Forty Years on a Hook by by Peter Romanowsky Chapter Greer

     A very emotional story about a man named Greer and it wasn't too long before I met a town bully. Who was so upset with me, because I wouldn't let him keep his two huge dogs in my ford  Econoline van, made in around1964 and I believe that there was a song and yes, it was a song about Ford Econoline vans in the 60s, straight sixes and I think Mitsubishi or some Japanese company bought the rights for the straight six engines and turn them is it something super, if I'm not mistaken and because the car was rickety and old and I had to keep moving it every tjet days under California law when it's parked on public property I had to continually lift up on it over the engine to do some adjustments to be able to move the car every 3 days and these two huge dogs were in the car and I couldn't even move the car when they are in a and he got very upset with me and tried to squirt me with a hose and barked at me and treated me like shit for not letting me keep his dogs in my van of which was in possible because the back was all filled with things and only the engine cover between the two front seats was really available and I couldn't tweak the engine and move the car every 3 days with two dogs left abandoned virtually in my car and so he was very upset and that was the beginning of a very long history of anger by this man at me and I could only describe it as demon possession because we never had any type of encounter before and this was virtually the first time I ever met him and he carried a grudge against me that would not end and ended up breaking a key often my car and my lock steering wheel which I had to take apart to move the car and flattened two of my tires on the same side when it was full of metal ready to take the metal yard for recycling in Richmond California at LMC metals next to the docks where they shipped a metal overseas to Japan apparently in other countries and I chased him around while he was laughing after slashing my tires and disabling my ability to cash in my metal to support myself and the police would do nothing and basically had the attitude of do you have a Polaroid and that was one of my early dumbfound experience with the Sausalito police and this went on and on let's say for a couple of decades taunting me belittling me calling me names and never knowing if he's going to further vandalize my car for instance and nothing felt safe with him on the waterfront and this went on and on and on maybe two or three decades and a brief time when he went to San Quentin prison for 3 years if I recall before attempted murder murder by kicking a homeless man in the head repeatedly with his steel toe boots from what I heard until the man's ear was just dangling off his head by a piece of Flesh according to the police and the man was only feeding his dog it's a homeless Camp behind Margaritaville at that time in Sausalito and before he went to prison he asked me if I would take care of his van and I took care of it for the 3 years that he was in San Quentin prison and had to utilize it is my Salvage and recycling operation and use it for storage and had to move it every 3 days and I already had two other cars that I had to move every 3 days and it was quite a circus to keep moving cars around and a lot of work and for that's the law in California you can't stay in one spot for more than three days and it's a big ticket at least $175 I got one at one time and on the back of the ticket it says if you disagree with this ticket right to the headquarters of where they process all the tickets and I told him I disagree and they got back to me that the ticket is Forgiven and it's one time only protocol I say and when he saw that I had to use his van to store metal for my Salvage operation he flipped out and blew a gasket acting threatening telling me I trashed his van that I've been taking care of for 3 years if I recall I last count of years he was in prison and it may have only been two or three years and he went to the police and tried to report that I had stolen his van while he was in prison and the police asked him if he gave me the keys to his van and he said he did and so he could not charge me with that and this is the Gratitude I got from a sociopath by trying to help him and be his friend a daycare of his van and all it needed was some cleaning when he got out but he wanted everything to be perfect like it was before he left and of course he never paid me to take care of his van and I never asked him for any money and just for the use of it is what I needed to do in order for me to practically take care of it by moving it every 3 days for instance and anyways I called a police on him after seeing him from a distance clinching his fist at me like he was going to attack me and fresh out of prison and to make a long story short the police arrested him again for he just got out of San Quentin prison and his parole was revoked for another period of time and I can't remember how long and then when he did get out after being charged with a pearl violation threatening me he began taunting and ridiculing me even more and acting threatening and never knowing what he might do are capable of doing for he didn't work at all and got a check from Social Security they're probably amounted to $1,200 a month for being mentally deranged and of course unable to get a job with a prison record and while I was Labor and recycling and getting only up to maybe $700 in the middle of summer salvaging and recycling in a month and that was the max I can remember ever making doing hard work and by hand collecting cans and bottles and enough cans and bottles if they were put on top of one another they would reach twice as high as the space station and are stretch all the way to Los Angeles and Beyond and while criminals we're using their money for drugs and prostitutes at the taxpayers expense and it was so painful to be able to scratching and working so hard after an unexpected divorce turned my life upside down virtually overnight and the pain and the feelings are still with me when I see how people take advantage of welfare and Social Security that are able-bodied and get those fat checks of which I couldn't get until I got SSI disability for my back after 17 years of backbreaking work salvaging and recycling on the waterfront of Sausalito and supporting myself and Ministry and then getting earned Social Security which together amounted for the maximum amount people get for mental disability or physical disability whether they have any quarters or not and anyone who gets drunk and runs into a tree and gets crippled or goes to prison and can't get a job or blowing their brains out with drugs and getting checks to buy more drugs until they virtually kill themselves with alcohol drugs and prostitutes and so The Beat Goes On and finally he had a stroke in the park and Sausalito and he was never the same after that he was obviously now neurologically and physically disabled both from overdose on drugs no doubt and was just as mean and ugly and more on the disabled side this time and used only words against me as I was working hard salvaging and cleaning the waterfront of Sausalito and the Anchorage of abandoned anchors and ground tackle and buying and selling and trading used votes and rowboats and tenders and outboard motors and became an expert at working on British seagull Motors and then eventually after more years of him calling me flapper for some reason flapper flapper like may confront of me being a preacher and drinking with his buddies and getting them all to rail at me and poke fun at me while I'm busy hard at work cleaning the Earth for a living and then a strange thing happened we started becoming friends after he got all that angst out of him and said he even voted for me when I ran for a local public office on ballot and then the next thing I heard is that he got in the argument on a boat anchored out over a backpack filled with money and probably somebody's social security or SSI check of $1,200 in cash or something and he wanted to argument got the backpack of money and got into a kayak at night and disappeared and was found drowned the next morning over in Tiburon California across Richardson Bay and was told that he was still holding on to his marijuana grinder in his hand when they found him dead onshore and that's my story and I'm sticking to it of Greer Kavanaugh and may He have found peace as we had may peace before he lost his life that night in an unsteady kayak that he wasn't used to and with his disability he wasn't very coordinated physically now also and a kayak you must be coordinated to stay upright without tipping over and the Anchorage is no place for drunks and that is why people tend to use stimulants that are anchored out if anything at all and moderate amounts of alcohol everybody virtually uses and nobody can be drunk I live anchored out on the San Francisco Bay very long without something terribly happening and to be continued 

chapter 13 /40 years on a hook on San Francisco Bay the arrival and the insult

Digressing again and again on when I first set foot in Sausalito again after an unexpected divorce and was given 72 hours to leave my home and family in San Anselmo in Marin County California where I first set foot in 1964 and for set foot also in Sausalito that same year and while living in Larkspur California and having a friend named Wes Hulk , whose father was the salmon fisherman and had a fishing boat named Molly had a place called Galilee Harbor Pier where it was docked along with other fishing and working boats as it was a working pure in those days and even had fuel pumps on the end of the dock and the boat was bought from Cass gidley who was in charge of operations and the Harbormaster so to speak of the pier and founder of a sailing school and harbor next door also and was a living legend and a real salt in a deep sea fisherman for salmon for instance and anything else he could catch and was in a movie with John Wayne as the co-pilot in the movie island in the sky and also got John Wayne the ferry boat used in the movie Blood Alley which was filmed close by at a historic water front ghost town called China Camp and Cass also acquired another vote for him to use as an office and it's in the opening scene of the movie Blood Alley and of what your friend of mine whom we call mushroom John AKA John Sperry, who bought the boat after it caught fire years earlier while being serviced on What's called the ways in Sausalito and referring to the mechanism to pull out out of the harbor or Bay for maintenance and while being pulled up on What's called the ways in nautical terms the fuel somehow had flowed to the back of the 85 ft some odd ship and caught fire and burn virtually everything from the deck up except for the Pilot House of which was salvaged and put in someone's Garden in Sausalito and is still there no doubt and the boat eventually sank many years later after John Sperry restored it from the deck up and built a new Pilot House and turn it into a luxury interior household and finally sank a few years ago from this riding , during the storm on San Francisco Bay off of Sausalito and John ended up in the first homeless camper Village and sleeping in his Volkswagen camper in Sausalito, until he got a Section 8 voucher and moved into a nice apartment eventually to retire from the water. The legendary casket League who sold my best friend's father the salmon boat called Molly and my best friend's father after retiring from salmon fishing we can operating the crane at the Army Corps of engineer, put an abandoned boats were crushed and disposed of and other Marine debris on Richardson Bay of which is part of the greater San Francisco Bay off of Sausalito Shores. When I landed to live full-time on San Francisco Bay / Richardson Bay off the shores of Sausalito, the first words I remember being told to me when I was talking to one of the, scurvy looking Pirates so to speak and Denison of the deep and in the depths of Sausalito I came again to live full time on my 30-foot boat that I named Daystar and it was made of marine plywood and a sailboat of which became my home for the next 15 years at least until it sank after a storm and thankfully I wasn't on it and when I did go out to it to salvage whatever I could before it completely saying and I'll never forget the feeling and the sinking feeling of waiting through the interior of my boat with water up to my knees and grabbing everything I could before the boat sank and put it in a 20-foot Cal 20 small sailboat of which became my home for the next year anchored also. And first words I heard when I tried to strike up a conversation with one of the denizens of the deep was fuck you asshole and that was shocking to me after leaving in a garden estate house with redwoods and being married and having three children for 16 years, living a normal life and raising kids and being a pastor and an international missionary evangelist as well as a gospel radio broadcaster on our local 50,000 Watt AM station in San Francisco of which antenna pointed North and the signal sometimes skipped over the North Pole all the way to Norway I heard in one incident and but not on my watch to my knowledge and mainly not contributions and correspondence from places like Grand Junction Oregon and and so forth. When I was a church planner our house which was two stories and owned by my in-laws and said to be my wife and I to own in the future and meanwhile paid a very low rent and payments to my in-laws of which we are used the first floor with its two bedrooms living room kitchen and sunroom overlooking a beautiful shaded Garden and we took in the homeless and use the first floor as a homeless shelter and disciple house for homeless men. Eventually after the homeless population dropped after the 60s we ended up renting the first floor to some young college students from College of Marin and they party it at night without music and even set up of that wheel and apparently we're doing some gambling downstairs and but I was paralyzed with exhaustion after returning from my fourth overseas mission and that time from Egypt and was suffering from professional exhaustion and professional burnout to the point that I didn't leave the house for 3 years and I spent the first year in my bedroom and then the next 2 years on the floor and rug of my living room and in the second year I spent the whole year studying dictionaries encyclopedias and primarily the history origin and study of words called etymology. The third year of my shut-in I watched religious television program on the two cable channels we had at the time until after a year they started repeating themselves and on Thanksgiving Day I was finally able to walk away from the house and walk across town in San Anselmo California to my in-laws estate for Thanksgiving dinner with my in-laws and my family and I had completed my 3 years of my monastic experience and felt great and bought a couple sailboats and wanted to take on the world again and then all the sudden I got hit with divorce papers and was given 72 hours to leave my home and children take only my personal possessions and a nomad trailer I had bought to go on a marriage counseling vacation back East to Jim Bakers marriage counseling center and Ministry on the East Coast for instance and my whole world caved in and my wife thought that I did not recover properly and said I was someone that had a broken arm and fixed it himself and it wasn't quite a straight or healed anymore and looking back I understand what she was talking about and for she was under tremendous pressure to divorce me and Lou losing her inheritance, if she didn't divorce me for her parents thought I was a religious fanatic and two Heavenly minded to be of any Earthly good for they were very rich and powerful people and on and off the richest county in the state of California and my late father-in-law was also originally appointed to the state harbors and navigation Commission by the then governor of California Pat Brown and then was reappointed by governor Ronald Reagan and my late father-in-law told me that he entertained Eisenhower and patton on his ship apparently in the Mediterranean during World War II and he said Eisenhower was very light nice and patton was kind of the opposite and aggressive as the Army soldier and leader that he was, in the fight against the Nazis. He also was a Marin County supervisor also and chairman of the Marin County General Hospital and found a mental health words attached to the General Hospital. He also was the chairman of the Vallejo State Maritime Academy from which he graduated and became a sea captain after the war for Madison lines and if I recall he told me he had been to Hawaii, something like 100 or 150 times back and forth. He also was a major property owner in Marin County and own everything from the largest single building in Sausalito called the Industrial Center building of which he turned into an industrial and arts Center and on the largest office complex and Sausalito at 3030 Bridgeway and the best of my knowledge built the largest apartment complex in Sausalito of which later was converted to condos in a partnership with a folk artist band called the Kingston Trio. So these were the forces working against me and when the divorce came down I didn't go to court because the woman judge had just officiated my wife's sister's wedding and the second judge was no doubt a acquaintance or friend of my late father-in-law when he was a Marion County supervisor and I just recently learned that he also owned part of if not controlling interest in the historic San Rafael Courthouse in Marin County a historic building that burned down one night after a homeless man was playing with fire and lighting newspapers inside and the place was lacking security and his fire got out of control and it was the most spectacular fire I had ever seen in my life and the largest building I've ever seen go up in flames and of course after insurance was paid two Banks ended up being built on this most Prime piece of real estate Martin County. So these were the forces that were working against my spirituality and spiritual and non-material journey and for he thought that I had married his daughter for his money and told me before the wedding that I would get nothing and I just stood there in silence and almost disbelieving what I'm hearing from my future father-in-law who apparently was only interested in having grandchildren and after having three grandchildren for him. My wife was pressured to divorce me in lieu of being disinherited and for he was very wealthy and a multi-millionaire and own our property that I could count in Northern California and including top skiable of which my wife was a limited partner in and the family own controlling interest after building the resort. So looking back I don't blame my wife for the pressure she was under because the kids could have been taken away from her too and for he has so much money influence and Power and I was like a little David and before a Goliath and of which it took 40 years for me to recover and to move on to land again after being forced to live on boats for 40 years and the majority of that time on a hook or anchor anchored offshore from Sausalito. Except for 3 years I spent renting a slip in gallery Harbor in Sausalito of which used to be the commercial fishing pier and had now become a floating boat and home residency and when it was supposed to be permitted as a full-time Marine Service Harbor and of course they lied and to this day it is now just a residential floating Tiki tacky houseboat community. To be continued ..