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I Didn’t Do It My Way Either

My memoir is set in the carefree 1950s and 1960s, leading to the dictatorship in Chile (1973-1990). It is sprinkled with irony and with a cornucopia of bizarre situations: when our home was broken into, my father (a celebrated radio personality), in underpants, wielding an unloaded rifle pursued the robbers, who returned, requesting their ladder back.

It revolves around our peculiar family, my triumphs and mostly defeats and those of my contradictorily tenacious father who buried hundreds of people. But it was not a crime as they were already dead. He ingeniously imported the first pacemakers saving many lives while at home; occasionally, we couldn’t pay our bills.

Innovative, he owned a radio station. And given his enormous energy, enthusiasm, and style, Radio Monumental became a success. Yet `Houston, we’ve had a problem.’ When he erected the mast on top of the building, it was the sole station to which listeners could tune in. The rest of the signals were swallowed as if by an intergalactic black hole. He was compelled to move the antenna. But what a way to do it!

Audacious, in business as good as a chimp, home alone with a razor blade, he ran a casino devoid of roulettes and slot machines as if for gamblers in rehab.

Compassionate, we visited the local prison where jailers and inmates welcomed him like a rock star.

`Scholarly’, he taught me things that were off-limits at my Catholic school: as underage, he took me to a striptease show.

Although my father sometimes acted erratically, I knew what tormented him.

Amid gradual sociopolitical change, at 15, I instead aspired to become a cartoonist. Broke, armed with my creations, I resorted to hitchhiking. Trucks laden with goats, on one occasion, the alpha male mistook me for one of his females. Luckily, I won that battle!