Vignettes Of San Francisco
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Almira Bailey >> Vignettes Of San Francisco
Out of the window of my kitchenette I can look into the window of a girl
in the next house. Every morning I get my breakfast by her dressing. My
coffee I start as she begins to unwind her curls from their steel cages.
I have a suspicion that she also dresses by me. If she sniffs my coffee
first, I imagine she hurries with her curls. She is usually fixing her
eye-brows to my toast and by the time I sit down she is doing her lips.
After that she goes off for the long day and so do most of the people in
the block. Then at night they all return, drawn by some tie of love or
habit or despair, each to his right place in the long row of houses,
which have been sitting there all day with their poker faces, waiting.
The Greek Grocer
He had just opened a store on our street and in a Lady Bountiful spirit
of helping him out, I went in to do a little trading. I told him I would
like a can of baked beans. Baked beans, but he didn't seem to
understand. So pointing over the counter where they were in plain sight,
I said with all my teeth and tongue: "Baaked Beens." He followed my
finger. "Oh," he said correcting me, "You min Purrk ind Bins."
That was the beginning and for weeks that Greek has been correcting my
pronunciation. There is no use to argue about it. The fellow has no
reverence for Noah Webster and besides there are more Greeks, nowadays,
than Yankees, and their way is probably getting to be the right way.
Sometimes I think it is we who are the "foreigners."
Once it was cauliflower. Now, I say cauliflower exactly as it is spelled
but that isn't right. It is "Culliefleur," said staccato. And honey -
one day I wanted honey and after I had sung "Hunnie, hunnie" in high C,
and he didn't understand, I went around and picked out a jar of it.
"Oh," he said reproachfully, "you min hawney."
A Scotch woman had a scene with him the other day over some "paeper."
There is no way of spelling it as she said it. She kept repeating it and
he kept getting the wrong thing. No, she didn't want paper but "paeper"
- seasoning for the table - salt and "paeper." The more excited she got,
the more Scotch she got and the more confused he. Then, when they were
both fairly hysterical, I discovered that it was pepper.
Then you should have heard that Greek scold. He told her that it was
"Pip-RR."
And she said back, "Paeper."
Then they argued and never once did either one of them get it "Pepper."
"Paeper."
"Pip-RR."
"Paeper."
"Pip-RR."
One day I heard him laying down the law to a woman who had dared
question his price of "Rust Bif." He told her what he had to pay for it
in "Cash Mawney" and asked her if she could do so, to explain. "Explin -
you kin explin - explin." But she couldn't explain. So, chastened, she
meekly bought the roast beef at his price.
Yesterday a U. C. girl was in and asked, "You are a Greek, are you not?"
"Naw," he answered, "you min Grrik."
Billboards or Art
If you like billboards you are not artistic. Take it or leave it. That's
the criterion. It's not my verdict. Ask those who know, the literary
clubs, the art clubs and our distinguished guests from Europe. I can
remember away back when Pierre Loti visited this country and was so
shocked at the glaring billboards that marred the beauty of New York
harbor and blinded his continental eyes with their gaudy colors.
Now, I would like to be both artistic and fond of billboards. I can't be
both. So I choose - billboards. Everyone who reads these words must make
his choice.
I not only enjoy them; I think they are beautiful. A lovely splash of
color in the grayness of the city, a sincere expression of American
life, so sincere that the critics who take their opinions from Europe
never have been able to sneer us out of them.
We must admit, those of us who admire billboards, that the critics had
their justification in the early days. We have not forgotten the days
when mortgaged farmers prostituted their barns by selling advertising
rights to Hood's Sarsaparilla and Carter's Little Liver Pills and to
Lydia Pinkham, and when Bull Durham marred every green meadow from
Boston to Washington. Billboards were an unsavory addition to the
landscape then. But the modern art of bill posting is quite a different
thing and in California it has reached its highest development.
Segregated spots of color in the dun cities, surrounded by well
manicured lawns, supported by classic figures in white and lighted by
dainty top lights. And out along the boulevards, how lovely they are at
night, luminous breaks along the dark highways, suggesting so tactfully
the kind of tire to use or the sort of mattress to lie upon.
The critic has had his mission. He has forced the Poster man.
Fortunately though young America has not taken him seriously. If he had
this country would have missed some of its most distinctive
contributions to Art. The electric sign for instance. That was condemned
as vigorously as the billboard. And today, tell me, anybody, anywhere
what is more beautiful in all the world than the dancing lights of
Market Street at night. In what a unique and vital way they express the
life of the great modern city.
And anything that expresses Life, whether that life be mediaeval or the
life of the machine age, that is Art. There.
How pleased everyone is to know that the pretty Palmolive girl who "kept
her girl complexion" is married and has a sweet little daughter who has
inherited her mother's skin.
I don't always take the posters seriously. Now, I don't believe that
that man "would walk a mile for a Camel." He'd borrow one first. And
"contented cows." Cows are always contented. All I've known. But they
may have had bolshevikish notions recently, cud strikes, perhaps. Hence
the accent on "contented cows," to reassure us that there is no "Red"
propaganda in the milk. Then, there is the parrot; what a long time it
takes to teach him to say "Gear-ardelly." And that sentimental touch,
"If pipes could talk." They do.
Sometimes, in an absent-minded way, I get them confused, movies and
merchandise, and find myself wondering who's starring in "Nucoa." Then
there's that ecclesiastical looking party, the patron of Bromo-Quinine,
whom I always take for some bearded movie star.
But to return to their artistic merits, they are artistic. Take those
same "contented cows." What could be more futurist than the coal black
sky under which they so contentedly graze? Or the henna hills so far
away, or the purple grass they chew. Matisse and Picasso, great
modernists, could not out-do those cows.
The cigarette men are particularly interesting. A bit over done. One
cannot help wonder what enthusiasm they would have left for a gorgeous
sunset having spent so much on, a cigarette. But I expect they are good
men at heart and not so sensuous as they appear. There's that jolly old
boy who hasn't had such a good smoke in sixty years. One wonders if his
teeth are his own. They all have teeth. Everyone has teeth these days.
It would be a change to see someone on a billboard with his mouth shut.
Golden Gate Park
Enter slowly, by foot is much the better way, and join the long,
loitering procession.
Black-green foliage, the curious old-green of trees that never wither
and never resurrect. Something very foreign or is it San Francisco?
Cubist effects of the horizontally-lined cypress, vertical lines of the
eucalyptus, and the soft, down-dropping of the willow trees and pepper.
Women on the benches tatting, reading, resting. A retired Kansan widower
passes, glances sidewise. Well, no harm in looking at a comely woman.
Gossip of mothers over baby carriages, "Only nine months old! Mine is a
year. Well, we think he's pretty fine."
Comes the sight-seeing bus. Blare of the megaphone. "Seventeen miles of
driveway, boost, boast, greatest in the world."
All day long the swings are swinging, rhythmic, slow to the touch of
loving hands. Then at night when all is still and dark, they go on
swinging dream children, rhythmic, slow.
Down the slide into the soft sand. Grandpa tending Nellie's children:
"Careful there." Ding, ding like the sound of a temple bell the
whirling, dizzy iron rings clang against their iron pole. Tramp of the
patient little burros. "Mother, I want another cone."
Bum-ti-bum, too-too-too, ta-ta-ta, ta-ta-tahh, the band. Wagner by
request. Music lovers in the crowd. A symphony orchestra is very fine,
but simple people like ourselves, we also love a band.
I've never been to Japan, but this must be the way it looks. Tinkle of
the wind bells, petals of Cherry floating down. Sorry, but I've used the
last of the films. Well, we'll come again.
The bears, the big brown grizzlies, leave them now. Out, what is this!
Fairyland of flowers and fragrance. Bears and orchids, wise planned
contrast.
People with accumulative minds wander through the museum, very
interesting, "Just look at this mosaic, John." Exhibit of modern art in
the gallery. "Portrait of a girl," only a daub to the wayfaring man,
Lovers in secluded places stealing a kiss, caught by the middle-aged.
"Silly young things," wistfully.
Once all parks were private grounds. Free now to the poorest serf. Well,
there's something century-gained. Some people say the world's growing
worse all the time. Perhaps, perhaps. . . .
Who cares. Lying flat on your back close to the smell of the earth, the
great kind mother. Up, up at the sky, how deep, how blue. Is there a
God? There must be Something; look at each perfect blade of grass. An
airplane across the blue. There's something gained.
Automobiles in stately procession proud as horses ever were. Automobiles
proudly rolling, swings swinging, people passing, and the swimming of
all the water fowls, the swans, the Japanese ducks and the little mud
hens. Infinitude of movement, infinitude of life, ineffable beauty.
There must be a God. There must be Something back of it all.
Extra Fresh
Some one in San Francisco keeps hens. Not only hens, but a rooster. I
distinctly heard him crow. It was in the very early morning, and like
Tennyson's "Queen of the May" - lying broad awake - "I did not hear the
dog howl, mother, but I did hear this crow."
It is Ralph Waldo Trine, I think, who says that "So long as there
remaineth in it the crow of a cock or the lay of a hen a city is not a
city." But I would not base the citifiedness of a city upon the mere
crow of a cock any more than on the census. It is a vulgar criterion.
For human nature is human nature and nothing betrays human nature like
hens. It is not surprising, therefore, that some woman has sneaked into
the city limits a mess of hens. Neither is it an aspersion on the
police.
Besides this was to be about eggs.
Has anyone noticed how eggs of late years are never just eggs, but
classified? The hens seem to lay them classified. There are hen eggs and
pullet eggs and large hen eggs and small hen eggs and large pullet eggs
and small pullet eggs and strictly fresh eggs and ranch eggs and choice
eggs and large dark eggs and all-mixed eggs and fresh cracked eggs and
mixed color eggs and small brown and, oh, hundreds of sub-divisions.
The very latest I noticed were "dirty" eggs, 2 cents cheaper. I look
next for "small dirty eggs." Why should they sound so unrefined? More so
some way than "small dirty boys." But an artist must paint life as he
sees it and I saw these "dirty" eggs on that bazaar - and bizarre - of
diversities - Fillmore street.
On Haight street I saw "extra fresh eggs" and how an egg can be more
than "fresh" I fail to see. Now, a man may be "extra fresh," but an egg
is different. Even if it left the hen early it would still be only
"fresh." Well, the grocer probably knows.
Every adjective he uses has its significance. Take "ranch" eggs, how
pastoral they sound and fanned by fresh zephyrs. The same with "yard"
eggs, such an "out in the open - let the rest of the world go by"
impression they confer. And so reassuring, too, as though they couldn't
have been manufactured for Woolworth's.
There is much, I find, to be written about eggs.
Isn't it "up-looking," as Mr. Wilson would say, that they are so cheap
now?
I cannot help wondering if that woman's hens - the hens that went with
the crow - if they laid well when eggs were so high.
On the California-Street Car
She was a little black girl about four years old, riding with her mother
on the observation seat of the California street car. She was a little
black girl and didn't know the difference - she might have been as white
as milk for all she knew. She was poor but daintily dressed beside being
very neat.
The rest of us in the car were grown-up and white - well-dressed people
who looked as though we knew a lot. We were all riding along; we and the
little black girl with her mother, when suddenly we came out from the
surrounding wall of apartment houses into the open, facing a side
street - .
And there before us, in all its morning glory, lay the great city of
Saint Francis. It was just emerging out of fog. The smoke and steam
rising, touched into color by the sun, softened it into a great mystery
with forms and hulks coming into relief through the mists. For a moment
it wasn't a city but a magnificent singing of the morning.
In a dull, inert way I suppose all of us, the grownup people, glimpsed
some of its beauty. But we were all intent upon the business of the
day - we didn't look out very far - .
But the little black girl who didn't know any better, the little black
girl raised her two arms above her head and exclaimed in a high, joyous
child voice - "GEE WHIZ!"
Western Yarns
The men around the corner store at home were forever telling stories
about the big yarns that Were told in the West. One of the favorites
was that ancient one of the Western town that was so healthy they had to
kill a man to start a graveyard.
Having been brought up on this tradition of Western yarns, I have been
surprised since living here never to have heard a single story that
didn't sound perfectly reasonable. But it has dawned on me recently that
the "Yarns" are true. Therefore, they are no longer yarns, but facts.
Here is an oil boom story I heard first-hand the other day. I believe
it, but you couldn't get those men around the corner store to believe it - .
It was in a dusty town where everyone rushed in to make quick money and
never mind about the main street even if they did have to plough through
dust to their knees. Then one day a heavy rain came that made the street
one slough of soft oozy clay which no one could cross.
Then enters the hero. Even while they stood dismayed, gazing at each
other across the clay, he appeared with a mud sled and took them all
across for 50 cents a passenger and $1 if you had a bundle.
Now, I believe it. Didn't I see the man who had been there and paid his
four-bits to cross? Imagine, if you can, though, trying to make those
Yankees around the corner store believe that there was a town where one
had to pay 50 cents to cross a narrow country road in a mud sled.
I believed a man who told me a story down in Kern County last summer. We
were riding over the desert and I asked the stage driver the name of a
low yellow bush that grows down there. He was an interesting fellow,
that stage driver, who had been a buccaroo all his life and apparently
knew all about the sage brush country. And when he didn't know he was
not lacking in an answer. I like a man like that. Answer, I say, whether
you know or not.
He said with great assurance that the little, low, yellow bush was
"Mexican saddle blanket" or "Tinder bush," this last because it burns
like tinder in the fall of the year.
"Why, that bush is so dry," he said, "that once when I lighted it to
cook my bacon for breakfast it traveled so fast that by the time my
bacon was cooked I was five miles from camp."
I laughed - I couldn't help it when I imagined that six-footer traveling
across the desert with a frying pan over that low bush. I laughed
because it was so real to me, but he misunderstood, and said so sort of
hurt, "Don't you believe me?"
And I told him I did. And I did. And I do. Five miles isn't a great
distance to travel over the desert after one's bacon.
Mr. Mazzini and Dante
Mr. Mazzini will never be rich. He takes too much time for philosophy
and gossiping with the women, and he loves a joke too well, and his
heart is too kind. He is a universal type, as old as the world is old,
Theocritus knew him well.
"You pick me out some good cantaloupes," I said with deadly tact, and
Mr. Mazzini answered that it couldn't be done and that melons were like
men, that there was no sure way of picking them out for their kindness
of heart. Then he took time over the melons to tell me how his mother in
Italy, who was evidently something of a match-maker, had gotten fooled
on a young man who was both "laze" and "steenge" in his youth but who
made a very good husband.
One day it was figs, and I was strong for the nice appearing ones, but
Mr. Mazzini told me a lot about figs and chose me some that were
lop-sided from packing. What delicious figs they were, all stored with
sunshine and sweetness and flavor just as he had told me. Mr. Mazzini
owns his own store, and yet when he throws in a few extra, as he always
does, because they are soft or a little specked, he will wink and glance
slyly around just as though he were putting one over on the boss.
One morning I saw him sweeping out his store and he wore a woman's
sweeping cap with the strings tied under his grisly old chin. When I saw
him I just stood and laughed aloud, and he asked me why not, and said
that a sweeping cap was just as good for a man as for a woman, and then
he stopped his sweeping and gave me quite a male feminist talk. And he
has a horse, Mr. Mazzini has, a fat old plug that peeks around his
blinders as humorously as his master. Oh, I could just keep on talking
about Mr. Mazzini for pages, but I started to speak of Dante.
I like the Italians and I like the Latin quarter where they live. I like
it better than Ashbury Heights for instance. I like the way the Italians
use their windows to look out of and to lean out of, and I like the way
they have socialized the sidewalk. It's all a matter of taste, and I
wouldn't criticize the people of Ashbury Heights simply because they use
their well-curtained windows only to admit the light, and do not lean
out and gossip with their neighbors and yell to their children, "Mahree,
Mahree," nor sit out on their steps in the evening and play Rigoletto on
the accordion. It's all a matter of taste.
Six hundred years ago Dante was an Italian, but he is much more than
that today. After six centuries Dante belongs to all those and only
those who can read him with appreciation and pleasure. Our scavenger is
an Italian, and he reads Dante just as so many of the Anglo Saxon
proletair read Shakespeare. So Dante belongs to this garbage man, not
because he is Italian, but because he sincerely loves the Divina
Commedia. A waiter, in Il Trovatore, a rarely honest man, acknowledged
to me that he could not read Dante, and that every time he tried he got
mad and threw the book away.
Dante belongs to the literary elect of all nations, Dante belongs to the
great internationale of the immortals. Dante belongs to Eternity. And
for that matter so does Mr. Mazzini.
On the Nob of Nob Hill
On the very nob of Nob Hill there is the ruin of a mansion which was the
Whittell home. In ruins it still is a mansion. In ruins it is grander
than any place around because it belonged to the grand days.
There is an enclosed garden in the rear after the fashion of old Spanish
gardens in Monterey. And between the boards that cover a door in the
high wall, one may peek and catch a glimpse of hollyhocks in a row and
roses running wild, trellises of green lattice and ghosts of beautiful
ladies having afternoon tea.
To one side of the mansion there is a formal garden that hugs up close
to the ivy-covered walls of the house. It is such a garden as one sees
in elaborately illustrated copies of Mother Goose "with silver bells and
cockle shells." It's so beautiful that it doesn't seem real. California
gardens are like that, and to those of us from bleak countries they look
like pictures out of books. There is this well-groomed garden of the
living present hugging up close to the ruins of yesterday and then, if
you please, Mother Nature, with her penchant for whimsy, has grown right
up against these two a riot of purple and gold lupine, a product of her
own unaided husbandry.
I am not much on allegory nor sermonizing, but I declare San Francisco
gets me started. And when walking along about one's business, one sees
such a vivid picture, the allegory forces itself. The grandeur of
yesterday, the serious beauty of today, and then the wild flowers that
covered the hills before man interfered and will live on after man has
gone into dust to make new flowers.
Such a contemplation would make some people blue but it gives me a
feeling of something basic and secure and eternal in all this strange
puzzle of life. It was a beautiful day up there on the tip-toe of Nob
Hill. What a beautiful view they must have had from the mansion windows.
The same sky and the same banks of heavy soft white clouds. And Job,
that mysterious man of the Bible, must have looked up at just such a sky
when those stern questions came to him:
"Where wast thou when I laid the foundations of the earth? Declare if
thou hast understanding.
"Dost thou know the balancings of the clouds, the wondrous works of Him
that is perfect in knowledge?"
"Hast thou with Him spread out the sky, which is strong, and as a molten
looking glass?"
The nob of Nob Hill, how close it is to the sky.
The Leighton Press San Francisco, Cal