Folksy Personal Narrative

Baby boomers who came of age in Fifties and Sixties America, and were close enough with their father to have enjoyed stories from his childhood will find a familiar voice in Alton Tabor's From Whence I Came, a folksy personal narrative that demonstrates the resourcefulness and ingenuity of those who lived through the daily rigors of the Great Depression. Even the cover photo of this tiny (93 pages) book evokes feelings of warmth and good nature, as Tabor is depicted with an engaging smile and wringing his hands self consciously, the proud daddy of three who rose from a hard scrabble existence in rural Oklahoma to serve his country with distinction during World War II, and eventually found great success as an actor and horse breeder. While Tabor's literary effort might have benefited from some critical editing, the reader is encouraged to forgive frequent syntactical errors and the occasional misspelled word, ("Coming from the summer-like weather of the South Pacific, the warmth there was so hot we would go without shirts") and instead allow the book to speak, which it does most eloquently.

The author's narrative is at once penetrating, flecked with humor, and oft times almost uncomfortably personal. Tabor will undoubtedly elicit a smile or two as he describes acting as "a pin in my foreskin, pulling me on." The introductory chapter drops the reader squarely into the middle of the Great Depression, with Tabor's description of his family's daily search for food and water becoming an almost tactile experience. His father having abandoned the family of six early in Tabor's life, the author's mother took in other people's laundry to make ends meet while Tabor and his brothers endured the hot, dusty conditions of life in rural Talihina, Oklahoma while completing such depressing tasks as raising the family's grossly malnourished cattle back to their feet when they could no longer stand, and finding creative ways to pool pennies in order to provide supplemental income for the family's basic daily needs. In chapter 7, he describes an intimate evening spent with a Japanese nightclub singer during time spent in country during mandatory service in the Navy Reserves just prior to the onset of the Korean War. After a nightlong sexual marathon with the singer, during which "she turned me every way but loose" Tabor writes that the next morning he "had a big smile on my face of being used and abused and loving every minute of it" [sic].

After wandering the United States for a while, Tabor caught the acting bug, and utilized the GI Bill to attend the Holloway School of Drama in San Francisco, where the wheels of his career began to turn. He completed his education at the University of Oklahoma drama school, where he met Jeanne Smalley, the woman who would become his wife, but not his lifelong partner. A sales position with Prudential Insurance allowed Tabor the flexibility to schedule daytime interviews for potential acting jobs. Later, he sold used cars, eventually assuming the acting duties for the dealership's internally generated television commercials. This job led to other commercial offers, and since these advertisements were all "live," Tabor's schedule became hectic. At one point he was drowning in success but unable to get much sleep, as his scheduled appearances sometimes ran from 8:00 a.m. to 3:00 a.m. the next day.

As Tabor writes, at this point "my ass was dragging." Jeanne's alcoholism would lead to the careless behavior that resulted in a house fire that took her life in 1970 after the couple divorced. As if this setback were not enough, Tabor subsequently suffered a debilitating heart attack. While recovering in a California hospital, he decided to end his struggle to find work as a film actor. The fact that he appeared in only one screenplay during his entire acting career, (the very forgettable Creation of the Humanoids [Wesley Barry, 1962]) combined with a well known historical phenomenon in the 1950s, made this...