Walt Disney Family Museum

DC and Marvel comics and MAD magazine were my
preference, but relatives kept giving me these.

On a cool, foggy Saturday we made our first visit to the Walt Disney Family Museum. It was also our first "fun" outing in 15 months.

The museum is in the Presidio, the former military base. Families were picnicking on the great lawn. Kids were throwing frisbees, and couples were walking their dogs.

We spent three hours looking at the displays. Ample space was devoted to the well-known chapters of Walt Disney's life--the animated shorts, the feature-length movies and Disneyland--but what I found most interesting were the building blocks that led up to the creation of Mickey Mouse, his family life, and Walt's vision for the "Florida Project." Walt died in 1966 at the age of 65 and didn't live to see the opening of Walt Disney World in 1971.

Like the late Steve Jobs who died too soon at the age of 56, Walt Disney never stopped working and dreaming of the next big thing. He kept pushing cartoon art until it became the basis for feature-length Oscar-winning movies; he cajoled recalcitrant bankers to fund an amusement park despite the industry's seedy history, and he laid plans for the City of Tomorrow in Florida's swamplands.

Both men's roadmaps were so powerfully drawn that their companies continue to prosper years after they died, not so much by embarking on new ventures but by expanding upon their original creations. (The only person alive today who could compare with them, IMHO, is Elon Musk.)

Like other mere mortals, we could only gawk at the talismans from Walt Disney's life.

The Golden Gate is visible from an upstairs window in the museum.