Pacific Beat

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I would like to thank the following people for their generosity and their help. This book couldn’t have been written without them. Gail and Betty Bagley, Tom Bagley and Vilma Dunn, Sioux Herlihy, Peggy Darnell, Dorothy Glover, Lynn Cooper, Jeanne Sandifer, Julie Sedevic and Dana Blakemore. Special thanks, again, to Donald A. Stanwood.

The main thing here is the Pacific. In the long run, the land and the people on it amount to only that. In the short run, a lot can happen.

The Franciscans ruined the Indians, the Mexicans bounced the Spanish, the Anglos booted the Mexicans and named the town Newport Beach. Dredgers deepened the harbor, and the people lived off the sea. There was a commercial fleet, a good cannery, and men and women to work them. They were sturdy, independent people, uneducated but not stupid. Then the tuna disappeared, the nets rotted, and the fishermen succumbed to drink and lassitude. Two wars came and went. Tourists descended, John Wayne moved in, and property values went off the charts. Now there are more Porsches in Newport Beach than in the fatherland, and more cosmetic surgeons than in Beverly Hills. It is everything that Southern California is, in italics. There are 66,453 people here, and as in any other town, most of them are good.

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