Editor’s Note

DISCOVER OJAI MONTHLY

Bret Bradigan

WHO DIGS YOUR GRAVE?

I spent six years digging graves, then another another six in the military before I set foot in a college classroom. I never felt like I missed much. Where I was once ashamed to have performed such lowly labors, now I am proud.

My brothers and I have different recollections of our many hours spent digging graves. They remember our dad paying them $5 or so for their labors, usually 3-4 hours to dig a grave that was 7 feet long by 4 feet wide and 54 inches deep (the old saw about six feet deep is rooted in myth, anything deeper than the 4.5 feet is totally unnecessary). I never, or at least rarely, got paid; my dad must have realized he was already providing board and keep, what did I need the money for anyway? I think he thought I’d buy drugs with it. He was probably right.

In November 1963, a young New York Herald reporter named Jimmy Breslin, shut out of the scree and scrum of reporters in the mad wake of confusion of John F. Kennedy’s assassination, found another way into the story, one that didn’t depend on “access journalism” of inside government sources cultivated over decades. He saw a grim, determined man named Clifton Pollard at Arlington National Cemetery, working with a spade and backhoe, and interviewed him instead. Look it up, “Jimmy Breslin’s Gravedigger Story.” Pollard said of the sad duty, “It’s an honor.” I know what he meant. It’s a classic feature that echoes through the years, while the breathless reports of JFK’s tragedy from the veteran reporters, the Beltway insiders with quotes from bureaucrats and campaign organizers, are now long forgotten, the next day’s birdcage liner and fish wrap.

Gravedigging is hard, sweaty work. Toil in a biblical sense. The ceaseless shoveling. First with the sharp-edged spade around the edges of the red-painted wood template with the angle irons. Then rolling up the sod and placing those lumpy coils in a cool shady spot, then covering them with a damp shade cloth. Another half hour or more of hard work of shoveling away the top soil, which went either into our tractor’s trailer, or into a wheelbarrow where it was unceremoniously dumped over the edge of the cemetery into the raspberry bushes in the upper cemetery, or into the hardwood forest in Forestville’s lower cemetery. Then the main act, digging out at least two dozen wheelbarrow loads of dirt, to pile up to await the memorial service. If access allowed, the backhoe operator could scoop out the grave in minutes, and I'd only be required to clean up the edges with the spade. But he took half the fee, $75 of the $150 my dad earned, a lot of money in the mid-1970s, so it was always a tradeoff. Cheap labor was a key reason to have a lot of kids in those days.

I learned more working in cemeteries than any classroom; it was where the human condition was laid bare. Ashes to ashes. I learned that princes and paupers share fate, that an honest day’s work is worth something for your character, to endure unpleasantness and pain and boredom. Because life will do that. Better to learn those lessons while young.

Also that there’s an impeccable state of mind within reach, to perform one final act of service for someone’s mortal remains, to honor them and all humanity. To feel the succession of generations, of birth and life all flowing through your labor, the march of humanity from past to future.

It was far from boring. There’s a quality to hard labor that frees your mind. I’m hardly the first to say so. Viktor Frankl, (“Man’s Search for Meaning,”) said it best. My resolve to make something of myself was forged in that sweat and heat and discomfort. It wasn’t quite the “why” that made Frankl’s "any how” possible, but it was a handy stand in. It started me on a journey that led to Ojai, so I'm grateful.

Every year our Rotary Club does a service project, cleaning brush and debris from Nordhoff cemetery. It's an honor It's a familiar place to me, and I wonder about the local gravediggers, if they pause to reflect about the lives of the people they lay into eternal rest. I'll bet they do. I know I did.

Ladd & Kelsey, Architects - The Von Hagen Residence, 1975

22035 Saddle Peak Road, Topanga, CA 90290

Beyond the steel gated entry, a long private drive gracefully ascends through park-like grounds to a broad plateau atop the mountain summit. Like the adobes at Acoma pueblo, living and working spaces hug the ground, and flow naturally across the landscape. From this 13 acre site, the vistas can honestly be characterized as nothing less than exhilarating. From above Malibu, views sweep over the Santa Monica Bay, Catalina, Palos Verdes, Long Beach and downtown LA, and continue to the San Fernando Valley, across the Simi Hills and far beyond to the San Bernardino mountains.

The residence incorporates 4 bedroom suites, a kitchen, butler’s pantry, living room, dining room and den. Every room has views and direct access to the outside via tall glass sliding doors, except the living room which adjoins the dining room that opens to the ocean view and the atrium and pool opposite. The master bedroom suite includes a fireplace, luxurious large bath, dressing room, 2 cedar walk-in closets and a kitchenette. One suite has its own living room with kitchenette. The 4-car carport is attached. Across from the residence is a 3,300 sf. accessory building/showroom/ garage that lends itself to multiple uses. It includes a workshop, kitchenette, laundry, 2 baths and ample storage space.

Christina Hildebrand 310.890.3313 $11,995,000

Exclusively Representing

310.275.2222

William Turnbull Jr., FAIA - The Tatum Beach House, 1972

12 Potbelly Beach Road, Aptos, CA 95003

First Offering: Of the many reasons this ingenious structure won Architectural Record’s Record House of the Year, perhaps the most important in terms of its gifts to living is its consciously elemental nature. The honesty of simple raw construction materials, now weathered like driftwood, and its glassy openness, enhance the occupant’s direct connection to the powerful natural forces and elements of the beach environment. To quote Donlyn Lyndon in Buildings in the Landscape: “Bill’s approach to the landscape was not one of emulation, but of cultivation. The land, the family, the acts of building, the joys of inhabiting, all merged in Bill’s mind into homes for the imagination. They are buildings that honor human presence in the land.”

4 bedrooms, 2.5 baths, 1,830 s.f., .29 acres $6,000,000

tatumbeachhouse.com

Crosby Doe 310.428.6755 Ilana Gafni 310.779.7497