A summer from the Rockford files

Regarding “Upwardly Mobile Homes” (July 24): In 1960, I spent the entire summer at Paradise Cove. I was 16 and in heaven.

It was just the trailers in the lower section (no trailers on the bluff), and we were just below the highway. After a couple of days, you didn’t even know the road was there.

Our trailer was one of the smallest. With four kids it got tight, but I was rarely inside. I lived outside on the covered patio.

I read with interest the description of the park as a campground. When we moved there in 1960, it was a permanent setup. The road around the trailers was paved. All the trailers were modified, and I doubt you could move them 1 inch. There was no indication that it had ever been just a campground.

The bluff where it said the trailers cost half a million or more was a runway for small private planes and it also had housing for migrant workers. Shacks, really.

In the ‘60s, the restaurant on the beach was the clubhouse for the residents of the park. One night a week was bingo and another night was dancing. At one end of the clubhouse was a concession stand that sold, among other things, snow cones. Late in the summer, I got a job working on the pier. One of my duties was going out at sunrise to the bait tank that was about 100 yards from the pier and handing out the bait to the day fishermen who rented small boats with 3-horsepower outboard engines. I thought they were crazy to go out in such small boats. But we never lost anyone.

All in all, it was great. Whenever I bring up my summer at Paradise Cove, I just tell people I lived next door to Rockford! Well, almost.

John Krill

Laguna Beach