Chapter 2, Belief Systems

We have fully developed belief systems, through our own observations.
I once heard it said that everything, we know we learn from our mothers. We sometimes talk about our lives in terms of our mother tongue. Is it possible that at least initially our belief systems are the very ones implanted by our mothers? Is it possible that we receive these initial belief systems genetically from before birth?
In my case, my belief system, which resembled my mother’s, became one of ever-changing rules and hidden truths and altered stories from my family. The pattern, it seemed, was to say or do whatever you need to get to where you are going.
As an adult I get it. It is exactly that behavior that is at the very core of our human nature. It was our parents, elders and forefathers who tried to instill some semblance of moral character. Families were supposed to shared truths, honesty and good behavior. They taught to us through their stories and guidance. At least that seemed to be the case when I was growing up. Most parents seemed to be focused on their own versions of truth and honestly. I’ve come to understand that in today’s world those common beliefs and behaviors are gone, probably forever.
I followed an entirely different path from the time I was a child well into adulthood. I always seemed to go in the opposite direction. I wasn’t a good follower and I really did not play well with others. To this day, I have trouble following directions and I hate authority. These traits became a lifelong curse or blessing, depending on your vantage point. As I reviewed my life to write this work, I realized that I had a life described best as “I was there but I was just passing through.”
So much happened during that time. I almost don’t know where to start. Both my parents were working parents. I had a grueling schedule commuting to St. Bernard’s. Dad was still trying to run a big gentleman farm. I spent so much time without any adult supervision, I got away with so much.
This period was when I developed the core of my belief systems, which I maintained well into adulthood. What I did not know, something I should have had understood, something that was never taught to me, was karma. Ultimately, I paid dearly for all the misdeeds of my youth. The karma cost began showing during my time in Vegas; big time in West Memphis, again in Santa Fe and finally in the early days of living in Southern California were huge. Karma is like a bank account. Whatever you deposit earns interest and even if you are not ready for a withdrawal, it comes shooting back, sometime literally. 
It was during this early period in my life, that my own initial belief systems took over like an illness and seriously warped my behavior. It began to steer much of my adult life. I often look back and feel tremendous gratitude that somehow with all the really bad stuff I was involved in for at least twenty years, maybe thirty, I survived to old age.
By all counts - after major battles with various addictions, three separate gun incidents and being involved with two people who ended up murdered - I probably should been put in jail or dead. It is quite impossible to understand just how or why my twisted, winding road eventually brought me to a happy marriage, raising two reasonably well-adjusted normal children and then finally starting at age 50 to begin leading an honest and productive fulfilling and happy life.
It was during the school year of ‘63/’64 that my teacher, Blair Holley, spearheaded a very aggressive effort to have me committed to the mental institution called Greystone. You may remember that place. This was after years of being a disciplinary problem in school, which often resulted in one form of lock-up or another.
In the fall of that year, I spent many an afternoon being “evaluated” as to my mental state. It became the responsibility of the doctors at Greystone to develop a methodology and action plan for the school and the school board to use to deal with a teen like me.
In those days, Greystone was truly an awful place, very much like the mental hospital as portrayed in “One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest,” complete with doctors, a brutal nursing staff and inmates who were forever on the lookout for incarcerated helpless young victims to abuse.  Once my evaluations were completed the lead doctor, Dr. Wolf, flatly declared that for me, at least at that moment, being locked up in a mental institution was not necessary. He knew I was having behavioral problems, but felt that they were not criminal or serious enough to warrant a life of institutionalization.
As an adult with many years of therapy under my belt, I now look back and wonder why Dr. Wolf did not recognize the symptoms of abuse, physical, mental, emotional and yes, sexual abuse?  At any rate, the school did not get the answer they wanted. So, they had to devise yet another plan.  They still persisted in trying to rid themselves of a serious juvenile delinquent problem child.
The school Principal, Paul Wert, my seventh-grade home room teacher, Blair Holley and the Board of Education devised a plan “B” to deal with their Jimmy Stone problem. Their next step was to recommend I be sent to the state-run lock up school, Bonnie Brae School. Look them up. They were and still are a prison school for juvenile social misfits. But at the time, I had yet to commit any serious unlawful crimes.
That was a very scary day, the day my father told me to pack my clothes and took me there for a visit. The place totally scared the shit out of me because it was a real prison. It was enclosed in chain-link fence and had a type of barbed wire on top and a uniformed guard at the gate. The population was predominantly black. I was introduced to the warden, shown classrooms, the dorms and the cafeteria. Even at that age, I fully understood what that environment meant.
The child inmates knew I was a potential new ward of the state of New Jersey. They had never seen me before, but they all knew my name. How did that happen? Talk about inside information. From behind a fence, they started cat-calling my name and screaming what they would do to me once I was admitted.
This is the stuff scary movies are made from. I was pretty intimidated. I begged, let me say that again, I begged my father not to leave me there. I swore to change my behavior. Thankfully, my dad was beginning to show some heart and love and wasn’t willing to give up on me quite yet. Certainly not just because everyone at the school thought it was the right course of action. We went home; Dad and Mom looked for another solution.
The next best acceptable plan to the school board was for my parents to assume responsibility for my education, sign a release of liability so the school could write me off. Mom and Dad had to find and send me to a “private” school equipped to deal with problem little men. I have no idea how they decided on St. Bernard’s School. If they had just sent me to Morristown Prep, I would have gone to school with many of my grammar school buddies.
They probably chose it because it was a farm school not far from our first farm, next to what became Trump’s New Jersey property. We visited and met the Head Master, one Mr. Durwood. He was an older man with longish wavy grey hair. His wife worked in the school office as well. There were less than 100 boys in the school at that time and I think three of them were Durwoods’.
It was a beautiful sprawling country property that at one time was a 208-acre dairy and horse farm. The ownership probably went back to Revolutionary War times. The dairy part belonged to someone else and was still a working dairy farm, but the horse part was still important to the school.
Rich people have horses. They wanted their spawn to be like them and ride. Every spring the school would put on a horse show, probably to attract new students. The misfits like myself with no horse experience were forced into slave labor on the day of the show. The entire school was made up of misfits, both adult and children. Just picture “Dead Poet’s Society” with weapons. Well, knives and fists.
I took the entrance exams on November 23, 1963, a very “auspicious” day, as I have mentioned before. Shortly after that visit, my folks and the Harding Township School negotiated an agreement. I would be sent to St. Bernard’s School in Bedminster instead of a lockup school, beginning September 1964. At the time it was a considered a very good school. Dad continually told me I was his Cadillac because it cost the same as a new Cadillac each year to send a single boy to St. Bernard’s. However, the it had a good track record of turning around troubled students and getting many into respectable colleges, and my parents were determined that all their children would be college educated.
On the day I took the entrance exams, my parents and I were given a tour of the school. Mr. Durwood was very clear; if I was going to be a student at St. Bernard’s I would have to attend mass every morning in the school chapel with the other boys. As we entered the church, we noticed a beautiful painted triptych of the crucifixion. Dad took one look at the painting and turned around and said to me “See that guy up there on that cross? If you fuck up one more time that’s going to be you. You got it?” Having just survived the visit to Bonney Brea, I took him very seriously. Of course, it didn’t take long for my Gollum to reappear. 
As a side note, Harding Township School wasn’t quite done with little Jimmy Stone. Blair Holley had one more surprise up his sleeve, one very painful parting shot that would haunt me for the next five years. I had been accepted into the St. Bernard’s School for “BAD” boys. But I would not be starting until fall of the next year. Blair had some vendetta, some twisted axe to grind. He wanted to make sure that I remembered him. In the spring semester of that year as I was approaching escape velocity, at the end of the school year, he failed me in every subject except gym, in which he gave me a “D.”
Someone, please explain this to me. How does a student spend five months in school, attending classes five days a week, and no one, I mean no one, notices that the child is failing EVERY subject? That day goes down as one of the most painful days of my life. To make matters even more painful, no one even seemed to care. Not my parents, not my siblings, no one in the administration at the school. No one was held accountable or responsible, and in an instant a child’s future was flushed down the drain and out of the school, problem gone.
During that summer the depression became so deep that when I subsequently tried to hang myself. I put a rope in the maple tree out in front of our home. One end was tired to the trunk. On the other end I made a noose, got a chair, stepped up on it, put the noose over my head and jumped off. no one even asked why. No one seemed to care. It was the moment that I realized that I wasn’t connected to anyone, which freed me to do whatever I wanted without serious consequence. I survived the incident a changed person. The die was cast on that very fateful day. I became free to be whoever I wanted to be. But, as fate may have it, forty years later, Blair Holley would once again show up in my life. May that bastard rot in hell forever.
What did I learn from St. Bernard’s School, a school full of people just like me? (Keep in mind that it was an all “boys” school, no girls) I learned to be a very good thief, a convincing liar, and an intimidating bully, all great skills that served me well for many years. It was a great primer for the life I was about to start.
When I started at St. Bernard’s, I was the biggest kid in my class. (Inset SBS picture here) Just look at our yearbook. In my class, I was the bully. The students at St.  Bernard’s ranged from middle schoolers to graduating high school. The environment was dangerous for the younger boys, especially for the fat obnoxious ones, for which I more than qualified.
Two things happened during this time. First, I got pretty good at taking the punch and coming right back with a punch, though I wasn’t really the boxing type. My usual way to deal with the bigger bullies was to just get really close, grab ahold of them real tight and then start to bite them and bite hard. Being a farm kid, I wasn’t afraid of the blood. This style of self-defense works every time. 
The other major skill I learned was how to negotiate. I found that because I always had money or food or both, that often I could avoid a fight by making a deal. My ability to understand the cause of a confrontation translated very nicely when I started to date. But it really came in handy years later in my business life. I am still a very skilled negotiator, except with my wife.
There was also much good that happened there. Mostly I was somewhat insulated from vengeful teachers and finally had a school principal who believed that I was not mentally ill. John Durwood had three sons of his own. He also was older and had a very good understanding of young men and had a personality that did not mind bending the rules for the good of the child. Make no mistake, with his big deep voice, Mr. Durwood could be a very stern Headmaster. I believe that he thoroughly enjoyed his job as headmaster. In an all-boys school with boys between 12 and 18 there was always some sort of excitement. Having one more little Jimmy Stone there just added another layer.
Fall of 1964, I’m a new student, I’m in science class with Mr. Fox, who himself was sort of a misfit. In fact, most of the teachers were also adult misfits. I think most of them for one reason or another could not work in the “public” education system.
I liked to sit at the back of the class because you could get away with all kinds of mischief. I was always armed, with matches and a knife. I had been carrying those tools since I was about eight years old. I was always using them. Even in those days fire was my friend. In the back, I would entertain myself during class by trying to light a match with my left hand while I used my right to write in my notebook at my desk. I wanted to look like I was taking notes. Well, you guessed it; I caught the papers in my desk on fire.
I tried desperately to put the fire out before anyone noticed. The fire got big, fast. Jack Stableman, the who sat next to me got scared and started screaming “Fire! Fire!” It really wasn’t that bad as fires go, certainly not my biggest. Just some papers and the wooden desk, nothing like the gasoline fires I usually set on the farm and certainly nothing like the fires that I play with now. All the same everyone freaked out because most people are afraid of fire. Someone ran over and pulled the fire alarm and Mr. Fox ran into the hallway, grabbed the nearest fire extinguisher, came back and threw my desk over-which spilled the fire and fuel all over the floor making it worse.
Luckily for me, Mr. Fox put the flames out before they spread to the rest of the school. Meantime the entire school was evacuated to the front lawn. I was marched outside in front of everyone on my way to Mr. Durwood’s office for “counseling.”  
At that point every person at St. Bernard’s knew my name and “pyro”- became my new nickname at St. Bernard’s. Mr. Durwood was really very cool about the whole episode. I sat in a big old well-worn leather wing-backed chair in front of his desk. Everyone at St. Bernard’s was called Mister. In a very loud and foghorn-like voice filled with exasperation; he asked me, “Mr. Stone, can you please explain to me just how that fire got started in your desk?”
With a straight face, in my best lying voice, with absolute conviction I answered, “Yes, sir, I can. Do you know what spontaneous combustion is?” He just shook his head and asked me to please explain to him exactly what I thought spontaneous combustion was and just why did I think that was the cause of this fire?
After a few minutes I realized I could not bullshit him and went silent, waiting to hear what my punishment would turn out to be. In an act of complete compassion and understanding he said, “Just stop playing with matches while you are here at school. I don’t care what you do at home. Mr. Stone here at St. Bernard’s, matches are off limits. Now stand up and empty your pockets.”
As far as I know the school never told my parents about the incident and for the first time that I can remember, I learned to respect and trust an elder. He retired after that year. Often throughout the year when we would pass each other on campus, he would just look at me sternly and nod. I fully understood exactly what that nod meant and did my best not to light any more fires on campus during that year. But there was still much more mischief and trouble for me to create before I finally got out of St. Bernard’s.
The next year was fairly uneventful at St. Bernard’s and in life in general. The move to a new school proved to be a godsend for me. I was treated like a human being and I was by far not the worst kid there. The St. Bernard’s school bus would pick me up in the morning right at our front door and drop me off at our front door on Pleasant Plains Road in the evening. Not much chance of trouble there.
By then I had learned to hitchhike. I was pretty good at getting a ride and getting just about any place I wanted without my parents knowing I was gone. I even got good at timing. I can’t remember not getting home in time for dinner or being missed. Hitchhiking was much safer in those days and sometimes I had a good enough story that the drivers would even take me all the way to wherever I was going. Sometimes they even gave me money, ostensibly for food. From a young age I was good at playing the sympathy card.
It was the following year that things started to get really screwy, again. First off, our family was forced out of our beautiful New Vernon farm. There are lots of stories about this incident. The short version was that then-Congressman Peter Frelinghuysen and Governor Robert B. Meyner mounted an all-out effort to block the Tristate Airport Authority from taking over the “Great Swamp” and turning it into a new jetport. With some research you can find the entire story published in the book “Saving the Great Swamp” by Cam Cavanaugh.
To pull off his plan, the State of New Jersey had to purchase about 11,000 acres of the swamp and then donate it to the federal government - specifically as a national land preserve. The state sent out agents to intimidate the landowners to sell their property or face a state level court battle for eminent domain and risk getting nothing. My parents caved rather quickly. I think my mother saw shadows of the Nazi occupation of her home country Romania and feared the power of the government. In a flash our entire existence on Pleasant Plains Road in Harding Township among the wealthy white folks of Northern New Jersey was over. The state came in and razed our house, all the barns and every trace of the Stone family farm. A few farmers were able to stand up to Congressman Frelinghuysen and his thugs. But not for long, those few families got to live out their lives in the great swamp but in the end the properties became the property of the state and finally the U.S. Government.
Forty years later, the properties bordering the “Great Swamp Preserve” are now worth millions of dollars per acre. In fact, Trump’s New Jersey property in Bedminster is not very far from my dad’s old farm.
My mother, as a Holocaust refugee, always looked to make the best of a bad situation and convinced Dad that with the money the state gave them, they could find an even bigger farm way out in the country further north. Indeed, Dad went from 110 acres to 140 acres. But the new farm was up in Sussex County, really in the boonies. It was a beautiful piece of property and there were actual working farms on all sides. It should have been a great move and in most ways, it was for everyone in the family, except me. That move sent my life once again spinning out of control.
First thing, there was no bus service to St. Bernard’s from Sussex county, so every morning I had to get up at 5:00 AM, eat breakfast and have my parents drive me 45 minutes to get to school and drop me off at about 6:30 AM. They would then drive back to Dover where they were working for the Department of Defense as engineers. No one ever came to the school until about 8:00. Mom and Dad made arrangements with school to leave the lower locker room door unlocked so I could come in from the cold and sit in the locker room to do my homework before school. Yea, right. That was a brilliant idea. It was really a downright stupid idea.
I was a 15-year-old sexually-driven young man, so you know exactly what happened first thing every morning. Then I needed to find something else to entertain myself until 8:30 when the school finally woke up. You would be surprised at the things a creative young mind can come up with when left totally alone and unsupervised.
The school maintenance office was located in the basement of Founders Hall, the building I was given unrestricted access to every morning, for an hour and a half, five days a week, for a year. Are you starting to get the picture?
One of the skills I had learned a couple of years earlier from my friend David, who went on to become a motorcyclist with a biker group, was how to pick a lock, any lock. I was pretty good at picking all locks especially door locks, at least until they started to redesign them to be pick proof.
Even combination locks were not a big problem in the old days if you knew what to do. You just needed tools. I was a true farm boy, so I always had tools in my school bag. In fact, I had a fetish for tools because I came from an engineering farming family who owned lots of tools. I often carried a small hammer, screwdriver, needle nose pliers and an adjustable wrench in my schoolbag. Other kids had their sports equipment, I had tools. One would think someone would notice a kid carrying tools. But I must have been invisible because no one ever looked. 
Initially, I just was curious about the maintenance guy’s office. It reminded me of my dad’s workshop. One morning I just picked the lock and let myself in. That was an exciting day. I did a basic reconnaissance. I did not have a plan, just curious kid stuff. But the second time I broke into the office I noticed a small, locked box on the wall. I picked that lock too. I hit pay dirt! It was a box full of copies of every key to every lock in every building in the school. Yeehaw!
By that time, I was pretty smart about being a repeat sneak thief. My style became “Leave no trace.” I instinctually knew that if I just took a copy of every key, someone would notice and then an investigation of some type would ensue. Also, the kind and understanding Mr. Durwood had retired and one Reverend Tillman had taken over. Reverend Tillman, who wore the white collar, was a no-nonsense Principal. He believed in strong discipline.  He made it very hard on everyone. I knew I would have to be very careful and control my Gollum, otherwise I was sure I would end up at Bonnie Brae with the real criminals.
I had to think very carefully about just how to handle this opportunity. What doors were important and why? Where would I start? You guessed it, the cafeteria kitchen. The cooks did not show up until after 8:00. There were always leftovers, especially the deserts. I would let myself into the kitchen and have a breakfast before I started my day. I was always careful to clean up and not leave a trace.
The kitchen was right under an apartment occupied by one of the teachers, a lovely single woman named Susan Roland. I knew from my experience with Annie Lennon, our young housekeeper, that sneaking in and out of the building where she lived on the campus of an all-male school was way dangerous. Later in the year I would find out just how dangerous it really was.
After a few morning breakfasts, I figured there had to be something better to do with my access to the entire school than eat. My next target was the school office. There was lots of stuff to get into in there. The dice just kept rolling my way. The first time I let myself into the office, I discovered the keys to the Coke machine at the entrance to the building. Yup, I took one of the copies of that key and started hitting the machine once a week for a portion of the quarters. I knew better than to take all the money. If I did that it might spawn an inquiry. I ended up with a once-a-week allowance, so to speak.
One morning when I was in the office going through all the staff mailboxes, I found copies of a science test that was going to be administered to one of the upper classes that day. Bingo! I knew that was worth something. So I snagged a copy and promptly found an upperclassman willing to pay me for it. I quickly discovered that distributing the questions of upcoming tests was a very lucrative business. The business was growing rapidly, so I started to build a small group of helpers.
Because I had unfettered access to every office and classroom in the school and because I was very careful about who I let know that I had access and how I distributed my information, I was able to remain undiscovered for the entire year.
Another thing that I was pretty good at doing in St. Bernard’s was convincing my fellow classmates, especially the younger ones, to gamble with me even though they almost never won. We played simple stuff like flipping coins or a few card trick things. What they initially didn’t know was that I rigged every game. As I mostly played with the younger students, if I didn’t win I would just take their money. Towards the end of the year, a couple of my class mates who were very suspicious pestered me and I finally started to share some of my secrets.
Here is the funny part - I was never caught at any of these shenanigans. I wasn’t even suspected because I was so good at hiding everything. But at the end of the school year Robert Woods and George Andrevette, who were my accomplices, knew that I was leaving the school for good. During the last week of school, they snuck into my locker and stole my keys. Can you imagine, my own trusted actually confidants stole from me? I certainly should have learned that lesson right then and there so I would not have to keep repeating it over and over again, for many years. Trust is a very interesting thing. 
They were not quite as smart as I was. They spent the next two and a half years emulating those good skills, which they had learned from me. What they apparently did not realize or did not understand was that you always had to evaluate the potential pitfalls and dangers of whatever you were planning. Midway through their senior year, somehow, they got caught with the keys. They took the entire fall for my efforts. I sort of feel sorry for them. The really sad part was neither of them was able to get into college. Some thirty years later I was invited to a Gill St. Bernard’s reunion weekend. There was almost no one that was at SBS when I was there. 
John Ward, one of the guys I played football with at school. I asked him about Robert and George, he told me the story. Both got caught with the keys midway through their senior year. Both were expelled and never finished high school or got their diplomas. Without diplomas, they were not able to get into college. I could not find any other information on Robert. But I did subsequently hear that George died of AIDS. They achieved almost mythical status. I never mentioned that it was I who taught them and originally got the keys from the maintenance office in 1966.
I sure hope that my karma for whatever part I played in their lives has been paid back. I guess I still have time in this life to find out.
Yes, I somehow found my way safely through those very dangerous waters. The skills I learned at St. Bernard’s of being a very good liar, sneak thief, bully and good negotiator ultimately became lifesaving skills throughout almost all my early years. But I totally lacked discipline and guidance in every other part of my life. 
I suppose my first painting adventure as an artist was with that darn black cat. My parents probably should have realized that inside me was an artist. During my last year at St. Bernard’s I was part of a Jewish youth group called United Synagogue Youth. It was probably my parents’ attempt to help me find somewhere I would not get into trouble. That fall while attending a meeting, it was announced that there was going to be a national USY art contest. I really have no idea what prompted me to enter. I suppose that it was an energy insight. I wasn’t sure what to do, I never read any directions. It just sounded like a good idea.
Aunt Litze and Uncle Bob used to visit almost every weekend. Uncle Bob was a retired NYPD officer. He really never did much on the farm, but he always brought the New York Times to read and a box of Dunkin donuts. I would often sit around gorging myself on donuts and reading the paper after he got finished.
One Sunday I found a picture of a very orthodox Rabbi reading the Torah. I did not own colored pencils or paint. But I did have tools. I found a piece of wood, sketched out the picture and went to work using my pocketknife, carving the wood to resemble the picture. When I got finished, I hitchhiked to Boin Arts and Crafts in Morristown and bought an ink roller and some black ink. I came home and made a wood block print of my artwork. I framed it and submitted it to the contest.
A couple of months later I received notice that I had won first place and could receive my award in person at the regional convention in Atlantic City later in the year. That was a very proud moment that no one in my family shared or celebrated or even acknowledged. However, I convinced the family to allow me to go to the convention to receive my award. I still have the first block print of that work. Life was showing a glimmer of hope. As it turns out this particular Rabbi, some thirty years later, long after his death, would reappear in my life.
Just before we moved out of New Vernon, I became enamored of jewelry. I loved visiting the jewelry counters and stores. At one point, I even bought a small friendship ring for my cousin Risa. As an adult, oh so many years later, she still remembered that gift and talked about it at a family gathering. My obsession with jewelry has reappeared many, many times throughout my journey. I made my first piece of jewelry when I was about 14. When I was busy picking locks at St. Bernard’s, I discovered that many of the older doors that used skeleton keys had little brass covers screwed on over the openings.
I swiped a couple, not quite sure what I was going to do with them. But I liked the curved shape and thought the keyhole was very symbolic. I figured out that I could use my father’s tools to braze the two pieces into a single unit, fill the screw holes, polish the brass into a mirror polish and make it into a pendent. I wore that pendent for years until I finally lost it on some other misadventure.
At St. Bernard’s, there was an art program taught only one afternoon a week by one Henry Nice. Henry allowed us to call him by his first name. He drove out from New York City once a week in his little Porsche to teach art to a bunch of misfits. I suppose he was some sort of working artist in the city. But he sure wasn’t much of an art teacher.
Perhaps he had an unsupervised position so the school could say it had an art program. I sure don’t remember him teaching much. He had a small hot classroom above the library. I got the idea that I wanted to learn painting, but there were no canvases available. I brought in a large piece of plywood, set it up on an easel and started to sketch and paint a street scene.
I got zero help or direction from the teacher. Being the inventive guy I was, I started to mix media. First I screwed my sneaker onto the board to represent the street. Then came some wooden blocks to represent the buildings, Henry never asked where the tools came from and wasn’t interested in mixed media, the stepchild of the art world. Eventually, after I robbed him and got caught, he threw me out of class, chucking my painting out on the lawn. 
There is much to be said about all of this. First, when I got caught, how did he explain expelling me from his class? How come no one ever followed up? It was as if I wasn’t even there. As an adult, I described my life as being there, but just passing through. This is how that looks.
It is said as one door closes another one opens. The next stop was in some ways much better and in some ways much worse. Susan Roland was a beautiful young single woman teacher in an all-male elitist school full of young, misbehaved men. To add to this already bad situation, she lived in a two-bedroom apartment above the school kitchen.
Susan was a kind and innocent soul. I’m sure she liked all the male attention. She did a good job of dealing with those juvenile delinquents and she was a fairly good teacher. On the day I got chucked out of art class - a very emotional event - she happened to be passing by and witnessed it. She very kindly offered to let me use her second bedroom to complete my painting. OK, fate is an interesting “guide”? I happily accepted and moved my wooden “canvas” up the steps to her apartment. Over the next few weeks, I merrily visited her apartment after school and painted. Even though by that time I had had a full-blown sexual relationship with another older woman, yet another housekeeper named Tuttie, it never occurred to me that Susan was interested in having sex with me. She was friendly, but never inappropriate.
Just about the time I was finishing my painting I began to hear some soft rumors from my friends that I was shagging her. At first, my ego was rather inflated. I never said I was, but I never denied it. It was cool to think that the seniors in high school thought that this overweight freshman was having sex with the best-looking woman at the school.
Then reality hit and hit hard. Some of what I am going to share is conjecture. I certainly had no way to confirm any of it then or now. But this incident sure happened. One day in a literature class taught by the good Reverend Nelson, who I had known long before I came to St. Bernard’s, a person who wore the white collar, and was supposed to be a person of upstanding morals and judgement, right?
Around St. Bernard’s the nickname the students gave him was “Nail her” because he also lived on campus and it was thought he would daily go home for lunch while his own kids were at school and have sex with his wife. No proof, just locker room talk.  Truth - it’s a funny thing isn’t it?  This is one of the many incidents in my life that makes me contemplate, what exactly is truth?
What I did not know was that there was also a rumor circulating that he was shagging Susan. Or that the rumor that I was also shagging Susan had reached him. He was a very passionate man. What happened to me with him on a beautiful spring day on the campus of an elite all-boy’s prep school can only be described as a very aggressive verbal assault with him towering over me in a very threatening and intimidating manner, right in the middle of class confronting me about my behavior, being a liar and being a Jew. He actually yelled at me “you dirty little Kike.” 
But the good Reverend was nothing compared to my father and the environment I grew up in on the farm. So I wasn’t intimidated. But a few fellow classmates who witnessed the entire incident were scared shitless and wanted me to report it to the good Reverend Tillman. That made no sense to me as I was getting ready to make the great escape from St. Bernard’s, so at that point nothing much mattered. Besides, it really wasn’t much of a “bitch slap.” The beatings from seniors in the school were much worse.
There were many good things that happened during my time at St. Bernard’s, though much of it did not sink in until much later. At St. Bernard’s, every student had to take Latin. That training is a great foundation to learning all the Romance languages. We had a marvelous relic of an old teacher Miss Harvey. She had to be in her seventies. She had very good control of her classes; I think we were all afraid of her.
I passed Latin one and two but was never really very good at it. The real gift Miss Harvey gave us was the repeated statement, “Tell me who your friends are and I will tell you what you are.” I didn’t think much of it at the time, but as the journey progressed her words would often rang in my head. Unfortunately I surrounded myself with dishonest people who had nothing but contempt for the law. For the next five or six years, that was the person I became.
Fifty-five years later I can finally say I fully understand what she meant and I remind myself almost daily to protect myself from those people. Because as we well know, if you don’t stand for something, you fall for everything and in the end the universe will just completely consume you. The universe consumes the innocent.
A couple more items from that period also helped shape my life. On a real farm, one with land, there is always hunting and fishing. Long before I got to St. Bernard’s I was a hunter and a fisherman. I discovered guns and fishing poles early. Even though my dad only owned an old Japanese rifle as a souvenir of the war, we seemed to have lots of access to firearms. Many of our neighbors hunted the wild pheasant and ducks that frequented our property. Often, they agreed to take me with them and sometimes they let me shoot. By the time I was 13 I was experienced in all kinds of weapons. The first time I shot a 12-gauge shotgun I was still somewhat small, and it almost knocked me off my feet. I really wanted a rifle. Then Dad told me this story.
A gentleman farmer friend of my family, a Mr. Henderson, owned a farm close to ours. He was a kindly man who was against hunting or killing anything. One weekend he found a father-son team from down the street trespassing on his property. He demanded that they leave immediately. He was a big handsome man with a very attractive wife, two large black Great Danes and no kids. The demand turned into an argument. The argument turned in to a physical fight. Mr. Henderson had the father pinned to the ground. The son cocked his 12-gauge and put it to the back of Mr. his head and said, “Let him go or I’m going to shoot.”
Both men knew instantly, because everything happens in an instant, that the line had just been crossed. Mr. Henderson carefully untangled himself. The father carefully took the shotgun out of his son’s hands and Mr. Henderson had both arrested and prosecuted. Dad carefully explained that once you pull the trigger, there is no going back.
One thing I instantly and fully understood at that time, was that because of who I knew I was even back then, because of my anger issues, because of my total disregard for authority, I knew in my heart that I would not have hesitated, and I would have just pulled that trigger. I made up my mind that from that day forward my weapon of choice would be knives, not guns. With a knife incident there is at least a small chance of a walk back. But once you pull the trigger the damage is permanent. As a young adult, I did end up in a couple very dangerous gun incidents, my father’s words came flying back to me instantly and probably saved my life.
Yet another part of this journey was about fishing. The first farm was on the Raritan River. The river in those days before it became a polluted mess, was full of fish. Dad allowed a few fishermen to use the property to fish from. They were usually older experienced fisherman who welcomed the opportunity to teach their hobby to younger people. At a very young age, I became a very competent fisherman. I never came home without catching my limit. I had to learn to read the river and know where the fish were hiding. As an adult I said often, “If you want to catch fish, you have to fish where the fish are.”
I was always curious about what went on under the water. When I got my first set of flippers and a mask, I went crazy. There are all kinds of interesting things under the shiny surface of the water. Understanding what is under there became a lifelong passion. 
There was also a fast stream that ran right through the St. Bernard’s property. This was not a lazy slow-moving broad river like the Raritan. It was fast and rocky. Every spring the stream would swell and if you knew where to look for them, you would find brook trout. Often, when I wasn’t practicing some other early morning mischief, I would take my rod down to the stream before school began. I was often able to see the trout, but as I found out, stream fishing is very different from river fishing.
During those years I became familiar with all the best fishing spots in New Vernon and Morristown. It was definitely my happy place when I could be alone in the water. In those days a simple pair of waders and some bait, were all I needed to be happy.  
At that same time, I began a lifelong love affair with sports cars. There were a bunch of them around St. Bernard’s. Besides the art teacher’s Porsche, the Brady Family had an Austen Healy 3000. Another teacher, Mr. Cooley had an MGA, and there was another student with some other British car. There was also a Jag that someone owned and of course Susan Roland had an Alfa Romeo. At that time Carroll Shelby was having a winning racing career with his Cobra and the GT40, and the sports car world was alive with new models and sexy designs. Like most of the boys at St. Bernard’s, I was smitten, for life. Cars became one of my many addictions and I ended up owning many of the cars that are considered “collector” cars today and during my career in broadcast television I got to interview my hero, Carroll Shelby.
The other thing that captured everyone’s attention was the whole music scene. For me, at that time it was the Beach Boys and surfing that caught my musical attention. It was probably all that youthful excitement during the summer of ‘66 which ultimately brought me to California. When I finally got here, I discovered that the oldest Durwood brother named John was living here in San Diego. As it turned out he was a famous surfboard builder and owned a surfboard shop in Pacific Beach. I paid him a visit, just once before he died. He looked just like his dad. Because of the age difference he only slightly remembered me. We had a good catch-up visit talking about St. Bernard’s, his family and life.
I never saw him again and a few years ago when I was working with a surfing broadcast program called Surfer’s Journal, I inquired about his whereabouts - only to find out that he had passed away. The Durwood family had a very positive influence on me at a critical time in my life. I will forever be thankful to them all.  
Like a good part of my life, this part was full of my own negative, thoughtless behaviors. Even though I was responsible for all of it, I did not think anything was wrong. I just thought that was the way life was supposed to be. 
What I had not learned during this formative part of my life was that your choices become a permanent part of your personal history. You can never go back and change them. You can’t wash them away. They are forever bound to your soul. They come back to haunt you in the most profound ways. Be careful  what you choose.
One repeat theme was starting to surface during this time: “Being on the outside looking in and having no idea where the door is.” This theme just kept passing by me like I was in a movie. It came to seem like I was always there, but I could never stay. By this time, the main threads of the brightly colored intricately woven fabric of my life were in place. The cloth was being woven and for the moment it wasn’t good. And the good/bad news was that it wasn’t going to get any better anytime soon.
As our family left our beloved farm in the Great Swamp and headed way out to the sticks, surrounded by majestic and picturesque country farms to what was supposed to be a much more wholesome living, no one heard the thunder or saw the storms brewing on the horizon.