American Rebel Read Free Page A

Hollywood, a few miles farther inland. Soon afterward they swung back north to Redding, then to Sacramento, then to the Glenview section of the East Bay of San Francisco. Finally they settled back down in the Oakland-Piedmont area, where Clinton worked a series of dead-end jobs. Clint, by now, had attended several schools, necessitated by the family’s continual relocations. “I can’t remember how many schools I went to,” he later recalled. “I do remember we moved so much that I made very few friends.” In 1939, after their long loop through the tough times of California, the family settled long enough for young Clint, now nine, to enroll in Piedmont Junior High School.
    Following the December 7, 1941, Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, America’s entry into World War II brought new defense-driven work.Clinton managed to secure a draft-exempt job in the shipyards with Bethlehem Steel, and Ruth found day work at the nearby IBM center.
    On the brink of adolescence, six-foot Clint was the tallest boy in his class; he would reach his full height, six four, by the time he graduated from high school. He was also, by all accounts, one of the best-looking students. He had inherited his father’s strong, broad shoulders, rugged good looks, and seductive half-closed eyes. He had a finely shaped, aristocratically turned-up nose and a thick bush of brown hair that fell in a curly dip over his forehead. The look was tough, but he was shy, likely the product of his family’s vagabond journey through the Depression years. Being left-handed also made him feel like an outsider, as his teachers forced him to use his right hand.
    He enjoyed playing high school sports—his height made it easy for him to excel at basketball—but that did little for his social skills. His teachers warned his parents that he had to be brought out of his shell if he was to make something of himself. One of them, Gertrude Falk, who taught English, had the class put on a one-act play and cast a reluctant young Clint in the lead. He was less than thrilled.
    I remember Gertrude Falk very well. It was the part of a backward youth, and I think she thought it was perfect casting … she made up her mind that I was going to play the lead and it was disastrous. I wanted to go out for athletics; doing plays was not considered the thing to do at that stage of life—especially not presenting them before the entire senior high school, which is what she made us do. We muffed a lot of lines. I swore [at the time] that that was the end of my acting career.
    Clint also didn’t do well academically, and his schoolmates and teachers considered him something of a “dummy.” Besides sports, the only other subject that held any interest for him was music—not the kind of big-band sound that was popular with the older kids, but jazz. He liked to play it on the piano, something that he correctly believed enhanced his attractiveness to girls. He even learned the current pop tunes that he had no use for but that made them flock around him.
    When I sat down at the piano at a party, the girls would come around. I could play a few numbers. I learned a few off listening to recordsand things that were popular at that era. I thought this was all right, so I went home and practiced … I would lie about my age and go to Hambone Kelly’s. I’d stand in the back and listen to Lu Watters and Turk Murphy play New Orleans jazz … I grew up listening to Ella Fitzgerald and Nat King Cole … Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, Clifford Brown, Fats Navarro, Thelonious Monk, Erroll Garner.
    And he loved cars. For $25 Clint’s father bought him a beat-up 1932 Chevy to help him keep his paper route job. Clint nicknamed it “the Bathtub” because of its missing top. Its best accessory was, of course, the girls. The Chevy, which didn’t last very long, was only the first of a long line of his beat-up cars. To pay for them all and the gas and repairs, Clint took