In his memoir, The Egg Man’s
Son, retired San Francisco Deputy Police Chief Kevin Mullen relates what it
was like growing up Irish in World War Two San Francisco, amid sensational
reports that motorists were being shot on the
Golden Gate Bridge
for “signaling with their headlights to Japanese submarines.” And when, to the
childish imagination of Kevin and his friends, the German lady on
Collingwood Street harbored wanted Nazis in her
apartment house at the top of the hill. He describes coming of age in the
working-class atmosphere of pre-1960s
San Francisco
and participating in the tail end of the saloon culture that had previously
predominated in the “city that was.” He was member of the
San Francisco police department during the great changes
that rocked the city—and the nation—in the “60s” and beyond. He offers one
insider’s view of that most turbulent era, revealing insights and information
about the contentious issues of those days which cannot be found among the
stories of those who made the “revolution.”