Michael Jackson: The Magic, The Madness, The Whole Story
The bucolic town of Los Olivos in Santa Barbara County is a little more than a hundred years old. If a visitor wants a sense of the local history, Mattei's Tavern, built in 1886, is the place to go. One of many monuments to a bygone era, it was a stagecoach stop where guests stayed overnight during their journeys, back when the only mode of transportation was horse-drawn carriage. It also became a stop-off point for the Pacific Coast Railway narrow gauge line, constructed in the 1880s when travel by land along the coast ranged from difficult to impossible. At its zenith, it stretched over seventy- five miles from what was once called Harford Wharf on San Luis Bay, south to Los Olivos. Passengers spent the night at Mattei's before taking the stagecoach to Santa Barbara the next day. Today, the Carriage Museum is on this site, providing a visual history of the region. The original watering hole is now a charming eatery called Brothers Restaurant at Mattei's Tavern.
One recent day, a strange-looking man came through the Museum with a boy, a girl and an infant. He was accompanied by two women, senior citizens who tended to the youngsters, maybe nursemaids, one cradling the baby in a blanket. Also present was a male assistant who appeared to be in his early twenties. His eyes darted about, as if he was on high alert, vigilantly aware of his surroundings, of what others were doing in his presence.
The older man, wearing a deep-purple, silk surgical mask, a fedora over ink-jet black hair and oversized sunglasses, stood before one of the photographic displays. "Prince! Paris!" he called out. "Come here. Look at this." The tots ran to his side. He pointed to the picture with one chalky, spindly finger -- at the tip of which was wrapped a Band-Aid -- and read the accompanying description, his high-pitched voice sounding instructive. In the middle of his reading, he admonished the boy to pay closer attention, insisting that "this is important." The group moved from one display to the next, the masked man reading each narrative, beseeching the children to listen, carefully.
After the day's lesson, the small group enjoyed a bite to eat in the restaurant. While there, they laughed among themselves, sharing private jokes, yet seeming closed off from their environment, never acknowledging the existence of anyone outside their miniature world. The masked man fed himself by lifting his disguise just a tad, rather than take it off. The locals tried to ignore the odd contingent. However, it was difficult not to stare, particularly since the children had been wearing masks, too -- not surgical, though... just Halloween. They took them off to eat, and then put them back on, once again hiding their faces.
In the early 1900s, a major new rail line was built thirty miles closer to the Pacific coast. Because Los Olivos had been bypassed by it, the population of the once-thriving town dwindled. However, it has since been rediscovered, thanks to an influx of tourists in the last twenty years. Now there is an Indian reservation and gambling casino, as well as a number of spas and New Age healing centers. Small and locally owned art galleries, antique stores, gift shops, boutiques and wineries flourish in restored western-themed buildings.
One afternoon, the masked man visited one of the art galleries. "Now, t/tis one would be just perfect in the bedroom, wouldn't it?" he said to his young assistant. He held up a small oil painting of two angels floating ethereally above a sleeping child. The assistant nodded. "Yoo-hoo," called out the masked man. "How much for this one?" He and the curator conferred, privately. Then the man in the disguise walked over to his assistant and whispered into his ear. "Okay, very good," he finally said to the store owner. "I'll take it."
The proprietor scribbled on a piece of paper and handed it to the younger man, who then extracted a wad of bills from his wallet. He counted them off to pay for the purchase.
"No, wait! That's too much," said the masked man who had been watching, carefully. "I thought you said it was a hundred dollars. Not a hundred and six dollars, and change." There was a quick, urgent conference. "What? Tax? Really? On this?" He made a show of thinking hard. "Well, okay, then," he decided. "Thanks, anyway." He put the painting down.
More negotiation.
"Really? Okay, good, then. A hundred dollars it is."
The covered man regarded the painting, again. "My God, it's so beautiful, isn't it?" he remarked, picking it up. "The way those children are so... protected. How sweet." As he and his assistant walked out of the gallery, he turned and hollered back to the proprietor, "I just want you to know that I think you're a wonderful person, and I wish you all the luck in the world with your store! I'll be back soon."
Los Olivos is the home of about five hundred horse ranch estates, Victorian-style homes and about two dozen businesses. A thousand people, maybe less, call this remote and slumbering place home (fewer than a dozen of them black), including one unlikely resident, the only man in town who wears a mask: Michael Joseph Jackson. Figueroa Mountain Road winds upward through the lush and rolling Santa Ynez Valley of Los Olivos. A man sells apples under a leafy old shade tree on the side of the road; he's been doing so for years. Every day, he sits with nothing to do but sell his fruit, enjoy his day and bake in the sun. It's just that kind of place.
A half mile back from the road, behind an imposing oak gate, is 5225 Figueroa Mountain Road, a massive Danish-style split-level farmhouse, its brick and masonry walls crisscrossed with wooden beams. This is where Michael Jackson lives.
This 2700-acre property, originally a ranch for farming dry oats and running cattle, was once known as Sycamore Ranch. It came on the market at $35 million; Michael purchased it for $17 million in May 1988. He then changed the name to Neverland Valley Ranch -- Neverland, for short -- an homage to Peter Pan's Neverland. The first order of business for Michael was to build his own amusement park on the acreage, including a merry-go-round, giant sliding board, railway with its own train and even a Ferris wheel. With his kind of money, he could pretty much do anything he wanted to do... and he would do it all at Neverland.
Michael's corner of the world is verdantly green as far as the eye can see. Old-fashioned windmills dot the landscape. There is an elegant softness to the grandeur; thousands of trees gently shade superbly manicured grounds which include a five-acre man-made, ice-blue lake with a soothing, never pummeling, five-foot waterfall and a graceful, inviting stone bridge. It is here, amidst the infinite silence of unfarmed, rolling and gentle countryside, that Michael Jackson has created his own environment, a safe haven for him from an ever-pressing, ever-difficult world.
Two thousand miles east, in the grimy industrial city of Gary, Indiana, there is a small, two-bedroom, one-bath, brick-and-aluminum- sided home on a corner lot. The property, at 2300 Jackson Street, is about a hundred feet deep and fifty feet wide. There is no garage, no landscaping and no green grass. Thick smoke plumes upward from nearby factories; it envelops the atmosphere in a way that makes a person breathing such air feel just a little... sick. Joseph and Katherine Jackson, Michael's parents, purchased the home in 1950 for $8,500, with a $500 down payment.
This place, primarily in a black neighborhood, is where Michael Jackson first lived as a child, with his parents and siblings Maureen, Jackie, Tito, Jermaine, LaToya, Marlon, Janet and Randy.
Like most parents, Joseph and Katherine wanted their children to succeed. In the early fifties the best they could do was two bedrooms and one bath for eleven people; clothes and shoes bought in secondhand stores. They hoped that when the youngsters graduated from high school, they would find steady work, perhaps in the mills... unless they could do better than that.
However, when the Jackson parents discovered that some of their kids had musical talent, their dreams expanded: the boys with the surprising musical and dance abilities would win contests, they decided, and be "discovered."
After their sons cut their first records, the imaginings of the parents grew more grandiose: a sprawling estate in California; servants at their beck and call; expensive luxury cars for everyone; three-piece suits, diamond rings and great power for Joseph; mink coats, jewels and a better social life for Katherine. They fantasized about flipping on their television and seeing their celebrated children perform their number-one hit songs for an appreciative world. As a result of the boys' fame, they figured, the entire family would be recognized, sought after, asked to pose for pictures, sign autographs. They would all be stars. What a great world it would be, for each of them. No more worries; everything taken care of, handled by their good fortune.
Was it too much to ask? It certainly seemed like a good idea at the time. However, as proverbial wisdom has it, be careful what you wish for. You just might get it.
Joseph Walter Jackson was born on 26 July 1929, to Samuel and Chrystal Jackson in Fountain Hill, Arkansas. He is the eldest of five children; a sister, Verna, died when she was seven. Samuel, a high school teacher, was a strict, unyielding man who raised his children with an iron fist. They were not allowed to socialize with friends outside the home. "The Bible says that bad associations spoil youthful habits," Chrystal explained to them.
"Samuel Jackson loved his family, but he was distant and hard to reach," remembered a relative. "He rarely showed his family any affection, so he was misunderstood. People thought he had no feelings, but he did. He was sensitive but didn't know what to do with his sensitivities. Joseph would take after his father in so many ways."
Samuel and Chrystal divorced when Joseph was a teenager. Sam moved to Oakland, taking Joseph with him, while Chrystal took Joseph's brother and sisters to East Chicago. When Samuel married a third time, Joseph decided to join his mother and siblings in Indiana. He dropped out of school in the eleventh grade and became a boxer in the Golden Gloves. Shortly thereafter, he met Katherine Esther Scruse at a neighborhood party. She was a pretty and petite woman, and Joseph was attracted to her affable personality and warm smile.
Katherine was born on 4 May 1930, and christened Kattie B. Scruse, after an aunt on her father's side. Kattie was born to Prince Albert Scruse and Martha Upshaw in Barbour County, a few miles from Russell County, Alabama, a rural farming area that had been home to her family for generations. Her parents had been married for a year. They would have another child, Hattie, in 1931.
Prince Scruse worked for the Seminole Railroad and also as a tenant cotton farmer, as did Katherine's grandfather and great-grandfather, Kendall Brown. Brown, who sang every Sunday in a Russell County church and was renowned for his voice, had once been a slave for an Alabama family named Scruse, whose name he eventually adopted as his own.
"People told me that when the church windows were opened, you could hear my great-grandfather's voice ringing out all over the valley," (Catherine would recall. "It would just ring out over everybody else's. And when I heard this, I said to myself, 'Well, maybe it is in the blood.'"
At the age of eighteen months, Katherine was stricken with polio, at the time often called infantile paralysis because it struck so many children. There was no vaccine in those days, and many children -- like Joseph's sister Verna -- either died from it or were severely crippled.