Reflections on 3/4's of a Century

Mes Amis’

On the 27th of August I will have reached the three quarter century mark. What does it mean? Strangely it seems somewhat unreal. I do not feel the years in my mind only in my body. When I look in the mirror I see staring back at me the same face that has accompanied me all my life. I think mainly of what still needs to be accomplished.

As I work towards realizing a retrospective of my fathers body of work in art I still think of myself as naively working towards that end with the sensibility and passion of a child who’s excitement drives the optimism that has always directed my life.

I still look back on the people who have coursed through my life with great affection especially those in the theater and in the art of puppetry, both gleefully containing the sustaining elements that make life such an adventure personified by my late family members whose obsession with art drove them to such a degree of passion that in their pursuit of it they often overlooked the people that gave their life real meaning.

Understanding that, I have in my journey found great solace in the individuals that have always cared and valued me among all things . Where would i be without Alan Cook whose vast reservoir of information always delights and amazes, never failing to reach out to those who need validating as they struggle in life or his words to reminds us of what what our lives have meant in the often ephemeral life we lead in pursuing our muses. I would place the Carters in that august group of gracious friends as well.

At the same time I would be remiss in not thanking those dead and gone who have in the course of my life took an adversarial approach to my ideas, Mike Oznowitz, being a case in point. I knew him through my father from a very early age and often we were at odds with each other basically because like my father he was a control freak and felt that he should always have the last word. Something of an elitist he would pick favorites, reward them and say no to those not in line with his positive visions. Being something of a loud mouth I pushed his buttons quite regularly so that he would jump on many of my ideas maintaining that they were unworkable. He would do this with some regularity and I would blithely ignore his pronouncements and take it as a challenge to prove him wrong. He always worked as a catalyst for me spurring me on to overcome the obstacles put before me and to this day I keep a button with his picture on it above my computer to remind me not to butt my head against the wall but to find some way of going round what hurdles are put in front of one. Irrespective of his nature I could still find a degree of love for this man and would look to find ways to work together when the occasion arose, after all we shared a passion for that diminutive thing called a puppet

Since my family seems to have been blessed with longevity I expect, hopefully, to live to see another 25 years and to continue blissfully loving what it is I do and who I am.

Bruce
Finally, In the process of teaching I have met groups of individuals, to numerous to single out, who from time to time remind me of what I have meant to them and it graciously warms my heart.

It reminds me that we need to personally thank, whenever we can, those who pass through our lives if even for a moment often unaware of what they have contributed. So those who lives I have touched in some way I thank you for allowing me to contribute to yours and to those, and you know who you are, who brighten up the days with art and discourse give yourselves a pat on the back.

One Artist's Reality Chapter III, Lessons From My Mother

One Artist’s Reality
Chapter Three
Lessons from my Mother

“Josie” Chessé
1928

Fast-growing understanding of the human genome has recently made it clear that both sides are partly right. Nature endows us with inborn abilities and traits; nurture takes these genetic tendencies and molds them as we learn and mature. End of story, right? Nope. The "nature vs nurture" debate still rages on, as scientist fight over how much of who we are is shaped by genes and how much by the environment.”

Nature vs. Nurture
Are We Really Born That Way?
By Kimberly Powell

My father’s world was “Art” and he would share that with you “ad infinatum” but always on his terms. Art was his reason for living, through it he created the world as he wanted to see it and it was a world he could control. It was through his art that he dealt with a real world that frightened him. Nature endowed both he and my brother Dion with talents that allowed them to leave behind an enormous legacy of accomplishment but it was my mother’s nourishment that fueled and protected them from a world they distrusted and felt hindered their desire for recognition. Acting was a wonderful vehicle in which they could do and experience the emotional things in life which they could not come to terms with on a personal level. In life we must trust people to gain the trust of others and then their are no guarantees it will be reciprocal.

Josephine Dupree

Josephine Dupree Chessé was born in New Orleans (her family was originally from Mississippi). She came from an average dysfunctional family(alcoholic father who deserted them and a mother who was married 11 times). She never went beyond the sixth grade. The Chessé family lived down the street from her on Burgundy and early on she formed a tight bond with my fathers sisters Leslie, Vonnie and Ding. They were were so tight a group that she was all but adopted into the family where my father was at the center.

The Chessé Girls
Leslie, Josephine Dupree, Ding & Yvonne

Like my father, my mother worked all her life with her hands and she too was an artist in her own right. Having to work as soon as she was old enough, she began in her teens working with her mother at New Orleans largest department store Maison Blanche on Canal street. Maison Blanche (White House in french) was part of a a chain of department stores. It was founded in 1897 by Isidore Newman, an immigrant from Germany and had its landmark flagship store on Canal Street.

She quickly made a name for herself as a seamstress working in the drapery department and specializing in lamp shades (with interior decorators.) She was a perfectionist and highly valued for the quality of her work. She made her own clothes and served a kind of apprenticeship that left her with in demand skills. When she followed my father to San Francisco in 1924 and then to New York in 1926 she worked at Bergdorf Goodman’s on 5th Avenue, an upscale apparel store who’s founder Edwin Goodman was the first to introduce retail ready-to-wear clothing. These skills she acquired soon led to good positions at stores in each of the cities she and Ralph settled in.

When my father married her and moved back to San Francisco in 1927 (his whole family following in 1928) she worked at Gumps in their interior decorating department assisting decorators with drapes and lampshades. There she was so appreciated by her employers at Gumps that they offered to pay to have an eye (it was turned out from birth) fixed for her.

My mother was beloved by all she came in contact and her generosity was unbounded. Their first years in San Francisco were difficult and it was a struggle to keep food on the table especially when she became pregnant. In 1927 she had her first set of twins who died at birth, one, a girl, lived briefly and her death deeply disturbed her. An article in the daily newspaper credited it it to her own malnutrition. Later pregnancies led to abortions due to their impoverishment and my fathers reluctance to take responsibility for more children. He needed her to work.

When my father’s entire family followed them to San Francisco in 1928, they all lived together on Blackstone Court in the Marina off Franklin and Lombard streets. Their old house is still to be seen there and is now an historical landmark. After the arrival of his family abortions were not an option. Even after the children arrived her working was an important part of the household income while my father freelanced and began to earn a reputation as an artist and actor/ puppeteer with his puppet theaters. His sisters, brother and my mother were all a part of those adventures.

In 1929 My brother Dion was born. In 1931 with his brother Roland, my father shipped out as a bellhop on a transport ship and toured the far east. When he left he gave my mother $28 dollars and she moved in with the Interior Decorator, she worked with, at Gumps, and her husband until his return. To his credit he returned with his entire pay packet and they again set up house with his returning to working in the theater and starting his puppet theaters up again. The depression years were a struggle and more children were still not an option. A later pregnancy was terminated when I was about ten. My father told my mother he could not risk having another child as troublesome as myself. The sacrifices she made for him were considerable.

She was the glue that held our family together. In the course of her life with my father she was a supportive bread winner as she was when she followed him from New Orleans to San Francisco to New York and back to San Francisco again always supplementing what meager income he received as a freelance artist. She never demanded that he be a practical working husband. Her patience with him was unending.

Her whole life throughout their marriage was devoted to my father’s lifestyle. It wasn’t until the WPA was formed that my father realized a steady income of sorts. In 1935 she had a second set of twins and it was then that my sister and I were brought into the world. WW II improved their income. Even then my mother took care of babies, sewed, did upholstery always supplementing the family income all through our younger years, always giving my father time to devote his life to his art. She protected him from the outside commercial world he feared. His family too was an important concern for her and she was extremely important to them as well.

In 1953, at 53, through the success of his television program Brother Buzz, my father was finally able to support the family solely on his weekly income. By this time however, my sister and brother were married and I had begun college and was on my own. It ran from 1953 to 1969 and the income we received from working with him financed the college education of both my brother and myself

During these years of struggle she built a circle of devoted friends by her gentle giving and supportive nature. While serving my fathers needs she managed to maintain her own life nourishing others and being emotional cared for in return by those who loved her as unconditionally as she loved them. I received the benefit of that love even though I led the family on a merry chase with my tumultuous, contentious, behavior that sometimes knew no bounds.

I could do very little that would meet the expectations of my sister, father, brother or my teachers. They all shined as students and artists and comparisons were always made and used to prod me to follow in their shadows, an impossible task for me. The more my feelings were ignored the more I acted out and sought their attention. The need to establish my identity was greater then my need to change my behavior. My mother understood this intuitively and the years she spent with my self obsessed father made her recognize the futility of the demands I made for my share of my fathers attention.

From early on she tried to make up for the inattention my father gave my sister and I. Once we moved back to San Francisco and the house on the top of 17th street a new world was opened up to us. Because she recognized my need to physicalize things she would took us down to the Stanyan Street Cyclery and rent bikes. We would ride them behind the Emergency hospital (I was to become a regular there) in the parking lot of Kezar Stadium and the Kezar Pavilion.

It was a two wheeled, fat tired, children’s bike which at first sight I jumped on and began whizzing around the lot furiously expending my endless energy as Renée struggled to find her balance. Afterwards we would walk to Golden Gate park and play for several hours on the slides and swings next to the Merry-Go-Round and if we were lucky and mom had some change we would get a ride on it.

Golden Gate Park became my home away from home during my childhood. We had no car until I was 19 so my feet were my primary means of locomotion unless I happened to have enough for carfare. As we got older we had school bus cards and they allowed us to go all over the city. My mother took every means at her disposal to make us independent.

During the WW II we would stand in line with our ration cards for the scarce goods. To us, Fleers bubble gum was the rare item and we would pay dearly for one little piece. My mother was a bargain hunter and she would regularly take us to the downtown stores to shop and then have lunch. She followed the sales religiously.

As our dentist was in the 450 Sutter building, by the time we were 8 my sister and I could take the 33 bus, transfer to the K, L or M car and then the Cable Car up to Sutter street. If we had time we would explore all the stores and when my father was doing puppet shows at the City of Paris during Xmas we would spend a lot of time there as well and take the streetcar downtown on our own to see the shows. Our aunt Florence would sometime meet us for lunch downtown, again something we did on our own. It was different world then.

Since my father would have nothing to do with exercise or outdoor activities my mother tried to expose us to new experiences whenever possible. One summer she enrolled me the Jewish Community Center summer camp. It was there at Camp Tiyatta that I went overnight camping for the first time and slept in a sleeping bag. During the course of those weeks at the JCC on California Street we had a festival where we all took part in decorating the center. I was asked to paint a mural and told the Director I didn’t know how to do it. Her response was to ask me who my father was. When I said Ralph Chessé. She said, “ The artist?” and I replied, “Yes”. “Well then you are an artist. Get started” And so I did. That was the first time anyone told me that. I believed her.

Another thing my mother got me started on was cooking. I loved to eat and I loved to watch my mother cook and bake. She taught both my sister and I to cook and sew by the time we were 8. She always bought the Pillsberry-Bakeoff prizewinning contest recipes so when Wayne, at the local grocery store, held a baking contest, for men only, I entered it using a prize recipe that you had to cream and mix with your hands. To everyones surprise, I won the first prize which they wouldn’t give me because it was a fifth of whisky. Instead I was awarded the 2nd prize, a cigarette pencil lighter. My first acknowledgment. From then on I baked whenever I could. Popovers were my favorite and the hardest to get right. I had a real knack for it which my mother fostered and encouraged in me. It was the one thing I could compete with my sister on and win.

My mother was a great seamstress and she was always sewing something. She knew everything there was to know about fabric. A perfectionist she taught both of us the art of sewing. My sister talks about how hard she was on her, ripping out anything that wasn’t perfect. Renée was taught the “art of sewing” which was harder for me to learn because I was sloppy. She started me on darning socks with a darning egg and sewing on buttons. Skills that would serve me well through my 74 years. Well into my 20’s and 30’s I would make things to impress girls and during the 60’s I made leather purses and sold them. Like my mother I was good at using my hands. My mother taught me about patterning. By ten I was using a sewing machine.I was also able to put those skills she taught me towards costuming my puppets when got a job with the Vagabond Puppet Program in Oakland. From both my mother and father I learned how to focus on doing something well and with passion. The work ethic of both may parents was something I was able to build on.

But more than that was the trust she placed in my sister and I with respect to being able to travel around the city on our own at a very early age (7-8). It also extended to handling ourselves with respect to strangers and weirdos. We were considered old enough to handle any situation which is not the case today. For example we lived behind the Engine 40 firehouse and we knew all the fireman. When my sister was approached by one of them (a potential molester) she told him to get lost and the kids soon knew he was someone to avoid. I don’t think anyone thought it important enough to tell our parents about it since we handled the guy ourselves, something that would probably not be done today.

Living between the Castro and the Haight and within a 20 minute walk of Golden Gate Park as kids we had a multitude of people, places and things to experience and explore. Unencumbered by fear my sister and I took full advantage of that. Next to our house was a large vacant lot with a large billboard we could climb on. On top of the lot was a large fallen down apartment building with trees where it fronted Clayton street. That was our immediate playground and jungle gym as well.

I was once picked up by the police for playing there, put into a police car, and taken around the block to the front of our house and warned, in front of my mother about climbing around in that vacant building. Across from it was an apartment building that was still in tack and rented by Bertha Gardiner. She was a single exotic lady who had lived in China before the war and would ride everywhere around the city on her bicycle and every so often she invited us over for wonderful Chinese meals. It was a large building built on the hillside and as such underneath her was a large unfinished cavernous unlit basement. That too was a continuing playground for the kids in the area. In this pitch black cavern we would crawl on our hands and knees on the wooden basement framework without a floor and play spooky games for hours.

Mount Olympus 1927

Within a short walking distance up a large flight of steps was Mount Olympus or what as kids we called Statue Hill. Once reputed to the geographical center of the city, during the WW II there was an airplane spotting center there which was a object of interest to us kids. It was also a great place to fly kites in the Fall and it had a tremendous view of the city.

North East of Mt Olympus was Buena Vista Park the oldest park in San Francisco. built in 1867 (see the Wikipedia listing) at Haight and Buena Vista Avenues it was explored endlessly by us as kiids. Particularly inviting was “the Traps”. This was where bushes and shrubbery bordering on Buena Vista east that as kids we would walk across until falling into a gap which led you into a labyrinth underneath through which you could crawl along until you came upon the next opening. Then you could pop out scaring others on top of the traps and disappear once again. The problem for us was the fact that it was scratchy and sticky and when we got home we were very dirty.

Looking down upon us our house on Uranus Terrace was Twin Peaks, which aside from Golden Gate Park, gave us our largest playground. In the 40’s the Portola Drive side was for the most part unimproved with a horse stable down from where Midrcrest Way is now. There was no housing on that side of Twin Peaks blvd. You could rent a horse there and ride up the hill to the Sutro mansion.

Going up from Clayton on Twin Peaks Blvd was a rocky hill which we tried to climb and often got stuck and one of us would have to run to the fire house and have them get them down. We climbed every part of Twin Peaks and often packed a lunch. Ed Moffit the unoffical Mayor of Twin Peaks and one of those wonderful San Francisco eccentrics. had built a wood and brick house for he and his kids as well as several apartments and a woodworking sudio that has full view of Downtown SF and the East Bay. Easter Sundays he would lead a group of us up to the top of the Twin Peaks as the sun was rising and deliver a sermon complete with a scraggly band to counter the religious ceremonies on Mt. Davisdson which was followed by a brunch for free thnkers. After we got our first car in 1955, a 1936 Plymouth, and when my mechancial emergency brake went out on me Ed Moffit had me buy a replacment and showed me how to install it. Something I could not have done had he not talked me through it nor would I hae even thought of trying it had not Ed encouraged me.

In 1953 my father had rented the studio from him when he began to work on TV creating The Wonderful World of Brother Buzz on Channel 5 as part of the Captain Fortune show. Since he was builiding a show a week he needed somewhere to spread out. Once again he had a maginificent view of San Francisco to fuel his muse

And of course there was Golden Gate Park the ultimate playground for us and a chief source of entertainment along with the De Young musum, Acquarium, Arboretum, Beach Chalet and much more. Later on we went furher in our explorations topped by the Presedio and Fort Winfield Scott at Fort Point under the Golden Gate Bridge. For most of my youth it was closed and we would break in and run around inside with wild abandon. How none of us were injured there was a miracle indeed. It is now a part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area where it is used for overnights for Bay Area school groups.

My mother following her instincts would always find new experiences and places for us to visit. Swimming at Fleishhacker Pool, Sutro Baths (in its heyday), the SF Zoo, dance lessons at Arthur Murrys and ferry boat rides. When the United Nations held their first sessions at the Opera house we were there. In addition, she took us to all the major downtown hotels to see the various delegations and get autographs. I remember seeing Molotov and Mikoyan. Ibn Saud with the Saudi Arabian delegation, all as they strolled through lthe lobbies of the Mark Hopkins, Fairmont and St Francis hotels. If there was something happening like as not we were there hand in hand with my mother.

I had always listened every Saturday to the Met Opera broadcasts as a kid and was in love with opera. When at thirteen I joined the SF Boys Opera Chorus she was there along with all the mothers helping out. After my voice changed I continued that interest by being a super in their performances and in High School I was a permanent usher at the Opera House and the Curren and Geary theaters. Music, Opera and theater became a passion that never left me.

Another broadening experiece was the Spanish War Releif Parties Lawyer Vincent Hallinan would hold every year in Marin County which my family and all my extended family would attend. This was the annual "left wing" get together with many colorful personalities such as Harry Bridges, controversial head of the ILWU.

After I was retained in the 5th grade I began to put on weight so that by the time I got to High School I was about 200 lbs. My sister had her own set of friends and left at 16 to marry and moved to Pacific Grove. I had to explain it all to her friends and mine. Since I was basically a loner I had very little social life and sang in choirs to feed my need for music.. As a freshman I asked 10 girls to a dance and was turned down by each in turn. I didn’t ask anyone out again until my junior year and then she was the girl with the worst reputation in the school. I had a great time. My mother by then decided that i needed to lose weight. She herself suffered from weight problems. Every day she would pack a lite lunch, mostly tuna salads with carrot and celery sticks and when I grew 5 inches in my senior year I began to slim down and by the time I graduated I was dating with some success. I could also talk to my mother about anything at all and she with me. Often it was about my father explaining why it was so difficult to communicate with him.

My father couldn’t handle illness or any kind of traumatic incident. As I was accident prone up through grammar school I made many trips to the Emergency room the first when as a child I swallowed ant poison three times (she was to embarrased to take me the third time I did it and administered the epicac herself), two times for stitches when at four my sister hit me with my cap gun and a split my lip, a week later falling down the stairs. More stiches were require living on Uranus Terrace, when I put my head through a window, fell cutting my palm on a broken bottle and when I was about 12 I was looking over the cliff down onto 17th Street outside our house and kids began throwing rocks at me and one hit me between the eyes.

I ran home with blood streaming down my face. My father took one look at me and told me to go to my mother and then went into his room and shut the door. My mother was furious. She wanted to run after the kids that did it but my father would not stay with me. Instead she took me down to the emergency at Kezar.

I owe every thing to my mother. She was the only one who never lost hope in me, understanding in her own way that I was different from the others and had special needs, one of them being that I had to rise and fall on my own efforts and to test waters for myself. Unlike the others I too was a nurturer and the most in need of care and understanding. Her love was unconditional and always maintained a belief in my abilities to succeed.

I have always lived at an emotional level that few understood, filled with so many ideas the it was often hard to keep track of them all. She lived long enough to see me marry and succeed educationally. What I was able to give her was lots of love and affection as a child, which was not forthcomng from my dad. She saw me married to an intelligent an caring woman, Jeanne Leicester, which pleased her no end and gave her another person to share her love with. The love she had in her was for everyone. Something she lived to share with her grandchildren and expecially Matt and Damon Chessé, my brothers children. Very independent and creative they taught her a few things themselve as she endeavored to grace them with the kinds of experiences she shared with us as children. On of their more humerous encounters is desctibed here by Damon in a letter which personifies her openess:

Bruce,

To the best of my recollection,it was 1973 and Matt and I were staying at grandpaand grandmas for a couple of days .it must have been in the summertime because i'm pretty sure that it was on a weekday ,like a tuesday and grandma offered to takeus to the movies..I was 10 and Matt was 7. So we went and got the chronicle and poured over the movie listings checking every listing from Millbrae to Serramonte. We finally decided on a double feature at the Strand theater on Market street. We went back to watching the TV while grandma, who was still walking around in her slip, ironing, cooking, doing laundry and looking through her bulb catalogues,began to dress for the trip downtown.As i remember it, she had gloves, and a hat, scarf, overcoat and a large hanbag with extra bloomers in it in case she had an accident. Anyway we all took the bus down to Forest Hill station,on the back side of Twin Peaks,which was used as a location in Dirty Harry,and caught the Street cardown to Market Street. I can remember the sparks of the tracks lighting up the dark tunnel and the smell of creasote that they used to treat the pilings.the street car emerged into the glaring sunlight at Castro street and continued down town picking an ever more interesting array of kooks as it went.We got off at powell street and had lunch at the Woolworths store by the cable car turnaround. the lunch counter at Woolworths seated ike a hundred people, or at least it seemed that way.Grandma probably made us go shopping while we were there.anyway we finally made it to the theater.the double feature we had chosen was "Scream Blacula Scream" and "The Legend Of Boggy Creek".Rated R. The Strand was on Market between 7th and 8th and it was as close to Times Square as the West Coast ever got .It smelled like Piss and there were people sleeping in there.The staff smelled of piss. The girl who sold you the tickets, did so with a look of strungout disinterest. The older woman behind the concession stand, wore a wig that looked like she cleaned out the pop corn machine with it. The third balcony, there were three, was was for street hustlers and hookers who didnt want to mess with a hotel room.You could smoke in there and masturbate .Remember grandma is wearing gloves and a vail. God knows where they stored the popcorn but we settled down in our seats.The film opens with a ghetto voo doo ceremony with some flashy brother with a process calling Pam Greer a "Jive Ass Bitch!". At this point grand ma announces that shes going to take a nap. We sat there for three and a half hours.People were yelling at the screen and at each other.People came in and out of the theater looking for people yelling into the dark sitting down and watching for 10 minutes and leaving. One guy way down in the ront got very excited, raised his hand to get permission to speak and told one of the characters on the screen to "SLAP HER!" We went to the Strand on our own quite a few times over the years but theres never really anything like the first time.I loved Grandma so much and I sure do miss her.

Take care,

Damon

Finally she always told us that when her time had come she would lie down on her bed and go to sleep. She did precisely that. Before passing she had my fathers dinner ready for him and had even done her Xmas shopping months in advance. We don’t know the cause of her death other then it had to do with her heart. My father and brother asked the doctor and were told that it was something between him and his patient. They wouldn’t push the envelope which was probably why because I was not there to do it for them. There was no memorial and I think that was more for him than her. My fathers response to her death was very dramatic with many tears. My nephews who stayed with him that night said he paced the room crying and crying out “What’s going to happen to me now?”. He needn’t have worried because he was perfectly capable of doing everything for himself and always was.

My parents 50th Anniversary

Interestingly this natural love for everyone extended to our entire family. She was always there for her sister-in-laws and in the many summers we 12 cousins spent together over the years through adolescense at my grandparents in Camp Meeker on the Russian River. It was Josie who took on the major caretaking. Her love embraced us all and whereas my father was the artistic male role model my mother was the female role model, having the time to nurture us all, she showed us the value and warmth of loving.


Bruce K. Chessé
11/2/09

One Artist's Reality Chapter II

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

With each new birth we ended up with a family of 12 cousins, 10 boys and two girls. From the time I was in diapers we spent every summer together in Camp Meeker on the Russian River
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 remained
in 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

One Artist's Reality

One Artists Reality

Bruce K. Chessé
8/27/09

In this blog I will try to deal with defining ones relationship to art as I experienced it within my family. To do this I should explain that I was born into a family dedicated to art and as such was surrounded by a world of over stimulation. I knew early on that I had the soul of an artist and my early years were spent trying to find a way of expressing it.

In 1935, the year I was born there was no discussion of hyperactivity the term ADHD was not coined yet and “Dyslexia.” was not a term in common usage within educational circles

“When a person is dyslexic, there is often an unexpected difference between achievement and aptitude. However, each person with dyslexia has different strengths and weaknesses, although many have unusual talents in art, athletics, architecture, graphics, drama, music, or engineering. These special talents are often in areas that require the ability to integrate sight, spatial skills, and coordination. Often, a person with dyslexia has a problem translating language into thought (such as in listening or reading), or translating thought into language (such as in writing or speaking).”

I didn’t come to realize I was dyslexic until 1967 when I married Jeanne Leicester a special ed teacher. In the fourteen years we were married I learned a great deal about myself and through my wife I found myself launched into the field of Puppetry in Education. It was a career that allowed me to dedicate myself to putting children in touch with their creative potential and began to explain the conflicts that came up within my immediate family with respect to my finding my place in art.

What defines a creative artist? My father and brother both exhibited drawing skills at an early age and in exercising those skills proved to themselves and others that they were artists. Drawing 2-dimensionally was never a skill of mine but I was possessed by an all consuming interest in art and theater and especially by that which surrounded me everyday.

Twins, Bruce & Renée

(age 4)

As I was hyperactive I got into everything to the degree that my fathers art especially his puppets were perpetually out of bounds and had “do not touch” signs connected to them. However punishments did not prevent me from getting into them.

My brother, not so restricted, however fostered my interest by putting on private puppet shows, exposing me to art, music, reading to me, and taking me to movies and exhibits. My first memory was of being taken to the Christmas parade on Hollywood Blvd. and seeing Edger Bergen, Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd high up on a float waving to us. At four years I knew who they were through he magic of radio. I also saw my first movie “Snow White” which excited and scared me at the same time. At four years of age I found an all consuming interest in “the arts”, and my father, a kid who pushed all his buttons.

Since my father and brother had the capability to illustrate and visualize their ideas on paper they were visual artists. At the same time my father and brother were actors and at six my brother appeared in the WPA Federal Theater Project’s production of “It Can’t Happen Here.” How was I to fit into the equation when I had the ideas and will but not the means to visualize my feelings or express them intellectually. When it came to art, as opposed to my twin sister, I always colored outside the lines and had no medium to pursue. The question then becomes: How does one at a very early age find a medium to express ones creative potential? If one does, it has to come from within the environment in which you a born and must be directed or encouraged in some way.

Man creates to satisfy his curiosity and to express himself. When he or she is successful one is able to validate one’s self esteem and find a springboard on which to find trust in who we are.

Bruce
(age 6)

Through my own experiences I have come to several conclusions based on the fact that we all learn in individual ways. Visual Artists are those who have the capacity to draw or paint their ideas graphically, in a 2-dimensional format and intellectualize their efforts. Instinctual Artists are those who feel their way in art experientially and not through any overt intellectual exercise but through a creative medium of expression that addresses their individual learning curve.

In the Eskimo culture one learns through observation. Interest becomes the defining factor in learning an art form. In 1976 while working in Alaska I found that children would wander into a studio where a carver was working in soapstone (a relatively easy material to work on) and walk around watching the process. Anyone could come in an out at for any length of time and for as many days as that person’s interest would hold them there. At some point you were given a knife and some material to work on. Their was no instruction you simply began to work the material until you roughed out something that appealed to you. Interestingly soapstone carving is finished by working with it under water where you could with tools or sandpaper create a smooth finished surface. Techniques for individualizing a piece were also realized by observing and then doing. Occasionally the artist would look at your piece, ask you questions and maybe make suggestions but for the most part you were left to your own devices to create you own piece of art.

What was even more interesting was the often abstract quality of the work even that done by the youngest child. This approach is not taught it too comes from observation. Observation of things in nature, plants, animals, the sky (the Aurora Borealis) and the art that surrounds them like masks which are highly symbolic and abstract as the ideas for them spring from dreams. This is even more interesting when you consider the fact that your experiential level often dictates how concrete your reality is.

Tuntatuliak, AK 1976

In developing improvisational puppet shows it is a known fact that you improvise on your experiences in life. If you have little around you in terms of reading and little that you do which influence the broadening of your horizons your puppet situations will be highly concrete representing everyday occurrences such as getting married or falling of a bike. It has no relationship to socioeconomic levels at all. However, if music was valued in your household, music figured in your play. In the Eskimo community I found the range of design of puppets made was highly abstract irrespective of the fact that the children were not abstract thinkers. The material at hand often influenced the design. I remember one child who in making a foam puppet head rejected the eye construction examples shown him and when I visited his table and looked at his puppet I found he had carefully cut out of a magazine a picture of real eyes and glued them on his puppet. In contrast to the rough design of the head the real appearance of the flat eyes pasted on the head gave an extremely hauntingly gripping abstract quality to the puppet, especially when it was animated.

1976 Tuntatuliak
(display case)

And so you have the talented and gifted whose life in art comes easily at the same time becoming an inescapable all consuming passion, the price for which is often paid by others in neglect. And then you have those who have to work at finding their muse through trial and error often having to slog through the dismissal of others relying solely on a self-determined convictions and passion. It is my particular belief that we are all creative individuals. It simply involves finding your particular mode of expression which can be self-determined by following your passion or through the encouragement of others who see in you your love of art and can suggest paths to explore. My mother was such a person

Harvey Milk and Between Castro And The Height by Bruce K. Chessé 1/15/09

View from 26 Uranus Terrace

The day Harvey Milk and George Moscone were killed I was at the San Rafael Police Headquarters rehearsing a puppet show on substance abuse. The entire office was put on a red alert and a shutdown was put in place. Traffic over the bay bridges was halted briefly. Bill Hool the officer I was working with filled me in on what was happening. Once things were under control I left and went over to San Francisco's city hall and joined the vigil that was taking place there until late in the evening

Seeing the movie Milk brought those moments back to me in a real time. Gus Van Zant accurately caught the tenor of it by integrating real footage into the mix. His use of color too created for me an erie sense of deja vu. Sean Penn was at his best as an actor. This was, however, more than a movie about a gay activist. it was about a unique person who accomplished, within the political structure of a city long run by Irish and Italian politicians, something often thought unobtainable. He legitimized gay activism and fought for the right of any minority to live freely as themselves. Ironically he did it in a Catholic neighborhood long a conservative stronghold in San Francisco. In doing so he set a precedent and changed the thinking of a country that long ignored the right of a gay person to live openly.

Harvey Milk was an ordinary person, unheroic in one sense, but driven by the need to believe that anything is possible if you have the will and determination to try and make it happen. It took six to seven years for him to prove that he was right in his belief and to convince others to believe in his ideas as well and only ten months to put those ideas into practice. In doing so he left us a lasting legacy. It is all in the doing. The Whites of this world spend all their lives looking for entitlements without the passion to challenge and make things happen. Harvey Milk transcended sexual preference issues by giving them acceptance politically. I was a minor part of that history.

Having grown up between the Haight and the Castro this movie brought back the wonder of those years and a reminder of the time I spent having always to prove myself and others what I was capable of.

Born in San Francisco in 1935 I spent my early years growing up between the Castro and the Haight in 1938 my father, Ralph Chessé, artist, puppeteer, actor and then managing director of the Federal Theater's California Marionette Theater Project was transferred from Los Angeles to present his marionette version of Pinocchio at the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition and Worlds Fair on Treasure Island. We rented a Victorian styled house at 26 Uranus Terrace at the top of 17th Street

26 Uranus Terrace

1949 Serograph by Ralph Chessé

From his 2nd floor art studio we could overlook all of downtown San Francisco and on a clear day see Berkeley and the Oakland Hills.

Seventeenth Street runs east from Stanyan Street in the Cole Valley neighborhood up a steep hill to Clayton (north of 17th and Clayton lay the Haight-Ashbury) then straight down through the Castro, on past Mission, to the foot of Potrero Hill ending at the Embarcadero.

On the NE corner of 17th and Clayton there is a stairway that leads up to Mt Olympus on Ashbury Heights at the end of Upper Terrace. This is the geographical center of San Francisco. It was also called Statue Hill and from its heights you have a 360 degree view of San Francisco.

We were half way between the Haight and the Castro neighborhoods and for 17 years this was to be the social center of my universe, except for a brief stint in the US Army in 1956, until 1969 when I married for a 2nd time and moved to the East Bay.

During that time I experienced, the Beat and Hippie generations, college riots at SF State and the University of California, the emergence of the Black Power Movement, the Viet Nam War protests, Ronald Reagan, the deaths of John and Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King and finally the death of Harvey Milk. I saw my first Castro Halloween parade in 1939 long before the Gay movement picked up and continued the tradition started by Cliff (Hilario DeBaca) at Cliff's Variety store.

My mother usually made our costumes for my sister Renée and I and we would walk down 17th, with it's two and three storied Victorians on each side of the street, alternating with single family stucco dwellings, railroad flats, duplexes and some larger apartment houses to Castro and Market streets. That first year my brother Dion was dressed as Captain Midnight. As always the streets were crowded with people. In subsequent years we would attend parades in the Haight as well. Castro however was our favorite.

The Variety store was central headquarters for the parade. Cliff walked with a limp and always dressed in black and sometimes in motorcycle leathers. His store windows were filled with mechanical displays of Halloween Ghosts, Goblins and Witches that moved and cackled ad infinitum.

In addition, Cliff's was always a primary source for everything and the place for kids to go for school supplies, balsa wood glider planes and penny candies. He and his wife knew everyone in the neighborhood. Both the Haight and the Castro were traditional Catholic neighborhoods represented by their individual parishes. Most Holy Redeemer in the Castro and St. Agnes on Ashbury in the Haight.

Their parishes ran the neighborhoods. As I remember most of the other churches were found outside of the Castro and the Haight. There were no middle schools in our districts. Elementary schools went from Kindergarten to the 6th or 8th grades. Most Catholic High Schools were found in the Richmond near USF and Geary Streets. Mission HIgh was across from Mission Delores on 18th in the Mission while Polytechnic and Lowell drew from the Haight Ashbury. Poly High was for blue collars and Lowell always was and still is the elite school which drew students from all over SF if they had the grades. In addition. Haight Street was a color line for blacks who only lived north of Haight street. For a while covenants were required on real estate south of Haight. This changed during the late 50's.

A lot of police and fireman lived in the neighborhoods as well as city employes who were for the most part good Irish catholics. Each district had a movie theater and the Haight had the public Library which was heavily used especially on Saturday. The Castro Theater was the largest and the most ornate movie theater their and had a balcony. However, it drew patrons from the Mission barrios. The 40's was the time of the Zoot suitors and what the whites called Pachukos. They ruled the balcony of the Castro and they could be very rough, so my brother and I tended to favor the Haight. The Haight theater too always had a cartoon, short subject and a raffle on Saturdays as well as a main feature.

Over the years I had a number of paper routes, delivering the San Francisco News, The Call Bulletin, the Examiner, the Chronicle and the Shopping News. These routes took me into the Haight, Cole Valley, Twin Peaks, and the Castro. In those days we had to collect the money as well as deliver the papers and this brought me in personal contact with many of the city personalities who lived in these neighborhoods.

Their was a great diversity to be found there. Customers in Twin Peaks included Mayor Elmer Robinson, Tort Lawyer Melvin Belli, Gus Farber, who owned Farber Jewelers for whom I also helped deliver Buena Vista Winery wines, and Ed Moffit, cabinet maker and unofficial Mayor of Twin Peaks who every Easter held an alternative sunrise service on Twin Peaks in in competition with Mount Davidson. Ruth Heller, children's book author, illustrator, and wife of Henry Heller rounded out this illustrious grouping.

The Cole Valleys most famous resident was Harry Bridges, labor leader and head of the ILWU, Louis Goldblatt, the ILWU International Secretary-Treasurer, and Dave Jenkins head of the California Labor School whose daughter Becky Jenkins was a classmate of mine at Grattan Elementary. The DeDomenicos of Rice-a-Roni fame lived in Ashbury Heights as well

Scattered around were artists and colleagues of my father like the Raymond Puccinelli and his sister and others. Down the block from me a tall skinny kid would walk to the bus stop every day with his music case in hand. On a couple of occasions on a summer evening he even joined us in playing "Kick the Can" with the other kids in the neighborhood and we would see him playing in the Poly High marching band at football and basketball games. In later years, in going to see Dave Brubeck at the Blackhawk nightclub I made the realization that the same kid was Paul Desmond.

There were only three public grammar schools to draw from in these neighborhoods, Twin Peaks, Grattan and Buena Vista Elementary the only school to offer wood shop and home economics classes near Masonic and Haight streets. My brother, sister and I went to all three in the 40'd. Because the community was small we all knew each other and my mother who did baby-sitting on the side drew from these school communities for jobs and my sister and me inherited many of the baby-sitting chores from those families we knew.

Growing up, the Castro and the Haight were residential family communities. In Later years many of the families moved to suburbs in Marin County or down to the Peninsula in San Mateo and Santa Clara counties.

In the 50's and 60's those families children often returned to go to San Francisco State College which was located in the Lower Haight at Herman and Buchanan and later at 19th and Holloway. I went there in 1953 and was part of the transition to the new Merced campus. Finding cheap housing in the Haight carried over to the 60's which gave birth to the San Francisco Rock and Roll music scene and the Hippie movement. My cousins Rodney and Peter Albin ran a boarding house owned by my Uncle Henry at 1090 Page street which gave birth to the first concerts from which evolved Janus Joplin Big Brother and the Holding Company (Peter Albin was the Bass player), the Grateful Dead and the Jefferson Airplane. This movement changed these neighborhoods forever.

Further Reflections

My father was a part of the San Francisco Bohemian Artist Community in the 20's and 30's. My subsequent involvement vis a vis the arts beginning at 12 in 1948 which encompassed singing at the Opera House with the San Francisco Boys Opera Chorus during the Golden age of Opera (1948-49) and involvement in art, theater, films and television in San Francisco ending in the 80's, gave me great insight into the development of Gay activism as personified by Harvey Milk. The Bohemian artists of the 20's & 30's were all inclusive in terms of sexual preference. The Bohemian Club has a long history of giving employment and access to talented homosexuals as did the art movements that flourished in North Beach. The arts have always been a unifying element throughout history. It has always drawn people together as a community

North Beach and the Barbary Coast in San Francisco historically was a harbinger of open sexuality. This carried on well into the 20's and 30's. San Francisco has always supported eccentricities, sexual of otherwise. We have only to look at Emperor Norton and how he was an accepted part of the community and cared for lovingly although he was mad as a hatter.

North Beach in the 30's was the center of large literary movement led by James Broughton an outspoken gay activist, poet and and early experimental filmmaker coming to fruition in San Francisco's Beat Scene, His numerous friends included a great cross section of gays and straights that included Stan Brakhage, Joyce Lancaster, Adrian Wilson, Alan Watts, Michael McClure, Susan Hart and Pauline Kael (by whom he produced three children) Anna Halprin, Imogen Cunningham. and Kermit Sheets who ran the San Francisco Playhouse at Beach and Hyde Streets. It too was a center for Gay Activism personified by James Broughton.

During the Beat Generation their were openly popular gay bars and restaurants in North Beach such as Finocchios,12 Adler Place, The Paper Doll and the Black Cat Cafe who Ginsberg described as the greatest gay bar in America. In that period gays, lesbian and heterosexuals in north Beach were, part of an integrated cultural arts movement centered there and who were left undisturbed by the city fathers.

My family and I were associated with The Playhouse all through the 60's. James Broughton was an important part of that association and was a major contributor to the Gay movement until 1979 when he set about traveling with Joel Silver his then lover. in 1980 he moved to Port Townsend in Washington. I saw and met with him again shortly before he died in 1989. In one sense James cultivated the ground that led to a rebirth of the Castro giving a platform for the ideas of Harvey Milk. Interestingly James lived to see his work and Gay Activism in San Francisco win the national recognition and respect it should have always had in his lifetime.

Theater and the arts flourished in the 50’s and 60’s especially in North Beach where ones sexuality was not a questionable point demonstrating, as we artists have always known, that it is a universal world we live in to which everyone can contribute and live together. In addition, along with family members my stay in the neighborhoods gave me a grounding in the world of art which has sustained me thoughout my life.