there is magic in concrete

there is magic in concrete
    if you believe

trenching,
    building forms
at some point it’s inevitable:
    you are on your knees in mud
    your eye to the earth, your butt
         to the air
for meticulous muscle-work

chop rebar in a shower of sparks
    weaving steel rod, suspended
    by wires, twist pliers
learn the names:
    doughboy, waler
         pier cage, stirrup

the mix, the pour
    no second chances now
spread and level
    wading in boots
shake the gray depths, vibrate
    voids not welcome

then you work the surface
    flat, in circles,
with the tool called a ‘float’
    (because that’s what it does)
buoyant on a gray puddle
and here’s the enchantment
    or else I’m just weird but
with fingertips on the handle you can
    sense the wet concrete, the mojo
    like a sleeping wet bear
solid in mass yet grudgingly liquid
    sort of bouncy
    as you stroke

hold the leading edge
    at a slight upward angle
         avoid plowing
pebbles disappear, embedded
the tool is sucking cement
    a final thin film, a pretty coat
    over guts of gravel and sand
   
for a finish, swipe smooth
    or brush
    or groove,
edging, an art
now hose the mixer, shovels, tools,
    hose your hands and boots
as the water disappears, so shall you
    unless you scratch a name

honor the skilled arms,
    the corded legs and vertebral backs
    the labor that shaped
this odd stone
    sculpted, engineered
    implanted with bolts
forgotten
half-buried in dirt
bearing our lives



©copyright 2015 by Joe Cottonwood. All rights reserved.

George Nakashima: The Soul of a Tree

In preparing my profile of James Adams, James mentioned that he was trying to follow in the path of George Nakashima.  Naturally, I had to get my hands on a copy of Nakashima's The Soul of a Tree.  I've just read it, and it's changed my life.

What an inspiring man — both for the life he lived and the works he created.  I've written before that the Shakers were a source for my woodwork and for my method of writing.  Now I add George Nakashima as a spiritual guide, a man who once joked: "I am a Japanese Shaker."

He is best known for his tables made of large wood slabs joined by butterfly joints.  The tops are smooth while one or more edges are the natural rough edge of the tree.

I'm fascinated by his two-legged, leverage-defying conoid chairs, which must have fantastically tight joints:
As with poetry, a reviewer can best let the book speak for itself, in word and image.  Here is George Nakashima:

"Resurrection"

On resurrection: "This slab was cut from one of the great trees of England...  A deep furrow remains, giving its surface a sculptured look.  The usual market for fine timber would not find much use for such a slab, practically a reject of nature.  I have sometimes rescued these great slabs from the dump heap and sometimes, with luck, seem to give them a second chance at life as good furniture.  The natural forms with all their bumps and 'warts' survive.  To fashion such a piece of wood into fine furniture is almost an act of resurrection."

On cutting: "Usually, cutting across the crotch produces the finest figuring [on left].  This cut also provides the greatest usable width.  Cutting along the crotch [on right] results in a somewhat triangular piece of lumber with less surface area to work with.  The figuring is less intense, too.  At the point where a tree branches freely, three or more crotches may be found.  The result in the lumber can be truly extravagant figuring."

"I make any number of preliminary drawings in chalk to get a feeling for the proportion of the object we are creating.  It's easier to make a final decision where to cut if there is something to see on the board." 

"There is drama in the opening of a log — to uncover for the first time the beauty in the bole, or trunk, of a tree hidden for centuries, waiting to be given this second life."

"The key man in the process of cutting logs is the sawyer, one of the great craftsmen of our age with steady nerves and experienced judgment.  It is necessary to have an almost silent dialogue with this sawyer.  Few words are spoken, but thickness, the direction of the cut, the positioning of the log — all must be decided with precision."

On the soul of a tree: "When trees mature, it is fair and moral that they are cut for man's use, as they would soon decay and return to the earth.  Trees have a yearning to live again, perhaps to provide the beauty, strength and utility to serve man, even to become an object of great artistic worth."

 "Each flitch, each board, each plank can have only one ideal use.  The woodworker, applying a thousand skills, must find that ideal use and then shape the wood to realize its true potential."

Rough design, bookmatched walnut root

Finished bookmatched walnut root table

"The object is to make as fine a piece of furniture as is humanly possible.  The purpose is usefulness, but with a lyric quality — this is the basis of all my designs."

On hand versus power tools: "Our approach is to realize a synthesis between the hand and the machine working as a small unit."

"As much as man controls the end product, there is no disadvantage in the use of modern machinery and there is no need for embarrassment...  A power plane can do in a few minutes what might require a day or more by hand.  In a creative craft, it becomes a question of responsibility, whether it is a man or the machine that controls the work's progress."

A butterfly key of rosewood joining two pieces of walnut.

On nature: "Once I was pulling a fairly large branch and it suddenly gave way, knocking me breathless to the ground.  As it fell, two long shards of wood broke off, each fifteen to twenty inches long and as sharp as a spear.  I was wearing heavy rubber boots with leather tops.  One of the shards pierced one boot's heel, while the other slashed through it.  Lying on the ground, I waited for the pain to start, for it seemed as if I'd been crucified.  But as my senses returned, I realized the wood had gone through the boot, but not my foot: all I had were scrapes on my sole and heel.  Nature is compassionate."

Part of my feeling of kinship with the man comes from the remarkable facial resemblance between him and my own father, who was neither Japanese nor a woodcrafter.

George Nakashima

On personal history:  "Then Pearl Harbor broke, and all of us of Japanese descent were put in concentration camps.  My wife and I and our newly born daughter were sent to a camp in Idaho.  This I felt at the time was a stupid, insensitive act, one by which my country could only hurt itself.  It was a policy of unthinking racism.  Even Eskimos with only a small percentage of Japanese blood were sent to the Western desert to die."

After relocating to New Hope, Pennsylvania: "After a year of doing general farm work, it was quite clear to me that chickens and I were not compatible."
 
On building his house in New Hope:  "At no time did we have more than fifty dollars in cash, but by scrounging materials, gathering stones off the property, digging foundation by hand, and working evenings and weekends, I was able to build a rough structure by Thanksgiving. …  Our first winter in the house was bitterly cold, and the faucet froze in the kitchen."

"We built, quite literally, on the principle of laying stone upon stone.  We had considerable stone on our land, and it was simply a question of hauling it by wheelbarrow to the building site."

On architecture:  "There is a wonderful feeling to be had in erecting a stone wall.  There is a sense of order and permanence.  A good wall will last for generations and even millenia."

"The decline in quality of modern furniture is probably due in part to the use of the quick, easy and cheap dowel joint.  The decline of modern domestic architecture can be traced to the popularity of the stud wall put together with hammer and nails, a type of construction calling for no joinery at all.  By contrast, the early American house and barn with their excellent joinery still represent the best we have produced and will greatly outlast contemporary buildings."

Nakashima built several innovative structures at New Hope, blending traditional Japanese and American styles with modern materials.  This photo shows the interior of the Minguren Museum, which has a roof that is a hyperbolic parabaloid.  "The span of the room is thirty-six-by-thirty-six feet, but note that there are no trusses or beams." 

Ceiling, stairs, Minguren Museum

"The stairway is made of three-inch thick oak planks cantilevered twelve inches into a fieldstone wall."  I wonder: With one end anchored in stone and the other hanging in free air, how much do they bounce?

The reception house

On local salvage:  "I call our reception house a sanso, or 'mountain villa,' in Japanese.  I built it … entirely with materials cast off from my workshop.  Castoff though the building materials were, they were quite unique since the rich and rare woods that I normally use are not generally obtainable.  The floor, for example, is made of red birch and walnut boards with extraordinary figuring.  Most of the outside construction was done with a single dead elm.  This elm, about five feet in diameter, could not be lifted by one huge forklift, but required two.  The elm had been cut into two-and-a-half-inch-thick boards.  Once cut, there seemed to be no client demand since the wood was light in color and not unusually grained.  So, we happily used it in the reception house."

There's so much more:  Drawings by Nakashima's own hand.  Chapters about species of trees, their spiritual and practical uses.  Pages about where to cut, and why.  Architectural commentary.  Gorgeous photos of Nakashima's stunning original designs that are so lovely, you'll want to run your fingertips over the paper.  Slabs of trees that make a woodworker's heart race.  A genius of a man who enriched our lives, even if we never knew him.  


The original edition of the book is out of print (I borrowed mine from the library).  Used copies are fetching enormous prices (as are his furniture), but a new edition of the book has been released by Kodansha.  I've just bought the Kodansha version and am pleased to report that it's of excellent quality.  The man deserves no less.  


Note:  If you're interested, here's a link to the Kodansha edition at amazon.com:
The Soul of a Tree: A Master Woodworkers Reflections.

For more about George Nakashima, here are some links:

George Nakashima web site

Tour George Nakashima's "Handmade House"

Links to some other books I've reviewed:

A Carpenter's Life by Larry Haum

House by Tracy Kidder

Toil: Building Yourself by Jody Procter

Religion in Wood: A book of Shaker Furniture by Edward Deming Andrews and Faith Andrews

With our Hands: The Story of Carpenters in Massachusetts by Mark Erlich

The Mind at Work by Mark Rose

Tools of the Trade: The Art and Craft of Carpentry by Jeff Taylor

A Splintered History of Wood by Spike Carlsen

Reverence for Wood by Eric Sloane
Cabin: Two Brothers, a Dream, and Five Acres in Maine by Lou Ureneck

Legends of La Honda: Limey Kay

Limey Kay was a gun-toting, hard-drinking, motorcycle-racing stonemason.  All around La Honda and the Santa Cruz Mountains you come upon samples of his masonry, usually with a whimsical touch. Often he mixed abalone shells among his bricks.

Limey's old house, built on a steep hillside between Laguna and Redwood Drive, is an eclectic mix of brick and stone reflecting different stages of his growth as a craftsman.

It's a small house, but it has six chimneys.  According to Debbie Kay, Limey's daughter-in-law, "The reason there are six chimneys and not the same amount of fireplaces is that Limey had built five or six chimneys for Neil Young's place and Neil shouldn't have more chimneys than Limey!"  No two of those six chimneys are alike.  Consistency and symmetry were of not much interest to Limey Kay. Neither were foundations, so some of his work hasn't held up particularly well.

In his day, Limey's work was in great demand, but you had to know how to approach him.  A six-pack of Coors was generally the cost of getting an estimate - or doing any kind of business with him. Joan Baez hired him by showing up at Apple Jack's with a pickup truck full of bricks and beer.  When he worked, he started the day (at 6:30 in the morning) mixing mortar and drinking Coors, even in the cold of winter.


Besides Neil Young and Joan Baez, Limey was hired by another local celebrity: Ken Kesey.  This particular job ended unfinished after Kesey invited Limey to join in a Fairy Circle, a regular event at Kesey's in which various Pranksters sat in a circle under the redwoods behind Kesey's cabin.  In the Fairy Circle people would drop acid, hold hands, be quiet, and tell each other "where they were at."  Limey (and a few other locals) couldn't quite adapt to this hippie custom and stomped out, never to return.

Limey had a series of vintage motorcycles.  An old Bonneville of his can still be seen around town.  With Hells Angels hanging out at Kesey's, and with Limey's history of racing motorcycles (which were not equipped with brakes),  along with Limey's fondness for guns and alcohol, trouble was bound to happen.  One day Limey held a gun to the head of a Hells Angel. For weeks thereafter Limey was on the lam, hiding out as the Angels sought revenge. Meanwhile Nancy Kay, Limey's wife, asked for mercy from her old friend Sonny Barger, who was head of the Oakland Hells Angels. Eventually Sonny called off the manhunt, and Limey came out of hiding.

For a while Limey carried a pearl-handled .44 Magnum revolver.  He had only one bullet, which he kept in his pocket.  Local residents still remember Limey laying the gun on the bar at Apple Jack's and demanding a beer, or Limey with a rifle threatening a neighbor's dog, or Nancy waiting until Limey passed out from drink and then tossing his gun in the lake. But here's the thing: Nobody has a story in which Limey ever fired a shot.

Hubert Allan Kay was born  in December 1929 in Menlo Park, where he lived until 1961, when he married his first wife.  According to James Adams, "The name 'Limey' was supposed to have been because he raced English flat-track motorcycles on no-brake bikes. The real reason for 'Limey' was because his Mom was English and he would go to England with her in his youth."  Moving to La Honda, Limey built the two-story brick house on the hillside from the ground up, with his bare hands, in the early 1960s. The current owner of the house is working to preserve the house with all its eccentricities including, of course, the abalone shells.

On his 50th birthday, Limey married Nancy, who was 29 years old at the time.  They had a daughter five years later named Jody Rose.  Nancy says, “I had already had three kids and he had four from a previous marriage.  Jody was number eight and pulled the whole extended family together. Those were some of the best times of our life together.”

According to James Adams, "Limey had, at one time, 22 feral cats. [Descendants of those cats still hang around the woods near his cabin.] The cats knew they could trust him. He'd take Jody, his infant daughter, out with him to feed them in the mornings. He'd spend more money for huge bags of cat food than he'd spend at the bar, which was a lot."

Limey had a long-standing feud with the town of La Honda.  Rather than pay his water bill, he poured concrete over the water meter box. Eventually, with the aid of a backhoe (and police backup), the town got a reading of the water meter, and got paid.

Limey didn't always have the firmest grasp of finances. One day he walked into a local realtor's office and said, "I hate to do it but I'm broke and I'm gonna have to sell my house." The realtor replied, "Limey, I'm sorry to tell you this but I already sold your house for you - three years ago."

Limey seemed to have a soft spot for animals and children. If anybody drove too fast up our little roads, Limey would flag them down.  People were scared of Limey because he was gruff. If he spoke, he mumbled. And yet he often showed kindness. If your car was stuck in a ditch, Limey without being asked would pull you out with his monster jeep-like vehicle which he called The General.

Limey died in 2005, but his spirit lives on in La Honda, as well as examples of his craft. He was a folk artist, a pain in the butt, a one-of-a-kind stylist, and a local legend.

(The photo of Limey as a young man is by Susan Friedman in the book A Separate Place by Charles Jones.)

(I wrote this article for the La Honda Voice, where it originally appeared.)

Bricks

It warms my heart to learn that there are people out there who collect bricks. Funky, basic bricks, among the foundation of our history, uncelebrated, essential. Here's one person I just learned about, courtesy of the fascinating St. Louis Mosaic blog: a web page by Scott K. Williams called

"Underground Coal and Clay Mines in the City of St. Louis"

and here's a sample:
The internet never ceases to amaze me. A year ago when I was writing about Limey Kay, I couldn't find much about bricks when I googled. Now I find amazing stuff. How about brickcollecting.com, for example, which is focused on the Hudson Valley:
Or how about the American Brick Collection of the National Building Museum:
More later. I've got some browsing to do...

Living with the Past: the Naked Remodel

It's a modern school housed in medieval stone, patched here and there with brick. I know how difficult it is with schools: There's always a balancing act with the budget, and the physical plant is usually the first cut. Still, they're doing a nice job. They've kept the walls from crumbling while adding a graceful modern door here, removing an old window there, even adding a glass roof and suspended lights over the little piazza.

Living with the Past: the Naked Remodel

They started building this church in the year 870. Eventually, even with brick and stone, things fall apart. I can count about six different repair jobs in this small section, involving at least three different tradesmen using different bricks and different styles. When you work with brick, your workmanship is your brand, and it really stands out - sometimes in a good way, sometimes not.

As a tradesman myself, I try not to be too critical of other people's work. Heaven knows I've made my share of sloppy repairs - but usually the sloppiness was because the owner wanted it quick and dirty and cheap. Eventually I stopped taking those cheap jobs because, like the bricks in the upper left of this photo, your quick cheap repair might last for centuries, insulting your reputation each and every day.

(You can click on the photo to see more detail.)

Living with the Past: the Naked Remodel

It looks almost like an architectural drawing. Somebody sliced away half of this palace and then left it like that. The remaining structure is still very much in use. The other half is now a vacant lot. I sure wonder why these things happen.

Living with the Past: the Naked Remodel

Ancient housing, modern communications. (And nakedly repaired - or removed - chimneys.)
How do you blend the old and the new?
The answer seems to be that if it's above the roof, you don't bother to blend. In fact, you consider yourself lucky if the installation guys don't destroy the roof in the process.

At street level, though, with a little care and a little paint, the electrical can be fairly unobtrusive, as with the house on the left. The plumbing is a tougher assignment. If you use copper, it can develop a nice patina. The house on the right chooses a less decorative approach, but it has a certain rough honesty to it, straight and simple.

Living with the Past: the Naked Remodel

I love how stone and brick buildings tend to reveal their history:

But sometimes, as in the case of this church, they seem downright immodest in how much they expose:

Living with the Past: Hardware

I call it a whale's tail. What's the official name? Where can I learn more about it? I assume it helps to keep the brick wall of the church from collapsing.

Living with the Past: Hardware

In the American West, when you rode your horse to town, you tied it to a wooden rail. In Siena, Italy, your horse had more elegant accommodations.

Hand-crafted, I assume, to explain the slight (and charming) differences.

The bricks remind me that the pigment colors "burnt sienna" and "raw sienna" are named after the color of earth in the town of Siena.

Somewhere out there in internet-land, surely somebody knows more about these metal fixtures (such as, for starters, what is their proper name?) Whoever you are, would it please somehow chance to happen, perhaps through divine intervention, that you read this blog and feel moved to tell me where I can learn more about these old fixtures?

Thank you.

Amen.

Living with the Past: Doors

Sometimes you improvise and hope it doesn't collapse before you get back to it ... maybe ... later...

Vernazza, Italy

Sometimes you've got a whole house to fix up, and the door will just have to wait...

San Donato, Italy

Sometimes you've got a church that's fallen on hard times, and new hinges just aren't in the budget...

Piacenza, Italy

Sometimes you go your own way...

Monterosso, Italy

And then sometimes you get it mostly right: not too grandiose but nicely, simply styled in harmony with the ancient city you're a part of. You're sorry about the kickplates, (and maybe you wish you'd used a dark bronze) but it's a tough neighborhood, and money's kinda tight, and the people who installed that gas meter on the lower left already messed up a couple of stones. Life is a compromise. You deal with it.

Lucca, Italy

Living with the Past: the Naked Remodel

When you visit old cathedrals, you're supposed to think about the architecture, the art, the history, the soaring grandeur, the holy spirit. Me, I think about the bricks.

At least, that's what I was studying at the Basilica di San Antonino in Piacenza. The first church on this location was built around the year 350. Then in the year 850 they disassembled it and moved it - yes, moved it, according to my guidebook - to a town more than 100 kilometers from here. (Or maybe something was lost in translation.) Anyway, the existing church was begun in the year 870.

The octagonal tower was built in two phases, first in the year 1004, then the upper section with windows in the late 12th century. If you click on the picture to enlarge it, you can see in the octagonal tower a change in the color of brick at two points - and that's what fascinates me.

Bricks that are manufactured in different centuries are going to look different. So is the workmanship of the craftsmen who apply them. Also different will be the amount of wear and tear.

I couldn't get close to the tower, but I could get as close as I wanted to the pronaos - that thing in front with the huge arch. So I studied the bricks of the buttresses of the pronaos.

There are at least four phases of brickwork in just this small section. I don't know which are repairs and which are simply changes of material in the original process of construction. The mortar changes, too, in both color and style of application. I like to imagine those rounded, smaller bricks near the bottom as salvaged from some ancient structure. I'm a little worried about the lack of visible mortar among them - but I assume somebody's keeping an eye on things. Above those rounded bricks, I like to imagine the blackened ones as recovered from a fire in some earlier era. I like to imagine a swarm of craftsmen over a string of centuries manufacturing bricks in big ovens or hauling old bricks from ancient ruins in groaning ox-carts. I see them mixing mortar, troweling, embedding, scraping, leveling, squinting with one practiced eye, assembling scaffolds, climbing ladders, hoisting and tuck-pointing, arguing and sweating, drinking, taking long breaks for lunch, going home to their children and watching them grow, teaching them how to lay bricks in a good and workmanlike manner. For me that's the soaring grandeur, the holy spirit.

Living with the Past

Simply wonderful public space. It's in a tiny town - Alvito - in the mountains south of Rome.

I love so many things here. This picture could serve as an index for many of the topics I want to explore: Doors, both the grand and the weird. Naked remodels. Laundry. Roof gardens. Windows. Texture. Appreciating the old and embracing the new.

How, oh how, - and why, oh why - is that new rectangular door cut into what appears to be the base of a three-story stone wall?

Living with the Past: Cobblestone

True cobblestone.

And you don't have to worry about cars on the streets.

Lovely textures, everywhere.

It's an ancient little town in the mountains south of Rome.

It's more modern than it first appears. Besides the drains cut into the path, there is a cutout in the foreground that must be for a utility of some kind. Then there are the overhead wires and, not visible here, the TV antennas on the rooftops.

The narrow winding road leading to this tiny town reminded me of West Virginia (without the banjos). I'm told you could buy one of these houses for $20,000. Heck of a commute, though.

Living with the Past: Cobblestone

A typical narrow street in old Piacenza, Italy. Some random thoughts:

Who cleans up? Cigarette butts, oil stains... It used to be horse droppings and human waste. In Piacenza I saw a tag-team approach where a man wielding a twig-broom (the old) would be followed by a mini-streetsweeping machine (the new).

Compromise: The street can barely accommodate cars - and yet you will encounter city buses! (Small buses, but still...) There is no place to park. The sidewalk is too narrow to feel safe and wouldn't accommodate a wheelchair. In practice, people overflow the sidewalks or ignore them and walk down the middle of the street.

No asphalt, no concrete. Instead we have quarried setts for the roadway, granite slabs for the sidewalk. Built by craftsmen for human use.

A theory is making the rounds among urban planners to give streets back to pedestrians much in the manner as they exist here, where the car is the lower priority and has to make its way, politely, among the crowds. This theory, in the USA at least, is still in the crackpot category.

The trouble with words

It's always bugged me that the truck bringing concrete to your construction site is called a "cement truck." Yet if you call it a "concrete truck," people will look puzzled and say, "You mean somebody built a truck out of concrete?"

"Cement truck" means, in the popular mind, the truck that delivers concrete. We can't change it.

So I have the same queasy feeling when I use the word "cobblestone" to describe a variety of pavings, some of actual round cobbles and some of flat quarried stone. You even see brick paving described as cobblestone. You can't fight the consensus. I'll try to be as accurate as possible, but I try to be a writer who speaks in the popular language. We'll see how it works out.

In the previous post, I managed to avoid describing Piazza Cavalli as having cobblestone, but I used "cobblestone" in the title because it is part of a thread on that subject. Language, like living with the past, is an ongoing battle. Sometimes, so as not to break up the flow of a sentence with a parenthesis or a footnote, I'll have to call a paving stone a cobblestone. I'm sorry, I know it's like dropping a cigarette butt in the middle of somebody's beautiful craftsmanship. I ask your tolerance.

Living with the Past: Cobblestone

I'm not much of a world traveler, but I've been to Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China. It's ugly. A disaster. It has all the charm of an empty parking lot. It was created by destroying a marvelous old neighborhood and paving it over with concrete. Then it became the site of a massacre of unarmed civilians.

The goal of the Chinese government was to create the world's largest urban square. In this they succeeded. Unfortunately, the design was inspired by Stalinist Russia, which, as choice-of-models goes, is like hosting a banquet inspired by the Donner Party.

Tiananmen needs everything: benches, fountains, trees, statues. They could start by ripping out the concrete. Such a contrast with something the Italians have known for centuries. On the left is a small section of an open urban square in Piacenza that embraces the past and feels welcoming, comfortable to the eye. And it all starts with what's under your feet.

Living with the Past: Cobblestone

The narrow cobblestone streets were designed for horses, not Fiats. The lovely intersecting arches of stones, endlessly repeating, are the work of hands, strong backs, bent knees.

The price of such beauty is compromise. They are noisy to drive on and laborious to repair. They are not amenable to underground utilities. They are bumpy for bicycles.

Do Italian children play hopscotch? How do they draw the lines?

Even the name is a compromise, at least in the English language. A "cobble" is a round stone created by water or ice. Most streets are now paved with flat quarried stones called "setts."

Limey Kay, Part Two

My previous post about Limey Kay caught the interest of a lot of people, including a newspaper, the Half Moon Bay Review. Their reporter Greg Thomas came to La Honda and interviewed me, and then I took him to Limey's house. Here's a link to the article he wrote.

Everybody who encountered Limey came away with a story to tell. I won't repeat what was said in the Half Moon Bay Review article, but here are a few more details.

Most of the Limey tales involve Limey with a gun, such as the time Limey held a gun to the head of a Hells Angel. For weeks thereafter Limey was on the lam, hiding out as the Angels sought revenge. Meanwhile Nancy Kay, Limey's wife, asked for mercy from her old friend Sonny Barger, who was head of the Oakland Hells Angels. Eventually Sonny called off the manhunt, and Limey came out of hiding. (In case you don't know, La Honda has always been something of a second home for the Hells Angels since before the days of Ken Kesey.)

Other stories involve Limey laying a gun on the bar and demanding a beer, or Limey with a rifle threatening a neighbor's dog, or Nancy waiting until Limey passed out from drink and then tossing his gun in the lake. But here's the thing: Nobody has a story in which Limey ever fired a shot.

James Adams, who gave me the old Stiletto hammer that I posted about here, says that Limey's real name was Hubert Allan Kay. I'll let James tell it: "The name 'Limey' was supposed to have been because he raced English flat-track motorcycles on no-brake bikes. The real reason for 'Limey' was because his Mom was English and he would go to England with her in his youth.

"Limey had, at one time, 22 feral cats. [Descendants of those cats still hang around the woods near his cabin.] The cats knew they could trust him. He'd take Jody, his infant daughter, out with him to feed them in the mornings. He'd spend more money for huge bags of cat food than he'd spend at the bar, which was a lot.

"He had a feud with the town of La Honda, and poured concrete over the water meter box. It was years before the town got a reading."

Some La Honda houses (including mine) suffered major damage in the 1989 World Series earthquake. Limey's brick house was no exception. When he repaired it, he left a memento. The writing on the abalone shell says EARTH QUAKE 89.

Another La Honda resident has this memory of Limey: "One of the first summers we were in La Honda, I was gardening. It was morning and Limey walked down the street and we spoke - just small talk. The next day, I was gardening again and Limey stopped and handed me a flower. He said something like, 'I know you like flowers so this is for you.' I don't even think he knew my name but his gesture touched my heart. We had heard that he was impolite, sometimes dangerous and that his personal health habits were somewhat unacceptable. But I never saw any of that side of him. I'll always remember him as the old alcoholic who wandered down the street and was gentle and kind."

And then there's this story from another resident: "I had a white Samoyed husky. He was not fenced, nor were most dogs at the time. I tended bar at Venturi’s, and my dog would sometimes wander down to the bar to pick me up from work. This was fine for a long time. Then we started seeing a pair of shepherds. Apparently the shepherds were building their gang/pack. Limey had a great rabbit warren and maze in his yard on the hill across from my house. One day I came home, and there were all of Limey’s rabbits, dead, scattered all over the street and my front yard. Apparently the shepherds gathered up a bunch of compatriots from up and down the neighborhood and they raided the helpless rabbits. I was scared silly. I didn’t know what to do. So I got a shovel and buried them all. It was scary. Apparently Limey wasn’t at home at that time. So that night I went to work. After a few hours, into the bar comes Limey with a rifle over his shoulder. He told me that the next time he saw my dog in his yard, he’d shoot him. I was scared, but he was absolutely right. I kept my dog inside. Within a couple of weeks, I learned that the pair of shepherds were shot [by a rancher, not Limey]. So my dog went back outside, and life returned to normal, and Limey never said another word about the incident to me."

Some of Limey's best work was hidden from the public inside his own house. I have a couple of examples here. He made a lovely passage between kitchen and dining room.

How did he keep those bricks in the arch from falling down?

It's a small cabin - one neighbor calls it "the Hobbit House" - with a small dining room, and yet at one end of the dining room Limey built a fireplace in which you could roast an entire pig. Imagine sitting at a dining table just a few feet from a full roaring fire.

He used brick as a baseboard and as a windowsill.

Limey usually had a toothpick in his mouth which he'd soaked in brandy the night before. If you wanted Limey to show up for a job, you enticed him with a six-pack of Coors. It was generally the cost of getting an estimate - or doing any kind of business with him. And when he worked, he started the day (at 6:30 in the morning) mixing mortar and drinking Coors, even in the cold of winter.

People were scared of Limey because he was gruff. If he spoke, he mumbled. And yet he often showed kindness. If your car was stuck in a ditch, Limey without being asked would pull you out with his monster jeep-like vehicle which he called The General.

Limey seemed to have a soft spot for animals and children. Besides the cats and the rabbits, I remember the goats he used to keep in a pen. My children would feed them carrots through the fence. And if anybody drove too fast up our narrow little road, Limey would flag them down.

I wish I had a photo of the brick shower that he had downstairs. Unfortunately, the plumbing was less durable than the brickwork, and the whole thing had to be destroyed. I wonder how he waterproofed it. Has anybody ever heard of a brick shower? It was certainly an appropriate spot for his use of abalone and other shells. Like Limey himself, that shower was rough, unforgettable, flawed, and one of a kind.