The Early Years
The Terrible Teens
Moving South for College & A Brief Career in Fine Stones
Entering Organised Crime--The Music Industry
Staring a Quarter Century in Australia
He Dies And Is Reborn
Phil's father's last tour of duty was back at Fort Gordon where Phil crossed the line into his early teens. With a bicycle as chief means of transport and his mother not driving, he was permitted to cruise around all day before and after school as well as on weekends and he used this freedom to explore the neighbouring city of Augusta, including its black culture. Lying to his mother that he was going to see a rerun of 'Mutiny on the Bounty', he instead made it to the front of the stage at the Civic Centre for a James Brown concert, the only visible white person in the audience in those pre-integration days. His reward for this was getting showered with Brown's sweat when the singer did a sudden turn and split within a few feet of Phil, staring him in the eye. And with a mighty HUAAGH! Brown seemed to levitate back onto his feet as Phil realised he's been baptised into a new church.
In his various schools where Phil went, he took up band, saddled first with a Sousaphone because he was late joining and then finally playing drums in a marching band. He joined the chorus "Because that's where the girls were", and also didn't do shop or sports, opting instead for typing and home economics because, "That's where the girls are." His male classmates called him a fag for taking girlie courses as they got sweaty, greasy and dirty in Car Shop, Metal Shop and Wood Shop or hung out in the showers comparing tool size.
Phil's father retired from the military and the family moved to their family home in the tiny town of West Poland, Maine where he stuck out like a sore thumb with his education and linguistic skills as well as his embracing black music. The 400 population town was stifling, but because he lived on a farm, he had plenty of animals to related to, among which were wild but harmless snakes living in stone walls and the farm's foundations. He also became a lover of birds and caught insects and butterflies of all types for a college professor who was assembling a fauna collection.
Unfortunately, his father and mother drank to excess during the long winter nights--the joke being that there are only two seasons in Maine, 'Winter and July'--and soon Phil's father became violent, directing most of his wrath against the 14 year old. At 15, after being beaten with straps, belts, sticks, pipes and finally, a garden hoe, Phil snapped and knocked his father out with one mighty punch in front of his mother. The humiliation proved too much and Phil's father moved out, leaving his wife who was recovering from a hysterectomy with a small farm to run.
She had to take a job and a Job Corps Centre had just opened up in an old hotel complex in neighbouring Poland Springs which became home to over 1000 young women between 15 and 21 years of age who were yanked out of cities and planted there to learn trades. After investigations into their character and strict monitoring, local boys were allowed on campus and allowed to 'date' the women there. Phil passed muster, visited every weekend and soon became a popular friend to many girls away from home--some merely lonely, others with massive problems, criminal backgrounds, drug problems or other life tragedies.
But it was here that Phil learned all about black music, how to dance and he was also taught how to make out and had his sexual awakening with a Latino/Africano woman in the back seat of a fold down Rambler. He smoked his first joint, drank his first beer and started to grow his hair long after 15 years of crewcuts. He was thrown out of one school in his sophomore year for stealing the chemistry department's enire set of exams and was placed on probation in his senior year for getting the band and chorus drunk on an exchange concert to another city. But he still graduated with honours and had to only make the concession of having a haircut to participate.