Mother: Joy
Father: Gerald

I think I had a pretty unique upbringing. Both my parents were educators. My father taught school and was the principal. My mother was a librarian.

Right after world war two when I was born we lived on Staten Island, but soon we moved to an Indian reservation. This was a Chippewa reservation at Red Lake, Minnesota.

We lived at a little place called Ponemah. And Red Lake in itself is huge; it’s so big that you can’t even see across it. We lived out on a little spit of land. Ponemah was about 60 miles down a dirt road, and about 100 miles away from Bemidji.

I remember my dad fishing on the lake when it froze. Dad became the principal of the school on the Indian reservation, and he taught sixth grade. I was only about four or five years old.

My mother recently found a book of photographs of this area, and I was able to recognize some of the places that dad would go fishing and hunting.

We probably only lived there for about two years. In the winter the ponies and horses would come to the house attracted by the heat. The snow would melt and the grass would grow nearby and the ponies would come in the middle of the night and eat the grass. Apparently it scared me and woke me up.



Mom and Dad Played Like Kids

My mother and father were very much in love. They were always having little squirt gun battles. The house was designed in such a way that a door went from every room to form a full circle. I ran around and close the doors while dead chased mom and vice versa.

When dad would take a shower mom would turn off the hot water! Dad would come running out and chasing mom all over the place.

I remember the snow getting so high that they would have to dig trails to get from place to place. There was one general store in town where you could buy venison and all the staples you would need. Often the lakes and streams would be flooded so trying to get out could be really difficult. One of the fellows would have to walk way out in front of the car, because all you could see was water.

After read like we moved to Oregon where dad got a job at Forest Grove in the library. We lived there until I was seven or eight and then dad got a job at San Jose state university. That was in December of 1952. My parents bought a brand new Eichler home that was surrounded by orchards. I think there were only about five streets of houses in that area off of Fruitdale Avenue.

In Oregon, we used to go camping lot. Mom was a director for the girl scouts. As a little boy I had to go to girl scout camp all summer. I was only six or seven years old but I could play the bugle so I was the fellow to wake everyone up in the morning. But it was really just a bunch of noise.

San Jose was a beautiful place. I remember orchards all the way out to blossom hill road. I still remember the smells of all the trees in bloom. One year all the prunes were in trays for drying but it rained, and they all fermented!