I met Cliff May — considered the father of the suburban ranch house — when I interviewed him in the early 1980s for a UCLA symposium celebrating his long career. At that time, he had recently been divorced from his second wife and was living in the former sales office for Riviera Ranch, a subdivision in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles that he had developed in the late 1930s. I found a somewhat frail but exuberant individual with a sparkle in his eye and an office full of renderings, papers and Post-it notes. He insisted on playing Gershwin's "I've Got A Crush on You" on the upright piano before we sat down to talk. It was clear that here was a charming and vividly western personality with an enormous zest for life. In addition to being a self-taught house designer, May had been a horseman, furniture builder, alto sax player, land developer and the pilot of his own plane — which, one of his clients told me, had a piano keyboard built into the cockpit so May could put the plane on autopilot and play honky-tonk ragtime at 10,000 feet. His tan Lincoln Continental with vanity plates that said "MAYDAY" was parked out front; according to New Yorker writer Brendan Gill, an old friend, May drove skillfully, but always at top speed. I soon realized that horizontal movement, not to mention a danceable beat, was an important part of his life and work.