At the foot of the Santa Lucia Mountains, an old house stoically faces the San Saba vineyards - and it's almost certain fate - about a mile from the renovated Soledad Mission. Those who lived in the house, and whatever dreams they dreamed there, have long been absent from the crumbling structure, shabbily playing out its days in the winter of its discontent. Perhaps the house was once a paradise for its inhabitants. Now it sits somewhere east of Steinbeck's Eden.