Happy Mother’s Day!

High School Graduation: Marge Kauschen

Every day is Mother’s Day. That’s what my Mom probably should have said. From the time I was born, looking back on all the pictures she was always there for me. When I was sick, when I was sad, when I was happy. She was always there.

Unfortunately all good things must come to an end and I lost her four years ago. I honestly think that she reached a point where she realized that I could make it on my own. She taught be to look out for myself, pay the bills get things done that needed to be done. She taught me to cook so that I’d never go hungry. She fought for me so that I would get good teachers and schooling.

I probably could have done more. I think the last thing I did for her was make her a grandma. Granted, I had help in that aspect. I had a lot of help and it wouldn’t have happened without Wife. I’d include a picture of her, but she doesn’t like to be in the limelight. She has that same aspect as my Mom. She never wanted to or tried to replace her and that’s a good thing. Wife is a smart cookie like my Mom and I think I did a good job in conning her into spending the rest of her life with me.

So today if you have a Mom that isn’t with you anymore I want you to think about her and what she gave up to make you who you were today. If you have a Mom that is still with you or you’re married to just take the time to remember that they’re doing an awful lot to keep you and your family on the right track.

Today’s Post is Dedicated to my Mom


Two years ago today I had to unpleasant surprise to find my Mom had died. I can finally say after two years I have been able to move on. We had great times and bad times together. She didn’t like to have her picture taken very often so I had to go back to her High School graduation picture [1946], one of the few pictures i have of her that does her any justice. Yeah, I miss her, but there’s lots of things that I’d want to tell her today that she wouldn’t want to hear, like the price of gas or that two boys she knew from the neighborhood that I grew up with are now women.

Wherever you are, just know that I’m doing fine and I’ll continue to do so. Oh yeah, your grand-daughter says hi.

Mommie Dearest

A year ago today marks the day my wife and I found my Mother dead watching TV in our house. That is still a hard day to think about because I don’t really like death. I don’t think anyone does, but I was a 5 year old that was afraid of dying. I suppose that’s when I first understood what it really meant. But I didn’t come here to write a downer piece for today. So let me tell you a little bit about my Mom.

She was born on May 28th, of 1929. That’s seems like a long time ago and you’re right, it was. She was the first of our family born in San Francisco. My family leaning toward the Italian side lived in the Marina when they moved here. Back then my mother told me she as a kid could remember there were still people having ice delivered to their houses for their ice boxes. Being a little girl starting her not too long before the great depression life probably sucked a bit for her, but my family being the type they were stuck together to get through it.

Once she entered her teens she joined the Girl Scouts and was very active with the environment before it was a popular thing to do. She was quite into camping and hiking and seeing as times were simpler then and she didn’t have access to all the new toys like we do she had dolls and a dollhouse that were made by my Grandfather supplemented with a few store bought dolls. In the summers at girl scout camp she would have fun tossing “cow chips”. When you think about it and she never said it, but it would have been a good line, “Why in my day we didn’t have World of Warcraft. When we wanted to have fun we threw dried up cow shit!”

We had family who lived up in Jackson, California which from the pictures back then it was pretty much a farm, so my Mom was a city girl who was raised on a farm part time. Because Jackson had a large population of Native Americans who were the original owners of the land she became interested in their culture and left us with a huge collection of “indian baskets” most of these were from the California tribes, but she did have a few items from the Navajo and Hopi’s, most notable are the collection of Hopi Kachina dolls we have hanging on our walls. What she never told me and we didn’t find this out until we started going through her stuff is that she also had a keen interest in the local Ohlone tribe’s language and it looked like she was either writing a book or just collecting research.

When World War II hit she would spend her days after school at St. Bridgette’s helping out the military by either scanning the skies off the coast for incoming aircraft from the other side to helping out with mapping in the staging areas at the presidio. I suppose they didn’t have child labor laws back then like we do today.

As she grew older she ended up attending SFSU and graduating with a teaching degree and got a job at Francis Scott Key out here in the Sunset working for the city’s then Childcare program. It was nothing like it is today, but it was more like pre-school and a little bit later for kids that couldn’t afford a private school.

Then one fateful Christmas day as my family was gathered into the car to go to someone in our families house for dinner they stopped on a gas station on Lombard street and my Mom saw a gas station attendant that she felt sorry for because he had to work on Christmas. It turns out that a few years later this man would one day become my Dad. For the life of my I can’t remember their wedding anniversary, but then again, I wasn’t there but sometime after that day came me. My Mom had had lots of trouble and after nine miscarriages they finally decided to adopt and that’s where I came into the picture. Adopting was a kind of hush hush thing back then and my parents arranged for a private adoption that only close friends and family knew of. I never would have known myself had I not been snooping around and found the paperwork when I was around ten. Even back then I was a devious kid.

Once I came along she became a stay at home Mom and never worked again. After I got older though she started focusing on her cooking and that is what she will always be most remembered for. If she taught me anything, my Mom taught me to enjoy what you eat and that you can make it from scratch easier than you can buy it from the store [well back then at least]. My Mom would always over cook for most of her life. She and my Grandmother would make vats of minestrone soup or bolognese sauce which was known in my family as Italian gravy. When they were available she would get pickling cucumbers and make pickles. Everyone my Dad worked with and all our neighbors got some along with the gravy and soup which we always had frozen in our big basement freezer.

Mom’s dessert’s were to die for. She could take a package of cake mix and make a few changes and you’d think it came from an uppity bakery that would have charged you ten times what it cost to produce. She made creme puffs and eclairs and cookies that it’s no wonder all the kids liked coming over to my house to play because they always got good food and plenty of it.

I think things started to go downhill for her when my Dad and Grandmother died back in 1999. They died a month apart and my mother had just undergone her fifth hip replacement surgery and the world crashed around her. Her favorite dog Shelly died a couple of months after our daughter was born and if we didn’t have our daughter she probably would have followed the dog in weeks. She at least got to be a Grandmother for a few years and she loved that more than anything else.

The saddest thing to me though is that all I have left of my Mom now are memories that can fit on one piece of paper. Guys, talk to your parents, because one day they won’t be around anymore. Yeah, they can be real assholes at times, but you might learn something from them.

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The Chain Gang of San Francisco

San Francisco has a bit of a conundrum on its hands with business. If you have more than three stores you are considered a “chain store” and can’t open any more stores even if there is a demand for your services. Yet, why is there a starbucks every half mile? Why are there so many Chevron, 76 and Shell stations? Why are there so many 7-11’s?

According to the books, San Francisco wants to keep local businesses at the forefront. So the mom and pop who invested money in a 7-11 to open it up in their neighborhood aren’t considered local businesses, yet myspace, google, apple, microsoft can open offices here while they aren’t San Francisco based businesses? Interesting way of thinking. There was a paint store that wanted to open up in the old Hollywood video store [chain!] on Mission street, but because they were a distributor of Glidden paint they were considered a chain and couldn’t move in. Yet we have a paint store in the Sunset that is the exclusive distributor of Kelly-Moore [chain!] paint, so much so that it’s called, “Kelly-Moore Paint” and that isn’t a problem?

I have at one time had a chance to visit the mother of all chain stores Wal-Mart and I was surprised by what I found there. DEALS! That was over 10 years ago and I’m still wearing the socks that I got for $3 for 6 pairs. In this down turned economy that is “coming back” people need a deal.  Mom and Pop who run the small place on the corner can’t give you that. The corner “convenience” [liquor] store that sells a six pack of budweiser for twice as much as your local grocery store [chain!] can’t really compete and you’ll probably notice that there is a lack of corner “convenience” [liquor] stores starting to show up.

There are things that every one of us need. Socks, underwear, gas, food. I don’t really care if it was hand made by underpaid naked virgins in Guatemala [out sourced!]. I just want it to fit and hold up over time. I don’t want to pay $5 for a handmade cupcake made with 70% cacao when I can get 6 for $3 made with Hershey’s [chain!] dark chocolate.

New York Mayor, Michael Bloomberg made a trip here recently made a trip to San Francisco and our new interim first Asian American Mayor [we’ll just ignore that Daly City beat us to the punch on that, because Filipinos aren’t the same kind of Asian we’re talking about] Ed Lee gave Mr. Bloomberg a Cable Car bell and locally made, organic hot dogs. Hot dogs? I haven’t seen a cow or a pig in San Francisco since I last went to the zoo. What about our locally made Boudin sourdough bread [chain!]? Or our crab? I have never heard one person say, “Damn I want me a San Francisco Hot Dog!” That’s because we’re San Francisco! We aren’t know for our hot dogs. There is the Treasure Island Frank which I can’t find any info on why a big hot dog is associated with Treasure Island, but they are difficult to find nowadays and I doubt that’s what Ed Lee gave Mr. Bloomberg.

I honestly don’t see a problem with chain stores. They bring affordable wares to the masses, employ people, albeit at usually a low wage, but only people willing to take low wages would work at a similar Mom and Pop local business. Daly City is taking away tons of San Francisco dollars because they’ll allow Target and other chain stores that provide deals that you can’t get here in San Francisco, so why not let them go in here and give back to the city that desperately needs the money? Kudos to the Board of Supervisors for loosening the stick up their collective butts for allowing Lowe’s to move into one of the worse parts of town. I never see any of those San Francisco resident employees with a frown on their face.

OK, rant off for now. Time to go back to talking about the things that make San Francisco the greatest place to be. It’s just getting harder to find.

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