San Sebastian Avenue
by Jon Gregory Presco
Copyright 2012
Chapter One
Three weeks ago I exchanged words with my niece, Drew Benton, for the first time in a cyber Land of Make Believe – that will go unnamed lest our worldly enemies track us down and snatch the secret key from us. Let us call this place ‘Moy Mell’ after a Faire Land far over the sea, where only………
The Dunites called their Bohemian community Moy Mell, a sanctuary for folks who had left the beaten path, could not cope, or, were just following their dream. It has been suggested that most people who can’t cope, become dreamers. But, it is a matter of what came first, the chicken or the egg. Whatever, we are not eggs or chickens. Usually wer are poets and artists, mystics, and hermits, who at an early age considered ourselves Foundlings.
I am a Foundling, after my grandfather, Royal Rosamond, who took his third born daughter Lillian down to the dunes in Ventura where there was another shanty town built by Bohemians and odd fellows.
“These are my people!” Royal proudly exclaimed as he he did an Irish Jigg to the music an old Scotsman played on his violin. My kindred had just had tea in a little shack in Ventura by the Sea.
When I interviewed Lillian for my autobiography, she told me her father took her to the top of hill overlooking Ventura where she and her three beautiful sisters had grown up. Royal had been away, and had come home……………just to say goodbye!
Mary Magdalene Rosamond had banished her husband from his home where dwelt the Faire Roses of the World. My grandfather was a very poor provider. Mary was making hats to support her children. However, there was a man lurking about, a dark man whose history did not survive for some reason. Perhaps it is because he sired no children. Uncle Conrad was Mary’s brother. He owned several home in the Ojai Valley, and the home the Rosamond’s lived in. He was a landlord.
With tears in her eyes, Lilian told me how her father imparted his dream to her, when he affixed her gaze out to sea, over the horizon, to the land of eternity, where the noblest attributes of humankind, dwell – a land where poets and artists are not punished for creating their beloved sanctuaries.
I met Drew Benton for the first time at her mother’s house, the day before Christine Rosamond Benton’s funeral in Carmel by the Sea. She had come over to play video games with her cousin, Shamus. Vicki Presco introduced us. Drew turned to look me in the eyes, did not speak, and went back to play in cyber world. When we met in Moy Mell, our Avatars, she approached this grey haired warrior and exclaimed with her computer keyboard;
“My long lost uncle!”
We had another exchange where I thanked my niece for helping this novice perform a simple task. I was vulnerable, and in danger of being slain by a tulip or an innocent looking mushroom. Vicki was a powerful elf creature on a winged horse, an old gamer that knew the ropes. I couldn’t get my sword to swing at these turd looking creatures. Why are these ugly things here. Do I own a anal cavitiy?
I was not in the mood for killing. I had come here to write poetry. Here are two stanzas from my poem ‘Dreamer’ I scribed when I was fourteen.
“Forget about living a life
of beauty and art
for the plays you have written
have no actors to act the part.
Forget about living a wonderful life
For you
there can only be strife
For you are a Dreamer
And Dreamers can only dream”
After I typed this message to Drew “I love you”, we parted ways. We left Moy Mell, but, we would never be that far apart again. For, I felt my psyche, my inner world, make a place for her, my kindred soul I never knew when young due to the conflict between her mother and I. In penning these words, that want to become memories, I have considered about writing a biography where nothing bad ever happened to any member of my family – and we never argued! But, that would mean everyone gets a piece of the Dunite Pie. But, not everyone likes the Dunites. Indeed, some of my kindred hate us with all their might.
This truth can not be deied………..the Prescos were famous for their arguments. One can say the same thing about the Bentons. Is there a cyber world called ‘American Pie’ where one can go on a Quest in the Land of the Free, wander about as Davy Crockett, or give a speech that begins
“Four score and seven years ago….”
With the blending of the Presco and Benton DNA comes together two Patriotic families. There are politicians and generals galore in Drew’s family tree. But, no one wants to read that dead history. For awhile folks wanted to read about how Christine became a world famous artist. Two very bad biographies were published, and there are two screenplays out there waiting to get on the Silver Screen located in the Land of Milk and Holly. These, books, are bad make believe. Indeed, they are make unbelieve because they could not even begin to pinpoint the great tragedy in our family. Here it is…..
Christine and I never created, never rendered works of art, side by side. And this is what she wanted all along, when she first pick up the brush, to join her brother and his beloved friend Bill, in Moy Mell.
The three artist God put in the world to accompany me in the Land of Make Believe, are dead. I felt all alone until three weeks ago. Then I felt her, here, she at her work table, engrossed in her vision, her hand that is liken to all the Roses of the World, moving across the white empty space, like a phonograph needle across a record, I hear her, and feel the energy she makes, so near, yet so far away.
“Drew! Is that you?”
Here is music to go go with the words you are about to read. I see Royal Rosamond atop a hill in Ventura by the Sea. He is with his beautful wife and daughters, their eyes beholding Moy Mell, the land they can now believe.
Jon Presco
ONNLA of the Fiery Hair was son of Conn of the Hundred Fights. One day as he stood by the side of his father on the height of Usna, he saw a maiden clad in strange attire coming towards him.
“Whence comest thou, maiden?” said Connla.
“I come from the Plains of the Ever Living,” she said, “there where there is neither death nor sin. There we keep holiday alway, nor need we help from any in our joy. And in all our pleasure we have no strife. And because we have our homes in the round green hills, men call us the Hill Folk.”
The king and all with him wondered much to hear a voice when they saw no one. For save Connla alone, none saw the Fairy Maiden.
“To whom art thou talking, my son?” said Conn the king.
Then the maiden answered, “Connla speaks to a young, fair maid, whom neither death nor old age awaits. I love Connla, and now I call him away to the Plain of Pleasure, Moy Mell, where Boadag is king for aye, nor has there been complaint or sorrow in that land since he has held the kingship. Oh, come with me, Connla of the Fiery Hair, ruddy as the dawn with thy tawny skin. A fairy crown awaits thee to grace thy comely face and royal form. Come, and never shall thy comeliness fade, nor thy youth, till the last awful day of judgment.”
The king in fear at what the maiden said, which he heard though he could not see her, called aloud to his Druid, Coran by name.
“Oh, Coran of the many spells,” he said, “and of the cunning magic, I call upon thy aid. A task is upon me too great for all my skill and wit, greater than any laid upon me since I seized the kingship. A maiden unseen has met us, and by her power would take from me my dear, my comely son. If thou help not, he will be taken from thy king by woman’s wiles and witchery.”
Then Coran the Druid stood forth and chanted his spells towards the spot where the maiden’s voice had been heard. And none heard her voice again, nor could Connla see her longer. Only as she vanished before the Druid’s mighty spell, she threw an apple to Connla.
For a whole month from that day Connla would take nothing, either to eat or to drink, save only from that apple. But as he ate it grew again and always kept whole. And all the while there grew within him a mighty yearning and longing after the maiden he had seen.
But when the last day of the month of waiting came, Connla stood by the side of the king his father on the Plain of Arcomin, and again he saw the maiden come towards him, and again she spoke to him.
” ‘Tis a glorious place, forsooth, that Connla holds among shortlived mortals awaiting the day of death. But now the folk of life, the ever-living ones, beg and bid thee come to Moy Mell, the Plain of Pleasure, for they have learnt to know thee, seeing thee in thy home among thy dear ones.”
When Conn the king heard the maiden’s voice he called to his men aloud and said:
“Summon swift my Druid Coran, for I see she has again this day the power of speech.”
Then the maiden said: “Oh, mighty Conn, fighter of a hundred fights, the Druid’s power is little loved; it has little honour in the mighty land, peopled with so many of the upright. When the Law will come, it will do away with the Druid’s magic spells that come from the lips of the false black demon.”
Then Conn the king observed that since the maiden came Connla his son spoke to none that spake to him. So Conn of the hundred fights said to him, “Is it to thy mind what the woman says, my son?”
” ‘Tis hard upon me,” then said Connla; “I love my own folk above all things; but yet, but yet a longing seizes me for the maiden.”
When the maiden heard this, she answered and said: “The ocean is not so strong as the waves of thy longing. Come with me in my curragh, the gleaming, straight-gliding crystal canoe. Soon we can reach Boadag’s realm. I see the bright sun sink, yet far as it is, we can reach it before dark. There is, too, another land worthy of thy journey, a land joyous to all that seek it. Only wives and maidens dwell there. If thou wilt, we can seek it and live there alone together in joy.”
When the maiden ceased to speak, Connla of the Fiery Hair rushed away from them and sprang into the curragh, the gleaming, straight-gliding crystal canoe. And then they all, king and court, saw it glide away over the bright sea towards the setting sun. Away and away, till eye could see it no longer, and Connla and the Fairy Maiden went their way on the sea, and were no more seen, nor did any know where they came.
Bouke Schievink, the self-styled hermit of the Oceano Dunes, was born in one of the Frisian Islands in the North Sea off the coast of the Netherlands and passed through New York’s Ellis Island in 1925 while still in his early 20s.
After six years of working at odd jobs, he returned to the Netherlands, first as a stowaway and later by working with the regular crew. When this self-
educated man arrived back in Frisian and found that his parents refused to accept his free-spirited ideas and actions, he knew that the visit would be his last.
Bouke Schievink arrived at the dunes in 1940 when a colony of “free spirits” inhabited the sandy terrain.
Squatters, labeled “Dunites” by the townspeople, found the area located between Oceano and Oso Flaco Lake to be ideal for their needs. They formed a settlement of driftwood shacks in the dunes, where its more or less permanent residents could have a plentiful supply of clams.
Edward C. St. Claire, a veteran of the Spanish-American war and a student of music, philosophy and poetry, became the first person known as a dunite. Before a half century had passed, the area would become home to an assortment of hobos, philosophers, mystics, writers and astrologers, each trying to live his or her life in a way that seemed foreign (but romantic) to the rest of the world.
Although they went there seeking solitude, and even though they sometimes squabbled among themselves, they were there for each other when needed. The camaraderie of the dunites was extraordinary.
Chester Alan Arthur III (known as Gavin to his friends), grandson to the 21st President of the United States, and heir to large sums of money at various times during his life, came to the dunes at an early age. He found himself enchanted with the colony and even attempted to create a Utopian society, named “Moy Mell,” within the dunes.
During one of his “flush periods,” Gavin bought a house at the corner of Paso Robles and Elm Streets in Oceano and furnished it with some antiques that had belonged to his grandfather. However, this proved to be another of Gavin’s follies as when his inheritances didn’t come in fast enough to keep him solvent, he was eventually forced to sell the property.
Gavin built a cabin made from quality lumber, instead of the usual driftwood. He installed a metal fireplace which his family had imported years before, and promoted the idea of a monthly magazine whereby his motto of “Individuality within Community” could be broadcast to the world.
In January of 1934 the first regular issue of the dunite magazine, Dune Forum, was on the newsstands with contributions coming from the most prominent figures in the art and literary fields of the times. Alas, the publication proved to be a bit too intellectual and expensive (35 cents) for the average person during that time of the Great Depression and the last issue of the magazine was published in May of the same year.
When Schievink — who preferred to be called “Bert,” arrived at the dunes, there were approximately
20 shacks made of driftwood stuck here and there in the sands. In order to find shelter from the curious, he selected a pocket of land located on the inland side of the huge mounds near the Arroyo Grande Creek, and proceeded to build a two-room shack using the usual driftwood found in the area.
This student of philosophy and astrology charted his life by the stars and often prepared birth charts for the many friends that he’d made in the area.
In order to finance the necessities not provided by nature, Bert became caretaker for summer cottage owners in and around Oceano by keeping up the landscaping, and doing minor repairs, thus establishing ties which lasted a lifetime.
He took what little money he made as a caretaker and invested it in the stock market. In time he had built himself up a tidy sum, only to lose it when the stocks fell. The money that he sent to his folks in the old country was readily accepted, but when his luck changed and he could no longer send money, they wanted no part of him.
As time went by, Bert’s fellow dunites either died or simply moved away.
Hikers who stumbled upon his cabin were all hospitably received, and the coffee pot was always on the stove.
Kathleen Jones once told me that Bert neither liked large groups of people, nor airplanes flying overhead. In addition, he had a nervous problem in that he couldn’t tolerate people staying with him in his cabin for more than an hour without becoming completely stressed out. Upon learning of this, Kathleen and her husband, Gaylord, made it a point of keeping their visits short.
Schievink dug two shallow wells in the fresh water just beneath the sand near his cabin and cultivated a vegetable garden, partly for his own needs and partly to feed rabbits and raccoons who accepted him as a friend. Birds had free rein on his property with one becoming so tame that it ate from Bert’s hand. He walked the dunes at all hours of the day and night, taking in its vastness, and enjoying the wild flowers and plant life.
But then Bert took sick. His legs became increasingly stiff and painful and he couldn’t eat. Although his friends urged him to see a doctor, he knew that if he ever left the dunes, he’d never return. His good friend, Harold Guiton, finally persuaded him to go to the doctor.
The two friends of many years, walking side by side, left the dunes together. With Guiton sitting by his bed at the hospital, Bert Schievink passed away from the ravages of cancer Aug. 21, 1974 at the age of 74.
Bert’s friends scattered his ashes over the dunes, thus making him a part of the place that he loved so much. Three months later, when his shack was burned down by two teenage vandals, the only remaining trace of the last of the dunites became a pile of smoldering ashes.
Rosamond Press 
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