Perceived reality in the subjective thought world via 60's T.V.
vs.
Perceived reality in the objective world of home life.

If our family had a credo when I was growing up, it would have been: Unmerited Favor.

My father, Jack (RIP)-- a 33 yr. old illiterate alcoholic Korean War Vet,married my mother Jeannette (RIP)-- a literate 18 yr. old, who Jack's mother had adopted a couple years earlier after Jeannette's father went to prison for molesting her. A symbiotic-disfunctional co-dependency they shared throughout my life with them.

My earliest memories? Off the top of my head I think that would probably be the pitchfork through my toe at 3rd or 4th yr when I tried to pick-up where my dad left-off digging up a small back yard garden. Or perhaps it is when I was 2 or 3 at my sister Sue's 1st or 2nd birthday when she received a giant pink bunny as big as me, which I beat the stuffing out of. In either event, I was certainly a rambunctious boy! A few more early memories? I had split my nose requiring stitches, at preschool during during a frenzied dance in the class. Then there's smoking cigarettes on the playground at Kindergarten. And then there's Culver City memories of the movie-- lots where movie-props (planes, stage coaches, old cars and the like) were stored. Such adventures there were in those days, for a rambunctious boy who had no fear of climbing over high fences. Let's see. . . I think I was about 5 or 6 yrs there. I remember lil Market across the way drank some Drano,and he lived to squirt out liquids from the hole in his stomach-- before he drowned in the pool we used to sneak into. . . Now that is a wasted life!

Yup, and all the while my dad, a fat drunk playing his poker with drunk neighbors kept the night-life interesting and my pockets full of their loose change and cigarettes. Mom would argue with dad for gambling away our welfare food money, and after one such argument late at night dad went outside to smash our car windshield when mom threatened to take us kids and leave him. About that same time my dad took me with him to pick up his brother, my uncle Danny, from the hospital after his face was all cut-up by muggers or something. Soon thereafter, Uncle Danny died on our couch apparently from an overdose. Another wasted life.

I recall my first nightmare back then. A horor movie called The Blob, caused a dream that I was a black kid and had cut open my thumb muscle (the blob) which got away from me and started growing on its own-- which terrified me and I awoke as a white kid. In hindsight, I wonder if that was a metamorphosis of my soul reincarnating with an agenda?

Let's see; Redondo Beach, is when my baby sister Patty was born in '72. I was busy with Little League Baseball and the Cub-Scouts. I remember that my mother often helped me obtain my merit badges. And she displayed my baseball tropheys the rest of her life. Grandma Ogello (dad's mother) lived with us there I recall, and I remember that i used to steal money out of her purse to spend when I ditched school. I'd go spend the day at the Bowling Alley, or go to a walk-in movie, or I'd take a Bus to the beach, or walk around watching out for cops or my parent driving by. One day when I came home from one of my adventures, Grandma had my dad cornered and he was swearing that he never in his drunkest day took any money from her purse. I must have been a pretty good criminal-- and somewhat a psychopath, to not look guilty or desire to take the blame off my dad for the missing money.

In fact, I remember from a very young age I've never let so-called "Rules" deter me from doing whatever I wanted to do--as the "consequences" never outweighed the pleasure of my willful wiles.

Or at least that was the case before my mother broke her wooden cooking spoon on my ass when she finally tracked me down at the community swimming pool where I was delaying our cross-country road-trip for Michigan for a family reunion with my mother's, grand-parents. Let me see, it was my mother and her sister (Aunt Eileen), and Eileen's husband all in the cab of the truck while me, Sue, Patty and my cousins Anna and Debbie rode in back under a camper shell. 2500+ miles was the longest trip of my life! Once there, though, I met or Herwarth branch of our family, and Uncle Ricky. Toured the Kellogs Plant and picnicked on the beach of one of the Great Lakes. Oh, and then we stopped at the Grand Canyon in Arizona on the way back.

The next memories I have are of the 5th and 6th grade at Lark Ellen School in Covina, where I had won a Art Scholarship which I never went to claim because I didn't want my own art skills conditioned by anyone else's standards. Instead, I was stealing bikes, vandalizing office buildings, breaking into surrounding schools and hanging out with the older neighborhood thugs who played catch with me. Literally, they'd throw me around amongst a circle of them. I recall crying when a few of those older friends of mine raped my mouth one day at their house-- and then showed me how it feels to masterbate.

More to follow--