“I kind of feel like I’ve been put in storage,” Alice looked up at me from her wheelchair as we sat by the parking lot of the Northridge Care Center. Her beaming smile of love that she almost always wore across her face faded as she spoke. The last rays of sun shot through the apartment buildings on the other side of Reseda Blvd creating a golden line around her hair. We had come out of the rehabilitation facility to feel the warmth of the sun and get some air. I had just met her in a room that she shared with three people, one of them was almost as excited to see me as she had been.
“It makes me happy to see you all grown up and everything,” her smile reformed. “I remember you were kind of a really sweet kid, and you were kind of curious, you know?”
Like many canyon kids my age, Alice had been my babysitter when I lived on Hillcrest, off Fernwood, some forty years ago. I couldn’t remember too much about our time together, but the warmth and unconditional love of that kindhearted smile was somehow engraved in my memory and seemed pleasantly familiar, like receiving a hug from an old friend. I remembered she had a magical quality: the ability to break the invisible barrier between children and adults. Magically, once our parents left for the evening, she became one of us.
Barbies vs. Troll Dolls
Alice has had a life-long battle with Spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia congenita. “Basically, my cartilage is too soft,” she explained. “My joints became really misshapen. You also don’t develop good bearings and gaskets, so to speak. I didn’t grow to full height because the vertebrae are compressed and they’re too soft.”
Tim Vickers, Alice’s dad, had the same genetic mutation. As a young man, he spent seven years in Yosemite as a porter and doing odd jobs. Any chance he could get, he would immerse himself in nature. “Yosemite was kind of like his savior, you know, it just gave him inspiration and life and it was his spiritual place.”
Topanga became Tim’s “little Yosemite.” He bought a one-room cabin on Observation Drive, with a “lean-to kitchen.” He would raise his three children there with Pat, Alice’s mom. Alice remembers her mom carrying her around when she was in a full body cast. She felt hot and itchy in the cast when she would lay by a window where the sun would come through. Her siblings would run through the house with her crutches, shooting away like they were rifles, but she couldn’t join in. Alice told me her sister was obsessed with Barbie. But Alice preferred Troll Dolls. They had long hair, big smiles, and a “fairy-tale element to them.”
The Swing
Although Alice had physical challenges, that never stopped her from being a true Topanga kid. Her childhood growing up on Observation Drive shaped her life view. “I’m so grateful for the opportunity. I was kind of an explorer, an observer.”
I began feeling more connected to Alice, as she spoke of her youth. Although we were different in many ways, underground, our roots were entwined.
She would gather with the neighborhood kids and venture into “another world,” becoming weightless, suspended above a steep rocky ravine, time would stop. She would spend hours down there, no houses, just a long rope swing that extended thirty feet over the creek. While soaring over this dreamland she would forget everything, her earthly responsibilities as well as her physical limitations. “When I came out of there, I was coming back into reality. It just made you feeI better. I was disconnected from everything.” Like her father, she felt most alive when immersed in nature, disconnecting from the hustle and bustle of daily life by connecting with the raw power of Topanga.
Woolly Bear and the Topanga Surfers
Alice’s adventures did not stop at the swing. When she was fifteen, neighbor Bob Denver, the star of Gilligan’s Island, sold her a furry pony they named Bear. He was named after the thick coated woolly bear caterpillars, which one can find crossing the Topanga trails in the fall.
“He was my guy,” Alice remembered. When she would soar through the air on Bear, she felt as though she was on that swing, total freedom. Alice rode Bear all around the canyon, even down to the Alpha Beta, which is now Gelsons, in Calabasas. “People were amazed to see me ride that pony, because I did have some limitations.”
On Bear, Alice could do anything. Once she decided to ride down to the beach with an adventurous friend, named JJ. They rode over “Bus Hill,” now known as Tuna Canyon Park, and down to the beach. The local surfers, who used to inhabit the houses along Topanga beach, before they were destroyed, were amazed that these Topanga girls rode all the way down the mountain. They greeted the travelers and offered them water. At dusk the girls rode along the beach, played in the waves, and then had dinner at a spaghetti restaurant that eventually became Cholada’s, before camping out along the coast.
Straddling a Stegosaurus
The two young explorers conversed with the locals and discovered there was a trail from the Rodeo Grounds, a community that once existed at the mouth of Topanga Canyon, up to Moonfire Ranch, an epic property impossibly perched on the mountaintops overlooking the Pacific. This path, which Alice recalled as “really hairy,” would be their way home. As they climbed the mountain it became steep and treacherous, the sun pounded down on the girls and their beasts. JJ had brought her dog, Teddy, along with them. At one point they had to dismount, as they crossed what reminded Alice of the back of a giant Stegosaurus. The five of them carefully traversed over immense boulders staring down at one-hundred-foot-high drop offs. As they finally neared their destination, JJ’s exhausted dog collapsed from the heat and had to be dragged up the hill, but Moonfire Ranch was in sight.
Alice’s smile was wider than ever as she told me the story. We had to interrupt the interview and move as someone was wheeled by on a gurney. As I looked at her in her wheelchair, humbled by a string of recent injuries, and using headphones that allowed her to hear my words, it gave me great pleasure to imagine her in the prime of her youth, with Bear, up on that ridge, head-to-head with the rough Topanga terrain.
Bony Bananas and Sugar Cubes
Exotic animals roamed the territory known as Moonfire Ranch. Alice remembered Bony Bananas, the camel, white peacocks, and a llama. The eccentric owner of the ranch, Louis Marvin, had once had a restaurant on Topanga Canyon Blvd. Alice’s dad, Tim, once commented on the signs, which read, “Love animals don’t eat them” and “God is alive and well on a sugar cube.” As they neared the ranch, a caretaker, who she believed was named Tangerine, told them that they were trespassing on private property and would have to turn around and head back. Dismayed by the news the girls froze with disbelief. How could this man be so cruel? Moments later, Louis himself appeared, recognized the girls and told Tangerine to go fetch them some water.
At age twenty, she had to let Bear go. “He was most definitely my pal, you know, he took me places.”
Alice decided to give Bear to her sister, who taught kids how to ride. But when she led him up to the trailer, he wouldn’t get in. That was really hard on Alice, she knew that he didn’t want to part ways with her. “My hips were never real happy all the time I was riding him,” she told me. “I’m grateful I could have that amount of time.”
Radiating out Into the World
Alice’s smile touched many kids in the canyon. She taught Chantal von Wetter how to brush her hair. Alice remembers chasing Lexi Pearl down a creek between Fernwood and Grandview. Lexi had just recovered from a serious injury, but she was “leaping over rocks and swinging from trees.” Worried, Alice went chasing after her. “Now she’s an aerialist,” she chuckled. “I got along really well with kids because I was kind of one of them, you know, and we just kind of bounced around together.”
As Alice radiated out into the world, she was always curious and determined to challenge herself. She learned French, German and Spanish, and even a little Vietnamese and Italian. Alice also repaired her own Volkswagen, with her friend JJ. She worked at the Children’s Corner, a local preschool. She also mastered the art of crochet and became a massage therapist, partly to better understand how to heal her own bodily aches and pains. Despite her physical condition, Alice pushed through life with optimism, spreading her love around to everyone who crossed her path.
Goodbye Hug
Even though Alice feels some resentment about not being in her Topanga home, she has made the best of her time in the rehabilitation center. Watching cars pass on Reseda Blvd. is a stark contrast from studying the folds of the Santa Monica Mountains. At first, she was lonely and cold. But the employees at the facility began taking her to the activity room. “I’ve started really connecting with people more,” she looked at me with a hopeful smile. A young woman named Karina Gomez braids her hair and paints her nails. Alice showed me her nails, a little white heart was carefully painted on each one. “She’s really cute. The other day, she goes, ‘I want you to adopt me.’” The warmth of Alice’s smile had obviously touched Karina.
Dusk turned to night and we could feel the chill. I wheeled Alice back through the glass doors and she waved at caretakers as we made our way down the hall back to her room. Her dinner tray was laid out on her bed. I gave her a branch of white sage I had brought from Topanga.
“It was really good to be here,” I looked her in the eyes. “I mean, part of the reason I wanted to write this story was just so I could come down here and talk to you.”
“Yeah, I’m glad you’re here, too,” she said.
I hugged her and she didn’t seem to want to let go. Neither did I.
