Old Hearse Collection Called Grave Problem

The eager sailor--anticipating a night with a new girlfriend waiting at his apartment--was speeding on his motorcycle through the Allied Gardens neighborhood when his fantasies were abruptly quashed by a huge vehicle that loomed suddenly on the curve.

Momentarily stunned by the collision with one of Nellie Johnson’s hearses, the sailor lay by the vehicle, remembered Craig Sweeting, Johnson’s next-door neighbor. “He looked up at Nellie’s hearse and said, ‘Oh, my God . . . a hearse! Am I dead?’ ” chuckled Sweeting.

After realizing that he was still alive, the young sailor bemoaned the accident’s bad timing. “I just met her tonight. She’s gorgeous. What’s she gonna think when I don’t show up?” he wondered.

For people who live in Johnson’s neighborhood, the sailor’s misfortune was nothing new. By Johnson’s count, the recent motorcycle accident was one of 91 crashes involving her fleet of parked hearses and cars--all Cadillacs--in the 31 years that she has lived at the 50th Street address, where the street connects with Twain Avenue.

Police say accidents are common on that stretch of residential street because cars speed around a sharp curve that bends in front of Johnson’s house.

“Nellie’s hearses have killed several cars, from motorcycles to Porsches,” said Felice Aveldson, who lives across the street from Johnson.

Though nobody has ever died in the crashes, the accidents have produced some amusing anecdotes.

“A couple of years ago there was a crash when we thought that somebody died,” said Aveldson. “The car hit the back of Nellie’s car and when we rushed out we saw this big red spot dripping from Nellie’s old car, and running down the street. It looked like a lot of blood and it had many of us gasping in horror. But as it turned out, Nellie had a big jar of raspberry jam in the back of the car that shattered and dripped,” said Aveldson.

Raspberry jam is just one of an odd assortment of items--trash to the neighbors and city officials--stored in Johnson’s collection of aging, battered and rusting Cadillacs. Currently, she has two hearses and a four-door sedan parked in front of her house, while another hearse and ambulance are jammed together in her small, front yard.

The hearses have become a San Diego landmark. Sweeting’s mother, Karen, said that when local residents give directions to their houses they usually ask: “Do you know where the hearses are? Well, we live next door, across the street, or whatever.”

However, Johnson bristles when people call her vehicles hearses.

“Dammit, these aren’t hearses. They’re funeral coaches. Hearses are solid black and usually ornate. Funeral coaches are none of that,” said Johnson, who sees nothing unusual about a woman owning and driving a vehicle designed to transport corpses.

“A lot of fellows drive these coaches but nobody bothers them. What’s wrong with a woman driving a coach?” she said.

The eccentric and earthy Johnson, who said that she has been “a car freak all my life” and admits to having “several more Cadillacs parked around town,” scoffs at people who drive “treason cars”--imports. But her trash-filled American vehicles and Johnson’s cluttered house and yard are seen as eyesores by many of Johnson’s neighbors, who have been complaining for years to city, fire and police officials.

Fire Capt. Jim Cline said he has been citing Johnson for fire code violations for the past 10 years but to no avail. Cline said citations mailed to Johnson’s post office box are usually returned unopened.

“The city health department has set rat traps in her back yard, . . . but I go there (Johnson’s House) every summer when the weeds are tall and dry. We get complaints from her neighbors all the time and they keep asking me, what can we do?” Cline said.

A bedrock but eclectic conservative who cringes at the name of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the elderly Johnson, who wears horn-rimmed glasses and favors baseball caps, also dabbles in Rosicrucianism.

She has lived alone most of her life and relishes her independence. Though most people her age have been retired for almost a decade, Johnson still works six days a week, often leaving early and returning late.

“I’ve worked all my life and never had anybody give me anything . . . I don’t bother nobody. All I do is work to pay my taxes and make my gosh-darned payments and I get messed with,” Johnson said.

A self-taught woman with an amazing circle of interests, Johnson admits that politics is her first passion.

“I don’t belong to any political party or organization. I’ve been a one-cell deal all my life,” she said. “If the people of the United States don’t wake up, I’m fearful that we’re going to be controlled by the international bankers, the Rockefellers, Du Ponts, Rothschilds and communists. Hell, California is already the biggest communist state in the United States of America.”

Until recently, Johnson was a familiar sight in San Diego, commuting to her various bookkeeping jobs in a hearse loaded with what city officials and others call junk. For many years, she stopped every morning at Rudford’s Restaurant on El Cajon Boulevard, where she favored the eatery’s chili burger and fries as a breakfast delicacy, said Karen Sweeting, Johnson’s close friend.

A vision problem has ended Johnson’s driving days, and now she relies on a friend to drive her to her various jobs. Craig Sweeting said that Johnson told him she is 72. But when a reporter asked about her age, she replied sternly: “It’s nobody’s business how old I am.”

Indeed, Johnson does not march in lock step with others.

“Nellie is a very nice person who doesn’t march to the same beat that most of us march to. She’s a very kind, loving human being . . . not trying to harm anybody. She honestly believes that what she’s doing is perfectly normal. In many ways, she’s the perfect neighbor,” said Karen Sweeting.

People who do not know Johnson are fooled by her gruff manner and eccentricity, Karen Sweeting said. But she remembers the time a few years ago when a sympathetic Johnson hired a nurse’s laid-off husband to do some yard work in order to help the couple, who were hurting financially.

“The nurse worked for a doctor, who was a client of Nellie’s. She told Nellie about how hard they were having it with her husband laid off and Nellie gave him some work. She’s always doing things like this, but my neighbors don’t know this side of Nellie because they’ve never gotten to know her like we have,” Karen Sweeting said.

Ray Lyons, a used car dealer who has known Johnson for 10 years, agrees.

“She’s been doing my books that long, and I tell you she’s a very good, kind person. And there’s nothing she won’t do for you,” said Lyons. Because of her eccentricity, over the years Johnson has been the frequent target of taunts and abuse from local youths and residents.

A back yard storage shed was torn down by neighborhood youths, and the windows of her house and cars have either been shot out or smashed with baseball bats. Police were alerted July 4 when a group of youths threatened to burn down her house.

On a night when Johnson was talking with a reporter outside her house, people in several passing cars yelled obscenities.

“I’m never raising hell . . . around like these other people,” said Johnson. “I’m gettin’ a little provoked.”

When asked why she collects hearses, she answers simply, “I’ve always liked Cadillacs.”

As for filling them with junk and debris, much to the chagrin of her neighbors, she said, “Do you know these coaches are commercial vehicles? Do you know what that means? That means I can put anything I want in them. I use them for storage. What’s wrong with that?”

Though most of her neighbors would like Johnson to drive her hearses out of the neighborhood, Karen Sweeting said she is ambivalent about the cars. Over the years, Johnson has had four cars totaled by errant drivers.

Sweeting, who lives next door, said that in the 20 years that her family has lived in their home, four of their parked cars have been totaled by drivers who missed Johnson’s hearses. And cars have plowed through her garage and home on two occasions. Two houses down from Sweeting, a family is repairing damage done to their home by a car that bounced off three of Johnson’s cars before crashing through their house.

“In many ways, Nellie’s vehicles have been a help to the neighborhood. Most of my neighbors would hate me for saying this, but they’re not in the line of fire like I am,” said Sweeting. “My daughter sleeps in the front bedroom, and when she hears cars careening down the street, she asks me if Nellie’s cars are out there to protect her. . . . I’m on both sides of the fence. I don’t like to look at the hearses full of junk, but yet, they’re my family’s protectors.”

The Sweetings and Aveldson said that the crashes in front of Johnson’s house--most of which occur late at night--have turned into social events over the years.

“We have a neighborhood rescue unit here. Whenever there’s a crash, somebody brings a blanket to cover the injured, someone else brings a flashlight and another person checks for concussions,” Craig Sweeting said.

In fact, a family-type relationship has sprouted between police and neighborhood residents because of the crashes. The cops who regularly investigate the accidents know almost as much about the residents as their neighbors.

“One night, we were attending to a couple of injured people, waiting for the police to arrive. When the police arrived, one of the officers looked at me and said, ‘Mrs. Sweeting, you got a new robe.’ Everybody laughed,” Sweeting said.