Embedded Files
Alan Heugh Story
every man has a story
10/25/2022
New and improved, again
1
I wandered a while after Syracuse. The summer of '70 was divided into finishing up some sort of SU requirement that I forget, but I briefly shared an apartment with Vaughn Polmenteer, then out of the blue I got a letter - remember them? - invitation to teach silversmithing and enameling, assistant to Jim Achuff at Chautauqua Institute. There's nothing like teaching to force you to learn. Jim was overwhelmed teaching ceramics too so he let me take on the whole shebang teaching about forty people, twenty in the morning and twenty in the afternoon. A challenge and a great experience. The summer ended with my first introduction to an art and craft show; I won two 1st prizes. (!) One in enameling and one in metalwork. But the possibility of earning money that way hadn't sunk in yet. I wanted adventure.
A couple I met there - Sonny & Karen - invited me to go with them to Austin Texas. There I spent the fall working construction in 110 degree heat building a log stockade around a restaurant called "Convict Hill Inn." Convict Hill (barely a gentle mound) is where convicts were forced to mine the white limestone to build Austin's capital building. The application had a blank space for the pay rate. I wrote $9.00 an hour, grunt work usually paid $5. Nobody noticed. Opening day of the restaurant they had me waiting tables wearing a striped prisoner's suit dragging a plastic ball and chain! Then, my pay rate discovered, I was given an ultimatum to accept a one-third cut or leave. And the boss told me to fell a tree along the road that slightly obscured a view of his sign. He didn't own it so I politely refused to cut it. I was fired.
Concluding that I went on a scary long train ride through mountains with landslides & heavy rain to Mexico City. Got sick and hated it. Then flew back to Pennsylvania. Then a bicycle and bus trip with my sister to Denver (well, part way with my sister; we fought, split, reunited) then to Georgetown near ski country. Nancy and I were standing on the sidewalk for less than a minute with no idea yet what to expect and a car pulled up, "New in town? Need a place to stay?" It was the Gracy House, aka "The Hippy Place."
The ethic there was never fail to stop for a hitchhiker. Brown rice and veggies, a big pot of it. Great selection of record albums. Sleep on the floor, be sure to roll up your sleeping bag during the day. Permanent residents all had jobs. Look past appearances and they all were responsibly fending for themselves. One drove a school bus. Most worked in restaurants or bars. One guy had just quit a construction job for something better, and advised me how to join the required union in Denver. Good pay, almost $10 per hour.
For less than a week that's what I did 11,000 feet high in the Rocky Mountains with fearless Pennsylvania coal miners, cutting through Loveland Pass during winter. HARD labor and thin oxygen initially, until my body adapted, meant a pounding fast heart rate with a headache, dizzy spells, burning lungs and general exhaustion, but I didn't realize that until I was doing it. It's named Eisenhauer tunnel now. Work started warm and civilized by coffee in a plywood shed. We put on the stiff filthy rubber suits, boots, layered gloves and hard hats - none of it fit me. They were pumping concrete into forms in the eastbound tunnel while still widening granite walls westbound. It got miserable fast. We rode through the granite side, passing bare light bulbs through mostly wet intermittent darkness in a rattily steel mining car. Seems like it might have been pulled by a cable; I know I didn't have a brake pedal! It swashed through long pools of ice water that sprayed off the walls back onto us, jostling and bumping hard on temporary rails. Punched steel screens on a welded pipe cage separated us from jagged rocks whizzing by just a couple feet away on both sides. Nobody talked.
The foreman directed me to unload twenty 65 pound wooden kegs of nails from a flatbed trailer and stack them in a shed. Finished, he told me to put them back UP on the trailer. It was a test. After construction work in Texas followed by a bicycle trip - I was in great shape, except for that thin air. I did it.
My real job continued outside the west end, to clear snow off 50 pound cement bags, knock them loose and shoulder-carry them up steep ice-caked ladder-like stairs to a platform over a concrete mixing hopper, rip the bags and dump them fast - another guy with 50 lbs. pushing behind me - then down the other side and immediately go get another bag. There were three of us with the foreman demanding we start up the stairs while the guy in front was still climbing -- a 160 or 180 pound man not including HIS bag of concrete shouldered seven feet over me, his boots crunching uncertain footholds on ice. Crazy dangerous.
Giant knobby tires rolled close through slush as Euclid mining trucks rode over shards of gravel with rubber gas hoses criss-crossing it. Propane heaters in old barrels teased us with a shifting breeze of warmth. Pause to catch your breath and warm aching cold fingers? No, you had to keep up or give up. Easy choice.
Next, dishwasher in the Adelweiss restaurant. The cook, Jack, lived upstairs. He was my immediate boss and he hated me for no more reason than that I wasn't likely to emulate him, and he was right. He'd won a sports bet with the bar tender who was paying him with drinks "under the table," so I quickly learned to do his job when he couldn't; it all came to a climax when he fell asleep on top of the low freezer padded with newspaper. A busload of skiers arrived late and rather than disturb him I cooked; burgers & fries mostly, but I succeeded in putting out edible lobster too. He woke up enraged and stumbled around with a knife trying to get me while I dodged easily and tried to calm him. A waitress, unaware of the situation came through for a tray of desserts and started between us just as he was lunging. I was lucky to shove her off course but the desserts fell, then HE fell on that with the knife, broken glass and goo, splattering himself in blood, cake, jello, chocolate, whipped cream, pudding etc. He somehow rose and chased after us (me) into the dining room full of astonished witnesses! He stood there panting, dripping, pot belly bulging, bald with his dyed-black comb-over hanging in his eyes glaring and swearing it was all my fault. The owner, town marshal, and a medic fixed him up enough to pack his stuff and put him on the next bus to his sister in Denver; one way ticket, gratis. No criminal charges either. That's how I got my first and only job as a restaurant cook.
I moved into Jack's empty room over the kitchen and got to know two other workers (I'll change their names here): Brawn and Ward. Brawn lived at the end of the hall, and Ward's room shared a thin paneled wall with mine. Ward was a pretend cowboy with all the costume trappings. Brawn was the nicer person, a pituitary giant I'm guessing seven feet tall. They were lovers "in the closet," and the "closet" was Ward's room, so I couldn't avoid hearing them. All the more surprising because Ward was also dating the owner's daughter; Georgetown society was more complex than I'd imagined! They argued a lot and it got serious when I heard the unmistakable metallic "snick - clack - clickit" of a bolt action rifle, cocked. Brawn said "Go ahead, you don't have the guts." I yelled something in panic. Ward didn't have the guts, or wasn't as dumb as he seemed; Brawn shuffled down the hall to his room. A few weeks later they found a real cook and I was demoted to dishwasher. I wasn't there the day Ward accidentally shot through his floor into the dining room.
2
That was enough. Hitch-hiking through the Rockys in winter seemed reasonable. It wasn't. Two cowboys in a pick-up gave me a lift in Utah. Part way across the salt flats the guy in the middle reached in front of me, opened the glove compartment and pulled out a revolver! Turned out he just wanted to show it off out of pride. "NICE gun!" I must have said as he handed it to me, a loaded Colt.
I went to the "pacific" (I hoped) West Coast to see part of California, and visited cousin Richard in San Anselmo, then north to my oldest friend -- literally -- in Portland Oregon. I didn't warn her, I just had her address, found the place and knocked on her door. She wasn't home so I left a note and waited somewhere warm. She might have been in Europe for all I knew! Luckily she was there when I tried again. Debby had been my baby sitter. We're still friends, an excellent artist from Pennsylvania, in San Jose now. As a student she attended The Pennsylvania Academy Of The Fine Arts in Philadelphia, like my parents but a decade later. Earliest memory of her: She would hold my hands and I'd walk up her legs until I was past horizontal and flip over backwards. She loved to swing me around. Debby made the best chocolate fudge, period.
She introduced me to her friend (Why can't I remember HIS name?) - witty, a juggler, clownish massive volume of black hair and beard, with a beret and a smile in the middle - who was planning to hitch down to LA, and then to Las Vegas. Not sure why, not that it mattered. Cars stop for a smiling juggler, rides were easy. In Los Angeles, I called the number for a family I'd met in spring of '69, on a raft trip with my uncle through the Grand Canyon. He came to get us in a red Mercedes and put us up for the night in luxury - in Hollywood! Who knew he was rich! In the morning we went to the Mount Palomar Observatory before he set us down at the on-ramp to Las Vegas.
By a serious hitchhiking error we found ourselves standing in total darkness, high cold desert late at night. Hours passed and so did the cars. Finally a Dodge Charger slid to a stop and backed up. We ran to it and climbed in gratefully. The driver punched it to 120 mph. wallowing across both lanes, and the other guy held up half a six-pack. "Wanna a beer?" he said! Urgent diplomacy saved us: "FAR OUT CAR!" we enthused. "Could I drive it please?" We switched places and they soon fell asleep. We drove to a casino where someone asked us to leave, he suggested the bus station to stay warm. Without money nothing was fun in Vegas.
There must have been a reason I don't remember, but I went back to Colorado, to Boulder and worked at Designer Originals; my first commercial experience designing and making jewelry. Irvin, the owner, wanted to avoid the difficulty of setting irregular shaped stones. He experimented with casting lab-grown Chatham emeralds in place (forming wax models around them, encasing them in plaster, burning out the wax and casting gold into the wax's "lost" cavity), he destroyed dozens of expensive beautiful crystals by quenching them while still hot! He once said "We fought on the wrong side. If Germany'd won the war we wouldn't have problems with Russia OR Israel." I knew then it couldn't last; my mother's Jewish ancestors in Kiev wouldn't have approved.
Boulder was where I got a "one lung thumper" BSA Victor motorcycle for exploring the mountains. Fun! It would climb anything if I could keep balanced, but geared too low for the road so I painted it candy apple red and sold it for an easy profit. Then I bought an old BMW road bike, a pinstriped stodgy R50 "Beemer."
(I'm forgetting the sequence, I wasn't anyplace for long)
At some point I was in Pennsylvania when ANOTHER guy showed me his gun, offered to loan it to me - The maitre d' in Marshalton Inn where I briefly set up shop upstairs. I thought that was safe. (Why restaurants?) I was burgled via a fire escape and lost an acetylene torch that my mother's friend Naomi Davis gave me when she was upgrading equipment. (flashback ten years) She made a name for herself in Philadelphia as a jeweler/artist through the '60s, my first inkling that something like that was possible. Our family dentist gave me his unused casting centrifuge and kiln. Dental technicians had invented their profession and dentists quit casting their own gold crowns and bridges. (end flashback) I was living with my parents - Xmas? - then drove back to Colorado, & back to PA again in the spring when the Volvo engine - the car I had in Syracuse - clunked, seized; it slid on locked wheels at highway speed (!!!) & suffered SADS (Sudden Auto Death Syndrome). I didn't have enough money for a tow AND another vehicle so I signed the title and gave it to the tow truck driver.
3
A $300 GMC panel truck I named Hank took me back to Boulder to the same job - again - for a few months, then California, again, with jewelry equipment and the BMW inside. After another visit with Richard I found a new but stinky apartment that was the second level of a hillside barn with three horses and chickens below. My rent was work, feeding and cleaning up after the animals. This was close to Diablo, a town near a mountain named for the devil by Kit Carson. Aptly named. I might have stayed except for the chickens. Lewis Lewis (honest, that was the owner's name) an anesthesiologist hobby farmer bought the chicks without worrying about their sex; five of them became roosters. Constant cock fights and crowing, skittery horses, sleepless and exhausted I moved to the second floor of a warehouse owned by Manuel Nagy, great guy and an excellent commercial artist in Oakland.
The big tin building had a second story sliding door with a crane hoist that let me lift the motorcycle to safety restore it inside. Manny was restoring an antique car up there too. He told the tale of using the crane to lift it a little, just to change a tire when the control chain caught and he couldn't stop the hoist! So he had to run around - a long way too - and switch off the whole building's electricity. The car was hanging free by then, so accidentally he gained confidence in the strength of his hoist.
Manny's warehouse was near the estuary between the Nimetz Freeway and Alameda. 5th and Embarcadero. Traffic whined constantly on raised concrete piles, Rails ran diagonally under that with freight trains clanking, striped gates opening and closing long before and after every train: "ding ding ding ding ding. . . . . " Alameda naval air base just across the water trained pilots, jets roared overhead. A concrete factory - cement manufacturer that is - a block north was going non-stop with shift whistles blasting. Fog horns announced barges in the channel. A stock race car builder tuned engines downstairs - a place where bikers without mufflers hung out.
Bikers, I’d learned, were not as dangerous as their myth, although I never risked testing that and wouldn't call it a rule of thumb. Most were good customers in fact, paid cash and had enough of it in their pockets to get what they wanted. Most of them had factory jobs or a business of their own. Mechanics usually. A few considered themselves noble, in a knightly sense. Their reality was an unheated dingy corrugated steel warehouse by the cement factory; a body shop where they doted on their bikes and fixed other people’s cars; spray paint dusted everything, intermingled with the stench of plastic resins, solvents, crankcase oil and beer.
This place was NOISY. From Oakland's hills looking down on it all there was a thick brown industrial haze. Manny said "You have to hand it that smog for those gorgeous sunsets!" The murder rate was impressive too, but those gnarly bikers protected the neighborhood just being there. Some claimed to be Hell's Angels, who knows? It seemed wise to remain ignorant. I made their scary jewelry, skulls and snakes, and they watched out for me. Symbiosis.
My space didn't have a ceiling, Sheet rock walls ended at normal eight foot height and then ten feet of open space to the tin roof and rough rafters. Clods of decades-old dust occasionally let go spontaneously, dropping in silent gentle bombs, so I added polyethylene tarps. It couldn't be heated so I got a waterbed and suspended a heat lamp above (same as my attic space in Syracuse). Once, only once, there was ice in a water glass. Oakland rarely freezes. The double level Nimitz Freeway, now Interstate 880, and much of that area was devastated 17 years later in the deadly Loma Prieta earthquake.
This was conveniently near my job at Squirkenworks - cheap jewelry and roach clip manufacturer. They needed new products. Their profitable clips had to go as anti-paraphernalia laws were encroaching state by state. There I designed and made original jewelry to be replicated, molded and cast in silver or gold, and I did the mass production too. Low pay for the skill level, I started with an agreement that I would own and use the designs myself too. That worked out, I left with something to sell. Another jeweler there molded a Harley Davidson ring and sold them wholesale. Dumb move, he was sued.
The Squirkenworks owner, Garry Knox Bennet, went on to international fame with his well made, often rebellious, quirky, sometimes publicity stunt art furniture. He's most famous for making a gorgeous curved glass and multi-drawered cabinet with intricate hidden latches, lovingly finished almost everywhere. It's most notable feature though is the bent twenty penny nail driven through the cabinet's top door. Somebody involved with its gallery showing pulled out the nail and a potential customer offered to buy it at full price, if Garry would replace that door. He refused, demanded to get it back and drove another nail in it. The whole idea, he said, was to devalue something precious. (Find it with a google search: the "nail" cabinet)
The little modeling and casting building where I worked was separate from the rest of his operation. Just the eventual Harley Davidson design thief and me. One story, two narrow rooms end to end, cracked concrete floor, cement block walls and metal framed windows thick with paint. It had once been a lavatory, urinals and toilets, but they were long gone. The window ledge was pretty high, about five feet. A basic shop with good light. What caught one's attention was a series of five inch to seven inch high metal castings lined up there on the window ledge. Maybe they were there in homage to the building's history. Sculptures made presumably by Garry and friends: Molded from the real things, highly detailed erect penis replicas. Surprising shapes! Someone there might have known which replicated whom, but I never asked.
I'd heard shop talk that street vendors in Berkeley were doing pretty damn well so I walked Telegraph Avenue on a Saturday to see it in action. Sunday morning I was standing there without bothering about a business license in front of Bank Of America (that's where the money was, right?) holding a small black faux-leather ring display box with 24 silver rings, half with semiprecious stones. When I sold something I had to close the box & hold it under an arm or between my knees. That annoyed other customers who wanted to see something at the same time, so sometimes I trusted customers to hold the display while I counted change! By noon I was sold out having grossed $300 or so, all cash, twice my weekly pay at the job in half a day!
A week later my "store" was a wood and brass antique camera tripod holding a 16" x 20" wood box lined with velvet, protected with a hinged picture frame and glass. Next upgrade was a more elaborate leaded glass case with sliding doors and a rod to hang earrings and necklaces, but still on that tripod. (Still have it.) I could arrive late and fit between tables if two friends were side by side and let me squeeze in. Always found a spot. Other people slept overnight under tables to claim a space - the competition was that fierce. My setup all packed inconspicuously in a funky cart that wheeled to my car. Dave MacDonald, a leather artist with a necessarily bulky setup said, enviously, "You look like Mathew Brady with an old lady's shopping cart." I started Sunday after Thanksgiving, by Christmas I had $4,000. Felt like a millionaire.
4
Summertime, Harleys roared and coughed exhaust amid the traffic every day, but this one kept it up just four feet behind me, “. . . PATATA PATATA PATATA POP PATATA POP POP. . . .” I stood and strained to hear the lady standing only a foot away in front of my tiny showcase on a tripod. She seemed a likely customer; I didn't want to miss a sale. Behind me, from the street a coarse voice yelled "Hey, I'm talkin' to YOU, muther fucker!" and with his kick my flimsy aluminum lawn chair screeched six feet across the sidewalk, slammed into a newly planted sapling, bruising tender bark as it folded and collapsed clattering into the concrete tree well. If not for that tree it would have hit my neighbor; the big black woman shiny with sweat just beyond the tree yelled some other obscenities back, and glared hatefully at him. She was a street vendor too, loud for effect, angry for real, and a very well practiced bluffer. A good neighbor in this situation. Bystanders on their coffee breaks gasped and shifted uncomfortably. All eyes were on the biker except mine; I watched my customer.
"Disgusting!" she said with a shocked and sympathetic demeanor, as I recovered the chair, keeping a peripheral eye on her. She was wearing a light pastel flowery dress, a pretty woman who, if she had a mind to, might have attracted me most of the time, but this wasn’t the time.
I maintained a consciously casual attitude as if my awareness of the biker was vague, but it wasn’t. I thought he might be drunk -- the most dangerous possibility -- but rudeness was common; the situation hadn't played out long enough to know what was happening. Odds were they chose me as a target and kicked my chair as a distraction, threatening at the exact same time an innocently pretty woman had appeared. Coincidence? Options raced in my head. I lifted a sharp pointed file and a heavy steel sizing mandrel from my tool box, gripped them in plain sight while my heart pounded, hoping the sight of steel in my hands might have some effect. It was a bluff; he was probably six feet tall and two hundred pounds; I was all of five-foot-six, a hundred and thirty-five, but quick; I wasn’t worried that he could catch me if I chose to evade him, but a fight was out of the question, and I had visions of a smashed glass showcase with a couple thousand dollars worth of rings -- all of my efforts, everything I had -- scattered into the crowd and out into the street.
There wasn't any reason for this barbarian to be yelling at me, not that it had to be logical. I couldn't be sure about it. Thugs don't need reasons, and the lady could be legitimate; I still didn't want to spook her. Shoplifting wasn't going to happen, I made sure of that. He kept yelling and I kept ignoring . . . .
“Does this sort of thing happen often here?” she asked.
“Not usually like this, but something rude happens almost daily.” I said.
“That’s terrible! What will you do?”
“Ignore him and hope he leaves.”
“What if he doesn’t stop?”
“I don’t know, but he’s seen this steel.”
John Talltree was watching from his display thirty feet down the sidewalk. I’d impudently nicknamed him “Shortshrub” without the slightest offense. Nice guy. Deer-skin moccasins and soft elk-skin pouches were arranged on a blanket at his feet. It was a delightful juxtaposition; tiny soft baby moccasins and him. John’s an Ogalalla Sioux who could have walked out of a 19th century tin-type, He’d worked around the world in the Merchant Marine, raised and lost a family and his house to a divorce, had done most blue collar jobs imaginable. Made good money once too. He had a broader world view under his belt than most of us ever would. He didn’t need or want much anymore, and he found it on the avenue. True to his name he was big, with a rugged jaw that might deflect bricks. He was pony tailed, tattooed, tanned, and lean, about forty, bare-chested in a dark leather vest, concho belt, jeans and boots.
He called out: "You alright Alan?"
"Not sure" I said . . . .
Without another word John was standing beside me -- towering over me -- his arms comfortably folded, feet apart, knees unlocked, bouncing slightly on his toes and swaying just a little from foot to foot as a fighter would, barely noticable, ready for anything and grinning confidently at the biker. It was a standoff for the moment, and I was no longer the target. The biker stayed there in that confrontation to save face probably, making noise with the bike’s engine and spewing new insults at john.
"What does he want?" the customer asked me in wide-eyed innocence.
"Maybe to distract me," I said, looking straight into those lovely hazel eyes. I was sure by then.
She smiled demurely, then without another word turned and walked away. The bike snorted, popped and growled off too.
John winked, sagged in relief as he reverted to his true gentle self, and returned to his display where a young couple were waiting with their baby, and eight dollars for some tiny soft moccasins. A few people gathered at my spot to ask what happened, and the avenue settled back into normalcy. Jerry, Russ the potter’s employee, was still sleeping off a hangover under his boss’s display table. Darryl was across the street, displaying his welded steel sculpture (but he quietly offered “genuine” Salvador Dali prints from a cardboard portfolio for $600 a pop.) News and a warning quickly passed up and down the sidewalks among the vendors; the jig was up for that scam. Don, Darryl’s brother, the under-cover Berkeley cop, came out of nowhere from behind and asked questions. Two teenaged co-eds arrived and were looking in my showcase, sipping caffe-lattes unaware of the drama that just ended. One of the girls had a cigarette pack bulge in her shirt pocket, with several thin-rolled joints in plain view among the cigarettes. Don showed her his badge and told her to be more careful. Don had bigger fish to fry.
A familiar professional victim emerged, pathetically pressing through the group. Overdressed in layers of black as usual, despite intense summer heat, with the same filthy hat she’d worn for a decade, festooned with old radical political buttons and cynical comments, she lurched and limped on her bad leg, bumping into people as if she didn’t notice them -- intentionally oblivious, part of her victim’s schtick -- to within inches of me. Dirt caked the sweaty creases of her face and neck. A sour scent drove me backward. The co-eds overacted: gagging and giggling cruelly as they left. “Do you like poetry?” she asked me.“I already have your book karla, I’ll buy your next new one,” I said. She left with a hurt smile, lurched on up the street to the next possibility among her supporting cast of vendor patrons. I took a quick look at my day’s sales, $63, good enough; better to leave early than to be a lonely target. I packed up, walked watchfully to my car and drove to the the docks and the bay, for some well earned serenity.
Looking for a closer living space I followed an ad to an address down near the water and parked. A big wolf-like dog ran out and jumped up on Hank's hood, looking at me through the windshield and wagging his whole body. That dog adopted ME! His owner deserted him and the homeowner implored me to accept him. He was already named Dubie, named after a joint I guess. (I told my dad his long name was "Dubious" for his unknown ancestry, and later Dad named another dog Dubie II) He learned to heel in two days, I could walk anywhere feeling safer with him, and he'd stay untied outside any building I went into for what might have been an unlimited duration, as long as I left a smelly sock on the ground for him to remember and guard. Wonderful beautiful long-haired German Shepherd.
I found a detached garage in Berkeley with a makeshift bathroom for $35 a month including electricity and natural gas. No phone. Life was simple. The decrepitude of it allowed big garden snails access under the rotting walls. They crunched underfoot if I wasn't careful. Later I rented an actual apartment and also afforded another space for a shop. I tried having employees selling and expanded to a second street space at Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco. There, another jeweler, Pablo, protected his wares by keeping pet tarantulas in the showcase. Clever, and smart for my helper to set up next to him as it attracted people. I fed my employees more jewelry, but I didn't have the fun. Stuff was disappearing too. The law of diminishing returns proved true. It wore me out.
5
That separate workshop was neat though. Betty Pillsbury rented it to me! - her real name. A non-stop creator of all sorts of things, she paved pathways in the yard between sculptures and little bunches of bamboo and garden plants with quirky found objects stuck in cement. A cute ceramics kiln stood ready in the center. She gave an 80th birthday party for her husband with a shadow-puppet show relating their life together. I helped make the silhouette puppets and brainstorm. Sexy Betty followed by Pregnant Betty switching three times got the best laugh. Tom, was a retired physicist who helped in the Manhattan Project and felt doubt, sometimes sorrowful regret. Not a good subject, I found. He loved to do mental calculations like "How much does the moon weigh?" And he'd explain as he did it so it made perfect sense. If you glazed over he'd stop and explain exponents until the thing made sense again. This was important fun for him! A mind just crammed with information, soaking up more. He had a private plane and took me on a sightseeing flight to the Sierras. (Betty got her own pilot's license, he was 80 after all...)
There was also a retired Doctor, a Psychiatrist - wish I could remember his name, Wendle? - who had a classic british racing green Jaguar XKE convertable and he was also a pilot. They were oldest friends. Great story teller, deeply educated. There was a crash in his younger days, Tom with him, and they had to walk out of the jungle in Guatamala. Of course he added "Any landing you walk away from it s good one." An impetuous youth, he'd volunteered to fight in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade (volunteer Americans in the Spanish Civil War). What made all this impressive beyond measure, considering the social hurdles imposed on him in the times of his youth: he was a black man.
Street vendors united and devised a plan to mollify bureaucrats when there was a threat from the city council to close the whole thing down, because of rowdy competition over spaces. The answer was a daily morning lottery in People's Park - a place with public sympathy in memory of police over-reactons in the recent past. Sidewalks were divided into spaces with painted numbers and lines on the curb. Vendors drew numbered paper slips shuffled by a cranked tumbler. First thought was to simply match numbers, but immediately people traded because location preferences varied (A street vendor's derivatives market!). Next, to avoid that, each persons number gave them their order in line for their choice of the remaining spaces, and that second number, the choice, was the one painted on the street. Bingo! No more turf wars. To work it had to be recorded. The job of doing the lottery, making numbered paper slips, spinning the tumbler and recording choice numbers on the slips and a map - officiating - was rewarded by first choice for a space, so soon there was a lottery to RUN the lottery. It became a welcomed civilizing ritual resulting in close friendships.
More difficult was the attempt to keep imports out. The whole public acceptance for it was that street vending in this place in Berkeley was specifically for artists and craftspeople. It was a city law by the time I arrived. But there were grey areas and cheaters. We divided ourselves into art & craft categories and you had to demonstrate making your product to a jury of people who understood it. We voted for representatives of each category and like a congress (that worked) they wrote the criteria. I was the Metalsmith Jeweler on the committee, and I wrote probably the toughest rule: that if you were selling cast jewelry you had to make your original models - no more selling purchased finished wholesale products, and man did they complain about that!
Strings of imported beads were also just bought and sold. We wrestled with how that might be changed. There were excellent, even extraordinary beadwork designers. Imports were especially unfair to them. The resulting criteria was that bead stringers had to make at least three beads themselves on any string. That meant they'd have to restring them, and it engendered creativity in some cases. Others argued that they should be able to treat a bought string just like a bought chain and hang a pendant that they made. Fair enough.
Still there were blatant cheaters. The most creative of those - I had to admire his chutzpah - was the guy who got his license in the category of Drawing. He drew childish crayon scribbles and hung them for sale: Buy one for $10 and you'd get a "free" pair of Mexican sandals.
One morning police barricade ribbons kept me from my usual parking area. I learned that Patty Hearst was kidnapped and the "Symbionese Liberation Army" (Eh?) was holed up in that building. "Beserkeley" was national news again. Tourism increased, and "The Ave" added to its allure as a destination. They came to see the freak show. Another day - warm, luckily - the street was choked with traffic. About fifty UCB students ran naked around us, through pedestrians and in the street around the cars - streakers.
(Remember this? - At the Academy Awards that year David Niven was the Master Of Ceremonies. A streaker ran behind him and without missing a beat David said "The only laugh that man will ever get is by stripping and showing off his short comings.")
Among them was a familiar non-student who was kind of an institution, a tall wiry guy who always carried a frisby, and as far as I know he never did anything else. He held a frisby record, I think for distance, and his was truly a skill worthy of the Olympics -amazing to watch him twist spin and throw it a hundred yards, accurately. I'm not sure but he may have invented Frisby Golf.
Another warm day a man with a New York accent stopped and asked if I'd consider teaching crafts at a new school he was helping to start on the island of Palau. William Vitarelli, "Vit" was Vice President of the University of Guam. I agreed and eventually set out on what became a fabulous brief adventure but a personal failure. Before that though I had another noteworthy California experience.
Berkeley friends organized to buy Orr's Springs, a run-down sulfurous natural hot springs resort west of Ukiah, nearly isolated on the long gravel road to Mendocino. They invited me to join in but I was cautious enough to rent first. Good thing. I spent Fall Winter and Spring there, still going to Berkeley for money. It's ruggedly beautiful sheep ranch country in a lumpy costal mountain range. Their first hope was that it would be a private cooperative home (Mm hmm), no paying visitors needed, somehow. Money ran out and they agreed to open for visitiors. That led to invitations to organizations, corporate get-aways and the like with deeper pockets for exclusive reservations and privacy. So I lost mine. Fun, though, were the odd groups for which California is justly called "The land of fruits and nuts." Nudity prevailed. Nothing was stable it seemed, one group wanted to be catered to, another took over the kitchen. A group of about thirty had "Sex Therapy," IN THE FLESH, right outside my room. I walked through to get to the bathroom, and nobody cared. The most interesting group was the California Prisoner's Union. Ex Cons., a very intelligent articulate group, I discovered; fascinating stories and great dental work.
6
It was time to go to Palau, so I shipped Dubie to my parents. (Poor guy, he got sick in flight. Poor parents, they had to clean him up at the airport and smell it all the way home.) Flying to Palau was exhausting as most long flights are, but the last legs from Guam to Yap to Palau were fun. Pilots there aren't - or weren't then - as regulated to follow an exact course or altitude. We had a sightseeing pilot and a lively talker pointing out whatever he thought interesting, flying LOW so we could see better. He spotted a pod of whales so he descended and flew in a circle around them with the port wing dipped, the surface maybe less than a five hundred feet below, then he circled the opposite direction to give the starboard side a view - in a passenger jet!
Landing in Yap took the whole wet runway to the paved end, any farther would have been mud and palm trees. We were herded through a wire fence enclosure to "customs," an overweight official in flip-flops, shorts and a faded green tea shirt, with betel nut blackened teeth and a fierce demeanor. He opened every bag and stole cigarettes - he unrolled one and chewed it! College kids returning from Guam between semesters dressed like average Americans and were greeted by parents in loin cloths.
The Vitarellis were wonderful and the Palauans were nice enough if a little aloof. I was the one with culture shock. The situation required more patience, resolve and preparation. There was no shop built, no place for me at the school site, lots of stuff needed and months-long freight times. I would have to be patient and I'd be living in a crude dormitory with some rowdy boys who from my immediate experience didn't really like an older white guy. I remember just one vinyl hose from a pipe in the ground for water. Sanitation? Lime, and not enough of it - breathtaking outhouse! With that in mind and with new appreciation of tropical diseases for which I had no exposure or immunity, I was offered a can of peaches that I'd watched being opened with the same knife blade that had just finished cleaning finger nails.
On the other hand I snorkled in coral reefs with Vit's great kids: lovely teenaged Janice, younger brother Mark and their friends. Unforgettable dense schools of brilliant fish let you get close; they had a comfort zone of a few inches, so you could pass an arm through the undulating mass of a thousand silvery bodies disturbing only those closest. They opened a space and then closed in behind as my arm passed through, inches from my skin but you couldn't move fast enough to touch one. There were gorgeous bigger fish and an ominous huge Grouper (and sharks that I never saw, but thought about), anemones and coral formations filled with colorful life. Older brother David gave me a motorboat tour through dozens of tiny surf-eroded mushroom shaped atolls to his pottery studio in a place remote and beautiful. It had it's own source of clay.
An English speaking Palauan boy showed me around, took me on a boat with spear-gun fishermen. We ate fresh octopus for lunch, raw. (kind of bland, it's much better cooked with garlic butter) The strangest part? Seeing that octopus before being dispatched bothered me; it was just barely caught, speared through a web, its suction cups held tight onto the spear with it's tentacles extended along it, wriggling and LOOKING at us with unmistakable intelligence and fear. The boy simply turned it inside out like a rolled glove and ink flowed, it went limp.
That evening, we went to a sizable corrugated tin building that served as a movie theater in the very basic town of Koror. Walking along I saw a crab climbing a tree! Land crab - a completely new concept to me. A Japanese karate movie was in progress with English subscripts, tedious, but the plot hardly mattered. An inches thick matted layer of gushy wet stuff lay underfoot that I learned afterward was chewed Betel Nut.
I went to a native wedding, maybe just the reception, I don't remember a ceremony. Celebration fare was fish, heads complete with eyes - delicacies - octopus with ink sauce, taro and dark rolled-up balls tied with fishing line - boiled bats. The bride's father had a ferry business between nearby islands and his pretty boat sat tied to the white coral dock putting away. It was meticulously painted light green with forrest green trim, and polished brass fittings. But puffing out smelly diesel fumes. So with an interpreter I asked why he kept it running? He said "Because I have lots of fuel." Bragging, showing off his wealth.
I was told there weren't any venomous snakes or bugs but one side of the main island there were sharks, the other side mangrove swamps and crocodiles, deadly poisonous stone fish rested disguised in the coral; no place to swim without risk. Although it isn't much of a risk if you know what to be wary of. Rare fresh water pools were religiously off limits. And, strangely, no whistling allowed. Watching women harvest taro I saw a six inch giant centipede with strong sharp legs and pinchers, not venomous, but every puncture would inject bacteria. We caught it in a jar so I could photograph it. In the brief time I spent there I didn't reach the comfortable nonchalance islanders had about the thousands of harmless little roaches flying, landing, crawling, on me trying to wriggle into a hiding place - a nostril, eye, ear or other dark body orifice! Palauans have a totally different outlook. The kids, I learned, climb trees to catch little snacks: spiders.
Chemicals for metalwork might be found at a hospital, so I went in search of some beginnings for the shop, nitric acid for etching and sulfuric for pickling flux and oxides off brazed and silver-soldered work. There a doctor said I should be wary of bacterial infections and I should be mindful of intestinal worms. In fact he said I should expect to be "wormed" before the year was out. I got an unnamed tropical skin condition that made a stiff flat lump on my belly an inch long and growing, shaped vaguely like New Jersey upside down, and then Vit talked about just getting over hepatitis -- I split! But now in spite of all that I wish I hadn't.
It might have been psychosomatic, the lump dissipated on the flight back and was gone in three days. In Berkeley, broke, my jewelry materials supplier offered to let me stay in the back of the store and double as a night watchman until I got back on a level keel. Berkeley continued to be the most worry-free lifestyle. It faded though, and gradually I worked more "professionally" with a wholesale effort (near torture), followed by a combination of art and craft fairs and shows, culminating with twenty-four years with permanent buildings at Renaissance fairs in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Texas.
Testing the concept of distant craft fairs meant having a much bigger display and vehicle to carry it. The first idea was a home-made gypsy wagon trailer that I dragged to Minnesota, Wisconsin and Texas renaissance fairs. Show management wanted permanent ever-more elaborate "booths" that became buildings. So be it. I found a $600 1966 Chevy school bus and built-in a complete workshop. Six expensive tires, a brake job in Wisconsin and an engine swap in Texas, and it wasn't so much of a bargain, but it kept things organized, it was my shop at home too.
I made friends with people from all over the US, including a couple from the town of Good Thunder Minnesota who moved to Lummi Island near Bellingham, Puget Sound. After a visit to help them build a pottery kiln during seductive mild weather in January (unusual, I now realize), and with their encouragement I moved to my current home here in the country between Bellingham and Burlington. It's nominally "Sedro Woolley" by postal tradition but that town's actually ten miles away. This is an unincorporated community called Glenhaven. It feels like suburbia by the road, but my home sits near a narrow section of Reed lake. It's an interesting hillside house that may never get "done." I'm lucky to live closer to nature than most people.
One spring I watched a Mallard with seven ducklings swimming sedately when a Bald Eagle flew over. The mother quacked in noisy panic and half flew / half ran on the water splashing violently around the ducklings, chasing them, one then another then another, and each in a different direction. They got the message and radiated away, actually running on the water, short wings unable to lift off but propelling them FAST, not stopping until they all reached shelter widely separated - some across to the other side. As this was happening she flew in a widening spiral diving at them, urging them on by turn until they made it. They hid invisibly still. Then she flew away still quacking loud a very long way off. Gone. I sat hidden and still, waited for ten minutes... twenty minutes... Then I heard a faintest peep of recognition and saw a chick swim out to her coming from the opposite direction than where she flew. Must have flown a big circle. She was quietly gathering them back making sounds I'd never heard before and I can't easily describe. Not a quack, not a peep - something in between, a little deeper - low and soft. The ducklings on the other side had a very long wait but they stayed as she swam slow and tight to the shore, and kept going around the whole lake until she had every last one.
A storm six years ago blew down two huge Douglas Firs and crushed my beloved homemade gypsy wagon and damaged the school bus / shop on wheels, so my house filled up with that equipment. The fairs and festivals became ever-more greedy with fees, and they expanded so schedules overlapped making it impossible to continue as I liked. My parents faded gradually in sequence, so I gave up the festivals to be able to see them any time of year, and to be home in Washington in the summer, out of the rain for the first time. I found I could specialize in design for other retail jewelers, so for the last thirteen years my work was almost entirely modeling and mold making for others - boring traditional work. It always felt temporary.
I'm building a little luxury workshop - by my standards at least - and I'll regain some living space. I'm truly enjoying oil painting. It's unlikely to pay but I don't care as long as I'm able to keep going. Who knows, I might just succeed! My last interesting project for pay was the restoration of a quality Meyer Bros. antique street clock in Mount Vernon. The owner handed me five boxes of rusty parts. It's now gleaming and ticking with two hardened polished pinion gears I made from scratch, an interesting change of work, once, but I don't think I want to do it as if I had to.
© Alan Heugh
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