Know your runoff before you run off

ROBERT GARDNER

* EDITOR’S NOTE: The Daily Pilot has agreed to republish The Verdict,

the ever popular column written for many years by retired Corona Del

Mar jurist and historian Robert Gardner, in exchange for donations to

the Surfrider Foundation. This particular column was originally

published Feb. 22, 2003.

I think they quit teaching geography about the time I left school

-- which was a long, long time ago.

This observation was triggered by an item I saw in this paper

recently that indicated one of my esteemed superiors, an editor no

less, thought the runoff from the Sierra Nevada flowed into the

Colorado River. It doesn’t. Neither does the runoff from the

Cascades, the Ozarks, the Appalachians or, for that matter, the Alps.

This widespread ignorance of matters geographic was brought to my

attention rather forcefully when I was appointed to the High Court of

American Samoa. Too many educated people -- at least, people with

college degrees after their names, asked -- “Samoa? Where’s that?”

When I said it was on the other side of Catalina, that seemed to

satisfy them.

I have always contended that the teaching of history is the most

important part of the educational process. Without a knowledge of

what has gone before, we have no way of evaluating the present or

forecasting the future. And geography is an integral part of history.

Of course, I got a jump on most others. When other children were

playing with dolls or teddy bears, my first toy was a jigsaw puzzle

map of the United States.

By the time I was 3 or 4, I not only knew all the states, but also

all their capitals. My parents -- who had only frontier, one-room

school educations but were widely read -- insisted that I know

geography.

My father, who had been a cowboy and lumberjack before the turn of

the century, had wandered over much of the West and would go through

all the Western states with me on my jigsaw map and explain them to

me. Early on, I knew that the runoff from the Sierra Nevada didn’t

flow into the Colorado River.

Thus, as I progressed through the educational process I gobbled up

history and geography, dodging mathematics as though it were the

scourge. Since that time, I have traveled a bit, and by putting all

that together I was, at one time, fairly knowledgeable in geography.

However, I must admit present day Africa has me baffled. When I

learned geography, Africa was easy -- Belgian Congo, German East

Africa, Portuguese East Africa, French Equatorial Africa, Italian

East Africa. Then the various African nations attained independence

and adopted native names. That really screwed things up -- Zaire,

Zambia, Botswana, Mali, Benin and Upper Volta, for example.

Apparently, it takes a war to teach the American people geography.

During World War II, we all learned where Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima

and Okinawa were. A few years later, we became acquainted with Korea

and later Vietnam. (French Indo China to me on my map.)

But that seems to be a terribly expensive way to teach geography.

I will terminate this learned discussion by pointing out that

Samoa is still out there, way to hell and gone the other side of

Catalina, inhabited by large, brown, smiling people who live in funny

looking houses and the men wear skirts. And the Sierra Nevada are

still there with their runoff going into the San Joaquin and

Sacramento Rivers, not the Colorado. For that matter, the runoff from

Saddleback doesn’t flow into the Colorado either.

* ROBERT GARDNER, a Corona del Mar resident, is a retired judge

and a longtime observer of life in Newport Beach.