Untethered and Alone

     Other days I enjoyed the buses. They only cost a quarter… with transfers and all the wholes city could be explored. Once I fell asleep and woke up deep inside of Fort Mason. Fort Mason was an active military base back then. Clean with tended lawns and anything that wasn’t moving was painted. Every tree and telephone pole was painted white a couple of feet up from the ground. I’d been on military bases before and wasn’t sure whether or not civilians were allowed… I felt like I was sneaking out expecting MPs to arrest me. Maybe they’d check me for a draft card… I had one but threw it away in a drunken rage. In fact, I had no I.D. at all.

     There was a time, my children, when a man could go from one end of the country to the other on buses, trains and airplanes with no I.D. at all. A Social Security Card wasn’t necessary if you knew your number when applying for a job. A draft card was required if you were of draft age or a drivers license if you drove a car. None of these were picture identification. Social Security Numbers were considered highly private and it was considered by most to be an unconstitutional invasion of privacy to put it on any other I.D.

     I walked past the guard at the gate with no hassle at all but, regardless, I never fell asleep on a bus after that. I did walk, more than once, all the way to the beach at the end of Golden Gate Park from Grant and Bush. Sometimes I’d take the bus back but other times I’d walk another route to simply check things out. It wasn’t exactly a trek but it was arduous enough. I loved Golden Gate Park… the Botanical Gardens… the two windmills down at the end of the park. And there the remnants of old and decaying Coney Island style amusement booths and fading attractions that still held off the march of time a few acres along that stretch of the beach. And, up on a point above those, I watched skaters in a magical arena at the Cliff House from an arcade that skirted the rink.

The beach was a wild rolling breakers and broad sand place where one could walk alone and untethered by people at all. Alone I sometimes spotted another soul on the beach… a young woman here or old man there. And sometimes I wanted to go up to the young women that passed and strike up a conversation in order to break up my isolation. I never did. The lonesomeness of it became heavy but I had no nerve.

     Indeed, I was alone but I wandered and wondered to places like the de Young. The museum was a San Francisco, and almost neglected, icon then that was free to anyone. I sat inside and sketched before an El Greco oil (Saint Francis knelt before a crucifix). The painting’s subject moved me as much as the brushstrokes and paint… the paint applied, dark and moody, like I’d never imagined paint to cover a canvass… oh, if ever I could! Free to come and go as I pleased and never an entrance fee. Oh, those were the days when public meant public… all the public… poor starving artists and wealthy socialites alike. So much has been lost… so little gained since the early sixties.

     People are so used to being gouged now. They get taxed and they surrender control to philanthropic enterprises that gouge them some more. The entrance fees, even parking fees at beaches and the special fees for exhibitions, are the norm everywhere and folks are used to being herded through in groups and looked at suspiciously by security if anyone ventures to stray at all. It wasn’t that way back then… the old curmudgeon in me says… it was an easy atmosphere one could enter and leave at will and feel as though we had just visited a dear friend and not as though I had been subjected to an art enterprise factory tour: post cards available in the gift shop.

     I don’t know how I spent it all but I was down to very little money before long. I bought paint and canvas… discovered acrylics… didn’t like‘em much… couldn’t get them to do what oils did… scumbbled onto the canvas… flowing, smearing across and over dark-scapes with a translucency that allows the under-paint to show through as the veil on Scheherazade.

     After the De Young I’d wander over to the conservatory: A majestic, glassed-in Victorian garden housing a jungle of wonder. Or I would cross the street to the Music Concourse… maybe sit there and rest before the colonnade of the orchestral half-shell.  Oh, how I longed for a Venus to approach from there…. But never and never was there an orchestra. A faun-like character wandered onto the stage, opened a case, taking out a flute… a solo adventurer who cared not that no one was there but a few stragglers like me to hear his flute resonating out to us in whimsical twists and turns, tremors or slurs. I wasn’t alone then.

     There was much more to the park to discover. Hidden from view on a hill…circled like a moat near the top of the hill was Stowe Lake. Then that rose in its midst… I think it was called Strawberry Hill but I’m not sure…. I would rent a rowboat and enjoy the solitude of circling the hill on the water. A hot dog stand next to the pavilion the boats were rented from provided me with the nourishment to forge my way down the hill from there where old men with grandsons floating model sailboats… some remotely controlled, out on Spreckels Lake below the Polo Grounds. I was lonely but happy to be alone.

     Other times I’d wander down Market Street, checking out the shops and all the way to the waterfront I take a break at the piers along the Embarcadero. There was a longshoreman’s type greasy-spoon where breakfast could be had for 88 cents… three eggs, and hash brown with juice and/or coffee. There wasn’t room for tables or booths… only a counter where middle aged but sharp tongued waitresses kept coffee cups full and called everyone “Dear”. There were no tourist attractions down there then; only working piers and warehouses with cursing and shouting longshoreman. San Francisco was a port city before all the containerized shipping went to Oakland. Fisherman’s Wharf was the only tourist attraction at the end of the trolley line and everything south of there was alive with ships loading, and unloading, cargo. I wanted to adventure myself on an imaginary tramp steamer but to my disappointment, tramp steamers were a thing of the past like Melville’s whaling ships and the merchant marines had it so locked down that it was impossible to get on a crew that I knew of. Besides, I wasn’t ready yet. I still had a little money and there was more to see.

     I got down to my last dollar, a jar of peanut butter and a jar of strawberry jelly with a loaf of Wonder Bread. I made it stretch while I puzzled over what I’d do. Then my Wonder Bread was gone and the jars of peanut butter and jam had been wiped clean. I had twenty-three cents left; not even enough for a trolley or bus. I knew that the market, across on the Bush Street side, where I’d bought the peanut butter and jam had a can of sardines for thirty-five cents. How easy could it be to slip the can into my pocket and buy a pack of gum as a foil… like I didn’t just wander into the store for nothing? I held the can in my hand. The Chinese clerk watched from behind the register… I felt her eyes on my back. I put the can back and purchased a pack of gum. Now I had thirteen cents. The gum did little to sate the calls from my guts.
There weren’t very many panhandlers in those days. They stayed down on Market Street for the most part. I went down there to try my hand at it. I’d spot a likely target, perhaps a business man in a suit, and prep myself with how I would approach him plotting it ahead, “Sir, if you could spare a dime or two, I’d deeply appreciate it.”

     The target would get nearer… I went for eye contact and felt shame… I couldn’t look another man in the eye and beg. He passed with any words coming from my lips. A woman approached; She might have been a secretary… in modest heals, heels supporting a pair of gorgeous San Francisco legs, dressed neatly and proper… I put my hand out, “Please help me with any change you can, Ma’am.”

     My shame increased as she flat out said, “No.”
    
     “Please Ma’am, I’m desperate.”

     “Then get a job.”

     That was it for bumming on the street. From then on I would rather starve than beg: I prayed.

     I was sitting on a park bench in the Civic Center in the mall across from City Hall; my stomach growled for want of food; I had gone a couple of days without anything to eat at all; my belt was tightened as far as it would go; I couldn’t shop-lift; I couldn’t beg; and, I had no ideas of what to do when Mario approached and sat down at the far end of the bench from me.

     He was listening with an ear plug on his transistor radio to a Giants game. Had he not seen or recognized me?

     “Mario,” I interrupted, “Is that you?” I hadn’t spoken to anyone in days… the words croaked froggily out of my throat.

     He pulled the plug out of his ear grinning, “Hey Red,” adding, “You follow baseball?”

     “Not much,” the words came easier but there was still some hesitation. I didn’t want him to try to pick-up on me again but damn. At least I could try to bum some money from him.

     “Giants are behind the Dodgers… you think they will catch up?” putting the ear plug back in he acted as though he hadn’t heard me.

     “I haven’t followed baseball this year.” In fact, I hadn't followed baseball, football or basketball in two or three years leaving me with little to break the ice with most men... and that was just fine with me.

     “Yeh, well this is the greatest. They swept the Cards and now they got the Pirates. Pick ‘em all off until they kick some major butt on the Dodgers… got a shot at the Pennant!”

     “Just had a birthday the other day,” I muttered, hoping to steer the topic towards my demise.

     “Hey, I’m hungry… you want to eat?” he took the plug out of his ear.

     It was as though the sky had opened… a Cecil B, De Mille moment, “Sure, but I’m busted.”

     “Don’t worry. You like Chinese?” he was already grabbing me by the elbow, “C’mon, I know this place not too far from here where some of the Giants… even Willie Mays, have lunch when they are in town.”

     “Sure, sounds good to me.”

    The restaurant was crowded. I only knew Chinese food from the almost fast-food joints in Spokane. There was always take-out chow-mien or sweet and sour pork ribs in those places but, all the time I’d been living right next to China Town I’d never sat down for a real Chinese meal. The trays that passed out table, carried by a little man in a starched white shirt, were stacked with plates of food piled high with several servings of this or that wok-fried or otherwise cooked concoction.

     I ordered mu-goo-gai-pan because I liked the sound of it. Mario ordered a combination. I’d heard about starving people having a hard time holding down their first meal so I resisted the temptation to dive into my plate. I savored every bite and Mario ordered beer for us. I wasn’t checked for I.D. which made me feel as though I was entirely an adult.

    “What’s the matter,” Mario curiously queried, “You don’t like the food.”

    “No, I love it, Mario…” I didn’t want to let him know I hadn’t eaten anything but a few slices of white bread and peanut butter the past week. “I’m just enjoying each bite,” like I was a connoisseur.

    “Have another beer,” Mario seemed pleased.

    Completely absorbed in the pleasure of eating my naivety didn’t allow the idea to enter my mind that I was on a “date”. Mario was in love… or probably just lust. But I could have cared less at that point. I was eating and that was good.

    “If you want to, I’ve got some more beer up in my room a few blocks away."