Chapter 1

My life is not to be taken into too much detail.

It never has been, and most likely never will, but I will explain to you some of my experiences that have gotten me where I am today. Some of you may enjoy it, and some may turn away in disgust.

Most people wouldn't care about it, and I frankly understand why. It's not interesting.

But what about those stories and artwork I made?

Huh, so some of you want the real story? Well...

Let's begin with were it all began.


1892. 81 years ago.

The year was 1892, and I was born at home on April 12th. My parents, Daniel Sr. and Ella Darger, were overcome with joy when I arrived. My father, Daniel Sr., was a kind and reassuring man that I was glad to have the chance to meet in my very young child-like years. My mother was not around in my life for very long though. When I was but the age of four she passed away after giving birth to my younger sister, who I never met during my life, due to puerperal fever.

Me and my father lived together for quite some time, and it was bliss in a way. That all changed although in the year 1900. That year, crippled and impoverished, my father was taken away from me to St. August's Home for the Aged. It was upsetting at first, but as time went on I learned to accept it. Thankful that I had apparent intellect, the young me was enrolled in public school for third grade by some higher person in charge. After beginning public school I was then moved to the Mission of Our Lady of Mercy and Grace. While I was living in MOLMG during the year 1905, and during a time where I thought life was going to get better, I was informed that my father had passed, and things began to fall. I felt alone, and I had friends at the orphanage with me, but I felt like a piece of me, a piece that had been with me for all these years to help me bare the pressure, disappear.

Later that year I was sent to the Illinois Asylum for Frail-Minded Children in Lincoln, Illinois. The people of MOLMG didn't seem to like the idea of me, and I understood that very well. The diagnosis was, and I quote:

"Poor little Danny's heart is not in the right place."

I was not fond of that place during that time, and I am still not to this day. I felt that during those years that the true underlying problem was that I could see through adult lies and began to become a "smart-aleck", and as a result, I was punished by teachers and bullied by classmates.

Creating strange noises could also be included into a compilation of those terrible years there.

It was irritating to the other children there, and I understand how it could be. It was a phase of my life that I still don't understand to this day. The Lincoln Asylum's activities included forced labor and severe punishments, for which I found enjoyment to put into my writing. I had friends, and I had enemies, which was surprising sometimes to say the least. I had tried to escape three times from that dreaded Asylum.

Two of the times I had been caught, and which raised my hopes in escaping again, but the third time was a success. Happy and ready for something more; I left and never looked back.

I was 16 at the time when I returned to Chicago. I was glad to be back, and with the help of my godmother, found employment in a Catholic hospital as a janitor. It supported me as long as it could until 1963 when I retired. In 1930, when I was 38, a brief stint of my time was spent in the U.S. Army during the era of World War I. After I was released from the military I decided to spend some of my time attending Mass daily, five was the total amount of times I went. Returning from Mass I picked up an array of trash from the streets around me; my attire was shabby, but I did try to keep myself clean and well-mended. One of my close friends during my lifetime, Kevin Schuyler, was of like mind on the idea of saving and protecting neglected and abused children. Me and him proposed a "Children's Protective Society" that would put described children up for loving families to adopt. But it was rejected by the Catholic Church, as well as my attempts to adopt a child. Kevin, sadly, left Chicago around the mid-1930s, but me and him kept in touch by writing letters to each other until his death in 1959.

In 1930, near the DePaul University campus, I settled in a second-floor apartment on Chicago's North Side. During the next 43 years of my life I wrote massive tomes, a ten-year daily weather journal, and other assorted diaries.

In April 1973, I was sent to St. Augustine's Home for the Aged, and like my father, died there. My last journal entry is as follows:

"January 1st, 1971. I had a very poor nothing like Christmas. Never had a good Christmas in my life, nor a good New Year, and now, I am very bitter but fortunately not revengeful, though I feel should be how I am.."


I am a artist.

I am a protector of children.

I am Zemug's creator.

I am somebody, and somebody worth remembering.


If you people decide to remember me.