A strolling stone gathers no moss

Walking as a means of transportation seems to be a thing of the

past. I grew up in a family of walkers. My father walked to work. My

mother walked to the store or to church. I walked to school.

When I lived on the Balboa Peninsula, I walked from there to the

14th Street Grammar School in Newport. Jimmie Van Trees, Albert

Spencer and I walked that two miles every day, rain or shine. On the

way home, we walked along the beach and picked up soft shell sand

crabs, which we sold for 10 cents a strawberry box to the fishermen

on the Balboa Pier. A dime split three ways wasn’t much, but it gave

a certain commercial zest to walking.

When we moved to Maywood, I walked to Huntington Park High School,

a distance of about five miles. Again, I remember the kids I walked

with -- Bob Brown and Lawrence Livermore. I remember them because we

were all on the Class “C” swimming team, and during the swimming

season, we walked home in the dark dodging occasional cars because

there were no sidewalks.

When I went to college, walking to school was a piece of cake -- a

mere couple of miles to the Central Manufacturing District to pick up

the “V” streetcar, which went by the USC campus.

Today, the very idea of walking to school is considered

un-American. If their parents don’t drive them, kids are picked up by

school buses, and those buses better pick them up close to home or

school officials will hear about it.

As for me, I probably walk as much as I ever have. Part of that is

because I no longer drive, so if I want a quart of milk or a pound of

ground round, I have to hoof it to the market. Part of it is because

I have a dog that loves to eat, and if she doesn’t get her exercise,

she begins to resemble the Hindenburg.

She is not an enthusiastic walker. Most dogs see the leash and

come bounding. She sees the leash and crawls under a chair, and even

after she’s coaxed outside, our “walk” is a rather leisurely thing.

Every blade of grass is worthy of examination, and it can take the

better part of an hour to go around the block, not that you could

tell it from her. When we get home, she collapses on the rug like one

of those people finishing the Iron Man. You’d think we’d walked from

Corona del Mar to Laguna instead of from Shore Cliffs to the Five

Crowns.

You couldn’t tell it from my dog, but I think walking may be

coming back. Go to Ocean Boulevard in Corona del Mar any time of day,

and you see people walking. There are the workout walkers who march

along with all the seriousness of Her Majesty’s Coldstream Guard,

eyes ahead, arms pumping. There are the amblers who stop every

hundred yards or so to gaze out at the ocean. Whatever pace they set,

they’ve all discovered that walking is an excellent way of getting

some place.

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

His column runs Tuesdays.