50 Years Later: Remembering my brief stay in San Francisco

I had arrived in the city with seemingly bright prospects (in my mind anyway) and left with a different judgment of myself and what might lie ahead.

    Fifty years ago, for a brief three-month period that began in early September and ended just prior to Thanksgiving, I resided in San Francisco.

   For a farm boy from Fowlerville, raised in that rural community on the outskirts of metro Detroit, this plunge into a cosmopolitan city proved a watershed moment—for me that is, not the city.

    I wrote about the experience, such as it was, in my essay ‘Echoes of November—Part 3’, so I have no need nor desire to re-visit the experience in any detail.

    But having become a newspaperman not too many years after my return to Michigan (three years to be precise), I learned that a milestone anniversary is a good excuse to reminisce or take stock. That’s true of such momentous events as the assassination of President Kennedy (which I wrote about in ‘Echoes of November—Part 1) and the 9-11 terrorist attack or an out-of-the-ordinary adventure that occurred in my more youthful days.

   When I stepped off the airplane a half-century ago, I had recently turned 21. I didn’t bring along much of a bankroll, but there was an older couple I knew—friends who’d relocated here the year before—who greeted me upon my arrival and who provided a place to unpack my suitcase, a mattress to sleep on, and a table and chair where I could write. Besides the suitcase, I’d brought along my portable typewriter.

    I wore a tan suede jacket, with blue jeans and work shirt, and a pair of scruffy work shoes, a combination that I felt gave me a bohemian look. However, not a unique outfit. I found that I blended right in with many others of my age group since that was the attire they wore.

   And I soon found out that not only did I look like them, but that I had added to the multitude who were camped out in the city—often in tight quarters. Since most of us had only recently spent time in college, we were used to sharing bedroom, bathrooms, and kitchen facilities.

   My new home was a small room in a former warehouse that had been converted into living and working quarters for the residents. Maybe inhabitants would be a better word, given (I was told) that people came and went. As I did.

   The place was called Project One, located on Howard Street, just south of Mission Street.  Market Street—a main byway in the city—was a short walk away. I don’t recall how many folks were residing at the Project when I showed up. I’m guessing a couple of dozen, including a mix of families with young children, couples, and singles. The age range was mainly early 20s to late 30s, but there were a few older teens as well.

   But memory is tricky, so who knows?

   I obtained a hot plate and there was a community oven on top floor, so that’s how I fixed my meals. The couple, which included the lady’s three young children, invited me to share their table on occasion.

  The groceries were purchased at a nearby store that featured a lot of affordable items, including banged up canned goods that were marked down.

   As for my evening refreshment, there was a local brand of beer that sold for less than a dollar for a six pack of 12-oz. cans, with the 16-oz. option offered at $1.20.

   I’d write—or attempt to do so—in the morning and on occasion in the afternoon. I’d make regular trips to the public library, by foot I should add, both to read and do some research for those articles I hoped to complete. And eventually sell.

   Not having much money, I looked for work. But there was more young labor around than entry-level jobs. Skill-wise, I knew how to milk cows, read books, and write a term paper, but otherwise lacked any marketable skill.

   Stops at gas stations, hotels, and restaurants bore no results, other than the accumulating weight of rejection.

    I ended up doing a lot of walking in my free time, which was a good portion of the day. My trips around the perimeter of where I lived kept expanding outward.

    A highlight came one Sunday in late fall when I turned off Market Street onto Powell Street. It was like Dorothy stepping from the drab cabin that had been in Kansas into the colorful Land of Oz.

    Or it seemed to me.

    A trolley track ran from the foot of Powell, up a tall hill, past stores and shops that catered to tourists. At the peak stood the Sir Francis Drake Hotel, complete with a doorman dressed in the period costume., and the tracks went from there to other parts of the city. Cars, loaded with riders, came up and down the tracks.

    I bought a package of cigars (cheap ones), walked to the top of the hill, then found a bench where I enjoyed a smoke and the scenic view. I would learn later that I was at the famous Union Square.

    Billboards advertised plane trips to the Far East and, seeing them, my wanderlust stirred. I imagined traveling to those locales, much as I had imagined what awaited me in the counter-culture mecca known as San Francisco—or so it have been portrayed.

    But the watershed that was taking place was the realization that this was youthful fancy, the stuff of imagination, not practicality. The hard, cold facts were that I, at that given moment, was over a half-a-continent away from my familiar stomping grounds, that I was barely getting by on this initial journey to a faraway place, and only the helping hand of friends was keeping me afloat.

    If I was going to make a career as a writer, it was not going to happen anytime soon, nor would likely be at this time or place.

    Of course, a little more money in my pocket and a paying job might have altered my outlook.

    What I did do, when I wasn’t trying to write, was copy passages from the books and poems I was reading onto a notebook; passages that I had found inspiring and wished to emulate.

   I did include a few things that I’d created.

     It was a small notebook, I should add, with my contribution being meager.

    Still, the exercise had its impact. What might have seemed a futile gesture, as it turned out, had a lingering and enduring influence. Lines from the notebook would later show up as epigraphs or quotes in newspaper columns. As did some of my observations about San Francisco—what I saw and, more importantly, how I felt.

They proved to be seeds that bore fruit.

    I had arrived in the city with seemingly bright prospects (in my mind anyway) and left with a different judgment of myself and what might lie ahead. What I needed, I had decided, was a readjustment of expectations.

   Maybe that was, and remains, an excuse for what was a failure, putting some lipstick on the pig. But it helped form an ethic I developed during those years as a young artist: That when things became too much, you could stand it, and when they became even worse, even that couldn’t break you.

You endured and kept going. Kept putting words to paper.

    We make our choices, forge your paths, reach a destination or come  up short. We might realize youthful dreams or find newer, better ones.

   We might, with good reason, find life a cause for bitter disappointment. Or good fortune might shine on us either by virtue of hard toil or mere chance.

   Fifty years ago it all lay up ahead and now, for me, it’s pretty much gone by.

   But I’m still writing. And for that opportunity, and for all the years I’ve been able to do so, I’m grateful.