Mark French

October 28, 2025

Hi Daniel,

In listening to Fishwhistle and Chicago Days, Hoboken Nights, some questions recur.  Among them:

I keep wondering how you managed some of the exploits you describe.  In California, you apparently had the freedom to walk two hours to a mall, amble around for a while and then walk home.  It sounds like this must have been before you were in high school.  In Chicago, you describe going downtown after (or instead of) school and then doing the most unlikely things until what had to be late night.  Your parents must have had a remarkably open attitude about keeping track of you.  How did you pull this off?  My mother would have had a nutty if I’d tried some of the things that seemed a routine part of your young life.

Also, your Dad sounds like one of those larger than life people.  Did he ever finally hit paydirt on any of his business ventures?  I found myself hoping that, after all he’d been through, he was able to enjoy an at least modestly prosperous later life.

Thanks for taking time to read this.  I hope you are well and happy,

Mark

By the time I hit high school I'd gone farther in education than either of my parents, so they may have decided I was then an adult. I came and went as I pleased, and at an earlier age it was easy enough to sneak out after they'd gone to bed. At one point, living in Hollywood, I liked to hang out late at night on a block where cowboy movie extras and young men who I later figured out were prostitutes stood around chatting. I never saw or heard anything that might have been inappropriate for a child to witness. I also never felt I was in the least danger in any of my wanderings. I was hardly the only nocturnal kid. As to my father's fortunes, he always appeared prosperous, whether he was or notl