When We Were Kids

 When We Were Kids

 

<previous, Wrapping up the third archive

Two weeks ago I posted this curious piece from archive 2, a credits picture from the Lost Canyon Trip show. Who were these people? We'll find out, talk a little bit about Pete, and have a look at some paintings from the fourth archive.

I don’t know if I have the ability to give a stranger any idea of what Pete was like. The inevitable comparison to Van Gogh always arises. Pete made it himself. We always hear that Van Gogh was “mad”, but seldom hear in just what way.

I’ve described Pete Hampton as being wildly eccentric, a mad genius, and a tragic genius. Dion Wright called it a “divine madness.”

You knew that Pete was odd, or a little off within moments of meeting him. Pete was intense, passionate, dramatic. He was a highly talented mimic, and his speech was punctuated with sounds that he’d imitate. Pete would not just tell you about a California Thrasher, he would show you a picture, and give a perfect bird call. Wind, trains, frogs, coyotes, you name it, if Pete mentioned it, you’d hear it.

Sadly, a common misperception people got, was that Pete was mildly retarded. My parents, and their friends believed this at first.  Those who took the time to actually listen to Pete soon found out that, not only was he not retarded, he was scary smart.

 Pete had encyclopedic knowledge of natural history, meteorology, wildlife, local flora. I was reading some of his notes from the early 1960’s on non-native plant species in Southern California. They could have come from yesterday’s newspaper. 

 Pete’s talent, and intelligence were immanent with a pure and child-like love of nature.  But along with that, there were large swaths of his personality that seemed frozen in single digit years. We'll talk more about this in subsequent posts. 

But back to the picture. Who were these people?

Pete’s hut in the Whittier Hills was gone by the time he began work on the show in 1963. 

At that time the Hamptons lived in a tract home north of Whittier Boulevard, and just at the foot of La Habra Heights. Friends of ours, the Meade family, had recently moved in just a couple houses down. The Schell family lived across the street from the Meades. That summer, 1963,  my family came out to La Habra to visit the Meades. (That December we would move to La Habra)  That’s when I met Pete. We would soon become friends.

There was a  utility pole easement between the Meade’s house and their neighbors, the Einem’s house behind them. This made for a short-cut  through the two yards to get up to the Heights, and both families allowed Pete to pass through freely. They let Pete build a replica of his hut in the easement between the houses.

So,  Scott Schell, Brent Masters, Frank O'Donnel, Randy Einem , my brother, Ross, were all pre-teen neighborhood kids. Pete used Brent Masters, and Randy Einem as models for himself, and his friend Jeff in the paintings made for the show. They even had overnight camp-outs in the hut.

I did not participate in the camp-outs, but my brother, Ross did. I frequently spent the day with Pete going door-to-door trying to sell paintings in La Habra. Sometimes we’d get in his truck and drive out through Carbon Canyon. This when I was 11 and 12 years old.

Pete would have been 23 and 24.

I go back to Dee Gayer’s phrase, “Odd in a good way.” How many guys in their early twenties would have the patience to hang with kids half their age? And think of how finely tuned a parent’s instincts are when it comes to their children’s friends.  How many moms would let their nine year old kid hang out with a 24 year old? 

 None of our parents ever had a problem with us kids hanging out with Pete. Pete may have been a little odd, but there was goodness, and a genuine innocence at his core. Our folks just seemed to know this. 

We'll wind up this week's post with this small piece from the "Cloud Sketches" file. It is memorable, not so much for the incomplete image, but for the inscription on the back:

"You will forget at times that you [are] in a room in a chair and will assume you have actually lived in this story in a period of time. Like if you were reliving it, like in a dream. It may seem like you’ve been in this story for years in a timeless, endless place; instead of a mere two hours. When these feelings that we’re reaching for, that we don’t understand or know as I’ve found out. Proving that there is something greater, that God does know. all. This so deeply arouses our emotions, but what and why? Like if one were repenting, not clean and pure enough to fit in, but so badly wanting to get in. Maybe this is the closest step toward what heaven is like, that many people don’t see."

Next week: inscriptions>