How to deal with stormy power outages in Cayucos

February 11, 2024

By DELL FRANKLIN

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

Franklin’s memoir, “The ballplayer’s Son” is currently on Amazon.

My power went out Sunday morning around 10 while on the stationary bike, shutting off the space heater to my left and the light above me as I plowed through my crossword and finished in 45 minutes. My shack is old and has little insulation, was cold and damp, everything on my deck was slamming around in gale force winds.

So I retreated to Cayucos Coffee downtown, where they still had power, drank some coffee and read an entire metropolitan Sunday newspaper, three articles in a magazine, 40 pages in a book, took out the handy flip phone my sister insisted I take everywhere, called my friend Ethan in Morro Bay and asked if he had power, and when he said he did, I arranged some dismal self-pity in my tone of voice and asked if it was possible I come over, and he said okay, come on over.

By this time it was around 2 in the afternoon and Ethan and Contessa, his wife, had made a huge pot of healthy soup with veggies in it and so they fed me and I was gracious and thankful as we talked. And then when I suggested I might go see “The Boys In The Boat” at the nearby Bay theater, they suggested I view the documentary on this subject, and so I lounged in warm comfort, thoroughly enjoyed the doc (I read the book) on Contessa’s computer screen.

The movie started at 4 but something was calling within me to not see the movie, and when Contessa reminded me it was almost 4, I found myself dilly-dallying until it was after 4, whereupon I asked Contessa to call Schooner’s Wharf in Cayucos to see if they were open. When they said yes they were open, Contessa informed them that Dell Franklin was coming down, and I heard some background jeers when the bartender made this announcement.

The bar was warm and cozy and jam-packed and I immediately fell in with my friend Nick, a former college basketball enforcer who, because of his size, can pack in a lot of beer and liquor. The wind outside was blowing at around 75 mph and the rain was coming down hard, but then as I nursed a beer Doug, whose wife was out of town, bought me a shot of good vodka and I drank it down and everything changed.

I was warm. I was glowing. I ran into Audrey and her friends. And Murphy. Nick and I called people and left messages and then big Malcolm showed up. Malcolm is the biggest person in town and can drink –Guinness dark beer. These huge, younger people dwarf me in booze intake, though I am no slacker, and if ever there is a time not to slack, it’s during the most violent storm I’ve observed in Cayucos in 35 years.

Both Nick and Malcolm have done some prodigious drinking in Ireland. Malcolm has Irish roots. I, like Nick, have no Irish roots but have twice been on pub crawls throughout Ireland and lived to talk about it. It seems, if in Ireland, you can drink and carry on any kind of conversation and even attempt to sing, you are in spirit an Irishman (especially if the weather is horrible and threatening), and once that is established there is no stopping you, it is a time to drink and not for a second fret over the consequences.

So, as the three of us told Irish drinking stories primarily in Dublin and Galway, the booze and ale went down and before we knew it the bar was clearing out and we induced a nice quiet tourist couple from down in Orange County, who were eating dinner, to sing with us; because, at a certain point in Irish pubs, after several hours of quaffing, singing, no matter how obnoxious and intruding, cannot be resisted.

This was especially so since the fellow from Orange County, a fireman, was celebrating his birthday and had been  somewhat reserved before Nick and Malcolm bought him shots.

Suddenly he was up on his feet belting out a song like a mad tenor, waving his arms, coming out of his shell as the wife looked on.

I cannot sing, or carry a tune. My voice, once terrible but loud, is a hoarse whisper. I’ve forgotten every line of every song I ever knew, but I was urged and then threatened and somehow found myself dancing and rasping idiotically to “What’s Goin’ On” by Marvin Gaye. I only recalled one line–“What’s goin’ on.”

So I danced, barreling into inanimate objects, feeling in my numbness that I had rhythm while observers guffawed, growing hoarse and faint from the rigors of old age and the stress of losing power in my igloo, and being forced to get bombed in the local watering hole with no promise of when the outage would lift.

Soon, only the bartender and three ladies were left to observe the bellows of Nick and Malcolm and the birthday boy and myself. It was late. But after ten to fifteen Guinness pints quaffed  by the big guys, and an onslaught of shots to myself and birthday boy, our lady bartender was indicating we’d had enough.

It was nearing midnight and this was officially a restaurant, not a bar. So into the gale we went, a day and night when Cayucos resembled the west coast of Ireland at its most volatile and some joyous boozers knew exactly how to weather the storm.

And ten minutes after I got home, the lights came on.

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