Abio 24: Berkeley in my time for May 26 Benicia Herald
Abio 24 – Berkeley in my time
Berkeley in my time, 1980. Berkeley, where the nuts hunt the squirrels. Berkeley, where the hairy, multi-colored hippies ruled the day. Berkeley, where they closed Telegraph Avenue to traffic every weekend and held a peddlers’ fair.
Blondie’s $1 pizza slices. The Soup Kitchen’s $1 bowl of soup with a hunk of big bread. Persian Bongo Burger’s $1.25 breakfast of two eggs, hash browns, toast, and a glass of OJ. Café Mediterranean gourmet coffee and one of the first unisex bathrooms, which confused my visiting Pennsylvania sister Carol who was looking for the ladies’ room and flat out refused to believe me when I told her everyone used the same facilities. It grossed her out. She refused to use it, and I walked her to People’s Park.
For me, having grown up in a rural Appalachian tiny town with one main street and 11 stores, moving to Berkeley was a lot to take in. Living in State College, PA for two years helped, but nothing could prepare me to the raging diversity all around me.
A woman regularly stood at my corner stopping cars and asking for money to pay for her kidney dialysis. She stood out there for nearly a year. Down MLK a few blocks from me was the Waving Man, an old, bald, black man with brilliant white teeth and a single huge white glove who waved at every passing car every morning for years. The Polka Dot Man wandered Telegraph wearing and carrying nothing but polka dots – shit, pants, shoes, hat, suitcase, umbrella, you name it – polka dots. He would pick a street corner, strike an unusual pose, different each time, and go catatonic. He would not move a muscle for an hour or more, then move on to a new intersection and repeat a new statuesque pose. He did not have a tip jar. He was not doing it for the money. One day Janet went into the comics store and bought him a Little Dot comic book. She tried to hand it to him, but he wouldn’t move, so she tucked it under his suitcase. We had the Howler, supposedly a former college professor who had gone mad. His clothes were tattered, his unkempt hair looked like he’d just stuck his finger in a light socket, and he would mumble and rant, but also he would howl, loud and long – Aaaaaoooo – like a lone wolf. A visiting friend of mine once took his photograph. I advised against it. The Howler liked to be left alone. When Paul snapped the photo, the Howler yelled, “The radiation on the outside of my body is not public property.” We had Michael the street profit who handed out complex two-page pamphlets warning that mankind’s only hope for survival was a total migration to the moon through the combined mass cultivation of marijuana. He claimed our oxygen was running out from high altitude to low, which meant that giraffes would die first and whales and dolphins would die last. He fascinated a crowd of high school film students that I once took to Berkeley to see Rocky Horror Picture Show. The kids were so taken by Michael’s stories, they sat in a circle on the sidewalk around him. He showed them an Aztec drawing of Quetzalcoatl appearing to work the controls of a space ship. “He brought life to Earth,” preached Michael.
When I flew my sister and brother-in-law, Carol and Phil, out for a visit, I did my best to break them in slowly to Berkeley lifestyles. I didn’t want to freak them out, so I saved Telegraph Avenue for the fourth day.
We parked on Haste during a weekend peddlers’ fair and walked to the corner. I asked them, “Are you ready for this?” They nodded ready. We turned the corner and stepped out onto Telegraph. The first person they saw walking our way was wrapped head to toe in aluminum foil that was decorated with red Magic Marker swirls and the words “Electric Spaghetti Factory.” He crinkled as he walked, and he was barefoot with his toes sticking out. Carol and Phil freaked out. “What the hell does it mean?” Carol asked. “Just wait. It gets weirder.”
I lived in a converted porch on the back of a Victorian on Haste near Merrick Hospital, one unfurnished room. My bed was a mattress on plywood on cinder blocks. My bookshelf was also cinder blocks and particle boards. I also had an easy chair that had one arm broken off.
Every place I had lived in Modesto, I’d offered the landlord to do maintenance and landscaping for a cut in rent. I was always told no. At this house, I did not ask. The backyard was a mess of dirt mounds and weeds. I leveled it, added topsoil, mulch, straw, and grass seed, set up a sprinkler, and soon I had a luxurious lawn where I could sit in the sun. One day a knock came on the door. It was the owner. He introduced himself and pointed at the lawn. “Did you do that?” I nodded yes. “It’s beautiful. I’m going to decrease your rent from $150 a month to $100 a month.” I bought a used push lawn mower at the Ashby Flea Market
I had no real bills besides rent and an $85 monthly student loan payment. It left me with $900 a month in expendable income. I couldn’t cook and my apartment was small, so I pretty much lived downtown every day. All my meals came from restaurants, and I ate well. I also saved and paid cash for my first car, a Tercel.
After three glorious years, Janet and I broke up. She said I was too happy and she was too sad. It was a mutual separation. Our romance had run its course. We parted as friends. I had four more casual girlfriends after that, but two wanted to get married and Dana was too wild and promiscuous for me. Too many rug burns. Dorothy was my first black girlfriend. She was my height, shaped like an hourglass, and she protruded. She laughed a lot and took no guff. We would go out dancing at Silks, a mostly black nightclub, and I would get some serious hairy eyeballs from the crowd, but we remained oblivious and happy. She ran off with a standup comic, David Allen Moss, my friend from the phone company.
I worked in downtown Oakland in a Phone Center with 22 employees. Two of us were white. Everyone else was something else, and we all got along great. I never heard a harsh word or racial remark in my six years. For six years I sold phone services and ate mushroom chicken at the Chinese restaurant around the corner. Never ordered anything else. I liked that mushroom chicken.
My life was so different from how I had grown up. Each morning now, I would iron a shirt, put on a suit and tie, tuck a newspaper under my arm, and ride the BART to the office. I still had no furniture, but from the outside looking in, I was doing well.
I bought a car after I met Susan. She did not want to ride on my motorcycle. When she did ride my motorcycle, she purposely dug her fingernails into my sides if I accelerated more than she liked. The first time I asked Susan out, she asked me if I was going to take her to the submarine races. I didn’t understand that remark for several years.
The story of how I met Susan is elaborate and deserving of its own column, so stay tuned for next week’s episode: How I met and married the woman I love.
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