FoundSF

"I was there..."

by Howard Isaac Williams

10:15 a.m. in the Mission, the bedroom is still dark.

Photo: Chris Carlsson

It’s My Birthday! … And the World’s Coming to an End!

On the morning of September 9, 2020, my 68th birthday, I awoke and looked toward my window to the east. I saw darkness. My internal clock felt like it was about 7 AM. But it looked more like 6 AM at the latest. I checked my analog clock. 7 AM. It seemed too dark for 7 AM but I just guessed that an overcast sky was obscuring the dawn.

Like millions that year, I was unemployed and so, remembering the wisdom of my late friend the archivist, activist and aphorist Greg Williamson that “Sleeping in is the revenge of the unemployed,” I went back to sleep.

After awhile I woke up again and looked toward my window. The sky was still dark. I checked my clock. 9 AM. Wait a minute. . . Nine AM?!

I got up and walked to my window to get a better look. The sky was still dark. Even its eastern edge displayed none of the waxing light that promises dawn. I opened my laptop and went online to check the news. Mostly about the Pandemic and Presidential campaign. I found nothing about the fact that the Sun had not risen over San Francisco. Maybe that wasn’t so unusual. After all, there had been extremely hazy days in previous years due to the wildfires that have plagued California and other places around the world. But on those occasions the Sun was only obscured, not completely erased from view.

On September 9, over 30 major wildfires were burning across California’s forests and mountains. These included the largest, 3rd, 5th and 6th largest blazes in California history. On that day, fires were burning in every Bay Area county (except San Francisco itself). Throughout 2020, California fires would burn over 4,300,000 acres—more than 6,700 square miles, an area larger than Rhode Island, Connecticut and New York City combined and devastating more of our state’s land than in any year before or since.

In the coming hours, news reports and videos would show that those fires had turned the skies above San Francisco the color of a decaying orange.

11:29 a.m., corner of Folsom and 24th Streets in the Mission.

Photo: Chris Carlsson

Those films and photos were taken in the City’s northern neighborhoods familiar to most residents and nearly all tourists. In the City’s north, the broad expanses of Ocean and Bay dispersed some of the wildfires’ smoke and allowed in enough sunshine to slightly lighten the sky.

But located on San Francisco’s southern edge near the Daly City line, and nestled inland between Mount Davidson (928 above sea level) and San Bruno Mountain (1,319 feet), my neighborhood admitted less sunlight. So instead of orange, the morning sky in my neighborhood (sometimes affectionately called “Far Out”) was a deep burgundy.

With all that had already happened that year—the Pandemic, the Lockdown, and the mostly but not always peaceful protests against police brutality—a day without sunshine seemed almost . . . normal.

I decided to take my morning shower. As a defense against the COVID virus that by 2025 has killed a reported more than 7 million people worldwide, I got into a daily habit of taking a shower each morning and another one at night. So after my morning cleansing, I trudged into the kitchen to pour myself a bowl of Grape Nuts. Supply chain problems that year had made it difficult for me to find that “old school” cereal. Grape Nuts has neither grape nor nuts but it does contain barley. Twice in my 60s, I had suffered kidney stones and because barley is good for the kidneys, I always try to keep some in my kitchen.

After breakfast, I went outside for a walk. It was still dark; cars drove by with their lights on; lamps and TVs shone in house windows. As I looked at this nocturnal scene, the words “darkness at noon” crossed my mind and I thought about Arthur Koestler’s anti-totalitarian novel with that title. The smoky air got under my clothes and covered my skin with an uncomfortable, sticky film. I went back inside and took another shower.

11:39 a.m. at 10th and Market, the Twitter HQ in 2020.

Photo: Chris Carlsson

After my shower, I took a nap. If I wasn’t going to beat the night, I might as well join it.

Around 2 PM I got up and went outside again. To the north, there was a sign of hope. Instead of being dark, the northern sky was turning orange. I called my friend Chris Carlsson, historian of almost all things San Francisco.

“Hey Chris, are you in the Mission?”

“Yeah. I’m at home.”

“What color is the sky?”

“Kind of a funky orange.”

“Yeah. Same here. Although it was dark till just a little while ago.”

“You’re still in the Outer Mission, right?” he asked.

“Yeah. Just before where Mission Street crosses the Daly City line.”

I mentioned that it was my birthday. Chris predicted that the world wouldn’t end on my birthday.

“The thought had occurred to me. But that would be selfish. After all, whenever the world ends, it’s going to be on someone’s birthday. I hope it’s not yours.”

“Thanks.”

11:47 a.m. at the Heart of the City Farmers Market in UN Plaza.

Photo: Chris Carlsson

12:19 p.m., corner of 9th and Market, Fox Plaza at right, Twitter HQ at left.

Photo: Chris Carlsson

We made a Donald Trump joke or two, worrying if the weather would be a symbolic predictor of the election. We finished our call and I walked back home. I muddled through the rest of the day online or reading.

Climate change and forest mismanagement by the state and federal governments had combined to create perfect firestorms that had ravaged California’s land and polluted our skies into an ugly shade of orange. For people in the Bay Area, the sky had looked apocalyptic. For millions of rural Californians in towns and villages, farms and crossroads communities, the land they lived and worked on actually was apocalyptic.

But the next day, on September 10, 2020, the Sun came out. For me, a birthday present, and only one day late.