Eric Hoffer was the first nationally famous person I ever met. He wrote “The True Believer” which my Dad told me was one of the most important social philosophy books ever written. He showed me his copies of Mr. Hoffer’s books we had at home and offered to introduce me to him but warned me Mr Hoffer might be very shy towards me, likely would look like a wino panhandling bum, and perhaps not smell great. I was a first grader in grammar school and decided if my Dad thought Mr. Hoffer was a very important person I’d be lucky to meet him.
A few weeks later I was dressed in my normal Big City clothes of a nice dress with white knee socks and patent leather Mary Jane buttoned shoes sitting on one of my Dad’s handkerchiefs spread out on a splintery old pier on the San Francisco waterfront outside Red’s Java just south of the San Francisco-Oakland Bridge. As I munched on a hamburger, my Dad introduced me to Mr. Hoffer. Indeed, he looked like a wino panhandling bum in dark brownish clothes with stains in a cloud of cigar smoke but while he did not talk a lot to me, I recall his piercing eyes and my Dad’s ease of conversation with him. They’d known each other for many years by that point.
My Dad was working then during the height of the Anti-Vietnam War protests as a salesman for ... with a sales territory running from San Francisco’s Financial District to the printing and warehouse district south of Mission Street both close to the waterfront. He’d grown up in Brooklyn and later out near the working farms of Long Island, and had always loved exploring and meeting new people. Once as a young kid he took the train to New York City, walked around the shoreline of the entire island of Manhattan just to see if he could do it in one day, came home, and when his mother asked what he did that day, she refused to believe it. His father had grown up near the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn when it was an open sewer and worked as a clerk with a U.S. merchant marine shipping company thus my Dad was extremely comfortable with everyone working on any waterfront.
He explained to me how Mr. Hoffer had been a San Francisco longshoreman and had used his free time reading, thinking, watching, and writing. Mr. Hoffer knew well a fellow San Francisco longshoreman, Mr. Harry Bridges, who founded the first union for longshoreman in the U.S. after the violent 1934 West Coast waterfront strikes Bridges led in San Francisco and was well versed in Bridges’ many trials from 1939 - 1955, mostly unsuccessful attempts by government authorities to deport him as an Australian Communist.
My Dad also explained to me as we ate outside Red’s Java with Mr. Hoffer and at other dad/daughter lunches there how the San Francisco waterfront was nearly dead as we looked at the sad empty piers on either side of the pier where we'd sit. The old merchant ships which needed many longshoreman to load and unload cargo were now almost all gone thanks to the new container shipping facility in Oakland built after President Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway system was nearly complete which made truck cargo more efficient. The U.S. flagged merchant ships were nearly all by then flying flags of other countries using cheaper foreign seaman because those countries allowed significantly lower wages and benefits. After one lunch, he showed me the San Francisco seaman and longshoreman union hiring halls which had many out of work men sitting forlornly on the curbs nearby hoping for work or just panhandling.
I learned Mr. Hoffer’s theory was that mass movements virtually always started with angry people. How they easily can spin out of control when emotions literally run riot. Seeing the dying waterfront full of empty piers and warehouses, I learned directly what it means when an industry’s technology changes while uncompetitive hiring practices and unreciprocal maritime treaties decimate a local industry.
The day Apple and Amazon kicked Parler.com off its servers last month, I immediately thought of Mr. Hoffer and his ideas about mass movements and angry emotional people, Mr. Bridges and his long fights for those working on the waterfronts, and Mrs. Kay Graham as a young women walking the San Francisco waterfront the 1930’s and later publishing The Pentagon Papers in her father's Washington Post. I like to imagine the ghosts of Eric, Harry, and Kay having choice words for Jeff Bezos and anyone else who thinks throttling Free Speech, or denigrate and ignore those who choose not to go college and instead learn a hands-on skill are ever good ideas.
My Dad taught me very young the expression, “I will defend to the death another person’s right of Free Speech” in order to make Free Speech truly available for all. He also taught me to have fun while laughing at the always crazy world.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
branchandroot
Re: Idea... Red's Java House July 4
Date: 2022-11-16 02:37 am (UTC)Eric Hoffer was the first nationally famous person I ever met. He wrote “The True Believer” which my Dad told me was one of the most important social philosophy books ever written. He showed me his copies of Mr. Hoffer’s books we had at home and offered to introduce me to him but warned me Mr Hoffer might be very shy towards me, likely would look like a wino panhandling bum, and perhaps not smell great. I was a first grader in grammar school and decided if my Dad thought Mr. Hoffer was a very important person I’d be lucky to meet him.
A few weeks later I was dressed in my normal Big City clothes of a nice dress with white knee socks and patent leather Mary Jane buttoned shoes sitting on one of my Dad’s handkerchiefs spread out on a splintery old pier on the San Francisco waterfront outside Red’s Java just south of the San Francisco-Oakland Bridge. As I munched on a hamburger, my Dad introduced me to Mr. Hoffer. Indeed, he looked like a wino panhandling bum in dark brownish clothes with stains in a cloud of cigar smoke but while he did not talk a lot to me, I recall his piercing eyes and my Dad’s ease of conversation with him. They’d known each other for many years by that point.
My Dad was working then during the height of the Anti-Vietnam War protests as a salesman for ... with a sales territory running from San Francisco’s Financial District to the printing and warehouse district south of Mission Street both close to the waterfront. He’d grown up in Brooklyn and later out near the working farms of Long Island, and had always loved exploring and meeting new people. Once as a young kid he took the train to New York City, walked around the shoreline of the entire island of Manhattan just to see if he could do it in one day, came home, and when his mother asked what he did that day, she refused to believe it. His father had grown up near the Gowanus Canal in Brooklyn when it was an open sewer and worked as a clerk with a U.S. merchant marine shipping company thus my Dad was extremely comfortable with everyone working on any waterfront.
He explained to me how Mr. Hoffer had been a San Francisco longshoreman and had used his free time reading, thinking, watching, and writing. Mr. Hoffer knew well a fellow San Francisco longshoreman, Mr. Harry Bridges, who founded the first union for longshoreman in the U.S. after the violent 1934 West Coast waterfront strikes Bridges led in San Francisco and was well versed in Bridges’ many trials from 1939 - 1955, mostly unsuccessful attempts by government authorities to deport him as an Australian Communist.
My Dad also explained to me as we ate outside Red’s Java with Mr. Hoffer and at other dad/daughter lunches there how the San Francisco waterfront was nearly dead as we looked at the sad empty piers on either side of the pier where we'd sit. The old merchant ships which needed many longshoreman to load and unload cargo were now almost all gone thanks to the new container shipping facility in Oakland built after President Eisenhower’s Interstate Highway system was nearly complete which made truck cargo more efficient. The U.S. flagged merchant ships were nearly all by then flying flags of other countries using cheaper foreign seaman because those countries allowed significantly lower wages and benefits. After one lunch, he showed me the San Francisco seaman and longshoreman union hiring halls which had many out of work men sitting forlornly on the curbs nearby hoping for work or just panhandling.
I learned Mr. Hoffer’s theory was that mass movements virtually always started with angry people. How they easily can spin out of control when emotions literally run riot. Seeing the dying waterfront full of empty piers and warehouses, I learned directly what it means when an industry’s technology changes while uncompetitive hiring practices and unreciprocal maritime treaties decimate a local industry.
The day Apple and Amazon kicked Parler.com off its servers last month, I immediately thought of Mr. Hoffer and his ideas about mass movements and angry emotional people, Mr. Bridges and his long fights for those working on the waterfronts, and Mrs. Kay Graham as a young women walking the San Francisco waterfront the 1930’s and later publishing The Pentagon Papers in her father's Washington Post. I like to imagine the ghosts of Eric, Harry, and Kay having choice words for Jeff Bezos and anyone else who thinks throttling Free Speech, or denigrate and ignore those who choose not to go college and instead learn a hands-on skill are ever good ideas.
My Dad taught me very young the expression, “I will defend to the death another person’s right of Free Speech” in order to make Free Speech truly available for all. He also taught me to have fun while laughing at the always crazy world.