Meriam Nagel

Transcript

Transcript

Charlie Hawkins:             00:00:00             This is the 9th of November 1972, and we're here at the home of Ms. Meriam Nagel on Cascade Drive in Mill Valley, California. And we're about to talk to Ms. Nagel about her life in and around Fort Point. Ms. Nagel?

Meriam Nagel:  00:00:20             Well, it was a nice place to grow up in. I'll tell you that.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:00:22             Now, we don't want to put you on the spot, but do you want to tell us what year you were born?

Meriam Nagel:  00:00:28             Yes, 1906.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:00:28             You were born-

Meriam Nagel:  00:00:34             On April the 28th, 1906.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:00:34             And you were born-

Meriam Nagel:  00:00:35             That was 10 days after the earthquake.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:00:36             You were born 10 days after the earthquake.

Meriam Nagel:  00:00:38             On the 28th.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:00:43             And I understand now, you were born in one of the houses that used to be behind the Fort?

Meriam Nagel:  00:00:49             On the hill, the one that was closest to the Fort.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:00:54             How many houses were there?

Meriam Nagel:  00:00:55             Two on the top of the hill. And then later in 19 seven, the one that was on the roadside was built. And that was demolished in what? 19...

Charlie Hawkins:             00:01:06             I think about 1963.

Meriam Nagel:  00:01:08             1963 someplace around there. And then two generations of the family were born there, and my mother was born in the original home, which was further up the hill, almost on the location of the old Fort San Joaquin. And that was a prefab house that was brought around the horn. And as I remember them telling, that thinking that they may have or might have some windy days and nights, the house was secured by cables that were run down into the cliff.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:01:51             Now did you say this house was brought in?

Meriam Nagel:  00:01:54             It was brought in around the horn, and it was a duplex.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:01:58             Now can you tell us about why your family was living in this house or the houses?

Meriam Nagel:  00:02:06             Well, that house, the duplex was the original lighthouse dwelling for the station.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:02:15             All right. So who was operating the lighthouse now?

Meriam Nagel:  00:02:19             Well, my grandfather had come to take over and I don't know the man's name that he replaced.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:02:28             Pardon me. And your grandfather's name was...

Meriam Nagel:  00:02:31             James Rankin.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:02:33             And he was there for quite a while, if I recall.

Meriam Nagel:  00:02:36             He was there from 1878 until March of 1919.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:02:41             And previous to that, had he been-

Meriam Nagel:  00:02:44             He was at the East Brother Light over in the East Bay there. And then prior to that he was aboard the USS Hassler Coast Geodetic Survey, making a survey of the West Coast.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:03:00             I guess for the record, I should tell who I am. I'm Charlie Hawkins, park technician for the Fort Point National Historic site, and a longtime friend of Ms. Nagel. Ms. Nagel, where did you go to school when you were living there?

Meriam Nagel:  00:03:15             I didn't go to school.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:03:18             You didn't go to school? How'd you get by with that?

Meriam Nagel:  00:03:20             Well, I'm making a mistake there. I did go for one year, but I did not live with the family at Fort Point. I lived with my other grandparents up at Arguello Boulevard Gate in the Presidio, and I went to the Madison School right down the hill.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:03:39             So you did go to school?

Meriam Nagel:  00:03:40             I did go to school. Then I went to schools in the country near the stations where my father was employed with the Associated Oil Company, various pumping stations.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:03:54             Now, when you lived in the houses there or house, your grandfather then was the lighthouse keeper. And can you recall about the condition of the light and some of the things on top of the building, if we had cannon in the Fort at that time. And can you tell us about some of the things around the Fort?

Meriam Nagel:  00:04:13             There was guns on top of the Fort. They had not been removed. And they were taken down sometime between, well I'll say I'm remembering possibly from 1910 on, between 1910 and World War I. And my understanding is that the guns were sold for salvage to some man. I think they said his name was White, and he carted the guns down to the what is now Crissy Field. And there was a little crevice in the hillside there, and he stood the guns up in there and filled them with dynamite or what have you, and blasted them apart and then took the pieces off to sell.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:05:11             Did you actually see him move any guns or-

Meriam Nagel:  00:05:13             No, this was, I was too young then to see that, too.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:05:18             Were there any soldiers in and around the Fort at that time?

Meriam Nagel:  00:05:23             You mean stationed in the Fort?

Charlie Hawkins:             00:05:24             Yes.

Meriam Nagel:  00:05:26             Not in my, the time that I can remember, which would be, as I say, from 1910 on. I think the last men were there in 1898 when they had that service for the ship going out to Manila.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:05:46             Now what was this now, this service-

Meriam Nagel:  00:05:46             The Pekin.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:05:46             Can you tell us about that?

Meriam Nagel:  00:05:48             Well, they had a big ceremony there and people came from all over San Francisco. Fort was covered with people watching the ship go out. And the-

Charlie Hawkins:             00:06:01             This was the transport, United States Army-

Meriam Nagel:  00:06:04             Transport, well, I guess you'd call it USS then, City of Pekin. And that was the last time that the guns were used on the Fourth, and they were used as a salute.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:06:19             Now where was the ship headed?

Meriam Nagel:  00:06:20             Headed to Manila.

David Ames:      00:06:22             Had these salutes been a regular thing up until then?

Meriam Nagel:  00:06:25             No, not that I know of. Unless they might've done it for a president or someone who may have come by. I don't remember anybody stating that.

David Ames:      00:06:35             That was a special event.

Meriam Nagel:  00:06:36             Special event.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:06:38             Now the other voice you just heard was,

David Ames:      00:06:42             Yeah, this was David Ames, the superintendent at Fort Point.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:06:46             Now, when they fired the guns, did they fire the guns from the top of the Fort? Do you recall? Or could-

Meriam Nagel:  00:06:52             That I can't recall Mr. Hawkins because I wasn't old enough to be in on that.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:06:59             But you do recall this great number of people?

Meriam Nagel:  00:07:01             Well, I remember. I've seen pictures of it and the folks, the family telling about it.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:07:06             Yeah. Okay. Can you tell us something about the light as you recall it?

Meriam Nagel:  00:07:15             Well, as I recall it, I can't give you the mechanism numbers and things of that sort, but at one time, let's see, it would be around about 1910 or 12. The light then had a white clear glass and a red glass, clear glass, depending on the minutes that it was to flash. I can't tell you what that was. And then later it was changed to a clear, just the one color. Well, we loved to climb up there with my granddad and he used to let me polish the brass, which was a help to him, I suppose, and the glasswork that I could reach and all that sort of thing. And I remember that they had a steel cable fastened on the base of the frame that held the lens, and that went down through a large, would you call it a pipe conduit or what have you,?

Charlie Hawkins:             00:08:29             In the center of the-

Meriam Nagel:  00:08:31             A and that went down through the lighthouse to the, I think it was the top of the board.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:08:39             To the stairwell there?

Meriam Nagel:  00:08:40             Yeah, in that stairwell. And that was, on that was a stone disc that fit just inside like a lid, but moved. I mean it would go up and down. It didn't make a lid, it just was a piece that went in and out. They wound up the cable, and the time that it took for the cable to unwind and take that disc down to the floor was the four hours that the man was on watch.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:09:12             How did they wind the cable up, do you recall? Did it have a big crank?

Meriam Nagel:  00:09:15             I think they had a crank there on the wall, but I can't remember.

David Ames:      00:09:18             What level in the lighthouse?

Meriam Nagel:  00:09:20             On the first floor as you went up was where you would see the disc.

David Ames:      00:09:28             I see.

Meriam Nagel:  00:09:29             Then there was a hole in the floor there where the pipe, where it started to go down. And there was some sort of handle on the wall, as I remember.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:09:36             But it went down from the light to the top of the stairwell there?

Meriam Nagel:  00:09:40             To the top of the fourth. And that took, the way they had it timed, it took the four hours. So they had four hour watches.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:09:49             I see. Each man would come in-

Meriam Nagel:  00:09:51             He had to wind it back up again.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:09:53             Do you recall what they used for fuel to light the light?

Meriam Nagel:  00:09:59             All I know is they had kerosene there. How they used it, I don't know. And then I keep thinking of alcohol. It had something to do with the mantle that was in the lens, and that was a tube like thing covered with a mesh netting, like a bandage that fit down and was pulled in tight over it. And something was poured on that, now, I don't know, was it, what that was to light it off.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:10:31             Once you told me about a little house that they had on top of the Fort where they stored kerosene.

Meriam Nagel:  00:10:37             Next to the light tower and right where the, it was across, you'll see in the wall of the Fort, right at the top, there's a remnants of a...

Charlie Hawkins:             00:10:52             That concrete block there?

Meriam Nagel:  00:10:53             Concrete block, which had the bracket on it for the winch. And they would hoist the cans, the five gallon cans of oil and whatever other supplies that they had for the light up on this winch. And then the little house was across the little walkway up on one of the gun, or between one of the gun emplacements. And I have a picture here in someplace to show you. It was very small, but enough to hold, they could stack maybe 10, 15 or more five gallon cans plus all their other necessary supplies. Well, they got supplies every six months. So whatever it would take for that time,.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:11:38             Would one man be in the lighthouse alone? Do you recall?

Meriam Nagel:  00:11:43             Yes. On duty you mean? You mean in the station.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:11:46             Up in the light. The light has a little circular stairwell.

Meriam Nagel:  00:11:50             Well, he was not there all the time.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:11:51             No. So where would he be?

Meriam Nagel:  00:11:53             He would go, he stayed in the, had a little room in the entrance way to the fog signal Had a desk and had chairs and they had a little or a chair, captain's chair, and a bench like thing that they had some cushions on that they did stretch out if they wanted to.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:12:12             I wanted to talk about that fog statement, but before we talk about that, how did the men get into the Fort?

Meriam Nagel:  00:12:23             Before they built the first bridge, and that was when the duplex and all that thing, they had to go from their homes way up there on the hill, down the hill and along the road and in through the sally port. And then climb up to the light tower.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:12:43             Then later they built a bridge-

Meriam Nagel:  00:12:44             Then they built the bridge across.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:12:46             Do you have any idea what year that might've been?

Meriam Nagel:  00:12:48             No, I don't. And there were three bridges built.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:12:55             You mean we lost some bridges there? You said they built three?

Meriam Nagel:  00:13:00             No, I think there were three bridge... There was the original one.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:13:05             And that was torn down or fell down or something, or what?

Meriam Nagel:  00:13:07             They just took it down, I think.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:13:08             I see. That was a wooden bridge?

Meriam Nagel:  00:13:10             Wooden bridge. That's the one that you have a picture, and I have of the gate, big white-

Charlie Hawkins:             00:13:10             Has a gate on it.

Meriam Nagel:  00:13:18             lattice sort of gateway. And I think there was one in between. And then the last bridge was iron. And that was torn down when they started to remodel and to fix up the Fort after the earthquake to bring in, to change the disciplinary barracks from Alcatraz, they were going to put them into the Presidio. This was during World War 1.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:13:45             I see.

Meriam Nagel:  00:13:47             And they equipped the Fort completely for this operation and then canceled the order.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:13:51             Do you have any idea why they canceled that?

Meriam Nagel:  00:13:54             I think the war was ending and they didn't want to be bothered. And they didn't have enough major prisoners to have to incarcerate them out there on the island.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:14:03             About the bridge. Do you recall that there was a bridge that might've been thrown down by the earthquake?

Meriam Nagel:  00:14:09             No, the bridge did not come down by the earthquake.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:14:09             I see.

Meriam Nagel:  00:14:12             It was loose on that side where it was shaken.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:14:15             But it was loosened by the earthquake. And some damage.

Meriam Nagel:  00:14:19             That probably was, was the bridge they took down and replaced with the iron bridge.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:14:23             So there was some damage then you think?

Meriam Nagel:  00:14:25             Yeah, because that whole wall, the south wall of the Fort was moved out, what was it, 10 inches, seven inches or something like that?

Charlie Hawkins:             00:14:34             I think the records show about 10 inches.

David Ames:      00:14:36             Did you hear of much damage in your homes in the 1906 earthquake? Did you-

Meriam Nagel:  00:14:40             No, because I didn't get there until the 28th.

David Ames:      00:14:43             I mean, did your grandparents ever point out any damage-

Meriam Nagel:  00:14:43             No. They didn't.

David Ames:      00:14:47             ... or talk about damage?

Meriam Nagel:  00:14:48             They didn't. In fact, I don't remember any, excepting that they said that that house just shook this way on the bias and you could hear the nails screeching and everything. And when it was all over, the house just settled back and there was never any loose door jambs or anything of that sort. But Mr. Kunder, who was the second, was the first assistant, I'll say, he was on duty when the quake started and he stayed up in the light tower where the lens was through the whole thing.

David Ames:      00:15:32             Did he ever talk about that?

Meriam Nagel:  00:15:34             Well, I didn't hear his stories. I wish I had, because he was a very interesting man. He went from here out to the Farallones and then, as a keeper, and then down to Point Loma.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:15:47             Could you tell us if they had any soldiers in the Fort when they had the quake?

Meriam Nagel:  00:15:51             Soldiers were quartered in the Fort, and when the wall separated, there was soil on the roof and that came in through this aperture that was created into the bedrooms and just piled up in there. And some of the men got out, ran out. They were all, a lot of them panic-stricken because they were from the east and places like that. But there was one story about one old diehard, and they went looking for him. They couldn't find him, and he was in his barrack room shaving, and they wanted to know what he thought he was doing. And he said, well, if he had to die, he wanted to die like a soldier and a gentleman.

David Ames:      00:16:38             And where did you hear that story? Where did you hear all the stories about the earthquake?

Meriam Nagel:  00:16:42             Well, my grandfather or somebody told my uncle and he'd come home and tell them, mostly from my grandfather.

David Ames:      00:16:50             You talked about the sod or the dirt on the upper level. Can you remember the sod?

Meriam Nagel:  00:16:55             That was all around the gun emplacements. And I think that it wasn't exactly sod, it was the accumulation of sand blown in by the wind, because it was loose stuff. But it was filled, in the spring, there was wildflowers all over the place, flag lilies and all kinds of lilies and poppies and this, that and the other thing up there. And then around the lighthouse, the fog signal part, my grandfather planted flower boxes and had a garden there. And then he put one right against the iron wall. Is that what we call it on the top of the Fort?

David Ames:      00:17:42             The railing?

Meriam Nagel:  00:17:42             The railing that is going to be up there, I hope, again.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:17:45             Yeah, the grilled fence.

Meriam Nagel:  00:17:46             From the lighthouse over about oh, 10 feet, like a planter box. And he had that filled with marguerites. And that was always blooming, those flowers.

David Ames:      00:17:57             We'll remember that. Maybe that's something that we can do someday.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:18:00             Well, you mentioned the fog signal. Can you tell us about that?

Meriam Nagel:  00:18:04             Yes. Well, I have pictures that would be more explanatory, but it was a small, how shall I describe the size?

Charlie Hawkins:             00:18:18             Was it a wooden, little wooden house?

Meriam Nagel:  00:18:20             It was a cement building.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:18:22             Cement building.

Meriam Nagel:  00:18:23             Cement building. And as you entered was this little room for the men to, recreation room or whatever you might call it.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:18:32             Was that located on the-

Meriam Nagel:  00:18:33             That was on the direct west end of the Fort.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:18:38             That part that sticks out, the vast-

Meriam Nagel:  00:18:39             That little piece that was there.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:18:42             It was built over top of a gun position, wasn't it?

Meriam Nagel:  00:18:45             It could have been. That, I don't know.

David Ames:      00:18:47             Or did it hang out over the wall?

Meriam Nagel:  00:18:48             No, no. It was flat on top of the Fort. And when they wanted to wash the windows, you could step out and walk along the rim of the Fort all the way around and do your window work.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:18:57             That's that filled in bastion on that end. I think. That's where it was. The picture shows up there.

Meriam Nagel:  00:19:04             And then there was this room which was longer, about, I'm not good at judging lengths. How long would this be? 12 feet, maybe, from the front door up to here?

Charlie Hawkins:             00:19:18             About around that.

Meriam Nagel:  00:19:20             Well, about 12, 14 feet-

Charlie Hawkins:             00:19:22             That's more than 12 feet, yes.

Meriam Nagel:  00:19:22             Well say 12, 14 feet from the window. And that was, well, it had a jag in it. It went around like that and then this way, and well followed the contour of the Fort there.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:19:34             I see.

Meriam Nagel:  00:19:37             And there were two engines. Now you'll have to get researcher statistics on that because I can't remember them. Two engines and up in the southwest corner of the wall in the ceiling was the fog horn. And then against the wall as you entered the room were work benches on both sides, windows above them. And they had all their equipment there.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:20:12             Was this a horn or a whistle now?

Meriam Nagel:  00:20:15             Well, I think there were two or three of those to catch up with. And I don't want to specifically say on the mechanism of it, but we have that.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:20:27             But they were operated by steam?

Meriam Nagel:  00:20:31             Yes, I guess that's what it was.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:20:32             Do you recall any difficulty of getting water out there for steam or how they might have accomplished that?

Meriam Nagel:  00:20:39             No. What is it? Was an Akroyd something or other kind of engine? It wouldn't be operated with kerosene, would it?

Charlie Hawkins:             00:20:39             I don't know.

Meriam Nagel:  00:20:50             I don't remember any steam or anything. I suppose, well, I don't know.

David Ames:      00:20:57             Do you remember anything about what the engines looked like, how big it was?

Meriam Nagel:  00:21:00             Nothing, except they looked awfully big to me and they looked awful nice and shiny. They got polished every day.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:21:05             So what would happen now, say the fog came in and what would happen? They turn on this equipment and then this-

Meriam Nagel:  00:21:14             And the foghorn would start to blow. And if anything happened to these engines on the north side of the building, on the rim of the Fort was a small iron shed or building that held the fog bell mechanism and bell. And there again, I can't give you the company names of it. I have it written down somewhere. And all I know is it was on a framework and it had a long piston-like handle. It came back and then it would hit the bell and the bong. And, of course, it was timed because each station had their own bells and they had to be synchronized so that they would know which station was ringing.

David Ames:      00:22:07             Was it run on a system of weights, too?

Meriam Nagel:  00:22:09             No, that was run on some sort of an engine thing that propelled this arm back and forth to hit it.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:22:18             Now did they then have the light operating, flashing we'll say, and then-

Meriam Nagel:  00:22:27             Foghorn going-

Charlie Hawkins:             00:22:27             ...the foghorn going-

Meriam Nagel:  00:22:29             Everything going at the same time.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:22:30             And the bell operating, too. So they had three signals going at the same time.

Meriam Nagel:  00:22:34             But the bell was used only when, no, they didn't have the bell going, too. The bell was used if anything happened to the engines that they couldn't use the fog horn.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:22:45             I see. I see.

Meriam Nagel:  00:22:46             That was there for that purpose.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:22:48             Now the fog horn, can you recall ever hearing it actually? And the bell, did you ever actually hear it?

Meriam Nagel:  00:22:56             I think I have, but I don't want to be specific. I've heard it when they were working on it.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:23:00             Well, that's what I mean. You actually heard it then.

Meriam Nagel:  00:23:03             Oh yeah, I heard it rung because every so often they would go through all the machinery and try everything out to be sure that it was going to work when they needed it.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:23:12             Do you have any idea what happened to the bell?

Meriam Nagel:  00:23:14             No.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:23:15             Or what happened to the-

Meriam Nagel:  00:23:17             I wish we did.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:23:18             Were you there when they took the bell away or-

Meriam Nagel:  00:23:21             No, I probably was down the country at the time that it was done or I would remember, I'd probably been tagging around, keeping my eyes open.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:23:29             How about the building with the machinery? Do you recall what happened to that?

Meriam Nagel:  00:23:34             No. It evidently was all taken out at one time. The bell and the thing, it wasn't too long a thing. We'll say the bells have where that table is. Then the framework that that arm business operated on came no further back than this from the bell.

David Ames:      00:23:58             About eight feet. Huh.

Meriam Nagel:  00:23:59             So it was about that. And then of course there was room to walk around the whole thing for work purposes inside of this little shed. Other than that, that was about the size of it.

David Ames:      00:24:10             And that was the shed then that sort of was hanging off the side of the Fort.

Meriam Nagel:  00:24:10             No, no.

David Ames:      00:24:14             No, not it, either.

Meriam Nagel:  00:24:15             That was right smack dab on top of the Fort and there were three little steps up to get onto the top of the Fort. And then you just walked along there and went in the door.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:24:29             What [Cross talk]? What was that? That was the what now?

Meriam Nagel:  00:24:30             That was for the fog bell, the last one that was there. Now the other ones that you're speaking of, the original one, there's still pieces of it stuck in the wall out there. That was where the original fog bell was put. Then there was a fog bell put up on the south side. That was approached from the top of the Fort. The one, the first one, you had to go up a ladder inside to get into it.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:25:01             I see.

Meriam Nagel:  00:25:02             But both had bells in them.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:25:04             So the first one then was on top of the Fort on a raised platform-

Meriam Nagel:  00:25:10             No, the first one, first bell was on the west end in that little housing that hung outside of the Fort.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:25:19             I see. All right.

Meriam Nagel:  00:25:20             And you went up by a ladder.

David Ames:      00:25:20             From the ground?

Meriam Nagel:  00:25:21             From the ground. The second one was in another housing, wooden, I think, on the south side, which you went into from the top of the Fort. Then this metal building with this auxiliary bell to be used when necessary was put in there.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:25:21             I see.

Meriam Nagel:  00:25:44             And I think that was done when all that remodeling, when the fog signal itself was built. Because you see, prior to that, all they had was the fog bell.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:25:56             Do you recall any shipwrecks out there in front of the Fort-

Meriam Nagel:  00:25:59             Well, no, I don't recall them, but the Dumaro went aground. What I was going to say before I get off of that, my grandmother stood watch in that little south side bell tower. Both my grandfather and his assistant were down with the flu.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:26:21             I see.

Meriam Nagel:  00:26:22             And our children weren't too good. So he would go anyway and do his watch. But the other man, they couldn't get him out of bed at all. And they didn't want to do it because they were afraid he had pneumonia. So she took his watch and, of course, it was only for a short time, but one night or a day or something like that. But she stood the watch.

David Ames:      00:26:45             How many people were really involved in the light station then? How many people lived out there and worked out there?

Meriam Nagel:  00:26:50             Usually there was the keeper and two assistants.

David Ames:      00:26:54             Each had one of the three houses then.

Meriam Nagel:  00:26:56             Yeah.

David Ames:      00:26:57             And how about the duplex? You mentioned your house being a duplex. How was that?

Meriam Nagel:  00:27:01             The duplex was the original. Now how they lived in that, I don't, I think there was only one other man at that time, and he probably had the other part of the house. But that I don't have any, I know nothing at all about it.

David Ames:      00:27:18             Right.

Meriam Nagel:  00:27:18             I mean personally, and I don't remember any stories being told about it.

David Ames:      00:27:22             So you lived in the one nearest the Fort and then-

Meriam Nagel:  00:27:25             And the one down and, well, I was born in that one, but we did most of our living in the house at the foot of the hill. I was born in 1906. And that house was built in 1907.

David Ames:      00:27:37             When you moved down then to the base, who lived in the two houses up on the hill?

Meriam Nagel:  00:27:41             Well, the two assistants, Mr. Kunder, that I spoke of, and the other man's name was Mr. Sutton, that was there at that time.

David Ames:      00:27:48             Fine. Good. That'll help.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:27:51             Was there a name for that area? Was that called the Fort Point Light Station?

Meriam Nagel:  00:27:58             Yeah.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:27:59             I recall-

Meriam Nagel:  00:28:00             As I remember-

Charlie Hawkins:             00:28:02             ...a photo showing a sign up there on the top of the hill said Fort Point Light Station?

Meriam Nagel:  00:28:06             Yeah. Well that was our address. Fort Point Light Station, Presidio, San Francisco, California.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:28:12             Let's talk about the hill for a moment. Once you told me about a little railway type operation they had up the side of the hill and-

Meriam Nagel:  00:28:22             Well, that was built after that house on the road was built, and that was to take the supplies up so they wouldn't, see, the military or the army was taking over a little bit of there and was getting towards the wartime and so forth. So they wanted to separate the stations. And so they built this trestle-like track from the road up to where the gateway was to go in to the yards of the houses, and then the men would take the supplies over to the Fort. That little store shed that was built on this side of the bridge or it's on the south side-

PART 1 OF 4 ENDS [00:29:04]

Meriam Nagel:  00:29:00             This side of the bridge or it's on the south side of the bridge that was built too later, around World War ... Well, I guess it was when that remodeling was being done so that they could put supplies there instead of see, they used to put heavy boxes of things just on any one of those casement places along on that side of the fort on the north side.

Speaker 1:          00:29:30             What years do you remember the remodeling being done for the detention barracks?

Meriam Nagel:  00:29:35             Well, that would be 19 ... what? '17, '18?

Speaker 1:          00:29:40             Do you remember the kinds of things they did during that remodel?

Meriam Nagel:  00:29:46             Well, first of all, they brought the prisoners from Alcatraz over to do the work. They used the three army tugs, the Barrett, the Slocum, and the general Cox to bring them in over and take them back.

Speaker 1:          00:30:02             Where did they land?

Meriam Nagel:  00:30:03             They landed down at your little wharf and then they were marched up to the fort. Of course, they had the contractors who had the job. Now, maybe they didn't. Maybe this was completely military. Anyway, the men did the work, installation and everything, and they would do all the drain. They'd bring in stuff on ships, cargo ships, not great big things, army tugs or what have you, two-year war, and then bring them up in dray wagons, army dray wagons, flat beds with the things. I remember one time watching, and for some reason, the mules decided that they weren't going for it or something.

              00:31:02             Anyway, they made a quick turn and either the man was inexperienced or what I don't know, but the next thing, the dray was in the water, plus the mules. Half of the dray thing was hung on the seawall. Well, one mule was all right, but the other one's legs were broken and what have you, so they shot it. That thing floated out the gate for days on end. They'd look out and here comes the poor fellow, and the next day he's going out.

              00:31:37             But anyway, the men would be marched down to the station to the fort, and then they would do their work. They fed them there and everything was put into that place. They built a complete kitchen.

Speaker 1:          00:31:51             Where was that?

Meriam Nagel:  00:31:52             In the fort, on the ground floor where those sealed over pieces are the wooden ... well, I don't know how they are and I've forgotten, if I get some of my pictures out, I can tell you better. They're in that album on the windowsill there. On the southeast end, say with that corner were the shower rooms and those pieces of cement that you see today, up like a drainage thing, they were put there then.

              00:32:26             They were not there before, and then you went across that east end, then coming up the north end, that's where they had the kitchen from the corner. Then there was the kitchen, then the dining room. Those places were screened off with that heavy wire mesh stuff that they used in prisons and all kinds of places, and with the doors that fitted them and locked in them. Well, they had huge cupboard things with all the dishes and ... everything was in there, just everything. The men would be, the cooks were brought over and they did the meals and then upstairs-

Charlie Hawkins:             00:33:17             They were cooking meals for the prisoners working there.

Meriam Nagel:  00:33:20             While the men were working. Then up on the second floor, they had a caretaker, they fixed up an apartment for him. I guess some of the contracting men had offices in some of those rooms and the rest of the rooms were left just as they were from the earthquake until they got around to sweeping them up. The west end, nothing was done. That was just the way it is now with those arches and the gun things and so forth. That was just left alone.

              00:33:50             Then when you get up on the top was the signal and the lighthouse and the guns as I remember until this work ... Now, when they took them down was sometime while this work was going on. But you see, we'd be here maybe six months of the year and then we'd be down with my dad in the valleys and so forth. There would be times when I'd miss things.

              00:34:15             I was going to say-

Charlie Hawkins:             00:34:31             Do you recall how they closed up the casemates, the big curb room? Did they have those boarded up or what?

Meriam Nagel:  00:34:36             On the kitchen part where the kitchen and the dining room part was where they did that closing in. I think on that east end where the bathroom facilities were. Oh, up on top of the fort, what I was trying to remember, the army had a signal light, that little square. Is it still up there on the southwest corner?

Speaker 2:          00:35:03             No.

Meriam Nagel:  00:35:04             A metal and wooden?

Speaker 2:          00:35:05             No.

Meriam Nagel:  00:35:06             Well, I'll show you in here. That was for a search light and that was used during the war one.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:35:15             World War I?

Meriam Nagel:  00:35:16             Yeah. I don't know what you people are calling it, but the little house that's on the top of the stair casement on the east end that my uncle used for a clubhouse, the army took over for the signal core. They had a cot in there for their watches and they had all the signal racks with all the signal flags for the shipping and they had the things out there so they could semaphore and do whatever.

Speaker 2:          00:35:49             This was World War I, period two?

Charlie Hawkins:             00:35:49             Now that was on this end of the fort?

Meriam Nagel:  00:35:50             The east end, the little house on the east end was used for that. Then they had a semaphore thing on-

Charlie Hawkins:             00:35:57             Right on the corner there?

Meriam Nagel:  00:35:57             North there, on the north facing right into the gate.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:36:01             By the way, when they had the Fort Point light station there, did they have a flagpole in front of the light station by the houses and also have a flag pole?

Meriam Nagel:  00:36:10             Yes. On the hill in front of the houses.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:36:12             Did they fly a flag from both the light station and the fort?

Meriam Nagel:  00:36:18             Well, no, not after the fort that last time ... The flag was flown on the fort until you people did it was that day that the peak in went out or shortly after when they took them in out of the fort. But the other one, the station flagpole, that's the one for the lighthouse they used there.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:36:41             Did you have a particular name for those houses over the stairwells? Because we're stumped with what to call them too.

Meriam Nagel:  00:36:48             No, just we called it Art's Club because that was his club, period.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:36:54             Did they ever say what those wooden houses were there for?

Meriam Nagel:  00:37:00             No. Only thing I can think of that they were there for was a shelter when you got to the top of the staircase. What else? You can't think of anything else they'd do you good for.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:37:10             Protect the stairwell, that's all I can see.

Meriam Nagel:  00:37:13             Yeah, that's all I can think of. Then they built the floor in there. Now, I don't know when that was done. My uncles, then the kids didn't do that.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:37:18             Now, the floor in where?

Meriam Nagel:  00:37:21             But that was in there, in that thing.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:37:23             Oh yes. I can remember we had-

Meriam Nagel:  00:37:24             Because you couldn't go upstairs all the way up in that particular casement, only the one on the west end.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:37:33             That was blocked up until just recently.

Meriam Nagel:  00:37:37             But I don't know when they put the floor in there.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:37:38             Now, speaking of floors, can you recall the courtyard of the fort being other than concrete like it is now?

Meriam Nagel:  00:37:48             I think there were slabs of slate.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:37:48             This is the courtyard down in the floor?

Meriam Nagel:  00:37:55             Yeah, big square slate slabs.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:37:56             Do you recall any kind of a water system that they had at the fort? Any water tanks on the outside?

Meriam Nagel:  00:38:06             Only the cistern. No.

              00:38:06             I don't know when those pipes were put in, but I think that was another one of the World War I thing. They must've used the cisterns.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:38:14             How about those big wooden tanks on the hill at the light station?

Meriam Nagel:  00:38:18             Well, up on the hill, they were the ones that were used for the lights station.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:38:24             But there was no connection between those tanks and the fort?

Meriam Nagel:  00:38:27             As far as I know, I don't know. There might've been a pipe run through to it. Then there was the watershed between the lookout, the life-saving tower, and the tank was a cement watershed.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:38:41             Now we're getting to the confusing part of that.

Meriam Nagel:  00:38:42             Yeah, we're getting out of-

Charlie Hawkins:             00:38:44             We had the Fort Point light station on top of the hill, the houses, the flag, and all that. Then up the hill a little further, we had what now? Is that the Fort Point life-saving station?

Meriam Nagel:  00:38:58             The tower, not the station, but just the lookout tower. The men would come from the station down there where it is on Chrissy Field, or a few yards further along.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:39:08             We'd coast guard the station.

Meriam Nagel:  00:39:10             Then if I can get over there, I can show you the path that they used. They would go up to the lookout and I think they did a four-hour stint and then change. When phones came in, they had phones connected with the station and they could say a certain ship was coming in or this or that, what have you.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:39:34             Now you told me about a water system there that I'm interested in, if you recall the old flume?

Meriam Nagel:  00:39:43             Yeah. Well, that was the flume was the San Francisco water system.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:39:47             Now, where did that come from?

Meriam Nagel:  00:39:48             It came from the Point Lobos Creek out on Beggar's Beach out at the back, along the cliffs way out. It came all along the cliffs to right almost where the seawall stops on the ocean side. Then there was a tunnel went through.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:40:04             What did it look like? Could you tell us something about that?

Meriam Nagel:  00:40:06             I never saw it. Then it went along the flume I saw.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:40:11             Yeah, the flume. That's what I mean.

Meriam Nagel:  00:40:12             It was just a box along.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:40:16             Was it covered?

Meriam Nagel:  00:40:17             Covered a square, well, like that post is there to the hold house up.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:40:17             Like a wooden pipe, a square wooden pipe?

Meriam Nagel:  00:40:25             Yeah, a wooden pipe. That's what it is. Also, there's a picture in here somewhere, the man who had to walk that every day to see that it was in condition and he carried some caulking material, which he called okum, I understand. Anyway, the thing started at Point Lobos, went along the ocean cliffs through the little tunnel at Fort Point, all along where the road is going down towards your office, and along the cliffs of Chrissy Field, the south side, and passed the Letterman ... Old Letterman Hospital is ... and on out to Bay Street. That sloping place out there is the reservoir that took the water and went on to this-

Charlie Hawkins:             00:41:22             Was that the Spring Valley water?

Meriam Nagel:  00:41:26             Well, the beginning of it.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:41:28             Now, about that tunnel, could you recall the tunnel? Was it large enough to walk through or?

Meriam Nagel:  00:41:33             Yes, it must've been. Might've had to stoop, but he went through it.

              00:41:40             He and his family, Mr. Monahan was his name, they lived in a little house or it was a couple of little houses put together and they had a nice little garden and fence around it. The old father was a Civil War veteran and the mother and father and this son lived there, and it was about where the little pet cemetery is now in the Chrissy Field. That was his job, but the Fort Point didn't use that.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:42:15             I see. There was no water connection going out of the flume into the fort?

Meriam Nagel:  00:42:18             No, as far as I know.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:42:20             You think the water supply for the fort then-

Meriam Nagel:  00:42:22             Was from the watershed into the tanks until they could hook up -

Charlie Hawkins:             00:42:27             You mean the cistern underneath the fort was the main water supply?

Meriam Nagel:  00:42:31             For the inside of the fort? Yes, and for the light station-

Charlie Hawkins:             00:42:35             They had the wooden tanks.

Meriam Nagel:  00:42:36             Well, there was also a little spring right there on the hill, which they probably used for the homes there up on the hill because they have a little picket fence around it, so they must have used it.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:42:48             But you can't recall any connections between the outside water plant and to the inside of the fort?

Meriam Nagel:  00:42:54             No, nothing. No pipes of any kind, excepting that there's that pipe that sticks out of the cliff there, where the passageway is between the cliff and the fort, but that would've been put in there when the remodeling job was done.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:43:11             Now, where the anchor to the Golden Gate Bridge is now located, you once told me about a structure that was there with triangle-shaped roofs and so on. Could you describe it?

Meriam Nagel:  00:43:25             The Powder magazine.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:43:27             That was a Powder magazine.

Meriam Nagel:  00:43:28             That was directly across the pathway or roadway that runs between the fort and the hill right now.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:43:34             Was that made of what now?

Meriam Nagel:  00:43:35             Bricks, the same as the fort.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:43:37             How was it [Cross Talk]?

Meriam Nagel:  00:43:38             I think they're out in the water off of the seawall right now.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:43:42             What kind of a roof did it have on it?

Meriam Nagel:  00:43:44             Well, what would you call that roof? It goes up and down.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:43:46             Well, I think you told me about running up and down the roof. Is that sod or what?

Meriam Nagel:  00:43:52             Yeah.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:43:53             It was sodded over?

Meriam Nagel:  00:43:53             It was cement or brick.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:43:55             Was cement with sod on top of it or just brick?

Meriam Nagel:  00:44:00             I think it was brick with some cement over the top of it. No sod and it went like a knife out to here.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:44:09             Then once you mentioned-

Meriam Nagel:  00:44:09             Maybe you can name it.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:44:11             You mentioned the possibility that there might be a passageway.

Meriam Nagel:  00:44:15             There's another one. I think you can get a vague idea of what it looks like.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:44:19             You mentioned there might be a passageway from the Powder magazine to-

Meriam Nagel:  00:44:23             Well, according to my uncle and my aunts, there was because they used to crawl through it.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:44:28             From inside the fort?

Meriam Nagel:  00:44:29             Inside the fort into that thing just where the door to the magazine was.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:44:35             I see. Now, on this picture that I have here in my hand, I have a picture of Fort Point and I can see the little house here.

Meriam Nagel:  00:44:43             Yeah. Well, now that's the original and vaguely you can see the other one. You can see it better in the one he has.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:44:48             Well, that was a bell house.

Meriam Nagel:  00:44:50             That's the fog bell tower.

Speaker 1:          00:44:52             Fog bell, yeah.

Meriam Nagel:  00:44:53             The original one. No, the second one and the other one, see there's just a [Cross Talk].

Charlie Hawkins:             00:44:57             Was that down low here?

Meriam Nagel:  00:44:58             Yeah, that's the ... and then the other one was up on top of the fort itself. I found this of my granddad and my mother.

              00:45:11             Now this is what we used to call Camelback and Helmet Rock, which is out back there on the back beach.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:45:21             Now, can you recall here at Camelback and the Helmet Rock, when they were building the bridge, what they might've done to the seawall?

Meriam Nagel:  00:45:30             Oh no, that's way beyond the seawall.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:45:34             That's beyond the sea wall. Was that seawall moved out when they built the?

Meriam Nagel:  00:45:36             No, the seawall wasn't touched. They built a fill outside of it. Right over the top of it and out. Then when they roll through, they scraped all that stuff away. That was too much of a job. The granite blocks, according to what my uncle and grandfather said, were sealed together with lead sheets. I just read recently, I can't remember at the moment, where it was some other fortification that they did the same thing, sealed the blocks that they were building with.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:46:15             Now, when you were living there in the houses, can you recall any street lamps out in front of the light station there or along that seawall?

Meriam Nagel:  00:46:27             No, no lamps. There was a stub of a lamp stand or what standard right there in the corner, where the seawall comes to a V there. I think we have some pictures in there showing one of those old rooms, it shows the army house. But now I don't know whether we have a date here or not, but now there's the fog signal. Can you squeeze in over here too?

Speaker 2:          00:47:01             I can just stand and look.

Meriam Nagel:  00:47:03             Let's see this. Now, get it around this way.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:47:05             When you lived there, do you recall a couple of big guns up next to the sally port door? Can you tell us-

Meriam Nagel:  00:47:10             I remember 16 of them.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:47:12             They were outside the fort there.

Meriam Nagel:  00:47:14             In a row.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:47:15             Now, what was the condition of the sally port door when you were around there?

Meriam Nagel:  00:47:19             It was in fairly good condition. It wasn't battered and torn like that.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:47:25             Do you think that those doors that we have today on Fort Point are the original doors?

Meriam Nagel:  00:47:31             I don't know, because they should have the brass knobs and hardware, like the entry to the gun emplacements up on the hill. The hinges on those doors and the staples that go into the doors, that's all brass.

              00:47:53             Have you inspected any of that?

Charlie Hawkins:             00:47:54             No. We have one door in the fort in the magazine, it has bronze.

Meriam Nagel:  00:47:57             This is what I was telling about. You were talking about the storm.

Speaker 2:          00:47:57             What's that?

Meriam Nagel:  00:48:03             Down by your office.

Speaker 2:          00:48:04             Great picture.

Meriam Nagel:  00:48:07             But you see the bridges? But now here's what's left at this time, whenever this picture was done, and there's a remanence of the one that you had to go up off of the ground to.

Speaker 2:          00:48:22             This was the first, the lowest structure was the first fog bell, and this was the second fog bell?

Meriam Nagel:  00:48:28             Yeah, as I remember.

Speaker 2:          00:48:29             The third one was up above.

Meriam Nagel:  00:48:30             No, no. This is the light fog signal itself and the other thing was on the far side of that building on the wall.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:48:37             Can you recall any problems that your grandfather might've discussed with you about operating the lighthouse? Any unusual things that happened or any hard times they had keeping the light operating or anything like that?

Meriam Nagel:  00:48:50             No, they didn't have ... it was too stable a station, I think. They had no storms to contend with and that sort of thing, except getting themselves to work. I remember him saying that he crawled on his hands and knees between the cliff and the sally port door one time in a storm to get to the door, things like that.

              00:49:10             But otherwise nothing, no damage work or that sort of thing.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:49:16             What was the service that he was in called in those days?

Meriam Nagel:  00:49:21             The lighthouse department.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:49:23             Lighthouse department.

Meriam Nagel:  00:49:24             Then just before he left, it was Chamber of Commerce, which irked him. To no end. Now, let's see. I think this, you're looking from the ...

Charlie Hawkins:             00:49:35             This is outside.

Meriam Nagel:  00:49:36             The west end at that floor of the ... here's Mr. and Mrs. Monahan.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:49:46             Now the houses there never had electricity in, did they?

Meriam Nagel:  00:49:52             Not in our time. 1920, I think.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:49:57             How would they heat the houses?

Meriam Nagel:  00:49:59             With a good old wood and coal stove and fireplaces.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:50:02             Fireplaces and stoves, and the lamps, kerosene-

Meriam Nagel:  00:50:07             Lamps, kerosene lamps and lanterns.

              00:50:09             Now, this is the lookout tower, and this is when the bridge was being built. You see that shaved off place there? That's where they found the San Joaquin tile, which you have in the board.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:50:22             Now here we have a picture of the inside of the fort. Can you tell us anything about these enclosures here?

Meriam Nagel:  00:50:28             Well, now this is work that was done for that prisoner business. This was some club that asked if they could use it for a party or something.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:50:41             Here the courtyard seems to be in.

Meriam Nagel:  00:50:44             Yeah, in those slabs.

Speaker 1:          00:50:48             What was this small building across the corner?

Meriam Nagel:  00:50:50             Well, that was part of the kitchen, that was part of the kitchen that they were building there.

Speaker 1:          00:50:55             What's that? The northeast corner?

Meriam Nagel:  00:50:56             That's the northeast corner.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:51:02             Can you recall a brick-like structure or was made of brick, a shot furnace in the-

Meriam Nagel:  00:51:09             Not there, it was up on this end.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:51:11             How many were in the fort?

Meriam Nagel:  00:51:13             I don't know whether there were two originally, but the only one that I heard of and have seen pictures of was the one that was up here. I think we have a picture someplace along the line. These are the little houses. Now this one was the one that was shut off that you couldn't come up through. My uncle used that one for a pigeon loft.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:51:34             You told me once about the fort being used for storage, for household goods, army personnel.

Meriam Nagel:  00:51:42             That was at the end of World War I. This caretaker, I think he improved his bank account very well with it. Anyway, they wanted to use all those buildings that they had things stored in up in the Presidio for the returning men to demobilize. So, they took all of this storage stuff out of there and brought it down to the fort. That was all personal household goods, China, linens, brick-brack, all that sort of thing.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:52:22             This belonged to who?

Meriam Nagel:  00:52:23             Two people that were still in the service but were ...

Charlie Hawkins:             00:52:27             Overseas?

Meriam Nagel:  00:52:27             Overseas, Manila, various places. They were sent orders to try to have someone pick it up for them and get it out of there, but it stayed until they could be picked up, until this fellow was filching everything. But most of it was picked up and taken out, except at the very end, they sent down a detail of men and they sat on the east seawall there, right at the end of the fort with the crates. They opened them up and they smashed the dishes and the granite and they tore up the tablecloths and the linen and threw them to the breezes and over the border wind.

              00:53:14             Of course, the silverware and stuff like that, as I say, this fellow, there wasn't any around. Every night, he went out, every single night he went out of that place at a certain time. Then my granddad, he was after all the men all constantly. He said, " If I so much as see one thing, you're going to be fired. I do not want anything out of that fort in the station."

Speaker 2:          00:53:37             This was right at the close of World War I?

Meriam Nagel:  00:53:47             Yeah. Now here's the inside of the fog signal with the engines that you asked me about, which I can't describe.

Speaker 1:          00:53:55             There used to be a tank here for steam.

Meriam Nagel:  00:53:59             Yeah, and there's a bell up there. The horn goes out of there. Now there were two of these, these two engines.

Speaker 1:          00:54:06             Sizable machines there.

Meriam Nagel:  00:54:10             All the paraphernalia that you have, the small one like that, and I've got the top part of this and the canned going. See now, that's what I'm hunting for is that size. I guess that's long gone.

Speaker 1:          00:54:22             We have that in the museum over there.

Meriam Nagel:  00:54:24             You have a small one. Maybe it's over here.

              00:54:26             Anyway, you've got one. Now, this is up in the old house where I was born I think, up on top of the hill. My grandfather was batching. My grandmother had gone off someplace.

Speaker 1:          00:54:38             Now when the soldiers were in the fort that you recall, what did they use for fuel in those fireplaces? They burn coal?

Meriam Nagel:  00:54:48             They must've burned coal.

Speaker 1:          00:54:49             Did you see them bring coal in there?

Meriam Nagel:  00:54:51             No, that was before [Cross talk ]. No, they were all gone before.

              00:54:55             Now here, see where this fence is?

Speaker 1:          00:54:58             Yes.

Meriam Nagel:  00:54:59             All right. This is the front door right in here to the inside of the fog signal. Now there were about four little steps there behind that flower pot up to the top of the wall. Then you walked along the side of the building and that's where the fog building thing was in there. Maybe find a better one. Now, these are when the bridge was being built.

              00:55:24             Let's see. Oh, here. See, there's you. They filled out and then they scraped it all away again.

Speaker 1:          00:55:38             Now, when they built the bridge, do you recall seeing them tear down the Powder magazine as you called it?

Meriam Nagel:  00:55:46             No, that was torn down I don't know when, but it was gone. There's the seawall again. See, this piece or that piece? This piece I think. Oh, I don't know. No, this piece is the seawall. Now, these I kept because it had the fog signal, the fog bell things. That's members of the family and that's what have you.

              00:56:14             Now this is their interior. This was the end. You came in the front door and this was the end of this little hallway. My grandfather put this across and this was his office. Then you went in here into the living room. This is the dining room.

Speaker 2:          00:56:32             They were very nice homes, weren't they?

Meriam Nagel:  00:56:35             Yeah, and that's the outside, here's the living room looking from the dining room. This was a little ... then that went to a door that went upstairs. I have some more of these someplace that my ... mine were all pretty well shot, but my cousin let me have. Now this is one of the fleet ones.

              00:57:05             Let's see, that's my granddad in civilian clothes. We had a nice picture that he had taken about this time with his uniform on. There isn't one member of the family that can find a copy, but I still am hoping. Now, that's my aunt and myself on the lawn that was in front of those houses up at the top of the hill. They had that much garden then, but when they started to build a bridge, they moved the houses up to about here. The yard was gone.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:57:36             They actually moved the houses?

Meriam Nagel:  00:57:38             Yeah, they pushed them right over to the ...

Charlie Hawkins:             00:57:40             Both houses?

Meriam Nagel:  00:57:41             Yeah. Again, it was the San Joaquin area.

Speaker 1:          00:57:49             Do you recall any gun emplacements behind the houses?

Meriam Nagel:  00:57:53             No. The emplacements, yes. There were three or four. Three anyway.

Speaker 1:          00:58:02             Were they empty or-

PART 2 OF 4 ENDS [00:58:04]

Meriam Nagel:  00:58:00             Three or four. Three anyway.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:58:02             Were they empty or?

Meriam Nagel:  00:58:04             Empty. Yeah, that's where we... Now, that's in the interior of the old house. And this is my paternal grandfather down in his office down in Portamester. Now, this in the Presidio, we're getting away from Fort Point, this used to be... From the car station across through those trees over to where the homes are on that street in the... What do you call that street? Going down towards the men's clubhouse. Now, here's the Peak Inn.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:58:44             Boston Avenue.

Meriam Nagel:  00:58:45             You have a copy of this, don't you?

Charlie Hawkins:             00:58:47             I think so.

Meriam Nagel:  00:58:50             Now, these are when McKinley came. Now, he came out to the fort and went through it and through the lighthouse and he signed the register. We could just find that.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:59:01             What year was that?

Meriam Nagel:  00:59:04             When was he here? I don't think I have any dates here. But anyway, this was running along what they call Lookout Point or something up there on the top of the Presidio.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:59:13             Yes, mm-hmm.

Meriam Nagel:  00:59:13             Headed towards Arcola Boulevard then coming around there. And that was down on the parade grounds and Infantry Terrace. And this is up on the pillar. This is the little house that was at the Arcola gate. That's where the family lived. Now, this is the shape of the lampshade of the... Not the lamp...

Charlie Hawkins:             00:59:13             The globe?

Meriam Nagel:  00:59:41             Globe or whatever you call it, and as near as I could get the dimensions. But see, it went straight up, then there was this bulb and then straight up again.

Charlie Hawkins:             00:59:50             Now, can you tell us about the lamp you have over here, this brass lamp that you have in the corner of your living room here?

Meriam Nagel:  00:59:55             Well, as far as I know, it was used in the original wooden tower that was built before the fort was started.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:00:07             Oh, you think this was in the lighthouse out in front of the present Fort Point where the bridge foundation is.

Meriam Nagel:  01:00:14             On the north point there. Right on the point.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:00:15             This was the actual light then that would-

Meriam Nagel:  01:00:18             That, I won't say for sure, but I think it was used as one of the lights anyway. I think in those days they have a circle of lamps like that with reflectors behind them?

Charlie Hawkins:             01:00:29             I don't know, tell you truth.

Meriam Nagel:  01:00:30             I think maybe some Coast Guard or something could come up with that.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:00:34             How did you acquire this now?

Meriam Nagel:  01:00:36             It just came along in the family from... I don't know where my grandfather picked it up, but it was around, so he brought it down at the house. Nobody was using it and it was just a family lamp that was there. We always used it and they took it with them when they went to Antioch, where they retired to. And then my uncle gave it to me and I've had it ever since.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:00:56             So that would date back to before 1864, then.

Meriam Nagel:  01:01:00             Before the fort.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:01:01             Right.

Meriam Nagel:  01:01:03             Now, these are Presidio events. Let's proceed. There's just the corner and some of the mild.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:01:14             You recall any-

Meriam Nagel:  01:01:15             Here. Now, this is the one I was trying to find. That's the powder magazine. See how the... What do you call that kind of a roof? I know it's an ink port. Now, here's the sally port door. The way it looks, well, it's not quite as battered [cross talk]. But that was around World War II or something.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:01:37             I think so, because it would-

Meriam Nagel:  01:01:38             Yeah, they were down to see what's-his-name. Now, this was when the Demara, I think, or what have I got there?

Charlie Hawkins:             01:01:45             I don't see it. You don't have it in this.

Meriam Nagel:  01:01:51             You haven't done anything. Oh no, I think that was one of the swim things across the... And these are range finder sheds. Now, here's your gun placements. One, two, three. Maybe that's a fourth one here. Now, here's a good one of the tower, the lookout tower.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:01:51             That's the life-saving tower.

Meriam Nagel:  01:02:17             It's life-saving. Now, here's the watershed and then the tank was down below that. So you see the rain rained and fog on this and then drained into the tank.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:02:29             They have two tanks, right?

Meriam Nagel:  01:02:31             Yeah, I think so. And then-

Charlie Hawkins:             01:02:33             One here and one down here. So there's two water tanks.

Meriam Nagel:  01:02:42             Yeah, here. Here and here. And then... It's not in that one. This is like the man looking for his discharge. Now, this is an old one of your place, and this is the house up... Used to be up above you.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:02:53             Now, those houses up above building T989 were used for what?

Meriam Nagel:  01:02:59             Well, those were homes for officers and non-coms, I guess, or what have you.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:03:04             People stationed at the fort?

Meriam Nagel:  01:03:06             Mm-hmm. And this was sort of a... What would you call it? Little store. What did the army call them?

Charlie Hawkins:             01:03:15             Right here?

Meriam Nagel:  01:03:16             Yeah, what did they call them?

Charlie Hawkins:             01:03:17             The Sutler store?

Meriam Nagel:  01:03:18             Yeah, that sort of thing. At least that's what they were using it for. Then my grandfather used it for a chicken house for a while.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:03:26             And you can recall the people actually operating-

Meriam Nagel:  01:03:28             No, no, I don't remember anybody there. I remember it as its last job.

Speaker 3:          01:03:34             As chicken house.

Meriam Nagel:  01:03:34             Yeah. Let's see. This is a life-saving station, original one. And that was further down the beach than the present one just by a few so many yards or so. And this is when these fortifications were built. That lady that I got these from, incidentally, I think lives here in Mill Valley now, and she still had a batch of Presidio stuff. Now, this is up on the hill there by those gun emplacements. And that was refugee earthquake. Now, those you know more about than I do. I got these, the lady had a shop over in Tiburon and she was selling out, and the lady who's... Do Lucrecia Little?

Charlie Hawkins:             01:04:22             No.

Meriam Nagel:  01:04:23             The city clerk and historian. Well, anyway, she was looking for maps and things and she phoned me and she says, "Come quick, Meriam, there's pictures of the Presidio." And it was the last day I'd go over there. This is Point Sur, my dad was stationed down there. That's my father, not my grandfather. That was me and my mom. And that's the road to Point Sur. That was MacArthur. And that was a sketch of the gate that my dad was going to do a picture of, eventually, but he never got to it. And let's see, right here, there's nothing... Oh, here's a Demara on the... Now, here, there's the stumps that I keep talking about that were part of the tower of the original lighthouse name.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:05:22             I see.

Meriam Nagel:  01:05:23             And of course, they kept disintegrating and disintegrating. But that's right on the north end there. And then this is that little shed I said that man who walked the plume, he kept his oakum and all that junk and waded around on Point Lopez. And that's... My dad was out of Farallones. There, now, this is what I'm trying to find is a picture where my grandfather looks like this because this is the way I knew him.

Speaker 3:          01:05:55             Charlie, what's that picture we have of it? A large picture.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:05:59             Well, I sent that-

Meriam Nagel:  01:05:59             That's from a newspaper, yeah. And this is the East Brother Light.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:06:03             But did you get a big print mounted from this?

Meriam Nagel:  01:06:06             No.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:06:06             Just recently?

Meriam Nagel:  01:06:07             Yes, the one like we had in the case, but that's when he first went there.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:06:11             Oh, I see.

Meriam Nagel:  01:06:12             This is the way he looked when I knew him.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:06:14             I see, right.

Meriam Nagel:  01:06:17             Oh, that's me. And this is Mr. Cobb's dog. Now, this is I think measurements, again, of that thing. Now, he's got... This is art my uncle did, so I don't know what... They didn't give me any details, but I grabbed it and stuck it in here. And the wicks, I never saw them. They must've been laying on these spokes or something. I don't know how they got... Coast Guard should be able to come up with some information on these things from their history stuff.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:07:01             What was the condition of the road to Fort Point when you were around down there?

Meriam Nagel:  01:07:06             Oh, just like it is now.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:07:08             It wasn't cobblestone or was it-

Meriam Nagel:  01:07:10             No, no, just a road. These were... Mr. Holcombs told me to get over there fast.

Speaker 4:          01:07:19             This angle may be different, but I don't remember all these trees there now.

Meriam Nagel:  01:07:23             No. Well, my brother went up on the hill and see, we were up here and I said, "Take it from this angle too." And so he did. This is the house down on the road.

Speaker 4:          01:07:32             Okay.

Meriam Nagel:  01:07:33             This is the house near the bridge where I was born. This is the one down near the road, these two. This is the back and that's the front.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:07:46             I wish they kept those houses because it had a good office down there.

Speaker 4:          01:07:48             Beautiful places.

Meriam Nagel:  01:07:50             Yeah, and they kept until... I don't want to be disparaging to the Army, but when they let them go in there. But those places were inspected every six months, and if they weren't spic and span, that was something doing about it. Everything. They went in the clothes classes. Now, here's the door up on the hill there. Now, if you go up there, you'll see that hardware... Well, look there, the brass. And all those hinges and everything that are in there, unless they've been pried out since that was about 1960 something when we were-

Charlie Hawkins:             01:08:33             This old cart here in the fort.

Meriam Nagel:  01:08:33             Yeah.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:08:37             Do you recall what that was at one time? It's been there for years.

Meriam Nagel:  01:08:42             I have no idea. But see, this is the wall that separated from the fort.

Speaker 4:          01:08:49             In the earthquake.

Meriam Nagel:  01:08:50             Yeah, which you know anyway just from that.

Speaker 4:          01:08:54             Well you, there's a great deal of controversy about that.

Meriam Nagel:  01:08:58             This is a rose bush I was. Well, I saw the crevice. I mean, I won't say it was... I saw it and I saw the dirt down in the rooms.

Speaker 4:          01:09:07             I see. How deep was the... Was it really... Big piles.

Meriam Nagel:  01:09:10             There were piles up like that out in the room.

Speaker 4:          01:09:13             Three feet high. Interesting. See, the people... Some people say that there has never been damage in that area due to an earthquake.

Meriam Nagel:  01:09:21             In the first place, those metal things that are up on the front of the building up high, that's what they used to pull that wall back into place.

Speaker 4:          01:09:30             Right. That's very interesting. I think it has to do with-

Meriam Nagel:  01:09:34             And it was solid at the bottom. It didn't break at the bottom. It went this way. It was a seven or whatever it was inches at the top, but it was solid at the bottom. And every brick was in place. There wasn't any bricks broken or falling out.

Speaker 4:          01:09:49             Mm-hmm. Yeah, we've got these... We get this kind of information both from... Well, from Golden Gate Bridge people. You probably remember the controversy when the bridge was being built about earthquake or no earthquake.

Meriam Nagel:  01:10:01             Well, they were asking my dad and my uncle when they'd catch up with them and find out that they knew that they were out there. Mr. Barrington. What happened to him?

Charlie Hawkins:             01:10:14             Well, he went to Canada.

Meriam Nagel:  01:10:16             Oh?

Charlie Hawkins:             01:10:17             He and his new wife.

Meriam Nagel:  01:10:21             Now, let's see, right up here is where that little winch thing was.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:10:25             Yes, its remains of it are still there.

Meriam Nagel:  01:10:29             Well, that had nothing... A lot of people say that. There's another story. They say that that was used to hoist the shot up there, but it wasn't.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:10:37             No, I'm sure it wasn't.

Meriam Nagel:  01:10:38             It wasn't. Now, this is where the um ……. oven was.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:10:47             Shot furnace.

Meriam Nagel:  01:10:48             Yeah, a furnace or whatever you want to call it was right in there. And that was there. I remember remnants of that and the foundation thing, seeing it. I can't tell you in detail what it was like, but I can remember it.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:11:06             I got my old Okinawa-

Meriam Nagel:  01:11:08             I've got everything that I got.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:11:09             ... Okinawa card here.

Meriam Nagel:  01:11:10             Oh, is that what it is? Yeah, it is.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:11:11             Yeah, that's the Okinawa symbol.

Meriam Nagel:  01:11:15             And that's my uncle at Fort Benton where my dad was born. And that's just a picture by Mr. Stein of Fort Point. And I don't know whether there's anything in here. That's my grandmother. She got to Fort Point two years later.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:11:37             So then how many members of your family were associated with Fort Point and the old Ford Point Light station down there-

Meriam Nagel:  01:11:44             You mean individual members or generations?

Charlie Hawkins:             01:11:46             Generations.

Meriam Nagel:  01:11:46             Two.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:11:47             Two generations.

Meriam Nagel:  01:11:49             Yeah. When they came, she brought her oldest son, and then my mother was the next... She was born there.

Speaker 4:          01:11:57             Your grandmother was Helen Collins from Boston, Massachusetts.

Meriam Nagel:  01:12:00             Yeah. And her father was with the Navy. And he was transferred from Charleston Navy Yard out here to the Mayor Island. That's how they got out here. And he worked on the... Well, he was superintendent of construction or something like that. And one of the jobs that they had was refurbishing the kirsosh, which I still haven't got the stand put together, but it's all sanded. I have the wash stand from the captain's quarters of the original kirsosh. Those are the ones we already saw. And this I took of our little house before they tore the plates out of it, and what's-his-name.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:12:45             Here's a... Here they are.

Meriam Nagel:  01:12:48             Put his name on there, would you for me, please? He created more sensation that day. What was I going to have you... Oh, I know what I wanted you to read. It's in here some place. If I can get back to without cruising too far. Where is he now?

Charlie Hawkins:             01:13:19             I guess he's still down around San Mateo. I don't know what he's doing.

Meriam Nagel:  01:13:28             Now, the only other thing I have right at the moment on hand is papers of my grandfather's, like his geodetic survey and that sort of stuff, if you want to glance through it.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:13:37             I'd like to look at it.

Meriam Nagel:  01:13:38             Oh, well, wait a minute. I'll get it for you.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:13:38             Is it in here? Can I get it?

Meriam Nagel:  01:13:38             It's one of those black binders. There's two of them there, right? Now, where the heck is that? It's in here. You got knees that won't work like normal?

Charlie Hawkins:             01:13:57             [inaudible].

Meriam Nagel:  01:13:56             Darn it, just because I want it. Oh, here. Now, this is the block, the tile from San Joaquin that you have in the fort. My dad and my uncle were out prowling and they decided they... They were starting to put the anchorage for the bridge. And he says, "Let's go up and see what we can find." And they found this slab and they brought it down. And my dad says, "Well, there's no use of us taking it home. Let's give it to Cobb and have him give it to Mr. Rhodes," who was the inspector, " and he'll know what to do with it." So Mr. Rhodes, in turn, took it to the California Historical Society. But now there's a couple of places in here. In the first place he got my name, but that doesn't bother... He had written to find that picture of the Spanish fort that you have over on the wall. He says, "Sometime ago I received from Mr. Cobb, the last keeper of the fort, a tile from the old Spanish fort, which was recovered by Mr. Rankin." Well, that's all right, because my uncle's name was Rankin. "When the fort was raised." Well, now that art wasn't even born then, but that's the only thing. And this tile was subsequently donated to the Historical Society. He requested the loan of your pictures, and that's why I was delayed so quickly in returning it. Let's see, where are we? You never know when you open these things whether you're going to be deluged with a pile of... Well, that's the way it starts with the... I think you've seen some of these, haven't you?

Charlie Hawkins:             01:15:51             Yes, I've seen those.

Meriam Nagel:  01:15:56             But that's the only discrepancy that they... Now, these are James Rankin's papers from-

Speaker 3:          01:16:05             1843 to-

Meriam Nagel:  01:16:07             Well, not the Fort Point, but it is geodetic in that way.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:16:07             Oh.

Meriam Nagel:  01:16:18             And this... Oh, this os my other grandfather, his passport from France.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:16:22             Is that right?

Speaker 3:          01:16:22             How long was he at sea as a Senator?

Meriam Nagel:  01:16:30             Carried that around in your pocket. Well, he was up and down the coast here. I was down in Santa Barbara one time, I went in the library and was poking around there to see if I could find anything about the... And there was his... He had registered for a naturalization.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:16:50             Boy, that's some passport.

Meriam Nagel:  01:16:51             Yeah. How would you like to carry that in your pocket if you're going someplace?

Speaker 3:          01:16:55             Oh, a French passport.

Meriam Nagel:  01:16:57             My Grandpa Nagel's.

Speaker 3:          01:16:58             It's in beautiful condition too.

Meriam Nagel:  01:17:16             Yeah, considering. It's been battered around. My dad and Maya took it up to a cabin they had in Mendocino, and then they went off and left the stuff with a so-called caretaker, and my dad went up and found it and I rescued it and I've had it since. But God knows what... The paparazzi would've finished it off by the end of the season if we hadn't gotten it. Then this one, well, you don't want to go through this stuff. This is more or less Presidio if there was anything Army. Of course, I've got 1,000,000 scrapbooks with more or less current stuff. Do you know any place where I can get a decent scrapbook? I can't get these guys in these stationery shops here. They don't seem to know any.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:18:09             Like this?

Meriam Nagel:  01:18:09             No. I had some paper-covered ones that were about that long and about this wide that are just ducky for newspaper clippings.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:18:23             I'll look around, see if I can find you something.

Meriam Nagel:  01:18:25             You can get the better half of a page down onto them if you want to. Or you can fold it in half and have room for a couple of things, plus pictures and that. It works out for clippings very nicely.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:18:37             Oh, one thing, just looking into your notes here, could you tell us anything about Christmas in the Fort Point area? Anything you might've done on Christmas down there?

Meriam Nagel:  01:18:49             Yeah, don't I have it in there?

Charlie Hawkins:             01:18:49             Yeah, I just-

Meriam Nagel:  01:18:51             Anyway, they went to... If you want me to talk, they went to... Of course, they had to go to town to shop and they have this mob of the kids, grandchildren. They had to go from Fort Point, walked to the car station and then-

Charlie Hawkins:             01:19:09             That was the old D line, if I recall.

Meriam Nagel:  01:19:10             Yeah. And then you got the... Well, I wasn't called that then, but Union Street or something. And incidentally, in that man's letter, he names that man who had the photography thing at the station that I've been trying to find out. Anyway, they went from the station on the streetcar and they went downtown, did their shopping and so forth, come back and then no matter how big the load was, you carried it and walked back to Fort Point. So that was part of it. But there was always a big Christmas, and I don't know how they got the tree there, but there was always a great big tree. And of course the whole family came and we'd probably been there since October. And they would put the tree in the living room in the corner, then they'd put those folding doors closed between the dining room. And then we did all our activities out there until it was time.

              01:20:13             And then we'd hear bells and what have you, and we'd make a wild ash. And of course they'd gotten out through the front door and disappeared. And then they'd pull open the doors and here would be this huge Christmas tree with the candles, no globes, candles sparkling all over and gifts on the tree, gifts under the tree. And then we just went through the usual Christmas festivities. But then there was one year there was a storm and he couldn't get to town to wherever it was he used to get his tree. And it kept getting closer and closer and closer and closer, it was getting like the far away Christmas on the island out there. So he called me one day and over there across the road in that little cove where the path starts up the hill.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:21:03             Yes, yes.

Meriam Nagel:  01:21:03             Well, in that little cove right along this... There's a couple of them coming up, I noticed, a couple of little cedars. Well, it was the hedge of those along there. So he called me over and he says, "You pick out a tree." And he had a saw there and everything. So we fiddled around and we finally decided on it. And that was our tree for that Christmas. And we thought it looked just as pretty as the other ones.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:21:28             Did your grandfather ever mention anything about soldiers and Fort Point at Christmas or anything? What they-

Meriam Nagel:  01:21:34             No. I don't know. The only connections with Christmas that I had were mentions of particular families or something like that, that would say, "We did this for Christmas," or what have you. And then we would have... We were always up there for Christmas, I mean, staying there. Then we would go up, because the house... They had a huge family full of young people at the little house up at the gate. So there was no place for any of us to be staying, but we would always go up on Christmas day and there would be something done there too. We'd walk up, we'd cut through the trees behind the cemetery and out across the golf links and back down through there and that sort of thing.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:22:20             Did your grandfather ever mention anything about the soldiers in the fort? Maybe did he eat a meal with them or anything, or mention anything they might have-

Meriam Nagel:  01:22:29             No, but he probably did, but he never mentioned it. But he was friendly with a lot of the men that were there. He was strict in the details of protocol and that stuff. But beyond that, he was all friendship and liked to meet people liked to talk with them. He'd stand and talk for hours to the people there on Sundays and Saturdays, when they'd come and tell him all about the fort and all around the bay, anything he could remember. They had a real cook's tour from him by the time he got through.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:23:08             Did people tend to come down to the point as sightseers?

Meriam Nagel:  01:23:14             Every Sunday, there was a stream of people and fishermen, but mostly people. And of course the thrilling thing to me was to see the nurses coming. Oh God, I thought they were the most glamorous things on Earth with they white uniforms and the long blue cape with the red lining and they'd have the piece thrown back like this.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:23:36             These were the nurses from Letterman General Hospital, or Letterman Army hospital then.

Meriam Nagel:  01:23:42             Yeah. Oh boy, did I think they were something. I wanted to be a nurse, but being a nurse to take care of somebody was... Last thought in my mind, it was to be wearing that outfit.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:23:55             Well, how did the people arrive? Did they walk or come by horse carriage or was there a-

Meriam Nagel:  01:24:00             No, a bus. Don't ever remember. Later, a few came in cars just before we left there. And then I told you about the... Well, it's in there too. Oh, the swims across the gate and all that stuff. There would be mobs of people then, just mobs of them. And all during the 1915 fair, I think we had as big a gate as they did, was just a solid stream of people.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:24:35             That came down to Fort Point.

Meriam Nagel:  01:24:37             My granddad would go until he couldn't go any longer, then he'd ask one of the other men to go and they'd take them all around through the place. And they even had me doing it. I learned the spiel and I was going along. Some of the people had come back to as far as the house and they'd say, "Is she telling Mr. Isaac?" He says, "Yeah." And he says, "What she told you, you can believe."

Charlie Hawkins:             01:24:57             Now, can you tell us about the World War I period? Was the fort ever used as a prison for German prisoners? Did you ever see-

Meriam Nagel:  01:25:07             No, no, no, no, no.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:25:09             You're saying definitely no, right?

Meriam Nagel:  01:25:11             That's when they did the remodeling job. And they were going to put the German prisoners on Alcatraz and they were putting the disciplinary men from the posts into the fort. That was the job.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:25:25             Now, they were going to put German prisoners on Alcatraz. Had this been discussed in newspapers or?

Meriam Nagel:  01:25:33             That I can't tell you, but that was the thing that was to be done.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:25:35             I see.

Meriam Nagel:  01:25:36             And then all the disciplinary men from the various bases were to be housed in the Florida.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:25:44             I see.

Meriam Nagel:  01:25:46             But there were no wartime, that kind of prisoners in... There never was any prisoners period, not even the disciplinary, unless there was somebody incarcerated overnight because the sergeant said, " You get in the..." What have you.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:26:02             Do you recall the three jail cells in the fort?

Meriam Nagel:  01:26:06             Well, I know they're there, but I don't know anything... They didn't put me in one of them.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:26:12             Okay. And you can't recall that anybody... Your grandfather ever saying that they had some soldiers locked up in the jail over there?

Meriam Nagel:  01:26:18             Oh, I didn't listen in detail, so I can't tell you, but I'm sure that I... Vaguely in the back of my mind, I can remember my uncle telling about him. Mostly it was guys that got drunk or something like that. They'd throw them in there for the rest of the night or something like that. The story that my aunt tells, and this one uncle, Art, and one of the Nagel boys and Gene was a Nagel, they always got together every Saturday and their main job was looking for dead men. Because if they found them on land, what is it, they got $ 10. And if they spotted them floating out in the...

PART 3 OF 4 ENDS [01:27:04]

Meriam Nagel:  01:27:00             $10 and if they spotted them floating out in the water, they got $5 I think it was. So they prowled the fort figuring that this is a good-

Charlie Hawkins:             01:27:10             Who would they notify?

Meriam Nagel:  01:27:12             Well, the thing was what they did. They'd put poor Jeanie, you sit here till we get back and they'd take off. Well, this happened. Some fellow evidently drank too much, maybe had a bad heart or what have you, I don't know. But he slid down against the wall and that was it.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:27:30             This is by Ford Point there?

Meriam Nagel:  01:27:31             In the magazine, powder magazine, just inside the door. These kids can crawl along and they find him and they shook up daylights out of him and he wouldn't come to, so they had a dead man. So you sit there, she sat and they took off up over the hill to Fort Scott or whatever they called it then and got some of them in. Down they came. They got the money and she never even got a penny out of it and to this day, if you mention that story, she'll say, "Those dog gone sun of a guns. They never gave me my money."

Charlie Hawkins:             01:28:09             Who was paying the $10 reward? The Army or?

Meriam Nagel:  01:28:12             Well, I guess the Army or whoever the authorities were.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:28:15             I see. Was the man a soldier you think, this guy?

Meriam Nagel:  01:28:18             He was a soldier this time.

Speaker 5:          01:28:20             Was it that common to find?

Meriam Nagel:  01:28:21             No, no. But they had read someplace or heard that if they found, and that's true today. If you find them on the land, if you find them in the water, you can make, I think you can still probably, it's so old that no one would ever think of doing it, but I think the law is still in existence. But these nutty kids, this was their project every Saturday.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:28:48             Can you recall when they were thinking about building the Golden Gate Bridge? Do you recall any preliminary activity there? What was taking place? Surveying or?

Meriam Nagel:  01:29:01             No, we were living in the city at that time and going to school. I don't know whether I'd started to work part-time or what I was doing. My dad went out and always every weekend and he would come back and relay things and say they're getting so far along and this and that and the other thing.

              01:29:19             Also, I have a pad there with a name on it for you. I looked in the telephone book. There's one C Desmond on 20th Avenue. Now, there was a family lived down in so-called Soap Side Row, which is down beyond your office in the curve there where those buildings are. You know what I'm talking about don't you?

Charlie Hawkins:             01:29:49             Right.

Meriam Nagel:  01:29:54             There were three boys and this was the youngest son. He would be around my uncle's age and he was with I think the fire or police department. And if this C Desmond is the man, he might be able to give you some stories about that locale and about the fort because he and Art and all those kids prowled around in there. Of course they were born and raised right there on that spot.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:30:25             Can you recall a story during the probation days where reportedly they made a search and found liquor hidden in the cisterns at Fort Point?

Meriam Nagel:  01:30:45             Never heard anything.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:30:45             You never heard a story like this?

Meriam Nagel:  01:30:47             Never.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:30:48             We heard a story like that and we just wondered if you had any verification. But can you tell us-

Meriam Nagel:  01:30:54             I doubt it. I doubt it very much.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:30:58             How about the buildings that we now use as an office, that area? Can you recall what was down there?

Meriam Nagel:  01:31:05             Well, at the far end on the west end of your building, that little piece there in the-

Charlie Hawkins:             01:31:05             The dock was there.

Meriam Nagel:  01:31:16             World War I time they used as a garage mechanic place to work in. Mr. White who used to live in the house up on the top of the hill right across the road, he was the fellow in charge there. I remember as I told him there, he had one of the officer's electric cars and he took us from there to the house and we felt so set up riding in there for the first time. No, that's the only thing I remember that part of the place. So the other part I don't ever remember being in. And then the other buildings across from there, over on the far side that were there, these things that are there now are all new since World War II. There used to be just a few storage sort of buildings and then there was the homes of Soap Side Row and they have little gardens around and so forth. That was a home area there.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:32:17             There was something I was going to ask now.

Speaker 5:          01:32:23             While you're thinking of that, I find these letters very interesting and I was wondering if you might mind if we copy some of these.

Meriam Nagel:  01:32:31             That's all right.

Speaker 5:          01:32:34             After 41 years of faithful service and it amazes me the way he was retired. Probably you read this. There wasn't even a thanks a lot or anything. Have you read this, Charlie?

Charlie Hawkins:             01:32:48             I think I've skimmed some of it.

Speaker 5:          01:32:51             He had saved 18 lives there at Fort Point.

Meriam Nagel:  01:32:56             Well, my grandmother wrote to the Carnegie thing to see if she could get the medal and it was just so much over the time. They wouldn't bend there.

Speaker 5:          01:33:07             Wouldn't bend it?

Meriam Nagel:  01:33:07             Uh-huh. That was really one of those, well, it's in there. That was really something. He went down there. He was just, well maybe five years before he retired, so he was in his late sixties and it was Saturday or Sunday. There were a lot of people. This man and his son had gone fishing in a boat and the boat capsized and the boy got the father on the boat and then he swam in and he was right down in front of the house and we kids were playing there. All of a sudden we heard this, "Help, help, help."

              01:33:48             We finally saw there was a man in the water and ran in. They always had the life preserver and a ladder right was kept on the porch. He and my uncle got those and they tore out there too, right there in that V. He was right down in front. He'd managed to get in fairly close, not too close. My grandfather peeled off every of clothes he had. Down the ladder he went and dove off and he went out and he got them in. And here's about at least 50. From 15 on and not one of them, not one single one so much has made an offer to even go down the ladder, let alone go down in the water and help him. The kid had been swimming all the way from the north end of the fort. He got him there and then they finally did break down and reached down to get his arm up the ladder.

              01:34:49             Well, in the meantime, I don't know who was sent up to the lookout, lifesaving lookout, and they phoned to say that the man was out in the boat and that they were trying to get the boy in. The night before, the two guys while they were changing shift got the bright idea to tie knots. They tied all kinds of fancy nuts but the fellow that came on duty didn't untie them. So here he was with the lifeline with all his fancy work in it and he was trying to untie it as he ran down the hip. Well, he was useless.

              01:35:25             Anyway, they got the boy up on the road and on a slight bank and he still no clothes on and starts giving the boy resuscitation. I don't think they did mouth-to-mouth then. All of a sudden we heard all the men laughing and we couldn't see because it was such a crowd. When he finally got over at the house he said, "What was all laughing about?" This woman pushing her way in and out between all the men. "It's the first time I've ever seen a man without clothes on except my husband." He says, "You get out of here."

Oh, boy. They got the boy in the, he came too and they got him into the house on the entrance way and he passed out again. But they finally got him to, and then they had taken the boy father down to Letterman. They caught up with him. He came out about two or three hours later and took off and they used to come out all the time, pay visits. But she never, that was just nonchalant. Sorry, but it's over the time and that's it. But with that number of rescues, you'd think they would've made some sort of a-

Speaker 5:          01:36:56             Some kind of motion.

Meriam Nagel:  01:36:56             And a man in the service. I mean if it was just somebody just around why that would be different, but no. Well, I guess that's the way you keep things going when you follow the rules.

Speaker 5:          01:37:10             I just find it rather depressing though, the way he was just retired without even a thank you. It just says in effect-

Meriam Nagel:  01:37:19             Well, it's the same way with the other grandfather. They just get a notice that you're through on such and such a date, period.

Speaker 5:          01:37:28             Considering that you're 75 years old is not the way it reads.

Meriam Nagel:  01:37:31             That doesn't mean anything. Just get out of the way.

Speaker 5:          01:37:32             You are hereby retired.

Meriam Nagel:  01:37:33             So the next fella can step in. No, that's either you make something of it for yourself or that's it, I guess. I don't know. I know that he enjoyed his work and I know that he enjoyed all the people that he met and that sort of thing and [inaudible]. Kids, we had a ball with him. The other grandfather was a little more, you had to get to know him. I mean on the surface he was a little more formal, but underneath, he was a tease too. When the kids got older, at first when they were little, they were, and of course he had a little bit of a German accent and although he spoke perfect, he spoke five languages, but he-

Speaker 5:          01:38:32             This is your grandfather Nagel.

Meriam Nagel:  01:38:34             Nagel. But he was, as I say, more formal so the kids didn't, well unless they'd been with him a long time, they wouldn't go tearing across the room and land in his lap. They'd run up to him, but they'd wait for the invitation, that sort of thing.

              01:38:54             But he was full of fun and there was so doggone much going on with the teenagers and everything and that house was so small that, and I wasn't just the right age either, but boy, I wish I was to get some of his stories. Because he was in the Hanoverian Army and then he went into the, of course they were defeated and then he went as a prisoner because he was a Hanoverian. He had to get out of there. Prussia was the big guy. They went to France and he was in the office that took care of the refugees, so-called, that fled, and then when the Franco Prussian war started, he had to get out of France and an old priest that he knew got passage for him and for two other boys on the ship coming to America and that's how he got here. He never went back and he had a little ranch for a short time in Montana and then he came out here and back into the army again.

Speaker 5:          01:40:14             When you were living near the fort, did you ever meet anybody who claimed to have lived in the fort?

Meriam Nagel:  01:40:21             No.

Speaker 5:          01:40:21             Especially a family type person, a wife or a child?

Meriam Nagel:  01:40:28             No. There were no people living in there. The only thing that I can think of for this story, which I've heard since all this rehabilitation and so forth has been going on is that possibly some of the families of men in the Presidio were brought down there during the earthquake for several weeks or a month or something like that maybe. Because one man that you have pictures of him too, he claims to have been born there in the fort.

Speaker 5:          01:41:01             I've heard of a woman claiming to be born there, and you were a man.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:41:04             There's also a man. There's a picture of an old soldier standing in front of the door, pointing the door and I was born here.

Meriam Nagel:  01:41:12             Well, sometimes when they say I was born here, it means the general location. Like I say, I was born in Fort Point. Well to the novice, they immediately think I was born inside that brick building, which is logical. I mean after all.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:41:29             Some of them we found say that they were born at Fort Point, but then when you talk to them, they say Fort Winfield Scott.

Meriam Nagel:  01:41:40             Well now you see in the old days Fort Point encompasses the Fort and up there on the hill where the rose bush is and all of that stuff, and part of those homes up on the top of the hill and then all of that place that I call Soap Side Row, right beyond Soap Side Row was the swamp then from there down to Van Ness Avenue. You see what is a marina today was a fill for the fair.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:42:05             Right, I understand that.

Meriam Nagel:  01:42:07             So, there was no land there except puddles and little hillocks of like a swamp mainly covered with yellow lupin bushes about a mile high. Of course, the tide would come in and go out. Not too high, but it was there and that's the way that was until they took up the land for the, it was the racetrack that was built there for the 1915 Fair. All the barns and the grounds, I mean the track itself and then all the...

Charlie Hawkins:             01:42:52             When you were around the fort there and back over the hill toward what is now the Fort Scott area, do you ever recall seeing any brick yards, remains of a brick yard or anything?

Meriam Nagel:  01:43:06             I won't say there really wasn't one there, but I don't know.

Speaker 5:          01:43:13             Was it routine for you to be allowed to go up into the light itself?

Meriam Nagel:  01:43:18             My granddad never bothered. I mean I was the only one. He didn't let, the other children were too small and I was just hanging right on his-

Speaker 5:          01:43:25             But there were no strict rules against family members going into the light?

Meriam Nagel:  01:43:28             No. He would put me to work. He'd give me a rag and some brass polish. I tagged after him all over and he'd walk as you read that, we'd go hiking over the hills and anything that was of interest that he thought I ought to know about, he'd stop and tell me about it. One day we were in the beach was covered with onions and he went into a long dissertation about how they raised onions up in the delta because part of his geodetic survey, he had to go up all the river things and they raised the onions and he said, "Then they have to transport them to market." He said, "Sometimes they can't afford the railroad trains or they can't get the price that they want to sell them, so they just throw them in the river and there just aren't any to buy." He tried to get it through to me, the economics of it.

              01:44:21             He said, "So," and then he went on with the tides, how the tides went in and out and up the river and down and so forth. He said, "Now the tides brought these out and he says they've probably gone all the way up from near to the farone. Now," he said, "the tide's coming in so they floated in there on the beach." Things like that. He'd stop and go through all this rigamarole and tell you these things.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:44:43             Do you recall a period of time, say about 1920 or '21 when they used the fort as a school-

Meriam Nagel:  01:44:52             Never heard of it.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:44:52             ... and taught people automobile mechanics, soldiers after World War I?

Meriam Nagel:  01:44:58             That probably was an army project, but there was no publicity about it. I mean other than whatever was necessary for them.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:45:06             Now were you living near the fort during World War-

Meriam Nagel:  01:45:06             No, he left in 1919.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:45:12             Now, where were you during World War II? Were you ever around the fort.

Meriam Nagel:  01:45:14             I was in San Francisco.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:45:15             Did you ever get down around Fort Point?

Meriam Nagel:  01:45:17             Oh, yeah. We'd ride down and take a look around and see what was...

Charlie Hawkins:             01:45:20             Can you recall what they had on top of the fort? Say a couple of guns or search lights? Could you recall seeing any search lights or guns on top of Fort Point?

Meriam Nagel:  01:45:29             I don't remember any search lights now except the World War I one. The only reason I remember that is because we went up in there one night and was fooling around and talking to this fellow. He says, "Come on up and I'll show you the light." We get up there and here's a poor fisherman coming in, in his little boat and he turns the light on him and he kept it on him all the way until he was almost on the rocks and he was screaming and waving his hands. I forgot that.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:46:00             But there was a search light there during World War I?

Meriam Nagel:  01:46:03             Yeah.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:46:04             And it was manned, had people there operating it.

Meriam Nagel:  01:46:08             There were regular watches all day and all night.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:46:09             Were there any guns on top of the fort or around the fort that you can recall?

Meriam Nagel:  01:46:14             I don't recall-

Charlie Hawkins:             01:46:14             Modern guns.

Meriam Nagel:  01:46:15             If they were, they were small guns or things and I don't remember. All I remember is the searchlight and probably only because of that incident. But it...

Speaker 5:          01:46:34             Right now we're about a fourth of the way through the restoration of the light. They've stripped away the things that are too rusty and they sandblasted the main structure and the metal.

Meriam Nagel:  01:46:48             You can do that. I mean it's-

Speaker 5:          01:46:49             The metal was in very good condition.

Meriam Nagel:  01:46:51             Good.

Speaker 5:          01:46:51             Much better than everybody thought it would be. It's been primed and painted. It's bright white now.

Meriam Nagel:  01:46:58             Than in other words it's going to be more or less the same old tower.

Speaker 5:          01:47:01             Theoretically, it should look just like you first remember it when it's all finished. As a matter of fact, that'll be the final test to have you look at it and see whether it's the way you remember.

Meriam Nagel:  01:47:12             I just thought it would be another shape, but it would be the white with a red trim and so forth and it would just look.

Speaker 5:          01:47:20             How do you remember it painted when you...

Meriam Nagel:  01:47:24             Just white and some black trim and the roof was red.

Speaker 5:          01:47:28             The roof was red. How about the little ball on top of that?

Meriam Nagel:  01:47:32             Well, that I can't tell you about.

Speaker 5:          01:47:33             Red or-

Meriam Nagel:  01:47:34             Mr. Hawkins told me that's the monument for the survey.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:47:39             It's a survey market. It's when they get a hold of the chief ex survey people, and that's a reference point for their surveys from there. They were up there before you arrived with a lot of gear clamming around the top there making their surveys up and down the coastline there.

Speaker 5:          01:47:56             Right on top of the lighthouse?

Charlie Hawkins:             01:47:57             Right. That's the top of it. That's it, right on top of the lighthouse.

Meriam Nagel:  01:48:00             There's another monument right in that view of the sea wall.

Speaker 5:          01:48:10             It won't be furnished inside with a working light.

Meriam Nagel:  01:48:13             I know. I didn't see how you could do. I mean-

Speaker 5:          01:48:14             But it will be restored to look the same from the exterior and the interior, the wood and everything will be restored so that at some future date maybe-

Meriam Nagel:  01:48:24             It used to be, I wish we, I keep wishing. Against, the east wall was a desk which was hung on the wall. It was a drop leaf box, slanted top, and up at the top was a little shelf with places for the ink quills and the pens, and then the lid opened up and the register was in there and whatever else they wanted to put in there. That was hung on that wall. Then it was on the south wall a little bit to the west of the ladder, going up into the light was where that whatever it was that ran the cable. But other than that, I can't think of anywhere black. There was some black trim, but where it was, it was very small amount.

Speaker 5:          01:49:24             What colors was the inside painted?

Meriam Nagel:  01:49:26             White.

Speaker 5:          01:49:26             It was all pretty white inside other than the brass metal and everything?

Meriam Nagel:  01:49:33             Yeah, they used a lot of white paint. The houses were white with red roofs up on the hill. Then the other house was a more, it was a stucco English type sort of thing with a brown roof and the ecru colored stucco. I don't know what or whether the poor little duplex ever got painted. In the pictures it's just weather beaten. That's it. There's one picture in that envelope there of the house, part of the house. Can I make you get up again? I think right there on the, I was trying to think what, and the inside of the fog signal, it was cement, but it was like wash wipe. I think this is Mr. Stillwell's obituary. Now here, these are army. This belongs to the fort. This was right evidently after the houses were built, these houses. This is the duplex.

Speaker 5:          01:50:52             This is the house then that you were born in.

Meriam Nagel:  01:50:52             This is the house my mother was born in. This is the house that I was born in.

Speaker 5:          01:50:55             I see. Then you moved down to the house that was built here.

Meriam Nagel:  01:50:58             That was built here. But this is army. See they had to go to get to the lighthouse station homes and everything, you had to go up this to get there. Someplace, no, it's up on the top of the hill. It's over this way a little bit is where that spring was. Don't you have a copy of that?

Charlie Hawkins:             01:51:21             I think so. Yeah.

Meriam Nagel:  01:51:24             Here's one of the bridges.

Speaker 5:          01:51:29             Can you identify the man sitting on the railing or the man sitting on the rock?

Meriam Nagel:  01:51:34             No. I don't know who they were. They must've been the people that he came to work with.

Speaker 5:          01:51:42             He worked his way all the way up from the second assistant to-

Meriam Nagel:  01:51:45             Well, he was second over on East Island. When he came to Fort Point, he was keeper.

Speaker 5:          01:51:50             I see.

Meriam Nagel:  01:51:58             Whenever I see one of these things, I grab them.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:52:09             [phone ringing] painting.

Meriam Nagel:  01:52:09             That my granddad did.

Speaker 5:          01:52:12             It's very good.

Meriam Nagel:  01:52:13             See he's got the old house there. Now this is the plume as he put, and then it went through the hill there and it went on around the cliffs to point over surrounding in the back.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:52:31             You can see he went through the hill here.

Speaker 5:          01:52:36             And there was a tunnel you could walk through?

Meriam Nagel:  01:52:38             Yeah, a tunnel. Well, he must've been able to walk through it because he had to walk the whole thing to see that there were no leaks and that sort of thing.

Speaker 5:          01:52:45             Gee, I wonder whatever happened to that tunnel?

Meriam Nagel:  01:52:47             It's there someplace. It might have caved in by now or something, but it's right in the, you know where the little walk starts here at the cement walk and it goes up the hill? Well, it's right in that little hollow there. The little compression that's in there. Someplace in there is where it is.

Speaker 5:          01:53:06             Do you remember when the fence was built that goes up the hill from down the top.

Meriam Nagel:  01:53:13             That was built, evidently when that house was built in 1907. This used to be a hedge. The cement walk went all the way up there and on the outside of it was a sea view hedge all the way up, as tall as you or taller. And then he used to trim it and you could walk and it was so thick you could walk right down the top of it. Now he doesn't have line point or anything in there. That must've been something that was hauled there to use on a... Now if they're granite, then they were part that was going to be used for the sea wall.

Charlie Hawkins:             01:54:01             The department or war I think and unloaded them there. Very good.

Meriam Nagel:  01:54:15             But that of course, he was a detailed artist, but he did a darn good job. My cousin has a big one, bigger than this. Then she also has a matching size one of the camelback and helmet of rock out on the back beach. She has agreed that if some time you wanted to plug an art exhibit or something and you wanted to display them, she try to get them up here. But in the meantime, she lives in Concord and she doesn't want to part with them. She thinks if I get my hands on them, I'll never return them. Now my dad did this at Point Sur. That was about, I don't know how many, 170 some odd stairs you had to climb. That was before they had the road around I think.

Speaker 5:          01:55:07             I'll bet.

PART 4 OF 4 ENDS [01:55:14]

Description

Interview with Meriam Nagel, who grew up at Fort Point, because her father was a lighthouse keeper there. Throughout the interview they reference unknown photos.

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