THE SANTA MONICA PIER
Once upon a time there was a pier in Santa Monica, and a newspaper, called the Herald Examiner in Los Angeles. This grainy little photo ran on July 5, 1989 along with the Examiner's piece on the Third Annual Dawn's Early Light Fireworks Celebration, on the Fourth, at the pier.
It is not the pier of today. This pier had a Merry-Go-Round, a fish and chips place, a cotton candy stand, a blown glass emporium, a shooting gallery, a dance hall, and a bar at the end of the pier. That's about it, folks.
On Sundays, we took our son fishing off the end of the bar, and watched him through the big picture window of the bar and drank many beers.. On Mondays, when our fellow workers asked what we did on the weekend, we'd say, "Oh, we took the kid fishing." They admired us for our family values, spending our time off, recreating with our child. The fish he caught tasted like petroleum, and we were usually drunk at the end of the day.
