California Girls

By Jerry Gee Williamson

Four San Diego women in their late fifties decide to write a book. It will consist of four memoirs. As the women have been friends since their youth, they share many experiences, but they also have adventures of their own. Each in a different year, reminisces about her past. Vangie, the newspaperwoman, suggests the project, but Ginny organizes the effort. Vangie introduces us to George whose unique antics both exasperate and delight his companions. He is watched over by Alex, a friend since childhood. Vangie also describes a Great Luau that takes place on a La Jolla beach. In her memoir Ginny tells about an extraordinary family she once knew. Jean remembers an eccentric but kindly neighbor. Melissa describes her troubled romance at the Chicago Art Institute. At the end of the book Ginny brings everyone up to date and hints at what the future may bring.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781475978223

Jerry Gee Williamson

Jerry Gee Williamson is a native of San Diego, California, and a graduate of Stanford University. In her youth, she played tennis competitively and was nationally ranked. Today she lives in San Diego with her husband, Tom. They have four children and twelve grandchildren.

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Copyright © 2013 by Jerry Gee Williamson.

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ISBN: 978-1-4759-7821-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4759-7822-3 (ebk)

iUniverse rev. date: 03/04/2013

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE    Written by Ginny in 1987

CHAPTER I     A KIND OF MAGIC        Written by Ginny in 1985

CHAPTER II    THE GOLDEN ANGEL  Written by Jean in 1965

CHAPTER III   THE GREAT LUAU        Written by Vangie in 1972

CHAPTER IV   A JOURNEY SOUTH      Written by Melissa in 1974

CHAPTER V    THE REUNION                Written by Vangie in 1986

EPILOGUE     Written by Ginny in 1987

This book is dedicated to my children—

Stephen, Michael, Tabitha, and Mathilda

PROLOGUE

By Ginny

1987

J ean, Vangie, Melissa, and I have been friends for forty-three years, while Melissa and Jean have known each other for an even greater length of time. We were California girls long before the song was written. Our state is a big one, with diverse regions, so that phrase must mean different things to different people. In our case, it brings back memories of sunshine and salt water, of young, tanned bodies and flowing hair. It also reminds us of those days when we were brimming with confidence. An overload of confidence is something most California girls have in common. When we were sixteen or seventeen, we felt invincible. Even Melissa admits she felt that way. We knew that nothing could harm us. We were sure the sun above us was benevolent; we had faith that the waves we splashed in would never knock us down.

We lost some of this feeling over the next few years. Before I had reached nineteen, I had turned wary. But much of our early self-assurance stayed with us, and we are grateful that it did: we had need of it later on. We are glad we started out as California girls before we metamorphosed into women.

The four of us grew up in the southwesternmost corner of the United States, at a time when the beaches and highways of southern California were uncrowded and the air, even when hazy, was clean. We lived in San Diego, but we liked to claim La Jolla as our second home.

In the nineteen-thirties, during our childhood, San Diego was a small coastal city, tranquil and unpretentious. World War II disturbed the tranquility. Thousands of strangers passed through our city on their way to fight in the Pacific. After the war was over, many of them returned to San Diego to live, and they told everyone back home about our weather. Nowadays, San Diego is still unpretentious, but it is not very tranquil, nor is it small.

In the thirties and forties, La Jolla, just to the north, was a little beach town perched above the ocean, a place famous for its red and pink geraniums, its interesting people, and its sudden, breathtaking views of the sea. After the postwar boom had begun, La Jolla struggled briefly against its fate, until it, too, was overrun by newcomers. Yet one could hardly blame them for wanting to live there. As my friends and I grew older, we tried to spend fewer hours in the city and more in the town. We were drawn to La Jolla because of its glamour, a glamour that is still seductive even in its current, diluted state.

Melissa’s mother discovered La Jolla right after she had bought her house in San Diego. "But La Jolla reminds me of the Côte d’Azur! Melissa remembers her saying. What a pity I didn’t find it sooner!" She introduced Melissa and Jean to that little community in 1939, when Melissa was ten years old and Jean, eleven. My parents succumbed to La Jolla’s charms at a later date, after they had rented a house there in the summer of 1947. It turned out to be a summer that, for various reasons, none of us would ever forget.

In the first four stories in this book, Jean, Vangie, Melissa, and I look back at our youth. Each of us, in a different year, recalls that distant past. We describe certain memorable events and certain people who were important to us. We also describe a little of what happened to us, and to those people, in the years that followed.

In the fifth story, Vangie, our reporter, brings us up-to-date for the second time. She says she will never do it again. Vangie finds wrap-ups meaningless now. She has bequeathed the wrap-up chore to me.

Because the four of us were such good friends, our early experiences often overlapped. But we lived separate lives as well, and that is reflected in our stories. My story, A Kind of Magic, centers around that summer in La Jolla and a family I once knew.

Today, La Jolla is a busy, overcrowded place. The traffic is horrendous; cars clog the streets. My favorite drugstore, with its old-fashioned soda fountain, is gone, and I have no idea where one would find a tearoom. The village center is a financial district now. Large office buildings line the sidewalks, and where the office buildings stop, condominiums begin.

But just beyond the town, the Pacific Ocean still sends its waves toward the shore, to crash on rocks and sand. Surfers still ride the waves at a beach called Windansea. And here and there, along the quieter streets in town—and up in the hills above—one can still discover stately homes famous for their gardens.

CHAPTER I

A Kind of Magic

By Ginny

Written in 1985

T he MacEwen family was the most exciting family I had ever known. Individually, and as a unit, its members were irresistible. And I was ready for them that summer; I needed to step into a world like theirs. The MacEwens and their children lived the way I felt people ought to live. Their environment was one of comfort and beauty, while their interests seemed unlimited. For a long time, my own family suffered in comparison.

I met them in 1947, at the end of my freshman year at Stanford. I had returned home to San Diego that June, stumbling from the train in a daze of migraine and tears. My parents were concerned but philosophical. This was not, they insisted, the end of the world. I was sure they were wrong.

My boyfriend, a fellow freshman, a young man with muscular arms and gray-blue eyes, had just flunked out of Stanford. He was on his way back to Pittsburgh to face his irate father. His father, who was a high-level executive with a steel company, had reason to feel irritated. My boyfriend, Robin, was intelligent, but he was a rebel. He had resisted academic learning his entire freshman year. Escapades of a nocturnal nature had become the outlet for his energy. When he would take me back to my dorm at night, his night was just beginning. One beer too many and off he’d go, flailing away at authority with zestful, and sometimes destructive, abandon. It was rumored he was the one who had heaved a grapefruit through the glass of the Western Civ Libe window.

I should have disapproved of Robin’s antics, but I laughed at them instead. Although I sensed there might be some deep problem there, I felt unqualified to probe. At any rate, I could not be judgmental where he was concerned. I studied hard that spring myself. I kept trying to believe that Robin was studying, too. When the quarter ended and I learned he had flunked out, my laughter stopped. I was inconsolable. Our last night together, he drove me out to the Hetch Hetchy water temple, a popular spot to visit by moonlight. We embraced in front of the little temple, and I cried. We promised to write.

Today, I can look back on all of this with a feeling of detachment. I can even agree with my parents that it was not the end of the world. But I am an older person now, and have gained perspective. That June, I felt I was drowning in sorrow. I had lost my sense of humor; I identified with every tragic heroine of literature or history. It took time and the MacEwen family to turn me around.

*     *     *

My parents had rented a cottage in La Jolla for the summer. My father planned to spend his workdays in San Diego and his nights and weekends in La Jolla. Our house was small but well situated, just one block from the ocean. We moved in on a sunny afternoon, my father carrying his fishing tackle and poles, my mother, her extra pots and pans. They anticipated an enjoyable stay. Earlier, I had looked forward to a La Jolla summer, but now I felt listless and almost indifferent to our surroundings. The morning after our arrival, I got up late and slowly put on my black two-piece bathing suit. After breakfast, I wandered down to the beach. I wanted to be alone. I wore dark glasses and carried along a copy of Anna Karenina.

It turned out our beach—a beach named Windansea—was where all the surfers of La Jolla congregated. In those days, there were very few surfers in La Jolla—or in California, or in the world. I had never thought much about surfers before. After I had read awhile, I began to watch the ones in front of me. I noticed they spent a great deal of time sitting on their big wooden boards, far out in the water. They seemed in no hurry. They would sit there, almost motionless, waiting for the wave they wanted.