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 twelve coming home to Marin again

After leaving Soledad Canyon we made it back to Marin County by bus and I had to part with my friend and travelling companion gor my thirty foot boat was just to small for us both and I had a world of trouble on my mind and it was winter beginning to set in and no heat on my boat and still leaking from the day I got it. My feet got frostbite from sleeping in wet cotton socks and they looked like jungel rot, never seen anything like it and never fell asleep with wet socks again, unless they are wool or course and maybe synthetic, but never cotton and my friend went to Becky's house and now my divorcing wife and she gave him a sleeping bag and he eventually died homeless and having a seizure in his sleeping bag in San Anselmo, the town that I and my wife took in a the homeless, including the so  called town drunk James Gronzinsky, who died and peacefully went to Paradise, in our guest house and my travelling friend died, because of the bullet fragment in his head from a drunk and paranoid  grandpa shooting him in the head, after falsely accusing him of having an affair with his teenage granddaughter, and he went to Paradise also, I'm sure and so I struggled almost mindlessly to survive the coming winter anchored out off Sausalito on San Francisco Bay. I was broke, no source of income at all except from my t

 wife, for we not officially divorced yet, helped me out and my life but my life was ruined as a professional minister, International Missionary Evangelist and historically a local pastor and Church Congregation Planter and a Christian radio minister and  homeless shelter and disciple house Director from our mini estate, that we as used for, until the street population subsided an then we rented to some College students and years later a bronze statue of Indiana Jones was put up in a small park he built, next to City Hall and the statue looks like me  and not the actor, funny my children's mom was the first, to bring the statue to my attention  and when I saw it yes, it looks like or resembles me, without o

my beard, as a younger man and I believe the Angeles put my face on the statue, for having at one time,  the only homeless shelter in Zan Anselmo, in the heart of Marin County. Look up or search Indiana Jones Statue in Imagination Park and see it resembles me and not Harrison Ford and I was told or read as I watched the dedication on YouTube that George Lucas could see his park and statue from his Mansion across the valley and post script we lived virtually next door to that mansion at one time...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