Umbrellas Awaken Towns With Good and Bad Results

George Mull wanted desperately for Christo’s umbrellas to change his life. He got his wish, but not in the way he had expected.

Like many who lived in the Tejon Pass where the Bulgarian-born artist’s massive “The Umbrellas” project stood from Oct. 9 to Oct. 26, Mull saw the art exhibition as a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. How often, after all, would this area of truck stops and sleepy villages be a center of international attention?

It was a project that brought Mull love, if not money, and otherwise affected the lives of residents in a variety of ways--good, bad and unexpected.

Before the project ended in the death of a Camarillo woman who was hit by an umbrella uprooted during a windstorm, the 19-mile artwork was seen by more than a million people who made the trek to the pass, about 60 miles north of Los Angeles.

Gone now from the area are the visitors, food wagons, traffic jams, media crews, helicopter sightseeing rides and vendors who offered T-shirts, posters, jewelry, painted rocks, sunglasses, mugs and anything else that could be viewed however vaguely as a commemorative souvenir. Where the largest group of booths once stood in Lebec, only an empty, dusty field remains.

“It was like the flip of the page,” said Victor Hadawar, co-owner of the Lebec City Market, “and then it was gone.” But not forgotten.

Before “The Umbrellas” came to town, Mull was a lawyer on the staff of Tejon Ranch, a mostly undeveloped parcel of land that is roughly the size of the city of Los Angeles. He helped put together the agreement that allowed Christo to put more than half of the 1,760 umbrellas in the pass on the ranchland.

Mull saw the Christo project as his ticket out of the corporate life. “It was basically a good opportunity to segue out of the job and into a business,” he said in late September before the umbrellas were cranked open. He resigned from the ranch and, using his own money and loans, put together $200,000 to open and stock seven vending locations.

“Our goal is a net profit of about $700,000,” Mull said with confidence.

He did not come close.

Like many vendors, Mull reports that he was doing fine during the first two weeks. “We were just about hitting our projections,” he said.

The outlook was so rosy that he made substantial reorders. But on the Saturday of the last weekend a storm hit and the death occurred. Christo declared the exhibition over and all of the umbrellas not destroyed by the winds were cranked down.

Mull ended up being stuck with more than 20,000 T-shirts.

But all was not a loss.

One night when Mull walked into the Okie Girl restaurant in Lebec, he met Linda Puckett, one of nine young women brought in from Oklahoma to work as waitresses during the exhibit. The women helped keep the restaurant open 24 hours a day during the exhibit and managed the lines of people that at times grew so long that there was a two-hour wait for lunch.

Puckett spotted Mull soon after he entered. “I let him cut into line,” she said with a laugh. They fell in love, and are planning to wed and live in Los Angeles.

“On the personal side,” said Mull, speaking from his car while the couple was en route to pick up her engagement ring, “I won big.”

Mary Lynn Rasmussen, owner of Okie Girl, figures she broke even.

She did not do well on her concessions, which included a special commemorative beer that was advertised as the Okie Girl’s “tribute” to Christo.

The rustic restaurant, however, fared well and that, she believes, is a good sign for the future.

Business is now running 20% over what it was before “The Umbrellas,” and Rasmussen’s knack for entrepreneurship has been recognized. Recently, she was paid a visit by 13 graduate business students on a class trip from Loyola Marymount University. “Imagine a little ol’ Okie girl like me talking to those college students,” said Rasmussen, turning up the accent.

The vendor whose products had least to do with “The Umbrellas” was Bob Prewitt, who had a stand in Frazier Park where he sold life-size fiberglass animals. He did all right, considering that the elks, chickens, pigs and the like carried price tags that ranged from $595 to $1,695.

“I think I sold about 10 of them,” said Prewitt, who is back home in the small town of Phelan.

Prewitt, who has been manufacturing and selling the animals for 30 years, makes most of his sales to commercial outlets such as drive-in dairy stores that want a cow out front. But he tries to get to events where he can sell to the public.

Even he is not exactly sure why a homeowner might want, for example, the bear he sold to a Santa Monica resident. “I guess it is better than owning a real animal and aggravating with it,” he said.

For residents, “The Umbrellas” was unmistakably an interruption of their lives. “Local people complained about the traffic and the crowds and the trouble getting around, but it was really something to have all those people coming to see us in this little place,” said Mike Haddad, the other owner of the Lebec Market.

Haddad, who got stuck with about 600 T-shirts, looked out the window toward the hills.

“I miss the umbrellas,” he said. “They were really beautiful.”

Next door at the post office, postmaster and only full-time employee Barbara Schu was waiting on the occasional customer.

“I miss all the people,” she said. “You would walk out and everyone was having picnics under the umbrellas and walking around smiling. They would be extremely kind and courteous to each other. I think it brought out the best in them.

“We won’t see anything like it here again.”