The Early Years — Part 7

We received our first viable offer on the house in December of 1982, and it took until March of 1983 before we closed and were able to move. Once the process started, we began selling items from the house that we were not going to take with us. It was kind of difficult to have a yard sale because of Michigan's fabled winters, but we mostly sold items to friends. By the time the end of February rolled around, we were down to using a mattress as our living room seating in order to watch TV. We both had quit our jobs in February in anticipation of the move. The rate department threw us a going away party, with a great decorated cake that had the Golden Gate Bridge and good wishes written in the frosting.

By mid-March, all that was left in the house was the water bed, our clothes, linens, and kitchen items. It was a bare bones existence; we were getting anxious to get the closing out of the way so we could hit the road. Dennis was hoping to leave by the Ides of March (the 15th), but we missed by a day, leaving on the 16th after having one final lunch with our best friend, Tom Wade. We met him at the Back Stage Deli, one of our favorite restaurants along the Woodward Avenue corridor and within the perceived "gay area" of Detroit. It was a Broadway-themed restaurant, with posters from all the plays and musicals that had been on Broadway over the years. Tom followed us back to the house; we had a tearful goodbye and hit the road about 2pm on that Wednesday. We had sold our respective cars, but we were using a station wagon that one of Dennis's highway dispatch drivers had loaned us, because he had to get the car to his ex-wife in Los Angeles. Besides the small trailer we were pulling, the station wagon allowed us that extra space we needed to haul our possessions.

We made good progress the first day as we drove for 10+ hours. We stopped for the night in West Des Moines, Iowa, having driven more than 500 miles. Thursday morning we continued on along Interstate 80, which would take us directly into San Francisco. It seemed to take us forever to get through Nebraska, but as nightfall was approaching, we crossed the state line into Wyoming, where we hit our only bad weather during our drive and started getting our first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains. A snowstorm was hitting Cheyenne and it was coming down hard, so we decided to stop for the night and hope for the best in the morning. By the time we left the next morning, more than 12 inches of snow had fallen and a light snow was still falling, but we decided to hit the road anyhow. It took us over 2 hours to get to Laramie, which was only 50 miles down the road. But we no sooner saw the signs for Laramie when the storm ended, blue skies prevailed and we had smooth sailing the rest of the trip.

Crossing from Wyoming into Nevada, the first town you hit at the border is Wendover. Being Nevada, of course there were casinos in Wendover, so I convinced Dennis that we should stop for the night, have some fun and continue the trip the next day. I love to gamble and thought it would be fun, though Dennis could have cared less. My mindset prevailed—we stopped for the night. Driving through Nevada on Saturday, Dennis couldn't believe how bleak the landscape was, though it was no surprise to me as I had taken this same route back in May of 1978 when my friend Wes and I drove out to San Francisco. We spent the entire day driving through Nevada; I wanted to stop for the night in Reno, but Dennis had had enough gambling so we didn't stop for the night until we reached Truckee.

We got up early Sunday morning, just grabbing coffee for the road figuring we'd stop around Sacramento for breakfast and then finish the drive into San Francisco. We had been astonished at the amount of snow along the side of the freeway while coming down I-80 that morning. The winter of 1982-83 had been an El Nino winter, with more rain than usual, which meant more snow in the mountains. We arrived in San Francisco the morning of March 20th. While crossing the Bay Bridge, Dennis stated, "It feels like home already." Having been here before, I had been confident that he would like it—I'm glad I was correct. I managed to find Amy's apartment like I had been driving in San Francisco all my life. We parked the car and trailer at a gas station across the street and they agreed we could keep it there until Monday morning, when we'd take it to a U-haul lot until we acquired an apartment.

That first week, it continued to rain every day but it did not deter us from searching for our first apartment. We had the profit from the sale of the house in the form of a certified check, so the first thing I did Monday morning was to walk to the Castro neighborhood and we opened a checking account. There's an old saying: "money talks" but sometimes it screams, like when you find the apartment you want and tell the landlord you're willing to pay 6-months rent in advance (which is what we did), though he didn't actually make us pay six months in advance. But it did convince him that we were serious. We moved into 213 Ashbury Street on Friday the 25th; we were only four blocks from the famous intersection of Haight & Ashbury. We had officially become San Francisco residents!