12/02/2023
My Sweet Life
As the days wind down to the winter solstice, the shortening hours of sunlight affecting me as they do, I know that in just a few weeks we'll break through to longer days and more light in my life.
Mind you, my life is so good. I'm flooded with gratitude as I look around at my studio and my cabin, a nest well feathered.
I built some beautiful furniture for the fishy Ph.D’s down in La Jolla.
They seem to like my work and they keep engaging me to design and build beautiful things for them.
Yesterday, after two long years, tugging and sketching, presenting and revising, buying and trucking, planing, and ripping, pushing and sanding, fairing and finishing, I delivered the last of their order to the water’s edge at Scripps Pier.
It felt good to keep my word, and deliver as promised.
It felt good to sit with the money people and listen to them ooh and ahh at my designs and workmanship.
It felt good to feel my ass and lumber nest into the shapes I designed.
Did I, perhaps, design them just for me?
…maybe.
I folded my packing blankets, stashed my tools, and turned to look at the waves.
For 34 years I have hung around La Jolla Cove, feeding my wives and children, taking customers soaring over the cliffs up to Torrey Pines, and hovering 300 feet above Scripps Pier, in awe of my life.
Six months ago, I recruited some of my giant offsprung to carry an eighteen-foot walnut table and its two children, twelve-foot solid walnut benches, dovetailed in curly maple, scarfed through a waterfall edge, to carry into a conference room one hundred seventy-five feet above the Cove and the Pier.
It is a million-dollar view from my conference table and on my way up the hill from the surf, I stopped to visit her and her children and show them to a friend who had helped me with the morning's delivery.
A few years back, I stumbled into an opportunity to build a solid walnut Post-Modern desk for the CEO of Scripps. Her office is in an old redwood building a few feet from the sand and a one-minute walk south of the pier.
She loves her desk.
So do I.
Once every year or so, I stop in to visit
It still looks quite good.
I know how fortunate I am.
I know there are several great woodworkers in San Diego who could have built my projects and done a far superior job.
The good news is God’s timing and that I have some selling skills.
I never take for granted my good fortune.
Feeling desperately blessed, I chose the Coast Road for the ride home, about two hours ahead of the Friday afternoon crunch.
Careening down the Torrey Pines Grade, the view of the Pacific widening every second, I breathed out “Thank you, God.”
The sun was bright, the water, so blue, the cumulous soft and puffy, the sand reflecting gold up into my eyes.
Del Mar greeted me with the usual smattering of Del Martians.
I passed a number of homes in which I had worked and again, breathed out thanks.
Passing, L’auberge, I remembered my friend Doug Randal, the house pianist, who would, on occasion, invite me to play my stand-up bass with him for weddings and special events.
I turned onto South Cedros and aimed my truck at North Cedros. Driving past the Belly-Up, I thought of the huge party we held for Doug after he was forced out of the pattern at Palomar airport, flying his faithful old Mooney.
What a life he lived.
I pulled into the lot at Once Upon A Frame where I go to get loved. The three owners always treat me like a celebrity.
We have had so much fun together over the years.
I’ll play music with them next Wednesday night and visit with friends, old and new, and one of my favorite creations, parked in the middle of their showroom.
Yael introduced me to Mitch and Carol who were there buying a frame and happened to be looking for a furniture guy. We exchanged numbers and I kissed everyone goodbye and continued north.
The roll through Cardiff and up the grade to Swami’s is one of the prettiest places in my world. I got divorced there, married there, raised a few sons there, and started my 14-year foray into technology in the penthouse of the Coast Building.
Sailing into downtown Encintas, I pulled up to the red light at E Street.
For ten years, I did business in an old rail siding at E street and the railroad tracks.
Some of the best years of my life.
A young long-haired leaping gnome stood on the far corner waiting for the walking green, dressed in a splash of dumpster finery.
I rolled down my window and yelled across the intersection, “GET A F**KIN” JOB!!!”
Connor looked up, beaming, and charged through the intersection, happily jumping in beside me.
We parked and he took me to his favorite lunch joint.
Mitch and Carol, reading the menu, probably thought I was following them.
I introduced my new customers to Connor, and they headed off.
We ordered our vegetable sandwiches and walked to the end of E Street to gobble them down.
It’s a truly great view, from La Jolla to San Clemente, standing eighty feet above the surf.
Connor asked me about my daily flights off the bluff thirty years ago.
I pointed out that the fence was new and 20 feet of the bluff was gone, rendering it nearly impossible to ever launch a paraglider there again.
Again, I quietly breathed out gratitude for my good fortune and epic life, standing there with my beautiful son soaking up the environment and happily filling our bellies, sweet memories dancing across my frontal lobe.
We finished and headed back to our cars.
At 2nd Street a cute little woman, Shelly, of my vintage, stopped us to chat about how Encinitas has changed, a conversation Connor and I were already in the middle of.
We commiserated with her and I watched amused, as a young feller of Connor’s vintage approached him and stated, “Dude, Your fit goes hard!”
Connor translated for us older folks.
He is in the fashion business regularly pulling thousand-dollar rags out of dumpsters and selling them to Ralph Laurens Vintage team, and a bevy of Japanese collectors that fly over every month to buy out his inventory at his booth at the Rose Bown Flea Market.
The rest of my day was as glorious as the first nine hours.
I toodled home in the sunshine, stopping for an hour to buy a motorcycle.
I’ve never had it so good.
