Chapter 36 – Santa Lucia

Married life was blissful, chaotic, compromising, funny, serious and most of all the best decision I had made since buying my first guitar. Donna was driving the TR-6 I had semi-restored from Vine Street to Inglewood five days a week and the only time she ever broke down I had to drive down to Baldwin Hills to rescue her in the fall of 1990. I popped open  the bonnet and gave it a once over. Then I saw the trouble—the coil wire came loose and  all I had to do was stick it back in and she was on the road again. What a great car that was.

The gig at The Boathouse had run its course and the band eventually broke up. I was still working at home doing the Universal Data Supply selling typewriter ribbons and lift off tape but now the world of the written word was changing. Word Processors and computer printers were taking over and the job became much more complex. I had to learn a whole new slew of products. The laser printer was coming into fashion and the big thing now was to have them refilled; it was half the price of a new cartridge and it complied with the idea of waste not want not— I was now in the recycling business. Still, I spent most of my time locked away in my studio learning how to play the pedal steel guitar and, of course, writing and recording my songs. At that time a had a Fostex four track cassette recorder but it was getting a little funky so I made the plunge and bought an eight track, reel to reel tape machine—I think it was also a Fostex. I also purchased Richard Sandford’s old Studiomaster console that his surviving brother, Chas, was selling. It was five hundred bucks. With my guitars, bass, drum machine and pedal steel, I was a one man band.

All work and no play was making Jack a dull boy, as Stephen King’s character Jack Torrance from The Shining had revamped, so I knew it was time to get away. Donna hadn’t had a day off since our honeymoon and the Christmas holidays were rapidly approaching. My sister came through big-time. She had a friend, Paulette Douglas, who shared a flat on the upper west side of Manhattan with her boyfriend or fiancé Woody. They were going to be out of town for the holidays and Susan arranged for us to apartment sit for a week or ten days. All we had to do was come up with the plane fare and enough cash to see a show or two and sample the wonderful New York City cuisine. We knew the food was going to be expensive, but the amount of money we were saving by not having to book a hotel was enormous. It was too good to pass up.

We left L.A. a day or two after Christmas and planned to spend New Years in the Big Apple. I hate crowds, so I knew Times Square was going to be out of the question, but we would figure something out—probably go bar hopping or watch the tumult from our apartment window on 72^nd between Alexander and Columbus Avenues. At the time, Ray’s Pizza was still one of the best places to get a few slices. God how I missed good old New York pizza—there’s nothing else like it anywhere! Maybe it’s the sauce or the thin crust, but it had to be the water that made it so unique. My favorite thing to do there is walk. Walk and walk and look at the people and the store windows and of course the museums. So much to do and so little time. We did catch one Broadway show, Buddy, which was a musical about the life of one of my favorite singer/songwriter’s of all time—Buddy Holly. It was so good to hear those songs come alive again that I even bought the t-shirt. I was surprised that Donna had heard of Buddy Holly but then I remembered that Holly had a huge following in Britain and she told me her mum and dad used to listed to his music all the time. In fact, Olive and David Smollett had actually seen The Beatles (who were also big Holly fans) perform live in Scotland back in 1962 in Kirkcaldy.

Donna’s has a cousin, Alastair, who had a nice house in Morristown, New Jersey that he shared with his wife, Corrine, a wee Asian woman from the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean. Alistair looked a lot like John Lennon, so I liked him right away. We spent a the day before New Year’s hiking the back trails of some state park, the name of which escapes me at the moment, but I never knew New Jersey had such lovely terrain. It was like being in the wilderness—not a car, house or any semblance of civilization in sight. By the time we got back to the house we were dead on out feet so we were asked if we wanted to hang out there for New Year’s Eve. Why not? It’s as good a place as any, and watching the ball drop at Times Square on television was fine and dandy with me. We would be with good company and far away from the madding crowds eating Chinese food and drinking champagne. It was now 1991 and we were officially in the nineties now.

Being back in L.A. was a bit of a letdown. You know how it is after a vacation, the mundane day to day life is chore and the apartment on Vine Street seemed too small now for us. Not only that, we had received a notice that the rent was going to be increased to over eleven hundred dollars a month. Outrageous—for a 600 square foot apartment—it was definitely time to move. My mom was still dabbling in the real estate biz and had suggested that instead of renting again, to buy a house. We had saved some money between the two of us (I had some of the insurance money from my father’s estate), so we began the search for our first home together. We figured we couldn’t afford the west side and the San Fernando Valley, even though the idea of living where the temperature was always at least ten to twenty degrees hotter in the summer would be our best bet.

My mom suggested a realtor, James Gary and Associates, since she had some previous dealing with that company. We had narrowed our search to the west valley, primarily Woodland Hills. The two real estate agents, Debbie and Nancy, were a couple of savvy women who seemed to know the area well and they were very helpful. The first house we saw was a darling little three bedroom bungalow with a pool and beautiful red rose bushes by the front door. It had parquet wooden floors, a fireplace in the living room and a nice size kitchen with all the appliances you would need and the master bedroom had French doors that open up to reveal a huge pool surrounded by twenty foot high hedges and a two car garage. I was ready to make an offer right then and there but Donna convinced me to keep looking. You never pick the first house without checking out some comparables, do you? I agreed to keep looking but I had a feeling about that house on Santa Lucia. It just seemed right to me and I knew we would be happy there—a good place to start a family.

Debbie and Nancy drove us around the area in their air conditioned Mercedes as the search continued. We must have looked at least a dozen places and I was getting irritable and worn out but Donna kept plodding along trying to convince me that we were covering all of our bases and not to make a rash decision (rash decisions were my specialty). I kept thinking about the house on Santa Lucia, and even though it was the first house we looked at, I knew it was the one. It was. We made an offer and the wheeling and dealing began. The offer was accepted. I was shocked and Donna was nervous.

The funny thing was, all three of the Haymer children were now homeowners while Johnny and Helyn, even though Mom was in the real estate biz, never owned a home. They always rented. I guess it was that actor’s mentality, never get too tied down in case you had to leave town in a hurry. They did purchase one house, the one my dad bought with his brother, Ellis near Pico and Doheny. That house was purely an investment and neither of them ever lived there. They were landlords so it really doesn’t count. But Donna and I were buying our first house—a Shangri-la—a lover’s paradise. YES, YES, YES!