Halfway to Brooklyn

I called BART a subway because in my mind I was halfway to Brooklyn.

Don’t ask me why.

All I knew was that everything about that place seemed perfect. It had legends. The Yankees. Babe Ruth. The Three Stooges. The music. The attitude. The style. Guys in flat caps who looked like they had stories in their pockets.

And the hot dogs.

Holy God, in my mind, Brooklyn had the most perfect hot dogs in the world. I loved hot dogs, so that alone was enough to make the whole place feel holy to me.

Then there were the writers.

I was in love with words from age four, when I started reading, and Brooklyn felt like one of those places where words came out sharper, funnier, tougher, and more alive.

So riding BART into San Francisco never felt like ordinary transportation.

It felt like practice.

A boy from Fremont reaching toward a world that looked bigger than the one he knew.

I was born in Los Angeles, and that always mattered to me. Still does. But I was raised in the East Bay, in Fremont, California, and Fremont carved itself deeper.

Back then, being a kid in America still felt wide open.

We had bikes, guts, junk food, and whole little kingdoms nobody else knew how to find.

One of them was Hobo Jungle.

Some nights I would sneak out and meet my friends near Lake Elizabeth, over by the tracks, and we would come loaded like young kings with Hostess fruit pies, Twinkies, cupcakes, Chico Sticks, Astro Pops, whatever we could get our hands on.

We swapped treasure by firelight, laughed like fools, and tore through the dark on our bikes with sugar in our pockets and smoke in our clothes.

The Bay smelled different after dark.

Damp earth.

Water.

Brush.

A trace of fire in the air.

To me, it smelled exactly like life.

One night I got there early, and nobody else was around.

That changed the place immediately.

Hobo Jungle was one thing when your boys were there. Bikes dropped in the dirt. Somebody laughing too loud. Somebody digging through his pocket for a half-smashed fruit pie. Somebody already trying to get a fire going.

Empty, it felt wrong.

Too still.

Too quiet.

I had that feeling in my gut that told me to turn around while I still could.

I ignored it.

That is one of the first laws of boyhood. When good sense arrives, stupidity usually grabs the wheel.

I clicked on my flashlight and started walking deeper into the dark.

Then a man’s voice exploded through the night.

“Who are you? What are you doing here?”

Before I could answer, he grabbed my arm.

I looked up and saw a giant man with dirt on his face. He smelled sour, rough, and hard-lived. No trace of friendly anywhere on him.

My heart was beating so hard I could hear it, but fear has a way of sharpening a boy.

So I lied.

I told him my friends were on the way and one of their dads was a cop.

He dropped my arm immediately.

I did not waste one second. I turned, ran out of there, grabbed my bike, and rode like hell.

Honest to God, I had never ridden that fast in my life.

Well, until the next time.

Because what do boys do after a scare like that?

We band together and go back for more.

That was our answer to fear.

Company.

The next night five of us met up again.

Same part of town.

Same dark.

Same bad ideas warming up in our heads.

Meet at the lagoon. Head toward Hobo Jungle. Check out the boxcars by the tracks. Build a fire. Trade whatever treasures we had in our pockets.

Somebody had weak flashlight batteries.

Somebody had caution he had no plans to use.

Somebody had Chico Sticks.

Somebody had a mouth full of confidence.

And then, because somebody always had to improve a bad idea into a terrible one, I said it.

“Let’s jump a train.”

They moved slow enough through there that it felt possible, which in those days was all the proof we needed.

Ride it as far as we could.

Jump off when it felt right.

Get back before the grown-ups knew how much geography we had covered.

Every one of us agreed it sounded glorious.

Then, for once, we started thinking.

That happened now and then.

The truth is, some of the adventures we took would peel most people’s lids back.

Ten years old and on BART into San Francisco.

Walking through Oakland at night to hang out in a smoke-filled pool hall.

That was our world.

We were boys with bikes, nerve, bad ideas, and just enough freedom to make every one of them seem possible.

Fremont was our home base, but it never felt like the edge of the map.

The East Bay was our launching pad.

San Francisco felt close enough to touch.

Oakland had its own dangerous pull.

Every plan had the same ingredients.

Meet up.

Laugh hard.

Trade junk food.

Push farther than we should.

Get home before the grown-ups realized how much ground we had covered.

A handful of boys could turn almost anything into courage.

Foolish courage.

Temporary courage.

Courage that vanished the second a cop car rolled in and sent us scattering like leaves in a storm.

Still, it counted.

It got us to the next fire, the next path, the next bad plan, the next story.

And the stories kept coming.

Some belonged to Fremont.

Some belonged to the tracks.

Some belonged to San Francisco.

Some belonged to Oakland.

All of them belonged to that vanished country called boyhood, where a flashlight felt like real equipment, junk food tasted like wealth, and the night, if you were bold enough to step into it, could still feel like yours.

Los Angeles gave me birth.

Brooklyn gave me myth.

Fremont gave me the dark, the bikes, the boys, the nerve, and the stories.

That is where a lot of me was made.

And that, right there, is hard, East Bay truth.