Smuggler E-Book

Robert Stark

• Herausgeber: Spines
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

"Smuggler" is a riveting memoir that chronicles the extraordinary life journey of a man navigating the clandestine world of illegal activities, intricate relationships, and life-threatening situations. From his humble beginnings as an orphan to his rise as a skilled operator in various underground enterprises, the protagonist shares candid reflections on the values, decisions, and experiences that shaped his identity and shaped his path. Through tales of high-stakes maneuvers, unexpected alliances, and personal revelations, the book offers profound insights into human nature, resilience, and the pursuit of self-discovery. With a blend of suspenseful narratives and thought-provoking reflections, "Smuggler" captivates readers with its raw authenticity and profound wisdom, ultimately celebrating the power of choice and the resilience of the human spirit.

Leseprobe

Robert Stark

Smuggler

All rights reserved

Copyright © 2024 by Robert Stark

No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

Published by Spines

ISBN: 979-8-89383-376-8

SMUGGLER

A LIFE OF DANGEROUS ADVENTURE

ROBERT STARK

“My Life Story? You wouldn’t believe it if I told you. Hell, I have trouble believing it, and I was there!”

FOREWORD

I have always believed that there are a great many things that parents teach their children—things that help them to understand others, know when someone is joking, help to know how to fit in, or even how to feel love. I began to believe this because, when I was in my teens, every day I would find myself clueless and full of questions about one interaction or another, while I would see others seemingly know without question where they stood. At first, I could not figure out how. I knew I was not dull; in fact, even people I felt were seemed to have this mysterious knowledge.

I eventually came to understand that the vast majority of people have a sense of self at least partially based upon their parents. It is so innate that they are completely unaware of it or the effect it has on their every waking moment, good or bad. If you tell a person that this is so, they invariably cannot understand what you are suggesting, so incorporated into their persona it is. They cannot separate themselves from this mental picture of themselves, it being a big part of what they use to define who they think they are.

Now you might ask what importance this revelation has to the story that follows. Its importance is in helping the reader to understand the why of many of the actions and experiences I will relate here. If you find the events and experiences I chronicle here hard to believe, I completely understand. I sometimes find them hard to believe myself, and I was there. All names have been changed to protect the guilty!

CHAPTER 1

NEW MEXICO

I will not bore you with endless childhood memories; I have few anyway. I was born in the 1950s in a small town in New Mexico, or at least that is what is on my Birth Certificate. My parents' real home was Los Alamos National Laboratory. As at that time, this was a Top Secret base where the atom bomb was invented and where the most sensitive weapons research was ongoing. Understandably, this place "did not exist" for security purposes. My parents were two of the hundreds, if not thousands, of civilian scientists working with the highest clearance on the most cutting-edge weapons research at that time.

Their work, as you can imagine, exposed them to many dangerous elements, not the least of which being various radioactive isotopes. I have no idea why they split up, but my father left when I was 5. When I was 7, my mother told me my father had died. She was working at the Lawrence Livermore Radiation Lab by that time, and we were living in Livermore. I did not know it then, but my mother was also very ill. Cancer would take her life a year or two later. They were both in their mid-40s.

I remember running wild with my brothers with little guidance or attention from my mother. This, I came to realize later, was likely due to her ill health. I don't remember any loving or tender interaction with my mother or anyone else for that matter. In fact, as far as I can remember, I was never held or kissed as a child. I did get regular attention from my mother in the form of severe beatings. I don't think I was a bad child; quite the contrary. She was just overwhelmed by three very rambunctious boys, her job, and her advancing illness. By the time we moved to Berkeley, California, so she could work at the UCB/Radiation Lab, my persona had changed from happy to very serious. I consider this to be the end of my childhood. From this point on, I was paying attention, trying to figure the world out. I was an adult.

My mother died when I was either eight or nine; I can't remember. We had rarely celebrated birthdays or anything else, so I have no frame of reference. I do remember being called into the school office to be told my mother had died. They told me I didn't have to stay at school, so I walked home for reasons unknown to me. I wasn't worried about where I would go. I guess I was indifferent, having had little interaction with her save discipline.

I was sent for a time to live with some relatives back east who I had never met. First in Brooklyn, and then in New Jersey. I think they meant well and tried, but had no experience with a boy like me. In a short time, I was escorted back to San Francisco to be placed in a Group home (read orphanage). Except for a brief trip back east to be Bar Mitzvah'd, I never heard from or saw them again. I believe by this time I was already exhibiting symptoms of PTSD.

Left to fend for myself with no one to trust or ask questions of, I kept all my belongings in a knapsack ready to leave at a moment’s notice. Of course, there were house parents and social workers, some of whom really did care. This, however, did not prevent them from moving me from house to house until I was the youngest in the house or the oldest. Not sure why but must have had something to do with my regular sessions with the social workers or psychiatrist. I came to the conclusion that none of the adults had answers to my questions, so were giving me their best guess which, of course, is all any of us can do. I realized I would have to figure out everything for myself. I did make one decision which I believe served me well for the rest of my life. I decided that to dwell on a past that I could not change was a downward path that if followed would quickly become impossible to return from. I decided that no one did this to me, it was just life and like it or not I must deal with it.

I was determined to live the life that I thought kids with parents did. I joined the swim team in high school and was 3 years all city. I then played water polo in my brief stint at college all despite being the only one with no family in the bleachers cheering them on. I took shop classes, built a sailboat in woodshop, learned the lost cast method in jewelry class, taught myself to scuba dive, how to work on cars, how to sail, and took Philosophy. These things and more I did on my own, self-motivating, including continuing to work out regularly which I have kept up to this day. I went through my life determined to expect the highest standard of myself working out and eating the healthiest foods. Even teaching myself how to cook so I could control what I ate.

At some point, I was no longer trying to equal others but was instead seeing how much I was capable of. This may be where my habit of trying harder and taking on increasingly difficult projects started.

Continuing to try to learn what I didn’t know, figure out how I fit in, I needed to somehow acquire a sense of who I was, like everyone else seemed to have. It’s funny but despite being rejected and passed along so many times, I always had a belief that if I put my mind to anything, I could understand it. Not sure why. As I internalized my search, going over and over every interaction attempting to understand the rules, I learned that I could visualize, design, and test in 3D. I could even run two parallel storylines, comparing them, to understand the possible outcomes well into the future.

I explored all the various “paths to enlightenment” of the time, deciding very quickly of each that they had no special insight so were of no value. I remember once in a high school philosophy class, the professor was explaining the good that would come from being introspective and facing your own fears. He looked at me as the class let out, then said I had such a calm knowing expression. He asked me if I was OK. I lied, told him I was, even though I was hopelessly lost, believing I would never figure it out because there were so many variables. By this time, I would sit for hours in my own world running possible storylines trying to learn the outcome of each. I was lost in thought most of the time until finally I decided I had to get to living, no matter the hurt. I went out to deal with the world. One of the motivating factors was loneliness. Another was my approaching the age when I would be booted out of the orphanage. I felt no amount of rejection or hurtful words could be worse than being alone with no chance at happiness. At least if I tried, there was a chance.

Still, I was walking around shoulders slumped, head down, with a crippling insecurity when dealing with others because I had no value, no one wanted me. Deciding I could not live like this, I set out to decide what attributes defined the kind of person I wanted to believe I was. Then I adopted those traits as my own to begin living as that person. This gave me a framework to reference when deciding what was acceptable or not. When asked to help a friend, even when that help would put me in jeopardy, or when pressured to betray a friend to save myself, it was immediately clear to me that if I did not help that friend in a time of need or if I sold out a friend to “save myself,” I would instead lose myself. I would cease to be the person I wanted to be. I would lose being the person I was working so hard to become.

One of the first tests of my new persona came soon after. I had worked hard and saved enough to buy myself a little English sports car, an MG. One night while hanging out at the Daily City A&W, a friend of mine drives up in a brand new Triumph TR6 which was the competitor to my car. He had just 30 minutes earlier stolen this car and suggested we see which one performed better. We drove south on winding roads, racing until around 3 am when we found ourselves on the freeway at the Pacifica exit. I was in front. Not wanting to travel farther South, I took that exit. He followed, so we raced through Pacifica, looking for a way to get back on the freeway North. We passed a 7 Eleven with two police cruisers in the parking lot. I was a ways out front and saw them in time to slow, but apparently my friend behind me driving the stolen TR6 did not. On a straightaway, he flashed his headlights, so I pulled over. He pulled up behind, ran to my car, jumped in, and said, "GO, GO, GO." I looked in my mirror to see a police cruiser with lights on turning onto the straightaway. I managed to ditch them after a few turns but realized there were only two freeway on-ramps in Pacifica so we were probably trapped. I parked my car, and we took off on foot.

After a couple blocks, the police pulled up next to us and asked what we were doing and how we got there. I answered, "walking on the beach," and that we drove in my car. They put us in the back seat to have me show them where my car was. One officer got out, felt my tires, then said, “Yup, this is the car; tires are hot” (hardly admissible evidence). We were taken into custody then to the station where we were placed in separate rooms. One officer came into mine to begin questioning me. I refused to answer any question, knowing that my car was legal, so they had nothing on me. The officer said my friend was telling all and throwing me under the bus for Grand Theft Auto. He said he knew I didn’t steal the Triumph because I had my own car but would charge me unless I testified against my friend.

I had no intention of cooperating, even if he was telling all. Besides, I felt that their case was weak. I knew they always tell you your friend is ratting you out in a ploy to get you to talk. So I declined the offer. As it turned out, this time my friend was, in fact, throwing me under the bus. However, because they had only his testimony with no corroborative evidence, they were not able to charge me (nice tidbit of information I would use in the future). They had also found a camera that my friend stole from the Triumph then carried to my car, so charged me with receiving stolen property. I was told this charge would be dropped if I testified. I was not willing to give up my newfound ideals so declined this offer as well. I was assigned a public defender who should have been able to get such a flimsy case dropped with ease. Instead, through his inattention (read incompetence), I was convicted of the misdemeanor. This experience would affect some of my future decisions. The friend would go on to become a San Francisco police officer, which he could not have done with a Grand Theft Auto conviction. I never did get a thank you from him.

Years later, this same guy was busted in a corruption case within the SFPD. It seems some officers were looking the other way, sharing info with some of the Chinese gangs in Chinatown. Two of these gangs had been started in my high school while I, along with this former friend, were in attendance. He, being of Chinese descent, was friends with a couple of the guys who started one of the gangs. I always wondered if he wasn’t an unknown member before he became a cop.

By the time I was in high school, I pretty much had the orphanage wired. There was an internal school for those housed there because most were too disruptive to go to public school. I, however, attended public school where I received good grades so was given some latitude. I was allowed to have a dog, plus I had a private room. When I took wood shop, I didn’t want to make the standard first project, a box, so was allowed to build an El Toro racing sailboat. I joined the swim team thinking I wanted to experience everything I would if I had parents. Instead, it served to focus on the isolation and loneliness of being an orphan. I was a decent swimmer, being All-City for three years. The problem was that at the swim meets, everyone’s parents, sisters, and brothers would cheer for them while I would get out of the pool to a deafening silence, even though I had won. The medals I received only reminded me, so I gave them to a girlfriend's daughter years later. I was even allowed to travel to Mexico a number of times with my Marine Biology Professor. He had finagled the loan of an official California University System van then had convinced Shell Oil to provide an underwater camera, film plus cash for food etc. We would drive down to Guaymas on the Sea of Cortes for Christmas and Easter with a select group of his students to study the flora/fauna of the area. In reality, we would camp to party with the all-girl group of chosen students until the last few days when I would jump in the water to take some films. Shell Oil would put these in their commercials trying to convince the public they were not polluting the environment.

Later on, I would find out one reason the people running the home might have been so accommodating with me. When I was 14, my social worker gave me an IQ test. This was a requirement, I was told, for any child in an agency accepting public funds. After taking the test, I was called in again to take another IQ test. I thought I must have screwed up the first. It was not until I was older, when I broke into the house parents' apartment to read my file, that I discovered I had scored comparatively high.

I should mention again that the people who worked at the orphanage were, for the most part, good people with good intentions. They had to be to put up with the abuse that I, with the other kids, heaped upon them. Some because they were angry, me because I didn’t trust them. I call it an orphanage, but I was the only true orphan there (until my little brother was put in another house). The other kids were wards of the court, having been taken away from their parents. As such, every weekend and on holidays, they all would go home. I would be left there alone.

CHAPTER 2

I WAS A TEENAGE PUKA BARON

At 17.5 years, I moved out of what had been the only home I had known through my teens. I tried to follow the path that I had been told was the next step. I enrolled at CSU/SF as a Marine Biology major with a Pre-Med minor. I received SSI benefits from my parents so long as I carried a full load in school. To keep a roof over my head, I took a job as a lifeguard at night. To keep from starving, I would go down to Pigeon Point near Half Moon Bay, climb down the cliffs to a secret dive spot, then free dive for Abalone. At that time, you were allowed 7 per day. I had an old wetsuit (no hood or gloves), an old weight belt with an Ab iron made from the leaf spring off a car. I would climb down, jump into freezing water to get my limit most times by feel due to poor visibility. Then I would struggle back to shore with over 30 extra pounds of dead weight (no raft) to climb back up the cliff. Abalone is tasty but very rich. You couldn’t eat it too often without having a coronary, so I would take them down to Chinatown. There, I would trade to restaurants for food. Abalone was not legally available at that time (farmed now), so they would feed me for a week for a couple good size ones. The downside was I had to eat in the kitchen so I wouldn’t occupy a table. If you ever saw the inside of those kitchens, you would swear off Chinese food forever. Nevertheless, I did fairly well for a time, but eventually with no support plus no study skills, it became too much. Also, I didn’t want to be a doctor. I loved the ocean but found Marine Biologists were paid so little they had to eat their subjects or starve. I dropped out of school. Now I needed to survive with no support, little education, or skills. I worked every angle I could picking up laborer jobs at construction sites (later carpenter jobs), then eventually making jewelry to sell on Fisherman’s Wharf to tourists. Made good money until the city implemented a lottery for the limited spaces because of constant disputes. I put in but did not win, so with a friend Marcus (who was Mexican) I met on the wharf, I went to Mexico to begin importing. We would bring back Macrame’ pot hangers, then special women’s huaraches (woven leather sandals) that we had had made with wooden high heels. Sold great to the nurses at the medical center… Until they all had a pair!