Something old and something new

I took a few drives around San Francisco this Mother’s Day weekend enjoying the perfect spring weather. I was thinking about how lucky I am; I can’t anymore, but for at least a half of a century I got to wish my mom a Happy Mother’s Day. As I drove around checking out some new sites, I also stopped at a few places my mom visited long ago.

I visited Corona Heights for the first time ever: I can’t believe that all these years I’ve never been up there!

The views of San Francisco from the top are as stunning today as they were in the 1960’s. (Michael Bry)

Also on Corona Heights is the Randall Museum of Science, Nature and the Arts and its many wildlife exhibits. But seriously, this is a very interesting museum well worth visiting.

Drove over to the Fillmore Street Hill at Vallejo: How did people drive their cars up here before automatic transmissions were invented? (Curbed San Francisco)

Back to familiar ground: My mom got to San Francisco long before I did, and as a pre-World War Two teenager from Grand Forks, North Dakota, one of the first places she wanted to visit was the Cliff House. The vintage image is from the 1950’s. (virginiapicks)

Before they closed it off, I had a chance to locate the spot where my mom, on the left with her cousin Frances, was sitting on the old stone W.P.A entrance to Fleishhacker Zoo.

They’ve fenced the old entrance off now, either to keep people from sneaking into the zoo, or animals from sneaking out.

Some, someday moms at the old Fleishhacker Pool: The girls in the picture from the Shorpy Archives are posing in 1927, two years after the pool opened.  I’m standing on top of the pool in the current picture; the pool was filled in and is buried under the San Francisco Zoo parking lot. That’s the entrance to the old pool house on the left in the modern picture, the only thing remaining of Fleishhacker Pool.

That’s my 17 year old mom on the left swimming in Fleishhacker Pool on her first visit to San Francisco. If she looks miserable it’s probably because the water in the pool was rumored to always be cold!