Not many have even heard of Pauma Valley. But soon you will. A well kept secret is out.

To get there is inconvenient. Generally, we don't like inconvenience. We like "Freeway Close." Quick on and off. In and out. Easy access. Drive-through. Roll down the window - do your business - outta here.

This place is way on the other end of that whole cultural spectrum.

Pauma Valley is a huge topographical bowl. And that is the origin of its magic.

Southern California is short on water. Always has been. Always will be. Even today there remains a whole horde that will never forgive Southern Californians for thieving their water. From a satellite, you can observe the long lines - aqueducts snaking their way out of the urban centers of Los Angeles and San Diego like rubber hoses siphoning out reserves from distant places - and draining them dry.

It has bred resentment for generations.

But not so Pauma. It doesn't need anyone else's water thank you. It has plenty of its own. Like a catch basin, the Valley captures every drop of moisture the heavens and the earth will yield. The holding tank is a wonderful water table just below the surface. Laying flat between Palomar Mountain to the north and the ridge at Valley Center on the south, that water table supplies sprawling orange and avocado groves, and colorful flower fields on the valley floor. Stand on one of those ridges on a clear, sunny afternoon and you'll take in a grand view you will not soon forget.

For three going on four generations, the Lyalls have worked their Pauma Valley land. They dug the wells and planted the trees in straight rows that follow the contours of the basin. Their juicy sweet valencia oranges are shipped all over the world. I doubt that many consumers have a clue - that early morning glass of California sunshine came from Pauma Valley.

Chuck is now Patriarch of the Lyall clan. And Kay is Matriarch. It’s a family with history and tradition and friends who carry with them stories and rich memories of Pauma. Their near fifty year marriage has produced children and grandchildren who grew up chasing around these groves, just like Chuck - who to this day lives next to the house his dad built - an adobe.

Chuck is not only a rancher - he is a scientist, a mechanical engineer, a pilot, a videographer, a musician, a world-traveler, and a churchman. If the dictionary is right, that an eccentric is simply one who departs from the established norm, then Chuck is one. There is only one Chuck Lyall. Just ask Kay.

The centerpiece of his eccentricities is a fully restored, fully operational two thousand pipe, twenty rank, three manual Wurlitzer Theatre Organ. The polished horseshoe console sits in the living room he built in the nineteen fifties. The pipes and marimbas and bells and snare drums and bellows are set just below the floor of that living room in a basement with a twelve-foot high ceiling. Through hardwood cabinets, regulated by giant mechanical shutters, two large openings on either end of the room bring the full sound of the organ pipes below into the living room.

The floor vibrates.

When the Wurlitzer's pipes open up, you can hear the resounding melodies from all four corners of Pauma Valley.

Theatre organs are turn-of-the-century marvels. For the first thirty years of the nineteen hundreds, cinema reigned as a most popular art form. The picture show projected on the silver screen was silent, but the theatre was not. Opulent, ornate "Movie Palaces" boasted massive pipe organs that filled the cavernous auditoriums with rich full sound. They created moods and movement - from a romantic love scene to a wild chase. They were mechanical orchestras - with realistic sound effects. Electrical impulses traveled by wire from each of the keyboard manuals (sometimes stacked three or four or five high) and the stop tabs and the pedals and the pre-sets to a relay which in turn would pull open one of thousands of valves on a precisely selected pipe at just the proper moment releasing a stream of air which passed over a carefully cut opening - to produce a finely tuned whistling sound at just the right pitch. Some of those pipes were smaller than a pencil. The largest - as much as thirty-two feet tall.

But not only pipes. From the keyboard, the organist operated a whole variety of other instruments - piano, drums, cymbals, xylophone, marimba, bells, chimes, castanets, wood block, and even tuned sleigh bells. And sound effects, too - train and boat whistles, car horns, sirens, bird whistles, and imitation surf and wind and rain and thunder.

The giant theatre organ at New York's Radio City Music Hall is one of the few surviving instruments still played regularly in concert. In San Diego's Balboa Park, the magnificent organ in the Spreckles Pavilion is the largest outdoor instrument in the world. But most theatre organs disappeared sometime after the 1927 film - "The Jazz Singer" - the first ever talking movie. Except for collectors and enthusiasts like Chuck Lyall - they would be gone. A distant memory.

Last week, Carolyn and I made our first visit to the Lyall's Pauma Valley home. Carolyn's sister Judy and brother-in-law Bruce came along. They traveled across the country for a visit. Bruce is an accomplished organist. We encouraged him to pack some music. He did.

Chuck and Kay welcomed us warmly and took us for a tour of the console and the pipes downstairs. Access to the basement (a rare thing in California) is via a three foot square elevator/lift - the door opens in the kitchen.

While Chuck plays and maintains the instrument, he shies away from giving his own concerts. Years ago, he created a device that records not the sound, but the electrical impulses sent to the relay by all of the keys and pedals and presets and tabs. When a skillful organist visits (as they often do) - he records the entire session. Later, Chuck replays the tape - and the work of the maestro is repeated. The full concert can be enjoyed again and again, and the pipes don't even know the difference.

So it was that Chuck demonstrated the instrument as we sat in their comfortable living room suspended over two thousand organ pipes. The console was empty - but the mighty Wurlitzer came alive.

"Seventy Six Trombones!" As though Professor Harold Hill came high-steppin' right through the living room in full bright red regalia - baton beating out the rhythm. The percussion in tempo shook the whole house. One had difficulty remaining in one's chair.

That was followed by a couple of the old romantic tunes like "I Met My Million Dollar Baby in the Five and Ten Cent Store."

Then it was Bruce's turn. He was the first and only one of us to brave center stage. The horseshoe console surrounded him like a space capsule envelops an astronaut. He quickly familiarized himself with the tabs and presets and pedals - and said, just a bit nervously, "well, here goes."

And off he went. A "Fugue in G minor." Pauma Valley got a visitation from the master of counter-point, and composer of the baroque era. He's been called one of the greatest and most productive geniuses in the history of Western music. Johann Sebastian Bach. Good work, Bruce.

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Last week, our Pastor told a terrific story.

After a year's preparation, our new little church presented itself with open arms to the community for it's first publicized worship service. Part of the plan was to saturate the town with the news.

The best suggestion of all was to hang a large banner over the main entrance to our town. RIDGEVIEW CHURCH IS HERE! Almost all twenty-five thousand residents come up the grade and into the valley the same way. Every day. Banners announce every kind of local event from that strategic point - why not the opening of a church? No one would miss it.

So Pastor Bill set out to find out whom it is who is empowered to grant permission to hang such a banner. For three days he made phone calls, knocked on doors and sat in waiting rooms - finally he realized the plain fact of the matter.

He reported his findings with a question: "You know who gives permission to hang the sign?" He held out his arms and raised his eyebrows - and waited for the answer. We all shrugged.

"No one," he said. Then he broke into one of those big Bill Trok belly laughs we've come to love.

I thought about that all week. I thought about Chuck and his dad. I thought about Bruce. I thought about Bill. I thought about you.

Who gave Chuck's dad permission to dig that first Pauma Valley well? Who gave Chuck permission to restore a forgotten Wurlitzer? Who gave Bruce permission to master Bach? Who gave Bill permission to start a church?

No one.

It came from somewhere inside. It was a prompting. A calling. And it gave energy and focus and direction and meaning and purpose. And we all benefited. Enormously.

Are you waiting for permission? Still waiting? It's been way too long.

Take it from Chuck and Bruce and Bill: you've got permission. Here and now. Today.