An old resident of Cayucos returns to town

22 September 2024

By DELL FRANKLIN

Editor's Note: The following biweekly series, “Life in Radically Gentrifying Cayucos by the Sea,” features the notes, thoughts and opinions of an original American voice: author Dell Franklin.

Franklin's memoir, The Ballplayer's Son, is currently available on Amazon.

Bill, who raised and sent his children to college in Cayucos and now lives about 30 miles south of here, recently returned to celebrate his 96th birthday with his daughters, son and great-grandson and several admirers down at Schooner's Wharf at open mic night. Bill, whose ancestors came from the Kentucky coalfield, was previously embarrassed to be celebrated with military paraphernalia in his current home because he is a Navy veteran.

Why was he embarrassed? “I wasn't in combat,” Bill explained. “The guys in combat, the wounded and the dead, deserve to be celebrated, not me.”

I know how he feels. I hate it when people thank me for my service in the Army in Europe during the Vietnam War.

But Bill, who is a poet and has his own band (which has between 82 and 96 members), is so revered by his fans that he was treated to a small parade and was compelled to accept the invitation.

People should know this guy. He once sent me a rather long piece that he had written in immaculate handwriting (without a typewriter or computer) about the years at the end of the war, when he left the farm in Iowa where he had grown up in a large family at the height of the Great Depression, was homeless, and tried to get into the Navy as a 16-year-old.

He slept outdoors, spent his days completely broke, trying to find some kind of work to get something to eat. He wrote of the deep satisfaction and relief he felt when he finally found a small, temporary job and had a roof over his head and something to eat for at least a few days before the Navy finally took him in and gave him a temporary home when he turned 17 in 1945.

I told his daughter that he must print these memoirs and send them to schools in this affluent area so that children today understand how brutally difficult life in this country once was. And that hard times made people like Bill strong, humble and indomitable, and that they still radiate an irrepressible joy for life today.

Bill celebrates his 96th birthday at Schooner's Wharf in Cayucos

Before Bill went on stage to sing three songs, accompanied by his daughter, a singer, and an 83-year-old guitar virtuoso named Nathan, his daughter Sue read one of his poems, which received a standing ovation from the audience. Bill stayed at the microphone and sang with a clarity and range that was amazing for a man nearly 100 years old. His stamina continued as they finished with a little Hank Williams. Bill moved his hands to the rhythm, tapped his foot and smiled, perfectly in tune with his accompanying musicians, and his voice even had a certain rumble to it.

He wasn't a real actor, but a born showman who had fun and even exaggerated a bit.

I sat next to him before and after he went upstairs. When I tried to pick up his jacket from his seat after he returned, he shook his head and grinned and told me to leave it there because “I have a bony butt.”

I told him I liked his poem. He writes almost every day. His words are simple, rhyme and tell a story or a thought.

He is skilled, spontaneous and untrained. He said he felt his constant thoughts and inspiration came from somewhere up in the universe, but I told him I felt that what was bubbling inside him and desperate to come out came from his gut, his heart and his brain and had something to do with curiosity, an extraordinary mind and energy, a desire to make sense of this world while he was alive. A passion.

He was surrounded by his family. Others at the open mic paid him homage. He was amazed by even the smallest token of appreciation. One son came from Oregon. The Harland clan was four generations long. Apparently there are already a few old ladies flocking to him after his last companion died a few months ago.

You could say he lived life to the fullest and wasted nothing. Could it get any better?