TEPCO[1] Beach[2]
We crossed the highway and walked West, away from hunched Costco, toward the water. Path bordered by sour grass and wild fennel we picked till our tongues tingled. Wild radish’s purple and white petals. I picked a bundle of mugwort and put it in my inner pocket. I knew mugwort as one of the nine Saxon magic herbs. What magic, I didn’t know. Pon said if I put it under my pillow I’d have vivid dreams, or erotic. Patrick said he’d smoke what he took.
Along the water, only egrets and an old woman, walking home. Asked after her accent: she replied yes, she was German. From Munich.
Shelf mushrooms turned into plates, place-holders for rocks on the shore. Climbing a discarded segment of concrete stairs, I looked to be in an Escher painting sprinkled on some windswept shore, rain-torn post-storm. It was cool, the silver light. Like everything had already been preserved in tin type. A kind of photograph.
Anna took photographs of:
My post-industrial-sludge-covered boots, gooey green.[1]
Our friend the dead stingray. Even without arms, he looked like Jesus. Disc
width of fins spread. Mouth a slit, gap. Sting ray who died for our sins. Pon’s new
quarter next to him for scientific reference.
Mussel shells.
Live mussels.
Barnacles living on porcelain plates.
Barnacles living on porcelain mugs.
Pon, triumphant, with a fistful of mug handles.
My finger beside hermit crab who had adopted two plate pieces for his home.
An old TEPCO flyer:
“Good china
makers are not to be found
in the labor-market—
they must be made.”[4]
Our wide-angle view: the Bay Bridge and the Golden Gate. And a grey gauzy veil of cloud, specter disintegrating over San Francisco.
[1] Technical Porcelain and China Ware Company. Major producer of plates and other porcelain wares for hotels and restaurants all around the West Coast. The company, founded by Italian immigrant John Pagliero, also received contracts with the Navy, Army and Veterans Administration. Based in El Cerrito from the 1930s until it closed in 1968. For a long time, TEPCO was El Cerrito’s largest employer. As of 2010, El Cerrito’s top employers were the West Contra Costa Unified School District and Home Depot.
[2] The beach’s local name. It’s actually on the south shore of Point Isabel. TEPCO was granted a selective permit from the sanitation department to dump its mal-manufactured ware, as well as the china that remained when the factory was shut down.
[3] On November 7th, 2007, more than 200,000 liters of oil spilled into the San Francisco Bay after the Cosco Busan, a container ship, struck a tower of the SF-Oakland Bay Bridge under cover of a thick fog. Many beaches in the San Francisco and East Bay were temporarily closed, including Point Isabel.
[4] Despite this flyer promoting investment in long-term employees and compassionate corporatism, TEPCO did suffer from some problems. In the late 1930s, factory employees went on strike and there was a fire at the factory. After WWII, there was an explosion at the factory.
