3 Jerry's Writings: "Dream"

 

 I am trying to think what is going on. This is a dream, obviously. I am somewhere between fifty and sixty years old, although I am not sure. I wear my casual 21st century jeans, cap and old jacket.

  We are in San Francisco, or what is to become San Francisco, on a patch of ground where Market Street will be surveyed a few years later by Jasper O’Farrell. (It will be named for a street in Philadelphia.) I am here to consider investing in this area and perhaps to move here permanently. I have been collecting cowhides from nearby ranchos. I will make arrangements, perhaps with one of the whalers anchored in the Bay, to carry the hides and myself back home. Back east I will load up with supplies and barrels of whiskey. Then I will open a general supply store here. So far there are few Anglo residents. No one has yet found gold.

  No other buildings are visible. The countryside is clustered with buckbrush, toyons, oaks, and bay trees. I can see in the distance the bare hill where I lived, or will live, quite a long hike south over sand hills and tidal flats.

  A track on one side of our structure leads east toward the cove that will be named Yerba Buena. I set out inland to Mission Dolores, an hour’s walk on a dirt path to the west.  I recall that this is a time of cougars and bears, so being outside is not necessarily a safe thing. The weather was intermittently overcast, sunny and windy, so I guess it could be June or July.  The air temperature was something 60 degrees Fahrenheit. I know this because I am both from here and future.

  The Mission area is distressingly squalid. A few Indian workers laconically till a few vegetable plots. They look away and do not make eye contact. They are without shirts, and the scars on their backs are horrifying. The friars are slovenly, overweight, unshaven and generally reticent. The buildings are rundown. I inquire in Spanish about conditions, availability of supplies, and the like, although I know the answers. I have a few silver reales in my pocket. I leave the coins with the padres.

    I decide to hike to the Presidio, probably half a day’s walk north.  By evening I reach the Golden Gate. I see a few adobe buildings, all in appalling condition. One or two soldiers look up, then resume their card game. I look north across the strait to the future Marin County. No bridge, no lighthouse, no Fort Point.

  A billow of fog rolls in. Everything is obscured. I turn around. There is the City. I wait for Muni. The No. 28-19th Ave. takes me to the No. 22-Fillmore, which connects to No. 24-Divisadero. Then I am back at Mission and 24th streets with weary commuters, obnoxious teenagers, evangelical Christians, sidewalk alcoholics, and tired women shoppers herding small children. No cowhides. The dream is over.

San Francisco