When Future Star Esther Williams Eloped to a Small Town

This vintage postcard shows MGM star Esther Williams circa 1952. 

She was gorgeous and she had already had two children.

If you like movie star trivia you are in good company with me. I love learning more about film history and the interesting people who made their home in this industry. Esther Williams is certainly one of the more unusual. An award-winning swimmer, she had planned to compete in the 1940 Olympics, but the summer games were cancelled by the beginning of World War II.

The Other Winchester House: Landmark Legend and Luxury

The Winchester-Merriman House is the oldest house in Los Altos, California, and was once owned by Sarah Winchester of Winchester Mystery House fame. 

Mrs. Sarah Winchester was a native of New Haven, but left New England after the death of her husband, who was the heir to the Winchester Rifle fortune. She moved to the Santa Clara Valley in California, hoping the mild, sunny climate would be good for her arthritis and gained fame for her fantastic house, now a big tourist attraction in San Jose. It has, however inaccurately, become associated with gossip about Mrs. Winchester's involvement with the occult, something that has never been confirmed by even one bit of verifiable research.

Sarah Winchester is one of six profiles in my upcoming book, Historic Bay Area Visionaries, coming this October from the History Press.

Finding Lost Treasures in a Family Home and Other Lessons

The home I grew up in is in Los Altos, California. My father built our first home across the street when he and my mother first moved to California. We moved into this house when I was nine. My parents lived here until their deaths, three months apart in 2009-2010.

There is a cliche that says "life is what happens to you while you are making other plans." The saying is hackneyed, but true enough, since so many of the things that play a significant role in our lives are the things we never planned for.

A New Series on Local (Silicon Valley) History: Robin Chapman's First Columns on "Santa Clara Valley Lives"

The house Sarah Winchester built for her sister on the San Francisco Peninsula. Located between Palo Alto and Mountain View, the acreage eventually led to the founding of the city of Los Altos. And the house still stands.

I'm writing a new series of columns for the Los Altos Town Crier, a paper that reports from the heart of what we now call Silicon Valley. It was called the Santa Clara Valley when I was growing up here (that is still its official name) and the stories are about the region before it became the center of the tech revolution. We're calling the feature "Santa Clara Valley Lives" and I wanted to share my first columns with readers who do not subscribe to the Town Crier, but are inclined instead to look for my work on this blog. 

The photo of the house above, forms the basis for of my first column. The glimpse you can see of it through the trees gives us a whisper of a reminder of the Winchester Mystery House of San Jose, for which Sarah Winchester is so famous. Perhaps it is the interesting angle on those gables.

The Vagaries of One Valley Village: Local Opinion Piece

The Daily Post of Palo Alto doesn't put its articles on line. So here's what Robin's article looks like in today's paper. Below is the full text for easier reading.  

There has been graffiti on the Hale Creek bridge at Rosita Avenue and Springer Road in my hometown of Los Altos, California, for four years. Last summer, a Los Altos crew closed Rosita for weeks, not to paint, but to install an ADA ramp. The ramp was built without a drain in the middle of the downhill side of the bridge’s sidewalk, the result of which is that now, when it rains, the new ramp fills with water and turns the street into a lake. A disabled person would have to use a flotation device if she ever came to need it during a storm.

Neighbors Working Together Can Make a Difference

A vintage postcard of Santa Clara Valley's orchards, from my book California Apricots: the Lost Orchards of Silicon Valley, published by the History Press.

I was very discouraged when I wrote the post in February, about the lastest proposal to redevelop the property where my small town has preserved a small Heritage Apricot Orchard for more than half a century.

When I stopped being discouraged, I joined forces with a number of my neighbors and got back to the work of saving it. 

Paving Paradise (Continued) ...

Our new "streetscape" on First Street in Los Altos.

One week after our local paper criticized our Mayor and her City Council for not meeting any of their deadlines on a downtown "streetscape" which has closed our key intersection since July 2011: Voila! The street is now open.

That's a relief anyway--though our formerly tree-lined street now has what looks like a prison wall along its edge. It does go to show how fast you can get our mayor to move if you have the nerve to criticize her.

How Does Your Garden Grow?

The Big Max pumpkin vines threaten to overtake the entire garden plot:  but I must guard the squash with care as the critters are very fond of them.

Northern California is having a mild summer, so the tomatoes are taking their time ripening.  At least mine are. This is my first vegetable garden in ... can't remember. But everybody in Northern California does it--to distinguish ourselves from Southern California denizens who put swimming pools in both their front and back yards.

Creature of Trap One Revealed: And Then ... A Surprise in Trap Two ...

Yup. That's a creature, all right. (That's Andy from Creature Catchers doing the science part of his job.)

I had a busy day and was finally able to meet up with Andy back at the ranch--I mean ranch house--after 2:00 p.m. Thus, is was the afternoon of the first day of incarceration for the Creature in Trap One before we were able to serve him with a writ of habeas corpus and allow him a chance to get out on bail.

There was food in there. We met all the international treaty requirements on prisoners.

Andy, a truly nice man from Creature Catchers, put on these really huge gloves. Then, he tipped the trap endwise, opened the lid, and looked inside.

"That's a really big 'possum," he said.

"Would it be ... I mean ... do you think I could look?" I asked him. I've only seen a live marsupial in the zoo, except for that one time I saw this 'possum as large as my house in my Florida driveway. I caught him in the headlights of my car and ... wait, I'm getting off track here. Let's get back to California.

Andy said it would be okay. So I approached. My iPhone camera at the ready.

Mr. Possum said hello by barring his sharp teeth and hissing.

One look was plenty.

But could this be the Creature who has done all that damage to my lawn?

Andy said yes he could. Should you haul him away, I asked? Yes I should, he said.

"If he has been out grubbing on your lawn in daylight," he said, "he may not be healthy. That's not normal for a 'possum. They come out at night." The lawn damage seems to take place at about 3:00 in the afternoon.

Then, to add to the fun, my Neighbor came over to kibbutz. He's the guy who is trying to train his big, friendly, yellow Lab called Toby Tyler. Toby has grown to an enormous size and is working very successfully at avoiding all attempts at behavior modification. (Toby is also a very good television critic and writes for this blog, from time to time, when he can sneak away from his important "sit" and "stay" sessions.) But back to the Neighbor, who arrived sans Toby.

The Neighbor comes over to look into the trap with Andy. The Neighbor agrees it sure does look like a 'possum.

"What are you going to do with that thing," the Neighbor asked? "You're not going to kill it, are you? I like 'possums. I had one that used to come in my doggie door and drink from my dog dish."

"Naw," said Andy. "I'll just relocate him."

"How about if we relocate him to your yard?" I asked the Neighbor. Ha ha ha, he said in return.

So, as the sun began to set in the West, we took one last look at Mr. Possum before Andy took him to the truck.

Bye Mr. Possum!

Mr. Possum hissed goodbye to us all. They Andy said goodbye too. It was his wedding anniversary and he wanted to get home so he could take his wife out to dinner.

Andy smiles his goodbye.

Before he departed, Andy moved Trap Number Two to the place where we had success with Trap Number One. Why not? It was baited and there might be another creature involved in lawn grubbing that had been working with Mr. Possum on his Lawn Damage Project.

If Trap Number Two was still empty after the weekend, Andy said, he would just come and pick it up and take it away. No charge.

Then ... this morning ... I had to pass Trap Number Two on my way out to get the newspaper. It was Saturday and I had slept until 7:30 a.m. and the sun was up. Oh No!

Trap Number Two. Saturday. 7:30 a.m. Sprung.

Trap Two had been sprung and I could see something inside, resting quietly in the nest-like surroundings of the white plastic trap. It was black and white.

I called the Creature Catcher hot line. Their card reads: "Seven Days A Week."

The Trap awaits Andy.

I need to get Andy to the house ASAP. Because if Toby Tyler should come over to visit before Andy does, and that black and white thing in the trap is what I think it is ... the entire neighborhood is going to know about the meeting of dog and ... Creature Number Two.



I'll keep you posted. Oh, I said that yesterday. How about "stay tuned?" Also--possibly--stay clear.

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Something There is That Doesn't Love a Wall And Wants it Down ...

I awoke this morning to find that the Himalayan tree in my front yard had been behaving badly. Since it is one of the most beautiful features of the house, and since one expects beauties to suffer a little temperament, we are somewhat used to this. Branches will crash down from time to time.

But this time the cedrus deodara took out part of my fence, and that is a no-no. Plus, my niece was visiting a few days ago and had parked her car in exactly the spot where the limb came down this morning: we were lucky she wasn't still here today or her pretty new Prius would have gotten smooshed.


The tree was a small shrub when my parents bought the house a half century ago. In fact, there were two small deodara that framed the end of the driveway. But over the years, the one on the side adjacent to the front lawn got all the water from the lawn sprinklers and the other was gradually dwarfed by it. The landscaper must not have known that these ancient trees have a lifespan of at least a century and can grow to enormous heights or he wouldn't have thought of planting two of them as one would have--and has--been more than sufficient.

The deodara on a quieter day in a photo I took looking out from the house toward the street.

The cedrus deodara is a native of one of the most beautiful regions of the world: the Vale of Kashmir. Kashmir borders modern Pakistan, Afghanistan, and India and its beauty, they say, is so great that those countries and many other conquerors have fought over it for millennia. There are forests of deodara there where the people of those lands believe sacred spirits dwell.

Looking up into the deodara's branches.

Their mystical belief is easy to understand when one looks at the tree that dominates our house. Not only is it enormous and stunningly beautiful and brings a cooling shade to the dwelling: its branches appear to spread out above us in a protective embrace.

But it does have its moments.

William Ashley Chapman, posing with a branch from the deodara in 2004.

In the winter of 2004, my parents sent me the photo above of one large branch that fell and blocked the entire street after a wild Pacific storm blew through town one night. It took several days to clean it up and my father posed more than once with the cedrus detritus.

My father at the age of 84 was not able, for the first time in his life, to do the tree-clean-up work himself. He and Mom hired someone to take a chainsaw to the mess, which stretched all the way to the house next door, which is behind my father in the photo.

The work must have taken place in spite of the Sabbath, because my father, in both these pictures, is dressed for church.

The tree that spreads its limbs above us, from the mystical land where the spirits dwell, is a temperamental creature. Like the multi-armed Hindu goddess Kali, it represents both beauty and danger.



Both scientists and theologians tell us that energy is never born and never dies--it simply changes forms. Thus, the branch that once cooled this house in summer will now have a new life--warming it in winter--as firewood. Thank you o sacred tree! (Just don't take down my fence, next time you feel like acting up.)



ABOUT THE CEDRUS DEODARA

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The Adventure of Stove Island

Stove Island looked like this for three weeks. The advantage was that you didn't have to open the cupboard doors below to reach the pots and pans--you just put your hand right into the cavity to pick them up. The disadvantage was that there was no cooking surface in the house on which to put a pot.

I was beginning to think my Stove Island was like Pitcairn and would be isolated and uncharted forever. And then Sebastian the Tile Man sailed into port--on a Saturday, no less--and put Stove Island on the map.

He had been at Fort Chapman once before--on April 22 as scheduled--to demo the original tile on Stove Island. We had to do it because the old cook top--a 1952 Thermador--was a 48" monster that had seen better days, and I couldn't find a reasonable replacement to fill its enormous dimensions. Cook tops these days run to about 36" when they are on the large size.

So, I picked out a white GE cook top with grey burners--similar to one I had in my old home in Winter Park, Florida--and arranged with a local company to re-do Stove Island to the new dimensions in a tile that was complementary to the other tile in the kitchen. I was going to have them install a nice piece of granite on the Island, but then they smiled and said I could just pop over to San Leandro to pick it out, and all of a sudden the tile that I saw before me in the shop looked better and better.

After the demo, I had the plumber add a gas line so we would be ready for the re-install date of April 27.

And then, somewhere between Italy where the tiles were made, and Mt. View, California, where they were to be picked up by Sebastian the Tile Man, the "Durango" tiles were mislaid. Honestly, I was beginning to think the tile company was jiving me, and had the great Sebastian far too busy working on other, much more lucrative projects to stop for a day to work on Fort Chapman's tiny Stove Island.

Finally, one day last week, the tiles turned up in Reno (divorcing themselves from Italy, perhaps?) and once they headed down Donner Pass, the tile company called to say Sebastian would be here on Saturday. Ten days late is better than nothing.

On Saturday it wasn't long before I heard the happy sound of Hola Senorita! And oh! What a joy it was to see Sebastian using my pretty front lawn as his workshop! Ordinarily I would have smacked him for strewing wood chips and grout on the green; but, at this point I wasn't about to find his divots anything but delightful.

Sebastian at work using the front lawn as his job site. And oh well for that.

Once he got cooking, which was something I had been unable to do for several weeks, the work proceeded apace.

The Stove Island repaving project begins.

The one thing that worried me the most was that he had to remove the stove from its packing case in the garage--so he could measure it to create the Island template. And I worried, as it sat in the driveway under the spreading arms of the cedrus deodara that it would end up with scratches and nicks and pine sap all over its lovely face. I checked on it regularly. Alone as it was, and vulnerable, sitting on the asphalt.

There lies a thousand dollars of my old Dad's dough, I would say to myself as I checked on the pretty, lonely cook top.

Sebastian had to run an extension cord into the garage to power his tile saw, and in the course of that he noticed--how could he not?--the gargantuan pile of furniture my sister and I had stored in there for our upcoming garage sale. After three or four hours he asked me about a couple of chairs he saw in there, and how much would we be asking for them?

I thought about it and called my sister. I had disliked those faux Victorian chairs for decades. Not comfortable. Not, in my opinion, very pretty. Oh, and my college boyfriend Bill had sat in them one summer evening, waiting for me to appear and accidentally pulled one of the arms off when he rose to greet me. (They needed to be re-glued.) (And he was 6' 4".)

I had this idea. I had nine tiles that needed to be replaced in the grey bathroom shower ... My sister agonized a while then called back and approved the trade. The bathroom shower was repaired while Stove Island was drying before its re-grout. And we traded Sebastian's extra work for the old, red, chairs. Deal! I was happy and so was Sebastian.

My sister always worries that we've missed our big chance on the Antiques Roadshow, and there is something to that. But my feeling is that "things" only have a theoretical value, unless you are willing to make finding their actual value your full-time work. And unused "things" have almost no value at all. Sitting in our garage is not what a chair was made to do. Sebastian had a family who wanted to sit on them--much more sensible. And we got our shower repaired.

So, later Saturday afternoon, we wrapped the day up with a happy ending. The "Durango" tiles (a Colorado name they've adopted in Italy?) looked ab-fab and so did the cook top when it had recovered from its brief stay in the driveway.

Sebastian, in a flurry of sealing the tile.

The darn thing still has to be properly installed and connected to the gas line by the plumber. And it needs a little piece of moulding around the bottom of the tiles. (Why not? Every project so far has been missing that one final thing.) So, I still can't boil water anywhere in the house, except in the microwave.

But we moved several steps forward. Got Stove Island well on its way to joining the League of Nations. Got the shower-that-has-been-bugging-my-sister-for-three-decades on its way to having a new mixer and faucet.

And I got to say Adios! to a couple of things that were taking up space in the garage. And a very nice young man took Mom's old red chairs home to his family.

The Adventure of Stove Island turned out to be an excellent adventure indeed.

I warned Sebastian, as he drove away, not to let his daughter's boyfriend sit in the chairs, until he gets them properly re-glued.

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Name That Pup: or You Can Love Again

Mickey's new yellow Labrador. But he has no name.

We have a new and very cute no-name Labrador in the neighborhood and it is your job to help this poor pup get himself a handle. To explain my connection:

Over the years in my family's neighborhood, there was a dog called Sunny. She lived across the street from us, and when her owner was ill with cancer, my father volunteered to take the young, gentle, well-mannered Sunny for her walks. The two became friends. Sunny's owner passed away a decade ago, but the owner's son, Mickey, inherited the house and his father's dog, and the friendship between my Dad and Sunny continued.

My father and his friend Sunny the dog, about 1998.

Sunny lived to be thirteen years old or thereabouts (her age wasn't known exactly when she was acquired) and, in fact, she lived long enough to attend my father's 90th birthday party. She died a week before my father did. Having lived almost a decade-and-a-half, she was about 90 years old (in dog years) herself.

At right, Sunny at my father's 90th birthday party, December 2009. You can see that poor old Sunny's body is riddled with tumors.

Sunny went everywhere with her owner Mickey, who has a landscaping business, and when she died he was so struck with grief he just went inside his house for a few days and didn't come out.

I wondered when a new dog would show up in his life to cheer him. And yesterday, I saw a little yellow lab appear on Mickey's front lawn.

Now I've met the little scamp I have learned from Mickey that this young fellow has no name. Any form of Sunny is out, as to Mickey and his wife Donna, Sunny cannot be replaced. But love is not a zero sum game and that's why they can now make room for the No-Name Pup.

I thought perhaps all of you out there might be able to come up with something, and my neighbor said it was okay for me to ask my readers for help. Otherwise he is threatening to call the dog Norbert, and, not being a Harry Potter fan I don't even get that.

Can you help? The puppy still needs some education in housetraining and a name might come in handy for Donna and Mickey, as they work to help him earn that diploma.

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Memories of Loyola School: And How it Grew Into the 21st Century

Loyola School in Los Altos, California after its recent makeover.

Guest Blog Post by
Lisa Gutt Arnold
Bainbridge Island, Washington State

Robin writes: Loyola was the first school I attended and though it was a mile from our house in Los Altos, California, and I began school at the age of five, I walked the distance daily with my sister and my neighborhood friend Keith. There was one girl in all of my classes, by the name of Lisa Gutt, who was my rival in everything: in athletic events we were the two best in our class; in academic contests we always were near the top; and in breaking the hearts of all the boys in our class, well, it was quite a battle indeed. Here she writes a guest entry for my blog about our alma mater (K-6) and the way its architecture was updated by another of our classmates.

By Lisa Gutt Arnold

In the hallowed halls of Loyola Elementary School I won the third grade spelling bee on the word “dictionary” and then had the misfortune of being sent to the cafeteria “bad table” by the vice principal, Mr. Wickstrom, for laughing too much.

Loyola School sports its new look.

On the playground I played four-square and raced Robin in the fifty-yard dash. Last fall Robin and I caught up with each other at our high school reunion, and discovered that the renovation of the school where our friendship and rivalry began was the focus of a high school classmate’s prowess.

In 2003 David Hingston (Los Altos High, Class of 1968), an architect, flexed his design and management muscles against the weight of expectation. A renovation of Loyola School had been underway when conflicts surfaced among the participants, stalling the project dangerously close to the beginning of the school year.

The utilitarian school takes on post-modernist coloring.

We alumni, who savored our Loyola years, might have hoped the renovation would bring the school into the present without destroying the past. But, for a student, worse than the prospect of starting school at the end of a glorious California summer, would be starting it in the midst of construction. David’s mandate was to pull the team of contractors back from the edge and complete the renovation on time. He proved up to the task, blending diplomacy with design intelligence and what he calls “spirit of place.”

The beauty of California flora is now incorporated into the common areas of the school.

Given the fifty-odd years since Loyola was built, there was much room for architectural improvement, like clerestory windows to summon the northern light into classrooms. But the renovation also succeeded in maintaining a military grace, existing in the original design.

As David describes it, the building is: “Shed-like, utilitarian, expediently constructed, the campus in some ways resembled a small military base. The ‘bar buildings’, surrounded by asphalt, were barracks-like. Arguably the school’s most prominent architectural feature was the flagpole sporting a flag for country and one for state."

Redwood siding graces the open air hallways of Loyola, post renovation.

"Bar buildings date back to the decade following World War II. From school to school their construction varies, but the concept is the same: an east-west orientation, parallel placement, thirty or so feet of separation, and a north wall of glass to admit natural light. Hundreds if not thousands of schools, especially in California, have classroom buildings based on this concept. The term of art is finger-plan. The schools are known as finger-plan schools.”

Renovation of the exterior of the bar buildings added paint to the stucco and redwood siding. The modernization introduced air conditioning, insulation, and ‘novelties’ (see the photo of the Hungry Lion fast food window, just the right size for kids). When the classroom buildings were built circa 1950, the only heat in the classrooms came directly from the sun. Now heat and air conditioning are centrally controlled from district headquarters.

At right, the Hungry Lion serves fast food for elementary kids at Loyola, an innovation.

David’s view is that “for a school, to be functional, is fitting. Utilitarian buildings and brainpower: the connection is mythic. Victor Frankenstein had his basement; Packard and Hewlett their garage; Abe his log cabin. Surely physicists work in Quonset huts, and scientists of all stripes in trailers.”

Brain power, exhibited in fourth-grade flash cards and wild excesses at recess gave David pause when it came to Loyola’s playground. “Much as it always has been, the playground at Loyola today is largely an uninterrupted, horizontal, asphalt plane. From a small child’s perspective, it is a vast, almost infinite space.”

In that space we took our time between classes, absorbed lessons taught, and imbibed fresh air. But to David, “such spaces favor big kids and athletes, who tend to dominate them.”

The school's lion mascot is featured in a new mosaic.

To me, admittedly small, the merriment was thick, encouraging learning with brief respites. The other day my father and I recalled Pet Parades held on the Loyola grounds. Our dear mutt Peco’s spotted bow tie once won my sister a pearl necklace. So much for mad scientists and early computer geeks. Loyola’s architecture, and along with it, our memories, are destined to improve with age.

The cowgirls in this historic photo include Loyola school alumna Lisa Gutt (back row left) and Robin Chapman (front row left).

David Hingston's firm is:
Gelfand Partners Architects

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Art and Business: Co-op Makes Sense

Viewpoints Gallery on State Street in Los Altos, California.

You don't always think of artists as practical people, but one very practical group of artists in the San Francisco Bay Area has defied that stereotype. They have joined together in a business model that is a delight to art patrons and an affordable platform for artists. Everybody wins.

Viewpoints Gallery in Los Altos, California is an art cooperative that has been around for more than thirty years in the same space. If you love California art, it can be found here. But the artists don't just paint regional scenes. One recent show featured farm scenes and another filled the walls with images of bicycles.

If you can't afford to buy, but simply love to look, the gallery offers a change of art every month. If you're a collector its a real find: the prices are reasonable and the artists are excellent. And for the artists; it is a wonderful place they can show their work by pooling the cost of the gallery's rent and expenses. There are fourteen artists in the group today, thirteen "two dimensional" artists and one potter.

At a recent reception, all of the artists in the cooperative were available to meet and greet their guests. Food and wine in the courtyard behind the gallery brought art patrons outside to see additional panels of art on display that tripled the number of paintings that could be shown inside. The weather smiled and though rain was forecast, it stayed away.

While my friend was queueing at the wine table, I strolled through this mini art fest. And here I had the chance to chat for the second time with one of my favorite artists, Diana Jaye, a accountant turned plein air artist. Plein air artists (the two words mean "open air" in French) take their easels into the out-of-doors to catch the beauty of the changing outdoor light. Jaye waited until she retired from her career crunching numbers to entirely shift over to the other side of her brain and paint. The cooperative has allowed her an affordable way to show her work and to meet other talented artists who want to sell their paintings but who don't want to set a price on them that the average collector can't afford.

Artist Diana Jaye at the Viewpoints Gallery Reception.

As all good marketing projects are, this reception was fun. Whether you were buying or not you had a chance to meet people who were pursuing their dreams and who had the common sense to form a group that helped bring their dreams to the public.

The pursuit of happiness: and making a profit from it. Isn't that what America is all about?

Reception guests study the work of San Francisco Bay Area artist Barbara von Haunalter.

Viewpoints Gallery Link
Artist Diana Jaye Link

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