The Pirate, aka Randy Crozier (right, with author Dell Franklin) took things as they came, for better or worse without complaint over his 67 years—a miracle of accomplishment in itself, being that most of his years were engaged in joyous and guiltless self pollution.
By Dell Franklin
The pirate flag at Schooner’s Wharf restaurant and bar in Cayucos is at half staff, for the Pirate of Cayucos, Randy Crozier, has passed on.
The Pirate was not afraid of anything or anybody, and I don’t think he was afraid of death, either. He took things as they came, for better or worse without complaint over his 67 years—a miracle of accomplishment in itself, being that most of his years were engaged in joyous and guiltless self pollution.
Yes sir, the Pirate embraced unhealthy habits with an impish grin and a cackling, coughing laugh. He was a happy man, especially when planted on his stool at Schooner’s Wharf after a day of plastering, one of his many occupations and talents that barely scratched the surface of an immense palette of creativity that was always in motion.
I looked upon the Pirate in awe, because I realized that myself as well as almost everybody I knew would never have survived during certain eras in our country, and especially the 19th century, while the Pirate would have been in his glory in any century, going back centuries.
Why?
The Pirate was fiercely self-sufficient, and could repair anything, build anything, grow anything, was an accomplished stone mason and hunter and hunting guide, a commercial fisherman, and, to boot, a very fine bass guitar player who for years led his own band, the Motowners, which played at various venues along the coast but primarily, every year, on a float during the notorious Cayucos 4th of July parade.
The Pirate went to school here in town. While employed at framing or plastering, he drove a series of creaking, groaning, out-dated, dust-shellacked pickups my dogs could hear blocks away as they paced and circled on my deck in anticipation of him pulling up, dislodging himself slowly from his truck, powdered in plaster, and hurling two big biscuits up to Marley, and later Wilbur.
Wilbur, once, on the seawall, heard his truck on the main drag and cut loose, limping and bouncing after him for several blocks, barking, before the Pirate got out and gave him a biscuit.
The single beauty of the Pirate, though, was that he never saved a dime but was always jolly and wanted to buy you a drink in Schooner’s, and for years in the Cayucos Tavern. His brother, who, along with his wife, drove down from northern Washington to be with him for a month while he was in and out of the hospital and finally at home in hospice care, said, “He did things his way. He worked as hard as he could for three or four days a week, or whatever it took, and when he had enough to pay off his rent and bar tab, he was back in the bar.”
I mentioned his application to unhealthy habits, or, um, vices. Well, he drank beer and rum and a lot of it for as often as he could and as long as he could. He relished marijuana, and was even more lovable under its influence. He smoked cigarettes all of his life and savored the ritual, even when it turned his voice into a rasp and a cough whenever he laughed, which was a lot. And the pirate was not one bit fussy about his diet, consuming just about anything in the food orbit that was bad for you but tasted good, though there is the possibility he ate the luscious veggies he grew in his gardens as well as the pickles that were on a par with the great kosher pickles from New York City and which he bottled and dropped off to his many friends in Cayucos—and only in Cayucos.
Randy seldom ventured far from Cayucos, unless it was to market in Morro Bay for something he couldn’t find in town. For you see, this was his town. Nobody loved Cayucos more than Randy and he saw no reason to go anywhere unless it was to drive nonstop in an ailing truck to see his other late brother in northern California, who was dying of cancer.
For those of us who have lived in Cayucos for decades, he was Cayucos, the very soul of Cayucos, a reminder of an era that not only stretched back to before Randy even got here, but to a time when men were stubbornly self sufficient and defiant of help and would rather perish on the prairie than ask for help.
Most important, though, was that the Pirate was irresistibly lovable and loved, and he knew it, and that almost everybody who knew him felt they were his good and special friend, as he was to them.
In an interview I did with him in The Rogue Voice almost twenty years ago, he mentioned that he wouldn’t leave much behind but possibly a six pack of beer and a beat up truck when he died, but to all of us here in Cayucos the Pirate left us with memories we shall cherish for the rest of our years.
On Monday, less than a day after his passing, on the sea wall, two ladies walking their dogs, ladies who did not frequent Schooner’s Wharf and knew the Pirate only fleetingly, paused when they saw me, held their hands to their hearts, and appeared on the verge of tears.
Dell’s tribute to Randy Crozier, AKA The Pirate, first appeared at Cal Coast News. His memoir recalling an earlier era of baseball, “The Ballplayer’s Son,” is available at Amazon.
“Another time, when an old man asked what would be the best thing to have on hand during old age, Musonius Rufus said, ‘the very same thing that is best to have during one’s youth: living the right way and in accordance with nature.’”
Photo and story by Stacey Warde
More than once I’ve been told, “You’re too much in your head.” It’s true; there’s a lot of racket going on up there.
In high school, some friends nicknamed me “Spacey.” I’d zone out, stare off into space, which I now know is a way to escape pain, a sign of trauma. In my head. Disconnecting from the world.
Where did I learn about my head problems?
1. Martial arts – getting back into my body
Sensei pointed out I would do better by thinking less, analyzing every move, the opposite of what I’d been taught in school, or learned at home. Relax! he’d say. Breathe, and let your body do the work! He told me this early in my training, after I’d injured myself overthinking the practice, before the hakima and a black belt, in which there’s little to no time to think.
2. Music – Listening, not only with the ears
I’ve studied music since sixth grade and still feel like a beginner. [Incidentally, when Sensei awarded me black belt status after 10 years of study, he said, “Now, you start kindergarten.” We laughed but knew it was true.] I’m learning to listen again — with my entire body. What’s the vibe?
I’m taking music lessons again [at McCormick School of Musicwhere I’ve had the good fortune to connect with teacher/jazz jam host Jacob Chatfield, whose ears are attuned to what I’m still learning to recognize, the tones and rhythms, for example, that escape my notice.] I feel like a beginner again. Jacob recently and politely noted that playing the keyboard might come more easily if I weren’t so much in my head. It’s true! Lotta junk up there. Still disassociating. Just not as much.
So, what is “according to nature” as urged by Stoic philosophers like Musonius Rufus? What makes us human? Or virtuous? [I’ve often thought that “virtue” has a prissy ring to it. A kind of religion based on the nebulous notion of what is “good.” Virtue, of course, is much more than being good. Virtue makes humans happy, and a community thrive. Virtuous actions evoke admiration and gratitude, sometimes tears. They create warmth and community. Ultimately, it’s learning to be fully, completely human as reflected in behaviors that benefit the tribe or community or polis.]
Each time I ask these questions about what makes a human human, I’m brought back to the joy of learning how to take falls like a child to avoid injury when an attacker throws me. I’m brought back to my first scales worked out and attacked on the piano. “Sometimes you’re up, sometimes you’re down,”a joyful, sometimes sad, beginner. When everything feels new, and curiosities are abundant.
It’s easy to get lost in my head, especially this festive time of year. I’ve mastered this art of head work through various methods and I can say with some authority that ducking out, getting lost in one’s head, analyzing the details, isn’t always the best way to handle things. Sometimes, a person must act, without overkilling the details.
It’s worse, I believe, if you want to be human, to lose interest altogether, to think you know something, to get stuck in your head, and to stop being curious, which is probably the most obvious sign of something that is against human nature.
Stacey Warde writes from his home in Orange County where escape through one’s head is certain to become a public health hazard. This item first appeared at Stacey’s blog space, Abusive Elder on Substack.
Thompson’s murder has helped to unleash the fury of Americans denied life-or-death medical care recommended by their physicians.
By Stacey Warde
I do not endorse murder or assassinations of any kind, yet it doesn’t surprise me that Brian Thompson, murdered CEO of one of the country’s most profitable health insurance companies, became a target.
Who knows why? I sure don’t but I have some ideas.
His murder has helped to unleash the fury of Americans denied life-or-death medical care recommended by their physicians. Denied as a matter of health insurance policies shaped by profit seekers like Mr. Thompson. He oversaw profits approaching the ridiculous when you consider the losses in human life and decency. And his cohorts don’t seem much to care how their leadership maximizing and turning profits for shareholders impacts patients the profitable group presumably covers.
As we’ve learned in recent reports, more than one insured of United suffered pain and/or death as a consequence of for-profit policies endorsed by Mr. Thompson. Profit seeking, in my view, works fine in other industries, EXCEPT healthcare.
I am glad for the outrage but wonder how far it will go in a culture bewitched by wealth, where profit means more than a person’s life, and I’m saddened by the fact that anyone must die for greed, profits, or revenge.
I do not support industries that profit from another’s suffering, pain, or death. I also do not support a healthcare industry that relies on bloodletting to survive.
I believe a universal healthcare system is in order. Call it “socialism,” or whatever you want, it’s the right thing to do.
Meanwhile, I’ve taken my concerns to artificial intelligence, today’s latest fashionable god and oracle, for feedback:
Me: Why is the death of a patient as a result of a denied health insurance claim not considered murder?
AI: The complex interplay between intent, causation, and corporate liability
While it may seem morally reprehensible for an insurance company to deny a claim that could lead to a patient’s death, there are several legal reasons why this isn’t typically considered murder:
* Intent: Murder, in most legal systems, requires a specific intent to kill. Insurance companies, while often motivated by profit, typically don’t have the direct intention to cause harm or death. [Cynical Me, thinking: That’s debatable.] * Causation: Proving direct causation between a denied claim and a patient’s death can be extremely difficult. Many factors, such as underlying health conditions or other medical treatments, can contribute to a patient’s demise. * Corporate Liability: While corporations can be held liable for negligent or harmful actions, the specific individuals within the company who make decisions about claims are typically not held personally responsible for the consequences of those decisions, unless extreme negligence or malice can be proven.
However, it’s important to note that this doesn’t absolve insurance companies of all responsibility.
In many cases, patients and their families can pursue legal action against insurance companies for wrongful denial of claims, especially if it can be shown that the denial was based on a clear violation of policy terms or medical necessity.
It’s also worth noting that public outcry and increased regulatory scrutiny have led to reforms in the insurance industry, aiming to reduce unnecessary claim denials and improve patient care.
Me: Who’s responsible when a patient dies as a consequence of a denied health insurance claim?
AI: The complex issue of liability when a patient dies due to a denied health insurance claim is a multifaceted one, often involving multiple parties and legal considerations.
While it’s difficult to provide a definitive answer without specific details about the case, here are some potential factors that could influence liability:
1. The Insurer: * Breach of Contract: If the insurer fails to fulfill its contractual obligations, such as denying a claim without a valid reason or delaying necessary approvals, it could be held liable. * Bad Faith: In some cases, insurers may be accused of acting in bad faith, which involves intentional or reckless disregard for the insured’s rights. This can lead to significant legal consequences, including punitive damages. 2. The Healthcare Provider: * Medical Malpractice: If the healthcare provider made errors in diagnosis, treatment, or care, they could be held liable for medical malpractice. * Failure to Advocate: In some cases, healthcare providers may not adequately advocate for their patients with insurance companies, which could contribute to delayed or denied care. 3. The Patient: * Failure to Appeal: If the patient fails to appeal a denied claim, it may limit their legal options. However, this is often a complex process, and patients may need legal assistance to navigate it effectively. Legal Recourse: If a patient dies as a result of a denied claim, their family may have legal options, such as: * Civil Lawsuit: A lawsuit against the insurer or healthcare provider for negligence, breach of contract, or other relevant claims. * Regulatory Complaints: Filing complaints with state insurance departments or other regulatory agencies. * Class-Action Lawsuits: In some cases, multiple individuals may join together to file a class-action lawsuit against an insurer for systemic issues.
It’s crucial to consult with an attorney to understand the specific legal rights and options available in a particular case. Please note that this information is intended to provide general knowledge and does not constitute legal advice.
Me: Is insurance a protection racket?
AI: No, insurance is not a protection racket. Here’s why:
* Voluntary: Individuals are coerced into paying for protection, insurance is a voluntary agreement. You choose to purchase a policy to protect yourself against specific risks. * Risk Pooling: Insurance companies pool the premiums of many policyholders to pay claims. This spreads the risk and allows for financial protection for everyone. * Regulated Industry: Insurance companies are heavily regulated by state and federal governments to ensure fair practices and consumer protection. * Contractual Obligation: When you purchase insurance, you enter into a legally binding contract with the insurer. They are obligated to fulfill their part of the agreement if you need to file a claim.
While some people may criticize certain aspects of the insurance industry, such as high premiums or denied claims, these issues do not equate to the definition of a protection racket.
Me: It seems to me that requiring drivers to insure themselves, for example, is a type of coercion.
AI: You’re absolutely right. Requiring drivers to carry insurance can indeed be seen as a form of coercion. It’s a government mandate that restricts individual freedom of choice. However, it’s important to consider the rationale behind such regulations.
Governments often implement these laws to: * Protect the Public: By ensuring that drivers have financial responsibility, governments aim to protect innocent victims of accidents from significant financial burdens. * Maintain Road Safety: The knowledge that one could be held financially liable for accidents can incentivize safer driving behaviors. * Promote Social Equity: By spreading the risk across a larger pool of drivers, insurance can help mitigate the impact of accidents on individuals who may not be able to afford significant medical or property damage costs.
While it’s a complex issue with valid arguments on both sides, the primary goal of mandatory insurance is to create a safer and fairer road environment for all.
Me: Wouldn’t universal healthcare be a better option?
AI: Yes, universal healthcare is a compelling option. Many countries have successfully implemented universal healthcare systems, providing comprehensive coverage to all citizens. Here are some potential benefits: * Improved Health Outcomes: Universal healthcare can lead to better health outcomes by ensuring that everyone has access to necessary care, regardless of their income or employment status. * Reduced Healthcare Costs: By pooling resources and negotiating lower drug prices, universal healthcare systems can often achieve lower overall healthcare costs. * Increased Productivity: A healthier population can lead to increased productivity and economic growth. * Reduced Administrative Costs: A single-payer system can simplify the billing and administrative processes, reducing costs for both providers and patients. However, it’s important to note that implementing universal healthcare is a complex undertaking. There are challenges to consider, such as funding the system, managing healthcare provider shortages, and balancing quality of care with cost-effectiveness.
Ultimately, the decision to adopt universal healthcare is a political one that involves weighing the potential benefits against the costs and challenges.
Stacey Warde seeks a more just healthcare system in the US. This article first appeared on Medium, where Stacey’s longform essays are published. For shorter items, visit Abusive Elder on Substack.
I transitioned from small-town America to a flat endless horizon of surging traffic, a snarled madhouse of giant shopping centers, one residential neighborhood after another, intertwined with high-end condo retirement complexes the size of most towns. Photo Stacey Warde
By Dell Franklin
I took the Amtrak train from San Luis Obiso south to visit old friends who live in Orange County and it’s taken me almost one week to digest the horror of it. I was too dazed to be overwhelmed at first as I transitioned from small-town America to a flat endless horizon of surging traffic, a snarled madhouse of giant shopping centers, one residential neighborhood after another, intertwined with high-end condo retirement complexes the size of most towns.
And strip malls.
I felt so small and insignificant, like an invasive germ.
My friend Angus picked me up at the Anaheim train station adjacent to the stadium where the California Angels call home. Angus lives in a Huntington beach grid among many grids of homes that have no front porches and are walled in so that the only time people see each other and have little visits with dogs and so on is when they are out and about, which is seldom. There are no lawns. The streets are idle and inert. Like a ghost town.
Angus and his wife Dot have lived here for 47 years. They are retired school teachers. Angus also coached baseball and football and was once an All League athlete. They have a pleasant home with modern fixtures and appliances and furniture and a swimming pool and jacuzzi that neither use.
They know when I make one of my generational visits that it can be an ordeal absorbing my comments and picking on Angus, whom I consider a person 100 times more virtuous and valuable than I am; which is why I make it a point to pick on him constantly.
He took me to breakfast, lunch, and dinner. He drove me to Huntington Beach’s main drag that was studded with Miami Beach-like luxury hotels that go for a grand a night and are always booked full. Where does the money come from? We parked and walked. I splurged and bought my first T-shirt not from a thrift store in possibly 40 years just for the hell of it—50 percent off and beachy.
Later, Angus, who is 82 and has two knee replacements, two shoulder replacements, one hip replacement, and spent a year of chemo fighting off cancer, forced me to go to Costco with him to purchase some medicine for Dot and for a few odds and ends. It was hot out, and we had to park a long way away. He commandeered a shopping cart and began pushing it around.
“Why do you need a cart for a few items?” I asked.
“Be quiet.”
“I’ve never been in a place this big with so many people buying a bunch of shit,” I said.
“Stop it.”
“It’s obscene.”
He refused to react. I made fun of his painful, shuffling walk. He ignored me. He needed help in the cavernous immensity of this particular Costco, and a little cheerful Asian lady pointed him in the right direction. More than half the people pushing carts appeared to be Vietnamese American women. They pushed their big carts with grim, get-out-of-my-way determination. I took over Angus’s cart in a move I felt would relieve his being miffed at my condemning Costco and making fun of his walk. I suddenly became pleased as I picked up the pace and played chicken with aggressive and tiny Vietnamese grandmas. I know how to adapt.
I did not see one even slightly portly Asian but a lot of overstuffed white people stacking their carts to the brim as they waddled about.
Angus was looking for plain white T-shirts like the ones we wore in the 1960s but they didn’t have those, although Costco is supposed to have everything. The T-shirts they had were not white and were too small.
Angus needed raspberries, and as we passed the salmon he bragged about how delicious and easy it was to prepare. He does a lot of cooking since Dot would rather read. When we came to the vodka, I urged him to buy a half gallon of Gray Goose since he could not spend all the money he had, but he did not like Gray Goose and preferred Absolut. I told him that although I was poor I insisted on luxury vodka and he should too since, like me, he was a lifetime boozer.
I informed him that he was institutionalized to inferior vodka due to growing up poor, and needed to break out. He stuck with the Absolut.
We came to the wine section. I asked him what he knew about wine and he said not much and that most wines tasted the same and he and Dot liked a certain white which I pooh-poohed. I explained I did know a little about wine because my brother-in-law and nephew spent hours on their computers studying wine and various vineyards and were experts, and when they visited me up in Cayucos they spent whole days wine tasting in Paso Robles and bought crates of top-shelf wine.
When I spotted a Dou Chardonnay from Paso Robles that my nephew bragged about, I informed Angus this was an excellent wine for the price and to buy it, and insisted that Dot would like it, and though I could see he was as usual leery of my opinions and exclamations, he gave in and accepted two bottles I dropped in the cart.
After that I felt rejuvenated and became more aggressive with the cart, feeling like a teenager in a bumper car at a county fair. When we finished finding raspberries and other crap, I sprinted my cart to an open checkout station and cut off a Vietnamese woman with a packed cart. She sped to another check out station without reaction, cutting off another woman.
Later, the three of us sat out in the coolness of Angus and Dot’s little sheltered patio after I shoved the chard in the freezer. Angus opened it. Poured out three glasses. He and Dot sat across from each other and sipped. Dot nodded. “This is really good, Angus,” she said.
Angus took a sip, nodded. “It is good,” he agreed.
“Is it better than what you usually get at Costco?” I asked Dot.
“Yes. Definitely.”
I turned to Angus.“What’d I tell you, huh? Aren’t you glad I made you buy two bottles?”
“I said it’s good.”
“For the price, it’s better than good.”
He wasn’t biting.
“You should stock up on it. That’s what people do at Costco, right? Stock up. Because there’s never enough of everything and anything in Orange County. They all gotta have it all or there’s no life.”
His phone rang. It was Stacey Warde. My old partner with the Rogue Voice literary journal I once published in SLO County. Stacey once wrote for the local Tribune and was managing editor of New Times, where we first met. He now lives in Tustin and was to show up at Angus’s around 4:30 p.m. Another friend from around Mission Viejo named Sean was also to join us and then we’d retreat to a bar.
After Angus hung up, he said Stacey was on his way. Tustin was only half-an-hour away.
“You don’t know Stacey,” I said. “We ran that paper together for four years, and my guess is he won’t get here for at least two hours. He’ll get lost—even in his own backyard. He’ll call again. You’ll have to talk him here. Trust me.”
It took him two-and-a-half hours, although he grew up in the OC. He called several times for directions and stayed on the line. He dealt with horrendous road rage. When he finally arrived one could see how the OC takes its toll.
(To be continued…).
Dell Franklin writes from his home in the lovely quiet beach town of Cayucos, Calif. This column first appeared on Cal Coast News, an online publication. He’s the author of The Ballplayer’s Son, a memoir about his father’s years as a pro when baseball was still a working man’s game.
I miss the conversations about watersheds and droughts and trees. Or how many pigs came down out of the hills last night to wreak havoc on the orchards and irrigation lines in search of food and water, or where the coyotes keep their dens. Or how many chickens were killed by the bobcat that lives down in the hollow underneath the old abandoned school bus.
More often, the conversations I hear today in Orange County revolve around sports or fitness and cars and jobs and burnout and crime rates and the occasional coyote roaming down suburban streets taking out neighborhood dogs and cats.
Outside of promises of the good life, such as they are in Orange County, there is no life. That’s the sense I get from this place after moving here nearly one year ago from Mendocino County, where there are more trees than people. Prior to that, I lived in San Luis Obispo County for almost 40 years, much of that time on a ranch in a tiny house of 300 square feet, not in a multi-million dollar monstrosity of thousands of square feet in the middle of endless suburbia. This modern El Dorado I live in now, Orange County, is the golden mean for quality of life, if you listen closely to those who love living here.
“I wouldn’t live anywhere else,” I’ve heard people say while others nod in agreement.
For some reason, my brain wants to imagine Orange County the way it was 40 years ago when I first fled the area for greener pastures, which thankfully I found in Cayucos, California, a beach haven not unlike the Laguna Beach I knew as a child.
The OC, as they call it now, resembles nothing close to what it was when I was growing up here, or what I still imagine it to be with ranches and orchards and open fields. I recently discovered to my dismay that those features have long since disappeared while taking two hours to find a friend’s home only 20 minutes away in Huntington Beach.
The entire drive, which should have been easy, felt like a test flight for a fighter pilot. While trying to figure out where I was, looking in every direction for a familiar sign, an impatient driver behind me started madly honking his horn and waving his arms in great distress. If looks could kill, his scowling and fretful face would do the trick, and I would be dead.
I know the feeling, buddy, I thought, waving your arms isn’t going to help you. Believe me, I know, you look like an idiot flapping your gums and waving your hands in anger while driving solo in heavy traffic. Been there, done that. He pulled out from behind me in a sudden bolt and showed me his middle finger as he drove by and aggressively cut me off with a sharp, dangerous turn into my lane. Road rage runs rampant.
I kept my cool, which isn’t like me. Ordinarily, I would have shown the same foolish disdain by offering him my middle finger and flapping my gums as a greeting. But I’m trying to get away from that type of bad behavior, which I see everywhere on the roads. I’ve seen lots of that around here, as often on the roads and freeways as among the many homeless who wander the streets in search of refuge. This is quality of life? Now, he’s one car length ahead of me, no longer waving his arms or flapping his gums. All that wasted angry energy to get his one useless car length advantage. That’s Orange County: Crowded freeways, entitled angry murderous drivers, overworked populace, expensive, unaffordable homes, the appearance of wealth and success, tons of debt and graft.
Then, my Google GPS told me to turn onto the Santa Ana River Trail made for bicycles only. I turned off the GPS after two hours of driving and said: “Fuck!”
Thankfully, I wasn’t far from my destination. I pulled into a crowded Costco parking lot, where most if not all of Orange County does its shopping, a favorite pastime here. I made the call and got directions to my desired location only blocks away. The traffic. OMG! I gave up herds of cattle blocking the road home for this?
No doubt, the ornamental trees in Orange County show the wonders of a fine climate, which so far is the only real attraction I can rightfully attach to the place. The citrus orchards that gave the county its name have all but disappeared. I see cars and row after row of houses. More cars. More houses. Little slices of “paradise,” at home in the best climate in the world. And a lot of frustrated angry people (in paradise?). Am I missing something? Perhaps I haven’t given it enough time? Where are the orchards and fields and farmworkers? Why do they call this Orange County?
I once got into a conversation regarding the wisdom and shame of removing an old oak tree, probably hundreds of years old, because its deep roots were sucking dry the well we depended upon for drinking water and showers and gardening, water designated for domestic use. Water for livestock and orchards were seldom at risk. Our home water use depended mostly on necessity rather than convenience. We showered, for example, not every day as they do here but only when essential, when the stink of chickens got so bad we had no choice. We treated our water and trees and livestock as precious resources. We were connected to nature. It was essential for our survival.
We studied the watershed that fed the creek and the wells and reservoirs. We knew when we were in trouble and when there was plenty. Our water wasn’t assured, there was no water company to secure and process this precious resource; it was clean and drawn from the pristine, environmentally sound, hills above and around us. We welcomed the rain. The runoff served us well, without an influx of bacteria threatening major health hazards and closing popular beaches.
Here, I get the feeling, precious resources, trees, water, wildlife, even beaches, come as an afterthought, after another grueling day at work, after the baby is fed and put to bed, after beating traffic to get home, after the dishes are put away. After another unsuccessful turn of putting off a lover’s sexual advances. After exhaustion sets in. After suicidal thoughts have been momentarily banished.
In El Dorado, water is water. Gold is what you need and want. But if you prefer water, all you have to do is turn on the faucet and see! — Water! Spend time in nature? Escape the rat race? Boy, wouldn’t that be nice, but there’s gold around here somewhere.
OC is a shower-every-day kind of place. With sun, beaches, parties and posturing, and a sometimes semi-arid climate, sports to play and gyms to visit, you don’t go to the clubs later without getting showered and dressed and looking fine, which is an important part of life here. Netflix and chill is more of a country thing, I think, but one would hope there’s plenty of that too in Orange County.
Meanwhile, a hawk slices through the air to enter the protective cover of an enormous ancient pine tree across the street to rustle smaller birds and mammals (tree squirrels). The commotion and squealing of the tree’s inhabitants is a familiar sound. I hope the hawk wins. I don’t think squirrels are cute. They’re a nuisance for farmers and they make good food for coyotes and bobcats, prey for raptors, which still make their rounds here. I’ve watched the squirrels jump from the street wires onto our lone avocado tree, another ancient survivor of Orange County, to search for food. In the wild, I’d shoot it because that’s what you do if you want to eat.
I know that change is the only constant in life; nothing stays the same. I know this yet I’m shocked at how much has changed since leaving here so many decades ago. I also know there were cruel exiles in ancient Rome and Greece meant to punish and diminish a person, which is kind of how I feel now in my own particular self-imposed exile from the beauty I knew in Cayucos, but who nonetheless came out ok in the end. Exiles who showed character, Musonius Rufus, for example, found purpose wherever they landed, however they were treated. I hope to find a similar purpose here, made from character and virtue rather than entitlement, and make the right connections, before my dying day or before being overtaken by another driver on the rampage.
In the end, the survivors and people who prospered in exile were the ones whose character brought them to safety and a sense of well being. Here, in El Dorado, gangsters and Disney and grimy politicians seem to prosper most. Here, people are judged more often by the cars they drive, titles they hold, and houses they own rather than by the strength of their character. Thug culture, I call it.
Those who live here seem to love it and I have yet to understand why, not when you compare it to life in the wild where one is truly free though more likely to run into bears or a herd of cattle than countless cars speeding down the freeway with angry drivers threatening murder and mayhem. In the wild, as elsewhere one would hope, conversations have meaning and purpose, and quality of life starts with how one chooses to live.
Stacey Warde is adapting to thug culture while searching for integrity and honesty.
Pests, aka pickleball pukes, invade tennis courts & take over
Like officious twits inculcated into the deep bureaucracy, both these people, a man and a woman, repeated regulations obviously culled straight from the recreation department charters and ignored me as I scalded them for taking over “our” tennis courts.Photo by Frankie Lopez on Unsplash
by Dell Franklin
The four newly built pickleball courts at Del Mar park are evidently not enough for local pickleballers, as on a recent Saturday morning at 8:45 – the time my tennis partner, Ethan, and I play – one of two courts at Monte Young park in Morro Bay was open and a 30ish-40ish dandified couple not only took it over while I waited for Ethan, but, against the supposed rules created by the Morro Bay Recreation Department, they knelt on their hands and knees with chalk and sullied up the court to pickleball specifications.
By this time, I was on the court as a couple of tennis players volleyed on Court 1, and told the pickleballers that these courts were not marked out for pickleball, and were for tennis players only.
Like officious twits inculcated into the deep bureaucracy, both these people, a man and a woman, repeated regulations obviously culled straight from the recreation department charters and ignored me as I scalded them for taking over “our” tennis courts.
But I soon realized a cult as fanatical as pickleballers was impossible to reckon with, as they are prepared interlopers unabashed about planting themselves in foreign territory and, like an invasive species resistant to all manner of chemicals or poisonous toxins, they grow and grow and take over more and more territory, and the more they grow and take over territory the more entitled and arrogant and self-righteous and odious they become, until we tennis players can only resort to visiting intimidated officialdom at the local rec department and watch them shrug, shrivel up helplessly, shake their heads sadly and tell us there’s nothing they can do.
Soon the intruding pickleball pukes begin batting the ball around and filling the neighborhood with obnoxious pongs, PONGS, PONGS!
The two tennis players on Court 1, both of whom are friends I’ve hit with, seemed embarrassed and said nothing as I continued jawing at the enemy. To this attack the pickleballers scrabbled about as if preparing for the Olympics — perhaps the next goal of this noxious effluvium.
“Why don’t you go to the rec department if you wanna play ping pong?” I sneered.
“Why don’t you go to the high school if you want to play tennis,” said the man, snottily.
“Yeh!” said the woman.
“Because the high school courts are occupied on Saturdays,” I yelled. “A tennis group plays there! Maybe you can get the city to turn those courts into pickleball courts.”
I was growing faint with a rapid adrenaline-spun heart beat. I am 80, and cannot allow myself to even engage in verbal combat anymore. Rage no longer suits me.
Ethan showed up and, a man 18 years younger and much less scabrous and confrontational than I, walked right on court and began abusing the pickleballers with a concise vehemence I found shocking, yet envied.
“Look,” the guy finally said, holding his paddle. “The courts at Del Mar were full and we didn’t want to wait, and we need to practice, so we’ll only be here thirty minutes.”
“Why can’t you wait at Del Mar?” I asked. “I thought waiting around was a big love fest with your cult. You can talk about how pickleball is saving American slugs.”
Again, they stopped and went through a list of rules and regulations that allowed them to use our tennis courts as “open to the public.”
Ethan continued berating them. I was thankful to have eloquent back-up. We double-teamed them, agreeing that if we made their thirty minutes a living hell, they would return to their cult grounds and warn everybody about the vicious psychos at the only playable tennis courts remaining in Morro Bay.
During a brief pause from our abuse, Ethan said to me, “You know, the local cult paid for those courts at Del Mar. I think it cost them around forty-grand. Pickleballers have money. Their cult has big money. They’re like a corporation. It’s like they have lobbyists fighting for them day and night, because they realize they’re despised, that they’re an invasive species, but they’re rich enough to pay for lawyers and lobbyists, because cults, once they get going, collect money like these evangelical religious leaders.”
“They drive luxury cars.” I retorted.
“And I hate to say it, but I think the majority are liberals—Lexus libs.”
“The kind of liberals that give us a bad name—snooty, corporate, wine-sipping, money-grubbing hypocrites who never have enough.”
“There’s no stopping them.”
We went back to abusing the pickleballers, but grew weary and sat down and waited, glowering at them as the wife or partner returned little lobs here and there and her hero dashed back and forth, back and forth, lathering himself up.
“Tennis used to be the snob sport,” I told Ethan. “Now we’re the outcasts – the bums. We have no backing. Nobody cares about our rights. That fucking cult is massive, and they’ve gained the upper hand. They’re winning. It’s like a pandemic, and we have no immunity.”
“What about the ones we used to play tennis with and were kind of friends?” Ethan asked.
“The converts are by far the worst. The born-agains are the most fanatical proselytizers. They’re unbearable.”
Ethan nodded. When the pickleball pukes finally finished, they strolled past us, heads held high in a manner of smug ownership, left the courts and headed for their vehicle.
He would observe the occasional wandering snake or feral cat passing along the dirt floor from one side of his shack to the other, past the row of bottles of booze he’d stored on some old wooden shelves
Photos and Story by Stacey Warde
I’ve known rascals, and loved some, too, those guys who thumb their noses at culture and the corporate value system that degrades humans (like a bad drug, or too much alcohol) and turns them into humanoid shells of greed and hubris.
Tam helped me to see what salt of the earth really means: Basically, people who have struggled, and sometimes thrive, on the fringes, along the margins and outskirts of fashion, and of what’s trendy like cold baths and avocado toast. He grew up beyond the reach of formal training and education, studying instead in books and magazines of his choosing, also in the hollows of wild pig dens and in the wide-open spaces of the Pacific ocean and fertile California farmland. His life trajectory spun him far and away from the familiar refrains of “how to get ahead” and “make it big” and “make a name for yourself,” which he already had in some circles, 86’d from more than one bar in his lifetime, no easy task. He scorned the chosen, acceptable path or standard, what is popularly sought after in our American culture of bozos and boosterism — notoriety, fame, money, security — and set his own course with his own rules. Some observers might interpret his indifference and way of life as low-brow, mean, and limited, a man with not much ambition. Just the opposite.
His mode of living might have appeared as if he didn’t love life; he did love life, on his terms. In fact, he was life, full of hardscrabble, grit, and grace. He lived closer to the cattle trails and cow pies of his chosen lifestyle than he did trying to be somebody who might be ok with recruiters and corporate hacks. His arc of life choices, for good or ill, stretched beyond the lies and false promises of a “good life” (who’s to say what that is?) in the US. He’d made it, as far as he was concerned.
“I wouldn’t trade this for all the money in the world,“ he’d say of his apparently rough circumstances, waving his arm across the open wild that was his front yard.
Salty people like Tam know how bad or good things can actually get, living close to the ground, and they appreciate how lucky they are, even though they’ve taken punches and blows, suffered setbacks, without worrying about “optics,” market share, bottom lines, or how much money they earn.
Their views and values haven’t been warped by a predatory corporate culture — owned and operated by vultures and wolves, we both agreed, of a sort more dangerous and cutthroat than one might find in the wild — people with major personality disorders, squeezing out the bitter juice of envy, greed, and corruption that makes America “great.” Salties have instead been shaped by real living, where sun and earth get under one’s skin and fingernails, and the juice tastes pretty good. There’s nothing like cutting into a ripe avocado to eat and fresh water to drink during a rest break under the shade of a forest of trees on a ranch in the middle of a hot California afternoon where the breeze feels fine and snakes slither off into the coolness of dried leaves. I doubt you can beat that on a New York holiday.
Tam was the salt that keeps life interesting and real, I knew it from the start, a modern-day Diogenes, far from time-wasting office politics and petty grievances that pepper and ruin the workplace; he was the Cayucos version of the Greek Dog from Athens, barking at distracted city fellows from his refuge in a wine jug to stop and breathe and enjoy life. He lived out loud from the moment I met him, unashamed of himself, often on the verge of drunkenness, and unconcerned about how to fit in; he lived the way he wanted to live, like Diogenes the Dog. Better to trek rattlesnake infested weeds than the halls of business filled with vipers and psychopaths. Most people who get ahead in America, he’d observe, are not well balanced. They don’t know how to live.
Neither, perhaps, do the salty ones, like Tam, with whom I am most familiar and most comfortable.
Flat out, with no sense of shame or embarrassment, when we first met, Tam told me he’s an alcoholic, didn’t mind being one, and in fact had learned not only how to be a functional drunk but had also acquired the expert knowledge to make his own booze, a master distiller, a skill he learned from his late father, a Morro Bay fisherman, and decided that living is fine, more than fine if you had the guts for it, but living without a batch of your own homemade whisky is no way to live at all.
He took great pride in his Scottish heritage, organizing and participating in rough-and-tumble Scottish games as a young man, self-reliant, fiercely independent, scornful of anyone who tried blowing smoke up his ass with promises of a better life, a “safe” and “easy” life of which he knew there was none. A man has to make his own way. That’s how it’s always been, he’d say, a lesson his father taught him raising a family as a commercial fisherman.
A Scotsman as devilish and feisty and short as a leprechaun, Tam lived in a dirt-floor shack that he loved and maintained just the way he wanted with its solar panels up top to power his lone analog tv and video player and some selected lights in a yard filled with scavenged treasures, tools, saws, tires, wood, a beater Honda that he rescued and drove with pride. “Forty miles to the gallon!” he boasted. “What the fuck do I need a new car for?”
He would observe the occasional wandering snake or feral cat passing along the dirt floor from one side of his shack to the other, past the row of bottles of booze he’d stored on some old wooden shelves, and he welcomed the fresh running spring water that fed his still; he was a modern day homesteader/hermit tucked into the quiet of an enormous open landscape filled with coastal oaks, willow, native scrub, invasive weeds, and running creeks, bothering no one, living his own life with no one to bother him. A world of his own where work and play were all the same.
We were employed by the same ranch outfit, a sprawling enterprise for cows and produce: He worked the cattle side, I worked in the orchards, mostly solo in our respective roles, and we got stuff done.
Tam plowed the nearby adjacent fields of the thousand-acre ranch and made sure we had plenty of feed to get us through the dry season, which was almost year-round in that parched part of coastal California.
I irrigated, pruned, and cut down trees, made burn piles in the enclosure where the bulls were kept until breeding time. The bulls, all nine of them, would surround me, nudging me out of their way, looking for green grub among the leavings, as I unloaded the trailer with my cuttings and piled them into the center of the field where I would burn them in the fall after they dried out.
Tam plowed the nearby adjacent fields of the thousand-acre ranch and made sure we had plenty of feed to get us through the dry season, which was almost year-round in that parched part of coastal California. Tam later taught me how to drive the fearsome Kubota tractor so I could mow the orchards in spring and help prep the fields for planting grasses for the cattle, which Tam managed in his own gleeful ranch hand way with a smile, a wave, and a bottle of homemade whisky. He repaired the ancient tractors and harvesters on site, and he loved every one of them, almost as if they were his own family, or old lovers.
“I’ve been inside and out of that tractor more than I’ve had pussy, and I’ve had plenty of that,” he’d say, pointing to the lone menacing machine standing stuck in the middle of the field — again. Damn thing nearly killed him once when it rolled over him, he said, bruising his insides and breaking nothing. “The doc said I got lucky on that one,” he said, “coulda killed me if it had rolled over my chest and rib cage. Just bruised my intestines is all.” During the off hours, we sat at an old picnic table in his big open yard by the creek, or on old ‘50s-style Formica table type of kitchen chairs with fat degraded padding, facing each other, telling stories blown way out of proportion, laughing like fools, refilling our glasses, rolling in the dirt, loving life.
Each time I got up for another pour, he’d say, “Make sure you add a bit of water. Whisky tastes better that way.”
We sat on the far opposite ends of the political spectrum too — he thought liberals were hypocritical bloodsuckers — yet we enjoyed good conversation. He would never go on disability or ask the government for anything. No handouts. Ever.
Able-bodied people had no business asking for handouts. The government can’t be trusted either, he’d add. So long as he could get out of bed after a night of eating out barflies and waking up to grapple with the tractors and feed the herd, and get paid, why do anything else? You’d be a fool and a loser to go on food stamps. Tam lived large, as an unapologetic conservative with no interest in the buttoned-down universe of Madmen.
“The oceans aren’t rising,” he argued in our sloshed conversations about climate change. He knew the oceans better than I, I figured, because as a youngster he’d worked as a fisherman up and down the West Coast from Alaska to Mexico. “If you take a glass and fill it with ice and water and watch the ice melt,” he’d say, “the glass won’t overflow. It’s the same with the oceans. If the polar caps melt, there won’t be any overflow. It’s basic science.”
The point being, he’d explain, that environmentalists were mostly a bunch of cry babies who don’t know how to have fun, don’t know what they’re talking about half the time, have little science or knowledge to back their claims, offer no reasonable/doable solutions, and only know how to make life difficult for those who are serious about earning a living, actually doing stuff instead of looking for an easy way out. I loved Tam.
Women, as salty and crusty as he was, with voices rough like sandpaper, and generally not my type, came often to visit, glad to have landed at Tam’s hideaway refuge on the ranch, away from the mean streets of Morro Bay or San Luis Obispo (which a friend and writerfamously christened the “Golden Ghetto” after a series of unsolved murders of three women, including Kristin Smart) away from state highways crowded with tourists, happy to be a part of his inner circle, generous with hugs and kisses, drinking Tam’s home-spun whisky, with a place to spend the night, if necessary, where the floor was made of dirt and the bed always made for love.
Tam, ever the gracious and sometimes unpredictable host, loved a good talk and welcomed evenings watching a movie on his solar-powered VCR and rolling in the arms of a wanton woman. He fancied himself a lover. Once, during a drunken fit, he tried to molest my girlfriend, who nearly punched him in the face.
Often, during work hours, I’d see Tam driving the ancient murderous red tractor through the fields adjacent to the avocado and orange orchards where I worked making sure the irrigation lines were intact, not chewed down or leak-sprung by coyotes or jerked out of alignment by wild pigs, which ran everywhere, tearing up the ground beneath the trees and making an unholy mess of things, fouling the low-hanging fruit with mud and dirt.
“I had pigs all over my place one season,” a neighboring farmer once told me, “just tearing the place up. So, I went out one night and shot 30 of the bastards, thought I’d cleaned the place out. Next night, they were back at it again, I could hear them, and I went out and bagged 18 more pigs. You can’t win. They’re everywhere.”
Occasionally, on an outside turn in the field, Tam would drive the tractor over my direction to say hello, not far from the section of dirt road where I found what I thought at first, in my limited imagination, were the hideous footprints of an old hag and which turned out instead to belong to a bear. The ancient tractor, pulling an equally ancient seeder loaded up with new seed, made its chugga-chug-chugga-chug lurch through the freshly ripped clay soil as he approached. Then, Tam stopped the machine not far from where I stood. The thing coughed a final blow from its smoke stack to rest sputtering from farm work. He was seeding about seven acres, which would produce much-desired grass for the cows. “Wanna nip?” he shouted, his own voice raspy with age, as he reached into his back pocket to pull out a plain bottle half-full with his home brew of golden-blond whisky.
“Sure,” I said, taking the bottle. “Damn! That’s good.” The smell of freshly plowed earth, alcohol, red diesel, and last year’s hay passed between us as I handed back his stash. The tractor continued to cough and sputter.
“Have another nip!” he offered, leaning in my direction from his perch on the tractor, hand outstretched. “OK,” I said, taking the bottle once more.
“What’re you planting?” I asked.
“Sudan grass. It’ll survive any drought, made for dry climates, the desert, North Africa, and we get lots of feed from it. If we’re lucky, we might even get two harvests from this planting.”
I handed back his bottle. “That’s awesome. Thanks for the nip! You do good work, Tam. I’m pretty sure the cows love you for it. Maybe more than your lady friends.”
“Never!” he said. “Come on by later!” he added, “I just made a new batch.” He was proud of his craft. He fired up the tractor, saluted me with a wave of his arm and hand, as if he was riding a horse, and began to chugga-chug around the field again spreading Sudan grass seed.
My after-hours visits with Tam were always a good plan. I dropped back into the cool shadows of trees to finish pruning, anticipating another evening whisky chat with Tam, who schooled me on the value of being a man and a rascal and the good life as he saw it.
Stacey Warde is retired from his labors as a farmhand and remembers his work there with fondness.
