Johnny T
Barbara Ann-Mario
THE GHOST OF FISHERMAN'S WHARF
By Rob Tillitz
I SAW THE GHOSTLY APPIRITION for the first time on a night
I spent tied to the old Standard Oil fuel dock. The unique smell
of the Wharf was low-tide strong: goose barnacles; creosote; deep-frying seafood and steaming crab cookers; diesel and sulfurous mud. We'd come in off the tuna grounds and were waiting to fuel up in the morning.
It was a light blue manifestation and the din of the City faded to a whisper as the paisley shadow swirled in the foggy night like an electrified whirlwind; I still remember the taste of ozone upon the salty air.
That was 30 years ago, and now more than ever I believe that ghost is real.
"Why," I recently asked Johnny T, "does everyone always come to you about Wharf problems?"
"Robalone, we're the only ones left," John shot back in his
particularly San Francisco but slightly Sicilian tone. By we
he refers to himself and a very small handful of others.
Indeed, that small-but-colorful boat basin that conjoins like a face onto the seawall at the foot of Hyde Street; the one that likely has more film exposure than any other fish boat sanctuary, is not as active as it once was. Like one of those Hollywood false-fronted main street movie facades, the mostly restaurant-owned fishing boats are basically for show. It's only the Party Boats that are regularly active these days. Them, Johnny T, and just a couple few others.
At the northwestern end of San Francisco's Embarcadero is
where Fisherman's Wharf lies. There are several finger piers
adjacent to the basin where visiting boats can tie--near Scoma's
Restaurant. Pier 45 juts out on the opposite side, and behind its line of roll-up overhead doors there are several fish companies and an ice house. Visiting boats sometimes tie against the Pier 45 pilings.
When Pier 45's designation was first changed from a shipping pier to a commercial fishing asset, Johnny T and Mike McHenry partnered with Warren Nogasaba and opened City Fish, then later Polar Ice. I think Meatball was involved for a time in the ice company also. John's father, Salvatore or "Sam" Tarantino, used the giant and ample extra space inside the pier to mend nets and hang tunnels in black cod traps. Fishermen owning and participating in a fish buying operation was a new concept for San Francisco; at first it appeared to be the new wave. That wave has since fizzled.
Johnny T is the 2nd of four generations of Tarantino fishermen. His father, Sam, fished sardines in the 40s, then switched to dragging when the sardines declined severely. Johnny's son, John Paul, fishes bait--anchovies and herring--on the Bay, and John's grandson, Justin, fishes crab with Mike McHenry.
Maybe it's Johnny T's big-city suaveness, merged with Mike
McHenry's country-boy originality, that has continued to pair the two salts since they were hardly more than teenagers. Whatever the draw, John and Mike gravitate to one another and even today John deckhands for Mike, bait fishing on the Bay. I'd like to be a kelp fly on that cabin wall when Michael yells at John to pick up the pace.
"Pull that net hard, John, and it'll come easy." I can hear Mike holler.
"Bite me!" I'm sure would be John's reply.
To me the relationship has always been heartening and appropriate.
In 1972 I began deckhanding, and my first immediate goal was to get my own boat; the second was to join the Z-Squad. There were several requirements to joining the Squad, but the main one was low-crawling the president (ask a Squad member what that is). And when I asked who the president was, everyone said it was Mike and John both: they shared the duties, as well as the title. Thus, that these two continue to work so closely together all these years later, to me is a testament to friendship. Either that or to what John said about there being only a couple active fishermen left. The new generation has, apparently, lost interest.
I can only speak from a Bay Area boy’s perspective about the romance of San Francisco's Fisherman's Wharf, and the ghosts that live in infamy there. Philip Battaglia, who had the Paula B II, shows up every winter to fish crab with skeets on the Josephine. They recall ghosts: Philip’s dad, Dominic, on the Elenore; Albie Spidarro on the Flori S II; Albie’s dad, Vince Spidarro on the Santa Anna; Frankie Pomillia, Stubba’s dad, on the Josephine; and of course Chico on the Warlock. All good fishermen who have long since passed, but whose ghosts still haunt the famous Wharf boat basin.
The Wharf and City ghosts manifest strongest when passing under the bridge. I recall my first time. I was crewing on the Two Brothers, a 28-foot Monterey, and we were fresh with the bittersweet mood of the Wharf as we set out to fish the last few days of salmon season. The sun was just dropping below the span of the bridge up ahead. The skipper called me back to the stern and said, "Take the rudder. Steer us right up the middle while I salt these herrings."
I stood like a statue, hanging on to that oak stave that was the stern tiller, and shivering with a frisson of fear when we got to the point where the bridge loomed overhead. I figured we were about where a jumper might land. Between the jumpers and the countless number of fishermen before me that had made this passage, it was a deliciously thrilling moment to head West out of the great San Francisco Bay and under what is known as the world's longest suspension bridge and an incredible engineering marvel.
Quoting from the first chapter of Genesis I whispered: "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea..."
And we did, indeed, go out to the Soap Box and catch a
nice end-of-the-season jag of salmon.
The ghosts were powerful, indeed perceptibly visible, that evening as I watched the bridge's golden lights twinkle on, just as the flaming globe of the sun quietly disappeared over the ocean’s straight black horizontal line. To me, there is hardly an act than can more stimulate a fisherman's psyche than that of leaving the Wharf and then passing through the choppy brown-green currents under the bridge, on the way out to catch fish on the famous stretch of ocean beyond the steepled towers of that famous red-gold span.
Johnny T has been doing this since before he was old enough
to shave. He fished with his father at age 12; got his own boat
at 21, and not long after that he began making the trek north
with some of the old-time Wharf adventurers like Vito Pomillia on the Miss Angelina, and Vito’s son Victor (Baby Huey). It didn't take long for John to find kindred spirits in Half Moon Bay's Mike McHenry and Geno Law, and for all of them to form the Southern Z-Squad (The Northern Z-Squad was actually the first and original squad, and it was out of Westport). That Bay Area Z-Squad spent almost two decades of summers chasing salmon up the coast--occasionally fishing albacore--before John finally decided to stay closer to home. He fished black cod and herring, and for a number of years he gill netted halibut and shark.
The phantom blue specter that glides about the Wharf may
be the ghost of a fisherman who refuses to give up. Or perhaps
a woman left brokenhearted by a whaler, or a trawler, or some other kind of fishcatcher--one who has moved on to his girl in the next port up the line.
Who ever the Fisherman's Wharf ghost is, the blue umbra that is best seen in the swirling fog and on black nights reminds me of a tradition that is mostly myth now. Folk tales and sagas that, after Johnny T and Rich Fitzpatrick (Skeets), Philip and a few of the rest, will be nothing more than fables. Tall tales of improbable successes.
I wonder if the blue ghost will still appear when the remaining few are all gone? I wonder if, before it's too late, a group of burgeoning youngsters will see the impending void, sense the era of wisdom about to be lost, and step up and breathe life into a near-ghost of a tradition?
I wonder about these things, and recall vividly that night that I tied to the old Standard Oil dock, waiting to fuel up in the morning. The old wood-hulled Visit creaked and rocked, and shadows moved about on the dark mahogany paneled walls. I laid in my bunk in the upstairs cabin, still rattled after having seen the ghost out on the wharf, when in through the partially open Dutch door swirled the blue specter. It was neon and instantly chilled the cabin air. I tried to speak, as if it were real, though all that was plain was that this was indeed the essence of a soul. And when I attempted to breathe out words, only a cloudy vapor escaped my lipps.
~
