In the realm of punctuality, there’s one good thing about tardiness: You can count on a search party

It was inevitable, I suppose, that after boasting about my punctuality I would turn up late somewhere.

It is my nature, as I said, to be on time for every event, an attitude that I learned first from my YMCA basketball coach, and have since had reinforced by the Marine Corps and the newspaper business, neither of which accepts any excuse for tardiness.

I had agreed to talk to a group of University Women in Torrance at 7:30 one evening last week, and I left my house in plenty of time to be there at that hour. When I turned off the Harbor Freeway and onto the San Diego Freeway, and took the Crenshaw off-ramp, according to directions, I looked at my dashboard clock and saw that I would probably be 15 minutes early. That’s the way I like it. I can sit in the car and read the newspaper or listen to KMPC, which gives me a lot of reassuring old songs and not too much news.

But at the Crenshaw turnoff I accidentally got on to 182nd Street, instead of Crenshaw, and went on that until I realized it must be wrong. Then I went back to the freeway and found Crenshaw, and went the wrong way on that. I have a good sense of direction, but after dark, and especially in the harbor area, it is easy to get turned around.

It was well after 7:30 that I found myself in the designated neighborhood, looking for the house I was expected at. Two women were standing on a corner. They waved. I rolled down my window and said “Are you looking for me?”

They turned out to be from the group of women I was trying to find. They said it had taken quite a bit of courage to go out on the street and accost me, as they had.

“I said you might be a rapist,” one of them said.

They were looking for me because they knew I would be on time, and assumed I was lost.

When they escorted me into the entry hall of the house I saw a banner stretched out across the wall under the ceiling. It said: “It’s exactly 7:30, Mr. Smith.”

I was naturally embarrassed. They had put me to the test and I had failed it.

Anyway, there isn’t much point in being on time in a society that not only doesn’t demand it, but doesn’t expect it.

But there are still some communities that live by punctuality. One of them, I am informed, is Leisure World, in Laguna Hills.

A resident named Mac Rosen writes to remind me of the day that I talked to a large group of residents down there.

“I have no idea how much time you spent in Leisure World,” he writes, “but if it was more than one day you could not have missed being impressed by the ‘Punctuality Capital of the World.’

“Your lecture hall was completely filled to the last seat 30 minutes before you were scheduled to appear.

“If my wife and I are invited to someone’s home at 7:30 for an evening of bridge and we are not there by at least 7:20 they will call your home, and at 7:30--the paramedics.

“If a dance is scheduled for one of the halls for 7 to 10, at 6:45 the place is packed, and at 10:05 completely empty.”

The punctuality of the people at Leisure World is fascinating. Possibly they have reached the age at which they have intimations of mortality, and time becomes precious.

Or maybe they have only reached the age where they realize that we must keep our commitments to one another, however trivial, if we are to live in peace.

The custom of punctuality survives also, according to Gene Baker DeLoach of Marina del Rey, in England.

“At least in the area where our cottage is,” he writes, “dinner guests are expected to be exactly on time. In fact, the last time we attended a dinner party we were 10 minutes late and were the last of three couples to arrive.

“Of course this promptness is much easier on the hostess and results in better cuisine, but may also be practiced in England because they don’t have a long cocktail hour, and no (or rarely) hors d’oeuvre.

“There is a phrase commonly used on printed or written invitations that I think you would find interesting--”7:30 for 8,” meaning that you are invited to come at 7:30 and dinner will be at 8. If the guest doesn’t want a drink he needn’t arrive until just before 8.”

Fine idea. But I suspect that most American hostesses would prefer to try their cooking on guests who had had at least one mood-altering drink.

In writing the other day about my appointment with Gen. H. M. Smith, commander of the Fleet Marine Force in World War II, for which I was one minute late, I noted that our photographer, Bruce Cox, had made me late by taking too much time to get his photographic equipment out of his trunk.

I have heard from Bruce Cox’s loyal wife, Bobby.

“I wish,” she writes, “that he had some lingering sense of guilt for letting you go ahead of him to face the general when you were one minute late on that interview, but he hasn’t. Bruce was in the Navy in World War II and was always happy to let the Marines land first.”

Once a swabbie, always a swabbie.