A transplant from Roswell, New Mexico, she felt like an alien in the East Bay.
The man I married when I left New Mexico wasn’t just from Berkeley; he was of Berkeley. With him I moved here at age 22 after graduating from the University of New Mexico in 1975.
My husband and his brother co-owned the Three C’s, a small creperie at Hearst and Euclid near the north side of the U.C. Berkeley campus. Like all right-on Berkeley kids, he was protesting the Vietnam War at the Oakland Induction Center when he was 12. When I was 12, I was dutifully writing pen-pal letters to soldiers in Vietnam. That’s because I am from Roswell, New Mexico. I grew up on afarm far enough from the highway that the lights from the UFOs my mother spotted with great frequency showed up brilliantly in the night sky. Before Mulder and Scully made the Roswell Incident an internationally famous phenomenon, hardly anyone had heard of Roswell, nor were they interested when I said where I was from. That was okay with me. I wasn’t much interested either. But I was interested in a Berkeley phenomenon that made me feel like a Roswell alien upon arrival—the Berkeley lineup.
At any time of day, people could be seen strolling along the sidewalks of Berkeley. In New Mexico, we walked around, too, mainly to get somewhere, usually out of the blazing heat or howling wind. But in Berkeley, people appeared to have an enormous amount of time on their hands. Emblematic of this leisurely lifestyle was the line Berkeleyans loved to stand in.
Sure, back home I had waited in line at the grocery store and the drive-through package liquor store. And during a dust storm, I’d sit in my car like everyone else, while the line at the drive-through bank curled around the block. But we are talking necessities here: food, booze, cash.
I began to understand that the Berkeley lineup was an institution when day after day—no matter the weather—a long line of people extended out of the venerable Peet’s on Walnut and Vine. What is happening there? I asked my husband. When he informed me that people were waiting in line for coffee, I was truly baffled. Coffee, in my experience, just wasn’t something to wait for. I made my own in a beat-up metal coffeepot that percolated noisily atop my stove. Through the clear glass knob on the lid I could watch the water turn brown as it bubbled up through the grounds, signaling it was ready. There was the occasional cup at the counter of Denny’s or Bob’s Big Boy. But that didn’t require a line either.
My husband wasn’t a coffee drinker, but he didn’t want me to remain ignorant of the pleasures of real coffee. So we hopped into line. Yes, Peet’s beat Big Boy hands down. But still the 20-minute wait? Didn’t these people have somewhere to be? And it wasn’t just coffee they’d wait for. Want a pastry? Get in line. A wedge of cheese? The line starts there. A chocolate truffle? Get behind me, buddy.
You could find me standing in line for hours to buy tickets for the Rolling Stones, and I’d stay for a while to get into the opening of Chinatown or The Godfather. But coffee? Cheese?
Please.
In 1978, I returned to the University of New Mexico to attend graduate school where I was fortunate to take a class with the poet Robert Creeley. Once during his office hours, he commented that he was surprised by the low enrollment, explaining that when he’d taught at Berkeley, students lined up outside the door trying to get into his poetry workshops. I responded hastily, “Oh, people will line up for anything in Berkeley.”
Fortunately he wasn’t insulted. He laughed, and we talked about Berkeley. Yes, Hink’s Department Store downtown still sent payment up to the cashiers via pneumatic tubes. I didn’t know if Diane’s Nude Rap Sessions were still held, but I did remember the sign painted on the windows of the building on Shattuck and University near the Keystone nightclub. He was, of course, quite a fan of the Walnut and Vine Peet’s and didn’t mind the line a bit. He’d even eaten at my husband’s Three C’s creperie.
Eventually I returned to Berkeley and have now taught at Cal for almost 20 years. But I must confess that I’ve never once been inside the Cheese Board. And whatever it is people are lining up for in front of the Fat Apple’s on the corner of MLK Jr. Way and Rose Street, I’ve missed out on that, too. My inability to join the Berkeley lineup is no doubt the reason why when people ask me where I’m from, I still say Roswell (RosWUHL, by the way. Not RosWELL). While I’ve learned to enjoy a leisurely stroll, I never go with the confident flow of the crowd into a crosswalk without coming to a full stop before I step into the street. In Berkeley I might have pedestrian rights; back home I’m just target practice.
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Jane Hammons teaches writing at U.C. Berkeley. Twice nominated for the Pushcart Prize, she has an essay in the recently published The Maternal Is Political (Seal Press).
