THE CALAMUS EMOTION: LOVE AMONG THE RUINS

Jack Fritscher

 

San Francisco, April 25, 1906

 

Dear Benny,

It’s yer old (ha ha) pal Jimmy writin you from General Delivery in Frisco where you might of heard back in Saint Louie we had a little earthquake on my birthday Wednesday last, April 18. What a way to turn nineteen (ha ha). No cake for me like two years ago at our fine spree at the Saint Louie World’s Fair before I lit out for Frisco on the train from Union Station. I ain’t forgot that cake or the icin on it. How we had our cake & ate it too. Sorry I ain’t writ you much but I bin thinkin about you, &, pal o mine, I wish you were here, but I’m glad you ain’t been through what I been through. What I seen in the last seven days could break a man’s heart. This whole city it ain’t gone, but sorely wounded. Ma Sloat’s boardin house where I live is all charcoal ashes down South of the Slot, along with all the South of Market buildins around it. So forget that address.

It were all us workin men livin in cheap rooms down there, & pore families, cuz nice San Franciscans never cross South of the Slot in Market Street. Remember I toll you last letter how the iron cable-car slot worked, runnin down the center of Market Street, pullin the streetcars from the Ferry Buildin west toward Twin Peaks like a hummin metal line fencin off us & the rich folk we work for. It were terrible after the shakin woke us all up at 5:12 in the A.M., yellin in our longjohns, steppin out as I did from my third-floor window that crumpled down like a house of cards to the curb, crushin fellas livin under me, all us who could dashin out into the cold streets, everyone screamin. The Chronicle says 60,000 of us souls live down South of Market, & we was all runnin for it, tryin to get away from the fire that started in a Chinee laundry near Ma Sloat’s at Third & Brannan. It just spread & spread through all the broken wood & gas mains shootin flames into the air. At 8:14 A.M. come another quake rollin through, knockin more buildins down like tinder, & puttin folks chokin on all the smoke in a worse panic.

I don’t want to make you sick, dear Benny, but there was women and children, whole families killed, and lots of men, more than you can guess. Lots of fellas, some of em I knew, trapped in the collapse of all the bachelor workmen’s boardin houses. They saw the path of the fire and they was beggin, shoutin, you could hear, in all kinds of languages, at first for somebody to pull em out, till those that didn’t have guns to kill themselves, becuz they was about to be burned to death, was beggin somebody, anybody to shoot em, & they was shot. Some of em as a mercy was shot by each other, you could see em, some dyin naked as they was born, & even if you turned away, you could hear the shots that stopped the shouts. I didn’t need the priest from Saint Pat’s, which toppled down, kneelin in the holy bricks prayin in the middle of Mission Street, to tell me it was a vision of hell, & I was glad he got up like a man & started pullin trapped souls out from the rubble. Nothin none of us could do to keep somethin like 3000 souls alive in our disaster. Somethin like 500 looters, & still countin, was shot on site includin 2 fellas I knew who was just tryin to get their trousers & shoes & pocket watches & tintypes out of the wreckage. Gunfire & flames & smoke & explosions & the ground quiverin every few minutes like the earth was a bag of gravel. I left Ma Sloat’s hightailin it with nothin.

Don’t know where I’m gonna live. Am now sleepin rough, in a view with no room, you might say, as I’m campin on leaves of grass in a make-shift lean-to against one a the thousands of tents in Golden Gate Park which you may recall I once toll you you’d like since I could see us walkin there, hand in hand through Paradise.

You mayhaps have already read in the Saint Louie Post-Dispatch how when our Opera House fell down around his eyetalian ears, the Great Caruso sat on the ground in Union Square & cried, with less courage than Pagliacci’s “Vesti la Giubba,” that he was never comin back to Frisco. The tent my lean-to’s presently up against in the Park sports a “hoochie-koochie” sign from downtown readin “Maiden Lane” (ha ha), & the friendly “tootsie-wootsies” inside it, who I do-for (cuz among their services to other fellas) they cook for me, have been laughin at Caruso as not bein all that great! They hear tell that the grand soprano Luisa Tetrazzini herself, who don’t scare easy like her warblin tenor chum Caruso, is sometime soon headin back into Frisco to sing free at Lotta Crabtree’s fountain which is about the only thing still standin downtown at Market & Geary. The ladies, who know a town pump when they see one, been cookin what they been jokin is “Chicken Tetrazzini” in her honor. I toll em it should be “Chicken Caruso,” & they all laughed, & give me pie. So life ain’t all bad, or bad at all, & it’s startin over, life is, which is the secret of Frisco.

I was wondrin if you wanted to come out here to the ruins (ha ha, but I mean it) cuz you said you were needin work & there’s lots of it here now, even more than before, for thousands of us strong young fellas.

Which vision reminds me I been takin my salt-water sea-bathing, 7 A.M to 6 P.M., once-a-week out near the ocean, at cold North Pacific temperatures & up to eighty degrees, for twenty-five cents at the Sutro Baths that’s all glass and iron as fine as any building at the Saint Louie Exposition. Reason enough for you to travel west, there’s bathing music performed by the Sutro Baths Band, & I bet we could work for room & board for that ol blonde Ma Sloat nobody calls “Ma Slut” to her face. She’s rebuildin over on Folsom Street upstairs over where her brother Hallam has a piece of property for a new saloon cuz he believes in the future of Frisco even South of the Slot. She says he believes in the future of thirst, & he be namin the little street next his after their father the older Hallam who ain’t unlike yer pa & mine when it comes to bellyin up to a bar to bend an elbow.

If you have work there in Saint Louie then maybe you could send yer old secret chum a couple bucks to help out, but, dear Benny, if I have to start over, & I do have prospects, I’d a damn sight rather start over with you by my side here in Frisco cuz you never know what’s gonna happen next, but this monkey’s uncle, yours so truly, can tell it’s gonna happen here, & it could be good for us. Remember when you was seein me off at the train station, steamin away, you cracked wise that confirmed bachelors gotta know how to take care of ourselves.

I can’t meet you in Saint Louie, Louie, where we fell down laughin tryin to dance the hoochie-coochie, but I can meet you at the Golden Gate. Don’t be late! You might want to hear the Great Tetrazzini as much as me (ha ha) except this boy ain’t no more singin soprano. That married bachelor Horace Greeley was right when he said, Go West, young man, Go West! There’s gold in them thar hills! I found, down near the Embarcadero, blowin around on Folsom Street, some French postcards like you never seen. It’s an ill wind that blows no good instructions.

I love this place, but not as much as you know who. There. I finally said what you said when last we parted. Put that in yer pipe, dear Benny, & smoke it. Two bucks would be fine. Yer hand in mine, pal o mine, would be better. If I had a ceilin, I’d be lyin awake at nights starin at it & thinkin of you, takin it all in hand, your hand in mine, hand in glove with you.

Yer devoted pal,

Jimmy