|
|
|
|
|
Alan Simpson Interview (page: 2 / 9)Statesman and Advocate
|
 Print Interview
|
| |
What was your childhood like?
Alan Simpson: It was quite idyllic.
|
My dad was a lawyer. He'd gone to Harvard Law School and he busted out. He always felt badly about that. But then he read the law, and he was a very capable lawyer. His father had been a lawyer, and he was thrown out of the fourth grade for witnessing a public hanging. That was William L. Simpson, my dad's father. The teacher said, "If anybody goes to the hanging, they will be thrown out of school," and that was a twofer for him. He was in the fourth grade, so he knew if he went to the hanging, he'd get thrown out of school. He did. And then he went to my grandmother, who was then a beautiful young woman, teaching to the Indians at St. Stephen's in Fort Washakie. He heard that if you learned Latin you could be a lawyer. So she taught him some Latin phrases, and he married her and he became a lawyer. He was devastating because he was totally, totally novel, and irreverent.
|
|
Where did you grow up?
|
Alan Simpson: Grew up in Cody, Wyoming. The Depression came. I was born in '31. I remember the hobos came on the train. There was a train to Cody; that was the end of the line. And it was funny how you'd be out with all your little pals, six, seven years old, in '37, '38, and these guys would be cooking stuff, and talking to you, and telling you stories. Nowadays, no sane person would ever allow their six-year-old children to sit with a bunch of guys, you know, cooking nail soup, telling stories. Gosh. I mean, that's what we did. We were hunting rattlesnakes and prairie dogs, and that's what we did. Sat by the flume and threw boats in it. It was a great place to grow up. I had a brother, 13 months older, so he was my best pal and we did the whole works. Dug caves, shot BB guns. We were good at it.
|
|
What were you like as a kid?
|
Alan Simpson: I was a fat kid. When I was in junior high, I weighed about 185. Big pimples all over me and knock-kneed, and that was tough. So I learned humor. All humor comes from pain. If you ever meet a guy full of humor, great, good humor -- Danny Kaye, who was here in Jackson, conducting the symphony one night, and I'd met him before. I said, "Where did it come from?" He said, "Where did it come from? A Russian Jew in the streets of New York? A kid, getting my head beat in every day. I couldn't outrun them. That's where you learn humor." And there's a lot to that. So that came, that was great. It was lucky I had wonderful parents who were dear. But a teacher one day... and of course, then you become the class clown. Because then guys pay attention to you and you tell stories. I look at all the stand-up guys, and all I know is that a lot of them have been through pain. It's the way it works. Don't tell me that they haven't. There won't be one. I won't believe it if they don't tell it. And a teacher said, "Do you realize, Alan, have you figured out whether they're laughing with you or laughing at you?" Boy, that was a tough one. Because really, they were laughing at me in many ways. Then you learn you want to have them laughing with you. That's a nice thing. I learned that in grade school.
|
[ Key to Success ] Perseverance |
|
|
I had things that you do that you wouldn't expect you could do. Going out for football. What else could I do? I was huge. If you didn't go out for football and you were 235 pounds and six-seven. So I did, and then the old coach was -- he's still kicking -- he's a marvelous guy. He's about 85. He used to make me, you know, get me all worked up and then I'd just tear the butt off somebody. And that's what he was up to. So I learned how to turn it on and turn it off.
|
|
|
I had a vicious temper as a little boy. And my mother said, "I'm not going to allow you to grow up like your grandfather," who had killed a man in the middle of the main street of Cody, Wyoming, in August 1923. Which I suddenly realized was eight years before I was born. And he was acquitted, but he was charged with first-degree murder. Hung jury. A guy hit him in the back of the head, knocked his eye forward, and he just went and got a gun, went and killed the guy. I had a vicious temper, and I knew I could always get my mother to cry if I worked on it long enough. Pretty diabolical. And the old man used to say, "If anybody leaves this house, it'll be you guys and not your mother." Well, that was a wake-up call. And then my mother would say, "You're going to learn how to turn your won't power into will power." And she says -- I don't remember the occasion -- but she said that when I was about 11, I came into the house and I said, "I got it! I got it!" She said, "What?" I said, "I've got my will power instead of the won't power." So, that was -- she was a wonderful, magnificent woman. "The velvet hammer" we called her, Pete and I. And she gave me the inner strength. Pop gave me the humor and the good common sense, But she was the steel. And they both lived -- if you can believe the benefit -- they lived to be 95 and 93, and my brother and I said, "Kind of hell to be an orphan when you're 63 or 62!" And that's when we were orphaned, at 62 and 63. So it was a rich life in Cody, Wyoming.
|
|
|
It sounds like family has been important to you.
Alan Simpson: Oh yeah. They were the anchor. My brother Pete, to this day, is the closest friend I have, other than Ann, my wonderful companion of 44 years.
|
Some young person came up last night and said, "I heard you say something about you had to have a belief in a higher being, or you said God, didn't you?" "No," I said, "No, I said a higher being." "Well," she said, "I don't have a faith in any kind of higher being, so I'm a little offended by that." "Well," I said, "then you got a hell of a rough life ahead of you, because you're going to find that at some time -- and you can't miss this -- but you will find a time when you don't know where to turn. And then you find there's only one place to turn when you don't know where to turn, and that's some higher being. It might be the Great Eel, it might be a green jade thing. Whatever it is, it's something that's outside of you that's bigger than you are." I said, "It might be even a tree or a mountain." Well that got her. So I said, "If you don't have any of those things in your life, you're among the dead unkilled." She kind of staggered off. I thought I'd ruined her sight. But what the hell, you have to. You don't make it in life unless you have some faith, some belief in something outside of yourself which is bigger than you are. And a good place is right here. You could look out and see the Tetons and say, "I don't have any religion. I'm everything anti-everything, but that thing out there, I think, is bigger than I am and will be here longer than I will." So, those are things that you sort out. In Wyoming it's easy to do. You get up in the morning and you look a hundred miles, and you can see forever. So those are things that you grow up with. That's the vista of -- it clears your mind out here.
|
[ Key to Success ] Vision |
|
Alan Simpson Interview, Page:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 |
This page last revised on Jul 06, 2012 14:47 EST
|
| |
