In the middle of a high-traffic road on the fringes of modern suburbia is a vacant house with the literal signs of abandonment posted on a long thin slab of neglected property outside of its forbidding iron gates. Built in 1928 with a grandiose Spanish style, this $700,000 worth of real estate is attracting an assorted swarm of potential buyers and Sunday drivers. The empty abode is the star piece of scenery on one of my many walks and induces a series of daydreams that continue until my destination.
I wonder of that first year in 1928, before the stock market crash made symbols of despair and suicide out of the Colorado Street Bridge in nearby Pasadena. That first year in a new house during the unknowing-tail-end of an era when the New York Times famously renowned that, “gin was the national drink, and sex the national obsession.” A home like this must have belonged to people or an individual of opulence and well-to-do standing. I imagine the situations of the possible occupants in that first year in a new home during the prohibition-jazz era, and their lives as suited for the home they inhabited. The overall first impression of the home is solitude, with all the comfort and amenities needed to exist in an expensive bubble. It has a neglected feeling of foreboding and sadness, but it also has the conflicting aura of mystery and danger. Its constant state of abandonment is testimony to the financial nightmare of its ownership, or to the world created once settled in.
The home has four bedrooms and three bathrooms, suitable for the modern family of any decade. The one-bedroom guesthouse out back among the concrete courtyards, small pond, swimming pool, miniature streetlights and gazebos was ideal for the visiting in-laws and special guests of the family. The money was in citrus, earned the hardest of ways, and the family’s influence was apparent. The forbidding gates affirmed a family close and confidential in their endeavors, where appearances were of the utmost and the children’s dating circles were close and confining. Death or divorce came to one of the spouses, and as the children entered their thirties they remained at home, unwed and disgraceful, latched to their disreputable lifestyles and taking comfort in the knowledge that with each passing year they grow closer and closer to taking it all. They were no doubt a dysfunctional family with a secret. A dark and horrible secret binding them their whole lives until it could no longer stay buried, unraveling their world with such ferocity that absolute destruction of their bubble was their only fate. If a family endowed this home, the reasons for disappearing can only be gloomy ones. Sadder still is the simple possibility that the generation next in line came to tragedy in the Second World War, leaving only an era of broken dreams for a lonely two that carried on for a lifetime.
Of course, there is the possibility of an ostentatious young newlywed couple with no children and no plans of ever slowing down long enough to have them. Budding stars of the studios -- behind the scenes -- their careers in make-believe granted them a lifestyle and a social circle that was as out of touch with the general populous as the house they purchased on a dizzy whim before they were married. An absolute whirlwind of a relationship; a relationship founded on reckless abandon and a style of nightlife that is best suited for envy than experience. Countless nights after two o’clock in the morning, alcohol-induced rages of jealousy, betrayal and hopeless insecurity shattered the rooms and hallways. The threats of suicide, always regarded as desperate melodrama, became sound to the mind after too many nights of crying and pleading to no one in an empty house. Her body discovered by friends in the bathroom of the closed-up, musty master bedroom. The litter of empty liquor bottles, overflowed ashtrays and broken home décor were all evidence of a devastated mind left alone for far too long. The news reached her disconnected husband in Ventura beach days later; a hotel clerk delivered the telegram. He always knew that the accusations of another woman were not completely unfounded, whether they could have been proven or not. His behavior and actions in the weeks leading up to her death was the catalyst that ruined him socially and within the studios. There was nothing more to do than dissolve into another life far away, haunted by the physical and emotional abandonment, and the selfishness of youth.
The more traditional third scenario for stories in this setting is that of a solitary man, usually distant and mysterious, with strong financial means. I prefer the prospect of a lone woman in the age of late twenties or early thirties. She was a radiant blonde with sophisticated beauty, always dressing for her own style rather than for the sex of her race. A woman well educated, yet bubbly and warm, never married and rarely seen alone in the company of men in a dating sense. There was known facts about her distinguished education, but mystery remained surrounding the circumstances of her money. She was an artist of words and color, although not professionally as far as anyone knew. Her paintings subtly displayed throughout the common areas of her home and her manuscripts and poetry always nonchalantly scattered near reading chairs. Her home was always open to the community for holidays and regular parties during the summer. Her home became a source of social traffic although she never seemed to form a close relationship with anyone. She was never cold or distant, but it was obvious to those who knew her at all that she protected her heart and learned to be even more protective of her dreams. She never flirted with any woman’s husband, and her never-changing relationship status said that she was unwilling to give her time and romance to anyone who did not love her for who she really was at her core; an emotionally complicated and semi-undisclosed woman. At times, neighbors observed her hand delivering a letter to her postman -- never more than two at a time. They were letters of vibrant paper and exquisite cursive handwriting. There were fewer sightings of her and number of gatherings at her home during the thick of the January and February winter that came after that exciting summer of 1928. No one knew if she took ill or if the memories of the season took their turn in her emotions. The few sightings were usually of her making trips to her mailbox wearing large dark glasses, bundled up to her nose in a heavy, long black coat, her thick blonde hair lashing in the winds. The neighbors were hopeful and sad for her because they knew there was nothing. There was always nothing. Then one day she was gone. She had spoken of a trip once during the summer, when she was tipsy and laughing by her pool. No one could recall where she had spoken of. It was a place that held no familiarity in anyone’s mind. The general consensus was that she had taken that trip. Perhaps it was in search of her letters. When she left she never returned. Men with trucks came in her place, emptied the home and claimed to know nothing of where the boxes were going. She was gone and there the home remained, with lingering traces of sadness that are still evident to this day.
Passing this home regularly, it being recently for sale and the Halloween season has made this home fun to imagine. To warp your thoughts to suit a holiday where it is okay to be scared, okay to explore the darker recesses of our imaginations. Built in 1928, and its last recorded renovation was in 1928. After pausing in time for so long this home has returned to the housing market, and for one million dollars you can own a secluded piece of California that has long grown past its intended golden age; for one million dollars you can try your luck against nearly a century of unrestrained nightmares. All of my rational faculties tell me not to get too excited about Gatsby moving into the neighborhood anytime soon, but the always-daydreaming side of me wants to imagine what scenario this era will be witnessing after escrow.
In the middle of a high-traffic road on the fringes of modern suburbia is a vacant house with the literal signs of abandonment posted on a long thin slab of neglected property outside of its forbidding iron gates. Built in 1928 with a grandiose Spanish style, this $700,000 worth of real estate is attracting an assorted swarm of potential buyers and Sunday drivers. The empty abode is the star piece of scenery on one of my many walks and induces a series of daydreams that continue until my destination.
I wonder of that first year in 1928, before the stock market crash made symbols of despair and suicide out of the Colorado Street Bridge in nearby Pasadena. That first year in a new house during the unknowing-tail-end of an era when the New York Times famously renowned that, “gin was the national drink, and sex the national obsession.” A home like this must have belonged to people or an individual of opulence and well-to-do standing. I imagine the situations of the possible occupants in that first year in a new home during the prohibition-jazz era, and their lives as suited for the home they inhabited. The overall first impression of the home is solitude, with all the comfort and amenities needed to exist in an expensive bubble. It has a neglected feeling of foreboding and sadness, but it also has the conflicting aura of mystery and danger. Its constant state of abandonment is testimony to the financial nightmare of its ownership, or to the world created once settled in.
The home has four bedrooms and three bathrooms, suitable for the modern family of any decade. The one-bedroom guesthouse out back among the concrete courtyards, small pond, swimming pool, miniature streetlights and gazebos was ideal for the visiting in-laws and special guests of the family. The money was in citrus, earned the hardest of ways, and the family’s influence was apparent. The forbidding gates affirmed a family close and confidential in their endeavors, where appearances were of the utmost and the children’s dating circles were close and confining. Death or divorce came to one of the spouses, and as the children entered their thirties they remained at home, unwed and disgraceful, latched to their disreputable lifestyles and taking comfort in the knowledge that with each passing year they grow closer and closer to taking it all. They were no doubt a dysfunctional family with a secret. A dark and horrible secret binding them their whole lives until it could no longer stay buried, unraveling their world with such ferocity that absolute destruction of their bubble was their only fate. If a family endowed this home, the reasons for disappearing can only be gloomy ones. Sadder still is the simple possibility that the generation next in line came to tragedy in the Second World War, leaving only an era of broken dreams for a lonely two that carried on for a lifetime.
Of course, there is the possibility of an ostentatious young newlywed couple with no children and no plans of ever slowing down long enough to have them. Budding stars of the studios -- behind the scenes -- their careers in make-believe granted them a lifestyle and a social circle that was as out of touch with the general populous as the house they purchased on a dizzy whim before they were married. An absolute whirlwind of a relationship; a relationship founded on reckless abandon and a style of nightlife that is best suited for envy than experience. Countless nights after two o’clock in the morning, alcohol-induced rages of jealousy, betrayal and hopeless insecurity shattered the rooms and hallways. The threats of suicide, always regarded as desperate melodrama, became sound to the mind after too many nights of crying and pleading to no one in an empty house. Her body discovered by friends in the bathroom of the closed-up, musty master bedroom. The litter of empty liquor bottles, overflowed ashtrays and broken home décor were all evidence of a devastated mind left alone for far too long. The news reached her disconnected husband in Ventura beach days later; a hotel clerk delivered the telegram. He always knew that the accusations of another woman were not completely unfounded, whether they could have been proven or not. His behavior and actions in the weeks leading up to her death was the catalyst that ruined him socially and within the studios. There was nothing more to do than dissolve into another life far away, haunted by the physical and emotional abandonment, and the selfishness of youth.
The more traditional third scenario for stories in this setting is that of a solitary man, usually distant and mysterious, with strong financial means. I prefer the prospect of a lone woman in the age of late twenties or early thirties. She was a radiant blonde with sophisticated beauty, always dressing for her own style rather than for the sex of her race. A woman well educated, yet bubbly and warm, never married and rarely seen alone in the company of men in a dating sense. There was known facts about her distinguished education, but mystery remained surrounding the circumstances of her money. She was an artist of words and color, although not professionally as far as anyone knew. Her paintings subtly displayed throughout the common areas of her home and her manuscripts and poetry always nonchalantly scattered near reading chairs. Her home was always open to the community for holidays and regular parties during the summer. Her home became a source of social traffic although she never seemed to form a close relationship with anyone. She was never cold or distant, but it was obvious to those who knew her at all that she protected her heart and learned to be even more protective of her dreams. She never flirted with any woman’s husband, and her never-changing relationship status said that she was unwilling to give her time and romance to anyone who did not love her for who she really was at her core; an emotionally complicated and semi-undisclosed woman. At times, neighbors observed her hand delivering a letter to her postman -- never more than two at a time. They were letters of vibrant paper and exquisite cursive handwriting. There were fewer sightings of her and number of gatherings at her home during the thick of the January and February winter that came after that exciting summer of 1928. No one knew if she took ill or if the memories of the season took their turn in her emotions. The few sightings were usually of her making trips to her mailbox wearing large dark glasses, bundled up to her nose in a heavy, long black coat, her thick blonde hair lashing in the winds. The neighbors were hopeful and sad for her because they knew there was nothing. There was always nothing. Then one day she was gone. She had spoken of a trip once during the summer, when she was tipsy and laughing by her pool. No one could recall where she had spoken of. It was a place that held no familiarity in anyone’s mind. The general consensus was that she had taken that trip. Perhaps it was in search of her letters. When she left she never returned. Men with trucks came in her place, emptied the home and claimed to know nothing of where the boxes were going. She was gone and there the home remained, with lingering traces of sadness that are still evident to this day.
Passing this home regularly, it being recently for sale and the Halloween season has made this home fun to imagine. To warp your thoughts to suit a holiday where it is okay to be scared, okay to explore the darker recesses of our imaginations. Built in 1928, and its last recorded renovation was in 1928. After pausing in time for so long this home has returned to the housing market, and for one million dollars you can own a secluded piece of California that has long grown past its intended golden age; for one million dollars you can try your luck against nearly a century of unrestrained nightmares. All of my rational faculties tell me not to get too excited about Gatsby moving into the neighborhood anytime soon, but the always-daydreaming side of me wants to imagine what scenario this era will be witnessing after escrow.
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