VLVL(6) - Pepperdine and Coll. of the Surf

[David Casseres]

At 9:09 -0800 12/3/98, Kathleen Fitzpatrick wrote:
>At 7:23 AM -0800 12/3/98, Gary Thompson wrote:
>>Maybe Kathleen has a little closer view.
>
>Funny you should say this.  I've seen the Pepperdine campus -- astonishing
>views; these carefully manicured green lawns extending right to the edge of
>cliffs overlooking the Pacific; Malibu's a heck of a place -- but only
>once, and in passing.

I think of the pre-hippy realtor/potter I knew in Topanga Canyon (loosely,
part of Malibu) in the early 60's.  His name was Bob DeWitt, and his real
estate office was also a pottery shop and coffee house on Topanga Canyon
Road.  He'd been buddies with Will Geer and (I think) Woody Guthrie and had
a taste for folk music, but he would not listen to what he called
"mechanical music" by which he meant anything that came out of a
loudspeaker.  So he had to make friends with musicians and get them to come
play in his coffee house, which was the whole point of having a coffee
house.

Bob always knew Topanga Canyon was going to be developed some day, and his
realty activities had much to do with selling lots to the kind of people he
wanted for neighbors, people who might someday resist the tide of big fancy
houses, businesses, etc.  When he talked about it he would occasionally
burst into song with his paranoid anthem, pounding the flat of his hand on
the table to mark the rhythm:

	They came, up, Topang-a Can-yon,
	MARCHING FOUR ABREAST!!!!
	They had dollar-signs, painted, on their eyeballs!
	And they MAARCHED ALL OVER
		poor old,
			Bob,
				DeWiiiiiiiiiitt...

...wonder what happened to old Bob.... In my imagination, Pepperdine
University, which does indeed have those dollar-signs on its eyeballs, now
marches all over poor old Bob DeWitt's coffe house....

Cheers,
David