How to Wash a Cat

“San Francisco has always been a beacon for second, third, and fourth-chancers.” That’s what my uncle Oscar used to say. “There’s nothing here to hold you back. You can do—or become—whatever or whoever you want.” Oscar owned a small antique shop called the Green Vase, here, in San Francisco. His specialty was Gold Rush history. He’d acquired an extensive collection of artifacts from that time period, mostly due to his network of contacts in the construction industry. You see, after the discovery of gold back in the spring of 1848, hordes of gold-seeking masses crammed themselves onto every ship heading towards San Francisco. As soon as the city was in sight, passengers and sailors alike jumped off and ran for the Sierra gold fields. There was no one left to unload the cargo, much less sail the ships on to their next destination.As the rapidly expanding city crawled out into the bay on a foundation of hastily constructed landfill, many of these rotting and abandoned ships were sunk in their moorings, drifting down into a man-made sediment of ship hulls, sand scraped off of nearby dunes, and anything else the residents of this growing shoreline wished to get rid of.Downtown San Francisco is once again experiencing a building boom. As each new high-rise office building sinks its roots down into this landfill debris, many long-discarded items from the Gold Rush Era are being disgorged. Most of these relics were tossed into the mire as unwanted trash, but—every now and then—an item of far greater historical significance is uncovered. Thanks to his construction industry contacts, Oscar was always the first on the scene.I recently inherited the Green Vase after Oscar’s sudden death from an apparent stroke. As I began to sift through the contents of his store, I couldn’t shake my suspicions about Oscar’s death—and that it might be related to something he unearthed about the last Gold Rush legend he’d been researching.It wasn’t long before I realized that there was a lot I didn’t know about my Uncle Oscar.Danger can sneak up on you, especially when you’re not looking for it. Sometimes, it helps to know How to Wash a Cat.