Header Graphic
CDM breakwater swamped
Today seawater came over the breakwater at Big Corona and flooded the beach. Saturday. September 10, 2022.

The breakwater was built in the 1930s.Thanks to  Brad Rawlins, '68 for the report and photo.

 

My mom, my uncle, my aunt and their Anaheim High School friends Glenn Lehmer and his future wife Patti Lodge; Bob Fluor; Marion Knott;  probably the Heiden kids and many others went to that beach all the time in the 1930s. My parents carried me there as a babe in arms in 1949.

In June 1967, the Class of 1967 had their Senior Day there. About 150 of us. Stan Commons, Ron Jacksom and others sat Indian style in a  small circle and sang songs and played their guitars in the early evening. Stan sang "Abilene" and put his heart into it, ("Abilene, Abileeeene/Prettiest girl I ever seen .."). Ron sang a brisk "That's what I learned in school today/That's what I learned in school" and "Ticky tack houses" and other Pete Seeger protest songs. Earlier the boys played a brief, farcical touch football game in the sand, 

There was music the air, salt spray in damp Lancelle and yell leader and Student Court hair .. we roasted marshmallows and hot dogs in the fire pits as breezes bent the flickering flames .. 

In the gleaming, couples wandered off to hold hands and neck ever so tenderly (Walking in the sand ..) and soft Big Corona breezes told strange melodies of exotic Golden Hill and north-of-Bastanchury mysteries  (Life  is so inviting ..) while lonely Neptune rose from the foamy green kelp to blow his lyrical conch and summon the elite back to the Snack Shop and Giovanni's (Life is so enticing ..) to fill their aristocratic bellies for a febrile night of sage-scented parties until distant coyotes howled and sleep-rumpled unshaven dads in garish stripped pajamas came down dark hallways to light a Tareytown in the kitchen and draw a fifth of DeWars to pour themselves a railroad glass to wet their beaks, clean their whistles, cut the dust and carry a second and third back with a throaty low grumble to "Clear the GD place out!" while lissome naiads and dryads lolled at poolside, future construction barons and lawn mower merchants and night school lawyers and deeply tanned legacy recipients cannon-balled, swan-dived, drained wine bottles and, sated for the moment, snoozed on deck chairs past the hillside dawn.

I'd much earlier climbed the steps and drove my mom's white 1964 Pontiac Gran Prix sedan with John Thompson, Steve Shepard and Craig Scott aboard to glide across the vanishing citrus plains of Orange County, borne by the green light of my destiny at the intersection of South Euclid and West Valencia Drive, far from the madding crowd, totem .  low and deep beyond the gilded night shrieks of the northern teen elect to slouch toward Bethlehem in the stucco and neat broad lawns of Nepenthe amid newly sleeping Walerys, Ambridges, Rowes, Loewes, Beasleys, the faintly snoring Cogan, somnolent McClanahan, the sacred shrine of Nicolas sublime and flat in the hissing June lawn where nocturnal shades of Hades in shoes with taps and shiny blue nylon tankers crept to smoke Lucky Strikes and loiter later in pitch-black dusty garages until the draft boards sealed their fate.

An epochal day of sound and fury, Sea N'Ski and evanescent whiffs of maidenly Noxema.

 

Add Comment

There are currently no comments.

Add Comment