Tape 2, Side A

[Begin Tape 2, Side A]

This is September 21st. We are sitting at the Moffitt Library on the U. C. Berkeley campus. Michael has his coffee and his Cuban cigar, of which he only managed to smoke about a quarter of an inch last time we talked, and I think we’re probably ready to roll here.

[In a public speaker’s voice] Good morning. I’ll make this cigar last throughout the whole thing. Well, just to pick up from where we were last time . . .

. . . There were two things that I was thinking of. The last thing you mentioned was the institution in St. Louis. You said that your mother had converted to Catholicism before she died. Was the institution in St. Louis a Catholic institution?

No. As it turns out later, as I learned more and more about the whole Masonic thing, it’s just the opposite, because if you’re a Catholic you cannot be a Mason. So, ah, my father had been a Mason. I mentioned earlier that he was involved in the VFW. He had also been involved in the Masons for many years, I mean, something that I don’t remember anything about, but he’d achieved the exalted rank of thirty second degree Mason, which is pretty high up there. And, you know, on the surface of it they’re a service club and they do things out in the community, but they have their little--they have more rituals I think than any of the others; and some conspiracy theorists used to point to the Masons as one of the organizations that was running everything all the time, you know, ‘cause, George Washington, there’s pictures of George Washington with his Masonic aprons; so the Masons were involved in the founding of the United States and all that stuff, but you know they pretend to trace their lineage back to the builders of Solomon’s Temple, the original Masons; that’s why they’re Masons. So their are some rights and rituals involved in Masonry and the Catholics, as I understand it, never did like that ‘cause they saw it as another religion in many ways; so they came up with the Knights of Columbus, which is the Catholic version of the Masons. It’s a service club too, like the Masons. And, you know, the Masons have different sorts of sectors. For women they have the Order of the Eastern Star, and I think there’s something similar to that in the Knights of Columbus. [A coworker of ours happens by] [Declaiming] And another thing!

[Referring to Michael’s cigar] Yeah, you’ve gotta draw on that thing or it’ll go out.

So, you know, my father was not involved in this conversion to Catholicism, so . . .

. . . And you said you weren’t actually . . .

. . . We were, but we weren’t--I don’t think we made it all the way. I remember doing catechism things, and I remember studying and that sort of stuff, but I got into trouble when I was in the Catholic home--oh, I mentioned this before but I never mentioned--I got in trouble because one of the things they did in the Catholic home was, they would get you up at 5 am and they would hustle you into the chapel, and there was a priest there, and then you would have these morning services, and I remember it was just filled with incense, and it was kind of neat, actually, to get up that early, still groggy, and go into this chapel with no windows and filled with incense, and the lighting was all strange and all these bizarre rituals were going on, one of which was communion, you know, everybody lined up and they gave you the little communion wafer on your tongue. And they kept telling me . . .

. . . So you’re seven or eight.

--Yeah, six or seven or eight, something like that--Don’t get in line. You can’t get in line ‘cause you’re not baptized, so you know I wasn’t really--that’s the way I read it--I wasn’t really all the way; I hadn’t got that final knock from the scepter, or whatever it takes, you know. Or you go into the little room with the priest and he raises his cassock and that’s it: [in a grand tone] My boy, now you’re a Catholic, now that you’ve seen the great mysteries. So, but one time I did; I got in line, I just couldn’t, you know, I . . .

. . . You wanted to see what that was about.

Yeah, I wanted to see what the, what the, what was goin’ on there; and, ah, stuck out my tongue and they put the little wafer on there--you’re not supposed to chew it, you know, it just dissolves; and ah, so okay, I thought that was--so I’ve done that. And then they found out, and I got in trouble.

Did you get the wine too?

No, they didn’t, ah, they didn’t ah; I don’t remember the liquid. I don’t remember if there was any liquid. It’s interesting that you mention that because there comes another incident later on that had to do with communion, holy communion, where I got in trouble again, but this time on the Protestant side of things.

So now this getting into trouble thing pretty much started with Colorado?

Well, I don’t know. I was always--I wasn’t that much in trouble as far as I remember. I used to get into rock fights, and get into trouble for that, and I used to make disturbances in school and would get into trouble for that; but looking back I don’t think it was anything--I wasn’t a juvenile delinquent or a rebel or anything like that.

There wasn’t a pattern there?

Not really, just things came up and . . .

. . . Were you a class clown?

Yeah, probably was, yeah. Yeah, probably was.

‘Cause you said last time something about starting to make enemies.

Yeah, with adults, people who were in charge, starting to make enemies with them.

So that starts in St. Louis?

Yeah, probably, probably, I mean people who wanted me to do things that I didn’t want to do, or prevented me from doing things that I did want to do. So that comes into play too.
So the Catholics and the Masons, they didn’t see eye to eye. There’s some long animosity there. But two things I did remember later, after the first session that I did want to remark--[facetious voice] want to get on record here--because they had some--they were kind of big events, and I don’t know if they had anything to do with what happened--things that happened later, or [shifts to funny voice] made me who I am today--but they were big events at the time. When I was six years old I got hit by a car. I was crossing the street going to school--it was a big highway--and I got hit by a car. Now I don’t remember getting hit, but I remember being in the air, I mean flying in the air.

You remember it?

Yeah, I remember being in the air, you know, and the thing that I related it to was Superman! [laughs] ‘cause I felt like I was flyin’, I mean, I was . . .

. . . So the moment of contact you don’t recall, so you were maybe unconscious . . .

. . . Too traumatic . . .

. . . but came to flying through the air?

Uh huh.

And you actually thought of Superman at the moment?

Yeah! And I kept that with me for a long time; and the next thing I remember from that is waking up--these guys who hit me, they were just kids; you could drive really young in Kansas; I think the driving age was fourteen . . .

. . . Were you near home?

Yeah, I was going home; I was going from school to home and had to cross a big street. Next thing I remember I wake up in the back of these guys’ car, like three guys, and I’m stretched out along the back seat and I look down and--my legs are on one of the guys’ laps--and I look down and there’s like a door open in my right leg, it’s like [makes sound of creaking door], like a square door, looks like a door is open, like a hinged door or something is opened up. I remember that image. The next image I remember of that is they took me to the nearest city, ‘cause we were on the outskirts, and they took me to a dentist’s office.

[Incredulously] What?!

They panicked, you know, they just looked for the first place they could that looked sort of . . .

. . . Anything that was semi-medical . . .

Uh huh. So I remember being in the dentist’s office, screaming my head off ‘cause I was in pain I imagine.

So the door in your leg was . . .

As I learned--just missed severing my entire leg, you know, just by an inch or two. I’ve got the permanent stitches to prove it.

And it was actually your ankle, what part of your . . . ?

. . . Right here, yeah, right here, sort of above my ankle. See! Permanent stitches!

Wow.

It never went away; it’s like a compound fracture.

[Laughs] And they took you to a dentist?

Yeah.

That was their solution?

They just panicked, you know, that was the nearest thing they could--’cause I’m bleeding, you know, bleeding and screaming.

Was that the worst of your injuries, the leg?

Yeah. So eventually somehow I got to someplace where they stitched me up. But the other thing about this that was significant is that they gave me ether, to knock me out.

Was this your first drug experience?

That was my first trip [laughs]! And I still remember lots of parts of it, ‘cause it was like, you know; it was this combination of dread and anxiety and fear and wonder, because I was like being suffocated and pressed down, down, down, down.

That was the feeling of the drug?

That was the feeling, like giants . . .

. . . Going under?

Yeah, going under, but as I was going down I was traveling down this hole, and all along the hole were these big bright glowing Xs, red Xs, and I could look down and see they were getting smaller and smaller [laughs]; so I was being Xed out as I was going down the hole. [Fondly remembering] Yeah. So I was looking forward to my next ether experience after that; but that laid me up for a while.

Did you even know what it was?

No, I didn’t know.

They put a mask over your face?

No, here, just breath deeply. The second time I had ether I knew what it was.

So they took you to a dentist. The dentist got you to a hospital?

A hospital or a doctor’s office or something, yeah. I don’t know.

Then they put you under, and then when you came around you were . . .

. . . When I came around I had a cast. So I’m six years old, walked around with a cast and crutches for a while, and I got to stay home from school; and I got all sorts of presents. [In hushed tones] I remember that. And the one I remember specifically was a brand new heavy-duty luxury Cootie set. You know Cooties? those little--[Noting interviewer’s incomprehension, laughs] you know Cooties?

[Laughing] Cooties? No.

Yeah. They’re like bugs, with legs and heads and--like Mr. Potato Head . . .

Uh huh, okay . . .

You know, you could stick different things on ‘em. That was cool. I’m sure I got a lot of other goodies. So that was cool. I can still remember the smell of that wet cast, the wet plaster. It was kind of funky but . . .

It sounds to me like you got a lot of positive stuff out of this experience.

I think so, you know, a lot of attention. Everybody wants, you know all the kids want attention. Got a lot of attention and ah . . .

. . . And there was all the consciousness--I was going to say consciousness raising, but I wouldn’t say that’s it--

--It might have been--

--Altering, at least . . .

. . . Definitely some consciousness altering . . .

. . . So there was the Superman experience; there was the ether experience; there was . . .

. . . The old door in the leg experience. And then afterwards, you know, everybody writes on your cast.

The thing with the door in the leg interests me because there’s a sort of an odd experience people have. You know how before anything like that happens to you you tend to think of your body as this sort of integrated whole, but as soon as you see something odd--it happened to me with being operated on and having something removed, actually this was just skin so it wasn’t a terrible thing, it wasn’t like an internal organ or anything . . .

. . . Psycho-surgery . . .

. . . But there was a strange feeling upon seeing what they had cut from me, like: Well now my body’s different. Did you have--like a door in your leg is kind of a strange experience.

Well, it was all--yeah--things . . . possibly. I don’t know that I ever put all that together then, and I can’t track anything that came from that then, other than realizing that things could happen to you, things that you hadn’t expected could happen to you, ah, but nothing like that, approaching that had happened to me before, and nothing like that has really happened to me since, so it’s kind of a one-shot deal. I don’t know if it changed other than that it gave me something to talk about, you know: Here’s a thing that happened to me! Hell, that ain’t nothin’--had your appendix out--ever been hit by a car? So I don’t know. I know what you mean, but I don’t know that that--those kinds of realizations usually have to do with shifts in consciousness, so maybe it was the ether thing that really [laughs], that you were aware--that suddenly I became aware, or somehow I became aware on some level, some kid level, that you don’t have to think of things like that, like the way they were always presented to you in life or on TV; there were other realms. So that probably comes into play later, you know, looking for those other realms.

So that the life that you see around you all the time exists along with all these other realms, these holes in the . . .

. . . I was probably more careful crossing streets for a while thereafter, but then somehow or at some point I took the opposite tack thinking that, you know, it’s never gonna happen again, I’m never gonna get hit; so I became much more reckless and careless in crossing streets, later on.

‘Cause you thought it couldn’t happen again?

Yeah.

Like lightning striking or something . . .

Right. I’ve had that. I’ve had that one. Yeah. So it didn’t scare me off from--except in the initial phase, ‘cause again, like I say, I don’t really remember--and probably as a kid, you know, you heal quickly and you heal mentally quickly, so . . .

Who came and got you? Do you remember?

Uh um, no, I don’t remember. Probably my father came and got me, you know, took off work or something and came and picked me up.
The other thing that I wanted to mention about that time, the other thing that did have a strange kind of effect is, I found out that other people thought I was smart. And this happened in school, because, you know, I was in like the third grade--this was one of those big all one-room school places, like an old-fashioned schoolhouse.

Are we in St. Louis now?

We’re traveling back in time to Olathe, Kansas.

And there really was a one-room schoolhouse?

Yeah, it was a one-room schoolhouse. There weren’t that many kids in the community. At a certain point though they put a big divider, like an accordion divider, right down the half of the school room. And so it was like grades one through four on one side of the divider and five through eight on the other side of the divider. And, you know, those eighth graders, they would drive to school.

[Laughing] They would?

Yeah, they had stubble, yeah, ‘cause, you know, I think driving age was fourteen, plus they had some, you know, holdovers, guys that couldn’t make it out of eighth grade. And they had to have a low license age ‘cause everybody worked on the farm, drove tractors and that sort of stuff; so they would drive their jalopies to work.

So the kids needed to help around the farm.

Right, and that’s why probably, I’m guessing, some of them didn’t attend school consecutively one through eight, every single day; maybe they would come and go.

Harvest season.

But there I was in the third grade and I guess I was gettin’ antsy or bored or whatever--they bumped me, right in the middle of the third grade, bumped me up to fourth grade.

They just said: He’s too smart for this, let’s . . .

. . . Yeah, so I spent half of that year in the third grade, half of the year in the fourth grade, and the next year I was on the other side of the divider; so I lost all—I was a year younger than everybody else, and I lost all contact with all my pals, sort of, that were in that other realm--not really, I mean you could see them, but when you’re that age--in Amer’ka--school takes up a large part of your life, it’s all day, you know, and you have your lunch and . . .

. . . Was that alright . . .?

. . . I don’t know . . .

. . . Did you lose friends . . .

. . . Yeah . . .

. . . among the kids your age, and did you gain friends among the older kids?

No, I don’t think so. Later on . . .

. . . You still hung out with the other kids?

I don’t think so. I don’t think so. I think it was pretty much a break there, so it was just a . . .

. . . Did you regret it, or was it another thing that happened?

I sort of regretted it; I don’t remember now how or in what way, but I sort of regretted it, yeah, [under his breath] those bastards. Yeah, I sort of regretted it. But it made a difference from then on, you know, through grade school, ‘cause I was a year younger than everybody else.

Did it make a difference in your attitude about yourself?

Ah, no, ‘cause I had none, you know, I had no such of a thing.

So it wasn’t like, Hey, I must be smart.

Ah, no, I don’t think so, because I didn’t exactly know why. I mean they told me, but I thought it was a way to keep me out of trouble or something like that, ‘cause I didn’t really pay attention to school that much anyway, the way you’re supposed to, the way the teachers and adults would like you to. I had to go there, and, you know, there are some things there that were fun, but generally I mean I never elected to go there. It was another one of those things where they tell you where to go, you go there, and, you know, you try to play their game. And, you know, it wasn’t anything I thought up, but it seemed to be what everybody did, so I’m ‘o’ do it too [laughing]. But that’s what, that--so I was always a year younger, and something came along later on that changed my opinion of myself because another phase of other people thinking I was smart happened when I was in the home.
So now we’re caught up, we’re back to this, so we’re like in the beginning of 1956.

Feel free to do more time traveling if things occur to you [laughter].

Okay. Things pop up. 1956, beginning of 1956; I’m nine years old, and we’re driving up to the entrance of this huge, you know, this estate that the home is on. It’s a huge acreage; there’s old, old red brick buildings three or four stories tall, and there’s like over here, on the further edges of the campus or whatever you call it, there’s a brand new nine-story building. So there’s lots of people there. Later on I find out that there’s about thirty or forty kids and there’s about 400 old people, all on this thing, all supported by the Masons of Missouri, you know, all the chapters send in money and the wealthy masons kick in, and they maintain this fairly lavish atmosphere for relatives of Masons, one way or another, for retired masons.

So even in the midst of a baby boom the place was dominated by older people. Did you say there’s three or four hundred older people and only thirty or forty kids.

Thirty or forty, yeah, thirty or forty kids. And as I understood it, which may or may not be true--none of this may be true though--you had to be, for the kids you had to have a surviving parent, and there had to be some Masonic connections. So these kids weren’t orphans, although some of them--one of them, I think, came into the home when he was an infant, and he’d been living there for eighteen years. And maybe some others of them their surviving parent had since died or disappeared or whatever, but, you know, most of them had a mother or a father somewhere, most of them in the St. Louis area, still living. So it was kind of an interesting deal when I think about it now, I mean what were the conditions, what were the requirements that let them come to this--let their children live in this atmosphere. I can understand, you know, the old people; they were retired, retired Masons, and they had no, you know . . .

. . . So it was a retirement home with the difference of these--I mean, the emphasis was on the retirement home part of it?

They were kept completely separate, you know, except for--there were some people who went back and forth, I mean not lived back and forth but, in the old people’s part there was a hospital area, or there was a separate hospital building at one point I remember. There was even, in that new building, there was even a floor for the mentally incompetent old people; there was a floor for nuts. And ah, we weren’t--you know the kids weren’t supposed to mix with the old people, but some of us did; some of us found ways.

It sounds like you must have explored the place to know that there was a floor for this and . . .

. . . Oh, yeah. I lived there for five or six years, from when I was nine to, you know, fourteen, or somethin’ like that, fifty-six to late sixty, or something like that, yeah. And that was a--that takes up a . . .

. . . How big were the grounds? Was it really . . .

. . . It was pretty big, pretty big; you know they had all sorts of facilities. They had a boiler room, steam plant, laundry room, and they actually had two buildings for the old people. There was a smaller, older building. There was this nine story one, and then there was this smaller older one where--it had like a huge dining hall in it, and there was a swimming pool.

Was it an urban--I mean was it in the midst of the city?

Yeah, yeah, right in the midst of St. Louis.

What part of St. Louis?

Sort of, not exactly downtown but in a thriving area. Later on it became totally ghetto, but, it was very municipal. Big churches, zoned for churches right in that area, big churches around there, you know those big old Midwestern Episcopal and Methodist churches, and down, you know, a few--maybe a mile or two down the road there was another home, some evangelical home. There were lots of homes like this in the St. Louis area, because every Christmas they would turn over, for one day, they would turn over one of these great big department stores, Famous and Barr, to kids from all these homes; and all these kids from all these homes would just take over this huge department store. So, I don’t know, maybe St. Louis was zoned for orphans [laughter], lots and lots of ‘em. But see, there were Masonic homes in other cities too. Occasionally we’d get visitations from the kids from the Masonic home in Dallas, or something like that. They’d come in a bus . . .

. . . Out on a junket.

Yeah. And then we’d swap stories about how good they had it versus how bad we had it.

Oh, really, and did you tend to emphasize--was it usually: We’ve got it better than you?

No, no, no. They seemed to have it better than us. They had more modern stuff, they had, they had--but you know it’s hard to know because really, when I really look at it, wasn’t much to complain about, I mean we all had our own rooms--had our own rooms!

So it wasn’t dormitory type . . .

No. Even the little kids had their own rooms. So it was a kind of a neat arrangement, and, you know, it wasn’t dickensian, you know, there was . . .

. . . What was the food like?

Food there, they had qualified nutritionists on board, you know, they had--I don’t know, I think they--I’ve seen some of these in San Francisco but maybe in St. Louis at the time, maybe they had this stuff--when you went to restaurants or wherever food was served for commercial purposes, they would have these ratings, like A, B, C, out on the front and, you know, certified by, I don’t know, State of Missouri Board of Inspection, or somethin’ like this; and we had an A rating, and, you know, they had one of those little things on the window that said A. And we had some interaction with the serving staff that was sort of down in the basement, you know, they were ladies with uniforms and hair nets: qualified nutritionists, and three squares a day, and come home for lunch from school. So, food was good. And table settings, table service, you know, it was all real, real cool. It wasn’t lining up with your wooden bowl and spoon: [Oliver Twist voice] May I have some more, sir?

Did all the kids eat together, or was there a sort of communal . . .

. . . Yeah, all the kids ate together . . .

. . . There wasn’t a big cafeteria for everybody?

No, no, everybody ate together, it was kind of like a dining hall sort of situation: great, great big room, with five or six different tables. Well see, they had the thing split up into--the tables represented where everybody lived. There were little girls and big girls, up on the third floor; they were on two different sides on the girl’s floor. They didn’t mix with one another really; they’re not s’posed to. Little boys and big boys . . .

. . . The little girls and the big girls didn’t mix with each other?

Right. They weren’t s’posed to that much, you know; and each one of those had their own matron--I mean had their own, I forgot what they called ‘em, the matron was not, not a matron; the matron was like, the big lady. So there was that division of course, you know, the boys were on a different floor and girls and boys were not supposed to go on each other’s floor.
But I didn’t know any of this when I first came there. I just got out of the car, me and my younger sister Patricia, my younger brother Dennis, my father led us up there. We met this matron, Mrs. Morris, and they took us on a little tour, and they said, you know, everybody has their own room, and da da da da, and slowly and slowly it dawned on me what was about to happen. I was about to be left there. So I ran away. I ran out . . .

. . . The first day? You ran away?

Yeah, it was the first day, yeah, you know, I just didn’t--well, I didn’t exactly run away. I just took a look: I ran. I just ditched. I just ran out, ran down the stairs, and ran back and sat in the car [laughs]. I mean I had no idea what it meant or--it was just sheer instinct. That’s just what I thought.

Let me turn the tape over. I don’t want to miss anything.

[End Tape 2, Side A]