Summer's Almost Gone

By Vince Basehart

On Labor Day, summer throws a haymaker of a heat wave that cripples the valleys and bakes you even while you still linger in bed. By breakfast your shirt is sticking to your back and the fan pushing around air in the corner is hopeless. In possession of sound faculties, you gather a few things, put together a plan, and happily charge off to the beach. On Labor Day.

You discover upon arrival you are not the only one to have considered a dip in the ocean on a national holiday and the hottest day of the year. Most of humanity has the same idea. The beach is a forest of sun umbrellas, a field of lounge chairs. There is more human flesh visible across Santa Monica Beach than there is sand.

You spy a spot of unclaimed sand near the water’s edge which no one else seems to have noticed. You make a run for it.

Traversing the Saharan stretch of beach between the parking lot and your spot resembles fire walking. You hop from foot to foot as searing sand pours inside your flip flops, before finally breaking into a gallop - towels and magazines coming loose from your grip, the plastic grocery store bag handle tearing free and threatening to dump water bottles onto the sand. But you make it, plunging your feet into the under layer of sand where it is something resembling cool.

It is a very hot day.

The Pacific is not delightfully chilly as you expected, but a tepid bath, and it is crowded with chubby, Boogie-boarding kids, couples smooching, a family wearing T-shirts in the water flopping down in the knee high waves, frat boys tossing a football, parents lifting their toddlers over the lines of foam that roll in.

The sky is the color of bleached denim. Catalina is barely visible through the hot haze. Far to the east, white thunderclouds hover over the Inland Empire like great scoops of mashed potatoes.

It is a maddeningly hot day.

By 2:00 the heat seems to have simply flattened everything under its glare. There is an eerie stifling of the volume and movement on the beach. Even the hot breeze which stirred earlier has given up. The sand is a torment, reflecting the sun’s heat and glare back up at you.

It is so hot that men no longer bother to suck in their guts as they pass women. The football-throwing frat boys are collapsed under an umbrella. Children sit dazed in the sand under the stupefied gazes of their mothers. The water itself is beaten, having now reached the temperature of poaching liquid.

A squadron of Cessnas lugging advertisement banners behind them, the beach's air force, is out in droves on this unofficial last day of summer, trudging through the thick air as if through pudding. They make a clockwise loop: chugging west about a half mile over the water before moving up the coast, and circling back near Sunset to move south over the beach with seemingly aerodynamics-defying slowness. Some banners are teasing, (Coors Light: The World's Most Refreshing Beer) some direct, (LA County Sheriff Now Hiring), some desperate (Three V-Dubs for under $199 a month!).

The drone of the planes' engines and the enormous heat, now pressing down on you like a hot mud treatment beat you into a stupor. You curse yourself for not taking up your friend’s suggestion of spending all day in an air conditioned Sherman Oaks multi-plex theater, and wonder what kind of mania drove you to come and bake on this God-forsaken, over-hyped spit of land called The Beach along with half of the residents of the State of California.

But finally, about a half past 3:00, just when your reserves of bottled water are getting low, you feel the breeze again, and it is now tinged with a noticeable hint of coolness. The frat boys are back up and tossing the ball. Kids are running into water again, no longer stumbling about like heat-drunk zombies.

Your head is clear. It's suddenly cooler. The sailboats on the ocean are surging ahead with foam at their bows. There is a real breeze and it is bracing. You slosh into the water and it too has regained a sort of crispness.

It simply gets better as the sun begins its long, slow descent. Beautiful people are out running. Beach balls are being batted around in the perfect, balmy air.

You know that upon your return home you will smell like the sea and sun block for the rest of the night, even after a shower, and you will have to sweep beach sand from the kitchen floor, just as it should be. And suddenly you thank God you're spending the last day of summer exactly where it is supposed to be spent, on the beach in Santa Monica, not like those poor souls crammed into air-conditioned movie theaters in the Valley.