Clint Eastwood Read Online Free PDF Page B
Author: Richard Schickel
since. He was a dear, charming boy.”
He was also a daring toddler. His mother remembers that when she took him for walks along the shore of Lake Merritt he always insisted on going as close to the edge as possible. One day he fell into the lake, “and I had to jump in, pink dress and all,” to save him. It was the first of several misadventures, at least one of which surely had a shaping effect onhis character, in which Clint encountered large bodies of water to dangerous effect.
The elder Eastwoods were by this time walking along a different sort of edge. Clint Sr.’s brokerage commissions had dropped to almost nothing, and he began looking for some other kind of work. As it happened, Ruth’s brother, Melvin, had a refrigeration business in Spokane, and he proposed that her husband come to work with him. This was the first of the many moves the family made during the thirties, though Clint has no memories of it or of their life in Washington. His mother, however, has one vivid recollection of him in this period. It seems they acquired a deer’s head and hung it over their mantel. When Clint saw it for the first time “he ran outside and around the house to find the rest of the deer.” They stayed in Spokane for just over a year, not very happily. “Working for one’s wife’s brother is not the most wonderful thing in the world” is the way Ruth puts it.
At that point they began the odyssey that would consume the rest of the decade. As recorded by various interviewers, the Eastwood family’s wanderings have taken on the cast of a Steinbeck novel, but that over-dramatizes the case, suggesting a desperation that Ruth never felt. “We didn’t even know we were poor … we just knew we didn’t have quite enough money.”
Her casual gallantry matches Clint’s recollections of the spirit in which his parents confronted adversity. “I don’t recall them ever complaining a lot. She’s a strong lady. She wasn’t a griper, and they always kind of made do—positive attitude.” That was Clinton Sr.’s way as much as it was his wife’s. He was, as Clint puts it, “a very personable guy. People liked him a lot and he liked people a lot—a lot more than I do, I think. I mean, he seemed like he was very much at home in the world.”
That held true no matter what unpromising corner of it he found himself occupying. After Spokane, the family returned briefly to Oakland, but Clinton Sr. found no work there. Some friends prevailed on an acquaintance of theirs, who worked for Standard Oil, to give him a post, and he was told there was something for him in Los Angeles—pumping gas, as it turned out, generally on the night shift, at the Standard station on Sunset Boulevard where it joins the Pacific Coast Highway north of Santa Monica.
If Clinton Sr. thought this a comedown, he said nothing about it, and the Eastwoods, who now had a second child, Jeanne, settled into half of a double house in Pacific Palisades, then no more than a sketch of a suburb that would not begin to be fully filled in until after World War II. There were only a few other houses on the street.
Clint’s memories begin here. He recalls his first encounter with anangry dog, his fascination with an ostrich egg owned by one of their neighbors, seeing Catalina from the beach and imagining it was China. His mother recalls a little boy with more courage than sense. She remembers one day when he slipped out of sight and she found him pedaling his tricycle on a nearby boulevard, narrowly avoiding oncoming cars. On another occasion she looked up to see her five-year-old son clinging to the rear bumper of a neighbor’s car as it took off down the street. Older kids had put him up to this stunt, and by the time Ruth rushed out and flagged down the driver (who couldn’t see the little fellow who had attached himself to his vehicle) smoke was rising from Clint’s ruined shoes.
One day the family decided to go bodysurfing at Santa Monica beach. “I
He was also a daring toddler. His mother remembers that when she took him for walks along the shore of Lake Merritt he always insisted on going as close to the edge as possible. One day he fell into the lake, “and I had to jump in, pink dress and all,” to save him. It was the first of several misadventures, at least one of which surely had a shaping effect onhis character, in which Clint encountered large bodies of water to dangerous effect.
The elder Eastwoods were by this time walking along a different sort of edge. Clint Sr.’s brokerage commissions had dropped to almost nothing, and he began looking for some other kind of work. As it happened, Ruth’s brother, Melvin, had a refrigeration business in Spokane, and he proposed that her husband come to work with him. This was the first of the many moves the family made during the thirties, though Clint has no memories of it or of their life in Washington. His mother, however, has one vivid recollection of him in this period. It seems they acquired a deer’s head and hung it over their mantel. When Clint saw it for the first time “he ran outside and around the house to find the rest of the deer.” They stayed in Spokane for just over a year, not very happily. “Working for one’s wife’s brother is not the most wonderful thing in the world” is the way Ruth puts it.
At that point they began the odyssey that would consume the rest of the decade. As recorded by various interviewers, the Eastwood family’s wanderings have taken on the cast of a Steinbeck novel, but that over-dramatizes the case, suggesting a desperation that Ruth never felt. “We didn’t even know we were poor … we just knew we didn’t have quite enough money.”
Her casual gallantry matches Clint’s recollections of the spirit in which his parents confronted adversity. “I don’t recall them ever complaining a lot. She’s a strong lady. She wasn’t a griper, and they always kind of made do—positive attitude.” That was Clinton Sr.’s way as much as it was his wife’s. He was, as Clint puts it, “a very personable guy. People liked him a lot and he liked people a lot—a lot more than I do, I think. I mean, he seemed like he was very much at home in the world.”
That held true no matter what unpromising corner of it he found himself occupying. After Spokane, the family returned briefly to Oakland, but Clinton Sr. found no work there. Some friends prevailed on an acquaintance of theirs, who worked for Standard Oil, to give him a post, and he was told there was something for him in Los Angeles—pumping gas, as it turned out, generally on the night shift, at the Standard station on Sunset Boulevard where it joins the Pacific Coast Highway north of Santa Monica.
If Clinton Sr. thought this a comedown, he said nothing about it, and the Eastwoods, who now had a second child, Jeanne, settled into half of a double house in Pacific Palisades, then no more than a sketch of a suburb that would not begin to be fully filled in until after World War II. There were only a few other houses on the street.
Clint’s memories begin here. He recalls his first encounter with anangry dog, his fascination with an ostrich egg owned by one of their neighbors, seeing Catalina from the beach and imagining it was China. His mother recalls a little boy with more courage than sense. She remembers one day when he slipped out of sight and she found him pedaling his tricycle on a nearby boulevard, narrowly avoiding oncoming cars. On another occasion she looked up to see her five-year-old son clinging to the rear bumper of a neighbor’s car as it took off down the street. Older kids had put him up to this stunt, and by the time Ruth rushed out and flagged down the driver (who couldn’t see the little fellow who had attached himself to his vehicle) smoke was rising from Clint’s ruined shoes.
One day the family decided to go bodysurfing at Santa Monica beach. “I