What Is Indomitable

It was a chill November morning—1970…

We lived in the Serra Retreat—a small secluded canyon that was part of the original Malibu land grant.

I came out our front door to tuck an outgoing letter in our mailbox up on the road. Crossing our deck I noticed there were—What is this, cinders in the air? Cannot be.

Opening our front gate I saw Sharon Adamson (wife of Merritt, son of Rhoda, daughter of May Rindge, doyenne of The Malibu—creator of the Malibu Pier and the Malibu Movie Colony) clopping up the road on her big dappled horse. I called out, “Good morning, Sharon. Are these cinders? What do you think?” or something equally inane. But as Sharon had been a resident of Malibu much longer than I, it wasn’t too silly a question. Was it? I mean, a cinder in the air is a cinder, but it’s not something your subconscious wants to acknowledge straightaway when your day has just begun of a November morning.

Now Sharon was a phlegmatic sort and she said, “I think there’s something going on up the canyon. Probably it’d be a good idea if you got stuff together.” She smiled, waved, and to my astonishment clopped on along Serra Road. I was flummoxed. If an old Malibu hand thought fire was imminent, why was she riding her horse away from her house?

But then I stopped and looked up the hill from us. Black SMOKE! Oh no! I ran back in the house, called out to Gene. The children were at school, thank heaven. I ran into his study, told him what Sharon said. To tell it true, it wasn’t just a neighbor advising us to pack things into a car, it was an Adamson.

It was our first fire but there was one thing and one thing only that I knew had to be rescued before we could walk out the door—my writer husband’s years of handwritten journals. I found a box and packed them, took them out to his car. What did I want to take? I didn’t keep a journal, I did have notes, but I am not a tidy mouse and they were scattered. The article I was writing was neatly laid out in thin strips on my worktable—once I read Tolstoy referring to his “noodles,” I was so heartened–no way was I going to mess up my noodles. I’d just bought an extravagant lot of Rodier wool to make a skirt, it was all I could think of. Pretty silly. No, I’d also just bought a new KitchenAid mixer…of course I went into the kitchen and lugged it out to my station wagon.

Found all three cats, stuffed them into their travel cases.

I ran out and looked up at the canyon again. More cinders, darker smoke.

Next I realized Oh my heavens! What about our daughter’s beloved horse, Chris? Chris was a young filly being boarded at the back of our canyon. I called the office and was told by a frantic woman we needed to get Chris to the corral on Cross Creek Road where other horses were being sheltered. Now. I drove back there, parked the car, was given Chris’s reins, and we set out.

The route to Chris’s safety was through Malibu Creek. In those days Cross Creek was a paved road one-car wide which lay sometimes above the water, sometimes below it, depending on the whims of the creek.

Now unlike Sharon Adamson, I was not a horsewoman. I rode horses in summer camp when I was eight and nine, then sometimes later in Will Rogers Park. But unlike dogs, I was not 100% at ease around a horse. No time for a saddle and I was not going to ride Chris bareback to her shelter. These fifty-four years later, I can vividly feel the terrified young filly’s flank pushing against me as I lead her along the cement road through the creek. Part of what was hard was that in those days I’d decided I wanted to become an eccentric—I forget why–and I’d sewed myself a full-length cotton patchwork wrap skirt. With it I wore thong sandals (a rope between my toes on a leather sole). A pretty concoction, but I didn’t make the skirt with the prospect of having to walk in it up to my ankles in water through Malibu Creek steering a terrified horse with my long skirt sopping and the filly pressing against me so hard we’d both land in the creek. So I pressed her back and walked forward as best I could, kept thinking of my mother and grandmother—women of grit—determined to get that dear child to safety. I did. Chris was so happy trotting ahead to join friends.

I ran back through the creek, freezing, got my car, on the way home saw neighbors packing their cars. Waved at several. Wondered what it would be like when I saw them again.

The hill above our house now was alternately belching black smoke and red flames. Gene had called Webster Elementary and Malibu Park Junior High and had instructions how to fetch our children.

Gene went into his car with our boxer dog, I got into our station wagon with three mewing cats. Gene was going further up the coast to the junior high for our son, David, thirteen. I was going to the nearby grammar school for son Benjamin, eleven, and our daughters Dinah, ten, and Amanda, eight. We were to meet at my parents in Westwood.

Got the kids, if they were frightened, they didn’t let on. Lots of chatter. To them it was an adventure.

The thing I remember most about driving down the Pacific Coast Highway toward safety—it was early afternoon but as dark as twilight with all the smoke—was now and again I’d see friends in their car—we’d exchange waves, call out cheering hopes—and I’d think, “Oh, J—she lives on the beach, she’ll be fine…how lucky…I wish we lived on the beach, too, so much safer…” And I’d see another friend from our canyon and think, “Oh, T–lots of land around them, they’ll be fine…”

As you’ve either heard or experienced for yourself by now, fire is capricious: Oh I think I’ll just whisk down that lane and swallow that house…and maybe I’ll whip across the highway—no need to bother the cars—and land there, that café looks inviting…

Around midnight that night when we were able to come back, we were astonished, horrified, to see the house next door was leveled…their gas main was shooting gold fire, orange spangles  shimmered shattered down from trees through the air. But our long Sears-Roebuck grape stake fence was still standing, and as I pushed open our front gate, I felt like the little girl in The Secret Garden…what would there be on the other side?

Except for the sad fact that the fish in our koi pond were poached—the heat through our garden must have been ferocious–incredibly enough, our house stood untouched.

The reasons?

Partly because when Gene had a problem to solve with a script, his way of working was to go out into the garden, turn on the hose, and water. So the front garden—where the fire came first—was sopped. But it was also a matter of timing. A neighbor, a deputy sheriff, had gone down to the highway to commandeer a fire truck, and by the time he and the truck came up the road, the poor man’s house was blazing. So the fire truck drove on down the road in our direction. As the firemen told us when we took them brownies the children’d made, they never stop to save a burning house…they go to the next house that hasn’t begun to burn and save that. In that case, it was our house.

Purely a fluke.

Purely luck.

The friends I saw driving on the Pacific Coast Highway when we were evacuating? For a wonder, those in their beach houses were bereft. I was so surprised. Shocked. Saddened. And many  marvelous houses in our canyon were lost. About one-third of our small close community, as a matter of fact…but no lives were lost, for a mercy

Why am I telling you this story? Just because I am so affected by what has happened to the Palisades. My granddaughters, who went to Palisades High School, have THREE friends who did not lose their homes. Like Kate and Maggie, I, too, spent many happy hours of my girlhood at the Bay Theater, in the Bay Pharmacy, then as a young writer at Sander’s Stationers.

All gone. Next to impossible to absorb.

And I’m telling you my story because granddaughter Kate asked me to…I think she imagined/hoped I had fresh words of wisdom for survivors.

I do not.

I have not suffered such a loss. I can only imagine what it feels like.

Thus all I can offer is reminders of what has been said a hundred hundred times these past days. James Rainey’s story in The Los Angeles Times should win him a Pulitzer.

The human spirit is indomitable.

Love is indomitable.

Hope is indomitable.

Faith.

Goodness.

Kindness.

Caring.

Optimism