INTRODUCTION:
Long ago, in 1986, I moved from Portland Oregon to Eureka, CA. I had grown up there and longed to be back in redwood country. For a short time, while I was looking for a place to live, I lived with these three brothers in a large Victorian house they had inherited from their parents.
They were all high-end blue-collar skilled craftsmen, in sheet metal, glass and iron work. They frequented a local bar, mostly populated by commercial fishermen and their wives. The bar was only about 100 feet from the dock where a Coast Guard cutter was docked.
We were somewhat alienated because I was the “professor” and they were the salt of the earth. Still, we had an amicable relationship.
I have kept a journal for many years, and this is an excerpt from that time, written to a friend.
NOTE: This is the way I saw it then. My view has changed considerably since then.
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Writing? Did we discuss that? I guess we did. It is easier to write than to do visual arts because I am less self-conscious about using words than pictures [ as in photography]. And there are a few things I would like to write about. Here is a little example.
The guys I live with frequent a bar; I think we may have talked about it; the Vista Del Mar, better known by locals as the VD.
I have been down there a few times to rescue one or the other of them when they have gotten themselves stupid. At least they are not so stupid as to attempt driving under the influence of stupid.
This place is intriguing. In some odd way, it reminds me of the setting for a John Steinbeck book. The cast of characters is in some way like those in the bar scene in "Star Wars". Everyone knows everyone else, and everyone has been at one time or another involved with the other's spouse or intimate other. Musical mates.
When I first started going down there, my impulse was to produce a series of black & white pictures; the faces and demeanor of these people is compelling to look at; intuitively, it called up a collage of impressions about human suffering & courage, about idealism turned sour and about having to live with pain (physical & emotional), and self-disappointment.
I was at once put off and a little afraid of this motley collection of humanity. But as I got to know some of them after having been introduced by one or another of my roommates, I began to see why my first impression was so powerful.
First, most of them are fishermen; and all of them are hard drinkers. They listen to country music and I think they really believe the values which incessantly spew from the jukebox about "my woman left me", who-cheated-on who, truck drivin', "tonight the bottle let me down".
Essentially, it comes down to an ethic which denies personal responsibility for what happens to you. Somehow, they feel, "I feel bad because somebody or something made me feel that way". And I think that comes from having a sense of powerlessness about the world around them. It has been demonstrated time and time again throughout their lives that they have little power to change things for the better. So they cope. And the way they cope is by camaraderie and drinking and "hillbilly music" .
I'm beginning to really understand why the middle class assessment of the blue collar ethic totally misses the mark. They have never known a lifetime of hopelessness, so they cannot possibly comprehend the adaptive strategies these people have taken. Getting through the day is the best that most of them can hope for, never mind planning for the future -- you can't count on the future.
At the bar, holding a shot of tequila and chewing on a slice of lime, the bartender is occasionally shaking salt on my hand as I try not to look anyone in the eye. Kenny is drunk again.
They are having a wake for one of the owners who died of a heart attack today. He was only forty-six; his heart muscle tissue was destroyed by excessive amounts of cocaine and alcohol; during the last year he was working out daily in the gym, trying to ward off the inevitable.
On my right is a woman with a gaunt face; she keeps staring at me; I avoid her gaze. I think she looks like an over-the-hill prostitute; she probably is. Her looks are gone and she knows it. Kenny is being crass and making fun of her; she hears it and looks away.
Fisherman's wives are getting drunk and playing pool while their husbands are out at sea. This is nothing new to them; there are large black and white photos on the walls, of other husbands who have died out there.
Their dogs wander in and out through the open doors, looking for attention and scraps of polish sausage, dropped discreetly between the barstools by patrons who know them by name. The jukebox is playing the "Neutron Shuffle", a change of pace after "Guitars, Cadillacs, and Hillbilly Music".
One of the wives falls off her barstool and four others rush to help her up. They huddle together and soothe her for a while until she can regain her composure. Even through the alcoholic fog her eyes are hard and tearless.
At the dock, one-hundred feet away, is a coast guard cutter. The speaker is blaring the terse news from her husband's boat: "We're taking on water twenty miles from the whistler buoy". The dispatcher matter-of-factly responds. A rescue boat is dispatched.
On my left a woman is telling me her life story. She used to be rich and influential, she says. Kenny buys me another shot of tequila; the bartender shakes the salt and even gives me a napkin with two slices of lime. The woman's life story fades into the din of other conversations and I keep nodding my head as I look across the bar. I try to concentrate on the baseball game on TV.
Kenny puts some money in the jukebox and plays a Merle Haggard tune: "You've Got a Friend in California", while he sings a whisky-voiced harmony to it. I know he's thinking of an old girlfriend in South Dakota.
I look up from my contemplation of the slices of lime on my napkin -- they're more sweet and ripe than I'm used to. I focus on the sign taped to the door of the beer refrigerator: "Since I gave up hope, I feel much better." This is all too much; I gulp down the rest of the tequila and leave the bar as the PA system on the coast guard cutter blares, "Stand by for boarding, we'll tow you in"