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SPENCER’S "PHOENIX" HOUSE
By Suzanne Adams
On Sunday, October 5, 1980, the fields west of Wonderland
Hills leapt with flames. Within ten minutes the fire roared upslope to Pine
Brook Hills and utterly destroyed Tom and Emmy Spencer’s home, the only Pine
Brook house ever lost to wildfire. The cause? "Two juveniles," says Emmy,
"One age 12 and one 32," who set off fireworks on the hot, dry hillside. All
of Pine Brook was threatened that day, saved only by the efforts of 200
firefighters and the fortuitous availability of a slurry bomber.
The fire was eventually controlled but cinders from the
house and its contents were still smoldering. The fire department felt that
the safest course was to scoop everything up with an excavator and take it
to the dump. When Emmy and Tom returned to the nothing that had been their
home, they were allowed to go to the dump and watch the burial of their
belongings. They were able to salvage one ski boot and a few bottles of wine
that, amazingly, had survived the fire.
What is lost when a home is lost? Music, for one thing. Tom
and Emmy are classical music fans and lost six to seven hundred LPs. They
were in Japan when the fire occurred; the Japanese don’t like to give bad
news. Trying to determine the extent of the damage, Tom called his company,
Ball Aerospace, and asked, "Should I buy new hi fi equipment?" That was one
of the easy questions. "Yes." Of their former home only the chimney
remained, and that eventually collapsed. Another significant loss was their
"travel museum." Tom and Emmy are world travelers. Their lost collection was
irreplaceable: the Macao bark cloth costume, the Guatemalan frame loom, the
Kashmiri carved box, the Yugoslav carvings, the blowgun and arrows. In
addition, photography projects for an article about Japan that Tom planned
were, of course, gone. And then there was the wine. Tom describes himself as
"a fanatic about wine"; his interest goes beyond simply drinking fine wine.
He is interested in all aspects of viniculture. There had been good places
to store wine in the house, and investment-quality vintages were among the
200 cases that, in the 70’s, had been purchased reasonably. "There was wine
on my side of the closet," Emmy recalled. "There was wine under my yarn!" A
water pipe had melted in the fire and kept some of the wine wet. One of
Tom’s co-workers crawled in and out, salvaging 40 cases, including some 1963
Port. Grand Cru Bordeaux and Burgundies from the 50’s and 60’s were among
the 150 cases lost.
But it was more than those things, however irreplaceable. A
way of life was lost. As Emmy says, "It’s not the wood and stuff - it’s the
life you had, the deer sleeping, the foxes…"
Emmy is a talented professional weaver. She had yarn, lots
of yarn. "7000 pounds," said Tom. "The yarn was everywhere in the house; it
would overflow whatever storage was made for it." Now Emmy’s yarn and the
looms were gone. "I felt so naked because I didn’t have any yarn - no yarn!"
And no looms or place to put them. Ten years passed before she felt that she
had regained her former level in weaving.
For Tom, the house had been almost an extension of his
workplace. As Ball’s chief astrodynamicist, Tom had published technical
articles which he presented at meetings throughout the US and abroad. He and
Emmy entertained experts in his field in their house. It was part of his
career. Losing the house severed one of the anchors tying Tom to Ball. When
coupled with loss of support for several of the projects that particularly
interested him, the break seemed complete. Eventually he retired, and he and
Emmy spent the next three years in Europe, traveling and living in a
Volkswagen bus.
Why didn’t they just rebuild? They thought about it for the
first three or four years but found that
they couldn’t deal with the damage - the trees were gone, even the rocks
were blackened and exploded from the heat and the water. It was hard to
reconcile themselves to the land because they knew what it had been before
the fire. They couldn’t build on the old foundation. They would have to
clean the ridge. It would cost $100,000 just for the excavation. "We
couldn’t stay, we couldn’t face it."
Time passed. In fact, 20 years of time passed. Occasionally
they would hike back up to Pine Brook, and find themselves thinking, "God,
this is really beautiful." They had bought a house on Wonderland Lake, but
as Emmy said, living on a hill makes you feel "Physically and
psychologically elevated." It’s not the same down in Flatland. And then
there were the people; "We knew more people in Pine Brook - even after 20
years. We felt at home here." Finally they decided to rebuild the house on
the original site. They surveyed the land themselves, running cheap cord
down lines and using a five foot pole with a level. It was, Tom said with
some surprise, "an amazingly good job." They did their own site plan review
and had it accepted. Emmy drew plans for the house and Tom said they
wouldn’t work. They found a young architect who saw that they liked curves
and used their ideas. And after 20 years, the Spencer's returned to Pine
Brook Hills, to a beautiful house with the same neighbors on both sides- the
Bramhall's and the Toomre's.
So what kind of a house is it? According to Tom, "One of the
things we’re most proud of is that from Boulder, you can hardly see the
house." It’s true. With the earth-tone stucco, gray tinted windows and a
profile that is actually lower than the original house, the home settles
into the ridge. In fact, the ridge intrudes into the house, creating the
room known as the Rattlesnake Pit. A fire alarm repairman was bitten by a
snake in that room. No problem - he treated the bite, killed the snake and
skinned it. Emmy wishes she had that skin.
Understandably, Tom and Emmy have some concerns about -
FIRE. Tom noted, "We’re quite concerned about protection from future fires.
We are definitely in a very bad place for fires." As a result, the new
house:
1. Has a stucco, not wood, exterior.
2. Has no exterior wood except for one deck, and it is on
top of concrete.
3. Has a cistern, storing a lot of water, under the
driveway, and a generator to make it work if electricity were cut off.
4. Has water sprinklers on the roof.
5. Does not have trees next to the house. Tom cut 33 trees
and limbed the remainder high.
The new house is beautiful. The LPs are replaced by CDs; the
large speakers delineate the living area. There is a real wine cellar,
housing one of those bottles from the fire. Emmy lifted it to show me and a
few crimson drops fell out. "It’s OK," said Tom, "It’s still good." Emmy’s
weaving studio is a large, light room bright with the colors of her
yarn. She calls her studio "a dream thing. I feel so lucky to be here. I
believe in treading lightly on the earth, but lately I’m just enjoying its
bounty." And, she added with a note of amazement, "I have an appliance
garage!"
From the Pine Brook Press, Summer, 2002 |
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