The Back Streets of October

Vignettes of the vibrant life under the stars the quiet hiker sees that the hurrying motorist never sees but can only disperse with his headlights and his noise...

On Dana street approaching Derby, I was aiming home with groceries after an errand-dominated afternoon--cheerful because of my relative success. As I covered the new paved surface I looked out at the glimpse of the Golden Gate you can get from the corner of Ward. It was after seven and the sun had set in rusty dark orange. The seasonal darkness gathered under the trees and it still seemed so early, the way it always does.
Just then, an old delight reawakened when I saw a window lit up for the Hallowe'en season. As I passed I noted the most flamboyant feature a chorus of ceramic pumpkins with a light inside. Next to it was a homey faux-patchwork quilt of a black cat in a leafless tree against a full moon. But what was that spooky face in the small poster above it? By the light of the pumpkin lamp, it looked like a woodcut of Karloff, maybe as the Mummy. What did it say? Oh...OBAMA.
Well, he's an Arab, ain't he?

I remember Hallowe'en the October of the Cuban missile crisis, 1963. I stood on the sidewalk out in front of a place selling Kennedy and Krushchev masks. I thought that it seemed scandalous. How could anyone find fun in the frightening story I'd seen on television?
There's a photo of Bob Dylan from that year, crouching in front a store window with the same masks and grinning. Within a couple of years I was listening to his records and before long I had acquired that wry perspective myself, maybe more so.
Sadly political humor is rarely fun for me any more. After Nixon and Reagan there have few laughs left. The current occupant of the White House makes you laugh with his latest malapropism or inadvertent admission of wrong doing but the laughs dry out fast. The criminal caught out still pays no price and Congress and the Press let his disclaimers go largely unchallenged.
I've become somewhat grave once again, I guess. I'm like the pensive child I was discovering the masks, having heard about the game with nuclear stakes as reported on the black and white picture-tube at home. But I'm younger than that now.

A month ago I had passed a sidewalk border garden with the huge tornado of a cherry plant spilling over its fence over the sidewalk. I tried a few and they were sweet. I firmly believe that food grown on public air-space belongs in part to all. Take only what you can use short term would be a good motto too. California has a tremendous amount of fruit and so forth that goes unused by people often creating a lot of sidewalk mess. It just makes ecological sense too.
So last week I thought of the probability of late ripening tomatoes waiting there for rain and cold nights to spoil them. It was time for my 11 PM walk and I thought I'd go and see. The moon was full or nearly so and the light was brilliant. Clearer weather meant that planets like Mars were still vivid even with the bright moonlight. Orion's belt was making the scene, underscoring again the change of season.
I took Telegraph which had a few revelers who seemed no more full moon-wrought then most nights of lesser moons. Up to Bowditch I walked by the temples and the Park--all the day sleepers are gone from the spot-lit shrubbery now patrolled by a languid shark-like police car.
How boring and adverse to the mind is surveillance to those who do the watching.
Then on Dwight a tall black cop was hand-cuffing a young man across from of the Maybeck temple. They stood behind the revolving strobing cop car while I simultaneously realized someone was wiggling a green laser light on me. Judging by the angle it was from a high-rise dorm across the street. I moved right near here to an apartment on Benvenue shortly after I'd relocated to California. Right after I did, 50 feet from this spot, I was shot by a pellet from one of these dorms, so this game is no mystery to me now. I just hoped it wasn't a gun sight and then it was gone.
So a little flushed by all of this, I turned onto Benvenue. Way down the sidewalk I saw a figure approaching that got more and more familiar as it did. It was an rather intense person, a work acquaintance who I had socialized with a little. We greeted and kept on trucking. It was to my relief. I didn't particularly want to explain my mission, really. Seen walking away from home at midnight, I had intrigues of my own.
I arrived at the garden sidewalk and there certainly was fruit. Most had been picked but an abundance lay close to the earth. I harvested a modest amount. From the other direction a guy with his dog came home to the house next door. He must have seen me sitting on the stoop as he ran inside. Perhaps he was not so much frightened of me but rather loathe to embarrass a peaceful gleaner. This is what we expect in Berkeley--co-existence whenever possible. And I soon had enough of the ripe fruit.
Heading back through the mystery-laden streets home, I took a path through the deserted Willard park. Away from the street lamps off in the grass, the full moon and the redwoods came forth. The night sounded a faraway train.
When I got in I started the tomatoes in garlic and olive oil while I boiled a pot of water for some whole wheat fusilli. Greatly reduced, somewhat seasoned, the cherry tomatoes made a sweet fresh sauce for my midnight repast. Some indefinable element is added to such a meal, like food cooked outdoors, or from farmer's markets, some conscious naturalism that enriches quotidian life.

Darkness had fallen while I was at 5 o'clock Mass. It was the Mass of All Hallowed and it took place on All Hallowed's Even, commonly called Hallowe'en. It was the Celtic New Year and the veil between the living and the dead was at its thinnest at this point in the year.
Lacking a carved turnip lantern and a disguise, I relied on my usual seasonal demeanor to carry me through the residential streets of Berkeley on my long walk from the Rockridge to my Southside digs. I had even worn a necktie, a rich shiny paisley brocade cut thin contrary to prevailing fashion. This was with a dark grey shirt, a burgundy coat bought for my Canadian train journey in 2005, and my usual ensemble of black pants, boots, gloves and beret--I looked to be dressed for the occasion.
Outside a hair salon where she worked I told a girl in a sexy bunny costume that I had just seen another bunny girl outside the post office if she was looking for her. She was gracious-- beautiful young women can be so nice to non-threatening middled aged guys. I also hailed a guy in the smoker's courtyard of that little subterranean bar along the way. He was dressed as a giant glass of Guinness stout and on Hallowe'en I feel friendly liberties are in order, a carnival esprit de vie.
Next I traveled down through Fairview Park to the Elmwood, my neighborhood for twenty years, fifteen of them in a quiet place on Woolsey. I often still walk the flowery neat sidewalks of Benvenue, street of my first Berkeley address almost thirty years ago. Or I take Hillegas, its stately tree-lined first block south of Alcatraz avenue, kids dreaming in the leaves, which culminates at Woolsey with a rustic looking cottage towered over by a magnificent redwood stand. Other times I slink along the strange overgrown lane called Bateman that locals have long altered to read Batman on the street signs.
This night I was seduced by a booth overtaking the Benvenue sidewalk near Webster. You passed through opaque curtains of filaments and maybe clear plastic strips--I was already spellbound, had smoked me wee smoke on the block previous with the pumpkins. Indeed, there had been a remarkable jack-o-lantern composed of a synthetic fractal-esque material yet lit by a live candle--time marches on.
Exiting the booth, I entered a very floral yard containing two houses and tonight there was spooky sound and various eerie tableaux arranged through its narrow garden. A lady attired as a witch busied herself with some arcane activity in one place, a group of little ones were collecting candy at the other. I enjoyed walking out again with the happy kids and parents. On the sidewalk approaching the post office a very serious and intent little girl walked came toward alone dressed as a sort of glitter fairy--it is fascinating to witness the intensity kids bring to Hallowe'en.
I crossed Alcatraz and entered into a more frenzied zone of holiday observation. Russell street has become a magnet for area kids and someone on nearby Benvenue had gone to some lengths to erect an attraction as well. I don't know what it was life-sized crude cubistic figures in some sort of frightful gore scene. I tuned in more to the kids and their vibes, a contact high of sorts.
Older kids cruise around subject to public displays of loud off-key, tuneless singing of insipidly sexy pop hits. Younger kids keep on eye on the older ones lest their need to show-off suddenly involve themselves. Most of the really young have hovering parents anyway.
One year I walked up Russell and was less than rewarded by what there was to see by way of spook houses and Hallowe'en ambiance. But to kids it's fun alley and I ca dig that. Locally speaking, I have always favored the upper Solano avenue area for a neighborhood Hallowe'en experience. Especially back in the days when all the shops would have school kids paint Hallowe'en scenes on their store windows. One could stroll around as an adult costumed or otherwise and see trick-or-treaters, get a scoop of store-made ice-cream and stroll by the schol park and the Masonic lodge with its occult glyphs. Ah, twentieth-century pleasures all flown, all changed...who cares?

Weary, I sat on some familiar cement steps a moment or two. The last time I sat had there, a puzzling young man had asked my opinion on a small tree's likeliness to fall on a parked car sometime soon. I recognized the same tree this night despite the darkness. What looked like a little headless skeleton emerged from it--it was a little black boy carrying his mask.
As I forged on, I found myself being rapidly followed by a group of six excited 13 year-old girls all sugared-up, chattering and laughing. I had to start laughing myself as they closed-in. It grew to be too much and I finally stood aside and let them pass. My life is like a Val Lewton movie. I nodded to their smiling dad-figure coming up behind and let him go too.

I approached the slightly more mature precincts of the Southside. This early in the evening the students had not yet got their proverbial freak on. Perhaps a few fireworks, rockets were launched in People's Park as I passed by, that sort of thing. Fibrillations of portent vibrated in the dry plants in the trees and phantom rain was perceived. Ahead of the stars, two planets hung brightly in an arc as I orbited back down Bancroft way on foot.
I think back to the Hallowe'ens of my fifties youth in New England, of bat-haunted Goodrum's tower, homespun witches and gypsies, little pirates with burnt cork beards, silhouettes around a bonfire of leaves. And I know remembering that bonfire I can still catch a fire from it and enter the dream of haunted All Hallowed's Eve.