David Covey

Finally my father got a job at the Belmont Park Amusement Center, and we moved into a small bungalow on Strand Way.

My favorite childhood ritual was this: the first barefoot summer walk across smoldering pavement. Scurry for shade. Walk on your heels, or on your toes. Up from the beach, across the asphalt alley — quickly! — down the sidewalk to Harry’s Market on Mission Boulevard, where a few scavenged empty pop bottles were miraculously transformed into a few cents. This ritual hot walk, a little bit of pain to be savored and shared, itself marked a miraculous transformation: all my young friends and I, inhabitants of the cottages and apartments along the Mission Beach shore, who only a few weeks before had been reasonably behaved schoolchildren, suddenly changed into a pack of near feral creatures let loose to freedom for the summer. Free to play all day long on the beach. Our beach.

One afternoon Faye and the Englishman tied me up with kelp and pushed me into a large pit on the beach.

David Covey

By mid-July we’d have toughened the soles of our feet enough to take a slow noontime stroll down the hot sidewalk of one of the courts to Harry’s Market. This, of course, was after many strenuous games of tag, played in the sand, and after endless rounds of hide-and-seek among the bungalows and apartment buildings, after lots of bicycling and roller skating up and down Ocean Front Walk. In Mission Beach, summertime was the best time.

Autumn, not summer, was the best time in Oregon. That’s when the wind whipped our cheeks fresh and crisp as a Delicious apple, when our footsteps crackled across the frosty ground. Oregon never learned to summer well. My parents tried to explain to me as best they could what had happened to them and why we were moving to California. Some kind of disastrous financial affair I didn’t quite understand. I thought I’d probably miss my friends, but I knew what two things I’d miss most of all: our backyard cherry tree (perfect for climbing), and our neighbor’s quarter-horse (I could ride it bareback). Were there cowgirls in San Diego? Could you climb a palm tree? All I knew about was Disneyland — but that wasn’t even in San Diego.

Harry's. Lee surveyed every person who ventured into Harry’s. He wore a white butcher’s apron and hat, had a weathered face, a voice all smoky and sandy.

David Covey

We packed all of our belongings and our five cats into a U-Haul trailer. To mollify me, my folks got me a new pair of sneakers, striped with different colors. I wore them all the way south. We left in autumn, in September, but arrived in summer. Another miracle. The family stopped to gather resources at a small motel in Ocean Beach, and while the other kids dutifully trundled off to school, I spent two weeks, warming myself on the beach. Finally my father got a job at the Belmont Park Amusement Center, and we moved into a small bungalow on Strand Way. Sharing this tiny one-bedroom beach cottage with my folks seemed like a vacation. We were only one long jump away from the ocean. I didn’t realize then exactly how far we’d traveled, from Oregon and from my past life.

Belmont Park rollercoaster. The click of the chain would split the ocean air as the cars ascended; the rattle of the rail would resonate through the concession buildings and rumble in the pavement.

David Covey

Faye was my best friend during those early days in Mission Beach. We were in the same grade at school, even though she was about a year older than I. You see, Faye’s mother was often away and Faye had used the opportunities to get into trouble; she’d been in juvenile hall more than once. Faye’s older sister, a teenager, wasn’t around much either; she was developing a talent for hot-wiring cars, and, I think now, sometimes worked as a smalltime hooker. Faye’s other sister, Lily, was a couple of months younger than I, a grade behind us in school.

Faye got into trouble because she loved to run free on the beach, and because she’d steal any large dog (she had a preference for German shepherds) or any bicycle she could. One time when she was ten, her case worker caught her with three stolen dogs and a garage crammed full of stolen bicycles. She would steal presents for her friends. Faye was a tough, sturdy girl and she made sure that none of the other kids picked on me because of my slender size and inexperience. I helped Faye with her math.

One bleak October night, when our family had especially little money, Faye came to dinner bringing gifts. She gave us a frozen pizza, and had presents for each of us; my gift was a plastic golf-score counter. It was pretty clear that Faye had stolen all of these things, but we kept them and ate the pizza that night. It would have been silly to do anything else because we were hungry. Some storekeepers may have let her steal things because she was hungry then, too. I just hoped she hadn’t stolen the things from my friend Harry, at his market.

Later, Faye started spending time with a young Englishman who lived in one of the apartments nearby. Faye missed her father so terribly that she’d take any substitute handy. My mother had begun cleaning apartments, doing laundry, and ironing to help earn money. She’d seen a lot of strange books and papers in this Englishman’s room. We’ve since concluded that he was writing a doctoral dissertation about the sociology of beach life. One afternoon Faye and the Englishman tied me up with kelp and pushed me into a large pit on the beach. It was too big for me to get out. I cried in terror but no one heard me; I thought I might drown as the tide rolled in. Finally Faye came and got me out of the pit. Eventually I forgave Faye, but I never trusted her fully after that. It wasn’t a bad lesson to learn — it was only unfortunate that I had to learn it at such a young age. I learned a lot of things too early in Mission Beach.

My friend David, the first person I’d met when we moved to the beach, had an older brother named Carl, who was a little younger than I, a couple of inches shorter, but about my weight. Carl was a bully, he liked to hit his younger brother. Sometimes he even hit David over the head with a shovel, which I thought was terrible. One day the three of us were playing together, and I couldn’t stand it any longer. Carl hit David, so I hit Carl. “There, see what he feels like,” I told him. I’d never done anything like that before. Carl cried. That didn’t make me happy, but I felt good about protecting someone who needed help. I still feel that way sometimes in similar situations. I thought I’d done a little bit to pay for all the protection I’d gotten from Faye.

Not all of my friends in Mission Beach were children. Once in a while, when we had the money for it, we’d stop in at a small diner on Ventura Place for a treat. They had the best filled doughnuts in the world there. The hamburgers and grilled cheese sandwiches were great, too. The proprietor became our friend. We’d have good, long talks every time we stopped in. He seemed to miss us when we didn’t come by often enough. One day we discovered the diner closed up. We soon learned that our friend had been arrested for bookmaking, whatever that was.

Walking down Ventura Place was one of the routes you could take to get to Harry’s Market or Ray Smith’s Drug Store; it was the way you took if you were bored and had a little spare time. Often one of the bars would spill forth juke-box music, raucous laughter, or unwound patrons. I always wondered what was going on inside to create such an overflow and why children should be prohibited from seeing it, especially children who saw so much else. I sometimes walked with Faye when she hunted for her mother in the Ventura Place bars. Faye would peek inside the entrance to look for her mother. They’d confer in the doorway once Faye found her.

Ray Smith’s Drug Store was just north of Harry’s Market on Mission Boulevard. Ray, who always wore a white smock, enjoyed visiting with his customers when he wasn’t busy. He was knowledgeable about cosmetics as well as drugs and he possessed a charming turn of phrase. I recall him describing one diarrhea medicine: “It’s as good as a cork!” Ray would not tolerate thieving children in his store, so he watched us carefully, but he was unfailingly amiable with those of us he felt he could trust.

Usually, when we journeyed away from the beach down to Mission Boulevard, we were not on our way to Ray’s Drug Store but to Harry’s Market. If we hadn’t yet toughened our feet to insensibility, our first sensation after entering Harry’s would be the coolness of the concrete floor against our burning soles. On the left, a bulletin board announced offers and possibilities. As you moved a few steps farther in, you reached the territory of Lee, the butcher.

Behind a glass-encased, white display counter, Lee surveyed every person who ventured into Harry’s. He wore a white butcher’s apron and hat, had a weathered face, a voice all smoky and sandy, and a fullness of laughter. Lee would help me find a “pickle with my name on it’’ from the large jar on his meat display case. He’d sell my family “day-old” pork chops at a reduced price, and sometimes when we got home, we’d Find that Lee had miscounted one extra. He loved to go out fishing on the ocean and would always have fish to give us after he’d been out. When I heard that he’d died, I was very sad. But when I reflected on it, he died the way I would have chosen as a gift for him: that day he went out fishing, had a good catch, came home, sat down in his favorite armchair, and died.

From the sawdust in the corners of the deep-chilled concrete to the set of mirrors that gave him an omniscient view, Harry cared for the cluttered world of his market. I don’t remember ever stumping him with any request; he had almost anything you’d expect to find at a grocery and he knew where everything was. The southeastern comer (directly behind the ice cream freezer) contained novelty items suitable as gifts, sewing goods, and all manner of notions. I spent a lot of time in that comer, shopping for aunts’ and cousins’ presents.

If you walked in the store and continued straight past Lee’s counter, you’d find the beer and soft drink locker on your right. If the choice was mine, I always took Strawberry Crush — ice cold, it was like drinking summer. Styrofoam paddleboards and inflatable toys were suspended from the ceiling at the back. Turning eastward down the next aisle, you could pick up some evaporated milk. (I always got that because I was allowed to have coffee if I put a lot of evaporated milk in it.) Harry kept the most tempting small items near him.

Candy and chewing gum were right in front of the cash register counter; the ice cream freezer was just to its left. In a hat — I remember a Panama straw hat, some paper butcher hats, and several handmade newspaper hats — Harry would cheerfully reign in his market. If he spied someone shoplifting, he’d call out, “Hey! Get out of here!” and he’d chase the offender away, onto Mission Boulevard. Harry loved to smile and to chat with us, for he was truly interested in the people who lived in the area.

My parents developed some friendships during those early days in Mission Beach, too. Their closest friend then, I suppose, was a woman named Cynthia, who once told us, “You’re as green as grass and just about as refreshing.” We thought she probably knew what she was talking about, since she was a professor at USD. She even showed us her office window when we drove through Linda Vista one bright-blue afternoon. Cynthia always seemed to have a lot of money. She often brought us food. She had a daughter my age who sometimes lied and was sneaky. Cynthia gave us an entire Thanksgiving dinner one year when we couldn’t afford anything special.

Cynthia wasn’t as conservative as you’d expect a professor to be. She changed her hair color and style frequently; sometimes she wore strangely ragged clothing. She’d take us on outings to Tijuana, where she seemed to know everything about all the shops and restaurants, and where everyone seemed to know her. Cynthia, of course, was not a professor, though she was good at her specialties: impersonation and check artistry. She’d insinuate herself into someone’s trust (ideally, an elderly couple’s), steal some of their checks, and forge their signatures. She’d even taken her own husband for thousands of dollars. I liked and respected Cynthia very much, so I was a little confused when the police came to arrest her during lunch one day. She waved cheerily from the back of the police car as she was driven away, and she promised to come back to finish lunch when she got out of jail. We never saw her again, and I was disappointed: Cynthia was the only nonviolent, entrepreneurial criminal I ever got to know.

I did get to know several violent criminals during those days. In fact, one night some of them almost killed me. We had moved into a lovely old apartment complex on Ocean Front Walk. We could afford it because my parents began managing the apartments when the owners moved to Mexico. I loved those apartments. They were California rancho style, creamy stucco with deep-brown wooden trim. The interiors were paneled in a knotty pine whose patina fairly shone in early-morning light or at sundown. We had a lot of interesting times managing those apartments.

One young man came from out of town to stay in the largest unit for a couple of weeks. He wore elegantly tailored clothes and carried expensive luggage. Supposedly he didn’t know anyone in San Diego, but he sure had plenty of visitors. We never could figure out how many people trooped through that apartment, or even how many actually stayed there. When the young man left, we had quite a bit of trouble getting out a sickly, sweetish smell that had permeated the apartment; it was a strange odor we’d never smelled before.

All of our garbage cans disappeared one day. Soon garbage cans around the neighborhood also vanished. It was a remarkable mystery and led to much speculation. Who, after all, would want to steal garbage cans? And so many of them? When our tenants at the time checked out, we found all the missing garbage cans — they were in the kitchen, crammed full of smelly trash. It seemed that the vacationing renters had thought it too burdensome to carry garbage down a flight of stairs.

We finally rented the large apartment to more permanent tenants and thought that was the end of our major problems. Before long, however, we discovered that this new couple and a nearby apartment manager were involved in serious drug trafficking. My parents asked them to leave. They became upset. Along with some confederates, they threatened us with the prospects of dismemberment and decapitation. They’d often wake us in the middle of the night by banging on trash cans, lighting firecrackers, and shooting guns; they threw whole bags of rocks at us.

It was no longer safe for me to play outdoors. I couldn’t stay in all the time, though, because I’d taken on a new job to help the family finances: I walked a large poodle for some owners who couldn’t care for him. One evening the dog and I were strolling down Strand Way when these soon-to-be-evicted tenants tried to run us down. No doubt about it, since they raced their car at us from a couple of blocks away. We barely escaped into an adjacent alley. Everyone in the neighborhood seemed to think it a miraculous relief when all of these people moved out the night before the police came to question them.

That was the only time I ever knew of adults threatening any serious violence against children. We were safe on the beach, even at night. At Halloween we went trick-or-treating alone from Belmont Park to the northern end of Ocean Front Walk. No razor blades in apples, no acid in candy.

Andy, one of the men living in a cottage on Strand Way, always kept a watchful eye on the beach kids. When some of the little girls were outside, he’d like to play on his stereo Maurice Chevalier’s version of “Thank Heaven for Little Girls.” He usually played his selections loudly enough for most of the neighbors to hear. Andy threw lots of parties, each of which would be heralded by a glass-shattering rendition of “The Toreador Song.” The one I remember best was a toga party. After pouring enough of it into themselves, the partygoers poured creme de menthe in patterns over each other because they’d decided their costumes were too plain. I enjoyed watching these wild affairs from my window.

We had a sheriff living nearby who threw some of the more decadent parties there. One night it took me a while to realize that he wasn’t having a party. Someone he’d helped convict had gotten his address and was just throwing rocks at his cottage. Another small house close by proclaimed itself “The Den of Iniquity” and proved equal to its name. The police had to quiet them down about twice a month.

Many of the transient beach residents were involved in entertainment. (Everyone knew Victor Buono, who was invariably nice, but he didn’t count because he was getting to be famous.) You could always tell the dancers, for they wore revealing clothing to show off their lean, muscled bodies to excellent advantage. The disc jockeys came with one name, changed it to another while they lived there, and moved out with a third name.

Also, a lot of musicians lived in Mission Beach during those years. I think they could especially appreciate the music in the wind and the waves. Some members of a rock and roll band named The Hard Times lived near us for a little while. They had a couple of hit records and made some appearances on the old TV show Where the Action Is. They were surprisingly quiet, and they drove a hearse. Shyly, I liked to peek around comers and watch them. I was really too young to have a crush on any of them, but I thought it might be nice to be able to say I'd known them when they were struggling musicians.

Folk music was still in its original ascendancy then, and we had our share of folk musicians, especially since we were not far from the Heritage, that old Mission Boulevard coffee house where many of them performed. Adults took me to the Heritage a couple of times. I remember going there one night and sitting in the golden candlelight, drinking warm spiced cider, listening to the smooth baritone of a young man who accompanied himself on a dreadnaught guitar. I don’t remember much of what he sang — mostly standard folk songs — but he made up a verse to “Goodnight, Irene”: “Sometimes Irene wears pajamas/Sometimes she wears a nightgown/But when they are both in the laundry/lrene is the talk of the town.” Not really memorable, perhaps, but I thought so then. I developed a lasting fondness for the Heritage that evening. It was just a low-lying concrete-block building, but like an unattractive man with a wealth of character, it became beautiful in my eyes. And folk music has had the power to touch me forever after.

Other people who lived in Mission Beach were mostly misfits in one way or another. I don’t say that cruelly, for I was one of them. A few were poor for “good” reason — they were elderly or handicapped — and some were outcasts because of more insidious prejudices. Adelaide must have been a beautiful woman before her illness. With her neat, short, pale hair and her slow smile, you almost didn't notice the falter in her step or the studied way she managed every movement. She had extreme difficulty with her speech. Before she had become ill, she’d been the successful owner of a string of beauty salons. Her husband seemed to take reasonably good care of her, but when we were alone with her, she’d often say things such as, “Mean man,” with a glance toward the direction her husband had gone. There was suspicion that her husband had pushed her in the bathtub, and that that had caused her brain damage. Most people spoke “around” her, as if she weren’t there or as if she were stupid, but I always thought she only had difficulty with output of her speech and that she saw very clearly what she wasn’t able to express. I worried about her for a time after they moved away.

Belle was another woman who must have been sensational when she was young. She had worked at Belmont Park for years before she’d retired, and in that time she’d become quite a character. I wondered if she had been a naughty lady. Belle enjoyed drinking very much but she never let it interfere with her appearance. Every day she would put on her makeup, even when she was staying in and expecting no company. In fact, we had a tidal wave scare once and were advised to evacuate the beach area. A kindly neighbor went to assist Belle down me stairs from her apartment and out to his car. She refused to leave before she’d fixed her hair and put on her rouge and lipstick.

She devised a series of window taps to let people outside know whether she was okay or needed help or wanted someone to come up to her apartment. It was important to keep in contact with people, she thought, especially after her doctor had prescribed tranquilizers for her; Belle felt they made her “too calm.”

My visits to Belle’s apartment weren’t exactly what you’d expect of a little girl’s calls on an elderly woman. Of course, her place was a room of wonder. Walking down the narrow, dingy hall, and then stepping into a room packed full of keepsakes from the Twenties and Thirties, things that seemed so much like toys, was a magical experience. Belle told interesting stories, like the one about her friend who had such pendulous breasts that she’d been able to throw them over her shoulders.

Every inch of space in her apartment was covered with one of her trinkets. She’d let me play with some of the items in her collection, and usually she gave me some little thing to keep. At the end of one such visit she gave me one of the most marvelous presents I’ve ever received — it was a rag doll that was bigger than I was, with embroidered features and hair. Someone had sewn it completely by hand. I think Belle wanted to see her doll settled in a good home, and she must have known that would happen as she watched me carrying the awkwardly large doll home with me. I saw Belle watching me from her window. I still have the doll.

Some other neighbors lived in Mission Beach due to discrimination. They were Jewish and would have preferred La Jolla, but that community was restricted when they went to build their first house. They’d compensated well — their house was gorgeous, directly on Ocean Front Walk, I frequently played with their children as I grew older. We were the only two “decent” families (no divorces, no affairs, no excessive drinking, always went to church) in the neighborhood. The mother didn’t really like us very much, though. She'd never sit down in our house, although she would invite us to her house occasionally. She did give my mother laundry to do from time to time, but she also gave my mother a talking to for allowing me to shave my legs when I didn't even have double digits to my age. Her daughters had complained because they wouldn't have permission to shave their legs until they were well into their teens. By any reasonable assessment, with my sprinkling of blond leg hair, I didn’t need to shave; I only did it to imitate my mother. I think that Jewish woman was the most adult adult I ever met on the beach.

Her husband, by contrast, was always very kind to us, even playful. He’d sit at our house and talk with us. In fact, he always spoke whenever we met; he never pretended that he hadn't seen me. He gave my father odd jobs whenever he could, and one Easter he gave me a complete outfit, down to a wonderfully crinkly petticoat, frilly panties, and a flowered hat. I was enchanted.

Most of our summer days were organized around playing in the ocean or going to Belmont Park. You'd go to Belmont Park if you and at least one friend had enough money. Otherwise, you’d grab your air mattress and catch some waves.

There is nothing that can compare with the feeling of tiring yourself out bodysurfing, then lying in the sun, letting the sea salt bake across your shoulders, and finally rinsing yourself with the garden hose (when the water is first warm, but then comes in a cold rush). No thirst is better satisfied than by a drink from a garden hose at such a time.

When you went to Belmont Park, you needed money for the rides or concessions, of course, but what you really had to be able to pay for was a candy apple or a frosty. To eat something wicked like that and then to watch the people was almost fun enough. I was in heaven when I could stroll Belmont Park with a chocolate frosty. Because my father worked at the park, I got to go there more often than most other children. At first he ran the milk-can toss concession. The player had three chances to pitch a softball at a pyramid of three heavy “milk cans." If you knocked over all three of the cans, you won, and you received a token for every win. You could collect these tokens for as long as you wished and then exchange them for a prize at a special booth.

On occasion I’d help my father with his concession booth — stand watch when he went to the bathroom or when he hurriedly legged it home for a hot lunch. A canvas painting at the back of the booth pictured a very silly cow chewing hay while her tongue was sticking out. The cow was kicking over the milk pail under her, the tri-legged stool beside her, and the farmer milking her. The reason the cow was doing this was because a softball was headed toward her. I’d contemplate that inane painting as I stood behind the wooden bar that had been polished by years of many hands reaching for a tiny victory. The drunken pitchers were, of course, the most dangerous. They’d usually throw hard and they hit me a couple of times. I learned how to dodge surprisingly well.

Since I was at Belmont Park so much, a few of the other people who worked there “adopted” me. The alcoholic man who ran the merry-go-round missed his daughter, who was my age, so we had many long talks and he gave me a religious medal. (It’s now buried at the bottom of my jewelry box.) I called the horses we’d always ride “Cigareet” and “Whiskey.” Even now, I can never pass a merry-go-round without taking a ride.

Bob, who became a close family friend, often let me ride “The Scrambler,” one of my favorites, for free. The man who oversaw the fun house would, at times, let me in to try to beat “The Rotating Disc.” It was like a large wooden record album. You sat on it and tried to stay on as it began rotating; if you failed to maintain your center of gravity cleverly, you would go flying off. There were others who would let me win at their games or who would give me winning tokens they had “found.”

The one I esteemed most, though, was Shorty. He was, as the name implies, a little man. He was also slightly rotund and he always wore a flat English cap. He rounded himself with a many-pocketed apron into which tickets would disappear and from which tokens and balloons would emerge. Shorty ran the balloon-pop concession, in which you took three darts and tried to pop balloons with them. Shorty didn’t just give me tokens in one way or another, he also taught me about the games — he evaluated each of them for me, told me which ones I had a good chance of winning, and explained what I would have to do to win at them.

Later my father moved to Enchanted Land, that part of Belmont Park which you could enter for several tickets and use on an unlimited basis. It contained many mini-attractions: a hall of mirrors; a black-light maze; a visual-illusion room with a tilted floor that appeared flat; a long, fast, wooden slide; a set of hinged ramps that moved up and down like waves. The best of all in Enchanted Land, though, was “The Barrel,” a large wooden cylinder that rotated. The object was to walk through it without falling. I became excellent at this rather esoteric skill. I’d safely negotiate “The Barrel” at all speeds, even faster than others dared attempt. No one seemed to regard this as a significant accomplishment, but I did. And I cherished my fierce, secret pride in it.

I was glad that my father had gotten the job at Enchanted Land for some other reasons, too. It meant that I no longer had to work at Belmont Park, which was essentially a place of play. Enchanted Land needed only two concessionaire-caretakers, so my father and his co-workers could take turns going for lunch and dinner breaks. My father was more rested and he became happier, his work schedule was less erratic and he was home for family dinners more often. He thought he should spend a little time with me every day, so when he got home from work, my mother would awaken me. We’d talk as we watched The Jack Paar Show and consumed chips and dip. After about half an hour, it would be time for me to go to bed. I felt very mature, being up so late.

The peerless attraction of Belmont Park was not Enchanted Land, however, it was the rollercoaster. We could hear its sounds from our apartment. I rode it only five times; a dizzying trip on the roller coaster was such a special experience that it had to be savored in rarity. The spirit of that baroque structure dominated all of Belmont Park: the click of the chain would split the ocean air as the cars ascended to their apex; the rattle of the rail would resonate through the concession buildings and rumble in the pavement. Standing beneath the roller coaster, with the heavenly flavors of a cinnamon apple in my mouth, or with the smooth, rocky, sweet earthiness of a caramel-nut apple trapping my tongue, I could feel the moving life of Belmont Park.

I’ve long since moved away from Mission Beach, and rarely meet any of my old playmates. But in the ones I’ve seen, I sense, as in myself, a strange and unconventional layering of adult and child. We all grew up in a uniquely idyllic setting, but we certainly weren’t protected from the baser aspects of human nature. Perhaps we learned it all too soon, but we refused to let it interfere with our fun. Resolute, we demanded to remain children.