Jim Dodge was born in Santa Rosa, California, in 1945, where he lived for six years until his father, a carpenter and former WWII bomber pilot, was recalled to active duty as a flight instructor during the Korean War. Jim spent an uncommonly peripatetic youth as an Air Force brat, living in Texas, Wyoming, southern California, and Labrador, where he went through puberty on Goose Bay Air Force Base. The only five girls his age within a thousand miles were madly in love with Ricky Nelson, a twisted situation that no doubt contributed to what would become a virulent antipathy for American stardom and the vast cultural commodity spectacle that serves as its bloated host.
