I was born in the middle of a hurricane in Port Arthur, Texas. That part I don’t remember.
I do remember fires in the refineries and I was told that the Nazi submarines were operating along the Gulf coast and sinking ships coming out of the Sabine River. I do remember the blackouts and the hushed conversations between my father, who was a physicist, and some other men who might have been interested in doing something about the submarines. I don’t know. It was all very shadowy and covert.
There must have been interesting people that came from Port Arthur, Texas. The only one I ever met was Robert Raushenburg who turned out to be an artist that I admired very much. I painted my first picture when I was about ten years old. The only thing I remember about the incident is that the teacher wouldn’t put my watercolor in the exhibit because she said the tree trunks had to be brown an the leaves were supposed to be green. I told her I’d never seen a tree with a brown trunk. I sat a long time in the assitant principal’s office waiting to see if Mr. Lee was going to paddle me for insubordination.
