Nostalgia for a Santa Barbara Resort

Your article on the beach inns of Santa Barbara (“Steps From the Sand,” May 5) reminded us of how much we miss the Miramar, the old-fashioned family resort where we took our children for half a dozen vacations.

We bought club sandwiches in the train car diner and took them to the beach for picnic lunches, bodysurfed, passed endless afternoons reading or building sandcastles and leaped to our feet when dolphins appeared offshore.

We sensed it was the beginning of the end of an era when we returned one year and found the floating dock gone. Some years later, Jacques, the perennially sunbaked and craggy-faced Frenchman who sat next to a handwritten sign renting out mismatched chairs and old umbrellas, died.

When we called the following year, the Miramar was closed. The hotel we knew is gone forever, but our children still have the pennies flattened by the rail cars that roared through the property throughout the day. The sound of a late-night train whistle always brought a smile: It meant we were back at the Miramar.

MAUREEN FOSTER

Sherman Oaks