So long (for now) to ‘The Thinker’
Here is a look at the past. Items have been culled from The Chronicle’s archives of 25, 50, 75 and 100 years ago.
1992
June 19: San Francisco’s most famous statue, Auguste Rodin’s “The Thinker,” got the hook yesterday. The massive bronze figure was lifted off his marble pedestal in the courtyard of the Palace of the Legion of Honor, where he has sat hunched and brooding since 1924. It then was plunked on a truck and driven down the coast to the Santa Barbara Museum of Art, which will be its home for the next 2½ years, while the Lincoln Park landmark is closed for a $25 million expansion and seismic strengthening. Before the French sculptor’s masterpiece was loaded onto the truck, Harry Parker, director of fine arts museums, got on his hands and knees to peer up inside the huge bronze. He’s hollow up to the shoulders,” said Parker. The statue is actually two castings, one of the seated figure and the other of the rock he is crouched upon. It is also a lot lighter than the museum’s experts had thought. A museum press release this week said the statue weighed 2,750 pounds, but when crane operator Bill Thomas checked the scales, he found it weighed only 1,200 pounds.
— Maitland Zane
1967
June 24: Writer Ken Kesey started a sentence yesterday — six months in jail, a fine of $1500 and three years probation for possession of marijuana. The 31-year-old author of “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest” told Redwood City Superior Court Judge Frank W. Rose that he had decided to abandon his appeals to higher courts and serve his sentence. The colorful novelist, who appeared in court in red and white striped trousers and long suede jacket, was convicted last year of possession of marijuana after a raid on his La Honda home on April 23, 1965. Kesey arrived at the court in his psychedelic painted bus, accompanied by a delegation of family that included his three children, Zane 5, Shannon, 6, and Jed, 3. As the husky writer made his farewell appearance before being led off to serve his jail term, he was asked what sort of future he saw for himself and his friends. “We’re all preparing for the big earthquake,” he replied cryptically. Another marijuana charge against Kesey is still pending in San Francisco.
1942
June 18: Nearly 150 men on parole from San Quentin are serving in America’s armed forces, from Ireland to Australia. Some of them have already died for their country, killed in action. Others are in Japanese prison camps in Manila, China and Japan. This was disclosed here yesterday by officials of the Board of Prison Terms and Paroles. More than 50 men went with the Merchant Marine Convoy Service. Two of these men have been lost on the Atlantic Ocean, torpedoed by Axis submarines. “About half a dozen,” said Parole Officer Joseph Brennan, “are in Japanese prison camps. Two were lost when the President Harrison was caught by the Japs, and the rest were caught in Manila. The parole officials declined to give the names of any of the men.
“Their draft boards know their prison records,” Brennan said, “But nobody else. There’s no sense in putting these men behind the eight ball by branding them as ex-convicts in front of their fellow soldiers. At the end of the war many of these men will have completed their parole terms. They will be free men.” The parolees ought to make good soldiers, he asserted. “Most of them are young fellows who went a little wild. They’ve learned their lesson and they’ve already learned to follow orders.”
1917
June 21: Preparatory to taking the men of the reserve officers’ training camp to Europe, Europe will be brought to the Presidio, during the second period of training, which begins tomorrow. The subdebutant officers will leave such old-fashioned things as extended order drill; instead they will build trenches and throw hand grenades. The new courses will be eagerly greeted by men and officer-coaches alike. The camp wants to centralize as much as possible on the gentle art of strafing the Germans according to the latest system of strafing. The men are very glad of the new training. The general point of view is that they would rather develop a sore back now and here, while plying the pick and heaving the sand bag, than have some insolent German shell come along somewhere in France, without even an introduction, and push them about the terrain.
The bayonet shares the position of the shell. On the theory that it is more blessed to give than receive, the men are deeply interested in the job of perfecting themselves in its use. The big question concerns the artillery. Most of the men assigned to the artillery say their knowledge of big guns, horses and mathematics — the big three of artillery — is about on a plane with their fluency in Sanskrit slang. “Pistols are the only things we have here to train the artillery,” said camp commander LieutenantColonel Frederick W. Sladen.