When I returned to San Francisco
for the first time since I lived there forty years ago, the flashbacks were
inevitable, even though the acid had long since worn off.
As a lost-in-life, hippy mailman driving a delivery truck
back then, I had known my way around the city pretty well. Poking around Chinatown
this month, I couldn’t believe I once had navigated that confusing jangle of
back alleys and labyrinth balconies, delivering packages to old Chinese who
seldom spoke English.
I frequently worked in North
Beach – birthplace of the beatniks
and the neighborhood where author Richard Brautigan (A Confederate General from Big Sur and Trout Fishing in America) lived. I trucked packages to City
Lights Bookstore, founded in the ‘50s by poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti (A Coney Island of the Mind), and to all
the other famous tourist spots – Telegraph Hill, Lombard
Street (“the crookedest street in the world”), and
topless/bottomless joints on Broadway Street.
My favorite delivery was to The Condor where Carol Doda and her “twin 44s”
danced. If I was lucky, a bare-breasted dancer would answer the bell and sign
for the package.
Some nights, I wandered along Broadway watching the strip
club hawkers at work: Right a-bove
your chair on a sol-id glass cage… My favorite I
called “The Bullfrog”; his croaking voice, inviting sailors to “step right in,”
was even lower than a bullfrog’s. He got upset if you giggled when you walked
past.
On my recent return to San Francisco,
I walked these same streets. The park where once I had seen Richard Brautigan
sitting alone on a bench, was filled with flocks of t’ai chi-ing Chinese women.
Broadway’s licentiousness had withered; a shabby Larry Flynt’s Hustler Club
echoed by-gone color. Chinatown was vibrant as I remembered, clogged with
locals shopping for food – colorful boxes of fresh produce and seafood stacked
early-morning sidewalks, Chinese voices chattered like wind chimes in the cool
breeze. A bent, toothless woman with a bag of fresh, silvery smelt haggled
price with five customers surrounding her.
On Grant Street,
a window display of ivory netsuke caught my eye. Netsuke – invented by Japanese
more than 300 years ago – were used to cinch to sashes the cords that hung
pouches (kimonos lacked pockets).
I first fell for the miniature carvings when I had lived in
the city, often visiting the netsuke collection at the de Young art museum in Golden
Gate Park. In
fact, that moment in Chinatown, I was heading to the Asian
Art Museum to see them once again. (The
Asian museum was created from the old city library; it now displays the Asian art
once held by the de Young.)
The netsuke in the Chinatown shop
window, however, were not limited to traditional depictions of monks and
animals. Many were X-rated, carved, oriental Kama Sutra – all acrobatic positions
finely rendered in ivory. I needed a closer look.
The shop was empty of customers but jammed wall-to-wall with
all manner of high-end Asian arts and crafts, including exquisite jade and wood
carvings. The really good stuff was upstairs on a balcony, the steps blocked by
a velvet cord.
I asked Carlos, the young salesman, the range of prices for
the netsuke in his front window. He said one to several hundred dollars each,
then escorted me upstairs to see more netsuke and other fine art.
I stopped cold at the head of the stairs. “This is
incredible,” I mumbled. My delight at his sculptures inspired Carlos and he
showed me his favorites – two-foot-long ivory tusks with dozens of tiny figures
incised in their curves. “These are museum-quality,” I said, and told him how I
was heading for the Asian museum that very morning.
“But you can’t touch them in a museum,” he smiled, and
caressed the un-carved, ocher end of a tusk. “Here.”
The ivory felt alive, smooth and cool on my fingertips. It
was like sneaking a touch in a museum, but without the guilt.
Carlos showed me a brilliantly-lit display case crammed with
netsuke. “Any chickens?” I asked. He opened drawers and boxes, but found only
one tiny rooster that didn’t impress me. Carlos wanted to sell me something and
I wanted to buy something. He showed me ducks and other miniature creatures,
but nothing I liked. I focused, one-by-one, on the hundred or so netsuke (the
majority in frozen stages of fornication). I asked to see an R‑rated one, a
naked geisha sitting on her haunches. Ivory, probably from an ice-age Russian
mammoth tusk. She was the one. Sold,
I thought. I threw out a number. “Would that do it?” I guessed. I was thirty
dollars too low.
“But would you do it anyways? That’s my limit,” I replied in
my sternest tone. Carlos finally agreed and we started downstairs.
“Just one last feel,” I said, and stroked again the carved tusk.
That gave Carlos fresh salesman adrenalin, and he launched into a story about
rare white jade, reaching for a delicate white sculpture in a display case to
show me the jade’s inner glow under the spotlight. His sale pitch started at
$4,000 and eventually got down to $1,500.
“Carlos, you’re killing me here,” I laughed, while thinking:
My wife would kill me. “No, I just
can’t,” I concluded. “I spent all my money on chickens, building them the Taj
Mahal of chicken coops.”
Carlos laughed, but sounded deflated. I went on my way with my
naked netsuke, an odd birthday present for my wife.
When I got to the new (to me) Asian Art Museum, the
handsome, young, African-American security guard, all natty in his dark suit
and tie, cooed, “I like your bag,” inspecting my birdwatching book-bag. “O-oh,
purple on the inside!”
“Thank you,” was all I said. What I thought was, Maybe we’re all a little gay on the inside.
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| Netsuke -- Asian Art Museum |
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After soaking up all the art culture I could manage, I
returned to the sunshine. The broad plaza between the library-converted-to-museum
and the city hall was quiet. But scenes of anti-Vietnam War violence and hatred
flared in my memories.
* * *
The date was May 4,
1970.
My home apartment had been just up Market
Street and then a couple blocks up the hill on Haight
Street. Walking to the library that day, I had stumbled
into an anti-war demonstration and joined several thousand people outside the
nearby Federal Building.
Lots of “right-on” and “power to the people” in the air. Country Joe McDonald
sang the call-and-response Fuck Song (Gimme
an F!, etc.) and my
favorite, the Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-To-Die
Rag:
Yeah, come on all of you,
big strong men,
Uncle Sam needs your help again.
He’s got himself in a terrible jam
Way down yonder in Vietnam
So put down your books and pick up a gun,
We’re gonna have a whole lotta fun.
And it’s one, two, three,
What are we fighting for?
Don’t ask me, I don’t give a damn,
Next stop is Vietnam;
And it’s five, six, seven,
Open up the pearly gates,
Well there ain’t no time to wonder why,
Whoopee! we’re all gonna die.
…Well, come on mothers
throughout the land,
Pack your boys off to Vietnam.
Come on fathers, don’t hesitate,
Send ‘em off before it’s too late.
Be the first one on your block
To have your boy come home in a box.
After speeches, the demonstrators marched across the
concrete mall to City Hall to present an anti-war resolution to the Board of
Supervisors. Everyone tried to crowd inside; Viet Cong flags waved and chants
of Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh echoed off the
rotunda. Finally convinced to go back outside, the crowd clogged the sidewalks
and street. That’s when dozens of “blue meanies” (city police) arrived and
started sweeping up the area. I watched twenty kids get clubbed on the steps.
From there, it turned into an off-and-on skirmish for the rest of the
afternoon. The cops formed lines to keep the street and front of the building
clear, so the jeering crowd gathered across the street in an open mall area.
Rocks and bottles flew; one took out a window in a passing patrol wagon.
The cops carried three-foot clubs scarred with cuts and
nicks. If they thought they saw someone throw anything, a squad would give
chase, and people would scatter. Guys got hauled down and beaten. One was
caught and clubbed by a cop, who found himself alone and surrounded by a lot of
pissed off people; he pulled his gun and started waving it at our faces.
Personally, I never saw the point in throwing things
or being ugly about it all. Nonetheless, I was there because I wanted the war
to end, which was the real point.
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| San Francisco City Hall in quieter times (2012) |
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Everyone knew by then that there were demonstrations going
on that same day across the country. In Lansing,
more than 25,000 people marched on the state capitol building, and twenty-five
were hurt when a pro-war supporter drove a car into the march. Eastern
Michigan University
was under a state of emergency and dawn-to-dusk curfew. That day at Kent
State University
in Ohio, four students were shot
dead and nine injured by National Guard troops.
In San Francisco
after things had petered out at the
anti-war demonstration, I walked home and ate some supper and later walked back
to the library again. It was all so peaceful. Nothing left but discarded
pickets and broken glass. The rhododendrons were in full bloom. I picked a big
pink blossom and took it home to fill my apartment with sweetness.
Being a hippy mailman was easy, but it sucked. I drove my
truck every day in traffic jams and smog and hauled heavy packages up hills and
stairs, dodging dog shit that seemed everywhere.
When not working, I bought fresh squid for bait in Chinatown
and fished off the rocks at the entrance to San
Francisco Bay,
using a cheap saltwater fishing rod I bought through the mail from L.L. Bean.
Rarely, I caught rock fish and tiger sharks. The sharks seemed more like dogs
than fish; their malevolent eyes would follow my hand, and they would snap at
me when I took out the hook. One time, something enormous took my bait and
headed into the setting sun. It easily stripped all my line and vanished,
leaving me shaking and in awe. And once, I caught a 19-pound striped bass off
the sand at Baker Beach
in Marin County.
I rode my Harley home across the Golden Gate
Bridge with the great fish’s tail
sticking out of my backpack. Jaws dropped as cars passed me. It was a proud
moment.
After my girlfriend from Michigan
moved in with me, we spent my free days in Golden
Gate Park, along Bodega
Bay, and on Mt.
Tamalpais hiking and bird watching.
She cooked and made our tiny apartment homey. She wore spring-flower perfume.
We drank jasmine tea and ate Chinese food with chop sticks.
She enrolled in classes at San
Francisco State,
and I rode the bus with her to cinema classes to watch avant garde films. In Golden
Gate Park, we
watched old Italians play bocce ball and dreamed of learning the language and
traveling to Italy.
We were enchanted by an outdoor performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in the park’s open-air amphitheater.
* * *
Four decades later, I sat on the
same green park bench, stared at the empty stage, and the moment was so
beautiful that it brought tears to my eyes. Here was where last I sat a
lifetime ago, watching Shakespeare with the then-love-of-my-life. Puck and
love’s foibles had made us laugh. Little did we know that it all was a will-o’-the-wisp.
On this day in 2012, the
true-love-of-my-life, my wife, was 500 miles away. She would enjoy this park, I
thought, with its gardens, ocean air infused with eucalyptus, lovely
Asian-Americans everywhere, including a young man in a white sweater, black
pants and a sword-shape of white down each leg, floating on the Earth through
his t’ai chi.
The Vietnam War and its protests were long silent. Had all
that really happened? The only protest I had seen on this visit was a small
group of striking janitors noisily picketing in front of their parking lot
employer on Market Street.
I had forgotten the anonymity conveyed on you in the big
city. Despite the loneliness, there is a freedom that comes with knowing you
have virtually no chance of seeing anyone you know. Of course, “virtually none”
is not zero.
* * *
Back in 1970, on a Sunday morning in an early December rain,
I had dropped half a hit of acid and headed for Golden
Gate Park. From
the foggy bus window, I spotted a bum on Haight Street
who looked familiar – tall and lanky, scruffy beard, dark eyes. I jumped off
and found an old friend from Michigan,
Tom, selling the Berkeley Barb
alternative newspaper. He was dirty, ragged, and looked like he had been
standing out in the rain too long. He told me he was living on the street, selling
papers, and sleeping in crash pads, the park, or, once in a while, hotels.
I gave him my other half-hit of acid, and we walked around
the park, sat and talked, and went to the de Young art museum, where I showed
him my favorite netsuke. Tom stayed with me a while and then moved on with life
back in Michigan.
A decade later, when I also was back living in Michigan,
Tom and I ran a half-marathon together on a gorgeous late-fall day in rural
mid-Michigan that was the best run of my life. We averaged 7:30 minutes per mile and finished together with energy
to spare. Today, running one mile at that pace would do me in.
Back then, Tom was looking for love and used a dating service
where, after many false starts, he found a wife. They moved to a farm in Minnesota.
Tom developed a difficult disease, but he seems to have had a happy life with
his family and farm animals, judging from the annual Christmas cards I still
get from him. As I struggle these days through my solo runs in rainy Oregon,
I often marvel at our long-ago friendship and those two strangers whom I barely
recognize, running like gazelles in the Michigan
sunshine.
* *
*
As for my hippy, trippy self of so many yesteryears ago, that
lonely guy wandering the city, lost in life – well, it turns out that I still
have an eye for netsuke. I still hate war and warmongers. I still like birds and
fishing and flowers and jasmine tea and bare breasts.
Wandering the city this month, I stood on the traffic island
outside the Broadway Street
tunnel and stared into its dark opening, peering into my past. I once had loved
going fast on my Harley. I would ride to this spot late at night, idle until
traffic had cleared ahead, and then fly as fast as possible through the half-mile-long
tunnel – 85 mph was my tops. The Harley’s roar in that narrow, one-way tunnel
was some kind of thrill, especially when a little drunk. Far out.
That had been my life for a few long years living in San
Francisco in the ‘70s – a mostly unhappy time filled
with weed, acid and ennui. Yet, it was where finally, at age 25, I figured out
what I wanted to be when I grew up (that’s another story). Starting in San
Francisco, I spent a lifetime becoming the person and
creating the life I wanted for myself. My return to the city of my spiritual
birth confirmed how much I like how that all turned out.
