The Verdict -- Robert Gardner

While I never knew Madam Modjeska during her lifetime, she and I had

certain contracts of which she was completely unaware but which give me a

certain feeling of closeness to her.

In addition to her home in the canyon that bears her name, the madam

had a home in Balboa, specifically on Bay Island. For the uninformed, Bay

Island is a small island in the bay reached only by a wooden bridge from

Balboa.

Now, before the gung ho boys dredged Balboa Bay and renamed it Newport

Harbor so that the multimillionaires could moor their multimillion-dollar

yachts here, what is now the bay was then a mudflat, which started at Bay

Island and continued to the harbor mouth, with a canal dredged by Joe

Beek so that his ferry could travel from Balboa to Balboa Island.

The mudflat was my playground as a youth. Other kids may have had

baseball diamonds or football fields. We locals had that mudflat.

First, of course, that mudflat furnished us with food -- cockles and

scallops as well as razor clams for bait for the fishermen. But more than

that, the mud flats furnished recreation.

We hollowed out narrow channels, which, when the tide went out, were

the places in which we ran, threw ourselves into the air, landed in one

of those channels and slid to the end. It was great fun except for the

slices on our bellies when we ran over some razor clams.

And so Madam Modjeska and I were essentially neighbors, she in her

mansion, me on my mudflat.

My other connection with Madam Modjeska was with her son, Felix, who

became a friend of mine. Felix worked for the city of Newport Beach in

the street department. Felix will always remain in my memory for a

classic letter he wrote to the city when it was naming the streets in

Corona del Mar.

The decision had been made to the name all the streets after flowers

and to do it alphabetically, starting with Acacia. They proceeded through

the alphabet, and when the came to the P street, their choice of flower

was pansy.

I know there is other terminology today, but in that time, pansy was

slang for homosexual.

And so Felix Modjeska wrote a marvelous letter to the City Council

pointing out that he found it a bit embarrassing to have Pansy as an

address and explained why. The city quickly changed Pansy to Poppy, and

that is the street’s name today.

And those are my connections to Madam Modjeska.

* ROBERT GARDNER is a Corona del Mar resident and a former judge. His

column runs Tuesdays.