Rusty's Beach

High tides - 1954

At an early age, I suddenly had a new appreciation for the ocean's capability!

I walked out of our house on a sunny, January morning in 1954, just as a white foamy river of saltwater came around the corner and down our street!  I then noticed waves crashing over the beach, hitting the ocean-front houses and cutting channels under the railroad tracks before combining into a sluggish flood that inundated our neighborhood within several minutes.  My mother ordered me to stay off the beach, and then she and my brother scrambled to fill sandbags to keep the garden-killing saltwater out of our yard!  A neighbor later took the photo of his kids and me playing in the water.

At only six years old, I was both stunned and thrilled by what the ocean was doing.  Every few years, especially when the beach was badly eroded, storm surf and high tides combined to flood the streets.  Most of the locals seemed to take it in stride -- except for those who lose their houses.

Much later, I learned that we lived on top of a low-lying sandbar.  The sandbar had been partially paved over with streets and then built upon, but like sandbar beaches, sand-spits and barrier islands everywhere, our beach was created -- and could be removed -- by the ocean!

"Early Afternoon (Around Lunch)"

 

This is one of my all-time favorite paintings.  It's a warm day and someone (probably me) has been eating a sandwich, but somehow got distracted.

This is another variation of Wisconsin mixing with old memories of Southern California.  The porch architecture is from a house in Algoma, which I happened to pass by one day.  Algoma is on Lake Michigan, but this house wasn't even on the ater.  I loved the woodwork!  The brick patio, geraniums, alyssum and nasturtiums are all from our old backyard, ca. 1959.

There is something about sunlight -- and moonlight -- on the water, especially on the ocean, that touches my soul.  I remember suriving a lot of emotional turmoil in my youth by going out and just watching the play of light on the water.  The sun and shimmering water are like a silent mantra, telling me that everything will be all right.  Also, I like being warm and this is a warm place.  Lunch is always good!

"Early Afternoon (Around Lunch)" will be added this week to selected items in the Rusty's Beach store!

Origins

On writing autobiography:

...it is a precious thing to be allowed to talk about yourself in public, not for reasons of simple exhibitionism but because the attempt to describe your experiences to an audience pushes you forward into an understanding of it.
                                   --Nuala O'Faolain

Mom and me (Fall 1948)

Why are we born in one location in the world and not another?  Do souls really float around between lifetimes looking for new bodies to inhabit that seem to fit the reason for their existence?  Do these souls have a purpose in mind, such as “Hmmm, this child will live with parents who both love the ocean, and he’ll grow up a block from the beach, so that is where I’m going!”  Is that how the Universe works?

I ask this because after 20 years of living in the Midwest (for many practical reasons) I still have an abiding need or calling or deep desire to return to the west coast.  I’ve visited the Atlantic shore, the Gulf Coast, coastal Australia, and beaches in Viet Nam (another story!) but I’ve always felt attached to the California and Oregon coasts.

I was born in Southern California -- in Santa Ana, because its hospital was closest to the beach where we lived.  My dad loves the ocean, and is still most at home deep-sea fishing on tuna boats.  My mom loved the beach more, and would spend as much time as she could in the sun or swimming.  She worked nights as a waitress so had most of her daytime hours free.  Mom was fair-skinned, but it’s clear that by September, when this picture was likely taken, she'd been working on her tan all summer!

So what might be my reason to have such a connection to beaches?  Is it to help save them, as I've done with some of my paintings, helping to preserve some of Southern California's coastal wetlands?  Is it to allow other land-locked beach-lovers to enjoy beaches as I do -- through my paintings and prints?

I know that for a while, I stopped appreciating the ocean and the beaches that I could walk out to, and I moved to Wisconsin where we have since settled.  It has all gone pretty much as we thought it might -- lots of extended family nearby, better jobs, good schools for our daughters, pretty lakes and woods, little crime, affordable housing... but no ocean!  A good friend told me recently that I was meant to be here, perhaps driven by an abiding desire to be there, so that I could paint stronger pictures of the ocean and beaches than I would have if I'd remained on the coast.

I know he's right, and so here I am... at least for now.

Our House

This is where I lived until I was 13.  It was built in 1945 or '46 and my mom must have bought it new, or nearly so.  She never elaborated on how she acquired this house, but, according to my dad, she already owned it when he moved in with her.  I remember Mom saying that it cost something like $11,000 and the mortgage payment was $55 per month.

It originally had two bedrooms, but a third was built along the back fence that connected the house to the garage.  The fence was actually used as one of the walls, so only a roof and one new wall were built over a cement-slab floor.  That was my brother Dave's room.  My room was the one along the side with the double set of windows.

All the floors were wood, covered with linoleum.  Because of the sand, Mom wanted no carpeting.  She later bought a "sea grass" rug for the living room, a popular, coarse grass "carpet" made up of one-foot squares sewn together 12 feet wide and sold by the running foot.  It was cheap, the sand filtered right through it, and it smelled wonderful.

Mom planted everything in the photo.  She found that if you mixed peat with the sand, it made a fine garden soil, and she often traded cuttings with a neighbor lady.  We had geraniums, gladioli, morning glory, ivy (on the fence), jade plants and otehr succulents, an out-of-control pampas-grass bush (in the corner), and a lush green shade tree that I could never remember the name of.  Normally, trees didn't grow in Sunset Beach because they would die when their roots hit salt water, but this one thrived.

There was a small back yard, a tiny front yard, a two-car garage that wouldn't fit Mom's 1958 Buick Roadmaster, brick walkways and a picket fence -- all on a 30-foot by 90-foot lot.

In 1961, Mom sold the house and we moved to a larger, but drafty and dark house on Sunset Heights, about two miles away.  At first, I thought the move would be an adventure -- but I immediately missed having the beach only a block away!  Oh, how I wished that we had stayed where we were, but I knew that there was no going back.