GROWING UP IN INDIANA IN A FAMILY OF TEN CHILDREN

I grew up in Indiana — at least that's where I spent my youth. My wife claims I still haven't grown up. She's probably right, and I'm proud of it. I have a really old body and face, but my mind, heart, and soul are young.

Several things played important parts in my life. Let me begin by saying that sex, crime, vast family riches, political power and corruption, and international intrigue — that is espionage — played no part in my life whatsoever. Well, sex did, once. Not mine, but that of my parents when they conceived me. Actually, they didn't conceive of me, or they might not have had sex that time.

Carmel, Indiana, where I spent much of my youth, could have been the setting for the movie A Christmas Story. One freezing winter day, I licked a metal pole — don't ask me why, because I don't know — and my tongue stuck to it. It hurt a lot. No one said I was a smart kid. My father had one of those lamps shaped like a woman's leg. Actually, that was my lamp when I was seventeen years old, and I still have it.

Small towns are great because the gossip keeps you up on all the mischief involving everyone in town. Unfortunately, because we were the largest family in Carmel, much of the gossip was about us.

Growing up in a family with ten children was like being in a large litter of puppies around feeding time. There was great chaos and a good deal of pushing and shoving trying to get food, but when dinner was over, there was plenty of loving playfulness and happiness.

I am the second oldest in a family of ten children, six boys and four girls: Carole, me, Howard, Kenny, Gail, Peggy, Kathy, Shawn, Danny, and Jimmy. The fact that there are ten children in our family should tell you that my mother and father weren't entirely sane. And we didn't have a large family because my parents were Catholic. Our large family was the result of my mother's poor hearing. Every night when they went to bed, my father leaned over and whispered in my mother's ear, "Do you want to go to sleep or what?" Not hearing well, she frequently answered, "What?"

We were as normal as a family of twelve could be. Mom and Dad played games with us — like Uncle Wiggily, Sorry, and canasta — and helped us assemble jigsaw puzzles on our dining room table. Once Dad bought Howard, Kenny, and me a Lionel electric train set but insisted that he be with us when we used it. He said he didn't want us to electrocute ourselves or set the house on fire, but we suspected he enjoyed playing with the train set as much as we did.

Our first house in Carmel was quite small for a family our size. It had three floors — a basement; the first floor with a living room, dining room, kitchen, bathroom, and two bedrooms; and an attic, where Howard, Kenny, and I slept. Mom and Dad had one of the first-floor bedrooms, and Carole and Gail shared the other when we first moved there. Before we moved from the house, Carole shared the bedroom with Gail, Peggy, and Kathy, and infant Shawn's crib was in Mom and Dad's bedroom. We clearly had a full house.

In 1955, we moved diagonally across the street to our second Carmel home. This house, one of the oldest in town, had been built in the late nineteenth century. Much larger than our first home, it had four levels — a basement; a first floor with a living room, dining room, TV room, kitchen, a bathroom (of sorts), and only one bedroom where our parents slept; a four-bedroom second floor where all us kids slept; and an attic. The attic was used primarily for storage, but it also was the home of the family ghost, Mr. Fisher. I'll talk more about Mr. Fisher later. The house's exterior was made of cut stone, and its interior walls were made of plaster. The backyard was smaller than that of our first home, but it too had a swing set, and we played baseball and football in the backyard. Because the house was much larger than the previous one, it better accommodated our large and growing family.

Like other families, we had pets, dogs mostly. Our first pet and my favorite was a mutt named Ginger, with a lot of golden retriever in her. She was sweet, gentle, and as good a friend as a six-year-old boy ever had. Another family favorite was Foxy. Foxy was also a mutt, but he had fox terrier blood.

A family pet we didn't like was King, a large, fearsome, and at times vicious dog that Dad had bought from a man for ten dollars. Perhaps Dad thought King would provide protection for our family. If so, things didn't work out as he expected. King frightened the man who delivered fuel oil to our house, so the man sprayed him with oil and refused to deliver oil to our house unless King was tied up or penned. King also frightened our postmen, milkmen, bread men, and other people who weren't members of our family. Even we kids were afraid of the dog. We tried keeping King in the basement, but that wasn't a long-term workable solution. Nor was it fair for a dog of King's size to be cooped up like that. Finally, Dad returned King to the man who had sold him. The man wasn't thrilled to get the dog back, so Dad had to pay him to take King off our hands. Dad, who didn't like spending money, was pretty unhappy that he had to put out money to get and then to get rid of King.

That wasn't the only time Dad had trouble with a dog. Once his father — our grandfather — went on a trip and asked Dad to watch his old hound dog. Dad brought the dog home along with a bag of dog food he had found in the shop area of our family's electrical-contracting business. The hound didn't like the dog food, but he ate it. There's little wonder that the dog didn't like the "food." It turned out to be cement mix. Fortunately, the dog didn't die.

While he didn't always deal well with dogs, Dad knew how to handle the demands of ten children. On many summer Sunday afternoons, we all piled into our car — a sizable, copper-colored Plymouth station wagon — and took drives just for the fun of it. Motoring down country roads, Dad accelerated as we zoomed over hills, giving us kids a thrill. "Do it again!" we'd holler, and he would. Most of those drives ended in Noblesville, the Hamilton County seat, located some fifteen miles northeast of...