My Arrival

(c)1994

I came to Bolinas as something of a waif - not really belonging to the streets, but lacking in the social graces necessary to ingratiate myself to the general populace. I came with only the clothes on my back, and a desire to establish something of a home and a life for myself in a place free from the constraints of the negative expectations of my family in Denver.

I was all of eighteen years of age, although by producing altered draft cards and birth certificates I was able to make periodic forays into Smiley's Schooner Saloon. Admission to Smiley's was of paramount importance then, as here was the focus of all social life in town. It's regular denizens were the likes of Jean Greenburg, Bobby Jean D'Accardo, George Marzocchi, Bob Creely, Bad Ass Dolomite, Greg (Grog) Hewlett, Coon, Nairobi Steve, Mike Mahoney, and a host of other local talent. I'd produce the altered documents at around the time of my birthday, and would manage to binge for several weeks before someone would realize that it was only a year before that I was previously determined to have been under-age. This having been the case on my nineteenth and twentieth birthdays, my twenty first was met with great skepticism.

The Shoppe, as it is now known, was then a bait/tackle/beer Shop known as Snarley's, which was open only according to the hangover-driven whims of it's proprietor.

Scowley's Restaraunt was originally the town's malt shop, which evolved into a funky and down home cafe after it's inheritance by the Fontan brother's from their belated dad, Paul. In the years of my association with Scowley's I never knew his first name, in that 'Pop' was spoken with highest reverence and no other name was relevant.

Thus stood the triad of Snarley's and Scowleys, which flanked each other, across the street from Smiley's, which faced it's sister businesses as if in retort to their curmudgeonly names.

Upon my first arrival in town I was struck, like everyone, by it's unique beauty, it's remarkable diversity, and an indefinable allure. Russ Revere would likely cringe at my telling of this, but it was him who directed me to Bolinas after meeting me while hitchhiking near Big Sur. We were both southbound, and had each caught a ride in the same van from different points along Highway 1. Russ was a bean pole in jeans and buckskin, who looked remarkably like many of the Catholic renditions of Jesus, with flowing brown hair and a full beard, and friendly, knowing eyes.

I'd told him in conversation of my aspirations to be a songwriter, and shared with him some lyrics I carried with me in a song book. In retrospect, I think Russ's aesthetic values may have been blurred by the joint we'd shared. He was moved to the extent that he drafted a letter of introduction to Paul Kantner, and drew me a map to town - cautioning me to expect no sign pointing to Bolinas from the highway. If he'd actually heard me sing, I believe that Russ's map would have directed me directly to the heart of south-central L.A.

Having no clear destination at the time, I immediately disengaged from my south-bound ride, and changed course for this place so hip as to have a longhaired, buckskinned, hitchhiker (Russ), on the board of Public Utilities Directors.

A day later I was a hundred miles to the north, riding in thick, mystical fog along the edge of the Bolinas Lagoon, past stands of peeling eucalyptus with their ornamental drapery of Spanish moss, spying stilted egrets and herons posing in the shallows through the mist. My ride into town was speechless, except for the sewing machine whir of the V.W. bug I'd caught my ride in. The envelope of fog was like church, making conversation seem inappropriate.

I somehow knew in my gut that I was coming home - a place I'd never really known in my nomadic, dysfunctional life to that point. The feeling was strong and inexplicable - perhaps intuition or maybe a prophesy to be self-fulfilled.

Following my map to it's end point at 'The Airplane House' on Brighton Beach, I anxiously pushed the button at the tall gate there, and peered up humbly at the overhead camera, which peered down with a seemingly menacing disapproval. I buzzed, and waited and buzzed again and waited and buzzed again... and made the misbegotten and wishful decision that the fuckin' buzzer was OBVIOUSLY broken. The natural course then, having a personal letter of reference as my passcard, was to find another way in! I naively clambored over the tall gate, into a wonderland of hand formed redwood tiling around the bluest of pools with Ferrari parked at hand near a series of sliding glass doors.

So this was to be my destiny: to rub elbows with the creative rich, to bask in the light of the recognition of my famous peers. I 'd known it all along... Emboldened by my letter, I walked around the pool, past the carved front door, and seeing a man sitting on a large cushion with guitar in hand I knocked upon the sliding door there.

Obviously startled, the man inside made no move from his place, but through the closed door suspiciously asked me what THE HELL I wanted.

Raising my crumpled paper hopefully, I said "I have a letter!"

In a single maneuver the guitar was set aside and from some concealed place within near reach came a sawed-off shotgun leveled through the glass at my chest.

" I can explain! I have a letter!" I said breathlessly.

I paraphrase his response as "Get the fuck outa here NOW!!!", or words near this shade of meaning.

"Perhaps another time, when he's in the mood to receive guests..." was my first thought. Wwithout further discussion I exited by the same route, but quicker, than I had entered.

During my first few days in town, I slept on the hill adjacent to the intersection of Wharf and Brighton roads. I found a bush large enough to conceal me, and holed up like a rabbit there until being awakened one night by a number of renegade dogs tearing at my sleeping bag with the idea of making me the night's sport. Grabbing a nearby branch, and connecting solidly with a couple of indiscriminate swings, I changed their plans, but was convinced of the wisdom of finding other quarters.

A sympathetic 'local' directed me to a platform in the trees, built at the edge of the Francesco Mesa, which served as among the most beautiful places I've ever occupied. - But only for a few days until the wind and rains wrecked the plastic sheet I'd hung in the branches, soaking me and my few belongings to the marrow.

I'll always remember the sight of the lagoon at sunrise from that perch; flocks of white egrets rising gracefully into the pink skies as flocks of smaller birds rose and circled in juxtaposition, the sun a golden promise behind the misty Tamalpias Ridge. This was salve to the bruises of my hapless adolescence, and here I began to find a little healing.

A guy named Bruce invited me to stay in a cabin on the back of a property near Smiley's as a "house sitter". I spent one inexplicably creepy night in the place until being informed the following day that the house was vacant because the property had recently been the site of Bolinas' only recorded murder.

By this time I'd already begun to learn the ropes of survival in town. On many days I could wash dishes in Scowley's in exchange for pocket change and a cheese and veggie omelet which filled every vacant inner cavity for the duration of the day. Fruit trees overhanging the walkway on Brighton and parts of Wharf Road., berry bushes, and Bob Cole's garden provided other sustenance. There were times so lean that I'd even contend with the dogs for scraps from Michael Rafferty's butcher barrel. At one point I was loaned a large tent, which I set up deep in the bushes behind what is now the lumber yard.

During this time I adopted the only other waif in town more scrawny and raggedy than me. Cookie was pure Bohound - a skinny terrier mix with grey/brown hair, more aware and intelligent than a dog ought to be. She'd chewed off most of the rear quarter of her coat from flea allergies, and was emaciated from the strain of nursing a litter of eleven puppies.

Cookie'd been living in the crawl space of a house, near the bar where she spent much of her time looking pitiful and mooching hot dogs (much like me). I gathered up her puppies in a box and moved the whole grunting, wriggling mass to my campsite.

I made daily raids on the butcher barrel, and saved every Scowley's table scrap in a futile effort to fatten Cookie up. Eventually I came to realize that her bony countenance was a part of her survivability, as she made mooching from soft hearted saps and tourists her life's avocation. I gave Cookie my hearth and heart; she gave me fleas.

One morning at my campsite as I slept in the stale, humid atmosphere of thirteen pair of heaving lungs in one now small tent, I was called from my slumber by the booming, authoritarian words:

"YOU IN THERE!...COME OUT!"

I poked my groggy face from out the tent flap to the sight of a green uniformed Sheriff's Deputy.

"What're ya' doin' here?" - more demand than question.

"Somebody in the bar told me I could stay on their land here" I lied lamely.

"Izzat so? Well let me explain to you that you are camping on MY property, and if you and every last trace of you aren't gone in FIVE MINUTES you're goin' to jail for trespassing!"

It's astounding what a little motivation can do to prompt an eighteen year old into action.

My next try for shelter involved setting up the tent behind a large wooden bulkhead on the beach. This was to be my lesson in the action of the tides, following the total immersion of all I owned in that night's high tide. The experience was made even more edifying by the ordeal of dragging a wet canvas tent and all it's contents up the face of the cliff to a point high enough that the tide could be safely waited out. I earned my honorary degree in studies of gravity and moisture this long night.

Shortly hereafter, I was required to surrender the tent to it's original owner, and so I took up residence on the burl slab table in Scowley's back yard. By nailing a vertical piece of scrap board at each end of the table, I was able to stretch a length of string across the table's length. Then by draping a sheet of plastic over this I created a basic pup tent. Cookie's puppies had been adopted out by this time, and so this more compact arrangement was livable, with she and her ever present fleas occupying the area at the foot of my sleeping bag.Here we huddled against the wind and rain as winter set in with full force.

I awakened one bizarre morning, after a night of pouring rain and the highest tide of the year, on an island - as all of downtown had flooded. In disbelief I watched as Odd Todd paddled by on his surfboard through Scowley's back yard and on around the side of the adjoining surf shop, cheerfully giving me a smile and a wave as he passed.

It was around this period when I'd been around long enough to have become a familiar face, banging each morning on Scowley's ancient upright piano, mooching cigarettes in front of Snarley's, or watching the evening's show (the comings and goings of local life) from under the tree outside of the bar. Having a nickname at this time was a sort of recognition and a sign of acceptance. I was not sure however, that I was at all pleased with the low implications of being called 'Backyard Steve', as a result of my place of residence in Scowley's back yard. I, after all, aspired to greater heights.