to the company and his bosses. He, like Grandma, lived and preached the word of God. He was not the disciplinarian Grandma was, but, like his children, he was under his wife’s thumb. If he tried to comfort Mom with a display of affection, such as a pat on the knee or an arm around her shoulder, Grandma was quick to insinuate he was vulgar. To keep harmony between them, Grandpa let his wife rule their home. Poor man. In later years he was taken away from the home he supported and died in an asylum.
For Mom life was filled with a never-ending list of denials. From awakening in the morning until going to bed at night it was, “No Kathleen, that dress is too short. Braid your hair, don’t comb it like some hussy. Come directly home from school, don’t let me catch you talking to any boys. No, you can’t go to the school dance, we are going to church. Kathleen, you say grace. Don’t forget to say your prayers before going to bed and ask forgiveness for your sins.”
In 1933, at age fifteen, my mother ran away from home. “Was driven” might be a better description.
Other writers have portrayed Mom as a teenage whore. Because she happened to be the mother of Charles Manson, she is downgraded. I prefer to think of her as a flower-child of the 30s, thirty years ahead of the times. Her reasons for leaving home were no different than those of the kids I became involved with in the 60s. And like those kids, she chose to be homeless on the streets instead of catering to the one-sided demands of parents who view things only as they believe they should be. Some day parents will wake up. Children are not dummies; a home life is a multi-directioned street, and all ways of life should be considered and understood. As for Mom being a whore, those early teachings at home prevented her from selling her body. She did have the vanity of a whore, though, and while she was never a raging beauty, she was a pretty girl—her red hair and fair complexion made her noticed in most any surrounding. She was barely five feet in height and would consider herself fat if she got over a hundred pounds. Yet despite her vanity, physical attractiveness and display of confidence, Mom was searching for her own identity and for acceptance by others. In her search for acceptance she may have fallen in love too easily and too often, but a whore at that time? No!
In later years, because of hard knocks and tough times, she may have sold her body some. I am not about to knock her. Knowing the things I know now, I wish my mother had been smart enough to start out as a prostitute. You can sit back and say, “A statement like that is about what is expected out of Manson’s mouth,” but to me a class whore is about as honest a person as there is on earth. She has a commodity that is hers alone. She asks a price for it. If the price is agreeable, the customer is happy, the girl has her rent and grocery money and the little teenager down the street hasn’t been raped by a stiff dick without a conscience. The teenager’s parents don’t have a molested child going through life trying to live down a traumatic experience. The police don’t have a case, and the taxpayers aren’t supporting some guy in prison for umpteen years. Yes, an honest prostitute does more than help herself. She is good for the community.
On November 12, 1934, while living in Cincinnati, Ohio, unwed and only sixteen, my mother gave birth to a bastard son. Hospital records list the child as “no name Maddox.” The child—me, Charles Milles Manson—was an outlaw from birth. The guy who planted the seed was a young drugstore cowboy who called himself Colonel Scott. He was a transient laborer working on a nearby dam project, and he didn’t stick around long enough to even watch the belly rise. Father, my ass! I saw the man once or twice, so I’m told, but don’t remember his face.
The name Manson came from William Manson, a fellow Mom lived with shortly after my birth. William was considerably older than Mom, and because of his persistence they eventually got married. I don’t know if it was his way of trying to lock Mom down or if it was a moral thing because there was a kid in the house. So through him I got the name Manson. But a father—no! The marriage wasn’t one of those long-term things and I don’t remember him. Whether the divorce was his fault or Mom’s, I never did know. Probably Mom’s, she was always a pretty promiscuous little broad.
When Mom ran away from a home that had completely dominated her, she exploded into a newfound freedom. She drank a lot, loved freely, answered to no one and gave life her best shot. When I was born she had not experienced enough of life—or that newfound freedom—to take on the responsibilities of being a mother. I won’t say I was an unwanted child, but it was long before “the pill” and, like many young mothers, she was not ready to make the sacrifices required to raise a child. With or without me, Mom still had some living to do. I would be left with a relative or a hired sitter, and if things got good for her, she wouldn’t return to pick me up. Often my grandparents or other family members would have to rescue the sitter until Mom showed up. Naturally I don’t remember a lot of these things, but you know how it is; even in a family if there is something disagreeable about someone it always gets told. One of Mom’s relatives delighted in telling the story of how my mother once sold me for a pitcher of beer. Mom was in a café one afternoon with me in her lap. The waitress, a would-be mother without a child of her own, jokingly told my Mom she’d buy me from her. Mom replied, “A pitcher of beer and he’s yours.” The waitress set up the beer, Mom stuck around long enough to finish it off and left the place without me. Several days later my uncle had to search the town for the waitress and take me home.
In saying these things about my mother, I may sound as though I am selling her short, and by society’s standards her measurements aren’t up to par. But hey, I liked my mom, loved her, and if I could have picked her, I would have. She was perfect! In doing nothing for me, she made me do things for myself.
When I was about six years old my mom had dropped me off by my grandparents for what was supposed to be just a day or two. Several days later, I remember my grandfather asking me to go for a walk with him. Once outside the house, he became softspoken and kinder than I had ever remembered. As we walked we played games and ran races, and he would let me outrun him. He put me up on his shoulders and carried me while I pretended I was a giant and taller than anyone alive. After a while we sat down to rest. He put his arms around me and, fighting back tears, told me, “Your mother won’t be coming home for a long time.” I don’t know if the lump came in my throat because my grandfather had begun to cry or if it was because I realized what he was telling me.
My mother and her brother Luther had attempted to rob a service station in Charleston, West Virginia. The story goes that they had used a coke bottle as a weapon to knock the attendant unconscious. They were caught and sentenced to five years in the Moundsville State Prison.
At Moundsville she lived in the women’s ward of the prison, but her work assignment was near Death Row. It was her job to clean an area that included the scaffold (West Virginia was a hanging state). Mom tells a story that one day as she worked, she saw the guards escorting a man to the scaffold. Normally, on a hanging day no one but the officials and the person to be executed are supposed to be in the area. By accident or oversight, they forgot to inform Mom a hanging was to take place that day. Afraid she would be in trouble for being there, she hid in a broom closet by the scaffold. When the trap sprung, the velocity and the guy’s weight caused the rope to sever his head, and as Mom peeked out the door for a firsthand view of the hanging, the head rolled right to her hiding place. She swears the eyes were still wide open and that death literally stared her right in the face.
Twenty-seven years later, when I was first placed on Death Row in San Quentin, I looked at the gas chamber. The room’s two viewing windows looked like two huge eyes of death. Instantly my mind flashed to my mother, and I had a vision of her looking into the eyes of death. During that moment, I understood more about my mom than at any other time in my life.
While Mom was doing time at Moundsville it kind of fell on my grandmother to take care of me, want to or not. So there I was in the same household that my mom had run away from six years earlier. Strict discipline, grace before each meal and long prayer sessions before going to bed at night. Don’t fight, don’t steal, and turn the other cheek. I believed and practiced all that my grandmother taught. So much so that I became the sissy
