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MY OLD MAN AND THE SEA
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On the second floor of the building, above City Hall, was Sausalito’s Public library. A simple sign at street level and a flight of narrow wood stairs would take you up to what I later realized was a small room for a city library. But I of course remember it as, if not large, as spacious as it needed to be. There were the typical wood shelves lining the walls, metal shelves in the center of the room, and a large round oak table for magazines. Street-side were two large windows that looked out to Richardson Bay, an inlet of San Francisco Bay, just north of the Golden Gate Bridge, which my great uncle Rudy Pettersen helped to design.
Before each window was a well-worn dark wood table, furnished with heavy chairs, and while seated you could look down to see the quaint city park; just a few blocks away to the north were dozens of piers, securing a variety of boats from skiffs to yachts, jutting into the bay. Across the choppy green water was Angel Island, where Japanese families were interned during the war—now a national park. And to the right of this, a little farther out, was the derelict Alcatraz prison, still imposing and the subject of many local stories, most having to do with escapees who had, successfully and not, swum across the bay, which wasn’t supposed to be possible—thus, the reason for a prison on an island in the middle of cold and turbulent water.
To the right of this was the beige skyline of San Francisco, which was often obscured by the thick fog that would roll down from the headlands, swallowing the Golden Gate Bridge along the way. Sausalito is the first town north of the bridge, and by taking Bridgeway (named by the same great uncle, in 1935), you would, after a long and winding road, find yourself in the town. And along the way you would have passed the Victorian home where my mother was born and where Jack London was said to have stayed, and written.
If you were looking from Angel Island back to Sausalito, you would see Bridgeway running along the shore, and numerous art galleries and restaurants for the thousands of tourists who would descend upon the town each weekend, and streets moving quickly up steep hills, where expensive homes with phenomenal views were surrounded by lush greenery. And back down on Bridgeway, you would see the two bay windows of the public library, and maybe a 12 year old boy.
I would visit the library regularly, and would be helped by Mrs. Georgetti, a very librarian-like librarian. She had short, bobbed, dark hair, wore a simple plain blouse tucked into a long pleated skirt, and spoke with an Irish brogue—and was said to have known James Joyce and Henry Miller. I don’t remember her as a cheerful woman, but I do remember her as attentive and helpful, and surprisingly lax, given that she would let me bring in a Tab with crushed ice and a crusty sour dough roll, from nearby Ole’s bakery, which I would set on the table next to the window as I read. However, given that she was a rather staid lady, and this was a library, I may be making up this particular memory. But it feels so real—so I’m sticking with it.
Being the very grown up 12 year old that I thought myself to be, I wasn’t willing to read “the kids’ books,” so Mrs. Georgetti would indulge me and recommend something a little more mature. One day she suggested Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea, and seeing that it wasn’t too long, I accepted. As I sat near the window reading, looking over to the boats and out to the bay, the parallel here wasn’t lost on me, especially because Mrs. Georgetti knew my old man, as all Sausalitans did.
Swede (a playfully insulting nickname for a young Norwegian—which stayed with him, for some reason) was larger than life, and by the time I was in the picture, larger than most people. So he qualified well to play Santa every year under the forty foot tree (in whose branches he, on tall, precarious ladders, strung the Christmas lights) in the little town park. On some years a sleigh in the form of a seaplane would deliver him, and my older brother would play elf while Swede handed out presents. He looked quite convincing in his red velvet costume with its thick black belt and fake white beard, but the iconic red cheeks were his, acquired over the years from his daily visits to Smitty’s Bar and the numerous other drinking establishments in this little hamlet.
It was Swede’s uncle (thus my great uncle) who helped design the north tower of the bridge and who named Bridgeway. And his father, my namesake, was a ferry boat captain, until the ships were no longer necessary to carry cars and commuters home from work in San Francisco, after the bridge was built.
As is clear by now, my father’s family were people of the sea. (Living in Norway, which his parents did until just before his birth in New York, almost makes this true by definition.) And he was of the sea, too. In his 20’s, he looked like a human version of Popeye, and I have a photo to prove it. He is wearing a tight fitting black and white striped shirt, with short sleeves that expand around his oversized biceps; his waist looks to be about half the size of his broad shoulders; and his hips are small. But no spinach. He is standing on the end of a dock next to a massive hook that holds a six-foot hammerhead shark. Sometime during that era, he would board a ship that would take him to Midway Island to work for the Bechtel Engineering company, which repaired vessels for the U.S. Navy. Given that he was born in 1916, this must have been in the mid 1930s.
While he was working underwater one day, an explosion occurred. The effect of this on a human body is explained in this excerpt from an autopsy report from those days: “Water, unlike air, does not compress, and since the human body is the same viscosity of water, the shock wave passes directly through the body and ruptures hollow organs and spaces such as the bowels, lungs, ears, and sinus cavities.” Fortunately, Swede was far enough away to survive, but his right eardrum was blown out, and at the time either could not be repaired, or no one tried. So for the rest of his life we would watch him put a cotton ball in his ear before ever putting his head in water. But the greatest damage, in his mind, was that it classified him as 4F, which would prevent him from enlisting in the navy, as all his friends were doing, “and any patriot would.”
By the time I came around, he was working as a fireman in the Sausalito Fire Department. Still, being by the bay, he remained a man of the sea. And he, in some ways, made me a young man of the sea, which resulted in some of the best memories of my childhood.
Swede would often take me down to the docks and lift me into a skiff. Even at five years old, I wasn’t scared, except at times of him, a now 250 pound, often gruff man. I recall the tarry smell of creosote on the pilings that held up the piers, and the splashes of salt water that would inevitably soak some or all of my clothes, and me. To be floating on the water was thrilling to this boy of the sea, and sometimes my father would row me along the shore of Sausalito to a small beach near the Castle by the Sea, the name of the Victorian home where my mother was born. This beach, which was about 300 feet wide and deep, could be accessed only by boat, or by walking along the shore at low tide, or by the 30 or so overgrown wood stairs that led steeply down from Valley Street. In that era it was called Valley Street Beach; now there is a plaque there that shows its current name: Swede’s Beach.
Sometimes on our treks to this small patch of land, he would have me turn away and then would use a stick to inscribe five circles in the pebble-filled sand. He would tell me that if I could guess in which circle he buried “the treasure,” always a handful of coins, I could keep them. Of course, sometimes all five circles got dug out, but I always got the money. And I always knew I would, but it’s the magic of childhood that you can know this and not know this at the same time.
Heading back one day, the usually overcast skies were clear, and as my father’s strong arms pulled and pushed worn wooden oars through the dark water, sparkles began to appear on both sides of the boat. Slowly, tips of wings began to emerge, and then the whole wide bodies of beautiful stingray, who had decided to accompany these two humans for a few minutes on their short journey. They swam along with us, reflecting liquid light off of their smooth bodies as they glided just above and below the water’s surface. My father and I knew not to spoil the moment with words. And soon, our aquatic angels disappeared, having blessed us with the gift of their glistening presence.
Every year around January there would be a “herring run” along Sausalito’s shore (and throughout Richardson Bay). Literally millions of these sardine-like fish filled the bay as the females darted toward the large rocks on the water’s edge to lay their eggs, and the males followed to fertilize them. This frenzy in the water created a similar state everywhere else. Thousands of squawking seagulls would hover and then dive to gorge themselves on this abundance of food, and Japanese and Chinese fishermen, in boats and on the shore, would rush in to gather up as much roe as they could. And along with them, everyone with a net of any kind would show up to haul in what they could.
During one of these runs, when I was probably 10, my father defied my mother and the public school system and took me to the fertile water with him. I remember how cold and wet it was (given that the herring always decided to show up during winter) as Swede led me to lower spots on the piers where we would be close enough to drop our nets into the roiling bay. But anything would do; even buckets with holes in the bottom would come up filled with these slippery, silvery, seemingly crazed fish. And if you tried to walk on the rocks and were lucky enough not to slip right off, you would feel the crunch of herring eggs between your shoes and the rocks’ surface.
Getting any day off of school is a treat for a fifth grader, but being a truant because your father stole you away was a dark thrill. And then to be surrounded by the wet of winter and the salty water, the stickiness of the herring’s scales, and the pungent fishy smell was beyond exciting. It was the substance of an epic adventure, even if it involved six-inch herring and not a fierce marlin. And in the midst of all this fervor, I could tell that my father was enjoying it mostly because he could see that his son was transfixed by this raw encounter with nature, which was the more important education for the day.
And for days after the herring had left, as I walked up and down my street on my walks back and forth to school, I would look into the open garage doors of our neighbors and see barrels there, full of herring in brine, reminding me of the day my father and I had netted our own share.
On weekends, my old man would take me to Sausalito’s most common fishing spot, a wide dock set right off Bridgeway. There, a variety of crusty “old timers” would sit the handles of their poles into well-worn dugouts in the wood below their feet, and lean the poles against the metal railing that edged the pier. They would sit and argue, drink beer, and tell stories as they waited for a perch or stingray or shark to grab onto the bait they had cast as far out as possible into the bay.
Before we got there, Swede and I would follow our ritual of going to the Chinese-owned Marin Fruit Company, a tiny grocery store that also sold bait—we usually got squid or prawns—and to the Venice Gourmet for sandwiches. I would always order roast beef with cheddar cheese, on a tangy sour dough roll made from the famous San Francisco yeast. I would watch them slice the meat and cheese fresh for my sandwich, apply the mustard and mayonnaise I had asked for—nothing else—wrap it in white butcher paper and put it in a brown paper bag, with an ice-cold Tab, for me to eat on the dock as we fished. Still, nothing compares to the blend of those flavors, with a hint of squid since there was nowhere to wash our hands.
Swede would in turns yell and laugh as he told his stories and listened to those of his friends, and yell more when the lines of all these fishermen got crossed, especially when the “newcomers” wouldn’t follow the rules they hadn’t been told. As everyone sat there, we would wait for the poles to tell us what kind of fish had taken the bait. A little bend in the pole probably meant a perch or other small fish. A fast, extreme bend indicated a shark was on the other end. But stingrays were unique. With their vise-like, toothless mouths they would secure the bait (slid over a hook, of course) and move away from the shore a short distance, sitting there for minutes, as though deciding what to do. But by the taut line and pole we knew they were there.
Eventually, the line would start whirring out of the reel, which had to be set to the right amount of drag so it didn’t snap but also didn’t let the ray completely unwind it. The point was to tire it out so you could slowly bring it in. But they and the sharks were too heavy to pull up onto the dock, so in a dance of bad choreography you had to veer your catch to the side of the dock and past the other lines, which on that side were usually dropped straight down into the water, and then to the rocky shoreline along Bridgeway. And as your pole was bending almost to a semi-circle, and a number of the guys were gathering around, one with a gaff to pull your catch ashore, the cars of tourists would stand still all the way down the road so they could watch this drama and discover what marvel was going to emerge from the water. At this point, pulling in the ray or shark was as much performance as it was a battle with nature.
The humans didn’t always win, as the muscular fish sometimes managed to slip out of the men’s hands after the hook had been removed. Little did they know, though, that in a few minutes they would have been thrown back anyway, because no one knew how to cook shark or stingray. But if there were Chinese fishermen nearby, they might take the catch, because they did know how to prepare the fins for soup and cook the meat. We would always, however, first cut off the ray’s boney, serrated stinger (which would grow back), for a memento. Some of the men wore simple string necklaces with 10 or more stingers hanging from them, white from having been set on a rock to be bleached by the sun. And I had one or two that had been given to me, Little Swede.
I was usually a spectator in these events, even when a shark or stingray might choose my fishing line to run with. At 100 pounds at most, I was not tall or strong enough to negotiate all the maneuvers necessary to get to the shore and then yank the catch up, even with someone else manning the gaff.
But every so often Swede would take me out to the marshes under the Richardson Bay Bridge, at the north end of the city. He would drive his old car out as far as he could and we would set up our stuff as close to the water as there was hard ground to be had. It was usually just he and I, the concrete underside of the tall bridge above us, and the water, and the salty, mud-scented winds that rushed just above it.
Like on the dock, we would cast our lines out as far as we could—there was real skill in this—and then wait for one of our poles to go taut and for the line to madly spin the reel as the stingray would dart away. It seems that, as opposed to sharks, they liked to settle into the mushy silt as they sought their own prey. And one day it happened—my reel began to whir and I began my battle with the deep, as my father coached me on what to do next.
For over an hour I stood there as the ray rushed from the shore, then stopped, maybe to rest, maybe to coax me into a lull, then took off again. But little by little I was able to crank that reel, filling it back up with wet line, until the 80 pound stingray was far up enough on the harder ground for my father to gaff it and bring it in. It wasn’t the days long battle with a marlin that Hemingway described, but with the help of my old man, I was able to pull this beast from the sea with my own muscle.
It became quite the story, of little me struggling with this big old ray. And maybe the duration of the conquest got longer in the telling, and its weight heavier, but I could tell Swede liked telling the tale, as he would back at the dock, many times.
As the years went on, and I went to high school, I would spend most of my time with my friends, as it usually goes, and less with my old man, who was becoming noticeably older, and larger. After my senior year, Swede and Pat tried moving about an hour north and inland to be closer to relatives, but they couldn’t be parted from Sausalito, where they had lived almost all of their lives, and where I was born—and from the sea. For as long as I knew Swede, he would sleep with the window above his bed open all night so he could feel the cool winds off the bay, even when the chilling fog would descend.
As Mrs. Georgetti knew when she recommended Hemingway’s book, Swede was known by most Sausalitans. When he was made Captain of the fire department in 1965, the city manager wrote this:
And when I was in college, he and my mother were chosen to be the Grand Marshals of Sausalito’s historic Fourth of July parade. Sitting in the back of my uncle Red’s vintage Auburn convertible, and ahead of the Native Sons of California’s motley marching band, the Boy Scouts, the baseball teams, and other organizations of this little town on the water, Swede and Pat waved to all their fans on both sides of Bridgeway.
But battle-scarred after years of saving lives and fighting fires, which included falling through the floors of burning buildings and being hit by a loose and ferocious fire hose, and weakened by his weight and drinking, Swede’s heart finally gave out while he was making repairs to the small apartment complex, just two blocks from the bay, that he and Pat managed after he retired.
And this is when Valley Street Beach became Swede’s Beach, as stated on the brass plaque, now a patinaed green, set into large stones in the sand where he had buried treasures for me:
It wasn’t only in this way that Swede stayed a man of the sea. One cold and windy day, my brother and his young daughter and a friend rowed a skiff out into Sausalito’s bay and sprinkled his ashes, along with a pint of rum, into the deep, where he will always be, with the perch and herring and shark, and especially the glistening stingray.
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It is with particular pleasure that I announce the appointment of Captain Pedersen.
With the exception of a period of nine months, Captain Pedersen has been with the Sausalito Fire Department since July 24, 1944. He has served in every position under Chief on an acting or permanent basis, with his principal service having been in Fire Inspection and the City's Ambulance Service. Outside of local physicians, undoubtedly no other individual in Sausalito's history can be credited with saving more lives in the line of duty. Captain Pedersen's personnel file contains numerous letters of commendation from both physicians and residents for his competence, ability, and quick thinking in first aid and rescue.
In addition to this, the Fire Department owes credit to Captain Pedersen for the success of its fire prevention program. Through his personal interest, the major portion of fire inspections in recent years have been carried out by him in his off-duty hours.
As a result of this exemplary service and his proven ability as a combat officer, Captain Pedersen has ably demonstrated his value to the City of Sausalito and earned this appointment. He resides at 416 Locust Street with his wife Patricia and three children.
SWEDE'S BEACH
DEDICATED IN FOND MEMORY OF
FIRE CAPTAIN
RALPH K. 'SWEDE' PEDERSEN
FOR HIS ENDLESS DEDICATED
SERVICE TO OTHERS
NOVEMBER 20, 1916 - MARCH 5, 1985