One Artist’s Reality
II
My mother always told the story of how my twin sister at 4 would pull our cribs together and point her finger at me and saying “Bad Boy, Bad Boy.” My sister throughout her life has always tried to reform me to no avail. My imagination was something she never understood and yet it has always been at the center of my universe.
In 1940 my mother took all the children to New Orleans to meet her side of the family. It was there that I saw and experienced lighting for the first time as well as "Jim Crow". Being a hyper individual, I always ran to the back of the bus to look out the window. It was always a source of aggravation to the bus driver. My sister felt it attracted unnecessary attention but much delighted the black people relegated to the back whose company I enjoyed. My mother always told the driver that she had no control over me and let me enjoy myself at the rear of the bus. The weather there terrified me. I was overwhelmed by the heat and the thunder an lightning storms sent me scurrying under the bed.
When we returned to San Francisco it was time for us to start kindergarten. We went to Twin Peaks elementary and my mother would walk us to school every day by way of Clayton street where the 33 trolley bus ran from Stanyan past Lower Market. The bus was powered by overhead wires and the trolley poles would often come off the wires creating a shower of sparks and electric flashes. My imaginative fear was that, like lightning, the electricity sparking from the bus would flash down and electrocute me. Walking to school was terrifying to me. When this happened I would immediately refuse to keep going to school and demanded to be taken home much to my sister’s disgust.
Neither my mother or my sister understood my fear and as a five year old I could not explain what I was afraid of. My first day in kindergarten was also a disaster and I cried most of the day as my sisters disgust grew. I remember one particular instance which really defined the relationship we have had all our lives.
Behind our house on the corner of Carmel and Twin Peaks Blvd. was the Twin Peaks Grocery. The owners Mr. & Mrs. Jones were childless and very friendly. One day we were invited to their apartment on Clayton for snacks. They lived there with two Siamese cats and a view that overlooked the the East Bay. They had a long couch set against a large bay window and several large stuffed chairs that the cats would leap from, chasing each other all over the room sometimes running across the window sill. As we sat there drinking lemonade and talking I watched these cats intently for some time. I was fascinated by their wild movement. At one point I asked the Jones if they realized why the cats were so wild . Not waiting for an answer I launched into a long explanation telling them how their were directly related to the wild black panther. I went on in some detail making it up as I my imagination went into full gear. After awhile Renée and I excused ourselves and left. As soon as we go out the door my sister began to berate me for lying to them about the cats. I had totally embarrassed her. My flights of fancy meant nothing to her and was something she wouldn’t tolerate. To her I was not coloring inside the lines
As we continued in school her constants efforts to control and correct me disturbed our teachers. the last straw for my sister was in the third grade when I was caught fighting on the playground and trying to bang someones head on the asphalt. For this offense I was punished and put back in the 1st grade. The was totally humiliating to my sister and even more so to me. My sister was beside herself and bugged me so much that the school and my mother decided to send her to another school. Before this happened I came down with pneumonia and was confined to bed at home for about four weeks.
During that time, at home, nothing was said about school and I didn’t know if I was going to go back to the 1st grade after I got better. When I finally returned to school my sister had been transferred to Grattan Elementary in the Cole Valley. Only then I was placed back in my proper class until I too was transferred to Grattan but not in the same class as my sister. At no time did I have any say in what was decided.
Although not a good student I read voraciously. and anything in the arts held my attention My brother fueled this interest by taking me to the library every Saturday, suggesting books to read and then off to the movie matinee at the Haight street theater. On Sunday he would take me to the Palace of the Legion of Honor in Lincoln Park near Sea Cliff in the Richmond district. I was also taken to any plays that my father or brother appeared in
However, I was always subject to temper tantrums and gave my mother difficulties when things wouldn’t go my way. My father considered me incorrigible and a continual embarrassment to him. However, when I wasn’t hyperactively causing trouble I was a very pleasant kid. I loved people, my curiosity was easily aroused and I had an acute sense of humor. However I resented people telling what I was or wasn’t capable of, my sister being the chief critic when it came to my deportment. In the fourth grade I was unnecessarily slapped across the face by a substitute teacher who went on to terrorize the entire class and at recess I was delegated by other classmates to tell the principal, which I did and got the teacher fired. I was not afraid to speak up for myself
In the 5th grade my teacher Mrs. Levy felt I was not working up to my potential and convinced my mother that I should be retained so once again I was to be separated form my sister only to be punished again for being who I was. It was at this point that I established a pattern that I was to follow the rest of my life. Don’t count on others to know what is best for you.
My response to the retention was a simple one. I told them to go ahead and flunk me. I knew I was not stupid so I said “go ahead, I don’t care, keep me back. I’ll just graduate from high school in 3 and 1/2 years in spite of you.” Which I did on a “C” average by going to summer school every summer. Another lesson I learned was the power of language. Because of my dyslexia I was never very good at writing in school but I was very good at oral presentations and I found that I could use the power of oral persuasion to get what I wanted. I also found that I could wear my father and brother down with words. I was a good talker and could keep them off balance combined with aggressive energy
In some things I knew no fear. I also had an acute sense of fair play and always reacted to any kind of prejudice. My father and brother were fearful people and total conformists when it came to the status quo.
I could never count on them to understand what it was I needed. My mother, I felt, was the only one who understood my frustration with them and their social view of life. When she agreed with Mrs. Levy I found myself truly alone and was convinced that the only one I could depend on was myself. I was a loner and from that point on when someone said I couldn’t do something I would say okay and look for a way to prove them wrong by finding the means to accomplish my objectives.
When they did a musical at school I recognized that the song I would have to sing was to hard for me so I asked if I could sing another song instead, which got me my first part in a play. My father, true to his nature, never came to see it. When at 12 I wanted to audition for the San Francisco Boys Opera Chorus and was told by the music specialist that I wasn’t good enough. I simply ignored her opinion and went to the open auditions on my own and was accepted.
Singing in the Chorus gave me a sense of belonging and proved to myself that I was capable of making my own decisions. I was finally an artist and one on my own terms. It was this combativeness and my charming individuality that became my sole means of survival. I found that I could with a little guile be a very persuasive individual. This combined with my father’s need for puppeteers he didn’t have to pay finally convinced him to let me work in the department store puppet shows he did for The City of Paris and The Emporium in downtown San Francisco. This along with my membership in the SF Boys Opera Chorus at 13 I had finally found the road to my muse.
So far I have dealt with dysfunction in my family personally. However, much of my feelings of neglect were offset by the existence of my extended family of grandparents and my father’s siblings families which consisted of three sisters and a brother.
Camp Meeker
at the home of my grandparents, all the while bonding in a way that
continues today.My father was the role model for all these cousins
and each in their own way were filled with a creative bent that has remainedin the family even through the later generations. My third chapter will deal with that and discuss also how the revelation of our Creole heritage many years later came to explain the family peculiarities as well our tight sense of family which provided a great solidarity reflecting much love and affection
