This is the memory palace. I'm Nate DeMoeu.

He would build a shrine to an idea.

That was the idea.

Or a shrine to ideas that may have been it.

Maybe the vigorous debate of ideas?

Ideals with an L, certainly.

Intentions are hard to divine when you look back.

So maybe it's best to start at the beginning.

Walter Not had nothing.

He lived out in the San Bernardino Valley, east of LA.

His father died when he was little and his mother did what she could.

She was industrious. Her own parents had come out west and then honest to God covered wagon.

But there was only so much she could do on her own.

So young Walter pitched it.

There was an empty lot near his school. He was eight or nine. So this is like 1899.

In Walter planted a garden there.

Tended it before and after school and then sold the vegetables that sprouted up through the dirt.

Took some of that money, rented out other plots and other empty lots.

Unused corners of neighbor's yards, grew more vegetables, made more money.

And when he got older and married his high school sweetheart, they moved out to the Mojave Desert.

Built a house and started working the land.

Didn't get much out of the land so he took a second job.

...