It’s Still Possible to Take a Rosy View of County--Face It

Blue skies, sun shining, fleecy clouds, ripples in the Pacific. Just the way they drew it up when they tried to sell California to the outside world. This is the California that, dare we forget, still exists.

Emalee Durbin wonders how anyone could ever forget it.

“This is a beautiful place,” she says, looking through the front windshield of her and her husband’s 35-foot RV, parked at Huntington State Beach and offering an uncluttered view of the ocean.

This is the pure vision that California still offers, and Emalee and her husband, Sol, who are retired and live in Corvallis, Ore., make sure they take time to bask in it. This visit is only going to be for a few days, but they could do it much longer and never get bored, Emalee says.

“We had our honeymoon here on the beach,” Emalee says. “It was the second marriage for both of us. We were married at the Crystal Cathedral. That was the first church that we attended together. I was visiting in the area and he was visiting here too. He told me about Crystal Cathedral, so we went. I had always listened to the “Hour of Power” on Sunday morning, anyway. We decided we’d like to be married in Crystal Cathedral.”

So they were, on Feb. 2, 1985. In the Tower of Hope. From there, it was a short hop down to the beach for the honeymoon.

Like countless other retirees in America, the Durbins spend much of their time on the road. Emalee says they usually leave Corvallis at summer’s end. The newsletter they’ve prepared on the current sojourn tells friends they left Corvallis Oct. 3. Since then they traversed Canada, then drove down the Eastern Seaboard to Charleston, S.C., before heading west.

“Every time we’ve been in the area, we’ve come back to stay on the beach and relive those happy times,” says Emalee, who spent a 34-year career teaching at all grade levels from kindergarten through graduate school and also as a professional librarian.

“I love the water,” she says. “I was raised in Virginia around the Tidewater area. I’ve always been used to the water, and all my uncles had boats.”

Realizing that some people aren’t moved by the ocean, I ask Emalee what appeals to her about it. “It’s just a beautiful place. To me, it is one of the most soothing places to be. Water moving in patterns is very therapeutic, I think. And the sand. On warm days, I like to sit out there on the sand.”

The Durbins got down to the beach Wednesday night. Since then, their days have been filled either visiting with friends or in the kind of idle contemplation that pointing yourself toward the ocean affords.

“My first visit out here was to an American Library Assn. conference,” Emalee says. “Way back around 1950-something. In Los Angeles. I went around and visited as many places as I could, but, of course, time was limited and so was my transportation.”

It isn’t as though California represented any idyllic getaway for her. It’s not like she actively pictured retirement as sitting in an RV and staring into the Pacific. “I don’t know that I thought about it that much,” she says. “I was thinking more about my profession.”

As we talk, Sol returns to the RV and ventures the opinion that beach authorities ought to consider electrical hookups and, in addition, advertise the site. “Because there’s no place like this that I know of,” he says.

I ask them if they give much thought to California’s much-publicized “craziness.” I wonder if they even see it, given that their view of things is out to sea.

“By the time the press builds up the floods and earthquakes, you’d think the whole place is falling apart,” Sol says.

Well, I guess the Durbins are proof the place isn’t falling apart. It still lures people from all over, and if Sol and Emalee are content to spend three days looking out into the ocean, maybe the rest of us should take stock too.

So, life is perfect now? I ask Emalee. You’re not bored?

“Oh, no. Not as long as I can see the water and see my friends and get some books.”

We had to cut our conversation short so Emalee and Sol could make a lunch engagement.

“Have fun,” I said, as I left.

“That’s all we do,” Emalee said.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.