Thinking About San Francisco

I'm working on this puzzle and it's bringing back so many memories of my childhood in San Francisco--waking up to the sound of foghorns and seagulls, riding my bike around the block in the fog, going by streetcar to the children's room in the big library on 19th Ave., getting lost in Golden Gate Park, going to Fisherman's Wharf with my parents for fresh crabs (and later sneaking the stinky shells into the trash cans down by Ocean Beach).

We lived in San Francisco from 1945 to 1956. I arrived as an infant in a little Ford with my parents who had driven cross country from Maine. At first we lived in housing for naval workers at Hunter's Point. At some point my parents were able to purchase a house on 48th Ave., just one block from the beach. When I was five, my little sister was born. (Note: My parents sold that house in 1956 for $11,000. Houses in that neighborhood are priced in the $750K's now!).

It was such a different time for a child. I rode my bike anywhere on the block as long as I didn't cross any streets. There were three taverns on that block and I would hold my breath as I passed to avoid the smell of stale beer and cigarette smoke. There was also a lady who lured children into her house to teach us Bible stories with a felt board. I went for the felt board, which fascinated me. I don't think I ever mentioned this adventure at home--not because I was being naughty, but just because kids' activities weren't generally a part of our dinner table conversations. 

A neighborhood friend and I took her doddering old grandpa on a walk to nearby Golden Gate Park where we all got turned around for a bit before finding our way home again. I wonder if my parents even knew we had gone. We were probably around seven at the time.

Francis Scott Key Elementary School, opened in 1908. In the late 1930s a more modern FSK school opened, but this old building, known as "The Annex" when I attended K-3, was still in use in the late 1940s 

When I was ready to go to kindergarten, my bachelor uncle (unfamiliar with children, I imagine) walked me there on the first day--down 48th Ave. to Judah Street, then up Judah to 43rd Ave. The second day he sent me to walk there on my own. To my credit, when they eventually found me, I was standing in front a big house painted in the same brown and yellow colors, but many blocks away.

I walked a couple of blocks down 48th Ave. when I was probably in 4th grade, to a skating rink to take ice skating lessons. Once again, by myself. No one hovered in those days, and the term "helicopter parent" had yet to be invented. 

Eventually I was allowed to go on the streetcar by myself to the library--what an adventure! I would take out as many books as the librarians would let me pile up and would start reading on the way home. 

Going back to work on my puzzle now.

San Francisco Memories

Because I spent part of my childhood living in San Francisco, I expected that our recent trip there would stir some memories, and it did. 

Crossing the Golden Gate Bridge with the fog coming in...

... catching a cable car...

... the excitement of the cable car going up... and up...

... and the stomach-clenching thrill of the cable car going down...

This is a tranquil shot taken out a restaurant window at Fisherman's Wharf (look closely for some of the resident sea lions sunning themselves). The wharf retail area is now much bigger and much busier than the wharf of my childhood, which had maybe three outdoor crab pots boiling for the few people waiting in line to take fresh crabs home with them. Back then in the early 1950s, there were a couple of big restaurants, and they are still there, but now the wharf area is "best known for being the location of Pier 39, the Cannery Shopping Center, Ghirardelli Square, a Ripley's Believe it or Not museum, the Musée Mécanique, the Wax Museum at Fisherman's Wharf, the Aquarium of the Bay, and the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park" (Wikipedia article, Fisherman's Wharf, San Francisco)

These little three-wheeled rental cars were a new sight to me. 

I loved having the chance to ride a familiar street car once again. 

This was the view from our daughter's hotel, the J.W. Marriott Union Square Hotel. You can see our hotel, the King George, somewhere down there. The cool San Francisco fog together with the sound of fog horns and the cries of seagulls took me right back to my childhood...

... as did this intersection. As we strolled back down Kearny Street to the hotel from our dinner at The Stinking Rose, the sight of that gate literally stopped me in my tracks. It was such an unusual sensation for me, but I had the strongest feeling that I had been in this exact spot before. When I looked around a bit, I realized that I was standing at the entrance to Maiden Lane, where my parents had brought us kids to see Christmas decorations every year. I had no idea that the memory was stored somewhere in my brain since we moved from San Francisco when I was only 11, but there it was!

Who knew that this happy street from my childhood had once been at the heart of the red-light district, and that, at one point, the area was experiencing a murder a day! However, enterprising merchants were determined to change it into a destination, and by the time I knew it, the Christmas decorations there were magical. Now it is an upscale shopping area with fancy boutiques, closed to auto traffic during the day. 

I loved our trip to San Francisco and feel so lucky to have lived there. Our little row house on 48th Avenue is still there in the Sunset District out by the beach. My parents sold it for $11,000 back in 1955. We could never afford it today!

Me, at our house on 48th Avenue in San Francisco
Circa 1949-1950

A San Francisco Evening

Who doesn't want to reek of garlic? Our first meal in San Francisco is always, if we can manage it, at The Stinking Rose ("we season our garlic with food") in North Beach. Their website tells us that the restaurant has become famous for celebrating the culinary euphoria of garlic and serving over 3,000 pounds of the pungent herb each month. Named after an historical term for "garlic," The Stinking Rose offers scrumptious, contemporary California-Italian cuisine prepared and adorned with garlic. 

We walked the mile and a half from our hotel, and were soon digging into bagna calda ("garlic soaking in a hot tub") and neon ravioli.

City Lights Books was just a few buildings away and we spent some time after the meal browsing the free-spirited selections in the famous bookstore founded back in 1953 by Lawrence Ferlinghetti and Peter Martin. On our very first date in 1980 (or so) Beez and I had discussed Ferlinghetti's poetry collection, A Coney Island of the Mind; Beez with his usual total recall and me figuratively trotting along, trying to keep up with his quick intellectual strides. Of course, Ferlinghetti's shop has always been special to us.

And speaking of trotting along, I did my best to keep up with daughter Dee and gym rat Beez on the (long) way through Chinatown back to the hotel. At the slightest hint of a hill I stopped to "take a photo" while resting up for the next block. It irritated me that all those hours on the treadmill over the past six months didn't seem to translate to real-world San Francisco walking, but as my son Ben pointed out it would have been a lot harder for me to walk all over the city B.G. (before gym). 

Street mural,
Chinatown, San Francisco

Although I was born in Maine, I lived in San Francisco from the age of 3 months until I was eleven. I had no idea that all sorts of forgotten foggy city memories were lodged deep in my brain. More about that next time.

Along the Road in California

Here are a few scenes from our recent road trip to California...

Date palms

Joshua trees

The best part of a hot driving day

This photo is special to me because it shows the turnoff to Marinwood, where I spent some of my childhood 

And you know where we're headed from here. Stay tuned...

Vertigo in San Francisco

A more daring photographer would have leaned out further, but I just couldn't manage to do so!

We just got back from a trip to California and I wanted to share this vertigo-inducing photo with you. It was taken from the 21st floor looking down to the third floor of the J.W. Marriott Union Square Hotel, where our daughter was staying. You can see a photo gallery of the hotel here.

We were just down the street in the far more modest but historical boutique hotel, the King George, which was built in 1914. You can see photos of the King George here.

Both place were centrally located and we never took our cars out while staying there. We walked (and walked, and walked!) to North Beach and Chinatown and all around the Financial District. When our destination was too far for walking, we took a cable car or a street car.

I will share more about our trip in upcoming posts.

Dressing Up

Ready to go downtown in winter

While looking at old photos and reminiscing, I remembered an annual family tradition that started in the 1940s in San Francisco. We always went downtown on the street car, my mother and me (Dad was at work, as all men were in those post-war years), to see the Christmas decorations in the big department stores. We would go for evening drives later when my father got home from work to see decorated outdoor places like Maiden Lane, which I now find was originally an area of brothels(!) that had been converted to fancy shops that were decorated beautifully during the Christmas season.

I remember going up the escalator and all but gasping at the sparkling decorations in the Emporium* on Market Street. We always went to I. Magnin's, and Macy's, too. The transformation of the familiar stores was amazing and it seems to me that the decorations were far fancier than anything we see now.

Dressed up in spring

You know, we used to get pretty dressed up to "go downtown." For me, always a coat and matching hat, if possible (my mother made a lot of my outfits), and a little purse to hold my white gloves. My mother insisted on those gloves when we rode on the streetcar. For my mother, a dress, high heels (how did she do it?), matching purse, coat, hat, and gloves.

Fancy family dress

Beez and I recently received an invitation in the mail for a Christmas party, being held in a pretty fancy part of town, to honor volunteers of a local charitable organization. The invitation, in addition to giving other details, specifies "spiffy casual" dress. Whatever that might be, it points out how much things have changed over the decades. People get dressed up less often, and so do our public places, especially during holiday times.

***

*I feel so historical. While looking for links to the stores and places I remember in downtown San Francisco, I found that many of them are gone and a part of history. I guess I am, too (a part of history, not gone).

Taking Another Look at California

The little Sunset Distric house in San Francisco

My parents moved our little family of three (Bucksnort came along a little later) to California from Maine when I was an infant. I grew up in San Francisco, just a block from the beach in a little house they sold in 1955 for $11,000; then in Marin County, in one of the suburbs that were springing up in those post-World War II decades, in a house they bought for exactly, I remember, $19,950. In recent years, either house was valued in the six hundred thousands, although prices have fallen a bit lately, even in these expensive areas.

By the time I was 21, I was anxious to leave California, finding fault with the traffic and ever-increasing development. After leaving, I lived in British Columbia, Washington state, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Connecticut, then New Hampshire and New Mexico once again.

I still see those things when I go back to California for a visit--crowded highways and the resulting smog, and endless developments that fill up the farm and ranch land that I remember from my childhood. But I was surprised, on this trip, to find that I was enchanted by the other parts of the landscape--the deserts, the mountains, and most of all, the beautiful rolling foothills, grassy and studded with bay trees and live oaks, still festooned with the mistletoe I remember from my childhood. I had brought along lots of knitting to work on during the many hours of riding in the car, but found that it sat there in my lap while I admired the scenery.

Northern California foothills