My mother\u2019s lover, Clarence Neff, was a vain, gimlet-eyed, good-looking sonofabitch, with a shock of slick, dark hair combed straight back. He\u2019d-swagger around his apartment with a smoldering look on his face\u2014sweeping my mother up in his arms like he thought he was Rudolph Valentino or something. I\u2019d roll my eyeballs\u2014and head for the toilet.<\/p>\n
To this day, I have no idea where they met or how their ill-fated affair ever developed. Even in her later years, my mother refused to talk about it.<\/p>\n
Neffs eight-year-old daughter, Gladys, was another story. She was about a year older and about two inches taller than I was at the time. And I was surprised and delighted when she turned out to be a little offbeat and a lot of fun. She had a weird sense of humor, an abiding curiosity, a gangly look, dark bobbed hair and a lop-sided grin. Was it Clara Bow?<\/p>\n
We became pretty good pals. Within minutes of our first meeting, she revealed in a dramatic stage whisper that she was going to be a \u201cmovie star\u201d when she grew up.<\/p>\n
Later, she put on a private performance for me. Wearing one of her dad\u2019s silk shirts, she did an exultant mimic of the arrogant Neff in action. As she swept haughtily around the room in long, exaggerated strides, I thought she was nuts \u2014but interesting. (Looking back now on that bizarre scene from long, long ago, I\u2019d say her performance was more Groucho Marx than it was Clarence Neff\u2014or Rudolph Valentino.)<\/p>\n
***<\/p>\n
My mother and I moved in with Neff and his screwball daughter. Neff had once been a carpenter, like my dad. Now he was a salesman for some kind of home fixtures company. He really thought he was hot stuff. (Famous Arrow<\/em> shirts cost about two bucks at that time. Neff insisted on $20 silk shirts as his trademark, every day of the week.)<\/p>\n He had a \u201cfurnished\u201d apartment on the second floor of a three-story brick building in the interesting old Lincoln Theater district of Southwest Portland. The apartment was decorated in what you might call cheap moderne\u2014or minimal Bauhaus. Whatever. My mother\u2019s piano looked lonely in Neffs sparsely-furnished front room, jammed up against the bare wall to one side of a bay window.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Neff and my mother slept in the big front bedroom. Gladys and I slept in a pull-down Murphy bed. It took up most of the\u00a0floor space in a small study down the hall. During the day, the polished wood wall featured a full- length mirror. At night, when you pulled down the counter-balanced face of the wall, and snapped the legs in place, it became a full-size double bed.<\/p>\n On that bed is where my earliest sex education began.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t long before\u00a0Gladys and I were curiously exploring each other. By the end of the week, our curiosity had turned into a lot of playful fiddling around. We\u2019d snuggle in bed and feel each other and rub and romp and wrestle and just have ourselves one helluva high old time. We didn\u2019t know what we were doing. But we knew it was exciting, it felt good, and it was a lot of fun.<\/p>\n These nightly games lasted maybe two weeks, maybe less. One night, my mother walked in on us, right in the middle of a most enthusiastic session. The bed was badly rumpled. And so were we.<\/p>\n All hell broke loose, My mother was absolutely lived as she stammered out, \u201cNo-no-no, you mustn\u2019t do that\u201d\u2014 for reasons that were never explained to us. Then Neff jumped into the act. He went sort of berserk. He bellowed out his anger in my direction. For a grand climax, he threatened to thrash me within an inch of my life and send me to Woodburn. (I learned much later that Woodburn, Oregon, was the location of the state reform school for wayward boys.)<\/p>\n Gladys and I lowered our heads, put on contrite faces, and kept our mouths shut.<\/p>\n In the end, I suppose virtue triumphed. From that night on, I slept on a cot in an alcove next to the dining room. And I remained a virgin until I was almost seventeen years old.<\/p>\n \u00a0***<\/p>\n My new school, where I entered second grade, was adjacent to Lincoln High, only a few blocks away from the apartment, this made it an easy walk to school. My mother came along the first week or so. Then we were on our own.<\/p>\n Gladys showed me her favorite route. It took us along an attractive street of little neighborhood shops and stores and restaurants, clustered in the blocks around the Lincoln Theater movie house.<\/p>\n Living in this kind of urban atmosphere was a wide new world for me, of course. I found it very intriguing.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n <\/p>\n My mother would\u00a0sometimes let Gladys and I attend a weekend matinee all by ourselves, as long as we stayed together. This resulted in lively wrangling over what movie to see. One vigorous debate over \u201cWINGS\u201d<\/em> still sticks in my mind.<\/p>\n By 1928-29, the talkies were taking over the film industry. Yet a few silent films remained big box-office hits, especially at the neighborhood level. Advertising for \u201cWINGS\u201d<\/em> told of \u201cdeath-defying exploits\/’ coming to our local theater. I made up my mind, I had to see it.<\/p>\n \u201cWINGS\u201d<\/em> was a silent, big-time, world war aviation thriller. It won the first-ever Academy Award for \u201cBest Picture of the Year.\u201d (The combat flying sequences using WWI Spads and Fokkers are still considered among the best aerialdog-fighting sequences in Hollywood history.)<\/p>\n Gladys had no interest, whatsoever, in going with me to see \u201cWINGS,”<\/em> even when I told her it starred Clara Bow and Richard Arlen.<\/p>\n “Aw … c\u2019mon, Gladys.\u201d In the end, we made a deal. She\u2019d go with me to see \u201cWINGS\u201d<\/em>if I\u2019d go with her to see something called \u201cBroadway Melody.\u201d That Grade B bomb turned out to be of possible minor interest only because it was the first of the talkie musicals. I can\u2019t remember anything else about\u00a0it. But I did go see it with. her. And Gladys and I remained good buddies.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Most kids steal, at one time or another. My time came early. It wasn\u2019t much. But it taught me an unforgettable lesson\u2014real quick.<\/p>\n One day I set out to explore the neighborhood on my own. I enjoyed checking out all the wonderful stuff in the windows, one shop after another\u2014like the Jewish bakery, a used tools store, a fancy shoe store, an Italian deli, chocolate candy store, art supplies, and the open-front Chinese market. There was my downfall.<\/p>\n Tucked in with his vegetables and exotic Chinese herbs, the elderly store-keeper kept a wire rack next to the sidewalk, neatly stacked with boxes of chewing gum. Blackjack<\/em> gum\u00a0was my favorite.<\/p>\n I stared long and hard at that box of Blackjack<\/em>gum. I\u2019ll bet there were\u00a0two-dozen packages in the box. Came the moment of decision, I reached over, picked up the entire box, jammed it under my arm like a football and high-tailed it down the street.Suddenly from behind, a big, heavy hand grabbed my shoulder and stopped me in my tracks. I whirled around. There I was, facing the biggest man of the law I\u2019d ever seen in my young life. He was the local cop on the beat and he looked ten-feet tall.<\/p>\n We had a little talk. His approach was stern but not unkind. Then he walked me home to the apartment, two or three blocks away. By the time I trudged up the stairs, I was almost in tears. I had to face my mother.<\/p>\n Throughout her life, my mother held firm to a stubborn honesty. That day was no exception. She gave me a tongue lashing I\u2019ll always remember.<\/p>\n \u201cYou don\u2019t take something that belongs to somebody else,” was her tough credo. She lived by it. And I learned my lesson well.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Agnes Peterson lived in the apartment directly above us. She was a tall, jolly, round-faced woman in her early thirties, about the same age as my mother. The two of them hit it off immediately. They became close friends.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Agnes worked as a hostess in a downtown speakeasy. On late rainy afternoons, before going to work, she\u2019d often stop by for a cigarette and a cup of coffee. My mother and Agnes both smoked Chesterfields<\/em>. They\u2019d put on a fresh pot of coffee and the two of them would sit at the kitchen table and talk and talk and talk. Sometimes I picked up all kinds of things.<\/p>\n That\u2019s how I learned that the speakeasy where Agnes worked was located in what had once been the meeting hall of a German Turnverei<\/em>n, two blocks from City Hall. She worked for a guy named Battisti or Batuzzi or something like that.<\/p>\n Over a stretch of several afternoon visits, I also learned that Agnes had been married twice\u2014her first husband was a merchant marine sailor lost at sea during the war\u2014she was born and raised in Minneapolis\u2014she liked to attend the fights at the Portland Civic Auditorium\u2014she was trying to cut down on her smoking\u2014she hated wearing girdles\u2014she liked bootleg beer, French fries, kids and jazz\u2014and her 21-year-old niece, Emma, was about to get a divorce.<\/p>\n I liked Agnes,too. She taught me how to build card houses, using an ordinary deck of Bicycle<\/em> playing cards. She had a very steady hand. One afternoon she successfully built a tower three stories high. The best I could ever do until years later was a two story structure that collapsed when I tried to widen the second floor.<\/p>\n Agnes had a loud, marvelous laugh. Her belly used to go up and down. It fascinated me.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n I can remember February 14, 1929. That was the day AL Capone\u2019s hit men walked calmly into a dingy South Chicago garage and machine-gunned seven rival mobsters from the George \u201cBugs\u201d Moran gang. It was part of an ongoing gangland war for control of the illegal booze business. With big, black headlines, the newspapers called it the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre<\/em>.<\/p>\n In an era when violent crime was not an exploited staple of the nightly news, as it is today, this vicious gangland killing captured the shuddering attention of the nation. We didn\u2019t talk about it at school during class. But you can bet it was the hot subject of conversation the following day on our school playground, during recess.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n I can remember February 14, 1929 for another reason, too. My mother\u2019s divorce became final on that date\u2014six months after the judge\u2019s original decree, she said.<\/p>\n Neff decided to take her out on the town to celebrate. He announced they were going to Battisti\u2019s speakeasy, which featured thick grilled steaks and French fries, freshly-made booze, a dime-size dance floor,Chicago-style jazz and Agnes Peterson as hostess\u2014all for a price.<\/p>\n When they returned late that night, Gladys and I soon knew the evening had not gone well. Coming into the apartment, somebody loudly slammed the front door shut as if they were trying to knock it off its hinges. We jumped out of our beds with a start. The sitter hurriedly left. Loud arguing erupted.<\/p>\n My mother and Neff went at it, face to face. And it was ugly. Yet from what little I could understand that night, it all started over a spilled drink … or was it a thrown drink? I don\u2019t remember. There must have been more to it than that.<\/p>\n This was the first of several quarrels between Neff and my mother that we were to overhear in the months to come. As Iremember it now, most of those hot sarcastic arguments seemed to center on the subject of money, or lack of.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n During spring vacation that year, my dad took me with him up into the mountains to visit Aunt Phoebe and Uncle George Littreal, who were working at a new logging camp job. My dad and Phoebe and George all remained good friends.<\/p>\n This new logging camp was in the rugged mountains of southwest Oregon. We drove up in the Overland. However, the only way we could get into camp the final three miles was by way of the old logging railroad tracks.<\/p>\n We joined up with two loggers who were returning to camp on the timber company\u2019s mechanized hand car\u2014 open on all sides. I held on for dear life as we rounded the bends and crossed two high, narrow trestles\u2014hundreds of feet above some wild rapids in the steep gorge, far below. For me, it was a great adventure.<\/p>\n In the cook shack, I was spoiled rotten, as usual, with Aunt Phoebe\u2019s famous freshly-baked pies, right out of the oven, Apricot, strawberry-rhubarb. green apple, peach, wild huckleberry\u2014hey, I don\u2019t remember them all. But I probably sampled them all, topped with generous scoops of home-made ice cream, of course.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n In her ambitious climb to movie stardom, Gladys decided to take up tap dancing, She talked me into going with her. Tap dancing! Can you believe it?<\/p>\n The Oregon Journal<\/em>, Portland\u2019s afternoon newspaper, sponsored a variety of activities for kids under the club name \u201cJournal Juniors.\u201d Gladys read about the tap dance offer in the Journal Junior section of the Sunday comics. For 50 cents a lesson, you could learn how to tap dance during eight Saturday morning sessions at the Paramount Theater in downtown Portland.<\/p>\n Neff said the price was too high. He finally gave in, however, And my mother walked us into town and signed us up for lessons.<\/p>\n I had never seen a movie palace as big and asbeautiful as the Paramount Theater. It had a grand carpeted staircase sweeping down to a long, inlaid marble lobby that seemed to stretch on forever, Magnificent crystal chandeliers sparkled overhead. Gilded rococo walls and smoky mirrors added to the glamour, It all had the look and feeling of the king\u2019s royal court in a fairy tale, I was <\/p>\n The tap dancing lessons took place in the lobby of the Paramount. Somebody said the teacher was famous. I doubt that. And I don\u2019t remember her name. I had much more fun on Saturday mornings skating around the block on my new roller skates\u2014or learning how to play ping pong with the Italian kid who lived in a big old rooming house around the corner. His house had a wide front porch with a swing set on one side and a ping pong table on the other.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n Why is it that boys are so attracted to violence? Is it early environment? A learned response? Media influence? \u201cMacho\u201d traditions? Peer pressure? Higher levels of testosterone? Or does it begin with something in our genes?<\/p>\n How else can I explain why a group of ordinary seven and eight year olds would try to knock each other\u2019s blocks off with rocks and rubble\u2014-just for the fun of it?<\/p>\n I tagged along that day. A group of us started poking around inside the fenced remains of an old apartment house, torn down the week before. The area was strewn with crumbling basement walls, rocks and rubble. It had the look of a bombed-out building in war-torn Berlin.<\/p>\n Almost casually, a very dangerous game developed. Crouched behind the stub of an inner basement wall, three of the kids laughingly pitched small chunks of concrete at the rest of us, about 30 feet away. They were just playing around. We jeered at their poor aim and dodged behind a parallel piece of wall, shouting back a few friendly obscenities. Then we started lobbing rocks back at ’em. Like a snowball fight.<\/p>\n Soon, however, the intensity escalated. All kinds of rubblestarted flying back and forth. An eerie dust cloud began Suddenly, the kid next to me got smacked in the side of the head with a small chunk of concrete. Blood dripped from a dirty gash above his cheek bone and he started to yell bloody murder. The rest of us were scared. That ended the battle, right there. Two of his best buddies walked him home, where they found out the damage was minor. But it could have been lethal, and I think we all knew that.<\/p>\n When I got home, I felt a sense of some vague humiliation and shame I couldn’t get a fix on.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n The inflated prosperity of “The Roaring Twenties\u201d came to a crashing end in late October 1929, when the stock market tumbled into a disastrous free fall. Many companies that had been built on enormous debt simply collapsed like a house of cards. Many thousands of Americans who had speculated in the market found themselves totally wiped out. Losing everything. Many thousands of others who trusted their savings to banks found there was little or no money left. Many banks failed. Brokerage houses went under. Great financial companies went down in ruin.<\/p>\n Blind fear ruled the day. Panic spread. And the worst was yet to come.<\/p>\n I knew or understood nothing of this at the time. I did hear the stories about stock brokers jumping out of high windows and speculators shooting themselves. But the crash meant nothing to me personally, until that day when the company Neff worked for went belly-up. They closed their doors. Clarence Neff, in his $20 silk shirt, was out of a job.<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n It was no great surprise when my mother and Neff called it quits. Their relationship had been fraying badly for months.<\/p>\n In a noisy quarrel just before Christmas, Neff told my mother that he and Gladys were heading for Denver, where he was going to work with his brother. He said we could stay in the apartment until the end of the month. Then, we had to get out.<\/p>\n When Neff and Gladys pulled out, they packed everything they owned in three heavy suit cases. She smiled her crooked little smile, waved a plaintive good\u00adbye, and that was it. They were gone. I never saw or heard from Gladys Neff again.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Over the years, I sometimes\u00a0wondered. Did she ever grow up to become a \u201cmovie star?\u201d<\/p>\n ***<\/p>\n As we entered, the 1930’s, America began its slide downward into the Great Depression\u2014the longest, cruelest and most devastating economic crisis in our nation’s history.<\/p>\n My mother gamely faced the harsh reality of her situation. It was a time of sky rocketing unemployment\u2014 with people scrambling for fewer and fewer jobs. And \u00a0here she was, a 34-year-old single mother with an eight- year-old kid, almost no education, no job training, no money, no alimony, no car, no place to go\u2014and no idea of what was to come.<\/p>\n
\n\u201cNo way.\u201d
\n\u201cYou just gotta come with me.\u201d
\n\u201cNo way.\u201d
\n\u201cPleeze?\u201d
\n\u201cNo way.\u201d<\/p>\n
\nentranced, (This Beaux Arts beauty still exists, I was happy to discover during a visit we made to Portland a few years ago, It\u2019s now a part of the city\u2019s handsome civic center performance complex.)<\/p>\n
\nAlong with 50 or 60 other kids, all shapes and sizes, Gladys and I lined up that first Saturday morning in the Paramount lobby, We lined up in three long rows, \u201cLet the lessons begin,\u201d By the end of the second week, the number of students had dropped to about 30, By the third week, it was down to maybe two dozen.Gladys took to tap dancing like a Ruby Keeler on parade. She became good\u2014very good, My own buck and wing, on the other hand, never made it. After about four lessons, I dropped out.<\/p>\n
\nto rise. The stormy scene turned into a fierce, small-scale battle.<\/p>\n