This photo is from the front of Dome 14, looking west, circa winter 1975. Tim is wearing his usual garb and my hands are bandaged from immersion in carburetor cleaning fluid from blindly helping Tim work on his ’64 BMW.
During the summer of 1973, I was looking for a more affordable place to live than Ivy Towne Apartments. Mike Murphy, whom I had met in TB-9 ceramics class, turned me on to a barn in downtown Davis that he thought I might be able to rent. It was behind the house in which Mike was basement-living. I renovated the upstairs of the barn to hold a bed, a fish tank, a camp stove, and a 5-gallon bucket toilet. While the $60/month rent was very appealing, the porta-potty bathroom and showers from the outside cold-water hose left something to be desired. To further reduce my rent, I began subletting portions of the barn to two individuals, a wood-carving artist and a mechanic. Once the barn’s owners learned I was actually living there, not to mention subletting, I was quickly evicted. Winter was approaching.
Having met Mark Brandon in class, I shared my lament with him about having to move out immediately and not having a place to stay. Mark offered that I could crash on the couch in Dome 15, in which he and Jon Spencer were living. This arrangement worked well for me, but I still needed to find a more permanent place by the end of the quarter. Fortuitously, Mark then decided to take a break from school, which gave me the opportunity to move into his vacated bedroom and utilize his rental agreement.
While living in Dome 15, I met Fred Stevens, who lived next door in Dome 14. Since the housing department required 2 people per dome, Fred needed a paper roommate so that his non-student girlfriend, Geraldine, could be his second person. I became Fred’s paper roommate. At the end of that school year, Fred and Geraldine moved off campus, at which point I moved into Dome 14, fulfilling my paper roommate status.
I now was in a position of needing a real or paper roommate. Mike Murphy became my paper roommate so that my girlfriend, Sandy, who is now my wife of 43 years, could share dome life with me. This arrangement lasted until the end of Winter quarter ’75, when I graduated.
With my Behavioral Physiology degree in hand, I moved to Encinitas to raise tropical fish with a fledgling company, Solar Aquafarms. In 1976, after nearly a year of bare-sustenance living, and a month-long desert trip withSandy, I moved back to Northern California. Sandy and I got a flat in Sacramento within walking distance from her job at the Capitol. I worked as a groundskeeper for Los Rios Community College District, then for U.C. Davis, and then Cal Expo.
After all these changes, I decided to start my own landscape business, which we ran for 5 years, with Sandy also getting her Masters in Social Work. During those years, we had a son, Tyson, and Sandy was in a major accident with a drunk driver. These family challenges plus the difficulties inherent in supervising sometimes unreliable employees culminated in me deciding to return to school. I earned a Masters Degree in Plant Protection and Pest management in 1988, while also becoming a father again to our daughter, Maya.
Sandy worked as a medical social worker and retired in 2012. I worked for U.C. Extension for 2 years, then began working with Monsanto, which at that time enabled me to work with farmers on integrated pest management. After 27 years, and many company changes, I gladly retired in 2016.
Both our kids are happily married, and we have 5 grandchildren, all of whom we see often. Sandy and I traveled extensively until I had a bizarre accident in 2020. Stepping in a 2+ foot deep, leaf-covered hole abraded my spinal cord and herniated multiple discs, resulting in two major surgeries, from both of which I’m still recovering.
Our passion for plants, gardening, and the outdoors has been continuous, and has spilled over to our children.
