Old St. Petersburg

When I was a kid, my family came to St. Petersburg on occasion.  It was quite something then as all things in the past were.  But it was something that is disappearing in the world--exotic.  It was an eclectic mix of the strange.  There were sunken gardens full of exotic plants and weird animal parks meant to titillate your imagination.  But it was something else, too.  The light was strange as was the air.  And it smelled differently than anyplace you'd ever been.  The sugar sand beaches that were dead quiet.  Sound did not seem to carry far in the damp air.  You saw people, but you were within yourself.  There were plastic pink flamingos and real ones, too.  It was an end of the earth where people came to die, a kind of elephant graveyard like in the old Tarzan movie.  I mean man, it was really something.

When my father died, I was still in my twenties.  I was an only child, and he left me some money, a roomful of tools--he was a tool and dye maker by trade--and a VW bus.  I took some of the money as mad money and bought a sailboat.  He and I had loved sailboats though we had never been in them, so I thought that perhaps I was doing it for both of us.  O.K.  I did it for me.  And after a while, I found that I could keep it in St. Petersburg fairly cheaply at a public dock just off the old Million Dollar Pier.  By then, St. Pete was a wreck of a place and the downtown area had been abandoned.  It was a Blighted Area that was solemn and sad and scary.  On the old famous waterfront, the Vinoy Hotel was an abandoned shell.  Even a hippie like me could afford to keep a boat on the water.

I would drive over on the weekends alone and live the seafaring life.  Of sorts.  I liked to hang around the docks on Friday night and talk to the people who lived on the boats full-time.  I'd have drinks at sundown and then go back to my boat to sit in the cockpit and fire up the pot to make dinner.  It was usually a lot of things thrown in together--corned beef, carrots, peas, celery, potatoes, onions--and cooked over a small gas flame as I watched with a rum drink in hand.  After dinner, I'd read by gas lamp until I was tired, then I would fall dead asleep into my bunk.  I slept well.

In the morning, I'd go up the street to the downtown area where a few cafes were open.  You can watch a John Cassavetes film from the 1970's to get the feel of it all.  Breakfasts were cheap and the coffee weak and horrible.  I'd sit with hundreds of retirees in wonderment.  A roomful of big noses and hairy nostrils, enlarged ears, and pink scalps told my future.  It was as if I'd been dropped on an alien planet.  But it was irresistible for someone like me.

Back to the docks, I'd loosen the lines and push my boat off its dockage.  The idea was to sail out of the harbor rather than motor.  It was difficult, but that is what a real sailor did.  And so I'd try, as likely to fuck it up as not,  crashing into pilings or other boats.  Then I would start up the engine and head on out for deeper waters.

A day's sailing alone can be a special thing--wonderful or horrible.  It is not easy to predict.  But sometimes when it was wonderful, I'd sail off to some uninhabited bay and drop anchor for the night.  Alone all day, alone all night, I'd repeat the process of the evening before--dinner, drinks, books, and bed.  But out there alone, though not really far from anything, I was full.  The stars, of course, were brighter, the moon bolder, the wind spookier, and the air more chill.  If it was winter, I'd crawl into my sleeping bag and drift off with the rocking of the boat at anchor, never certain that the anchor would hold, waking all night at every shifting wind to make certain of the boat's safety. Then, with sunrise, I'd be up to wipe the dew off the deck so that I could sit more comfortably, and I'd make coffee and eat some bread. Mornings alone were always the strangest, much different than the night which was romantic and adventurous and a bit spooky.  Sunrise was a quarrel of sorts, an argument about what to do and when to do it.  Pulling anchor, where to go?  But go you must, and sailing alone on an early Sunday morning was often weird and desperate, knowing that I need be back by noon to clean up the boat and drive back in time to get ready for work on Monday morning.

I came back today for the first time since I gave up my slip.  Driving over, I remembered everything that was gone and done.  I remembered what had passed.

And then, finding the Hilton with difficulty, I settled into my room and took a walk around town.  But that will be another entry.  This one has reached its denouement but to say that I walked about and took digital photographs only to find that I left my card reader at home.  There can be no photos for a few days.  Not mine, anyways.  And so it is told.  C'est la vie.