J.T. Owens - Steve Jobs Bio: The Unauthorized Autobiography

Steve JobsBio

The UnauthorizedAutobiography

By J.T. Owens

Copyright 2014 J.T.Owens

SmashwordsEdition

Contents

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

* Heres to the dreamers of dreams*

Childhood

I was born in San Francisco,California, USA, planet Earth, February 24, 1955. I was adopted atbirth. My biological mother was a young, unwed graduate student,and she decided to put me up for adoption.

I had a pretty normal childhood.I grew up in Silicon Valley, my parents moved from San Francisco toMountain View when I was five. It was nice growing up there. I meanthe air was very clean; it was a little like being out in thecountry. I grew up fairly middle-class,lower middle-class. It was the suburbs, on a blockwith lots of kids. It was like most suburbs in the U.S. It wasreally the most wonderful place in the world to grow up.

I was very lucky. My father,Paul, was a pretty remarkable man. He joined the coast guard inWorld War II and ferried troops around the world for GeneralPatton; and I think he was always getting into trouble and gettingbusted down to Private I think is the lowest rank. He was amachinist by trade and worked very hard. He was kind of a geniuswith his hands.

He had a workbench out in hisgarage where, when I was about five or six, he sectioned off alittle piece of it and said, "Steve, this is your workbench now."And he gave me some of his smaller tools and showed me how to use ahammer and saw and how to build things. It really was very good forme. He spent a lot of time with me... teaching me how to buildthings, how to take things apart, put things backtogether.

He could fix anything and make itwork, and he could take any mechanical thing apart and get it backtogether. If we needed a cabinet, he would build it. I thought mydads sense of design was pretty good, and he even cared about thelook of the parts you couldnt see. He loved doing things right.When he built our fence, he gave me a hammer so I could work withhim, and he said, You got to make the back of the fence thatnobody will see just as good looking as the front of the fence.Even though nobody will see it, you will know, and that will showthat you're dedicated to making something perfect, for you to sleepwell at night, the aesthetic, the quality, has to be carried allthe way through.

He was not an educated man, but Ialways thought he was pretty damn smart. He didnt read much, buthe could do a lot. My fathers father was an alcoholic and whippedhim with a belt, but Im not sure if I ever got spanked.

One of our neighbors across theroad was a real estate agent, he wasnt that bright, but he seemedto be making a fortune. So my dad thought, I can do that. Heworked so hard, I remember. He took these night classes, passed thelicense test, and got into real estate. Then the bottom fell out ofthe market. You had to suck up to people to sell real estate, andhe wasnt good at that and it wasnt in his nature. I admired himfor that. I try to be as good a father tomy children as my father was to me.

We had an Eichlerhome, Joseph Eichler did a great thing, his houseswere smart and cheap and good. They brought clean design and simpletaste to lower income people. They had awesome little features,like radiant heating in the floors. You put carpet on them, and wehad nice toasty floors when we were kids.

I can go into a lot of detailsabout my youth, but I don't know that anybody would really careabout that too much. I remember the late 50's and early 60's. Igrew up at a time where we were all well-educated in publicschools, a time of peace and stability until the Vietnam War gotgoing in the late sixties. It was a very interesting time in theUnited States. America was sort of at its pinnacle of post WorldWar II prosperity and everything had been fairly straight andnarrow from haircuts to culture in every way, and it was juststarting to broaden into the 60's where things were going to startexpanding out in new directions. Everything was still verysuccessful, very young. America seemed young and naive in many waysto me, from my memories at that time.

I remember John Kennedy beingassassinated. I remember the exact moment that I heard he had beenshot. I was walking across the grass at my schoolyard going home atabout three in the afternoon when somebody yelled that thePresident had been shot and killed. I must have been about seven oreight years old, I guess, and I knew exactly what it meant. I alsoremember very much the Cuban Missile Crisis. I probably didn'tsleep for three or four nights because I was afraid that if I wentto sleep I wouldn't wake up. I guess I was seven years old at thetime and I understood exactly what was going on. I think everybodydid. It was really a terror that I will never forget, and itprobably never really left. I think that everyone felt it at thattime.

School

School was pretty hard for me atthe beginning. My mother taught me how to read before I went toschool, so when I got there I really just wanted to do two things.I wanted to read books because I loved reading books and I wantedto go outside and chase butterflies. You know, do the things thatfive year olds like to do.

I encountered authority of adifferent kind than I had ever encountered before, and I did notlike it. They really almost got me. They came close to reallybeating any curiosity out of me. Both of my parents knew the schoolwas at fault for trying to make me memorize stupid stuff ratherthan stimulating me.

I was pretty bored in school, andI turned into a little terror. You should have seen us in thirdgrade, I had a good buddy, Rick Farentino, and the only way we hadfun was to create mischief. Wed get into all sorts of trouble.Like we made little posters announcing Bring Your Pet to SchoolDay. It was crazy, with dogs chasing cats all over, and theteachers were beside themselves. We basically destroyed ourteacher. We would let snakes loose in the classroom and explodebombs. One time we set off an explosive under the chair of ourteacher, Mrs. Thurman. We gave her a nervous twitch.

I remember there was a big bikerack where everybody put their bikes, maybe a hundred bikes in thisrack, and we traded everybody our lock combinations for theirs onan individual basis. Then we went outside and switched all of thelocks, and nobody could get their bikes. It took them until latethat night to straighten things out. We got kicked out of school alot.

Things changed in the fourthgrade, though. They were going to put Rick Farentino and I into thesame fourth grade class, and the principal said at the last minute:"No, bad idea. Separate them." So this teacher named Imogene Hill,who is one of the saints in my life, said, "I'll take one of them."She taught the advanced fourth grade class and thank God I was therandom one that got put in the class.

She got hip to my whole situationin about a month. After school one day she said, "Steven, I'll tellyou what. I'll make you a deal. I have this math workbook and ifyou take it home and finish it on your own without any help and youbring it back to me, and you get it 80% right, I will give you fivedollars and this and she pulled out one of these lollipops thatseemed as big as the world, and she held it out in front of me. AndI looked at her like, "Are you crazy lady?" Nobody's ever done thisbefore and of course I did it. I handed it back within two days.She basically bribed me back into learning with candy and money,and what was really remarkable was before very long I had such arespect for her that it sort of re-ignited my desire to learn. Ijust wanted to learn and to please her. In my class, it was just meshe cared about. She saw something in me.