It was one of those visits to Half-Priced Book Store where I’d go to spend the afternoon seeking anything that would catch my fancy, from architecture to travel to needlework to design to gardening to photography…wandering from section to section looking for a cover or a title that would pique my curiosity. I never knew what would trigger it, sometimes a book on Mexican decor, sometimes some obscure vintage needlework design. Once it was a book on the Watts Towers in Los Angeles.
Simon Rodia is one of those people who had a vision and wanted to create something greater than himself, something that would last long after he was gone.
You might not have ever heard of him, but he created those towers single -handedly with nothing more than concrete and a bucket of whatever he could find: shells, broken tiles, broken dishes, glass bottles.
And when he was done, he was finished with it–he just walked away from it all, never to return.
The amazing thing is, years later, the city of Los Angeles declared them dangerous and an eyesore-they wanted them pulled down. People rallied around the towers and a deal was struck-if the city could prove the towers unsafe, then down they’d come. BUT, no matter how much stress they put on them, no matter how hard they pushed with their bulldozers, the towers never budged!
Simon Rodia, all by himself, built something so strong it couldn’t be torn down by any means-and this in LA, the earthquake center of the country. If only he was here to teach our city engineers a thing or two about construction!
Not long after that, I found the Magic Garden’s of Isaiah Zagar…so far, I’ve just read about them online (http://www.philadelphiasmagicgardens.org/) but I plan on going there this summer. It’s not that far from West Reading and Lancaster where I did visit last month, and there’s the coolest, coolest shop in West Reading called the Curious Consignment-
But that’s for another day…
OK, I’ll shut up now.
BoHo Express 
