and dignified, and these white policemen tied his queue to a hitch post and hit him with sticks. The Chinaman was so ashamed that white people had done this thing to him he went home and gassed himself from the light fixture. You cannot gas yourself from a light fixture now, but you could then.
They had a parade with just about all the important Chinese in San Francisco in it. Dad and I watched from the third-floor balcony of a hotel on Clay Street. Or maybe Dupont, I forget. Dad put me on his shoulders so I could see the thousands of Chinese all wearing white and carrying banners and riding horses. Some rode in cars. It was a big event to them.
Dad told me Chinese wear white for mourning instead of black like us because China is on the opposite side of the Earth and everything is backwards there. Up is down, and if you could read the letters on the banners they’d be backways. He said in is out, and I said what’s that mean? He said if a Chinaman tells you he is going inside, it means he is going outside. And vice versa. I do not know where Mama was that day. I think she had a headache.
***
San Francisco was pert near paradise for a lad of ten to twelve. The streets were chaos, and I did enjoy my chaos. There were cable cars and horse cars and streetcars; automobiles started showing up in bunches, yet most folks still went by horse carriage, only they had no stop signs or stoplights or any of these modern rules the government imposes on road travel nowdays. Ever intersection was a test of wills. That’s why so many, especially Chinamen and Indians, got run over. I saw a fat man in a white suit drive his carriage right over the top of a Mission Indian over to Market Street. He stopped his carriage and looked back and said, “At least it weren’t nobody white.”
The Indian’s legs were broke, but he didn’t show no pain. I don’t what come of him.
Mama hated me running the streets, on account of the Chinese and Indians, but I never saw neither bunch hurt a soul. It was sailors you had to keep a lookout for. A bud of mine got shanghaied, hauled away and turned into a sailor against his desires. He was only eleven years old. It like to ruined his family.
I was supposed to be in school, but I didn’t put much stock in it. There was too much excitement outside to study Latin and cipher. I only went to school when it was cold. For one thing, the teachers weren’t hardly older than me, and half hadn’t gone past eighth grade their own selves. They mostly read us Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Kidnapped and drew pictures on the blackboard they copied from the science book. I liked the stories, but spelling and grammar are not my strong suits, and I didn’t pay attention to science at all, which I’m glad for now, because fifty years after I left school, ever’thing they tried to teach me was proven wrong. Ever’thing children have been taught about science since the beginning of time has later proved false. There’s no call to think today is different. We shouldn’t even teach science since it’s all gonna be wrong in fifty years.
***
After a bit, Dad told the Oddfellows to go to heck and moved his shop over to Kearny Street. I had a job sweeping the hair up each day at 5 p.m., but he didn’t pay me nothing. Just made me work free.
At first, Mama liked being someplace where you were not judged by your last name, but then after a year or so, she didn’t. It’s hard when you have been important to not be important. She said the California fog smelled bad. So she would relax, Dad bought her a twelve-dollar fiddle and bow, and she took lessons from a man with the biggest mustache I ever saw. He would shout at Mama for playing the notes wrong. She wound up not relaxing after all.
April of ’06, our lives changed between breaths. One breath we were this way and thought we always would be, and the very next breath we were more different than we ever thought possible. Change has come on me often like that. Maybe
They had a parade with just about all the important Chinese in San Francisco in it. Dad and I watched from the third-floor balcony of a hotel on Clay Street. Or maybe Dupont, I forget. Dad put me on his shoulders so I could see the thousands of Chinese all wearing white and carrying banners and riding horses. Some rode in cars. It was a big event to them.
Dad told me Chinese wear white for mourning instead of black like us because China is on the opposite side of the Earth and everything is backwards there. Up is down, and if you could read the letters on the banners they’d be backways. He said in is out, and I said what’s that mean? He said if a Chinaman tells you he is going inside, it means he is going outside. And vice versa. I do not know where Mama was that day. I think she had a headache.
***
San Francisco was pert near paradise for a lad of ten to twelve. The streets were chaos, and I did enjoy my chaos. There were cable cars and horse cars and streetcars; automobiles started showing up in bunches, yet most folks still went by horse carriage, only they had no stop signs or stoplights or any of these modern rules the government imposes on road travel nowdays. Ever intersection was a test of wills. That’s why so many, especially Chinamen and Indians, got run over. I saw a fat man in a white suit drive his carriage right over the top of a Mission Indian over to Market Street. He stopped his carriage and looked back and said, “At least it weren’t nobody white.”
The Indian’s legs were broke, but he didn’t show no pain. I don’t what come of him.
Mama hated me running the streets, on account of the Chinese and Indians, but I never saw neither bunch hurt a soul. It was sailors you had to keep a lookout for. A bud of mine got shanghaied, hauled away and turned into a sailor against his desires. He was only eleven years old. It like to ruined his family.
I was supposed to be in school, but I didn’t put much stock in it. There was too much excitement outside to study Latin and cipher. I only went to school when it was cold. For one thing, the teachers weren’t hardly older than me, and half hadn’t gone past eighth grade their own selves. They mostly read us Uncle Tom’s Cabin and Kidnapped and drew pictures on the blackboard they copied from the science book. I liked the stories, but spelling and grammar are not my strong suits, and I didn’t pay attention to science at all, which I’m glad for now, because fifty years after I left school, ever’thing they tried to teach me was proven wrong. Ever’thing children have been taught about science since the beginning of time has later proved false. There’s no call to think today is different. We shouldn’t even teach science since it’s all gonna be wrong in fifty years.
***
After a bit, Dad told the Oddfellows to go to heck and moved his shop over to Kearny Street. I had a job sweeping the hair up each day at 5 p.m., but he didn’t pay me nothing. Just made me work free.
At first, Mama liked being someplace where you were not judged by your last name, but then after a year or so, she didn’t. It’s hard when you have been important to not be important. She said the California fog smelled bad. So she would relax, Dad bought her a twelve-dollar fiddle and bow, and she took lessons from a man with the biggest mustache I ever saw. He would shout at Mama for playing the notes wrong. She wound up not relaxing after all.
April of ’06, our lives changed between breaths. One breath we were this way and thought we always would be, and the very next breath we were more different than we ever thought possible. Change has come on me often like that. Maybe
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