1937–1956 Childhood in California
When I was nine, my parents built a stunning modern restaurant perched on the cliffs of Big Sur, California, where the whole family lived and worked. As a barefoot boy on the California coast, I loved the rugged terrain …redwood canyons, beaches, and steep mountains. This spectacular, isolated setting turned out to be a big draw for artists, writers, musicians, and actors, and our family-run business became a magnet for interesting people—both staff and visitors—from across the globe. Meeting these larger-than-life characters stimulated my young mind and was a powerful influence. Their confident personalities and colorful stories about the exotic worlds of Europe and the Orient filled me with longing to experience those places for myself. The progressive boarding school I attended as a teenager, which was full of cultured teachers and inquiring students, would further intensify my burgeoning enthusiasm for a creative life of my own.
1937–1946
My early years in San Francisco and Carmel
I was born on December 7, 1937, at 2:47 a.m., at the Children's Hospital in San Francisco—December 7 would later become the infamous Pearl Harbor day. My parents, Bill and Lolly Fassett, were both twenty-six at the time and already had a one-year-old in tow, my brother Griff. Dad and Mom debated about a name for me. Griff had been named after Dad's maternal grandfather, William Eliot Griffis, so Dad said, "Why not please your family and name him after your grandfather?" Mom had adored her maternal grandfather Frank Powers, and she readily agreed, signing my birth certificate "Frank Powers Fassett."
My antecedents were an eclectic mix of art philanthropists, entrepreneurs, academics, artists, suffragettes, and writers. This made my parents encourage creativity in anyone who crossed their paths. Mom was a great romantic and loved the color in life, and Dad loved drama. Neither had cultivated an art or craft, so they didn't impose any particular artistic discipline on their kids. Still, they were always keen to promote celebration and heightened fun.
Mom had been a very handsome young woman in her early life and had traveled around Europe with her painter grandmother, Jane Gallatin Powers, wife of Frank Powers. After Frank's death in 1920, Jane emigrated to Europe, taking her two youngest daughters—her oldest daughter, my grandmother, was already married and had had my mother by that time, so she stayed behind in San Francisco. At the age of seventeen, my mother left California and went over to join Jane. Mom would regale us with tales of her six years spent in Paris, Rome, and Capri. One story I loved was how on arriving at grand hotels, my great-grandmother would unscrew the door handles and replace them with her own more decorative ones.
Mom also told us about the dashing, unusual clothes she wore during her years in Europe. She often described an apple green satin dress she had worn, for which she had made one peacock blue shoe and one emerald green. Is it any wonder I should develop a passion for color with inspirational visions like that embedded in my memory? One of Mom's aunts married the governor of Capri, so Mom spent many summer days swimming and evenings attending receptions and dancing at grand balls.
My father was tall and handsome with a wicked sense of humor that gained more of a sadistic edge as he really got to know you. His personality would have made him a good twenty-first-century TV presenter, prying out embarrassing stories from unsuspecting people. He was also an eclectic and avid reader. Politics, religion, and the American Civil War were among his favorite subjects. He talked often of writing a great book, but those plans remained in the realm of talk—a sad fact that motivated me to act on my own dreams.
Dad's upbringing, mostly in California, was rather bohemian for the time, and after finishing Cornell University, where he studied hotel management, he returned to California and started working as a merchant marine. He lived next door to Mom in San Francisco, and it was only a matter of time before these two handsome people would get together. They were both born in 1911 and married at twenty-four.
At the time of my birth, my mother and father were living in the Powers family home on Steiner Street in San Francisco where my mother had grown up. Her maternal grandparents, Frank and Jane Gallatin Powers, were the founders of the artist colony in Carmel-by-the-Sea on the beautiful wild coast of California. They had bought a house on the edge of the Carmel beach called The Dunes when they were developing the colony, but they also had this San Francisco house, as Frank had his law practice there. Jane's father was Albert Gallatin, a wealthy California businessman who was an early pioneer of hydroelectric power and power transmission, and was the president of the largest hardware, iron, and steel company on the West Coast. A self-made man, he built himself a large house in Sacramento that later became the governor's mansion for thirteen California governors.
My father's antecedents were pretty impressive as well. His maternal grandfather, William Eliot Griffis, was a noted American Orientalist and writer who had been decorated in Japan for his work in education there. Dad's birth father was Edward Lee McCallie, whose family had founded the McCallie School, a renowned boy's school, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, but his mother, Kevah, divorced and remarried when he was still a baby. His wealthy stepfather, Newton Crocker Fassett, was William's best friend and the man who, by adopting Dad, gave our family their surname.
The past family glories didn't seem to offer my young parents much financial privilege. I always remember them struggling pretty hard to make ends meet during my childhood. But the advantage passed down to me was probably the cultured upbringing my parents had had—it ensured that I was exposed to the arts from a young age.
My very first memories are of the Powers family's Steiner Street house and its garden. The house seemed huge to me then, but it came down to size when I was to see it a couple of decades later—a kind of average-size four-story San Francisco Victorian. I lived there with my parents and older brother until I was four and Griff was five.
Being so young, I don't remember much about living on Steiner Street. What I do recall is the delicious feeling of lying down in my little red wagon and gazing up at clouds and the berries on the holly tree till I dozed off. The next thing I knew, my mother's voice was booming out of the upstairs window. "What are you doing? Come up to bed if you want to sleep." Naps were compulsory for Griff and me, and we hated having to take them. We were active boys and disliked being told, "Oh, you are overtired," whenever we complained about anything. One afternoon when we were really resisting shutting our eyes at naptime, Dad said, "You'll love having a nap one day." Indeed, I have come to treasure a short power nap during my working day in the studio. It need only be ten to fifteen minutes to set me up for an afternoon's hard work. Often when guests are here for lunch, I'll slip out as they are having a cup of tea after the meal and be back before they get up from the table.
A story I often heard my mother tell regarded my "real" name. When I was old enough to go to nursery school in San Francisco, my father signed me in there as Frank Powers Fassett. A year later, when I required a vaccination, the school needed my birth certificate, so they sent off for it. When it arrived, my astonished teacher rang my mother to ask, "Doesn't your husband even know his own child's name?"
1, 3, 4: My great grandmother, artist Jane Gallatin Powers, in Italy, where she lived and painted in the 1920s and 1930s, and two of her paintings from that era. 2, 5, 9: Jane would have approved of my patchwork fabrics from the nineties—Bekah and Cloisonné—and my Fair Isle knitting from the eighties. 6, 8: Mom in Capri in the early 1930s, when she was living with her grandmother; and Jane's portrait of her. 7: Mom and Dad looking content on their wedding day in 1935.
"Why, what did he sign him in as?" she asked.
"Frank Powers Fassett. But I have his birth certificate in front of me, and it says Frank Havrah Fassett!" My mother had never heard the name Havrah, so she called Dad at his office to get an explanation. My father was so shocked when he heard the story that he dropped the phone. When Dad was born to his astrologically obsessed mother, Kevah, she gave him the middle name Havrah, a name thought to have great stability because it had an "h" at each end. Dad hated it as he grew up and never used it or told anyone about it, including Mom. Kevah had passed away a few years before I was born, but my mother always felt she must have wanted the name Havrah in the family so much that she had "arranged" it from the other side. I feel sure that Kevah was a forceful creature, capable of doing that. Educated at Vassar in the early twentieth century and quite a bohemian, she was divorced twice and married three times in the days when divorce was a very rare occurrence. She became active in the early movement for women's rights and worked with Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood.
Our family had another addition in 1941 when my sister Dorcas Jane Fassett was born, and in the same year we moved to a ranch just outside Marin City, a couple of miles northwest of downtown Sausalito. With three small children under five, my parents were trying to make a go of running a horse ranch, and Dad joined the World War II effort working in the Sausalito shipyards, at the north end of the Golden Gate Bridge. Housing in Marin City itself was building up rapidly at the start of the war to accommodate more than 70,000 shipyard workers flooding into Sausalito to work in the Marinship Shipyard. My strongest war memory is Dad coming home with a gas mask on and sending our family dog, Dewsy, into a frenzy of barking.
My sister Holly Fassett was born during the war in 1943, and shortly after it ended we moved to a rambling house in Carmel. It was a warm-hearted abode only a block from the beach, so we could swim before and after school. My mother wrote of it as a "marvelous old Spanish-style house with a huge living room and a fireplace." Dad took various jobs, but found his vocation when he started a magazine called What's Doing, which featured the Monterey Peninsula happenings. An aspiring writer, he was much more in his element doing this than working in the shipyards. The new job also put him in touch with all the movers and the shakers of the area, which would be a great advantage when he and my mother took up their next adventure.
1947
Arriving in Big Sur
In 1947, my parents had the foresight and good fortune to buy a spectacular piece of coastal property—a twelve-acre hilltop about thirty miles south of Carmel that was crowned with a log cabin. The cabin had a forty-mile view of coastline along Big Sur. A ninety-mile stretch of coast between San Francisco and Los Angeles, Big Sur had been an inaccessible wilderness until Highway 1 was finished in 1937 (shortly before my birth), linking it to towns north and south. Before then, Big Sur had been accessible only by foot or horseback. Despite its remoteness, the unique landscape always attracted hikers and lovers of unspoiled wilderness. The log cabin, built in the 1920s by the Trails Club of California (the precursor of the Sierra Club), was a pivotal base for them. This area, with the stunning Santa Lucia Mountains tumbling gracefully and dramatically down to the Pacific Ocean, is considered one of the most beautiful coastlines in the United States. Much of the wild nature there is luckily still protected by vast federal and state parks along the coast. My mother had spent childhood holidays on the beach below the log cabin where she and her grandfather Powers had had picnics, roasting corn on log fires on moonlit nights.
Dad bought our log cabin and its twelve acres from Orson Welles, who had purchased the property in 1944 as a honeymoon present for Rita Hayworth, but the couple never actually stayed there. Since this rugged coastline had only had its highway since 1937, and the war had interrupted any substantial development, by the time the Fassett family arrived, it still had no electricity and very few inhabitants.
Coming from the small seaside town of Carmel, my sisters, older brother, and I took to this rugged new home with great enthusiasm. Surrounded by oak trees and redwoods, our log cabin was perched 800 feet above the Pacific. At the beginning, we lived outdoors for the most part—chopping wood for our stone fireplace, climbing up the near-vertical hills, and tumbling down long canyon trails to our stunning deserted beach. What a perfect child's adventure it was for us, like having a huge park all to ourselves, one that was full of new smells and sights. We would run naked in the surf, arrange stones and shells in decorative patterns on the sand, and climb the miniature waterfall up the creek, picking wildflowers. When I think of how cosseted and supervised kids are today, I'm amazed by and grateful for the trust our parents had in our independent exploring.
My three sisters, Dorcas, Holly, and Kim—at six years, four years, and nine months old—were the "little kids" when we moved into the log cabin. I was nine and my brother Griff was a very grown up ten and a half. We had a tight friendship for a brief period, before he found pals his own age and suddenly saw me as the annoying little brother. Soon after we arrived, Griff and I did a quick survey of the properties surrounding our plot and explored the terrain until we were scared off by warning shots from a neighboring landowner.
When we kids were not climbing and frolicking on the beach, I would often have the job of looking after my little sisters while my parents were occupied with settling in to our primitive accommodations. Sometimes, to keep them and me amused, I'd dress them up in romantic costumes, dreaming we were in the time of Shakespeare's Henry V.
I'd recently seen the Laurence Olivier film, and my young imagination had taken in every detail of the sets and costumes. My father had a record of the key speeches from the film, which we'd listen to over and over, picturing the vivid scenes and savoring the language: "This day is called the feast of Crispian."
I'd drape my sisters in scarves and strings of beads and push them around in our old wheelbarrow, transforming them into the grandest of ladies in fine coaches, or we'd wrap bandannas around our heads, put on loincloths, and become Native Americans. We built improvised theaters with bedspread curtains and played music from a windup record player, all under our big oak tree. That oak tree—like a huge elephant on whose back and trunk we'd climb, squealing with delight—was a living entity for us. We spent hours on the swings hanging from its branches.
When the rains (which could be torrential) struck on frosty winter days, we'd make puppet theaters in our rooms and beg any adults to come watch our latest productions. My mother saw from an early age that I had a creative talent, and she gave me every encouragement. Each year, about a month before Christmas, while my siblings slaved at chores like cutting wood, cleaning, and filling kerosene lamps, I was planted at the dining-room table to hand-paint the many Christmas cards we sent out. I loved this task, and I got more and more imaginative and detailed as I worked through the piles of colored papers making my poster-paint images. It was a joyous job I looked forward to every year.
Aside from encouraging my painting, my mother attempted to introduce me to other arts on offer in Monterey, thirty-five miles north of us. She took me to any colorful piece of theater and film she could. I remember the surprising vision of a Kabuki troupe, Balinese dance performances, and classic films like David Lean's Great Expectations and, later, Powell and Pressburger's The Red Shoes. These productions became a rich education for me. My brother also started to find his own intense interests. He discovered classical music through friends of the family and through our father, who loved romantic orchestral pieces, often filling the house with great rolling symphonies.
My fondest early Big Sur memories of Dad are of him reading stories to us kids as we gathered in our pajamas in front of a roaring fire. He always read what interested him as well as us. Satirist and short story writer Ambrose Bierce was one of his favorites, as he was steeped in the American Civil War and writings about that period. He also read us The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and many English children's books—Winnie-the-Pooh, The Wind in the Willows, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, and, best of all, the Mary Poppins series by P. L. Travers.
1948
Building the Fassett family restaurant
My parents had different opinions about what they wanted to do to make a living with their Big Sur property. Dad seemed happy to set up a roadside hamburger and coffee stand, but my mother thought they should build unique cabins on the site and rent them out. Eventually they decided to build a huge modern restaurant just below the log cabin so the world could share our spectacular view—which included the sun rising over the Santa Lucia Mountains and spectacularly setting over the Pacific. Finding someone to design the building took a little time, but they finally met Rowan Maiden, a sensitive architect who lived in Monterey. Mom realized he understood her vision for the unique restaurant she wanted to build. Rowan had studied with Frank Lloyd Wright and was one of Wright's three favorite apprentices.
Coming to an agreement about what the restaurant should look like wasn't easy for my parents. My mother was definitely the visionary in the family, while my father, with his hotel management training, was the practical one. Because he had a very male approach to many things and was not particularly aware of aesthetics, my mother had an uphill struggle to keep her unique vision untainted. Their fights were legendary even before we embarked on the restaurant. I remember bottles of milk being smashed against the walls as we children tried to eat our breakfast and, most memorable, a stack of glass ashtrays crashing on a concrete floor.
To construct the building, Mom and Dad turned to two brother contractors whose father had built our log cabin, Frank and Walter Trotter. They were big, powerfully built guys, sympathetic to the design of the building. To finance the construction, Dad went to his uncle Stan. Stanton Griffis had made a fortune as an investment banker, then later ran Paramount Pictures and owned Brentano's bookstore in New York. During the President Truman years, he had also been the U.S. ambassador to Poland, Egypt, Eva Perón's Argentina, and Franco's Spain. Maybe his own sense of adventure helped him to understand my parents' attempt to set up a business in the beautiful backwoods like this.
I remember Uncle Stan arriving in a big car. He stepped out looking pasty and old to me, and dressed in a very exotic three-piece suit—everyone I knew in those days wore casual clothes. After looking over our property, he had mumbling conversations with Dad. As he was preparing to leave, my little six-year-old sister Dorcas, realizing he was about to back our dream business, tried to make polite small talk. She gestured to the looming mountain behind us and said, "Isn't that a beautiful mountain, Uncle Stan?" This elderly, balding New Yorker gazed up at the sight and said, "Do you want me to buy that for you, too?"
By hook or by crook, Mom got Dad to agree to her dream, and her rustic modern structure started to materialize. My parents both contributed to the actual construction process. Dad worked for the Trotters for a while doing building labor. Although Mom had her hands full with five kids to look after and meals to make for all involved, she still found time to help work on the restaurant. When big bricks were needed for the outdoor fireplace and a retaining wall below the log house, she made her own version of them using local pinkish gravel and cement. Mom's boots and work clothes were often stiff with splattered cement.
The great modern structure of the restaurant takes form, with me trying to help the workmen.
We kids were fascinated by the building of the restaurant and were allowed to help. My brother and I shoveled earth from the kitchen area, which was carved out of a hillside behind the main dining terrace. As the great trusses that formed the skeleton of our building went up, it was like a huge stage set for me. It was thrilling to watch the wide south-facing concrete terrace and mammoth stepped seating area that led down from the log house being poured.
As my parents were looking for a name for their restaurant, the name Nepenthe came from our family friend Daniel Harris, a Hungarian-American artist who had dubbed himself ZEV ("wolf" in Hebrew). Nepenthe is Greek for "isle of no care," and my mother thought that a place meaning basically "house of no sorrow" fit in with her picture of creating a beautiful haven for all to enjoy. ZEV had studied art in Hungary and at the Academy of Design in New York, and he and his wife, Gertrude, had built a fantasy of a house called Crazy Crescent in Seaside, just north of Monterey. They had used wonderful found objects to make it a little palace of delights. Mill-end floors of odd shapes of wood set on end, walls made of old bottles creating a stained-glass effect, and mosaics of crockery and pebbles all added enchantment.
To us kids, ZEV was a magician. He had a whimsical grin and dancing, fun-filled eyes. He was always drawing or making something, or digging in his treasure chests to find us a memorable present. These chests were full of little boxes and pretty cloth bags of ZEV's favorite things—beads, china, coins, paintbrushes, pens. He was a big kid who squirreled away his magic talismans.
One day ZEV announced he would make special mosaic tables for inside the restaurant and outside on the terrace. He found some glass tiles in brilliant colors—kingfisher blue, gold, purple, ruby red—and added to those some of his prized strings of beads, glass inkwells, and keys. We watched spellbound as he danced about, brimming over with creative joy. The resulting tables were eye-catching and delightful, the bright collection of a magpie. My love of mosaic started there.
ZEV also drew a wonderful phoenix bird for Nepenthe, which became the symbol of the family enterprise. He wrote a ditty to put on the menu: "Forget all your worldly cares at Nepenthe's gay pavilion—where the Phoenix Bird repairs and is feeling like a million." I recall his delight in Nepenthe's early costume parties, where he arrived one year sporting a skin-tight pair of knitted shorts (a child's outfit he found at a thrift store, stretched over his muscular legs), a sailor's hat, and a huge grin. ZEV gave us kids drawing pens and paper for Christmas, always encouraging us to be as productive as we could be.
Though ZEV was married, his unbridled joie de vivre and kooky sense of humor revealed a free spirit that was never going to be tamed by the heterosexual world. I once overheard my parents arguing about ZEV's homosexuality having a possible influence on us kids. They needn't have worried in my case; I'd instinctively known from an early age where my strongest interests lay. As much as I adored the girls and women in my life, I knew that men were the attractive ones for me.
From the time we arrived in Big Sur, Mom had started making Sunday-night dinners in her big kitchen in our private quarters in the log cabin, to which all kinds of interesting neighbors and friends were invited. She continued these as the restaurant went up, and they became famous over the years. One reason Dad gave for agreeing to build the restaurant in the first place was that they were already feeding everyone in the vicinity. The dinners drew in local artists, writers, and antique dealers—Big Sur, Carmel, and Monterey were home to many creative types, and my vivacious parents attracted them into their circle. The table was always full of laughter and gossip, as well as split French loaves of garlic bread, pasta or hearty stew, big tossed salads, and lots of good wine. Mom's adoring dinner guests wore colorful clothes matched by her own big-print oriental-style tops and oversized earrings.
Aside from being allowed our outdoor ramblings, my school-age siblings and I were signed up for the local school a couple of miles north of us on Highway 1. To us kids, it was a large house, but it was actually a pretty small place to accommodate first through eighth grades. The youngest kids were in a side room while the rest of us were in the main room with our one teacher. There was a big blackboard at the end of the room, and we sat in little wooden desks—seats attached to a writing surface that opened to store our schoolbooks. One wall was mostly large glass windows that looked out on a playground and a road that curved around to the front of the school.
The end-of-year photo from our small schoolhouse in Big Sur. I'm the fourth from the left in the middle row; my sister Holly is to my right in the same row; and my sister Dorcas is the sixth from the left in the top row.
1, 5, 10: Mirage, a knit I remember designing on a trip to India; my Paperweight ribbon design; and my fabric Millefiore—inspired by my mother's passion for color. 2: The entrance to Nepenthe restaurant. 3: I loved the costume parties at Nepenthe. Here I am in 1956, wearing a hula skirt and an Egyptian tapestry that made me into a Kabuki character. 4: The restaurant was designed by architect Rowan Maiden. 6: Our artist friend ZEV dancing at Nepenthe's first Halloween party. 7: Nepenthe, finished and ready for business. 8: The phoenix bird, which is a symbol of Nepenthe, made into a door decoration by ZEV. 9: Another joyous end-of-season Halloween party at Nepenthe; after this party the restaurant would close for the winter. I would often appear in several costume changes during the evening, sometimes quite dramatically under a huge silk parachute. It gave me a taste for dramatic happenings on the world's stage.
The only grandparent who played a significant role in our lives was my mother's mother, Madeleine Powers Ulman. My brother, sisters, and I called her Nona and visited her frequently. She had a very different style than my mother's and lived in a grand country house, with lush gardens and a fruit orchard, situated on the Carmel River. We loved romping in those gardens, but entering her house was a nightmare for country kids. "Don't touch the wallpaper! Don't touch the banisters!" was the constant cry.
On one of her visits to our Big Sur home, Nona was reading us an Oscar Wilde story when she suddenly started to weep. My father happened to stick his head in the door at that instant, and he asked, "Why are you crying?"
"Because the words are so beautiful," she replied tearfully. Then she turned back to us children and her tears stemmed instantly as she yelled, "Kick it, kick it!" pointing to our dog. Startled, we looked at our sweet dog lying at our feet, lazily licking his balls. I gently took him out the door instead. When I came back and sat down, Nona drew herself up to her full height and declared forcefully, "A dog always reflects the habits of its master."
Nona was very grand looking, like a Gibson girl—red hair piled up on her head and usually topped off with a bold garden flower. We nicknamed her the Duchess. She would make points by closing her eyes with her head held high. When an actor friend met her some years later, he said, "When she closes her eyes, it's like the curtain descending at the Met!"
My grandmother's spacious house was lavishly furnished with antique carpets and textiles, and handsome furniture, some passed down from her father, Frank Powers. Big brass trays and Italian pots stand out in my memory, as do the murals, done by a local artist, in her sunroom, which overlooked the gardens leading down to the river.
One day as we were playing croquet on Nona's lawn, I suddenly focused on the beautiful, big, shiny leaves of her magnolia tree. The suede brown undercoating of these waxy leaves transfixed me. As I gazed in wonder at their size and contrasting textures, my grandmother murmured, "You like the leaves, but you didn't see the flowers." She reached up with her croquet mallet and pulled down the most enormous bloom I'd ever seen. Huge, creamy petals surrounded the golden center of a flower the size of a punch bowl, or so it seemed to my young eyes.
Nona's fruit orchard was at the side of the house, and I also have wonderful memories of climbing her apricot tree, picking the fruit, and nearly swooning at the sight of the orange apricots with deep pink blushes against the sapphire blue sky. I recalled these orchard impressions to make conversation with Nona after she had been divorced and was living in a much smaller house in Carmel. "Don't rub it in! I was kicked out!" she bellowed at me.
The Nona quilt I designed in memory of a cloth my maternal grandmother, Madeleine Powers Ulman, gave me.
1949–1952
Nepenthe starts up
The building of Nepenthe lasted for more than a year, and the restaurant opened in 1949 with a fire-lit evening. There was music, a playwright reading his play, and folk dancing on the terrace. The place was a great success from the start. Dad's role was crucial—the financial management and the running of the business. But he was hurt and even jealous at the number of compliments Mom received for the concept and visual details that made the restaurant unique in its time.
From the beginning, Nepenthe attracted people from many different worlds who lived nearby or were passing through. Because we were either working in the restaurant or hanging around it, we kids got the benefit of soaking up culture from every corner of the globe through our contact with these visitors. The bar, the restaurant, the stunning surroundings, and the company of my interesting, vibrant parents were all big attractions. Right away, Nepenthe was considered a relaxed and welcoming place by local residents. The entertainment my father organized was a draw, too. Dad would stage harpsichord and dance performances and poetry and play readings on Nepenthe's grand terrace. There was always a great welcoming fire burning inside the restaurant, as well as one outside on the terrace to greet guests as they arrived. When some professional event wasn't scheduled, we kids would occasionally put on fantasy costumes and dance our hearts out during the evenings, inspiring the customers to get up and join in.
The oil painting I did of my grandmother in the early 1960s. She arrived for the sitting with a bucket of garden roses, a decorative cloth, and her striped muumuu.
One good thing about residing in a challenging, rugged countryside with no electricity and far from civilized town life is that you are surrounded by self-sufficient souls as well as creative ones—writers, actors, potters, painters, and sculptors. Big Sur was the perfect place for those seeking a different lifestyle and a place to peacefully get on with their writing or artwork. One vivid character in the artistic set on the coast was the renowned author Henry Miller. My father had known him before the restaurant opened, and he was one of the first famous regulars at Nepenthe.
Henry had come to Big Sur in 1944 and had lived in our log cabin before Orson Welles bought it. After his time in the log cabin he moved farther down the coast to Anderson Creek. The houses at Anderson Creek were constructed as a camp for prisoners who were employed to build the precipitous coastal highway. Several cabins were left standing and could be rented out, but they had no heat or power. Henry lived in the deserted mess hall. The makeshift oil-drum stove inside it provided barely enough heat to warm the big drafty space in winter. As it was right on the sea, the views from the mess hall were fabulous, and it was surrounded by clumps of narcissus that perfumed the air in spring. On nights when gales occurred and the wind whistled though the rafters and floorboards, Henry and his visitors bundled up in blankets and sipped wine before the fire. When anyone got unbearably cold in Big Sur, there was always relief at Henry's favorite place, the hot sulphur springs that were just down the road. A bath in those would warm your bones right through the night.
By the time Nepenthe opened, Henry was in his late fifties and a very well-known writer whose daring work was inspirational to the upcoming Beat Generation of poets and authors. Even though Henry had already written some of his most notorious books, recounting his sexual adventures and the joys of life in Paris and Greece, he was struggling to make ends meet at that time. His money was evidently difficult to get from his publishers in war-torn Paris. He was married then to a pretty young Polish woman named Lepska, and they had two very small children, Valentine and Tony. A fan of his had given them a house and property on Partington Ridge, a bit north of Anderson Creek, to live in free till they could afford to pay for it.
What I recall of this wiry little man with a deep voice and New York accent was his enthusiasm for life, and especially for art. He adored painting, saying, "To paint is to love again." When I got a little older and started producing large portraits of my family, Henry was my most enthusiastic audience, cheering me on. Aside from frequenting the bar and restaurant, he was also often around at Nepenthe while he was reading his work onto long-playing records. The sleeve on one of these says, "Recorded at Nepenthe, Henry's nearest neighbor with electricity." Henry also mentioned our family later in his book Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. He talks about my parents running the restaurant and their brood of children, and notes that all five of the young Fassett kids "specialized in raising hell."
Henry's own house on Partington Ridge was full of delightful colors (predominantly pink), bits of mosaic, colorful mobiles, children's artwork, and a motley collection of the crockery found at charity shops. As a child, I can't recall ever seeing a house that boasted a complete matching set of china for the table. Even our restaurant had plates of a dozen different colors.
During those early years, running the restaurant was like being in the theater for my parents. They would wind up high on adrenalin after dealing with full houses. If there were interesting people around after most had gone home, a moonlight trip to the sulphur baths was laid on. The ocean spray wafting up in the cool night while the soothing candlelit hot springs warmed your body was a touch of nirvana that people never forgot.
Even with Nepenthe up and running, Mom was still raising us on a shoestring, as most of the money she could coax out of Dad went to her next building project. We always needed more space for storage or housing for staff members, so there was an ongoing series of small buildings being put up on the property. My mother would hear of a job lot of timber or building materials going and would have a house built by traveling workmen needing a job. When the wooden bridges on our highway were replaced with concrete ones, she bought as much of the reclaimed timber as she could.
Henry Miller, drinking with Mom and Dad. He was a frequent visitor to our log cabin, where he'd lived in the 1930s.
A quilt from my book Simple Shapes Spectacular Quilts that echoes the fabric on my mother's bold smock.
My Chevron Stripe fabric.
One of Henry's gouaches. He used to say, "To paint is to love again."
Mom and Dad at their beloved Nepenthe.
My Lotus Leaf print on the left, and Mom in an oriental hat and one of her bold prints.
In my studio in the 2000s—surrounded by a delightful creative jumble.
As the physical work of the building was nearing completion, Mom saw Dad skipping off on one affair after another, and she found solace in food. She discovered the nutritionist Adelle Davis, as many did in that era, and was very careful to eat healthy foods, but secret hoards of candy were to be found wherever she went.
Memories of my mother could fill a book, but one that sums up her spirit and warmth for me is this tale: When I was about fourteen, a tramp came knocking on her kitchen door begging for a little food. She rushed to me, saying, "I'm heating up some nourishing soup for this guy, but what can I put it in for him to take it on the road? I don't want to give him a bowl, as I'll never see it again. Oh, I know, I'll give it to him in a can." She quickly opened a can of plums, poured the contents into a bowl, and ladled the soup into the empty can for him. "What can he eat it with?" was the next question. She went to her drawer, fished out her best wedding-gift silver serving spoon, and plunked it into the can. "He can sell it afterward—I don't have a lifestyle for this now." Then she opened the back door and handed the astonished hobo his can of hot soup with a huge ornate silver handle sticking out of it. This wasn't Mom's first or last act of kindness, and she quickly garnered a reputation with locals for feeding and lending money to hard-up passersby in Big Sur.
Living in our rugged outpost wasn't always upbeat and jolly or, conversely, full of drama. After the big costume party celebration that was held at the restaurant every year for Halloween, the restaurant was routinely closed for the winter, not to open again till April. My parents used this time for necessary repairs and renewal. Some of the staff took this opportunity to retreat to Mexico for the season. So even though my mother still held her Sunday dinners for friends, and certain events were put on for selected locals, the winter months meant everything wound down to a slower pace, at least it seemed to for us kids. We would often set up a ping-pong table in the restaurant and play throughout the winter.
I recall many lonely times, isolated as we were. And as I grew into an adolescent, there were, for me, times of introspection. I didn't have too many fears of bogeymen in dark places, but I had a huge anxiety as a child about whether I would be able to remember things later in life. It had overpowering strength emotionally and was somehow linked to my fear of not being able to organize and keep a tidy home. This fear was quite real to me—the difficulty of dealing with the avalanche of chaos that life brings in its wake. "Could I ever be grown up and lead a normal, organized life?" I wondered. The funny thing is that as I write this book at the age of seventy-three, I do have trouble remembering the dates and places of the events of my life, but most of my treasured stories are astoundingly vivid in my mind, such as seeing my mother's aghast look when she would come into my room and behold the chaos of my child's worldly goods around me. She would pick up the closest misplaced item and hurl it across the room in no particular direction to try to get me to make an effort to tidy it all up! I still create a mess around me wherever I am working—yarn, books, paints, paperwork, sketches, knitting needles, fabric scraps—but I usually know where to find what I need.
One thing I did learn in those solitary days of wandering the countryside was to look at things more intensely if I got bored or sad. There was always something to light me up—even the grayest of rocks revealed delightful hidden shades when studied closely.
1952–1955
Spreading my wings outside Nepenthe
By the fall of 1952, when I was nearly fifteen, I had gone as far as I could in the local one-room schoolhouse and started ninth grade at Monterey High School. It was a big change for me, as I was entering a more conventional atmosphere than I was used to. I was already a budding artist and took art very seriously. During the early years at Nepenthe, my mother and the bohemian guests at our restaurant who noticed my interest in the arts often encouraged my artistic leanings.
Many of our changing staff were also creative types. At one point, two women had come to work for us: gentle, feminine Janet with glasses, and big, broad-shouldered Anna, who had a wicked drawing line. Anna often did telling cartoons of the various characters at Nepenthe. I'd see her broad shoulders hunched over a quill-pen work, her blond ponytail quivering, a giggle escaping from the side of her mouth. A beady-eyed drawing of Dad had the caption, "There's nothing to fear now the crisis is here." She did one of Tyke, our chef's wife, with a pointed nose, squinting eyes, and a large carving knife in her bony hand. We all agreed it captured her to a tee. She watched my growing creativity and advised me intensely, "Draw every day—any object around you. A coffee cup, a piece of fruit, your hand …" I carried this message with me as I arrived at my teenage years, and it still rings in my ears.
While I was in ninth grade, my path toward the arts got a further boost from artists Liam O'Gallagher and Bob Rheem, who often spent time at Nepenthe. They were well-traveled, erudite men who loved the restaurant and all of us kids dancing and dressing up. Liam taught art part-time at a private school down the coast in Ojai (just south of Santa Barbara) called Happy Valley School and told my father this was the place for me. When Dad protested he couldn't afford the fees, the school offered a very good scholarship, and in the fall of 1953, off I went to boarding school to start my sophomore year there. Dad broke down in tears as he delivered me, saying it was just the sort of school he wished he had gone to.
Happy Valley School was very different from the usual conventional high schools of the 1950s. It was founded in 1946 by philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti, author Aldous Huxley, Vassar philosophy professor Guido Ferrando, and Rosalind Rajagopal, a member of the theosophical circle. The school was built on more than 500 acres of land in the idyllic Ojai Valley that had been bought by Annie Besant many years before. Its back history is fascinating. Besant was born in London in 1847 and spent most of her young life as a prominent social activist. In middle age she turned, to the surprise of her socialist cohorts, to the spiritual, quasi-mystical beliefs of theosophy and moved to India in the 1890s.
In India, Besant became involved in establishing a Theosophical Society whose aim was to prepare humanity for the "world teacher" when he appeared again on earth. Jiddu Krishnamurti was the humble Indian boy a member of the society discovered in 1909, who was assumed to be this awaited "savior." He was tutored privately and eventually sent to Europe for an elite education, where he learned to speak several languages and mixed with the upper echelons of society. Although Krishnamurti later separated himself from the theosophists and denounced the idea that there should be a world teacher, he remained a philosopher and educationalist his whole life and close to his adoptive "mother," Annie Besant. Besant's California property passed to Krishnamurti's charge on her death in 1933. When the Happy Valley School started, followers of Krishnamurti would flock there to be near him and would work for peanuts teaching and doing administration. They shared his view of holistic education, providing children with a noncompetitive environment where they could freely develop their emotional, creative, and intellectual potential—a radical concept in 1950s America.
Because I had an operation for a hernia just as the Happy Valley term was about to start, I missed the first couple of weeks of school. All the other students had settled in and were making friends. They looked at my empty bed and empty place at the dining table and began to speculate about who this missing boy was. They finally all agreed—I was going to be a seven-foot-tall black boy called Ralf. "Ralf?" I cried when I arrived. "I hate that name!" It was even worse than Frank. For a few years, I had begun to dream of the artistic life that seemed to be opening up for me, and I started to feel that "Frank" lacked spark—it just didn't suit me. Then, when I was about fourteen, I came across a children's book called Boy of the Pyramids by Ruth Fosdick Jones. The book was set in ancient Egypt, and a drawing of the Egyptian teenage hero was featured on the dust jacket. It was the cover that caught my eye. The boy looked like me! Since my early grammar school days, I'd worn my hair in sort of a pudding-basin style, or "bowl cut," and this son of a pharaoh had exactly the same look. I totally identified with him. When I opened the book and read that his name was "Kaffe," I felt it fit me like a glove. Up to this point, I had never had the courage to actually change my name. Now was my chance. "If you are going to change my name, 'Kaffe' is what I want to be called," I told my classmates. That name appealed to them, and I was called that by everyone in the school thereafter. When I got home, I announced my new identity to my family, who surprisingly took to it with no fuss.
Happy Valley School was small, funky, creative, and free! We could wear whatever we liked, so we wore colorful clothes we'd find in charity shops, went barefoot, and sometimes even tucked flowers behind our ears. We were way ahead of our time with our relaxed, pre-hippie look. I loved the atmosphere, so I didn't mind at all being sent to boarding school. It was a great adventure, where I could be with people who understood me. I also considered how lucky I was not to have been sent, like my older brother Griff, to my grandfather's McCallie School in Tennessee. At the time, it was a strict military academy, like many private boys' boarding schools in those days. Griff had been involved with speeding cars and other teenage-boy misdoings before he was sent off to McCallie. Perhaps I was fortunate never to have learned to drive!
There was bound to be the exception to the rule of our colorful dressing, because everyone was encouraged to express their own personality. That exception was fifteen-year-old Joan Watts—she wore bobby socks, two-tone brown-and-white shoes, immaculate pleated plaid skirts, and neat blouse-and-sweater combos. Her hair was done up in the current high school coifed look. In short, while the rest of us ran about thumbing our noses at conventional America, she was the nonconformist Doris Day look-alike. And that's not the most surprising thing—her father was the renowned British philosopher Alan Watts, who wrote The Spirit of Zen in 1936. He had moved to California in 1951 and became the main popularizer of Eastern philosophy in the United States and one of the figureheads of the Beat Generation and hippies.
I recall vividly when Watts came to Happy Valley for a school lecture once. Holding up a piece of chalk he asked, "What's this?" We students offered a few suggestions, to which he added, "It could be makeup or something to stop a squeaky hinge, but it's none of these things. It's THIS!" He hurled the chalk into the midst of the audience—shocking, exciting! We loved it.
Krishnamurti and Huxley gave talks, too. Huxley's niece Olivia was one of my best friends at the school. But our favorite teacher was Ronnie Bennett, a dashing drama and dance coach who directed us in a Shakespeare play each year. The first year I was there it was The Tempest, in which I played Ferdinand. I loved the language and helping with costumes, sets, and makeup. Ronnie and I would have long talks in his little MG car to get away from the hubbub of the school. He had the head of a young Shakespeare with blond hair brushed back, a small goatee, twinkling blue eyes, and that director's sharp gaze. He wore handsome knitted sweaters, tweedy turtlenecks that looked excitingly timeless on him, and he could silence us rowdy teenagers in an instant with his powerful actor's voice: "NOW PEOPLE!"
I roomed with a tall, fierce-looking boy named Erik de Steiguer. He would have made a perfect Dracula with his pointed eyebrows and square jaw and was aptly cast as Prospero in The Tempest.
In spite of his tall, menacing looks, Erik was quite innocent and na?ve. His younger brother, Kim, on the other hand, was good-looking and very precocious, leading me—without too much resistance, I must admit—to the bushes, after lights out in the dorm. Those spring and early summer nights were quite an education. Some of the brighter sparks in the senior class set up a mill to make gin, bringing juniper berries from the desert to flavor it. Many drunken nights followed that; it's a wonder we didn't all go blind. I recall the speed with which we could set up and dismantle our still in the communal showers between our dorm father's inspections. Even in the bohemian environment of Happy Valley, where we called our teachers by their first names and went barefoot to class, we still were meant to follow certain rules!
My roommate Erik de Steiguer as Prospero in The Tempest at Happy Valley School—a boarding school I went to that nurtured creative spirit.
One of the best things I studied at Happy Valley was folk dancing. We learned the dances of many countries, but concentrated on those from Russia, especially the Ukraine. Our troupe was formed for exhibition dancing, so we practiced assiduously. The boys wore black billowing trousers and leather boots with a smocklike white shirt. We embroidered panels on the sleeves and bibs of these shirts in geometric cross-stitch patterns. Given a personal choice of colors, I chose an autumn palette of rusts, golds, and moss greens for my shirt. This was my first serious attempt at embroidery, and obviously I loved it, as I remember my color palette to this day.
The girls wore full skirts, boots, and large-sleeved blouses with similar embroidered panels on the sleeves and the fronts. In their hair they sported wreaths of flowers with long colored ribbons hanging down the back. These scarlet, cobalt, and saffron ribbons contrasted excitingly with the crisp black and white of the boys' outfits.
Ukranian wedding dance at Happy Valley in 1954. I'm waving a flag, center back. Above and below are ribbons I designed in 2010 that could easily have been used on our costumes.
A poster I painted for our folk dance festival at Happy Valley School in the mid-1950s.
J. Krishnamurti (founder of Happy Valley School), Radha Rajagopal, Beatrice Wood (also pictured to the right), at Santa Barbara, 1938.
One of my ribbon designs.
A group of students (including me, bottom left) in the Happy Valley production of Shakespeare's Henry IV (Part 1) in June 1954.
As we danced to the rhythmic Ukrainian music, the skirts whirled out, and we boys did intricate, energetic leaps and squat-kicks with our Russian-style prisyadkas. I did prisyadkas so enthusiastically that I cracked the cartilage in my knees on two occasions and had to have hours of therapy to put it right. Once our troupe was in its stride, we took these polished performances onto local television a few times and into a women's prison on one occasion. The inmates developed instant crushes on us male dancers—and on some of the girls, too.
The folk dancing and the plays and modern dance we performed helped us get over our stage nerves and speak and move unselfconsciously in front of audiences. This was great preparation for facing audiences later in my career.
Classes progressed, and I learned a lot in my first year at Happy Valley. The free atmosphere helped, as did being among a collection of bright kids from interesting, cultured families. Parents had to be fairly enlightened to send their kids to this highly unconventional school.
It was exciting to have our Shakespeare plays to design and act out, as well as music to explore. We also did our own creative writing, painting, and pottery. Talks by Krishnamurti, Alan Watts, Aldous Huxley, and architect Richard Neutra opened our minds to the vast world within each of us. There were always characters of great individuality visiting our classrooms. They demonstrated to us how rich and fulfilling a creative life could be.
The famous potter Beatrice Wood was the most vivid visitor. She was about sixty at that time and, living nearby, was a frequent presence in our lives. She wore big, colorful skirts and red leather boots. I once heard her say to someone, "I sleep in these boots!" Before she died in Ojai at 105, she wrote her autobiography, titled I Shock Myself, which brings her big personality to life. She was a prolific potter, creating a world of subtle but exotic color and texture like ancient Byzantine metallics. When I was at Happy Valley, I didn't know of her colorful past life. She had been an actress in Paris in the 1910s and was at one time the lover of Marcel Duchamp and, simultaneously, Henri-Pierre Roché. Roché wrote the book Jules et Jim, which was inspired by their bohemian threesome and later became a famous French film of the early 1960s. Before becoming a potter, Wood had also worked on the first Dada magazine in New York and gained the nickname "the Mama of Dada."
My French teacher at Happy Valley, Kate de Nagy, also had an accomplished artistic past. Known as K?the von Nagy, she was born in Hungary in 1904 and became an acclaimed movie star in France and Germany before World War II, making the jump from silent films to talkies. She appeared in scores of 1920s and 1930s films.
Of course, the adults at school had an impact on me, but the strongest memories are of my peer group. Cappy Peake was a classmate I remember fondly. A fascinating gazelle-like creature, she had huge eyes, delicate hands, and a hesitant boyish charm that really appealed to me. She could also draw like Michelangelo.
One day, Cappy took me to meet her family. Her father, Channing Peake, was a well-known artist who had studied fresco muralism with Diego Rivera. They lived on a working cattle and horse ranch just north of Santa Barbara. Their house was enchanting. Filled with Indian rugs and big wooden furniture, it had a bold western style. In pride of place in the dining room was a large canvas by the renowned Mexican painter Rufino Tamayo. It was the first time I'd seen a really famous painting in a private house.
My roommate Erik also invited me to his family home, which was in the desert. I loved the look of his parents' place—good colors, paintings, rugs in a sort of New Mexico style. One day during my visit, we took a long walk into the desert to see an abandoned dam. As we neared the base, I was amazed how huge the dam was. I felt it must be as tall as a New York skyscraper. Erik said, "I've climbed it before. Let's do it now!"
With enthusiasm, we started climbing the metal rungs embedded in the dam wall. The wall slanted away from us for about two-thirds of the way up, then became vertical. Not thinking to pace myself, I quickly pulled myself up hundreds of rungs. By the time I reached the vertical section, I felt nearly drained of energy. I realized I hadn't the courage to go back down, and Erik had already reached the top, so I struggled on. Very near the top, I suddenly ground to a halt—my arms were weak as a baby's. Because I felt helpless to move in either direction, a huge wave of terror swept through my body. "I can't move," I told Erik.
He peered down from the top rim of the dam. "You only have a few feet to go, Kaffe, then you can jump up on top," he said encouragingly.
"I can't. I haven't got the strength," I replied. Fear paralyzed me more with each small movement, and I realized I didn't care if I fell. In fact, it would have been a relief to just let go and stop straining; even holding on to the rung was just about beyond my capabilities. I tried to imagine the fall—the terrible descent waiting for the crunch of impact. The wind was howling up my legs, urging some sort of action. I could now not feel anything in my arms.
Erik talked to me quietly. "Just take a deep breath and rest, then put your hand and foot on the next rung." I realized I hadn't taken a breath in some minutes, and that was a large part of my paralyzed state. Slowly, a tiny bit of strength returned to my useless hands, and I took the next rung. Somehow, with Erik's encouragement, I got my leaden body up over the edge.
That scene has played in my mind many times as I enter some dangerous episode in my life that makes me feel helplessly vulnerable. "I survived that dam," I say, "and somehow I'll get through this."
I spent my junior year at Happy Valley as well and enjoyed it just as much as my first year there. Although I missed out on some of the goings-on at our family restaurant during these two years of boarding, I still went home for holidays and summer vacation. One year Erik visited me at Big Sur, and we spent the summer bussing tables and peeling potatoes for the restaurant. We'd had many laughs together, but one of the best ever was after a near disaster one busy night in the restaurant. We were clearing a large party's dishes away, and I was holding a tray as Erik placed the used plates and glasses on it. The guests at the table were at that drunken stage where everything anyone said evoked roars of laughter and loud responses. Eager to get away from them quickly, I rested the edge of the tray on something and hurriedly helped Erik pile it high. Suddenly, I wondered what the tray was resting on. Looking down into the candlelit shadows, I saw it was resting on a poor woman's shoulder. In her inebriated state, she didn't seem to notice. But she must have wondered why she was sinking lower in her chair. I gently lifted the tray and Erik and I rushed back into the kitchen, where we both exploded with laughter.
After our long hours working, at each night's end Erik and I would join other dancers on the terrace to release wound-up energy, and I would wonder if Erik would hook up with any of my sisters. That didn't come to pass.
The Fassett family poses on the bleachers of Nepenthe's terrace, around 1952, with our log cabin home above.
My Russian folk-dancing lessons at Happy Valley were a boon to Nepenthe. The simple dances were wonderfully easy to teach to guests in the restaurant. This added to their enjoyment, as they could join in for a memorable night of after-dinner dancing under the stars in Big Sur. Whatever the staff were doing on the property, every one of us who knew the dances would run to the terrace when we heard the music start up. It was such a seductive sound. I loved seeing the salad chef in his apron, one of the bartenders, and the dishwasher all joining hands with us kids to do a rhythmic line dance from Israel, the Balkans, or Greece. A favorite by the early 1960s was a lilting Greek dance to the song "Never on Sunday" from one of the epic films of that era.
For a spell during the mid-1950s, the salad chef at Nepenthe was a young actor from Oregon named Lewis Perkins. This lighthearted fellow with a large head and delicious sense of humor was a big influence on my development. A typical teenager, I had a tendency to brood over perceived problems and sulk if I didn't get my way or was criticized (which was often, it seemed, in those developing days). Lewis took everything in his stride, had a wonderful use of language, and could affect a fruity, deep voice to quote a poem or sing a phrase of opera or a popular song to lighten any tense moments.
This incident illustrates Lewis to a tee: My father was being bombastic (a regular occurrence), stressing about something in the running of the restaurant and directing his tirade at Lewis. Dad's words, as usual, were delivered in a powerful, bullying tone. When he stopped to draw a breath, Lewis, who was standing in front of a large bed that served as a couch in our living room, cried out in a plaintive voice, "Kiss me!" I was shocked, and frightened how macho Dad would take this cheeky invite. For a moment he scowled in astonishment, then burst out laughing and fell against Lewis so they both took a tumble onto the couch. It was just the sort of drama my father actually loved and why he fit in so well with Big Sur's extrovert characters.
The main thing I remember about Lewis was that he often carried about a bag of knitting and would be working on a cardigan or jumper of many colors. Some of his yarn was retrieved from unraveled sweaters from the Goodwill store, and he called his concoctions "dump sweaters." I have vivid recollections of broad stripes of teal, wine, mustard, and pink. This was the first knitting that attracted my attention and made me start to think about taking up needles. My mother knit solid-colored things that I took hardly any notice of, but Lewis's creations were tantalizing. It would be nearly twenty years before I would actually learn to knit.
1955–1956
Senior year at Monterey High School
As much as I loved Happy Valley, it strengthened me with so much belief in myself that I became curious to see what I could get out of the ordinary Monterey High with my newfound self-esteem. And, indeed, it was much better for me when I returned there for my senior year. Feeling more grown up at seventeen, I got to know my teachers much better than I had in my freshman year and was able to decorate for parties at the school and have really meaningful talks with my peers. I also liked the ethnic mix of Portuguese fishermen's kids, Mexicans, and lots of black kids with their energy and rhythm and quirky sense of style. My best friends were Francis Dauer, a short Japanese boy who had a German mother, and Vito Danis, a tall, handsome guy from Lithuania.
Inspired by the artists I had met at Nepenthe and Happy Valley, I continued to wear as much color as I could find when I returned to Monterey High. I still wore secondhand charity-store finds, but I also splashed out on a new pair of brilliant orange corduroys. I dyed my white tennis shoes bright pink to go with them and found a kelly-green sweater to complete the outfit. I was a total freak at our conventional school—but what else was new?
My teachers there were much straighter in appearance than those relaxed Happy Valley folk, but I found some of them to be very creative under their conventional clothes and short haircuts. Our English teacher surprised us all one day as we stumbled into his class in our usual sleepy, bored state. The room was in darkness with a few candles burning around a little open coffin in the middle of the room. As we came up to look in, sad funeral music cast a spell on us. In the little silk-lined coffin lay the huge silhouette of a comma cut out of black paper. As we all looked on in puzzlement, our teacher intoned mournfully, "This is the death of the comma." He then handed out our latest essays, in which there was universal disregard for the poor comma in our writing. I'm probably not the only student who has never forgotten this class.
My parents continued in their sometimes-stormy relationship throughout my high school years. I remember especially when Germaine Maiden moved to Nepenthe. She and her husband, architect Rowan Maiden, had become friends with my mother and father when Rowan designed Nepenthe. Germaine had, in fact, become Mom's closest confidante. She had met Rowan when he was working with Frank Lloyd Wright at Taliesin, where her father was Wright's garden designer. Germaine was a real beauty, with hair worn like someone's from Chopin's age—pulled back with large, attractive curls hanging down to frame her beautiful, chiseled face and green eyes. She moved and spoke in a dreamy, always-enthusiastic way. I don't ever recall her being angry or down. Full skirts were the rage then, and she wore hers with panache.
Like all the creative people in our lives, Rowan and Germaine lived on meager earnings but seemed to make the most of it. They were building a house on Huckleberry Hill near Monterey, and when they were nearing completion, Germaine decided to throw herself a party to celebrate years of living on a building site finally coming to fruition. She baked wonderful food all day, cleaned, and decorated. When the first guest arrived—a handsome writer friend—they shared a glass of white wine and a glorious waltz. After that, she said, "I'll just have a little rest before the party. If anyone else comes, please let them in." When she woke, the party was over, the food and wine were devoured, and she realized she had totally missed the festivities. Her response to the fact that no one thought to wake her resulted in a rare instance of Germaine losing her temper.
The year Rowan was accidentally killed, falling from a roof, Germaine moved to Nepenthe. She worked as a hostess and waitress in the restaurant and shared a room in the log house with her three children. All of us Fassett kids benefited from her sunny spirit in our lives, but, unfortunately, so did Dad. It was a double blow to Mom when my father had a very public fling with Germaine. He took Mom's best friend and confidante off on trips where they would spare no expense to pleasure themselves. This was especially galling for my mother, as she was, as always, trying to make ends meet raising us, and the restaurant still had to borrow money during the winter months to tide us over while it was closed.
The Nepenthe bleachers with the cushions Mom collected to add color and comfort. The bleachers are a great vantage point to view the dancing or special events on the restaurant terrace.
The mid-1950s saw Nepenthe's popularity growing. It was by then open for lunch as well as dinner. Both Architectural Forum and Arts & Architecture had featured photos of the restaurant in 1950, which alerted a wider audience to its existence. Mom's love of vibrant color served to humanize the dark line of modern architecture. She scattered cushions covered in brightly colored burlap along the redwood benches, chose canvas director's chairs in many colors, and selected dinner and salad plates in a multitoned palette.
My parents had made the place more and more enjoyable for the guests, creating a homey yet exciting center for Big Sur. The homeyness came from our large family working in the restaurant and the staff all acting like welcoming hosts. The excitement came from the bohemian atmosphere of the family, staff, and guests alike, as well as the special events. As much as Dad protested that he knew nothing about art, he was quite an entrepreneur, putting on concerts, poetry readings, and dance evenings on the restaurant terrace. One of my favorite performances was a harpsichord recital played with great style and verve by an attractive woman. I visited her one day in her house down the coast when I was about sixteen. We talked all day about art and life. I told her I loved Scarlatti, as he was one of the few piano composers I'd noticed and learned the name of at that age.
At the next concert she gave at Nepenthe, she played a Scarlatti piece, which I recognized and loved. When I told her afterward how much I had enjoyed it, she said, "Yes, that was especially for you, Kaffe." I was shocked and deeply thrilled—a gawky teenage kid being honored by a brilliant, beautiful performer. The present I got from that unexpected acknowledgment stayed with me for years.
On nights when no special events were staged, we played folk music and every sort of dance music from rock and roll (Elvis Presley hit our world with a bang at this time) to dreamy Glenn Miller tunes. To this day, if I hear Glenn Miller, I'm transported back to warm nights of slow dancing on the terrace, with cocktail glasses clinking in the background.
As well as artists and writers, Nepenthe also drew in the Beats and the Hollywood set. There was always a frisson running through the restaurant when a celebrity was dining there. From the early years, I recall seeing Ramón Novarro, Gloria Swanson, and Steve McQueen. Ted Turner and Jane Fonda were frequent visitors. I first met Jane at Nepenthe when we were both nineteen. After a wild night of dancing, she complimented me on my movement. I was a total fan of her father's films. And recently, reading her story, I realized we were the same age, having parallel lives all these years. Her acting has always involved my full attention, so I return her early compliment.
On certain memorable occasions, my parents would throw private parties in the winter months. The one I'll never forget was held for Olivia De Havilland in the 1950s. We heard the film star was visiting Big Sur and was looking forward to experiencing the great Nepenthe she had heard so much about. Mom said, "We must not disappoint her. Let's invite everyone on the coast for a party in her honor." Many local people had no idea who this Olivia was, but entered the spirit of the evening—dancing and having a glorious time. When I ran into her ten years later at a New York party, her eyes glowed with excitement recalling that evening. Those magical times at the house of no sorrow are not easy to forget.
