The fight doesn’t concern real people, only crime-causers and consumers. : Fear and Voodoo in Calabasas

There is nothing like a good, vicious community battle to start the new year, and the fight going on in Calabasas has it all: fear, name-calling, racism, greed, threats of physical violence and voodoo. The Sheriff’s Department is investigating and the FBI is sniffing around. No foreign involvement so far, but don’t count on it.

At least one of the reasons for what a resident calls “the recent ugliness,” other than a natural human inclination to beat out brains, is a plan by contractor Jack Bravo to build 800 “affordable” apartment units next to an existing non-affordable housing tract. This has enraged homeowners in the vicinity. Enraged is actually too mild a term, but good taste and a strict editorial policy forbid a more colorful description.

Construction of the apartments, according to the homeowners, will cause floods, slides, traffic congestion and crime, to name the four furies of modern mythology, and effectively destroy the bucolic nature of their community.

On the other hand, the Calabasas Chamber of Commerce, which is traditionally more in favor of business development than in cows grazing on the hillside, supports the idea of the apartment complex because it will lure more consumers to the area, a consumer being defined in this case as a human being with money.

That’s another good part of the fight. It doesn’t concern real people, only crime-causers and consumers.

The whole thing was dumped into the lap of the county Planning Commission. During a meeting only one person spoke in favor of the proposed construction. His name is Lou Melson, a tough old bird of 71, who was acting as a spokesman for the Chamber of Commerce. He voiced his approval of the project. Then, as they say, the spit hit the fan.

A week after his somewhat lonely stand, a knife-slashed voodoo doll was left on Melson’s porch accompanied by a threatening note trimmed with Nazi swastikas. Also, his otherwise pleasant, two-story home was smeared with eggs and yogurt. Yogurt? It fits the area. In Encino they might use a delicately seasoned French pepper glaze, but in weight-conscious Calabasas it’s yogurt. Don’t ask about Chatsworth.

I talked to Melson about the obvious threat. He reached over and took me by the lapels and asked me if I had ever heard of the Liverpool clip. When I said no, he jerked me forward and bumped his head against mine. Under truly hostile conditions, Melson explained, he would have bumped me harder and knocked me out.

“I spent 10 years at sea,” he said, “and learned to do that on the Liverpool waterfront. On the Sidney waterfront they give ‘em the boot, which means knocking someone down and putting your hobnail shoes in his face. Well, that’s what’s going to happen to the next guy who threatens me.”

Though he is pushing into his 70s, doesn’t hear too well and is blind in one eye, Melson is 6-foot-1, weighs 184 pounds and is in otherwise good physical condition. It doesn’t require flawless perceptual senses to give someone either a Liverpool clip or a hobnail boot in the face. Also, Melson wears a kind of perpetual grin, which takes on ominous overtones when he has you by the lapels.

He is naturally concerned about what future course his protagonists might take, but tough old Mel is not about to either change his position on the apartments or get out of town. “My crypt is paid for,” he says with that strange grin. “All they’ve got to do is slide me in and slam the door.”

Meanwhile, however, he has filed a report with police and has talked with the FBI about possible civil rights violations, maintaining that those who oppose the affordable apartments are really opposed to blacks and Mexicans moving in, since blacks and Mexicans know a good deal when they see one.

“That’s an outright lie,” said David Brown, an opposition leader, “and you can quote me on that.” Done.

Brown is a history teacher and a member of the Sierra Club who thinks that maybe the whole voodoo doll-yogurt thing was manufactured. Melson, he says, is just a toady for the contractor. Melson, by the way, feels that Brown is an agitator and a troublemaker. They are not good friends.

“If we let that thing go through,” Brown said of the 800-unit development, “we are going to be swamped by an oversized project. We’re a bunch of hills with a narrow valley. Let’s start with 50 and see if it works.”

Even with 50, however, there are those who feel the development will either be buried in a landslide or washed away in a flood--not a displeasing prospect to its enemies, but disrupting to the community.

Then there is the matter of crime and traffic and herpes and wild parties that just naturally accompany a surge of new consumers into a community that limits its quiet animosities to yogurt and voodoo dolls.

I can hardly wait to see how the battle ends. There is a rumor circulating at the Calabasas Inn that the practitioner of voodoo who is threatening Melson has figured out a way to raise the dead. Zombies always add to the lively spirit of a good community fight, although the Liverpool clip may make them wish they were back in the cemetery.