Dad completed it in a few days and rushed it to Lurton for submission to Paul Smith. In order to make each proposal more noticeable to an editor, Lurton always submitted it in an orange folder, with an agency label bearing the story title and name of the author.
An astute judge of talent, Lurton encouraged my father and assured him, “You’ll be a big name before too long.” The agent became something of a father figure to Frank Herbert, and a tremendous inspiration. He was also a no-nonsense man who said what was on his mind. Lurton’s brother, Wyatt Blassingame, was an award-winning short-story writer who also offered advice and encouragement. Wyatt’s work had appeared frequently in national magazines and anthologies. He had written pulp science fiction as well, with such memorable titles as “Ghouls of the Green Death” (1934) and “The Goddess of Crawling Horrors” (1937).
Lurton wanted very much to see Dad’s novel completed, the psychological thriller about submarine warfare that he had begun a couple of years before in Santa Rosa. But that writing project had been derailed by the necessity of survival.
At least my father had a job, for the time being. That was not always the case during the years I lived with him.
The subjects Dad researched for Cordon were varied, and would form a basis not only for the Senator’s speeches, but for the political-ecological writings of Frank Herbert in the next four decades. He researched tidelands oil, the Submerged Lands Act, the Continental Shelf Lands Act, land grants, an “oil-for-education” congressional amendment, Federal Aid to Education, issues of grazing on national forest lands, and the highly publicized Hells Canyon issue involving construction of a huge hydroelectric project on the Snake River. Sometimes Dad wrote committee reports on Senate bills for Cordon.
He also analyzed Cordon’s voting record in detail, on environmental, educational, agricultural, power development, and other issues. With this information, he prepared abstracts of the Senator’s comments for press releases and other purposes, slanted to show how Cordon’s positions were benefiting people in the State of Oregon.
Guy Cordon, a strong influence on my father, believed in reducing government spending and in limiting the size and power of bureaucratic institutions. Between 1947 and 1951, the Senator voted to cut all federal appropriations, to cut non-defense spending, to reduce government publicity expenditures and to reduce government employee benefits. He voted to limit the President of the United States to two terms in office. Cordon also advocated state instead of federal control over offshore resources, and opposed federal construction of massive public power facilities—positions that were directly at odds with those of Neuberger.
One of Senator Cordon’s most important speeches, involving what was known as the Hill Amendment, was sixteen pages long and involved wading through nearly fifty documents. Dad worked all night to complete it, and, bleary-eyed, showed up with it at Cordon’s office at 9:00 one morning. He found the door to the Senator’s inner office closed, which usually meant an important visitor was inside. But Cordon’s secretary told Dad to go right in with the speech. Upon entering he noticed a man in a Homburg felt hat seated with his back to him. The man had his feet on Cordon’s desk.
Something was very familiar about the hat.
Frank Herbert said, “Here’s your speech, Senator,” and was about to leave when he realized that the visitor was ex-president Harry S. Truman. Cordon introduced them, and they shook hands. Truman said something to the effect that he hoped it was a good speech, and Dad, flabbergasted, beat a hasty retreat. Cordon and Truman were buddies, despite being in different political parties. Both men were outspoken individualists. At the time, Truman had retired from public life and was working on his memoirs.
After reading the speech, Cordon took Dad to lunch and told him it was “a powerful piece of paper,” and “one of the best damned research jobs” he had ever seen. Dad got another raise. The speech was ingenious, and in writing it my father called upon a technique he had learned in the newspaper business. Neither Cordon nor anyone on his staff had ever seen anything like it. Using what newspapermen called the “concentric circles” technique, Dad wrote the speech so that it could be cut from the end in a number of places, thus making successively shorter and shorter speeches. A variety of lengths could be chosen, and each time the length was expanded, it enlarged upon the arguments in the central theme, making it more and more convincing.
One evening late in May—so that primary voting for our neighborhood could be held in our house—Mom moved the furniture and rugs out of the front hall, living room and dining room, and scrubbed the floors. Balloting booths were moved in. Two days later on the morning of the election, a number of election officials arrived. I remember standing in the living room in a thick forest of adults who towered over me, all of whom were talking politics. At the time, I was just getting over the measles. Mom took us out to a restaurant for dinner while the heaviest election crowds were in the house.
Cordon won the Republican primary as expected, and my father returned to Portland in June. At our dinner table, he spilled forth stories of important people he had met or heard about. He spoke of a faraway place called Washington, D.C., and of distant lands he wanted to visit, such as American Samoa. He called Samoa “paradise,” and showed us romantic color photographs from books and magazines of palm trees, thatched huts and sailing boats.
“We’re going to live there soon,” he announced.
My half-sister Penny, by Dad’s first marriage, came to visit us late in the summer of 1954. Twelve years old, she wanted to spend time with her father, and despite the fact that he remained in arrears on his child-support payments, her mother assented.
That August, Dad received terrific news. Collier’s wanted to publish his article, and were paying well for it: $1,250. Dad was elated. Through Lurton, he tried to get assurance that “Underseas Riches” would appear in time to help Cordon’s re-election campaign. Dad felt strongly that the Neuberger side was engaging in a smear campaign, spreading false information about Cordon’s positions on issues. Neuberger had a way of coloring the facts, of distorting them to his advantage.
In the Cordon campaign it was hoped that the article, in a popular magazine, would help set the record straight. Months went by, however, and the election occurred first. The article, while paid for by Collier’s, was shunted aside for nearly three years, and never did appear in the magazine. Ultimately the publication folded.
The 1954 national elections were held on Tuesday, November 2nd. Oregon returns were slow coming in, since they only had one voting machine in the entire state. Consequently, the vast majority of votes had to be tabulated by hand. After polls closed in the state, Cordon held a slight lead, and it increased slowly all night long, until he was twelve thousand votes ahead. He showed surprising early strength in heavily Democratic Multnomah County. When Neuberger went to bed late that night, he thought he had lost the election. Cordon wasn’t so certain. He called it a “horse race.”
During the following morning and early afternoon, Cordon’s lead shrank. The election was so close that the governor ordered the placement of guards on all ballot boxes, to prevent vote tampering. By 2:30 P. M., Neuberger was only eighteen hundred votes behind. Two hours later, he took the lead. The margin then increased by ones and twos and tens, and kept increasing. When all votes were tabulated, Senator Cordon carried twenty-six of thirty-six counties but still lost the election by less than four tenths of one percent, since he didn’t carry the most populous counties. It was the closest U.S. Senate race in the nation and the most dramatic election in Oregon history.
Thereafter, Frank Herbert put more effort into obtaining a position in American Samoa, where he believed the slow, laid-back lifestyle would fit into the vision he had for his life. Adding to government material on the South Seas that he had shipped back from Washington, D.C., he purchased books about American Samoa and other trust territories, including a book about interesting archaeological ruins at Ponape (also known as Pohnpei, and forme
rly Ascension Island) in the Caroline Islands.
Dad’s application for a government position went through channels to William Strand, Director of the Office of Territories. Secretary of the Interior McKay and others put in recommendations in support of it. Strand, however, had the final word. He apparently felt my father was overqualified for the position, and that he would not remain in it long before wanting to devote full time to other pursuits. Strand may have been correct in this assessment, and it may have been based upon an offhand comment made by someone who knew my father—a comment to the effect that his first love was writing. Maybe Dad told too many people about his creative interests, and word got out that he wouldn’t be a good “government man.”
Dad turned his attentions to his writing. He had sold more short stories in 1954 than in any previous year, along with the lucrative sale to Collier’s. He had in mind a novel based upon his experiences working for Senator Cordon, but for the moment he was sour on politics. The unfinished submarine thriller was at hand, the novel Lurton wanted to see. Lurton also wanted more science fiction short stories.
So, with our funds dwindling once again, Dad set to work on the submarine novel.
A few days before Christmas 1954, we rented a little A-frame beach cabin in Healy Palisades, Washington. This was a tiny community between Seattle and Tacoma, in an area now known as Federal Way. The rent was low, and well it should have been. The cabin, all six hundred square feet of it, was at the bottom of a steep hill, reached by a long narrow trail. We moved in by boat, using a large open dory powered by an inboard diesel engine. This was supposed to be an interim house, a cheap place to live until Dad finished his submarine novel, Under Pressure. Dad set to work on the book, rising early each day and working far into the night.
My mother began to do freelance copy-editing for local stores, writing retail advertisements to bring in what money she could. Mom’s work was only part-time, paying very little. To reduce family expenditures she removed frayed collars from our shirts and sewed the collars back on inside out, giving new life to old fabric. She also cut long sleeves down to short when the elbows became worn, and patched our socks and the knees of trousers.
To save money, my father regularly gave his sons what he called “butch” haircuts, using electric clippers. These were crewcuts, with our hair cut the same length all over. His haircuts turned out okay at first, but always looked funny in a few weeks when the hair grew out. I had cowlicks, and as time passed without a new trim, my head took on the shape of a large, strange flower.
The proverbial church mouse had more money than we did in those days. When we didn’t have enough on hand to pay bills, Mom developed a random method of deciding which would receive priority. She threw all of them on the floor, and the ones that landed right side up were paid first. On other occasions she drew bills out of Dad’s Homburg felt hat to determine which ones to pay.
For my principal chore, I was assigned to collect driftwood from the beach to heat the house. I found quite a bit, which I stacked on the porch by the front door. Dad did his own foraging for firewood, and he supplemented that by getting on as many mailing lists as he could, under a phony name. In a few weeks, junk mail was pouring in from all over the country, which Dad and Mom tossed in the wood stove in the kitchen along with the driftwood, or in a river rock fireplace in the main living area.*
Our beach cabin had one bedroom and one bath. I slept on a mattress on the floor of a tiny mezzanine overlooking the living room. Bruce’s crib was set up nearby. He was three, and I was seven. Due to the absence of a wall, activities downstairs often kept me awake. Especially Dad’s loud voice as he told long, convoluted “shaggy dog” stories, and his booming laughter after the punch lines. I often crawled out of bed, and in my pajamas peered through a railing at adults below. Bruce slept through anything.
A man of extremes, my father could become very angry—a side of him I saw too often. At the other end of the spectrum, he could behave like the happiest man alive. At such times his laughter was remarkable. It rolled from him in great peals. He savored each cachination, taking a couple of extra gulps of mirth at the end. When entertaining guests, my parents often had the lights down low while the fireplace blazed cheerily, giving the cabin a warm glow. A remarkable raconteur, Dad enjoyed talking far into the night.
For his desk Frank Herbert salvaged a broad slab of driftwood from the beach and mounted it on a frame constructed of plywood and two-by-fours. It was set up in the living room by a large window, so that he looked out upon the water.
One day he received an unsolicited package of peyote in the mail from a friend, along with instructions on how to take it. A note with the package said the stuff was guaranteed to cure writer’s block. Mom told him not to do it, to throw the stuff away. But Dad was curious. He’d never had peyote before, and proceeded to cut up an entire blossom. With this and hot water, he made a cup of tea. The instructions said to quaff it, and Dad did so. Instantly the stuff came back up, with most of the other contents of his stomach. After cleaning up, Dad didn’t feel any ill effect, and went back to writing his submarine novel at the driftwood desk.
Soon he seemed to be upon the waters of Puget Sound, with sunlight glinting off wave tops in a rhythmic pattern. He experienced sound with each beat of light—an eerie, beautiful pealing. The water was choppy, almost forming whitecaps, and sunlight glinted upon it. Suddenly he realized he was hearing each glint of light—the most dulcet, soothing chimes he had ever experienced in his life.
Thus when he wrote in the Dune series of a “vision echo,” he was writing from firsthand experience, from an experience of sensory mixing.
My father discarded the rest of the peyote, and never did anything like that again. He said the regurgitation was caused by strychnine, a white fluffy material that should have been separated from the blossom’s bud with a knife and thrown away.
Before we moved again in early 1955, Dad returned the driftwood desktop slab to the beach. He told my mother he had been the custodian of the wood for a short time. Years later he would say something similar to me, that none of us ever “own” land. We are merely caretakers of it, passing it along one day to other caretakers.
It is this way with the Earth, he said. We are stewards of it, not owners, and one day future generations will assume the responsibility.
Chapter 9
The Family Car
And always, he fought the temptation to choose a clear, safe course, warning, “That path leads ever down into stagnation.”
—Frank Herbert, in Dune
THAT SPRING Dad received a job offer to do promotional work for the Douglas Fir Plywood Association (DFPA) in Tacoma. The position didn’t pay much, but with these earnings we could afford a nicer place to live—not much of a step upward. We moved into an old ramshackle house on the tide flats of Marine View Drive, across the bay from Tacoma. The weather-beaten house, with a porch that ran around most of it, stood on a narrow stretch of land some twenty feet below road level, reached by going down two sets of steps. Part of the structure was on pilings, and below the house was an old dock.
For his study, Dad set up a desk in what had once been the living room. This afforded him a view of an industrial waterway, filled with tugboats and log booms. Each evening after work at the DFPA and every weekend I heard his portable typewriter going constantly—a rapid, machine-gun rhythm of keys.
Tacoma had long suffered a reputation for its poor air quality, known as the “Tacoma aroma.” A number of pulp mills were in and around the city and the tall stack of a giant smelter across the bay was visible from our house. From the dumping of arsenic, heavy metals and other industrial wastes in the bay, the tide flats by us had a distinctive, unpleasant odor, especially when the tide was out. For the six months that we lived in that house, Bruce and I slept on thin mattresses, on a pair of toboggans set up on an unheated, enclosed porch.
Two of Frank Herbert’s science fiction short stories were published that year, “Rat Race
” (Astounding Science Fiction, July 1955) and “Occupation Force” (Fantastic, August 1955). Earnings from them were minimal.
These stories had been written before we moved to Marine View Drive. Now here, with every moment of spare time, he labored on his submarine novel, Under Pressure. He finished the 75,000-word book in April 1955, and mailed it to Lurton. It was organized into several story breaks, making it easily adaptable to serialization. When he wrote the book, he had in mind the legendary editor at Astounding Science Fiction, John W. Campbell. Among his other accomplishments, Campbell was a science fiction writer himself.*
Even with my father’s job, we didn’t have much money to spend. Flora knew where we were, and wanted her child-support money. The IRS demanded payment for back taxes, but in lieu of checks Dad sent excuses. Other bill collectors were in pursuit as well.
Dad did much of the cooking in our household, and liked to stir-fry several pounds of rice in a big wok, with a few vegetables and a minimal amount of meat. I’m sure it was good for us, with all the complex carbohydrates my father promised. But for years after I moved out I refused to eat rice. Only recently have I been able to stomach it again.
In the mid-1950s, a large new medical facility was opening in Tacoma, the Mary Bridge Children’s Hospital. When Mom’s freelance copywriting assignments ebbed, she took a part-time job with the facility, writing promotional literature for hospital fund-raising.
At the dinner table, my father sometimes spoke of writing and his attempts to sell stories, complaining about particular editors. Sometimes as he ate, he read passages to my mother from manuscript pages stacked by his plate and asked for her opinion. She always provided honestly, and he would make pencil notations on the pages. At other times, Dad and Mom sat in the little living room, overlooking the tide flats, and he read short stories and chapters to her.
Dreamer of Dune Page 10