289. Celebrating the 4th of July

Independence Day

Last week I worked the 4th of July Festival at the Berkeley Marina. I don’t know how many years I’ve worked this event, but it must be close to ten. It’s a nice setting for an afternoon in the sun by the bay. Though I do spend my time in a parking lot. 

Getting there takes a train and a bus and about an hour and a half -- getting home takes over two hours, in part because you have to walk a long way because roads are closed leading to the marina. 

The long parking lot is divided in half, lengthwise with a long line of food vendor tents on one side, an open area for lines, an area of tables, then a landscaped berm and the waters and boats of the marina proper to the north. Just beyond the west end of the parking lot is another parking lot given over to a pony ride, various other kids rides, and our supply area which for Berkeley events includes parked garbage trucks instead of dumpsters. The (union) city crews haul the bags we pull, and the piles of cardboard the vendors leave, back to the proper truck... we hope.

At first, back ten or whatever years, we would monitor the eco-stations when it got busy, which meant standing in the sun for hours pointing to the right container and then fishing out all the things people threw in the wrong one regardless. I still did a little of that this time, along with some “education” for people interested in the process -- there are always a few weirdos at these events -- but mostly we keep in motion, sorting and, when necessary pulling bags and leaving them on the ground for the city crew to haul away. But a large percentage of my time is taken up finding and sorting the bags of trash the vendors are hiding. 

I thought I was keeping ahead of things yesterday, except for the vendor at the far east end of the line who wouldn’t give up their can for me to sort until the end. If I could have gotten my hands on it sooner, I would have cleared out all the (mostly plastic) landfill items, as I could see that it was mostly landfill. But no. When the woman running the booth finally let me have it, they had just added the good compost that they were tossing at the end of the day. It took me forever to separate a couple gallons of noodles and rice from all that plastic. So my mood was not the highest as I started my long hike to the first bus, only to learn then that the expected wait was half an hour. 

At least I got a shuttle bus ride up my hill when I got back to SF, as they had taken the cable cars out of service. And I still have no idea why my cell phone decided to take the day off, leaving me unable to clock-in and out. 

I kind of lost my train of thought there, what I started out to talk about was my memories of celebrating Independence Day. The first celebrations were so of that time. My parents, especially my father, being serious golfers, we belonged to a country club, Owl Creek, in a suburb to the east of Louisville. The club sponsored it’s own little firework display on the golf course. We would gather on blankets and towels on the grass on a hot and humid Kentucky evening, and watch a modest, but very close, display of pyrotechnics, while our parents drank and the mosquitoes drained our blood.

I have no Independence Day recollections from Colorado, which is curious, and possibly a comment on the bleak state of my parents marriage at that time. In SoCal, I remember our first 4th because we spent it trying to recover our dog, who had bolted. After that, I recall us driving into the hills where you could see a half dozen or more distinct firework displays happening at various beaches, and even over the landlocked semi-cities of the LA basin. LA is really more like the Balkans than it’s like an actual “city.”

This train of thought may have started with the little ponies in Berkeley yesterday. I couldn’t help recalling Freckles, my horse for a summer in Prescott, Arizona. Now that was an Independence Day to remember. First we had to ride the horses into town from our camp up in the mountains. It was the longest ride I can recall us taking, since we mostly just rode around up in the mountains. Then we rode in the local parade, with Freckles proving very popular with his bucking and prancing about. I’m sure Rick must have stood on his saddle and guided Prince with voice commands, but I don’t actually remember that in the parade -- probably because I was trying to keep Freckles under control. Then we stopped at A&W for junk food... the thought of taking horses to a drive-through was just too good to resist. And finally we had to ride all the way back home, in the rain, because the 4th of July is also the traditional start of the Arizona monsoon.

That’s a day I would like to see again on video.

After that, 1968, I don’t recall another Independence Day until 1976, two days after I arrived in San Francisco. I rode the 22 Fillmore bus to SF’s Marina Green and spent the day enjoying the sun (a freakish notion for a refugee from Summer in Phoenix) and playing volleyball. The weather was perfect until the sun went down and the fog rolled in. By the time it was dark enough for fireworks, the fog was heavy and low. All you could see was a vague glow of color in the sky. I loved it.

Since then, they’ve moved the SF fireworks further away from the Golden Gate, with mixed results. Some years you can see the fireworks and some years you can’t. I’ve watched them from the roof of Fox Plaza (29 floors up) and from the northern slope of Russian Hill, where we sat of the sidewalk steps and enjoyed whatever we could see between the buildings on either side. And now, for the past ten or so years, I’ve been at Berkeley. 

At first I would stay to the end, shutting down our stations and cleaning up after. There was one year I stayed just to actually watch the fireworks, which are launched off the old Berkeley Pier. it’s a perfectly fine firework display, though not as grand as SF’s. But I’ve learned that if I stay even for the fireworks it takes even longer to get home, and if I stay to clean up I will be riding one of the late night buses back home. Better to bug out early. The only fireworks I actually see now are the private (illegal) ones I see out the windows of the bus or train as we pass through the Oakland battlefield. Last night there were two fires in Oakland, though I didn't hear if they were firework related.

Next up on my work calendar: Bastille Day!