But the family name is at stake

PETER BUFFA

I’m melting, melting! OK, Margaret Hamilton said it first, that

witch, but that’s how I feel sometimes.

Two things happened in 1976: America had its Bicentennial -- and

we bought our first house in Costa Mesa. You probably heard more

about the Bicentennial than our house, which was on the Eastside at

354 Magnolia.

It was a small house, and we use the term “small” loosely. It was

all of 760 square feet, which is not a lot of square feet, but it was

as cute as a bug’s ear. No one knows exactly how cute that is, but

apparently it’s very cute.

Our daughter was 5 and our son was 1, which is a good thing,

because if they had been any larger, one of us would have had to step

outside for the other three to fit inside.

Even at that, there was a lot of walking sideways, carrying things

above your head, and saying things like, “You go first. No, you.

Wait, sorry. OK, you go.”

Our fondest memory of the place was that our son slept in an open

space between some cabinets, which my wife has upgraded in her memory

to a “built-in crib.”

But it was great fun, as those things can be when you are

20-something and don’t have to double-pump to get off the couch yet.

Flash forward some 30 years. Whoosh, it’s 2005. Now try getting

off the couch. See? It’s hard.

Not long ago, I wrote a column about time capsules, and how I’ve

always been fascinated with them, and how I always put a little note

in the wall anytime we do some remodeling or repairing or whatever --

just a few words about who we were and what we were doing at the

time, so forth and so on.

In that column, I wrote about our mini-house on Magnolia and the

fact that I planted one of these notes, carefully wrapped in plastic

and tin foil, in one of the bedroom walls.

A few weeks ago, I got an e-mail from a nice lady named Cynthia

Johnson who just happens to live at 354 Magnolia, although that is a

fluid situation. She and her husband are in the process of

demolishing the place and replacing it with a house that is more

suited to actual, full-sized people, versus munchkins.

She and her family had read my time capsule column, saved it and

were bound and determined to find my note from those many years ago.

The house was built in 1947 and the Johnsons have been in it since

1993. They bought it from Cynthia’s aunt, who had owned it for about

five years as a rental before that.

Cynthia and her husband did a lot of upgrading to the place and

have had their share of homeowner adventures, including breaking up

two bee conventions and dealing with a genuine FDR-era fuse box --

that means that if someone was drying their hair while someone else

tried to nuke a burrito, darkness would befall the land.

When I stopped by the house to see the Johnsons’ handiwork, I was

surprised to see a large tree of the deciduous variety in the front

yard where a towering, and I mean towering, spruce tree once stood.

That’s because on a Santa Ana-windy day some years ago, Cynthia’s

husband heard a loud thud and stepped out front to see the giant

spruce lying on its side, with its top in their neighbor’s yard

across the street and most of the Johnsons’ front lawn still attached

to its roots.

All that aside, I feel terrible.

Not because the house is coming down -- but because my alleged

note hasn’t surfaced and, in Cynthia’s words, “ ... not for lack of

trying.”

The Johnsons have been bashing away at the house for a few weeks

now, with the final Smackdown-on-Magnolia scheduled for Monday.

The bada-booming started with the Johnsons’ daughter, who took the

first whack, followed by some buddies -- all swinging hammers,

crowbars and any other implements of destruction they could find.

No note.

Cynthia herself took on the bedroom walls, whaling away like a

rock star in the presidential suite on a three-day binge.

No note.

I don’t know what to say.

My wife reminded me that certain people should say as little as

possible about what they did 30 years ago when certain people can’t

remember what they did yesterday afternoon, and that if a certain

person did plant a note, it would have been in the bathroom wall, not

a bedroom wall.

But the bathroom is already toast. And still no note.

With apologies to the Johnsons, here is my real fear. The note is

there, but instead of being found, it will be carted off to the dump

where someone will find it 700 years from now and read a note from

some guy named Peter Buffa, who lived there in 1976 with his wife and

two little kids, and that person will say, “Geez, the guy lived in a

dump with a wife and two little kids. What a loser.”

Not exactly the legacy I had in mind. So keep looking, Cynthia,

keep looking. This is important.

I gotta go.

* PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs

Sundays. He may be reached by e-mail at [email protected].