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| San Francisco Examiner, 21-November-1924 |
"Rediscovering San Francisco" was a series of articles about the old days in San Francisco. Idwal Jones was the writer. George Canning published the ironic poem "The Friend of Humanity and the Knife Grinder" in 1797. Dennis Kearney drew great crowds with anti-Chinese oratory. Blind Chris Buckley, was a powerful Democratic party political boss.
JERRY THE OYSTER-OPENER
This is the first of a series of articles devoted to rediscovering San Francisco. Others will follow.
NOT any more than the knife-grinder in Canning's poem had old Jerry "a tale to tell, sir."
For seventy years he had lived in the thick of history as it was unrolled along Kearny, Montgomery and Clay streets. He saw it all from the shop window where he sat opening oysters.
Jerry's one delusion was that he was Irish.
He was born at sea, and the captain had forgotten to put down the latitude and date.
Anyway, his father, Joe Mallorca, a Portuguese got a job as newsboy at Noisy Carrier's, 14 Long Wharf. This jetty stuck out into the bay from Montgomery street and is now all built over.
As Jerry Mullarkey, he became a newsboy at the tender age of six. He peddled the "Alta California" at the docks. This paper was nearly as big as a door and had daily and weekly editions. He had to stand on a soap box and yell at the top of his voice to make sales.
This conspicuous position brought him in three dollars a day, but the gains were offset by too many black eyes and trouncings from his rivals.
Then he got a job helping in the kitchen of the Rassette House, at the corner of Bush and Sansome. For years he developed a muscular wrist opening tin cans and paving the way for his career.
The most important date in Jerry's history was 1872. John Moraghan, who ran a fish and game house, conceived the idea of planting oysters.
Hitherto the delicacy had been imported from Massachusetts in cans. True, the enormously wealthy used to have the bivalves shipped them from 'round the Horn and blanched not at paying two dollars apiece for them.
Moraghan drove with a champagne basket full of oysters, to Millbrae, and planted them in the bay. They sprouted, fattened and multiplied. In a few years the yield was 82,000 oysters a week. San Francisco went oyster-mad.
In 1883 the yield was 2,000,000 a week.
Jerry went to work for the great Moraghan in the middle seventies. His pay was eight dollars per diem. When he first began at the Rassette House he got recompensed in doubloons, rupees, English crowns, pesos -- whatever the boss cook had at hand.
Thenceforth he achieved fame as the fastest oyster-opener in San Francisco.
Everybody used to come to Maraghan's. Jerry used to swear he once opened five bushels of oysters in eight hours. Doubtless this is pure braggadocio.
In the late sixties he bought a stool, a high one with brass legs -- a throne, no less -- and he did his work by the open window, to the admiration of the populace.
Doane's, at the old California Market, where the present market stands, was another great oyster emporium, but Jerry refused an offer to go there because the windows were at the back.
After that nothing much happened. In 1877 he saw Dennis Kearney, the sand-lot orator, march with his army up Clay street to terrorize Chinatown. That year Kearney made a great demonstration against the millionaires on Nob Hill. Oysters rose in price steadily into the middle eighties, then slowly declined.
In 1884 Jerry opened a shop of his own on Montgomery street at the corner of Sacramento. Here he saw more figures through the window. There was Boss Buckley, who drove by every morning in a barouche. In 1894 the Midwinter Fair was held in Golden Gate Park, and he took two hours off to see it. The next holiday was in 1896, when the Ferry building was opened with great ceremony. In 1899 and 1900 there was plenty of trouble in the Philippines, according to the newsboys, but it didn't interest him at all. But in 1901, moved by a vague, patriotic impulse, he went to the Union Iron Works Dock to see McKinley launch the Ohio -- quite a fine boat.
In 1906 the fire chased him out of the shop. He encamped in Portsmouth Square for two weeks.
His especial griefs were that he had lost the oyster knife he had used for forty years, and also his dog, which he suspected two old Chinese refugees of having killed and eaten. that he had lost all didn't concern him very much.
After things were cleared up, ten years ago, he found his powers failing. He got his wages regularly, and for the last five years, despite a cataract in his eye, opened two bushels of oysters daily.
Then came prohibition, which somehow annoyed him more than wars and fire.
Oysters had fallen from their high estate. They used to be sent out to fine houses in hampers like game from Marin county and ducks and venison. Latterly they got toted about in bottles.
He brooded over the bottles. Latterly, airplanes had rumbled overhear. But even with two pairs of glasses on his nose, Jerry couldn't see them. Opening oysters was the main thing, and in 1923 he laid down his knife to die, not without much regret.
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