Brookston Birds

Wild Turkey, Cotati, California March 18, 2021

J: I was born in Reading, Pennsylvania in 1959, the only son of childhood sweethearts. My mother was a nurse & Dad was a navigator in the Penna. Air National Guard. We lived in the suburb of Shillington, a cozy, close-knit community of 6,125. My folks divorced when I was young and Mom remarried a mechanic when I was 5. Mom passed away when I was 22, a victim of breast cancer at 42. I then spent 3 years in an Army Band, stationed in NYC. After my honorable discharge, I spent a few years managing records stores while attending college simultaneously. I later moved to Durham, NC to be a record buyer and then worked for a video chain. After divorcing my first wife, I moved to San Jose, CA with a good friend who was moving there for law school. That was 1985. The next decade was spent managing a video store, a comic book store and working as a law clerk with my free time spent with a large, close-knit group of friends. Then I met Sarah and it was love at first sight. We were married in 1996 & moved to Oakland so she could attend law school at Boalt Hall, Berkeley’s law school. We had Porter, our son in 2001 and our daughter Alice was born this summer. We moved to Marin in 2003.