9

For thirty years that piece of coastal property had two houses on it, located as far as possible off the highway so as to be directly overlooking the beach and water.

One of the houses was large, twenty-some rooms, the other less than a third that size. There had also been a restaurant on the highway there. A small seafood place. It was an eyesore, had changed hands often and no owner had ever made enough from it or cared enough to want to help the wooden building fight the quicker deterioration that came with being near the ocean.

In 1967 the larger house was sold to an anonymous buyer, who never moved in. A year later the smaller house was purchased by someone and left vacant. The restaurant went shortly thereafter, its owner glad to make a little more on it than he’d ever expected from a buyer who, represented by a real estate broker acting on behalf of another broker, remained unknown.

All three transactions complete, titles cleared and transferred, it came out then, and the former owners bit themselves for not having held on for more, at least twice as much or more.

Lots 10938, 10939, 10939A of Orange County tract 673 had been patiently, cleverly acquired by one large business.

Within six months the property was transformed and there stood the Seaside Supermarket.

On its own private bluff.

The coastline at that spot scalloped out as much as a thousand feet. All along the edge it was a sharp drop of nearly two hundred.

Between the market and highway was a blacktop parking area for five hundred cars. To help circulate customer traffic a double-lane drive ran around the rear of the market, but after business hours a heavy chain was strung across to prevent anyone from using it. Splendid view of the ocean, out of view from the highway, it had become a nighttime place for loving in cars. What spoiled the good thing was that too many people left evidence of their ardor.

The supermarket itself was mainly cinder blocks and glass, a rectangular-shaped structure 120 feet deep by 280 feet long, hoping to make up with size for what it lacked aesthetically. An impression of spaciousness, increased by height — a single story equal to two and a half.

Despite its ample dimensions, like so many buildings throughout Southern California it did not give a feeling of permanence. It seemed unsubstantial, as though put up hurriedly with little faith in the future, short-term prosperity in mind. A California habit, perhaps the remnant influence of gold rushes and earthquakes and certainly persuaded by the climate, usually so mild.

Royal palms. Groups of them helped soften the market’s corners. Other landscaping was limited to semitropical spear-leafed shrubs, defiant full-grown growths set in beds covered with layers of wood chips, so they hardly ever needed tending.

The northern end of the building was solid, windowless. The southern end had a high, extra-wide opening for stock delivery. There were two doors in the rear, an emergency exit and a way in and out for employees only.

The front, the face of the place, made it appear light and open. It was almost entirely glass, large sections of heavy gauge plate glass that ran from ground to roof. Entrance-exits for customers were located extreme left and right. A special mesh gate was used to protect the glass front from outside. It was electrically controlled. From its housing along the edge of the roof it rolled out and down all the way and automatically locked itself in place. Once the gate was in down position it was impossible for anyone to enter or leave the market without switching on the automatic control mechanism. That required a unique magnetic key. Identical steel-mesh gates also made the side and rear doors impenetrable.

The mesh gates were not part of the market’s original design. They had been installed a year after completion, because young men defying law and death at three in the morning included the parking area in their version of a Monaco-style race course. Twice cars had screeched around, fishtailed and crashed through the market’s front panes.

Since the gates were put in, several times there had been trouble of another sort. Employees got locked in and had to call the manager at home to come let them out. Once a pair of muscular stock clerks and a good-looking blonde checker got left inside on a Saturday and had to spend the weekend in there because the manager was out of town. Considering what they could eat, drink and do, they made the best of it.

Across the front of the market at the roof line, individual lighted letters seven feet tall changed from all red, added some white and became bordered with blue as they rotated in unison:

SEASIDE

One of 538 stores in a chain. However, the only one where the chain name “FOODWAY” was given second billing. FOODWAY was a totally owned subsidiary of Horton Simpson, Incorporated, a conglomerate with such diverse holdings as Fiberglas speedboats, room deodorants, a reptile-skin processing plant and lipstick. At Horton Simpson board meetings on the seventy-third floor of the Horton Simpson building in New York City the agenda often included visual reassurance that the firm actually did own so many different things. A slide show of photographs accompanied by a pretaped spiel. The Seaside always represented the rest of the supermarket chain. Same slide everytime: the market shown from its most favorable angle with its palms set ideally against the Pacific and a true-blue California sky.

During the year 1974, the 40,960 supermarkets in this country rang up a record ninety-eight-billion, two-hundred-sixty-five-million dollars.

The Seaside did its bit, much better than average. Two hundred and ten thousand a week.

Over ten million for the year.

On the inside the Seaside had some features that made it extraordinary. Several supermarkets in its area were just as large, but they didn’t appear to be, didn’t give the feeling of nearly as much space. That was as planned: the Seaside’s ceiling was exceptionally high, twenty-three feet with no supporting interior columns. The effect was openness, room to breathe, conducive to shopping.

Another attraction was the advanced method of checking out at Seaside. It had what the trade called a completely computerized front end. All eleven of its check-out stands were equipped with IBM 3660 scanning systems. Each purchase was exposed for merely a moment to a four-inch-by-eight-inch glass-covered slot in the counter surface. Just long enough for the scanner within the slot to read the Universal Product Code that appeared on each item. The Universal Product Code was a symbol made up of numbers and an arrangement of lines of various lengths and thicknesses. The scanner translated it into price, category, brand and other information. No need for a checker to punch her fingers numb. The scanner did everthing — except make mistakes and steal.

The Seaside’s fully electronic front-end system fed data into a central processor. A touch on a console key and instantly there came a readout, a positively accurate count on how much a certain check stand had in its till or how much to the penny was the total take of the market at that moment. The system also kept inventory, showed what products were moving well, which brands were shelf warmers. It advised when to stock, what to push, even gave an early warning signal against overstocking. As one old-time grocer said: “It did everything but wipe the store manager’s ass and maybe would have done that if its roll of paper had been softer.”

In other ways the Seaside was similar to other supermarkets of the 30,000- to 35,000-square-foot category. It had twelve gondolas of tiered shelves (islands) for merchandise, each seventy feet long, six feet high. The islands were constructed and arranged according to the recommendations of marketing experts who made a science of such seemingly obvious things. There were no cross aisles, for example. Once a customer entered the store and headed down the first long, sleek, polished terrazzo aisle, it was practically impossible for him not to shop the entire market. It was like being caught in a very well planned maze — down and around, down and around, the shopping cart somehow getting fuller than intended.

To buy a staple such as milk or butter, a shopper had to go all the way to the deepest corner of the store. There was method to the inconvenience. Only the most single-minded or extremely hurried persons could make the long trip there and back without being attracted or reminded to buy other things.

On the perimeter of the store, going clockwise from its southern end, were: frozen foods, produce, dairy products, meats (with special polarized lighting so the meat looked a fresher, fleshier red), liquor (high-profit item set apart within a carpeted alcove), gourmet foods, delicatessen, bakery, housewares, toys and school supplies, photo shop and a pet-supply center. The entire western side of the building, a 7,000-square-foot area, was partitioned out of sight for receiving, storage and stock preparation.

The management office and the computer system’s processing center were situated within a wide overhang above the south end of the store. A spiraling metal stairway led up to it. The office had a long window for an overall view.

By no means unseen were the large styrofoam letters displayed across the flat of that dominating overhang. Letters in red. Again that same attention-demanding red. Customers saw it without realizing, the motivational researchers claimed. It splashed the shopper’s unconscious with:

BUY THE SEASIDE

The play on words was punctuated before and after by an identical pair of suns. Brilliant orangy yellow styrofoam cutouts with irregular flaming circumferences and smiling, happy-eyed painted faces.

Opposite the supermarket, on the inland side of the Coast Highway, stood the office of Grove Realty. A nice white ideal country house with banistered porch, peaked roof and an eave.

It was a real illusion. Californian, like one of those forty-foot rotating doughnuts, except the house was under- rather than overscale. Only two small rooms.

Less than a hundred feet away on that same side was a Gulf service station, a six pumper.

Both these businesses had literally carved places for themselves — out of the hill that came down right to the edge of the highway.

The hill was one of those called the Sheep Hills.

Part of the San Joaquins.

It went up for almost eleven hundred feet. Poor soil, crumbly in some places, sticky, claylike elsewhere, ranging in color from pale beige to ochre. Sparsely covered by scrubby, shallow-rooted plants that didn’t look alive.

Nevertheless, it was rich ground.

Propped and nestled on it here and there were homes of the hundred-fifty-thousand to two-hundred-fifty-thousand class.

Twenty-seven altogether had taken advantage of any slight crease on the steep, dug in and spread out. Most had private gates and drives, reflecting name plates, full-grown trees brought in. Got their good green atmosphere from as many hibiscus and gardenia bushes as their expensively hauled topsoil could hold.

All said it was well worth the effort. Especially those situated at the top said that.

What a fantastic ocean view. And practically perfect television reception.