Willoughbee's story

My Father is dying, or rather slowly fading away. He spends most of his time in bed these days which doesn't seem such a bad way to go out, but I guess lately everything got tiresome enough to where he wanted to end it all. Luckily the magic of modern medicine intervened and they shot him up with steroids.

"A new lease on life!", he proclaimed. "Now I know why Barry Bonds did it, I feel amazing!"

On a recent visit we got to talking about the old 'It's' Beach in Santa Cruz and how it was a god-awful mess of broken beer bottles and cans and butts and crap all over the place when we first moved there. So Dad, being the Eagle Scout-'always leave the campsite better than when you found it.'-decided that we should go down there every day and haul out the garbage by hand until it was gone.

At first we would spend hours dragging bag after bag up the cliff, only to find the beach strewn with garbage again the next day. Eventually though we began to get on top of it, and his theory was beginning to work. He petitioned the city for more receptacles along the cliff, and we found that the nicer the beach became the less likely people were to litter.

But then he took it too far. He began to patrol the beach daily, a constant fixture with his plastic bags in hand, scowering the sand for cigarette butts and approaching every group of tourists no matter how sloshed, reminding them to pack their trash.
When I expressed concern for his safety he would brush me off and point to his white hair saying, "this allows me to get away with all kinds of stuff."

But Dad never figured on Willoughbee.

Willoughbee lived on It's Beach and always had. In fact, his people-he claimed to be Ohlone Indian-owned the land. He was kind enough to loan us the beach for now, but make no mistake one day the vengeful warriors would return to exact painful retribution on the white man.

Willoughbee was totally bonkers and a huge drunk, but mostly you could tell all he really wanted to do is watch a sweet wave peeling left all day and grin and talk about it.

I liked Willoughbee and wanted Dad to leave him alone. "C'mon Dad, we can clean up his cans after he leaves!" I pleaded, but my father was determined on principle to let Willoughbee know that he could no longer indiscriminately throw his trash around because, hadn't he noticed, no one else was doing it anymore.

And so the titans of It's Beach clashed.The more purple they got the more I was sure that it would be a fist fight that my Dad was about 40 years on the wrong side of.

Finally someone broke it up and Dad stalked off but not without first indignantly picking up all of Willoughbee's trash in front of him, down to the last gum wrapper.

As my Dad walked away Willoughbee snorted and threw his latest can on the ground. What happened next is in my Dad's own words:

"So there I go fuming around the corner. I can't stand this guy! I just can't stand that no one will tell him what for! And I'm not looking and this huge wave barrels in and knocks me down, and the garbage I've collected all day goes washing out to sea. Now I'm not a religious man, and I've never heard voices before or since, but I swear to you, clear as day this voice is booming in my ears 'Your anger is as much of an offense as his garbage.'"

This incident was almost 30 years ago, and Willoughbee and my Dad became friends after that day, I'm not sure how.

Shortly after that visit I saw Willoughbee drinking beer on the westcliff and I approached him to tell him my Dad's story. Of course I never got that far, because he got so involved in ranting at me how 'Digi-Man' is gonna repel down the cliffs to his campsite at night and gouge his eyes out while he's sleeping. As I slowly backed away saying goodbye, it was clear to me that Willoughbee was still nut-bars. However I did notice that all his cans were neatly packed away in plastic bags by his side.

The Eagle Scout strikes again!