Nick Nolte as a child

.Nick Nolte

My mother had blonde hair and a face and figure that caught everyone's attention. She had a fashionable style and was handy with a needle and sewing machine.

Best of all, she had a healthy respect for the imagination. She'd take Nancy and hit me in the woods near a cave. There, she'd spin yarns about an old guy who lived in there because he did not want to modern life Best Construction Projects in Lahore.

My mother did not believe we had to be great students. A brand new idea or doing something unique was much more exciting.

I got along with my mom. But my sister was often puzzled and hurt by her frequent rages and blunt way of putting things.

When I was 7, we moved to Waterloo, Iowa. My father's company made industrial-size pumps to control the Mississippi and had transferred him there.

Right after we moved in, my mother took Nancy and me door-to-door, introducing herself to housewives and making sure they knew she was a working woman. Soon after she took a job in a local department store.

My mother took Dexedrine. When I was not up for school, she would give me one, calling it "vitamin pill." She also drank a few vodka tonics each evening. I was allowed to drink at home at 15.

I often thought of myself as a river kid. We lived near the Cedar River, where I'd sit on its banks and watch the moving water for hours.

In school, I was a solid football player. But after a friend and I pulled a prank, a summer-camp coach vowed I'd never play football for any school again. We moved almost immediately to West Omaha, where I could play.

After high school, I went to several colleges on football scholarships, but my grades were not overwhelming. In 1962, I left Pasadena City College in Los Angeles and wound up rooming in Laurel Canyon with two older women.