A long string of bad luck

"It's my life, dude."

So says the man whose boat, on which he lives, sits on the beach, washed ashore in the recent storm. Its position on the sand hasn't stopped him from living on his boat, he just sleeps at a 45-degree angle or so up in what the newspaper referred to as "the narrow tip of the vessel." Sailors would refer to that area of the boat as the bow, but fact-checking costs extra, and this is a small-town paper.

Nearly every time there's a storm, boats wash ashore here from the anchorage--a totally unprotected stretch of ocean where it costs nothing to anchor. Many of the boats that wind up on shore have been abandoned, and the city government eventually gets a bulldozer and clears away the debris. If you're lucky, you can salvage usable parts--cleats, winches, or in one case a nearly new diesel engine--before the wrecking crew comes.

This latest boat on the beach belongs to a guy named Jeff, the one who referred to it as his life, dude. His left foot has been amputated, and he lives on the boat because he can't afford to live anywhere else, he says. He lives on $800 a month, his disability check. To haul the boat back into the water would cost $2500, which Jeff doesn't have.

"We're not a social service agency," said the manager of harbor operations, responding to the suggestion that a program be set up to assist people in Jeff's position.

A City Council member volunteered that situations like this don't happen to "good seamen," which seems to miss the point. I have come to doubt his priorities, as this same man once, after being refused admission to a highly exclusive country club due to the jeans he was wearing, called the newspaper to report the price of the jacket he had on ($600), hoping to save face.

The City is not a social service agency, it's true, and perhaps "good seamen" don't permit their boats to wash up on the beach during a storm, but to me, in this place they call Paradise--smugly and with a nod to their good fortune for living here--there seems to be very little love for the chronically unlucky.



Star of the day. . .St. Patrick
posted @ 11:31 a.m. on March 17, 2006 before | after

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She lay awake all night,

zzzzzzzzzzz......