I was born in 1937, in the middle of the Spanish Civil War, on the cusp of the Second World War, and grew up in the shadow of the mushroom cloud and concentration camps. I was a child in Upper New York State during the latter conflict, in a small town where my father was the CEO of a fish line factory that was converted to manufacture glider and parachute cord for the Invasion of Europe (Normandy). My father, a Republican, walked around with a .38 in his back pocket, probably to face down strikers, in my mind to defend against German paratroopers who would somehow descend from trans-Atlantic transport planes and knock out the factory. I wandered through the woods much of my early life carrying a .22 rifle and killing small birds and animals and thinking about girls, while imagining German soldiers waiting for me in ambush. When my mother found out I was illiterate, she rushed me to Phillips Academy Andover, where I failed the most basic tests in English and Arithmetic. I was sent to a boarding school outside Boston, with bees waxed floors and gas wall lights, Fessenden School, to repeat the eighth grade and learn Latin, Math, American History and the great English and American poets. With a wonderful gay teacher, closet, of course, who taught me to love writing. Activities from which I have still not recovered. I went on to Andover, where I added Classical Greek to my Latin, and then on to Harvard, at a time when it still counted to have a father who went there, to be white and privileged for that reason. A black family lived across the street from us, and so I asked my mother why my best friend wasn't going to Andover. She marched up to Andover and insisted on him getting in. He went on to Harvard and is still my best friend. I went on to Berkeley, got a Ph.D. in Germanic Languages and Literature and taught for many years a Sonoma State University, north of San Francisco. I moved to Mexico about twenty years ago and used my English (and other languages), plus my still-lingering boyhood imagination, to write stories about Mexico and Mexican History. Which I invite you to taste, along with short stories which you can browse through at: sterlingbennett.com. I bake bread, do yoga, paint, currently learn Japanese and do what I can to keep my leaders from starting wars and killing people. May the force be with you.Read more about this authorRead less about this author