ROBERT GARDNER -- The verdict

The first line of the song “Summertime” goes as follows: “Summertime, and

the living is easy.”

Well, if working seven 10-hour days a week is easy, I’m glad I didn’t

live where the living was hard during summertime.

When I was a youngster, I lived in Balboa when that part of our city was

a summer resort. During the summer, everyone worked like dogs to make

enough money to carry them through the rest of the year. It was seven

10-hour days a week for three months, then hibernation.

The rest of the town didn’t differentiate between summer and the rest of

the year.

In Newport Beach, the fishermen fished all year, selling their catch to

John Horman, who put the fish in ice-filled tubs and sent them to Los

Angeles on the Pacific Electric for sale at the Grand Central Market.

Balboa Island was a mud flat that disappeared entirely at high tide,

summer or winter.

Corona del Mar, or “The Palisades” as we then called it, was a few square

miles of unsold lots over which Irvine Ranch cattle grazed, and those

cattle didn’t care much about the seasons. But in Balboa, it was summer,

and the place shut down.

The weather was usually good during the summer, which was what brought so

many people down here, but we natives knew a secret.

It was the month after “summer” that was really the best. September meant

warm days, warm water, guaranteed -- and no crowds.

When I became a judge and took the first vacation in my life, of course I

took the month of September, and what happened? It rained every day. If

you live on some glamorous South Pacific island, there are two seasons --

the wet season and the dry season.

The latter is something of a misnomer. During the dry season, it just

doesn’t rain as much as it does during the wet season -- 50 inches during

the wet season, 20 inches during the dry. That’s what it felt like. I was

living on the island at the time and spent the whole month in Buster

Creely’s bookstore. So much for September.

After that experience, I took my vacation during the summer like everyone

else.

Going back to the song “Summertime,” the verse concludes, “and your Ma is

good-looking.” What is she the rest of the year -- ugly? It must be tough

to have an ugly mother, even if she’s only ugly nine months out of the

year.