My Life Story Part 1

My Life Story

I was born in Corona, CA.   My dad was stationed at the 29 Palms Marine base.  My dad was shipped to Korea, so we came home when I was about 12 days old.  My mother told me that when I was on the way to the Naval Hospital where I was bornMy earliest memory is when I was six months old. I was sitting in a small swimming pool on the front porch in Highlands, TX. My mom called me into the house to show me a picture of my dad who was overseas in the Marines. It was either that or sitting on an anthill thinking it would make a fine stool. They happened around the same age. I was living in this house.

My first house where I was in a pool on the porch

Where I was stung by sitting on an ant hill

When I was 18 months old, shortly before my dad came home from Okinawa, I was run over by my mother's best friend who had just gotten her driver's license. I had quit breathing and my leg was stuck on the tire and my leg broken under the fender well cover. I had quit breathing so I was presumed dead. That's not the only time I made a miraculous recovery but it was the first. Here is a picture of my grandmother's house where I was run over in the driveway by my mother's best friend who had just gotten her license.  I was playing with the shell in the driveway while my mother was untangling my dad's fishing line in his fishing reel.

Now empty lot where I was run over - Grandmother's House

I spent a lot of time at my grandmother's house. In fact, we practically lived there. My uncle who was ten years older than I would teach me morse code, my grandfather would teach me about drums and broke his lamb head snare when I was trying to play it which taught me a little about physics, my grandmother bought me my first toy guitar which I tried to tune even though it had a crank to play. I got in trouble for climbing a tree in the back when I was three or four years old. I had climbed way to the top and when my grandmother found me she told me to get down from there and switched me for it. My grandparents had a piano on which I used to tinker playing things like Chopsticks and basically learning the sounds of my notes, creating my own songs sometimes. I learned right from wrong there.

At her next door neighbor's house, I learned to play the accordion a little but the old man had little patience with a four year old so I didn't learn much. I think I got a song or two learned but that was about it. The neighbors were the Esteraks. I was fond of the woman of the house who fed her peacocks in her back yard. Even though her name was Mrs. Estrak, I called her “Mrs. Quack Quack” because that's the best I could do at that age. I think I learned to say her name properly by the time I was four, but I think I still called her Mrs. Quack Quack because that's what I had called her for so long just like I called my aunt Doris “Aunt Dodo.” Here's a picture of Mrs' Quack Quack's house.

Mrs. Quack Quack's House

I went down one day knocking on people's back doors asking for candy. The woman at the end of the street three houses over gave me some candy and called my grandmother. My grandmother came over there, apologized to the lady, grabbed me by the arm, and switched me all the way home. That was my first spanking by my grandmother and I thought I was being killed.

Mrs. Chandler's House where I got my first switching.

By this time I considered my grandparents more of my parents than my real parents. Having my dad come home from the Marines was difficult for me because I was used to getting all of the attention from my mom, my uncle, and my two aunts who were nice. My dad... not so nice. Moving away from the small town of Highlands to Houston with my dad was even more difficult for me at first. I wasn't used to this strange man with the loud Marine Sergeant voice yelling at me and beating me. Here is a picture of the house in Houston. It was white back then and I thought that's what they were talking about when they said The White House.

House in Houston on Candleshade Ln.

There I finally got used to having a father but hated the beatings, sometimes for a small reason like accidentally coloring outside the lines, or other times for no reason at all. He loved to beat me with his belt so I didn't have too many fond memories of him. At one point though, my dad started building a race car and made me disassemble the engine. I think I was about eight onr nine then. I was still skinny and weakly but I managed to get most of it disassembled with a little help from him on the hardest parts. He and his friends would put it all together and he'd go race at Meyer's Speedway in Houston. It was near Meyerland Plaza where my mother used to shop. It was fun watching my dad race every week though. I can't Meyer's Speedway anymore so it must have been torn down, but I did find Meyerland Plaza on Google Maps.  Meyerland Plaza was where I saw my first "Wild West Medicine Show."  It was put on by the radio station KILT if I remember correctly.

Meyerland Plaza

I went to Windsor Village Elementary School during that time, and in third grade I believe, I was going to the restroom and saw the principal and a few other people watching the Kennedy parade in Dallas. I stopped to watch. It was a live broadcast. I actually saw him get shot. When I got back to the classroom, the teacher called me a liar and I believe paddled me. The next day she profoundly apologized when she learned the truth for herself.  I had a best friend there named Grey Hayes who was a Jehovah's Witness and had a bomb shelter in his back yard.  He used to protect me from the bullies until he was severely injured, then I protected him.  Here's a shot of the old school.

Windsor Village Elementary shot with sign

Wide shot of Windsor Village Elementary

My mother sent one of her friends to pick me up and I wouldn't get in the car with her because they had just showed us a film on strangers. I didn't really know what a stranger was, but she was trying to get me into the car like a stranger did in the film, so I wouldn't go and walked all the way home.

Having the injury to my leg and dying for awhile caused me to be more sickly and less athletic than other children my age and very skinny as well, something that plagued me from that age through high school. Still, I continued to do my best at whatever I could do. I did a lot of reading. I loved science and religion. The first time I heard about God, I felt like I already knew him. The scar from the surgery was unsightly... and still is to some degree so I almost never wore shorts, something difficult in Southeast Texas heat. When I went to the beach, I hated to have to pull off my long trunks to go swimming in my swimming trunks. It made me very self conscious.

When I was about five or six, one of my best friends had to move away. His mother came to get him as he was playing outside with me. She explained to us how her husband had been killed in Vietnam and how horrible war was. Those words stuck with me throughout my life. When I heard the beatitudes, I took note of the following verse:

Matthew 5:9

New International Version (NIV)
9 Blessed are the peacemakers,
    for they will be called children of God.

From that time on, my desire was to be a peacemaker. I tried to live as Jesus did and tried to behave as the Bible taught us to.

A few years after my dad started racing, he was transferred to Longview, TX by his company Triangle Refineries, Inc. where he had been a computer programmer. He was a CEO of Premier Oil in Longview. That's when things got rough. 

This was our house in Longview.  It's still the same ugly pink that it was then. 

I was beaten at home and beaten at school. I wasn't athletic then but did well at music. At the time we didn't realize that my kidney was infected and was getting worse and worse.

 

Our House in Longview, TX

It was a split level home and our bedrooms were upstairs. The television was downstairs on a room next to the basement. That's where my dad would sit and drink when he got home. He started beating me and my mom more frequently.  I made a few friends there and even had a girlfriend.  I was eleven through twelve years old when we lived there.  The boys were pretty rough, most of them and their dads being in the KKK.  They liked to beat me up because I was a Methodist and not a Baptist.  That gave me a pretty bad impression of Baptists.  That made things even harder.

My dad had decided to spend his money elsewhere and not at home.  Every night we would hide behind the couch to see if he came home sober or drunk.  If he was sober, he was relatively friendly.  If he was drunk, he was hell.  By then I'd had enough of his Marine Corps "discipline..." basically the torture he went through at 29 Palms. I was beaten at home and beaten at school. I wasn't athletic then but did well at music. At the time we didn't realize that my kidney was infected and was getting worse and worse.

One night, my dad came home, beat and pistol whipped my mom, shot a hole in the door to the garage, then put the gun in her mouth. After that he made her strip so he could take pictures of her. No, I'm not going to show you the pictures, but you could see the fear and hurt in her face. I had her burn them. Afterward, he went upstairs and laid on top of my sister and I had to push his drunk, passed out ass off of her with my legs. He was 250 pounds and I was a 98 pound weakling.

Although I had been disciplined by a Marine, I didn't like to fight because I wanted to be like Jesus. That got me beaten more than if I had stood up for myself. I did occasionally get in a fight with a neighborhood kid who would want to beat me up because I was skinny. Still, I was determined enough to tell my mom that I was going to take my sisters and go move in with my grandfather if she didn't leave him. She thought about it then finally made the right choice and left.