The white boys at the beach called it “bummer,” as in the “Bummer of ’42.” The weather reports were nothing but nonstop references to record rainfall and continuous cloud cover. Every day, at around nine thirty, a low-pressure system settled over the coastline and it’d pour off and on until early evening. Some folks won’t surf in the rain, even more refuse go out after a storm, worried about contracting hepatitis from the sludge and all the polluted runoff that flows into the Pacific after a heavy downpour. Personally, I like catching waves in the rain, fewer fuckers in the lineup, no windsurfers. Stay away from the arroyos near Malibu and Rincon, which tend to overflow with septic waste, and you’ll be fine. So that summer I didn’t worry about fecal matter and microbes. I agonized over my satsumas and segregation. How do you grow the world’s most water-sensitive citrus tree under monsoon conditions? How do you racially segregate an already segregated school? Hominy, the race reactionary, was no help.
