November 24, 2008 – I-280 into San Francisco

Friday morning, November 8, 2008, 0630 hours, traffic is light on Monterey Highway northbound just south of downtown San Jose and the Interstate 280 interchange, my intermediate destination. Once beyond the congestion around the new shopping complex called The Plant, (built on land that once housed the giant General Electric campus at the intersection of Monterey Highway and Curtner Avenue), traffic moves at the 40 MPH limit past the SIMS Metal recycling center on the east side of Monterey and the Department of Immigration and Naturalization office on the west side of Monterey. The cluster of traffic I’m in stops at the Alma Avenue traffic light, about where Monterey Highway ends and the street we’re on becomes South First Street. The Windy’s fast food restaurant where the infamous finger in the chili was found sits unoccupied off to my left while diagonally across the intersection and just ahead on my right the Denny’s Diner is beginning its breakfast rush.

Through the intersection I follow the traffic veering off South First right onto Keyes Street for one block then left onto South Third Street, which is one-way northbound. I follow this to East Reed Street, where the traffic congestion around all-girl Catholic college prep Notre Dame High School is not yet underway thanks to the early hour. Turning right on East Reed one block and making another right at the South-Fourth-Street traffic light where South Fourth becomes the on-ramp to I-280, I’m soon merging onto the freeway that will take me into San Francisco. It’s just before 0650 hours. Sixty minutes from now, this stretch of I-280, where the freeway passes the Highway 87 and Bird Avenue interchanges in quick succession, will be bumper to bumper with cars exiting at both off ramps while others attempt to enter the highway from the two on-ramps. For now the traffic is moving at the limit and I’m anticipating no delays until 280 crosses Highway 17 and thereafter a slight slowdown where I-280 crosses Highway 85 and the Foothill Expressway.

I-280 after Highway 85 is one of the most scenic drives you’ll experience—with the exception of California Highway 1 from Monterey to San Simeon. I-280 rises gently off the floor of the fertile Santa Clara Valley as it passes through Cupertino. Once, before high tech became its major commodity, This stretch of land was called the “Valley of Heart’s Delight” for the cornucopia of fruit it produced. Beyond Cupertino, I-280 climbs onto the foothills of the Santa Cruz Mountains—the seaward bulwark holding back the Pacific Plate’s relentless geological assault on the North American Plate with the San Andreas Fault forming the battle line between the two. In this hundreds-of-millions years war the former is winning as witnessed by the gradual uplift of the Santa Cruz Range. The four- and five-lane wide concrete and asphalt freeway climbs and traverses tree- and brush-covered rolling hills sparsely populated with custom homes on large lots within the cities of Los Altos and Los Altos Hills off the Magdalena Road and El Monte Road exits from I-280. Beyond these exits the road curves left and descends to just beyond the Foothill College campus on the left before beginning to climb once again gradually veering right for nearly a mile. Traffic on the now-four-lane road has thinned considerably allowing the frustrated traffic to speed at 70 to 80 miles per hour using the right- and left-most lanes to pass slower cars and trucks in the middle.

Just over the hill north of Foothill College, the Interstate begins a fast descending gradual right curve then bending more sharply to the left with the grade diving, driving the speed of traffic above 80 until the highway bottoms out at Page Mill Road and begins to slowly bend right and rise once again. We loose the Palo Alto commuters here. Beyond the exit off to the right cattle graze beneath a handful of large tall microwave dishes scattered about dirty brown acres of open grassland spotted here and there by a lone tree. Land on both sides of the freeway, which has continued to climb gradually, is fenced-off with no sign of settlement until near the Alpine Road exit, where trees and shrubs once again populate the landscape. Just before Alpine Road, the road starts to descend again and off to the left custom homes on large lots follow Alpine Road as it meanders south and west. Just beyond the Alpine Road exit, the roadway begins a steep ascent crossing over the 2-mile long Stanford Linear Accelerator just before cresting the rise and curving left as the traffic passes the Sand Hill Road exit. The colony of low-rise office buildings on the northeast side of the Interchange signals an enclave of Silicon Valley venture capital companies and the surrounding residential community of tree-enshrouded Sharon Heights to the east and north. The golf greens of the tony community’s Golf Club follows I-280 north.

Beyond Sand Hill Road, traffic has thinned even further as we lose the Menlo Park and Stanford University commuters. Now, the freeway descends before passing the wealthy community of Woodside, west off the Highway 84 (Woodside Road) exit. After the Woodside Road exit, the freeway climbs once again. As it nears the crest of the rise, the road curve left passing the Farm Hill Road exit. A half mile north of Farm Hill Road on either side of the I-280 all the way to Highway 92, the landscape is as unsettled as in the time of Father Juniper Serra for whom I-280 is named. The subdivisions have been blocked from encroaching and the land of either side is covered over by trees and brush browned by accumulation of dust and grayed by the dearth of rain that California’s long dry season has wrought. The Bayberry, Pacific Madrone, California Bay Laurel, Coast Live Oak, Coastal redwood, and Douglas Fir that claim this landscape are all impatient for the next overdue winter storms—one that occurred a little while back merely teased this area with an unkept promise for more.

Approaching the Highway 92 exit, I-280 dips and rises before curving left and steeply diving toward the interchange, where CHP Radar are typically waiting to catch drivers hurtling down the hill at 90 to 100 miles an hour. On the western side of the roadway is a spectacular view of Upper and Lower Crystal Spring Reservoir, featured in the Bond movie “View to a Kill”—the last in the series featuring Roger Moore. Taking 92 west brings you to Half Moon Bay; taking it east carries you through San Mateo to Foster City—built off land reclaimed from San Francisco Bay—and further across the bay via the San Mateo Bridge to Hayward—the first suburban Bay Area town I spent time in during my nine-month stay in the Bay Area in 1963 to 1964.

The Upper and Lower Crystal Spring Reservoir flood the base of the San Andreas Rift Valley. The San Andreas Fault, which runs through the heart of this valley, created it. Further north and not clearly visible from the freeway is San Andreas Lake, which gives its name to the fault line. However, it was Father Francisco Palou, the diarist and historian to Captain Gaspar de Portola, governor of Baja California who named the lake and valley on November 30, 1774, to honor the feast day of Saint Andres, the younger brother of Saint Peter. I’m fond of this saint as his feast day falls on my birthday. In the late 1800s, the city of San Francisco purchased the lands within the watershed to provide a source of water for the growing city. Unable to satisfy the voracious thirst for the city’s inhabitants, in the second decade of the 20th Century San Francisco built a reservoir in Hetch Hetchy Valley to supplement the supply from Crystal Springs.

Beyond highway 92, the road traverses upscale Hillsborough, one of the wealthiest suburban enclaves in America with a population of around 10,000 and the highest income of anywhere in America. Seventeen miles south of San Francisco, the city looks east at San Francisco Bay. Just past Bunker Hill Drive the next exit after Highway 92, the highway slopes downward toward a bridge that takes I-280 high over San Mateo Creek. The gorge created by the creek serves as a moat between vast expanses suburban Hillsborough on the north and San Mateo on the south. Just over the bridge on the edge of the gorge is a house that looks like something out of a Flintstones cartoon. The home has graced the side of the freeway since we arrived in California in the early-1970s.

On the western side of I-280, just north of the Haynes Road exit, is Crystal Springs Golf Course. Within the city limits of Burlingame, the links run along and high above the Lower Crystal Springs Reservoir (which is north of Upper Crystal Springs Reservoir). From the golf course northward the right hand side of I-230 is lined with expensive homes some with striking views of San Francisco Bay off to the east and below. Just north of Haynes Road, Highway 35 intersects I-280 then traverses beneath. Here the concrete freeway—tree-lined on the west with an expanse of apartments on the east—begins a rapid decline curving right as it races toward sea level. Careening down the grade, you get a dramatic view of San Francisco Airport as I-280 rushes toward its interchange with I-380 the short stub of a road that carries I-280 traffic to Highway 101 and to the northern hangers and long term parking and the newly-built rental car facility at San Francisco International.

Beyond the interchange I-280 passes the expansive 161-acre Golden Gate National Cemetery, home to 138,542 souls as of the end of 2007. Rows of uniform-shaped white marble headstones bearing the name of each interred below run for as far as the eye can see. The Pete Seeger song “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” comes into my head every time I pass this place: “…gone to graveyards everyone. When will they ever learn…” (It’s the song I sang when visiting my Scottish in-laws decades ago and the custom after a few rounds was each person within the party graced the gathering with his or her song.) When viewing the thousands laid to rest alongside the highway, the last line of the Funeral Oration of Pericles from Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War seems appropriate: “And now, when you have duly lamented, every one his own dead, you may depart.”

Beyond the cemetery, Interstate 280 becomes another urban freeway bearing its burden of 100s of thousands of commuters in cars and trucks all rushing some where to get some thing done. I’m one of them and I’m going to be an hour early for my appointment so I’m in no rush.

November 2, 2008 - Conversation with Dad

I called Dad today and learned that he was not well, having come down with a cold recently and was just getting over it. The subject of our conversations typically revolves around his health. He went to William Beaumont Army Medical Center to have his lungs checked. They were clear. The hospital has been caring for him and my mother until her death in January 2006. In fact, the hospital has given care to my father since the 1950s, when he convalesced there after a car accident in Germany almost left him paralyzed. The hospital gave him antibiotics in case what he had was bacterial and sent him home. The fever broke yesterday and he was now over the worst and planning to have his flu shot on Tuesday—the ounce of prevention his fragile lungs requires.

For a man three years shy of ninety, he’s in remarkable shape, considering all the insults his lungs has suffered. He started smoking when he joined the Army at the outbreak of World War II. He was twenty. He gave it up, cold turkey, forty years later when he was turning sixty. He worked around asbestos and other hazardous materials during his twenty-three years in the military and during the twenty some years afterwards working at the ASARCO copper smelting plant in El Paso—you see its tall smokestack heading into El Paso from Las Cruces on Interstate 10. You can’t miss it on your right.

He is still able to get around and is clear-headed, though a bit hard of hearing. I tend to speak softly, a complaint that goes back to my speech class in high school. When we converse by phone, I yell into the mouthpiece to make myself heard. He drives himself about town—to the hospital, to Ft Bliss Army Base, and to most places around El Paso. He tells me he’s voted at Northgate Shopping Center last week—first time for him to vote a straight ticket along a single party line. I won’t divulge which party.

We talk about the Filipino community where he still belongs. Father Benito, the retired priest that my father credits with bringing him to the Catholic faith continues to proper in the care of one of his parishioners—a widow who befriended him during his time at Our Lady of Assumption Church on Byron Street and took him in rather than have him live out his life in the care facility provided by the Catholic Diocese of El Paso. The wife of one of my high school friends, a Filipina who came to El Paso as a nurse, is now in poor health. The daughter of my mother’s closest friend, who passed away recently, had a stroke and is being cared for in a city health facility. Thus, goes the small dramas that beset the community I left forty years ago.

Finally, he tells me he’s received some literature from the Veterans Administration informing him he’s eligible for a low-cost loan for home improvement or to purchase a home. He’s thinking of building a new place on property he owns nearby. His lifelong friend Charles Upton willed the property to him a few years back. It has a small one-room house on it and Dad is thinking about expanding the building or raising it and putting up a new house. He’s 87 and still thinking about building, a pretty optimistic statement. It’s the sort of guy he is.

We’ve been on the phone for an hour and he’s getting hungry so we ring off.