Yep, the very same guy they named the long, twisty road after that runs across the mountains above L.A., Hollywood, and Beverly Hills. At its very end, it becomes a dirt road, just before the Pacific Ocean. In my Facebook photo spot, there’s a picture of me standing in front of my 1946, 22 ton, twelve wheel drive, UNIT, crane. The one I’ve been ripping my hair out trying to move for the last two months. It turns out, not only is it the last one of its kind in the world, it was also bought, brand new, by William Mulholland, to do some work on the Hollywood reservoir. Afterwards, Mulholland donated it to the city of Los Angeles. The city used it for twenty five years, then sold it at auction. My pal George Sack bought it, then, after fifteen years of me pestering him about it, I traded him my one-fiftieth steel truck collection, with a mini building to house them. A friend of mine did all the research. I finally read it all…Since most of the research didn’t have that much to do with me, naturally, I blew it off. Something about a phone switchboard caught my eye while I was looking for more stuff on me, the important one. Being a phone man, I knew I had to be part of the story. Nope. It wasn’t about me at all. It was about a tiny, nameless semi-retired woman who was ten times the person I’ve ever been…Seems Mulholland built the entire water networking system that brings water from the water rich Northern part of California, down to the parched, arid, semi-desert, Southern part of the state. Mainly, Los Angeles. He tapped into the Colorado River, the Owens Valley and the Sacramento River delta to obtain the water needed for the soon to be millions of people coming into the L.A. region. He built thousands of miles of concrete aquaducts, plus, reservoirs to hold the water as it traveled south. One such dam was in a canyon called San Fransisquito. Mulholland screwed up on this one. It had a broken off rock base he wasn’t aware of. Once it was completed and full of water, it started to leak. It was dirt ram construction with a cement shell. Not good. Now, under the shadow of this dam was an entire comunity of ranches, farms, small businesses, and, hundreds of tents for all the workers still in place who had built the giant project. Also, one old woman who ran the local phone switchboard from the living room of her tiny farm house. A small, 551 switchboard. The type with the cord pairs you see in the old movies with the gal wearing the 1920’s headsets that cover your entire head. She did it as a favor, plus, it gave her a sense of being part of the community. Along with her dog and cats, she also had a small burro for a pet. It was in the middle of the night when the dam broke. The entire contents of the vast dam, headed for the Pacific Ocean, miles away, in a thirty foot wall of water. Nothing was going to stop it. A rancher who lived just above the dam heard the sound of its collapse. He called and woke up his friend the switchboard gal to warn her. Being a few miles away, she had plenty of time to get out of harms way. That water would travel at about twenty five to thirty miles an hour. She was saved…No, saving herself wasn’t in this gal’s makeup. Staying at her switchboard, she calmly called everyone she could past her to warn them, right up until the wave of water crushed her into oblivion. Like the hundreds of others in the cascade of water, her body was never found…It’s people like her her that make me appreciate just how fine the human spirit can be…
