A Collection of Stories : The sole binding factor of the varied subjects of this column has been a willingness to follow their own shining paths.
At the end of this column each week, we inquire, “Are you fixated?” It’s scarcely a fair question to ask since, after a year, we’re still only beginning to figure out what we mean by the term.
In the maiden column last November, we described “fixations” as the “passions, hobbies, causes and predilections that get a bit out of hand in some people’s lives, making them unique, perhaps certifiably so.” But even with that broad mandate, there was no guessing how these fixations would manifest themselves, particularly here in Orange County.
People in the outside world seem to think our complete name is “Conservative Orange County,” and looking at our style-leeched suburban sprawl it’s hard to argue with that. But, as we’ve stepped through the doors of some of these faceless tract homes, it has felt like the camera in David Lynch’s “Blue Velvet,” when it suddenly plunges into a perfect lawn to reveal a strange place teeming with disquieting insects. And those are just the doors of the wrong addresses I’ve knocked at.
The right doors can seem like portals to another world. One house might have a scale-model castle in it; another, 700-pound metal sculptures made of pop-top rings and bottle caps; yet another, 550 rubber ducks. One family in Fountain Valley--the husband of which has HOBBIT tattooed on his stomach--has transformed its home into a medieval fantasy wonderland full of knurled wooden wizard’s thrones and gnarled wax museum wizards.
We’ve met, among many others, an orchid addict, a hand analyst, a Chrysler proselytizer, a Dalmatian maniac, ukulele enthusiasts, Raggedy Ann-ophiles, a wind-up phonographarian, a sexagenarian tambourine player, a septuagenarian comedienne, a blind octogenarian political radical and a nice retired gentleman who likes to create purplish-blue four-foot lightning bolts in his garage with a Frankenstein’s-lab Tesla coil.
The sole binding factor of these people has been a willingness to follow their own shining paths, no matter how unnavigable, ridiculous or pointless they might appear to others.
While I’ve had merciless fun at the expense of some of them--how seriously can you take someone who dresses as a “Star Trek” android or who worships the memory of the late actor Vic Morrow?--I’ve also learned a lot from them and been surprisingly moved by some of the chats.
The Morrow fan, Diane Elliott of Seal Beach, was a good example of that. Most of us don’t think too much or too often of the sullen-faced “Combat” star, who died in the 1982 “Twilight Zone--the Movie” helicopter disaster. When we spoke with her in February, Elliott had sadly noted, “When I talk to people about Vic now, all I ever hear is, ‘Oh, wasn’t that the guy who got decapitated?’ ”
But Elliott--who memorized “Combat” episodes, claiming, “I know his every movement”-- made a personal, solitary quest of upholding Morrow’s memory, bringing fresh flowers weekly to has grave, lobbying to get him a star on Hollywood Boulevard, and paying to have a real star in the heavens registered in his name. In a world of looming problems and higher causes, such a pursuit might seem the height of triviality, but there was something so pure and compassionate about Elliott’s concern that it overflowed its narrow course.
When I recently tried reaching her to see if she’s still committed to Morrow, it was reassuring to hear her phone message tape playing the strident “Combat” theme.
In the case of collectors, usually it isn’t their collection that’s engrossing, but the human stories behind it.
My favorite of those was Fullerton’s Roger Ellison, who has a giddy collection of hundreds of rubber ducks. Though he was nearly as cheery as the ducks when we talked, he told of once having a violent character and raging alcohol and substance addictions. To celebrate his first year of sobriety, a friend gave him a rubber duck as a joke, and the collection snowballed from there.
“I get almost the same satisfaction out of this little 5-cent duck that I used to get out of a half-pint of whiskey,” he explained. Ellison is now in his 12th year of sobriety, and the collection has grown by several webbed feet since we first talked to him last December.
Sometimes I’ll think I’ve found a total chowderhead only to be very surprised. I’d presumed that a Marine officer with a collection of 250 G.I. Joes would be suffering a severe marble shortage, but instead, Maj. Bill Mimiaga of Costa Mesa provided one of the most thoughtful, far-ranging chats I’ve had, including some highly unmilitaristic insights on the morality of war.
Irvine’s Marc Goldstone similarly seemed to rate a high dweeb-factor, having taken his rare DeLorean and glued a Krupp coffee grinder, hoses and other items to it so it would resemble the time-traveling car from “Back to the Future.” But Goldstone turned out to be an impassioned anti-development activist who used his car as a hook to tell people how bad the future would look if left in the hands of developers.
A lot of the fixated people I’ve talked with have been senior citizens. I don’t know if they just have more character, more free time, or if they’re just so far along in life that they couldn’t give a damn what others think of them. In any event, the retired folks I’ve talked with have been a delight.
They have a broad scope of interests. There’s Laguna’s 87-year-old Jack Miller, whose interest in political protest goes back to his childhood when labor legend Joe Hill was executed in his home town of Salt Lake City. There’s Vic Grakas of San Clemente, who has painted copies of hundreds of art masterpieces. There’s Bud Young, who can be found singing in any number of the county’s karaoke bars, where, at least briefly, he’s king of the hill, top of the heap.
My favorites are Travis Harrelson and Don Wilson, who, billing themselves as the DTs, go around terrorizing people with their ukuleles. Mostly they play for free at hospitals and senior centers. But every so often they’ll get fed up with how emotionally cold America is becoming, board an OCTD bus and take over with their songs and antics.
While being devoted is part and parcel of being fixated, two of our subjects go above and beyond.
Nearly a year ago we visited 73 year-old, chain-smoking great-grandmother Rosario Velarde, who since 1960 had spent two solid months a year on her knees or balancing on goat-defying tiers constructing a dizzyingly complex, rococo Nativity scene in her Santa Ana front yard. In 1953 she’d suffered a life-threatening illness and made a pledge to Jesus that if she was allowed to live to raise her children, she would build a Nativity scene every year.
Now at 74, Velarde says she has a tumor in her back and seven months ago was given six months to live. “I have a mandate from God to complete this work,” she said in Spanish, and she is again constructing her Nativity scene at her aging house at 219 E. Warner Ave. She says it will be completed for viewing on Dec. 15.
Concerned with more earthly matters, there is Costa Mesa’s Sid Soffer, who for decades has been a peppery, outspoken thorn in the side of local government. He attends nearly every Costa Mesa City Council meeting and speaks his colorful piece on almost every item that comes up.
He missed a few meetings recently when he became our first subject to be jailed for his fixation. A longstanding legal disagreement with the city over one of Soffer’s rental properties resulted in him winding up in the county jail for nearly a month.
Describing it as “a great vacation,” Soffer didn’t sound especially repentant. “The only thing I learned was there are a whole lot of people in jail who shouldn’t be,” he said. Soffer said he doesn’t harbor a grudge. He has resumed his outspoken place at council meetings, though, which should be revenge enough.
That’s the sort of hardheaded spirit we’re looking for. There are a few other things I might mention we’re looking to see.
Nearly two decades ago I read about someone in Southern California spending thousands in an auction for Hitler’s toilet seat. If that’s you, drop us a line, but wash your hands first. If you collect carpet samples, build volcanoes or have a video library of Earl Scheib commercials, let us know.
