Read Ebook: Vignettes of San Francisco by Morey Almira

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Ebook has 399 lines and 25548 words, and 8 pages

Safe on the Sidewalk

Are there others, I wonder, who feel as I do about crossing the street? There must be. Now I, when I cross, say Market street at Third, I run. I take my life and my bundles in my hand and run, darting swift glances to the left and to the right. It looks "hick." I know it looks "hick." And I care. But I prefer to be alive and countrified than sophisticated in an ambulance and so I run.

At corners, too. I think corners are worse. For there the machines may turn around and chase me, which they often do. It's a horrible feeling.

There must be others who feel as I do about crossing the street, but they never betray it. I watch to see and when they cross, they just cross--that's all. Not with nonchalance exactly, but with ease and assurance. Once I actually saw a man, a native son, I'm sure, roll a cigarette as he crossed at a point where even the traffic cop looked nervous.

No one ever gets killed or even injured. But always everybody is getting almost killed and almost injured. They like it. It's a sort of sport. I've noticed it more since the city's gone dry. The game is, if you are walking, to see how close to a machine you can come and not hit it.

Street cars, machines and people all go straight ahead and they all come out right. It's the only city where it's done with such abandon. They never stop for anything except taxis--not even fire engines.

The secret of it is, I think, that no one ever hesitates. This is understood by all San Franciscans--that, no one is ever going to hesitate. That's why there are no accidents. It's the unexpected in people that makes disasters and creates a demand for traffic cops.

Next time I am more careful. I look to the traffic cop for attention but, being a handsome man, he thinks I'm trying to flirt. Policemen should be homely. So I wait until the street is entirely empty. I wait a long time--it is empty--I run like a steer--and suddenly out of nowhere a machine is yelling at me individually and I know no more until, breathless and red, I reach the haven of the sidewalk.

Once I heard a horrible story of a man who lost control of his machine and ran up on to the sidewalk.

Port O'Missing Men

They say that San Francisco is known all over as the Port o' Missing Men. That it is a city where a man may lose himself if he chooses, and that by the same token it is a good place to look for "my wandering boy tonight." I can believe all this especially on Third street. Third street should be called by some other name or it should have a nickname. If it were in Seattle it would be known as "skid row." Third street doesn't describe it at all.

When I see a lot of men like that, wanderers, family men out of work, vagabonds, nobodies, somebodies, "rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief; doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief," I always get to thinking how once each one was a tiny baby in a thin white dress, and how before that each one of them was born of a woman. If I could ever forget that, I could perhaps sometimes call men "a lot of cattle." Come to think of it, it is men who call other men "cattle." At any rate, I like to think that no woman would ever see men as less than the sons of mothers.

The Port o' Missing Men is like the Port of San Francisco, and these men are like boats in from a foreign port, tramp steamers some of them, out of nowhere, going nowhere, no baggage, no traditions, men who'll never get lost because they are on their way to Nowhere.

Yet, the majority of these men are going to some place, but where I do not know. What do they talk about in groups down there, tall, young fellows and strong middle-aged men and reminiscent, old ones down in the Port o' Missing Men? If they're out of work where do they sleep at night, and what do they have to eat? And have they any women folks?

Not all kinds of men are down there, but many kinds. There are Mexicans, Sinn Feiners, old American stock, and once in awhile a venturesome Yankee. There are lumberjacks in from the North, and Chinamen in shuffling slippers, and philosophers and Swedes, half-breeds and just plain men. Some are Vagabonds who can't help their roving, and others are very tired and would like to lie over in port for or a long spell. There are Italians, and Portuguese, and many Greeks, and turbaned Hindus, tall and skinny, always traveling in pairs like nuns. Sometimes the Port is fairly crowded.

New England is a section of the country where men leave home, and I have heard mothers sing with tears in their voices: "Oh, where is my wandering boy tonight?" On Third street down at the Port o' Missing Men, I have a fancy that I would like to write back to all those mothers that here are their boys. But, after all, what good would that do, for who can tell which is which?

Market St. Scintillations

Oh, the things our eyes discover as we walk along on Market street. Such a medley--infinite, incongruous, comical, pathetic, motley and sublime.

Harding in a window with "pure buttermilk." He'll be in more difficult situations before he is done, I'm thinking. An electric fan above him that keeps the buttermilk "pure" and flies the American flag in crepe paper.

"Crabs to take home." They are freshly cooked, very large and forty cents apiece. I decide that some I shall really buy one and take it home when I confronted with the fact that "All Hair Goods Must Be Sold." Why, I wonder. Why must they be sold? And here are "Eggs any style," so close to the hair goods that I immediately visualize them as marcelled "style" and pompadoured.

"Shoes Drastically Reduced." It is the truth. The Oxfords I wear are reduced by a drastic five dollars. Well, I couldn't go barefooted, I comfort myself and hurry on.

A shooting gallery and a man standing there trying to make up his mind to try it. A second's glimpse of him and all that he is is revealed. One knows immediately that his favorite song is "My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean," and that his ideal man is Governor Allen and that he is on his way to spend his "remaining days" with his sister Lottie in Los Angeles.

Who would eat "stewed tripe Spanish." Someone must or they wouldn't advertise it on the outside of he restaurant. Well, it takes all sorts of people to make a world. Probably the man who would order "stewed tripe Spanish" wouldn't touch an alligator pear salad. To him alligator pears taste exactly like lard. To the person who wouldn't eat "stewed tripe Spanish" they are a delicacy.

A crowd around a window. On your tip-toes to see. It's that fascinating Lilliputian with a beard and electric bowels who stands in drug store windows and administers corn cure to his own toes with a smile.

The professional window shopper is a vagabond at heart--a loiterer by nature. Here is one gazing in a photographer's window to discover someone he knows. These two are not professionals though but a spring couple looking in furniture windows for nest material. And sailors wandering about, nothing but kiddies, lonesome looking and no doubt wishing we were at War again and hospitable once more.

Here is a "Pershing Market" and a "Grant Market," beside it. There's a lot of that in San Francisco. Is there an "Imperial Doughnut?" Up goes a "Supreme Doughnut" next door. It's the spirit of "I'll go you one better every time." It's the spirit of Market street.

Cafeterias

This is not to hurt the feelings of anyone, for some people are very sensitive about cafeterias. They are cafeteria wise, they have a cafeteria class consciousness. Such people are to be admired. They have accurate minds which enable them to choose a well-balanced meal at minimum cost. Lacking that sort of mind, I do not get on well in cafeterias. As sure as I equip myself with a tray and silver in a napkin and become one of the long procession, I lose all sense of proportion, and come out at the end with two desserts, or a preponderance of starches or with too much bread for my butter, and a surprising bill.

Those who are cafeteria wise can choose a good meal for 28 cents or 33 cents at the most. They don't take food just because it looks delicious. They "yield not to temptation." They have a plan and stick to it. Wise and strong-minded, they shuffle their way bravely to the end. It is said that in time they acquire a cafeteria shuffle which one can detect even on the street. But I don't believe it's so.

Other sections of the country have cafeterias and in some parts of the South, especially in Louisville, they are run quite extensively. But it is in the West, especially in California, that they have attained a dignity and even lavishness that makes them the surprise and delight of the tourist. Irvin Cobb says that this is the cafeteria belt of which Los Angeles is the buckle.

We have music in our cafeterias. We have flowers on the tables. People don't just eat in them, they dine. They take their guests there. Our cafeterias have galleries with rocking chairs and stationery. They have distinctive architecture. We take visitors to see them. We brag about them, and when we wish to be especially smart we pronounce them caffa-tuh-ree-ah.

Personally, I am proud of our cafeterias, but I do not get on in them. I enter hungry. I look sideways to see what other folks are eating. I decide to have corned beef and cabbage and peach short cake and nothing else. Then in the line I have the hurried feeling of people back of me, and that I ought to make quick decisions. Everyone ought to eat salad, so I take a salad. Then some roast beef looks good so I take that, and the girl asks briskly with a big spoon poised, if I'll take potatoes, and I don't wish potatoes, but she makes a great nest of them beside the meat and fills the nest with gravy and I pass on. According to Hoover or Maria Parloa or Roosevelt, I ought to have a vegetable, and so I take two. Meanwhile I have taken bread, but the woman ahead takes hot scones and so I do. I choose some thick-creamed cake, very fattening, but just this once, and then, oh, I don't know. The tray is heavy and no place to put it, and in my journeying I peek at the bill and it's over 75 cents, and when I finally sit down opposite a stranger I find on my tray two salads, and when I chose the other I don't remember.

But cafeterias are very fine for those who have cafeteria sense.

The Open Board of Trade

Months ago one of The Journal readers suggested a story to be found down on Market street near the Hobart building. Many times since when passing there I have thought that those street hawkers must have a certain picturesque and even humorous value, and hoping to find it I have stopped to listen. But the moment I stop they win me with their everlasting logic, and then blessed if I can write them up. They have the same effect upon others. I have seen chambers of commerce and stock exchangers and professors from Berkeley passing with a supercilious glance which did very well so long as they kept moving. But once let them step into the magic ring and they too became mesmerized and stood there gaping in spellbound interest. "Logic is logic, that's all I say."

Those hawkers are artists, skilled in the arts and wiles of persuasiveness. There is one with a long, horse-hair wig which he occasionally brushes back from his eyes with a dignified flourish. This man has found the supreme elixir and the secret of perpetuity. He is the only man in the world, this modern Ponce de Leon, who knows the secret. Surely we need not blush to listen to its exposition, is a small sum to pay for such a bonanza. Forty thousand people have used it in the last thirty-nine days. Think of it. "Take it right out into the crowd and sniff it for yourself," he urges and somehow that breaks the spell, and strong men look foolishly at each other and move a-way.

Horoscopes, suspenders, iron watch charms, brown cakes that may pass for maple sugar, ironing wax, laundry soap or penuchia, a book on Prohibition, mending wax and books of magic are all there. They are not things which we particularly want, but that's the point. Anyone can sell things that people want. But these men are professional persuaders of men against their will whose mission it is to make people want what they don't want. That's Art.

The horoscope seller must have taken his degree from some college of venders, his call has such finesse. I cannot reproduce the lilt of it--"Here's where you get your horoscope, a dime, ten cents." It is suggestive of the midways of country fairs, shooting galleries on the Board Walk, and circuses in the springtime. "Here's where you get your horoscope, a dime, ten cents."

The little, old, blind man sitting there with one hand outstretched and the other holding a book, his white hair and beard neatly combed, reminds me of something Biblical and prophetic like pictures in old churches. Alas! no one seems to buy his story of prohibition. I think he would do lots better in Kansas or Iowa. A particularly fascinating one is the man of mending wax who stands before his table like some professor of chemistry with a tiny flame and saucers of mysterious powders and, I almost said, a blow pipe.

But, pshaw, I can't write them up. I take them too seriously. "Logic is logic, that's all I say."

The San Francisco Police

The San Francisco police are the handsomest and most-willing-to-flirt policemen in the United States, if not in the world. What a surly lot, the New York policemen. They treat one as though he were a blackguard for merely asking some direction.

"What car shall I take for the New Jersey Central Ferry?" we ask.

"Zippity-ip," he snaps, moving off.

"What did you say?" we ask in timid desperation.

"Zippity-ip," he yells, shaking his fist at us.

But ask a San Francisco policeman the way and how different. He will take your arm and smile down at you and even go away with you chatting all the time--"Stranger here? Well, you'll never go back East again." And somehow after that you never do.

Of course, the San Francisco police are many things beside being handsome and willing to flirt. But these are important qualifications which, up to this time, have never had their place in journalism. Ah, many a Raleigh and Don Quixote in the roster of the S. F. police.

A policeman is all things to all people. What a policeman is depends upon what we are. To those who are fast, either in reputation or driving, he is a limb of the law to be either evaded or cajoled. To the small boy he is a hero to aspire to become when grown. To the public-spirited citizen of the reforming order he is a piece of community linen to be periodically washed in public with a great hue in the papers about graft expose. To almost anybody in the dead of night with burglars prowling about, he is a friend to be called--in case one has a nickel handy.

But to the great army of women who are hopelessly respectable, the policeman is something quite different. And what we women think of the police is important. We pay taxes, we vote and we cross the street. We like our policemen to be handsome and cavalier and, again I say, the S. F. police are both. Any fine day they will make a funeral procession out of the motor traffic to escort a nice woman across Market street.

It goes without saying and is an unwritten law that policemen should be Irish. I enjoy Greeks in classic literature or in restaurants, but not as policemen. There is a saying in the city that when Greek meets Greek they go together to get a job on the Market Street Railways. But when they get upon the police force, I for one, shall move to the country. Policemen should always be Irish.

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