Carnett: For me, there is only one island

As I was growing up on Balboa Island in the late 1940s and early ‘50s, we never called our slice of heaven Balboa Island.

No sir. It was always “The Island.”

I was born at St. Joseph Hospital in Orange in 1945 and lived on The Island through 1952. My grandparents owned a place on Marine Avenue from 1943 through 1965. We lived in the back apartment over the alley.

We felt as though The Island was an incomparable speck of sand, rock and ice plant placed lovingly for us by the hand of providence in a sheltered bay. To me, personally, it was the only island.

I later visited Vancouver Island, the San Juans, Maui, Kauai, Molokai, Fiji, Manhattan, New Zealand, Honshu, Puerto Rico, Ile de la Cite, the Whitsundays, fair Eire, Prince Edward, Wolmido and Great Britain. But none measured up to my island.

When I lived there, everyone in Newport-Mesa knew exactly what was meant when someone mentioned The Island. It was not to be confused with Lido Isle, Bay, Collins or Harbor islands.

It had — and still has — a charm and culture of its own.

As a wee lad, I was very much aware of the fact that I lived on an island. That invigorated me. I relished the idea of being on a finite fleck of terra firma in the middle of a vast and shimmering sea. My life was reassuringly encapsulated by saltwater.

I was an accomplished swimmer by the age of 4 and knew that if some natural disaster ever befell our mini Eden, I could swim to the mainland. I would make certain my mom, who couldn’t swim, was on my back.

But who could ever willingly abandon a place best described in Shakespearean hues: “This sceptred isle … (this) demi-paradise … this fortress built by Nature for herself … this precious stone set in the silver sea … this blessed plot, this earth, this realm.” This … Balboa Island!

I remember early foggy mornings of my youth. We could hear from our beds the unmistakable moan of the foghorn at the entrance to Newport Bay. After lunch, when I lay down for my nap, I could hear the comforting growl of outboard engines echoing off the facades of homes lining the Grand Canal. It was perhaps the most reassuring sound of my life.

Whenever we left The Island to visit friends or relatives, or to shop in Santa Ana for what little The Island couldn’t provide, we either drove over the Balboa Island Bridge to the mainland or took the ferry across the bay to “The Peninsula.”

Almost no one lived on The Island during the school year. They were holed up in their “regular homes” in Beverly Hills, the San Fernando Valley or San Marino. We had it to ourselves.

But the summers! What bliss.

I have a friend several years my senior who also grew up on The Island.

“Though it’s changed since the 1940s, The Island hasn’t changed much,” I said to him the other day. “It has the same wonderful feel.”

I go there several times a month to walk with my wife, Hedy, and our 23-month-old grandson, Judah. He’s the sixth generation of our family to stroll The Island’s byways and to loll next to its protective sea walls.

“Every time I drive over the island bridge and settle on Marine Avenue, I feel as if I’ve stepped back in time,” my friend responded. “It’s better than going to Hawaii.”

I agree.

On each occasion that I return with Hedy and Judah, I’m tempted to go to our old house, which has changed very little. I long to open the garage door and take out the paddleboard my uncle painstakingly fashioned with his hands in 1944.

Do you suppose it’s still there? Oh, to be able to launch it again in the beneficent waters of Newport.

Some memories are almost too dear to contemplate.

JIM CARNETT, who lives in Costa Mesa, worked for Orange Coast College for 37 years.