Demolishing the reminders

THIS MORNING'S OC Register offers a typically chirpy story about the Demolition of the defunct El Toro Marine Base

Now, in case you haven’t noticed, I’m a positive guy, and I’ve been boosting and celebrating the Great Park project, which is slowly supplanting the base with all manner of eco-friendly whiz-bangery (to be surrounded by more housing developments—d'oh!).

I’ve been boosting ATEP, too, which is our district’s development of about 60 acres of the old Tustin Helicopter Station, home of those enormous and supremely cool blimp hangers that manage simultaneously to be in the middle of OC and in the middle of nowhere.

Well, anyway, the Reg chirps that

Every week another building falls at the old El Toro Marine Corps air base. Offices, barracks and homes all are appearing again in piles of wood, concrete, doors, windows and more to be recycled…The Lennar Corp. has been demolishing some of the buildings, trees, asphalt and concrete on its property that surrounds the future Great Park….

As though tearing things down were the most wonderful thing a body could do, the Reg gushes forth with: “Here is what Lennar has demolished as of June’s end[!]….” It then lists over 1,000 structures.

THIS OLD HOUSE

Now, I’ve got mixed feeling about some of this demolition because I love history and I love old buildings and I especially love old buildings with history. I mean, I always feel like hugging them or something.

That’s why, twenty years ago, Kathie and I bought a “historic” house in old town Orange. That was great until I asked my crazy brother Ray to “retrofit” the place, earthquakewise, and he crawled under there and started laughing, and I said, “what’s so funny?”—and Ray, being Ray, wouldn’t tell me, he just laughed, only harder. And he crawled out from under there and finally said, “Man, your house isn’t even attached to this dumb-ass foundation! In an earthquake, your place will just bounce down the street and fall into the Orange Plunge!”

Har har, very funny, I said. But Ray loved to laugh at things, and he was on a roll. He pointed to the roof. “What’s that?” he asked.

“The friggin’ roof,” I said.

“No, I mean, what’s up there?”

That old house, built in 1903, had a skinny, haunted-house kind of chimney poking out of the middle of its roof. It was way cool.

“You’ve got a chimney,” said Ray, but there are no bricks under your house!” He beamed at me.

It took me about a second to process the brick factoid. Then we busted out with hearty peals of laughter. —They had built the chimney on top of the floor, which hovered three or four feet above the earth to which this house was not particularly attached.

That meant that, in an earthquake, the chimney would be free to rip around like a lead ball in a birthday cake.

Ever been to Angelo’s and Vinci’s Ristorante in downtown Fullerton? When it comes to extremely cool old deathtraps, it doesn’t get much better than that. Going there is like munching on a pizza while skydiving in John Wilkes Booth’s suit. (No doubt it's been properly retrofitted, but c'mon.)

Orange County has lots of wonderful old structures, but they're disappearing. And most people don't seem to care about that. Most people are idiots, I say.

COOL MILITARY STRUCTURES

They’re probably death traps, but you’ve gotta love some of those old buildings at the Tustin Base and El Toro. A couple of days ago, I took some snaps of this one:


I don’t know what it was—some kind of hanger—but it’s absolutely fabulous. No doubt, they’re just gonna rip it down, and that’s too bad.

Above: chapel on ATEP property (Tustin Helicopter Station).

NEGATIVITY

OK, BUT HERE'S THE THING. When it comes to these old Marine facilities, people never seem to say what needs saying, in my opinion. It’s this: the conditions that these Marines live and work in are squalid.

Well, maybe not squalid, but consistently shoddy, ugly, and substandard.

I taught out at the base about twenty years ago, and I recall that the building I was assigned to was old, but not in a cool way. It was dusty, ugly, poorly designed, and badly maintained. There was no AC—OK, I get it, Marines are tough—but there was no ventilation either. Everybody sweated profusely in the thick, still air.

I kept expecting some gal to pop her head through the door asking somebody if they'd bust up her chifforobe.

I recall fanning myself, saying, "Man, it's hot in here." The Marines would just stare. I expected a private to ask, “How come they put us in this shitty room?” But nobody ever said that. They were used to shittitude.

Years ago, I drove by the officer housing against the hills along Trabuco Road, and I used to think, “Jeez, if this is where they keep the officers, they must keep the grunts in total shitboxes.” I would look over at what appeared to be basic Marine housing, and, sure enough, I saw seriously cheap apartment buildings, surrounded by dirt, pounded by the sun.

Somebody told me once that those cheap apartment buildings were a a big step up from what they replaced. Old quanset huts, I guess.

PICS

Well, a couple of days ago, I took some pics of Marine housing too:

This appears to be family housing. It probably looked better ten years ago. Still, it's undeniably minimal. Strictly cheapy.

To the right, we see typical Marine apartments. Obviously, made on the cheap, cheap, cheap.

The credit union was in this permanently temporary shitbox:


Clearly, at one point, this old theater was remodeled, using cheap, inappropriate, ugly stucko.


I know: nothing new here. We treat our soldiers and veterans like crap. So what else is new?

Yeah, but at least let’s be honest about it. Let's not act like it isn’t right there in front of us, as plain as day.

No doubt, everyone will be relieved when the evidence of our never-ending shittiness is entirely hauled away, replaced by a beautiful New Agey park.