A Reason for Liking Orange County

To Roger Flynn, Bayonne, N.J. Sunday, July 21 Dear Roger,

I’m writing because as I sit here in Laguna Beach on an incredibly beautiful afternoon, you suddenly popped into my mind.

I remembered some of the things you wrote when I first moved to Orange County: how you’d never live anywhere in Southern California but especially not in Orange County; how you couldn’t understand anyone with that sort of freeway mentality.

Over the years, virtually everything you’ve said about Orange County has been true. Our congressmen do seem like living cartoons. We are willing to tear up almost anything if doing it is profitable. Most of us really do love our cars more than our mothers. This is probably the only part of the country that doesn’t think a drive-in church is an odd idea.

Most of us won’t go anywhere that doesn’t offer ample parking and air-conditioned comfort. There is plenty of both at our shopping malls, so they have become our temples.

Over the years, I could have adopted the easy counteroffensive and cranked up a few wisecracks about Bayonne. But I didn’t--well, not very often, at least--because I was more interested in explaining why I like this place. And it took a while for me to figure it out. I think I figured it out today.

I like it because of Laguna--and places like Laguna. They still exist and are close by, and a day spent there can rescue you from the depressing sameness of the old and new Orange County landscape.

As I sit here in the shade of a eucalyptus tree 10 paces from the beach and maybe 40 paces from the sea; as I lean back in a chair some artist has built of tile and concrete; as I feel the warm, salty breeze on my outside and the steamed clams and beer on my inside; as I watch the lithe and beautiful men and women playing beach volleyball and basketball, I feel somehow that life is good.

I’m sure that life can be good in Bayonne--or even in Boise or Bismarck. It’s just that life can be just as good in Laguna during January and February. And it’s so good that people coming here from only 10 miles away feel as if they’re on vacation.

Which is how I feel right now, because this place is so different from the workaday Orange County I know.

You realize the town’s different before you even get here. Without signs, you can’t tell where Santa Ana ends and Garden Grove begins. But there is a definite beginning to Laguna. From mainland Orange County, you drive along a beautiful, nearly uninhabited coast or through a canyon of low, rugged, rocky hillsides with cattle grazing, and suddenly you’re there.

This is, however, a walker’s town, not a driver’s town. The people here don’t want more cars; there is no place to put them. Unlike most of the rest of Orange County, Laguna Beach thinks parking structures are ugly.

People who insist on driving to Laguna on weekends usually become part of the fascinating and endless parade that meanders through town in vain search of parking places. They are watched with amusement by those who pedaled in on bicycles or parked at Laguna Hills Mall, Fashion Island or in the canyon lots and caught buses.

Once here, those who see Laguna only as a different place to shop have before them all the shops they can handle in one day.

Others, however, can walk up to the summer-long art festivals at the mouth of the canyon.

There really is an art colony in Laguna, although few of the artists are pushing at art’s outer boundaries. These are artists trying very hard not to starve, and they seem constantly to have the buying public in mind. Most anyone will find some art to his liking at these festivals.

Of course, there is the beach, and this, too, is not typical of Orange County. The beaches in Laguna are too small for the masses that flock to Huntington Beach and Newport Beach. There are cliffs and no-parking zones and houses in the way.

You have to value beauty over motoring ease to set out for these beaches, which must be the reason that a different kind of beach crowd comes here. There seem to be fewer of the abusive fraternity boys who populate Newport in the summer--the kids whose fathers rent them a bungalow so they won’t come home.

But the real joy of Laguna is in the sitting and watching. The town has provided many places to do it, especially along the Main Beach. In summer when the festivals are under way, there are many examples of quaint humanity within view.

Sitting here at my portable and writing this letter makes me one of them, I guess. A few minutes ago, a French tourist came up and asked if she could take my picture. Odd, being considered a picturesque native.

“Very, very beautiful,” she said, gesturing in a sweep toward the town.

“Thank you,” I said, acting as temporary mayor.

“One feels good here,” she said.

I couldn’t agree more. Even you would say the same, Roger, if you had been standing there.