Lady-Fame; Or, the Fluke

By Peter Santino

On Christmas Eve, 1972, the commercial fishing vessel, LADY-FAME was struck and capsized by a fifty foot rogue wave while crossing the Humboldt Bay bar. Contemporary artist, Peter Santino was a crew member and wrote fifty thousand words during the months following, describing every thought and action that occurred, with no embellishment or clever t

• Language: English
• Publisher: Failure Institute
• Release date: Aug 10, 2014
• ISBN: 9780990639213

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Copyright

LADY-FAME; or, THE FLUKE is a sea story.

Names, characters, places, and incidents are, in part or in full, the products of

the Truth, the author’s imagination, and a fanciful collaboration with H. Melville.

Exception to this is the account given of the capsizing, and ensuing heroics,

which falls so far outside the normal realm of human belief

it could only be presented as a sea story.

Failure Institute epub Edition – August, 2014

This book is available in print at most online retailers.

LADY-FAME; or, THE FLUKE –non-fiction novel (sea story).

Copyright © 2014 by Peter Santino. All rights reserved

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This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

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ISBN-10: 0990639215

ISBN-13: 978-0-9906392-1-3

Failure Institute

New York - Firenze - Eureka

Inscription

IN TOKEN

OF MY ADMIRATION FOR HIS GENIUS

This Book is Inscribed

TO

HERMAN MELVILLE

ETYMOLOGY & PROLOGUES

The Failure (1):

Normally proposed as the opposite of The Success.

The Failure (2):

Beginning an essay, thesis paper, doctoral dissertation, journal, novel, fairy tale or sea story with a definition.

The Fluke vs. The Rogue:

Fluke is okay, but Rogue, O! What a great word! Fluke does the job and has all those fish, ocean, whale associations. But Rogue! Standing apart, never caring about society’s judgment of success or failure, up against the wall in stiff, dirty, never-washed Levi’s®, white T-shirt and grimy leather; smoking and pulling a smelly rat-tail comb out of the well-worn Perfecto® and running it through the greasy duck’s ass. Then here comes that Rogue Wave.

O! What a great word! Rogue.

Why did that winking, whining, ██████ of an Alaskan ex-governor, have to go and step all over my beautiful Rogue? If not for her, I might have presented all this to you as the fascinating ramblings of The Rogue Artist struck and shaped in youth by The Rogue Wave!

A Fluke, I suppose. Serendipity. Leading to whales. And naturally then to books about whales; books about whales, the sea and such.

The Fluke (1):

Trematode. A giant flatworm with big, glistening, tooth-filled suckers that attach to the sorry host and drain nourishment; freeing the parasitic creature from the need to brush his teeth, shave, shower, get a job, have a pleasant personality or pretty much do anything normally necessary for survival.

The Fluke (2):

An unknowable phenomenon, luck, chance. An unpredictable incident or occurrence that pops up within or drops down into the stream of a life and alters the flow of that already established rivulet of existence. Irreversibly. For better or worse. Like bending down to pick up the glimpsed coin on the curb just as the un-glimpsed assassin pulls the trigger... like the ring of a telephone on a cold Saturday afternoon.

The Fluke (3):

The whale’s tail. But not just a whale and not the whole tail. The fluke is either one of two lobe-shaped horizontal parts of the tail of a cetacean: whale; dolphin; porpoise. Flukes, it seems, have to be attached to a sea mammal and are the last thing visible when, after taking a deep breath, it plunges into the depths.

The Fluke (4):

A barb. As on the tip of a fishhook. As on the end of an arrow’s tip. As on the anchor; that flat blade that digs into the floor of the ocean, as the boat, as the ship and miles of line and chain all dragging, that flat blade digs in and stops, holds it steady, saves it, lets the bow (pulling so tight on the line now) come about and put itself into the weather. That handy part of the anchor that would grab the sea bed if your ship were a hundred yards offshore and in danger of being pulled into shore and smashed into a thousand sharp and pointy pieces which fly about, churn about in the surf, impaling you as you are being pounded into the rocks and smashed by wave after wave breaking on you with the force of brick buildings collapsing, until there is nothing left but little globs of bloody mess floating gently now, gently... quietly... drawn back out to sea, gently... merging again with the One, the Mother... back into the pudding. Food for the crabs... nibble, nibble.

The Crab (1):

Crustacean. The word clicked and clacked sideways into English as crabba from a Germanic root: krab, krabbe, krabbi, krabben.

Thousands of species of this shelled animal live in every source of water, fresh and salt, everywhere on earth.

Research reveals that while some species might well be suitable as filler material in frozen crab cakes, the one variety that surpasses all crabs and in fact all other delicacies from the sea, stream and lake – including lobster fresh from the boat in Gloucester, scampi hot from the grill in Rome, a little butter, olive oil and rosemary, salt, pepper – surpasses them all in texture, aroma and indescribably delicious taste is found only along the West Coast of North America, from mid California to Alaska: The Dungeness Crab!

The Crab (1a):

The Dungeness Crab! Early in the crab’s annual migration north, the harvesting begins while the Dungeness, already fine tasting, has not yet achieved its peak of flavor. That peak is only reached after a long and difficult swim in mammoth clusters, hundreds of thousands, swimming as a group along the sandy ocean bed, their legs locked one crab to the other for protection from predators. Building character with each stroke, feeding all the time, north, San Francisco, flavor beginning to improve, north, Fort Bragg, worth catching and eating now. But wait! Further still where perfection is finally achieved!

Now deserving of the sobriquet Humboldt Strawberry, the Dungeness are scooped at great risk from the turbulent waters between Cape Mendocino and Point St. George, boiled alive and presented whole and steaming on thousands of Christmas tables.

The Crab (2):

The crab louse, pubic louse. Not actually a true crab, Pthirus Pubis is a tiny insect that lives exclusively in the pubic hair of humans, feeding on human blood four or five times a day! It waits patiently for the hot sweaty contact of sexual intercourse to jump to the warm, dark, hairy regions of a new host.

The Crab (3)

Cancer. From the Greek word, karkinos, which had three meanings, as does cancer: a) the spreading sore, the tumor; b) a constellation in the Zodiac; c) the crab as a creature.

Hippocrates made reference to some tumors looking like crabs.

Those born between June 22 and July 22 are said to be under the sign of Cancer the crab. They tend to be patriotic – natural enough since so many are born on the 4th of July. Cancers are emotional and wear their hearts on their sleeves, but, much like their crustacean friends, have a hard shell into which they duck during times of stress or personal danger.

Out among the stars is found the Crab Nebula, so named for its distinctive shape. Sadly, it is located in the Taurus (the Bull) Zodiac region.

Then there’s the term cancer stick for cigarette dating from 1959, dear friend to all those hearty salts on the bounding main, fishing, catching crab.

Also, this:

The Harmonics:

ALL IS VIBRATION - ALL IS FREQUENCY - ALL IS HARMONICS

Woodbass

Considering Memory:

DON’T LOOK BACK

Bob Dylan

Prologue:

Loomings

Thank me dry! After the really bad time, I ran. Some forty years ago, young, broke and looking, searching for an alternative-something to the depressing shit-life I had going on. I listened to that wise-ass coyote and chose to go Home; go to work; go to sea. The choices were limited and since Academe and its Ivory Towers had been rejected in the midst of that same heady epiphany which rejected swooping in low over thatched-roofed villages and loosing floods of orange-hot burning gelled gasoline; well then, working in the woods cutting down the towering Redwoods, or pulling on foul weather gear and crossing the bar to chase the wily Dungeness and the slippery Chinook out in the cold, blue Pacific, were the only possibilities that would keep me from the sad office, the miserable warehouse, the auto parts sales counter.

Home was the port city of Eureka! on the Humboldt Bay, at the very center of the universe for the Wiyot people and at the very end of the world for the Immigrant people. A place once hemmed close to the water by those same, aforementioned towering Redwoods, thick and dark, and dripping with fog. Ten thousand, twenty thousand years! Each of the days beginning and passing in the same manner with only the slightest flickering changes in weather: sun; rain; fog; wind. The feet of the Original People finding the paths and imprints of those who walked the day before and the week before and the year before.

Ten thousand, twenty thousand years without change, without need for change and then the people came whose very nature was change and whose religion was the need for change. They came from the East. Cocksure changers. Changing things. Fixing things. Making the world better. Fixing the world forever. Fixing the world for Good.

My Immigrant relatives (Maternal) were fine changers and fixers from Scotland across the other sea, where they had run out of things to fix. Coming from the East and up from the South and down from the North. Following those clear and fast rivers, picking up the gold that just lay there. Following those rivers and coming to the edge of this big ocean, and the bay that sat hidden – its entrance missed by explorers, pirates and privateers for hundreds of years.

Coming to this forest of Redwoods! Trees of unimaginable size and age like something from a fairy tale. Yes, a fairy tale but a Northern European grim and frightening fairy tale forest. A dark and damp place where evil trolls and wolves and Satan and dancing naked natives must certainly dwell untouched by God’s Holy Sun. An opportunity! A chance to rid the world of this dark and damp and evil place by felling Redwoods and letting the Lord’s cleansing light in! A chance to let that same healing light fall upon the naked backs of the local savages. An opportunity to fix this world; to change this evil world for the Good. And to make a shitload of money in the process. A happy ending like the best pornography and the best tales.

Aye, a best tale, a best sea story, I will tell ye.

Ye have heard the difference between a fairy tale and a sea story?

If not, I can remind ye. A fairy tale always begins thus: Once upon a time...

And a sea story always thus: Now, this is no shit...

Now, this is no shit.

Chapter i

The Telephone Rang

The telephone rang. Just when I had the cocksucking picture steady. And now it’s going to do its stupid thanking little horizontal roll and roll and roll a roll a roll a roll on to that pop! into diagonal lock and there the thank it is. The 49ers on a Saturday afternoon, the 23rd of December 1972 to be exact and yes, yes it does matter. It does matter since all of this really happened.

Thank me dry, the telephone rang. The Dallas Cowboys from blonde and bosomy, sun-addled Texas, led by Roger Staubach (America’s team!) beat the San Francisco 49ers from the land of the dirty darkie homos and commies, led by John Brodie, 30 to 28. I can tell you this now even though I never saw much of the game; even though all I ever wanted to do was watch it. Escape for a few hours in something banal and normal. Freezing cold, pacing back and forth wrapped in a blanket, smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee and hoping for a few minutes of clear television reception.

I remember that television set. A Philco® Seventeener – green and cream, two-tone – with rabbit ear antennae coming out the ends of a swiveling luggage-style handle on top. Portable television design at its highest. A shortened picture tube with that luggage handle on top conjuring up an image of Mom or Dad just grabbing the thing like a little valise and toting it into whatever room desired for viewing at the moment, all the while holding a cocktail in the other hand. It had been the only TV set in the house I grew up in on P Street until it was replaced with something better. I grabbed it for my artist’s garret. If only it actually worked.

Rolling and rolling and when the vertical hold was just holding the horizontal would pop and motherthaaaaaaa arrrgh shit! Thanky, thank, thank, thank thank.

The telephone rang. Not exactly. It sort of sputtered. It hadn’t been ringing too well for some time now. Not since F. Scott, in an effort to get some sleep, had castrated it.

♫ Roundabout, Yes

David, could you turn that down! The TELEPHONE! I yelled.

Chapter ii

The Telephone

Whether it was a normal offering, or someone knew someone, or some administrative mistake, I never figured out, but the telephone in the warehouse was a public pay telephone mounted on a wall in the dark hall upstairs near the bathroom and kitchen.

A clever solution to the worry of huge long-distance charges built up by ne’er do well residents and visitors; the local Pacific Bell® office had been happy to do a free installation. No monthly bill, no equipment rental.

AHOY!

ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL FELT THE PROPER GREETING

WHEN ANSWERING THE TELEPHONE SHOULD BE:

AHOY!

Anonymous. Posted near telephone

Chapter iii

The Ice & Cold

Itook a job almost as soon as arriving Home. In that new first week of that new first month of that new first year of that new decade, 1970. Not on a boat as I was hoping, but as close as I was going to thanking manage right now.

Can you start this afternoon? Jack ███████ the manager had said, with his nervous giggly voice, carefully looking down at my boots to avoid eye contact as always. Jack giggled again to my boots.

Three or four years before, Kento and I had spent many long days and nights working at the ice plant during high school Christmas vacations and summer breaks, manhandling and hard-freezing the slippery, slimy catch of Humboldt fishermen.

Eureka Ice & Cold Storage, right on the bay with its cold concrete docks and windswept loading bays that seemed like tropical beaches during breaks from the freezer rooms. Every forty minutes hit that hanging cord with a gloved agony hand that could barely grasp; a motor parts the vault doors and midst clouds of fog, enter into Ipanema. Tan and lovely... Caipirinha, sir? Pull off layer after layer of wool and thick fish-oiled canvas. Throw that shit on the heaters, try to drink coffee, smoke cigarettes. Twenty out, forty in. The twenty was gone real quick and it was back in after reassembling the layers of stinky, steamy, slimy, partially hardened clothing, pushing a heavy steel bucket cart of fresh black cod to be laid out on the frigid galvanized shelves at minus 30 degrees – Fahrenheit mother thanker!

♫ Baba O’Riley, The Who

You guys are thanking crazy to do this job, said the most talkative of a group of dumbfounded stevedores who’d come down to the ice plant to pick up a little easy money during a week of slack dock work. They’d lasted a couple of hours – forty minutes in, twenty minutes out – and were anxious to get the thank out of there.

I wouldn’t thankin’ do this for three times the thankin’ money, said another. Kento and I just smiled.

It’s therapy, fellas. It’s all about therapy, I said. Arbeit Macht Frei had been scrawled in lumber marker above the back freezer door by somebody, some joker.

Therapy, yeah, plus workmates. And while Johnny didn’t actually work at the Ice & Cold, he was there every day picking up brine frozen crab and delivering fresh fish for Lazio Seafood a couple of blocks up the bay. Kento and I’d known Johnny Tashtego since high school and we’d bonded while surfing together over the years, frolicking with Steve, mit den Bieren, down at Shelter Cove.

Most of the time we used our old surfing nickname for Johnny:

[THEY CALL OUT POINTING,

ARMS OUTSTRETCHED TO THE SEA FROM THE BEACH,

NEAR A SMOKING DRIFTWOOD FIRE:

"LOOK, THERE! THERE NOW!

FOR HE IS ON THE NOSE!

LOOK NOW! HOW HE IS!

O!, AT THE WAY HE STANDS THERE!

SLOUCHY, YET BACK ARCHED BACK, AND FIVE TOES OVER!

GROOVY, GROOVY DADDY,

HAIL, HAIL, GROOVY DADDY!"]

Chapter iv

Chuck Wagoneer

We spent our Mr. Chuck Wagoneer breaks smoking cigarettes together on the loading dock and Steve would have been there too, smoking and trying to get warm with coffee and hot chocolate, but he was off frolicking mit den Mädchen in Germany. It took longer to get to know Keith than it would have if Steve had been there.

Keith Buck was the king of the Ice & Cold. Looking like something out of Wagner standing high and golden on the huge machine, he’d fork these massive plywood crates – noses, fins and tails of frozen tuna poking through breaks in the sides and threatening to spill from over the top. Towering forklift pushing out the portal with the blast of a huge white cloud when minus 30 embraces plus 50, from one side of the plant to the other. Checks his clipboard. Then back with a pallet stacked high with canned crabmeat – crescent-moon-cardboard-boxed and bound for Vietnam.

[THE SCORE:]

High-pitched shrieking whine of the electric forklift eeeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeee; the grind and cram and roar of the opening portal; skitter of hard rubber wheels through puddles; the howl of wind; the explosion of mist.

♫ Mississippi Queen, Mountain

Nordic, stoic, native of Eureka, Lutheran by mother. Looking into those deeply set eyes you sensed he was a man who had endured much and would no doubt endure much more with no complaint. A champion in heavy gloves, fur-hooded thick coat with cigarette drooping.

The picker ladies with their white babushkas and jeans tucked in rubber boots were all so in love with him and just a bit afraid. Keith didn’t smile at them, just drop that pallet. He’d be back when it was full.

Sometime later, it was Keith who brought up the idea of the three of us, Groovy Daddy, me, and him, putting in together and renting a big enough space to work in.

Good... good, said Groovy Daddy. He’d been making some minimalist, installation type work out of chain link fencing in a small dark room Lazio’s lent him in one of the old wood waterfront buildings they owned. He’d just about installed himself out of space, just about fenced himself out.

Yeah, maybe we could find something big enough and halfway habitable. Make a real co-operative studio. I don’t want to be staying at my parents’ house. And Kento, he’s got that little place on Harris, but maybe he’ll wan...

Yes and soon! put in Keith, cutting me off. I haven’t set up my loom for years. Not enough room at my mother’s house. Something habitable, yes! We need someplace to live too. He always looked intense, serious, but then relaxed into a huge smile after a long drag on his cigarette.

I’ll ask my father tonight whether Lazio has any buildings we could rent. Groovy Daddy’s father was the bookkeeper for the fish company and knew where every skeleton, with fins or otherwise, was hidden.

ART IS NOT A MIRROR TO REFLECT REALITY

BUT A HAMMER WITH WHICH TO SHAPE IT

Bertolt Brecht. Hand lettered on the front of Keith’s forklift

Chapter v

My Ship

So I stepped across that threshold like walking up a gangplank and embarked on my much-desired adventure to sail the mysterious seas of creativity in an ark of art. I did not know at the time and still to this day find it hard to understand that I climbed those musty wooden stairs and surveyed the vast open second floor not as lowly scrub but as master.

Are those glass jars for bait? Are those piles of old hemp rope available? Are you the owner, sir? I asked.

Supposing I was, what would you be wanting of the owner?

I, well, me and my friends, were thinking about renting this place. I was taken aback by the situation, since I thought someone, most likely he, would be expecting me. The front door had been open, all was arranged, I thought.

You were, were you? Do you have any experience in the renting and operation of a 30,000 square-foot warehouse such as the one in which we now stand?

I have rented apartments before. Two in San Diego. Also rented a twenty-one foot trailer and its parking spot, well, I went in half on that, but I did rent a house once.

Don’t speak of apartments and rental houses to me, laddie! This be serious industrial property we are negotiating! Trailers! Tomfoolery...

[FADES TO MUTTERING.]

I heard a toilet flush behind a rough redwood wall and immediately another man, very similar in dress appeared, walking toward us.

Hello, hello, you must be Peter. Similar in dress, maybe, but considerably different in manner was this new one.

I’m Roger Bildad and the fellow who’s been yelling at you is Don Peleg. I spoke to you on the phone. Peleg/Bildad Property Management. We’re handling leases and rentals for Lazio, and he reached out to shake my hand.

Don’t be too upset by Don’s attitude. He still hopes for a serious manufacturing business to take the place. I spoke to Lazio and I understand this is different – the whole starving artist routine, ha ha!

Roger looked to be about half of Don’s age and while also dressed in a suit, he had soft, damp eyes, a wispy moustache, slightly elongated sideburns and a hair or two creeping over his collar.

I’d already seen enough but wasn’t clever enough to hide my enthusiasm.

It’s perfect! I exclaimed. We’ll take it. Where do I sign? How much a month?

We were discussing terms back at the office, said Peleg. Considering the square footage, comparable rentals in the area, $777 a month."

That’s a lot more than I had tho...

Blast you, Peleg, cried Bildad, cutting my meek response. Dost thou intend a swindle?

7, 7, 7, repeated Peleg. A nice easy sum to remember.

Wait, interrupted Roger Bildad.

[SOTTO VOCE TO PELEG:]

Remember the talk I had with Lazio, Don?

Roger turned to me, returned his dewy eye contact and said, We thought $100 a month would be fair.

That’s great, thanks.

Oh, there is this one little thing, said Roger. A fisherman who delivers to Lazio stores his crab gear here. Would it be okay? Just until he finds another spot? Just...

Sure, fine, I blurted, excited about the rental price.

"...downstairs in the back you won’t really even see him. Great! Oh, and there’s this other guy who has been wanting to rent the place. He’s an artist too. He’d fit right in. We can set that rent if you are willing to give this guy some space, as part of your co-operative."

Huh. Who is he? This I hadn’t seen coming.

What kind of artist? What kind of work does he do?

You probably don’t know him. Just moved up here from Oakland. He cuts up old wine barrels and makes them into artistic chairs and tables. Very beautiful, elegant, or so he told me. Really a very nice guy. Name of Charles. He prefers Charlie, Charlie Cain.

Yes, Cain, said Don Peleg, with a little smirk, like the brother.

♫ Seemann deine Heimat ist das Meer, Lolita

Chapter vi

Characters

Once Groovy Daddy, Keith and I had a look at the place, we realized bringing in some other artists would not just be a good idea, it was key to having WACO function as a real co-operative studio.

Not just anybody, said Keith, and I agreed.

I know this guy David, a student up at Humboldt State. Great guy. A painter, I think. I’m pretty sure he’d be interested in renting some space, Groovy Daddy offered.

Hmmmm, David McStubb. I remembered him from high school. A year younger than Steve and me. Always pleasant and friendly with one of those handsome wide-open smiling faces the girls all seem to go for.

♫ Ooh La La, Faces

He looked a bit like the young Rod Stewart of the Faces period, same poofy hair but with an almost invisible thin droopy moustache and a quick laugh of dismissal if you tried to get too serious.

Man, I just don’t know what to do! Advice? I might ask while sitting hungry at the kitchen table worried, anxious about... something. David, turning pirouettes in front of me with his ever-on professional roller skates, would reply Hah! That sounds like a personal problem! Hah hah hah! while skating off.

Maybe the thing that kept him in good spirits was his friend, his pipe. The pipe that was constantly jammed tight in a corner of his mouth. At the dawning, when he lifted head from pillow, a pipe, freshly tamped full, went in and a lit match found it quickly. David kept a row of five pipes, in different shapes and sizes, on a little wooden shelf low on the wall next to his mattress; each cleaned and ready to be loaded and lit. We were told it was an over-the-counter Captain Black vanilla mix and it did smell that way, indeed, sweet like a summer cookie, not at all harsh like cigarettes can sometimes.

♫ You’re So Rude, Faces

We all assumed he augmented the tobacco with a just hint of the local sensimilla, and called him Happy David.

Chapter vii

Characters & Characters

Scott Gerard, or F. Scott, the guy I mentioned earlier who’d castrated the telephone, lived in the warehouse also. The rent was cheap and he needed a garret-like atmosphere for writing his version of The Great American Novel. College done – degree in English – all set! Now he was going to stun the literary world with a gritty workin’ class adventure about tough talkin’, cigar chewin’, foot stompin’ truck drivers caught in a web of existential incidents involving tits ’n liquor and always wonderin’ ’bout what it all meant, and all them gerunds wit’ no g. 1970, 1971, he was a good five years ahead of the big truck driver craze. If his book had been on the shelves when that song Convoy hit, man, it would’ve been an easy best seller.

NEVER PUT OFF TILL TOMORROW WHAT MAY

BE DONE DAY AFTER TOMORROW JUST AS WELL

Mark Twain. Posted in hallway

I wasn’t a writer then any more than now but I did make paintings and drawings with words in them and I found the practice of calligraphy enjoyable, spending many happy hours lettering pieces of found cardboard, or the occasional purchased matte board, with clever aphorisms and witty quotes. That Mark Twain thing was an example, pinned up in the hall near the kitchen.

Here’s another:

DON’T LOOK UP HERE FOR A JOKE

YOU’RE HOLDING IT IN YOUR HAND!

Unattributed. Posted in bathroom above toilet

That one was eye level above the toilet. I admit I just copied it from the restroom of that cafe in Laytonville, but it did look nice in pen and ink on white Bristol board with a very thin, crisp, inked border until ruined by errant (?) spray.

If you asked for a description of F. Scott, I would say this: Picture the young Errol Flynn of Robin Hood standing there smiling in front of you, shit-eating grin. Then take off his suede booties and green tights and replace them with Vietnam era combat boots and knee length plaid shorts, dirty T-shirt tunic. And oh yeah, stick a smoldering, Swisher Sweet® skinny turd cigar in his mouth.

Pretty remarkably close, I tell you. Anyway, his eyes are very big, clear, green, and set off by dramatically thick eyelashes. Those eyes make him look clever, a bit mischievous, always twinkling.

Twinkle, twinkle.

F. Scott was a very local guy. Raised by bona fide Bohemians in a wild windswept Victorian farmhouse out on that lonely one lane road to Table Bluff. Along with scouring the house’s clapboards to a paint-free grey, the constant wind had turned all the surrounding spruce and cypress into spooky topiary and given his childhood a howling, haunted soundtrack.

The parents, both heavy writers and serious drinkers, surrendered over the upstairs of the house with its bathroom and three bedrooms to their children – Scott, Wendy and Duncan. None of them wanted to go to school so it wasn’t insisted upon. Instead, an early form of home schooling was imposed. Basically, first learn to read and then start reading. Then, here’s some more books.

The children read upstairs. And they did whatever else they wanted upstairs: cut passages between the rooms; built rope ladders and elaborate forts; put together model rockets and small bombs; carved the woodwork; painted murals; used mirrors and lenses to construct death-ray beams – death for spiders and insects, anyway.

The parents stayed below never venturing up those stairs for any reason. An intercom was set up by Scott for the minimal necessary communication:

[PUSH TO TALK]

Hey! We need TP up here!

[PUSH TO TALK]

All the fixings for tacos are hot on the table!

F. Scott’s actual first name was Flask, decided upon just after the birth by his father while taking a long draught from one. Everyone just called him Scott and he was fine with that right up until he decided to start writing. I sometimes made an effort to go along with his evocative re-naming request, but more often than not, I ignored it.

He was frustrated with this writing thing, not much ever got on the page. Instead he took a truck driving course out at College of the Redwoods. He became a tough talkin’, cigar chewin’, foot stompin’ truck driver who didn’t give a shit about the meaning of it all. Got a night job hauling tank truck loads of product up and down the county.

♫ Drug Store Truck Drivin’ Man, The Byrds

F. Scott called it product. I thought that was so funny and always laughed. Maybe it was a truck driver’s professional way of referring to whatever they were hauling. Maybe they taught him to say that in truck driving school or when he took the job with the distributor. Never gas or gasoline but always product. I found it so amusing. He didn’t give a shit about what I thought, so naturally when he asked why I laughed, I told him.

Well maybe, Scott, maybe it’s because we don’t normally conjure up a fireball and burning people and their faces are melting and great slabs of crispy flesh are sliding off and they’re running away screaming waving their arms and dying, when we think of product, I said.

He looked at me with a what the thank are you jabbering about? look.

F. Scott didn’t give a skinny rat’s ass shit.

What he did give a rat’s ass shit about was getting his sleep. I didn’t tell him to get a night job. We’re living in WACO. I didn’t tell him he had to live here either. WACO, a state of mind, an old warehouse on Second Street in the bad part of Eureka. Industrial, not a home-sweet-home in the quiet suburbs.

Never was the easiest place to sleep even at night. Truck and car traffic in the street all day and the Northwestern Pacific train a block away hauling lumber up and down First Street. Mendenhall