Annabelle's Beach

Have you ever watched Columbo, the TV murder mystery franchise?  

It spanned almost three decades, but for me, the best episodes were from the 1970s.  Their plots may not always be rock-solid, and dialog can often be unrealistic, but their cinematography often brims with compelling complexity.  

Columbo makes for great retro television because it celebrates its period optics.  Southern California's vintage estates, for example; before skyrocketing property values forced many owners to subdivide sprawling grounds.  Enormous luxury cars, before the mid-70's gas crisis forced automobile downsizing.  And larger-than-life clothing fashions that, frankly, are charming today because they have NOT withstood the test of time!

Nearly every episode is set in Los Angeles, and many involve the Pacific Ocean in some way.  A murderer is either throwing incriminating evidence into the Pacific, they live along the Pacific, they kill somebody on its beach, or they're piloting yachts just offshore.

My favorite Columbo episode is "Try and Catch Me".  It checks all the essential Columbo boxes, with a grand mansion, opulent European convertibles, lavish sets, gorgeous Pacific shots, and an emotive orchestral soundtrack.  It features an exceptionally well-crafted finale, with everything kept afloat by witty dialog in keeping with the franchise's efforts at being something of a comedy.  

In "Try and Catch Me", the diminutive, venerable Ruth Gordon plays an overly-assertive mystery writer who grew up in Massachusetts, but now lives on the West Coast.  Early in the episode, she's strolling along a Malibu beach with the man she ends up murdering.  Just before suddenly, two horses gallop around either side of them (talk about dramatic cinematic foreshadowing!), she bluntly offers an unsolicited comparison of America's two oceans.

"As for the broad Pacific, I find that rather an effeminate body of water," she declares.  Her stilted Boston Brahmin affectation clashes with LA's sun-soaked waves, rolling up from azure surf onto the sand.  "Down on the Cape, when I was a girl, I watched the Atlantic day and night.  How it churned and boiled and roared!"

"Nobody but you could put down a whole ocean!" chuckles her unsuspecting prey.

I've never seen the Pacific Ocean, but I've seen the Atlantic many times, been boating on it, and lived next to it.  My mother's family is from coastal Maine, and my paternal grandfather worked freighters back and forth across the Atlantic.  My maternal grandfather's father even died at sea when, in 1920, the 4-masted schooner he captained, the Amelia Zeeman, literally disappeared in the fabled Bermuda Triangle.

Personally, I don't believe there is such a thing as the Bermuda Triangle, at least in terms of there being a particularly nefarious zone for ships and aircraft in the Atlantic.  Nevertheless, as far as folkloric myths are concerned, don't you think it curious that the Pacific doesn't have any similarly significant section within its vast expanse boasting such notoriety?

Unlike some of my forebears, I don't have salt water in my veins, and I doubt I could identify one ocean from another like Columbo's protagonist presumes to do.  I've never been particularly fond of boats or being beyond the sight of land.  I'm content to live in landlocked north Texas, hours away from any salt water.  However, I've been to the Gulf of Mexico and to me, salt water there tastes and smells similar enough to the Atlantic's - albeit maybe cooked a bit more by Texas' far warmer climate!

In the painting above, we see a rather frothy waterscape as viewed from the domesticated interior of a building perched atop a rocky shore.  Tempestuous waves, lots of surf, and even blurry pine boughs all convey a dynamic of wind.  Quite close to shore, the prominent lip of an incoming wave can be seen, followed immediately by at least five more.  Whitewater from spent waves roils about the foreground.  It's obviously not a calm day, but it's not a hurricane, either, since plenty of sunlight illuminates everything.  A distant island or peninsula reaches into our sightline from the left, leaving the rest of the horizon open, as if to suggest an even greater body of water extends far beyond our sight.  Perhaps the tableau represents a scene from one of the Great Lakes, or an ocean?

When my Mom first saw this painting, she loved it.  You see, nostalgia immediately conditioned her to recognize the view from her Aunt Isabel's and Uncle Walter's cottage along Blue Hill Bay in Brooklin, Maine, west of Mount Desert Island.  When my father and I later saw it, we agreed with her.  And when my three eldest nephews saw it for the first time, they blurted out almost in unison, without any coaching, "That's Annabelle's Beach!"

Many of their early summers were spent on Aunt Isabel's beach, years after both Isabel and Walter had passed away, as their heirs own it and let us use it whenever we'd visit Maine.  Mom called it "Aunt Isabel's beach", but somehow, the nephews always heard "Annabelle", perhaps because that was the name of a character in one of their childrens' stories.  So for all practical purposes, it became "Annabelle's Beach" to us and remains fondly so today.

Imagine our surprise, however, when Edith, one of Mom's cousins who lived in Maine her entire life, visited us in Texas.  "Do you recognize the place this painting appears to depict?" Mom playfully challenged, expecting her cousin to say it was their Aunt Isabel and Uncle Walter's place.  But nope, Cousin Edith stood and stared and then leaned forward and squinted at the painting, before finally giving up.  "No, I don't know where this is," she conceded.

"Doesn't it look like Uncle Walter and Aunt Isabel's waterfront cottage in Brooklin?" Mom prodded her cousin.  But no; again, Cousin Edith shook her head.  She turned to her husband, who would have been acquainted with the scene as well, yet he politely shrugged his shoulders for lack of recognizing it himself.

So there's that.  Nevertheless, at least for my more immediate family, this painting reminds us of the delightful Maine shore at a beautiful property we could enjoy at our leisure - without also having to pay Maine's staggering waterfront taxes for the privilege!  All we had to do was remember to re-latch the chain across their private gravel driveway when we left.

In case you're wondering, that one-bedroom, three-season house was built in the 1950s, and far closer to the shore than would be permitted by law (or logic) today.  Having the surf roiling so near an interior room represents a sensation that no contemporary building permit or insurance policy would allow for new construction, due to environmental concerns over erosion and fluctuating sea levels.  Indeed, a series of strong storms this past winter pushed many new rocks up against freshly-exposed roots from the waterline's pine trees, and "Annabelle's" heirs (who winter in Arizona) told Mom earlier this summer that even the shape of the shore had appeared to change.

What makes this picture ironic, however, isn't that Cousin Edith and her husband didn't identify it as being "Annabelle's".  What makes this picture ironic is that its artist, a next-door neighbor of ours here in Texas, painted it while living in Santiago, Chile.  

Those are her glasses, her coffee mug, and her sugar bowl.  And this was the view out of her apartment's window.  Overlooking... the Pacific Ocean!   

Definitely not how I'd consider an "effeminate body of water" to appear, is it?

Well, that depiction was ostensibly spoken by a Columbo murderer.  So, in keeping with the lieutenant's signature phrase, she was simply wrong about "one more thing".

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