“Oh people, look among you it’s there your hope must lie. There’s a sea bird above you gliding in one place like Jesus in the sky. We all must do the best we can and then hang on to that gospel plow. When my life is over, and I stand before the father… But the sisters of the Sun are going to rock me on the water now … ”
—from “Rock Me on the Water,”
by Jackson Browne
It was shock and awe.
When Scott Dekraai went on a rampage last Wednesday, bursting into the Salon Meritage, shooting nine people and killing eight of them, the news spread like a bad virus.
Thanks to our modern technology, the whole world found out quickly what had happened, even as the situation developed from six who died at the scene to two more who died later after being taken away to see if their lives could be saved.
For all of us who live and/or work in Seal Beach, if we did not know them or a member of their family, it’s likely we know someone who knew them, or their family. There are very few degrees of separation from this tragedy for any of us.
Those bullets pierced the heart of everyone who loves Seal Beach and what it has strived to be. In the hearts and minds of anyone who ever took a happy walk down its Main Street to the city’s historic pier and back we will, I hope, continue strive to think of it as our Mayberry By The Sea.
A former officer of the Union army, who might have been looking to forget the carnage of the Civil War, first settled Seal Beach in modern times.
From the days of the Gabrielino Indian culture to the days of the “Joy Zone,” the Jewel Cafe dancing hall, the city’s Lions Club’s first fish fry, the wild days during Prohibition when rum runners came and even when Seal Beach was known as “Sin City,” people were drawn here. From its days as a meager tent city, to its present incarnation as a family town, one thing has remained constant—people came for the sunshine and ocean air.
A former mayor’s wife, Dorothy Nescher, wrote a song called “In Salubrious Seal Beach,” which means that the place was good for your health and peace of mind.
Seal Beach transformed itself during the last half of the last century to become what the world is describing as a tight-knit, small town with small town values. For me it became reminiscent of my favorite Twilight Zone episode, “A Stop at Willoughby,” in which a businessman starts dreaming on the train each night, about an old, idyllic town called Willoughby where it is said a person can “live life full measure.”
However, the name Mayberry By The Sea seems to have stuck for most.
The original Mayberry was a fictional TV town created by a former stand up comic and actor/writer, TV producer named Andy Griffith. He supposedly dreamed it up based on his hometown. Griffith’s Mayberry had one traffic stop and little in the way of indigenous crime save for moonshining and bootlegging. Out of town bank robbers, scam artists, escaped convicts, and vagrants occasionally found their way to Mayberry.
The county and the town share the same name and jurisdiction.
We learn in one episode that Mayberry has had the lowest crime rate in the state for two years in a row under Sheriff Andy Taylor.
There were other things about Mayberry we all seemed to like.
It had a real old-fashioned barbershop with a humorous barbershop owner.
Seal Beach has one of those as well on its Main Street. I must have walked right by Ernie’s barbershop the first time I visited Seal Beach with my wife.
My journalism adviser Barbara Fryer, who used to own the Seal Beach Journal, which evolved into the Sun, suggested I visit the town as it might remind me of the east coast beach towns where she and I both grew up.
Walking down Main Street, we were surprised that strangers smiled and said “hello.”
It was unlike any of the other beach towns we had visited along the Orange County coast. From across the street she spied the office of the Sun, which was then called The Seal Beach Journal.
“Wouldn’t it be nice if, when you graduate, you could work there and maybe I could get a job nearby,” she said.
I told her I thought that it would.
And in my head I thought, Yeah, that’s another thing that will never happen.
It did happen and just like she said it would. I have been lucky all these years to enjoy the simple splendor of working as a journalist in this wonderful Old Town.
Last Wednesday afternoon, as the phone calls came in and I went out to the crime scene to cover the story, I came to realize that something else had occurred that I thought would never happen.
I believe that this tragedy is like a lightening bolt, unpredictable and potentially devastating when it finds its mark. We were struck by lightening, which hardly ever cracks the sky around here.
Now we know it can happen anywhere.
Seal Beach will be known for this tragedy for a long time to come.
It will be up to us who love this town to continue to keep its true value at the top of our minds and live our lives full measure in this somewhat scarred Mayberry By The Sea.
“Rock me on the water. Maybe I’ll remember now. So rock me on the water. I’ll get down to the sea somehow. I’ll get down to the sea somehow … ”
Editor’s note: It is said that Jackson Browne, who grew up in Orange County, performed on Main Street Seal Beach at a bar called Cosmos in the 1960s.
Dennis Kaiser is the editor of the Sun Newspapers.
