You Might Remember Me The Life and Times of Phil Hartman Read Online Free Page A
Author: Mike Thomas
Doris, Martha, and Phil met up with them in June after the kids were done with school. Sarah Jane did not make the trip, and John stayed behind briefly to paint the house on Dufferin (a condition of its sale). “It was a sad parting,” he told the Brantford Expositor of his family’s uprooting, “but also an exciting adventure.”
Chapter 2
Phil, age nine, St. Rose Elementary School in Lewiston, Maine. (Courtesy of the Hartmann family)
Having taken a job selling roofing supplies for a company called Ruberoid, Rupert settled his family into a rented four-bedroom tract house on Cochnewagon Lake. The “incredible little cottage,” as John describes it, had a sink pump, no running water and only the lake for bathing. It was there the Hartmann clan began acclimating to their new country. “It wasn’t even a one-horse town,” John says. “It wasn’t even a one-goat town. I don’t even recall a store.” There was, however, a pea-canning factory whose runoff drained into the lake, and a magnificent old Victorian building that housed the Gilbert and Sullivan Festival Theatre, where that summer Nancy worked in the box office and John sold librettos.
In September, just before school started, they packed up again and left for Lewiston, Maine, where Phil entered St. Rose Elementary and the family inhabited a drafty old farmhouse just outside town at 866 Main Street. Most of the kids were felled by the flu that winter, and Mike the dog died after a car struck him on the highway. The Hartmanns remained pet-less from that day forward.
Next up for the nomadic clan: Meriden, Connecticut, and the bottom floor of a two-story duplex at 31 Wall Street. Its upstairs inhabitants—an Italian cop and his wife—fed their housemates hearty dishes from the homeland. But that stay, too, was short-lived. At long last, in early 1958, Rupert and his brood set off for California, where he had secured work as the western states sales representative for Whirlpool. As with the family’s Canada-to-Maine trek, a few of the kids stayed behind to finish school and joined the early arrivers—Rupert, Nancy and Paul—later on in the L.A. suburb of Garden Grove.
One of the best things about their rented home at 7348 West 82nd Street—particularly for ten-year-old Phil and his five-year-old charge Paul, whom he watched over much as Nancy and Martha had him in Brantford—was that Disneyland in Anaheim was within walking distance and cost only a nominal fee for admittance. Sometimes it cost nothing, Paul says, courtesy of a family friend with connections. Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park was close by as well, offering rides, live shows, and what Nancy remembers as “the best darn fried chicken west of the Mississippi.”
Soon enough, the family outgrew its Garden Grove home and moved yet again—this time to a three-bedroom, one-bathroom cottage in Westchester, forty minutes or so away. There, in the shadow of an expanding Los Angeles International Airport, Phil and Paul attended St. Anastasia Elementary School. Fortunately, they were able to stay enrolled when the family transitioned to a larger ranch-style place at 8648 La Tijera Boulevard, where Doris set up her artist’s easel on the patio or in one corner of the dining room and painted when limited time allowed. Featuring a walled-in backyard, a handsome patio connecting the house and garage, four bedrooms and two bathrooms, the dwelling and many others in its well-maintained middle-class neighborhood would one day be razed to make way for a new jet runway. Phil’s sister Mary was born on La Tijera, in October 1960. The youngest, Barbara Jane (called Jane), came six years later. Until then, after much wandering, the family stayed put.
When twelve-year-old Phil began attending Westchester’s Orville Wright Junior High in seventh grade, he befriended a kid named Jim Jones. Both of them were Boy Scouts. In early February 1960 the Crescent Bay Area Council made Phil a
Chapter 2
Phil, age nine, St. Rose Elementary School in Lewiston, Maine. (Courtesy of the Hartmann family)
Having taken a job selling roofing supplies for a company called Ruberoid, Rupert settled his family into a rented four-bedroom tract house on Cochnewagon Lake. The “incredible little cottage,” as John describes it, had a sink pump, no running water and only the lake for bathing. It was there the Hartmann clan began acclimating to their new country. “It wasn’t even a one-horse town,” John says. “It wasn’t even a one-goat town. I don’t even recall a store.” There was, however, a pea-canning factory whose runoff drained into the lake, and a magnificent old Victorian building that housed the Gilbert and Sullivan Festival Theatre, where that summer Nancy worked in the box office and John sold librettos.
In September, just before school started, they packed up again and left for Lewiston, Maine, where Phil entered St. Rose Elementary and the family inhabited a drafty old farmhouse just outside town at 866 Main Street. Most of the kids were felled by the flu that winter, and Mike the dog died after a car struck him on the highway. The Hartmanns remained pet-less from that day forward.
Next up for the nomadic clan: Meriden, Connecticut, and the bottom floor of a two-story duplex at 31 Wall Street. Its upstairs inhabitants—an Italian cop and his wife—fed their housemates hearty dishes from the homeland. But that stay, too, was short-lived. At long last, in early 1958, Rupert and his brood set off for California, where he had secured work as the western states sales representative for Whirlpool. As with the family’s Canada-to-Maine trek, a few of the kids stayed behind to finish school and joined the early arrivers—Rupert, Nancy and Paul—later on in the L.A. suburb of Garden Grove.
One of the best things about their rented home at 7348 West 82nd Street—particularly for ten-year-old Phil and his five-year-old charge Paul, whom he watched over much as Nancy and Martha had him in Brantford—was that Disneyland in Anaheim was within walking distance and cost only a nominal fee for admittance. Sometimes it cost nothing, Paul says, courtesy of a family friend with connections. Knott’s Berry Farm in Buena Park was close by as well, offering rides, live shows, and what Nancy remembers as “the best darn fried chicken west of the Mississippi.”
Soon enough, the family outgrew its Garden Grove home and moved yet again—this time to a three-bedroom, one-bathroom cottage in Westchester, forty minutes or so away. There, in the shadow of an expanding Los Angeles International Airport, Phil and Paul attended St. Anastasia Elementary School. Fortunately, they were able to stay enrolled when the family transitioned to a larger ranch-style place at 8648 La Tijera Boulevard, where Doris set up her artist’s easel on the patio or in one corner of the dining room and painted when limited time allowed. Featuring a walled-in backyard, a handsome patio connecting the house and garage, four bedrooms and two bathrooms, the dwelling and many others in its well-maintained middle-class neighborhood would one day be razed to make way for a new jet runway. Phil’s sister Mary was born on La Tijera, in October 1960. The youngest, Barbara Jane (called Jane), came six years later. Until then, after much wandering, the family stayed put.
When twelve-year-old Phil began attending Westchester’s Orville Wright Junior High in seventh grade, he befriended a kid named Jim Jones. Both of them were Boy Scouts. In early February 1960 the Crescent Bay Area Council made Phil a
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