CRAIG DIRGO: How did he come to America?
CLIVE CUSSLER: One of his two sisters had come to America and married.
He decided to leave Germany and come across, too. He was almost deniedentry into the country when an immigration official considered Dad apotential welfare case because of the injured leg. After a six-day stayat Ellis Island, where he conned his way into the country by claiming tobe a piano player, a job where the injured leg would have no effect, hetook a train to hissister's farm in Illinois, where he worked in the fields while helearned English. The following. year, he moved to Chicago during theRoaring Twenties and experienced exciting times, driving a StutzBearcat, making gin in a bathtub, seeing Al Capone on the courthousesteps, finding gangsters' bullet riddled bodies in the street andfinally meeting my mother.
CRAIG DIRGO: Wasn't your mother in Minnesota?
CLYVE CUSSLER: Mom was living in Minneapolis, and while visiting afriend in Chicago, they decided to go dancing. Dad and Mom alwaysclaimed they were introduced by mutual friends. It wasn't until theywere in their seventies that the truth came out. It seems they actuallymet when Dad asked her to dance at the Trianon Ballroom to the music ofTed "Is Everybody Happy" Lewis. So it could be said that Dad picked Momup. This was in 1929. They were married on June 10, 1930, and had me alittle over a year later.
As usual, my timing was bad, and I arrived on the same day Dad was laidoff his job along with a hundred other workers at Durabilt Steel, acompany that made steel cabinets. He moved my mother and me toMinneapolis, where we lived with her parents.
My grandfather was making good money working as an engineer on therailroad. Dad finally found a job as a traveling auditor for a companycalled Jewel Tea that sold coffee and related supplies door-to-door.
We moved around the country, living in Terre Haute, Indiana; Louisville,Kentucky; and then back to Minneapolis, where I started in kindergarten.
CRAIG DIRGO: What happened next?
CLIVE CUSSLER: During the winter of 1937, I came down with pneumonia andnearly passed on to the great beyond. Those were the days beforeantibiotics, and I lived in an oxygen tent for six days before finallyshowing signs of improvement. As I began feeling better, the hospitalmoved an old derelict into the bed next to mine. The police had foundhim half frozen in an alley. Old Charlie was a neat guy. He taught mecard games and told stories no six-year-old should have heard in thedays before TV and R-rated movies. One morning, when the nurse cameinto the room to check on me, I nodded over at Old Charlie and asked whyhe had turned blue. She gasped, whipped the curtain around Charlie'sbed, and within minutes he was whisked out of the room covered by asheet. When Dad found out an old drunk had died in the bed next to hislittle sonny boy, he damn near tore the hospital down to its foundation.Boy, was he mad!
Against doctor's orders, he and Mom carried me to their little apartmentso I could enjoy Christmas at home. They had sacrificed their smallsavings to buy me a Lionel electric train complete with a tunnel, a fortwith wooden soldiers and a little switchman who came out of a tiny houseto swing his lantern when the train went past.
About this time, Dad was offered a promotion within the company thatcalled for a transfer to Chicago. At the same time, there was also anopening in the Los Angeles office if he remained at his present salarylevel. It was the dead of winter in Minnesota, the snow was piled eightfeet high around our apartment and his sickly son looked like deathwarmed over. He never thought twice. Within the week, we were allin our 1937 black Ford Victoria and headed for sunny SouthernCalifornia. Dad drove straight south to Texas to get out of the snowand cold as quickly as possible and caught old Highway 66 west into theGolden State.
CRAIG DIRGO: Where did you live in California?
CLIVE CUSSLER: We settled in a small suburban community outside LosAngeles, called Alhambra, where I lived for the next twenty-three years.My inaugural in the first grade was an introduction into the differencesbetween east and west. All my classmates were healthy, tannedCalifornians, while I was this pale, sickly kid with ribs poking throughhis chest who looked like an anemic ghost. I recall they laughed at mebecause I wore short pants when no self-respecting California kid wouldever be caught dead in short pants.
I survived and still treasure happy memories from my eight years atFremont Elementary School in Alhambra. The principal was a tough oldbird, rather attractive as I think back now, and well respected. Hername was Mary Mullin. Those were the days when teachers took no crapfrom their pupils. A number of fathers, including my own, wrote lettersto Miss Mullin, stating that if their boys were naughty, she had theirexpress permission to paddle their asses, which she did on numerousoccasions. I only felt her wrath twice, as I recall.
Amazingly, at my fortieth high school reunion, nearly twenty kids out ofmy old Fremont grammar school class attended.
Friendships were made that are still cherished.
CRAIG DIRGO: What did you do for fun as a child?
CLIVE CUSSLER: I was very fortunate in growing up in a neighborhoodwhere there were six boys of the same age who caused mischief and wereall punished by razor straps, belts or switches but were veryindustrious and creative. From the age of eight until we all enteredhigh school, we built tree houses and eight-room (granted, they weresmall) clubhouses, dug caves and covered them with boards and sod, anddeveloped entire miniature cities out of mud.
In the open fields behind our homes, before the Southern Californiahousing boom in the postwar years, we struggled to move bales of hayfrom a local rancher's harvest and constructed a huge fort, where weplayed French Foreign Legion fighting off the raiding Tuaregs of theSahara Desert. We also built a twenty-foot boat in the middle of avacant lot and pretended we were pirates raiding the Spanish Main.
I joined the Boy Scouts at age twelve and was a member of the CobraPatrol of Alhambra Troop Six. My scoutmaster was a wonderful man I'venever forgotten. His name was Guy Smalley, and along with my dad, theyinspired me to make Eagle Scout by the time I reached fourteen. Thecamping trips, the hikes, those Thursday night meetings in a logstructure built from telephone poles donated by the phone company,they're still with me. Few boys had a finer childhood.
CRAIG DIRGO: What was your first job?
CLIVE CUSSLER: When I was old enough, my father insisted I learn workethics. My job, if I was to be offered food and clothing, was to mowand trim the lawn every Saturday. We lived on a corner lot, and ifyou've ever lived on a corner lot, you know how much yard there is tomaintain. The trimming was the part I hated. There must have been fivemiles
of sidewalks and flower beds to edge. Even to this day, I'd rather runup a steep slope in my bare feet on pea gravel than trim a yard. I alsohad to wax Mom's linoleum floors. Remember those? And dry the dishesevery evening. All for twenty-five cents a week.
When I became a teenager, Dad raised me to a dollar a week. I wasn'timpressed. With the canny mind of a fourteen-year-old, I began doingsuch a rotten job of taking care of the yard, Dad finally threw up hishands in exasperation and hired a gardener.
Through high school, I worked every chance I got. Getting up at 4:00A.M. to deliver the Los Angeles Times seven days a week for twentydollars.
Selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door. Loading trucks at alaundry. Boxing groceries in a supermarket. Working a dirty jobgrinding the burrs off the impellers that went inside water pumps. Isaved every nickel and dime for that glorious day when I could afford togo out and buy my own car.
CRAIG DIRGO: What about high school?
CLIVE CUSSLER: Except for the extracurricular activities at AlhambraHigh, I found school to be a colossal drag. Frankly, I hated it.
During algebra and civics classes, I stared out the window, blocking outthe teacher's lecture while I fired a cannon with John Paul Jones on theBonhomme Richard in his epic battle with the British frigate.
Miraculously, I managed to survive four years without an F and, I mightadd, an A or a B. My report cards, much to the frustration of myself-disciplined and highly intelligent German fat
her, were filled withC's and D's and the usual notation: "Clive seems bright, but he doesn'tapply himself."
When fans and interviewers ask me what teacher inspired me to expand myhorizons and enter a writing career, they always seem saddened to learnI never had a teacher who saw any potential in a boy who seemed lost inNever-never Land. All they saw was a disinterested student who wouldprobably end out his days working as a farm laborer. I've alwaysthought that education is geared more to students who show a flair ofscholarship than those who have an untapped well of creativity.
CRAIG DIRGO: So school was not your favorite activity.
CLIVE CUSSLER: Hardly. The early forties were the heyday of Californiahot rods. When my buddies and I weren't making clowns of ourselvestrying to impress girls, we were body-surfing on the beach and laboringover our rods. Buying a car meant more to me than sports. Despitebeing a competent football pass receiver and baseball hitter, I optedfor working until I had enough money to buy a 1936Ford four-door sedan. Never half as fast as I hoped and prone tothrowing rods and breaking axles, it was nonetheless a pretty car indark green metallic paint with the louvers of the hood filled in, moonripple disk hubcaps, lowered in the back and touched off with teardropfender skirts. I poured my heart and a thousand dollars into that car.
After I went into the Air Force, Dad sold it for sixty-nine dollars.
My friends and I had a lively time in high school.
A few actually had girlfriends, but mostly our love was directed towardour cars. I once bought a big black 1925 Auburn limousine with vanitymirrors and flower vases in the backseat for the grand sum of twenty-twodollars. It was right after the war in1945, and most of the American public, having coaxed the family car tokeep running in spite of the gas shortage for nearly five years, wanteda new car. The used-car market fell through the floor, and old classicscould be purchased for next to nothing.
For the football games, my motley crew and I would dress up likegangsters, complete with overcoats and old fedora hats pulled down overour eyes, and smoke cigars. My poor parents had once suffered for threeyears in a vain attempt to make me play the violin, and I took the casedown from a shelf in the garage and carried it under one arm as thegangsters supposedly did when concealing their submachine guns.
Pulling up to the football stadium in the big black limousine, our gangwould rumble through the aisles and up the steps to our seats. Thesecurity guards never did catch on to the fact that I smuggled beer andwine into the stands inside the Violin case.
CRAIG DIRGO: But you ended up graduating.
CLIVE CUSSLER: Barely. I had so many demerits that to graduate on -thestage with the rest of my class, the Alhambra High class of '49, I hadto work as a gardener on the school grounds after class for two hours aday. I next enrolled at Pasadena City College. It was a junior collegein those days. For no good reason that I can think of, I applied myselfand began receiving B's and a couple of A's. My dad almost went intocardiac arrest and demanded to know why I was impersonating his son.
During the summer of 1950, an old school pal, Felix Duprey, and I tookoff in Felix's 1939 Ford convertible and toured the country, coveringthirty-six states in three months. We slept in freight carsin Boise and Houston, in a bandstand in Vermont, in the bushes directlybeneath the Capitol building in Washington, D.C and under the frontporch of a school in Kingsland, Georgia, where the local sheriffarrested us for trespassing. He followed our car into town, where hemade us sit in a barbershop because the barber happened to be thejustice of the peace.
There was the threat of thirty days on the Georgia chain gang until Ilaunched into a speech about the ill treatment two red-blooded Americanboys received in Kingsland, Georgia, while traveling the great UnitedStates. Unintiniidated and dubious, but maybe a tiny bit confused, thesheriff and the justice of the peace ordered us to remain in the barbershop while they went over to the post office to see if there were anywanted posters out on us. Once they were gone, Felix and I looked ateach other, ran to the car and beat it over the Florida border onlythree miles away.
CRAIG DIRGO: So after the trip, did you go back to Pasadena CityCollege?
CLIVE CUSSLER: When we returned to Alhambra, we were stunned to find allour friends enlisting in the armed services. We'd paid no attention tothe news during the trip and were only vaguely aware of the conflict inKorea. Times were different then, and few boys hesitated to serve theircountry. Felix and I tried to sign up for flight training in the Navyand Air Force, but because so many college students had enlisted whilewe were driving the country, flight school had a nine-month backlog. Sowe signed up with the Air Force and went off to basic training atLackland Air Force Base in San Antonio, Texas.
On the train ride from Los Angeles,along with sixty other recruits, we all became drunk on cheap bourbonthat had to be smuggled on board, because we were all under age, andproceeded to sing "Good Night Irene" while breaking out the windows inthe club car. When the train reached El Paso, a squad of militarypolice boarded the train for the rest of the trip to prevent anotherincident.
After basic training, I was sent to aircraft and engine school to becomea mechanic. The sergeant who interviewed me for a job classificationignored MY pleas for the motor pool. "All you do is change sparkplugs," he said, waving his hands airily. "What you want is aircraftand engine school." The Air Force had this irrational concept that if Iloved rebuilding old automobiles, I would simply adore maintaining C-97Boeing Strato cruisers in the Military Air Transport Service. The bigdifference was that my old Ford flathead V-8 had only eight spark plugs.The twenty-eight-cylinder Pratt-WUtney 4,360 cubic-inch engines thatpowered the C-97 each had a total of fifty-six spark plugs that requiredchanging all too frequently. After graduating from mechanic school, Iasked to be shipped to Europe in the forlorn hope I could visit myrelatives in Germany. Naturally, the Air Force sent me in the oppositedirection-Hickham Field, Hawaii, to be precise.
Like school, the Air Force and I never really hit it off. If I found anangle to get off work, I used it. My medical records read like anEncyclopedia Britannica. I once found a large medical book dating backto 1895 in the back of an antique store. I bought it and began studyingthe entries. I remember one doctor asking me what my symptoms were.
I told him, "Sir, I see purple spots before my eyes, I have hot flashes,the back of my neck has gone numb and I can't seem to bend my fingers."
He looked at me strangely for several moments, then he gasped. "My God,son, it sounds like you have Borneo Jungle Incepus. I want you in thehospital."
Very astute, that doctor. His diagnosis was right on the money. I wasimpressed he was aware of a disease considered rare even in 1895.
After three days of blood tests and warnings to stop harassing thenurses, I was declared fit and sent back to the flight line. Thatantique medical book was the best investment I ever made.
The final six months of my overseas tour passed slowly but pleasantly.
I made many fine friends who remain in touch today. Dave Anderson, asculptor from Tulsa, Oklahoma; Charlie Davis, a pilot from Chicago; and,of course, Al Giordano, a rugged, sarcastic little stonemason fromVineland, New Jersey, who became the inspiration for Albert Giordino,Dirk Pitt's close pal in all the NUMA adventures.
Al is now retired and living in Stuart, Florida.
After roll call, Dave, Al and I, along with Don Mercier, who has sincepassed away, would jump in our cars, drive around the island of Oahu toa secluded cove and go skin diving. We soon became as tanned as thePolynesians and as agile as the fish we speared. Diving was wonderfulin those days.
The beaches and coves were deserted, and we had the reefs and theturquoise waters to ourselves. It was then I enhanced my alreadyestablished love for the sea.
To supplement my meager one hundred and thirty dollars a month as a bucksergeant, I used to buy old cars from the new-car dealers, fix them upand sell them to the troops arriving for service in the islands. Notrelishing Air Force life, I bought an airplane with three other fellows,a 1939 Luscombe,
and rented an apartment at Waikiki Beach.
A 1940 Packard limousine was my transportation to and from the baseuntil I bought and restored a 1939 Fiat Topolino with a little 500ccengine. I sold that car when I returned home and always regretted it.
On a return vacation to Hawaii several years later, I found that the carhad been converted to a dragster that won several trophies on the localdrag strip.
CRAIG DIRGO: It was about this time you met your wife, correct?
CLIVE CUSSLER: I met my wife-to-be, Barbara Knight, shortly before Ileft overseas in October of 1951.
She and I were introduced by a mutual friend, Carolyn Johnston, on ablind date when we attended a football game." They arrived to pick me upat my parents' house, and I sauntered out wearing a leather flightjacket, a white scarf flowing over my shoulders, Levi's, and smoking acigar. I thought I looked rather dashing, but Barbara took me for somekind of barbarian member of a motorcycle club. She sat as far away fromme as she could and spoke only about ten words the whole evening.