My “earth parents" are actually from a much closer and far more alien origin, also known as New Jersey. My father was born in 1939 in Bloomfield NJ to a mostly German, I-coulda-been-a-contender-boxer turned baker, and a stubborn Dutch girl with a penchant for riding Indian Motorcycles. His paternal grandfather was a marine engineer who changed his last name from Franks to Williams, most likely due to anti-German sentiment arising out of the World Wars.
That’s right, my real name (well, not my REAL name…that’s not pronounceable in any terrestrial tongue…and I told you I didn’t want to talk about that) is Kenneth Allen Franks. In truth, it’s probably not even Franks, because I’m pretty sure that my great grandfather’s family Americanized it when they came here from Germany.
I gather that my father didn’t have an ideal childhood. My grandfather was apparently very fond of hanging out with his friends at the local bars, and had a bad temper. Personally, my only memory of this grandfather was that he liked to give me cheese. I never really knew him, because he died from a stroke when I was like 3 or 4.
My dad had one older brother and one younger sister. Unfortunately, his brother, Charlie, had a massive breakdown when he was a teenager, and was institutionalized, after being diagnosed with schizophrenia. His mother spent a lot of time after that taking long bus rides to go visit Charlie in “Overbrook”, which I gather was not a very nice place, in that they gave Charlie shock treatment countless times in a blunt attempt to “cure” him (it didn't work). I’ve heard my grandmother was tough woman, but I can only really remember how kind she was. From what I’ve been told, she did her best to raise her children in a much less than ideal set of circumstances.
I don’t think my dad was into school much. He had several different jobs from a very early age, and developed a real talent for building and fixing things as a young man. He built his own bikes from junk, developed a great skill for woodworking, and learned a lot about cars, especially Chevys.
My dad joined the Navy right after he graduated high school, spent a year in Charleston, SC, training in the usual military subjects, along with electronics, and was then assigned the position of Radio Man on a destroyer that traveled everywhere from California to Australia to the South Pacific and Asia. He has a lot of stories from his four years in the Navy. I get the feeling there are some he will never tell me.
My mom was born in Elizabeth, NJ, in 1943 to a very English and very talented mechanical engineer and an equally English and similarly talented housewife. Did I mention that they were English? Yes, all sorts of lineages are available: folks who came over on the Mayflower, folks who helped form the Harvard Divinity School and establish Unitarianism in the U.S., folks who had large country estates with servants. Booths, and Wares, and Allens (thus my middle name), and lots of other waspy folks.
My mom was the oldest child. She had a brother for a brief time, but he died very young, and no one ever talks about that much. She did permanently end up with a younger sister, who became quite the hippie chick for awhile, then grew up to become a SAS programmer with two kids, living in a swanky town in northern NJ. My mom was somewhat of a tomboy, and an athlete too, excelling at track and tennis. Not at all surprising pastimes for the daughter of an English son. Her parents were good parents from what I’ve heard, and money wasn’t a problem. I have heard her complain that they were not very affectionate, and that they wouldn’t let her stir her ice cream into mush before eating it, because, well, that’s just not proper!At some point my mom became friends with a girl from her elementary school. They got along very well. This girl had one brother who was certifiably crazy, and another one who was uncertifiably so, at least in the tendency he had to take my mother’s shoes and throw them in the trees. Ooh, how she hated him! She plotted and waited patiently, like any girl worth her salt can.
Some time later she graduated high school, and had the occasion to go with her old friend to greet that odd shoe-throwing brother of hers, who had just returned from his tour in the Navy. Hmm, he was CUTE now: bright blue eyes with more than a little mischief shining through them. The gears of an ancient plan creaked back into motion. She would invite him on the local Presbyterian church’s hay ride. Revenge would be hers! She would marry him.
