Nepenthe's Opening Day

Sixty years ago, on April 24th, 1947 Nepenthe Restaurant opened its doors to a crowd of well-wishers, curious locals, family, and friends.  It was a bright, spring afternoon filled with good food and drink, and merry festivities lasting throughout the evening, including a theatrical reading, a musical performance, and lively folk dances, setting the stage for what would become part of the scene at Nepenthe for the years following, and what will again be the order of the day during our 6oth celebration this Friday. 

But let’s start at the beginning, or at the restaurant’s conception. It was less than 2 years before, that my grandparents first took sight of the property, stopping at the log cabin for a family picnic one late summer day, and where they began to dream, and soon with a little luck managed to buy the property. But with 5 young kids in tow and the worry of how to make a living, there was hardly a minute to settle in before they began building the restaurant. Why a restaurant? As my grandfather used to say, it was because they were non-stop entertaining friends, and friends of friends, so why not open a restaurant and make a couple of bucks, later suggesting that they “lost a few friends, but gained a few new ones on the way.”

One of those new friends was the artist Marion Seawell, who lives in Mill Valley and is 80 years old, and sounded as bubbly as a teenager when we spoke on the phone. She told me that she was actually working down at Deetjens (the restaurant had a different name at the time) when my grandparents came by, thought she had “enough character ” and persuaded her to come work for them. They told her she could become a waitress when the restaurant opened, and in the meantime could live with the family, have her own room and bath and help with the construction–which she did.  ”It was the happiest time in my entire life,” she said, then recounted the stories of being drawn into my grandparents’ world and into the construction process. ”They bought me work boots and work clothing,” she remembered, laughing.

Lolly Building Nepenthe's fireplace

It was Marion whom helped my grandmother make the adobe bricks for the outdoor fireplace and the retaining wall, above the bleachers. She said my grandfather “dictated” that she and Lolly make them, a feat they turned into an art project, one that had them roving the countryside in an old Army jeep for red clay and local materials. “We wanted to do it like the Indians did,” she said, “but we cheated a little (by using a hand mixer and adding in a bit of cement).” They studied the bricks at an old California Mission up Naciamento road, she remembered, where they also found the red clay. 

Nepenthe's New Mosaic

Last year, Nepenthe redid that old fireplace (also making the bricks, and added a new mosaic), and I was so sorry to have to tell Marion, but she took it in stride, saying it was a wonder the bricks lasted all these years. Marion actually left before Nepenthe opened–things got a little complicated as she recalled, and my grandparents were running out of money, so she went back to work at Deetjens and eventually moved back to San Francisco (she became part of the city’s thriving, bohemian art scene), returning to help on opening night. “I was a waitress, and cried all the way home to San Francisco,” she lamented.