I was trying to recall how I got involved with Baggins End. Tim’s narrative brought a lot of memories flooding back. Days and nights at TB 9 doing art, that’s where I met Tim, in Bob Arneson’s class. Then the thing with the barn at 7th and C. My dog and I were renting the basement there for $50 a month. Tim had the barn on that property for a while. He got kicked out, I had to move to another basement (well, not because I preferred cave dwelling, just because basements usually went pretty cheap) out at the old “Le Gallery” on hwy 113 until that was condemned to make room for the highway 113 expansion.
Even though I was Tim’s “paper roommate” I ended up moving into Dome 9(?) with my old dorm friend Paul Riley. Lamont (my aforementioned dog) and I lived there for a while. I remember workdays building walkways to get us out of the mud and off the boards. I’m sure there are plenty of things I don’t remember as well.
At the time I was a student in the ABS dept .but was also working as a student manager at the Silo Craft Center managing the Jewelry, Ceramics and Woodwork shops. That’s where I met my future wife Susan Slover. She was an upholstery teacher and I was asked to help out in her class. We’ve been together almost 50 years now.
I worked at the Craft Center as a manager and then as a Ceramics teacher until 1975 when I received my B.S. degree. Susan and I moved to a few other places in Davis after my stay at the Domes then moved to Woodland .
We started a business in 1976 where I was building Custom Cabinets and Furniture and she was doing Custom Stained Glass as well as teaching Stained glass in Adult Ed and at the Davis Art Center. We bought a house in Woodland, lived in it for a few years, sold and bought a 1 acre place (fixer upper) about 4 miles west of Woodland back in 1982.
Our daughter Megan was born in ’82 and our son James Drew (JD) came along in 1986. We have had lots of Horses, Lambs, pigs, dogs cats and other critters, Still no grandkids. I doubt if Megan will ever have any but we hope JD and his partner will. We still live in the same place though it’s no longer a Fixer Upper. We built a shop for my woodworking in 1994, and a house for Megan to live in after she had a bad auto accident in 2002. She suffered a Traumatic Brain Injury and it took over a year to be able to walk and talk again. She still lives on the property and runs her own business as a balloon artist and entertainer, some of you locals may know her as “Dilly Dally the Clown”. She is also a therapeutic masseuse when she isn’t clowning around. JD lives in Sacramento and works for the state. His partner, Moriah, also works for the state and they are in the process of buying a house.
Susan went back to school at Sac State in the early 90’s and earned her Masters degree in Social work. She became an Executive Director at CHOC (Community Housing Opportunities Corp.) in Davis. She retired in 2015.
I switched gears and gave up the self employment gig and went to work in the computer software field in 1998 with a small brand known as Cabnetware, developed in Davis in the 80’s . The software was geared for cabinetmakers to design, layout and manufacture the cabinets. I was involved in Technical Support/Quality Assurance and Product Development. It went from a basic Design and layout software in DOS to being able to process parts on virtually any CNC machine.
The small software company was bought by larger and larger entities and by the time I left it was a part of a very large outfit, Hexagon Metrology. In 2016 they decided to continue development on a different software in their stable and were “sunsetting” the brand I worked on. I decided to retire a bit early (in 2017 at 64) take the severance they offered and continue supporting the customers that still wanted to use the old software. Usually they were older users that didn’t want to spend years learning a new brand of software. I’m still doing Consulting and support for a bunch of my old customers.
In May of 2021 Susan had a knee replaced. During the procedure her Femur was broken. Not a real common occurrence they said. They put some plates on it to stabilize it and sent her home. Several days later she was moving (on a walker like they said to use) from one room to another and we heard something snap and she fell over backwards. I was behind he and caught her but it turned out those plates they put in were not adequate and came loose. Another trip to UCD Med, another hospital stay and a much bigger titanium bar attached to her femur. She is still recovering from that. She still has limited mobility. We travel when we can and still enjoy living in our rural setting.
Currently we are drilling a new well to replace the shallow one that has served us so well for years. The old one was 120’ deep and has worked since we’ve been here(had to replace the pump twice). The new one is now being drilled, we are at 420’ and think we need to go deeper. Damn drought.
We are still doing well despite the setbacks. I still enjoy woodworking when I get the chance, cooking and traveling. Helping customers and other folks. I have been chairman of trustees at the United Methodist Church in Woodland for the last eight years taking care of that historic property.
I remember fondly the time I spent at Baggins End. I look at the campus now and see all the changes and marvel at the fact that the domes continue. I seem to remember hearing that it was temporary housing and was slated to last 10 years or so. Here we are at 50years and that community seem to be going strong.
