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Testing 1234 today is um. 16 June 1999. This is Harvey Schwartz. I'm with um Fred D Fletcher and we are in. Sebastopol, California. Um, I'm just gonna ask you. You can tell me some of the basic facts, where you were born, when you were born. Born

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in San Francisco, March 25, 1920. 1920 1920. And how long were you in San Francisco? Uh, off and on, uh, off and off, off and on, uh, Uh Oh, it's sort of my hometown. Off and on for um 20-30 years it's it's that's not strictly speaking

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the case I consider San Francisco. Uh, partly my hometown and for many years, my father lived there when my, when my mother and he were separated and my grandparents had had a place there. Um, but I moved. To at the age of 12, I think, to

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Palo Alto for a couple of years and then to the town of Sonoma, a ranch outside of Sonoma at the age of 13. What was it like growing up in San Francisco in the 1920s, if you remember the 1st 10 years of your life? Sure, I

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remember it's just like growing up, I guess, that's very hard to answer. Um, I, we were out in the Richmond district, uh, right on the over the, right on the Presidio. Um What's the name of that creek? We were right on the Presidio and we could.

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Uh lost a Spanish name, the creek that drains uh Actually into Baker's Beach. I remember my father used to Don is uh His duck hunting. Hit boots and go down into the creek and pick. Um, sacks full of Watercress And uh He was a doctor and

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There was some question I know that some people wouldn't eat his water crisp. Because they felt it was probably polluted. But Um I grew very fond of, I've been fond of watercress since the age of about 6, but Um And uh Well, I, I, I, it's

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hard for me to say. I, I growing up, uh. In a fairly well to do Area of the city. Um, Where where did you practice medicine? He practiced in San Francisco and and much, much later in San Rafael. Um, when he was in the city, what

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hospital was he attached to? Was he, was he, did he use a particular hospital? Uh, he was a clinical professor of medicine at Stanford Hospital when Stanford Hospital was down there on what Clay Street and Webster. Now Presbyterian I don't know what it is anymore. Yes,

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then became Presbyterian. Um And uh I know once when he still hoped that I would want to be a doctor, he took me on his rounds at City and County Hospital, which is I'll call somebody else. San Francisco General, yeah. Um Where, uh, I went to

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all the interns and 2 or 3 residents following my following my father around. When on that particular occasion. I lost and all the thoughts of becoming a doctor when He actually had me move up and look down a von Kaskoscope. Into a man's moving lungs. And

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the guy was going This damn thing was way down, you know. Um, anyway, that's my father was a very well-known, uh, ENT, ear, nose and throat doctor, uh, Uh At one point, the president of the medical society and Etc. what was his name? Harold A. Fletcher.

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Where do you, where do you go to medical school? Do you, uh, Stanford undergraduate Cal Cal graduate. You went to Stanford. You went to Stanford Medical School, yeah, 1912 graduate. I don't know. I guess he graduated from Cal in 1910 or something like that. Do you

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know what he was, he was a this is. Off the subject perhaps, but you asked about my father, he To know his personality and perhaps the Account for some of the Differences between us. Uh, he was an all-American football player in the days when, well, I

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hasten to add, in the days when Most great universities had banned football and football was rugby. And uh He became an outstanding rugby. Player And is at the University of Nevada. and transferred to Cal simply to be on a bigger football team. The thing of something

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that people in Reno resented for years and years and years after my father was a doctor, he had, he had deserted him. And uh Anyway, either the hell raising, hard drinking. Uh football player who paid no attention to the books until he almost got out of

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Cal and then he wanted to be a doctor. And um Things changed Was he, was he on the, uh, remember the Cal Wonder teams or did he predate that a little bit? No, that was, that was, that was Andy Smith. That, that, uh, No, it wasn't.

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That was a little bit involved the way the old grads are, but um yeah that is really interesting um and um what uh What was his background in uh in the sense of what, what countries did he, did, did his parents come from? Uh, his parents

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came from Maine, both of them, and, and the family, uh, his part of the family went back. Um, my grandmother, uh, religiously, uh, Claimed uh descent from Mayflower people and so forth. She was a French and her mother was a Perry and that's Admiral Perry and

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uh Etc. My grandfather was a graduate of Colby College in Maine. And was um a newspaper publisher in Michigan. Then later for years uh in Montana and California and Nevada. Hey, mine superintendent My father went to high school in Berkeley, but he also spent summers working.

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In goldfield. Uh, where my grandfather was running a mine. And uh Uh, he took us on a trip once to Montana. We visited some of the mines. Uh, near where he had lived near Helena and so forth. Uh, what was his, what was his name? Granddad,

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yeah. Fred Fred Nathaniel Fletcher. I'm Fred Darman Fletcher, but And he became the Executive officer of the first executive officer of the Nevada State Taxpayers Association. It was sort of the Not protege, that's not the term, he was sort of a, um, Lieutenant Of, um, I

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Long time um Big politician in In Nevada had been Governor Odie, Odie, Governor Odie, Odie. I'd have to See that someplace and I have my grandfather wrote a little book about the The, uh, the, um, The uh Immigrant trails roads. Into and through Nevada. Which has

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been republished recently, uh, reprinted. That's amazing. That's really interesting. What a rich background. How about your mom? How about your mother? I was born in San Francisco, as was her mother. Um Her father was a Terra Lee Peasant orphaned quite young. Who, um, had been sort

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of the The In the matter of Terra Lee's families in those days had been It was, was, Almost required by his mother's dying wish, in effect, that's an exaggeration, but to go into the church, the Catholic Church, of course. Um, which was about as foreign to

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him, his, his spirit is. Anything could be And he was adopted by um Distant relatives And became an eye doctor. In Vienna and Innsbruck. And uh And they just Largely as I understood it related related to a dispute over who was to become the assistant head

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of the eye department. And I'm not sure that that was University of Vienna or in um Perhaps Salzburg or Innsbruck, but Um In which the royal family was involved. And The successful candidate was not my. Grand my grandfather. And so he decided to take off for

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Australia. And uh Got as far as Seattle. All this is back in 18. 70s or 80s, 80s, I guess. Uh, got as far as Seattle and uh. Somehow learned that an eye doctor, an ophthalmologist in San Francisco had died. And He moved to San Francisco where

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he became established. And um Uh, he was a, uh, Uh Typical Vienna trained, uh, you know, Vienna was the Medical capital of the universe in those days, and he returned many, many times, and my father, in fact, went back, went to Vienna to study frequently when

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I was a kid. In fact, I, when I went to Europe when I was 9 years old for a year and because my father went to Vienna to study. And uh My grandfather was a naturalist. He was a, his, his curiosity was just without bounds, and

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he spent most of his life. I don't know how he, he married a wealthy woman, but I, I don't know how he really afforded all this, even as a As a well-known ophthalmologist. He spent, I think he crossed the Atlantic about 20 times, the Pacific about

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15 times. He At a ripe age, he climbed Kilimanjaro. He took a trip in a Buick from the Sahara to Cape Town. Uh, and then the spirit of travel and adventure there was, there was, uh, As you can probably judge, he was The guy in my

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family that I that drove me. Um His name was Caspar, Melchar, Baltazar, Bichel, those are the three wise men and years. When I was a kid, the Commonwealth Club. section that he frequented. Uh Gave him some sort of a dinner and a big cartoon of the

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three wise men. Seeking, seeking, seeking. Because he was always sometimes he's a pain in the ass. He was, he was always curious about things. Are you saying that you, you admired him and emulated him to some extent? Is that, is that what you're saying? You're saying

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he was a big influence on you, very, very big, very big, and on my mother and on your mother. How so on your mother? Well, to begin with, she wanted, when she was in her teens, she wanted to become a doctor. Her mother, who was from

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a Very conservative, uh, merchandizing family in San Francisco. Uh Mm. In a fairly high social strata. Uh, said, you know, young women don't do that. And uh So she married a doctor. I don't know how they, they, they were not my father and she were just

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not, shouldn't have been married except I guess I'm glad they were, but, but, um. She, um Uh Always seemed interested in things that were not. Uh, Exactly what uh she was raised to be interested in. And um what what what like what things? Well, the most

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exact outstanding example of this was that that um Uh, she was. Uh, enjoyed the quote unquote, uh, a, a. A prominent social position in San Francisco, um, the Symphony Society and so forth and so on. She Um, on several occasions gave a, a, uh, party for

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the whole symphony orchestra, for instance, once, once at my grandmother's place at Ross. Um She was, I suppose, a, uh, I don't think the word existed then, but a socialite. Um But after she and dad were divorced, Uh, she then married a Hearst editor. She's met.

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And uh that's when we, she, she, before they were married, she, she moved, we moved to Palo Alto, which only lasted two years, but Then came the ranch, and here is this. I guess mom was, uh, what, in her, 40s. I don't know, it's strange. I

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can't, it's pretty hard to figure that one out, but How old he was, but he moved up to a ranch of a very Rugged ranch, no electricity. No phone. This was near Palo Alto. This was near Palo Alto. No, no, no. This was at Sonoma. Oh,

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Sonoma, OK. And 3 ft in the mountains, 800 ft high, 800 ft up, I should say. Toward Bismarck Knob, which is 2300 ft. North of Sonoma on the Napa-Sonoma County line. And, um, There we proceeded to live a uh very different, very, very different life and

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that she, her, her friends in San Francisco were appalled. Um, she rarely went to San Francisco. Um She goes to the symphony and a few things like that, but, But um The This is just not what anything is what that she was supposed to have done

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with her life. So she, I shouldn't editorialize, but she devi she defied convention to a degree relative to what, what expectations were. What was, what was her name? And also her maiden name as well as her name, maiden name was Inez Darman Bichell. Bichell, P I

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S C H E L. Incidentally, Pichell was P I C H L. But uh my grandfather. Found too many people saying uh How are you, Dr. Pickle? And my grandmother didn't care for that. So it became this shell, so many people thought we were French. But,

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uh, but my grandmother was German and my grand and he was German or Austrian. So I'm half German and half English in effect, yeah, so. That is really interesting. That's really interesting. Uh, Well Um, just before we go on for the record, uh, what, what was

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your dad's politics? Was he, was he Republican? OK. He He was a Hoover, definitely a Hoover supporter. In those days, I knew very little about what all that meant. So that I can't say much about what he. Uh His ideology, but he was clearly a Hoover

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supporter. He, he scoffed. At, at uh Al Smith. Um I think he was opposed to the idea of a Catholic being a president anyway. Um, there was anti-Semitism in the, in the family. I, I was appalled to find how much there was. When I was older

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and uh because Stick it out But my, my mother married her first editor is Jewish, half Jewish, yeah. Edelson, E T T E L S O N. Lee Edelson. Then um spent his career traveling around the country for Hearst, yeah. Do you know about approximately what

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year your mom and dad got divorced, just so we're kind of oriented? They, they were divorced around 1930. 2 OK, and then you moved, and it's after that that you moved to the ranch for 2 years. Oh yeah, no, no, not for 2 years. We moved

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to Palo Alto to Palo Alto for 2 years and it turned out to be for 2 years, my freshman and sophomore years in high school, right? And then you're at, uh, the ranch for after that, yeah. And where did you go to school at that time?

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Valley Union High School for 2 years. I graduated then in 1937. OK. How did you get to high school from the ranch? Was that a long ways? I drove home A station wagon, sometimes a Ford. See Dan sometimes and a state truck sometimes over this creek

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bed of a road. With my Sister A stepbrother and stepsister. Going and And my, oh, and my brother. My brother and I, he was 2 years younger, went to high school, and the others, the other 3 went to Sonoma Grammar School. And I had to collect

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them all. I, I had to get a special permit. I was, I was 13 years old. No, wait a minute. Yeah, yeah, I was 13 years old. And I had to get a special permit to drive into some of the That's how I got, that's how

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we did it every day, and I pick up, we, we go to, to Grant's grocery to pick up the order. My mother had phoned in, by this time we had phoned and uh Drive home. Sometimes I couldn't get across the creek or the other ford. Once

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in a while we had to get old Charlie Bain with his team of horses to pull us out. Well, now, what, what, what, uh, was the economic endeavor at the ranch? What, what, what, what was happening there? Jesus, they You, you understand, here's a Hearst editor.

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And my mother, who had some, had money. Um, we bought this ranch which originally was 500 odd acres. And grew to be 1100 acres. It's a big piece of property. And I think Lee fancied himself, he was a good horseman, so was my mother. Uh, a

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cowboy and um For a while we We grazed um Hereford's Wiener Hereford wild. Of beef cattle of It would break through fences. It was, oh, it was a circus, but then uh successively. Uh, league on a Once when he was, I think on the Chicago paper.

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I learned of new methods of raising turkeys for market. And um Had constructed to, uh, I think Department of Agriculture. Specs What's noticed uh that breeding houses are all new. Method of raising turkeys from the day they came out of the hatchery, that's poults. They all

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post Um Uh, and And structures and and and house housing under Feathers, feathers. Sticking out of boards. A very ingenious Um, for those days, they're gonna, so we, we became turkey ranchers. And um We, uh, uh, in those days, Turkey was Raised strictly for Thanksgiving and

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Christmas. Nowadays you get turkey everywhere. You couldn't find turkey in the market in the spring. Those days. So we, every year for some years, going into World War II. When the government bought all our turkeys. Um We raised some 3500. Turkey starting In the early spring.

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When they were a day old and To the day we shipped them out. Uh, they weren't slaughtered at our place and they shipped them out for slaughter and in late October or something like that in November. And um a very big operation for the time involving

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new techniques. We herded turkey. We had a full-time turkey herder. And he would herd them during the daytime in the open range up there. And then herd them into an enclosure where they roosted. And then fight off the um predators at, at night. Uh He had

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a dog Well And so we literally herded turkeys the way you herd sheep I say more sheep rather than cattle. They were all in flocks. And then um And so that they were quite successful with this. I, I don't think French ever made money, but they,

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they, this operation was successful. Uh Turkey growing then the, the, the, aside from the breeding, there's still in Sonoma County some very important Uh breeding operations, but for growing turkey for meat, that all moved for economic reasons down into the Central Valley after World War 2.

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And um Mm Mother then started a A dairy A milking shorthorn dairy that's a, a, a, a breed of, of Um, dairy cow that, uh, whose calves Um, are good beef producers. And the theory of the milking shorthorn. Uh, which Fred McMurray and his big ranch

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up on the Russian River, Hidden Valley Ranch. Um Followed mother and he exchanged breeding stock because they both were involved in in milking shorthorns. And the theory, of course, was that the milking short horn yielded milk very well, although it wasn't nearly as productive as the

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Holsteins and the Jerseys and Guernseys. It is really a good milker, but also it's the calves, the male calves steered, uh, made much better beef than Holstein. So for years we had um milking short horn, dairy of 30 or 40. Not very big. Um He milked

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every day, twice a day. Usually with my mother handling at least one of the milking herself. Um, and we sold the milk to a cheese factory down the hill in Sonoma. So that we didn't Uh, we can produce it to a something different standard than, than,

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than. And uh Then I can't give you the dates. I, I maybe I can figure it out, but um mom switched out of that into Aberdeen Angus. Um, raised not for beef but for bloodlines, breeding stock, so they could, she had registered Aberdeen Angus and so

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did Fred McMurray. And again, and she was very much involved in that for many, many years. Um, and I guess made some money, I don't know, but, um, again, I, I know. But anyway, I was gonna ask you, um, and then we got into, into, I

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haven't finished. Oh, go ahead. No, might as well finish the succession finally. Um, and mom replanted an old vineyard. That had been abandoned prior to our prohibition had been abandoned before we ever had. In fact, I used a team of horses to pull those old vines

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out very early, about at the age of about 15. And but she planted a new vineyard and converts Tremeter. Um And um Uh, uh, did very well. And then in 1970 now, we're way up there. My brother, who was a, a doctor and a professor of

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medicine at Stanford, University of Stanford faculty. Um At the age of 50, I think. Be tired Um And moved up to the ranch to make a real vineyard. Business out of it and so he then planted. Fairly large vineyards on the place both Grimeter and Sin

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Handel and they're still producing except that we don't know, we no longer own the ranch, but Uh, but that this is. This is the