Thomas A. Goldenberg M.D. Written August 26, 2022 regarding the events of September 1971-June 1075. I apologize for any in accuracies, my memory is not what it used to be.
My Work on the Domes.
My time at UCD started in Hughes Hall, AKA Hughes Beckett. I came from West Los Angeles and I was kind of a low life in high school so I had no friends that were going to UCD. My friends from high school were pretending to go to junior college while they were just “hanging out”. Anyhow, my first two friends at UCD were Jan Naud and Peggy Matthews. Peggy and I had come from the same neighborhood but due to the dividing line for school districts, we went to different schools and thus did not know each other before UCD.
I started out as a science major with no particular area of interest and I was a bit overwhelmed by the college system of learning. Reading the textbook and doing the homework were new to me. I had seen people taking notes in a lecture but it was not something I had ever done.
Thanks to Jan, I learned how to be a student and learn in the college environment.
I drove an old VW van with a patchwork headliner and I thought I was kind of alternative and hippie. Not that I knew what that really meant. Anyhow, we had a natural food cafeteria in the dorm that served brown rice and other macrobiotic foods that I had never heard of but Peggy and Jan were eating there so I followed along.
Towards the end of the year, we saw a notice about a group that was getting together to build alternative housing. Well that sounded like what hippies would do so Jan and I decided to go. We were following Peggy who seemed to know what alternative hippies should be doing.
We had a meeting or two and we then met Ron and spent a day putting up a PVC pipe dome covered with a parachute and I was hooked.
As others worked with the University, Lynn Marchand, and all those people behind the scenes I was anxious to get started. Once things got rolling, and people were put on the mold, or the core unit, or the fiberglass crew, It seems I didn’t end up anywhere. I asked Ron, what do you want me to do, where can I fit in. Ron said someone needs to do a site plan, sewer , water and electrical drawings and installation of said items. I responded that I knew nothing about any of that. Ron said don’t worry, you’ll figure it out.
Well, I was worried and I went to Clay Brandow who was one of the few engineering students in our group. I told Clay about the task Ron had given me and my concern about lack of knowledge. Clay said, “ all you need to know about sewers is the sh_t rolls down hill” and the rest will fall into place.
The site plan started with how to lay out the 15 domes we were going to build. Talk about inflation, our budget was about $125,000. We had a corner of a wheat field that was across the street from married student housing. A flat patch of ground without a tree or plant in sight. It was summer and we did not realize how it would become a mud puddle when the rains came. We might have planned for some surfaced walk ways if we had thought ahead.
Anyhow, I came up with several options of how to lay out the 15 domes. The idea was to present the options to the group and vote to determine the plan we were going to utilize.
Well, I had just read JRR Tolkien’s trilogy and I wanted to live in middle earth and I named the various options after places in the trilogy. Not that I was trying to influence people but I named the one liked the best Baggins End and the one I least liked Mordor. Needless to say, Baggins End won and hence we all got to live in a place called Baggins End.
Once we had a site plan, we had to fill in all of the electrical, water and sewer lines. All of the had to approved by the UCD architect and engineers. I spent a lot of time riding my old beat up Schwinn Stingray bike between Tercero where we lived and the dome site and the old horse barn that housed the architects and engineers. As the plans developed, I would show them to Ron for his approval and then on the the Horse barn guys for their approval and stamp.
I remember one issue with the sewer system was clean outs. A “clean out” is a port( or opening) onto the system that will accommodate a cleaning rod to break up a blockage.
Well, the UCD architect did not think we had enough clean outs. I came back to Ron to report that all of the drawings had to be redrawn with more clean outs. Ron’s response was that I should take a cleanup and shove it up the architects nose and go with the existing drawings. I wanted everyone to be happy so I quickly redid the drawings and they got the stamp of approval.
Once we got down to digging trenches and actually laying pipe and wires, Clay Brandow was indispensable. Clay taught me how to use surveying equipment and all throughout the process kept reminding me that sh_t rolls downhill. I remember the guy from UCD who actually drove the backhoe to dig the trenches. Clay and I had calculated all of the slopes so the sh_t would roll downhill. I was busy telling the backhoe guy about all of my calculations and he told me that he didn’t need all of that fancy math. He understood the basic principle of sh_t rolls downhill and he had done this before so I should just stand back and let him work. Of course, I stood back and the sewer trenches came out perfect.
I am remembering an event that happened that first winter. As you all remember, it rained a lot that winter and we dealt with a lot of mud. During the worst of the rains and mud we had a sewer/water problem. Everyone assumed that we had messed up our installation of the underground water pipes and the sewer pipes. In the worst rain, I was trying to track down the problem and we dug a large deep hole at the corner of the property where the sign and mailboxes were. Everyone was assuming that we would find that we had made a mistake or shoddy workmanship, well our work was just fine and the problem was in the street with the Universities pipes. Whew!!
I got to know most of the domies that winter as I was also the go to guy when the toilets got clogged or any other plumbing issue. Most toilets drop the contents straight down into the main sewer pipe underneath the toilet. This design uses gravity to help move the load. Well, dues to the design of the Core Unit (which was a great design because it allowed us to position the Core Unit at any point around the dome thus working well with the site design and and the underground sewer and water lines) the toilets in the core unit had to send the load horizontally for a distance before dropping down into the main pipe. Once in the main pipe, Clay’s adage holds true: Sh_t flows downhill. Any how, I did a lot of plunging and snaking. But I did get to know most of the domies pretty well. We were an interesting mix of people and after 50 years we are still friends.
I am sure most everyone has fond or not so fond memories of our dome meetings. We had to discuss community issues and of course upcoming work days. I chaired quite a few of these meetings and given my lack of leadership skills at that time I’m not sure I did a vey good job. During my time in the Navy I heard a lot more about leadership. I wish I had had that train before those dome meetings. But we survived and the work did get done. We created a communal group that worked. We can all be proud of that. I may be the only one who remembers Mark Brandons participation in these meetings. He was always an active member in the meeting and after every discussion, Mark would say “I have just one more thing to say” It drove me crazy but now it is a fond memory.
The money that the university put up to build the domes was. $125,000.00. Based on the rents we paid, $50 per person, the pay back was amortized over 8 years. The University never thought that the domes would last that long. Here we are 50 years later and they are still standing and housing students. That $125,000 did get paid back.
Anyhow, from that day we put up the parachute dome, this group and this project remain a wonderful period of my life and I will cherish it forever.
Tom/Tommy
Thomas A. Goldenberg M.D. FACOG
