Thirty Years on a Hook by Peter Romanowsky Life on San Francisco Bay in the Sixties Chapter Tewenty Three....rough and unedited...to be continued

There is a point living on an anchor that you begin to make friends with the flies and the spiders first, then cats and dogs and always Seaguls and this is my longest and oldest of my Seagull friends and I call him Gorgeous Gearge or King George of the Seagulls,  because he is larger then his spouse and they mate for life and he is the undisputed boss of the waterfont of Sausalito at the ferryboat landing and has been there for years and they live married for up to fourteen or fifteen years like Geese and Swans and Wolves by mate for life and no like some humans and as I have written before while looking for a dog to adopt I found an abandoned human being and child of God forsaken on the mean streets of California, when one is homless in paradise. 

Another friend or aquainatace I had was Greg and please excuse the photo for he would not let me take is picture without giving his his fingers and not even with a picture of his mom, he told me once and his mom was a decent hard working person and single mom to two sons from two different husbands and worked at the Army Corps of Engineers  in Sausalito, at the famous Bay Model of San Francisco and was quite the story teller, but the one I listened to first was how he said he was cook Meth in the mountains of Santa Cruz California in his biker days before he lost his divers license over a drunk driving ticket and never drove again, because it was to bard to make DUI classes and pay for them at the same time. He said that in his San Jose and and Santa Cruz mountain  experiences chopping Harleys and cooking meth some killers shot him multiple times and killed his wife and he survived and showed me, what looked like multiple gun shot wounds and he said that he had tracked down two of the killers and killed them and only one left of his his hitlist and it's hard not to believe what he said with the scars on his body for my dad had scars also fro. the Winter Wars, when Russia invaded little Finland and he defected to the West, with the rank of an officer and the reasons that I am writing about Gregg is because he was such a part of the waterfront of Sausalito and an Anchorout also and part of the history of the waterfront and San Francisco Bay. He told me he was raised or lived in Newark New Jersey and during the face riots in the Sixties he used to climb over tanks to get too groceries for his his mother no doubt. But beacause he got in trouble occasionally with the law or drugs he was sent by his mother to Synonon,  a  drug rehabilitation colony in West Marin County in California to get straightened out and he said that he was beaten by fellow drug rebates who were running the place known mainly as a Heroin or other hardcore drug addicts and not that I have ever thought of him or that he was an heroin addict and yes he was a lover of meth, when I knew him late but he always seemed to keep it under control and never saw him acting like he was a meth head of something but always seemed focused on something like getting even or revenge for  something a lot of the time but was a great animal lover in fact his name was called the "Animal" and he especially liked my first dog Caji and my second dog Diamond and claims to have taught it to bark out loud when first arriving in Sausalito for the doggie was so culture shocked that she was very shy and bewildered and silent on fire arrival to the best of my memory and anyway she has become the most barking little dog on the waterfront of Sausalito and anyway I remember when things were going really downhill for the the "Animal", for had gotten a job as a bouncer and cleanup man at a local yacht club and lived there also in the basement of the floating yacht club on  barge. He practiced shooting his bow and arrow there  weight lifting and martial arts type weapons ? Anyway he was quite happy for a long time and even  bought a houseboat barge and eventually moved everyhing he owned onto the delta style houseboat, after he lost his job of which made him very bitter, but was handling it alright and being happy on his houseboat anchored on the bay and  rent free and was proud to show me his little treasures like laughing little toy and furry creatures and when a terrible storm came from the south his floating home sank and he believed that another boat drug anchor and hit his boat and I saw the tug that drug past my boat and off into the dark and I called the Coast Guard and but they could not find the boat in the dark, wind and rain in the might and was in waters to shallow for rescuing on the night and went up on the beach at Blackies Pasture with no one on boat and damaged its rudder and the steel tug finnaly went down off Ocean Beach, off San Francisco with its Skipper,  my anchored neighbor and went down with his ship after a wave slammed him against his boat and hit his head and his first mate began swimming for his life towards shore and a para surfer flew out to  rescue him. Greg was very upset about his houseboat sinking and had bitter feelings about the Mariner that went down, with his ship in that late rincident, but I didn't think the tug sank his home for I saw it pass his boat, that he was not on that night also. Every five years a monster storm hits the bay with sixty mile per hour or more sustained winds and over a hundred mile plus gusts. My neighbor who lost his life lived lived on one of John Waynes boat a modified WW11 subchaser, like the one he had also in Southern California. The boat was destroyed by Bill Price the harbor administer for the Richardson Bay Regional Agency, after its Skipper, when down with his working tugboat, while trying to retrieve his working powerboat that broke lose and went out of the bay and as afore mentioned lost his life in it's rescue attempt, off Ocean Beach and in spite of its historical value and he also destroyed the Western writers Zane Gray's yacht that was converted into a fishing boat and then a livaboard anchored boat, that broke lose in a storm also, even though it had wood beatles, it could have been saved. The problem has been that perfectly good boats have been and are still being crushed instead of giving them too Mariners living on the bay in exchange fort thier battered  and wornout boats in exchange for a decent boat to live and work on, plus it's bad for theover all environment destroying good boats that will be taken good care of in exchange for boats that will be crushed anyway so two boats are eventually lost ...to be continued 

Thirty Years on a Hook by Peter Romanowsky a work in progress in daily chapters and being written during virus shut in...Chapter Twenty Two ....latest chapter in progress called the most wronged women on earth meets the most wronged man on earth Lol !

       Life wasn't easy living with a women that has been homeless and living outdoors for at least ten to maybe even twenty years from what I could understand from her, for she could barely even really talk,  for she had been out in the bush so long that she appeared too becone ferro or had a stroke or onset dementia and as I have said before she could bearly complete a sentance   no less a whole paragraph and I could only get bits and pieces of information from her, like how many years has she been homeless and in the brush and she couldn't answer, like she had amnesia and so I figured at least ten years even though she looked like twenty years and in the bush and if so or even near, beteeen ten or twenty years then she would be in my opinion, the most wronged women in the World or Universe, for that matter. We would clash together now and then  but never on the boat, where she lay in her forward bunk and watch police lights on and no doubt so glad to be safe and sound, on a boat. One of the worse fights I got into or the first was that after a year or so I just didn't want her on the boat and she was acting up or so and at the time I forgot which episode, but she would sleep all night on a bench near the digny dock and I had to eventually, take her back and like I say, I forgot which episode and the first major episode I remember was taking her to the welfare office to get her some help and they wanted her to talk to a psychiatrist and she bust out of the room and called him a rapist and stormed out and well theRAPIST was the word, so to speak and we it pisted me off but that was that no welfare check or Social Security for you mine friend so to speak and on another incident I took her to get good stamps and she sabataged that also by te the lady at the counter that I has asked to see her breats and can you imagine what for he is a Minister and that was it, she had gone to far, sure I asked her once,ike a doctor and after we have been living together for a long time and I have never seen her naked and she was slim and trim, back then from being homeless for so long and had larhe breasts and that's what a prude she was and self proclaimed Nun and I was her Priest. I let my self proclaimed Nun know that I became a nudist,  some time after my divorce and  I was tempted to hate women and one day or night I opened a Playboy Magazine that someone discarted while recycling out of a yacht harbor dumpster of which I usually avoid being so unreal and tjier airbrushed off tatoos and all, but yet how beautiful women are and how they they so hard they try to be as beautiful as men who doesn't have to wear makeup,  like a Peacock. But still the softness and pettiness and generally smaller stature of a women is attractive, even without makeup and shaved leg for in nature they have to be able to hid and not noticed and while the males like deer are magnificent and out thier guarding the smaller and plainer looking doe and yet the doe is so soft and tender and beautiful in it's own way. So where the painted ladies in the magazines still do beautiful in thier own way and  beyound the makeup and cosmetic surgery. So my feelings of hatered towards women started fading away and then while watching the 700 Club on television and the former Miss America co host was on location in Dan Francisco and as excited as ever and she talked about how beautiful San Francisco was still back then the late eighties of course and then she pointed to the Marin County Headlands on the other side of the bridge and in an Innocent voice said that there was a nude beach over there and in my backyard so to speak from Sausalito and I have never heard of it since living in the County since 1964 and save one year back in Los Angeles. So I rode my bike back to the area she pointed and eventually found the beach and never really gone or been too a clothing optional beach and a I descended down a long steep trail to the vast and hidden beach below of which cant be seen from up above and what wonder for it was called Black Sand Beach or Fishermen's Cove. I remember first seeing a nudist,  who was slightly middle aged looking women, walking by and smiling and slightly nervously saying that we are all just family or something and noticing how overweight she was but still nice looking at a human being and it was my first encounter since my temptation to hate or look down on American women as preditors. Other things I noticed on the beach was how flawed some women were physically in that they showed streach marks from birthing and varicose vains and cottage cheese thighs as well as obesity and the men's faults were more like pot bellies and obesity but very little if not all the problems that women have concerning thier skin problems because women have an extra layer of fat for softness and that softness and extra layer is very fragile and streaches when overweight and wrinkles into streach marks,  that have nothing to do with pregnancy and the bottom line is this extra layer of skin is very fragile and obesity is the number one enemy of a womens beautiful and tender layer of skin and like I said men didn't seem to have these problem and  just obesity and baldness, from a visible and cultural point view of beauty and maybe all men should grow thier God given beards to compensates for thier baldness. The beach itself is fabulously beautiful from a visual point of view, the sand was bark and beautiful from coming from Marin County's official rock called Serpentine and comes in green and red and looks like Jade or Jadite and also the beach is  sparsely peppered with the a semiprecious orange looking and  semi translucent stone called Carnilien and if one is patient collect or make into jewelry. On the right side of this dramatic beach, located at the entrance of the Golden Gate Bridge area,  of which is at least a half a mile long is an extinct volcano opening with a high sphere of magma that one can climb up and at its base the opening of the extinct volcano opening was a pool of water so big that one can jump into or cannonball. The biggest tidepools that I have ever seen. On the left side of the beach the Gay homosexuel men gatherd together and on  the right end of beach is where the straight people and  Lesbian women hung out  rather then sunbathing with the Gay men. I saw things still hard to explain like the Lesbian Gay women with thier tatoos and body piercings in very uncomfortable places. Pale white were many of the people on the beach from working in offices from San Francisco across the way oinfull view and I virtually didn't recognize anyone from the Marin County side due to most people in Marin dont know where the beach is because so remote and well visible from the San Francisco side and I noticed that people drank a lot of bottled water  wherein, I always drank beer or fortified ales. Around this time I met a girl or young looking women or lady in sausalito  from San Francisco in what's called the Tenderlion or the Gay part of town and eventually she took me to her favorite dancebars one called the Cafe'and the other in the vicinity that was called the Badlands and I enjoyed them both, dancing to the music videos surrounding the dance floors and I saw nothing unusual it was a lot of fun but one thing struck me was why were virtually all the music videos of hot looking women and not men except for and example Houlio Englasis and I thought this was a mainly Gay male bar? No Chip and Dale's  music videos just gorgeous women videos and makes one wonder what is really going on here in this district?! The area around used to be called "Finn Town" where the Finnish sailors and tradesmen lived and with thier famous Saunas and bathhouses, which was eventually come to be known as the "Gay District" and after the Finns moved out and left thier bathhouses. My new found friend was being evicted by two Gay men who bought the property and had first right to live or move into her top floor apartment with a penthouse view. This is the same niegborhhhod that my Great Grand Uncle lived in as a Missionary who eventually became my Great Grand father after the untimely death of his brother from a broken heart, I was told after my Great Granmother died at childbirth these my genetic Great Grandparents both gone and my Grandmother who survived was raised by my Great Granduncle and wife named his name Matti Tarkkanen my now late Granfather in whose shoes I walk in today. Meanwhile I helped my new found female friend move  onto a boat I found for her in a Marina in Sausalito a Cal 20 sailboat....to be continued 

 

Thirty Years on a Hook a story and a history of San Francisco Bay and the Sausalito Waterfront and Anchorage History beginning in 1964 Chapter Twenty One the story of Homeless Mary Continued.

        The next couple of years or so Homeless Mary and I shared my boat and after I cleared out the forward bunkroom she settled down in her bunk and was as quite as a mouse, one wouldn't even know she was on board, if they visited for instance which rarely if ever happened and if so of course, she would have come out to visit. I just dont remember  if it ever happened, because we lived like Hermits and of course came to shore for supplies and do my waterfront salvaging and recycling occupation, while Mary would panhandle and salvage also, from next to the Goodwill box at Mollie Stones Market parking lot and clothes, that were very expensive, left outside she grabbed and dressed. One day on the boat I thought I heard her say to cut off her one big dreadlock and I began to do it and to her shock, she just asked for a trim and I accidentally cut it off. She after her initial shock, began to put it back on her head and for the next couple of years or more, she wore it under a headscarf. I no scarf, she would use anything at hand, like a shirt wrapped up like a turbin and never brought up the subject of cutting off her hair again and so one day at I think it was  the Sausalito Friday nite Church dinner, at the Old First Baptist Church in Sausalito, so.eone asked was she had under her turbin and I said show him what's under your turbin and she did and pulled out her severed dreadlock and it looked like a rats nest and I couldn't help but laugh in my heart, by the look on his face. So Mary walked back and forth on the waterfront panhandling and salvaging anything she could find abandoned or laying on the ground and changed her clothes regularly from Goodwill Box donations, left outside by expensive and rich Sausalito Marinites and was the best, of most luxurious dresser on the waterfront. But she would throw away expensiver clothes in the trash after a day or two of wearing them for it was part of her illness. So life goes on with us two divorced and abandoned people by forces greater then even ones spouses and we struggled together with sex and living like Nun and Priest and waiting for this title wave of life to pass over us and in the midst of the chaos and condition God gave me the dog that I was dreaming about, when I found homeless Mary begging in front of the grocery store here in Sausalito, when looking for a dog to adopt and in my heart I said this poor homeless women and abandoned mother was and is more important then a dog and I adopted her for two and half years and nursed her back to reasonable physical and mental as well as emotional health and in the midst of a this God gave me the dog of my dreams as a reward for taking in  one of His children, before taking in a dog and I was rewarded beyond measure with the first dog of my own in my life a wired hair miniature doxie with a mustache and beard as we began preforming and ministering on the Sausalito waterfront making more money in tips and donations then I have ever seen  doing back breaking work on the waterfront and anchorage since 1984 and we made and raised thousands of dollars and more then I was ever given from my divorce form the richest family in the second riches county in America and my father in law was the County Supervisor and knew the judges personally that officiated my unwanted divorce and we made a d raised thousands together, after adopting first a human  being, over a dog and Mary helped take care of my dog also together us three took on the world for Jesus and winning and losing battles, but not losing the war...to be continued 

Thirty Years on a Hook Chapter Twenty a story about life on San Francisco Bay and the Sausalito waterfront and Anchorage a rough and unedited book in progress.

      After I took homeless Mary from a smaller sailboat sidetited to mine to avoid out boats from being smashed together in as storm, I had no place to but her in my thirty foot Marineply wooden sailboat I had to put her in bed with me for lack of spacge or room and only one narrow bunk and there we were going through storms on an anchor or two and never took her clothes off she was so modest and in fact, she would wear up to three layers of clothes and I never saw he naked or touched her of took advantage of her, for she was suffering from some sort of eary onset dementia and never used drugs or alcohol and been a vegetarian since some eighteen years old, from what see told me and I never saw her eat meat. I asked her where she was from originally, before she became homeless. She said South Boston (a tough Irish District) and she said that she has a twin sister but not identical and said her sister took her furnature from her apartment and  caused her to be driven from her home, or something of that nature, for she could barely talk for she was so ferro from being homeless for so long sleeping in the wild and on Beaches such as Bolinas, on the coast. She couldn't speak in paragraphs, but only short and broken sentances. She was some ten years younger then me, but looked older from being exposed to the elements and homeless for so many years. It took forever to get any straight information from her like what exactly happened a about her husband divorcing her and taking her children  and abandoning her on some beach in Hawaii ultimately, from what she said and kept saying that she was th he Queen of Hawaii and wanted to go back and still does decades later to this day when I visit her and wants to go back to her Paradise in Kauai, on the clear Honelli river she lived next too and with her four wheel Jeep and house and er children in her mind a paradise lost to divorce and early onset dementia that obviously her husband couldn't handle and dumped her for another women, marriage and children. It took forever to get any solid information from her, I her broken sentances. she know her Sovial Security number and the names of her children and her exhusbands name, which she still believes, that she is married too and I watched as her face slowly begin to heal from the cheek size scab on her face and the her broken and blistered lips began to heal, one at a time over a year period, I didn't believe that she had Aids or Syphilis, like she first told me, apparently she said that to people while panhandling and or begging in her desperation and survival mode otherwise she was not prone to lie, but had a fantastic imagination ad a means of escape, from the harshness, of this physical world and after I attained her children's name after a year of her healing and being out from the elements, on my boat. I looked for them on the internet and I found a daughter in some University dorm and I called the Dorm Mother with the good news that I found your mom and Mary was standing next to me at the Library phone and grabbed it and started yelling and screaming at the Dotm Mother and accusing her of kidnapping her child or children and I. gog the phone back from her and apologized for her dementia inspired turret syndrome on attacking her and I was  given a message from her daughter of whom I was not able to talk through, because of the emotional outburst of her mother and was given a phone number of her eldest son and found some relief in that, until I called the number and the answering machine said I will kill your children and burn your house down and he was working for the police department somewhere in the Detroit area, if I recall and worked for or in the computer science lab, or something for a police department and I was shocked and left a message that I found your long lost homless mother and when he eventually got back to me and he said what can I do with the problem, throw money at the problem of his mother and I said that all she needs or appreciate small things like food and tea and practical things like that. So he sent a care package of all sorts of little goodies including tea, which she loved so much. Eventually he called back and said that that he was coming to San Francisco on business and would meet us at the Restaurant a d tragically again while waiting for the great reunion her son was in a traffic accident with the one that picke him up from the airport in presumed and got the call, that he wasn't coming due to the accident on that chilly day, he wasnt hurt to the best of my knowledge,  but no doubt eally shook up, so back to square one trying to bring on a family reunion and you could not makeup such a tragic tale. So we went on together as brother and sister living together on my relatively small boat for I had eventually cleaned out the forward bunkroom of my boat which I used for storage sometime early I the first year she was onmy boat and we both shared a bunk, but early on I found out that she snored like a sailor or like someone that has t had a good sleep, in countless years, for when I met her I asked where she slept at night and she said in porta pottie outhouses and I said how could you deal with the smell and she said that she used construction  site outhouses, for they were cleaner obviously and she slept sitting up all night..to be continued 

 

Thirty Years on a Hook on San Francisco Bay Chapter Nineteen by Peter Romanowsky a tough and unedited draft of a future best seller and looking for a non profit publisher, all profits going to the New Covenant Evangelistic Association Inc. www.paypay.me.peterromanowsky

    When I first arrived on the waterfront full time, with no home to go back to in 1984. I was thrown into another world, a world I once lived in, so long before, that I had virtually forgotten, how what life was on the waterfront full time. All the protection and all the home to go to at night was gone. I lived on my leaky boat cold boat called Day Star a thirty foot marine plywood sailboat and I finally managed to create some heat by propane burners for cooking also and eventually worked my way up to a marine fireplace on my boat. It was a long haul  my life being reduced to thirty feet of boat. Alone on an anchor without even a pet. I began to identify with any creature that was alive on my boat and I started bonding with the flies and spiders my only company inside my boat. I have a deal with the spiders that if they left me alone, that I wouldn't crush them, for I had heard for example that if you crush a wasp or a bee, a signal will be sent out by thier crushed bodies into the air and then all the other bees, will attack you. So I figured the same for spiders and I have never been bite on my boat, since 1984. Flies die themselves in three days, unless they come in waves. Besides the spiders help keep the flies down, to a minimum. I do believe that I might have seen Brown recluse spiders with the violin on thier backs saying you'll be sorry to mess with me, they will be playing volines over you,  so to speak. Finnaly I got a cat and that is when I had my first pet on my boat, I was starving for companionship and I was quote a story, what I went through and the changes. First all it was a kitten and and sleep curled up on my head for warmth, because a cats body temperature, is slightly higher then ours, the same with dogs, so they get colder easier and curled on my head, kept us both warm. The hardest part was leaving the kitten on board and looking through a pothole and crying to come with me and not to be left alone. Little did I know, how bad it was to have a single cat on board, without a companion. It still breaks my heart, to thing of all the times, she was alone and frightened. Finally one stormy day or might, she fell off my boat was so lonely, for I had a  emergency a family emergency in  Los Angeles  and had to leave in a hurry and left enough food and water out, until  I returned and a dark storm came and frightened my cat and was found b, Ted Stewart and friends on the draybocks in the middle of the bay, drowned. Of course it was heartbreaking as well as the family emergency. So I tried again after someone gave me a female cat off a large boat anchored offshore on the bay. Th he cat had gone ferrou, living o  such a large wooden boat, that looked like a decommissioned fishing trawler moored where the Vendura sailing yacht is moored now. The boat was so big that the cat got lost somewhere in it and someone from the boat gave me the cat and it turned out to be totally wild, I was told later by same person that gave me that cat, that it ate its young. Apparently they gave me the wildest or didn't want more kittens to be eaten. I finally had to get a gunnie sack and look for my wild and ferrou cat on my boat now, hiding and never seeing her, holed up way in the bow of my boat and only came out at nite, for food and water. Finally I miraculously caught the cat as it came out to eat and I grabbed her and had to wrestle with her to get her into the sack fighting and clawing all the way and I took her to shore and released her into the wild  because she was already ferro, from living on a hugh and semi abandoned, or lived aboard boat. That was it no more cats on my boat for pets, yes j had to of them, to keep each other company, for short times. So I started thinking and dreaming and praying  of getting a dog, that I could take with me to shore and I never had one of my own. So one day in front of Mollie Stones Market Iin Sausalito, I saw and Irish looking homeless women begging or panhandling in front of the Market and her face had a huge scab on her cheek that first glance looked ljke the worse case of Herpes that I have ever seen and both her lips also. She told me a story how her husband abandoned her in Hawaii where she lived on the isIand of Kaui and how shewas abandoned and he was a constructionworker, who began sellng drugs and gave Aids and Syphllous and other diseases and I gave her my hat to protect her from skin cancer and bought her a liter of Coke and I couldn't help but notice that her Irish red hair was one big dreadnought the likes I have never virtually seen looked like she had been homeless for decades or at lest ten years, so I went on my way and still thinking about adopting a dog and then i saw her walking down the street holding her head like she was the most miserable person onearth and then I had to do something! I told her I had a spare sailboat and would she like to stay on it anchored out and sidetided next to my main boat and only smaller then my thirty foot sailboat. I the winter I had to move her on my main boat because of the crashing waves and reanchor my smaller boat at a safe distance, otherwise our boats would be crashing together. 

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

My inlaws owned largest building in Sausalito and built the largest apartment complex in town partnering with on of the Kingston Trio folk rock band. They also owned the largest office building in Sausalito on 3030 Bridgeway Boulevard and his office was in a huge walkin safe and all that was missing was bags of money  like Scrooge McDuck,  laugh out loud! They also owned an historic Post Office Building in Mill Valley next door to Sausalito and also owned or co owned  the Historic Court House in San Rafael in the heart of Marin County and the underwater land behind the Yellow Ferry off Waldo Point and the entire block across froafroael m City Hall Sausalito and developed it into an luxurious office block and the also owned the old train station in heart of San Rafael and a Mink Farm in Novato north of San  Rafael and helped develope the downtown area. They also owned a luxurious beach house in Dillion Beach on  the coast of Marin County and a small farm and house and landing pier on Braford Island in the Sacramento delta and of course owned our two story and two unit Edwardian style house, with a two room. guest house  in the heart of Marin in San Anselmo, which had a bird house in front yard garden, big enough to turn into cabin and redwoods and paved walkways and a perennial stream and an abandoned fishpond and tulips and fruit trees and an apple tree in the middle of the garden, that made it look, like the garden of Eden and a two car garage plus a hillside view from top floor and thier own hillside estate in San Anselmo with more toilets of bathrooms then I can remember and the biggest basement, then I have ever seen and of course they owned Tahoe Ski Bowel in Homewood on lake Tahoe and the famous bar on a pier and a seven bedroom house near the in Homewood and the Chambers Lodge property so big that it's on the map of California.and a smal shopping center in North Shore and of course they didn'town, all these properties at once and my wife was part owner of the ski bowel and I cared for none of these things, but called of God to be a preacher and evangelist and a pastor and used our home to take in the homeless and not to forget to mention that they owned a fifty five foot Garden Ketch yacht in Sausalito, just to show the economic and financial disparity between myself a called of God preacher and my inlaws.