Not your usual preschool

 The smell of cut pine, wet concrete, or freshly excavated dirt and I am five again. My dad worked tirelessly rebuilding our Topanga house on a shoe string budget. And I was his constant companion. 

He jacked and leveled and shored up the stilt like supports. He dug the bank to widen under the house and the driveway with a pick, shovel and a wheelbarrow. He scrounged old bed frames and other discarded steel to reinforce the floor, built forms, and poured concrete mixed in a wheel barrow with hoe. 

If I wasn’t with him, I was with my new best friend, Lila. She and her two sisters lived in the small house just below us while her dad built a new house just up the hill. We often  were allowed to play around that building site, as well. That house was going to be three stories tall in a traditional Norwegian style. We played inside a septic tank before it was in use. We learned the hazards of dropped nails and splinters. 

Mr. Eide told stories of his time at sea and ghost stories. My dad told me everything from Bible stories to popular fairy tales and Uncle Remus stories. He would even throw in an occasional long form joke about Pat and Mike. 

We also spent time at salvage sites where he could get cheap or free building materials. The pedestal sink for our bathroom came from the demolition of a house that had been owned by a silent movie actress. Before I started Kindergarten I had visited numerous types of building supply and hardware stores. I can smell the bags of nails now. 

My mom continued to work at Douglas Aircraft in Santa Monica. Her pay as a file clerk was our family's only income during this time. We ate a lot of beans and cornbread. 

There is one story about me from this time that my mom loved to retell, though she never heard my perspective. As my dad worked, he often used the term “I need to give this some elbow grease.” I thought that was the funniest thing, elbow grease. Did you rub it into your elbows to make them stronger? One day he was on a ladder on the narrow ledge on the down hill side of the house. The ladder slipped, and my dad landed in the bushes a yard oh so down the hill. As he lay there, assessing his condition, I poked my worried face over the ledge. 

“Are you all right daddy? Do you need some elbow grease?” He was scratched and scraped, luckily was not seriously injured.

This was in the day that most average people did not have medical insurance. There were some more serious challenges that year. My dad reached down to pick up a stick, heard a pop, and had broken the tip bone on his elbow. My brother had a front tooth broken off in a basketball game at school. And saddest, my mom suffered a miscarriage and then a month later developed a related infection. Both times she had to stay overnight at the hospital. 

It took about a year of living in hope and chaos. Our house was transformed from a weekend one bedroom to a two story, three bedroom family home. My parents owned the house, two well used cars, and owed not a penny in debt, even with the medical expenses. 

More than that, my dad had learned many new building skills and made connections with local building supply businesses. He also had learned the building permit and inspection system. He got business cards made and put an ad in The Evening Outlook. He began getting paid for general home repairs. He quickly became well known and trusted in the Malibu and Pacific Palisades area. 

Topanga Canyon has always been a place of artists, radicals, and independent thinkers. Now, the average home price there is a million and up. But when we lived there, it was a more affordable choice for our family. 

For kids, it was a wonderland. It was creeks and caves. It was talking to squirrels and catching lizards. It was so much freedom to wander and explore nature and test the limits of our imaginations. It was magic. 

When I look at the street view of my old neighborhood now, it is sad to see tall gates across driveways. We used to wander freely, often cutting through the property of people we knew to cut miles off traveling the looping streets. “No Trespassing” signs were respected, but we also knew the older people who would welcome an occasional visit. And each visit was filled with new stories.