Memory & The City [Part One]

Maybe leaving suburban California was the start of it all. At age ten, I traveled to Holdingford, Minnesota for an extensive family reunion. It was an impressionable trip, being the first cross-country journey I'd ever taken. Memories of grassy fields, horse-back riding adventures and discovering open- plain antiquities such as carriage rides through town to church, will be forever bookmarked in my brain. Though, one memory I have associated with this vacation has nothing to do with Minnesota. In fact, it is a memory of something that never occurred in reality. Distinctly, I recall having my first vision of San Francisco. 


It was at the tail end of my stay in Minnesota. I had a ticket to return to California. My cousins planned to take their time by driving home. I was jealous that they were going to see most of the country through long-stretched roads. The travel bug ignited, I wanted to see everything with them too. When we were all back home together, in California, they told me of their detour to San Francisco. For some reason I believed (or imagined) they had reached the holy grail. I am sure they only mentioned typical things: clam chowder, Boudin bread, and trolly cars. But for some reason it looked like a mystic mountain amongst the fog, in my mind. Right then and there, my first distinct memory of San Francisco occurred. While dangling souvenir key chain's encapsulating the vision I began to build, my cousins described the cold summer chill the city breathed. And that, that was enough.