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The year was 1941. The day I left Springfield, it was raining. At least it had just started to rain when
I boarded the big Greyhound bus, the huge drops hitting the hot pavement with a hiss that could be heard over the roar of
the bus's engine. It was unbearably hot that July, and the rain was welcome, even if it only meant a brief respite from the
sun's unbearable rays. Summer rain. Summer rain was always welcome even if it meant it would be more miserable after it stopped.
But then, I didn't really care. I was leaving Springfield with no thought of ever coming back. I was going to Hollywood to
become a star. I had no reason to think that. I had no real talent to speak of. While I had been in every dramatic production
the school had produced during my tenure there, I had shown no great expertise in acting. Just brashness. When I was on stage,
I was brash. (Just the opposite of when I was not on stage.) I had even played Santa Claus (in the first grade) despite
my small size. Why? Because no one else in my class would do it. No one else had the nerve. I had plenty of nerve, all right.
Plenty. That's why I was so happy to be boarding that Greyhound bus for Los Angeles. I would show them all right. I would
show them that I was not cut out to remain in a place with absolutely no future. What did I know about a future? I was only
thirteen years old. I say I had no talent to speak of. I guess I got whatever my dad had given me since I was a baby.
But if I really followed in my father's footsteps, I would probably become a bricklayer, like him.
My dad fooled around with show business in the late twenties and early thirties. There was not much else
to do between jobs, which were scarce at the beginning of the Great Depression. He took part in minstrel shows. Blackface,
they called it. In tents. Not intense, in actual goddam tents. Minstrel shows, He was a blackface ventriloquist and guess
who he had for a dummy? Me. It was a part of what they called "The Chicago Wheel." Tent shows throughout the middle west.
Actors were hired for mere pittances. Some worked for whatever they might get in food handouts. I think my dad did it because
it was fun. When I was two years old, what did I know? He would carry me on stage all painted up like a little black dummy.
He taught me to remain as still as could be and he would talk for both of us. All I had to do was move my mouth like I was
talking. I really didn't have any idea as to what he was talking about, but the people laughed and cheered. You see, they
didn't know I wasn't a real dummy, that is, until the end of the act when he would stand, set me down on the floor and bow.
Then, I would get up and walk off the stage. What a finale! The crowd would go wild, or so they told me later, after my dad
died and I was old enough to understand.
My dad died when I was just eleven. That was in 1939, a couple of terms after Franklin Roosevelt
became president.. My dad actually hated Roosevelt. "Goddam unions," my dad would curse when he didn't think anyone was
listening. My dad was a brick contractor when he wasn't doing things like "Uncle Tom's Cabin" in tents. He built houses
and schools and churches, stuff like that. That is, when there was a job to be hand. And he hired other people, not just his
brothers who were also bricklayers. He didn't want to contend with union bosses telling him what he had to pay the laborers.
So, he hated Roosevelt. He'd vote for anybody who would oppose FDR. He even voted for Norman Thomas once (not that he approved
of Norman Thomas, cause he was a socialist), but he just wouldn't give Roosevelt his vote.
More to come eventually...
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