Side by side

My best friend pointed out she'll be in her eighties when our next 28th wedding anniversary comes around. To be fair, so will I.

Would that we could still do what we're doing now, giving each other time. We're on the cusp of realizing how dear it is.

Time, this time, was a day in San Francisco to celebrate. Nancy and I became a strange hybrid of tourist, resident and nomad. We think alike on the big stuff, always have.

The City fascinates us. Not Fisherman's Wharf or the cable cars or most of what makes it memorable to the world. We avoid those distractions. Though we went to the de Young Museum a couple of years back to see a Dale Chihuly exhibit, we haven't been to the Academy of Sciences or the Exploratorium since before we were married. We always mean to, but then The City — the real one — catches our eye.

(My son brands the Exploratorium declaration a lie, since he remembers me taking him as a kid; I claim faulty memory. The larger truth still holds: It's been a long time.)

When we go — it's rare, sadly  — we pick a part of The City, figure out the easiest way to get there, then just walk and see what we find. Anything we find is fine by us. There must be 158 different cities and towns jammed into the city limits. Ordinary life is extraordinary here.

San Francisco is a city where seven or eight road races, parades and festivals can run concurrently and never affect one another. It's a place where a dozen people from all directions can pile into a little pet shop, stacked to the corners with white six-foot-tall bird cages, and that little shop will thrive by the sheer mass of pet-loving humanity living right around the corner.

San Francisco is a place where, close by the madding crowds, you can duck into a tavern where it's cool and quiet, an eddy in the river of people.

San Francisco is a nice place to visit. I couldn't survive living here.

We rode the fast catamaran ferry from Vallejo, the one that sidles respectfully past the decaying Mare Island Naval Shipyard before jetting across the Bay. From there we went into full tourist mode just long enough to buy day passes for one of those "hop-on, hop-off" double-decker buses.

I recommend it. Seeing San Francisco stress-free from high above the street is worth the money. Even 10 feet above the sidewalks, with no pressure to maneuver your own vehicle up and over these maniacal streets, lets you discover details The City keeps hidden.

We got on at the tour bus office two blocks off Fisherman's Wharf, sat in the open top, rode back and forth across the Golden Gate Bridge in the bracing chill, through Golden Gate Park and then to a McDonald's a few blocks west of Haight-Ashbury, where we got off.

We never got on again.

Why here? Not for Haight-Ashbury and the chance to be forensic tourists, digging up the Summer of Love and gawking at its spawn. No, because it looked like Stanyan Street, where the bus stopped, is almost a straight shot up to the Sutro Tower, that landmark left over from the War of the Worlds, the yin to the TransAmerica Pyramid's yang.

(Named for Adolph Sutro, The City's 24th mayor, who made a fortune with engineering feats enabling deeper exploration of the Comstock Mine …)

I've always wondered how to get close to it, and now was our chance.

The last block of Stanyan Street lifts nearly 45 degrees below the tower. A few more degrees and we could reasonably have scaled it hand over hand. I laughed, giddy at how close the pavement was to my face as we climbed.

Through vine-covered eucalyptus forests and a park at the end of a neighborhood, up a long winding road and there we were, near the base of Sutro Tower. The rest of the curious had driven up.

From there San Francisco lay in shades of white, like broken blocks of gypsum spread on a dropcloth. Faraway freighter ships still looked giant in the south Bay. The Giants were taking batting practice at AT&T Park, far in the distance.

Nowhere to go but down. My knees complained. We found a few hidden sidewalks, followed a runner through a secret space between some buildings, down a street so steep its sidewalks are stairs, and into Noe Valley (named for José de Jesús Noé, last alcalde of Yerba Buena, before it was renamed San Francisco).

Here's where we discovered the wildly popular little pet shop — and the cool, quiet Valley Tavern. We had walked about four miles by then. Time to rest.

The Giants game had just begun, showcased on eight giant screens above the bar (a celebrity high-diving show played on the ninth). We slid into a booth way too commodious for us, and luxuriated in having it, ordered ales and porters and stayed seven innings, the Giants clouting the Braves.

The bartender said we could order pizza next door. The pizza place is endorsed by ace pitcher Matt Cain; even has a pizza named for him. It was kismet in pepperoni and sausage. We gorged.

Back on the street, it felt like a different day, a new mission. Conversation went like this:

"Left, right or straight?" We looked around each intersection, decided which seemed most interesting, and headed that way. Ascents seemed the most interesting to me.

Zigging, then zagging, we dropped into Mission Dolores Park, where hundreds and hundreds of people sat out in the sun, picnicking on blankets. We searched the entire park for the reason so many  had gathered (A concert? A festival?) but the attraction was nothing more than sun and Saturday afternoon. Simultaneous games of frisbee and catch and chase criss-crossed in the empty spaces.

Up and down a staircase just because. A couple was happily installing a hanging garden of plants in some kind of water-bearing fabric on the side of a glorious cube of an architectural wonder of a house, all exposed metal and great sheets of glass and gigantic reclaimed beams, dripping in dollars. We made up stories about their fabulous wealth.

Down through the Mission District and open-air shops grocery and clothing stores with signs in Spanish. Past teenagers on the sidewalk, pounding and dancing to a samba beat on giant drums. Up to an elevated fake-grass soccer field, where high school kids played full-contact soccer. We fell asleep on the real-grass apron, our feet burning.

"Left, right or straight?"

Down Potrero Hill in the direction of AT&T Park. We had walked too much; even though we had no plan, this was not part of it. But we walked; we are quite used to days like this.

Past the rising city-within-a-city of the UC San Francisco medical complex, around Willie McCovey's statue, so lonely on the cove opposite the ballpark. Nope, no players wandering around the park after beating down the Braves.

Past the majestic Ferry Building — the transit juncture of an alternate universe — along the piers to our ferry landing. The last one had left 15 minutes before, and the next one wouldn't be by for another two hours — and would have picked us up from the Ferry Building a mile back if we had known. 

We wandered into Fisherman's Wharf anyway for coffee, and watched a line of frustrated customers wait for a woman who went into the restroom and wouldn't come out. "We get this a lot," a barista explained to the line.

Since Fisherman's Wharf is what the world's tourists come to see, you'd think San Francisco would leverage all resources into making sure restrooms are clean and plentiful. But they're broken, locked up or incomprehensible biohazards.

We missed so much. We were within blocks of Mission San Francisco de Asis, the fountainhead of Western intrusion that turned this place into a city. One more zig and zag would have put us on the doorstep of Anchor Brewing Co., maker of Anchor Steam Beer, the only beer worth drinking at a Giants game.

But we didn't know to look for these, and didn't see them on our walk, so we can't really say we missed them.

The ferry came despite our fears — we've been stuck in The City before — and rode sleepily in the cold orange mist, the light sculpture on the Bay Bridge's cables dancing in our dream state. Back to our car and an easy late ride home. Nancy took one photo, of the two of us, on the morning ferry.

Time well spent. Happy anniversary, Nancy. I love you.

"Monterey, California?!?!!!" Our creation story

"Tell the story," someone will say, on rarer and rarer occasion, and we tell it.

Most people and families, I expect, have the story. The fundamental tale, the progenitor, the what-if-it-hadn't-happened? story.

On the 27th anniversary of Nancy being willing to marry me, this is the story of how we became one.

It took place two years before our wedding — we have been together as best friends now more than half our lives.

Our friendship began when we worked together as journalism majors on The Mustang Daily at Cal Poly. I met Nancy while she was busy on deadline (to write the only story, she will add here, for which she won an award for student journalism). Soon that year we had more leisure time, and spent every moment we could together at Poly Royal, the May weekend when the entire campus turned into an open house (which is what it's called now anyway, since alcohol-fueled riots in 1990 nearly killed the event; another story for another time).

The school year ended. "Maybe I'll see you over the summer," I said. As soon as I said it, I wanted to make it true.

I had just gotten a shark-nosed Volkswagen squareback with my parents' help, so now I had motive and means. The opportunity came around my birthday. My loving family often and inexplicably felt need to mark my birthday by going to the Santa Barbara County Fair, which was held not in Santa Barbara (too picayune for that crowd) but in Santa Maria, in the north county. The fairgrounds was a glorified parking lot behind a JC Penney store.

Even if it was the fairest fair of all — which it wasn't; maybe 40th out of 58 counties — it was not the appropriate birthday destination more than once, not for anyone older than nine, anyway. For this birthday, I needed to escape.

Time to do something different, I told my parents. Just take a daylong drive, maybe. Being a lifelong Goody Two-shoes paid off: My parents said OK.

Get out of Lompoc by, oh, 8 a.m., make it to Auburn by lunch, say thanks and 'bye and drive back by around dinnertime. That was my plan — my deluded, naive, star-dusted plan.

The drive, we have learned over the many years, really takes more than seven hours, one way.

Lunchtime came and went on that first trip north, and I wasn't even halfway, having just dipped out of the Kettleman Hills into the San Joaquin Valley. Though not a stranger to this strange land — we'd gone through on many family trips to the Sierra — this was the first time I had a front row seat and had to pay attention to it all.

I might as well have been walking in space.

The miles droned on. The gray-white hills never seemed to move, nor did Auburn ever seem to get closer … until many, many hours after lunch, somehow I navigated my way through the macramé of freeway cloverleafs that was Sacramento, and ascended the foothills in the softening summer night.

Finally, Auburn! Now, how in the world to find Nancy?! In the dusk! I had packed neither telephone number nor address, just a map and memory of the city name. Of course, the only solution was to drive around in search of a miracle.

It came soon enough in the last of daylight, in the form of a green Volkswagen beetle, which crossed in front of me at an intersection. Who was at the wheel? None other than Nancy … well, maybe Nancy … unless it was her identical twin, Carol (sounds like a bad soap opera by now, doesn't it?). In the absence of any other sign or clue, I followed the VW to St. Joseph's Catholic Church, parked near her and followed her inside, taking a pew behind her and waiting until she finished her prayers to say:

"Excuse me, you look so much like Carol Lewis, it's scary." Clever me: If it was Nancy, she'd laugh and we'd hug. If it was Carol, she'd say something like, "I am Carol Lewis," and I'd explain everything. See!

(Later, Carol would say she thought I was a stalker intent on taking her tires; such innocents we were …)

Nancy was at work, Carol said, and Carol was on her way to work after Mass herself, but she would lead me back to her house and introduce me to their family.

All but two of the Nancy's 10 brothers and sisters were living at home then; older brothers Tim and Phil were out on their own. Without Nancy to guide and interpret, I was immersed in the chaos of a regular evening in the household — two small brothers, Stephen, just two or three years old, and Greg; a sister, Sharon, and brother, Joel, in the middle grades (I was like an insect in a jar, a thing of intense curiosity, to them); three more sisters, Kathleen, Joan and Susan, in high school (maybe Joan was home from college then?) futzing mostly unseen in the downstairs part of the house; and their mom and dad, all of whom welcomed me with warmth and expectation, and not a hint of trepidation that this guy who knows Nancy from college just drove nearly the length of the state unannounced to see her.


They would not let me leave after I saw Nancy. Stay the night, ridiculous child, they insisted.

I called my mom to say I'd be home the next day. "All right, I figure everything's OK," she said, not too put out that I deflected her pointed questions.

Carol returned from work and drove me to the pizza parlor where Nancy worked. I hid behind my cowboy hat as I walked in, but Nancy somehow suspected it would be me.

"How funny!" is what she said mostly, over and over. Back at her home, she reintroduced me to her family.

Next morning was my induction to the sophisticated choreography of getting a baker's dozen of people ready for early Mass. It was a process I'd join for many years.

After breakfast, we spent a final few hours down at the American River. Nancy accidentally threw her shoes into the water while throwing pebbles and had to wade in, in her Sunday dress, to retrieve them.

"Do you need some money?" she asked, saying goodbye. Nope! I said. I had my checkbook (This is a plot point; pay attention).

Off I went for home, only the roof of the car keeping me from leaving earth's orbit, a happy, happy guy. Since this was my first time driving the great continent by myself, I veered toward San Francisco, eager to go home by another way. With the last of my cash, I paid for gas in Pinole and turned west.

It turns out The City is blocked by toll bridges, each requiring toll. A strange and inconvenient concept. No cash in the ashtrays. Not a penny in sight. When you can't pay toll at a toll bridge, you don't get a just-this-once pass: The bridge keepers shut down all lanes so you can drive sidelong across lanes that aren't meant for driving sidelong. So the westbound mass of humanity, backed up near Oakland, watched me rattle along to the bridge headquarters building, where I wrote a check for 75 cents.

Beautiful city, though, San Francisco. Undeterred — reinvigorated, in fact! — I thought, Why not head to the coast and keep driving home along Highway 1? Yeah, why not? I'm king of the world!

The gas needle dropped. I was unafraid. I let it go to a quarter of a tank and pulled in to buy gas — where I learned that just that summer, the entire world decided it would no longer accept checks for gasoline purchases. This was not a matter that anyone would have thought I'd find newsworthy, apparently.

Vast quantities just waiting in my checking account to pay for fuel. OK, not vast, but enough. A fair exchange, check for gas. Can't you just take one lousy check? Just this once?! I'm good for it!

No! Also, no, no, no, no, no, no and no.

The needle dropped to empty as the miles passed, the inviting coastline turning lonely and cold and menacing, the hard sun shooting longer and longer glares, refusing to abate.

The needle dropped below empty when I coaxed the ter-pocketing car into the parking lot of the Hilton Hotel in Monterey at sundown. Clothes askew, sweat dripping from my body, my face red from screaming at humanity's blindness to my needs mile after mile, I looked like I ran all the way.

In those days:

(1) Pay phones existed,

(2) You could make a collect call for a dime, and

(3) The desk clerk at the Hilton wanted the dime back after I completed the call home. Hilton, above all, must balance its books.

"Where are you??" My mom asked.

"Monterey."

Pause. "Monterey, California?!?!!!"

Appreciate, if you will, my nanosecond of restraint as I consider the wisdom of lightening the mood with the snappy, "No, Monterrey, Mexico (Duh!)" I settled on, "Yes," letting my mom have the funniest moment of the whole misadventure. I finally had to let them in on what I had done.

Since I was due in early the next morning to my summer newspaper job, my parents and sister had to make the three-hour trip from Lompoc to Monterey to retrieve me. Well, they didn't have to, but they did, bless them. Three hours and many miles served to soften my parents' mood (though my sister came along with the expectation of witnessing my evisceration), so that by the time they found me at 1 a.m., they were contemplative and maybe grateful that my absence was just a lot of fuss over a girl.

I rode with my dad for part of the way home, then switched cars with my mom at about Soledad, and attempted to deflect any lingering anger by asking them about their childhoods, filling in gaps about things I've always wondered. It worked: They were in a mood to talk, and I never had such uninterrupted time before or after.

After a couple of hours' sleep, I went to work and called Nancy later that day to tell her the whole story. I know that's hard to believe, but that's what the world was like without smart phones and facebook. News and trivia sometimes actually had to wait an entire day.

We married two years later in the church where I had met Carol on that first trip, 27 years ago this weekend. I proposed along the coast in Monterey, not far from where I borrowed 10 cents in hopes my parents would rescue me.

If you see us, pull up a chair and we'll tell you the story, complete with gestures and interruptions, maybe even song — a whole show.

Happy anniversary, Nancy!