For 50 years, I’ve been listening to my husband’s stories about growing up on San Diego’s Mission Bay when it was more of a small fishing village than the popular resort it is now. The warm bay water lapped at the sand when the tide was in. There was swimming and surfing. Phil went without shoes from June until September, and his feet grew calloused and summer-wide.
He’d row his small boat out where the reeds and grass grew tall and read comic books until his nose was sunburned and his empty stomach growled. He watched seals tumble in the water and fished for perch and small halibut. When the tide was out, the beach was mud, pocked with pickleweed and eelgrass. Shoals and small islands, home to colonies of mussels and sand dollars that stood on end in soldier-like rows, were revealed...