San Francisco, the War in Vietnam and Anchor Steam Beer

A few weeks back, I was in Wegman’s beer section which is a vast collection of beer and ale and stout from everywhere.  I grabbed a six pack of Anchor Steam Beer brewed for more than a century in San Francisco.  It was beer with a special memory for me.

In August of 1969, my college friends Mike Rosenberg and Larry Kaye and I were halfway through a cross country camping trip.  Mike was going to do a super-senior year, in the fall, Larry had already started teaching biology, but for me this trip was the last page of my youth, with the first page of real life about to open at Chittenango High School in early September.  

We had come from Yosemite into San Francisco.  I can’t remember the exact order of events, so much time having passed, but a very important thing we had to do when we arrived was pick up my close hometown friend Barry at the San Francisco airport.  It was the Vietnam era, and Barry had joined the Air Force and had flown commercial, compliments of the USAF, to California.  The next morning he had to be at an air base, name forgotten, about an hour out of the city.  We had talked in Webster and realized that I might be arriving in SF at the  same time Barry would, and maybe I could pick him up.  Thank goodness, it happened that way.

Barry was on his way to Thailand to work on the jet fighters that were battling in Vietnam.  We got to the airport on time to see Barry coming down to the luggage pickup.  When he saw us, the expression on his face went from acceptance to happiness.  His last night in the U.S. of A. would be spent with a friend.

Now comes the part about the Anchor Steam.  We wandered across the Golden Gate that evening and found ourselves in the little bayside town of Sausalito.  It was once the subject of a song with the forgettable chorus, “Sausalito is the place to go.”  We found a great bar on the main street of the town.  Each table had a chessboard built into the top.  The beer on tap was a local called “Anchor Steam.”  I had a couple, loved it, and never forgot about it.  When I think about “Steam” I am transported back to that night.

Nothing monumental happened.  We drank in the little bar, then drove to the campground/chopped cornfield where we were tenting.  The next morning we drove Barry to the air base, dropped him at the gate, and wished him well.  I was so glad it had worked out.  We were on a trip without itinerary, and yet serendipity brought us together at the right time to see Barry off to war.

We were in San Fran for a few days.  We ate at Fisherman’s Wharf, rode the cable car, went to Giardelli Square, and saw a strip show in the Tenderloin district.  Then we headed south toward Los Angeles a day or two before Charles Manson and friends would begin their gory spree.  We had a great and memorable time in San Francisco.  And the Anchor Steam was great, too.

 

(I wanted to get this posted before Mother’s Day, but I didn’t.)

   

The Swing

by Robert Louis Stevenson

How do you like to go up in a swing,

Up in the air so blue?

Oh, I do think it’s the pleasantest thing

Ever a child can do!

Up in the air and over the wall,

Till I can see so wide,

Rivers and trees and cattle and all

Over the countryside—

Till I look down on the garden green,

Down on the roof so brown—

Up in the air I go flying again,

Up in the air and down!!

When I was a kid, little, 3 or 4, I got a swing set for our backyard on Five Mile Line Road in Penfield.  My dad and uncle assembled it and put it in the ground.  It wasn’t much of a swing set when compared to modern backyard playground edifices.  “A” shaped supports, about 6 feet tall, on each end with bars to climb onto, a ladder in the middle for climbing over the top, a seesaw to be situated on a rung of the ladder, and two swings.  I loved the swings.

When my mother pushed me on a swing, she would sing the words above.  I can still hear her sing them.  It is one of my earliest audio memories.  I had no idea until I looked it up today that the words were a poem by Robert Louis Stevenson from a book called “A Child’s Garden of Verses,” but I remembered most of them.  When my mom sang the words to me, I imagined them.  On every push I would look out at the field behind my Gramma’s house where we lived, and be positive I was seeing rivers, trees, brown roofs, and green gardens.  And castles.  I though Mom was singing “castles” not “cattle.”  I’m sure she was, in fact, because she loved imaginary castles as much as I did.  Trying to see the castles is a wonderful memory.

This post is not about swings.  It is about my mom and how she had a song for virtually every occasion.  My wife Linda soon became aware of that and said so to me.  She was so right.  Being a kindergarten teacher gave Mom a songbook of little kid tunes.  I remember many rounds of “Jesus Loves Me” being sung.  Singing for hours on car rides.  We sang sheafs of Christmas carols, of course.  But there are two special songs I need to remember and share because they meant so much to us kids in the 50’s and then our kids in the 70’s and 80’s.  The first one got my daughter Jan in trouble when she was a little girl.  Gramma had taught it to her, and she wanted to share it in the neighborhood.  It goes, “Once I went in swimmin’, where there were no women, and no one to see, clothin’ I was loathin’, so I hung my clothin’, from the willow tree.  I stepped into the water, just like Pharoah’s daughter, stepped into the Nile.  Someone saw me there, and stole my underwear, and left me with a smile.”  It was a song that always left us laughing.  Jan should not have been sent home for sharing it.

I sang the other song I want to share at Mom’s funeral.  I sang, “Alice where art thou going?/Upstairs to take a bath/Alice with legs like toothpicks/and a neck like a giraffe./Alice stepped in the bathtub/pulled out the plug and then/Oh, my goodness!  Bless my soul!/There goes Alice down the hole/Alice where art thou going?/Blub blub blub.”  As I sang it, my siblings joined in, and we brought the house down.  A very funny moment at a wonderful memorial for our mom.

My mom loved to sing.  My mom was a song.  A song of love, and joy, and caring, and humor.  A song saying all is well, fear not, just sing along.  Happy Mother’s Day a bit late, Mom.  We love you.

 Take Me Down to Asteroid City, Where the air is hot, and the girls are gritty. . .

Wes Anderson is an amazing filmmaker.  A little crazy perhaps, but amazing anyway.  I went to see his newest, “Asteroid City,” Sunday at the Manlius Theater, which, thank goodness, is back in business.  I loved it.  It will be hard to explain why I loved it, though.  I think the main reasons were the strangeness and the humor of the experience.  

It’s a story about a play that is taking place as we watch.  The play is on a huge soundstage with a motor court, a diner, a bus station, a bunkhouse, an auditorium of sorts, and a lot of desert which you can buy from the vending machines at the motor court.  Ten dollars worth of quarters will get you a desert plot about the size of half a tennis court.  A plot with no possible use.  At the beginning and then occasionally, the play is interrupted by a black and white scene of the backstage and commentary by a sort of Walter Cronkite narrator on the nature of theater and some other things.

The movie has some unforgettable characters played by a remarkable cast of actors including Maya Hawke, Jason Schwartzman, Scarlet Johansson, Tom Hanks, Margot Robbie, Adrian Brody, Bill Murray, Steve Carrell, and Brian Cranston,  If that is too few Hollywood biggies for you, there are also in the cast Rupert Friend, Hope Davis, Tilda Swinton, Jeffrey Wright,  Jeff Goldblum, Matt Dillon, Rita Wilson, Liev Schrieber, Willem Dafoe, and Bob Balaban.  When after watching the film you read the cast list, you will have no idea who some of these actors played.  They are all so good, save for Maya, Scarlett, Jason, Steve, and Tom who are superbly good.

“Asteroid City” is about a science conference for teenage science students in 1955. This location is chosen because a famous asteroid crashed in this spot 600,000 years ago.  There are also A bomb tests occurring maybe 50 miles away every so often.  The period costumes and set pieces right on it.  The lighting is terribly bright, high noon desert light.  Be sure to sit close if you are soon to have cataract surgery and want to read the signs and see any little, but important bits of the action.  I sat where I always sit and learned a valuable lesson.

The plot concerns how everybody in the cast gets to know everyone and the audience figures out who these people are as they interact.  Maybe two-thirds of the way through the film, an alien drops in at a ceremony taking place.  Everyone is sore amazed.  Schwartzman, a photographer, takes its picture as the alien poses coyly with the chunk of the famous asteroid he is stealing.  The alien is built like Jack Skellington.  Later on the asteroid is returned.  The alien leaves and the science camp goes on military lockdown.  Then some more fun stuff happens.

I forgot to mention the Faris triplets, darling 11 year old actresses who often steal the screen as Schwartzman’s daughters who believe themselves to be part witch and part alien.  They want to bury their mom’s ashes in the middle of the motor court.  Mom has been dead for about a month, but it took their dad 3 weeks to get the nerve to tell them.  I also should mention their teenage brother played by 19 year old Aussie actor Jake Ryan.  The guy has an amazing nose. He is really good in his part,  a main character!

I think this movie is about the importance of art, music, theatre, photography, science, being in love, despair, accepting death, making friends, being tolerant to people or aliens who are different that you are, and, the meaning of life.  The question of just what that is is posed several times during the film.

It’s time, I guess, for this review to ride off into the sunset in the back of Tom Hanks’ giant 1955 Cadillac convertible.  Which is just how the movie ends.

Greg Ellstrom