I mentioned earlier about my gradually becoming "latchkey kid" in Rio Linda. By that summer of 1960, I was latchkey all the way in North Sacramento, alone for more than half the day, no playmates in sight and my half brother leaving an almost empty nest. The new bedroom room we shared was smaller by half than the one we shared in Rio Linda, and that huge bed Bob slept in — the only time I ever saw him — seemed to fill up half the room, dwarfing my little cubby in the corner.

That huge bed was mostly empty in the 2 years we lived in North Sacramento. I have a very clear memory of my mother and I seeing Bob off at the airport sometime in July or August of 1960. For years I had thought of him as a pain in the ass big brother, always lecturing me, occasionally slapping me half conscious, once in a while holding my hand and wiping the tears from my face. On the way back home, I hardly felt any emotion except relief. By the time I got home and saw the big empty bed across from mine, I broke down and cried for hours. I missed him, of course, but I also knew nothing would ever be the same, and that made me cry more.

I always felt as if I had stood in his shadow, and he never hesitated to demonstrate his superior intellect. As I said, his pride was enormous, which I suppose is no great fault in one so young and so full of promise. I remember how he taught me to play chess, and to this day I have not won a game against him. After a streak of four losing games, I would just pound the board in my 9-year-old anger, while Bob just sat there across the table in superior 18-year-old amusement and even offered to help me pick up the pieces.

In his absence, in my mother's words, I "grew up like a weed." Had we switched places, I might have been very like him, wanting to forge my own path away from the cheap rentals and hand-to-mouth day-to-day that made us what we were. But here I was, the lesser son, with another eight to ten years to go before I too would be leaving the nest. I felt wretched and unloved, and even my mother was beginning to distance herself from me — not intentionally, I'm sure, but seeing my brother spread his wings affected us both.

She never got over having to quit high school back in 1937 to take care of her family, and now that one of her