Cayucos, an idyll

pith.cayucos4Apricots are suede loafers, and
black plums are cordovan weejuns,

both of which are indications that
Summer, however foggy it may be

in this tiny beach town, is upon us.
The tourists, in their brightly colored

shorts and aggressive t-shirts
advertising everything they own

and everywhere they’ve been,
descend to the kelp-strewn beach

and set up their tents, their umbrellas,
and their coolers filled with light beer

and candy flavored malt liquor. The
locals grumblingly take the tourists’

money. It is a grudging annual
symbiosis, but the apricots are

delicious, and my suede loafers are
safe from the flip flop wearing hoards.

—Todd Young

Wilbur’s Reckless Peeing Habits Come under Attack

CITY LIFE.WILBUR'S PEE HABITS

Wilbur, who has his favorite spots to pee, has admittedly developed habits unbreakable. Photo by Jason Vest

by Dell Franklin

Just about every weekday afternoon, at around 3 o’clock, Wilbur, my 10-year-old, 95-pound chocolate Lab, sunning himself on my spacious terrace, hears Randy Crozier, otherwise known as “The Pirate” and resident boozer at the downtown Schooner’s Wharf, returning from work as a builder and approach our residence in his loud, growling 25-year-old truck. Wilbur immediately tears to the railing, tail wagging frantically, drooling, pacing, as Crozier pulls over, steps out and lobs a couple biscuits up on the terrace, which Wilbur instantly devours and returns to the railing to watch Crozier turn down the street below us and park three doors down. Wilbur rewards Crozier for his generosity by peeing on his tires when we walk down that street.

Wilbur rewards Randy Crozier, also known as "The Pirate," for his generosity by peeing on his tires when we walk down that street.

Wilbur rewards Randy Crozier, also known as “The Pirate,” for his generosity by peeing on his tires when we walk down that street.

Wilbur has admittedly developed habits unbreakable. I was walking him the other morning around the corner from Crozier and along the same route I’ve been walking dogs in this neighborhood for 17-plus years when the blinds went up at a new residence and a stern voice blurted, very curtly, “I’d appreciate it if your dog didn’t pee on my bushes, thank you.” His “thank you” was very dismissive and condescending, as if Wilbur and I were trash when for years we’ve been regarded as harmless if a little eccentric and unruly of appearance due to the gentrification of Cayucos.

I paused after Wilbur peed on the bush and faced the narrowly opened blinds and laughed in a jeering manner as the blinds snapped shut. Wilbur and I continued on past signs on some yards of a dog squatting to shit and a red arrow running through it. I try and refrain from allowing Wilbur to shit on any lawn, but in case he does I keep plastic poop bags like a thoughtful neighbor. This little grid of a neighborhood is rife with dogs of all sizes and we’re all pretty respectful and affectionate toward each others’ dogs. So far no signs have popped up of a dog lifting his leg to pee with a red arrow running through it. As far as I know these signs don’t exist. Dogs here and everywhere are hard pressed NOT to pee on every fire hydrant they pass, as well as  plants, bushes, mailbox posts, fence posts, tires, trash cans, or any object other dogs have peed on, and if you try to stop them they fight hard and become confused and perhaps unhappy.

This is THEIR time.

Wilbur and I continued on past signs on some yards of a dog squatting to shit and a red arrow running through it.

Wilbur and I continued on past signs on some yards of a dog squatting to shit and a red arrow running through it. Photo by Stacey Warde

I’m concerned about this guy who lurks near his window so early in the morning laying in wait for miscreants like Wilbur and myself who are used to roving around with impunity. Has he maintained this vigilance with all the tiny dogs and pretty pedigrees walked by ladies wearing designer sunglasses and toting Evian bottles of water? Does he have it in for Wilbur and me? I recall him glaring at us and issuing a muttered, grudging “hello” when I greeted him with an ebullient “hello” one afternoon as I allowed Wilbur off the leash to indulge in some frenzied sniffing and peeing. Since then, I’ve made sure to leash Wilbur and wonder: Has this guy employed a hi-tech surveillance system to catch dogs peeing on his newly planted bushes so he can gather an enemies list and confront them, too?

My problem with this guy is he’s the first person ever in all my 71 years that I’ve ever heard of having a problem with dogs peeing on his or her bushes. What he needs to understand is that before he moved here Wilbur had already established territorial rights on his property and has no inclination whatsoever to relinquish them. Wilbur jerks and pulls me to that bush, threatening my bad knee, hip and shoulder. It is a vital part of his peeing grounds, just as he leads me invariably to the same shitting grounds and shows displeasure if another dog has violated these grounds. And this is all set off by his sniffing mechanism, which controls his every instinctive action and reaction.

The blinds went up at a new residence and a stern voice blurted, very curtly, “I’d appreciate it if your dog didn’t pee on my bushes, thank you.”

Anyway, I’m in a quandary about this situation. One friend warned me about pushing it and advised me to avoid this street, home and bush so as not to trigger a confrontation, which in my past history has led to threats and violence and the police called in. “Be big,” he said. “And let this asshole be small.”

Another advisor said “You’re too old to get worked up and involved over such a petty predicament. And besides, you’re too crippled to fight like in the old days.”

Sorry, but I just can’t get over this. I’ve always hated authoritative tight-asses trying to control my behavior. I’ve got a good notion to purposely have Wilbur pee on his putrid little bush and wait for him to snap open that blind so I can explain to him that Wilbur cannot live without sniffing this bush every day to find out who else has peed on it and then pee on it himself, and if he doesn’t like it, well, build a goddamn fence to keep all the goddamn dogs in the neighborhood from peeing on his goddamn bush!

Or, I could come by without Wilbur while he’s obsessively maintaining his vehicles or premises and explain very diplomatically that it is the destiny of every living dog to pee on any bush any other dog has peed on and if this is interfered with it destroys the harmony dogs have brought to this and every neighborhood in America and perhaps the world.

Is his precious bush so important it antagonizes the entire neighborhood, especially when I’ve lived here so long and know everybody on HIS street as well as the surrounding grid and will soon inform all of them about his antics regarding Wilbur and myself? Does he realize that in a case like this EVERYBODY is on Wilbur’s side and that automatically puts them on MY side? Does he know that his immediate neighbor, Crozier, has lived here since he was a child and loves Wilbur as his own and has a history of unchecked vengeance when he feels his friends are being wronged?

Maybe I should leave a business card from my lawyer, Gifford Beaton, Esq., a heavy hitter who resides in San Luis Obispo, on his bush, with these words, “I am Wilbur’s lawyer and anybody trifling with his peeing habits will be taken to court!” §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he and Wilbur spend their days when not peeing on bushes in the neighborhood. He’s the author of The Ballplayer’s Son.

The Oaxaca Express

Alfredo pointed to a side road running into the fields and inland hills near Cambria. Barns and ranch houses nestled among clusters of oaks. Cows and the occasional horses grazed. I had cut the meter at $40 and was saving them at least $25.

Alfredo pointed to a side road running into the fields and inland hills near Cambria. Barns and ranch houses nestled among clusters of oaks. Cows and the occasional horses grazed. I had cut the meter at $40 and was saving them at least $25. Photo by Stacey Warde

by Dell Franklin

Sitting in your cab when the buses roll in at the Greyhound station in San Luis Obispo, Calif., you pretty much know who your prospective rides are going to be: black women visiting inmates at the state prison, little old ladies afraid to fly, parolees in new issue shuttling down to L.A. from prisons north, tattooed white trash, the occasional student, and Mexican immigrants from the poorest provinces of that country. The very rock-bottom of the socioeconomic ladder in America.

Anybody who departs from a Greyhound bus after having been on it for days exudes an identifiable odor: a distinct blend of cigarette smoke, exhaust fumes, sour, dead air, armpit sweat ands crotch rot—all accumulating over years and soaking into seats and clinging to the hair, skin and clothes of a passenger and rising from them like a fetid, septic vapor, a sensory bludgeoning.

I picked up these field hands, or campesinos, always immigrants. Six of them. Since a cab is by law only allowed five passengers, I tried to explain this to them in my broken Spanish, but they pretended not to understand and piled in, five squishing up in back. They were not about to separate and take another cab for the extra $60 or 70$ to transport them to the farm or ranch where they were to cultivate and harvest vegetables and fruit and tend cattle out by Cambria, thirty-five miles away. Besides, they were diminutive people compared to fat Americans, stick-like and black-eyed, no doubt from the farthest reaches south, 3,000 miles from home.

Each of them toted a flimsy satchel with their meager belongings, which I stuffed in the trunk. The five in back were young men, and the oldest, with grey flecks in his abundant hair and bushy mustache, sat shotgun in the bucket seat. He smiled at me hopefully, a sly, wise look on his face.

I was familiar with these people. As a college kid, I had worked part-time and saved enough money to travel to the interior of Mexico with three pals in an old jalopy we eventually blew up. We hit cantinas, beaches, whore houses, and although we were poor compared to most Americans, we must have seemed to these peasants to our south, rich and privileged.

These passengers were not street-wise, big city or border town Mexicans. This was possibly their first time in America. They seemed curious yet wary, like young kittens.

The man sitting shotgun smiled at me. “You geeve me good deal, amigo?”

I shrugged, looking helpless, pointed to the meter. “No po-see-blay, amigo.”

“We have leetle dinero, señor.”

I nodded. “I understand. But it will cost you around seventy dollars.” He winced, as if stabbed. He was possibly a few years younger than me but looked older, obviously having lived a harder life, as they all did.

I remembered how, when our car stalled in little villages and big cities, everybody, even kids and women, came out of buildings or shacks to push us up hills, waving and smiling as we pulled away. I remember, deep in the interior, little dark men like those in my cab buying us beers and tequila when they could not afford it, because, evidently, they liked us, or were too proud to allow us to buy them drinks, or perhaps they were showing us the true nature of the Mexican people—warm and generous, money meaning little in the face of gratitude and goodness of spirit.

“I will try and make us a deal, amigo, but it is very difficult.” I again pointed to the meter, explaining to him that my supervisor kept close tabs on cab drivers. Then I picked up the phone, checked in with my dispatcher/supervisor, informed him I was going somewhere past Cambria and would be gone a while.

The car stunk. It was chilly outside, but I had my window open and the thin-blooded peasants huddled up and shivered in their faded denim jackets. Shotgun, who was named Alfredo, asked politely if I could roll up the window, so I cracked it a little, turned on the heat, but the stench increased and wafted to my nostrils, my gorge rising, like somebody died in my cab. They were, of course, immune from their own miserable smell and had probably been eating food they’d never eaten before, arousing their bowels, causing them to get diarrhea and even vomit. This happened to us in Mexico. These poor kids were used to nothing but beans and rice and tortillas and whatever they could kill.

They were incurious about the passing countryside, sat quietly, like mutes awaiting a sentencing. Alfredo kept an eye on me, occasionally producing his reassuring grin, his teeth white and clean.

Alfredo and I haggled amicably, bluffing, shrugging, throwing up our hands, and eventually arrived at a price.

Alfredo and I haggled amicably, bluffing, shrugging, throwing up our hands, and eventually arrived at a price.

I asked him where they were from. And he told me Oaxaca. I told him I’d been there, and it was pretty, and was about to comment on how poor it was, but knew this would humiliate him and place me at a disadvantage when we started haggling over the fare. I’d decided to give them some kind of deal. He knew this, sensed my willingness to compromise. I could tell the dispatcher I got lost from poor directions from non-English speaking Mexicans. Perhaps cut the meter at around $40 or $50. That was my limit.

So I relaxed just past Morro Bay, and Alfredo and I talked. My chopped up Spanish was as adequate as his English. He had a wife and five kids. Two of his boys were in back. They lived in a small village outside of Oaxaca. He was foreman at a ranch outside of Cambria. As we passed Cayucos and its glinting bay, my passengers did not bother to look. I studied the peasants in the rearview mirror; they looked exhausted, half asleep, like bags of ragged clothes. Urchin-like, they received little or no help from their government, I knew, forcing their survival on family alone. They possessed the high-cheek-boned, ridged faces of bantamweight boxers toiling in American arenas and on our sports channels on TV—men who could dish it out and take it and ignore blood and pain, never backing up until the final bell rang, bleeding, swollen about the eyes, yet still proud and game. They had perfect skin, were splendid looking people. Their women, in teenage years, before being burdened with multiple children, were breathtakingly beautiful. As a people they broke your heart, but you never let them know. Never.

Alfredo pointed to a side road running into the fields and inland hills near Cambria. Barns and ranch houses nestled among clusters of oaks. Cows and the occasional horses grazed. I had cut the meter at $40 and was saving them at least $25. At Alfredo’s direction, I turned onto a bumpy dirt road; rows of crops on either side. There were orchards and more cows. We arrived at a single trailer situated some fifty yards from a main house and barn and small corral.

When we pulled up, a door opened and five Mexicans who looked exactly like my passengers spilled out of the trailer. Their satchels and a few duffel bags were stacked by the steps. They looked fit and fuller than my crew. Everybody piled out of the cab and I opened the trunk and my peasants took out their satchels and everybody commenced to speak in Spanish at such a rapid pace I could not keep up with it. Alfredo talked to an older man who stepped out and could have been his brother. He glanced at me as they talked.

Occasionally, after a harvest, on a pay day, they’d go to a bar in Cambria and get drunk, shoot pool, become happy and sentimental, stare hungrily at big, healthy white girls, perhaps get angry.

I observed the crew I’d dropped off. They would be here for months, a year, probably longer, working all day, every day. Occasionally, after a harvest, on a pay day, they’d go to a bar in Cambria and get drunk, shoot pool, become happy and sentimental, stare hungrily at big, healthy white girls, perhaps get angry, maybe fight among themselves and be called “beaners” and “wetbacks” before being run out. This was to be part of their lot: Work, eat, drink, sleep, go without.

The two older men approached me. Any Mexican, be he a cab driver, pimp, or merchant involving any kind of exchange, liked to haggle. We learned to do it well in Mexico. They had no respect for you if you didn’t try and chisel them down or were a pushover when you tried.

“How much to San Luis?” asked Alfredo.

“The same, amigo—forty dollars.”

Again the pained look. “Too much, amigo.”

“Other cabbies, they charge you sixty-five, seventy on the way up, the same on the way back. They are not like me. They are not simpatico.”

Alfredo nodded, expressing his appreciation of my understanding and generosity. He turned to the man who looked like his brother and conversed rapidly while the peasants talked in the background. I heard the word “simpatico.” I’m sure they knew from previous rides that if I drove back alone I got paid nothing. Dead time. This was an excellent opportunity for all of us to come to a very pleasing compromise. Since they didn’t tip, which was fine with me, I could make some quick cash and be a true amigo at the same time.

Alfredo returned to barter. He shrugged helplessly. “We are not reech, senor. It is too much.”

Now they were all staring at me, a dozen bantamweights with calloused hands, wiry frames, sparkling teeth, deep leather tans. The departing kids would be returning home with pockets full of cash for their families, where they would be kings in their small village, almost heroes. They had no doubt already sent money home. I had seen their kind break hundred-dollar bills in the Cayucos Tavern to buy pitchers of beer. They spent their money on little else, lived free in the trailer, were fed, had few expenses. They became very generous when drunk, forgetting temporarily how poor they were as they bought local gringos and women shots and beers if they seemed halfway tolerant and interested in them as people. The drunker they became, the more foolish they became with their cash. They dropped it on the floor and left it on the bar and sometimes lost wallets. They requested their honking, tooting, oompah music on the jukebox, but no bar would hear it.

Alfredo and I haggled amicably, bluffing, shrugging, throwing up our hands, and eventually arrived at a price—$60 for a round-trip. I would make myself a $20 tip. For them, they were saving a fortune. Everybody was happy, satisfied. They paid me with a hundred-dollar bill. Alfredo and I shook hands. His brother, Eduardo, nodded at me, smiling. Everybody piled in.

On the drive back, I talked with Eduardo, who was from a family of fifteen. The kids in back were talkative and lively, behaving like jubilant school boys going away to summer camp. It was a quick, easy ride. I dropped them off at the Greyhound depot, where they hauled off their plump satchels and duffel bags. They wore new denim jackets and new leather boots and Levi’s and plaid flannel shirts and white straw hats.

They were freshly cleaned and laundered and smelled good. Such sweet people.

They would stink to high heaven when their bus pulled into Oaxaca. §

Dell Franklin writes from his home in Cayucos, Calif., where he lives with his rescue dog, Wilbur.

 

 

MADE IN CHINA

FUCK YOU, CHINA! At first I got mad at the country of origin—there wasn’t any manufacturer’s label, just a price tag. “Fuck you, China, for your cheap consumer ‘goods!’” And: “Fuck me for being dumb enough to buy them!”

FUCK YOU, CHINA! At first I got mad at the country of origin—there wasn’t any manufacturer’s label, just a price tag. “Fuck you, China, for your cheap consumer ‘goods!’” And: “Fuck me for being dumb enough to buy them!”

 

In parched, sun-baked California, buyer beware

by Stacey Warde

I bought a cheap pair of plastic sunglasses, made in China, at the Cayucos Super Market several days ago, a purchase I’ve come to regret.

In less than a week, they broke. Of course.

The white “Made in China” small print along the inside of the temple piece began to wear off in less than two days.

The frame cracked the next day and by the fourth day the flimsy dark plastic eyepiece fell out.

Not my best purchase.

I bought them becuase the sun bears down hard lately, harder than feels normal this early in the season, mid-April, and summer still officially two months away.

Pollens and dust from swirling, drying winds fill the air. Clouds of tiny bugs drift across the dusty ranch road. They fly into my eyes whenever I drive the quad to get to the orchards I tend as a farmhand. It’s annoying as hell, and hazardous to boot.

Additionally, my eyes have been light sensitive, they hurt and they’ve been watering. When I put on scratched-up safety goggles or get sun screen in my eyes, I can hardly see sometimes. A new pair of sunglasses seemed essential.

I might have known better. Buyer beware.

***

It feels like summer already. It’s so damned bright, and hot. We’ve had above-normal temperatures for weeks now, and little of the precipitation this parched country so desperately needs. The governor has put restrictions on water, demanding reductions in residential use.

Farmers and corporations, apparently, are not subject to the same restrictions. Blame and finger-pointing have begun in earnest; last week, it was Nestle® who was most at fault, and this week, environmentalists are to blame for the historic drought.

The dust on dirt ranch roads kicks up much more easily now, and hangs in the air  longer, like a faded earthen curtain, blinding and choking, slowly drifting with the breeze, moisture and water obscured from sight and becoming more scarce.

Ticks and snakes have come out, predators and pests are more prevalent. The coyotes sneak closer to drink from the dwindling creek in front of my cabin. They nabbed a neighbor’s house cat recently.

I heard the shrill and sudden scream of the cat in its final desperate act of defiance. Wrong place, wrong time that night. Tooth and claw, foolish cat. The kill couldn’t have been very satisfying for the coyote. The cat was scrawny, no contender, and had snuck out of the house, where it was safe, and went down to the creek.

“That’s what they do,” a friend tells me of the coyotes, “they sit near the creek at night and wait for critters to come drink.”

The night cry spooked me. I thought a bobcat or young mountain lion had screamed. It pierced the night, fierce and defiant, even for a scrawny animal.

When I flashed my light across the creek, I saw the coyote chawing on the victim’s feline remains. I threw a rock at the prowler and it dashed off into the darkness with its prey.

My neighbor was grief-stricken. “She shouldn’t have gone out there,” she lamented. “She never had a chance.”

As water becomes more scarce, we’re likely to have more run-ins with  predators risking rocks, ranch rifles and shotguns to get their food and drink.

Some say the unusual brightness and intense sunlight are evidence of global warming, or of fallout from the nuclear disaster at Fukushima, or of a government conspiracy to spread mind- and weather-altering chemicals in the sky. Whatever it is, it’s rough on the eyes.

***

Barely two days after buying my new sunglasses, I noticed the flimsy dark plastic lens on the left side popping off the rim.

“Good thing I got these for eight dollars instead of the fifteen they wanted on the sticker price,” I thought.

I had plowed through the pastic-wrapped, toy-like sunglasses on a bottom shelf near the handkerchiefs and beach items and over-the-counter medicines, eager to find a protective cover for my eyes.

“Oh, these’ll be OK, only four dollars.” My eyes, tired from age, and watering from excessive light, wind and dust, missed a digit on the price tag. The nice lady at the cash register, seeing my difficulty, offered them to me at the cut rate of only $7.99 instead of $14.99.

I knew better the moment I touched those shitty, toy-variety sunglasses, that they were worthless, absolutely worthless, and I bought them any way.

At first I got mad at the country of origin—there wasn’t any manufacturer’s label, just a price tag. “Fuck you, China, for your cheap consumer ‘goods!’” And: “Fuck me for being dumb enough to buy them!”

***

I’m working in the avocado orchard today, tending 1,300 or so trees, irrigating, pumping thousands of gallons of water, installing injectors with their chemical magic to keep dying trees in production, cutting out deadwood, and pulling up suckers and sprouted seeds.

It’s unseasonably hot and dry again. I’ve put on my new sunglasses, and that helps against the intense brightness of the sun.

We’re one of the lucky few growers in California. We still have water. This season’s crop of avocados looks promising and we expect a favorable yield, so long as the water supply holds out.

Just over the hill, however, barely a mile or so distant, a friend who also farms avocados has already heard the gut-wrenching sound of gurgling from one of his pumps, indicating that his water source is running low.

“It hurts like hell,” he says, “to watch what you’ve worked so hard for just wilt away. But what are you going to do? You can’t fight mother nature.”

Some growers have begun trucking in water but that’s an expense few can afford.

The green from what little rain we got this season has begun to fade and turn shades of yellow and brown; drying grasses appear the way they usually do at the beginning of summer.

The rolling golden hills of California…are not such a pretty sight right now. It’s going to be a long, hot summer.

Trees have been cut down, stumped and painted white. Pests have turned up, attacking weakened trees and fruit, and will continue to be an issue as water turns more scarce.

The great California drought of the new millenium put a significant stamp on this county’s agriculture in 2014, according to the ag department, reducing yields of avocados. The drier weather was good for strawberries, though, which topped even grapes as the highest yielding crop in a region that prides itself on wine.

The wine industry, meanwhile, continues to suck up the lion’s share of North County’s water. How much more water can be squeezed out of the ground is anyone’s guess but when it does finally run out, we’ll have plenty of wine to drink.

The world-class desal plant in Cambria is a last resort as a home water source but some people still complain about and fight it, arguing they’ll pay more for their water rather than contribute to farming water from the ocean or brackish ponds. But how much will they pay when traditional water sources run out?

“This is bad, really bad,” people keep saying.

Nonetheless, even with water restrictions and hills turning brown, residential landscapes, the little slices of heaven we create to insulate ourselves from the cruel world, manage to stay green. As long as water continues to pour out of the taps, homeowners seem to think, what’s to worry about?

In the Central Valley, meanwhile, the nation’s breadbasket, some water-starved growers have shut down operations and unemployment among farmhands has skyrocketed.

***

One of the benefits of working out here is the lack of distractions from meddlesome and self-important boobs whose only apparent goal in life is to make money, or sell something, regardless of its value.

Not to say there’s anything wrong with making money or selling goods and services but some people I know—and avoid—think only of turning a buck, would sell you a bucketful of dogshit if they could, and tell you what a great value you’re getting.

I despise those people, the crafty, who lack integrity, whose only motivation is to make a fast buck, the hosers and posers, the merchants of cheap and worthless goods, whose only real interest in you is how much money they can get out of you. I avoid them whenever possible. They’re scum.

Then, there’s my farmer friend whose wells are going dry, whose one great joy in life is to put food on people’s tables. He takes pride in growing quality organic produce, and is glad to provide something of value, something that actually improves the quality of people’s lives.

If more people thought the way he did, we might not be subject to cheap imitations and bogus, worthless consumer goods, with which this culture, thanks largely to slave-labor countries like China, more than eager to supply them, seems to have overrun itself.

***

While eating lunch in front of Ruddell’s Smokehouse in Cayucos, friends of mine brought up the subject of U.S. indebtedness to China. [Disclosure: The smokehouse is a sponsor of The Rogue Voice.]

“What’s going to happen,” asks one, “when they finally decide to collect on their debt? Will the U.S. be able to pay? And, if not, what will China do, invade us?”

“I doubt it,” I say, “but if they do, the only thing that will save us will be places like this, places that haven’t succumbed to selling cheap and worthless goods.”

What drives this dependency on cheap goods? Low wages? A lackluster economy? The so-called recovery from the Crash of 2008, from which many still suffer, is being hailed as the “low-wage recovery,” meaning basically that jobs don’t pay enough for workers to survive.

There was a time when, perhaps a fool’s errand, I thought I could avoid buying anything made in China. That seems almost impossible now. §

Stacey Warde is publisher of The Rogue Voice.

Trying to get laid in America, Part III

A ‘WOMAN-HATER’ PROWLS SAN FRANCISCO

CULTURE.TGLIAIII.vesuviocafeby Dell Franklin

October, 1968

I found a tiny, dark, subterranean garret for $125 a month on Vallejo near Webster on a hill in Pacific Heights. I was on the bottom of a four-story Victorian, whose landlady was Roselee, a Jewess married to a prominent Jewish lawyer—liberal Democrats involved in city politics and owners of 49er season tickets. They lived on the first and second floors above me, rented out the other two floors. Right off, Roselee, a tiny woman with big brown intense eyes, was pressing me to find a job, recommending sales since I evidently appeared clean-cut and impressed her as a normal young veteran on the right path to a future of structure and success.

My priorities were finding a good watering hole, a woman, and a job, in that order, since I did have what I assumed was a three-month nest egg.  Early on, I patrolled Pacific Heights, hitting the Bus Stop—its clientele consisted of smooth, elegant men from the financial section in vested suits and handsome women in pants suits; the Marina Lounge—an “IN” crowd of fluff and enamel, huddled together laughing joyously while sneaking looks at my shaggy ass; the Horse Shoe, a step below but almost as snotty as the Marina Lounge; and Danny’s, a hallway-sized, hole-in-the-wall, just dark enough, with a pool table; not a pickup bar, but a hive of friendly cab drivers, longshoremen, school teachers, mailmen, hardhats and a scattering of amiable, used women older than me. The owner, Danny, a small, balding man around 40, worked most nights and employed a chain-smoking, used-to-be-sexy barmaid working days and let me mooch off the free buffet on Sunday football as 49er fans yelled at the TV. I had no TV, radio, or phone.

After about a week of drinking beers every night and feasting on his cheap hot dogs, I notified Danny that I was in the market for a bartender job. He said he’d keep me in mind, but I’d have to join a union. If I wanted to drive a cab, I had to join a union. San Francisco was a union town. I realized right off that no woman would have a thing to do with me if I didn’t have a job, unless I hung out at Haight-Ashbury and Golden Gate Park and passed myself off as a leftist panhandler with a line of bullshit. I ventured to a bar in this area one evening and several hippie/biker types surrounded me and accused me of being a narc while their women made persecuted faces and hissed at me and called me a pig! I left.

I began hunting jobs with serious intent, entering several over-crowded employment agencies in my newly polished Army low-quarters, Harrah’s Club black slacks, Harrah’s Club white shirt, and thrift-store, clip-on black tie. At one agency, a middle-aged woman behind a desk motioned me over.

“You look like a sales type,” she declared, looking me up and down. “You’re a fine looking lad. You a veteran?” When I nodded, she sat me down and asked did I have any college. I told her two years. She nodded. “I have to give you tests. Don’t worry about them.”

I took a test determining whether I was dim-witted, another determining whether I was a team player and psychologically sound, cheated on both, and was offered several jobs selling surgical instruments, insurance, appliances, cars, all of which were long drives to places like Burlingame and Petaluma. Finally, after turning down several jobs, I settled for a desk sales position at a national electrical supply company in the Market Street industrial area across town.

Roselee was all smiles, observing me in grown-up garb. “I knew you’d find a good job. You’re such a handsome clean-cut young man.” She unnerved me with her bulgy eyes and anxious smile. “Sidney and I hear your typewriter,” she went on. “Are you a writer?”

“I’m trying, Roselee.”

“What are you writing about?”

“I have a novel going, Roselee. I’d rather not divulge its content…it’s bad luck to do so.”

Her wiener dog, a male, began to mount my knee, and Roselee pulled him away. “Sebastian likes you. That means you’re a good person.” She continued smiling. “I bet you’ll find a nice girl soon enough. It’s too lonely trying to be a success without a good partner in life. You’re Jewish, aren’t you?” How would she know this? I was a renegade Jew, a disgrace to the Jews, kicked out of Hebrew school, a heathen, hated by all Jews where I grew up.

I nodded.

“I bet you’d find the perfect girl at our synagogue.”

I had to break away from Roselee’s suffocating gaze and retire to my garret, where I put up a dart board above the fireplace so I could fire darts when my writing was so horrible it plunged me into despair and I started hating everything and everybody.

***

I lasted three days at Graybar Electric. I sat beside an ace desk salesman with a framed picture of his wife, kids and dog and stared at the secretaries as he attempted to “train me.” I could not imagine myself nailed down to a desk five days a week leafing through a telephone-size catalogue and talking to faceless beings all over America. At lunch the secretaries huddled and snuck looks at me and made sour faces and nodded emphatically. I got drunk two nights in a row and reported the third morning half an hour late, my face nicked badly from shaving with quivering fingers, my Harrah’s specials rumpled from passing out in them, and had a panic attack, a complete meltdown that had the supervisor ready to call the paramedics as I flung my snap-on tie at him and fled from the vast premises, tromped across the railroad tracks, took a bus to Danny’s, and got drunk.

I decided I needed to tend bar, but most of my nest egg would be sacrificed to a union, with no promise of a job, so I concentrated on writing, reading and hanging around Danny’s and rambling around town in hope of getting laid, regulars in Danny’s telling me there were so many homosexuals around that women “were drooling for straight men.”

Once, as I prepared to set off on my prowling,  which took me to all parts of the city—North Beach, Marina, Nob Hill, Downtown, Golden Gate Park, Fillmore—searching for the right bar with a prospective woman who might just talk to me, much less fuck me, Roselee, ambushed me outside my door.

“Did you lose your job?” she inquired, concerned, fretting, hands clenched together.

“I quit, Roselee. I’m not cut out for sales.”

“I see you’re growing a beard and haven’t got a haircut. You’re not going to be one of those awful hippies, are you?”

“No, Roselee, I hate hippies.”

“What kind of job are you looking for now, honey?”

I was really squirming. “I want to be a bartender, Roselee.”

She sighed, her face filled with suffering for me. “But…that’s a …dead-end job, honey. You’ll never find the right girl at such a…well…uh…questionable profession.”

“Excuse me, Roselee, I have a job interview.” I tried to scurry off as her wiener dog was about to ejaculate on my knee, for he’d been scratching on my door lately and sneaking into my garret and making himself at home, but Roselee snagged my arm.

“Lately, Dell, I’ve heard, well, this sound coming from your room, like something bouncing off the wall…”

“I have a dartboard, Roselee, throwing darts clears my mind for writing; relaxes me.”

She pulled Sebastian off my knee. “You’re not…destroying the walls, are you?”

“Absolutely not, Roselee. Bye.”

I concentrated on North Beach. In Vesuvio’s, next to City Lights Book Store, and supposedly once a hangout for Beat writers like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsburg, I sat nursing a beer, hoping to engage a literary conversation with a woman of intellect and appreciation of the arts. I’d been reading Dostoevsky and Nietzsche. Instead, as I sat at the end of the bar farthest from the front, three girls on the opposite end, all looking like prime prospects to discuss Sartre and Knut Hamsun, sent the bartender over to request that I put out my cigar, as the smoke was bothering them. He seemed a decent sort, and I’d already tipped him a dollar a beer out of conscience as a bar person, even if I couldn’t afford it.

“That’s a pretty nasty cigar,” he said, trying to be reasonable. True, it was the cheapest cigar made, a big, nasty one. I gazed down at the girls. They had long hair parted down the middle, big billowy brightly colored sun dresses, multiple beads and bracelets, no bras, and a proprietary attitude, as if this was “Their” bar. I took a big puff and sent it in their direction, the people alongside me waving at the smoke.

“Tell them no,” I told the bartender. “I’ve got a right to enjoy my cigar.” 

“Come on, man, be cool, huh? They’re cool babes.”

I continued gazing in their direction. As my cigar started to go out, I re-lit it and sat staring forward, puffing, and one of them shouted, “ASSHOLE!”

I tried every bar in North Beach—Gino & Carlo’s, a cozy 1950s bar with Italian male bartenders and city girls smoking cigarettes and hobnobbing with men in white shirts and loosened ties or local blue-collar types shooting pool. I was ignored. The Saloon was overrun by hippies blathering, hugging; dancing to a rock band. A bar on the corner of Grant and Green had a jazzy blues band but the crowd was comatose to the point of paralysis as they danced in ultra slow motion, grins plastered across faces, heads bobbing slowly, the bartender so glazed he didn’t see me beckon for a beer. I was invisible. I tried the Golden Spike on Grant. Three men in berets, smoking cigarettes through long-stemmed holders, turned to watch me sip my beer a few stools down and broke out laughing. They repeatedly huddled, stared, guffawed. One waved with a limp wrist and beckoned me over. I left, finished with North Beach.

I ventured across the bridge to Zack’s down in the Marina in Sausalito, where the truly beautiful people cavorted so gracefully, and skulked out. I was shot down right and left, from the Richmond district to the Tenderloin, where hookers propositioned me. On Polk, I stumbled drunkenly into a gay bar and was accosted by a man who grabbed at my thigh. I stumbled out. Snoozing in Lafayette Park, another gay man propositioned me. I politely told him I was straight. He tried to convince me that I should explore new avenues since I couldn’t find a woman. “How do you know I can’t find a woman?” I asked. “I know,” he said. “Believe me, I know.”

Like a mole, I stayed in for a few days during a nonstop heavy rain, reading “Hunger,” by Hamsun, and “Last Exit to Brooklyn,” by Hubert Selby Jr. I tried to write but instead furiously hurled darts and ate canned pork and beans and petted poor lonely Sebastian. I emerged in the downpour like some bundled scarecrow and hustled down the hill to Danny’s, where the crowd welcomed me and began offering ideas on finding a job. Danny gave me free beers and hot dogs. I drank and farted and lost at pool. I was in no-man’s land. I wanted no job. I was ceasing to give a shit.

*** 

One rainy Saturday night I sifted like a ghost out of Danny’s and down a block to the Marina Lounge, with the intent of infusing my hatred of women with new ammunition so I could continue my stalled novel, “Woman Hater.” I was clad in soggy sneakers, torn Bermuda shorts, T-shirt, and my Army field jacket. The bar was packed, warm and steamy, the crowd broken up in gaggles of high hilarity as locals and city people joked and laughed with easy familiarity and an affectionate camaraderie, folks not afraid to show their true emotions, in the very prime of their social lives, getting laid, falling in love, doing things together, a nonstop surge of the mating ritual.

I stood scowling by the door as I eyed up a vivacious girl so cute and charming that several men were trying to impress her—an ex-cheerleader type—when I caught the gaze of a very large blonde in a black dress clinging to a thick solid body—all thighs and hips and buttocks and broad shoulders and small breasts, her blunt features and square chin lending her a jock aura. Her friends were hobnobbing with a group of black men in trench coats who sported Afros and muttonchops. Word was from the boys in Danny’s that these jive asses were down in the Marina to fuck classy white girls from the financial district who were dissatisfied with white stiffs and gays and sought a little forbidden fruit.

The big blonde and I continued a stare down. She disengaged from her crowd and I sauntered over, and without thinking, I sneered, “I hate this goddamn place.”

She coolly looked me up and down. “Why is that?”

“It’s phony. The whole goddamn scene’s phony. I can’t play it.”

“Then why are you here if you hate it so?” She held a mixed drink.

“I’m desperate for a woman. I’m a forlorn basket case on an endless famine. It’s contributing to the downfall of my soul. I’m nearing a vortex.”

She sipped her drink. Her blonde hair was thick and plentiful and her complexion smooth and healthy. “Want another beer?”

“Of course.”

Her name was Hillary Marshall. She’d graduated from Sarah Lawrence. Her brother was a tackle on the Army football team at West Point. She was a broker at the stock exchange and roomed with a girl who’d inherited a Victorian home on a hilltop in Pacific Heights. I bought another round and continued a palaver of castigating everything—the so-called revolutions, hippies, fraternities, sororities, the establishment, music, sports…I didn’t dare flirt with her. Every shred of venom stored up in my starved, wrought-up soul spewed forth in a tirade that had her frowning quizzically and at times laughing. Finally, out of breath, I suggested we go to Danny’s, where I planned to show off the first girl to actually talk to me for more than thirty seconds since I’d moved to San Francisco.

“No,” she said, shaking her head emphatically. “Let’s go to my place.” She told the bartender to call a cab, and we stepped out under the awning in the rain. I didn’t try to touch her.

***

The front room of the Victorian was appointed with ornate furniture, framed oils, a wet bar and a spacious window with a panoramic view of the Marina, the Golden Gate bridge, and Coit Tower. The bay was dull under a driving rain. Hillary poured brandy into huge snifters and handed me one. I checked out the bookcase of handsome first editions and informed her I could NEVER live here because it was too nice.

“Why don’t you take off that odious jacket?”

I took off the jacket and flung it on a couch and began expounding on my nihilistic feelings. “KEEP YOUR VOICE DOWN!” came a voice from another room.

“That’s my roommate,” Hillary explained. “You don’t want to meet her.” She watched me refill my snifter with Hennessy’s. “Why don’t you take off those hideous rags?”

I placed my snifter on the bar and began undressing. She watched, nodding her approval. Naked, I walked over and pulled her dress up over her head. She wore no panties or bra. She was all meat and every bit of it was firm. After one long kiss, I was on my knees, squeezing her enormous thighs, my face buried in her blonde muff. She lay back on the sofa and wrapped those thighs around my neck, squeezing my ears, cutting off all sound as I lapped and groveled and growled like a ravenous mongrel devouring a perfectly seasoned meaty bone donated by a soft-hearted butcher. Her groans came in shudders as she pulled me up and atop her and soon the roommate, a severe woman of around 30, was hovering near screaming at us to “take it to the goddamn bedroom!”

We fled to Hillary’s bedroom. In time, I was back for the bottle. We snuggled and wrestled and she rode me more than I rode her before we eventually passed out. I awakened to sun pouring through a dormer window. The bed was empty of Hillary. I heard the shower and minutes later she came in wrapped in a big fluffy white towel and suggested I take a shower and meet her in the kitchen. I wanted to shove my snoot between those rhino thighs one more time but she was in charge and I obeyed her wishes. In the kitchen, she fried eggs and bacon. I asked about the bitchy roommate.

“Church.”

“How’d you like to go to the Ram-49er game at Kezar Stadium?”

She perked right up. “I’d love to go. I love football.”

We took the bus to Kezar, where I managed to secure two cheap end zone tickets from a scalper. The end zone was where black folks from Oakland and the Fillmore sat. Wisely, I’d secured a pint of brandy for the chilly afternoon. Hillary wore a herringbone coat with elbow patches and tight, faded jeans and turtleneck sweater, the eyes of every brother feasting on her big-boned torso. These brothers nodded at me, approving and respectful of my trophy. I was “The Man” and felt I could fall for Hillary and forge a relationship of romping sex and snug companionship and even love. We sat surrounded by brothers in trench coats and fedoras and berets, and their women, who were decked out in tight-fitting garments and loopy hats. The goal posts were very near. Halfway through the first quarter the brother beside me offered up a flask. Hillary and I swigged. I passed my bottle around and they offered a joint and Hillary and I puffed (it was my first time), and I lapsed into a golden haze in which everything was rosy.

During the game, as the only Ram fan, I made comments that had the brothers and sisters guffawing and Hillary rested her hand on my thigh and smiled at my wit and soon the brothers were drawing hard looks from their women for talking to and paying too much attention to Hillary, a marvelous sport. Before I knew it, Ram quarterback Roman Gabriel was barking orders from the one-yard line below us in the final seconds and we were all on our feet. The Rams scored and the game ended in a tie and we all said our good-byes and soul shook. Hillary and I took a couple buses until we ended up at my garret. She took one look at it and announced she was exhausted and had to go home and would I please call a cab?

“I have no phone. I’ll drive you.”

I hadn’t driven in a while and the battery was dead so I pushed the VW downhill until it caught and jumped in. At the curb of the towering Victorian in the plushest area, I asked her out, only to discover she had an out-of-town boyfriend. “I like you, and you’re a lot of fun,” she said. “But I’m not sure many women can take you in anything but small doses at this stage of your life. Thanks for the game. I had a great time.”

“Get a hold of me when you’re ready for small doses,” I croaked, my voice barely audible.

***

As my money dwindled and the rains came down harder and harder, seemingly nonstop, day after day, I ceased trying to find a female who might take me in small doses and became a shut-in. I paced my room, typed angry, self-pitying, pious, pretentious, plagiarist garbage, tore it to shreds, read, tossed darts, ate pork and beans, drank Brown Derby beer, scurried down the hill sans umbrella when I became claustrophobic and nursed a lone beer in Danny’s, waiting for him to hire me, waiting to hear about job applications from the post office and recreation department.

I descended into a black vortex of morbid and bitter rage directed at myself and the world and its occupants. The vortex swallowed me whole as a whale swallows a minnow and I swam about blindly in the soggy stinking darkness until I was spewed out upon the wasteland of desolate America, a crippled crab isolated from the kingdom, unwelcome, wallowing in the self-imposed morass. I began hulking through the streets of San Francisco, anger and sorrow oozing from my every pore as people wielding umbrellas and brief cases dodged me, eyes averted. At Danny’s, I settled at the far end of the bar, a morose figure hunched over a warm beer, uncommunicative.

I raged in the garret, felt myself spinning downward into the vortex, seeking bottom. I considered walking around the world penniless until I expired. I kicked and tossed my worthless possessions and hurled darts at the board like a fire-balling baseball pitcher, ripping it into tatters and chipping away the painted brick wall when missing. I wept. Steinbeck, my idol, died, and I wept some more. I spent Christmas and New Year’s walking the streets, passing illuminated windows of homes and bars and restaurants out of which poured the bubbling party voices and rich laughter of those in harmony with the universe. One night I picked up my typewriter and surged into the street in a blinding rain and bashed it upon the asphalt, shattering it, kicking it down the hill. In the morning, Roselee banged on my door. I opened it and she jumped back in a state of fright. She gathered her courage and asked to see my room as Sebastian slithered in and jumped on my bed. I motioned her in and she gaped in awe at the tattered dartboard and massacred wall above the fireplace. She was speechless.

“I’m leaving tomorrow,” I told her. “I’ve got two weeks left on my rent. I HATE San Francisco, and it hates me. Take the damage out of my security deposit. I’m sorry, Roselee, I’ve become unhinged.”

I had a $103 to my name and decided to drive my VW back to LA, hit the open road with thumb out, head for New Orleans and Mardi Gras, try and find a job on a river boat, and forget about women. I no longer cared what happened to me. It was a feeling of mountainous relief. §

Dell Franklin writes from his upscale hovel in the beautiful seaside town of Cayucos, Calif., where he resides with his rescue dog, Wilbur. Dell is the founding publisher of The Rogue Voice.