Stories I Tell Myself, Biography

Foreword

My purpose in writing this book is to leave a record for my great grandchildren and their children. When I was 12 years old I spent a couple of weeks with my grandfather, Munroe Lashley. He told me the family history and he knew it to his great grandfather Thomas Lashley who had been a Captain in the Confederate Army. He knew the Lashleys were from across the pond and had started their American journey from South Carolina Piedmont. In the Duggan Family my grandfather and his brothers told their own stories and everyone adored their mother the Duchess, my great grandmother whom I met. Her husband was the youngest son of Michael Duggan, the immigrant from Ireland to Missouri.

These stories are the stories I would wish to have from my Great Grandfather. I wish I were a better writer. My own vision of an autobiography would be more complete and better writing than these, but this is my answer to the Hollywood saying “Do you want it done or do you want it perfect?”

I was inspired to write this book when a friend quoted his father from his biography. I was surprised Richard’s father was a published author. “No,” he said, “he just wrote it for us.” A book, I thought, had to be good enough to publish and I wasn’t capable of that, but I could make a record for my family. I am not Emily Dickinson who wrote poems that were only discovered and appreciated after her death. When I write I want people to read it and for that I started a blog, Stories I Tell Myself, and all of this was published there first as a blog post.

I have some readers. One or two I know about and some who are a mystery to me. In 11 years I’ve had over 15,000 hits on my blog. In the world of blogs it’s not much, but it’s a few. I suspect most of them are tractor programs from remote parts of the world looking for personal data, but some of them, maybe a few, are from real people, people who know me and people who don’t.

For my family, people I’ll never meet, I’ve put in as much detail as possible, places, dates and events. It’s a personal history not a general history but I hope it gives a sense of what it was like to live in the last half of the 20^th century and the first part of the 21^st. I think of my grandmother who was born in 1892. When she was born there were no cars on the road. When she died in 1963 the country was crisscrossed with freeways and cities jammed with cars. She went from horses to cars, from trains to planes from telegraph to television. And like her I’ve seen some changes to the world and this is how it felt. It has been an interesting time.

I’ve told the stories honestly, not fictionalized anything I experienced. The people I admire I’ve used their real names. People who would be embarrassed by these stories, I’ve changed the names and clouded some of the facts. People I disliked or had bad experiences with I’ve changed the names. My experience was bad, but of course, there are two sides to the story and people I don’t like aren’t necessarily bad people.

I hope you enjoy these stories. I hope they tell you something about where you came from, who your ancestors are or just what it was like to be an ordinary man in this place and these times. Maybe they’ll inspire some of you to write your own record, an essay at least or a book. Thank you letting me tell you these stories.

I.

The Barracks

We called them The Barracks.  I was born in 1946 and I don’t remember living anywhere else before them. It was 1948.  The Barracks were Army barracks built during World War II to house the anti-aircraft units protecting Lockheed. After the war they were used to fill the housing shortage in LA for returning GIs and their families. 

Barracks similar to the ones where we lived in 1948. http://www.mtsu.edu/centennial/1941.shtml Middle Tennessee State University

The Barracks were in Glenoaks Park across the railroad tracks from Lockheed Aircraft in Burbank.  The Barracks were on the outer edge of the park starting in the middle of the Park between San Fernando and Glenoaks on Amherst where 3rd Street comes in.  In military order they ran from 3rd Street up to Glenoaks and across Glenoaks to Andover on the outer edge of the Park.  The Barracks took up about a 1/3 of the Park.  Our apartment was on a walkway between facing one story buildings, each one converted into three apartments.

My parents, my two sisters and I were crammed into two bedrooms, a living room and there must have been a kitchen.  A large bed took up most of the space in my parents’ bedroom and my sisters had the other bedroom.  I think I slept on the couch in the living room.  The front door let out onto a small covered porch with a couple of steps down to our yard bordered by a low white picket fence.  All of our neighbors had kids.  And it seemed like all the kids were my age.  There must have been a few like my sisters born before the war, but the rest of us were the post-war Baby Boom.

My two older sisters and I on the porch at The Barracks

I don’t remember spending much time indoors.  From the time we got up until dusk I ran in the park with a gang of kids my own age.  Our apartment was only a few steps down the walkway between barracks to the play area.  The oleander bushes between our house and the playground were big enough to crawl into and hide.  No one could find me.  I’d come out all sticky from the oleander.

The best thing in the park were the swings, wide rubberized straps with chains connecting to a crossbar high overhead.  With each pump we tried to get higher and higher until we nearly flew out of the swing.  There was a slide we threw sand on and rubbed into the metal to clean it and make it faster.  We climbed a long ladder up and then went down as fast as we could to catapult ourselves out into the sand.  There were a jungle gym, a huge sandbox and monkey bars. We spent most of our day swinging and climbing on the iron play equipment.  Facing the playground was a rec center where a small room on the side had a Dutch door half opened where an adult inside loaned us balls in exchange for a personal item, usually a belt.  When we were bored we would explore the rest of the park.

There were green lawns and stone retaining walls to balance walk on top of.  We could go anywhere in the park, lawns, horseshoe pits, picnic tables, ping pong tables and ball fields.  Down on the south side by San Fernando Road was a log and river stone cabin, headquarters for the Girl Scouts.  I don’t remember anyone using it but we climbed all over the cabin and its stone walls.  There was a radio tower nearby, red and white that had a blinking red light at its very high top.  We didn’t climb on the radio tower.  There must have been a good fence around it.  We climbed on and over everything else.

I saw a television for the first time in one of the Barracks up Amherst from ours.  Above us the buildings were two stories with a stairway outside to the apartments on the second floor.  We were all crammed into someone’s apartment to watch the TV.  It was a wild party of kids climbing over the couch and watching the box.  I don’t think there were any adults around, which was probably why we were let in.  One kid, I think who lived there, ran out naked from the waist down and from the back of the couch he pee’d over the crowd.  I don’t remember what was on the TV but I remember the unrestrained and screaming exuberance.  It was the beginning of a new age.

Someone owned a Flexie and we rode it down the sidewalk on Amherst Street taking turns until the owner tired of sharing took it back.  We flew down the hill without braking if we could and then walked it back up for the next kid.

Photo from the Missouri History Museum http://collections.mohistory.org/search/node/69325

The southwest corner of the park was a baseball diamond and the major league teams played spring ball there.  I remember climbing the fence to watch a Yankee’s game one time.  The game went into the night and I snuggled under a blanket with a couple I didn’t know.

I found a baseball glove wedged in some junk in someone’s yard.  I retrieved it and made my father play catch with me.  I remember the fathers in the Barracks were roughly divided between those that were around all the time and those that had jobs.  I thought of myself as one of the unlucky kids whose fathers worked.  Sometimes he worked at night and we had to be quiet during the day when he slept.

We lived in the Barracks from 1948 to 1950.  By 1950 they were tearing down the Barracks in stages.  We played in the demolished sites and across Glenoaks Boulevard where they were building new housing.  We collected slugs on the ground from the terminal boxes.  The slugs were like the steel pennies still in circulation.  We had pockets full of slugs and pennies.  A penny bought a square of bubble gum.  Slugs didn’t buy anything and didn’t fit in any soda machines.

We moved from the Barracks in 1950 and our apartment must have been demolished pretty soon after that.  The Park returned to being just a park.  On the north side they built a new recreation center with a gym and swimming pool.  Where our apartment had been was turned into tennis courts.

II.

Mom

My mother was a very admirable woman.  In her long and rich life she made strengths out of her weaknesses.  Against incredible odds, she survived the loss of her mother, a crippled father, the Depression, and deafness.  Not only did she survive, she made a comfortable life for herself and her children.  She had an amazing ability to cope and she did it better than anyone could have ever imagined.

My mother was born February 3, 1918 in Flatriver, Missouri, now called Park Hills.  Her mother, Lorraine Jackson died a day or two after she was born, maybe from the Spanish Influenza* which was particularly devastating to young adults at that time or maybe just childbirth.  Her father, Munroe Lashley, was crippled about the same time by polio. 

My mother was raised by her grandmother, Malissa Jane Firebaugh Lashley, who still had four or five of her own children at home.  I think my great grandmother also took care of some other grandchildren left by one of her sons.   My great grandmother had at least 8 children of her own and my mother had two older brothers, Tommy and Charlie.  As a child she had the mumps which left her so deaf she couldn’t continue on with school.  She was called a dummy and her formal education stopped at the age of 9 in the 3^rd grade. 

When she was 14 she went to live in St. Louis with one of her uncles, Walter, and his wife.  Forty years later she still hated both of them.  She never talked about it.  I only knew about it because on a visit to Missouri I met them.  They were very friendly and nice to me.  I told her about them and she dismissed them with a bitter remark.  It seems Walter’s wife treated her as a servant.  As a young woman, 18 or so she worked in a candy factory in St. Louis and her best friend was Pat.  They kept in contact for the rest of their lives.  . 

In St. Louis sometime after she left Walter and his wife she remade herself from an impoverished orphan into an attractive woman, a transformation that included having all of her teeth pulled and false teeth made to replace them.  She was raised Hard Shell Baptist.  I don’t think anyone in her family was particularly religious.  One of her aunts who lived near us in California was Foursquare Gospel, but she didn’t have any respect for that and always talked disparagingly of holly rollers. 

At the end of 1939 she met my father, got pregnant, and converted to Catholicism.  They got married and moved to Glendale, California.  My father got a job at Lockheed Aircraft in Burbank.  In 1942, my father went back to St. Louis and enlisted in the Army Air Corps.  After a short time my mother left her two children with my father’s mother and joined my father.  She went with him to San Angelo, Texas and Lake Charles, Louisiana.  When my father went overseas she went back to live with my grandparents in St. Louis.  She adored my grandfather and at his urging went to work in an aircraft factory in St. Louis, probably McDonnell Aircraft.  The company provided training and my mother had a real talent in math. 

A story I have heard but don’t know the facts of is that my father returned from the War and was in St. Louis some time.  I have no idea how long, before he returned to his wife and two children. 

I was born in 1946 and my younger sister was born in 1950.  After my younger sister was born we moved from the Barracks to a rented house near the railroad tracks and my mother was working for Weber Aircraft in Burbank.  Weber made seats for aircraft.  I remember she was laid off at one time and collected unemployment.  I remember at the Barracks my mother used to do laundry with a wash tub and wringer affair, but on Ash Street she had a washer.  After that she always had a washer.  She never used a dryer.  I remember her hanging clothes on a clothesline in the back yard. 

At this time I felt protected and cared for by my mother.  I liked being around her. 

My mother was always trying to get me to wear what I thought were outrageously colored clothes.  Both my parents had grown up in the Depression and my mother was particularly aware of the cost of things and the importance of making do.  I think some of the clothes must have been on sale because they couldn’t sell otherwise.  My mother was an extrovert and I was an introvert particularly as a child.  My mother was always trying to convert me. I think we both thought of it as a moral question and not just a personality trait.  I preferred quiet and out of the way.  My mother thought that was something she could change in me.   

In 1952 my father got a job with Stainless Steel Products, a new metal fabricating company.  He worked there another 30 years.  My father earned most of the money, but she took care of it.  My mother began looking for a house to buy in Burbank.  My father had very little to do with these things and took his allowance from my mother each week and left everything else to her.  We moved to 817 East Magnolia Boulevard in Burbank above downtown on the slope up to the Verdugo Hills.  We called it living in the hills and it was a wonderful neighborhood.  

My mother stopped working and took care of us and the house.  In 1954 we visited Missouri and saw her father and brothers and my father’s parents and relatives. 

My mother smoked Herbert Tareyton cigarettes and called them Hoppies.  She used Sen Sen to freshen her breath and shared the Sen Sen with us.  I don’t remember my mother particularly drinking.  If there was a party or some event it was common that my mother got drunk.  She would come home apologetic, defensive and aggressive.  She told us all how much she loved us, and we’d never know how much she loved us and how hard her life was.  She’d grab us and hold on tight.  I didn’t know what to do, but I knew I didn’t want to be there.  

After her conversion my mother was a devout Catholic.  She sent us all to St. Robert Bellarmine Grammar School the local parish on our side of town. 

My mother took care of all the money in the household and made sure we knew she had grown up in the Depression.  She seemed to be particularly shaken by the recessions in the 1950s, though my father never lost his job our household standard of living went up and down with the aircraft industry and space effort.  Around 1958, 1959 she went to work at the Disney commissary and brought us giveaways and stories from the Zorro Television series.  My father apparently didn’t like her working and she quit that job after awhile. 

I remember other than those rare episodes when she was drunk or in one of her self pity moods, which usually went together, I enjoyed being around my mother.  When I became an adolescent she seemed to change.  She was more aggressive toward me.  I think she drank a little more and often had wine in the afternoon.  She was very discouraging of any relationship with girls I might have.  That seemed a major theme for her and my elder sister that I should be protected from the inclinations of the male sex, sent to an all boys school, protected from females. 

After grammar school she enrolled me at St. Francis of Assisi High School an all boys school in La Canada.  La Canada is a wealthy neighborhood in Los Angeles at the base of the San Gabriel Mountains between Pasadena and La Crescenta.  My mother was very concerned that the boys who went there from rich homes shouldn’t know I didn’t have more clothes.  I had to wear white shirts so they wouldn’t know how many I had.  I’m not sure what that was all about.  I had plenty of white shirts which I wore for four years of high school. 

My mother served me my first glass of wine when I was 13 or 14.  We drank wine together in the afternoon, initially just a small glass, but I could have as much as I wanted.  It was a rough red wine she bought by the case of gallon jugs.  My father drank red wine with his meals.  My mother drank it during the day. 

She found my cigarettes sometime around then. I started smoking when I was 14 after my freshman year.  My sister Joan came home from college smoking and that summer I started. My mother had stopped smoking Tareytons and started smoking Salems before I was in high school.   In my senior year I began smoking openly at home.  I bummed Salems from her.

The whole time growing up my mother never belonged to any sort of organization, parents’ clubs, Cub Ccouts, card groups or anything else.  I think it had a lot to do with her hearing.  My mother couldn’t hear people in groups.  The way she lived was largely shaped by her hearing problems. 

During the 1950s my mother was referred to Doctor Howard House, an ear surgeon, who was pioneering surgical techniques to repair some types of hearing loss.  My mother was operated on in 1952 and her hearing was partially restored.  She had additional surgeries after that and while my mother was still hard of hearing it was not what my sisters remembered from before.  She could hear one or two people in a conversation as long as we spoke clearly and one at a time.  Of course, long before that she had learned to compensate for her hearing by dominating any conversation that she was part of.  If she controlled the conversation, she could hear better.  She still wasn’t good in a group and she avoided them.   

At that time it seemed like my mother began to drink more.  Whenever there was a party or some event she went to we would expect that she would get quite drunk and maudlin, how much she loved everybody and how no one appreciated her.  When my eldest sister went off to the convent in 1959 my mother became particularly maudlin and protested how much she missed Ellen and how devastated she was by her loss.  These episodes became more and more frequent. 

When Ellen came home for visits, my mother clutched at her and tried to control her every moment and cried when she wasn’t there.  At first Ellen would visit and stay in the convent but eventually she stayed at home on her visits where she was a virtual prisoner of my mother.

I graduated from high school in 1964 and my mother and I went to my graduation.  I don’t know where my father was, probably working that Saturday.*  I went off to the seminary that summer.  My mother seemed very pleased to have a future priest in addition to the nun she already had.   

After six months I returned and got a job at the Phone Company and my mother was supportive.  I lived at home.  She still wasn’t fond of the girls I dated but that seemed to be normal. 

In September, 1965 I went off to college.  My mother paid many of my expenses the first year.  I paid my tuition from my employment at the Phone Company and the next year she paid my tuition.  I met my future wife, Cathy, in my second year at Loyola.  My mother really disliked her.  She only became tolerant of her after our first son was born.

When I returned to Los Angeles my mother helped out financially while I went to UCLA.  She gave me odd jobs to do and paid me well.  We struggled through the year on the GI Bill and those extra few dollars helped.

As I write this, I’m struck by how supportive my mother was and how until I was 14 or 15, I had thought of her as my best friend.  There were moments when she was particularly hard to deal with, particularly her drunken tirades of despair and protests that no one appreciated her, but overall she was there when I needed her.  My father was a distant figure. 

When I had a family, my mother talked this wonderful support and love for her grand kids but she was destructive around my kids, feeding them candy and sugar treats, promising them things that she didn’t deliver and demanding that they visit but not really paying any attention to them when they were there.  We had thought she might babysit the kids, but we left them with her once and it was a terrible experience for everyone.  She complained about it for weeks afterwards and said we were taking advantage of her. 

When I got sober my mother repeatedly tried to convince me to have just one beer with her.  "One beer won’t hurt," she said.  I couldn’t believe she was undermining what was obviously a change I needed to make. When we left home my mother began complaining of my father’s alcoholism, but never talked about her own.  My sobriety starting in 1983 seemed to offend her.  When my father got sober in 1991 she tried to convince my father that AA was stupid and he could still drink, he just needed to drink less.  She wasn’t successful.  He stopped going to meetings but he didn't drink again.

Sometime in the 60’s my mother and father had become very active alcoholics going from what was probably Stage II to Stage III alcoholics or even Stage IV¹.  They bought their vodka by the case.  As alcoholism does, it got worse until my father’s recovery in 1991.  My mother continued to drink until she died. 

So what was it that made my father OK at the end, a loving and loved parent and my mother not?  By the end of her life, I avoided my mother completely.  I found her destructive, mean, and venomous.  It wasn’t just the alcoholism.  My father had been an alcoholic and even during his worst days, there were warm moments when he was sober. 

My mother was an extraordinarily strong character.  Her survival alone was a testament to that.  And she had gone from extreme poverty in the 1920s to a middle class life in the 1950s where her children were able to go on to college.  It was all through my mother’s efforts.  My father contributed a paycheck and even that was at the urging and nagging of my mother.  I don’t think my father would have been employed fulltime without her taking care of everything for him. 

Somehow my mother was living a lie.  There were so many lies we didn’t know what the truth was.  The first lie that she never admitted was that Ellen was born in October when in fact she was born in August, only 6 months after my parents were married.  She also made such a deal of how much she loved and was loved by my father, when it was obvious growing up that most of the time there was little love or respect between them at all.  My father had as little to do with my mother as possible, was normally very sarcastic to her and the only time it seemed like he loved her, was if any of us were disrespectful to her and he would attack us viciously for it. 

She never thought any of us loved her enough.  I don’t think she liked the men in her life.  When I began acting like a young man my mother attacked me and accused me of being like her father, someone I barely knew, that I didn’t appreciate her and no one got to treat her that way.  

When I had my own family, she demanded that we come and visit and when we did she complained that we didn’t do it enough or she complained about my sisters and how seldom they visited.  Holidays she demanded that we spend time with them, and my sister from Chicago went along with her and thought our duty was to make my parents holidays what they wanted.  After a few years, we stopped going.  There was no room for us and our family in the holiday and I felt my children had a right to a normal Christmas.

My mother certainly gave birth to me, but in the end, I didn’t want to have anything to do with her.  In writing the facts of my mother’s life, it‘s hard to explain the animosity and coldness I felt toward her. It doesn’t seem fair or reasonable, but those of us who knew my mother knew that it was necessary to fight for your life when you were near my mother, to keep her at bay, to erect a wall against her.  She had nearly destroyed my eldest sister and Ellen stayed as far away from her as she could.  My youngest sister had left home at 18 and had nothing to do with my mother and father or any us until this day.  She is still hiding from us.

My mother died alone.  Maybe my sister was there.  Maybe she wasn’t.  If she was, it was only because she had to be.  It was our mother, and mothers should be loved and respected.  I mean no mother is perfect and you hear people complain about their mothers all the time but in the end, no matter how bad they were, they were our mothers, right?

My mother’s strength of character is something I hope I have inherited.  I am a survivor.  I’m persistent and I work hard.  My children have strength of character and their children do as well.  Maybe that’s my mother’s legacy.  She gave our family backbone and some good math genes.  We're all her beneficiaries.  I’m sorry she didn’t know how to bend a little.  I think her children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren have an ability to hear that she didn’t.  I hope we have learned to listen and with our strong characters to bend a little.

*My grandmother died in 1918 and I always thought it must have been the Spanish Flu pandemic, but in fact she died in February and the epidemic didn’t start until March, 1918 in Kansas. It’s the Story I Told Myself.   

*In fact he was at my sister’s graduation from college in Dubuque, Iowa, I think, another SITM, Story I Told Myself.

^*.            Stage I alcoholism is when drinking is fun most of the time.

                 Stage II alcoholism is when drinking is fun but sometimes it’s a problem.

                 Stage III alcoholism is when drinking is a problem but sometimes it’s fun.

                Stage IV alcoholism is when drinking is always a problem and it’s never fun.                                                                                  The alcoholic has to drink to survive.  

III.

Pop

My dad was a son of a bitch, not a lovable old codger son of bitch, but a mean son of a bitch.  He was mean to us as kids and he was mean to our mother.  It felt as if he blamed us for the drudgery of his life and he was making us pay for it.  He was  a man of incredible talent in his own mind, superior to just about everyone, but it had never come to much and it was our fault. 

It’s odd to me that two us, my eldest sister¹ and I, remember our father fondly and miss him, while at the same time I have no such feelings for my mother and still haven’t forgiven her for the way she treated us.

My father was born in St. Louis or Springfield, Missouri.²;  I’m not sure which.  His whole life he had us believing he was from St. Louis, but at the end of his life I wasn’t sure.  His last days he lived in a dream world with his mother nearby and that dream world was Springfield.  Until high school he grew up there.  His  great grandfather had immigrated to Springfield from Ireland.  At 14, my father went to Christian Brothers College, a high school in St. Louis.  I think his St. Louis origins may have been fabricated to hide that he was from the country.  He was a young man of great promise, or at least that’s what we got from people who knew him, my grandmother, his brother and even my mother. 

His brother, Ed, greatly admired Jack and Uncle Jack was a favorite of Ed's children.  One time he came home from a family crisis in St. Louis with stories of how wonderful Ed, his wife, and particularly their children were.  It sounded to us like we could never measure up.  I think my father admired his brother as well, admired what he had done in life and how he was able to get sober and be there for his family.   

My father was born in 1916 to Helen Cullen and John Duggan.  We learned Helen was actually Ellen after she died. Apparently Ellen was too Irish.  My eldest sister is named Ellen.  My grandmother was raised by the McGlenns, her mother’s sister and her husband.  My grandmother  must have used their surname, because my grandfather always called her Mac. 

When I first met my grandfather he was a senile old man.  Before the booze destroyed him he had been a salesman and an aircraft worker.   My Uncle Ed, my father’s only brother, was born in Seattle when my grandfather worked for Curtis Wright.  My father told stories about organizing for the UAW, which my grandfather must have been active in in the 1930s. 

My father’s grandfather, Grandpa McGlenn died in an auto accident in Springfield.  My grandfather was driving and he was drunk.  My father was in the car.

My father met my mother in 1939.  Pictures show that he was a very handsome young man.  She was quite a knockout herself.  He had had a number of jobs, working in a foundry and on a railroad, as a gandy dancer, he claimed.  Both jobs were probably from relatives.  He also claimed to have been a prize fighter.  From his notebooks, full of cartoons, quotes and his thoughts, I learned he was very aware of what was going on in the world, particularly in Europe.  My mother got pregnant around December, 1939, and they got married February 3, 1940.  The early pregnancy, of course, was a family secret.  Ellen, my eldest sister,  learned her real birth date when she was 18.  I heard it from her years later.  Ellen’s public birthday was October 31, 1940 three months after she was born.  That was typical of my father to choose Halloween.  He liked mean little jokes like that.

Stories in our family were like images in a fun house.  The truth was there somewhere, but it got distorted, twisted, unrecognizable, looking like something else.  My mother would embellish, create, cover over and make herself the hero.  My father took his facts, twisted them, turned them upside down and made them into a maze.  The real story was hard to find.  In my own mind, I've tried to strip them down to what I know and reconstruct them in a way that makes sense.  Neither of my parents were reliable sources for anything that happened recent  or past.  The most important events were often secrets and by mutual consent never to be discussed.

My parents came to California after they were married.  I think my grandmother was not happy about my mother and they were never friends.  My father worked at Lockheed Aircraft and then enlisted in the Army Air Corps in 1942.  He didn’t have to go.  He was 25 years old and had a year old child and one on the way.  In my opinion, he ran away from home.  I don’t think my father ever dealt with anything like a man the whole time I knew him.  When his brother was dying and his niece and nephew appealed to him to come to San Diego, he stayed home.  I think he was a spoiled kid, his whole life.

He went to Baylor University in Indianapolis as an Army Air Corps Cadet.  From there he went to San Angelo, Texas, Goodfellow Field, and Lake Charles Army Airfield, Louisiana for training as a Bombardier/Navigator on a B-26, light bomber.

In September, 1944 he was assigned to to the 497th Bomb Squadron of the 344th Bomb Group at Stansted, England and was there in time for the Battle of the Bulge.  He flew 45 missions and received the Air Medal for it.  At discharge he was still a 2nd Lieutenant but had been the lead navigator for his squadron.  He flew from England, France and then Belgium.  He flew bombing missions over France, Germany and Czechoslovakia.  When he was older and very drunk he would talk about George Mitchell, the pilot of their plane, whose death as he told it in fragmented references he was responsible for.  I knew whatever it was it had eaten at my father his whole life.  I thought my father had somehow caused Mitchell’s death by being a coward. 

After he died I found a letter.  The exact opposite was true.  Just before the end of the War, my father and his plane were flying a bombing run over Germany.  Captain Mitchell was the lead pilot.  The War was won and it was the last days when the navigators on many bombing runs never found their targets or waved off in the deadly moments before they dropped their bombs.  The most dangerous part of a mission is the actual bombing run when the target is sighted and the plane levels out and flies straight toward the target until the bombs are dropped.  In those few minutes the bombardier is flying the plane.  The plane is a sitting duck for anti-aircraft fire from below.

My father, who for all his faults was a man of absolute integrity, was the navigator/bombardier on a bombing run at the end of the War in which Captain George Mitchell from Georgia lost his life.  My father had a letter from Mitchell’s parents thanking him for his loyalty to their son.  When I read the letter I understood the story my father told in drunken fragments.  He didn’t feel guilty because his cowardice killed his friend but because his bravery or pig headedness had killed his friend.    

By the time I met my father he was a grim man who barely talked at all.  He listened to the radio, he read foreign magazines, he smoked cigars and he drank beer.  Most of the time he was holed up in a back bedroom, Mr. D’s room, with his radio, phonograph and books.  We had to be quiet when he was there so we wouldn’t disturb him. 

An early story I remember was holding my Teddy Bear outside the car feeling the wind in my hair and I dropped it.  He wouldn’t stop or go back for it.  When we were together, he had to take care of me or for some reason my mother wasn't there, it was like I didn't exist.  Anything I did was an imposition on him.  I would walk beside him and try to engage him in conversation and he wouldn’t say anything.  The one time we played catch he was so critical of my throwing and catching that we never played again.  I was three years old. 

He obviously had great aptitude for many things.  He learned to speak French during World War II and read French magazines and books.  In the 1940s and 1950s in California he learned to speak Spanish, with dictionaries, how to books, records and radio he listened to.  He listened to Dodger games in Spanish.  My father never spoke to anyone very much.  He was a very taciturn man.  When I learned to speak Spanish he was wouldn't speak Spanish with me.  I doubt he spoke Spanish at all.  When I forced him to it was haltingly and slowly.  He just didn’t have enough practice, but he did read it and write in Spanish very well.  And with the French whenever there was anyone around who spoke French we would proclaim my father’s fluency but he would refuse to speak French to anyone who was fluent.  I don’t think he had any confidence in his fluency in either French or Spanish.  

At one time or another my father had been an art student, I think before and or after the War.  There were a number of oil paintings around the house and they were very good.  His palette was muted, dark colors, like a Dutch master palette and he did portraits.  I like them better than his brother, my uncle's paintings.  My uncle made a living as an artist and was good at it.  He too had a dark palette for his traditional oils and portraits.  His Chinese paintings were bright and colorful.  

My father knew books, literature, opera, history and philosophy.  Somewhere he had gotten the start to a very good education.  The whole time I knew him I never saw him read a book.  He had a small stack  of books that included dictionaries and a foreign magazine. He didn’t say he was reading them, he “studied” them.  For Christmas one year I gave him John Steinbeck’s book, “Travels with Charley.”  I know he never read it. 

It went on like this through high school, from the 1940s until the 1960s.  And then there seemed to be a crack in my father’s wall.  It began when my older sister, Joan, and I began to drink beer with him.  I was sixteen.  We would sit and drink beer until it was gone and we would talk.  He would make jokes and tell stories and after having been ignored by my father for my whole life, it felt wonderful to be his buddy while we drank.

Maybe time had diluted his bitterness and defeat from the War on.  When he was 50, he started UCLA Extension and took an engineering certificate course.  For years he went to night school and he completed the certificate program.  My father was still bitter and mean but from the 60s on there was more life to him.    

When I went in the service, when my sons were born, at a few times, he even expressed some warmth and affection. 

I got sober in 1983 when I was 37 years old.  My father got sober in 1991 when he was 74 years old.  After that things really changed between us.  

In April, 1991 I got a frantic phone call from my mother that Pop was in the hospital and they thought he might have had a stroke.  By this time, my parents who were getting older were leaning on me sometimes during crises.  I went to the hospital and talked to the staff.  They couldn’t figure what had happened to my father.  He had lost consciousness while walking.  It wasn't a stroke and they weren’t sure what it was.  

 The doctor asked me about my father’s medical history.  I asked him if my father or mother had told him that my father was an alcoholic.  He said, “No.” 

The next thing I looked down the hallway and there was my father trying to stand on one foot.  The doctor was giving him what looked like the classic Highway Patrol field sobriety test.  He failed.  The diagnosis was alcoholic seizure and the doctor told him he could go into addiction treatment downstairs or be discharged.  The doctor would not treat him if he didn’t go to the alcohol unit.  He said it would be a waste of time. 

The doctor came out and talked to my mother, my sister Liz and I.  He said my father had had an alcoholic seizure and that there was an alcohol treatment program in the hospital downstairs and that he would not treat him unless he went to it.  He must have told us that once my father had alcohol seizures it would only get worse if he didn’t stop drinking and eventually be fatal. 

Everyone seemed to be in a panic and I asked my sister and mother if they wanted me to talk to Pop.  They said, yes. 

I went in and told my father, “The Doctor says you  can go downstairs for alcohol treatment or you’ll die.  It’s your choice, what do you want to do?” 

My father said to me in a whisper, “I guess I’ll go downstairs.” and he did.

 Not only was my father an alcoholic, but my mother was as well.  The family story as she told it was my father was the designated alcoholic and my mother was doing her best to cope with it and make things good with the family.  Of course, she drank as much as he did.  So when my father went downstairs my mother was all in favor of it.  She had wanted him to do this all along, she said.  But after a day or two, the staff at St. Joseph’s Hospital wanted my mother to join the program as well. 

My mother’s  creature as the Irish call alcoholism, went crazy, as if it were being exorcised by a priest.  She went in every direction for a day and then had nothing to do with the program.  For the thirty days my father was in treatment, I was his family and attended family therapy with him.  We both talked about being raised by alcoholic fathers.  It was a program that was classic AA and prepared the patients to go to regular AA meetings afterwards.  The AA group that met at the hospital was very active and run by alumni of the treatment program. 

My father got sober and stayed that way mostly until his death 11 years later.  My mother never had anything to do with it and after a few months was able to discourage my father from going to meetings.  I think she got him off the wagon once but he got back on almost immediately.  He stayed sober.   

 I treated my father as a fellow alcoholic.  We openly acknowledged the bond between us and felt it strengthen and grow.   I could see that he was a good and sincere man and like myself had had his difficulties growing up and coping with life and had been as devastated by his disease as I had been by mine.  I think my father was very proud of my sobriety and of his own. 

All that tension growing up and the meanness melted away.  He was a comfortable and sweet old man.  Sometimes he’d have flashes of anger and cynicism but they were only flashes, not smoldering storms.  He was much more tolerant of my mother than I was able to be.

In February, 2003 he died.  He had had many bouts with various cancers and kept them in check for many years but in the end he succumbed to leukemia.  His last five months he was very weak.  He and my mother were in an assisted living situation in Phoenix near my oldest sister.  Ellen watched out for them and took care of my father at the last.  We visited, we talked and it was a wonderful time for us.  One of the last visits I made to him I was doing most of the talking and then he asked, "What happens if I get well?"

I said, "Don't worry about it, Pop.  It won't happen."

Another time we got to talking about favorite words and he said his favorite word was "Enough."  We said our good-byes a few days before he died and easily told each other, “I love you.”      

^1.  For the genealogist:  My father was John Lawrence Duggan born August 26, 1916 in Springfield or St. Louis, Missouri.  His father was John Harold Duggan, probably of Springfield aised McGlynn probably of St. Louis.  Grandpa McGlynn had a drayage business in St. Louis with a partner.  My father's paternal grandmother was Catherine Walsh Duggan from Ireland or maybe Liverpool. Her surname of course is Irish for Welsh, but there was some story she had been a servant in Liverpool before she came to the U.S.  She was called the Dutchess and I got to know her.  My father's paternal grandfather was John Duggan from Springfield.  His paternal great grandfather was Michael Duggan of Springfield, originally from Ballingarry, Tipperary immigrated through New Orleans.

Pop - an addendum

I call this biography, The Stories I Tell Myself.  I believe the stories we tell ourselves, the family myths, the misinformation, the fanciful, and the made up are as important as the facts.  So this biography, the essays that make it up, are the stories I tell myself.  I’m not worried about having all the facts.  We fill things in, we tell stories, we imagine the way it might have been, we smooth over the gaps.  I try to be as honest as I can be, but it doesn’t surprise me that sometimes my own stories aren’t as factual as they should be.   

When I was drinking I didn’t tell myself I was a drunk.  I told myself I was a good person doing the best I could.  I enjoyed a few beers, convivial company, and it wasn’t my fault some people weren’t as Irish as I was.  When I got sober that story failed me.  Sometimes growth is admitting the facts to be true.    

I have stories about my family and they’re a pastiche of what I’ve been told, what I’ve learned about my family and the history of the time.      

Since my father’s death I’ve always thought there was a good chance that he was born in Springfield, Missouri.  My father was a dissembler.  He never told the truth straight out.  Either did my mother, but my father would twist things and embellish them so that  I’ve always questioned his facts.  Well the facts are that my father was born in St. Louis.  He never told us about growing up in Springfield and now I know he did but he wasn’t born in Springfield.    

I knew Michael Duggan my great great grandfather had been a farmer in Missouri and I thought it was Springfield.  I’ve since learned it was Brinktown, Missouri. 

Facts are a good thing.  The world is full of fact checkers and I expect somewhere in my descendants there will be someone capable of correcting all of my errors.  If they do I hope they will add them to these stories.  Between the facts and the stories are the myths that make us who we are.  I always appreciate knowing the facts, but I’m Irish enough to never let the facts stand  in the way of a good story.

IV.

My Education

I started the first grade at St. Robert Bellarmine Grammar School in Burbank at the age of 5.  In those days Catholic schools didn’t have kindergarten and we didn’t go to public schools, even for kindergarten.  One of our classmates had gone to kindergarten and was always suspect after that.  Maybe he wasn't really one of us.  Our suspicions were confirmed years later when he transferred to Burbank HS in the 10th grade.    

St. Robert’s was a good place.  It had some odd characters.  The pastor, Monsignor Keating, lived in his own world, an amalgam of Catholicism, Americanism, and patriotic devotionalism.  He changed the name of the parish from Holy Trinity to St. Robert Bellarmine.  Bellarmine was a 17th century Jesuit Inquisition Judge.  Among the trials he was responsible for was Galileo's trial.  He is particularly hated by the English.  It seems he was the judge for a number of auto de fe’s of English heretics.  According to Monsignor Keating the Declaration of Independence was based on Bellarmine’s writings.  I took the Monsignor’s word for it.  I’ve never read Bellarmine. 

According to Monsignor the Inquisitor had been one of the foundational writers on political rights.  This was blended with the monsignor’s experience with the New York Fighting 69th.  The original Fighting Irish were a New York National Guard Regiment that distinguished itself in the Civil War, the Spanish American War and World War I.  Monsignor Keating for a short time was a stateside chaplain to them.  So we wore World War I uniforms, the girls wore nurses’ uniforms from the same period.  We were the Bellarmine-Jefferson Guards.  It was very complicated and included Cardinal Pacelli who had once visited Burbank and St. Roberts and then became Pius XII.  Pacelli is sometimes known as Hitler’s Pope.  A humanist inquisitor and a quisling Pope were icons at St. Robert Bellarmine Grammar School.  The nuns just went around it as much as they could. 

One of the assistants Father Granger had survived the Bataan death march. After that he became an Episcopalian seminarian and then converted to Catholicism.  I remember some of his ideas seemed a little different.  One of the nuns told us not to listen too closely to Father Granger, that his doctrine sometimes wasn't completely Catholic.

In the 7th grade it was Father Granger who gathered all of us all together in the church and gave us a lecture on one of the most horrendous of sins being committed by people like us.  He wanted us to know this sin was not only spiritual suicide but also a health hazard.  We had no idea what he was talking about.  I don’t know if it was then or later that we figured out he was talking about French kissing.  I think it was Sister Francetta who after this incident told us that Fr. Granger was just a little crazy.        

The nuns, members of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, tolerated Monsignor Keating and Father Granger.  The BVM's were an order founded in America and based in Iowa.  The order ran Clark College in Dubuque and Mundelein University in Chicago.  The BVMs were a progressive and open minded group of women, down to earth and practical like their Midwestern roots.  In those days they wore voluminous black habits with starched stiff headdresses, boxes around their faces and stiff collars around their necks, starkly white.  They wore heavy black belts under a layer of black cloth with large rosaries attached.  They were quite intimidating in this garb and when we offended their sense of decorum looked like battleships cruising toward you, a ruler or even a yardstick in hand. 

They taught reading, writing, arithmetic, history, church history and religion.  I don’t think we had any science classes and we did art but nothing frivolous except for etching.  I hated etching.  It made no sense to me and was just plain messy.  I liked the nuns.  I did well in school; I was one of the brighter kids and got attention for my performance. 

I think they did a good job of transmitting to us mid-century Irish American Catholicism, politically progressive, morally strict, with a touch but not too much mystery and devotionalism.  We believed in the Pope and John Kennedy.   

When I graduated from Grammar School it seemed important to my mother that I go to an all boys school.  My father was totally passive about everything in the family and left all the decisions about his children to my mother.  My father had been a player as a young man and I think between my mother and my older sister, there was some agreement that I was going to be protected from involvement with women.  Anyhow my mother chose St. Francis of Assisi High School in La Canada.  It was 12 miles away in La Canada in the days before freeways.  The boys in my class who didn’t go to the parish high school went to Notre Dame or Pater Noster which were both closer to Burbank.  The parish high school was a perfectly good co-ed high school where my sisters and most of my classmates went.   

I went to this Capuchin Franciscan High School completely out of the area.  My mother had read about Padre Pio, an Italian Capuchin priest with the stigmata. I read it too.  It seemed a little fantastic and far away.  At that time miracles seemed to me like snow, something that happened far from Burbank.  My mother liked the miraculous and there was a priest at St. Francis, Fr. Cyril who was reputed to have miraculous powers of healing.  Fr. Cyril was the principal at St. Francis and in the four years I was there I didn’t see any miraculous healings or even hear about them, but he was a good man, serious about his religious practice and vows and a strict math teacher. 

It seemed OK when I went there, but as the years passed and I realized what it was like in comparison to other schools, I found it less and less attractive.  It was a football school.  With only 400 boys in the school in my last year there St. Francis won the large schools Southern California Football championship.  The football coach was legendary and taught, if you could call it that, history at the school.  He also had the cafeteria concession and a number of other businesses connected to the school so that he was able to make a living that kept him there.  During football season he began his class each Monday with the statement, “Football players to the front, toadies to the rear,” and then would rehash the game on Friday excluding the rest of us.   

I didn’t play football and I didn’t like Jack Friedman.  The school was all about sports; academics were secondary.  Many of the teachers were also coaches.  Athletes were treated well and the rest of us were second class citizens.  I became an athlete later in life, but at the time, I lived too far away and because I had a November birthday I was smaller than my classmates in the beginning.  Add to that astigmatism, I couldn’t see the ball very well, and athletics were an ordeal for me where my poor performance was ridiculed.  I wasn’t an athlete and I didn’t fit in at St. Francis but I spent three hours commuting to get there each day. 

The school was in a wealthy neighborhood and took on the values and ethics of upper middle class La Canada.  I came from a pro-Union working class background and didn’t have much in common with my classmates and didn’t see eye to eye with most of my teachers who, mostly Irishman from rural areas, were seduced by the sophistication of wealth.  One of the priests was particularly taken with the fight against Communism and we read and studied the right wing literature he liked.  He liked to point out the insidious ways of Communist like the hammer and sickle hidden on the penny.  I went along with all that silliness for awhile.  I even read J. Edgar Hoover’s Masters of Deceit.  By my junior year I had rejected all that crap, but that was much against the tide at St. Francis.      

When I had sons of my own I sent them to Loyola High School near downtown Los Angeles where they got a decent education along with athletics and arts. 

It’s funny, I was always one of the smart kids, but today as the social networks put me more in contact with my classmates from high school, I’m surprised that guys I thought of as thick headed athletes and others who didn't seem that bright went on to very successful careers, doctorates, MDs, JDs, and success in business.  They certainly aren't dumb and in retrospect maybe I wasn’t all that smart, smart enough, but not as smart as I thought I was.  I’m good in school; I still do well in classes, but . . .

Probably one of the most important contributors to my education was the public library.  The Burbank Public Library was outstanding.  It was well run and had a wonderful collection.  I started going to the library when I was in the first or second grade.  My first books were Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck and through the years I worked my way into novels, history and current affairs.  Every week I went to the library for a fresh supply. 

From the first grade on I was a good reader and reading was my pleasure.  I enjoyed reading stories on my own.  I graduated from college as an English major, but really I was just continuing on with my first grade success.  I was a reading major.  I was good at it early on and I’m still good at it now.  I read well.  Of course, reading as much as I did it was inevitable that I would think about becoming a writer, but that didn’t really occur to me until much later. 

I wrote voluminous letters to my sisters away at college in the Midwest, but not much else.  I hated writing in school.  I never understood themes, starting sentences and all those rules.  It would have made sense it they talked about storytelling, but the standard instruction about writing a good paragraph left me cold.

I did my six months in the seminary and then applied to Loyola University.  My mother would pay for college as long as it was Catholic.  It was that conspiracy between my mother and my sisters again, to make sure I didn’t become a player like my father.  Somehow going to all male Catholic schools was going to make a difference.

I loved Loyola.  It was all about academics.  I didn’t seem to be the only smart kid around; everybody was smart.  I remember one young man, obviously brainy, still played the fool and I wanted to tell him, “It’s OK, the bullies and jocks aren’t in charge anymore.”

My freshman year I took English IA.  It was taught by Michael Duncan.  Mike had us write in a journal every day, anything we wanted.  I did the exercise somewhat, though at the end of the month I had to write furiously to turn it in.  Those were some of my first stories.  Mike liked what I wrote, gave me an A in the class, and I changed my major to English. 

After that I took the Survey of English Literature, the big hurdle for English majors.  The course went from Beowulf to Virginia Wolf.  At Loyola it was taught by Dr. Carothers, a wonderful gentleman. I barely passed it but I took a modern literature course from Dr. Erlandson, the department chairman, and I did well in that. Overall I was creditable as an English major.

Mike and I became friends.  That meant more to Mike than it did to me and when he tried to kiss me one time, that made me rethink his patronage but I was already an English major by then. 

I wrote my first stories at Loyola.  I published in the campus literary magazine.  I liked the stories.  Other people did as well.  That was the first time I began to see myself as a writer or dream of being a writer.  One of my best moments as a writer came some years later when in argument with one of Cathy's friends from college, her friend cited a story she had read to make her point.  As she described the story Cathy and I looked at each other and it was a story I had written.

I dropped out of college after my sophomore year.  It was a combination of a mid-college crisis and the military draft.  Uncle Sam didn’t want to give me a second chance to get my feet back on the ground.  He needed me in Vietnam.  I joined the Air Force and after training was sent to England.  It was pure luck.  My class from Keesler AFB drew the right number and we went to England for three years.  I went to night school classes at Chicksands Elementary school.  They were good classes.  When I left the Air Force in August, 1971, I had 60 units from the University of Maryland European Division

I started UCLA in September 1971.  One of my first classes was Pat Kelly’s Literary Criticism.  Pat asked the class how many of us were transfer students.  Nearly two thirds of us raised our hands.  In the group I became part of, it was a rare bird that had started UCLA after high school and stuck with it.  We were almost all transfers from somewhere.   

After my lackluster second year at Loyola University and my year of college credit from the University of Maryland I was a junior/senior transfer student.  I had courses in Shakespeare, Folklore and American Literature behind me.  I was an avid reader and a sometime writer.  It seemed natural I should continue on as an English major. 

UCLA was fabulous.  I took medieval courses from Ed Condren and Milton from Chris Gross.  Professor Dick taught Drama and Pat Kelly Literary Criticism.  The professors at UCLA were amazing.  They were original thinkers in their fields.  They were the authors of the articles in the journals on the library shelves.  Until I got my grades the first quarter I thought I was out of my league, but somehow I managed to ace all of my courses except for Milton.  Chris Gross was a young phenom in Milton at the time and all of the professors were excited that UCLA had landed him.  I just didn’t get Milton, I’m not sure why.  Thirty years later I finally read Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained and loved it.  For some reason I couldn't get it before.   

My circle of friends were also an amazing group, talented young women and men.  Llon King was part of our group and there was a young Marine veteran who had been at Khe Sanh. There were Theodora Poloynis and other amazing women.  Even after four years in the service I felt liberated in public school.  I told people I finally made it to public school after the 15th grade.   I had a wife and two children and I was in a hurry to graduate.  I took four courses a quarter for four quarters.  I paid for UCLA with money I had saved in the service and we lived on $250 a month from the GI Bill. 

I took a course in Folklore that was taught by a young woman eight months pregnant who got up on desk and sang a cappella songs from Appalachia.  It was unearthly, ethereal and very beautiful.  We studied Gilgamesh.  I took Russian Literature in translation and a class in Celtic Literature from Pat Ford. 

In May, 1972 Nixon started mining harbors in North Vietnam.  For me it wasn’t the mining itself but just that we were still escalating the fight in Vietnam, a war we had already lost.  I enthusiastically joined the anti-War gatherings and protests.  Helicopters began circling the campus.  There was a feeling in the University that we were under siege by the establishment outside.

Jane Fonda and Angela Davis spoke at the rally on campus and they sounded like a breath of fresh air.  They made sense and it was the mainstream, the newspapers, and the rest of our world that seemed to be out of touch with reality.  My brief three years in England and exposure to another point of view, even though it was just the English establishment instead of the American establishment, made me sensitive to how much of the news is just business and government propaganda.     

The protests went on all week.  A few days into it there was a fire at Murphy Hall one morning.  Some protestors had set a mini-cart ablaze.  The local Fire Department was called and they refused to come without police protection.  There is a UCLA Police Department but they insisted on the LAPD.  Someone approved that and the Los Angeles Police Department came on campus.  They were confronted by about a 1,000 students.  No one at UCLA wanted the LAPD.  They were known for their brutality and heavy handed tactics.  The protest began to grow.  By noon, the LAPD declared UCLA an illegal assembly.  By three or four o’clock 10,000 students confronted the LAPD.  The police charged the students with batons and when that didn't work they drove their cars at high speed through the crowds.  Nothing they did could budge us.  We waited them out and at 5:30 that afternoon the LAPD left campus.  Within the hour the students disbursed and went on their way and the campus returned to normal. 

Many years later I was talking to an auditor at City National Bank.  Richard was a vice president and a very stolid member of the establishment at the bank.  It turned out he went to UCLA at the same time I did.  We compared notes.  We had been standing only a few feet apart from each other during the demonstration when the police cars were ripping through the crowds. 

I had been four years in the service but I had never seen anything like it.  The LAPD were crazed and full of rage.  The students were adamant and courageous.  The US withdrew from Vietnam a year later.  The War ended three years later in 1975. 

At the end of the spring quarter I went to visit the registrar and reviewed my record with a clerk at a window.  She said I had all my requirements and I just needed another 12 units to graduate.  I think there may have been some paperwork.  So based on what she said I quit going to school after the summer quarter.  I put UCLA behind me and hoped I would get a diploma one day.  Some months later I received one in the mail. 

UCLA was impersonal but what a great experience.  I loved it.  It was only one year there but I am a Bruin forever.  Go Bruins!

In Japan people get jobs based on where they went to school and when I joined Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank of California I was hired because I had graduated from UCLA.  But it wasn’t just the Japanese, I think everyone looked twice at that.  I’m not sure how much of an education I got in my short year there, but I had a great time.  It was an exciting year for me.  And it didn’t look bad on my resume.

Since UCLA I’ve taken classes: public relations, accounting, find yourself career classes, management classes, and writing classes.  Most were UCLA Extension classes but I also went to Glendale College.  When I became a loaned executive at United Way they sent me to a two week training at USC.  USC was great.  I did my POST (Peace Officers Standards Training) for Juvenile Hall at Evergreen College in San Jose.  The six weeks there was fun and taught us a lot.  The State Parks Ranger Academy was controlled by Monterey Peninsula College and I got credits there for 30 units or more.  Five months of classes 8 hours a day, five days a week turned out to be hard, hard on the bottom and hard to stay focused.

My last years as a Ranger I went to College of Marin and took math and science classes and did very well.  I told people I was a scientist in an English major’s body.  I was coming out.  My English major wife called me a nerd.  I bought a pocket protector like my father used to wear. 

Another influence in my education was the example of my father.  He spent his life studying as he called it; language, history and music.  He was a lifelong studier.  When he was in his 50s he started and completed an engineering program at UCLA Extension.  Like him I consider myself a lifelong learner.  All I know about nature, trees, plants, birds, animals, geography, I studied on my own.  I spent years studying and learning to speak Spanish. 

I still read, novels, history and current affairs, along with philosophy, foreign languages, and anything else I’m interested in.  I am particularly fascinated by ethnicity.  I suppose if I were to pick a college major today I would be a cultural anthropologist. Maybe I’d add some calculus and statistics classes.  I love knowing where people’s culture comes from, ethnicities, nationalities, religion, what culture is and what its foundations are.  I love cultural differences and similarities. 

I don’t trust institutions much, but I greatly admire scholars.  I was taught by some incredible scholars, I’ve known a few, and my son Ted is a scholar. My other two sons are artists.  I love scholarship. I consider myself a hedgerow scholar, undisciplined but enthusiastic.  

V.

Best Friend

My best friend from the summer after the 8th grade on was Rick Powell.  Rick and I went to the same grammar school, St. Robert Bellarmine in Burbank.  Rick was kind of a dorky guy, distinct features, when we were young he had a head a little too big for his body, gangly, not one of the cool kids, but a funny guy and kind of sloppy.  We wore uniforms at St. Robert’s and I think Rick’s shirt was always untucked and his hair always messed.  If you were one of Rick’s friends, he would let you slip your thumb and small finger into the indentations in his skull left by the doctor who delivered him. 

In the first part of the 8^th grade my best friend was Ray Ziegler.  Ray was kind of a rough kid, strong, very smart but an only child and hard to get along with, no social graces, even in comparison to other boys our age.   He lived in his own world but he was a good guy.  He also lived two and half blocks from me up the street and across the street from Mary Ellen Boyd. 

Mary Ellen was my unrequited love through most of grammar school.  In the 8^th grade Mary Ellen was the bandleader for our school band.  She was a strawberry blond, a big girl, not heavyset but just good size, always a shade taller than I was and she developed breasts early on, a very remarkable thing in the 7^th grade.  She was smart, she was pretty and I pined for her, though she never much acknowledged me.  I think I walked her home whenever I could which didn’t happen very often. 

Ray lived across the street from her and he told me he had actually played football with her and her friends in the middle of the street one time.  I started hanging out with Ray though I didn’t see much of Mary Ellen for the effort.  I think maybe I got to play football with the kids up there including Mary Ellen one time. 

I found Ray to be a pretty interesting guy.  His mother and father were divorced and he lived with his mother.  His father, an engineer at Lockheed, visited occasionally and took him places.  His mother wore tube tops, short shorts, drove a 1957 white Thunderbird and had Johnny Mathis playing on the phonograph all the time.

Ray had electronics, speakers and microphones and most interesting of all a tape recorder.  We took these things apart and put them back together.  He had a miniature camera that used miniature film.  I don’t remember any pictures from it.  He had really cool stuff.  Ray was a nice guy and we hung out together after school and played with his stuff, watched for Mary Ellen Boyd and went places together. His mother’s Johnny Mathis played in the background. 

Ray was friends with Rick and Rick came by one day.  I found out he was a pretty good guy, interesting and fun to be with.  Ray moved to Sherman Oaks when his mother remarried and we didn’t see each other maybe once or twice after that, but Rick and I began hanging out together. 

Rick and I had a lot more in common.  He had a little brother and didn’t seem to live in his own world the way Ray had.  He was actually pretty smart, not a dork at all.  Rick read as much as I did and we quickly began exchanging books and walking down to Thrifty Drugstore to buy more.  Thrifty’s had a large bookrack of paperbacks in those days.  The Powells had a pool in their back yard but there were a lot more interesting things to do than swim usually.  Rick had a great sense of humor and a real taste for adventure. 

One of the things Rick and I did together was to take the bus to downtown LA during that summer.  We would board the gold and white buses of the RTD, the Rapid Transit District, at Olive and Glenoaks and pay 62 cents to ride to downtown LA.  I remember the bus driver got pretty irritated one time when I paid most of my fare with pennies.  In those days there was no counting machine to throw them into, he had to take them and count them each one before he started the bus off again for our trip downtown. 

Downtown we’d go to the LA Athletic Club and swim in the pool.  I had never been in an indoor pool and it was fascinating to me to go swimming on the 5^th floor of a building downtown.  Rick’s father was a banker at Bank of America and a member of the club.  We’d go swimming and then we’d go somewhere else.  One time we took a tour of the Los Angeles Times when the building downtown had big presses running and linotype operators.  We went to the top of City Hall and saw Los Angeles from its tallest building at the time. 

After our day was over we’d go back to the Bank of America at the corner of 7^th and Spring Street, up to the 5^th floor, the executive floor, and squish across the carpeted offices.  In those days Bank of America still had open floors and no private offices even for the top people.  A.P. Giannini believed in accessibility and the spirit of A.P. Giannini was still strong at Bank of America.  Mr. Powell drove us home.  Mr. Quinn, the father of a classmate, and a lot of other Quinns, was the Manager of the main B of A in Burbank, but Mr. Powell was even more important than that.    

Rick and I stayed best friends all through high school.  He went to Bellarmine Jefferson and then Burbank High School.  I went to St. Francis up in La Canada.  I had a best friend at St. Francis but when I was home in Burbank, Rick was my best friend.  We learned to drive about the same time.  He had easier access to his parents’ car and we would drive around Burbank in a 1962 Cadillac, a brand new car, big with fins.  It didn’t impress the girls much but it was comfortable.  Neither Rick nor I had much success with the girls in high school. 

But we hung out together and we read books and talked about them.  We went to movies and we talked and we talked.  When I went to the monastery in 1964 I lost contact with Rick but there he was again a year later when I started Loyola University in Los Angeles.

Rick was a sophomore and I was a freshman.  We each had our own circle of friends.  He ended up joining a fraternity and was a party guy.  I joined the intellectuals and was a pseudo-writer type.  We still had a lot in common and hung out together sometimes just to be with an old friend.  I wrote a paper for him one time and one time he loaned me his car for a date. 

Rick told me he had used my story once to charm a girl he was trying to meet.  I worked for the phone company for nearly a year before I went to college.  I was surprised by that.  I didn’t think I was that interesting and I never thought of making up a life story.  I admired Rick’s creativity. 

When I went in to the service we didn’t stay in touch again but then I met Rick again when I finished UCLA in 1972 and joined Bank of America.  Rick was already a loan officer in the International Division in San Francisco.  We stayed in touch through Bank of America.  When I went up to San Francisco, we’d get together after work.  I don’t think Rick’s wife Maureen much liked me.  One of the things Rick and I did together was to drink too much. 

Rick went off to Canada and then Thailand with Bank of America and then came back to the US and left the bank.  He and Maureen moved to San Diego.  When he returned one time he and Maureen invited us to join them at Lake Arrowhead.  We drove up there with our kids and they were staying in this wonderful 3,000 square foot “cabin,” nicer than any home I’ve ever lived in.  Maureen’s father was a successful CPA and the cabin was his or someone closely connected to their family.  We stayed the weekend with them and had a great time.  There was a power boat that Rick and I drove towing the other one behind trying to learn to water ski.

The week before my family went up there we had had the flu and our kids had been very sick with it.  We had just barely recovered when we went up to Lake Arrowhead.  I heard from Rick later, that after we left Rick and his family all came down with the flu. Their week’s vacation at Lake Arrowhead was mostly going back and forth to the bathroom and dealing with sick kids.  Rick indicated that Maureen wasn’t too keen on us as friends after that.  Rick on the other hand teased me about it for years afterwards. 

After I got divorced and sober we began getting together again whenever I showed up in San Diego for the bank I worked at. I went down to see Rick and Maureen a few times.  Maureen and I got to be good friends.  She’s a good lady, but Rick and I didn’t seem to have the same rapport we did before.   One time we were in a restaurant eating lunch.  We noticed the waitress looking funny at us.  We were two bankers, middle aged and both in pinstripes, and without thinking about it we were sharing a dessert.  We explained we had known each other since we were five years old, my older sister had babysat for Rick and his brother, and that we were each other's oldest friend, like it or not.    

I like Rick.  He’s a good man.  He turned out to be much more like his father than either of us would have expected.  He did OK in banking but never reached the prominence of his father.  It was the wrong time for banks.  Rick worked for one small bank and then another in San Diego.  We fell out of touch again, though this time I’m disappointed to say we've lost contact.  Rick likes to have a few beers.  When I last saw him in the 80s he was running with the Hash House Harriers.  I’m not sure why we’re not still friends, I wish we were.  Rick and Maureen are good people. 

VI.

Seminarian

At age 17, I became a Franciscan monk at San Lorenzo Priory, a newly built monastery tucked back into the hills on the edge of the Santa Ynez Valley in the coastal mountains of Central California. I had just graduated from high school.  In August I became a postulant, the first step in becoming a Franciscan priest. 

Every morning we got up at 5, went to the chapel and chanted Prime and Matins. After breakfast we chanted Lauds, Terce and Sext. After dinner we would do Vespers and then Compline. All of this in Latin in 1964, psalms, New Testament readings, and lessons. In between the Hours of the Divine Office we did gardening, took care of chickens, rabbits, and cows. Our meals were eaten mostly in silence. We had a few classes and there was a little free time but not much. Sundays were free days, no work, but still prayers. Sometimes we got to go to Santa Ynez Mission in Solvang. 

I was at the monastery with my high school friend Joe Quattropane and three other postulants and a couple of novice brothers. The best part of it I remember was running free in the ranchland around us. We were up a hill from the Santa Ynez River, a dry arroyo with a small trickle in the center at the mouth of a canyon that climbed up Mount Figueroa. The oak grassland around us and the canyon teemed with deer, wild pigs and hawks.

Built the previous year, San Lorenzo smelled of concrete still drying. Each of us had a room, a cell, walls of concrete blocks, a desk, and a bed. Once a week we did discipline outside our cells, flagellating ourselves with a few short rosary chains without the beads, bound together; probably available in some monastery supply catalogue from Belgium or Italy. The first time we did it, it was a surprise, but reinforced our connection to very old traditions. The real penance of it was more the standing in doorways, bare asses exposed while we bent over swinging a handful of chains lightly behind ourselves. It did promote humility. It’s hard to be dignified with your underwear around your ankles and your robe pulled up over your backside.     

After three months of monastery life, we became novices and donned the full robe and hood of Capuchin Franciscans. The other monks were a couple of brothers, one was a cook and the other did maintenance work, older retired priests, one demented, one not. Another priest, a middle aged man seemed to be serving out some sort of exile at San Lorenzo away from whatever problems he had left. He didn’t seem a very happy man. And there was a novice master.

I really enjoyed the ritualized prayers of the Office, the sound and feel of the Latin. Often during meals the Rule of St. Francis was read. I enjoyed the hills and mountains around us.

At 5:30 a.m. one morning half awake in the chapel to the music of the Psalms I was daydreaming of Mary Ellen Connelly. I woke up during my daydream and thought it was time I reviewed my sacred calling. I realized I was more inspired by my wanderings around the mountain than I was by my spiritual practice. Between my daydreams and my love of the mountain I thought I probably didn’t have much of a calling to the priesthood. 

It still amazes me that I was at any time a seminarian. I grew up Catholic, attending Catholic grammar school. I was an altar boy. I went to a Catholic high school. The nuns and priests always pitched a vocation to the priesthood as the highest calling a person could have. I wasn’t a goody two shoes, but I was always trying and I appreciated any praise I got from adults. Answering the call to the religious life was encouraged. 

In high school when I had no clue what I was going to do after graduation and my best friend was grooming himself to enter the priesthood. I went along. It solved the problem of how to apply to college. My parents had not attended college themselves. My older sister had gone to the Sisters of Charity college in Iowa on a full scholarship and my eldest sister had become a nun. I didn’t know anything about applications, selecting a college or anything else about going on after high school and it seemed no one was helping me. 

As soon as I said I wanted to be a priest it was all taken care of. After the seminary I figured out on my own how to apply to Loyola University and eventually 8 years later I graduated from UCLA. 

I never put San Lorenzo on my resume or even told many people about it. I enjoyed it. I was always glad I did it; I just didn’t want to be categorized as an ex-seminarian. In my mind six months didn’t qualify me for that. It became a habit not to mention it. When I remembered, sometimes it was funny to surprise someone with the information.  My eldest son was particularly suprrised at the age of 24 to learn I had been a seminarian. As an adult no one thought of me as an ex-seminarian and in my own mind I wasn’t an ex-seminarian, an ex-monk maybe, but then for only six months. It was a short retreat from the material world. It did cost me a draft deferment. Two years later I was classified 1A because I had not been a student continuously since high school. 

It was something private that I kept to myself, but it was a good time in my life, time spent outdoors and time spent in prayer and contemplation, good preparation at the threshold of being an adult.

VII.

Car

My first car was a 1958 Chevy Delray.  I bought it in the spring of 1965.  I was 18 years old. I needed a car to drive to my first real job working for the Phone Company.

The car was huge and it smelled bad, a sort of vinyl seats, horsehair stuffing and too much sun smell.  The main body of it was blue and then a light blue on the side panels.  Or it was green with light green side panels, or blue with light green side panels.  Whatever it was, it was badly faded.  Besides being huge, smelling bad, being an odd color and a gas guzzler, it was ugly.  I told people my 1958 Chevy1 was General Motors gearing up for an impending war and this was the car they made before they transitioned into tanks. 

The first car I looked at was a 1953 Chevy Convertible.  It was white with gold highlights and very cool looking.  Rick Sharp, my best friend and I saw it at a used car dealer's.  It was only $500 which seemed reasonable.  I’m not a mechanic and I just thought I wouldn’t be able to keep it running.   It was a pipe dream more than anything else.  I didn’t know how to buy a car by myself and I didn't even talk to the salesman.    

My mother found the 1958 Chevy and we went to see it in Hollywood.  The owner was a youngish gay man who was selling it to buy something new.  She decided it was the car for me and we bought it on the spot for $800. 

My mother made the decision and she was an irresistible force when she decided.  My mother made all of my father’s decisions for him and she was doing the same for me before I learned to get out from under her.  My mother would get these ideas into her head and that was it.  At the time she decided Volkswagens and small cars were dangerous.  It wasn’t good enough that I should get something bigger than a Volkswagen, I needed a behemoth just to be sure.  There wasn’t much on the road bigger or boxier than a 1958 Chevy. 

Five days a week I drove the Chevy to my job in Reseda about 20 miles away.  I think it got 12 miles to the gallon but gas in those days was about 25¢ a gallon.  It was a big roomy car and great for making out with somebody.  My first girlfriend after the seminary asked me how I felt about French kissing.  I said I thought it was a sin.  That was stupid, we never French kissed.  With my second girlfriend I kept my ideas of sin to myself.  We French kissed and even after awhile made it into the backseat of the Chevy which was very roomy. 

A side note here, being Irish, Catholic and an ex-seminarian it was a long time before I ever got laid and even longer time before I ever made it in the back seat of a car.  10 years later my wife and I decided to try it and we made it in the backseat of our car, a Volkswagen Van. 

I drove the Chevy to work until September, 1965 and then I left it at home while I went to college in Westchester, near the airport.  I think it was about then I bought a Suzuki 50cc motorcycle, a zippy little thing that maxed out at about 35 miles per hour, 40 with the wind at my back.  It was a two stroke engine which was always smoky and fouled.  I lived with my sister in an apartment in Mar Vista and used the Suzuki to get to school.  I drove it across town to Burbank when I went home.  I rode it in all kinds of weather including torrential rain when I got soaked to the bone.  I also slipped and went down a couple of times while riding it on slick streets.  In those days helmets weren’t required and no one wore them.  I certainly didn’t have one, it never occurred to me. 

I think when I went back to work at the phone company in the summer of 1966 I drove my Chevy again.  It was the summer after that, 1967, when my father decided that since he had driven it all winter and made some repairs to it that it was now his car and I had no claims on it at all.  Even I was a little surprised at how arbitrary and unfair that decision was.  My father was adamant and at 20 it didn’t do any good to argue with either of my parents. 

That summer I went in the service and and in the spring got married to Cathy Bruemmer.  She joined me in Bedford, England and I worked 12 miles away at Chicksands.  We used a bus to get to the base when we needed to and by myself I hitchhiked to work.  Public transportation in England was good and we didn’t get a car until our second winter there.  I bought a 1956 Ford Popular2. It was cool.  It was a pre-War design and looked like a miniature gangster car.  I drove it a few times and then it stopped running.  A friend on Dog Flight  said he would help me get it running again.  We got it torn apart in the base auto shop and that was it.  We never got any further.   

That spring I bought a 1963 Volkswagen from a sergeant who was going back home.  The Volkswagen was wonderful.  It ran and ran and ran.  I found a mechanic, a Pole in Bedford to work on it and on cold days I learned to jump start it by running beside it and jumping in. 

We drove the Volkswagen to Italy and all over the Midlands and southern England.  It was a wonderful car and our first son, Sean, loved it more than we did.  Volkswagen was among the first words he learned.  

When we got back to Los Angeles we needed a car.  One can live in England without a car, but no one can live in LA without a car.  I found a Volkswagen advertised in the newspaper, went to see it and I bought it for $500.  Our Volkswagen in England had been a deep shiny blue, the new one was Volkswagen pale green.  The English VW had been a 1963 and the car I bought in LA was a 1968, but they were just about the same car. 

I drove my Volkswagen from North Hollywood to UCLA in Westwood every day.  I looked for cheap gas and found a place where it was about 22¢ a gallon.  I put gas in it and I drove it.  Sean, 3 years old and Ted 1 year old bounced around in the back seat.  There were seat belts in the car but in those days we didn’t use them.  If you came to a stop suddenly there was this reflex arm movement with the right arm to the passenger if they were a little person to keep them from flying forward. 

I remember driving down Venice Boulevard and coming to a sudden stop and both boys in the back seat tumbling forward into the foot well.  A very clear voice, every word distinct, said, “Don’t do that.”  Ted was talking. 

Something finally went wrong with the car.  It was overheating and someone told me it needed a regulator or some part.   I called around to see how much it would cost and reached a Volkswagen garage in Glendale where the owner quoted me the lowest price to repair it.  The day I was supposed to pick it up I got a phone call from Julius, the mechanic.  He told me that he had mispriced the item and in fact it was more expensive than he had quoted.  I made some sort of sighing comment and he said, “Oh no, he wasn’t going to charge me more.  He just wanted me to know.”  I went to Julius and then his son Rich for the next 20 years. 

When I got a job, I could afford to service the Volkswagen regularly and repair things as they wore out.  I even bought new tires for it.  I could tell I needed them; I was getting flats and seeing white ribbing in the tires.  Julius kept my Volkswagen running until 1981 when I finally gave up on the Volkswagen after two rear end collisions.  The second one did it in and it didn’t seem worth it to put a new engine in a 13 year old car.  I sold to it to Sean who was 12.  He wanted to work on it and get it to running again one day. 

In 1976 we bought a used Volkswagen Van as our second car.  It was great for family vacations.  The engine was a little more touchy than the Volkswagen Beetle and the van took more servicing and mechanical work, but it ran well.  It was a great car, blue and white.  It even looked cool.  I drove the van most of the time and Cathy drove the Beetle. 

When the Beetle died in 1981 we bought a brand new Honda Civic.  Hondas were the new Volkswagens.  It had a small engine, was very well designed and zippy like a sports car.  I liked it. 

In the beginning of 1983 the transmission on the Volkswagen Van gave out and we decided it was time to get another car.  I think Cathy was already planning our separation and she wanted to get a new car before I left.  We bought a Toyota Tercel station wagon for her.  It was an odd little thing, four wheel drive and a boxy look.  When we did separate later that year she kept it.  I made payments on it until it was paid off.  I think she drove it well into the 90s.    

By 1989 with a 135,000 miles on it, the Honda was beginning to show its age.  Ted, my second son, was driving it one day and we started out on a green light across Riverside Drive and a Ford Bronco went right through the red light and plowed into us.  Thank god, Hondas are sturdy little cars.  We weren’t injured.  Ted was a little bruised.  The car still ran but it was mashed.  I gave the Bronco driver’s insurance company a chance to pay me off and they took the car.     

I was ready for a pickup truck and I bought a 1989 maxi cab Toyota with a camper shell on the back.  Toyotas run forever.  I never liked the look of it, but it was practical for camping and carrying bicycles. 

I took it north when I moved to the Bay Area.  I left Rich in Glendale and got it serviced elsewhere.  In getting the service done somewhere new, it wasn’t checked for preventive things and on a drive back from LA, the timing chain gave out.  Now on my list of things to do with a car, is to change the timing chain around 175,000 miles.  The engine froze up and I had it repaired for $1200 but it never ran the same again.  Also Suzanne, my wife at the time, had one of these who goes first collisions on the front left fender that left it looking sickly.  I replaced it, but never painted it. 

With Suzanne’s input we bought a 1998 Honda CRV, much bigger than I would have wanted and with leather seats.  At least we didn’t buy the Mercedes Benz she proposed to get at first.  In 2004 we bought a Honda Civic Hybrid.  I loved that little car, as fun as my first Civic and you could watch the readout on gas consumption and try for more than 50 miles to the gallon on a trip. 

When Suzanne and I divorced she got the Civic.  I still drive the CRV.  Hondas today last much longer than they used to last.  The CRV has 203,000 miles on it.  I changed the timing chain at 175,000 miles.  The car runs great.  It will be another year or two before I buy another car. 

In 2008 I bought a Honda Rebel Motorcycle.  I like small cars.  I like small motorcycles.  The Honda is a 250cc.  It tops out at 75 or 80 mph and keeps up with traffic on the freeways.  It has a four stroke engine and runs like a top.  I appreciate my CRV.  It has done well by me for 14 years and over 200,000 miles.  I love my Rebel.  And I wear a helmet.

^1.  http://stormpix.deviantart.com/art/1958-Chevrolet-Delray-167853227

²  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Popular

³  http://www.remarkablecars.com/main/volkswagen/1963-vw-001.html

^4. My own photo

VIII.

Joining the Air Force

My grammar school classmate Larry Stephan was killed somewhere near the DMZ in Vietnam on May 1, 1967.  In August, 1967 I joined the Air Force.  I went into the Air Force because I had a 1A draft classification, I didn’t want to be drafted, I didn’t want to be killed, and I didn’t want to go to Canada.

In 1965 when the US was "attacked" in the Gulf of Tonkin I had been in favor of the war.  At 18 I thought I would go when the time came.  By 1967 I had no feelings of patriotic duty to save the world from Communism.  It was pretty obvious to me by then we were fighting a colonial war in Vietnam and we were on the wrong side of history.

In December of 1966 I had fallen in love with Cathy Bruemmer, a freshman at Mount St. Mary’s College and joining the Air Force seemed the best way to stay alive and plan a life with Cathy.

I was 20 years old and not a deep person.  I struggled some but when the time came, I just gave in.  It was easy enough to go to a recruiting office and start the process and then it took on a life of its own. I gave in to my dreams of being John Wayne, a soldier, like my father in World War II, prove myself.  It also ended any struggles I was having in school.  The semester I joined I had a D average.  It gave me a new start; let me run away from home.

In June I went to the Recruitment Center in downtown Los Angeles and went through the process.  I got in line with a hundred other young men.  We stripped down to our underwear and went from medical station to medical station.  At the end of it, we took an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States from all enemies.  We got to put our clothes back on for the oath, but it didn’t make any difference, we still looked naked and vulnerable.

As only made sense in the Department of Defense, I was in the Delayed Enlistment Program, which meant I was sworn in in June, but didn’t actually go in the Air Force until August.  In August I went back through the medical examination again.  The night before there had been a going away party for me at home and I had gotten very drunk and spent the night groping Cathy before I had to show up.  An Army doctor asked me if I was OK.  I must have looked as bad as I felt.  "I'm OK," I said, it was too late to go back and the process continued.  At the end of it, instead of going home like I had before , I boarded a bus and we headed for the airport.

I remember when my father said good-bye to me that morning.  He looked me directly in the eye and gripped my hand.  I could see sadness, love, and fear in his eyes, felt it in the way his hands held on to mine.   History was repeating itself in our family and it wasn't a good thing.  My parents had been in favor of the War, it was a sore subject between us when I brought it up, but a few months later my mother was working for Eugene McCarthy and my father agreed with her.

We arrived in Amarillo, Texas in the dark hours of the morning.  A couple of sergeants met us and took us on a bus to the base.  We passed under a sign that said something like “Home of our greatest weapon.”  I didn’t get it.  Someone later explained to me we were the weapon.  I never felt like anyone’s weapon.  We had breakfast in the chow hall and then were taken to a barracks.  Everyone was pretty nice to us.  That was the end of that.  No one treated us like human beings again for a very long time.

The next morning we started the process of becoming airmen.  I found myself among 40 other young men from all over the country.  There were a few of us from California and young men like ourselves from Kentucky, Georgia, and everywhere else.  At 20 I was one of the oldest, most were 18, just out of high school.  We told each other where we were from, what airports we flew from and what the trip to Amarillo had been like.  We gave our names to each other and then we fell in line.

The first day we got haircuts and uniforms.  The haircut was a buzz cut as close to the scalp as possible.  I had gotten a haircut before I went, not a buzz cut,  just short and ordinary.  In 1967 the length of one's hair was an important marker.  One or two of my fellow recruits had long hair and it ended up the floor along with everyone else's. When we were left free again that evening we were all shocked to see people we didn’t know.  We had to reintroduce ourselves.   We were bald headed young men in green fatigues and we had begun to look indistinguishable from one another.

The drill sergeants were mostly Southerners and had accents that sounded like the flat Texas panhandle of Amarillo.  Our drill instructor was Airman 1^st Class Steinberg.  Later Airmen 1st were called sergeants. As we marched by other flights Airman 1^st Class Steinberg was taunted by their drill instructors, all staff sergeants.  They attacked his name, his heritage and his rank.  Steinberg responded back in the same mean aggressive voice.  Taunting, belittling, degrading were the language of basic training.  Everybody did it and since there was nothing lower than an Airman Basic, we were taunted constantly.  Foul language, racial epithets, regional slurs, homophobia were all practiced and allowed in those days.

It was a long six weeks.  We marched, cleaned the barracks, got shots, took tests, attended a few sixth grade level classes, learned how to pull the trigger on an M16, got ready to do a one mile run in 8 minutes or less, smoked,” smoke if you have ‘em,” and went to the small BX near our barracks when we had free time, which wasn’t much.  The last two Saturdays we had day passes to go to town.  I stayed in the barracks the first Saturday because someone in my squad had screwed up.

We learned military discipline.   Do what you’re told.  The consequences of not doing what you were told were not good.   There was a motivation flight where those who needed it were harassed constantly.  Everywhere they went they marched double time.  With their hang dog beaten looks, they looked like prisoners.  Most of them got discharges after a few weeks in the motivation flight.  It was a way out, but it didn't seem worth it.  Whatever we were before we arrived at Amarillo Air Force Base, after that first day we were slicks, no stripes on our sleeves.  At the end of basic training we were promoted to Airmen 3^rd Class.  We were congratulated and we had a single stripe.   

During that six weeks, I scored the highest of any airman there on the language aptitude test.  That week there were no slots for the foreign language training institute, a two year assignment in Monterey, California, studying Russian or Chinese or one of a dozen other languages.  Instead I would learn Morse code at Keesler Air Force Base.  I didn’t know it at the time, but that was in preparation to be a Morse Code Intercept Operator in the Air Force Security Service.  Security Service is what they called the Air Force electronic intelligence gathering unit under the direction of the National Security Agency.  They had bases all over the world most of them close to the Soviet Union or China.  The NSA had convinced the Air Force to give them their top recruits.  I was always good at aptitude tests and scored very high.  When I arrived at my duty station I found myself with a lot of other college students now airmen who had also scored high.  The job didn’t require much intelligence but apparently NSA convinced the Air Force it did.

At the end of Basic Training I won the Airman something or other Medal, a medal given to the best recruit of the period.  I was selected to compete because as hard as I tried not to  appear different, I was picked as being above average in literacy and then drilled on nonsensical questions, such as how many stripes on the American Flag, what color, and in what order?  Airman 1st Class Steinberg had left on leave after a few weeks to get married, a welcome respite for us, the Sergeant from our sister flight who took over had a sense of humor.  Steinberg returned at the end of our training when I went to the General’s office to get the medal.  He was more scared than I was.  I was pretty relaxed; he was a nervous wreck.  Someone stole the medal from my locker at the next base I went to.

After graduation I stayed at Amarillo AFB for a few days and then boarded a series of planes from Amarillo to Midland to New Orleans to Biloxi, Mississippi. 

IX.

Keesler and After

From Amarillo, Texas, I flew to Midland, Texas and then to New Orleans.  From New Orleans to Biloxi, Mississippi, I rode in a Southern Airways DC-4 prop plane.  From my window seat all the way to Biloxi I watched a bolt work itself loose from one of the engine cowlings.  It didn't quite fall out.  

Keesler AFB was a large sprawling base with a town outside the gates.  Unlike Amarillo, Mississippi was green.  The Gulf just outside the base was a turgid washed out pale blue.  I was assigned to a flight in a two or three story concrete barracks, two men to a room and then a week of KP (Kitchen Police).  All new trainees did a week of KP before starting classes.  KP went from 3 a.m. to 7 p.m. with a break in the middle of the day for a couple of hours.   On November 2nd, my 21stbirthday I left the chow hall at 7 p.m. and had a drink in the Airman’s club, the only time I went there.  

Those first days we were known as Pings.  Everyone at Keesler had their hair at a decent military length but we still had buzz cuts from Basic Training.    Ping was for ping pong ball.  

Class was all day long.  We learned Morse code and the basic rudiments of radio operation.  We didn’t know it at the time, but no military in the Western world used Morse code.  It is a cheap and efficient way of communicating over long distances and was used extensively by the Eastern Bloc.  We didn't know it but we were being trained to listen to the Russians and their friends.  We listened and never sent. 

Since I had joined the Air Force Cathy, my fiancée now, sent me letters every day and I wrote her back.  If we had been in love before, the letters exacerbated it and made it much more intense.  Both of us were raised Catholic and we hadn’t made love yet.  We groped each other in the letters and we talked about getting married as soon as we could. 

I was at Keesler five months and then got orders for England, RAF Chicksands near Bedford, a very secret base for which the Service Club base information corner had no information.  At the beginning of 1968 the North Vietnamese launched their Tet Offensive and threw the American effort back on its heels.  The War was more than a sideshow and it lasted another five years before we accepted defeat though that word was never used.  While at Keesler I read a copy of Mao Tse Tung on Guerrilla Warfare from the base library. From my reading Vietnam was going very well for the Communist in 1968 and right on schedule for final victory.   Going to Europe was an incredible stroke of luck. 

It wasn’t just me picked to go to Europe.  Our whole class was assigned to Europe.  The Air Force made assignments by classes.  The class behind us went to Pakistan and then Vietnam.  Another class went to South Korea and then Vietnam.  My class stayed in Europe.  It was a three year tour and that’s what we had left in our enlistment.   

I went home on leave April 3rd.  Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4th.

Washington D.C., Baltimore and Louisville, Kentucky erupted in riots.  I was on my way home after seven months in the service and I was getting married. 

In December at Keesler the service club had staged a play, a Fibber McGee and Molly episode.  I had never seen the program but tried out for a part.  I never could memorize by rote memory and I was a disaster with a speaking part as a visiting minister.  Fibber was played by another airman we called Stretch and Molly was a young woman from town who came to the service club.  Charlene was coming on to Stretch during all the rehearsals but the afternoon of the play, December 24th, Stretch apparently rejected her and she turned her attention on me. 

After the play I went home with her and we listened to records in her living room.  She showed me a book of poetry she had, Lawrence Ferlinghetti.  We began to make out and she said, “Wouldn’t we be more comfortable in bed?”

 I said, “Yes,” and followed her into the bedroom, scared to admit I had never done this before. 

Charlene and I lasted another week or two.  Her life was complicated.  She was married to a GI in Vietnam.  His best friend was watching out for her and sleeping with her when he could.  She hadn’t wanted to get married but her mother or her mother-in-law forced her.  I never got the story straight.   She had a child.  For all of that she was a nice girl.  She had once danced ballet with a New Orleans company.  She wasn’t much as a lover I learned later but she gave me what she could.

By the time I got married, my short experience with Charlene was a fading memory.  It should have remained that way.  Cathy Bruemmer and I did a full wedding with the church, the priest, a reception and a long list of guests.  It was all put together in three weeks from the time I got my orders and it was wonderful.

I was 21, she was 20.  We drove to San Francisco for our honeymoon.  I was nearly a virgin.  She was. Making love to her was wonderful.  I had six weeks leave and we got back to LA and set up in a motel apartment for a week before I left for England.  She was going to follow after her school term at Mt. St. Mary’s was over.   

We played house.  I had my sister over for dinner and we drank champagne.  I drank as much as I could.  At that time I had a considerable capacity for alcohol, mostly beer but wine and that night champagne.  We had a wonderful time.  I was feeling high from life, close to Cathy and everyone.  Things were right and in my drunken stupor I had to share a piece of writing I did, a piece about Charlene. 

In my drunken stupidity I was just thinking about how good the piece was and sharing it with my best friend.  That is probably the most stupid thing I have ever done in my whole life.  

Of course, the shock of it was terrible.  Today I know men are stupid and I know we can never explain to our partners how susceptible and oblivious we can be when it comes to sex.  It was incredibly stupid not to even think about our relationship under the circumstances and then to think the whole affair was something insignificant to us.  Alcohol didn't help.  I did learn to avoid the situation, but I didn't that time.  I knew it was inconsistent with the love I felt for Cathy and sober I had enough sense to keep it to myself, but those weren't sober years.  

I left for England the next day.  Cathy was supposed to join me in a month.  She stayed in LA and struggled on her own.  I know she thought of not joining me.  She wrote me a letter that she slipped in a book she shipped to me in England.  She joined me and like the Irishman and the drunk I was, we never discussed it, never cleared it, never apologized, never repaired the damage done. 

In a short time, we began to enjoy life.  Things were good.  Cathy became pregnant at the end of the summer and we had our first son.  But I don’t think she ever trusted me as she had before.  The damage was done.   

X.

England

I left LA hung over.  At this time in my life it seemed all my new chapters started with a hangover.  I flew to Philadelphia and took a shuttle to McGuire Air Force Base.  We waited in a cavernous hangar/terminal all day, all night and part of the next day.  Our charter flight required new tires before it could be cleared for takeoff.  Finally after enough time to lose track of time we had new tires or at least adequate used tires and we were off to England.  

We arrived some time in the afternoon to Mildenhall Air Force Base in England.  No one knew what day it was.  A few of us were going to RAF Chicksands.  We stood around lost until an Englishman gathered us up and took us there in his van.  He called us “Mates.”  I think he said, “Welcome to England, Mates.”  It was hard to tell what anyone said in those first days.  England was wonderfully foreign.  I was in Europe, not reading about it, but there.  Everything was smaller, greener, old and modern jumbled together, everything looked English, even on an American Air Force Base and the highway from Mildenhall to Bedfordshire was as though we were driving through a fairyland.  I couldn’t peel my eyes from the window of the bus and I’m sure my mouth was open the whole trip.       

We reached RAF Chicksands and the duty sergeant asked if any of us were football players.  None of us were and he lost interest.  We were assigned rooms and the next morning began processing to go to our units.  Our security clearances had to be confirmed.  We had some sort of military duties in the meantime, picking up trash or running CQ, charge of quarters, for a week or so.  And then we went to work.

Royal Air Force Chicksands was an Air Force Security Service Base.  The 6950^th Security Squadron shared the base with an Air Force Communications Service Unit.  The base sat in the middle of Osborne Farm called Chicksands Priory, a former Gilbertine Priory, with its own ghost in the Officer’s Club.  It seemed to me there were more gardeners than guards.  The base couldn’t be seen from the highway and the road in had ominous warning signs prohibiting the casual visitor.  At the center of the Osborne Farm was a FLR-9 antenna, a multi-story antenna array from a design by the Germans from World War II.  We listened to Eastern Europe and Western Russia. 

The base itself was newly built dormitories, an administrative building, a BX, a store with American goods tax free, an officers’ club, an NCO club, an Airman’s club, a library, a bowling alley and the motor pool.  On the west side of the base there was on base family housing and an elementary school.  There were no flight line and no airplanes.  All together we were about 2,000 GIs, mostly Security Service, Morse code, teletype, and Russian speaking intercept operators. 

I was assigned to Dog (Delta) Flight and given a green baseball cap.  There were Able, Baker, and Charlie Flights, blue, red and yellow baseball caps.  Between us we listened to the Russians and others 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, every day of the year.  As ditty bops, Morse Code Intercept Operators, we listened to trains, planes, army units, and anyone else we could find and copied it live on Smith Corona manual typewriters.  We used 7 ply computer paper on continuous sheets with carbon between them and all of that was sent to Fort Meade, Maryland.

The messages were in code, five letter groups of gibberish, but we were more concerned with who sent it and where it was from.  Maybe at Fort Meade they could read the body of the message.  At the beginning of the transmission there was a lot of information exchanged between  radio operators and we came to know them individually, their moods and personality, which we could hear in the code just as if they were speaking.  It was apparent they were Russian GIs just like us, doing a boring job with the same enthusiasm with which we did ours.  Sometimes it was interesting, most of the time it wasn't. 

The operations building was at the top of the hill separated from the rest of the base.  The antenna was further out in the woods.  I never saw it except for the bit of construction that poked over the trees.  We wore security badges and had to pass through a gate.  During the day when an armed Air Policeman manned the booth, it was pretty serious stuff, but at night one of us manned the booth.  I liked guard duty, it was an excuse to read a novel.  Of course, anyone other than us anywhere near the building would have been a remarkable event and they would have been quickly caught.  It never happened.  

In pretty quick order I found a flat, an English apartment, the second story of a row house on a street of row houses and shops.  Mr. and Mrs. Collins owned the house at 78 Castle Road and rented both floors to American GIs and their wives.  Castle Road went by a small  hill nearby that had once been Bedford Castle.  The Collins came to adopt Cathy and me and were our friends for the three years we were in England.  They were an older couple, probably older than my parents.  They owned a little shop on Kempston Road.  It was a small shop with barely enough room to stand in next to a counter.  Behind the counter were drawers and cabinets from floor to ceiling and if you told them what you wanted, they pulled it out of a cabinet and there it was.  I remember it was mostly soft goods, knitted things, baby clothes. 

They lived in a large comfortable house on the north side of town with a ragged hedge in front and a ramshackle garden in back.  They invited us to their home a couple of times, once to tea and once when Cathy’s parents came to visit.  They were wonderful warm people and particularly took care of us.  When we talked about moving into a nicer flat after a couple of years, they talked about buying a place we would like that they could rent to us. 

The day I went to town looking for a flat I saw a newspaper in a news rack with a screaming headline.  That’s how I learned Robert Kennedy had been shot.  I had cast my first vote ever in the California primary by absentee ballot that month.  I voted for Robert Kennedy.  Celebrating his victory in California he was shot by Sirhan Sirhan.  It was a miserable day.  Unimaginably life just went on after that, but assassination  had become a part of American politics.  In five short years Kennedy, King, and then Robert Kennedy were all cut down.  A few years later George Wallace was crippled by an assassin.  

Cathy arrived from Southern California.  We moved into 78 Castle Road, the upstairs flat, and we made love and nothing was said about that last night in California.  We went out shopping in the afternoon and Cathy bought a set of crystal water glasses.  They cost 60 schillings.  She thought she had a bargain, schillings and cents, but schillings were 12 pence and 12 schillings was a pound.  A pound was worth about $2.50 in 1968.  Sixty schillings was 5 pounds, about $14, more than a day’s pay for me at the time.  Things were inexpensive in England for our dollars but not crystal glasses.  Our flat was £23 a month.  It was built in 1870 and was uninsulated brick and sat low in the ground.  Bedford was in the Fens.  We learned Fens meant swamp.  The ground was always damp and our flat was always cold. 

We learned to speak English.  There were gas fires in our flat (apartment).  We paid for the gas in a meter downstairs that took schillings.  It was a cold night when we ran out of schillings.  Later we bought paraffin (kerosene) heaters.  They were dangerous and hard to use.  If I didn’t trim the wick just right it could fill the flat with thick greasy smoke before I could turn it off.  We bought kerosene at the base and stored it in 5 gallon jugs in the back of the flat.  

Our flat was four blocks from the center of town.  Bedford was a market town, the center of manufacturing and commerce for the area around us.  Only a few blocks from us and across the Ouse River was farmland, and a path to walk to Cardington, a village nearby, about a half hour away.  Two blocks east on Castle Road was the pub, the Gordon Arms.  Castle Road around us was flats and shops, a  bakery, a news agent, an off-license, a butcher, a barber, and a couple of green grocers.  High Street in the opposite direction was crowded with shops and restaurants. 

In college I was an English major and Cathy was a history major.  We were ecstatic to be in England.  It seemed too good to be true.  Our situation was as good as anything we could imagine.  I was making $250 a month which in 1968 was the same as a teacher in England was making.  A pint of beer was less than 2 schillings or 25 cents.  The first year it seemed like times were tight but by the time we left I was making over $500 a month and we were saving money for college.  I had money in my pocket.  It took a long time to ever be that rich again.        

I worked at the base, an eight hours and then back home.  I hitchhiked into the base.  Another GI going to work would pick me up.  It was shift work.  We worked four day shifts, had 24 hours off, and then four swing shifts, 24 hours off and then four midnight shifts and 72 hours off, 3 days off at the end of each shift.   The constant change was hard on the body but the days off were wonderful.  When I went home to our flat in Bedford I almost felt like a civilian. The Air Force and America seemed very far away.  

We took buses or trains to London, to Cambridge.  We visited all the villages around us.  We loved Bedford.  Neither one of us had ever lived in a small town and in Bedford we got to know people and exchanged greetings with people on the streets, shopkeepers and neighbors.  Once we drove to Stratford on Avon and saw two plays.  We joined the film society and borrowed books at the library.  We were living in England.  It was a dream come true for us. 

After I had been at the base for awhile, I signed up to take college classes.  In Europe the University of Maryland ran an Extension program with college classes right on the base.  The first class I took was Economics.  The professor was an Englishman from the London School of Economics making a few quid on the side.  He was a good professor and it was a good class.  The next class I took was Shakespeare, two semesters of it, taught by an American professor on sabbatical in Europe.  I took four semesters of German taught by a newly minted Lieutenant who had taught as a graduate student at the University of Michigan.  I took a class in Folklore and one in American Literature.  

All together I took 60 units of college classes.  I got A's in every class except for German and then I got B's.  If we worked the night of a class they let us leave to go to class.  One night I was driving to work and there was a German quiz that night.  I wasn’t prepared and I prayed there would be some event to postpone the test.  There was a power outage.  Since then I’ve learned my powers of prayer aren’t all that great, but at the time it was a nice coincidence. 

There was a woman, Betty, who worked at the base education office,  She was English.  During the War she had worked at General Eisenhower’s headquarters.  She and a lot of Brits liked Yanks.  They seemed to be amused by our friendliness and naiveté.  They enjoyed our sincerity.  Betty liked helping the kids going to college on the Base.  There were a lot of us.  You can’t be an American GI in Britain very long before you hear the refrain from World War II, “The problem with the Yanks is they’re oversexed, overpaid, overfed and over here.”  It was Betty who told me the American response to that,  “The problem with the Brits is they’re undersexed underpaid, underfed, and under Eisenhower.” 

The English called the Americans Yanks and when they weren’t around most of the GIs called the Brits Blokes.  Overall the British were very friendly to American GIs.  The older people had a wealth of good feelings left from the War.  They knew and liked our fathers.  People our own age didn’t appreciate us much, we were still overpaid and oversexed and still in England, but the girls seemed to like the GIs.  As GIs we were treated better in England than we were in the United States.  In the US GIs were held responsible Vietnam.     

And while the sentiment in England was against Americans in Vietnam, we weren’t sneered at by anyone in England as we were at home. I wasn’t there, but from a distance in that time, it felt like we were the enemy in our own country.  In England we were respected for serving our country.   In the pub where I drank, there was a Scotsman who had served in Korea and East Africa.  He asked me how it felt to be fighting a policy war? 

I learned to act like a guest in England.  I was eager to learn everything British and enjoy it as much as I could.  Cathy and I lived in town.  We made friends in England and we did as much as we could to be a part of life there.  We even learned to speak English.  I could understand people in Bedford most of the time and many people in London, though one time we drove to Northhampton, a few miles away, and we had to ask everyone to repeat themselves a couple of times before we got anything they were saying.  Accents and dialects could vary in England in only a few miles.           

The last summer I was in England I was drinking at a pub across the street from the Bedford Times.  A gentleman from the newspaper was fascinated by my speech.  He said, “ I know you’re not from England but let me guess where you’re from.”  He went through every country in the Commonwealth and finally was frustrated to be left only with the United States as his last choice.  He said, “Well I don’t know anything about it, but you must be from New England.”

“No,”  I told him. “I’m from Los Angeles.”  He was incredulous.  In three years in England I changed to an English vocabulary and syntax.  I cleaned up my accent and stopped using  Americanisms.  People who knew called it a mid-Atlantic accent.  A local on the base who worked with Americans said he spoke half, like off, and half, like hat.  It was more than just speech, it was also clothing, haircut, and body language.  I even ate kippers (smoked herring) and rollmops (pickled herring) and liked them.  As a 21 year old in Britain when I arrived, in three years I became Hoff and Haf.  It was a great experience. 

Years later in the San Fernando Valley where I grew up I was asked where I was from.   When I went to UCLA I was downgraded on a paper because the paper size was British standard not 8 ½ by 11 as required by the university and my spellings, colour, honour, and centre were all British.  I cited the Times in a class discussion one time and had to explain that I didn’t mean the LA Times or the New York Times.   I wasn’t even conscious of it, most of the time.  Our two year old son Sean learned quickly to call lorries trucks and to make siren sounds that suited Americans instead of the wigwagging sound of British panda cars. We began to fit back into the United States but never as completely as before.  

Thirty years later I was still brewing a pot of strong English tea and drinking it with milk and sugar in the morning.   

XI.

Security Service

I spent six months learning Morse code at Keesler Air Force Base in Biloxi Mississippi.  I was not very good at it and I didn’t get much better after I was sent to the 6950th Security Group at RAF Chicksands.  I  sat at a rack of two World War II era radios, R390s, and listened to the Russians and other Warsaw Pact members send Morse code for eight hours a day.

It was easy enough to find people sending it.  Our giant antenna array was pointed at Eastern Europe and Western Russia.  There were bands on the radio dial that were particularly rich with traffic.  We would listen to two radio operators chattering back and forth, telling each other who they were and what they were going to send, and then they settled into the body of their message sending groups of four or five letters and numbers in long sequences some going on for pages.  We couldn't read it.  We just sent it on.  I don't know if anyone else could read it.  

Sometimes we copied airplanes, civilian and military, Estimated Times of Arrival, Airports, directions and other details.  I even copied trains sending Morse code, but no one was very interested in that.  We’d look for stuff, Soviet space efforts, army units, sometimes civilian activity.  There were assignments and things we copied regularly and there were times we just searched for what we could find. 

My first summer there I copied Russian tank units.  We watched the buildup of Warsaw Pact Military Exercises in the summer of 1968.  Dubcek and the Czechoslovakian people were in the midst of Prague Spring.   Leonid Brezhnev and the hardliners in the Soviet Union were against it.  It felt like the excitement of Perastroika 20 years too early, but just as the US crushed Salvador Allende five years later, Brezhnev crushed Dubcek. 

I remember the night in August, 1968, we came to work a midnight shift.  All week we had seen Polish, East German, Bulgarian, Hungarian and Russian units staging on the borders of Czechoslovakia.  And then they went in.  It was amazing, hundreds of thousands of troops pouring into a small country and securing it in a tight lockdown in just a few hours.  They seemed to have soldiers  at every corner and tanks everywhere.  The Czechoslovakians resisted but it was futile against such a force. 

For the next few days we tensely watched as Dubcek flew to Moscow to meet the Russians.  Within a week or two Czechoslovakia had a new government returning meekly to the Soviet fold. 

The sheer naked power of the Soviet military was frightening to watch.  NATO, the U.S. and its allies, of course, went on alert.  In Security Service we were always on alert, but within a few hours the rest of the US Military in Europe stood ready if the Russians moved beyond Czechoslovakia.  The small British military was ready with us and over a period of weeks, the rest of NATO put itself into position to resist a Russian invasion.  Quickly it was obvious the only credible force between the Russians and Paris was the U.S. Military. 

I was going to work one day that week and a Britain patted me on the arm and said, “Hello, Yank, glad you’re here.” 

The rest of the time the job was mostly boring.  I did not enjoy the work and I wasn’t very good at it.  One time we were told to search everything to find out when a Soviet manned satellite would be coming down.  I told the Sergeant it would be 0126 Greenwich Mean Time or Zulu as we called it.  He came back a few minutes later and said, “You’re right!  You’re right!  How did you get that?”  I told him I read it in the London Times that morning.   

Copying Morse code for three years was not my best job.  I was proud to be part of NATO and the defense of Europe against the Russian Bear.  I loved being in England.  When it was happening four years seemed like a long time out of my life, but looking back it was a good time.  

XII.

Our First Son

Cathy announced that she was pregnant in August, our first summer in England.  We were ecstatic.  Neither Cathy nor I were practicing Catholics but we certainly came from that background and during our courtship, the idea of having children was exciting to both of us.  We felt like adults.  

In August, 1968 I was 21 years old and she was 20.  We were living on our own in England. 

For the first few months Cathy used birth control but she went off the pill as soon as we had settled in.  We were the first of our set to have a child among the airmen and their wives who came to Chicksands in 1968.  The whole experience was exciting to us.  I think one day she went to the medical clinic on base and we met in the Airman’s Club for lunch.  She told me we were going to have a child together.  I remember the table we were sitting at when she told me. 

Sean was born April 25^th, 1969.  I used to always mix up his birthday with  our anniversary on April 20^th.  Then I made the mnemonic, first we were married and then he was born.  Cathy told me the gossips in El Segundo where she grew up were disappointed it was a year after we got married. 

We lived in Bedford, about 10 miles from the base.  Toward the end of the nine months Cathy had labor pains frequently and two or three times we went to the base and got prepared to go to the Air Froce hospital in London and they called it off, Braxton Hicks contractions or false labor.  The last time an ambulance came out to get her and took her to East Ruslip near London.  I was told by the doctors,one more time it was Braxton Hicks and normally they would send her home, but since we lived so far away they would keep her and induce labor the next day.  I should go home and return in the morning.  There was plenty of time. 

After a long train trip home and back, I arrived back at the base hospital  about 10 o’clock the next morning.  I got to see my son Sean for the first time.  He had been born two hours before. 

From the start, he was an incredible youngster, so beautiful and lovely to look at.  He was a delight to be around.  Early on he developed a love for cars and we began buying him matchbox cars.  He had dozens of them and would spend his time lining them up to play with them.  He slept in a crib in the front room.  At some point before he was two years old, he learned to climb out of it and play with his cars until we got up.  Usually by the time, we joined him he already had them all lined up and running with motor sounds he made. 

We bought a used Volkswagen shortly after he was born.  He could spot any Volkswagen product from long distances.  VW was beginning to manufacture squarebacks and notchbacks and it seemed there were odd VWs wherever Sean looked.  We had no clue they were Volkswagens and Sean would announce “Volkswagen!” with great delight.       

It was a wonderful time having a baby and Sean was a wonderful baby.  We took him around town in a large perambulator, pram (baby buggy) that we bought used.  We dressed him warmly and went to parks and took pictures whenever we could.  His grandparents from El Segundo came to visit him.  His grandmother was worried that if he came to harm unbaptized his soul would go to limbo.  My seminary training told me we didn’t a priest to administer the sacrament of baptism, so we baptized him at home to satisfy Minnie.  Later Monsignor (Major) O’Donnell made it official at the base chapel. 

My sister came to see him and stayed with us for a couple of weeks.  Cathy’s brother Alan, a 16 year old, came and stayed part of the summer with us.  Alan learned to drink beer at the pubs.  I came home from work and he looked dreamy eyed and punchy.  Somehow an American 16 year old looks 18 to the British.  I guess he was tall enough and well fed. My parents from Burbank came to see their first grandchild.  It was the middle of winter and we had to have a doctor to see my mother for a terrible respiratory infection.  

Sean began talking in England and by the time we came home, his grandparents and everyone else wanted him to talk to them, because he had an English accent.  I think it lasted less than two months.  When he was 20 he went back to England from Paris where he was living and got his British passport.      

XIII.

Insanity

For the first few days I was locked up in a room with just a bed in the psychiatric unit at Lakenheath AFB in England.  I heard voices.  I saw things that probably didn’t happen.  I tried to speak French.  I would have told the doctors about the voices but they were in Russian and the doctors didn’t have security clearances high enough to to know what language I was hearing.  There was even a guard outside my door until my own clearance was pulled.    

A week or so after that I had a dream.  I could tell it was a dream, a very bad dream, but I knew it was a dream.  I was getting better. 

It all  started after my family, Cathy, Sean and I, got back from 30 days leave driving to France and Italy.  It was a fabulous vacation.  When we returned it was springtime in England.  I went back to work and everything seemed to be good, very good.  I was having a little back pain and I went to see the doctor.  He prescribed a muscle relaxant, a new wonder drug called Valium. 

I took the Valium and I was off.  Gradually I slept less and less.  During that time Cathy had a miscarriage but I was so busy marveling at the wonder of my life that I missed it.  I didn’t even know it happened.  Friends of ours, Tom and Anna, had a crisis in their life and Tom and I stayed up the whole night looking for Anna.  The next day I was like a high voltage wire talking nonstop and going faster and faster. 

I went to work at midnight and sat down at my rack.  The first thing to do at work was to type in my name at the top of a blank page.  I couldn’t remember my name.  It seemed a simple thing and I tried a little harder and it got harder.  I stared at the page and tried desperately to remember my name.  I couldn’t.  I didn't know who I was.  I pulled the earphones off and I think I shouted in panic.  Whatever I did it caused quite a stir on Dog Flight in the Manual Morse Section at about 10 minutes after midnight.  Sergeant Hornbecker took me down to the Base Medical Clinic and the corpsman there tried to figure out what to do. 

Later I learned the corpsman with Horny was trying to figure out  how to undo and use a strait jacket.  While they left me alone I was sinking into a terrifying well of nothingness and I couldn’t stop myself.  I was as frightened as I had ever been in my life.  Thank God, the corpsman didn’t figure the stait jacket out before the doctor arrived and gave me a shot of Thorazine and maybe another. 

I woke up the next day and life was still wonderful, I was talking to anyone who would listen and talking if no one was listening.  The doctor explained I was going to go to the hospital up at Lakenheath for observation.  I had a reasonably calm ride up there but at the hospital everything seemed to fall apart. 

I was locked in a room and a guard was posted outside my door.  Apparently the doctor with a security clearance high enough to treat Chicksands patients was on leave and the other doctors were being careful.   After a day or two the guard was gone, but I was insane. 

I was tortured by poundings on the wall, the sound of steel beds being dragged across a hard floor in the room on the other side of the wall, there was no room, and voices I heard in English and Russian.  I didn’t know what was going on but it was terrible and I couldn’t get away.  After two or three days of this, the doctor told me he was going to give me Lithium.  He explained that it was a new drug that hadn’t yet been approved but was being used very successfully in Australia.  After a couple of days he got permission to administer it to me.  Apparently the doses I was taking were so high that there was some danger involved and a corpsman arrived twice a day and drew blood from me. 

Within a day or two I had calmed down enough to join the rest of the patients.  I think this must have been when I had my bad dream. 

There was an anorexic teenager and a couple of other airmen who seemed nice enough.  We were a little group of crazies.  We attended group sessions with a psychologist and there were nurses and doctors.  The voices continued but not as bad.  I always had to be doing something, playing ping pong or talking, or drawing or playing pool.  One time I saw an airman in a wheel chair being taken down the hall and I knew he was being taken for electroshock treatments.  There were events and amazing connections going in flashes of heightened awareness all day long.    

I know there were no electroshock treatments being done at Lakenheath but I believed it at the time and it was hard to convince myself months later that everything I saw and heard was not real.  Even a few years later when I read about the military doing LSD experiments, I thought maybe that’s what happened.  It was hard to believe it was all in my head and not something being done to me. 

There were meetings with the doctors and nurses.  One day I decided not to tell the truth about the voices to the doctor .  When he asked me if I was hearing voices, I told him, “No.”  A day or two later I got to go home. 

I have no sense of time in all of that.  The best I can do is a day or two here or there.  I think I was at Lakenheath less than two weeks, but more than a week.  I made a leather wallet in occupational therapy which Cathy carried for years after that.  

I went home with a prescription for Lithium salts.  For a few days, a few weeks, a few months, I don’t know, I was very quiet and contained.  I sat in our flat and tried to feel sane, tried to have control.  After a while it didn’t seem so hard.  Sometime on my own I stopped taking the Lithium.  It made everything taste bad.  I think the doctor went along with that

I went back to the base.  My security clearance had been revoked.  That’s when the guard left.  In the military, apparently if I didn’t have a security clearance, I wasn’t a risk.  Dog Flight’s first sergeant, Senior Master Sergeant Scarborough, tried to get me a temporary position on the base newspaper until a determination could be made about where I was going.  The Personnel Section stepped in and I was assigned to them. 

I could type and for a few days I helped out at Personnel.  They were nice enough.  I had the shift worker’s dream of a day job, five days a week, with weekends off.  By this time I was a three striper like Airman 1^st Class Steinberg, but in 1970 we were called sergeants, but we still cleaned latrines.  The assignments clerk, another sergeant left for one reason or another and I stepped into his place. 

I became the assignments clerk for RAF Chicksands.  It was during the Vietnam War and I spent my days working on itineraries and orders for Airmen and Sergeants being shipped all over the world though mostly through Travis AFB near Sacramento to South Vietnam or Thailand.  I enjoyed it.  I had a good time.  Sergeant Graham was my boss and our boss was Master Sergeant Erwin.  There was a captain as well, but Sergeant Erwin addressed the Captain in his Alabama drawl as “Son.”  I don’t ever remember the Captain as having much to do with the operation of the section.   

Sergeant Erwin brought his coffee and a sandwich to work in a net bag like the English used to go shopping and one time I saw a copy of the New Republic showing through it.  He was a World War II New Deal Democrat from Alabama and as fine a man as I’ve ever met.  He had a serious problem with the bottle and it seemed to be destroying him slowly.  

I must have done a pretty good job because at the end of six months, Sergeant Erwin and Sergeant Graham asked me what I wanted to do, where I wanted to go, as something they could do to return the favor.  They thought they could keep me in personnel if I wanted to stay or let me go back to the States or whatever I wanted.  I knew that once having had a security clearance that it was never going to look good  if I lost it.  I said I wanted to go back to Dog Flight.  My base medical file was written showing a drug reaction as what had had happened.  It seems everybody was watching out for me.    

The whole time I had been in personnel, Captain Sinclair of the Air Police and in charge of security clearances for the base had been trying to get me ordered off the base, sent to Torrejon, Spain or somewhere other than RAF Chicksands and Security Service.  I was told he was writing memos that had to go through personnel and that Sergeant Erwin was attaching explanations to the memos that negated them and that there had been a running war between Captain Sinclair and the Personnel Department.  Personnel won. 

At the same time the Air Force began giving a test for promotion to Staff Sergeant.  The first one was that February.  Ron Graham, my boss and Sergeant Erwin recommended I take it.  I said I didn’t have a clearance.  They let me know it didn’t require a clearance and I took the test.  Before I left personnel they informed me I had been put on the Staff Sergeants list and I would be promoted shortly.  That day they gave me my new stripes, four of them, to take home. 

I went back to work on Dog Flight.  I sewed those stripes on a couple of months later.  I spent the rest of my six months in the service as the assistant to the First Sergeant.  I typed reports, supervised clean up details and did whatever Master Sergeant Lewis required.  It was a good time.  I enjoyed it.  I never had to listen to Morse Code again. 

This is a good place to talk about Sergeants.  Until I had my breakdown I didn’t realize how well we were cared for by our sergeants.  It was a Staff Sergeant I worked with who took me down to the Medical Clinic.  Hornbeck or Horny was a good friend and somebody who took gentle care of me that night.  Chief Madigan, Chief Master Sergeant Madigan, the senior enlisted man at Chicksands made sure my wife was able to come see me in the hospital when she needed to.  One time he drove her to Lakenheath himself to see me, three hours away from Chicksands.

When I returned from the hospital our first sergeant at the time, Senior Master Sergeant Dick Scarborough was watching out for me and working to get me a good situation and to protect me from people who didn’t care.  Pretty quickly Technical Sergeant Ron Graham and his boss Master Sergeant Erwin were watching out for me.  Chief Madigan was always there somewhere in the background. 

The military could be pretty impersonal place but the sergeants were like mother ducks, they watched out for us.  They protected their own.  Like parents they cared about us and made the system work like a family.

For the first ten years and more after that I seemed on the edge of going back there.  I think it wasn't until I got sober 13 years later that I lost my fear that it was something that could happen again.   

XIV

Living with Mania

What I had was a manic episode.  I was and probably am a manic-depressive or at least have that type of personality.  Now it’s called bipolar disorder. I prefer manic depressive. 

My manic episode was bad, probably unloosed by the Valium I took.  By the time I got to the hospital I had been going so hard and so long I was at the virtual end of my physical endurance.  I hadn’t slept, I hadn’t stopped and everything kept going faster and faster.  The doctors worried that I would crash and they wouldn’t be able to stop me, that I might run myself to death.    

I surprised everyone by how quickly the Lithium seemed to work.  I took Lithium for a few months after that and then stopped because it made everything taste bad.  I was a little depressed for a few months afterwards, but then life resumed.  Working at Personnel was enjoyable.  Being promoted to Staff Sergeant was wonderful. 

After the service I waited for it to happen again.  And it didn’t.  Like a lot of manic depressives or bipolar people I treated my highs and lows with alcohol, beer and wine, and then later martinis and Irish coffees. I was comfortable with depression.  Highs scared me.  Bipolar and alcoholism are related somehow.  One doesn’t cause the other but they seem to go hand in hand together.  When I got sober I worried that I wouldn’t be able to  handle the highs anymore, but it wasn’t a problem.

One time after I was sober I really got out there.  During the Los Angeles Civil Disturbance I began working in City Hall and for the first few days, everything was hectic and intense.  I didn’t get any sleep and the little sleep I got was disturbed.  I began to get crazy and grandiose.  I got some sleep and life seemed to become more normal.  It seemed that way to me.  There were some bad signs that I was still functioning in a different way.  I broke up with my girlfriend and fiancé.  We had lived together for over a year.  I borrowed money from retirement plan because I needed things.  Looking back on it, it was more serious than I thought at the time, but it ended with enough sleep and normal work.    

When I took the psych test to become a peace officer at San Francisco Juvenile Hall, it showed up on the test and I explained my service experience to the psychologist and I was cleared to work in Juvenile Hall.  When I took the psych test to become a Ranger, it came up again.  This time I thought it was the end of my application.  They asked for my service records and I got them.  They looked at my service medical file and set up an appointment to talk to a psychologist.  He cleared me to become a police officer.

I am surprised it never happened again with the exception of 1992.  I spent many years waiting for the other shoe to fall.  I think it was closely related to my alcoholism.  When I got sober I worried about it, but life seemed easier and I became more confident. 

The mania I experienced in 1992 during the LA Civil Disturbance scared me.  I had really gotten out there and made a fool of myself with people I worked with.  It seemed OK while it was going on.  It was only in retrospect I began to realize it had been full blown mania and how serious it had been.  When I became a Ranger and was doing call outs, searches and other crises at all hours I was even more careful to make sure I got enough sleep.  Proper sleep for me has been the cure for the mania of manic depression. 

The depression is easier.  I’ve handled it with physical exercise and just showing up.  I lower my expectations for work and just wait it out.  I have had thoughts of suicide but never taken it very far.  Depression has always felt to me like a gathering in, something like a renewal, whereas mania is an expenditure, a letting loose, a draining.  It feels good while it’s happening but it has a hell of a hangover.  I think I may have had a manic episode in college.  Part of college felt like one long manic episode and it is hard to tell the difference between insanity and late adolescence. 

I’m glad I had the experience.  I think it made me more empathetic, made me aware how vulnerable I am and how vulnerable we all can be, how tenuous our hold on reality actually is.  I think it’s what makes me treat people in extreme circumstances like human beings, whether it be insanity or incarceration.  I know even in the insanity there was an I there.  I got to come back.  Like sobriety, sanity, being able to function, is something I’ve always been grateful for. 

A little bipolar or manic depressive is just who I am. 

XV

Another Son, an Honorable Discharge and Home

Shortly after I got home from Lakenheath hospital Cathy decided we needed to have another child.  We needed to take advantage of the healthcare we had in the Air Force or as it turned out, what we had in England.   So we did.  

The idea was that she was going to have her baby at home with a midwife.  She did all of the pre-natal with an English doctor and midwife and the pregnancy went well.  Our home was visited and her pregnancy and health were evaluated and we were approved for a home birth.  The night of May the 9^th I called the health service and Mrs. Roselli, the midwife we had already met, a Polish woman, arrived at the house and took over.  She had a nurse with her from Kenya.  Our friend Anna came over to help out.  Later a doctor arrived.  Mrs. Roselli said he wasn’t needed but came because there was nothing else to do. He knew to stay out of Mrs. Roselli's way.  

In the middle of the night, the wee hours of May 10^th, the Kenyan nurse delivered the baby under Mrs. Roselli’s careful eye.  During the birth the doctor sat in the corner and made comments.  Most of the night before that I sat in the dining room with Anna and drank Vodka and lime juice.  Mrs. Roselli made a pointed remark about her own teetotaler status, but I don’t remember being drunk, just excited.  I went into the bedroom and stood by the side of the bed and watched the birth. 

I remember when the baby was born they laid him down on the bed beside Cathy and he was all blue and didn’t move.  For a terrible moment I thought he was stillborn but then he screamed and his little body bloomed in color.  For me it was an instant of death and resurrection in less than a minute.  They attended to him and we had a new son.  Ted, Edward Charles Duggan, screamed for the rest of the morning.  When he was awake he screamed.  He definitely let the world know he had come.  He had a good voice. 

We were exhausted.  The nurse and midwife cleaned up and left.  We were at home, we had a new baby in the bed and it was done.  After the sun rose I brought Sean in, Sean was 2 years old, to see his new brother.  Later that day another nurse came to visit.  I left and went to register the birth at the registry office downtown. 

I think it was that summer that I was finally accepted by the Airman Education Commissioning Program, something I had applied for years before.  If I wanted to stay in the Air Force they would send me to college and then I would be an officer and serve another six years.  I was ready to get out.  It had seemed attractive half way through my enlistment but with only months to go it was no longer attractive.  I was accepted at UCLA and San Francisco State.  We decided it was better to return home to LA and so I made plans to attend UCLA. 

The last few months in the service were very comfortable.  We loved England and we had learned to live with the Air Force.  Being a staff sergeant was much easier than being an airman. 

We left England in August and arrived in Los Angeles in time for one of the hottest periods ever in LA.  I remember one day the temperature reached 127° in the San Fernando Valley.  We bathed Ted our new baby in a cool bath and after one visit to my parents in Burbank stayed in El Segundo with Cathy’s parents where the temperature was only in the high 100s. 

We found an apartment in North Hollywood in a subsidized housing complex and I started UCLA in October.    

XVI

Banker

One job skill I’ve never had is looking for work.  In the fall of 1972 I went looking for work.  Mabel Wedlaw at the unemployment office sent me to Bank of America.  So I became a banker.  I had one other prospect also from Mabel for a company called Western Gear.  I took the B of A job.  It was a good job as a public relations representative, a writer for B of A.  It paid $9,000 a year, a good salary in 1972 and about $4,000 a year more than I expected fresh out of college.   

I wasn’t a very good writer and what I didn’t know at the time is that writing like any other trade is a skill to be learned.  I thought I had to be good at it out of the blocks and I wasn’t.  I was so uncomfortable having to do something I had no confidence in, I quickly got out of it and went into community relations with Bank of America.  Community relations was about talking to people; organizing people in taking action.   I learned how to do it as I went.  I don’t think I had a preconception of how good I should be. 

I transferred to Bank of America’s Urban Affairs Department and there I organized volunteer efforts that taught consumer finance in adult school, matched mentors for Job Corps participants and made connections between the bank and community groups.  I got to work for Joe Angello and I began learning how to interact with people. 

Before I got sober I had a tendency to burn myself out wherever I went.  In those days I was impressive in the start and poor in the long run, a flash in the pan.  My ambition took me to credit training just as my credit at Urban Affairs was running out.  I became a loan officer.  I really wasn’t very good at that.  I had some success opening a new office for the Walnut Fair Oaks branch as the agency manager.  After that it was downhill.  I found myself in over my head and after two years I fled Bank of America into commercial sales for a company that sold paper and rotary press forms. 

I made good money, but sales either takes a huge amount of self confidence or more often monster insecurities disguised as self confidence.  I had neither in sufficient amount.  I did a lot of birdwatching that year instead of selling paper.  One time the manager's wife came into the office and later commented to her husband, "For a guy who supposedly works indoors, he sure has quite a tan."  After a year I got back into credit and became the manger of mobile home financing operation for a medium sized independent insurance brokerage.  The credit market tightened up and I was struggling to make a living and after nine months I was lucky to get a job with City National Bank. 

By this time I had enough experience to actually learn to become a loan officer at City National Bank.  I enjoyed it.  Unfortunately, my alcoholism which had not served me well anywhere, got worse at City National Bank and my career was grinding down to nothing.  When I joined City National they were a small but dynamic Beverly Hills Jewish bank.  I started at Encino and after a year and a half I got myself the job of assistant manager of the Century City Office and failed completely.  There were challenges in the branch but I was not up to them.  I remember one time I had stayed up until the wee hours of the morning drinking wine by myself.  I came to work in the morning smelling of wine and still a little drunk.  Most of the time I was oblivious how others might see my drinking, but even I knew coming to work drunk was not a good thing.  

I was nearly fired, not for drinking but just incompetence, not measuring up.  My job at the bank was saved by a friend, a drinking buddy in credit administration, and I became a relief loan officer at various branches that needed someone temporarily.  I recovered a little and got assigned to a branch with an incompetent and tyrannical manager for whom no one else would work and I couldn’t do any better.  I got sober while working at the Sunset Doheny branch.  In AA they say you have to reach bottom before you can get sober.  In my career as a banker, Sunset Doheny was pretty near the bottom. 

Joe’s wife was from a well known and wealthy family and he rode their money.  The branch itself catered to wealthy Beverly Hills types, rock and roll bands and minor celebrities.  Cher without makeup or presence, looking like a washed out mouse, spent hours with our new accounts clerk who was a friend of hers.  Joe tortured his employees because he could and my customers were tattooed and pierced rockers in the days before that was common.        

In 1984 after 8 months of sobriety I left City National Bank and went to Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank in downtown Los Angeles.  As a career move it quickly proved to be the wrong place to go.  My first day instead of going to an office in headquarters as I thought I was, I was shown my desk on the branch floor, next to a retreaded B of A Vice President who I had known many years ago.  I thought I should have left the first day, but my pride kept me there.  DKB and its predecessor Japan California Bank had been in California 25 years taking care of the interests of its Japanese customers and trying to tap into the rich California market without any success.  They didn’t have a clue before and they didn’t have a clue after I joined them. 

The Japanese officers there worked hard to help their Japanese customers get into the California market, to take whatever technologies they were looking for, make quick real estate profits and generally take advantage of the American market in any way they could.  I stayed at DKB 9 years and after I left the orgy of buying eventually collapsed with the Tokyo real estate bubble and so did DKB, a zombie bank it was swallowed up by other Japanese banks who were only marginally healthier. 

I was still learning how to live a sober life when I joined DKB.  I quickly realized that being a token American officer in an organization that was lost was not the worst way to make a living.  I got a decent paycheck without very demanding work and I could put my energy and drive into learning to live sober.  At DKB they were strict about punctuality.  It was important to get to work on time and no one should leave before quitting time.  What I did in between, they really didn’t care.  I went to noontime AA meetings and long lunches with my sober friends afterwards.  My downtown AA community was my classroom for life and my evening meetings in South Pasadena were an opportunity to develop my leadership and community skills.

After the first year Yoshihiro Hayashi came to DKB from Tokyo and we became friends and I enjoyed working for Hayashi-san.  I felt like I was doing something and I learned how to work with the Japanese.  I’ve always enjoyed foreign environments and I learned a lot about collaborative work from my Japanese friends.  After getting used to that environment I much preferred it to the competitive American environment where people often seemed to work against each other.    

In 1990 I became the CRA officer for DKB.  CRA, the Community Reinvestment Act, was an obscure law that the first Bush administration revitalized as a way to put the pressure for economic development on the private sector and take the pressure off the Federal government.  Banks couldn’t operate without a satisfactory CRA exam, including foreign banks, who had no clue on how to develop business and lend in “disadvantaged” areas.  The meaning of “disadvantaged” at the time was people of color and areas where they were concentrated. 

DKB had no idea at the time that I actually had experience in working with community groups, and Latinos and African Americans. 

I went to meetings hosted by the regulators and consultants in the field.  I began to get a sense of CRA.  There was a regular circle of CRA people among the more sophisticated banks.  They didn’t have much time for the Japanese and Chinese who were mostly clueless.  They weren’t helpful to me at all with the exception of Bob McNealy, a very good man from Union Bank.  Slowly I began to figure things out.  I was lucky to link up with an old friend from City National Bank, Gordon Lejeune, who had become City National Bank’s CRA officer. 

In 1991 I was a member of the board of Casa de las Amigas, a women’s alcohol and drug recovery house and that year I became the chairman of their annual fundraising event.  I had a lot of help and guidance from people with experience and a wonderful committee and the fundraiser came off very well.  I learned a huge amount about organizing and got a great confidence boost. 

So at the end of 1991 when I finally had secured a seat on a CRA committee organized by the major banks, I was able to join Gordon on an effort to form a Community Development Corporation, one of the goals of the committee.  In March, we had a well attended public meeting with the all the banks and community groups from South Central Los Angeles to explore the way a CDC could be formed.  In April, the Rodney King verdict civil disturbance occurred.  In the aftermath from my work on the CDC I knew the players, City Hall, the banking community, their regulators and the community groups. 

The third day of the disturbance I volunteered to work for City Councilmember Mark Ridley Thomas and joined his office as a loaned executive for 90 days to work on the CDC.  Earlier Mark had given us his support for a CDC if I promised to follow through and make it happen.  DKB didn’t understand why they had to loan me to the City, but they were intimidated into going along with it. 

I spent 1992 and into 1993 working on the goals of the Community Reinvestment Committee.  We put together a coalition of banks that formed a CDC and got it off the ground in 1993.  I also worked with Bob McNealy on the same committee to get a Community Financial Resource Center opened at Martin Luther King Boulevard and Figueroa.  A couple of years later Bob and I were both screwed in succession by the executive director I pushed to hire.  She didn’t like the oversight Bob and then myself demanded on what became her own personal juggernaut.   

The director is still there but the CFRC is one of those organizations that in my opinion still gets funding but doesn’t do much other than promote itself.  The CDC was killed by Bank of America.  I didn’t realize forming the CDC was a back room agreement between Don Mullane of B of A and the City of Los Angeles during the Security Pacific “merger” talks.  After a couple of years the Southern California Business Development Corporation was struggling, it could have survived, and Don had succeeded as chairman and shut it down.  After the buyout was completed he had no further use for it. 

I also worked with Sister Diane of Esperanza Community Housing Corporation.  Esperanza built real affordable housing.  Esperanza and groups like it, built and rehabilitated housing in South Central Los Angeles.  They did great work that benefited the communities they served but it wasn’t much in comparison to the need.  Los Angeles needed real affordable housing and instead we got token affordable housing.  It’s always been difficult.  Do you take what’s doable or do you strive for more.  In the post-Reagan era we did the doable.     

DKB took credit for all of my work with the bank coalitions and community groups and received a satisfactory CRA. 

In 1994 I was ready to quit banking, my youngest son was graduating from high school.  For my own needs I no longer had to make the money I had been making but then I got a call from California Commerce Bank, a Los Angeles subsidiary of Banamex, the largest bank in Mexico.  Banamex had a serious CRA problem and needed help.  I was learning to speak Spanish and a year working for Banamex seemed like a great opportunity. 

I continued working with the community groups I knew.  I had an expertise in fundraising and building bridges between community groups and the banks.  I continued to work with Sister Diane and California Commerce Bank had a president active with Catholic Charities and I worked with Catholic Charities in supporting a Women’s Shelter.  I enjoyed working at Banamex.  I was well paid and when I went to the Bay Area, they kept me on working my own schedule and showing up when I needed to.  It was hard to give up a job where I made good money doing only what I wanted to do.  I stayed with California Commerce Bank until 1999.  I quit banking in October of that year and took a year off with the intention of looking for work in a completely different field. 

When the year was over I got a job as a consumer credit counselor, then a juvenile hall counselor and finally as a State Park Ranger.            

XVII

Benjamin

At the end of 1974 Cathy was a fulltime student a Cal State LA.  Sean was in kindergarten at Glenfilez Boulevard Elementary School and Ted was enrolled at the pre-school at Cal State LA.  I was working in the Urban Affairs Department at Bank of America.   Cathy and I had had a rough time in  our marriage.  We had gotten through England OK, even with a bad start, but when we got home, the tensions began to increase.  Cathy seemed to be angry and jealous of my going to school and then off to work.  I wasn’t committed to Cathy and things were rough between us.  I think we had married very young and it didn’t feel very comfortable to either one of us as we began to grow up.

Then we went to Marriage Encounter.  It was in the early days of Marriage Encounter and Chuck Gallagher, a Jesuit priest, was leading most of the weekends.  Chuck and a small circle of couples had adapted encounter groups to married couples and devised this weekend without much sleep.  The honest sharing of encounter was between the couple who attended it.  We were encouraged to tell each other our innermost feelings and to share them in a loving way.  For Cathy and me it came just in time to save our marriage.  It worked and that was a good thing.  

There were cultish aspects of Marriage Encounter.  They intimidated the participants into giving a lot of money and attending information meetings and other events over getting sleep and other obligations.  They proselytized with a heavy hand and we were expected to bring everybody we knew to Marriage Encounter.  We were encouraged to go to weekends as often as we could and outside the weekends we formed groups that met in homes and we got to know other couples.  Marriage Encounter was very Catholic and we began attending church.  Marriage Encounter created community in a way that wasn’t usually seen in Catholic parishes.    

It was a very good thing for us.  Cathy and I became respectful of each other and much more loving.  It helped us to develop and nurture the love we had for each other. 

These weekends conducted at local hotels, started Friday night and couples would share intimate aspects of their relationship.  After a sharing by a couple on a subject, we would go back to our rooms and write to each other about the topic.  The communication on difficult subjects made it a very intimate weekend with breakthroughs in our relationship that continued on.  We learned like other couples to bring a jug of wine on these weekends.  Alcoholism was never one of those subjects discussed.  The Catholic Church we threw ourselves into, was very Irish and alcohol was a common social lubricant.  I never heard it discouraged by anyone.  I think among Catholics alcoholism was the elephant in the living room. 

In February, 1975 Cathy told me she was pregnant.  We were Catholic but we still practiced birth control.  Early on Cathy had used the pill.  She had tried an IUD but didn’t do well with it and in 1974 and 1975 we were using a spermicidal gel.  It was inconvenient but easier healthwise and apparently not all that effective.  At the time, I thought Cathy’s pregnancy was convenient for her.  She was doing well in school, had gotten a job with the day care center as a clerical person and things were going well, but my thinking at the time was that she was frightened of success and the pregnancy let her off from that.  I had felt railroaded when pretty much on her own she decided to have a second child just before we got out of the service.  I think my role at the time was very passive and I resented that she seemed to take advantage of that. 

I think it’s important that pregnancies and birth be viewed in the most positive aspect and so I did when Cathy announced she was pregnant.  I don’t know how Catholic we are but I think children born should always be greeted as gifts from God.  We were in a good place and it was a good thing.  I was doing well at Bank of America and at Cathy’s insistence we began house hunting.  Before the baby was born we found a house in Glassell Park and bought it.  The house a little way up the hill from Eagle Rock Boulevard cost us $33,000 dollars and we used the GI Bill to make that purchase.  It stretched us financially; the payments were $333 a month.  I was making $12,000 a year and taking home about $700. 

Benjamin was born October 14, 1975, two weeks after we moved in.  Our friends from Marriage Encounter helped us with the move and we were welcomed into the new parish, St. Bernard’s, by couples we already knew.  Benjamin was born at Kaiser Hospital on Sunset, our first American born child.  As I had with Ted, I got to attend the birth.  Shortly after Benjamin was born we got a dog and became the classic family, three boys and a dog.. 

Life was good, little league, involvement in our local parish, community.  We went on vacations to Uncle Warren’s farm.  Warren and Frannie were Cathy’s aunt and uncle in Bellingham, Washington.  Benjamin himself was quite a character.  I think he had to be tougher than the other boys just to survive.  Early on he began wearing a red fireman’s hat, something he was never without from the time he was less than two years old for the next two years.  He was well known wherever we went.   He liked action figures and sports.  He seemed to have an easy going character and he was cute as the dickens.

It turned out Benjamin was great in sports.  He was a star in t-ball, one of the kids who could actually catch the ball. He went on to be an outstanding little leaguer and an incredible flag football quarterback.  He was an interesting young man.  He seemed to me to be quiet and able to take care of himself.  I think he had a hard time with two older brothers and they kept him in his place and while he was a sweet kid, he was a tough kid too, able to roll with the punches.   

Benjamin turned eight when Cathy and I separated.  I remember on his birthday, I picked him up and took him to the Grinder, a coffee shop in Glendale.  We were both enjoying our time out together.  I told the waitress that it was his birthday and he was surprised and delighted when the waitresses came with a birthday cake and candles burning.  He couldn’t believe they knew it was his birthday.  I remember also at that dinner, I drank numerous glasses of white wine.  Not unusually I was probably a little sloshed.  That is, thank god, the last time I remember drinking with any of my children around me.  I got sober two months later.

When we separated Benjamin had just turned 8, Ted was 12 and Sean was 14.  Benjamin seemed to do OK.  He was deeply involved in sports and sought after by coaches in baseball and football.  Ted was involved in swimming and went to long practices every afternoon and meets on the weekends.  Sean began acting out right away.  He was expelled from Loyola High School for having marijuana at a football game.  After that he went to Providence and after that Eagle Rock High School.  He dropped out of school when he was 16.  Neither Cathy nor I seemed to be able to get him to settle down and we had less and less control over him as time passed.

From then until Ben graduated from high school I tried to live as nearby to where they lived with their mother as I could.  I drove Ted and then Benjamin to school every morning at Loyola near downtown LA.  I stayed involved with them and while the divorce wasn't easy on anyone I think we survived it.  Cathy or I never did manage to regain control over Sean, still true today, but he managed to turn out very well himself.  

XVIII

Outdoors

When I 30 years old I felt as if the mountains and the desert were this wonderful world I wanted to explore.  I was on the edge of doing that but I was blocked from going through the door.  How could I get outdoors?  I was looking for the secret door.    What I didn’t know was that I already knew how to go outdoors.  When I was six years old we moved to a house on the northeast side of Burbank two blocks below the Verdugo Hills.  By the time I was 7 or 8 I was joining the other neighborhood kids to go hiking in the hills.  We walked up to Sunset Canyon Drive, went to a break between the reservoir and the houses and crossed into the chaparral.  We never followed any roads or formal trails, we took footpaths made by deer and kids like us.  We went straight up the hill. 

We never made it very far.  Our goal was usually what we called the Big B, a letter of whitewashed rocks maintained by the Burbank High School students that could be seen from the valley below.  The Big B was located on the first ridge of hills before a canyon that divided that ridge from the higher elevation hills behind.  We loved the hills.  It was a place where our imaginations ran wild, where we caught lizards, snakes and horny toads; where we played army, marveled at the tracks of raccoons behind the flood control dam, and threw rocks as far as we could.  . 

When I was 14 I took my sister on a hike and for the first time followed a fire road into the Verdugo Hills.  We made it all the way to the back ridge, an elevation of nearly 3,000 feet.  It was a winter day and white snowflakes were blowing in the cold air.  My younger sister never went hiking with me again.   I was fascinated by this remote world just above Burbank where I could see the ocean to the west and the San Gabriel Mountains to the east and where it snowed. 

It was in the Verdugo Hills that I saw the first bird that really caught my imagination.  It was a Rufous-sided Towhee, a beautiful bird, Robin size, black wings and head, a red and white breast, white markings in its wing and its tail, and bright red eyes.  I remember seeing this Towhee jumping from branch to branch in a bush very near to me and what a treat it was to see this amazing bird.  It was a long time before I learned to see and identify birds and commonly saw birds like the Towhee and other amazing birds wherever I went.  I still remember that first Towhee and being astounded that such a beautiful bird was right there in Burbank. 

My family did almost nothing outdoors.  My father spent most of his free time in his room, reading, smoking cigars, listening to music and studying as he called it.  The furthest outdoors we ever got were trips to the beach and an occasional visit to a city park.

I really didn’t do anything outdoors until I got married.  Cathy’s family did camping trips and picnics in the mountains.  Summers we borrowed her father’s Volkswagen camper van and made trips to her aunt and uncle’s farm in Washington.  We camped along the way.  We went to Charlton Flats in the San Gabriel Mountains for picnics.  We visited the snow during the winter.  But we never got very far away from the car.

I didn’t feel like I would ever get through the door until 1977 when my college roommate, Tony Cole, came over for dinner one night and told us about recent hikes he had done.  He and his father had hiked to the top of Mount San Jacinto, and a peak in Baja California.  I was astounded, someone I knew doing something I only imagined, going to the tops of mountains in the wilderness.  I grilled Tony for how it could be done.  He said it was easy; it only required water and a map.  A few weeks later after Sean’s first communion we had a free afternoon and I took Sean and Ted, 8 and 6, for a walk out of Millard Canyon above Altadena.  We walked up and out of the canyon and on to the Mt. Lowe Road.  We found the door.    

The next week the boys and I returned for our first hike in the mountains.  We hiked out of Millard Canyon and on to the Mt. Lowe Road.  We followed the fire road up past Echo Mountain and further and further into the San Gabriel Mountains.  It seemed like it went on forever.  The boys were game but after miles of going uphill they were ready to quit.  I pleaded with them to go just to the next bend in the road.  Around the bend we saw the Mt. Lowe Campground.  We had made it.  We spent a good hour enjoying our victory.  We explored and enjoyed the view from Inspiration Point.  We were in the outdoors and it had been easy.  I learned the mountains weren’t much different than the Verdugo Hills, just bigger. 

We spent that summer and the next two years hiking any time we could.  The boys were incredibly game.  We peak bagged almost all the peaks between Pasadena and the back ridge, Mount Wilson, Mount Hillyer, South Mount Hawkins, Mount Islip, Mount Throop and many others.  Five thousand feet of elevation gain and 10 mile hikes were our standard.

About that same time on one of our visits to Uncle Warren’s farm I had seen a Great Blue Heron.  This giant bird rose up out of the reeds nearby and flew right past me.  Warren loaned me a bird book to identify birds on the farm.  I was hooked. 

A couple of years after that I felt confident enough to try backpacking in the San Gabriels and then the Sierras.  Then in 1981 I signed up for the Sierra Club Basic Mountaineering Training Class.  It was more backpacking than mountaineering.  The class ended with a winter hike on snowshoes into the High Sierras.  By that time I had already become an avid birdwatcher with nearly 200 birds on my life list.  BMTC gave me confidence that I could survive in the wilderness. 

In 1982 I did a two week solo backpack trip into the Sierras through Kearsarge Pass.  I spent two weeks in the back country around Gardiner Basin at an elevation near 11,000 feet.  After that I frequently went backpacking to the Eastern Sierras and especially Taboose Canyon.  I skipped BMTC the following year and in 1983 I joined BMTC as an assistant instructor.  Our leader was Claude Lane.  Claude was forming a mountaineering team to climb Mount Rainier that summer and he asked me to join. 

The people he asked were all involved in BMTC.  As instructors we taught rock climbing, snow travel, wilderness first aid, snowshoeing and snow travel skills.  We weren’t mountaineers yet but we were getting there.  Under Claude’s leadership we began training as mountaineers.  Our goal, Mount Rainier was beyond anything any of us had ever done. 

As a team we practiced our rock climbing at Stoney Point.  In a wintry March we climbed Mount San Gregornio, 11,000 feet.  It was so cold and windy along the long ridge at the top that the first hill we reached along the ridge we agreed was the high point and we turned around and went back down.  It was a grueling hike.  We saw people coming out of the same snowy wilderness on cross country skis. Snowshoeing is like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer; it feels so good when you stop.  That was the last time I ever went snowshoeing.  I vowed to learn how to cross country ski after that.    

The next month we did the North face of Mount San Jacinto.  It was a nightmare of permits and passes all taken care of by Claude.  He worked like a demon on the project.  We were a banker, a lawyer, a sanitation engineer, a programmer, a plumber, a printer, another lawyer and a couple of others.  There were nine of us, all in our 30s.  We drove out to San Jacinto in the plumbers van, filled with pipes, tools and nuts.  On the way out, I asked this group of people who were avid hikers if anyone personally knew anyone who had made the climb.  No one did.  We camped in the desert at Snow Creek and at 3 a.m. started out for the peak.      

The North Face of San Jacinto is one of the hardest climbs in North America.  It is 10,000 vertical feet in 5 miles.  We bushwhacked and boulder hopped for hours until sunrise when we began to get into the canyon of Snow Creek.  There were hours more rock climbing up the steep creek.  Midway up the creek I slipped off a 20 foot face into the water.  I was told I came out of the ice cold water faster than I went in.  We finally came to the snow on a snow chute up to the top.  On the nearly vertical snowfield we ran into another Sierra Club group from the Sierra Peaks Section.  SPS and BMTC were rivals in the Sierra Club and we referred to them as climbing Nazis.  The rivalry was strong but friendly and people in our party knew people in theirs.  For an hour or two we competed against each other and then we merged. 

I don’t think either party would have made it without the other.  Breaking trail with 18 climbers was easier than doing it with just 9.  Like most mountaineering it was uphill forever, just one foot in front of the other interminably.  The steepness of the snowfield was incredible.  When we put crampons on the ice turned to slush and when we took the crampons off the slush turned to ice.  We switch backed up the snow chute for more than six hours.    

We reached the summit at 10:15 that night, 17 hours after we had started.  I was banged up from my fall and my left Achilles tendon was badly bruised from stiff boots.  We all had our own battle scars but we made it.  Near the top the climb finally leveled out.  We stopped one time to rest for a few minutes.  When we resumed moving we had to wake up two or three members who had fallen asleep.  We finally made it to the top and found shelter in a snow filled hollow just below the summit.    

We had climbed with nothing but the gear we needed and at the summit we bivouacked in what we were wearing and had in our packs.  We slept on rope coils between us and the snow and tried to shelter with plastic garbage bags.  We huddled together for warmth.  It was cold.  Ever since on hot nights when it’s hard to get to sleep I remember how cold it was that night and enjoy the heat.

The actual climb of Mount Rainier two and a half months later was physically easier, psychologically and technically it was new territory but for sheer physical demands, San Jacinto is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.  The next morning we took the Tram down the mountain. 

After San Jacinto we were ready for Mount Rainier. 

June, 1983 we all flew up to Washington separately and met at the Rainier Lodge.  The next day we went out with one of the approved guides who taught us crevasse rescue.  It was great; we kept dropping into a crevasse and then being rescued.  A glacier from inside is a beautiful thing.  On my turn inside the crevasse I remember thinking that whatever force opened the crevasse could also close it.  I put that thought out of my mind as an unproductive.  We all learned how to set up rope systems to pull someone out.  Of course, in the end, with all these complicated rescue methods, the guide told us, most commonly it was the ‘champagne cork’ method.  Two or three people grabbed the rope and popped the fallen climber out.  It turned out we didn’t use those skills on Rainier but it was good to have them.   

The next day we started out from a trail head on the White River on the north side of the peak.  From the river the trail led us on to the Emmons Glacier.  Mountain climbing is more than anything else just walking uphill and uphill and uphill and then more uphill.  And that’s what we did, with 60 pound packs, wearing crampons we climbed the glacier in rope teams of three.  The path up Emmons was well marked and we followed it.  In the late afternoon we made it to Steamboat Prow.  Steamboat at 9700 feet is a rocky outcrop where Emmons Glacier and Winthrop Glacier come together.  From there it is another 4, 700 feet up to the peak.  Even half way up the view is incredible.  We stayed at Steamboat for the night.   

Most major mountains have accident books, books of things that went wrong on the mountain.  Mountaineers read these books as cautionary tales.  My favorite accident was told to us by Claude.  A climber was cooking at his camp at Steamboat Prow.  He wasn’t roped in, as we didn’t.  The camp site is on a flat piece of ground.  A gust of wind blew the top off his small camp pot.  He reached out to catch it and was never seen again.  I liked the story because it reminded me the mountains are unforgiving and it only takes a moment. 

Claude was our leader and read all the books for us.  In fact Claude did all the planning, getting permits and scheduling, not just for San Jacinto but Rainier as well.  Claude was a mainframe computer person.  It was before everyone had emails but we got printouts with volumes of information every time we met.  He was amazing.  It was his trip and we were fortunate to be his friends and able to come along.  After the Mount San Jacinto trip and before Mount Rainier Claude had an appendicitis attack.  We all went to see him in the hospital.  With his appendix out he immediately began planning to return and climb Rainier with us. 

We appointed Paul Ivonovich our temporary leader but Claude stayed with us and was in charge of everything but the actual climbing. On a mountaineering team the leader has absolute authority.  Like military discipline the agreement is whatever the leader decides everyone else follows without question.  Sometimes there’s no place and time for a discussion on a mountaintop.   We trusted Claude and we trusted Paul who was our second best climber.   Claude came along with us on the trip.  We all assured him that if he wanted to do it, we all would make sure he made it to the top.  He was weakened but determined. 

At Steamboat we managed to go to sleep and the next morning at 3 a.m. we started for the top.  Mount Rainier is 14,410 feet and we had more than 4,000 feet of snow and ice to do.  Most of the climb was just like the hike up to Steamboat, uphill and more uphill, but this time we were over 10,000 feet and it required twice as much effort as below.  At 13,000 feet we came to the bergschrund at the top of the glacier where there is a huge crevasse between the rock of the mountain and the beginning of the glacier.  We walked across a ledge at the top of the glacier where the bergschrund was on one side, a crevasse that looked bottomless and on the other side was the steep side of the glacier with a nearly vertical fall of 2 or 3 thousand feet before it began to level out.  The path was about 2 feet wide, plenty of room to walk, but it took concentration to stay on the path and not think of the fall on either side.    

Mount Rainier was a real challenge.  As Southern Californians it was unlike any mountain we had ever been on.  The biggest challenge was in overcoming the unknown.  As it turned out the bergschrund was the only difficult piece to the climb.  We got past it and walked to the top.  The top of Mount Rainier is a large flat sandy area cleared of snow by the constant wind.  We walked around a bit, enjoyed the view, congratulated each other and waited for the rest of the team to catch up.  Claude made it up last with his rope mates.  He had begun to suffer from altitude sickness and had the beginning of edema.  The cure for edema is to head for lower elevations immediately.  Claude got the best rope team we had and they took off down the mountain as fast as they could go. 

I was left with two climbers who had struggled across the bergschrund.  We came down carefully, not too fast and giving everyone the space, assurance, and time to get past it.  I was pleased with myself.  I was one of the stronger climbers and I had managed to hold my own fears in check.  I thoroughly enjoyed the whole experience. 

We all gathered at Steamboat Prow.  We had made it, including Claude.  Everyone was fine.  And then we hiked out, a very long hike down Emmons Glacier and into the woods along the river until finally we reached our cars.  We were completely exhausted and full of elation at our accomplishment.    

For me it was the accomplishment of a lifetime.  I had finally made the varsity.  I had been a strong and supportive member of the team and we had triumphed.  It was as if we had won the championship.  The experience changed my life.   

After the climb I went on to embarrass myself with very heavy drinking, an almost involuntary reaction to being without any booze for over two days and the incredible high of having climbed the mountain.  Remembering the success of the climb and the embarrassment I felt at my drinking were an important piece of my getting sober six months later. 

In December Claude and Ann, Claude’s special friend on the team, got married and had a party to which we were all invited.  I went to the party sober and it felt great. 

After that I made numerous solo backpacking trips.  I had become a real outdoorsman and I had a growing reputation among my friends as someone who could show them the wonders of the mountains and deserts.  I led hikes, took friends hiking in the San Gabriels and the Sierras.  In 1989 I joined a group with professional guides and climbed Mount Baker, near Bellingham. In 1992 while cross country skiing in the San Gabriel Mountains I met Steve and we formed our own back country partnership.  Later that year in April we skied to the top of Kearsarge Pass at 11,000 feet in the Sierras, and back down. 

So in 2005 when I started the Ranger Academy at Asilomar I had been outdoors for almost 30 years.  One of our instructors in the beginning of the course told us “We’re going to teach you how to be cops.  All of you are already Rangers or you wouldn’t be here.”   In my case, I knew that was true.  It was true for my classmates as well.  

Photo Mt. San Jacinto:  http://www.traditionalmountaineering.org/Photos_SnowCreekRoute_sm.htm

Photo Mt. Rainier: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mount_Rainier_from_southwest.jpg

XIX

My AA Story

From the 12 Traditions of Alcoholics Anonymous:

Our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion; we need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films.

This is my personal story.  I can’t write my own biography without talking about my alcoholism, how I stopped drinking and what it means to me.  I am not a spokesman for AA.  There is nothing official about this, it is just my story.  The AA members I mention in the story are deceased and their anonymity is no longer an issue. 

I had my last drink December 13, 1983.  I haven’t had a drink since.  I went to my first AA meeting a week later, December 22^nd, 1983.  

I grew up in alcoholic family.  My grandfather, my mother, and my father were all alcoholics.  I started drinking at around age 14.  My father drank red wine with his meals.  Our family’s self image was that we were sophisticated drinking red wine like Europeans.  My mother bought the wine by the case, Pride of Cucamonga, four large gallon bottles in a cardboard box from the Monte Carlo Italian Deli.  It was a Zinfandel that left a red stain on my teeth.  I started having a glass of wine with my mother in the afternoon.  

After that I could pour myself a glass of wine whenever I liked and I drank a little wine with my meals.  At first a half glass, we used water glasses, of the Zinfandel was enough.  By the time I was senior in high school I would have a full glass or maybe two if I felt like it and I began to go places with a bit of buzz on.  At 16 I started drinking beer with my dad and by the time I was 17 I was going with my sister who was 21 to the liquor store to buy a six pack of beer.  My father, my sister and I would drink it until it was gone and sometimes go for another.  One time in a liquor store in Glendale the clerk stopped us.  He wasn’t going to sell me a six pack of beer.  I deferred to my 21 year old sister.  He wasn’t going to sell her the six pack either.  Other than that one time it was never a problem.

By the time I got to college, I could drink pretty well.  I still drank beer as much as was available, but I eventually learned to stop sometimes when there was still beer left.  I remember one wedding I attended I got so drunk I tried putting the make on the groom’s sister.  She was married and much older than I was, and I think she may have thought it was funny.  I don’t remember ever seeing the groom again.   

At college there wasn’t much opportunity to drink beer.  By this time I drank mostly at home.  Sometimes there was a jug of Red Mountain wine at a party and I always drank my share.    

I went in the service at 20.  On the base servicemen could drink 3.2 beer on base at 18 and in Mississippi we could drink 3.2 beer off base.  I turned 21 a few months later and I could drink hard liquor but mostly I stayed with beer.  After Mississippi I was stationed in England and I became a regular at the local pub, the Gordon Arms.  My new wife and I drank red wine, Volipacella from Italy in half gallon bottles in baskets.  We bought it at the Class VI store on base.  We had quite a collection of empties hanging on the kitchen door.  We used them as candle holders and gave them to friends. 

There were a few parties or events where I drank too much, but most of the time it was just fun.  I loved the pub.  For less than a pound, I could drink all night and most nights that was 3 or 4 English pints, 20 ounces each.   In the service we didn’t think anyone drank too much.  I remember being a little shocked at Sergeant Welch drinking bottles of Ripple as he drove me home one Sunday morning after our shift.  And Sergeant Irving, an older man in Personnel, had an alcohol problem. 

I came home from the service and went to college.  We lived on the GI Bill, $240 a month and my wife and I could barely afford the Safeway Chablis gallon bottles we bought weekly.  On weekends I drank my fill of beer at my in-laws house or at my parents.  When I went to work at Bank of America drinking was a regular part of the job.  My first boss got a DUI, driving under the influence, and quit LA and went back to San Francisco. 

In the PR Department we often went downstairs to a bar after work.  As the newest and youngest member of the department I would freeload the best I could from my better paid co-workers.  At one time, one coworker and I made regular visits to a Carl’s Junior in the Broadway Department Store basement mall where they sold pitchers of beer for $4.  It wasn’t very dignified drinking pitchers of beer in Carl’s Junior, but it was cheap.   

By the time I got sober my drinking had progressed to a quart of wine every night starting with a glass at dinner.  I drank martinis when someone else was buying and sometimes I had a bottle of gin at home.  Every so often we’d discover something new like putting cheap scotch in coffees or using tequila to make margaritas.  Scotch and tequila never lasted very long in our house.  So while I didn’t think of myself as a hard drinker, just a little beer wine, I was drinking hard liquor frequently and beer and wine all the time. 

One of our favorite things to do was to make fondue with white wine.  We dipped our bread in the cheese and drank Chablis while we did it.  Afterwards I’d make margaritas in the blender and we’d get really blasted.  Like the red wine when I was a kid, the fondue pot made us feel sophisticated. 

I had friends I drank with and friends I didn’t drink with but most of my friends were people who enjoyed a few drinks and what I thought of as convivial company.   I drank a lot of what I didn’t think of as drinking.   Beer and wine didn’t really count.  When I worked in the bank branches my regular lunch was to go to a mini-mart, buy some cheese and an apple and a can of beer.  I gave the beer a lot of thought.  Sometimes it was a 16 oz can but sometimes a 12 oz can because I had to do something at work or needed to be more alert or maybe it was a couple of 12 oz cans because I deserved them.  These decisions included a lot of factors and subtly balancing them out.  I didn’t get much work done in the afternoon, but I don’t remember anyone complaining.   

Occasionally I found myself drinking too much in the wrong company.  I seemed to have offended my wife’s co-workers at a party at someone’s house I can’t remember.  I thought of myself as just flirting with pretty women, but I may have been just boorish.   I tried to avoid those situations that would get me in trouble, but sometimes I just couldn’t.  One time I invited my friend Burton Katz to join me and my drinking buddy Bill Kline at the Sportsman’s Lodge.  Bill and I could down a few and it was with Bill, who always bought, that I indulged my taste for martinis.  The next morning Burt called me at work and told me how shocked he was at my behavior and he didn’t want to ever see me drink that much again and how I shouldn’t hang out with people like Bill.  I never invited Burt to drink again.

I was embarrassed by Burt’s call.  It was like a pebble in my shoe, something I couldn’t forget.    

After that I was working at our Century City branch.  It was not a good situation.  One morning I came in to work smelling of wine. I can’t remember who pointed that out to me.  After that I was more careful about when I stopped drinking.  I made a new rule to stop at midnight on weeknights.  I had a lot of rules around drinking.  One day the Regional Vice President came to the branch and announced to the staff that I was transferred from Century City to Loan Administration Department.  In the Loan Administration Department I was a replacement officer for loan officers in the branches who were on vacation or sick.  My friend Bill had just barely saved my job for me. 

Shortly before I got sober I was invited to a party at a customer’s house.  By that time I had figured out it was better sometimes if I didn’t drink.  I did OK that night, but after the party I bought a six pack of beer and drank it in the car as I drove home.  I had learned to put my beer in a large coffee mug and drink it that way in the car.  I took an accounting class at UCLA Extension and before the class I would have a beer in the parking lot.  When my wife drove me to a football game at the high school she taught at I put a healthy serving of gin and a little vermouth in a travelling mug and arrived at the football game blasted with my face numb from the gin.  

I drank and I drove.  I drove to the places I drank and I drove back from the places I drank.  Sometimes when I had too much to drink, driving was a struggle.  There were things I could do, close one eye, hug the line, things that always got me home.  I was never stopped by the police.  I think those were different days.  I don’t remember any checkpoints.  Even among my drinking friends drunk driving arrests didn’t happen or no one knew about them.  My first boss was the only one I knew personally.   

A week before I got sober, I called a priest my wife and I were seeing for marriage counseling.  I don’t know what I said to him, but at some point he said, “You’re nothing but an alcoholic” and that I was nothing but a self-pitying drunk.  I didn’t think he was much help, but he was the first person who ever called me an alcoholic to my face. 

It was preying on my mind.  The 13^th of December I went to my estranged wife’s house and dropped some boards off I thought she could use.  She gave me a beer, I had a second and then I went home to my parents’ house.  For some reason I decided not to have any more to drink that night.  I never drank in the morning before going to work and I didn’t drink at lunch the next day.  That night as usual I stayed at work late after everyone left.  I found myself at work alone, writing in my journal.  After my wife and I separated I lived at home with my parents and most nights I stayed late.  I made tea in the bank lunchroom.  My parents were alcoholics and were bad company in the evenings.  Dinner with them was a dismal affair, so I normally waited until I was sure they had gone to bed before I went home.  They went to bed early, thank god.      

Writing in my journal I admitted I was an alcoholic.  Writing makes me honest.  It was almost a joke.  I was Irish and Scotch Irish.  Both my parents were alcoholics and I drank every day.  Of course, I was an alcoholic.  Years before I had attended training for supervisors in which an Employee Assistance person told us how to recognize and deal with the alcoholic among us.  I remembered the class.  That’s where I had first heard alcoholism is a progressive disease.  For the first time looking at myself I finally admitted, I was an alcoholic.   

That summer I had decided my Saturdays were lost in a beer haze and I decided to stop drinking for awhile to see how that was.  It was OK for a couple of days and then I went to a party and was doing just fine until they brought out champagne left over from a wedding.  Well just a glass of champagne and my short days of sobriety vanished.  For the first time I realized I needed to drink.  I didn’t think about it after that, but it was always there.  I was drinking hard liquor now.  I was drinking and driving and drinking had caused a number of problems.  My boss made pointed remarks about my drinking.

The next morning I called EAP, the Employee Assistance Program, and talked to a counselor.  He agreed to come out and see me.  “How was next Wednesday?” he asked. 

I told myself I wouldn’t drink before I saw him.  My last drink had been a beer at my estranged wife’s.  I didn’t drink that week.  I didn’t drink that weekend.  I went out to lunch with a friend and when I normally would have had a beer I didn‘t.  It was easy. 

The counselor came the following Wednesday and gave me a schedule for Alcoholic Anonymous meetings in Los Angeles.  It was a thick little book.  He told me I sounded like an alcoholic to him and there were different programs I could go to but the only one that worked in his experience was AA and he said that’s where I should go. 

I spent a lot of time poring over that little directory looking for just the right meeting.  Finally I decided on a meeting at St. Francis of Assisi Church on Brunswick Avenue in Atwater.  Eleven years before I lived on Brunswick down the street from St. Francis.  The little Episcopal chapel always seemed to be a place of peace and tranquility.  I had been to St. Francis High School and afterwards a Franciscan monastery.  The image of St. Francis was familiar to me.   

I waited at work until it was time to go.   I arrived in Atwater early and went to the Brown Keg Liquor Store across the street and bought a pack of Lucky Strike cigarettes.  I usually didn’t smoke cigarettes but it seemed like a cigarette night.  I was wearing my banker’s blue pinstripe suit.  I went in and found a seat in the chapel and waited to see what would happen. 

My marriage had fallen apart.  We had been separated a month.  I was living at home with my parents.  My job was about as bad as it got.  I worked for Joe Bent who was later fired because he was out of control and a petty tyrant.  He seemed to take satisfaction in torturing the people who worked for him.  I was an Assistant Vice President.  The Assistant Manager, another AVP had recently been fired.  Joe told me I was never going to be the Assistant Manager and it was true. 

I think I had been placed at Joe’s branch because Joe and I were both problems.   I was known to give supervisors a hard time and they didn’t really care which one of us crashed and burned.  The smart money was on Joe but if they were lucky they’d get rid of both of us.

My life was a disaster.  I needed to start doing something about it.  I thought Alcoholics Anonymous was like going to yoga, a self improvement class.  I figured I had a lot of problems and it wouldn’t hurt to stop drinking.  

The format of the meeting was three speakers who shared.  The first two speakers were probably newcomers and gave short 10 minute pitches and then a regular speaker with a little sobriety telling his AA story.  One of the speakers went through a list of woes in his life.  It was a laundry list of things gone wrong, mostly good intentions failed and he ended each failure with the refrain, “And if I don’t drink, it will get better.” 

I heard that.  If I don’t drink, it will get better, no matter what and I believed it.  At the break, everyone was friendly and they gave me the two books I would need to get started, Alcoholics Anonymous and 12 Steps and 12 Traditions.  The books were for sale.  I only had a couple of dollars and some change on me.  They said that would be OK, I could pay the rest later.  They also pointed out that the meeting I was at was a gay meeting and that I might be more comfortable at other meetings.  They told me about a place in Glendale where there were meetings every night.  

That was Thursday, December the 22^nd.  I went to my next meeting Saturday, December the 24^th.  Later people asked me how it was to get sober at Christmas time.  Christmas time?  Hell, I didn't care what time of year it was.  I had more important things to worry about than Christmas that year.   

On Christmas Day I did go to my ex-house and see my sons.  I told them I had stopped drinking.  My middle son, Ted, who was 12 at the time, said, “That’s a very brave thing to do, Pop.”  I didn’t think it was brave but when he said that I thought this is something I’d better stick with.

My sons were 14, 12, and 8 when I got sober.  I tried to be as good a father as I could be.  I never thought about it before I got sober, a few beers was who I was, but alcohol did not contribute to my being a parent.  I wasn’t there a lot of the time for them.  It takes a lot of time to drink.  I came home late.  I spent time on the couch barely conscious.  My moods were unpredictable.  Even when I wasn’t drunk I could be volatile and angry without provocation.  As a person I was unreliable.  I drank and I drove with my children in the car.

It’s hard to admit, but drinking was probably more important to me than parenthood. 

A Start in AA

The first few days were easy.  I just didn’t drink.  I read the books they gave me.  I drove down to San Diego on the day after Christmas and visited with my Uncle Ed.  My uncle had been sober since 1946, though there was a short time in the 1960s when it seems he might have gone out again.  It was either the booze or a manic episode or probably both.  My Dad got involved, no one explained it, and he was found in San Francisco.       

My cousin was there for the holidays and I learned she had gotten sober a couple of years earlier.  She and I were only a few months apart in age and she always made sure I knew she was way ahead of me in just about everything.  She sneered I was still in the pink cloud phase of sobriety and that it would go away.  Out of spite to my cousin I kept my pink cloud through good times and hard times.  I claim it never went away. 

I drove back to LA and went to a meeting in Atwater on my way home.  I remember in that meeting people tried to warn me about slippery places.  I thought I didn’t need to worry, I had this program and it was easy.  I started going to meetings once a week or so at the Windsor Club in Glendale.  Club Houses and there are thousands of them are separate from AA; run and funded by their own boards, usually AA members.  They provide a place for people to hang out and rooms for AA meetings.  The Windsor Club is a two story brick building with a lounge and café in the first story and meeting rooms upstairs.  It even had a parking lot and when there were meetings the parking lot and the streets around the club house filled with cars.  It was a popular place.   

The Monday night meeting at the Windsor Club was called the Gong Show.  It was a large raucous meeting with 150 people or more.  The room was packed, every seat taken and people standing up along the walls and in the back.   It was the standard LA format, a reading from the Big Book and the 12 Traditions, cakes for anniversaries and chips for newcomers at their first meeting, and chips for 30 days, 60 days, 90 days and six months.  There was a 10 minute speaker, usually someone new, and then a circuit speaker, one of the AAs well known for their pitch and invited specially to give it.  

Most AA meetings are pretty informal but the Gong Show took informality to an extreme.  The meetings were rowdy with bikers, punks, suits and street people, mostly on the younger side.  I attended regularly and it seemed like everybody knew each other.  After a few weeks I still felt isolated and out of place.  I didn’t know anyone and no one talked to me.  It just wasn’t working.  I realized I couldn’t even make it in AA.   

I went home devastated.   I opened up the Big Book and read the Fifth Chapter, “How It Works.”  I just wasn’t getting it.  I read the chapter; I read the 3^rd Step prayer.  I did everything I could think of.  I don’t believe in God, but I’ve always believed in the power of prayer.  I don’t know who I was praying to and I didn’t care.  If it worked it worked.  The 5^th Chapter didn’t tell me who was in charge.  It didn’t tell me how to become part of it.  It didn’t tell me what makes it work or how to get started?  It didn’t answer any of my questions.  It just gave me the Steps and recommended I work them.  Exhausted I finally went to bed. 

The next day everything seemed to change.  It seemed like a weight had been lifted.  One of my friends, a customer, called to see how I was doing.  That day I had this feeling that people cared about me.  It wasn’t anything major, just small things.   

At the Gong Show there was one gentleman, who like me wore gray slacks, a blue blazer and a tie.  Church, as he was called, seemed to always be around and he seemed to get the program.  He seemed comfortable with himself.   

When I got him aside I asked him to be my sponsor.  He told me he was gay. 

I asked if that made any difference.

He said, “I don’t think so.”

I said, “That’s fine with me.”

I think he said, “If it doesn’t work out, I’ll help you find a new sponsor.” 

Church was my sponsor until he died 9 years later.  At that time he had about 5 years of sobriety.  He worked for a commercial insurance brokerage downtown.  He was comfortable with himself and he worked a wonderful program.  Under Church’s guidance I began working the 12 steps.  He also recommended I find another meeting.  He recommended a meeting in Pasadena known as the Women’s Club.  The Wednesday Night Speakers Meeting met in the South Pasadena Women’s Club for fifty years or more. 

I went to the meeting and came back and told Church it seemed like everyone there was blue eyed, well dressed, and they were all lawyers and bankers.  He said, “Yes.” and looked at me.  I realized maybe instead of the bikers and down and outs at the Gong Show; I should start hanging out with people like myself.  Of course, there were more than just white people and professionals at the Women’s Club but overall it was a more gentle and sophisticated meeting. 

I started attending meetings regularly at the Women’s Club. 

I still went to the Gong Show but not as often.  One night I came in late and was standing in the back of the room.  There was a young man there dressed in white jeans and a white turtleneck.  He looked pretty cool, but he didn’t seem to be able to stand still and nervously he backed up to the counter in the back of the room.  There was a coffee urn there and as he backed up he hit the spigot and hot coffee poured down his white jeans.  I felt sorry for him, he was trying to be cool and it wasn’t working.  It reminded me of myself.  By this time I knew the Gong Show was mostly newcomers like I had been.  The court card people, people ordered to attend AA by the Judge, hung out in the back and that's where I had been trying to make friends.

The place to find AA is not in the back of the rooms, but up front where people are getting it and not in meetings where everyone is a newcomer but in meetings where people keep coming back.  It doesn’t happen overnight.  In South Pasadena I got a job pouring coffee and I didn’t just stand around anymore.  I became one of the regulars who stuck my hand out when I saw someone uncomfortable.  Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn’t.   

In Pasadena I got to know people.  I worked the steps, gradually I became very comfortable with this meeting and sometimes even comfortable with myself.  After awhile I began to sponsor people.  Eight years later I was the secretary of the South Pasadena Wednesday Night Speaker’s Meeting known as the Women’s Club.  At work where I was just another bank Vice President I wondered what people would think if they knew I was the head drunk for the Pasadena area including San Marino.  Of course, the secretary of an AA meeting is not that important, as the book says “Our leaders are but trusted servants.”  Most importantly I belonged and AA worked for me. 

It’s been 28 years since then.  I don’t attend AA meetings much.  I’ve never connected in the Bay Area with AA the way I did in Pasadena.  My job and weird schedule made meetings hard to do and I don’t have much in common anymore with newcomers.  Even some sober AAs aren’t comfortable with cops.  I’ve been sober so long I look like the middle aged white guy that doesn’t have a clue. There are enough new people who are cool and who are getting it to take care of the newcomers. 

I’ve taken the concept of service as I learned it in AA and done it elsewhere.  I worked as a counselor at San Francisco Juvenile Hall.  As a Park Ranger and cop I was always open to helping people in need, especially people mired in addiction with no way out.  Sometimes the best way to help is to arrest them.

When I got sober it took a long time to recover the trust I had squandered with my sons.  I tried to be there for them.  I tried to control my own anger, fears, and rage.  I tried to listen and I tried to support them.  Most importantly I tried to insure that nothing came between me and them.

Years later I have a very satisfying relationship with my adult sons.  I appreciate them.  We are friends and they are part of my life.  With Paloma I have another chance to be a parent and I think I’m better at it than I was the first time.  I have my sons as good examples for being a parent and they give good advice.

My life has been good and the first principle of my life today is I don’t drink.  The speaker 28 years ago was right.  If I don’t drink, everything gets better and better.  

XX

After the Divorce

Cathy and I separated in November, 1983.  I went off to live with my parents and she stayed in the house we had bought three years earlier.  Shortly after I left home Loyola High School decided to expel Sean, our eldest son.  Sean had been caught with marijuana at a football game.  Loyola had zero tolerance for drugs supposedly.  It was a hard time for all of us.  As soon as they started the process we did everything we could to fight it.  I moved back into the house and spent all of my free time getting letters of recommendation together for Sean.  It didn’t make any difference.  Sean in his first three weeks of Loyola with a full scholarship was thrown out.  It was devastating for all of us. 

When it was over I returned to living with my parents in Burbank and Cathy got Sean enrolled at Providence High School in Burbank.  Cathy and I were angry at each other.  Sean took everything on himself and struggled at Providence.  He was exceptionally bright and he did his best to shock and dismay his teachers.  An English teacher gave a lecture on writing to get the attention of the reader.  Sean wrote a suicide note.  He said it got her attention.  Ted had started swimming the year before and his days consisted of going to school and then swimming practice for hours.  His weekends he spent at swim meets.  He spent more time with his team and his coach than he did anywhere else. 

Benjamin the athlete spent more time at his baseball coach’s house than he did at home.  The baseball coach had a son about Ben’s age and Ben found a safe haven there.  Cathy and I seemed to be buried in our own pain and I don’t think either one of us was there for the kids at the beginning of our separation and then divorce. 

In December I stopped drinking and began attending AA meetings.  In January I began a writing class at UCLA Extension.  Separating from Cathy after having been married since I was 21, I began my long postponed bachelorhood.  I was desperate for companionship but not very good at it.  In the new year Cathy met someone and I took care of the kids.  Many weekends I just moved into the house and stayed with them.  Ben, Ted and I began to establish our relationship now that I wasn’t living with them.  Sean was out on his own, as wild as he could be with a wild set of friends.  I barely ever saw him.  Sean was obviously very angry at me.  The other boys seem to adjust to the new reality. 

Cathy and I did the lawyer thing.  I had my good friend Hu Sommers take care of me.  Hu made sure Cathy and I both got a fair deal.  He front end loaded my obligations and when I asked him why I had no money, he asked me what was I going to spend it on? 

I continued working at City National Bank and Cathy was teaching at Immaculate Heart High School in Hollywood.

 It took me until May to establish a real relationship with someone.  Not to my surprise, but it was ironic, Cindy was much like Cathy.  She was president of the local parish mother’s club, a legal secretary at a small firm; she had an 11 year old son and lived in a home she rented in the neighborhood she had grown up in in West LA. 

I dated Cindy for about eight months and then went on to another girlfriend, which became my pattern for the next 10 years or more.  I wasn’t ready to get married to a woman very similar to my ex-wife within just a year of separating, but of all the women I dated Cindy was probably the one I should have married.      

In August of 1984 I moved out of my parents and into the back house of a friend a few blocks away from where the boys and Cathy lived.  I left City National Bank and began working for Dai-Ichi Kangyo Bank.  

Cathy and I had worked out our bitterness using lawyers for awhile but that played out and we settled into a relationship where I paid child support, alimony and car payments.  I was broke but as Hu said, it didn’t do me any harm.  We never formalized visitation rights over the boys thank god.  I saw them when I wanted to, took them places, attended Ted’s swim meets and stayed with them when she was away.  After the initial accusations of being a poor husband and a poor father, Cathy didn’t stand in the way of my seeing my sons at all and until Benjamin graduated from high school I lived nearby and actively participated in their lives. 

It took me awhile to get started in AA.  At first I attended meetings once a week and I stayed pretty much on my own, but I was lucky to find a good sponsor and after the first three months got more involved in AA and even found a home meeting in South Pasadena.  A home meeting in AA is a meeting that one goes to regularly.  I showed up and I began participating, pouring coffee, cleaning up, getting to know people.  We met in the South Pasadena Women’s Club. 

I participated actively in that group and attended other meetings in the Pasadena area.  I got to know people and to be known.  I celebrated my first year of sobriety at the South Pasadena Women’s Club and many birthdays thereafter.  Eventually I became the secretary of the first meeting, the pre-meeting and then the second meeting.  The secretary isn’t really the person in charge.  They help to find the speakers and they lead the meeting.  The South Pasadena Women’s Club meeting had a small informal steering committee, all men, who met for breakfast on Thursday mornings at the Green Street Café.  I became a member of that group.  The AA group had an official name besides The Women’s Club, but most of us didn’t know what it was.  We just called it The Women’s Club.    

Making things equal the Crown City Meeting on Friday nights had an informal group of women who ran that meeting.  Somewhere along the way I became secretary of that meeting for a while too. 

At work I used to laugh to myself that these Japanese bankers, American businessmen and lawyers that I was often stuck in meetings with had no idea that I was the head drunk for San Marino/South Pasadena for awhile.  Of course, I knew leadership in AA wasn’t like other places, much more amorphous and all about service, not prestige, but it was fun to think about. 

At the bank in 1987 I was promoted to vice president.  In 1984 I started driving Ted to Loyola High School every morning and did until he graduated in 1989 when I started driving Ben to Loyola every morning. 

Sean was asked not to come back to Providence after his first year.  He started Eagle Rock High School.  At Eagle Rock he was more a truant than a student.  He’d bought a car on his own before he was 16 and hid it in the neighborhood which I found out about.  He was a punker and ran with a crowd that was as lost as he was.  At one point he moved in with me, but then he started stealing from me.  Since then Sean has proved himself to be scrupulously honest.  I suspect at the time he thought of it as borrowing from me.  If he did, he owes me $10.  I was probably too scrupulous and intolerant at the time and I dropped him off in Glendale to fend for himself, which he did. 

I began doing well at work.  I figured out how to be single and have a social life.  As Spalding Gray said, being a straight single man in my late 30s with a job, it wasn’t that hard.  I dated women in AA and women I met at work or in classes.

In 1986 I met Lisa Levine.  She was a beautiful woman and very smart.  She had two daughters, a girl 11 and another three years old.  It was a stormy relationship for the next three years.  Sara, the youngest daughter made my life impossible around Lisa.  Lisa herself had some strange traits, but we tried to make it work.  We broke up and then got back together.  In 1988 we bought a house together and I thought if I just settle down this will work.  After a year together I realized I didn’t want to marry someone with whom I was just going to be unhappy in the end and we broke up.  She moved out and I kept the house. 

A couple of years later I found myself deeply involved with Judith Barnes, a strikingly beautiful woman and again extraordinarily bright, but also very neurotic.  She was a victim of childhood sexual abuse and was recovering but life was not easy for her.  I was very attracted to her and loved her, but life with her wasn’t easy and it didn’t look like we would ever have a normal life together.  In 1992 in one of my rare manic episodes I broke up with her, which probably was for the best. 

During this period Benjamin started to Loyola High School.  He started as an athlete but didn’t like his baseball coach and dropped out.  Later he became an adequate swimmer on the water polo team, but his athleticism didn’t go very far in high school.    He was his own character.  I learned later he had been the LSD and marijuana dealer for his classmates in his final year or two.  His mother found marijuana in his drawer one time and I went through a charade of being shocked with her.  I did want him to know that being a pothead wasn’t a good way to go through life.  He was very active in Alateens. 

In this same period, Benjamin began to develop a reputation as being a very original character and someone with a lot of talent.  He won a full scholarship dedicated to a young man, an original, who had died in an auto accident.  In his last year in high school he took a photography class.  He made a short film that was remarkable for its tone and lighting.  These were the first signs of Benjamin’s talent as a first class photographer and an artist, a skill he has developed.   

It was ironic that Benjamin also became an alcoholic and addict.  Ted stopped drinking at 15.  Sean stopped at 28 or so and Benjamin kept going until he was 35. 

Ted finished high school and went on to UC Santa Cruz.  It seemed an odd choice for Ted who by the time he finished high school was an outstanding athlete in water polo, buttoned down, very conservative appearance, though gratefully not in his politics, and very sober.  He struggled for three years at Santa Cruz, loved it, dropped out after his third year and returned to school to graduate in 1994.  He taught high school and then went through a personal crisis and left for Japan to teach English.  After two years in Nagoya, he went to Saudi Arabia for a year and then returned home.  He paid off his student loans.    

He met a girl in Santa Cruz, married her and started graduate school.  Seven years later he earned his PhD in political science from the University of Oregon.  Somewhere between struggling with everything in his undergrad days at Santa Cruz and graduating from Oregon he became an academic.  He was always a scholar but it took him a long time to focus it and to learn to work it, but he is an outstanding scholar.

Ted and I never really got along very well.  That’s even been true sometimes until recently.  Ted and I, I think are too much alike.  We had terrible arguments when he was in high school and seemed to hurt each other’s feelings easily, something I was more responsible for than him but something it didn’t seem I could prevent.  He was an incredible youngster, very intense, very interesting.  We weren’t really very good friends when he went to college, but over the years, as with my other sons, we have built a very warm and enjoyable relationship. 

Sean was the wild child.  He was on his own from 15 on.  He lived on the street, then with a group of friends.  He was a character.  There was an article about him in my UCLA alumni magazine, a child of the 90s written by a sociology professor.  At that time Sean at 19 was the night manager of Del Monico’s pizza parlor in Hollywood, drove a 1959 Ford Fairlane and the night he spent with the young professor, the car only ran in reverse, and with that he gave the professor a tour of Hollywood after midnight.  Sean was involved in the punk scene and by extension in fashion, music, art, and clothes.  Sean has incredible charisma and he was always a remarkable participant in whatever he did. 

Shortly after he was 18 I went to see him.  We planned to have lunch.  I think he invited me.  We had not been able to talk at all through his teen years but something happened in that visit and we became friends, a friendship that has continued and developed for over twenty years now.  He started modeling in LA and then got on a plane and went to Paris.  He stayed there three years and did very well.  His drinking and whatever else he did didn’t help but he was a wild child within bounds. 

He came home and started working in the movie business, a gopher, then a grunt and eventually learning most of the trades.  Sean is a good carpenter, a good mechanic and can figure almost anything out.  My three sons have extraordinary minds.  Ben is an artist of the first rank coming very much into his own now.  Ted is an extraordinary scholar and thinker.

I am fortunate that all my sons are admirable in their own particular ways.

I went to visit Sean when he was in Paris.  Sean walked down the streets and people knew him, French, British and Americans.  He cut a unique figure even in Paris.  He did well as a model but burned out toward the end.  When I visited him he had been in France for a couple of years and spoke French easily.      

I had this great stay with Sean and his girlfriend Lindsay in a fifth floor walkup apartment in Le Marais, the third arrondisement in Paris, right in the heart of Paris.  I brought a bicycle from home and Sean let me ride his Yamaha 175.  I got around Paris and began my day with café au lait and croissant in La Pierre du Marais.  I read my International Herald Tribune and enjoyed the best coffee in the world. 

I met Sean’s friends, he had many, and we went to lunch and dinner in incredible places.  I learned about Paris.  I became very jealous of Sean’s ability to speak French which he did with ease.  Sean who was 24 at the time and full of advice and worldly wisdom, told me if I wanted to speak Spanish, I should go home and speak Spanish to everyone who could. 

After my two weeks, I went home and took Sean’s advice.  I bought tapes for my car and began speaking Spanish to everyone I thought might respond.  It was great.  I began learning to speak Spanish.  I started going to Tijuana once a month to practice and rented a hotel room west of downtown.  I quickly learned that Tijuana is a wonderful town with museums and coffee shops where the people are very friendly and it was at that time a very relaxed and comfortable atmosphere.  I got my tongue working.  I would sweat but I could communicate with people.  I learned how the jitneys worked.  I visited el museo de California.  I had a favorite coffee shop. 

In September I went to Cuernavaca Mexico for a two week immersion course.  The school I had signed up for was nearly out of business; Eduardo had broken his partnership with another school and had no facilities.  So I lived with Eduardo, his wife Lourdes, Maria Lourdes or Mary Lou and their small child.  They were wonderful people and during the day we studied Spanish at Eduardo’s mother’s house, a beautiful Mexican home that opened on to a garden.  I really began to learn Spanish.  A couple of weeks after I got home I got a call from an attorney who needed advice on my expertise, CRA, for his client a bank with a large CRA problem.  He didn’t say it, but I knew it was California Commerce Bank, a subsidiary of Banamex in Los Angeles.  I was tired of Dai-Ichi Kangyo and recommended myself as the CRA officer to help the other bank solve its problem. 

I went to work for California Commerce and they had a wonderful bilingual staff with loan officers from Mexico.  As soon as I let people know I wanted to learn Spanish I had plenty of people helping me.  It was a good bank and a wonderful environment to learn Spanish. 

Spanish became my obsession and within two or three years, my Spanish was very passable for a gringo who had never lived in a Spanish speaking country, not counting Los Angeles. 

It is one of the great accomplishments of my life.  Until then I had never met a person who learned a foreign language on their own, without living in the country, with the exception of my father.  When I began speaking Spanish, my father wouldn’t speak it with me, though he understood easily.  I began to realize my father never spoke Spanish or even French when there were people around who spoke the language.  For awhile Ted had a girlfriend who spoke French and Pop would never converse with her, he’d always put her off. 

I began to think about it.  My father barely spoke English to anyone or any other language.  He always claimed he spoke French and Spanish and while he studied French and Spanish all the time, he never spoke them to anyone.  It was all in his head.  He could get by in a foreign country but to be a tourist only requires rudimentary speaking skills.  He certainly wasn’t conversational in Spanish and I doubt that he retained enough French after World War II to be conversational in that language.  But he and Sean were my inspiration to learn Spanish. 

These were good times for me.  I was living a sober life and doing what I wanted to do.  I began working in a very foreign and interesting environment with the Japanese which wasn’t always very satisfying but it was challenging.  I was promoted to Vice President at the bank.  I was a leader in my AA community and I was becoming a leader in economic development in banking. 

Dating became easier, though falling in love, getting bored or tied down and ready to move on and then single and looking for another girlfriend wasn’t always comfortable, I dated interesting and beautiful women.  I dated a librarian, a professor, an agoraphobic Beverly Hills princess, a Jewish Chinese woman from England and many other people.  It was an adventure, not always comfortable but always interesting. 

I learned to speak Spanish, I travelled.  I went to Paris, to Toronto, to Mexico.  I bought a house in La Crescenta with a woman I thought I wanted to settle down with.  That didn’t work but I kept the house and lived there from 1988 to 1995. 

Then in 1994 I met a woman in San Francisco.  In 1995 I moved to the Bay Area to be with her.  A year later we were married.  

XXI

Moving to the Bay Area

I  enjoyed my time of being single.  I enjoyed dating.  I enjoyed relationships when they were good and I struggled through them when they weren’t.  A couple of times I thought I might get married, but it didn't work out.  By the time I was in my late 40’s I was really tired of being single and ready to settle down.  Judith and I had nearly married.  After Judith I was still looking to get married.     

A friend of mine in San Francisco set me up on a blind date, dinner at her home with a few other people, and I met Suzanne Givens.  Suzanne was fascinating, African American, a Cal grad, she was very successful in her career, and doing well at Pacific Bell.  Her mother was an important political leader in Los Angeles, and Suzanne was well connected politically.  She had worked for Willie Brown, knew Jerry Brown, Nancy Pelosi and just about everyone in California politics, north and south. 

A couple of months later we had our first date in Los Angeles and then a reciprocal date in the Bay Area.  Suzanne considered herself a libertine.  She certainly tried to be, at least at first, but for whatever reasons Suzanne and I couldn’t seem to find a rhythm between us.   We had a lot of other things in common and we both sincerely appreciated each other. 

I had reservations.  I don’t think my love for Suzanne was ever overwhelming or profound, but the situation was good.  She introduced me to a new world that was interesting and exciting and we had a stable middle class existence.  Our physical relationship was like the overall relationship, good sometimes and tolerable most of the time.  Suzanne proved to be unsatisfied with her own accomplishments and driven to work harder and harder.  She is a good person but sometimes she could be very difficult.  After seven years of marriage we were pretty estranged from each.  We found ways to keep it working.  We made it another four years.  After eleven years together Suzette came into the picture and the excitement and desire of pursuing Suzette pushed me into ending what had become a very uncomfortable relationship with Suzanne.    

But in 1995 I moved up to Mill Valley to live with Suzanne.  I had lived my whole life in LA except for the four years in the Air Force.  I used to tell people I had lived all over, North Hollywood, Atwater, Glassell Park, Highland Park and La Crescenta.  I told them, one time, I had even lived 11 miles away from where I was born.  Now I moved 400 miles north.     I loved LA but I wanted to see what life was like elsewhere. 

I moved in with Suzanne in Marin County just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco.  I continued to work for California Commerce Bank in Los Angeles.  The President of the bank kept me around as an insurance policy against the problems the bank had had before I came.  I supposedly worked in San Jose but that office closed.  After that I worked at home and went to LA when I needed to.  Two years after the first satisfactory examination, I got us a second satisfactory CRA exam.  I put real effort into the job.  It wasn't easy but it didn't require a lot of time.  Salvador, the President of the bank, was satisfied with that.  I worked half time and got paid full time.

I enjoyed kayaking, cycling, hiking and just leading a life of leisure.  Suzanne went from the Phone Company to Odwalla, the juice company. After 6 months she was fired.  They didn’t really want to run a decent company, they just wanted window dressing.  A few months after she left Odwalla had an outbreak of E. coli from their juice.  One child died, many were sickened and they were found guilty of criminal negligence.  After Odwalla Suzanne worked as a consultant and finally went to work for Citibank as their CRA manager for California.  After I left California Commerce, a subsidiary of Banamex, Citibank bought Banamex and my successor at California Commerce Bank worked for Suzanne. 

At first I felt very unrooted living in the Bay Area.  Professionally no one knew who I was and San Francisco is very different from LA.  It seemed in non-profits and economic development that people of color still naturally had the advantage but in San Francisco the gay community added an extra twist and being a straight white male was no advantage in non-profits.  In Los Angeles I had been well known and respected.  In San Francisco I felt discounted as a white middle aged male from the suburbs.    

I never became an ex-Angeleno, one of those people who denounces LA.  I described myself as an unrepentant Angeleno or an Angeleno in exile.  I did come to appreciate the Bay Area where it’s OK and even common to be literate and where their universities are better known for academics than for their football teams.  In LA, unfortunately it's true, people seem much more ready to discuss the movie than the book.  The neighborhoods in San Francisco and the East Bay are fabulous, unlike anything in LA.  And I’ve even become a foodie.  For the first few years I had a foot in both worlds, but when I quit banking and started working for the City of San Francisco I had to admit I had become a Bay Area person. 

We lived in Mill Valley for awhile, in a beautiful home Suzanne owned on the hillside above Boyle Park.  Then we moved to Half Moon Bay where she worked for Odwalla.  Half Moon Bay was interesting for being so close to San Francisco but so far away at the same time, isolated by roads that closed in winter storms and otherwise frequently jammed with traffic. We got married in April of 1996 when we lived in Half Moon Bay.  After Odwalla let Suzanne go we moved back to Mill Valley

In 1999 I quit California Commerce and stopped commuting.  Staying in the Bay Area helped me to begin to put down roots. 

Once when I was counseling at Consumer Credit Counselors I asked my usual question, “Are you a native San Franciscan.” 

The woman answered, “No, but I’ve lived here so long, I think of myself as a native.”

“How long have you lived here?” I asked. 

“Seven years,” she said.   

By then I had been in the Bay Area for almost seven years myself and I didn’t feel almost native at all, but it did make me think I should start accepting the Bay Area as home.  Seven years is a long time.   

In 2001 I went to work for the City of San Francisco in their Juvenile Hall.  Juvenile Hall and Parks would never have happened for me if I hadn’t moved up to the Bay Area.  For that alone I always counted myself lucky to have moved. 

Between Suzanne and me, the crisis in our marriage came when Suzanne lost her cleaning lady and I did laundry for both of us.  I drew the line at folding her clothes.  It was a small thing but it reminded me of the Paul Simon song, “she liked to sleep with the window open.  I liked to sleep with it closed.”  Suzanne wasn’t having it and we had to go to counseling.  Suzanne was a dominant personality and I am an independent person.  Our marriage survived when she got a job in LA and I stayed in Oakland.  We were good at a part time marriage.  Our marriage became untenable when she moved back to the Bay Area and we began living together again.

After ten years or so it was hard to deny that I wasn’t at home in the Bay Area.  Now with 18 years in the Bay Area, I don't even try.  I am a Bay Area person. 

I love the beauty of it, I love the culture, I love the diversity, and I love the Bay Area.  I also love LA but I have to admit every time I go down there I notice the traffic, the rushing everywhere, the prominence of the Hollywood culture, and the incredible distances in Los Angeles.  LA is like a city in a centrifuge; flying away from its own center.  And the air is bad. When I visit LA I try to keep my complaints to myself, but sometimes they slip out.

I miss the mountains, the wilderness, the desert, LA’s Mexican heart, the vitality of it all, LA’s lack of self consciousness and smugness and the way LA is always changing.  I miss the vibrant arts and the museums in LA.  I miss a town that has a nickname for itself.  I miss mild winter days in LA.        

Paloma and Suzette think the Bay Area is home.  I have friends here and a working of knowledge of the local history and geography.  I am a Bay Area person with strong LA ties.

XXII

Second Wife

I liked to sleep with the window open

and you keep the window closed.

You’re Kind

Paul Simon

A friend of mine invited me to San Francisco to meet an interesting woman who might be interested in me. She said, “By the way, she’s the daughter” and she named a well known political leader in LA. Suzanne and I met for dinner at Kathy and David’s a few weeks later. Suzanne was interesting, charming, a good dinner guest. We were both on our best behavior and it went well, we liked each other. We agreed to meet again for a date after she returned from a vacation in the Caribbean.

And so we did. She flew down to LA and I planned a date that started with tea at the Biltmore. I didn’t know Suzanne had spent a half year in England on a fellowship and had a taste for tea and things English. I think we went to dinner after that and finished up at the dancing fountain at the new Water Plaza on Bunker Hill. It was as I had planned it a romantic evening. A week or two later I flew up to San Francisco. From the Oakland Airport we went to lunch at an Italian Cafe Deli Market in the Rockridge neighborhood in Oakland, my first experience of the wonderful neighborhoods in the East Bay. And then we went to her house in Mill Valley.

The romance began on our second date and after that we became distance lovers, exchanging hot and heavy letters. I think we were still using the post office. It seemed more appropriate than emails. The letters were passionate, though in person we were stiff and out of synch.

I think we were both ready for a longtime relationship even marriage. Suzanne was a manager at the Phone Company and like me active with community groups and causes. She was 36. I was 47. At the phone company her cause was disabilities. She had an older brother who was developmentally challenged. At one time she had worked for Willy Brown and had been very active in the early response to the AIDS epidemic. She had a network of gay friends. Suzanne fancied herself a libertine, but like me at her core I think she really was a prude.

We fit in many ways. She was a successful middle manager and community leader. I respected that instead of staying in LA in her mother’s shadow, she had gone up to the Bay Area and made a life for herself. She had graduated from Cal and gone into politics working for Ron Dellums and then Willy Brown. She might have had better contacts than most people but she wasn’t capitalizing on her mother’s name. She was committed to equity and working for a better community that included everyone. She was also a longtime member of the Sokka Gakai, formerly the Nicherin Shoshu of America, NSA, the people who chanted “nam-myoho-ringe-kyo” and in chanting sutra discovered a new life. When I was in college in the 70s they, like the hare krishnas, actively proselytized everywhere particularly on college campuses.

She wanted me to join the fellowship and I was happy to go to meetings with her and chant but not to dedicate my life to chanting for long periods in Japanese and follow the teachings of their sainted leader. I was an active member of AA and got the results of surrendering myself to powers that be and the contradictory empowerment I found in doing that.

Suzanne had a similar middle class background mine. The Givens had a house in a middle class area of Los Angeles. Walt Givens had been a designer and aircraft worker like my father, but as an African American he was the last hired, and the first fired and he had tried his hand at various ways of making a living. Her mother had been activist in the school district on behalf of her special son, and then ran for elected office and had a successful career as an elected official and leader in education and civil rights.

Suzanne's parents divorced when she was a teenager. Her brother’s health and special needs had been at the center of their family dynamics. She had a great need to be recognized and acknowledged, not to be overlooked.

Her way of living was to create challenges and to struggle for status, income, and respectability. For her success was a beautiful home in a tony neighborhood of Marin, corporate success, recognition and a good salary. Suzanne also had an interest in theater. She traveled to New York when she could and attended shows and was a board member of an experimental theater in San Francisco. She also was a key person in putting on Soka Gakkai public events that highlighted their involvement with world leaders and peace.

Suzanne worked hard with great intensity at everything she did. She could be abrasive and demanding but she was respected and appreciated. She had street cred. We seemed compatible. I had a good education, a responsible corporate position, served on a number of non-profit boards. While she was driven and always pushing; I was more self effacing and downplayed status in a perverse sort of way.

We went forward more a willful choice on both our parts than a giving into passion. I moved up to the Bay Area and we shared Suzanne’s house in Mill Valley in February 1995. I had been working for California Commerce Bank a year and had helped solve their regulatory problems by then. My boss said, “you can’t quit, so work up there, go into the San Jose office, do whatever, but stay.” That summer Suzanne and I went on vacation to the Caribbean and stayed in a luxury time share she had bought the year before and went on a short sailing ship cruise. Our differences, her demanding the best and luxury and my trying to blend in, go below the glitz, conflicted. We are both strong willed and as much as Suzanne tried to dominate I clung to my independence and my way of doing things. We got through it but there had been some bad moments.

Nonetheless I proposed either before or after that vacation together. Suzanne planned a big wedding and I went along with it, so in April, 1996 we got married before hundreds of people. My professional friends in LA were impressed that I was marrying into power. I was impressed by the easy way Suzanne traveled in the world of community, state and even national leaders.

One time a young African American working with Suzanne in San Francisco learned who her mother was and said, “Oh my god, you’re LA royalty.” And that’s what she was, LA royalty, a princess living anonymously in the Bay Area. My LA friends were quite aware I had married into royalty, particularly my African American friends. I think that was an attraction for me.

We did well together at first. I think we were both people of good will. Each of us had married for our own reasons and maybe it didn't run as deep as it should have. My attitude was this could work, we’re compatible and for me it was a new life, Northern California, the Bay Area, Suzanne traveled easily in the world of foundations, community activists and political power.

Over time our differences grew. I am maniacally punctual. Suzanne was notoriously late. She was a take charge, always in control person. Her drive to be successful came out in being decisive and aggressive. I like to just go along and get along.  For me when it doesn't go my way I detach.  And I can be very independent or stubbornly perverse.  Some people called that passive-aggressive.  Our qualities or flaws didn’t mix well. Our relationship devolved into a contest more than a partnership.

Long before we actually divorced I knew I didn’t like being married to Suzanne. About the time I was done Suzanne got a job in Southern California. I was working at San Francisco Juvenile Hall and establishing myself in San Francisco. We decided to get an apartment in Los Angeles and a small apartment for me in the Bay Area. And that worked well for almost three years.  When I was getting the job at San Francisco Juvenile Hall I started on-call or a substitute. I was stuck in the hiring process, Juvy had terrible personnel department and things could go on forever without getting hired fulltime.  resolution. Suzanne offered to call her friend the Mayor, Willie Brown. I let my boss know she might do that and the next week four of us in the limbo of on-call, were hired full time. They were always short handed and they paid comp time for overtime. I worked a few double shifts every month and took a week off to stay in LA. With distance and long breaks Suzanne and I were OK.

I’ve always loved women and enjoy women friends. Sometimes as someone described it, there were inappropriate female friends. I am too much of a prude to really have affairs, but I enjoy flirting and lunches or getting together with a friend where there’s attraction and a little tension. A few years before I had made an inappropriate friendship with a young woman I worked with at Consumer Credit Counselors. It was fun, a little strange, we didn’t touch or hold hands, but the tension was there.

Suzanne changed jobs and moved back to the Bay Area. By that time I had a Ranger’s House in the State Park. They’re not all that great, the maintenance isn’t good and the landlord is your boss. I was new at Mt. Diablo State Park and not doing all that well with my boss. Suzanne in her take charge way, demanded repairs and improvements to the house and then we had to have an antenna for her internet that violated park rules. She was making my job difficult and not willing to go along with things. That wasn’t her way.

My inappropriate friend seemed all that more attractive and her situation was changing and she was more available. I realized I was risking “my marriage” but I went ahead. At that point I was getting ready to quit the marriage anyhow. Living with Suzanne seemed impossible and just a constant struggle.

So my friend and I began holding hands. I informed Suzanne we were done. She accused me of having another woman and I denied it since that wasn’t really the reason and it got worse from there. Suzanne was very angry.  I didn't do it well but I think in the end I certainly didn’t regret breaking up Suzanne.  our breakup.  I didn’t want to live with her any longer. Life with Suzanne had been like a battle  not just between us, but Parks, and airlines, and restaurants, and contractors, and doctors and nearly everyone else.

And so we went our separate ways. I lived in Parks and flew as low under the radar as I could get, but punctually, and Suzanne went back to her home in Mill Valley which she had been renting out for three years and started another remodel project. 

XXIII

Unemployed

In 1993 my youngest son Benjamin graduated from high school.  For twenty years I'd been dreaming of quitting my job when I didn't need to earn good money.  I wasn't quite ready, I needed a little more time to think about it but I could see the light at the end of the tunnel.  There were parts of banking I enjoyed and a lot I didn't.  I liked working with the customers, doing a service, I liked analysis, but the most of it was a pain.  It's what I did to make a living.  It was how I payed the bills.  

About this time I was learning to speak Spanish. I was speaking Spanish in LA, listening to tapes, and doing weekends once a month in Tijuana and then I did a two week immersion in Cuernavaca. I returned with a head full of Spanish dreaming of speaking it one day. Back at work I got a call from an attorney. I was reputed to be a CRA expert, a Federal regulation called the Community Reinvestment Act. There was a bank in CRA trouble. Could I recommend somebody? Everyone knew BanaMex, the big Mexican bank, and their California subsidiary California Commerce Bank were having a hard time with the Feds over CRA.

I recommended me. I met with the President of the bank, Salvador Villar, and we argued for an hour. After that personnel called, could I come to work for them? I figured if I stayed at Dai Ichi Kangyo Bank I’d have a bad year trying to appear enthusiastic but at BanaMex I might have a bad year and learn to speak Spanish. I started there January, 1994. One great advantage of a Mexican Bank, during the World Cup, that summer we had extended management meetings in the conference room with a wide screen TV.

I met Suzanne in August of 1994, 8 months after going to work for CCB. In that short period CCB’s CRA problem had been mostly solved. In February I was going to move to the Bay Area. I told Salvador I was quitting. He said, “You can’t quit. Work up there or something, go to the San Jose Office. But you can’t quit.”

So I moved up there and made do. At first I went to the office in San Jose, three days a week, a two hour commute, but that didn’t work very well. Then the San Jose office was closed. I worked at home in Mill Valley. I went down to LA when I needed to. I took care of CRA. I did the job. That did not require 40 hours a week and I didn’t work 40 hours. In Marin I became a regular kayaker. I enjoyed life.

The Mexican nationals at California Commerce Bank were all bilingual and the gringo credit officers were fluent in Spanish. The rest of us, mostly admin, wanted to learn to speak Spanish and two of us were serious, Tom, the bank’s in-house attorney and myself. Salvador hired a private teacher, who came in once a week and tutored us, mostly Tom and me, in Spanish for a couple of hours. 

Eventually at California Commerce Bank I felt I’d worn out my welcome. I had been good insurance for five years, but they didn’t need me after the first couple of years. They were doing just fine. It had been good for them and good for me but it was time to go.

So in October, 1999 I quit. Ironically five years later Suzanne, my wife, got a job with Citibank doing PR and CRA in Southern California. Citibank bought BanaMex and CCB’s CRA officer worked for Suzanne. Not too long after that Citibank shut CCB down, they didn’t need an in-house competitor for offshore Mexican dollars in the US . In the process they slandered Salvador and the Mexicans for questionable banking practices. Citibank should ever be as professional as CCB was.

In November I started “my year off.” I packed my Honda CRV with supplies, a laptop computer and a bicycle and started a road trip. I would have liked a year to wander but I had a new wife and a month would have to be enough. I got on Interstate 80 and headed East.

My first night camping was at Pollock Pines in the Sierras. I camped on a dirt road deep in the woods well away from the highway. The next morning I started writing. I had recently started working with the book, The Artist’s Way. It was an enhancement of my journaling practice. I can’t remember what I was writing but I do remember from that day on I began to think of myself as a writer. It wasn’t planned or anticipated, I just began to relax and let it be.

In Reno the newspaper had a short article about Shoshone Mike and the Last Indian Massacre near Winnemucca in 1911.  The story seemed incomplete and it started me d reading old newspaper accounts at the Winnemucca library.  Camping near Great Basin National Park I had this daydream, the full moon, the desert, the mountains and Shoshone Mike and his renegade band.  I began writing a story. I don’t think I had written any real short stories since my college days and certainly never finished anything.

The rest of the trip was dreamlike. Years before I had met someone from Nebraska, a place I had never been so that became more or less my destination.  What's Nebraska like?  I spent a week or more in Nevada and then continued East. I passed through Nicodemus Kansas, a Black pre-Civil War farming settlement, where Suzanne’s mother was from and eventually Lincoln, Nebraska. The West ends at the 100^th parallel and as I traveled further East I felt out of place. There were fewer open spaces. At Lincoln I turned around.

I stopped for a few days at a cheap no name motel and spent my days writing. I had begun the writer’s life and I enjoyed it.

North of Scott’s Bluff I detoured to Agate Fossil Beds National Monument. Now that I think of it the whole trip was detour. At the National Monument I saw a painted deerskin, the History of the World by the rangers and local Lakota artists.  It began at creation and spiraled through time to the present, battles, births, horse raids, barn burnings, the Dawes Act, World War I; it was personal and rooted where it was and universal at the same time.

Later I had the same experience reading Norman Davies Europe, A History. No matter how objective the historian tries to be, it always is like the Agate Fossil Beds history, told from the place where the historian is. For Davies it was the edge of Europe. For the Lakota it was Nebraska. 

I finally made it home from a very magical journey and continued to write. I wrote a Shoshone Mike Story. I joined Zoetrope, a writers’ workshop online. Zoetrope is this wonderful mix of new and experienced writers. My first attempt, which I published on Zoetrope was a real lesson for me. Voice, tenses and point of view as badly set as jello, wiggly and all over the place.  I kept writing and workshopping. I did it for a year and the stories got better, much better.

I had a regular routine and I worked every day. I was a writer. Like all of my writing, when I’m good I’m pretty good, but never quite good enough. I have these flashes. My last short story on Zoetrope I really liked. I had learned some things.  I told myself, this life I'm learning, if I keep at it in my next life I might be a Nobel Laureate.

 At 54 people would say to me, “Oh, you’re retired.”  My answer was “No, I’m unemployed.”  I didn’t feel like I retired, I had just quit banking and was clearing my palate before I looked for work again. I didn’t want to be a banker anymore or anything like it.

XXIV

Juvenile Hall

Who knew about age discrimination?  In Los Angeles I had a reputation and credibility.  In the Bay Area I had none.  What I thought would be an easy task turned out to be damned hard. I didn’t want to be a banker.  In fact I didn’t want to be anything.  I told my friends I had a serious disability, a total lack of ambition.  I just wanted a job, something to do, earn a little money, something worthwhile, no big career, no mover and shaker job.  I had my day being a mover and shaker and I wasn’t very good at it.  I didn’t enjoy it while I thought I was doing it.  In fact I wasn’t really moving and shaking very much.  I was just being used by my employers to look good while they made money in the usual way. 

One of the things I had always wanted to do was temp work.  I saw temps come through the banks I worked at and some of them were very interesting people.  They’d come in, help for awhile, the good ones quickly became part of the office and then they’d move on.  I thought it would be interesting to try it, to see the inside of offices I’d never worked in before and then move on.  I told a friend I was thinking about it and my first temping job was as a receptionist for the nonprofit where my friend worked.   

I enjoyed it.  They got a kick out of having a former bank vice president at their front desk and I made a few hundred dollars a week for a month.  Then I signed up with a temp agency and did receptionist and filing work.  One time a little boutique brokerage went on a ‘training’ junket for a week and left me in charge of the office answering the phone.  I was surprised they left a temp by himself but they were satisfied and I had a good time. 

The rest of the time was more like work.  I was a receptionist at Sutro, the investment house, with limited coffee breaks and I had to ask permission to use the restroom.  It didn't hurt my ego to be deflated a little.  Then I was a file clerk at Solomon Brothers on the 40^th floor of the Bank of America tower, great view.  The young up and coming masters of the universe avoided me like a leper.  I think they could tell I had come down in the world and they were afraid whatever I had might be catching.  I did chat a couple of times with the boss about mountain climbing.  I had to work hard for my $10 an hour. 

For a short week I was a messenger in the mail room at Morrison and Forrester, a big law firm downtown.  I saw lawyers like medieval monks in their cells scribbling away at contracts instead of tomes.  It didn't look very exciting.  On one of my treks through the floors passing out mail, I stopped to talk with an old friend who was working there.  Years before, I hired Richard's firm to do some legal work for the bank I was at.  He was good.  We became friends.  We had both sunk from our former glory days.  He was a lawyer at Morrison and Forrester and I was a mail room clerk, but we were OK. 

I don’t think knowing an attorney helped my status as a messenger.  The mail room supervisor let me go when I sat in the wrong chairs, the ones reserved for supervisors.  I moved, of course, but without feeling the proper guilt.  I guess I smiled and let it show I thought it was funny.  I didn’t mean to be disrespectful but the concern for small privileges was a little overblown.  I didn’t take any satisfaction in that.  I know small privileges are much harder to obtain than large ones.  The mail room supervisor deserved respect.  I guess it was hard for me to give him the respect he needed and look like I meant it.      

My temp jobs were fun but I needed to make a real living and the temp jobs were hard work, physically demanding, and I didn't earn much.   

I needed a real job and it was time to start looking.  As a banker I had been the caring face of banks who didn’t care much.  I served on community boards, I had done the Lord’s work and the banks took credit for it.  For my part I got paid to do the things I enjoyed.  Fundraising was the easiest way to get on the inside of a community organization whose good favor we needed.  I liked fundraising; I was good at it and I wasn’t looking to make the big bucks.  I was a volunteer fundraiser with a talent for it.  I thought it would be challenging to become a professional.  I could work for someone who really knew their stuff and learn the trade.  It seemed like something that would be worthwhile. 

Looking for work is not my best skill.  In fact, I am miserable at it.  I had a few informational meetings that I arranged through friends or my wife at the time, Suzanne.   Nothing came of them.  I didn’t impress anyone.  I think my lack of ambition showed.  I knew I could do a good job fundraising, grunt work, but people seemed to think they needed someone more dynamic.  My opinion is a lot of dynamic people try to make long hours and drive look like substance.

I went on an interview with CORO that Suzanne arranged.  I didn’t impress the new director at all.  As it turned out the director didn’t impress the board much herself and a year later was gone, but I didn’t get a job with her.  I don’t think she wanted to supervise someone her father’s age and she turned out not to have much substance herself, so someone with real experience and substance probably wasn’t the person she wanted to have around.

I finally had a solid lead with the San Francisco Ronald McDonald House.  The McDonald Houses are a franchise in most major cities.  They are good organizations doing good work, providing housing and a family atmosphere for families of gravely ill children while the children receive care in the local hospital.  The San Francisco director was a solid guy.  McDonald's Corporation takes credit for Ronald McDonald Houses while they make healthy profits creating generations of obese Americans.  McDonald's doesn’t contribute much on the local level, mostly their name, a little organizational help and seed money.  Each house does its own fundraising.  

I liked the job, I liked the people.  By this time, I was also pretty desperate.   The decision came down to me and another candidate.  We met in a waiting room before the board interviewed each of us separately.  I didn’t know the lady who was my competition but I had met her sisters in spirit many times.  She was dressed in a hard suit, nylons, high heels.  She looked very professional but up close she was wearing a mask of makeup to hide her age and a helmet of lacquered hair. 

It was obvious to me she had lived a hard life on the edge, trying to make money in real estate, fundraising or anything else.  She probably had a very nice car but lived in an apartment that smelled like a cat.  She was a middle aged woman in pain, crusted in bitterness and still holding it together.  I knew this job was going to be a reach for her and one more shot at credibility. 

I could be totally wrong about her.  Maybe the board saw something in her I didn’t.  They chose the lady with the lacquered hair. 

Now I was even more desperate.   I went to a job fair at Fort Mason on my way home from some dead end appointment.  There were all these personnel types from small companies looking for dynamic self starters.  I was surprised to see Consumer Credit Counselors, CCC a nonprofit I had run into as a banker when they were new back in the early 70s.  San Francisco Juvenile Hall was also there looking for applicants.  The lady from Juvy wasn’t very enthusiastic but I worked to sell myself and she finally gave me an application to take home.  I left an application with CCC. 

I went home and filled out the application for the City of San Francisco.  I remember there was a filing deadline or some problem I ran into and I pushed my way into talking to a personnel officer and got everything done and put in place.  Many years ago when I was finishing up at UCLA one of my daydreams had been to work in prisons.  I’m not sure why, my early days in hospitals may have left me permanently institutionalized.  I found prisons, jails and juvenile halls fascinating worlds. 

I took the test to be a counselor at San Francisco’s Youth Guidance Center.  They called it counselor but it was really a guard at Juvenile Hall.  I daydreamed of doing work that I really wanted to do.  Consumer Credit Counselors was hiring and as an ex-banker I seemed to be attractive to them.  The people there were good, the personnel officer and the manager.  I told them I had put in an application at Juvenile Hall and that if I got the job, I’d take it, but they hired me anyway.  I think they knew better than me the hiring process at the City was more complicated than just putting in an application. 

I started to work at CCC as a consumer credit counselor on July 1^st, 2001 at $35,000 a year and benefits.  I needed that job.  It was good work, counseling people who were nearly bankrupt and helping them to dig their way out.  The banks weren’t as enthusiastic about the program as they had once been and the people who owned the franchise were eager to make a profit which they took in salary and benefits.  We did most of our counseling on the telephone and I hated that, but it was a job.  When I was able to help people I got a lot of satisfaction out of it. 

I met Suzette Anderson there.  She was a young recent college grad and very smart.  We became good friends and 11 years later we got married.  At that time Suzette was a bit of tease.  She was in a relationship and I was married.  It took another 6 years for our friendship to blossom into an affair and even as an affair it smoldered more than flamed. 

Meanwhile I kept my application going at Juvenile Hall.  I took the psych test.  My short stay in a psychiatric unit in the Air Force came up.  I talked to the psychologist at the testing site and he cleared me to work.  I took the physical and they did a background check.  When I took the test there were about 50 candidates.  Half didn’t pass the background check.  It’s surprising how many people with shady pasts apply for law enforcement.  I think it’s a variation of the Stockholm Syndrome.  Another big chunk didn’t pass the test, basic high school grammar and math.  So by the time they hired us, there were only four candidates. 

In December, 2001 I was hired as an on call juvenile hall counselor.  On call meant we filled shifts for people who were sick or on vacation. 

In mid-December we had a week’s orientation class.  It was taught by Dennis Cleary², the Assistant Director.  We learned about Juvenile Hall and how it worked, the kids we’d be working with, and some basic self defense and control moves that we would have to use sometimes.  It wasn’t much but it was enough to get us started. 

I worked my first shift New Year’s Eve, 2001.  The first few shifts in Juvenile Hall were with experienced counselors and it was easy, just do what I was told.  The population at Juvenile Hall was a little over 100 kids, not just troublemakers, but the very worst troublemakers in San Francisco.  A youngster didn’t get locked up in Juvenile Hall unless his or her crime was very serious, or they were a danger to others or everything else had been tried and no place else would take them.  We had youngsters accused of murder, assault, mayhem, and gang violence.  And then there were the host of kids who were in the system and just couldn’t stay in foster homes, group homes or any other programs and kept coming back to us again and again.  They ranged in age from 14 to 18.  The 14 year olds were small but had less self control than the older youngsters.  Some of the most violent incidents occurred on the unit for 14 year olds. 

Most of the time, most of the kids, were mostly good.  However, the kids were always on the lookout for a weak spot, a chance to take advantage or even to escape.  They needed constant watching and that’s what the counselors did.  A counselor was never alone with the kids in the unit unless they were locked in their rooms.  There were always two counselors, so if one was attacked, the other could sound the alarm and control the other kids.  Ideally there were three counselors, two to handle the kids hands on and one to stand back and control the situation until help arrived. 

More often than not it wasn’t kids attacking counselors as kids attacking each other.  A counselor would grab one, the other counselor the second kid and the third counselor would call for help.  Help was a shout on the radio of “Condition!” then the location and repeating it over and over.  “Condition B4! Condition B4! Condition B4!”   At that sound, the third counselor in each of the other units would run to the unit with trouble as quickly as he or she could.  Usually within two or three minutes, the room filled with an overwhelming number of counselors.  Most times it was an overreaction, but sometimes violence would spark violence and the whole room of youngsters would erupt in fights of long smoldering grudges, gang affiliations, and individual problems.  Anything could set it off.  Every condition had the potential to be a riot. 

Many of the counselors were huge; former college football players were common at the Hall and valued members of the team.  So once everyone was there it didn’t take long to calm the situations down, but the first couple of minutes could be difficult and if I was wrestling with a kid it could seem like forever until help arrived.      

Most of the counselors were incredibly good people.  All were college grads and the majority had been there a long time, five, ten, fifteen, twenty years.  On calls were vetted to see if they could make it.  If the supervisors and your fellow workers liked you, you were called to fill shifts until eventually they hired you.  If they didn’t like you, they didn't call.  The counselors were the kind of people who really cared about the kids.  They treated them well, they took care of them, and they liked their work. 

However, there were a minority of counselors who for one reason or another shouldn’t have been there.  They stayed because of the incompetence of personnel, the lethargy of the system, the union, and civil service.  There was one counselor who was very inappropriate with the young men, too close to them, bribing them with treats and gifts.  It just didn’t feel right.  He had been fired for this behavior, but he got a lawyer and fought it.  After a year he won his suit, was reinstated and given a year’s back pay.  He was there for good and it did no good to complain about him. 

There were other counselors who just played the system, one who was a pothead and liked to stir up trouble just because he could.  I’m not sure why they didn’t drug test us.  There were counselors who were too old or infirm to do the job, but just hung on, and counselors, who had twisted personalities, couldn’t handle kids, or were troublemakers.  They worked there because the pay was good and they could sit behind a desk and let everyone else do the work.  There was even a counselor who was a drug dealer and recruited kids in Juvenile Hall for his business.  He had very good political connections but he was eventually fired.   

My first week or two I worked with counselors who knew what they were doing.  The work was easy.  They were good people.  As an on-call counselor most of my shifts were swing shifts.  The regulars with seniority had day shifts.  Midnight shifts were an odd collection of burnouts and night people.  After the first few weeks I got thrown in wherever they needed me and without any seniority or clout more often than not it was with the counselors who were hard to work with. 

I continued to work at Consumer Credit Counselors.  I wasn’t sure I was suited to Juvenile Hall or whether they would take me if I wanted a job there.  My days off and holidays I worked at the Hall.  There was always a need for someone and I began working 40 hour weeks.  The pay was good and in March I quit CCC. 

The work at Juvy was great.  I loved the job.  For me it was unexpected but I even liked working with teenagers. 

When I went to work at Juvenile Hall they were still in the old building; new construction was being started behind it.  To get to the Hall I went through the Juvenile Courts Building on Woodside Avenue and down the hallway on the right, up a half flight of wide stairs and in through double doors that had to be buzzed open.  It was its own world.  Inside there was a gatekeeper who checked your purpose in being there.  

After the small narrow room there was a long wide corridor, plexiglass windows on one side and cinderblock walls on the other punctuated every 25 yards by double doors that were securely locked.  Behind the double doors were the units.  There were 7 units in Juvenile Hall, B1, B2, B3, up to B5 and then a girls unit.  B1 was 14 year olds, younger smaller kids.  B4 was 17 year olds, big kids and B5 was the maximum security unit, a unit for the very dangerous youngsters.  There was also a unit for non-dangerous arrivals.

B1 was the easiest unit.  The kids there were still very much kids and easily manipulated into good behavior.  They had to be watched closely because left on their own they had no sense of consequences and were capable of real violence on each other.  But for the most part they were small and easy to handle.  B4 was the 17 year olds and the kids there were generally calmer, easier to reason with.  It was the kids in between B2 and B3 that were the hardest. 

As a newcomer it was the kids in between that I usually worked with.  There were some good counselors, but that’s also where the counselors who were a problem worked as well.  Ms. Brown, the lead for B3 was an obnoxious evangelical Christian, grossly obese who played favorites with the kids, sat behind the desk and never moved.  When there was trouble she could always be counted on to make it worse, screaming like one of the kids making accusations and throwing out insults.  I could never figure out why she worked there, she seemed to hate the job and the kids. 

My day usually started at 3 p.m.  I’d go in, check the worksheet to see where I was assigned and who I was working with, the right counselors could make for an easy evening, the wrong counselors could make for a night of hell.  Usually it was in between.  If there were two of us who knew what we were doing we could compensate for the third counselor.  The supervisors tried to balance it out so no one had it bad all the time, but sometimes it just worked out that way.   

The unit was laid out in a line up from the doors, a 20 yard hallway.  At the beginning of the hallway was a door that opened on to a classroom, which looked pretty much like any classroom in a regular high school, a little more spare on decorations and a little more tattered.  

At the end of an upsloping 20 yards, the unit opened into a large room on either side.  On the right side was a dining room with a kitchen at the back and a serving slot between the kitchen and the dining room from where the food was served. 

At 5 o’clock the main kitchen delivered trays and pans of hot food.  It was institutional food, noodles, heavy gravies, nondescript meats, unimaginative vegetables, salad, and cobbler type desserts.  There was milk and juice.

On the right side of the corridor was a rec room.  The tables in the dining room were fast food restaurant tables with the seats attached that two people could lift and move to the TV side.  There were very few things in a Juvy unit that could be picked up and used as a weapon.  Things like buckets, brooms, and mops were kept in locked closets. 

After the rec room and kitchen the unit narrowed down and on one side was a bench for the kids to sit and on the other a waist high cage and behind it a desk with a chair and a telephone.  This was the counselors’ desk.  Notes, papers, and the daily log were kept there and anything the counselors wanted out of reach from the youngsters.  Behind it was a closet that could be locked where the sporks , a combination fork and spoon, and kitchen utensils were kept and a small bathroom that the counselors could use.

Before three o’clock the kids were locked in their rooms for shift change.  We’d check in at the desk, exchange information with the day shift, check the radios and the plastic sporks.  The sporks could conceivably be used as weapons; these and the metal ladles and serving spoons were counted at the beginning of shift, after meals, and at the end of shift. 

Further on the unit opened up to a large bathroom for the kids and hallways on either side and one straight back.  The rooms were on either side of the hallways.  In the straight hallway on one side was a shower room.  At the end of the right hallway there was a large closet with linens, towels, clothes and cleaning equipment. 

The rooms were reasonably large, with two iron bed frames bolted into the floor.  We put foam mattresses on the frames.  If the hall was crowded we sometimes put an extra youngster in the room and sometimes even two.  The youngsters liked this, the more kids the more it was like a party, so the kids who got put together were the kids following the rules, easy to work with, the kids who got along. 

All the cleanup, floors swept and mopped, toilets cleaned, food served and everything else we needed, the kids did.  Any reason they had to get out of their rooms was appreciated and cleanup was considered a privilege.  The kids who knew their way around Juvy watched their behavior to earn the privilege.  It was one of the many tools at our disposal to guide the behavior of the youngsters. 

At 5:30 we served the kids dinner.  Depending on the counselor and the kids, one counselor would work the kitchen and the kids would help.  Some of the better kids, usually kids who had been there a long time and knew their way around were very helpful and it paid off for them in time out of their rooms and other privileges we had to dispense.  And it was just easier to live there when we all got along, easier for us, easier for the kids. 

At first there was a lot of skepticism about my being in Juvenile Hall.  I was a grandfather, though most of the counselors there were close to my age.  I’m not big, 5’9” and I’m not a fighter. I’d rather talk, but after a while most people came to accept me.  The macho types who believed in being rough with the kids never did, but I got along.  I proved in a fight I could wrestle with the kids.  I learned it was a matter of just jumping in, like being a lineman on a football team.  When the quarterback called the number you jumped and hit hard.  If you knocked the kids off balance that was usually enough to end the situation. 

Some people were never going to accept me and that was fine.  The first real fight I saw I did stand flat footed for a few moments.  A large kid seriously attacked a smart mouthed youngster and bloodied his face.  I also learned a lesson in report writing.  The older experienced counselor worked with the other counselor to write a report that made me look like the problem, diverting attention from the other counselor’s mistakes.  Most people are stunned by violence, it’s unexpected and they don’t know what to do.  But after a while and with a little experience, I learned to respond to it.  I used my voice a lot more than muscle, but I learned to jump in when I needed to. 

I liked working in Juvenile Hall.  I liked the kids.  I talked to them, I teased them, I listened to their problems.  I treated them well.  Most of the time that worked very well with our population.  There were very few of the kids who seemed thoroughly evil or mean.  Most of them had a good side and most of the time that’s what I worked on.  I did learn never to trust the kids.  They were all schemers and like bank customers when I was a banker, friendship was fine but when it came down to it, they were going to do what they thought was best for themselves not caring who was in their way.   

There was one youngster, McKissick, I don’t know what he was in for.  Most of the time we didn’t know.  He was well over 6 foot tall, but very slender and gangly, not coordinated at all.  He was 15 years old, but his voice hadn’t changed and he had a real little kid kind of feel to him.  He had been put with other 15 year olds but he had been victimized by the more mature sophisticated kids and so he was put down in B1 with the younger kids.  He fit in and did just fine.  He was there for awhile and so he became one of the trusted kids.  He was cooperative and helpful and was a regular for cleanup and other privileges.

At one time he sprained his ankle and he had a crutch from the clinic.  Crutches were treated with great care in Juvenile Hall and when he wasn’t using his crutch it got locked in a closet.  The fear was he or one of the other kids could use it as a weapon before anyone could get close to them. 

The kids were locked in their rooms after meals, during cleanup, and during shift changes.  After the evening recreation they were locked up until the next morning.  A constant thing between the kids and the counselors was their need to use the bathroom.  It went on all day and all night.  Any time they were locked up it seemed the kids needed to use the bathroom.  The more I let them out the more they needed out.   I learned to pace their bathroom breaks, make sure everyone got one and then to ignore their whining.  If you absolutely must use the bathroom, piss on your shirt and we’ll give you a new one after shift change.  They very seldom needed to do that.  It took balance.  I let the kids out regularly to use the bathroom, when they really needed it and sometimes just because they wanted out, but it had to be controlled. 

And whenever the kids were locked up and a counselor was alone in the unit, it seemed like they all needed out.  If I was in there for a long time or there was a genuine need, I would call to another unit or a supervisor and someone would come and join me while we let the youngsters out and did bathroom breaks for the whole unit.  The rule was never to be in the unit alone with a detainee out.

It was particularly difficult on the midnight shift because all the units but a couple had single counselors and getting a backup counselor could take some time. 

One night as usual Mr. Peters was working the midnight shift in B1.  He had been at the hall forever and the midnight shift was his regular time.  Peters was about 5’3” and 120 pounds.  He was an older man, frail and small.  He had a good sense of humor, was a very nice guy, but he was one of the midnight people.  It was known that some of the counselors sometimes let the kids out by themselves.  They knew the good kids; some counselors were big enough to handle anybody and didn’t worry about being attacked.  It wasn’t the norm but it happened. 

That night Peters let McKissick, the good kid out.  McKissick nearly beat him to death with the crutch.  He left Peters in a bloody heap behind his desk, took his keys, and escaped the unit.  Sometime later someone checking the units found Peters.  Paramedics were called and his life was saved.  The police found McKissick on the roof of the building trying to find a way to get over the tall fences that surrounded the facility. 

Peters survived but he never came back to work.  McKissick was charged with attempted murder and was going to stay in custody until he was at least 25 years old or maybe longer.  I think kids locked up often dreamed about mayhem but we never gave them the chance.  Peters gave McKissick the chance.  His story was added to the cautionary tales that got told to remind us all to follow procedures.     

I watched counselors relax their guard because they knew the kids, because there hadn’t been any trouble for a long time or just because they were tired.  I always reminded myself, that Juvenile Hall was easy, and it was comfortable, but it was always dangerous. 

Occasionally filling in at B5, the maximum security unit was usually easier because the counselors knew their kids were dangerous and they were always vigilant.  They followed procedures carefully and almost never bent the rules. 

Most of the time I enjoyed going to work.  I enjoyed my shifts, I enjoyed the people I worked with and I really enjoyed the kids.  I got invested in them.  I found them funny and warm and I liked that they responded to being treated decently.  Besides the counselors, there were teachers during the day, some of whom were incredible.  There were nurses who visited the units with meds, mostly Motrin, and antibiotics.  There were a few kids on psychotropics but not many.  There were psych counselors, probation officers and lawyers.  In the evening there were whole host of volunteers, yoga instructors, mentors, community workers, rehab programs, music teachers, and art teachers.  There were also families.  It was a community, a community I enjoyed. 

Sometimes my stomach would twist in anxiety at going to work that I might be stuck with one of the counselors who made working there more dangerous than it had to be.  Ferrar was just such a counselor.  He spouted some sort of South American liberation ideology, read books at work and provoked the kids just out of sheer boredom and cussedness.  He’d get into it with a kid and jack the kid up until there was an incident and the kid was locked up in his room for days as punishment for having lost control.  The whole unit would be locked down and Ferrar could read his book.  Ferrar enjoyed power and he was unpredictable. 

Another counselor, Michaels, was just stupid and always trying to get out of work and lording it over anybody who he thought had less seniority than he did.  The kids took advantage of him and then reacted badly to his neglect.  He’d argue with them and working with him was always a problem. 

There was one counselor who was too old and decrepit to be of any use on the unit.  Another counselor was just a twisted personality and had some sort of weird sexual thing going and went sideways with the kids unpredictably.  There was another counselor who was into the plight of the Black Man and would provoke the black kids against the white counselors stirring them up with his own sense of victimization.  Most of the counselors were very good and decent people but the few who weren’t could be a real problem. 

One Christmas at Juvenile Hall I was scheduled to work the swing shift on Christmas Day.  I didn’t have much seniority.  It was my Monday as we call our first day back after two days off.  I agreed with Suzanne to go down to LA for Christmas with her family, but I had to make it back to work at 3 p.m. on Christmas Day. 

I did the Christmas thing with family and then I left early and rushed to the airport, making a plane for San Francisco.  I got to San Francisco with little time to spare and rushed to Juvenile Hall.  I made it there just before three.  I thought it was important to be there for the kids.  Holidays were hard for them and I knew they needed someone who cared. 

Weekends and holidays the sheriffs who manned the front door of the Juvenile Court Building were off and one of the counselors would be assigned door duty.  I looked at the duty roster and that’s what I got.  I had been burning with the satisfaction of my own altruism in rushing to be with “the kids” on Christmas Day and I spent the shift watching a door that was little used.  Juvenile Hall was like that. 

I worked on call for six months.  The usual thing was that an on call counselor just worked right through the limited hours that defined on call and by default became a provisional counselor working full time with benefits.  Personnel and procedures at Juvenile Hall were so bad, that this haphazard way of promotion had become the norm. 

I was used to doing things right, needed to have some definition and as I neared my 1096 hours of work in one year, I said something about it to a supervisor.  The next day I was told to stop working and go home until I was called back or until the next 12 month period started.  There were four of us in the same situation and the other three were laid off as well. 

I was told, don’t worry about it, they wanted to have me full time and the layoff would be temporary.  Of course being hired required budget, approval for hiring, and a lot of bureaucracy.  It felt like an astrological lining up of the planets to the right configuration.  Even if it happened it might be beyond the ability of personnel to take advantage.  The personnel office for Juvy was behind a locked door in the court house part of the building.  You had to ring a buzzer to get someone to come to the door.  That's where business was normally conducted, at the door and no further.  Often no one was there or they just didn’t answer the buzzer.  If I called on the phone I got an answering machine. 

I went home and started collecting unemployment.  I remembered when my mother collected unemployment during the 50s she knew she would be called back to work but she had to demonstrate she was looking for work to get her checks.  Apparently that wasn’t the case by the time I was collecting unemployment but I felt like I should look for work anyhow.  

One morning while surfing the internet I thought about what I wanted to be when I grew up.  The answer was easy, a Park Ranger.   It turned out State Parks was taking applications online.  

Suzanne, my wife, at the time, had worked for Willy Brown when he was the Speaker of the Assembly and she had kept up her contact with Willy and the people who worked for him.  She kept hounding me to let her call Willie’s office.  Willy was the mayor of San Francisco.  Finally after four months of waiting to hear from Juvenile Hall, I decided I would let her give it a try.  I called my friend, Dennis, the assistant director and warned him that Suzanne was going to call the Mayor.  I just wanted him to know where it was coming from. 

One thing a bureaucracy hates is scrutiny from an elected official, particularly the Mayor.  This fear can even overcome inertia.  Two days after my call the four of us were called back to be hired as Juvenile Hall Counselors.  

I went back to work, got a regular shift on B4 and enjoyed working at Juvenile Hall for another two years.  I didn’t stop my Ranger application.  I took the test with State Parks.  Juvenile Hall sent me and another counselor to Juvenile Corrections Officer Training through POST, Police Officer Standards Training, at Evergreen Valley College in San Jose. 

The training was great, six weeks all together.  We were in a class with Juvenile Hall Officers from Santa Clara and Monterey County.  It was a good course and at the end of it we were Peace Officers, unsworn and unarmed, but peace officers nonetheless.  In the same facilities with our class there was a class of Santa Clara Adult Prison Officer Cadets and a class of police cadets for San Jose and other Santa Clara municipalities.  One of the cadets was a retired math teacher.  John was 57 years old, a year older than I was, and he was doing well in the class and enjoying it.  Later when I was called to be a Ranger, John was one of my inspirations to go ahead and try it.    

I went back to work at Juvenile Hall as a Peace Officer and I enjoyed it.  But two years later when State Parks asked me if I wanted to go to the Academy, I said yes.  It could be dangerous to work at Juvenile Hall, not because of the population itself, but because of the administration of it, because of incompetent counselors and because safety and procedures were secondary to bureaucratic inertia. 

I liked working outdoors.  I liked the idea of being a cop.  I liked being a Ranger.  But I missed Juvenile Hall.  There’s something comfortable for me about being locked up with pastel walls and no windows.  And I missed the kids. 

 1.  In 1999 I quit California Commerce Bank and took a year off

2.   I’ve changed most of the names of my coworkers in Juvenile Hall.  It can be dangerous and a little bit of paranoia is well founded working there.  Also it allows me to be more honest about some of the characters I worked with. 

XXV

Becoming a Ranger

My first year at Juvenile Hall I was on call. At Juvy the pattern for people who became full time counselors was to work the hours as six months straight and then be taken on as a provisional counselor, benefits but not full civil service protection.  The transition was accomplished by staying under the radar and becoming provisional because you worked more than 1096 hours and personnel didn’t stop it. I made the mistake of pointing out to a supervisor that I was close to my 1096 hours.  

I was laid off along three other counselors.  I collected unemployment and the thought occurred to me I should at least look for other employment even though I was assured I would be rehired at Juvy either full time or brought back as an on call the next year.  So one morning while surfing the internet, I asked myself what I wanted to be when I grew up?

Park Ranger!  I went online and quickly found California State Parks.  They listed Park Ranger as an open position for which they were taking applications.  I could apply online.  So I did.  Two or three weeks a notification of the test came.  It was in February.  In November I was rehired by Juvenile Hall as a full time counselor along with three others who had been laid off.  Within a couple of months I was enrolled in the POST course for Juvenile Corrections Officers.  In the jargon of law enforcement, counselors are badged peace officers, but not sworn, that is they don’t carry weapons and they don’t have full powers of arrest.     

I was actually still in training when I went to take the State Parks Ranger test in February at Half Moon Bay.  A Ranger from the local State Park was there.  To my surprise he was wearing a large sidearm.   I had no idea State Park Rangers were armed and that’s when I learned Rangers are full fledged police officers with police academy training and the same powers as a Highway Patrolman or any municipal police officer. 

I struggled with the idea of being a cop with a gun but from my experience at Juvy working with police officers and asking myself how I really felt about it, I realized I really wanted to be a police officer.  I had wanted to be a police officer since I was five years old.  In daily practice I’m mostly a pacifist.  But I knew from juvenile hall that I could subdue kids when I needed to.  As a twenty year old facing the draft I had asked myself if I was a conscientious objector.  I really searched my conscience and the answer was no.  I believed armed force was sometimes necessary, in wars of defense or protecting the innocent, and the same held for police officers.  I knew then and I know now, that under the right circumstances I am willing to take a human life to save lives. 

I daydreamed of being a Park Ranger and a police officer and it became very attractive to me.  I couldn’t believe State Parks had no age limit for Rangers.  They thought that even though I was 56 years, that was just fine. 

In State Parks all superintendents are peace officers and one career path in State Parks is to work one's way up through maintenance to Maintenance Chief and then go through the Academy, become a peace officer and a superintendent.  So Parks had experience with people going through the Academy when they were well into middle age.  Many senior superintendents in park management had followed just that career path. 

Even though I really wanted to be a police officer and a Ranger I told myself I would just stay with it through the agility test as a challenge.  After all I really was 57 years old.  The agility test required normal good physical condition which most of my adult life I had maintained into my 50s with running and cycling.  In training I injured my left shoulder and worried about trying to carrying weights while running in one of the tests.  In June, 2003 my shoulder had healed enough that I did barely pass that test.  As I was doing the step test I realized in my training I had trained wrong and I ended up struggling through that test.  The rest of the test was relatively easy.  At the end we had to dive in a pool fully clothed, retrieve something from the bottom, and swim to the far side.  After passing everything else the dip in the pool was refreshing.  Lots of people didn’t pass the test and I felt 10 feet tall among all those 20 and 30 somethings.  I passed!

In December I went ahead and met with a retired Ranger who did the background check and in February of 2004 I took the pysch test.  As San Francisco had done the State asked about my experience in the service but instead of a short conversation and passing me as the psychologist for the City  had done, the State wanted my service medical records.  I was devastated.  I thought that was their bureaucratic way of getting rid of me.  No, a personnel clerk told me, I could send off and have my service records sent to the State.  So I did, but I wrote off becoming a Ranger.  I settled into Juvenile Hall and adjusted my thinking that I would stay there until retirement.  I even became a union steward. 

In August, two years after I had first applied, State Parks asked me to meet with a psychologist who by coincidence also contracted with San Francisco Juvenile Hall.  He was very interested in my experience on unit B4 with the 17 year olds, and then he passed me.  I didn’t hear anything from the State but in December I got a panicky phone call that said my background check was expired and could I quickly meet with an investigator and if I passed it again, could I attend a class starting January 2^nd in three weeks time?

I couldn’t believe I was crazy enough to consider going to a Police Academy at the age of 58.  Then I happened to pick up Lance Armstrong’s biography and the message I got was, Go For It!  So I did.  I got notification that I passed the background two days before Christmas.  I spent the next week trying to get together the uniforms I needed and January 1^st, 2005 I l drove to Pacific Grove near Monterey and the California State Parks Ranger Academy.

XXVI

Police Academy

B.V.S.T. 28 was known as the special needs class.  Basic Visitor Services Training, as they called the police academy classes in Parks were held at the William Penn Mott Training Center at Asilomar State Beach.  The facilities were part of the conference center run by a concessionaire.  We lived in hotel rooms with maid service and a fireplace in a downstairs day room.  By older Park Rangers it was derisively called Camp Snoopy.

It was hard to say how we became the special needs class.  We were the last class for the testing done in February, 2003.  That meant, as someone in the class before us indelicately put it, we were the bottom of the barrel.  The classes were put together based on overall scores.  I had originally been scheduled for BVST 27 but the delay from my psych test knocked me back to 28.  We were all in the situation of either being at the bottom of the scoring or having something that delayed our starting.  One cadet had diabetes and had fought the bureaucracy to have his application accepted. 

There were 29 of us.  We were bright, almost all college graduates, a few had AA degrees which they had worked hard to get.  We were teachers, park aides, State clerks, and people who had held one job or another but still hadn’t found the job they wanted.  Our class also had four Fish and Game Warden cadets.  We ranged in age from 21 to three of us in our 50s.  The majority of the cadets were around 30 years old.   One of the older guys was a former banker like myself and the other had worked for an airline. 

The thorough background check done on all of us assured that we were honest and people of outstanding integrity.  The Academy is the only place I’ve ever been where I could leave a pen on my desk in the afternoon and come back the next morning and get it.  Even cash lost was recovered and an attempt made to return it to the owner.  There were no thieves and no liars amongst us.  If we were the bottom of the barrel, it was an outstanding barrel.    

State Parks runs a very good Academy.  It is the same P.O.S.T., Peace Officers Standard Training, that all police officers in California, LAPD, Highway Patrol, sheriffs, municipalities, counties, state and special agencies go through.  It was a 21 week course and had an academic component along with physical training, arms training and police procedures.  The material wasn’t that hard by itself but the sheer volume of it packed into a short period and the intentional stress put on the cadets by the system and the trainers, made it a very grueling five months.  The academic part was geared to a high school graduate and the physical training to someone in reasonably good shape.  The physical training was the easiest part of all.  I think most of us welcomed it as an enjoyable challenge and a stress relief from the rest of the program.      

In spite of all the potential it had, BVST 28 turned out to be one of the worst group experiences I’ve ever had.  My expectations were that it would be like basic training or mountaineering where a disparate group of people came together and accomplished a difficult task by helping each other and developing a team spirit.  It turned out to be an ordeal where each of us survived in our own way.  We never came together as a group and in fact, the 20 of us who graduated six months later, all of us seemed to be relieved to be done with it and fled the scene as soon as it was over.  Parks added an extra month to the academy for interpretive training, At the end there seemed to be a general feeling of embarrassment of what we had become, like the survivors in William Goldings novel, the Lord of the Flies, we didn’t want to be reminded of it.  It was something to be put behind us.  As a group we’ve never made any attempt to get together or even connect on the internet.  We were fragmented into various cliques and while everyone tried to belong one way or another most of us were on the outs.  Instead of being a bonding experience, it was more like a junior high experience, something we were all relieved to be done with.    

It was hard to say what went wrong.  It was basically a very good group of people  We were honest, we had character, we were a specially selected group of people with really superior talents and motivation.  In my opinion, there was one bad apple among us, not bad for a group of 30, and a few weak links also not a bad number for any group.  It was certainly a group that given the right circumstances should have been a good experience for everyone who could survive the challenge. 

I recently had lunch with a superintendent and we talked about my class and his experience in the academy.  He attributed the lack of cohesion to a failure in leadership and I think there’s something to that.  There were two Cadet Training Officers, one of whom was very well liked and supportive, but the other was distant and hard on us and himself.  Our first crisis as a class was an alcohol incident.  Alcohol was banned in the Park for cadets.  We could walk a 150 yards to a local pub outside the Park.  Behind the pub was a picnic area that they didn’t mind if cadets brought their own and consumed it there.  Six weeks into the program it was discovered that some of the cadets were openly consuming alcohol in the dorms.  The Training Officer called each of us in and reminded us we were bound by an honor code to reveal what we knew. 

The so called honor code we were held to was based on a few minutes of paperwork that had been part of the blizzard of paperwork in the first week.  It had never been explained and there had never been a real commitment to it by the group, so no one was protected by any group agreement of transparency, a minimum requirement for any honor code to work. 

In my uncomfortable interview I admitted I had seen a particular cadet take a six pack of beer to his room, but I had never seen him consume it. At the end of the so called investigation we seemed to fall into two groups, conspirators and snitches, but no one could be sure who was which, just suspicions.  Somehow a squabble between two roommates got mixed into it and one of the roommates, one of the alleged snitches, was a lesbian and some of the offended cadets grumbled she shouldn’t even be in the class.  One of the Training Officers, a female, was very apparently a lesbian.  In law enforcement in general and in Parks as well more than the usual number of women among the Rangers were openly lesbian.  On the other hand in law enforcement gay men are almost never out.  Our class probably had one or two gay men in the closet and that added to the tension and one of the leading homophobes against the woman as to be expected had his own issues. 

So we divided into the drinking crowd and the non-drinkers, the cool people and the uncool people, snitches and conspirators.  Some of the younger cadets had problems with those of us who were older, especially me, it seemed.  Maybe I had a problem being older.  I don’t know. 

In my experience even all of this shouldn’t have derailed us.  Differences and problems to be overcome are not unusual in group dynamics and often are part of the challenge the group overcomes.  I guess in our case there were just too many differences, character, age, geography, education, orientation, basic attitudes, even departments, and in my opinion it was exacerbated by bad leadership.  We fractured and then we fractured again and again.  We never came together as a group. 

I started the classes excited about the subject material and threw myself into it.  Our first real classes we had two deputy district attorneys teaching it.  I was excited to have them in the classroom to learn from and grill.  While everyone in the academy did well academically, it quickly became apparent that a number of cadets thought any enthusiasm for the classes was an attempt to show them up and the tone of the classes became competitive with penalties for being enthusiastic about it.  A clique of young people studied together but they seemed to exclude everyone else in a paranoid attempt to look better themselves.   

We studied 40 domains as they were called.  There were sections on traffic enforcement, sex crimes, constitutional guarantees, search methods, everything a rookie police officer needed to know before going in the field.  The classes in law were taught by the deputy district attorneys for Monterey County.  Other classes were taught by Rangers who had become experts in the field and police officers from other agencies like the Highway Patrol, Carmel Police Department and Gilroy.  The material and the classes were not too easy but also not very hard.  What made it hard was the relentlessness of it, week after week, we sat in the classroom for eight hours with short breaks and a lunch break and learned one unit after another. 

When we completed a unit there was a test.  POST requires that the test be passed with a 70% score.  Parks required 80%.  The additional stress of physical training, and the minutia of barracks life, and the academic part which wasn’t in itself hard became stressful.  We had done the same thing for Juvenile POST class, but that extra 10% and the other stresses hadn’t been there.  If you failed a test, you had to retest and if you failed that, you were out of the class.  Our diabetes cadet, a teacher, failed out on a test four of us had to retake. 

It was a week where everything seemed to go wrong.  The section was on Sex Crimes against Minors and it was all about relationships and ages.  The test was loaded with detail and four of us got less than the 80% required.  As a group we decided to retake the test that Friday instead of waiting over the weekend and taking it Monday.  Everything happened that week and there wasn’t enough time to study enough.  At the retesting I still didn’t know the material.  We had a very difficult hour waiting for the results.  No one was confident of passing and Lars, our teacher and diabetic, didn’t.  He was a big loss.  Everyone liked him, he had been one of the cadets who pulled us together. 

In those first few weeks, we lost a Warden cadet who had been too far away from school for too long.  We lost Lars and another cadet who was trying to split his attention between a new wife and the academy.  Alvin chose the wife.  At the end of a couple of months one of the older cadets was let go.  Red was strong but his joints were stiff and he didn’t have flexibility in his hands and wrists.  The defensive tactics training, police judo, was hard for him.  His attitude was they had to pass him and they didn’t. 

I did finish the course, I got a lot of support from Al Pepito and other people in the program but Bill Delasin was my training officer and his write-ups and manner were always very negative. 

Later in the course we had anonymous evaluations by our peers, another ill conceived and executed move that fractured us further.  Many of the evaluations were poison pen notes.   One critique of me particularly criticized my anti-abortion stance, I happen to be pro-choice, based on a question I had once asked.  Another classmate had her weight criticized and denigrated

We never worked together as a class and a cool people clique formed and they helped each other but seemed to think the rest of us should not be there.  It all had a junior high school feel to it.  There was a junior high cynicism and bias against taking the classes seriously.   One classmate who was probably the slowest in the group was made a hero for being a fool.  He bloomed under the attention and showed a good sense of humor.  He was voted the class valedictorian even though he wasn’t close to being at the top of the class.  One of my guests wondered what was he doing speaking for the class, but he was the cool group’s mascot.

I felt isolated and alone.  In my sixth grade John McAdam was the misfit in our class.  John wasn’t particularly bright and he was overweight.  He was desperate for friendship and didn’t have any friends.  He didn’t fit in.  He was the brunt of jokes and teasing.  Everything he did seemed to reinforce his not belonging.  I felt like the John McAdam of our class. 

I didn’t have any real friends among my classmates.  The one friend I had made was too wrapped up in her own world and her problems to be much help.  As scenarios approached it really became an issue.  Scenarios, going through realistic situations with actors, where we had demonstrate a knowledge of procedure and law, couldn’t be practiced alone and the cliques practiced together and excluded the rest of us.    

I was desperate and I sought out Denis Poole, the other cadet my age.  He agreed to practice with me and we began working together.  Thank god.  My friendship with Denis was the only way I made it through the Academy.  For some reason, Denis and I hadn’t connected before.  He lived not too far away and didn’t stay at Asilomar except when he needed to study.  At the end of April we began practicing for scenarios together.  Denis and I have been good friends ever since.  In a recent conversation, Denis said he didn’t trust anyone in that class.  Now that I think about it, I need to confirm with Denis that I was the exception.  Certainly since that experience Denis is one of my most trusted friends today. 

The training itself was challenging and enjoyable.  Our daily routine was physical training before breakfast three days a week, long runs, sprints, and  various exercises to get us ready for the physical test that was part of the academy experience including leaping a six foot wall on the run.  That was a challenge for almost all us but could be accomplished by having the right attitude and using the flow of your body as you hit the wall.  Even for the short people, using their own momentum could get them over the wall easily.  It was typical of these tests that at the end, when we had practiced on a smooth wall, the actual test was done on a wall with a small chink in it that could be used as a step. 

The other universal element that everyone dreaded was the pepper spray in the eyes.  It added to the feeling that some of the training was just plain hazing that all California police officers shared to become part of the fraternity.  The academy started in January and in April we received our training for pepper spray and tear gas.  We walked through buildings full of gas that made it hard to breathe and brought tears to our eyes.  At the end of the day, we waited in the classroom for our turn to go outside and be sprayed.  When my turn came I stood for a moment outside the classroom with my back to the wall.  When I stood at the wall, the Ranger asked me my name and when I looked up to give it to her, she sprayed me square in the eyes.  She was good at it and it hurt. 

Pepper spray  on your skin burns like hell and particularly burns in your eyes.  I had seen it done at the San Jose Police Academy we shared at Evergreen College.  There the cadets were pepper sprayed and then ran to a tub of water and washed their eyes out as soon as they could.  Typical of our academy, since we had a reputation for being warm and fuzzy, they made it harder.  Before we could wash our eyes out we had to handcuff a trainer using proper defensive tactics methods.  So for as long as it took for the pepper spray to wear off enough to think and act clearly we just stood there and suffered through it.  . 

Some of the cadets were in huge pain.  One of my friends began shaking uncontrollably as he wept his eyes out.  The people with lighter skin and lighter eyes suffered the most.  My mother used to make chili sauce when I was young and it seemed frequently the essence of it got in the air and burned our eyes and if we touched anything it seemed to get on our skin and then in our eyes as well.  I make chili sauce myself and sometimes forget to wash the oil off before I touch my eyes.  I’ve felt the burn and I knew the best thing to do is to keep my eyes open, not to touch them and to let the active ingredient oxidize.  I had a very bad 10 minutes and then was able to handcuff the trainer and go and take a shower.  The shower was painful but eventually I was able to wash my eyes out. 

Some of my classmates took a half hour or more to be able to handcuff the trainer.  They closed their eyes because it felt like it helped but in fact made the whole process take longer.    

The rationale for the pepper spray is that if we use it we need to know how it feels.  Someone asked, “Does that mean you’re going to shoot us next?”  In fact, it seems to me it is just a rite of passage that all cops share and afterwards we get to laugh about it together.  It’s sanctioned hazing and it works.     

I was surprised the whole physical part of the program was easy.  I was in good shape.  I’ve tried to stay in good shape most of my adult life.  I was a jogger and a runner, a mountaineer and a cyclist.  We ran about 12 miles a week and did strengthening exercises.  It was fun.  I managed to stay right in the middle of our class, coming in about 10^th overall.  The three mile runs became competitions.   The Tigers ran out front but there were plenty of us in the middle to compete against each other. 

I heard Jim Nelson comment one time that he felt OK as long as he stayed ahead of me.  The next run, I stayed right with him, and half way through he realized we were racing.  He kept trying to get me to lead and I kept dogging him, if I went ahead I went slower than he wanted to run.  At the last half mile I took off and left Jim in my dust beating him by a good 200 yards or more.  I loved it.  We did a rematch and I stayed with him but at the end of the rematch I didn’t try as hard.  I don’t know if Jim found his win as satisfying.  I loved mine.  I repeated this experience later with a Ranger at Mount Diablo and it was just as satisfying then. 

Besides the other academic training, hours and hours in the classroom with frequent testing where each test had to be passed or be terminated, we had basic medical training.  I particularly enjoyed the EMR, Emergency Medical Responder, training.  I found the physiology challenging and interesting.  It was a large section and took more than a week.  It was very involved and included practical tests, splinting, taking vital signs, bandaging and all the elements of advanced first aid.  The first few times in the field I was very unsure of myself with accident victims, there was always another Ranger that would arrive on the scene as a backup, but after awhile I developed a real competence in emergency medical treatment and a year after the Academy I even went through additional training to become an EMT, an Emergency Medical Technician. 

It was a grueling five months and the last step were the scenarios that we had to do.  We went out to Fort Ord, a decommissioned military base in Monterey.  We waited in a classroom and then were called out to various calls.  We drove in a police car to each station; domestic violence, robbery, burglary, felony arrests, sexual assault,  mentally deranged and one with live fire with paper wad loads.  A  sniper opened up on me with an AR-15 in what started as a medical call.  I fired back with my Smith and Wesson pistol, paper charges.  I wasn’t hit myself.  I thought maybe the trainer wasn’t that good a shot, but one of my classmates had a pattern of hits on his chest.  The sniper, a Ranger, was very accurate.  I think in immediately firing back I put the sniper off balance long enough for me to get to cover.    

The other scenarios used actors and Rangers who really got into it and we were passed or failed on following procedures and handling the situations.  It involved all of our classroom learning and using our defensive tactics.  It was extraordinarily stressful but I managed to pass all the scenarios with only one that I had to repeat or remediate as they called it.  I was able to do it the same day and pass the remediation. 

My friend Denis had to remediate three the next day.  We had two remediations for each scenario before we were out and Denis was on his last, but he also managed to pass all the remediations.  In fact, our whole class, those who were still with us, managed to pass.  It was the last test on the Friday before Memorial Day and we finished the POST part of the academy.  The last month was Park training for Interpretation and there was no stress to that.  It was a good class but not especially hard.   

Michael Greene was the instructor.  I think he was frustrated with some of us, because we didn’t take the class as seriously as he thought we should.  I was exhausted and didn’t put much effort into the last month.  The training was excellent and I learned it and incorporated it into the interpretation I did in the years afterwards, but Michael wanted us to be extroverts and flamboyant about it and that wasn’t my style.  I can do that and sometimes do, but I didn’t rise to the occasion at Asilomar.  And the weekend I should have put into my presentation I went to my eldest son’s wedding in New Mexico.  My final presentation was adequate.

On July 1^st, 2005 we were sworn in as State Park Rangers.  It was an incredibly satisfying accomplishment.  The last weekend before graduation one of our classmates had been arrested for driving under the influence.  He didn’t report it to the training officers and on Tuesday before graduation Mike was terminated for not having reported a negative police contact as required by the department.  It was a sad event, Mike had been one of the bridge cadets who got along with everyone, but it was the way our class had gone.  Also Bill Delasin showed up at the graduation dressed in civilian clothes without a badge or a weapon.  Bill had always worn his uniform and weapon.  He wouldn’t say why, but he said he was no longer a police officer.  We never learned why but whatever it was, it had been going on for some time, either a medical issue or a violation of the conduct required of peace officers.  It partially explained to me why Bill had been so negative to me.  I think it seemed unfair to him that I was becoming a Ranger at 58 and he was being forcibly retired in his 40s.

We left and as a group seemed to be glad to be done with each other.  There was no group feeling even at graduation.  We all seemed a little embarrassed being together.  We went our separate ways and I’ve only stayed in contact with a couple of people.  Twice when I’ve visited Parks where classmates were Rangers, our exchanges have been very warm, even though both times they were members of the inner clique.  Maybe the whole thing was in my head but I don’t think so. 

I am very proud of having completed a full police academy and I learned in the experience but it didn’t include much personal satisfaction with the group.  I survived, I got a badge and earned the right to train as a police officer in the field and I’m very proud of that.  I’m just sorry that we’ve never been able to share that accomplishment as a class. 

All of the training at the academy was just preparation for training in the field.  I went to Mount Diablo State Park east of San Francisco and my Field Training Officer was Cameron Morrison, an experienced Ranger and one of the most knowledgeable people I’ve every worked with.  For 90 days Cameron and I worked together as a team and in fact the rules which we followed rigidly required that whenever I was in the field armed and badged, that Cameron and I be together. 

The things I learned in the academy we did for real in the field.  We did traffic stops, wrote tickets, chased a drunk at high speed and even made an arrest.  At first Cameron led but then I began to take the lead and Cameron watched and critiqued.  It was not easy, but Cameron’s attitude was so positive that there was little doubt I would pass.  Two of our classmates did fail the Field Training. 

Field Training lasted 90 days and then another 9 months of probation during which I had regular training and support. 

The first day showing up to work actually wearing a loaded pistol and a badge was an amazing experience and after 90 days being in the field by myself most of the time wearing the pistol and badge was again a very unsettling and ominous feeling.  It took a year to get used to wearing a gun.  I don’t think any of us ever take it for granted and I was always aware of it but it did become routine and I became used to people’s reaction to an armed and badged police officer. 

I loved being a cop.  It was a great experience.  I got to work with incredible people and I enjoyed the respect and admiration of citizens when I did my job well.    

XXVII

Mt. Diablo

I went to Mount Diablo State Park in July, 2005, my first assignment out of the Academy. My ranking in the Academy gave me a choice between Mount Diablo and Ventura State Beach. I wanted to go to LA. Suzanne was working down there and we had an apartment and I was ready to return to LA, particularly the mountains and the wilderness down there. But Ventura was the closest slot available. At Ventura State Beach alcohol is a problem, Hell’s Angels and meth addicts and it was nearly 100 miles from LA. I decided that wasn’t for me, I don’t like the beach, and the enforcement there looked to me like cowboys and Indians. Suzanne and I wanted either LA or San Francisco.

The disadvantage of Mount Diablo was that the actual assignment included being in charge of the museum and souvenir shop at the top of the mountain. I really didn't like the idea of becoming a shop keeper after going through the Academy. I didn’t become a Ranger to be a shopkeeper. I visited Diablo and they seemed eager to have me, so I took the Diablo assignment. I didn't think it would be that bad but it's not what I wanted to do as my first assignment when I became a Ranger.

Mount Diablo is 20,000 acres, 45 miles east of San Francisco. It sits right where the weather of the Bay Area and the weather of the Central Valley meet and it can go either way depending on which way the winds are blowing and where the pressure systems are for the day. I had been to Mount Diablo in 1995. We drove to the top and looked around. That time I was very unimpressed, a 3,837 foot peak with a parking lot and gift shop at the top.

In the Academy when I made my visit to Mount Diablo, it was a beautiful spring day with light fog on the south side, hanging between the blue oaks which were just beginning to bud. It was magical and a beautiful place. When I began working there, I came to appreciate what a gem Mount Diablo was.

At 3800 hundred feet it wasn’t much of a peak but between the Bay and the Valley it was the highest point, looking across to Mount Hamilton which anchored the South Bay. All the hills around it were much smaller and it sat on the edge of the Valley like a giant viewing platform giving a view from the Sierra Buttes above Sacramento and sometimes even Mount Lassen down to Yosemite in the South. On a clear day we could see out to the Farallon Islands 30 miles west of San Francisco.

Mount Diablo is the center of its world, one side facing east with Western Junipers and Gray Pine and the other side facing west with Blue Oaks and Live Oaks. There are Coulter Pines like the ones in the mountains facing LA and Madrones that always made me think of Oregon. For plants in the Bay Area it is as far east as they go and plants from the Sierras stop their western march at Mount Diablo and the same is true for the North and the South. Mount Diablo really is the center point for California. We had our own Manzanita, Mount Diablo Manzanita and the Mount Diablo Globe Lily along with Mount Diablo Buckwheat and Mount Diablo Sunflowers and many other endemic plants. We had two breeding pair of Golden Eagles.

The Miwok people in the Sierras and in the Bay Area were created on Mount Diablo. After being there a short time I realized Mount Diablo for the first people was the Garden of Eden, the sacred place, the center of the world, where it all began.

Even in modern times Mount Diablo gathered legends about itself. Everyone in the Bay Area called it the tallest mountain the Bay Area. It wasn’t. Mount Hamilton well within sight of the Bay was three hundred feet higher. Everyone said that the view from Mount Diablo was the largest view in the world except for Mount Kilimanjaro. From the rooftop viewing platform on top of the museum you could hear that ten times a day. It wasn’t. That particular piece of information had turned up in the newspaper in the 1930s and was groundless but had been repeated so often that people came to believe it.

But these made up myths about Mount Diablo just acknowledged that there was something about Mount Diablo that people couldn’t quite explain, something very special and sacred, and so people made up stories about Mount Diablo just to make sense of it. There was a whole story about how the mountain was a misunderstanding by the gringos of the original Spanish and that it really wasn’t named for the devil.

My own story which I could never verify but made sense in terms of the history of the mountain is that it was named by the missionaries from San Jose. The area around Mount Diablo was a good distance from Mission San Jose and the local people sought refuge on the mountain. It also was the Miwok Garden of Eden, a very sacred and holy place to the Miwok. In Europe anyplace named for the devil is usually a former sacred place to pre-Christian people. I thought the same thing probably occurred at Mount Diablo. The missionaries told their neophytes it was the Devil’s Mountain and they should avoid it. It made more sense to me than trying to claim that the most prominent geographical feature in the area, called Mount Diablo for over a 150 years, had been named by mistake.

An evangelical Christian from the nearby town of Oakley has been campaigning to change the name of the mountain. So far he has been unsuccessful but he keeps trying. The first attempt to change the name of the mountain was in 1863.

When I was working there I saw a Buddhist group at the mountain one day. They were staying at Juniper Campground and then I saw them again at the summit. The group of about 50 people all seemed to surround a monk that they were very protective of. I approached the group. The followers began to move in defense of the monk and then he signaled his followers to let me through and I met the Sogan Rinpoche, the sixth reincarnation of the Sogan Rinpoche from Tibet. The Venerable Sogan Rinpoche was a delightful and very personable gentleman who was delighted to meet and chat with a Ranger from the mountain. We talked about the sacredness of Mount Diablo and agreed that it was a very sacred place. It was where the Sogan Rinpoche came each year to do his earth blessing.

I often heard people say that Mount Diablo had been sacred to the Miwok people. And I tried to correct that and told everyone that would listen to me that yes, Mount Diablo was sacred to the Miwok people but that it was still sacred to the Miwok people and not just to them but that it was simply a sacred place and the Miwoks are aware of it and so are many other people. Yes, it was sacred; and it’s still sacred today.

One summer evening, closing the Park I kept coming across small groups of Muslim Americans, people with young families. They obviously didn’t want to leave the Park and when I went to talk to them, I learned they were from a Muslim Center in San Ramon and they had come to observe the new moon that marks the beginning of the month of Ramadan. For these Muslim Americans with roots from all over the world, just like many other people in the Bay Area, Mount Diablo is a sacred place. Finally they all gathered in a particularly good spot to see the new moon and began praying. They invited me to pray with them.

XXVIII

 A Working Ranger

We showed up.  That’s what Rangers do on Mount Diablo.  When there was a call for help, I responded and if I was the first on scene I was in charge until someone better trained or experienced showed up. 

I learned first response was pretty easy.  Was the patient breathing?  Did they have a heartbeat?  If they didn’t we gave them CPR, which for me didn’t happen again until my last summer at Angel Island.  Then we protected the spine, stopped the bleeding and took care of the patient.  We kept them calm until transport arrived.  At Mount Diablo that could be 20 minutes or more. 

After Gary it seemed easy.  All of my patients were breathing and while they might have been in pain with broken bones and gashes, they all survived.  That’s pretty good.  Mostly our treatment was to give people oxygen, hold their hand and tell them they were going to be OK.  It was amazing how positively patients responded to just those three things.   

In my time at Mount Diablo only one call was immediately life threatening, a case of heat stroke.  The young man had Kleinfelter’s syndrome which includes poor spatial sense.  The best he could tell us from his cellphone with a dying battery was that he was near a tree.  Dispatch finally got him to describe an old water tower he could see.  That put us in the general area.  There were 30 or 40 firefighters out combing the area.  Two of the firefighters I followed up a very steep hill.  The young man was at the top of the hill.  In a brief moment of triumph we compared ages and found out we were all over 50.  We found him and all the younger firefighters were down below us.    

The Highway Patrol helicopter came in and hovered over us.  We got the patient out and they started cooling him as soon as they got him in their aircraft.  He survived.  In my career there were motorcycle accidents, bike accidents, falls, heart attacks, and drownings.  Just showing up, staying calm, and being there, made the situation better.  I liked finding people, calming them down, taking care of them, working with firefighters and other police, helicopters, boats, and ambulances.  I learned it was something I could do and something I enjoyed.  I didn’t want to see anybody hurt but if they were I wanted to be there.  . 

At the end of my first year I went to EMT training through the Parks.  We did two semesters of training in a single month.  The classes were all day and weekends.  It was intense.  At the end I qualified as an EMT.  I became a trainer for medical responses.  I got to be good at it. 

The biggest issue in law enforcement on the mountain was the ban on alcohol in the Park.  Not all parks ban alcohol but we did.  It is a park by park issue.  At Mount Diablo we had 11 miles of narrow winding mountain roads used by bicyclists and cars.  Banning alcohol saved lives. 

At night we patrolled the campgrounds.  A lot of people equate camping with heavy drinking.  We tried to nip that in the bud.  It varied in difficulty.  Sometimes it could be a very negative situation.  Most of the time we caught them.  We gave them the option of pouring it out or a ticket and confiscating it.  They usually poured it out and that was the end of it.  There were a lot of young men in their twenties and sometimes they would try to be cute; sometimes they were belligerent.  I didn’t much enjoy the alcohol enforcement though there was a cat and mouse aspect to it.  We had signs all over the Park and the Park Aides would tell people as they came in.  It was on the camping reservation form.  So everyone knew about the ban before they came to the Park. 

I enjoyed foot patrol in the campgrounds at night.  It was like being invisible.  The campers stood around their campfires or a lantern and their night vision was gone.  We walked the campgrounds without flashlights.  We could walk right up to the edge of a campsite and no one saw us until we stepped into the light.  Catching people in the act was easy and their surprise was a small victory for us.  There was an element of humor in it which not all the campers got.    

The ban on alcohol made the campgrounds much more family friendly and eliminated those loud all night parties that make camping so irritating some times. 

Campfires were also a problem.  We allowed campfires during the off season but during the fire season, from May until about November, they were strictly banned.  A lot of campers thought they had to have a campfire even during fire season when the chaparral is tender and dry and campfires are just plain dangerous.

There wasn’t much other law enforcement.  Car break-ins were a periodic problem.    We increased our patrol in the parking areas and thankfully they were never more than sporadic.  We never caught anyone.  We instituted searches for potential suicides who were last seen heading for the Park.  Often police shootings are what we call suicide by cop, threatening cops with a lethal weapon and trying to provoke the cops into shooting.  Potential suicides are dangerous to cops.  Twice there were tense situations with armed suspects but both times I wasn’t on duty. 

I did two arrests and a detention while I was in the Park.  One in the back country on an outstanding warrant for gun possession, another for drunk driving and the detention of a potential suicide with a butcher knife.  Detention is much like an arrest except we took the subject to the County Psych Ward instead of jail. 

We did searches.  We found all of our subjects or in one case he turned up at home.  We knew the Park well and people tended to get lost in the same places, so the searches weren’t that challenging most times.      

Most of the time I drove around in the Park, driving on my side of the mountain from South Gate up to the summit and back down toward North Gate.  If we needed to go to the Mitchell Canyon side of the Park we took a backcountry dirt road closed to the public or drove freeways through Walnut Creek and  all the way around the mountain.

I think my favorite duty was closing the Park, particularly on a winter evening.  The Park closed at sunset.  There were gates at the bottom of the mountain and we started the closing by locking the incoming gate and putting spikes up at the outbound lane to prevent people from coming in. Then we’d go to the top of the mountain and work our way down.  We’d run into a visitor or two and ask them to move on and like a sweep work our way down to the bottom going in each picnic and parking area looking for laggards.  At the end we closed the outbound gate.  We could go as fast or as slow as we wanted.  There was a routine to it.  The mountain was beautiful and the night animals, coyote and bobcats would begin to come out.  Owls perched in the same spots every night.  It is a beautiful park. 

I did some interpretation, certainly not enough.  I also walked through popular areas and chatted with the visitors, pointed things out to them, but most of the time I was on patrol.  I did Ranger hikes with Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts.  I gave lectures and impromptu lectures.  I talked to visitors.  It seemed to me as a park visitor I always enjoyed talking to a Ranger about the Park.  Before I was a Ranger I didn’t meet many Rangers.  I tried to make myself as available as possible.   

Working in a park can be easy or overwhelming depending on the supervision.  At Mount Diablo we had a supervisor who made the job harder for all of us.  As a new person and an inexperienced Ranger I was particularly vulnerable to being bullied.  More because of his own problems than any problem I had Bill, my supervisor, picked my work apart.  I checked with the other Rangers and in their opinion I was doing OK for a newbie.  I was reliable and I was developing the skills I needed.  It never seemed to satisfy Bill.  Bill’s own performance was marginal at best and he was being harassed by the superintendent.  The superintendent who was an amazing type left the rest of us alone. 

Greg, the superintendent, had executive hair and he was tall.  He had no social skills.  After a year he still didn’t know the names of the six Rangers who worked for him.  The rest of us started calling Vince, one of the Rangers, Victor.  That was what Greg called him.     

One rainy winter day before the 8 a.m. park opening Jeremy’s wife Nikki drove down the hill as she usually did to take her son Chris to school.  Nikki was about 8 months pregnant with Kaylee.  Greg was driving behind her on his way to his office on the other side of the mountain.  At the bottom of the hill Nikki got out to open the gate in driving rain.  Eight months pregnant she got back in her car and drove through.  Normally in these situations the second car would stop and close the gate.  Greg, the superintendent, drove through the gate, around Nikki’s car and down the street.

Greg made life uncomfortable for Bill and Bill made my life uncomfortable.  It seemed like I never got clear directions on exactly what I should be doing.  It was as much my fault as my supervisors but Bill would give me assignments to do stuff I didn’t understand.  The paperwork and the ways of getting things done in Parks was complicated and everything seemed opaque, even getting my truck fixed.  It just took forever and involved submitting paperwork and redoing it and resubmitting it and redoing it again and again.     

I felt incompetent, the same way I had felt as a banker thrown into the branches when I first completed credit training.  I didn’t know what I was doing and I was getting beat up my boss.  In this case, at Mount Diablo unlike the banks I got reassurance from my coworkers that I was doing just fine. 

From my perspective now, after having been a Ranger for seven years, I was doing OK.  As a Ranger I have some outstanding abilities. I do well with people, in day to day contacts and in high stress situations. I learned how to act in cop situations with experience but mostly with just common sense and a sense of duty to do what needs to be done. 

There were times when I dealt with belligerent citizens badly but there were times when I did it well.  Overall looking back I did a pretty good job.  I wish I had been able to do a better job.  I wish I had more support, time and opportunity to have been more of what the public expects of a Ranger, an organizer, reaching out to people.  I reached out to some visitors but sometimes it seemed I had to sneak around to do it.  At Mount Diablo my best skill wasn’t appreciated that much.    When I went to Angel Island things weren’t perfect, but they were better.    

Before I became a Ranger I had dreamed of how cool it would be.  It was a difficult and hard job and made less enjoyable by paperwork and bad management. 

I got to wear a uniform and a gun.  That in itself was quite an experience.  I enjoyed the sensation to be out in public as a police officer.  At first I enjoyed going to restaurants or cafes.  But after awhile being in public outside the park became a strain.  It seemed easier to avoid doing anything outside the park. Being more a Ranger than a cop, wearing the iconic hat, was better particularly with children. 

I enjoyed working at Mount Diablo and I didn’t enjoy it.  I loved being in the Park; being in nature all day long.  I got to see nature not as a visitor but living in it and working in it.  I got to see the things that took patience and being there, that evolved day to day, week to week, month to month and even year to year.  It was fun, for the first time in my life, I was working with people who enjoyed the same things I did.  Together we learned and shared the natural and human history of the Park and the local area.  

I have never lived in a more beautiful setting than on Mount Diablo.  The Park is 20,000 acres,  just enough to be a viable wild space.  We had bobcats, foxes, eagles, rattlesnakes, and coyotes.  On Mount Diablo in the late summer and fall, the tarantulas came out and began their trek in search of female mates.  My first year there was a particularly good year for tarantulas and they were everywhere. 

We had six different species of oaks in the Park.  For the first time I became aware of the blue oaks, the new leaves in spring, their fullness in the summer and their stark bareness during the winter.  We had interior and coastal live oak, both evergreens.  We had mall oak.  We had black oak and on the edges of the Park a few valley oaks.  The oak trees were often old and gnarled.  I felt blessed to stand near an oak that had lived for hundreds of years.  I was able to observe the wonderful ecology of the California oak and chaparral community.  There was fog on the south side of the mountain, coastal live oak, knobcone pines and riparian, turning to scrub on the sun blanched east and south sides.  I got to know the California buckeye.  On Mount Diablo the buckeyes lost their leaves in July and August and visitors would complain to us about the dead trees.  They were adapted to California seasons dropping out during the harshest time of the year when there’s been no rain for months and the temperatures can be in the triple digits.     

I enjoyed just being on the mountain, hiking, walking, sitting in one place, bicycling or driving my car slowly from Southgate to the Summit.  I got to see the drama of nature in all kinds of weather, at all hours, plants growing, the scenery changing, and animals in their environment.  I got to see foxes running away and bobcats that would stop and stare menacingly.  One time closing at the top I saw eagles, a pair, in a mating dance  in tandem inches apart flying against the sunset.  I watched them for nearly an hour.  They knew their dance was beautiful.  Their consciousness of their own majesty was for me a glimpse of the divine.  Mount Diablo is truly a sacred place.       

At the Park we had wonderful volunteers.  One gentleman, who had already made his living elsewhere devoted himself to making a wonderful junior ranger program.  The president of our cooperative association had been a high ranking Secret Service agent and was dedicated to doing everything he could to keep the Park beautiful and accessible.  Rich was inspiring.  He was a man of considerable stature and presence who anywhere he walked always picked up trash as he went. 

At 60 years old I was proud of my strength and endurance as a Ranger.  Rich, a few years older than I am,  invited me out to do a survey of the signage in the Park on foot.  The other Rangers teased me betting that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with Rich.  I managed to stay with him, just barely, from the bottom of the mountain to the top and traversing back and forth on our way up with no regard for the steepness of the trail.  It was a challenge.  I was exhausted and relieved when we made it back to the car.  I wasn’t Rich’s equal but I could keep up at least on Mount Diablo,  After I left Mount Diablo Rich and a friend of his climbed Mount McKinley.

Probably my favorite thing to do in the Park was a short hike with pre-teen youngsters.  I loved showing them the trees, finding wildlife and listening to them tell me about what they saw and what they enjoyed in nature.  For youngsters around four or five years old my wearing the hat and the uniform was as good as being Santa Claus.  They were so excited to be talking to a real Ranger they stammered with excitement.

After a few months at Mount Diablo it became obvious that the house at South Gate was available.  Bill wanted to keep it open to use it as a draw for another Ranger and after all I was brand new.  Carl figured out it was a union issue and I had senority.  The house was mine if I wanted it.  And I did.  It saved me a lot of commute time, I was living in Oakland commuting 45 minutes to get to the Park and the house was darn near for free.

The house itself was a 1940s government house, green with a green roof.  It was a rectangle divided into a living room, a kitchen and two bedrooms.  It sat on a flat promontory above a deep canyon.  The promontory gave a view of the canyon, the valley below and the hills beyond.  Of course, being a government house it was situated such that the large living room window looked out on the road and the nearby hillside, almost no view at all. 

It was a wonderful place to live.  The disadvantage of living in the Park was that I couldn’t leave the job at work.  Home was at work and work was at home.  Every so often I’d have someone come to the door in spite of signs saying don’t disturb the occupant and ask a stupid question.  Where can they get maps?  Once or twice an actual emergency came to my door, but for a government house sitting directly across from the gate and the fee collection hut, I was remarkably undisturbed.  It helped that in the evening we locked a gate nearly 3 miles down the road and in the evening no one could come in.  There were wonderful walks just outside my door and the canyon itself was incredibly beautiful and steep. 

Suzanne moved in with me shortly after I got the place.  She immediately began complaining about the heat, the roofing, she needed to have painters come in and paint.  Suzanne left for work and for weeks it seemed I was left in the house with a painter, or a housecleaner, or had to stay and wait for the internet service.  She always had somebody coming to the house for something.  Suzanne insisted I follow up on her complaints to the maintenance chief or my supervisor.  Suzanne made living in the Park difficult and when she left it became much easier.   

The last summer I was at Mount Diablo it seemed Bill began to pay me special attention demanding I do things his way and looking for things I wasn’t doing.  I was Bill’s special project at work.  It was a downward spiral and I knew it might end in losing my job. 

Relations with Bill were terrible, he was always on the edge of writing me up, the things I was actually good at, he made sure or tried to make sure that I wasn’t able to do it without interference or being diverted.  It got worse and worse and I was in charge of signage for the Park.  I wasn’t a decoration or crafts guy, so putting information in the broken info stations wasn’t something I was good at or could even get started on doing exhibits.  I put maps in them and that was as much as I could figure out.  The highway signs involved figuring out the incredibly complicated system of ordering signs in the State bureaucracy and making justifications for them and so on and there was a sign dispute between the cooperative association and Bill which I didn’t know about and I was in the middle of that. 

So even when I ordered the signs, I wasn’t able to tell anyone they had come in and the order wasn’t what Bill had been forced to agree to in a meeting with the association.  So the whole thing was just a mess and as a bureaucratic novice and someone who doesn’t like doing that stuff anyhow, I wasn’t good at it and Bill was pushing and pushing and pushing.  I was getting nasty assignments and just felt like I was one of those employees on their way out. 

I thought of becoming a union steward, not so much to fight it as just protection for my position, screwing a union steward usually isn’t a good idea.  

Like my days in banking when I finally did learn to become a loan officer, I was learning to become a Ranger.  In banking it had been rough in the beginning.  I think I’m a slow and careful learner and so it was as a Ranger.  At the end in both cases I was pretty good at what I did.   

So I chose to go to another park.  When Bill learned about this he tried to convince me to stay.  I knew it wouldn’t change our relationship, but it was typical of Bill, he was clueless.  Here he was working to make me as uncomfortable as possible, to brand me as incompetent, but he didn’t want to lose me. 

After two years at Mount Diablo I transferred to Angel Island.  The superintendent there was Dave Matthews.  Dave had been the supervisor before Bill at Mount Diablo.  The reviews on him were mixed.  Carl and Rich really like him.  The cyclists who used the Park hated him.  Some people liked him and some didn’t.  He had a reputation for being overbearing and irritating everybody needlessly.  Supposedly he was hard to work with. 

I went to see Dave at Angel Island a couple of times and got a good impression of him.  So in November, 2007, after two years at Mount Diablo, I went to work for him. 

XXIX

The Angels' Island

On Angel Island people asked me how I got such a great assignment.  Well it wasn’t hard, between the isolation of living on Angel Island itself, totally unattractive to anyone with a family, and the Superintendent's reputation for being a micromanager, there weren’t many takers.  A few Rangers were interested but as soon as they looked into it, they backed off.

I went to Angel Island November 17, 2007, 10 days after the Cosco Busan oil spill.  The island was still coping with the spill when I arrived.  The cleanup on the island’s shore went on for months afterwards.   I had my own personal crisis, having recently separated from Suzanne.  At Angel Island no one knew her or anything about my marriage and how it ended.  As far as anyone knew Suzette was my girlfriend and she started coming over to the island and was an immediate hit with the island residents, they all seemed to like her. 

The island itself was another beautiful place, 800 acres, about one square mile, sitting in the middle of San Francisco Bay with a view of the City, the East Bay, the San Rafael Bridge and Richmond, and a mile from Tiburon across a very rough piece of water.   

I told people that coming to Angel Island I had had a religious conversion of the Park variety, from the Devil’s Mountain to the Angels’ Island. 

The island was a favorite camping spot of the local Miwok people for over 5,000 years, then part of a Mexican land grant where they ran cattle, and then an Army Camp from 1862 until 1962.  After 1862 it was a Federal island and in addition to the Army post they used it for a quarantine station and an immigration station with detention barracks.  The Chinese, mostly young men, were detained for interrogation about their documents and their detentions ranged from weeks to years. 

Most of the human history was on the edge of the island surrounded at an elevation of about 150 feet by the Perimeter Road. 

Richard Dana in his book Two Years Before the Mast, wrote about Angel Island in the 1830s.  He called it Wood Island.  The Whalers who stopped in the Bay took on wood at Angel Island for rendering whale blubber.  By the time the Army occupied the island in 1862 photographs show it nearly completely bare of trees.  The Army planted Eucalyptus trees around their structures supposedly to prevent malaria and left the rest of the island alone.  Over the 150 years the Army stopped grazing and wood cutting the interior of the island restored itself with a dense covering of live oak and California chaparral.  Above Perimeter Road, we tried to keep the island as natural as possible.  The biologists battled invasive species removing Eucalyptus and Monterey pine. 

The views from Angel Island are the best in the Bay Area.  We could see the City as if we could reach out and touch it, the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz, the East Bay and the North Bay.  From the top of the island I could look over the Berkeley Hills and see Mount Diablo. 

Angel Island was a much quieter park than Mount Diablo.  The only way to get to the island was by ferry or private boat.  We had spaces for 30 boats to moor overnight in Ayala Cove and 10 campsites.  Alcohol was fine on the island.  The café sold beer and wine.  People brought their own, but the costs of getting to the island kept most of the rowdy 20 somethings away.  Public drunkenness was an occasional problem but easily handled. 

There were fewer accidents on the island, but as the only Ranger I responded to all of them.  Even when Eric Knapp joined me in 2009 we still responded together, so the only accidents I missed were when I was off the island.  We only had one serious police incident the whole time I was on the island, a drunk who called in a bomb threat and then said he was armed and was going to kill himself.  Eric and I went searching for him.  We found him in the bushes on the east side of the island and arrested him.  We never found any weapons.

Law enforcement was very low key, most of it was enforcing fees and boating regs for the private boaters who came to the island.

The housing at Angel Island was amazing.  I was given a choice of houses, the Pharmacist’s house in Ayala Cove or the newer Coast Guard house at Point Blunt.  Point Blunt has an incredible view, but it’s windy and often foggy.  .  I chose the Pharmacist’s house, an 1890 two story Victorian house with a wraparound porch.  It was up the hillside from the beach at Ayala Cove.  The house was cold and drafty but beautiful.  Ayala Cove is where all the ferries came in, the Park offices are there, a café, a picnic area and a small beach.

The house is up from the picnic area and 100 yards up the road from the Park Headquarters.  Even though it was within sight of most of the activity of the Park, it was still quiet and out of the way. 

There is no bridge to Angel Island.  The only way to get there is by boat or swimming.  I had first gone to Angel Island in a kayak from Sausalito and for a number of years that was the only way I got there.  It’s a strenuous kayak trip against strong and rough currents and constant headwinds it seems.  Before I had decided to work there I had only come ashore at Ayala Cove and Camp Reynolds, both on the western side.  I kayaked around the island a number of times, but I’d never really got up on the island to explore.  I’d seen the east side from the Larkspur Ferry and all the houses and buildings at East Garrison seemed mysterious and forgotten. 

So just prior to taking the job at Angel Island I went to the island by way of the Tiburon Ferry.  Once I moved on to the island the regular means of getting on and off were the Angel Island Ferry and the Park’s 50 foot crew boat which ran a regular schedule of 8:30 a.m., 1:00 p.m. and 5:30 p.m.   The Ferry ran for the tourists hourly on weekends and during the visitor season three or four times a day during the week.  During the winter the ferry ceased operation on weekdays except for charters. 

Living on Angel Island was wonderful but it was also like being exiled.  Even though it was only a mile from Tiburon and within sight of most of the Bay Area, it seemed very far away.  I enjoy unusual and remarkable things and living on an island was a remarkable experience.   Knowing the boat schedule was very important as it was the only way of getting off the island and back on.  If I needed milk, I drove or walked down to the docks on Angel Island, got there in extra time and waited for the ferry.  There was nothing more frustrating that to get to the dock just in time to wave good-bye to the departing boat.  If I were operating either of the Park boats myself there was preparation time.  It took 10 minutes to get across the strait and then the tying up, disembarking and a four block walk to the parking lot where we kept our vehicles for use on the mainland.  Until the last year on the island I could use the Park’s boat for trips, but these had to be scheduled and announced well ahead of time so everyone had an opportunity.  There were no spur of the moment runs to the mainland.

So that quart of milk took about an hour and a half to two hours if I planned it just right. 

I could have gotten my own boat, but maintaining a boat is a lot more trouble than a car.  People joke it’s like having a second wife.  And there are no public docks available in Tiburon.  Tying up required borrowing space, permission and avoiding spaces when they were needed.  The whole thing made it nearly impossible.  To rent a space was hundreds of dollars and the only thing available was all the way over in Paradise, about five miles away.  Dave had a whole course and qualification system for the crew boat and only a few of us qualified to operate that boat and a 16 foot inflatable with a large outboard motor on it.  Even that ended with a new superintendent in 2011. 

I lived on Angel Island for four years.  At first it was a novelty and I enjoyed it, but as time wore on the inconvenience of it began to weigh heavier and heavier.  The worst part was scheduling a return from the mainland.  After Suzette moved on the island and we had Paloma, if we were to go shopping or just to visit the mainland we would have to schedule it in such a way that we could return to Tiburon in time for the boat.  

There was a lot of waiting around because we had to get there early enough to make sure we didn’t miss the boat.  The islanders were well known at the town library and the café on the corner near the docks. 

I remember one time we went to LA by car.  We drove back overnight so Paloma would sleep through most of the trip and scheduled our return to catch the morning crew boat to the island.  It’s hard to be precise about time with a 400 mile trip and we gave ourselves plenty of time to make the ferry.  We arrived in Marin before 5:30 a.m.  The boat schedule for the island was 8:30.  We went to the 24 hour Safeway in Corte Madera.  We shopped for things we needed and bought some morning snacks and then returned to to the car to wait for the ferry. 

We still had 2 hours before the boat left Tiburon for the island.  Of course, there we were, Paloma, Suzette and me, our luggage and the debris of the trip in the car.  The security guard for the shopping center, drove around us every 10 minutes for the two hours we waited.  We looked like a homeless family living in the car.   That was the worst time but we often felt like a homeless family looking for a temporary camp until it was time to catch the ferry. 

On a busy summer weekend there could be 5,000 visitors to the island or more.  Most of those would arrive by ferry and leave by ferry the same day.  So the earliest visitors arrived at 10:30 a.m. and the latest left at 5:30 p.m.  There was space for 30 boats to be moored and there might be a 100 people in the moorings but they stayed on their boats overnight.  We had 9 campsites distributed around the island and maybe 50 people used those.  During the winter on a weekday or rainy weekend we might have 10 visitors, a couple of moorings and no campers.  Except for busy weekends which were only half the year the only residents on the island were the Park employees and our families, about 25 people. 

After sunset and before mid-morning it was very rare to see anyone on the island.  There were 80 or 90 deer on the island, hundreds of raccoons, harbor seals in two different locations and a host of owls, hawks, and seabirds.  There were no rattlesnakes, no coyotes and no bobcats or mountain lions.  It was an idyllic place.      

The Superintendent at Angel Island was Dave Matthews.  Before I went to Angel Island I met Dave and decided at worst he had to be better than my supervisor on Mount Diablo.  He seemed like a good guy.  I worked with Dave for three years and at times it got a little crazy.  He was a micro manager.  He was always changing things, couldn’t leave anything alone and something I didn’t expect he was always battling with the forces of evil, park vendors, partners, maintenance people from the mainland and management.  There were things Dave could have done or more often not done that would have made working there easier but basically Dave was a good guy, honest and a reliable friend.    

When I first got to Angel Island Dave and I were the only Rangers.  I was replacing Hector Heredia.  Hector was an odd character, a real wannabe cop, he had been heavy on enforcement on an island where there was a rare need for it.  Dave had to fish him out of trouble with the visitors a number of times.  After I’d been there awhile I began to realize Dave’s MO included surrounding himself with dysfunctional people who needed his help to stay afloat.  His most loyal follower was Jean Orchard, a Park Aide.  Jean had a serious alcohol problem and a year after I got there had to be fired for testing positive for cocaine.  Dave tried to get her a job on the mainland.  His reasoning was that drug testing was an island requirement because of crewing the boats.  It didn’t apply to working as a park aide on the mainland.  The Tamalpais Sector people thought that hiring a coke addict made no sense at all and didn’t accept Dave’s recommendation. 

It was a blow to my ego to realize why Dave so readily recruited me to be a Ranger on Angel Island.  As a 61 year old Ranger over the hill and wounded by Bill from Mount Diablo,  I was another one of Dave’s cripples needing his protection.  

I felt like Dave made a mistake in my case, but that’s probably not true.  I flourished under Dave’s protection.  He excused my failings and appreciated I didn’t do anything without checking with him first.  As a veteran of the military and 9 years in a Japanese environment, I was a well practiced follower and I think Dave appreciated that.   

Dave was a good guy.  I liked him.  He put people and family first, but he couldn’t resist manipulating all of us.  Dave, like me was that frustrating mix of sterling qualities and raging faults.  Dave battled everybody, the district, our vendors, the ferry boats, the Coast Guard, anyone outside of his circle and caused us problems with nearly everyone.  The Coast Guard generally avoided the island and treated us like lepers. 

When we had the fire he insisted that he should take overall responsibility for the investigation since it was his jurisdiction.  Cal Fire, of course, didn’t see it that way at all.  The Cal Fire investigators were very competent and knew what they were doing.  Dave interfered so badly with the Cal Fire investigators that after a month or so they wouldn’t talk to us.  That was also part of Dave’s MO, to get in a power struggle with people we should have cooperated with.    

I  really enjoyed Angel Island and I hated it at the same time.  I hated that the visitors mostly wanted a character like Mickey Mouse at the docks who would wave at them and stand in pictures with their family.  I did that and enjoyed it, but a lot of the time I was the only one at the docks, during the week and in the winter and being a dock aide, smiling and waving wasn’t always that much fun.  It was a day tourist venue and the tourists could be demanding and shallow. 

I also disliked the arrogance of the boat owners, both the ones on the dock who avoided paying fees whenever they could and the ones in the moorings a few of whom displayed an arrogance of property and disrespect for the Park.  On the other hand some of the boat owners were extraordinarily nice and I got to know and appreciate the regulars.  It was one of the pleasures of being a Ranger.    

I liked our vendors.  I got to be good friends with the people at the café.  Maggie, the ferry boat operator is a special friend.  Living in a village was interesting.  I used to say if something happened on the island, it only took 15 minutes for the people on the other side of the island to know about it, unless it was a secret, then it took a half hour.  Being the Ranger for the local Park was also very interesting.  I knew the businesses in Tiburon and the local bank manager.  From doing medicals together I knew the firefighters.  Walking down the street in town whether I was in uniform or not I was well known character and exchanged greetings with people along the street.  That was different than my usual experience of being anonymous nearly everywhere.  

In my second year we got another Ranger, Eric.  Eric was a character.  He had a droll sense of humor.  He had been a Ranger for over 25 years and was pretty well burned out.  He didn’t much like the visitors and he quickly got off on the wrong foot with Dave and kept making it worse. 

Eric was called the ghost because he was hard to find.  But when I needed Eric he was always there.  There were a few times when we went out on gunfire or other questionable calls, where we didn’t know what we were going to and I always felt safe with Eric at my side.  He was experienced, competent and courageous.  Other things about Eric didn’t count much in comparison to trusting him with my life, which I did without hesitation. 

He and Paloma had a special relationship.  To her he was Uncle Eric and anybody who is friends with Paloma is OK.  Paloma also got the benefit of being in a village where everyone knew her and loved her. 

XXX

The Angel Island Fire

On October the 12^th, 2008, after the last ferry left, I finished my shift. It was around 5:30 or 6:00 in the evening.  It had been a long day, Sunday of a three day weekend and Fleet Week, more than the usual visitors coming over to the island to see the air show from the island's south side. End of shift, I went home to my house on Ayala Cove and settled in for the night. At 8 o'clock I got a call out. The dispatcher said an employee was reporting a bonfire in Campsite 1.

I got back into my uniform, put on my POPE gear, the acronym we use in Parks to describe our gun and all the other stuff on our belt. We always wore the full gear for a call out. At Mt. Diablo I had been called out one night on something sounding innocuous that ended with an arrest after a camper high on drugs had threatened us with a knife. After that I never thought twice about wearing my POPE gear. It was easier to have it on than it was to go back and get it.

The weather was warm. Humidity was low. There was a light but steady breeze blowing out of the northeast. Mount Tam and the larger parks were on fire alert. At Angel Island, wood fires were never allowed though campers could use charcoal. From my house in Ayala Cove I drove to the northeast side of the island where Campsites 1, 2 and 3 were clustered about 200 feet above the shoreline on a spur off the fire road .

I drove my truck to the turnoff above the campsites. I didn't see any fire. I got out and walked back to the campsites and started with the young adults in Campsite 3. They seemed relaxed and surprised to see me. Campsite 2 and 1 were four fathers and a large group of young girls, about 10 years old. There were small bikes, mostly pink parked all around the campsites. As I did in 3, I checked the to see if there was a campfire or wood burning anywhere and I didn’t see anything to be concerned about.

Everything seemed to be as it should be. The girls were running around, shouting, having a good time. I talked to the men and told them I was checking for fires and they assured me they didn’t have a campfire. I told them it was a serious problem and people needed to be careful. They said they understood my concern. I walked back to my truck and headed for Campsites 7, 8 and 9. Some employees can be pretty unreliable reporters, new employees with no experience and people who just overreact. Like any reporters they get their facts jumbled up. I called in to dispatch that I was leaving Campsite 1 and heading for 7,8,9. I got a phone call on my cellphone. It was Gerald O’Reilly our maintenance chief. He was the reporting employee.  Gerald is a reliable source and he had been driving on the fire road and had personally seen a large fire at Campsite 1.

I was halfway to the other campsites. I turned around and drove back and left my truck at the junction of the fire road and the campsite road. I walked down into the campsite. The girls were still running around and I walked up to the barbecue stand and there were coals in it but also chips of wood that had been gathered from the site after I left the first time. I gave the men a stiff lecture and told them, no fire was allowed, no wood at all should be put on the charcoal and that if there was another report of a fire that they would be ticketed. I warned them it was a heavy fine. One of the girls asked what a ticket was and I gently explained it to her. I had not been gentle with the men.

I walked back up to my truck and as I got close to it, I saw a column of white smoke rising up beside the reservoir nearby. My heart jumped with a shot of adrenaline and I hurried to my truck and called in a fire and requested assistance from dispatch. I knew Tiburon Fire would be moving immediately and they would be there soon. That alone made me feel better.

I drove quickly toward the smoke swallowing the panic I felt and began planning what I needed to do. I got up to the smoke where there was an old retaining wall below the reservoir. The fire was on a patch of grass behind the wall sloping up the hill. It was a small grass just starting right at the wall. I got a shovel out of my truck and got up beside it, I knew enough not to put myself in front of the fire but to go to the side and try to work around it. I shoveled dirt on the fire and it kept broadening and advancing. Gerald arrived in his pickup truck with a small water tank and pumper in it. It took a minute or two to get the pumper going and we attacked the fire with the small water hose from the truck. Still the fire kept creeping up the hill and expanding and we weren’t getting control of it. Mike Holste arrived with the island's fire truck, a pumper, and we got that going, but by the time we began pouring water on the fire, it had jumped to a pile of dead branches and then into a dead tree and from there the fire took off up the hill.

The Angel Island crew were amazing that day. They had proved themselves before in medical emergencies and crises. Now with a fire they showed up and immediately started doing what was needed. As each one arrived and pitched in, I felt less and less alone. We were working together. Park people everywhere are good, but the Angel Island people are the best.

The whole time we were fighting it, the fire kept growing just out of reach. It seemed if we had been just a little better, a little faster or just had more water or more people we might have been able to stop it. At each stage it was just a little more than we could handle. When I first got there it was only two yards square and then it was the whole draw and working up the hill. Casey Lee our chief interpreter arrived on the scene and she began evacuating the campers. Kelli Holste was in her truck evacuating campers. Tiburon Fire came across on their fire boat and arrived in one of the vans we kept in the cove. Ed Lynch, the Tiburon Fire Battalion Chief, greeted me with a smile and began moving his crew along side the fire. Ed and his crew were in charge. I don't think I've ever been so relieved. The fire was theirs now.

Time seemed to compact itself. The first concern was campers and the Park employees evacuated them and made sure we had everybody. They loaded people into their trucks and vans and searched the island thoroughly. Rangers from the mainland arrived and more firefighters. We helped the new firefighters figure out the lay of the island. We evacuated the visitors to Camp Reynolds and the Quartermaster Building which was on the southwest side of the island, all the way across from where the fire started.

By the time Dan Villanueva, a Ranger from China Camp, arrived the only vehicle left in the cove was one of the small electrics we used. Dan used it until it ran out of juice in an area that was later overrun by the fire. All night Dan worried that he was responsible for a puddle of plastic on the hillside. It wasn't the worst thing that could have happened he felt bad about it. In the morning, we learned one of the firefighters had moved it. Even the electric cart had been saved.

The fire quickly reached the top of the island and began coming down the southwest side. We decided to evacuate the visitors completely off the island and the employees and their families to Ayala Cove on the northwest side of the island. I went to Camp Reynolds where the campers were gathered. Some were calm but some were frantic. We assured them they were safe and I had to tell one woman she was not going back to her campsite to get something she needed. By that time the fire was already heading down the south side of the island through Campsites 4, 5, and 6. Later we saw that the firefighters had set a backfire behind Officer Row protecting the employee houses on the east side of the island.

Before we loaded all of the campers in our various vehicles I pulled aside the four men who had been in Campsite 1. They wanted to explain, to talk, and I told them I really didn’t have time, I just wanted names, addresses and phone numbers. We would talk about it later. They were pretty chastened.

Maggie McDonogh, captain and owner of the Angel Island Ferry, met us at the docks. She had come when she saw there was a fire. She evacuated the campers and began bringing firefighters across the strait to the island. Her boat held about 300 people and she brought us firefighters as they arrived in Tiburon. By early morning we had 375 firefighters, all the local companies and CalFire crews.

Dave Matthews the superintendent arrived on the island. I was assigned to the docks to help the firefighters and equipment coming in.

Rich Ables a maintenance worker was operating the Ayala, a crew boat. Allyn Shaffer, our boat operator, and his son Nick were operating the LCM, landing craft mechanical, a boat of about 80 feet, able to carry a large truck and land it on a ramp.  Western Marine showed up with another LCM and began transporting fire trucks to the island. The Coast Guard showed up with their Life Boat and asked if they could help. By that time everything was covered and there wasn't much for them to do. They left and came back with pallets of bottled water and cartons of Cliff Bars which turned out to be a wonderful contribution. After that they patrolled the strait with a cutter ready to assist us if we needed it.

It was a hectic night. 375 firefighters fought the fire. 15 Fire Trucks were brought on the island. The docks were a busy place all night long. I helped unload the ferry and LCMs and oriented the firefighters to the island. I could see smoke coming over the top of the hill but I couldn't see the fire from the cove. I had a second radio with the firefighters band on it and I heard the constant stream of reports and commands back and forth between the firefighters.

I heard them staging to fight the fire on the southwest corner of the island and all along the south side. The fire came over the hill and they held it at the fire road. At one point I went up to my house and the night and the trees changed the perspective and the fire looked like it was in my backyard when in fact it was better than three quarters of the way up the island. The residents of the island from the east side who were staying at my house didn't like the look of it, but with an effort they managed to stay calm.

Before dawn four helicopters staged themselves in the air above Tiburon and Belvedere across from the island. At 5:30 am it was determined there was enough light for them to begin their runs and they came over the island and dropped loads of water, a couple from belly tanks and a couple from large buckets suspended by cables. They made another run and another run, pulling water up from the lakes nearby on the mainland. Within the hour the fire was under control. The hot spots which had been held at the Fire Road by the firefighters were doused.

After that all the tension was gone. Cal Fire arranges for food for firefighters and the caterers arrived in the morning. Breakfast signaled the end of the fight. After that it was cleanup. Everyone’s mood shifted. It became a friendly and relaxed gathering of first responders, stories to be told, work to be done. No buildings had been lost, no firefighters injured. There was no one else on the island, just us. A wonderful air of satisfaction settled over the island, lots of work to do, but the worst part was over.

At three o’clock in the afternoon I left the docks and was off duty. Suzette met me on the main land and we had a late lunch at Il Fornaio in Corte Madera. It was a strange feeling after the preceding 18 hours to be sitting in a nice restaurant and enjoying a nice meal. It was wonderful like stepping through a curtain.

Later that afternoon I came back to work and showed the County Fire Marshall around the island to the scene of the campsite and where the fire started. At the campsite we saw beer cans littering the ground and in the trash. There were wine bottles in the trash as well.  It had been quite a party before the fire broke out. We heard from other campers and some of the girls that the girls had been putting sticks into the charcoals and burning wood debris and running around the area waving their burning sticks like sparklers.

It had been a bad combination of unsupervised children, an illegal fire, and red flag fire weather.

The next day two investigators from Cal Fire arrived. George and George, they said there was good George and bad George but they wouldn’t say which one was which. They were incredibly professional, combing the spot for evidence inch by inch where the fire started. They were both Fire Captains trained as investigative police officers. They were in civilian clothes but they wore pistols, magazines and handcuffs on their belts, serious looking men.

Our own district biologists and the County Forester visited the island. Quickly the conclusion was the fire had not been bad for the island. No buildings were lost. The valuable historical sites were unharmed, Camp Reynolds had been saved. The chaparral in California is fire compatible and the environmental effect of the fire was to clear invasive weeds and revitalize the cycle of the local plants which are able to withstand fire and regenerate themselves. As one naturalist said, it couldn’t have been better if it had been a controlled burn.

Our superintendent was always one to assume control of the situation and he began a struggle with Cal Fire over who was in charge of the investigation. There was never a question that it was Cal Fire but the effect was they stopped talking to us and as is normal in these cases, we never learned about the results and the whole incident just faded into the past.

They quickly determined the cause of the fire was human, that it was negligent not criminal. Before they stopped talking to us I asked what happens in these cases. They said the responsible parties pay the cost of the fire. The initial estimate put the cost of the fire at over a million dollars. I said, if it were me, I just didn’t have the money, what do they do then? They said the judge determines what the responsible parties can afford and they make payments for the rest of their lives. That sounded fair.

I was never able to learn what happened after the first few weeks but it was a solid case against the campers and I’m guessing that the State of California reached a settlement with them before it went to court and they are paying for their negligence. They didn’t seem to be bad people, they just did something very dumb and it seemed fair they should be held accountable for it.

At the fire scene in the beginning there was a little girl who was very distraught and had to be calmed down. Of course, no one admitted what had happened. I was sure her parents were going to fight legally any responsibility but I hope they stepped outside of the legal issues and get the little girl the help she needs to understand she wasn't responsible. The guilt she might feel seemed to me to be the worst potential damage of the fire.

The fire was exciting but like all the other events in Parks, within a surprisingly short period of time everything returned to normal. Visitors came, the island renewed itself, and the Park went on.

XXXI

Suzette and Paloma

I first met Suzette at Consumer Credit Counselors of San Francisco.  I was in the new class of counselors hired on July 1st, 2001.  Suzette was in the class before me and had started working there six months earlier.  Early on I had a client who as I talked to him told me what he had told the previous counselor to do.  As I listened to this guy, I realized he was only manipulating the system to cheat his creditors and I was supposed to roll over and help him.  He was what in banking we called a flake.  I reverted to being the bank vice president I had been two years earlier and told the SOB we weren’t there to help him cheat his creditors.   

I went looking for the previous counselor to tell her I had taken care of this guy for her.  I expected to find a young recent college grad who could be easily pushed around.  Instead I found Suzette.  She was wearing a long gray sleeveless slinky dress that was businesslike and sexy.  She was gorgeous and had a smile that lit up the room.  She had not taken the client seriously and the problem had been she didn’t follow his directions either. 

She had a laugh to match her smile.  She was a most attractive young woman.  Of course, I found her attractive, I would have had to be blind and deaf not to have been attracted.  She had a beautiful laugh.  She was young, in her mid or late twenties, though I thought she was younger.  She was a recent graduate of Cal, the University of California in Berkeley.  She was an English major and probably the smartest of all the counselors.  She was a favorite of Susan the supervisor and did special projects for her.  Her name was Suzette Anderson, she appeared to be a dark skinned African American.  She wore her hair pulled back to a French braid, looking very Spanish, that and something she said, I asked her if she was a Latina.  And she was, Panamanian, born in New York, with immigrant parents, she grew up in Inglewood.  Like many Central Americans she is fiercely patriotic about being Panamanian. 

This was the period at the end of my obsession to learn Spanish, an obsession that got me to fluency and I immediately spoke Spanish which she understood but responded in English.  It turned out she could barely get a word of Spanish out.  She reminded me of my cousin’s children who would only respond to their mother’s Tagalog in English.  For years I used her as an example of someone who at five decides to only use English.  My own granddaughters stopped speaking Spanish in kindergarten.  I think it was their reaction to the way the Spanish speaking immigrants were treated in their classroom.  If they didn’t have to speak Spanish they didn’t want to.  Suzette to my surprise could barely get gracias out of her mouth.  She choked on it the way the most anglicized gringa would speak. 

She had been an English major at Cal and immediately began plying me with books.  She particularly liked Toni Morrison and at her urging I read “Song of Solomon.”  In our chats I quickly realized her appreciation of literature and literary criticism was way beyond my understanding.  She had learned something at Cal that had passed me by or honestly I probably didn’t have the aptitude for at UCLA. 

From my point of view it was a wonderful office flirtation.  She was a beautiful young woman and we were friends.  I tried to go to lunch with her whenever we were free together and it wasn’t often enough, but every week once or twice.  She was a bit of tease.  I wasn’t sure how she felt but it was fun for me.  She had a six year old son and lived with his father, but they weren’t married.  She didn’t talk about John and I didn’t talk about Suzanne.  If I had thought about it I would have realized the flirtation was mutual, but the age difference between us was huge.  Suzette was younger than two of my sons.  I just enjoyed the friendship with a beautiful and exciting young woman.  Anything more would have been too complicated and it never occurred to me. 

When I left CCC to go to Juvenile Hall, Suzette invited me to dinner with her and her friend Jody.  There was an electric charge between us, but if we hugged, it was stiffly.  I went back to have lunch with Suzette a few times after I went to Juvy, and it was always fun.  We didn’t really stay in touch but she was a friend and I wasn’t really surprised when two years later I got an email from her and she suggested lunch. 

By this time I was living in Oakland and Suzanne was living in LA.  Suzette and I had a wonderful lunch.  We ate somewhere in my neighborhood on Lakeshore Avenue in Oakland and then we went for a walk, all the way around Lake Merritt, a good three miles.  We sat in a café and drank coffee and talked and talked and talked.  She was going to graduate school for an MFA and was very excited about that.  I was unabashedly attracted to her and would have loved to have touched her.  We sat close but there seemed to be an invisible curtain just barely keeping us apart. 

At that time Suzanne and I got together for a week in LA each month, which was OK, but I had long since given up on the marriage between Suzanne and me and would have welcomed an affair.  Suzette didn’t talk about John and my natural Puritanism and reticence and we were just good friends.  She was as a friend described it later, an inappropriate female friend, but not a relationship that I felt would ever get beyond flirtation.  I didn’t really know how Suzette felt and I didn’t ask.  I was enjoying her company. 

We got together a few more times and then I went to the Ranger Academy in Pacific Grove, a good distance from the Bay Area.  After the Academy, I invited her to my graduation.  She didn’t come but invited me to a celebratory lunch in the City at the Slanted Door, a highly rated San Francisco restaurant. 

We saw each other after that and then I received an email, our only form of distance communication, that invited me to lunch.  Suzanne was supposed to be in Oakland that week and I emailed Suzette that Suzanne being in Oakland made scheduling lunch difficult.  I knew the mere mention of Suzanne violated our unspoken rule of not talking about partners and it acknowledged in a subtle way that our lunches were not the totally innocent meetings of friends that we pretended they were. 

I got no response from Suzette.  As the time passed I realized she had been scared off.   I was surprised to think, maybe there was more to this than I had admitted and I found that very exciting.  Maybe I would hear from her again.  But I didn’t for nearly two years.

Then in March, 2007 I got an email from Suzette wishing me a happy St. Patrick’s Day and maybe we could get together for lunch.  By this time Suzanne had moved back up to the Bay Area and was living with me in Park housing at Mt. Diablo.  It was not a comfortable situation and I welcomed a chance to see Suzette again. 

Only this time I was going to say something directly about it.  I sent her an email and told her how much I enjoyed hearing from her and I would love to go to lunch, but I was married and this was a little complicated.  We needed to talk about what we were doing. 

In response I got an erotic love poem that took my breath away.  Suzette is a very talented poet and this was a very good poem.  I had no idea Suzette felt toward me as the poem showed.  I really had thought, the flirtation was just her style and we really were just friends. 

I was eager to see her and we arranged to get together shortly after Easter.  This time we touched.  I held her arm and enjoyed the closeness of her next to me.  She was shy, but the air between us was charged and it was wonderful. 

About that time I picked up Helen Fisher’s book, “Why We Love: The Nature and Chemistry of Romantic Love.”  Suzette and I were in love, all the chemistry and emotion that Fisher talks about.  It was a wonderful roller coaster ride.  I was old enough and experienced enough to know what was happening and our infatuation with each other was like a storm we couldn’t resist, a storm that would inevitably pass.  I was going to enjoy it while it was there.        

I tried to see Suzette every time I could.  We emailed each other and I would go to work and sit down at the computer first thing to see what she had sent.  It was a delicious obsession.  I knew if it came out, I was risking my marriage but by this time, I really didn’t much care. 

Suzanne knew something was going on.  One time at a restaurant I arrived very late, something I never do.  She teased me about a girlfriend and I stumbled through a denial, but it was true I had been with Suzette and lost track of the time. 

After that Suzanne went on vacation to the Caribbean.  I had already said I did not want to go and work gave me the excuse.  I saw Suzette on the weekends and we spent more time together.  Suzette was still living with John, but that obviously wasn’t a good relationship either.  John and Suzette had a son born in 1995.  Suzette didn’t tell me much, but early on the relationship was on again off again and then John moved up to the Bay Area when Suzanne went to Cal and she wanted a father for her son. 

With Suzanne in the Caribbean we had a date and went to the Legion of Honor.  I think it was closed but we spent the day in the City and on the Muni I reached for her hand and for the first time we solidly held hands, not linked arms, not nearly close this time, but tightly held hands.  It seemed naively adolescent but Suzette and I were very reticent with each other and it made the romance all that more exciting. 

In all of this I really knew it was the infatuation that was running us and we wouldn’t know what we really had until the infatuation had run its course.  Being married and trying to indulge an infatuation wasn’t going to work and I realized I needed to end it with Suzanne.  I was really grateful that this infatuation gave me the energy to end something I had really wanted to end years before. 

By the 2004 I couldn’t stand living with Suzanne.  Our living in separate cities postponed the inevitable, but when Suzanne said she was moving back up to the Bay Area I thought I should tell her we were finished.  But I took the easy way out and decided to give it another try.   She moved up in December and by spring I had had it with Suzanne. 

I was having a hard time at the Park.  My supervisor was a twit.  I was the lowest man on the totem pole, a probby, on probation.  Living in State housing and in the Park is never a simple thing and Suzanne was making it very difficult for me with her demands on our “landlord,” and her dissatisfaction with everything in the Park and her own situation.  Her vacation to the Caribbean was a welcome respite but when she got back I had to do something about it.  I was grateful that Suzette had come back and I felt lucky that it gave me the energy to finally end it with Suzanne.    

When Suzanne got back on July 1^st, the next day I invited her to go for a walk with me.  “We had to talk.”  I struggled through telling her I wanted to separate.  I didn’t want to be with her.

She interrupted me and asked, “Is there another woman?”

I said, “No.”  I wasn’t separating from Suzanne because of Suzette.  I just wanted out. 

She said, “You’re lying,” and told me she had been reading my emails.  It didn’t go well after that but the result was right.  We were done. 

Suzanne and I continued in the house for a short time together.  We tried to avoid each other and didn’t talk again.  In September she moved out and I was free.

In August I went up to Oregon to see my son and his family there.  When I got back Suzette and I went for a picnic at Paradise Park.  I leaned over to kiss her, for the first time.  I anticipated a light chaste kiss but it was returned passionately and our relationship took another step along.

In October Suzette finally informed John and that started a round of insanity for her.  I think it was shortly after that John turned up when I was meeting Suzette at a BART station.  I was surprised he was a little man and jumping up and down and yelling biblical insults at me, adulterer and all of that.  I thought considering that he had never married Suzette in 12 years or more he didn’t really have that much of a claim on her. 

John began drinking and was pretty distraught.  I learned he was a graduate student at Cal State East Bay, still a graduate student, even though I guess he was in his late 40s or even 50s and he worked as a community aide for the UC police, walking coeds to their cars after night classes.  I didn’t take him very seriously. 

I stayed close to Suzette throughout the craziness.  John had gotten himself totally worked up, he was drinking and one time he grabbed Suzette and ended up biting her on the lip, enough to bring the cops for a domestic violence call and earn a temporary restraining order.  So John was gone in November.  He continued to be as troublesome as he could be, but it was over.  He convinced the court he was the better parent for Arom, now 12, and he got custody of him. 

Suzette and I settled into making out as if we were virgins back in Catholic high school.  Yes, Suzette had put in her time at St. Mary’s Academy before she finished at Rialto High School. 

I went to Angel Island in mid-December which made the break with Suzanne more complete.  By that time we had started divorce proceedings, Suzanne was very businesslike and in charge.  We did a mediated divorce and had no problems until Suzanne decided I had cheated her on taxes.  She decided I owed her $150,000.  I explained how community property laws actually worked and what claims we might both have.  She didn’t pursue it.  I think in the end if I was cheating on her, even financially, it gave her closure and justification.  I certainly had enough blame and she was rightly angry and I was relieved. 

I was glad to be at Angel Island.  The people there had never met Suzanne and as far as they were concerned Suzette was simply my girlfriend.  Our scandalous beginning was irrelevant. 

Suzette began coming over to the island but she always needed to get off sooner than I would have liked.  She’d come only if she could leave at 9 at night or 3 in the morning or way too early and cutting her visits short.  After awhile it seemed like we were still having an affair, but it wasn’t John we were cheating on, it was Arom.  After the initial protests Arom was living with Suzette most of the time.  She told me she had not told him about us

We dated for a year, but it wasn’t a very satisfying relationship.  Even after John left it didn’t seem Suzette was free.  Sometimes I could reach her.  Sometimes I couldn’t.  Suzette is an extraordinarily private person and it was hard to tell what was going on with her.  Sometimes she was available and sometimes she wasn’t.  Sometimes she would come to the island and we would enjoy each other’s company and sometimes she couldn’t wait to get off the island. 

By January of 2009 I had decided that Suzette and I weren’t going anywhere.  I gave up on trying to establish a relationship with Suzette and waited for her to withdraw, only the next time I wouldn’t try to bring her back.  The infatuation was over.  We went on like that until March.

Then one day Suzette called me and asked me if I was sitting down.  I laughed and sat down and waited to hear what she was going to tell me.  She told me she was pregnant.  We had been using birth control but apparently it wasn’t effective.  When we got together a few days later Suzette had decided that she wanted this baby.  So with great trepidation I celebrated this coming event with her.  We would have the child.  She would move on to the island and we would get married. 

Then in April we learned that Suzette had tested positive for Trisomy 21 markers.  She had an ultrasound.  Fetuses with Down Syndrome often clench their fist.  The fetus didn’t have clenched fists.  We learned we had a girl.  They withdrew amniotic fluid and we waited for the test results which take about three weeks.  It was a very hard three weeks on both of us.  Suzette was mostly withdrawn.  I had concluded if our child did have Down’s Syndrome that I would want the fetus aborted. 

With great relief we learned that Paloma, by that time we knew her name, had no chromosomal problems.  It was like the second acceptance of this event.  Times had been difficult

Both times, learning about the pregnancy in March and then the test in May were like a roller coaster ride where this was this excruciating slow climb up a hill and then the decision to go ahead and the plunge down.  The first time the climb was a few days until we got together and I found out Suzette wanted to keep the baby and the second hill, much longer and higher, was four weeks and then we plunged down into the speed and inevitability of Paloma’s coming. 

That was in May and it was time for Suzette to move to the island.  She put it off, reasonably enough, until Arom graduated from Sierra Prospect 8^th grade.  She also put off telling Arom that they were moving and that she was pregnant.  She told Arom about me and her pregnancy as they were packing to move on the 4th of July.  Arom was 14 years old and furious.  I had never met him and Suzette didn’t tell him anything about me.  He was in a total snit, not talking, not helping, he was angry, rightly so I think.  It couldn’t have been handled much worse.

In return Arom did his best not to graduate from the 8^th grade but Suzette and his teachers pushed him through. 

Suzette got her father and brother to help her move.  The truck arrived at the docks in the late evening and it was a pile of furniture and boxes that had been thrown into the back of U-Haul truck willy nilly.  It took another few days to finish moving and I went over to help Suzette.  The apartment was a wreck.  We trashed what was left, packed a few boxes and I had Suzette hire a couple of casual workers to help her clean the apartment. 

We planned to get married in August.  Suzette got very crazy, as pregnant women sometimes are.  Disorganized she began concentrating on details of a very elaborate wedding.  For a wedding cake she went to a bakery in San Carlos, 40 miles away; the invitations she was hand making.  At this time Suzette had some idea I should be a father figure to Arom.  He was barely talking to me and rightly so I thought. 

In August Suzette and I went to get the marriage license and as was common by then Suzette wasn’t talking to me.  She like Arom radiated hostility and anger.  That was my excuse to pull the plug.  Getting married seemed a crazy idea.  The wedding was being put together with no communication or proper planning.  Suzette was focused on hand making invitations, and she was by this time very pregnant.  So I said, no, we would postpone the wedding.  She was angry that afternoon and then never said anything about it afterwards.  I knew it was a resentment that wouldn’t go away but it didn't make sense to me at that time to go ahead and marry someone who couldn't even talk to me when we were going to get the license.    

Suzette and I occasionally found a way to be friendly and comfortable together, but it wasn’t common.  We went to pregnancy classes at Kaiser Medical Center in San Rafael and most of those we passed ourselves off as the loving couple we should have been.  In social situations Suzette would relax and we did well, so sometimes that goodwill would last past the evening.  Paloma was born in October, more or less on schedule.  

Thankfully the day Paloma was born we were wonderfully together. 

On October 11^th about five or six a.m. Suzette woke me up and told me she was having regular labor contractions.  We were living on Angel Island.  Rich Ables, the maintenance worker on Angel Island, was a good guy with a very good heart who really liked Suzette and me and wanted to do anything he could to help us.  Instead of waiting for the 8:00 run to the mainland, which would have been easy enough, I called Rich knowing he would be very proud of being part of our day of birth for our new daughter.  So at 7 a.m. Rich took us to the mainland on the Ayala, the Park’s crew boat.

Everything was easy, there was no hurry or panic, we just wanted to be on the mainland as the situation developed.  When we got to Tiburon we walked the four blocks to the car and I asked Suzette if she wanted to go to breakfast and she did. 

We went to Denny’s.  Suzette ordered pancake rounds with syrup and butter, pancakes, orange juice, bacon, extra bacon, a vanilla milkshake and I think maybe eggs.  They kept bringing things and by the time she was finishing the table was full of empty plates.  The waitress there still reminds us of that day.  It was very funny and Suzette was having a good time. 

After Denny’s she wanted to go to ACE Hardware in El Cerrito for a board or something she needed; so we went there.  The salesman who helped us had been a medic in the Army.  He asked when the baby was due.  We told him the baby was on her way now.  That made him nervous.  Don’t worry you won’t have to do it, we told him.  From there we went to Target and Suzette shopped.  I don’t remember that we bought anything,

At Target she just wandered around looking at things.  We were moving pretty slowly.  Mid-afternoon we went to a Starbucks in Emeryville.  We sat there and talked and entertained each other through the afternoon.  Finally we decided we should think about going to the hospital.  The pains had never been terrible, but by this time Suzette would regularly stop and hold herself during a contraction.  They continued to be regular and they were getting stronger though not urgent.

I said I probably needed a burrito before we settled into the hospital and we went across the street to La Cucina Puebla, a place we liked.  Suzette decided to eat and we had a full meal, taking our time again. 

By this time, the pains were coming more regularly and at shorter intervals and we headed for Kaiser Oakland.  There is no maternity ward at Kaiser Marin so we had made all the arrangements to go to Kaiser Oakland.  Oakland Kaiser is a big medical complex at Piedmont Avenue and Broadway.  By the time we were walking from the parking lot to the hospital the pains had become intense and we would have to stop and wait until they passed.    

We went to the pre-birth triage and the nurse was very nice and the intern was a wonderful young man.  They agreed that it was going to be sometime that day but not soon.  They said if we lived on the mainland they would have sent us home but since we lived on an island we were admitted then.  We moved slowly, stopping when Suzette was having pains and were relocated to the obstetrics area and made comfortable in a delivery room. 

Even remembering it over three years later our experience at Kaiser was incredibly warm and human.  Everyone was wonderful.  They took care of us like we were family and very very special people.  They made us comfortable, they watched, they did what they needed.  From beginning to end, the triage nurse to the girl who helped us to our car two days later, people were just wonderful.  Thanks to whatever hormones, dopamine and whatever other things go on at a birth we were in a heightened state and we stayed that way, feeling close and deeply in love for the whole time we were there and loved by everyone around us. 

After 11:00 p.m. the labor contractions strengthened and started to become unbearable.  Suzette was in great pain and not her stoic self at all.  At one point, she started saying “No mas!  No mas!  No mas!”  The nurses all looked at me, they had no idea that Suzette was latina and pushed to her limit she reverted to her childhood language.  Coincidentally as she switched to Spanish the baby crowned and a few minutes after midnight Paloma was born.  Unfortunately the baby had picked up the drugs used to dampen Suzette’s pain and the first half hour a neo-natal intensive care unit, six very intense and efficient people concentrated on her to get her breathing and keep her breathing.  After a half hour they succeeded, cleared up and left the room, leaving the baby with us and the regular obstetrics staff. 

After the delivery we had a wonderful room to our selves on the 12th floor.  It was just us and the baby and we spent our time admiring her.  Outside it was storming, pounding rain and beautiful thick gray clouds.  The first storm of the season it was greeted by everyone in the Park and throughout California wild lands as the end of the fire season.  Paloma’s arrival brought a sigh of relief from all of us, the bad dry days of summer were over.  The rains had arrived.  We had a long relaxing day in the hospital.  The next morning I rushed around to do the paperwork, pay $800, the portion not covered by insurance and we left that afternoon and took a boat back to Angel Island through the storm with our new baby. 

Paloma was transforming.  She was and is such a beautiful child, remarkably so from the very beginning.  Suzette and my genes from disparate places in the world produced an incredibly beautiful girl child. 

We both took time off and adjusted to the baby as she took over our lives.  Suzette went to work in March and during the winter I had a schedule where I only worked weekends.    

I had a lot of fear around being a father at 62 but over time the more I get to know Paloma as a person, the more fortunate I feel.  However she came into the world, whatever the timing, I am just a very fortunate person to have her.  The heart attack I had less than a year later made me feel very vulnerable but after six stints and three years later, I am alive and well and doing well today. 

As much as possible I don’t dwell on the future, I stay in the present and enjoy my beautiful daughter. 

Suzette and my relationship was difficult in the first year.  Arom didn’t help the situation.  The following September he left to join his father in Florida.  We got a new superintendent in the Park at that time who began to put the Rangers in their place and it became harder and harder to live on the island.  The superintendent changed the rules for using the boats to leave the island and Suzette could no longer get to work from the island.  In April, 2011, we moved to Oakland and living on the mainland was one less stress on us and our relationship. 

I retired in November of 2011 and I began enjoying that.  One day I went to Kaiser and they asked me if my spouse had insurance and I started giving the clerk all the information on Suzette and her job.  As I got to a part I didn’t know I said, I would have to call her, and then as I was dialing the phone I realized, she wasn’t my spouse; we weren’t married. 

I went home with the intention of telling the story to Suzette and asking her to marry me.  In our nearly three years together we had become a couple.  For some petty reason when Suzette came home that night, she was all upset and directed some of it at me and as she had been doing since we began living together, she withdrew and wasn’t talking to me.  I was struck by the irony of that, one more opportunity to get married missed because Suzette decided to be angry.  This time I waited a month and told her the story and asked her to marry me. 

We got married on April 3rd before a county commissioner and then a wedding with all of our friends at the Unitarian Church on Saturday April 8th.  Again the wedding was a difficult event but for me I did what needed to be done, a hall, a minister, a caterer and emails to my friends to come to the wedding and Suzette concentrated on the things that were important to her.  It worked.  We had a nice wedding.  Lots of people were there.  Suzette went to work Monday and we began living our life as a married couple instead of just a couple. 

In July, 2012, Arom returned from Florida to live with us.  Initially he was more cooperative but that wore thin.  Arom still makes life as difficult for himself as he can, but I’m less a part of it. 

Suzette and I live together better than we have before.  Two days after Arom moved in we moved, as previously planned, to a house in El Cerrito.  It suits my working class self image.  It’s a nice house, not luxurious, on a nice block in an acceptable neighborhood.  It’s very comfortable without being showy at all. 

My days are filled with writing.  Suzette still goes to work incredibly early and comes home late.  Lately she hasn’t had so many things going on that keep her away from the house.  For awhile it seemed she didn’t want to spend any time with me, but now we’re quite close.  That too will change.  Arom will join the Army this summer or be shipped back to Florida. 

And I enjoy Paloma.  We do ballet, that is Suzette and I take Paloma and watch her begin to dance in her pink tutu and tights and sometimes leg warmers.  We go bicycling, her in a green seat on front of my bike or lately on her own bike, a 12 inch pink princess bicycle with training wheels.  We go to the Farm, a small show farm in Tilden Park and to the snow.    

This winter we went up Highway 108 to the Sierras.  We had seen snow for the first time last winter in Arizona.  This time as soon as Paloma saw snow by the side of the road, patches under the trees and on the shady spots, from the back seat she shouted, “Stop the car!  Stop the car!  I want to play!”  We drove on a short distance and stopped in a parking lot with more snow where she could play and then went on to our hotel and the next morning had a wonderful time just being in the snow. 

We sing, we read stories, we dance and I am delighted to have a daughter.  I am also delighted to have a beautiful wife who lately most of the time is very warm and affectionate.  She is an incredibly interesting person who is sincere and seems to try very hard.  We are I think getting better together.  And while it’s not quite the normal middle class life that I’ve aspired to, it’s close enough and it has Paloma and Suzette in it and that’s an incredible good fortune.   

XXXII

Arom, Writing and Retirement

On November 5, 2011 I retired. Sixty-five is too old to wear a badge and a gun and answer 9-1-1 calls in the middle of the night. When I quit I thought I could still do it but I didn’t know how much longer that would last. I had these ideas of starting another career, maybe going to law school or just going to college. People wanted me to stay in Parks, become a boat operator. My heart attack a year before made me realize that I wasn’t going to go on forever, that I needed to stop and enjoy life and that would be OK. So I quit. I retired.

I had some money saved. The last year or two in Parks I even put some more aside on top of the generous retirement credits I got from CalPers. My investments, mutual funds, had grown back after the market crash of 2008 and by 2011 were nearly back to what they had been. I applied for Social Security and there was Social Security for dependents under 18. With my City of San Francisco time and then the State I got 20% of my final pay in CalPers retirement. And with my 30 years of paying Social Security tax there was no reduction to offset the CalPers.

I think this was probably one of the most anxious times in my life. What would retirement be like? I focused on money but I really it was about not having a job, connections, identity and status. I had resisted being a retiree when I quit work in 1999 but this time I had no claim to anything else. I didn’t have a good image of retirees. What does a retiree really do? I knew the stereotypes and what I had seen. I didn’t want to raise tomatoes and talk about writing a book. I didn’t want to buy an RV and tour America. I certainly wasn’t going to become a gardener. I had no role model that worked for me.

My Dad didn’t retire until he was 75 and could no longer work and then he just stayed home and puttered. My mother said he was writing a book. When he passed away I found a notebook about the Balkans but it was mostly gibberish and didn’t make much sense to me. My grandfather was still a drunk when he stopped working. My Lashley grandfather was a cripple and sat in the doorway of his tar paper shack and smoked hand rolled cigarettes. My uncle was a working artist and kept working until he passed away. 

I wasn’t going to be a police officer until I was 75. I really never liked working. Before retirement we moved off the island to an apartment near Lake Merritt. As to what I was going to do in retirement I’d made a few transitions in my life so I had at least an idea of how I wanted to start retirement. I would be on vacation, put off making any plans for three months. I don’t remember much of what I did, puttered around, enjoyed living on the Main Land in one of my favorite neighborhoods anywhere, Grand Lake in Oakland.

Suzette and I planned to move to a Spanish speaking country for a year. I was beginning to settle on Uruguay because it has a good government and a European feel to it. Then I realized if European was an appeal that maybe Spain was the right place to go and we began looking into that.

We went to the Spanish consulate and started learning about moving there. We met friends of friends who had lived in Grenada for a couple of years and he had written a small book about it. Then sometime in that year my Father-in Law convinced his daughter that that was a bad move for her in her career, too risky and she listened to him. His torpedo sunk the plan.

When my Social Security check went into my account, it was like magic, we were there, and it was bigger than I thought it would be. My CalPers check arrived and it was a real check bigger than I expected. CalPers seemed like a gift. I didn't get the Juvy job and then State Parks thinking about retirement but CalPers turned out to be a very good deal for me. Medicare kicked in and I got the Senior Advantage from Kaiser. Adam’s Social Security check game and that was another gift. There was a final check from Parks for compensating overtime and unused vacation and it was about 3 months pay. At least for the first year I had plenty of cash and Suzette had a good job. We had money in our pockets, paid our bills and got by. We were going to be just fine.

And in December I started a blog. I wrote a piece about making bread. The ember of writing a biography that had been smoldering for years flamed and in January I began it.  

In retirement, I had the time, and I did what I enjoyed, I wrote every day. I was a writer. One of the things I enjoy about writing, is that when I do a piece, some work on it, an hour or two of intense writing, I feel free for the rest of the day. I produced something and that’s enough.

Suzette went off to work, Adam went to daycare and in the evening I picked them up. I had the whole day to myself. I wrote, I bicycled, I enjoyed the lake, I read, I met with friends, I did whatever I wanted.

The results were readable. Nothing I write is good enough but readable is good. It was a biography for my family, for my great grandchildren, people who will never know me. It was a gift to them.

In July, 2012 Arom, Suzette's 17 year old son moved back in with us. Before in 2007 and 08 Arom spent a difficult year with us on Angel Island and then went to Florida to live with his dad. John was in grad school and it wasn’t a good time for either one of them. One night Arom threatened his father with a knife, the cops were called and Arom picked up a Juvenile record. Arom told us after that John got a teaching job in Brazil and couldn’t take Arom with him. He was coming back to California. As far as I know there was no job in Brazil.

Arom is a good kid. He’s bright, he’s handsome, and when he’s himself he’s very charming; he has a wonderful smile. I knew that from my coworkers and friends on Angel Island.  But the Arom I got was angry. The way I came into the picture didn’t make him any happier. I think Arom was really upset at all the changes in his life, things were out of control and when I was around I was the focus of all his problems. I understood as a kid he was doing the best he could to survive. I tried to be helpful. I think sometimes he’d recognize that and occasionally I’d be asked for advice or help, but most of the time Arom was just angry.

Suzette found us a house to rent in El Cerrito and we moved there, Suzette and I, Paloma and Arom. It was three bedrooms and had a large family room downstairs. Arom had found The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene. It’s a popular book in Juvenile Hall and prisons. It’s the Thug’s Handbook or how to be successful by being an asshole. Greene was a minor entertainment company executive, an industry well known for it’s lack of ethics. He rewrote Machiavelli in present day. It’s been one of the top 10 books read in US. prisons ever since. Arom carried his copy around like a bible and did everything he could to make my life miserable. Whenever our eyes crossed he gave me the mad dog look.

At heart Arom really was a nice kid, sensitive and thin skinned; his intimidating angry Black Man never really quite worked. But as a 17 year old with focus, persistence, and righteousness he did a good job of making my life as miserable as he could.

I continued with my writing and got to the end of my story at that time, to retirement and I was done. It was good. Each piece I had done what I needed to get that, wrote first draft dumps, let them simmer, and then rewrote them.  Sometimes I started over with more focus. I'd polish it, revise it and then I post it on my blog. My goal was to publish one piece every week or two and I did. The pieces had to be good enough to put out in public. Years ago my writing had taken a leap forward when I heard the Hollywood saying, “Did you want it perfect or do you want it done?”

I had done it, a first draft a full biography. I knew I needed to go over it, sew it together and make it flow, but I had a first draft and for then that was good enough. I was going to let it sit for awhile before I went back to it.  I needed a break. I was tired of writing.

After that I would occasionally write something but I no longer wrote regularly. I didn't give myself goals or deadline and not much happened.  

It was hard to work with Arom around.  He was the angry young Black man at every opportunity intentionally self centered and rude. He was going to join the Army and began the dance with the recruiter who became his best friend and encouraged him to think of himself as already the almost war hero. Unfortunately he omitted his Florida Juvenile record on his application. When they did a background check that was enough to disqualify him.

He finished high school and graduated. Arom had a sister in Boston who had lived with Suzette, John and Arom in Berkeley 12 years before. She had had a break with the family and moved out of the apartment and went to live with a friend’s family. She had formed a bond with her friend’s mother, Cricket. Cricket was willing to take Arom in when he graduated from high school.That lasted for most of the summer when Cricket told him they were moving and  he had to leave.  He was coming back to us.  

About that time his grandmother my mother-in-law came up and took over. Arom was going to live with us and somehow he was going to get his life together and go on from there. I put a time limit on that and said he couldn’t stay with us forever unless he was going to school and had a job. We were not going to support him laying around the house radiating anger. It was sad, his real nature being so sweet and his efforts to cope so sincere, but he was making my life miserable. Suzette was passive. Somehow I was the adult who was supposed to give Arom what he needed, to finally begin to cope and grow up. I was the last adult in the world that Arom would listen to. There was nothing I could do to make it better.

He went to Berkeley City College but his attitude had if anything turned worse. The Army had been a big disappointment to Arom and Arom’s coping skills, being a hostile and scary young man, did not help. He looked for work and couldn’t find a job. I asked him how he was going about that. He said he presented himself very professionally and gave me his deepest voice and angry young Black man war hero look. It was unfortunate that Arom did not have anybody whose advice he could accept. He was doing the best he could but with 48 Laws of Power and professional demeanor it wasn’t working very well.

As Fall came I had had it with Arom. He went to classes part of the day and was an angry presence in the house the rest of the day. My agreement with his grandmother was that he could stay with us a short time if he went to school and had a job. Now he was planning to join Job Corps on a nonresidential program and live with us. I had not worked my whole life and retired to be responsible for someone else’s angry teenager.

His grandmother had a big family gathering to celebrate her 65^th birthday with friends and family from all across the country. Arom went down to Corona to stay until Christmas. In the passive way that we  all had it was understood that  Arom was leaving and so he packed everything in his bag and gave me his keys. I knew staying with us wasn’t doing Arom any good. 

After the celebration we returned home and then in December went to Corona for Christmas. Everything was OK, and then it came time to leave and I said we weren’t taking Arom with us.

Elvia, her brother Ervin, and James his grandfather all seemed to think I was responsible for Arom and told me I had to take him. That was one miserable afternoon. The whole Anderson clan screamed in my face, especially Uncle Ervin. Suzette was there but she didn't take part either way. There’s no doubt that people had abandoned Arom when he needed them, but it wasn’t me.  He was 18 now and I wasn’t the person who could make up for that. We left without Arom.

And life went on. Since then no one in the family tells me anything about Arom. When I ask Suzette she says she doesn’t know. At his aunt’s wedding a year or two later he was there and still giving me the mad dog. I figured Arom will be one of those kids who never get to grow up and lives in the nether world of dependency on whomever will let him. Eight years later we were at the Andersons for Christmas and like the good dysfunctional family all is forgiven, or at least not talked about. Arom is not there and no one says anything about him.  And then I see on the wall a diploma from UC Santa Cruz with Arom’s name on it. I did a quick internet search and Arom is working as an IT person in Santa Cruz.

After being with Arom at what was probably the most difficult time in his young life, it gives me a very good feeling to see he succeeded. I don’t know how he did it but to me that diploma said he figured it out and was doing well in life. I didn’t think he was ever going to be able to right himself and he did. Good man!

XXXIII

Teachers Aid

One more time I asked myself what do I want to be when I grow up? At 67 it still resonated. I tell people, I’m no longer immature, I’m young at heart. The last time I asked that question, I became a Park Ranger. I wanted to do something that would be new and fun. And the answer came back, an elementary school teacher. I didn’t want a job, but a job like volunteer gig. On a school tour for Adam I asked the principal how I might do that. She was enthusiastic and told me first to go to the district and get cleared as a volunteer, get a badge and we’d go from there.

Lisa Kantor and I exchanged a couple of emails and we were getting ready to start. In her last email she asked what experience I had. I told her I was a kindergarten Sunday School teacher. I didn’t hear back from her. She didn’t respond to any of my emails or phone calls. She was unreachable. I think maybe Ms. Kantor didn’t want a Sunday School teacher at her school. By that time I had stopped qualifying my church attendance as being Unitarian.  Be honest, let people think what they want. I was in good company with Jimmy Carter. I think maybe I’d just been stereotyped as a “Christian Evangelical.” That didn’t feel good. Even Evangelicals have a right to be in our schools.

Not long after in February 2014 I was registering Adam for Transitional Kindergarten at Colorado Elementary School in Richmond and I asked to speak to the principal there. I met Linda Cohen, a legendary principal in Richmond Schools. We talked and she was quite eager to have me as a volunteer. “When can you start?” she asked. “Tomorrow,” I answered. And so I did, the very next day. Linda had me go to each class from 3^rd to 6^th grade and ask the teacher what they would like me to do. The first year I tutored math, babysat or just distracted disruptive kids, worked with a new immigrant from Mexico who did not want to learn English and worked one on one or in small groups.

I volunteered two days a week. At lunchtime I went to the teacher’s room. I met some teachers, I was part of Coronado Elementary School. After a few months, one morning I got up with that feeling, oh god, I don’t want to go school today. A moment later I realized, wow!, just like a real job. I was showing up.

The next year Adam started Transitional Kindergarten at Coronado and the first day I asked Linda what she wanted me to do. She was busy and said, “Well why don’t you just go to Transitional Kindergarten for now.” We’ll figure it out later.

I found a home. There was no later. For the next six years I was a volunteer teacher’s aid in Transitional Kindergarten. I worked with Licet Santos, the regular teacher’s aid and Pat Boyne, the teacher. We were a team. I did what I could to help, supporting the kids, encouraging them and enjoying them. Little people have always fascinated me, the amount they learn just to get started in life and the physical changes are astounding, learning to walk, to talk, and in TK to be part of a group and that squiggles and symbols can have meaning. It is their first formal step in learning to learn.

My TKers were learning more in that year than graduate students at Berkeley would learn in a year.  I was in awe at what we were part of. These kids were laying the very foundation of their education. They were learning life skills. Recess was just as important as the classroom. They were being domesticated, like wild horses they needed to be gentled. For some kids it was their first experience in the system. They couldn’t leave, it wasn’t voluntary and making a scene didn’t help.

One day I was telling my good friend Bob Weiss about what I was doing and he said, “You know these kids are going to remember you for the rest of their lives.” I hadn’t thought of it, but of course. What a responsibility, memories of Mr. Jack into the next century.

Licet, Pat and I worked together for six years. Licet was wonderful, local, very bright, she should have been a teacher herself, but after a marriage, two kids and a divorce, she needed to earn a living and it was our good fortune to have her as a teacher’s aid. Pat is a professional teacher and did the magic of curriculum, lesson planning, pacing and all the paperwork. I appreciated that I got to be a part of teaching children hands on, but I didn’t have to do the bureaucracy. My style is more Ranger than Teacher and with Pat and Licet, that worked.

In 2019 things began to come apart. Pat was getting toward the end of her career and had a hellacious commute. She had injuries and health problems. Licet was having a hard time too. There were sick days and substitutes and it wasn’t going very well and then we got a substitute who stayed, Miss Chavez. She was a graduate of Cal but had been a truck driver between LA and San Francisco. It was her first year as a substitute and we were fortunate to get her. She didn’t have the experience of Pat Boyne, but she had a lot of heart, wanted to do well, and loved the children. So it was good and then in March of 2020 Covid came.  We were doing distance learning. I tried to join in, but a teacher’s aid on Zoom is just one more complicating element and it didn’t work.

In September of 2020 I didn’t participate but when in person classes started again in the Fall of 2021 I came back. Miss Boyne was the TK teacher again but struggling with the administration over medical leave. She mostly didn’t show up. We had a series of substitutes and just no teacher at all. We did have Miss Pinkston, a wonderful teacher, She was the new Reading Resource person at the school and it wasn’t her job to take over TK.  She did what she could to help.    

I needed something more consistent. I talked to my friend Lourdes, a great 2^nd grade teacher there. She recommended I ask Terra Doby, the kindergarten teacher if she would like a volunteer. She did and we started working together.

What good fortune. Terra Doby is an amazing teacher. If Kindergarteners are a little wild, she is a Kindergarten Whisperer. Her oft repeated phrase is, “Ignore to learn.” And so the class seemed wild from the outside, slowly she began to work her magic on the kids and all but one became happy students, and even the most difficult child improved, got a little better. Instead of letting the difficult kids take over the class she was able to gently bring them in. She didn’t let them distract her and the class. They were ignoring to learn. It was a wonderful experience for me.

During the summer break, Adam and I went to lunch with Miss Doby. Afterwards Adam said, “I wish we had a teacher like Miss Doby in our school.” She is gentle, loves her job and is very good at it.

For their own reasons the administration decided Miss Doby was going to the 4^th grade the following year. She asked me if I was staying in Kindergarten or might want to come along with her. I tell my friends that after 7 years in Kindergarten I’ve been promoted to the fourth grade.

This year has been different, fourth graders are a lot different than Kinders, but they’re still wonderful kids. Working with Miss Doby has been a pleasure. It’s enjoyable just to watch how she teaches.  It's fascinating to watch a Kindergarten teacher who is very different in the 4th grade but just as good.  As her aid, I do what I can to make that easier, copying, cutting, sorting books, just doing a lot of the time consuming jobs that leave her with more time to teach. I also do assessments. I tutor a little and sometimes I walk around and just help. I’m older than when I started this and I found two days a week was taking it out of me. I cut back to one day a week and it made it much more enjoyable.

I love being around the kids, participating in their growth, helping where I can and being Miss Doby’s assistant, doing whatever I can to make her job easier and give her more time to teach. I am amazed and delighted how much the kids appreciate my being there, how they miss me when I’m not there and happy to see me when I am.

XXXIV

Japan 2012

In 2012 I finally accepted the invitation from my boss at Dai-Ichi Kangyo when I was there in the 80s. I had become Hayashi’s right hand man, my desk next to his. I was his American advisor, a gopher sometimes, a trusted lieutenant and a friend.

When he returned to Japan we continued to correspond and he insisted that one day I should come to visit him in Japan. The expense seemed intimidating and I didn’t have the time, but in my first year of retirement I was cash rich and had nothing but time. My excuses were gone and I finally agreed to come.

I arrived in Japan and Hayashi met me at the airport and was my host and tour guide almost every step of the way. Hayashi is a bit of a control freak but in two short weeks I got to see Japan in a way that most America-jin would never see it. I was the VIP guest in a downtown hotel, visited the Hayashi’s at home in central Tokyo, was a guest along with an old co-worker and his wife at Hayashi’s country home where the Hayashi family was from. I got to become friends with Nagasuchi-san. We had worked in the same place but never really known each other. I went by myself on a carefully planned package tour to Kyoto.

Currency, language, geography were never a problem with my guide.

The first event was a reunion of the DKB staff from Los Angeles in the 1980s. The dinner was at Hayashi-san’s very exclusive club in downtown Tokyo. After the 1980s DKB became a Zombie Bank and vanished in a takeover. My colleagues were the survivors and had been scattered to the winds. It was the first meeting of all of us since those days. It was fun to recognize each other after 25 years and the dinner was an incredibly warm and fun event. It seemed our affection for each other had only grown in the interim.

Ono-san, the class clown, was still the class clown. He was assigned to take me back to my hotel. We walked out into the crush of downtown Tokyo, he raised his hand and a large black limosine immediately pulled up at the curb. Ono-san was the president of a Japanese insurance company.

During the course of the trip, various colleagues were assigned to take me out or put me up. Yamada-san met us a few times and we went to restaurants and shrines. Nagasuki-san and his wife, friends of the Hayashis, picked me up and took me to the country home in Nakano. We spent a few days together and went touring in the countryside, seeing temples and shrines and eating at wonderful restaurants, touring the City of Nagano and Matsumoto Castle. I hadn’t really known Nakasugi-san. He was in charge of IT and we didn’t work together. We became friends on this trip. He and his wife were delightful. I asked him if Hayashi-san had changed at all. No, he said, if anything he was more himself, still the boss, but his loyalty and affection for his team was still strong and it seemed we all still did what he told us.

Hasegawa-san hosted me at a National Park near Mount Fuji. Yamaki-san took me to dinner at a famous restaurant in the Ginza. Arahata-san took me to dinner. At the end of the trip Hayashi had assigned Nakasugi-san to take me to some museum and we both discovered we were more interested in the railroad museum and we cheated and went there. On a trip arranged by Hayashi I visited Kyoto. Tsukamoto-san a junior office in Los Angeles was now a senior executive at a major International Bank and we met him for a very special lunch at his bank.

In a short two weeks I had an amazing trip to Japan, hosted and guided by Hayashi-san. I saw Tokyo, Yokahama, Nagano and Kyoto, shrines, temples, parks, restaurants, gardens and public baths and castles. An extended stay with the Hayashis at their country home. I met his auntie, his brother and saw his daughter a Nippon Telephone executive. It was an amazing trip and the warmth and friendship of my former colleagues was incredible. A short trip but a life experience for me.

XXXV

Ireland

In 2012 I finally went to Ireland. Most of my family and friends and even people I didn’t know all talked about what a wonderful place it was after they had been there. I am proud of my Irish heritage, but after being taught by Irish priests in high school and my experience of not being Irish enough for them, when I was in Europe Ireland wasn’t on my list of things I had to see. Finally in 2012 I went there for myself.  

As soon as I landed I was Irish enough.  I felt welcomed. It is an incredible country with incredible people. I have never been in a place where it was so easy to talk to people. Every town has a Falté shop, a government tourist center where the people are incredibly helpful. In Galway I got acclimated just walking around. I learned pizza shops in Ireland are always Pizza and Kebabs. I went to a poetry reading in a local library where arriving on time got me the last seat available.  It’s not cosmopolitan, it’s not provincial, it’s just comfortable

In Dublin I toured the city particularly aware of the Easter Rebellion, the Post Office and the bullet holes in the Daniel O’Connell statue in the line of sight for British snipers at Trinity College to the to the Republicans General Post Office barricades. I attended a lecture at Dublin Castle and was invited by the moderator, an Italian Irish American from San Francisco professor at University College in Cork invited me to join him, the lecturers and their historian friends to go the pub.

I took a bus tour to the New Grange, a Neolithic site, even older than the Pyramids. I went to the National Museum of Ireland. I saw artifacts thousands of years old. It wasn’t the history I had shown at State Parks in California, someone else’s ancient history, it was mine going back to time immemorial, Irish stone tools and dugout canoes.

I went to the National Gallery and saw a special exhibit of Leonore Carrington, one of my favorite Mexican artists, an ex-pat of Irish ancestry who made Mexico her home. There was a wonderful docent who showed me around and we saw a small model maybe 8 inches long of “How Doth the Little Crocodile” a crocodile boat with a crocodile crew. I told the docent I had seen the full sculpture all 16 feet by 30 feet on the Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City. It was an old friend from Mexico honored in Dublin, like me part of the Irish Diaspora.

I went on to Cashel in Tipperary to see where my family was from. In the graveyard of the Cathedral on Cashel Rock there was a Duggan gravestone. In Tipperary at Brian Boru’s castle I wasn’t a person with an Irish surname, I was one of the Duggans.

Ballingarry is a long and expensive cab ride from Cashel. I got there and walked the main street. There is the Church of the Assumption, two pubs, the Miners’ Rest and the Amby, and a sundries/post office shop. The pubs don’t serve meals. I asked the publican where do people eat in Ballingarry. He said at the Day Break across the street, a 7/11 type convenience store that served chicken wings and snacks.

People told me my cousin Mark Duggan, a veterinarian, was down the street, but he wasn’t home that day.

The only thing of note in Ballingarry was Famine Warhouse, actually 5 kilometers away in the country. Warhouse is where the Royal Irish Constabulary had fled from the Young Irelanders.  Young Ireland had taken over the Commons in the Rebellion in 1848 and the Constabulary sent to break it up had to flee for their lives and took five hostages in the widow McCormack’s farmhouse.   

An hours long gun battle ensued; two rebels were killed.  Reinforcements came for the Constabulary and the rebels retreated and faded into the countryside. Most of the Young Irelanders escaped capture after the event and some showed up in America afterwards. I knew about the Rebellion at Famine Warhouse, where the Irish Republican flag was first flown. I didn’t know it was in Ballingarry where my great great grandfather was from. It was closed for the Day.

I learned a little more about it and began to connect the dots. The Young Ireland movement was an independence minded group made of up of middle class Irish Protestants and Catholics. William Smith O’Brien, the leader was Protestant country gentleman from a landowning family and a member of Parliament.

Michael Duggan my great great grandfather arrived in Missouri in 1849 at the age of 21. He was not fleeing the famine, like Irishmen of the day in steerage to Ellis Island. He entered the United States through New Orleans and went up the Mississippi and bought 500 acres of prime farmland in Brinkstown Missouri.

A young man, 21 years old, from Ballingarry who left there in 1848/49 and arrived in America with enough money to buy a large farm. The Duggans have always been Republican in their sympathies and rebels at heart.

Was my great great grandfather a Young Irelander in Ballingarry in 1848? I don’t know. He certainly could have been.

XXXVI

Congregational President

In 2016 I reluctantly said yes to joining the Board of Trustees of UUCB, the Unitarian Universalist Church of Berkeley. I ran unopposed and won. At first I couldn’t figure out what the board meetings were all about and what the real issues were. Who was running the Church? We spent most of our meetings discussing the process of governance and real issues must have been addressed elsewhere. It was pretty obvious it wasn’t the board. Before I had figured that out they told me the Vice President was too busy with job and family to run the nominating committee, would I to the nominating committee and be the acting Vice President? The next year the Vice President, now me, reluctantly became the President.

Like most mainline churches in these times we had the usual problems: a large old building sitting on very valuable real estate, growing deferred maintenance, a large staff and an elderly and shrinking congregation. When I joined the board our longtime co-ministers had just retired and we were in the two year interim where a search committee looked for a new minister. We had an interim minister I couldn’t seem to get in step with. The real leadership of the Church was diffuse and fragmented; the choir, religious education, the grounds committee, chalice circles, the personal theology program, the men’s group and a humanist group.

70 miles away we had a cabin in the woods in bad disrepair, our retreat center. At home we had a financial management mess, law suits and bad tenant relations. We had a congregation deeply divided and everyone passionately protecting their idea the church’s identity. I was the person most visibly in charge and still trying to get a handle on it when the new co-ministers arrived and I became President.

Together we dealt with lawsuits, finding new tenants, and trying to find out where the money was. Before we found out where it had gone we ran out of cash for payroll. The real problem had been the financial manager without good supervision borrowing from Peter to pay Paul and covering up the mess it created. We were short and now Peter had to be paid.

The property in Sonoma, Freestone, had been a getaway for members since the 1970s. I wasn’t as sensitive as I should have been to how cherished the property was to an important minority of the congregants. I saw it as a piece of property in desperate need of repair and restoration with funds we didn’t have and a resource we were barely able to use with only a few congregants committed to it. At a big congregational meeting a majority just short of 2/3s voted to sell the property. We didn’t reach it.

Ironically the board is trying to sell Freestone again some five years later. This year they’ve changed the majority to 50%, but the vote hasn’t happened yet.

After my term was up, I served another year on the board supporting the new President and then gratefully went off the board. My Unitarian Universalist enthusiasm, my UU faith, was barely intact. I had a new respect for people who can make democracy work, particularly direct democracy like the UUs. I don’t know how they do it, leaders who can speak the truth without pissing people off. Then the pandemic came and now years later I’m still a member of UUCB albeit with a much lower profile. Our cash flow problem was saved by Federal Pandemic relief for employers which the church tapped very successfully, other problems were postponed and recently hired co-ministers left.

The church continues on, maybe unsubstainable, maybe not, but always struggling and so it goes with or without my help. I do know in 50 years there will still be a UU Community in El Cerrito with or without a Church. It will not be easy. I think the people there now are better able to deal with the strife. There have been three more board Presidents since, all of them reluctant to have taken the job.

XXXVII

A House of Our Own

When we left Angel Island we moved to what we Islanders called the Main Land. We rented an apartment on Lakeshore Avenue in Oakland, one of my favorite neighborhoods in the world. The first heavy rains the roof leaked in our bedroom and they fixed it and it leaked again and they fixed it again and again. Then in July a year after we had moved to Lakeshore, Suzette’s 17 year old son Arom moved back to California and to live with us. Suzette found us a house on Humboldt Ave in El Cerrito.

It was a good house in a nice neighborhood, close to things on a bicycle and even a few places to walk to. We were planning to go to Spain in a year and the landlord was planning to sell the house in a year. That worked. Then Suzette reconsidered Spain and the landlord was selling the house. We found another house in Hilltop Green, a wonderful neighborhood with a park except it was in a dell below a freeway.

When the landlord raised the rent 10% after the first year we looked around and realized we could afford to buy a house and began looking. By 2015 the financial and real estate crash of 2008 had evolved into an overheated market and the East Bay was crazy. A small apartment called a condo in Berkeley was selling for twice what we could afford. Another house in Berkeley we could barely afford was across the street from where the local leisure class hung out in front of liquor store.

We bid on one house in Richmond on a nice street in a poor neighborhood and were outbid. We had started in May and after three months we were still looking. One more bid in the Dimond we nearly got and then we looked at a house in the flats of East Oakland near Mills College. It was almost in our price range and we overbid for it and got it.

5615 Fleming Avenue was on a good street below the 580 freeway and above Foothill Avenue. East Oakland is the hard part of town but our neighborhood was a 1920s development a little more genteel than the area is known for. It had gone through covenants and restrictions to block busting to gentrification nearby. The neighborhood had changed color a couple of times but after a hundred years it was still genteel. When we moved there the diversity of the neighborhood was solid and still is and the neighbors turned out to be the best part of our new house. Shortly after we moved in Bettina and Gary Larsen moved in. Bettina quickly became the neighborhood social director and godmother to all the children. We met all of our neighbors and Pastor Clarence of the Mills Grove Christian Church. It wasn’t long before we felt at home.

A month after we moved in Adam started kindergarten at Escuela Bilingüe Internacional in Rockridge, 15 minutes away. The second through eighth grade is in Emeryville, again 15 minutes away. From our neighborhood everything in Oakland is about 15 minutes away.

The house is 1200 square feet, two bedrooms, one bathroom, a backyard and a small front yard. It’s more than adequate for us. The backyard is well fenced and in 2017 we got a dog, Bella, the Rescue Dog. I don’t do yard work and the landscaping is au naturel. We’ve lived here for 8 years and it’s home. We’ll probably stay until Adam graduates from high school when I’ll begin to look for digs in a cheaper geography.

I used money I inherited from my parents for the down payment and so far it has been a good investment. For a few years we watched the value of the house increase rapidly and since the Pandemic it’s at a plateau well above what we paid for it. At first the payments were hard on our budget but we refinanced and reduced them by 15% and our income has increased with the Cost of Living Allowances of Social Security and CalPers. Buying a house has done what we needed, fixed our housing costs. Eight years later we can afford it. It’s a good house for us in a good neighborhood with a good dog. 

XXXVIII

The Pandemic

My grandmother died in 1918 and though it was in childbirth, a few months before the first signs of the flu, in my mind it’s always been connected to the ‘18 flu. After 1918 nothing like the World Flu Pandemic has afflicted us for over 100 years and then the COVID-19 pandemic struck. We learned we are just as vulnerable today as the world was in 1918.

In December, 2019, there were reports of lock downs and quarantines in Wuhan China, a city most of us never heard of. In 2020 the news was full of the novel coronavirus but but like Ebola and other outbreaks it was a virus far away and didn’t seem relevant to the United States.

In 2019 my sister in Iowa began having seizures and we made a couple of trips to see her. Our second trip was in February 2020. In January the virus had broken out from China and isolated cases were showing up all over the world including the United States. At first outbreaks were traceable back to China. A cruise ship was quarantined in Yokohama. But by January there were cases of “community spread” on the West Coast. The first case in the Bay Area was January 31^st related to China and then the first “community spread” in the Bay Area was February 28^th.

On February 23^rd, when Adam and I went through O’Hare Airport in Chicago a few people were wearing surgical masks, mostly Asian. In Asia masks are common during cold and flu seasons and Asian ethnic communities here, but it always seemed a little neurotic to me. I wasn’t worried about the novel coronavirus yet, but in the Chicago airport some people were.

As March began it became obvious that the novel coronavirus was loose in the United States. By mid-March cases were multiplying each day, 4 became 8, became 16. Trump was incompetent as a national leader. In the first week in March a cruise ship in the Eastern Pacific with hundreds of infections was looking for a safe port. Trump said, “he didn’t want to bring the Grand Princess’s passengers back to land because doing so would increase the critical count of US coronavirus cases. I don’t need to have the numbers double of one ship that wasn’t our fault. I’d rather have them stay on, personally.” The ship parked outside in International Waters outside of the San Francisco Bay March 4^th and finally March 10^th docked in Oakland.

By March 15 Alameda had community transmission unrelated to travelers. It was in the Bay Area and infections were multiplying exponentially. A few cases in February had become hundreds of cases by mid-March. Adam’s school canceled classes for March 15 and said they would consider what to do after the weekend.

Saturday I went to the supermarket to pick up a few things The atmosphere at the Nob Hill in Alameda was tense and there were people with full carts, some with two carts. The shelves where there had been toilet paper and sanitizer were empty. Sunday we went to Shop Rite in our neighborhood. It was crowded but less tense. Monday, a free day, it was announced the school would close indefinitely and school would be by distant learning online. On Tuesday March 17, the six county Bay Area declared a regional Shelter in Place order, closing schools and all but essential businesses. On Thursday March 19 Governor Newsom issued a statewide Stay at Home order.

It seemed like we were under siege. When I bicycled in the East Bay Shoreline Regional Park on Wednesday, the maintenance worker wasn’t sure I could be there, it was still being argued. Not until the next week was the order altered to allow outdoor exercise. Similar orders in Europe and Asia were being enforced by cops writing citations and making arrests of anyone outside their apartment for anything but essential trips.

On May 28^th twelve cases of COVID-19 were reported at Cardenas Supermercado in our neighborhood. My brother-in-law Alan Bruemmer, Kate’s brother, had Multiple Sclerosis. His MS required frequent hospital visits. He was infected and died in December, 2020. Alan’s death was the only one of two of someone I knew. An elderly neighbor Mrs. Smith lived two doors down from us. Her house was a gathering place for her children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. At first the family stayed away but after a couple of weeks the children, grandchildren and great grandchildren returned. Some wore masks but younger people in our town were less careful. Mrs. Smith died of covid during the summer.

A high school classmate, a gentleman with whom I had reconnected 15 years before, had gone full Q-Anon on rumors and paranoia. In our last phone conversation in November 2020 according to Bill the pandemic was a plot and a hoax and the vaccine was dangerous. I was shocked that he believed it all. I knew he was a Republican, but he had always seemed rational to me. He died of covid in August 2021 unvaccinated. Until today, March 31, 2023, Suzette, Adam and I have been uninfected. We took precautions and when vaccines were available we got vaccinated.

In the first days we wondered when things would return to normal. They never have. Early in the pandemic I heard a radio host respond to the question, “How are you?” with the answer, “Under the new normal I’m doing pretty good.” 

I’d been baking our bread for over ten years. I buy active dry yeast by the pound and it lasts a year or more. In the beginning of the pandemic my supply of dry yeast was running out. Baking at home had become a national past time and yeast and flour were hard to find. I found a 25 pound bag of flour at Shop Rite. I made a sour dough starter at home and three years later I’m still using it.

The year before the pandemic I had gotten interested in specialty coffee. In November before the pandemic I bought an espresso machine. And so in the pandemic I indulged my interest in coffee, exploring the Peerless offerings at their roastery buying from a table in the doorway and then online at Amazon. My coffee obsession reached a new level. We began doing weekly shopping trips online at Amazon. In April we went to Starbucks in San Leandro and waited 45 minutes in a long line of cars to buy our drinks at a drive-up window. It was a real treat.

In the beginning of the pandemic I thought if we could take the proper precautions we might eradicate the virus. We watched the various indexes, the Worldometer, the CDC maps, the New York Times maps, the State Data sites, the County Data Site. Reading charts like baseball statistics, trying to parse out infection rates R(t)s, deaths, infections, testing and ICU capacity. We watched the transmission rate closely, wishing it below 1.00 where maybe the virus would die out. Or a vaccine, only vaccines take years and that wasn’t going to happen soon.

At first we didn’t go anywhere unnecessarily. We stopped seeing friends. Gary, our neighbor four doors down and I began meeting for morning coffee on his porch on Tuesdays. We sat and discussed the pandemic and politics for an hour and a more. We met like that for 2 ½ years.

By May, 2020, I realized masks could make a major difference. Experts were not recommending masks. I think it was more they were in short supply and they didn’t want to start a run on masks that would worsen the shortage for health care workers. I wore a bandana over my face and slowly China was able to ramp up their masks production and we could all get masks. In June California mandated masks in indoor settings and the pandemic prevailed. I ordered 50 surgical masks from Amazon. There was no longer any hope of stopping it before it became widespread.

In June I talked to a friend in Redondo Beach who had gone inside a restaurant to eat. Restrictions were easier there and I was jealous. We hadn’t been to a restaurant for months. At first delivery had been fun and then it was boring Then we went for a drive to Inverness and went to a deli where after we ordered our food we could eat outside at a picnic table. It seemed such a special treat that day in June. I remember the first time we went to a restaurant with outdoor dining at Jack London Square. We had to have our temperature taken and wear masks except at our table. After that we returned to the restaurant scene outdoors as often as we could.

The pandemic deaths in the United States were in the thousands each day. The vaccine was rolled out with a limited supply in December, 2020, an incredible accomplishment by the scientific and medical community. The pandemic peaked in January, 2021 with over 4,000 deaths per week in California alone.

There was a scramble by people to get the vaccine. At first you had to be 75. I was 74. Then there were loopholes and cracks and people I knew spent hours on the phone were able to get in for a vaccine. By the end of February I got my vaccination and in March Suzette got hers. The worst spread had been among the elderly decreasing with age and children mostly were unscathed.

There was this sense of new freedom. By June, 2021, fewer than 100 people a week were dying and it seemed the dying were the unvaccinated. There was another surge in February of 2021 at a third of the death rate of 2020 and since then the virus has been with us, many people infected but fewer deaths. A few vaccinated people died but overall it was at a rate 50 times less than the unvaccinated. Death was no longer a strong possibility but more like the flu a remote possibility. After my vaccination I never worried much about dying of covid. And then the variants started infecting vaccinated people, but like flu, a couple of weeks of being sick for most people staying at home, not hospitalizations. Today there are antivirals that are very effective if used early.

In the first flush of enthusiasm and relief I made plane reservations for a vacation in Puerto Rico. I was feeling protected. Later we changed to Chiapas Mexico when Adam’s close friend made plans with her father to return to where they had spent a year before. And we went to Chiapas. Chiapas had experienced low infection rates at the worst of it in Mexico and the vaccine was generally available by the time we arrived in July. We were careful on the plane. Mexico was much easier than the United States. There was no political divide. Mexican society has much more social cohesion and most Mexicans were careful about protecting themselves and their neighbors. Stores and nearly everywhere else required you to put a hand up for a temperature check and wear a mask. An attendant at the door enforced the rules.

There was no worry about scofflaws or skeptics. And the rates of infection showed it. For a month in Chiapas we were aware of covid but didn’t see any infections. The locals were concerned and acted so and the covid they had they blamed on International tourists like us but there wasn’t active animosity. Leaving for the United States we had to have an antigen test within a few days of our departure. It was hard to find, the demand was very high and the availability limited, but finally at a pharmacy we were able to make an appointment and it was an easy process.

Back in the States the politics were poisoned. Areas like the coast of California and liberal regions were safer but even here compliance wasn’t universal, the possibility of non-compliance, the lack of will was obvious, unlike Mexico. In Mexico everyone paid attention. In coastal California most people did wear masks indoors and in Eastern California it seemed to be a statement of patriotic independence to ignore it. We went to Yucca Valley where many people were defiantly unmasked and many gave us the fisheye when they saw our masks.

The Omicron variant came while we were in Mexico and at home there was renewed caution with people more careful about mask wearing. The Zocalo, a favorite cafe in San Leandro, allowed people inside but only after showing proof of vaccination, washing your hands, and wearing a mask. The whole staff was masked of course.

Vaccines were approved for 12 and up in 2021 and Adam got theirs when they turned 12 in October.

I went to Iowa in November, 2021, my sister was in hospice. In Iowa people wearing masks were in the minority. The politics were that lock downs and closings limited our freedom and was bad for business. The Republicans apparently were practicing Social Darwinism. After all the worst effected by the pandemic were the elderly, the poor and people of color. It was so amazing that it was clearly a political issue for Republicans, Trump at first had been on the side of prevention and caution, but when the Populists angrily denied acts of empathy and thoughtfulness as infringing on their freedom Trump followed.

Slowly the pandemic waned, less transmission. The politics continued toxic. The Democrats won back the Presidency.

This is the new normal. Life doesn’t seem constricted. We do what we want, go to restaurants, shop, travel, and visit with friends. Some people are more cautious than others. Here in the Bay Area most people seem respectful, putting on masks when asked to. Our Unitarian Church started in person services again in March 2022. We were more conservative than most churches. There had been some intense discussions about requiring vaccinations or not. We are still required to wear masks indoors except when eating.

Hugs and closeness, not everyone is comfortable riding in the same car with other people, sharing an elevator, inviting people into their homes. One friend still won’t eat indoors with other people.

There is this feeling of unease that’s always there, mostly unconscious. It’s a constant we’ve all learned to live with. We’re never going back to what we called normal but things today are normalish. Nature has shown us our own fragility. Life is a gift.

Conclusion

It’s been a good life. It could have been better. Better if I had not been an alcoholic or stopped drinking sooner. Better if I hadn’t had mood swings sometimes becoming manic. Better if I had learned life’s lessons sooner or easier. Better if I had learned to own up, face the music and apologize. But if I had been better, I wouldn’t have my sons and a daughter. If I had been better I wouldn’t be a veteran. I wouldn’t be a Bruin. I wouldn’t have worked with the people I did at various banks and banking coalitions. I wouldn’t have been a Ranger. I wouldn’t have worked at Juvenile Hall. I wouldn’t be here in Oakland in 2023. I wouldn’t be me.

At my high school reunion I sat next to a classmate who had become a pediatrician, moved to a small town in the wine country, practiced medicine there over 30 years now, raised a family and is still in the same town. He said he envied the variety of my life. I envied the stability of his. I’m sure neither one of us would change it. We are who we are, but it would have been interesting.

Life happens to us, one can prepare for it, but things never turn out the way we expect. For me I certainly don’t think the rational and cautious life is preferred. I envy stable people, but I wouldn’t want to be one. I call myself a tourist, wide eyed and slacked mouthed I’m always looking to the turn in the road. The biggest regrets I have are the people I hurt like a bull in a China shop I was insensitive to the harm I did to people around me. I wish I could have been more thoughtful, reliable, appreciative.

I describe myself as a schlepper. I admire people of great accomplishments, talents, saintliness. I envy fame, prestige and money. I wish I had money, I like money, but I never thought it was worth working for. I was never going to become rich, it just wasn’t worth the effort.

I’ve been fortunate to have incredible friends, people who were more talented and smarter than I am, people of achievement and better at relationships. When I feel down I judge myself by my friends and it helps. I must be OK in my own way, I have great friends.

Looking back on my life, the gifts were many. Going to a monastery at 17 was a really a dumb thing to do and a great experience. Being a Central Office Equipment Repairman for Pacific Telephone and Telegraph was a wonderful job and a good first experience in adult work. I went to college and wrote some good short stories and fell in love with Cathy Bruemmer.

I joined the Air Force to avoid the draft. I didn’t admit to anyone it was a bit of a John Wayne complex, hero in a uniform but by age 20 I had enough sense not to volunteer for combat duty. And then the Air Force sent me to England for three years. I had no say in it. It was just the way the numbers fell, the bureaucratic machine. Cathy and I had two sons in England. I was promoted to Staff Sergeant. I was accepted at UCLA and finished a degree there. Cathy gifted me unexpectedly with a third son.

I got to become a mountaineer. We climbed Mount San Gregornio in the winter of March and Mt. San Jacinto up the North Face in April, one of the hardest climbs in the Lower 48. And then we climbed the North Face of Mount Rainier. After I got sober I climbed Mt. Baker on a guided climb and soloed Mount Whitney, the easy route which was hard enough and cross country skied up to Keersarge Pass in winter.

If I have a talent, it’s being a parent, a mentor. My sons are men I enjoy and admire. My daughter is incredible. As a parent I try to help them in becoming who they are. From my mother and my Catholic education I have always been a volunteer, with students in college and the United Farm Workers in the Grape Strike, working with schizophrenics and mentally ill to enjoy life. In sobriety, I've mentored young men in becoming sober and sponsored friends and through the First Graduate Program in LA and the Bay Area mentored junior high students into adulthood and I've been a Sunday School teacher. For the last 9 years I’ve been a volunteer teacher’s aid at an elementary school. I’ve had a hand in helping good people do well in life.

After college I found a job for more money than I expected and was employed for 40 years, earning a paycheck usually larger than I expected until I retired.  And now I have more money in my pocket than I ever expected in retirement.

I got sober, later than I should have but early enough to have a long life in which I’ve been present and a lot more responsible than I ever had hopes of being.

I moved up to the Bay Area, got to work in Juvenile Hall, met Suzette and we were surprised by the coming of the amazing Paloma, now Adam. I finally learned to speak Spanish and had friends in Mexico and got to travel there extensively. I’ve been to Paris, Ireland, Spain and South Africa.

I went to a police academy at 57 and graduated and got to be a Park Ranger for seven years and live in Parks most of that time. I was part of a team that saved lives. I was a cop and got to be a trusted member of an order of incredibly courageous and dedicated men and women.

It has been an interesting life. I’ve done more good than harm. I have wonderful children, grandchildren and friends. My life doesn’t feel as much a result of effort and resolve as it was good fortune. My world is full of grace and I have been its beneficiary. It’s good enough and I’m grateful.