By the Sea

I’ve lived nearly all my life in coastal California. My only considerable time away was an 18-month stay at an Army post in Colorado, nearly 35 years ago.

The post, Fort Carson, was in the shadow of Pike’s Peak, on the eastern slope of the Rockies. There was abundant natural beauty close at hand. One thing the area didn’t have, however, was an item this L.A. boy missed terribly – the ocean.

I can go for months without venturing west of Fairfax. Still, there is great comfort in knowing that Big Blue is there. I’m not sure why. Sometimes I think that living on the continent’s edge gives one the sense that escape is always possible. Or perhaps some primordial memory is stirred by the smell of the sea or the rhythmic crash of the waves – all life came from the sea originally, if the paleontologists have it right.

Perhaps the truth is not so abstract or exotic, however. Perhaps it’s simply that ocean and beach are associated with pleasant memories from childhood, memories of summers, freedom and fun.

My daughter, the third grader, seems to have made the latter associations. This became evident Sunday morning, when we had a short window of time to ourselves and settled on a quick jaunt to the beach. We wouldn’t have time to swim, only time to walk a little and spend a few minutes at the water’s edge, before we had to return to the heart of the city to pick up her mother at work.

We took Crenshaw south to the Santa Monica Freeway, where traffic was light. It seemed barely 20 minutes before we shot through the tunnel at the end of the freeway and emerged onto Pacific Coast Highway. I looked for Lifeguard Station 12, but missed the turn. I decided to take a ramp back up to Palisades Park, which overlooks the highway and the beach, and get my bearings from there.

We parked and made our way along the promenade to the statue of Saint Monica, still standing where she has always stood, at the foot of Wilshire Boulevard, looking east as if to catch a glimpse of her son, the hellion and philosopher-to-be.

It was almost noon, but the sky was still steely grey, as it had been all morning. To the north, the mountains behind Malibu were hulking purple shapes softened by haze. Closer in, the amusement park and pier to the south, with a Ferris wheel and roller coaster, seemed brighter and the colors stronger – there was a lot of red, white and blue. Due west, beyond the beach, a handful of sailboats scudded over a cobalt sea.

My daughter liked the view, but missed the sun. “Dad, what causes June gloom?” she asked.

I mumbled something about warm air over land and cold air over water, then realized I had very little idea how the effect was produced. “We’ll look it up when we get home,” I said.

The chattering of squirrels drew my daughter’s attention away from my lack of knowledge. An extended family appeared to live in a patch of aloe vera at the bluff’s edge. They were lively and bold and evidently used to being fed – my daughter’s approach set off a series of chirps and expectant stares. One fellow pushed himself halfway into an empty potato chip bag and skittered head-first across the sidewalk between us.

We left the squirrels and climbed down a series of steps to a concrete bridge that spanned the highway. We crossed to the line of houses on the beach side of the road. The houses were long, narrow and rectangular. They looked like a row of shoeboxes all lined up and piled high. Some were old, some were new. Even the old ones looked freshly painted, in very bright colors – yellow, pink, blue and lime.

We walked past the line of houses, looking for an opening to the beach. A three-story shoebox house in yellow had a for-lease sign on the front fence, along with a plastic holder full of the kind of fact sheets that real estate agents love to put together to peddle their listings. Curious, I took one.

Fabulous 3-level, light-filled contemporary-style home on the beach, hardwood floors, skylights, glass block walls, gourmet kitchen w/subzero, located on the ocean & close to all. LP: $11,900. S-DEP: $23,800. Term: 1-yr. minimum. Tenant pays electric, gas, water.

I idly wondered what “subzero” meant, as I crumpled the paper up and put it in my pocket until I could find a trash can.

We found a walkway between houses and emerged into the clear. The beach was nearly deserted, although the bikeway right in front of us had some traffic. I held my daughter’s hand as we dashed across to the sand.

I took some pictures with the fun zone in the background and told my daughter a few stories about the old Pacific Ocean Park (P-O-P, as we called it back then). It was built on and around another pier, one well to the south, almost to Venice. My brother and I loved the old roller coaster that hung precariously at the end of the pier and dispensed thrills and chills high above the water There was also a fake diving bell that submerged you in murky water and a ski-tram type ride that, like the roller coaster, took you out well past the breakers.

It’s all just memory now. The park went bust and closed in the late ‘60s. The pier burned down in the early ‘70s.

My daughter and I resumed our trek to the water’s edge. I had guessed wrong and we were headed to Lifeguard Station 14, not 12.

As my daughter ran down to the surf, I looked up the beach to my right. Lifeguard Station 12 was two stations up. It appeared open – its flag was flying, an orange flotation bag hung from the roof and there were knots of people close by. It appeared to by the only lifeguard station open so far that morning.

When I was a kid, we always went to Station 12 because the parking lot was directly behind it. I can remember my mother piling us into a two-toned Chevy wagon – cream and red, with an old-style visor over the windshield. The Santa Monica Freeway hadn’t been built yet, so we took Olympic Boulevard all the way out (Wilshire was much too slow).

Santa Monica Beach northwest of the pier was a great beach back then, especially for children. It still is today. This is a big beach, both wide and long, with an open horizon and a big-sky feeling. The mountains lining up to the north only serve to deepen the visual field. It is a fairly safe beach, with a decent shelf under the surf that extends the shallow zone and keeps the waves relatively small most of the time.

As I got older, there were other beaches. In high school, I ran with a crowd that favored Playa del Rey – Gillis Beach under the roar of jets from LAX during the day; Dockweiler Beach and its fire rings at night. For years, my family made a pilgrimage every summer to the Balboa Peninsula in Orange County and its Ocean Front Walk, staying the whole month of August. And my college years were spent in Santa Barbara, 10 minutes from Refugio and El Capitan.

But Santa Monica is the beach that I remember best from my childhood years. I remember the anticipation and impatience as we made the long journey down Olympic Boulevard in my mother’s cream-and-red Chevy, the shimmering heat of the sand as we trekked to the waterline, the bracing cold of the water as it crashed over my head, the warmth of the sun as it dried me, the beautiful light that bounced off the water and filled the sky, the taste of salt on my lips – the essence of a Southern California summer.

All those sensations came back to me Sunday morning as I watched my daughter play at the water’s edge. Third grade had made for a long fall, winter and spring, but was now almost finished. The time had come for that most carefree of seasons in childhood.

She took my hand as we started the long walk back to the car.

“I can’t wait for summer to start, Dad,” she said.

It is almost here, child, almost here.