MORRO BAY, CALIF. — I am sitting in the lobby of the Ascot Suites inn looking out at Morro Rock and talking to Tank Nelson. Both are imposing sights.
The rock is a volcano plug of sheer stone that towers almost 600 feet into the misty blue sky, just offshore. Tank, who is 6 feet 4, 240 pounds and vibrating with life, demands the same attention that one accords the rock.
This is a meeting I have wanted for several years, going back to the days when Tank wrote a weekly column out of San Pedro for the Daily Breeze. He sent me copies of his essays accompanied by letters that always ended with a scrawled "Laugh Lots."
He called his column "Think Tank." It ran until about three months ago, when, after 16 years, it became a victim of the downsizing affecting newspapers everywhere. I couldn't believe they would let a guy like that go. Born in San Pedro 75 years ago, Tank was the heart and soul of the old waterfront town nestled around the shipping docks.
In addition to the column, he had worked as a longshoreman since 1951, operating a hammerhead crane that loomed above one of the busiest commercial harbors in America. He retired at 62 but kept writing until the ax fell.
"It was fun back then," he says to me, following the comment with a burst of loud laughter and a wide-armed easy-come, easy-go gesture. A woman walking by the front door of the hotel, startled by the intensity of the laugh, pauses and looks in, wondering if there is a seal barking at her, or maybe a howling dog.
Tank is wearing a red shirt and jeans, and sneakers without socks. Everything about him is big: his size, his laugh, his ears and his dome-like balding head. His columns were full of memories and realities that often meandered like the wandering trips he took through San Pedro itself.
He wrote of characters like the 85-year-old woman he called Norma the Pistol he drank with down at Ante's, and the brawling Kennedy boys, Bob and Larry, who could whip anyone in town, weaving his own thoughts through prose that was remarkably visual.
I see him as a combination of Eric Hoffer, the stevedore philosopher San Francisco fell in love with; Charles Bukowski, the hard-drinking poet who, it was said, nailed his words to paper; and Eureka logger Jack McKellar, the burly 6-foot-3 self-described aging eagle of the redwoods. Rough-hewn poets all.
