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.