I remember the warm weather and I want Samoa

Is it my imagination, or is June gloom becoming May-June-July gloom?

You would think that after living here for almost 80 of my 91 years,

I would be used to June weather, but I’m like a snake. I crave hot

weather, which means I’ve been spending a lot of time wishing I were

somewhere else, maybe visiting old friends in Samoa.

For three years, we lived in Pago Pago, the capital of American

Samoa. As a capital, it’s pretty small potatoes -- no skyscrapers or

traffic jams, one stop sign, a few buildings, the port where the

occasional cruise ship moors, and an open market. Pago Pago makes

Newport look like New York City.

There’s a lot to be said for small places, but the best part of

Samoa is that it’s warm. For three years, I never wore as much as a

sweatshirt. The only way you can tell it’s winter in Samoa is that

there’s more rain.

It rains a lot in Samoa, about 250 inches a year, but it’s a nice,

warm rain, not that cold, gray, depressing rain you get in places

like Seattle, and it doesn’t last very long. There’s a short

downpour, and then the sun’s out. No slogging around in a raincoat

and umbrella. Duck into a doorway for a couple of minutes, and then

you’re on your way.

The amount of precipitation impressed the English writer Somerset

Maugham. He set one of his stories on the island. The title? “Rain.”

It’s a story about a missionary and what was at one point called a

fallen woman.

Well, when I was living in Samoa, we had a missionary, in this

case a woman. One day I was at the open market in Pago Pago looking

at the produce and dreaming of a tomato. I tried for three years to

grow tomatoes and failed all three years, getting a few yellow plants

and no fruit at all. It wasn’t that I didn’t know how to grow

tomatoes. It’s that you can’t grow them there.

It’s an odd thing about Samoa. It is a lush island, a jungle of

green, but despite all this vegetation, the soil is very poor and

supports little in the way of produce. You didn’t go to the open air

market expecting to find lettuce, zucchini and eggplant or peaches,

plums and apricots. All they had at the open air market was taro.

Everything else was shipped in. You went to the market because that

was like the town square, where you met people.

Anyway, I was at the market and happened to run into the

missionary. Now, on an island the size of Samoa, you know most

people, so I had met her before, but didn’t know her that well. We

chatted, and somehow the conversation got around to Maugham and the

story he had written.

I promptly suggested that we take up where Maugham left off, only

she would be the missionary, and I would be the fallen one, in this

case a man. Unhappily, the lady had no sense of humor. She took me

seriously and gave me a strong lecture about marriage, its

responsibilities and my duty toward my life. I’m sure she meant to

give me a life lesson, but the only lesson I derived was to be sure

of your audience when you tell a joke.

Meanwhile, as I sit bundled up against the dank June weather, I

think wistfully of Samoa. 250 inches of rain? I can handle it as long

as it’s warm.

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

His column runs Tuesdays.