Living in a Middle-Class Microcosm : Tarzana: Despite growth and development, many aspects of the community haven’t changed all that much.

The Christmas of my 12th year, I received 24 books. Twenty-three were by Edgar Rice Burroughs, and 10 of those were Tarzan books.

On the back of one dust jacket was a photo of a baldish man lying in a hammock, half asleep. The hammock was slung between two trees on a hill overlooking a big valley covered by orange groves as far as the camera’s lens took you. Far in the distance were mountains. At least they looked like mountains to a boy who knew only the flat plains of North Dakota.

The photo caption said, “The author, Edgar Rice Burroughs, at home on his Tarzana ranch overlooking the verdant San Fernando Valley in California.”

Little did I know that 27 years later, I would buy a house on a half-acre that was once part of a once-favorite author’s domain.

My wife, Jay, and I signed the papers in August, 1954, when the mercury was pushing 104 degrees in an aluminum-sided trailer that served as a real estate office.

“You’re getting a well-built house, and,” the real estate agent said as he paused for emphasis, “a large septic tank and two cesspools.”

We soon learned that the number of cesspools established your niche in the social strata of Tarzana, much the same way the number of BMWs, Mercedeses or Jaguars in the driveway does today.

At one of the first neighborhood parties we attended, Jay mentioned offhandedly that we had two cesspools.

“Oh, Mrs. Spicer,” a matron said, “south of the Boulevard we call it a private system, not cesspools.”

Our house was a “ranchette” set in the middle of a half-acre of adobe. When the winter rains came before we had planted dichondra, the wet adobe would stick to you if you walked across it--much as it did to the sandals of the Franciscan monks who discovered the adhesive mud with which to build their missions.

Now, 37 years later, I’m still on that half-acre. Tarzana has changed much, but in many ways, it’s the same.

People still moan about the heavy congestion producing gridlock on the freeways. When I was driving 23 miles each way to my office in downtown L. A., the Hollywood Freeway ended at the foot of the Cahuenga Pass. The San Diego, Ventura and Golden State freeways didn’t exist.

From the top of the pass, it was Ventura Boulevard all the way to Tarzana. Only the homebound commuters didn’t call it Ventura Boulevard, but “Turtle Walk” as we cursed City Hall and the stop-and-go traffic. The signals were not synchronized; parallel parking closed curbside lanes to traffic and every major intersection allowed left turns without left-turn signals or left-turn-only lanes.

It all seemed worth it when you got home. The air was clean and aromatic from a blend of orange blossoms and barbecuing. From our back porch, the view over the orange groves was so clear you could see the Nike missile launchers on the peaks of the hills above what is now Granada Hills, 20 miles away.

Today, except rarely, the air is crummy. And even if it weren’t, you couldn’t see over or around the monstrosities that have changed the rural Valley to an incipient, urban jungle.

Before Sam Yorty brought sewers to the Valley, the cesspool pumpers ranged the residential streets. The pumpers were big rigs with an assortment of valves and hoses and a large steel tank upon which was inscribed their capacity in gallons. Some of the pumpers reflected their owners’ bucolic sense of humor. One such was painted baby blue with pink posies entwined about the legend: “Sweet Pea.”

Another was lettered, “Hit me gently. I’m loaded.”

You still see the cesspool pumpers in the streets, but the lighthearted approach to this public service is gone.

When we moved to Tarzana, it had five independent bookstores. Now there’s one, a chain. But there are four video rental places. At Gelson’s, the videotapes were once displayed in an area that used to hold racks of magazines catering to the most catholic tastes.

The role the supermarkets played in our daily life has changed little. Our first market was a Food Fair on Ventura Boulevard where a Mann’s multiscreen theater now stands. Last time I went there, I saw “Pretty Woman” in what I am certain was once the produce department--specifically the organic tomato bin--in the old Food Fair.

My late friend John, a screenwriter neighbor, maintained that Tarzana was a microcosm of the American middle class.

“Nowhere,” he used to say, “can you find a setting with more character types to study than in a Tarzana supermarket.”

He said he could go into the Food Fair, and later Gelson’s, at any time in recent history and tell you what year it was by how the women were dressed.

In the ‘50s, the dress was cutoffs, halters and hair in curlers. In the ‘60s, swimming suits, usually bikinis, were in vogue. In the ‘70s, blue jeans, which had a respectable showing from the ‘50s on, began to be replaced with designer jeans. Next came leotards, tennis tutus, stretch denims, perky baseball caps and bodysuits that fit as snugly as the long johns of my North Dakota boyhood when worn in early winter.

Tarzana had several interesting eating places in our early years there. A favorite was the Hangman’s Tree, named for a huge, venerable sycamore that shaded the west side of the restaurant. Legend had it that early horse thieves were strung up in the sycamore gibbet.

For a time, a stuffed dummy called Reseda Red swung from a branch on the end of a rope. On his chest was a sign saying, “Warm beer. Lousy food.”

To the right of the entrance was a tack-room bar that was popular with the horsey set, who hitched their steeds to a railing outside.

Some time in the ‘60s, the Hangman’s Tree changed hands, changed its name and lost its charm. In keeping with the times, the new owners put in a piano bar.

Another popular eatery was a counter diner, Pop’s Pie Place, set back from the Boulevard in the open fields between Tarzana and Encino. Pop’s main course never varied: roast beef, mashed potatoes, gravy, vegetable, soup, salad and a large wedge of pecan, apple, chocolate, rhubarb or lemon meringue pie known far and wide. Pop, who reminded me of someone’s aunt, always wore a bib apron. After he served you, he would sit and gossip as he peeled potatoes or apples. The price was $1.60, pie a la mode 50 cents extra.

Pop retired to tour the United States by bus, fulfilling his lifelong dream. A shopping mall now stands where Pop’s Pie Place once did.

West of Tarzana, Ventura Boulevard narrowed to two lanes as it bisected acres of open land en route to Woodland Hills. Set back in an Oriental garden was a Chinese restaurant.

At the door, the maitre d’ informed Jay and me that women in slacks were not seated. We went outside, where Jay rolled her slacks above her knees and hugged her cashmere coat about her. We got a table.

Even before we settled in, Jay, an ardent lifelong Democrat, joined the Democratic Club. She was picked up at home by a wintering Texas couple in a new Jaguar sedan. At the time, the club had eight members--the Texas couple, five domestics and Jay.

“The party of the people,” I said.

We bought in Tarzana when Eisenhower was riding high in his first term. A dear friend of ours, whose husband had made his first million operating a primary training field for World War II allied pilots, wore a diamond brooch shaped like an elephant with the word IKE spelled out in diamonds.

Today, we have a public library shared with Encino, named after Norris Poulson, L. A.’s mayor in the 1950s before he lost to Yorty. Poulson carried the Valley on a campaign promise to institute one-stop trash pickup. We called him the “one-can candidate.”

Now, even the one-story tiled roof building that housed the Hangman’s Tree restaurant is gone, and with it, rumors of a cache of booty cemented in the chimney that old-timers used to talk about in the tack room.

On that site today is the Wall Street Plaza, which has been described in The Times as a “neo-Victorian-style building with nearly 50,000 square feet of offices . . . estimated cost of $14 million.”

The big sycamore at Hangman’s Tree was preserved and is still standing. One recent moonlit night when I walked by, I could have sworn I saw Reseda Red hanging there.