By Kaye Ross

Fred Costales’ teahouse sits at the far end of the backyard behind his Cherry Avenue home. The bridge over the swimming pool enhances the meditative theme. Below, the teahouse interior.

In Japan, where the serving of tea is a high art, there are seven rules of tea dating from the 16th century. “Be prepared for rain,” one says, “even if it is not raining.”

That is where the teahouse began for Fred Costales. He was not anticipating what happened, but something in his spirit was prepared to take the life-changing moment and turn it into something of enduring beauty.

Fred met Nancy Spackman in the 1940s on a blind date at Hyatt Rickey’s in Palo Alto while both were at Stanford. He was in medical school, and Nancy was studying education. They were married Dec. 20, 1948, the year Nancy graduated.

After serving his internship, Fred opened his medical practice in Los Altos in 1954, making him the first board-certified internal medicine specialist in town. It was hard getting started - “After the first year, you can almost make expenses” - so Fred began doing extra work giving pilots medical examinations for their Federal Aviation Administration certifications. It became more of an avocation than a second job.

Pilots must be certified every six months, so Fred had plenty of clients. And as Silicon Valley grew, more businessmen had their own planes, requiring three or four pilots apiece, all needing exams. Fred’s work also provided an excellent referral source for his private practice.

Fred had been bit by the flying bug during his time in the Korean War when the “Marine flyboys” used to tell him about their adventures. He got his pilot’s license in 1969, and for years, while he and Nancy were raising their four children, they’d fly out of San Jose on trips. Today, Fred goes up every month or two and flies to Half Moon Bay for lunch, but doesn’t put in the hours needed to fly more often.

In 1971, Fred parlayed his FAA work into a position as senior aviation examiner for JCAB, the Japanese equivalent of the FAA. Japan Airlines had set up a training center in Napa, where college graduates who at first, Fred said, “didn’t know an airplane from a lawn mower” were put through a rigorous 1½-year course to teach them everything about aviation. More than 100 students are working toward their pilots’ licenses at the center today.

The medical exams were as stringent as the training. “It used to be that heart trouble, hypertension, diabetes meant you were out for life,” Fred said, “but now you can be tested and, if you’re doing OK, you can work” as a pilot.

Over the years, Fred and Nancy learned a good deal about the Japanese culture through Fred’s work, and they visited Japan many times. Their Cherry Avenue home is sprinkled with memorabilia from their trips. Nancy and Fred celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in December 1998. Three months later, Nancy was gone. She died at 73 of a ruptured aortic aneurism.

Soon thereafter, a winter storm swept through Los Altos. The huge Deodar cedar, 18 feet in circumference, that stands in front of the Costales home survived, but a set of redwood timbers Fred had put up in the backyard blew down.

Fred wanted a kind of outdoor room, so son Ric harvested redwood from the family timber ranch near Ft. Jones in Siskiyou County and built a structure with four posts and a roof. Fred was happy with it until Santa Cruz son Tom, who works in computers, said one day, “Dad, I hate to say it, but that looks like a carport.”

Fred had to agree. Back to the timber ranch went Ric for more supplies, and he and Tom transformed the carport into a little red teahouse. Fred began buying Japanese maples to place in pots around the exterior, and set up several chairs and a table inside.

Daughter Nan of Sebastopol thought the teahouse needed something else. She had a plaque made to hang over the entry way. “Nancy’s Teahouse,” it reads in kanji.

Fred was content for a couple years nursing his Japanese maples and building brick planters. And then one day an idea struck. What about putting a barrel bridge over the swimming pool?

“My sons looked at me as if to say, ‘Sure, Dad, great idea,’ ” Fred said.

When son Jim, a civil engineer in Alaska, came for a visit last Christmas, he looked over the situation and concluded that dad could have his barrel bridge. He found a local contractor willing to do the work if Jim would draw up the designs.

Ric supplied the wood, set up the cedar posts and purchased extra-hard Brazilian Tigerwood for the bridge floor. It was finished in May. Even Fred called it “Fred’s folly.”

Tom got his first look at the bridge over Thanksgiving, when the family gathered to celebrate Fred’s 82nd birthday. Like a good son, he most certainly pronounced it beautiful.

Fred expects to enjoy his teahouse for years to come. He is in perfect health, still plays tennis several times a week (he was on Stanford’s tennis team) and works 2½ days each week giving pilot physicals.

One recent day, Fred was fulfilling one of the seven rules of tea: Act with utmost consideration toward your guests. An unusually warm autumn sun was falling toward the horizon. There was a moment of silence. Then Fred said: “This would have been a place Nancy would have loved.”