How to Be Great at Doing Nothing--Practice, Practice

In the lexicon of Madison Avenue, summer and fun go together like sun and surf, pain and gain, sweat and equity. You build a good time with calories, just as you build a good wall with brick.

For starters, you have to go somewhere. The park, the beach, the mountains. Then you put out: You throw a ball, pedal a bike or climb a slope.

But, for some, there is an easier path to summer contentment. It’s the delicious art of doing nothing. Absolutely nothing.

They sit. They recline. They take in the shade. They stare into space. They wait, but not in line or at the bus stop. Too much purpose in that. Their goal is to contemplate, meditate--or simply repose, pursuing that peacefulness admired by philosophers and poets and ascribed to the gods themselves, who, as Lucretius wrote, enjoyed “immortal aeons and supreme repose.”

*

Take the Duward Ladd method of watering the lawn.

The 73-year-old retired contractor, resplendent in white golf shirt and hat, does the job not in the standing position, arm extended, thumb on the hose end, but from an old kitchen chair in front of his Pacoima home.

First he positions his sprinkler, a 25-year-old contraption of galvanized pipe. Then he takes a seat under the shade of a maple tree and watches the water soak in.

A monosyllabic sort, the Oklahoma native says, “Yeah,” he’s content to sit for hours watching the comings and goings of his quiet section of Eustace Street.

“There’s nothing else to do,” he says with no inkling of displeasure. “I worked all my life, then stopped.”

Sometimes, when his wife is away at work, Ladd chauffeurs for a retired doctor. Otherwise, he doesn’t have much on his agenda but dominoes. And TV’s out of the question.

“I’ve always been an outside person,” Ladd says. “I don’t like inside.”

*

The porch--that prop for public sitting so ubiquitous in the southern states--seems out of favor with architects today. Consequently, on a sweltering summer day, there is nary a person in sight along miles of residential streets in much of suburbia, where houses are strictly geared for back-yard living. But in older neighborhoods such as those in the northeast San Fernando Valley--where prewar bungalows and the Craftsman tract homes still dominate--the porch remains a common sight. And even a cursory inspection shows that it is still in use.

Having no car, no school, no itinerary for the day, Lorraine Garcia, 16, and Elvira Gutierrez, 19, sit out the heat on a shaded porch on Alexander Street in San Fernando.

Their cooking and cleaning are done. Their hope of being picked up by friends to go to the movies is still a far off prospect for the evening. They may walk down the street to the library later on or go shopping when it cools down. For now, a little breeze buoys their idle conversation, and there is no hurry to do anything.

Visiting is an honest way to steal an idle hour. When construction worker Frank Granillo dropped by his old neighborhood on Devantry Street in Pacoima, his friend Sam Dorris had a couple of chairs waiting at the curb. That was all they needed to entertain themselves for the afternoon, recalling old times, cracking jokes, sipping a brew. There’s nothing serious up for discussion, and no comment is off limits if it gets a laugh.

For example, on when they take it easy:

“Every chance we get,” says Dorris, 31, who has the time because he doesn’t have a job.

“That’s it,” elaborated his sister who pops out the front door. “Past 15, 20 years.”

“Oh, man. Oh, man,” Dorris says, reeling in mock humiliation. “I’ve got to fill out my applications.”

“We could be the next Cheech and Chong,” Granillo says, rolling his chair back with self-satisfaction.

Of all locales, parks are the most productive setting for the pursuit of perfect idleness.

It’s 3:30 p.m. at Balboa Lake in Van Nuys, and 30-year-old Rodel Umali, oblivious to the children rolling in the grass, the joggers and the pedal boaters, strikes a pose on his Kawasaki Ninja like Napoleon contemplating the Italian campaign.

“I just woke up,” says Umali, a lab assistant from Reseda. “It’s too hot in the house, so I just went out relaxing. In another two hours, I’ll be ready for work.”

Not far away, where water gurgles out of the lake over a channel of rock, Bernard and Sophie Tmur lie on lounge chairs 15 feet apart. They come here every day from their apartment in Encino.

“We stay about five, six hours every day,” Bernard Tmur says, stirring from sleep and lifting a straw hat from his face. Their routine is minimal.

“Read and walk, listen to the radio,” he says. “We have lunch, coffee. We have a good time.”

The Tmurs indulged such pastoral pleasures even before they immigrated to the United States in 1963.

“In Argentina, when the kids were young, we used to pack the sandwiches,” he says. “We like the life outdoors.”

Their first stop, lasting 13 years, was Minnesota. “We used to go to a different lake every week,” says Bernard, a retired engineer.

After arriving in Los Angeles, they found repose at the beach until Balboa Lake opened last summer.

“This place is beautiful,” Sophie Tmur says dreamily.

And so she lies back. Doing nothing.