The blind mullet off the Newport Pier

People who complain about water quality today don’t know how good

they have it compared to the early days of Newport. A comparison of

our two piers is illustrative.

The Balboa Pier was a tourist pier. Thus, the Balboa Pier had

railings so that tourists could lean against them while admiring the

beautiful blue Pacific Ocean. The Newport Pier had no railings. When

ships tied up to load and unload, railings would have been a

nuisance. Even when ships no longer tied up to it and trains no

longer came out on the tracks, the Newport Pier had no railings. If a

tourist fell off the pier while admiring the beautiful blue Pacific

Ocean, that was just too bad.

But the real difference between the two piers was their toilet

facilities. If, while strolling on the Balboa Pier, one felt the need

to go to the toilet, quite a challenge was presented. Time meant

everything. Hopefully, one had a lot of it. First, one had to walk

back to the foot of the pier at Main Street. Then one walked or ran,

depending on the time element, two blocks down Main Street toward the

Pavilion. When one came to Soto’s Curio Shop at the corner of Main

Street and Bay Avenue, one turned to the left and walked (or ran) to

the corner of Bay Avenue and Washington Street. There, one found a

small cement structure bearing a sign that read “Public Comfort

Station.” That was the public toilet.

I have always thought the sign “Comfort Station” was more accurate

than the more common “Public Restroom.” One usually gets a certain

degree of comfort while utilizing such a place. One does not

necessarily get much rest -- unless one had been at the end of the

Balboa Pier when nature called. In that case, one got some much

needed rest as well as comfort.

On the other hand, the Newport Pier was a commercial pier. The

idea of having workmen who were being paid by the hour taking time

off at the employer’s expense to leave the pier in search of a

toilet/comfort station/restroom on the shore was simply unacceptable

to the employers. Thus, the Newport Pier had its own toilet/comfort

station/restroom right there on the pier.

However, since there was no sewer line running out to the Newport

Pier, it had for its toilet/comfort station/restroom an old-fashioned

privy, an outhouse, a structure enclosing and supporting a board

large enough to sit on and do whatever one does in a

privy/outhouse/comfort station/restroom.

In a society that has a hard enough time saying the word toilet,

trying to describe in words acceptable to the general public just

what is deposited in such a toilet presents a challenge. However, the

traditional privy or outhouse is ordinarily built over a hole in the

ground. The Newport Pier had no such hole in the ground. It had a

hole over the ocean. Whatever went through that hole in the

privy/outhouse/comfort station/restroom went plop right into the

beautiful blue Pacific. It then floated ashore where the happy

bathers were frolicking in the surf. The local Newport kids called

those objects “blind mullet.”

It wasn’t just the pier that had this problem. Being at sea level,

you couldn’t have outhouses in early Balboa and Balboa Island, so

there were sewers, but these sewers emptied right into the bay at the

end of each street. And so it was that those of us who learned to

swim in those days always learned to dog paddle or do the breast

stroke so we could watch ahead for anything suspicious that happened

to be floating in the water ahead of us. We also learned to keep our

mouths tightly closed while swimming. Our water today may have

problems, but not like that.

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

His column runs Tuesdays.