It's My Life #2 - Beginning

My father’s family came from Europe in the early 20^th century, today they would be considered Euro trash but back then were viewed as refugees from a crumbling Europe. I am from a long line of Counts of the old Holy Roman Empire. In researching my background it appears that they were the chief bakers for the royal court. I am trying to find out if I can lay claim to some long forgotten title.

The aging Count could see that the end was near so he packed up his precious teenage son and sent him to New York City with too much money and apparently little common sense. For awhile the Count kept tight control on the purse strings and the young man would send home long letters about student life at Columbia. In fact, the young man was really the toast of the town, leading a life the would have made Prince Egon Von Furstenberg blush. The last the young man heard from his homeland was a letter telling him his father had died in defense of the crumbling empire. Before he had died the Count ensured that all the money was safe and secured in a Swiss bank account. The young man threw a party at the Plaza and declared himself the new Count and partied for the rest of his life.

His son continued in the idle rich ways of his father and in 1959 had a son, me. My father learned pretty quickly that I was not going to be an asset. Babies with single fathers were not really babe magnets during the age of Eisenhower. It turns out my mother had no real maternal instincts and she too busy trying to shack up with William Burroughs. So they both set about trying to find a way to get rid of me. My mother found a relative of my father’s in Easton Pennsylvania of all places and within months I went from being Anton Waverly Bleeker Fladden to Donald Charles Flad, Jr.

And so this is what happened after that………