Tales of a Boy Genius, Episode Three: When is a House not a home? Or "That Word Has Nothing to do with Soup!"

Here I am with another tale detailing just how far I am from a genius. In this tale we will travel back to the year I was in fourth grade. This was 1968–1969.

My first thirteen years were a peripatetic existence. My dad was in the Army, so we moved often. One of the reasons I never really bothered to enlist in the military was that I had already given up any semblance of a normal childhood with roots and long-term friends. I felt I owed my country nothing more. Not that I didn't have friends. I had some fine friends, but never for more than three years. One or two years were more typical.

I did get to spend two and a half school years in the same school: Thomas O. Larkin Elementary School in Monterey, California . I moved to Monterey on February 11, 1967 halfway through second grade, and got to stay through my fourth grade year. (Third grade was the first year I actually was in the same class for the entire year. Sometimes I think I might have had a more settled childhood if I had been born among the Romany people.)

My time in Monterey was golden. Not that it was perfect. There were a couple of bullies more into emotional harassment than physical battery. My parents had my dog put down because he was "a problem" (I've never told them that I haven't really been able to trust anybody, them especially, since). One of our neighbors was a pedophile. I got into trouble in third grade for not doing any homework. (This was right after losing my dog; my teacher told me "you just have to get over it." Mrs. Larsen, you were a Bitch.)

How golden does thats sound? Well, like I said–not perfect. But it was rich in experience, I lived in a beautiful place, and there were many adventures and activities for a kid my age. It was the happiest part of my childhood and perhaps the happiest part of my life. I used to go down to the Poor Scholar Bookstore with my nickels, dimes, and pennies and buy Marvel Comics. There were backyards, tree-houses, and all kinds of vacant lots to explore. The touristy and historical parts of Monterey were actually two short blocks away.

It was the historical part of Monterey that this story centers around. As anyone who has gone to public school in California knows, fourth grade is the year for California State History. I think there might be another year that does a lot of state history, but I don't know; after fourth grade I never went to school in California again.

One beautiful spring morning my class, Mrs. Clark's fourth grade, went out on a walking field trip to Monterey's nearby historical sites. Monterey was at one time the capital of Spanish California, and Thomas Larkin Elementary was lucky to be only three short blocks from the Old Custom House and many other preserved historical buildings, which were all within a very small area. Besides the Custom House, there was California's First Theatre, Where we got to watch a very silly melodrama. We stopped at the Casa del Oro, the store owned by Thomas Larkin, American merchant and the first American Consul in Monterey (yeah, my school was named after him, as was the street I lived on). There was a Spanish garden where a young man serenaded a young woman who wore a period dress. And then there was a place just a little different: the House of something or other. 

[Seriously, for years I thought it was the House of the Four Winds, but researching this I found out I might have remembered the wrong name. I in fact could not find out the right place. But I swear I am not making this story up.]

We were ushered inside and told to be very, very careful. We found ourselves in a beautifully ornate parlor with exquisite decor: crystal chandeliers, an old, ornate spinet, elaborately carved chairs. Lace doilies everywhere. It was gorgeous, and probably was the fanciest parlor in Monterey back in the day, or for that matter, at any time. Gorgeous, but a bit over-the-top even in the view of a fourth grader. A nice older lady in ornate historical dress was there to point out the decorations and tell us some vague things about the place.

I was a reader, and there were signs—historical landmark plaques—at all the sites we had visited. And I read them all, because that's how you learn stuff. The sign said—and this is as close as I can come to a quote, that this place was "a popular place of entertainment for the gentlemen of Old Monterey."

I thought about that. I pictured the gentlemen of Old Monterey—Spanish landowners, fops, and military officers—seated around the spinet as a lady played it, all singing sentimental songs. Seemed strange. And having enjoyed many a Coke in many a Officer's club with my Dad, I recognized there was no bar. No bar? Strange. 

[You may detect that some slight dysfunction affected my youth. Acknowledged.]

So I asked, absolutely innocently, "What kind of House was it?" The docent-lady stopped and stared for a second. Then she went on without answering my question. A minute or two later she finished her spiel and I asked her again, "But what kind of house? What kind of entertainment did they have?"

She kind of goggled. I'd never seen an adult do that. My teacher Mrs. Clark (who was probably the most calm teacher I'd ever had), said gently, "Paul? Let's go outside." I thought I might be in trouble, but when Mrs. Clark and I went outside, she said, "Let's not ask embarrassing questions, okay?" She smiled, and I knew she wasn't mad, but I was mystified. What was odd about my question? Why was the answer so—embarrassing?

That happened when I was ten.

Two years later, in sixth grade, my teacher, Miss Shaw, reputed to be the toughest teacher in history, gave us extra vocabulary words every week. Unfortunately for her, she accidentally included the word "brothel." This is true. I would love to have made this up, but I didn't have to. One of our assignments was that we had to look up synonyms for each word. Golly gee you should have seen the look on Miss Shaw's face when she asked a student to read his synonyms. I never heard so many synonyms; my favorite was "cathouse."

Miss Shaw slammed her hand down on her desk and shouted, "That is not funny! Sue, will you please read the correct synonyms?" Sue was a good student, so when she read pretty much the same words, Miss Shaw stopped her. She then looked into her large dictionary.

I had heard about people's mouth dropping open and hanging there swinging, and I assumed it was an exaggeration, but I have actually seen it. Had there been a breeze in the classroom, Miss Shaw's jaw would have flapped in it. She then swallowed hard, apologized, and then gave us a substitute vocabulary word. From that point on, we knew that Miss Shaw might be tough, but she obviously did not do all her homework either.

I was mystified, so that night after gauging my Dad's state of mind, I asked him what it meant. Dad has always been good about answering questions, so he asked me how it came up and I told him about Miss Shaw's gaffe. He smiled at that, then he told me that a brothel is a place where prostitutes work. I asked what a prostitute was, and he told me—a woman who has sex with men for money. When I looked puzzled he explained that a lot of men like sex, and are willing to pay for it.

I nodded and sat there, thinking of the strange behavior of adults, and hoping I didn't get too bizarre when I got older.

Then all of a sudden I remembered a walk on a nice spring morning in Old Monterey. The "entertainment." The idea of embarrassing people when asking about a house...

Oh! Then I got it! Only two years after the fact, I got it.

Like I keep telling you, I am not a genius.