Many of the new readers of this old geezer has asked about past events in life. They want to know of where I came from and what I did. Truth be told they want to know the dirt about Fresno...
Not sure if MOI is capable of serving up a horrid tale of personal past. Can give readers a taste of what was written of in the past. The following article appeared in the Fresno Bee on Boxing Day, 2007. It set the stage for much that followed during the time in Fresno. The writer was most kind and the story got loads of interest, and to this day still get comments on from folks.
FRESNO MAN CLEANS UP CALAVERAS STREET
Diana Marcum
The Fresno Bee
Originally published 2007-12-26
The new neighbor on Calaveras Street doesn't quite fit in.
For one thing, he calls the police "coppers." For another, he calls the police.
On a downtown street where many residents have learned to look the other way when they see a steady stream of upscale cars arrive and make a quick, suspicious stop, Rob DeFrees keeps the police on his speed dial.
He's given to "banging on," as he calls it, about Calaveras Street. He writes pedantic letters to city officials, the newspaper and the chief of police about everything from trimming trees to the difference between poverty and despair. He's started a Web site (calaverasstreet.com), where he keeps a chatty diary about daily goings-on, neighbors with tidy yards, thoughts on his Christmas card list -- and a hall of shame of suspected slumlords on his street.
DeFrees, who says he was called "the Tarzan of the Tenderloin" decades ago when he was a property manager fighting urban grittiness in San Francisco, is now aiming to be the Crusader of Calaveras. He moved into the neighborhood in July as a caretaker for a rundown rental property and decided he'd found his cause.
He describes himself as an "old bugger." The 60-year-old white, gay man with a puzzling penchant for British phrasing (he was born and raised in Pennsylvania) raised a few eyebrows as he first went door to door on Calaveras Street introducing himself.
The next thing he did was take the bars off the property he is caring for, further convincing the neighbors that he was odd.
"If one is going to live somewhere, one has to live there. Not cower behind bars," he says. "It gives the wrong impression."
Even on a map, Fresno's downtown neighborhoods are off-kilter. The rest of the city is on a north-south grid, but downtown is like a circle cut out then rotated a third of the way around.
These streets boast some of the city's remaining historical houses, architecture from a time when the area was grand. In another city, a street like Calaveras might have become a choice neighborhood. But Fresno has a history of not safeguarding its history, and many of the street's classic homes were long ago replaced with motel-style apartments or carved up into boarding houses with rooms that rent cheaply.
Some of the people who live on Calaveras -- in the shadow of the downtown skyline, within walking distance of a McDonald's -- are here because it's all they can afford. But DeFrees is the latest in a long line of people staking a claim and making a home, by choice, on one of Fresno's oldest streets.
Robert Macias and his family moved to Calaveras Street 13 years ago because of their house, an Eastlake Victorian moved to the site in 1921.
Macias comes to his front door when DeFrees knocks, even though he worked a night shift as a production supervisor for a roofing manufacturing plant, and could use a few more hours sleep. They sit in the living room of the lovingly restored home with its big Christmas tree and bowl of cinnamon potpourri and discuss the roughness just outside.
In a way, it's the passing of the baton.
Macias, 57, and his wife are selling their house. The children are grown. They want to move to the country and own horses.
But he's fond of life in the inner city.
"It's disruptive. Your life becomes chaotic. But it becomes satisfying because you feel you're doing what you should be doing," he says. "You step outside your own culture. You step outside yourself."
In practical terms, he says, this comes down to backyard versus front yard. In more affluent neighborhoods, people live their lives privately in their backyards.
"In the inner city, everything's out front. We have barbecues in the driveway and neighbors invite themselves."
Over the past dozen or so years, Macias has watched the quality of life on Calaveras ebb and flow, sometimes more hopeful, sometimes more violent.
He gives DeFrees words of both encouragement and warning.
"I really believe one or two people on a street can make a difference. I've seen it," he tells him.
"But you're going to hit the wall, and then we'll see where you're at. It's not the big things. It's not the drug deals. It's not the gunfire. It's that you get so sick of people leaving trash on your lawn."
DeFrees shakes his head no.
"I won't let the rubbish be my undoing," he says. "I won't let a few ruffians tell me I can't have a proper garden."
Macias grins.
"Well, maybe that's the difference between me and you," he says. "I have garbage in my yard. You have rubbish."
Fresno Police officer David Rady, an investigator with a policing unit that covers Calaveras Street, says DeFrees' presence is making a difference.
"It's a challenging neighborhood. There's a fair share of parolees, a fair share of gang members. That neighborhood also has a lot of good families that have to sleep there and wake up there, but won't call our attention to problems."
Rady says DeFrees already has helped stop some of the drug trafficking.
"Someone like Mr. DeFrees, who isn't afraid, becomes a voice for all the good people who might not speak up. It has to start with someone. I don't know if it sounds corny or not -- but one person can make a difference in a neighborhood."
On his Web site, DeFrees has posted a cartoon of a knight in shining armor with a sign that says "I'm looking for someone to save."
"It's cheeky," he says. "But I suppose that's how I see myself."
In the case of his Calaveras Street mission, it's a case of mutual saving.
About a year ago, DeFrees had a bad reaction to pain medication and hovered near death.
He survived. And he was angry that he had lived.
"It made me re-evaluate what was going on in my life. To a large extent, I had checked out, given up."
He had spent years living the good life with a wealthy partner. After his mate died 20 years ago, he drifted a bit from place to place. Before coming to Fresno, he was living in San Diego, in a scene of what he calls "in-your-face-beauty. It's Botox injections and hair dye and the constant search for youth. If you're 60 and gay, you might as well be in a tomb. I figured my day in the sun was over."
Looking for a fresh chance, he chose Fresno.
"I threw a dart, so to speak. I had no clue what Fresno was about. But I'd lived in Europe and San Francisco and Hawaii. I figured Fresno was so foreign to anything I'd been in before that it would be an adventure."
He found an advertisement online from a couple looking for a caretaker.
Dave and Dottie Natal had spent their savings to buy a house on Calaveras Street. Their plan was to find tenants for the subdivided house and to use the collected rents as retirement income. Instead, the property had brought them nothing but trouble from bad tenants. They needed someone to help them clean up the mess and live on site to keep an eye on things.
DeFrees took the job. His "flat" is upstairs.
After moving in, he restarted the street's defunct neighborhood watch program, spending $50 of his own money to put up a sign.
In the early morning, well before sunrise, he walks the center of the street with a flashlight (he calls it a torch, of course) making sure all is quiet. Then he sweeps and washes the sidewalk in front of his house before settling in to listen to the BBC over the Internet and drink tea while working on his Web site. He spent seven years in England, which partly explains his Anglophilia.
He says he's never been happier.
"I'm having the time of my life. I have a purpose. My house looks clean. My street looks clean, and it matters. Wash-and-sweep is catching on."
Indeed, DeFrees says that not only did the house across the street recently clean up, they even put up Christmas decorations. He thinks it has something to do with his example. He was delighted -- and shocked.
"I was absolutely gobsmacked to see the lighted plastic Santa across the street," he says.
He's been reading up on the different historic homes nearby.
On a recent day, he was pointing out architectural details and historic tidbits of houses on Calaveras, like a guide on an architectural tour. ("This home is in the Queen Anne vernacular. Sounds very posh, doesn't it?")
Andrea Herrera, who spent 10 years living on Calaveras and still owns several historic rental homes on the street, walked over to say hello.
DeFrees gushed.
"She believed in this area for a long time. There is a core of decent people on this street. And that's all it takes. A core of decent people fighting hard," he says. "Little by little, wash-and-sweep will triumph."
Herrera laughed: "The way he talks is funny, but I like the things he says."
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