Home Free in Canyon Country : Turnabout: A couple who lost their house to fire, then endured makeshift quarters for two years, will receive a new mobile home--free.

Frank Fisher couldn’t believe the news, the first good news he had heard in a long time.

Two years ago a brush fire destroyed his house in Saugus, forcing Fisher and his wife of 63 years, Mabel, to live in a trailer on the property ever since. Then in August, their landlord cut off their electricity and water in a lease dispute, leaving them without utilities for 55 days.

So Thursday morning it was hard for Fisher, 82, to believe that the owners of Apple Homes, a mobile home dealership in Canyon Country, had offered the couple a new $35,000 mobile home free of charge. The mobile home dealers, brothers Robert and Pat Milan, had already found a space for the unit at a mobile home park in Canyon Country and said they would pay the $275 monthly rent.

“We’d like to do something to help you two,” Robert Milan told the Fishers at his office, saying he had read newspaper accounts of their plight. The couple had been brought there by their attorney, Richard A. Patterson, who on Oct. 2 won a court order forcing the landlord, Bill Jordan, to re-connect the utilities.

Fisher didn’t understand at first. He thanked the Milan brothers for their interest but said there was no way he could afford to buy a mobile home. Then the news sank in.

It was all free.

He looked stunned.

“I don’t want to be a beggar,” he protested. Mabel Fisher, 85, possibly embarrassed, just looked away.

“I don’t want to impose on anyone,” Frank Fisher continued. “All my life I’ve been able to work. You can’t do it for free.”

But Patterson reminded Fisher that the stress of the dispute over the lease had aggravated a heart condition. “You can’t work,” Patterson said, pleading with him to accept the gift.

The Fishers stood quietly, thinking.

The house that burned to the ground two years ago was to have been their retirement home. A tough man with a sharp tongue, Frank Fisher built the home himself after a lifetime of unusual jobs, from stunt man and chef to ambulance driver and used-car salesman. He once wrestled bears in a movie.

The Fishers obtained a lease to live on the remote Saugus property, along Hasley Canyon Road, 19 years ago. But Jordan maintained that the lease, which expires Dec. 20, 1990, became void when the house was destroyed. He also said the trailer was a hazard because the electricity had been connected illegally.

Patterson admitted that Los Angeles County ordinances do not allow a trailer on the property. All he wanted, he said, was time to find a new residence for the Fishers.

But Thursday morning, the Fishers repeatedly resisted Patterson’s pleas. “I’m better off in the damned trailer,” Frank Fisher said. “All my life I’ve paid my way.”

“You’ve had a lot of bad luck and it’s time you had some good luck,” Pat Milan said.

Finally, the Fishers were taken to Sierra Park, a 75-space mobile home park along Soledad Canyon Road. The Milans and another Apple Homes employee, Duke Eriksen, let the couple tour a home, saying it was identical to one already ordered for the Fishers.

Finally, Mabel Fisher spoke.

“Beautiful,” she said.

“My mother lives here,” Pat Milan said. “You’ll be her neighbor.”

The Milans then led the Fishers to a vacant trailer space shaded by a large oak tree. Their mobile home would go here, the Milans said. It will be ready in about a month.

For the first time all day, Mabel Fisher smiled. She and her husband had a new home. “I’ve have a lot of surprises in my life, but I ain’t never had one like this,” Frank Fisher said as tears filled his eyes.

“I can’t tell you how grateful I am. I don’t have any words.”