Skippy

Our family was a little ahead of its time I suppose.  Nowadays it isn't weird to have siblings who aren't entirely related to you.  There is no stigma involved in having different fathers for your various kids today.  But back then, the nuclear family of one mom, one dad, and a bunch of genetically related kids was the normal family. I saw many normal nuclear families at my Catholic elementary school.  Even as a small child, I liked seeing families where all the kids looked a bit like their mom and a bit like their dad.  Even the bad traits that seemed to be shared by whole families, like buck teeth and pigeon toes, seemed okay to me because they all shared a common characteristic, which to me meant order and belonging to a group. To me, the typical normal family seemed like a smooth blanket with uniform stitch work and a complimenting color scheme.  It was a nice, drawn-up plan with a pattern.

Our family, however, seemed like a rough patchwork quilt carelessly thrown together without a plan, with uneven squares, loose or absent stitching, and batting here, but not there.   And in spite of the obvious, we all had to pretend that it was perfect. Even before I knew anything about our family secrets, I was aware of this.  And I got weird nonverbal hits from outsiders, who didn't say anything out loud, but somehow I picked up on what they were thinking.

Truth eventually emerges, but usually not all at once.  For my first 10 years, the story of us was that there were 10 kids in the family and that we all had the same mother and father.

Then, I was told that the first 5 kids had their own father who killed himself when kid #5 was two months away from birth. Then Mom married our Dad, and they had kid #6, number #7 died at birth, and then miraculously, kids #8, 9, and 10 were born.

After that,  I was told that kid #9 had a different mother, and kid #10 was really my niece.

A few months later,  I learned that kid #9 was totally unrelated by blood, and that his adoption was botched and never finalized.

Finally, when I turned 18,  I was told that kid # 8 (which is me) was legally adopted and completely unrelated by blood to anyone in the family. (I was relieved to learn of this truth)

I think there is still more to our family story.  It has to do with kid # 5:  Rodney James Tompsett.

Rodney was never known by his first or his middle name.  Since he was a toddler, he was always called "Skippy." He was born May 22, 1949.  He joined a family with 4 older siblings, whose mother had become a widow less than two months earlier when her first husband "Bill" Tompsett committed suicide in his car.

Skippy was a cute little blonde haired, blue-eyed boy. Mom told me that he had suffered a botched circumcision, and that is why she did not believe in the procedure. By Lynda's accounts, older brother Tim was the favored boy who could do no wrong, while Skippy seemed to find trouble with every step. And when little Darwin came along 3 years later, it seems that Skippy became just another kid, stuck in the middle and not as important as either the oldest son or the baby of the family.

Mother's Day, maybe 1959 or 1960 from left:  Skippy, Mom, Darwin

Summer 1963 Skippy and Darwin with their balloon project

Skippy got a bunch of awards from camp that summer

Bepo entertaining my classmates and neighbor friends for my 6th birthday

My earliest memory of Skippy was when he dressed up as a creepy clown for my 6th birthday party in 1966. He was a tall lanky clown dressed in hobo pants, a cone hat, and a big wide tie emblazoned with his clown name "Bepo."

Tammy and Skippy (Bepo) 

I don't remember much about the party, but I do remember having familiar flashbacks to that day while watching "Homie D. Clown" on the comedy show "In Living Color" for the first time in 1990. Get on YouTube.com some time and watch the first Homie D Clown video. That skit is strangely similar to my 6th birthday with Bepo the Clown. At the time of my party, Skippy was almost 18 years old.  He had never spent much time with us during my youngest years. And he disappeared again not long after he clowned at my party.

Skippy was one of the problem boys in the family.  Mom and Dad never talked about him except when they were having to deal with his being in trouble. Sometimes there would be a late night phone call from Skippy asking to be picked up or bailed out. They were having to go downtown to either wire him some money or pick him up from the Greyhound Bus station. He was constantly outrunning the cops, who would often show up at our house looking for him. It was always something with Skippy.

Mom used to coach me on how to answer questions about Skippy if nosy neighbors were to ask me about him.  I was not supposed to tell them when he was being held in the mental hospital for acting crazy.  I couldn't tell them when he was in jail for various theft and burglary offenses. I was only allowed to say he wasn't home and nothing else.

I am certain that Lynda has some normal memories about Skippy.  But I don't,  because he started taking drugs in the 60s, and he never outgrew it.  He started with marijuana and alcohol.  Then he took uppers that made him act crazy.  Then he took stuff that made him see things that weren't there. Then he got into downers, and finally, heroin. He went to prison many times for stealing everything that wasn't bolted down.

He hung out with like-minded people-- strung out druggies, thieves and prostitutes.

One time he brought home a skeletal white-haired prostitute with only 1 front tooth.  She asked to use the bathroom, then came out scratching her crotch and complaining that the cream didn't kill all the lice.  Mom blew up and kicked them out of the house, then she grabbed a bottle of bleach and splashed it all over the toilet seat and the floor of the bathroom and had me wipe it all up.

Another time he brought over an old whore who had just been released from what we called Patton Insane Asylum. She had killed her baby and was found not guilty by reason of insanity.  She had a weird taste for Arby's Horsey sauce.  We had several packets of it in the kitchen, and she asked for a glass of milk, then started squeezing the horseradish cream into the milk. And then she stirred it up and drank it down.

It isn't that the state of California didn't try to help Skippy. He was sent to rehabilitation therapy.  He was given occupational rehabilitation again and again.  He received grants to go to Mesa Community College. The taxpayers must have wasted hundreds of thousands of dollars on him, and none of the efforts to give him a chance for success did any good.  He couldn't stay out of trouble long enough to give  law-abiding living a chance to take hold.  It appeared to me that he was living his dream: drifting, partying,  and committing crimes of opportunity. It also seemed to me that as much as mom complained about his thieving ways, sometimes she took advantage of it.

One example occurred when he was in between prison stays.  Aunt Louise, an in-law of Mom's sister Amy,  passed away in July 1972.  She was a rich lonely widow and was going into the ground in style.  Mom drove Skippy and me to the Lewis Colonial Mortuary on El Cajon Blvd to visit the body.  Mom waited in the car.  Skippy and I went inside and the somber funeral director showed us to the darkened viewing room.  The room reeked of the huge rose sprays that decorated the room. Aunt Louise was in a dark wood casket with ornate carvings on the outside, and soft cream-colored velvety bedding on the inside. She was all decked out in a fancy green dress, with her hands folded across her chest. All her familiar rings were still on her fingers-huge diamonds, emeralds, and rubies.

Skippy wanted those rings, and told me she wouldn't miss them where she was going.  He said he wanted to get in the casket with her and take off all her jewelry. He approached the body and reached out to her hand.  I normally didn't say much to him but I was horrified and this time I spoke up. I told him quite forcefully that if he took anything off of her I would run to tell the man at the front desk.  I must have sounded serious, because he stopped, looked at me for a second, and then backed away, saying, "Well, lets go then, there is no reason to stick around." I had the feeling that stealing her jewelry was the only reason Mom drove us there.

He and his stinky runny-nosed hippie friends sometimes would rent a truck and drive it to a department store to do a little shopping.  But when Skippy shopped, he never paid for anything. One time, he backed a truck up to the loading dock of the Montgomery Wards, which used to be in Mission Valley shopping center.  There were cases of electric typewriters just sitting there, and he loaded them all into the truck and pulled away.  He then came to Eagle Street to drop off his load. Mom gave him money for the goods, and I got an electric typewriter for my birthday that year.

Skippy could never be trusted alone in a room, because he would steal whatever he could get his hands on. He stole pennies from my purse.  He stole the framed first dollar bill that little brother Jeff earned.   His crimes were sometimes petty and needless.

For example, I was scheduled to play some music on the pipe organ for a Christmas recital at my high school's convent chapel one year.  Mom didn't feel like going, so she sent Skippy in her place.  While I was performing, he just couldn't resist stealing my teacher's Bible that had been given to her by her parents went she entered the convent.  I didn't find out he did it until after we got back to school from Christmas break and the teacher was asking the students if anyone had seen it. I just knew he had done it, and found it later in his backpack of belongings that he left at the house.  He had cut out all the pages where her parents had written their dedications to her.  I didn't have the heart to return it with so many pages mutilated.  So I did nothing and just felt guilty every time I saw that poor old nun.

Skippy didn't have any impulse control or conscience.  He couldn't hold any kind of legitimate job.  He never had a real address because he never paid his rent, even when apartments were cheap and plentiful in San Diego.  Drugs were the most important thing in his life, and that is where any money he had went to.

He was the one who introduced Mom to Paris Young, her horrible third husband.  And after he got out of prison for the final time, he spent his days stealing, selling his infectious blood plasma,  buying drugs, Camel nonfilter cigarettes, and bottles of Thunderbird.  His teeth rotted out, his tattooed body was covered with sores from injecting heroin, his eyes were bloodshot, and he had a dirty Fu Manchu moustache. He was balding prematurely, and his remaining hair was filthy and straggly. He looked so bad that Mom joked that he looked like the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

One rainy night in January, 1978, Skippy got drunk and decided to take a walk on Interstate 5 near Old Town, and not surprisingly he was hit by a car.  The collision broke his legs in a few places and put him in the trauma unit at County Hospital in Hillcrest.  His social worker encouraged him to file a lawsuit against the poor Doctor who never expected a drunk zombie would suddenly stagger out on the highway in the dark and in pouring rain. He won a structured settlement and every month, he received a check that would have supported him.  But instead, he bought heroin and Thunderbird and lived on the street.

Skippy was not a son to be proud of.  Mom didn't want anyone to know he was her child, and she never wanted him to show up and have to be introduced or explained to new friends and associates. No one in the family who knew Skippy really wanted much to do with him because he was hopelessly lost.  So it was very odd that Christmas season of 1979, Mom was trying to locate him and bring him to Eagle Street.  She was getting a visit from someone she had never spoken of before, a man named Pete Arnett.  She was all excited about the visit and told me that Pete was an old friend from way back in the 40s when she lived in Detroit.  She told me that he still lived with his mother and that he had a big fat sister who was a bitch and was always trying to boss him around and get in his business.  When I asked why she wanted Skippy to come over when Pete was here, she changed the subject.

Pete Arnett and Mom, December 1979. Mom was very affectionate to him when he visited

 Pete arrived and stayed for a few days, and he and Mom seemed to be very familiar with each other.  Pete didn't care about touching base with Lynda, Tim, or Darwin, but he seemed to be interested that Skippy was going to come by. And then Skippy arrived and the three of them visited, with Skippy acting calm and well-behaved, which seemed very weird to me. It was like he was trying to give a good impression.  My instincts at that time were telling me that this man, Pete Arnett, was Skippy's real father. This is just my opinion.  But I would put money on a DNA test proving it. After Pete Arnett went back to wherever he lived, I asked Mom if he was going to be her new boyfriend.  Her answer made me think she had hoped that they could rekindle some spark that first occurred 30 years prior, but she knew it was not to be.  Pete never came back again after that visit.  I think when he saw Skippy, he was pretty turned off, and he choose to once again abandon his son, as he did in 1949.

Another piece of evidence that Skippy was not the 5th and final child of Bill Tompsett is a will that was written by Bill Tompsett's mother in 1964, before all Skip's crimes, insanity, drugs and disappointment became a big part of who he was.  The will acknowledges the first 4 children, but does not even mention Rodney James Tompsett.  If Skippy was truly the final child of her son Bill Tompsett, essentially a gift from the grave,  she would have cherished him and acknowledged him in the will. But she didn't.  The absence of his name indicates that Grandma Tompsett knew Skippy was not her grandchild. And if she knew, Bill probably knew too, and that could have been what led him to kill himself.

In 1984, Skippy came around with a young woman named Marianne.  He said they were married.  There was a baby girl born in October of that year, and he thought he would impress Mom by naming her Angelica, after Mom's fake name Angel. Mom was only mildly impressed.  But she hoped that maybe this woman and baby would make him turn his life around. But they didn't.

I learned from observing Skippy's pathetic existence that it does not matter how many times people bail you out of jail, pay for your rehab and medical bills, train you and place you in a job, or find you an apartment,  And it doesn't even matter if you find a person who loves you and has your child. It's often nothing but a big waste of time, trouble, and money. Because some people cannot be saved from themselves.  Skippy was one of those people who doomed himself to an early death.

On April 14, 1986, Mom got one last call from the authorities about Skippy.  His dead body had been found downtown, leaning up against a San Diego Gas and Electric building, dead from an overdose of black tar heroin.  The Coroner's office asked Mom if she wanted to come down and positively identify the body, and claim it for disposal. She said not unless she had to.  They told her it was not necessary, because his prints and tattoos were good enough. For the final time, the county taxpayers had to foot the bill to take care of the mess Skippy left behind.

Was Skippy just a "bad seed," as Mom often called him? Was he a victim of so much abuse in the home that he turned to drugs and crime as a coping mechanism? Was he truly mentally ill? Did his bad circumcision permanently affect his psyche?  Was he Bill's son, or was he Pete's son?  How many unsuspecting people caught hepatitis from the blood and plasma that he sold for drug money? How many crime victims are still out there wondering what happened to their class rings, watches  and family heirlooms that were stolen out of their homes?  There are many questions about him that will never be answered.  For me, Skippy was a huge life lesson, a cautionary tale, the reason I never experimented with drugs. He is why when I look at the hundreds of filthy, crazy, drunk and high feral people polluting the streets, shooting up, stealing bikes, and setting fires in the canyons,  I know that every single one of them had many chances to recover and reform but made their choice to wallow in misery.   Just like Skippy.