Our 98-year-old farmhouse

Our house now is 98 years old, sufficiently rare in L.A. to have spent much of the 1990's portraying 88 year old farmhouses in a variety of films and television shows. There was one year the house even paid for its own mortgage, in a straight-to-dvd flick starring Roger Daltrey of the Who, Christopher Lloyd and Lauren Graham (in her first film leading role) called "Chasing Destiny." It's also a Sears kit house. The reason we know it's a kit farmhouse is depicted above: these two homes are identical. Ours is the green and purple one that survived the Northridge '94 earthquake rather better than the blue one in Fillmore, with our 2-story chimney breaking off entirely and falling through the roof 10 ft. from us where we slept, the television swan-diving to its demise, ceiling fans unmoored from ceilings, with every plaster wall in the place cracked. Fortunately, our earthquake retro-fitting predated the quake or it would have succumbed to the Fillmore home's fate.

Still, the damage was far preferable to the fate of our across the street neighbors who died in it. 40 years accumulation of floor to ceiling junk knocked down by the quake killed them. It turned out they were hoarders of the most severe pathology, a worst case scenario cautionary tale for the chronically untidy. Mary Kay of The Dogs, then my neighbor, and I were part of the non-rescue party. Hard times.
(photo top left (C) 2010 Heather Harris)

"Chasing Destiny" shot primarily at our house