About-me

I was born under a fig tree just outside Winters California. At the time my parents worked exclusively as migrant field hands and camping near the current crop was not unusual. The year was 1939 and in the U.S. the great depression had begun to wind down, while in Europe, the dogs of war had just begun to strain at their leashes. Winters didn't have medical facilities so my birth certificate is from Woodland, the nearest hospital, and my birth registration lists no address. Fig trees don't have house numbers.

Since my family moved frequently from one crop to the next, my childhood became one long, great adventure. I grew up without experiencing the boundaries of a child raised in a single neighborhood; consequently I cultivated no life-long friends, because everyone, except my own family, was eventually left behind. My first job, at age nine, was picking cotton and until fifteen, most of my jobs were fieldwork. After that I traded my cotton sack for a ten pound single-jack and helped wreck buildings. When that ended, I cleaned the floors of a slaughterhouse and on weekends worked as a tracker, chasing wild animals that had somehow displeased civilized men. Even so, when a job ran out, or I decided to get out, farm work became my fall-back position, and that continued until I was nearly thirty.

I married at nineteen, and in less than a year became a widower. Soon after, the U.S. Army decided it urgently required my services and I was drafted. Two years in Army Intelligence taught me a lot of important lessons, the most memorable being that there isn't a great deal of intelligence in the Army. After the military decided it could survive without me, I returned to civilian life as a meter reader. Restless and dissatisfied, I drifted on to find myself building boats, or working as a roustabout, and when that all became too much, I spent a few years as a beach bum. Finally, I married the sweetest girl in the world and under her steadying influence, settled down to an eighteen-year stint as a Quality Control Chemist.

I am sometimes asked if I have any regrets for the kind of life I've led. My answer lies couched in my grandfather's words to me just before I left home for the first time. "Son, you've got a big appetite for life. Don't let it tempt you into taking such a big bite that it chokes you." So far I haven't.