Ed Schertz Interview

--(Interview begins)--

BENET: Today is October 24th, 1986, and I am Linda Benet. I will be interviewing Ed Schertz for the Santa Barbara Museum of Art's Oral History Program, on the Santa Barbara community of Mountain Drive. I am interviewing Ed at my studio next to the Natural History Museum.

BENET: Good afternoon, Ed.

SCHERTZ: Good afternoon.

BENET: Ed, before we go into your history, could you describe how you feel about Santa Barbara now in 1986?

SCHERTZ: Oh, that's a totally unexpected question. I usually react with great ambivalence, anytime something unexpected comes up. Having done some traveling recently, I still feel it's one of the most beautiful places in the world and, of course, one of the most dear to me since this is where I grew up, to a certain extent. And, of course, I can't help but feel slightly aggrieved at the 00:01:00way things have shaped themselves over the last few years; the rise of bureaucracy, the incredible control, all of these things create a sort of ambivalence. What can I say? Ask me on another day. I'll tell you more.

BENET: No, I just wanted to get some kind of here and now reaction. When and where were you born?

SCHERTZ: I was born in Los Angeles, California, May 17, 1931. That makes me 55 years old, young, I'll say, at this point.

BENET: Where were you raised?

SCHERTZ: I've been Southern Californian all my life. Came to Santa Barbara first in the early fifties to college.

BENET: What did your parents do?

SCHERTZ: My father was an alcoholic, died rather early in my life. My mother was a very upwardly mobile teacher, intellectual. She did many, many things and still is a very, very active traveler, studier, mathematician, astronomer. She's a very marvelous woman.

BENET: What's her name?

SCHERTZ: Mary F. Warnley is her name. Beautiful lady, I like her a lot. More so the last few years than I ever have before, as a matter of fact.

BENET: Since her name is different from you...

SCHERTZ: She remarried when I was in my late teens, married a second alcoholic, interestingly enough. It tends to verify that theory of caretakers and 00:03:00care-tenders and I think by this time, though that she'd sort of learned her lesson and got rid of her second husband, I think, within the year, year and a half of their marriage. So, she's lived a very solitary life which she's compensated for by being a very, very social person, outgoing teacher, people-oriented person, but living mostly by herself.

BENET: Do you have any siblings?

SCHERTZ: No siblings at all. None.

BENET: What did you do before you came to Santa Barbara?

SCHERTZ: Before I came to Santa Barbara, I was a student...ne'er-do-well

BENET: High school...

SCHERTZ: I did high school, junior college. I worked, I worked my entire life. I started working when I was twelve. I worked...

BENET: What did you do when you were twelve?

SCHERTZ: When I was twelve, I worked for the Seaside Hospital in Long Beach. I was a...

BENET: That's where I was born!

SCHERTZ: Really? Seaside Hospital?

BENET: Yes.

SCHERTZ: Interesting!

BENET: What year did you work for them?

SCHERTZ: Well, let's see, I was twelve, so that puts it pretty close, doesn't it? I was in the eighth and ninth grade. It must have been, must have been the early forties.

BENET: I was born in 1948 at Seaside Hospital.

SCHERTZ: That's funny.

BENET: What did you do at Seaside?

SCHERTZ: I was kitchen help.

BENET: Then, since you were a ne'er-do-well what did you ne'er-do-well?

SCHERTZ: A ne'er-do-well means, has a great deal to do with having it very easy at school, so I was always, I always had a lot of free time. I gambled. I speculated. I philosophized. I raconteured. I loved the ladies. This has been most of my life, actually.

BENET: Were you in the service?

SCHERTZ: I was in the service. I went in the service in the early-fifties, mid-college, and...

BENET: Were you drafted?

SCHERTZ: I sort of volunteered for the draft. It was during the Korean situation. Real shaky and I never knew if I was going to be able to finish school, so eventually volunteered for the draft, came out, came to Santa Barbara, actually had been in Santa Barbara and then came back to Santa Barbara and finished school.

BENET: What school did you go to?

SCHERTZ: That's at University of California, Santa Barbara. Then, I went to law school, Hastings, finished, didn't finish at all, quit the first year...

BENET: Of law school?

SCHERTZ: Yes. Came back to Santa Barbara, worked at the University for the architects and engineers office.

BENET: What were you doing there?

SCHERTZ: Well, I was sort of an architect's aide. I did a lot of surveying, which I did in the service.

BENET: Who did you work for?

SCHERTZ: Oh, boy, names now. Those names are thirty years ago; Mr. Perkins. I 00:06:00can't remember the other names. Isn't that terrible?

BENET: Was that when the campus was located on the...

SCHERTZ: The campus had just moved out to Goleta, five or six years prior, but the building program was really going full blast and so, I found that amusing and I found it very interesting and worked out there for, oh, year, year and a half.

BENET: Did you have a B.A. at that time?

SCHERTZ: I had a B.A. at that time. Right.

BENET: What year did you graduate from UCSB?

SCHERTZ: I graduated in 1955.

BENET: How long were you in the service?

SCHERTZ: I was in the service for a little less than two years.

BENET: When you mentioned you had come to Santa Barbara before, what was that first trip to Santa Barbara?

SCHERTZ: First trip, I spent my sophomore year, beginning part of my junior year 00:07:00in college in Santa Barbara. Then that, then, from there, went in the service, came back and spent the next year and a half finishing college.

BENET: What was the specific reason you came to Santa Barbara, after?

SCHERTZ: The specific reason was that my girlfriend...

BENET: What was her name?

SCHERTZ: Darlene Poole and my best male friend whose name was Frank Dobbins, both were interested in the school and I came sort of, on a lark, to visit the place and, of course, fell in love with it immediately. As almost everyone does.

BENET: Did you live in the Mountain Drive area at first or elsewhere?

SCHERTZ: Well, no. I didn't become familiar with Mountain Drive collective, community, until, maybe, a year or two before moving up there and then, in the late fifties, I started socializing with a few Mountain Drivers and then moved 00:08:00there in the early sixties, 1961, I moved.

BENET: Were you involved with art when you were at the University?

SCHERTZ: I had an art minor, English minor and art minor which...

BENET: What was your major?

SCHERTZ: My major was sociology. But the minors, I was really more interested in my minors than I was in my major. The minors kept me attuned slightly more to the thinkers and talkers and people I was interested in Santa Barbara.

BENET: Did you meet any Mountain Drive people at the University?

SCHERTZ: Oh, yeah, sure, certainly. Some real early Mountain Drivers. Names that probably no one even remembers now.

BENET: Can you remember any?

SCHERTZ: Yeah. Jim Devine. He was a marvelous, sort of a beatnik person in the mid-fifties, met him in Dallas Sturmons's class. Let's see. There was a guy 00:09:00named, well, names, I guess aren't so important. I met a number of sculptor people, a number of pottery people, a number of writing, Bill Richardson, a number of writer types, during these years.

BENET: Were you writing?

SCHERTZ: I was doing a little writing and a little painting, two vices I've subsequently given up.

BENET: Were you doing any potting at that time?

SCHERTZ: No, actually, I was only able to give up those vices because I found pottery, something I could (laughter) pour it all into later.

BENET: When did you discover pottery?

SCHERTZ: Pottery was in, I think, 1960, '61. I started taking a class from Bill Neely.

BENET: Through adult education?

SCHERTZ: Through adult education. I felt I probably owe this man a debt for the rest of my life. He was my first pottery teacher.

BENET: Can you describe your first class?

SCHERTZ: That would be a, that would be poignant, wouldn't it? You know, I think I can. I think that, I think I felt almost immediately as if I belonged, something very, very secure, something very warm. I felt, where I'd felt, a sort of outsider invading art, I felt like in ceramics that I was an insider trying to uncover all of these things that were part of me that were very meaningful. I felt very at home with ceramics and Bill Neely made me feel even more so. He was a marvelous person.

BENET: Had you had any art experience as a child?

SCHERTZ: Yes, many good and many bad. I can, I still have a story about the third grade where I drew probably the best drawing of my entire art career, up to that point. It was a windmill. I remember that. I remember the blades and the upper story and the lower story and the middle portion was yellow brick except I hadn't outlined the yellow with black, so that when the art objects were taken in front of the class, I realized that you couldn't see the middle part because it was yellow. I was so incredibly embarrassed. I did have, I had by far the best windmill, but you couldn't see the middle because it was all yellow. It was, it was very, very embarrassing to me. As I say, one of my most poignant memories of this early period, certainly of my early art career.

BENET: Were you taken with the windmill as a subject matter?

SCHERTZ: The windmill was marvelous and something I've thought about a lot since.

BENET: That's what I figured. Have you ever built a windmill?

SCHERTZ: No. A lot of kites, but no windmills.

BENET: Can you describe Mountain Drive as you first found it?

SCHERTZ: It was sweet. It was so sweet. It was so open. If that's the kind of person you were, if you weren't a..., the mass society orientation, if you're interested in freedom, the exchange of ideas, if you're interested in drugs and booze and women and sex and all those things, a marvelous place because there was a great freedom there. It all came down this hierarchy from Bobby Hyde, I'd say the two priests below Bobby Hyde were Frank Robinson and Bill Neely. All of 00:13:00this freedom seemed to emanate and glow all around you. You were encouraged to bring out your most heretical ideas. You were encouraged to be a radical. You were encouraged to be as free as possible and to explore it.

BENET: Did you just visit it or were you actually living there during the first experiences?

SCHERTZ: I think I probably went to a number of, yeah, a number of parties and then...

BENET: Can you describe one in particular?

SCHERTZ: Oh, God. It's rather difficult to describe a party. They all started pretty much the same, then this alcoholic haze sort of settled over everything. Then the most outrageous things would begin to happen. I can remember one in which the old McGeorge house in which policemen were called and I was...

BENET: By whom?

SCHERTZ: I can't remember who the police were called. Obviously, some neighbor many miles away. I can remember arguing with the policeman. I was in the pool, nude and didn't feel that I could get out and argue with them, so I told them that it was, quite frankly, none of their business, what we did up here in the hills, that we weren't disturbing anyone and that, I really felt that they were intruding upon the party. It was, of course, unanimous feeling. Everybody there felt similarly to I, and eventually convinced them to leave, so we could continue on with our party. It was a nice, very nice evening. We spent many, many like that. But it was more than just the parties which were like the 00:15:00weekends. It was a continuous ambiance all the time. We had this feeling of freedom and being special.

BENET: Why did you feel special?

SCHERTZ: I think part of it had to do with just not wearing clothes a great deal of the time. Almost always, if you remember, we, if we got up that morning, and if we did not feel like putting any clothes on, we didn't put any clothes on. Sometimes we went two or three days without wearing any clothes. It was, it brought a great deal of social pressure on us from the outside. A lot of tourists possibly came for that reason. But, it was for me, a time when I could get below the surface and felt a great deal more for myself and for other people because we did put those things aside, all that mundane, cosmetic, superficial 00:16:00surface, we put aside and it was really a meaningful time for me, those sixties. Through the sixties, I was really a Mountain Driver.

BENET: Where were you living on Mountain Drive?

SCHERTZ: The early sixties, ah, this is interesting because when I did move to Mountain Drive, I was not just somebody moving to Mountain Drive, I took over Jack Boegle's house. Jack Boegle is a Mountain Drive institution along with some of the other names I've mentioned. His particular scene was the Sunset Club.[1][2] Since I was moving into his house, his house was providing this function. I could not say, "no." I couldn't say, "Don't come here." So, I was just caught up in the institution. 00:17:00So, for the next two or three years, one of the main Mountain Drive ongoing institutions, at least for the men, was the Sunset Club. I felt like I was the centerpiece. I was the host. I was somehow classed with the wizened.

BENET: Can you describe a typical Sunset Club evening?

SCHERTZ: Well, we had the typical, in one would be a sort of subcommittee meeting of the, say the steerage committee for the central orgy society. We did plan the week's coming events. We'd have to lay out these major orgies that were to transpire.

BENET: Who were some of the members at this time?

SCHERTZ: Oh, gosh. The members then were Frank Robinson, Bill Neely, Stan Hill.[3][4] Let's see. We had Lednicky, was at the time. Gene Sturmer was one of our most beloved. John Stack has always been one of the brothers and holders of the faith. Oh, Marty Birdsell, of course.[5] Just many, many, many other people. Those people have sort of always been there. But we've had other people there for months, years, couple of years, even decades and they've gone on somewhere else, but...

BENET: Who came up with the name, Sunset Club?

SCHERTZ: I have no idea. I have no idea.

BENET: Did it refer to the time of day?

SCHERTZ: It had to do with the fact that most of the, this is a very male-dominated society, as I guess most societies in America were in the early sixties. During that period of time when the children were fed, the screaming brats, so to speak, would be fed, the men would high off to involve themselves with philosophy and the politics of the day and watch the sun go down, drink some wine.

BENET: What do you think your womenfolk thought of this?

SCHERTZ: Well, one, I'm sure you'll hear this story maybe a couple more times, but, we were frequently made aware of what the womenfolk felt. Occasionally, these evenings would lapse into longer drinking sessions. Then this one evening, 00:20:00we all left the veranda of Jack Boegle's house, moved inside. As we all got our seats straightened out and the next round of drinks were poured and the next round of jokes were started, coming through the window was this brick (laughter) which was a note for Stan that his dinner was being served. (laughter) So, he scuttled on home and the rest of us remained for a while. So, we did get the idea that the women had some rather strong opinions.

BENET: Who were you involved with on Mountain Drive?

SCHERTZ: Ladies? Or males?

BENET: Ladies.

SCHERTZ: It was a time of a great deal of experimentation. I mean, almost all the women and all the men were involved with each other at some point.

BENET: Who was your first longer term relationship?

SCHERTZ: Well, let's see. Mary Lynn and I were together for about a year and a half in Jack Boegle's house.

BENET: Were you married?

SCHERTZ: We weren't married. No. We were in a living arrangement. She was a poetess and I was a beginning potter. We were involved in this great experiment. As I say, we were, our house was one of the central points for this experiment.

BENET: Do you feel that the experiment was successful?

SCHERTZ: Oh, I don't think experiments necessarily need to be successful or unsuccessful. Experiments are experiments. I mean, they're meant to be tried and 00:22:00that's why we have them. That's why you do them. That's why you get involved with them. Yeah, I think it was, I guess in another sense of the word, they were extremely successful. They give us a whole new perspective to view the rest of society through.

BENET: Where did you move after Boegle's house?

SCHERTZ: Well, let's see. I had been occupying Jack Boegle's house because he was in, first in the tropics, Pago Pago, I think he was in. Secondly, he was in Japan for a year. He got married in Japan, brought his wife back to his house. So, I had to scuttle around and try to find a place and Gill Johnston,[6] who was being overburdened with his land payments, kindly offered to sell me one of his acres. He had two. He wasn't able to really fulfill the expectations of even one, so he sold me one, or agreed to 00:23:00sell me one. It took me almost three years to pay for it, $3,500 for an acre. Can you believe that?

BENET: That's terrific.

SCHERTZ: He had purchased the same acre for $2,000 just a few years before. That's the sixties. That's twenty-five years, approximately, that same acre is worth $125,000 without the house on it, with the house on it, it's worth another $150,000.

BENET: What was the structure that you were living at?

SCHERTZ: The structure I lived in was a small, call it Dallas hut. It was a twelve piece portable building that I erected with the help of Robert Venable in two days.

BENET: Where did you get it from?

SCHERTZ: Frank Robinson, it was his old workshop, studio space, and he sold it 00:24:00to me for ten cents. I refused to take it away until he gave me the ten cents. Finally, (laughter) finally, he paid me and I took it away and moved it down there, erected it and moved in. Then for the next ten years, I was involved in building a house.

BENET: Why did you decide to build the kind of house you did?

SCHERTZ: Well, by this time, I was really involved in pottery.

BENET: Were you teaching pottery?

SCHERTZ: I was teaching pottery. I was making pottery. It was my entire existence, my living, my livelihood and my living. Adobe bricks seemed to me, at that point, seemed to me to be an economical, feasible way of building structures. I've since changed my mind, but, at that point, it seemed like the 00:25:00real reasonable way to go.

BENET: Was it because they were like clay?

SCHERTZ: Clay bricks and the house was round or actually oval and that was very appealing to me. It was not square. It didn't have corners in it. It didn't have all those things that a lot of straight houses did and I just was very attracted to this design that Frank Robinson and I had come up with. I was willing to dedicate my life to that land, that house, that group of people.

BENET: Were you living alone at that time then?

SCHERTZ: I was living alone, but shortly thereafter, a liaison with another one of my favorite people, Claire Gottsdanker, started. We lived together for a short while. Then, a number of other liaisons and finally, I met the mother of 00:26:00my children, Chris Walden.[7] We lived there for ten years, there and in the house. Actually, she got there as the house was almost, not almost, but starting to get to the livable stage. Two or three years after we came together, we moved into the big house.

BENET: Can you describe how you came up with the plan for the house?

SCHERTZ: Well, most things on Mountain Drive start with some sort of absurd remark. I remember Frank telling me, he said, "You can't lay a straight line." It was very simple from that point, realized that I wasn't a straight line person. I was a potter. I was much more oriented to circles, and as soon we figured that out, then the design was quite easy. It was very exciting.

BENET: Were you happy with the house?

SCHERTZ: I was involved with that house for, gosh, better part of twenty years and I've always been happy. It's always brings a warm feeling when I think about that house, and the year's there. It was a good part of my life. Really a lovely part of my life.

BENET: Do you feel that your interest in ceramics relates directly to your interest in the physical environment?

SCHERTZ: No, not at all. No, I think I, the closest part of my relationship with ceramics is totally an ideal, totally thought. The potter's wheel is the mantra. 00:28:00It's a device. It's a centering device for going away from material world. I realize that potters are sort of moribund. They're really pulled down by the fact that they work with all these pounds and pounds of material and make these material things. But, I felt my attraction was just to, equally at least, ideological. I felt that it was at least as important in terms of thought and thinking as it was in artifact and solid fact.

BENET: Can you describe the act of throwing mud?

SCHERTZ: Well, it's one which I've described in a number of ways to a number of different people. It's a dance. It's a dance which you do to a great extent, in 00:29:00your mind. It's a dance which you have to do with your braincase, i.e. your body. It's a dance that if your body is conditioned, that your brain can express through your body in a much more direct easy way. But that's really talking about me and not the clay. The clay is equally important in all this. The clay is really responsive. It's a love affair that I've had because no matter what I can think of, clay can become that. Clay is potentially anything you want it to be, whether nose cone, automobile engine, bathtub, porcelain shitter, whatever, 00:30:00clay is potentially it.

BENET: Did you get involved with clay as sculpture?

SCHERTZ: I've been more involved recently with clay as sculpture. The fact that I'm less inclined to be in love with the surface and more involved with the form has made my affair with clay really flame up, if you'll pardon the bad metaphor. Less and less am I inclined to put glass on the outside of my forms. My forms now are more expressive of the process on the outside and the forms may be more 00:31:00expressive of my own self.

BENET: We were just cut off when you were describing the process of throwing the clay. Could you maybe step back a little bit and start again?

SCHERTZ: Well, the clay experience is becoming the predominant experience in my life. It's been facilitated, in the last few years, by a few trips to Japan, the Japanese history of their clay experience. I found there that glazes weren't so important. For the 16th century Japan, for instance, glazes were almost totally unimportant. The glaze experience was one that the character of the process, the 00:32:00kiln imparted to the pot rather than the maker putting on the pot. I feel that these forms which are more claylike and less glasslike are meaningful to me in a way that utilitarian pottery isn't. So, I've explored a number of different ways of articulating this; low fire, high fire...

BENET: Was this first in Japan?

SCHERTZ: Well, I'd done this. I'd done this on and off for years. The Japanese experience did strengthen this feeling to a great degree. The second time I went to Japan, I especially explored and talked with potters and processes which were 00:33:00near to these roots, so to speak, than my own, and found with each conversation, with each experience, just found that this magnetism, this being drawn toward clay and not the surface so much, but the clay and the form just became stronger and stronger and I felt in the last three or four years that it's so strong that I can't ignore it. I mean, I do my functional ware. I do my glazed raku. And, yet, I'm continuously drawn back to just the clay and the fire. I've developed some ways of firing which, possibly are not totally unique, but I've never heard 00:34:00of anybody else doing them before.

BENET: How wonderful!

SCHERTZ: Doing firings in a campfire wrapping the form in aluminum foil which sounds sort of hokey. On the other hand, I've never heard of people who could successfully bisque fire in a campfire.

BENET: And have you been successful?

SCHERTZ: I've been bisque-firing regularly in a campfire. In twenty or thirty minutes, I've been able to bisque-fire a pot. Whereas, I've never been taught a way of doing it in less than five hours. Suddenly, I'm able to take the process and telescope it into a twenty minute situation where I can, within a very primitive situation with no kiln, I can approximate these twentieth century ways and means and, it's very exciting. It's, of course, I'm using aluminum foil. 00:35:00That's hardly a primitive material.

BENET: Do you think that's the difference?

SCHERTZ: Well, I think it helps. Yeah, because it does, it spreads the temperature out rather evenly and it protects the ware at the same time from the flame looking on it. The tip of the flame, you see, can be quite hot.

BENET: And cracking?

SCHERTZ: And, not only cracking, it can make it explode. The steam escaping can tear a whole sides out, tear the entire form apart. That's not to say this is easy to do with aluminum foil in a campfire, but with some sensitivity, it's possible.

BENET: Have you had this photographed?

SCHERTZ: Not yet. That's an interesting idea, though.

BENET: Maybe I'll photograph it.

SCHERTZ: Yeah, for another project. So, we're off the subject again. (laughter) Yeah, I'm going to be talking with the City College sculpture department this 00:36:00next weekend and I'll be discussing this.

BENET: Excellent. Well, maybe we'll stop here.

BENET: It's Thursday, October 30, our continuing on the Mountain Drive tape and I wanted to ask you a little bit about the Pot Wars.

SCHERTZ: Well, the pottery wars, sort, in the beginning, were a sort of continuation of the party atmosphere. It was an attempt to exploit Mountain Drive in a commercial sort of way, especially on my part and on the part of Bill Neely. But, neither one of us really knew that, at that point, I don't think. We were just making a lot of pots, a lot of early beginning pots and needed a way 00:37:00of just getting rid of them.

BENET: Were you working together?

SCHERTZ: No, no. He'd been my teacher, but you don't stay with a teacher of his sort very long. You learn what you can and move on. So, we were more friendly competitors, he being the senior competitor and I being his previous student but now present, younger competitor. And that was what the whole thing was rigged as, his pots against mine. He was selling by the pound. When I found out about that, I doubled the price. I asked, he was asking a dollar a pound and I started asking two dollars a pound. It went on like that for many years.

BENET: Where did you have these Pot Wars?[8]

SCHERTZ: These were sort of the central location of Mountain Drive, the Hyde's house.

BENET: Inside or outside?

SCHERTZ: No, no. These were all totally outside. The Hydes soon came to abhor these things. I mean, once, twice a year, and sometimes as many as 1,500 people, they might have enjoyed the first one or two, but after a while, they would retreat behind their adobe walls. That's not totally true. The kids would come out and Bobby would come out, occasionally. But, they got quite wild and drunken. I would...

BENET: Why did they hate them? Because of that?

SCHERTZ: Well, they, yeah and plus there were so many outsiders. We were attracting hundreds of people. I remember one year, they were parked all the way down Coyote Road, all the way to Cold Springs Road.

BENET: What year would that be?

SCHERTZ: Oh, God, that was in the early mid-sixties, probably '64. Yeah. Think we started them in '62. We started before the Renaissance Faire. I remember Ron 00:39:00and Phyllis Patterson came to our second Pot War as they were planning the first Renaissance Faire.[9] We met them at some various social functions. So, she came and we exchanged ideas there. Then, Bill and I were in the Renaissance Faire for a number of years, in the early days.

BENET: So, how high did your prices go after the two bucks a pound? How far up did you go?

SCHERTZ: That was about the limit of the Pot Wars. I remember one Pot War, I made a thousand dollars which was a lot of money.

BENET: How many pots do you think you made?

SCHERTZ: That was a dollar a cup, dollar and a half a cup I was getting. So, there was a lot of pots, a lot of casseroles, a lot of pitchers, a lot of small bowls, an incredible amount of pottery, cheaply, really incredibly cheaply. Then 00:40:00we, we were talking about the art thing, but here we've degenerated into the commercial aspect of it. The real artist here, I think, was Bobby. He was creating this society in a very loose way by selecting these various people into this little community with the sale of land and whatnot. Now, I sort of came in through the backdoor. I rented for four or five years before I was able to buy land. But I did. It was thirty-five hundred an acre. (laughter)

BENET: Was Bobby any other kind of artist besides this sort of social artist you're describing?

SCHERTZ: Yeah, he was a carver. He carved serpentine and marble. You have to 00:41:00call his feats with the bulldozer pure artistry. He didn't really, he wasn't really a bulldozer operator. He was an artist who rode a bulldozer. He created those little lakes and architectural vistas with his bulldozer over the years. He was also a builder. I mean, I think that architects are fully deserving of the word artist. I really respect...

BENET: Was he a licensed architect?

SCHERTZ: No, no, he was not a licensed architect. He was a ne'er-do-well. He was a Go playing philosopher. He was a botanist of some repute. He was a marvelous photographer. He was a great conversationalist. He was a very sensitive man, very literate and an author, of course, many books. The one, Six More At Sixty, 00:42:00everyone will mention that one, I expect.

BENET: You mentioned being part of the Renaissance Faire. Were you part of the, any of the other commercial establishments in Santa Barbara, like the Yes store?

SCHERTZ: I was in the Yes store for the first four years. Then I came back and did two years after being away for a couple of years. I even thought about doing it this year, but I just, just getting this thing going down here, is going to take all the energy I have for a while, for the next month or so, anyway.

BENET: You mentioned that you have been part of the founding of the beach show?

SCHERTZ: Well, I was in Maria Margelli's beach show and then, various other shows that weren't necessarily running all the time.[10] 00:43:00I hadn't been attached to this particular beach show under this particular version of it. Do you know what that is?

BENET: Have you taken part in 4th of July shows up at the Mission?

SCHERTZ: No, I haven't done that either. I've been selling pretty much out of the closet through Elizabeth Fortner the last few years.

BENET: Do you sell outside of the Santa Barbara area?

SCHERTZ: I have many patrons, many patrons, when they come to town, come to see me. So, I'd say yes. I don't have accounts. I don't have people showing my work outside of town right now. But, yeah, I have a lot of people who follow my work 00:44:00and collect...

BENET: Who would you say is your oldest patron? Timewise, not age wise.

SCHERTZ: I don't know. Maybe, I feel a little personal about my patron. I don't know why. I don't know why. Let me think about that one for a while.

BENET: Besides the Pot Wars, can you recall any other festivals that you took part in?

SCHERTZ: Yeah. Do you remember the Old Artisans? The Artisans sponsored openings for about two and a half, three years during the early mid-sixties. I was one of the eight contributing members there. We had all sorts of, our own work, of course, and all sorts of other visiting artists were featured monthly.

BENET: What year was that?

SCHERTZ: That was in the mid-sixties. So, I was running a school and selling my work at that time, through there and sort of developed from that time on, people who'd just come to my studio.

BENET: What kind of contribution do you feel that the Mountain Drive community made on the artistic life of Santa Barbara?

SCHERTZ: Well, I know, in the musical satire arena, Mountain Drive's always contributed heavily to acting, singing, playing a musical instrument, directors, you name it, I mean, all sorts of musical geniuses lived and played there and not-so-genius.

BENET: Have you participated...

SCHERTZ: I'm not a musician. I'm a music appreciator, but not a performer. I feel what I do is, I sort of channel my sensitivity into that.

BENET: Do you remember anything about the wine festivals or the grape festivals?

SCHERTZ: I knew we'd get to this. You seen the movie?[11]

BENET: Yes, I have.

SCHERTZ: Have you seen the European version or the American version?

BENET: Probably the American version.

SCHERTZ: We got to see it before it was cut by the studio, just the rough footage which about an hour and half of rough footage that year that we did the 00:47:00Wine Stomp I can't even remember the name of the...

BENET: Rock Hudson.

SCHERTZ: There was Rock Hudson. Yes, that part's for sure. But, I think we got $15,000 for doing it.

BENET: ...split, all split up?

SCHERTZ: No, no. That started the Mountain Drive Fund. Plus they picked up the tab on the biggest party. We'd been practicing this party with no funds for ten or fifteen years and now, to have unlimited resources plus even get paid for it. It was weeks, it was party weeks in coming to fruition and plans and going to get the grapes up in Templeton, as it always was.

BENET: How many people went up for the grapes?

SCHERTZ: Somewhere around forty or fifty, I think that was the outside. As few as twenty-five or thirty. We tried to keep it a small group because you get a bunch of drunks in a grape vineyard and, you know, they could do all sorts of damage.

BENET: So, when did the party take place? Throughout the whole screening?

SCHERTZ: So, the party really was from the moment we signed with, to do it, planning and scheming and trying to figure out how we were going to get some extra footage on our own, probably. This incredible struggle for power between Bill Neely and Stan Hill and Frank Robinson. They were the three principles in this very heavy drama. The rest of us were sort of scurrying around, clearing trails where they had to get the camera dollies down these trails, you know, whatnot. So, we were working on it for weeks and it was an incredible blow out. We had all the best wines. They went for this huge pig-out which they filmed the 00:49:00whole thing. I don't think they used hardly any of this in the American version.

BENET: Did this bring the community more together, do you think?

SCHERTZ: No, by this time, Mountain Drive was already sort of fractioned between those three top dogs that I just mentioned and maybe a couple of more who weren't quite so social. By this time, Mountain Drive was sort of fragmented. The writers would over here, you know, like Bill Richardson, he, I didn't mention him in that, but he was also, these are very, very strongly, ruggedly, individualistic people. The thing that kept us together were these wild bacchanals and as soon as these started getting exploited, then we started 00:50:00falling apart. Oh, we'd say we'd work on somebody's house. I made it a point for twenty years to help with every ground-breaking on Mountain Drive. Just something I took pride in. Just, I think, I've worked on almost every house on the drive at some point or another.

BENET: That's fantastic.

SCHERTZ: But I think that was the beginning of the end. I think that...

BENET: What year would you say?

SCHERTZ: That was in the mid-sixties. That's when we started to look at ourselves, rather than just being innocent natives, we started sort of playing for ourselves and one another...

BENET: Do you think that was because you were getting older?

SCHERTZ: Yeah, I think so. Bill Neely was even writing plays. Everybody would get drunk and go be in this play that he was writing. And downtown would come and view it.

BENET: Did you take part in his plays?

SCHERTZ: I was never in a play. I always took part, of course. I helped set it 00:51:00up or you know, something of that sort. Lighting or...

BENET: Lighting, okay. Were they just planned spontaneously or were they getting really organized?

SCHERTZ: Oh, yeah. The parties were an art form in and of themselves. There was a master planner. We celebrated all the pagan holidays in the beginning.

BENET: Who researched this holidays?

SCHERTZ: Well, "The Golden Bough" was being read to the children, so we were learning an awful lot about the old customs and religions. So, as we read this to our children, we started acting out these various ceremonies; the ceremony of the Bean King, on Twelfth Night. That was an incredible mannered play, a play within a play within a play, sort of, that occurred in one of these parties. It 00:52:00got so that we had to sort of ring the party with people to sort of keep downtown out.

BENET: So, did people start going their separate ways then?

SCHERTZ: Yeah, I think at that point, it just got too big and too loud for even the initial celebrants. Well, that's not quite true. Frank Robinson is over there doing Mountain Drive today just like he has for the last thirty-five years. He's great.

BENET: But the rest of you started to...

SCHERTZ: But, Bill Neely's died of cirrhosis of the liver. Many of the other big drinking types have sort of fallen on evil times, in terms of cirrhosis of the liver, heart disease, fat, a number of other sedentary diseases have taken over. 00:53:00I think probably everybody's working. Everybody's getting much more conservative. Nobody had a job in the early sixties on Mountain Drive. I would go to work, but I didn't have a job. I would work at construction, if I couldn't sell my pottery, but I would never take a job, that terrible sort of unresolved state today, of looking for a job when that isn't anathema, an anathema to me. I don't want a job.

BENET: How do you feel your kids respond to all this? Do they pick up the banner?

SCHERTZ: Well, they're extremely liberal minded, you know. They're encouraged to disagree with it, so they do so, so they have their own very strong opinions about things, very likely fashioned from ours, but they're encouraged to think 00:54:00with other people, too. I think they're real open with us. I think that we've encouraged the, I think that part of it's the Mountain Drive experience. There are also studies of this, UCLA, alternate lifestyles studies.

BENET: I know you're part of it.

SCHERTZ: I might, I never did very much in it. They just studied the kids, keeping statistics on the kids and how well they do in school. Our two were chosen to represent this one lifestyle.

BENET: Wonderful. Good choice. How do you feel the community will develop from now on?

SCHERTZ: Well, the commercial attack is still on. It's now, the land prices are 00:55:00so elevated that almost no one can afford to live on that expensive a piece of property. That $3,500 acre I mentioned earlier is now worth probably $150,000. With a house on it, probably $250,000. So, how many potters can live on a quarter million dollar acre. It doesn't, it's a tough one.

BENET: Some people still are trying to.

SCHERTZ: A lot of people are, but many of the people are retired or getting ready to retire. It's very tempting, very attractive just to trade in this high maintenance, hilly acre at these top prices for something a little less private 00:56:00and a little less arduous. A lot of people get tired of living on Mountain Drive. It's not like your usual downtown existence. There's many times and many roads where you just don't really come in contact with civilization. It's like being on the frontier sometimes, my land in particular. Sometimes, it's just like being out there on the frontier. I see Frank slogging by every now and then and I just say I've got all my essentials right here. I'll just wait it out until the weather breaks, you can get up and down the road again. But, even over at the other place, we had a dirt road for fifty years. So, you wouldn't drive down that driveway, sometimes two weeks at a time. So, the frontier feeling was a feeling I've tried to stay in touch with, with this new land, this land that I'm on now. I still have that. It's so big and it's so incredibly private.

BENET: That's excellent for you.

SCHERTZ: They won't let me pot up there, though.

BENET: That's why you have this studio?

SCHERTZ: That's why I have this nice studio. So, I'm thinking that maybe, it's just working out as it should. This is great. I love this place.

BENET: Great! Do you have any last things to say about remembering Mountain Drive?

SCHERTZ: No, it just goes on. It just goes on and changes. There will be something different and remain at the same time. I'm not too concerned about it. It's, I've got hundreds and hundreds of friends here who were some of the closest associations I've had in my entire life. I enjoy it. They enjoy it. Whether it turns more conservative or changes radically or some of the neighbors become much richer or, all the same, it doesn't really make that much 00:58:00difference. It's still a real, real nice place to live.

BENET: Well, I look forward to seeing your new pottery.

SCHERTZ: Yeah, well, check it out. Tomorrow night. Leif is having an opening, I guess you got an invitation.

BENET: I think so.

SCHERTZ: Yeah. We're not on the list of the showees. We're just doing it for Halloween. It's just a Halloween warrior.

BENET: Well, thank you very much!

SCHERTZ: Sure.