I don't consider myself a gourmet or even a foodie. I cook decent Santa Fe food and can prepare a few other dishes without starting a fire in the kitchen or poisoning somebody. The Santa Fe fixation is because I grew up eating mostly New Mexican and Arizonan versions of Sonora cooking. The rest was pure Americana. A standard faire of pancakes, peanut butter sandwiches, snickers, and snacks. In the 50s and 60s, it wasn't a very good idea to eat seafood when you lived in the southwest. I remember getting sick several times due to bad crabs, lobsters, oysters, and clams--all fresh out of a can. Couldn't imagine eating the real thing fresh off the boat. It must be even worse! I left the southwest with some serious food aversions. These days, a mere 50 years later, I slurp oysters, snuffle that stuff out of Dungeness Crabs, and suck crawdad head without shame. This is the story of the transformative miracle, the joyous moment that brought me to the sea. I'll share several easy recipes in the appendix.
Summer of 1970 was a glorious time. I had dropped out of school. No tests, no assignments, no real responsibilities at all. I had a mindless "straight" job down on Market Street in San Francisco that paid rent and essentials and allowed me to sling my guitar around town. Most days, my work was done by noon, and the other long-hair in the company, Gene, and I spent the rest of the day riding the freight elevator smoking weed. The company policy seemed to be to hide the longhairs so that potential customers and especially the corporate officers would not see us. I worked up on the 6th floor in the mailroom. Gene, who was 22 or 23, had just moved from Houston to The City and worked in the basement; but I was never sure what the hell he did down there. On one of those freight trips, the elevator stopped and another passenger, a baby-faced guy fresh out of the Navy got on. We made no attempt to hide our activity. Better yet, Dave, just back from cruising the Vietnamese coast, was happy to join in and contribute to the elevator party. After 30 or so minutes of riding the freight, we were off into The City, walking around and getting lost and laughing at everything and nothing at all.
Two eventful things happened that day. The first was that we became friends. We all worked for the same awful company, and we all knew how to work the freight elevator. There would be plenty of occasions for us to have a smokey freight elevator conference while the suits at the company were having alcohol fueled babblement at some downtown restaurant. The second was that, while we were walking around up in the Tenderloin, smoking a joint out in the streets and out in the daylight, we met Tony.
Tony just sauntered up and asked for a toke. As we all walked on together, he invited us to his "apartment complex" to go for a swim and to party. And, in those days, San Francisco was a rolling party. Of course we went along.
Eventually, I moved into that "apartment complex," and Tony and I started a little musical act or something-- not exactly a band. He played bass and sang beautifully. A guy who claimed to be Sly Stone's cousin played percussion on some Congas and he claimed he could play flute; and I hammered away on my acoustic guitar. My guitar changing moment had not yet occurred, but it would. And that would be the end of the little band. But that's another tale, for another series of awful confessions.
The swim party was spectacular. Back in its day, maybe the 1940s, the apartment complex must have really been something special. It had an enclosed courtyard behind a large grate-iron gate and included a fairly large swimming pool that could not be seen from the street. I will say no more in order to protect the innocent, but naked swimming is pretty cool when you are only 18. Nobody looks really bad at 18. The other important part of the party was that we met this swell guy called Bob-- fresh out of San Quentin Prison, and he didn't seem at all dangerous. Imagine that! He had a huge box of assorted drugs for sale, and we could get anything we imagined. We imagined three tabs of purple, grape-flavored mescaline. The grape mescaline was almost legendary, and legend was that it was made by the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Frankly, I liked it as well--maybe better--than the Orange Sunshine that was always attributed to the Brotherhood.. I had eaten a tab when I first saw the movie Woodstock, guaranteeing a good time. I ate another with a Hells Angel during a T-storm down at The Incident at Kickapoo Creek, and we were getting along famously until he went after a Gypsy Joker who kicked his bike. Even in the midst of that potentially deadly chaos, the grape mescaline did not turn ugly. It was pure and delicately manufactured, and I endorsed it wholeheartedly. It was perfect for the 4th of July. Best of all, we didn't have to wait long. The 4th of July was two weeks away.
As we waited for the 4th to arrive, we made plans to assure the best experience. We finally decided we would go up to Sausalito early in the evening. Maybe hit a bar or two and convince the proprietors that I was older than my 18 years so I could have some beers with the guys. We would eat our purple mescaline at 8 PM, giving us an hour or more to get into it. And soon, there would be fireworks, launched off some barge out in The Bay. Perfect.
The show was pretty good. It was interrupted by a couple of high school girls who figured that they could make their boyfriends jealous by hanging with us and mooching hits off the occasional joint. And it worked. The boyfriends were threatened and became obnoxious, but we didn't get into the fight that they wanted or anything like that. The cheerleaders eventually limped away with their limp boyfriends, and we completely enjoyed the show. Nothing strange, yet.
When the fireworks show wound down, we waited a bit until I felt upright enough to drive us the few miles back into the city. We got into the car and headed down 101 toward the Golden Gate Bridge. For all of you familiar, you know that you have to go through the Waldo Tunnel before you break out onto the Bridge. As we entered the tunnel, all sorts of hell was erupting behind us. There were flashing lights-- but no sirens. There was a cream colored Ford sedan that was driving way too fast, weaving and screeching through the three lanes of traffic. And then there was a "POP!" Before the POP, the cream sedan was first car behind us in the outside lane, and then suddenly it was sliding and screeching and sparking as it careened across the two inner lanes and slid to a stop on the gravel covered, right side of the highway just outside the tunnel. Everyone was stopped. I imagine we all thought that a tire had blown and were just grateful that no crashes happened. The driver of the beached sedan got out. Rather than signal for help or just run away from his car, he pulled out a gun-- a long-barreled, black revolver-- and began shooting. Behind us--immediately behind us in the rear view mirror-- we could see three unmarked, brown, cop cars. Maybe Sheriff's department but who knows? The cops were piling out, seeking cover behind their doors and rear bumpers. They opened fire and the gun-toting driver dropped slowly to his knees , wisps of smoke coming out of dark holes in his shirt and tan jacket, and then dropped flat on his face.
Gene and Dave were screaming at me."Drive!! Go!!" Very insightful directions. I couldn't go until the cars in front of me went.... but we all eventually got moving. It took a moment to eat its way into my consciousness. We had just witnessed a shooting and the likely death of a man. It wasn't a hallucination. All the other cars in the tunnel were stopped. They couldn't all be seized simultaneously in a 4th of July mescaline panic. And then, in the back of my mind, I realized that we were the first car in front of the brown cop sedans. If they took any license numbers at all, mine would be one. We were the front line witnesses. I had to do the right thing. The RIGHT THING! When we crossed The Bridge, I pulled into the parking lot at the Bridge Authority. Gene and Dave were losing it fast. Gene was trying to grab the steering wheel, but too late. They threatened me with a good beating, but I reminded them that they had no transportation other than mine. I promised that I would be out in a minute. I just needed to go in and report the incident, along with my license plate number and driver information... just to be sure that I was a good citizen. After all, the good cops in the unmarked cars needed my cooperation. Who else would testify that the dead guy shot first?
There were two people ahead of me in the small office. Both were defending their rights to drive on The Bridge without having to pay the toll. No big deal. When my number was called, I stepped up and said "There was a shooting just this side of Waldo Tunnel, and I want to leave my information in case a witness is needed." Pretty cogent for a kid flashing hard on mescaline in the middle of The Good Citizen delusion. Of course, the desk-jockey said "What?" I explained again about the shooting, and she looked at me carefully, noting, no doubt, that my pupils were the size of small dinner plates. "Wait here."
A sergeant in Bridge Authority (three stripes) came to the desk and asked me for my identifying info once again. And, please, tell again what I had witnessed. I did... with remarkable accuracy and brevity for someone so fucked up. "Wait here." And I waited a little longer.
An officer (no stripes, bars on the shoulder) in the Bridge Authority came out of a back office. and asked that I tell my story one more time. I did. The receptionist and sergeant agreed that the story was intact. Same thing that I told them previously. The officer got on the official radio and requested information about a shooting in Waldo Tunnel. There were numerous responses, none of which seemed to say "Hurray for the witness citizen! Exactly what we need." The Bridge officer looked at my saucer eyes and said "Wait here.' I waited.
The Bridge people kept asking if I was OK, kept asking me to tell the story again, kept asking if I was sure I saw what I claimed I saw, and so on. I kept asking if I could go out to tell my drug-addled passengers what was going on. The good Bridge people recommended that I stay right where I was. Twenty or so minutes later, a disembodied voice came over the cop-radio in the office. "Get him out of there. We don't need any damn witness." That was it. The officer in charge said, kindly, "You need to go now. Drive carefully." By that time I was ready. I didn't offer any additional information. I went. When I got to the car, Gene and Dave were in a strange dimension. Bad trip for them. It must have been a half hour or more since I left the car in helpful citizen mode. Who knows what kinds of goblins had eaten their brains in the interim? I was glad that they had not clawed holes in the roof of the car. Not my problem. I had done my civic duty. Where next?
One of us, maybe even me, suggested that we go down to Fisherman's Wharf-- not to the tourist part but to the docks. It was close to midnight and getting foggy and dense. Nobody would be there. We could listen to the ocean and calm down. On second thought, it might not have been me who invented this idea because I remember thinking that my companions might be planning to kill me and toss me into the Bay as payback for their torment. Still, we went.
We strolled and smoked, gradually recovering from my mescaline induced role as citizen. We walked out onto the end of a long pier to grab more calm. And that was when one of us spotted the fire. Down fo the left of the pier, there were some men huddled around a fire. We just watched for a few minutes, and then Gene yelled down to them. "What's happening?" Great question. And one of them shouted back "We're boiling some crabs. Come on down!" So we did.
Finding our way down was one of the more difficult tasks of the night. It was slippery and sandy and sometimes muddy, but we made our ways down. The gentlemen we met were not what we expected. These guys were in their 40s or more. Real Old. They were not some leftover hippies having a cook-out on the beach below the Wharf. These guys were genuine Hoboes from the old days of train travel. They were unemployed, so it is told, by choice not by circumstance; and they traveled the West Coast by train, back and forth from Seattle down to San Diego. Depending on the season, depending on the weather, they could be here, there, or now in San Francisco. And they lived by their wits. In this case, their wits caught a bunch of crabs in the Bay and were boiling them up for a late dinner. We were now invited, if we could somehow chip in. So we traded them Weed for Crab. They were delighted.
My early years were in the southwest... New Mexico and Arizona. The next miserable years were in Wisconsin, land of awful lake fish. Seafood was never an item on the menu. Usually it was some horrible canned mess that no real person should eat. I remember gagging on the oyster dressing at Thanksgiving. I remember gagging on the clam chowder that showed up on the table uninvited. The offer of crab did not make my stomach happy. I confessed my lack of seafood experience to one of the older Hoboes. He was astonished. We chatted a bit, and he promised that, if I tried a bit of crab and didn't like it, they would give back the weed we had bartered. The other old guys chimed in and agreed. Now I was on the spot. Eat a piece. If I did my usual gag reflex routine, we were done. If not...
I still remember that first bite of crab claw meat. It was sweet and tender and delicious. It was heaven beyond anything I had ever tasted. No gag reflex. As I reached for another piece, the Hoboes erupted in laughter. They got to keep their new stash of weed. We settled in for a feast that I have not had again in 50 years, and I was hooked. As we ate, I said "You guys wouldn't believe what we just saw..." and both Gene and Dave chimed in "Shut the fuck up and eat." And I did.
You are not really expecting an appendix with recipes after that, are you?