by Laura Garber
There is a gained charisma, a developed charm that comes from living over 70 years in a stubborn, slow-burn beach city where sand dune yards, dirt roads and bungalows once defined the landscape.
At 96, Polly Schneider has become an esteemed local elder and one of Hermosa Beach’s longest residents.
The Hermosa Beach Museum hosted a discussion with Schneider on Saturday, February 7, focusing on her new memoir, “Little House by the Boatyard.”
The discussion, which included questions from the audience, was moderated by Bill Palmatary, a co-founder of the Facebook group Hermosa Beach Residents’ Forum, which began in 2020.
Palmatary informally ordained Schneider as the Patron Saint of Hermosa Beach, introducing her to the museum audience as a “firecracker,” “dynamic” and “earnest.”
The isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic inspired Schneider to start posting her beach-side memories onto the residents’ forum.
“I was in my house, and nobody would let me out!” Schneider told the audience.
Memories of South Bay hippies, late nights at The Lighthouse, run-ins with Linda Ronstadt at the effervescent Insomniac Cafe before her big break, and even discovering her first husband was cheating with her best friend βall were stories posted for the community to read.
“These are the most popular posts I’ve ever seen on this forum,” Palmatary said. “It’s either extremely salacious and everybody wants to talk about it, or she writes the most uplifting, fun posts we have. She hit a nerve here in Hermosa Beach.”
Schneider’s posts often garnered over 500 likes, a high number for a forum of roughly 24,000 members, according to Palmatary.
With a bit of encouragement from Palmatary and the online community, Schneider wrote a hardcover memoir that included many of her original online posts.
The memoir captures Schneider’s humor with engaging chapters such as “Starter Husband” and “Being a Landlord in ’70s Hermosa.”
The titular experience for her memoir was inspired by her former residence on Hill Street, located close to the old Ace Boatyard, where her second husband, Herb Schneider, indulged his new passion for building boats.
“When I talked to the real estate lady about buying the house on Hill Street,” Schneider wrote in her memoir,” her comment was, ββYou don’t want to buy that. Nobody wants to live on those sand dunes.'”
Yet Schneider and her family did, overlooking the boatyard and its many faces, which provided great comedic relief.
“We met a lot of dreamers there,” Schneider wrote. “Maybe every boatyard is full of dreamers.”
Schneider’s delicate online musings provided a glossary of almost-forgotten times from past residents of Hermosa Beach.
One audience member, impressed by her detailed memory well into her 10th decade, asked what her secret was.
“I think it’s because I swam in the ocean my whole life,” Schneider said. “I have learned recently, life is short, and you might as well just have fun.β
βOh, my grandma,” Schneider suddenly recalled. “It’s my grandmother’s fault.”
Schneider claimed her grandmother, who moved to Chile to become an artist, might have been the first hippie in the world because she never held a job.
“That’s the way life was for her, and she always told us kids, have a little fun every day,” Schneider said. “It can just be little tiny things; it might be seeing an old friend, or talking to somebody on the phone. It could be some dumb thing like that.”
Moving from Long Beach to Hermosa Beach as a young woman provided Schneider with many flirtatious experiences. Her advice to young women looking for a man? “Get a puppy,” she said.
She met her second husband, Herb, while walking her Boxer puppy down The Strand.
“You ought to get that dog to obedience school,” she recalled him telling her. “Who is this?” she remembered thinking. “You’re telling me what to do with my dog?”
Three years later, they married after Herb’s Jewish mother overcame her fears about him marrying a gentile.
While Schneider has a penchant for remembering good times, her ability to remember decades-old grudges is equally impressive.
Schneider answered a question about her interactions with Officer Bill βWild Billβ Cavanaugh, a notable Hermosa Beach police officer known for handing out tickets throughout the ’70s.
“I went to the court. There were seven people out of about eight that were there because of Officer Cavanaugh,” Schneider said. “Everybody in town got a ticket from Officer Cavanaugh.”
The same zeal Schneider had to fight the citation, she used to fight a City Council redevelopment agency in 1972 and 1973 to avoid rapid community developments similar to King Harbor in Redondo.
The redevelopment agency, made of City Council members at the time, deemed the southwest neighborhood of Hermosa “blighted.”
The threat of tearing down local businesses and homes, including her small yellow house on Hill Street, inspired Schneider and her neighbors to form an advisory committee.
With the advice of an attorney the neighborhood hired, they collected signatures to recall the entire City Council.
This, along with a Community Center auditorium meeting that ran until 5 a.m., was enough to deter City Council members from continuing with the redevelopment plan.
“It had taken over a year, but we had won the battle,” Schneider wrote. “As I look around today, I can see that we might have lost the war.”
“There are so many things in Hermosa over the years we’ve had to fight for,” Schneider told the audience at the end of her discussion. “And it takes everybody in town.”
A smirk appeared on Schneider’s face.
“Don’t be afraid to fight city hall,” she said. “That’s my final thought.”
Copies of “Little House by the Boatyard” can be purchased at the Hermosa Beach Museum. All proceeds from the book go toward the museum. ER
