I always wondered who lived at the house below me. We get each other's mail. I met Ed Houston, washing his car, while walking Yuki down the hill, and maybe not looking forward to the steep part of Buena Ventura, walking up. Longshoreman for 40 years, in the Army for six years, during the Vietnam era, and in that house since 1972, married three times, and two children living outside of the State. Ed is a bit of an introvert and keeps to himself, he says. Yet I heard more stories than I could count, standing there. The stories are there, waiting. I heard the story about the German shepherd he inherited from his neighbor, an old woman he sat with, as a nine year old, giving her insulin shots, and keeping watch over her. He hoped the job would last long enough to enable him to earn money for a scooter. But he was told not to go, on the third day. It turned out she had died. Not long after, he was summoned to the reading of her will. He was nine, and dressed in a suit, with short pants. He was handed a leash. The dog was bequeathed to him. It was a fine purebred German police dog. But he didn't have the dog that long. A breeder wanted that dog, and his mother sold him for the grand sum of $200, a lot of money in the thirties or forties. In later life, Ed commissioned a ceramic sculptor to create a portrait of that dog. Ed went into his house and brought out a magnificent two or three foot high glazed ceramic dog, spitting image of Russell, that she had created purely by his description.
The land between our houses went through many changes. It used to have many tall pines, but these tended to fall over on the street, and the owner of the land was asked to remove them. The owner eventually lost the land to the city for failure to pay taxes and upkeep. A woman who worked in Silicon Valley was going to build a house but she lost the land, too, after losing her job. Except for one lot, the house is now a tangle of trees and shrubs, a real jungle.
I finally made it home, my head filled with Ed's stories.
