In April of 1984, I visited my friend David Burns in Texas. At the time, he was living with a woman named Lori Bier. I took a photograph of them, and later did this drawing of the two of them.Of course, both Lori and David were (and still are) much prettier than they appear in my drawing. I can't draw people well.
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As I was walking Clyde and Luna this morning, I was thinking how good my life has been.
Born in 1956, I had an older brother, Bruce, who was born in 1954. The family (mother, Charlotte Evelyn Campbell Burton; father, Howard Emory Burton) moved to Riverside, CA, before I was a year old. Joy was born in Riverside in 1958. I had a happy childhood.
I clearly remember lying around in the entryway; I liked to read the newspaper (still do, but don't like having it delivered because it takes time and space and money)... and I would spread the paper on the carpet in the entryway... near the front door, the doorway to the kitchen, and the closet... with the entryway to the living room behind me.
When I was very young, I thought that walls were very thick; YARDS thick. I was puzzled and disappointed when I found out how thin walls actually were.
I liked having an older brother and a younger sister. When I was younger, up until high school, Bruce and I were closer; he had a neat purple StingRay bike with a cool banana seat and he zipped around the neighborhood on his skateboard (I was never co-ordinated enough for a skateboard, rollerskates, or icescates).
When I was a junior in high school and Joy was a freshman, I started hanging out with her crowd (which included girls that I liked being with); the theater crowd. I was too shy to try out for any play, but I thought about it.
Overall, though, I didn't much like high school. I was bored. But I liked certain teachers: Doris Lustgarten, Dorothy Corley (both taught English), Robert Derrick (French), Ron Crandall (science), Ed Lyman (history), and others.
During my senior year of high school, I was part of the "High School University Program." It allowed me to take classes at the nearby University of California at Riverside even before graduating from high school. I took a philosophy course, "Critical Thinking," from Dr. Larry Wright. Larry was friendly with the father of my good friend Shane Harrah because Dr. Harrah was also a professor of philosophy at UCR.
Larry Wright was not only a philosophy professor, but an amateur race-car driver. He drove a Formula B Brabham. My friend Thor Loeffler, whose stepfather (Dr. Ed Clinkscale) taught music at UCR, was more into racing than Shane, so Thor and I hung around with Larry.
I got to sit in Larry's Brabham, but I never got to drive it.
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