Dad always bought his gasoline in fixed amounts, probably to make his mileage calculations easier. I can still hear him leaning out the window and saying, “Ten gallons of ethyl,” just after driving over the rubber hose that evoked a loud DING in the office. This practice of ten-gallon purchases also guaranteed that restroom breaks on this trip would be as frequent as needed, with no emergency stops required. In retrospect, I now understand that my dad and a few thousand others actually coined the phrase that became the title of newscaster Al Roker’s autobiography—Don’t Make Me Stop This Car!—a familiar command to all of us former backseat-riding baby boomers.
Thinking back to that July day now, I can truly attest to the fact that there is no heat in the world quite like Bradley, California, that summer, when the thermometer at the Flying A gas station read 115 degrees (no car air conditioning in those days). Fortunately, Mom had stocked the Coleman ice chest in the backseat with our lunch and several extra bottles of 7-Up for just such an occurrence. Windows down, heads hanging out for the breeze, we were so excited and relieved to reach the fog of Pismo Beach just a short time later, as Highway 101 meandered its way toward the coast as it did back then.
Like many “modern” motels of the time, the place we stayed that first night had “Magic Fingers” vibrators on the beds, along with a wall-mounted push-button coffeemaker (then cutting-edge modern) in the bathroom. Needless to say, armed with a supply of quarters, I managed to test both devices multiple times during our overnight visit, with Mom and Dad thoroughly caffeinated and vibrated by the end of our overnight stay.
Our first stop the next morning was Marineland, the granddaddy of all marine-themed adventure parks. Located on the Palos Verdes Peninsula in Los Angeles County, it was a must-see destination for families with kids from the mid-1950s until about 1987. Its peak years were the late 1950s and early 1960s, before the opening of Northern California’s Marine World (in Redwood City in 1968 and then Vallejo in 1986). It was a combination of aquarium/circus show/feeding zoo, and there were thousands of people there the day we visited, yet we managed to spot two different families of my grammar school classmates.
Throughout the trip, our daily meals were always eaten in restaurants attached to the motels where we were staying—places like Denny’s, International House of Pancakes, Sambo’s or any establishment with the words “Waffle Shop” or “Family Restaurant” as part of its name. Mom correctly theorized that such places always had clean restrooms plus menu selections that were not too exotic for kids who might be picky eaters.
Following a brief one-day visit with the performing dolphins and porpoises, it was off to spend a couple of days on the Southern California beaches before finally reaching Disneyland. Mom ran into a childhood friend from San Francisco on the beach at Santa Barbara, Dad bumped into an old navy buddy later that day and one night, I saw one of my own St. Cecilia School classmates having dinner with her parents at a seafood restaurant in Santa Monica. Even then, it amazed me that for all its population, California could be such a small place.
Finally, it was time for the big event. Spotting the Matterhorn from the freeway sent every backseat-riding kid into an absolute frenzy—“WE’RE HERE, WE’RE HERE” could literally be heard from thousands of vehicles navigating Highway 101’s Harbor Boulevard exit and the streets of Anaheim each day. Disneyland was only six years old then, much smaller than today’s site. Even so, the rides were still a definite step up from our usual Playland-at-the-Beach entertainment, though still light-years away from the high-tech wizardry that exists down there today.
Mom had read somewhere that kids and parents should have some sort of distinctive clothing or headgear—in case they became separated in Disneyland, it would be easier to spot one another. So on that first day, we stopped at the Mad Hatter, one of the shops just inside the park, where we were all outfitted with peacock blue alpine hats that were accessorized with a twelve-inch-tall white feather—our family plus a couple of hundred others, from the looks of things that summer.
Once in the park, kids quickly learned the lingo of the A-B-C-D-E tickets. The A ticket was for something pretty dorky like the Main Street Cinema. The B ticket was a bit better—attractions like the now-gone Motor Boat Cruise where passengers could steer (even though the boats were guided along on an underwater rail). The C ticket was for things like the Tomorrowland Autopia (once a narrow curving track, but with a guide rail added around 1964 to control over-adventurous ten-year-olds and others). The D ticket gave access to the now-gone Skyway from Fantasyland to Tomorrowland or TWA’s iconic Flight to the Moon, while the coveted E ticket was the best of all—things like the Submarine Voyage, Jungle Cruise, Matterhorn Bobsleds and the Monorail. In later years, E tickets also covered It’s a Small World (with its hauntingly sweet theme song sung in ultra-soprano), Space Mountain and many others.
The few remaining tickets I have are in a booklet from the mid-1970s visit that shows a face value of $10.55 (“only $4.75 for Magic Kingdom Club members”) back at a time when every large employer offered Magic Kingdom Club discount cards. Those single tickets disappeared in 1982, to be replaced by full-day fixed-price passes, and I shudder to report that today’s online discounted price for a one-day, single-park adult pass is now approaching a wallet-busting $100 per person.
The Disneyland E-ticket has come to mean “the best, the ultimate.” It was certainly that way for thousands of youngsters hoping for a summer vacation visit to the park in its early decades. Author’s collection.
After many hours of waiting in lines and whooshing through rides like the Matterhorn Bobsleds (then the most “scary” of all the attractions), we headed back to the hotel for an afternoon dip in the pool and, at Mom’s insistence, a one-hour nap. About 5:00 p.m., we would be off to dinner at nearby Knott’s Berry Farm, where fried chicken with gravy and biscuits plus boysenberry pie à la mode were the staples. Like the Disneyland of that era, Knott’s was also a much lower tech operation in 1961, featuring mule rides and panning for gold—I still have a tiny plastic bottle, the water long gone, with a few teeny, tiny flecks rattling around. Then it was back to Disneyland at night—the absolute best time to be in the park, with cooler weather, shorter lines and the guarantee of a relaxing frozen treat at the now-gone Carnation Ice Cream Parlor on Main Street or the Tahitian Terrace in Adventureland. There were nightly fireworks shows, but these were nothing like the spectacular events that were to come with the Main Street Electrical Parade of the 1980s and 1990s.
By the second morning, Mom and Dad decided that room service for breakfast was the order of the day—and an easy way to avoid the local eateries and the crowds of families that had a few too many rambunctious kids. Over breakfast, the daily drill began—which new rides would we go on that day, and which rides did we all want to go on for a second time? The ticket book concept ensured that at some point, even the lackluster attractions that used an A ticket, such as the Main Street Horse Cars, would be visited by most families.
Armed with the Kodak eight-millimeter movie camera in Mom’s oversized tote bag, plus Sea & Ski lotion, Life Savers, Wash & Dry (“the miracle moist towelette”), Kleenex, Band-Aids and enough assorted other items to stock a small convenience store, we set forth to await the park’s opening in the crowd along Main Street. Throughout the day, it was still line after line, but we never complained—it was Disneyland after all, and there was always something to see, even when waiting. By the end of that day, we were tiring somewhat, and a quick dinner at a nearby air-conditioned restaurant was just fine with everyone.
Finally, on the last day there, it seemed that every kid went into a wild buying frenzy of souvenir items from the shops on Main Street, and I was no exception. I still have a lapel pin, and I occasionally drink my morning coffee from a Donald Duck mug with my name on it. Best of all, there was the leather beaded belt with ADVENTURELAND spelled out across the back, which will be very handy once again, just as soon as I get back to having a twenty-eight-inch waist.
/> Cramming the car’s trunk full of suitcases and a variety of shopping bags from our weeks on the road was no small task, and we began to resemble the Ricardos and the Mertzes packing their car for the trip from New York City to Los Angeles. Dad still favored Highway 101 over the coast highway, and we were rewarded with cooler weather on our trip home than what we had on the way down. After endless games of Auto Bingo and family sing-a-longs (plus reading the Burma-Shave signs—even then, they were about to disappear into roadside history), we finally reached 19th Avenue for the last leg of the ride home.
Then, for the next few years, it was back to our family standard vacation—Marin Town & Country Club—until Mom raised the idea of a return visit to Disneyland a few years later. It turned out that she herself had seen an episode of Wonderful World of Disney when she veered away from the Ed Sullivan Show one Sunday night and apparently liked many of the new attractions that were being shown, so I didn’t have to do any persuading that second time around.
We made our second visit in June 1964, when Dad decided that it was high time for a family train ride. On the Sunday morning of our departure, Grandma and Aunt Margaret picked us up at home and dropped us off at the old Southern Pacific station at 3rd and Townsend (an intersection and a neighborhood that is barely recognizable to anyone who has not seen it in the last five years or so; for a present-day look at the same intersection, Google “747-3rd Street, San Francisco” and then scroll slightly left for today’s view from that spot).
Onto the Coast Daylight, and we were off—breakfast in the dining car in San Mateo County, lunch somewhere deep in the Central Valley and dinner just before arriving at Union Station in Los Angeles. This was still the era of white linen service, heavy silver utensils and thick china plates with the railroad’s logo emblazoned at the top. I must say that Dad was right—more than fifty years later, I still relish the entire day that we spent zipping southward on those steel rails that Arlo Guthrie would sing about several years later.
That year, we stayed at the Biltmore Hotel in downtown Los Angeles and had dinner with a couple of Dad’s cousins whom we had never met before. It was my first lesson in genealogy, which led to a lifelong fascination with the subject. We also rode on the old Angel’s Flight cable car that climbed one of the downtown hills and explored Olvera Street, the Farmers Market and Grauman’s Chinese Theater. (Mom apparently didn’t approve of whatever they were showing at the time, and it was years later, traveling on my own, that I had the pleasure of experiencing the film Titanic on that enormous screen—with such a great sound system that you could literally feel that magnificent ship go down.) Then after a few days, it was off to Anaheim, with a list of the latest attractions firmly in hand.
By that year, Disneyland had expanded its offerings to include the Enchanted Tiki Room, Swiss Family Robinson Tree House, Haunted Mansion and Flying Saucers—round pods that, filled with one child, floated on a field of pressurized air (but only for a year or so before they disappeared). The Skyway was still running then, with new rectangular rather than round baskets (now, sadly, it is a feature that has been discontinued). Along with the Monorail, I began to think that Mr. Disney had mastered the whole idea of transportation better than San Francisco’s MUNI—and I hold that opinion even more strongly today.
Future attractions like General Electric’s Carousel of Progress, Monsanto’s Adventure Thru Inner Space and the People Mover were all added later. My personal all-time favorite, Pirates of the Caribbean, was still a bit of pixie dust in Mr. Disney’s imagination at that time, and the blockbuster draws like Star Tours, Mickey’s Toon Town and Disney’s California Adventure were yet to be dreamed.
Knott’s, too, had expanded somewhat by 1964, but the big thrill was taking one of the new public tours up at Universal Studios. Far smaller than today’s rendition, the tour involved simply boarding a tram and being given a glimpse into a Hollywood back lot and soundstages. The visit was quite an eye-opener for this twelve-year-old, who could never again attend a movie or watch television without declaring with a voice of authority, “I know how they did that…” at every scene of a bloody barroom brawl, collapsing bridge, rock avalanche, parting waters or fiery inferno. The sets from the infamous Bates Motel, the Leave It to Beaver house, the streets of Andy Griffith’s Mayberry and Quentin McHale’s PT-73 were all designed to involve family members of every age, and Universal did the job very well.
Too soon to imagine, it was back on the train for the ride home to San Francisco. Leaving downtown L.A. in the morning, then racing through a sunbaked Central Valley at midday, we were finishing up our dinner on the outskirts of San Jose and about to return home to a classic foggy summer evening in the Parkside.
For me, though, the travel bug had bitten, and after just a few more years, I was off on adventures of my own—travels that would eventually take me far beyond our Parkside District neighborhood.
10
DINNER ON THE TABLE
From the time of the gold rush, even up to the current millennium, San Franciscans have had a penchant for dining out. How could it be otherwise with virtually all of the world’s culinary versions within easy walking distance of so many people?
Growing up, most of us were raised on mom-cooking, with meatloaf or a mac-and-cheese casserole often getting star billing, with tuna casserole or fried fish Friday night staples in Catholic households. Yet for most of us growing up in San Francisco, there was an early exposure to the “Big Three” of foreign cuisines—Chinese, Mexican and Italian—since they dominated the dining-out landscape of the mid-twentieth century.
Today, youngsters will grow up knowing and appreciating Turkish, Indian, Vietnamese, Filipino, Thai, Cuban, Peruvian and dozens of other culinary delights from around the globe, whether at home or in neighborhood dining spots.
In a city as large and diverse as San Francisco, restaurants are notorious as businesses that come and go regularly. Everything from a bad Yelp review to fickle public tastes to parking hassles can doom the best dining venue. Sometimes political considerations enter into the equation—such as the drastic decline in German-themed restaurants and hofbrau establishments immediately after the commencement of World War I.
Likewise, drinking establishments have a history of being wildly popular and then suddenly fading from the scene as something new comes along. Those operating in residential areas, though, seem to have a better chance of long-term survival. Virtually everyone has a favorite local spot close to home.
The politics of World War I brought about a decline in restaurants that featured singing, as this was widely regarded as a German custom, in an era of anti-German sentiment. Author’s collection.
Some San Franciscans also enjoy pre- or post-meal visits to one of the many spots that dot every neighborhood. The West Portal area has been a shopping and dining destination on the western half of San Francisco for nearly one hundred years, with the Philosophers Club one of its many popular local establishments. Photograph by Michael Fraley.
As new restaurants open daily, others fade from the scene. Many of us grew up in an era of dressing up to go out to a dining establishment with linen tablecloths, low lights and sometimes formally clad headwaiters. These seem to have disappeared from the scene, as dining out has taken on a far more relaxed atmosphere in recent years.
Restaurants with cuisines from overseas can be notoriously competitive. Once largely limited to the Chinatown neighborhood, such establishments can now be found virtually across San Francisco, specializing in specific food types from various regions of the vast country. The local culinary scene has seen a gradual shift over the years from Cantonese cuisine to more farranging dishes, including Hunan, Shandong and Sichuan.
Changes in immigration patterns have also brought many more varieties of Indian, Pakistani and other regional foods from various regions of the subcontinent and many parts of Southeast Asia to San Francisco diners.
Local tastes also evolve over time, with the mild flavors of some ethnic foods
now seeming bland to more sophisticated palates. Dining out in the city continues to evolve day by day, just as the food served to today’s youngsters is also evolving from what many of us knew while growing up in the 1950s.
It is a typically foggy night in the Parkside District, as regular patrons—often referred to as the “born and raised”—enjoy dinner at the Gold Mirror at 18th Avenue and Taraval Street. Opened at this location in 1954, the same family has been operating the popular spot since 1969. Photograph by Michael Fraley.
The following are just a couple of the San Francisco–based recipes from years gone by that produce instant requests for a written copy whenever I make one of them.
BARDELLI’S “FRIED” ZUCCHINI
Bardelli’s was a popular San Francisco bar and restaurant since the days before World War I. It was a half block up the O’Farrell Street hill from Macy’s, and it became a regular gathering place after work, since it was on the way to the Mason & O’Farrell Garage, where many of us parked. This version is a dead ringer for the original, only without the deep-frying and the excess fat and calories. The flavor is true to the original, and the dish is highly reminiscent of many an after-work Saturday night dinner that I enjoyed with friends back in the 1970s.
4 medium zucchini
2 eggs
½ cup seasoned bread crumbs
½ cup grated Parmesan (not fat-free!)
Salt
Pepper
Trim ends from zucchini and slice in half, lengthwise. Cut each half into four equal strips. Scramble eggs in a wide dish and mix dry ingredients in another wide dish. Dip each zucchini strip in the egg and then in the bread crumb mixture. Place on prepared cookie sheet. Lightly spritz the laid-out zucchini strips with nonstick cooking spray. Bake in a preheated 425-degree oven for about 15 minutes. Turn each piece over with tongs, and bake for an additional 10 minutes. Serve piping hot.
Growing Up in San Francisco Page 7