Frank Stallone

My mother had me in California and brought me back to Texas, her home, when I was 14 months old.

And I grew up with my grandmother.

She left me with my grandmother.

I grew up in Nacogdoches.

She was 20 years old, and she went into Houston to get a job as a waitress and left me out in the country with my grandmother.

We had an outdoor toilet.

I don't know how many people you know that had an outhouse, but I'm one.

Ooh, chamber pots are nasty.

Well, she didn't really abandon me.

She left me with my grandmother because she couldn't work and take care of me at the same time.

I never met my dad, no.

She left him in California, and he didn't seem to...

to want to really search me out so uh were you ever reunited with your father no he died when he was 46 and i found out about it through my grandmother who had stayed in touch with his mother but i never met him and i never got a letter from him and i never heard from him and uh not good for a young girl

Not good because, you know, they say for a girl, not knowing her father is much, much worse than having a father and losing him, like having him die.

Because if you don't have a male figure when you're growing up, then you sort of go around with some screwed up idea of what it is you're looking for.

That is a very sensitive, interesting, true way to put it.

I think they're both devastating, to tell you the truth.

But I will say that growing up without a father is very difficult for a young woman because I think that a mother can show a daughter how to be a woman, but a mother can't show a son how to be a man.

He needs a father for that.

And he's this big hero to you.