Dreamer of Dune by Brian Herbert Page B

Hansen, who was part Quileute Indian. Just before the recital began, Howie heard Hooper’s wife tell someone, “We have a nice young newspaperman renting a room in the basement. His name is Frank Herbert.”
    The atmosphere at the recital was painfully formal, with much posturing and phony conversation. Many attendees sat with exaggerated erectness and chit-chatted, their little fingers sticking out as they held wine goblets.
    Dad wandered in at around 11:00 P.M . For twenty minutes he listened to the singing (which seemed off-key to him) and noticed the hypocrisy and superficiality of the guests. I think my father must have been a little tired, or perhaps something didn’t go well at work, because suddenly he dispensed with civility and announced, rather loudly, “I’d like to show you what this reminds me of.”
    â€œOh?” Mrs. Hooper said, with a smile. “And what is it you do?”
    â€œAn ape act,” Frank said. Thereupon he jumped on the sofa and began hopping from one end to the other in street shoes, curling his arms like a chimpanzee and making simian sounds.
    â€œHoomph! Hoomph! Hoomph!”
    Everyone looked at him in stunned disbelief, except Howie, who could barely contain his laughter. Presently, Frank left the room, saying, “That’s what I think of what I saw here tonight.”
    The next day, he was invited to move out.
    So, my father lost a place to live. But he gained a lifelong friend and kindred spirit in Howie Hansen. “I was just off the reservation and pretty wild,” Howie said to me later. “Maybe that’s why Frank liked me.” Howie, born in late 1931, was only fourteen years old when they met, but was intellectually quite mature. Frank developed the good-natured practice of calling him “H’ard” at times, and would later even autograph books to him that way.
    With his stepfather’s approval Howie invited Frank to live with them on a houseboat, moored near the Ballard Locks in Seattle. A short time later their new tenant showed up with a pickup truck full of items, and began unloading. He had books, skis, a microscope, footlockers, clothes and articles of furniture, piled high in the back of the truck.
    When Howie’s stepfather saw all of that, he exclaimed, “My God, he’ll sink us!”
    So Frank lost another place to live, but with the assistance of Howie arrangements were made for substitute quarters at the home of John Gerke, Jr., in the Ballard district.
    Howie wanted to travel the world by ship, and tried to talk his new friend into joining the U.S. Merchant Marine with him. They would vagabond to distant, exotic parts of the world. This was tempting to my father, because he dearly loved the sea and wanted to learn everything he could about the world. But he enjoyed the newspaper business, and was planning to take writing classes soon at the University of Washington. He didn’t say no, and he didn’t say yes.
    They often went on trips out into the countryside, and Dad always took a camera along, and a book. “He was always reading and showing me things in books,” Howie recalled. Upon hearing this I thought of a boyhood description of my father when he was some fifteen years younger, at a time when he was always seen in the company of a book. He hadn’t changed, and never would.
    They talked about opening a camera supply store together. Frank went to Portland to contact suppliers but was delayed there when he met a girl he thought he liked. A few days later he returned to Seattle and told Howie she was a “dull-wit.”
    In March 1946 the Post-Intelligencer laid Frank Herbert off, citing obligations to returning World War II combat veterans. He had not been in combat.
    In a creative writing class, English 139, he sat next to an attractive, dark-haired girl, Beverly Forbes. She had a shy way of looking at him with dark blue, half-closed eyes, and she spoke in soft tones,