The future will always be a surprise.
More than a century ago, my 19-year-old grandfather arrived in San Francisco on his trip to ‘see the world.’ He checked into a cheap hotel and went out to see the town. Before he could return to his room, at 5:12 a.m., the earthquake struck. Fire quickly followed. The hotel where he had stayed burned to the ground. Unlike the mobs on the street who were sure the last days of earth were upon them, my grandfather was not a drinker. So he was drafted into service by the authorities. For the next ten days he was given a number of jobs. One was looking for bodies in destroyed buildings. He stacked the bodies in piles “like cord wood,” poured creosote on them and let them burn. He also worked as a “safe cooler.” Because a safe is made of layers of steel, it was possible for the outside to be cool but the inside to be red-hot. Workers found that if a safe were opened when the interior was red hot, the sudden introduction of air caused an instant conflagration of all papers inside. So, when safes were found in the debris, they were taken down to the dock area and placed on boats. My grandfather’s job was to tie ropes around the safes and lower them into the water where they would remain for several hours to cool enough to be opened safely. Another job he had was delivering milk to expectant and nursing mothers in what is now Golden Gate Park. In this vast open space thousands of people were living in tents. He said that he spent those ten days working hard and that he too, lived in a tent in the park. He ate camp style and drank only boiled water because of the fear of typhus. Among his belongings was the coarsely sewn Red Cross armband that had been issued to him which our family still has today. Until the day I actually recorded his reminiscences, all he would say of the Quake and Fire was a sad “So many, many people died.” Thank you, grandad, for being a part of history.
