Living Near a Freeway

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After 15 years as Samuel Goldwyn Jr.'s personal chef, cooking for celebrity guests Neil Simon, Charlton Heston and others, Fujie Wade took a room in a retirement home overlooking eight lanes of the 101. Her first move was to sink $2,000 into wall-to-wall drapes that block both the view and the racket. "The noise doesn't bother lots of people here because the average age is 84, and they just take out their hearing aids when they go to sleep," she says. "But if I didn' have the drapes, I don't think I'd last a month."

Living Near a Freeway

( Gregg Segal )

After 15 years as Samuel Goldwyn Jr.'s personal chef, cooking for celebrity guests Neil Simon, Charlton Heston and others, Fujie Wade took a room in a retirement home overlooking eight lanes of the 101. Her first move was to sink $2,000 into wall-to-wall drapes that block both the view and the racket. "The noise doesn't bother lots of people here because the average age is 84, and they just take out their hearing aids when they go to sleep," she says. "But if I didn' have the drapes, I don't think I'd last a month."