The Pirate, soul of Cayucos, leaves us

December 19, 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.

The pirate flag at Schooner’s Wharf restaurant and bar in Cayucos is at half mast, for the Pirate of Cayucos, Randy Crozier, has passed on.

The Pirate was not afraid of anything or anybody, and I don’t think he was afraid of death, either. He took things as they came, for better or worse without complaint over his 67 years—a miracle of accomplishment in itself, being that most of his years were engaged in joyous and guiltless self-pollution.

Yes sir, the Pirate embraced unhealthy habits with an impish grin and a cackling, coughing laugh. He was a happy man, especially when planted on his stool at Schooner’s Wharf after a day of plastering, one of his many occupations and talents that barely scratched the surface of an immense palette of creativity that was always in motion.

 

I looked upon the Pirate in awe, because I realized that myself as well as almost everybody I knew would never have survived during certain eras in our country, and especially the 19th century, while the Pirate would have been in his glory in any century, going back centuries.

Why? The Pirate was fiercely self-sufficient and could repair anything, build anything, grow anything, was an accomplished stone mason and hunter and hunting guide, a commercial fisherman, and, to boot, a very fine guitar player who for years led his own band, the Motowners, which played at various venues along the coast but primarily, every year on a float during the notorious Cayucos 4th of July
parade.

The Pirate went to school here in town. While employed at framing or plastering, he drove a series of creaking, groaning, out-dated, dust-shellacked pickups my dogs could hear blocks away as they paced and circled on my deck in anticipation of him pulling up, dislodging himself slowly from his truck, powdered in plaster, and hurling two big biscuits up to Marley and later Wilbur.

Wilbur, once, on the seawall, heard his truck on the main drag and cut loose, limping and bouncing after him for several blocks, barking, before the Pirate got out and gave him a biscuit.

The single beauty of the Pirate, though, was that he never saved a dime but was always jolly and wanted to buy you a drink in Schooner’s, and for years in the Cayucos Tavern.

His brother, who, along with his wife, drove down from northern Washington to be with him for a month while he was in and out of the hospital and finally at home in hospice care, said, “He did things his way. He worked as hard as he could for three or four days a week, or whatever it took, and when he had enough to pay off his rent and bar tab, he was back in the bar.”

I mentioned his application to unhealthy habits, or, um, vices. Well, he drank beer and rum, and a lot of it for as often as he could and as long as he could. He relished marijuana, and was even more lovable under its influence. He smoked cigarettes all of his life and savored the ritual, even when it turned his voice into a rasp and a cough whenever he laughed, which was a lot.

And the pirate was not one bit fussy about his diet, consuming just about anything in the food orbit that was bad for you but tasted good, though there is the possibility he ate the luscious veggies he grew in his gardens as well as his pickles that were on par with the great kosher pickles from New York City and which he bottled and dropped off to his many friends in Cayucos—and only in Cayucos.

Randy seldom ventured far from Cayucos, unless it was to market in Morro Bay for something he couldn’t find in town. For you see, this was his town. Nobody loved Cayucos more than Randy and he saw no reason to go anywhere unless it was to drive nonstop in an ailing truck to see his brother in northern California, who was dying of cancer.

For those of us who have lived in Cayucos for decades, he was Cayucos, the very soul of Cayucos, a reminder of an era that not only stretched back to before Randy even got here, but to a time when men were stubbornly self-sufficient and defiant of help and would rather perish on the prairie than ask for help.

Most important, though, was that the Pirate was irresistibly lovable and loved, and he knew it. And that almost everybody who knew him felt they were his good and special friend, as he was to them.

In an interview I did with him in the Rogue Voice almost twenty years ago, he mentioned that he wouldn’t leave much behind but possibly a six pack of beer and a beat up truck when he died. But to all of us here in Cayucos, the Pirate left us with memories we shall cherish for the rest of our years.

On Monday, less than a day after his passing, two ladies walking their dogs by the sea wall, ladies who did not frequent Schooner’s Wharf and knew the Pirate only fleetingly, paused when they saw me, held their hands to their hearts, and appeared on the verge of tears.