Lands End, San Francisco, 1976: The radio was all abuzz. A tzunami was coming. It would arrive around 8:30 just after dark. San Francisco residents are advised to avoid the beach and low-lying areas.

Naturally, we all wanted to see it.

As I rode my motorcycle out Geary Boulevard, I remembered Playland at the Beach. I’d since seen movies from the thirties, showing a boardwalk thronged with crowds in strange bathing costumes. But the week I’d moved into Ms. Douglas’s upper room, I’d driven down Ulloa Street to the ocean.

Playland at the Beach was abandoned. An empty boardwalk, in the middle of the day. I walked around like a human on mars. I heard a garish, distorted laughing and followed it. Through an open door I entered a building, the Fun House, now empty, sunlight coming through the windows. There, a huge mechanical clown inside a glass cage rocked back and forth, bellowing with wild laughter.

Nobody was around. I went back outside. It was all closed. Rides closed. Concessions closed. No cotton candy. No crowds. Two blocks off the beach. Wild laughter echoing round the corners. Empty.

Not long after, Playland had been razed. Ugly apartment buildings were to spring up later, but now, just empty lots two blocks off the beach.

I parked my motorcycle at Land’s End. Land’s End is a cliff, just above the Cliff House restaurant and the winding highway. Once there was a house there but only foundation stones remain, and a gazebo. It rises a couple of hundred feet above the ocean. A great place to see the tsunami.

From the verge of Land’s End, with a crowd of excited people, we peered down past the trees and brush to the highway and the beach below. We watched a fool dash past the police cars to the beach and back. The radio had said Do not go to the beach. Repeat. Do not go to the beach.

They’d not said anything about Land’s End. We laughed at the fool. We wondered at the police cars. A tsunami can be 30 feet tall, and in record cases 100 feet tall. Either would sweep over the seawall and engulf the police cars.

The time approached. Bottles were passed around. A scent of smoke and wildness in the air.

You never know, maybe the tsunami would sweep up the cliff. Maybe our laughing crowd would be killed, carried and buried into the crushing black of the ocean. It was a beautiful night for it, the air so fresh and clean.

The time grew near. Sometimes a big tsunami will first pull the water back, exposing the ocean floor.

The time came. No water pulled back. The waves on the beach seemed about the same, just like always.

We waited a while, but that was it. This particular tsunami, said the radio next day, was only about an inch high.

Teeny-weeny.

The tsunami.

North Beach, San Francisco, 1978: Adrienne found the black cockapoo on Christmas, and so the little dog was named Holly. Found abandoned on the freeway, Holly lived out her life with Adrienne.

Holly led a charmed life. The night she dug out of the back yard to investigate the neighbor’s swimming pool, first she tumbled in, and then was unable to climb up the pool’s lip, so she paddled through the night. In the morning, when Adrienne followed the tracks, Holly, now very feeble but still paddling, was pulled from the water. Holly tried to shake off the water, but stumbled and fell. But soon, after a few hours wrapped in a blankey, she was chipper as ever. That gal!

The Beach Blanket Babylon chapter of Holly’s story came later …

Adrienne was dating an actor named Jay, and when she heard of the auditions for Toto the Dog, for the upcoming Beach Blanket Babylon version of The Wiz, she figured Holly had an inside, because Holly looked like Toto. Adrienne signed Holly for an audition, and Jay was suitably impressed.

Beach Blanket Babylon, now the longest-running musical revue in America, had begun its run in 1974. Now located at the Club Fugazi dinner theatre (across from the Green Street Mortuary, the home of the famous marching band), the Beach Blanket troupe produces parodies of current happenings, and is famous for gargantuan and peculiar hats.

In 1978, based on the Broadway smash hit, a movie called The Wiz appeared, starring Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, with a Quincy Jones soundtrack. This was a natch for Club Fugazi!

At the Saturday morning auditions, the line of dogs and owners stretched out the front door. The theatre was dark, smelling musty of last-night’s alcohol. Holly patiently waited her turn. Adrienne was nervous.

Finally, it was Holly’s turn. She jumped up the steps, looked back smiling as Adrienne followed. Adrienne introduced Holly to the audience and to Mr. Silver, the guy in charge. “Go ahead, dear,” he said. Adrienne turned to Holly.

“Are you ready?” Adrienne asked. Holly looked ready.

“Sit,” Adrienne said. Holly lay down.

“Shake,” said Adrienne. Holly sat.

“Speak,” said Adrienne. Holly held out a paw to be shaken.

“Lie down,” said Adrienne. Holly barked.

Adrienne couldn’t help laughing, along with the audience. First one, then another of the audience, rose to their feet, clapping wildly. Holly was a hit. Tears running down his face, Mr. Silver said, “Thank you, dear,” but the audience kept clapping.

It was Holly’s standing ovation.

San Francisco, CA 1976: When the lady came to drop off the flyers for the play, her car had a problem starting again, so I went downstairs and helped get it going. The flyers were for a play about the tribulations of black folks.

After she paid me to distribute the flyers, she said she liked my southern accent, and offered me a part in the play: a slave trader.

I thought, Why not?

I went to the audition, and got the part.

The play was set in the time of the underground railroad, and I was to play an over-the-top redneck of wretched disposition who flew off the handle. I flew off the handle. Did it well.

After a week’s rehearsal, the play opened. It even got good reviews. But it became clear that I didn’t want to be an actor: It was interesting while learning how to do it, but who would want to do the same old thing night after night?

The lanky actor who played The Preacher disagreed. “Not at all,” he droned in his deep voice, “That’s the challenge. Being able to create it brand new very night.”

Hmmph. Not my cup of tea. But no problem. This play was only for the one performance.

I wouldn’t have missed it though, because at the final rehearsal, two very strange things happened.

. . .

I’d shucked my motorcycle jacket in this little room where we waited. It was a semi-dress rehearsal. We all wore black trowsers and a white shirt. My boots were OK.

While we were waiting, the male lead, a large black man of great charm, said something, and somebody else said, “Yo’ mama,” and there was a great laughing, which puzzled me tremendously. He saw the look on my face.

“It’s a kind of insult thing,” he said. “You insult somebody and their mother. For example …”

And then he blistered into the most amazing rapid-fire diatribe against me, calling me all kind of names that were at once confusing, irritating, and hilarious. Then he turned to insulting my mother.

“Your mama,” he said, “Your mama so fat she use the equator for a belt! Your mama so ugly she got to sneak up on a glass of water to get a drink! Your mama so mean her smile got arrested by the police!”

All the black actors rolled around. I’d never heard anything like it. Wierd!

Then we went to rehearse the play. And when we got back, my motorcycle jacket had disappeared. It wasn’t just missing; it had been stolen.

In my shirt sleeves, angry and depressed and shivering, I rode home to Third Avenue, and put the motorcycle away. Back up in my room, I warmed up with a glass of tea, then became depressed further, realizing that my green smoking material in the fancy box and my clever folding pipe were in the jacket pocket, along with my little notebook of things to do.

I looked out my window, and riding high above the victorian across the street, the full moon peeked down through misty strings of cloud to shine moonlight on my face. I smiled.

“Ms. Moon,” I said to the moon, “I sure do like my jacket. And if it’s gone, well, that’s the way it happened. But I sure would be grateful to have my jacket back.”

Ms. Moon smiled down at me.

A few minutes later, the door buzzer went off from downstairs. I wasn’t expecting anyone but buzzed them in, and, looking out at the hallway, was surprised when the cop came up the stairs with my jacket.

He asked me if I was me. I said yes. He asked me if it was my jacket and I said it was. He asked me what happened, and I told him how it disappeared from the rehearsal room. He told me how it came to him.

“My partner and I were driving along near the auditorium, and this guy was walking and when he saw us, he took off. That made us curious, so we followed, and then he ran down an alley, threw off the coat, and climbed over a fence.

“Your name is in the little book, and when we investigated, it didn’t seem like you were that guy, so here you are.”

I thanked him and he left.

In the pocket, my little book, and the little pipe, and the fancy wooden box for the smoking material. The smoking material was gone, but how much can one ask of the police?

I said, “Thank you, Ms. Moon.”

San Francisco, 1980: Network Answering Service had been running along fairly well, but then the hepatitus struck.

Bill the drunk came down first, then lanky Ed, followed in quick succession by lots more. And so it was, that particular Saturday, there were no operators able to work, to answer the phones for our 300 clients.

Early in the morning, I sat at the phones, alone, waiting for the world to wake up.

We’d just got settled into our new office on Geary Boulevard. Later we would add another table and another 300 clients, Lori would join me, I would invent the Line Seizer device, and we’d buy a voicemail company. But just now, none of that had happened.

Operators were called OPs, because we abbreviated everything, kind of as a style thing. Our motto was “Network OPs are Tops!”

Normally, two OPs worked as a team, sitting across from each other with phones in the middle and message racks to the side. This was a system that Bob and I developed, way back when.

Today, nobody sat across from me. I didn’t know how this would work. And now the calls started coming in. One wave. Another. And another. It was getting real hectic, and now somebody was banging on the door downstairs. Open during the week, on the weekend it was locked, so I ran down the stairs to open it.

It was my friend Dennis. I dashed back up the stairs, and he followed, curious at my behavior.

Dennis and I had met as writers at the San Francisco Writer’s Workshop, and had stayed friends through his cab-driver and photographer phase, and through my Simple Simon Bookkeeping, and Thumbtack Bugle phases. Several times I’d borrowed money from Dennis for my schemes, and, by the simple expedient of repaying him, we’d stayed friends.

I don’t recall why he’d come by; he was just on the way to somewhere else. I pointed to the chair across from me.

“Have a seat,” I said. He sat down. He started telling me about something, but suddenly I got an idea.

“Here, Dennis,” I said, “Put this on your head.” He stared puzzling at the Plantronics headset. It’s a small plastic hoop that goes over your head, with a tiny plug to go into your ear, and a thin microphone before your lips. I looked Dennis in the eye.

“Dennis,” I said, “How would you like to be OP for a day?”

“Sure!” he said.

I showed him how to answer the phone, gave him the brief version of what to say, how to mark the message down, and how to file the messages in the message boxes.

Just in time, for here came a big wave of calls.

Some hours later, I sent him to the liquor store with cash for sandwiches for lunch. Towards the end of the day, more sandwiches for the evening meal. Toward closing time at midnight, we sat back between the few calls, and shot the breeze.

Dennis had just dropped by, but he stayed for a week, answering calls every day. One day, clowning around, he fell off his chair, and put his elbow through the window pane. He wasn’t hurt, and I called a repairman to come and fix it, while Dennis and I, bundled up in coats against the cold draft, kept answering phones. Dennis was so apologetic.

“I am so sorry,” he said, for the tenth time. I smiled.

“Dennis,” I said, “If you like, you can break out every window in the place.”

What a pal!

This is a simple law of nature, but one which is very handy:

Choose someone like yourself, and you’ll get along.

Choose someone different from yourself, and IF you can get along, it will be exciting!

That’s it.

The first step to getting along with women is Proper Selection. And it’s a choice kind of thing.

If the woman you choose is similar to yourself, and holds similar views and values, you’ll tend to get along. For example, if you’re both liberals, English majors, hate exercise, and like sentimental movies, life could be occasionally boring, but you’ll not fight much.

On the other hand, suppose you’re a liberal, English major who hates exercise, and loves sentimental movies, and you get yourself a foreign-born woman who’s a right-wing mechanical engineer, whose idea of fun is running marathons and attending the ballet. The two of you may find each other real exciting; that is, IF you can get along.

Isn’t this great? You get to choose!

Knowing this important secret of the universe, go forth and prosper.