lagunabeachindy . com JANUARY 27 , 2023 11
GUEST OPINION :
A Neighborhood with Klass
By Bob Borthwick
Laguna is a town of many unique neighborhoods . Some are larger , like Top of the World , and some are smaller , like Canyon Acres or Woods Cove . Every one of them has stories . My neighborhood is Brooks Street , and this is the story of one of its original families from the 1930s : Carl and Virginia Klass .
My wife Vicki and our two young sons Scott and Evan moved to our house on Brooks Street in 1980 , after living a block away on Brangwyn Way for the previous six years . It was our good fortune to be moving next door to the Klass family . At that time , I was 34 years old , and Mr . Klass was 70 .
When we moved to Laguna , Mr . Klass was a well-known business owner on lower Forest Ave . His small storefront [ near the current Shoe Cellar ] was called Klass Electric , which sold small electrical appliances and did minor repairs . It was a place where one could bring in their broken lamp for a new cord or plug and then bring it home in like-new condition for a very reasonable price . ( Ann Christoph tells me that her repaired toaster was returned with a piece of toast in it — to prove it was fixed !) Such was life in Laguna only a few decades ago .
On the personal side , Mr . Klass was both exceptionally kind and unusually frugal . On our first holiday season on Brooks Street , our sons were 5 and 7 years old . Mr . and Mrs . Klass knocked on our door on Christmas morning dressed in red as Santa ’ s helpers , and they came into our living room to provide a little show for our kids with the marionettes they had brought . A complete and wonderful surprise .
Shortly after we moved in , Mr . Klass gave me a tour of his house , which he built brick-by-brick and board-byboard by himself in 1936 , with assorted friends and laborers to assist .
Almost all of the materials were brought to Laguna from salvage yards and demolition sites around southern California . Mr . Klass was a Depressionera scavenger for cast-off materials if
The Krass house circa 1936 . The house ’ s windows face ocean , with Brooks Street to the right . Photo courtesy of the Krass family .
there ever was one .
Even the lumber was salvaged from torn-down structures , and the nails had to be removed before using the boards .
He proudly showed me every room : “ See that bathtub ? It came from a hotel that collapsed in the Long Beach earthquake . See those clay roof tile ? They came from a demolished boathouse in Altadena . I traded the guy a clothes washer for the roof tiles .”
His unusual 7 foot tall x 4 foot wide glass-panel front door was discarded from the front of a dress shop on Colorado Boulevard in Pasadena . Everything in his house had a story .
I was raised in a small tract home in the suburbs where all the components were standardized , and these stories of salvage and creativity fascinated me . I realized that this type of individuality is what gives Laguna its charm .
Recently Carl Klass Jr . loaned me his father ’ s high school yearbook [ Bonita Union High School - La Verne , 1928 ] and the journal he kept that described the construction of his Brooks Street house : from land purchase to completion . Carl Jr . grew up in the Brooks Street house and is a retired Laguna
BORTHWICK , PAGE 15
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