The tower was never supposed to stand forever. One day, while I was standing at the very top of the tower, taking a break from nailing up the roof supports for the third floor of ‘A’ wing, an odd thing happened. It has happened many times in my life, so, I wasn’t that surprised. A feeling of sadness came over me, just as I was exulting on how fantastic it would be to live in this tower and be able to finally be happy for ever. A quick mental image shot through my mind. It sort of said, “No Kim, this isn’t about you. Its not to be”! I felt like a balloon that you slowly let the air out of. Huh? After all this work? All the things I had done to come this far? Sneaking ninety foot glue lams over the 138 at three in the morning from a San Pedro Naval pier that was being demolished. Finding ways to get said beams up into the air sixty foot? Why? Jackie of the mountain filled me in when I went to cut her weeds the next day for the money she had lent me to buy more steel and threaded stock to beef up the tower for earthquakes. She’s in her nineties. Has lived at the base of our mountain in a tiny hand made shack for fifty years. She’s French, but went to the death camps with her Jewish neighbors because her father hid Jewish friends and his next door neighbor turned them in to the Gestapo. She escaped from Dachau. She was 17 years old. None of her family made it. She’s sort of a psychic. You can barely make out what she says her French dominates when she speaks. Any how, I was cutting weeds to pay her back for the money owed. She came out with a glass of water, then tells me this. “Yous’e mad aboots zee tree hoose heh?” I set down my weed eater, drink the water and stare at her. She continues. “Eeets not about you, stupid, eets for helping the odeers?” She takes the glass back then slaps me across the face lightly before going back into the shade to sit with her old dogs…