Striving to Be a Fair Weather Friend

Why should I feel guilty? Is it my fault the Southern California weather turns lousy every single time I have out-of-town company? Why do I feel like I’ve betrayed a trust when people come to visit and instead of putting on suntan lotion we’re cranking up the heat in my apartment and looking for the umbrella?

Is that my conscience I hear, telling me to reimburse my guests for their airline flights? Sort of like the conscientious hotelier who takes it personally if guests in the cabana had an inadequate supply of towels?

You don’t have these guilt feelings entertaining company when you live in Nebraska or Colorado, as I once did. You get visitors there -- they take their chances. If you’re planning a Memorial Day backyard barbecue and it snows, hey, that’s how it goes.

On my last visit to Chicago, I was halfway to Wrigley Field with my friend’s 7-year-old son when the pelting rain began. Minutes later, his mother was on the cellphone, ordering us to return to port.

Did my hosts apologize for Chicago weather? Hardly. I’d been through the drill many times before, including a two-hour rain delay at the ballpark on another visit. I surely didn’t hold them accountable.

But Southern California ... and especially here in the O.C. ...

Let’s just say there are some expectations.

When you live a mile from the Pacific Ocean and you’ve booked tee times in February and you have tickets to the Nissan Open golf tournament, you feel obliged to deliver the goods.

So what did an Omaha friend get for his visit that began last Thursday morning and ended Tuesday morning?

One walk on the beach at Corona del Mar, two canceled trips to the golf tournament and 12 holes of golf that began and ended in the rain.

“I’m glad we got this in,” he said as we sloshed our way off the course Sunday afternoon in Costa Mesa. “I hit some good shots.”

Yeah, I was glad, too, while wondering how long it would take my shoes to dry out. As for our tournament tickets and the chance to see Tiger Woods up close, well, wait till next year.

My friend isn’t a complainer, but I couldn’t shake the guilt -- even after laundering his soggy golf clothes and not charging him for detergent. After all, the man paid hard-earned money for his flight and was forsaking Omaha for some SoCal sun.

And what did I deliver unto him? Nothing but, as they say in Nebraska, precipitation activity.

I’d blame him, except that everybody I know can’t be a jinx. My sister visited last April for a weekend with her 10-year-old granddaughter, and we promised to let her frolic on the water at Laguna Beach. She frolicked, all right -- under slate-gray skies as my sister and I shivered on the sand and watched her skin turn blue.

“Sorry about the weather” seemed wholly inadequate on my part.

My mother, who has come to California at all times of the year, is convinced the sun seldom shines in California. She sees it as a slick marketing campaign. She’s heard me say, “It’s usually not like this,” more often than she can stand.

Meanwhile back in the apartment this week, my Omaha buddy asked if I had any heat. “Dude, it’s cranked up to 70,” I told him, reminding him he was sitting there in a short-sleeved shirt and shorts. He was too polite to say, “Oh, I thought I was in sunny Southern California.”

On Tuesday morning, I dropped him off at John Wayne Airport and fully expected bright, beaming sunshine to cover the landscape as soon as his flight left the county.

But as I’m writing now and looking out the window in midafternoon, it’s still raining. Earlier, I heard thunder off in the distance. Someone in the office mentioned a tornado warning.

Does that mean it’s not my fault. No reason for host guilt, right?

Rain, thunder, tornado ... and the visitor is long gone?

I feel better already.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.