I REMEMBER - The Houseboat

...Once Upon a Time, I lived on a houseboat.  It was moored in Walnut Grove, California, a few miles south of Sacramento on the Sacramento River Delta.  A friend of mine bought an old used rental houseboat and enlisted my help to remodel it.  The were selling off the whole fleet and replacing them with newer boats.  I bought my own.

The premise was to remodel them into the "everything redwood" 70's style and live happily ever after on the Delta.  I have to say, it was pretty cool.  I stripped all the tin siding off and recovered the 'apt on water' inside and out with redwood. Added a couple of skylights.  New tile shower and kitchen counters.  New carpet.  Removed bunk beds and added double bed with caribou bedspread and skylight above.  Very 70's. It was awesome.

As it is said, every silver lining has a cloud.

1st cloud:  the roof was flat and because of the previous 10 years of college fraternity guys with kegs partying on the roof - it sagged a bit and leaked (hence being up for sale).  First order of business was to cut the roof off and replace with an open beamed ceiling with a slope.  What I didn't realize at the time was that ALL THE ELECTRICAL WIRING was strung through the existing roof beams.  I naively removed the roof and discarded all the junk, discovering to my dismay that I had just devalued my new floating home by 50%, now with no working electrical system.  Thank God for Sunset Magazine's How To... books.  I became a plumber and an electrician quickly.

2nd Cloud:  I was a working carpenter in Chico, California at the time, spending all my weekends on the boat remodeling it. About 250 miles round-trip.  My table saw was in two pieces, the saw and the stand it sat on.  I would dismantle it and carry it up the boat ramp every weekend to use on my job in Chico.  Getting tired of unbolting the saw to the stand on  a regular basis. I hit up on the idea of strong jawed clamps to secure it and then I could just squeeze and release the clamps when it was time to go.  Sounded good.

I was sawing a long 2" x 8" cross beam on the front deck of my boat one Saturday when a speed boat went by pretty fast- ignoring the 5 mph wake rule in the marina.  The rocking  back and forth caused my wood to pry the saw from the stand on one side.  I shut off the motor (thank God) and reached under the saw to grasp the clamp and tighten it down  again.  Note: like an iceberg, the big part is under the water.  Eyes firmly on the 2" of the 10" blade still spinning (motor off) I promptly stuck my hand into the 8" portion spinning out of sight, under the table.  The blade stopped when it stuck in my knuckle of my right forefinger. To the left of the blade was my right thumb and right forefinger.  To the right were my other three fingers.  Did I say 'Thank God' my saw was turned off, yet?  I am not Three-fingered Jack.

Surprisingly,at first, there wasn't a lot of blood.  It was a pretty deep cut from right beyond the base of my thumb to the right forefinger knuckle.  I wrapped a decently clean dishtowel over my hand.  I calmly walked over to my friend's boat, knocked on the window and asked him to run me up to the med clinic in town.  We hastened over and walked inside.  For the first time since the accident, we removed the towel to see the damage.  Not so good.  The towel was pretty well soaked through with blood.  I thought to myself that this was like dissecting a frog, but more personal. Tendons, veins, flesh and lots of blood, etc.  The young woman at the clinic rinsed it off, wrapped it up with gauze and said they could not handle anything so severe and I should go directly to the hospital in Stockton (40 or so miles away) and did I want to call an ambulance.  My friend almost passed out...he did not realize the extent of the cut.  We thought we could get there faster if he drove me, as we were way down on the bayou and the ambulance would have to come from Stockton and then take me back.  There was a little two-lane road along the top of the levy and then a wild ride through rice fields to get to the main highway. I was more freaked out by my friend's wild panicked driving than I was by the injury.  I had to tell him to slow down many times, as I knew we were unlikely to make it to the hospital alive otherwise.

We arrived at the emergency room and luckily, there was an extremely skilled surgeon there, waiting for a union rep that had gotten his finger caught in some machinery that was being flown in for the surgeon to work on.  He agreed to fix my cut - 'to warm up'. before the other guy got there, NO CHARGE!

I don't remember much other than he whistled "Hitch Your Wagon to a Star" the whole time, it didn't cost me more than $50 for medical supplies and that there is a barely discernible scar today.

I eventually towed the houseboat to Chico and sold it for twice what I paid, so some silver did shine through.

rlw

I REMEMBER..."Big Red" - My Volkswagon Bus

...my Volkswagon Bus - "Big Red." I loved that van. It was an all-purpose vehicle. I hauled plywood, tools, people, furniture, and went camping in it. It was my first NEW vehicle, and I drove it to Mazatlan, Mexico, the first week I owned it. I had the first 1,000 mile check-up at a Volkswagon factory in Mexico. Stayed in a little hut on the beach south of Mazatlan for quite awhile. Fished every day; had a great time.

Back in Chico, California (99 miles north of Sacramento - I graduated CSUC in 1969), I had various jobs from running the Italian Cottage Restaurant, working at Kramore Inn, etc. Most of the time I had my own business as a carpenter and a leather worker. Leather worker stories (Lone Eagle Leather) later. While I was a carpenter, I worked on a great three-story Victorian (built for a college student by her parents - nice), helped build the Redwood Forest retail store in a downtown mall, remodeled Ron's S.F. Flowers flower shop, Sundance Records record store, Bird in Hand Gallery, a couple of homes, a big 6,000 square foot mansion and caretakers quarters/barn in Woodside, CA (lovingly referred to as the home to Horses & Porches) and worked on my 40-foot houseboat in Walnut Grove, California (yet another story). I hauled my table saws and tools and lumber in Big Red. Never had a problem.

Side bar: I once bought a quarter ton of walnut slab scraps from a gun stock manufacturer in Chico. I hauled that pile of walnut from house to house, storage to storage for years, thinking I would someday make valuable things out of it (clocks, I think, was the original idea). All of that was accomplished with Big Red. After close to five years of hauling that wood around, I eventually used it as firewood in my fireplace...ha.

Went camping often to the north coast of California in the Ft. Bragg area many times and slept in Big Red when it was foggy and cold. Caught many a good fish--but never a cold. Picture of successful fishing trip attached.

Before I was a carpenter, I had many fun and successful years as a leather worker in Chico. I used Big Red to go to San Francisco and Berkeley for leather supplies and Haight Ashbury trips (used as a very loose term here). More stories to come later about those days, if I can remember them. (My sister, Sharon, says that if you can remember the 60's, you weren't really there.) Anyway, I bought a radial arm saw to manufacture belt racks from redwood to help convince retail store owners to carry my line of leather belts and so got hooked on carpentry. Leather evolved into wood. Big Red was perfect for both ventures.

All things have a beginning and an end. Good times and bad. The one thing you can always count on is that whether times are good or bad, they will eventually end. The beginning of Big Red's life I took him to Mexico for quite an adventure and throughout the leather and woodworking years, I never had a problem.

I was commuting between Chico and Walnut Grove (on Snodgrass Slough in the Sacramento River Delta) on a regular basis. I co-owned a house in Chico with friend Bob Crowe. I learned the hard way about the downside of living in and remodeling a house simultaneously. We had every room torn up and half finished for a very long time. Sheetrock dust and sawdust was in everything. By the time we eventually finished it, we had turned it into a rental and eventually sold it to break even on the investment.

On weekends, I would travel to Walnut Grove to work on the houseboat (was thinking I would become a houseboat builder and write a book about it--and travel to Amsterdam to check out the world famous houseboat community there...never did...but it was a temporarily good dream). I traveled back to Chico one fateful weekend and (thank God) unloaded all my tools at the house and set off through the middle of downtown Chico, headed to the lumberyard. The cool thing about Volkswagen buses is that they had a notoriously good Porsche engine block and except for an occasional minor flaw, ran forever and a day with no problems. The minor flaw was that the fuel line would occasionally become detached while in motion and spew fuel all over the hot engine block, causing a weird little "POOF" explosion, just loud enough to get your attention...followed by a lot of fire and an exceedingly large amount of smoke in, say, two seconds. Fortunately for me, I was traveling down Main Street, Chico, at about ten miles an hour, when it was Big Red's final moment. I slammed on the brakes, jumped out, and ran from store to store on Main Street, looking for a fire extinguisher. By the time I found one, poor old Red was engulfed totally in flames. Even the tires were on fire. Someone had called the fire department, and when the firetruck eventually pulled up, it was too late for Red. As they arrived, a rather memorable last hurray for Red happened. There was an electrical short and Big Red started up and started lurching down the street, full of smoke and flames everywhere. The firemen thought someone was still inside, trying to drive away. They were dragging the hose and running alongside, spraying it with foam and water. One fireman ran up and whacked the driver side window with an axe to see if someone was driving. As the fresh air hit the now broken window area, a small firestorm replaced the smoke and finished off old Red right there on the spot. Melted to the ground in the middle of Main Street. Note: I did not need the pictures someone took to convince the insurance company that it was to be declared a total loss. Rest in Peace, Big Red.