Photo by Sue De Lapa
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Lost It All: Their homes were reduced to cinders, but the Mountain Drive residents I met Tuesday were in surprisingly good spirits and talking about rebuilding on the ashes.
There may have been tears at first, but I found no gloom or doom, even among those who lost virtually everything.
Barney
“We will rebuild,” Linda Godlis said, smiling bravely as she watched her husband Ross clear away remains of the smashed metal roof at 245 Mountain Dr. It's not actually on Mountain Drive but on what’s known as Hyde Road, a sloping gravel quasi-driveway leading off to the south, named for the late patriarch Bobby Hyde, with houses branching off every which way.
Hyde bought 50 barren acres along East Mountain Drive in 1940 and sold lots cheaply to young families who built homes with materials at hand and shared water supplies and, according to legend, strung long extension cords between houses. Pay me when you can, Hyde would say.
The Godlises have been there 25 years and aren’t about to cut and run. Their roofless slumpstone walls were charred and the floor was littered with debris. Linda is a potter and, in the tradition of making lemonade from lemons, plans to create a memorial wall of shards of broken pottery she found in the wreckage.
Ross greeted me with a friendly grin. I think I’d be wallowing in my tears.
Sue De Lapa
Linda Godliss surveys damage to her home.
Across Hyde Road, Greg Stamos, a Venice, California, attorney and his writer wife, Dale, poked around what little was left of their vacation home and hoped-for retirement place. A Buddha head topped a stand where a red sign read: “Danger.” “We are considering rebuilding,” Greg told me matter-of-factly. “This is where I want to retire -- or wanted to.”
Both had attended UCSB and they bought the property 19 years ago from one of the original families on Mountain Drive. They found both the main home and the rental home a bit worse for wear but they applied sweat equity and fixed them up. Joining them Tuesday were Erica and Treavor Ortiz, who’d fled the rental property with their children as flames roared down in the enclave last Thursday afternoon.
“The moon was this big,” Erica recalled, thinking of the glorious sight as they drove home that day, only to be confronted by a wall of flame. “We had an evacuation drill in April and that was so helpful,” she said.
Sue De Lapa
Children's toys
“There’s my kids’ wagon,” Erica pointed, the remains of their home having fallen into the creek bottom after the stilts burned away. A new home a stone’s throw away somehow survived, perhaps because of its masonry construction. The owner had spent the perilous night inside, wetting down the place but risking his life. The tiny lawn was an emerald gem on the edge of blackened soil.
“We are heartbroken,” Dale Stamos told me. “We loved it. It’s been an oasis.” When they went house-hunting a couple of decades ago, they rejected the traditional houses a real estate agent showed them down in the main part of town. Quirky Mountain Drive appealed to them.
She said she likes Mountain Drive’s “funky, interesting cottages, with a lot of flavor and style. It’s still a community up here. The grey-haired ex-hippies are still here.” Dale teaches at the Santa Barbara Writers Conference.
Sue De Lapa
Fire Buddha
A Salvation Army van rolled up, offering cold drinks and sandwiches. A Montecito Fire Department worker asked if anyone needed masks.
Sue and I headed down Coyote Road, past fire-blazed hillsides and sad remains where just days ago families lived and loved and children romped, and surely will again.
Barney Brantingham can be reached at barney@independent.com or 805-965-5205. He writes online columns throughout the week and a print column on Thursdays.