Associating more than I thought

ROBERT GARDNER

I am not a joiner. I belong to no fraternal organization, no civic

organization, no lodge, no temple, no nothing. Or so I thought. Yet

when I went through some old records recently, I seem to have

belonged to a remarkable series of organizations.

Some are familiar names, such as the Newport Harbor Elks Lodge,

the Salvation Army Advisory Board, the Executive Council of the Boy

Scouts of America, the Congress of Parents and Teachers, the Orange

County Pioneer Council and the Newport Beach Historical Society. I am

also a member of the Friends of the Oasis and the Neptune Society,

neither of which is very exclusive. For the first, you just have to

be old, and for the second you have to eventually die -- something

anybody can (and will) do.

Some of the memberships hark back to my military service: the U.S.

Pacific Fleet Cincpac Advance Headquarters Officers’ Club, the

Officers Club of Pearl Harbor, the Officers’ Club of the Naval Base

at Saipan and the Officers’ Club of Guam. I was big on officers’

clubs because they were a good place to drink, which might lead one

to question how I also became a member of the American Temperance

Society and the Women’s Christian Temperance Union, but my mother was

a lifelong member of the WCTU, even an officer at one point. So I

guess I was sort of a legacy.

Another family connection stood me in good stead when I was in

China in the 1930s. Thanks to my sister Marion and her way with men,

I became a member of the Peking Club when we were in that city.

As golfers, my wife and I were members of the Lava Lava Golf Club

of Pago Pago, American Samoa. The name is a little more catchy than

the Irvine Coast Country Club, where we had previously played.

Speaking of Samoa, I was also a member of the Pago Pago Yacht Club.

This one is very select. At the time I belonged, its fleet consisted

of two Hobie Cats. And while on the subject of yacht clubs, I was

also a member of the Promontory Point Yacht Club, of which Blackie

Gadarian was commodore. The Promontory Point Yacht Club had the same

mission as the Balboa Island Punting and Sculling Society, which was

nothing to do with boats and everything to do with having a convivial

drink with friends.

How I became a member of the International Assn. of Turtles, and

what the International Assn. of Turtles does or stands for, I haven’t

a clue. But as for the Australasian Order of Old Bastards -- well, I

don’t know about the Australasian part, but I’m certainly old, and I

was referred to as a bastard many times in my career on the bench, so

maybe they waived the other part.

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

His column runs Tuesdays.