In 1955, it rained steadily for a week, and the San Lorenzo River broke through the levees and flooded downtown Santa Cruz. Pacific Avenue was 6 feet underwater, and all the bridges washed out. My roommate, George Kovalenko and I put in our surfboards up by the Pasatiempo golf course and went flying down the river. There were refrigerators and cars and parts of houses bobbing along. We got down to the river mouth, and the cops were going to arrest us. For what, I know not, possibly stupidity, but they got diverted and we slipped away.
Pic taken of me by George with my Baby Brownie camera.
About Lloyd Kahn
Lloyd Kahn started building his own home in the early '60s and went on to publish books showing homeowners how they could build their own homes with their own hands. He got his start in publishing by working as the shelter editor of the
Whole Earth Catalog with Stewart Brand in the late '60s. He has since authored six highly-graphic books on homemade building, all of which are interrelated. The books, "The Shelter Library Of Building Books," include
Shelter,
Shelter II (1978),
Home Work (2004),
Builders of the Pacific Coast (2008),
Tiny Homes (2012), and
Tiny Homes on the Move (2014). Lloyd operates from Northern California studio built of recycled lumber, set in the midst of a vegetable garden, and hooked into the world via five Mac computers. You can check out videos (one with over 450,000 views) on Lloyd by doing a search on YouTube:
