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 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 Bay Chapter eight stuck in EL Paso

Robert Brown my missionary friend could give monatary condolences but like I said offered to invite to the Mission we helped him fund in Mexico but my mind was on my two anchored boats and one of the my now home in exhile was leaking. I called my parents and now divorce wife for financial help for I was out of gas and money in El Paso and enough money was sent to take a bus back to California through Mexico for my partner and I and I will also remember what the aging missionary told me how his wife and two children left him on the mission field in Latin  America and how she became an alcoholic or something and how his two children grew up and came to hi. and said dad, you were right and they decided to go into the ministry also and how he told me not to worry and fret for all will be good in the end and just calm down and breath, so to speak and  so I eventually gave him my car and trailer and boarded a Mexican bus with my friend and we made the journey on the Mexican side of the border to San Diego and along the way the Mexican police boarded the bus and asked where are we going and I said San Diego for the missionary told me we would have no trouble with the authorities along the way and but because my travelling partner looked Mexica because he was of Indian blood he took a second look at him, bullet fragment his head and all and while back in El Paso the missionary we met said that he was a missionary dentist himself at one time, because it's easier to get a license in Mexico, if I heard or remembered right, my mind that spinning out oforbit. So he took us to a Mexican dentist in Juarez, because my trvelling partner had a terrible toothache and had it removed and it was a back tooth. So we rambled across the border in Mexico and eventually e eventually after seeing some beautiful desert scenery and after a stop or two for food and snacks, we moved on and somewhere along the way a beautiful little senorita was sitting next to me and as feeling devastated and having to leave me car and trailer because no gas and an anchored boats in Caligornia that I had to get back too, the lady started rubbing my ankle with her foot or shoe and I had no Idea what it meant, or was not sure in my confusion and loneliness, I started rubbing her foot or shoe back and it stopped....to be continued, next stop Tiujanna and then San Diego 

Thirty Years on a Hook on San Francisco Bay by Peter Romanowsky chapter six in El Paso

After rolling down from Grand Canyon and across the high desert plains of New Mexico with its brilliant night skys unabsttucted by city lights in the high desert we finally rolled into El Paso Texas past a Tavern seen across the border that a missionary said it was the Tavern in a popular song and finally finding a parking lot near downtown that was sparsely occupied by cars and settled down and eventually went downtown to get badley needed supplies like candles and food and sold my wifes gold wedding ring for scrap gold and got ten or twenty dollars cheated and it was a perfectly good gold nugget style wedding ring and I was so poor at the time we got married that my wife had to pay for the rings and that's another story and I sold my accordiain and tried to se some few pieces of silverware with a pathetic look on the face of the pawnbroker and we were out of gas. So there we sat and slept in the trailer and one night I saw a shadow of a man's head at the foot of my bunk and then I heard a crash and he was breaking the window, at my feet. I jumped up and grabbed a knife and yelled w Jim o are you and what do you wants starling the guy and then in a drunken Spanish accent voice he started calling my name in Spanish saying g Pedro, Pedro and I knew this was the Devil speaking for how did he know my name and he went away and that freaked me more thinking as far away as El Paso the Devil xwas still tormenting me or taunting me, sc o I thought this must be an important mission for the Devil, targeting me again and even here. We were  downtown in the Square of Park on a Sunday I believe and therewas a couple dressed in white gowns preachingthe Godpel and I met an aging missionary and invited him to our trailer and he got on his knees and prayed that he would have a trailer like this. He told us that he was a Missionary somewhere in South or central America when his wife left him and took his two children and moved back to the States and that they were both trained as missionaries together or something and that she worked for the goverment in Washington at one time I  the defense department or something like that and that he has been alone since working as a Missionary across the border in Ciuadad Warez and lived at the local Rescue Mission in El Paso and new a missionary friend of mine in San Jua  Del Rio eight hundred miles south of the border of which mission, we helped start. He took us across th he border to and inexpensive resturant and bought us dinners, really cheap place, with good food and as we got to the border a Mexican with a chain wrapped around his next met and greeted us, because he knew the missionary and he was big and ugly looking and we had no problems and we walked around Juarez and was suprised to find that for instance instead if cash registers they would pile thier money on the countertop show how much they After rolling down from Grand Canyon and across the high desert plains of New Mexico with its brilliant night skys unabsttucted by city lights in the high desert we finally rolled into El Paso Texas past a Tavern seen across the border that a missionary said it was the Tavern called "Rose's Cantina "from  a popular song and finally finding a parking lot near downtown that was sparsely occupied by cars and settled down and eventually went downtown to get badley needed supplies like candles and food and sold my wifes gold wedding ring for scrap gold and got ten or twenty dollars cheated and it was a perfectly good gold nugget style wedding ring and I was so poor at the time we got married that my wife had to pay for the rings and that's another story and I sold my accordiain and tried to se some few pieces of silverware with a pathetic look on the face of the pawnbroker and we were out of gas. So there we sat and slept in the trailer and one night I saw a shadow of a man's head at the foot of my bunk and then I heard a crash and he was breaking the window, at my feet. I jumped up and grabbed a knife and yelled w Jim o are you and what do you wants starling the guy and then in a drunken Spanish accent voice he started calling my name in Spanish saying g Pedro, Pedro and I knew this was the Devil speaking for how did he know my name and he went away and that freaked me more thinking as far away as El Paso the Devil xwas still tormenting me or taunting me, sc o I thought this must be an important mission for the Devil, targeting me again and even here. We were  downtown in the Square of Park on a Sunday I believe and therewas a couple dressed in white gowns preachingthe Godpel and I met an aging missionary and invited him to our trailer and he got on his knees and prayed that he would have a trailer like this. He told us that he was a Missionary somewhere in South or central America when his wife left him and took his two children and moved back to the States and that they were both trained as missionaries together or something and that she worked for the goverment in Washington at one time I  the defense department or something like that and that he has been alone since working as a Missionary across the border in Ciuadad Warez and lived at the local Rescue Mission in El Paso and new a missionary friend of mine in San Jua  Del Rio eight hundred miles south of the border of which mission, we helped start.  or were making that day. I was smoking this time by then again after having and extremely hard time quiting just before the divorce and the cigarettes were dirt cheap, called Pharoes. It was a strange world across the border, newspapers showed blood and graphic violence onthier front pages, Mexican youth would for instance would stand on the sidewalk in front of a ladies laungury store to find mental and or emotional support fro. visions of the opposite sex  and  everyone seemed friendly and no sign of the  horrors that that would come later as the murder capital of the world? Later my missionary friend Robert Brown of Mission Dios Es Amour from San Juan Del Rio met us miraculously was I  town and somehow, we found each other and invited him and his young Mexican wife to our trailer and tried to get a reassuring  hug from her  and she was devastated. by the news of the divorce also, because my wife processed all the non profit donations to the mission, through our Church orginization of which was Vice Presient of called the New Covenannt Evangelistic Association Incorporated and was understandably alarmed, or concerned about future funding, which never changed. They invited me to go back deep i to Mexico with them, but Ieft two boats anchored in California and o e was in Sausalito at anchor andhad a leak in it and the other anchored in Monterey ...to be continued