Page 178 - People & Places In Time

Interior Dimensions
My success at COS became instrumental in my beginning work at Kast- ner, Horner and Young, Architects, at the age of nineteen.
Sometimes a moment can be so significant that it can erase any doubts of confidence. For me this occasion happened while working on the Gang Sue restaurant in Porterville. I had made a pencil rendering of the proposed build- ing, partly because the roof didn’t make sense to me. I took the drawing to Dick Young the architect in the office who had designed the building, explaining to him that it was impossible to build because of a double warp in the roof. The design was changed, and I still have the drawings I worked on for this project.
It’s here that I found encouragement from Bob Kastner. He began giv- ing me increasingly difficult projects that I thought beyond my ability, yet he was there looking over my shoulder, in his usual gruff manor to push me toward completion of what he knew that I could accomplish. Looking
back, I know for sure that had I been able to continue working in
this office under his supervision, that my life would have turned
out much differently. However, that could not be, as I wasn’t
completing enough college credits and became eligible to
be drafted; I joined the Navy and soon after left Kastner,
Horner and Young.
When I came home two years later, I didn’t even try to go back. Somehow, and I can’t say for any reason as to why, I had given up on the pursuit of a dream . . . an opportunity was lost.
Still, years later I remember the time at Kastner
Horner and Young as the best working experience of my
life. Often, I was the first person at the office in the morning,
waiting for the front door to be unlocked. I would sit down
at my drafting desk and soon enough, someone was having to
remind me that it was noon and time for lunch, the same when it was
time to go home in the evening; I would lose complete track of time. This is the experience of my youth that was never to be regained. Perhaps it’s possible to go back, but time is a difficult obstacle to overcome.
Final conformation, and as I said redemption, did come at the end of my career with one last opportunity. I was offered the chance to design a new office building for Christ Lutheran Church; the church of which I’m also a mem- ber. Following my completion of construction documents, I retired and spent the first year of retirement working with the builder in the construction of my design.
This new two-story building is attached to an existing two-story build- ing that was also being extensively remodeled. This necessitated a design that flowed inconspicuously between the two, as well as tie in style wise with the rest of the campus. A complex design set at an angle to the existing building al- lowed me to regain for that year, the joy of total immersion into a project.
The design, drafting and coordination of the completed building was totally done by me alone, with no input from the firm I was with at the time. Working closely with the contractor and builder Steve Seals became an uplifting final chance at what I had spent an entire lifetime searching. I say this not as self- congratulation, but to say; that after a lifetime of disappointment I had complet- ed what I had known I was capable of all along. Though my satisfaction at times drifts into melancholy with the realization now, of what could have been.
Interior Dimensions Incorporated
Interior Dimensions, Inc. was my creation down to the smallest detail, this was not by chance but followed years of fascination with furniture
and the stores displaying it. I can still see through my mind’s eye the showroom floor of Slaters Furniture on Blackstone in
Fresno. This was perhaps my first experience, here, with my parents, as they were shopping for furniture for
the new home they were building in Exeter, during the mid 1950’s. Seventy years later, several of those furniture pieces they bought have been refinished,
reupholstered and are sitting in my living room today.
Forward to just a few years ago, I was, in typical fashion, wandering with my wife around
the furniture district in West Hollywood. We came upon the Rapport Furniture Company on La Brea
Avenue. Significant because this store in the 1950’s and 60’s was the source of adds that appeared in the
L.A. Times Home Section. These adds were my first exposure to modern furniture styles. On Sunday mornings
this section was an insert in the Times that I could read over and over; just recently I threw away the file containing pages I had
cut from the Home section and that had been saved for nearly fifty years. I’m certain no other source had the impact on my design style this magazine did.
When I walked in to Rapport, I felt as though I might be standing in a hallowed space. As good fortune would have, I met the current owner and daughter of Jerome Rapport. I was able to spend time that afternoon talking about our common experience with different furniture lines we each carried such as Selig, Thayer Coggan, Pacific and more. Not such a big deal to most people, but a special moment of nastalga for me.
Not just any store pulls me in, but back then, as well as today, if I pass by a store with a certain and compelling quality, I don’t resist walking in; not just for furniture but for anything that displays a sophistication of style, the finest in craftsmanship, material and design.
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