It rained more than 4 inches Sunday in San Francisco. Note that this is an all-time city record for the month of October. Of course, “all time” is a very narrow concept. In San Francisco it means less than 200 years. Still, it’s enough. Enough to rejoice. The rain fell in sheets. The skies opened. It’s almost impossible to avoid cliché, and also impossible to describe. Some point out that after this much drought, the ground cannot absorb much water. That’s OK. The reservoirs in the Bay Area and, more importantly, in the Sierra Nevada, are designed accordingly. And fortunately, we are learning. Doubtless it’s too little too late. Perhaps it was always thus. Anyway, in the San Joaquin Valley growers are voluntarily flooding their fields, ensuring that they badly depleted water table recovers slightly. There’s no other way. Cooperate or die.
Actually, it doesn’t matter how much it rains within the city limits of San Francisco. It is the melting snow in the Sierra Nevada mountains that fills the city’s Hetch Hetchy reservoir and flows 200 miles across the state and into our sinks. Much of San Francisco’s rain rolls straight down the hills, into the storm sewers and out to sea. Unless you have a water garden. I think we do. That is to say, enough gravel and loose soil to encourage absorption. In any case, we certainly don’t have a lake in our garden. Nor do we have gullies of erosion. One of the regional motorways, Highway 880 which rolls up the eastern edge of San Francisco Bay, was flooded enough Sunday morning to shut down for hours. The radio proclaimed it Lake Fremont. How utterly wonderful.
On this mind-boggling day what else to do but head for the Mission District, there to enjoy lunch. Unfortunately, this was a solo experience. Jane had decamped to the suburbs to help her very pregnant daughter. So there I was, arriving at the subway station named for 24th St.. I rolled my way along the BART platform, past and present flying at me as they do these days. I used to walk this platform, that is to say, limp, along its length. From the ticket gate to the lift must be 100 m. And I would twist and lurch, leaning on my one crutch, day after day. After all, I had a job. It had taken me 10 years get full-time work after my shooting. And somehow I had a position, a science writer, at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory.
In the morning, I sometimes got up very early and headed to the Garfield Pool. In the swimming pool, run by San Francisco’s Parks and Recreation Department, I did five laps. And not only that, but I changed in and out of my clothes, got myself up and down the pool steps, dried, and into my redoubtable 1968 Plymouth Dodge. The car was about 10 years old, and it was wonderful. It had a slant-six engine, and even my extremely non-mechanical self could get a handle on this. All six cylinders were lined up in a row and mounted at an angle. Easiest car in the world to work on, mechanics told me. I drove all sorts of places in it. But fortunately, not to work. I had enough sense not to wear myself out on the roads. But I parked my car, somehow right near the station, and although my memory does not serve me well in this regard, there must have only been a small walk to the station lift.
Anyway, the past is the past. And on this particular October day, I am headed for the Beloved Café. The establishment has appeared post-COVID-19. Mission Coffee across the street has succumbed to the virus. To everything turn, turn. Messieurs Beloved Café make an absolutely stunning dal soup. Unfortunately, there has been so much rain that the COVID-19 vaccination site just down the street is closed for the day. I plan on getting a Moderna booster. While I eat my soup in one of the parklets, the outdoor restaurant shelters that have appeared all over San Francisco during the pandemic, I listen to a couple of women talk about their lives. At the other end of the structure, a guy talks about his. No one is in a hurry. Everyone is either not working on this Monday or not worrying about it. I am conscious of being a member of San Francisco’s haute bourgeoisie. I talk about stuff like this too. I am similarly free.
But not so free that I don’t have to phone my neighbor to open the bottle of marinara sauce when it’s time for dinner. Jane is gone, and I’m on my own, but I’m never really on my own, not with neighbors like Jeff and Beatrice across the street. The latter comes to my rescue, unscrewing the jar, and I know, as I know throughout this day, life is good.