Everyone who resided at Williams College had a job to pay the rent, and were generally fairly active people when not at work. Darryl had a part time gig at a cheese store on Vine Street, close to the Shattuck Co-op, which had just expanded their imported cheese section and was now offering budget blocks of Finnish lappi, muenster, and gouda.

Leading up to a quieter side street away from from the busy parking lot of the Coop where Volvos and Volkswagens and other small imported cars vied for parking, the corner of Vine Street and Shattuck offered a popular laundromat on one corner where the tubs and driers constantly revolved, one Maytag always had a quarter stuck in the slot, allowing for a perpetual free wash. Across from the laundromat was a large restaurant called Pantry Shelf. The waitresses wore pastel uniforms and the hovered behind a real soda fountain in the rear that served a bit of NY, a deli menu including chocolate egg cremes and celery spritzers. That was a very friendly place which welcomed every customer, and the waitresses remained working there for years.

The cheese store, where better heeled patrons shopped, was just down the street from the original Peet's coffee. Because Darryl was well liked at the cheese store, he was able to take time off work when touring with the Mime Troupe. Darryl would work in the back and sometimes behind the counter in a white apron slicing off orders from huge wheels of imported cheese. Within a few years, the cheese store became a worker's collective.

His friend had a part time job as a temporary employee delivering mail for the post office, and would drive around Oakland with her dog in the truck and delivered mail. One time, her dog ran off while she was around the corner delivering mail. She knocked on every door enlisting neighborhood aid to locate the missing animal. She tapped at one door and saw a flutter of curtains like someone was peeking out. She tapped again, and a gruff voice barked loudly, "Whaddya want?" She explained the circumstances through the closed door and the door was opened by a large man sporting a huge Afro dashiki. She'd interrupted what she said looked to be a Black Panther meeting, with guys in large Afros sitting in large African basket chairs, the walls of the entry decorated with an animal skin with African shields and arrows on top. She did find her dog that day. When budget cut backs arrived she was temporarily laid off with a muttered promise she would likely be rehired down the road, so in between she snagged a job walking horses at dawn at Golden Gate Fields.

Ed Leddy toured more often than not with the Marine Band.

Gene Schoenfeld maintained a medical practice in addition to his publishing and busy social life with other famous icons of the sixties and he was not around the estate too often. The man residing in the peacock house, which was an immense single floor space with kitchen and bath below a rehearsal studio, though from a fairly well-heeled family who owned a music publishing company, relied on a student stipend and worked as a teaching assistant while finishing the dissertation for his PhD.

I worked part time nights as a waitress in what I regarded as the hippest blues and jazz club in the East Bay and was enrolled as a fulltime student of history and literature at UC Berkeley while I lived below what was being used as a dance studio in the old gymasium on the estate. My boyfriend worked at Leopold's, also known as Leopold Stokowski Memorial Pavilion, which was primarily a record and tape store which was owned by the students of Berkeley and which was founded with the idea of distributing profits to support community endeavors.

A couple who rented the big two story carriage house almost no one ever saw -- he was a professional muscle builder and competitor and worked in construction, while his girlfriend worked as an exotic dancer. They were likely in residence the longest of any renters, surely from 1966 and to late 1974 if not beyond.

Altogether, the total rents each month collected by Dr Hopkins in the mid- to late-sixties may have soared to close to $1500 a month, out of which Dr. Hopkins paid the PG&E bill, water, and trash pickup for the entire estate (except for the carriage house as I recall which I believe was on a separate meter), material costs for repairs or improvements and maybe property taxes. As we asked little of Dr Hopkins in the way of improving the property, perhaps he and his aged father pretty much lived off what was left of those meager rents. Charles, the handyman, was given free room and board by Dr. Hopkins in exchange for working about the estate.

While people can argue the residents were the lively ones and existed apart and were most interesting all on their own, it was Dr Hopkins afterall who met and approved or selected residents from the rental applications and so he determined who would live on the estate.

Ed Leddy was a jazz trumpeter best known for his work with Stan Kenton, but Leddy also was a player at the Lighthouse and all the famous places that helped birth and nurture the cool jazz of the late 50s and early 60s known as West Coast jazz. He appeared on many lp's which were testaments of the shift from big band to be-bop. (The image on the right is Ed's own scrapbook of newspaper clippings of his music tours primarily those with the military.)

As one of the more curious coincidences, he'd played on one of the first jazz lp's I ever bought, West Coast Jazz in Hifi. At that early point in history in Los Angeles, my sister knew some jazz musicians, and coincidentally again was introduced to Ed Leddy who had given her a small can of rum babas, a confection that his aunt in New Jersey had mailed him on his birthday. This had to have been 1960 or so that I opened and ate the rum babas.

In 1968 or 1969, I didn't put together that I might have even heard of Ed Leddy until I saw Ed Leddy himself walking down from the manor house one day with a package. His aunt had sent him a birthday present, his favorite, a can of rum babas. What's more, the confection was put out by the same company, so it was an exact duplicate of the delight I had ingested nearly a decade prior. I was truly surprised when I saw that.

Ed had attended West Point Academy and played in the US Army bands. He toured around the world with them and played everywhere towards the end of WWII. Apparently he'd reenlisted after that as he was rumored in the mid-60s to be playing in the US Marine Band. He often traveled with them which is why he was so seldom seen on the estate. I remember seeing his scrap book on the table in Darryl's cottage once. His scrapbook is pictured above, purchased from Ebay by a military collector.

In 1969, a person Ed used to play with had recently died, and there was a record jacket near the turntable in Darryl's cottage. I noticed the title "Burrito Borracho" and Darryl and I laughed a bit about that as Borracho was the name of the character who Darryl was playing on a Mime Troupe tour.

Mostly the conversation drifted to Latins who make music and art, as "Latin" and "Mexican" was on the air with the Mime Troupe and an offshoot El Teatro Camposino as they were performing together at that time. And Darryl even was onstage once with El Teatro, back when the names of the characters were identified by signs hung around the necks of the actors. And Johnny's record aside from the copy we'd just listened to was nearly destined for the scrap heap drowned as it was in the oceans of rock music being released, as was a recording called Cuban Fire which was similarly doused and one which would likely never again see re-release until some music historian took interest. So the conversation that afternoon was something about the transience of art.

The West Coast jazz scene of the early 60s had nearly disappeared with the bursting popularity of rock and roll recording, with Los Angeles nearly as the hub. Most jazz players who wanted to continue with jazz relied on European tours, some relocating permanently to Europe in order to play jazz regularly. Other jazz musicians took on jobs playing television and sessions and tours with rock and roll bands who needed musicians to actually play the music. Ed survived by touring and playing with the US Marine Band.

Because we shared an interest in a particular delicacy, I told Ed about a wonderful restaurant called the Balabosta down on University near Mandrake's, the blues and jazz club. I had the idea he might want to stop into Mandrake's sometime to catch some of the major jazz that was pumping out of the club. I ran into him at the Balabosta one time, each of us seated at different tables covered with red and white checked cloths. We each had set before us a small dish of their famous chocolate baba a rhum.


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