I’d wander around alone, and it seemed that the wind was always blowing and I was always cold. San Pedro is by the ocean, and we lived right next to Fort MacArthur. Maybe during the First World War there was a lot of action there, but around 1935 it was just a very big place staffed by a few soldiers. It was on a hill, and you could see the ocean all around, and there was a lot of fog and a lot of weeds and trees and brush and old barbed wire, and there was a large area that had been at one time, I think, a big oil field. They had huge oil tanks that went down into the ground very deep, overgrown with weeds. I used to go through the fence and wander around the fort. I’d climb down into these oil things.
Closer to the water they had big guns, disappearing guns, set in cement and steel housings. Every now and then they’d fire them to test them, and they’d raise up out of the ground. But most of the time they were quiet, and I’d sneak around and climb down onto the guns. Down below they had giant railroad guns, cannons, and anti-aircraft guns that they’d practice on; you could feel them going off.
On weekends I’d walk down the hill to a place called Navy Field, where there were four old football fields with old stands. The navy ships docked in the harbor, and the sailors had games, maybe four games going at once. I’d go down alone and sit alone in the stands and watch. Once I was walking under the stands to get out of the wind, and I looked up and saw the people. And the women, when they stood up, you could see under their dresses. That really excited me, so I started doing that, walking around under the stands on purpose to look up the women’s dresses.
I built up my own play world. I loved sports, and I’d play I was a boxer or a football player. I even invented a baseball game I could play alone with dice, but boxing was the one I really got carried away with. At that time Joe Louis was coming up as a heavyweight. I would go out in the garage and pretend I was a fighter. I had a little box I sat on. I’d hear an imaginary bell and get up in this old garage and fight, and it was actually as if I was in the ring. Sometimes I’d get hit and fall down and be stunned, and I’d hear the referee counting, and I’d get up at the last minute, and just when everybody thought I was beaten I’d catch my opponent with a left hook. And then I’d have him against the ropes. I’d knock him out, and everybody would scream and throw money into the ring and holler for me, and I’d hold my hands together and wave to the crowd.
I played by myself for a long time and then, much as I hated to be with other kids, because I felt I wasn’t like them, they wouldn’t like me, I wanted to play sports so bad I overcame that and started playing in empty lots, and I was extremely good at sports. I was good in school, too. My drafting teacher in junior high said I really had a talent, and my father dreamed that one day he’d send me to Cal Tech here or Carnegie Tech back east so I could do something in mathematics or engineering.
My mother’s side of the family was very musical. Her aunt and uncle—I think their last name was Bartolomuccio, shortened to Bartold—had five children. They all played musical instruments. The youngest boy was Gabriel Bartold, and as a child he played on the radio, a full-sized trumpet. He’d put it on a table and stand up to it and blow it.
The Bartolds lived in San Gabriel in a big house. In the back they had a lath-house, an eating place with a big round table. I remember going there several times and all the activity in the kitchen with the aunts and I don’t know who-all making pasta; they made the most fantastic food imaginable. The men drank their homemade wine and ate and ate and ate, and the children were very attentive to the adults. I was very young, and the only thing I really remember is the daughter who was an opera singer. I remember hearing her sing and how pretty she was. She looked like a little angel, and she sang so beautifully with the operatic soprano voice.
I loved music, and when I passed a music store and saw the horns glittering in the window I’d want to go inside and touch them. It seemed unbelievable to me that anybody could actually play them. Finally I told my dad I just had to have a musical instrument. I wanted to play trumpet like my cousin Gabriel. My dad agreed to get somebody to come out and see what was happening with me. He found this man somewhere, Leroy Parry, who taught saxophone and clarinet, and brought him out to the house. In playing football I had chipped my teeth. Mr. Parry looked at my mouth and said I would never be able to play trumpet well because my teeth weren’t strong. He said, “Why don’t you play clarinet? You’d be excellent on clarinet. Give it a try.” I still wanted to play trumpet, but I figured I’d better take advantage of what I had, so I started lessons on clarinet when I was nine years old.
Mr. Parry didn’t play very well, but he was a nice guy, short and plump with a cherubic face, warm, happy-go-lucky. He had sparkling little eyes. You could never imagine him doing anything wrong or nasty or unpleasant. He invited me to his house for dinner a couple of times and I met his wife. She liked me, and they had no children of their own, so she would send me candy that she made. Mr. Parry was like another father to me, and I used to love talking to him. That’s what our lessons were. None of them had anything to do with technicalities or the learning of music. It was just talking, having somebody to talk to. And I never had to practice. Just before Mr. Parry came I’d get my clarinet out and run through the lesson from the previous week. He’d think I’d been practicing the whole time. When I did play I played songs. I played what I felt. I didn’t want to read anything or play exercises.
My father lived nearby. He was working as a longshoreman, and he lived with a woman named Nellie as man and wife. He never married her. He’d visit us and pay the bills. When it was time for school he’d give my grandmother money to get me a few clothes. He drank all the time, too. He used to get mean sometimes; he’d get loud and talk on and on and recite “The Face on the Barroom Floor” and all kinds of weird things.
After I started playing the clarinet my father would come and take me down to San Pedro to the bars. I’ve been there lately and the place is all cleaned up, but at that time, down by the waterfront, the whole area was nothing but bars, and there were fishermen, Slavonians, Italians, Germans—almost every nationality known was in those bars. A few had entertainment, a beat strip show, but most of them were just places guys went to hang out and talk. They weren’t the kind of bars women would go in or that hustlers were at. They were men’s bars, where they’d drink and talk about fishing and the waterfront and driving winches and their problems with management, to talk about the union. They were real tough guys; they were all my dad’s friends. He would take me to several different bars, sit me up on the bar, and make me take out my clarinet and play little songs like “Nola” and “Parade of the Wooden Soldiers” and “I Can’t Give You Anything but Love,” “The Music Goes Round and Round,” “Auld Lang Syne.” The guys would ask for other songs, and I’d play them, and they’d listen. My father would stand right by me and stare at them and nod his head—like they’d better like it or he’d smack ‘em in the mouth! And he was a big guy, and he’d be drunk. I got the feeling that they did like it because I was his boy. They liked boys. I was his boy: “That’s Art’s boy. He plays nice music.” “Yeah, nice boy. Play that thing, boy!” They’d pat me on the back. They’d grab my arm and shake my hand—almost hurt my hand they were so rough: “You just keep it up, boy. You don’t want to be like us.” I was like their child. All their children. “You keep that up and you won’t have to do like we do.” And they would have fingers missing, and some guys would have an arm gone. Things would drop on them and they’d lose legs, feet, fingers. I could get away from that and be respectable and not have to get dirty and get hurt and work myself to death. And so they’d drop a dollar bill in my hand or fifty cents or a silver dollar. I’d end up with fifteen, twenty dollars just from these guys, and my dad never took the money from me. He said, “That’s yours. You earned that.” I always felt scared before I played, but after I did it I was proud and my dad was proud of me.
My grandmother was always talking about Dick, her son, the favorite. According to my dad Dick never helped my grand-mother at all, never brought her anything, never gave her any money, but she