I first saw the Bridge when our family visited Aunt Ruth circa 1937 - plus or minus. Aunt Ruth knew all about our life on an isolated apple farm near Santa Cruz where the history books in our one room school did not reach much beyond the Assyrians. She drove me and my siblings to places like Golden Gate Park and the museums. Once we were taken to some point where we could see the Bay Bridge still under coanstruction. There was not yet any deck or roadway. The cables supported some sort of road like surface for workers and equipment. I thought that was the bridge and that cars would drive up and up to the top of each tower and then speed down and up to the next.
Back home at Fruitvale Elementary, the teacher asked me to draw a picture of the bridge. She always allowed me to draw on the black board in the back of the room when my lessons were complete. So, with chalk and eraser, I made this 8 foot wide drawing which covered the board. To be sure that she understood, my picture included autos driving up and down from tower to tower. As the local authority on the subject, I was asked many times to draw this.
When we visited Aunt Ruth again in 1939, she took us to the Fair at Treasure Island. While we drove across town toward the now completed bridge, I became puzzled. No cars on the cables? And there was now a flat highway with two way traffic. When I discovered that the 36 inch cables that I had read about were not the verticle ones, I was even more at a loss.
We spent a whole day at the fair. Lots of amazing sights, food and snacks. One large exhibit really impressed me. It was all about how the world would look way out in 1965 AD!
Later, back on the ranch, I heard a lot about Fair In Forty. I think that an extra year was added. I also discovered that there was a baseball park in the fair where naked ladies were playing baseball and you could buy a ticket and go peek through a knot hole in the high fence. Alas, we never returned to the Fair in Forty, and Aunt Ruth would never have taken us out to the ball game.