White Cliffs of Doelger
I suppose some high school “alumnis� might appreciate this. As the decades fly by, I find I appeciate more of everything and find lots of humor where I used to see only sorrow.
Today I received a gold and red flyer (my San Francisco high school’s “colors�) from the Abraham Lincoln Alumni Assn. announcing The White Cliffs of Doelger, an alumni talent show. The show–which will take place on the stage at Lincoln Auditorium on Sat. November 5–is described as “a hilarious journey through sixty-five yeas in the Sunset from 1940 (when a dollar was a dollar) until today.
Lincoln High School–I lived two blocks away from this cold, bureaucratic- looking concrete structure–was/is located in the heart, I guess you could say, of the Sunset District, famous for having no sun, a joke among those who lived in the daily fog and have long since moved away. It was Henry Doelger of Westlake and Daly City fame who turned the Sunset’s shifting sand dunes (the Sunset is a San Francisco add-on, to the west toward Ocean Beach and on the south side of Golden Gate Park) into a construction zone stretching from 19th avenue to 48th avenue, give or take, and from Lincoln Ave to Wawona.
On the flyer are listed a few of the stars of the White Ciffs of Dover. Jerry Kay I know because he was ahead of me at Lincoln and a vigorous head cheerleader. You couldn’t miss at football games. Of course Terry Lowry’s name I knew because, well, she’s both a tv star and often hosts charitable events.
The whole thing amused me–thinking back on the much-aligned Sunset District.
But you know I’ve never gotten away from Mr. Doelger. When I arrived on the Coastside he had already built one of his every house is the same subdivisions north of the old Ocean Shore Railroad town of El Granada where there’s lots of character. Mr. Dielger also kept a hideaway on the clliffs above Moss Beach–the house with stone fireplaces burned sometime after I got here. And Mr. Doelger was trying to build a “south seas” theme resort at Princeton. Needless to say, there was a lot of oppositoin to Mr. Doelger’s plans.