I was born in Easton, Pennsylvania, on
June 15, 1970. My maternal grandfather owned a butcher store near the
steel mill in Bethlehem. He was the son of a hatmaker in the Fishtown
district of Philadelphia and found his meat-cutting calling while an
apprentice at Reading Terminal's center city market. Later he was a
sergeant at a POW camp in Virgina during WWII; after he died we found
recipes for sausage written in German in a notebook in his house. I
never met my paternal grandfather. He was a Marine in WWII, and they say
he stormed the beach at Guadalcanal. He contracted malaria there. He
died in his 40s. I've heard he died on a golf course with a drink in his
hand. I don't know if it's true or not, but it's a good story. In
pictures he's a thin-mustcahed slickster in sharp clothes. My maternal
grandfather was a big man with little fashion sense who delighted in me
and I delighted in him. My maternal side is Philadelphian, and Ireland
and England before that (Morrissey, Shanahan, Young). My paternal side
is northeastern Pennsylvania people; the Lehigh Valley, Slate Belt, the
Poconos. They came from Scotland and Germany (Macadam, Bauman). My
maternal grandmother died when I was a baby. My paternal grandmother,
like much of my family, is a long story.
I grew up mostly right across the river in New Jersey in a little farm town called Quakertown between Clinton and Flemington. There were still a lot of open fields there, then, and woods. I was a fairly dismal student and ended my relationship with formal education the day I squeaked out of high school. I tried my hand at theater school, the HB Studio in New York, but gave that up when they wouldn't let me play old men. I met Jack Hardy around that time and began writing.
I've done a bunch of things to pay the bills over the years, with widely varying degrees of success: I've been a soldier, sailor, touring musician, cook, house painter, clerk, editor, copywriter, laborer. There's other things in there, but who can remember? I spent part of one winter on a scaffold, dangling high on an old West Philly high school, doing something with windows (I'd lived in India for a year when I was 13, and spent most that cold winter on the scaffold wishing I was back in Kashmir). The next spring I had a job watering plants. Some of the plants I watered were in the corporate offices of AT&T. I timed it so I got there around 2 p.m. and could help myself to the buffet in the executive dining room. I wasn't particularly good at any of these jobs, although I usually tried. I was pretty good at being a soldier and I think I wasn't too bad as an editor.
I live again in Pennsylvania now. George Washington crossed the Delaware River a few miles from where I live, on his way to attacking the Hessians in Trenton. Of more interest to me are the nearby former homes of Moss Hart, Oscar Hammerstein, James Michener, Pearl Buck.
I grew up mostly right across the river in New Jersey in a little farm town called Quakertown between Clinton and Flemington. There were still a lot of open fields there, then, and woods. I was a fairly dismal student and ended my relationship with formal education the day I squeaked out of high school. I tried my hand at theater school, the HB Studio in New York, but gave that up when they wouldn't let me play old men. I met Jack Hardy around that time and began writing.
I've done a bunch of things to pay the bills over the years, with widely varying degrees of success: I've been a soldier, sailor, touring musician, cook, house painter, clerk, editor, copywriter, laborer. There's other things in there, but who can remember? I spent part of one winter on a scaffold, dangling high on an old West Philly high school, doing something with windows (I'd lived in India for a year when I was 13, and spent most that cold winter on the scaffold wishing I was back in Kashmir). The next spring I had a job watering plants. Some of the plants I watered were in the corporate offices of AT&T. I timed it so I got there around 2 p.m. and could help myself to the buffet in the executive dining room. I wasn't particularly good at any of these jobs, although I usually tried. I was pretty good at being a soldier and I think I wasn't too bad as an editor.
I live again in Pennsylvania now. George Washington crossed the Delaware River a few miles from where I live, on his way to attacking the Hessians in Trenton. Of more interest to me are the nearby former homes of Moss Hart, Oscar Hammerstein, James Michener, Pearl Buck.
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