Part 3: Rooster on the Dung Pile
When the family returned to Summerland, they took up residence in the remodeled house on Pierpont Avenue. Becker, seeing that oil was a more profitable business than jewelry in the area, switched hats. He took over Williams wells, bought back the other two thirds of the enterprise from Agnes’ step children, Harry and Edith Bea, and became an oil producer.
With her five daughters and one son, Becker was quoted as saying, “How I love being the only rooster on the dung pile.” He was the rooster, but what the dung equated with is unclear.
Agnes’ son Worsley came and went, but when he was in town, he worked the fields with his new step-father. The two men worked well together, creating a more economical method for pumping oil, and then a water softening system that significantly reduced the amount of cleaning required for the boilers.
By 1900 there were 12 wharves extending into the ocean, 22 operating companies, and 412 operational or exploratory wells in Summerland. Complaints from over the hill increased, and acts of vandalism began to occur. Literal wrenches were thrown in the works, concrete was poured down open wells, and a new refinery on top of Ortega Hill was burned to the ground. J. Paul Getty, who came to town in 1903 to drill and produce oil, was one of the firms chased out. He had no patience with the vandalism.
At home, Agnes’ daughters were married off one by one. Her daughter Caro, a noted violinist, married Roger Clerbois, a Belgian pianist. Emma Morgan and Harry Williams Jr. married and had a daughter, Agnes Strickland Williams. She was called Carmen or Buttons. That marriage didn’t last, and neither parent wanted custody of Carmen so George Becker, since she was included in Harry Williams’ will, adopted Carmen in order to retain the Williams inheritance.
Only Nona never married.
The family also sold off much of the Ortega Rancho during these years. The homestead was sold to Francis Underhill in 1907. Underhill pulled the 25-year-old farm house down and erected his own mansion on the existing foundation. However, a few weeks before completion, the new house burned to the ground.
Making Room
The house at 108 Pierpont was never quite big enough for Becker’s pile of dung. Agnes’ family was large, and now there was Carmen. In 1910, Becker and Agnes decided to remodel the twenty-year old house.
The couple added a second story and enlarged some of the downstairs rooms. Thomas E. Nixon, a hard-working, no-frills Santa Barbara architect was hired to complete the work. The building contractor was Robert W. Robertson. Finish carpentry, of which some elements still remain, was Mr. Kempton. Interior hand-painting, again some portions of this remain, was done by Mr. Craig. (Mr. Craig lived with the family for a time during the renovations and fell for Nona. Nona did not have similar feelings for him.)
Nixon faced the structure with concrete instead of wood to make it more weather-resistant and impressive. In the interior, Charles E. Sutphin built the staircase. Hardwood oak floors were installed from Union Mill and Lumber in Santa Barbara. The sun porch and fireplace tiling was imported from the east coast. The finished home supposedly had a ‘mysterious’ fireplace and a secret door.
The mysterious fireplace had handmade tiles designed and kilned by Ernest Batchelder of Pasadena. A panel of four tiles showed the view of the islands from the site of the house, and then scattered amongst the other tiles, a series of Dutch-style ceramics . Batchelder’s tiles were made from 1909 until the firm fell victom to the Depression in the early 1930s. The tiles were extremely popular during the Arts and Crafts movement and ended up in hundreds of homes and businesses across the United States. The beautiful fireplace at 108 Pierpont in Summerland has been preserved and remains in the house today.
Nixon also encased the open water tower at the rear of the property, providing servant quarters on the first floor. The Chinese cooks lived here, but the Beckers lost help due to frequent overflows in the tank above. Water would flush down the walls and drench everything in the room downstairs. After a few soakings, the cooks would move on to another gig.
On the exterior, not to be outdone by Nixon and his contractors, George Becker designed a terraced garden held in place with river stone walls. The stone work matched the exposed river stone foundation walls.
At the back of the house upstairs, along Hardinge Avenue, a carriage door opened. In the early days, a carriage could be kept in the space. Later, autos could be kept there. Later still, owners found a generous quantity of coal waste piled beneath it, so it was also the point of ingress and storage for coal deliveries for some years.
Becker kept his office in the low-ceilinged basement in the front of the house. A separate door opened off the office to the eastern, or Summerland, side of the house.
Death and Taxes
The end of the onshore oil industry in Summerland came in two waves. The first occurred at the turn of the century with a drop in oil prices. According to Michael Redmond, peak production of 20,000 barrels occurred in 1899. Storm damage to the offshore piers in 1903 and ’07 destroyed expensive infrastructure. However, construction of, and production from, beach facilities continued through the 1920s.
This came to an end in the early 1930s, however, with the completion of the protected Santa Barbara harbor. Max Fleischmann, Fleischmann Yeast heir and adventurer, had arrived in Santa Barbara in the mid-1920s, and began at once to promote a man-made harbor along the Santa Barbara coast. Summerland oil men fought the plans from the outset, concerned that a harbor would drastically alter the coastal flow of sand and make the hundreds of wells installed on offshore wharves vulnerable.
The Santa Barbara harbor went in anyway, the fortunes of Summerland too distant to be credible. Completed in 1930, the harbor immediately stalled the flow of sand to the east. A vast quantity of sand built up to the west of the harbor. Then, as it reached the corner of the rock wall, it began to pass around the harbor and wrap back inside on the eastern end, creating a large sandspit.
In the harbor, dredges were eventually employed to remove the accumulating sand. To the east, in Summerland, beaches eroded away and the oil derrick wharves were pummeled by invasive surf. Over a period of a few months, one by one, the derricks crashed into the ocean. The jagged metal supports of a few of the rigs are still visible above the high tide line today.
Perhaps as a result of the demise of oil in Summerland, George Becker passed away on Christmas Day, 1932. He left the home and oil proceeds of the Summerland Oil Company to eight heirs – his wife Agnes, her six children, and his adopted daughter, Carmen. Charles Ford of Summerland was executor of the estate.
The big house became the abode of Agnes and her daughter Nona, who cared for her. Then Agnes passed away July 28, 1934 and Nona kept on alone for many years. A nephew, Clifford Knecht, and then her mother’s sister Julia, came to stay in the 1960s. But Clifford returned East in 1964 and Julia died a year later.
It was during these years that Spiritualism evaporated from Summerland. The faith was largely extinct across America, dying out in the upswing in national mood following World War I. But it had lingered in Summerland. The last gathering of Spiritualists took place in 1950 at the Liberty Hall, just down the street from Nona’s home.
The next year, Liberty Hall, the Darling Brothers Machine Shop, and a handful of other homes and businesses were razed for the construction of the new 101 freeway. The Spiritualists broke camp in Summerland and took their meetings to a hall on Garden Street in Santa Barbara where they continue to meet to this day. Known as the Spiritualist Church of the Comforter, their statement of principles include:
4. We affirm that the existence and personal identity of the individual continue after the change called death.
5. We affirm that communication with the so-called dead is a fact, scientifically proven by the phenomena of Spiritualism.
Back at the house, Nona remained living there alone accepting very few visitors until 1969. She was 91. Her demise started with a fall from a ladder in which she broke her hip. She wanted to remain in the house and so Carmen came to stay with her. But when Nona attacked a visiting physician with her cane, Carmen placed her in a rest home.
For the first time in many years, no one was living in the house. Charles Ford, executor of Becker’s will, advised selling the house to pay for Nona’s care. The sale took place in 1971. Four years later, Nona would die at the age of 97.
Yellow Paint
We’re now deeply into the story of Summerland and the house at 108 Pierpont. And only now does the large rectangular structure get a coat of yellow paint.
The home was purchased by John and June Young from Carpinteria. June Young, with her first husband Patrick McKeon, were the impetus behind the successful roadside attraction, Santa Claus Lane, a few miles down the road. Working together at The Harbor Restaurant after the war, she as a waitress and he as a valet, they saved their tips and opened a juice stand along the Coast Highway in 1948.
As 101 was built during 1951, they expanded. They got the county to designate their segment of the old Coast Highway as Santa Claus Lane and added a date stand and then built a trading post. They soon had a North Pole play area that included a refrigerated play area, a miniature train, a petting zoo, a penny arcade, a carousel, and a magic shop. The magic shop eventually became the Toyland toy store. But in 1966, a partner they brought in to help them expand fleeced them and they had to auction off their interest. A divorce seemed to come with the package.
Regrouping, June married John Young, a mechanical engineer from Carpinteria who was the head of Quality at Port Hueneme. June convinced John to sell off some of his ranch property in Carpinteria and buy rental properties. Then in 1971, she saw the large, grayish house in Summerland up for sale. Bright paint and colorful signs had pulled travelers in off the road at Santa Claus Lane, and they would do the same in Summerland.
Or almost. Roadside signage was already limited by the early 1970s, and so according to her daughter, Jeri Spencer, June painted the prominent house a “bright garish yellow” with a bright orange roof and yellow-and-orange awnings. Summerland was shocked. Spencer remembers outraged letters to the editor about the eyesore.
June courted restauranteurs to lease the space. She found a good candidate in James Cunningham, owner-operator of the Green Gables, a French restaurant in Santa Barbara. Cunningham had launched Green Gables initially at 2710 De La Vina, the current site of Edomasa, in 1956. A year later, he moved to 3304 State, the current site of First Bank at the corner of Las Positas, gaining higher visibility in a fast-growing area of town, and much improved parking.
Cunningham signed a lease with the Youngs in 1971 and refitted the house in Summerland with a professional kitchen and waitress stations. The basement was converted to a wine cellar. Bathrooms were left as they were, the upstairs bathroom designated for men, downstairs for the ladies. Opening as The Green Gables, the new restaurant was not the success Cunningham had hoped for. Two years later, when his lease lapsed, he bowed out.
Marketing West, a subsidiary of Sam Battistone’s Invest West, bought the lease. They brought in a management team of Don and Kathi Turner. Don Turner had helped launch Red Lobster Inns and owned Railroad Restaurant in Orlando, Florida. They worked closely with Marketing West VP George Bevliaqua and his wife, Kaye. The Bevliaquas came up with the notion of single-entrée family-style dining as they sat around the dinner table one night. Other changes introduced for the new restaurant were a full bar and a basement wine and gift shop in George Becker’s old Summerland Oil company office.
The restaurant was closed for renovations, and reopened on Tuesday, June 19, 1973 as The Big Yellow House. The restaurant hit a chord with food- and nostalgia-hungry travelers. It was just like going to grandmother’s, except there was no clean-up afterwards. As one patron from the old days remembered it, “First thing was to weigh the kids, different weights different price. No menu. Big salad in a big bowl. Two kinds of dressing on the table. Three choices of main entrée – chicken, beef, maybe fish. A big bowl of mashed potatoes, a bowl of gravy, a big side dish of maybe corn. Almost forgot soup – chicken noodle or clam chowder. Iced tea or soda or coffee. No booze. Two choices of dessert. All food was hot and now.”
Initially only fried chicken was offered as an entrée. Additional entrées were added as the demand arose, pot roast, turkey, and eventually a fish. The bar came and went at different times under different managers.
It was during these early years that Rod Lathim worked at the restaurant. Lathim, at the age of 15, told restaurant manager Don Turner that the gift shop could be doing better. Turner challenged Lathim to sign on and make it happen. For the next four years, Lathim ran the gift shop, making it a popular and profitable part of the restaurant’s public persona. Lathim would later write the book, The Spirit of the Big Yellow House, with his sister Kim, who also worked at the restaurant.
Ghost Stories
Spirits and Summerland are united like lath and plaster. Lathim’s book was the first public acknowledgement that many people claimed to have ghostly experiences in The Big Yellow House. The book was sold in the gift shop and a synopsis of the home’s history, including a brief description of the home’s spirit presences, was included on the back of the menus.
Lathim encountered a presence in the cellar gift shop whom he called Hector. According to Lathim, Hector was a “playful, rambunctious personality. He made noises, moved things, hid things, turned lights on and off and ran about the low-ceiling, cavernous rooms of the cellar.” Hector’s presence drove Lathim’s curiosity about the house and he began researching the home’s history. He also began asking gift shop patrons about their own memories and experiences of the home. One patron, Thelma Morgan Clark, had lived in the house as a child. She verified Lathim’s experience of Hector, responding to his queries, “Oh yes, he was here when we lived here.” She described Hector exactly as Lathim knew him.
But there were other, more potent spirit encounters. According to John Griffin who began research into the other-worldly events at the house during the 1970s, managers and staff reported a host of events. “Huge, heavy stainless steel vats – used to whip up the copious amounts of honey-butter served with the restaurant’s famous cornbread – sat on the floor in the kitchen. Members of the cooking staff reported that the vats would sometimes take on a life of their own and careen across the floor, like something out of The Sorcerer’s Apprentice in Walt Disney’s Fantasia.”
But one of the upstairs dining rooms was particularly problematic. Staff said it was impossible to keep the room warm, regardless of the temperature through the rest of the house. Tips were smaller in this room. Customers often asked to be moved.
During one of Griffin’s visits to the house, he ran across a medium he knew, Elizabeth Huffer. He asked Huffer to join him in the problem room. According to Griffin, Huffer said that she had seen “a huge black man conducting a ritual in the room area, attended by other spirits. She described the black man as truly a giant.”
This sounded like the giant black man contacted in the early 1890s by Harry Allen, the notorious drunken medium of Summerland. Griffin states that Allen often participated in séances at the Norton house at 108 Pierpont Avenue. This was entirely possible since Liberty Hall, where public séances could be held, was not built until 1892. On one occasion, according to Griffin, an attendee asked for physical evidence of the spirit’s size. “He then felt an unseen hand closing around his head, so huge that the heel of the hand touched the top of one of his ears while covering the ear on the other side.”
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