Gate, 2

I wonder if Pasadena has any good haunted houses. Real ones, I mean. There must have been a haunted house where you grew up. Every town has at least one. I knew of two haunted houses in my hometown, both on the outskirts, one west and one southeast. Old farm houses, both of them.

In the 1960's, farm flight was already beginning. It's possible both homes had been abandoned by owners who sold their farms for good money and moved to town.

To kids, the emptiness of these lonely houses left room for imagination to expand. The house west of town slumped alongside the road; we pedaled our bikes to it in daytime and wandered inside, wondering at the graffiti and the odd items left behind. Did they belong to the people who left, or the ghosts who stayed?

We discovered the other house in the early 70's. On a double date, for some reason I was driving and not one of the boys, as would have been the usual back then. I parked my father's compact car at the end of a long driveway and turned off the headlights. All four of us, sixteen-year-olds, tip-toed along the darkened lane toward a house hidden by trees, while our eyes became accustomed to the night. We crept up the porch stairs and peered into the windows, but it was so dark we couldn't see inside. Then we heard something. I don't know what it was--don't remember--but it came from the house and I know we all heard it because we all leapt off the porch and ran as fast as we could back down the lane, shrieking and giggling, to tumble into my father's car and make our getaway to the lights of town.

The next day my father asked how the print of a large tennis shoe had ended up on the ceiling of his car.

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In case you missed it, we're having a contest here on the ol' PDP. It's called "Camelot Where You Are" and all the details are here on yesterday's post. Enter a photo of Camelot Where You Are to win a copy of my upcoming novel, 

"Camelot & Vine!"

Lincoln Heights: Art

There's art all over Lincoln Heights. Here's some of it.

We talked about Lincoln Park yesterday in the comments. I like this piece a lot, and not just because you can frame a tree with it. I like how the neighborhood rises beyond it, like its reason for being there.

If you turn around you see it's part of a larger artwork, The Wall las Memorias, the first publicly funded AIDS monument in the nation.

Roberta (Latino Heritage) mentioned this yesterday in the comments. You can see the horseshoe peeking out from behind it. It's actually not a horseshoe, but a design based on the AIDS awareness ribbon.

I don't know, do you call this art or architecture? Good architecture is art, after all. Maybe I should have put this in the architecture post from the other day. I like it a lot.

This mural has several panels. Karin posted another part, where the artists included pictures of themselves painting the mural. The whole thing is witty that way. I love how in this panel the artists incorporated the night deposit box as our hero's footrest.

I took a picture of the artist's signatures or I'd never remember that the mural was done in 1977 by Los Dos Streetscapers, David Botello and Wayne Healy, and renovated in 2006 by Paul Botello.

Unruly Posse

Sunday my friends and I traipsed about Pasadena and Altadena for the annual Theodore Payne Foundation Native Plant Garden Tour. I loved poking around the exquisite, private, drought-tolerant gardens.

It was educational. It was gorgeous. It was inspiring. And it was frustrating, because I can't show you any of it. At every garden we visited, photos were either not allowed or allowed for personal use only. I of course took photos for my personal use, but I'm much to chicken scrupulous to post them.

On the way back to our cars we stopped to peer at one last garden, which wasn't on the tour. Is that a great gate or what? It reminded me how glad I am not to live in a gated community tyrannized by muted colors or a homeowners association. The San Gabriel Valley is full of undiscovered Edens, tour or no tour. I hope the owner didn't mind us peeking in because we'd been nosy all day and we just weren't ready to stop.

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By the way, thanks to the Restless Chef for alerting me to the fact that my posts and those of other bloggers are being stolen by http://www.justpocketcamera.com. I'm trying to have a good attitude about it. justpocketcamera is one of those blogs where they steal content to try to get you to click on ads. I hold the copyright to my posts, which are published at http://pasadenadailyphoto.blogspot.com before http://www.justpocketcamera.com steals them. That's against the law, but try getting a sheriff and a posse on this here wild, wild internet.

If you'd like to be my posse, c'mon and join up. I'm not sure how to get them to stop, but maybe I'll see if I can come up with more bizarre word combinations than theirs. Your suggestions for messing with them are welcome. In the meantime, it's worth a look just to see their weird translations of the copy.

Gate, 1

I keep passing this gate on my walks with Boz and finally I caught it in the right light. I love that wisteria. I'm not crazy about the security company sign, but I guess when you have an entryway this pretty you have to protect it from people who just can't resist inviting themselves in.

Cold Confection

I came across this gate back in April, then came across it again last night while looking through my photo files. It's on the property that once belonged to the Merritt Mansion and is now part of the Ambassador Campus. When you step through the gate, a little stairway takes you from the lower garden to an upper garden. I posted about the Merritt upper garden last May, soon after I wandered there taking photos.

For those who don't want to click the links: industrialist Hulett C. Merritt was one of Pasadena's early millionaires. He built his mansion on Millionaires' Row in 1905 for a cost of $1,100,000. That gives you a general idea of how fancy the house was, and still is. It's a big, old wedding cake of a place, one of the few surviving mansions along Orange Grove Blvd. You don't normally notice it from the street, though, because it's flanked by a couple of modern buildings that were built by Ambassador College when it bought the property.

Those ill-conceived flanks look like giant ice cube trays, which conceal the wedding cake in their chilling shadows. But you can stroll on the property at Green Street and Orange Grove Avenue and discover this remnant of Pasadena's past for yourself. Do it soon; the property has been purchased. Changes will happen. Let's hope they won't be drastic unless, for example, ice cube trays are removed to reveal wedding cakes.

Wander far enough and you'll find this gate. Let it lead you to the gardens. It only takes a little imagination on your part to enjoy a glimpse of its heyday.

Did I mention I like archways? I think I mentioned I like archways.