Life’s really a beach

I like the beach. As with a ballpark, a beach is the sort of place where everybody goes. Attorneys sit next to barkeeps. Cops sit next to crooks. At the beach, I even saw a husband sitting next to his wife. Yep, you see pretty much everything at a public beach.

I like the beach. I like the way a hot dog singes your fingertips when you turn it because someone forgot to bring tongs. I like the way the kids sit around the little grill with marshmallows on sticks, and the parents wait with graham crackers and chocolate. (Admit it, s’mores are way better than sex. They last longer; there are fewer apologies.)

I like the beach. There is always plenty to read. Someone will bring a newspaper or a couple of month-old magazines. When done with those, you can read your neighbor, for tattoos are the new bumper stickers.

On this day, one neighbor has a little rose on the swell of her breast. Another has something on her ankle, a bottle of wine or maybe a tiny gas pump. In a nation that never reads, we now love to cover ourselves in words and prison graphics. I guess that’s the beach for you -- an outdoor branch of your local library.

I like the beach, for the kids do something they never do at home: They leave us alone. Today, they are sitting along this sand trap by the sea, pouring water from buckets into deep holes they’ve dug, then looking down mystified over where all the water went. In a thousand years, kids will wonder why sand swallows the water. I can’t explain it, for the ocean itself seems to survive just fine and not disappear into the sand. It probably has something to do with volume and weight.

Speaking of which, why are there no heavy people in this stretch of Orange County? Me, I prefer a beach with a few fatties, for it makes the ordinary among us feel better about ourselves. I like it when the guy next to me has a belly as soft as peach cobbler and the muscle tone of boiled shrimp. Wait, I just described myself. Forget it. Forget all that stuff I just said about fatties.

And by the way, what the heck happened to chest hair? Used to be, all the fathers at the beach looked like they’d been fertilized with Weed & Feed. I guess chest hair went out of fashion. I guess summer is no time to be wearing wool.

Anyway, even without chest hair, I like the beach. We always bring a few items to make our day more comfortable. Not much, for it’s important to pack light for the beach. It’s important to keep it simple.

On this day, all we’ve brought is a pop-up cabana, several chairs, an ice chest, a banquet table, a credenza, a makeup mirror, three cans of air freshener, a small washer-dryer, a half-eaten hard-boiled egg, some carpet tacks, a fax machine, a wireless router, a complete set of encyclopedias, a five-person tent, tweezers, a checkerboard and a lot of other stray crud the kids found in the car.

Not that much really.

“Anybody got a bottle opener?” someone asks.

Oops, no bottle opener.

I like the beach, for someone always finds a way to make do when we forget the bottle opener or the tongs. Strangely, we have never forgotten the beer or some other refreshing beverage.

In fact, we sit in small clusters at the beach, tonguing our drinks and talking about everything, in long lazy conversations that last for hours. These are summer conversations, meandering yet memorable. The Algonquin Wine Table.

We talk about Barack Obama’s fundraising and Rupert Murdoch’s assault on journalism. What it’s like to raise a family in Hong Kong and the seminal work Ed O’Neill is doing in “John From Cincinnati.”

We talk about the sad state of tennis, bad movies we’ve seen, good restaurants to take the kids. We talk about the portable teak table we brought, which miraculously rolls up like a beach mat and stuffs into a small canvas case.

These tables, by all accounts, are the biggest blockbuster of the summer, bigger than “Pirates,” or the latest “Die Hard” sequel (“Die Already, Would You”).

“We first saw them at the park,” I explain with the same level of discovery and awe that people usually reserve for Machu Picchu. “Now, everybody’s getting them.”

There isn’t anything we won’t discuss. We talk about how to do a proper real estate appraisal (it takes time), and the poor, distraught housewife down the block who tried to kill herself with her own cooking.

“Oh my God,” someone says. “Is she OK?”

“They had to fingerprint the pork chops,” I say.

“How do you fingerprint a pork chop?”

“It takes time,” I say.

Cold drinks. High clouds. Tall tales. That’s why I like the beach.

--

Chris Erskine can be reached at [email protected].

For more columns, see latimes.com/erskine.