deeded Gene McGeorge an acre. McGeorge had bought a couple of acres up there, but Bobby Hyde had deeded George another acre, for convenience. He didn't want to have it in his name or something, for some reason. At any rate, McGeorge and I (conceived?) this idea. Hey, let's approach Bobby. McGeorge's wife had some money, and Bobby had this property, and I had the building skills by this time because I'd built a couple of houses on my own by then. Let's approach Bobby and see if he'll let us build on this acre and then when we sell it we'll pay him for it. Fifteen hundred dollars was the price. So we designed a house, I designed a house for it. McGeorge and I built it. We put about five thousand 00:25:00dollars into the house and including our own labor, and before it was finished we sold it for eighty-five hundred. We thought, my God, we going get rich as hell, ya know. Paid off Bobby and said this is the way to go!

GASSER: Who did you sell it to?

ROBINSON: We sold it to (Flurde Kay) who was one of the residents here. His wife (was named) Kay Kay.

GASSER: And Bobby was agreeable that that should happen to the land? He didn't try to keep control?

ROBINSON: No, no, no. He never reneged. He was very good. It was interesting; this was at the end of the water, Bobby's water line almost. Bobby's water was at my house, the water meter. That's how I got my water so 00:26:00quickly, see. At that time there was a moratorium on in Montecito, you couldn't get any water meters. But one of the reasons I bought the land down in the canyon instead of on a hill was because Bobby said I could tie into his water meter. Well, I did (very softly under his breath he added) and a couple days later I was making adobe bricks. His water meter ran to his house which was about five hundred yards away, and (then) branched off to a house that he'd built for his son and a couple of others, and then right across the canyon. It generally got extended as people started building farther away. (laughter) and eventually it ran for over a mile and there were 15 people, 15 houses on it.

GASSER: Was that also one of the problems during the Coyote Fire?

ROBINSON: I suppose you could say that but I was right at the meter and I didn't 00:27:00have any water during the fire. So uh I don't think that was... (trailing off)

GASSER: ...a big problem then.

ROBINSON: No.

GASSER: The problem was the flame?

ROBINSON: Yeah, The problem was too much fire and too little water in the main.

GASSER: So you built your first house, made some money and you were off to get your architectural...

ROBINSON: Aaah, well we suddenly discovered that if we were building houses for sale that we were supposed to have contractor's licenses. So I sent away for a course. (Actually) I applied for my contractor's license and as soon as you do that, you start getting all these courses in the mail. (?and mail order courses, I sent away?) I responded to one of them, got it studied, went down, took the examinations in LA, and got my contractor's license. So then we were licensed contractors, and so we became big time. We got a couple of contracts right away 00:28:00both of them with design involved. One (was) an addition, I think, and one (was) a continuation to build a completion of an adobe house that had been just started. (cough)

GASSER: Were these places on Mountain Drive or were they in the city?

ROBINSON: One was on Mountain Drive and one was in Ellwood. The one on Mountain Drive was right below my house. The house next to mine. It's gone through changes over the years and about three years (ago) I put on a major addition onto it.

GASSER: Whose house is that?

ROBINSON: It belongs to Don Briggs, who's an attorney in town. But then we 00:29:00wanted to build another spec house so we checked around and bought a lot over in Mission Canyon. And Si DiLoreto[6] was working for another realtor at the time, I've forgotten his name. But Si, he's the man who owns Sunset Company now, sold us this lot for about seventeen hundred dollars, I think. Then we found out there was no way to get water to it. It wasn't on the public street. It was just over from Tunnel Road but it didn't front on Tunnel Road it fronted on Orange Grove. The people that owned that twenty-five foot strip of land between it and our lot on Orange Grove wouldn't give us an 00:30:00easement to put a water line across it. For one thing because they were trying to buy this lot real cheap. So we had to put a water line up Tunnel Road about two hundred yards and back to Orange Grove Avenue another one hundred fifty feet and spent quite a bit of money. We didn't make so much money on that house.

GASSER: (chuckle) But that didn't stop you from continuing?

ROBINSON: No, we got other jobs. We bought and sold a little land which we always made money on, and we got design jobs. By this time we were getting a reputation and we got good design jobs and built houses over father east on 00:31:00Mountain Drive in Montecito, and various other places, two in IV, a couple on More Mesa. We would try to get a commission to design the house and we'd design it and (hopefully) build it.

GASSER: Who of all the... Whose influence do you value the most in your architectural design?

ROBINSON: Oh, Frank Lloyd Wright undoubtedly. I was interested in him and his work, and his buildings, and I studied him a lot. I remember one day he came to SB and he spoke over at the Lobero Theatre. Our folk couldn't afford to pay for the seats so we got to sit on the stage behind him. And (FR his voice raises to 00:32:00higher pitch becomes more lively as if in remembrance) god, just hearing him talk, I came out of there, I thought I'd been in communication with God. Because he was so easy and so open. I hesitate to use the word self-assured, but he wasn't self-assured. He wasn't cocky or anything like that. He was just the way he... (end of tape cut ROBINSON off mid-sentence)

GASSER: This is side two of the interview with Frank Robinson on the twenty-second of July.

GASSER: Okay, so we were talking about Frank Lloyd Wright and his...

ROBINSON: Right, and his talk at the Lobero Theatre. That's the one in which he remarked that Santa Barbara has been remarkably successful in holding to a tradition of architecture that never existed. And he's right, you know. Santa Barbara architecture it borrows a little here and there. It borrows a little from Spanish, very little, and quite a bit from Mexican; but basically it's Santa Barbara. By the time I went to live in Mexico I'd developed a reputation 00:33:00for building Spanish or Mexican houses. I got down there and I designed the same sort of houses; they said, "Ahh, typo Californiano". (laughter)

GASSER: When did you go to Mexico?

ROBINSON: I went there in 1968.

GASSER: And stayed for how many years?

ROBINSON: Four. I took my family down there. By this time a new wife and a couple of my kids and a friend of theirs and three dogs and a trailer and an International travel (log). Drove down and lived on a hundred-year-old rancho 00:34:00built of stone and adobe.

GASSER: Had you planned to stay in Mexico? Or was it...

ROBINSON: By the time we went there we planned to stay there. I had gone there on business with a friend who is engaged in (mumbled building houses?) He wasn't a builder, he was a financer, and he wanted me to go down there and see, this was a client (mumbled), and wanted me to see what I thought of the project. So I saw it, saw a lot and saw what's happening and one thing and another and so a couple of months later when I was here and..., and 1967 was not a good year for builders because the interest rate had just gone up to eight percent and nobody would possibly pay eight percent, you see. (laugh) So it was very slack. But down there it was going good guns because the government was doing a lot of financing. So I said I could put a deal together down there. Went down. I'd 00:35:00already met a few people and I put together a little organization and a proposition and came up here and solicited friends see if they would be interested in investing with me and, I raised about $35,000. By this this time I'd had land and view, and that sort of thing, and a team and we went down there and started on that.

GASSER: But you did come back to Mountain Drive?

ROBINSON: Uh huh.

GASSER: Ultimately, is there a reason that one goes back to Mountain Drive?

ROBINSON: Oh sure, it's because whenever one leaves Santa Barbara and goes on holiday or a project of any kind and when you come back over and drive over the Summerland Hill, or whatever they call it (mumbled), my God, this is the most 00:36:00beautiful place I've been, no matter where you've been, and sure by that time, of course, I had lots of friends on Mountain Drive. Anyway I'd never considered not coming back to Mountain Drive.

GASSER: There is definitely a community feel to Mountain Drive. What would you remember as the best holiday? Your birthday I believe fell on Robert Burns's birthday[7], as well. Was that one of your favorite holidays?

ROBINSON: That was one of my favorite holidays. One of my neighbors just dropped this picture off, and the mice have eaten the rest of it, but she cut this out and it got me pretty well but this is Robert Burns's birthday. But I was dressed as Robert Burns I dressed as the poet you see so I didn't have to wear a kilt (mumbled), but uh sure, I loved that it was a great holiday. (mumbled) We did 00:37:00things in a very traditional way, in our own traditional way, but we had the address to the haggis. This man I have the photograph of, George Greyson,[8] gave the annual address to the haggis. He organized the Bobby Burns party. He's a Scot, and for several years he gave the party at his home. And he's also a chef. He worked for the Biltmore and one thing and another. But each year he would build this; he would get this sheep stomach and make the most wonderful haggis which he would bring on a silver platter. And this was fine when there were ten of fifteen people but after there 00:38:00got to be thirty or forty or fifty, one little sheep's stomach wouldn't do so he bought about six of them and sewed them together and built this gigantic haggis and he, in full chef's white's, you know with his hat, silver platter and little kids running before him, pipers piping, and drummers drumming. And once we had the full (mumbled), the full 7UP Santa Barbara pipe band.[9] I don't know if you ever saw, but they used to march in the parades. Well six pipers and a couple of drummers and the drum major and (mumbled) and what's his name Don MacGillivray who was the mayor in Santa Barbara who was also a Scot, learned that we were having a Bobby Burns night and he came up with his entourage. And that was a bit much.

GASSER: Why was that a bit much?

ROBINSON: Well, it's like everything else that we did on Mountain Drive. It got so much fun, and got so good, that it got too popular and got too many people. And pretty soon it was it had grown itself out of bounds. Grown itself out of proportion. It happened with Robert Burns night and to some extent with the Bastille Day celebration, which we had every year. I guess I shouldn't complain about that, it grew and was just marvelous all the way.

GASSER: How did that grow?

ROBINSON: One day, we were just having friends over a hot summer afternoon at 00:40:00Bobby Hyde's little pool. And people were around. Bobby Hyde was a card-carrying nudist, you know, so people cavorted in the nude at his pool and that was fun and pleasant. I'd been working and stopped by the pool to refresh and cool off. Jack Boegle[10] showed up with a couple of bottles of champagne..., he'd lived in France for a couple of years so. So he said, "It's Bastille day, vive la France!" So he opened the bottles and poured it around. There was probably twenty people there and pretty soon somebody else went down and bought four bottles of champagne. Opened that up, which we drank. Then somebody else went down and bought six bottles of champagne. It was a wonderful time. Then, the next year, McGeorge and I, my building partner, "Let's really do it up right this year." So, we couldn't buy flags as you can now. But we bought 00:41:00red white and blue bunting and tied it to the right place to make French flags out of it. And various other things, and then we gave this party up at Jack's house. Jack Boegle's the one that started it the year before, and he lives up in this high place, that I almost bought up on the hill, I often regretted not buying. But since he's said it was fine because now I go up there but I don't have to own it. You see, I go up there and watch the view. But at any rate, we organized ourselves into the Nobility, the Aristocracy, and the Rabble. The Aristocracy gathered up at Jack's and fired off the cannon, and drank champagne, and were effete and decadent, which I sort of enjoyed. Then the Rabble came and 00:42:00stormed the Bastille and invariably won because that's the (cachet?) history. Then they joined the general revelry and drank champagne. Then we moved up to The Castle on the hill, the big house, which had been built in the meantime. Then we really got into it. The Nobility came dressed in costume and powdered wigs and all this sort of things. We had a sit-down dinner for about thirty people, I think, while the Rabble were outside, down the road, cooking the meat, sans culottes, over an open fire.

GASSER: Was there any choice whether you were in the Aristocracy or...?

ROBINSON: Well, anybody could choose to be anything they want. I was always Aristocracy. I thought that beat the hell of being Rabble, because you get the 00:43:00champagne and you got the food and I can't understand why anyone would want to be Rabble.

GASSER: Perhaps to save their head. What happened after the Bastille was stormed?

ROBINSON: They had a guillotine there one year. In fact Bobby very nearly got injured on it. That thing, it wasn't knife sharp, you know, but it was, a guillotine. And it had some kind of chuck in it or something so it wouldn't (?). Bobby Hyde was fooling around with it and he had his neck in there and somebody tripped the mechanism. We grabbed it just in time or it would have given a nasty blow on the neck, I'm sure.

GASSER: It could very well have done some damage. Let me see there was also Twelfth Night?

ROBINSON: Yeah, Twelfth Night happened. Let's see when John Stack was living 00:44:00over where Westmont is now. He had property over there. He was living in a converted barn. Somebody had done some research on Twelfth Night, and found out what the party was like and what it was about. There had been some talk about it and then somebody did some research and we should celebrate it, though. At this time we were looking around for more things to celebrate, you see. I can't remember who did the research. We found that every year a Bean King was elected. The way he was elected was that the ladies would bake a cake that contained one bean and the cake was cut into squares and each of the men would take one of the 00:45:00squares of cake and the one that got the bean was elected Bean King. So the Bean King was celebrated and touted for the whole night the party and there was a court jester so that when the King started to take a drink, (said in loud theatrical voice) "The King drinks!" and when the King drinks everybody drinks. So, you see that sort of thing could lead to a bit of drinking which it often did. So that was a great night and great fun. There were maybe twenty people there and then the next year we had it someplace else, at a bigger place, and more people. We used to bring our Christmas trees to Twelfth Night and burn them. This was alright when it was out in the open fire, but I remember one night we did it at that Castle.[11] They had a fireplace that was about eight or nine feet wide and five feet, a big fireplace, but when 00:46:00people started throwing their Christmas trees that fireplace didn't just smoke, it flamed. It flamed (?) (a chuckle) it was impressive. It melted the damper and the damper has never worked since.

GASSER: This was at your place?

ROBINSON: No, this is up at what we called The Castle. Where we always had these fine Bastille Day celebrations. But we still do that and it has been at my house the last few years. Not always. The younger generation is beginning to come into these things and Twelfth Night is one of the things that they've come in on, and they elect their Bean King and the Bean King chooses a Bean Queen. The only rule about the Bean Queen being is she shouldn't be his spouse or intimate girlfriend she should be someone else.

GASSER: How did that tradition get started?

ROBINSON: Well, I don't know we just decided that's the way it should be. Then he elects a court, the Bishop of Fools, the Lord of Unreason, the Minister of Paths and Trails, the Dame of the Bed Chamber, and the-this-and-that, and all these wonderful things. Everybody gets nominated for something. That's a sit down dinner, thing. I've had as many as fifty people in my house for sit down dinner for Twelfth Night. The Queen is host...

GASSER: ...who serves the sit down dinner?

ROBINSON: Well, the young kids, the children. Their dressed as pages and they bring the food and the wine. And they serve the whole thing. Part of the ceremony is the Queen is hoisted to the shoulders of a couple of the courtiers 00:48:00and with a candle she makes a cross in smoke under the main beam of the house to protect it for the coming year. The main beam of my house has so many crosses on it that I've painted it out several times. My theory is that the cross is only good for a year anyway (?). It's a (?) mess after a few years.

GASSER: True. You must have also been quite involved in the boat races and the Regatta if you... Could you tell me a little bit about that?

ROBINSON: Oh, yeah, the Mountain Drive Yacht Club. It must have been about 1960. There were a few boats on Mountain Drive, a few little sail boats, dinghies, and things, three or four. I had one, my partner and I had it. So we conceived of 00:49:00the idea of having a New Year Day's race. Somebody called it the New Year Day's Regretta, you regret the night before. Right? So we managed to dutifully get up on New Year's Day Regretta the New Year's Eve. Down at the harbor and all of Mountain Drive shows up, you know. I think, we had four or five boats that first race. I won that one. I had a good little sailing boat, it was small but it sailed just fine. John David had one that sunk. Other people had them that sunk. (laughter) It was hilarious, really. So we had that for several years until the Coyote Fire. The Coyote Fire wiped out the fleet. People used to come in costume 00:50:00to that. We had an admiral's costume that I'd bought at a rummage sale. We used to go the Junior League rummage sales. It had full dress coat with gold bars on it and everything on it, and a tail coat and a hat. We elected an admiral of the fleet every year and he wore this "rig" down to the Regretta. The other people (?) on shore, and there was a good deal of wine drinking and one thing and another. New Year's Day was also Mom (long pause) what's his name. I never did really know her last name, but Mom's Italian Village. Well, it was Mom's birthday. And Mom's birthday she held open house in her restaurant and 00:51:00everything was free, drinks, food, everything.[12] So we would move over there en mass. And just have a wonderful time! I'd dance with Mom and everybody. It was great. We came about three years in a row. The second year her son, I've forgotten his name, too, unfortunately, said, "I haven't seen you since last year." We had a wonderful time.

GASSER: Sandy and wet, right? There were also a lot of plays that took place on Mountain Drive. Were you ever in any of those?

ROBINSON: Oh, sure. The Midsummers Night play. It was on the Solstice. Which has now been usurped by this new group that makes the parade. Bill Neely usually sparked that one. Each person seemed to be the spark of one party of another, like Greyson 00:52:00was the Bobby Burns night, Boegle was the Bastille Day and in this case it was Neely doing the Solstice. So we put a play one year in Bobby Hyde's pool the Lysistrata, Aristophones' Lysistrata, which is a very bawdy play.[13] It was done in Bobby Hyde's pool which people emptied. People would sit around on the edge of the pool and the player. (chuckling) You know, it was hilarious, it was marvelous. We did that and we alternated each year with the play within a play from Midsummer Night's Dream, Pyramus and Thisbe. And that was hilarious. That was great. I remember one time 00:53:00we had that down at Bill Neely's place. It was on the lawn there. It's a satire on a play because it done by these country bumpkins, you know. So we were experts at that. (chuckling) I was the narrator of the play that night, I remember. After the play we discovered that Dame Judith Anderson had been in the audience. She said there were tears in her eyes rolling down her cheeks she said, "I didn't know things like this happened anymore!"

GASSER: A wonderful compliment.

ROBINSON: Yeah, I thought so.

GASSER: Did you practice for these plays?

ROBINSON: We usually had one or two rehearsals, sure. Then of course we had the Christmas play which was always the kids, and it was usually at my house. Gill 00:54:00Johnston would narrate it. We edited the Bible to bring out the juicy parts of the Christmas story, the good parts. The kids would play it. A little five year old girl would be Mary, and Joseph would be a little boy and the sheep would be the littler ones with a sheep skins thrown over their backs, and shepherds watching by night, (laughingly) all that jazz, and the angels. And it was a wonderful time, I really liked it.

GASSER: Probably the most infamous of all times were the grape stomps. That's what Mountain Drive got to be noted for.

ROBINSON: Yeah, well the grape stomps.[14] They got started one afternoon in the middle of summer I was reading the Santa Barbara News-Press and I saw somebody advertise a wine vat and twenty bottles for twenty dollars. Well, I had known Bill Neely for a year or so then. The previous year I had encountered him making wine in his cellar down on Victoria Street. And I thought, "I wonder if he'll be able to make wine." And Neely was up in Yosemite being a forest ranger at that time it was summer. So I called up Bobby Hyde and said, "Hey can we," I knew that Bobby Hyde had also made wine at one time. So I said, "Let's buy these wine barrels and this wine vat and make some wine." So he said, "Okay." He put in ten dollars and I put in ten dollars and we bought these twenty bottles and this wine vat. So this was about in August and so by September we set up the wine vat and we organized all the people on Mountain 00:55:00Drive and went off to De Kinevan vineyards up on West Camino Cielo and picked grapes. We crawled around on that steep hillsides picking grapes and picking grapes, we picked these missions. We came back and I think we had a ton of grapes or something. I guess Bill Neely was back. He knew something about the wine making, anyway. We dumped at the grapes in the vat under the olive trees next to Bobby's pool. We elected, chose, a Wine Queen.

GASSER: Do you remember who that was?

ROBINSON: Nina the Dane. Her name was Nina. She was Danish and she later became a well-known movie actress. We had a fine time. And we made this wonderful wine. But never really took care of the wine (said laughingly), and it sat out in the 00:56:00hot sun in those barrels. Well, we drank it anyway. Bobby Hyde mixed it with Vodka with it and served it at his parties. We'd all bottle some and take it. The next year we did the same thing again because it had been a very successful party. We picked grapes up at De Kinevan vineyard again. That year we had a new Wine Queen, but we had an embellishment in it. People would bring music, and instruments and wonderful things.[15][16][17][18] The following year we moved the vat down, oh, we built a wine cellar, Jack Boegle, Bill Neely and I built a wine cellar down in the canyon.

GASSER: It was on Neely's property?

ROBINSON: Well, he claimed it was. Actually it turned out to be on Tom's property, the property next door. At any rate, we built this, and we set up the 00:57:00wine vat there and somebody gave us a statue of some young boy holding up his arms, nude, which we probably figured was probably Bacchus, right. So we painted the statue with gilt paint, and decided this was Bacchus. We'd go for a big feast up at Neely's and oh, we picked the grapes at another place by then, but by this time it was tradition. It was going on to great things. Typical thing was, we'd all go off and pick grapes on a Friday night. A friend and I would go out and sleep in the vineyards, have a nice campfire and so forth that night, but sleep in the vineyards, wake up in the morning (?) that lines of clusters of grapes appeared and you'd just stick a cluster (makes sound of whoosh and chomp) 00:58:00the whole thing and then tossed it away because it's been eaten. It was marvelous. You felt like a king, a Roman, or just an orgy. At any rate, then we picked the grapes, and we usually got done with the grape picking early in the day. Drove all the grapes back to the wine cellar. Load 'em, unload and put 'em down there. Then, Sunday morning the men would gather down at the vineyard and crush off part of the grapes for white wine. Then the skins and the very many grapes went into the vat, piled high to make the red wine. Then we got all set and all cleaned up and the statue had been re-gilded and we got all our white 00:59:00wine put to bed. Well, then we'd sit around and decide who was going to be Queen. We always chose some likely nubile young girl and it was a great thing. And nobody ever let the secret out. We would go up from there after we were already for the thing and go up for the feast at the house which the ladies had been preparing. Which we'd eat and there was a good deal of drinking and revelry and music and singing and so forth and then when it got time, well, we had our flags and our banners and our singers and our dancers, and I usually, well I think always, danced at the head of the procession with a wild cat skin on my shoulders which I had.[19] And I was high priest. And then we gathered down there and gathered around, and I made incantations to Bacchus and the other gods of this place, and libations, and pour wine around, and it got a bit revelry, you know. Then somebody had made..., there were always grape fronds brought back from the vineyard and they would make crowns of these for people and one of them was sprayed with gilt paint and I would take that and place it on the head of the lady who had been chosen, which was always a surprise. Nobody ever leaked that it was just kind of marvelous, nobody ever found out. And she would get in the wine vat first and tread on the grapes. And then I'd get in as next in line. Then, when the grapes started to get crushed, other people would get in, then other people would get in, and then there was 01:00:00great singing and dancing and music and rhythm and all those wonderful things.

GASSER: Was that also the beginning of the hot tubs whenever you got out you had to go get clean? Or...,

ROBINSON: Yeah. (mumbles looking for the thought) The hot tubs sort of started separately. I think the first hot tub on Mountain Drive, we used to have the Sunset Club up at Jack Boegle's where the men gathered after a weekend of being with their wives and families the men would gather up a Jack Boegle's, who's was the bachelor's house, which has a great view and all those wonderful things to recover from this two-day's family experience.[20] (chuckles) I put it that way but it wasn't really that way. But at any rate we got up there and it was strictly men but the ladies resented this and they sort 01:01:00of, in a humorous way, and they organized the Moon Risers Club, the Mu Ralpha Chi, they called it. So the Mu Ralpha Chi would meet down at Gill Johnston's house, while the Sunset Club would meet up at Jack Boegle's. And the Mu Ralpha Chi, one time invited, organized the part we were going to have, and invited all the Sunset Club to come down to the Mu Ralpha Chi. So this was a great party down there. And somebody, I think it was Ray Hawthorne, had this stock tub. I'd built a little bathing pool outside of my house but I'd never heated it, it was just a little splashing pool, you know. I think somebody else said too it's more to keep cool than to keep warm. But then Ray Hawthorne brought around this bathing 01:02:00pool, this stock tub and it was sank so deep, you know, and maybe eight feet in diameter. And we set it up down there, which was a steam generator and he decided to heat up the water because it was kind of a cool night and so he stuck that in and heated up the water. And I think that was the first hot tub on Mountain Drive.

GASSER: How would you characterize the influence that Mountain Drive has had on your life and on your architecture?

ROBINSON: Well, it certainly was my life, it sort of been my life, you know. Generally around my work I work with people, and I do what the client needs. I work for the client's needs. But I do, of course, have an attitude toward 01:03:00housing that tends to be a little more casual, I think, than most architects. In other words, I don't see much formalism. Also, because I saw people built successful houses with no practical help at all. I was convinced that people could build their own houses so I worked it a lot with owner-builders who want to do their own. Also, I think what you want to do, and this is Bobby Hyde's idea too, how you want to live, is the way you should live. So long as you don't hurt anybody you should be allowed to do that. It sort of prurient in my 01:04:00philosophy. Of course I've done technical things that don't have anything to do with this. I've never done a bank or a post office or even a public school, but I've done hotels and motels and restaurants and brothels and this sort of thing. My logo is sort of designing places for people, or (where) people live not where they work but... (the phone rings loudly)

GASSER: That would be the contribution of Mountain Drive. How many houses have you designed on Mountain Drive, and what portion of Mountain Drive is Frank Robinson?

ROBINSON: I've never counted them but probably somewhere around ten or twelve now, I think more than that. (mumbles names under his breath) Ten or twelve, fifteen.

GASSER: What would you most like to be remembered for?

ROBINSON: Oh, some of my good houses.

GASSER: Which are?

ROBINSON: Stevie Schott's house, which is that one...

GASSER: ...at the top of Coyote Road.

ROBINSON: That's appeared in three books. And Dana Smith's house which I think is very good. It's a Mexican adobe brick and the little house (?) he's hidden it with acacia trees now which kind of disturbs me. (pause) And a few other houses I can't think of any. Some houses are mostly accessible to others. Some houses 01:06:00please the occupants and don't particularly impress other people. And some houses impress other people and don't particularly please the occupants. (...try to mend...sort of thing...) you can't make it on every shot. The worst experience is when you spend a lot of effort and time designing a house and it doesn't get built for some reason or another, and that happens all too often. I'd say around ten or fifteen percent of the time.

GASSER: Lack of funds or...?

ROBINSON: Lack of funds. Most often it's the quote gets over bowled (seems to be searching for some word) over... They want to incorporate more into their house, 01:07:00into the nest, in things they've seen, you know. Nothing worse than the client comes at you with a stack of clippings from some Sunset Magazine. You know you're in for it then. But they want too many things. I've had clients, that they have to have this. They have to have a room that's big enough to play ping pong in. They have to have a separate dining room. They have to have the family room and the living room, and this, and a place for the child and a place for that child, and a play yard. And they get so involved and it gets so expensive in spite of my warnings that they can't build it. I remember one, the one I'm describing, after having to have all these things. This is more money than they 01:08:00could afford. And they went two blocks away in Walnut Grove and bought a hideous tract house. It didn't have any of the amenities, it had the basic rooms, you know, it didn't have any ping pong yard, didn't have a pool, didn't (?). They bought it and spent almost as much as the house would have cost them. That sort of thing happened.

GASSER: How do you basically like to work with your clients? They must have some ideas.

ROBINSON: There's nobody that comes to me that doesn't have some idea. I don't particularly like to work for developers. In fact every time I've worked with a developer it's been an unpleasant experience. I just don't work with developers, I haven't for ten years. I work with clients that are going to live in the house. I don't like to work with people who are building to sell or building to 01:09:00rent. I work with them. What I do is, they usually have a site. If they don't, we select one. I help them do that. I haven't done that in a long time. Usually they have a site. I deal with what they talk, what they say, what they say a lot, and then that determines what they really want. Well, sometimes there is a difference, you know. Well, I try to distill, this is where my philosophy comes in, do you see, and my psychology all that liberal arts training comes in, and distilled in what should be done, and what's the best thing to do for these people, and with their lot which is a certain orientation, certain slopes, configurations, has beautiful trees, has a great view, it has a telephone pole 01:10:00sticking up in the middle of a great view. You know. How to deal with all these things plus how to deal with the building code, the board of architectural review or whatever. And you put it all together and I try to avoid going out on the property and waiving my hands and saying, "Oh, we'll put the living room over here and the dining room over there and the kitchen could be back there, and your bedrooms could be here. I don't do that. I say this is a marvelous place, you get a good view from here. This is nice. That is a good view. This is a bit ugly over here. We'll play that down, and so forth. We deal with how you deal with the property. Most steep lots you have to deal with how you get the car out of the property, but generally I don't even design it until I make a topographical map of the place, and a full panorama of photographs and when I 01:11:00shoot out all the views with my transit why I, the view might look like the whole wide world when you a standing there, but when you shoot the angles on the transit may be all of fifteen degrees. And it's really (?). Also, you have to know where to put the windows in this house to catch that view. What I do when I design that house I know what you're going to see out of this window I know what you're going to see out of that window I know what tree is laying over your house and threatening it, I know where the water line is going to come, I dealt with the topo and figured out how to get the car in there and back it out of the garage and turn it around and down the hill, and that sort of thing. So my approach, I don't like the work holistic, but I would think it was something like that.

GASSER: Frank I want to thank you very much for your time. It was a lovely interview, I hope I can come back and see you sometime if I have additional questions.

ROBINSON: Okay.