K. Gingrich: No, not really. I was not, I've said it so many times --I was married on a Saturday, and I left him on a Monday. Yes. I was living right next to my mother. I had an apartment, and let me tell you this, I wanted to break our engagement and my mother said, 'You can't because it's going to be in the paper tomorrow.' Oooh, oooh. So, I mean, my father had just been killed a few years before and things were never the same without my Dad. But anyhow, I moved back with my mother. And then I found out I was pregnant and then the McPhersons --who are really nice country people-- let me move back up with them and Newt came home in August and I told him that I wanted to divorce. So he went back. He was in Merchant Marines and he went back and I filed for my divorce. I got my divorce and I was still with my mother.

Q: Newt never actually grew up then with the McPhersons?

K. Gingrich: No. He grew up with Bob and I.

Q: How did Bob make the adjustment to having a child?

K. Gingrich: You see we went together for a year. So he was around him all that time. And I can only remember one thing: It was Sunday and we were sitting in the living room and Newt had got new white shoes, high tops, and he wanted my attention and I wasn't giving it to him and he came over and he kicked me in the shins. And he got cracked across the rear end and Bob said, 'You won't have that again. Watch out.' [Laughs]

Q: He must have been tough to discipline as a child.

K. Gingrich: No. That's the only thing that stands out in my mind, you know, that Bob ever did. Newt's [friends] maybe got in trouble.

Q: How do you think Bob influenced Newt?

K. Gingrich: Just by being around him. Like he'll say at different times that he was so grateful to Bob because he knew that he didn't have the money, but his dad wanted him to have the Encyclopedia Britannica, was it? One of those two big ones at the time, and you paid so much a month, you know, on it. His dad wanted him to see all of the world and thought that that was one way he would learn. And he did. He used them. He got it for Christmas. It was 1957. And Newtie would say things like that. And he realizes what he was touched by Bob. And he told me once that he and Jimmy, his best friend, were afraid of Bob. And I told Bob, he laughed. They were afraid because he is firm. A quiet type person. Newt can stay out there and talk more than he talks to me in a week. He's just not a talker.

Jim Tilton's wife or somebody told us once that they had suggested to Newt that he read "The Great Santini" or see the movie because, you know, it was about this relationship, the Pat Conroy thing. I'm sure you may or may not have seen the movie. But the book was about the relationship between the son and his father who was a military officer, and very disciplinary.

Q: Was your mom an influence also on Newt?

K. Gingrich: Oh, my mother was. She was a former schoolteacher, and she had him writing and reading before he went to school. I mean he was her life. You'll love this. One Christmas, my mother didn't have much money. She bought him a leather jacket. Beautiful thing. He decided he wanted to be a zebra. So he went and painted stripes all over the jacket. My mother nearly had fits. [Laughs] But he did it. He wanted to be a zebra. I don't know if ever got the paint off or not.

Q: Tell me about the zoo. He apparently loved the zoo, still does.

K. Gingrich: Oh, yeah, yeah. He really does. That's what he really wanted to be --a curator. God, he has his own zoo now. [Laughs]

Q: Snakes. Did he have snakes when he was a kid?

K. Gingrich: Well [laughs] Yes, he did. But not for long cause I can't stand them. And I can see him to this day sitting on the back steps, holding the snake's head like this and feeding it hardboiled eggs. That's what he fed the doggone thing. And I don't know if it was that snake or another one that he brought in. And me and my mother were sharing the bedroom because you only could get so many bedrooms. And he put the jar down without the lid on it. And my mother was taking a nap. When she awoke the snakes was coming up the jar. And she shrieked and I ran for Newtie because I knew. So he was told, 'You're going to have to take that snake out and put it back where you got it.' Well, he didn't want to because it was cold and he was afraid the snake would freeze. So he went crying up the hill and he dug a hole and put the snake down the hole and covered it up, so it wouldn't freeze. But I don't think he's ever forgiven me. That I insisted no snakes. He loves them. He really does.