The House That Irv Approved

I wasn’t going to write another earthquake column because, God knows, we’ve all had it up to our bobbitts with seismic tremors, but I couldn’t let the latest L.A. disaster go by without thanking Irv.

I was thinking about him the other day as I was putting hundreds of books back on their shelves that had been knocked to the floor in the six-point-sixer.

Everyone I know is still involved in putting their books back. They left them until last because you can kick books aside without slicing off a toe or breaking your neck, and not bother with them until all the glass is swept up and the pictures rehung.

Also, there is a kind of joy to organizing books, to holding them and looking through them at your leisure. Lifting them back on the shelves is a little taxing, but, as a novelist friend pointed out, it’s still a hell of a lot easier to lift a book than to write one.

About Irv. He came to mind when it dawned on me that the worst damage to our house was things dumped on the floor. Nothing cracked or split or shattered, and the place remained firmly on its foundation. There is no question in my mind all that is due to Irv.

His full name is Irv Erickson. He was an L.A. County building inspector who, in 1978, had the power of final approval over a major addition we were making to our house.

Irv insisted we put in steel pilings, sheer walls, metal straps and a lot of other things that kept the old place standing when the earth shook like a dog after a bath. Irv saved our place. But it wasn’t easy for him.

*

Take those steel pilings. Irv insisted we put in nine of them to bedrock, which would have added $18,000 to the cost of the addition. When I heard that, I went looking for him with hatred in my heart.

This is not unusual. Doug Browne, who manages the Calabasas office of the building and safety division, tells me building inspectors are often hated. Sometimes they are the object of tears, shouts, spit and threats of physical violence.

I am not big enough or strong enough to worry anyone, but I was foaming at the mouth by the time I found Irv, who was at the bottom of a six-foot hole inspecting some kind of concrete foundation.

I jumped into the hole with him and argued for 45 minutes against the necessity of putting in pilings, but Irv, who was a soft-spoken, slow-talking man, just kept saying I had to have them to make the place shaker-proof, no two ways about it.

He reminded me of one of those solemn, taciturn Northeasterners who insist in very few words you can’t get there from here no matter what the map says.

The only emotion Irv manifested during the ordeal was when I finally gave up and said, “How do I get out of this hole?”

Irv said, “How’d you get in?”

I said, “I jumped in.”

Irv smiled slightly and said, “Jump out.”

That wasn’t the end of it. The pilings weren’t enough for Irv. He wanted large sheets of plywood nailed up in the basement to prevent horizontal movement and a couple of dozen metal straps here and there to keep it all together.

A friend suggested I bribe him, but by that time I’d spent all my bribe money on steel pilings, and a six-pack of Bud just wouldn’t have cut it.

*

“A lot of people are like that,” Doug Browne said the other day. He meant people who spit and curse their building inspector. “But we’ve got to do what we’ve got to do.” I felt like I was talking to John Wayne.

I’d gone to Doug looking for Irv to tell him he was right about the pilings and the straps and all. Doug said Irv had retired about 10 years ago, probably from the stress I had caused him in 1978.

No one seems to know where he is, or even if he is. The last time Doug heard about him, Irv was ill and moving out of the area to be with a son.

“He took a lot of crap,” Doug said. “We all do. Usually when you explain to someone why something’s got to be done to save their house in an earthquake, they’ll say OK and let it go.” Pause. “But some don’t.”

I thought about that when I crawled under our house the other day to see if everything was OK. I hate being under there because of spiders and God knows what else, but I was pleased to report that everything looked fine.

Wherever you are, Irv, I wanted you to know that. If you have gone from this earth I hope heaven has a special little house for you with sheer walls and vertical straps.

And I’m sorry I called you a dirty dog-licking, rat-brained, fish-eyed son of a scabby harlot. I get a little emotional when it comes to spending money.

But I’ll be ever grateful to you, Irv. The house stands. We owe you for that. Come on over, the Bud’s still cold.