To the Call
march 27, 2000. I guess I’ll write this while the
math is easy. I have lived in California 2.7 decades. I
lived in Washington, D.C. 2.3 decades. One frigid North
Atlantic morning, I heard the Mamas and the Papas
"California Dreamin" and on such a winter’s
day, no less, it was, for me, gruesome. I returned to
thaw out!
I’ve now read at least three of the
San Francisco Call and also taught architectural history
long enough to know that the Call-Bulletin was a 1906
newspaper here in town! I read Sharon K. in the March 13
edition. Decline in civility. Say what, Sharon?
I, too, remember a Bay Area that had
no crisis of confidence, I would call it. One
that was pretty neighborly, landlord and tenant alike. I
remember a San Francisco with expensive gasoline but
fair-to-middling people and reasonable treatment of one
another. What at one point was presented to me as my
paranoia, is now echoed weekly in the press, by a
multitude of writers. I worry myself no longer. But I
empathize with Sharon K. We obviously live in the same
city. But I see the inconsiderate landlord who rushes to
cash the check. The claque at the top of the Muni
underground, who will not step aside to let you pass.
The near daily automobile broadside at: (pick one) 13th
and Mission, Polk and Pine, Gough and Bush, or Polk and
Broadway. I’ve seen three this week! Since we can .com
it so fast, with lightning accuracy, couldn’t we tell
the truth and slow down? Even with a computer, it’s
garbage in, garbage out, remember? Janet Gaynor, Mary
Martin’s pin-up girl friend was killed at Franklin and
Pine. One taxi broadsided another taxi. If a red light
won’t do it, how will increased police ticketing do
it?
Tolstoy once observed, "Everyone
dreams of changing the world, but no one dreams of
changing themselves." Has that become the guiding
light of northern California? And as you see, I use the
little "n" as in northern Virginia. They’re
both highly populous urban areas, with many expatriates.
And many loyal residents. You can’t just go home,
any more. They were all here or we were all there, to
begin with! Change places? One friend declares,
"But the population of the world has doubled since
_____." So? Will marching to a faster pace, improve
the crowded human race? You tell me. I’m listening.
Changing the world, but not themselves. Hmmm! Or could
Tolstoy have been right?
James Albert (Skip) Norfolk,
San Francisco
On the eve of World War I, the Call
underwent a change in ownership at least as puzzling as
the Independent’s recent acquisition of the Examiner.
In 1906 the old Call and the Bulletin
were still friendly competitors. The Morning Call, owned
by the rich and powerful Spreckels family, especially
delighted in chronicling the failings of Michael de
Young’s Chronicle. Geographer Gray Brechin describes
"a meticulous card file" kept by publisher
John Spreckels, which recorded the events not covered
by the rival paper. The Call was an in-your-face
newspaper, editorially and physically: its offices stood
cheek-by-jowl with the Hearst and de Young buildings at
Third and Market.
On August 15, 1913, Michael de Young
could apparently stand the jibes no longer. He announced
that he’d bought the paper and planned to close it
down, lugubriously adding, "Dear old Call, we place
upon the tomb a garland of memory’s flowers with
sincere regrets that the parting is at hand."
But his announcements of the paper’s
demise were premature. In fact, they were false. It
turned out that William Randolph Hearst had bought the
paper, or had de Young buy it for him. For several
years, the Call continued to appear as a minor afternoon
paper operated mainly by Hearst’s employees, serving
as a gadfly for Fremont Older’s muckraking Bulletin,
but no longer a threat to the big guys. The final insult
came in 1919 when Hearst persuaded Older to run the
paper for him.
