"It Had Two Bathrooms!" — Growing Up in Early Laguna Beach

By Joyce Darling Wethe Robertson

Imagine me, a girl of 10, growing up in a Minnesota country gas station in the winter of 1936. The mailman tromps in with snow-crusted boots and pulls out a postcard from the rest of his delivery, saying, “Anybody here by the name of Joyce Darling Hahn?”

Me? Something for me? I jump up to take the card, and there on the front is a picture of Santa Claus romping in the surf in a bathing suit in a place called LAGUNA BEACH. It’s from my grandma, Maude Darling, who lives there with her uncle, Chester Stevens, on a street called Cypress Drive.

Like so many mementos of the past that I wish I’d kept, this card remains indelibly printed on my mind. It hinted of the time just a year or so hence when I’d be there with my family discovering a world of sunshine, sand, and strange odors like kelp, eucalyptus, and pepper trees, and sounds of the waves rolling in among Laguna’s picturesque coves. Seals barking, gulls screeching, and shimmering surf where my little brothers and I built drippy sand castles before watching the big one come in to wash them away.

In spring, there would be a sudden array of colorful umbrellas adorning Main Beach, and we’d be parked under one of them in our bathing suits while Grandmother Darling and Uncle Chet sat on beach chairs, fully clothed. Always these outings included a picnic basket. I didn’t miss the sub-zero snow-clad winters of Minnesota one little bit!

For the 7th and 8th grades I spent in junior high here, I was in a magical world. Our family rented a brown shingled house on Holly Street for $35 a month. It’s still there, looking just the same. And it had two bathrooms! (At home in Minnesota, we hadn’t even had one!) When my brother, Danny, and I came home from days at the beach, we didn’t have to fight for being first to take a warm fresh water bath. We lived in the lap of luxury in a quaint little artist community, where beach cottages grew up between banks of bougainvillea and spiky purple status sprigs could add a pretty touch in a school girl’s hair.

, in those days, had not yet inherited the tall palm trees that grew along the Canyon Road, but my mother often took us kids there to sit on a cliff and simply watch and listen to big breakers rolling in to send their white sprays high up along the rocks. became our favorite place to swim, and I took many a roll trying to ride the breakers there. I dove too, and managed to stay alive through two summers.

Forest Avenue had open-air markets, and the boardwalk then was straight and bordered by tiny shacks with concessions for souvenirs and ice cream cones, umbrella rentals and such.

I remember a place on the corner opposite the called The Villa. It was a charming little gathering of yellow beach shacks among tall trees and connected with dirt paths. Down on Ocean Avenue, another stand of beach houses stood called Tent City.

My dad found it hard to get work in those days, but when the City Water Works needed extra help, he worked there for $5 a day. That paid our rent. He also painted houses, and between jobs, he’d go fishing off the rocks at . I never remember that he caught a thing, but if he could find mussels big enough, he’d bring them home for Mother to shell, pound, and cook.

Eventually, Daddy persuaded Mother to move back to Minnesota. We drove our old Buick up the coast, stopped by the World’s Fair in San Francisco, then headed farther north to visit my uncle in Medford, Oregon. Over the Rockies to the Black Hills, and finally home.

In our country gas station, we lived out the Depression with our farmer relatives who provided cheap milk and eggs, and even canned beef. As for fruit and garden vegetables, our own five-acre plot provided those. And my dad added a bathroom to the house!

My girl friends at Laguna Junior High told me I’d get the “Laguna tic,” and it would always lure me back. It was true. My husband and I settled in Laguna with all three of our children in 1959. (My daughter, —who writes a blog in the Patch about her growing-up years here and how she became an artist—has told about that.) When the kids were grown up and gone, my husband, Wally Wethe, and I moved to a ranch in the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon in 1975.

But that’s another story ...