THE VERDICT:

I keep writing about the adventures and misadventures of Sam Oxarart and I forget I’m writing about a time when this town was much smaller and everyone knew everyone else. For those who may not know, the Oxarart family was interesting.

They were Basques and part of the Bastanchury family, also Basque, by marriage. The original Bastanchury, a sheepherder, started a citrus ranch in the hills behind Fullerton, which finally became the largest citrus ranch in the country. The original Bastanchury married an Oxarart, and the two families lived in luxury on the Bastanchury ranch. Mrs. Oxarart once told me it was nothing out of the ordinary to have 30 people for dinner while they lived on the ranch.

But then came the Great Depression and the ranch went bust. The Oxararts moved to Balboa — Mr. and Mrs Oxarart and three sons, Charlie, Sam and Vic.

With the change in family fortunes, Mrs. Oxarart got a job with one of those government entities that sprung from the Depression. Unlike his wife, Mr. Oxarart stayed home and devoted himself to endless jigsaw puzzles. He had never worked and saw no reason to start even in the face of crisis, particularly since his wife had a job.

His life reminds me of what Lionel Barrymore said about his brother John, who was in San Francisco during the earthquake and worked in the Army during the cleanup. Lionel told it this way: “It took an earthquake to get my brother out of bed and the United States Army to get him to work.”

And so it was with Mr. Oxarart. It took a world war to put him to work. When World War II broke out, he reluctantly left his puzzles and went to work as a civilian at the El Toro Marine Corps base.

His attitude about work was shared by his son Charlie, whom I knew rather casually. We had played water polo against each other in high school, and for some reason I never fully understood, Charlie moved in with me one summer.

I was living in a room in the Balboa Apartments at the corner of Main Street and the bayfront, working seven 10-hour days a week to make enough money to carry me through college for the next year.

I have no recollection of inviting Charlie to live with me, but there he was, even though I couldn’t really afford a guest.

When the summer was over, and I went back to USC, Charlie moved in with a Santa Ana dentist and his two attractive daughters. The next summer, he couldn’t move in with me because I was living with Hersh Teeter, the lifeguard captain, and a couple of other guys, and there wasn’t any room. So Charlie moved in with a family that ran the lumberyard. And had two attractive daughters.

Looking back, I can’t remember him ever having a job during those years. Like his Dad, it also took World War II for him to get a job. He latched on with Douglas, a job he held until his death many years later.

Back when I knew the Oxararts, Vic, the youngest of the sons, was just a kid. So it fell on Sam to be the only man in his family who always had a job.

He worked in a laundry, then with the labor gang putting the sea wall around Balboa Island, and also as a bartender at Gus Tamplis’ bar in Balboa. During the war, he also went to work at Douglas. After the war, he worked for Alex Oser, the wealthy junkman who lived on Lido Isle.

Sam finally branched out on his own in the airplane parts business and did quite well. He was a responsible, hard-working man. But somehow, he seemed to constantly be in the wrong place at the wrong time — hence the many Sam Oxarart stories.

Oh, yes. After I became a Superior Court judge, I was able to get Mr. Oxarart the perfect job. He was appointed the official Basque court interpreter. He was qualified, since he spoke Basque fluently, and it met his personal attitude toward gainful employment — There was not a single case during his tenure in which a Basque interpreter was required.