This bridge was my first view of Sacramento. The year was 1959. I was in the 8th grade and my father had just been transferred from San Francisco to Sacramento. I was not happy.
Back then, there was no Interstate 80. There was only Highway 40. It did not go around the downtown area, but instead lead right downtown. In fact, you came over this bridge on to Capital Ave that led directly to the State Capital building. It is right in your sites as you crossed this bridge, strangely named Tower Bridge.
All well and good if your destination was the Capital. But, if you were headed east towards the North Area of Sacramento or even Reno, you had to take a circuitous route all around the Capital Park, then out 16th Street, then on to another local highway that eventually became Highway 40 again.
If you were headed for Lake Tahoe, you still had to travel the same route, but you turned onto a different street to connect to Highway 50. Apparently in those days, the City Fathers believed the only way to make people stop and spend their money was to make them drive all around and through the downtown area. My great aunt Monica, when she came to visit us for the first time, said, “They took me all around Robin Hood’s Barn to get here.” Wish I would have said that.
Much later, the Feds built a highway around the city so that you could have a non-stop modern freeway route all the way to Reno and beyond. Today it is Interstate 80. Even if you wish to go to Tahoe you take the Freeway and connect to I-5…then to the Highway 50 turnoff. Of course, the city has not lost money as it has grown to a Giant metropolis with many, many new buildings, great shopping, and the tourist-trap known as Old Sacramento. (see my blog date 10/21/15).
As mentioned, I was not happy with the family’s move to Sacramento. I had to leave the metropolitan San Francisco Bay Area. It was my home for my entire life…at least to this point. I left people behind who were very dear to me as well as a city that is still one my favorite cities in all the world. I had to leave the 49ers and the Giants behind (only one year removed from their move from New York) as well as my Grandmother, Market Street, the Cable Cars, Fisherman’s Wharf, Chinatown, North Beach, and the Ferry Building.
That was the day when I became a San Franciscan in absentia. Of course that title still applies today. San Francisco will always be my hometown, even though I now live in Tucson.
Did my bad attitude towards Sacramento ever change? Nope! It got better as time passed, but Sacramento was a big city with a small town mentality. As Gertrude Stein once said about Oakland, “There is no there, there.” That was my feeling about Sacramento. I could not wait to get out. And I did. Four years later, after graduating from High School, I left for college. Can you guess where? That’s right…The San Francisco Bay Area. Actually I moved to the city of San Jose, now the capital of Silicon Valley. Admittedly I was 50 miles south of my favorite city, but still managed many, many visits to that great city. I was back home.
Over time, circumstances led me back to Sacramento on two different occasions. I still didn’t like it all that much. I suppose a lot of it has to do with its close proximity to San Francisco…its hard to compete, much less surpass a great city like SF. As for Sacramento, I left it for the final time in 1992. Truth be told, it is better now than it ever was and has more to be proud of…but it can never replace the Bay Area. Never.
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