Compare to NYC!

https://is.gd/c8RzH

Looking through the fence at a house out near Ocean Beach in San Francisco. It was set back from the street so it had this sunny front yard. Like a bit of the country in the city.

I’ve never liked electric hot water heaters, since a lot of energy is lost in transmission from the generating source. Propane or natural gas provides heat right at the source and seems a better choice. And of course, solar is king, if you’ve got it together. I have a solar-heated outdoor shower, but haven’t got around to solar-heating all household water. I’ve made an exception to electric water heating with this little 2-1/2 gallon hot water heater that goes under the sink of our office kitchen. It has a switch that I turn on for maybe an hour, then turn off. The water temperature can be set with the thermostat. The tank is well insulated, so it stays hot for hours. It seems a very efficient use of electricity.

In the house, we’ve had a 5 gallon electric water heater under the kitchen sink for about 15 years. It’s minimal in electric power usage, and doesn’t waste water getting from cold to hot (in pipes coming from a more distant water heater).

And yes, I’ve got to get more of our water heated by the sun. It’s on my list of things to do, honest.

https://www.insinkerator.com/product/product.php?id=41&template=hwd

When I was 12, I helped my Dad build a house on the outskirts of Colusa, Calif. It was a concrete block house on 440 acres he had bought and turned into a rice farm. Also, he was a serious duck hunter and it served the dual purpose of farm and duck club.

We’d leave San Francisco early Friday afternoons and work long hours Saturday and Sunday. My job was shoveling sand, gravel, and cement into a concrete mixer (which I still have, still working, 63 years later). We’d usally pick up a laborer early in the morning on the streets in Colusa, then drive the 8 miles out to the ranch. I found I could work harder than the guys we picked up; they’d usually been drinking heavily the night before. I liked the work. I got some rare praise from my Dad for working hard. I still like shoveling, although I always tried to hide this skill on construction jobs so I wouldn’t end up on shovel detail.

As much as I liked shoveling, it was nothing compared to hammering. One of those memorable moments in my life: the concrete slab was finished, the block walls built (by travelling masons), grout poured in the blocks, and the walls and roof framed by Pinky Smith, a cigar-chomping carpenter who was also the leader of my Cub Scout troop. I was allowed up on the roof with a hammer and canvas apron to nail down the roof sheathing. I still remember that morning, sun shining, smell of the wood, the satisfaction of hammering nails (acuracy wasn’t that important here), the thrill of creating a surface, and then walking on it. I was hooked.

My next carpentry experience was in college (’53-’54) when I got a job working summers for a shipwright on the docks in San Francisco (which used to be an actual working port instead of a tourist destination). When ships came in and the holds were loaded, we’d go in and shore up the cargo with wooden bracing so it wouldn’t shift around out at sea. I got $2.50 an hour and double-time for overtime, a fortune in those days. Some times we’d work 24 straight hours and I’d get close to $100 for the day. In down time, when no ships we’re in, we’d build pallets at the shipwright’s yard at the foot of Hyde Street, right down from the Buena Vista bar. The Ghirardelli chocolate factory was a few blocks away and when they were cooking, the smell of chocolate filled the air. Most of the other carpenters were from Oklahoma and all of them were older than me, and I loved learning the basic carpentry skills and the camaraderie.

When it came to building my own house in the early ’60s in Mill Valley, I had the basics of crude carpentry down. I never got any good at finish work, but I’ve alwyas loved working up to the time a building is framed and sheathed. To this day I love to shift gears and do something with wood. Making tables, fixing chairs, shaking a roof, the smell of wood, the satisfaction of creating something out of raw materials. You know, with all the changes going on in the world now, the art of building a home isn’t that much different. Computers can’t pour a foundation or frame a wall, or lay a floor. It’s still human hands holding the tools and making the connections to provide the roof overhead.

My roommate and best friend for a couple of years at Stanford was Dick Zanuck, now the über-successful film producer (Driving Miss Daisy, Butch Cassidy, and more recently the Tim Burton/Johnny Depp collaborative mega-filns. We’ve kept in touch over the years and he knows I like the film work of his son Dean (who produced Road to Perdition in 2002), so last week he sent me two tickets to an advance screening of Dean’s latest movie, Get Low with Robert Duvall, Bill Murray, and Sissy Spacek. (I mean, how could you go wrong?) My friend Jack Fulton and I went. It was at the grand old Castro Theater in San Francisco. Before the screening, Duvall answered questions for maybe 45 minutes. His favorite role of all time was in the TV series Lonesome Dove; he said he walked into the makeup room on the Lonesome Dove set and said, “Boys, we’re making the Godfather of westerns,” He considers the first two Godfathers masterpieces. Asked how do you get into all these different roles, he said, you have to know yourself.

Photo: Director Aaron Schneider, producer Dean Zanuck and actor/producer Robert Duvall

He must know himself pretty well, because he gives a brilliant performance in this wonderful movie. It opens July 30 and you can see a trailer at: https://is.gd/bRlaz

It’s a great script, wonderful acting, set in 1930s Tennessee. Duvall’s log cabin is a beauty, with a stone fireplace; inside wide horizontal planks, orange glow from kerosene lanterns and flickering fireplace flames. Just lovely throughout. Bill and Sissy are perfect. Duvall’ is a 100% Academy Award performance, powerful, nuanced, and I hope the fact that this is a low-budget film without big-bucks backing doesn’t stop him from being nominated.

Here’s to guys who make movies from the heart.