Saint Francis Is A Friend of Mine

From ‘My Father, Myself: A Memoir’

By Richard Humphries

“Sometimes a man hits upon a place to which he mysteriously feels that he belongs. Here is the
home he sought, and he will settle amid scenes that he has never seen before, among men he has
never known, as though they were familiar to him from his birth. Here at last he finds rest.”
—W. Somerset Maugham

The stifling heat in the van woke me and I stretched over Eric to open the side
doors to get some air. My best--and forty years later still-- friend had driven
the final four hundred miles or so of our meandering trip from Michigan and
deserved another minute’s rest. The doors pushed open with an effort due to
the fact our right wheels were up on the sidewalk and our left ones in a
parking spot on Washington Street. It was a bit of a slant.
“Oh, man, Eric,” I felt every bit of wonder in my voice. “Eric, wake up. Check
this out, man.”
“What’s happening’?” Eric and I were eighteen years old and woke up ready
and raring to go, no matter what we ingested the night before. He slid out of
his sleeping bag and joined me on the sidewalk. We stood in our blue jean
cut-offs and wrinkled tee shirts, barefoot on the sidewalk in the very center of
San Francisco’s Chinatown.
Freshly graduated from Pontiac Central High School a month and a half earlier
we had planned our escape to The Coast for over a year. I say ‘escape’ but we
were also acting out our generation's primal urge: To Split For The Coast.
There were bigger things happening and we wanted to be part of them. Eric
was also avoiding his Austrian father’s plans for his future. After a fatherless
and frightening adolescence, Michigan could only offer me a grim future
working in an auto plant for the next thirty years, if I wasn't sent to 'Nam.
Most motivating to me that summer of 1970 was the Selective Service
Administration’s insistent desire to get me in for a physical A.S.A.P. My birth
date had come up third in the national draft lottery and the Old Boys in D.C.
were eager as hell to ship eighteen year olds off to Vietnam. We'd be there
another five years before utterly ditching the place. At 18, I was not soldier
material and the war ran against all my sincerest beliefs. At my house, we
cheered The Champ Cassius Clay when he said at the time: "I ain't got no fight
with them Vietnamese."
I did not want to die and had seen classmates only a year older smartly
presented in their military uniforms one last time at their funerals. Autoworker
or teen soldier. These were not my after-High-School dreams. As confused as
the future appeared, I was sure about what I didn't want to become.
There wasn’t a dime for college, but I had a 1964 Ford Econoline van and
three hundred dollars in twenty-dollar bills. Gas at about thirty-two cents a
gallon for the whole length of Interstate 80. And a quart of oil every three
hundred miles or so is all she asked for. California was in range, Man.
And the luxuries: Eight track stereo with ten speakers mounted throughout.
There were over a hundred flower decals covering the outside of the van and a
few yards of deep red shag rug within. A self-installed roof vent released the
plumes of pot smoke we puffed as we discussed the amazing erotic
possibilities of such a vehicle. It would just require some girls.
And there were zillions of girls in San Francisco. Zillions. And very few of
these zillions were wearing bras, as seen in every magazine. Hippie girls. Free
Love Girls. Revolution (the song) was here and we were ready for duty.
It was a magical mystery tour of our own devising and we had made it. Our
dream destination lay before us. A sparkling, pastel city of light buildings and
hilarious hills surrounded us. “If you’re going to San Francisco,” the song had
sung and here we were.
It was an utterly new world to me. The very number of Chinese people walking
about amazed me. My exposure to people of this race had been limited to the
painfully smiling couple that owned Pontiac’s single Chop Suey restaurant. But
here, why, we were the minority.
Pulling on our hiking boots, we paid the parking meter as much as we had in
change and hit the trail. San Francisco’s fogs hold off our summer season
until late, but this August day was perfect at about seventy degrees with a
light breeze from the Bay.
We wandered without plan in every direction and the easy grid of the city’s
streets left us free to follow our feet. Walking the grimy sidewalk under the
elevated Embaracadero Highway toward the dingy Ferry Building, we ducked
into a sailor’s joint on Pier 23.
We had salami sandwiches and beers at the bar as the owner couple Whitey
and Joanie took a personal interest that we understand the walking route to
Ghiradelli Square. They drew a number of maps on a number of cocktail
napkins as they debated the ideal approach from where we sat. It was then,
as now, a straight walk and a left turn when you see the huge Ghiradelli sign.
Running a joint often packed with sailors of the world, this kindly couple knew
rube kids when they saw them.
The one contact we had was a fellow from Pontiac who now was grooving—
rumor had filtered back -- working in a bookstore in Ghiradelli Square, living
near the Panhandle and we should look him up. A friend’s cousin’s brother or
some such long-stretch possibility good for a night’s couch space.
Squinting into the sun as we three sat by the splashing fountain on his break,
he was very and genuinely happy to tell us of his final freedom to be gay and
his complete lack of interest whatsoever in furthering our budding
acquaintanceship. And please lose his number.
A block away, we jumped on the cable car for a quarter and took it to the top
of the Hyde Street hill. From there we spotted Washington Square, the heart
of North Beach and cover of Brautigan’s new book. Jumping from the cable
car, we ran down the curvy brick street, all the way to Grant Avenue.
Once in North Beach, we stopped for an espresso. This was not a common
drink at all at the time, but a few cafes in the area had them. Caffeinated and
still eighteen years old, we climbed to the top of Telegraph Hill and its 360-
degree view of the city. The nearby Vallejo steps led down to the bawdy strip
that was calling to us. Broadway.
It was dusk now and Broadway was lighting up. Every storefront was neon
bright with lusty females needing your penis, only yours. We were not
complete bumpkins and could easily pass the more lurid come-ons, but were
definitely keeping our eyes open. After some due diligence, we found that
‘Talk To A Live Nude Girl For A Dollar’ was not an unfair value. She was a nude
girl (and alive) and the curtain did rise on the plastic window of her booth for a
minute for every dollar paid in the slot. It was a young man’s game if you
were on a budget.
Each strip joint had a barker, a likely parolee in a garish get-up busily
bullshitting the tourists to horn them into the joint before the competing joint’s
barker three feet away was able to.
With one quick haircut to shoes scan, these fellows knew we were no
prospects for their six-dollar glasses of beer/two drink minimum. But they’d
smile and never made it personal as they refused to even consider the
fictitious birth dates on our faked driver’s licenses as proof enough to get us
through their doors. “Try down the street, guys,” they’d advise.
Wisely, we finally bribed a bum to buy us a pint of Wild Turkey at the corner
store next to a place screaming Dixie banjo music out the door. The entire
area was loud and adult and shady and exciting. But somehow okay. It wasn’t
Detroit.
We had learned early in the day to make a pact not to spare any change as we
were, frankly, more broke then most of the bums asking of us. It was a policy
that served us well throughout the day as we were constantly asked for
money.
“Can you guys spare any money?” The guy asking had come up behind us as
we were drinking in the alley next to the He And She Love In. The element of
surprise caught us momentarily speechless. “I got shot and I got to get a cab
to the hospital.”
At this I notice the man was a bit bent over to one side and painfully gripping
his jacket.
“See?” he said. Opening his jacket he gave us a plenty long peep at a hole in
the side of his torso that was gaping open. “I got shot.”
“Jesus,” Eric stared at me. “Maybe we should give this guy some money.”
“You think so?” I asked like a tight-ass tightwad.
“Yeah,” Eric was digging in his pocket. “I do.”
I did the same, ashamed of my hesitation.
”I mean,” Eric dug some dollars deep out of his front pocket, offering them to
the hunched-over and now groaning victim. God, was he going to die right
there? Wouldn’t we get in trouble? “This guy’s story is too good. I mean, he
has that hole in his side.”
“You’ll go straight to the hospital now, right?” I asked too loudly of the guy. I
held out a few bucks as well. The bleeding man snatched the bills with his
non-bloody hand. “Promise?”
“Right.” The guy confirmed. “Hospital. That’s a pretty good idea.”
He counted, one-handed, the money we had given him. It was about nine
bucks and he thanked us politely.
“You’re good men, Men. You’ll do well. Stay away from the military.”
He began walking quickly as the crossing lights changed. “And I might try
that hospital idea,” he said to us over his shoulder.
Last seen, our charity case was running across Broadway into the liquor store
with the windows filled with strange brands of booze. This town used to be
very much about drinking. People in San Francisco drank more than the rest
of the country. All the time.
We walked up Powell Street from Columbus and stopped at the top of Nob
Hill. Grace Cathedral pulled at me and my cynical buddy could justify the
extra steps as architectural study. The Manse stood directly in front of the
Cathedral in those days and we saw clerics gathered in a circle of high-back
chairs in a book-lined room.
The massive bronze doors of Grace Cathedral depict the Gates of Paradise by
Lorenzo Ghiberti. Moodily growing invisible as the night’s fogs began to
envelop the stone building, the Gates kept me standing there until they
disappeared. I tried to sense the glory of such gates opening someday. I was
eighteen and always wondering about scary, life problems. I couldn’t help it.
“Well?” asked a delighting (and aggressively agnostic) Eric. “Did Jesus say hi?
Can you, like, fly now?”
“No. But he did say he thinks you’re an asshole.”
Our van was calling to us for a final toke of pot and stinky removal of our
boots. We were discussing these big city plans, walking along again on Powell
Street as a cloud, loaded fat and gray with rain passed in front of the moon.
With sudden silence, the cable ceased humming beneath the street. This is the
motorized wire rope that runs the length of the city all day, humming away in
the background, pulling the cable cars up the hills. When the motors and the
cogs and the cable take a rest for the day, turned off on schedule, the soul of
San Francisco changes.
But, then, it is time for big boys and girls to head home and so to bed. Do be
careful though, with the right person next to you at this magic moment in the
city you can lose your heart.
As for me, I felt maddened and unsettled. I had fallen in love with a city. I
didn’t know you could fall in love with a city.
The night fog, trailing us around town for about an hour, was now turning to
droplets.
“Let’s run for it,” Eric shouted as he was off and running. It was his standard
gambit to gain a head start. At 6’2” to his 5’2”, I gave him the lead. He was
faster but my legs were longer. But he was tricky, too. You had to keep your
eyes on Eric. You still do. I think a fellow only gets one to three true friends in
a life, so I try to keep up with Eric.
Drenched, we found the van just as we left it. The meter long expired but no
parking ticket. It was a charmed day.
The rain pelted the sheet metal body of the van as we lay in our sleeping
bags, banging a tin-drum beat as we shared a ten-dollar joint of pure oregano
bought earlier in North Beach. With the camouflaged compassion of teenage
boys, we laughed ourselves silly over our gunshot spare change artist. How
often did he have to shoot himself?
I lay awake late through the night, growing more and more—almost to the
point of pain--determined I would become a San Franciscan. I was going to
stay and live in San Francisco. From now on. Eric’s occasional grunts in reply
to my grandiose plans were all the encouragement I needed or dared ask for.
Poor bastard. Trapped in a van in the rain with a madman dreamer. An
audience of one.
The ‘cottage’ in the Western Addition was a two-room shack behind a decrepit
Victorian overflowing with a commune of free spirits. After paying my new
slumlord sixty dollars for a month’s rent, the city’s urban renewal guy came by
and lowered it to thirty-five dollars and threw in a month’s free.
It was just the toehold I needed in my City. I had found my home. All things
were possible. It was in the very air. Coming from the Motor City, the
neighborhood seemed fine to me. I don’t think I ever did figure out it was a
bad place for a white guy. The mix seemed about normal. Like Pontiac.
Over the years, my personal dreams of that rainy night in the van have met
with adjustments. I’ve made mistakes and even bigger ones.
Saint Francis said, “I have been all things unholy. If God can work through
me, he can work through anyone.” I may be giving him a run for his money
on that one.
My four kids are San Franciscans, born in the city. They are artists and
writers, photographers and college students. I remember dreaming of
becoming each that long ago rainy night. And my kids keep such dreams
alive, around me.
It was the best three hundred bucks a guy ever spent.