Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
Tehachapi's Online Community News & Entertainment Guide
The Forde Files No. 163
A giant spider appears to be stalking Kim and Pat Fahey's youngst son Leo from the barn on their six-acre property in Sand Canyon.
Alan Kimble "Kim" Fahey's 608-page book, "Hollywood Unlisted" is a rollicking, naughty memoir of 30 years as a telephone service man in Hollywood.
A gate made of giant pencils.
Birdhouses atop the gate.
Lion guarding the elegant chicken coop.
Stained glass on the fence.
Fahey built this fanciful train station for a client. It resides in his barn/workshop along with Tom Mix's stove, Errol Flynn's 1942 refrigerator and other artifacts.
Fahey's wife Pat, a former immigration attorney, with their youngest son Leo, 23. Between them Kim and Pat have 10 children. Their home is filled with books, dinosaurs, science fiction memorabilia, antique mechanisms and art work.
Kim Fahey made a big splash in the news three years ago when Los Angeles County, citing building code violations on his Acton property, ordered his fanciful structures – including a huge treehouse – torn down. He and his wife Pat packed up their collection of thousands of books, science fiction toys, model dinosaurs, vintage mechanical objects and art work and found a house on six acres in Sand Canyon.
Fahey, 66, has been remaking the overgrown parcel into a whimsical wonderland of his own design, with fencing made of wooden rounds from industrial wire spools and luminous stained-glass panels that he i nserts into the centers of the rounds. He has made a gate of giant pencils and topped it with elevated birdhouses. The three-story chicken coop is the Ritz of chickendom.
There's a giant spider on the roof of his workshop and William Mulholland's 1941 crane in the yard. ("It still runs.").
He has Danny DeVito's spiral stairs that were eight inches out of alignment.
He has a Tom Mix's stove, Errol Flynn's refrigerator and a classic glass restaurant cabinet that is filled with toys.
Fahey has graded a section of the property where he plans to plant 20 mulberry trees.
The structures are solidly bolted.
"If they say use a 2x4, I use a 2x10," he said.
Fahey was a telephone company service man in Hollywood for 34 years, working for six major companies. He wrote about his experiences in a free-wheeling book, "Hollywood Unlisted." Fahey is an entertaining story teller and he admits he likes to talk.
Fahey and his wife Pat have 10 children between them. Their youngest, Leo, lives on the property with them. Fahey usually has an apprentice he trains in construction.
