Hail Britannia! : Jolly Good Club in Garden Grove Offers a Bit of the Motherland in the Southland

It’s a slice of the United Kingdom, a bit of jolly old England in our own back yard.

It’s the British and Dominion Social Club, population 250. On a good night.

Sunday is usually a good night.

The 5,000-square-foot club, tucked away in the southeast corner of Bridgecreek Business Park in Garden Grove, is open from 4 in the afternoon until 2 in the morning Monday through Saturday.

But on Sundays it opens at noon and closes when “there’s nobody here,” usually about midnight.

“There’s always a crowd on Sunday nights,” promised Portsmouth, England-born charter member Ed Miles of Yorba Linda. “A lot of people play cricket, soccer and rugby in the afternoon and then come by for a spot on the way home, just like a pub back home.”

To gain admittance to Orange County’s largest private British social club, dues-paying members insert a plastic membership card into a slot next to the front door. All others must press a buzzer and state their business.

At 4:30 p.m., the club was just beginning to fill up, but it looked as though it would be a typically busy Sunday evening, particularly when the tour bus to Las Vegas returned to the club at 6.

By then guitarist Gene McEwen would be on stage singing, and the cavernous club would be abuzz with all manner of British accents and Scottish burrs, some as thick as the haze of cigar and cigarette smoke settling over the bar.

For now, it was rather quiet, a bit like a Sunday afternoon in the park.

In the red-carpeted bar area, several members were playing pool. Three of the six dart boards were in use. The big-screen TV was tuned to a basketball game. And club president Matt Dennett, manager of the Downey Savings & Loan branch in Los Alamitos, was busy at his post behind the bar.

Seated at a table next to the empty 3,000-square-foot dance floor were Miles, his wife, Sally, and Miles’ visiting sister-in-law, Joan Miles, who lives on Hayling Island near Portsmouth.

“You should have been here last night,” said Sally Miles, eyeing the empty dance floor that had been packed for the Saturday night dance.

“Some of the younger rock bands are nervous the first time they play the club,” said Ed Miles, ruddy-faced and dapper with a trim mustache and a sport coat with an open-necked white shirt. “They see some old people here and say, ‘What the hell you going to play for those people?’ ”

That is not to say all of the 930 members of the 25-year-old club are old enough to remember buzz bombs over London or to have heard the reassuring words of Winston Churchill over the BBC. It is also not to say that the older members

don’t enjoy rock music--or at least, amends Miles, soft rock music.

“Sometimes when we have a major event here, the place is jumping,” said Miles, recalling performances by the Ink Spots, Al Wilson, the Drifters and the Coasters. Indeed, those are the times when attendance swells beyond “a good night” at the club to more than 300.

This weekend, there may be barely enough room for members to squeeze in.

The club has extended a formal invitation, through the British consulate in Los Angeles, to the 250 crewmen of the Britannia to come down to the club.

The 412-foot-long ship, bearing the Duke and Duchess of York to Los Angeles for “U.K.-L.A.--A Celebration of British Arts,” is sheduled to arrive at Long Beach Naval Station this morning.

The club, however, has not extended an invitation to Prince Andrew and Fergie. Club vice president Marjorie McNaughton, who had joined the Mileses at their table, grinned at the thought of inviting the Duke and Duchess down for a complimentary stout or two: “Maybe we should go a little higher with our ideals, go to the top!”

If the crew of the royal yacht accepts the club’s invitation, it won’t be a first. During the two-month Falkland Islands War in 1982, sailors on the Active, a British warship, dropped by for drinks.

During the 1984 Olympic Games in Los Angeles when the club raised more than $6,000 for the British Olympic Assn., Australian cycling gold medal winner Kevin Nichols spent 90 minutes at the club signing autographs. Sir Stanley Matthews, “one of the greatest wingers in soccer,” also came by once to make a presentation to the club’s soccer team.

It is not hard to guess the appeal of this suburban British outpost.

“It brings the British together, real cozy,” said Miles, a certified public accountant, taking a sip from his screwdriver, a drink he says is unknown to most bartenders in England (“You have to say, ‘orange juice and vodka’ ”).

“Don’t forget the Canadians as well,” said Canadian-born McNaughton.

“They come because they enjoy being here. It’s like old England,” said Sally Miles, laughing: “But I’m Italian!”

The Mileses, who came to the United States in 1957, have been with the club since it was founded in 1962. In fact, they hold membership card numbers 1 and 2.

Originally called the Commonwealth Club of Southern California, the club moved into its first permanent building in Signal Hill in 1968. But the city refused to grant a liquor license to the private club. If they wanted to drink, members had to bring their own bottles into the club. And, sniffed Ed Miles: “It’s tacky to bring your own, to say the least.”

In 1978, the club moved into its current quarters in Garden Grove, where it obtained its coveted liquor license and members turned the insides of five storefronts into a Tudor-style rendezvous, complete with 20-foot bar.

It is a home away from home for club members.

That is what Miles likes about the club.

“The British atmosphere--and no drunks!” he said. “It’s sort of a family affair around a table. I’ve often said this is like your own living room. You put a beer on the table, and they’re as happy as you know what.”

Whether members are new arrivals to Orange County, lured by jobs and the weather, or old-timers, the club takes the edge off their homesickness.

“Absolutely right,” Ed Miles said.

“Especially the youngest,” Sally Miles added.

Club president Dennett, 39, a native of Loch Lomond, Scotland, was introduced to the club by friends shortly after arriving in Orange County. That was seven years ago. He kept coming back.

“It’s just a place to come to, where it’s the same language, the same sense of humor,” he said. “You can come here and laugh and joke with people that understand you. It’s a good meeting place.”

Dennett excused himself to wait on a customer. A man standing at the bar said something and grinned. He fit right in with the crowd lining the bar, but he spoke with a funny accent.

“I’m an American,” said Jerry Robert of Westminster, who married his Belfast, Ireland-born wife, Beryl, in London 35 years ago. “I’ve been a member four years and enjoy every bit of it: a little cards, a little pool on a Sunday afternoon.

“It’s not like an American bar,” he added.

“It’s just a good family atmosphere,” agreed Larry Brown of Garden Grove, speaking in a heavy Scottish burr. (“You should have heard me before I lost my accent,” he joked.) “You can come in here and see 100 people and probably name 90 of them. You can’t do that in a bar, can you? You really make good, long-lasting friends because it’s a club, not just a bar.”

Laughed one of Brown’s buddies sitting a few stools away: “It’s the beer he likes!”

For many transplanted Britons, the move to Orange County is not made without experiencing a few jolts of culture shock.

Bruce Gajjar, the 24-year-old co-owner of an Anaheim scooter shop, recalled moving to Orange County five years ago from West London: “The main thing was how big the place was and how everything looks so similar, the roads especially; I couldn’t make out where I was going. And the houses are just fantastic here compared to England. The average guy owns a real nice house over here. It’s bigger too.

“Another thing is credit. It kind of struck me as really weird, everybody having credit cards. Back home, the average person doesn’t rely on credit that much. A lot of people buy furniture or whatever with cash.” He laughed: “I did find out you can’t do much over here without credit.”

Although he returns to England for vacations, Gajjar said he prefers living here. “The people are very friendly, and it’s more of a relaxed life style. People are very stressed in England. I don’t know why, probably (because of) unemployment. People here don’t have to work overtime to make ends meet if they don’t want to. They can work 40 hours and live life comfortably.”

Dover, England-born Andy Anaxagoras of Huntington Beach has not found the transition from England to Orange County to be an easy one.

“The easiest thing is to get here,” said the burly, 24-year-old tile setter, wearing a red-and-black plaid shirt with rolled-up sleeves. “The hard thing is to stay here. We’re all here struggling.”

Anaxagoras had visited Orange County three times before moving here permanently four years ago. “The first three times I dismissed the country out of hand. I didn’t want to accept the culture.”

His first two visits to Orange County were vacations to see his father, who lives in Huntington Beach. The third time, he had just gotten out of the merchant navy and was considering living here but, he said, “I couldn’t stand it. I didn’t even talk to the people. Their attitudes were so different. I thought they were living in Fantasyland.”

He said he grew tired of hearing people complain because they couldn’t buy a new car every year and young people whining because their parents wouldn’t send them to college, and here he was “lucky to feed myself.”

He returned home to Dover, where 25% of the people are unemployed.

Much as he disliked it, he came back to Orange County “because your priorities change when you can’t get a job. Here, everybody is brought up with the thought that everyone can do anything. In England, you’re not, you’re trapped in your class wars. I came to the States to get ahead.”

Still, he said, every day is an effort to accept his new surroundings and, as an outsider who speaks with a British accent, to be accepted by the people he meets.

But to stay here, he said, means “you got more chance, more opportunities. Your brain says this is economically sound. But your heart is always saying you’ve got family back there and you want to go home. It’s really tough.”

That’s where the British and Dominion Social Club comes in.

“It keeps my sanity,” he said. “It brings you back to when you were home. Even the old-timers, after 40 or 50 years, have to come to this club to reaffirm their nationality and their roots. To come here is relaxing, and I find that’s what a lot of people do: Let’s just remember the old times and have a laugh.”

With that, he picked up his pool cue and walked over for a friendly game of pool. British style.