Juliette Spindler for Kennebec7(#3) Valhalla
I’ve previously mentioned the book, Black Soul, White Madness, by Messrs. Mix (one word name) and Milton Green. Mix is his street name. His birth certificate says Sidney Fauntleroy. Sidney Fauntleroy, I assume, wouldn’t sell nearly as many books as ‘Mix’. Those boys have sold a passel of books. Number Six today on the Best Seller list. I confess: I’m a bit envious. Mix is only 28, and Milton, a part-time Drama student at Montrose Community College, has just reached 30.
According to what the authors say on the talk shows, Milton found Mix, whose numerous entrepreneurial activities included freelance writing for black gossip magazines and agenting for wannabe rap singers. Together they corralled Oscar Paige, 47, and Olivio Cardenas, 39, warders at the Pensky Center mental institution in upper New York State. The star of the book is Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (‘Bobby’) Pollette, the so-called mad son of the recently deceased, incredibly rich artist-adventurer, Ernest Pollette, about whom I have written in past blogs. Oscar was Bobby’s principal warder for some twenty-five years. Olivio had become Oscar’s backup some eleven year ago.
Bobby, who currently resides comfortably at the Pollette estate in Valhalla, accumulating his own measure of astounding fame, named his two warders the ‘O Brothers.’ He was genuinely fond of the ‘O Brothers,’ prior to getting released into the custody of his 72-year-old mom, Elinor McEvoy, formerly the Pollette housekeeper, later Ernest’s seducee.
What did Bobby know? He had been institutionalized at Pensky at the age of nine and only released to Elinor at age 39, following Ernest’s death and his subsequent loss of absolute control over his son’s fate. Ernest and the administration at Pensky had effectively colluded in hiding Bobby for 30 years!
Many of you have commented on the running battle of the talk shows in which I’ve been confronting the authors of the spurious Black Soul, White Madness. I have been accused by Messrs. Mix and Green (sounds like a salad) of being a racist, a malcontent because my book on the Pollettes, The Pollette Saga, Too Rich to be Happy, won’t come out for another few months, of trying to promote my book off the back of their book, bla bla bla.
The truth is the truth; BS is BS. Warders Paige and Cardenas were keepers, no more, no less. The fact that they appear to have been marginally kind to Bobby during their 25 years controlling him, is the least that we should expect from the people who hold sway over the mentally and emotionally disabled souls housed and hidden behind the fences and bars and gates from the world. Under the O Brothers regime, Bobby frequently got into fights with fellow inmates and twice tried to kill somebody at Pensky.
The emergence of Bobby Pollette as a genius abstract artist that has the world championing the Pensky Center’s art therapy program and the two warders, Paige and Cardenas, has much more to do with Bobby’s freedom to roam his late father’s estate, the loving care he receives from mom Elinor and his older sister Mary Lou, and of course to the Pollette genes.
I recently had the exclusive opportunity to interview Bobby, under the supervision of Mary Lou, for my forthcoming book, The Pollette Saga. To conclude this blog, I preview that interview as follows:
JS (Juliette Spindler): Are you happy these days, Bobby?
BP (Bobby Pollette): Bobby happy.
JS: That’s wonderful. Do you like it better here than at the Pensky place?
BP: Bobby likes trees. And flowers. And birds. And butterflies.
ML (Mary Lou Patchett): And wearing your blue and yellow shorts.
BP (laughing): Bobby loves his blue and yellow shorts. Bobby loves colors.
JS: Like your dad. He loved colors.
BP: Likes daddy. Daddy love colors. Bobby love colors. Blue, yellow, orange, purple. Black white, too. . . Red. . .
JS: You love your father, Bobby?
BP: Daddy die. Bobby paint Daddy smile in Heaven.
JS: Yes, I imagine he might.
BP: Bobby have family. Mommy, Mary Lou…. Daisy. Daisy Bobby sistah, too. Bobby love her. Daisy like a flower.
JS: Bobby, do you know where Daisy is?
BP: Daisy in Bobby’s painting.
…Tell me folks—does that sound like ‘white madness’ to you?
Juliette Spindler
New Rochelle, N.Y.
05/07/2010
