Despite the Feud, He Keeps On Trucking

There’s a feud brewing in La Crescenta; been brewing there about 13 years.

Because he never got the Tonka toys he asked for as a child, Paris Fish grew up with an unrequited love for trucks. Big trucks, like a diesel-snorting Kenworth tractor. And the trailers that go with it.

When Fish turned 17, he learned to drive--in an 18-wheeler. That’s when he bought his first truck. He’s been buying and selling them ever since.

“They’re big Tonka toys,” said Fish, whose curly white beard, ample girth and twinkling eyes give him a Santa-Claus like appearance.

Fish’s neighbors are not amused.

They don’t like the fact that he parks his equipment on a residential street in front of their homes. Fish purchased his current “toy”--a 1950 green and yellow Kenworth tractor, once owned by a dairy--in Texas two years ago.

He parks it on the street, near his home in the 4400 block of Raymond Avenue.

He also has a flatbed trailer there.

And a forklift.

Residents say the equipment is unsightly, illegal and a safety hazard, blocking the view of motorists on a tight curve at Raymond and Community avenues. They have complained to the County Sheriff’s Department, the California Highway Patrol, the air quality district, the county zoning department and their county supervisor. About 25 residents in a two-block area signed petitions of protest in 1987.

Fish, 39, has been hauled into court twice. One time he was charged with being a public nuisance and faced a jail sentence. He has received innumerable tickets and his equipment has been impounded.

On every occasion, Fish beat the charges. He won in a jury trial two years ago and last year a Municipal Court judge threw out the case.

Fish and his attorney have successfully argued that county rules permit him to keep the equipment at his house, where he has operated a heavy machinery brokerage since 1975.

Still, Fish’s neighbors contend that the business and equipment is inappropriate in a residential zone and have not relented. At their insistence, Supervisor Mike Antonovich last year asked that the district attorney again press charges, according to Ollie Blanning, an Antonovich deputy.

But Michael Noyes, a deputy district attorney who closed the case, said he rejected a request from the Department of Regional Planning seeking a criminal complaint against Fish.

“There were no facts in the report, just neighbors complaining,” Noyes said. “Besides, it has been to court several times before.”

Blanning said most neighborhood disputes are quieted when the offending party gives in to pressure and remedies the situation. “But this has not been easily solved,” Blanning said. “It’s been like trying to make Jello stick to a wall.”

Fish’s detractors claim that the jury decision and court ruling were misguided.

“He’s wrong,” said Carolyn Holmgren, who moved into the neighborhood with her husband five years ago. “He has squeaked under the law. It’s just so frustrating.”

Michael T. Wayland, Fish’s attorney, called the complaints from neighbors to county and law enforcement officials “a gross misuse of public funds. This is a stupid neighborhood squabble, a private war.”

Fish, who accuses his opponents of being “a few quarts short,” said they are just jealous of his hobby of collecting old heavy equipment. “They have never come up with a shard of evidence that I have done anything illegal.

“These neighbors, they just like trouble,” said Fish, who wears a heavy chain around his neck. “They don’t have any hobbies. I’m their hobby. If I moved the trucks all off tomorrow, they would bug me about the color of my house.”

But Fish won’t stand still for people bugging him about his trucks.

“I’ve always liked old trucks,” he said. “I’ve driven them for years.”

He also has a 1928 Ford roadster stake truck, an antique wagon and the 1962 Corvette he drove in high school--all stored in a large building he built several years ago on his half-acre property.

Fish admits that some of the animosity stems from a transition in the nature of the neighborhood since he moved there in 1975. Home values have soared along the street where it was once common for residents to keep horses and park trucks on the street. Recent buyers are more citified. “They’re not what I call the more old-fashioned rural type like I am.”

Fish said he probably would move his wife and three children to a more rural area outside Southern California “if somebody gave me the price for the house. I’m not in love with the place by any stretch of the imagination,” he said.

Fish’s unwelcome collection in the city is not surprising to officials of the American Truck Historical Society, a national organization of heavy equipment history buffs with more than 10,000 members.

“Most people who collect the hardware--the vehicles--have some place to keep them, like an old barn in the country,” said Roy Stewart, managing director. “If you’re parking them on a street in the city, well, sometimes neighbors are unhappy about that.”