Well, I guess this next section then, you know you talked about that campground you designed a Lava Beds. And I guess I was wondering whether the Park Service had standard designs for picnic tables and camp stoves or you did a lot of experimentation.
Oh yeah. We’d had a standard design, we saw the things, we tried them out. We got that issue. They never sent us instructions about what, we used our own judgments. They used to have a specialist that came out from Washington. They were worried about fire places for campgrounds. We did more damn experimenting with him to build these fire places. Odd shapes, uses of rock. And we’d build them and he didn’t like them. And we had a cast iron crate for with the heat on and that didn’t work. They made a simple thing so complicated that you couldn’t get a fire started! And we just eventually used a grill placed on stone, simplified, you know. Some of these fire places got awfully complicated. God, they got terrible. My wife used to get at me for worrying about the details. I said, “Well, I got to follow the damn drawings.”
I guess that last question.
What’s that?
About the camp units at Lava Beds being similar to those at CRLA. Did a lot of the campgrounds that you designed have a lot of similarities; did they tend to be the same layout?
No, I think we had variation. Flat ground, bush, stones, and they used stones to mark the campgrounds or the parking area. We used, they were simple. Did you know any of the naturalists at CRLA? I knew a couple of them. John Doerr, and I think Schwartzlow was up there for a while. I liked John Doerr, nice guy.
He and … a lot of the reports were to Kittredge who was in San Francisco office.
Oh yeah, I think it was Ward Webber, that’s right. He was, yeah, he lived in Berkeley. He was under Kittredge. We used to go up and see him now and then. A nice, quiet man, you know, well liked.
And I guess this last question about did the various architects have different ideas about the Rim Village? There weren’t any conflicts over that?
No. I think Tom Vint and those guys just went ahead and built it, you know. I think if you were to build it now you wouldn’t get it done.
I guess it’s one of the things we’ve been talking about at the park. What it should look like.
I don’t think much ever came of it. A lot of that stuff. I didn’t pay too much attention to it.
