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estebanana -> RE: chemicaly soaked timbers (Mar. 31 2013 2:11:41)
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I Remember when I lived in Big Sur CA in the early 1980's there was a summer called the Summer of the Seaweed.
The US Coast Guard was chasing some smugglers up the coast and as the Coast Guard gained on them they threw the cargo over board. It was several bales of marijuana, I don't know how big they were, several kilos each, but there were dozens of them washing up onto the shore of well known surf beach called Fullers Reef.
Fullers was run by a local crew of tough guys, surfers who lived in their VW vans all summer on the Pacific Coast Highway. The wetsuit draped caravan over looked the ocean from 400 ft high cliffs covered with the dusty ecceum plant, sage thickets and lots of blue belly lizards. The boys at Fullers kept non locals at bay, by among other un savory strategies, setting a non local guys car on fire by the side of the road after he got into a beef with one of the local heavies. The guy who's car they torched happened to have been a lawyer who lived up on Monterey. I don't know how that turned out.
Part of the charm of Big Sur is that even though Henry Miller had long passed away, Richard Brautigan no longer lived there had had committed suicide in Bolinas CA, just north of San Francisco, Big Sur Still had a cast of celebrated roadside characters. Brautigan and Miller wrote about them back in the old days, but the new breed was just as interesting as the ones in the novels and short stories.
There was a Kiwi who lived near the trailhead of Fullers Beach in his van, his name was Terry, but most of us called him 'Hide'. He made leather hiking sandals that all the surfers in the area used to traverse the steep goat trails that led from the cliffs to the beach. I had a pair that Hide made for me. You would go find him by the side of the road and ask him for a pair of sandals, he would pull out a piece of cardboard and a sharpie pen and trace your foot ask a few questions and measure your arch. You would give him half of the money in deposit come back in two weeks. His father was a cobbler back in New Zealand and he learned shoe making from his dad and was an excellent craftsman. Hide was also a published author, he wrote mystery novels and it was rumored he had a doctorate degree in something like biology. But this part of the story is not leading anywhere so back to the white punks on dope of Fullers beach.
The day the Seaweed washed up the big boys cleared the beach of all the non essential personnel, meaning the twurps from the city. They set out on surfboards and paddled out half a mile or more scouting the area beyond the kelp beds. The bundles of seaweed were getting stuck in the kelp and they dutifully ridded mother nature of this unwanted sea trash. Surfers really were the first conservationists of the ocean in California.
Once all the seaweed was collected, the surf mafia set about drying it and selling it about town. It became all the rage. I don't smoke, I have asthma, but I was told the salty sea water imparted a raspy after effect giving the smoker a bit of a scratchy throat. But that minor irritation did not deter the robust usage of this seaborne product.
I don't want to moralize and make this into an allegory, or worse yet a pretentious exegesis on the evils of drugs. But I think you know where this is headed, so brace yourself. The Seaweed did not make great violins, but if one smoked enough they all sounded like Stads.
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