By Heather Buchanan
The patent for the fire hydrant was lost in a fire.
There is a convincing theory that Frederick Graff, Sr. invented this life-saving device in 1801. He was the Chief Engineer of the Philadelphia Water Works. He came up with the idea of replacing wood pipes with an iron pipe system. He developed 37 other waterworks throughout the United States. He served the city of Philadelphia for 42 years and a stone gazebo with a bust of him was erected at Fairmount Water Works. It seems only natural that he would be the person who invented the fire hydrant. But the proof went up in flames along with 9,957 other patents and 7,000 patent models in 1836 when the U.S. Patent Office burned to the ground. At first, the Post Office was suspected of arson. It shared the building with the Patent Office and was already under investigation for awarding dishonest mail contracts. Rumors spread that they started the fire to destroy evidence. But, since the Post Office managed to save all their documents, investigators decided it was more likely an accident caused by someone improperly storing hot ashes in a box in the basement.
There was an attempt to recover these patents by getting duplicates from the original inventors, but this process was slow-moving and expensive. The endeavor was abandoned in 1849. Only 2,845 of the lost 9,957 patent records were restored.
After the fire, the way patents were handled changed. Each was given a unique number rather than just being filed under the date of the patent or the inventor’s name. Copies were made. A new fire-proof building was completed in 1864 (which then caught fire in 1877).
The closest documentation for the invention of the fire hydrant is U.S. Patent 909, issued to John Jorden on September 8, 1883, on which he describes some improvements. He changed the design of the drain that allowed the water to run out of the riser after each use and prevented water from freezing inside the hydrants when layers of sawdust or manure weren’t enough to insulate the pipes during winter. This is back when fire hydrant casings were wooden and the illustration that goes along with the patent looks more like a saltshaker than the hydrants seen today.
Until the modern fire hydrant was invented, firefighters would dig down to the wooden pipes and drill a hole in them to access the water and collect it in buckets using pumps. After the fires had been put out, these holes in the pipes would have to be found and plugged. A marker would be used to show where a “fire plug” was, so fire fighters could find ready-drilled holes if there was another fire in the area. Eventually, cast iron water mains became the norm, and branched fittings were placed on the mains at intervals. By 1865, cast iron hydrants had taken over.
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I am in the throes of my third cold of the year when I wake up at 4:55 ᴀ.ᴍ., pull a raincoat over my pajamas, lace up my Doc Martens, and wander out into the drizzling darkness to go look at a fire hydrant. The shot of Nyquil I took seven hours before is refusing to release me from its tractor beam. It isn’t until Nick is searching for a parking spot near Dolores Park that I even realize I am still sporting a nose strip and my dental night guard.
This day marks the anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, which rumbled from southern Oregon to central Nevada, a distance of 296 miles. The 42-second-long shock killed 3,000 people. 250,000 more were made homeless. 28,000 buildings were destroyed across nearly 500 city blocks.
It is as dark now as when I went to bed, and I feel like I’ve turbo-slept through space and time. The illusion is amplified when we come across a black snub-nosed fire truck from the 1940s parked across two lanes on the corner of 20th and Church. The spell is broken when the windows crank up and three women duck their heads out to offer Philz coffee (with three choices of cream density) to the police officers milling around.
I can feel my cold getting the upper hand on my Nyquil buzz, and I dig around in my coat pocket, hoping I’ve stashed a few tissues. Instead, I come up with three Pokémon cards and a green-haired Joker Lego-man I confiscated from my second-grade students the day before.
News vans begin to pull up and lug their equipment around the antique fire truck, which is blocking their path to the hydrant. A group of people from the San Francisco Department of Emergency Management drag over what looks like a body bag. They bicker over where to set up, and then erect a pop-up tent strapped with weights to keep the canopy from tipping. A man with an assortment of digital cameras slung around his neck blinds me as he takes his first flash photo of the matte-gold hydrant.
Besides Nick and me, there is only one other civilian in this crowd. Like us, he isn’t wearing a neon-colored vest with a title printed on the back. He takes a few photos with his cell phone. His name is Joel and, when I ask him why he is here, he tells me this is his second year attending the ceremony. He asks me if I woke up for this on purpose or just happened upon it.
The question takes me aback: I wonder if I look like someone who might just wander the dark streets of Dolores Heights on a rainy morning.
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The day of the earthquake, huge chasms ripped open the ground. Sidewalks and roads tore like wet newspapers. The earth-rending sounded like hundreds of cannons firing at once.
As one survivor, P. Barrett, told NPR: “Big buildings were crumbling as one might crush a biscuit in one’s hand.” Collapsing buildings shed bricks that crushed people and animals alike. Loose cattle and horses were shot to put them out of their misery or to prevent them from stampeding and causing more deaths. Streets flooded with half-dressed people, desperately seeking safe ground. Many trekked around mountains of rubble that were once prominent hotels towards the Ferry Building, hoping to get on the first boat that could take them away. San Francisco was in chaos. The military and state militia were deployed to keep order. Most of the soldiers did their job and served the community by fighting fires, establishing communications, and providing food and shelter. Many were criticized for taking the law into their own hands—being drunk on duty, looting, and shooting before asking questions, particularly when it came to people who were poor or of a minority.
Once the shaking stopped, the fires began. Gas mains were severed during the lateral spreading and released streams of gas that fed the flames. Fires sprang up in all corners of the city when civilians were just trying to survive. A mother attempted to cook breakfast for her family, unaware of the damage done to her chimney, and the kitchen wall burst into flames. The Ham and Eggs Fire spread to other buildings and burned up the Mechanic’s Pavilion and what was left of City Hall. The smaller blazes, nudged on by the wind, converged into massive infernos. The fires raged for three days, with nights glowing like daylight and days stained black with ash.
Those who no longer had homes fled the city or moved into makeshift military-style tent camps located in parks throughout the city.
As the fire leapt from street to street, the disorganized and crippled Fire Department grew desperate. (Fire Chief Dennis T. Sullivan died in the initial quake when the building next to the fire station collapsed into his living quarters, sending him through the floor and into the cellar.) To contain the spreading fire, the department tried to dynamite artificial firebreaks, destroying wide swaths of the city in a desperate bid to save the rest. The exhausted firemen had never handled explosives before and inadvertently started more fires.
Jerome B. Clark recalled watching the process: “I saw some of the finest and most beautiful buildings in the city, new modern palaces, blown to atoms. First, they blew up one or two buildings at a time. Finding that of no avail, they took half a block; that was no use; then they took a block; but in spite of them all the fire kept on spreading.”
Water mains ruptured. There wasn’t enough pressure in the system to hydrate the fire engines’ horses, let alone fight the actual flames. Hydrant after hydrant was tapped and found useless. Fire spread toward the Mission District. Families already camped in Dolores Park watched as the columns of smoke drew closer. Novelist Mary Austin described the approaching soot as having “a surly, lurid glow like the unearthly flush on the face of a dying man.”
When word spread that there was no hope, John Rafferty, a local blacksmith, recalled seeing a hydrant up the hill being used earlier that morning. When checked, the hydrant gushed water, but after days of hard work, the fire horses were too weak to pull the engines up the hill.
Refugees sprang into action and lugged Fire Engine No. 19 up the hill with ropes. Another group gathered and slowly pushed up a second fire engine, No. 26. Together, the citizens and the firemen used whatever they could find—tea kettles, mops, their own dampened clothing—to extinguish the flames.
After seven hours of battle, the townspeople defeated the fire and reclaimed one of the few neighborhoods to survive the ordeal.
That single working fire hydrant was dubbed “The Little Giant.” Every anniversary of the quake, people pay their respects to fire hydrant and honor those who did not survive by repainting it gold.
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I often forget that some people aren’t used to earthquakes. It’s easy to tell the native Californians whenever one hits. Once in my college days, a low-level earthquake hit. Cassy, a New Hampshirite, immediately scampered to a doorway. Eyes wide, she was clearly convinced the building would collapse. Aaron, on the other hand, calmly got off the couch and held a palm against his flat-screen TV to make sure it didn’t topple.
Those of us who grew up with earthquakes laugh at high-budget disaster films that depict The Rock cresting a tsunami in a rigid-hulled inflatable boat set in motion by an earthquake. I’ve lost count of how many movies and TV shows have destroyed the Golden Gate Bridge—by earthquake; by a space drill; by a giant, mutant octopus. Each scene feels more ridiculous than the last. There are YouTube video collages dedicated to Golden Gate destruction. The comment sections are full of people suggesting other films that were overlooked.
In all the action-movie destruction, we forget how devastating earthquakes can really be.
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I once asked my students if they had ever been in an earthquake before.
They all raised their hands.
I let a few tell their tales of hiding under beds or thinking a garbage truck was driving by until they realized that the overhead light was swinging. My favorite one came from Javier, who slept through an earthquake and was woken up after it ended by his mother checking in on him. His story ended with him going to the bathroom and taking a big poop.
The day school had an earthquake drill earlier that week and I decided to teach them about tectonic plates and how earthquakes happen with paper plates, graham crackers, a bowl of water, and a can of aerosol whipped cream.
I handed out the paper plates with two halves of a graham cracker first. The graham crackers represented the tectonic plates, the hard, outermost layer of the earth that is cracked into large pieces. All the earth’s land and water sit on these plates. They fit together a bit like puzzle pieces. But sometimes the edges of these plates crash into each other.
I asked them to rub the sides of two graham crackers together. “What do you notice?”
The kids followed directions. The room filled with scratching noises and little shreds crumbled off, dusting their paper plates. “Earthquake!”
This was an example of a transform boundary. A few got too excited about the rumble. They ground the crackers hard together and broke their squares in half.
I went around the room, spraying a whirl of whipped cream onto their plates while explaining that these tectonic plates move around because they sit atop the mantle, a slightly softer layer made of partially melted rock. Depending on the temperature or amount of pressure it is under, it can behave like a thick fluid—like molasses or syrup.
I had the kids lay their graham crackers on the layer of whipped cream, side by side. They recreated divergent boundaries by pressing the graham crackers down and away from each other. The whipped cream oozed up in between. When divergent boundaries fully open the mantle, molten magma flows to the surface, where it cools and creates ridges, valleys, and volcanoes.
Subduction zones were next. I instructed the kids to push the two graham crackers towards each other and allow one to overlap the other. I pretended not to see the kids quickly scoop up some whipped cream into their mouths with their fingers. The graham crackers on top jutted up haphazardly into the air. The bottom one dove down lopsidedly into the mantle. This kind of boundary can form mountain ranges, islands, and trenches.
Finally, I carried a measuring cup of water to each kid, dipping one edge of each graham cracker in the water. The water was milky white and chunky by the time I finished. The kids lined up the graham crackers so the soggy ends faced each other. They shoved the two graham crackers together to make a convergent boundary. The wet edges of the graham crackers pushed against each other and folded upwards to make a mountain ridge.
All these boundaries and zones create profound friction that often results in earthquakes.
By the end of the class, the tectonic plates were disgusting. They looked like they had already been digested. I assumed that would put the kids off eating it when the experiment was over.
It did not.
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Joel’s friend, Les, is dropped off by a taxi and joins our little group. He introduces himself by complaining about the early hour, wondering why they couldn’t have had the earthquake at a more convenient time.
By now, it’s well past 5:12 ᴀ.ᴍ., the actual time that the earthquake hit, but the dark streets are still empty. Joel and Les explain that this isn’t actually where the ceremony starts. Most hardcore locals meet an hour before the earthquake at Lotta’s Fountain, San Francisco’s oldest surviving monument, which stands unscathed after quakes, fires, and this ever-changing city’s development.
The fountain was commissioned by Lotta Crabtree—comedian, theatrical actress and banjo player. She launched her show biz career during the Gold Rush by dancing on barrels in saloons so miners would toss gold nuggets at her feet. Legend has it that she filled a steamer trunk with that gold, and, in 1857, used a portion of that fortune to build her beloved city a fountain. Survivors of the quake used the fountain as a natural meeting place to reunite with loved ones or post notes for those still missing.
“It was like the Facebook wall of that time,” Joel quips.
Despite the role Lotta’s Fountain played in 1906, it has never been designated as a memorial. Neither has The Little Giant nor Golden Gate Park’s Portals of the Past arches.
The closest commemorative feature I had come across was the 1852 South Beach shoreline marker that features a squiggly gold line through the sidewalk accompanied by a plaque that explains that the golden squiggle shows the original shore of South Beach. Everything beyond is standing on a massive man-made landfill. Not mentioned on the plaque is the fact that the entire area—along with Treasure Island and large sections of North Beach, Mission Bay, and the Marina—is part of the liquefaction zone. This seemingly solid ground is at high risk of behaving like fluid during earthquakes, due to loose layers of soil, mud, rocks, and rubble—basically becoming quicksand.
The San Francisco History Association aims to rectify this lack of memorials. They hope to raise enough money by next year’s ceremony to dedicate a bronze plaque that will educate passers-by about the fountain’s role in the earthquake. For now, people walk past the fountain daily, not realizing that, for many, it is a symbol of everything lost in the disaster and the hope and resilience that rose from the ashes.
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When I was being trained to work with children suffering from trauma, I met a woman who experienced the Loma Prieta earthquake in October 1989. She was at her brother’s baseball game. She remembered seeing the undulating Earth rolling like ocean waves toward her before she was slammed to the ground. But she conceded that what our students go through is worse than anything she or I will likely ever experience.
The kids I work with are the toughest people I know. I work at an extended school program for a Title 1 school in the Mission District. Classes are held in both English and Spanish. The school provides all students with a free breakfast and lunch, plus free supper for students in the after-school programs. Most of my students are immigrants and moved to San Francisco when they were just a few years old.
As someone who had only previously worked with kids in Orange County, it took a while for some of the school’s procedures to make sense to me. Classroom doors were always locked during school hours and only essential staff had keys. All the windows in the hallway doors were covered in posters, so no one could peek into classrooms. This last semester, they began locking the main gate during school hours as well and required visitors to use a video cam linked to the front office. Every teacher was trained on how to deal with overzealous ICE Officers.
I remember doing natural disaster drills in elementary school, learning to stop, drop, and roll if I ever found myself engulfed in flames and to crawl under a desk and cover the back of my neck if the ground started shaking. But kids today have the added practice of active shooter drills, as if that were as inevitable and unpreventable as wildfires and earthquakes. Online, I once found a terrifying nursery rhyme used to teach the littlest kids in Massachusetts what to do during a shooting set to the tune of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”.
Lockdown, lockdown, lock the door.
Shut the lights off, say no more.
My supervisor attended the graduation ceremony for our fifth graders, who were about to head off to middle school. The building housed the graduation ceremonies from several schools in the Mission District. She was amazed to see how different the students from the other schools were, so much kinder and naïve. “They are the same grade,” she told us the next morning. “But our kids are so much older.”
I had been at the school for a month when we went on our first lockdown, due to a gang-related shooting across the street. My class could hear the shots from where we were in the cafeteria. I tried to play it off like it was a group of stupid teenagers with fireworks, but they weren’t buying it. They knew gunshots when they heard them. Some of these kids hadn’t lost their first baby tooth yet, but I already couldn’t spin a fairy tale to keep the world from creeping in.
That night when I left the school, the cross streets were cordoned off with crime-scene tape. Eight cop cars idled with their lights flashing and a few officers patrolled the area with assault rifles. I ducked back into the school and ordered a Lyft.
The next shooting came about a month later. This time, one of the school’s students was waiting at the bus stop with his parents. His father had to be rushed to the hospital when he got shot in the leg.
My days here all contain contradictory images, a strange mashing together of innocent hijinks and pensive, sobering moments. For the last three years, I have jotted down daily vignettes. The following are some I wrote during the school year:
It was my first day working at the elementary school. A seven-year-old told me to go fuck myself.
I tried to lead my class in an art activity where we made an origami Pikachu. It ended early when one student stabbed another with scissors.
Shauna was in the middle of changing the lyrics of BO$$ to be about getting her butt stuck in the toilet when there was an announcement that we were going on lock down, that we needed to lock the doors, turn off the lights, and stay away from the windows.
Our PE coach was the third teacher to quit over winter break. Since then, we have rotated through different subs to take over that time block. One taught the students how to play dodgeball. Over the last few weeks, I haven’t been able to get through a whole morning recess shift without having to break up a fist fight and bandage up a bleeding kid.
We FaceTimed my uncle so my detective class could have the chance to talk to a real detective. The plan was to play a few rounds of Two Truths and a Lie and see if he could catch us in a lie. But first, I gave them a chance to interview him. Hope raised her hand. She asked if he had ever shot anyone.
Jaiden accused Angel of stealing everything out of his backpack. Angel lunged at him, screaming that he was going to kill him. It took me and two other teachers to restrain him. As Angel was still struggling against us and swinging his fists, a first-grade girl came up to me to inform me that Valerie was rolling her eyes at her.
Miss Katherine’s classroom had a new poster for her students to tack up their feelings for the newly elected president. There were Post-its talking about how feo he is and that he is muy malo. Along the bottom, there were a few yellow squares that depicted crude drawings of Trump getting decapitated by a creeper from Minecraft.
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Joel and Les talk about how the coffee-delivering antique fire truck used to be stocked for making Bloody Marys. How after the hydrant got a new coat of gold paint, the congregation used to migrate to Lefty O’Doul’s for a few pints. This was a piano bar where Nick and I celebrated our first night of living in San Francisco, since shut down after a dispute with the landlord.
Les rubs his hands together to keep warm. “Every few years, another landmark closes,” he says wistfully. He is a week away from moving out of the apartment he’s lived in for ten years. He can no longer afford it.
It is a similar case for a lot of my students. Many live in Oakland and commute on BART every morning to school. They only see their homes when it is dark out. A few spend the school week living with relatives in the city. One lives in a car with his parents and younger brother.
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The 2016 presidential election results did not help schoolyard morale. The morning after Donald Trump’s victory was the quietest I’d ever heard San Francisco. Even the schoolyard during recess was eerily silent. Most days, as I enter through the main gate, I am rushed by students, exuberantly hugged, practically knocked to the ground by their excitement. That day, I walked through the school without being stopped once.
The kids were gathered in small groups.
I could hear them whispering, asking each other if they had papers or if their parents were going to be deported.
Luz was already crying when she was released from her day class. She curled up into a tiny ball against the wall where my kids line up for program. Normally, she’d cartwheel down the hallway despite my constant efforts to stop her.
I sat next to her and asked why she was crying.
She wouldn’t lift her head to look at me. “I’m scared,” she said.
“Why?” I looked around, searching for anyone who might have punched her or hurt her feelings.
She took a deep breath and stared intently at her untied shoelaces. “Because I’m Latina,” she said, so softly I couldn’t be sure I heard her correctly.
Pinning all the world’s problems on immigrants is not a new concept. Chinatown was an area of the city largely assumed by everyone who didn’t actually live there to be a place of danger—full of gambling, opium, and disease. Returning from their segregated camps after the quake, the residents of Chinatown found a singed heap of rubble, and they were in danger of losing even that. City officials planned to move Chinatown out of the heart of the city to Hunters Point, the most isolated corner of San Francisco. They wanted to claim that prime real estate for wealthier, whiter buyers. While the subcommittee was still debating the relocation, the people of Chinatown started rebuilding anyway. They made temporary wooden buildings that did not require a permit. The plans to sweep away Chinatown to the margins ultimately failed when the subcommittee realized how much they would lose in tax revenues and duties from trade with China.
Then inspiration struck. Tin Eli, a Chinese American businessman, secured loans for rebuilding and convinced Chinatown merchants to hire American architects to design a city inspired by the Orient, a place these architects had never seen. The square, brick buildings that were common before the earthquake were replaced with pagodas, bright colors, and dragons swirling on crests. With this unusual Chinese and American collaboration, Chinatown became a unique ambience all subsequent Chinatowns have mimicked. To people who lived in that neighborhood, it was their means of preservation. To the rest of the city, it was exotic, yet palatable. The reconstruction of Chinatown was completed a year before the rest of the city. The town that was almost cut off became San Francisco’s rescuer and the core of rebuilding their tourism industry, helping the economy bounce back.
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A crowd is finally forming around the Little Giant. A few women are dressed in period costume, their large, feathered hats blocking the view of anyone stuck behind them. One woman is draped in dozens of plastic leis. On her head is a massive pile of rubber duckies and neon-colored Easter eggs. News cameras begin filming as the ceremony is officially opened by members of the SFFD. One carries a grocery bag full of spray-paint cans. He rummages through the bag and pulls one out, holding it above his head for everyone to see.
“Yes!” he shouts into the microphone. “It’s gold! It’s gold!” This is a jab at the painting ceremony of 2012, when the fire hydrant was accidentally painted silver, and no one noticed until the sun came up and they could see the color difference.
Next to the microphone is the San Francisco History Association, represented by a man dressed in full regalia—feather cap, sword, and scarlet silk sash—as Emperor Norton I. In 1859, an English immigrant to San Francisco suddenly declared himself Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico. His first decree appeared in the San Francisco Bulletin. It demanded that representatives from every state convene in the Bay Area to work out new laws that would free the land from evil. His request was embraced purely for its comedic value. The people of San Francisco, already inured to off-kilter citizens, took his presence in stride. They bowed when he walked by and refused to let him pay for meals or train tickets. Officers of the United States Army provided him with old uniforms decorated with gold-plated epaulettes. Despite suffering from a clear mental disorder, Emperor Norton I was ahead of his time. He declared that anyone referring to the city as “Frisco” would be fined $25. He fought against the anti-Chinese protests of the 1860s. One of his most ridiculed ideas was that a bridge be built to connect San Francisco to Oakland. In 1939, a plaque was dedicated at the Bay Bridge, honoring his “prophetic wisdom.”
At the microphone, the Emperor Norton impersonator hits the crowd up for donations to the earthquake memorial. He is quickly followed by Donna Higgens, who has faithfully attended the painting ceremony for forty-four years. She speaks about the sheer will and determination of the people who helped 200,000 others save their homes. She gives tribute to Gladys Hansen for correcting the rampant misinformation that spread about the earthquake.
For decades, the earthquake was believed to have only taken 478 lives, the number reported by the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. Hansen spent the better part of forty years carefully cataloging those who died during the earthquake on three-by-five cards. She not only disagreed with the Board of Supervisors’ numbers, but also updated the count to 3,000. She estimates the fatalities to have numbered about 6,000, but there may never be a complete count. The death toll grows each year as genealogists discover letters people have written to family about those who died and those who disappeared. There are also the homeless who were crushed by buildings and those who were thrown into mass graves without being identified.
Hansen suspects tycoons and business magnates deliberately minimized the scale of the disaster to make it easier to draw back investors. It was just bad business to set up shop in a city that could be wiped off the face of the earth in less than a minute. Officials blamed the fires for most of the destruction. The real problem, they claimed, was poorly built wooden houses, something much easier to fix than a city atop a fault line. Even insurance companies would only cover claims made for fire damage. The less people talked about the earthquake, the quicker the economy would mend. The people of San Francisco put on brave faces and quietly misinformed the world.
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When the fires were finally put out, survivors did not waste much time mourning. They had work to do. Within days, plumbers were fixing water and sewer lines. The first repaired cable car was up and running four days after the earthquake. The refugee tents were replaced with 10′-by-14′ wooden cabins, to give people more protection when winter arrived. These houses were paid for by the month, and residents could purchase them outright, if they promised to relocate them. This allowed many families to own their first homes. Some of these little cottages still exist throughout the city.
Photographs from the rebuilding are strangely hopeful. In their backgrounds, the sky still smolders, and four-story hotels are sunk so deep their top floor is level with the road. Despite this backdrop, people standing in long lines for bread and water smile for the camera. Children cobbled together carriages for their dogs to cart around their few remaining belongings. Postcards designed for survivors to send to relatives took on a humorous tone. One depicted a family living in a tent in a park. A woman is washing clothes in a tub, a few blankets and shirts are hung on clotheslines to dry. A tea kettle whistles on a relocated woodstove. A small, spotted dog sits in the center of the scene and declares that he likes this better than a house. Another postcard depicts a couple, each dragging a single piece of luggage while a building burns behind them. A parrot perched on the woman’s shoulder quips that there seems to be a sudden hot spell. The postcard bears the title “The Day We All Moved.”
Those who refused to leave the city also refused to suffer. Gallows humor bound them in a way that made them mightier than any earthquake. The same humor still marks San Franciscans.
I open my class with a daily journal entry. The day after the election, I asked my students which superpower they wished they had. I was expecting the usual: flight, invisibility, the ability to read minds. Maria was the first to finish her sentence. She wished for the power to erase Trump.
Trump abuse became a game for her. No matter what prompt I gave the class, she would twist it to insult the President-elect.
What was your favorite thing you learned in the marine biology lesson?
That the Blob Fish looks like Donald Trump.
Write a note to your future self.
Dear Future Me, I hope you still hate Trump.
Would you rather be blind or deaf? Why?
Blind, so I wouldn’t have to see Trump’s ugly face.
As a teacher, I try to stay neutral when it comes to politics. I’m not supposed to alienate students who might feel differently than I do. All I can do is suggest that maybe we shouldn’t wish harm on anyone.
It was hard to hide a sly, proud smile. But it was easy to see no upheaval could knock this little girl down for long.
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One creative outlet for survivors of the earthquake and fires was the creation of The Refugee’s Cookbook, Compiled by one of them. Rather than a collection of meals cooked and eaten while surviving the aftermath of the earthquake, it is full of the meals that people missed most, the ones they dreamed about eating again when the world went back to normal. These recipes call for veal, ice cream, butter the size of an egg, oysters, calf kidneys, suet, two pounds of walnuts, whipped cream, lady fingers, and maraschino cherries. Cooking tools like a large porcelain kettle, a double boiler, a sieve, a pudding dish, a grater, a freezer, and a full functioning oven capable of cooking “briskly” for over an hour are required to make these dishes. It isn’t until the very last page, page eighteen, that the book gives some hint of what people had to do to survive. There was a description of how to make a Refugee Filter by perforating the bottom of a tomato can with holes, covering the bottom with a layer of cotton batting and five tablespoons of pulverized charcoal. The instructions were to boil water and pour it through the filter to get rid of sediment from the water supply. Another helpful tip was to burn a tablespoon of cayenne pepper in a pan over the fire and open all doors or windows to get rid of flies.
Around the same time, locksmiths were waiting multiple days before attempting to open any safe for fear that the contents would immediately burst into flames if the steel was not given enough time to cool down. People buried their possessions so they could dig them up later. Everyone was just waiting for the world to be a safer place.
It reminded me of the project Ms. Delgado’s class worked on the day of Trump’s inauguration. They were given a few hours to express themselves through art and work out their feelings about this period in history. Aracely came to visit me in the bungalow during recess, hoping that she could cute her way into getting a free snack from the after-school teachers. She brought her inauguration artwork to show me. She had drawn what she imagined the border wall would look like. It was a mass of bricks with curled barbed wire stretched across the top. But the wall only took up the bottom third of the paper. The rest of it showed the sky above the wall where a dozen butterflies were flying free, so high that the sharp edges couldn’t touch them.
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Even with the world crumbing around them, survivors didn’t have to look far to find support and courage. Help came from all directions. Railroads gave free transportation to refugees and carried relief donations from all over the nation. Civilians and dealer showrooms used their cars as ambulances, fire wagons, taxicabs—whatever was needed. Restaurants handed out free coffee to keep medics awake and warm the injured. Hotels sent mattresses and beds to makeshift hospitals.
Sometimes this loving cooperation came from the least expected places—society’s most judged and abused. The first cash donations to help rebuild schools came from Broken Arrow in Creek Nation, a town of indigenous people thousands of miles away in Oklahoma. They knew what it was like to lose their home, as they were forced off their land and into an entirely new state along The Trail of Tears. Diamond Jessie Hayman, former prostitute turned madame, used her wealth to provide food and clothing to those made homeless by the tragedy.
Lucy B. Fisher, a local nurse, wrote A Nurse’s Earthquake Experience for The American Journal of Nursing about her efforts to help the city heal. At first, she worked at the Mechanic’s Pavilion. When the building caught fire, she roamed San Francisco, searching for places she could be useful. After a few failed attempts, she found herself at Park Hospital. Here, the fires around them burned so bright it made lanterns unnecessary at night. She worked for seven days, but it felt like a lifetime to her. She saw things that made her wonder how it was possible her brain “did not snap in some part of its delicate mechanism.” Looking back, she could not understand her own ability to stare at death and destruction so directly, writing, “I looked it calmly in the face, not through bravery perhaps, but because I was given no alternative.” Her short memoir captures the feeling held by most people who witnessed the aftermath: “within my own soul there developed a deeper and greater reverence for human nature . . . shining forth in deeds of glad self-sacrifice which were manifested in a tireless devotion to the injured; in the performance of tasks that ordinarily might be classed as menial but were done with such an unselfish spirit that the work became glorified.”
With stories like that, it is easy to see why the people of San Francisco were so full of hope about the future.
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Doc Bullock, dentist and historian, started the yearly painting ceremony in the 1960s. He’d sneak out at night and quickly coat the hydrant. His tag name became “The Phantom.”
Then one year, he showed up for the ritual and found a news crew waiting for him. Hence, a tradition was launched. The spray cans are first handed to anyone who survived the earthquake. Then they are passed to their family members and members of the fire department. Then native San Franciscans. Everyone who wants a turn joins in. Today, each participant gets a certificate, declaring that they have helped paint the fire hydrant on 20th and Church Streets gold.
The woman with the Easter egg bonnet is handed a bouquet of red and white roses, which she promptly drops at the foot of the hydrant. A sign now dangles from the outlet cap, reading “111 Years After.”
The painting is finally about to begin. Joel informs me that last year was the first without a survivor to commence the spraying. That last known survivor, William Del Monte, was three months old at the time of the earthquake. His family made their way to the Ferry Building, where they escaped to farmland they owned in Oakland. He died in January 2016, at the age of 109.
Before each of us takes our turn, we are asked to announce who we are spraying for. Many spray in honor of ancestors who were lost. Others dedicate their turn to the men and women who did everything in their power to help San Francisco rebuild.
The sky is lightening to an icy blue. The sun remains hidden behind the hills and the fog. The spray can is still being passed among the survivors’ families. They laugh and elbow each other as they make plans for breakfast after they are done.
When the can comes to me, I dedicate my turn to the tough and scrappy survivors I see in this storied city every day—all of them in second grade.
Nick and I make our way back to his car. It is past six ᴀ.ᴍ., and I have only an hour to prepare for my day at school.
Heather Buchanan’s work has appeared in Crime Magazine, The Vignette Review, The Campus Survival Guide, and Morkan’s Horse. She was a finalist for The Missouri Review’s Jeffrey E. Smith Editor’s Prize in 2022. She lives in California and spends most of her time trying to convince children not to stick that thing up their nose. heatherbuchananwrites.com
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