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Pagrovian
Nature/Human Nature
Family Reunion
Ever heard the song,
“Beautiful Kauai”? Well, I’m singing and humming it and
inserting, “There’s a Peninsula acro-o-ss the se-e-ea, beautiful
P.G., beautiful P.G.”
Asimolar Beach is the
Bonneville salt flats today, exposing tide pools in which naked
toddlers troll the sand with their colorful buckets. The sky is
blue topaz and the clouds are white cars that leave chalky tire
tracks across it. A line of pelicans soar as high as my spirit
today.
It’s 80 degrees and I have just one prayer: that the pencil of
fog laying over the horizon doesn’t decide to swallow the sun.
Understand, I hold no
malice toward those who love fog. Many of them come from the
sweltering Central Valley to Pacific Grove fog where they feel
caressed by its cool, awed by the evanescence of it filtering
though Monterey Pines.
I’m just not one of
them. Give me sun, sun, sun! As a teen I used to lie around our
swimming pool by the hour. Dad would always say, “Susan, you’re
going to end up looking like a Maui prune.”
This was what he called a family friend who moved to Maui and
leathered from the weather. I admit, I’m following in her
footsteps.
But I digress . . . Two young women in wetsuits carry their
sleek surf boards toward the tumblers that seem to be giving
other water walkers a good ride. I say to them, “I admire you
athletes. Your sport is so natural – just you and your board and
the waves.”
The tanned blonde
says, “Yeah, it’s the only athletics where the playing field
keeps moving.”
I laugh and keep up my
power walk, hopping salty puddles, gulping in fresh ozone and
watching the antics of half a dozen dogs (unlawfully) off-leash
and cavorting around with each other.
I’ve seen many things
over the 33 years that I’ve resided in P.G. and walked Asilomar
Beach - met many interesting people - but today takes the cake.
As I reach the tide
pools, I notice a group of adults horsing around and one of them
has a whip – a little one, black with a red tassel, but a whip,
no less.
“What is this,” I ask
the white-haired conservative looking woman who is doing the
flogging, “sadomasochism?”
The group laughs and
she says, “Oh, good heavens, no. We are having our yearly family
reunion and we’re enacting scenes from “Two Years before the
Mast.”
Apparently, every year
the extended family gets together and one member picks a theme.
This year’s was Monterey and it included a trip to the Monterey
Bay Aquarium to view jellyfish, a trip under the pier to view
abalone farming, artichoke cooking and enacting sailors on a
tall ship that was shipping hides. Apparently, the person
getting the flogging hadn’t done their homework on the subject
and had failed to keep the hides dry.
The whip was designed
for enacting the Mast but, after talking to them, it seems they
may continue to use it on the people who get wrong answers on
their quizzes. Kind of a Carlos Mencia thing (deh-de-deh). (If
you don’t get that, be sure to tune into Comedy Central TV for
“Mind of Mencia.” The man is a comedic genius.)
At any rate, I made a
suggestion for the next family reunion. “Why not choose the
gumboot chiton? It’s way cool.”
Blank stares.
“They are mollusks
that look like halved melons, or orange footballs, and I used to
see masses of them washed ashore after a storm at sea. After
their flesh disintegrates, they leave behind parts of their
spine - white discs shaped like butterflies.”
“Oh, yeah, we just saw
one of those,” a younger member said. “That sounds like a fun
idea.”
Inspiration? This
family has that and creativity times 10!
Good Views: I just re-watched “Mr. Holland’s Opus” for
the umpteenth time and cried and cheered and marveled at this
awe-inspiring story of triumph over difficulty, faith,
inspiration and following your dreams. Richard Dreyfuss is, in
my estimation, the consummate actor. He does funny as well as he
does serious. But, in this film, he does passion so convincingly
that you’d swear he has conducted orchestras before. Maybe he
has, I must Google that . . .
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