I struggle to find the right word(s) to describe my dad. If you ever met Don, you might be inclined to agree. If not, bear with me and I’ll try to explain…
If Don could have written the last chapter of his life, I think it would have ended exactly as it did. Don was found curled up in his bed, in his “cabin” (as he called it), with his beloved dogs Sophie and Sergei.
The house on Lancaster Road in Walnut Creek was often referred to as “Lancaster Castle” because after a stint in the US Army in Austria in the 50’s, my dad installed a “Fressglocke” (German for ‘feeding bell’) and two copper clock towers on the roof. This was Walnut Creek, CA in the late 1960’s:
(I remember being petrified at being so high when this picture was taken – good thing I had my trusty red rabbit’s foot on my belt loop for good luck.)
Don and Gale were known to regularly fill the back of Don’s ’52 Chevy truck with whatever collection of neighborhood kids happened to be around. The Miller family across the street had 9 kids, so it wasn’t hard to find an enthusiastic posse for a run to the Du-Mor Milk drive thru dairy. Don would buy a carton of fudge-sicles which we would devour like a pack of piranhas as we rode home in the warm summer air in the back of the truck. Don’s only rule was “Keep your butt down on the bed of the truck. No standing!”
The eclectic and creative antics were endless in my childhood. The house was heated by two wood burning stoves. Don always said “Good wood warms twice” (once when you cut/split/stack it and once when you burn it.) Who knows how the idea got in his head, but we made condom-shaped tissue paper hot air balloons, filled them with warm air from the chimney and launched them off the roof:
One year, Don and I decided we were going to do a ‘summer project’ and after some other ideas, eventually decided to build a wooden sailboat. Looking for construction plans, we landed at the Boat Warehouse in Walnut Creek one afternoon, immediately taken by a cherry red Laser (brand) sailboat. It looked fast, sexy and ready to sail. It was all three.
Of course, neither of us knew the first thing about sailing, so in classic Don fashion, he bought a book. And a toy sailboat. And a fan. We put the latter two in the bathtub and – Viola! – our physics/sailing lessons began.
We practiced rigging the boat in the backyard and after much trepidation (his), excitement and impatience (mine), we set out on our first marine adventure to Lafayette reservoir with the 13 foot Laser tied to the roof of the car. I know Don was convinced we would sail away from the dock and not have the skills to return. Somehow we made it back. Our sailing careers were launched.
At 6’1” and 128 pounds (I’m not kidding), Don had a superhero’s ability to lift/move large items. I remember watching him move a 250lb radial arm saw (with table/base) up several stairs by himself during one of the many remodel projects on Lancaster. Don was a master of assessing a situation and using leverage to achieve his means. I know the feeling – I move heavy stuff by myself all the time. The apple doesn’t fall far…
In regards to his “slight” stature, Don would tell the story of going in for a chest X-ray at Kaiser. Upon taking off his shirt for the procedure, the tech looked at him and said: “Damn, I could X-ray you with a strong lightbulb!”
At one point, while in his early 80’s, Don spent a couple of nights in the hospital for a stomach/intestinal problem. During the meeting with the occupational therapist on his release, she asked: “Do you use any assistive devices at home, Mr. van Druten?” (she was referring to a walker, cane, hand rails, etc.) I laughed from the other side of the room. She shot me an evil glance. “Yeah, when he has a truckload of gravel delivered to the driveway, he uses a wheelbarrow to move the pile to the backyard!”
I’m not sure what started the whole go-kart thing, but for one of my birthdays they gave me an old lawnmower, with a Briggs & Stratton gas engine. The idea was to transplant the motor onto a go-kart frame we would soon fashion from an old steel army cot, with pneumatic hardware store wheels and bicycle sprockets for the drivetrain. The initial implementation had foot steering and no brakes, but version 2 was complete with a steering wishbone and direct linkage steering. And the backyard in Walnut Creek was mostly flat so who really needed brakes anyway?
In retrospect, you couldn’t design a better mechanical engineering/physics project for a kid. Pulleys, belts, steering, centrifugal clutches and internal combustion? Game on.
But there was *always* some crazy-creative, out-of-the-box project going on around Lancaster Castle. One such endeavor was a life-sized “music box” Don created with a 30” galvanized sheet metal drum he soldered together. It had a full octave of 12″ to 36″ copper pipes (cut and tuned to different musical notes) as chimes, with an elaborate set of wood levers and strings to act as strikers. I remember watching his brain work over several days to figure out where to solder the pins on the drum and how far apart they should be to create the tempo and melody. I don’t remember what the song was, but in the end he eventually figured it out and it actually played.
Yes, that’s an old washing machine motor and a rope driving the McGuyver’d potter’s wheel. If memory serves, it took a few iterations to get the speed right so the bricks (which made up the flywheel on the base) didn’t fly off and crush your toes.
(The term “demodeling” was often used because Don and Gale would take a room in the house down to studs, only to realize they weren’t really sure *how* they wanted to put it back together. I remember living in rooms with studs for years.)
Don was *always* building and creating.
The European-inspired “Climbing Tower” we built in the backyard was the envy of the kids in the neighborhood. It had a shingled roof, ropes to climb, a fire pole to slide down, a sand box and planters full of Geraniums.
He loved wood carving.
“Shenanigans” or “Antics”? Which is the best word to describe the goings on at Lancaster? Both words apply and it was always done for fun, and with safety in mind. Getting hurt or hurting someone else wasn’t an option.
I remember countless afternoons of launching water balloons with a home-made “slingshot” made of 5 foot pieces of 5/8″ surgical tubing and a pool buoy, cut in half to make the launcher. It took three people (often including Don if I couldn’t find another neighborhood kid) – two to hold the ends of the tubing and a third to pull the cup back and launch the balloon into the “enemy” kid’s backyard (who also had a launcher and would lob balloons back our way).
Don lifeguarding as I began my surfing career in the doughboy pool in the backyard.
As a teenage boy, Don would always say the same three things to me when I would walk out the door on a Friday or Saturday night (knowing darn well we’d be getting into some kind of mischief):
- “Don’t get anyone pregnant.”
- “You can sleep wherever you want – just let us know where you are so we don’t worry about you.”
- “If you get thrown in jail, I’m not coming to get you tonight.”
While the first two were absolutely legit and understandable, it was the third that kept me out of trouble. If my friends were doing something that might be dicey, I had to make my own decisions about whether to participate or not. It guess it worked as I managed to stay out of jail.
Don loved costumes and dressing up. You just never knew what he’d get up to.
Here I am, proudly displaying my new 10-speed French road bike with him lurking in the roses, dressed as lord-knows-what and flipping off the camera. I’d be surprised if he was even wearing pants!
Don’s love for dogs started as early as I can remember. We always had a family dog. Don was a big player in the puppy raising program for Guide Dogs for the Blind in San Rafael, leading groups doing immunizations, checking fences for prospective raisers and helping kids with training of their dogs. He also volunteered with the local German Shepherd Rescue program. In his later years, his dogs were everything to him.
Another great memory of Don was written by my cousin Ken “Pooch” van Druten and provides yet another glimpse into my dad’s fantastic and wonderfully eclectic mind:
Well, my Uncle Don passed away yesterday. He would have been 90 years old in September. I have many fond memories of Don. He always treated me with so much love and respect. His craft most of his life was as a dental lab technician and when I had my braces removed as a teenager he built my first retainer. He was one of the first dental lab technicians that could put pictures in your retainer….so when you held your clear retainer up to a light you could see the photo. Remember this was the early 1980’s, so this was amazing new technology. Lol Well…. Good ole uncle Don made me one with a playboy centerfold as the picture in MY retainer. You wanna talk about being the coolest 13 year old at school… I was king for several weeks thanks to Uncle Don. I will miss him, and I know he had reconnected with my dad (his brother) in a way that really was nice in the past years. They would go have coffee together and hang out. My dad is gonna really miss him. RIP Don. Sad to see you go.
Don in his “lab”, making retainers.
The story of Don and Gale is long and for another time. While they were separated for the past 30 years, they remained married. After Don passed, I imagined he and Gale on a porch somewhere, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee and looking down saying: “Well, that was a shit-show!”
Wherever we go in the afterlife, I’m visualizing Don sitting on a rooftop, flying a homemade kite… fly in peace dad, I love you.
Kirk van Moon
August 2025
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