Rolling up Geary

I’m rolling up Geary. It’s a good east west route; its late on a weekday night, traffic is minimal and I’m kicking it. Above Divis I wheel into the right lane to catch the ramp up to where I’ll make a left onto Masonic. I flash on bumbling through this intersection just a few weeks ago, a menace then to me and all the other drivers.  Not now, not tonight. I can’t claim to know my way everywhere in San Francisco. The Laguna Honda route south to highway 1 remains an unsolved mystery. But I’ve got a good mental picture of the grids. I can find my way to most places.

It strikes me that my knowledge of the city is much the same. You can form opinions over a five or so week stay. But how much can you really know?

 A few weeks back on one of my many walks it occurred to me that I was succumbing to the charms of the city. On the next walk the next day I was sure of it. The charms are many and varied and with prolonged exposure they can’t be eluded. Nor should they be.

I formulated the conceit many years ago. Take all that’s great about New York City, cut out all that’s not drop it down in a beautiful place and you’d have San Francisco. So true. The culture, the food, the architecture, the vibrant neighborhoods, the progressive politics, the open-mindedness  are all combined in a place where flowers are always in bloom, where from the beach you can watch the sun setting into the ocean. Jennifer disdains the public transit system as inferior to other places she’s lived like New York, Paris and Toronto. Indeed our one experience was pretty toonerville trolley like. But it is ubiquitous.

Yet for all its egalitarianism, it’s an enclave. “Didn’t you notice the bubble?” asked Mark Pesche. To the north, east and west, water. To the south, mountains. The sprawl, the ghetto, the crime, ungodly traffic, harsh reality has all been exiled across the bridge, the long long bridge, across the bay. Can’t fault that. Why would I? Could I have concluded this had we not stayed as long as did? Unlikely.

I’m writing this on the plane headed home. Below the shadows are lengthening across the landscape. We’d a passel of plans when we’d set out, trips up and down the coast, visits to friends in LA, riding the train north to redwood country, flying home by way of Florida where we’d spend a few days with our old friends, Hal and Kitty, at the Don Cesar on St Pete’s Beach. But once we found ourselves ensconced gratis in a lovely apartment on a quiet street in a great neighborhood we, as Garminella would say, recalculated. We understood that Katherine, whose apartment it was, could reclaim it at any time. Indeed, there were coupla false alarms. Katherine will be there for an evening, you’ll have to vacate. But each time she, in the end, stayed away. Then on Monday, she notified Jennifer she and friends would spend the night in her place Thursday. And then the plan changed to Katherine reoccupying her place for the weekend. With little time left before our scheduled flight home one by one our contingency plans quickly collapsed. Without a viable alternative we renegotiated our flight home.

So it wasn’t the trip we’d planned. It was far better than what we could have imagined. We spent time away from the harsh winter. We hung with the beloved daughter. We filled our days and nights with the things we love. We enriched our lives.

I learned my way around.

Multi-multiculturism

An old army buddy emailed me one of those anti-multiculturalism screeds. The maligning missive denouncing the pernicious influence of cultural diversity on our American way of life had the ironic bad luck to pop up on Dyngus Day. Whoever wrote this, it occurred to me, hadn’t spent anytime in Buffalo.  

 

Bishop Fallon High School is long gone. Now there’s a car wash where the school once proudly stood. Fallon was a West Side school which in those days meant most of us were Italian. However, reflecting Buffalo’s ethnic make up there were plenty of Poles, a smattering of Irish and a handful of oddballs with names like Dumpert.  My graduating class also included a Snodgrass, a Higginbotham and Hoffman, Kaufman and Zoffman.

The school may be long gone but those of us who graduated all those decades ago stay in touch. Members of my class or at least a pretty good sampling of those of us still in Buffalo (and still above ground) gather for breakfast once a month. At the next breakfast I attended I recounted the contents of the onerous email. The Fallon boys were outraged by what they perceived as nothing less than an attack on our way of life. In Buffalo, the Fallon boys insisted, we celebrate our cultural diversity. We all believe our lives are richer and fuller because of it. 

No sooner had the group settled down and returned to its usual topic, how tough we had it compared to youth today, when a younger Fallon grad stopped by our table to say hello. He serves on the board of directors of the Italian Heritage Festival which blossoms every summer on Hertle Ave.  The boys recounted the story of the offending email and indignation soared again.  

“If only the people who think like that could come to our festival,” he said, “They just don’t know what they’re missing – the music, the food, the fun, the food, the games, the food!”

 

“The food,” chorused the Fallon boys. 

“And there’s not just the Italian festival,” one of us pointed out. “Buffalo is a festival of ethic festivals.” 

There’s the Hellenic Festival,” someone else noted which lead to a cascade.  

“The Caribbean Festival.”  

“Juneteenth,”  

“The Hispanic Festival,”  

“There’s a Celtic festival in Lewiston.” 

“There’s a Lebanese festival in Williamsville." 

“What about the German festival in Hamburg?” 

 “There’s a Macedonian festival in Blasdell.” 

“Don’t forget the St. Patrick’s day parade.” 

“…and the Pulaski Day Parade.” 

Then the boys started listing Buffalo’s cultural centers: Irish, Polish, Jewish, even, just a few blocks apart in over in the Riverside neighborhood, Serbian and Croatian. (I’ve always been amused by the juxtaposition of last two, the former in a brightly painted home and the latter looking for all the world like a bunker.)  

The Fallon boys concurred that the rest of the world could learn a lot from how we observe our multicultural heritage here. We’re united by how we celebrate our diversity. Our discussion just helped to make it all the more clear that denouncing multiculturalism in Buffalo is like denouncing sunshine in a nudist colony.

 

 

 

Oklahoma Breakdown

Tooling outta Tulsa. It’s the first sunny day on the trip. And I’m thinking I haven’t written anything yet. What? .Maybe something about how we travel now, GPS, satellite radio, cruise control.

Then WHAP!

Then KHWAMP, WHAMP WHAMP WHAMP WHAMP

I hope it’s the road surface but I’m also pretty sure it’s a flat. I pull onto the shoulder, get out and look. It’s not a flat. It’s a blowout. There’s nothing left of the left rear tire but a few shreds of rubber still attached to the wheel.

I get back behind the wheel and push the emergency service button. First a recording, “This call will be monitored for quality control purposes.” Great. That’s reassuring.. Then a worried voice, “Is everyone alright?”

I explain the situation. “We’ll call someone to come and change the tire for you. “I’ve got you westbound on I-44. Is that correct?” It is I tell her. It’ll be about half an hour,” she says.

About twenty minutes late my phone rings. ”This is Ed from triple A. I understand you need someone to change a tire. He’s on another call now. He should be there in half an hour.”

So we sit by the side of the road. An Oklahoma state trooper pulls up. “Is help on the way?” he asks.

“We hope so.”

Turbulence from the semis rushing past rock the car. Some trucks pull into the outside lane.

“Some will. Some won’t,” says the trooper.

He departs.

Another twenty minutes go by. The phone rings again. “This is Becky from Acme Tow Truck. Are you on the 44?”

“Yes.”

“Our driver is on his way. He should be there in a half an hour.”

Half an hour goes by. Another phone call from Becky. “Is he there yet?”

“No.”

“What exit are you near.”

“I don’t know but I see a sign that tells me I’m seventeen miles east of Stroud.”

“I’ll tell him that. Maybe it’ll help him find you.”

I’m tempted to say that it can’t be hard to find a car broken down on the side of the Interstate.  But I forbear.

Fifteen minutes later Matt pulls up in the service vehicle. He’s taciturn but sets straight to work and gets the spare mounted. I note that the car has suffered some structural damage.

 “Will it be OK to drive?” I ask.

“Might be.”

He departs.

We decide to drive the seventeen miles to Stroud and see how it goes.

Exiting there we can hear a lotta distressing noise coming from the wheel well.

Then, lo, directly across the way: Roy’s Repairs Shop. Might better be called Roy’s Ramshackle Repairs Shack. And there is Roy played by Wilfred Brimley. Well, just about. He’s older, short, round bellied, dressed in matching green mechanic’s slacks and jacket both of which are as grease stained as his green baseball cap. He sports a full grey mustache also grease stained.

He speaks with a thick Oklahoma accent “Back ‘er in and lemme see what I can do.”

He directs us to the “customer waiting room”. Clutter galore. But on the walls are all these somewhat reassuring thank-you notes from folks in distress that he’s previously helped. A half hour later he calls us out to see what he has wrought. He’s repaired the damage. Not so that the car won’t be spending time in the collision shop sometime soon. But seemingly secure enough for us to head on our way.

“How much do I owe you?”

Roy takes off his cap, runs his hand over what little hair he has, looks skyward. “Well, lessee. A half hour labor. Thirty dollars.”

We need a new spare tire so we get directions to the Lexus dealer in Oklahoma City downloaded to the navigation system.  When we get there we ask them to look over Roy’s work and let us know if they think we can make it to San Francisco without further intervention. We can they opine.

Modern road trip: emergency response system, navigation system, cell phones. And good ole Roy by the exit in Stroud Oklahoma just there to help.