But the youthful life at the beach still tugs
by Deborah Paul
Circa 1976, I won the Easy Reader Anniversary Contest with the article “How to Make it in Manhattan Beach.”
The story was about a semi-fictionalized episode in the lives of two 21-year-old flight attendants who moved to North Manhattan Beach from back east. Confounded by all the tan, fit, beautiful people and the laid back lifestyle, the duo didn’t have a clue how to become part of this eclectic coastal community.
Eventually, they figured it out by spending much of their hard earned airline salaries on an apartment close to the water and fused into the lifestyle by giddy osmosis.
For a young person high on life there was no other place to live than the beach.
Sadly, the real Carol in the story passed away at the age of 27 from Lymphoma sarcoma, with me — the Toby in the story — holding my best friend in my arms as she exhaled her last tortured breath.
But Carol lived her short life well. She certainly figured out how to make it in Manhattan Beach. She was stunning looking, kind and physically fit right up to the time we discovered a benign tumor under her arm.
She remained a flight attendant for American Airlines until the end and had several, true-love boyfriends, one of whom she would have married if she lived. She deeply cared about her friends and family, and always had a book close by. She earned her pilot’s license, read the Bible and made amends with her Lord at the fighting end.
I carried on in my 20s, bumping along from apartment to apartment in Manhattan and Hermosa Beach, Palos Verdes, an awful stint in Simi Valley, then back to San Pedro and ultimately landing in Rancho Palos Verdes for the last 40 years.
I’ve had a few young loves myself, with one bad choice that sent me soul searching and back to church for answers. At age 31, I met and eventually married an amazing man from our singles class who still plays hard to get at 77.
Inspired by Carol, I’ve always tried to live my life to the fullest. I even earned my pilot license in 1977 on Friday the 13th, about a year after Carol died.
I never had children of my own, but my beloved stepchildren have supplied plenty of lively grandkids and great grandkids. My husband and I live a busy, community minded, spiritually uplifting and physically challenging life.
Still, the tug of living at the beach has never left me, although a recent trip to Manhattan Beach makes me appreciate my quiet cul-de-sac, compared to the still-standing A-Frame at Highland and 15th where I once lived, with its honking traffic, and joint smoking pedestrians at all times of day or night.
I paid $10 to park my car at Pancho’s. That would never have happened in the ‘70s, when there were no cover charges and no restaurant parking fees. Jose, the meter man, used to put nickels in the meter for me when I lived in the A-frame.
The last time I rode my bike on The Strand, during Covid, it was so crowded, I thought my love affair with the beach might be over.
But it’s not.
The life Toby has made for herself in the South Bay has been a satisfying one, though not without the usual sand hills to climb, sea cliffs to avoid and errors to rectify.
Half a century later, “How to Make it in Manhattan Beach” remains for me a bitter-sweet account of how to have a happy, abundantly thankful, well-lived life no matter where your dry bones end up. ER
