History of the Presidio (Part 1)

[Music] every time I Drive over the Golden Gate Bridge and come south and see the place that reminds me of when I first saw it coming in as a captain and it just hasn't changed it's just beautiful when you're driving through the historic forests and the Sun is beginning to set you just start seeing the little beams of light trickling through the different trees you forget that you're in the middle of this busy city but here you are in the middle of what seems like nowhere the coastal Bluffs is a pretty amazing area it's just wild and you have this beautiful view of the ocean and the Golden Gate Bridge and you just feel like you're back in time before this area you've changed so much one of my favorite things to do is walk down Crissy Field and on a misty day you've got the wind coming in through the Golden Gate you're looking at this incredible tableau in front of you but the thing that I remember most and always think of is the feeling of the mist on your face [Music] the foghorn has this way of guilting you out of whatever mindless thing you were doing and reminding me where you are I'm here and it's now and I'm super lucky the procedure has a certain darkness turret is slightly melancholic and I like that I really like that it's not it's not a happy you know happy-go-lucky place it's a real place you know it's got a tough history Porsche - he a cachaca mechanic her confidence hot conductor general oniy a coin Makarov monomer kiss we what that means is hello my name is Vince I'm George annual Oni and welcome to our land where we are born you know imagine ten people here in just one person left there is no word for it in church any o of this hardship and the strife and the suffering that happened during this period the closest that I could come to in my languages my roots and what it means is the night or the darkness my great-great-grandmother is sort of the source of my hispano California connection through her 24 of my ancestors came to California by 1781 eighteen of my ancestors came on the ants expedition to found San Francisco were like the dirt on the hills were like the Adobe on the hills because we've been here a long time were kind of dusty from running around after the cattle and we just always been here and I know that Native Americans would dispute and I said well we've always been here well we came more recently but it's the same sense that we've been here all along and witnessed all the changes [Music] to me this was like a stage set where the cast left some time ago it looks the same but it's not really the same these great views happen to be fields of fire for artillery people would come here and say gosh you'd have great views well there's a reason for that and there's a reason it was placed at the south end of this channel was to command the entrance to the bay the cemetery is particularly moving because there's 33,000 men and women serving and Families that are buried there there was a lot of camaraderie but there was also a lot of respect my soldiers as I called him to this day I call him my soldiers I would never let anything happen to any one of my soldiers we had a lot of good times we had balls here every month we had Friday nights happy hours and they were very happy because the drinks were only 50 cents and the parades and and army birthday and Veterans Day and Memorial Day and all that it was it was just glorious one of the things as a military kid that you got used to was that if you were riding your bike or driving with your parents by the time when they were lowering the flag you just stopped you stopped you got out of your car you got off of your bike you stood there at attention while the flag got lowered and then you went on about your business and you know for me it was just one of those rituals that you did routinely and it didn't occur to me that it was unusual that other people didn't do it until after I stopped being a military kid the army I think the worst thing you can do is miss your overseas shipment they allowed me to stay in a motel with my wife and I was so terrified of missing that overseas shipment the alarm clock didn't go off or you have an accident driving so we we slept in each other's arms in our car in the car and then in the pitch dark she woke me and said they just blew a whistle so for some reason it always makes me cry to think that most strange that they seemed because soldiers aren't supposed to cry but I remember being the last person on deck on the rear of the ship till I couldn't see San Francisco anymore and I remember this I could see Aptus junior high and I knew my house was block away and I was the last guy on deck [Music] [Music]

Channel: Presidio of San Francisco

Views: 6,270

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Id: aMUxc0xMrKI

Length: 6min 9sec (369 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 13 2020