Boat Bum: Tristan Vangogh and the Voyage of the Sabrina Ann

By Capt.Flash

This is not a story about someone who grew up around boats and made a miraculous voyage across open oceans. (Think Maiden Voyage by Tania Aebie, Ballentine 1991.)
Actually this is a story about an older burned out, Hollywood cab driver with no experience who didnt get into boating till he was forty five. This is the story of a dream realized and the learning experience it became.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Nov 12, 2008
• ISBN: 9781465328830

Capt.Flash

I was born in “German Town” near Phill. Pa. On March 2, 1944. The only boy in a family of four, the obvious black sheep. I grew up to be “wonder kind”, having four homes and a business in L.A. Before I was thirty five only to realize I had been put on earth to be an artist not a landlord. I got rid it all and went to Europe. That began eight years of homelessness which ended suddenly when I came into a large amount of money, got my life back together, wrote a book, bought a sailboat and left.

Book preview

CHAPTER 1

THE BEGINNING

The sunset was putting on a dazzling display as I sailed out of the harbor. A soft, summer breeze was blowing thru my hair. Anna, the first mate, dropped her bra and passed me a bottle of red wine.

Romantic fantasies are a good way to start a story and get someone’s attention. Now that I got yours. That’s not the way it happened. Not at all. This is not a story about someone who grew up around boats and made a miraculous voyage across open oceans. (Think Maiden Voyage by Tania Aebie, Ballentine 1991.)

Actually this is a story about an older burned out, Hollywood cab driver with no experience who didn’t get into boating till he was forty five. This is the story of a dream realized and the learning experience it became.

The dream crystallized on Palma Majorca, a sun drenched island in the Mediterranean. The Spanish king had his summer home there. I was there in 1981. It was during my first year of homelessness. Homeless ? Yes, the first year of eight years of it. It’s a long story but I’ll see what I can do to shorten it.

I was the only boy in a family of four, the obvious black sheep of the bunch. I was put in the Air Force when I was seventeen. My parents were divorcing and dad wanted to save on child support. He told me I was no good and the military was the only thing that would save me. I dropped out of high school and boarded a train for Lackland AFB on July 5, 1961. Twenty eight months later the AF decided that dad was right, we were incompatible. Not an auspicious beginning.

Getting fired from my first three jobs didn’t help. Being a young man whose hormones were raging I wanted to be around women so I decided to become a beautician and enrolled in cosmetology school. That’s where I met my future wife. A Mexican-American who looked oriental. I was in love. She was from Watts, the location of the 65’ riots. She was in Mexico at the time.

We got married in 67 and had a daughter in 1970. She was the greatest joy of my life, a daddy’s girl for sure.

My wife was a far better beautician. It didn’t take me long to realize I was NOT a beautician. I hated the bitches and their fickle B.S. Not only that I continued to get canned.

I had experienced some success as an artist. I had drawn the best airplanes in the sixth grade. While in the AF I’d taken some art courses at the local college.

We settled down near McArthur Park in Los Angeles. I took some art courses at city college then got into Otis Art Inst. It was a fine art school started by Otis Chandler, founder of the L.A. Times.

In 1969 with $750 left over from a student loan we bought a beauty salon called the Pagoda on W. 6th street. We had such a good first year we bought a house on Monte Vista St., in Highland Park that already had an existing beauty salon in it. We re-named it the Last Chance. Our motto was; If you can’t be helped here, you can’t be help.

Leona, my wife ran the Last Chance, I ran the Pagoda. It folded. From that first house we bought the house next door on a land contract and eventually two more up the street and around the corner. Within about five years the original investment of $750 was parlayed into $75,000 on paper.

My first job out of art school was production painter, doing ten painting of the same thing at the same time, lions in the grass and Spanish conquistadors. The kind of schlock art you find in furniture stores.

Miracle of miracles I didn’t get fired. I quite when the scenic artist union called and had me go to work at NBC as a pot boy. I moved on to an outfit called J.C. Backings on the MGM lot in Culver City. We did large back drops for films such as Logan’s Run, Jaws and the re-make of King Kong. After a couple of years of playing whipping boy I was terminated.

I became the editorial cartoonist for one of the first anti-war, underground papers, the L.A. Free Press. I did not get fired. Larry Flynt the publisher of Hustler Magazine bought it. When he got shot, it folded.

I returned to driving taxi at night, a job I had done a couple of times before. At first I was terribly depressed. I had tried so hard. I’d gone to art school and got a a degree only to discover it was worthless. It seemed my efforts were in vain. I’d come full circle and was back to where I’d started.

That was in the beginning. Slowly I became addicted to the job. I would get hi on the action. It was like the urban cowboy, the last of the great adventures. You had time, transportation and money. If you broke down they’d come get you. It killed two birds with one stone. My lust for adventure was satiated while being a good provider for the family. It was sorta’ like Indiana Jones in Hollywood.

The first year was great. The second, not so good. Things went from bad to worse. Hold ups, accidents, someone died a bad death, etc. The truth was it was a violent job. The violence affected me to the point where I became the violence. I ended up whacking a Mexican in the head with a hammer.

It was during this time that my art really started to take off. The stress released the creative juices like popping a pimple. Drugs played a part. (imagine that) Yes folks it’s true, the driver was stoned most of the time. It was a way of life. Get stoned, go to work. Drive out into that jungle and see what happens.

The pot led to the magic mushroom and hallucinations that affected me and the art. The paintings became more and more abstract. Then I let go and they went totally abstract. The stunning visuals I would see were so incredible I tried to put them on canvas but could come no where close.

Things got real bad. A driver I knew was incinerated in a fiery collision not long after I talked to him. That had a profound affect on me. The drugs and violence were beginning to take a toll. Things were beginning to un-ravel. I had a nervous breakdown. The properties had become a pain in the ass. All I had were a lot of other peoples problems. People to lazy to do for themselves were sucking me dry of my energy

One day I realized that I had been put on earth to be an artist, not a landlord.

We started selling off properties one by one. We had a great summer followed by a horrible trip to Mexico. It wasn’t long after returning to L.A., that I experienced a severe karma shift I believed it was the week Sen. Alan Cranston’s son was killed, a close personal friend died, my wife and I broke up and the cab company fired me for the fifth and final time. It was a bad week.

Talk about being depressed. The wife got the house with the business. I got my car and my art. I agreed that her and my daughter could stay in the house till she was eighteen. I decided to go to Europe and live the pure life of the artist. Leaving my baby was the hardest thing I ever had to do. I promised her if I ever got a boat I’d name it after her. Little did I realize at the time that this was the beginning of eight years of off and on homelessness.

I put my paintings and everything I owned into a car and headed for the East coast. I stopped at Dad’s place in Lancaster, Pa. Then headed onto my old war buddy’s place out side New York city. I left the rest of the paintings with him.

They threw a party for me and with some financial aid from my buddy I got to Brussels, Belgium. I ended up in a cheap hotel in the Turkish section next to some rail road tracks. There was a tin shower in one corner. I thought it was the pits. I felt I had hit bottom. All I wanted to do was to go back to the airport and get on the next plane back to the states.

I didn’t do that, instead on the advice of a cab driver I got on a train to Amsterdam. The net effect was, I found myself cold, alone, broke, dirty and hungry in Northern Europe in the dead of winter.

Amsterdam was where I got my first taste of living on the water. After getting kicked out of a hotel (Is there a theme here?) I ended up on a canal boat that had been converted into rooms. It was on a canal right next to the original Dutch East Indies Company. You know, Manhattan and all that… . stuff.

The rooms were small and the walls paper thin. You could hear when your neighbors were having sex. You could hear better if you held a glass against the wall. There was a little window. When you looked out you could see a building built in 1619.

A thin radiator ran along a wall on one side. I’d get up in the morning and smoke some tar baby hash. (Black Afghanistan) I’d snuggle up against the warmth and pretend it was a woman with big tits, and dream the day away. For the first time since leaving California I was warm.

Trouble was… . lice. I was mortified to discover I had crotch crickets. I tried chemical warfare. The paint thinner burned like hell and only made them drunk. The pure life wasn’t so pure.

When the spring came I left Amsterdam and went to Antwerp to visit an American artist I knew from L.A. Tony Mafia. He’s the one who encouraged me to go to Europe. He confessed to trying to hit on my ex after I left. Now I knew why he encouraged me. I asked him if the line was long. I moved on. I thumbed my way to Paris. On the edge of the city I got on a subway. I didn’t know where to get off. I recognized the name Place Pigalle so I got off there.

Talk about culture shock. It was like a zoo. The first night I crashed in the door way of a male porn theater till the cleaning lady ran me off. The second night I spent chasing whores down some side street, trying to sell them art as they chased a customer.

The third night I got lucky and contacted a girl I’d met in Amsterdam. Her parents had an apartment in Monte Martre the traditional artist section of Paris