Audio
Madeline Chase
Transcript
[TAPE 1, SIDE 1]
Martini: It’s Friday, June 6th, 2003, and this is an oral history interview with Miss Madeline Chase. We’re carrying this out at her house at 1714 24th Avenue in San Francisco. My name is John Martini. I’m a historian-consultant working for the National Park Service. This oral history is being done for the Park Archives at the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and, Miss Chase, you know this is going to be part of the collection and people can use this and listen to it. And you give up your copyright?
Chase: Right.
Martini: Great. Let’s start at the very beginning. Can you give me your full name?
Chase: Madeline Elizabeth Chase.
Martini: And when and where were you born?
Chase: I was born in what we now call the Marina, April 14th, 1915.
Martini: 1915—right during the Fair?
Chase: Yes.
Martini: Um hum.
Chase: My mother couldn’t go because she was pregnant [both laugh].
Martini: So your father worked at the Presidio—was he in the military or was he a civilian?
Chase: Civilian employee.
Martini: Civilian employee. When did he start at the Presidio?
Chase: I don’t know. I have material but I don’t think it indicates that.
Martini: Um hum. And what kind of work did he do?
Chase: His brother, Louis, who was also there was—I don’t like to use the word “superintendent” but I can’t think of anything else. And I think my father was called “foreman.”
Martini: Foreman?
Chase: Yes.
Martini: Doing what type of—construction? Or—
Chase: They did whatever needed to be done that the military couldn’t do. And that included, I guess, carpentry. I think principally with those weapons and the batteries.
Martini: The Coast Artillery.
Chase: Yes.
Martini: Okay.
Chase: Sixth Coast Artillery. Can you blot out some of this?
Martini: We can change anything you’d like.
Chase: Oh, okay. I hate to sound so—
Martini: But that’s right. That’s their name. It was the 6th Coast Artillery.
Chase: Yeah but I don’t if it was when they started.
Martini: It was, I think, the 66th Company of Coast Artillery. It had a slightly different name—they kept changing.
Chase: That card that I showed you—maybe that would say on it. Does that say…
Martini: We’re looking at a postcard and—
Chase: Engineer’s Office.
Martini: Engineer’s Office—yes. And he mailed this from Corregidor in 1911.
Chase: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah--he was there two years.
Martini: So he’d been working for the Army well before you were born.
Chase: Indeed. Yes.
Martini: Now--did you have any brothers or sisters?
Chase: I have one sister who’s terribly ill mentally.
Martini: What’s her name?
Chase: Dorothy.
Martini: Dorothy.
Chase: Her name is Banter (??) now—Dorothy Chase Banter.
Martini: And what were your parents’ names?
Chase: Alexander Joseph Albert Chase and Eileen Rice.
Martini: Okay. When you were living in the City, at some point you actually moved onto the Presidio.
Chase: Yes.
Martini: Yeah?
Chase: Yeah—it comes back to me. I was born in 1915 and we living in the Marina. My sister was born 1917 in that house.
Martini: The house at Fort Scott.
Chase: Yeah. Yeah. Because we were not entitled to medical, dental, or commissaries. So my both my father and mother had their own doctor and their own dentist outside of the Post.
Martini: That’s cause you guys weren’t military and you weren’t covered by--
Chase: Exactly.
Martini: Okay. Then how did they even get to move onto the Presidio?
Chase: Well, that I don’t know. Whether Uncle Lou was there previously and got his brother in I can’t tell you. They had only grade school education but it seemed to me that they were smart. They could do anything. Honestly, it was amazing. But I think their principal work was to take care of these big batteries and these guns that were in there.
It was many, many years, when Dorothy and I were probably in our teens or a little bit younger, on a Saturday afternoon my mother was going to something to which we weren’t invited. So she said, “You stay home with your father.” And he said, “I have to work until noon.” And we went to the batteries and he said here until noon.” But it was in the batteries, what we called the batteries--those--west of the bridge.
Martini: The big concrete?
Chase: Yes. Yes.
Martini: People called them bunkers but batteries is their real name.
Chase: It seemed to me their principal—but I may be way off base—their principal duty was to keep those in working order. God knows why—nobody ever bombed us in the history of San Francisco [both laugh].
Martini: So they—I think the terminology they used would have been like ordnance—
Chase: Ordnance—that rings a bell, yeah.
Martini: Let me go back to your house for a bit. Where exactly was your house located?
Chase: Well, you know, it’s still dirt road and it’s dreadful now. You know the road that goes down to the brick wall—
Martini: To Fort Point.
Chase: Then the other paved road goes past the aviators’ quarters. Between those two roads there’s a dirt road. It has a white barrier across it now. It’s still a dirt road. The first house--Uncle Lou’s house--was built for the Colonel of Engineers. I used to know his name--I can’t think of it…
Martini: Was it Mandell?
Chase: No.
Martini: Alexander?
Chase: No. It was built for him but he lived there for less than a year when he retired and moved to France and nobody heard from him after that. This is word of mouth, you know, and I’m old and, when I heard these stories, I was a kid.
Martini: That’s okay.
Chase: In front of that house, closer to the water, was our house, which was built for his office—for the Colonel’s office.
Martini: Okay.
Chase: This.
Martini: Yes. We’re looking at a picture. In the lower left-hand corner, it has the number “592” and it’s dated September 18, 1910. A little hipped roof building. Yeah.
Chase: Well, anyway, that’s where we lived because, when the Colonel left, they didn’t use it as an office apparently. When my parents moved in— Dorothy was born in ’17 so it was before that cause she was born in that house.
Martini: So at the start of World War I or so you were in there.
Chase: Yes. Yeah, I guess.
Martini: For reference, for anyone listening to the tape, the roads you described: the road that goes down to the Fort, that’s what we call Long Avenue.
Chase: Exactly.
Martini: And the aviators’ house--________ that you use that; no one calls them those any more—that’s the row of old pilots’ quarters on Lincoln Boulevard.
Chase: Lincoln. I should know—Lincoln is down, and Washington is up. But I don’t go up Washington because, as I say, I’m not too good on hills.
Martini: There’s nothing left of your house now, is there?
Chase: No. They’ve torn both of those houses--both structures--down.
Martini: You say the road’s terrible. It’s changed from when you living out there?
Chase: Well, I don’t like ________ and I don’t like going in alone. But I went in on Sunday cause there are lots of people on Sunday—a month ago--and, of course, the structure’s have been gone. But it looks to me that they’re preparing to make a road right through to the bridge, all stacks of soil and walls and stuff. I was heartbroken. See those trees--I’ve known them all my life. I’ve known those trees. We played in them and our houses—I guess as kids we appreciated it but, my God—I’d sell my eye-teeth [both laugh] and anything else to live there but they don’t want eye-teeth [interviewer laughs].
Martini: That’s something I have on my list. What was it like living out there? It was kind of remote, wasn’t it? In the 1910s and 20s…
Chase: Oh, indeed, it was remote. Indeed. Now you mentioned transportation--shall I talk about that? My father had a car. In fact, we had two cars. It was the strangest situation: If we wanted to build a garage, you just built a garage for your car. I don’t know if they got permission or where they got the material. But we did it, Uncle Lou did it and he did it for his son who traveled from there to Polytechnic High School, driving—he must have been fifteen or sixteen years old and he was driving. Well, anyway—what else was I going to…
Martini: How did you get out there?
Chase: Oh—there was an Army bus. And when I think of this miserable one bus line that I had—when I think of that bus line-- It drove from, you know, the bachelor quarters were the aviators—that’s where it terminated. It went up Lincoln, turned where the General’s quarters are, and then there are commissioned officers’ quarters—went down there, passed the post x before it got there. Then it came down that road where I sit when I’m tired when I’m walking and went to the Presidio what we call the car line, half hour between—15 minutes trip each way so it was a half hour that you waited at either end. Never once in all the years that we lived there was it ever late or broken or anything. You cannot depend on that—well that’s—you’re not interested in... It was a great big dark red bus that I don’t know the make and Mike was the driver. He eventually married one of the teachers at the old Winfield Scott School. Never once! I don’t know how they ran but we used to go to Seal Stadium in the night--with my mother, of course--and walk in this lonely, dark road, no lighting… Never. I think of that when I wait a half hour or an hour for the 71 bus. Never broke down. Well, that’s as much, I guess, as I can tell you about the bus.
Martini: You said it would stop right in front of the bachelor officers’ quarters—
Chase: Yeah. And turned around there and then went back up Long.
Martini: Yeah. I think that’s what/when they call/ed Lincoln Hall or something [unintelligible]--
Chase: I don’t know—
Martini: With the columns in front—
Chase: Yeah. Well, it was where you have military living. You have quarters for the bachelors.
Martini: Um hum. So your closest neighbors would have been those pilots in those houses right up the hill, huh?
Chase: Well, we lived in the red house and Uncle Lou—
Martini: Oh, right--I’m sorry. Your next-door neighbors. Yeah.
Chase: Well, now, nobody ever mentions this and it was almost mysterious: As you go in this road, there was a house—I think it was yellow. People did live in there but we never once saw them and if you went in in the night, there were lights in there. I’ve heard that they were soldiers but they must not have had any children. It was the strangest thing. And then many, many, many, many years later when I went in the entrance up at Lyon and Pacific Avenue, I walked this beautiful walk. I walked down there and do you know there was another house quarters in there. I just recently thought maybe they were woods and they wanted somebody living there. I don’t know. But it was the strangest thing to have those wooden frame houses—push that aside [unintelligible—interviewee, distracted by something in the room, speaks to the interviewer]
Martini: It’s alright…
Chase: Each in isolated—and never, never once. The milkman would go in and leave milk there. Oh, I told you I was going to talk much. A graystone. about this big there. And there was another one where my mother would say, “Aunt Mildred’s coming over next week (or tomorrow).” And Dorothy and I would sit out on this brick stone and it’s still there. Little gray and white stones. A nice little place where we sat. And there’s was one—well, I’m talking too much and I’m digressing.
Martini: No, this is what—we want to know what life was like out there at that time—
Chase: Well, we didn’t, as I said, we didn’t have any commissaries, no medical or dental, so it meant my mother would have to go to what we call the Marina or my father the wharf or favored the Richmond. He drove—my mother didn’t drive. And that was kinda hard going because we—well, it wasn’t because we depended on the bus and it was entirely dependable and reliable. But then you got your car line and you had always either the D or the E car, sometimes both. Excellent service.
Martini: Okay. So this was a free bus? A free Army bus?
Chase: No. We had bus tickets. And my father always got them at the post office. I don’t know adults paid. I’d ride with an adult but he had to pay. Maybe a nickel or a dime or something.
Martini: You’d mentioned in one of your visits about you used to go down to that lighthouse keeper’s houses?
Chase: Yes. Oh—did you ever see those?
Martini: I remember them but they were torn down before I started to work.
Chase: Well, that was a sacrilege. Mr. Cobb (??) was the keeper. His was on the ground, right down there. No electricity. When we moved, it still didn’t have electricity. The first assistant was Mr. Jordan. And Mr. Mc Kay (??) was the second assistant. Mr. McKay--we didn’t know it at the time but he was ill and we didn’t know that he had cancer. Do you know that they had a bridge up there on the hill that went to the top of the red brick fort where the lighthouse was? And the damned idiots tore down that lighthouse. I get so angry! Now, here’s Mr. McKay—he had the third watch, midnight to eight, an ill man. The wind and the fog on the footbridge—that high up, going over there. I just adored those people. And Mr. Cobb and Mr. Jordan too. Apparently lighthouse people are interesting. Channel 9—they showed a couple of times—fascinating! Well, anyway—there were steps down to what we call down below where the morning paper was delivered and the afternoon one and the Army kids brought it to our house. But my father or uncle bought nice boxes so Mr. Cobb and Mr. Jordan would be able to put their paper in (unintelligible). It was such a heavenly place to be.
Martini: Now Mr. Cobb--
Chase: First—he was the keeper.
Martini: He lived in the big single house down—
Chase: Yes. Yes.
Martini: Yeah. Now Mr. Jordan and Mr. McKay—they lived up on top of the hill? In the (unintelligible).
Chase: Yes. Yes.
Martini: Yeah. And the McKay girls—
Chase: Yes. Now you can go down there in an automobile.
Martini: Right.
Chase: They didn’t—they had a chute--C-H-U-T-E--for the garbage and for the, well, garbage because they couldn’t get up there. I don’t know how they got their fuel, because they had fireplaces. They had fireplaces in the bedrooms. They were magnificent [pounding sound for emphasis] houses!
Martini: I was told when I started in 1972 that those houses had been torn down simply because the Army had taken them over when the lighthouse left and they couldn’t get anyone to live in them because of the noise from the bridge and people dropping things—
Chase: Oh.
Martini: So they were torn down in the Sixties.
Chase: I forgot. The Army did take them over. You see, I forgot. McKay’s—do you (unintelligible) walk over with those—I hate that! Absolutely hate that bridge ruining my beautiful Golden Gate!
Martini: Yeah. It totally changed everything when the bridge was built.
Chase: Well, you know, we would sit on the porch and watch the sun go down. One time--I was just a small kid--my father and his brother knew a lot of people from Harbor View. I’m digressing but I think this is interesting. And they knew a man who was captain of a sailor, a sailing ship. And they would go up to Alaska yearly to get salmon. And they knew Captain Saline and I heard Uncle saying, “That’s the last time we’ll see a ship going out into sails.” Their parents—my father’s parents or his grandparents—were—I should write a book--their ship went down in the South Pacific. I’ve got it here. Well, anyway—you don’t want to hear it. Or do you?
Martini: Yeah. We’ll come back to that later. Yeah. Go back to the red brick fort. Did you ever go in there?
Chase: Yes, we did. And sometimes it was quite dirty and I didn’t like it in there. And my sister and the McKay kids went up into the lighthouse. I’m afraid of heights and I’m sorry now I didn’t. But they did. And we played baseball.
Martini: What’d you play?
Chase: Baseball.
Martini: Baseball?
Chase: On the ground.
Martini: In the fort?
Chase: Yeah. However, when I say baseball, we didn’t have nine [laughing], much less eighteen. Girls and boys. Roy Cobb was Mr. Cobb’s youngest son but he was a lot older than we were. The McKays, in addition to Joe and Louise, had three sons but they were so small. But I was the pitcher. Now I want to be a catcher. But, anyway [both laughing], we played in there, yes. Right on the floor.
Martini: What was happening in there? Was anyone living in it or was (unintelligible)--?
Chase: No. No, no. Not then. I understand that people did live in it. Sorry I can’t tell you more about that but--whether it was wartime or what--but there were people who--but it was long before we went in but I don’t know who or what had happened.
Martini: Okay. They used it off and on over the years.
Chase: Oh, did they?
Martini: Yeah. In your time I think it pretty much a warehouse, something—
Chase: No. It seemed to me to be, with the exception of the lighthouse--cause we would wander around in there and I was never terribly comfortable. But in my time, from 1917 to ’33--you see, I was there on the day my sister was born with all the doctors coming from Lombard or someplace—Union—so she arrived before he did-- But anyway, I know that I lived there probably from ’16 to ’33.
Martini: ’16 to ’33—you would have been there right when they started to build the bridge.
Chase: Oh, indeed we were. And Louise and Joe and I and my sister would take great big pieces of mud, cod mud as big as we could get it, and put it on the steps of their field office when they went home because we were hating to see that bridge being built.
Martini: Really?
Chase: They had the field office right on the ground there and we just hated to have them build that bridge and on my land!
Martini: I’m gettin’ the impression you felt kind of possessive about ________ at Fort Scott.
Chase: Oh, I still do. My trees are there [interviewer laughs]. When the men are there, you know, doing the right thing, trimming trees, I say--they laugh at me now—“Why are you cutting down my trees? I’ve known these trees since I was four years old,” which I do.
Martini: Ah. From the photos that I’ve seen, the trees got a lot bigger, though, since the early days.
Chase: Oh, yes, yes.
Martini: It’s a forest in there now.
Chase: Yes. However, I read that—which I don’t think doesn’t seem to be true—eucalyptus trees have short roots and they tip over. I’ve never seen one fall over.
Martini: Takes a high wind.
Chase: Ah…
Martini: You remember about six or seven years ago we had that horrible storm that blew through and a bunch of trees fell over in the Presidio--
Chase: Oh, really?
Martini: And a house collapsed above Baker Beach—the foundations washed out? I think it was ’95 or ’96. Yeah, they lost a couple of hundred trees over night in the Presidio.
Chase: Is that true? You see, I guess I remember--which is true of old age--things that happened a long time ago. But if you ask me what day it is today, well I know it because you’re here--otherwise I might not.
Martini: Of course, the Golden Gate Bridge we’re always fascinated with. I know it kinda ruined the Golden Gate but when did you first start to hear that they were going to build a bridge and what did you hear?
Chase: You know, I can’t be sure of that. Maybe I just didn’t accept it or maybe I didn’t read—we took two newspapers—maybe I just didn’t read them. But when they actually got their historic building, I was absolutely crushed. And I think it’s ugly. It’s—who is interested in brilliant orange steel? And I know they had to have orange and I knew it had to be steel. Have you read that plaque, which I have read many times, about not—Giannini actually coming through with the money because Strauss couldn’t get enough money to build it. So he sold—he was trying to float loans, which nobody would buy and Giannini said, “Well how long will it last?” And Mr. Strauss said, “Forever.” If I had heard him, I’d have strangled him [interviewer laughs]. That’s all written down but I have read it many times in many places.
Martini: You moved out right when the bridge was just starting to get going then.
Chase: Yes, yes we did. We left in 1933.
Martini: Was that related to the bridge or the changes?
Chase: No, no. Uncle Lou was over—cause he was more than 69—so he was more than retirement age.
Martini: Wow.
Chase: And my father was close to it. And they were too old for what they were doing. They were big, heavy men, as you could tell from these pictures. And they were just past it. Uncle Lou’s son, Malcolm—Lou Malcolm--took over but he took what they say, had a drinking problem and he just lost out on what would have been, you know, a really beautiful situation, as far as I was concerned. He got our house and I do know but I can’t think of the name who got Uncle Lou’s house. And that was a lovely—well, it was built for the Colonel. Two fireplaces [interviewee clears throat], a dining room and an eating room—each had fireplace and, of course, we both had wood and coal stoves—there was no gas for us.
Martini: Did you have electricity?
Chase: Yeah, yeah. My mother every summer would go with Dorothy and me to the Russian River with her family. When we came home, my father had always done something nice for us. And Dorothy and I each had twin beds and he had put in a--cause we were readers--each had our own electric light over our beds. He could do anything. I mean, and they seemed to have permission. As I said, if they wanted a garage built—he built a shed with electricity for the washing machine, for the woodshed cause we had wood and coal, and then storing canned food. And that’s separate. A building entirely separate. If you want it, build it. I don’t know how they did that.
Martini: There’s an expression in the government that it’s easier to beg forgiveness than to get permission. So sometimes people just do things.
Chase: Oh, that’s interesting.
Martini: Also, too—not being military, you know, being civilians, there probably was less attention paid than if you were in military quarters.
Chase: Nobody ever--it was really an astounding thing for anyone to get in there. Once in a while, if the fleet came in, people would come to see the fleet come in.
Martini: So you didn’t get a lot of tourists running around looking at the—
Chase: No. That would get--ladies in the afternoon when you had chauffeur-driven cars you know from Pacific Heights. The chauffeur would drive them. It was a rare, rare place. I mean, nobody—well, they didn’t know it was there, I guess--a dirt road and, I don’t know. But we never, never saw anyone. It was sheer heaven. When I die, I’m not going anyplace as good as that [both laugh].
Martini: Right below you, right below your house, the cluster of buildings now where they have the Warming Hut with the little bookstore in it and the fishing pier—
Chase: I got ya, yeah.
Martini: What was that area?
Chase: They used those buildings for whatever reason—well, one of them, the end one closest to the bridge and to the brick fort, had an open fire so there must have been whatever you do to melt—
Martini: Like a blacksmith type of forge?
Chase: Exactly. Because we cooked crabs. They owned a little row boat, which they hung under the boar and they’d--which I guess now is illegal--leave the row boat there and, at the end of the day, pick up the crabs. And they would cook—my mother would say, “Al, get all the crabs you want. But I’m not going to cook them up here.” You have to have a great big thing—a roaring fire. So they cooked the crabs on that thing.
Martini: So you’re describing the building that’s now like the Ranger’s Office down (unintelligible).
Chase: Yes. Yes. Yes. Now the other building where you have the coffee shop was also their building. And the barn was where Uncle Lou had his office, his desk—
Martini: And the barn—is that still standing?
Chase: Yes. It’s the one at the far end, the other end, the opposite end as far away as you can get. I think there are three buildings and they used all three of them. This one still had the horses’ names above when we were kids.
Martini: I’m sorry—is that building still standing today?
Chase: Yeah. Yeah.
Martini: Is that the one that has the bookstore in it?
Chase: No. The bookstore is the one in the middle, isn’t it?
Martini: I think it’s the one on the end now but there’s--.
Chase: No. No. I was there because I walk early in the morning and I couldn’t get in because they weren’t open. But I saw it’s a bookstore and it’s sort of a coffee shop.
Martini: That’s it.
Chase: That’s the one. Then the other one where they had this open fire and then the barn. You went in and you made a sharp right--there was a fence all around—it wasn’t a barn in our time but you could see it had been a barn cause the stalls were there and the names of the horses were there. And then Uncle Lou had his desk and his office in the front end of that barn.
Martini: Okay. So he had a separate office just for doing his work for the—
Chase: Indeed. He hired extra people when he needed them. They were all laborers as far as I could see.
Martini: You’re doing fine. This is great!
Chase: Well, I talk—you only have an hour to do-- See there he is and these are the men—
Martini: This is a photograph showing a bunch of men doing construction work with Point Bonita in the background. Oh, that’s Uncle Lou—
Chase: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Martini: The big guy on the left.
Chase: Yeah. And my father was about ten pounds lighter and one or two inches shorter. That’s my father and my mother. That’s me. There! Our garage was here but I remember that thing. Well, anyway…
Martini: I’ll tell you what I’m going to do: I’m going to turn the tape over and then I really want to talk about those batteries.
Chase: Well, we used to have picnics up there—
Martini: Hold on!
[End of Tape 1, Side 1]
[Tape 1, Side 2]
Martini: This is Side 2. Tell me more about your dad and your uncle working on the batteries. Specifically, did you get to go with them?
Chase: Yes. Yes. This was the time—and these batteries were—you know the road that comes in from the Richmond District?
Martini: Twenty-fifth Avenue?
Chase: Yes. This is the time my mother was invited to something on a Saturday—a Saturday. So Dorothy and I—my father worked until noon. And he said, “Now there’s not going to be anything here for you to play with.” Staying there for a half hour was like an eternity but we ran around there--I don’t know what my father was doing there but he worked half day on Saturday and he said, “You will be here.” So that was understood. But what he was doing there, I don’t know. Did you have live electricity in those batteries at that time?
Martini: They did.
Chase: Well, that must have been what he was doing—
Martini: There’s a picture of a big, like, power born in here (unintelligible) that was in the main power plant.
Chase: Well, they kept them alive, as I said, for all these people who were bombing us [both laugh].
Martini: Waiting, right?
Chase: All I know is that we were in there. It seems to me there was—you know, we were little kids and there was a wall of something that might, as I think back on it, electricity—yes, yes. But that’s the only time we were in any of them. There were occasions when Dorothy and I used to go for picnics up there all the time, but not to that one—to the ones that are still there. I walk around it but I don’t like heights so I don’t go up on top of them. But that was a dangerous place--you could fall right off.
Martini: All those cliffs could— Were there a lot of soldiers running around Fort Scott?
Chase: Well, they might be in the bus sometimes but we were never aware of them, particularly. We didn’t get—well, we went to grammar school and to Galileo but we used the military bus. We did have a school bus to take us to grammar school. But I’m sure we saw soldiers but I can’t—we didn’t—The Nagels who lived on the staff line—Master Sargent Nagel—his son just died (unintelligible)—my uncle is buried on the Presidio. My father—my uncle and his wife died out there in that house, the big white house, with TB. And, at that time, the doctors were saying (unintelligible) out there in the fog, out there is like cheese. Anyway, she got TB and she died but, she got buried in the Presidio so Uncle Lou was with her now. But my father and mother didn’t get space because, if you requested it, you couldn’t have somebody who’s at Holy Cross. You would have loved my father. He was--both of them--fascinating, interesting, delightful men!
Martini: Did--the big batteries up at Fort Scott—they ever fire those guns?
Chase: No. No. They did have a gun when they lowered the flag but it wasn’t on the batteries. It was—well, I know exactly where it is—I don’t know if it’s still there or not. But I can’t—you know where the General’s house is?
Martini: At Fort Scott?
Chase: Yeah.
Martini: Yeah?
Chase: Way down at the end of that they would fire—in the morning also, I think, at 8 o’clock and at 4:30 in the afternoon—
Martini: That’s right.
Chase: And, you know, my mother’s china—she had nice china—would be dancing around and some broke [both laughing].
Martini: What about the rest of the Presidio? Did you go exploring all over the place?
Chase: No. We were entitled to swim at the Y on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 2 to 5. That’s the only—no commissaries, nothing. But we—well, of course, that was the Y, not the Army.
Martini: Um hum.
Chase: So we did that. But, other than that--well the tennis courts, I guess, were limited to the commissioned officers.
Martini: On the Main Post, where the Officers’ Club is and all today—
Chase: Well, we went to Mass at the chapel and that’s a sinful thing, not to have that chapel still-- I went, after we moved over here. I bought a Volkswagen, which I sold almost immediately because I thought I’d be put in jail. So I’d walk, I’d get off at the bridge and walk. But it’s closed.
Martini: The Chapel of Our Lady, next to the—yeah.
Chase: Yeah. Yeah. Dorothy—well, no, she got her First Communion over at Letterman because Father Baily, he was pretty good ________ but sometimes he didn’t show up. And there was another chaplain but eventually—well, then, we moved over here and we went to St. Anne’s. Did you ever see that chapel before they—
Martini: Yeah, I went to a wedding there.
Chase: God! Why did they ever—those memorial windows—Dorothy and I were little and these people had the dates on (unintelligible). They took out all those beautiful stained glass memorial windows. How could they do that?
Martini: I think some of them belonged to the Army and the Army took a lot of their stuff when they left.
Chase: Oh.
Martini: To use other places. That’s why they took a lot of artifacts, a lot of things because they were U. S. Army property, they weren’t the Presidio property.
Chase: Got you. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Martini: I hope somebody uses that little chapel--it’s a great little building.
Chase: Well, I can only go ________ go around here. I have St. Anne’s and one way over there. And I walk—
Martini: That’s nice. You walk all over the place. I’ve gotta ask: What’s your biggest impression of all the changes at the Presidio since you were a little girl?
Chase: I’m absolutely crushed and heartbroken.
Martini: Yeah? What’s the biggest change?
Chase: Well, where we lived is, you know, what we knew most. But it’s commercial now, which it has--I understand this and I’m glad that we’ve got it, but—and I see all these hoards—why are all these people on my property here [both laugh]? All these horrible hills—
Martini: They love it for the same reason you love it.
Chase: I know.
Martini: Makes you wonder where they come from though.
Chase: Oh, indeed. Hikers—why are they going in my road? I will tell you and I know, I know that they’re doing the best they can. One morning--I still go out there to do my postage—but I was walking from the Post Office up, cause there’s a bus stop there at the Officers’ Club. I think this building was put up during World War II because I think—now I could be away off base—that during the war—since there were so many people working there—the Muni would go in there but I can’t see that. But anyway, it looks like a waiting room—it’s all open, it’s about as big as this room—maybe not this big, has windows, it’s all open—no doors. And there was a man, and I think he was a black man, lying on the table. I didn’t stop and I couldn’t care what race, what color—people’s color—I don’t believe in that—and he had all this baggage around him and he was sound asleep. That sorta frightened me and, more recently, when I was walking—I generally don’t walk back to this graveyard—I walk in to and catch the bus going back ________ . There was a man asleep across that white barrier to our dirt road.
Martini: Yeah.
Chase: So I don’t go in there at alone and I know nothing has ever happened. I did report this other man who probably was totally harmless. But it just didn’t look right. So I walked up to the—well, I was going there anyway—to the Visitors’ Office and told them and they sent someone over to get him. He was just probably a transient, homeless, tired--just like I am—sleepin—and why not?
Martini: It’s kinda scary, though, I guess.
Chase: It didn’t look right.
Martini: I came up with a whole checklist of places around the Presidio. I just kinda wanted to mention some names and see if you remember visiting them or what you could tell me about them.
Chase: If I know ‘em, sure.
Martini: Did you ever go down to Baker Beach—Baker’s Beach, I think you called it?
Chase: We did, indeed, and I wonder--cause Fort Baker and Baker’s Beach—anyway that’s—
Martini: Named after different people.
Chase: Yeah. We didn’t--we rode by but the McKay’s and Dorothy and I, we never actually went there. But, in order to get to the Richmond District, my father always went that way.
Martini: That way—yeah. Across from Baker Beach, there used to be—remember the big balloon hangar? The was a balloon for many years—like a blimp.
Chase: You mean at Fort Baker?
Martini: Baker Beach—yeah, right up near the exit to the Presidio.
Chase: I can’t say I remember that. You know, for the time that they were getting our house in order, we lived—it was probably six months or maybe the rest of the year, anyway—at Fort Baker.
Martini: At Fort Baker? On the other side of—
Chase: Yes—but I really don’t remember it. I know we had chickens [both laugh].
Martini: And what about the stables, down where they are now.
Chase: Until they had Crissy Field, we never went down there. Did you know that that road down and up from Crissy Field was a two car road at one time? Smaller cars and wider [both laughing]-- “Down Crissy,” or “Don’t go down Crissy.”--we’d always say that to my father--in an automobile. But we never walked down there—no.
Martini: And Crissy Field—that must’ve been a real hoppin’ place in those days. Things were takin’ right out of your house.
Chase: They were. I barely—you know, that big hill that’s a parking lot now that’s facing those empty quarters that’s a parking lot?
Martini: Yes, the dirt part--we call that the battery east parking lot.
Chase: Oh. When I was a young kid, I went up there—there was barbed wire fence but we had a steep—I think I dug the devil myself to get up there—now whether there was a vegetable garden first or wildflowers first, I don’t know. But I would go up there--cause I’m still a gardener--and get fields of poppies and that pink flower that I never see any more and have never seen anyplace else. And now it’s a parking lot. I cry when I pass that path. Arms full! There was a foot path from—there was a barbed wire fence facing the aviators’ quarters and all this hill. And occasionally Dorothy and I would play in there. Seems to me somehow we got from there to their hill but I—yes, you could walk up to the batteries and then from the batteries down to their houses. Yeah, it comes back to me. My God, we were lucky to have lived there! And as kids we just took it—this was ours and we took it for granted, you know.
Martini: Do you remember the airplanes at Crissy Field?
Chase: Yes. I do. I hated them. I still do [both laugh]. Well, I flew from here to New York and from here to Italy and England. But I hate airplanes. My God, if you’re going anywhere, walk and see what you can see [both laugh].
Martini: You go to the Presidio all the time. What do you think of the change at Crissy Field from the way it was, say, ten years ago when it was _________ concrete and barracks buildings to the way it is now?
Chase: Well, you know, much as I hate anything new and modern, I’m delighted. I’m happy that they are keeping it nice. It’s beautifully painted. As I say, they trimmed the trees—I haven’t gone this week—this kind of weather’s kind of hard on me— When you walk there—maybe it was last week, there isn’t a spot on the streets. Everything is immaculate. Well, of course, I know that the people that took over first are gone—
Martini: Rangers.
Chase: Rangers—they are gone, aren’t they?
Martini: Well, there aren’t as many of us as anymore. We’re in a very small area. Yeah—it’s not the Trust ________ most of the space.
Chase: Yeah. You know, when I was going out from here to the coast, to the chapel, there was a woman--I suspect she was a retired nun but I have no idea—I don’t know what I was going to tell you about her. Well, anyway, she would read part of the Mass, you know, at the chapel—I don’t know if she lives on Baker Street now—oh, I think she subscribes to me for the newspaper that I get because I’ve never taken up a subscription. She’s a charming, elegant lady, tall, slender, beautiful carriage. I don’t know how she makes a living because nobody’s ever old as I am but she’s not young [interviewer laughs].
Martini: You talk about taking street cars and the car stop was across from Letterman—
Chase: Exactly.
Martini: The D car.
Chase: D and E. The E was a little car that was in the middle. Do you know that little car?
Martini: I never saw one but I’ve read so many books. It’s the cute little one. I think it ran to the ferry.
Chase: Well, probably they both did. The D went out Greenwich, up Van Ness, down Geary, cause that’s how we got to the Emporium, when my mother shopped. The other little car was made, I guess, just for the run because, not the steep hills up to Pacific Heights but those lower hills—it ran there, on Union. And, from where, I don’t know where it went—from there—unless, if we were going to Galileo, we’d take it till the car was there.
Martini: You mentioned that’s where you went to high school.
Chase: Yeah.
Martini: And for grammar school?
Chase: We went both my mother and all of her sisters went to the Winfield Scott School. It was on Lombard between Baker and Divisidero, because we walked to the car line from there to get home on the—no, I’m telling you a lie. The school bus brought us home from Winfield Scott School.
Martini: Did it go all the way into the Presidio?
Chase: It picked us up outside on the dirt road.
Martini: Not bad.
Chase: No. It was good. We had a dog, Jerry—oh, I loved Jerry.
Martini: Your dog?
Chase: Well, it was Uncle Lou’s dog but, you know, it lived anywhere.
Martini: Do you remember—at the car stop—do you remember there was a photographer’s studio?
Chase: Yes, there was. There was. And I wouldn’t have remembered unless you had told me.
Martini: Do you remember anything about the studio or the man that ran it?
Chase: I knew a man ran it but I guess—
Martini: I know his name was Mr. Givens. G-I-V-E-N-S.
Chase: I wouldn’t have known. I just—it was there. You see, we waited there for the bus. Isn’t that interesting—there must be a lot of other stuff that I don’t remember.
Martini: On one side would’ve been his studio and across the street was, of course, big Letterman Hospital.
Chase: Yes, indeed. Again I’m digressing—my mother’s brother was wounded badly in World War I and I went in alone—I guess I was five or six years old—to see Uncle Peter. And I can remember in Letterman rows and rows and rows of beds and cots. And there was Uncle Peter, and all the men looking at this little girl alone and he was delighted to have seen me. I must’ve been going to Winfield Scott School. You start school at seven, don’t you?
Martini: I think so, yeah. That area of the Presidio—that’s very distant from where you lived. It’s almost like another part of the City.
Chase: Indeed. But, we walked it frequently. Yeah—both ways. I don’t know whether we just missed the bus or what. But maybe we didn’t have any tickets, I don’t know, cause my father went up to the PX, I think, to get—we had to have bus tickets to use that. Cause you paid. But this is separate from the truck that we went—
Martini: Got you. Right.
Chase: To school in the truck.
Martini: Was there any—like, when you went to school—like, class system because—
Chase: Oh, indeed.
Martini: Oh, yeah?
Chase: Winfield Scott School only went to the sixth grade. Why, I can’t tell you. Then--and I don’t know why they did this because there was a choice of several schools and I feel that the school bus must have gone to them—but we went up to the Grant School and, when you say “class,” that’s what I mean because those were what we called rich kids and they were and we weren’t. Actually, we were quite comfortable because you had no rent and, I guess, we paid electricity and phone bills but we weren’t poor but we weren’t like these kids of the Grant and some of them were really nasty.
Martini: Probably from Pacific Heights, huh?
Chase: Yeah. Well, Pacific and Broadway run this way and Baker and the other—And it was a big treat if we walked down that road, which, as I say, I walked it ten or fifteen years ago just for fun, and I saw this yellow house in that forest.
Martini: That forest—
Chase: Maybe it was twenty years ago cause I retired at 55. I felt that--and I don’t regret it—I would get a better pension but I’m not complaining.
Martini: When you were talking about the kids at the school—was it because you lived at the Presidio?
Chase: No.
Martini: Or it was just that--
Chase: Well, I guess it was. What did they call us? Army brats. You see, they didn’t even know [interviewer laughs] that we weren’t in the Army. But then it was Depression so I don’t know—some of the wealthy kids went there. I’m sure many of them went to private schools. But they just didn’t like us. The teachers recognized too that we might’ve been-- I’m a big opera fan and this teacher, Virginia Rider--my mother and her sisters had the same teachers that we had at Winfield Scott and at Grant—she brought in her—this Virginia Rider, there were two sisters there—showed her the cape that she wore to the opera—one does that got to do with anything? I thought it was—at that time, I was amazed because I look back on it now, Dorothy and I when we were only students--I still go; in fact, tomorrow I see La Cenerentola--but we stood, bought standing room tickets for a dollar when we were old enough to do this and there she was, in the green velvet wrap sitting there. Listen, I think that’s an amazing story, [laughing] not for your records but, I mean, it was…
Martini: How did you like Galileo High School?
Chase: Oh, fine. Great. I loved it. I had great teachers. I had ________, of course, and _________ working to get the grades to get to State Teacher’s-- I think they called it normal—but the year I graduated was the year my father and Uncle Lou were out. So I never got any more education. Great teachers--I remember them. I felt that what they taught me, except for geometry—I never could catch on to that [both laugh]…
Martini: So what happened when you moved out of the Presidio in ’33? Where did you all go?
Chase: Here.
Martini: This house?
Chase: Yeah. Yeah, I’ve lived here since August 2nd. My father wrote it down, but some idiot erased it down in the basement—August 2nd, 1933. We didn’t recognize it at the time but he was getting lung cancer and he died.
Martini: So in a couple of months, you’ll have been here seventy years. Wow!
Chase: Seventy—yes. August. Can you believe that?
Martini: It’s a long time! This must be one of the few houses in the Sunset District that’s still owned by the same family from the--
Chase: Oh, I think so. There’s all new-- Well, I have once cousin, my mother’s sister’s daughter, lives down on 27th Avenue—not near. I’m the oldest living cousin. And it’s so sad—there was no ________ street, no bus line ________, trying to get on it.
Martini: But why did your dad decide to buy all the way out here?
Chase: Well, that’s an interesting story. He and his brother had each bought a lot, not adjoining, in the Richmond, with the understanding when they retired—I guess they could’ve built their house. They weren’t licensed carpenters but I think they could have. But I guess they didn’t need that to build. Well, you know, my mother comes from an Irish background and I—it’s not a point that I admire, particularly—clans. Her mother was living on the—which is still there—a flat on Third Avenue, right near the park. And all of her daughters who were married lived here. “I want to live near them.” My mother said that. So they sold the lot and bought this house, which is fine—I like this old house. I’m thinking of selling it and moving into a family center. But I’m so sorry that we didn’t move into the Richmond, you know, but my mother said, “No, I want to live near my mother.” It’s not an attractive trait, I think, of the Irish although my father’s mother was Irish also.
Martini: It’s to keep the families together.
Chase: Yeah, yeah. And they’re always quarreling and, this is a rotten thing to say, but I didn’t like my grandmother. She sat in the window, making fun of people in the street. I can’t stand that [interviewer laughs]! All day, sitting in the window, and her daughters waiting on her, hand and-- You’re going to hate me.
Martini: No I’m not. This is great! Now, I’ve got to ask you: Were your dad and mother and your uncle—were they from San Francisco also?
Chase: Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Martini: So how long has your family been here?
Chase: Well, my father’s—I didn’t know whether to tell you this or not—my father’s father came from Nantucket. His Irish wife, she was a different kind of lady, although I didn’t know it. He had the second largest dairy right at Baker and Beach, in what was Cow Hollow.
Martini: Cow Hollow, yeah.
Chase: I guess all ranches have a man to take care of the milking cattle. He would graze the cattle in the Presidio every day and I used to know his name but I never met him. That was part of his job, working in the dairy. I don’t know whether it was fifty cents a day, fifty cents a month or a dollar but I have those figures in mind. One day he came home and he only had ninety-nine of the cows. So his mother sent Louis—Louis—back to find the cow, which he did. And, you know, I’ve been trying [finger snapping sound] to think of the weeds--he got lost, cause he was only five or six or seven years old—which still grows there. Darn it, I wanted to remember that. But he left Cow Hollow so, I don’t know what point this happened, well they lost the biggest customer, which was a commercial bakery. But I don’t know for sure whether the ranch failed or whether they were just being bought up. But the City wanted to make street work and sidewalks and my father and mother—my parents—didn’t have the money to do it. So it was only Uncle Lou—there were five kids in their family, four boys and one girl but they died—neither he or Uncle Lou had the money to do the street work so they sold the lot. If they had hung onto it for ten years, we would have been wealthy, I guess.
Martini: What was the intersection again?
Chase: Baker and Beach. You know, the oldest house there, Al Herman were there close friends. Al Herman had a beer garden right there and he was the first one to build a house that wasn’t a kind of a--I don’t want to use the word “shack” because my parents—my father’s family--lived on the ranch.
Martini: Um hum. Now, in 1915, they moved onto the Presidio.
Chase: Yes.
Martini: Were they displaced by construction of the fair [Pan Pacific International Exposition], by any chance?
Chase: No, no. The fair, I think, was City. It was a San Francisco City fair. I have a pocketknife that my father bought at the fair [chuckles]. He wasn’t a walker and they would pass free and they’d go to the fair and they’d go here, go there and look at these candies, said he’d walked for ten miles--which was probably a mile— he said, “All I saw was a lot of candies.” They were big men and they sat down. Well, my father had rheumatism badly. Uncle Lou didn’t. They were the most charming, delightful, interesting people I’ve ever known in my life. They were--
Martini: They must have been really close friends as well as brothers.
Chase: Oh, blood brothers—four boys and Nell, their one sister. She kept house for them. She eventually married and moved. The other two brothers I didn’t know. My father was the youngest of five children. Uncle Lou was the oldest. But I knew him cause that’s where we were. But they were extraordinary men and they would help you and they were well known.
Martini: I think it says a lot that the Army somehow invited them to live on post—
Chase: I never understood that. I should’ve asked a lot more questions. No use thinking of that now.
Martini: You must have a lot of memories of old San Francisco too before the war.
Chase: Oh, I do. I do. When I go to town now—well, I haven’t been to town this year—after I took care of my mother, shortly after I retired—
Martini: A couple of the areas that I kinda wanted to bring up that are now part of the park—like did you ever go to like Sutros? And--
Chase: To swim, yeah.
Martini: To swim? Yeah, cause Uncle Lou’s daughter, Evelyn, drove a car. She and Malcolm each had a car. Uncle Lou had, I think, two—as I say, ‘Just build a garage, ‘ and you get a car. So we’d go to Sutros to swim. Yes. Now that was kind of a treat—she would drive us. However, we could swim, as I say, at—maybe that was after Evelyn married that we could swim at the Y.
Martini: That’s probably—probably got you in there. What do you remember of Sutros?
Chase: Huge! Huge! And many different pools—warm and hot and cold. Yeah—that’s all that I can remember but I know we used to go there and swim—yeah. And my sister was a good swimmer. I didn’t even enjoy it. I guess we went cause it was the thing to do or something, I don’t know.
Martini: So, while you were living on the Presidio, you’d always go to town. What kind of things did you do when you went—what, downtown?
Chase: Oh, yeah. As I say, take the D car, it went right along Geary. My mother always walked down Powell to the Emporium. And Hales Brothers, too. You know where they were on Market Street. My God, when you look at Market Street now-- But anyway, when we came home, in addition to bathrooms on the car line in the Presidio, you could buy ice cream or sit there and have ice cream, which is, I guess, what we did. And cigarettes. Anywhere, there was a little store there. I don’t know how long it stayed open and then, as I say, the bathrooms were there. Right there, you’d walk up some cement steps, 3 or 4 or 5, up to the cars. The D car made a big turn, which was fun, and waited--you got there before the bus was due and it was never late. You’d just sit there and wait. Magazines—they sold magazines.
Martini: I think it’s still there. I think it’s now—
Chase: It is. Exactly.
Martini: I think it’s the rental office for the Presidio Trust or something.
Chase: Well, it’s been many/different things. I have gone in once in a while—not recently--to ask about stuff. And they tell me where to go. I don’t know I was there last but they’ve taken, you know, the last—
[Tape stops]
[End of Tape 1, Side 2]
[Tape 2, Side 1]
Martini: This is Tape Two of the Madeline Chase interview. We were talking about the hillside up above your house and the little brick tunnels that used to be up there.
Chase: Yes. Yeah.
Martini: What did you call that area?
Chase: Mounds, cause they looked like mounds. And, you know, we were small kids. If we ran in there, it was dark in there. It wasn’t for ammunition?
Martini: [Interviewer apparently nodded.]
Chase: Ahh.
Martini: Old ammunition magazines.
Chase: Well, I’ll be darned. They’re still there, you know. Cause they had doors that swung and, if any kid got in there and some other kid closed the doors, it would be horrendous. But now they’ve taken the little doors off. But we played around there—wildflowers, as I said, everything just-- And then, back of those, you know, I was thinking that’s where my uncle had chickens and stuff but it’s too far away from where the house was. But we played there all the time.
Martini: What did you call the housing area just up near—
Chase: Lancaster. Battery Lancaster.
Martini: And there were houses there?
Chase: They were dreadful houses. It was shameful. They obviously, obviously had wood, but in front of them was this sort of material, thinner than leather. They were gray. Probably--it was windy, terribly windy up on that hill--probably kept the wind out. It was (unintelligible) look good. They were dreadful, dreadful looking (unintelligible).
Martini: Like tar paper? Was that—
Chase: Well, they were gray.
Martini: So that they were wood but they were covered with fabric?
Chase: Well, yes. There must’ve been a wooden foundation and there were only probably four on each side or maybe five on each side but Dorothy Smith’s father was a sergeant—they lived there. There was a family with several youngsters--the Buteen’s--lived there. We used to play baseball in that street and they had a thing for basket— We had baseball with fewer than nine people [both laugh]. Oh, I wish I had kept in touch with people. Now, the Nagels—Mr. Nagel was master sergeant. I guess that’s a non-commissioned officer—is that what a master sergeant is?
Martini: Pretty high ranking, yeah.
Chase: Well, he was an electrician and his daughter, Margaret, and I went to school with-- Margaret, ________, and I were the same age. And Dorothy, my sister, was the same age as Jo—Josephine, that is. Margaret’s brother was older—he went to West Point. He had a dreadful accident—I don’t know, you may want to cut this part out. Anyway, coming back from West Point, I’m afraid he was driving a car and one of the kids was killed. But at--then he was washed out at West Point. During the war, he went—but I’d lost touch with him finally (??). But he just died recently and he made Colonel--
Martini: Did he?
Chase: So the war (unintelligible) him.
Martini: When you were talking about that area up there, that was—
Chase: Slaprun, they called that Slaprun.
Martini: Okay. That was enlisted soldiers living up in that--as opposed to officers—living in the Lancaster area.
Chase: No, I think that they were, probably never got higher than sergaent. Where the Nagels lived were master sargents and that’s—
Martini: Where were the Nagels?
Chase: You know, when I walk to the bridge, I walk along the wall. And there’s a bench right there on the highway but not on the street. And I sit there and rest. There’s a road that comes down back of that bench.
Martini: Yes.
Chase: And that’s where they lived, up there.
Martini: Okay.
Chase: After we moved, they built new quarters for them and they were very nice—electric refrigerators and a lot of stuff. So they, I guess, were as close to being commissioned officers as you could get, without—
Martini: The nice Fort Scott area, ________ across the _______. On the Presidio, it sounds like there was a real class stuff—
Chase: Oh, definitely.
Martini: Yeah?
Chase: Oh, I think there still—and I understand there has to be. But I think it’s relaxed a great deal, you know. But, in order to have command, you’ve got to have this understanding that you’re a general and you have—what is it called--you know your ranks—buck sargent? You know your ranks--
Martini: Or private first class.
Chase: Yes.
Martini: Yeah. Did you ever get a chance to go into the aviators’ houses across the street?
Chase No. We drove by them all the time on the bus going to school, going to town. Course we were there before they were built.
Martini: Right.
Chase: And it was just a field of flowers and, when I walk by there and all this dust and stuff [laughs]. I walk down. I get off the bridge and walk down along to the Presidio. I always ride home. One day, I had to walk because the Muni had broken down and they didn’t have the little—those marvelous little—
Martini: Presidio shuttle bus?
Chase: Yeah. You know, one Sunday it was early and that man drove me to places where I hadn’t been in the Presidio. Apparently, the Jewish people are redoing their building and they’ve rented a huge building up there. Do you know where that is?
Martini: Yeah--
Chase: I’ve never been up there—
Martini: The Public Service Hospital.
Chase: Yes. Yes. I had never been there. They’re charming people. They’re knowledgeable about what they do. They drive beautifully.
Martini: The drivers on the bus?
Chase: Yeah. And they have these—and, when I think, ‘Get out of this bus and get into the Muni bus.’ [Both laugh.]
Martini: Yeah—I see it going around the Presidio and they look almost lonely. I bet they’re happy to have you as a passenger.
Chase: I guess on weekends they have me.
Martini: Oh, yeah—
Chase: I find for walking—if you walk along the lawn, there’s no sidewalk. I did go when they were having Mass out there but I try to avoid it. Also, I found out I have some kind of a health problem—I’m allergic to something…
Martini: So now what’s your route—take the Muni to the toll plaza?
Chase: No, I have to transfer. You have to get across the Golden Gate Park. And that 19th Avenue and Lincoln Way—well, if you want to commit suicide, there’s where to go [interviewer laughs]. And, then—I’m old and I don’t see very well and I don’t wear glasses—but the letters this big will tell you where these buses are going—two different routes. However, they both go to the bridge. I’m a morning person. I like to go fairly early. People going to work think, “What is that old woman doing out of the house when I’m trying to get to work?” Lately, fewer of them go to the bridge. They stop at California Street—they stop before that even. It’s hard. As old as I am--my doctor says walk and I just love to go out there. As I say, I would sell my eyeteeth to live there.
Martini: So, when you finally make it to the toll plaza—
Chase: [Laughs] Then I walk.
Martini: What route do you take?
Chase: Well, I go down Long, walk down Long [cuckoo clock can be heard “chiming” in background], stay on that past the cemetery because I’m going to—well, I don’t every day, I don’t go to the post office--but I go in there and I said, “We used to have box twenty-one, Presidio.” And he says, “It’s still there.” [Interviewer laughs.] Well, it’s a whole new building. You know, we used to call it a jail and they called it a “holding center,” which it was—that building. And I think the post office was in a separate building from the jail. [Interviewer apparently nodding.] I thought so--yeah.
Martini: Yeah, they moved it there, I think, after the war or something.
Chase: Yeah. They made a lot of changes during the war. Yeah, they did, which is understandable.
Martini: That building was the guardhouse.
Chase: Yes! We called it the jail.
Martini: That’s what its main job was, yeah.
Chase: Yeah, yeah.
Martini: Yeah. And there was a little hospital just down the street, that’s now where the Army museum used to be. That was a hospital for the soldiers on the post. They had their own hospital separate from Letterman.
Chase: I didn’t know that. Was that during my time there?
Martini: Um hum. Took a while to refigure it out. Letterman was its own Army post, inside the Presidio.
Chase: I’ll bet. Yeah, yeah.
Martini: Had its own commanding officer…
Chase: Is that true?
Martini: Yeah.
Chase: The history of the Presidio—I mean, with the Spanish and the—what was the family who lived in the Officers’ Club—Conseuello, Con—I know it—oh, the street’s named for her, for her family: Moraga and the other one.
Martini: I’m blank. You know that the Presidio was founded right about where your friends’ houses were—the lighthouse keepers.
Chase: Yeah.
Martini: That’s where they raised a cross to found San Francisco.
Chase: Yes.
Martini: It was too windy there, so they moved—
Chase: Well, and it’s still windy. You know, there used to be a nice little awning in front of the two keepers’--well, I guess Mr. Cobb on the main street, their house had an awning. They were beautifully kept houses. But it was windy up there. God almighty!
Martini: Do you remember when they started to build the bridge?
Chase: Yeah, I do.
Martini: Did they move those two houses up on top of the hill?
Chase: No.
Martini: Did they have to move them? Because the bridge was awful close.
Chase: No. You know, there’s no way to get up there in an automobile. The Cobb’s and, I guess, the Jordan’s too had cars but they kept the cars down on the flat road attached to the house. I-I am kind of lost—all I remember is going on that bridge, which I never liked to do and I think it was (unintelligible)
Martini: (unintelligible)
Chase: Midnight, though [interviewer laughs]. But it was always, always windy up there. Now I remember the chute they had for their garbage.
Martini: To get it down the hill—
Chase: Yes. Yeah. They had privileges at the Post X. We didn’t.
Martini: Because they were—that’s interesting.
Chase: It is.
Martini: They were government employees, weren’t they?
Chase: Yeah. Yes, they were.
Martini: Yeah, but they were—instead of contractors. Yeah, because your family was in an odd position. They weren’t really civilians but they weren’t on the payroll.
Chase: No. No. We were lucky. We were lucky to have lived there. Dorothy and I were—and, as little kids, we just took it for granted. We moved in, this was the way things were, you know.
Martini: Now, short of removing the Golden Gate Bridge—[laughing] that’s not going to happen—
Chase: It isn’t?
Martini: No, sorry [interviewee laughs]. What would you like to see happen out there in the area where your old house was to tell the story of--?
Chase: Well, I would like to see it just naturally, without anything there. Just trees and grass and wildflowers—iris. God, yeah, iris used to grow there. I got one and [interviewer chuckles] and it’s really bloomed this year in my backyard. Just as it was. I mean, if there was some kind of—which I know there would never be--something to indicate that there were civilians living there and what they did and what their names were but that, you know, that’s a pipe dream that will never be.
Martini: How does you show it?
Chase: Well, you never know. I’m always interested in the--you know the man who went into World War I and lived on the post in his--
Martini: Pershing.
Chase: Yeah, yeah. I’m always interested in reading about that. He wasn’t at all hap--he was miserable, actually, I read recently. He couldn’t get—in France—he couldn’t get enough men and the young men they were sending he said, “They’re not soldiers. They’re nuts/not--” And they weren’t. I’m sure they weren’t sufficiently trained. I don’t know where I read that but I just read it recently.
Martini: He would have been very, very young but the Presidio was just full of these young guys who were poorly trained.
Chase: Yeah, yeah.
Martini: No one was ready for it.
Martini: I’m kind of mad at the government and the Army. When you think--I happen to have a friend, a man who was a lieutenant in World War II. And he was wounded. And, like all the others who were wounded in the war, they were promised lifetime hospitalization. Now there is hospitalization but—he’s my age—if you’re old and sick, you going to go to Los Angeles to go to a hospital? I don’t think so. And they also took away—and they were promised a lifetime—commissaries, post exchange. I really think that is dirty pool. Many of those men volunteered. How did they do that? You’re going to find out I’m a real miserable old woman. I just found out—it was Clinton but I’m not sure that it was—ask anybody over whatever the age of social security. In other words, they come here to this country—they do have to become citizens—they get more social security than I get. And they took it away from me—you know, that was just deducted from paychecks (??).
Martini: Oh, right (unintelligible)--
Chase: And I pay taxes on it and they don’t and they’re getting $700. How do you explain that?
Martini: It’s a--
Chase: Don’t put that in your record—they’ll throw me into jail [both laugh]!
Martini: So--this has been great! This has been a great interview!
Chase: Well, I don’t know.
Martini: Thank you.
Chase: You know, as I say, I don’t drink coffee. But if you’d like a cup of tea, I would because I’m talked out!
Martini: Well, let’s have one. Thanks much, Ms. Chase.
Chase: I’m delighted to talk. My cousins aren’t remotely interested. And I’ve got a whole lot of cousins. There’s--my sister is but, as I say, she’s (unintelligible).
Martini: End of tape.
[End of Tape 2, Side 1]
Description
Interview with Madeline Chase, whose father and uncle worked on the Presidio and lived in the Fort Point area between 1917 and 1933.
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