When I Take You Out in the Surrey

My favorite driving-around-alone-in-my-car music was once best suited to a teenage boy’s tastes.  ZZ Top.  Beastie Boys.  Nirvana.  Eminem.  To name a few of my darlings.

Then, there was a shift.  First, oldies radio.  Then KOIT (Lite Rock, Less Talk).  Then KDFC or any satellite classical station.  NPR, naturally.

On super stressful days I guiltily tuned in to Spa on SIRIUS.  Driving across San Francisco at rush hour became a very different experience while listening to rain chimes and flute instead of Angus Young.

Now I’m enamored of SIRUS’s On Broadway channel.  I’m smiling when somebody cuts me off as I’m listening to Oh, What A Beautiful Morning (Oklahoma).  Or I get all weepy over Johanna (Sweeney Todd) at the 10-minute-long red light at Junipero Serra/Portola/Sloat.  Or I decide it’s time to pull over for a soy decaf latte after hearing Wouldn’t It Be Loverly (My Fair Lady).

Yet at the opening strains of any drivel from Les Miserables or The Sound of Music, I jump right back to Deep Purple, Muse, Radiohead, Parliament, The Cars, The Ramones, The White Stripes, Frank Zappa. Watch out! 

Rude Awakening

Six lanes of traffic during morning rush hour on Market Street near San Francisco School of the Arts.

A red ambulance heading east with sirens screaming.

Everyone stops except one sleepy teenage boy. He’s with a group of kids standing in the median ready to traverse eastbound lanes.

Ambulance slows faintly before flying through red light. Boy thinks ambulance is stopping for pedestrians and steps into crosswalk. Ambulance blasts horn with prejudice just inches away. Boy vaults backward and falls into friends.

Driver on my right, cyclist on my left, son in the passenger seat, me: We all catch our breath, drop our jaws and start laughing. Too close for comfort. There but for the grace of God.

SF In My Bones

“It's an odd thing, but anyone who disappears is said to be seen in San Francisco. It must be a delightful city and possess all the attractions of the next world.”  ~ Oscar Wilde

First steps on Fifth Avenue in San Francisco

Some sage person (who?) said we feel most at ease in the place we learned to walk.  The ground in that particular place hums like a tuning fork against your bones. 

I was born in the southern Appalachians and lived thereabouts until I was 23, but it was in San Francisco that I took my first steps.  In an apartment on Fifth Avenue near the old French Hospital.  My father was stationed at the Presidio, and Mom and I came out to be with him.

There are photos of me waddling all around the city in baby shoes, usually with one parent or the other kneeling nearby with outstretched arms to catch me:  At the Palace of Fine Arts, in the Japanese Tea Garden, at Fort Point, on Baker Beach.

I have no memory of that time.  Yet, as a young adult, I moved back to San Francisco and I've stayed nigh on 30 years. My work is here. My friends are here. My children were born and raised here.

San Francisco feels exactly right. In my bones.