Remembering . . . what Venice once was

Step into a hand-painted postcard from Venice beach, circa 1910, and you'll be wandering inside California's first theme park. The idea that someone would dig canals and raise arched bridges so that you could wave over a gondolier proves that the dreamers of Southern California went a little too far — and were proud of it.

Mailed to some Eastern city, on a winter day, not long before the sinking of the Titanic, you can hear the postcard landing in an empty mail slot. Outside, snow is falling. Elm trees cast skeletal shadows against distant brownstones, and in your hands is something unbelievable. The image is small, and the lighting reminds you of the Mediterranean. You saw it once on a trip to Italy, where there never seem to be shadows, even in the brightest sunlight. Here is a gondola, crowded with well-dressed men and women, being sculled on a canal that looks like nothing in Venice — or at least the Venice that you know. Alongside are two young boys, modern-day Tom Sawyers, in a wooden canoe, and in the distance, there's a high, arching bridge and a few homes painted red on a green spit of land set against this powder blue sky.

You rub your eyes. Imagine living there, you think. "Boating on the Canal, Venice, California," the caption reads. Abbot Kinney, the mastermind of the dream, would have wanted it this way.