School was a nightmare because I was unbelievably shy, and terrible at sports. I had no friends, and teachers ridiculed me. I wound up skipping most of the ninth grade and had to make it up during the tenth grade so I could graduate on time. As it was, I squeezed through with Cs and Ds. Again, I was sent to live with relatives. In order to buy clothes and have some spending money, I worked at a young age. For a while I sold the
Grand Forks Herald in hospitals and bars; during junior high school I set up pins every night in a bowling alley."
1 "When I was fifteen, I started taking off. I'd go for a summer and hoe sugar beets, and during the school year I'd find things to do at night...."2
His teenage years were not totally bleak, however. He had "safety nets--all of them women. My grandmother and aunts were terribly important to me. And there was someone else. One day as I was walking past the public library in twenty below temperatures, I could see the reading room bathed in a beautiful golden light. I went in to get warm and to my absolute astonishment the librarian walked up to me and asked if I wanted a library card.
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