Andy Coburn, former resident of 6728 Apperson St.

Well I know the correct years now when I lived at 6728 Apperson St. We moved there late in 1953 or early in 1954 and stayed until February of 1956. These were my 3rd, 4th and 5th grades at Pinewood Elementary School (and this is how I know the dates to be correct). So our house was probably finished mid-1953. The other houses on the block had been built earlier because I don’t remember any construction happening and certainly the Riveras had lived there for some time.

Our house was close to the street with a steep downward sloping driveway. The house was cantilevered over a concrete foundation that only extended one-third of the way under the house. My parents worried about this but seemingly Victor Sease knew what he was doing because the house never slid down the hill. We owned one-third of an acre (if memory serves) and our backyard was completely wild. We built an aboveground swimming pool and that’s the extent of the landscaping behind the house. The steep front yard was planted in Lantana. I imagine that there was absolutely no insulation in the walls of the house. The ceiling was the roof because it was just 2 x somethings placed on end. There was only a carport and just beyond it was a large pile of dirt which served as a way to stop the car when the brakes failed (which was not infrequent: See below). Just to the East was a deep concrete drainage ditch. Presumably it’s still there.

On Haines Canyon lived a Lila Bulgren (and I’m not certain of the spelling). She was a Los Angeles Prosecuting Attorney and was a guest on the TV program “What’s My Line”. She stumped the panelists as I recall.

Let me write what I remember of Victor Sease. He was very tall and very thin. Of course to a 9 year old everybody seemed tall. For part of our stay there the Sease’s lived on Haines Canyon but later they moved across the valley to another house he had built there.

Across Haines Canyon and somewhat North of Apperson was a large water storage tank. This held the water we drank and on top of it was a large measuring pole, which could be seen from Apperson St. We could see if there was enough water or not. We had to conserve whenever the level fell below some point. I remember this happening a number of times.

I mentioned the large fire that burned a great deal of the hill to the South (across Foothill Blvd.). Many Sease homes were destroyed. This fire would probably have occurred the summer of 1954 but this is a guess.

Some post on this thread (or another one) reminded me that Tony Rivera was a cartoonist working for Frank Capra. His wife, Mary, was my first piano teacher and the Rivera’s remained friends of my family for years. All gone now, sadly. Their house is the one just to the East of 6728 Apperson with the extremely long driveway.

The family living in the house next door to the West built an in-ground swimming pool and devised a very Rube Goldberg device for a filter. It consisted of two large sewer pipes, maybe 4 feet in diameter and maybe 5 feet high standing side by side. Into these they put big boulders, then littler ones, then littler ones still until there were just pebbles on top. A large pipe came from the pool and shot the water down onto these “filters”. I have no idea if it worked or not. Presumably this device has been replaced by now.
Another memory: On Haines Canyon (also in a Sease house) lived Templeton Laraby (called “Temp” by his friends). He had some sort of job in Physics and he and my mother would spend hours discussing Quantum Mechanics and other trivial subjects. My father would just sit there and drink Sherry. Later “Temp” and his wife moved to Berkeley, California and lived atop Grizzly Peak Boulevard and she forgot to put the spices into a Pumpkin pie one Thanksgiving.

There has been mention of many trees lining Apperson St. now. Well in the 50’s there wasn’t a tree to be seen. All of these must have been planted since (duh!). We had scrub bushes in our backyard that had a wonderful scent but were really quite wild. We had to cut them back because of fire hazard.