To dramatize how coastlines can be forever changed, I've assembled some aerial photos of Sunset Beach and Surfside, CA. The saltwater marshes behind Sunset beach were once home to thousands of ducks, pelicans, fish fry (baby fish), clams, shorebirds, mice, crawfish, hawks, foxes, wild pigs, snakes, and sometimes wandering kids. We just called it "the slough", and if I'd known about the snakes and pigs, I might not have gone out there as much!

Above is my hometown in July 1956. The beach was small, but the marshes were vast then. Below is that area I drew in 1961, which is in the center of the above photo.

The ocean is at lower left, with surfers (the spots!), the green parts are the slough, bordered by PCH, or Highway 1, with my neighborhood in between. (Airplane wing for realism effect.)

Here it is today!

Here's That part I drew in 1961, today. The railway is a park (nice!), the beach is sterile, no more clams and only scavenger birds; and it's littered with enough plastic and other debris as to be visible from space! The old slough,as they say in Southern California, is all built out.

    About four blocks from our house was (is) the town of Surfside. Like Sunset Beach, it was built on a sand beach with two streets lined with small cottages. In the early 1950's most of the sand washed out in a series of storms and the waves then attacked Surfside's beachfront houses. I think I was along when my mom took this picture in 1956. At about that time (I was eight then) I started to walk down here regularly to see the damage.

    It was fascinating and awesome!

    Acres of beach had simply vanished, houses were gone, and the street was covered in sand or missing!

    What power!

    So over time I began to re-create these events in miniature or on paper. Instead of sports or Boy Scouts, I would sometimes wander the back bay and if I found a sandy shoreline and some junk I would build a little town with roads and buildings and a seawall and then clobber it with waves I made with a board... Later I built a 'wave box' in the back yard that I filled half with sand and then spent hours building a model beach house on the sand. I'd then fill the 
'ocean' with the hose, and  bring in the storm surf with a board and that was the end of the house!

    I usually did the wave - board thing by myself, but also built model houses and towns on the beach with my friend Chris. It was an extra treat if the tide came in and the waves got it!

    Then I began drawing the ocean, or trying to, and came up with scenes like the one below, done in oil pastel when I was about 15. I was trying to visualize what it would be like being in one of those Surfside houses when that big wave came that ultimately destroyed it...

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The next several posts are going to be about growing up on the coast, primarily in Sunset Beach in Orange County, California. That's where my mom, my brother Dave and sometimes my dad were living when I was born.

Dave still lives nearby in Huntington Beach. He's never lived more than 5 miles from where we grew up, except when he was in the Navy. He's always loved the ocean, surfing, his friends, his cats, the beach and an occasional cigar. His company is called Wave Electric and he's on a campaign to promote solar power.

Dad lives in Corona CA about 50 miles inland. He has always loved fishing, particularly commercial tuna fishing. He was a Marine for many years and spent much of his duty time diving into and cleaning WW II ordnance out of tropical lagoons in the Marshall Islands. Ever since then he's had an affinity for the Marshallese. He also fought in the Korean War, where he saw a lot of shit.

My mom died in 1978. She left Rhode Island for California in 1938 and never went back. She worked as a waitress and sometimes a restaurant manager all her life, except for a few years there where she had her own gift shop selling decorated wicker purses and other gifty things she made herself. She wanted to be a doctor once (her mother put that down as unladylike) then an artist (she went to RISD briefly) but I think she was lured by the social atmosphere (lots of guys) and the good tips to be made by working in fine restaurants. She raised Dave and I mostly on tips!

Somehow she was able to buy our house one block from the ocean in Sunset Beach in 1946. I was born the next year.

 

Here is one of my favorite paintings of New Island that I did a few years ago, titled "The Yellow Island".  I love wildflowers, and this was inspired by the poppies and lupines that bloom in California in the spring. So here is a little Christmas color from the imaginary side of the world. Enjoy!

This photo reminds me of me when I was about seven years old, wanting to go swimming when the waves were too rough. I'd get clobbered but then I somehow survived.

I spend a lot of time daydreaming about being somewhere else...usually a place similar to an ideal Southern California sometime before it was built up, maybe in the 1920's. Then there were only small towns, lots of primitive natural beauty, few cars (people used streetcars and trains!) and a laid-back proto-hippie ambiance.

Most of New Island is a result of these daydreaming jaunts.

Here's a place called Alison's Beach. This part of New Island's eastern coast is little-known and seldom visited, but you might find a meditative hermit. Swimsuits are optional, and the surf here is ideal for bodysurfing.To get here from Victoria Harbor, take Route 6 north all the way to Smallwood, then take M25 to the trailhead near Bailey's Beach. Pack a picnic lunch and water, and have a delightful time.

See map below, with arrow.

I'm going to post some sketches of places on that island in the Indian Ocean. I'll include the island's landscape, beaches of course, settlements, lighthouses, 'natural' houses, harbors, etc. They will be from New Island, where I get much of my inspiration.

The picture above is an old watercolor I did of the Poloustrov Lighthouse, also known as South Light at Roaring Cape,the southernmost tip of New Island (see map). 

I'll be traveling there soon.    - Rusty