Avalon

Avalon.  The very name evokes ancient mysteries, for its legends that some dare call "history" have long harbored mystical and mythological meanings.  Arthur.  Excalibur.  Lord Tennyson's Idylls of the King.  Avalon, in italics, is the name of one of my favorite rock records ever, and I cannot emphasize enough (though this time proper grammar dictates no italics) that Avalon is also one of my favorite destinations ever.  I wouldn't doubt that Bryan Ferry or Phil Manzanera fancies it as well.

Avalon, the town, is a small seaside enclave twenty-six miles from the mainland of California on Santa Catalina Island. Protected by a bay on the leeward side of the island, the town, which has elements of the best of San Francisco (steep narrow streets bedecked with Victorians), of Main Street USA (old school, independent, Mom-and-Pops, some selling malteds), and of the French Riviera I can only presume (lavish yet elegant Mediterranean-style estates hanging off terraced soapstone cliffs with blazing balcony views of sunlight glinting off the tinted windows of yachts moored in the humble half-moon of a harbor below; of sailboats and skiffs upon the white-capped cobalt blue of the Pacific shimmering its golden glaze in an elongated triangle to the horizon), is a sheltered cove I'm tempted to call Paradise because it rarely gets too hot or cold or crowded.  Maybe Midas — and not only King Arthur, but possibly Roxy Music, too — lived here once upon a time.  The homeless sure don't — they probably can't afford the ferry ride over. Approximately 3,800 suntanned souls live in Avalon year round.  With few automobiles about, there is not even one traffic light. People mostly get around the 2.9 square miles of the city on golf carts. The collective sound of golf carts in the village (say one were noticing their hypnotic, fifteen-miles-per-hour-maximum, collective sound from the second story window of a small white room in the historic Hermosa Hotel; a sound that, surprisingly, I did not find at all abrasive) sounds like a single intent lawnmower going by, going by, going by always, always, going by, as if it were committed to cutting the grass upon some invisible and infinite island lawn.

When in Avalon ...  And so we took a tour of the town in one such buzzing golf cart.  Drove steep one-lane roads that wound above town, where beautiful "blue dick" flowers flourished beside the punishing paddles of prickly pear cacti (ouch!); and where, finally, up in these sunburnt hills high above Avalon, the subtle, intermingled, intermittent scents of open air eateries, fish, admixture of sunscreen and sweat, tidal surge and salty air, are pungently purged by the funky aromas of chaparral.  Stopped the golf cart abruptly and took a whiff of this weird windblown bloom.  Kids called me crazy for sniffing the air like some white rabbit. Drove on, but stopped again soon, this time at the entrance to a gated road on Mt. Ada that led higher up a steep ridge to the Wrigley's famous manor overlooking everything they once owned . . . .

I closed my eyes there for a second at the overlook under the Wrigley mansion and saw, in black-and-white, in stills that mysteriously floated by, this astonishing image of a baseball diamond and outfield on an island in my mind.  Wrigley built it, and the Cubs came.  The team arrived every winter before The War for spring training . . . .