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As a child I was very interested when other children died. There was no doubt about it that I was a morbid kid and when other children died, it always fanned the flames of my forensic curiosity.

Later, in February of 1948, this curiosity would become a personal reality and engulf and turn my life upside down and inside out like Alice in Wonderland taking place in a cemetery with the white rabbit as an undertaker and Alice wearing a grave-eaten shroud to play her games in.

But in my life before that was to happen, I was fascinated by dead children and began in 1940 when we moved into an apartment that was annexed to a funeral parlor.

The apartment had once been a functioning part of the mortuary. I don't know exactly what part, but the undertaker to get a little extra cash had changed the former dead space of his funeral parlor into an apartment where we lived for a few months in the late spring of 1940.

I used to get up in the mornings and watch the funerals out the window. I had to stand on a chair because I was five years old and I want a good view.

I seem to remember they held some funerals early in the morning because everybody would still be asleep in the apartment and I would be wearing my pajamas.

To get at the funerals I had to roll up a window shade that was particularly difficult for my dexterity to handle. but somehow I managed it and then pulled a chair over and stood on top of it and watched the funerals.

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