Redondo Beach

The first time I walked onto the pier I became engulfed by the smell of sauteed garlic coming from the Chinese eateries. The pier certainly had an Asian feel to it, but there were also northern European names like Brixton and Kilkenney that gave the feeling of an English seaside town.

The pier wasn't your normal pier that only projected in a straight line onto the ocean, but was horseshoe-shaped. We walked near the bend of the horseshoe, near all the shops and the garlic smell that caught my attention. There was also the smell of the sea, especially as the wind blew from the west and off of the dark undulations of salt water that rolled below us through the wooden pilings of the pier.

As we came to the bend, a worker dressed in an orange vest talked discreetly into his walkie talkie. “He is with a woman in a striped shirt. He's at the very top of the pier. I'm not looking at him now.” This piqued my curiosity and I naturally slowed down, hoping to eavesdrop on more of the conversation, but I had to continue or it would have been obvious what I was doing.

We rounded the corner and saw the fishermen, each with their poles cast over the pier and some reeling in little fish and putting them into buckets. I couldn't discern the nationality most of them, but they all had dark skin, probably from Mexico or Asia.

I looked for a lady in a striped shirt to see if I could figure out what was going on. My family rounded the corner with me and we all sauntered at a slow pace, taking in the new experience. I looked back every thirty seconds or so, just to make sure we were all there. Jenelle and I brought all five kids and the thought of one of them getting kidnapped, just wandering away, or climbing on the fence of the pier and accidentally plunging into the frigid water was real in our minds. I turned around and waited for them to catch up and then we continued around the bend and towards the apex of the horseshoe.

That is when I passed the worker in the orange vest that I saw earlier, and this time he was pushing a cart in the direction that we were going. “Turn around,” he said. “There's a crazy man waving a gun. You don't want to take your family there. Turn around!”

Good advice, I thought, so I whispered to Jenelle what the man had said and we turned the kids around and herded them back around the bend and to the left side of the horseshoe.

It was then that we heard the shot. The sound of the blast suggested a medium-sized caliber or perhaps it was louder than I thought and the building that we hid behind muffled the majority of the blast. Many people now were running in our direction, hoping to avoid the fray. Once we were around the building we probably should have kept going, but we felt safe there and as luck would have it, the building that we hid behind was a restaurant with glass walls on every side. We looked through the building, from one side to the other, and then another thirty yards, and watched the whole episode unfold. We didn't know where we were supposed to look at first, but soon a small group of men rushed together across the wooden planks, seized a man, picked him off his feet and slammed him to the ground. We couldn't see too well, but without a doubt, the crazy man that was waving a gun was now at the mercy of some big fisher boys and on his belly.

The cops arrived shortly after that and I felt that it was now safe enough for a man to wander onto the scene. I told my family to stay put and only look through the glass walls of the restaurant. I wandered over cautiously, but bravely, and witnessed first-hand the crazy man who waved the gun. By now he was in handcuffs, but still on his belly, and on his left knee a large bloody cut emerged, probably from being slammed onto the floor. A girl was on the ground also, but soon a female cop came up to her and slowly coaxed her to the side where she could talk. She was hysterical, still moaning and wailing and very faint of strength, barely able to stand. The policemen picked her boyfriend up and marched him off while the female cop stayed with the woman.

Between Jenelle and I, we were able to fit together the pieces of the puzzle. The man was threatening suicide and when he shot the gun, he fired it into the water. His girlfriend was the first one to be tackled, but it was to protect her. They threw her down to the ground then covered her body with theirs and at that moment the man was thrown to the ground also.

We decided it was safe to continue our walk, so once again we rounded the corner of the horseshoe-shaped pier and everyone, it seemed, had returned to normal. The fishermen once again dropped their lines off the side of the railing where just a few minutes earlier the scene was nearly vacant. As we continued walking, we realized that had the man in the orange vest not turned us around, we would have been exactly where the gunman was when he fired his shot.

The sun neared the western horizon and the lights from the dance club and the restaurants now lit up. The building called Kilkenney's illuminated with a shamrock next to it and the full moon rose above the palm trees on Catalina Avenue.

By the time we reached the right side of the horseshoe, the sun was fully flared in sunset mode, throwing its rays onto the rocks of the shore that met the end of the pier and turning the spray of crashing water into a golden delight.

We completed our loop, continuing back to the cluster of shops. A man who had played his drums for money was still there, but now packing up his instruments for the night. We had enough for the evening and decided it was time to return to our hotel.

The walk was only ten minutes, and that was at the pace of little legs. Our hotel was part of the Redondo Beach experience, being so close and being the most luxurious hotel that we had ever stayed in. That, of course, wasn't difficult, being a bunch of small-town hicks that were poor and never saw a beach more than once every three years. Our hotel was a family suite, with a large main room, king-sized bed and a hide-a-bed, a coffee table, a round table, a television, fridge and microwave. The connecting room had two queen-sized beds and another television.

The big bonus for us, however, was the balcony that was big enough to walk about or sit down in chairs and enjoy a bite to eat. This balcony faced west, directly above the Pacific Coast Highway, and the view of the ocean existed beyond the beach-side buildings. Across the street were three shops painted in bright pastel colors and a residential home with a sofa on the front porch. The humid air drifted up onto the balcony, across my face and through my hair.

Our favorite television channel was K-CAL, which had news at nine o'clock. We would watch the news while eating our dinner that we brought into the hotel room, usually something such as fried chicken from the grocery store.

Brittany loved the beach. She could have spent hours, I'm sure, standing shin-high in the water, facing the incoming waves, and and letting the white rolls crash against her legs, wetting her knees and thighs, all the kelp and loose sand brushing at her ankles, then feeling the water fall back into its depths, watching the liquid at her feet disappear, and feeling the sand being sucked across the top of her feet and that arousing perception of losing one's sense of balance, the air and the world moving one way while the ground and everything standing on it moving the opposite direction.

The face of the shore at Redondo Beach was excellent for finding items in the ocean. We found many clam shells and mussel shells and I even found a whole shell with the clam still inside. We searched around for shark teeth, especially Jordan and I. After visiting Aquarium of the Pacific earlier that day, we were satisfied that shark teeth had to be everywhere. Jordan found a large jaw of an animal with teeth still intact. I don't know if this was a shark, or an animal that was attacked and killed by a shark, or perhaps just someone's dog that drowned in the water and whose bones were just now being washed ashore. He also found a lady's shoe.

Jenelle brought some bread along to feed to the seagulls. Before we knew it, the birds were all around us. They looked like chickens scouring the sand for scratch to eat. Some of gulls were smaller, like pigeons, but others were large, their wings spanning wide, and the sunlight glowing through their plumage.

We took plenty of pictures while there: images of the kids playing in the waves, a sailboat in the harbor, the silhouette of the pier, and the long stretch of coast line and hills behind it. One of our daughters buried her sibling, all but her head, in the sand.

At various times in my life I have thought that it would be pleasant to run along the beach, just like in Chariots of Fire. Why couldn't I do it now? I took off my shoes and socks and ran up along the flat part of the shore, far enough away from the water that I wouldn't get wet. My strides were shorter than normal because with every step my feet would sink in the sand and it would take greater effort than normal to move.

The beach was quite sparse with people, allowing me to maintain a straight course without maneuvering around the crowds. The sand was mostly soft, but not fluffy-fine as are some other beaches, and as I ran, the grains of the beach pressed into the spaces between my toes and chaffed as the toes twisted and conformed to the contour of the ground I ran on.

About three minutes into my run I decided to abandon my current path and instead trudge through the swash. This felt much, much better. The wind blew against my body at a cooler temperature and the brisk waves lapped at my ankles. My footsteps imprinted deeply into the mud, but once a wave came crashing ashore, all the prints would wash away.

Some stretches of the run were gentle on my feet, but others, scattered with little rocks and seashell fragments, poked and annoyed them. After six minutes I turned around and returned along the same path that I had taken. I looked again for my footprints, but all were erased. I ran past a man laying in the sun. The spray of the ocean misted my glasses. It felt good. The waves washed up over my feet and sucked back down, pulling thousands of grains of sand along with it, giving the impression that I was running sideways on a giant conveyor belt.

We dried our feet and put our shoes back on. Now it was time to return to the pier before the sun went down. There were no gun shots this time. Just the shops, the fishermen and the smell of the deep green ocean that beat against the posts of the pier, and the scent of the garlic in the food that so infested my mind a couple nights ago.

On Jenelle's list of things to do was to stop at an oyster shop on the pier. For twelve bucks you could pick your own oyster, which the man behind the counter would open and clean. They were guaranteed to have pearls inside. Jenelle bought an oyster and so did Brittany. We huddled around a large shell in the man's hands and he was using a utensil to scrape away the insides of the valve. Then, with long tweezers, he pulled a perfect pearl from the shell. This was Jenelle's. When Brittany had her oyster opened, they were twin pearls. The man behind the counter cleaned them both off and slipped them into a small plastic bag in which we could take them home.

The rest of the evening was enjoyable, but non-eventful. We watched the sun fall toward the horizon and slip behind the clouds, but it never created a powerful sunset. It just disappeared. The sky turned to gray and the sail boats on the water turned into silhouettes.

Thursday was our final day. We spent it in other places in the area including Hollywood, Beverly Hills and Santa Monica. It was dark when we drove back to our hotel and along the way we stopped at Albertson's to buy some food for dinner.

Everyone had bought their souvenirs for the trip such as T-shirts and postcards to remind them of where we had been. I hadn't bought a thing. And that was alright with me. I was just happy to watch the kids, enjoy the smells, and take lots of pictures.

Once back at our hotel, an idea popped into my mind. We parked and I helped carry our many items up to the room, including the supper that Jenelle had just bought: Totino's pizza and canned fruit. The kids got situated around the table, next to the sofa and in front of the television.   Jenelle looked like she had things under control.

“Jenelle, do mind if I leave for a little while and go buy my souvenir?” I asked.

She was gracious and allowed me to go.

I snuck out the room and down the steps of our hotel. On the busy coastal highway I walked south toward the intersection, passing a formal Thai restaurant and a Mexican eatery. At the intersection, I crossed the road and then walked west. I hope I don' t get mugged, I thought. Lights were dim, but certainly existent. I passed an angler who was returning to his home after an evening of fishing on the pier. “Hello,” I said to him in passing. He said something back, but I wasn't sure what it was. The lighting was murky enough that I couldn't tell whether he was Mexican, Asian or something else, and I am not even sure that he could speak English.

I crossed another small street, this one with no crossing lights, but lightly traveled with traffic. Then I came to Catalina Avenue. This was the final street before the ocean. Once across, the road angled slightly inward and from this corner I could see the large neon sign, high above the ground: Redondo Beach. Below it glowed the words, The Pier. Behind the sign the very dark waters of the ocean could be faintly distinguished and all around the palm trees projected into the night.

At the pier, the life there had not disappeared, but had morphed into more of a nightlife. The Brixton nightclub seemed to be the center of activities. An entrance line formed at its doors and patrons were paying money to enter. A group of young adults congregated at a point in the middle of the pier, half of them dressed in costumes. They looked as if they were playing a game and the man in the middle was explaining the rules. As I walked in their general direction, a woman with a mask passed me and flirtatiously asked, “How are you?” I fumbled out an answer and continued walking. You probably don't realize that I have a wife and five kids back at the hotel room, do you?

Most of the food establishments were closed and I was disappointed. The glass windows were pulled down, tables put away.

That is, all but one. It was the Chinese place on the corner, the one that seemed to have the greatest aroma of garlic flowing from it. An older lady with gray-speckled hair and sloping eyes was the lone worker that evening. “May I help you?” she asked in broken English.

“What do you like best?” I asked her back, still not convinced of what I wanted to order.

She pulled out a laminated menu with pictures on it. “Oh, I like it all. Especially the seafood and chicken.”

In a way, everything on the menu looked the same, with slight variations. I found a combination that I had been eyeing earlier and pointed to it. It was a plate of jumbo shrimp, orange chicken, noodles and rice.

“I think you like that very much,” she said.

I paid her my money and watched her go back to the kitchen and begin to prepare the food. I then wandered the much emptier proximity of the pier, just observing what was around. The group of young adults was still there and I couldn't quite figure out what they were doing. They looked like college students and this is probably what they did for entertainment on the weekend.

My order was ready and the old Chinese Lady handed me a bulging Styrofoam container of steaming food. The flap on the container would latch, but couldn't seal all the way around. The warmth of the serving permeated the Styrofoam and onto my two hands that held the container preciously as I walked the dark streets back to my hotel room.