Page 216 - Folsom Street Blues: A Memoir of 1970s SoMa and Leatherfolk in Gay San Francisco

200 Jim Stewart

between Kalamazoo and Chicago. Now I wanted to experience
a cross country train trip. I packed up what was left of my goods
and shipped them via motor freight to Michigan. Two suitcases
I’d take on the train. The smaller one held a few clothes and a
toothbrush. The larger rather ratty brown leather suitcase held
my camera, photo negatives, and contact sheets. I was taking no
chances it would be lost en route.
How do you say goodbye to San Francisco? You never can.
I wanted to leave town quietly, promising myself I’d return. My
last night in the City I spent at the Caldron, a piss palace a couple
of blocks away on Natoma. In the morning Wil Rutland, a lanky
North Carolinian I’d run into several times at the Caldron, drove
me in his 1959 red Cadillac convertible to the Transbay Termi-
nal at Mission and First. The sun was out. The top was down. I
boarded a bus that took me over the Oakland Bay Bridge to the
Amtrak station and a train bound for Chicago.