COMMENTS & CURIOSITIES:

Let’s show a little respect, shall we? Chris Columbus gets a bad rap these days.

As you may know, Monday is Columbus Day, which is barely a blip on the screen around here.

Where I come from, in the Largest Apple of Them All, Columbus Day is a major league big deal thing, with a parade in Manhattan second only to St. Patrick’s Day, which is the mother of all parades.

Out here, Columbus Day just means that some government offices are closed, the kids are home from school, which can be good or bad, depending on the kids and whatever else is going on.

Probably the best thing about Columbus Day out here is that Monday’s traffic will be lighter than usual, which is nothing to sneeze at. But let’s take a closer look at Christopher C. so we can at least have some idea of who he was, what he did and why he wore silly clothes.

Anyone who can make the 55 and 405 move along, even for one day, deserves that much at least.

Let’s get the myths out of the way first. Columbus didn’t “discover” America. Leif Ericson and his Norse buds made it here hundreds of years before Columbus, more than once.

Irish and Scottish sailors had been leap-frogging from Ireland to Greenland to Newfoundland for just as long. What Columbus did do was to open the New World to Europe, which people like me greatly appreciate. On the other hand, Native Americans are sorry it ever happened since it led to centuries of nightmares caused by Spanish Conquistadors, then European traders, then European settlers.

So who was Christopher Columbus? He was born in 1451 in Genoa, Italy, but he wasn’t there long. The people of Genoa — the Genoese — belong to the sea.

As was his destiny, Columbus went to sea as a young boy and spent the rest of his life as a seaman, then a captain, then an adventurer.

The last one is the hardest. Long hours, no benefits, things that try to eat you and you’re constantly lost. Remember, this was years before GPS.

By his 30s, Columbus was obsessed with finding a westward passage from Europe to Asia and the Orient. Getting back and forth to the Far East meant serious moolah, in spices, silks and stereos. That trade had gone on for years, but always eastward, which meant you had to schlep everything over land on camels and other things that smelled awful until you got back to the ports on the Mediterranean, if you got back at all.

In 1484, Columbus asked King John II of Portugal if he might be willing to give him a gazillion pesos to find a westward passage to the Orient across the open ocean.

King John said, “Wait, let me think…no.” After his wife passed away, Columbus took his young son Diego to Spain in 1485 and spent the next seven years nagging Queen Isabella to back his big but loopy idea. Finally, in 1492, Isabella said, “All right already, here’s the dough, write if you get work, these Italians make me crazy.”

And so, on Aug. 3, 1492, Columbus set sail from Spain with 120 men, three ships and the silliest clothes he could find, especially the hat.

Cap’n Chris piloted the largest ship, the round-hulled Santa Maria. His other two ships, the Niña and the Pinta, were smaller, faster craft called caravels. Keep in mind this was really scary stuff. You’re setting out across the open ocean without the slightest idea of what’s out there, if anything, in three small boats. How big is small? If you’ve ever seen replicas of Columbus’ ships, there are plenty of boats in Newport Harbor that are bigger, way bigger. Columbus and company had enough water, supplies and DVD’s to last about 90 days, which is a good thing, because on Oct. 12, they landed on an island in the Caribbean that Columbus dubbed “Hispaniola,” which today we call Haiti and the Dominican Republic, which is where baseball players come from.

It wasn’t so much a glorious moment as a confused one. Columbus thought he had reached “The Indies” — what Europeans called India and south Asia — and he called the people he found there “Indians.” To the natives, the strange people who turned up in the weird boats and the goofy clothes may as well have dropped out of the sky.

When Columbus returned to Europe in 1493 he got a big thumbs up from everyone including the poo-bahs and was given the lifetime title of “Admiral of the Ocean Sea,” which sounds redundant to me, but I wasn’t there. Fast forward a few centuries and in 1937, FDR proclaimed Oct. 12 “Columbus Day.” In 1971, President Nixon declared the second Monday of October a national holiday.

And that, in a nutshell, or a small boat, is that — Christopher Columbus, silly hats, and why the 55 should be moving on Monday, but don’t count on it. Enjoy the holiday, such as it is. I gotta go.

PETER BUFFA is a former Costa Mesa mayor. His column runs Sundays. He may be reached at [email protected].