Nice Nice Cars For Girls photos today

A few nice nice cars for girls images I found:

Another Excerpt: Vacation is a Trainwreck


Image by Viewminder
I’m not the most organized guy in the world.

I kinda fly by the seat of my pants in most of the stuff I do.

I grew up that way.

And I’m still like that as an adult.

I do everything at the last minute… and I generally try to pay all of my bills right before they become thirty days past due.

If the people really want their money they’ll call right?

And they get so happy when I give it to them and I get to hear that in their voices on the phone.

I get a lot of bills in the mail.

There’s like this ‘secret code’ or something…

the really important ones are red in some way.

I know how far I can push it.

It’s fun living dangerously sometimes… watching how low you can get the needle down on the gas tank before you gotta get gas.

That’s how I learned about something really smart people call ‘parallax.’

Paralax is ‘the effect whereby the position or direction of an object appears to differ when viewed from different positions.’

Like if you look at the needle on the fuel guage from the passenger side it looks like you got less gas than you really do.

That’s where your girl sits and looks at the gas guage from.

The designers of automobiles took this into consideration when they dealt with fuel guages.

They know your woman’s gonna look over and see that needle on ‘E’ and say something.

It’s like a built in safety device.

And she’s always like ‘we better get some gas.’

And you’re always like ‘we can go another 70.4 miles after the needle hits ‘E’ babycakes.

Then you tell her about ‘parallax.’

Dumbass.

There you go with your physics shit again.

Note to your idiot self: chicks don’t care about physics.

Name one legendary female physicist.

There are none.

I just did a search for ‘legendary female physicist’ on Google and got the old "Your search – legendary female physicist – did not match any documents."

Not one.

I also did another Google search in my intensive research for this book… research which consists almost entirely of my life experience, lies, bullshit, bullshit lies, made up statistics, things drunk people told me in bars and Google searches.

I Googled ‘chicks who like walking after their dumbass guy runs out of gas.’

And guess what came up?

"Your search – chicks who like walking after their dumbass guy runs out of gas – did not match any documents."

Then in that little box it taunts you with every time you misspell something it said ‘did you mean to search for ‘dumb ass’ instead?

Did you ever get the feeling that Google was talking directly to you?

I will admit that I had to do the search twice because the first time I used ‘there’ inappropriately when I should have used ‘their’ and I needed to straighten that up to insure the integrity of my research…

because that’s the kind of guy I am… and I’m also not afraid to admit that I’m wrong either…

as long as no one’s around to hear it.

Not even any naked pictures came up or anything.

That seemed odd.

So just to be sure that Google wasn’t broken I did a search for ‘hot freaky sex’ which produced twenty one million one hundred thousand results.

And lots of fascinating pictures.

That’s the Google I’ve come to know and depend on.

You know I really didn’t get much out of the rest of that day.

Or half of the next.

I did have to think fast when my girl got home and said ‘Honey… did you use all of my lotion?’

‘Yeah Love Gravy Buckets… I was doing research for my new book.’

And then she did the predictable thing… the very thing I did not predict…

she asked me ‘why would you need an entire bottle of my lotion to research your book?’

‘And what happened to the full roll of paper towels I put out just before I went to work?’

I had to come clean with her so I showed her.

You know what?

I’ve never been so happy to let the woman peer into my browser’s history.

I felt like that moment helped her to ‘get me’ more just then.

I think she liked some of that stuff and I ‘bookmarked’ the stuff that she seemed fascinated by.

Or at least just not ‘overtly repulsed by’ anyway.

Then we had a really good talk… you know… the kind that bring you closer together after helping you to understand each other in a deeper and more intimately meaningful way?

‘It’s all about the research Sweet Love Kitten’ I promised.

‘But I hafta admit that some of that stuff looks like it could really spice up our love life you know’ I added.

Then just to reassure myself that this kind of research was valid for something other than an excuse to look at all of those pictures that are now seared into my mind right next to all of the other pictures just like that that have been seared into my mind for a very long time…

I did another Google search after typing ‘women are impossible to understand.’

It came back with one hundred and seventy one million results.

These statistics which I did not make up for once… not only support everything that I’ve been telling you… they’re alarming.

There’s eight times as much ‘women are impossible to understand’ out there on the internet as there is ‘hot freaky sex.’

Try it yourself.

If your woman catches you you can just tell her that you were checking the academic soundness of my work.

And if you’re a woman it’s a good opportunity to take a look inside of your mans medulla-hot-freaky-oblongata and see what he’s really thinkin’ about 96% of the time.

And wait until you see how much more ‘exciting’ it gets to check your ‘spambox.’

That’s where all the good stuff goes anyway.

Except those messages that are always giving me a complex…

the ones that say ‘would you like a bigger penis?’

I’m going to find out which of my vindictive and bitter ex’s signed me up for that one and have a little ‘talk’ with her.

Anyway I think it all goes to show that I’m right… there’d be a whole lot more hot freaky goin’ on if men could understand women.

I’d like to see those numbers reversed in my lifetime.

Shit… I’d like to see those numbers reversed in my personal life.

But I don’t need to do a Google search to tell you this brainiac:

no chick wants to walk because your dumbass parallax understandin’ self made a miscalculation over fuel endurance.

Dude.

THAT is a walk you never wanna take…

walking to the gas station with your woman after you showed her how close you like to get to the edge.

Just like saying stupid shit… burning the gas in the tank down to vapors before you get more gas is a deep intrinsic need of yours.

What is the frickin’ use of the ‘bottom’ of the gas tank anyway if you don’t use it right?

Yeah I run out of gas every once in a while…

I have never done it with a woman in the car though.

Run out of gas I mean.

Ever.

Except my daughter.

And that only cost me a little glittery plastic pony to get my ass out of that one.

Women feel that having more than fumes in your gas tank when you take them somewhere is what they call ‘considerate.’

The danger you think you are facing in driving that car until the last molecule of the petrochemical dinosaur juice miracle that propels it is combusted just as you pull up to the gas pump is nothing compared to the danger you’ll be in if your calculations are flawed when your woman’s in the car.

And lets face it.

That’s when it’s gonna happen too.

Because you won’t handicap your mental fuel endurance calculations for her nonstop adjustments of the climate control because you’ll be thinkin’ about hot freaky.

And since women ALWAYS lie about their weight you’ve probably underestimated the total load you were carrying.

Plus that duffel bag she calls a purse that she carries gahdknows what in and that keychain she has… the one that’s composed of lots of key chains all fastened together until it becomes one megalithic ass keychain… the one that weighs like nine pounds that every once in a while you fear she’s gonna beat you with.

Am I right or am I right?

I’ve tried to explain my propensity to do this to my girl this way…

‘baby… I look at it in a lot of ways like I look at our relationship… It’s like I just wanna ‘know’ my car you know… I wanna know it so deeply and intimately… like I wanna know you… all of its needs and stuff… I wanna know when it’s ‘really’ gonna stop… I have a need to know this kind of thing… you know… how far I can push shit… aren’t you always saying that I do the same thing with you?’

You know I had to fuck that one all up at the end right?

So I run outta the go juice every once in a while…

and here and there whatever utility I may have pushed it too far with stopped by the ranch and disconnected me.

Living the Amish life for a few days isn’t the end of the world.

It gives you the time to sit around and make high quality solid oak furniture with your bare hands because you won’t be fucking around on the Internet all day.

In college I’d just hook it back up after they left.

Scored free cable for a lotta years too.

I didn’t even hafta climb the pole to do it because my roommate caught my neighbor doing it in the middle of the night one time.

My roommate was not a ‘legitimate businessman’ and freaked out when he saw a guy climbing the telephone pole in the middle of the night because he thought it was the authorities fixin’ to tap the phone lines.

The guy might not have been a ‘legitimate businessman’ but he was ‘legitimately paranoid.’

He ran out there to ask the guy what the hell he was doing… in his bathrobe… with a gun… and I just kinda sat there on the couch so I could get a head start on makin’ up my story or something.

Guy walks back in in five minutes all smilin’… puts the gun down and says… ‘we got cable now… turn the tv on… the neighbor was jackin’ it and I told him to ‘turn us on’ too… premium channels and everything!’

I live and breath chaos.

I seem to be pretty good at it.

A lot of people just can’t live life in such a dynamic and unstructured way.

They’re probably better off for it…

because it drives a lot of people crazy.

Especially every one of my ex’s apparently.

I just couldn’t live any other way.

Unless a preponderance of hot freaky tips the scales towards a more regimented and domesticated lifestyle.

Ultimately everything is negotiable I suppose.

I work hard and I play hard and I do dig myself some nice vacation here and there.

It’s something I really look forward to as a self-employed ‘legitimate businessman.’

Men and women and vacation are a strange and extremely volatile mix if you ask me.

They’re always volatile really.

Vacation is just the ‘spark’ that can really set them off.

I can remember my parents getting into fights all the time right before getting into the car and heading on the door out for a roadtrip.

That really sucked and it kinda made me think that I just had hot head freaks for parents.

Besides fights about dad coming home shitfaced every once in a while fighting was pretty rare in my childhood home.

What I didn’t know then was that ALL couples pretty much get into it either just before vacation of just as they’re walking out the door.

Mom wants to make triple sure that everythings cool with the house.

Dad figures ‘fuck it… lets go… I got insurance.’

Mom wants the house to be really clean as soon as she steps in the door when we get home from vacation.

Dad says ‘fuck it lets go.’

Mom’s worried about what she forgot to pack.

Dad says ‘fuck it… I got a wallet full of money.’

Mom says ‘you never take anything seriously.’

Dad says ‘why do you always have to start shit right before we roll off to vacation?’

You can see that I am the descendent of a man with a propensity to say stupid shit too.

In fact I come from a long line of men who were really good at saying stupid shit.

It is my experience that leaving the pad and going mobile does different things to the sexes.

Men just wanna get the hell out of Dodge.

Women wanna make sure that Dodge is in good shape before they come back.

Secretly I think men are thinkin’ that they’re gonna have such a good time on vacation it might just be the end of them.

That’s always my goal on any given vacation… to have so much fun I could die.

So what do men care?

Maybe women can see that ‘glint in their eye.’

When I speak this way I can’t indict all women for this behavior.

Just the one’s I’ve been with.

And we’ve already come to understand that I’m not the kinda guy who makes the best choices.

I’m pretty sure that all men share the same guilt though.

Every woman I’ve ever been in a longterm commited, or unilaterally semi committed relationship long enough to go on a shared vacation with has had that lobe pop just prior to or right at departure time.

I’ve often wondered why this is.

I have a theory.

Going mobile makes women feel vulnerable I think.

And when your woman feels ‘vulnerable’ she knows full well that you’re to blame.

She ‘needs’ you to protect her… or at least make her feel ‘protected.’

And since she feels vulnerable buddy… You have failed.

I see it start up about a week out as a mild anxiety.

And it builds up with each day closer to ‘go time’ that we get.

Generally the lobe pops right when you’re packin’ the car.

I think it’s just that guys get all excited about going on vacation.

And we can’t pack for shit because we don’t know where anything is anyway.

And women, they just get a little nervous about leavin’ the nest.

And all their throw pillows.

They’ve worked so hard to decorate the place and now they’re being torn from it like it’s a cesarean section going down.

You gotta be sympathetic to them just then.

All they really need is reassurance.

Lots and lots of reassurance.

And not the regular kind of reassurance…

like how she’s more beautiful than the day that you met her…

or her ass isn’t ‘really’ getting fat…

and that you want to grow old with her…

she needs ‘vacation specific’ reassurances.

And you don’t get too many oportunities to work on your vacation specific reassurances.

Because for once in your life you’re not just thinkin’ about hot freaky.

You’re thinkin’ about ‘vacation hot freaky.’

You know all about the pseudo-scientific studies that show that a woman’s more likely to get down with some hot freaky in a hotel bed.

Because it’s not hers.

That way she doesn’t have to think about it again in the perfectly accessorized and color coordinated ‘love sanctuary’ that she created for the two of you called a bedroom.

The place she likes to think of as a ‘budoir’ but would never tell you that.

You know why?

Because a ‘budoir’ is a room that a woman lays around in and thinks about her perfect fantasy guy.

It becomes a ‘bedroom’ the second you walk in.

Because you spoil the whole effect by leaving your dirty socks on the floor right next to the freaking hamper.

But dad’s not thinkin’ about any of that.

He wants to get the fuck out of there.

He’s excited to go.

Mom’s nervous about leaving.

Maybe he’s already ‘getting to work’ on his skills of tuning the kids out.

Maybe he’s thinking about the car and any problems it might have.

He’s got the route in his head and he’s got a timetable that he wants to stick to.

Dad’s got plans to be wherever it is that he’s going at a certain time.

He has done pages of mental mathematics… running all sorts of navigational calculations against his personal biorhythms, applied ‘rush hour’ handicapping to whatever city you’ll be driving through then, figured out the liklihood of having the kids sleep at the most critical point…

Dad’s mind is on the journey.

It’s like a ‘bombing mission’ over hostile territory the way that he looks at it.

Moms worried about whether or not she left the iron on.

Dad doesn’t know what that is and why she’d be worried about that anyway.

Vacation creates a great disconnect between men and women.

At least the preparing and the motivating part.

If your relationship were the Titanic… vacation would be the iceberg.

I really don’t think that there’s anything more perilous a guy can do with his girl than to go on vacation.

This guy I used to work with… we’ll call him ‘Eddy’ because I’m not sure the solution that he came up with for this very situation was either legal or ethical… but damn… it was nothing short of brilliant.

Especially if you knew ‘Eddy.’

Me and the guys were sittin’ around the warehouse one day talking about this very phenomenon when Eddy jumps off the forklift and chimes in…

‘Bitches are always cranky right before they go on vacation… everybody knows that… you know what I do… I see it comin’ and I say ‘hey baby… you look a little stressed… let me get you a glass of wine.’

Then ‘Eddy’ said he goes to the kitchen… pours a nice glass of red outta the box in the fridge… and then he crushes up two xanax tablets and stirs ‘em in there real good.

He insists you gotta use red because he tried it with a zinfandel once and he said you could see like some ‘residue’ in the bottom of the glass.

‘She feels all happy that I noticed her anxiety and she cools off when I hand her the glass of wine you know’ he said.

All of us just stood there in stunned silence with wide eyes and mouths agape.

‘When those xanax kick in and the alcohol from the wine I ain’t got a problem in the world… I been doin’ it for years and it always works’… and he looked at us when he said it like he’d just divulged the very secret of life to us.

Fuckin’ ‘Eddy’… the smartest gahdamn forklift driver in the world.

None of us could believe his genius at that very moment.

And we all agreed later after he got fired for getting caught on video coming into the warehouse at five am one morning after a three day cocaine bender just to get a box of razor blades and then go home to call in sick that his idea was the most intelligent thing any of us had ever heard him say.

I’m not advocating ‘slipping your woman a mickey’ but I’ve sure thought about it since ‘Eddy’ told us about his secret method.

In my studies on the male mind I’ve found that most men can’t think past the next weekend.

That’s because statistically that’s when we’ll be most likely to successfully impregnate a woman and pass on the propensity to say stupid shit to yet another generation.

It’s a part of our biology.

Plus we have to work all week.

While a woman is entirely capable of making restaraunt reservations for dinner four months in advance.

About the same time she begins thinking about what she’ll wear to that dinner.

That comes from her biology.

She’s got that monthy cycle to break down time for her into manageable chunks.

It’s a lot easier to do when you can only get pregnant on one of those weekends anyway.

And if she’s on the other end of your weekend ‘reproductive success’ or failure depending on how you look at it she’s got a nine month gestation period to give her enough time to figure out the perfect color scheme for the nursery and whatever the most fashionable baby name might be that year.

That’s just the way it is.

It’s always been that way.

It will always be.

And those differences should be celebrated you know?

They are what makes a couple who’s found and nourished and built a functional relationship capable of so much more than any one person could be on their own.

Neanderthal mom would look back to last fall and remember where she filled her basket up with those delicious nuts… or the succulent berries in the spring.

Neanderthal dad and the guys would be playing around bullshitting with each other when one of them said ‘yo… check it out… a wooly mammoth… we should kill it.

And Neanderthal mom would always be accusin’ Neanderthal dad of behaving like a ‘Cro-magnon.’

The differences in the male and female mind and thought process’ are there for a reason.

Not just to cause you to get in all manner of fights with your girl and to get in the way of hot freaky.

The secret I think is to show your girl that even though you are for the most part a beast so different than what she really wants you to be that it is in many ways those very facets of your manliness that she secretly craves and needs in her life as much as baskets, throw pillows and paint sample chips.

And the way to show her that is to become her hero and save her ass.

One of these days I’m gonna rig up a secret ‘baby be cool’ button in my automobile.

Here’s what it will do…

whenever Sweet Honey Cake Biscuits isn’t showin’ me the love… if she’s all bitchin’ at me about some crazy shit I did for the fiftieth gahdamn time…

I can press the secret ‘baby be cool’ button.

It will make the vehicle break down.

Hopefully I will push it in the worst neighborhood I can.

At night.

Then as I glide to a stop on the side of the street she will get all freaked out…

feel really vulnerable and scared…

she’ll forget whatever the hell we were just fighting about… as soon as she confirms the car didn’t stop because I ran it out of gas…

and I will open that hood like a MAN.

Because I know where the secret lever that opens it is.

The thing on the side by where your legs go with the dumbass lookin’ stick figure standing in front of an open hood staring at an engine that he has no idea how the hell it works and scratching his head as he does.

And Honey Pie has no idea where the secret lever is.

We just happen to be in my ‘realm’ now.

I will demonstrate reassuring confidence that I can fix this problem and save our asses.

Maybe I’ll say something like ‘I know you’re scared baby… but don’t you worry Sweet Peaches… just give me a minute and I’ll have this fixed.’

Of course I will need some tools that I have in the back near the spare tire next to that comprehensive first aid kit that I’ve built over the years.

And I will make it a point to ask her where those tools are because I put them there for just this situation.

When she tells me that she ‘put them in the garage’ I’ll be cool with that… I won’t blow my stack… I’ll say ‘don’t worry baby… I can fix this… even with my bare hands if I have to.

I’ll mess under the hood for a couple minutes like I know what I’m doing as she bites her nails and sinks in her seat to keep from being seen…

I’ll touch something dirty and wipe that on my face so she can see it and be reminded of what a freakin hero I am when she tells me to wipe it off and lovingly hands me a baby wipe she keeps in that duffel bag sized purse of hers…

then I’ll get back in the car and press the secret ‘baby be cool’ button again…

Whammo!

I have saved us!

I am the man.

End of argument.

I think that button would end just about any argument.

Because she will instantly have it reinforced that even though I am a creature filled with flaws and who may have only evolved half as much as her… that she needs me.

Sometimes.

When I make the car break down in bad neighborhoods at night.

And even if you’re not arguing you could just use the ‘baby be cool’ button to be her hero every once in a while.

Because nothing gets you hot freaky like being a hero.

Her hero.

If you apply science, logic, psychology, thought and your half mastery of automotive mechanics to your goal… if you recognize all of the traps, dangers, perils and pitfalls of going on vacation with your woman…

and you have that ‘baby be cool’ button installed on your car like I’m telling you to do… and you use it at precisely the right moment…

you will be telling me how it is that you have personally come to discover that ‘vacation hot freaky’ is more than just the stuff of myth or legend.

You will be the man.

It’s either that or you’re gonna be telling me about the train wreck that was your vacation when your miserable ass makes it back to the refuge of the office where you’ll be just as unappreciated but you’ll be safe among men who’ve all ridden on the crazy train too.

Foundry and Studio


Image by achesonblog
Point Reyes Light – February 12, 2004

Public worries about fate of Lairds Landing

The Park Service is updating its management plan for the Point Reyes National Seashore and for the Golden Gate National Recreation Area north of Bolinas. The government so far has unveiled five "concepts" for that plan, and this week the nonprofit, Marinwatch unveiled a sixth. Please see Marinwatch's guest column in this issue. Two key elements of the concepts are what will happen to historic buildings in the parks and what will happen to agriculture. This week's issue focuses on historic buildings. Next week's focus will be on agriculture.

By Ivan Gale

First in a series

With the public facing a Friday, Feb. 20 deadline for commenting on proposals for a new plan to manage the Point Reyes National Seashore, the fate of historic structures at Lairds Landing is drawing public concern.

Lairds Landing, a cove on the west shore of Tomales Bay and adjacent to Marshall Beach, is imbued with a cultural history that stretches from the Miwok Indian era to the recent past, when it was home to artist and innovative furniture designer Clayton Lewis.

Lewis, who died in 1995, sent daily letters to his mother, decorating each envelope with a drawing. In time the drawings became so well-known they were the international exhibits. While at Lairds Landing, he became a commercial fisherman but was equally interested in netting fish for students to look at and then releasing the fish.

Miwok & art history

For the moment, both the Miwok dwellings and Lewis' studio-foundry – loft are in a state of arrested decay. Gordon White, chief of Cultural Resources for the National Seashore, last month told The Light, "At this point we're stabilizing the buildings until we have a better understanding of their significance."

White added he will decide next year whether to apply for federal funding to restore the buildings. But the real test of whether Lairds Landing will receive enough funding to preserve it will be whether it qualifies for the park Service's National Register of Historic Places, White said.

Most structures need to be at least 50 years old and fit into certain historical themes, said White, noting that one of them is Coast Miwok history. If the park study finds that these structures fit the qualifications, federal funding will be much easier to come by, he said.

"Until then," White said, "we're assuming they're eligible until they're proven otherwise."

John Dell'Osso, Chief of Interpretation for the National Seashore, said he is hesitant to call the older buildings "Miwok structures" because they have been extensively remodeled, but he conceded they "definitely [have] a Miwok historical component."

Can't save them all

Dell'Osso stressed that there are 297 historic buildings that the park is responsible for, and each with a different level of significance.

"Getting funding is very competitive," Dell'Osso noted. Although the National Seashore gets Park Service money each year to maintain and restore major structures, such as the lighthouse, getting money for smaller projects is more difficult.

The National Seashore annually competes with 51 other national parks in the Western Regional Division of the Park Service (or a total of 388 parks nationwide) for preserving cultural history.

"We're doing what we can," Dell'Osso said. "Can we literally take care of every historical building? No. That's not physically possible." Doing so, Dell'Osso estimated, would cost "tens of millions of dollars."

However, the Park Service's recent razing of homes in Hamlet, Jewell, and Stinson Beach has convinced some critics that the government is trying to save money on maintenance by eliminating buildings that need significant upkeep.

A former West Marin resident now living in Novato, Vanya Bostroem commented after seeing Hamlet destroyed, "Suddenly I saw that the Park Service does have a plan. They acquire a property (with our money), then they practice intentional neglect until the place is beyond repair, and finally, they tear it down, saying it is beyond repair."

Deliberate neglect

Urging that Lairds Landing be protected, Bostroem added, "Let's not let the Park Service (with the emphasis on the service) raze another part of West Marin just because they haven’t the imagination to do otherwise."

By at least one historical account, there was a Miwok settlement at Lairds Landing since before 1830. It was one of nearly 100 Miwok settlements, some with more than 100 residents, on Point Reyes when the white man arrived.

Sites chosen for settlements usually provided protection from the elements and proximity to the Pacific Ocean or Tomales Bay.

"It was a rich place to live," noted Miwok archeologist Sylvia Thalman. "They harvested all sorts of things."

Along with hunting elk, birds, antelope, and other wildlife, the Miwok at Lairds Landing collected mussels, clams, and abalone. In the hills, they gathered acorns to make acorn "bread," a staple of their diet, , noted Thalman.

Other "produce" just there for the picking included hazelnuts, berries, miner's lettuce, and some wildflowers.

The mission catastrophe

The catastrophe of the Spanish mission system struck the Tomales Bay area in the 1790s, with Miwok rounded up to be enslaved workers, initially at Mission Delores in San Francisco and later at Mission San Rafael as well.

Many died from disease and overwork.

The Mexican Revolution in 1821 reached Alta California in 1822. While many Indians remained in servitude, many more were given land or allowed to return to their ancestral homelands.

Miwok at Lairds Landing

By 1830, according to testimony in a 1954 property-ownership case, Euphrasia Felix, a Miwok, and her husband Domingo, a Filipino, were living at Lairds Landing.

In 1858, Charles and George Laird were dairy ranching on the surrounding land, which had been acquired by the Shafter Estate. In order to ship their butter to San Francisco, the brothers around 1861 built a jetty to the Tomales Bay shore, which was how the cove came to be called Lairds Landing.

Among the Miwok living at Lairds Landing in the 1800s, the Felix family settled. Some reports suggest the family of Domingo and Euphrasia Felix, settled at the cove in the 1880s, while other reports suggest they were there as early as the 1830s.

Around 1900, Domingo and Euphrasia erected the buildings that stand today. One of their daughters, Perfy, lived there as did another descendant, Virginia Jensen, who owned Hamlet across the bay until the Park Service bought the village in 1987, finally destroying it last year.

Recalls her youth at cove

Perfy and her sister Bertha lived a "very, very, quiet life," Jensen said. "It might have been nice if you liked to live quietly. Walking up to the beach, you could hear the water coming in and lapping on the shore. It always seemed so soothing to me."

Jensen recalled the family cultivating a large vegetable garden. It was commonplace for them to row across Tomales Bay to buy supplies in Marshall. "Rowing in those days didn't mean nothing," Jensen said. "If they needed something they'd row for it. They didn't have outboard motors or anything."

Jensen said, as a little girl, she remembered using a hoe to dig for clams along the shore. But life at Lairds Landing was not easy, and by the 1940s, most of the family had left.

The last Miwok descendant living on the west shore of Tomales Bay, Victor Sousa, son of Bertha Felix, was evicted in 1955 by owners of the Turney Dairy Ranch, who claimed they had bought Lairds Landing when they bought surrounding K Ranch in 1952.

Miwok in white man's world

Sousa responded he had squatter's rights, but proving squatter's rights required proving he had lived on the land five years, fenced it without permission, and paid taxes on it.

Sousa hadn't been paying taxes so it was necessary for him to demonstrate to the court that his ancestors had occupied the site prior to 1878, the year California's tax law went into effect.

But it was now a white man's world. Sousa lacked the necessary documentation and was evicted. Sousa moved to Marshall and died in 1966. Virtually all Coast Miwok living in West Marin today are his descendants.

In 1960, Murray Richards bought the land and in 1964 decided to rent the little buildings at Lairds Landing.

After the park acquired the property in 1972, Supt. John Sansing ordered that the Richards family home be torn down. Lewis, who rented from Richards, in theory had not been a landowner so the Park Service supposedly was not obligated to lease his land back to him as they were obligated to do with other landowners.

Lewis' luck

However, because Lewis had built his foundry-studio, he actually did own property in the National Seashore, and the Park Service was forced to allow him to stay.

For many young people who moved to West Marin in the 1960s and 70s, Lewis epitomized a back-to-the-land bohemian lifestyle, long-time friend Richard Kirschman of Dogtown said Wednesday.

"Clayton was perhaps the absolute ideal of West Marin counterculture for younger people who were trying to figure out how to live a moral life and not get caught up with the industrialization and commercialization," said Kirschman. "He was the antithesis of that.

"He lived in a beautiful place, made virtually no money; he lived without electricity or telephone; his life was off the grid."

Kirschman said Lewis was capable of being "anywhere from an irritating curmudgeon to the world's greatest guy. It depended which sex you were. He was very fond of women."

A renaissance man

Jonne LeMieux, who ran Drake's Beach Cafe in the National Seashore, was married to Lewis for a time and lived with Lewis at Lairds Landing for 13 years in the 1980s and early 90s. "He was a renaissance man," she said last week. "I worked at the restaurant. When I came home, he would often have dinner made from clams he had dug or fish that he'd caught."

For awhile, Frank Cerda of Point Reyes Station lived in the Miwok structures. "He had restored a smaller cabin with a fantastic view of the bay. It had an elaborate bedstead, and the surrounding decor was an artist's dream concept. I lived in one of the buildings for several years, off and on.

"When I knew him," said Cerda, "he was very reclusive and didn't suffer fools. He was an artist who guarded his privacy.

In his later years, another of Lewis' artist visions drawn on the envelopes of letters he sent to his mother in Washington State five days a week, earned him unusual acclaim.

Trying to save memorial

Elaborate watercolor drawings covered the envelopes. Lewis sent more than 500 such letters until his mother died in 1985.

The art was noticed by famed California historian J.S. Halliday, who wrote about Lewis in a California Historical Society magazine. Subsequently, Lewis and Kirschman went to Paris for an opening of his envelope exhibit.

When Lewis died in September 1995, the memorial at Lairds Landing was huge. The crowd "was in the hundreds," Kirschman said. "People came by foot, by car, and by boat. They talked, and drank, and ate, and smoked. It was a wonderful event."

After Lewis' death, his son Peter, Kirschman, and others created a nonprofit to teach environmental education in Lewis' memory, but their goal failed when political activists and the park's Citizens Advisory Commission opposed the idea.

"The buildings are just rotting away," the son said. "It's so depressing, I can't even go out there anymore." He noted that when his father died, he was assured the buildings would be preserved.

"Now, they're leaking like sieves," Peter Lewis said. "I suspect in the next 10 years, they'll be in such bad shape [the Park Service] will have no choice but to knock them down."

The Park Service's lack of appreciation for the artist's studio notwithstanding, the Smithsonian Institute is considering an exhibition of Lewis' envelope art, noted Kirschman. "If that happens, I wouldn't want to be the one who tore down Picasso's studio."

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