PAGAN
LOVE AND WILDING HEARTS
25.
A Ruby’s Worth of Dreams
And so the
winter passed and 1975 arrived. The cops were getting wise; usually it was the same two
badboys. They seemed to have a personal vandetta against me. They crawled under the beach
house one morning and found me sleeping and wrote me a fifty dollar ticket and took me to
jail in handcuffs. After that they caught me sleeping so often that many nights I had to
stay awake and vigilant to dodge them. They started ticketing daytime beach-sleeping too.
One day I was so tired from lack of sleep that I stood on the beach with my back resting
against the cliff wall and my eyes closed—and the two cops came along and ticketed me
for sleeping on the beach!
And there always
seemed to be new ways of getting into trouble with the cops. Feeding a hungry hundred
pound dog like Demetrious was always a problem but I found a means to solve that nicely:
Kentucky Fried Chicken threw out a large cardboard box full of fried chicken practically
every night. They were kind folks so sometimes I just went to their back door at closing
time and they gave me a bunch of pieces. Other times I arrived late and so I raided their
dumpster. Demetrious ate like a colonel.
But dumpstering
was illegal in Laguna. The police took people to jail whenever they caught them, so I had
to be real careful. One night I found a full case of wine in a dumpster! One bottle was
broke, but other than that I never have figured out why they threw the whole case away.
Maybe they were worried about some customer getting cut by a shard of glass tucked under a
label. But imagine throwing away a whole case of wine! Laguna is a rich town…
With some of the
best places to sleep in danger of the high winter tides I was desperate for somewhere dry
and warm to sleep. One place I found that I
could use when I didn’t have Demetrious with me was in a Laundromat. There was a
metal wall above a dryer that could be pried away and I could squeeze in with my sleeping
bag and sleep warm and unseen until morning. It seems absurd now, looking back. But I
dearly remember how desperate I was for somewhere to sleep. I was caught above that dryer
several times. Customers caught me, the owner caught me, and the police caught me. But it
was warm.
Another place
that served me longer was the Salvation Army Drop box. I bet I spent thirty nights in
there all together. Others used it from time to time, too. It’s funny, how when
you’re living on the streets you come to think of some dumb place like that as your
“home”. It’s ridiculous. It’s fucking pathetic is what it is. The
police caught me in the drop box too, a couple times. When they realized I slept there
they’d wait for me to climb in and then they’d swoop down and arrest me. So I
learned to approach quickly and stealthily. It usually worked but not always. The drop-box
was a good source for blankets and clothes, too.
When Demitrious
was with me some local people might have thought we were a symbol of something that
wasn’t inherantly “bad”. Writers and artists live in Laguna. One might
expect kind sentiments from them.
Anyway, a St
Bernard is a rich man’s pet, and they liked to see us out there, living our lives in
their sand. I know some of them lived my life vicariously, wishing they could duck out of
their rat-races and be me. On several occasions individuals came up to me and told me as
much! They went on and on - about how they wished they could just throw their cares and
responsibilities to the winds and live on a beach with a dog for a best friend like I was
doing. I always told them my life wasn’t really as carefree as it appeared and that
they didn’t realize how lucky they were to have a home. But I understood full well
their sentiments. (What I really wanted to tell them was that if they liked what I was
doing so fucking much how about letting me park my Triumph in their driveway and how about
giving me a few bucks?)
One day a man
came out of the woodwork with a female St Bernard. He
told me he had been noticing me and my dog living on the beach and went on to say he
figured we were pretty lucky to be so free. He introduced me and Demetrious to his dog, a
female—and asked me if I would like to have her! He said he wanted her to be free
like we were because he was tired of seeing her cooped up all day. I accepted her for
Demetrious’ sake and the big galoot immediately started trying to get her pregnant.
What a managerie I’d have following me around the beaches if she had pups! I named
her Gertrude.
When the weather
began to warm up we slept again up on the cliff below Victor Hugo’s. So far that
place had gone undetected. It was also safe from unexpected high tides. The view was
mind-bogglingly fantastic and there’s nothing like sleeping with the roar of the sea
in your ears. Nothing.
The logistics of
moving around two large St Bernards and a motorcycle were becoming preposterous. I kept
the two dogs chained together and I attached a leash to the middle of the chain, sort of
like a “Y”. They were strong dogs. If I could have hitched them to a cart I
could have flown down the beach like the wind. There were downsides too. Like for instance
nothing can quite ruin someone’s picnic in the sand like two frolicking wet St
Bernards.
Spring
was upon us, and homeless people were popping out of the woodwork everywhere, like they
always do when warm weather hits. Nothing disgusts wealthy people more than indigents. So
all of a sudden the Laguna cops seemed doubly determined to bust us all, and especially me
for anything and everything. They even ticketed me once for spitting on the sidewalk; I
refused to pay that one. I had some other unpaid tickets, too. I couldn’t pay them all—a person would
have to be rich to afford to do that, at least by my standards. So before long I had
outstanding fines and warrants. And I knew it was a matter of time before they took me to
jail. On top of that my Vermont driver’s license had been confiscated by the cops and
I could no longer legally ride my Triumph.
One
day I had to move the motorcycle and I was hoping against hope that no cops would notice
me riding through town. When a patrol car passed going the other way I watched him in my
side-view mirror and saw him make a sharp U-turn—so I quickly turned up a side street
and ducked into an alley. The cop missed me but I knew he was cruising and probably
radioing around—and I didn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell at getting
away on the Triumph. What I needed was a safe place where it wouldn’t be towed away
after I went to jail.
No
such luck. The judge was tired of seeing my face in front of him. He gave me twenty days
in Orange county Jail and told me the next time I came before him on any charge
whatsoever; sleeping on the beach, not having my dog on a leash, or riding my motorcycle
without a license— ANYTHING— he would give me six months!
I
contacted my mother from jail to ask her to go get the dogs but when she got there they
were gone. I never saw either St Bernard again—but if I ever get to Heaven I’ll
expect to see them with wings and halos -- at least if God ever forgives them for what
they did to some of those picnickers on the beach, which is doubtful.
Twenty
days. Orange County Jail was a dangerous place. About half way through my sentence a crazy
Chicano swore he’d kill me in my sleep. So I clanked my cup against the bars and
asked a guard to put me in the hole and I was glad when he agreed to do that. I stayed in
there until my release.
When
I got out I was happy to find my Triumph still parked behind the church. I arrived just in
time though—the garbage collector was going to tow it off as abandoned trash! I fired
it up figuring to ride it over to my mother’s house and leave it there. Of course,
legally I still couldn’t ride it anywhere.
And
the cops knew me well, and they knew my Triumph, and they knew I wasn’t
licensed… I tried to be careful but they stopped me and wrote me a ticket before I
even got out of Laguna. And they assured me if they caught me trying to ride it again they
would take me straight back to jail. So I had to leave the bike sitting beside the
highway. That was no good. I spent several hours looking for someone with a license who
would ride it to Huntington Beach for me. No such luck.
As
it started getting dark I walked to a convenience store and got myself a small pint bottle
of wine and went outside and stood against the wall of the store drinking it. Angrily I
picked up a stick and smashed it against the cement wall. I heard a clattering noise that
didn’t quite sound right and instinctively my finger moved over the familiar feeling
of my massive silver ring—and I became agonizingly aware that the thirty-eight carat
star ruby was no longer in the setting!
I
obtained a flashlight from the cashier and we both searched the grass and debris beside
the wall for an hour—to no avail. I knew the stone was gone forever. I wish I could
tell you what a loss that was to me. The huge ruby had been a sign to me that I could be
as much a success in Laguna Beach as anyone else if I were only given a chance. Many is
the time people had noticed the massive ruby stone in the ornate silver ring with shock
and amazement. It did tend to stun the eyes. In any sunlight the huge star moved
wonderfully across it’s surface. Now it was gone and the winds seemed particularly
cold. . It kind of felt to me like without that ring I would not have any way to prove
myself in that town… It was as if Providence had removed my options to be an artist
in Laguna.
I pushed the
bike over to a residential area and parked it near someone’s driveway. Early the next
morning I returned to the bike and fired it up and headed north on highway 101. I
hadn’t even gotten to the next town before I noticed a cop had spotted me and was
turning around.
I ducked off the
highway onto a rutty dirt road that led out towards the seacliffs and jumped off the bike
and ran down to the beach. It felt like the
court system was dragging me irrevocably into a sure jailhouse death trap and I knew I
would have to do my best to avoid those machinations. I didn’t think I could stand
another six months in a cage. I was shaking. From a safe distance I peered over the edge
of the cliffs in the direction of my Triumph and saw two cop cars parked near it. So I
stayed put until the cops left. Fearing that they were still lurking nearby I let the
Triumph remain where it was and hitchhiked home to my mother’s.
When I returned
a couple days later with a truck to pick up the bike -- it was gone. I made phone calls to
police and sheriff departments but no one claimed to know its whereabouts. I never saw the
Triumph ever again.
My Triumph
650’s serial number is DU 19336 in case anyone wants to know.
