Ah, no, Art! If San Francisco were utterly leveled by simultaneous fire, quake, blight, and blast, and I were empowered to save but one building, it would have to be a bakery! I have lived in New Orleans, where French bread is a staple, and in New York, where the Italian bread is nonpareil. But there's nothing like San Francisco's sourdough bread. Whenever I flew back to Louisiana, I had to carry a loaf or face my mother's wrath. It was California where I first had raw green peas in a salad; likewise broccoli. These are now common in salads across the land. I had my first Dungeness crab there, and zucchini cake, and a host of Oriental and Mexican vegetables that I miss sorely here in the Southeast. And Martinelli's sparkling apple cider. And squid, and abalone. At Pismo Beach, I had a sampler plate of fried clams of four or five species, including the famous Pismo clam (Tivela stultorum). The jackknife clams were the tastiest, by the way. Californians have a greater variety of good, fresh food than anyone else in the U.S., because so many specialty crops are grown there. There's a climatic zone for everything, and all the different ethnic groups brought their own crops. Even a student could afford to buy five kinds of lettuce for a salad, and the variety of fruit and berries in June was phenomenal. <<SIGH>> Have a nice weekend, everybody. Andrew K. Rindsberg Geological Survey of Alabama