The Lightning Tower Revisited

 The Lightning Tower Revisited,

and on to the Lost Canyon...

<previous,"Tying the Broken Strand"

 

Well, here again is the picture of Pete at the electric tower in La Habra Heights, only this time we’ll get the whole story from Dee Gayer.

Richard had found this photograph, along with a few others, and sent it along to me for the blog, here. Shortly after I received the pictures I got a phone call from Dee. I had not seen Dee since sometime in the 1970’s.

Dee and I were talking about the swarm of coincidences that has surrounded this project from the start. As I wrote earlier, I wondered who had taken the photo of Pete at the tower. Dee then related this story:

 Dee Gayer writes:

"One day Pete picked me up and we drove up to La Habra Heights, where he proceeded to park facing an electrical tower about 75 yards in front of the car. I asked what we were doing, and he told me the tower was going to get hit by lightning. We walked around for a few minutes. I told him he was crazy because there was not a cloud in the sky.

So we sat in the car and just talked and waited. Pete said that it was safer being in the car because it had rubber tires. Mind you there was barely a cloud in the sky, but I had nothing else to do so we sat there and had a couple of Pabst Blue Ribbon beers and chatted. An hour or so went by and a few clouds began to appear. Then a lone lightning bolt dropped down from the clouds and hit the tower with a thundering explosion.

I looked at him and said “Holy shit!”

Pete calmly looked at me and said, “Told you”. The chances of that happening to anyone are infinitesimal. You have a better chance of winning the lottery. Unless, of course, you were with Peter.

Another day I drove to Pete's parents' house, where he was living, and found him digging under the car seats looking for something. Being the friend I was I proceeded to open the other door and knelt down and started digging around also. I asked him what we were looking for and he looked up and me and very matter of factly said, “tarantulas”. I have never vacated a location so fast. He then explained that he had a bag of them in his back seat, and it fell over, and they had escaped. You just really never knew what to expect from Peter.

One of the biggest things we worked on together was saving the “Lost Canyon”..."
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We'll begin talking about Pete's master work, "The Lost Canyon Trip" next week, and we'll hear more from Dee Gayer, who frequently assisted Pete with the live showings. 

Here's a preview. These paintings are from a very old box wrapped in newspaper, and labeled "Pictures From Lost Canyon and Part Two"

"Me climbing up to the "W" on hilltop

 Next week: Into the Lost Canyon>