Steve McQueen

by Greg Laurie

  Barbara, Pat, and Loren accepted the invitation and came too. Jean said they blew everyone away with their friendliness. Barbara was the main speaker at the festival and made a point of setting the record straight about Steve’s feelings for his boyhood home.

  “Steve didn’t hate Slater,” she said. “Steve didn’t hate anything—except when he ran out of beer.” Everyone laughed.

  During a public question-and-answer session, somebody asked how come Steve married all brunettes. Without missing a beat, Barbi shot back, “Sure, Steve married all brunettes. But don’t forget, he had a lot of blondes in between.”

  “This was the Orearville School,” Jean says, “the one-room schoolhouse Steve McQueen attended.”

  Roaring laughter again. By the time she was done, Barbi could’ve been elected mayor by acclamation, Jean tells me. No surprise there.

  Since then, Slater has held a car show in Steve’s honor every year, they’ve put that billboard up, and they’ve dedicated a highway to him. All is forgiven.

  But looking back, I can’t help but wish he’d received at least a little of that extra attention when he was growing up here. He and his mother, Julian, lived as Claude Thomson’s houseguests, Jean says, though Julian never stuck around long. She took off for Los Angeles one time, looking for Steve’s father, who’d reportedly joined the Merchant Marine. She didn’t find him but found plenty of other men. I’ve read somewhere that McQueen said he finally stopped counting the number of husbands Julian acquired.

  After breakfast—all for less than ten dollars!—Jean takes me on a tour of Main Street that starts at a vacant lot where the Kiva Theater once stood. Steve was a regular at the Saturday matinees there.

  “Westerns were my favorite,” he once said. “I used to bring my cap pistol and fire at the villains.” Wonder if he ever imagined as a little boy, sitting in that dark little theater, that one day he would light up the screen as a gunfighter himself in the classic western The Magnificent Seven?

  The 250-seat, single-screen theater shut down in the early ’60s. Too many people were staying home and watching TV. Jean says the building was later refashioned into a bowling alley. It burned down in a 1999 fire.

  A few blocks later we come to a white and green-shingled A-frame style building. “Abbott’s Chapel” says the sign above the door.

  “This was the Orearville School,” Jean says, “the one-room schoolhouse Steve McQueen attended.” Its original location was in the Town of Orearville near the Thomson farm. When Orearville ceased to exist and a new school was built, the building was then moved, literally trucked into downtown Slater and “converted” into a chapel.

  Raising hogs is a hard, dirty, twentyfour-hour-a-day business.

  McQueen’s problems in school have been well documented. For one thing, he was dyslexic; for another, his attendance was spotty because Julian frequently dragged him along on her man-hunting expeditions, and he liked to play hooky anyway.

  I like that the school was transformed into a church, which gives me a natural opening to ask Jean about Slater’s faith-based community. She says the first church, Mount Zion Christian Church, was built in 1877. The first Catholic church was built in 1889. At one time, Jean says, Slater offered thirteen places of worship. She doesn’t know which one McQueen might have attended or whether he went to church at all.

  After we shake hands, Harold asks with the hint of a sigh, “I guess you wanna talk about Steve McQueen?” Turns out he’s also well versed on that subject.

  Jean and I cross the street and walk to the Slater depot, a brick structure built in 1915. This is where Claude and Steve drove the hogs in Claude’s half-ton truck for shipment to the slaughterhouse. Steve imagined himself a cowboy, shepherding the animals into their holding pens.

  With that piece of sightseeing completed, the downtown Slater portion of our tour is now over, but Jean has saved the best for last. “Would you like to see Claude Thomson’s home, the place where Steve grew up?”

  Would I!

  We climb into Jean’s car and take a back way to Highway 240, then turn right a half mile later on Thomson Lane. To my surprise, it’s just a plain dirt road, probably no different than when Claude and Steve trucked their hogs along it.

  Raising hogs is a hard, dirty, twenty-four-hour-a-day business, Jean says. The stock has to be fed, moved, watered, and otherwise tended regularly. The animals are susceptible to flea infestations and a whole range of diseases. All of a sudden I’m half-wishing I hadn’t eaten all that pork for breakfast, even if it is “the other white meat.”

  The farmhouse is hidden behind a stand of trees. Its current owner is a farmer named Harold Eddy. Jean says he grew up on the farm next door.

  Harold is in the yard as we pull in, tinkering with vintage farming equipment. He’s been collecting for more than fifty years, and the property is full of antique haying and corn harvesting machines, wire-twisting machines, broom-making equipment—and more than anything else, plows. There are sulky plows, cultivator plows, lister plows, bluegrass plows, ice plows, sod plows, potato digger plows, double-wing shovel plows, left-handed plows, and an assortment of unpatented plows forged by local blacksmiths.

  Jean obviously has given him a heads-up about the reason for our visit because after we shake hands, Harold asks with the hint of a sigh, “I guess you wanna talk about Steve McQueen?”

  One birthday he gave Steve a red tricycle on which McQueen raced kids from neighboring farms on a dirt bluff, winning more than his share of the gumdrop prizes.

  Turns out he’s also well versed on that subject and starts by relating that Claude Thomson purchased the house from a Sears catalog in 1919 for about six thousand dollars. “Some of it was modified,” Harold says, “and Claude put in a lot of upgrades. It was finished in 1920.”

  Steve and his mother moved to Slater in 1934 or 1935, and while Claude was no great shakes as a brother, he seems to have done much better by “the boy,” as he usually referred to Steve, and even developed a genuine affection for him. Steve himself once recalled his uncle as “a very good man. Very strong. Very fair.”

  Claude worked Steve hard. “I milked cows, worked the cornfield, cut wood for the winter. There was always plenty to do,” McQueen later recalled.

  His uncle didn’t spare the rod. “When I’d get lazy and duck my chores,” Steve said, “Claude would warm my backside with a hickory switch. I learned a simple fact: you work for what you get.”

  But Claude was also generous to him. One birthday he gave Steve a red tricycle on which McQueen raced kids from neighboring farms on a dirt bluff, winning more than his share of the gumdrop prizes. I assume this is where he got the bug for driving fast, something he chased until the disappointment of his 1971 racing film, Le Mans.

  The inside of the farmhouse is roomy, comfortable, filled with antiques. Steve’s old bedroom is upstairs, and Harold leads us there. It’s fairly small, but from the window there’s a nice view of the property.

  While in California, Steve ran the streets with a gang, stealing hubcaps and shooting pool.

  If it wasn’t an idyllic situation for McQueen, his uncle’s home at least provided a semblance of stability and love. Unfortunately, not enough to keep young Steve from being hurt and thrown off stride by his wayward mother’s behavior and the local gossip it stirred up.

  “There was a lot of scuttlebutt that went through the neighborhoods when she came to town,” says Harold. “Sure got a lot of tongues wagging.”

  Steve never stopped hoping Julian would clean up her act and come home for good. He might as well have hoped to sprout wings and fly. Sometimes she dragged him off on her escapades. Months after they chased to California in search of Steve’s vagrant dad, Steve ended up back on Claude’s doorstep, alone, dirty, and starving. Claude’s new wife Eva Mae Stewart, a former St. Louis Follies dancer many years his junior, took the teenager in and took care of him.

  A traveling carnival happened to be passing through at the time, and when it
moved on to the next town, Steve went with it.

  While in California, Steve ran the streets with a gang, stealing hubcaps and shooting pool. When Claude heard about it, he laid down the law: “If you get into trouble here, I’m going to send you back to your mother.”

  I’m sure Steve was torn. On one hand, he loved the stability of being with Claude. Though it required hard work, there was routine, well-defined rules, and three square meals a day. If Steve felt as I did toward my mom, who was so much like Julian, he would have wanted to be with her because, after all, she was his mother, and like me, he would’ve felt a strong, protective instinct toward her.

  But despite Claude’s stern warning, Harold says, Steve did get into local scrapes. After he and some friends went on a window-shooting spree with a BB gun, Claude told McQueen he was enrolling him in an all-boys school.

  A traveling carnival happened to be passing through at the time, and when it moved on to the next town, Steve went with it. Years later, a widely distributed newspaper article quoted McQueen as saying, “I hated the farm life and didn’t get along with small town people. I guess they were just as glad to see me go as I was to get out of there.”

  No wonder it took so long for that billboard to go up.

  “Did McQueen ever return to Slater?” I ask Harold.

  “Once,” he says. “Back in the late ’50s, a few months before Old Man Thomson died.”

  Steve and Neile Adams (his first wife) were newlyweds at the time, living in New York. Neile signed up to perform in a six-month revue in Las Vegas, and as they traveled west, Steve made an impromptu decision to stop in Slater and reconnect with his uncle.

  And as Jean and I head back down Thomson Lane, she tells me something Barbi McQueen privately told her during that appearance at Steve McQueen days in 2007.

  “How ya doing, boy?” asked the delighted Thomson as he pumped the hand of his adult-aged nephew. McQueen only answered him with a thin smile.

  Claude died at eighty-three on November 28, 1957. McQueen didn’t return for the funeral and never went back to Slater again. When invited to participate in the city’s centennial celebration in 1978, he didn’t even respond.

  Well, it’s time to let Harold get back to his antique farm implements, with my sincere gratitude for his time and information. And as Jean and I head back down Thomson Lane, she tells me something Barbi McQueen privately told her during that appearance at Steve McQueen Days in 2007.

  Steve had just been diagnosed with terminal cancer, and as they were driving their motor home to Idaho, he told Barbi, totally out of the blue, that he wanted to see Slater one more time.

  But the cancer moved swiftly. He never made it back.

  THE FATHER WHO WASN’T THERE

  _____

  Yesterday contained more than its share of revelations. After parting ways with Jean so she could get back to her real job, I kicked around town for a few more hours, before grabbing some take-out and heading back to the Steve McQueen Suite for an early bedtime. I could feel the road fatigue setting in, and realizing I’ve still got two thousand miles ahead of me, followed by way more than that the next week, I decided to let common sense overrule my need for speed. Full night’s sleep tonight then refreshed for what starts all over again tomorrow.

  Before pulling out on Friday, however, I swing back by the Slater Main Street News, wanting to thank Jean one more time for helping me tie together so many loose ends of McQueen’s storyline and upbringing. Little did I expect her to serve up today, out of the blue, the pièce de résistance. It hadn’t occurred to her, she said, until right this moment, but would I like to talk to Steve’s half sister, she asks?

  HUH?

  I thought I was pretty well acquainted by now with all the important details of Steve McQueen’s life, but I sure didn’t know he had a sibling.

  Terri McQueen is her name, Jean says. She was a guest at Steve McQueen Days in 2011 and is a perfectly delightful lady. She lives in Pueblo, Colorado, near her daughter Antonette. After rooting around in her desk for a minute or two, Jean comes up with a phone number in case I want to call her up on my way back to California.

  I thought I was pretty well acquainted by now with all the important details of Steve McQueen’s life, but I sure didn’t know he had a sibling.

  I don’t wait. I call her up, right here in Jean’s office. And like everyone else I’ve encountered so far, Terri McQueen couldn’t be nicer. The seventy-seven-year-old daughter of that mysterious phantom William McQueen says anytime I want to come to Pueblo, she’ll be happy to show me letters, photos, and military documents, and answer any questions I have.

  I do some quick calculations in my head. If I leave right now and drive straight through, I can make Pueblo by 10:00 p.m. “How about breakfast in the morning?” I ask. Terri laughs and agrees.

  Minutes after offering again my undying thanks to Jean Black, I’m in the Bullitt and out of Slater like a shot, where because of my haste to make Pueblo by nightfall, I’m in need of constantly reminding myself to calm down and obey the speed limit. After a few minutes I turn on the radio to distract myself from the jumbled thoughts in my head.

  Nice try. One of the first songs is “Cat’s In the Cradle,” the 1974 smash hit by Harry Chapin. Irony? Maybe. Providence? No doubt.

  I’m sure you remember the song. Told in the first person, it’s about a father too busy to spend time with his young son. Later in life, the roles reverse, and the grown-up son now has no time for his wistful dad. Its message about the swift, inexorable passage of time and the lost opportunities that can never be recovered is poignant. And hearing it now, within the context of what I’ve been discovering firsthand about McQueen’s lonely past, instantly transports me back to my own fatherless childhood.

  Clearly this odyssey is starting to wear on me mentally as much as physically. I knew our two backstories were alike in many ways, yet somehow I never quite expected the discoveries I was making to affect me quite so personally.

  The man I thought was my dad wanted nothing to do with me. Whenever he was around, he was abusive, physically and otherwise. My Aunt Willie remembers coming to our house when I was still in a high chair and finding him beating the bottoms of my feet with a ruler because I wasn’t eating my food.

  I was still quite young when my mother left him, but I recall it as a happy day for us.

  After I married Cathe and we had our son Christopher, I wondered if the years had changed my father, and so I decided to track him down and find out. He ran a dry cleaning business, and when I got the address, I took Cathe and Christopher there with me.

  “This is your grandson Christopher,” I said to the old man behind the counter. “I thought you’d like to meet him.” He just stared at us. No words. Nothing. After a few very uncomfortable minutes, we left. On the way home I said to Cathe, “I’m not sure he even is my actual father. No father would react like that to his own grandson.”

  I grab a seat in the waiting area and pull out my laptop to catch up on the world. Suddenly a statuesque, older woman steps forward and offers her hand. “I’m Terri McQueen,” she says with a smile.

  Turns out I was right. He wasn’t my real father at all. My mom had lied about that.

  I thought of Steve McQueen’s alcoholic dad who was never there for him. But at least he knew his father was out there. Somewhere.

  Clearly this odyssey is starting to wear on me mentally as much as physically. I knew our two backstories were alike in many ways, yet somehow I never quite expected the discoveries I was making to affect me quite so personally.

  At least Colorado offers a beautiful change of scenery, and after almost seven hundred miles on I-70, Pueblo is appearing in the distance.

  I’m fortunate to get a room at the Hampton Inn and Suites on a Friday night without a reservation. I call Cathe first thing to let her know where I am and why, and that I’ll be home very late on Saturday or possibly even early Sunday morning. I’ll be there for services, no matter how exhausted
I am.

  Dragging pretty good right now, I fall asleep as soon as I hit the bed. Morning comes too soon, and after my routine of Scripture and correspondence, I check out and program the GPS for the B Street Café in the heart of Pueblo’s Historic District.

  I grab a seat in the waiting area and pull out my laptop to catch up on the world. Suddenly a statuesque, older woman steps forward and offers her hand.

  “I’m Terri McQueen,” she says with a smile.

  We’re seated in a booth in back, and after explaining to Terri what I’m up to, I wonder how I’ve not come across any mention of her in my research about her famous half brother.

  “Well, I don’t go around advertising,” she says, “and there are some people who would prefer I not open my mouth at all. When you go around saying you’re Steve McQueen’s sister, most people think you’re full of it. Besides, I have nothing to prove to anybody. But if somebody asks, I’m not going to deny who I am either. I’m too old for that.”

  It was a McQueen biographer, Terri says, who first found out about her, via old birth records. After tracking her down in Pueblo, warning her to brace herself, then dramatically revealing that she was the half sister of Steve McQueen, Terri let the air out of him by saying, “Oh, honey, I’ve known that for years.”

  Terri has a large file of documents she’s accumulated over the years about Steve’s dad (and hers), William McQueen. We dig in.

  I like this woman!

  Terri has a large file of documents she’s accumulated over the years about Steve’s dad (and hers), William McQueen. We dig in.

  He was born in Nashville, Tennessee. His dad was an insurance agent, and after a year the family moved to Los Angeles, living very comfortably in the affluent Bunker Hill area. That changed, however, when Louis McQueen—William’s father— died of a brain hemorrhage in 1919. Thirteen-year-old William and his mother moved to Indianapolis, her hometown.