Following My Father: San Francisco

We moved back to San Francisco from Cambria, a seaside town in central California. I hadn't had the best high school experience and was tired of school. I decided to take a year off before starting college.

We rented a studio apartment on Jones Street. We had a view of Grace Cathedral across the street. Next to the cathedral is Huntington Park, the Huntington Mansion, and the Fairmount Hotel.

Nob Hill is San Francisco's most exclusive neighborhood. Some people own mansions. The rest live in houses or apartments.

It was just the sort of place to take a breather, as it was close to parts of the city I loved. The financial district and Chinatown lie to the east. Downtown is to the south. To the north is Fisherman's Wharf and Ghirardelli Square.

My parents slept on a Murphy bed. I slept on a couch that folded out. When both beds were down, it was a tight squeeze!

The small kitchen's and the living room's bay windows added charm to the place.

Nob Hill, scene of history and mystery.

Formerly known as California Hill, Nob Hill became an enclave for rich and famous men. The "big four" Central Pacific Railroad tycoons, Leland Stanford, Collis Potter Huntington, Mark Hopkins, and Charles Crocker built mansions there in the late 19th century. The men were dubbed the "Nobs," hence the hill's name.

Most of the mansions and the surrounding neighborhood were destroyed in the fire resulting from the 1906 earthquake. The remaining exterior walls with their smoke damage were incorporated when some of the mansions were rebuilt.

The Fairmont Hotel was just finished when the earthquake hit on the morning it was to open. Rebuilt in 1907, it is the "grande dame" of San Francisco.

The Fairmount truly is a grand hotel, and is visited by dignitaries and the rich and famous from around the world. It was dubbed "White House of the West" because every American president who has visited San Francisco has stayed there.

Important events take place in the Fairmount. In 1945, the final touches were put on the United Nations Charter and Harry Truman signed it there.

In 1974, the hotel was first in America to offer concierge service. Concierges perform helpful tasks for guests, like ordering taxis, recommending local shops and services, speaking for non-English speaking guests, finding a doctor, telling a hairstylist the do a foreign guest wants.

Major stars appear in the Venetian Room at the Fairmount. Tony Bennett debuted "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" there in 1961.

When I was young, a glass-sided elevator took visitors up to a restaurant and bar at the top of the hotel. The floor revolved, giving diners 360 degree views of the bay and the city. The restaurant was later replaced with a penthouse suite.

There are legends of ghosts that haunt the Fairmount. Some say that the ghosts are from people who lived in the home at the site of the Fairmount. Others say the ghosts are people who died in the 1906 earthquake. Another proposal is that the ghosts accompanied the antique furniture when it came into the hotel.

Whatever the origin, the ghosts seem to be merely mischievous pranksters.

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As Christmas approached, I took a job at the City of Paris, a grand old department store no longer there. Instead of tearing it down, it should have been designated as an historical building.

There was a long fight from preservationists. At least, the rotunda and dome were incorporated into the new Nieman Marcus built on the site.

When I applied in the small employment office, the woman behind the counter took one look at me, smiled, and hired me on the spot. It was lovely to feel accepted by her. City life can feel unfriendly at times.

I loved the City of Paris. It was on the corner of Geary and Stockton, across from Macy's and catty corner from Union Square. My mother and I went there several times when I was a kid. It felt so elegant!

The salesladies catered to us and brought clothes they thought we might like from the racks. We sat in antique chairs with embroidered seats near a window as we waited.

In the mornings I walked down the steep hill on Powell Street in the flats I bought for the job. I made a gray striped A-line skirt that I wore most days.

As I entered City of Paris, I came into a wondrous white room filled with counters displaying perfumes, toiletries, wallets, purses -- all those things that are put on the ground floor of a department store.

But the wondrous thing was that my eyes were drawn up to the balconies on the second and third floors and the intricate glass dome above.

I worked in the toy department, which spanned one side of the building with its wooden floor.

The toy department was packed full of toys on long rows of tall wooden shelves. At the end of the room was a large paned window that overlooked O'Farrell Street. In the windows' alcove sat wooden rocking horses and little tables in chairs set for tea parties.

Most of the toys were classic and expensive, including train sets, games, and sports equipment. Madame Alexander dolls sat in one corner. I had never seen those beautiful, life-like baby dolls before. They were dressed in fancy Victorian dresses or period dresses of the characters they represented.

Madame Alexander was the name taken on by Beatrice Alexander, who lived from 1895 to 1990. During World War I, German porcelain dolls were not available, so Madame Alexander made them out of cloth. In 1947 she began using hard plastic, and in the 1960s vinyl plastic.

The dolls represented historical figures, such as Mary Queen of Scots; contemporary movie characters and famous people, like Scarlett O'Hara from Gone With the Wind, the Dionne quintuplets, and the royal family and their guests at Queen Elizabeth's coronation; and characters from children's literature, such as Alice in Wonderland and Little Women.

One of my coworkers was a 19 year old young woman from Texas. I don't know why she was in San Francisco. She was torn between leaving the much older man she was living with in Galveston or staying. She was feeling taken advantage of because she took care of his children. I told her that didn't sound right, and she should consider leaving.

Working the old fashioned cash register was a lot of fun. I liked the way it dinged when the drawer opened. We had a chart to figure out the tax, then wrote out the receipt on a small pad.

The majority of customers were nice and in the Christmas spirit, even though they usually had to wait in long lines.

A few hours into my shift my feet hurt like crazy! On my breaks I took my shoes off and put them on another chair. By the time I left work, they hurt so badly that I took my shoes off and walked home in my stocking feet. Nothing like walking on cement to ruin a pair of stockings!

Vince moved back to Menlo Park and came to see me often. We took a lot of day trips in his ratty old car. I don't know how many times we broke down.

One time was when we were heading to Point Reyes National Seashore. On a country road a tire went flat. We waited in hopes that a car would drive by and give us a lift into San Rafael to get the tire fixed.

While we waited, a lay on the hood of the car languidly. Vince took this picture of me that captures my mood.

A car never came, so we trudged all the way to Nicasio about nine miles away. The only nice thing about the trip was that we stopped in a lovely coffee bar in an old bank building. We were lucky that a man gave us a ride back in the back of his pick up truck.

Vince was funny about the city. He felt like he didn't belong there. I did my best to take him places to show him that he belonged there like anybody else, but he never did feel comfortable.

Sometimes I visited him in Menlo Park. He rented an apartment above the Village Host. Most of what I remember about those visits is that because I couldn't stand how messy his place was, I cleaned it first thing. Pretty soon I tired of that and stopped going there.

It was not that enjoyable to me, anyway. All we did was go downstairs to the Host, eat pizza, and hang around drinking coffee. I never fit in with Vince's friends. The only person there I liked was Roy, the boy who used to visit us in Cambria.

It was during that year that Winnie took me to a math convention in Los Angeles. There I met a man from northern California. We went out a few times. I visited him and his roommate. They lived in an old house in the country near Gilroy.

They were high school teachers. I remember how impressed I was with all their books.

I never liked the man all that much, and thinking back, I don't know why I went out with him. I liked him even less after the final time.

He took me to visit his friend in Berkeley. I think he was a grad student in psychology. The next time I saw the man, he told me his friend had told him, "Watch out, she's bad news," or something to that effect.

There were two things wrong with that. One, his friend knew nothing about me. Two, the guy shouldn't have told me. I never saw him again.

Many times my old friends from eighth grade and I got together. Debbie went out with an army guy who was stationed at the Presidio. He was very nice, but I discovered that the two of them drank too much.

They took me to the commissary for a Saturday night party. It was kind of fun because no one cared that Debbie and I were clearly minors. Phil ordered glass after glass of a rum cocktail. We all became exceedingly drunk.

I never joined them on their regular Saturday jaunts to the commissary again because I was not interested in drinking that much, and the ride home was harrowing.

The two of them got married not too long after that. They eloped, so I wasn't involved in their wedding. They moved into a studio apartment in the Richmond district.

When I went to their place, I was impressed by Debbie's set of Paul Revere pots and pans. My parents had a mishmash of old pots picked up at thrift stores or cheap shops.

Debbie didn't work at the time. I wondered how she stood staying in the apartment with little to do except housework. Debbie did not have the kind of interests and hobbies I did. She wasn't into reading or sewing or crocheting. The only things I knew she liked to do were listening to music and playing Solitaire.

The thing she spent most of her time on was keeping the place spotless. Not my cup of tea. I always liked some disarray because it felt more interesting and less lonely. And, there are always other things to do than clean house!

On one visit, Debbie made me her favorite recipe of sweet and sour pork. It was very good. If you read my earlier post, you know that my batting average with cooking was nil. So, I was impressed.

After a few months, Debbie went into a prolonged emotional crisis. She called me day and night, and wanted me to come over. I supported her as best I could by having lengthy phone calls with her. But, I got tired of it. I felt she was asking me to rescue her, something I was incapable of doing.

In retrospect, I probably should have called her mother. It was her problem, not mine.

When my friends and I ventured to our old haunts, we often looked around Cost Plus. I had ambitions of one day having a place of my own with a table set with casual and fun objects. Cost Plus had just the kinds of things I wanted.

My first purchases were some votive candles and an incense burner with long sticks of sandalwood incense. Later, I bought woven placemats, pretty paper napkins, and my piece de resistance, a cobalt blue enamel teapot.

Roy bought me a red blown glass apple for my birthday. For Christmas he gave me a white ceramic teapot. He always knew what to give me.

When my City of Paris job ended, Dad enrolled me in a business school to brush up on my typing. I complied, although I did not enjoy it. It bored me.

Vince and I took many trips up and down the coast. Through all my moving around I developed yearnings to revisit many of the places I had lived. We traveled to Capitola, back to Cambria, to Pacific Heights, and Palo Alto.

I can't explain exactly why I felt so compelled to go back to where I lived before. Some of it was motivated by my need to have other people understand just what I went through. The process felt healing to me.

On our trips I embroidered or crocheted. I bought myself instruction books. I worked on an afghan made of circles in blue, green, purple, red, and fuchsia. But when it came time to weave the ends of yarn in and sew it all together, I found it too tedious and frustrating. I carted the circles around for many years, but never did finish the afghan!

The scenery along Highway One inspired me to begin an embroidered piece of a field along the cliffs backed by a sunset. In the foreground are cattails and grasses. I still have it and mean to frame it.

In addition to the striped gray skirt, I sewed two dresses. One was an A-line with long sleeves, much like a tunic. I found a piece of gorgeous ethnic striped cotton in green and white.

The other was made from teal polyester with large paisley patterns. With that I sewed a dress with a full skirt, a high neck, and ruffles along the sides of the front panel of the bodice. The tops of the sleeves puffed. It looked very Victorian.

My sewing in those days was of professional quality. I learned to sew that way in home economics in Cambria. I lined all my clothes, and finished the inner seams and hems.

__________________

Vince decided to move to Santa Cruz. He found a place in the basement of a couple's house in the mountains. It was an odd little place. The main room had walls of concrete and a rickety door into an unfinished basement. An old utility sink stood in one corner. A rickety shelf held a hot plate. At least it had windows that looked out into the forest. I made red calico curtains for them.

The bedroom, so to speak, was paneled in light wood. It almost looked like a sauna because wide steps rose along one side of the room all the way to the ceiling.

We adopted a black lab from the animal shelter, and named him Ogden. We took him on treks down to the creek and into the woods.

I looked for a job and applied at Sear's Roebuck. In those days it was a common practice for applicants to have to take a battery of psychological tests. We entered a room with desks and set to work.

I think they gave us the MMPI, because the test was long and multiple choice. I learned how to administer that in grad school many moons in the future.

My application was rejected. I felt traumatized. What did they think was wrong with me? What was wrong with me? It was quite damaging.

Fortunately, using psychological tests with applicants was discontinued for many years soon after that. But they are used today. I find it a bit unethical for the very reason I talked about: the effect on those who are rejected without ever knowing why.

I stayed with Vince in that tiny hovel off and on. But, he started to become agitated a lot, and it scared me, so I stopped.

__________________

Dad started feeling the effects of his stroke again. His balance was poor and he needed a cane. Many times I walked with him to Huntington Park where we sat on wrought iron benches near the playground and watched the action.

Dad and I spent many days together just sitting quietly. We did not talk about much, as I recall, just communed with one another.

I felt protective of Dad and was careful to find the right balance between offering my arm and leaving him to walk on his own.

I also felt concerned about his depression. He was going through one of his periods of unemployment. His profession meant so much to him that these times were painful. He was hampered then by his disability. No laws existed then to protect disabled people from discrimination.

I took on doing my parents' laundry. Mom worked long hours at the hospital. Dad couldn't drag the cart down the hill to the building's tiny laundry room. I felt glad to contribute in that small way.

By the time the year ended, I felt ready to embark on my college adventure. I had gotten the break I needed, and wanted to expand my experiences from hanging around with friends and taking day trips.

My parents and I moved to the townhouse in Parkmerced that Sylvia and Bill no longer needed after they moved to Danville. I enrolled at City College.

It would turn out to be a memorable experience in many ways.