A slice of American heaven

Quintin J. Reich

It usually happens that I wake up early in the morning, sometimes

before 6 a.m. The sound of the surf gently crashing on the shore

drifts in through our open window, calling me to life. I sneak out of

the house with my dog to say good morning to our little paradise by

the sea, and to my surprise, I am never alone.

Every morning, I see the same Japanese couple, ritually walking

their multiple lengths of the beach. Sometimes they walk together,

and sometimes they are many yards apart. But they are always there,

greeting the morning in their special way. One morning, there were

two young Asian girls sitting together at a portable piano, singing

some happy melody that I couldn’t quite make out.

I’ve seen a young, Native American couple dancing with drums and

shells that shook around their ankles. Their dance included a chant

that was powerful, moving and absolutely beautiful in the calm air of

dawn. Another woman, who must have been more than 60, danced alone,

almost in a waltz. She spiraled and twirled herself from one end of

the beach to the other and must have given herself a great workout. I

wasn’t sure if she was deliriously happy or seriously challenged by

reality.

Without fail, and irrespective of weather, dozens of Latino

families stake out their piece of grass, sand or rock that will be

their home for a day. It truly is amazing to see such a commitment to

family so widespread throughout one culture -- all before 6 a.m. As a

habitual morning person, it makes me feel almost slothful to see that

kind of industry and exuberance shine at such an early hour.

Of course, they probably look at me with my dog as one of the more

bizarre forms of life in the zoo. From their perspective, folks like

me, who follow around their four-legged friends to collect excrement

in little plastic bags, probably have no self-respect.

Climbing the steps home from Big Corona, I run into the real

fanatics. Every day, it’s the same thing. Some people hire personal

trainers to scream them into fitness, and some seemed motivated by

inner demons. They prance around in their Lycra shorts, jogger-bras

and designer sunglasses. They arrive in the most absurd gas guzzlers,

designed for some off-road adventure that will never come. They drive

up and down the streets for 10 or 15 minutes looking for parking

close enough to keep them from walking too far before their run. They

are the most conspicuously wasteful and the most environmentally

oblivious culture on the planet, and we live in their favorite gym.

Worse yet, it occurs to me after putting my sweaty Lycra in the wash,

as I drive my sport utility vehicle to work, I am them.

It would be no more an exaggeration to say that nearly 100% of the

exercise fanatics are white than it would be to say that nearly 100%

of the day-campers are either Asian or Latino. Rich white locals

don’t do the day-camper thing around here any more than their less

affluent, minority neighbors drive Hummers to go for a run. But

neither is more ridiculous than the other.

It makes me wonder what aliens from another planet would think if

they were to look down on us. They may or may not notice the color of

our skin, but they would certainly notice the actions of particular

groups. It’s not hard to imagine them saying something like: “The

ones with brown skin seem to be in charge. They get first pick of

available land, and therefore must be of a higher class. The white

ones in Lycra seem forced into physical labor and our scanners show

an inordinate amount of synthetic material enhancing their physical

appearance. This could only mean insecurity about their station in

life. And those poor slaves who have been relegated to picking up

after their four-legged masters, they must be in the lowest class of

all.”

This is really not too hard to imagine. Not the part about aliens

from other planets, but the idea of visitors misinterpreting the

cultural differences we claim to celebrate. Yes, I say “claim to

celebrate,” because, as much as I love the variety and the quality of

life here at the beach, I have to come home every day to the

side-effects of both. In fact, before sitting down to write this, I

noticed a soiled diaper outside my window. And since my wife and I

don’t have an infant living with us, nor do any of our immediate

neighbors, it’s safe to say that one of our visitors left it behind.

And I have to clean up after them.

Every morning, as I make my way down to the ocean for our run, I

see not only the various ingredients of our great American

melting-pot, I see all the garbage left behind from the night before.

They say that nobody takes care of your property as well as you, and

this is certainly true of our neighborhood. The people who live here

don’t put empty beer cans in your hedge, broken glass in your gutter

and dirty diapers on your lawn; the visitors do. Our quiet mornings

are not often disturbed by our neighbors driving by with their music

shaking the windows of our houses. That too is done by our visitors.

Does this make me a racist? I hope not, but it is the truth. And

if it’s the truth about Newport’s alleged or denied racism we’re

looking for, take a look at your CC&Rs.; At least one local

neighborhood, developed in the 1950s, felt it wasn’t a good idea to

sell homes to nonwhites. There’s even a paragraph prohibiting

nonwhites from spending the night at your house. So, for those of you

nonracist locals who have minority servants, please be sure send your

help home at the end of the day.

Yes, we live in a very beautiful place. We live in a resort town,

and people come from all over the state and all over the world to see

our little slice of American heaven. But we all have very different

habits, lifestyles and cultural practices. I’m not saying that one is

more offensive than the other. They are all good in some ways, and

all of them are bad in others. It certainly brings us locals no

pleasure to clean up after everyone else once they’ve had their fun

in our back yard. Neither, though, should it bring us any pride

knowing that we waste more of our planet’s resources than any other

culture on Earth, and therefore, have no right to complain about how

inconvenient it is to tolerate other cultures.

The challenges we face have to do more with doing the right things

than saying the right things. We cannot improve our track record by

denying that it’s bad. And we can no more afford to neglect our own

responsibilities than we can to criticize those who neglect theirs.

It would be nice to go to the beach one day without having to step

over the garbage others have left behind. But I’d also like to

compost, recycle and drive a solar-powered vehicle to work in the

morning. When I see my neighbor hosing off the alley behind his

house, wasting hundreds of gallons of California’s most precious

resource, I want to ask him to buy a broom. Instead, I go about my

business, often picking up dirty diapers along the way, and I try to

get my own house in order.

* QUINTIN J. REICH is a resident of Corona del Mar.