Sailor Bob

"Do you have any propane on you?" I was standing on the dock, minding my own business and this guy was asking me questions from a sadly weather-beaten and clearly unsafe sailboat.

"Funny you should ask, " I said as I made a show of reaching into my jacket breast pocket. I had no propane. It was cold as heck on the Willamette, and propane was needed. Though I had several layers, I have not achieved the girth necessary to conceal a ten-gallon propane tank. He laughed at my physical humor, which was a good sign.

I had time to kill before heading across Portland to meet my kid for dinner. Killing time in Portland doesn't have to mean a warm museum or watching an ornamented youth froth a latte. No, it could mean talking to some guy in a sailboat; maybe a craft that defied the odds and somehow remained afloat. I thrust my hands in my pockets and stood in the windy winter afternoon on a dock. This was fine, and a fine example of why I have so few friends who like to do things with me without a plan. "Let's go to Portland." "Okay, and do what?" "We'll figure it out when we get there." "Oh, hell no."

Meanwhile, back on the dock: "I got gas, but I ain't got propane. It's a 25-foot boat with a ten-horsepower motor. That's the biggest you're allowed to have." I nodded, hoping for the best.

"I stole this boat." Cool. "Well, I thought I did. The next day after I took it, I saw it on Craig's List for free. It'd been abandoned at a marina, and they wanted it gone." Goodness. "I could'a just walked up in broad daylight and took it away. Instead, I poached it at night. In the middle of the night."

"Wow," was all I had to say. Really, it all there really was to say.

"I did go back and get the title. I'd never even been in a boat before. I didn't know they had titles." He moved either a crab pot or mangled TV antenna out of the way so he could sit on the faded blue bench. "After I got the title, I headed down the river. Did you know sailboats have a big fin under them?"

"A keel." I offered.

"No. A fin. I was in the middle of the river and it hit something. The tide went out and I was stuck. I got out of the boat and started trying to dig the fin out, but it went way down." Yes, about six feet or so, I refrained from saying. He took a second to light a cigarette. "There was a CB on the boat. So, I called the Coast Guard and asked them to come get me. They asked if I was in danger. I said no and they told me to wait out the tide."

This story was so worth losing feeling in my legs from the cold. "So, did you float out when the tide came in?"

"Oh, yeah. Got the motor fired up but it died a few minutes later. Out of gas. I drifted and run aground again." He combined coughing with laughing to save time and get back to his story. "It was getting dark so I called the Coast Guard again. They told me to turn on my navigation lights and wait out the tide again. Well, I had no batteries left, no gas, no propane. Then, I asked them what navigation lights are."

The wind was kicking up but there was no way in hell I was leaving before this story was over. "The Coast Guard guy told me they were coming out. When they got there, they told me this was a crew exercise. They were not rescuing me. I didn't care. They dragged me back into the water and towed me to a public dock. They were getting ready to leave and I told them I didn't have any gas or batteries or anything. The guy just pointed at the road and told me to have a nice walk." He dissolved into laughing and coughing while gesturing his frustration.

This was essay gold. But, when I write about people like Sailor Bob (or whatever the hell his name is), I do it with the hope that the subject would enjoy how the story was told. This is not a federal deposition. Not letting the facts get in the way of a good story is how it's done. It isn't meant to be mean or malign this guy who was willing to tell me such a tale--not that Sailor Bob will ever read this. (He declined me taking a photo of his set-up.) We are enduring a time of vicious upheaval and many people are not living the way they hoped to. There are no easy answers. Sailor Bob was probably about my age and mentioned he'd been outta work "since the plague." He said he "stole" the boat to have a place to sleep. He told me of a whole community of people living on boats and bending (Snap!) the rules and regulations all along the rivers to have a place to spend the night and call home. They know how long they can overstay their welcome at what dock and how to get food and cheap fuel. This hit home with me since my life has been spent finding resources where most people wouldn't think to look. Sailor Bob was speaking my language.

Meanwhile, our little corner of heaven has also been running low on resources. Housing and living wage jobs are scarce and getting scarcer. I work downtown and I live downtown. Bearing witness to this mess is my daily grind. So, when I write about people who have been thrust into the position where stealing a boat seems like a good idea, I'm trying to acknowledge the resilience while not celebrating criminality. One of the greatest comedians of all time is George Carlin. I always felt he was making fun of our overlords for us. He was on our side. Seven Words You Can't Say on TV hit the charts while the war in Southeast Asia created a steady stream of body bags. Carlin pointed out the absurdity of censoring the word "tits," but daily news of people killing people was just fine. He said what we were all thinking but didn't say. So when I talk to Sailor Bob, or the guy in the horror show of a travel trailer by my shop, or the guy smoking meth in the side door of Safeway, I do it with a background roar of There But for the Grace of God Go I. When I write, I try to think of who George Calin would make fun of it he read it. Me or my subjects. I'm shooting for neither.

It was getting colder, and Sailor Bob needed to finish up his chores. As if on cue, my daughter texted and said she's heading over to the food cart court in about an hour, which happened to be my travel time across town. I tossed around the notion of slipping Bob a twenty, but he didn't ask for money and seemed like he needed to chat more than anything. Unceremoniously, Sailor Bob went below deck and I went to my car. My fingers stung as they thawed on the steering wheel. Slipping into traffic, I shifted gears from the romantic notion of marine homelessness to gratitude for food truck courts. My kid is vegetarian and I'm not. I've yet to be able to digest the meat substitutes she lives on. (Though I would graze on tofu and beansprout smoothies to spend a couple of hours with her.) We got pizza from the same truck, but mine had protein my body recognized as something not to be gotten rid of ASAP. It was almost Christmas, so she had a gift bag for me loaded with everything I shouldn't eat. She knows what I like and leverages the holidays as an excuse to help me be bad. But the prize at the bottom of the bag was a T-shirt emblazoned with one of my favorite George Carlin quotes. I knew I was going to write about Sailor Bob. Somehow my daughter reminded me to remember who the enemy really is. It isn't Sailor Bob.

 

Comments

[Cheryl]

Paul, I loved every word of this.
Thank you for being Real.

[Jason]

So good! Thanks for some lightness and laughter.