Jack Smith The Big Orange Ward Ritchie Press: Pasadena, CA, 1976. 1933, 1928, 1900, 1875, 1869, 1769, 1542
Santa Monica
"'Title to the ocean, the sunset, and the air is guaranteed by God.'
"The Santa Monica pier is antique. Naturally many people want to tear it down. Naturally, many people want to leave it up. At best, it is on reprieve. It has an embattled look, somewhat misshapen and askew. It creaks and groans on its weathered pilings, and supports a ramshackle row of shops, fish markets, galleries and cafes. At its shore end it is ornamented by an enchanting old merry-go-round." pp. 248 and 249
"It has stood there throughout the century, this Victorian playhouse, while generations of concrete buildings have come and gone. The little horses of the carousel are exuberantly sculptured, obviously of Arab blood, with wild eyes and flaring nostrils. The old organ pounds and clangs and wheezes as if trying gallantly to finish this one last song before expiring. A sign tells its story:
"'Welcome friend. The music you are listening to is coming from one of the oldest organs in the country, built in 1900 . . . Constantly playing for seventy years. The merry-go-round has the happiest record in the U.S. The horses were imported from Germany and are all hand-carved. There are no two horses alike. Your grandparents and mom and dad probably rode this ride when they were children. All the great actresses, and their children, too. Come aboard, close your eyes and listen to the music . . . '
"This was the first merry-go-round my own sons had ridden. We had lived in Venice then; the older boy was three . . .
""Fishing is free from the end of the pier, and there is always a hardy group of fishermen out there, whatever the hour and the weather. . . .
"He looked out at the breakwater, a ragged dark line, like the back of some enormous sea monster. It had been made of great blocks of granite, many of which had tumbled into the sea.
"'Fishing hasn't been so good here, though,' he said, 'since they built that new breakwater.'
"'New?' I said.
"'Well, new in Thirty-three, it was. I been fishing here since Twenty-eight.'" p. 250
"It seemed incredible that only a hundred years ago there was nothing here but land, sea and sky. An Easterner, writing years later of a visit he made to this shore in 1869, recalled that it was 'an unpeopled waste -no light (dressed) brigade of sportive bathers charged the angry surf; neither keel nor oar vexed the breakers that broke on the desolate shore.'
"Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo and his crew were the first white men to see Santa Monica Bay, on their voyage of 1542. Then two hundred and twenty-seven years passed before Gaspar de Portolá and his soldiers camped at a spring above the bay. It is said that one of Portolá's men named the place Santa Monica, likening the spring water to the saint's tears for her wayward son, Augustine.
"It was another century before John P. Jones, a Nevada senator, and Colonel R.S. Baker, a cattleman, who had bought the old Mexican land grants, formed a township, filed maps and started selling lots. The sale was held on a hot day in 1875. They hired Tom Fitch, an orator and auctioneer of note. Hundreds of people buggied down from Los Angeles to hear Fitch and to see the ocean. Both were magnificent.
"Fitch promised that anyone who bought a lot in Santa Monica would have the Pacific Ocean as a backdrop, with a daily sunset of 'scarlet and gold' and 'a bay filled with white-winged ships.'
"He went on to say that the title to the land was guaranteed by his employers, but the title to 'the ocean, the sunset and the air is guaranteed by God.'" p. 251