writing

Now we are 20 | Herb Caen

Sunday, August 24, 2008

On July 5, 1938, this column first saw the dark of print in the cold light of day. It was the signal for a series of strange happenings. Shortly after its inception, Hitler decided everybody should have Anschluss without weltschmerz, Churchill assumed control in Britain, a disastrous World War rocked the world and the Atomic Age began. As thrones tumbled and crowned heads rolled, the column marched relentlessly on, like the brainless creature it is, and the conductor himself grew steadily in stature from postpubescence to preadolescence, where he remains to this day, head lolling as he attempts to sit upright in his high chair. Next stop, according to plan: the ol' rockin' chair.

Twenty years. A long time to stand in the corner of a newspaper, scrawling inanities, illiteracies and even obscenities on a paper wall. Twenty years of unflagging devotion to items, tritems, sightems, slightems and even frightems; to the highly forgettable fact, the reminiscence nobody remembers, the flash that didn't pan out, the fallen arch remark; to the flopsam and jetsam, the abjectrivial and the three-dotty ephemera of a city's day-by-daze. A long time to be coining words, turning a golden language into pure caenterfeit.

Twenty years. Almost 6,000 columns and 6 million words. Put them all together and they smell, mother. Who was dancing with whom and where, but why? Marriages recorded, births noted, divorces granted - sometimes all in the same family, for this is a family town. Tycoons observed at work, drunks observed at play - sometimes the same people, for this is the city that never sleeps (and sometimes, as Frank Norris observed bitterly, "the city that never thinks"). Two decades of decadence and destiny, of beauty and beastliness in a fog-misted dream world I like to think of as Baghdad-by-the-Bay - its pennants sometimes brave, sometimes drooping.

Twenty years - long enough to watch a city grow away from you even as you stand in the middle of it. Long enough to have memories that flash through your mind with the jerky speed of an old newsreel: The Bay Bridge reaching out across the water, its shadow lengthening gradually over the ferries it was about to doom. The last ferry to Sausalito, the crowd singing "Auld Lang Syne," whiskey bottles bobbing in the moonlit wake, the skipper crying silently. Debutantes who are now grandmothers dancing with the boys they didn't marry in the Mark's Peacock Court. Little Joe Strauss, who built the "impossible" Gate Bridge, shrugging, "The redwoods will last longer." The rickety roller coaster at the Beach, the half-trolley, half-cable car on Fillmore hill, the handsome mounted cops on the downtown streets, Harry Bridges winning the rumba contest at La Fiesta, Sally Rand presiding daintily over her all-night Blue Room at the Music Box, the last night of the fair on Treasure Island, when the moon was full and the enchanting lights went down one by one and, as we headed home with one last glance at the sudden darkness, we knew we would never be so young again.

Twenty years, at soft labor, chipping at a rock with a feather. Answering the phone: "I'm jumping off the bridge in 20 minutes. Be there if you want the story" (no jump, no story, ever); "Man, I've got the scoop of the year for you" (it isn't); "How dare you print that!" (I didn't, somebody else did).

And reading the mail: "I loved your column about ...," "I hated your column about ...," "Why don't you write more about ...," "Why do you write so much about ..."

Twenty years of trying to keep in step with the passing parade. Of reporting that Hilton will build a hotel here, of saying the city has grown too big for its bridges, of keeping a snoreboard at Opera openings, of making Berkeleyans mad by calling it Berserkeley, Oaklanders mad by calling it Brookland, Sausalitans mad by calling it Souselito.

But best of all, 20 years of holding a mirror to the city and never tiring of the sight, 20 years of being in love with the view around the corner, streets that climb to the stars, hills losing their heads in the fog, cables running from here to the day before yesterday, and history walking at your elbow down a dark alley at midnight. On any birthday - 20th or 120th - the perfect gift.

This column, excerpted here, first appeared in The Chronicle on July 6, 1958.

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/08/24/PKLT11G6NR.DTL

This article appeared on page N - 76 of the San Francisco Chronicle