I said at the outset that this would not be an autobiography. That said, I think I need to lay out my personal history (in broad strokes) as well as some of the more interesting facts about my family. Many individuals in my family are long-lived. My great-grandmother (my mother’s father’s mother) died at 108, in the 1980s, my maternal grandmother (mother’s mom) died at 98 (or 96, we’re not sure because she has two birth certificates, which have different years, and she, in later years, couldn’t remember. I’m sure I could probably round it up, if necessary, but for here, it just matters that she lived well into her nineties.
I will only address those people to whom I have personal connections, and I’ll fill in, where needed and possible.
My mother’s mother’s father (my maternal grandfather), Alonzo Springer, and his brothers homesteaded several thousand acres in southeastern North Dakota, just south of Wahpeton. Later, after the town was flooded, my Alonzo sold the city some of his land, and the Wyndmere was relocated adjacent to the family farm (which is no longer a farm). Married three times, my grandmother Margaret Springer was the product of that third and final marriage. My great-grandmother was a fundamentalist from Canada, who, based on all the stories my mother used to tell was crazy. She would bring religious proselytizers in and chat for hours, but would meet a traveling salesman at the back door with a blood butcher knife if she didn’t feel like talking. In 1903, the family moved into a large two-story house built by Alonzo and his brothers. The house was big enough that prior WW II, the upstairs, which contained 4 bedrooms and a large hall that could be used as a room, was converted into a separate apartment, and the younger family lived upstairs, while the grandparents lived on the ground floor. The apartment would later be rented out by my grandmother, usually to teachers moving into the town of roughly 650 people. But, I get ahead of the story. Margaret would live, except for just a few years, the rest of her life in that house. The only reason she didn’t die in the house was that she had been in hospital for months with a broken hip, when she fell (while leaving the hospital), broke the other hip, and eventually died of infections acquired while in care.
Margaret grew up in Wyndmere, and as the daughter of the largest landowner, she knew her privilege. When she left her tiny pond, she was nothing special, but after having been the largest landowner, the principle and librarian (and English teacher) at the High School for almost six decades, she reveled in her status as “Mrs. Matthews” At one point, after retiring, she moved out to California to be closer to her son, Winston (in San Diego) and daughter (my mother, Marie, here in the San Joaquin Valley), and our family. After a few years, she moved back to her house, in her town, and she was happy. One of the two times, prior to that, that she left her corner to North Dakota was to go to college. I believe she went to college in New Mexico, in the 1920s, where she met her soon-to-be husband, Alfred. Somehow, after Marie was born, they moved back to North Dakota, where my grandfather hated life. His father ??? was a museum curator, and his mother, Bessie, was a research librarian. He had, by the time he’d met my grandmother worked in early radio, had made a trip on an ocean liner to Tahiti and Australia to get over a bad love affair (more about that in a different story), and generally lived a fairly cosmopolitan life, which didn’t sit well with him or the local farmers in Wyndmere. He would literally wear spats and gloves to the local diner if they were going out to dinner – something that would have been acceptable in New York, Seattle (where he grew up) or in another metro area, but not in tiny little North Dakota, in the even tinier little town of Wyndmere, populated by tiny little people, most of whom, never traveled any farther than Minnesota, just across the river, where there was greater access to booze, when most places in North Dakota were dry.
Eventually, he left for the War and never returned. He survived. He just never returned to the United States. He remained in Europe, following the completion of World War II, where eventually retired from teaching at the American University, outside of Frankfurt, Germany. He is buried in Barcelona.
My mother, Marie, was born in the 1930s, during the height of the depression. She was born in Tacoma Washington, while her parents were living with his parents. I think, in some ways, this was my mother’s happiest place, as she would often recount stories of her grandfather’s kindness and influence on her life.
I think she was about five when they moved to the house in Wyndmere.
My uncle, Winston Edward Alfred Matthews (no Anglophiles, in this family) who, for his adult life has gone by “Matt” was born seven years later. My grandmother was, of course, a single mother. That matters, as for most of my life my mother was single (more about that), so I think that explains why I’m always more comfortable around women. I prefer female doctors. I would MUCH rather have a female boss. Generally, I relate more, as people, to women, than I do other men. At the Super Bowl party, I’ll be in the kitchen with the wives and girlfriends who don’t give a shit about the game.
My parents (Marie Elizabeth Matthews and Marvin Eissinger) met, like my grandparents, at college. This time, however, it was Valley City State Teacher’s College (now Valley City University). My mother worked part-time at a dress shop, while my dad worked as a soda jerk (yes, they existed) and did construction and other odd jobs. Initially neither of them finished their BA, but they earned their teaching credentials and what was known as a Normal education, which was all that was required, at the time. Both would return to school and eventually get their BA. Marvin was the youngest of 8 children (seven who survived to adulthood). I believe both my paternal grandparents were first generation. My father, like his seven older siblings only spoke German until he started school. While I don’t have a lot of stories about this side of the family, I do have some good ones. Look for Edna. Hopefully, I’ll get that story written, one of these days.
Anyway, Marvin was from the even smaller town of Wishek which is very close to Lawrence Welk’s home base –Google it.
Shortly after I was born, we moved to either Goodrich or Havana, both tiny towns in North Dakota. The reason I say either is that I don’t remember the sequence, and while I have physical memories of both places, I can’t really sort out which is which. When I get to it, I’ll write up those earliest memories, but that’s another story.
By the time I was 4, we had moved to Minnesota. My dad had tired of teaching and Marie wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, so he found a job selling insurance, and she became a 50s housewife – something she was never able to get beyond, even half a century later. We lived, first, in a rental in Minneapolis, and then moved to a slightly larger house in Robbinsdale, a suburb. I’ll talk more about the latter house, as that’s where most of my earliest memories – good and bad – arise.
Upon reaching five, Marie and I were renting a room from one of the Schloemer families in Glenham South Dakota, where she got a job, sufficient to support the two of us, when she left my father. At the time, Glenham was booming, with a total of 167 residents (it’s about 170, today). I started school, in Glenham, and we remained there long enough to have my own mother for my 3rd grade teacher. My mother never drove a car, so living in the middle of nowhere, relying on public transportation in the United States, was an interesting adventure. I have lots of stories from here.
About 1963, Marie married Richard Berg; Fellow teacher and transplant. That marriage lasted about six months. Marie wasn’t ready, and she married for all the wrong reasons – I needed a dad, single woman in the 60s, etc.
I attended 4th grade in Hankinson, ND, where we lived for just the one year. Hankinson is close to Wyndmere, and I think both Margaret and Marie thought it’d be good to be closer. They were both wrong. Having never had a close relationship, proximity didn’t help. I was able to take music lessons from the same nun that had given my mother both voice and piano lessons, when she was a girl.
As the year wound down, Winston called my mother and asked her if she’d like to return to school and finish his degree. He had some extra cash lying around and offered to lend her the cash to return to school. She grabbed it, and we moved back to Valley City, for a year, during which time she finished her degree, and she interviewed for and received two job offers. The first was in Roulette North Dakota, eight miles below the Canadian border, and at the time eleven miles from the town in which my dad was currently working as a principle (he would later be superintendent in Escondido – I think it was). The second was in Hanford, California. We made a trip to Roulette and even looked at houses. She took the California job, sight unseen. That journey is another story – in fact, a whole bunch of stories.
I finished sixth grade at Monroe Elementary, the school where my mother was the Miller-Unruh Reading Specialist, before going to Woodrow Wilson Junior High and attending Hanford High for two years.
Marie met and married Leland Desmond Carlson, from Kingsburg, and we moved to Porterville, where he was the controller for Walls Vet supply. I finished High School, there, and started college, however, most of my units were theater and music, and really weren’t academic classes as much as they were supplemental and fun.
It was in Porterville where I lost my front teeth, in an auto accident. Unable, for several years to play trumpet, I left band and poured all my efforts into theater, even writing and producing my own, one-act play, my senior year. Six weeks after graduation, I was in my apartment on Sanborn Street, in Hollywood, getting ready for my first semester at Los Angeles City College (I only completed one full semester, before having to run back to the Valley after a disastrous love affair).
By that time, 1976-77, Marie and Lee were living in Visalia. I attended the College of the Sequoias (COS) for a couple of semesters and a summer. That was where I took my first cultural and physical anthropology classes, as well as my first Pre-Columbian Art History class, subjects to which I fell madly in love, but wasn’t ready to commit to the years of education needed to become a practitioner in any of those things. My folks were not having a good time, with their marriage, at that time, so it was an uncomfortable year. Another bad love affair, and I was ready to move on.
I moved to the coast – well, I say I moved, but it was the case where I decided to move. Lee and Marie were going to separate, so she was going to come with me, and then they decided to reconcile, and we all moved there.
I attended Cuesta college where I met Jena’s mother, Kathy Barrett (lots of stories, there).
By 1979, Lee and Marie had moved back to Hanford and I had a small apartment in Atascadero, where I worked at the brand new radio station KIQQ, starting with them three days before they even went on the air.
Three months, later, I was fired. That’s when I learned the only way to leave a radio job is to be fired.
Almost five years, to the day, I was hired at KTIP/KIOO, in Porterville, and had to return to the God-forsaken town, where I worked for over a year.
It was while at KIOO that Jena was born. Kathy was living in Fresno, where the baby was born and she was working as a waitress at Sambo’s while finishing her Licensed Vocational Nurse (LVN) certificate. After that, our relationship fell apart and we went our separate ways.
I resigned on my birthday, and made my first trip to Ohio to the Recording Industry Workshop, where I studied recording technology in both analog and digital multi-track studios (pre-personal computers).
I moved back to Hanford, to stay with Lee and Marie. I spent a year or more working through a depressive episode, triggered by the adoption of my daughter and the breakup of my relationship with Kathy.
For over a year, I wrote lyrics and poetry, to try to recapture my self. Eventually, I recorded many of those songs, went to work at KBOS, where I worked for more than a year – and where Corkey first encountered me (on air).
In 80, I went to KKDJ and attended Central California Commercial College (4 C’s). It was there I met Corkey and everything would change.
By 1981, I was working as a computer programmer, here in Fresno. A few years later, I moved for a year to Upland, near Ontario. During that time, the distance was too much on our relationship, and Corkey and I drifted apart. During the 18 months of our breakup, I moved back to the Valley, worked at KCLQ, had a 10-month affair with an absolute lunatic (Edith “Dee” Carey), left radio, and moved to SoCal to work at UCLA.
Shortly after I moved, Cork and I reunited, and dated, long distance for a couple of years before deciding the best thing to do was to stop messing about and we got married. We moved from my studio apartment to a slightly larger one-bedroom, in the same building, before moving to a much larger apartment, just three doors north of the original building, where Nik was born.
The Northridge Earthquake took a major toll on Corkey. Her depression had been worsening, but we kept trying to deal with it. When the tremblers hit, it scared her so badly that for months if an RTD bus came by, on the street, she would dive under a table. I had to get her away from the San Andres Fault, so we moved to Cleveland.
Two years later, we returned to the San Joaquin Valley, temporarily, and bought the house on Normal.
As I write this, we’ve been in this house for just over twenty-four years. I’m convinced, I’ll die here, and Nik will probably live here, most of his life.
I will only address those people to whom I have personal connections, and I’ll fill in, where needed and possible.
My mother’s mother’s father (my maternal grandfather), Alonzo Springer, and his brothers homesteaded several thousand acres in southeastern North Dakota, just south of Wahpeton. Later, after the town was flooded, my Alonzo sold the city some of his land, and the Wyndmere was relocated adjacent to the family farm (which is no longer a farm). Married three times, my grandmother Margaret Springer was the product of that third and final marriage. My great-grandmother was a fundamentalist from Canada, who, based on all the stories my mother used to tell was crazy. She would bring religious proselytizers in and chat for hours, but would meet a traveling salesman at the back door with a blood butcher knife if she didn’t feel like talking. In 1903, the family moved into a large two-story house built by Alonzo and his brothers. The house was big enough that prior WW II, the upstairs, which contained 4 bedrooms and a large hall that could be used as a room, was converted into a separate apartment, and the younger family lived upstairs, while the grandparents lived on the ground floor. The apartment would later be rented out by my grandmother, usually to teachers moving into the town of roughly 650 people. But, I get ahead of the story. Margaret would live, except for just a few years, the rest of her life in that house. The only reason she didn’t die in the house was that she had been in hospital for months with a broken hip, when she fell (while leaving the hospital), broke the other hip, and eventually died of infections acquired while in care.
Margaret grew up in Wyndmere, and as the daughter of the largest landowner, she knew her privilege. When she left her tiny pond, she was nothing special, but after having been the largest landowner, the principle and librarian (and English teacher) at the High School for almost six decades, she reveled in her status as “Mrs. Matthews” At one point, after retiring, she moved out to California to be closer to her son, Winston (in San Diego) and daughter (my mother, Marie, here in the San Joaquin Valley), and our family. After a few years, she moved back to her house, in her town, and she was happy. One of the two times, prior to that, that she left her corner to North Dakota was to go to college. I believe she went to college in New Mexico, in the 1920s, where she met her soon-to-be husband, Alfred. Somehow, after Marie was born, they moved back to North Dakota, where my grandfather hated life. His father ??? was a museum curator, and his mother, Bessie, was a research librarian. He had, by the time he’d met my grandmother worked in early radio, had made a trip on an ocean liner to Tahiti and Australia to get over a bad love affair (more about that in a different story), and generally lived a fairly cosmopolitan life, which didn’t sit well with him or the local farmers in Wyndmere. He would literally wear spats and gloves to the local diner if they were going out to dinner – something that would have been acceptable in New York, Seattle (where he grew up) or in another metro area, but not in tiny little North Dakota, in the even tinier little town of Wyndmere, populated by tiny little people, most of whom, never traveled any farther than Minnesota, just across the river, where there was greater access to booze, when most places in North Dakota were dry.
Eventually, he left for the War and never returned. He survived. He just never returned to the United States. He remained in Europe, following the completion of World War II, where eventually retired from teaching at the American University, outside of Frankfurt, Germany. He is buried in Barcelona.
My mother, Marie, was born in the 1930s, during the height of the depression. She was born in Tacoma Washington, while her parents were living with his parents. I think, in some ways, this was my mother’s happiest place, as she would often recount stories of her grandfather’s kindness and influence on her life.
I think she was about five when they moved to the house in Wyndmere.
My uncle, Winston Edward Alfred Matthews (no Anglophiles, in this family) who, for his adult life has gone by “Matt” was born seven years later. My grandmother was, of course, a single mother. That matters, as for most of my life my mother was single (more about that), so I think that explains why I’m always more comfortable around women. I prefer female doctors. I would MUCH rather have a female boss. Generally, I relate more, as people, to women, than I do other men. At the Super Bowl party, I’ll be in the kitchen with the wives and girlfriends who don’t give a shit about the game.
My parents (Marie Elizabeth Matthews and Marvin Eissinger) met, like my grandparents, at college. This time, however, it was Valley City State Teacher’s College (now Valley City University). My mother worked part-time at a dress shop, while my dad worked as a soda jerk (yes, they existed) and did construction and other odd jobs. Initially neither of them finished their BA, but they earned their teaching credentials and what was known as a Normal education, which was all that was required, at the time. Both would return to school and eventually get their BA. Marvin was the youngest of 8 children (seven who survived to adulthood). I believe both my paternal grandparents were first generation. My father, like his seven older siblings only spoke German until he started school. While I don’t have a lot of stories about this side of the family, I do have some good ones. Look for Edna. Hopefully, I’ll get that story written, one of these days.
Anyway, Marvin was from the even smaller town of Wishek which is very close to Lawrence Welk’s home base –Google it.
Shortly after I was born, we moved to either Goodrich or Havana, both tiny towns in North Dakota. The reason I say either is that I don’t remember the sequence, and while I have physical memories of both places, I can’t really sort out which is which. When I get to it, I’ll write up those earliest memories, but that’s another story.
By the time I was 4, we had moved to Minnesota. My dad had tired of teaching and Marie wanted to be a stay-at-home mom, so he found a job selling insurance, and she became a 50s housewife – something she was never able to get beyond, even half a century later. We lived, first, in a rental in Minneapolis, and then moved to a slightly larger house in Robbinsdale, a suburb. I’ll talk more about the latter house, as that’s where most of my earliest memories – good and bad – arise.
Upon reaching five, Marie and I were renting a room from one of the Schloemer families in Glenham South Dakota, where she got a job, sufficient to support the two of us, when she left my father. At the time, Glenham was booming, with a total of 167 residents (it’s about 170, today). I started school, in Glenham, and we remained there long enough to have my own mother for my 3rd grade teacher. My mother never drove a car, so living in the middle of nowhere, relying on public transportation in the United States, was an interesting adventure. I have lots of stories from here.
About 1963, Marie married Richard Berg; Fellow teacher and transplant. That marriage lasted about six months. Marie wasn’t ready, and she married for all the wrong reasons – I needed a dad, single woman in the 60s, etc.
I attended 4th grade in Hankinson, ND, where we lived for just the one year. Hankinson is close to Wyndmere, and I think both Margaret and Marie thought it’d be good to be closer. They were both wrong. Having never had a close relationship, proximity didn’t help. I was able to take music lessons from the same nun that had given my mother both voice and piano lessons, when she was a girl.
As the year wound down, Winston called my mother and asked her if she’d like to return to school and finish his degree. He had some extra cash lying around and offered to lend her the cash to return to school. She grabbed it, and we moved back to Valley City, for a year, during which time she finished her degree, and she interviewed for and received two job offers. The first was in Roulette North Dakota, eight miles below the Canadian border, and at the time eleven miles from the town in which my dad was currently working as a principle (he would later be superintendent in Escondido – I think it was). The second was in Hanford, California. We made a trip to Roulette and even looked at houses. She took the California job, sight unseen. That journey is another story – in fact, a whole bunch of stories.
I finished sixth grade at Monroe Elementary, the school where my mother was the Miller-Unruh Reading Specialist, before going to Woodrow Wilson Junior High and attending Hanford High for two years.
Marie met and married Leland Desmond Carlson, from Kingsburg, and we moved to Porterville, where he was the controller for Walls Vet supply. I finished High School, there, and started college, however, most of my units were theater and music, and really weren’t academic classes as much as they were supplemental and fun.
It was in Porterville where I lost my front teeth, in an auto accident. Unable, for several years to play trumpet, I left band and poured all my efforts into theater, even writing and producing my own, one-act play, my senior year. Six weeks after graduation, I was in my apartment on Sanborn Street, in Hollywood, getting ready for my first semester at Los Angeles City College (I only completed one full semester, before having to run back to the Valley after a disastrous love affair).
By that time, 1976-77, Marie and Lee were living in Visalia. I attended the College of the Sequoias (COS) for a couple of semesters and a summer. That was where I took my first cultural and physical anthropology classes, as well as my first Pre-Columbian Art History class, subjects to which I fell madly in love, but wasn’t ready to commit to the years of education needed to become a practitioner in any of those things. My folks were not having a good time, with their marriage, at that time, so it was an uncomfortable year. Another bad love affair, and I was ready to move on.
I moved to the coast – well, I say I moved, but it was the case where I decided to move. Lee and Marie were going to separate, so she was going to come with me, and then they decided to reconcile, and we all moved there.
I attended Cuesta college where I met Jena’s mother, Kathy Barrett (lots of stories, there).
By 1979, Lee and Marie had moved back to Hanford and I had a small apartment in Atascadero, where I worked at the brand new radio station KIQQ, starting with them three days before they even went on the air.
Three months, later, I was fired. That’s when I learned the only way to leave a radio job is to be fired.
Almost five years, to the day, I was hired at KTIP/KIOO, in Porterville, and had to return to the God-forsaken town, where I worked for over a year.
It was while at KIOO that Jena was born. Kathy was living in Fresno, where the baby was born and she was working as a waitress at Sambo’s while finishing her Licensed Vocational Nurse (LVN) certificate. After that, our relationship fell apart and we went our separate ways.
I resigned on my birthday, and made my first trip to Ohio to the Recording Industry Workshop, where I studied recording technology in both analog and digital multi-track studios (pre-personal computers).
I moved back to Hanford, to stay with Lee and Marie. I spent a year or more working through a depressive episode, triggered by the adoption of my daughter and the breakup of my relationship with Kathy.
For over a year, I wrote lyrics and poetry, to try to recapture my self. Eventually, I recorded many of those songs, went to work at KBOS, where I worked for more than a year – and where Corkey first encountered me (on air).
In 80, I went to KKDJ and attended Central California Commercial College (4 C’s). It was there I met Corkey and everything would change.
By 1981, I was working as a computer programmer, here in Fresno. A few years later, I moved for a year to Upland, near Ontario. During that time, the distance was too much on our relationship, and Corkey and I drifted apart. During the 18 months of our breakup, I moved back to the Valley, worked at KCLQ, had a 10-month affair with an absolute lunatic (Edith “Dee” Carey), left radio, and moved to SoCal to work at UCLA.
Shortly after I moved, Cork and I reunited, and dated, long distance for a couple of years before deciding the best thing to do was to stop messing about and we got married. We moved from my studio apartment to a slightly larger one-bedroom, in the same building, before moving to a much larger apartment, just three doors north of the original building, where Nik was born.
The Northridge Earthquake took a major toll on Corkey. Her depression had been worsening, but we kept trying to deal with it. When the tremblers hit, it scared her so badly that for months if an RTD bus came by, on the street, she would dive under a table. I had to get her away from the San Andres Fault, so we moved to Cleveland.
Two years later, we returned to the San Joaquin Valley, temporarily, and bought the house on Normal.
As I write this, we’ve been in this house for just over twenty-four years. I’m convinced, I’ll die here, and Nik will probably live here, most of his life.
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