Born A Bastard - Swim Upstream: Life Can Be Challenging

By Keoki McIver

Dive deep into a saga that blurs the lines between fiction and reality, spanning a century from the 1850s to 1950s. This tale, inspired by true events, unravels the intricate tapestry of a family I was adopted into – a lineage rife with hedonism, deceit, and dark desires.

Each character in this sprawling family epic is a study in contrasts: driven by their insatiable passions, they navigate a world laden with amorality, neuroses, and intense eroticism. Their stories are a testament to the tumultuous times they lived in, filled with ambition and treachery.

In 1946, amidst the serene backdrop of a Hawaiian beach house, a Tsunami loomed, threatening to engulf all in its path. Entrusted to the wrath of nature at the tender age of four, the intention was clear: my demise amidst the surging waters and the house's obliteration. Yet, fate had other plans. My survival is just one of the many riveting episodes from a past riddled with enigmas.

Venture into a world of intriguing personalities living through history's defining moments. A tale of resilience, lust, and the lengths to which people go to satisfy their own agendas. Embark on this compelling journey, and uncover the depths of human nature and the indomitable spirit of survival.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Mar 1, 2024
• ISBN: 9798886932584

Keoki McIver

Keoki McIver was born in 1942 and adopted by a couple in their late 30s. Keoki was very difficult. (Turned out to be Bi-Polar). They tried to kill him in various ways after the Tidal wave. He grew up with mostly adults around him. At age 10 he was presented with a bully of a step brother. Eventually, they had such a violent relationship – they were sent to separate military schools for high school. Keoki entered the Marine corps after high school for three years and was designated sniper and scuba diver. After service he attended college. He obtained a bachelors of science and a masters of education with graduate work in counseling psychology and creative writing. He worked for Firestone Tire Co. and managed two stores. He quit after four years to teach science. He taught science for four years and helped build a Polynesian voyaging canoe while camped on a deserted island in Canada for four months. Canoe destroyed in a storm ending broken on a beach in Oregon. He spent one season as a ski bum in squaw valley, calif. Then worked as a counselor in a high school. Left to become a Hippie homesteader and built a house out of a 25000-gallon used redwood water tank. He also worked as a private investigator, outside travel agent, and then finished as working as a telescope operator and planetary photographer on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. He spent 20 years as a tax practitioner for business clients. Then he retired to port Townsend, Washington, to sit and watch the view over discovery bay to the snow-capped mountains, where he wrote this book.

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About the Author

Keoki McIver was born in 1942 and adopted by a couple in their late 30s. Keoki was very difficult. (Turned out to be Bi-Polar). They tried to kill him in various ways after the Tidal wave. He grew up with mostly adults around him.

At age 10 he was presented with a bully of a step brother. Eventually, they had such a violent relationship – they were sent to separate military schools for high school. Keoki entered the Marine corps after high school for three years and was designated sniper and scuba diver. After service he attended college. He obtained a bachelors of science and a masters of education with graduate work in counseling psychology and creative writing. He worked for Firestone Tire Co. and managed two stores. He quit after four years to teach science.

He taught science for four years and helped build a Polynesian voyaging canoe while camped on a deserted island in Canada for four months. Canoe destroyed in a storm ending broken on a beach in Oregon. He spent one season as a ski bum in squaw valley, calif.

Then worked as a counselor in a high school. Left to become a Hippie homesteader and built a house out of a 25000-gallon used redwood water tank. He also worked as a private investigator, outside travel agent, and then finished as working as a telescope operator and planetary photographer on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. He spent 20 years as a tax practitioner for business clients.

Then he retired to port Townsend, Washington, to sit and watch the view over discovery bay to the snow-capped mountains, where he wrote this book.

Dedication

November 2010. Today I found out that my writing mentor had died (8 years ago). A knot formed in my stomach and a tear formed in each eye, both dropping and making way for new ones. He told me I hadn’t written about what I knew yet. He told me I didn’t know what I knew yet. He said it would show up someday. I wanted him to read my book when it appeared. I’m sorry he can’t. Dedicated to Asa Baber and my son, Michael, who drowned at age 3, in 1986, and Coco, the cat died the same week as Asa Baber had died. All together at the back fence of Heaven, digging a hole so I can sneak in. Aloha. Asa was my creative writing teacher in Graduate School at the University of Hawaii in 1972-1973.

SEMPER FIDELIS

TO

ASA BABER.

Copyright Information ©

Keoki McIver 2024

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

All of the events in this memoir are true to the best of author’s memory. The views expressed in this memoir are solely those of the author.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

McIver, Keoki

Born A Bastard – Swim Upstream

ISBN 9798886932577 (Paperback)

ISBN 9798886932584 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023916132

www.austinmacauley.com

First Published 2024

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

[phone]

Acknowledgment

Thanks to Jason Shook who transcribed my pilot pen handwritten manuscript into the computer over one summer.

Foreword

This is the story about the people who directly or indirectly influenced my life. My adopted parents left me in the path of a tidal wave. I wondered what type of people could possibly do that. So I looked at all their relatives, friends and associates to see what morals, ethics, or lack thereof could motivate people to kill their child.

Following is a list of them.

Isabel McIver (Canadian): Mother of bastard, Gave baby away in Hawaii.

Hal and Lola Reedy: Adopted the baby.

Dr Paul: Delivered baby bastard.

Wife Marilyn: Adopted Children—Brad + Linda—Mongoloid Daughter—Kaye.

General Tinker (Died at Midway): Head of Army Air Force Honolulu (was to be Godfather of Bastard).

George H. Reedy/Sallie: Parents of Hal and Dorothy

Benedicto Basta Jr/Clorinda: Parents to Lola and Leila (twins) and Guido.

Angel: Guido’s Wife

Daughters: Margreta and Alice

Admiral William R. Sheeley: Second Husband of Leila.

Rainey: First husband of Leila.

Helen Burton: Missionary to China. Returned with warehouse full of Chinese Antiques.

Susan: 16-year-old Japanese girl in concentration camp on OAHU with all of family. Hal used influence and had her paroled to him to be a maid and care for the baby. Hal and Lola were too busy.

Wally Martin: Shell Oil District Mgr. Friend

Joe Manly and Becky: Friends parents of Joe, surf champ.

Roy and Miriam Emery: (Bill—John) (Adopted) Hormel Salesman.

Joe Carvalho and Martha: Friends. His parents owned prosperous department store chain in Islands. Nanine and Jean’s daughters.

Ralph Radio and Milli: Sons Ed and Ted

Duke Kahanamoku: Olympic swimming Champion. Hawaiian hero. Friend of Hal.

Wu Fuck Ho: Chinese immigrant. Tong Lord. Owned Bank.

Seijitsu Yokomura: Senior Jujitsu Master. Keoki’s Jujitsu teacher at age 12.

Bart and Nikki Fun — Firestone Tire Company Rep

Tom Clark: Shell Oil Gen Mgr San Francisco Keoki’s Stepfather. From Tom Clark’s 1st marriage to an alcoholic who he divorced, 1 year after he took on Lola as his mistress. He had three children:

Daughters Jenny Betsy.

Son Tom Clark Jr.

Born a Bastard

Book 1-1

Chapter 1

Oct 1941—Isabel Gibson McIver arrives in Honolulu on the Lurline. As always, it is a very festive occasion: A loud Hawaiian band, Hula girls giving Leis, confetti and streamers cascading from above, naked 10-year-old brown boys swimming for coins in the warm Hawaiian sun. Joyous noisy crowds from the arrivals on deck to the locals spreading Aloha filling the dock in colorful clothing. Everyone was optimistic in imagining their time to come in paradise, lolling on the white Waikiki sand, visiting jungle trails and riding in Outrigger canoes.

The brave only looked forward learning to surf. Eager, happy ship departees. Except Isabel, she basically could be described as moping. Taciturn, she was quiet and kept to herself the whole 5-day cruise from San Francisco. Basically unapproachable. She was from Ontario Canada and that is all anyone knew. She was a 29-year-old mystery women. She could only be described as frozen, stunned, almost in a stupor. She picked up her two bags and disappeared into the crowd.

She took the electric trolley bus up to Waikiki, found a small one-bedroom apartment on the ground floor in an old wooden wood frame building held together by termites holding hands. The paint was shredded up both stories on the sunny side and covered with black fungus on the shady side. There was a small lawn in front of the place, and small yards in back filled with tropical plants—weeds?

To her, nobody bothered with the greenery. She had a small front porch which contained one rocking chair and one small side table and was fronted by a musty railing covered with vines. There was a stain on the green carpet in the main room—normally a problem for her sense of balance and well-being—but she just ignored it and walked on it. She was bland in mind. She had started throwing up in the morning here. She was sick every day on the ship. It had been a horrible experience. She walked down to the corner Japanese market on Kuhio St and stocked up. She bought a carton of Phillip Morris cigarettes and some ginger ale to mix with the Canadian whiskey she brought.

The next morning she dressed, too warmly for Hawaii, and took the electric bus downtown. She found the address in the tattered phone book in her room. She met with Dr Paul and explained she was 3 months pregnant, illegitimately, not believing in abortion, and needed a doctor and parents for her upcoming child. He was in the Canadian Air Force and away in Europe serving his country. The three children were with relatives and were told Mommy was away on a special job. And they all left it at that.

These Scottish descendants were tightly religious and did not tolerate bastards in the true British tradition. Since they were a family of means, she could well afford the six months in Hawaii. She went away as far as she could imagine; Hawaii, then considered a strange and far away paradise. She wanted to dump her burden as far away as possible, so as not to turn up in the future. Make it an American even, but there was no room for her bastard in Canada, or in her family, or in her heart.

She sat rocking in her chair, listening to the rain, sipping on Canadian, smoking one cigarette per hour, day after day after day. She was in no mood for bathing suits or the beach with her growing tummy. She was to see Dr Paul again in December. All she could dwell on was the party to celebrate Battle of the Boyne Day, last July 12th—a traditional Northern Ireland celebration. With her husband away, lonely, (in a crowd with 3 children), she went with a group to the large town celebration, she became separated from her group, drank a little too much, wandered into an unfamiliar pub and sat down in a corner. She remembers meeting the most handsome man she had ever met in her life on the way to the loo. He smiled and walked toward her out of the crowd. He waited outside the loo door for her.

They went outside together and joined the crowds. Whiskey flowed. Beer flowed. Good feelings flowed. The man also proved to be the most entertaining, charming, funny, and interesting man she had ever encountered. He recited poetry to her he made up on the spot. He told her how damn bloody beautiful she was. He told her war stories and adventure stories and charmed her like a wizard. He was a complete and total gentleman all night; at least until approximately 4 in the AM when he persuaded her to go behind a bush and make the beast with two backs. He ravished her from one end to the other at least 3 times before the sun forced them to get dressed. He wandered off… to where? Her husband had been like that before they were married and until she was one third into her first pregnancy.

Since then it had mostly been ‘wham, bam, thank you ma’am.’ This interlude had been quite refreshing for her, with a stranger from out of town, somewhere else, who would never been in her life again. This would be her wonderful secret she would carry to her grave. One night of total freedom, fun and a most wonderful companion. She was so alive and happy that this experience could carry her forever. She glowed. Then she missed her July period, her august period, and her September period. She was throwing up in the morning at the beginning of September. Reality set in. She began to regret the night that fun flowed, whiskey flowed, beer flowed, good feelings flowed, and sperm flowed. She started crying herself to sleep with the first missed period. She quickly made plans and left before anyone would notice her problem beneath her flowing clothes.

So, day after day, she rocked and read. Dr Paul’s office was close to the library, and she stocked up on romance novels. All tame compared to her experience on the Battle of Boyne Day. In the books they don’t get pregnant. She cried a lot. Then, one day she was awakened by the sound of loud machine gun fire—Airplanes—with red suns on the wings—and frightened her entirely. She ran out into the Dec 7 1941’s Sunday morning sun and chaos. She went into the apartment, turned on the radio, crawled into her bed and cried all day. My God, what have I gotten myself and my baby into? A war zone!

Between Dec 7 and April when the baby was due, she endured a life she had never imagined. Paradise was perdition.

One third of the apartment emptied due to the fact that they were Japanese and were taken to the concentration camp on Ford Island. She had to shut her blinds after dark, not letting the slightest glimmer of light show, or the Punee Police (civilian white people and some Japanese Loyal Americans) who patrolled at night would give her a citation. Cars had shades on headlights. She was given a gas mask and a ration card. She could mostly get spam, a meat like product in a can, greasy; rice, a white grease (lard) and yellow powder to make Butter, bread and milk. There were vegetables, though sparse. No Canadian whiskey.

One of her remaining neighbors, a Portuguese, got her some Okole Hau, made from fermented pineapple. She could sometimes get cigarettes, Poi, a paste made from Taro, and to her, good only for wallpaper paste. She ate it anyhow and gulped it down. Dr Paul said it was good for the baby. Dr Paul kept an eye on her and made sure she was OK. He even had her up to his hillside house in Manoa for dinner with a prospective pair of parents one night a few weeks before she was to deliver.

Dr Paul explained that Hawaii was a territory, not a state, and had relaxed adoption rules. She could give her baby away through Dr Paul and the court very simply. Once in a while she had doubts about having her baby in a war zone with strangers, Americans in a foreign land to boot, but in the end—Bastards are not wanted or accepted in Canada. She met Hal and Lola at Dr Paul’s for dinner. Dr Paul paid for a cab for her.

They seemed nice. They all sat in the living room on the main floor on the road. The house then descended 2 floors—next to the dining room and kitchen—next down to a bedroom, workshop and sunroom. She thought it a wonderful house. The views stretched down the Manoa Valley to Waikiki and Diamond head.

Hal was stocky, (said he was a wrestler in college), sort of handsome, and wearing his Punee Force uniform, was an impressive person. He liked women and flirted with Isabel all evening. Lola was a different story. She found Lola to be quite snobby, but very articulate and knowledgeable. She was a very Italian woman in her early Thirties—vivacious and self-centered. Isabel thought all Americans were like that, so she accepted them as good candidates for her baby. Hal even gave her a bottle of Canadian whiskey.

He was a friend of General Tinker of the Army Air Force and had access to steaks and booze. This dinner was steaks, good ones from America! And she figured her baby would be fine. They seemed to have money. Dr Paul recommended them. She agreed to give them her baby. On April 9, 1942, at 8:09AM in the maternity ward of Kapiolani Maternity hospital was born, No Name Bastard McIver—subsequently called Harold George McIver—subsequently called Harold George Reedy subsequently renaming himself H. George Reedy, for reasons that will become evident. Within two weeks she was back on the Lurline headed for San Francisco. She smiled all the way and was quite social on the crossing.

Her passage into Canada at the Michigan Border was recorded before April ended in 1942. She has not been heard of since. Subsequent searches have found no evidence of her birth, Kineardine, Ontario ≈1914 Baptism, Confirmation, Schooling, Marriage or residence—past or present. The only records of her start at the American Border in Michigan in October 1941 and then entry into Canada from Michigan in April 1942. There is no record anywhere of her having existed except for what we’ve seen. She had a passport—but the Canada-US border often acts like just an inconvenience gate between friends. So, she came out of nowhere with a valid existence that lasted only to have a baby and discarded him in Hawaii as locals threw empty unwanted beer cans on Waikiki beach; then her valid existence and all aspects of it disappeared. ‘Off the face of the earth.’

As far as Canada was concerned, she existed the moment she showed up at the border and vanished the next. Then in 1946 Canada became the real Canada instead of the British Canada and anyone born of Canadians outside Canada after 1946 were official Canadians. Anyone born of Canadians outside Canada before 1946 were on their own. They weren’t British and they weren’t Canadian. Since the child was born in an American Territory, he was automatically an American citizen without having to get a Visa and take the test. Thanks America, thought Isabel as she returned to the center—the core—the place—wherever or whenever she came from whatever, she dropped a 7 lb. 11 oz boy and disappeared.

Chapter 2

In the early 1880s out of nowhere, appeared a young man named Person in Wayne, Nebraska. He met and moved in with the George E. Reedys. They had emigrated previously from Sweden and welcomed the new immigrant, also from Sweden. George L. owned a store and was influential in town. He was the Grand Dragon of the local Masonic Lodge and had a ceremonial sword as a Knight Templar to show it. By 1988, Person had changed his name somehow to George H. Reedy and worked his way up to be senior postal clerk in Wayne. At some point, with the Knight Templar sword and a lot of money he emigrated to Oregon with his Brother and settled in Grants Pass. He built a sawmill and met married Sallie Connor, from a local family.

They had 2 children, Harold Connor Reedy, and Dorothy Sallie Reedy. His Sawmill being very successful, he founded a bank, was on the school board and became the Grand Dragon of the local Masonic Temple with his sword. He built a house that now is on the National Historic Places Register and totally restored. He loved dressing up in Turkish looking costumes and parading up the streets of Grants Pass on holidays. He dressed little Harold in very sissy clothes, even for the time. He was a hard-drinking mean son of a bitch. His wife was a cold fish and he partied with his friends. He showed up at all hours of the night bellowing drunk. He was hard on Harold. Harold worked in the sawmill from age 7 to age 11 when George suddenly died of a heart attack at age 55 in 1917. Hal had lost half of his right forefinger at age 10 to the saw blade’s unforgiving, unrelenting, whirring and whining. They found the finger part and just stuck it on in a 90-degree angle to the base. Harold always had a funny handshake.

Sallie remained a sour crone, Dorothy became a very sour crone at a very young age. Her father ignored her and acted as if she didn’t exist. There was a big empty ache in her heart. It grew a walnut shell around it and stuck with her and followed her to her grave. She was spoiled by her mother and was materialistic and a spend thrift. She always wanted the best. She was a snob. She was a strict, tight, uptight crone at an early age. She met and married Ivar Akselsen, and Sallie set him up with the Beechcraft sales and service dealership in Oakland. He was very quiet and mellow and at work or in the backroom when at home.

Dorothy ruled with an Iron Fist. More about them later. Little Harold grew up to be a 230 lb. high school wrestler. He started drinking early, at 12, stealing whiskey from the massive cabinet his father left and Dorothy ignored. Hal (as he liked to be called) with his fancy convertible car, and his heavy drinking and womanizing, and his fancy-dancy clothes, thinking himself to be the most dapper, only lasted one year at Stanford.

He went back and graduated from Oregon University with crappy grades and a very bad personal reputation. Mr. Fraternity ATO. He wrestled in college. He liked to get drunk—actually was always drunk, and liked to pick fights with smaller people. He had a terrible inferiority complex driven into him by his mean, insulting father and strict, ruler spanking mother. He went to work as a salesman for Shell Oil in Sacramento. He found a room in a boarding house with single men and women guests. He was a crude, pushy salesman who tried to pinch the bottoms of waitresses and feel any breast accidently that came close to him. He had no respect for women. They were really only sex objects to him, and he had no morals of ethics as to who he would pursue. He really was a jackass. He met another boarder, Guido Basta, his age, and they raised hell.

Chapter 3

Benedicto Basta fled the Italian Army in 1876. He did the actual thing people joke about (Italian Army Rifle—fired once and all scratched up from being thrown on the ground). He threw down his rifle and fled. Being Sicilian, he liked his Freedom. He did not mind kissing the Don’s ring, but hated taking orders from these idiots they called Officers. They kept trying to get him killed. Screw them. He went home. He was a gruff, tough barrel-chested feisty ruffian, but he hated the Army. Family Basta translates to Bastard in English. Mostly he was preferring to be well dressed, as he was used to being as a Made Man—a street thug, in a fancy suit, obeying his supervisors orders and doing his job.

His family Don sent him by ship to connections in Argentina. Benedicto spent 3 years in a monastery in the boondocks totally invisible. In 1879 he heard rumors of gold in the dirt in the California mountains and left Argentina in early 1879. He outfitted in San Francisco and followed the crowd, literally. He had no idea of what to expect in the gold fields and was amazed and surprised how civilization (supply stores—saloons—whorehouses—barbers—Chinese laundry service—people from all over the world, poking at the earth like Blue Jays trying to be the one to find the worms.

Golden worms; Golden Worms. Worms of Gold. Gold, Gold, Gold. It was a very rough place. No one was friendly except the bartenders, barbers and store owners; and of course the bar girls. Everyone wore guns. Everyone was suspicious. The norm seemed to be that most people found nothing, or almost nothing, just enough for the weekly bath, booze and girl. Then, broke, back to the rocks and streams. Benedicto soon learned that hunting gold sucked! Too much work for so little reward, except for the entirely lucky few! And there were a few that became wealthy.

Mostly the wealth drained from them in rivulets. The California Sierra Nevada was unforgiving, like the sea, but harder when you fall. Benedicto set up a small bar which grew to a saloon with girls and gamblers. Saloon owners took turns sending Bully Boys into break up a place in a fight to put the place out of business, even for the night. Then they got the business for a while. After 6 months Benedicto sold out his entire operation for $10,000 in gold (a lot then) to a Scotch—Irish family group with lots of relatives and lots of guns. He’d had it. He went to Jackson. It had one of the most famous whorehouses in California. He wanted respite there after his ordeal, after ordeal, after ordeal. He met a nice, Italian girl from one of the farms. They married and retired to a small farm, lived a quiet life.

They had one son, Benedicto, who grew up in Jackson. Benedicto Sr Always dressed his best when they went to town shopping on Saturdays and to mass on Sundays. Young Benedicto grew up in the church. He was stocky and barrel chested like his father. He had the same cocky disposition. He got into trouble at school often and barely passed. He wouldn’t learn English. His parents only spoke Italian and that’s good enough for him. He was very strong willed and a hard worker. He loved his parents farm and really learned about vegetables. They died in 1902 in a tragic fire on the farm. Benedicto was 20 years old.

The only thing he saved from the fire was his father’s old metal strong box wrapped in a chain with 3 key locks. No way to get into without 3 keys. Benedicto Sr, his wife and Benedicto Jr all wore one key around their neck with the obligatory St Christopher medal and cross with Jesus dying. He recovered their keys from their remains. He had been down the road romancing a neighbor girl and returned to a finality. Benedicto Sr had a very large copper still behind the house and it just exploded. It just exploded and that was that. Benedicto stood in the ashes with a metal box and 3 keys.

Their small 150-acre farm was adjacent to the massive Gianinni Clan holdings of thousands of acres. They were the most powerful family in the area. (Not Sicilian power, however, and they haughtily looked down on Sicilians. Benedicto Sr had never let on to the Gianinnis that he was Sicilian. They assumed he was from Genoa as he mumbled that name in passing, but not to start a conversation, as he’d never been there. They just accepted him as a poor neighbor who always got by and bothered no one. He once herded back 5 wandering cows (steers?) that were enjoying his wheat field, instead of surreptitiously killing and eating them, as most of the other neighbors would do—they were all jealous of the Gianinnis and thought them too rich, too haughty, uppity, and felt the cows would never be missed.

What they didn’t suspect that every steer, for meat, dairy cow, for milk, goat for both, chicken for eggs and meat and wild rabbit were counted and known by all the Gianinni men and certainly missed. Those thought to steal from the Gianinnis were shunned, somehow denied credit at the stores and bank, crowded out of front half of the pews at mass, and not invited to the yearly roundup, branding, castrating and counting of the animals. The party was ostensibly for everyone within shouting distance but certain families and all their relatives were excluded by non-invitation or rejection at the gate. It was the biggest and best feast in the area. Everyone worked the animals and everyone ate and danced and drank and who knows what. Only Benedicto was held in high esteem by the Gianinnis, of almost all the small farmers/ ranchers in the area. He was an honest man.

So when seed years were short, they shared with Bastas. When the river reduced considerably from its banks, not high enough to feed all the small farms—Gianinnis had spent time and energy tapping the river way up stream. They never wanted for water. Neither did Bastas. Benedicto, dusty, dirty covered in the ashes, burned, broken and devoid of all feelings but the loud screaming in his stomach aching for his beloved parents, lost to him in an instant. A bad surprise. Dazed, numb and tear streaked, the young man appeared at the massive door of the Gianinni homestead. They took him in. So he had no need to open the chest. He was nursed to sanity by the loving hands of the three Gianinni girls, Bena, Gena, and Clorinda. Clorinda fell in love with him. She snuck into his room one night and the healing was complete. He opened the box.

He then left for Sacramento with promises of return. In 1919 Benedicto bought a bar/nightclub with the blessings of his boss. Shortly, prohibition stunned him. It became the most popular speakeasy in Sacramento. He could throw a full keg at a person from one end of the bar to the other. He was a bull. Benedicto and Clorinda had 3 children. Guido, born in 1906, and the twins, Lola and Leila in 1908. They lived in Sacramento. At that time, Clorinda owned 3 small apartment buildings she rented to Italians. Italians were not held in the highest esteem in Sacramento. Benedicto still worked by day as a Carpenter (on his tax return) and hung out at the Club at night. Only Made Men were allowed to socialize in the Club. Benedicto dressed in fancy expensive suits with a vest. His shoes gleamed and he wore a carnation in his buttonhole. He always wore a hat. Fancy dude. Didn’t look much like a carpenter.

They dressed the children well for school, the Epithets. Dago, or Wop, or Grease ball, or Puta, would follow the children home. From a damn Catholic school for crying out loud! All the Christians in town were suspicious, skeptical and afraid of the Dark Italians. So Benedicto picked up his family and moved to Stockton, down the road, smaller, rural, agricultural and oblivious to Italians. He bought a very small, unobtrusive 3-bedroom 1-bathroom house in a line of the same on a rural road. There was a small store on the corner. Benedicto always drove a new car, dressed well, and described himself as a Carpenter. Clorinda raised the children. Also the Nuns.

The nuns were strict and brutal. Rulers. Guido had too much feminine influence in his early life. The girls felt, or were made to feel less than the people who weren’t all Italians. Italians were at the bottom of the ladder. Those early insecurities were to follow, haunt, cripple and drive the three children for the rest of their lives. They reacted in totally individual ways as adults, even the twins. Their outward behaviors were far from the anger they all carried inside eating at them. It crippled them, although they appeared to walk. Nuns with rulers. Boys only wanting to date the girls because they were Italian, strange, and hopefully loose. No serious suitors in the neighborhood. We’ll run into them later on.

Guido was slick. He had a smile that would charm even Dorothy Akselsen. Guido had curly black hair cut neatly. He dressed well as was his father’s tradition. He had a charming manner—one would think him a gentleman. Actually he was a slick, oily son of a bitch. His insecurity on the inside cause him to be outwardly tough to the extreme. When the war came, he enlisted in the Navy. He spent the war in San Francisco teaching physical education to recruits. Go figure. He had already married before leaving Sacramento. Angel was a short, dumpy, cute, feisty, Basque girl from Los Banos. She had a heart bigger than the moon. She was a very likeable person. She and Guido had a combative relationship since inception. They competed as to who could yell the loudest and longest.

There was not one thing in the world they could ever agree on. Not one! They met in Sacramento. She immediately fell Flippo Butterflies, flushing the face in love with the handsome, charming, smooth, wonderful, funny, fun, he-man guy Guido Basta. Guido was basically lonely, having had only superficial relationships with women as he was only trying to bed them. Angel was so easy and convenient and dependable and handy that he overlooked (for a while) the fact that she was not in the top 50% of pretty girls and he considered her fat. Really fat. He, having a pretty perfect body, was a bit ashamed of her. And he let her know it. In front of anyone.

Constantly, which, of course, made her nervous and more insecure and dependent on Guido and she kept eating as a substitute for love and stayed pleasantly plump. Lola lived in the same boarding house with Angel. Lola was studying bookkeeping and Angel was studying Guido. These years were from 1928-1932 in Sacramento. For some reason Hal didn’t meet (Freudian slip—Lola was only Meat to Hal as were all women) Lola until Leila, the twin, came to town to visit. She had impulsively married a creep and they had lived in San Francisco. The marriage had one miscarriage and some infidelities and fell apart after a year and one half. Leila went to Sacramento to put her head on her big brother’s strong shoulder and commiserate. She was down and needed family. I think his name was Norris.

The miscarriage bothered Leila more than the divorce. Although she had a snappy temper, didn’t really like children at all, and really didn’t like them around with all their noise and mess, she wanted to have a baby so badly. Probably out of her need for love. Benedicto really hadn’t been around and it showed inside with hidden needs for love and affection. Leila was a pretty cold fish, however. Both Leila and Lola were considered beautiful raven-haired girls with full bodies and pretty faces. They both had tremendous breasts. Men stared. They both had prominent Italian (Roman, Mideastern, Semiotic) noses, probably from the Gianinni side of the family who were descended from immigrants from Florence, in Northern Italy.

They were beautiful from the front and really obviously Roman in profile. They were knockouts with hourglass bodies. Hal met Leila when she came to see Guido. He could see that she was in no shape emotionally now to have a relationship with anyone. He made the remark to Guido, Too bad you don’t have another one at home like her.

Guido replied that actually—there was one, a twin—and not at home, but on the other side of town. Hal and Guido went over and Hal met Lola. After a while Guido met Angel. They all started going out together. They all got really close. Angel and Lola were friends, but Lola always felt sorry for Angel because she was not so pretty on the outside. She also needed someone to look down on—so a Basque fit the bill. Hal and Guido were still rascals. They were not loyal at all to Lola and Angel. Guido found a woman who would do it for a bottle of whiskey. She gave him crabs in return. He told Hal about the whiskey and the reward, but not about the crabs. So Hal got crabs. Lola got crabs. Angel got crabs. Crabs all over the goddamn place and really hard to get rid of. Guido really thought it all funny. He had a warped sense of humor.

Hal was always drunk and warped as well. What a pair to draw to? A losing hand. Lola needed, I mean needed to be the center of attention, Leila was a bit more serious and more secure. Lola operated mostly out of her left brain, was highly verbal and intellectual beyond her formal education, and tried to dominate conversations with her opinions. All their lives growing up, people paid more attention to Leila and Lola had to fight to get attention. Lola scared men off with her verbiage. She knew more than they did and let them know it.

Hal was always drunk and paid little attention to her verbiage—only her body. Lola loved mirrors, so she loved Hal’s worship of her body. Lola was ambidextrous and could write equally with either hand. Leila operated mostly out of the right brain, was very artistic and in some ways more attractive in personality than Lola. It killed Lola. She was always second fiddle. She was apprehensive of Hal. He was just too dominating and rough and crude and surly.

Chapter 4

So Lola moved to San Francisco to rid herself of Hal and Leila and crabs and the whole unpleasant situation. It was just not how she planned to live. She wanted to marry a rich and powerful man. In fact, when they were teens and first realized the ways of the world, they made a pact to compete to see who could marry the richest and most powerful man who could decorate them with jewels, take them to far off exciting places, present them to the best of people and give them a life where they could forever escape and forget living on the bottom rung of the society where they lived. She had not been proud of her father owning a speakeasy.

Guido reveled in it, spending a lot of time there as a teenager awed by his father. Lola liked it better when he sold it back to the Irishmen who sold it to him in the first place. For the same price, even! It had all been worked out before prohibition between the Italian and Irish bosses. Benedicto had been used. He had money, but not as before. Clorinda collected income from her apartments and Benedicto retired to their simple home in Stockton in the early thirties. He fished for catfish and fed bread to the ducks and was unfulfilled. He had been used by his allies. They threw him out to keep peace with the Irishmen. He made no fuss. He might need them later for Guido. He sat and listened to loud opera when not fishing or sitting hunched over on a bench, throwing bread pieces to wildly quacking ducks, dreaming of things that were not and wouldn’t be. Ever again, Lola only had hints of all that happened from Guido, as Benedicto was closed mouth about everything but eating. She was very happy to see Daddy retired, relaxed and home with mother. She had no idea how sad he was. Her sense of self-esteem grew with his loss. She could no longer stutter over what her father did at parties and was pleased to just say retired. Lola found a position keeping records for a wine merchant. This was in 1933. She liked her boss and liked her job and was content for a while. Rid of Hal.

Chapter 5

Hal was fired from Shell for spending too many drinking lunches with the dealers. The fact that he slept with the District Manager’s wife, getting caught, by one of their teenage children, in flagrant delicto all naked and groaning and sweaty. The 13-year-old girl started screaming like a fire alarm, causing Hal to roll off and fall out of bed and stressed his back to the point that he was stuck laying on his back on the floor between the bed and the wall, stuck and hurting, embarrassed, and bare assed, until his boys showed up to help him up from the floor. He wasn’t too gentle. Hal’s wrestling and weightlifting had taken their toll and his back was broken.

They took him to San Francisco and operated on him, unknowingly planting a bacteria deep in his back muscles, which would plague him for the rest of his life, but give him the perennial excuse that he needed the quart of vodka and bottle of Darvon pills daily to combat the pain in his back. Anyhow, ten weeks later he walked out of the hospital and found a job as a route salesman for McKesson Robbins, a booze distributor. Go figure. He had to find a job, however, as his welcome by Shell Oil, his boss, many cuckolded husbands in Sacramento had expired. No one but a large bunch of smiling women wanted or would welcome him back.

Crude, drunk, loud, pushy, butt patting, womanizer Hal had something that caused so many women to jump in bed with him. So he went to work selling booze, drinking booze and bedding women in San Francisco. He always told people he went to Stanford, neglecting he was only there one year and really did not participate academically. It was an impressive school, he had his perennial convertible car, he dressed well, and fooled people into thinking he was a worthwhile human being. He was a natural salesman. He got and gave crabs a lot. After a short while, all the bartenders, whores, hotel clerks at the St. Francis, and loose women in San Francisco knew Hal. He did not want all that—he thought—he wanted Lola. At least to marry and have at home to go to. He wanted Lola and he damn well would have Lola—for a wife—he had her the other way over and over and over before she left for San Francisco. Somehow he never got her address there—from her or Guido. He was out of touch.

For a while. He established himself in short as a top salesman for McR. (Probably drank half of it)—anyhow, he still pined for Lola. Determined to find her. He heard from Guido. Guido and Angel went to Las Vegas on their honeymoon. Way out in the Desert, still busy with cars and busses, Angel had to pee. Guido parked the car by the side of the road and encouraged Angel to squat and pee in the cover of the open door. Angel got comfortable. Guido drove off leaving her squatting. He turned around up the road and came back. Angel, being a lady, being naïve, being trusting, had no idea Guido would be so mean. She had to stand up, red faced, pee running down her leg, soaking her stockings, wetting her dress, her best dress; son of a bitch Guido finally showed up after a million years. She started sobbing the minute she stood and never stopped, inside, never.

Outside she stopped sometime into their honeymoon days. She did not enjoy her honeymoon. Guido humiliated her. She was angry at Guido. She hated Guido. She would never forgive Guido. Never. She was a good catholic girl raised in Basque tradition and bound by the rules set by the church. No divorce. Ever. So that was that.

She was doomed to argue with and be humiliated by Guido for all time. What had she done to deserve this? Like I said, Guido thought this to be funny, and didn’t change his mind even based on Angel’s over reaction, God, she almost spoiled the whole honeymoon!

Guido snuck out at night after his obligatory exercise with Angel. She’d cry herself to sleep and he’d find a showgirl or two, and once 3 at a time! Now that was sex! He wasn’t a gambler at that time. Just a sex magnet. He was a handsome and dashing and fun and inside a real son of a bitch. He traced Hal through the hospital and called him. Hal thought the honeymoon story hilarious to boot. Guido gave Angel crabs, yet again. They seemed to follow Guido everywhere. Crab man. Yet—he never scratched in public, like the basketball players. No one ever knew about his crabs except Angel who would find out the hard way and cry more, and Hal who always followed Guido, in Sacramento and again in San Francisco into the welcoming arms and tunnels