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 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. 

Thirty Years on a Hook Chapter Seventeen Missionary ancestors on San Francisco Bay since 1990

 I am so proud of my Missionary heritage and work by  and doing the same work today as my Great Grand Uncle/Father did in San Francisco, Sausalito and Bay Area As a young missionary to the Finnish sailors and other sailors and he had the Lutheran Church financing him and I have been financing myself as a missionary too Sausalito, write too the New Covenant Evangelistic Association Inc. P.O. Box 2404 San Anselmo  Ca. 94979, for tax exempt support to keep the missionary work going  that my Great Uncle/Father who sat were I sit in1990 and ministering to the waterfront people and  anchorouts and sailors  like I do today, is a family tradition and while he waiting For the Ferryboat too San Francisco like I do today talking to sailors and waterfront people and anchorouts like I do todaand then he  founded the Finnish Seamens Mission in San Francisco, serving the whole San Francisco Bay Area and it's most famous Anchorage in Sausalito and his Mission developed into Gethsemene Lutheran Church and then merged with a Danish Lutheran Church and is now called Saint Francis Church on Church Street off of Van Ness Boulevard in the now called  Tenderlion District of which used to be called Finn Town for all the Finnish people that lived there and  eventually became known as the Gay District,  after  all of the Gays that  moved into the Community of Saunas and Bath Houses that the Finniah left of which were closed down by the Health Director after the Aids epidemic outbreak which started there. I ironically I married a prominant Sea Sea Captain's daughter and Marin County Supervisor and Chairmen of the Vallejo Maritime Acadamy in California and was Sienot member of the then called the  State Harbors and Navigation Board and appointed first by Governor Pat Brown and the reappointed by Governor Ronald Reagan and failed to get reappointed by Governor Jerry Browm in spite of the fact that his father former Governor Pat Brown wrote a letter to him asking that he be reappointed and saying, that he was the best appointment he ever made. He also had General Eisenhower Supreme Head of the Allies at his Captains Table on his ship in the Mediteranian and also General Patton and said the Eisenhower was a quite and gentile man and Patton was as usual, himself in so many words. He s

also said that a bomb hit his ship while in the mediteranian and that he had to pull his gun out and threatened to shoot anyone trying to abandone ship and get into a lifeboat, on another occation while he was Merchent Marine Captian of apparently a Libery Ship, possiblyvbuilt in Sausalito ?! He said that he rescued two thousand Canadian troops in the Mediterranean after thier ship was hit by a German bomb and was awarded the Silver Cross for his rescue, but said that in the confustion of the war, that he never recieved the metal.mental. My missionary ancestor recieved a metal from the Czar of Russian, when Finland was sf till under Russian control or part of Russia, for his worldwide missionary activities, as head of Finlands Missionary Society. I talked to the last in the of the Czars, who lives in Marin County, Prince Andrew Romanov and shared that with him and his son is named Prince Peter Romanov. Going back to my late Father in law he owned more property on land and even on the water here in Sausalito then one could imagine. House in rental house in Santa Rosa California, the first house he ever built, in Albany iin East Bay, where my wife was born and  cofounded the the Locaters real estate business in Richmond also in East Bay and went into partnership with State Senator William Bagley into buying apparently all the land behind the Rod and Gun Club in Marin County and parceled it out and made a fortune and bought at beautiful and scenic dairy ranch in Bolins, which is now part of of the Golden Gate National Seashore Recreation Area and the Victorian looking small two story white boarded up ranch house is now being used officially as a bat sanctuary or declared to be and my future wife attended a one rom school house in Bolinas and is still there. She told me a story how a bully took everyones straws and drank through them and it reminded me of my late father in law might have have have been as a child when she told me this story I laughed out loud in my heart and when his former ranch, house becoming a bat sanctuary it was hilarious in my mind and  just imagining all the bat poop that went down in the attic and or upstairs and his cowpond became a local clothing optional swimming hole.Then with the compensation fro. the Federal Goverment, for his land, he apparently used it to buy the S Bar S Ranch and also known, as the Lost Spring Ranch in Lake County California near Kelseyville and that ranch had an historical Stagecouch Inn on it saa nd being used by a Rancher tenant named Babe and meet him in Church one day in the area and  somewhere along the way I heard, or it sounded like he got a raw deal along the way and had to move on, and I know the feeling especially after my divorce and all. The ranch was around twelve hundred acres and one of the most beautiful, in California and situated next to an extinct volcano in a valley that reminded me of a dramatic  movie setting and he even had an Atari looking four wheel drive on the ranch that either he owned to drive around or his Rancher, who lived in the stagecoach Inn. There were a number of Native American historical site on a survey map of the ranch and all I could find, were the tailings of flint mining activities, on the surface of the places I looked. There were boulders of flint, Beverlseen so much, in my life and apparently they transported traded or sold it all over the area, if not all over Northern California. Meanwhile at the ranch was also an older period ranch house with a heated swimming pool and Cabanas with showers for guests and he used it as a getaway and as a duck and deer hunting lodge and bringing all his friends, connections in business , politics and judges no doubt and even his car mechanic, every year totaling some thirty people for hunting parties. He even brought former Governor Pat Browns secretary once and some and a family of guests,  were swimming naked in one of the ponds or in the pool and he sent out an agitated letter to family and friends,  that no nudity allowed I public on his ranch or out in the open and Interesting enough that his forme ranch has a public swimming hole on it, that is clothing optional funny Karma. 

Thirty Years on a Hook on San Francisco Bay by Peter Romanowsky Chapter Sixteen King of Recycling and Salvaging on the Waterfront of Sausalito.

The amount of toxins and paints and used thinners and even used oil for outboard engine gas mix in a tire spot and the good oils I found for my van and or car, when I had one, was amazing and topside oil paints and bottom paints I found them all. Gasoline also in outboard motor tanks. Flares and all kinds of such hazardous stuff, like flareguns and flaregun amo, including parachute flares and hand held rocket flares all in dumpsters and hazardous waste and image gun one, children getting a hold on some of this stuff and also found a lot of discartered medicines and one time I found a trashbag full of used hypodermic needles from a clinic and a student doctor I was told later illegally discarted the contaminated waste, because so expensive to dispose of properly I sermize, or that he pocketed the money, anyway it took two thousand dollars  to have the needle at the bottom of the trashbag, after the fire department came down and inspected and the harbor master/owner had to foot the bill and I hope that he collected from the yacht harbor tenant. Another time I found a grocery bag stuffed with what looked like fresh cut Marijuanna and I took it to Chris Hardmen and neighbor on mine when I was in a slip and a member of Galilee Harbor, yo ask him if this was weed and we both looked and figured that is so and meanwhile apparently we were doing or I was being followed to the Harbor, by what looked like two, suspicious looking guys, in the dark when heading into the  harbor and miraculously a friend popped up out of the dark and stroll with me and I asked him if I was being followed and he turned around and said something like "yes", then I went to Crisis' tugboat covered to a houseboat and whe  I came back out to the front of the Harbor parking lot. There was no one there for I had gone back to the dumpster to see if or how much I accidentally spilled in the dumpster,  when I broke open the shopping bag and that's when I felt that I was followed back and that I may have interfrered with a drug drop off and I was a little shook up and so I took the pot, to the police station and showed it to a cop and asked him if this was Marijuanna and he looked and said yes and I asked him what he was going to do with it and he said that he was gonna burn it and now mind you, I hadn't used Marijuana but a few sample times since I was Birn Again, I  1968 in front of the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, while Katheryn Kuhlmen was conducting a Miracle Service I  side and could only hear the singing and preaching from outside. Because the Fire Department used the e trance down because the Auditorium, had reached its maximum capacity af around seven thousand people. So I at first could not recognize that it was pot at first or just cutting from weeds and I asked the policemen to have it published in the papers that I had turned it in, so whoever followed me, unless it was only in my mind, would read it and try not to find me. The Independant Journel, Marin Countys mayor newspaper and the only one,holding a monopoly, said that it was worth $10,000.00 dollars an obviously ridicules amount, uses there were buds of course,  packed at the bottom of the bag?!. ,

Thirty Years on a Hook on San Francisco Bay by Peter Roanowsky Chapter Fiveteen Dumpster Diving

Meanwhile back In Sausalito struggling to survive with my bare hands most of the time fighting through dumpsters and most of the time with my bare hands and when possible my trick was to cut off the top of a large nail and drive it backwards into something like a broom after bending it into a hook, so I could hook the bag plastic trash bags in the rich Marina dumpsters to feel how much the bag weighed and judge its contents before ripping it open. For instance I could tell if it has a lot of cans and bottles by shaking the bag and or if it had anything heavey like discarted canned food or marine hardware, discarted crusing yacht canned food was always a good find. When a yacht is being sold the previous owner will clean out thier yachts of storage food and marine stuff that has accumulated and thrown into a dumpster and one can find virtually anything discarded in general like watches, jewelry, accident discarted items, etc. The best watch I ever had at the time was found in a dumpster. Sometimes when someone dies they throw away all the diseased persons stuff away that someone in the family or friend throws away as clutter and much valuableand usable and practical things, can be found, from household items to things of value, on the waterfront, such as clothes, tools, hardware and seeming personal momentos, etc. Might even find a trophy or an award given, like I once found a Zippo lighter given as some kind momento or award too, or from or concerning somekind Maritine Admiral award ceremony and I gave it to our local street chief, whom we call the Admiral and he treasures it to this day and shows everyone he can that that Peter Romanowsky gave me this lighter, out of a dumpster and I had it reconditioned and he Carrys it to this day, as a practical thing to have, fire with you a the time. Another time or two I found fantastic womens laugerie that I could never afford to buy for my wife while married and I figured things like the left overs from one of the rich yachts in the Marina or someone's wife or girlfriend is coming around and ditching the evidence and all was clean and nice, because virtually nobody throws dirty old clothes away, but  are virtually always washed and even folded and much clothes, as we are marine hardware,  goods and household items are left next to dumpsters, and free for the taking. Another thing I found a lot were discarted Playboy magazines and other sex magazines and I avoided them, even though very valuable as trading items and one waterfront friend offered to buy all that I found and I declined, even though I would find sometimes, cardboard boxes full of them and I  was a poor as the proverbial Church Mouse, for I could not sell, my morals. I the beginning the late eighties when the Republicans where in power the dumpsters were rich and overflowing with items from televisions, video tape decks, radios, marine ship to shore radios, etc. When the Democrates got into power everything went downhill, people weren't confident anymore and held on t ok things more and even worse they took away a tax exempt for maintaintaing for improving or maintaining thier boats, even though they are taxed just like a houseboat in some instances or have to pay property tax because of  being tied up to a dock and the county taxes all boats in slips and us anchorouts are tax free.Thee bottom line is this, the bottom of the job market fell in, for all the maritime workers, mechanics, boat brights, riggers and labourers in general for virtually all non essential work on boats, stopped and not to forget to mention again, the free stuff and recyclables, were virtually, cut in half or greatly diminished. In the wintertime in the non tourist season especially aluminum cans were hard to find and glass beer bottles were the few and only things one can find and a whole gunny snack of glass bottles, if you could reasonably fill it, brought only four or five bucks and maybe six, after checking out seventy  marine dumpsters, in a day....to be continued

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. 

Thirty Years on a Hook on San Francisco chapter thirteen arriving back in Sausalito

Once back in sausalito the trials begin for instance I traded a switchblade knife I bought in Israel and flew it back to the states on me without hassle in my backpack which I bought in Jerusalem, for an old used outboard motor and two cop cars stopped me walking down  the street and looked for serial numbers thinking that it might be hot, never seeing me on the streets before and this was just the beginning of my  experiencing in poverty and the cops in Sausalito were out of control at the time, rumors of beatings and harassments and such. But my experiences with the cops were just beginning for I was used to be living in the nicest house on the block in San Anselmo and not used to be walking around, without a car. and remember someone saying to me fuck you asshole and I wasn't accustomed to being addressed that way and the culture shock was just beginning. There was no digny dock to tie up near where my boat was anchored,, so I had to land on the rocky beach at Dunphy Park and drag my skiff over sharp rocks at low tide and slowly tearing of the bottom for again there was no place to tie up except Galee Harbor pier, but they charged fifty dollars a month and I was broke and jobless and my reputation as a minister was shot even though it was a no fault divorce and our joint income was the highest that year in sixteen years and never been accused of harming my children or my wife and the police have never had to come to our home for any domestic disturbances and in general, I was a destroyed ma , living by the tips of my fingernails and there were none of my old friends to help me or could even find me and I had no phone, no cell phones in those days and in utter and total statements I was like  ship on the sea with broken mast and rudder. I remember a former on and off heroin user I met on the water  and homeless walking down the street with his arm in a sling saying some guy best him up for his money and the police, doing nothing. He took me under his wing or sorts to help me survive and bought me food and cigarettes for I begin to start smoking again and a long period after my divorce and I felt so grateful that someone mas out the to help me for he had social security or welfare and at least had some source of income and I took him in and let him sleep on my boat occasionally but eventually he began barking like a seal one night and mimicking the seals that my boat was anchored next to the docks where they hauled out and had to ask him to leave, because I could sleep, between the barking seals and him. But we stayed friends, when I first begin to let him stat on the boat he was going through withdrawal on heroin and asked me if he could die from withdrawal and Ki told him that I didn't think so. Meanwhile I was walking back and forth on the waterfront looking for anything that I could salvage or eat out of dumpsters and J remember the obviously mentally disturbed on and off drug user and mostly on including Marijuanna of which I was delivered from in October in 1968 and virtually never touched it but once or twice and had no desire to use it again and needing all my wits to climb, out of this proverbial  bottomless pit that I was thrown thrown into and then I remembered how Satan walked back and forth throughout the earth and came to God's throne in the Book of Job after walking back and forth and how God told him something like have you noticed Job the most righteous person on earth and Satan said or implied that Job loved him because God put a hedge of protection and property around him and but if He took it away, that he would curse God to face and God said go and take all his prosperity family and health from him to the point of death and even then, he would not curse God even though even his own wife said or implied Job to curse God and die, or kill yourself by implication. So I took heart and encouraged myself to walk back and forth on the waterfront collecting and recycling out of dumpsters saying in my heart that if Satan could approach Gods throne by walking back and forth, then I would do it also....to be continued

Thirty years on a Hook on San Francisco Bay chapter eleven crossing the stream or river in Soledad Canyon

Driving through the stream that separates my parents original eighty acres in Soldad Canyon on Huges Canyon Road where my parents lived across from the Shambala Nature Preserve of big cats and a couple of elephants that could be very dangerous for they where used in movies to overturn cars and such and retired movie lions and tigers and Panthers and cougers and such we settle on my parents property, which ended up being only forty acres because a nasty judge wanted access to his property over my parents and was forced to sell him the other forty and if true, may God punish his soul if not already, being decares ago. We recouped and mother did our laundry and washed my Indian Jones looking hat and destroyed the petite, or was it a Humpry Bogard looking hat ?! Well we ate and rested and across Soldad Canyon Road on the hill it was rumored that a famous comedian had some property and allegedly the MGM lion was kept somewhere in the vicinity and wild moutain lions lived in the area for it was one of the only waterfront properties my parents had in all Los Angeles County for a stream ran all year aroind and not had to drive through it, to get to my parents property and in the winter when flooding there was another access road and a nearly complete access road behind d Huges Canyon and we were at the outer most limits of Los Angeles County. My mother while visiting Tibi Hedron said she a cougar in her giving room and like I said the elephants were potentially dangerous and the handler couldn't drink alcohol, because the elephants hated the smell of something or had a drunk handler in the past ?! Oh the comedian that supposedly had property across the road was Steve Martin?! Also a Science Fiction movie was made there in the Canyon at the local mom and pop style store and it was renamed the Starlight cant remember the movie, but it will come back to me, about a boy playing a video game there and was recruited to go to space and help fight someosmic battle, with a guy wearing a turtle helmet. Also Tarzan episodes were filmed at Shambala next door to my parents land and spread and it was just a little  patch of jungel about the size of an averagegarden. Pathetic looking and one is tempted to think that it was a joke, the garden size jungle looked so small. ...to be continued

Thirty Years on a Hook Chapter Ten arriving in Soledad Canyon

After arriving in San Diego from Mexico and doing all I could to get help from parents to send money some food and bus many to get to Soledan Canyon I remember sitting on a bench virtually homeless and before or after or maybe the next day I tried calling my mother in law to try to talk to her about the divorce from San Diago an young sounding man picked up the phone with a slight Gay sounding lisp and said something like I was where I belonged and that he was where he belonged after tell me he was my mother in laws close and personal friend and here I am out in the cold broke and the night closing in waiting till the next day on a cold and lonely bench and has night began closing in I began  to notice all the homeless people coming out at night and never seen so many and a some point on the bench a young and cheerful apparently homeless man came up to me with a bag or somethings in his hands and said "are you hungry"? and I cant remember if it was day or night sitting on that bench and let's day it was a least dusk day or night and but probably night it was so long ago and my timelines are a little confused from memories long ago and but I remember him saying that he had just scored some still wrapped hamburgers out of a McDonalds dumpster and they were still fresh and found put years later that a shift change all the burgers were thrown out and that's how people survived and ate from M Donald's for instance. We I had never eaten dumpster food in my life except some veggies give  to cattle when visiting a cattle of dairy rance in San Fernando Valley area with my parents overnight and the ranch hand had an entire truck full of day old or discarted vegetables to feed to the cattle and we ate some of them from a grocery store or supermarket and here I was eating a couple of cheeseburgers from apparently a homeless man and I thought that I had hit bottom but the burgers were so good, when your hungry and meanwhile my traveling companion wandered off to find s ol me bushes to sleep in and the next day or before he had found some coin or coins, forgien it seems and I asked him how he finds such things for he had a nack for finding things on the ground and I asked him how does he do it ? He said from always from always looking down. So there I was al night sitting on a bench, didn't dare may dow  on it, if I remember well and even my mother on the phone said why dont I pan handel for bus fare or food and I have never pan handled in my life. So al night long I sat there watching thhe homless people wander around all night and feeling like I was I  hell and the next morning tired sleepless was able to pick up the money my parents sent for I had no credit cards and broke as hell and the next day we boarded a bus to Soledad Canyon next to Tibis Hedron's place with the hundred or more big cats including roaring lions like you couldn't believe at night and could hear them for a mile or so and by the way she was the women in the movie The Birds and her husband produced the movie The Exhorsist and so I was picked up at a bus stop and home at last on my parents forty acres and mobile home that I was told belonged to Don Wrikels the comedian who lived in it while his home was being built and my parents moved it on to thier property which was originally eight acres I  a canyon called Huges 

Canyon and maybe after Howard Hughs?