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Listen to Dan telling his story (in quick speed) starting with Luther Burbank.
The most prominent thing that stands out in my mind from the early days is living in a 2-bedroom flat upstairs from a printing shop. The printing press would drone on and on, below us, all day, every day. It was just Mom and Dad and two older brothers and me. There may have been a couple of younger ones, and now that I think about it, I remember my younger brother Glenn was often my accomplice in those days.
When I was 6 yrs or so, I was allowed to go out onto the very busy Mission St, all by myself. We had a friend down the street who's parents owned a bakery where we used to drop in for a treat now and then. Right next door was the corner grocery store. We would first go from door to door collecting empty bottles, so that we could then take the empties to the store for the deposit money. With that money we could buy enough candy and gum to make us sick. And we did!
While we were hunting for treats at the bakery and corner store one day, we saw what looked like a red birdhouse hanging on a telephone pole. So I told Glenn that it was, in fact, a birdhouse and that if you would pull the lever down, a little bird would come out and sing. Well, I got down on my hands and knees, Glenn got up on my back, and reached up and pulled the lever. No little bird came out, but a bell started ringing. Glenn looked at me, I looked at him, and we both started running for home. When we got there we scrambled for a place to hide. Mom heard us running up the stairs and came to find us both hiding behind the couch.
“What did you do?” she asked.
Glenn started to sing like the little bird should have. “Dan said that...", blah, blah, blah. Mom dragged us down the street as the sirens stopped and the firemen all gathered around the birdhouse. They explained to us that this is not a bird house but a fire alarm. They mentioned that we could go to jail. Oh No! We again had eye to eye contact and started to cry.
They let us go and we went home, knowing that we would soon meet with Dad, and have to re-live the whole experience, with the distinct possibility of some physical pain to bear.
'Danny' front left at 5 yrs. old.
The days, months, and years reeled by, with Dennis growing, and along came Craig, and I don't know how many more brothers there were. Eventually, around 1965, we moved to a larger house in a very exciting neighborhood.
Dad must have spent quite a bit of time moving stuff to our new house on Madrid Street. Eventually he loaded everyone in the car, and drove up Madrid, crowded with adults and kids, all having a water fight right in the middle of the street. Hoses, water balloons, squirt guns, you name it. It looked like the happiest place on earth. Little did I know that many of the kids on this street were some pretty seedy people. Mostly all these kids went to public schools with the exception of the Cain family down the street. Tom was in my class at Epiphany, the local Catholic school we attended. It turned out to be quite an education for me as a kid, who was an altar boy, to learn of some of the local talent in the neighborhood. Most of the younger kids were still Innocent, but some of their older brothers had already been in jail or juvenile hall.
In those days Dad was still active with the family. He would play kick the can and other games with us and the neighborhood kids. He could jump fences in the yards like they were merely a curb on the street.
That house was the place that most of the older kids received some pretty nice bikes for Christmas. Gary had this awesome stingray bike that had a banana seat and a slick for the rear tire. He could ride a wheelie for what seemed to be several blocks long. Then one day it got stolen at the church. Wow! Everyone was jealous that the bike was his and not theirs but to have it stolen? We all had our turns to ride it and could not believe how easy it could hold a wheelie, like an unicycle. And then it was gone.
Everything had been going as planned. I was getting decent grades in school, and fitting in with the rest of the Farrell clan. Then, in 1965, my life took a tremendous change, and not for the better.When I was 10 yrs old, Mom sent some of us to CYO camp in Occidental. After being there for a while, some of the kids I had to bunk with were jumping up and down on their beds, buck naked, grabbing their junk while bouncing, like they had found a new toy. This set the tone for the sexuality that took place this year. Our counselor seemed to be a nice enough guy - not mean or a drill sergeant type of guy. Then I found out what kind of person he REALLY was. One night we all had a camp-out at one of the local dairys. I was getting situated in my sleeping bag and just dozing off to sleep when I felt a hand slipping into my bag, reaching down to unbuckle my belt. I rolled over onto his arm and the hand quickly withdrew. I peaked through my squinted eyes to see our counselor. In my innocence, I thought that he must have just been trying to loosen my belt for me. I went to sleep and it all seemed fine.
A couple days later we went on a hike. We arrived at a place that looked like an area for a camp fire, with a large, rounded area with trees around, and rocks piled in the middle for the fire with logs around it to sit on. We all sat around listening to the counselor telling stories. I don't remember how the story got to the place where it required someone to be tied up to a tree, but there I was, tied to a tree, crying my eyes out. Then, to make matters worse, they decided to take off my pants. Apparently, those perverted kids that I saw jumping on their beds did the dirty work. But maybe it was at the suggestion of the the counselor, who was in training to be a man of the cloth. He finally told them to let me go, probably because I was screaming so loud that I could be heard a long ways off. I was a trembling wreck, so I quickly pulled up my pants and started running back to the CYO camp which was what seemed to be miles downhill through the forest. In those days I was a pretty fast runner and nobody could catch me. When I arrived, I crawled into my sleeping bag and stayed there for the night. No dinner or activities for that night. Fortunately the next day we all got to go home. From then on, my trust in people was severely damaged. I don't think I ever told Mom, or anybody for that matter.
I went to school that year in the 5th grade and could not concentrate on my courses. Most of my grades became D's and F's. The only course that I did well in was Art, probably because I didn't have to interact with anyone. My 7th and 8th grade years were similar.
My final years at Epiphany I met a good friend, Tim Burke. And then I had my second real brush with a bully, Claudio, who was Tim's neighbor. When we lived on Pope Street, our family somehow acquired a mini-bike, probably through Dad, as he kept a close eye over it. It was a cool, gas-powered, very small bike with a few gears, handbrake, and all that. One day I decided that I would sneak it out the back gate and ride it down to Tim Burke's house. We were riding it around his neighborhood, when Claudio, a much bigger kid than us, showed up and just sort of took control of it. He disappeared with it for about an hour. When he eventually showed up with it, he was pushing it because the clutch cable was broken. So Tim and I pushed it all the way home, well over a mile, uphill. We sneaked it back into the yard, through the back alley. Somehow, Dad found out and I got my ass kicked SOOO HARD. It was the old pony ride, with him holding onto one arm while kicking me in the ass as I ran around in circles.
I don't know how, but in 1969 I graduated from the 8th grade at Epiphany. But I didn't have good enough grades to go to Riordan H.S, the private school that my 2 older brothers went to. So I ended up in a public middle school: Luther Burbank Junior High (aka 'Hell on Earth'). At Luther Burbank I met up with all sorts of riff-raff. Being used to a Catholic school for the previous 8 years, I was naive to the way the rest of the world was taught.
I soon learned about Gym class. Having to go in and undress in front of all the new perverts raised all sorts of fears in my mind. Instead of going to Gym class, I would usually cut class and go down to Crocker Amazon Park, very close to my new school. Because of that, I ended up in the principal's office where I faced down the truancy officer so many times I lost track. I met with a psychologist who could not crack the wall that I had built, mostly because I had blocked out the whole 'camping' episode by that time. I honestly could not figure out why I was so afraid to attend gym class, especially with all these huge bullies lurking around the halls. After the shrink could not crack me, I was allowed to spend my Gym class time in the library, but all my other classes suffered due to all the assholes in my classes messing with me.
Believe me, I have never realized that there were people who loved to pick on kids who were smaller than them. I was scared all the time. I had my own designated group of assholes who's lives were not complete unless they were humiliating me. They were led by my own personal asshole: yep - Claudio.
At Burbank, he and his entourage of friends were always on the hunt for me. I seemed to really irritate him because I would unknowingly humiliate him. When we both were at Burbank, I would run across him and a couple of his friends at Crocker Amazon Park while cutting class. They would see me and start running after me to do their deeds, but I was faster and better winded than all of them, thanks to our family games of tag around the block, running for hours. So I out-ran them most of the time.
Me in brown jacket at around age 15, my year at Burbank.
When they sneaked up on me, or I just didn't feel like running, I would pay the price, usually by forfeiting everything in my pockets, or by taking some strategically placed punches, or both. Once they had a pair of handcuffs and they handcuffed me to the baseball chain link backstop and left me there for an hour or so. No one came by the whole time I was there. When they came back to uncuff me they said they were going to kick my ass now. So I pushed them, broke free, then took off running. They gave up easy and did not chase. I made it back in time for math class, but when they showed up for class late, they went to see the principal for being tardy.
Claudio knew some real thugs at Burbank. One of them was a Chinese guy who was a real bad-ass. Everybody said he kept a gun in his locker, and he would threaten people with it. I didn't want to mess with that guy. One day I was walking down the hall, and I heard Claudio, that Chinese guy, and a couple of his friends walking behind me, calling me names to get my attention, and kicking me in the ass. It was very humiliating. I just prayed for one of the teachers to see me and do something. Nothing happened. I think the teachers were as scared of them as the rest of us.
One good thing came from my time at Luther Burbank: that is where I met my good friend Dave Pagano. He and his family had arrived straight from Italy. His name was actually Octavio Salvatore Pagano. He changed it to Dave some time after we got out of high school. His parents spoke Italian in their house, which I visited many times over the following years. I actually came to understand some of what they were saying.
Somehow I was allowed to leave Luther Burbank after one year, and got the privilege of attending Balboa High School for 10th, 11th, and 12th grades.
One of the bad things about going to Balboa (Bal) was that all the bullies who enjoyed harassing me ended up following me there. But there were also a few good things about Bal, one of them being the wonderful world of ROTC, which was mostly for nerds and other not-so-cool kids. We got to shoot .22 gauge rifles once in a while, and because none of the assholes were there, it was safe. We had to wear a stupid uniform once a week, but that was a small price to pay.
Another class I took at Bal was drafting and Architecture. I really enjoyed these two classes, but in order to get better in Architecture, I needed to attend math, algebra and other classes in that field. Unfortunately for me, Claudio was again in my math class.
I came to love music by learning to play Clarinet in Band class. I chose clarinet because Jack (Mom's new boyfriend) played jazz clarinet at home, and it sounded real cool. Dave was in band at Bal and was VERY good at trumpet. It was awesome going to football games with him and getting to sit with the band.
I also met a good friend, Ray Woods, through Dave. Ray was a brainiack, and he got into stuff like electronics. He only had one working eye, and because he was handicapped, the thugs sort of felt sorry for him and didn't pick on him. Those two guys were my saving grace through high school. We discovered weed together and other types of innocent drugs.
While Balboa had some very fun and interesting classes, it also had some VERY big, very scary, major league thugs. There was one big Samoan guy who liked to play volleyball in the quad between classes. There was also a skinny white kid who was a very good player. The skinny kid made the mistake of spiking one too many balls in the direction of the big Samoan, who eventually lost his temper, and punched the skinny kid in the face so hard it caused some brain damage. Note to self: Don't even LOOK at the big Samoan.
When I was in the 11th grade, race riots were happening in San Francisco, and Balboa felt like ground zero. Kids would converge on Balboa from surrounding schools and neighborhoods and stake out territory. I remember black kids gathering in the streets surrounding the school. Many of us wanted no part of the race riots, and found alternate routes around the obviously claimed territories. It was a VERY scary time, and this is when I stopped going to school.
Although Mom may have known that I stopped going to school, there was nothing she could do. By then, Dad was living with his new girlfriend, Barbara. I reached out to Dad and he let me know that dropping out of school was not a good idea. So since I was soon going to be 18 years old, he came up with the idea of enrolling in SF city college to get the rest of my classes and eventually get a GED. So I moved in with Dad, which pissed Mom off to no end.
Dad was a changed man since living with Barbara. Maybe he was not as angry and overwhelmed with kids. Who knows? I remember Barbara hollering at dad in the other room about how I forgot to do something, or I didn't do it good enough. Then I heard a knock on the door and dad came it. "I guess you heard that", is all he said. And that was all it took. I vowed to do what I could to never put him in that position again.
So, Dad got me started at the city college. I REALLY liked it there, as the students just wanted to get an education and had no interest in causing trouble. I took some general education classes, and one music theory class which I really liked. The next semester I took music harmony, which was much harder but still fun. But then my life again took a detour.
We went out to dinner one night and I got a huge salad. Soon after that I started feeling stomach pains. The next thing I knew I was doubled up on the couch while waiting to get into the doctor's office. Apparently I didn't have an appointment. So dad took me to the hospital emergency room where I was immediately admitted. They said they needed to remove my appendix before it burst. As it turns out, it did burst as they were cutting into me and there was some contamination in me after the surgery. I was under constant care for the next two weeks. I was told that I had come was close to dying. That was scary for me to hear afterwards, but it certainly was no scarier that going to school at Bal. Fortunately, my friends came by frequently to cheer me up.
I was eventually discharged and recuperated at Barbara's house. For the time being, I was exempt from chores and they took good care of me. After awhile, they told me that they were going to Sacramento for the weekend to spend time with Barbra's sister Patti and her husband Cliff. I was welcome to join them and, if I liked it, I could stay there with them for a couple of weeks. I figured I could use a change of scenery, so I agreed. Cliff and Patti welcomed me warmly, and I gladly agreed to spend a couple of weeks with them.
They had three kids younger than myself: a girl about 16 and two boys much younger. Regardless, they took me in as if I was their own kid. They even gave me my own room! Cliff was a kick in the ass; he loved to joke around. He was one of the first adults to teach me how to work on cars and stuff. He liked to drink and, even though I was just 18, he would take me to bars with him. Patti was also strict but she wasn't mean. She actually showed me how to do the dishes, which was a whole lot better than Barbara just yelling at me. Cliff had his own business putting aluminum awnings on mobile homes. He didn't have a partner at the time, so he took me in and taught me the trade. He paid me minimum wage but I was getting free room and board in his home. In no time, I was becoming stronger, I had some money, and I eventually bought my first car, a 1970 Pontiac Le Mans.
My first car looked kinda like this one.
Around that time, I became reacquainted with my old friend Bill Jerome.
The Jerome family lived a few doors down from us on Pope Street. I knew
that they had moved to Sacramento, and I was good friends with Bill
growing up. So I reached out to him and we started to hang out. And I had
wheels, so life was VERY good!
Bill and I eventually found an apartment and moved in together. It quickly
became party central. Jim Jerome, Bill's older brother, was a regular
guest. I met a lot of fun guys, but there were also some shady characters
coming and going from our place. One time my leather jacket turned up
missing. Bill said that he saw Bob, this big black guy, wearing it and
wondered if I had sold it to him. Nope! He stole it from my room, and I
knew that I wasn't going to get it back.
After a while, business started to dry up, so Cliff decided to go back to his old job at Lucky grocery store. He put me in touch with Tucker, a friend of his in the awning business. He was a big, 50 yr. old, dorky looking clown who would refer to himself as '(Something) Tucker - a bad mother f---ker!'. But he paid me better than Cliff.
I stayed with Tucker for about 6 months, but things came to an abrupt end one day on a job in Pittsburg Calif. The posts for awnings are typically attached to a concrete slab with hardware. But if there is no slab, we had to drill holes into the ground with a power auger and fill it in with concrete. We were drilling holes one day, and both of us were hanging onto the auger when it contacted something. He stopped it immediately, then said to me, "did you hear that?" I didn't but he said, "Hold on, I'm gonna make sure the power to the property is off." As he walked away, the auger tilted slightly and a giant shock surged through my hands and knocked me to the ground. The next thing I knew he was slapping me in the face trying to wake me up.
I took some time off after that, and then decided that I didn't want any part of drilling holes into the ground. He tried to talk me out of it by saying that the electrical line should not have been there, but that scared the crap out of me.
I began to work with Patti next, in a sewing store that she managed, stocking shelves with big bolts of fabrics. She taught me all of the various materials. That didn't last long as that sort of stuff was not my thing. Being the classy lady that she was, she understood.
I was about 20 years old when I went to work with Jimmy Walker, another friend of Cliff's. He was an old, skinny, chain-smoking Okie from Arkansas. He liked me because I knew how to install awnings and decks. I told him straight off, "I ain't doing no augers!" He said he would take care of all the drilling, and we had a deal. He gave me my own work truck, a small Datsun pickup. He asked if I knew anyone looking for work who I would like as a partner. I thought of a friend of Cliff's who had a son who was looking for work. We partied a few times and had fun together. I asked the kid if he wanted to work with me and seeing as how he was about 17 and had nothing else going on, he quickly agreed.
The kid and I would do lots of small jobs for Jimmy by ourselves. We got along well, and the kid was a good worker and did everything I told him to do without question. We had this big job once, taking down aluminum awnings and decking at one place - a piece of cake - but then reconstructing them at a different place. This was the first time that Jimmy and the kid worked on the same job. I quickly found out that the kid had a problem with authority or something, because he would start arguing with Jimmy. I had to intervene several times. It was a tough job made tougher by constant bickering.
Then we got a REALLY big job on a very expensive T-shaped mobile home. We had to put up custom awnings, decking, and screen the whole thing in with insulation, which is very expensive! There were lots of complicated calculations which gave Jimmy a hard time anyhow. The kid was having a very hard time respecting Jimmy, and in one of their many arguments, the kid quit and walked off the job. That was the beginning of the end for us. We finished the job, but work started to dry up and I decided to start thinking of moving back to San Francisco.
Besides missing my old friends Dave and Ray, there was another episode which I totally blocked out until just now, but was central to my decision to move back to the City. Here goes:
When I was about 20, I had moved out from the apartment with Bill and I moved in a new place with a Latino girl named Terry. She had a 7 yr old girl.
I got completely wasted one time with Terry and I knew that this was NOT just pot. It turned out to be pot laced with crystal meth. After talking with her, it became clear that she was a dealer. She would take my car to drive to Hayward to deal drugs with her old boyfriend. I had no experience with that stuff. She took me to Hayward one time and left me in an apartment. She took my car somewhere and said she would be right back. She came back hours later! I found out from one of her girlfriends (who was trying to get me to live with her) that she was having sex with her old boyfriend.
Things deteriorated quickly after that, and finally ended in a big fight over some long-distance calls she was making to Hayward. I had my construction belt sitting in the living room, and she grabbed a hammer from it and tore the phone off the wall. I calmly commented that it looked like she wasn't going to be making ANY calls now. She didn't like that, so she took the hammer to the TV picture tube. I decided that it was time to step in before she took it to my nice stereo. In the middle of her back swing, I ripped the hammer from her hand, causing her a little pain.
All of a sudden, there was a knock on the door. The police had heard the commotion and came to see if everything was OK. That was very fortunate because I told them that she was high as a kite, and had become very violent, pointing to place on the wall where the phone used to be, and the TV. They asked what I would like to do, and I said that I would like to move out. They offered to keep an eye on her while I packed. Just then, Bill drove up in a station wagon. So we loaded up all of my stuff and moved it to his apartment. I left her a mattress.
So I temporarily moved in with Bill. A few days later when I wasn't there, he heard a knock at the door. Bill could see that it was Terry's brother, a boxer, with a bunch of his motorcycle buddies. Bill grabbed my shotgun out of the closet, swung open the door, cocked a round into the chamber, and asked what they wanted. They backed off and said they were looking for Dan. "Dan don't live here, so get the f--- outa here and never come back". So they politely turned and didn't come back.
That was a HUGE incentive to leave Sacramento and head back to the city. Mom offered to let me move into the study room downstairs, which I gladly accepted. A few days later, Mom came down to tell me that Mike had gotten him an interview at the parking garage on Post and Mason in the city. Dad had been working at the Fifth and Mission garage for years parking cars on the side. He introduced me to Sam Waters, who does all of the hiring and firing for the biggest parking garage guy in the bay area. Based solely on the fact that Dad and Mike were good workers, he hired me on the spot. He handed me his car keys and told me to see Rich at the Post and Mason (aka Olympic Club) garage and tell him that Sam had just hired him for the 4pm to midnight shift, Mon - Friday. As I pulled in driving the big boss's car, the workers scrambled to greet me, but were confused when I got out of the car. Rich quickly took care of the business getting me inducted into the Teamsters / parking attendant's union, and almost overnight, I once again had a good life. I met many fun guys and also celebrities while working there. I spent the next 20 years in that union.
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