And they had weekend field trips. They had two Dodge power wagons and they’d drive the kids out to the East Bay or down down the peninsula, or to the San Bruno Mountains or to Marin County, and we’d collect specimens. And there was this wild guy who was one… Read More
And I was standing there next to him. He says, to expose the beetles, you have to hit the cow pie whack. And of course I had cow shit all over my pants and he had ’em all over his pants. But then he was showing me these beautiful, colorful… Read More
So that was, and then she taught me the multiplication tables, ’cause I was lagging behind in that. So anyway, I kind of got up to speed. I was never a brilliant student or anything like that. I was always distracted by other things that were out of doors. But… Read More
They were very tolerant of anything that I wanted to bring home if it was an animal. And they started to buy me books. I didn’t add that. My mother, my father assigned my mother to teach me how to spell. And what they were doing was the, it was… Read More
But she was a teacher that was so engrossed in these topics herself that her enthusiasm was infectious. And so a number of kids really got into it. And I was one of them. And then from the planets, we got to the gravitation of the moon on the earth… Read More
He understood that boys do stupid things. And he gave me kind of a lecture about honesty and not doing things that you’re gonna regret later on. Anyway, Mrs. Steinberg was a very good science teacher. And the whole class had to learn about, first of all the constellations and… Read More
And I knew I was gonna get it. And I did. When I got home that day, she laid into me, not physically, but shamed me for embarking on a career of criminality. If it’s a felon, you’re a felon. If you forge papers, you cannot sign checks. If it’s… Read More
You know, she kind of got that squinty look like she would get when she was mad, you know?… Read More
I’d like to talk with you about something. So when I heard that, I thought, oh shit, this is bad. Right? And I watched my mother through the window. I could see her face going from smiling to becoming very sour. Read More
I’ll give it to Christen, but do you have a moment to spend with me?… Read More
And she’s all dressed up in her cub Scout uniform, you know?… Read More
So she had her eye makeup on and everything. She was being beautiful for the world to admire. She loved to be admired by men. And Mrs. Steinberg went to the door and let her in. And she said, oh, Mrs. Wemmer, she said, thank you for the lunch. Read More
I said, yes, she did. And I just felt terrible ’cause I was in it deep now. Well, that day I felt so much anxiety that I forgot to take my lunch to school. So my mother comes to school, I see my mother waving to me in the class… Read More
And she looked at the papers and she looked at mine and she said, Christen, did your mother sign this paper?… Read More
And there was seal rock was out there. And the big, big thing was we’re gonna see the sea lions or the, she called ’em the seals and there were stellar sea lions and maybe California’s out there too, but they just looked like big yellow things on the rock. Read More
And the dumb kids who didn’t, who faked, who flunked the spelling test, had to take their spelling test home and get their parents to sign it. That Friday afternoon, we had to take our spelling test home. There was a group of us, a small group of us, and… Read More
Were animals part of your life?… Read More
Yeah, Growing up, I, from the earliest memories, I was fascinated, I mean, really fascinated with animals. I mean, I, I wanted to be around them. I wanted to hold them and, and just seeing them gave me a thrill. And my mother used to walk my, I had two… Read More
I remember that. And then we moved into an apartment. My grandfather owned a flat in San Francisco. It was his first house. And so we moved into a property owned by my grandfather, my father’s father. And I started going to elementary school, which was one block away down… Read More
So he took the family and move back to San Francisco. And his wife was very happy about it because she had grown up in fairly primitive conditions in northern Sweden. He was a Swede too. And she said, I didn’t come to this country to live in a cabin… Read More