Things always get messy where the land meets the sea. Such was the case yesterday, when we visited Cannery Row in Monterey. Once the center for the local fishing industry, Cannery Row in now a tourist mecca. Anchored at one end by the Monterey Bay Aquarium, it is home to a host of shops and restaurants that vary from the high end to the ticky-tacky. The canneries are mostly gone now, except for their concrete bones that still remain. The poor immigrants who used to work in these smelly fish factories are gone, only to be replaced by modern day immigrants who are reduced to panhandling on the street.

It is a picturesque place to walk. Even the ruins of long dead canneries, now lost is some legal limbo still add character to the place. We were walking past some of these ruins when we happened upon two people having an altercation. They were a young man and woman. The woman was emphatically telling the man to go away. She would turn away from him, but he would always get back in her face. We watched this go on for about five minutes, rising in tension as it went. At some point a sidewalk vendor interceded, telling him no meant no, but he was not having any of that. She pulled out her phone and threatened to call the cops, when he grabbed it away from her. It was at this point that Anne called the police. An officer soon arrived, eventually followed by two more. They interviewed the couple and us and then told us that this was not their first dealing with these two. With everything seemingly under control, we left.

Decades ago, I encountered a similar situation. I was in Monterey on business. I had rented a bike and was riding the path that encompasses the peninsula. It was early morning, predawn, before work. I was biking along when a naked woman appeared on the trail. Distraught, she was walking the opposite way. This was before cell phones, and I continued on until I reached the end of the trail and then turned around. When I returned to where I had seen the woman before, the place was a hive of police activity. A little while later I saw the woman again. She was now clothed in only a blanket, but this was enough for her to escape.