Compared to us, Lou and her ex-husband seemed rich. His full name was Cleon Morgan Cox II, which sounds like a rich guy’s name. He was a contractor who sometimes worked as a carpenter. He’d been married to Lou for fourteen years before they divorced. The family gossip said that he was a drunk.
The house they’d lived in, at 376 Hawthorne in Los Altos, was a nice, modest, ranch-style place, white and yellow, with a big pepper tree in the backyard and a couple of pine trees, and bordered by an old-fashioned split-rail redwood fence in the front. Red Cox had bought it in 1953. It was on a quiet, shady street a few blocks away from Hillview Elementary, where my dad taught and where I would go to school. It was about three-quarters of a mile from the little stretch of “downtown” Los Altos.
With all of us living in it together, the two-bedroom house on Hawthorne was crowded. The four boys—me and Brian, Cleon and George—shared a single bedroom outfitted with two sets of bunk beds. My dad and Lou had the other bedroom, down a hallway that was “restricted.” We were not allowed to go down there, into their hallway, their bathroom, or their bedroom.
The house was cramped, but it was fun. I liked having stepbrothers. Cleon, who was known as Binky, was about five years older than me, but George was just a few months older than me. I liked having a kid around who was my own age. George and I spent a lot of time playing outside, in a sandbox behind the house, or climbing that big pepper tree. My father liked to barbecue, so we had cookouts whenever the weather was warm enough.
My father also liked to build things. He always had a project going. He’d pick up lumber from the street, or from construction sites, and store it at home. One summer he built a homemade swimming pool in the front yard. He had bought these army surplus tents, made of heavy canvas, and figured out a way to stitch them together. Then he built a kind of platform around them, and filled the stitched-together tents with water.
It was leaky, and it was messy, and it was kind of funky, but it was a swimming pool. That was terrific. I have pictures of me and George and Brian, suntanned and wet, splashing around and having a great time. We had swimming races, competing to see who could run and jump in and swim the most circles around the pool without coming up for air. There’s even a picture of Grandma Boo getting into the act, standing in this funny homemade swimming pool wearing a flowered bathing suit and a bathing cap, smiling into the camera.
To solve the overcrowding problem, my dad also built an addition to the back of the house on Hawthorne. That became Cleon’s bedroom, so it was just me and Brian and George sharing a room.
Leaving the cramped house with Grandma Boo for a new house with a new mom and new stepbrothers was a big change. So was moving from San Jose to Los Altos. Socially, that was a giant change.
I already knew about Los Altos. Everybody knew about Los Altos. It was like the Beverly Hills of San Jose. It was an uptight, upper-middle-class, or even upper-class, community. This was where the doctors and lawyers lived, where the wealthy people lived. The houses in Los Altos were larger and statelier than anyplace I’d ever lived, and you never saw so many Lincolns and Cadillacs, and foreign cars. It seemed exotic. It was green and leafy. The roads were lined with redwood trees, pepper trees, and oaks. The sidewalks and backyards were shaded by fruit trees, too. I especially liked apricots. You could pick your lunch on the way to school and eat your fill.
The little strip of downtown was like something out of a story-book. The main drag was filled with attractive little shops. There was a five-and-dime store in the center of the block called Sprouse Ritz. The supermarket where we did our grocery shopping, Whitecliff Market, was just around the corner. Down the street was Clint’s, an ice cream parlor with a giant ice cream cone on the roof. At the end of that block was a quaint one-story shopping center, where the buildings were all made of dark-stained redwood. The parking lot was always full of nice-looking cars—especially those wood-paneled station wagons that rich suburban housewives used to drive.
We could never have afforded to live there on our own. I’m not sure my dad could have afforded to own his own home even in San Jose. For sure he couldn’t have bought a house in Los Altos, not on an elementary school teacher’s salary. (My dad told me he was hired there at a starting salary of $4,000 per year.) So it must have been the fact that Lou already owned the house on Hawthorne that made it possible for us to live in Los Altos.
This might have grated on my dad. He was a proud man, and this was the 1950s. Women weren’t supposed to be the breadwinners, and they weren’t supposed to hold the purse strings, or the deed to the ranch.
It also might have given my dad an extra reason to work extra hard. Because he started working very hard. Every day he went to teach at Hillview, just like he had been doing. But now that he was a two-family man he took a second job working as a motion-picture processor on the swing shift at an Eastman Kodak production facility in Palo Alto. He’d come home from teaching, eat something, then change his clothes and go out again. He’d work from six to midnight, when the graveyard shift started, then he’d come home and sleep and get up and teach again.
But that wasn’t enough. I don’t know if he needed extra money, or felt he needed to pull his own weight, or just wanted a reason to be out of the crowded house and away from all those kids. Whatever it was, he took a third job. He started working on weekday afternoons and all day Saturday and Sunday as a checker at Whitecliff Market. During the week, he’d leave school, go to Whitecliff, work a few hours, come home and grab a quick bite, then go to Kodak for his swing shift.
That wasn’t enough, either. He got a fourth job. He signed on as a crossing guard, before school and after school. He’d leave the house early in the morning and stand out there with another Hillview teacher, raising and lowering this big sign so the kids could get across the street. He’d leave school and do it again after classes ended, then go to Whitecliff, then come home to change, then go to Eastman Kodak.
I’m not sure how long he did that, but after a while that still wasn’t enough. He enlisted in the National Guard, and began taking military classes and undergoing training on the weekends.
The obsession with work was a lifelong thing with my dad. My uncle Kenny told me that when he and my dad were in high school, and living in that logging camp in Ryderwood, Washington, my dad was the same way. There were fifty kids in their high school, and there were three part-time jobs available for the high school boys. “Rod had all three of them,” Kenny said. “He was the janitor, he swept up in the pool hall, and he worked in the meat market at the company store.”
Somehow he also found time to continue his education, too. He studied part-time at Stanford on the nights he wasn’t working and on the weekends that he wasn’t doing his National Guard service.
We didn’t see much of him. When he was home at all, he’d come in tired and sit down in front of the TV with a beer and a little snack and fall straight to sleep. Me and the other kids got yelled at if we made noise. Dad’s sleep was the most important thing, whether he was taking a nap in his room or snoring in his easy chair. We’d get in real trouble if we woke him up.
I got in trouble all the time.
Lou was a stern stepmother, and she ran a tight ship. She kept a clean house. I’ve never lived in such a clean house. I liked living in a clean house, but with Lou it was a kind of mania.
For example, not long after we moved in with her, she started inspecting and then wiping my butt. She’d make me take down my pants and underpants, and bend me over. If she didn’t like what she saw, she’d take a washcloth and wipe me—while complaining about how dirty I was.
She did this with my brother Brian, too. And maybe with him it made sense. He was old enough to wipe himself, but he was only four, and he hadn’t had a mother around for most of his life, so maybe he wasn’t doing such a good job of it. But I was seven years old! I didn’t need anyone to wipe my butt. It was traumatic for me. It was humiliating to have someone make me bend over and take my pants down. I hate
d it.
Lou was a good cook. She made pork chops with mashed potatoes and homemade gravy. She baked turkeys, and roast beef, and she cooked liver. She was big on salads and vegetables, which I didn’t like at all. She made cornbread and homemade soups. I never knew her to use anything canned or powdered or packaged. She made good homemade cakes, even though I didn’t like the way she did her icing—it wasn’t that creamy, gooey kind that I liked. One of her famous dishes was Italian Delight. She’d take whatever was left over in the fridge and put it together with Italian sauce and spices and serve it over spaghetti. This was Lou’s Friday night special.
But she was also very strict. She had rules about everything—you’d better do this, and you’d better not do that—and she always knew if you broke them. She could tell, even if you were at the other end of the house, whether you’d washed your hands before dinner. If you hadn’t, you might get sent to your room.
You could get punished for yelling, for fighting, for coming home late from school, for not doing your homework, for losing your homework, for getting your school clothes dirty, for talking back, for not having proper table manners, and for any number of other things. Lou made everyone say “yes, ma’am” and “no, ma’am.” She made everyone say “please” and “thank you.” If you forgot, you got in trouble for that, too.
If you didn’t behave, you either got sent to your room or you got spanked. Being sent to your room wasn’t so bad. I didn’t like being left out of the games, or being separated from my brothers, but I could do things in my room with my imagination. I could invent things. I had plastic cowboys and Indians, and army men, and I could make up stuff by myself.
The problem was the house was so small and cramped. If it was nighttime or a rainy day, and the other boys weren’t playing outside, I couldn’t be punished by being sent to my room—because we all shared a room. So, a lot of the time, I got spanked.
To be honest, I deserved some kind of punishment. I was a troublemaker. I’d get restless or bored, and I’d start to misbehave.
For example, I liked scaring people. I would hide behind a door or behind the sofa and wait for someone to walk into the room. Then, when they were real close, I’d jump out and scream. I loved getting a reaction. Mostly I did it to George or Brian. Especially Brian.
I also liked to attack Brian, or attack his stuff. I’d watch him carefully build a castle out of blocks. I’d watch him make the walls and the tower, and maybe put a bridge over his imaginary moat. I’d wait until he had everything perfect. Then I’d come swooping down like an invading horde. I was Attila the Hun. I was Genghis Khan. I’d descend on his unprotected castle and demolish it. I thought this was the funniest thing in the world. I’d storm in, attack him, and then storm out again, laughing my head off while he cried about his ruined castle.
It never occurred to me that I was hurting him, or even upsetting him. I just thought the idea of it was so hysterical. That moment of surprise was so much fun that I never really thought about how it felt to be on the other end of it. So I got in trouble.
I also got in trouble at Lou’s house for eating when I wasn’t supposed to eat. She was very strict about food, just like she was strict about all the rules in that house. Meals were for mealtime. There was no snacking. If you were hungry, you went hungry and you waited until dinner.
I couldn’t wait. I was a big kid. I was growing fast. I was hungry all the time. So I’d go into the kitchen and grab something to eat. Usually it was fruit. I particularly liked bananas. I’d take the banana and go up to my room and eat it there.
It wasn’t just at home. I was hungry everywhere I went, and I learned to sneak or steal food. In the first grade at Hillview Elementary, I got caught committing my very first crime. I was hungry, as usual, and I was alone in the cloakroom, and I realized I was surrounded by other kids’ lunch boxes. So I opened one and found some cherries and started chowing down. I got caught red-handed—literally, with cherry juice still on my fingers—and was punished. When I got home and told Lou what had happened, I got punished again, with a spanking.
Sometimes I got punished for things I shouldn’t have been punished for at all. For example, I got punished for taking those bananas. Like I said, Lou ran a tight ship. If a banana was missing, she’d know it. I don’t think she actually counted the bananas, but there was the problem of getting rid of the evidence. You couldn’t hide a banana peel from her. She kept such a clean house that she’d find it no matter where you put it—in the trash, under the bed, wherever—and you’d get punished for stealing a banana. Imagine spanking a kid for taking food from his own house when he was hungry. But that’s what happened, more times than I can remember.
So, between one thing and another, I got spanked a lot. When I was little, this was usually a pants-down, over-the-knee spanking. Lou would deliver some pretty sharp smacks, with her hand or with a wooden spoon, and give me a lecture. It was painful, and it was embarrassing.
With my dad, it was much more serious. When it was his turn to do the spanking, he didn’t fool around. After he’d come home from work, Lou would take him aside and tell him what I had done. Sometimes she told him the truth. Sometimes she exaggerated or made things up. Sometimes she’d blame me for things the other boys did. Either way, my dad would punish me for it. He never asked me if it was true. He never asked me for my side of the story. He’d just say, “Howard!” and then take me outside.
With my dad, I got spanked with a piece of wood. I had to choose the piece of wood myself. This was tricky. If I chose a thick piece, it was going to hurt. But if I chose a thin piece and it broke, he’d finish the job with his hand, and that never broke. So I’d try to choose one in the middle, a board that would bend a little when he hit me but not break.
I got pretty good at choosing boards, because I got a lot of practice. I’m not sure what I did to deserve it, but I swear I remember some weeks when I got spanked every single day—either by Lou or by my father. I remember afternoons when Lou would say, “That’s it. I’m telling your father when he gets home.” I’d spend the rest of the day worrying about that, wondering what time he was going to get home and how badly I was going to get spanked when he did. I guess I was scared of him. He was a big man, and he was rough with me. He never really hurt me—like, to the point of putting me in the hospital—but I was afraid that one day he was going to.
Sometimes, in addition to the spanking, Lou would take something away—a toy, or a ball, or my bike. But the big punishment during that time, when we lived in the house on Hawthorne, was losing television privileges.
This was the 1950s. Television was a pretty new thing. There wasn’t much of anything special on TV for kids, except maybe Saturday morning cartoons. There was some boxing, and some roller derby, but that didn’t interest me. There were lots of family shows. There was Life of Riley and Bachelor Father. But I didn’t care about those too much, either. They weren’t really made for children, and those families sure didn’t look like my family.
But television did have Disneyland. Every Wednesday night there was Disneyland. This was the TV show hosted by Walt Disney—the name would later be changed to Walt Disney Presents and then to Walt Disney’s Wonderful World of Color—and it was the biggest event of the week. I practically dreamed about watching Disneyland. I looked forward to it the way some kids look forward to Christmas.
If the boys had been good all week, we were all allowed to sit in front of the TV and watch the whole show. If we’d been real good, we were given a candy bar to eat while we watched.
For me, this was heaven—sitting in front of the TV, eating a candy bar, watching Disneyland. It didn’t get any better than that. So taking these things away from me was the most effective punishment that Lou could think of. If I had been bad, the other boys would get a candy bar and I wouldn’t. If I had been really bad, my punishment was not being allowed to watch Disneyland at all. I’d be sent to my room instead—still hungry, and with no candy bar—where I could hear Brer R
abbit singing “Everybody’s Got a Laughing Place” or Fess Parker singing “The Ballad of Davy Crockett.”
I took the punishments pretty hard. I don’t remember this, but one of my aunts later said she was visiting our house one time when Lou got angry at the boys. She shouted at us to get out of the house, to go play outside, to leave her in peace, and threw us all out the back door. The other boys went and played a game of some kind. But this aunt said that I went over by the fence and started crying, like I had my feelings hurt.
Could that be true? I guess so. I wanted Lou’s affection. I wanted her to like me. I called her “Mom,” because that seemed like the right thing to do. I wanted her to treat me like her son, the way she treated George, to love me and be proud of me and all that.
But that’s not the way she was—at least not with me. She wasn’t very affectionate. She didn’t hug her boys, or kiss them, or tell them she loved them. In fact, I don’t remember her being affectionate with my father, either. I never saw them being loving toward each other. That just wasn’t their way.
My dad wasn’t very physical, at least in a good way, either. I remember him holding me when I was a baby, because I remember his scratchy beard. I didn’t like his beard. I liked being held by my mother, because she was soft and gentle. With my father, it was rough. I remember him pushing me on the swings when I was really little, and I remember it hurt—he shoved. By the time he married Lou and moved us into the house on Hawthorne, the only kind of physical touching I got was the spanking.
The other boys later said they were scared of Lou and her temper. George remembered Lou getting hysterical. She would start yelling and screaming, and my dad would have to grab her hands and hold them in order not to get hit. “She was a screamer,” George said. “When she started yelling, you got to it. You set the table without being asked twice. You jumped.”
My Lobotomy Page 3