Now If He Could Just Invent Someone Willing to Market It

Summer is icumen (actually it’s ihere , as of today’s solstice), and with it, the coastal conundrum.

How can you lug your beach chair/folding chair/chaise longue to the beach while also juggling your cooler (full of City Council-approved beverages only), towels, blankets, picnic basket, Frisbee, Sunday newspaper, Boogie board and beach toys for the children?

To the rescue comes Caddy Sack, the brainchild of William Gex, 39, an electrical engineer at the Naval Ocean Systems Center in Point Loma, and proud possessor of United States patent No. 4,972,981.

Gex had a revelation while watching beach-goers at Pacific Beach trying to carry it all in one trip:

“I saw people struggling more than usual. I figured there’s got to be a better way.”

On his off-hours, Gex tinkered with prototypes. Finally he got one he liked, in the manner of a camping backpack, with plastic straps to be cinched around the chair(s) and thorax.

“It’s a stretch, but I’ve fit five chairs at once,” he said.

He sought a patent. The patent office remitted copies of designs for similar gizmos developed by a Britisher and several Germans. Gex finally proved that his idea is sufficiently different.

So far, Caddy Sack is listed in a mail-order catalogue for $42. Or direct from Gex for $25.

Last week, Gex ventured to the annual Inventors Expo at Crystal Hill, Va. He was there along with guys who had just invented things like a super nutcracker, a robotic chef and a thigh-shaping exerciser.

Gex had hoped Caddy Sack would attract a manufacturer willing to spring for a joint venture. Alas, this was not to happen.

Again this summer, Gex will serve as his own distribution manager and advertising prop.

He will walk the beach slowly on weekends, his Caddy Sack fully loaded, awaiting the curious glances, sales brochures at the ready.

Which proves that, while necessity may be the mother of invention, audacity is the father of marketing.

No Percolating on the Range

Try one.

* Saddle up.

Mike Klarfeld, Rancho Bernardo attorney and officer of Cattle Drive America, reports a surge in interest in his weeklong roundups in Wyoming since the movie “City Slickers.”

For $995, a greenhorn can spend a week driving cattle along a 40-mile trail from Cheyenne to Laramie. A crew from CBS will join the first drive, which starts July 8.

Klarfeld says his drives are just like the one in the Billy Crystal movie, with some exceptions.

Among them: No electric coffee makers like the one that started the stampede in “Slickers.”

* Backtalk.

Last week, Municipal Judge Larry Stirling started a controversy by ordering court workers to use a mop and Windex to clean up after a forgery defendant who is HIV positive.

This week, Stirling received a huge blowup of a coupon for Windex. Signed only: The Committee on Public Health & Safety.

* Proof that irony plays no part in politics.

Assemblywoman Tricia Hunter (R-Bonita) and other conservatives are resisting a proposal to increase income taxes in the upper brackets: branding it merely a dastardly plan to rob the rich and give to the poor.

So where did Hunter and her Assembly allies go the other night to celebrate her 39th birthday?

To see the movie “Robin Hood,” of course.

* Federal Appeals Judge Stephen Reinhardt of Los Angeles talks next Friday to the City Club of San Diego on “Jews and the Supreme Court.”

His provocative thesis: Jews have been silent too long and should begin lobbying for a Jew to be appointed to the high court, which has not had a Jewish justice since 1969.

* KSDO radio talk-show host Danuta, describing the state’s water delivery system to San Diego County: “It’s like a very thin catheter to a very large bladder.”

When she starts describing the sewage system, I’m leaving the room.

A Line on Modern Living

Working mother.

Seen in Encinitas: Woman with two small kids in tow, shopping at Ralphs, talking business on a cellular phone.