From the mid-fifties to the early sixties, the space race began in earnest. Families started to buy automobiles frequently and there were even a few rich ones who had two. TV shows became a shared event in America with ads featuring jingles that stayed in your head: “Winston tastes good like a cigarette should,” and “See the U.S.A. in your Chevrolet.” Rock and roll started to be played over the airwaves, and African-American artists and athletes became popular for the first time. Housewives dreamt of owning a dishwasher, and as for me, ages three through eight were spent in Upton, a small town in Southeastern Massachusetts. These were my earliest memories. I remember opening the front door for the first time. My brothers were being watched by my parents’ friends and so I alone was there when we first moved in. My parents bought it from a male gay couple who had recently fixed it up and flipped it. It was an old classic New England salt box farmhouse built around 1760 on what was called a “gentleman’s farm,” which is a property with a lot of land, but few crops or farm animals. In other words, it didn’t function as a true money-making farm, it was all for show. In Texas, they would say my father was “All hat and no cattle.” We had eight acres. The white clapboard-sided house had two floors of living space, plus a full walk up attic, and a basement that could only be accessed from the outside. In addition, the property had a chicken coop and a milk house. There was an old utility section attached to the house that was probably once used to stable horses and carriages. There was a fireplace in every room of the house, though all were closed up. There was no air conditioning and there was only heat on the first floor — provided by cast iron steam radiators. There was only one bathroom and no closets. My bedroom wasn’t even a room, it was a sitting area between my two brother’s rooms on the second floor. On the first floor there was a formal foyer, an eat-in kitchen, formal dining room with crystal chandelier, living room, a sunk-in den, and a full bath. When we moved in, there was a turn-of-the-century player piano in the house. It was in good condition and later we found hundreds of player piano song rolls in the attic in great condition. It was like finding a CD collection from a hundred years ago. On the second floor there was a master bedroom, two bedrooms, a guest bedroom and a large sitting area. The attic was huge, and had rooms where apparently servants lived.
Surrounding the house were a number of curious features. There was a sunken garden, an artesian well, and an entrance to the basement that you needed to step over to get to. There were also a number of Classic New England-style stone walls, a barn foundation, and open fields littered with enormous granite stones, blueberry bushes, and junk cars. The house, which sat high on a hill, was the only one on Wood Street at the time, and was built within several feet of the dusty gravel road. I remember it being quite an event when a car passed by. Across the road were the fields to Kelly’s Farm. Wood Street connected to Mass. Route 140 below and to Prospect Street up the hill. The house could be seen from Route 140 as there were open fields up to the sunken garden which led up to the formal entrance to the majestic house. Being a rural setting, the neighboring houses were pretty far away. I would often stand by Route 140 and name the year, make, and model of cars that passed by. I also liked to look at license plates from distant places. My best friend Johnny Page lived up the hill on Prospect. Another friend was John Kelly, the farmer’s son. He worked all the time, so I rarely had the opportunity to play with him. If you want to hang out with John Kelly you had to work with him, not play. He had a surly grandfather who threatened to shoot us with salt pellets if he found us on their property. I still remember helping John clean the cow barns and bale the hay.

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