Speaking of adaptive reuse...

Several days ago, Chicken Corner was out and about in Echo Park. I stopped to check out a yard sale and noticed this cart-like structure that had been converted to plant platform in the front yard of a house in Elysian Heights. It wasn't for sale. The owner of the house, Rosa Ponce, told me the "cart" was actually what remained of an old Model T chassis her father brought home to the same house in Echo Park several decades ago. She believed he had brought it in Beverly Hills. She told me the car once was used to ferry newlyweds to the house for a wedding reception. Hundreds of people attended the festivities at the house, which has a terraced backyard about 200 feet long (like most of the lots in the area). Her next door neighbor, Mary Pritchard, who, like Ponce, was raised in the house she now lives in, next door, remembered the automobile and the parties, for which the Ponce family is legendary.

Mary Pritchard, left, and Rosa Ponce.