Edward Vincent Surr

In my photo, Grandpa stands in a wool overcoat and a fine fedora on our Southern California driveway. He wears a handsome full, white mustache with a grin underneath. A large white duck I’d won at the Orange Show stands behind him, its beak open in a raucous squawk. The duck and the man were on cordial terms, but then everybody was on cordial terms with Grandpa.

Grandpa was born in England; he moved to San Diego with his family in his late teens. Great Grandfather’s family paid Great Grandfather to live outside England after he went bankrupt. Bankruptcy was not respectable in those days.

Grandpa wrote much of his own life story in an autobiography called Part of My Life. Grandpa wrote often and lots. He wrote poetry for the San Francisco Chronicle; he wrote political treatises; he wrote many letters to various editors; he wrote charming letters to his children, sisters, brothers, and grandchildren.

Grandpa was a Socialist   He was pleased when he lost the election for Judge of Alameda County, because although he ran on the Socialist ticket, 5,000 people voted for him.  I used to envy my cousins Justus, Jeremy and Gaea who lived in the apartment downstairs; they huddled for hours on the stairs, eavesdropping on Grandpa while he conversed with all the great Socialists of his age. Justus, Jeremy and Gaea became politically canny.

After working as a bootblack in the Hotel Del Coronado, a cowboy, a rancher, a travelling hardware salesman, and a clerk in a lawyer’s office, He found his vocation in the law. His decision was, no doubt, helped by the fact that firm’s principal told him “Surr, You’ll never be a lawyer!”

Grandpa made an interesting if spotty living defending poor people accused of crimes.  He helped a Mormon family sue the undertaker who stuffed their son’s corpse with Hearst newspapers, ensuring the son an eternity of intimate proximity to yellow journalism.  

Grandpa became stone deaf, which made courtroom work difficult, although he grew adept at lip reading. He then hired out to research for other lawyers. Grandpa irritated Grannie because he thought it rude to send his clients bills. Occasionally a client would pay him anyway. Once the unbilled fee was a sizeable one. Grandpa decided to buy a Galapagos Island for sale at the time, until an English friend persuaded him to invest in a device that lit small lights on empty theater seats. The Surr children never got to live on the Galapagos Island, because the theatre seat device failed to give Grandpa any return on his investment.

Grandpa owned a large, slightly run down house on Berkeley’s Panoramic Way. The house was a kid’s dream. Besides three other apartments full of interesting people, it held dandy features, like a thousand stairs to the street, the dumbwaiter (an elevator for us) and the milkman’s box. This inside/outside box held the empty bottles for the milkman to remove and kept the morning’s fresh cream shaded. The box also held secret codes and other hidden things for us. 

Off the living room was Grandpa’s sleeping porch with a view of the Bay Bridge and San Francisco. Grandpa’s chair was a Victorian armchair, covered in a gray plaid wool, which had a beanbag ashtray on its arm. Grandpa was a messy smoker, and ashes were liberally scattered around the right side of the chair.

Grandpa loved the Berkeley hills and all who lived there. A large and beautifully colored book of western snakes was often open on the table beside his chair. When Daddy suffered Bright’s disease as a boy, and could not walk for several years, Grandpa carried him all around the Berkeley hills, pointing out the exciting wildlife and plant life. This gave my father his enduring love of the real world, which Father then gave his own children.

Grandpa rode to his law office by train across the lower Bay Bridge to San Francisco. Several times he took me with him into the city. He would park me in the office law library with a large stack of plain paper and various writing instruments. This would keep me very happy for long periods. 

By mutual agreement, when I grew bored with drawing and writing, and after warning the secretary of my intention, I was allowed to explore San Francisco. Grandpa was well known in the city and many eyes looked out for me. My favorite place to go was Chinatown. There I would sometimes buy a paper fan or a small ceramic ornament imprinted “Made in Japan”  I’d always go back to the office around lunch time, and often was taken back to Chinatown to a restaurant lunch.

At the end of Grandpa’s day, we took streetcars and the train back to Berkeley. Grandpa would stop at a bakery on the way home, and get small bags of cookies. When he reached home, he’d ask any present children “Were you good children today?” On our assurances that we had been, he would solemnly hand each child a small bag saying, “Discipline is a system of punishments and rewards.”  I don’t remember Grandpa doling out any punishments.