When he got mad he had no control over the language he used, and Fay has always been the same way—not merely using gutter words, but in the indiscriminate choice of insults, harping on each other’s weak points and saying anything that might hurt, whether true or not—in other words, saying anything, and very loud, so that their two children got quite an earful. Even in his normal conversation Charley has always been foulmouthed, which is something you might expect from a man who grew up in a town in Colorado. Fay always enjoyed his language. The two of them made quite a pair. I remember one day when the three of us were out on their patio, enjoying the sun, when I happened to say something, I think having to do with space travel, and Charley said to me,

“Isidore, you sure are a crap artist.”

Fay laughed, because it made me so sore. It made no difference to her that I was her brother; she didn’t care who Charley insulted. The irony of a slob like that, a paunchy, beer-drinking ignorant mid-westener who never got through high school, calling me a “crap artist” lingered in my mind and caused me to select the ironic title that I have on this work. I can just see all the Charley Humes in the world, with their portable radios tuned to the Giants’ ballgames, a big cigar sticking out of their mouth, that slack, vacant expression on their fat red faces… and it’s slobs like that who’re running this country and its major businesses and its army and navy, in fact everything. It’s a perpetual mystery to me. Charley only employed seven guys at his iron works, but think of that: seven human beings dependent on a farmer like that for their very livelihood. A man like that in a position to blow his nose on the rest of us, on anybody who has sensitivity or talent.

Their house, up in Marin County, cost them a lot of money because they built it themselves. They bought ten acres of land back in 1951, when they first got married, and then, while they were living in Petaluma where Charley’s factory is, they hired an architect and got their plans drawn up for their house.