15th St. Transcendental Blues

Rendezvous Ballroom at Newport Beach circa 1962. Constructed during the roaring 1920s, the Rendezvous became the home of surf music at the beach during the 1960s until it burned down in 1966. Today it is the site of a condominium complex.

Well she got her daddy's car
And she cruised through the hamburger stand now
Seems she forgot all about the library
Like she told her old man now
And with the radio blasting
Goes cruising just as fast as she can now

And she'll have fun fun fun
'Til her daddy takes the T-bird away
(Fun fun fun 'til her daddy takes the T-bird away)

                                            -- Brian Wilson and Mike Love 1964

At 15th Street I turn right toward the ocean and find a space to park. At the terminus of this half block lies a sprawling white sandy beach that holds more memories than I can process. 

I negotiate the electronic meter punching in my license plate letters, KRZEN, and slip in my credit card. Automatically, for a buck-fifty, I'm good for 30 minutes of scouting around, and believe that if I do not return before then I will likely be ticketed. I am inside Orange County, the OC, where I have not trod for nearly 60 years.

I survey the setting looking for familiar signs. I note a barely visible person perched on a second-story balcony across the street, decorated with two flags. One, the familiar field of stars and stripes. Red, white and blue. The other, a blue and red composition with white all-caps letters TRUMP outlined in red. 

I feel like an outsider. I always was an outsider, a flatlander come to enjoy the treasures of Newport Beach, even though here, at 15th Street, was where kids from my high school and several other schools gathered and hung out especially on summer weekends and often for longer stretches because there always seemed to be someone you knew whose parents rented a cottage nearby for weeks at a time, including my girlfriend Linda's family.

Those days at the beach defined the pleasure of an era, and my youth.

The waves perfect for body surfing, curls to ride like the dolphins. The scene Southern California nirvana -- sun, sand, bikinis, the scent of coconut oil and Coppertone lotion, a continuous flow of adolescent bluster, posturing and coolness. I search for Skip's, a sidewalk operation where we would buy strips -- fried corn chips cut into slices and sold by the basket. Pour on a little ketchup. No more Skips. Formerly located beneath the aforementioned, flagged balcony apartment, Skip's has transmogrified into and a posh surf shop with the latest brands. 

Surf shops used to be work shops not haberdasheries.

Everything's fancy in today's Newport Beach.

The scene is clean and refined. A quiet Monday in mid-November. Low clouds blocking the sun but clear. A beach-looking guy about my age cruises slowly by on an electric bicycle. Funny how you can spot a local yokel. He fits a mould of sun-weathered skin, facial hair, not in a hurry, rumpled just enough to make you believe he hasn't had a care since he got stranded in his ketch off Palmyra in 1975.

Stepping carefully, negotiating 70-something-year-old legs and sore feet that have been cramped into a compact automobile for more than an hour, I walk onto the almost empty beach, which I find much larger, undoing the memory of a sea of adolescent bodies that swarmed the sand like a heard of locusts. The bodies. Where are the bodies? It must be crowded during summer. Gotta be.

My soles crush into the soft, lumpy sand, hoping to prompt a figment of my life at this very spot so many years past. Perhaps exactly where Tony and I happily squandered afternoons playing chess in the sunshine. You can still draw from the memory bank, what you haven't already withdrawn or tossed into oblivion, while you realize how ephemeral those precious seconds were, like shooting stars. Here and gone. Too fast. As brief as a sudden cool breeze.

You want to return and walk among the characters, even see yourself, young and more muscled, dripping wet, smiling at the simple sensation of just being there, with a happy sun-tanned girl. Our skin touching, lips and bodies pressing. Go dancing to surf music at the Rendezous that night.

You are different. Older for sure. This place is different. You both have undergone a weathering. I take a deep breath and exhale with faint tremble of loss, all things must pass. But wasn't it pretty. 

Finally, I see the surf line which is mere bubbles of white foam. The ocean quiet. The surface glistens blue, glassy, reflective, at rest, running way out to the silhouette of an island. Is that Catalina? Was it always there? Why don't I remember?

I want to feel the water on my skin. I'm dressed, ill-prepared to jump in. On the clock.

The damned meter. I wasn't on the clock back then. Is that why I feel rushed? The meter? Always the clock. What if there were no clock, just day and night? Would it be easier?

I have two minutes remaining when I return to my car, nonchalantly glancing toward the balcony where the monitor is still sitting, surveying the comings and goings of the cul de sac. I consider waving, maybe a shaka, but decide not. Maybe I'm paranoid and inventing a scenario that is not real. Ah, that reality thing that now buggers the masses. It used to be real. Didn't it?

Back in my car I drive along Balboa Blvd noting the cleanliness of the streets, the whiteness of the houses, a few still tiny cottages kept pristine. Two young girls wearing helmets and riding electric bicycles turn at the corner. Life is good.

The paucity of vehicles tells me these are mostly second homes, vacation getaways in hibernation. The many red, white and blue flags nicely accent the white-sail-colored buildings and blue water of Newport Harbor where yachts rest at ease, an armada of pleasure warriors beneath the cerulean sky. 

I turn left, north, at Pacific Coast Highway (the PCH) to head back to the South Bay on the other side of Long Beach and the Palos Verdes Peninsula. No frenetic freeways for me. I ride the PCH my way, all the way. I have time to get back before the sun sets. I don't drive at night anymore. Searching for a decent radio station, I wonder what happened to KHJ and KRLA that played all our music?

A particular morning comes to mind on the PCH, heading south with surfboards to Doheny with my buddies  -- Nick and Pat and Bill and Corky and Andy -- hearing for the first time that tune that changed the Beach Boys for ever, that always reminds me of that moment:

Well it's been building up inside of me
For oh I don't know how long
I don't know why
But I keep thinking
Something's bound to go wrong

But she looks in my eyes
And makes me realize
And she says "don't worry, baby"
Don't worry, baby
Everything will turn out all right

Don't worry, baby

            -- Brian Wilson 1964