FoundSF

"I was there..."

by Dick Boyd

I first set my knees and hands on the ground on Otsego Street in the Excelsior District. When I was two (1932) my Dad purchased a two-bed room, one bath house at 140 Quintara Street in the GG Heights. It had been built in 1919. The price was $5,000 bucks. The mortgage was $37 a month. There was a great big house about the same age and just a little more expensive in neighboring Forest Hills. We didn’t buy it because my Mom balked at paying the Forest Hill Assn $7 bucks a month for maintaining the trees, median strips etc. My dad had a large room added on in the back for $500. It served as the bedroom for all of us. At night we used pots stashed under the bed to pee, as there was only one bathroom in the main house. We were supposed to empty them in the toilet but if we could get away with it, my brother and I dumped them out the side window into the lot next door.

View westerly down Quintara Avenue from 12th Avenue, January 16, 1928.

Photo: San Francisco History Center, SF Public Library

For heat we used a stand-alone coal oil burning heater, which we turned off when everyone was in bed. There was no closet added until 1942. This became my brother’s and my permanent bedroom up through 1952. My brother went in the service in 1946 but returned home in 1948 and back to the room.

My grandmother and my grandfather (when he was home) stayed in one of the inside bedrooms close to the bathroom. When my grandfather died in 1937 my grandmother remarried and moved to Oakland and my mom and dad took that room. The other was a permanent guest room or on rare occasion when someone got sick. Usually me. Baths were a Saturday night event for my brother and me together in the same tub. During the week it was face, and hands. My brother and I only had two pairs of shoes, one for school and one for dress occasions. I often wore my brothers’ old shoes after they were half-soled. His feet were growing so fast they were usually in pretty good shape. Mom darned our socks. For heat there was a coal-burning furnace along with a coal bin in the basement. There were 5 vents to heat the house. The stove was gas but had a trash burner that we used in the mornings to heat the kitchen/breakfast room. Toast was made in the lower oven/broiler. My mom’s iron was heated on the stove and she used starch on my dad’s collars and cuffs. There was no refrigerator early on. We had an Icebox. The Iceman delivered the ice as the milkman delivered our milk and coal man delivered our coal.

Our diet was usually pretty stable. For breakfast it was Cream-o-Wheat except on weekends when my mom would fix bacon or ham and eggs with waffles or Aunt Jamimah’s pancakes and of course potato patties from left over dinners. I couldn’t partake of the eggs as the Dr’s said it would/could cause an asthma attack. (It wasn’t until the 60’s that I learned that my asthma attacks were triggered by molds on the linoleum floors in the back bedroom!) There was little waste in our house. For lunch for me it was peanut butter and jelly up through Jr. High and I still like PBJ sandwiches. My afternoon snack was soda crackers smothered in real butter with sugar sprinkled on top. For dinner we always had fresh vegetables. Usually peas, carrots, string beans or spinach. Potatoes were the staple with our evening meal usually baked. During WWII we grew some of the veggies in our victory garden in the back yard. Our meat was usually lamb chops. Sometimes we had pork chops or hamburger steak as my mom called it and sometimes on Sunday a ham. I had my first real steak in 1950. Another staple was “Creamed Chip Beef.” The military had another term for it (SOS) not fit for print in this publication. As many of you my age and older will remember it was a no frills era and there was no TV to tell us that others may be eating better. There was a poor table at West Portal School where kids could put their lunch if they didn’t want it. These were usually kids from St Francis Woods who then could go down to West Portal and buy something different like a milk shake and hamburger. Sometimes I would “exchange” my PBJ for another sandwich like maybe a baloney or ham sandwich. Later when I was in the 4th 5th and 6th grades weather permitting we ate in the yards outside.