12. If you’re going to San Francisco…

When I was ten, my parents sent me to visit my sister Maureen in San Francisco. In my lavender Easter dress, matching jacket, and white patent leather shoes, I flew across the country. My uncle, who was general counsel for United Airlines, had secured a first class seat for me. The stewardess brought me a Shirley Temple. When we arrived in San Francisco, the gate agent walked me to where my sister stood with her toddlers, Séamus and Matthew, and we headed back to their apartment.

Let’s go to the library, Maureen said. I changed my clothes, and we walked the six blocks to the library at the corner of Haight and Ashbury Streets. My eyes took in the sights and sounds — and smells — of San Francisco in 1966.

One evening, we walked across the skyline bridge at Geary Boulevard and Steiner Street to eat at a Japanese restaurant. We sat on cushions on the floor and watched the waiter cook our meals on a hibachi at the table. When we left, Maureen’s husband Billy pointed at a car dealership across the street and said, Look, they’ve started selling Japanese cars here now. A sign in the window said Datsun.

After I had been there a few weeks, Kevin used the money he made working at Hot Shoppes to buy a ticket to San Francisco. I now had a compatriot. He and I took the N Judah streetcar and the Powell Street cable car to Chinatown so Kevin could buy a straight-edge razor. What a 13-year-old needs a straight-edge razor for I don’t know. But Kevin did.

On the way back, we didn’t have enough money for each of us to buy a hamburger and a cable car ticket, so we decided to buy the hamburgers and walk back up the hill to Market Street. Kevin dropped his hamburger as he walked away from the counter. He grabbed it off the floor and kept going. He was not going to lose his hamburger and walk back up that hill.

Maureen and Billy had an old turquoise and white Dodge van. They both had long hair, although I’m pretty sure neither of them had ever heard the word “hippie.” One day as we drove across the Golden Gate Bridge, a girl in a van coming in the opposite direction looked at us and held up two fingers in a V sign. People keeping doing that, Billy said. I wonder what it means.

……

A couple of years later, I met Claudia, the fifth member of our sisterhood. She was funny, smart, and more creative than anyone I knew. She had brown curly hair and was even shorter than me. She was a sprite. 

When I made my break from parochial school and started public school in 9th grade, Claudia and I were in the same home room. Before long, we concocted a plan to go to San Francisco the following summer. We shared an afternoon job watching Dennis’ three kids and Missy’s two little girls. We saved every cent for our trip.

Summer vacation finally came, and we left for California. By this time, I was fourteen and not easily corralled. Maureen tried, but she was no match for a couple of wily teenagers. She fed us granola with yogurt she had made herself…and amazing meals of Chinese vegetables and brown rice. Maureen knitted her children’s sweaters. Or she found them at secondhand stores. With Billy in grad school, there was not a lot of cash on hand. By now Josh had been born. He was a beautiful round-faced blonde baby with deep blue eyes.

Claudia and I wandered through Golden Gate Park most days, meeting a host of characters; some nice, some downright unsavory. We walked up and down Haight Street, looking at the shops filled with beads, pipes, papers and peace sign pendants. People wore “Jesus” sandals, bell bottoms patched with colorful fabric, and round glasses like John Lennon’s. By late July, almost everyone we met said, You’re from the East? Aren’t you going to that festival in upstate New York?

One day we decided to go to the Embarcadero. We walked down Stanyan Street and took the trolley, switching to the cable car that goes all the way to the bay. When we got there, we wandered through the fish markets at the water’s edge, eventually making our way back to the chocolate factory, ending up on the grass in the park across from Ghirardelli Square.

We decided taking public transportation back would be boring. We’d done that. So, we walked to the edge of the park and stuck out our thumbs to the passing cars. A few minutes later two guys with hair down to their shoulders pulled over and asked us where we were going. I said, The Haight. They said, So are we. I thought, Of course.

In addition to the two hippies, the VW beetle had a gigantic sheepdog lying on the floor in front of the fellow in the passenger seat. As we went up and down the hills, the dog stretched his body across the floor and lay his large head on the accelerator. If the car was going uphill, it was no problem—any help was appreciated. But if the car was going down one of those steep hills, the car violently lurched forward. When we got back to Maureen’s, we decided hitchhiking was something we wouldn’t share with Maureen. It would only worry her.

We went to the Fillmore and bought tickets for a musical called Hair. The production encapsulated that year in an hour and half: hippies, pot, a guy who was drafted to fight in Vietnam and, of course, rock music. We loved every minute of it. When Maureen picked us up after the show, we were ecstatic. 

We also went to see Traffic, an early band of Steve Winwood’s. Maureen was unsure about letting us go until she found out the venue, The Family Dog, didn’t have a liquor license. If she had known that just about every type of current recreational drug was in use at The Family Dog, she would not have let us go. Hell, if I were my mother, I wouldn’t have let me go! But we drank Coca Cola and danced to the music. 

We found out that Carol was visiting her sister Beth in Berkeley that summer. Carol’s dad had taken a yearlong job in Taiwan the previous year, and she was heading to boarding school in Sedona, Arizona. She came into the city to see Claudia and me at Maureen’s.

This part of the story becomes a little hazy. Between the three of us, we can’t come up with much detail. Claudia thinks we went to Golden Gate Park. Carol thinks there may have been some recreational herb use, although I can’t think of where it came from because Claudia and I didn’t have anything like that. Maybe Carol came across it in Berkeley. That would explain the hazy memories, I guess.

Anyhow, we all got on the N Judah trolley to go back to Berkeley with Carol. This particular line didn’t have a turnaround at the end. The driver would get up at the end of the line and walk to the back of the trolleycar, sit in the other driver’s seat and proceed to take the trolley in the opposite direction on the same line. 

That day we were sitting near the back, near the other driver’s seat, only there was a woman sitting there, and she wasn’t wearing a transit uniform. When we got to Market Street, she stood up and walked off the bus. Claudia turned to the two of us and, with some concern in her voice, said, Why did the driver just get off?

Carol started to laugh and I followed. Claudia joined in. The tears streamed down our cheeks. The other people on the trolley tried to look away but couldn’t. And we couldn’t stop. I think we laughed all the way to the Transbay Terminal and across the San Francisco Bay. We may have stopped by the time we got to Beth’s. But none of us can remember.