Elegant Elegy

A columnist in today's Examiner appears to be channeling the late, great Herb Caen in an elegant elegy to San Francisco past.

As I walked out the door, generations of San Francisco history flooded over me. Across the street the zoo disappeared in a thick finger of fog and was replaced with Fleishacker Pool, with Lincoln High School students racing to their swim meets. I got in my car and took the long way home, driving along the shore where thousands of San Franciscans gathered after Pearl Harbor to gaze across the ocean and wonder what fate had in store for them and their beloved city.

I swung past the Cliff House, just picking out the white shadows of Seal Rocks. To the right sat Sutro Park, where a quick squint of the eye brought Adolph Sutro's magnificent mansion back to life. A sad chapter in our history when his daughter Emma discovered she could no longer keep up the grounds. Government crews arrived and promptly tore the whole thing to pieces, down to the stone parapets that stood over the ocean.

I drove around a corner to be embraced by one of the greatest vistas in the world, our bridge standing there in that iridescent orange fog and light. And then into the Presidio, past batteries that looked out over the sea for invasions that never came. Past the Main Post, where the 5 o'clock cannon used to crack out over the Marina every day and announce cocktail hour on Chestnut Street. And then out the Lombard gates, where the soldiers had marched out in formation to empty the camp for the last time in 1989. I glanced over my shoulder one more time and sadly drove back into the present.

Of course, if anyone can channel Herb, this columnist can.