Life With Iron Giants: Rowing to Catalina

John Olguin died on New Year's morning. Most of you reading this have no idea who this man is, but here in San Pedro he was Ernest Hemingway's Old Man and The Sea, Jack LaLanne, and Saint Nicholas all rolled up into one humble package. Nothing shy of a living legend, his love of and ever present relationship with the sea was the stuff of tall tales, even made more fantastical by the improbable but true stories of his rowing trips to Catalina Island, or the time he and his wife opted for a month-long rowboat trek to explore the Carribean Islands, rowing at night when the seas were calm, and frolicking in remote beaches where they'd camp for a night. He met the water on several fronts, as a lifeguard, sailor, swimmer, and teacher of the bounties brought by the sea.

And Olguin was in it constantly. For decades he would start his morning by jumping into the port channel for a swim around the point, avoiding tug boats and tankers alike. Other times he would take to the beaches around our part of the peninsula for swims long and short, choppy or calm; his sun-browned children spent their summers at our Cabrillo cove where he lifeguarded and shepherded many students of the sea into successful and fulfilling lives. He built museums, restored our rich maritime history, a legacy he grew like a man tending to the shallows where young fry needed protection to thrive.

When I met him two years ago he was 87, and as sweet and robustly energetic as he'd been all his life. I was invited to their home to honor his painter wife, Muriel, with a special plaque. They collected these things by the dozens, but John usually got most of the attention at these affairs. He seemed so delighted to be sidelined by the affection shown to his wife that day, sitting casually on a nearby stool, hands on his knees, his bright gaze everywhere. Shyly hanging back in the crowd, I was still trying to take in the atmosphere, and a powerful sense of familiarity with the rough-hewn cottage life I'd come to know as a summer kid in Ontario.

John and Muriel's hand-built wooden plank house perched on the edge of grassy cliffs that undulated down toward the sea. It had grown to a pleasantly ramshackle footprint in stages, starting with a modest post and beam structure that was added onto as fortunes and children dictated. The place smelled like sea air, beach wood, and creosote from the original pot-bellied stove still in the corner. There were two doors in the single bathroom, one for the house occupants and one for sandy-footed surfer/rower/swimmers who would pad up the stone path from somewhere down to the sea-crashing shore. Wild flowers grew everywhere, visible through the huge windows, and their perfume added to the warmth inside.

The living room led through glass doors onto a large porch on stilts, winged over the falling terrain so's not to obscure breathtaking views. When I asked John why there was a double bed outside in the far corner of the porch he looked at me with a twinkle in his eye.

"Muriel and I sleep out there," he answered.

"Every night?!"

Those who scoff because of our warm California reputation have never experienced the dark and bone-chilling winter, when torrential rains and Arctic flows hover near the freezing mark. When the sun goes down on the ocean horizon it can get damn cold.

"For fifty years," he confirmed, and smiled again.

I looked out to the porch with skepticism. The bed had a modest cover on it, and no screening - just the natural protection of a corner niche, and bracing possibility of constant off-shore breezes. It seemed impossible, especially with two white haired octogenarians huddled there, often in the buff, if he wasn't having me on.

Mimi was outside and at that point came running in with a sweet in her mouth.

"Where did you get that, honey," I asked.

She solemnly pointed to the porch floor, rough hewn and spotted with decades of useful dirt, pigeon, seagull, and peacock droppings."

"Spit it out!" I cried, oblivious to the old man next to me, who had lived to a ripe old age reveling in the rough, obviously to no ill effects. But my daughter had already swallowed it and before I could utter another word she turned and ran back out to the porch again, a new fan of the transparent barrier between home and nature the Olguins had created.

While I fretted about the possible diseases she might have gotten from the poisoned pill, let me mention the peacocks again if they slid by in the story without more than a how-dee-do. Peacocks lived around and on their house, as they do in the entire neighborhood of their part of San Pedro. Brought in to nearby Palos Verdes by someone decades ago as a nice lawn ornamentation, they thrived and stayed wherever they were welcome. When Bob and I drove over, we were warned early to watch out for them, and it was obvious they weren't watching out for us, so they ruled. A couple of times we had to stop and wait for one or two sauntering across the road, as haughtily oblivious to us as sleek cats, tails up or down, crown feathers of jaunty blue and shimmering rainbow hues bobbing along. God help you if they decided to stop midway, or perhaps with one of their luxurious tails still resting in your way. Mess with a peacock and you suffer the consequences, for they can be formidable advisories, especially those coddled by the locals as these were.

How can you not see the magic in a place where peacocks perch on rooftops and men row to sea on a summer's night for fun? This was one of the many times that I had an affirmation for where we had landed, so much by chance, as by fortune and circumstance, a place off the grid even to those of us living down the way. John and Muriel's ocean house was a reminder of the escapist times of my childhood, when cottages were simple structures meant to be used for sleeping or lounging on ancient but comfortable furniture, or to play cards by on rainy days or in the quiet night. For the rest of the time, the outside world was our playground, our wonder, our constantly changing place of discovery and imagination. And appreciation. All vistas were of the gifts given to us by the world around us, never less important than any one thing in our lives.

I met John Olguin only once. And now he's gone. But the peacocks, and all those who love and protect the ocean, they live on.