Stopped At Carpinteria

For my Friday Archives we journey to Carpinteria. These are recent pictures but everything looks just like it did in 1992, a mere 16 years ago. The above picture is a short or long term apartment building. We had the ground floor second from the corner for the month of October.

   

We came here because 1.) he was already here on a job, and 2.) I needed a vacation. So I specifically requested, "I want to walk out the front door and on to the beach!" And he got very close.

If you turn around 180 degrees, this is what you see. Those big things way off on the horizon are not ships but drilling platforms, and when the fog lifts, they are quite obvious. 

  

Everyday that October I would walk all the way down the beach to the campground, and everyday was a mini adventure. 

One day I got tar all over my feet. This wasn't left over from the disastrous 1969 oil blowout.

No. This asphaltum occurs naturally and was used by the Chumash to make their canoes watertight.

Another day some Hollywood people were filming a beach blanket bingo type of movie complete with dozens of tan young women wearing bikinis with long blond hair. The director was having them run back and forth across the sand. They looked like they were about to collapse. 

And yet another day the fog was so thick, you could barely see your hand in front of your face. I went down to the waterside and felt a strangeness like I was being picked up, a floating sensation, and then these two nuns in full habit appeared and smiled at me. True story.

  

I went back to the apartment and experienced the worse flu I think I've ever had in my life. I didn't want to move for three days. Only it wasn't the flu. I was pregnant.

  

I didn't come to term with the child. Isn't that the nice way to say I miscarried? But if I had I would have a 15 year old on my hands right now (and I'd probably be wringing them occasionally).