This is the first of a two-part series on a resident’s quest for the spirit of Malibu.
I’m coming back to Malibu.
I’ve been away almost 45 years. But never in my heart.
When you’re born in Malibu and grow up living on the beach, you take it for granted. Or so the grown-ups think. My parents always wondered whether living such a privileged life while I was young would have any lasting effects.
And so did I.
I spent the first six years of my life in the Colony. And in this column, and one that follows next week, I will go back in time to explore that question as well as some fears that have taken root over the years.
Fears? Yes. I am afraid.
Afraid that while special memories live on within me, they may be lost for a newer generation of Malibu residents.
One of my earliest memories is of leaning forward over a saddle, grabbing long locks of Doll’s rust-brown mane into my fists, and lowering my head over her neck as my own heartbeat thundered wildly inside me. Waves roared. Hoofbeats whipped the sand.
Oh, the wonderful terror of riding a runaway horse. I had lost the reins. But I was not afraid then. On that cold, late winter afternoon, with hot horse breath steaming the air and the wet salt wind stinging my face, there was no room for fear. I clung tight to stay on top. To live. And I knew I would.
Looking back now, I think that pounding ride shaped my outlook on life. No matter what I encountered, I knew that if I hung on long enough, the clanging alarm bells would stop reverberating and things would be calm again. In control.
But I look around me in Malibu now, and wonder if things are still the same.
There is a shopping center where Cross Creek empties into the lagoon. Restaurants and Ralph’s and Sav-On stand where long grasses rippled in vacant fields. And plans for more shopping areas, more development are on the books.
Instead of chaparral, condominiums crown the hillside — just above a field where the wooden rails of a horse ring once stood ready for the gymcana. And the monumentality of naturally sculpted pink sandstone has been replaced by a university.
So I take a look to determine whether there is still the same free feeling in Malibu that I knew as a young child. I pause to inhale. The air is still heavy with the smell of sweet sagebrush that I remember so well.
Under the bluffs at the mouth of Malibu Canyon, I see myself as a small child, jumping from my horse and, like a squirrel in spring, rolling gleefully through a bed of wild purple lupines and glowing orange poppies. Near the creek at the Archer Ranch, I am groping through high grasses, grasping treasured duck eggs, and pushing them down into my pockets. Alone along the Colony road, I am climbing sappy pines behind the tennis courts, and then wandering by myself on lazy afternoons, tasting crystals of rock salt that I dig out of granite fissures in the ground.
I grew up in Malibu in a freer time, when four-year-old girls could ride horses on the beach as the sun set, when you could hear the roar of truck engines chugging up the Pacific Coast Highway grade. When distant sirens meant my dad might be called to the Emergency Clinic to work on an injured highway driver.
Dad had a medical practice in Beverly Hills. But he also ran the Emergency Clinic from the building that is now the veterinary office at the entrance to Malibu Road.
I was born in 1947, in one of those rickety little houses lining the highway, perched on stilts over the rocky sea. As a toddler, I lived with my parents, June and Peter Salisbury, in the apartment over the clinic, before moving to the Colony when I was nearly four.
Is this dj vu, or destiny?
Today, I take my cat, Demon, to the veterinary clinic for his shots. Once inside, I am overcome with nostalgia. The building has not changed. The receptionist still sits where Dad’s receptionist once met patients. And Demon received his shots in the same room where I remember watching my father take forceps to extract a chicken bone that was stuck in a little girl’s throat.
My grandmother rocked me to sleep in her arms on that top porch there.
In my mind, I still see the line of gray cars coming through the mist, with yellow headlights shimmering through the fog, making their way along the highway, Gatsbyesque visions, filtered through the decades, to be sure. But instead of the yellow-rimmed spectacles of Dr. T.J. Eckleberg, the Sea Lion Restaurant stood with its half-dozen caged sea lions barking and jumping to catch the cold sardines we threw them. Duke’s Restaurant is there today. The sea lions live on in the bay.
And Malibu still has its collection of elusive stars and crusty characters.
Across the street from the clinic, comedian Joe E. Brown had lived in a house with five garages. And it remains with its five garages still facing the road.
Mama told me how actor Charles Boyer used to walk along the warm, white sand on summer evenings, his baggy trousers hanging dangerously from his hipbones.
And there were a few mornings when Mama seemed annoyed. Ida Lupino lived a block away. Apparently, she didn’t seem to mind calling my father at 1 a.m., and — in tones that were both frantic and distraught — pleading with him to come help her swallow a pill.
Though they are being restored, the landmark twin towers of the pier still stand as timeless icons.
And scores of less famous spots remain as well, such as the Malibu Inn. I remember going inside with my father to find it smoky and dark, and smelling of beer. Older men, with grizzled faces, leaned along a wooden bar to the right, holding tall glasses of amber liquid and clinking ice. A dazzling array of smiling stars, grinning pointlessly in black and white glossies, with autographs inked black and purple fountain pen, faced inward from the highway wall.
Yes, the photos are still there. Paper images of the past, small monuments of glory, and icons signifying a promise yet to come.
What were those promises that Malibu held for me so many years ago? And have they come to pass during the nearly 50 years since I’ve been gone?
In next week’s column, you’ll find the answers.
Ann Salisbury is a freelance writer who can be reached at loislane@headlines.org.