Volume 36: Number 2 February/March 2018 Newsletter

Appraisal Roadshow Coming to the Sharpsteen April 14

Help us celebrate our 40th Anniversary! Ever wonder what that old vase Grandma gave you is worth? On Saturday, April 14th, the Sharpsteen Museum is hosting our very own “Antiques Roadshow”. Bring your family treasures, fine art, jewelry, timepieces, etc. Carry-in items only; large items such as furniture can be evaluated with photographs. Clars Auction Gallery Specialists from Oakland will provide verbal appraisals. If you need a written appraisal, simply speak with a Clars representative.

Member admission is $10 ($20 for non-members) and includes one free appraisal. A maximum of two additional appraisals will be offered for $20 each.

More information on this event will be forthcoming. In the meantime, save this date, Saturday, April 14th on your calendar!

The Sharpsteen Museum Celebrates 40 Years!!!

What do you do for a 40th Anniversary? A 40th anniversary is referred to as the Ruby Anniversary. The symbolism behind the ruby rests in its inner

flame, therefore rubies are the gifts commonly shared during this time. Now we don’t expect you to give us rubies, nor can we gift any to you, but we can certainly offer an eventful 2018.

We have many special events in the works for this year and, with any luck, many will come to fruition. The May special exhibit will be a collection from the Sharpsteen family; the November exhibit will feature collections from a local chapter of the Horseless Carriage Club; our first “Antiques Roadshow” in April, and a second coming towards Fall; at least one “Meet the Author Day”; a new and different Instant Wine Cellar; many mid-morning Coffee Hours; a special dinner at a local venue featuring an 1800’s menu (or possibly a menu from 1978, not sure what this may be- jello molds?); new 40th anniversary t-shirts will be in our Gift Shoppe; the children’s summer program; media presentations every day- the possibilities are endless.

We are trying our best to give you all a memorable 40th. Without the support of our members and the people of Calistoga, we could not have reached this small pinnacle. Any suggestions for events or special activities? Let us know.

It was Ben and Bernice Sharpsteen that first instilled the “inner flame” that carries us each day, it is YOU that keeps it burning.

Stay in touch for more details, it’s going to be a busy year! The Early Days-

Breaking Ground for the Museum Weekly Calistogan Sept. 23, 1976. L to R: “Doc” Wilkinson, Ben Sharpsteen, Clarence Thom, Peter Holtzen, Bill Thomas, Thelma Radelfinger, Bill Smith, Rutherford Millar, and Will Drew.

Artists Kendall O’Connor and Steve Della Maggiora at work on the 30 ft. long display.

The Diorama Takes Shape

1311 Washington St. P.O. Box 573

Calistoga, CA 94515 Tel: (707) 942-5911 Fax: (707) 942-6325

Email: sharpsteenmuseum@att.net Web site:

www.sharpsteenmuseum.org LIKE US ON FACEBOOK

Museum House phone: (707) 942-5916 Museum Hours: 11 am to 4 pm daily, except Thanksgiving and Christmas

BOARD MEMBERS Alan Rogers – President Kathy Bazzoli - first VP DeAnn Wylie - second VP Kathy McCloskey- Recording Secretary Rick McCloskey - Treasurer Marilyn Glaim- Docent Chair Jackie Lang - Education Chair Bev Barnes - Collections Chair Pat Larsen - Ways & Means Chair The Sharpsteen Museum Newsletter

is published bi-monthly by the Sharpsteen Museum Association,

a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization. Editors:

Gail Sharpsteen and Kathy Bazzoli MISSION STATEMENT

The Museum’s mission is to preserve and to provide for public exhibitions and study

of the history of the community of Calistoga and the upper Napa Valley.

Message from the President Dear Sharpsteen Members,

Welcome to the New Year 2018. It’s time to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Sharpsteen Museum. I can think of no better way to start the celebration than to go over some highlights of the year 1978.

Where were you in the year 1978? I was in my eleventh year as a science teacher at a junior high school in Santa Monica. I was divorced with two sons ages 10 and 6. I started dating my life partner who had two daughters and one son, ages 19, 16, and 10 respectively. My hair was in a curly perm and I wore polyester shirts, bellbottom plaid pants, and platform shoes. Though I looked the part of an actor out of Saturday Night Fever, I could not disco dance with those shoes. What are your remembrances of the year 1978? Well, here are some historical moments of 1978 to help you get started down memory lane: • Jimmy Carter is President of the United States • Peter Kagel is Mayor of Calistoga • World Population: 4.4 Billion (7.6 Billion today) • Calistoga Population: under 4000 & today over 5000 • Yearly Inflation Rate 7.63% • Dow Jones Closes at 805 at the end of the year • Gold is worth $200/oz. • Average Cost of a new house $54,800; Average Monthly Rent $260/month • Average Income per year: $17,000; Minimum Wage $2.65/hour • Cost of a gallon of Gas 63 cents • 8 Track player costs $169 • 1lb Bacon $1.20, Dozen Eggs 48 cents, 1lb Butter $1.33 • A Mother’s Day Dinner with wine at the Silverado Restaurant & Tavern (Brannan’s

today) cost $6.95 • Cal Mart Passes into the local hands of Bill Shaw and Ron McBride • People drink tap water • Calistoga City water rates drop 20% • Top Movies: Grease, The Deer Hunter, Animal House, Superman • Top Music: Shadow Dancing, Night Fever, You Light Up My Life, Staying Alive • Top TV Shows: Laverne & Shirley, Three’s Company, Mork & Mindy, Happy Days • First Cellular Phone produced • First Test Tube baby born • California Approves Proposition 13

• US bans the sales of the latest Computer Technology to the Soviet Union

• City of Calistoga formally accepts the Sharpsteen Museum • Volunteers of Any Kind Wanted by the Sharpsteen

Museum • September 30th the Sharpsteen Museum is dedicated and

John ‘Doc’ Wilkinson serves as Master of Ceremonies while Ben Sharpsteen talks about his dreams for the museum.

• No internet, laptops, smartphones, Facebook, or flat screen TV’s --what did you do without these? This is what 1978 was like when the Sharpsteen Museum

opened its doors. What does 2018 have in store for us? As far as the Museum is concerned we will be open from 11am-4 pm, 363 days of the year, closing only on Thanksgiving and Christmas; just as Ben Sharpsteen wanted in 1978.

Come to the Museum this year and help us celebrate our Fortieth Anniversary. We have many events scheduled, including Coffee discussions, two special exhibits, museum historical video presentations on our new TV monitor, the Instant Wine Cellar, and possibly a celebration dinner featuring a late 1800’s menu. Alan Rogers, President

Coffee Hours at the Museum Wednesdays- 10:00 am No admission charge

FEB 28 Calistoga Schools District Superintendant Erin Smith-Hagberg MAR- TBD APR 4 Chris Canning, Calistoga’s Mayor

“Doc” Wilkinson

Ben Sharpsteen

Annual Christmas Luncheon for Members at Calistoga Inn

Sam and Eliza Brannan (Dean Enderlin and Cindy Eddy) stopped by the Museum following the traditional lighting of the nearby City Christmas Tree.

Museum Booth at Christmas Faire Is a Sell-Out!

As has been the case for 40+ years The Sharpsteen Museum had a booth at the Calistoga Christmas Faire held

at the fairgrounds December 2, 2017. Again this year we did not sell food items, which cut down on profits- but we did have a very successful day selling our freshly made wreaths, and our hand embroidered dish towels and catnip mice, among other handicrafts. The mice and towels always sell out quickly

and in the case of the towels they were gone this year within a half an hour! Looking ahead to next year’s Faire we would love to have a larger supply of towels, which of course means more volunteer embroiderers. If any of you enjoy embroidering please

give Emma Mazzola a call at 942-6649. She will be delighted to get you started!

We believe it is very worthwhile for the museum to participate in this yearly Calistoga tradition. Thank you to all who made it possible!

Pat Haynes, Christmas Bazaar Crafts Chair

News for Members Greetings and Happy New Year! As the new Membership Chair,

I would like to sincerely thank all of our members, docents, and volunteers for your support of the Sharpsteen Museum. Without your continued commitment, keeping the Sharpsteen open 363 days a year would be very challenging indeed.

We continue to make improvements to our website www.SharpsteenMuseum.org. Now members and the general

public are able pay for new or renewal memberships in the Association, make a donation, learn about our Foundation, and order books from our bookstore and have them shipped to your mailbox. You can also check our event page for more information on our upcoming events. We are looking forward to seeing you soon at the museum! DeAnn Wylie, Membership Chair

Welcome New Members

Joel Bard Maria and Morris Brown Louise Della Maggiora

Don Winter

A Joyful Holiday Season- 2017

In Memoriam Joe Huesmann

As we begin 2018 it is time again to recap book sales for last year. We track each sale throughout the year to enable us to always keep stocked the most popular titles. For 2017, we had a couple of surprises.

The number one seller has not changed; it remains “Images of America: Calistoga” by author John Waters Jr., with the Sharpsteen Museum. Nearly 130 pages of photographs, stories and anecdotes of pioneer Calistoga and its progress through history.

The number two seller was not a total surprise; “The Early Upper Napa Valley”, by author Elizabeth Cyrus Wright. Elizabeth (aka Rachel) was a daughter of John Cyrus and Lovina Graves Cyrus, survivor of the Donner-Reed Party of 1846-47. John & Lovina married and raised their family here having 5 children. Rachel was the youngest being born here in 1873. In

1895 Rachel married Geo. Wright, who himself was born to Calistoga pioneers John Ripley Wright & Elsie Hoover-Wright (1856).

“Early Upper” is a compilation of Rachel’s family history, opening with a story her father had told her time and again, “There is an Indian phrase, Tu-la-halusi, meaning beautiful land and I am going to begin my tale of the Upper Napa Valley by describing the actual condition of this beautiful land as it was told to me by my father who saw it before man had made any changes in its condition. It lay, fresh from the hand of God, like a great unfenced park.”

Our number three seller was another surprise, even though it is as it should be. “Sam Brannan- Builder of San Francisco”, by author Louis J. Stellman, tells the exciting story of Samuel Brannan (1819-1879), founder of Calistoga. This book was originally published in New York, 1953, and republished at the 150-year anniversary of the landing of the ship “The Brooklyn” at Yerba Buena in 1846. Brannan was a Mormon elder at the time and had brought 236 Saints from New York Harbor to their new life in the West, known then as “Manifest Destiny”.

Sam Brannan was California’s first millionaire, first entrepreneur, establishing our state’s first 4 mills, publisher of the first SF newspaper, founder of “the Society of California Pioneers”, leader of the first Committee of Vigilance in 1851, and possible scoundrel, to name only a few.

In this title’s Introduction, Kevin Starr, former State Librarian of California and well known historian, writes: “At the conclusion of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, Huck says that he is going to “light out to the territories”. Had Mark Twain written the novel about Huck in his adulthood, the adult frontier Huck Finn would have very much resembled Sam Brannan”.

We were happy and proud to find that our visitors throughout the year are purchasing more books about our local history. You as members should be proud as well, after all, this is your town and your museum. Congratulations!

Kathy Bazzoli, Book Chair

MEET THE AUTHOR AND BOOK SIGNING SATURDAY, MARCH 31ST, 12-2PM

Have you ever wondered about Charles “Charley” Earl Boles, aka Black Bart, also referred to as the Poet Bandit, or Gentleman Bandit? What were his early days like growing up? What made him the man he became, ultimately robbing 28 Wells Fargo stagecoaches between 1875-1883?

Local lore has always claimed Charley spent time in Calistoga, but did he? On Saturday, March 31st, from 12-2pm, author Bruce Bradley will be on

hand to tell you the history of Black Bart from his newest publication. “The Walker” tells the story from Charley’s perspective. It explains his mistrust of horses, tells of his first trips to the

California gold fields, his participation in seven major battles during the Civil War, and the events that led to his vendetta against Wells Fargo.

Books will be available for purchase @ $9.95/ea. (less 10% for members) and personal autograph by the author. Other titles by Bruce Bradley include: Hugh Glass, Seeds of Darkness, the Last Jaguar, Drelliks, and 25 Things

You Should Know About Wine. Hope to see you all there!

NOTES

FROM THE

BOOK

CHAIR

Docents: We Couldn’t Have Done It Without You!

Best of the Best Docent Team for Nov./Dec.: Bev Barnes Pat Haynes Jo Noble Kathy Bazzoli Gisela Huesmann Judy Parent Ray Branstetter Jackie Lang Ellie Robinson John Clark Sylvia Marciano Anne Scott Judy Cornils Shelley Martin Rita Tucker Al Derrick Barbara Maxfield Josepha Walpen Donna Dill Emma Mazzola Wendy Watson Lorne Glaim Kathy McCloskey DeAnn Wylie Marilyn Glaim Sue Morton Helen Yost Linda Hanson Patricia Murphy Ingrid Zehntner Gold Star Awards to those docents working the most shifts this period: 10 shifts- Wendy Watson; 6 shifts- Judy Cornils and Al Derrick; 5 shifts- Kathy Bazzoli, Ray Branstetter, Sylvia Marciano and Sue Morton.

Ellie Robinson—petite, always smiling, and sturdier than she looks. In fact, if you get to know her, you might think of her as the “comeback kid.” In late summer she tangled with a box of fruit while she was canning and broke her pelvis, but she was up and out of rehab in short order and back at home on her ranch. She was almost ready to return to the museum to take up her docent duties, but the October fire aimed itself at her property outside of Calistoga.

On October 8 she was just checking her doors about 11 p.m. before turning in for the night. She glanced out the back door and noticed a huge red glow in the sky. Grabbing the phone, she dialed 911 and gave her location. “You’ve already been evacuated,” a stunned operator told her. Ellie, with her almost-healed bones, jumped into action. She woke her tenants, and then stayed to hurriedly load a few things into her car. She left not knowing what would happen. When she returned she found that only about half an acre of her ranch had burned. The buildings were all okay. Fire fighters had quickly bulldozed a wide fire line at the edge of her property. “It must have saved my place and the neighbors nearby,” she says.

Ellie did, however, have to delay her return to the museum. She had set back the healing process by carrying

heavy boxes to the car. Within another month though, she was back at her museum post, and in the first month back, took more than her share of shifts.

When I first joined the docent staff of the museum, the first thing I noticed about Ellie was her big black dog, “Whiskey”. A rescue from the pound, he was quiet and perfectly mannered. He lay so still behind the cash register that Ellie had to warn people not to step on him. Last summer we noticed how hard it was for him to move. We walked with Ellie to her car where we helped lift him into the seat. It was the last time Lorne and I saw him. Not too many weeks later, he did not wake up from an afternoon nap. It’s hard to get used to his absence. “I miss him,” she says simply, and when I see Ellie at work, my impulse is still to lift my feet to step over his spot on the rug.

When asked how she happened to start working at the museum about ten years ago, she smiles a bit sheepishly. “I won the Instant Wine Cellar grand prize and decided it was time to give back by volunteering.” Ellie says she loves telling visitors about the displays but admits she’s worried that she says the same thing every time. She laughs ruefully, and says, “Well I guess the people are different each time, so they think it’s new!”

Her most memorable experience? One day she was showing a visitor the section of the museum that features Ben Sharpsteen’s work with Walt Disney. She was amazed to find out that the visitor was a Disney historian, and had ties with the Walt Disney Family Museum in San Francisco. The happy ending to that story is that her contact with Dave Mason led to a special six-month guest exhibit of Disney Studio and Disneyland memorabilia from his personal collection. Ellie’s carefully chosen words and the display itself brought a memorable exhibit to the museum and helped to create a tie between our small museum and the one in San Francisco. Marilyn Glaim, Docent Chair

DOCENTS- Save the Dates!!! Our Annual Docent Meeting has been set for Thurs., Feb. 22, 10:00am. This year we will meet at the museum itself rather than the house. We will review a successful 2017 and discuss our plans for an exciting 2018. Please be ready with any questions and/or suggestions; this is your chance to share experiences and ideas. We look

forward to seeing all of you! Because you are the best docents in the world, this year’s Docent Appreciation Luncheon is tentatively set for Thursday, March 22nd. As soon as we have the details of the where & what time we will let you know.

CALENDAR FEBRUARY

Wed. Feb. 7, 5:30 PM. SMF (SM Foundation) Meeting, Museum House. Wed. Feb. 14, 9:30 AM. SMA Board Meeting, Museum House Wed. Feb. 28, 10 AM. Coffee Hour, Museum. Calistoga Schools Superinten-dent, Erin Smith-Hagberg.

MARCH Wed. Mar. 7, 5:30 PM. SMF Meeting Wed. Mar. 14, 9:30 AM. SMA Board Meeting Sat. Mar. 31, 12-2PM. Meet Bruce Bradley, author of “The Walker”

APRIL Wed. Apr. 4, 10 AM. Coffee Hour, Museum. Mayor Chris Canning Wed. Apr. 4, 5:30 PM. SMF Meeting. Wed. Apr. 11, 9:30 AM. SMA Board Meeting, Museum House. Sat. Apr. 14, Time TBD. “Appraisal Roadshow” at the Museum

Hello, Members! Now that we are done with 2017, it’s time to focus on bringing in something new. As you all

know 2018 is the 40th anniversary of our beloved museum. I thought this would be the perfect time to get t-shirts to celebrate. This will be my new project so please keep an eye out for them.

Also, look for an expanded “members treasures” area in the gift store. Here you will find heirloom-quality items that have been donated by members like you for sale at very reasonable prices. After all, you are all part of making the museum such a wonderful place. Have any treasures to donate? Please leave a message for me.

I am looking forward to this New Year. Thank you for all your support.

Becky Turner, Buyer & Gift Shoppe Chair, and Sierra Turner,

Co-Chair

Available for purchase in the gift shoppe, this 3-piece silver-trimmed white coffee serving set is $15.99; the antique Wm Rogers silver tray, approx.15” diameter, is priced at $30. Special offer: Purchase all 4 pieces together for $40!