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For
some unknown reason, throughout my life various circumstances have led me into
unusual situations. Perhaps the drummer I was marching to played Stockhausen on
the snares, but it began early in life. I was born in Dhahran in 1947 where I
lived at 1134. Hamilton House, the palatial, by Dhahran standards, company
guest house was on the next block to the north. It was the only place with a
lawn covered hill in town. Rolling down the slope was
great fun and you’d always come home with grass stained jeans, itching like mad
from the bugs in the grass.
To the
south was a large median with two bachelorette portables. The bachelorette
portables were terrific. If you were a kid, you could go and knock on the door
and almost always some lovely single woman would answer, invite you in and
spoil you with cookies and maybe a Pepsi. A block further on was the recreation
complex: the pool, the bowling alley, the Fiesta room – a snack bar and coffee
shop, the tennis courts, the ball field, the movie theater, and unfortunately
the school.
I
didn’t really have anything against school, my brother and sister went there,
but it did seem somewhat constricting as you had to go every day at the same
time. So when I turned six it was off to the Gulag. However my family was on a
short leave, so I started Kindergarten a week or so late.
