I am sort of ambevilant about what I want to tell about myself here, because I am aware of just how dangerous it is to tell too much of one`s self to perfect strangers on the Internet, but on the other hand, I do feel a strong need to tell someone of my past experiences, so having said that, here goes...
Just as many many other American citizens, I am a product of a very inadequate and disfunctional family...
My mother was born in Phillipsburg, Kansas and she was an only child and was very much pampered, spoiled and brainwashed by her mother...
My grandparents sent her to college in Nebraska where she met my dad in the early 1930s...
My mother was a product of the old school way of thinking and our family had always been for the Republican Party and shared it`s values and ways of thinking (You know, Herbert Hoover and the whole scene)...
And my mother also had been brainwashed about religion and "Sex was Evil and Bad" and about "God and The Devil", and "Fire and Brimstone", and "Billy Graham", and "The First Presbyterian Church", and I had to be baptized when I was first born, and so on, and so on, and, well, you get the picture....
My mother even gave me a lecture when I was around six or seven years old about that if I didn`t be "a good boy", I would go to Hell and Burn in Hell Fire for Eternity...
However, I did not join my family in their very medieval and set and stupid ways of thinking...
Maybe when I was a little kid I went along with it, not knowing any better...
However, I was always a rebel at heart and I never followed anyone`s set standards or traditions...
They also followed the Republican Party traditions and ways of thinking in that they had very little compassion for their fellow man...
"If you didn`t make the grade then out you go" was their motto, you might say...
Sort of like Nazi Germany, you might say...
As to why my mother set out to have three children with my father is beyond my comprehension...
And also my mother wanted only girl children...No doubt about it...
My father was apparently very unstable and had drinking problem...
He was a corporate lawyer for The Amarillo Oil Company...
My mother had to hide all the kitchen knives to keep him from killing himself...
He finally checked into the Langley Porter Clinic in San Francisco for treatment...
At one point, he insisted that they perform a lobotomy on him or he would jump out of the window and kill himself...
I guess they made him think that they did the lobotomy, although whether they actually did it, or not, remains a mystery...
One day when my father had been drinking, he was holding a gun and threatening my mother with it (so the story was told to me by my sister)...
This is when my mother decided to pack up and leave my dad and move back to Fairbury, Nebraska to live with my grandfather and grandmother...She was still carrying me at this time...
Amarillo, Texas is where she had been living with my father and my older sister and older brother...
However, my mother had always had a problem with dealing with the men in her life and always seemed to get along better with women than men, so you be the judge as to what was really going on with her and my father...
My father remarried, after being with my mother, and he didn`t seem to have any problem dealing with his second wife, and they had two boy children together..
Then later on I was born in Fairbury, Nebraska...
I never had a father for the reason that I just explained...
I was raised by my grandmother, grandfather and my mother...My mother never did remarry after leaving my father, at least not until the year 1979...
She went to work for a bank in Council Bluffs and also for a bank in Pomona, California...
The family moved to Council Bluffs, Iowa when I was around three years of age.. And then we moved to Pomona, California when I was eight years of age...
My grandfather died at the age of 73 when I was at the age of nine and therefore leaving only my grandmother and my mother to raise me from then on...
While attending grade school in Pomona I was picked on a lot by the other students...This made me feel that I was somehow inferior and different from other people...
My older brother would also pick on me and also he would get his friends to do the same...
My third grade teacher, Miss King was her name, thought that I looked like a cross between a boy and a girl, and right in front of the entire class she made this known, and she made up a name which would sound like the cross between a boy and a girl, and that everyone in the class should call me this name from now on...
Ordinarily, today, if something like this occurred, the kid would complain to his or her parents and have the teacher reprimanded, but I knew then that my parents would not care less, so I never mentioned it to anyone...
My mother never really showed any close affection or love for me (or my older brother, for that matter)...
She always seemed to like and favor females rather than males, and she also seemed to favor and offer more love towards my older sister, rather than to me or my older brother...
The only time when us kids got any attention, it would seem, from our mother was when she would read the bible to us at bedtime and preach to us about religion and make us kids go to church every Sunday...
And being raised by my nuerotic grandmother was even worse since she never liked my father, and she also never really liked us kids and we seemed to be a burden on her...
And things got even worse after my grandfather and my greatgrandmother died (she was also living with us in Pomona)...
I always sort of had a compulsion about certain things in my life...
You might say I was a perfectionist about certain things, or very meticulous, such as cleaning my room all the time, and it always had to be perfect...
I would have to move all the furniture out into the hallway and start from scratch and begin waxing the floor, and so on...
At the age of ten, I came home from school one day and I was in my room and it would not appear right to me in my mind, no matter how I would look at it...
A terrible fear came over me and I went downstairs and into the kitchen, but the terrible feeling was still there...It was a feeling which I had never experienced before...And it all began by my looking at my room that day and I could not make it appear right in my mind...
And from that moment on I would continually have these experiences in my mind...
Well, you might say that Howard Hughes and I have something in common and I won`t say anymore about it than that...
Back in those days, however, people knew nothing about this sort of thing and you were looked upon as being something weird or not normal...
When I was at the age of twelve, my mother, having decided that raising three children with only the help from my grandmother was more than she had bargained for, sent me to Florida to live with my sister and brother-in-law.. My brother-in-law, Kenneth, was stationed at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa at the time...
I only lived there with them for one school semester (January to June) and when they left to return to California for the summer vacation period, I felt better to be back home where I felt I really belonged, although my mother and grandmother didn`t feel that way, I`m afraid to say...
Sending me to Florida, when I was twelve years old, was the first time I experienced being pushed out of their house and into someone else`s house...
They even took me to see a "shrink", a Dr. Madlem, to see if this was the best thing for me, to go to Florida and live with my brother-in-law and sister...
During the month of August, after having returned to California from Florida and when the family was on vacation at Newport Beach, California, I came down with a very serious illness and no one knew what was the matter with me, and also no one bothered to take me back to Pomona to see a doctor until I became so seriously ill that they had to do something about it...
I was so sick that I couldn`t even stand up straight and I had to walk around all humped over, because walking straight up would cause too much pain inside me, but this still didn`t give my family a clue that something was terribly wrong with me physically, and they simply let me go on like this for about a week, or so...
At one point, I was too sick to get up and get around and simply wanted to lay down in the front room of the beach cottage which my family was renting for their vacation period (my mother was employed at the Pomona 1st Federal Savings and Loan Assn since 1951 and retired in 1976, and she always took 3 weeks vacation in August and always spent it at Newport Beach, California)...
Anyway, my sister, who had very little compassion for me and always really hated me and resented me as being her younger brother, insisted that I not lay around the beach cottage, even though I was too sick to do anything else...
She slapped me and said to get out of the cottage and go down to the beach and lay in the sun (and in my condition)...
Well, I did what she told me to do, and that night while we all were asleep, and I was also asleep on the couch in the front room of the cottage, I had a terrible nightmare and while still asleep I got up and was yelling and screaming and running all over the front room and even gave my grandmother, who had been asleep across from me, a black eye, and I did all this while I was still asleep and still experiencing my nightmare...
What I remember next is my older sister on top of me and with me on the floor and she was slapping me in the face and telling me to stop it, as I was then still screaming and then I was starting to wake up after that...
Of course, this was all caused by the poison which was leaking into my system from my bursted appendix...
My brother-in-law finally drove me back to Pomona and then to the Pomona hospital, and our family doctor then discovered I had appendicitis...
After the operation, I was informed that my appendix had already burst open sometime before they finally drove me to a hospital (as I had already previously mentioned) and I could have very easily died, because the poison was already into my system and it was causing me to have very freaky nightmares and I was running around the room while I was still not awake and yelling and screaming, and things such as that (as I had already previously went into detail about), while I was still at the beach at Newport, before they finally drove me back to Pomona...
So when my sister and her husband wanted me to return to Florida with them the following Fall Season, I refused to go, and therefore upsetting my mother`s plans for me (which was to get me out of her house and out of her face)...
However, that same school year at the beginning of the second semester, my mother talked me into going down to Pacific Beach near San Diego to attend a military boarding school (Brown Military Academy, which no longer exists) and telling me it would very good for me, indeed, which, of course, was not true at all...
My grandmother and my mother, both, even were bribing me and said if I did this, they would buy me a television set for my bedroom when I returned home for vacation (this is how badly they both wanted me out of their house, and out of their face)..
I was thirteen years of age at this time in my life....
My mother and grandmother tricked me into attending this school...
Usually when parents want to send their kids to a boarding school, the reason is because they are not wanted at home and this was also true in my case...
After I was enrolled, I was completely miserable at this school, but my parents didn`t care about that...They insisted that I continue with the school, no matter what...(My parents being my grandmother and my mother)..
Well, here is actually what I had to go through in order to get myself back at home in Pomona and back into public schools again... It meant me having to write a letter to the Director of Admissions, Major James H. Barham, of this military school, after I had already been attending this school for a period of one school semester, which was actually from January to June, and keep in mind that I was only 13 years of age doing all this...After typing out the letter, I signed my mother`s name to it...The letter was saying that Frank doesn`t wish to continue with the school next year...(This being the summer vacation period when I did this)...It went as far as my having to run away from home when my mother was going to return me to this school...
After having run away and taking a bus to Los Angeles, I fell asleep on a bus bench at the bus depot in Los Angeles and then a security guard woke me up and took me to the back room of the depot and called the police...
I was then taken to the police station and placed into a jail cell...
The police had called my mother as to where I was...
And then my mother and grandmother, along with a few other people with them, drove to Los Angeles to pick me up...
After driving back to Pomona with me, a next door neighbor older kid who I knew, Mike Holm, and my older brother`s friend, Cary Seldon, in the car, they then stopped at the Pomona Police Station and had the Police Sergeant give me a lecture and telling me that I had a choice of either this military school or "Camp 5", which was actually "reform school"...
The next day, my mother and grandmother, a family friend, Helen Frey, and my older brother, who was driving the car, were all ready to return me to this military school...
My older brother was also in with the rest of the family as far as forcing me to return to the school...
My older brother, "Jack" (as the family called him), never really liked me at all and he really resented me as being his brother...That is, until I reached the age of fifteen and that`s when he started to lighten up on me...
My brother actually physically assaulted me and had me on the floor of my bedroom and had my arm in a hammer-lock...He was forcing my arm upward until I would say I agree to go with them back to the military school...
Everyone then drove me back down to San Diego to enroll me back into this school for another year...When everyone entered the administration building, Major Barham asked if I had written this letter which he had received saying I didn`t want to return to the school next year, and I said that I had...So he refused to admit me, because he said they didn`t want kids there who didn`t want to be there..
So that letter, which I had wisely written earlier to this school, was the only thing that saved me from another year of hell at this military school...
But, the fact was that I simply was not wanted at home, so writing this letter didn`t change that fact any, or make my family love me any the more...
I always felt that I somehow was a mistake that someone made and I should never have been born in the first place...
After learning that they had no choice but to return me to Pomona with them, my mother and grandmother then took me on a tour of the military school campus and they were trying to talk me into changing my mind about enrolling into this school for another year, but I still refused...
They were plenty upset that their plans for me had "gone down the tubes"...
There`s another story that could also be told along with this very depressing story...And this story tells you of the fact that my family did succeed, in the end, in totally ruining my life...They got even with me in the end, in other words, and boy how they did get even with me...But I cannot tell that story here, I`m afraid...
Just another added note to his already very depressing story...I usually would kneel down next to my bed at night and say my prayers, as I was taught to do by my very religious mother and grandmother, who always went to church every Sunday and also forced us kids to do likewise...
Well, I was saying my prayers, also, this particular evening after returning from San Diego, after a very traumatic day for a thirteen year old kid, such as I was at the time that all this occurred in my life, and I suppose I was thanking God for sparing me another year of hell at the military school... Well, the door to my bedroom happened to be open while I was kneeling down saying my prayers next to my bed and my grandmother happened by and said these very words to me..."You`d better say your prayers, Boy, after the stunt you pulled today"...
The story even gets better after all this, but I think everyone gets the picture by now....
My third grade class photo...Lincoln Elementary School, Pomona, California...I am pictured in the top row, 3rd student from the left...(Note my teacher: Miss King, on the far left, second row from the top)
This photo is of me at age twelve with my older sister when I was living with her and my brother-in-law in Tampa, Florida...Photo was taken at Clearwater Beach, Florida
click photo for full viewThis is me at age thirteen in the back yard of our 2nd Pomona residence when I was on a home leave from Brown Military Academy in Pacific Beach, California
click photo for full viewMajor James H. Barham, Director of Admissions at Brown Military Academy when I was attending the school in San Diego, California...It was actually this man who saved me from another year of hell at this school
Dr. John Brown, Sr. who was the head and founder of all the John Brown Schools which were, at one time, located all around the Southern California area, and Brown Military Academy in San Diego, California was one of them...Dr. Brown was also a pastor and every Sunday at the military school, where I was forced to attend for one school semester, we were forced to listen to his sermon in the auditorium building
click photo for full image Brown Military Academy, which was located on Garnett Avenue, Pacific Beach, California..A photo of the auditorium building taken from "The Warrior" Yearbook..This school no longer exists
An overhead view of the Brown Military Academy campus in Pacific Beach, San Diego, California (no longer there)
click photo for full image
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