(I first published a version of this piece on my blog 16 years ago.)
One of my favorite sites is Found Magazine, which publishes random items discovered by its readers — “love letters, birthday cards, kids’ homework, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, receipts, doodles - anything that gives a glimpse into someone else’s life.”
Sometimes things like that land right in front of my house in the Mission District of San Francisco.
That’s because my side of the street -- the west side -- is the recipient of many lost items, courtesy of a wind tunnel that swirls through here much as those that used to cause those pop-ups of legendary movement back at old Candlestick Park.
This note I am posting tonight came drifting into my front yard the other day.
It has has two sides, and reads:
Michelle & Justin:
I am trying to sell my car. I need bus money only to get hom(sic) to Detroit. Michelle this is your moms(sic) car. Do you want it? My food stamps didn't come. I don't want to cause anyone any trouble. I just want to get home!! I'll see you later.
The author shares my hometown -- Detroit -- which makes his story the more poignant to me. San Francisco is not for everyone, so I hope he gets enough bus money to make it back home.
***
Most of us who live here, in this city perched unsteadily above the San Andreas Fault on the tip of a peninsula that measures almost precisely 7 by 7 miles square, have spent many years hearing references to a certain number -- "49." How many of us realize how mathematically perfect this number is for our town? We all know, of course about the Gold Rush that built San Francisco back in 1849, but that isn’t the origin of the nickname.
It’s the geography.
San Francisco is also a windy town. There must be a million scraps of a million stories like the one I found blowing in that wind.
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