A Local Christmas Tale

By George L. Garrigues

The rolling of the surf. The empty beach under a gray sky. Gulls skimming the sand. In the distance, two lovers dare the threatening surf. It's a damp, chilly Friday in the Santa Monica winter, about noon.

The Boathouse is somewhat shabby, but in a well-tended way, like your maiden aunt's apartment in Silver Lake or your grandma's old house in Santa Barbara. It's amazingly quiet, except for the murmur of the television perched above the bar.

The place is decorated with the usual accouterments of a seaside cafe -- life preservers, paddles, fish nets. The six male customers and one bartender look out the window or talk to each other in an atmosphere of calm.

A little bearded man, probably about fifty (though he looks decades older) sits at a table, and Jeff, the bartender, brings him a glass of wine and a bowl of clam chowder, along with some bread.

The man, who is white, raises his glass to a black man seated at the next table. The little man is consummately polite.

"Merry Christmas to you, God bless you and God bless your family," he says. The other man responds by extending his glass.

"Isn't it beautiful out here?" says the bearded man, gesturing toward the pier and the ocean beyond the window. And then he adds that he has walked all the way from New York, barefoot, and that he "broke Forrest Gump's record by twenty-eight miles."

He arrived in Los Angeles on his birthday, Thanksgiving Day, the twenty-second of November. He mentions also that he once had a wife and children, all of whom he lost on the same day.

He tells the black man how much he admires Chuck Berry and Michael Jordan, and his listener moves away to order another beer at the bar. The old fellow feels that perhaps he has violated a taboo.

"I didn't mean to bother you, young man," he says when the other returns but sits down at a table farther away.

"No problem."

"It's just that this is the first meal I've had to eat in twenty-five days. And it's the best clam chowder on the pier."

My fantasy of magnanimously offering to pay for the old man's lunch dissolves when he finishes his soup, bread and wine ("This is my body and my blood . . . "), stands and announces to the room, "Merry Christmas to you all, and to your families," and goes out the door, without a tab being presented to him.

"Do you know that old man?" I ask Jeff. "He seems like a nice guy."

"Yes, he comes in here once in a while. We feed him. Anything else for you."

"No, I'll just sit here and read my book."

"I'll be here." Jeff moves back to the bar.

I look at the menu rack and find two fliers. One of them -- headed "SAVE THE BOATHOUSE" -- informs me that the Santa Monica city bureaucracy and City Council are seeking the demolition of the family-owned restaurant, which is in its third generation and is "part of our history, our nostalgia, and our connection to the past." The idea is to invite bids from chain restaurants for the spot where the Boathouse now stands.

The other flier invites me to email the City Council to "hold off on any eviction while this matter goes through the courts."

I think about the last time I was forced to eat in a chain restaurant overlooking the surf in Huntington Beach, with all of its glitz and its hype and its "servers" named Reggie, and I shudder.

Then I pay the bill -- which came to something like sixteen dollars for mahi-mahi, vegetables, coffee and a shot of brandy and went back to my apartment in Los Angeles -- refreshed, and quite willing to write this piece, which I hope to share with the members of the Santa Monica City Council.