In the Hobbit Hutch

IT WAS A BUSY DAY, and I've still got this rotten cold. Limber Lou dropped by, but only for a few minutes. It was so beautiful outside, I decided to take a few snaps. Limber Lou kept talking and squirming and asking me questions, and it was kind of a relief when he left. I waved.


My folks wanted me to drop by about something, and so I did that. Got to talking with my mom, Sierra, about that image of a German Shepherd that you see on K-9 cop cars. (I mentioned it a couple of days ago.) It’s a stencil that you can buy in the usual cop supply outlets. When I Googled “K-9 supplies” or some such thing, I first found a place in Kentucky that sold maybe 15 different stencils. Prominent among them was this one (see).

I asked Sierra (i.e., my mom) to tell me the story. Here’s what she told me.

It was the mid-70s, and she was painting animals in those days. She and my dad (and, to a certain extent, I) got to know a cop named Dave R. I’m not sure he was a cop—he could have been an electrician—but he was definitely involved in training dogs for police “K-9” squads.

Dave asked Sierra to paint portraits of his two dogs, Kai and Cora. They were magnificent purebred German Shepherds from Germany, as I recall, and they were truly amazing dogs, and beautiful, too. They were trained as “Schutzhund” (working) dogs—we had met Dave at a Schutzhund club. The training includes such routines as shooting a gun off next to a dog’s head! The dog isn’t supposed to freak out. These dogs never did. They were cool customers, boy.

I do believe that Dave regarded Kai and Cora as his best dogs ever, and he loved ‘em to pieces. My dad took some photos of the two—they were a kind of team, and they were lots of fun to be around—and my mom used those pictures, mostly, to paint the portraits.

Dave was pretty happy with the results. My mom got paid. Not long after that, my folks gave up on the dog club, and they didn’t see Dave much after that. (We had joined the club to get my little brother Ray interested in something wholesome—like dogs and dog-training. It didn’t work.)

After a few years, Sierra did hear from Dave again. He had sent her a letter along with a sweatshirt and some stencils. It turns out that his dog-training company needed an image of a dog, and they couldn’t get any image to work—except for the two portraits that my mom had painted (or photographs of the portraits). So, after a little manipulation, those images ended up on the company’s logo and masthead (etc.). The sweatshirt that Dave had sent had the picture/image of Kai, the male dog, on the front. (See below.) On the back was the company logo, which, I believe, included the image of Cora, the female. Dave had also sent stencils used to transfer the Kai image onto the sides of police "K-9" cars. He explained that police departments all over the country were using these stencils. They were being used in Germany, too.

In the letter, Dave was apologetic. He said he felt bad that she wasn’t getting royalties. I’m sure my mom didn’t care about that. Besides, she told me, Dave owned the painting. She had sold it to him, and so he had every right to use it.

I asked Sierra if she still had the sweatshirt and the stencils. Off she went looking for them. After a few minutes, she returned with the shirt. It was in a bag and it was as good as new:


She said that she thought the stencils were up in the old “Hobbit hutch,” my family’s name for an old dilapidated structure that my parents once used for painting. They don’t paint much anymore. Nowadays, they’re into pottery and sculpture.

I headed up there. It’s a real rat-hole, up against the hill, right above my parents’ private road. I could find no stencils. But I did find interesting things.

Mostly, the shed is filled with old paintings—some on canvas, some on board—leaning against each other. The weather—the sun and moisture—and even the rats had gotten to them. In the case of some paintings that were directly exposed to sunlight coming through the dirty windows, the paint had mostly peeled away. The paintings that were stacked along the wall were very dusty and dirty.

I didn’t find the stencils, but I did find some of my mom’s old animal paintings, though most of them lay flat one on top of another in flat drawers. I focussed mostly on the paintings that were stacked along the walls.

Here’s one that was probably painted some time before the Kai & Cora episode:


I had to wash it down to really see the image. Even after that, it looked grimy and dark. Later, I photographed it, downloaded it to my Mac, and then Photoshopped it. I tried the “auto level” button, and, voila! For once, that button pretty much did the trick. (Later, I’ll actually clean up the painting. That’s tricky.)

I kept digging. One painting was a real surprise, and it brought back lots of memories. In the early seventies, my beautiful and silly German cousin Tina had visited my folks for several months. (This was while I was attending UCI.) She didn’t speak a word of English. Still, she managed quickly to become part of the family. She’s was—still is—a great gal, full of fun and full of wild gestures and great emotions. We took her everywhere. She charmed the pants off of everybody.

Evidently, my mother had started a portrait of her. It’s pretty badly damaged, but there’s no doubt who it is:


Well, I’ll be spending some time working my way through all this stuff in the crummy old "Hobbit hutch." (I seem to be the family historian and archivist.) I won’t go on and on about all the things that I found there today.

Well, there was one thing. Evidently, my whole family had attended one of the wild parties given by one of my Professors/advisors in grad school. This would have been about 1980. I don’t know how it happens, but, somehow, my family ends up knowing everybody that I know. The “wild party” Professor—a famous philosopher of religion!—had visited my folks on several occasions, too. I don’t get it, but there it is.

My sister was at the party, too. She’s an artist, and she took lots of photographs. Later, she developed the photos—they were pretty wild—into these 1 1/2-inch square “portraits,” exhibiting every imaginable emotion or attitude. She assembled these geometrically upon a large board. The resulting piece was a work of art. It was pretty wild. Pretty terrific.

Well, I found that thing—next to a large rat nest. It was covered in muck. Some of the photos were missing; others were damaged. I took it up to my place and started cleaning the photos, one by one.

The first one I cleaned—it was the first picture in the first row—was of my late brother Ray, who also attended the party. Ray was probably the funniest person I have ever known. I vaguely recall that he had entertained people, in his outrageous manner, quite successfully at this particular party, which occurred in a great little house near the ocean in Laguna Beach. Here’s the pic:

Ray would have been about 19 years old at the time. He's obviously giving my sister a dirty look. I loved the guy.

Later in the day, my mom called. She said that she had found some photos that I might want to look at. Among them was this one of my little brother Ray, standing before his “crop,” somewhere in Northern California (circa 1990):


I love this photo, which I've never seen before. It's so Ray.

If there are any Junior G-Men out there, well, just chill out. Ray’s long dead. And I don’t know where the photo was taken.

Ray knew the Latin names for everything. For instance, he knew the Latin names for all the varieties of vegetation in the Santa Anas. And he knew the Latin names of other vegetation, too.

He got into a lot of trouble, though not in the Santa Anas.

He sure did have a green thumb.

Evidently, Fidel Castro was at the party, too.