Hi. Welcome! Today I’m starting a multi-part series called Autobiography. I enjoyed writing it. I hope you enjoy listening. Please click PLAY above for the full experience. (13 min listen)
Autobiography- Part 1
They call me Hal, but my real name is Harold. I was named after my dad who was named after his dad. That makes me the third - Harold Walker lll -- no middle name. When I was a kid, I was always embarrassed of the name Harold. It was such an easy name to make fun of and none of the other kids had that name, Harold. I recently made a friend who lives in central England and I love the way she says "Harold." It makes me realize that Harold is meant to be said in an English accent, not in an American twang. "Harold... Prince Harold." As a kid I always wished I had a cool name like Dave or Mike or Steve. Today I'm Hal, but Harold is in my blood.
I spent the first part of my life on the south side of Chicago. My dad, the minister of the First Presbyterian Church in Woodlawn, was perfect in every way. He never told a lie. Dad spent his life advocating for the poor, visiting the sick, taking care of his family and devouring every liberal book on theology that was ever written. When I think of my dad, I think of him sitting on a cozy porch with a cup of coffee reading some dense book that was more than my pot smoking, musician brain could handle. My dad was a man of deep faith, but when I’d ask him about God, he’d give me a 15 minute sermon and two books to read.
Most of it went right through my ears... and I’m not much of a reader. But my dad was my biggest fan. He’d travel all over Ohio just to see me play the harmonica.
My mom, an ex-republican from Oak Park, devoted her life to making art and creating a beautiful home for her family. For years, she put dinner for six on the table every night and it usually included some amazing dessert which was her specialty. Today, my mom is still living in the house where I grew up over on Beech Drive. She stops by occasionally to give me a hug and a kiss and to plead with God that someday I get better. She wants to see her Prince Hal back on the stage making music, being amazing.
With two older sisters and one younger, I was the lone boy in the middle. I always kept myself just a little bit on the outside. I was the joker and the tease. I remember one time my dad saying, "Son, can you ever be serious for just one moment?" At the end of my senior year, I was voted best personality of my high school class. I was so surprised by this outcome that I felt it must've been some sort of joke on me. From an early age, I suffered from insecurity and fear of conversation. Small talk and mingling at coffee hour or happy hour has never been my strength. But put me on some kind of a stage and it becomes a whole different story. The headline in a 2010 Scene Magazine article about my music called me a "folk charmer." They were right. I was a people pleaser to the core. I could say just the right thing at the right time to get everyone in the room to like me. Currently living with severe chronic fatigue syndrome, I can see now how exhausting that was.
The Walker family lived in a brownstone apartment on the corner of 58th and Kenwood in Hyde Park. One time my dad and I got held up at gunpoint while we played catch in the grassy lawn across the street. In 1971, our family was featured in the Chicago Tribune for hatching and raising a bob white quail named Arnold. We started with six eggs in an incubator, but Arnold was the only one that hatched. In our city apartment, my whole family learned to love Arnold's familiar call. "Bob White, Bob White." (whistle)
In first grade, I was at church running full speed during coffee hour when a large oak coat rack tipped over and fell on top of me. Though a big brass hook just barely missed impaling me, the heavy oak structure fractured my left femur and I was rushed to the hospital. At 6 years old, I spent Thanksgiving and Christmas alone in traction at Michael Reese hospital. I remember growing a sweet potato plant and writing an illustrated book called, Teddy Goes to the Hospital. My older sisters tell me that I would call home in tears saying that the food tray was out of reach and that there were no nurses around to help.
In September of 1973, my dad got a job as the minister of the First Presbyterian Church in Kent, Ohio. Our family packed up the red Volvo and moved east to a little college town called Kent. Just a hop, skip and a jump up the hill from Longcoy Elementary School, the Walker family put down roots in a lovely ranch there on Beech Drive, a street that had no need for sidewalks.
While my elementary classmates Mike Gilcrest, Dave Prendergast and Tim Patitsas were having epic touch football games down on Ada street, I became best friends with my next door neighbor Georg. Georg and I invented games. We created a nine hole Frisbee golf course in our back yards and a secret Nothing to Do Book Clubhouse in my basement. Georg's family was from West Germany and his mom drove one of the original VW bugs. Their house smelled like german chocolate and waffles and they usually spoke German in the house while I was over. Georg was two years older than me and I always felt like he was the smarter, more inventive one. But looking back, I see it was our joined forces that made our creativity so unstoppable.
Georg and I had a bit of a breakup when I went on to junior high school, I became friends with Dom Mandalari and I'm not proud to say we used to make fun of Georg from a distance. But I'm glad to report that Georg and I are still friends today. Currently, his daughter Elanor is working on a documentary about me called Living in a Body. Today, Georg is one of my favorite people on the planet.
Throughout my childhood, our family spent at least two weeks every year visiting my dad's folks who lived up on Red Mountain overlooking Birmingham, Alabama. These were deeply formative times in my life. With no seat belts, the six of us would pile into the station wagon and drive 14 hours south. Sometimes, we'd break up the drive with a stop at the Holiday Inn in Bowling Green, Kentucky. My mom was the master of packing a cooler full of meals for the drive. I'll never forget those picnic table lunches at the old rest areas along 71 and 65.
My dad's parents, who we lovingly referred to as Granny and Grandad, owned a stately home on the dead end section of Lenox Road on Red Mountain. The neighborhood up the hill was full of incredible mansions over looking the city and the woods behind their house was full of snakes. Sometimes, those snakes would find their way into grandad's cricket filled garage under the house. He'd just knock 'em over the head with a shovel. I, on the other hand, was nervous to grab one of the crickets in the jar to put it on a fishing hook.
As the only boy in my family, I had the very special privilege of spending a couple days every year with Dad and Grandad out at the lake. From the old cobweb filled dock of boats with small engines, we'd head out early in the morning to fish for bream and sometimes trout . After a long day in the sun, eating Vienna sausage on white bread and drinking Coca-Cola out of a glass bottle, we'd come home with a big mess of gutted and cleaned fish ready for Granny to fry up in the griddle. Corn bread, black eyed peas, collard greens, tomato slices, and wedges of ice berg lettuce were the standards around that Birmingham table. The chocolate cream pie that granny served for dessert was the best dessert that anyone has ever tasted.
Our playground every summer in Birmingham included Redmont Road which was a winding hilly road of mansion-like homes that overlooked the city. There was very little traffic in the neighborhood and the streets were nicely paved with smooth blacktop — perfect for downhill skateboarding. While my three sisters did things that sisters do, I would go off on my own and spend hours on my old school (1970’s) aqua blue skateboard slaloming down those hills. Over and over I would walk to the top of Redmont Blvd. and choose my route down. For a fast adrenaline-filled ride, I could make the risky turn onto Lenox. I remember a couple significant wipe-outs going that way. For a long slow ride though, I'd just wind down Redmont, past the thick forest and the rock wall practically all the way to Altamont Park. These hours by myself on those hills were the most formative times of my childhood. The combination of the southern breeze on my skin, the summer quiet of the mountain, the dense scent of the southern woods and the freedom of the ride touched me forever.
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