Tape 5, Side B

[Begin Tape 5, Side B]

So in school you were already sort of getting into it?

Yeah. Things were making more sense, you know some of the classes I was in; I was starting to take French I think, and I’d already had a little leg up because of my time as a gifted student, [Jerry Lewis voice] as a gifted poi’son. I’d had a little French there already, and things like Contemporary Society or Social Studies, or something like that, there was a really engaging teacher.

Do you remember the teacher’s name?

Liebermann. Mr. Liebermann. Yeah. He was really… I mean he spent most of the time talking--we didn’t have much to read as I remember—talking about one thing or another and challenging us. There were a couple of… Oh, biology class: fun with fetal pigs.

Really? They did?

Sure. And you had to share them, ‘cause the next class, so, you know, you were supposed to put everything back. So you take a fetal pig, if you were one of the early classes you get to make the cut, open it up and there are the organs. Follow along in the book, follow along with the bouncing ball: this is the heart, this is the kidney, this is the liver, this is the da da da da, then, knowing that the pig was going to be used in the next class, you rearrange the organs [laughter]. You put them where they weren’t supposed to be, and maybe even you took something from one of the other pigs so this pig would have two hearts [laughter].

You just couldn’t help yourself could you?

No, but by then the other kids, they thought I was real funny too, plus I was talking during—oh I was acting out—talking during classes, sitting in the back and talking to the other kids, drawing things to make them laugh.

So you continued with your drawing?

Yeah. I took some art classes there too. And just having a ball, and probably getting bad grades, but that part of it didn’t seem to make any difference. I’ll have to get out my high school transcripts, ‘cause it’s on your permanent record, you know, you never…

An F in gym.

I’ll show you my F in gym; maybe I didn’t get it then but I certainly got it later. But in 1961 Kennedy was president, so I started getting into reading the newspaper, and in fact reading a lot. I remember I was sitting in my room; for some reason it was freezing, I don’t know, maybe we didn’t pay the electrical bills or something like that, but reading The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, from cover to cover, and then reading it over again [laughs].

Really?

Just because it was so big!

As soon as you finished?

Yeah. Because it was so big, and I knew also, I knew later in a way that I was reading too fast. I knew I was always reading fast.

That was your tendency, to really zip through things.

Uh huh. And I had a paper route, the very same San Jose Mercury. My dad got me this job, and that was great because, at least it was great except for the very first time, because you could get up early. You’d get up early, you’d go out there.

It was a morning paper?

Yeah, it was a morning paper, so you had to get up pretty early, and you could ride your bikes up and down the street. That whole getting up early thing was great. Nobody’s out there on the streets. It’s all fresh.

It was the old thing with—apparently they don’t have paperboys anymore, the traditional, at least around here.

Guys in cars.

The big canvas bag.

Yep, canvas bags, front and back, yeah, you can use rubberbands or you can lock ‘em.

Did you learn how to lock ‘em?

Oh yeah, learned how to lock ‘em and throw ‘em, throw ‘em good. And I’d meet people on my route when collecting. Oh there’s a sad story there; oh there’s two sad stories connected with the paper route. But the good thing that happened with the paper route was all that freedom early in the morning, just riding up and down the streets when nobody was there, and the other one was you could connect with some of these other people and get other jobs, like lawn jobs, or house-sitting jobs or babysitting or that sort of stuff.

So you were picking up money?

Yeah.

Did you have an allowance too?

As far as I know I had an allowance, but I don’t remember. But here’s what happened the first time, the first month of the paper route. I went around and collected all the money from all the people. I knew you had to collect the money and then you send it in, keep some for yourself and then you send it in. Well I took all the money I collected and put it in an envelop and addressed it to The San Jose Mercury and put it in the mail box. It never got there. ‘Cause I didn’t know, you know. I didn’t—how was I supposed to know that you’re not supposed to do that? I actually put the dollar bills and the coins in this envelope. It was over a hundred dollars. My father had to pay it, and he about killed me.

And you didn’t get your money either? So you lost your money too?

I think what happens is they mail you back your money. Yeah, that’s what it does. But he didn’t make me drop it; next time I just… but that was a, oh that was a black mark, probably the worst thing I ever done; second worst thing I ever done; the worst thing I ever did also had to do with my paper route.

The worst thing in your childhood? I gotta hear this.

Well it was just an accident really. My brother Dennis, I was having so much fun, I said: I’m gonna take my brother with me on my paper route! So I got my bicycle out there; got the papers all loaded up and said: Come on, Dennis. Woke him up. Put him on the back of my bicycle, and we didn’t get hardly out of the driveway, just out into the streets, and he starts screaming bloody murder. And I look around and he’s got his leg tangled up in the chain of the bike, and it’s all ripped up, his flesh is all ripped up. So here it is, it’s four thirty in the morning, my brother’s all messed up and he’s lying on the ground writhing, and I knock the bike over. So I take him back to the house; wakes everybody up; nobody knows what to do. My father’s on his paper route. And I run and get some… what’s that stuff you put on wounds?

Mercurochrome, or some of that painful stuff?

Yeah, real painful. I just douse it on, you know, ‘cause he’s screaming. And he remembers later, he tells me later that he remembers my sister Patricia dancing around saying: The angels are coming! The angels are coming! [laughter] She must have been bad. But he remembers that to this day, and I do too.

Did he have to go to the hospital for some stitches?

Yeah. So I left him there and I carried on with my paper route and when I got home there was some awful thing. I must have blocked it out; I just don’t remember what happened, but my father wasn’t happy with that either. So that was pretty bad. I used to torture my brother.

Little Dennis?

Yeah, mentally. I found out that he—he was what, six or seven or eight, something like that—I found out that he had a particular aversion to depictions of people grimacing. I don’t know how I found this out.

Grimaphobia or something?

People whose features were all writhing in torment. They had this thing—maybe this is how I discovered it. You know Ben-Gay? Well Ben-Gay used to have these magazine advertisements, you know, Peter Pain, kind of looks like a little pickle with a derby, Peter Pain? Peter Pain was a little cartoon figure, a green guy with a stogie, and he had a pitchfork and he would jam it into people. This is what you’d use Ben-Gay for, you know, there would be a picture of a woman going… with a horrible…

For the benefit of our listeners: he looks like ‘The Scream’ by—who’s that painter?

Edvard Munch. And Dennis would see these and he’d just freak out, so I used to go looking for these pictures, and I’d be looking through some magazine and I’d find a picture and I’d say: Hey Dennis, come here; and I’d just shove it up to his face like that, and he’d be aaaagh, you know.

Do you have any idea what it was that was freaking him out?

No, unless he could—later on, you know, it turns out that he has psychic gifts, so it’s possible that he was somehow able to, or the torment of these people, the palpable torment that these people were in, even though some were just acting, affected him so deeply that he just couldn’t stand it, he was feeling their pain, or something like that, I don’t know. I don’t know what it was; I just thought it was funny and weird. But those things I meant to do. I didn’t mean to wreck his leg up like that and give him these awful memories.

So he was just riding on the back?

Just riding on the back, and I, just two stupid things: I didn’t know that you couldn’t put money in an envelope and expect it to get there, I mean I thought, for a while I remember thinking that when you picked up a telephone and put money into the slot that that money would travel through some conduit all the way to the telephone company. I wasn’t very street smart. I didn’t have no street smarts.

It was creative.

‘Cause I lived in that home for so long. And I didn’t know that you couldn’t just park somebody on your bike and take off. There wasn’t even anything back there to sit on probably, it was just a fender, maybe it was one of those racks. You know, just poor planning.

So did your father really go off on you?

Yeah, there was some awful punishment. I don’t remember what it was. He wasn’t happy. There was a lot of screaming I’m sure. But that period… I could go on with stories about that period, but it didn’t last that long. It was only a year or so before I found myself again on a plane with my sister and brother; we were going back to the home because my father and his other family were going to Turkey again.

Do you think she prevailed on him to go back?

Yeah, that’s what we always thought, yeah, that she just couldn’t—you know, it was an ultimatum: I’m going, or we’re going, and they can’t go. That’s sort of the way it always seemed anyway.

Did you, at this point… It sounds like the first time you went to the home you didn’t express a sense of betrayal about it, but this time was there a difference?

No, I don’t think so. I just didn’t have the sophistication or the ability to put into any context other than: oh, we’ve been bad; we’re going back again; or this is not working out. I guess I felt a little responsible in some way, as much as I was able to think things through at all, which wasn’t very much. I wasn’t experienced with thinking things through.

How old were you then?

I was like fourteen, thirteen or fourteen I guess. Fourteen, something like that, so my sister’s ten and my brother’s seven or eight. And I knew already from conversations that the home had already refused to take me back. They were going to take my sister and brother back but not me; they definitely did not want me back.

You knew that, when you were on the plane and going?

Yes, I knew that. I knew that. He told me that. He told me that—this was before it was decided that I was going anyway—he said: They’ll take Patricia and Dennis, but they won’t take you; yet somehow I found myself on the plane too, but again I wasn’t able to think things through. I didn’t know what was going on other than him just thinking that, well if he’s there they’ll just have to; and maybe I’m thinking: well, if I’m there they’ll have to. So I don’t know, there was no other recourse as far as I was concerned, I mean, in fact didn’t even occur to me to envision another recourse. You know when you’re a kid you just…

This is what’s happening. This is it. So…

So, we’re all three on the plane… Oh, I forgot to mention, the coolest thing about, or the most interesting thing about the first time, my first plane trip from St. Louis to San Francisco. It was great, you know, the plane ride was great, and when we got there I realized we’d come an enormous distance, and I looked around and it was kind of interesting that I and my brother and sister, who had been in this other place, were now thousands of miles away, and I thought that was interesting, but you know the thing that I thought was the most interesting was that all our stuff came with us too. That was the incredible part [laughter].

So the idea was kind of magic that your things…?

Yeah, all the little things that I had, you know, all my clothes that were in the suitcase and other little toys and souvenirs or whatever that I had. That made it through too.

Did you take everything? Was it all your earthly goods?

As far as I know, but my sister suspects that the home kept, they kept certain things in a safe, you know, like they had a safe for valuables, she’s always suspected that they kept some things aside, especially things that had actually belonged to our mother. I don’t know. But now that we’re on a plane again going to St. Louis, and we land in St. Louis. I can’t remember what time of year it is, but they see me; they don’t know that I’m coming but they see me, and I see the expression on their faces and they’re not happy.

[End Tape 5, Side B]