Chapter 14     My Son, the Musician

Elaine writes---

It's time for Mom to get a word in sideways here, this is her 
story too.

I got rather weary of commuting to Renton every day for the 
thankless task of fixing constantly outdated computer systems 
for Boeing Aviation and after 8 years it was time for a break.  
Art had been taking it easy building barns and fences and 
planting crops, as well as teaching English at Monroe High.  We 
also had grant money coming in from the IPR and were doing all 
right economically.  So I got to quit work at last, wheee!

I wanted to be more of a mother to Adam.  He was growing up so 
fast and I was missing out on so much of it.  And our life at the 
Hacienda was more important to me than any job anyway.

Adam and I would often go horseback riding together when weather 
permitted, he was a good rider when he was young.  He liked 
animals and had a good way with them, but they had to get used to
him--strange horses and dogs usually went crazy when they smelled
him coming, but he could usually win them over by talking gently 
to them.

As he got older though, he didn't ride any more.  For one thing he
got too heavy, but also because his own body had so much power
and endurance that he could simply outrun a horse.  But we went 
riding together anyway--he would run alongside me as I rode Starmist 
at a gallop.  Quite a sight.  

Adam was getting really tall about then, much higher than me, or 
even Art, who was almost 6' tall.  I suppose most fathers 
experience that traumatic/proud day when his little boy is suddenly 
taller than himself and I assume they try to be graceful about it, 
especially when they know it to be as inevitable as it was in Art's 
case.  For Art it came when Adam was 8 years old, but he'd already 
been outweighed the year before, so Dad was already used to being 
the little guy in the family.

By age 10 Adam had grown to 6'5" and weighed over 300 pounds. He
got big and bigger and showed no sign of stopping.  Next year he 
flattened our bathroom scale, only built to take up to 300 pounds.  

Adam loved all animals and through the years we've had several dogs 
and cats out on the farm, but Adam's favorite had been Potatochip, 
the half-retriever half-mutt he got as a cute little puppy when he 
was 10.  From then on Potatchip was his constant companion. Adam 
would often go on long walks through the woods with her, sometimes 
ranging as far as 30 miles in a day. Although he had people friends, 
there was no human who could keep up with his pace or endure his 
routine when it came to trekking.  That was their private world 
until he was about 17-18; after that he had to run alone, since 
he had grown faster every year while Potatochip had only grown old.  
He never became so attached to another dog.

He liked cross-country skiing when there was enough snow, which 
wasn't every year.  We had to have a special pair of boots and 
skis made for him, but Art and I both loved to ski and we thought
it something that Adam should learn to do with us.  He was good 
at it despite his oversized feet and he loved to race through 
the woods at breakneck speed.  We worried about that--or at least
I did, typical mother, I suppose.  But he never had an accident 
bad enough to really hurt him, he was coordinated and had an 
incredibly tough body.

As for school, that went pretty well.  There were no more serious
problems since even Peter Sinsley was more careful about picking 
on Adam after his father had lost the famous fight.  I'm sure 
Peter had been warned not to get himself hurt.  

Adam liked school, he had his own group of friends there and he 
wanted to learn.  He did amazingly well despite his dyslexia, due 
to efforts of teachers, Art, me and especially Melly.  But his 
grades were never really tops, because he began to feel that 
studying took too much of his time.

Still, it was in school that his artistic abilities began to
flower.  He developed a nice drawing style quite early, mostly 
to imitate the comic books he liked to "read".  Although he 
couldn't read or write, he could draw a picture that was worth 
paragraphs.  He would leave pictograph notes for us sometimes 
instead of taped messages, just for fun.

This is the “signature” Adam eventually developed for 
himself: a stylized drawing of a very Big Foot.

But drawing was always a sideline, his real interests and abilities 
were in music.  Art has told you how Adam liked listening to music, 
and how he had a very precise ear for tones and pitches.  He tried 
to learn piano at home, I taught him a few melodies which he could 
more or less plunk out, but the piano was simply never his 
instrument.  

Ever since the first time Art's old college buddy Steve Bonneville
came and played his guitar at our house, Adam had always yearned 
to play the guitar.

We bought him a Japanese classical guitar, with a wide neck to fit
his big hands and Steve taught him some chords, so Adam was on 
his way.  But slowly: he strummed and plunked throughout his 9th 
year, buzzing and muffling the notes, not especially musical, 
seeming to lack some necessary rhythmic coordination.  He really 
tried and just got nowhere.  Sorry, but he played terribly and 
this is his mother talking.

But he was dedicated and there was a music teacher at the 
Elementary school, Frank Espino, who taught guitar as well as the
regular school band and Adam stayed after school every Wednesday
to try to learn.  Frank saw Adam's problems clearly and 
instructed him not in melodies or chords, but in proper classical
technique: sitting, holding the guitar, trimming the nails, 
scales; all the boring details.  Adam didn't complain at all, 
just practiced scales patiently every day, sometimes for hours.  
It seemed that pointless finger exercises and chord progressions 
went on forever, but no real music ever got played.

Having said that, I have to admit that I could be just as guilty 
as anyone else of expecting adult capabilities from Adam simply 
because he was bigger than the average grown man.  How many 9 year 
olds are virtuoso guitarists?  

But honestly, it seemed to us that he would never succeed at this
one thing--until one day I went past his room and heard Bach's 
Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring being played sweetly and perfectly
on a guitar, so I looked in to see who was visiting Adam.  There 
he was, alone with his guitar.  I applauded enthusiastically and
he blushed with happiness and pride.  At last.

From then on he actually became proficient.  Frank was seeing him
in special classes now, "After all," he kidded, "I'd love to have
the reputation as the only music teacher in the world to have 
taught a sasquatch to play guitar!"  Frank began to perceive an 
actual talent in Adam, who could hear any complicated piece of 
music just one time and repeat it exactly.  Adam enjoyed playing 
classical music as much as any other style, even though he really 
wanted to rock. 

Most of this was going on while he was 9 and 10.  When he left
elementary school for junior high he continued lessons at Frank's
home.  He also started playing stand-up bass for the junior high 
school band.  By the time he was eleven he was an impressive 
musician.   Okay, he wasn't a Mark Knopfler, but he sounded 
pretty good, really.  All right, yes, now this is a proud mother 
talking. 

Adam also had an amazing vocal ability to imitate almost any sound 
he had ever heard, including musical instruments.  He had been 
fascinated by scat-singers like Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, 
so he developed a “novelty act” that became quite popular at school: 
the one-squatch band.  

Adam and Melly loved playing music together.  Her instrument was 
the piano.  I'd started teaching her back when she was eight years old 
and she'd gone on to lessons at school. She became adept at classical
music and also liked to play 50's rock'n'roll.  

They each shined at talent shows and sometimes performed together, 
usually doing rather well, winning school contests.  They talked about 
starting a band, but couldn't decide which musical direction they wanted 
to take, so never really got a repertoire put together in those days.  They'd 
usually perform whatever song was most popular on YouTube at the 
moment, which was what appealed to their junior high school 
audience anyway.

Although Adam and Melly won school talent competitions several 
times, perhaps it was mostly for being interesting (surprise: one of us is 
a Bigfoot) rather than for being noticeably superior musicians.  There were 
other talented students in the Monroe School District who also got to 
win every now and then. 

By far their most ferocious competitor was pretty but mean little Lissandra 
Cunnings, who played cello in the school orchestra.  In their 7th Grade talent 
show she performed a cello solo with electric pickup and wah-wah pedal, 
imitating Jimmy Hendrix's Woodstock version of the Star Spangled Banner: 
war effects, diving bombers, machine-guns chattering.  It was a crowd 
pleaser and she easily won that year.  They won again the next year, but by 
then Lissandra had dropped band and cello, preferring to rebel against 
the system, so they never got a rematch.



Part of being considered a Normal Kid in modern American society 
is having your own cell phone, of course. The social pressure to 
conform began for Adam at the age of seven when he became enrolled 
in the 2nd Grade.  "But Mom, all the other kids have themmm" is 
the usual battle cry, even though it was never quite true.  Adam 
wanted one too, but the poor kid couldn't speak even that little 
untruth no matter how badly he wanted to.  

Actually, Art and I thought he should have one, remembering that 
kidnapping attempt when he was younger.  But when we discussed it 
with other parents we heard so many horror stories about insane 
telephone bills, kids obsessed with You Tube and general misuse of 
the technology like anonymous SMS harassment and happy-slapping.  

But we discussed it with Adam and decided that any kid as honest 
as him could be trusted with his own phone and it turned out to be 
so.  Besides, IPR offered to pay the phone bill anyway--although 
probably because they wanted to be able to trace his whereabouts 
via his cellphone chip. But at that early age, so did we. 

Even though Adam could not read, he memorized the positions of the 
keys as well as any telephone numbers that had been spoken aloud 
to him, so he had no problem using his phone.  Later, when his 
fingers grew too big to hit individual keys he navigated with a 
pencil, which he always had to draw with.

When he was a little older, around ten, his ability to draw also 
gave him access to other online technologies: he and Melly 
developed their own secret symbol-code so that they could post 
simple messages to each other. 

Melly's own signature was, of course, a kissing smiley-face 
on a happy heart: (from somebody who loves Addy.)

She set up Adam's home computer with those same symbols as icons so 
that he could use software without being hindered by text unreadable 
to him.  Melly wasn't going to leave him behind as she went boldly 
into the high-tech future. 
 


As for school sports, Adam had an athletic body, but was never 
allowed to compete against classmates in school because he was
too big, too strong and too fast.  But he took up an interest 
in gymnastics for a few years, which was accepted since nobody
resented Adam competing with himself.

As Art has mentioned, Adam had been regarded as clumsy when 
younger, but by the time he was 8-9 he was amazingly good at 
handstands, kips, high bar, parallel bars, rings.  He could 
execute one-armed chin-ups despite his enormous weight, which
nobody else in the school could do at all.  People expected his 
raw physical strength, but were surprised by his grace and skill.

Adam took part in several gymnastics tournaments, not officially 
competing with the other kids, but winning prizes anyway.  He was 
a crowd pleaser, people came to see what a sasquatch could do, 
even back then he was box office!  

But by the time he was 11-12 he became too heavy for the school 
equipment.  When he weighed 370 pounds the high bar bent under 
swinging, the parallel bars broke under a dismount, stanchion 
wires ripped out of the floor and walls when he did swings.  He 
had to retire as a gymnast.



The summer Adam was 11 we got some friends to take care of the 
farm and drove down to Mexico for two months.  The IPR was kind of
testy about us taking Adam out of the country, but since Adam was
an American Citizen with his own passport, they couldn't really 
stop us.  We took Melly along as well, Sally was filming in LA and
Doug was overworked at Microsoft, so it was fine with them.  

We camped out on beaches mostly, living in our old Chevy van. 
Mexicans were pretty polite about Adam, but he certainly turned
some heads.  He was 6'8" at the time and could just pass for a 
very tall gringo as long as he was dressed and wearing a sombrero.  
Since Adam could memorize Spanish words faster than either Art or 
me, it was very often him who did the talking for our group, so 
that any questions the Mexicans had about him had to be 
addressed to him.  

On the beach everyone could see that Adam was covered with hair 
(trimmed short all over for the heat), but he went around half-naked 
just like everyone else and it was accepted as natural.  We spent most 
of our time in Oaxaca State, rented a palapa on the beach outside of a 
small village called Puerto Angel, where there were not so many 
people to bother us.  It was very laid back, all the gringos 
hanging out there swam naked, just like at our favorite lake back
home, so we fit right in, even Adam.  Doug and Sally came down
and joined us there for a week.  It would have been hard to come 
home again if we hadn't loved our own Hacienda so much.

While in Mexico we had some sandals made for Adam.  Shoes were
always a problem for him, his feet far too big and wide for any
commercially made shoes by then.  When the old sandal maker saw 
those feet he couldn't believe his eyes.  He used twice as much 
leather as he had ever used for anyone else.  He was a jolly old 
man and kept laughing as he worked.  "Este muchacho no tiene
piedes, tiene BARCAS!  Je je, hijole!" 

Adam was good natured about it and joked with the old zapatero in 
Spanish, who threw in a gigantic tooled belt he made right on the
spot, over 70 inches around and embossed with a Mitla design.  So
Adam was happy about that, belts were also getting harder to find
in his size as well and he was nowhere near through getting 
bigger.

On our way south we had also visited a little town called Paracho,
in the state of Michoacan, famous for all its guitar makers.  
Adam played well enough to need a better guitar, one with an 
extra-wide neck because he was still growing and so were his 
hands, already too big to crowd onto a normal 2-inch classical 
fret board any more.  So once again, Adam spent a day speaking 
Spanish with a little old man who was both honored and amused to 
make something special for "el Piede Grande".  

Ernesto, the guitar builder, was 72 years old and had never been 
out of Michoacan--and he had certainly never seen a sasquatch 
before.  By then Adam's Spanish was quite fluent and they talked
and joked as the old guitar maker hewed out a double-width guitar
neck and fretboard and attached it to a half finished body with 
amazing speed and dexterity.  This time the neck was made extra 
wide, so that Adam could grow into it.  Since we had to wait a 
couple of days for the glue to dry we ended up being guests of 
Ernesto's large family and meeting everybody in town at a real 
fiesta, my God, it was fun!  

Best of all, Adam had a very nice sounding guitar that he could 
play as he had never played before, with room for his fingers to 
move.  

While we were camping on the coast Adam would play at night on the
beach.  Sometimes for us, sometimes just him and Melly, but just 
as often when they went off to be alone, a crowd of local Mexicans
would show up and sit on the beach with them.  They were always 
interested in Adam anyway, but when he played a guitar they simply
couldn't resist, it was a good enough excuse to come over and sit
with him.  Mexicans are enthusiastic about music and they taught 
him some songs, La Llorona was a local Oaxaca favorite which
became part of his repertoire.

Adam was also intrigued by the religion in Mexico.  Especially 
among the Indians (primitive people living in nature, almost like
sasquatches) most of whom were devout Catholic pagans.  In our 
house we usually spoke in spiritual rather than religious terms.  
We all had faith that something keeps the universe running, plays 
games with it, but we never tried to pin it down to a name or a 
church.  Adam had grown up surrounded by anthropologists, who 
necessarily view religion from an academic distance, or 
intellectuals who enjoy theorizing.  The abject worship of the 
Indians aroused questions such as "Who is right, us or them?"

We had read him many parts of the Bible, Adam could quote chapter
and verse if he wished to.  When we got back we looked into the 
Koran, the teachings of Buddha, the Bhagavad-Gita.  Doug had been
quite interested in occult philosophies when younger, so we worked
our way through Astrology, the Tarot, the I-Ching.  Adam became 
quite an expert in systems of belief over the years.  Well, we all
did, I suppose, while reading all those texts to him.

Adam was searching for something, clues, which he seemed to catch 
glimpses of in ancient books.  Like from the Bible, Genesis 6:4,
"There were giants in the earth in those days..." which suggested
"sasquatches" to him.  Or the story of Samson, references 
correlating "hair" to superhuman strength seemed to hint that 
Samson could have been a sasquatch.  Beowulf's struggle with the 
monster Grendel, the Trolls of European mythology and so on.

I guess that was only natural.  He'd always been looking for an
answer to the age-old question: What Am I?  His body was so
different than anyone else's, he had all those quirks of ability
and disability to separate him from us and yet he knew that he
was probably more like us than any other sasquatch out there.  He
wondered what they believed in.  

"You know, I've been thinking about 'squatches," he told us, "they
don't build cities anybody's ever seen, they don't farm food, what
do they do?  They must do something!  So I'll bet they just search
for enlightenment, like monks."

At another time he might wonder if they were headhunting savages,
or Flying Saucer People (he liked to think that he might be from
another star-system), but he always came back to his theory of the
monk like spirituality of the sasquatches.  "Who knows?  Maybe 
their religion is the One True One."

Adam and Melly both took special interest in the ancient ruins 
around Mexico, they could define Aztec and Zapotecan styles and
were totally thrilled by the ruins of Palenque.  Melly read books 
about the old cultures aloud to Adam and then they would 
challenge one another to see who knew more about each ruin site.  
Neither won, they were evenly matched.  It was clear that we had 
two budding anthropologists on our expedition.

They also took long walks alone together.  Perhaps they were 
discussing anthropology, or religious philosophies, I don't know,
but it was about then that they began to spend a lot of time 
without the old folks hanging around.



I'm trying to round out Adam's childhood years before puberty and
maybe wandering a bit, but the idea is that he had an upbringing 
like most American kids.  Maybe better, growing up in the country,
his parents were happily married (rather than divorced, like so 
many others), he knew he was loved, we were a family affectionate
with each other--two families, including the Wielsons.  All in all
he was a happy child, healthy, living in ideal circumstances and
allowed to progress in his own direction.  

But life is not always nice to us.  Innocence is doomed, sweet 
childhood becomes bitter adolescence.  There is a tragedy coming, 
which changes everything, but I'll let Art tell you about that, I
have no heart for it.