The Confessions of My Youth

About the Book

From being a dirt farmer in South America to the heights of California Society, from a promiscuous lifestyle to the peace of Christian life, this is the story of the first thirty-four years of my life. While some sought money, fame, or education, or some other goal, I sought the experience of life, and to the best of my ability, I was a seeker of the Supreme Power in that experience. This story is factual according to the perceptions I’ve encountered and remembered. In a phrase, my father, Howard Orville Caldwell, lived the Grapes of Wrath. He was born in Oklahoma, and during the Great Depression, when his father’s job at the local zinc smelter ended, the family moved to South California: Grandpa, Grandma and the three children. That was in the thirties. Dad grew up, went to school, and worked in South California when Los Angeles had only a few hundred thousand people. There was a definite division between rich and poor. Marlon Brando, then Bud Brando, was in the same public speaking class as my father in junior high school. Marlon was one of the rich, Dad was of the poor. This story begins there.

About the Author

Conceived as a baby boomer in southern California, born in Pennsylvania, and between I went over the Rocky Mountains in my father’s Model “A” Ford named “Clompetida”. My father was a grade school friend and my grandmother worked as a domicile with the late Marlon Brando and his family. I became an Eagle Scout in Staten Island, New York City and in Meadville, Pennsylvania. I’ve assisted at over 5,200 lifetime Roman Catholic masses. The family (with mom and dad) moved thirteen times in our first seventeen in various places in the U.S. At the university of Notre Dame, which I put myself through financially, I became fluent in Spanish and French language with a native Colombian accent and a southern French accent, and with a year living abroad. “I studied as a graduate student at five” other colleges and/or universities, “I studied poetry under” Dr. John Matthias who read before the Queen of England in the 1960’s; also, I wrote advanced calculus at Cal Berkeley 1973. I also raised 100,000 California red worms that I bought in what would become the “Silicon Valley”. By 1968-71 with Dr. John Dunne at N.D., I passed over into eastern religions and returned to Catholicism with new insights. My teacher, Professor Walter Langford, took fifteen of us to Cali, Colombia for a year. He had started the Peace Corps for JFK in Chile. I, myself, was arrested illegally with Doctor Spock, the pediatrician, in May Day 1971. After Notre Dame graduation, I traveled 22,000 miles hitch hiking around the U.S. and down into Mexico and Colombia. I am 34 years diagnosed schizoaffective. Since 1972 Jesus Christ is my highest power.