Today is our last day in San Francisco as wedding #1 activities came to an end. The parents of the groom hosted a wonderful dim sum brunch at City View, near Chinatown, for those of us still in town. I’m so full I can’t move and grateful I had already completed my 3-mile running task for the 3900th consecutive day. That alone is a monumental personal life moment but perhaps not as grand as the 49th anniversary of my first Led Zeppelin concert. Forty-Nine years ago today, a high school friend and I were surprised to find that the group was playing in nearby Oakland. It was their 6th U.S. tour that we found out about via a handbill on the door of the Fillmore West. We rushed from the Haight-Asbury district to our car parked at Fisherman’s Wharf to drive to the show that night and paid about $10 each for a seat in the rafters. As I ran the waterfront this morning, I began to marvel how 49 years had passed so quickly, and that I was ironically in the same place at the same time after all those years. 

49 is also a significant number in San Francisco, and not just the football team. After all, a 49er or Forty-Niner is the nickname for a miner or other person that took part in the 1849 California Gold Rush. I felt that we struck gold in seeing the great Led Zeppelin that summer. It’s a memory that I would not trade for anything. As I sat in our Coliseum seats, it was as if “Karl the Fog” (See Post # 1053) had rolled in, but instead it was the haze of marijuana smoke. It was an amazing spectacle of big screens, wild music, and frenzied fans. I would not even have been familiar with the legendary group if it we’re for the fact that I had just bought a portable record player and there were only a few stereo choices on the market. I had bought the album for that reason only and became familiar with their music. By encore time, we were down in front of the stage with a mob of long-haired “hippies” and surrounded by mounds of wine and cheap liquor bottles. I was undoubtedly high from secondary smoke, plus joints were passed freely. It was one of the most unique experiences of my life, as the band concluded with the classic “Blueberry Hill.”(See Post #295). Years later I got a scratchy bootleg recording of the concert to refresh my memories of the show.

Today was just another significant milestone in my life. A happy, newly-married step-daughter and my wife the satisfied mother-of-the-bride were at my side. Similarly, I rationalized regrets about recently missing my 50th anniversary high school “Class of 69” reunion, but pictures of former classmates were certainly reflective of all the years that have passed. A year after high school, I was in San Francisco for the first time and saw the show of a lifetime. I can’t tell you how many people have been envious of that experience, just as I marvel at those that claim to have gone to Woodstock. 1969 was also the year that I went to Albion College, joined the Sigma Chi Fraternity, and worried about going to Vietnam. I grew-up quickly in that period and a feeling of independence led me to travel across country, further away from home than I’d ever been. This morning, in my mind, I thought about that last half-century of my life that led me to where I am today – reminiscing about school, work, marriage, and my current enjoyment of retirement. “Good times, bad times…You know I had my share.”