the author interviewed her—one boy and two girls.
Ken's father became increasingly unhappy with his wife's overbearing, dictatorial, pious control of other people's lives, including his own. Among other maxims Mary Parnell insisted that everyone in her family fall toe-and-heel with her rigid fundamentalist Christian beliefs, and woe unto the child or husband who did not. Cecil Parnell did not, and in 1937 he was history.
Shortly thereafter Mary took her brood west on the Santa Fe Railroad and settled in Bakersfield, in California, the state at that time revered as the land of milk and honey by hundreds of thousands of escapees from the dust and unemployment of Texas and the Midwest. Once there she struggled mightily to start a new life.
But shortly before the family had departed for California the absence of his father so upset five-year-old Kenneth that he spent several hours pulling out four of his teeth with a pair of pliers. "My recollection of the day of separation—just as any kid would obviously be, I was upset. I wanted to go with my dad, and of course I didn't. I just simply did not want to leave where I was at. I didn't want to come to California. Children tend not to want to have their world upset," he convincingly concluded.
Once in Bakersfield, Mary began working as a nurse's aide and joined and quickly became one of the staunchest members of the Assembly of God Church. She required her children to accompany her to services every Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday evening, rain or shine. This was in addition to the compulsory weekday ritual of making her children get down on their knees with her and pray just before they left for school. Said she, "My children never did go to school without prayers. They wouldn't go to school without having their prayers any more than they would go without their books or clothes. They all expected that." And daily she taught the Bible to Kenneth and his half-brother and half-sisters.
After a few years in Bakersfield, Mary felt she could better provide for her family back in Texas and so packed her brood up and returned, this time to Waxahatchie, just south of Fort Worth. For three years she worked hard and saved her money, but in early 1944 she returned with her children to Bakersfield, this time for good. She immediately invested her savings in a boardinghouse—housing and feeding the oil field roughnecks—so as to take advantage of the war-related oil boom then in progress in Bakersfield and nearby Oildale. This was not, however, a happy time for Kenneth.
In the spring of 1945 one of his mother's boarders befriended the slender, troubled thirteen-year-old and, after establishing a degree of trust in the fatherless boy, coerced the lad to engage in fellatio. This—young Kenneth's first-known homosexual encounter—was the apparent catalyst for his setting fire to a pasture very soon thereafter. He was found out, taken into custody, and locked up in Bakersfield Juvenile Hall. A psychiatrist who examined him at the time, Dr. Richard D. Lowenberg, recommended temporary placement for Parnell in the Juvenile Hall "in the hope that his marked emotional immaturity mixed with his sophisticated disposition toward perversion might be overcome."
After several months in Juvenile Hall, Kenneth was released in the early summer of 1945. But that fall, shortly after his fourteenth birthday—and still chafing under his mother's strict rules—Kenneth stole an automobile, was arrested, and, after a court hearing, was sent to the California Youth Authority's Fred Nelles School in Whittier, a residential facility for juvenile male offenders. Parnell remained there from October 1945 to February 1947, during which time,he later reported, he engaged in homosexual behavior both passively and actively. *
Upon his release from Whittier in 1947 Kenneth returned to live with his mother in Bakersfield. He entered the ninth grade but was already so far behind in his studies that his
Ken's father became increasingly unhappy with his wife's overbearing, dictatorial, pious control of other people's lives, including his own. Among other maxims Mary Parnell insisted that everyone in her family fall toe-and-heel with her rigid fundamentalist Christian beliefs, and woe unto the child or husband who did not. Cecil Parnell did not, and in 1937 he was history.
Shortly thereafter Mary took her brood west on the Santa Fe Railroad and settled in Bakersfield, in California, the state at that time revered as the land of milk and honey by hundreds of thousands of escapees from the dust and unemployment of Texas and the Midwest. Once there she struggled mightily to start a new life.
But shortly before the family had departed for California the absence of his father so upset five-year-old Kenneth that he spent several hours pulling out four of his teeth with a pair of pliers. "My recollection of the day of separation—just as any kid would obviously be, I was upset. I wanted to go with my dad, and of course I didn't. I just simply did not want to leave where I was at. I didn't want to come to California. Children tend not to want to have their world upset," he convincingly concluded.
Once in Bakersfield, Mary began working as a nurse's aide and joined and quickly became one of the staunchest members of the Assembly of God Church. She required her children to accompany her to services every Sunday morning, Sunday night, and Wednesday evening, rain or shine. This was in addition to the compulsory weekday ritual of making her children get down on their knees with her and pray just before they left for school. Said she, "My children never did go to school without prayers. They wouldn't go to school without having their prayers any more than they would go without their books or clothes. They all expected that." And daily she taught the Bible to Kenneth and his half-brother and half-sisters.
After a few years in Bakersfield, Mary felt she could better provide for her family back in Texas and so packed her brood up and returned, this time to Waxahatchie, just south of Fort Worth. For three years she worked hard and saved her money, but in early 1944 she returned with her children to Bakersfield, this time for good. She immediately invested her savings in a boardinghouse—housing and feeding the oil field roughnecks—so as to take advantage of the war-related oil boom then in progress in Bakersfield and nearby Oildale. This was not, however, a happy time for Kenneth.
In the spring of 1945 one of his mother's boarders befriended the slender, troubled thirteen-year-old and, after establishing a degree of trust in the fatherless boy, coerced the lad to engage in fellatio. This—young Kenneth's first-known homosexual encounter—was the apparent catalyst for his setting fire to a pasture very soon thereafter. He was found out, taken into custody, and locked up in Bakersfield Juvenile Hall. A psychiatrist who examined him at the time, Dr. Richard D. Lowenberg, recommended temporary placement for Parnell in the Juvenile Hall "in the hope that his marked emotional immaturity mixed with his sophisticated disposition toward perversion might be overcome."
After several months in Juvenile Hall, Kenneth was released in the early summer of 1945. But that fall, shortly after his fourteenth birthday—and still chafing under his mother's strict rules—Kenneth stole an automobile, was arrested, and, after a court hearing, was sent to the California Youth Authority's Fred Nelles School in Whittier, a residential facility for juvenile male offenders. Parnell remained there from October 1945 to February 1947, during which time,he later reported, he engaged in homosexual behavior both passively and actively. *
Upon his release from Whittier in 1947 Kenneth returned to live with his mother in Bakersfield. He entered the ninth grade but was already so far behind in his studies that his
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