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Just a little documentation perhaps useful only to give some sense of the place.  The house, a rickety old affair that showed up in a history book (that I later discovered in a local used book store) as the oldest frame house in the Canyon, extended some three stories-worth down the side of a very steep cliff which had become overgrown with all manner of vines and bushes and small wildlife.  (And I recall a mutant orange-lemon tree that had incredibly bitter fruit.)  Sometimes when the haze would abate, you could get a peek of the ocean through the bushes.  One of the photos, taken from the inside through a living room window, shows the rooftop of a neighbor’s house as well as the more or less flat roof of our garage (about four levels down and accessible only from a lower street) where bike repair, furniture refinishing and sunbathing took place.  Plant growth was not just limited to the outside; we packed the interior with spider and other plants to keep the air as pure as possible, although Santa Monica air was among the cleanest of the L.A. area.

During the summer of young niece Gabrielle’s visit, much of the evening  entertainment consisted of live group readings (everyone would take a turn)  and listening to music.  Guests seemed to drop by regularly.  And sometimes we went to the San Fernando Valley to watch velodrome racing, to supplement the late afternoon impromptu pickup racing brother Dennis engaged in, riding up Pacific Coast Highway with his exotic featherweight bicycle.  This followed his work by day of building and repairing bicycles (and working construction) when he was not writing.