Grid #60.61.71.72 by Al McKee
Just because the sun is still up doesn’t mean a man can’t step out in his pajamas and give the Airedales a little exercise. This gentleman will be fast asleep before the day’s last light has sunk into the Pacific. And that is true also of Chuck and Charlie or Felix and Fester or whatever these pampered scamps are called. Early to bed and early—very early—to rise. He will take them out again at dawn. Judging from the sheen of his high forehead and the well-fed waggle of his un-toned jowls, he is likely a man of fastidious habits. If you were to catch him in the flower shop he owns or the art gallery he has run for thirty years, you would find him immaculate—his tie crisply knotted, his starched collar snug against that waggle. Funny, then, that his neighbors know him best in the a.m. and p.m. by his wardrobe of jammies and bedroom slippers and the lovingly frayed sleeves of his favorite bathrobe.
The scamps pause to sniff a familiar tree. Mr. Pajamas waits.
“Good boy, Felix! Good job, Felix! Fester, hurry up!”
After the earthquake everyone rushed home from jobs downtown.
Out here the damage was spotty. Long-forgotten sutures from underground creeks and dried-up riverbeds determined which addresses participated in catastrophe and which got off easy with a few broken cups. A block of apparently unaffected homes would be marred by one lifted off its foundation. A house, at first glance, in tidy good order would reveal in profile (like a battered wife’s black eye) one corner collapsed.
Getting off a packed bus or arriving on foot after a long trek from the financial district, commuters arrived home with their hearts in their throats. Many hadn’t been able to reach loved ones yet. Many hadn’t determined that everyone was safe. With power out all over the city, it was difficult to get reliable information. Who knew what was true? The Bay Bridge collapsed? The Marina on fire? Freeways down with many dead?
Out here most commuters returned, happily, not to tragedy, but to inconvenience: the house dark, the fridge melting, books off the bookshelves, crockery cracked. Once everyone was accounted for, they could step outside and join the block party of excited individuals milling around the streets, recounting the history they had just experienced. A strange mixture of merriment and dread, as they hoarded daylight (and companionship) in advance of the rapidly encroaching night.
In the hills above Laguna Honda the legend of The Romantic City Planner lives on. No one knows who he was or exactly when he lived. But it must have been in San Francisco’s formative years, back before all the streets had names. Other planners forging the map of the new city chose bold names to designate its bold avenues: Geary Street after John W. Geary, the first mayor of San Francisco; Brannan Street after Sam Brannan, publisher of the city’s first newspaper; Fremont Street, after explorer and soldier Captain John C. Fremont. Those were streets at the heart of the metropolis.
In the fog-shrouded outlying districts, however, a different protocol applied. There must have been in City Hall, at that time, a dreamy planner who, staring at the soft curves of a survey map or wandering the ample slopes of the neighborhood was reminded of a sweet evening in that fog and named the street to commemorate it: Evelyn. Or perhaps the setting sun reflected in the windows of hillside homes evoked for him the sparkle of eyes by candlelight, and he christened the street: Juanita.
Evelyn, Juanita, Myra, Marietta, Teresita, Isola—and don’t forget the lovely Verna. In those rough times perhaps this man’s talents were under-appreciated by the bureaucrats who worked in his office. No matter. The nights he spent cannot be taken from him and the monuments he… uh, erected to them… will live forever on the map of San Francisco.
A goat is the perfect urban animal. Friendlier than a cat, more trustworthy than a dog, some of the smaller breeds fit nicely into a one-bedroom apartment. Accustomed to cramped sheds and chicken-wire enclosures, a goat will make a cozy haven of a basket in the kitchen. And unlike either the cat or the dog, the goat is a four-legged, sweet-natured paragon of eco-friendly utility. Can your dog eat yesterday’s newspaper? Can your cat be milked for cheese?
The stress of city life rolls off a goat’s back like water off a sluice. You will look a long time before you find a more temperate companion, a mellower sidekick than the doe-eyed, floppy-eared, soft-as-velvet Anatolian nanny. It’s not for nothing that goats are released into cattle herds at calving time (to keep the cows from miscarrying). It’s no coincidence that goats were used to coax horses onto ships (back when getting a horse on a ship was serious business). And grim though the concept may be, it’s telling that goats are sometimes used to lure other animals into the slaughterhouse. Judas Goat! Any creature capable of such feats of pacification may be counted on to assuage your tensions without lifting a hoof.
A goat is good luck! A black goat in the road means there is treasure nearby. A tethered goat at a wedding bestows good fortune on the bride. A goat on a crosstown bus… well, you are not likely to see a goat on a crosstown bus any town this side of Calcutta, but if you do, you may be certain the bus you are riding is enchanted. (And the driver drunk).