Riding With Eddie and the Drifters

Long before LaVerne died and Eddie lost his anchor, he was a drifter. LaVerne used to say Eddie was the kind of man who was gone before he got there. Then she’d open her mouth and laugh halfway down her throat, showing the sweet gap in her front teeth.

Eddie had heard her talk about his wandering ways too many times to laugh, but he never tired of seeing the gentle roll of her belly under her dress when she chuckled at her own remarks. With friends, laying back on the couch waiting for the football game to start, he’d study the toes of his boots and smile at her over the rim of his contentment, a cream-licking cat stroking his whiskers.

East Bay Dragons Motorcycle Club, an all-black,
all-Harley-Davidson riding crew. Photo probably from the 1960s

 On Saturday mornings before the end, she kept her eyes closed when Eddie got out of bed before the sun. She’d fit the familiar sounds of his movements as he prepared for a run—the rustle of jeans pulled up and zipped, the predictable clunk of a dropped boot--to her memories. She’d hear the squeak of leather and pull the pink comforter tighter under her chin sensing it was time. She knew he had his gang colors on, but she wasn’t afraid. He always made it back.

In the half light before dawn, her mind swayed with the rhythmic prelude of his leaving, reminding her of when they used to ride together, when she’d clung to his back, hands locked around his hard belly, fingers warmed by the furnace of his spirit. He set the pain pill set by the bedside. She registered the soft closing of the bedroom door, then hot cracks from the bike firing up. The horn’s one short beep signaling he was off. She rested in familiar images of Eddie in the saddle, stretching to his full height in the brightening morning light, then slipped into the darkness of her pain.

  

Bessie Stringfield, born in 1911 in Jamaica, was the first woman
to ride a motorcycle across the the U.S. solo. She was inducted
into the Motorcycle Museum's Hall of Fame in 2002

 After 27 years of marriage, Eddie’s heart crashed and burned when she slipped away. He laid his bike down, throwing sparks and spinning out, broke his ankle, sat expressionless in the front row at the funeral home, cast resting on a chair, shook hands, said thank yous. He left his old gang and hung up his colors.

About a year ago Eddie sat doodling at the kitchen table where he and LaVerne used to drink coffee and eat cinnamon rolls on Sunday mornings before she got sick. Back then they’d go back to bed on Sundays for some extra sweet stuff. This morning sunlight cast its gold across Oakland and the streets were still, then the silence broke and he heard a far-off rumble, probably a flathead Harley, he thought.

Without realizing it, he designed new colors for the back of his riding vest – a flaming red and orange heart. He found some new boys – professionals and businessmen like himself – and they put on the colors too. Today they’re running to Capay Valley, following the course of Cache Creek spilling down the Mayacamas Mountains, the water searching for the Sacramento River, but halting the easy flow where the road connects to Interstate 80 and the gang rumbled back home to Oakland.

I met Eddie at the Jack-in-the-Box in Vallejo, where Highway 37 crosses Highway 29. I was running late for a Saturday writing workshop and he saw my impatience, let me order ahead of him, leaned forward, paid for my coffee. We talked and he told me about where he and the boys were headed, asked me if I wanted to ride sissy.

I shook my head, glanced at his bike, started to say no, but he interrupted, said if I waited, all I’d get is older. Seemed like he knew what he was talking about. I believed him when he said all I had to do was hang on tight.

Next Saturday Eddie and the Drifters will run someplace and I’ll weigh anchor, drift.

History of Black Motorcycle Clubs: Who Paid the Price for Black Bikers Who Ride Today?

It's true I met Eddie and members of his motorcycle club at Jack-in-the-Box in Vallejo on the way to a workshop on writing personal essays. Eddie and the Drifters MC were on a run, decked out in riding leathers and heavy boots, more splendid than rodeo cowboys. Eddie was kind and funny when we talked. He bought me coffee. I felt a wistful sadness in him and tried to guess the source, prompting this essay, fueled by a dip into the fascinating history of Black motorcycle clubs in Oakland, CA, in America. 

Waltzing With Birdie

Uncle Doug was a bachelor. He wore thick, black-rimmed glasses that greatly magnified his watery blue eyes. At 35, he was short, bald and chubby. After World War II was over and his typing stint at Fort Benning, Ga., ended, Uncle Doug came back home to San Francisco. A year later, he and my grandmother used the GI bill to buy a bungalow way up on the hill in Noe Valley. The three-bedroom house, with a tunnel entrance seemed like it was built on stilts, a promontory to the only world I knew – the Mission district down below, the neon Dutch Boy paint sign waving mechanically in the Potrero Districts, and ships, like tiny logs, anchored in the bay beyond.

My mother and father moved the four of us kids into the house’s cavernous basement when my father’s drinking led to the bank’s foreclosure on our tract house in Pacifica. Upstairs, Uncle Doug, Great Aunt Eva and my grandmother slept in the three small bedrooms, huddled together at the end of the long hall. Sunshine flooded in through three big skylights, which eased the despair.

Uncle Doug collected girlie pictures and pasted them into loose-leaf binders like recipes in a homemade cookbook. He kept them on his bureau with all the stats – bust measurements, age, height, weight, other magazines they’d appeared in. Before going to work in the afternoon, Uncle Doug would pace the floor of his bedroom listening to baseball games, calling the plays out loud before they were made. He had a record player and sometimes sang along with Frank Sinatra when the Giants weren’t at bat.

My grandmother said Uncle Doug had “shell shock” from his experience in the war. That was what made him so odd, she said. That was what made him talk to himself and pace like a big cat. My mother rolled her eyes and held her tongue whenever the shell-shock theory was presented. She leaned toward the brain-damaged-at-birth notion.

Sometimes Uncle Doug would go to the basement. There was an old, black upright piano in the back corner, shoved against the cement foundation wall. Our beds were arranged there too. He’d beat the keys, pound out hymns and sing in his thin tenor voice about the love of Christ. My mother would usually take us kids down the street to the park until the music died.

Uncle Doug loved to dance. He went folk dancing on his days off. He’d wear a plaid shirt and tie with a frayed tweed sport jacket. He had high blood pressure and anemia, which he tried to cure by eating raw liver. He picked the ear wax from his ears with a bobby pin and ate it. He smelled like the inside of an old shipping trunk. He never missed a day sorting mail. He turned over his paycheck to my grandmother without discussion.

Everyday payday, my grandmother would add things up and tell him how short we were. She’d go through the bills, figuring how much we could get away with not paying each month. Because we did have a car, we carried paper shopping bags with rags wrapped around the handles when we walked to the grocery store. The rags kept the weight of the food from cutting into our hands when we walked back up the hill. Sometimes Uncle Doug would take my bag and carry it for a while, adding the weight to his own load.

I never heard my uncle complain. He hugged us kids and tickled us, grabbing our legs just under the knee cap and wiggling them back and forth giving us what we called “shinnie, shinnies.” Once he took the four of us children to the Fun House at Playland-at-the-beach. Another time he took us to a roller-skating rink. One time we went with him to watch the Fourth of July fireworks through the fog at Marina Green. He spaded the garden when asked and carried my great aunt to the living room so my grandmother could change her bedding. Then he’d gently carry her back to bed again.

Sometime in 1958, when I was 10, my grandmother began to get phone calls from a bill collector. She’d argue and cry and hang up the phone. She and my mother would go in the kitchen and close the door. We could hear their agitated tones over the sound of the radio. Once I heard my mother say, “That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard! Is Doug out of his mind?”

Then I overheard my mother talking to a friend. She said Uncle Doug had signed a contract for Arthur Murray dancing lessons. They wanted the $1,500 right away, and Grandma had finally borrowed the money on the house to make the bill collector go away. My mother said they took advantage of Doug, that he wasn’t bright enough to understand what he had done.

Uncle Doug wasn’t home much after that. Once in a while he’d spend an hour with us kids. He showed us how to rumba and cha cha. I tripped over his brown wing tips trying to waltz. He had rubber footsteps he’d lay out for us to follow on the living room floor. He’d play Frank Sinatra records so we could dance. He bought a black tuxedo with a blue cummerbund. He started to smell like Old Spice and White Shoulders.

One day I found his collection of girlie pictures in the garbage can in the basement. Ants were crawling all over the women’s bare breasts. They got on my fingers and marched around my wrists. I shook them off. I closed the lid.

Not long after that Uncle Doug brought Birdie home to meet us. They were ballroom dancing partners, he said. Birdie showed up with false teeth, a lot of rouge and a powder-blue chiffon dress with a fake fur stole. Uncle Doug’s cummerbund matched the blue in her dress exactly. He put his arm around Birdie when they sat on Grandmother’s burgundy chesterfield. My grandmother flinched when Uncle Doug called Birdie “Mama.”

My mother said Birdie was as Okie as the day was long. Killed her first husband with greasy Southern cooking. My mother said the poor man died of a heart attack while they were in the act. To no one in particular, my mother pointed out that Birdie had six grown kids. My grandmother said Birdie didn’t have the brains God gave a parakeet. Birdie ran a mangle and folded sheets in a commercial laundry. Uncle Doug said he loved her.

They were married at Glide Memorial Methodist Church in 1960. The reception was held at my grandmother’s house. We served a buffet of boiled ham and potato salad in the dining room. Then they sprinkled cornmeal on the basement floor and we kids sat on the wooden steps and watched as Birdie and Doug waltzed and tangoed on the open space near the washing machine. My mother said the marriage would never last. My grandmother said Birdie was old enough to be his mother, that she’d die first and Doug would come back home.

Uncle Doug and Birdie bought a singlewide house trailer in a park in Santa Rosa. For years Uncle Doug took the Greyhound bus to San Francisco to sort mail at the post office at night. He bought Birdie a new washer and dryer. They made payments on a refrigerator-freezer combination from Montgomery Ward.

A few years ago I drove up to tell him my mother had died. He’s retired now. He has a deep scar on his cheek where they took out a cyst. His magnified eyes are dim and he has dandruff and gout. He asked me if he was mentioned in my mother’s will. I said no. He asked if I wanted to hear some Frank Sinatra. I asked if he and Birdie still danced. He said yes.

San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday Punch Dec. 11 1994

Talking Japanese With Cats

woodblock print, 1934 | Toraji Ishikawa

Plastic grocery bags, coupons offering two-for-one, old shoes dumped in the alley behind the house, broke-down stoves with oven doors hanging loose like panting dogs. All free stuff. Well, the stove was free, but hefting it onto the rotting back porch of the apartment my sister Ronnie was renting at the time, the one with the Murphy bed that wouldn't stay politely closeted, cost me a bottle of pain reliever due to back issues.

She’d decided to snag the stove after studying its abandoned hulk out her kitchen window, which charmingly looks out on garbage bins and incorrigible weeds, for a week and chatting with a guy she'd been eyeing at the coffee shop. He suggested by way of flirting (her words) that it might be fixable, offered to take a look, which involved three hours of hair styling and make up for Ronnie before he showed up in basketball shorts and a crummy "Huskers" T-shirt.

I was there when he arrived for moral support or to call 911 in case the guy went rogue, but I spent most of his quick visit staring at his poorly fitting false teeth. My sister's about as hot as crust on an oven rack so I went along with it in hopes something yeasty would arise with Mr. Fix-it, and truthfully, he had a full head of lustrous, better than George Clooney, salt and pepper hair.  

But me—I'm not too enthusiastic about junk. I figure, if it’s free, there’s a reason. My sister looks at life as one grand dumpster dive and can’t help herself, which is how I got Tiger, my orange and white cat, and she got three dates with a University of Nebraska college football fan.

The “garden” apartment where I was living at the time didn't permit animals and Ronnie called after work to let me know she was stopping by the "studio," as she called my cozy three-room apartment in an upscale complex. I've never been a cat lover, don’t enjoy the hair on the furniture and resent their insolent lounging about.

“Why the heck did you bring the thing here? I can’t keep him.” I huffed and opened the box. The thing jumped out and ran under the couch.

“See?" She looked at me like I'm both blind and dumb. "He likes it here already. Made himself right at home.”

I felt impatient, tired after a long day. This was not my sister's first free fiasco. We've been dysfunctional co-dependents since before it was cool. I've been through the foisting of second-hand desires before and I was sure he had mange. It would only be a matter of time until its fur was gone and his teeth fell out. I’m allergic to flea bites, for god’s sake.

“Where’d you get the damn thing?” I got down on my knees, rear in the air, peering under the couch, expecting claws and teeth, some kind of Wild Kingdom reenactment.

“You've got lint on your butt, she said to my backside. “He was free and you know how much I love free.”

“That’s not what I asked.” I stood up stiff, tottered.

“His name is really Tora. Means Tiger in Japanese.”

“Japanese? What? He escaped from a trade delegation?”

“No. I was having lunch with friends. Ardith was paying. You know how much  . . .

“I know you love free!” I stepped mincingly around the box, glared, kicked at it.

“That’s not what I was going to say.” She sounded hurt and made pouty lips. “I was going to say I love inari and this place downtown has the best, plus shrimp tempura, teriyaki chicken, steamed broccoli, white rice. Great lunch in a bento box. You ever have a bento lunch?”

“Give me a break. Are you telling me that what’s under my couch is an escaped entrée?”

“It’s not like that. Listen. My friend Ardith goes to pay and I’m getting ready to go out to my car. I found a place to park almost in front of the restaurant and there was still time left on the meter. My lucky day! Free. But, .. . ." She paused for effect, fluttered her false lashes. "I could see through the restaurant window the meter had expired and I didn’t want to get a ticket. That’s when I saw the sign ‘free cat’ with a cute picture. So, I asked the woman really fast about the cat and got Ardith to go out and put a quarter in the meter.

“You got your friend to buy you lunch . . . and pay for parking?”

“Not just lunch. There's enough left over for dinner. I got two meals out of it, actually,. They put the leftovers in take-out containers. Do you want some? Free dinner.”

“Veronica," I said, trying to be reasonable. "Why would anyone give away a perfectly good cat? What’s wrong with him? I mean besides the fact he's under my couch.”

“The woman at the cash register didn’t speak much English. The owner’s mother, I think. She was really old and wore those white socks with the toe split.” She glances down at her wedgie sandles and wiggles her toes to show off her purple polish and tiny daisy decals. “We used hand gestures. She said they already have a cat. But this one, Tora, means tiger in Japanese.

“You told me that,” I’m stood, hands on hips, looking with one eye at the gap under my couch and thought about the day that will live in infamy.

“He fights,” my sister said, all bright and cheerful like the cat also cames with a free samurai sword. “They tried for two years to get him to like their other cat, but the vet bills got to be too much. Since Tiger was the newest one, and they liked the older one better, they decided to get rid of him.”

“And you think I need a vicious tom cat?”

“It’s not like that. He just doesn’t like other cats in his territory, that’s all. You don’t have a cat so he won’t have anyone to fight with. Besides, you’re lonely. You need a pet. I worry about you. I really do. Bye the way, do you have an extra roll of toilet paper? I don’t get paid until next week and it would get me through.”

I stomped into the bathroom and fished out a fresh roll from under the sink, twirled it on my index finger before tossing it to her.

“What about my furniture? Does he shred things, too, I mean just to stay in shape for wrestling season?”

“Stop! The woman didn’t say anything about that. She said he’s a good cat. It’s just that he likes to fight. That’s all I know. I’m sure he’ll be fine. But, I gotta go. He was free and I just couldn’t pass it up.”

We’ve been together now, Tiger and me, for more than ten years. He has gotten a lot fatter and refuses to use a cat box. I bought a little house, which Ronnie calls the “asylum.” But, Tiger knows my ways and waits on the front walk for me every evening and greets me when I come home from work. OK, the truth is he meows until I top off his kibble bowl and set down fresh water and then ignores me.

Ronnie and I don’t talk about his assaults on other cats in the neighborhood or the birds he kills and leaves in front of the patio door, or the time he scratched the mailman. The Postal Service sent a note about mauling, but I didn't respond. He sleeps on my bed and purrs beside me when we go to sleep. I've gotten a bigger bed, but don't invite overnight guests, or encourage visits by people with small children.

Ronnie is pleased with our relationship, takes full responsibility for what she calls my “bliss.” I remind her he’s just a cat when she comes over to borrow things, which is to say often, and she never fails to mention he is . . . well, quite a bargain.

Hiroshige Woodblock Print, 

Swimming to British Columbia

We’d hold hands before falling asleep, twin beds pushed together, blankets mounded in the divide. Across that narrow separation, my grandmother told stories of when she was young, about times when she taught school in logging towns in British Columbia and lots of other things.

These tales from the turn of the century come to mind now for several reasons – I've been reading Alice Munro’s Selected Stories and find in these beautiful jewels reflections of stories my grandmother told-- turns of phrase, vocabulary choices -- evoking memories long put aside. And, since March is Women’s History Month, Facebook friends are focusing on women’s issues.

 For various reasons, I've been going through boxes of old family photos handed down to me, mostly without notes or orientation, leaving wide margin for my own invention. I find myself remembering and wondering, making up stories to go with the images from slender recollections. This story comes to mind, told in my grandmother’s dark, dusty bedroom on Elizabeth Street in San Francisco, the smell of face powder and cologne in crystal perfume bottles with fancy stoppers, providing aromatic atmosphere:

Dessalyn Matti King
Probably about 1910 to 1915

“It was a beautiful day. British Columbia was beautiful back then,” she said.

“When?”

“Probably about 1915, but don’t interrupt or I won’t tell the story." She gently squeezed my fingers. "Anyway. It was Sunday and I had the day off from teaching school. I taught the children in one room, in a log cabin. Most of them weren’t very smart and the rules for teachers were strict back then. I had to clean the schoolroom on Saturdays. I didn’t like that, but I did it. And, they wanted you to dress and talk a certain way.”

“Who?”

“Oh, the town’s people. The men who hired me. But, let me go on."

“Where did you live?”

“In a house they provided, of course. It was one room with an old wood stove for heating and I drove a car my father bought me, which they didn’t like. Most people didn’t think women should drive. But, I did it anyway. Do you want to hear this story or not?”

Dolly driving 

“I want to hear,” I said, but pulled my hand free. The unnatural angle of our holding made my wrist ache.

“I went hiking by the river and then decided to swim. I was near the chute they used to send the logs down to the water where they’d gather them up in big rafts and float them downstream to the mill. I didn't expect the men would be working on Sunday. I thought I would be alone. But, I heard a rumbling and saw big logs coming down the chute, straight for me in the water.

“I knew I’d be killed so I ducked under water and swam beneath the surface as far and fast as I could go. The sound of the logs hitting the river carried under water and made me swim harder. When I came up, I was far out in the river and the current had caught me. I was carried into the log jam. I grabbed ahold of the logs and pulled myself around, ducking under, swimming with them until I got myself close to the bank. I was afraid the logs would hit the rapids and I'd be crushed in the jumble. I got out just in time and had a long walk back to my clothes, but I lived through it.”

“Were you cold?”

“Don’t be a simpleton. Of course I was cold, and scared to death and glad to be alive.”

“I’m glad, too.”

Dessalyn in the doorway of the one-room
log-cabin school where she taught
in British Columbia.

“You shouldn't ever swim by yourself and you need to be a strong swimmer. You never know what will happen. Now, give me your precious little hand.”

My Grandmother, Dessalyn Matti King Wilson, was born in 1890 and graduated from the University of Missouri with a degree in physics in 1910. She was 20 and there were no jobs for women in the field of physics in those days. She went to teacher (normal) school and by 1915 was teaching in one-room school houses in logging towns in British Columbia.

She said she did it for fun, which I took to mean the adventure of being a pioneer. She was the second youngest of 10 children. Her father was a prosperous merchant in St. Louis. All of her siblings were college educated, unusual for that era.

They called her “Dolly,” partly because she stood about 4 feet, 9 inches. She was pretty and quick. She liked to sing and dance and played a half dozen musical instruments, including honky tonk piano, which she played for me and my brothers and sister as we were growing up.

Dessalyn, first row center, with her parents and siblings

Probably about 1900

She liked girls who “stood up for themselves, had gumption.” She didn't like bawl babies, called girls like that "little calves." She loved to walk and smoke and cheat at gin rummy. She was an accomplished seamstress and made all her own clothes and ours until I went to junior high school and rebelled, because no one wore cotton dresses with big collars and crinoline petticoats in the early 1960s.

She wasn’t hurt by my decision. Instead, she took me shopping in downtown San Francisco wearing white gloves, patent leather shoes and ankle socks. She shopped at Hales, The Emporium, City of Paris and the White House, called the sales ladies “Petty,” and insisted they go into the stock room and bring out the best “goods.” She picked at the merchandise and complained about the quality and price, made a big fuss. Sometimes she'd call for the manager.

Out on the sidewalk with our bags, she'd excuse her behavior by say something like: "I'm a business woman and know good goods. I'm not going to let them cheat me." We'd walk to catch the J Church street car back home to Noe Valley and hold hands as we crossed Market Street, her fingers slender and childlike, but gripping my hand as strong as a jumberjack.

Historical Note: Most of the earliest teachers in rural communities of the West were men. When the teaching profession developed and required that teachers have some formal training, more and more women entered the field. Communities were happy to have female teachers because they would work for less pay than a male teacher.

They were often young  --  sometimes as young as some of their students  --  and did not stay for very long in one school if they could find another teaching position in a better location or which paid a little more. 

As the country moved West in the United States, the need for teachers, male or female increased. By the 1870’s, 25% of all American-born white women had taught school at some time in their lives. The community had an advantage in hiring a woman teacher, though. Women were paid 40-60% less than their male counterparts, making $54.50 a year to a male teacher’s $71.40 on average in the 1880s.

 https://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/schoolhouse/008003-2100-e.html 

Frontier Teachers: Stories of Heroic Women of the Old West

 http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/frontier-teachers-chris-enss/1100305442?ean=9780762748198&itm=1&usri=9780762748198

Information about the early days of logging in British Columbia and historical photos are archived online by the Campbell River Museum at http://www.crmuseum.ca/logging-jungles

Red-tailed Hawk and a Fractured Valentine

I recently got an email from an old friend of my ex-husband,

who now lives in England. He inquired about John's whereabouts.

I wrote him back with the news.

Dear Dan:  Thank you for your kind note about John. I'll pass it on to our sons, Mark, 35 and Mike, 24. I know they'll appreciate your remembrance. They've taken the loss of their father hard and they're still getting over it. They were relatively young to lose their Dad and have been rudderless since, as I've been for the past few years. John was always so big and robust, wherever he went he filled the room. It's still hard to believe a mere virus could diminish him, take him away.

John and I had a challenging relationship, as you know, and we were not living together when he died. He died alone by choice and it was a month before his body was discovered. I regret the way he died and miss him very much. He was my biggest supporter and we all wish we had been there for him. But, in the end, big and gruff, he chased everyone away in his bitterness.

As you may have gathered, I'm a writer and have worked as a reporter for many years. My work has often taken me to remote locations. John was always there for the boys and they easily went back and forth between us. He was proud of my work and in many ways made it possible for me to do it. I now live in Sacramento and work as a writer and photographer specializing in environmental issues. After Mike graduated from high school, I began to take creative writing classes -- short stories, poetry -- and I began a novel, Adrift in the Sound, published in 2012, that includes several characters modeled after John.

I worked my day job and worked on the novel nights and weekends. It's set in Seattle in 1973, its about what happened after the "Free Love 60s" ended and a new era began -- end of the Vietnam War, Watergate Scandal, Roe vs. Wade that legalized abortion, launching of the war on drugs, the Arab Oil Embargo, etc. The story is about Lizette, an addled street artist who hooks up with the Franklin Street Dogs, a ragtag tavern softball team, it's about the gritty drug scene and the pristine beauty of Orcas Island, its about John and me and the only thing that really matters. But, remember, it's fiction.

I struggled to find an ending for the story, but it eluded me. One night I had a dream, vivid and powerful. John and I were in bed on a sunny morning. We were young. In the dream, he went to take a bath and I went along to keep him company. In the dream every hurt, resentment, tension, grievance between us was resolved and in that moment only comfort, love and acceptance washed between us.

It was as if John came to me in person. It was 2 a.m. and by 6 a.m. the end of the novel was written, the story complete. I had a strong urge to call John, check in, see how he was doing, but put it off. As best the San Francisco Coroner can figure, he died the day I finished the novel. I believe the end of my story was his final gift to me, the gift of feeling his complete, untarnished love, and a gentle, resolved ending to a grating story. Sorry, but I can't go on telling. It makes me cry.

Gerald and Buff Corsi ©
California Academy of Sciences

At John's funeral, we had lots of chocolate and roses and friends from John's days in San Francisco's Haight Asbury. When it was over, I went outside and a huge red-tailed hawk swooped low and ruffled my hair then perched on a cornice of the building. You would think this an exaggeration, but I have witnesses.

The hawk was vigilant, as if guarding. It was still there after everyone left and I was alone with this magnificent bird, standing in front of an ornate and historic mausoleum. I hated to leave him there and my brother had to drag me away. We sprinkled some of John's ashes in the Panhandle at Golden Gate Park where he played baseball as a kid. I have kept the rest.

Find Adrift in the Sound here.

Memorial Day

We were late getting there, what with traffic and a not-so quickie in the truck-stop rest room off I-5 that smelled of toilet bowl freshener. We took the slow lane, didn't zip down the highway. Why rush? he said and caressed my inner thigh. I agreed, but felt fatigued by the time we landed on his mother’s doorstep last night, the faces of his family blurry and blank.

I gushed insincerely about his mother’s amazing flat, the hardwood floors, the view of the bay, the double glass doors separating the living and dining rooms, skipped over mention of her now gone husband, his soldier's photo in the place of honor on the mantle. She'd start with "we"  or "he" then stop. "Vietnam," she whispered, following my eye to the photo.

His brother talked about flying in from the East Coast with his family in a nasally voice. He told how the guy next to him blew his nose on the airline blanket and then spread it over his chest. He said the cab from the airport smelled of stale hash and warned us the kids get up early, then slouched off to the back bedroom behind his wispy wife. We got the living room fold-out without much padding, the inflexible frame now cutting into my spine.

At first light, she began setting the holiday table at a dogged pace. I watched through the glass doors with one eye, riding my attention over the bunched pillow like a sneaker wave, to spy her fondling each saucer and candlestick. She flapped a white tablecloth, smoothed it with veiny hands, pulled brown napkin rings from a drawer in the battered sideboard, held up a cobalt glass goblet to the dim light, studied it, put it away, stood hunched before the dining room window, facing east, wiping her eyes, twisting her wedding band around her bony finger, thinking she alone was staring at the first hints of a mimosa sunrise.

I ignored the warmth coming from behind, his knucklehead nosing my thigh. Clearly, his mother, my hostess, was lost in painful reverie. Lost, but she didn't have on blinders. I pushed him away, suspecting her hearing was still pretty good. Relenting with the next nudge, I arched my back and surrendered into her grief.

From Hard Holidays, online flash fiction prompts from writer Meg Pokress, author of best-selling flash fiction collection Bird Envy.

Stalking the Rose

MAY

7

Note to Mister: It comes to this. Of course, I love you. I’ve loved you in the darkest hours of the night, the thieves’ hours—when the world is asleep and stealing what I want is easy. An unlocked window, a child’s rocking horse close at hand, darling in its painted saddle, tufts of brown plush for a mane. I reach in and snatch it, no one awake to see, and the child doesn't deserve it, not this precious little toy. I carry it under my arm, ditch it behind the dumpster, come back later to get it or leave it.

It’s easy and the world is asleep.

I slip in a back door, trip on a soured mop, catch the handle before it drops, move to the front, to the mailboxes, lift the little brass doors with my chewed thumbnail, rifle the envelopes for checks. Take what I need, take the love offered in the darkest hours, lift my hoodie, blow on my cold-stiffened fingers, slip out, soft. It comes to this often. I loved you then and now, tonight, when the fullest moon, the perigee moon makes you howl like a dog and you grovel on your purple couch and clutch your red and black hula hoop. Swing it. Hang on, because, of course, I love you. 

 I wrote you a book, told you a story in the darkest hours, hours stolen in my four-poster bed with it’s down comforter and handmade Sunburst quilt I bought in Solvang when I was alone, traveling to nowhere, nibbling pfeffernüsse. It was a daytime impulse, not a dark obsession like writing a book, not like you.

And, later, your memory with me in the dark motel room, I sensed you sniffing at the rosemaling tattooed on the drawer fronts and complaining about saccharin, about the wooden shoes planted with flowers. You were turning a phrase, talking about latex and restraints, turning my head with the story of the boy on a subway with a knife and cat eyes, while I worked saltine-flavored songs on my laptop.

Now it’s done and I’m writing letters and flyers and press releases to tell everyone what we did in the thieves’ hours, offering to show them and buy and sell them, seduce them and make them mine. Of course I love you, but it has come to this:   

I wrote you letters and you read them, made vague grunts. But, I study your letters long for clues about how to write, not sentences, but for state of mind, for emotion, for truth and heat, for the moment when the artist lets their guard down—like I did with Rilke, Anne Sexton, Conrad, Flannery O’Connor, Steinbeck and Hemingway, Joyce. I see your the tangled path to truth and try to follow with panting heart, treading the rocky trail, stumbling on roots and skinning my palms. And now, of course, I write again in the thieves' hour because I’m afraid.

I sit very still now, wonder what's going to happen? Tomorrow, I'll get up with thieves and stalk you, wait. I can’t sleep without you, without getting up to steal the writing and read the emails from everyone, but especially from you.

Note: This post is inspired by an email from writer, Stephen Elliott, publisher of The Rumpus. I came home dusty and wind blown from a rose seminar, tired from walking the test fields, and read Stephen's email, popped out a reflexive response--a melange of fact and fantasy. It's a jazz riff, a variation on theme.

About my obsession: My novel Adrift in the Sound, is available in paperback and e-reader I’ve also published a slim book about the final editing of Adrift, co-authored with my editor, Tom Thomas. Between the Sheets: An Intimate Exchange on Writing, Editing, and Publishing is available now through Amazon for e-reader and in paperback.

And, I've started a serial fiction on the site www.jukepop.com. It's a story installments about a willful, foolish woman who finds ruin and redemption in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta. Find Drowning in the Delta online. It's a free read, at least for now.

But, no matter. Remember that in the still, black hours, it comes to this: I love you. Thanks for visiting the Word Garden, thanks for dropping comments and encouragement like rose petals. I'll be listening to Brahms and Boney James, waiting for you.

Brahms on a Variation of Paganini: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iiTwSK8PvIM&feature=kp

Waltzing With Birdie

Uncle Doug was a bachelor. He wore thick, black-rimmed glasses that greatly magnified his watery blue eyes. At 35, he was short, bald and chubby. After World War II was over and his typing stint at Fort Benning, Ga., ended, Uncle Doug came back home to San Francisco to live with his mother.

A year later, he and my grandmother used the GI bill to buy a bungalow way up on the hill in Noe Valley. The three-bedroom house, with a tunnel entrance seemed like it was built on stilts, a promontory to the only world I knew – the Mission district down below, the neon Dutch Boy paint sign waving mechanically in the Potrero District, and ships, like tiny logs, anchored in the bay beyond.

My mother and father moved the four of us kids into the house’s cavernous basement when my father’s drinking led to the bank’s foreclosure on our tract house in Pacifica. Upstairs, Uncle Doug, Great Aunt Eva and my grandmother slept in the three small bedrooms, huddled together at the end of the long hall. Sunshine flooded in through three big skylights, which eased the despair.

Uncle Doug collected girlie pictures and pasted them into loose-leaf binders like recipes in a homemade cookbook. He kept them on his bureau with all the stats – bust measurements, age, height, weight, other magazines they’d appeared in. Before going to work in the afternoon, Uncle Doug would pace the floor of his bedroom listening to baseball games, calling the plays out loud before they were made. He had a record player and sometimes sang along with Frank Sinatra when the Giants weren't at bat.

My grandmother said Uncle Doug had “shell shock” from his experience in the war. That was what made him so odd, she said. That was what made him talk to himself and pace like a big cat. My mother rolled her eyes and held her tongue whenever the shell-shock theory was presented. She leaned toward the brain-damaged-at-birth notion.

Sometimes Uncle Doug would go to the basement when my father wasn't down there passed out. There was an old, black upright piano in the back corner, shoved against the cement foundation wall. Our beds were arranged there too. He’d beat the keys, pound out hymns and sing in his thin tenor voice about the love of Christ. My mother would usually take us kids down the street to the park until the music died.

Uncle Doug loved to dance. He went folk dancing on his days off. He’d wear a plaid shirt and tie with a frayed tweed sport jacket. He had high blood pressure and anemia, which he tried to cure by eating raw liver. He picked the ear wax from his ears with a bobby pin and ate it. He smelled like the inside of an old shipping trunk. He never missed a day sorting mail at the post office. He turned over his paycheck to my grandmother without discussion.

Every payday my grandmother would add things up and tell him how short we were. She’d go through the bills, figuring how much we could get away with not paying each month. Because we didn't have a car, we carried paper shopping bags with rags wrapped around the handles when we walked to the grocery store. The rags kept the weight of the food from cutting into our hands when we walked back up the hill. Sometimes Uncle Doug would take my bag and carry it for a while, adding the weight to his own load.

I never heard my uncle complain. He hugged us kids and tickled us, grabbing our legs just under the knee cap and wiggling them back and forth giving us what we called “shinnie, shinnies.” Once he took the four of us kids to the Fun House at Playland-at-the-beach. Another time he took us to a roller-skating rink. One time we went with him to watch the Fourth of July fireworks through the fog at Marina Green. He spaded the garden when asked and carried my great aunt to the living room so my grandmother could change her bedding. Then he’d gently carry her back to bed again.

Sometime in 1958, when I was about nine, my grandmother began to get phone calls from a bill collector. She’d argue and cry and hang up the phone. She and my mother would go in the kitchen and close the door. We could hear their agitated tones over the sound of the radio. Once I heard my mother say, “That’s the most ridiculous thing I ever heard! Is Doug out of his mind?”

Then I overheard my mother talking to a friend. She said Uncle Doug had signed a contract for Arthur Murray dancing lessons. They wanted the $1,500 right away, and Grandma had finally borrowed the money on the house to make the bill collector go away. My mother said they took advantage of Doug, that he wasn’t bright enough to understand what he had done.

Uncle Doug wasn’t home much after that. Once in a while he’d spend an hour with us kids. He showed us how to rumba and cha cha. I tripped over his brown wing tips trying to waltz. He had rubber footsteps he’d lay out for us to follow on the living room floor. He’d play Frank Sinatra records so we could dance. He bought a black tuxedo with a blue cummerbund. He started to smell like Old Spice and White Shoulders.

One day I found his collection of girlie pictures in the garbage can in the basement. Ants were crawling all over the women’s bare breasts. They got on my fingers and marched around my wrists. I shook them off. I closed the lid.

Not long after that Uncle Doug brought Birdie home to meet us. They were ballroom dancing partners, he said. Birdie showed up with false teeth, a lot of rouge and a powder-blue chiffon dress with a fake fur stole. Uncle Doug’s cummerbund matched the blue in her dress exactly. He put his arm around Birdie when they sat on Grandmother’s burgundy chesterfield. My grandmother flinched when Uncle Doug called Birdie “Mama.”

My mother said Birdie was as Okie as the day was long. Killed her first husband with greasy Southern cooking. My mother said the poor man died of a heart attack while they were in the "act." To no one in particular, my mother pointed out that Birdie had six grown kids. My grandmother said Birdie didn't have the brains God gave a parakeet. Birdie ran a mangle and folded sheets in a commercial laundry. Uncle Doug said he loved her.

They were married at Glide Memorial Methodist Church in 1960. The reception was held at my grandmother’s house. We served a buffet of boiled ham and potato salad in the dining room. Then they sprinkled cornmeal on the basement floor and we kids sat on the wooden steps and watched as Birdie and Doug waltzed and tangoed in the open space near the washing machine. My mother said the marriage would never last. My grandmother said Birdie was old enough to be his mother, that she’d die first and Doug would come back home.

Uncle Doug and Birdie bought a single-wide house trailer in a park in Santa Rosa. For years Uncle Doug took the Greyhound bus to San Francisco to sort mail at the post office at night. He bought Birdie a new washer and dryer. They made payments on a refrigerator-freezer combo from Montgomery Ward.

A few years ago I drove up to tell him my mother had died. He’s retired now. He has a deep scar on his cheek where they took out a cyst. His magnified eyes are dim and he has dandruff and gout. He asked me if he was mentioned in my mother’s will. I said no. He asked if I wanted to hear some Frank Sinatra. I asked if he and Birdie still danced. He said yes.

San Francisco Chronicle, Sunday Punch Dec. 11 1994

Growing Up in Noe Valley

K. Ripp, Wikimedia

Noe Valley. I lived there once, on the hill, on the street that cleaves Twin Peaks, in a house with a window that pictured the world – San Francisco Bay, the neon Dutch Boy sign with the child mechanically waving a paint brush, cargo ships resting like driftwood, waiting to dock.

The city’s roar and diesel fumes swirled through my grandmother’s open front window on winds from the ocean. We watched TV, black and white Crusader Rabbit cartoons, played on ratty oriental carpets, broke the faux Chippendale furniture, ignored the framed prints from Sears, and relied on the house’s skylights to illuminate the gloom. When someone asks “where are you from,” images of growing up in the 1950s in Noe Valley rush in before I answer, then I tell them the truth in those two words, words that once named my universe.

In that Irish enclave where my family had lived for several generations, my Great Aunt Eva lay dying of old age and widow’s despair in the back bedroom. My father, his bony body spent, curled up drunk on the bedstead in the basement. Next door, Mr. Anderson, the neighborhood bachelor, pruned shrubs in his front garden. He had a hot house in the back, propagated cuttings from the nursery in Golden Gate Park where he worked, shared the strongest ones with my grandmother. He called the four of us kids "the weeds."

Our side of the hothouse—a fence divided our yards and the structure, but the long narrow hothouse was there first—it served as a playroom. We invited the neighbor kids back there and ran through the flower beds and Grandma's thoughtful plantings: calla lilies, coral bells, primroses and iris in spring. We climbed on the playhouse roof, careful not to get pricked by the climbing Cecile Brunner rose that provided pink bouquets for our yellow tea table. Mr. Anderson, his watery blue eye trained on us through the crack in the boards, knocked on the wood when we said bad words or socked each other.

My first crush, Michael Esterbrook, came over from across the street in his coonskin cap. We played saloon, Davey Crockett and Daniel Boone. I’d be Miss Kitty from "Gun Smoke" and try to trick him into a kiss, but my brothers were always there, lifting butterfly cocoons from the Shasta daisies or prying quartz rocks from the birdbath to use as ammo, distracting us. I put nasturtiums and white iris in my hair, sucked nectar from the flower tubes. Michael never kissed me. I kissed my pretty dolls as I lay them in their tole-painted toy beds.

Sometimes my grandmother called us in from a back window and we’d trudge with her, all four of us kids, down to the grocery store at 24th and Castro. She’d buy lamb chops at the butcher shop, chat with the neighbors. We’d ogle the pig's head in the shop window, peek around the paper 3-D glasses to study it's milky eyes, get free slices of baloney from the butcher, wait for the 11 Hoffman bus to carry us back up the hill with our sacks of canned food. Back to where I’m from.

View from Twin Peaks today

Noe Valley garden, similar to the one where I grew up.
Our "playhouse" was hidden in the far back corner.
Courtesy: Noe Valley Voice

1903 image of the area of Noe Valley where I grew up.

Westerly view up 30th Street from Noe, in 1926, when it was just dirt paths.
Photo: Greg Gaar Collection, San Francisco, CA

Me on our family's Hudson Hornet about 1952.

Axford House at 1190 Noe Street at 25th.
Built in 1877 by William Axford, owner of Mission Iron Works.
A block from James Lick Jr. High School where my mother attended
and where I later went. We had some of the same teachers.
Photo: David Green

 1937 James Lick school yard,
about the time my mother went there.
Twin Peaks in the background

School yard today. When I went to Lick
the big yard was for the boys. There's a fence and small
lower yard on the right near the building that was for the girls.
We played jump rope and hopscotch. Back in the day,
pre-Title IX , adopted in 1972 and requiring equality in sports,
physical education was separate -- and decidedly unequal.  

Italianate row on Vicksburg St.,
at the "bottom of the hill."
Courtesy Alan Ferguson 

Many of the historical images in this post are from FoundSF.org. What is FoundSF.org?

It's a wiki that invites history buffs, community leaders and San Francisco citizens of all kinds to share their stories, images, and videos from past and present. There are over 1,800 articles presenting primary sources, essays, and images from San Francisco history... and site managers hope you'll add to it to help it grow!

Images and stories about Noe Valley can be found at: http://foundsf.org/index.php?title=Category:Noe_Valley