The final copy for Wednesday. Letting go of San Francisco There is nothing inSan Francisco that does not tug on my heartstrings. This city was my entry into the NA continentin ‘65, and after the melodramatic passage under the Golden Gate Bridge in thatAugust morning, I alighted on Embarcadero from a 20-day cross-Pacific sail fromManila to SF via HK, Yokohama, and Honolulu. At sunset, billeted with relations on the foothills of Oaklandoverlooking the Bay, the sight of a fogless bridge and the wharf overlooking mybay window served as the backdrop of the uncontrolled tears that streamed downmy eyes. I was twenty; twenty daysbefore, my mother saw me off South Harbor in Manila Bay, to come halfway aroundthe globe for graduate school. I came back to SF ayear later in ‘66, and spent half a summer when I turned 21 by Union Squaregetting familiar with cable cars, Geary, Stockton, Market and Powel streets. SF has since become the city where thenorthern CA members of INHS60 (my high school class in the Philippines) do nothesitate to find an excuse to get together in South San Francisco. This visiting classmate is treated as a longlost brother. I showed up almost 50years after I last saw a shadow of any of them since I skipped the class’ graduation! More recently, mysecond daughter’s family of Irish husband and two boys, moved to the foothillsof the East Bay in the Oakland area. After being spoiled a week by my eldest daughter, her husband and herfamily (two grandsons, too) in Chicago, it was my second child’s turn to spoilthis old coot on his farewell appearance in North America. They make home in Concord and thanks to theBART (Bay Area Rapid Transit), they are only a 30-minute rail trail from theEmbarcadero and Market train station. A colleague who livesby the Marina had me billeted at the Holiday Inn by the Fisherman’s Wharf one day last week with afamily dinner. My daughter made sure Ihad protection from the evening winds that hit on the unwary out-of-townvisitor, letting me don an Irish Sport’s pullover jacket, and since I waswithin walking distance to the famed Lombard St. zig-zag road, graced withcolorful flower pots this season of the year, I blended well though oddly tothe numerous tourists in town as an Asian Irish sports’ fan. I thought of cracking crab legs at the Fisherman’sWharf but I was informed that the service was expensive and the fare is, atbest, crabby! I was a studenttourist in ’66 when I first came to be a summer resident in the city. It was my first summer in the country after ayear of schooling in Kentucky. I thoughtI would be a bellboy at the Francis Drake Hotel but that summer, the friendlyskies of United went empty when UA employees decided to strike, depriving thecity of more than half of its regular tourists. A dent on the hotel occupancy left me without a summer job in the city. An outfit that preyedon foreign students, who expressed themselves relatively well in English, luredus to conduct “market analysis” in neighborhoods; I joined them (a Norwegian,Swede, Chinese, and I comprised a team) in knocking on doors to “place”Colliers’ Encyclopedia into “qualified” homes. Professor Mortimer Adlerof the Great Books’ fame had a well-crafted sales pitch we used: “Just for theprice of a pack of cigarettes a day (25 cents at the time), a set ofencyclopedia with a wooden bookcase would be sent to qualified families,” wesaid, after an engaging and well-spirited 30-45 minute presentation, leafingthrough the plastic laminated pages of book samples. Bonus books were added if the targeted couple(we knocked on homes that had children’s toys in the yard) wrote a check of$375 for the whole set to cover the yearbooks that followed the next ten years. Our team stayed onwheels and motels during the week as we scoured the suburban landscape for our marksaround UC at Berkeley and the foothills north to Richmond and south to Hayward,even putting on a week around Eureka’s lumber and timber towns, and cruisingalong Stanford U in Palo Alto when a cop gently reminded me that it was illegalto knock on people’s doors to sell something without securing first a permitfrom the local business bureau. That’s when my sanitypinged back and immediately resigned from the sales force. I was never good at closing out a sale anyway,for though I supported the notion of “placing a library into qualifiedfamilies’ homes,” I knew too well that the pitch was a ruse for a well-craftedsale. I was not selling Hoover vacuumcleaners, but the method was the same, so I could just as well have been, andit was illegal. My INHS60 classmates gottogether at an SSF residence and they provided a warm and convivial send-out forme. The Pinoy food added to the 10 lbs.that already girded my girth gained since I landed in North America some four weeksbefore. The voices in Iloko spokenfreely and fluently was music, and when one of our musical talents set herfingers on the piano keyboard, we started belting out what could have beeneasily serenade songs in our youth. Over breakfast, I chattedmerrily with my hosts before I was driven to the airport for my flightout. They were polite by not mentioningthe obvious. I was wearing my shirtinside out. (They said, they did not notice.) Not a fashionstatement. I was old and forgetful (leftbehind my pony tail cap, as well). But itwas time to get out of town. j'aime la vie pinoypanda2031@aol.com yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!