Editor:
Go Cody Hills! (“Backyard of Boats,” Dec. 6.) Not only are you honoring the Lazio and Alioto families’ legacies by restoring Stephanie, you are also carrying on for the Machis and Shelter Cove. My grandfather, Pop Machi (1877-1969) was born and raised in St. Elia, Sicily, and as a young man emigrated to the U.S. to settle in San Francisco. In 1909 he formed the San Francisco International Fish Company along with Tony Trapani and cousin Joe Alioto. The company evolved over the years and the partnership eventually included the Lazios. Both the Lazio and Alioto families came from the same fishing village in Sicily that my grandfather did.
The Fish Company bought property at Shelter Cove in 1928, developing commercial fishing, mostly shipping out salmon. Pop’s eldest son, my dad Tony, first came to the cove from San Francisco aboard one of the Fish Company’s vessels at age of 16 in 1928. It’s highly possible it was the International #3. Pop’s two other sons, my uncles Babe and Mario, would soon follow. The brothers worked on the dock during the summer of the late ’20s and early ’30s. In 1946, just after World War II, the Machi brothers bought the 40 acres surrounding the cove and began reestablishing and creating businesses that remain today. They left a legacy of sport and commercial fishing, motels, a campground, restaurant and snack bar, bar, tackle shop, boat launching and some pretty daring rescues.
I keep a fond eye on Stephanie knowing my dad, uncles and grandfather walked her decks many years ago.
Mary Ann Machi, Cutten
This article appears in The End of the World.
You’d be tarred and feathered by these recent ancestors had you warned them that farmed salmon would replace the wild runs that collapsed, the carbon in the ocean that’s now forcing the farming of shellfish, Humboldt’s rivers and wildlife becoming endangered….as if we’d learned nothing from the idiotic farming techniques that caused the dust bowl. Far be it from our “intelligent” species to interfere with the last profiteer of collapse before we change our ways.
Unless our words and deeds start focusing laser-like on local sustainability, the end of cheap oil will provide another wake-up call unparalleled in human history.