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Eddie and Eddy
San Francisco, 1965
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One of my great friendships developed when I lived in
SoMa
. That's where I met Eddie. A prize fighter back in the day, Eddie had been a short, bantamweight fighter in the underground circuits of the 1920s. Time and life pummeled him inside the ring and out. His nose had been busted so many times it zigzagged down the middle of his face at bulbous angles.
Eddie had a little dog, also named Eddy - the oldest, mangy-faced mutt you ever saw. He followed old Eddie wherever he went, sat on the curb snarling at birds with his tail thumping in the dust. The two were inseparable. Eddie and Eddy - two ugly, beat-down souls.
Eddie had a small pension which afforded him an occasional bottle of real whiskey and a room in the Argus Hotel - a well-known wino flophouse right next door to my studio. At night, I'd jump across the parapet
, land on the roof of the Argus, then make my way down through the decrepit stairwells to Eddie's room
where we'd eat some of his fire-hot chili and have wonderful, profound conversations about life, death and civilization.
Sometimes the superintendent joined us for supper, usually when he needed Eddie's help.
For example, whenever anyone died in the hotel, the two of them would go in and loot the place. They'd sell off anything of any real value, and then Eddie would keep the rest. Jammed floor to ceiling in his little room, Eddie had it all categorized - each nubbed pencil, each rosary, each moth-eaten sweater. I spent hours in Eddie's room just fascinated by the valuelessness of it all. There were transistor radios, jewelry of the awfullest kind, clothes, beggar suitcases, broken knick knacks - all of it worthless.
After a year or so, word spread that the city was planning to reconfigure SoMa, transform it into a big convention center. They proposed a plan to disperse the bums, split up their friendships, and stick them in various places - mental wards, half-way houses, and Oakland. There was only one problem - the men didn't want to go.
So Eddie became their voice, the leader of vagrants. This eighty-year-old black man shined his mismatched shoes, left his junk piles, and crossed Market Street to take on the City of San Francisco.
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"Just leave us be," he said. "We don't hurt you. Hell, we don't even hurt each other - much. These guys, they got so little. Why do you got to take it out from under them?"
Of course, the city did what cities do. There were condos to build. Their plan was all locked up long before an old wino with holes in his sleeves showed up to lodge his complaint.
So the buses came, and the winos vanished. When they relocated Eddie, they took his dog away from him and moved him up to a rehabilitation center in Oakland.
About six months later, I saw Eddie again. On my way home from a bar, I came around the corner and there he was - a ghost of the man I once knew. His skin seemed covered in a layer of ash. His arms and neck were skeletal as the rags he wore flapped around him
"Eddie, is that you?" I called out. I came up beside him, but he cringed as my fingertips touched his shoulder.
He tilted his head in a slow-motion daze. The quick, bird-like movements had vanished. He didn't recognize me. His eyes shifted out to the street as he lifted his dingy fingers to his mouth and whistled. "Y-you seen my dog?" he asked. "I had a dog here. A good dog."
"Yeah, Eddie. I remember your dog," I told him.
That moment is frozen in my mind, has been for 50 years. He wandered away from me that night, down an alley whistling into the night air.
If you ever get to SoMa nowadays, you'll see. There's not a single building, dumpster or stoop left from my years there. What you will find, ironically, right on the spot where the Argus once stood, is the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.
Today it houses the works of such incredible artists as Frieda Kahlo, Jackson Pollock, and Andy Warhol. Travelers from around the world make their way to see post-modern, structure. It is really quite beautiful. And sad.
All the splendor I experienced there has been wiped clean, like it never existed. All I have left is the memory of that last time I saw Eddie, just an old man out looking for his dog.
Still looking.
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