No wind this morning. It's all fog. And quiet. You can hear the cars coming from behind while they are still a block away. If you are listening for them. If you can hear them over the sound of your own breathing. If your ears are not filled with music or news.
I'm all in favor of music and I like to fill my house with it. But not my ears while walking or cycling. I just think we need to listen to what's going on around us - for self-preservation if nothing else. OK, end of sermon.
Today I rode to the top of the hill, at least the top of the hill I live on. There's a house on top of the hill which was built about 1900. Long ago the builder intended it to be his mansion, then for it to be the central lodge of a group of guest houses. The city refused to accept his plans, so in an angry reaction he cut the big hilltop house in half. For 100 years it's been two, side-by-side houses. On the top of the hill. Here they are. Imagine the central hall filling the gap there?
Here are the same two houses on a sunny day. The one on the left is currently for sale; you can
see its listing here. If you have a couple million, come on up to the top of the hill and buy a piece of history.
How do I know the story of the houses? I was told it 40 years ago by the daughter of the angry man. She used to sit out on the front right porch and her sweetheart, Major Gage Brenneman of the Army Air Corps, would fly over in his biplane and toss notes to her (wrapped around a small rock). Until he broke the front window and her dad became an even angrier man.
I love stories like that. She lived within a mile of these houses for more than 80 years, until ill health forced her to move to a convalescent home. Major Brenneman gave his '56 Cadillac to our church youth group, and I used to take a half-dozen kids to the beach in it (in hindsight, not such a good idea, really).
Here's the car photo of the day - a fairly nice Ford Falcon Ranchero, which apparently has been fed a diet of extremely volatile fuel!
