Stephen King’s Fam Is Just Like My Fam and Your Fam and Everyone’s Fam

by Mike Dang and Logan Sachon

Mike: I loved the story about Stephen King’s family in the Times Magazine. It’s kinda amazing that everyone is so talented and prolific — his wife has published several books. Both his sons are authors. His daughter-in-law Kelly Braffett is coming out with her new book. One of the things I really liked about the story was how the writer broke down everyone’s origin story. One of the son’s, Joe, decided to come up with a pen name “Jay Stephenson” (J., Stephen’s son), because he didn’t want people comparing him to his famous dad. And really went out of his way to make it on his own and get out of his father’s shadow. And Stephen and Tabitha, his mom, were like, “We support you! Do whatever you want!” I don’t know, that’s basically like the opposite of my experience with talking about my career with my own parents. I’m sure your parents were also supportive of whatever you wanted to do?

Logan: We sort of talked about this last week, but: I’ve never “wanted” to do anything? But they’ve been supportive of me as a person and the things that I’ve ended up doing, yeah. My favorite detail from the story was that the Kings made their kids tell their own bedtime stories at night. Love that. “No, you tell me a story. You sing me a song.”

Mike: Is that what you had growing up? Bedtime stories, and songs? I had … not that. The thing I did have was watching the local news with my folks, and then going to sleep. And on Fridays, watching America’s Most Wanted with my mom and then staying up at night terrified and thinking about it for the rest of my life.

Logan: Hhah. Um. I think we were more a book reading house. My dad told us a lot of stories about his childhood, too. And college and a trip to Europe he took after college. My favorite was this one about coming upon a small restuarant in a small town in the mountains of Germany where no one spoke English, and they were totally starving and ate this great meal, and then at the end the dessert menus come out, and my dad is like, I’m getting whatever the cheapest thing is. And his friend was like, yeah right, I’m getting the most expensive one, because that’ll be better and also I can afford it (subtext). So they ordered their respective desserts. And my dad gets his and it’s a huge slab of chocolate cake and it’s frosted and superb and his friend gets his and it’s a single slice of pineapple. When I was a kid, that story KILLED.

Mike: Oh, I bet. I mean, that’s a funny story. So the King kids knew their father was a writer because he was always upstairs writing while they were downstairs being kids. I sort of grew up not being too aware, or, well, just being aware enough of what my parents did — but they never really talked about it. Were you aware of what your parents did, and did they talk about their jobs with you?

Logan: I still don’t really know what my dad did. Computer tech management programming super computing distance learning stuff at a university. And my mom was a physical therapist which was much easier to understand — oh, people’s body’s are broken, and you help them fix them. I also got to go to work with my mom a lot — when I was little, she was a professor at the university, and I remember going to her office and hanging out there while she graded papers or met with students or whatever, she had a little Playmobil set on her window, doctors and nurses, and I always wanted to play with it so bad. Then later, she worked in the public school system and when I had days off from school, I’d go to work with her and meet the kids she worked with. I feel really lucky that I got to see my mom at work so much, being someone’s boss, working with teachers and kids to make their lives easier. She was so super at her job. It makes me proud of her to think about it now. And now she and my dad are both retired and do whatever they want, so I know exactly what they do now. Did you parents talk about work at the dinner table?

Mike: No, my parents didn’t like to talk about work. I guess, they were working just to earn a living and they didn’t love it. They worked so they could raise a family basically. My dad worked (or still does) for the Ford Motor Company helping fix and build cars and he said it was too dangerous for me to visit him at work. I remember my teacher asking me sometime in the first or second grade what my dad did and I said that he worked with cars. She said, “Doing what?” I went home and asked him, and he said, “I’m an auto worker.” I know he came home a lot with all these mysterious injuries and cuts and bruises, and one time he almost lost some of his fingers in an accident. And I thought about that a lot during the recession: “[X] amount of auto workers lost their jobs today” or whatever. I thought, “auto workers. Like my dad.” And my mom worked in a salon. And then they’d come home and they went out dancing. Dancing was their thing.

Logan: Dancing was their vocation! I always assumed my parents just worked because they had to and their real life’s work was raising ME. I told that to my dad recently and he laughed at me.

Mike: Well, in a sense: It’s true! When I have a kid, I’ll be all in. Whatever it takes for the kid to have a normal, happy childhood. And I’ll totally talk my job with the kid.

Support The Billfold

The Billfold continues to exist thanks to support from our readers. Help us continue to do our work by making a monthly pledge on Patreon or a one-time-only contribution through PayPal.