Morning in San Francisco ((diary notes)(summer of 1968))
Morning in San Francisco
[diary notes]
(August, summer of 1968) If you’ve been in San Francisco, you know then, how it is early in the morning with the tramps and young hippie beggars just waking up from the streets, those resting against the walls of buildings, coming out of the Mission building down the road a spell, before even the milkman delivers his milk; some of the bars opening up, and all night nasty movies still playing around the clock, three movies in a row for a buck, can’t beat the price. In the dumpy hotel I was in, on the seventh floor, a bed, an old dark brown wooden framed mirror on the wall across from my bed, a rug along side it, the iron bed squeaked as I’d jump out of it, up off it, and see if my face was healing. The hotel was on one of the side branches of the main street, leading off the main street, near it was a 24-7, café with lights still on. Morning was just breaking. A bum I met last night, the one who stood against the stone wall near the hotel and café was in the café this morning. He wanted my last silver dollar last night, or at least I told him it was my last, but it wasn’t, I just said it so he didn’t bother me about it but I liked talking to him, he seemed weak and frail, a light white and gray beard, perhaps my height, in his late forties, dark blue pants, and a ragged looking shirt, and a leather jacket that looked out of date for the times, but kept the wind from his arms and chest.
It’s the only café open on this street I told myself, looking through the windows he’s talking to a few friends, friends from the mission I think, I saw them there last night, after me and the bum stopped talking, and I wouldn’t give him my silver dollar, we went to the mission, he actually told me about it, and he and I listened to a preacher talk about Jesus and being saved and we followed him to the mission, he told me that is how it works: that being, you listen to him, and after he is finished, he feeds you, and it was true, and we ate, we sat by one another, didn’t talk much, and when he saw his friends, they sat down by him, and I didn’t talk much. I had told him I came out from Minnesota, a friend Tom, who lives across the bay set me up for a week at his house, he’s a welder I said, he also is from Minnesota, but I got this rash, Poison Oak, and he kicked me out, contagious he said, and he had two kids and wife. (I liked Tom, but that kind of got to me, although I couldn’t blame him much. He had to do what he had to do. But I was surprised to see his wife, she was as tall as a bean stock, perhaps six-foot one, and he was five-foot four.)
Anyhow there we were, four of us sitting at an old wooden table, eating gravy and chicken, hard biscuits, and flushing it down with coffee, it didn’t cost a dime, I got some more of Jesus in me, and that didn’t hurt. I suppose I didn’t care that I lied to him but I felt for some reason I had to (I didn’t know then, but I’d see this fellow again, some six months down the road, I’d see him walking the streets in San Francisco, and I’d say ‘Hello’ and he’d stop, look at me, smile and go on his way, he would be dressed in a $500-dollar suite, and trimmed beard, and look like Rockefeller, and I’d say: ‘Job well done,’ as he walked away, but he’d not hear me and he’d not turn around, he just kept on walking until he faded into the horde of humanity.)
Those mornings I’d walk the streets were chilled somewhat, and then the day would turn about with a cool breeze in the warm summer air. I’d walk by this hotel, nice hotel, well known, see this bum sweeping the outside, I stopped and talked to him, he said he been doing that going on fourteen-years. I couldn’t believe it. And he said, “I get to sleep down by the furnace, it’s warm there, I like it, private.” And he smiled with a grin, as if he swallowed a gold fish, I mean, he was happy with his simple life. I saw him off and on, nodded my head off and on when I saw him, and passed him by. He’d step clear of me, and face the street, like an old soldier, as if I was an officer, a General. As if I was waiting for a chauffeur. I liked him. Anyhow I’d keep walking looking for work, knocking on doors, listening to the sounds of the street; the tires go by, the horns and so forth. Then one day, a few months down the road, I picked up a newspaper, and found out he had died. Just up and died, he was sixty-six years old that was a ripe old age I guess. But what startled me, above all was not that, although it was sad—I even took a closer look at the paper, saw his face, affirmed it was the same bum—it read, “(so and so)…leaves $250,000-dollars to the hotel in his will.” I tell you, you just do not know a think about other people. Perhaps my first lesson in, don’t judge the person because he looks the way you think.
My friend, the stranger, as I had mentioned, was perhaps in his late forties, I was twenty-years old, would be twenty one in October, not old enough to drink yet, but I can drink in most any bar anyhow; and that’s what I was doing until I got this rash, and I dare not go into them now, lest they kick me out for having some venereal disease, it got all over my face, now it is just in blotches, and I drink my beer in the hotel room, I pay by the week. I made a deal with the hotel owner; I think you can almost name your own price here, $3.00 dollars a day, and if you want a bathroom in your room, it is $5.00.
I walked daily down the streets knocking on doors, looking for work, I stopped a few days ago and asked one of the hippie kids, my age, said to him, “You’re fit as a fiddle to work, why are you out here begging?”
And he said (with a smirk on his face, slowly as if he was giving me a lesson in life)
“How much money do you make?”
Well I pretended to be working, and said
“I make one dollar and seventy-five cents an hour,” I said that because Lilly Ann, a dress designing place said they would hire me next week, that is if I came back, and I think I will because I can’t find any other work. When I was working for ‘Swifts’ meats, back in Minnesota, in South Saint Paul, I was making $3.50 an hour, big money but I’m not in Minnesota am I. Anyway, he said to me, “I make Seventy Five dollars a day, and I work only eight hours,” and my eyes opened up wide, as folks walked by me and him, and they gave him change, he’d say,
“Any spare change sir, or madam,” something similar to that, but I couldn’t do it, it was a matter of pride I suppose. And he looked so sad when he said it, he could have been on T.V., a star, a movie star, and perhaps will be someday, that’s how things work out you know. One day a beggar, the next, a star. I would have liked to have done what he was doing, making money under false pretenses. He was a nice-looking kid, fellow I suppose.
“I don’t mean to make you feel bad,” he told me, “but it beats the hunger in the stomach, and paving the streets like you are doing for work, just doesn’t do it.”
Well, he wasn’t all wrong, was he?
“You know” the young fellow went on to say to me, said with a smile to me, or was it a mockery smirk, I can say, “its just a living…” he implied, and his hand went out to another customer, a woman in her late thirties, and she gave a quarter, I still cannot get myself to make a living like that, so I beat it on down the street.
I stood there a moment, and looked at the cars, going back and forth, a tunnel was being built as a transit system I guess, underground, it looked like it was on its last stage of its construction.
I decided on Tuesdays I’d go to movies, on Sundays I’d stay in my hotel room and eat chicken and drink beer. And so I did just that, and on the second Tuesday I did my agenda, I was watching the second of three movies, it was a dump of a theater, in the heart of downtown, and the place was sporadically filled with odd looking people, doing odd things, or at least they were not the things you did in the Minnesota theaters. Men with men, and women with women and everyone doing everything but watching the movie; it was in the afternoon, and the movies would go on until 6:00 PM, and these peculiar things would not stop until then. Be that as it may, I told myself, and enjoyed the movies, and if a woman or man came too close me I gave them the evil eye, and they readjusted their thinking.
I had gotten the job I was hoping for, at Lilly Ann, and had started work, and was no longer living in the hotel, or at my friend Tom’s house, I was living in the Dojo, in the Castro area of San Francisco. I had gotten away from the bums, and the trashy hotel, and was now in an area not as dangerous per se, as the downtown streets, but I didn’t figure on the folks being mostly, or highly homosexual in this area, and it made me plenty nervous, I was a ripe Midwestern boy, and every bar I went into someone, male, tried to but the make on me. At first I was too dump to figure it out, thinking they were just good old folks, but the likes of them did show, and confrontation did develop, and we would always separate with me shaking my head in disbelief. I was slim, with every inch of my body muscle, and toned well, and young, I suppose I had all the qualifications for a potential homosexual square, but I was to the contrary, except for the square part of it—meaning I was a tinge naive.
Written: 5-25-2008
[diary notes]
(August, summer of 1968) If you’ve been in San Francisco, you know then, how it is early in the morning with the tramps and young hippie beggars just waking up from the streets, those resting against the walls of buildings, coming out of the Mission building down the road a spell, before even the milkman delivers his milk; some of the bars opening up, and all night nasty movies still playing around the clock, three movies in a row for a buck, can’t beat the price. In the dumpy hotel I was in, on the seventh floor, a bed, an old dark brown wooden framed mirror on the wall across from my bed, a rug along side it, the iron bed squeaked as I’d jump out of it, up off it, and see if my face was healing. The hotel was on one of the side branches of the main street, leading off the main street, near it was a 24-7, café with lights still on. Morning was just breaking. A bum I met last night, the one who stood against the stone wall near the hotel and café was in the café this morning. He wanted my last silver dollar last night, or at least I told him it was my last, but it wasn’t, I just said it so he didn’t bother me about it but I liked talking to him, he seemed weak and frail, a light white and gray beard, perhaps my height, in his late forties, dark blue pants, and a ragged looking shirt, and a leather jacket that looked out of date for the times, but kept the wind from his arms and chest.
It’s the only café open on this street I told myself, looking through the windows he’s talking to a few friends, friends from the mission I think, I saw them there last night, after me and the bum stopped talking, and I wouldn’t give him my silver dollar, we went to the mission, he actually told me about it, and he and I listened to a preacher talk about Jesus and being saved and we followed him to the mission, he told me that is how it works: that being, you listen to him, and after he is finished, he feeds you, and it was true, and we ate, we sat by one another, didn’t talk much, and when he saw his friends, they sat down by him, and I didn’t talk much. I had told him I came out from Minnesota, a friend Tom, who lives across the bay set me up for a week at his house, he’s a welder I said, he also is from Minnesota, but I got this rash, Poison Oak, and he kicked me out, contagious he said, and he had two kids and wife. (I liked Tom, but that kind of got to me, although I couldn’t blame him much. He had to do what he had to do. But I was surprised to see his wife, she was as tall as a bean stock, perhaps six-foot one, and he was five-foot four.)
Anyhow there we were, four of us sitting at an old wooden table, eating gravy and chicken, hard biscuits, and flushing it down with coffee, it didn’t cost a dime, I got some more of Jesus in me, and that didn’t hurt. I suppose I didn’t care that I lied to him but I felt for some reason I had to (I didn’t know then, but I’d see this fellow again, some six months down the road, I’d see him walking the streets in San Francisco, and I’d say ‘Hello’ and he’d stop, look at me, smile and go on his way, he would be dressed in a $500-dollar suite, and trimmed beard, and look like Rockefeller, and I’d say: ‘Job well done,’ as he walked away, but he’d not hear me and he’d not turn around, he just kept on walking until he faded into the horde of humanity.)
Those mornings I’d walk the streets were chilled somewhat, and then the day would turn about with a cool breeze in the warm summer air. I’d walk by this hotel, nice hotel, well known, see this bum sweeping the outside, I stopped and talked to him, he said he been doing that going on fourteen-years. I couldn’t believe it. And he said, “I get to sleep down by the furnace, it’s warm there, I like it, private.” And he smiled with a grin, as if he swallowed a gold fish, I mean, he was happy with his simple life. I saw him off and on, nodded my head off and on when I saw him, and passed him by. He’d step clear of me, and face the street, like an old soldier, as if I was an officer, a General. As if I was waiting for a chauffeur. I liked him. Anyhow I’d keep walking looking for work, knocking on doors, listening to the sounds of the street; the tires go by, the horns and so forth. Then one day, a few months down the road, I picked up a newspaper, and found out he had died. Just up and died, he was sixty-six years old that was a ripe old age I guess. But what startled me, above all was not that, although it was sad—I even took a closer look at the paper, saw his face, affirmed it was the same bum—it read, “(so and so)…leaves $250,000-dollars to the hotel in his will.” I tell you, you just do not know a think about other people. Perhaps my first lesson in, don’t judge the person because he looks the way you think.
My friend, the stranger, as I had mentioned, was perhaps in his late forties, I was twenty-years old, would be twenty one in October, not old enough to drink yet, but I can drink in most any bar anyhow; and that’s what I was doing until I got this rash, and I dare not go into them now, lest they kick me out for having some venereal disease, it got all over my face, now it is just in blotches, and I drink my beer in the hotel room, I pay by the week. I made a deal with the hotel owner; I think you can almost name your own price here, $3.00 dollars a day, and if you want a bathroom in your room, it is $5.00.
I walked daily down the streets knocking on doors, looking for work, I stopped a few days ago and asked one of the hippie kids, my age, said to him, “You’re fit as a fiddle to work, why are you out here begging?”
And he said (with a smirk on his face, slowly as if he was giving me a lesson in life)
“How much money do you make?”
Well I pretended to be working, and said
“I make one dollar and seventy-five cents an hour,” I said that because Lilly Ann, a dress designing place said they would hire me next week, that is if I came back, and I think I will because I can’t find any other work. When I was working for ‘Swifts’ meats, back in Minnesota, in South Saint Paul, I was making $3.50 an hour, big money but I’m not in Minnesota am I. Anyway, he said to me, “I make Seventy Five dollars a day, and I work only eight hours,” and my eyes opened up wide, as folks walked by me and him, and they gave him change, he’d say,
“Any spare change sir, or madam,” something similar to that, but I couldn’t do it, it was a matter of pride I suppose. And he looked so sad when he said it, he could have been on T.V., a star, a movie star, and perhaps will be someday, that’s how things work out you know. One day a beggar, the next, a star. I would have liked to have done what he was doing, making money under false pretenses. He was a nice-looking kid, fellow I suppose.
“I don’t mean to make you feel bad,” he told me, “but it beats the hunger in the stomach, and paving the streets like you are doing for work, just doesn’t do it.”
Well, he wasn’t all wrong, was he?
“You know” the young fellow went on to say to me, said with a smile to me, or was it a mockery smirk, I can say, “its just a living…” he implied, and his hand went out to another customer, a woman in her late thirties, and she gave a quarter, I still cannot get myself to make a living like that, so I beat it on down the street.
I stood there a moment, and looked at the cars, going back and forth, a tunnel was being built as a transit system I guess, underground, it looked like it was on its last stage of its construction.
I decided on Tuesdays I’d go to movies, on Sundays I’d stay in my hotel room and eat chicken and drink beer. And so I did just that, and on the second Tuesday I did my agenda, I was watching the second of three movies, it was a dump of a theater, in the heart of downtown, and the place was sporadically filled with odd looking people, doing odd things, or at least they were not the things you did in the Minnesota theaters. Men with men, and women with women and everyone doing everything but watching the movie; it was in the afternoon, and the movies would go on until 6:00 PM, and these peculiar things would not stop until then. Be that as it may, I told myself, and enjoyed the movies, and if a woman or man came too close me I gave them the evil eye, and they readjusted their thinking.
I had gotten the job I was hoping for, at Lilly Ann, and had started work, and was no longer living in the hotel, or at my friend Tom’s house, I was living in the Dojo, in the Castro area of San Francisco. I had gotten away from the bums, and the trashy hotel, and was now in an area not as dangerous per se, as the downtown streets, but I didn’t figure on the folks being mostly, or highly homosexual in this area, and it made me plenty nervous, I was a ripe Midwestern boy, and every bar I went into someone, male, tried to but the make on me. At first I was too dump to figure it out, thinking they were just good old folks, but the likes of them did show, and confrontation did develop, and we would always separate with me shaking my head in disbelief. I was slim, with every inch of my body muscle, and toned well, and young, I suppose I had all the qualifications for a potential homosexual square, but I was to the contrary, except for the square part of it—meaning I was a tinge naive.
Written: 5-25-2008
Labels: Dennis L. Siluk, Ed.D., Poeta Laureado
posted by Dennis and Rosa Siluk at 9:45 AM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home