Downtown islanders set for summer

Last year, Tony Borst's summer on the river ended poorly.

Bludgeoned with a baseball bat in the middle of the night and left in the coals of a fire pit, he suffered 17 cracked ribs, a shattered elbow, third-degree burns and other injuries.

But several months in medical facilities and one artificial elbow later, Borst is back home -- on an island downtown.

The start of summer means many things to many people -- baseball, barbecues, beach trips, for instance. For Borst and friend Joseph "J.D." Osborne, it's all about the river.

Introduced to the public last year in a Richmond Times-Dispatch story, Borst and Osborne have been spending summers on two small islands in the James for decades, camping in tents or makeshift structures, cooking over fires and drinking beer.

One of the islands is privately owned, with the owner happy to allow guests. The other is unclaimed. Both are accessible from land only by railroad tracks near the Mayo Bridge.

"We try to keep a pretty low profile," Borst said recently at Osborne's camp, sipping a beer after work.

Though still in physical therapy for his injuries, Borst was recently able to get his job back as a landscaper and picked up two other part-time gigs. Osborne is still living off disability money.

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This year, Osborne is on Vauxhall Island, while Borst has laid claim to Devil's Kitchen Island, a more spacious but isolated chunk of land farther down the tracks.

Both serve as landlords for their respective islands, allowing a rotating cast of tenants to set up camp if they fit the bill. Joe Kokoszki, an unemployed ironworker from Michigan, was recently approved.

"I made some bad choices with alcohol. That's what got me here," he said, grilling a burger over a campfire at his site overlooking the rapids on the south side of the privately owned Vauxhall.

Kokoszki said he started drinking at age 5, when his alcoholic father would take him to bars with him. Kokoszki stayed clean three years, then slipped back into his old habits. Two driving-under-the-influence charges later, he was living on the streets.

Kokoszki spent last year sleeping on fire escapes, wrapped in plastic to keep the rain off. He was recently provided a tent and a new pair of boots by HillTop Promises, a Richmond support group, and found out about the island from some others in the homeless community. Now he's using it as a rehab camp of sorts while he looks for work and a home. He says he has been sober for two months.

"I never really expected to be in this position. A lot of nights I'll cry myself to sleep just feeling like my life has crumbled and I don't know if I'll be able to rebuild it," he said, regretting the marriage that fell apart and the son he's lost touch with.

"Alcohol's a wonderful drug," he said, managing a laugh.

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Another new character this summer is Undertaker, Osborne's 7-month-old black Lab. He picked him up over the winter while living in a city apartment, but the dog went missing last weekend. Osborne suspects a drifter made off with him.

"He's the only thing that keeps me going, and he loves it out here," Osborne said from beneath the railroad bridge, where his comfortable camp is outfitted this year with a stereo and karaoke setup for happy hour.

Osborne is considering moving from the island, saying he doesn't want to be there without Undertaker.

"You don't know what that dog means to me," he said, recalling his morning trips across the tracks to the South Side to fetch breakfast with his pup. "He's all I have."

In the meantime, Osborne "ain't doing nothing but fishing," he said. And though he doesn't care for catfish himself, he has been offering them to Kokoszki. "He got so many catfish now he don't want no more," he said. "He wants bass."

Kokoszki has even taken up fishing himself, landing his first catfish a couple of weeks ago with a tricky rod and reel he borrowed from Osborne.

"I was proud of myself," he said. "And it wasn't just that I caught my first catfish from the James, it was the first fish I ever caught sober."

Contact Wesley P. Hester at (804) 649-6976 or .