A holiday trip visiting family down south

December 2, 2025

Dell Franklin walking his dog on the beach

By DELL FRANKLIN

Editor’s Note: The following series, “Life in Radically Gentrifying Cayucos by the Sea,” to be posted biweekly includes the notes, thoughts, and opinions of an original American voice: author Dell Franklin. 

Franklin’s memoir, “The ballplayer’s Son” and “Life on The Mississippi, 1969” are currently on Amazon.

I took the train because I no longer tolerate driving in Southern California. Some member of the family must pick me up and take me back to Union Station from Palos Verdes Estates, one of the most beautiful and unique affluent areas on earth. My nephew Adam, out from Denver with family, which means wife and two kids, picked me up and of course filled me in on the kids, a boy 12, and girl 9; and, since I am a lifetime bachelor never wanting anything to do with kids outside of coaching them in baseball and basketball, I issued him sage advice on how to deal with the cocky, arrogant, know-it-all, impetuous, nonstop infuriating 12-year-old—let me have him for a week, sans any kind of screen or cell phone, only books, and I will institute a harsh environment kind of like army boot camp.

He will do what I want him to do. He will eat what I cook and not leave a sliver on the plate no matter how much he dislikes it or he will go without.

Well, for three days and nights down there, it seemed without my given authority, the monster ran roughshod over everybody, especially during the NFL football games, which he narrated as commentator and knew more about the players than I did. He browbeat his grandfather into buying him a football card to add to his collection. He never stopped moving or talking or arguing or rebelling or pouting or refusing to listen.

It’s tough dealing with a 12-year-old with an astronomical IQ and titanic wiring, so I began teaching him how to box, explicitly trying to show this gangling goof how to throw a straight punch and screw it in.

Whereupon the brother of the father of this monster, who is an ex-playboy bachelor married to a former beauty queen near his age, and has a 3-year-old daughter at 46 and also needs my child-rearing advice, and has boxed, began sparring with the know-it-all in the kitchen after Thanksgiving dinner after too much wine and vodka and suddenly, for no provocation whatever, the brothers, after taking turns sparring with the kid, got into it, ransacking the kitchen while rolling around on the floor and banging into cupboards, gouging away until they were both winded, bruised and mussed.

My sister simply shook her head. The grandfather was asleep. The brothers continued boozing without holding hard feelings while the 12-year-old continued aggravating anybody within inches of him.

Through it all, as  I sat calmly on a tall stool, glass of vodka in hand, and observed this heated tussle and its aftermath, it occurred to me that families are simply wonderful and indeed I missed this sort of spectacle as a stodgy old bachelor living in self-imposed exile.

About the vodka: For three days and nights my nephews repeatedly, without asking, placed premium vodka on the rocks in my hand and joined me, at times infuriating their mother and father and wives while precipitating various small petty yet fiery spats that were quickly forgotten and forgiven.

The younger nephew, once a decent basketball player, wanted to renew old memories by driving to a bar I once worked in the 1970s at the pier in Manhattan Beach. We always had a drink or two or three at this institution after hoops in the early 2000s.

We found stools at the bar on a very busy Black Friday afternoon and failed to rouse a crowd of artfully composed filthy-rich fucktards missing out sadly on two-generations-ago blissful self-destruction in the once glorious organ-hounding melee. The younger men were soft and pasty-faced, their women gym-sculpted, highly enameled, professionally tanned, and fetching to the max.

Nevertheless, we downed shooters and I tried to explain to one couple the joy of being completely toasted at three in the morning and, along with fellow bartenders, chasing naked party girls across Manhattan Avenue to the beach for ocean frolicking.

I was not taken seriously and the stares were distant and full of pity.

Back in Palos Verdes, my sister, the only sane person of the bunch and who did all the hard work and held everything together, led me on a 3 1/2 mile morning speed hike with her Golden Retriever through neighborhoods with fragrant canopies of trees, architecturally gorgeous homes, friendly joggers, mellow retirees with Labradoodles and Goldendoodles, a very large turtle with his own cave and yard, a beautiful young woman in some kind of sexy bodysuit jogging at a slower pace than a ninety-year-old walks.

I was introduced to regulars on this path—ex-doctors, ex-lawyers, ex-professionals, etc.–who accepted me enthusiastically because of my sister as we engaged in pleasant conversations mostly concerned with where I currently lived and how, according to my sister, wonderful it was because dogs ran the beach freely off leashes in Cayucos.

Back to the vodka. I never once asked for a glass or a refill, except at a certain point—like in the bar—where I felt an impish and delicious binge coming on. The younger nephew succeeded in stopping me. I might have slept nine hours in three nights, if I was lucky.

On the last day I tried to counsel and explain to the 12-year-old that the next few years, during which he would behave so abominably his own parents and some teachers would want to strangle him, were also to be his best ever, and to enjoy them to the max, because in the near future he would, sadly, be forced into becoming a professional grown-up like his parents and grandparents and all the parents of his friends.

Unless he wanted to end up like the wayward uncle. Not a chance. Not in this day and age. Too bad.