Some of my earliest memories involve San Francisco. I remember riding the train there from Cincinnati where we left my newborn brother with Grandmother. I remember my berth above the compartment, and my alarm when the sun seemed to be crashing into the western horizon, its red light splattered across the lower edge of the sky. (The memory is a starting-point for a short poem about my entire life, On Track.)
We were visiting Dad's parents, my Mamaw and Pop. Dad's older brother Jack was there. At some point, Mom rode a bicycle with me in the basket on the handlebars. Later, we all went down to Los Angeles to see my Aunt Harriet.
On a later visit, Pop and Dad took my brother and me up Mt. Tamalpias just north of the Golden Gate Bridge.
The visit I remember best was in 1969, a reunion of all Mamaw and Pop's family for their 50th wedding anniversary. We visited Chinatown, saw Alcatraz across the bay and San Quentin -- during a summer when Johnny Cash's recording at San Quentin "A Boy Named Sue" was a big hit. Other hits of that summer were Stevie Wonder's "Ma Cherie Amour" and a song with significance I didn't "get" yet, "Grazing in the Grass."
[Photo: Me with my grandfather Dewey "Pop" Smoot. It's 1962, I'm three years old, and he's 63. We see the legs of Dad and Uncle Jack Smoot in the background.]←← | ← || → Use the arrows to follow the entire tour from the beginning.
2 comments:
Very cool, Scott! If you’re ever actually in the Bay Area, reach out to the Loudermilks! We’d love to catch up and talk literature, history, and maybe have a martini. Also, Wendell Berry and the Episcopal church!
Justin, it's good to hear from you. You've appeared in my blog before now. Check out my post July 20, 2020.
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