… the view from above Hobson heights in Ventura is stellar, possibly due to knowing the love the deck I get to imbibe it on was hewn by hand from.
They flipped a house everyone had given up on at the top of a hill into their dream home, and the husband built a wrap around deck with almost as much square footage as the house… lovingly with his bare fn hands, alone.
Not rich(especially not in LA), just skilled and truly in love.
He was seen by my nephew pup’s mom and her seeing him set them both on fire. That’s epic to me. As epic as the view and getting to have bacon on it, basking in the sun.
And while all of us are yakking he’s the one whipping up frothy souffle-ish frittatas and pounds of bacon and sausage for us to devour. Just badassed.
I have realized (mid-nomnom) why adult me appreciates it.
He’s a Californian dude…but the stock he is drawing on matches the Northeastern working class dudes that raised me & came up alongside me.
Not just the nine uncles between my parents. All our friends & neighbors Dads too. My Ventura buds are only about 12 yrs older than me but what that means is they got the tail end of that real life stuff.
That fn cool definition of what a Real Man was and did when that definition pivoted from the claustrophobic misogynistic vibe many of our moms elbowed out of as teens.
Real dudes built AND cook. & tried to remember kids names & birthdays Without the mom helping. The real ones I came up with did.
& it created a blip in the generation (at least where I was) where Everybody had to take home economics by the time I got to middle school.
The Dads (&their wives) didn’t let their sons leave their homes as adults without knowing how to fn build & cook. Because they were not raising boys(or girls) primed to behave like their own Dads who they’d had to kinda break of postwar shit. They were invested in moving forward whether they were still rocking their tie dye or not.
Maybe not everyone. But by grace that was the brunt of what I saw.
What it meant design & engineering college-wise as a young adult is the brunt of those dudes marching around the campus I was on were midwest urbanite boys who’d been hustling by interning through high school ( like me) to ensure getting into the competitive programs we were all in… Or dudes who’d been hay-bale-ing, contracting and all kinds of other hands on work to stockpile for college, which brought another cool layer of geterdone grit to them. And ROTC/Reserves guys. One of my big bro forevas who used to cart my nondriving ass to damn near cornfields on the outskirts of Cincinnati to watch the Crow incessantly😁 was a mean-assed clubhead by night, graphic designer by day who was like a friggin sniper on the frickin weekends. Like for real. Like deadshot.
It was a cool energetic mix.
I’ve had a question rumbling in me this entire season in regards to this.
I was not expecting to gain insight on it looking out over a slab of bacon at the ocean in Ventura.
But syntax is everything.
And clarity is the Emperor of all things.
Has me all the more curious about upcoming Ojai.