We've Had No Summer

When I was talking with Mary just before my trip to her house, she advised that I pack a parka. "We've had no summer," she said. Just a steady series of chilly nights and cool gray days. She hoped I wouldn't be too disappointed.

The idea of being disappointed by leaving Texas at the end of August for a week of cloudy and cool Pacific life made me laugh.

All week the foghorn mooed, a sound that can't help but remind you that great ships are nearby though invisible. We took nice long walks, as we often do; this year down to Paseo del Mar. This is the area of Royal Palms, with its famous tide pools and formerly famous resorts, gone now. In a previous post I mentioned a chunk of Paseo del Mar that fell off a couple of years ago, just north of where I took this picture. (At least, I think it's north. San Pedro is a peninsula, and I come from a place where the large body of water means "east," so I could be all wrong. Anyway, up the road.)

When I'm here it's hard not to daydream about the old days, when coastal property was cheap and all the rich and famous drove to the seaside resorts and dance halls in limousines. I found a personal reminiscence by a San Pedro writer from 2011: http://www.dailybreeze.com/general-news/20111209/san-pedro-authors-history-of-white-point-comes-from-personal-experience. Make note of the Corner Store where she had her book signing; we'll be heading there before long.

Mary had been quite right in recommending warm clothing. Doubtless she was remembering the summer of 1989 when I drove out to live with her during my internship year. While she and her scantily-clad workmates played volleyball on the beach, I sat wrapped in sweatpants, sweatshirt, and a blanket. This year, we walked briskly to keep warm.

As we went about in this monochromatic salt-smelling landscape, nearly unable to tell where the sea left off and the sky began, I kept thinking about Sylvia Plath's line, "This is the sea, then, this great abeyance." Fortunately there were some spots of color to remind me I was still alive.

Pelicans never cease to amaze and amuse me. As they take off from the water they seem as unwieldy as pterodactyls. When they land on the water they always look surprised. And when they go from full flight arrowing down to snatch a fish, they look like torpedoes. I just love the pelicans.

Later in the week Mary and I would naturally spend time at the beaches: Redondo, Hermosa, Manhattan. It's what we do. One day when the sun was beginning to take a stand, I took the opportunity to see what I could do with my new polarized filter. Photography lessons are second on my list for the coming year. (First up: I have resolved to learn how to knit something that's not a hat, scarf, or shawl that I can actually wear.)

This is a part of Redondo Beach just north of Palos Verdes, where you park on a wide avenue of elegant condominiums and walk down 75 stairs to reach the strand. We encountered just a few people playing in the surf

a long sweep of coastline

and one sailboat off in the distance.

I have nothing original to say about the ocean, although I've written a poem or two with oceans in them, some of which I rather like. Not my words so much as what all large bodies of water evoke: a soothing, terrifying timelessness; a calming indifference to my troubles; all the best moments of my childhood. A professional-level insomniac, I sleep like a stone whenever a combination of salt water, warm sand, and the shouts of children at play are my environment. Even more than half a century later I can remember waking up from a nap in an upstairs room, the muslin sheets faintly sandy, the shrieks of kids across the street at the beach filling me with an urgent need to rush down the stairs and out the door to join them.

How do you explain a world in which you can feel at once completely alone and so deeply connected?

My Southern California Life

I've been away. At the end of every summer, in the days between the last day of summer school and the start of the fall semester, I get to go away. To my best friend Mary's house. We've been friends for thirty years now, because a guy I was dating kept telling me, "You really remind me of someone. You really need to meet this person." 

Although nagging your new girlfriend about how much she needs to meet your old girlfriend may not be everyone's idea of ideal dating strategy, I did go to meet her. We have been best friends ever since. We always know what the other one is thinking; finish each other's sentences with about 98% accuracy; and agree that a great friendship is one in which you might not talk for many weeks at a stretch but when you do, it's as if the conversation has never been interrupted. I bought my first house in Austin because the street name was the same as the street on which Mary lives, where she has lived most of her life.

Lots of people find it hard to believe that anyone can love San Pedro. Santa Barbara, San Francisco, San Diego, Carmel - lots of people love lots of places in California, but not that many people love San Pedro. It's the Port of Los Angeles, the end of the Harbor Freeway, hotbed of shipping, plagued by poverty and crime, appreciated mostly as a place where you catch a boat to go someplace else.

In a 1940's film noir, or a Perry Mason episode, San Pedro would be where you'd find the shady stool pigeon in a stained fedora. Or the dead body. Or both.

When I first visited San Pedro back in 1983, the waterfront areas were rough indeed. No problem summoning up images of sailors on leave looking for trouble to get into, or longshoremen looking for work. You certainly didn't venture down "below Gaffey," or heavens forbid "below Pacific" at night.

All I saw was a San Francisco in the rough.

Since then a great deal of gentrification has taken place, San Pedro being a location where southern California home prices are relatively reachable. Not reachable, relatively reachable. The waterfront area has turned itself inside out to attract visitors, without a great deal of success. This is sad in a way,  but it leaves Mary and me with some very pleasant bike rides along the wharves where fishing boats occupy the berths they've held for decades. 

And through the marina where luxurious yachts await their busy owners, and many slips await more boats.

When I was a child we had a cottage in a small Connecticut town on Long Island Sound, so many of my spring and summer memories are associated with salt water, old houses, and somnolent "downtowns." I was just looking on that Facebook place where people reminisce about their hometowns, and saw how people still have to explain little Westbrook as "right next to Old Saybrook." 

Maybe that's why I understood San Pedro right away, and felt sufficiently at home there to take on Mary's house as if it had been my own. (During the first summer we visited, my daughter and I took up all the wall-to-wall carpeting one day while Mary was at work. Another year, I painted the inside of her house and did the trim in unmistakably '80's colors. I could go on.)

San Pedro also has retail areas that look like the 1950's are still alive and well. Mary remembers these stores from childhood, and the merchants up here know her, too. 

San Pedro's main retail center is not up here on Weymouth, but is down there "below Gaffey." It was where you went for school shoes, Scout uniforms, books, fabric, and art supplies. Remember the unmistakable smell of an old department store, with its creaky wooden floors and hosiery presented to you in a flat box the saleslady drew from beneath the glass display case?

Unlike my home towns of Hartford and Austin, San Pedro has preserved many of their vintage buildings with their characteristic mid-century entryways - like these zig-zag display windows:

Imagine the name of your store - your name! - set in stone in your entryway. A proud statement back in the day, but almost unbearably poignant in a largely abandoned downtown.

Rather than make ourselves sad about a way of life that hardly exists any more, Mary and I spend most of our time paying attention to the things that won't change a whole lot in our lifetimes. There are many trails between San Pedro and Palos Verdes, and we have walked many of them in our time.

Oops, just as I was talking about things that won't change much in our lifetimes, here's a piece of road that, um, fell off last year:

Not Here Any More

Maybe part of the appeal of So Cal is its transience. I've experienced four minor earthquakes and feel very fortunate to be able to regard them as merely interesting. Many people haven't been so lucky.

Sometimes Mary and I drive to one of the fancy golf resorts on the peninsula, park her '92 Civic in one of the six free spots they so generously provide for hoi polloi, and hike down to sit near the rich folks' Pacific.

Once you bring your damp treasures home, you can't really tell whether they came from the rich peoples' beach or the beach that belongs to all of us. Treasures accumulate on the sunroom table.

Long ago, back in the spring of 1983, I spent a few days at Mary's house getting to know this former girlfriend of the guy I was seeing. At the end of the visit I cried, unable to believe I had to leave. When the relationship with the guy came to a tumultuous end, Mary said, "This is my fault. I should have killed him that time with the wooden recipe box." Our friendship survives and thrives, and San Pedro still feels like home to me. I don't know why it hasn't caught on like the swishy seaside communities nearby, but I love it in all its shabby, struggling glory.

A note: I am proud to know that my own book has been on the shelf at Williams' Book Store, and deeply saddened to know this is truly, finally, Williams' last year in existence. We shall miss it.

Updates

You can imagine how happy I was to see this in this morning's NY Times, and not just because I'll be living right next to Long Beach all next week: Towns Crack Down on Lawns

The article is a little too lenient on Austin, making it sound like enforcement officers driving around all day meting out fines to sprinkler offenders is as good as a truly sensible water use policy regarding lawns (i.e., prohibiting them). Last week Austin's City Council made it official that Homeowners' Associations in town cannot prohibit xeriscaping, rain barrels, or composting - a step in the right direction, but nowhere near enough.

I do wish to announce that the front yard river rock project has reached completion, much to everyone's relief. It only took two weeks, all told, but the effort was intense. Yesterday one neighbor walking by asked Floyd if I was all right. Was he worried about my aching muscles, or did he imagine I had been suffering a bout of mania? My mind is as intact as ever (!), but my left elbow and right quad are angry with me. Sorely angry, I could say. That's fine, because now I'm mad at them, too.

But check out the results!

In these first two photos I am standing at the end of the driveway. Below, that huge rock Floyd worked so hard to stand upright for me, her profile obscured by a salvia whose dark purple flower spikes are much loved by honeybees. I think the big rocks will really come into their own when winter decimates the landscape and there isn't much greenery to look at.

I can't imagine what people do without their own dear welder to make lovely fitted corners.

This cool parabolic curve came about because Floyd often thinks about drainage. The curvy column of rocks on the left is designed to send overflow away from the house and toward the sidewalk. Words cannot express how eager we are to see whether it works.

Every sharp corner was cut away and rounded.

Below, the stepping-stones across which you will glide to leave your chariot behind and enter our rarified universe, where you will be served luxuriant food and drink and a charming border collie will drop tennis balls at your feet:

Well, the part about the border collie is true.

This bench will soon be replaced by one made of metal and ipe ("ee-pay"), a beautiful wood so dense it sinks like a stone. The metal will either be steel, or aluminum tubing. I saw one online recently for almost three thousand dollars, but Floyd indicates I might be able to get a discount. 

Now I think of it, aluminum would probably be best, eliminating the need to have the bench put in place by a crane. I want a plain, backless bench six feet long so I can carry out a pillow, a book, and a drink and catch whatever breeze may be going around the 'hood. Working on this project made us both sharply aware of how pleasant shade + breeze is in the middle of summer, and the advantages of a corner lot when there is any breeze to be had.

The "warning track" of mulch will be taken over by the weedy lawn in no time. Or not. If any part of our yard will receive water as long as I have hose, rain barrel, or leftover cooking water, it will be this corner, where our wondrous live oak resides. 

Never happy to leave well enough alone, I am using some of our leftover stones to add bits of color to the big rocks we hauled from our neighbors' yard a few weeks ago.

I like to think there's some room, even in the suburbs, for whimsy.

PS: Remember 

from "Bud Love?" I wasn't able to catch that bud doing what makes buds worth waiting for; but this morning the cactus near the corner bench had done it again.