As the years went by, I developed a vision for my brother’s old age-not that he was going to get better-I knew that was not going to come to pass. Rather, I always hoped that he would get old enough that it wouldn’t matter. I had a fantasy that the symptoms would subside somewhat and that by the time we were in our 70s we would just be two grumpy old Jewish guys on a bench in Golden Gate Park or out in the avenues. I imagined that when we got that old the differences in our lives and what we did as adults would matter less. We would talk about my kids, baseball and the shared childhood that neither of us could ever figure out, but that I was able to leave behind.

When people ask me how I spent my teenage years, I tell them a lot of different things. Sometimes I try to describe the political and social climate of San Francisco during the late 1970s and early 1980s, or talk about spending evenings at Baker Beach, the Palace of Fine Arts, or other foggy outdoor venues where my friends and I tried to find a little time and space away from the adult world. Occasionally, I describe the shows we went to at places like the Fab Mab or the On Broadway. Too frequently, I tell stories about freezing, eating cold hot dogs and watching yet another ground ball go through Johnnie Lemaster’s legs at Candlestick Park.

When people ask me how I spent my teenage years, I tell them a lot of different things. Sometimes I try to describe the political and social climate of San Francisco during the late 1970s and early 1980s, or talk about spending evenings at Baker Beach, the Palace of Fine Arts, or other foggy outdoor venues where my friends and I tried to find a little time and space away from the adult world. Occasionally, I describe the shows we went to at places like the Fab Mab or the On Broadway. Too frequently, I tell stories about freezing, eating cold hot dogs and watching yet another ground ball go through Johnnie Lemaster’s legs at Candlestick Park.

I almost never, however, tell people the truth: I spent most of my teenage years waiting for the 43 Masonic.

Among the emails, phone calls, and notes congratulating us after my younger son, Reuben, was born was one from one of my oldest friends from San Francisco, asking if I had named him “after the pizza guy.” Reuben was named after my wife’s grandmother Ruth. But after he was born, and as we began to call him Ruby, I found myself thinking more about “the pizza guy.”

“The pizza guy” was Danny Rubinstein, known as Ruby. I had worked for him for one summer, at his restaurant Ruby’s Gourmet Pizza, fifteen years before Reuben was born. Ruby’s Gourmet Pizza was one of San Francisco’s—and perhaps America’s—first restaurants that sold pizza made from gourmet ingredients. A not-particularly-large slice piece of pizza at Ruby’s ranged from $2.35 to $3.25, a lot of money for a piece slice in 1986—even one with sun dried tomatoes, smoked salmon, pesto, or escargot.