Editor’s note: This is a series of Oral History recordings with Red in his last weeks with us. We recorded this Oral History project while he was in his hospital bed. The time we spent with Red was a gift. We aimed to preserve his experiences to continue sharing his gifts with all who appreciated him. He is a brilliant orator, and we have recorded over six hours of Oral History to share with the world. His spirit and memory will live on. – Johnny Mao
Hi my name is Travis “Red” Coy. We’re in Seattle, Washington on the 28th of February 2023. Currently recording in room 59…419 of Northwest Hospital… I have the hiccups…[cracks up]. When and where was I born? This recording story? (Yeah).
I was born in Bremerton, Washington, which is on the Northwest Coast of the continental United States. It’s closest you get to Canada without going there. I was born there in 1982 at the Bremerton Hospital on August 12 [opens trash bag], and it was a pretty uneventful birth by all accounts. But I had my parents who used to tease me and tell me I had yellow hair because I peed on my own head when I came out.
Now I don’t know if that’s true or not, but they said I looked like a little trolly doll, they said my hair looked light green. I don’t think, I don’t think that’s a thing . But yeah, Bremerton at that point was …not a good place to live. Let’s… we could say that. It’s definitely not getting voted in any top 10 for livable places.
Bremerton, the town, is built in the shadow of a gigantic Navy compound called Puget Sound Naval Shipyard [PSNS]. And it dominates the economy of Bremerton. I don’t actually, I don’t know if that’s true anymore. When I was a kid, you either worked like my Grandfather. And some of my family members, after and before, worked at this military industrial complex. It’s soaked up a lot of good working class people.You have my Grandpa in their pipe fitting. I think my Cousin did some time there before he got too many DUIs, but that’s that’s another topic.
But yeah, it was a uniquely terrible place to grow up. It was not like the country. It was not the city. It wasn’t really West Coastie. Neither was it like Midwest. But it definitely was a dark place. Very poor. We were very poor. There were certain parts of town that that were more affluent, and they were the ones that were adjacent to the Naval Shipyard. And we weren’t adjacent to the Naval Shipyard in that way. My family wasn’t, at least my immediate family, my house. And a lot of violence, Bremerton was a very violent place.
We’ll probably get into it plenty later on. I don’t need to elaborate on it now. Anyway, that’s Bremerton. That’s Bremerton. It is a tiny little podunk with big aspirations that’s backed up by a military industrial complex, that stops it from basically becoming another dead port in Washington State. It would slide into history, let’s just say that. That’s Bremerton, in a nutshell, a place where dreams go to die.
Yeah Bremerton sucks. The neighborhood I used to live in is paved over now, they built a park over it, I couldn’t even take you there to show it to you if I wanted to. (The whole thing just got knocked down?) Mmmhmm, yeah, yeah, they just completely erased the whole neighborhood and just build a gigantic park and parking lot for the Naval Shipyard over my neighborhood where I grew up in so it literally doesn’t exist. (How long did you live there for?) In Bremerton? (In that neighborhood?) Oh probably until I was ten. Yeah, we moved uptown a little bit. My dad got a union job at some point, and that was able to get us a slightly better house, slightly bigger, and other things but yeah, yeah, it’s yeah, Bremerton.
The military industrial complex, like you asked, is a shipyard and repair station. So there’s Puget Sound Naval Shipyard [PSNS], which I think does the repair and mothballing for the West Coast fleets. And then oh, yeah, so basically you do work. And then the other option besides the bullshit-fucking-menial-jobs-they-don’t-pay-shit. The other alternative is to completely sell your soul to the military industrial complex and go work at either Boeing or PSNS, and they’ll have you fix it up their fuckin’ gangster war machines in no time. And or mothballing them because PSNS also mothballs ships.
If you’re driving into Bremerton from Port Orchard or from Gorst, going the freeway route you’ll see all the different ships lined up and they look undressed. That’s, that’s the mothballed ships they have parked there. They’re basically out of date or destroyed or whatever but the government is like stripping them of their valuables and then reusing them so.. “Green Military” you go guys! Gonna get it for recycling! But yeah, you’ll see them on the right-hand side as you drive up the freeway. And I watched, I saw those like multiple times per day, every day for my entire life there, whether it was on or off.
Yeah, and so you get one of those jobs and it’ll pay you a decent wage, you can raise a family, yada yada yada, but there’s just culturally, it’s pretty much like a cultural Savanna, like it’s not quite a desert, it is not quite a cultural desert, but it is definitely not a lot for kids, or oh, regular people to do just like regular stuff. When I was there it was these gentlemen, you know, and it was go work at McDonald’s or go work at the base. But you know, you gotta pay the fucking rent, right? So, simple, make the choice. It’s an easy choice. You know, you got pretty much guaranteed hours to the government because all that military industrial complex shit is completely unaccountable to anybody. So like, nobody’s really paying attention and lots of dudes would just fuck off and collect their paycheck and do as little as possible. So if you’re going to serve the war machine, you might as well slow it down as much as you can.
It’s pretty valid… welders and pipe fitters and solid working class jobs that people seem to really appreciate. But it kind of locks you in you know? They give you this pension promise and all that stuff to keep you pulling them ships apart. (So your family did that work?) Yeah.
Yeah, so the Grandpa I know that’s on my Grandma’s side. Or the Grandpa I know on my dad’s side, worked there. He became a pipe fitter, shop steward, before he retired. Okay so memory refresh on where we were at here. The man who married my dad’s mom, it’s my grandpa. Yeah, right, he grew up on a chicken and turkey farm, I don’t remember where, I think Texas maybe? North Texas or somewhere like that, because part of my family looped up from Texas into Washington. I have photos of them in early Hollywood when the strip was literally real palm trees and there was nothing there yet. There was like a little roadside motel and like a little tikki shack, it was really uniquely 50s, 60s kind of thing. By the 70s they were up here in Bremerton. And he knew that he wasn’t gonna do farming, you know what I mean, he never ate chicken. He never ate chicken or turkey. He always had to have a beef roast on the holidays, because he would tolerate the smell of a turkey, but he would not eat it. So we would make him a special beef roast, and we all ate it, but it was really for him. He was like ‘I’m never going to work on a farm again’.
But my family did end up, basically, with a little fourteen acre ranch place out in Gorst, which is like the armpit between Bremerton and Port Orchard if you’re keeping track of locations here. But, so, he worked his way up, my Grandpa worked his way up, he got his union job, he got like a burned out farm house from who knows when. And then presumably some friends [did as well], but he never gave them no credit, it’s always been intimated to me… my family doesn’t explain things, they don’t explain shit it’s just like the CIA. Anyway, he bought this little burned out house and rebuilt it by hand, I’m sure he had some help but nobody ever mentions it. And that’s where they raised my Father and my Uncle and my Auntie. And those are all my Aunts and Uncles on that side.
I don’t really know the other side of my family too well, except that they’re Arab. Or at least partially Arab. My mother looks extremely Mediterranean, but she might be Lebanese. Something like that, but we don’t… we’ve been estranged for many, many years. And so, I don’t know much about her life or background really to speak of.
But, back on my Father’s side, he married my Grandpa… my Grandpa?…haha of that would be an amazing event… haha… but uh, my Grandma was an angel. My Grandpa…my Dad, everybody for the most part, the men are absolutely toehead thugs basically. We are knuckleheads.
And the women in my family, like my Grandma, are absolute angels. And it is the weirdest, it is the weirdest composition.
Like my Grandpa and my Dad and me were all extremely violence capable and willing to prove it. And my Grandma, is the sweetest creature, well she passed away a few years ago. But… Rest in Peace Grandma… But yeah the men were just horrible, my Father was horrible, my Grandpa was horrible. Yeah all the way down basically.
Somehow the dickhead gene missed my Uncle Rick. That’s my Uncle Rick, and he’s just like.. my Uncle. My Uncle Rick is a sweet dude. Just bald and curly hair, super happy, just a regular guy, loves to watch sports, hang out, drink a beer, totally harmless. I don’t know how he didn’t get the gene, but the rest of us are friggin’ psychos. [chuckles]
And like I said, my Aunt and my Grandma were like instrumental in raising me, the men taught me to fight and to endure and to be a Spartan Warrior basically. You were always supposed to have your own equipment, your own your own weapons. And you’re always supposed to be ready to fight at all times.
Oh, yeah, and if it wasn’t for my Aunt and my Grandma I would…I wouldn’t have no kind of humanity whatsoever. We would be having this conversation over a fucking $19 a minute prison phone call system, and it would take us 12 years to record because we’d be doing it over the phone, from prison to be clear. My Grandma and my Auntie basically raised me as their own after our Mother dipped out, or was run out or I don’t know. I don’t know the truth or the circumstances because I couldn’t get a straight answer from anybody and most of the answers died with my Grandmother.
But in there, my Dad basically neglected us into the ground, and the only attention he ever really gave me was when we were practicing to like do violence of various sorts.
Um, but yeah, my Grandma and my Aunt, they, they would build these spaces. They would take me in and build this like cocoon around me, away from my father and away from the streets and away from all the violence and the Neo Nazis and all that shit. So I just take a deep breath and gather my thoughts out on the countryside. And I would spend summers at my Aunt’s or my Grandma’s house because it was just… they felt for me so hard. It really nothing they can do. My dad was scary as shit. He was a scary, scary motherfucker. And so they were terrified of him. But they absolutely did everything they could to like… create an area where I can have an alternative, or I can try out an alternative besides being a fucking wild animal. And it worked partially, you know, they taught me that….
I know it sounds weird, but my Aunt, my Grandma had to sit me down and be like, you know that other… other people feel pain, right? Like when you hurt them, they get hurt. And it’s not good for them. And in my young brain… [spits]… in my young brain, I hadn’t really connected that. I was really a little sicko and they would take me out to the country, and they’d give me everything that I wanted. Not spoil, not everything that I wanted, but you know what I mean. But like, the basics, they gave me a clean bed to sleep in. Because at that point, I think I was sleeping at my Dad’s house on a pile of dirty clothes, and then my blankets were more dirty clothes. And so they gave me like a proper bed to sleep in, you know, they’d feed me three meals and it was always up to me, like I made the menu, you know, I was this special boy or whatever.
And that had a not good effect on my sister. But well, I will probably eventually get to that.
But basically, they took me under their wings and over the years, just kept reminding me that I can make better choices, that they’re here for me and that when I’m ready, I’m ready to be better and do better, that they’re ready to support me and that sort of stuff. Um, and also just giving me a space to be a different kind of kid. And so like I would every weekend, on the first weekend, and so like every Thursday at school, like in the midst of my whirlwind week and even when I was in those like bad school days or bad, like school weeks, or months, or even years, I would remember what my Grandma told me: “You can make better choices” or whatever.
Um, but like on Thursdays, like Fridays come in, and my Grandma and my Aunt come and get me and take me out to the country. And every single Saturday morning, every single Saturday morning, they would make me waffles with whipped cream and strawberries. Because that was my favorite breakfast with scrambled eggs. And just a couple of pieces of pork. Yeah, and I just I would go absolutely apeshit for it.
And then we would have like a freeform lunch, we’d all go to the store together and shop for the weekend. And I’d get to pick the groceries, and I’d get to pick the like dinner and stuff and it was always spaghetti with meatballs. Always spaghetti. Yeah, I always wanted spaghetti on Saturday night and Sunday night, just whatever we got at the at the market on Saturday…[spits]… Whatever we got on the market on Saturday, we turned it into Sunday’s breakfast and dinner, you know pork chops or whatever. But the point was that I got to customize the meal, it was my choice. And it was empowering, and in the process I learned a lot.
I mean I learned how to you know, be polite and wash your hands and do all those things like you think would be obvious. Like, nobody taught me to shave for instance, nobody in my immediate family bothered to teach me any hygiene or anything like that. There was nobody in my in my house Monday through Friday, ever. There was no parents, basically ever. And so you know, there’s nobody that was like, Travis — which is my Christian name, but don’t you don’t you dare ever call me that if you get a chance. My name is Red and I only answer to Red — but I lost my train of thought again — Oh, yeah, yeah, and so at my Grandma’s house and at my Aunt’s house, they would say you know, ‘It’s time for you to brush your teeth’, you know, ‘Time to get ready for bed’, so normal time for normal people. And they basically taught me to like… or did their best they could with the limited time they had… to like, teach me those like basic life skills that you need to survive in a world that has lots of unwritten expectations of you, that I was totally unaware of.
And they created this like material space that was just… there was no chance I was going to run into anybody that I knew, or anybody from the block. And I could just be a kid. I could just go outside, like playing the hose, you know, run around play hide and seek, all these things that you didn’t do it in the city because someone would call you a faggot and fucking deck you in the neck. Yeah, ‘smear the queer’ let’s just say ‘smear the queer’ was a popular yard game in my school, pre-fifth grade, like up to fifth grade. Like, smear the…. like, nobody even batted an eye when you say we’re gonna play ‘smear the queer’ and so that was like the environment we were in.
Yeah, I just got to be a kid and as I got older some of that stuff stripped away and it was less childish, I would come over there and I started to help cook and help bake and that’s where I found my passion for cooking and baking. My Grandma is a master at making bulk food. Like gallons and gallons and gallons of stew or whatever. Um, and my Auntie is a great baker. She loves to do like holiday cookies and stuff like that. And so I got exposure to that. It gave me a life skill, but also you know, it got me exposed to people that are not violent frickin weirdos.
Ah yeah, and those two are the reason why I have whatever good you see in me. Whatever, whatever good you find in my existence, I owe to them directly.
If it was up to my Father, I’d be a fucking serial killer. By the way he was trying to raise me, it’s what it seemed like, he was doing his best to raise a fuckin’ school shooter. And I flipped the script on him, but we’ll, we’ll talk about that probably later. But he had kind of big plans, not big plans, but he thought I was gonna be a different kid than I was and I disappointed the shit out of him. I mean, I’m absolutely happy to say because you don’t want a man like that proud of you for any reason whatsoever.
And I’m sure we’ll get into him. Another time. I don’t know not tonight. But we’re just kind of jumping around on this, aren’t we? (Yeah, your family like to cook together?) Yeah, yeah, that was to get exposed to a family meal where everybody sits together and eats. It’s all new to me. My dad ate over t over sink. He would never join us for a meal if he didn’t have to. Or alternatively, he would get home from work drunk as shit. And eat at his computer and smoke piles of cigarettes inside with no windows open, until the place looked like it was on fire and then he fucking pass out at the keyboard with half eaten food and a cigarette still smoking. Total mess of a person.
But yeah, let’s take a break. Take a break from this real quick. I got to catch my breath. Let’s stop and listen to it.
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Red Army Duck 