Ohhh -- I Remember When ..

Slim: Hey -- want to go fishing Sunday?
Me: Sure, where?
Slim: in the ocean. In Pacifica.
Me: Really? OK.

Sunday morning we get up and go over the hill to Pacifica and rent a sixteen foot outboard rowboat and they launch (drop) us off a steep, long ramp made out of telephone poles and we paddle through the breakers, drop the outboard, and poof -- we're in the Pacific in a 16' wood (freakin) outboard rowboat. Fishing for Ling-Cod.

"Just point right at the beach and the waves will take you home -- and {stay to the left of) try to miss the rocks and you'll be ok ... pull the motor up at the last minute ..." I can remember the shoreline from the ocean as if it were yesterday, but the odds of finding it from the beach side today are impossible.

I was sixteen, and Slim was about sixty-nine and my neighbor. I never was scared, and I never felt in danger. I never caught a fish, and I never was seasick. Slim threatened to throw his teeth up over the gunwale and told a shark story or two ... "The shark bit at the back end of the boat and left a bunch of teeth in it -- see -- here's a few," and he holds out a fistful of shark's teeth tied together with a string. If he were here today, I'd get in that boat with him again.

Holy crap. I wish I had taken a camera. You can't imagine the feeling of being on the very edge of the world, beyond the edge of the world -- and out there in the water. Looking back at the land with childish wonder. Holy crap. I wish I had taken a camera. I think it was here where the pillars are in the water.

And, damn, I won that camera the year before at the county fair, by shooting little targets with serious deadly accuracy, or some other crazy game.