I was born in Bellefonte, PA on October 14, 1954. I grew up in State College, Centre County, right in the center of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. I was the fourth child of Ethel R. Crandell (nee Cannon) and John B. Cannon, Jr. My dad was an electrical engineer and worked for HRB Singer for several years.
I didnât know the meaning of the ân-wordâ, but I learned that it was wrong when I received a slap across the face from my dad for saying it at around age seven. My mother had been called a n****r as a child. She was white, but she had an olive complexion, which turned pretty dark after being in the sun for a while.
I never served in the military. I was a skinny, uncoordinated, non-athletic kid who was opposed to the war in Vietnam, and frankly very worried about being drafted. I wasnât a tough guy, and wouldnât have lasted one week in boot camp. But my dad was a veteran, as was my step-dad, and both of my older brothers.
My dad, who committed suicide when I was 24, was a deep-thinking, introvert. He was a closet alcoholic, and barely spoke two words to me. But he did the best he could, and left me with a deep appreciation for music with his piano playing and huge record collection. He quietly encouraged my guitar playing by buying, for my sixteenth birthday, a Heathkit guitar amplifier which, my having built hastily, was very distorted.
My first car, which I purchased in 1973 from a grease-monkey in Pittsburgh for $350, was a silver 1965 Chevy Impala. It had a set of mag wheels on the front, and wide street racing tires on the rear, with chrome rally wheels. The V8 engine was hot-rodded with an open exhaust manifold that was not even connected to tailpipes or mufflerâŠso it was kind of loud. A section of the floorboard was rusted throughâŠI didnât do a very thorough inspection! One day as I was driving home from work (about a mile away), there was a thumping noise in the front, and slowing down, I watched a tire rolling down the street on my left just ahead of meâŠthen the left front end of the car slowly dropped to the pavement as I pulled off of the street. The mag wheel had broken! A few months later, as I was moving back to State College from Pittsburgh, about halfway home, I saw smoke coming out from under the hood. The engine temperature gauge shot up, and the engine just quit. Pulling over to the side, I discovered that there was a trail of oil on the highway and looking under the car, I could see a huge hole in the oil pan. A piston had come loose, and shot right through to the road. I had to call home and get my sisterâs boyfriend to come and pick me up.
After selling the Chevy to a salvage yard for $25, I had to borrow my momâs car for a while, until I bought a 1969 Volvo wagon from a friend. Another $600 mistake. It ran OK for a few months, when I traded it in for a â73 Plymouth Duster, taking out my first car loan. Then the 1979 oil crisis happened, so I decided I needed a smaller, more fuel-efficient car. After test driving a few foreign models, I decided on a Renault R12. I stuck a bumper sticker on the back that read âAyatollah Assaholahâ, my idea of some kind of âpatriotismâ. This front-wheel drive, 4-speed, 4-cylinder got really good gas mileage, but had the worst ventilation ever, and no power steering! I guess the French donât consider that very necessary. I then decided to move away from Pennsylvania, so I loaded up my few belongings, bought a bike rack to put on the back of the car, and with my mom along for company (she wanted to go visit my brother Chris in Colorado) we drove the nearly 1600 miles to Ft. Collins. Miraculously, the Renault made it with no problems. Then my friend Gary from State College, who had flown out ahead of me to visit friends in Estes Park, talked me into driving to Austin, Texas to visit another friend. Somewhere along the way, he made a sudden turn into a parking lot, running over a curb, which broke the muffler off. Now, we were driving across Texas, land of cowboys and pickups, in an incredibly loud little French car. Miraculously, we werenât murdered.
After returning to Colorado, Gary and I rented a house in Longmont so he could commute to his new job in Boulder. That was at Tecnetics, a small electronic power supply manufacturer. I took a job at a small bronze foundry, called Quest Foundry. After working there for a few weeks, Gary convinced me to come apply at Technetics. This is where I met my first wife, Lori, who I soon married. We had Michelle and Melissa, and after eight years, I realized I was no longer in love with her, and we separated, and eventually divorced.
Over the next few years, I went through a few more car purchases, from a Honda Civic, a Toyota Corona, a Datsun 210 wagon, and a Nissan Sentra Hatchback, all of which had their share of mechanical problems. There was a Subaru wagon, my favorite of all of the Japanese models, that served me well for a few years. Then, as Michelle and Melissa were growing older, I wanted to take a road trip adventure with them, so I bought a Ford minivan, because it had lots of room. After a year or so I traded down to a 1993 Ford Escort wagon, which I owned when I met Jean while working at Hewlett-Packard in Loveland.
Jean and I fell in love, and got married after a few months, on October 25, 1997, in our house. We had originally planned on having a small ceremony at a park in the Big Thompson Canyon, but a surprise blizzard put a stop to that plan.
My daughter, Melissa, served in AmeriCorps before college & worked in Gulfport and Lafayette mucking houses after Katrina. Today, she is a PhD tenured professor.
After the attacks of September 11, 2001, someone asked my wife if she was worried about me. Confused, she said âno, why?â I had started wearing a beard in the eighties, and like my mom, my skin quickly turned dark in the summer sun. So, some people assumed I was of Middle-Eastern descent, and should fear for my safety. Ever since, I have been sympathetic to (non-radical Islamist) people of Middle-Eastern descent.