Saratoga, you would not describe, I don’t think then or now, as a very ethnically diverse community. It was a very sort of middle class, white community and very, I would say, very Catholic. There were a lot of different religions then nestled up against the hill.

I was, in the early 60s, going to the community school which was the elementary school right across from Saratoga High School. I never made it to Saratoga High School. I went to the community school for about three or four years until my parents decided that the level of education what they determined to be, you know, sort of what they thought we should be getting.

So, we were then moved. My younger siblings Brian and Cathy and I, were going to be moved to Sacred Heart which was an elementary school, a Catholic school. We were the only three of our family schooled all the way from grade school through high school in the Catholic system.

My older brothers and sisters had all gone through the public system. By the time we came along there was quite a gap between my next oldest brother David, and I, of about six years. My mother had several miscarriages. It created almost two different families; there was a psychological separation.

By the time I came along, they determined they weren’t pleased with how the older ones were being schooled. It was the time of UC Berkley and the free speech movement. Both my dad and mom were devout Republicans and Catholics so they had a problem with that. Hence we were stuck into the private school system.

But, growing up in Saratoga at that time was really very much like small-town America. Even though it was a growing community it still was a very rural community with ranches, and crops, and fruit trees. To this day they still have a very, what you would call, almost like an old-time downtown.

When we were growing up they still had a drug store with a soda fountain. We would go to the soda fountain and sit there and have Shirley Temples. They also had a very, very small town bank and that’s where we used to do our savings accounts.

It was a very safe place for a young child to be growing up. I think we were given pretty much free reign to explore. Our range of motion was pretty broad. Between our house and downtown must have been a good three or four miles and we just would explore everywhere. Creeks, and farms, and pastures. We would explore and generally it was considered safe.

Our first dog that we had while I was still a young child was named Santa. The family had gotten him at Christmas time back east and he moved out here with us to California. He was very attached to one of my older brothers, Bruce.

All of us were encouraged as soon as we could, when we were maybe high school age, to get jobs to sort of earn our own incomes to do what we wanted to.

In other words we weren’t very molly-coddled even though our parents had substantial amounts of money we weren’t luxuriating in any of that money. We were expected to earn our own way.

So, Bruce had a job as a bag boy down at the supermarket. Before there was Safeway there was a supermarket down there called Blue Hills which is at Prospect and Hwy 85 now. It’s some real estate office now but it used to be a supermarket.

Santa followed him down there one night without Bruce knowing about it and was killed on the highway. It devastated so much of the family and my parents that they just resolved we would get no more dogs. We did have some cats but then it turned out – that must have been back at about 1959 or 1960.

Then in about 1967 we were at the pet shop in downtown Saratoga. All the shops in Saratoga at that time were all old time shops, nothing with a chain. They had a little puppy there and he took a liking to it and my dad brought it home to surprise us. Of course that was Rusty who went on to live until after my mom died. He kept my dad company until about 1980 when apparently he ate some rat poison in somebody’s garage.

Rusty would accompany us everywhere and he left us and went to the hillside and brought us back rocks. He was a grey terrier dog and fearless. He would accompany us on our walks through the fields.

When we were a little bit younger before we got Rusty there was neighbor called Mr. Pittman who had orchards, and then sheep, and then he also had a pond that had ducks and chickens around it.

We would go down and load our pockets up with duck eggs (Laughs), and try to sneak back to the house but they would invariably break in our pockets and it was quite obvious what we had been doing. We wouldn’t own up to the truth (Laughs), and often we got in trouble for that.

I just had lots of great adventures when we were younger. I had several neighbors with very long driveways. They were long and downhill so all the neighborhood kids were just gonna be sort of real crazy and go careening down the hill.

I was sort of a, uh, I don’t know…I was always odd when I was younger. I was fearless.

We lived on a corner and at the bottom of our long driveway it was the corner of a street which was faced on the other side by a vineyard so it was a blind corner. I used to like to lie in the middle of the street and just see how close cars could come to me. Invariably the neighbors would call up my mom and let them know that I was sledding down the street. I think I stopped doing this when I was maybe seven or eight years old, but earlier on I liked doing that.

My dad used to take us on outings ever Sunday morning. That was the time to give my mom a break because raising eight children was just numbing I could imagine.

So, Sunday morning she got a break and we would get turns sitting on his lap, we’d get to drive the car. He would let us drive the car up Highway 9 which went up behind Saratoga, and then there was also a great reservoir up there, Stevens Creek Reservoir. We’d go up and build sailboats or go down to Vasona Lake which was down by Highway 17, and build boats and sail them. Invariably they’d sink but we would consider them being sailed. Catching pollywogs and frogs and stuff. I did a lot of that stuff. Everything seems a little bit more walled off now for your protection.

I remember going over to Santa Cruz boardwalk before the boardwalk was really rejuvenated and it was a little seedy. That would be a big outing for us to go over to the beach. Of course I have white skin so I would almost always get more of a sunburn but enjoy it - but not the aftermath.

My dad would go out into the waves where they would just about be washing over him and he would dig down with his toes and get clams. We would bring home clams thinking that would could somehow keep them alive but you know I guess my parents just didn’t want to go with that notion (Laughs).