"Ole" Fifty Seven

My Aunt Anne passed...sending me into a spate of memories.

Everybody's first friends are usually their siblings and/or relatives and yours truly was no exception. I had a whole raft of companions to choose from! Between my sister, the eldest, and two, then three brothers (I came between brothers number 2 and 3), and assorted nieces, nephews and cousins my dance card could be fairly full. The neighborhood was crawling with kids, too. So isolation was never a problem!

But I did enjoy my solitude; going off by myself to the railroad tracks and beyond...it's where I met the most interesting people. Some of them lived from one train ride to the next, sleeping when they could behind the billboards at the bottom of the hill where we kids sledded and did other daredevil things, or outside the Philadelphia train yards dodging bulls and bad weather in their rust colored coats, faded levi's and worn out shoes. I spent many summer afternoons going down the tracks, seeing who was around.


These folks were ragged looking...they spat and swore, but that didn't bother me. Their stories were worth every peanut butter sandwich and apple swiped for them from home. I'd leave early, paper lunch sack secreted in my back pack and make my way along the silver rails, listening for distant trains.

If anyone was around, I'd pull out the grub, hand it over, sit on a stump or upturned box and listen as guys like Lester Peke, Hap and his dog Muzzer or Blind Mike  talked about Pittsburgh, New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and the other great cities. If nobody was around I'd find a comfy spot to watch the world while I ate a half sandwich. I'd always leave the rest behind...just in case somebody hungry came along.

Then I'd make my way home, feet itching to be on my own adventures. Of course this was back in the day when kids could go out and play, with a fairly good chance of coming home. I'm so grateful to have grown up in a time when innocence was still possible...even if ....but that's another story.

For today, Fifty Five is the New 57.... after Engine #57; one of many great electric/diesel engines pulling the trains that came rumbling through my childhood, carrying freight and fantasy in their deep, dank boxcars.

Weather Report

by rcy

April in San Francisco is a bit different from the April of my East Coast hometown.  Back there, we had loud, booming thunder storms-real window rattlers!  The flowers usually started coming up shortly after the grasses...that happened after the last of the snow.

Things are changing all over the world....including the weather patterns.  Most notable to me; the presence of thunderstorms.  We used to only get three flashes and a far-off boom here in San Francisco.  That was it.  No muss, no fuss.

This past winter we had a storm that lasted about 20 minutes. It got me to wondering why folks think there's no truth to the idea of global warming. 

Well, for today, Fifty Five Is The New Weather Report....sunny with a chance of anything.

'59 It Was A Very Good Year (Remembering Aunt Anne)

I got a call today from my sister, who let me know that our Aunt Anne passed. Naturally all the memories of us kids and cousins, nieces and nephews,  aunts and uncles, parents and pets came flooding into my memory like a herd of kinfolk toward a family reunion meal.

Aunt Anne was my father's sister...one of three actually, and as long as I can remember she and her son Cousin Larry lived near us...first with Grandmother "Nanny Pumpkins" in the family home, then on their own in a nice apartment once Nanny had passed.  She'd been called "Nanny Pumpkins" because, as family lore went, she made the best pumpkin pie.

Anne was active in her church, a hard worker on the job and a good mother to her son. She served as Den Mother and Sunday School Teacher for the church; mentor, mediator and confidante for many young adults through those turbulent times. She had a very deep, personal relationship with her Savior, which included an unshakable faith that though tested through the years, never strayed.

Anyway, Mom, Dad and us kids used to pile into the car and go visit her and Larry,  we kids would end up in the basement or outside while the grown ups sat around talking or playing cards or talking and playing cards....or Yahtzee.

The boys usually found things to do that involved rumbling around, making car noises. My sister, the oldest, was either chaperoning, sitting with the adults or out with her friends. I was kind of the "odd man out, " in a matter of speaking.  For a while it was okay, we were all young enough so that me playing army with them wasn't such a bad thing, but as they got older things changed.

They called me a "girl," and left me to my own devices....which was fine by me! I loved looking through my cousin's comic books and listening to his records. Got to read my first Mad Magazine there, falling instantly in love with Spy vs. Spy, the t.v. show and movie parodies and the fold up picture puzzles on the back cover. 

They had a copy of Bill Cosby's album "Bill Cosby Is A Very Funny Fellow...RIGHT!" Larry put it on the record player. I laughed so hard, my sides hurt! Who am I kidding, everybody came to the "rec room" to listen.... pretty soon the whole house was doubled over in laughter...then we played it again, just to make sure we heard what we thought we heard.  F-U-N-N-Y!  It's also where I first heard Bob Newhart the Button-Down Mind......F-U-N-N-Y!

There are so many wonderful memories of growing up with a great bunch of cousins, assorted aunts and uncles and so on....from earliest childhood, featured prominently among these treasured moments are those shared with Aunt Anne.   

For today, Fifty Five is the New '59 (as in 1959, the year Cosby's "Funny Fellow" album was released) , in memory of my Aunt Anne who always gave of herself, and loved to laugh....it was a very good year.

63 Bunnies

Spirit Within Without  by rcw

Springtime is all around...birds chirping, trees and flowers blooming...little kids carrying spring/Easter crafts home from school, and marshmallow peeps are popping up all over town.

It reminds me of so many Easters while growing up...mom must have spent hours fussing over each of our baskets. The unsung artist, she made each one special...not just piled up with chocolate bunnies and jelly beans, mom made every basket look like its own little garden scene.

The weeks leading up to Bunny Sunday were full of preparations! Mom usually took us shopping for our Easter outfits.... Lit Brothers, J.C. Penney's, and Gimbels in 69th Street, a stop at Kresge's Five and Dime for a soda at the snack counter then on to home for cleaning and cooking, unless it was one of the Holy Days Of Obligation. If that was the case, it was off to church before going home. Talk about a full dance card!

One year, Mom decided to make my Easter outfit.  She sat at that sewing machine day and night and produced a beautiful outfit in my favorite color at the time...lilac. That might have been one of the years my birthday actually fell on Easter Sunday....which hasn't happened in quite a while! Well, anyway, lilac was as close to purple as I was going to get, so I was grateful.

For a few years, my sister and I got peek-a-boo eggs, not the cheap plastic things that get passed off for peek-a-boos these days, either!  The ones I'm talking about looked like sugar candy, decorated with "icing" piping....at one end was a little round hole and inside was a wonderland of bunnies and baby chicks, flowers and painted eggs!  I loved those things!

In our house we went to church for all the holidays, all the seasons leading up to the holidays and all the seasons past the holidays, too.  I loved the smell of incense, the organ music, the pomp and ceremony of the High Mass's opening procession....the one where all the priests and altar boys  (now altar girls, too) walk up the aisle in their finery, candles and incense burners filling the air with spiritual import....then Father O'Donnell's booming voice showering down on our heads from the angel encrusted marble pulpit as he read the Stations of the Cross.

Man! When he preached, the chandaliers shook...all us kids sat at straight-backed attention when he mounted the steps leading up to his preaching perch. We knew what was coming...year after year, the story always ended the same way, but with his flair for the dramatic and booming voice, Father O'Donnell brought new life to the old stories.

Between Jesus and the Easter Bunny and God and Santa, The Tooth Fairy and the Virgin Mother my world was full of icons! I held on to the notion of Peter Cotton Tail for a long time, even though I knew it sounded improbable, because it was just plain fun.  It was fun believing in magic!

My brother Bob, still baby, had several more Bunnies, Santas and Tooth Fairies under his belt to contend with before having Childhood Mythology pulled out from under him.

I celebrated my first Easter as a former "Believer" by helping put the bite marks on the carrots Bob left as a snack for his seasonal hero. My sister was grateful to have someone else take over that task because she hated raw carrots!  Thanks, sis, for all those years you helped keep the magic alive for us younger kids! Knowing how you loathed raw carrots, I appreciate the sacrifice!

Anyway, for today Fifty-Five is the New 63, because Easter fell on my birthday that year and I feel in the mood for a good Bunny Hop!

1978, the Park and Other Things

Where I sit today is so far removed from when Diane and I first arrived.  I am somewhat comfortably ensconced in North Beach, skies full of birds, windows full of views. Granted the flat is old and drafty, the pipes are slow and the steps are many but you'll not hear me complain. 

I've been on the outside looking in and don't ever want to sleep in a cardboard box again....unless I have to, and then hey!  I'm already qualified for the job!

But back then, Diane and I were wet behind the ears, gullible and steeped in all the fairy tales they told us about going to San Francisco wearing flowers in your hair.  I should have known we were a decade and a year or two too late, but news travels slow....sometimes real slow...on its way back to Philadelphia from all points beyond the Franklin Institute.

We decided to visit my friend Stephen in San Francisco while I gave my marriage (and my sanity) a re-think.   Most of me already knew the outcome...I was too crazy for marriage and not crazy enough to kill myself so the only thing left to figure out during this trip was if I wanted to go home and go crazy, or go home save up my pennies and try for going crazy in San Francisco or L.A.

Anyway, we arrived a la Greyhound, expecting to be met by our friend Stephen but instead were met by a few of his friends who piled us into their tiny foreign car and whisked us to Twin Peaks for our first view of "The City."

After the long bus ride, stretching out up on Twin Peaks was the perfect thing to do.  Back then, the Peaks were still wild and woolly...there were no cute footpaths, staircases and safety walls...so I climbed down the hill a bit and stretched out, breathing in the fresh Pacific air.

I made a wish....please let me find a direction here....or let me find my way back home...whichever is right.   I was having a lot of mental episodes at then, so the memories of this time are a little fuzzy.

Stephen was out of town, but his room mate was around to let us in.  He was very French, very opinionated and very much opposed to having anything to do with us. Stephen had told him we were to be made welcome, so he opened the door, pointed to our loft, said something about feeding the birds then went out....leaving us with no door key, no word about what food we could or couldn't eat,  not even a "go to hell."  And that was just the first day.

It was all down hill from that.  Perhaps he saw me being crazy, I don't know.  I do remember having to break the glass to get into the apartment one night, then replacing said glass the next day...twice, because Mr. Room Mate  broke the window trying to fix it. He demanded money for our stay, which on the one hand was a reasonable enough request but on the other, we'd been invited.  Anyway, once our money gave out that was it. No more "hospitality."

After that he kicked us out.
We slept in Golden Gate Park for several nights after that....well, Diane slept anyway.  I remember sitting up, my knife' "Johnson'" sharpened and at my side until the sun rose.  I remember scavenging for food in the Mc Donald's dumpster that first morning, then us heading out of town for a few days hitching up to Cloverdale....then back to The City to find a place to crash, or at least get a shower.

After another night in the Park, I remember someone putting us up at "a friend's" flat while it rained, then having to run away from said "friend" as they tried to threaten me with a baseball bat if I didn't have sex with him.

I remember being hit repeatedly by that bat...my head was splitting, my ribs ....blood, blood....I remember getting Diane awake, grabbing our things somehow and getting her down the steps ahead of me, all the while this idiot was railing at me with that damned bat.

He must have been on PCP or something.

Anyway, I rounded the corner one more time, ducking whenever possible....then ran straight for the steps...I made a last second right turn which sent my assailant falling, ass over head, all the way down the steps. Yes folks, sometimes flights of steps come in handy. But I wasn't out of the woods yet.

Somebody started yelling at me about "What did you do to my brother?" They started punching me....I must have had one of those black out moments, or maybe it was just the concussion because I don't remember how...but somehow I got out, probably walking over my rumpled attacker at the foot of the stairs.  I didn't bother to check his condition....somehow I wasn't feeling very neighborly at that moment. Quite frankly, at that instant I didn't really give a damn.

Diane I think was waiting for me outside with our miserable traveling belongings.  I was bleeding, going in and out of consciousness and in need of medical attention.  Again, I don't recall how we got there, but I "came to" behind some bushes in Buena Vista Park.  I heard Diane's voice once in a while, calling my name, telling me to stay awake.

When she wasn't doing that she was, apparently, trying to get us a ride to a hospital.

I don't know how long it took but somehow she got an ambulance to stop and the attendants assessed the situation. They were under the impression that I was just a crazy drunk, so they planned on taking me to Ivy Street (now Tom Waddell) then the drunk tank. Diane told me later that they weren't exactly nice to me, making jokes about having had a bit too much to drink and so on....I don''t remember. 

Apparently itt wasn't until they got me in under the light that they saw the damage....and it was extensive.  I was one big, beaten, bruised contusion, bleeding from my nose and ears, shaking from head to toe.

Needless to say this condition earned me a few days' stay at San Francisco General Hospital followed by a free two week's stay at the Sunnyside Hotel on Sixth Street, courtesy of San Francisco's local social service agencies.  Thanks, guys!  And yes, it's the same hotel we stayed in when we returned....told you we had a history.

Anyway, during that time, I recovered my health and strength, licked my wounds and assessed the situation. I was on a walker the first week, but by the second, I was walking about under my own steam and determined to put the incident behind us and move on.


Call me stupid, call me crazy, but through all the madness I'd become very certain of one thing....if we were going to move out to  California, we'd do best to depend on ourselves and no one else.  Diane agreed. She wasn't deterred by what had happened, rather she said it was a very big, very difficult lesson for us to learn.  And somehow we survived it.

That's my Lady Di, always putting things into perspective.

Once my health was restored, we took the Greyhound back home to Philadelphia, to see what the fates had in store...either staying back east or moving to California, the answer, I knew, was eminent.

o for today, Fifty Five feels like the new 78 because hard times don't always mean give up....they usually mean move on!

Party Hosts

Ya can't please everybody....when am I ever going to learn that?

We like entertaining....to a point.

We run ourselves ragged when we're expecting company, and when they show up the majority of the time it's a good thing...but once in a while, like earlier this evening, it's like the Guest From Hell shows up and there you are.  An evening of obligatory hospitality for someone who has no manners at all.

I understand that guests are supposed to be treated with honor and respect and have no problem with that.
But where do you draw the line.....when they start being argumentative and over demanding; when it gets to the point of disrupting the household, it's time to end the festivities. 


And that's just what we did. Good riddance!

Ahhhh......!     Glad that's over!  Now Jack and I are going to relax with some of those nice home made snacks and watch some t.v.

So for this evening, Fifty Five Is The New Party Hosts...it's good to know when to close it up for the night.

Forty Niners In The Modern Age

Walking around Sixth Street near Minna today, my mind was drawn to when Diane and I first got to the City. We were wide-eyed and expectant, frightened and mesmerized all at once.

Having visited San Francisco in 1978, we kind of knew what to expect and where to go for the first few nights. And being seasoned travelers, we did what most seasoned travelers do...we reserved our hotel room so that it would be there for us when we arrived. Now, considering our intended temporary abode was the Tenderloin's famous/infamous Sunnyside Hotel and we called to make our reservations from Philadelphia like a couple of dandies, you can imagine the ruckus and fuss it must have caused!

Coming across the Bay Bridge I looked out the window and breathed a silent prayer. I didn't know what was 'round the corner....we didn't really have any prospects, just what we had with us and the determination that comes from knowing that survival is all you got.

The City's skyline twinkled like the million dreams it was built upon; and there we were on the verge of adding ours to the din. A little late for cold feet, I reminded myself, it's here or the ocean...can't go any more west than this!

Diane was looking out the window, too. "Well kiddo," she smiled nervously above the bus's continuous engine hum, "looks like this is it!" "Yep." I nodded, suddenly remembering the way my mom made what we kids lovingly called Irish Chili con Carne served over mashed potatoes.....I smiled at my friend, "No turning back now!"

Our trip started out from Philly on the tail end of February 1980 and we arrived at San Francisco's bus terminal on March 3rd of that same year at around 11 pm...'though according to our aching backs it felt like a year had passed on those bus seats!

It took a few minutes to get our luggage sorted out, then we walked over to the hotel and started dragging our bedraggled bodies and bags up the long staircase. At first no one offered to help but once they realized we were the Philadelphia Party you'd think we were a pair of movie stars in a first class house!

"Oh! Let me carry this for you, miss.." a very round, heavily Hindi-accented man cried out as he came from behind a caged window. "You've come a long way....your room is ready." He grabbed the 75 lb back pack and a majority of our luggage set and led the way down a very narrow hallway.

"I must apologize." the manager sighed "For tonight only you have this one. Tomorrow morning we have the corner room," he paused as if offering the Presidential Suite, "complete with its own bath!"

At the word bath I smiled and did an unconscious sniff of the air around me. I smelled like bus! My mouth tasted like foot! My legs were weak from too much sitting, ears still ringing from the four days and three nights of nonstop Greyhound, and I'm sure Diane felt the same.

But when he opened the door to our room all I saw was the bed. It was fine....it was perfect.
It didn't matter that there was a very visible depression in the middle of the mattress... after sitting in bus seats for several days, it was comparatively flat! We thanked our host with a smile and a small tip then closed the door.

We were hungry. We'd packed the left overs from our 30 minute dinner stop in Reno, so after taking turns in the hallway bathroom we snacked on the Conestoga Casino's famous chicken...which we'd discovered on our previous trip in 1978 and just had to have again this time 'round. For that night, it didn't matter that cockroaches were crawling up the walls or that there were mouse droppings in the drawers...we were landed.

We were, for better or worse, home....the next day would be all about moving to our corner room and getting baths, calling the folks to let them know we were okay, looking for work, getting a bank account for our meager savings and getting familiar with our new surroundings.
But for that first night, we were happy enough to grab a quick snack, brush our teeth and get some sleep.

Together we'd made a leap of faith....to the tune of leaping across the Grand Canyon minus the take-off and landing ramps, ambulance and host of admirers. We were fundamentally alone.

For my own sake it wasn't so important. I'd done the stranger in a strange land thing before. But for Diane who'd lived a very sheltered, somewhat privileged upbringing, the mean streets and lean times were going to be quite an education. But she was strong and smart and not afraid to stand up for herself and those she loved so all that made up for any inexperience. Besides, in many ways Diane was stronger than me; like the fact that she wasn't crazy...that helped a lot. I was crazy enough for both of us, although I hadn't lost much time on the trip I was still having episodes.

As I nodded off to the sound of people arguing in the alley way, someone barfing and a gun being fired, my mind wandered 3500 miles east and all the security we'd left behind. What lay ahead was anybody's guess...failure or success, living or dying were all part of the same equation and happened on a daily basis all over the world. All we had to do was do it.

Diane got a job and we landed an apartment within our first week in San Francisco, it took me a little longer to get work and then my mental and physical health gave out before any meaningful career could take place, so I had to opt for General Assistance then SSI.

I learned a lot about standing in lines and begging, then learned the local spots and supplemented my income by singing on the street with my battered guitar and an ancient milking stool from Purple Heart thrift store. As the years went on I managed to do other things, from home health care work through publishing an international fanzine, teaching a computer graphics course and working in the medical cannabis movement; but those first few months it was all about surviving.

That was thirty years ago and a lot has happened since then....enough to count for more than one lifetime a piece for each of us.

What all of that has to do with Fifty-Five being the new anything you may well ask.
Today, to me at any rate, Fifty Five is the New Forty Nine, as in the pioneer Forty Niners...because that's just what Diane and I were; a couple of pioneers on the trail to self discovery in the brave new world of San Francisco.