Packard and Englishman that served in the British army during the mow mow Wars in Kenya Africa and excuse the spelling and punctuation for this book is written and voice text and will be corrected after I get all my thoughts down on this chapter on my friend Roger Packard and a man who is the epitome of being British and a gentleman and a man of manners. As well as an expert shipbuilder who built his own sailing yacht and move to the tip of Baja California and Mexico with his wife and child and lived many years there and built a home down there and lived happily and son named Chance went to school there learn Spanish as well as English and eventually for a parent health reasons ultimately Roger and his wife separated as she struggled with cancer and had to be treated here and United States with Roger and his son following and is the best description and understanding of the situation and I met him in Sausalito after 1984 the year of my unexpected divorce and full-time Exile from my home and family to the Waterfront of Sausalito California in Marin County and I am learning not to be overly concerned about grammar and punctuation as well as getting my thoughts out and my thoughts are Roger and his spouse and his son are all good thoughts and especially his wife as she eventually succumbed to cancer is my understanding and with fascinated me about Roger was not only his other britishness and manners and English accent and was his knowledge of boats and sailing and building and designing boats that he personally built , by hand . I learned so vastly much from him on Waterfront life and the sailor's life and stories and fellowship and how he knew all the beatnics that transitioned into the hip generation for between the Beat Generation and the hippie generation , there was called The Hip generation . These people consisted of Alan Watts a spiritual and apostate leader from the Anglican Church as he was a former Anglican priest , was my understanding and became a Buddhist and a teacher of what he called Zen Buddhism . He also know people like the owner of the hungry bookstore in North Beach San Francisco and a popular Beat Generation place for intellectuals to hang out . He told me a story how he used to work on his yard in Sausalito and his name was Guido and he brought Barbra Streisand out on his yard on San Francisco Bay and off of Sausalito California and Rodger told me that she was a real Jewish princess , the way she acted . He knew all the people from the degeneration before me for I grew up in the hippie generation , started in the '60s and he was still at 50s generation beat person who arrived in Sausalito in the 50s . He had so many stories to tell that I could listen to him all day and when he gets pulled over by the police with no driver's license for instance for just coming back from Mexico and things like that , he would talk to a cop in his British accent and they would let him know and I witnessed it when we got pulled over one night for inspired registration or something and I don't believe he even had a current license on him and the police officer just let him go . That British accent of his was a real charmer even though he was of a very husky weight and did not look like The Stereotype of Englishman one thinks of as thin and tall and nose up in the air and that was a real down to earth and husky pirate looking man that should have been wearing an eye patch for one of his eyes was accidentally punctured with a sharp object while he was working I do believe and got hit in the eye and he said he could see through people when I asked him how the vision was in that one eye of his and he would have had the most perfect reason to wear a patch but he could still see out of that one eye and some translucent way and as I said he told me he could see through people and say it with a smile or a grin . We've only been in one argument and it was something I said at a Friday night church sponsored dinner at the former Baptist Church of Sausalito of which I was baptized by the pastor in 19 68 , named Pastor Jay Orr ! Roger would talk about the old timers that were on the waterfront before me , while I was raising a family close by and San Anselmo California , before moving full-time to the waterfront of Sausalito and on my anchored out 30 ft marine plywood sailboat of which has become my home , after said divorce . Roger's wife had to leave him for personal reasons also as well as my wife did Under Pressure from my late father-in-law who also was a Marin County supervisor , when I first met his daughter and that is another story in itself , of intrigue , politics , business and religion of which I was diametrically the opposite of my late father-in-law and was called into the spiritual life and Ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ ! I talk too much with Roger about the Lord and he always listened and I became his personal chaplain as well as many other people's personal Chapel when there was no other minister around . Other Beat Generation or another name for that generation is the hip generation , before the hippies were of course Timothy Leary , Allen Ginsberg , the artist varda and many others from that generation would meet and visit on the historic houseboat community of Sausalito and the county of which is the largest houseboat community in America , to the best of my understanding . There was a historic hippie conference at the gates houseboat community of which was also called the gates of hell , from the Tic Tac on the squalor and the original designs of the houseboats and floating homes that didn't need any architectural permits and so could be built any artistic way anybody felt like putting together a houseboat out of an abandoned Lifeboat or a barge or powerboat . One of the freed Charlie Manson convicted women eventually got her parole and who lives on a houseboat also , the last I heard was being to be repented for her implications in the murders in the Hollywood Hills and that is more up-to-date news of the historic Waterfront of Sausalito and even the original later of the children's claymation cartoons called Gumby lived in Sausalito also and at least for a while and the countless other celebrities have lived in Sausalito and Marin County in general after moving from San Francisco for instance by like the Grateful Dead rock band and others when they got some money , to move out of San Francisco into the garden and Lush County of Marin County and is the birthplace of the first rock concert of which took place on our local mountain called Mount Tam and was called The Magic Mountain Festival around June 3rd to the 4th in 1967 , before the Monterey Rock Festival and years before Woodstock . Paragraph a story that Roger told me when he tried to sell his assailing ship that he built and sailed down to Baja Mexico and lived and worked with his wife Bridget and Son chance and after chance and Bridget had moved back up to San Francisco Sausalito, he tried to sail his boat up from Mexico and had an inexperienced crew member at the wheel while Roger was sleeping and the ship open up on the rocks around Cabo San Lucas if I recall and after the man at the wheel and Roger were standing on shore and looking at the wreck ship, he said to Roger will where are we going to go and what are we going to do next and Rodger was so upset that he told him I don't know about you for your on your own now. His dream boat on the rocks did he built by hand and raised a family in and so Roger made his way back up to Sausalito and left Mexico and his dreams behind and ready to start all over for he was the most positive guy you could imagine and always cheerful and always polite and respectful with his British accent and his husky look and damaged eye of which he could have easily wore a patch over but he could still partially see through it and as I mentioned before he said he could see through people. He spoke well of everybody including Alan Watts and the artist Varda and others from the beat and hip Generations for Roger originally came to Sausalito and the fifties and knew my late father-in-law retired sea captain Ernest Niles Kettenhofen who was the senior member of the state harbors and navigation Commission for the State of California appointed first by Governor Pat Brown and then reappointed by Governor Ronald Reagan and he said during the war when he was in The Merchant Marines as Captain of his ship in the Mediterranean he told me he had both Eisenhower and General Patton at his Captain's Table and said Eisenhower was very polite and patent very cocky and he told my late father-in-law to clean out the fuel tanks of a yacht that he and his son Jamie sailed and delivered as a gift to the Vallejo Maritime Academy of which he was also the chairman and had fuel trouble along the way starting in the South Pacific of which Roger tried to warn them don't leave before flashing the fuel tanks for any possibility of water condensation for instance or even rust particles to plug up carburetors and anyways to Voyage turned out to be successful. Incidentally my late father-in-law told me he had been to Hawaii some 150 times working for Madison lines as a sea captain, if I heard him right, after the war and then became a Marin County supervisor when I met and eventually married his daughter Becky and have three three grown University today two daughters and a son named Michael and Sarah and Hannah. Roger had a condition called narcolepsy and he would fall asleep so easy going out to movies and his wife complained of that also and I didn't mind as long as he didn't snore in the movie theater and when he drove I was also concerned about him falling asleep at the wheel and obviously he never did and but when he fell asleep and let an inexperienced person pilot his vote around a very dangerous and rocky area coming around from Cabo San Lucas and that's when the narcolepsy really cost him and but he bounced back and got over it quickly for when you're a semen are a boat architect self-taught like Roger you just start dreaming thinking and planning on building another boat are turning an existing one into a houseboat of what she slept in a Ferro cement boat with no deck and no interior and just put a tarp over the boat and he could sleep anywhere and even in the storm and but finally he had a severe case of apparently gout and had trouble boarding his floating home and fell into the water and had to be rescued and then was taken to the hospital and then fast tracked into public housing for he was getting at that age to be retired from the sea life and he moved into an apartment overlooking the San Rafael Canal which leads out into San Francisco Bay and could fish from this balcony if you wanted to and actually had an empty boat slip outside of his apartment given to him by Ritter house I presume or another organization to help get people housing called the street team and they used to come out and visit me on my boat also to check on me anchored on San Francisco Bay for decades and even brought a nurse and we're very friendly people and eventually someone from Episcopal services to House people was hired by the Richardson Bay Regency agency as an intermediary and go between the anchor about Mariners of San Francisco Bay and the government agency hired by this San Francisco Bay conservation and development Commission located in San Francisco to do the Dirty Work of removing all the ink routes Mariners and fisherman and salvagers and First Responders off of San Francisco Bay in collusion with the head of our local Audubon Society that wanted all the boats were moved off what they call a protected sea grass area and pushing the boats out to deeper water and unsafe conditions with no adequate place to land a skiff or a dinghy and with the inevitable Mandate of removing all such vessels off the bay of which has been a historical Anchorage going all the way back to when Sir Francis Drake first dropped his anchor off the shores of Sausalito and was received welcomely by the local Miwok tribe and had a great celebration for him before he left to sail around the world and I read or heard somewhere and maybe it was from his chaplains diary that they buried tons of silver bars that they had taken from the Spanish and bury them before they left and sent a boat back to recover the silver and the boat never returned is the Scuttle button and if true that silver is still buried somewhere in Marin and I believe near birkenshire's according to a book a descendant Miwok had written a dentist doctor on the history of Sir Francis Drake planning and repairing his ship for his around the world voyage to avoid the Spanish who are looking for him and never discovered San Francisco Bay until maybe 100 or 150 years later before it was such a good hiding place at the time with the fog often obscuring the entrance of San Francisco Bay even though Spanish ships sailed all the way from Manila with treasure and Ming Dynasty pottery and even Shipwrecked in what's called Drake's Bay on the Ocean Side of Marin County and pieces of China still wash up on shore I've heard as well as jewelry from the treasure ship of which has never been excavated because the area was used as a practice bombing range and there's a lot of unexploded ordinance scattered all over the bottom of Drake's Bay and the ship is probably buried and there are a lot of sand also and but Sunday someone will find a way to excavate it safely and I hope it's soon and in my lifetime.
Another interesting story that I can't get out of my mind is how Roger Packard dealt with a local Sausalito bully named Greer who accosted or approached him on the bike path and insulted him and threatened him while he was riding a bicycle and the way Roger dealt with other chronic bully was by offering to pugilize him with boxing gloves in a sporting sort of matter rather than barebuckle and brawling and shut the bully down with diplomacy for Roger is up in years the late '70s early '80s somewhere and Greer a young tough hoodlum and who eventually had a stroke, apparently from his hard use of drugs and alcohol on taxpayer expense through Social Security SSI for either being mentally disabled or physically disabled or both for he complained of some physical disability that prevented him from getting a job and I believe it was mostly mental disability and after him stalking me for years off when he wasn't in San Quentin prison for a few years for assault and battery on a homeless person who is feeding his dogs and ending up kicking the homeless person in the head repeatedly until one year was just hanging by the flesh off of his head from his apparent of steel-toed boots and eventually Greer Kavanaugh and I became friends after countless years of suspension stocking and ridiculing and acting threatening around me while I was working hard salvaging and recycling and he was using his Social Security on drugs alcohol and prostitutes and living homeless and eventually kayaked out too a boat and got in a dispute over I believe it was over about $750 in a backpack which is the basic amount of Social Security minimum people get plus there is Social Security Supplemental Income for any mental or physical disability in California so we're looking like he was making about $1,200 a month and blowing it and gotten a dispute over hundreds of dollars in the backpack and took the backpack from others on a boat and got into his kayak and disappeared Into the Night and he was found drowned on Shore the next day and the scuttlebutt is that he was holding his marijuana grinder still tight in his hand when they found his dead body on shore for he should never have been paddling around in a kayak because he had had a stroke in the park and has been truly physically disabled since the stroke and too uncoordinated to be out paddling around in a Tippy kayak of which I won't even get into. He voted for me he said before he died and I'm so happy that to all the years of suffering stalking intimidating on which seemed like for decades when he wasn't in prison and I remember sending him back to prison when he was out on parole and after taking care of his van and moving it every three or four days for 3 years to keep it from getting towed for there's a 3-day limit in the state of California to leave your car in one place and when he got out expected his panel van to be in pristine condition when he came out and I had to use it for salvaging and recycling storage, for all the time and effort taken care of the van for him and when he got out he clinched his fist with his angry Stern toothy chin out bodily physically signing to beat me up and I know the cops wouldn't do anything if I just said that he threatened to assault me and instead after his virtual attempted murder of a homeless man by repeatedly kicking him in the head of which is a reason he went to prison and I told the police that he threatened to kill me and that was enough to send them back to San Quentin prison for a spell again and I often reflect and wonder if I said or did the right thing at the time and it seemed to be the right thing to say about a historical and violent bully who chases people with hatchets and knives and clubs and possibly even got a gun from a gun show in San Francisco and maybe even started shooting cars on Highway 101 for there was a shooter in Sausalito shooting at cars at one time and I couldn't help to think that it sounded like something that that demented person Greer, would do and again I want to underline and emphasize that we make peace before he tragically died over a backpack full of paper money and died in the overall process and I hope and pray that he found and made peace with God for he certainly made peace with me before he died and said that he even voted for me and the lesson I learned is no matter how much you've been bullied or stalked or intimidated or lied about, peace will come in the end if one is patient and also extending Olive Branch to the bully or stalker or misguided person and either ignore them or do some act of kindness for them and that will really catch him off balance and surprise them. Sometime later an anchor out Mariner who was there on the boat when this argument over and backpack full of money was going on told me that there was something of intrigue or suspicion, the way he died and why was he let let go to get into his Tippy kayak with a possibly heavy backpack with other items in it also as often Waterfront people, always have backpacks to carry their possessions also and apparently this person that confided in me about something suspicious the way he drowned or died and all I could say is nobody prevented him from getting into his Tippy kayak at night and possibly inclement weather and him being a stroke is victim and uncoordinated in a Tipsy and top heavy kayak and if there wasn't an argument and dispute over some $750 the amount of money one gets basically for Social Security and Welfare checks also can be that high and combined with food stamps someone on welfare can basically survive and actually I think it's more like welfare checks are about $350 then $100 or more in food stamps if one is homeless especially and so the dispute was basically over a social security amount of money aside from some $550 paid out as Social Security Supplemental Income for mental or physical disability on top of earned Social Security and if one has not earned any Social Security credits, one can still receive a full 12 to 1,300 a month if one is disabled without having put any quarters in and the Greer may have had some quarters also and the question is is it right to lie to protect oneself from a chronic and historical threatening bully with a history of violence to get them off ones back and the police gladly whisked him away as a problem person in Sausalito and I'm still wrestling with a decision I made to say that he threatened to kill me and it was the only way to get rid of him and off my back, after decades and sometimes you have to lie, for the truth to come out for Spiritual as well as physical Warfare on Earth is all about lies subterfuge and deception in order to protect oneself and or to gain advantage over the enemy, and the spiritual as well as physical life and of course it's common for people in general on the waterfront to use terminology, and heated moments like saying that I will kill you if you do such and such and virtually always said metaphorically and not actually making a serious death threat from people to say that all the time that they're going to kill somebody for something or other in a symbolic or rhetorical way. To be continued tip your PayPal 415-374-0734 and help me feed people and Pakistan as well as here at home and God bless you and thank you for any and all thoughts and prayers and give some blessings, for it is better to give them to receive and I look so forward to giving to those who are less fortunate. Another story that I heard from Roger Packard was when he was in the British army and was sent to Kenya to fight in the Boer Wars, when the people rose up and took back through country from the British and at peace today as back then the Boers, or considered terrorist and I asked Rodger if he ever shot anyone during his military service in Kenya and he said he shot over their heads and expressed no bitterness or animosity from his war and military experience in Kenya, Africa and he also had a disciplined way of looking at things from his experience in the military No Doubt and he would also listen to me for hours, talking about the Bible and my missionary experiences before coming to live on the waterfront and Anchorage of San Francisco Bay offshore from Sausalito California and Roger was not an outward religious person and clung to know particular religion or church even though him being Anglican and no doubt has respect for the English Anglican Church and he never argued with me about religion or the Bible or my personal faith and New Birth and was like a sponge, soaking in everything I said about the Lord and the Bible and my personal experiences, virtually without saying a word and never blaspheming God or the Bible or expressing serious doubts and only God knows what was going on in his heart and I felt satisfied as being a minister and a chaplain to him, when there was no other minister our chaplain on the waterfront are on the Anchorage where we primarily all lived and so I became the de facto chaplain to the so-called Pirates of San Francisco Bay and how dare are we not pay rent or have a master or landlord over us as free thinking Rovers and Adventures and Desperados fleeing the law or an unjust divorce.
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