"Have you done any technical climbing?" Bernie asked when they returned to the cabin.
"Technical climbing? Ropes, carabiners, pitons, and that sort of thing? No, I haven't. Why?" Jake asked.
"Well, not that technical. Just rappelling down a rope is what I meant. I've got to see Charlie McGivney sometime soon, and I was thinking that today would be a good time for it."
"And rope rappelling is required?"
"Yes. Charlie's place is accessible only going down a rope."
"I was pretty good on the rope climb in Phys. Ed, but that was freshman year of high school--centuries ago--but the gym only had a sixteen foot ceiling."
"This isn't too hairy a climb if you're not afraid of heights. It's not like Fog Valley. Your high school experience is probably enough," Bernie suggested.
"Okay, I'm game. I'll try it."
"Good. Now all we need is a case of Augsburger Beer and we'll be ready."
"Er ... " Jake hesitated, "if it is only a moderate climb, what's with the beer fortifier?"
"Oh, the beer is for Charlie. I bring him a case whenever I visit. The only place to get it around here is in Morro Bay, so I pick up a case or two whenever I'm down that way."
"Ah," said Jake who, not being a beer drinker, did not appreciate the high quality-to-price ratio of that Wisconsin brew.
Bernie slipped a case of beer into his pack, grabbed a coil of heavy nylon rope, and said: "Let's go." In the truck, going up Highway One, Bernie explained. "Charlie's is a squatter in the National Forest. He's been there since the early 1970's, I think. He has some idea that if he can prove that he's been continuously squatting on the same location for twenty-one years, then he can stay there hassle free forever."
"I vaguely recall something of that nature being incorporated into English Common Law, but I don't know any of the details. I'm not a lawyer," Jake said.
"Nor am I. Nevertheless Charlie has been there for a long time, but he's still paranoid about the Forest Service finding him and kicking him out. We will, therefore, approach Charlie's lair with caution and by a circuitous route."
Several miles into Los Padres National Forest Bernie parked the truck in a turnout overlooking the ocean. Immediately below them was a tangled forest of ceanothis bushes, then the land dropped away precipitously to the sea. From that viewpoint the shoreline wasn't visible.
"And now?" queried Jake.
"Charlie's place is a mile from here. There are zillions of interwoven deer trails through all that wild lilac. We'll follow them in a random pattern until we get to Charlie's trail. Then we go down the rope," Bernie explained. The passage through the ceanothis was pleasant but uneventful. Bernie worked his way through the maze of trails, then brought them to a precipice.
"It must be a thousand feet straight down to the ocean," Jake exclaimed.
"About eight hundred and fifty feet actually, and it isn't straight down. There's a slope of twenty or thirty degrees offof vertical for some of it."
"Well, in any case, it's mighty steep."
"Yes, virtually inaccessible."
"Well, lead on," Jake encouraged.
They followed a deer trail along the rim for awhile until they came to a particularly thick patch of trees. Bernie parted a tangle of branches, then crawled down a narrow ravine. Jake followed, closing the branches behind him. A short way down the ravine they came to the precipice. On the edge a steel pin was driven into the ground.
"Here's where things start to get interesting," Bernie commented as he removed the rope from his backpack. He doubled the rope, knotted the ends together, slipped the middle over the pin, then tossed the knotted ends out over the cliff. "We're going to go down in stages. There's a ledge below us with another pin, and below that is another ledge and pin. Charlie's chateau is twenty-five feet below the last pin."
"That's all very clear. What's not clear is how we get back up."
"There actually was one occasion when we couldn't get back up. There was a high wind. Today, however, is rather calm. We shouldn't have any problem," Bernie assured him.
"But ..."
"You'll see. Trust me. Besides, we do have a case of beer should a temporary stranding take place."
The three stage descent was not as difficult as Jake had imagined it would be. There were well worn footholds in the ledge, and the ledge was, as Bernie had promised, not vertical. Nevertheless, it was an exciting decent. Should the rope break, the pin pull out, or a hand slip, it was a very long plunge to the ocean.
At the third pin, Bernie pulled an empty .22 shell out of his pocket and gave a few whistled toots. "Just to let him know that we're friendly forces," Bernie explained.
The last stage left them standing on a ledge of about ten foot width. It seemed to peter out on the south, but continued in the northward direction for a considerable distance, going to the tip of the promontory.
Then, wearing only cut-off jeans, Charlie appeared. Short, wide, heavily muscled, and hersute, Charlie was like a condensed, occidental Sumo wrestler. He did a double take at the sight of Jake.
"Relax, man, this is Jake Jacobs, my partner in various nefarious activities ... such as beer running."
"In that case, welcome to my humble digs,"
Charlie said, offering a paw.
They shook hands. Jake had the feeling that Charlie's firm grip was restrained--that Charlie could crumble an anvil if he took a notion to do so.
Meanwhile Bernie groaned melodramatically.
Charlie turned to Bernie. "Beer, did you say? I haven't had a beer in a week."
"I forgot to warn you, Jake. One of the consequences of beer deficiency, at least in the case of Charlie McGivney, is a propensity to make outrageous puns. Digs indeed! Quick! Reach into my pack and pull out a bottle for this depraved creature least we be assaulted audibly," Bernie said.
Jake did as instructed: he pulled apart the cardboard case and extracted two bottles. He then handed one to Charlie and one to Bernie. Charlie twisted off the cap and took a long draught.
"Ah, a transfusion of life's blood." Charlie took another gulp. "Now I am ready to transact business. Let's go inside."
Charlie lead the way down the path to a small door set into the ledge. It swung in to reveal a narrow passageway which lead a short distance downward to a shaft and ladder. Jake followed his two companions down the ladder. He noticed that shelf niches had been cut into the walls of the shaft. The dozen or so shelves were jammed with boxes, cans and jars. At the base of the ladder was a small room carved out of the rock and soil matrix. A two-foot-to-side window was set into the wall overlooking the ocean. Three feet to its right was another door. Before the window was a crude work table made from rough, sea-chaffed four by fours. A similarly constructed bench completed the room's furniture. The back wall of the room contained more well-filled shelf niches. A grid of four by fours and dunnage poles constituted the ceiling. Near the work table a myriad of small tools hung on wire hooks from these rafters. The work table was littered with more tools and piles of copper and brass scrap. The center of the table contained a small anvil on which rested a flatter and a fishing lure.
"How has production been going this month?" Bernie inquired as he handed Charlie the beer-filled backpack.
"Great! I've got a gross and a half," Charlie replied, taking the beer to the back of the room. He lifted a piece of plywood in one of the corners to reveal a metal, water-filled well sunk into the floor. There was one tube trickling water into this reservoir and another as a drain.
"The spring isn't cold enough to serve as a refrigerator, but it's cold enough to cool down the beer."
"Why don't you give Jake here the grand, twenty- five cent tour of your estate while I look over your new suggested.
"Sure," Charlie agreed, grabbing a second beer. "As you can see, I make fishing lures for a living ..."
"Not mere fishing lures," Bernie interrupted, "but the finest, hand made, one-of-a-kind, examples of the highest form of piscatorial art."
Charlie laughed. "You've got to take my business agent with a grain or two of salt."
"Pshaw! You're the highest-priced metal lures on the market, and they're always sold out in the first week," Bernie said to Charlie He turned to Jake, "A lot of them never see water. Some fishermen collect them the way little old New England ladies collect tea cups--not for their utility, certainly."
"They're just fishing lures," Charlie demurred. He said to Jake, " You see, I needed some kind of work which was portable, compact, and compatible with living here perched on the coast. Fishing lures were the perfect thing. The artistic hype is all Bernie's doing."
"Nonsense! You were doing one-of-a-kind sort of stuff all along," Bernie said. "I just gave you the marketing strategy--to go after the rich fishermen. The only thing different on your end is that each lure gets a tiny registration number engraved on it with a diamond point. For that little concession, if it is that at all ... for that concession you've gotten tipple the old price and have been able to cut back on the quantity to concentrate on the quality and design considerations ... What concession? You've been freed to concentrate on the creative aspect of the whole thing while I've got to peddle these damn things. Talk about ingratitude!" Bernie huffed in mock indignation. "I'm going to drink another one of your beers in spite!"
Charlie laughed. "And how long does it take you to market this stuff?"
"Oh, an hour or two on the phone each month," Bernie conceded with a laugh. "But my ten percent is way below the going rate for art commissions. You still get ninety percent of the gallery stuff too." Bernie turned to Jake. "I mounted up some collections of Charlie's lures in shadow boxes an have them hanging in galleries in Carmel and down in Cambria. Mounted collections go for more than double the price of unmounted individual lures, but then there are the gallery commissions to take into consideration." Turning back to Charlie, "Besides, I even bring you all your raw material for my measly ten percent."
Charlie dismissed the idea with the wave of a beer can. "A few chunks of old copper water pipe or sheet, yours for a mere pittance at Hielman's junk yard."
"Bah! Humbug! I've brought you brass strips this month. Eleven gage, three inches wide, eighteen inches long ... dozens of 'em."
"Oh, boy!" Charlie enthused.
"You go on with your tour. I'll drag the brass out of the bottom of the pack when you get back."
"Okay, we'll do that," Charlie said to Bernie. To Jake he said, "This workroom was the first one I dug. It's crudity speaks for itself. I wasn't sure of this sort of excavated construction would hold up, thus the reinforced ceiling, but as it turns out barrel vaulted ceilings do very well. I've been here for quite a few years, and I haven't lost a room yet. Nevertheless, you'll see that I tend to err on the side of caution, and all my rooms are small and compact."
They went out the door and out on a down-sloping ledge. This ledge varied in width from three to ten feet and formed a natural ramp for a couple of hundred feet. The ramp disappeared around the point of the headland. Charlie lead the way down the ramp.
Under the brow of an upper ledge and facing due west was a large plexiglass window set into the vertical cliff. This window was made up of three two and two thirds foot by four foot panels. Above the window was a rolled up screen of camouflage netting.
"The workroom was cut out of an ancient layer of earth and stone. Here it is more like soft sandstone. It is a little harder to dig through this stuff, but you can make sharper cuts," Charlie explained.
Again there was a small door set into the rock. They entered. This room was radically different from the work room. Before the window was a huge planter carved out of the sandstone. In it were growing tight patches of lettuce, kale, chard, other leafy vegetable, and a variety of herbs.
"I had a hell of a time figuring out what size to make the planter--it was before I discovered the books on intensified gardening. I wanted a perennially-growing, one- man supply of greens, and the only things I could find on the subject were semi-science fiction speculations on garden sizes for space stations. Those were also supposed to be for oxygen replenishment, so had to be extensive on a per-man basis, so in the end I had to just guess. This turned out to be just about right for a salad garden." Charlie explained as Jake examined the garden with a professional eye.
"A few tomato plants, onions, and cucumbers and you'd be just about set," Jake suggested.
"'Cukes, I don't care for, cherry tomatoes I have in pots further down the ledge, and onions I have to buy by the fifty pound sack."
"Even so, you must be nearly self-sufficient."
"I've grown used to the luxuries of civilization ... the beer, the imported coffees, the exotic spices, and such. In theory, however, I could be self- sufficient here. There's a third of a mile of coast which is accessible to only me. Rocky points dropping off into deep water on either side of me keep shore followers away even on the lowest of tides. The cliffs are precipitous and crumbly--dangerous even for experienced climbers. There are all those tangles of ceanothis and poison oak to keep out the casual folk. The result is that not only do I have my privacy, I get to be the only one who harvests from my beach--fish of all kinds, crabs, muscles, abalone, and other goodies. With the vegetables I grow, I could be self-sufficient if necessary. In fact, the beach gave me just about everything in this room."
Jake looked around the room. With the exception of the planter, the sea-side wall and it's two adjacent walls were completely paneled in wood. There was a wooden floor below and a wooden ceiling above. Only the back wall was natural sandstone. A bed niche and more shelf niches were carved into this wall. There was also a small door of perhaps old-fashioned, built-in ironing board size set in the wall. On this door was tacked an oval sign which read "Please don't flush while the train is in the station." A sink was carved into the wall near the door; it was, however, lined on the inside with a conventional porcelain sink. In typical male bachelor fashion, the breakfast dishes were still awaiting a wash. A large, well-made table stood in the center of the room. It was flanked by two benches. A wooden recliner stood against one wall. Beside it stood a cube-like table on which were a large portable radio, a kerosene lamp, and a book held open to its reader's place by a triangular lead fishing sinker. A compact combination kerosene and wood cookstove and a wooden cabinet stood along the other wall. A box of driftwood stood beside the stove. A great miscellany of pots and pans hung from ceiling hooks near the stove. A glass-doored china cabinet was built into the wooden wall on the sea side. A wicker oval chair hung from the ceiling. A large, long haired, gray tiger cat napped in this chair. He did not stir, but followed Jake with his eyes. Several heavy hooks were set into the walls at various places. From two of these hung rolled up fish net hammocks--the guests' quarters, it turned out.
"Cervasa non, coffee si?" Charlie inquired. The occasions when Jake turned down a cup of coffee were few and far between, and this was not one of them.
There were two copper spigots above the inset sink. "My solar water heater won't take it up to coffee-making temperatures," Charlie explained as he filled a copper kettle, "but it's close. All I have to do is zap it for a minute on the kerosene burner and it'll be boiling--a very economical system."
"Amazing! And you say that everything came off the beach?"
"Almost everything. The stove actually came off another beach, one north of The Cruz where a fishing boat went aground and broke up."
"All the lumber ...?"
"Oh, that was a great score. There was a lumber barge that dumped its load a number of years ago. It spewed wood from Big Sur to Cayucos. Fishing boats put away their nets and dragged bundles of lumber to Morro Bay. Many of the bundles broke up, so wood was scattered all over the place. I even heard rumors about a guy who hired a helicopter to take wood off some of the more isolated beaches. This beach is so inaccessible and invisible from everywhere that I got all the wood that landed here. I ended up mostly with boards and two by fours, but it's kept me in construction materials for years."
"It's a long haul from the beach to here," Jake noted.
"True," Charlie agreed. "What I did was first stack all the wood above the high tide line. Then every time I went down to the beach I moved some of it to a little plateau which was above the storm line. Once I got it all secured there, I had my own little building supply store, and I could take a piece or two up here as projects required. What you see build up here has taken years to construct. There is still a small pile of lumber left down there above the beach."
Jake shook his head in wonder at the man who carried his house, piece by piece, up a near vertical precipice of several hundred feet. "It's an amazing piece of work," he commented as he accepted a cup of coffee.
"Oh, it wasn't too difficult at this level. It's all pretty soft stuff to work with. The rock is harder down towards the ocean. It took me a long time to cut the storm center."
"Storm center?"
"Up here I am fairly isolated from the moods of the ocean. Part of the reason I chose to live here was to be near the ocean. It's quite a trip for a Nebraska farm boy. So I cut a room just above the storm-tide mark. That way I can be right next to the sea when she is throwing her worst temper tantrums. In the storm center I can feel the waves pounding the rocks, can hear the rattle of the boulders as they roll back and forth in the surf, can smell the invigorating salt spray as it is thundered into the air ... all while being comfortable ensconced behind my plexiglass window." Charlie opened his second beer and suggested, "Grab your coffee and we can go down there."
They zig-zagged their way down the cliff following natural ledges and Charlie's hand-cut connecting paths. In a short while they were only a couple dozen feet above sea level. At this point there was a fissure. Charlie had enlarged it and cut a narrow tunnel directly through the promontory.
"This point goes right out into green water, so the passage gives me the choice of using the beach on the north, which is rocky and a good place to fish for cabezon and rock fish, or the sand beach below us which is my 'perchery.' The perch aren't as tasty as the cabezon, so I use them mostly for chowders--it takes a lot of onions and seasonings to turn a rainbow perch into a gourmet meal," Charlie commented with a chuckle.
In the seaward side of the passageway, near the middle, and set a couple of feet above the floor level was a wooden hatch. Charlie pulled open this portal and revealed a shaft, downsloping at about forty-five degrees. Wooden ladder rungs were installed with their ends set into either side of the shaft's walls. Charlie scampered down, and Jake followed. At the bottom was a cubical room, eight foot to a side. The sea wall had an eight by two foot plexiglass window set in a horizontal arch. The rock colored camouflage netting was in place, but through the mesh they could see the ocean directly in front and below them. The inside window ledge sloped downward and formed a chord of the arch; into it an instrument panel was whimsically carved. Before this command center was a large, oak, office type swivel chair. It was upholstered in what the experienced trout-fly- tying eye of Jake Jacobs instantly recognized as seal fur. The plane cockpit motif was continued above the window also. This all gave Jake a sense of deja vu which puzzled him for a moment, then it hit him. "Hand me a phaser and beam me down from the bridge, Scotty," he said.
Charlie laughed. "It wasn't my idea," he protested. "There was a lady in residence about the time that I was doing the rough finish of this room, and she did all the trekie glifs. It took awhile to get used to it, but I like it now. A few years ago she sent me this." Charlie handed Jake a Star Trek communicator carved out of jade; it had an operating cover and jade hinge pins.
"Very nice, very nice," Jake commented.
"She's gone on to be a big time jade carver with things in all the better galleries in L.A. and New York, but here's where she got started--The USS Storm Center."
The USS Storm Center was also a utilitarian room, however. In one corner sat a treadle powered set of buffing wheels made out of an old sewing machine. Jars of various types of finishing compounds were set around it on the floor. Unfinished fishing lures covered the table top.
Jake picked up one of the lures. "I think that I've seen something like this before." he said, holding up a brass jig.
"It's quite possible. It's one of the few designs of mine which are in commercial production. A mail order tackle shop in Vermont has them manufactured in Mexico, then sells them. I get a ten cent royalty. You probably know the theory that fishing lures are made to catch fishermen, not fish. That's certainly true of the things that Bernie markets for me. These flying jigs, however, are really good lures to fish with. I discovered the design quite serendipitously. It started out as a simple, low cost substitute for the standard jig. I took an egg sinker, slipped it over the eye of a long shanked hook, then flattened it in place with a hammer. This gave me a lead-headed hook which didn't have the lead interfering with the barb of the hook. That was the jig improvement I was looking for--I wanted to be able to use smaller hooks for trout. However, when I tried it out, I found that this jig, unlike the standard jig which just bounces up and down, this jig also planes side to side erratically, and I found that I could 'fly' it under rock outcrops and into riverbank undercuts. It was a great lure, but plain lead was rather dull. I started painting them, then I started epoxying Colorado spinner blades onto the back. A friend showed me how to solder it together using a positioner jig, this eliminating both the epoxy step and the need for egg sinkers, and viola! the flying jig was born. Someone brought one into that Vermont tackle shop's retail store looking for more of them. Of course the shop had never seen them before. Fortunately for me the sample they encountered was one on which I had engraved my mark and 'McGivney, Big Sur' plus the lure's i.d. number. They traced me down to my post office box and we commenced negotiating. I didn't want to get involved with large scale manufacturing, so they arranged to have them made and now pay me a ten cent per lure royalty. That pays all of my transportation costs each year, including the insurance on my pick up truck."
"It sounds like a very nice deal," Jake commented.
"It is. They make the plain brass ones to catch fish, and I still get to occasionally make the deluxe, hand-made ones to catch fishermen."
"You mentioned a truck. I can see how you can keep your house hidden from the Forest Service constables, but how do you disguise a pick up truck?" Jake inquired.
"I don't. I keep it parked at a friend's ranch a few miles south of here. If I have to bring in something large, I make the delivery in the wee hours of a full-moon morning. I park it in a pullout and stash my stuff down some deer trail. Then I ferry it in here. My limitation, living here, is that I can't have anything larger than can be disassembled and transported by backpack."
"Just getting household supplies mist be a hassle in a situation like this," Jake suggested.
"Oh, it's not too bad. The five gallon jerry cans of kerosene for the stove and lamps are the bulkiest things I have to carry in on a regular basis. I have built a special backpack just for that purpose. Everything else gets taken in with a regular backpack," Charlie explained. "The hardest things to get down here were the plexiglass windows. This one here is the biggest one, and I had to replace it once already."
"Replace it?" Jake said with surprise. "Yeah. Storm damage and salt etching. However, I found a company that makes a heavy duty anti-reflection film for office windows. Now I just replace the film every few months and let it take the wear and damage. That way the plexiglass stays protected. Everything is sealed with an industrial silicone sealant. I get protected from the elements and have my storm view at the same time."
Jake laughed. "That sounds like rather high technology for the sort of neo-troglodyte life you're living."
"I'm living here by choice--aesthetic choice--not as some sort of adherent to Luddism. Where technology is available to simplify or improve my life, I use it. It's just a matter of figuring out what my need is, then finding a technology to fit. The window sealant and protecting problem is a perfect example of that."
"I agree with that philosophy," Jake said. "Given my misspelling ability, for example, computer driven spelling checkers are a high tech solution to one of my old problems. Would that they had existed when I had Miss Finch for eighth grade English ... but the difficulty has always been that finding the problem was simple, finding the solution was not."
"Not necessarily. When I have a problem, all I have to do is go down to the Cal Poly library and root around in the stacks until I find the solution. I once had an argument with a teacher on the idea that I didn't have to know whatever fact was in contention, all I had to know was where to find the fact when I needed it. I asserted that an educated person was one who knew where to find the facts when needed. An educated person wasn't necessarily one who had a great number of facts stuffed in their heads in the hope that, when needed, the fact would already be there in the head. That's the philosophy that I've followed, and I think that it has served me well."
"The proof is in the pudding," Jake said, waving his free hand around to indicate the storm center room.
"Speaking of pudding, will you be staying for dinner?" Charlie asked.
"I am always receptive to invitations of that type, but I'm on Bernie's schedule, whatever that happens to be."
"No problem, then," Charlie said. "Bernie has never been known to turn down a food invitation. Let's go down and check my crab traps."
They retraced their steps and returned to the open ledge, then followed another set of switch-backed paths to the shore. Charlie has several crab traps in the reefs at the southern edge of the beach. The yield was four crabs. Charlie put the three largest crabs in a sack and returned the smallest one to the ocean. Charlie also had three handlines set out. These yielded one large cabezon.
"I don't usually leave set lines out, but I knew that Bernie was coming sometime this weekend," Charlie said. "I usually poke pole along the other beach for my fish."
"Should we have an abalone hors d'oeuvre?"
"Abalone? Isn't the tide rather high for searching for abalone," Jake asked.
"Under ordinary circumstances, yes. However, I have established what might be called the S.A.R.--the strategic abalone reserve."
"That sounds like some sort of military term," Jake commented.
"Actually, it does have a military origin. Come on, I'll show you."
They followed the shoreline south to a large tide pool which was protected from the full force of the surf by several large rack fragments on its western edge. The pool itself contained a number of additional rock fragments which divided it into several deep, well-like partitions. Strange metallic objects were jammed into the bottoms of these wells.
"In a previous existence these cages were part of some type of Air Force equipment, but they came up on the surplus market, and I beat the swords into plowshares," McGivney stated. "They are now abalone cages to house my strategic abalone reserve."
The objects in question were sandwiches of stainless steel plate bolted together with stainless steel threaded rods and spacers. The plates were spaced between one and a half and two inches apart; two of the sides were sealed, and two were covered with grill work which was wired into place. The "cages" themselves varied in size from 1' X 1.5' X 6" to the 2' X 2' X 2' monster in the largest pool. Inside each layer of the sandwiches were dozens of abalone.
"The grills keep out the predators--mostly the nasty, rat- like otters--and keep the abs from wandering away. However, they are sufficiently open to let the abs' food drift in. During good low tides I go out and collect abalone, then add them to my collection. I even get undersized ones, but these I let grow to legal size before harvesting them," McGivney explained as he unwired one of the grills. He then used a short piece of flat iron to pry a couple of abalone from one layer of the cage. He measured the abs and made note of this in a notebook.
"You keep records?" Each abalone, Jake noticed, had a number painted on its shell.
"Yes. These in this pool are generously fed with lots of kelp. I toss in several buckets full every couple of days. I have another pool where the abs are on their own--they eat whenever and whatever nature provides. After a couple of years I'll coordinate all my data--size at time of collection, size at time of harvest, and the length of time involved, and I'll see if it is worth it to pamper the abs. It might be that they do as well on their own. That would save me a lot of work."
"It looks like you've got a lot of abalone here."
"That's true. At the current market prices, I've got more than ten thousand dollars of abalone in my pools. I'm not interested in raising abalone commercially myself, however, if I can perfect the technique, then small scale aquiculture of this type could be practiced along the coast, and it would be another way for us humble workers to exploit the Blativarism of the rich."
"Blativarism?"
"It's a Swiss psychologist's roughly translated as 'insecure avariciousness' It means that a person compensates for his insecurity by insisting on having the best of everything--$30 a pound abalone, in this case. It's a highly exploitable trait, if handled carefully."
"Ah, fleece the rich."
"Yes, a fine tradition here on the central coast. Hearst had Blativarism. Why else would he have built that ostentatious monstrosity overlooking San Simeon harbor? Art and antique dealers were the ones who took advantage of Hearst's Blativarism, charging him double prices for the things that he wanted. However, there aren't many Hearsts. Taking a bite out of the Mercedes-drivers is more the level I'm thinking about. That is still sometime in the future as far as the abalone-growing techniques are concerned, however. Meanwhile, we get to eat the abs while the experiment is being conducted."
"So even if the experiment fails and you can't get to have your Blatavarist cake, you still get to eat it. It sounds like a rather well-designed experiment to me," Jake commented.
Charley shrugged his shoulders. "Time will tell. Let's go back and see how Bernie is doing."
As they retraced their steps, Jake marveled that, from the edge of the beach, no trace of Charlie's handiwork was either visible or even hinted at, with the exception of the workroom window where the camouflage netting was up, thus making a square, shadowy opening in the ledge. Everything else, trails included, looked one hundred percent natural.
On the trip up the ledge, Charlie made a detour about halfway up to pick an handful of tomatoes from plants growing on a little, inconspicuous terrace.
"Beans or broccoli for a vegie?" Charlie asked.
"Chef's choice," Jake replied.
Charlie eyed his garden for a moment, then said, "Beans it is. The broccoli plants could use a little respite from the harvester's knife." He took a plastic bag out of his pocket, dumped in the cherry tomatoes, and proceeded to fill the rest of the bag with yellow snap beans.
When they arrived back at to the workroom, Bernie had already examined and priced Charlie's output of fishing lures. he was in the process of rolling a joint.
"You did well this month," Bernie said to Charlie. "I like those new brass and glass lures. They should disappear very quickly. You could probably make some even larger." Bernie was referring to some eight inch long flat fish-like lures made of hammered brass and fitted with delicate stained glass inserts.
"I don't think that I have proportionally larger hooks, and besides, larger might detract form the effect of the stained glass," Charlie replied.
"Possibly. I'll get you some giant treble hooks next month, and you can experiment, if you like."
"Okay," Charlie agreed, "but don't hold your breath."
Bernie smiled, took a notebook out of his shirt pocket to make a note about getting the hooks, and said, "I never do." He then took out a wad of currency--the proceeds from Charlie's previous month's output--placed the money on the table, and lit the joint. Charlie quickly and efficiently started cleaning the fish as the joint made its rounds. Jake took his cursory toke; Bernie and Charlie shared the remainder.
The crabs were the first course. Jake, of course, was used to the meaty plenitude of Maine lobsters. The little, five inch rock crab in his plate was an awful lot of work for a rather small amount of meat, albeit delicate and sweet, but he refrained from making any comment to that effect. The main meal of fried cabezon, salad, beans, rice, bread, and coffee supplied all the heartiness that could be desired.
"How is it that you came to this particular spot of paradise?" Jake asked Charlie.
"When I came out West, I came by way of Utah. There I saw all those wind and water eroded canyons. One time, in exploring them, I came across the remains of a prehistoric Indian site which had a little adobe room tucked in under a wind eroded ledge. I could see where part of the ledge had been crudely worked to fit the room in. Later, when I got to California, I met a man who bought the steepest and cheapest housing lots in Cambria and who, over the years, chopped building spaces out of them with hand tools. Old Art Beal claimed to have worn out three mattocks--worn down the steel, not the handles--in carving out his house site. Still later, I was out here looking for a place to ... er ..."
"It's okay, man," Bernie interrupted.
"I was looking for a place to grow a little marijuana, and I found that little spring, and I was out here on the ledge taking in the sunset with a little smoke, and it all came together--the Indians, Art Beal, and this place. I suddenly knew that I could carve a house out of the ledge. I lived in the workroom for five years. After Sharon showed up, it was just too small, so I just started expanding. I'm going to put in a few more garden terraces, but otherwise I've done my bit to leave a mark on this old planet. A retired Cal Poly geology professor gave my ledges a looking over once, and he estimated that it was good for a hundred years before the ocean, earthquakes, and erosion pulled it down. A hundred years? That's good enough for me."