One of the singular pleasures of living on the central coast of California is the delightful experience, albeit an acquired taste not universally well regarded, of a bracing chill fog and resulting rain like mist in the summer months. While the rest of California is baking to shades of gold and brown, the fortunate residents of coastal communities from Santa Barbara through Sonoma, enjoy highland mists and resulting Brigadoon disappearances and reappearances of houses, dogs, children and beloved landmarks. Today's fog was a gentler herald of the deep fogs of August, that storm tossed month when trench-coats, gloves and hats must be worn. and the fog is a seemingly madly driven fierce force bent on the destruction of all but the hardiest gardens.
Today's silver white clouds gently wafted in, silencing the noise of the city below our mountain, hiding everything, beautiful or common in it's whiteness, enveloping all in sweet silence. It's a child 's paradise of hide and seek but also perfect for a lovers embrace. All is enveloped in a cloud of white. Four grand houses, built in the magnificent neo-Monterey Colonial style popular in San Francisco in the 1920, lavishly spread over simply huge lots. One landed Don's villa next to another, their garden walls, outbuildings and towers deeply rooted on the slopes of the mountain. The sum total of the four, covering in their combined lots. an area half the size of the original village of Yerba Buena, the sum total having a good deal more rooms, better views and far more civilized inhabitants than that town now lost in history's mist. After an hour or so spent wrestling , playing hide and seek and being pulled about the steep streets by a dog aggressive beagle boxer mix in an atmosphere ready made for the Scottish Opera, refreshment, as reward for both master and dog is needed.
The rite, long established but until recently much disregarded, of afternoon tea, provide such refreshment and a perfect moment to reflect upon the goodness of stillness. The choice of tea is a brisk Irish Breakfast with accompanying tea sandwiches made of butter and raspberry jam and other's of cheese. The setting is a warm well appointed room, full of 18th century furniture and 19th century garnd tour art, the tea service a jolly 21st century set meant for solitary use. The choice of companion is the witty conversation provided by Miss Viola Mooney of 1966 Vallejo Street or more precisely the written wit within her 1911 edition of G. Bernard Shaw's,The Unsocial Socialist. Miss Mooney, for I would not dare address the lady as Viola, came into the ownership of this deep blue leather and gold embossed book in April of 1916. I came to own it eight decades later by making a purchase of dozens of books in a used book store on Polk Street, mere blocks away from Miss Mooney's house on Vallejo. The solid and stately house Miss Mooney brought her Bretano's edition home too is long gone, having been replaced sometime in the late 20's or early 30's by large luxurious apartment buildings since turned into co-op's. I've no idea who Miss Mooney was but as she was of my maternal Grandmother's generation and class, or so I have deduced by her clear penmanship, choice of book, quality of edition and address of residence, I have a fairly good idea of her.
My Miss Mooney is a jolly young lady, who has quite gotten on from the terror of the great fire and earthquake that forever served as her generations Rubicon, each survivor having crossed over from the imperial 19th century city's ashes to the start of modern San Francisco. The fair of 1915 had been a resounding success and Miss Mooney, I am certain, was a lady of the ragtime era wholike the city she lived in knew how! Shaw's tale of earnest young ladies of county families boldly moving forth into the pre-world war one social reform movements must have echoed her own views of all that was modern. San Franciscoo was new, well new again and all that had been, had been swept away in the firestorms ten years previous, In San Francisco the grandest mansions and ruins of Imperial America's splendor are daily replaced by even grander modern buildings of the settled modern west.
Miss Mooney's European sister's crossing of their Rubicon, was far more brutal than even the destruction of a city by earthquake and fire. The recording angel would have no end of trouble recording the breach of class and caste of young woman thrust into experiencing the unrelenting bloodbaths, that by April of 1916, had eroded the foundations of Empires in floods of slaughtered men. The collapse of the sweet world of English school girls of County families in 1911 was by than complete. But than for Miss Mooney in the San Francisco of April 1916 the distance to Flanders fields was greater still than even the distance for me in San Francisco of June 2011 to the hillside forward posts of Afghanistan. We each of us, in our time, enveloped in the calming stillness of walking in white silver clouds, fortified by of a cup of tea, taken in warm well appointed rooms, amused by the wit of Shaw and enjoying if for a moment the lifting of the fog which is the passing of time in San Francisco, united if but for 30 minutes across the divide of 95 year's over by the magic of out city's light,air Shaw and tea.
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