Preternatural Positivity

Replica of the Model-T ambulance he drove in France.

We prepped for Saturday's expedition to San Francisco by packing water, jackets, masks, and hand-sanitizer.

The Walt Disney Family Museum still requires face coverings and social distancing; also, it distributes plastic-wrapped headphones and styluses to each patron for plugging into the audio jacks and for using the touchscreens.

We traveled up to the Presidio in our 17-year-old Camry, as we did on pre-pandemic trips to San Francisco.

Perhaps we were being overly cautious due to the regular reports of auto-smash-and-grabs. According to critics of the SF District Attorney these burglaries are not being prosecuted because his belief that lives are more important than property translates to not prosecuting property crimes at all.

(available on Amazon)

We had no trouble with our car, which was in a parking space clearly visible from the museum.

Speaking of cars, one of the great influences on Walt Disney's life was the year he spent in France as an ambulance driver just after World War I. So eager was he to volunteer, he adjusted the birth year on his passport from "1901" to "1900" so that he would meet the minimum age requirement; however, due to illness, he wasn't shipped out until after Armistice Day on November 11, 1918.

During his time in France Walt Disney honed his drawing skills and acquired material for his cartoons, as well as life experience:

Lesjack leaves us with a decent look at Walt’s life during the World War I years that foreshadow his choices later in life. The insight provided tells us about Walt’s thoughts before, during and after the war. In a few cases, Walt shows a preternatural positivity that would last throughout his life, even against hardships and loss.

That's what we all need--a little preternatural positivity. But I'm still driving the clunker to San Francisco.