The cute boys are at La Jolla Shores

Former draft dodger crosses cultural divide, harrowing trail from Vietnam, Salton Sea fishermen, slice of PSA pilot life, unlucky run across border, Coyote Canyon horses, the Butcher Shop, snakebite

Author

By Jeannette DeWyze, Neal Matthews (RIP), Judith Moore (RIP), Steve Sorensen, Richard Meltzer, Stephen Meyer

Publish Date

July 15, 2023

Sitting on her towel on Pacific Beach, Karen sang a snatch from the Beach Boys’ “California Girls” and gazed out across the water. “We’re just trying to have some fun before we grow up and have to go to work every day.” (David Diaz)

The girls of summer
Right after the Fourth of July, a series of perfect days unrolled across San Diego County beaches. Sun sizzled away the coastal low clouds by no later than eleven, and girls from local high schools began spending entire blue days at Pacific Beach and La Jolla Shores.
By Judith Moore, Aug. 28, 1986

We hop in her bright yellow Datsun Z, head out for 32nd Street Station, only to be stopped cold at the gate 'cause she hasn’t prearranged my pass. Since Libya this is the one base (lots of ships berthed here) where civilians are treated as potential saboteurs. “C’mon!! — he's got an i.d.” (Stephen Vance)

Richard Meltzer's Navy
Okay. I spent five-six days with the U.S. Navy. It didn't kill me. As “mixed" an encounter as any I've had as a writer, some parts were wretched, ghastly, distressing; others, ethereal, effervescent, exhilarating. Mostly it surprised me at every turn.
By Richard Meltzer, July 10, 1986

I opened the door of my box and stepped outside. Lying close to the ground, I crawled for a short distance past the meeting rooms of the camp commander. (Helen Redman)

Escape!
I can still recall the date, May 19, 1977, because that was Ho Chi Minh’s birthday. The entire camp was taken out to the fields to clear away the elephant grass — to “compete with each other for Uncle Ho’s birthday.” The grass grew head-tall alongside the main road.
By Duong Phuc with Vu Thanh Thuy and Neal Matthews, May 15, 1986

“Look at that Freddie. He’s just killin’ them croaker. Got a bucketful of croaker."

Bury my bait at Bombay Beach
Driving north on Highway 111, up the east side of the Imperial Valley, it’s hard to tell if the first glimpse of the Salton Sea is real or just a desert mirage. There is nothing in the empty landscape to give an impression of size or distance — only a silver, shimmering mist against a backdrop of hazy blue mountains.
By Steve Sorensen, May 1, 1986

Masley and Owens. Masley: “I once flew with this guy for a month straight, and he blocked out so much of the sun I lost my tan.” (Craig Carlson)

Day in the life of a PSA pilot
In the dark hour before dawn one recent Tuesday morning, Jim Owens was thinking about the fog. Stars shone clearly overhead here in San Diego, obscured only by a ragtag army of cloud fragments scurrying eastward, remnants of a storm that had drenched the county the previous day. But Owens was heading for the airport and PSA's flight number 471 to Oakland.
By Jeannette DeWyze, Jan. 9, 1986

James Gibson saw the police before they saw him, and his walk turned out to be a run — straight south from Imperial Beach to Mexico.

Was James Gibson tortured by Mexican police?
When two Mexican police officers and two FBI agents showed up at his beachfront Playas de Tijuana apartment on October 17, James Gibson had reason to suspect that his attempt to start a new life south of the border had been foiled. This became all the more clear to him as he was pushed into the back seat of a car and, with an FBI agent seated on either side of him, driven to the headquarters of the State Judicial Police in Tijuana.
By Stephen Meyer, Dec. 4, 1986

“The studs have been stealing mares. I just got a call the other day from some people — the Tweedies — who live up on Table Mountain. They lost a mare."

The wild horses of Coyote Creek
The first time I met Vern Whitaker, two years ago, he was celebrating his seventy-third birthday in the back of a camper parked beside a horse corral in the Anza-Borrego Desert. The camper looked about what you’d expect the home of a seventy-three-year-old bachelor cowboy to look like. There was a pile of dirty dishes in the sink, a pot of coffee strong enough to float a horseshoe boiled on the stove.....
By Steve Sorensen, Nov. 20, 1986

Roberto DePhilippis came to San Diego in the early 1950s with his family, which opened Filippi’s Pizza Grotto on India Street. (Craig Carlson)

The Butcher Shop — Las Vegas glitz and mafia aura
Roberto DePhilippis, the owner of the Butcher Shop Steak House, got very angry one night last spring. In fact he had been seething since November of 1985, when his landlord, the Plaza International Hotel in Mission Valley, sent him an eviction notice.
By Stephen Meyer, Nov. 13, 1986

Group under shade

Snakebite!
If you had to pick a group of people to pit against a large, deadly rattlesnake, the men and women who drove south into the Baja wilderness last June would have been a good choice. There were nine of them, every one the most solid of citizens: a retired metallurgist, a college professor, several housewives, a small businessman, a librarian, a truck driver, a school food service director.
By Jeannette DeWyze, Nov. 6, 1986

Deborah Hager, Nicole, Athlene Novosat (Michael Justice)

Mystery of the Gypsy Song
It's the fourth of July at 6:30 a.m., and we’re driving down to Puerto Madero. the southernmost port on Mexico’s Pacific Coast. Ken Franke, a retired Coast Guard captain and now a marine surveyor from San Diego, is at the wheel of a red Nissan he rented in Guatemala City. His mission is to find out what happened to the Gypsy Song, a sixty-five-foot ketch-rigged sailboat that left the port of San Jose, Guatemala, about 130 miles south of here, on January 2, 1985, bound for Acapulco and ultimately San Diego.
By Stephen Meyer, Aug. 21, 1986