Childhood of a Metaphysical Author

My brother and I lived with our parents in a Los Angeles apartment following our birth in 1956.

   
 
An article considering my childhood?  I tell myself to take a deep breath and just relax to let it happen.  Most of my childhood memories come to mind in sparse inklings and recollections.  My identical twin brother and I had been born on August 8, 1956 in Culver City not far from MGM Studios.  At birth I weighed 4 lbs., 3 oz and Mike weighed 5 lbs., 7 oz.  The doctor had to use the forceps to remove him from the womb after I was taken out, resulting with the shape of his head being a little more narrow than mine.

By the time we turned six, our parents were no longer together.  There had been financial difficulties with bill collectors calling and knocking at the door.  Ellen attempted to put the troubled times behind her after the divorce.  In Pasadena Ellen worked in the medical records department at St. Luke Hospital, a Catholic Hospital under the supervision of nuns from the order of St. Joseph of Orange.  I know many details about my mother's life back East from hearing her talk about her life and once I even interviewed her about the subject for a two character play.

My strangest memory from my infancy is of going to a park with a fountain and watching two women involved in an altercation concerning a child.  Frantic words were exchanged about "It's my baby and not yours . . ."  One of the woman was desperate and I don't know if she was my mother or not.  The overwrought demeanor of the young woman was something unfamiliar.  When I asked both of my parents about this incident on separate occasions, each responded in a surprised way but no information was offered.

Another disturbing memory is of an incident when I witnessed my father strike my mother after an acrimonious conversation.  She fell to the floor and was unconscious.  This was the only major physical altercation between them that I ever saw.  When my twin brother and I were alone with our father, he was usually pleasant.

Another shocking memory is of seeing a neighbor playmate being hit by a car.  I remember visiting him in his family's apartment but nothing else about him after that.

Some childhood memories prior to the divorce are of attending a prekindergarten school, frequent television viewing, Mike and me participating in an ice skating pageant, going with Paul to an impressive hamburger restaurant, and being in the audience for a taping of the "Bozo the Clown" daytime TV show.

After the divorce, there would intermittently be shouting and irrationality from my mother as she became a chronic beer drinker.  The hospital where she worked was a street away from our apartment.  Twice we relocated to different apartments on the same block.  The first time we moved to an upstairs apartment and the second time to a different complex down the street with another upstairs apartment.  Because of my mother's moody disposition, she was probably looking for a living space where she wouldn't have to worry about what the neighbors might hear.  The second time we moved, it was right after the landlord had spontaneously entered the apartment when it wasn't in the most tidy condition.  There was no question that Ellen loved my twin brother and me yet it was obvious being on her own was very stressful for her.  She would threaten to "get the belt" when something made her angry and it seemed that just about anything could do that.  Once the belt buckle gashed the back of my head during a punishment.  Luckily, no stitches were needed but I remember some awkward moments the next time when I went to the barbershop.

The longest span of time in Pasadena was on Del Rey Avenue directly across from St. Luke Hospital.  Most of my childhood memories are mundane, such as losing my beloved stuffed animal 'Boo Boo' in kindergarten.  Mother always gave us an allowance and purchased many pleasing things for Mike and myself.  Meals weren't always the most nutritious and there were often 'TV dinners,' which we actually did consume while the TV was on.

My first memory of something happening to me that one might relegate to the so-called ‘paranormal’ was around 1962 when I was five or six years old in Pasadena.  I awoke one morning when a voice began calling my name in a loud whisper.  The voice sounded male and I couldn’t figure out from where it was coming.  I observed that both my brother and my mother were still asleep as the voice continued to intermittently say my name.  I decided that it must be someone from school who’d somehow found out where I lived and was playing a joke on me; however, as I searched throughout the apartment and glanced out the windows, there was nobody there.

During the first four grades of elementary school, Mike and I attended a childcare facility until Ellen finished working.  I was a sensitive and shy child.  We all were all the children of parents who all had day jobs.

One day the entire class visited the health office, perhaps for a vaccination.  Every elementary school student is nervous waiting one's turn for such an unwanted intrusion yet the circumstances involving the shot had been explained so I decided not to let it upset me, feeling relieved when it was over and promptly returning to the classroom like everyone else to continue working on an assignment.  Suddenly there were startled voices and I couldn’t make out what they were saying.  It felt like I was waking up but I was startled to realize that I was not in bed but in class.  I was on my back upon the floor.  I thought, “The aliens have come back.”  The teacher instructed someone to help me put my feet up so the blood would flow back to my head.  Later, the perplexing explanation for my having fainted was said to be a delayed stress reaction from the vaccination.  What was most perplexing to me about the entire incident was the bizarre recollected thought about ‘the aliens.’

There were other fainting episodes.  Occasionally I became so apprehensive about passing out again that I would begin to hyperventilate and the cycle was repeated.  When this happened, I was sent home for the remainder of the day to rest and there I would worry about the reaction of the other students when I returned.  Once at Hale Elementary School in Pasadena, my friend Joel hit his head against the monkey bars and I became alarmed as blood began trickling down his neck.  He received help from a school staff member yet as I returned to the classroom I couldn’t avoid losing consciousness again.

I would recall these incidents in 1995 after my thirty-ninth birthday.  After learning about a contemporary ‘talking poltergeist’ case in a Fortean Times magazine article, I visited the family experiencing the phenomena and the events that I witnessed would completely change my understanding of life.  I had previously become familiar with a case from the 19th Century—'The Bell Witch' case—where daughter Betsy Bell would have fainting episodes without any explanation.  This  family also had Bell ancestry and when I asked if any family member had fainting episodes, the response was no.

About My Mother

Ellen had grown up in Pennsylvania during the Great Depression.  The first years of her life were passed in Oil City, where the oil industry first started in America.  Her mother was Margaret, whose maiden name was McElhattan and whose own mother was Native American, while Ellen’s father, William Bernard King, was away at the workhouse for forgery.  When she was four, Mildred and Gordon Smith asked Ellen several questions before settling upon her as the child they wanted to adopt.

 

Ellen called her new mother ‘Millie.’  She was an earthy, heavyset woman who smoked constantly.  Living with Millie and Gordon, Ellen was given new clothes from a store for the first time in her life and at Christmas received her first presents.  One discovery was that her new mother had an odd talent.  Although she’d never had any piano lessons nor was able to read sheet music, Millie could play music on the piano after hearing it once.  If the church pianist was absent, Millie would be asked to be the substitute.

In 1948, one morning while Ellen was in the tenth grade, Millie asked Ellen to stay home from school.  Gordon left for work as usual and a truck soon came to transport Millie and Ellen’s belongings.  Millie left Gordon a note.  She’d become dissatisfied with their relationship.

After high school, Ellen’s first major job was working as a secretary in the testing department at a Sylvania Electric television manufacturing plant, where Millie also had been hired.  Eventually there was a new man in Millie’s life.  She called him ‘Cece’ and it was clear to Ellen that he was a moocher.  Ellen insisted that the couple regularly went out boozing.  She explained that it had been obvious that the main reason he liked Millie was because she paid for everything and even gave him spending money.  When Millie started letting Cece stay over, Ellen decided it wasn’t something she couldn't tolerate.  She demanded that Cece leave the house; if not, Ellen vowed to move out.  Millie responded, “How dare you?  I’ve given up everything for you!”

“You haven’t given up anything,” Ellen told her.  That was the day she left.

Ellen had already chosen her destination.  She’d read too many issues of Motion Picture, Photoplay and Modern Screen magazines to consider going anywhere other than Los Angeles.  Ellen imagined that she could attend UCLA.  Perhaps, someone would notice how pretty she was, with a resemblance to Elizabeth Taylor, and ask her to be in the movies herself; however, Ellen admitted that this prospect was merely a fantasy.

I met Millie one summer after we traveled by train to Seneca Falls in New York, where she lived in a house beside one of the Finger Lakes.  She told us about the single most important event that had ever happened to her.  Once when Millie was doing her laundry, she mistook the bleach for a cup of water and drank it before realizing what it was.  She promised to God that she would dedicate her life to Him if she didn’t die.  Millie kept her promise and became a churchgoing Christian.  During our visit with her, we heard Millie pronounce what she thought was the most glorious of blessings: “May you bathe in the blood of Jesus!”  Several years later, Millie vacationed with us in Pasadena during the holidays and attended the Rose Parade with us.  I remember she was still a chain smoker and made the best donuts I’d ever tasted.  Grandmother gave Mike and I small Oxford University Press editions of The Holy Bible, which I eventually decided to read each day at lunchtime for one school year when I was around fourteen.

Nearly three decades would pass before I traveled to Pennsylvania and met many of Ellen’s relatives, including her real mother.  Ellen’s mother Margaret was in the hospital dying with a broken neck at the time.  How the injury had occurred during a lengthy hospital convalescence was never to be known with any kind of certainty.

My cousin Nancy researched the history of the family and discovered that trial records indicated that Millie had once been known as what in those days was called a ‘bawd.’  Possibly, what my mother had described as Millie’s sister Maude’s boarding house for the men who worked the oil fields had actually been a ‘bawdy house’ or house of prostitution.  Nancy told me that the court records showed it was Millie’s association with William King that had brought her into contact with the family.  Gordon had probably never actually been married to Millie.  When I asked Ellen if she knew about any of this, she became outraged and insisted that if I ever repeated such a thing she would never speak to me again.

Ellen had arrived in California with savings of $700.  Getting off the plane, the first thing she said that she noticed was the smog.  She then checked into the glamorous Statler Hotel.  Her first night at the hotel, she watched Xavier Cougat and Abby Lane perform in the showroom.  Four days later, Ellen found a room at The Evangeline Residence for young women.  Rent plus meals cost $18.50 per week.  One of the rules required men to meet their dates in the lobby as men weren’t allowed elsewhere in the building.  Ellen began looking for a job and visiting some of the places she’d read about in magazines.  She said that in the 1950s her favorite stars included Betty Grable, Maria Montez, Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy.  Ellen recalled that outside of the Coconut Grove, she and some of her new girlfriends had excitedly spotted Nanette Fabray, Gig Young, Doris Day and Jeff Chandler.  Ellen told me that she thought Jeff Chandler was one of the most attractive men she’d ever seen.  She recalled that he later died in 1961 at the age of forty-two and she said that Mike and I had been born in the same hospital.  Ellen talked about hospitals because of her career.  She was first hired at Methodist Hospital and would be involved with medical records for four decades, eventually becoming Director of Medical Records.

About My Father

 

Ellen met Paul Ray Russell at church dances sponsored by the Los Angeles Congregational Church.  He was about ten years older and proved on the dance floor that he’d once worked as a dancing instructor.  She also found out that he’d once been on the tennis team at USC although he’d never graduated.  He’d even played tennis while serving in the U.S. Army’s air force stationed in Puerto Rico during World War II.  He’d also been stationed at the air base in Miami, where he fractured his jaw while “horsing around in barracks” in 1944.  He was discharged as a corporal in December, 1945.  As they began to date, Paul seemed to enjoy going out and doing all the things that she also liked.  He was a salesman at a Ford dealership and Ellen could see how his outgoing, friendly personality made him ideal for such a job.  She never told me that he physically resembled her adoptive father Gordon Smith but I noticed this when I saw photos of Gordon in a family album.

Where marriage was concerned, Ellen realized that an elder man would probably be more settled and have more assets.  She said that when she found out that a previous marriage for Paul had ended in divorce, she didn’t think anything of it because the ex-wife was totally out of the picture.  He was a chain smoker like Millie but so were a lot of people back then.  When she met Paul’s family, she thought his mother, brothers and sisters epitomized what a family should be, except for the fact that Paul’s father had left them all behind to begin a new family.  A figure of renown, Paul Ray Russell, Sr. during his career served as chief prosecuting attorney for the United States government, secretary general for the Methodist Church of the Western United States, and president of the Park Avenue Methodist Church Trust Fund.  I would never have the chance to meet him but learned that he’d provided a monthly check to his previous family.  Paul Jr. was his eldest child and eventually took on the responsibility of contributing to the family’s living expenses after the move to Southern California.

Ellen especially admired Paul’s twin sisters Dorothy and Esther, who’d been valedictorian and salutatorian of their high school class and as singers had appeared at such venues as The Roxy Theater in New York City and The Biltmore Hotel in Los Angeles, where they were booked with such headliners as Frank Sinatra and Danny Kaye.  Paul also had two brothers, Allen and Bob.  Ellen admitted that she also was impressed by the brand-new Ford convertible that Paul drove.  Their marriage took place at the church where they’d met in early 1955.  For their honeymoon, Paul and Ellen selected the popular Riverside Inn.

Dorothy and Esther           Paul with his mother and twin sisters

Returning from the honeymoon, Ellen soon began seeing Paul in a different light.  He lost his job at the dealership for having borrowed the Ford without authorization during their honeymoon and she discovered that his own car was a horrible old wreck.  While he could talk anybody into hiring him for practically any position, none of the jobs ever lasted for very long as Paul seemed to soon become dissatisfied when he wasn’t quickly put in charge.  He didn’t accept Ellen’s advice about finding a good job where he could gradually advance his position within the company.  He seemed to always think that there had to be a better alternative for making a living just waiting to be discovered.  Ellen recalled that one of his jobs was processing timecards at MGM and there was also a stint at 20th-Century Fox.

The Southern California lifestyle of fun under the sun couldn’t last forever yet Ellen always enjoyed going out on the town with Paul.  While for her there had been little interaction with black people back East, a delightful memory was once getting on a bus and finding a famous passenger: Louis Armstrong.  In Los Angeles, Ellen recalled seeing Harry Belafonte at the Ambassador Hotel, while a vacation in San Francisco included a concert by Nat King Cole at the Fairmont Hotel.  Attending sporting events with Paul, she once saw Ozzie Nelson and his sons during a charitable event.  Another thrill came when Jeanne Crane sat beside her at a tennis tournament.  Ellen also recalled occasionally noticing celebrities such as Marge Champion while shopping at department stores.

Ellen told me that despite Paul’s erratic employment, they always had a good time.  She estimated Paul’s incapacity for holding a job may have been affected by having begun working as a newspaper delivery boy at a young age.  One weekend they went to Palm Springs and Paul talked his way into the Palm Spring Tennis Club.  She knew that he wasn’t exaggerating about his tennis abilities because she saw him play many times and other players told her that he could’ve been a champion if there’d been a way for him to finance the required expenses of going on tour. 

In the sixth month of pregnancy, Ellen had to leave her job and she found that even then she couldn’t depend upon Paul staying employed.  One morning when she thought he was working, a mutual friend called Ellen to let her know that he’d visited her.  Ellen found their financial situation becoming desperate only months after the birth of her sons and she returned to work while Paul stayed home to take care of the twins.   She found a position at the Hospital of the Good Samaritan.  Recalling her years working there, Ellen mentioned that she’d once seen Katherine Hepburn and Montgomery Clift waiting for Spencer Tracey.  She also remembered occasions when she’d glimpsed Robert Young and Yul Brynner at ‘Good Sam,’ as the hospital was known among the staff.

At home, Ellen found that she couldn’t trust Paul to help manage their money to pay the bills.  Not knowing what else to do, Ellen contacted a divorce attorney.  The lawyer’s payment demands increased after Paul responded contentiously to her plans; however, when the court date arrived, Paul didn’t show up.  No matter how exasperating their life together had been, Ellen admitted that she and Paul probably would’ve managed to stay together if not for the added responsibilities of parenthood.

Paul occasionally telephoned and once in a while took Mike and I somewhere for an afternoon excursion, such as to the circus, a fishing episode (which I found horrid) and once we participated in a TV show marketing research screening.  Whenever Paul visited us, he would try to compress months or years of paternal instruction into a few hours.  Once when he had the use of a car, I became so angry at the way he was treating me that I once tried leaving the car while he was turning into the alley on our street, misjudging how fast the vehicle was going.  It was a good thing that he had long arms and a quick reflex.  He reached over and pulled me back inside the car.  My mother could also arouse consternation and I remember one night riding my bicycle through Pasadena wishing there was somewhere else for me to go.

When Paul visited, he usually would take us to downtown Pasadena on the bus or, when he had a car, to Hollywood, depositing Mike and me in a movie theater while he went to a nearby bar.  He’d come back to get us when the movie was over.  Ellen also regularly dropped us off at double features so my brother and I saw an immense amount of movies while growing up.  We also watched a great deal of black and white television.

Our mother told me that she hadn’t asked for alimony from Paul because she didn’t want anything more from him.  The court required Paul to pay some money toward child support yet he only contributed occasionally and sometimes made Ellen sign receipts stating that he’d given her more money than she actually received.

1960s and '70s

 

I remember Mike and myself attending Sunday school at neighborhood churches a few times at our mother’s insistence although I don’t recall her ever attending services herself.  In the summer, there was vacation Bible school where the lessons took on a more evangelistic tone with descriptions delivered of what would happen during the rapture as Judgment Day was most assuredly scheduled to occur within our lifetime.  Different handicraft workshops seemed like rewards for listening to the usually unexciting biblical elocution.  One of the photos from a family album shows Mike and I during a visit to Niagara Falls after we traveled by train to New York to meet Mildred Smith.

The movies offered a diverse assortment of make-believe, often innocuous predicaments.  The first time Mike and I were taken to a movie theater was to see the insipid “Snow White and the Three Stooges” prior to the divorce.  There followed a variety of the expected children’s fare in the next several years, including countless Disney movies.  Also molded to a childish sensibility were Jerry Lewis comedies, Tarzan adventures, Frankie & Annette beach films, the first James Bond thrillers, and Beatles movies.  Trips to the Chinese Theatre and the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood offered large screen spectacle with such movies as “The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm,” “How The West Was Won,” “Fantasia” and “Mary Poppins.”  We especially liked fantasy and horror films.  A few of these included “The Magic Sword,” “Jason and the Argonauts,” “The Day of the Triffids,” “The Haunted Palace,” “Children of the Damned,” “7 Faces of Dr. Lao,” the two “Dr. Phibes” movies, the “Planet of the Apes” movies, and “The Other.”  The last named movie was without charge for Mike and I because there was a night when all twins got in free as a publicity stunt.  The first British ‘Hammer’ horror movie that we saw was “Dracula Has Risen From The Grave”; another memorable one was “Five Million Years to Earth.”  There were also movies with more mainstream appeal like “The Sound of Music,” “The Trouble With Angels,” “Thoroughly Modern Millie,” “Bonnie and Clyde,” “The Graduate,” and “Tora! Tora! Tora!”  Among the adult dramas that Paul took us to see, although they offered little to hold our attention at the age of seven and eight were “Dr. Strangelove” and “The Night of the Iguana.”  We accompanied Ellen to movies that especially appealed to her, such as anything with Sean Connery or Doris Day.  Our mother also took us to re-releases of ‘classics’ like “Gone With the Wind” and “Ben-Hur.”  There were also Hitchcock movies: “The Birds,” “Marnie,” “Torn Curtain.”  My childhood viewing experiences also included the short film from France entitled “The Red Balloon.”  It almost seemed like on every rainy day this film would be projected in the Hale school auditorium.  Without any important dialogue, “The Red Balloon” presented an allegory where a small boy’s balloon seemed to possess a consciousness of its own.

I've noticed in movies some strange correlations with my own life.  

The ‘60s was a time when many magical things were happening in the popular culture.  The emphasis was on mind expansion with young people seeking new and better ways to make the world a better place for all God’s creatures.  The social revolution that seemed to be gaining momentum encompassed an examination offered by realms of knowledge usually associated with the catchphrase ‘the occult.’  Some of the memorable artifacts of the time were love beads, the ‘peace sign,’ and psychedelic posters bearing humanistic messages of love and spiritual awareness.  The days of “flower power” and “What If They Gave a War and Nobody Came” are long gone.

I began collecting comic books at the age of ten.  This was the Silver Age of the Marvel superheroes with such captivating protagonists as Thor, Dr. Strange, The Fantastic Four, the Silver Surfer, the Sub-Mariner, and Spider-Man.  Their adventures were often interplanetary in scope yet I enjoyed just about every comic book genre except infantile ones featuring Disney characters.  Of course, seeing a Marvel superhero movie—or any narrative movie for that matter—as an adult has been unthinkable for me personally during the last 22 years.  As a teenager, my favorite comic books were Conan the Barbarian (after having read the original books by Robert E. Howard; Barry Smith, artist) and any illustrated by Jack Kirby as his work always showed memorable and thought-provoking storylines, such as when Thor was defeated by an incidental character (Hercules).  Other favorite comic artists included Sterenko, Neal Adams and John Buscema.  My brother and I also read each issue of Famous Monsters of Filmland and other Warren 'monster magazine' comics: Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella.
 

As I grew older, I was always interested in nonfiction accounts of unexplained phenomena.  I remember at the age of twelve beginning to read paperbacks about UFOs.  The flying saucers excited me as indicators of a cosmic presence whose future seemed linked to humanity’s own.  One afternoon while attending a matinee at the Colorado movie theatre, my brother and I discovered that a secondhand paperback and comic book store had opened next door.  A large table near the front window revealed countless stacks of new adventures waiting to be discovered.  The proprietor called himself Gypsy Pete and he would always give us special discounts on our purchases.  I also was an avid reader of paperbacks with my favorite being nonfiction titles dealing with the unexplained, such as Abominable Snowmen: Legend Come To Life (1968) by Ivan T. Sanderson, The Great Orm of Loch Ness (1970) by F. W. Holliday, and anthologies of purportedly true ghost stories.

In school, the two years that made the biggest impression on me were the fifth and sixth grade at Hale Elementary School.  Hale was close enough to home that Mike and I could walk to school and back as we were now old enough not to need to attend the childcare center.  During the ‘66-‘67 school year, I found myself in the fifth grade class of Miss Hinkley.  She was a cranky old maid who wore glasses and a red wig.  There were frequent angry tirades yet she also impressed me as intelligent, demonstrating a love for books when she became enthralled while reading aloud to the class.  In comparison, my mother’s anger was usually of greater consequence when vented.  The most distressing significance of the fifth grade for me was that considering Miss Hinkley’s petulance and my mother’s rages, my life in the classroom wasn’t distinctly different from life at home.

Although it seemed apparent Miss Hinkley had more patience for girls than boys, anyone could become the object for scolding.  Once, a classmate named Linda was caught harboring a collection of dolls within her desk and found herself the teacher’s sudden object of vehement attention.  When, for some reason that I don’t remember, it was my turn to be similarly confronted, Miss Hinkley called me to the front of the class and I had another fainting episode.  A consequence of this was my going to a district office for a psychological evaluation.  One of the first short stories that I wrote was a character study about her that I entitled "Just Getting Even."

I remember that it was at Hale that I became interested in playing a musical instrument.  For some reason, my chosen instrument was the cornet.  Ellen went to a thrift ship and purchased an instrument for me to use; however, a musical hobby was not meant for me as I found that I was not even able to blow correctly through the mouthpiece of the instrument.  My singing ability may also have been questionable as once when the class was singing Christmas carols, Miss Hinkley grimaced and her gaze eventually found me and she demanded that I lip-sing.  On another occasion, it gave me a chuckle to substitute some of the lyrics when we sang the school anthem.  Hale was replaced with 'Hell,' and I wasn't the only boy to do this.

Like Miss Hinkley, I wore glasses once my nearsightedness was diagnosed.  I remember how strikingly more vivid the world became.  During the school year spent in Miss Hinkley’s class, I discovered something encouraging about myself during a class assignment.  Students were instructed to form into groups of two and to write stories together to convey the circumstances portrayed in a photo from a magazine.  I recall grabbing for my friend Ronny and myself a magazine with a cover having a bizarre photograph featuring a handsome hero coming to the aide of a damsel in distress being menaced not only by a mustachioed villain yet also by a menacing gorilla.  Ronny showed an amazed expression as sentence after sentence, paragraph after paragraph came effortlessly forth as I imagined and related the events depicted in the photo. 

During my sixth grade year, I found myself under the instruction of Mr. Titus, whose personality and demeanor were surprisingly pleasant.  Once I was confronted by him for not participating in the recital of the pledge of allegiance one morning and he demanded me to recite it aloud by myself.  In this predicament, it was hard to know if indeed I hadn’t ever memorized the pledge or was just too embarrassed to remember the words.  Instead of punishing me, he said that he could understand how it might be hard to think of the words upon being singled out in such a way.  I don’t remember Mr. Titus ever noticing anyone else ever failing to recite the pledge of allegiance, nor can I say how much discussion there was concerning the circumstances of the author of the pledge, Francis J. Bellamy.

Mr. Titus frequently called upon me for tasks that required different skills, such as working on a mosaic of the Aztec calendar on the back wall of the classroom or collecting students’ milk money at lunchtime.  For the annual talent show, he called upon me for the pivotal role of narrator for a short play.  I don’t think I would be the same person that I am today if it hadn’t been for Mr. Titus.

On one day in Hale, the students were shown a sex education film.  It was a very clinical description of human sexuality and I was totally disgusted at any thought of 'doing it.'  Being an identical twin did give me one close relationship in life.  As a child, there was only one occasion when I became so angry with Mike that I actually punched him and it felt terrible afterwards.  Once he threw a dart at me, probably to scare me, but the dart struck me in the chest and I fainted.  Learning lessons about how one should and shouldn't behave are a part of 'growing up.'

Throughout my teenage years, the incessant movies, TV shows, comics, books, as well as pop music from records and the radio all made escape from reality commonplace.  Sometimes at night I would peer into the darkened room and look to see who or what might be discernible.  On one occasion, I was left wondering if I’d succeeded in actually seeing something paranormal.  It happened during the summer when sometimes it was so hot in the apartment that I would sleep on the sofa in the living room with the front door open.  One night I remember peering into the shadowy room to see what looked like a murky figure of a man with a large hat and cloak standing near me.  A skull-like face seemed to be grinning as the figure dissolved into the darkness.  The radio songs during my childhood years ranged from romantic ("Ma Bell Amie") to upbeat ("Good Vibrations") to completely crazy ("Fire") to phantasmagorical ("Angie Baby") to moralistic ("Bless The Beasts and The Children") and blithely profound ("Eleanor Rigby").  Just like older people back then, often when I overhear what young people are listening to nowadays I'm often at a loss to understanding their taste in pop music. 

One exceptional experience I would discover had also been described by others.  One early morning I awoke to realize that for some reason I couldn’t alter my position in the bed.  My body felt paralyzed and I remember thinking that there must be some manner of being in the room whom in some way was able to prevent me from getting a close look.  There would come a moment of identification concerning this experience when I was reading a nonfiction paperback.  The cover had caught my attention at Gypsy Pete’s store, showing a crystal ball with a skull appearing inside it against a crimson draped background.  The title was The Edge of the Unknown (1930) and the author was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  The book described the personal experiences leading to Doyle’s belief in ‘the occult’ with the back cover description asserting, “. . . the conclusions arrived at by an intelligent mind in its search for truth provide an amazing and thought-provoking experience.”

While the books about Sherlock Holmes had never interested me, I did see movies about Doyle’s famous character who was known to have been inspired by Dr. Joseph Bell, a teacher at the medical school of Edinburgh University where Doyle received a medical degree in 1881.  Reading The Edge of the Unknown fascinated me with what seemed to me real life mysteries.  There was a passage that proved my research of the unexplained could allow me to discover experiences of others similar to my own, as Doyle described having wakened in his bedroom one night “with the clear consciousness that there was someone in the room, and that the presence was not of this world.”

One evening, Mike and I convinced Ellen to take us to see “Tales From The Crypt.”   I remember her reaction was a grimace throughout the movie and on the way home she told us she’d experienced a premonition while watching it.  This was something she never said before or again after that occasion.  The next day, there was an obituary for the father of my closest childhood friend, James, in the local newspaper.  James lived in prestigious San Marino and had seemed fortunate to have parents who seemed like what must be the model mom and dad.

Whatever process of life enabled my mother to have her premonition also was responsible for an unexpected encounter that Mike and I had with our father.  While in high school, my brother and I discovered that there was a convenient bus line that we could catch at the corner and ride all the way to Hollywood, where we found stores devoted to comic books, discounted movie soundtrack albums and other items of curiosity.  When the bus passed through the section of Glendale where we knew Paul lived, we always worried that he might board the same bus.  One afternoon, our apprehension was realized.  Paul entered the bus and his expression made it obvious that he was looking for us. He told us that it was inexplicable but he knew that we were on that bus and we spent some time together that wasn't anything like what might've been expected.  During another bus ride, it was an older Miss Hinckley who got on the bus.  We recognized one another without saying anything, which was something sad.

My mother, brother and I usually remained home during summer except for excursions to the beach or Catalina Island.  Once when we stayed for several days at Catalina, I did something that I would always regret — something so completely ignorant and inconsiderate that I have trouble understanding how I could ever have thought to do such a thing.  While investigating the town of Avalon, my brother and I found a display of Golden Age comics along a corridor of shops and offices.  Apparently, one of the artists who’d worked on the comic books put some of the earliest editions in the display window so that passers-by could spend some nostalgic moments gazing at the bright colored comics depicting Captain Marvel’s exploits against the Nazis and other threats to humanity.  The window of the office had been opened at the top to let air circulate inside during the hot summer afternoon.  I couldn’t believe how easy it would be to take one of the valuable Whiz magazines.  I told myself that if I didn’t steal one, then someone else surely would because the circumstances made it so easy.   I arranged for Mike to stand guard and alert me if anyone was coming while I stole from the group the comic that seemed the most valuable and then we began hurrying back to the hotel.   There was one mishap on our way.  When I tried to jump over a fence, my foot struck the top and I fell down, sustaining a deep gouge on my right knee.  That night, I couldn’t stop thinking about the terrible thing I’d done and worried that somehow my crime would be discovered.  Ellen and Mike later told me that while I was asleep, I got out of bed and started sleepwalking.  They told me I said, “I want to go home.”  Ellen replied, “We’ll be going home tomorrow.  We’re on vacation.  You’re at Catalina Island.  Go back to bed.”  My brother and mother told me I returned to bed.  Ellen found it an annoying, strange episode.  The way I felt after stealing the comic book made me determined not to do anything like that again. 

In the summer of 1971 when I was fifteen years old, I would again find a supernatural presence manifested in my life.  One night around dusk, while Ellen was watching TV, I prepared to conduct a seance in her bedroom, where there was enough room on the floor for Mike and me to sit around the Ouija Board that I’d selected as the centerpiece for the event.  On the middle of the board, I placed a glow-in-the-dark skull that was a souvenir from Disneyland along with a lit candle.  After turning off the lights, the seance was ready to commence.  Mike has always been nonchalant in his outward demeanor and I’m certain he showed no anticipation for the seance yet he was willing to humor me as long as it didn’t take too long.  I declared, “I call upon the spirits of the dead.”  Before I could say anything more, suddenly there was a loud clattering of rocks and other debris against the north and eastern windows in the corner of the room as Mike and I scrambled away in terror.  The fright turned to amazement that there wasn’t any broken glass.  The world of the occult was obviously not something to be taken lightly.  The following day, we learned that something unique in our vicinity had occurred — a small tornado had touched down upon the roof of an apartment building north of ours to fling roofing materials against the bedroom windows.

When Mike and I were children, two cats lived with us in Pasadena: a mild-mannered Frosty Point Siamese cat that we named Pandora, and we adopted Tommy, a gray striped and spotted alley tabby after I first befriended the animal by bringing her a dish of milk.  The first time that Tommy came up the stairs to our apartment, I was sitting on the top step and felt a rush of affection as the cat stepped onto my lap and began kneading my thighs while purring.  Ellen was hesitant to let the cat into our apartment at first but one afternoon it started drizzling and the rain-sprinkled cat began mewing at the patio window to be let inside.  From then on, she was another member of the family.  Pandora and Tommy tolerated each other yet Tommy would hiss and growl when you tried to pet her or pick her up.

My experiences with smaller animals as pets were not as pleasant and today I’m of the opinion that beyond cats and dogs I think it’s best not to keep animals captive in small cages and aquariums.  Raising a series of hamsters ended with me accidentally stepping on one while with another I made the mistake of taking the animal out of the cage without having realized that she’d just given birth.  I’d also foolishly adopted some guinea pigs from James.  The animals' large hutch was transported from James’s large yard in San Marino to our small upstairs patio.  Then we moved to an apartment with a smaller patio.  The animals were moved to a smaller bin and I felt sorry for them until a new home was found.  What happened to an aquatic turtle resulted with another calamity.  One afternoon, when I finished cleaning the turtle’s aquarium I looked around and the creature was nowhere to be found in the backyard.  It probably crawled quickly away (this same thing happened with one of my neighbors recently).  I've always felt sorry for pet fish.  Once, I found a dead goldfish floating at the top of it's bowl so I flushed it down the toilet.  Later that day, it was unnerving to see the fish had somehow revived and was back alive in the toilet bowl, ready to return to its unfortunate habitat.  

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In 1997 I was living in Santa Monica when my mother’s health declined to the extent that she was no longer able to shop for herself and I invited her to again live with me.  That was several years after the life-changing sequence of events that would culminate in the days following my trip to Oklahoma.  One blessing that had occurred was that Ellen didn’t show any further desire for drinking beer.  She told me that one day she’d simply become aware that she no longer liked or craved the taste of it.  Even without drinking beer, she sometimes verbally took out her frustrations on me as people unfortunately do to their loved ones as there is no one else to whom one can express oneself.  It had often seemed over the years that Ellen would be more polite to strangers than she was to us.  Occasionally I tried to discuss these emotions with her and ask if this was the way she, herself, had been treated as a child yet this wasn’t a manner of question she was able to consider.  She never could comprehend nor care about such vague notions as reasons or motivations.  Once when I encouraged her to reflect about the lessons that life had brought her, she replied, “I’m proud of what I accomplished.  I raised two boys and had a good job.  If you take care of your responsibilities and do what you’re supposed to do, you can be proud of yourself.  I’ve learned to rely on myself.”

As I became Ellen’s caregiver (and officially so during her sixth year of dialysis), we moved to the San Fernando Valley.  She began interacting with me in a more loving manner, realizing and appreciating what I did for her.  Considering her mentality of not wanting to express any interest in metaphysical subjects although she was eager for any information about the afterlife, I once left a paperback copy of Betty Ede's Embraced By The Light (1992) within her reach one morning as I left for work.  There were some harrowing medical ordeals for her during this period.  It was understandable how sometimes she could be outrageously cranky with the neighbors or myself.  I recognized that it made me feel good to take care of her.  Although she didn’t understand my metaphysical experiences and research, she was always willing to help me in any way that she could with a mother’s unconditional caring.  There have also been times when my relationships with my brother and father have also reflected such great concern.  It’s easily understandable how most families should reflect these feelings and capacities.  Recognizing universality in human emotions has been one of my essential insights into life, enabling me to fathom the unlimited possibilities for mankind should everyone consider themselves as all belonging to the same vast family.