Mesa Musings:

Shakespeare derisively labeled it “filthy air.”

I, however, like it.

I took my early-morning constitutional last week in dreary, dripping, delicious fog. It was so soupy that I had to continually brush away a laden drop accruing at the end of my nose. It was glorious!

The experience took me back to my youth in Costa Mesa, in the 1950s and early ’60s. Fog would be with us for weeks on end. Here, in our little nook on this “best of all possible coasts” — as Tom Murphine liked to call it — we always knew when it was Christmas. The holidays came cloaked not in heavenly snow but shimmering dew (except when the Santa Anas blew!).

Perhaps because Costa Mesa and Newport Beach are now chock-full-o’-concrete they’re unable to attract fog. Or, maybe the climate has changed. But, whatever the cause, things are different today.

When I was growing up, the heavy-fog season ran October through January. I remember during the fall of 1961 — my senior year in high school — we had fog roll in 40-plus nights in succession. As Carl Sandburg so eloquently phrased it, it sat “looking over harbor and city on silent haunches” — night after night.

I’m told that optimal fog conditions occur during the long, cool nights of fall. Autumn days in Newport-Mesa can be warm, and there’s plenty of invisible water vapor in the air. During the lengthening nights, the air becomes saturated as it cools to dew-point temperature. Fog forms from the ground up. Fog layers usually dissipate after sunrise with heating from the sun and the mixing of winds.

During the 1961 football season, my parents, along with the parents of my high school chums, were loath to let us out on Friday nights to attend games. My mom possessed an almost obsessive angst about fog. She refused to allow anyone in our household out the front door on an evening when there was the slightest hint of vaporous mist. We’d remain safely tucked away in our living room, with the shades drawn. To her way of thinking, fog was nothing short of contagion.

Typically, fog would steal in at dusk on its “little cat feet” and hang morosely in the trees. It seemed to get thicker as the night wore on. By dawn, it could be as impenetrable as pea soup. Usually, it would hang around past mid-morning before finally receding. It wouldn’t go far, however, and usually returned by dusk.

I can’t begin to estimate the number of mornings I stood at a bus stop — or rode my bike or drove my car to school — in the fog. It wasn’t unusual to hear the bus chugging up the road toward the bus stop long before you could actually see it. Girls wore head scarves while the guys had their hair matted to their foreheads.

During my junior year I had a first-period P.E. class. Actually, I loved playing flag football in the fog. It was a challenge for receivers to find the ball spiraling out of the murky slop.

During the first seven years of my life my family lived on Balboa Island. I remember lying in bed at night and hearing the forlorn wail of a foghorn by the jetty’s entrance. To me, the sound was comforting.

I attended a college party on the Westside of Costa Mesa in the fall of 1963. I left for home after midnight. The fog was so thick that I had to roll my window down and thrust my head out the window to find the yellow line. Intersections were a nightmare to navigate.

More than once I pulled to the side of the road to look for a street sign to confirm my location.

We don’t get fog like that anymore.

One evening I drove from our home near Del Mar and Monte Vista to Newport Heights. It was “clear as a bell” when I departed (my mother’s favorite phrase to describe a fog-less night), but as I traveled down Santa Ana Avenue, at about 21st Street, a fog bank enveloped my car. It was like being swallowed by the Leviathan. I inched the remainder of the way to my destination.

Fog may not be your cup of tea. I understand that.

For me, it brings back many pleasant memories.

JIM CARNETT lives in Costa Mesa. His column runs Wednesdays.