Meeting of the Minds

Of all the places to hold the coveted title of ‘best third places,’ San Francisco has to be at the top of the heap. While London has its pubs, Paris, its sidewalk cafes, and Beijing, its teahouses, I haven’t found a spot that carries such a coveted history.

Down through the decades, the ‘old lady by the bay’ has attracted a wide swarth of the talented, troubled, possessed, dispossessed, and marginally-coherent individuals who gave the city its unique brand of literacy.

The Montgomery block, when constructed in 1852 on the bay shore survived earthquake and fire long enough to become San Francisco’s most illustrious literary landmark. More than two thousand creatives are reputed to have lived in the building over the years. Among the writers, Stoddard and Joaquin Miller had rooms and affairs there. Ambrose Bierce wrote his blistering ‘Prattler’ newspaper column there. Jack London stayed there near his friend George Sterling who had a room for his many secret amours.

Long before North Beach and the infamous Barbary Coast brought San Francisco to America’s attention, the disenfranchised creatives were gathered on the Montgomery block. South of the city, Monterey Bay, also became a literary hot spot.

Much like Carmel before it, the area attracted a wide swath of brilliant, troubled, talented, drugged out writers, artists, actors, anarchists, alchemists, and socialists.

Many years later, my mother lived and worked as a maid in the same fog-draped, wind-swept enclave known as 17-mile drive after the bohemians moved back to San Francisco. The Black Cat Café, located next to the Montgomery Block, was the most famous of bohemian hangouts during the 1930s right up until the Berkeley Renaissance of the late 1940s.

My brief exposure to the sights and sounds and aroma of post-beatnik, pre-hippie culture came from several jaunts to an old working-class neighborhood not far from the base. Haight Ashbury was just beginning to attract a younger crowd of Berkeley intellectuals, folkie drop outs, drug dealers and young people looking for the next big thing. I was just a lonely GI accompanying a seasoned veteran looking for weed and hippie chicks.

As a young enlisted man, the closest I got to those mid-Sixties social and cultural changes was working at the Larkin Theater in the Art District and watching a ton of foreign films. Barracks life exposed me, for the first time, to a wide swath of other life styles captured as we all were by two or more years in Uncle Sam’s Army.

Life in the barracks was but a brief moment in time when we were all young and stupid and far from home. Asinine antics, weed-smoking on the window sills and stupid horsing around were daily occurrences. It was a non-stop party we all knew would end all too soon.

As a motley collection of draftees, we all knew there were eventual transfers for all of us to other army bases far less permissive than the Presidio. So, while we were there, the collective mantra seemed to be ‘let’s be stupid now for who knows what our future holds?’

After the service, it was the Triangle Bar on the West Bank that gave me the same comfortable ambiance to continue my search for direction and a glimpse into my future. It wasn’t the Chelsea Hotel in the Village where my folk idols gathered but it was better than nothing.

Third places take many shapes and forms but all serve as a collective gathering spot for like-minded souls. Mine have come and gone, based on current writing projects, Sharon’s art classes and lucky accidental meetings.

The one coveted ‘third place’ I’ve only visited once was the Henry Miller Library in Big Sur. It played prominently in my last novel ‘Playground for the Devil.’ The kids and I stopped there on our tour of the West Coast a couple of years ago.

The place reeks of moldy paperbacks, old rag sheets, new literature, cook-out and sing-alongs on the back porch and a gathering spot for the eccentrics of the area.

Unfortunately, there are no third places in Palm Springs, at least not for me. A patio chair and coffee will have to suffice. Minnesota does better with my mulch garden hideaway, my ‘Coffee and Chat’ sessions and one coffeeshop in Norde East.

It’s not the same as other third places but it still provides an out-of-the-way place to collect my thoughts, jot down writing ideas and spend the quiet with other like-minded souls.

This Baby is Different

Writing my latest novel ‘Playground for the Devil’ began, like all the rest, as an exercise in blindly following my instincts and believing that it would all work out in the end. When I started the project last summer, it was a decision forced upon me by the COVID-19 pandemic which had closed down ‘live’ theater, made my planned group reads impossible and creative music sessions not realistic. My only option seemed to be writing another novel to add to my portfolio of vernacular ramblings.

I’ve blogged about this process of creating my twelfth novel twice before in El Pais Grande Del Sur and Fractured Love Affair.

With all due respect to childbearing, for me writing anything is like giving birth. Each manuscript was conceived out of the germ of an idea, thought, or image swirling around my head. They then began to take shape and form as I delved deeply into the storyline and the characters that began to inhabit that space.

My first gestation of story-telling took place in Reisterstown, Maryland in 1973 and then again in 1974. Impressed by the writings of several well-respected western writers like Will Henry, I took the first tentative steps toward creating my own storyline. The result was ‘Apache Death Wind, a trilogy’ and ‘Apache Blue Eyes.’

After those respective births in print form, it was off to the races. Next came a semi-autobiographical novel entitled ‘Love in the A Shau’. Then an Ode to Palm Springs in the form of a trilogy entitled: ‘Debris.’ That streak of novel writing ended with my 566-page doorstop entitled ‘Follow the Cobbler.’ ‘Cobbler’ featured a female protagonist called Katherine (spelt with a K) who came the closest to resembling my wife. The character is modest, reserved, very smart and intuitive. The kind of woman who can cut any man off at his southern fork.

Last summer, while deep into creating the ‘Playground for the Devil’ storyline, I tried to share the background for my novel and the interesting characters who lived in that fictional world in a blog. It really wasn’t until I had finished my first draft last fall that I felt I knew them all pretty well. And what a collection of characters I had created! All of them were (cliché here) not what they seemed to be. What I didn’t know was the extent to which some of them were damaged and almost bi-polar. They ended up saying and acting in ways my fingers didn’t understand as I frantically typed in an attempt to keep up with them and their antics.

My two protagonists, Brad and Laci, changed, evolved, and slowly began to reveal more and more about themselves as their story progressed. The emotional bantering back and forth surprised even me but I just let them’ go at it’ as I took copious notes in the form of story chapters. I realize now I was retelling the story of my own relationship with my better half.

Granted the comparison was done on a very subconscious level but it was there nevertheless. The Bradley-Laci story is, in retrospect, a metaphor for my own marriage. As in the book, first impressions don’t count and it’s only after a period of time and circumstances that the true characteristics of my protagonists reveal themselves. What seems to be a power imbalance at first slowly morphs into a realistic balancing act between two strong-willed, determined personalities.

My first pass at the book jacket showed a two story cabin. However, as the storyline progressed and my protagonists finally reached their quest, the cabin in question didn’t fit the image I had created in my mind.

At that point, a one story cabin was more in line with the structure that emerged in the novel. The first book cover showed a Big Sur landscape that was simply too bright and colorful. I needed something dark and sinister that better conveyed the dangerous environment my protagonists entered into when they ventured into the backwoods of Big Sur. Vida, my editor and creative designer came up with three versions of the cover.

Finally, my editor and I settled on a darker, more sinister landscape that seemed to better reflect the danger and mystery the Big Sur area presented to my main characters.

When I began writing ‘Playground’ I worried that there might not be enough ‘red herrings’ and twists and turns to my plotline. I needn’t worry because as the chapters slowly came rolling out of my head, the characters and their quest took on a number of surprising twists, turns, detours and stumbles. I even surprised myself by the conclusion to the story.

I asked myself at the end of my ‘FracturedLove Affair’ blog whether Brad and Laci would be together at the end of the novel. I never really knew for certain until I typed in ‘The End’ one day. Theirs was a fractured, wounded relationship that ended the way it was meant to end for the personalities involved. I think the three of us knew it probably would end the way it did. No one is complaining.

At one point, I was torn between labeling my novel a murder mystery or a suspense thriller. Unsatisfied with either description, I’ll simply call it a suspense novel with, I hope, enough action and mayhem to satisfy either audience.

A little over a year ago, I drove up to that big San Francisco mansion for what turned out to be a swingers party. It only got more complicated, intriguing and dangerous from there on. It’s been one heck of a venture exploring the backwoods of Big Sur with these characters who carry more than their own weight in issues, attitudes, and attributes.

We’ve completed the journey. At least some of us have. There is a deeply satisfying feeling being able to pull it off and hopefully leaving my readers asking for more.

Before The Tsunami (San Francisco in 1964)

Waves of bohemian creative-type characters, with Kerouac, Ginsburg and Burroughs leading the charge, had washed over San Francisco a year or two earlier than my arrival. North Beach coffee houses, cafes and nightclubs were overflowing with poets, folk singers, jazz players and other disenfranchised elements of the art world. Alienated youth were beginning to hang out in the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood and gathering in Golden Gate Park for their music festivals. Across the bay in Marin County, outlaws and outcasts were being drawn to the ‘action’ in the city.

This was truly the calm before the storm. The social, sexual, and cultural changes that defined the 1960s were all taking shape in cities like San Francisco, New York, London and around the world. A younger generation was beginning to stir and awake to the injustices it found all around it. There was a new sense of sexual freedom with the pill. Rebellious youth, fueled by rock and roll music and marihuana, were speaking and acting out. Linear thoughts gone aground by poets and philosophers up in North Beach and Greenwich Village were opening up young minds to new thoughts and aspirations.

All of this was happening as I arrived at the Presidio of San Francisco in the early summer of 1964. I had left college and the proverbial ‘girl back home’ for my first true adventure courtesy of my Uncle Sam.

The greater Bay Area was slowly coming alive with more commercial development. Marin County was seeing growth up along the north coast and among the bays and inlets of the bay. Sausalito was still a backwater village but feeling the growing pressure of a city expanding beyond its past one hundred year borders.

My work as a reporter/writer at the Command Post newspaper was fulfilling, enlightening and eye opening, all at the same time. Fortunately, my boss was a lifer who loved the military and his job. He made it easy for me to come to work every day. In addition, there was the usual cast of characters who in retrospect could fill a dozen or more plays and novels with high drama, suspense, dalliances, corruption, and colorful behavior.

There were several off-post separation parties that became legendary for their gratuitous, outrageous behavior, heavy drinking, and sordid but funny happenings. My only excuse is youth, immaturity and pent-up hormonal demands. In reality, I was just an observer, too inexperienced to get involved, but smart enough not to envy those who did.

My time spent in San Francisco was a wonderful gift I didn’t appreciate until long after it was gone. It marked the beginning of my long-winded running career and journaling, my prelude to future novels, plays and screenplays. It was like some wonderful party that can’t be replicated afterwards even if all the same participants gathered together once again.

A journey is really a time capsule. It’s a sliver of space in one’s life that gives birth to either good memories or bad, to wonderful thoughts or sad reflections. Yet it always remains locked in that serendipitous turn of events which can never be replicated or replaced. Whatever happened did happen. Whatever was gained can’t be changed even if it later becomes lost in a fog of future events. That’s how my tour of the California North Country was born.

The idea for a road trip was hatched early one Sunday morning in some unnamed dive bar on North Beach. We were a motley assortment of drugstore cowboys, fast food aficionados and one kid with two years of college under his belt. Each of us ruminating on about our pending release from military service a monumental two years away. This was long before “Easy Rider” and my own sojourn to Denmark.

What were we going to do after the service? Return to college. Head out for Europe. Stay in San Francisco or hit the road just as Jack Kerouac did in “On the Road.”

The more sober philosophers among us thought we should get on with our lives. We should go back home after our hitch was up, get an education, marry our college sweetheart and settle down to the good old standard American life. The more inebriated among us thought otherwise. Another round of beers and an impromptu survey was taken. The open road garnered first place with Europe a close second. Returning home to suburban tranquility didn’t even register.

Some of us were already open road desperados. One guy had a big-ass Triumph 650cc motor-cycle with enough horsepower to fly between San Francisco to Los Angeles in record time. He went down to the city of angels almost every weekend to see his girlfriend. That is until a transfer landed him in the middle of nowhere Indiana in a snowstorm and his bike went into cold storage.

A couple of guys had souped-up cars they’d brought to the Presidio from back home. But soon one fellow was shipped off to Vietnam and another got transferred to Okinawa. Several more wantabees disappeared when sobriety raised its ugly head. So that effectively took most of my gang out of the picture. I was the only one left with my Vespa motor scooter and exaggerated, romantic notions of the open road still spinning around in my head.

A dream had been ignited in my plastic brain that resonated throughout my body. I decided I might as well hit the asphalt right then and there instead of waiting another two years before my enlistment was up. My destination would be the distant lands north of the Golden Gate Bridge. At that point, they had just been shadowy mounds of gray that kissed the skyline outside my office window.

                                

This was the old Northern California countryside before multiple ballot propositions changed the political and social landscape and a bulging San Francisco disgorged its inhabitants far and wide; spilling them out across the bay to once tiny hamlets like Sausalito, Mount Tamaulipas, and Stinson Beach. It was a time when cows roamed empty fields amid gun emplacements that still protected San Francisco bay from Japanese battleships. An era, before satellites, when radar stations scanned the northern skies for raiders from Russia. A time when only a few small enclaves of new housing slashed into the green hillsides. A time when the only sound heard was the putt-putt of my tiny Italian engine against a wind blowing oceanside and birds on high, floating silently in the sea breeze.

After I had braved the crazy traffic on the bridge, I swung north to the tiny enclave of Sausalito. Even back then Sausalito was a very special place. During the war, the Navy had installed a host of ship maintenance facilities. By the sixties those had all disappeared but a lot of the ship workers had stayed. They were joined by displaced beats and hippies from across the bay.

Together they made Sausalito an eclectic community, a growing artist colony and home to the funky and weird. On the way out of town, I spotted this inlet where fancy cars were parked in front and yachts in back. It was a novel idea at the time, priceless in this day and age. It was the first sign of encroaching humanity. The pristine countryside of Sausalito was becoming just another suburb of San Francisco.

This was one of dozens of inlets along the coast road where the sea had dumped its collection of driftwood and debris on land. I’m sure there were treasures down there but I never stopped to investigate. I was so tempted to ride down to this house to see who lived there. I can’t image a more remote, mysterious and wonderful place to live. It was probably some writer toiling on the great American novel and suffering the pangs of a broken love affair.

Back along the bay, I came across this new military housing complex being built. The view out their front door was to die for. But more fascinating were the old World War Two defensive installations that ran up and down the bayside. It was a concrete collection of pillboxes, command centers and the foundations for large cannons which would have been pointed out to sea. Then behind those old fortifications was a new radar facility and cameras pointed down at a kid on a scooter who was peering up at them.

By the end of the week, I was flying with wild abandon. Yet I only crashed once, taking a curve too fast on wet leaves and ending up in a gully sans my glasses, hat and pride. The scooter was OK except for the mud and leaves that coated its undercarriage with brown muck.  I found my glasses, picked the dirt out of my teeth, and climbed back up on the saddle again.

During that week, one song in particular kept bouncing around inside my head. “Four Strong Winds” by Ian and Sylvia. It spoke of loss, separation and the infinitesimal yearning for some-thing better even if ‘it’ couldn’t be defined at the time. It’s a great song and still brings back a lot of fond memories.

I realize now that back then I was living in the moment…what Buddhists call mindfulness. It was just a few short months before that tsunami of change hit the shores of San Francisco and I was transferred to the hell that was known as Fort Polk, Louisiana.

Today we would translate that mindset as conscious living. In his book “Wherever You Go There You Are – mindfulness meditation in everyday life,” author Jon Kabat-Zinn talks about mindfulness as enlightening and liberating work. “It is enlightening in that it literally allows us to see more clearly, and therefore come to understand more deeply, areas in our lives that we were out of touch with or unwilling to look at.” Words to build a life on.

I should ride a scooter more often.