My Bedroom - About 1981
This picture is more illustrative of my father than it is of my bedroom. A constant clown, he delighted in mugging for the camera with whatever prop he could find. (I have a Super 8 movie reel in which he takes a swig of Brut after shave.) In this case it was a cigar. No, he didn't smoke them. A Lockheed maintenance painter by trade, he had respiratory problems enough with paint fumes and had to give up cigarettes early on.
That picture on the left? It's Vlad "the Impaler" of Wallachia, a province in Romania. Vlad is also called Dracula, and is the historical inspiration for the Bram Stoker novel of the same name. In 1972 two writers discovered Vlad and wrote an interesting book about him which was presented to me as a birthday present by my friend Angela (the one who painted the tiki gods on the back house). I then commissioned her to paint his likeness on a piece of wood. (Click here.)
Mom hated it for two reasons: 1) It was painted by Angela, and 2) It gave her the creeps. But I hung it up in my room anyway, and it only came down when Mom sold the house and moved away to retire in New Hampshire.
I still have it, but my wife won't let me display it anywhere, the Philistine.
To get to the den, or what we considered our family room, you had to tramp through my bedroom. We always thought this was weird, but short of rerouting our steps and tramping through the cold patio we never did anything about it. So, let's visit the den.