Make room for couch potato bowling alleys

Mansionization is a word I only learned recently. As I understand

it, this is used when someone replaces a small house with a much

larger one. Of small houses, I have considerable experience.

When I went to college, I lived with my parents in a small house

in Maywood during the school year. During the summer, a bunch of us

would rent a room in Balboa, four or five of us to a room, usually

sleeping two to a bed. In those days, two men in bed together was a

matter of economics, not sexual preference.

When I was first married, we lived on the peninsula in a small

house with a single twin bed. That wasn’t any problem for ardent

newlyweds, but when Katie became pregnant, my slim, 110-pound bride

was transformed into a whopping 170-pound mother-to-be, and I spent

about five months sleeping with one hand on the floor so I wouldn’t

tumble out of bed.

From there, we moved to the bayfront of the Little Island, where

we rented another small house, this one with a large frontyard of

sand. It was there that I built my first -- and last -- construction

project, a playpen of chicken wire. No self-respecting chicken would

have put foot in that playpen.

Fortunately, 2-year-old children aren’t as picky as chickens, and

our daughter played quite happily in that playpen. Then one day,

Katie looked out the window to check on her and, to her horror, the

playpen was empty. She flew out to the empty yard, looked across the

beach and noticed an unusual ripple. Running into the water, she

retrieved our daughter who had decided to walk across the bay

underwater. It seems my construction was not only unattractive, it

was also unsafe.

After our second daughter was born, we took the big plunge in

1947, buying a lot on Iris Avenue and building our own house.

Actually, Bill Rogers built it. I learned my lesson with the playpen.

It was a bright red house with white trim, three bedrooms and one

bath. One bath must seem woefully inadequate today, but I don’t

remember it ever being a problem. Of course, you couldn’t be overly

modest. Then, in 1953, my wife went crazy and spent $4,000 on a lot

in Shore Cliffs. This time, we went all out. Three bedrooms and two

baths. That’s the house I live in today.

As far as mansionization goes, it’s more or less wiped out my

personal history. I can’t even find our houses on the peninsula or

the island. There are a bunch of big houses in the general vicinity,

but exactly which one was ours? Who can tell.

The house on Iris was remodeled a few years back, but I guess the

owners didn’t know about mansionization because there’s just a small

addition at the rear -- probably a second bathroom. As for my current

house, I can only imagine what will happen when I’m gone. A vacant

lot up the street, no larger than the one my three-bedroom, two-bath

house occupies, is advertising a six-bedroom, 6 1/2-bath home for

the site. Now that’s mansionization.

People must be having bigger families or more house guests. If the

latter, I’d suggest they cut back on the bedrooms. Make house guests

too comfortable and they’ll never leave.

Although this proposed house has a lot of bedrooms, I don’t know

that they’re that large, unlike the house I read about on Harbor

Isle. It had a 3,500-square-foot master bedroom. I’m confounded as to

what you could possibly put in a bedroom to require that kind of

space. The only thing I could come up with was a bowling alley for

couch potatoes. You just turn over in bed and roll a strike.

* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge.

His column runs Tuesdays.