These are the kinds of books I enjoy reading most:

Books about science. I like this book about John F. Kennedy. I was watching tv when he was shot. I told the fellows down at the clam shop about what I had saw and they didn't believe me, but then they heard it all on the radio an hour later.

A very difficult educational experience for me was:

I seem to have a hard time learning things, understanding things, I know right from wrong, I have problems, they would send me to the store for some cigarettes and bread and stuff, and I would forget what she wanted, for some reason, i don't know why, I would go back and have the wrong thing. I would be embarrassed, she would send me back and give me a note to give them.

The activity that I and my friends most often engaged in:

Swimming, at the lakes.

This is the sport I most enjoyed watching or attending with friends:

I was never interested in sports.

One big misunderstanding I had with a friend was:

A couple of my friends tried to get me to go rob a gas station, they did it and ended up in reform school. They didn't have any money and they thought that robbing a gas station was easy, they used to hide money in the gas stations back in the days, they didn't have safes, they used to want me to go with them, but I wouldn't.

When I think of compassion and goodness I think of this person:

I think of myself. I used to give my shirt away, I still do, and they get after me for it. I used to do a lot of people favors, when I wanted a favor they wasn't around. A favor like helping to fix a car I had, I couldn't get nobody to do that.

True friendship to me means:

A person who is honest to you, and steers you right. Loyalty. A person who is trustworthy of you, doesn't make fun of you.

These people were my best friends in my middle years:

Some guys who I worked with, when I first started they were all older guys but then they sort of all died off and they would hire younger guys, when I went in the fish market to work, the guys were old and they were tough, they would chew and yell at each other, and drink, even when they worked they would drink.

My Best Friend after I left home was:

Francis, she was my best friend after I left home.

My Brothers and/or Sisters and I acted this way toward each other:

They took care of me cause they was older. They was more or less, married when they were young, they got out, I don't know if it was because of my Father's drinking or not, my brother was 15 years older than me, he was in the Merchant Marines, he came out, he said he was in Okinawa when they dropped the bomb on Japan, they cancelled all the weekend passes then and then dropped the bombs, of course nobody knew that was going to happen, just the President.

There was a big circus, The World of Mirth Circus, when the circus was coming there was a big parade and they would go down to the back cove and set up their tents, one night I was about ten years old, I went down there about four o'clock and I was down there until about one o'clock in the morning. I was sposed to come home at nine. My sister and my brother came and found me, they found me in the girly tent where the girls did the dances, I didn't have no money so I snuck in. I went home and I had a choice of a licking or to stay in for two weeks, so I took the lickin'.

My mother used to tie me up in the front yard so that I wouldn't run away, I took off all my clothes once and run down the street, my sister Jean had to come and get me, she tells me about that all the time.

We had these pets:

We always had a cat. We had to have a couple of them put away, they got sick or hurt. I can't remember their names. Tommy and I had one named Melody.

This was a serious accident that I remember:

Dottie had another accident a year after her other one, she was about 17 at the time. They had got her a job up at Mercy through the MR (Mental Retardation) program there, they put her in the laundry room folding towels. One of the bosses figured he would teach her how to run this machine that you put sheets through to iron them, it had two rollers and it pulled her hand in, it didn't have any safety thing on it, and it burned three of her fingers down to the bone, they had to do a skin graft. When it happened they tried to cover it up, Mercy had her there soaking it in ice water, she was screeching the whole night. They bandaged her hand up and sent her home but she was still screeching all night so we took her back and they had to do surgery right that night. The worst part was that Mercy took the machine apart right that night, when the lawyer went up there to look at the machine it was gone. They closed that case in about five months or so. They sued Mercy, but I don't know what they sued for, the amount. We went through more with those burned fingers than we did with her brain injury.

This health problem was very scary for my family:

We had many of them, especially Frances, she had problems that I didn't know about, I didn't understand her not wanting to go anywhere, we would go someplace were there was dancing, the Holiday Inn or something and Frances would just take off. When Dottie got hit by that car was bad too. The teacher called me up, I was working delivering fish, and they said that my daughter got killed out in front of the Portland High School, and a few minutes later two police officers came by and said that they didn't know if she was dead or alive. So we went up to the hospital, they said they couldn't get no vital signs but then one of the nurses saw her finger moving, she came to, I guess she was in some kind of coma, and then they got her in some kind of recovery situation, put her in a room. Her eyes were swelling up and pushing out of her head, and the nurses didn't recognize what was happening to her, but a brain surgery Doctor saw her and knew something was wrong, well she had a huge hematoma that had to be operated on. She was in a coma for three days after her surgery. They let me stay there with her for a while. Frances couldn't do it, I stayed there for a week and had to keep her awake. She recovered. I think it added to her retardation. The lawyer said it didn't, but she was worse than Rodney after that.

This was a time when I got very angry with my children:

Well when I lived on High Street at the time, on the third floor, we had a big place, three bedroom, I gave my daughter a birthday party, just me Frances and Rodney and Dottie, I cut the cake, I gave a piece to each of them and Dottie switched the pieces of cake because she wanted a bigger piece, and I got mad and took the rest of the cake up and threw it across the floor. I guess the kids got kind of scared of me after that, especially Rodney.

This was one of my favorite vacations with my loved ones:

We would go to the lakes, swimming and take lunch. Frances didn't like to go very far, she didn't like to leave the area, of course she had those panic attacks after a while.

Some of the things I loved doing with my family were:

Well I couldn't do a whole lot with them cause they were kinda retarded and they were always put in special school programs. I mean we used to give them birthdays and cakes and stuff. But we couldn't play games. We used to go out to restaurants and things, we would go to Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonalds, we would go there a lot. We had a lady who had to come to the house to help take care of Rodney.

I remember these funny incidents about the children when they were young:

I know they did some funny things, but I wasn't home much, I was always out working, and then I was always out late at night. I didn't really drink much until a couple years afterwards.

Rodney came out of school one day and stuck his tongue to one of those iron poles, to a fence, and it stuck to it. They said they had to get some warm water to pour over his tongue to get it off. They thought that was the funniest thing down at the shop were I worked.

I remember when the children were born:

Dottie was born 1961 and Rodney in 1962. I stayed in the lobby all night.

This is how we decided how many children to have:

We didn't plan how many children to have, the first baby was a miscarriage. Then we had the two kids, Dorothy came first 1961, and then Rodney in 1962, they were c-section babies. They told us when Dottie was born that she didn't have the right size of head, they told us that she would be either retarded or really smart, well she was slightly retarded, and it was the same with Rodney Jr. he was born with one hip undeveloped, they had to put a horseshoe cast on him when we was about one year old.

I remember my wedding well:

I don't remember it that well. 1961. I almost didn't make it because Frances' two brothers took me out on a bachelors night, I went out and got loaded. They had to come and get me to take me to St.Dominic's. They had these little gates you had to go through to get up to the priest and they said I was swinging on those doors while he was saying the vows...I don't even remember saying I do.

We reconciled after this happened:

After my mother passed away, he would only go out fishing for a short while at a time, overnight. Yeah, we got along better after that. He remarried about 20 years after my mother died to a lady named Mavis, they were only married a few years before he died.

This issue caused a great rift between me and my parents:

My father drank and used rotten language, that caused us not to get along. It made me scared of him, he talked loud because he was partly deaf. He used to bring his buddies home, sitting around the table arguing about money and what to do with the boat.

One of my Dad's strongest traits was:

He was smart, when he wasn't fishing, when he couldn't get out to sea all he would do was read read read. He read westerns and detective stories. He knew a lot about the law, I don't know if it was from the detective stories.

One of my Mom's strongest characteristics was:

She was very kind, she used to take people in who couldn't pay their rent. She would always tell us that no matter how people hurt you, you try to be good to them.