Hidden Valley Road - Inside the Mind of an American Family - Robert Kolker Page 0,25

the prairie. This was not exactly a promotion for Freudy; most priests want to move to larger and larger parishes. But he continued to offer spiritual counsel to Mimi, and he became a favorite of some of the Galvin boys—known for conducting masses in record time, performing his old magic tricks, and showing the older boys the train set and slot machine he kept in the basement of his house, east of Denver. A devoted smoker and unrepentant drinker, Freudy once lost his driver’s license, and the oldest son, Donald, when he was in high school, spent a week out on the prairie, staying with Freudy and working as the priest’s chauffeur.

In these years, Don saw the boys only insomuch as they were helping out with the falcons. With Don working or away much of the time, Mimi maintained the home, keeping to a strict routine. She went grocery shopping twice a week, each time bringing home twenty half gallons of milk, five boxes of cereal, and four loaves of bread. More than once, she simply threw out toys that had been left lying around the house. Each morning, she bounced quarters off the boys’ beds. Each evening, she made dinner for eleven—iceberg lettuce, cucumbers, carrots, and tomatoes for the salad; minute steaks with a little salt and pepper; a bag of peeled potatoes made into mashers. When he was home, Don would set up four or five chessboards after dinner, line up a few of the boys, and play all of them at once. School nights were for homework and piano practice, not going out. Late at night, Mimi would wash and fold diapers.

In 1959, Don attended a Mardi Gras party in the Crystal Ballroom of Colorado Springs’ posh Broadmoor Hotel with a turban on his head and a live, short-winged goshawk in his left hand. He told everyone he was dressed as an ancient seer or mystic. That got his picture in the paper.

Mimi smiled alongside him. She had her own notoriety, thanks to the children. The Rocky Mountain News published Mimi’s recipe for lamb curry, seasoned with onion and apple and garlic and served with boiled rice and green beans, slivered almonds and artichoke hearts. The headline: SHE SERVES EXOTIC FOODS TO FAMILY OF NINE BOYS.

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WHEN HE WASN’T parachuting out of C-47s with the Air Explorer Scouts or studying classical guitar or practicing judo or playing hockey or rappelling down cliffs with his father, the Galvins’ oldest son, Donald, was a track star and all-state guard and tackle on the Air Academy High School football team—number 77. Going to his games was often the big family outing of the week. In his senior year, Donald took state in his weight class in wrestling, his team took the state title in football, and he was dating a cheerleader whose father happened to be his father’s boss, the Air Force general in charge of the Academy. Donald was, by many measures, his father’s son—handsome, athletic, popular—and to his brothers he was a hard act to follow.

He was also, in ways that Don and Mimi either missed or chose to overlook, not precisely what they assumed him to be. Donald was quieter than Don had been in high school, and despite everything he did on the ball fields he was not the sort of person who got elected class president. His grades were average, eventually earning him a spot at Colorado State, not the more selective University of Colorado. And while he looked the part of his father, the carefree charmer, he lacked the charisma to pull it off. From the time he was a teenager, it was as if there was something keeping Donald from connecting with the world in a conventional way. He seemed most at home, at ease with himself, climbing and rappelling from cliffs and raiding aeries in the great outdoors. But whatever sense of mastery Donald demonstrated out in nature didn’t play as well around people.

At home, Donald exercised supreme authority over his younger brothers—first as a sort of substitute parent, and then as something less wholesome. When his parents weren’t around, he became, by turns, a mischief-maker, a bully, and an instigator of chaos. It would start out innocently enough, before escalating in ways that some of his brothers found terrifying. Don and