My story begins on the 15th day of December in 1974. I was living and working aboard a ship which was docked at Pier 59 in Los Angeles Harbor in San Pedro. It was a bright and sunny morning in the harbor and I was enjoying it, but I had no idea it would be one of the most riveting and influential days of my entire life. On that particular day, I was engaged in an activity that was an extreme rarity for me. In fact, I never recall ever having done it before. I was giving some people a tour of the ship. As I guided some people up a series of ladders to the ship’s bridge, I was accosted by Dick Glass, a man I hardly knew at all. Dick told me that there were some people on the dock who wanted to see me. I told him that it would have to wait until I finished the tour, but he made it very clear that whatever I was doing would have to stop and that I must make my way down the gangway to see these people. As the tour was not really all that important, I relented. I had absolutely no idea who these people might be, but as soon as I arrived on the dock, I immediately recognized my father’s cousin, Jacquie, and her husband, Tommy Anast. They lived only a short distance away in Palos Verdes and knew I lived on the ship, but there was
no reason for them to visit me. I primarily remembered them from visiting their house on New Year’s Day or at other times when I was a young child. Tommy then grabbed me, almost as if using a wrestling hold to keep me in a secure position.
“Son, your parents were in an automobile accident last night. They both died immediately.”
There was complete finality in what he said and no mention of hospitals or gasping for their last breath.
Looking back, I cannot imagine news that would have been much more shocking or devastating than that.
Although I was in a state of shock, I was not in complete shock. Before I could react to Tommy’s words, I heard a voice run through my head.
“I knew it!” were the words that went through my mind.
This was an unusual response, but I cannot explain it other than the fact that it was my response. In some strange way, it was as if my brain circuitry had expected it. Pluto was balancing the ledgers and this was the fallout. I did not think in astrological terms in those days, but on some level, my intuition told me that this was my destiny and that I should not be surprised. Perhaps it was sobering or fortunate that this moment afforded me a brief window into the fields of destiny, but there was also a very human situation to deal with and this included my emotions and that of everyone else who might be involved. I was only
twenty-one years old and felt that this was the biggest slap in the face the universe could have given me. The two people who had loved me and cared most about my welfare were now gone. It was all over. My most immediate analytical thought was to realize how lucky I was that this had not happened at a time when I was younger and unprepared to deal with the rest of my life. I was now on my own, but it was, nevertheless, like receiving a knockdown blow — and a hard knockdown blow — in only the third round of a fight.
Death had not only arrived at my door but had arrived on his horse and reared at me. Not one death but two. No, it was not really like being hit with a knockdown blow. It was like being hit with two different fists at the same time and being hit hard.
Since that time, I was keenly aware that I began to view life differently than most people. I have been extremely thankful for every minute and have never taken my day-to-day survival for granted. I have found this to be a big advantage in dealing with the changes and surprises that come your way in life.
My parents were gone, but I knew I still had a lot of living to do. There was no question of carrying on as I had a deep reservoir of energy inside of me. I knew my destiny
made for a bright future, but no details were supplied. I had no idea, however, that I would end up, in some strange way, carrying my parents with me.
Chapter 2 — Dad
Although what is to be said here are long and distant memories, my interaction with my father helped shape my outlook and interests that would play a role in my later life.
If there is a simple way to describe my father in a few words, it would probably be “outgoing and friendly.”
People not only liked him, they liked him a lot, and I was no exception. My mother once said to me that she had never seen a boy like their father as much as I did. His work kept him from home a lot. He was a petroleum engineer for a French company known as Schlumberger (pronounced Shlum-ber-jay) and, consequently, one of the first things I learned about my fellow Americans was that they could not pronounce words too well. Everyone pronounced it “Shlum-burger.” Basically, this company was a competitor of Haliburton and serviced oil wells.
My father’s expertise was in evaluating drill sites to determine whether oil would be found or not.
As a rule, my dad did not get weekends off and was on call twenty-four hours a day and would often leave the house at two or three in the morning. His days off were scheduled to some extent, but they were staggered. As a
young kid, I remember impatiently counting the days, waiting for him to be around. I missed him when he was gone. Although he was not around every day or weekend, he would make the most of his time with me.
Consequently, I got to see a lot of Southern California.
On the rare occasions when he could, he would take me with him on his job. That was always a great adventure.
More than anything, my father loved the ocean. He was a Scorpio. Growing up in La Jolla (pronounced la-hoya which means “the jewel” in Spanish) near San Diego, he spent much of his childhood on the beach where he surfed and rowed out on his small little skif to view the gray whales during their migrations. He took me fishing often and also to Marineland of the Pacific, the original aquatic park (now defunct), where he taught me the name and characteristics of any fish I could find in the tank. He rarely watched television; but when he was around in the early morning, he encouraged me to watch Kingdom of the Sea, a documentary style show about the ocean. At an early age, I knew a lot more about the ocean than most kids and even most adults. His interest in the ocean gave me an interest in the ocean.
Although he seemed to despise television, he did not forbid it in the household. There were only a handful of movies which I might somewhat facetiously refer to as
“required viewing” by him. By this, I mean that he became so excited that he acted as a live commercial for watching them. His interest in television was so rare that you could not help from being infected by his enthusiasm.
It also meant that you got to stay up late so that acted as an added enticement. These movies were Moby Dick, Captain’s Courageous, Mutiny on the Bounty , and The Endless Summer. All were movies about the sea. The first three were classics while the latter was sort of a modern classic about two surfers who follow summer across the globe seeking to catch the perfect wave.
He also took me on several all-day fishing trips to Catalina Island where you would board a commercial boat just before midnight and go to sleep. When you woke up, it was just about five o’clock in the morning, the time when schools of large tuna would feed just off the northern part of the island. I was usually the only kid on board unless it was my best friend and next door neighbor, Greg Arcuri. On the return trips from Catalina, I remember sitting on the bow of the ship and enjoying the crashing of the waves, especially when it got rough. My father would come to the bow to make sure I knew to hold onto the rail so as not to be swept overboard. I also remember old salts coming up to the bow and standing there with me for a while. It was terribly rocky, but I was having the time of my life like it was a roller-coaster ride. They would look
at me like I was crazy because they would start to get sick.
It was the sort of fun that only a kid could enjoy.
When I was about nine, Greg and I would stay up late on Friday nights to watch reruns of Sea Hunt with Lloyd Bridges. It was our favorite show. Greg taught me to splash water on my eyes to keep from falling asleep. One of the biggest highlights of our youth was when our fathers took us to a tuna processing plant and a man told us we had just missed Lloyd Bridges. He was shooting a scene at the pier and had left about ten minutes earlier. Even though we missed him, we were very excited just to have been so close. When I finally had the opportunity to see Greg for the first time in about twenty years, he remembered the incident just as well as I, and we still laugh about it.
My father also spurred my interest in writing when he entered a writing contest and submitted a true story about his real life adventures with the sea. I do not remember the specific parameters of the contest, but it was supposed to be about real life experiences with fishing. To my family’s surprise, he won the contest, and I remember going down with him to Pierpoint Landing in Long Beach to retrieve two free tickets for a fishing boat excursion.
Even though I was pretty young, I remember thinking that my father probably won the contest for two reasons. First
and foremost, he had a very rich history of real experience to draw from when it came to writing about the ocean.
Second, I could not help but thinking that the fisherman I had seen might not be too literate or expressive in a literary fashion. My dad, who was a science major in college, told me that his only English class at U.C.
Berkeley had been “bonehead English,” the required minimum for all university students. I think that early conversations with him about “bonehead English” might have had a slight subconscious effect on the fact that I never entered college. I always thought of “boneheaded”
people in an English class. I was not sure what a
“bonehead” was at the time, but it did not sound like anything I wanted to be a part of.
While having a bowl of soup with him at a restaurant at Pierpoint Landing, I remember gawking at all the decor of the sea which included mounted fish, buoys, extensive netting, a mermaid or two, and other iconography of the sea. I enjoyed the mock atmosphere which I realized was far more suggestive than the sea itself. What most caught my eye, however, was a large and prominent statue of King Neptune himself. That completely captured my imagination. Asking him what it was, my father told me that Neptune was the King of the Sea. He knew all about Greek mythology as well as a host of other subjects.
If there was any early indication that I was to eventually become a story teller, it was through the sea. One day, my fourth grade class was given the assignment to read a book and give a verbal report on it. As this was not long after I had watched the “required” Moby Dick with my father, I came across a book called The Story of Yankee Whaling which was full of artistic depictions of the New England whaling days. I brought the book home but was not able to read it right away as he scooped it up and read the whole thing with utter enthusiasm. Most ardently, he shared with me the story of the Essex, a true life vessel which was purposely stoved (crashed into and sunk) by a killer sperm whale. This was the true story upon which Herman Melville based Moby Dick. The Essex, however, was stoved by a black sperm whale and not a white one. Only a few of the sailors survived, but they told a gripping tale of months at sea and how enforced cannibalism enabled them to stay alive. In the end, my father had inadvertently, through his own enthusiasm, done most of my homework.
I did not have to read the whole book — I only had to give a talk on this subject. I got up in front of the class and just started relaying what was really a fascinating story.
The class was completely spellbound. Looking back, I was simply relaying facts in an understandable manner.
They just happened to be very interesting facts which involved high adventure with struggle and survival.
At that time, my father told me that we were now part of a small minority that knew the true history behind the novel Moby Dick. The story of the Essex was not known well at all at that time period, but it was known. In recent times, the History Channel has done a full hour documentary. If he were still alive, my dad would have been glued to the screen when that documentary aired.
After all of this, I decided that I wanted to visit the island of Nantucket, see the whaling museum and become a professional whaler. I wanted to go out on one of those whale boats and go for what was called a Nantucket sleigh ride. I could not imagine a more wonderful or adventurous profession. My father, however, explained that modern whale boats used a mechanized harpoon that did not give the whale an even chance. Saying it was cruel, calculated and brutal, he wanted no part of it and neither did I. I gave up my interest in whaling.
Although I loved the ocean, I loved sports even more. My father was an expert swimmer and was a life guard at the La Jolla beach when he was younger. He was a natural athlete but was not all that interested in other sports. He played football in high school and taught me all the rules.
Football became my favorite sport. It was the only sport he ever coached.
My proudest moment with him was, however, during a father-son baseball game. After the little league season was over, we had a picnic and the fathers played the sons.
We had a terrible team and had finished second to last, winning only seven out of twenty-one games. I knew, however, that we would cream the fathers. They were pathetic and did not have a chance. That is pretty sad, too, when you consider that we were mostly eleven and twelve-years- old. I am fifty-one now, and I doubt very seriously that my friends and I could be beaten by a team of twelve-year-olds. But, generations get stronger.
Anyway, the game got off to a mundane start with us taking an easy lead. Soon, our coach’s arm broke down and none of the other fathers could throw the ball over the plate. Again, they were pathetic. Finally, someone suggested my father. I just happened to be the batter when he came in to pitch. Although he was not a pitcher or even someone who had “baseball agility,” he was an athlete and could throw the ball over the plate. I was only eleven and was not the best player on our team and was certainly not a power hitter. I hit the ball over everyone’s head for a homerun. There was no question about it. Then, a couple of innings later, he came up to bat and hit a homerun in the exact same spot that I had. It went a bit farther and he hit left-handed while I hit right-handed.
After he hit it, everyone on the entire field just turned around and looked at me in my position in center field. It
was a very strange feeling. We were the only two to hit homeruns the entire day. The game in itself meant nothing to me as they were just a bunch of “old men” who should have been fitted for back braces or remedial exercise programs. He did not really give a damn about baseball, but that did not matter to me. On that team, he clearly stood above the other fathers. I felt I was the only kid who could go home that day with no reason to feel “ashamed.”