Before Gold, Before a Gate: Reality Green, Forever Blue

by

Jerry Dale McDonnnell©2013

Published in Over the Transom #24, 2014

He said he was an Indian, American Indian. It was San Francisco. North Beach. Said he lived here. His family born here. Had lived here for generations long before the Spanish gold seekers trekking north stumbled on to it. Before any sailors of yore found the entrance to San Francisco Bay. Aye matey, North Beach, once the old Barbary Coast, shanghaiing skippers, wheelers, dealers, hookers and snookers. Why the hell not an Indian?

Davy was skeptical of most things. He trusted tides and sudden squalls more than people. “He looks Indian, but he may be just bullshitting us for the beer,” Davy said one eye closed, first finger pointing at the Indian

We’d been buying the beer. I wanted to hear this Indian’s story.

It was almost November. A couple of days before the crab season opened. Davy and I had our boat docked in Sausalito ready to sail. Crab pots, 120 of them, on the deck, ready to set. A Wednesday night. My favorite. Most bar stools would be lonely. We hit the regular spots like tourists, Irish whiskey at Vesuvio’s, went next door to City Lights Books, picked up some reading for nights when we might be on the hook in Drakes or Bodega Bay, steered over to Mike’s Pool Hall then up the hill to the Spaghetti Factory for eats.

In the midst of the third pitcher of Steam Beer we met the Indian.

The Spaghetti Factory, what a joint that was, a barn of a place, the last place serving homemade Steam Beer made by an old man who brewed it nearby in his basement. The beer was as dark as a moonless night at sea and came topped with a deep dirty cream-colored foam that always reminded me of the surf on a rocky, reclusive beach, a smooth beer that slipped down easy. I hear the old man’s gone under. Must of taken his basement beer with him.

Blackie, the Indian said his name was, his white man name. Said he was a mixed blood, but no white blood. He claimed Miwok and Costanoan/Ohlone blood—said he and his grandmother was the last speaker of that language—said his great-great grandmother claimed traces of Blackfeet Bloods and maybe some Flathead mixed with that. Davy and I had never heard of a Costanoan or Ohlone Indian. Didn’t know then that the San Francisco Bay was home to a tribe named that. Later found out the names were interchangeable; most people—people that knew—now refer to them as Ohlone.

Blackie said he worked the city docks, longshoreman, had a house in Martinez near the straits, but stayed at his grandmother’s house in North Beach when he was working. Said his family went back generations in the area before it was called San Francisco or the Bay Area. Said this was Costanoan Indian land. Said his ancestors passed down tales of climbing sand dunes where Telegraph hill now is. Said just a few blocks up was the watershed divide for a creek that now ran under the town, one side running north, the other running east into the Bay. All filled in now and covered with concrete, brick, tar and lit up with strip clubs left over from the Barbary Coast days. He said that creek still ran under his grandmother’s house. He had a high tide of sayings.

Davy was doubtful, “You’re telling me that there’s a creek running deep under this pile of San Francisco high-rise.”

Blackie just nodded and drained his mug of beer.

Davy elbowed me, grinned, filled Blackies’s mug and motioned at the bar for another pitcher. “How many people know that?’ Davy smirked.

Blackie, he had to be at least 60 years old, stocky built, smooth skinned but etched with deep wrinkles around a small nose over a kind smile, had a way about him. Once you heard him talk you were hooked, even Davy’s skepticism began to wane. It was more than information being imparted; it was a reverent remembrance, a tribute. He told his tale softly, methodically, setting his words free with the occasional gesture as if his calloused, gnarled hand was painting an image in the air as he sipped his beer. The more he spoke the further he seemed to float away and soon you heard only the chant of a voice and began to see the images, elbowing doubt aside. The brick and mortar and structured steel of San Francisco slipped away leaving rolling hills and sand dunes and wondrous trickles of water running down slopes feeding into San Francisco Bay. You saw the migrations and habitations of wildfowl: geese, cranes, plovers, thousands of sea and shore birds. People with sun earned darkened skin paddling canoes in the bay where ocean-going cargo ships now navigate. Netting fish with grass woven baskets. Huge piles of consumed shellfish where fancy hotels and restaurants now dwell on what is a landfill on the edge of Emeryville across the Bay Bridge. And how much bigger the bay was before people began filling it in. Said his ancestors may have guided the first Spanish explorers that came north up the coast. Blackie’s telling came in on tides of history flotsam.

Davy was still smirking a bit. I chose to enjoy the tale and bought another pitcher of Steam Beer.

We had a fair season for Dungeness that year. Around the end of mid of December we heeded a calling for a bit of shore leave hoot and holler. Twas a grand morning, nary a breath of breeze, the tide a slack, the ocean a slick, the water as smooth as Olympic ice reflecting a full show sun from a cloudless sky. We ran south down the coast standing on the flying bridge bare-chested soaking in the Vitamin D. Gulls a-plenty escorting our hold filled with crab ready to market. Twas a celebration of life that morning. Black oystercatchers and pelicans flying close to shore, a couple of seals gave us a honk and a great white shark that year came close to the starboard side. Just outside the Golden Gate Bridge, taking a long swing around the shallow shoals of the potato patch in the north entrance, we saw a sight never we’d seen afore. Hundreds of boats, some as small as 16 feet were running out under the bridge into this ocean lying as flat as a blue sheet on a slab, taking this once in a rare day opportunity to see an ocean that defied the definition of a wave nary even a one inch swell. It was a fairy tale day. A day that nature let you think that maybe for just a brief moment you had your say.

Coming under the Golden Gate reality took a turn. To the north the wooded hills of Marin County with Mount Tamalpais as its beacon challenged the stacked brick and mortar and steel high-rise boxes burying San Francisco.

“Imagine what all this looked like before us,” I ventured entering the Bay. “Why in the hell do they call it development?”

Davy spit overboard, “That’s why I’ll take the ocean. Don’t trust land.”

“Don’t trust land?”

“This ole earth’s mostly water. More water than land. You can trust water, the ocean. Ocean is the only freedom we got left. The last thing we can screw up. It may roll you around some but it always comes back to level and you can’t pave it. It can bury you, but you can’t bury it.”

And Davy’s right. Land surrenders too easy.

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