Author and Artist
The Presidio
A fictional travelogue; three minute read.
“If you’re in the army, and get yourself killed, your mother and I will kill you.” I’m only half-joking.
My son Ben and I are at San Francisco’s Presidio. A decommissioned United States Army base.
We are here at my insistence because Ben—he just graduated high school with honors—has been hinting about doing a stint in the military before going to college. A few of his friends—his herd, his all-important tribe—have joined up.
Since 1852, the government has been burying people in the Presidio. I want Ben to see the 33,000 gravesites. I want him to imagine his mother weeping at a tombstone with his name on it.
I want him to doubt his Hollywood version of army life. To understand that military service is about killing and being killed.
Inside, I’m screaming.
Don’t end up on the wrong side of a bullet. Don’t fall on the wrong side of history.
He’s heard my rant about living your values a thousand times. Around the world, the chance of dying from a preventable disease is a hundred times greater than the chance of dying in a hot war. Americans station fifty soldiers abroad for every doctor. It’s a choice.
The Presidio has a checkered history. For 10,000 years, Ohlone Native-Americans lived here, then in the 1700s the Spanish built a fort to garrison 193 men, women and children. Soon Mission Dolores, a Catholic outpost, began subjugating the Ohlone. During the Spanish-American War, soldiers deployed from these grounds to invade the Philippines. The infamous WW II order incarcerating Japanese-Americans was signed in the Presidio.
“Don’t forget your Oscar Wilde,” I tell Ben: ‘A thing is not necessarily true just because a man dies for it.’”
“Sure, dad,” he says in that dismissive tone of his that tells me he’s got the message, but thinks I should butt out of his life.
Parenting Ben is an act of optimism. Along with my high school history students, he is my heroic stab at making the world a bit kinder and a lot smarter.
To keep going as a teacher, I have to believe that my students can outgrow their biases and overcome their stupidities. At least enough to be permitted in polite society. Enough to avoid going to war.
As we stroll across the parade grounds where servicemen were mobilized before shipping out to the frontlines, I turn to face Ben.
“Look, Ben, military service isn’t all bad. I mean, there’s always duck tape.” He looks quizzical.
“In 1942 the U.S. Army invented it to waterproof ammo boxes.”
“What’s your point, dad?”
“My point is we barely have enough time to make it to John’s Grill for our dinner reservations.”
John’s Grill (“steak and seafood since 1908”) hearkens back to San Francisco’s unsavory Barbary Coast. The décor recalls dive bars where sailors were shanghaied on to sailing ships plying the distant reaches of the Pacific Ocean.
The street signage for John’s Grill has all the subtly of a sex shop window. Red neon hints at voluptuous, fleshy meat dishes waiting inside.
We’ve been doing father-son dinners here since he was a junior high student. The Sam Spade special--sizzling lamb chops, golden-brown baked potato, a side of juicy thick-sliced tomatoes—has always been his favorite.
Mine too.
