A Fond Farewell to San Pedro

Farewell, San Pedro. We came to you on the eve of the American bicentennial, weary from a long voyage and eager to find a home. You greeted us with beautiful views of green hillsides, your welcoming smile extending from the Ferry Building to the top of 9th, amid a pleasant geometry of neatly kept homes.

Now we leave you, nearly 16 years later, with mixed emotions, our aims set on other horizons, challenges and goals.

But we’ll never forget you, San Pedro!

We’ll bring with us fond memories of early morning whistle blows, powerful tugs in your bustling harbor pushing behemoths laden with goods from the corners of the world.

We’ll miss our Sunday strolls at Ports O’ Call among the cosmopolitan and colorful humanity that meanders by Nagoya Street.

We’ll take along memories of casual laborers standing at the intersection of Gaffey and Channel, proud and hard-working people who broke language and ethnic barriers and chose to look for their American dream on a sidewalk, rather than falling for the temptations of drugs and crime;

We’ll remember those fiery sunsets over Catalina Island viewed from the Korean bell park, two rocky crests in the golden, wind-swept expanse, crossed by seemingly minuscule ships sailing to the Orient;

We’ll reminisce about Pantagruelian culinary feasts at the Fishermen’s Fiestas, and of endless shopping sprees in and about the many quaint boutiques along 6th Street.

We’ll laugh in remembering when, bare-handed and shivering, we waded with our children and countless others the icy waters of Cabrillo Beach at midnight in the fruitless hunt for the elusive grunions.

Last, but not least, we’ll always hear in our hearts the sound of your many accents, from our Italian barber, to our Yugoslav dentist, to our Mexican butcher, and promise you that--no matter where we shall go--we’ll never, ever, call you “Peedro”!

You’ve changed us profoundly, making us more appreciative of beauty, and more understanding of multiethnic coexistence. You changed too in all these years, your landscape now transformed by myriads of condominiums, and your waterfront punctuated by elegant hotels and busy marinas. But to us you’ll always remain the gracious bedroom town, whose beauty and charm made us fall in love with you 16 years ago, and wherever our fate shall lead us, we’ll always consider ourselves “San Pedrans”!

VIC & LILIANA PERNICIARO

Orange County