Family Businesses
Among the things that make Laguna unique are our family businesses. We’re not a town of corporate cookie-cutter storefronts; in Laguna, it’s about family ventures. It’s true we have Taco Bell and Jack’s, but those came in a prior generation, before we wised up. My last outing with the Beautiful Wife was to Ocean at Main, Craig Strong’s new restaurant. Thanks to chef Strong, my standing with the BW soared.
You have to like what life-long Lagunan Mark Christy and his group did with The Ranch, and we’re fans of his sister Laurie Alter’s Tuvalu. Thanks to Joe and Jane Hanauer, we have a renovated Pottery Place and my favorite, Laguna Beach Books. Maybe there’ll be a renovated Hotel Laguna. Best of all we have our own newspaper, the LB Indy. Local flavor from local families—it gives Laguna meaning. Which leads to a story.
A few years ago, I was driving our daughter back to college in Utah. Needing gas, she took an off-ramp with the usual collection of corporate gas stations, hotels and fast food chains. My previous trip was a cross-country drive to help another child start his career on the east coast. That was five days of off-ramps, all the same plastic stuff. Those businesses provide the basics, but lack meaning. This time was too much; I directed the daughter to continue into the small town. She was surprised but I imagined a special experience at a family-run station where an old guy called “Pops” would come out, offer to check out oil and wash the windows. He would chat with us, tell the local news, and wave to some boys on their bikes going fishing. That was my dream—the daughter rolled her eyes.
Well, it happened pretty much as I imagined—the gas station from another era, the friendly owner offering to help, even the local boys riding by on their bikes. I was loving it, though by now the daughter’s eyes were really rolling. She went inside to get ice, asking if there was a charge. “Oh golly,” the lady answered, “we’re not THAT impoverished.” The lady was family, of course. The owner, astutely sizing us up, assured me that our daughter would do just fine at the college. When his encouragement was recounted to the daughter, there was a final eye roll, “Well, I guess so, I am a senior you know.” I made just one mistake in my vision, the owner was actually named Forest Anderson. And to this day, when I see little Nephi, Utah, I retell the story of Forest and his family gas station.
I’m writing this as the Indy’s roving correspondent, from our ancestral home in little Midway, Utah. Like Laguna, it’s a town served by family businesses. The BW, you’ll recall, is half-Swiss and her ancestors settled this mountain valley in the 1860s. Our home was built starting in 1890 using a local “pot-rock” dug from the ground. It’s a snug farmhouse Victorian with 16-inch-thick walls. The temperature was in the 20s this morning; when I looked outside a light snow had turned our corner of the world white. The barn across the street is packed full of hay for winter feed. Horses graze in the pasture, indifferent to the cold. The Holiday season is coming, a time of family gatherings in homes across America. There’s meaning in this. We wish you a wondrous Thanksgiving.
Skip fell in love with Laguna on a ‘50s surfing trip. He’s a student of Laguna history and the author of “Loving Laguna: A Local’s Guide to Laguna Beach.” Email: [email protected].
Places to worship (all on Sunday, unless noted):
Baha’i’s of Laguna Beach—contact [email protected] for events and meetings.
Calvary Chapel Seaside, 21540 Wesley Drive (Lang Park Community Center), 10:30 a.m.
Chabad Jewish Center, 30804 S. Coast Hwy, Fri. 6 p.m., Sat. 10:30 a.m., Sun. 8 a.m.
Church by the Sea, 468 Legion St., 9 & 10:45 a.m.
Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 682 Park Ave., 10 a.m.
First Church of Christ, Scientist, 635 High Dr., 10 a.m.
ISKCON (Hare Krishna), 285 Legion St., 5 p.m., with 6:45 feast.
Jehovah’s Witnesses, 20912 Laguna Canyon Rd., 1:00 p.m.
Laguna Beach Net-Works, 286 St. Ann’s Dr., 10 a.m.
Laguna Presbyterian, 415 Forest Ave., 8:30 & 10 a.m.
Neighborhood Congregational Church (UCC), 340 St. Ann’s Drive, 10 a.m.
United Methodist Church, 21632 Wesley, 10 a.m.
St. Catherine of Siena (Catholic), 1042 Temple Terrace, 7:30, 9, 11, 1:30 p.m. (Spanish), 5:30 p.m. There are 8 a.m. masses on other days and Saturday 5:30 p.m. vigils.
St. Francis by the Sea (American Catholic), 430 Park, 9:30 a.m.
St. Mary’s Episcopal Church, 428 Park Ave., 8:00 & 10:30 a.m.
Unitarian Universalist, 429 Cypress St., 10:30 a.m.
