Cleanup Order Taxes Veteran, 75 : Moorpark: His home is included in a city crackdown on eyesores.

Edward Bradley says he never asked for anything from anybody. At 75, the tall and gaunt retired Air Force major is sticking by that policy despite facing an increasingly bleak future.

Sitting in his disheveled living room stacked with mementos, Bradley, who was the last man to fly the Enola Gay before it was decommissioned after dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, spends his days sorting through a pile of letters and court documents concerning the rundown state of his modest house.

He is one of a handful of residents in Moorpark who are being targeted in a city crackdown on eyesores and overcrowded dwellings. They have been told to either clean up their yards and homes or face big fines.

Situated on a corner lot, Bradley’s property has the look of a cleanup project just half complete.

Some of the overgrown trees have been chopped down, but the lawn is uncut. The rotted wood fence that once enclosed the back yard has been knocked down, but the lumber is still leaning against a wall.

The discarded and used car parts have been collected from around the yard, but they dot the property in rusty piles. The roof has been fixed, but some of the torn-up tar paper that once covered it remains. The exterior paint is worn and water-stained.

City officials’ recent push to spruce up Moorpark’s aging downtown is not their first. They have tried it in the past, but they backed off after critics said they were too heavy-handed.

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In 1992, code-enforcement officers tried to keep newcomers from crowding as many as 20 people into single-family homes, but some critics said the policy unfairly singled out poor Latinos.

Now the city is careful about whom it cracks down on. And, along with the tough approach they take on people like Bradley, city officials are just now offering grants and loans to fix up the homes of other residents who qualify.

“It’s a kind of carrot-and-stick approach,” said Steven Hayes, the city’s economic development manager. “If a code enforcement officer sees some violations--especially health and safety violations--they might check if those families qualify for the grant money. Otherwise . . . “

Neither Bradley nor the city seems to know if he would qualify for one of the grants or loans, and relations between the two sides have soured to the point that neither is looking into that possibility.

Bradley says he is being singled out for “selective enforcement.” The city ignores his neighbors’ violations, but picked on him because he is an easy mark, he argues.

City officials disagree, citing many occasions when they have cracked down on homeowners for everything from an illegal garage-to-bedroom conversion to failure to clean up yards. The difference, officials say, is that unlike Bradley most people comply after being warned.

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Bradley said he will comply when he is good and ready.

In February, a court commissioner told Bradley that he had 30 days to obey a city order to cut his lawn, trim his hedges, get rid of an old car parked next to his garage and open his home to building inspectors--or face heavy fines.

Bradley has repaired a roof that had been badly damaged for almost a year. He cut down four overgrown trees that were listing dangerously. And he got rid of three old cars that were parked in his front yard.

But the progress has been slow because Bradley, who is in poor health, wants to do the work himself. “I’ve always done things on my own,” he said, standing in his clean work coveralls. “I built that wall, that patio,” he said, pointing around his yard. “I’ve done my own work. Repaired my own cars. Rebuilt cars. I’ve never been one to ask for a handout.”

He also doesn’t rely on neighbors. Since he bought his house in 1958, most of the original neighbors have either died or moved away. He is estranged by cultural differences and a language barrier with the new neighbors. And he seems committed to facing his setbacks without them.

“We don’t have a community here anymore,” he said.

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If Bradley does not comply with the court order by March 26--and he says he is not physically able to--he will face fines up to $5,000.

If he continues to violate city health and safety regulations, officials might seek a misdemeanor violation against him and, as a last resort, ask a court to send him to jail.

“I am trying to comply with their directives, but I’m sorry to say that I have a respiratory problem and I don’t get around as easy as I used to,” he said.

City officials said Bradley has been given months to comply with their orders. After a tree fell on his roof more than a year ago, a local code-enforcement officer tried to encourage Bradley to repair the roof. The officer even coaxed members of a local veterans organization to help Bradley.

“I didn’t want them going on the roof,” Bradley said of the effort. “They’re all about my age, and I was worried that one of them would fall off and break something.”

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It was eight months before the roof was finally repaired, officials said, and that was only a day before the storms hit in January.

“The man is living in conditions that human beings should not be living,” said Jim Aguilera, director of community services. “He was late to one of our meetings because he said he was up all night putting buckets around the house to collect rainwater.”

Bradley, Aguilera said, is “set in his ways.”

Despite the rundown state of his home, Bradley has won over some supporters.

“I just don’t think that’s the way we should deal with a senior and a war veteran,” said former City Councilwoman Eloise Brown.

Bradley, meanwhile, says he is feeling stronger and more able to do the work around the house, but he expects the city to come down hard on him when the repairs aren’t finished in time.

So now he is considering hiring a lawyer.