The Catalina Crew

Punxsutawney has Phil the Groundhog, Yarmouth has Steamy the Clam, Quingdao has Chin the Beer Pig, and Avalon has Gill the Flying Fish! Gill is the mascot of the Catalina Flying Fish Festival, a four day non-stop barrel of fun and games, culminating in a Flying Fish Parade down front street and discounted evening trips out to view the flying fish themselves.

Gill, the Amazing Flying Fish

Well, OK. Maybe it wasn’t all that exciting, but it was a good excuse for some festivities. The festival began on Friday with the “Taste around Avalon” where local restaurants and bars opened up to compete with each other for best drink and entree, continued through Saturday with a merchant street fair and then Sunday’s Flying Fish Parade. Mixed in between were sandcastle scuptures, fishing tournaments, nature displays, bands & performers, and so on. Jacob’s pre-school had the honor of heading up the parade. Jacob was in top form, riding astride Dad’s shoulders waving like a champion parade veteran!

No, Really… He WAS excited, I promise! We just didn’t take a picture at the right moment!

How we get them home!

Or at least that’s how we used to get them home! We aren’t lucky enough to have a golf cart anymore. Nowadays we make Jared haul everything home!

OK, so I am finally getting around to it!

We had an awesome Halloween. It was really fun to have the old-fashioned neighborhood Halloween experience again. With all of the “Trunk-or-Treat” events that people are using lately instead of traditional “Trick-or-Treating” I have really missed seeing kids running around en-masse with friends and family, socializing and making a neighborhood a neighborhood. Avalon is one of those all too rare communities where urban fear has not yet gotten a foothold.

We started out of course by getting and carving our pumpkins. Jacob’s school sponsored a “Pumpkin Patch” where the kids could pick out their own pumpkins instead of going to the super market. Jacob chose a trio of good ones and we set to work making them look great. Jacob designed and helped cut his into a “Silly face.”

Jacob took a while and had several different ideas on what to be for Halloween before settling on cowboy. On Halloween evening, the city had a costume parade down Crescent street with all of the school kids participating. The community TV station filmed the parade and Jacob made the broadcast.

Jacob was a little unnerved by Dad’s costume and realistic looking scars and asked him to take the wig off. After the parade, we went over to Luau Larry’s for the traditional Wednesday $2 cheeseburgers and then hit the streets to gather loot.

By the end of the evening Jacob had filled his pumpkin basket to beyond capacity and Mom & Dad had met several new neighbors. Jacob did not want to stop but eventually we had to call it quits and head back home in time for bed.

Jacob with his friend Cory

One of the fun things about Sue working at the Catalina Island Museum is all the neat tidbits that she learns about the island and Avalon’s history. Anyone who has been to Catalina will recall hearing the beautiful ringing of the bells coming from the tower on the hill north of town. Few people realize how and why the bell tower (or more properly, the chime tower) came to be.

Not far from where this tower stands, sits the house of the great novelist Zane Grey. Zane moved to Catalina in the 1920’s and it was from his home here that he penned many of his novels and brought the “western” genre into popularity in the U.S. and worldwide. It was not long however before he crossed words with Ada Wrigley, the wife of chewing gum magnate William Wrigley, Jr. who owned about 90% of the island. Ada Wrigley could not stand Zane Grey and despised him such that she had her husband construct this bell tower only a few hundred yards from the Zane Grey Pueblo. Ada instructed that the chimes should be set to ring every 15 minutes throughout the day so as to annoy Zane and continually interrupt his writing.

The Zane Grey Pueblo still stands on the hillside near the bell tower and is now a 16 room bed and breakfast. However, it is in danger of being demolished for construction of new condos or other development. The Zane Grey West Society is working to preserve it, but is unable to afford the $17 million price tag. The chimes however, still ring every 15 minutes.