The Vision That Grew Into a Ton of Reality

In Southern California, the car may be king but the garage is seldom its castle.

Garages are for outgrown baby strollers and yellowing National Geographics. In Brentwood, the garage of Benjamin and Tara Lucas has been taken over by a 16-foot, 2,000-pound totem pole with likenesses of dead rock stars.

This objet d’art --and then some--arrived about four months ago from Bali, and now, Lucas doesn’t know what to do with it. Indeed, it’s still in its shipping crate.

The saga of Benjamin Lucas and the totem pole began two years ago when, sitting in his dining room, he had a vision: he was to go to Bali and carve it.

Six months later, with frequent flier tickets and their cache of cash in hand, the Lucases took off.

Tara recalls humoring her husband, because “it sounded like a pleasant place to visit”--and surely this cockamamie idea would self-destruct.

It didn’t.

Once in Bali, Lucas--a carpenter and woodworker by trade--went out and bought himself a tree, an already felled, perfectly knotless, 18-foot white mahogany, 38 inches around. He then hired 20 men to carry it 20 miles out of the jungle on a sling of palm leaves and bamboo.

Lucas and seven carvers from the village of Mas Ubud--working with hatchets, chisels and Balinese hammers with ebony handles that kept flying off--would spend the next three months making his vision come true.

When they had finished, they would gaze upon busts of Jim Morrison, John Lennon, Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix--top to bottom--with a cobra wrapping itself around them and, on the back side, a pair of angels.

What does it all mean?

Well, Lucas explains, holding up one of the totem’s six-foot wooden wings, the dead rockers represent peace, love and compassion. Granted, their lives were less than peaceful. But at one time, Lucas believes, “They were pure people.”

The cobra, he suggests, represents an industry in which “musicians are turned and twisted to extract every ounce of energy--and then discarded.” Maybe, he says, the totem is a vehicle through which the souls of the deceased, now “in limbo,” are giving off good energy.

Lennon, who was 40 when he was shot to death by a crazed fan, wears a Nehru jacket; his glasses are small circles of inlaid ebony.

Joplin, who was 27 when she overdosed on heroin, is singing; she is also wearing a peace medallion and exposing one breast. “I thought I’d make her eternally sexy,” Lucas explains.

Hendrix, who was 27 when he choked to death on his own vomit as he slept, has a head-full of flames for hair, flames that lick the length of the pole. Perhaps they represent the elements, says Lucas, who then confesses: “I couldn’t carve an Afro.”

Morrison, who was 27 when he died in the bathtub--probably from a drug-related heart attack--is trying to pull the cobra off with his hands, which are manacled by the tips of the flames, symbolic of Morrison in handcuffs during a scrape with the law.

The timing is right. All around him, Lucas sees a resurgence of the ‘60s quest for peace and compassion and thinks his totem pole could help bring the flower children’s message to their children. . .

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When Lucas, 30, first had his vision, he grabbed the only paper at hand--manila file folders--taped them together and began sketching from memory. Later, from photographs, he refined the rockers’ faces.

The Balinese were mystified: Who were these people?

“Lennon was the only one they knew,” Lucas says. “They knew Lennon. They didn’t know the Beatles.”

As the totem took shape, Lucas, who’d never done faces, consulted by long distance with his father-in-law, an L.A.-area plastic surgeon. “I’m talking wood and he’s talking skin, but it’s actually the same thing.”

Since the Balinese spoke no English, Lucas would pull at his eyes and contort his features to guide his helpers as they chiseled and pared.

By April, 1992, Lucas had completed his masterpiece. The pole would be sun-dried and then village women would sand it by hand and wax it.

But Benjamin and Tara were broke; it was time to go home. “I didn’t know if I’d ever see the pole again,” Lucas says.

Nine months later, a friend visiting Bali arranged for shipment to L.A.

The whole thing is kind of weird, Lucas admits. But he’s no stranger to the strange. Once he bought a Laurel Canyon property, only to learn that Morrison (his favorite) had lived there. He wants to convert it into an upscale B and B and call it “Love Street.”

Lucas has been a control room operator at Three Mile Island and a Playboy rabbit in Manhattan during a short-lived effort to revive the clubs by adding boy bunnies.

And just what plans does he have for a one-ton totem pole?

“I’d like to see it in a public spot, in a place of beauty.”

A place, Lucas says, where people will walk up and say, “Wow! How did that ever get here?”

Meanwhile, as he lovingly crafts furniture, he dreams of returning to Bali to build a 180-foot teak ark for his 9-month-old son, Noah.

Well, at Least He Still Has the Good Life

First, Peter Mayle moved to Provence. He loved it. He wrote about it. People loved what he wrote. He wrote again.

Inevitably, there was a TV movie, “A Year in Provence.” And, inevitably, Mayle-bashing began.

In cafes from Aix to Avignon, fellow expatriate Brits sniff about how he has spoiled everything. In the British press, Mayle has been vilified in a voice once reserved for Jack the Ripper.

Is he worried?

“I think it’s hysterical that the British are getting very upset about a country that isn’t theirs anyhow,” he says.

He adds, “I find it rather funny. People have been coming to Provence for 2,000 years.” But suddenly, every traffic jam is Mayle’s fault.

As for the reported massive tourist invasion: It won’t happen, he says, because “there’s nowhere for them to sleep. And there’s no Euro Disney Sud. “

The dapper ex-ad executive was at Central Library, where fans queued up for signed copies of his new novel of Provence, “Hotel Pastis.”

“I haven’t, I don’t think, ruined Provence, certainly not for me,” he assured them. He still has an eight-second commute across his courtyard to his office, where he’s writing “a dog’s eye view of all these cliches about man’s best friend” and another novel.

But life in Provence is not quite perfect: “You still have death, taxes, burst pipes.”

This weekly column chronicles the people and small moments that define life in Southern California. Reader suggestions are welcome.