Thirty Years on a Hook on San Francisco Bay by Peter Romanowsky Chapter Fourteen

I took heart that if Satan could go back and forth throughout the World and stand before God in the Book of Job then I was a Born Again Child of God then In could also and evenr more as I rode on a bicycle from dumpster to dumpster cycling on the waterfront of Sausalito collecting aluminum cans and bottles on my bicycle with big bags for recyclables and taking them to for instance Mollie Stones Market in Sausalito and cashing them in at the recycle depot in the parking lot and I hit every dumpster twice a day. Approximately thirty five dumpsters twice a day meaning that I hit seventy dumpsters a day on my bicycle looking for any and everything recyclable from clothes to virtually everything one can think of, canned food, fresh food out of our local Market called Mollie Stones and before that Big G Market and would find lots of day old but good to eat foods of every type. Today they put the food in a sealed container, but back then it was a free for all and basically I found everything I needed to live and survive on and also had food stamps and free medical for living on the poverty level, eventually andI also began to collect mental to take to the metal to Richmond in East Bay across the Richmond Bay bridge, when I had a car or van or a friend driving me and my goods in metal and also aluminum cans of which I had a better price over there, for the metals I collected where aluminum scraps of which I cut into four foot lengths and copper wire after stepping the insulations of them and tubing army made ourt of copper and bronze the same because in yacht harbor dumpsters of which I mainly was full at times or scrap bronze as discarted items, for yacht harbor dumpsters were like proverbial gold mines of discarted Marine items and often the yacht owners would leave precious things out next to the dumpsters, like everything you can imagine from bottom paint and every type of hazardous waste to recycle especially bottom paint which can go up to a hundred or dollars a gallon or more, for me to use on my boat and skiffs and dingys and spare boats that I would collect at times, buying and selling and trading and dragging for anchors with a grappling hook, for every year there would me a fresh crop of anchors to salvage and valuable anchor chains and shackles and anchour lines,  for these I used and traded and it was hard and fun work, pulling lost anchors out of the mud with no winch, just my back and or cinched up the found or abandoned or lost anchors at low tide and then left them up with tide, pull them out starting at lowtide. Salvaging and recycling is hard and heavy work. Separating the metals by every tool and method I could think of because the metals had to be clean and separate fron each type and so on.The hard work begins, with hatchets, hammers, hacksaw blades , screw drivers and wrenches, I separated them all and the hardest to separate were when bronze and copper which were sometimes practically welded together with oxidation.. I also collected a precious metal called monel a very valuable metal used, for instance in boat propeller shafts and I found a lot of stainless steel in the form of discarted sailboat rigging for it is  recommended to change yacht rigging every fifteen or so years, for insurance reasons and a lot of marine batteries are discarted for the same reason off any commercial boat, even if the batteries are still good, so I never had to buy batteries and many of them were still charged and I used them also because I had no source of electricity anchored off shore in the bay  off Sausalito of which, is part of San Francusco Bay. I recycled tons and tons of batteries over an approximate twenty year period, untill me back went out. I was able to sell the rigging for scrap, if a magnet didn't stick to it, meaning that it was stainless steel, for  ultimately hard no way of selling iron or steel, that would take a flatbed truck and a hoist and,all I had at best was was a early sixtie black van which I pursued, salvaged and recycled it with my bear hands and it ran forever with a straight six engine that I constantly had to check pushrods and gauge the tap valves and it may have had upwards a million miles on it, I thought in mind at times. because it was used to deliver clothes at one time, I heard say and so much for early Ford, strait six engines. The front end of the van felt very wobbly from being worn out and I replaced the whole front end, that I got from a wrecking yard and right on main road going through Sausalito, if you can believe thank and even had a passerby help me for a tad, with it. The other thing I had to deal with was that the driveshaft kept falling out, because the universal joint kept falling apart apart due to one side of the rear wheel was partially torn from the frame and I did everything I could to reattach or secure it from going forward and disinagrating thare rear universal joint and onetime it disintegrated after one block after trying to secure the rear wheel from traveling and I had to money for a professional welder to secure the wheel, to the frame and so I drilled  holes and used chains bolted around the wheel and the frame and and swivel shacked to cince up the chain and secure the wheel to the frame and after much trial and error, I finnaly succeeded. I remember one time when I was in the Town of Faifax, maybe coming from a movie, van dropped the driveshaft at night and it was a calm and dark night and I picked up at the pieces and roller bearings and put it all back together, with a flashlight and while under the van I thought of my family comfortable and secure in thier big fine house and garden so close and so far away a couple of miles or so in the Town of San Anselmo and I'm under this car,a alone in the dark and at least, it wasnt rainy or windy in the still of the night I grieved know that I couldn't just walk up to the house for help or see my three children that I try to invite for a movie now and then and eventually my wife would drop me and my children off to see a movie together and I think maybe only once, with a three, of my children for my mind is still I  the fog, after a these years for I had a couple of three year restraing orders in me and not to call, contact of write my children directly and only with her permission and not even get close to the house of my children 

 and exwife, all without her permission, starting with the original divorce restraining order. It was all heartbreaking for there has  ever been any domestic violence Iin our family and I even stopped spanking our children and made then do chores instead, like doing the dishes or working or watering our just Garden of Eden, looking front yard, with even Redwoods.