NEW!!! Thank Vietnam For Introducing Me To "The City"
by Aughtry Cooper
REUTERS/Jeff Topping
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San Francisco has always been a fascinating place to me. I hardly knew it existed when I grew up, as my world was mostly confined to my little town, county, and state. The Army, of course, opened up new vistas and one of those was San Francisco. I have to thank Vietnam.
Travis Air Force Base, about an hour north of San Francisco, was the jumping off point to the garden spot of Southeast Asia(Nam).
Some GIs processed in through Oakland Army Base.(By the way, this is the only Army facility, Oakland, that I know that was called a base. An Army has posts and the Navy, Air Force, Marines, have bases. Just a point.)
I knew we were flying to Vietnam, more or less but didn't think of stopping near San Francisco and had already learned, "just do what someone tells you."
I had never been west before and San Francisco was that mythical place on the left coast. I didn't identify with it then; and, riding through, I had no earthy idea of Haight Ashbury or the year of love or the crazies which in San Francisco were normal.
As the departure point for Nam neared, daze that I was in, I couldn't really take all of the city in and little did I know that San Francisco would be my home after the Army. Things looked pretty drab then, none of the greenery which was so familiar in North Carolina.
Andy Kuno/Reuters
| We went through an entrance gate at Travis; Travis Air force base was and still is a busy place; Air Force types are everywhere. We wound around several streets and buildings and ended up at a processing point. It is all a little fuzzy to me now.
Somehow, we got processed in, assigned a room, and were told that we'd be on our way to Vietnam in a day or two, but more information would be forthcoming.
Immediately after processing, I met this young lieutenant who said, "Want to go out and beat around?" He persisted and we are on our way.
The taxi driver took one look at me and the young lieutenant and drove us to North Beach so the risqué section of San Francisco was our first stop. There were these huge marquees with a picture of Carol Dota, the queen of strippers, and these country fair barker-type guys constantly trying to get us into a strip joint. Talk about a naïve, white boy from NC; I was absolutely overwhelmed and a Vietnam firefight would have seemed a welcome relief.
www.eden.rutgers.edu/~jctang
| Finally, my signal buddy(young lieutenant) led us into a joint and it looked relatively tame. We sat at the bar and the bartender came over and said, "Could I see your identification?" I didn't' think much about it at the time; but why did he want to see our IDs? I could hardly believe we looked underage. I immediately gave him my green active duty military ID; and, almost as if rehearsed, he turned it over. In those days, the Chaplain had a distinctive cross, something akin to a Red Cross symbol, marking the fact that he was a Chaplain on the back of the card.
The bartender looked at me and said, you a "father"? And, while I am trying to stammer out the fact I am a Protestant, or to deny, or go to the bathroom in my pants, this guy yelled out to the whole bar, "Hey, this guy is a priest and he's on his way to Vietnam."
Every head in the place turned; and, all of sudden, people were coming over, shaking my hand and three drinks appeared. My signal buddy had disappeared. I didn't know what to do, but finally stammered something and walked out the door. I'm sure that they felt I was ungrateful, but it all served me right.
http://www.orst.edu/~dragunoa
| I wish I could say that that was the end of my Frisco adventure, but I wasn't so lucky because the lieutenant reappeared.
I said something like I wanted to get back to Travis; but, before I knew it, we have moved out of North Beach and he said, "Here's a nice place, they've probably got a piano bar." Well, it was nothing at least like before- no dancers or strippers or anyone wanting to see our IDs. I ordered a coke and gave the gal a twenty. I didn't have many of them. She sized me up,I guess, and disappeared never coming back with my change. Welcome to San Francisco.
When I returned to San Francisco for subsequent military assignments, I was hooked on the City forever. The natives love to call San Francisco, "the City;" they hate "Frisco." I say Frisco often just to tick them off. After all, part of my job as a white boy from North Carolina is to keep pretense down to a minimum.
http://www.eden.rutgers.edu/~jctang
| There are many things about this city I love; San Francisco is simply a bunch of little villages stuck together-Italian, Chinese, Asian of various sorts, Spanish; you name the ethnic group and there is one in San Francisco.
My favorite thing, hands down, about San Francisco; is that, in this city, you can be anything you want to be; and that is no small thing. If there is a more nonjudgmental city in the world, I surely don't know where it is; I'm sure there are those in Europe, maybe Holland, but not sure.
All this being said, why do I want to chronicle my experiences here? Well, I can for one thing. To be out and about in this city and not report all the zany, crazy, weird aspects of life would almost be a sin for someone like me.
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