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BONNY DOON — Two weeks before the fire, Alberta and Peter Young celebrated their 66th wedding anniversary from the one-bedroom house that Alberta built herself, with hammer and handsaw, the year they married.
They counted their blessings that warm summer evening and watched the sun sink into the Pacific from the wrap-around deck they widened over the years to fit Alberta’s wheelchair, then his.
For years, their two daughters had urged them to move off the top of Empire Grade in the Santa Cruz Mountains and closer to town. Peter, who still carries a trace of the British accent of his youth, turned 89 in October. Alberta is 86. Neither could bear the idea of leaving.
Until one of the blazes from this record year of wildfire forced them to go. The tiny redwood cottage with the big picture window was one of nearly 1,500 structures destroyed in August by the CZU Fire that swept through the Santa Cruz mountains and into the towns of Bonny Doon and Boulder Creek.
The Youngs had lived on this gently sloping acre-and-a-half since 1954, when Alberta worked nights as a hat check girl at the Coconut Grove on the Santa Cruz Boardwalk and Peter ran a chicken ranch until he was hired on with the McCrary brothers at Big Creek Lumber. He spent evenings drilling for a reliable well on their property. It took 30 years.
On a recent fall afternoon, the couple drove up Alba Road to survey the mound of melted metal that once was home. The only thing standing was the 12-foot water tank Peter bought from the old Odd Fellow’s Cemetery, hauled up in two pieces and welded back together.
“It’s heartbreaking,” said Alberta, choking up.
“It’s OK, hon, don’t cry,” Peter said. “It’s hard to talk about what you don’t have anymore.”
A few days after the fire, a man at Costco with his young son offered to give the couple money. But Peter told them to donate instead to Valley Churches United, a food pantry in nearby Ben Lomond that had helped Peter and Alberta in the lean years of their retirement with gift cards and clothing in the disorienting days after the fire.
“I said, ‘You have a great daddy, but you have to give it to the churches,’” Peter said. “There’s somebody who needs it more than me.”
As part of our annual Wish Book, which seeks to raise money for the most vulnerable in our communities, Peter and Alberta hope that their story might inspire readers to donate to the organization that offered help when they needed it most.
After all, he said, they’ve lived a rich life on very little. They were just expecting, after nearly seven decades of love and struggle, to spend their twilight years in the warm womb of their hand-made home. At their age, with their ailments, can they start over?
Alberta first noticed him in 1952. He was petting her dog, a water spaniel named Blackie, on the back porch of her mother’s house on Broadway Avenue in Santa Cruz. At 5-foot-5, he was three inches shorter than she was, but he had a good build from throwing around hundred-pound sacks of chicken feed and a quirky sense of humor.
“Who’s that?” asked Alberta, a strawberry blonde home from her first year at Monterey Peninsula College.
He was a friend of her brother who raced with him at fledgling NASCAR tracks in Salinas and worked pit crew on weekends. After surviving The Blitz in London during World War II, Peter had immigrated as a teenager with his mother and younger brother.
When he offered to help Alberta wash the dishes and came around to fix his mother’s stove, she was hooked. They’d sit out in the back of her mother’s Victorian that still has the twin palms out front and talk ‘til 2. They dreamed of sailing to exotic places.
They eloped to Reno.
“You’re both so stubborn,” her mother said. “It won’t last.”
“We’re both too stubborn to give up,” Alberta told her.
They found the Bonny Doon property not far from the chicken ranch, Lot 29 in the wooded and winding Summit Park subdivision. It was covered in poison oak so tall they didn’t realize until they pulled it all out — and suffered weeks for it — that they had a view of the Pacific and the ships passing by. They lived in a 12-by-12 foot shack on the property with no electricity or water while Alberta worked on the main house. Peter built an outhouse. They trucked in water.
As Peter worked his way up at Big Creek Lumber, from ratchet setter to sawyer to supervisor, Alberta designed the 600-foot cabin and took direction from a retired carpenter who offered to help. “He wouldn’t climb a ladder and he wouldn’t pick up a hammer,” she said. “He sat in a rocking chair. If I got fouled up, he would tell me.”
She mixed the cement for the foundation and put up the framing with clear, kiln-dried redwood Peter brought home from the mill.
During the flood of 1955 when they were still living in the shack and rain poured through the roof onto the bed, Alberta thumb-tacked long sheets of wax paper to the ceiling and funneled the runoff to the floor. Before they could afford the glass for the picture window, Peter cut off the roof of an old car, installed it in the window frame, and cut a hole for the pipe of the wood stove.
“I really have a good wife, I can tell you that,” Peter said. “She put up with all this hillbilly stuff.”
While Alberta worked nights at the Coconut Grove, Peter spent his evenings digging for water, every 10 feet on the property. He struck granite each time. He soon became known in the neighborhood as “Dry Well Young.”
After attempts with dynamite and water witching, he finally hired a drilling company that got down 190 feet, but the well ran dry every summer. It wasn’t until the 1980s, and 562 feet down, that they hit a good well.
The living room doubled as a nursery, first for their daughter Annette, then Kimberly three years later.
Their daughters were nearly teenagers when they made plans to fulfill their dream of sailing. Peter bought a 34-foot hull and hand-built the cabin, decking and rigging. They locked up the redwood cabin and, on a boat named Turtle, set sail for Mexico, then the Panama Canal and up the Eastern Seaboard.
They fished for their meals and for nearly five years at sea, lived on $2,600 a year. Peter worked his way through the Caribbean building ship refrigerators with old Tecumseh compressors. The girls took correspondence classes and Alberta taught them to use a sextant for navigating by stars.
Travelers they met along the way had sold everything for their dream, but not the Youngs.
“I couldn’t do that,” Alberta said, her voice breaking. “I always wanted a home to come home to.”
Their sailing days ended when Alberta broke her leg tripping on stairs. It never properly healed. Back home, Peter worked maintenance jobs into his 60s, until his heart gave way and he needed surgery. He had trouble with his legs, too, but he still managed to tinker in the house and yard.
Their daughter, Annette, moved into a trailer on the property to help care for them.
They enjoyed their days watching the birds and squirrels fight over the bird feeder and deer wander by through the big picture window. A magnificent madrone tree kept the house in shade.
The couple lived on social security, which didn’t amount to much. They paid their bills, but sometimes found themselves short. With Valley Churches United’s aid, they could stretch their budget from time to time with free groceries.
“It’s hard to get by,” Peter said. “They’ve helped us a lot.”
The night of the fire, with help from their daughters, Peter and Alberta and their dog and cat escaped to Kimberly’s house in nearby Felton. But Kimberly’s house was also evacuated, and the couple spent three days sleeping in their van before they settled into a hotel.
They are back with Kimberly now, in her garage that has been renovated into a living space. For the first few days, water didn’t run from the kitchen sink. But that’s nothing for this couple who lived with so little water for so long they often ran out in the middle of showers.
Valley Churches United, like they have with so many fire victims, has come to their aid again, with gift cards, food, furniture and a reclining chair. Since Alberta’s electric wheelchair burned in the fire, she is using Peter’s, which then leaves Peter with Alberta’s walker to use. Valley Churches is hoping to help with that.
“Here they are losing everything, but you could see their spirit,” said Lynn Robinson, Valley Churches director. “We’re not FEMA or the Red Cross. We’re just this human, down-to-the-ground nonprofit. We’re known for ‘how can we help you?'”
Peter is adamant that others need more help than they do. He has insurance that will cover the house, although not the contents.
“We’re going to lose a whole lot,” Peter said, “but not as much as someone who has no insurance.”
These last weeks have been difficult. Without the house and property, Peter is anxious without a project to work on and he worries that his deep well might be contaminated with melted plastic.
“They are doing remarkably well,” Kimberly Clark said, but “it’s hard seeing your parents scared of the unknown.”
Her parents want to rebuild, but Kimberly isn’t so sure it’s the right thing. Can they handle the stress? With so many trees burned, the lot won’t look the same. An architect suggested leveling the property.
“They just want it back the way it was and that’s not going to happen,” Kimberly said. “I just want them to be happy. If it doesn’t feel to them like something warm and cozy anymore, I don’t know what they’re going to do.”
But Peter and Alberta are stubborn. They will still have their sunsets over the Pacific, and with the trees below them burned, maybe they’ll be able to watch the ships going by again, too.
“We’re definitely going to rebuild,” Alberta said. “I won’t be carrying the hammer, but we’ll rebuild for sure.”
THE WISH BOOK SERIES
Wish Book is an annual project of The Mercury News that invites readers to help their neighbors.
WISH
Donations will help Valley Churches United support wildfire fire victims with food, gift cards, gas cards, and rental, mortgage and utility assistance as well as aid in long-term needs for people who have to rebuild. Goal: $30,000
HOW TO GIVE
Donate at wishbook.mercurynews.com or mail in the coupon.
ONLINE EXTRA
Read other Wish Book stories, view photos and video at wishbook.mercurynews.com
