I remember Varda. My dad was a friend of him and Alan Watts. When I was 11, my dad took us (my brother and sister, and our friend P.B. Rivers, who we picked up from Gorda on our way up the coast) in a camper, up to SF to visit Alan. We all slept in the camper parked outside the houseboat the night we arrived.

In the morning Dad went in to say hello and socialize with whoever was there. We kids hung around without a lot to do but mess around dockside. There was a walkway on stilts going out over the mudflats to Varda's side of the houseboat.

Sometimes Varda gave us scraps from his collage scrap boxes to play with. We liked playing hide and seek through the "secret passage" that connected Varda's side with Alan's side.

On this morning, we were hungry and the grown ups were sitting at Varda's big table, talking and laughing. Our friend P.B. was lying on the walkway outside dangling his hands in the water. We were watching the guppies swimming over the mud. Suddenly, P.B. reached his hand in and pulled out a baby dogfish by the tail - about a foot long - like a baby shark. We all ran into Varda's side to show off our catch.

Varda leapt out of his chair at the end of the table and shouted "Breakfast!" , ran over, grabbed the dogfish and slammed it down on the wooden counter at the side of the room and before you could say "Jack Robinson", had it chopped and gutted with a huge cleaver, and frying in a pan full of onions and tomatoes.

Yeah! That was Varda! It was a good breakfast!

Originally posted on Sausalito.net on March 24, 19102 at 05:45:53:
In Reply to: Re: Jean Varda posted by Daniel Francis Eggink on October 19, 1998 at 10:19:34: