A Previous Life

It was 1946, winter in San Francisco, which meant you only needed a 5 cent cup of coffee and a good attitude to stay warm.  The war was over. I was out of the service. I was finally free to run anywhere my imagination and fast talk could take me. I was staying in the Mission at a boarding house ran by a kindly old lady and her husband.  Well, kindly until you didn't pay your rent on Friday. I didn't consider going home.  I hadn't consider laying roots in The City by The Bay. But I did keep finding myself giving Mrs. Williams that 6 dollars on Friday afternoons.

My days consisted of roaming the streets looking for a good place to read and a diner with a good bowl of vegetable soup. I would tell people I was also looking for women who didn't get mad when you whistled at them. I always found the soup, but I never found my whistle.  Seems I had something else on my mind.

photo by: free use rights off the internet

Its hard when you come to realize things about yourself that your mama would not like.  Its hard when you know your daddy would be disappointed.  They might still love you, but they would keep secretes. There would be no boastfully talk about you when they went to Wendell Brothers on Saturdays or at the church meetings on Sundays.

What I had realized and what I had to keep from mama, daddy and Mrs Williams, was that I had spent my enlisted time fighting the enemy in the South Pacific and loving the captan I had fought under. He lived in San Francisco.  He was a line cook at The Tennessean.  They made a great vegetable soup there.  His name was Scabby Johnson.