I was born at 5:30 a.m. on May 12th, 1938, at Sacred Heart Hospital in Eugene, Oregon. I heard my first joke three months later.
I lived in Eugene until I was 16 years old. My father and mother divorced when I was five years old. I didn’t see my mother again for 11 years. My father bullied and threatened to use his position as a deputy sheriff to keep my mother from staying in touch with my sister and me.
My father remarried Loree Santo, our housekeeper, in 1945 when I was 7 years old
My sister, Nondys, was killed by a car on the way home from school by an elderly man who was blind in one eye when I was nine years old. When I was five and six years old, Nondys was actually my caretaker even though we had a housekeeper. One memory of her was when I accidently threw a “decoder ring” I’d gotten by sending in cereal box tops, Nondys gave me hers.
My first three and my fifth and sixth school years were at Whiteaker elementary. My fourth year was at Lincoln elementary because of overcrowding at Whiteaker. I deeply resented having to leave my friends and go to Lincoln and rebelled in class whenever possible. When directed to answer questions in our workbooks, I simply wrote “no.” I was passed conditionally but had no problem after going back to Whiteaker.
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My folks farmed me out to a cattle ranch in Eastern Oregon during my 9th summer and my sister was sent to Niles, California so they could enjoy a few weeks without kids. This was just fine with me because, at that time, I wanted to be a cowboy when I grew up. Once there, I set about learning the necessary skills, such as riding a horse, roping, etc. One fateful afternoon I was riding around looking for things to lasso. (I’d been practicing lassoing the center post in the corral) when I decided to rope the wringer handle of the washing machine on the porch. I got it, but the loop was hanging too loosely so I put the rope coil on the saddle horn and turned the horse around. All of a sudden, something spooked the horse and it took off up a hill. As it did, the coil around the saddle horn tightened up resulting in puling the washing machine through the wall and dragging it along behind us. We reached a fence and the horse turned around heading back toward the ranch house, causing the rope to knock me off. My first thought was “Wow, that didn’t hurt at all — just like in the movies.” The woman of the house came running up to me to see if I was okay, and then screamed. She had spotted my little finger on my left hand badly mangled. I had to endure a sixty mile drive to Bend holding my hand on a hanky where it was amputated.
My sister, Nondys, was killed by a car while walking home from school when i was ten years old.
Other than those significant events, my life was typical for a youngster in Eugene until I was 16. Tension between my father and I grew increasingly worse, perhaps because we were so much alike. The straw that broke the camel’s back came when he forbade me to use the family phone. Everybody knows a teenager can’t get by without a phone.
I hadn’t had contact with my mother since I was five years old, but I knew a couple on my paper route who had been good friends with her so I decided to ask them if they knew how to contact her as I wanted to go live with her. They did and telephoned her on the spot. My mother, stepfather and half-sister, Kathleen, drove up that evening. I returned to Coos Bay with them that night. I later learned that my dad, having legal custody of me, had to agree with the move which he did.