My father likes to say that I was born and raised on Monterey’s Fisherman’s Wharf. Of course, that’s not really true, although my earliest memories are of the wharf, the beach and the sea life in the bay. When I sift through family photos I find faded black and whites of a little girl with a sun suit that is tied at the shoulders and a pixie hair cut (the kind that looked like your mom stuck a bowl on your head), and a big flat ocean in the background. Picture after picture—different sun suits, different skies, different angles of the beach, maybe on the wharf, never any shoes, never any sunscreen— always with the ocean in the background.

My childhood was filled with all the colorful characters the fishing industry could introduce to a child. There were people I only knew as The Major, Three-Fingered-Jack, Norm’s Blind Son, and the Two-Old Italians. These people were larger than life to me, meandering up and down the wharf, day in and day out. Then there was the life of the wharf itself along with the families that fished in the bay.

The wharf has these huge, wonderful, old anchors for the boats cemented directly to the wharf and they almost mushroom right up out of the blacktop. On warm days they could become very hot but on most days they were just pleasantly warm. I loved to sit on these anchors, dangle my legs and spin myself around or lay across them to warm my belly and pretend I was swimming through the ocean. On many days I would just sit on them and watch the fishing boats come in and tie up to these anchors and haul their catch onto the wharf. The smell of the boats, the nets, and the noise, are familiar to me as the memories of a neighborhood park are to other kids. When my dad wasn’t fishing, he was in the water with me and my brothers. We had the most magnificent innertubes, these huge tractor tire innertubes that were taller than me (at the age of 5) when turned upright. Dad had painted our names on each one in this bright green paint and we were the envy of every other kid on the beach. We could easily seat four kids on each intertube and we’d play forever in the waves. I was a little small to stretch across the intertube and would fall through the hole in the middle so most often I’d float with my father or one of my brothers. We were fascinated with the underside of the wharf, the barnacles that grew on the pilings, the sea lions that climbed on the pier, and we loved to float close enough to have them ‘bark’ at us. Starfish could also be found on the pilings and my father would gently remove them to show us how they ate and used their tentacles. We floated along the wharf and sometimes out away from the wharf, but never beyond what my father called the break water. Our goal was to look down and see ‘through the ocean’. We wanted to see what Jacque Cousteau saw on the Calypso, the only TV program we were allowed to watch besides Star Trek.

My father showed us how to stretch ourselves across the innertubes and look through the center of the tube almost like a porthole. We could see the ocean life below, the fish, the jellyfish, sharks, squid, octopus and all sorts of creatures. He would point them out to us one by one and tell us their names. We were amazed anew each time. When we were very lucky, we would have encounters with basking sharks, porpoises or dolphins. We sat very still and stretched out our arms to touch their sides, careful to stay away from the basking shark’s tail ends. These occurrences were not rare for us as children and it never occurred to me that there would be a time that these things that I loved so much, that created such incredible moments for me as a child, would not be here to share with my children or my grandchildren.

My dad loved the wharf and we spent time there day and night. At dusk we fished for halibut and at night we fished for squid. I hold incredibly magical memories of these times. The summer months on the beach were especially magical. My father would have his ‘waders’ on and cast his long line out, prop himself up on a piece of drift wood, and sit quietly looking at the ocean, waiting for that bite. I would run up and down the beach, sometimes building sand forts. We never built castles—we built forts—large holes in the tidal area, where we could sit out the waves with walls around us to protect us. Only with a massive swell would our fort become demolished. If I became bored with my fort I could dig for sand crabs or seek out the largest sea weed rope I could find and haul down the beach. The fact that it reeked never bothered me, in fact it comforted me, and I could pop the little pods connected to the rope while pulling it along.

When my father would catch a fish I would run out into the surf to tackle it. In my young mind I imagined I must be helping. Many times the halibut were much bigger than me and as I flung myself onto them they flung me aside. These battles between me and the halibut, with the waves washing around us on those late summer evenings, are incredible memories for me. My father would come out and rescue me first, carrying his fishing pole in one hand, usually calling me with the familiar term of “Baby Dum-Dum.” After standing me on my feet he’d return to the water to gently scoop out his fish. It was only then that I would realize it was so much larger than me. He was always careful about removing his hooks and I was always amazed at how he treated his fish with an almost reverence. Sometimes he would snag a skate on his lines and he would yell at me to stay out of the water, afraid that I would get ‘shocked’ if I touched it. I would watch while he put a glove on and went into the surf, placed a boot gently on the skate and reached down with his gloved hand to remove the hook to release the skate. Once I saw him get shocked and he did a little jig in the waves and complained that his arm was numb the rest of the evening but still he managed to release the little skate. Once he caught a few fish we were done for the day. We had dinner for tomorrow and some for the freezer and probably some would go in the smokehouse. These mighty fish were ours.