I kept this secret from almost everyone:

That I couldn't read, it was hard to do but I managed to do it.

I regrettably lost touch with this family member after we grew up:

My cousin Clayton, lived out to the Cape, he had a sister named Bessie, his mother was a religious person, very religious. They lived on the same road that Bette Davis lived on out the Cape, a few houses down on the opposite side, they had a big long house, long like a trailer, but it was a house, they had it divided down the middle with a blanket, and they had an old fashioned water pump to get their water, there used to be hundreds of bumble bees out in their yard, I used to play down at the lily pond catching toads with my cousin Clayton. He lives in Casco today, he has that Down East voice. After his mother died, she killed herself, they moved away to the Casco region, Sebago Lake area, it's up that way somewheres. My Uncle Bud was in the Coast Gaurd. He is still alive, I guess he is over a hundred. Clayton was one of my closest cousins, he went into the Navy, came out of the Navy and became a welder, for Williams Brothers, or McClellans, another company a family member owned. He is my age, he still works, he goes canoeing. I called him a month ago about an island that the family owns.

My first serious romance was with:

Pauline again.

For a while I thought I would marry this person but I didn't:

Her name was Pauline, it didn't work out.

"My World" consisted of this geographical area:

Right here in Portland. Part of Falmouth. A few of the islands, but I don't remember being on them, I was just a baby. Part of Cape Elizabeth.

My parents felt this way about politics:

They didn't talk about politics much, that was back in the Roosevelt and Truman days. I had two uncles in the service, one went over seas in the war. I think he went to Iwo Jima, he came back all shell shocked. He got TB over there and died. That was originally an overseas disease but I guess it is all over the world now.

I remember when these technological advances were made:

I remember when radar came out during Pearl Harbor, when they picked the Jap planes up they thought they were birds because they didn't know yet, the soldiers who they put on it weren't trained enough or something. Then the fishermen started using radar, as it improved. Cars got better, farmers tractors got better. Jets came in, they was testing them. Airplanes changed. Technology got better, television came in, now we are in the computer age.

Some of my favorite Hollywood actors and actresses were: ...I liked these qualities about them:

Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, The Lone Ranger, we had to go to the movies to watch them we didn't have no TV. Buck Rogers was an imaginary space program, but it all came true today though. There was a program called Rocket Man, a guy used to fly around with a space suit on.

They always was the champions of the west, the law abiders, they always made things right, they fought for justice.

This was a big wartime event that marked a turning point in the world (eg. D-Day or Evacuation of Saigon):

When they dropped the bomb on Nagasaki, my brother was stationed at Okinawa when that happened. I remember when I was a kid, over in South Portland they used to build Liberty Ships, the women.

This is what war meant to me growing up:

People getting killed, losing friends, I lost several friends in the Korean War. Some friends would come back with no arms and no legs, one just died a few weeks ago. It was scary. When I was a kid they gave my mother some sort of ration slips, you could only buy so much milk and so much bread, and cigarettes, we had to get city help when my father didn't make much money. They used to give her some sort of lard that she had to put dye in to make it look like butter. I used to sell rags, and pieces of copper and iron. I guess Hitler put Japan up to fight us, at Pearl Harbor. A lot of wars are fought over religious rights and that.

I disliked this responsibility/work growing up but it has proved to be very helpful to me as an adult:

I didn't like people sending me someplace to get something that I would have to read and they didn't know that I couldn't read, so I would come back with the wrong thing. I couldn't do the same things that other kids could because they could read.

This is the profession that I often mentioned when people asked me what I was going to be when I grew up:

An inventor or chemist.

I hated this particular work assignment:

I didn't really hate anything about my job, the worst part was being yelled at by one of my bosses and I didn't like the dirty jokes and swearing, throwing things at you. When you aren't educated, they can use words that you don't understand, you could get the feeling that they were talking about you though, if I did something wrong that they didn't like.

I remember this about my father's work and responsibilities:

Yeah, he was a fisherman, he was a hard worker, he wasn't lazy or nothing, he was tough and had big shoulders and big arms, they used to haul the nets by hand, he would go out in dorys - which are big sorta row boats - they are built so they can take a lot of the sea and carry a heavy load. He did cook for fishing boats, draggers, he was a deck hand. He used to order all the food, they bought a lot of cheeses and stuff that was salted, stuff that would last a long time. You couldn't make a pie because the boat moved too much, it isn't like you see on TV where the boat is rocking and moving and the dishes are all still sitting on their shelves, you had to tie everything down. He was in lots of hurricanes and storms, the Coast Guard couldn't always find them. Back then if someone passed away on the boat they would wrap them up and put them on ice, keep right on fishing.

He made good money in the summer months, and then in the winter months they would have lots of bills and when he couldn't get out he would go clam digging. Then he would just bring the clams home and shuck them, in the big slate sinks we used to have back then, I don't know where they used to sell them to, restaurants or clam shops, they always bought the best food for the ships though. The ham and stuff that they bought, the roast beef and stuff, if it got a little moldy after being out there for a while they would just saw it off and cook it.

I remember this about my mother's work and responsibilities:

My mother was a housewife. She would wash our clothes in a great big set tub made of slate, they were slanted, she would take a scrub board and scrub them in one and then rinse in the other one and she would put them in this basket she had and then take them to the window to hang them out. We couldn't afford a washing machine and when we did get one it was a wringer. You had to put that near the sink, you had to fill that by hand, then to empty it there was a pump. She also cooked. She gave us kids a bath in a big tub, she would heat the water on the old wood stove and give me and Bea a bath in it. Once she sent me to the barbershop, and the barber found some nits, he wouldn't cut my hair then. She combed my hair with a fine tooth comb and rubbed kerosene on it. Boy did that hurt. That was supposed to get rid of them. I used to take the curtains to have them cleaned and starched. My mother would hang them up, she always had to have curtains up in the windows no matter what else was in the house. Lots of times we had broken windows, we had to put cardboard in the windows. She would take care of washing the floors. She took a lot of people in that put out of their houses for a while, friends, relatives.

I took care of this person or persons growing up:

I took care of this kid named Hunky Babbage, his folks were drinkers, they paid me good, $3 an hour, that was good money. They would come home loaded. I was good with kids. I babysat for my cousins kids too.

I enjoyed this particular work assignment:

I liked driving, delivering for the fish market, taking the fish to stores, through Old Orchard. I didn't have to deal with much money, that was all done through the mail. If I did have to collect money I would call up over the phone and they would help me.

My first job for pay was:

I cut a few clams for my grandfather, I think I made $.15 an hour, I cut about a pint of clams. And I used to shovel coal for people. I made about $.50 for half a days work in cold zero weather.

This is how I got to school each morning in my early years:

My sister would take me or I would walk, it was just across the street.

This is one of the most important things about life I learned in school:

Not a lot. I did learn how to keep my teeth nice. How to take care of your teeth.

College?

I don't know, I wonder what it would have been like if I had gone to college, I am sure my life would have been much different, maybe I would have been a businessman.

When I was very young I thought I would be this when I grew up:

I thought I was going to be an inventor.

Junior High and High School:

I didn't go. I have no idea what it was like to go. It is something that is missing out of my life. It makes me sad. When I get around people who use big words I don't know what they're talking about. It was rough for me. All the kids were coming home with A's and B's and I only got one report card in my life, I got an A in drawing on that. My sister took me to school and I would walk in the front door and out the back one. I would go run errands for people on Commercial Street. I couldn't sit still, I couldn't sit there.

It effected my life a lot. I was always interested in Inventors, and wanted to be an Inventor or Chemist, I was always taking things apart, I never cared much about putting them together again.

I had a lot of fun with this subject in elementary school:

There was a lady who used to come and tell us stories, her name was Mrs. Abbott. We would go up to the auditorium and she would tell stories there at the old North School. Probably Little Red Riding Hood and like that. She went around to other schools too I think.

One of my most memorable teachers in elementary school was:

Her name was Mrs. McGlynn, I remember that when I couldn't afford a nickle for milk and a cookie she would give it to me. She killed herself in the bay in South Portland, someone found her there. They think she jumped off the old South Portland bridge.

I really enjoyed this grade in elementary school:

I went to sub-primary school first, today they call it kindergarten, and then I did one year of first grade, then about a month of second grade and then they put me and my sister into a special school, an ungraded school, a school for kids with learning disabilities I guess, they didn't teach you nothing, just sat there and told stories. I didn't stay there, I took off to go play and swim. So I didn't have much experience with elementary school.

If my parents had only known! I did this forbidden thing with my friends:

My parents never knew that I had this job, there was a gas station that used to sell tires. They would take old tires that had been turned in, with the tread real low, and they would have a chalk mark on them, we used to wash it off with gasoline and then re-groove the tires, we did it at night in a big old barn...If my parents had known I was doing that I would have been in trouble.

I took a pocket watch from my father too and showed it to everybody, and then I put it back.

If my parents had only known! I did this forbidden thing with my friends:

My parents never knew that I had this job, there was a gas station that used to sell tires. They would take old tires that had been turned in, with the tread real low, and they would have a chalk mark on them, we used to wash it off with gasoline and then re-groove the tires, we did it at night in a big old barn...If my parents had known I was doing that I would have been in trouble.

I took a pocket watch from my father too and showed it to everybody, and then I put it back.

What my friends and I liked best to do together was:

We went swimming, I hung with an older crowd, they used to take me swimming with them, they had cars. That was during the summer months. Two lakes. I more or less hung to myself, I kept to myself. I had one real good friend named Charlie Casey.

I had a childhood crush on this person:

I had a girlfriend whose father owned a small story. He used to work for a bakery before he owned the store. Her name was Pauline, she married a sailor, a Coast Guard guy and moved to Virginia. She liked me and I liked her, I never got to kiss her, her mother liked me real good, I guess her father liked me, I remember she asked me up to her house for a piece of Birthday cake, I remember there were two or three Coast Guard guys sitting there and I told her I didn't like that, I told her I didn't want to go with her any more and I asked her for my wife's telephone number. I used to help them make sticky apples and cotton candy they used to sell.

I wanted this person to be my friend but the feeling was not mutual:

I had some people stick their noses up at me, I guess that's what you call it, because I wasn't as smart as everybody. My one girlfriend's mother didn't like me too much. Her mother came out and told me that she didn't want her kids hanging out with me because I wasn't going to amount to anything, she thought her kids were going to grow up to be doctors or lawyers, but they all turned out to be drug addicts.

I remember well this birthday party I had with my friends:

My mother used to make us a cake, from scratch of course. And give me some kind of toy or something for a present, I don't know what it was. But there were no parties, my uncles when they came around they would give me a couple dollars or something. No parties like kids have today.