I was born January 24, 1949 in Palo Alto, California, at Stanford Hospital.
This is hearsay of course, since I was too young to remember. After a short
stay in mountain view, the parents and I moved to Sunnyvale, into a nice
home, where we were joined by my maternal grandparents, Dan and Sue
O'Brien. Two years and eight months later my brother Tom was born, and
my grandparents shortly thereafter moved across town into a small house of
their own.
Parents
My Mother, Josephine (O'Brien) Evans, born September 19, 1913. Here she is posing for her
wedding portrait. Probably around 25 years old, quite pretty.
My Father, (Ellis) Ross Evans, born January 28, 1918. He is also posing for the wedding portrait.
Handsome guy, 21 years old at the time, I believe
My Dad, the biker. In the Pacific, during WW2 (the big one).
My Mother, the Flapper. With an aunt, I suspect, probably a teenager judging by the clothes.
Kiddie Korn
Me and brother Tom, ages 4 and 2 maybe. How do two cute kids like that grow into frumpy
middle aged men?
Me, wet and wild. My dad still has that spray nozzle, by the way. Waste not want not, I guess
Guitar Dan with his first 'axe.'
First Fish (almost last) at age 4.
Grandparents & more
The O'Brien family, my grandfather Daniel, grandmother Susan (Sexton), uncle Edward and
mother Josephine.
Daniel and Susan. A wedding portrait?
Extended O'Briens, including a great-grandmother and an aunt. Probably Sextons but I am not
sure. Wasn't my mother a darling little girl?
Violinists Dan and Edward O'Brien. My mother's side of the family was very musical. Edward
was studying to be a concert violinist when he died of a brain hemorage in his early 20s.
Our house was in the heart of what is now Silicon Valley, but at that time, in
the early 1950s it was farmland, fruit orchards of apricots and cherries. It
was a good place to grow up, no traffic to worry about, no crime, we were so
isolated that I didn't even know the meaning of any four letter words till I was
9 or so. My father was trained as a machinist, and he was able to support us
well. But he didn't like the way the area was getting crowded, so we moved to
Roseville, near Sacramento in 1958. Roseville was a bit rougher than my
Sunnyvale neighborhood had been. It was still pretty quiet, but I did learn
the meaning of all those words I never knew before, and also learned the
Spanish equivalents.
Cute at 10
Handsome at 12.
Revolting at 18... Bummer. Baby Baby, where did your charm go?
I was a decent student, liked to play sports in the park with the few kids that
were my age in the neighborhood. I got through childhood unmaimed,
without even a broken bone (something that is STILL TRUE to this day!) I
got through High School without really making much of a mark, and moved
on to the local Community college, Sierra College. This was during the era of
the Viet Nam war, and I decided it was safer to be a student than to trudge
through the jungle looking for land-mines.
