Father Jerome USA/Nelson Jerome Rau: An Autobiography
March 23, 1940 –Present
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andthen I dropped out… only to find myself Inside of Life itself!”
Jerome/Nelson
Jerome/Nelson
I remember finding, in my Mother’s Diaries, after her deathin 1974, the statement that I had been born on Easter Day, 1940. She had also, as I remember, told me assuch, when I was yet a child. So, as anadult, not too long ago, I set out to find out about this assertion. But, according to the Calendar, in 1940,Easter Day was on March 24. But, withmy Mother having insisted that I was born on Easter Day, I dug into this matterfurther. And the result, it seems, isthat my Mother was right… if certain ‘realities’, of Time and Space and of TheHoly Spirit, should apply! Because,March 23rd, 1940, in Northampton, Pennsylvania… was Easter Day,March 24th, the Day of The Resurrection of Christ… in Jerusalem, Palestine!
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Okay, disregarding any and all possibilities of my Birthbeing a ‘Holy Event’, we shall continue on here. (Although there was also a rumor, somewhere in my Life, that myBirth… had been a Virgin-Birth!)
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My remembrances of my childhood loom somewhat vague in mymemory, but happy nonetheless! I was anonly-child somewhat, in that the brother that I supposedly had, had alreadybeen born… twenty-years before me! So,the earliest memory that I have of my brother, Leon, was that he had taken hisFlight Training at ‘Casey Jones Flying School’ in New Jersey and that he wasalready a Master Sergeant in the Army Air Corps (which became the Air Force in1947)! Incidentally, according to allof the ‘souvenirs’ and memorabilia that my Mother kept as family heirlooms, mybrother had also accompanied my Parents, in 1939, when they drove the oldfamily Model T Ford, cross-country, to see the famous 1939 World’s Fair inChicago! Leon was, later in his AirForce career, offered the opportunity to become an Officer, but he declined andinstead, until his retirement, was a Chief Mechanic of the B-52Bomber-Aircraft, primarily stationed at MacDill Air Force Base, Tampa,Florida. And Yes! There were several ‘visits’, during mychildhood years, to Florida and my brother’s family, as well as their ‘visits’,a few times, to Pennsylvania. I havethis very distinct ‘memory’, of enjoying swimming with my relatives, in thelarge neighborhood tree-and-forest enclosed sink-hole, that was the localswimming-pool, in their suburb of Tampa, Florida, just a few blocks from mybrother’s home! No! There were no ‘gators’ or ‘mocs’… moccasinsnakes!
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My brother was married several times and had 5 children, allby his first wife. For some reason,occasionally witnessing the sibling-rivalries and internecine squabbles betweenmy brother’s children, somehow ‘turned-me-off’, as to the very prospects ofhaving children myself some day, and thereby having to ‘put-up-with’ suchparental and sibling animosities and issues!And so, accordingly, it seems that such a ‘choice’ did prevail in mylife, and even though I was married twice, I had no children of my own, eachmarriage already having two step-children.
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I also had other relatives and visits therewith, therefromand thereto. My uncle, Ellwood Koch, onmy Mother’s side, lived in Tallahassee and had been a high-ranking Officer inthe Army Quarter-Master Corps in Japan, and had sent quite a few Japanese‘souvenirs’ home to my Mother, which she duly kept as valuablefamily-heirloom-antiques (along with lots more passed-down familyantique-treasures, that she seemed to have become the family-curator thereof,and which I inherited upon the eventual passing of both of my Parents and thesale of the family-home in Pennsylvania).My uncle had married a woman who was also a high-ranking Officer, but inher case, she was in the highly-secret Secret Service, or ‘spy-corps’! In later years, my uncle graduated fromFlorida State University, with a degree in Civic Administration, and over timebecame the Mayor/City Manager, of such cities as Dunellin, Florida; Largo,Florida; Clearwater, Florida; and eventually, Orlando, Florida.
(No, I don’t know that I am related in any way, to theformer Mayor of New York City, Ed Koch.)
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I had other relatives, mostly on my Mother’s side of thefamily, in that my Father’s father, or my grandfather, had passed away before Ican remember, although I was pointed-out the now-sold farm-lands, outside ofHellertown, Pennsylvania, that used to be the family-farm of George and LauraRau. I did occasionally visit and seerelatives on my Father’s side, in that he had several brothers, including EdgarRau of Bethlehem/Fountain Hill, who had two girls whom I dearly loved to see,probably because they were quite beautiful.Otherwise, my Father’s mother, my grandmother (Laura Strauss-Rau), wasstill alive and we occasionally saw her, as well as a sister of hers, inRaritan, New Jersey.
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But mostly, the relatives and visits, were to relatives andplaces-farms, on my Mother’s side, where there were family-names like Masters,Koch and Werkheiser. My Mother’smother, my grandmother, was Elizabeth Koch, her married name, but somehow Idon’t seem to remember her family name nor of any relatives from her family,unless it was the Masters family.
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The Masters farm was west of Allentown, in the rollingfarm-lands of that area and we rarely saw them, except for the annualfamily-reunion at a large family-reunion grounds, of a country-sideHotel-Restaurant, somewhere west of Allentown.
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We occasionally visited the Werkheiser farm, on the EastonRoad, off the Bethlehem-Hellertown Road, where my Mother’s sister Beatricelived, who was married into the Werkheiser family. There were several Werkheiser children, whom we occasionally saw.
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But mostly, even weekly if not more often, it was mygrandfather’s farm on my Mother’s side, John S. Koch, of Hellertown,Pennsylvania, on the Wassergass Road, that we quite often visited and which Iconsidered my second-home away from home, Northampton, Pennsylvania. My grandfather, John S. Koch, had been theRural Mail Carrier for RFD #1, Rural Free Delivery Route #1, delivering theU.S. Mail for years in his covered black horse-and-buggy Mail Delivery Van. He also had a quite large farm on theWassergass Road, where he lived his lifetime, with my grandmother Elizabeth,their sons Frank Koch (of Bethlehem), Ellwood Koch (already mentionedhereinabove, of Florida) and Clifford Koch (of Trenton, New Jersey), and adeceased son, with a name starting with the letter D, possibly Delbert(possibly killed in the War) and their daughters, Edna Koch (who lived on thehomestead-farm all her life) and my Mother, Alma Koch (nee Rau), and BeatriceKoch (Werkheiser).
I think there was also another aunt, Carrie Koch, who mayhave died.
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My uncle Frank was a frequent visitor to the homestead (helived in Bethlehem and worked part-time for Bethlehem Steel) and did much ofthe ‘chores’ around the farm, such as operating the tractor, plowing fields,planting crops, sowing manure and much more, of the ‘manly’ farm-hand ‘chores’and I was overjoyed to help him whenever I visited the farm. In fact, the farm-tractor is where I firstlearned to drive. Getting-up at 5AM inthe morning, to help milk-the-cows (with my aunt Edna), and pitch-fork strawand hay for the cows, and to shovel-out their manure, from the manure-pits inthe barn-stalls. I once even ‘assisted’my uncle, when a cow was giving-birth, helping to pull the new-born calf out ofthe mother-cow! Picking-the-eggs, fromunder the hens-in-their-roosts, was also another ‘chore’. And helping my uncle Frank, be-head achicken (the chicken runs-around without its head!) for dinner, or ‘skin’ arabbit (letting two rabbits copulate first, before their demise!)
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The Koch family farm spread across the entire WassergassValley, East of Hellertown, from one mountain ridge on one side of the valley,down into the valley and across the Silver Creek, sweeping up the other side ofthe valley, across the Wassergass Road and the old, 1800’s large stone familyfarm-house, Pennsylvania Dutch barn (replete with traditional PennsylvaniaDutch ‘hex-signs’ painted on the front of the barn, to ‘ward-off’evil-spirits!) and continuing up-the-hillside behind the farm house and barn,chicken-coops and rabbit-hutches, fruit orchards and fields, into the tree-lineand forests atop the hill-side on that side of the valley. (Where my Father loved to take his huntingrifle and go hunting for pheasant in season.I made-do with an old .22gauge mini-rifle.) Down in the valley, past fields on the other side of the creek,was a quite sizeable natural pond, inhabited by a family of beavers. And there was a footpath, through the woods,as well as a dirt road-track through the woods and up the hillside from fartherdown the valley, both of which led to the ancient log-cabin-home, of agreat-grandmother (deceased), who used to live there in the woods. The log cabin was on the hillside, near anatural spring, and there had been constructed, many years ago, a quite large water-reservoir,built into the hillside, to provide water for the residence. That reservoir still existed, full of waterand yet fed by the natural spring, although it had acquired a few small leaks,when I last saw it.
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At the bottom of the valley, the waters of the pond gentlyflowed out (via a small drainage-ditch-channel) across the several corn-fieldsthere, eventually flowing into the Silver Creek at the very bottom of thevalley, which had a wooden-plank bridge across it, for the tractors and farm vehiclesto reach the corn-fields on that side of the valley.
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On this side of the creek, were both cornfields andcow-grazing-fields, of lush clover-grass and more natural springs, where thecows spent their days in plentitude and cow-pleasure. The top of the corn-field, next to the Wassergass Road, is wherethe farm’s manure-pile was located and where I daily, after cleaning-out thestalls in the barn, wheeled my wheelbarrow of manure and dumped it on the pile,to age properly, until it was finally spread across the freshly-tilled-fields,as fertilizer for the crops-to-be-grown there.The corn that was grown was mostly field-corn, of small white kernels,to be fed to the cows, although very young field-corn was an occasionaldelicacy and most delicious, cooked and liberally spread with butter. The rest of the field-corn was harvestedonto a large hay-wagon and then deposited into a large corn-crib,ventilated-by-wooden-removable-side-wall-staves, where the cobs of field-cornwould turn hard and age, into husk-cobs of delicious ‘food’ for the cows!
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Incidentally, next to the corn-crib, on the hill-sidegravel-road driveway that led uphill and around behind the barn, to the upperfloor of the barn where the hay-mows were and the farm-machinery was stored… Justbelow the corn-crib, on the side of the gravel-road, was the spring-house, aconcrete building, that had two large concrete-vaults inside, that were filledwith icy-cold natural spring-water, that flowed from underneath thespring-house. Into these cold-watervaults, the steel-milk-containers, filled with the daily ‘milkings’ of thedairy-cows, were stored, until the arrival of the Milk Truck, from the LehighValley Dairy Cooperative, arrived daily to take the fresh milk to themilk-processing-plant, to be turned into the milk that was sold to consumers inthe Lehigh Valley area.
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On the other side of this gravel-driveway, was the barnitself, with a stone-wall-enclosed barn-yard in front, for the cows to gatherin before either leaving every morning for their grazing-fields, or to gatherin late-in-the-day before making their way into the barn itself and findingtheir individual home-stalls, to which they had become accustomed to feedingand sleeping in, until the daily morning ‘wake-up’ and milking-timearrived. Another ‘chore’ I enjoyed, wasopening the barn-yard gates, both early-in-the-morn or late-in-the-day, toallow the cows to either leave for or return from, their grazing-fields. The cows knew where their grazing-fieldswere and they would slowly walk out of the farm’s gravel-driveway, making theirway down the side of the Wassergass Road itself for a couple hundred yards, tothe open entrance-gates to their grazing-fields on the other side of theWassergass Road. Even though it was aPublic Road, there was never any problem with traffic, as any car that mightcome along, would naturally extend ‘the-right-of-the-roadway’ to the cows andwould wait until they had left the road.Late-in-the-day, I’d unlock the gates to the cow’s pastures and theywere usually somewhat eager to walk back to their barn-yard and theirindividual stalls, after a long-day spent in the fields!
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The floor-level of the barn was almost entirely occupied bythe cow-stalls, with several rows of steel ‘yokes’, to latch around a cow’sneck once the cow was in the stall. Theyokes were entirely comfortable for the cow and the cow could stand or eat froma feed-trough, drink from a cow-mouth-triggered-water-bowl or lay down easily. There were also birthing-rooms for acow-in-labor, as well as a no-longer-used horse-stall (from thehorse-and-buggy-days, when my grandfather was the local Mail-man). And behind the barn, under the hillsidedriveway behind the barn, was a gigantic underground water-storage cistern thatwas fed by the down-drains from the roof of the barn, catching all of therainwater that might land on the barn-roof, for emergency use if necessary(there was a faucet inside the first floor of the barn).
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Oh, of immense delight, was the wooden cask, that was one ofthe two large barrel-containers, that stood alongside the hillsidedriveway-maneuvering-lot behind the barn, where the large barn-doors for accessto the second-floor-level were located, as well as some low-lying corrugatedstorage-sheds, where most of the individual farm machinery was stored. One of these two barrels was a steel barrel,from which gasoline could be had for the farm vehicles. But the other barrel, as I say, was awooden-cask, and in the proper season, it was full of… apple juice! The apple juice was squeezed from the applesby a hand-cranked apple-squeezer and the juice was deposited into this vintagewine-barrel-cask. There, in the heat ofthe daily sun, that casket would sit, with its only opening being the smallcorked blow-hole on the top of the barrel (which was occasionally opened torelease the pent-up pressure). However,after a proper aging-period, one could then approach that barrel and gentlyopen the spigot-faucet on the lower front of the barrel, and what would thenflow forth… was the most delicious (and potent!) natural apple cider, therecould be!
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On the other side of the barn and barn-yard, was a largechicken-yard, that was ‘home’ for the contingent of chickens that made their‘home’ in the chicken-roosts that were located in an enclosed building attachedto the other side of the barn. And pastthe chicken-roost-building, the chicken-yard, the barn itself and thefarm-machinery-sheds, were several fields, rising up the slopes of thehillside, alongside and above the barn, which fields were usually planted inhay and straw for the cows, which was harvested when ready and stored in thelarge hay-mows on the second-floor-level of the barn. There were several hay-mow ‘drops’, or holes-in-the-floor (alsofitted with wooden ladders, for occasional quick transition between floors ofthe barn), by which hay and straw could be forked down to the lower-level ofthe barn, to be fed to the cows (hay) or used for their floor-bedding (straw).
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Up the gravel-driveway alongside-of-the-barn, just past thecorncrib, was a large stone-walled machine shop, that had a storage areaunderneath it for small machines, such as a grass-mower and various tools. But the ‘pièce de résistance’ was thesecond, or main floor, of the building, which floor was made of solid woodplanking. That was because it had beenbuilt to support weighty shop-tables and machines. The shop-tables were of massive and heavy wood-construction andlined all four walls of the huge room and each had large wooden drawers full ofpieces of mechanical-goods for a farm, like ‘teeth’ for a mechanical scythe orgrass-cutter. And, of course, thelarge, coarse-grindstone grinding-wheel, powered by a foot-powered pedal-pump,used to sharpen the ‘teeth’ of said cutting-machinery. Large electric cutting-saws, band-saws andother small and large electric and manual machinery-tools and hand-tools of allkinds and more! A machine-shopsupreme! Just what any good, old-timefarm needed! (With lots of vintage,old-time farm-tools, not-to-be-seen normally, in today’s modern world!)
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The farmhouse itself was ‘backed-up’ by a secondfamily-contingent of chickens, in a large chicken-roost-house, severalbrooder-houses and a large fenced-in chicken-yard, up the hillside behind thefarmhouse, which had a nice grassy-slope back yard immediately behind thefarmhouse, with a natural hill-side rock-enclosed barbeque pit andfamily-picnic area. There was also afamily of geese, in that hillside chicken-yard, that helped keep the weeds atbay by eating such and anything that appealed to geese. Up the hill as well, were orchards ofapples, pears and other fruits and rows of bushes of red/black raspberries,currants, gooseberries and more. On theone side of the farmhouse, along-side a grassy-access trail-road for thetractor and other vehicles (from the public road to the chicken-yard andorchards above the farmhouse), was a quite large ‘truck-patch’, orfield-for-growing small vegetables and strawberries, etc. There was also a smaller ‘truck-patch’,located between the other side of the farmhouse and the springhouse andcorncrib. The front of the farmhousewas nicely planted in flowers and flowering magnolia. There was also the large, square, rock-enclosed, water-well ofthe farm, dug deep into the ground, and in later years,electric-pump-operated. But years back,originally water had to be ‘drawn’ from the well, by pipes that werepumped-by-hand-pump, from the large kitchen inside the house. Unfortunately, in later years, thelevel-of-ground-water fell so low, that the well no longer had any water init. (The ‘culprit’ was Bethlehem Steel,on the other side of the mountain-ridge behind the farm-house, which was‘drawing’ ground water for its steel-making operations and depleting theground-water-levels in the entire area!)Also, in front of the farmhouse, on the large ‘truck-patch’ side of thehouse, under the ground of the grassy-access-road, is where the septic-tank forthe farmhouse was located, quite away from the water-well, but close to the‘truck-patch’, so that the septic-system’s ‘leach-field’ could run under the‘truck-patch’, providing important underground, soil-purified ‘nutrients’, forthe vegetables growing in the ‘truck-patch’ above said ‘leach-field’.
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And finally… the farmhouse itself! As I have said, a wonderful, old huge stone-built structure, fromthe 1800’s, that had been improved somewhat (years back), by enlarging the old,farm-kitchen end of the house, not only making the kitchen much larger (withthe large dining-table in the center of the room) and the sinks and (both gasand wood-burning) stoves along the one side of the room, but also adding asecond-floor, with a modern bathroom and two large bedrooms. And on the ground-floor, extending the rearof the farm-house (slightly into the rear hill-side slopes) to make a largework-room, with sinks and another small bathroom, as well as, again, the ‘piècede-résistance’ of the improvement-project… huge floor-to-ceiling freezers,along the inside wall, for storing any and all freezable food items, that thefarm might need to keep frozen. (Suchas ‘processed-cuts’ of beef cattle, that had been cut-and-processed by ameat-processing-plant in the area, for a nominal and economical bulk-price, orlarge/bulk bargain-priced meat/vegetables, obtained from visits to theQuakertown Farmer’s Market & Auction.)
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The yet unrenovated old, original section of the house, hada cool-storage cellar under the house, where potatoes, apples, root vegetablesand other veggies were stored, along with anything else, accessible down somesteps from the outside front of the house, under a pair of woodencellar-doors. Incidentally, apples,potatoes, winter squash and such, were always covered with straw, as the somewhatsharp-and-prickly straw seemed to be a quite good natural deterrent, to thepossible ravages of mice and small scavengers.
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Upstairs, the main room of the first floor, was a largeliving room, with old-time plush chairs, sofas and fancy-carving book cases,and the grand-old roll-top desk, containing all of the business matters anddocuments of the farm, along with a proper business-person’s wooden-armedwork-chair, for such a grand, old roll-top desk. There was also a smaller ‘entrance-room’, or vestibule-lobby,from the old, original front door of the farmhouse, which had a small porch onthe outside front of the building.However, the porch and original door were hardly ever used anymore, asthe main entrance-door had now become the new kitchen-door and larger porchtherefor, that now also occupied the front of the house. Also, just off the living room, was asmaller coat room, that was mostly used by my aunt as a cool-temperatureegg-storage and processing room, by keeping the one room window ajar at alltimes for cool outside air to circulate in the room..
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The second-floor of this grand old structure was reachedfrom stairways at both ends of the house.The newly renovated end had a nice large, standard stairwell, from therear of the new kitchen to the new second floor hallway, bedrooms andbathroom. However, the other end of thefarmhouse still had the original stairwell to the old second-floor. This stairwell was a circular, woodenstairwell-built-into-the-stone-wall-of-the-house itself, which was hiddenbehind wooden paneling in this small ‘vestibule-living-room’. This wooden-paneling entirely covered thewall of this small living room and was located on both sides of the original,old, huge stone fireplace, that occupied the wall in the center of that end ofthe farmhouse and which was, apparently, used to burn logs for heating theentire farmhouse in the olden days, but which was no longer used. Of course, the chimney for this oldfireplace was a huge, old-stone chimney that occupied the entire center of thefarmhouse wall, at that end of the building.
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The circular, hidden stairway, gave access to thesecond-floor at that end of the building.The second floor yet consisted of three small bedrooms, access to whichwas obtained by passage through the other bedrooms, there being no centralsecond-floor hallway.
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At the second-floor, the circular stairwell continued upwardto the attic of the farmhouse, which was a good-sized storage area, on solidwooden flooring, under the limestone eaves of the old roof. There, in the attic of the farmhouse, wereto be found many valuable and priceless ‘memories’… as well as Xmas decorationsand other storage items. But, to my‘sensibilities’, what I found to be most wonderful, were… the old, wind-up Victrola-Player,for 78RPM records, with the huge ‘horn’ and needle, to be gently placed upon aspinning record, the vibrations-sound of which, could then be heard coming fromthe huge ‘horn’! Also, there wasanother wind-up Player, but this one was for round-tubed-cassettes, the‘tracks’ on the circular tubes containing the music. And lots of old, vintage 78RPM records, with dates on them suchas 1908, some of which were so old, that they had but one song-piece on eachside of the record. There were also afew records that had only one song-piece, on one side of the record, and theother side was entirely blank. Ah, itwas there, among those old 78’s, that I found a vintage recording, of Ezio Pinza, singing his famousopera, Figaro, which I duly learned and emulated myself!
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Ah, mydays on the farm. Most enjoyable, for ayoung man.
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Oh,before I close this farm-related section, I must tell of two related topics.
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First ofall, back in those days of my childhood, I noticed especially, the very‘rural-ness’ of this area of Pennsylvania.We traveled one time, on these ‘country-roads’ of Eastern Pennsylvania(Hey! Perhaps this is why I just lovethat old Country Ballad, “Take Me Home, Country Roads!”), into a somewhatremote, secluded and wooded valley, to visit some relatives, who still lived onthe old farm-stead and lands of their ancestors. And the old farmhouse, barn and more, were really old andvintage. Incidentally, in those days,in this area of Pennsylvania, the paved roads were almost one-lane only, inthat the roadway was so narrow, through the woods and forests, that if a carwas coming from the other direction, your car would have to pull to the side ofthe road, in order to let the other car pass by!
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Secondly, that I remember, was the famous old QuakertownFarmer’s Market and Auction. Every fewweeks, we would drive south from Hellertown, to the outskirts of Quakertown,Pennsylvania, where the huge grounds of the Quakertown Farmer’s Market andAuction were located. At the rear ofthe grounds, is where the livestock auctions were held, with such as horses andcattle crossing the auction-floor, to the bidding of interested buyers. But again, the ‘pièce de résistance’, wasthe two huge and long market buildings themselves. My folks not only bought inexpensive bargains, of meat and vegetables,but also large and small ‘household goods’, from not only vendor-booths, butalso from the several all-day-long auctions, that were located inside themarket buildings. I remember my Fatherbuying at auction, some small, pocket-sized Army-colored oil cans, nominallyused for lubricating a soldier’s gun, that were dated 1945. I also bought, from a vendor, two fancycowboy hats. (Country music was verypopular in my day and, of course, Hank Williams wore a cowboy hat.) But I also remember spending lots of time(and some money!) at a vendor-booth that had loads-and-loads of old magazines,especially of the Ham Radio and Electronics genres, in which I was mostinterested at that time! Also, it wasquite interesting, to see the Amish, Mennonite and Quaker folks, dressed intheir traditional ‘garb’, also wandering about the premises, in search ofbargains.
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Perspective
Now, at this point of my autobiography, I think it is onlyright and proper, to insert some ‘perspective’ here, as to my herein described-and-toldautobiography and the realities thereof, that have guided-and-influenced myLife, from my childhood days unto today.Here are some of those realities.
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First of all, my parents.My Mother was just another typical Pennsylvania farm-girl… but as such,she was not only very intelligent but also quite unique, of many otherwiseindescribable qualities.
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On the other hand, my Father was a quite well-known civicleader and much more. He was not onlythe District Governor of the Pennsylvania District of the Exchange Club, butalso the Secretary-Treasurer of two of Northampton’s local civic organizations,the local Exchange Club as well as the Lappawinzo Rod & Gun Club(Lappawinzo Fish & Game Protective Association). He was also an Officer of the local G.O.P. Club. For the Exchange Club, he was Chairman ofthe Annual Golden Deeds Award (to an honored local citizen) and Chairman of theAnnual Jack Frost Parade, held in November, when the weather could guaranteesnow-and-frost for such a community parade-event. For the Lappawinzo, he was the Chairman of the weekly BingoGames, held in the Lappawinzo Hall, where several hundred dedicatedbingo-players gathered every Friday evening, arriving in chartered buses fromseveral pick-up points in neighboring towns and cities. I enjoyed helping out every Friday nite,especially being one of the ‘Floormen’, wearing an apron with two largepockets, containing Bingo cards which I would sell to Players for 50cents,making change, calling numbers on the cards of winning Players and deliveringprizes to the winners.
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Perhaps the largest event that my Father was responsiblefor, as a representative of both the Exchange Club and the Lappawinzo Club, wasChairman of the Annual Northampton County Fair. The Fair was sponsored by the Exchange and was held on the hugegrounds of the Lappawinzo Club, which fairgrounds, then, were overflowingwith booths, exhibits, carnival rides and tent-shows (provided by RinglingBrothers Barnum & Bailey Circus), as well as all kinds of farm animals andjudging-eventsand their 4-H Club owners. The Lappawinzo groundswere so packed with all these vendors,displays and activities, that therewas almost no room left, on their huge grounds-facility, spreading from theHokendauqua Creek all the way to the Kriedersville Road. Hundreds ofthousands of people attended, during the entire week of the Fair, coming fromall over the East Coast. There were chartered buses running everyhalf-hour, not only from downtown Northampton, but also from Bath, Nazareth,Easton, Bethlehem and other surrounding cities and towns. It was one ofthe great events of the year for Northampton, along with the Annual Jack FrostParade in early November.
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My Father was activein other civic organizations too, as well as, for a while, being a Teacher inthe local schools and the Principal of one of the Grade Schools. He alsowas, in later years, an Industrial Engineer for Bethlehem Steel, as a Wage-RateAnalyst, until a few years before his passing in 1968. He graduated fromboth Muhlenburg College and Lehigh University.
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The thing is, in reflection on this perspective-on-my-Life,as to just how much influence and ‘guidance’, my Parents actually did provide,for my later experiences and more! Infact, it seems that it was not only my Parents, but even my childhoodenvironment and circumstances. To wit…
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My Parents were Conservative-Christian Republican stalwartsof the Community, who duly attended Church every Sunday, with me in tow. During the week, while I was in gradeschool, there was a special program, whereby students could leave school earlyone day each week, to gather together in front of the School and then walk, insecular groups, to their individual neighborhood Churches, for afternoonReligious School, taught by the Pastors of each Church. I remember being one of the star-pupils atthis weekly Church School, because I could answer almost any question about theBible that the Pastor would ask. Ofcourse, I ‘cheated’ somewhat, in that my Parents had a copy of Hurlbert’s‘Stories of the Bible’, which I had quite assiduously already read, so when thequestion was asked about the Biblical ‘throwing-of-the-stones’, my immediateanswer was Steven. Accordingly, notonly in weekly Religious School, but also in my daily public school classes, Iwas always the top student, usually having the answers to anything.
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Due to my Parents predilections, education, experiences andmore, I had available, in my home, a great amount of books and educationalmaterials… starting with my Father’s college and university textbooks. I especially, at about the young age of 5years, remember sitting on the attic-steps of our family home, reading two ofmy Father’s textbooks, ‘Critical Thinking’ and ‘Astrophysics’. There were also the many books, of bothfiction and non-fiction, that abounded in our home. Sinclair Lewis, ‘Main Street’ and… Ah, especially enjoyed bymyself! A very First Edition, of JulesVerne’s ‘Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea”, with all of the actual Latinnames of the underwater fish and species, that Captain Nemo had supposedlyfound in his undersea travels. In lateryears, I walked several miles each evening, down dark-and-barely-moonlit woodedmountain roads, to the local drive-in outdoor movie theatre, in the PoconoMountains of Pennsylvania (near my Parents summer-resort cabin at Saylor’sLake), just walking in freely along-the-side of the car-parking area (of thedrive-in theatre) and sitting down on the generously-providedbenches-in-front-of-the-screen… seven times, over seven days… to see the movieversion of “Twenty Thousand LeaguesUnder The Sea”, starring James Mason and Kurt Douglas.
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My home also had, piled up on the attic-steps, every issueof the National Geographic Magazine, from the very first one, in 1888, and Irelished pouring through the pages, reading the articles and remembering thepictures. In my bedroom, there wereseveral old-time large book-cabinets with glass-windowed doors, as well asstandard book-shelved-cases. Thereinwere contained several encyclopedias, of twenty or more each, of largehardbound and thickly-covered books, covering the entire range of knownsubjects. One of these sets ofencyclopedias, however, was so old and vintage in both appearance andcontent/context, that I suspect that it was actually passed-down from mygrandparents. There was also a set ofabout 50 quite small-and-compact soft-cover booklets, each booklet of which wasa different subject. But again, the‘pièce de résistance’, for me, was a very large and very thick single-bookencyclopedia, that my parents had special-purchased for me, so the contentswere as up-to-date as possible, that had chapters and sections spanning theentire spectrum of human and natural Life and Existence, as well as Theology,Religion and much more! Add to allthis, the many books and magazines that I had personally obtained somehow. In later years, here in California, beforemy financial bankruptcy, I remember having over 150 subscriptions to magazinesand newsletters, in finance, electronics, ham radio, health, gardening,automobiles, classic cars (such as Automotive Quarterly, the preeminent ‘Bible’of Classic Automotive History), international cuisine, home repairs andimprovement, relationships, clinical sexuality and much more.
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I guess the point herein is this. As quite Conservative, Christian, Republican, Church-going,Family-oriented Parents, my Parents did thusly apply such Conservativeideologies, Bible-principled and Republican ‘beliefs’, to me… to the Who and Whatthat they saw and felt that I could become and ‘Be’… as they did sobelieve! Accordingly, they did applyone very basic and overriding Principle, to my Life… “Get the Hell out ofNelson’s Way, and Let Him Be and Do That Which He is Going to Be and Do!” In other words, “Let Him (myself), not beinfluenced in any way, by Authorities, by Teachers, by Employers, by Laws, byJudges, or anyone! Judge NOT… Nelson,nor Let Him Be Judged!”
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This ‘edict’ became strangely evident, several times in mychildhood and teen years, with certain ‘incidents’. I once, in my Senior High School year, foolishly had my Fatherlet me have the family car, driving my Father to his job, in order to thendrive myself to the Annual Lehigh Valley Science Fair, in which I had a Science-Projecton display. The reality, however, wasthat the school had provided a school bus, to take the school-participants tothe Fair and then return them to the School.So, I was ‘in-trouble’ with the school authorities, for disobeying theestablished ‘protocol’. The next day, Iwas called to the Office of the High School (and the entire Northampton Schoolsystem) Principal-Superintendent, to explain my mis-adventures. However, nothing came of it, other than a‘talking-to’, in that the Superintendent was a very good friend of my Father…and a Member of the Northampton G.O.P. Club.Incidentally, my Science-Project was not really of any merit and thuslyI didn’t win any prize or commendation at that Science Fair. (I was, at that time of my Life, merely‘dabbling’ in Science, in that I was more so interested in Ham Radio.)
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Another time, I had reason to visit the home of a PoliceOfficer in a neighboring town, who had, just the day before, given me a ticket,for not having a vehicle registration on-board the family car that I had beendriving when stopped for speeding. Ithought I would talk to him and get him to forget the ticket. But, at the door of his home, he again askedto see the vehicle’s registration, which I could not produce. (My Father always carried it around in hiswallet.) Accordingly, he then got intohis parked Police Car and waited for me to move my parked car in front of hishome. I had no alternative but to driveaway, with him following me. However, Idrove very slowly, eventually turning onto a local bridge that crossed over toanother town-district. He was stillbehind me. But suddenly, there wasanother car on the bridge, coming from the opposite direction. When he saw that, he then turned on hisflashing-red lights and pulled aside my car on the bridge, attempting to forceme to stop. But I turned into his car,damaging it and he then pushed my car into the concrete side of thebridge. With both cars damaged, be putme into handcuffs and drove us to the local Police Station-Fire House, where heallowed me to telephone my Father. Itold him briefly that I was under arrest and where I was. He asked to have the Police Officer put onthe phone and then asked the Police Officer to provide a vehicle to transportmy Father to where I was being held.Shortly, my Father arrived, but so also did both the Police Chief andthe Mayor of that town. We all sataround a large round table in the Fire House and discussed the matter. Eventually it was decided that no legalaction would be taken and my Father and I were allowed to go home. (I think the family car was towed to ourlocal family garage for repairs.) But,it seems also, that both the Police Chief and the Mayor, were also friends ofmy Father, and members of the same organizations that my Father was an Officerthereof!
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At other times, I was allowed to drive about our area ofEastern Pennsylvania, in almost blinding snowstorms with treacherous drivingconditions. But apparently, my Parentstrusted my driving skills and I usually had no difficulties navigating throughthe worst snow and road conditions (even with no chains on the car’s tires,which were, however, snow-tires.However, one time I did get stuck, with the car on top of an ice-coveredresidential city-street, where the car wheels could not get any traction. It took me several hours, of not only usingthe rubber snow-mat in the trunk of the car, but also the car-jack aswell. I would jack-up the rear wheelsof the car, and then physically push the car sideways, to fall off of thecar-jack, effectively moving the car a few inches at a time, until the rearwheels were finally on a less-icy and tractable roadbed, where I could, veryslowly, get the car to move forward, until I was finally clear of thaticy-patch and solidly on just-snow-covered roadbed. I was late picking up my Parents from their weeklyPinochle-evening with family friends, and I remember them both standing in thesnow in front of our friend’s house, wondering where I was at 1AM in themorning!
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Oh, I’ll also throw this in here as well. In my teen years, after I had obtained myPennsylvania Drivers License, at 15½ years of age, I was always the person whodrove the family car, wherever the family went (as well as by myself,especially after I was employed by the local town Movie Theatre, and I woulddrive myself to work each evening, after my Father had returned home from hisday-job and we had partaken of the daily family dinner-meal). Including such long trips, as fromPennsylvania to Florida, to visit the relatives and return. It was quite enjoyable, driving theInterstate highways and navigating unknown roads and territories, to getwherever we were going. I certainlyearly on learned how to read a road map.But the ‘highlight’ of one such trip to Florida, was the return trip,via the Blue Ridge Mountain Parkway, instead of the sea-level route that we hadtraveled going to Florida. Anyway, thespecific ‘highlight’, of both my education and ‘sensibilities’, occurred alongthat Blue Ridge Parkway. We had stoppedat a roadside ice-cream-stand, to have a milkshake. As I was sitting there on a bench, sipping on my milkshake, Ihappened to see two old Southern ‘Gents’, sitting on another nearby bench,looking at us. Then, one of these twoturned to the other, and I very distinctly heard the following conversationtranspire between both of them. “Hey,Lem! Do y’all know what the dif’renceis, ‘tween a Southerner an’ a son of-a-bitch?”“No, Clem, what is it?” To whichClem replied, “The Mason-Dixon Line!”Which was the dividing-line between the Union and the Confederacy,during the Civil War, and to which Clem had just alluded to, inferring that we,my family and I, were Northerners and that I was a ‘son-of-a-bitch’!
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Getting back to the ‘perspective’ that I have beenevidencing herein this discussion… In other words, I was given everyopportunity and chance, to do whatever I wanted to do! I guess my Parents figured that the only waythat I was going to survive-and-make-my-way in the world, was to learn what Ineeded to learn… on my own! Not they,nor any Teacher, nor any School… no one, could teach me, or educate me, or giveme, that which I needed to know! And Ido sincerely believe that such a ‘guiding principle’, has accordingly‘served-me-well’, throughout my entire Life!
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OtherChildhood Adventures
Well, I especially remember my childhood adventures in thesnows of Pennsylvania. When I was yetbut just a bit more than a toddler, I used to pull my sled to thetop-of-the-hill of the street in front of our house, and jump on my sled andride it down that snow-covered street all the way to the bottom-of-the-hill,which was just past our home. A littlebit later, I was building an igloo (with the neighborhood kids), withsquared-blocks of packed snow, in the vacant lot across the street from myhome. A little later, we builtsnow-encased-and-hardened speedways and sled-trails, down the slopes of theMunicipal Park, a block behind my home, with complicated sled-trails that woundall-different ways, from the top to the bottom of the slopes. Another popular sledding area, was almost avertical cliff, alongside the Hokendauqua Creek, in a wooded area that also hada grassy track down the cliff-side at another area of the cliff. So we kids had a choice. Go down the snow-covered gentle road-track,from top to bottom… or else plunge over the cliff with out sleds, for a veryquick ride from top-to-bottom!
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Incidentally, it is to be noted, that at no time, during anyof these early childhood, nor later childhood, adventures… in the snow oranytime during the year… were our Parents (of myself and the neighborhood kids)anywhere in-attendence thereto! Here,in this area of Northampton, Pennsylvania, all kids everywhere, were justnormally-and-naturally, allowed to roam-and-play freely! Such was the neighborhood ethic and reality,in which I grew up! Our Parents werewhere they were supposed-to-be… either at home or at work! Parental-supervision was a no-no… not to beengaged in at any time.
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Now, I also remember that my Mother did most sincerely‘believe-in-me’, as to my developing talents-and-abilities. The one time that she did as muchdemonstrate her ‘faith’ in me, was when she took me along with her to a weeklymeeting of the Church-Ladies, that she was attending for a period of time whenI was yet but only about 5 years old. Ihad been ‘exercising’ my lungs and voice at home, singing not only popularradio-tunes, but also Christian Songs from the Church Songbook, such as “In theGarden” and “Whispering Hope”. (Isupposedly was named after the famous Radio-Singer Nelson Eddy, which ispossibly one reason why, today, I just love red-haired gals, just as his,Nelson Eddy’s, Singing Partner was… Jeanette MacDonald!) Anyway, at that meeting of the Church-Ladies,she was obviously overjoyed to have me sing for the Ladies, a number of ChurchSong-Book tunes.
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Incidentally, I do yet today, have a quite goodcountry-singer singing voice, although I never exercise it at all, in that Idon’t have anyone to sing for or to, and I almost never sing to myself. I do, however, love to hear folk and countrymusic and when I hear a good country tune that touches me with either thelyrics/words or the melody, I am really ‘touched’ by it. Words that have ‘moved’ me recently, havebeen:
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Shuttin’ Detroit Down, sung by John Rich
Written by: John Rich, John D. Anderson
My daddy taught me that, in this country everyone’s the same.
You work hard for your dollar and you never pass the blame,
when it don’t go your way.
Now I see all these big shots whinin’ on my evening news.
About how they’re losin’ billions and how it’s up to me and you,
to come running to the rescue.
Well, pardon me, if I don’t shed a tear, ‘cause they’re selling make believe,
and we don’t buy that here.
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‘Cuz in the real world, they’re shuttin’ Detroit down,
while the boss man takes his bonus pay and jets out of town.
And DC’s bailing out the bankers, as the farmers auction ground.
Yeah, while they’re living it up on Wall Street, in that New York City town,
here in the real world, they’re shuttin’ Detroit down.
They’re shuttin’ Detroit down.
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Well, that old man’s been workin’ in that plant most all of his life.
Now his pension plan’s been cut in half and he can’t afford to die.
And it’s a crying shame, ‘cause he ain’t the one to blame.
When I look down and see his caloused hands,
Let me tell you friend, it gets me fightin’ mad.
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‘Cuz in the real world, they’re shuttin’ Detroit down,
while the boss man takes his bonus pay and jets out of town.
And DC’s bailing out the bankers, as the farmers auction ground.
Yeah, while they’re living it up on Wall Street, in that New York City town,
here in the real world, they’re shuttin’ Detroit down.
They’re shuttin’ Detroit down.
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Instrumental solo
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Yeah, while they’re living it up on Wall Street, in that New York City town,
Here in the real world, they’re shuttin’ Detroit down
Here in the real world, they’re shuttin’ Detroit down
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In the real world, they’re shuttin’ Detroit down, they’re shuttin’ Detroit down.
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And I definitely love folk and country instrumentals. One of my favorite’s today, is the folkmusic and albums of the Legendary Northern California Folk Singer Kate Wolf,who died in 1986, who wrote almost all of her own songs, and they were all LoveSongs, in one way or another. Onepopular Love Song that she plays, however, she did not write. The following song is from her album/video,“Kate Wolf Live, on Austin City Limits”.The song is “Let’s Get Together”, originally written by Dino Valenti,but this version has been revised by Kate.And if you Folks ever get to actually hear this piece or see the video,it has really fabulous instrumentals, that you have just got to hear!
“Let’s Get Together” (Words and Music by Kate Wolf)
Love is but a song we sing, there’sa way we die,
You can make the mountains ring,make the angels cry,
Though the bird is on the wing, youmay not know why
C’mon people now, smile on eachother,
Everybody get together, try to Loveone another right now!
Some may come and some may go, wewill surely pass,
When the One who left us here,returns for us at last,
We are but a moment’s sunrise,fading in the grass
C’mon people now, smile on eachother,
Everybody get together, try to Loveone another right now!
(Instrumental interlude)
If you hear the song I’m singing,you will understand,
You hold the Key to Love and Fear,all in your tremblin’ hand,
One Key unlocks them both, youknow, they’re at your command
C’mon people now, smile on eachother,
Everybody get together, try to Loveone another right now!
C’mon people now, smile on eachother,
Everybody get together, try to Loveone another right now!
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I remember listening to all the popularC&W songs and singers of the Day, like Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, BobWills and the Texas Playboys and more.And the radio programs, like Grand Ole Oprey and Louisiana Hayride, butespecially the Radio Program that I used to listen to on my car radio, as I wasdriving around as a teenager... "Well, Howdy Out there in Radio-Land. This is WCKY, Cincinnati, Ohio, the L.B.Wilson Station, featuring the Hillbilly Jamboree!"
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There was a well-known Family Amusement Park,somewhere in our part of Eastern Pennsylvania, a small but sizeable place, withlots of trees growing throughout the premises and a stream flowing through it,where kids could go swimming in the very cold waters bhind a small dam. It had lots of picnic areas with picnictables and barbeques, and it had quite a few rides and attractions, as well asfood booths. But, especially popular,every weekend, on the large stage that they had, they always featured a liveC&W Band, playing good old country music!
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Throughout my childhood years, I had at least two bicycles,with which I got around town and the neighborhood. One bike, a birthday present one year, was a quite large andheavy Schwinn bike, that I didn’t like so much, and I was somewhat glad whenthe frame cracked. I had it fixed forfree at the store where it had been bought, but I never really used it muchthereafter. I preferred the slimmer,bare bones bike, that I used to go everywhere, even to school every day,parking it outside the school, in the school’s bike-rack, where no one woulddare even think about taking another kid’s bike! I rode that bike, not only around the neighborhood and the town,but even longer distances, often riding many miles, to neighboring towns andplaces that I wanted to go to, for whatever reason or the other!
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I also had several Model Train sets when I was a kid. Two of the sets, appeared under the XmasTree for those years, when I was yet about 5 years old. I remember being awakened one night, on XmasEve, by my Mother, who motioned me to quietly follow her. We silently stole to the top of the stairwellin our house, where she motioned me to look down the stairs, to the Xmas Treein the Living Room at the bottom of the stairwell. And, Lo and Behold, there was Santa Claus, all dressed in hisSanta Claus ‘finery’, sporting his white beard, and placing Xmas Presents underthe Tree! (Of course, I later realizedthat it had been my Father!)
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But again, my ‘pièce de résistance’, as a kid-teenager,interested in Model Trains, was the old and huge Triple-000 gauge train-set,that I was given, from a family friend who was also the Engineer on the localindustrial railway, that moved rail-cars of cement and other industrialproducts, from the local industrial mills, to transfer-points, for pickup bythe long-haul railroads, that bore those industrial products to their finaldestinations. I had ridden my bikequite regularly, to his home in the southern section of Northampton, where hepaid me the fabulous sum of $20 dollars, each time that I mowed the grassaround his house. (He also had a largebarn-garage behind his home, which contained a most beautiful, Classic 1930’sBuick automobile, that he would occasionally drive.) Anyway, one time he gave me his old, vintage 000-gauge train-set,the several boxes of which he delivered to my house. He knew my Father and Mother and the gift was fine withthem. However, the huge Engine, severalrail-cars, caboose, tracks and other railroad accessories, were so large insize, that the only place in my home that I could set-up the entire tracks andthe train-set… was on the wooden floor of our attic. I duly cleared away other items that were stored there and puttogether this magnificent Model Train set, which I enjoyed quite often duringmy childhood.
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Back to my bicycle.One of the most enjoyable places that I quite often rode my bike to, wasthe old, vintage and abandoned, industrial facility, that had been the originalAtlas Universal Cement plant, which was located just a short bike ride behindmy home, across some fields and accessible down some old, never-more-used dirtroads. (Since then, the Borough ofNorthampton has purchased some of the property of this old facility, whichnowadays contains not only the City Hall and Municipal Buildings of the Boroughof Northampton, but next to said buildings, the Northampton School District hasalso built a more modern High School, replete with separate football, baseballand track fields.)
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Anyway, in the old days, across the dusty and dryweed-covered fields, down some dirt roads and alongside of some no-longer-usedrail tracks… was to be found the most magnificent ‘play-grounds’, for a youngteenager! A huge complex, of varioussized industrial buildings, with interconnecting causeways, pipings and otherindustrial-process facilities, all ‘topped-off’, by the two most immensebuildings of the entire complex… a huge dry-cement concrete-walledstorage-bin-container, and the large cement-production factory-building nextdoor to it. I usually hid my bike inone of the smaller abandoned buildings, just in case a factory-guard mightpossibly come through the facility, but I never saw one. (And I don’t remember ever seeing any kindof warning signs, to ‘Stay Out’, although maybe there were, somewhere along theperimeters and roadways that passed near these ‘sacred-and-magnificent’grounds, but I never, either saw or ‘recognized’ such warning signs!)
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Both of these buildings had entrance doors that werenominally locked, but that was no problem for a young teenager. Just climb up, somehow, and enter from theroof or other kind of second-story ‘entrance’.In the case of the huge cement-storage-bin building, it meant climbingup some steel ladders, on the sides of a few huge, circular, transfer ‘chutes’(that might have been how the dry cement was transferred to railway cars under these‘chutes’, after being dumped into the top of a ‘chute’, by the enormousmoving-shovel-transfer-machinery inside the building, that lifted the drycement out of the storage-bin and then fed the dry cement to the railway carsunder the ‘chutes’, by dropping the dry cement into the ‘chutes’) and thenjumping a foot or two from the ‘chute’ to the building itself. Needless to say, there werelayers-upon-layers of cement dust covering everything everywhere throughoutthese buildings.
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Anyway, once you had gained entrance to the inside of thestorage-bin building, there were service-walkways all over the place. The size of the storage-bin was probablyabout 800 feet across, from one concrete side-wall to the other, and the lengthof the bin was… Wow! Maybe 2000 feet ormore! (But then, maybe my estimates areexaggerated, by the immensity of the place, upon my young mind.) There were walkways, along the top of theside-walls and the ends, and there was an enormously long overhead, enclosedwooden walkway, high up over the entire bin, just under the roof, that wentfrom one end-to-the-other end of the building.When I was walking down that cement-dust-covered corridor, with numerousside windows and view-points, to see down into the depths of the bin-pit, itseemed as though that walkway just went on-and-on, taking quite some time towalk end-to-end.
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But again, the ‘pièce de résistance’, of this huge storagebin, was to climb out upon, the now quiet, giant once-moveable steel ‘span’,that spanned the 800 feet from one side-wall to the other, moving along the topof the side walls on tracks, so that the giant ‘bucket’ on that ‘span’, couldreach down into the depths of that enormous pit, grab hold of a huge scoop-fullof dry cement and raise that cement up and deliver it to the waiting ‘chutes’along the outside of the building. Butthe ultimate pleasure was to, from the ‘span’ itself, climb down the steelladder, into the depths of the pit, which was probably several hundred feetdeep, and then to step off the bottom rung of the ladder, onto the very floorof the now-empty pit! And then toactually walk down the very inside depths of that enormous pit!
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The cement-production-factory building next door, wasanother marvel. (I’m not yet sure, howthe ‘processed-and-finished’ cement was transferred to the storage-bin, unlessit was somehow ‘blown’ there, through high vacuum piping, between the twobuildings, being ‘blown’ into the storage-pit.This certainly would have produced a lot of cement dust-in-the-air!) Anyway, access thereto was had, via alow-sloping-to-the-ground roof at the rear of the building and through one ofthe many broken windows of the building.Inside, there was a virtual maze of wooden catwalks everywhere, from theground level to the roof, all covered with cement dust. (I don’t think I ever inhaled any of thiscement dust, in that it had long-settled into place and was no longer in theair of these facilities.) Butespecially enjoyable inside this building, were the several huge kilns, inwhich the liquid-cement-slurry was cooked/baked and thereby turned into the drycement product. From the upper-levelcatwalks, one could look down into these huge, empty kilns. But also, from the ground-floor level, itwas possible to ‘crank-open’ the huge access doors at the base of these kilns(which were like the circular hatch-doors inside of a submarine), and thenactually step through these access doors, into the very insides of thenow-empty kiln itself. That was alsoquite an experience!
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Also, I might mention here, that I once had the opportunity,as a school-sponsored field trip, to go on a guided tour of the new AtlasUniversal Cement Plant, located just across the Hokendauqua Creek from the oldfacilities, and spread out for several miles, along the southern side of theNorthampton-Bath Highway. The cementprocessing procedures had evolved into new and different methods, nowproducing, instead of rail-cars of dry cement, cement that was poured into 90pound sacks of cement, more convenient for delivery to customers via hardwarestores and such easier means of public-access to cement. However, yet remaining, on the northern sideof the Northampton-Bath Pike, is yet the gigantic hole-in-the-ground, closedoff from public view by the high fenced-in embankments that run for milesaround the perimeter of this giant quarry.The size of this gigantic hole-in-the-ground is about 3000 feet acrossand many hundreds of feet deep. Fromthe depths of this quarry, where the occasional loud boom used to signalanother blast deep in the quarry, blasting loose precious limestone rock (whichgeologically underlies this entire area of Eastern Pennsylvania), the quarriedpieces of rock are lifted to the surface, by a long ribbed-conveyer belt, whichcarries the pieces of rock up and into the rock-processing entrance of the newcement plant. In fact, about the onlyplace that a public citizen can get a glimpse into the darkened depths of thequarry, is from the highway bridge, of the Northampton-Bath Pike, which passesover the conveyor belt, transporting the rock to the plant. Of course, the guided-tour of the plant,provides the opportunity to gaze down that conveyor belt itself, watching asthe pieces of rock themselves, are actually delivered into the plant.
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I might also mention that there were also several moreindustrial facilities in this industrial area of Eastern Pennsylvania that allquarried their natural industrial-resource materials, of coal, limestone, rock,etc., out-of-the-ground. Thusly this entirearea is somewhat ‘peppered’ with a number of large-holes-in-the-ground that maynot necessarily be visible on the immediate ground level to passersby, but aredefinitely visible from satellite and airborne views. The following terrain map of the Northampton area shows these‘holes-in-the-ground’ as either blue-colored or white-colored ‘excavations’,indicated as an excavation by the wavy, sometimes heavy-black-in-color, linesthat surround such excavation-depressions in the topography of the area.
See: EasternPennsylvania Industrial Quarry Sites
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So, exploring the huge vastness-and-immensity, of these old(and new), abandoned industrial-facility-plant buildings, was just anotherwonderful ‘experience’, for this young teenager, who was‘learning-by-experience’, and, in this case again, as such might also be thecase throughout much of my later Life and ‘experiences’… with no one around… noone there, but myself!
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Throughout my childhood years, I seemed to have had moresuch experiences of not only unusualness but also of ‘immensity’ or of agreater-than-normal reality. Thefurther experiences noted hereinthefollowing, range across my childhood yearsand may not necessarily be in any chronological order.
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Swimming… I remember first learning to swim… Well, I don’tknow as I can say that I ‘learned-to-swim’, as though someone actually hadtaught me how to swim, because that was certainly not the case. (Although perhaps my parents might haveintroduced me to water sometime at an early age, but I cannot remember any suchdetails.) I merely got myself into thewater… and swam. But, when it firsthappened (that I remember), it was not the ‘doing’ itself that was unusual, butthe ‘how’ of my ‘swimming’. I got intothe water… and then submerged myself under the water… and swam like I was afish… underwater. And my first swimming‘experience’, that I can remember, was in the Lehigh River of EasternPennsylvania, which flowed by my hometown of Northampton. I had ridden my bike across town to theLehigh River… I guess I had planned to do this, because I was wearing swimmingtrunks under my pants. This was at apoint where the Hokendauqua Creek flows into the Lehigh River and I had beenthere before on my bike and had noticed that the local kids were enjoyingswimming there, in that the access to the Lehigh River was quite easy, as therewas already a mini-marina and boat dockings located there.
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Incidentally, there was also, apparently, some minorconstruction (possibly constructing the official town Marina) at this location,which involved the old Lehigh Navigation Canal, which also was extant here butwas no longer in use and was defunct and deteriorating, as to its former useand capabilities. In the 1800’s andearly 1900’s, the Canal was a major means of transporting the industrialproducts of our Eastern Pennsylvania area to market. Anthracite coal, iron ore, cement and other industrial andagricultural products, rode barges down the Canal, to Easton and major Easterncities, and this area of Pennsylvania was famous for many of theseproducts. Several coal-producingplants, cement-producing (such as Atlas Universal Cement, in Northampton), andother industrial plants in Cementon, Coplay and Catasauqua, as well as thefamous Bethlehem Steel Company downstream in Bethlehem, were located along theLehigh River and the Canal.
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The Canal nominally ran/existed alongside the Lehigh River,although it also had connecting tributary canals throughout the area, thatconnected this major commerce waterway, to all the major cities and portsthroughout this Northeastern region of the United States. Barges, loaded with commerce, would travelthrough the Canal, pulled by donkeys that walked along a narrow trail alongsidethe Canal. Because the topography ofthis area varied considerably, here in the Appalachian Mountains and Plateau ofthe region, there were numerous water-locks within the Canal, that allowed abarge to transit from one water level to another water level, by the fillingand discharge of waters from within a lock.Some locks were hundreds of feet long and raised or lowered the waterlevel in the Canal by up to 10 feet and more.
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Here at this location in Northampton, at the juncture of theHokendauqua Creek, the Lehigh River and the Lehigh Canal, was a huge old‘Mill’, as it was called. It might haveactually been some kind of industrial mill in the olden days, perhaps with awater-wheel to use the flow of the waters here, to generate power or performsome industrial processes, as well as transfer industrial products to and fromthe barges on the Canal, that was right at the Mill’s front door. But by the late ‘40’s and early ‘50’s, theMill was no longer in use, as was likewise the Canal.
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Anyway, it was here, at the ‘front door’ of both the oldMill and the Lehigh Canal, that the riverbank of the Lehigh River was beingtransformed into the local community Marina, and where I went ‘swimming’. As I have said, I’d ride my bike down tothis Marina, park my bike and strip off my clothes, down to my swimming trunks,and step into the waters of the Lehigh River.As I have also said, I ‘swam’ underwater. I’d go under the water, the depths of the water level of theLehigh here varied, but there were some places that were less than 6 foot deep,where I could stand, plus there were occasional large rocks on the riverbed, onwhich I could stand if I chose to. Butmostly, I loved to swim around underwater, chasing the fish around the manyunderwater rocks and water-plants. So,as I have said, here is where I remember first ‘swimming’. Well, I guess I eventually and finally,taught myself to ‘swim’ on top of the water… and my swimming ‘adventures’continued.
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Another place where I went ‘swimming’, was somewhatdown-river from the Northampton Marina, but was no problem to ride to on mybike. The Catasauqua Dam, across theLehigh River, was just north of the North Catasauqua-Lehigh Street Bridge. It was about 800 foot across the entireLehigh River, providing a falls and river-level drop of about 10 feet. The dam was constructed entirely of woodenplanks and wood-post construction, in an interlocking-post framework under thefalls, with the immediately-upstream lead-in to the dam and falls, being a longgraduated shelf of bedrock, that allowed the waters of the entire width of theriver to gradually rise up in front of the dam, before plunging over thewooden-structure planks on the top of the dam.The wooden planks on top of the dam provided an almost horizontal butnot quite, slightly downstream sloping ‘shelf’, that was about 8 to 10 foot inwidth, from forward on-flow to final off-flow plunge, across the entire span ofthe Lehigh River. Such constructionplaced hardly any water pressure against the leading wooden framework of thedam, which was effectively shielded from the surge of the water by the bedrockapproach-slope, which rose up to the height of the dam, allowing that entirewater surge to flow over the top of the dam and not put pressure upon thewooden framework of the dam. Howevertoday, it seems that only the western 200 foot of the dam yet remains, theremaining 600 foot of the dam having been breached sometime in recent history,thusly creating a rapids across that 600 foot span of the river and for aconsiderable distance downstream from it, as the river waters drop the 10 footthat was originally dammed by the wooden dam.
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I mention this dam because, as I say, I used to swim there(with other kids who were also ‘brave-souls’), both above the dam and below thedam, as well as sitting-in-the-river-waters on the wooden planks atop the dam,at spots where the water flow was not strong enough to sweep me over the daminto the falls and the river below.And, most daring and dangerous of all, I loved to swim into the fallingwaters of the falls (below the dam), actually swimming under the falls itself,and into the actual wooden framework of the dam itself, approaching fromunderwater and coming up out of the water inside of the dam, hoisting myselfonto one of the wooden support posts, of which the dam itself wasconstructed. (Which is how I know ofthe wooden framework of the dam construction.)I’d sit there under the dam for a while, on one of the support posts ofthe interlocking horizontal-vertical and diagonal framework, feeling thedripping waters falling upon me, that were leaking through the overhead woodenplanks. Of course, there was plenty ofair under the dam and I was not at all under water, until I slid off of thepost and submerged myself into the drop-of-the-falls below the dam. But, as I say, it looks like the oldCatasauqua Dam is no longer ‘holding back’ the waters of the Lehigh River (asseen from Google Map satellite-view) as it once did.
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Oh, one might say, as to my ‘escapades’ around-and-withinthe Catasauqua Dam… “Weren’t you ever afraid of being ‘swept-away’ by thestrong-flow of the river waters?” Well,the answer to that is definitely No! Waterhad become my ‘Friend’ and I was familiar with its realities and actedaccordingly. In fact, both here at theCatasauqua Dam and upstream at the Northampton Marina, there was anotherreality-of-myself that was in-play here.I had ‘learned’, or had found out myself, that I could quite easily…swim upstream, against the flow-of-the-river!So, whether it was at the Marina or either above or below the Dam, Ijust easily jumped into the flowing surge of the river, confident that I couldeasily, if but slowly sometimes, swim against the flow of those waters!
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Another place where I loved to swim, was at Saylors Lake, aresort area in the Poconos Mountains of Eastern Pennsylvania. My folk’s family friends had a largehillside cabin there on the Lake-side, with sleeping-bunk accommodations for asmany as 13 people, a long family-sized dining-room table, a small kitchen(complete with the massively-round trunk of an overhead pine tree, rising upright through both the floor and roof of the kitchen itself), a little-usedformal living room, and a large and long covered-balcony-deck, that was open tothe sweeping vistas of the Lake area below.This balcony had many lounge-chairs and tables, eminently suitable forrelaxation-activities. Of course, themost often indulged-in ‘relaxation-activity’, for my Parents and theirHost-Friends, was playing cards and specifically Pinochle. They were addicts of the card-game ofPinochle and they spent many hours at the Pinochle-table.
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All the while, I continued my boyhood ‘adventures’, down andaround the lake below. Not to ‘slight’the cabin itself here, under and around which I certainly did explore attimes. Under the cabin, where the upper-floorwas supported by a wooden framework upon the concrete foundations of thehillside, there was an open-air-storage for a few things and an off-seasonrowboat storage area, accessible from the Lake level and paved roadbelow-and-down-hill, via a steep dirt-road track, by which a car-truck (orother strong off-road tractor-vehicle) could back the rowboat-to-be-storeduphill and into the storage-area under the cabin. Surrounding the cabin, the hillside was nicely covered with lotsof fallen pine needles, brush-growth and the overhead many pine trees, whichwere home to squirrels, chipmunks and other small animals and birds. Immediately above-and-uphill from the cabin,was a downhill-gravel-dirt-road from the uphill paved roadway, which provided asomewhat circular in-front-of-the-cabin driveway, for the parking of thecabin-occupant’s cars. In thecenter-and-lowest-level of this driveway (which returned to the paved-roadabove, by continuing its circular sweep back uphill and through the surroundingwoods, to the roadway), on an off-to-the-side-of-the-driveway picnic area,there was a level gravel-covered area with a large outdoor picnic table and abarbecue-pit dug into the upward-slope of the hill alongside the driveway atthis point. All of the various levelsand structures of this resort-cabin-complex, were connected by both concreteand gravel-covered-dirt steps and walkways, from the uphill circular driveway,down to the cabin (which had entrances both at the kitchen in front of thecabin and at the outdoor balcony on the side of the cabin) and thence from thecabin, downhill through the woods, to the Lake levels below.
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Immediately below our cabin were a few more lower-levelcabins, alongside a lake-level access road alongside the lake, that wound alongthe lake shore for quite a distance, providing access to quite a number ofother cabin-lodges along that shoreline.But also, on the lakeside itself of this road, were the commercial andrecreational facilities of Saylors Lake.There were two long open-but-covered picnic pavilions, with about adozen-each picnic tables and steel barbecue-stands, as well as other outdoorpicnic-and-barbecue spots, along the shoreline of the Saylors Lake Marina andHarbor, where cabin-lodge residents had their individual small family row-boatssecured to small ‘tie-ups’ and family docks. But there were also rowboats andfoot-pedal-boats available for rental-by-the-hour, by the Lake’s visitors. Oh, immediately below our cabin, at thelake’s shoreline, was a large but somewhat old lakeside-house, that perhaps wasonce a nice formal lakeside villa-residence, of some once well-heeled family,but which apparently had been eventually sold by the family estate, and whichwas now a small lakeside Hotel, with a public bar-room/lounge on the firstfloor, which, of course, was ‘patronized’ quite often, by the neighborhood‘drinking-crowd’.
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But the ‘pièce de résistance’, was the huge commercialPavilion, sprawling across the inner-neck of the Marina-and-Harbor of the Lake,where most of the ‘activities’ of Saylors Lake were usually taking place. On the ground-floor level of the Pavilion,were the boat-rental office-booth, where rowboat-oars could be rented for50cents (help yourself to any of the public-use rowboats that were docked atthe side of the Marina-Harbor) and the recreational-swimming-beach office-booth,where 50cents provided access to the large sandy swimming-beach and pier, viathe sand-covered walkways under the Pavilion, which also provided severalpublic showers, for swimmers to shower-away the sand that they might haveaccumulated upon themselves, from their ‘outing’ on the beach. Then there were quite large and wide woodenstaircases, on both the front and rear of the Pavilion, by which people couldaccess the second, or main, floor of the Pavilion. It was here, on this main-floor Plaza-Promenade, that many of thePavilion’s commercial-recreational ‘facilities’ were located. There were not only several ‘fast-food’stands, but there was also a quite good formal restaurant. There were also lots of game-machines andstand-in-place kiddie-rides for the kids, as well as shopping areas for theparents, to buy recreational swimwear, other clothing and apparel items andgifts, as well as household and picnic goods and… Joy of all Joys! Magazine-racks of… Comic Books! (Comic books, in those days, were 10centsapiece!) Yes, I spent time sittingthere, on the floor in front of the comic-book racks, reading the comicbooks! (The management didn’t seem tomind much, because they could quite easily get me to ‘help out’ around theplace, doing odd-chores, including such as daily taking one of the rowboats andgoing around the perimeter of the lakeshore, to gather-up all of the rowboatsthat had quite often been abandoned somewhere lakeside by their renters. I ‘joined’ all of such orphaned rowboatsinto a long ‘train’, which I rowed back to their nominal home-berths in theHarbor-Marina.) All of these variousareas of the Pavilion’s main-floor Promenade, were merely separated by lengthsof low wooden-rail fences, along the main walkway-aisles of the Promenade, witheasy access to any and all such areas.Such that the entire main-floor Promenade was really open-to-view acrossthe entire main-floor, with only the numerous wide wooden-post support-columnsin sight, to indicate that there was yet another floor above all of this.
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And therein lies yet the other ‘pièce de résistance’ item,of the Saylors Lake Pavilion… the Grand Ballroom, which completely occupied theentire second-floor of the Pavilion, under the very-high-overhead roof andbeams, that truly provided a quite open and large Ballroom area, spanning theentire second floor. Access to thisGrand Ballroom, was via two Grand Staircases, from the Promenade below. And here, in this Grand Ballroom, on thestage at one end of the Ballroom, were to be heard, almost weekly, themagnificent sounds of… The Dorseys, Glenn Miller, Ted Beneke, The Modernaires,Stan Kenton, Cab Calloway, Benny Goodman, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, EllaFitzgerald and more of such wonderful sounds!
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The weekly couples that came to relish in such sounds, werealways ‘dressed-to-the-nines’, in their tuxedoes and beautiful ballroomgowns. I’d be outside, directingtraffic and parking, in the several uphill parking lots, which were always filledto capacity. The people would then findtheir way down the paved road (from the parking lots) to the Pavilion, perhapsarriving early enough for a nice formal dinner in the restaurant on thePromenade, and then, before the appointed ‘starting-time’, buy their ticketsand then ascend that Grand Staircase to the Grand Ballroom, the Dance-Floor andthe many small couples-tables surrounding the Dance-floor. The rest of the evening, was Big Band‘Seventh-Heaven’! (I think these tableswere also served by a number of Waiters, from a small Bar at one end of theBallroom, who provided the Dancers with nominally-available ‘drinks’, as sodesired!)
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Anyway, to return to my swimming ‘adventures’… Here, atSaylors Lake, I would get into the lake waters, at the dockside mooring wherethe rowboat of my Parent’s host-friends was tied up and then swim across theMarina-Harbor, to the swimming beach or even directly out, into the Lakeitself. There was a long Pier,extending out into the Lake from the Beach, which sided the nominalswimming-areas alongside of the Pier and the Beach, and which also had severaldiving-boards at the end of the Pier.(For some reason, the rocky shoreline on the Marina-Harbor side of theBeach-and-Pier, was not ‘provided’ with an easy sandy access-to-the-water,probably because, as I quite often discovered, there were small black leechesin these shoreline-waters, that I had to remove from my body, whenever I mightaccess the Beach and Pier from the Harbor-side.)
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But again, here upon the waters of Saylors Lake, I found notonly another swimming ‘pièce de résistance’, but also a quite nice ‘challenge’,to my swimming ‘prowess’. Located a fewyards out from the end of the Pier, not quite in the center of the Lake, was alarge pontoon-supported swimmer’s raft.Sometimes I’d even ‘go-the-distance’, actually swimming from this raft,all the way across Saylors Lake, to the shoreline on the opposite side of theLake. However, my usual ‘pleasure’ wasto (just as I had done at the Catasauqua Dam in the Lehigh River), just swimdown under the raft itself, coming up into the wooden framework under the raftthat held the pontoons together, and sitting there briefly, in the air-spaceunder the raft. Then, taking adeeply-inhaled final breath-of-air, I’d slip off of that framework and, usingmy hands, arms, legs and feet as ‘flippers-or-fins’, I’d push myself down intothe dark depths of Saylors Lake. Idon’t know how deep Saylors Lake actually is, nor how deep I actually went, butthe feeling was exhilarating. And thereturn-to-the-surface, after a few moments in-the-depths, was a heart-poundingthrill, as my by-now-aching-for-air lungs, were desperately awaitingbreaking-the-surface, where my lungs could once again gasp a breath of freshair. Of course, due to my earlierswimming adventures underwater in the Lehigh River, my lungs were already quitecapable of holding-my-breath for quite a long period of time. Yet I did ‘flap-my-fins’, my hands, arms,legs and feet, as vigorously as possible, when ascending from those ‘depths’ ofSaylors Lake.
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And while I am here, in the Pocono Mountains ofPennsylvania, I’ll also mention another place where I went swimming, boating,nature crafts and arts and more… at Camp Trexler, a Boy Scouts of America Campin the Poconos, where I spent two weeks each summer, enjoying Nature andlearning many things about Nature. Iremember making molds of deer tracks, learning the names of trees, bushes andall kinds of plants and animals, rope-and-knot-tying, tent and other Boy Scouttrivia, as well as the ‘organized’ Boy Scout ‘actvities’ that took place duringthat annual Boy Scout Camp ‘adventure’.One year I became an Initiated-Member of an Indian-Tribe Auxiliary ofthe Boy Scouts (don’t remember the name), via an initiation ceremony heldlake-side in the early evening by torch and camp-fire light, whereby allcandidates stood in a long line on the shoreline, an Indian-dressed Warriorcarrying a lighted-torch ‘came forth’ on the opposite side of the lake, boardeda canoe and was rowed to this side of the lake. He disembarked and then began running back and forth along thelong line of ‘candidates’, from one end of the line to the other. Along the way, he would then ‘punch-out’ aselected-candidate, in one swift punch-to-the-candidate’s-chest as he ran by,with the candidate then falling backward into the arms of a Staff Person behindthe candidate. Of course, thecandidate-to-be-hit, was ‘selected’ by the person behind the candidate holdingtheir open hand above the head of the candidate, as the ‘signal’ to the Runnerthat ‘here was a candidate’! Ah, I justremembered the name… Order of the Arrow!I don’t know if the Boy Scouts yet have such ceremonies today, but such‘regimented-activities’ were somewhat educational and enlightening, to a youngteenager, in ‘preparation’ for that individual’s coming ‘emergence’ into thewide-world and all of it’s Realities that are ‘out there’, as well as, somemight say, for a young person’s possible coming ‘indoctrination’ into thecountry’s military services.
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Of course, for quite a number of my childhood years, I was amember of the local Boy Scout Troop of Northampton, whose events and activitiesI participated in. I was also, for awhile, the supervising Den Chief, of a local Northampton-area Cub Scout Pack,whose weekly meetings in one of the mother’s homes, I oversaw with the Mother.
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Another place where I occasionally went swimming, in theClub Swimming Pool, was at the Bethlehem Steel Country Club and Golf Course(which is, today, the Silver Creek Country Club, after Bethlehem Steel has nowceased to exist), located East of Hellertown, Pennsylvania, of which my Fatherwas a Club-Member, as a member of the Bethlehem Steel Engineering Staff andwhich we occasionally visited. The Clubgrounds had, in addition to the many quite large links and fairways of the GolfCourse (although I don’t remember my Father ever playing golf and he did nothave any golf clubs that I knew of), a nice large hillside picnic grounds,where my family occasionally held picnics.Otherwise, I remember visiting in the Main Hallway and largeMeeting-Rooms of the ‘Steel Club’ (as it was known), on holidays such asThanksgiving and Christmas, when the Steel Club gave gifts and presents to itsMembers and their families.
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Other than swimming and adventuring as a teenager, I had twojobs. My first job, was as apaper-delivery boy, for the Cement News, the small local town-paper at thattime. My second job, started out as an Usher,at the Roxy Theatre in Northampton. Iworked there for about two years, until I joined the Air Force. Yes, I can still remember the Roxy... andthe days when the tickets were 50 cents! And the movies that playedthere! The Westerns, with John Wayne! Susan Hayward, Liz Taylor andmore! "Cleopatra", and "Giant", with Liz Taylor, RockHudson, James Dean, Sal Mineo, Carroll Baker. And the other James Dean'flicks', "Rebel Without a Cause" and "East of Eden"!And the Horror Movies! And on Sundays, non-stop for the kids, thescary-kid movies, all day long! I can remember the whole place being fullof screaming-kids, yelling-at-the-top-of-their-lungs... as that huge spider,came over the mountain-top!
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Before I continue here, with the details that I can rememberof my childhood days with respect to Ham Radio and Electronics, let me justinsert herewith several minor items that were Most Enjoyable (or remembered)in/about my childhood. In fact, theseare Reviews that I have done for the nationwide Review Service Yelp!, all ofwhich are Reviews of some of the places and experiences of my childhood. (Which are, in effect, HistoricalExperiences, as to the Folks who might read them on Yelp! today). These Reviews are:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/quakertown-farmers-market-quakertown#hrid:sYwIKsWNiUaUVRUGQmnlqA/src:self
http://www.yelp.com/biz/roadside-america-shartlesville#hrid:cWa8dZQRU87olPOwTG9OIA/src:self
http://www.yelp.com/biz/lappawinzo-rod-and-gun-club-northampton#hrid:CPF90x1VuIzgypew5KaWJg/src:self
http://www.yelp.com/biz/roxy-theatre-northampton#hrid:20OTG-XldMv4vQV_TQ0xZA/src:self
http://www.yelp.com/biz/coke-works-facility---history-bethlehem#hrid:hlzDYKnB9Qqo-ahZzUcvrA/src:self
http://www.yelp.com/biz/bethlehem-steel-corp-bethlehem#hrid:MWfrhErIbRyAWhxRHt134A/src:self
http://www.yelp.com/biz/queen-city-airport-allentown#hrid:DiV6IVh4c6DKa4JCvGSJMw/src:self
I’m going to insert one other Review here, of another placein Pennsylvania that I loved to visit, but which Review was removed by Yelp,because apparently some ultra-conservative person in that area of Pennsylvaniaobjected to the text of the Review and thusly Yelp was forced to removeit. Here it is (unedited):
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The Schnecksville Diner
West of Allentown, Egypt andNorthampton, PA, located in the rolling Pennsylvania Dutch farmlands, right onRoute 309, just off the Northeast Extension of the Pennsylvania Turnpike
From another Reviewer: "theyhave great food and the service gets me everytime!! everyone is so kind and..." Check that review and the further info, at the website listed withthis Review.
What I remember about this place,is when it was a small roadside Hotel & Eatery, in a vintage building, thathad both a regular restaurant and a family restaurant on the first floor. Idon't know what they served in the regular, formal restaurant, but as the webinfo for the place so describes the 'dining room' of today, it is definitelyfamily-congenial as well as Pennsylvania Dutch-American Traditional Cuisine andservice. And what I remember about the 'service' in the olden days... meaningthe food-service-and-seating therefor... is that there were several large andlong tables, in 2-3 rooms. Customers took their seats at one of the seats atthese tables, which were already loaded-to-the-gills with platters, bowls,tureens and dishes, of all kinds of food, ready-to-be-served. Justsit-yourself-down, make-yourself-comfortable, and ask your neighbor topass-you-the-mashed-potatoes, or gravy, or turkey, or roast beef, or anythingon the table! Just fill up your own plate, family-style, with anything on thetable. And the waiters will just keep refilling any platter or dish on thetable... and the hungry diners can just keep eating! That wasTraditional-American Pennsylvania Dutch-style Family Dining!
Oh, incidentally, I'm going toinsert this here, even though it may or may not pertain to the SchnecksvilleDiner. Anyway, do you Folks out there, remember the TraditionalPennsylvania-Dutch-style Family-Church Social-Dinners, similar to what I havealready described herein this Review? Well, speaking of'pass-the-mashed-potatoes'... What I remember, is exactly thecontent-and-appearance, of that big tureen of mashed potatoes, that made it soappealing-and-delicious, to the typical Pennsylvania Dutch farm-boy of thosedays. Because... those homemade mashed potatoes... were just 'swimming', in themelted butter, in that huge bowl!
Oh, one more thing I'm going tothrow in here, speaking of the famous Pennsylvania-Dutch 'territories' of thestate. Located in South-Central Pennsylvania, East of Harrisburg, Hershey andLancaster, 'smack-dab' in the middle of PA-Dutch 'territory'... is the quaintold Quaker town of Paradise, PA. Now, I understand the following to be true. Idon't know how many roads lead to Paradise, PA today, but in the olden days, itwas said that the only road to Paradise, was through its neighboring town. Inorder to get to Paradise, PA, you had to go through... Intercourse, PA!
Oh, a warning here! If you aredriving through this territory, be sure not to run into one of those blackAmish horse-and-buggys, moving along the side of the road!
I must honestly admit that Ihaven't been there today (the Schnecksville Diner), but from what I see on theweb... Well, you tell me, Diners-and-Reviewers. Is it yet the same?
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For all of my Yelp! Reviews, ofplaces in both Pennsylvania and of my later days in California, go to: http://nelsonr.yelp.com
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I became interested in Ham Radio at an early age, perhapsabout 9 years of age. Of course, ourhome had the requisite huge Console Philco Radio, sitting on the Living Roomfloor, which we all dutifully listened to, in those years of theGolden-Age-of-Radio. (See my Yelp!Review at:
http://www.yelp.com/biz/roadside-america-shartlesville#hrid:cWa8dZQRU87olPOwTG9OIA/src:self)
But, of course, when the radio was not tuned in to thesemagnificent ‘radio-dramas’ and Big Band music, I became very interested indiscovering exactly what else was ‘out-there’, on the radio-waves. That old Philco was multi-band, beingswitchable-and-tunable, across the entire spectrum of the HF Broadcast andShort-Wave bands-and-frequencies, and it had a large loop-antenna inside of thewooden console cabinet, which enabled me to literally‘tune-in-on-the-World’! And so Idid! And when I went with my folks, ontheir weekly card-game-evenings with the family friends (I was, apparently, notyet old enough to be let alone by myself at home!), those family friendsgraciously let me ‘use’ the ‘pièce de résistance’ of their home andliving-room, a magnificent-and-large old Zenith Radio, the epitome and Best ofModern Radio Engineering, as well as Styling!As I remember, it looked like a huge silver-and-chrome ‘something’, with4 large semi-circular ‘tuning-panels’, located at the front corners of thefascade, by which the various radio bands could very slowly-and-precisely, betuned, in order to find and tune-in, whatever radio signals might be found. And so I spent many hours,slowly-and-precisely tuning the radio bands, and finding all kinds of wonderfulradio signals and stations, of not only local broadcast and internationalbroadcast, but also the mysterious signals of facsimile and teletype and more…and the wonderful world of ham radio!(Yes, I quickly learned Morse Code and could slowly ‘copy’ andunderstand what those dits-and-dashes meant!)
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Back at home, I soon had to have my own Radio, which was avintage Echophone EC-1B multi-band radio in a small metal cabinet. (see: http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~postr/bapix/Echo1B.html) It was great for casual band surfingand listening in on the world, but I soon outgrew it. I bought on old Military Radio from an area ham radio operator, abig metal box called the BC-348R (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BC-348), which covered most of the HF radio bands and, being a military radio, hadpretty good tuning, selection and CW operation, ideal for ham radio use. I got my first ham radio license, as aNovice and bought and built a Heathkit AT-1 Ham Radio Transmitter, anexclusively CW and Ham Novice-designed transmitter.
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Early on, as a new Ham, I didn’t really make many on-the-aircontacts (via CW/Morse code), but I was quickly learning the technologies andintricacies of transmitters, receivers, antennas and all of ham radio. Over my early years, I bought and built (theywere quite inexpensive) a number of Heathkits (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathkit), starting with my first one, the Heath OL-1 Oscilloscope. The Heath DX-35, B-1 Balun, the PMR-6 andother Heathkits, which I learned to expertly assemble piece-by-piece andcomponent-by-component, until I had a completed and operational unit. By then I was also attempting to design andbuild my own circuits and units, of various kinds. But especially, I enjoyed building and designing antenna systems,and our home soon had both an inverted-V antenna and long-wire ‘sky-hooks’,holding-up-the-sky; over the top of our roof.(In later years, my ‘knack’ for building antennas, while in the AirForce, included the installation, quite surreptitiously, of a top-secretantenna, on the roof of the U.S. Embassy in downtown Tokyo, Japan!)
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For the purposes of this autobiography, I’m going tohereinthefollowing combine all my remembrances of the various ham radio gearthat I have used over the years of my ham radio experiences, from the ‘50’sthrough 1964, in both my childhood years and my early Air Force years. (I haven’t operated a ham radio stationsince 1964, when I ‘burnt-out’ on ham radio!)
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Here is the various ‘gear’ that I remember, along withcurrently online websites that describe the gear:
Central Electronics 20 SSB exciter. I had this in my childhood home, although Inever got to use it, as I didn’t yet have the proper FCC License (General orhigher).
http://www.eham.net/reviews/detail/6070
http://www.qsl.net/la5ki/org/ce/20a.htm
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Hammarlund SP600-jx-17 Receiver. I received this massive and exceptional receiver from my M.A.R.S.membership in the Philippines at Clark Air Force Base. Clark Field is now, today, ‘buried’ underMount Pinatubo, the Philippine volcano that exploded a number of years ago andcovered everything in its vicinity.
http://www.rigpix.com/hammarlund/sp600jx17.htm
http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~postr/bapix/SP600.htm
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Gonset G66B Mobile Receiver and Elmac AF-67Transmitter. I had these two through myearly Air Force days at Biloxi Air Force Base, Mississippi, where I was theSecretary of the Base Ham Radio Club/MARS Station, K5TYP. I also remember attending the local BiloxiHam Fest, where I encountered a most amazing rig, owned and built by a localMississippi Ham. It was a mobile hamrig/station, in his vintage ‘40’s Ford Coupe, that has been built entirely fromArmy surplus equipment. What wasunusual about it, was that it was a mobile 1000watt rig and mobile antenna,operated exclusively on CW (Morse Code), with the Morse Code ‘key’ sitting onthe front seat of the car!
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Collins KWM-1/KWM-2.
http://www.collinsmuseum.com/collins.html
I had these when I was at Edwards AFB, California, first theKWM-2 and later the KWM-1. I traded theKWM-2 for the KWM-1 and the Globe King 600L:
http://www.isquare.com/personal_pages/600L.htm
which, however, I both then sold for cash, in order to makea down payment on the 1964 Triumph Spitfire Sports Car, that I bought before Ileft Edwards for Japan. (And which wasocean-transport shipped to Japan for me, by the Air Force. More about this to follow in thisautobiography, in the details of my experiences in Japan.)
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http://www.qsl.net/la5ki/org/el/el.htm
These were the antennas that I used at Edwards, that Iconstructed myself from AF-supplied antenna-building-kit materials, that wereavailable in the Air Force Supply system and that I had requisitioned for theBase MARS Station:
All-Band 90ft Vertical w/ 24 ground plane radials
HF Log Periodic 8-element Large-Array
10-15-20 Meter Beam, w/3 elements each band, full-size YagiBeam Array
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Collins S-Line/Collins 75A-4/KWS-1. A military installation at Clark Field inthe Philippines that I occasionally operated.
http://www.collinsmuseum.com/collins.html
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This was one of the MARS Station installations at ClarkField in the Phillipines.
BC-610 transmitter/AM-2 amplifier, modified for ssb linearoperation, as well as AM operation. TheBC-610 was the AM rig for the local MARS Nets.The military AM-2 amplifier followed the BC-610 on AM, or the followingon SSB:
Both the AM and SSB operations (at Clark Field) used amassively large three-wire unterminated HF Rhombic antenna, that was mounted onthe top of (4) 90foot telephone poles, supporting the 4 corners of thethree-wire array, that was about 1000foot in length and about 800foot in widthand fed by a large 600ohm balanced-wire transmission line from the output ofthe AM-2 amplifier, which used an RF Amp meter to tune for maximum current into the transmission line. I never used the BC-610 combo-rig but I didrun several phone patches with the SSB gear, with a MARD operator in Texas andI once even had contact with a MARS operator in Germany. All this was on MARS frequencies, as MARSoperations were the only thing allowed in the Philippines, as operation of hamradio frequencies was not allowed except by Philippine Nationals.
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The Receiver Station (Owada) and Transmitter Station(Funabashi) in Japan, both had HF Rhombic installations also, but these werefed with underground hermetically-sealed transmission lines and were only usedfor official Air Force communications.
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Heathkits (AT-1, DX-35, others). These are the kits that I built/assembled when I was a kid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathkit
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BC-348R (similar to the BC-348Q). This is the military receiver that I had as a kid.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BC-348
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Echophone EC1-B. Myvery first Receiver as a kid.
http://oak.cats.ohiou.edu/~postr/bapix/Echo1B.html
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I graduated from High School in 1958 and two weeks later Ienlisted in the Air Force. (Yes, I lefta month old relationship with a High School girl, who somehow just didn’t seemto be what I wanted. I had an earlierbrief relationship with a beautiful red-haired-and-busty Junior-Class girl, butshe just wasn’t mature enough for me.And my long-time childhood sweetheart had gotten herself aboyfriend.) Somehow I knew that therewas nothing for me in my hometown area and besides, ham radio, electronics andmy own personal education (not formal education) and experiences had shown methat there was a big wide world out there, just waiting to be explored.
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I spent some brief Basics time at Lackland Air Force Base,Texas where, as I remember, the Air Force testing rated me very high in bothradio operator and electronics technology.(I got out of the nasty stuff of Basics because I wore glasses.) There wasn’t much to do off-duty atLackland. I remember seeing somebeautiful local Texas girls visiting the on-base Airman’s Social Club. I also found the Base Ham Radio/MARSStation, after walking one weekend many blocks across relatively empty streetsand buildings in a quiet area of the base, but I don’t remember anything ofsignificance happening there. Then the‘decision’ came down, that I had been ‘accepted’ into the Technology ranks ofthe Air Force and I was soon on my way to Keesler Air Force Base inMississippi, which was merely an Air Force bus ride of several hours from Texasto Mississippi.
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Somehow I seem to remember that the magic number was 52… 52weeks spent at Keesler, in Electronics Technology School. Off-duty I spent time at the Base Ham RadioClub/MARS Station, K5TYP. I had a fewon-air contacts there but nothing much otherwise, although I did build somegear, a Globe Electronics 400 and a self-designed Grounded Grid Linear using(6) 6L6 tubes in parallel. (Other thanexploring the Mississippi and Alabama Gulf Coast resorts and towns a few timeson weekends.) Then the Air Force gaveme my next assignment, which was Clark Field in the Philippines.
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Before flying off to the Philippines, I got a leave and wenthome to Pennsylvania for a few weeks.Nothing much had changed it seemed, but it was good to see my folksagain. I don’t remember doing much ofanything while home, except seeing one or two of my old high school friends,who seemed to be putting-on-weight, on the typical Pennsylvania ‘cuisine’. When I left home, I think I took a bus toPhiladelphia, as I vaguely remember being in the Philadelphia BusTerminal. From the PhiladelphiaAirport, I remember that it was an old (but new at that time) three-tailed TWASuper-Constellation Passenger Plane, by which I flew cross-country (it waswonderful to see the towns and cities passing below, and the landscapes ofrivers and mountains, which I had never seen before), to the San FranciscoAirport and then by military bus to Travis Air Force Base, north of SanFrancisco. At Travis, a day or solater, I was on a M.A.T.S. plane (which, in those days, was the Military AirTransport Service), again a nice Super-Constellation, on my way to Hickam AirForce Base in Hawaii. At Hickam butshortly, I was put onboard another MATS Super-Constellation, for Clark Field inthe Philippines. But, as it turned out,we had to go island-hopping across the Pacific Ocean because, apparently, inthose days, there were but few direct flights across the Pacific. I remember stopping at Midway (I think),Kwajalein and Guam. Midway is actuallyone of the Hawaiian Islands, out at the tip of the chain of the HawaiianIslands. But I especially rememberKwajalein Island (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kwajalein_Island), seemingly ‘out there’ all by itself, in the middle of the Pacific. I remember looking out of the airplanewindow and seeing this tiny speck of land below. There was only one runway where the plane landed. Getting out of the plane, the TerminalBuilding was just a small square corrugated-metal ‘shack’. I went in the terminal door from theairfield and out the door on the other side of the building and I found myselfon the beach! There was a narrow dirtroad along the beach and soon a dilapidated old vintage WWII Navy bus arrived. The bus drove to the other end of theisland, around the nice lagoon that was in the middle of the island and wefinally, after but a few minutes driving time, disembarked at what turned outto be a U.S. Navy Mess Hall, to be served a meal. And to this day, I nominally say that that meal, of turkey pot-pie,in that Navy Mess Hall on Kwajalein Island in the middle of the Pacific, wasthe best meal that I ever ate while I was in the Service! Then it was back on the bus, to the planeand on to the Philippines, after yet another brief stop in Guam, at AndersonAir Force Base.
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Clark Field
Arriving at Clark (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clark_Field), I checked into my assigned unit, the 1961st AFCS (Air Force Communications Service)Squadron where, very soon, my Air Force Career Field Classification wasimmediately changed. It seems that Ihad been trained and classified as an Aircraft Radar Technician, but the 1961stwas not an Aircraft Support squadron, but was, instead, a Ground Support squadron,in need of Ground Support personnel.So, I was re-classified and re-trained by the 1961st as aGround Radio Technician. I spent a yearand a half at Clark (which was ‘buried’ under the Mount Pinatubo Volcano, whichexploded near to Clark Field in June, 1991 and buried Clark in the lava andashes, however since then, ‘dug out’ by the Philippine Government and made aninternational airport.) Here are someof the highlights:
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Ham Radio/MARS, has already been mentioned hereinabove. Clark had one of the firstsatellite-tracking-array installations, a field of synchronized dipole antennasmounted low-to-the-ground (for ground-plane reflection-reception) on 4foot highpoles, which was able to track Sputnik and early satellites. At Clark, I also became responsible for theBase Radio-TV Broadcast Station facilities, which included a high-power AMBroadcast Station, a local FM Broadcast Station for the immediate vicinity ofthe Base, and a TV Station (Channel 8) for the Base and nearby areas, all ofwhich were operated as parts of the Far East Network (FEN) of the AFRTS (ArmedForces Radio & Television Services).I was a station engineer for all three facilities, a part-time TV Studioon-the-air Program Producer-Engineer…
At midnight every night, when the TV Station wentoff-the-air, the closing sign-off was always the playing of the NationalAnthems of both the U.S. and the Philippines, the ‘Star-Spangled-Banner’ andthe Philippine National Anthem.However, online info states that the Philippine National Anthem is “Lupang Hinirang” (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lupang_Hinirang)
However, I seem to remember Studio Engineers always playing,as the Philippine National Anthem, the famous Jimmy Dorsey OrchestraSpanish-language version of their famous Big Band Hit, “Yours”, or “Quiéreme Mucho”in Spanish.
I also, enjoyably, was a part-time Disc-Jockey, for the AMRadio Station. I remember creating aMusical-Monologue for Christmas, entitled, “A Hip Night Before Christmas”, witha Chet Atkins musical-guitar background… “Like, Man, ‘Twas the Night BeforeChristmas, and not a Hip-Cat was swingin’, and that ain’t but nowhere, Dad!…” But my most enjoyable on-the-air‘gig’, was as a part-time Host, of the 12-Midnight Show, which was known as‘Night-Train’, and went out to much of the entire Philippine Islands, and hadplenty of listeners. My most memorablenight was (I believe) the night I introduced Elvis’ “Blue Suede Shoes”, to thePhilippines. “Well, Good Morning, allyou listeners out there. This is AirmanSecond Class Nelson Rau bringing you ‘Album Time’ here on ‘Night Train’, and wegot a new Rock & Roll Artist back in the States by the name of ElvisPresley, and here’s his latest, “Blue Suede Shoes”! Take it away, Elvis!”
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I also had responsibilities for other Ground RadioCommunications Facilities, including the Airfield Tower and RAPCON (RadarApproach Control) equipment, LORAN (Long Range Navigation) and other, includingall of the Base’s Military Police and Emergency vehicles. I also remember ‘servicing’ remote sites onthe Island of Luzon, including a BC-610 AM Net facility located in the NorthernLuzon Province of Ilocos Norte, where I spent several days in a local Hotel,meeting quite a few local people, before returning to Clark. I also, one time, flew into the smallairfield for the Philippine mountain resort of Baguio, on an old C-47 cargoplane. It was just an old WWII dirtlanding strip-runway and our plane had to first make a ‘pass’ over the runway,to ‘shoo-off’ all of the local cows and goats.After landing, I was taken to a VOR site on the Philippine Coast line,where I first repaired a VOR transmitter and the next day, to the next-door VOA(Voice Of America) site, where I fixed some equipment also. The VOA Antenna Field was gigantic, with thedirt road through the antenna field passing under numerous high-off-the-ground600ohm tranmission lines, feeding several of the gigantic Rhombic Arrays. Back at the airfield the next day, I washitchhiking my way back to Clark, when another C-47 arrived. The 2 Colonels flying the plane agreed togive me a ride back to Clark, after they had put in a few rounds of golf on thelinks at Baguio. Late that afternoonthey returned and I got my ride back to Clark, in the equivalent of an airbornelimousine-for-important-VIP’s! Becausetheir plane, on their way to Clark, was a most plush United Nations Staff Planefrom Korea, fully equipped with luxury blue-and-gold UN Emblem seatsfront-to-back… and I was the only passenger!
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On Clark, off-duty, I ‘socialized’ with the local on-baseyoung airmen and teenage ‘crowd’ of daughters of on-base military personnel (Iwas only 19-20 years old myself), meeting quite often in the Base Cafeteria(where my favorite meal was a piled-high dish of ‘flied-lice’, covered withthick roast beef gravy!) There I met abeautiful young woman, in her early 20’s, who insisted upon ‘socializing’ withour young crowd (she liked to ‘blend’ gray-hair-streaks into my black hair, aswe sat in the large, round plush-leather dining-room customer-booths of theCafeteria), even though she was already married to an RCA Field Contractor, whowas off-base on remote assignments throughout the Far East. I ‘visited’ her exclusive Officers-QuartersBarracks apartment several times, quite enjoyably. (‘Nuf said!) But mostly,while I was at Clark, I had a teenage girlfriend, who was the daughter of aMaster Sergeant on-base, whom I met several times and assured him that I wastreating his daughter ‘nice’. Althoughseveral times, late at night (before she had to be home for curfew), we’d ridemy German-made NSU motor-scooter, out to a remote-dirt-road grassy picnic areaon base (which was dark at night, with no lights) and we’d throw ablanket-on-the-grass and ‘make-out’, enjoyably! (Again, ‘nuf said!) Ofcourse, I occasionally visited the just-off-base local towns of Balibago andAngeles City, where there was a ‘GI-strip’ of local bars, honky-tonks andbar-girls. No ‘involvements’ herethough, but I remember a Filipina bar-girl named ‘Philly’, who had a mouthfulof gold teeth. (In the Philippines, local custom was to keep one’s ‘wealth’ asgold-teeth.) I remember the local meansof transportation was the ‘jitney-bus’, which was everywhere, and which wasjust a converted WWII Army Jeep, with bench seats of both sides of the reardeck-bed, open on the sides-and-rear, a few access-steps at the rear end,covered over with fancily-decorated rooftops.
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But one of my more enjoyable ‘adventures’, was my‘excursion’ to a Birthday Party, back up north on the Island of Luzon, in theCity of Ilocos Norte, which, as I have already mentioned hereinabove, I hadearlier visited ‘on business’. I hadmet two Filipina girls, at the on-base Air Force College-Education Center, whowere actually attending College in Manila, one of which was at UP (Universityof the Philippines) and the other at FEU (Far East University). They were both friends who were from IlocosNorte. One of the girls was soon tohave her 18th Birthday and she invited me to attend her BirthdayParty in Ilocos Norte, which was to be a 3-day event with a Grand BallroomDance and Party. Of course Iaccepted. That weekend, I packed asuitcase with my Best Dress Suit (a Classic tan Robert Hall suit – see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Hall_Clothes), went off-base and caught the local Philippine bus-equivalent of GreyhoundBuses, from Angeles City north to Ilocos Norte. That bus-ride took all-nite long, depositing me in Ilocos Nortethe next day, where I booked a room in the same Hotel where I had stayed before. I contacted my girlfriends at their homes bytelephone and I was promptly picked up from my hotel. The weekend ‘activities’ had started and I was to be includedtherewith. I had lunch with the girlsand some friends at one of the girl’s homes, where I was invited to a BeachParty that evening. Somehow I obtaineda pair of swim-trunks for the event.That evening, friends drove us all to a remote out-of-town beach resortarea, where the party was inside one of the large beach huts. But, outside for our evening enjoyment, wasa nice long beach… of absolutely black sand!The next day was the Grand Ballroom Party. I dressed in my finest, with my Robert Hall suit, white shirt anda tan Texas bow-tie, a decidedly American-look, among all of the fancy FilipinoBarong-Tagalog Silk Shirts (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barong_Tagalog) that were predominant at the event. Idanced several times that evening with my Hostess, the Birthday girl, wholooked absolutely beautiful. (I had a photo of us dancing, but it is longlost.) Incidentally, her Father was theGovernor of the Province of Ilocos Norte, so she probably went on to greatthings in her Life and I never saw her again.But, it was a beautiful experience.Oh, the long bus ride home, in the middle of the night, with a quitebeautiful Chinese woman bus-passenger in the bus seat next to mesleeping-on-my-shoulder, was somewhat enjoyable too!
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I was stationed at Clark for a year and a half, from May 29th,1959 to December 10th, 1960.Then I received my next assignment to Edwards Air Force Base,California, the Air Force Flight Test Center, in the Mojave Desert of SouthernCalifornia. On the way, however, I tooktwo weeks leave-vacation in Hawaii, checking into the military resort facilityon-the-beach at Waikiki Beach, Honolulu, known as Fort DeRussy. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_DeRussy_Military_Reservation)
During my military career, I passed through Hickam Air ForceBase, Honolulu several times, traveling to or from my overseas assignments.Hickam is located right next door to Honolulu and the famous Pearl Harbor NavalBase Facility. And I especiallyremember eating several times in the big old building that was the Hickam MessHall, because when one walks up the concrete walkway to the entrance-doors ofthe Mess Hall, a person cannot miss seeing, and being emotionally affected by,that History which one can see when one looks at the walls of that building…which is yet, to this day, peppered with the bullet holes of the Japaneseplanes that attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hickam_AFB,_Hawaii)
While I stayed in Hawaii, I rented an old Jaguar XK-120Sports Car (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaguar_XK120) to get around the island, driving to and visiting quite a few places,including the pineapple fields of the northern island, Kaneohe Bay Naval AirStation (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Air_Station_Kaneohe_Bay) on the North Shore of Oahu and Waimea Bay (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waimea_Bay,_Hawaii), the home of the famous ‘Banzai Pipeline’ huge surfing waves and severalAnnual Surfing Contests, which attract visiting surfers from all over theworld. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banzai_Pipeline)
I also drove up to Wheeler Air Force Base, in the mountainsof Oahu, and visited with an old high school friend who was stationed there atWheeler. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wheeler_AFB,_HI) (No, I never saw the Pearl HarborU.S.S Arizona Memorial.)
Of course, I also drove over the famous Diamond Head as wellas swam on Waikiki Beach. Butespecially memorable were my visits to the popular ‘spots’ in Honolulu andWaikiki, such as The Shell Bar & Nite Club, where Martin Denny and hisExotica Tiki Band and music would play nightly. (I once owned all of Martin Denny’s Exotica albums.) See:
http://www.internationalmarketplacewaikiki.com/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_the_Beachcomber
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Denny
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilton_Hawaiian_Village
I then flew back to Travis Air Force Base in California,another place that I’d pass through several times in my military career. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_AFB) From Travis, I caught a shuttle-busto the San Francisco Airport. But I wasrunning low on money and I couldn’t afford any further transportation. So, I persuaded the bus-driver to let me offthe bus at the Freeway 101 off-ramp entrance to the San Francisco Airport. I then ran across the freeway (with mysuitcase and duffel bag) to the southbound side of the freeway. And there I was, late in the afternoon,standing by the side of the freeway, with my thumb out, hitchhiking my way toEdwards. (In those days, there was noCalifornia Law forbidding hitchhiking on California freeways and roads, asthere is now!) I was shortly picked upby a group with a large van filled with band gear, a local band that was ontheir way to play at some Peninsula nite-spot.Further down the San Francisco Peninsula, another driver gave me a rideall the way to San Luis Obispo. (Iguess it helped that I somehow had some masking-tape and had taped the largeletters ‘LA’ on the side of my suitcase, which could easily be seen byapproaching drivers.) There I was, atthe side of the road in San Luis Obispo, at 3AM in the morning, and the highwaywas almost dead of traffic. I think Iwaited about a hour, until a car finally came and picked me up. He was a young man who was a card-dealer inLas Vegas, who was going back to Vegas after visiting his home on the SanFrancisco Peninsula. Luckily for me,Edwards was on the route to Vegas, for I hadn’t realized that I needed toget-off my ‘south-to-LA’ route, in order to get to Edwards. (Actually, I think I may have intended to goto LA and then try to get to Edwards from LA!)So there we were, in the middle-of-the-night, crossing NorthernCalifornia, from the southbound Route 101, across to southbound Route 99 in theSan Joaquin Valley of Central California, and then heading south towardsBakersfield, California. I rememberthat it was just starting to get light when we got into Bakersfield and thecity was blanketed in fog. We drove outof Bakersfield, finding the eastern route toward Vegas, and started climbingthe road up the Tehachapi Mountains (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tehachapi_Mountains) As we drove higher up into themountains, all of a sudden our car broke out of the fog into very brightsunshine. I looked back and saw awonderful sight… the entire San Joaquin Valley was covered over in a blanket offog. We continued over the Tehachapisand then dropped down into the Mojave Desert, making a left turn at the town ofMojave and heading toward Barstow and Vegas.But before then, but a short distance east of Mohave, was theback-entrance-road to Edwards and my friend finally dropped me off and I bidhim well on his way. I waited but a fewminutes until a base civilian-employee came along on his way to work, who tookme on-base (there were no gates and no guards, just a paved road, which was oneof the back-entrances to Edwards) and dropped me off at the Base Headquarters,on the Edwards Main Base. It was about8AM in the morning, on a very bright and sunny day, of December, 1960, and Ihad just arrived in the Mohave Desert at the place where I would spend the next4 years of my Air Force career, Edwards AFB, the Air Force Flight Test Center! (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwards_AFB)
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Before I get further into my experiences andresponsibilities at Edwards, I want to mention some local flavor highlights ofEdwards and the surrounding areas.
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Nowadays the entire area, of land and air, is ‘locked-down’,under tight security, of course due to the fact that terrorism is now a realityin today’s day and age. The airspaceover this entire region of the Mohave Desert is a no-fly area to anyone other thanmilitary, government, NASA and federal contractor aircraft. This ranges from the entire airspace ofEdwards to the
nearby boundaries of what used to be George Air Force Basein Victorville, California, which is now the Victorville Airport (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victorville_Army_Airfield) which is not now included in this Restricted Airspace. However, Restricted Airspace area does passto the north of Victorville, extending further east into the Mohave Desert,over the Marine Corps Attack Helicopter Training Range at the Twenty Nine PalmsMarine Corps Air Station, Twenty Nine Palms, California (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twentynine_Palms,_Californiaand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMLA-367 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Woman_Springs_Road) and then onward to the Army’s Fort Irwin Training Center (see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Irwin_Military_Reservation) which includes, within itsterritory on its western side, NASA’sGoldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, for reception of Deep Spacesignals from such as the very first interstellar spacecraft such as the Pioneer and Voyager Spacecraft, and othersuch NASA Deep Space Projects since then. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goldstone_Deep_Space_Communications_Complex). The Restricted Airspace then extendsnorth to the China Lake Naval Air Station (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naval_Air_Weapons_Station_China_Lake). From there it then extends east toNellis Air Force Base, north of Las Vegas and the Nellis Range Areas of theNevada Test and Training Range and the super-secret installation known only asArea 51. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Area_51and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nellis_AFBand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nevada_Test_and_Training_Range).
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I mention the Old Woman Springs Road and Twenty Nine Palmshereinabove because I used to drive that road, which was almost a dirt roadacross the desert in those days, from Victorville to the Marine Base at TwentyNine Palms, to visit some friends who were there at Twenty Nine Palms. Just east of Victorville, before the OldWoman Springs Road begins, was the small town of Apple Valley, where Roy Rogersand Dale Evans, the Movie Stars, lived and was located the Apple ValleyInn. I remember stopping at theoriginal Apple Valley Inn, along the dirt road that was the town’s main road inthose days, when the Inn was just a clap-board old two-story roadhouse. I stopped there again in later years, andthe Inn was then a nice Motel and Cafeteria, with a Roy Rogers era vintagePontiac Convertible, replete with longhorn-cow-horns on the front of the hoodand other cowboy trivia decorating its body and insides, parked just in frontof the Inn. (See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Valley,_Californiaand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Valley_Inn).
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In those days, in that Edwards was an integral part of theMohave Desert, there were desert flatlands and low hills everywhere in theregion and quite often I would find myself actually just walking across thedesert itself. (Of course, I waswearing my military boots, so the sand and rocks/stones didn’t bother me.) I remember one time walking (most of theway, as I was really trying to hitchhike but the rides were few) to and fromGeorge AFB in Victorville and Edwards, via State Route 58 along the northperimeter of Edwards, to Boron and Four Corners (Kramer Junction), and thensouth on Interstate 395 to Victorville.
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At other times, when I was driving, I’d roam the Mohave onthe small paved and dirt roads that were scattered across the area. One time, south of Edwards and east ofLancaster, California, some friends and I later came back to investigate an oldabandoned mine that we had noticed in the hills off the road we weretraveling. Hiking up the deserthillside, we found a quite wide mine entrance and mine-car rail-tracks goinginto the mine entrance. Going into themine entrance, the originally horizontal grade started sloping downward untilthe rail-track was also accompanied by an almost vertical wooden ladder. As the mine shaft descended further, therewere two short horizontal mine shafts off the main shaft. At the bottom of the main shaft waswater. But somehow, one of my friendshad determined that it was really another horizontal mine-shaft, there at thebottom of the mine, that just happened to be filled with water. Then my courageous friend decided to findout. He stripped down to his undershorts and climbed down into the cold waters.Then, feeling the sides of the rocky mineshaft, he said he felt thehorizontal shaft going off from the main shaft. He lowered his head and whole body into the water and moved offunderwater into the horizontal shaft.In a few seconds, we heard his voice coming through the waters, yellingthat he had found an airspace and had his head above water. I don’t remember what else that experienceproved other than the fact that we could go ‘swimming’ in the cold waters atthe bottom of an old abandoned desert mineshaft
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At other times, I found myself following desert dirt roadsand tracks, that sometimes led to small dry lake-beds, where I just enjoyedgoing ‘round-in-circles on the lakebeds.
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Another interesting place at Edwards (before I get to themajor areas of the Base), was the sprawling old original base and buildings, onthe south edge of Rogers Dry Lake, that apparently were the original base whenit was Muroc Army Air Base, before it was renamed to Edwards Air Force Base. Here, as one slowly drove down theseabandoned streets (in my top-down convertible sports car or else actuallywalked these streets), past the numerous old-fashioned wooden low-lyingbuildings and structures, as the late afternoon desert winds blew through my hairand around me, one could almost get the ‘feeling’ that here, one was actually‘treading-the-pages-of-history’, seemingly with the ‘ghosts’ of all that hadever happened here in the past. It wasquite a moving experience! Also, Imight note that, at the intersection of two of these dusty roads, I had anotherunique experience. Again, I was drivingmy brand-new Triumph Spitfire Sports Car, an open-top vehicle that was quitelow to the ground, but the experience that I had did still amaze me. Out here, in the Mohave Desert, the residentBlack Crows of the desert, are quite large in stature and size. But there, at that aforenoted intersectionof those two old streets, in that old deserted Edwards ‘town’, standing by theside of the road as I drove up, was one of these Black Birds. When I stopped alongside of him, he juststood there, looking at me over the side door of my car, he was so tall that hecould easily see me over the passenger door.He just looked at me for a few seconds and then with a silent upwardthrust, gently flew off. Also, I mightmention another ‘encounter’ with these creatures. The Edwards Base MARS Station where I quite often worked, waslocated in a nice 3-bedroom house on top of one of the several hills of thisold, original southern perimeter of Rogers Dry Lake and since it had once beenthe home of the Commanding General of, then, Muroc Air Base, this nice housealso included a nice-size swimming pool, at the rear-of-house, there on top ofthat hill. One side of the house and hillsidehad a nice shady grove of trees, under planted with grass and a nice picnicarea. But, pertinent to the‘experience’ that I am about to describe, quite often these tree-tops, at theside of the house, were the perch-sites of numbers of these large Desert BlackBirds. But, the ‘experience’ wasthis. Late afternoon and earlyevenings, the winds would come up across the Mohave and the daytime nominalMohave temperatures usually dropped dramatically, sometimes more than 50degrees from day-to-night. Anyway, oneearly evening, as the sun was setting in the West and the winds had come up, Istepped out the rear patio door of the house, to ‘savor’ the early evening andthe winds, as they blew over the pool and the hillside. But then I looked up. There, gliding motionlessly and in-place,head-on into the winds and the setting sun, over the pool and thetop-of-the-hill, were about a dozen of these magnificent Desert Black Birds,just soaring in the wind. It was awonderful and mystic sight.
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Okay, I’ve said that the whole Edwards area is now quiterestricted and off-limits to the usual civilians, but such was not the caseback then in the ‘60’s. In fact, atraveler on these desert roads, could actually get lost and find themselvessomewhere on Edwards premises without knowing it. That is because all three main roads into Edwards, were not‘secured’, gated nor guarded in any way.Base Air Police merely drove about Edwards in their pickup trucks andcars.
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I have already mentioned my arrival-at-Edwards via thenorthern ‘back-door’ access road from State Route 58. There was also a southern entrance-road, from the northeastregions/streets of Lancaster, California, which intersected with the road up
Leuhman Ridge tothe Rocket Test Facilities at the top of ‘Rocket-Ridge’, on the easternperimeter of Edwards. However, turningnorth at this intersection, led through the old South Base Sled-Track TestFacilities and then on to Rogers Lake and the Main Base.
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But the nicestentrance-road to Edwards was the main western access-road, a nice 4-lane widehighway, named Rosamond Boulevard, that headed due east from Rosamond and StateRoute 14, through the eastern areas of the town of Rosamond and then, almostsurreptiously, entered Edwards and became Edwards main access-road. And I say ‘surreptiously’, because there wasno gate, no check-point, no guards and no military police. Nothing but a 4 foot high 12 foot longred-brick wall, angled not quite perpendicular to the roadway, which driverscould easily see. And thereupon thatred-brick wall, in large white letters, were the words, “You are now enteringEdwards Air Force Base.” As simple asthat!
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As the roadcontinued eastward, it shortly came upon the reaches of Rosamond Dry Lake,crossing the lakebed and rising up, to cross over a series of low-rollingdesert hills, until one could finally see Edwards Main Base and Air Field offin the distance. By now, one hadtravelled quite a few miles, from Rosamond to this point. At this point, one could also see the hugeairfield Hanger and alongside it, the Airfield Control Tower, both lookingsomewhat small at that distance, although the Edwards Control Tower is actuallythe tallest airfield control tower in the entire world. A few miles further, this road from Rosamond,intersects with the road coming from South Base and the south access-entranceto Edwards, which has crossed Rogers Lake on its western periphery. The road then continues east to the MainBase. However, I want to return here towhere this Rosamond Boulevard Road was crossing over the Rosamond Dry Lakebed. Because, alongside of thisroadway, about halfway across Rosamond Lake, is sort of an oasis, consisting ofa quite large off-the-side-of-the-road parking area, a nice grove of trees andthe dilapidated remaining low block walls and foundations, of a ‘notorious’adobe building/structure that once stood here, in this ‘oasis’, until itburned-to-the-ground many years ago.This, supposedly, was the famous Road House (although local historyplaces this roadhouse adjacent to nowadays Edwards Rod & Gun Club, which iselsewhere on the Base) of the famous Pancho Barnes, the legendary femaleFlying-Ace and Hostess, of the early days of Muroc Air Station and Edwards,whose Road House (the Happy Bottom Riding Club) was the legendary ‘Saloon’ and‘Meeting Place’, for all of the early ‘jet-jockeys’, fly-boys and astronauts ofour age, including the legendary Chuck Yeager, all of which were made famous inthat famous Hollywood Movie (of 1983) about Edwards and all of this, “TheRight Stuff”. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Right_Stuff_(film)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chuck_Yeager
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancho_Barnes
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Happy_Bottom_Riding_Club
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A brief note on ‘socialization’ while I was at Edwards. Of course, I had a few girlfriends whilethere, but the most recollectable ‘experiences’ were the several times that Ijoined the local ‘cruising crowd’, just like in the famous Hollywood Movie, “AmericanGrafitti”. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Grafitti)
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(from the Wikipedia link above)
Set in 1962 Modesto, California, American Graffitiis a study of the cruising and rockand roll cultures popularized amongst the Post-World War II baby boom generation.The film is a nostalgicportrait of teenage life in the early 1960s…
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(excerpted from the “American Grafitti” Wikipedia link above)
Meanwhile, Curt learns that RJ WolfmanJack broadcasts from just outside of Modesto, and inside the dark, eerieradio station, Curt encounters a bearded man he assumes to be the manager. Curthands the manager a message for The Blonde to call him or meet him. As he walksaway, Curt looks back and sees the man talking into the microphone, andrealizes that he is actually Wolfman Jack.
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According to the following Wikipedia link, Wolfman Jacknever actually broadcast from Modesto, CA, but the movie story was goodnonetheless. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfman_Jack). Wolfman Jack’s real name was RobertSmith.
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(excerpted from the Wolfman Jack link above)
In 1962, Smith took his act to the border when the Inter-American RadioAdvertising's Ramon Bosquez hired him and sent him to the studio andtransmitter site of XERB-AM at CiudadAcuña in Mexico,a station whose high-powered borderblaster signal could be picked up across much of the United States. In aninterview with writer Tom Miller, Smith described the reach ofthe XERB signal: "We had the most powerful signal in North America. Birdsdropped dead when they flew too close to the tower. A car driving from New Yorkto L.A. would never lose the station."[1] It was at XERBthat Smith developed his signature style (with phrases like "Who's this onthe Wolfman telephone?") and widespread fame.
XERF wasalso the original call sign for the border blaster station, which was brandedas The Mighty 1090 in Hollywood, California. The station boasted "50,000 watts of SoulPower." That station continues to broadcast today with the call sign XERB.XERB also had an office in the rear of a small strip mallon Third Avenue in Chula Vista, California.It was not unlike the small broadcast studio depicted in the film, AmericanGraffiti. It was located only 10 minutes from the Tijuana-San Diegoborder crossing. It was rumored that The Wolfman actually broadcast from thislocation during the early to mid-sixties.
I also remember listening to XERF many times on my carradio, anywhere in the United States over the years. “This is XERF, Del Rio, Texas, with our transmitter across theMexican border in Cuidad Acuña, Mexico, blasting the radio-waves with 50,000watts of power, the highest powered AM Radio Station on the North AmericanContinent!” I even remember picking upthe station one time when I was in Canada.However, I don’t ever remember hearing Wolfman Jack. Of course, he was probably gone by that timewhen I was listening to the station.
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From Edwards it was just a short drive over the AngelesMountains into Los Angeles and I did get into Los Angeles several times. Especially memorable, was my visit toCompton, CA one time with a friend, to visit friends of his. That night, we all went to a place calledthe 54 Club, on the corner of 54th and Broadway, in South-CentralLos Angeles. The club was crowded butthe music was just great. On the Billfor that evening, that night in 1962 (I think it was)… was ‘Charles’ (RayCharles), B.B. King, Little Willie John and Bobby ‘Blue’ Bland, all pioneersand originators, of Blues, R&B and the Soul music, that has been famous fordecades!
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I also remember going down into a large and operational GoldMine, located several miles west of Rosamond.
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Okay, I’ve mentioned Edwards Main Base, where most of thebase’s operational facilities were located.Adjacent to and just north of the Main Base, was a residential housingarea for all people living on the base, except for the single airmen who livedin the various squadron barracks in Main Base.Oh yes, and one of my favorite buildings, the Edwards Mess Hall, where Iwould many times stop in for not only regular breakfast, lunch and dinner, butalso for midnight breakfast as well!Yes, several orders of scrambled eggs and buttered-toast, sausages, hashbrowns and ‘S-O-S’, or sour-gravied ground beef (or ground pork) overtoast! Years later, I learned how tomake my own ‘s-o-s’ from an old Army Kitchen Sergeant: in a frying pan, brown one pound of groundbeef (or ground pork), until the meat has browned and separated into smallpieces of meat, which should be ‘swimming’ in the fat-grease that has been releasedinto the fry pan during the frying.Into that meat-grease mixture, add one whole cup of white flour and ahalf-cup of milk. Mix and heat, untilthe mixture turns somewhat stiff (as the flour congeals in the heat) and serve,over toast. Absolutely fattening, butalso absolutely delicious!
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On the north-east side of the Main Base, is the NASAFacility, NASA’s Dryden FlightResearch Center, with a few buildings on the Edwards Flight Line and an X-15Rocket-Plane Test Pad-Blockhouse (as of then, circa early ‘60’s, when the X-15was operational.) See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dryden_Flight_Research_Center
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-15
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Other than the Main Base, I’ve already mentioned theoriginal South Base, on the south side of Rogers Dry Lake, but since this areawas largely an abandoned area, the name South Base was really applied to theSouth Base Sled-Track Facility, further south on the base, on theEdwards-Lancaster access-road. It washere where there was a large experimental complex (run by a Ham-Radio friend ofmine, who was the Director of the Labs), as well as the long Sled-TrackFacility, which had a sled-track that extended several miles into the southernreaches of Edwards, to terminate in a large pool of water there in thedesert. Riding that rail-track was arocket-powered ‘sled’, on which the Astronauts rode, in order to accustomthemselves to the G-forces of gravity that they would experienceBlasting-into-Space on top of a Rocket.Eventually, however, South Base was closed and the sled-track was movedto Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico.(See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holloman_AFB
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While I am here on the south side of Edwards, I’ll mentionAir Force Plant 42, a large aircraft/airframe manufacturing facility, locatedjust east of Palmdale, CA, south of Edwards, where many new and experimentalaircraft are first manufactured, before testing at Edwards. (It is but a very short flight to Edwardsfrom AF Plant 42.) I had a local HamRadio friend who was an Engineer at AF Plant 42. I remember him telling me one time, that when they were buildingthe first XB-70 aircraft, they had finally rolled it out of the hanger and thenproceeded to fill-up the fuel tanks in the wings with jet-fuel. However, the jet-fuel immediately startedleaking out of those wing-tanks all over the ground! Back into the hanger and start over!
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Okay, inside Edwards itself, largely to the east side ofEdwards and Rogers Dry Lake, was Leuhman Ridge, or the ‘Rocket Base’, where allof the Aerospace Contractors had their Rocket Test Pads and Facilities. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edwards_AFB) I’ll mention here a personalexperience regarding Edwards ‘Rocket Ridge’.On ‘Rocket Ridge’ is where one of the contractors was testing the F1Rocket, rated at 1.5 million-pounds-of-thrust, at that time the most powerfulrocket engine in the world. At nighttime, when they ‘fired off’ that F1 Engine on the test-pad, the flames could beseen for hundreds of miles across the Mojave Desert. Eventually, they took the F1 Engine and bundled it together with4 more F1’s, making 7.5 million-pounds-of-thrust, which was NASA’s Saturn 5Rocket, on which Apollo Flights later launched to the Moon.
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Otherwise, there was North Base, which, according to theabove Edwards Wiki link, is now a super-secret restricted-access base andsingle runway, with only one controlled-access road and an unknown ‘mist’shrouding the base, so that even the buildings cannot be seen on a clearday. The following is excerpted fromthe Edwards Wiki link above:
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Another element of Edwards' success has been its proximity to other U.S.military bases. Edwards is close to the major city of Los Angeles, but it isalso only a short flight south from Naval Air Weapons Station China Lake orNellis Air Force Base that houses Area 51. Very secret aircraft developed atEdwards or other bases can easily and secretly be flown to a nearby base on amoonless night for maintenance or testing. Air Force Plant 42 and other defenseresearch facilities in Palmdale are located only a few miles south of Edwards.The site of Lockheed Martin’s famous Skunk Works, Plant 42 contains Boeing andNorthrop Grumman aircraft manufacturing facilities as well. New, top-secretplanes are often built at Plant 42 and then flown to the Main Base fornight-time testing to maintain secrecy.
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However, when I was there in the ‘60’s, North Base was awide-open base, just like the rest of Edwards at that time. It was but a short drive north from the NASAHeadquarters building, or south off of the back-entrance road to Edwards, tothe North Base buildings. I rememberone time repairing a KWM-1 Collins Radio that was installed in a U-2 Spy Planethat was based there at North Base.(See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U-2_spy_plane) The Collins KWM-1 was the very sameHam Transceiver that I once owned myself, which was here being used in this spyplane, for its pilot to maintain round-the-globe communications. I remember when they rolled that U-2 outonto the runway. It was so small thatit was like a small one-person airborne sports car. The wings were so long that they had small wheels built into thewing tips, for the wings to roll upon.Out on the runway, the pilot ‘lit the burner’, rolled forward down therunway for just about a hundred foot or so, lifted the aircraft’s nose, andwent straight up into the clouds!
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I had responsibilities for all kinds of electronics andtelecommunications gear and facilities on Edwards, which I’m just going to listsome of here that I remember: Closedcircuit TV systems everywhere, including NASA and the Rocket Base; UHFBroadcast TV Translator Station, for local Edwards TV reception; NASAOptical-Telescope Outer Space Tracking System; all Base and auxiliaryHF-VHF-UHF communications transmitters/receivers, for Control Tower, Airfieldand Edwards Area & Test Range communications. I remember that one of the UHF Receiver sites was on the otherside of Rogers Dry Lake in the foothills of the Leuhman Ridge Rocket Basemountains. In order to get to thereceiver site, one had to either drive the long way around Rogers Lake bytaking the previously mentioned Edwards-Lancaster Road to South Base and thenup the Leuhman Ridge Road or else go directly across Roger Lake bed. Of course, Rogers Lake Bed was an AirTraffic controlled landing-area and therefore when we reached the lake-bed dirtroad-access just north of the NASA Headquarters, we always had to radio to theEdwards Control Tower for ‘clearance’ to cross the lake-bed. But the dirt-track trail across the lake wasonly a few short miles and a quicker passage than going around the lake.
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As to myclosed-circuit TV experiences, one that I remember especially, was on NASA’sX-15 test-pad and blockhouse on the edge of Rogers Dry Lake bed. They were planning to test-fire an X-15 thatday which was already strapped into the test pad on the ground on one side ofthe explosion-proof blockhouse which contained all of the controls for thetest, as well as the TV monitors by which the test-engineers could see the X-15on the test-pad outside of the blockhouse.Apparently there was some cabling-connection problem with one of theirTV cameras and I was called in to fix the problem. So there I was, in the approximately 120 degree heat of thedaytime temperature of that day-in-the-Mohave Desert, crawling up on theside-skin of that Black Bird ‘perched’ there on that test-pad, and repairingthe faulty connection on a TV camera that was poking-its-eye down into a smallaccess hole on that Black Bird’s ‘skin’, in order to watch a valve orsomething, that they wanted to observe while the X-15 was firing its rocket.
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I also rememberdesigning and installing an FM communcations system for Gen. Chuck Yeager, forhis Astronaut School trainees to wear while riding in circles in the super-fastrotating gyroscope-chamber at Edwards.And many other electronic projects, including the audio and loud-speakersystems on the Edwards Flight-line for the Annual Armed Forces Day Exhibits andDemonstrations at Edwards. (I usuallyset-up the entire display-exhibit, in one corner of the huge Hanger, of some ofour MARS Station gear, as well as installing an outdoor wire-antenna 20 Meterdipole on-the-roof of the Hanger, actually strung between the Hanger and theadjacent Airfield Control Tower. ThenI’d ‘operate’ the Collins S-Line ham gear during the ‘festivities’, showingvisitors typical ham radio ‘operations’, while another MARS member operated oneof the other ‘rigs’, checking in with other MARS ‘sys-ops’ on MARS frequencies,which were quite active for those special Armed Forces Day events.) Speaking of audio/loudspeaker systems, Ionce had to install and operate the audio system at the Edwards Officer’s Clubfor the special Dance and Live Performance by The Bob Crosby Big Band andOrchestra, one of ‘Der Bingle’s’ (Bing Crosby’s) famous sons.
Other than any and everything electronic at Edwards, I wasthe Chief Operator and Station Engineer of/for the Edwards Base MARS (MilitaryAffiliate Radio System) and Ham Radio Station, AG6AIR (MARS) and K6FCZ (Ham),and my own personal Call-Letters were AG6CAI (MARS) and K3CAI/6. Incidentally, when I was in the Philippinesearlier, my personal MARS Call-Letters were AI4CAI and the Clark Air Base MARSCall-Sign was AI4AIR. (In later years, when I became a resident of California,I applied to the FCC for new call-letters and was assigned the quite venerablecall-letters W6ITL, which I hold to this day.)I designed, engineered and personally installed the equipment andfacilities of the Edwards MARS/Ham Radio Station, the equipment and antennas ofwhich were already described hereinabove in the Radio Equipment section of myearlier and childhood years. So,hereinthefollowing I will merely note some of my Ham Radio operating‘experiences’ at Edwards that were somewhat ‘notable’. Oh, I also taught Ham Radio Classes forBeginners, every week for a while, in the main meeting room of the EdwardsStation, for a small number of local Edwards and Antelope Valley residents, whoattended my ham radio orientation classes, where I not only taught Ham RadioFundamentals but also conducted Morse Code practice sessions as well. (In those days, knowledge of Morse Code wasone of the requirements of obtaining an FCC Ham Radio License.)
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Okay, ham radio operating ‘experiences’… Well, I remember contacting/talking withjust about any and all ham radio operators on almost all of the Pacific Islandsand Alaska, as well as numerous other ‘contacts’ around the world, includingone ‘interesting’ contact with a UA call-letter ham station located on theremote Arctic island of Franz Josef Land, north of Siberia, in the ArcticOcean, which was probably a Communist KGB outpost and listening-station. I also remember running a ‘phone-patch’ forEL4B, who was President Tubman, the President of the African nation of Liberia(at that time). I also talked with anumber of celebrities, including K4LIB, ‘The Old Red-Head’, the Radio & TV Comedian-PersonalityArthur Godfrey. Also, another suchcelebrity was Jerry Lewis, the Radio-TV Comedian-Personality. I also talked with Capt. Kurt Karlsen, theCaptain of the U.S.S. Flying Enterprise, the luxury ocean liner that sank inthe Atlantic Ocean in the 1950’s, with the Captain remaining on board until thelast minute. Of course, he now wasCaptain of the new U.S.S. Flying Enterprise II, sailing in the Caribbean Seawhen I talked with him. Also,memorably, I had a contact with the Chief Op of the U.S.S. Thresher NuclearSubmarine, the famous Thresher that was ‘lost’ under the Arctic Ice Cap duringthe 1960’s. I’m not sure what kind oftechnologies they were using, but the Chief Op told me that they were operatingunder the Atlantic Ocean and that I would lose their signal soon, as they werejust ‘coming up’ to the surface and, lo and behold, I did then lose the signal!
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But my most memorable Edwards ham radio operating‘experiences’ were these: As justmentioned hereinabove, I was able to run ‘phone-patches’ with my equipmentthere at Edwards. Of course, in thosedays (of the 1960’s), there were no cellular or satellite telephones and hamradio was one of the few ways that ordinary folk could talk to relatives andothers elsewhere in the world, without having to pay the expensivelong-distance telephone charges. So, Iquite often found myself being asked by a ‘contact’, to run-a-phone-patch forthemselves or another person. Usuallysuch was no problem at all. I’d justuse my telephone land line to call someone anywhere in the U.S. that myradio-calling-party wanted to talk with, telling the person that answered thephone call, that whoever-it-was was calling them by ham radio, that I was theradio-operator and asking if that person would accept the charges from mystation in California, which they usually did.And quite often, I did run ‘phone-patches’ for a number of the Navy guysat the McMurdo Sound Naval Air Station, Antactica, not too far from the SouthPole. “Hello, Mrs. Johnson in Texas,this is the Radio Operator at Edwards Air Force Base in California. You have a call from your son Johnny at theSouth Pole. Will you accept thecharges?” “Oh, Yes!” “Okay, go ahead Johnny!” “Hi. Mom!I’m calling from the South Pole… Over!”“Mrs. Johnson, just say Over, when you are finished saying something,which is the signal to your son to begin talking!” And so did most phone-patches go!
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But, most memorably, one time when I was runningphone-patches for KC4USB, the Research Station at McMurdo Sound… see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMurdo_Station
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antarctica
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_P._Crary
when I had just finished a ‘patch’, all of a sudden therewas another radio station on the frequency-channel, who was calling mystation. It was KL7FDB, the Naval AirStation at Adak, Alaska…
see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adak_Airport
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Circle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic
out at the tip of the Aleutian Chain of Islands off Alaska,just south of the Arctic Circle in the Bering Sea. He said he’d been ‘reading the mail’ (which in ham lingo meanslistening-in-on-the-traffic-on-the-frequency) and he was just checking in withus. Well, I told him he was coming in abit weak, so I told him “Hang on and let me swing the beam around in yourdirection!” I swung our big Yagi Arrayaround from South to North and then called him again. Nothing! Then I figuredit out! I then immediately swung thebeam South again and called KL7FDB.There he was, just fine! I wasgoing over the South Pole and all the way around the Earth, to the NorthPole! I was talking with both the NorthPole and the South Pole at the same time!
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My other quite memorable contact was K7UIG/3, operatingportable in Washington, D.C. He heardme on the 20 Meter Ham Band one weekend and called me. I usually had a somewhat ‘elitist’calling-phrase that I used on-air, to wit: “QRZed the frequency (in ham lingo,QRZ means “Who is calling me?”)? Thisis Kilowatt 6 France Canada Zanzibar, K6FCZ, the Voice of the Air Force FlightTest Center, Edwards Air Force Base, California, the Home of the X-15! QRZed the frequency?” Well, then I heard him call me… “This isK7UIG/3 in Washington, D.C., and the Handle is Barry.” “How-Do, Barry, and how goes? The Handle here is Nels.” We talked for a few minutes, telling eachother about the ‘gear’ that we were ‘running’ (as is a common formality when aham-contact is first made) and then he asked if I had a phone-patch. I said, “Yep! Who’d ‘ya like to talk to out here?” He answered, “My old Friend, ‘Twig’ Branch!” Well, I certainly knew who ‘Twig’ Branchwas, who was the Commanding General of Edwards Air Force Base at thattime. “Well, hang on, Barry! Let me see if he is home!” I rang his home on-base and his sonanswered, who told me that he was not home at that time. I called Barry back and told him, “No go,Barry! He’s not home!” “Well, okay, Nels, let’s try another oldBuddy of mine, Chuck Yeager!” “Okay,Barry, hang on!” Of course, again Iknew who Chuck Yeager was, the Commandant of Edwards Astronaut School, withwhom I had ‘done business’ many times.I called Chuck’s home, but there was no answer. Calling Barry back, I told him, “Looks likeChucks not home either!” Well, we‘yakked’ about ham radio for another half-hour and then ‘signed-off’. Two weeks later, in the Edwards Base Maildelivery to the MARS Station, I got Barry’s QSO-card. (When hams contact each other, it is a polite confirmation ofthat contact, that they send each other a Post Card, via the regular U.S. Mail,with their Station Call-Letters, Operator’s Name and Station details of thecontact.) Barry’s QSO-card was from…Senator Barry Goldwater, then (in late 1963) the Republican Party Candidate forPresident of the United States!
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Barry Goldwater was the last ham radio contact that I haveever had, because by that time I was beginning to burn-out in my dedication toelectronics and ham radio. I wantedmore ‘socialization’ and contact with females, which I was not having in mydevotion to electronics and ham radio.As already mentioned hereinabove, I soon sold all of my ham radio gearand bought a brand new 1964 Triumph Spitfire Sports Car… see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_Spitfire from the local Triumph Dealer in Lancaster,California. That was October 5th,1963. In April, 1964, I received myassignment to Japan.
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I had been resisting reassignment because I liked it thereat Edwards, but I guess I knew that some day my number would be up. I had turned down 4 assignments already,including a quite interesting one where I would be ‘stationed’ at the U.S. AirBase at the Panama Canal, but then I would be issued a complete wardrobe ofcivilian clothing, several travel bags of necessary tools and supplies, and Iwould be sent traveling around South America, to U.S. Embassies and otherlocations, to maintain the U.S. telecommunications facilities around the SouthAmerican continent. But I turned itdown. Finally, I had to take the fifthoffer, to Japan.
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But first, as part of the assignment, I had to attend atwo-month long training school at Hughes Aircraft Company in Los Angeles. So, in April, 1964, there I was, with all mypacked bags, driving myself to Los Angeles and navigating the LA Freeways andtheir progressive lane-change requirements, which I soon grew adept at. In civilian attire, I checked into a Motelin Inglewood, California, just a few blocks from the Hughes Aircraft CompanySchool that I would be attending. TheMotel already had rooms reserved for myself and the other students that wouldbe attending school with me, all of which had already been arranged under amilitary housing contract with the Motel.So, I just parked my Spitfire in the parking lot and checked in.
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The next day I found out that the entire Hughes premiseswere under super-high security and that the Hughes telecommunications system thatI would be learning, was Top-Secret. (Ialready had a Top-Secret Clearance.) SoI spent my days in school and, sometimes, in the local niteclub next to theMotel. One of the rooms in the Motelwas shared by two Airline Stewardesses (which is what they were called in thosedays), with whom I got along quite well, although no ‘involvement’ everhappened between us, as we all realized that we were but ‘transients’ at thatMotel and therefore no one was really ‘open’ to anything more than anoccasional ‘roll-in-the-hay’. But I doremember that the beautiful blonde room-mate had a quirky Texas ‘drawl’ and shejust loved to use the expression, “Ah’s jus’ hawg ‘bout y’all!” As to the School and the Instructors, Iquite soon realized that these guys, who apparently knew all there was to knowabout this super-secret gear and were making lots of thousand-dollar billsevery month… in all reality, none of them knew as much about electronics andtelecommunications… as I did! Thatrealization was thusly instrumental, to my eventual ‘decision’, when I returnedfrom Japan two years later, to ‘resign’ myself from the Air Force and to seekout one of those high-paying civilian jobs, such as my Hughes Instructors had.
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After two months of school, I left Los Angeles and headednorth in my Spitfire (top down, of course!), up Interstate 395 toward Reno andNorthern California, all the while my car radio was playing all of the popularrock and surfing ‘hits’ of the Day, including my two favorites, by the BeachBoys…
“California Girls”
Well East coast girlsare hip
I really dig those styles they wear
And the Southern girls with the way they talk
They knock me out when I'm down there
The Mid-West farmer's daughters really make you feel alright
And the Northern girls with the way they kiss
They keep their boyfriends warm at night
I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California girls
The West coast has the sunshine
And the girls all get so tanned
I dig a french bikini on Hawaii island
Dolls by a palm tree in the sand
I been all around this great big world
And I seen all kinds of girls
Yeah, but I couldn't wait to get back in the states
Back to the cutest girls in the world
I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California
I wish they all could be California girls
I wish they all could be California
(Girls, girls, girls yeah I dig the)
I wish they all could be California
(Girls, girls, girls yeah I dig the)
I wish they all could be California
(Girls, girls, girls yeah I dig the)
I wish they all could be California
(Girls, girls, girls yeah I dig the)
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and by The Ramones…
“California Sun”
Well i'm going out west where i belong
Where the days are short and the nights are long
Where they walk and i'll walk they fish and i'll fish
They sin and i'll sin they fly and i'll fly
Where they're out there having fun in the warm california sun
Well, i'm going out west out on the coast
Where the california girls are really the most
Where they walk and i'll walk they fish and i'll fish
They sin and i'll sin they fly and i'll fly
Where they're out there having fun in the warm california sun
Well, the girls are frisky in old 'frisco
A pretty little chick wherever you go
And they walk and i'll walk they fish and i'll fish
They sin and i'll sin they fly and i'll fly
Where they're out there having fun in the warm california sun
Where they're out there having fun in the warm california sun
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I remember hitting all of the known ‘spots’ along the way,up that Route 395 Freeway into the Mojave Desert, the Northern CaliforniaMountains and beyond… Cajon Pass, north of San Bernardino; then past George AFBand Victorville; passing by the eastern edge of Edwards; through Four Corners(Kramer Junction); past the eastern reaches of California City (where I wouldlater buy some Mojave Desert properties!) and on to Johannesburg, Randsburg andRed Mountain (famous in California History as the largest gold and silverproducing mines in the United States back in the late 1800’s); crossing thefamous Twenty-Mule Team Borax Trail, from the old borax mines in Death Valleyto the railhead in Mojave, California.In later years, while visiting my desert properties in California Cityone year with my first family, I remember letting my 7 year-old step-daughterdrive the family car, on the dirt-road across the Desert and through CaliforniaCity (passing by my properties), that was the old Twenty Mule Team BoraxTrail. Continuing north in my Spitfire,past Ridgecrest and Inyokern (and Area 51!), going many, many miles into theHigh Desert Country of Eastern Northern California, passing Owens Lake (lots ofwhat looked like salt water flats), I finally stopped in Lone Pine. All along the road here, I could get an excellentview of the Sierra Nevada Mountain Range and Mount Whitney, the highestmountain in the continental United States.See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Whitney
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Continuing on from Lone Pine, passing the famous historicsite of Manzanar (where many Japanese-Americans were ‘interned’ during WorldWar II), passing through Independence and several small towns, in that HighDesert Valley of Eastern California that is the Owens Valley… (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Owens_Valley) between the High Sierra peaks of California to the west and the WhiteMountain peaks of Nevada to the east, I finally reached Bishop, California, atthe top of the Owens Valley. Route 395then turned more westward, as it proceeded north, past Mammoth Lakes… See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammoth_Lakes,_California (Years later, I visited Mammoth Mountainand the Devil’s Postpile with my family and actually walked down into theMammoth Mountain Earthquake Fault.)See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mammoth_Mountain_Ski_Area
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devil%27s_Postpile_National_Monument
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansel_Adams_Wilderness
passing Mono Lake and the cut-off road (State Route 120)across the Sierra Mountains, from Lee Vining, California to Yosemite NationalPark… See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sierra_Nevada_(U.S.)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yosemite_National_Park
I continued on through many mountainous passes and plateaus,rising up quite a bit in elevation.Bishop is about 4000 foot in elevation and northwest of Bishop, 395 justgoes up… in elevation. In fact, I hadbeen driving all day, but I was surprised when I glanced at the enginetemperature gauge on the dash of my car and saw that the engine temperature hadfallen to Cold! And I had just passed asign by the side of the road that said, “Elevation 8000 feet”! Yet I was quite comfortable and happy, inthat nice cold air that was blowing over me, in my top-down convertible SportsCar, wearing no coat at all but just my favorite dark grey-colored woolensweater. I was enjoying myself!
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North of Mono Lake is the town of Bridgeport and I wonderedwhere the water was, this high here in the mountains, but it turns out that thelocal reservoir is called the Bridgeport Reservoir. At Bridgeport, 395 turned west again for a little while beforeresuming its northerly pace. At TopazLake, 395 entered Nevada and quite a few miles more I was approaching theoutskirts of Carson City, Nevada. Inever went into either Carson City or Reno, but instead took the short-cut roadfrom 395 to South Lake Tahoe. After afew hours at Lake Tahoe (not sure whether I stayed overnight or not!), I thenheaded southwest from Tahoe on Interstate 50, across the Sierras through Placervilleto Sacramento, picking up Interstate 80 and then on to Travis Air Force Base atFairfield, California. I checked in atTravis and then drove my Triumph to an Overseas Shipper just off-base,presented my Shipping Authorization Orders for shipping my car to Japan, leftthe car and hitched a ride back onto Travis.The next day, I was on my plane to Japan. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_Air_Force_Base)
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At Owada Receiver site, I was soon put on a regular dutyschedule that was primarily repairing and maintaining the banks of rack-mountedCollins R-390A HF receivers that were installed in a large room. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R-390A) The R-390/R-390A had replaced theearlier military standard Hammarlund SP-600jx17 about 1954-55, one of which(the SP-600jx17) I myself had received surplus as a MARS member when I was inthe Philippines. Additional dutiesincluding acting as a backup engineer for the Receivers Control Operator, whowas the single person responsible for switching on-and-off-line the variousreceivers in that room and actually tuning those receivers to the correctoperational military frequency, the specific band of operation being dependentupon prevailing HF propagational conditions at any time of day or night. Because I was familiar (as a ham radiooperator) with HF radio propagation technologies and operating (I had alsogiven a speech, in my childhood 8th Grade Junior High School Classin Northampton, in which I had to get up on stage and make the ‘presentation’to my classmates in the school auditorium.I remember that my speech, at that time of my childhood, was entitled,“Forward Ionospheric Propagation in Radio Communications”), I was quite often aConsultant for the Receiver Control Operator, as a backup engineer in selectingthe proper frequencies to use in maintaining the critical radio communicationschannels and circuits used by all military services in Japan. As a corollary to the Owada site, theFunabashi Radio Transmitter site, on the far side of Tokyo Bay and Harbor, wasthe transmitting installation for all of these circuits. I visited the Funabashi site once, but I hadno responsibilities there. However, inmy private off-duty life, as a Member of the Tokyo Sports Car Club, I did raceon the Funabashi Grand Prix Race Track a few times.
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Off-duty, I would visit the small local Japanese bars on amain road through the local village, where there were a number of very nice andbeautiful Japanese girls, always dressed in the traditional Japanese kimonogarb. These bargirls were of thetraditional Japanese custom of Hostesses and were certainly not available asprostitutes. They were always mostfriendly and gracious, learning to speak rudimentary English quite readily andalways there to insure that any customer always had a most pleasant‘experience’ as a ‘customer’ of their establishment. Of course, some patrons, of both the local Japanese Nationals andvisiting Americans, sometimes got ‘drunk’, but such was tolerated and the localfolks were always friendly and helpful.I remember one time, after I had gotten my Triumph Spitfire, which Iusually just parked in front of any bar that I was visiting in the town, Ipersuaded one of the ‘girls’, a quite beautiful Japanese young woman, to‘go-for-a-ride’ with me one day, a sort-of ‘date’. She agreed and I remember picking her up at the roadside-entranceto a long dirt road to her family-home just outside of the town. (Apparently I was not intended to meet theparents or her family!) We drove aroundthe countryside for awhile on the local country roads and visited my Owadasite, where there was a large swimming pool near the fenced-in premises. I drove into the field alongside the fence,near the swimming pool, and it turned out that some other guys at the Site, hadthat very day, invited some other Japanese ‘Hostesses’, from another Club intown, to go swimming with those guys in the Owada swimming pool. I could see that my ‘Lady-Friend’ wassomewhat ‘perturbed’ by this somewhat ‘free-association’ by these bar-girlsfrom the other bar-club and so I drove off.I drove several miles to Fuchu, drove on-base and around the base for afew minutes, before finally stopping at the Base Cafeteria for a bite toeat. She was somewhat subdued throughall of this and I guess I finally realized that this very nice Japanesecountry-girl was, in all reality, yet a somewhat conservative and traditionalJapanese girl, who was definitely not enjoying nor comfortable with, theamenities and modern-life of an American-in-Japan. I drove her home and thanked her for the day. I guess I did yet occasionally see her, butonly in her Club.
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I’m going to insert here an observational comment withregard to the People, Society and Culture of the Japanese People and theirCountry. As I say, I found the Japaneseto always be friendly, helpful, courteous and respecting of all people,foreigners included. And this was to befound everywhere, from Tokyo and the big cities down to the smallest localvillage. It was, apparently, theirculture. Of course, history is repletewith Samurai, Ninja and War-Lords, as well as the Japanese Empire of World WarII, their Emperor and their Military-Industrial Complex. Yes, their Society has, at times, been ‘ledastray’, as so has ours. But I’ve foundtheir Society to be basically peaceful, accommodating to everyone, communal andegalitarian in nature. When I wasthere, there was no violence anywhere (other than a few isolated incidents withdrunken persons) and no one possessed or carried a gun or any weapon (it wasillegal), not even the Police. Therewere small one-man Police Kiosks along some roads, manned day and night by anon-duty Policeman, to ‘oversee’ his neighborhood, in case of fire, accident orsuch, but he had no gun. If he thoughtthat your car was speeding as it went by his booth (the speed limit was no morethan 35 mph anywhere), he merely blew his whistle at you and you were supposedto slow down. There were no Police‘patrols’ or vehicles anywhere and definitely not on major roads andhighways. Which might usually becongested with the daily traffic anyway, inching along at maybe 10 mph or elsestanding still! I remember it takingseveral hours one time, for me to travel the main highway from Tokyo toYokohama, which is actually only a relatively short distance. There is an elevated, somewhat narrow-laned‘Freeway’, between Tokyo and Yokohama, where the speed limit is an impressive50 mph. Of course, on the officialJapanese race-tracks, the speed is unlimited!
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Oh, one other thing.I had noticed, along one of the dirt roads through-the-fields aroundOwada, leading to the entrance and the very small village of but a few homesoutside of the Main Gate to Owada, that there was a sort-of squarish ‘pond’ atone point along that dirt road. I wasfinally told that it was the local ‘Benjo-pond’, or place where the local‘honey-bucket’ truck deposited its ‘load’.The ‘honey-bucket’ truck was a large truck with a large vacuum-tank andhose, that made its ‘rounds’ every day to all of the buildings in the town(including all of the clubs), to ‘vacuum-out’ the on-premises ‘lavatory’, ofthe ‘natural-refuse’. (This countrysideregion apparently had no community sewer system!) After the ‘honey-bucket’ truck had vacuumed out the single-seattoilet on the premises, it then refilled the toilet’s holding-tank with achemical solution. Then the truckfinally deposited it’s ‘load’ into the ‘honey-bucket-pond’ out in thecountryside, to naturally be absorbed into the ground and thusly providenutrients for the crops in the surrounding farmer’s fields. Also, all of the roads in this region, hadsmall and narrow ‘benjo-ditches’ along one side of every road. When a local was walking down the road, ifhe/she all of a sudden ‘felt’ the need to urinate, he/she would just walk overto the ‘benjo-ditch’ at the side of the road and urinate into the‘benjo-ditch’.
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Culture-wise… Well, not culture, but… I’m not sure what tocall it. Anyway, the ‘System’ alwaysseemed to work. The trains everywhereran-on-time, even the many trains that ran minute-by-minute, in a somewhatcircular Circuit, around the downtown areas of Tokyo, which were vital tomillions of everyday commuters. Whenyou drove, you drove on the left side of the road, as they do in England and onthe Continent. My Spitfire was equippedwith the driver’s wheel on the left-side, American-style, so it was a bitunusual to see a car equipped as such here in Japan, although I soon got usedto driving on the left-side of the road.I’ve had many unusual driving ‘experiences’ in Japan, some of whichperhaps I’ll remember here. I doremember seeing some unusual upside-down half-moon concrete ‘homes’ along someof the roads. But then I realized thatthese ‘homes’ had, once-upon-a-time during World War II, actually beenbunker-hangers, for individual Japanese Mitsubishi Zero Fighter Planes, whichwere individually dispatched to suburban areas, where they could becomeairborne quickly from the local road or highway, to fight in theskies-over-Japan. The roads andhighways of Japan were always in excellent shape and condition, for both localand long-distance driving and I enjoyed many driving ‘adventures’, on the roadsand highways in and around Tokyo, as well as over-land, throughout some of theareas of the Island of Honshu and it’s Prefectures, usually with the TokyoSports Car Club. I remember onememorable cross-country trip, which was an officially sanctioned road-raceacross Japan, stopping each night at a local Resort-Hotel accommodations, someof which were at beautiful-but-remote-locations along the Japanesecoastline. Each driver had a‘navigator/co-pilot’, who was responsible to read the maps and to follow theprinted-sheet of rules and directions for the race. Each car started from a designated Start-point and finished eachday at a designated Finish-point. Inbetween, the race directions might say, “Proceed down Route 312 for 7.4 milesat a speed of 30.5 mph. At the junctionof Route 47, turn right and go 3.4 miles at a speed of 15.7 mph. At the end of this travel-point, take thedirt-road turn-off to the left and go 15.9 miles at a speed of 25.3 mph.” Of course, to make things difficult, thedirt road was now a winding dirt road through the mountains where it was almostimpossible to maintain a speed of 25.3 mph.And so such were the race directions.Incidentally, at the end-of-the-day, of that somewhat difficult mountainous‘trek’ over the mountains to the Japanese coastline, the day’s Finish-line wasat a most beautiful small harbor and fishing village, that had a wonderfulResort-Hotel, with individual rooms equipped with tiled hot-spring ‘spas’, aswell as a large hot-spring communal ‘spa’ and a most wonderous Grand DiningRoom, with a single large dining-table and lots of delicious Japanese-cuisinedelicacies. Yes, everyone sat onpillow-seats on the hardwood floor.
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At this point, I might mention that I had obviously receivedmy Triumph Spitfire that had been ocean-shipped from the United States. While I was stationed at Owada, I receivednotice that my car had arrived in port at Yokohama. A co-worker at Owada, who knew the Japanese roads and territory,took me to Yokohama one day via the train and I picked up my car. When I first saw it sitting there on thedock, it looked somewhat miserable.Apparently it had ‘weathered’ both storms-at-sea as well as‘bumping-around’, either in-the-hold or on-deck, and it was dirty, along with adamaged rear tail lamp assembly. But itworked and I signed for it, my friend and I got in and we ‘navigated’ the localroads and highways back to Owada, taking a somewhat semi-rural short-cutthrough the hills and suburbs of Tokyo, straight from Yokohama to Owada, ratherthan the main highways.
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Back at Owada, I immediately filed a claim for the shippingdamages and soon received the insurance payment. I then drove my Spitfire to the Automotive Garage on Fuchu AirStation (or was it on Tachikawa Air Base?), where they re-painted my entire carin the original bright red color. So, Inow had my beautiful sports car back in pristine condition.
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As well as driving about the local Tokyo roads and areas ofJapan (as already noted hereinabove)… I also, with a Friend and co-worker andtwo beautiful young Japanese girls who lived-and-worked on-base at Fuchu AirStation, drove several times into the suburbs and hills on the other side ofthe Fuchu River (?), where there was a large Disneyland-like Amusement Park,sponsored by Honda, that had mini-road-races, ferris wheels, lots of otherrides, attractions and displays, just like Disney land. One of the girls sat in my friends lap, inmy two-seater sports car, and the other stuffed herself into the package-shelfbehind the two seats. Damn, ‘my girl’(of the two) was really beautiful and to this day I can remember her!
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I had joined the Tokyo Sports Car Club. The Tokyo Sports Car Club (TSCC) was avenerable old car club (which is not the nowadays Tokyo Car Club) that wasoriginally founded and started at the end of WWII during the JapaneseOccupation Period, by a small number of American Servicemen who were stationedin Japan and who enjoyed sports cars and sports-car racing. The TSCC had a wonderful small car badgewith wings, that somewhat indicated the old Army Air Force origins of the clubitself. It eventually had members ofJapanese Nationals, American and other foreigners. We usually met for business meetings on-base somewhere and forcar-events wherever convenient. I waseventually appointed the Competition Chairman, for the TSCC race-events. One of our primary race-events was held onthe airfield taxi-ways and aircraft parking areas of Chofu Airfield, See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chofu_Airport,which at that time was a little-used civilian airfield facility located inChofu City, just east of Fuchu Air Station.A few other members of the TSCC and myself, laid out a winding racetrack, using many yellow rubber road pylons, which resembled a downsizedversion of the Grand Prix of Monte Carlo, Monaco. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monaco_Grand_Prix) Quite a number of local Nationals andAmericans attended and it was an enjoyable event.
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As noted hereinabove, I also enjoyed several other eventswith the TSCC, including the cross-Japan road-race already noted. There were several Grand Prix Racing Tracksin Japan, including the just-built Fuji Speedway, under the overlookingauspices of Mount Fujiyama, south of Tokyo (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fuji_Speedway), the Suzuka Circuit (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suzuka_Circuit) and the Funabashi Circuit, which I have already mentioned earlier (no longerin operation). By that time I hadapplied for and received my FIA (Class B) International Grand Prix RaceDriver’s License and I was thusly qualified to drive in any Grand Prix Raceanywhere in the world. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIA) I also, one time, raced my sports caron the taxiway at Tachikawa Air Base, sponsored by the local Hot-Rod andDrag-Racing Club. I had bought andinstalled a device on my dashboard by which I could manually, from the cockpit,rotate-and-adjust the timing of the carburetor on the engine of my car andthat, together with the Engine Choke Control on my dashboard, enabled me tofine-tune both the engine-timing and fuel-mixture of my engine for optimumspeed-and-performance, merely by making several trial-runs on the track. Also, interestingly, my engine was but1100cc in displacement but, for some reason, that put me into a racing-classwith large V8 Chevy and Ford drag machines.As a consequence, my light-weight-and-quick sports car won every drag racethat they entered me into and I walked away with the Grand-PrizeTrophy-of-the-Day for that Class!
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Back at the telecommunications reason for my assignment toJapan, after but a month or so at Owada, the ‘people-upstairs’ at my Fuchu AirBase squadron headquarters, finally realized that they had mis-assigned me andthat I was really supposed to be assigned to Fuchu itself, in the MaintenanceSection for the Airways-Command-and-Control Center (ACCC) which was locatedthere at Fuchu. The Fuchu ACCC, waslocated on the top floor of the Fifth Air Force Headquarters building. Fuchu was the Fifth Air Force Headquarters,for all U.S. Air Force and military airways activities in the entire WesternPacific Region and the Fuchu ACCC was the long-distance Supervisory-and-ControlCenter for all military aircraft flights, all the way from the South Pole tothe North Pole, in those Western Pacific Ocean territories. At Fuchu, I performed maintenance duties onall of the regular telecommunications circuits and channels and evendesigned-engineered technical improvements for the operational capabilities ofthe ACCC on-the-air airways operators.(For which I duly received official commendation therefor.)
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I also remember ‘servicing’ three other somewhat-secret‘operations-rooms’ at Fuchu. The firstone was a room of all Japanese Nationals, who wore headsets and were intently‘operating’, or listening to, the ‘equipment’ in front of them. It was very sensitive radio receivers (Idon’t remember where the antennas were located for these receivers.), that theywould precisely ‘tune’ themselves. Theywere listening to the high frequency CW (Morse Code) communications networksand sites that China was using at that time to communicate across the greatdistances of the Chinese nation. Theywere ‘code-readers’ and their daily ‘logs’ were analyzed by the Fifth AirForce.
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The second ‘operation’ was a facsimile (fax) ‘operation’,where we had to maintain the early fax ‘machinery’ that was in use. The ‘operators’ were actually WeatherOperations personnel and every few hours, they would ‘access’, or receive, thedown-load ‘broadcasts’, of the recorded-from-space weather-conditions maps,that were ‘broadcast’ from the early Tiros and Nimbus Weather Satellites. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TIROSand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nimbus_program
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The third ‘operation’ was the huge computer-room at Fuchu,with a direct-communications link to the Main Air Force Weather Computer, backin Oklahoma. From this computer-room,weather information world-wide was disseminated or distributed to all EasternPacific Theater-of-Operations Airbases and Facilities. This was 1964-5-6 and the very firstcomputers were massive pieces-of-machinery that occupied entire rooms and more,and were called (after the manufacturer thereof such computers)… UNIVAC. My responsibility was not the UNIVAC itself,but merely to maintain the data-link telecommunications equipment thatconnected this UNIVAC to the main UNIVAC back in Oklahoma.
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But, my primary responsibilities were for the super-secretHughes telecommunications equipment that had been installed there in the ACCCand was just being initially field-tested when I arrived at Fuchu. I took over access to the equipment andassistance to the Civilian Tech-Rep who was doing the field-testing, as well asthe maintenance thereof. I can only saythat, at that time, in 1964-5-6, that Hughes technology was on the cutting-edgeof digital-telecommunications technology, although it was accordingly done so,in the predominant not-yet-miniaturized circuitry-and-technology that was tofollow and therefore the cabinets that contained the mounted-racks of theequipment itself, were quite large. AsI have said elsewhere, with that technology and the maintenance thereof, I wasa ‘member’ of a somewhat exclusive ‘cadre’ of 18 Servicemen, all trained atHughes Aircraft in Los Angeles and working for the U.S. Air Force’s top-secretSecret Service (AFSS) and we were thusly, with our Telecommunicationsequipment-and-System… responsible for the ‘operation’ of the U.S. President’s‘Football’, the ‘Briefcase’, which, in effect, contained the Launch Codes andthe infamous ‘Red Button’, to launch the nuclear bombers and missiles, of theNuclear-Readiness-Forces of the United States!In other words, if the President had ever wanted toPress-that-Red-Button… and something didn’t work… Well, My-Ass-Was-Grass! Years later, tears would often come to myeyes, when I would ‘reflect’ upon the fact that I ‘had-been-there’, and hadbeen somewhat ‘responsible’, for the possible nuclear annihilations and deaths,that might have occurred!
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Off-duty again, I yet had my Triumph Spitfire SportsCar. By the time I was re-assigned toFuchu, I had ordered, from England, a fiberglass Hardtop that was available forthe Spitfire. The price of the Hardtopwas $150, but the Shipping Charges, from England to Japan, were $200. I eventually received my shipment and pickedit up from the Receiving Agent in downtown Tokyo (Butterfield, Ltd., as Iremember!), directing them to have it delivered to me at Fuchu AirStation. At Fuchu, I installed it on mycar myself and then drove the car to the Automotive Garage, where they then paintedthat hardtop to match the red color of the car. At the same time, I had the wheels of the car painted ayellow-gold in color. The reason beingis that I also had some rolls of 6 inch wide gold-yellow sticky-tape stripingthat was to be applied to the outside of the car. After the hardtop had been painted, I then applied thegold-yellow stripes, in two rows, down the very center of the car, from thefront-of-the-hood to the rear-bonnet of the car, which now included a rearspoiler-grid, as an integral part of the hardtop, authentically making thevehicle look almost like a famous Ferrari GTO race car! Of course, the now red-and-gold colors werethe international racing-colors of the United States Racing Team, although Iwas not a member thereof.
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I drove that beautiful Triumph-Ferrari all over Japan(actually Tokyo and local Honshu areas), many times parking it street/roadsidein small Japanese villages, where the locals would look at it admiringly andcome up to ask me about it (“How fast does it go?”) and often parking it‘on-the-strip’, the bar-strip on the road just outside of the main gate atFuchu, where there were a number of bars and the beautiful Japanese-girlHostesses thereof. Thesecity-bar-hostesses were not of the more traditional bar-hostesses that I havealready mentioned in my time spent at Owada, who wore the Traditional JapaneseKimono and were quite conservative in their ‘attitudes’. These city-bar-hostesses were more modern,city-girls, who wore modern women’s clothing and were certainly willing to doany and everything ‘with a guy’, whether ‘paid’ or not! I remember one beautiful Japanese bar-girl,who one time accompanied me, late one evening, to a small Japanese country-sidehotel that she knew of, not too far from Fuchu. I parked the Triumph on the dark roadside outside of the hoteland we went in. She negotiated for aroom, which we were led to on the second floor of the building. In the room, she showed me the casual robethat customers wore and we undressed and put on the robes. Then she led me downstairs to a small roomthat contained a small spa. Un-robing,we spent some time in the quite warm waters of the spa, where she ‘washed’ meand I ‘washed’ her, a most enjoyable ‘ceremony’. After a while, we put the robes on and she led me back to ourroom, where we ‘made Love’ for the next hour or so, before finally fallingasleep in each other’s arms. About themiddle of the next morning, the hotel provided a light breakfast-on-a-tray toour room. By late morning, I drove herback to Fuchu. It was a most pleasant‘experience’ and I saw her a few more times at her place-of-business bar, butwe never again had a sexual ‘escapade’.Sometime shortly after that, I had my ‘fateful’ day.
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I had been to some bars east of Fuchu toward Tokyo with afriend that I worked with and we had had a few drinks. I was driving home, back to Fuchu, on anarrow country road. As I understandwhat happened, my car was side-swiped by a large Japanese gravel truck, andsince I was probably traveling too fast for such a rural road, my car wasknocked sideways and went off the road, into a telephone pole, with the carhitting the pole with the driver’s door and myself at the point-of-impact andthen somewhat wrapping itself (the car) around me and the telephone pole. As I understand, it was exactly 7PM in theevening, of October 5th, 1965… exactly two years to-the-minute, fromwhen I had originally picked up that car from the Triumph Dealer in Lancaster,California, at 7PM on October 5th, 1963!
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Two weeks later, I woke up in the Tachikawa Hospital, in theIntensive Care Ward, with a beautiful blonde Nurse looking after me. (That is two weeks of my Life that I have nomemory of!) I had a head concussion, abroken left arm and a fracture of my pelvic structure. They had inserted a long screw into my leftarm from the elbow, to hold the broken bone together (which was never removed,but has never been felt nor bothered me over the years) and the head concussionjust ‘fixed itself’. As to my brokenpelvis, I could definitely feel it and I could not lie on my back at all due tothe pain of the crack. So they had melying on a fur-pad on the bed and I could only lie on one side of my body withminimum pain. But once, as I was movingmy body around to try to get comfortable, all of a sudden I felt the bones‘snap-back-into-place’. The crackhealed itself together and I never had any problems with it. Of course, besides the daily hospitaltherapy-sessions, to learn to walk again, and after I finally got out of thehospital, it was late 1965 and Rock ‘n Roll was everywhere, so I’d spend myevenings ‘exercising’ my hips-and-pelvic-structure, by discoing-the-nite away,shaking my hips back-and-forth to the Rock ‘n Roll and other tunes of the Day! But especially I remember, when I woke up inthe hospital and while I was a patient there, the Top C&W tune of 1965 was…
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One fineday as I was a-walkin' down the street "May the bird of paradise fly up your nose" The laundry man is really on his toes "May the bird of paradise fly up your nose" I was way behind one day to catch the train "May the bird of paradise fly up your nose" "May the bird of paradise fly up your nose" "May the bird of paradise fly up your nose"
Spied a beggar man with rags upon his feet
Took a penny from my pocket
In his tin cup I did drop it
I heard him say as I made my retreat
"May an elephant caress you with his toes"
"May your wife be plagued with runners in her hose"
"May the bird of paradise fly up your nose"
Found a hundred-dollar bill among my clothes
When he called me I came a-runnin'
Gave him back his dime for phonin'
I heard him sayin' as I turned to go
"May an elephant caress you with his toes"
"May your wife be plagued with runners in her hose"
"May the bird of paradise fly up your nose"
Taxi driver said "We'll make it just the same"
The speed cop made it with us
And as he wrote out the ticket
I stood by politely a-waitin' for my change
"May an elephant caress you with his toes"
"May your wife be plagued with runners in her hose"
"May the bird of paradise fly up your nose"
"May an elephant caress you with his toes"
"May your wife be plagued with runners in her hose"
"May the bird of paradise fly up your nose"
"May an elephant caress you with his toes"
"May your wife be plagued with runners in her hose"
"May the bird of paradise fly up your nose"
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After I got out of the hospital, in late 1965, I spent a fewmonths yet at Fuchu, during which I visited a few bars on the Fuchu ‘strip’ andgot my now-healing hip into ‘shape’ by ‘twisting-the-night-away’, listening anddancing to, Rock n Roll and Twist tunes.During this time at Fuchu, I saw the twisted remains of my Spitfire,which had been deposited in a vacant lot on base at Fuchu. I soon sold the Spitfire wreck to anothermember of the TSCC for the salvage value of $200 and the last time that I sawthat Spitfire, it was in a restoration garage outside of Fuchu, with thechassis being straightened out and the vehicle being restored. Apparently the engine and transmission wereyet in good shape, so it was certainly viable for more racing years ahead. But one day, I went down to Tokyo andvisited the local Japanese Triumph Dealer.I paid that Dealer $500 and placed an order for a brand-new Stage TwoFIA Triumph Race Car, to eventually be delivered to me in the U.S., at addressas yet unknown. (I hadn’t ‘learned mylesson’ yet, as to ‘machinery’ in my Life, even though I had just been‘delivered-from-the-dead’!) TheStage-Two Racing Triumph was a pure racing machine and with my FIA License, Ithought that I would further pursue my racing career back in the U.S. As it turned out though, by the time Ireturned to the U.S. and finally got my new job at Lenkurt, my Life waschanging and I was also getting ‘mixed signals’ from Triumph. A Triumph Representative, who was assignedto handle my order, finally informed me that Triumph would not sell a Stage TwoTriumph for delivery in the U.S. because, apparently, Triumph had no‘facilities’ in the U.S. for ‘proper-maintenance’ of such a racing‘machine’. It was suggested that Ipurchase another Triumph product. Bythat time, the new Triumph GT6 was available and I reluctantly changed my orderto a GT6, to be delivered to San Francisco.See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_GT6
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While also yet at Fuchu, as my last temporary assignment inJapan (I had declined re-enlistment), I was temporarily assigned to a remotetelecommunications site at Sendai in Northern Honshu, Japan, where there was ahuge VHF Forward-Scatter Telecommunications Facility and for a few months I wasthe Tech Rep on the site. Since I wasthe only American at the site, which was completely manned by local JapaneseNationals, I was housed at a nice Hotel in Downtown Sendai and every morning Icould call for a local pre-paid taxi to take me through the city streets and upthe local mountain to the site on top of the mountain.
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The site had many racks of telecommunications gear that Isoon become familiar with and a very large VHF array antenna, with very largevhf-frequency microwave transmission-line wave-guides that were enclosed insteel-waveguide-walls. The whole sitewas powered by a huge on-site stationary power generator, that used a veryfast-spinning and electronically regulated ‘drum’, as an interface between twohuge generators, insuring that operational power to the complex would not bedisrupted if the local-area main power grid were disrupted and lost power.
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Evenings I explored the city of Sendai, visitinglarge-semi-outdoor-but-covered-overhead ‘farmers-markets’, as well as a fewlocal nightclubs, where there were numerous beautiful Japanese girls. I remember, in some of the clubs, the Men’sRoom and Ladies Room were one-and-the-same.I ate my meals in the exclusive Hotel Dining Room, where the selectionand cuisine were excellent. As a majorJapanese city, I remember that the local radio stations that were available inmy hotel room, were very multinational, with programs in several languages, andthe TV programs had several stations in English as well.
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Returning to Fuchu, I had little time left in my Air Forcecareer. Over the past months, I had sentout hundreds of Resumes and Letters, to numerous electronics-telecommunicationscompanies all over the United States.Quite different from the usual prevailing employment situation today, bythe time I was to leave Japan, I had received over 200 return letters fromcompanies all over the U.S., inviting me to apply for employment with theirfirm. So, on April 12th,1966, I flew in a crowded-and-small Northwest Airlines Boeing 707, one of thefirst commercial jetliners, from Tachikawa Air Base to Travis Air Base, via asemi-polar air-route, stopping enroute at Elmendorf Air Base, Anchorage,Alaska. Arriving at Travis Air Base, Iwas officially discharged from the Air Force on April 14th, 1966.
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The Job Search
I took the by-now-familiar shuttle-bus from Travis to SanFrancisco Airport. An incidental itemhere, but while I was at SFO, I just happened to have lunch withfuture-Governor-of-California Ronald Reagan.I was having lunch in a leather-seat booth in the SFO Dining Roomoverlooking the airfield tarmac when Ronald Reagan and his aides came in andensconced themselves into the dining booth right next to mine. I recognized the gentleman but I did notattempt to engage him.
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While at SFO, I rented a Hertz rental car. I spent a day or so, checking in withseveral Bay Area companies that wanted to see me, interviewing, taking theirqualification tests and then telling them that I’d think about what they wereoffering me. I remember then drivingall-night, down 101 and over to Route 99 down the San Joaquin Valley and overthe Angeles Mountains to Los Angeles.(I don’t remember that Interstate 5, down to Los Angeles, had yet beenbuilt at that time.) In Los Angeles,Long Beach, Huntington Beach and several other places, I interviewed withCollins Radio, Hughes Aircraft and other companies. I had invitations from companies in San Diego (not sure whether Iwent there) as well as Boeing in Seattle, but I never got to Seattle. After several more days, I got on a plane(not sure if from LAX) and flew to Philadelphia. At the Philadelphia Airport, I rented a car and drove theyet-familiar Pennsylvania highways and back roads, to my grandparents farm inthe Wassergass east of Hellertown, Pennsylvania. I had written my parents and I knew that they were staying thereon the farm. Both of my grandparentshad passed away by then, my father had retired from the Bethlehem Steel and nowwas advertising in the international newspapers, for a well-heeled executive topurchase the farm as a country retreat.I stayed with my parents a few days, during which I turned in my rentalcar and borrowed my father’s car. Hehad a 1960 Chevy Bel Aire, having sold my childhood ‘ride’, a 1956 Chevy BelAire… in those days, of the ‘50’s and ‘60’s, it seemed that it was the custom,that every family would buy a new car about every three years, my Dad havinghad a ’46, a ’49, a ’52, and a ’56 Chevy.The local town auto dealer-garage-gas station was a Chevy dealer who wasalso a member of one of my Dad’s civic clubs and my Dad also parked his carevery night in the dealer’s garage in a space that the dealer provided for myDad. Actually, our car could be parkedanywhere in the garage and the keys left in the car, so that garage personnelcould move the car anytime if they needed the space. My Dad and I could just walk in the garage at any time and driveout in our car. Needless to say, thegarage was but a short three block walk from our home. Anyway, I drove north to Binghamton, NewYork, where I interviewed with the company that made all of theflight-simulators and such for NASA and others. I remember that they had offered me a position as Engineer 1,with the chance to ‘work-my-way-up’ to the highest engineering position in thecompany, Engineer 4, which paid about $10,000 a year, at that time in1966. I also telephone inquired withtwo television manufacturing companies in New Jersey but I never wentthere. I guess by now it was almost twoweeks that I had been out-of-the-Service.I needed a job some time soon.So, I reviewed all my prospects and then called long-distance to LenkurtElectric in San Carlos, California, that I would accept their offer. I then got myself to the PhiladelphiaAirport (not sure how, as I had turned in my rental car… or did I?), flew toSFO, rented a Hertz rental car and checked in with Lenkurt. The next day I started, as a top-levelSystems Technician-Analyst, at the fabulous salary of $3.96 an hour, which wasnot only the highest salary at Lenkurt at that time (1966) but also, as far asI could determine, the highest salary in the entire United States, for myqualifications.
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Lenkurt Electric (GTE)
The chronological time here is nowJune of 1966… and I must say here and now, that much of the following years aresomewhat of a ‘blur’ to me, in that I had so many ‘failures’ and ‘disasters’ inmy Life, both personally and professionally, that there are quite a number ofincidents and the details thereof… that, frankly, I don’t really want to thinkabout or remember, in the ‘sorrow’ that said ‘experiences’ have caused me. And yet, through it all, I can truly say,that I ‘found myself’… with “A Little Help From My Friend!”… the GuyUpstairs! In fact, I have written aboutit, on my webpage at:
https://www.angelfire.com/ca/sanmateoissues/Qualia98.html
Here’s an excerpt therefrom:
- And why I say that it 'comes hard to me', is that I was, once upon a time, just like much of humanity, 'addicted' to money! And possessions, antiques, cars, homes, things... any thing to 'show off', to embellish-my-personal-status and which, of course had, and related thereto, money and monetary value! (Which is, accordingly, the ‘norm’ of American Society and Reality!)
- Well, as I have honestly written and admitted thereto, I went bankrupt, both personally and professionally, and lost everything! But, there I yet was, trying to 'hold on to things', to the very last moment! "And WHAT, exactly, was the 'very last moment'?"
- Well, that was when, I finally realized that 'Someone Upstairs', was trying to tell me something! Which was... "Let Go, and Let It Be!" (Just like the Beatles song!) And not only that, but to absolutely make sure that I definitely 'got the message', He, the Guy Upstairs, did something that was to the ultimate benefit for this guy, myself, who was yet just 'trying to hold on', to any and everything that I could! "And WHAT did He do?" He took it all away from me! Everything! I lost it all, down to the very clothes on my back!
But, I ‘picked myself up’ and wenton with my Life, in whatever Life did ‘present’ to/for me! In some of the following details, thechronological order may be out-of-order, because I will be ‘telling’ suchdetails as my mind might so remember at this time. And such ‘memories’ might be of bad ‘experiences’ or they mightbe of good ‘experiences’. Yes, I guessI have had a few good experiences.Anyway, here goes.
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Telecommunications and otherprofessional ‘jobs’
See: http://www.yelp.com/biz/gte-lenkurt-corporation-san-carlos#hrid:XpFn7F7DUT6sRDg6C_o8kA/src:self
As a Telecommunications SystemsAnalyst at GTE Lenkurt, in San Carlos, California, I primarily performed FinalTest and Analysis of all kinds of telecommunications systems, as well asdigital systems and other control-and-communications systems that GTE Lenkurtdesigned and manufactured. It is aninteresting by-point here that, of the two largest manufacturers in the world(at that time) of telecommunications systems, GTE (General Telephone &Electronics) and Bell Labs, I happened to go to work for GTE Lenkurt inCalifornia, when the very same kind of manufacturing facility (WesternElectric), for telecommunications equipment for the Bell System, was locatedbut 9 miles from my home in Pennsylvania, in Allentown, Pennsylvania. I don’t remember whether the Bell Labs wereincluded with the 200 some ‘invitations’ that I had received for employmentinterviews when I was discharged from the Air Force.
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Here are some of the GTE LenkurtSystems that I remember participating in the Final Analyses thereof:
<![if !supportLists]>1.<![endif]>First Earth Station (telephone lines and all othertelecommunications, television and digital circuits, connecting earth satellitesystems to ground terminus systems) for such as: Beijing, China; Bangladesh;Alaska; Africa and others.
<![if !supportLists]>2.<![endif]>Telephone, microwave, TV, digital, for GTE and independenttelephone systems, across the U.S. and worldwide.
<![if !supportLists]>3.<![endif]>Telecommunications and control systems for the Bonneville DamProject.
<![if !supportLists]>4.<![endif]>Telecommunications and more for NASA.
<![if !supportLists]>5.<![endif]>Telecommunications and control for the Nationwide High-VoltageElectric-Power Grid. I remember anumber of the High-Voltage Line-Grid Switching Systems.
<![if !supportLists]>6.<![endif]>Digital control systems for the Diablo Canyon Nuclear PowerStation in California. These digitalsystems were designed by PG&E and manufactured by Lenkurt. I remember having problems with theoperation of these systems, in that PG&E had incorporated three (3)separate ‘Ground-Return Buses’, which presented the problems. However, PG&E ‘okayed’ suchinconsistent-operations and later, Diablo Canyon was reported to have numerousoperational difficulties upon installation.
<![if !supportLists]>7.<![endif]>Digital control and telecommunications for several RailwayCompanies. I remember especially adigital system that had ‘sensors’ along-side of railroad tracks, that coulddetect ‘hot-box’ wheels on the railcars (hot-overloaded bearings) as a trainwent by, signaling the data to the next train-stop, to be repaired or replaced.
<![if !supportLists]>8.<![endif]>Television Channels (microwave and satellite), for thecoast-to-coast TV Networks.
<![if !supportLists]>9.<![endif]>Other electronic Control Systems.
I worked for GTE Lenkurt for 12½years.
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I also, sometime after I had leftGTE Lenkurt, worked for several years for Harris-Farinon Division in SanCarlos, where I was the Vice Director of Quality Assurance for the Company,reporting directly to the General Manager-President. However, before being nominated for the Quality Assuranceposition, I was part of the Development Team that developed and manufacturedone of the first cellular-telephone technologies. Harris-Farinon was also a manufacturer of world-wide telephoneand telecommunications systems, for such places as Texas and Saudi Arabia, andI remember Harris-Farinon being the system-manufacturer of the entire EXXONtelecommunications system.
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At one time, when I was firsthomeless and living-in-my-car, for several months I worked a temporary job forthe Telecommunications Division of San Mateo County, California, maintainingall of their microwave, police/sheriff radios and office telephonesystems. I remember also installing thefirst county-wide mobile-radio system for the county’s under-covernarcotics-control officers. It wasinstalled secretly in under-cover ordinary-looking cars and was ascrambled-rolling-code technology system.I would go to work daytime in the ‘Radio Shop’ and after work, I’d getin my car and spend the rest of the evening at my favorite local C&W‘honky-tonk’ nightclub, enjoying live ‘good-ole-country-music’, until about2AM, then go out to my car in the parking lot and go to sleep in my car, untilabout 8AM, when I then left for my ‘job’ at 9AM. On weekends, I’d drive to San Jose sometimes or elsewhere, tosuch nightclubs as Cowtown and The Saddle-Rack, again sleeping in my car intheir parking lots.
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Since I had, along the way of myLife, also obtained a First Class Truck Driver’s License, such a qualificationone time got me a temporary job for a few months as a Refuse Collection Driver,picking up trash/refuse from residential routes in the City of Sunnyvale,California.
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A ‘job’ that I somewhat enjoyed,during the years of my first homelessness, was, for quite some time, drivingLimousines, for 5 different Limo Companies here in the Bay Area. I was an IndependentContractor-Driver-Chauffeur, with credentials from the professionallimo-driver’s ‘college’, The Institute For Professionals and I always wore animpressive very-thin-dark-brown-striped black charcoal suede suit, blackparson’s shirt and black tie, and a professional black English-Livery-Driver’scap. All-in-all, I looked quiteimpressive, standing there (sometimes), almost ‘at-attention’, on the sidewalkin-front-of-my-limo, parked almost at the very front of the St. Francis Hotelon Union Square in San Francisco, awaiting the return of myparty-of-the-evening, who were having dinner inside of the St. Francis. Passers-by on the sidewalk in front of theSt. Francis stopped to offer compliments and to inquire of my services. (One ‘group’ of quite beautiful ‘gals’ cameby one time, walking down the sidewalk, on their way to the entrance to the St.Francis, but I was taken aback when one of the ‘gals’ spoke to me in a verydistinctive and deep masculine voice, saying, “How are you?”) I usually gave out my ‘business-card’, afour-fold card with info on four sides, with the phone numbers of the five limocompanies that I drove for. Usually,the limos were either gold-plated Cadillacs or elegant silver-and-grey Lincolns,all of them of the stretch or extra-stretch variety. I did a few ‘airport runs’, but very few.
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Mostly, I usually preferred eitherthe Night-on-the-Town (usually in San Francisco) ‘gigs’ or the longTrips-to-the-Wine-Country, although one ‘gig’ had me taking a young BirthdayGuy and his wife, on a trip to his hometown in the San Joaquin Valley. It was someplace east of Fresno or Lodi andby the time we arrived there, it was after midnight and the place was‘dead’. We ‘cruised’ the streets androads for an hour or so, looking for his friends, but finding no one tocelebrate his birthday, so it was back to the Bay Area, arriving back inRedwood City about 4AM.
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Another ‘gig’ was a 2-limo Party offemale executives of a San Francisco Market Street Clothing Company, who wantedto have an executive dinner at the Silverado Country Club in the NapaValley. A few hours driving time thereand back, and they were ‘happy’… and a bit inebriated, from both the dinnerwine and the complimentary-bottles-of-champagne in the limos.
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Another ‘gig’, I picked up severalfemales at a restaurant parking lot in Hayward and drove them to their‘dinner-spot’, which was the highly-acclaimed ‘Most Romantic Restaurant inNorthern California’, the Shadowbrook Restaurant, alongside the Soquel River inSoquel, California, south of Santa Cruz.At the Shadowbrook, your Party gets to the restaurant by taking acable-car down the nicely-landscaped steep cliffs to the restaurant, which sitson the banks of the Soquel River. Myfirst wife and I ate there one time and the Chateaubriand was delicious. Come to think of it, all those women weregoing to ‘The Most Romantic Restaurant’ with no males-in-attendance. But, perhaps they didn’t ‘need’ any males,for a ‘Romantic Interlude’!
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One of my Wine-Country-Trips Iremember well. I picked up the couplein Oakland, who wanted to ‘tour-the-Wine-County’ and paid-in-advance for an 8hour ‘tour’. After driving to the WineCountry and visiting several wineries, after a few hours they were already‘burnt-out’ on wineries. I suggested thatthey see the Wolf House, Jack London’s famous home, just over-the-hill fromWine Country, in the Sonoma Valley at Glen Ellen. We drove there and they looked at the place for abouthalf-an-hour. Apparently they were not‘literary people’ and I could tell that they were not impressed by Jack Londonand his burnt-out home and stone cottage.We drove slowly north up the Sonoma Valley and crossed over the hills toSt. Helena and the top of the Napa Valley.I drove slowly through a few more wineries, driving south through theNapa Valley, but they didn’t want to stop at any of them. I wound up driving south along the side of amajor Napa Valley road with all the traffic passing us by. Another hour of a slow return to the BayArea and Oakland and the committed 8 hour ‘tour’ was complete. I don’t think I asked for a tip.
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Another ‘gig’ to the Wine Countrywas more pleasant, with a quite beautiful blonde ‘companion’ driving the 2ndlimousine of our Party. We got to afamous Wine Country restaurant and I somewhat sheepishly couldn’t find theentrance to the place, which was off-the-main-road, across the Napa ValleyTrain tracks, on a side road. We gotthem into the restaurant and after the Party was seated, they graciouslyordered additional meals to be served to myself and the other driver. So, there I was, partaking of a quitenice-and-elegant meal, at a patio-seating table, with my beautiful blonde‘companion’ seated opposite me, attired in her quite nice female-limo-driver’swhite-and-black-ensemble suit, complete with a cute red bowtie. I guess I didn’t try to make any ‘points’with her, as I think I remember that she was married.
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Many of my ‘gigs’ were to thefamous ‘hot-spot’ nightclubs of San Francisco, on Broadway, downtown and SOMA(South of Market), but also sometimes to the ‘Performance Theatres’ of thedowntown and to such as the War Memorial Opera House and Davies SymphonyHall. I remember one party that I hadto drive all the way to Rohnert Park in Marin County to pick up, and then totheir Theatre-Play, at a famous Off-Broadway theatre.
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Speaking of the War Memorial OperaHouse, Davies Symphony Hall and such ‘venues’ along Van Ness Avenue in SanFrancisco, I also remember picking up a renown female columnist for the SundayChronicle-Examiner, for her night-on-the-town at the San Francisco Hard RockCafé on Van Ness Avenue. Also, quiteoften limo-parties wanted to ‘cruise’ San Francisco and it was alwaysinteresting to be ‘cruising’ Broadway, Columbus, Fisherman’s Wharf, SOMA, theCastro and the ‘clubs’, with the Broadway ‘scene’ all-lit-up and my ‘party’poking-their-heads up through the moon-roof of their passenger compartment.
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A nice ‘view’ of San Francisco,that I occasionally provided to some limo-parties, was to drive half-way overthe Bay Bridge to Treasure Island in the middle of the Bay, and from the wideturn-around-area at the entrance to Treasure Island Naval Base Facility,looking back across the Bay toward San Francisco, it was just a beautiful‘sight’, to see San Francisco all ‘lit-up’ at night.
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Speaking of ‘views’ of SanFrancisco, although this was purely a personal and family ‘experience’, I’mgoing to include it here, as a most unusual and delightful San Francisco‘experience’. Just click on my followingYelp Review, for the details, at:
For all of my Yelp Reviews, go to: http://nelsonr.yelp.com
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Another time, I merely picked up acouple (at 11AM) from their week-end-retreat at a Bed-and-Breakfast in HalfMoon Bay and then drove them up the coast, on Highway 1, with nice KFOG musicplaying to them in the passenger compartment, to San Francisco and theirdowntown lodgings-condominium-workloft, in a large industrial-looking buildingSouth of Market.
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Also, many ‘gigs’ were tourist andsight-seeing ‘gigs’ of San Francisco, and I always took them to Coit Tower andthen amazed them, as I very slowly and expertly drove my longstretch-limousine, down Lombard Street, the Crookedest-Street in SanFrancisco! (Which was illegal at thetime, but I never got a ticket!) Onlyonce did I get a slight scratch on the front bumper paint of my limo, as I veryslowly negotiated a tight turn and slightly nudged the concrete wall.
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Ah, and the trips up Market Street,to Portola Drive, Twin Peaks Boulevard and Twin Peaks, so my limo-parties couldgaze at the magnificence that is San Francisco and the Bay Area, whether indaylight or at nighttime. But, Iespecially remember one such ‘experience’, which I will here copy from my YelpReview at: http://nelsonr.yelp.com
(copy follows)
An EXPERIENCE: The back road fromTwin Peaks to Haight Ashbury! This is strictly for SF visitors, in that,of course, all SF residents already know about this.
A while back, I was driving limousines and, of course, Twin Peaks was one ofthe most popular scenic destinations for SF visitors, both day and night, aswell as, especially, limousine 'parties', for Bay Area residents and others,who were celebrating whatever the 'occasion-for-the-limousine' might be!
Usually, like most limousine driver-escorts-tourguides, I would drive up MarketStreet to Portola Drive, allowing the 'parties/party' in the rear of thelimousine, to view the 'grandeur' of San Francisco, as Market Street risesslowly and windingly, from the 'intenseness' of downtown San Francisco, to the'heights' of the San Francisco Twin-Peak Hills. From Portola Drive, I'dthen turn onto Twin Peaks Boulevard and let the 'visitors/party' in the limo,further enjoy the scenery, as I somewhat slowly ascended to the final parkingareas at the top of Twin Peaks, where the limo-party could get out and lookaround for however long they desired.
Usually then, most limousine/bus tourguides, retrace theirpath-to-the-top-of-Twin Peaks, returning down to Portola/Market, to continue onfrom there. However, quite often I would, instead, exit Twin Peaks bytaking the 'back road', down into the Haight-Ashbury. This meanscontinuing on Twin Peaks Boulevard, down to Clayton Street, crossing 17thStreet and then taking Ashbury Street off of Clayton.
This is where my particular 'Experience' occurred, that I am relating here!
At this point, of our descent-into-Haight/Ashbury, at about Ashbury and WallerStreets, I would usually pick up my microphone to address the'party-in-the-rear', with the following 'tour-guide-announcement': "Ladiesand Gentlemen, we are are now approaching one of the most famous locations inthe City of San Francisco. Just ahead, at the very next intersection, isthat famous street-sign, that says, 'Haight/Ashbury'!"
Well, as it just happened to be, the 'party' in the rear of my limo that day,was a group of teenagers who were celebrating the birthday of one of theirgroup and were doing so in my limo. But, it was still somewhat surprisingto me, when, after my afore-given 'announcement', I just happened to hear, justbarely through the glass-window-separator between the Driver and Passengercompartments, which was about half-way-down anyway, one of the kids in therear, who turned to his companions and asked the very question that hadsurprised me so much: "Hey, Dudes! What is Haight/Ashbury?"
(end copy)
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I also remember: Driving a famousSpeaker-Celebrity from his home in San Francisco’s Noe Valley, to his ‘gig’, atthe San Mateo Performing Arts Center.
Another time, I drove Gladys Knightand The Pips (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladys_Knight_&_the_Pips) to their ‘gig’ at the Circle Star Theatre in San Carlos, where I was allowedto wait for them at the rear of the auditorium, joyfully listening to theirentire performance that night, before returning them to their Hotel, at theVilla in San Mateo.
Another time I drove the famousAcademy Award-winning actress Rita Moreno (“West Side Story”). See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rita_Moreno
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Another time, a Grandmother in EastPalo Alto rented my limo for several hours, for her grand-daughter, who wasgraduating from 8th Grade.So there I was, ‘cruising’ up and down the streets of East Palo Alto,with the moon-roof open, the radio-music blaring, and a limo full of kids.
Another time, I picked up the localBlack-Mafia-Chief of South Oakland, drove him to a Church, for the ‘services’of one of his ‘boys’, who had been killed in a drive-by shooting. After the ‘services’, there was a longcortege of black limos, to the burial site in a cemetery north of Oakland. After the burial, I drove him back toOakland and we spent the next hour-and-a-half, slowly ‘cruising’ the streets ofSouth Oakland, as he stood up through the moon-roof-opening, waving andsaluting his ‘friends’, on the streets of South Oakland.
Once-a-week, every week for awhile, with a small limo that one limo company had, I’d pick up a nice, elderlyblack Lady, from her home on Mount Davis in San Francisco, and drive her acrossthe Bay Bridge to Oakland, to her Church at about 14th Ave. and FoothillBlvd., for their weekly ‘services’.After I drove her home, she’d always give me a nice tip.
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A quick Return to Lenkurt
This return of the discussion to myLenkurt years is to briefly note some personal and social relationships duringthose Lenkurt years. Actually, I hadvery few personal relationships over the 12+ years that I worked forLenkurt. But I’ll note several herethat had significance beyond the professional side of ourselves.
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A middle-aged Italian fellow that Iworked with, by the name of ‘Big Al’, was a good friend whom I quite oftenvisited at his home in Redwood City. Hehad an autistic young daughter whom I could somewhat ‘communicate’ with and anolder teenage daughter who was quite beautiful. He helped me obtain two large office-style bookcases, that wereeach about 4 foot high by 8 foot in length, that Lenkurt had declared surplusand made available to the employees. Heloaded the two into his pickup truck and delivered them to my driveway inBelmont. Of course, he obtained twomore for himself. A number of yearslater, after we had both left Lenkurt, Big Al had gone to work for theTelecommunications Division of San Mateo County. During one of my occasional visits to his home, at the time thatI was on-the-road and living-in-my-car, he helped me get the temporary job thatI had with San Mateo County for a while, already noted hereinabove.
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C.J. was another fellow that Iworked with, a white-haired elderly fellow, who yet had a ‘sparkle-for-life’and who, like myself, ‘appreciated’ vintage ‘machinery’. I visited his home in Santa Clara a numberof times and had dinner with his family.He had a beautiful black 1963 Pontiac GTO Convertible, that he was mostproud of. He was also the owner of ‘BigRed’, the red-and-white 1958 Oldsmobile Station Wagon, that I eventually boughtfrom him and is further described herein later.
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Steve was another fellow that Iknew at Lenkurt whom I talked with quite often during working hours. I bought my Fiat 850 Sports Car fromhim. This Fiat is further discussed inthe following discussions.
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John was a Lenkurt ‘compatriot’ whowas somewhat ‘purposeful’ and ‘careful’ in all of his ‘actions’, professionaland social. I won’t say that he was‘slow-of-mind’, for he was very intelligent, but that was just hisdemeanor. He was a married middle-agegentleman who lived in Santa Clara. Weworked together for a long time and, of course, we discussed outside-of-work‘activities’ quite often, while we were sub-consciously ‘doing’ our daily work,on electronic systems that were very familiar to us, so we could be doing therequired ‘work’ without even really having-to-think-about-it. He had discretely let-it-be-known to methat, in order to not have any more children in his family (I’m not sure howmany children he already had), he had somewhat surreptiously ‘visited’ a Doctorin San Francisco, who had performed a vasectomy operation on him. Why the subject even came up between us, isthat, at the time, I had met and was dating Carol, who was to become my wifeand she already had two children. I’mnot sure whether it was Carol or myself or both of us, but somehow thepossibility of having more children, should we get married, was somehow not‘popular’ with either of us. As I thinkI have already mentioned herein above with respect to my Brother Leon and hislarge family, I had early-in-my-Life been ‘turned off’, as to the prospect ofhaving children myself and having to ‘endure’ the ‘trials-and-tribulations’ ofchildren. I guess it also was a‘concern’ for Carol as well, already with two children herself and somehow notreally ‘relishing’ any more children at her age, of the early 30’s, inconsideration of exactly what her Life had been so far, in already beingmarried twice. So, somehow the ‘topic’,had ‘come up’ between us. Andtherefore, I had somehow ‘brought it up’ in my casual work-conversations withJohn. It was then that he told me ofhis own vasectomy, with the Doctor in San Francisco, and when I asked, heprovided the Doctor’s phone number and address. I thought about it only briefly, somehow ‘sure’ that such was tobe my ‘Destiny’, even though I had never yet been married and had no childrenthat were my offspring. I called theDoctor, made an appointment and it was done.I remember having some pain for but a day or two and then everything wasfine. Carol and I got married shortlyafter that.
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Paul was a somewhat quiet and ‘gay’fellow whom I knew at Lenkurt, who always exuded a conservative and reservedattitude. However, we got along justfine. I remember meeting him one timein San Francisco, in my early days at Lenkurt, when I didn’t know much at allyet about San Francisco and city-life.He had promised to ‘show me’ some of the city-life that he knew of. I remember walking with Paul, about thestreets of the Castro area and later going into a bar on Polk Street, and beingquite surprised, upon walking in the door, to find the bar completely full ofmen, who all seemed to ‘look-at-us’ as we walking in the door. I indicated to Paul that I ‘didn’t like’that particular bar and we left. As wewalked, I somehow got the message to Paul that I wanted to go into a bar wherethere were women. I don’t remember whatwe did after that. But Paul and I werestill friends. I guess he was gettinginto his beyond-middle-age-years and I remember him having grey hair. He had a small bungalow-home in La Honda,even though he nominally lived in San Francisco. He invited me to visit him in La Honda and I did so several timesover the years. His place in La Hondawas absolutely magnificent. The pavedroads though his residential area of La Honda, wound through hillsides oftremendously tall Redwood Trees and his small bungalow was located on a roadthat dead-ended into the hillside, with very few other homes on thatresidential ‘street’. John’s home andquite-large and considerable hillside property were just a few hundred feetbefore the road ended. But the smallone-bedroom bungalow was almost ‘buried’ in the massive Redwood Treessurrounding the place. Parking on theroadway above the property, there was a stairway descending downhill to thehouse. But to descend down thisstairway, one had to almost go through the huge Redwood that stood directly infront of the home. I think the stairsactually split in two, so that a person could walk down the stairs on eitherside of the extremely wide trunk of the tree.When the two stairs came together again below the tree, there was asort-of ‘alcove’ at the base of the tree trunk, almost like an altar-alcove,with a somewhat ‘altar’ and some decorations surrounding it. (Paul was a Catholic gentleman, but he never‘expressed’ it.) In later years, Ivisited Paul one time when I was driving my 60-foot truck-trailer ‘big-rig’ inthe La Honda area for some reason and I parked the rig at the very end ofPaul’s ‘street’. The last 100 yards ofthe road were somewhat wide and there was at least one other driveway exitingoff of the road (an uphill driveway, as I remember). I don’t remember whether I was able to turn the rig around insuch a constricted roadway or whether I wound up backing out of the streetuntil the street intersected with another street, in order to turn around.
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Henry was another fellow that Iworked with every day at Lenkurt. Hewas a young, late 20-something fellow, originally from Bakersfield,California. At Lenkurt, he somehowintroduced himself to a ‘gaggle’ of Lenkurt ‘office-girls’ who were usually inthe Lenkurt Cafeteria at the same ‘break-times’ that we were and he had datedone of the girls who worked in the card-punch operations section. (Yes, I remember the old, card-punchmachines, that were the early ‘data-processing’ machines of those days, beforecomputerization became widespread!)Anyway, Henry’s ‘girlfriend’ knew Carol and we were introduced oneweekend via a double date. (I don’tremember what we did, unless it was to go to some nightclub somewhere.) So that is how Carol and I met. Of course, I got her phone number and calledher for further ‘dates’ myself. Henryand his ‘girlfriend’ eventually split, as I seem to remember that she was asomewhat liberally-inclined gal, while Henry turned out to be somewhatconservatively-inclined himself. Iremember Henry showing me some kind of business ‘endeavor’ that his family, backin Bakersfield, was engaged in and which he was tentatively planning to‘take-over-the-management’ of said ‘business’.When Carol and I eventually got married, I invited Henry, as well asHenry’s ex-girlfriend (Carol’s girlfriend), to the wedding. By that time Henry had met another gal andwas married himself. The wedding wasalso attended by Jim and his wife… details following here next. A week or so after the wedding, I held anice dinner for Henry and his wife at a Peninsula restaurant and nightclub. (A week later, I ‘hosted’ Jim and his wife,at the same restaurant.) Some yearslater, when I worked for a while for Harris-Farinon in San Carlos, as Directorof Quality Assurance, Henry was then also working in one of the departments ofthe firm, as the Department Supervisor.At that time, Henry and I did not talk much except about businessmatters and he was somewhat ‘sullen’ and sad-faced, with a constantly-blinkingleft eye, where he had apparently (I don’t remember how I found out aboutthis!) been hit-in-the-face by his ex-wife, before they divorced. His ‘conservatism’ had caught up with himand his life now had no future, it seemed.Oh, I almost forgot the other most important thing about Henry. When I first knew him, as a co-worker at Lenkurt,he surprised all of the rest of us one day at Lenkurt. This was the late 60’s and Haight-Ashbury,the Hippies, the Summer-of-Love and such, were ‘in vogue’. Apparently Henry had made a weekend trip toHaight-Ashbury, to ‘check-out’ the ‘scene’.(He was then somewhat ‘open’ to ‘things’ beyond his conservative‘roots’) Anyway, I remember thatfollowing Monday, when he showed up at work, wearing a lapel-pin that said,“Turn On, Tune In, and Drop Out!” Ofcourse, I naturally had to ‘check-out’ the ‘scene’ myself. I think I was already dating Carol by thattime and I remember Carol and I driving to San Francisco, finding our way tothe ‘Haight’, and absolutely getting ‘stranded’ on the streets of the ‘Haight’,with my old Plymouth totally surrounded by colorfully-dressed ‘Hippies’ whowere just walking about, in the crowds of people that were there in the‘Haight’ that weekend. I rememberbuying, for 50cents, a several-paged and wildly-colorful ‘newspaper’, that oneof the ‘street-people’ offered-to-us through the car window. Anyway, in this regard, Henry was also my‘introduction’ to Haight-Ashbury and the Hippie Culture of those Days. Although I quite often later would say, thatI was not a ‘participant’ in the Love-Years, or Love-Decade, because (somewhatjokingly) I was, at that time, engaged in the ‘making-of-bombs’!
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Jim was a young fellow whom Iworked with at Lenkurt, who was already a quite-married Mormon and somewhatconservative gentleman, but who naturally had an ‘eye-for-the-girls’, althoughhe never ‘practiced’ that obvious ‘propensity’, in respect to his wife, who wasa tall, somewhat plain-looking but nice country girl. Jim and his wife lived a few doors from me in the Redwood Cityapartment complex and had me over several times for dinner and baked yams. At work, he’d many times ‘alert’ me, whensome good-looking office-gals would walk though our ‘work-area’, especially abeautiful strawberry blonde gal, who worked in his department. (He was a Quality Control Inspector.) When Carol and I got married, I guess he wasthe Best Man at my wedding, and as already noted, Carol and I ‘hosted’ Jim andhis wife, shortly after the wedding, at the restaurant-night club in PaloAlto. I don’t really remember whathappened to Jim, as we lost contact after I left Lenkurt.
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More Perspective
Over the years, I ‘burnt-out’several times, as professionals and entrepreneurs are wont to do, but for me itwas sometimes personal as well. I guessmy first ‘burn-out’ was from ham radio and I’ve already mentioned that BarryGoldwater was my last on-the-air ham radio experience. And No, it didn’t have anything to do withBarry. I was just ‘burning-out’! Although I do yet have my ham radio FCClicense to this day, but no radio station or equipment of any kind. Plus, it is quite impossible to even thinkabout such when one is homeless and living-on-the-streets!
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My second ‘burn-out’ waselectronics and telecommunications, as a professional career. This occurred while I was yet working forLenkurt, although I did twice again, but temporarily, work in thetelecommunications fields in later years, for San Mateo County and for HarrisFarinon Corporation.
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During my last years with Lenkurt,I had started/created several financial-business firms, on-the-side while yetemployed by Lenkurt. One businessspecialized in ‘exotic investments’, including antiques, vintage/classicautomobiles, gold/silver and the ‘hard-asset’ investments. An affiliated business provided legalappraisals, for insurance, estate and other business purposes, on holdings ofvintage/classic vehicles and other antique assets. A third business specialized in sale-and-leaseback investmentsfor professionals who needed financing for their professional ‘practices’ (suchas doctors, dentists) but were unwilling to further mortgage their homes orother assets. Typically, if such a (ofcourse, quite ‘monied’) professional owned a vintage/classic car, such as aDuesenberg, Packard or Pierce-Arrow (worth perhaps $500,000 to a $Mil ormore!) See: http://www.yelp.com/biz/passion-investments-in-the-2009-economy-san-francisco#hrid:MVsV3NVbShYht2P-Ik5slw/src:self that person could sell-and-leaseback their‘most-prized-possession’, without actually ‘selling’ or giving up possession ofthe vehicle. They would keep the car(eventually re-claiming ownership), but in the meanwhile they would get up tohundreds-of-thousands of dollars, for investment in their professional‘practice’, all the while ‘writing-off’ the lease payments on their IRS taxreturn as ‘business-expenses’. (Ofcourse, I was most ‘expert’ in tax laws and the IRS at the time, althoughtoday, just like all of the ‘expertise’ and knowledge that I needed for these‘businesses’… I can really not remember much of anything, as to the requiredknowledge pertaining to such financial ‘businesses’, activities and fields offinance, but only such as might ‘come to me’, as necessary at any time, andusually as provided by My Good Friend Upstairs.)
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Another business was as aninternational financier/broker and, just like my FCC licenses for ham radio andfor commercial telecommunications (along the way, I had passed the tests and obtaineda First Class/General FCC License with a Radar Endorsement, which I still holdtoday, which qualifies me to be the Chief Engineer of any Radio, TV or FMBroadcast Station anywhere, as well as any commercial Radar installation)
See: http://www.yelp.com/biz/aurora-communications-int-belmont#hrid:-QgdDepaXYeA9ZV2vIWipA/src:self
I had also taken and passed theprofessional tests for both my California Insurance License and my FederalSecurities-and-Exchange License.
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And finally, my last business wasin real estate investments, for which I had obtained real estatecertification-and-licensure, as a real estate professional. And note that I have said real estateinvestments, as I was never a real estate commercial or residential broker orsales-person, although I did work (another ‘job’) for a while as a commissionedreal estate mortgage broker, dealing exclusively with FHA-VA mortgagefinancing, for both brokers and individual homeowners who wanted to obtaineither FHA or VA financing. In fact, itwas in this ‘job’ that I again ‘experienced’ an ‘eye-opener’, orfinancial-detail about the financial ‘system’, that I can yet remember to thisday. (With regard to such‘financial-scams’, as the famous and controversial filmmaker Michael Moore, hasproduced his documentary films about, as ‘indictments’ of the FinancialSystem.) Anyway, I was working forWinchester Mortgage Company of San Jose and it was at the end of a several-week‘orientation-class’ for new agents, that I had this ‘experience’. At the end of the class, the President-CEOof the company came to address his new agents.After a ‘go-go’ exhortation and congratulatory speech, he wound up histalk by saying something like this… “As we all know by now, the U.S. Governmentis the ‘Payor-of-last-resort’, meaning that, at the last or final point of anyfinancial transaction or investment, it will be the U.S. Government who will‘Be There’, to ‘bail-out’ anyone, whether it is individuals, companies,businesses or corporations. Ifnecessary, the U.S. Government will not let anyone ‘go-down-the-drain’, inorder to keep-the-System-afloat, or actively ‘operational’, because all of the‘fat-cat’ (i.e., Rich!) investors, stock-holders and businesses, upon which ourvery Financial System depends, must be ‘protected’ at-all-cost! Now, what this means for all of youbrand-new agents, is the very ‘realization’ that, perhaps someday… the U.S.Government will… Go BROKE! Bankrupt! Not be able to ‘pay-its-bills’ and‘obligations’, and no-longer-able-to-Serve-the-People! (Actually, the rich corporations andbusinesses!) And there is no oneanywhere, nor any ‘institution’, the might or could, ‘bail-out’ the U.S.Government. It IS truly, the‘last-resort’! And when it finally‘goes-bankrupt’… Well, that’s it! It’s allover! (Along with all of the fateful‘consequences’ thereof!) So, until that‘fateful’ Day should arrive… it thereby behooves all of you, just like everyoneelse… TO GET YOUR SHARE OF THE PIE! Goout and ‘get it’, all you can… while the ‘getting’ is still good!” That was his final words to us! And I’ve remembered those quite prescientwords to this day!
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I wasn’t really a ‘success’ in anyof my ‘businesses’ and I lost quite a bit of money. I was a ‘financier-entrepreneur’ for about 7 years, before Iagain ‘burnt-out’, this time on Finance and the entire financial system. Of course, helping-along that ‘burn-out’,was the fact that I also went bankrupt, losing my home and almost everythingthat I owned.
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Formal Education
I might as well mention here, myformal education ‘experiences’, along the way.My under-graduate education was with classes taken while I was in theAir Force, which also included classes near Edwards Air Force Base, at PalmdaleJunior College. I remember that mythesis for my Economics class was on the workings of the Federal ReserveBanking System.
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In later years, my seculareducation included graduation from the Greene University of Real Estate andFinancial Investments, in Mill Valley, California (at the time) and later theCalifornia Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (CITP), which was located inMenlo Park, California at the time. MyMentor at CITP was Dr. June Singer, the renowned student-protégé of the famousSwiss psychologist Carl Jung, who had studied with Jung at the Jung Institutein Switzerland. As I remember, she (Dr.Singer) was also renown for her Works, which included such famous books as “TheBoundaries of The Soul”, “Androgyny”, and “The Energies of Love”.
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I will only briefly mention here mynon-secular ‘education’, which is more explicitly detailed in my online Webpages. My Soul actually spent manyyears of study at the Third University of Luz (as I remember and assubsequently ‘Confirmed’), of the OA/OWB, The Most Ancient Order, finallygraduating with two Doctoral degrees in my 2 fields of study, D.Th. (InEsse-the Theology of Reality) and D.Sc. (Quantum Physics). Contrary to the secular education systems oftoday, the educational system of the OA/OWB, awarded only Doctorate and Mastersdegrees, and no Bachelors or other degrees.The Doctorate was the first or lowest degree and a student could obtainas many Doctorates as he might in as many Fields of Study as he mightpursue. The highest degree is theMasters degree, an award signifying extreme excellence of Wisdom, Knowledge andIntegrity. In this current HumanCivilization (since 9654 B.C.), the OA/OWB has awarded but only 27 suchdegrees, to those who were the Founding Fathers of some of Mankind’s Most Importantinstitutions and theologies. I receivedmy 2 degrees in a Graduation Ceremony, where Master Christ (Himself a Masterfrom aeons back), Himself ‘presented’ me with the degrees and thenshook-my-hand. The year was 7194 POL,or 13,653 B.C. in today’s chronological ‘accounting’. At that time, the OA/OWB was yet extant in the Corporeality ofthe Known World-and-Dimension of today.However, during the ‘beginnings’ of our present Civilization, afterLucifer had taken ‘control’ of the secular World and the Minds of its Peoples,as ‘The Prince-of-this-World’ (detailed on my Webpages), the OA/OWB‘extricated’ itself from this World and Reality, and now exists within its ownDimension-and-Reality of Consciousness, within Incorporeality.
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Personal-ProfessionalExperiences
I guess that I might as well starthere with one of the most challenging-and-eventually-disasterous ‘experiences’of my Lifetime. As mentionedhereinabove, investments in vintage and classic automobiles, was one of my‘interests’ (money and prestige, of course!)
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Actually, before I get to that‘experience’, let me just briefly tell of a few of my other‘vehicular-investments’ that were mostly more pleasant. At one time, I had bought a vintage 1956Packard Executive Coupe, a beautiful and elegant piece-of-machinery(‘machinery’, as vintage and classic automobiles were/are called, amongaficionados thereof), that served myself and my family quite well for a numberof years. I entered my Packard into theHillsborough Concours de Elegance one year (see: http://www.yelp.com/biz/hillsborough-concours-d-elegance-san-mateo#hrid:ZF3psJYkJp_lCkKW2Ov7Rw/src:self)
and it was an enjoyable‘participation’, sitting there alongside my car on the Show-Grounds, among allof the other vintage and classic ‘machinery’ and talking with the ownersthereof said ‘machinery’. I didn’t getanything more than a Participation Prize but the passing admiration, reparteeand conviviality, of both other owners and Show-attendees, was gratifying. Yes, my family, at the time, enjoyed it allas well!
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We (my family and I), had numerousother Packard ‘adventures’, including trips to the top of every Bay Areamountaintop, such as the Space Observatory on top of Mt. Hamilton; getting tothe top of Mt. Diablo (with a broken engine water pump hose, necessitating‘filling up’ the engine with water from a faucet in-the-parking-lot-restroomand then gently-and-slowly ‘cruising’ the Packard down the mountain road, to agas-station where the Packard was fitted with a new hose); and gettingsuccessfully to the top of Mt. Tam and back.We also, one weekend, went ‘exploring’ the rural-roads-and-dirt-roads ofthe East Contra Costa hills, on the way to Martinez, California. However, on one of the dirt roads, myPackard broke the brake lining of the front right wheel and we ‘limped’downhill into a gas station near Martinez.I had to leave the Packard for a few weeks until the station couldobtain a good used brake lining. Myfamily and myself spent the rest of the day riding buses and publictransportation back to the Peninsula.Then, weeks later, I had to again ride public transportation toMartinez, to pick up my Packard. As itwas, there was still a sort-of ‘clink’ and a funny feeling when I used thebrakes. I eventually took it to a localPeninsula Packard-knowledgeable garage and it was discovered that the Martinezstation had installed the brake lining backwards.
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And finally, as one of our pleasantPackard ‘adventures’, we did make to Port Costa, the historic World War IIShipping-and-Ammunition Port, on the Sacramento River. Oh, one more! I think we drove one weekend all the way to Columbia, California,near Sonora, California, in the Gold-Rush gold-mining hills-of-California, tovisit the historical old gold-rush town.I remember the local vintage Fire Department, in their vintage 1800’soutfits, parading an old Hand-Pump Fire Engine, in a parade down the main streetof Columbia. Then we all went into oneof the saloons and we all had a vintage sasparilla-soda!
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But, our most pleasant Packard‘adventure’, was an all-day trip to Hearst Castle and back, which I havewritten about in a Review on Yelp, so I will merely provide herewith thewebpage for that Review. (Again, all myReviews, are available at: http://nelsonr.yelp.com) Here’s my Packard ‘experience’Review: http://www.yelp.com/biz/a-packard-experience-day-trip-to-hearst-castle-san-simeon#hrid:MWSYaCxkbICAq2ege2PW4g/src:self
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I also owned a beautiful 1954 Buick Super Riviera HardtopCoupe, the last year that Buick made a car with the classic ‘big teeth’ in thegrille. We had numerous pleasant tripsin the Buick, including one memorable trip to Apple Hill in the Sierras nearPlacerville. In the Fall of the year,all of the farms in this foothills-of-the-Sierras region, hold an Open Houseevery weekend, and visitors can visit any of these farms (as well as a winery),to look over and purchase any of their farm products. Of course, lots of apples, of all varieties, and jugs of freshly-madepure apple cider, and baked apple fritters and apple donuts and more! Also other farm produce, vegetables likevarious winter squash, as well as, I’ve already mentioned, a hillsidewinery. We stopped by the winery, whereI purchased a box-of-twelve bottles of wine.Following a readily-available map of Apple Hill, we visited numerousfarms and sampled or bought their ‘wares’.
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I also had two beautiful 1965 Cadillac Convertibles, onedark green with a white top and the other tan with a light tan top. I don’t remember any ‘experiences’ with myCadillacs although I vaguely remember driving them both for a while, except theexperience of eventually selling them to a friend, along with my Buick, allthree vehicles for $150, which I urgently needed at the time.
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I had a nice Fiat 850 Sports Car that I also drove for quitea while but the engine caught on fire the very same day that I left for Canada,as it was being driven by a friend. Ididn’t find out about this until I got back from Canada. It seems that the fuel line hose to thecarburetor, passed over the top of the engine and was susceptible to fallingoff of the carburetor while driving. Itdid happen to me once when I was driving on the Interstate 280 Freeway in theSouth Bay. I was just going along about65 mph, and all of a sudden I lost power.I pulled to the side of the freeway and went back and lifted the bonneton the Fiat’s rear-equipped-engine.Then I noticed that the fuel line had fallen off the carburetor and wasjust laying there on top of the engine.I don’t remember if there was any gas spurting out of the hose, butthere was no fire and the little bit of fuel had drained off the engine, so Ijust pushed the hose back onto the input nipple of the carburetor, closed thebonnet and drove off. I left the Fiat,after the engine fire and I had gotten back from Canada, with anotherautomotive friend, the owner of a repair shop specializing in Italian-madeautomobiles, for him to repair and restore at his convenience. I didn’t pay him anything, as it was my‘funding’ that enabled him to start in the ‘business’ in the first place, so hestill ‘owed me’. As it was, he nevergot around to my Fiat restoration, although he did get it running again. Eventually, after getting several parkingtickets for the vehicle, because he was parking it in a public garage, I hadhad enough of the cost of yet owning the vehicle, and one day I just walkedinto his shop office and outright gave him the registration and ownership ofthe vehicle, telling him in anger, that I had had enough of waiting for nothingto happen as to restoration of the vehicle.Before that happened though, he promised me that he would have it readyfor me, when I told him that I was going to get married, to my second-wife, andwe wanted the Fiat to drive to Reno to get married. (My fiancée even stopped by his shop and ‘leaned-on-him’ to getthe job done!) However, as mywedding-date arrived, the Fiat was yet not even near being restored. My repair-shop friend, however, didgenerously provide a rental-car, at no cost, from a rental agency, which myfiancée/wife and I drove to Reno and back.
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I also had a 1947 Studebaker 1 Ton Pickup Truck, which Iloaned to a business friend for a while, but he had been parking the truck in anearby open space under a freeway and it was one day towed and impounded by thelocal Police Department and when I went to reclaim the vehicle, it had alreadybeen turned over to a junk yard and the junk yard owner wanted more for thetruck than it was worth to me so I abandoned it.
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And of course, I had my six Honda S-Cars, that I broughtback from Canada. Before I talk anyfurther about the Hondas, I’ll also mention that I also brought back fromCanada, what I classified as a ‘Special Interest Vehicle’, which was a 1965 AMCMarlin Coupe, one of the several varieties of ‘Muscle-Cars’ of that decade, butone of the decidedly better-looking, with its sweeping front-to-back look,somewhat like a Marlin sports-fish that one might go ocean-fishing for. I never did anything with the Marlin and Iguess it was eventually lost in my bankruptcy along with all the othervehicles.
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As to the Hondas… When I was in Japan and a Member of theTokyo Sports Car Club, I was introduced to the Honda S-cars. A few other members of the TSCC had Hondasand another Airman that I worked with had one as well. He, my friend, had his Honda S-car speciallytuned and prepared for racing by the Honda factory itself. I remember seeing him going down the ‘straight-a-way’,on the famous Funabashi Circuit Grand Prix Track, clocking over 140 mph andleaving behind a Formula Grand Prix Lotus Racing Machine!
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See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_S600
Honda built the S-cars from 1963 to 1968, in versions from300cc to, eventually, 800cc. Mostly convertibles but also some hardtopcoupes. They were actually sold allover the world, but never in the U.S., as the American Dealers didn’t wantanything to do with them, because they were so mechanically complex andrequired such precise tuning and maintenance, that American Honda dealers feltthat these ‘machines’ were more trouble than they were worth because they wouldforever be in the dealer’s ‘Repair Shop’ for ‘servicing’! The last 800cc Hardtop Coupes were sold,however, in the American Pacific Territory of Guam. A number of them were also imported to Canada by an independentHonda dealership and it was six of those that I eventually bought.
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I might also mention here that, while I was in Japan, I alsohad the opportunity to see another brand-new and unusual‘piece-of-machinery’. It was the ToyotaSports 800 Sports Car, a nice-looking 2-seater that somewhat resembled avintage Porche, with its up-side-down-bathtub styling. However, the Toyota 800cc engine was a 2cylinder air-cooled engine, again ala the Porche, with 2 huge cylinders. It was fast, too! In later years, in the ‘70’s, I saw one of these cars at a KruseClass Car Auction sale at Marriott’s Great America. It had been in storage for years and was silver-grey in color andyet brand-new, still having the factory tags hanging all over the engine andinterior. I think it sold for over$8000.
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As to the ‘complexities’ of the Honda S-Cars… Actually, fora small two-seat sports car, on the size of an Austin Sprite or an MG Midget,they were quite good-looking, as to both styling and looks. But it was under the hood, bonnet and body,that they were quite different than anything else on the road. Just as one can notice the ‘distinctivehigh-pitched sound’, off-in-the-distance, of a typical 8, 12 or 16 cylinderFerrari in-full-roar, so could one also notice the distinctive-sound of a HondaS-Car. ‘whining-away’ at over 12,000rpms, under the hood was a 4-cylinder engine that was akin to having 4motorcycle engines under the hood, all running in synchronized-tandem. But, in order to achieve such high-pitchedpower, required the necessity of 4 carbs, on top of each cylinder, each carbitself with 5 separate tuning-adjusts, from idle to maximum speed, allrequiring perfect synchronization! Inother words, a nightmare to tune! Plus,the rear-end-axle-and-wheels were of an independent-rear-suspension like noneother, with each wheel separately ‘driven’ by a certified-and-trueHonda-motorcycle-type chain-drive, from the horizontal main transaxle. This meant that each wheel couldindependently go up or down by itself, according to whatever the ‘roadconditions’ might be. This alsoprovided a most unique ‘view’ of the Honda S-car, when it was drag-racing orjust ‘firing-off’ from the Starting-Line in any race. Because, compared to any other car, of the normal variety, when‘getting off’ from the Start-Line… the Honda S-Cars would actually ‘jump’, or‘rise-up’, the whole body ‘rising-into-the-air’, as the engine-torque wasimmediately delivered to those rear wheels via thattransaxle-and-chain-drive-assembly! Itwas quite something to see!
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I brought 6 of these Honda S-Cars back from Canada, five redconvertibles and one dark-green Hardtop Coupe.Plus the previously noted Marlin.All aboard my 60 foot long International Truck and Trailer ‘big-rig’,which was two of the 23 vehicles that I owned at one time. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AMC_Marlin
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I guess it is now time to tell the ‘details’ of myTrip-to-Canada! I’ll start by tellingof how I found the Hondas. I had pickedup the daily mail from my mailbox and was paging through my monthly issue ofRoad & Track Magazine… Well, heregoes one of my many ‘asides’ throughout this autobiography.
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Speaking of Road & Track Magazine, I might as well sayit here and now. For a while, Iactually had over 150 subscriptions, to weekly, semi-weekly, semi-monthly,monthly, quarterly publications, No,not daily, that I can remember, in that I somehow felt that any‘daily-news-item’ needed a few days to ‘cook’, in order for such a ‘news-item’to ‘boil-down’ to the real details, rather than just theinstantaneous-and-usually-superficial ‘news’ of the story. With these over 150 publications, I was, ineffect, ‘self-educating’ myself, over a broad range of knowledge, about quite anumber of ‘fields-of-interest’ that I had.Of course, after I ‘burnt-out’ on ham radio, I don’t remember readingthe ham radio magazines (QST, CQ, Ham Radio and such) anymore. Same goes for Popular Electronics,Electronics, Radio & TV News and other such publications, of the ‘40’s,‘50’s and ‘60’s, which either quit publishing when modern-day technologies andeconomics went beyond their venues, or else I just quit reading them, when I‘burnt-out’ on electronics. (Oh, throwin Popular Mechanics, Popular Science and a few more!) I also had all of the financial publications,that I also eventually quit reading, on stocks and bonds, money markets, andespecially all kinds of hard-asset-investments, which also included newslettersfrom the numerous financial and investment clubs and organizations that I was amember thereof or at least a subscriber thereto. Oh, also here, throw in Vegetarian Times, The Provoker HealthNewsletter, Changing Times Health Watch, Kiplinger Newsletter, Prevention, theBerkeley Wellness Newsletter and others.Also, weekly/monthly publications on home improvement and repair, and thedetails/techniques of all kinds of construction, frommasonry/concrete/wood/tile/roofing to electrical, landscaping and more. Organic Farming, Home Gardening andsuch. More than I can remember.
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But, back to Road & Track. I also had subscriptions to Vintage & Special InterestAutomobiles, Hemmings Motor News and the ‘Grand-Daddy’ of all automotivepublications… Automobile Quarterly!With AQ, I had every issue from the very first one, all in hard-coverand I was knowledgeable about almost all vintage and classic ‘machinery’, as tomarques, market-values, histories and more.Did you know that there were only seven (7) Classic Bugatti RoyaleSports Cars made, each one of which is today worth more than $50 Million? For more perspective on valuation andinvestments in Classic automobiles, see my two Reviews on the Yelp website, at:
and
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But, I immediately starting making phone calls to inquire asto transportation for the Hondas, ranging from professional commercial vehiclecarriers to railroad-car FOB (freight-on-board). Everything was expensive.I finally, through a friend, found a truck dealer in the South Bay, thathad used ‘big rigs’ and trucks of all kinds.I went, looked and bought… a 60 foot long flat-bed truck-trailer rig…Well, not quite a flat-bed. It had twoextra-wide ‘tracks’ down the beds of the truck and trailer, from front-to-back,with two removable jumper-tracks between the truck and trailer beds, and twoloading-ramp tracks, from the downward-sloping rear end of the trailer to theground, for loading vehicles on to the rig, pulled onto the rig by the extralong steel cable from the electric winch that was mounted behind the front cabof the rig. It had been the ‘rig’ bywhich Boise-Cascade Corporation, which built RV Recreational Trailers, used todeliver their brand-new RV’s to dealers, until they finally decided to justdeliver them directly over-the-roadway, pulled by a pickup truck, which wascheaper and easier. I paid the truckdealer $5000 for the ‘rig’ and he promised that he’d have it all ‘tuned-up’ andin First-Class Ready-to-Go condition in a few days. I picked up the rig, spent a few days teaching myself how todrive a 16-speed Road Ranger transmission, parking-backing, driving andmaneuvering a ‘big-rig’ with a trailer.Then I went down to the DMV and took my driving test for a CaliforniaClass One Truck Drivers License.Unloaded, I could drive it on my regular Third Class DMV License, butfully loaded, with maximum weight on all axles, I would need to have a ClassOne Drivers License. I now had myTemporary First Class Drivers License.I went to my AAA automobile insurance agent, who got me‘pool-insurance-for-trucks’, from an independent insurance carrier. Two weeks later, I left for Canada.
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Also, I remember somewhere along the way, while the rig wasstill unloaded, I guess we did stop overnight somewhere and stayed in a motelin a town somewhere, parking the rig on a side-street across from themotel. Thusly ensued another ‘bad’experience. When I went to start theengine in the morning, it just choked and stopped. After trying several times, we started looking for the problem. Finally realizing that the engine was notgetting fuel and that the fuel-line and carburetor were okay, we finallydetermined that it was the gas-fuel tank that was slung under the bed behindthe cab. Apparently, some localhoodlums had twisted off the cap on top of the fuel tank and poured sugar intothe fuel tank. My assistant removed thedrain plug under the fuel tank and let the gas run out into the street gutter,until it was finally running clear and not ‘plugged’ with the sugar. The engine finally started and I had enoughgas left to make it to a local gas station.Incidentally, the rig had two gas tanks that combined into one big tankin the upper half of the two tanks. Thecombination held 300 gallons of gas, a bit expensive to fill up, but gasolineprices were not too expensive in those days, and the Edmonton area was agas-producing area so gasoline was somewhat cheap.
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I don’t remember if we finally found a motel and got somesleep there in the Canadian Rockies south of Calgary, but we finally got toCalgary. Somewhere along the way, Iremember having a spaghetti dinner at some roadside restaurant. From Calgary, I headed north toEdmonton. Finally, at Edmonton, I metup with my friend, the professor, at his ranch outside of Edmonton. I slowly drove my rig into a parking spot inthe high grasses in a field behind his barn.
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Somewhere along the way, I had bought some planks of lumberand coils of steel wire, thinking that I could put all of the Hondas on the rigsomewhat upright, like horses or elephants standing up with their front legs onthe backs of the one in front of them.But, I finally realized that such a scheme would not work. As I took the time, with a compressor unitthat the professor had, I precisely inflated all of the tires on the rig, tomaximum recommended tire pressure for a fully-loaded-weight rig. We finally decided that I would have to loadthe Hondas on the rig sideways, across the bed. The front-to-back length of a Honda was about 2 foot more thanthe 8 foot width of the rig’s bed-width, so each Honda would be sticking outabout a foot over each side of the rig.I went into Edmonton, bought some official Wide-Load signs, for frontand rear of the rig, and red and yellow warning lights, that I installed on theouter-edges of all the loaded vehicles.I also rented a rental-car, for my ‘assistant’ to drive in front of therig, with a Wide-Load Following sign on the rental-car. We eventually turned-in this rental-car atthe Seattle-Tacoma Airport and that is when my ‘assistant’ left me, to make myway home to the Bay Area alone.
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Back-at-the-ranch, the planks that I had bought came inhandy, in loading the Hondas onto the rig’s bed. I put two of the planks on the side of the bed, at thebed-location where the vehicle was to be located, the planks making a somewhat steepramp from the ground to the approximately 4 foot height of the bed-tracks. But, it worked. Pulling each Honda into place at the foot of the plank-ramp, theprofessor then ran his long steel winch-cable over the bed, hooked it onto thefront bumper of the Honda, and then slowly winched the Honda up the ramp andinto its final resting place across the bed of the rig, with the Honda’s frontand rear wheels securely placed solidly on the bed-tracks. The rig had smaller chain-and-winchassemblies under the bed that I passed over the axles of each Honda, securelytying each vehicle to the bed. I loaded4 Hondas on the front truck bed and 2 Hondas on the rear trailer bed. That left just enough room on the rear of thetrailer, to load the Marlin that I had also bought, on the sloping rear of therig. Incidentally, I used to have abeautiful color snap-shot of the fully-loaded rig, parked on a Canadianmountain-highway, with the snowy Canadian peaks rising majestically behind therig. It was a nice picture, but it gotlost somewhere along the path of my Life!
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Loaded up, I practiced driving the fully loaded rig on theback roads at the professor’s ranch, adjusting the cab’s side-view mirrorsuntil I was comfortable that I could see both sides of the rig clearly. The next day early, we left for Calgary, myassistant driving in front of me, in the rented car with the Wide LoadFollowing sign on top of it. I rememberhitting traffic in Calgary and finding myself in the extreme right lane of thehighway, traffic all around and as I glanced in my side-view mirrors, as Iprecisely drove down the center of that right-hand lane, I could see that mywide-load was just missing some of the street signs and trees at the side ofthe road by mere inches. But I made it outof Calgary and headed west, on the Trans-Canada Highway, for Osoyoos, Canada,on the border with the U.S., where I knew that I had to cross the border at aU.S. Customs Point Station. Oh, myassistant in the lead vehicle had a CB walkie-talkie that I had bought inEdmonton and we occasionally talked between our vehicles via our CB radios.
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From Calgary, the road rose steeply up the Canadian Rockiesand I even remember passing moose walking along the side of the road, with afull-rack of antlers on the head.Further on was the Canadian Rockies resort towns of Banff and LakeLouise, and I remember stopping at a roadside Lodge-Coffeeshop on the highwayalong the shores of Lake Louise and having a meal of lox and bagels. As weproceeded on, it was starting to get dark and all of a sudden something ‘feltfunny’ one time, as I applied the brakes on a downhill curve. Every time I gently stepped on the brakes,there was a funny sound and some noise.After a few more hours, we made it to Kelowna, on the shores of KanaganLake, where we stopped at a motel and stayed for the night and a meal. The next day, I located a nearby auto repairgarage, where it was determined that one of my brake drums, on my front rightwheel, had completely broken into two pieces.We were ‘laid up’ in Kelowna for a few days, until the repair shop couldobtain a proper brake drum from an International dealer in another nearbytown. I remember spending some timeswimming in Lake Kanagan, at a public park along the shores. Otherwise, nothing much to do. The brake drum was finally replaced and weheaded south to Osoyoos. At Osoyoos,however, the Customs people told me that, because of the unusual nature of thecargo that I was carrying, I would have to go to the Customs Station at Blaine,Washington, in order to get proper customs clearance. So, there we were again, on the Trans-Canada highway, travelingwest from Kelowna, to British Colombia and the border crossing south ofVancouver, B.C.
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I must have run out of gas or something simple otherwise,because I remember parking the rig along the roadside in the big CanadianNational Park that was supposed to be ‘Home of the Sasquatch’, or ‘BigFoot’. I remember getting out of thecab and walking into the roadside forest in the dark (it was night time) tourinate and wondering if I was being watched by ‘Big Foot’. We drove into Hope, B.C., stayed in a motelovernight, bought a 5 gallon can of gas, drove back to the rig, put in the gasand drove the rig to a gas station in the town. After filling the tanks with gas, we continued on towardVancouver. After negotiating thetraffic and highways around Vancouver, we made it to the border crossing atBlaine, Washington. I paid the customsfees and we were on the road again, heading south in the State of Washington.
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I had made it to Bellingham, Washington, when all of asudden, flames started pouring forth from the sides of the engine. We had just passed an International Dealerthat I had noticed along the highway and I was able to turn the rig around, yetbelching flames, and make it to the International Dealer and Garage. It turned out that the manifold gaskets onthe engine had blown out. We stayed inBellingham for a few days, while the engine was overhauled by the InternationalDealer. Finally, back on the roadagain, I was but a few miles out of Bellingham, when a State of WashingtonHighway Patrol Trooper gave me a red light and I pulled over. He nicely informed me that Wide Loads werenot permitted in the State of Washington. He graciously allowed me to return toBellingham, where I found a Storage Garage.The owner had a fork lift and I was thusly able to unload half of myHondas and put them into storage in Bellingham, before continuing on south,with the remaining Hondas now lined up front-to-back on the bed of the rig.
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Since we no longer needed the rental car for Wide Loadpurposes, we decided to turn in the rental car at the Seattle-TacomaAirport. As mentioned earlier, it wasthen that my assistant got on a plane and left me. I drove the rig back to the Bay Area and wound up putting theHondas and the Marlin into a storage lot.A few weeks later (I was still employed by Lenkurt at this time), I tookanother few days off and drove back up to Bellingham and reclaimed the rest ofmy Hondas. However, in getting there, Ihad another ‘experience’.
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I was driving through a downpour in Oregon, when my enginequit on me again. In between downpours,I crawled under the engine and supposedly determined that the engine starterhad failed. Using my tools, I unboltedthe starter from the engine and then stood by the side of the road with mystarter and my thumb out, asking for a ride.Someone finally stopped and dropped me off at a garage in a nearby town. The mechanic checked the starter anddetermined that there was nothing wrong with it. Somehow I got a ride back to my rig and re-installed thestarter. But the engine still would notstart. Finally, after a frustratingsearch, I finally discovered that the hot terminal on the battery had corrodedand the battery was not delivering enough ‘juice’ to operate the starter. I cleaned and burnished the battery terminaland connector, hooked up back up again and then the engine started justfine. I sat there for a few minutes, inanother Oregon downpour, just ‘being nothing’. Finally, I made my way into Bellingham, loaded up the rest of myHondas, drove back to the Bay Area and parked on a side street near my home,until I was able to unload these Hondas a few days later, to join the others instorage. Eventually, the storage lotfees were getting to be too much, so I loaded all the Hondas back on my rig (Iguess I had already left the Marlin in the driveway at my home in Belmont),hired a crane operator and crane, and had the crane operator, one by one,gently remove each Honda from the rig and carefully lower it into a lower sideyard at my home, where all 5 of the Hondas would be parked for quite awhile. The 6th Honda, theone that was operational, I already had in my garage.
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The trip to Canada cost me over $12,000 and with the costsof the Hondas, the rig, storage fees and more, my costs were approaching$30,000 and I now realized that my two automotive-friend brothers were notgoing to restore my Hondas nor help me in any way. I eventually filed a lawsuit against them for the monies theyowed me and after about a year or so, I won the lawsuit and was awarded a legaljudgement-lien on their business of $52,000, but by that time they had gonecompletely on a daily cash basis operation of their business and had no assets worthattaching. Incidentally, during theyears that they were yet cooperating with me, knowing my penchant for vintagecars, they (supposedly) bought for me, with my money, two vintage Corvettes, a1957 and a 1963 dual-rear-window Coupe (very rare). They restored both Corvettes and sold them, and I never realizedanything on these two vehicles. Anyway,after 10 years the Statute of Limitations ran out on my Judgement-Lien and itexpired and again I had nothing, but the cost of the legal fees which, by thattime, I could not pay and I was into my bankruptcy.
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As to my Hondas and all of the 23 vehicles that I onceowned, during my bankruptcy, I was given the opportunity to put them all intostorage for free with another friend that I had met, who was the co-owner andoperator of the Santa Clara Flea Market near Marriott’s Great America in theSouth Bay. Eventually, I lost all of myvehicles, either giving them away or selling them for peanuts/pennies. My ‘dreams’ of restoration of all them intovaluable-asset holdings as a Vintage Car Collector, had fizzled before myeyes! My Buick and both Cadillacs wentfor $150 total, when I one time needed $150.Eventually my Packard, the Marlin and all the Hondas were gone. An elderly lady friend and my Flea Market-ownerfriend, brokered a deal to sell my rig for $3500 to a traveling-crop-harvestingbusiness from the San Joaquin Valley, who saw it parked in a field alongsidethe front entrance to the flea market and thought it would be ideal fortransporting some of their crop-harvesting machinery. I was homeless by that time and living in my car (a 1973 MazdaRX-2 that I had bought brand-new from a Mazda dealer years before) and the$3500 helped me survive for a while, living-on-the-road.
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Taking a ‘break’ here andchanging the subject for a while, as I am not now clearly remembering the‘tragedies’ of my Life, let me tell of my two marriages here-and-now. My first marriage was to Carol, whom I met whileI was working for Lenkurt, through another gal who worked at Lenkurt. Carol was almost 5 years older than myselfand she had two children, Lori 7 years old and Mark 11 years old. Carol was a Woodside, California girl,although not of any monied family there.Her Father had been the Gardener on one of the big estates and he andhis family lived in a small cottage on the estate. Of course, as Carol grew up to be a teenager, she was susceptibleto being ‘chased after’ by all of the monied boys in the vicinity. And her father had a drinking habit, andCarol told of learning to drive the vintage-30’s family car with a stick-shiftat an early age, in order to drive her drunken father home from either theHitch Rack or the Peanut Farm, two local saloons on Canada Road in Woodside,which would later be the road which alongside thereof the 280 Junipero SerraFreeway would be constructed. (See: http://www.yelp.com/biz/hitch-rack-peanut-farm-woodside#hrid:B0ZB5iB_hCzmJ8dhatZbxA/src:self also see: http://www.yelp.com/biz/280-freeway-scenic-trivia-local-flavor-menlo-park#hrid:3PDwaEue7uLgV1zB5VNBlg/src:self)
Although we finally divorced(we were married in 1967) after 7 years of marriage, I did yet consider thatmarriage, my first ‘family’, to be my ‘family’, and we did have some ‘goodtimes’ together, while we were yet a family.I have included a few of those ‘experiences’ hereinthefollowing, which Ihave Reviewed on my Yelp Review pages:
5. http://www.yelp.com/biz/sally-stanfords-valhalla-inn-sausalito#hrid:pbNa-sF0X-EQXELIHKlQkA/src:self
Also see the hereinabovesection detailing my Packard ‘experiences’.
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My second marriage, severalyears later, after my bankruptcy and while I was yet, effectively, ‘homeless’(although I was living with an elderly gentleman named Robert in San Mateo,renting a room in his small home), was to Anya, or Anne, a Polish Catholic galwith, again, two children, whom I met at a local Rec-Center live-bandDance-Party. I’m not quite sure if weknew each other for a year before we got married but we eventually did. She had a quite large extended ‘family’,including her ex-husband and his new wife and young toddler, her mother-in-law,her parents and more, as well as several friends. Her children were Peter, 7 years old, and Ella, 11 yearsold. We were married in Reno, with afew of her friends, with no Catholic friends or family and no ‘concerns’ aboutre-marriage outside-of-the-Church. Iwas somewhat ‘accepted’ within her large extended family, but we never reallydid much together as a family, in that the ‘ex’ and the stepmother were moredesirable by the kids, for family ‘activities’. I tried one time to play tennis with Peter, but he was somewhathostile. I did get along better withElla. Anya and I were only married fora year (although the sex was great!) and she filed the divorce papers with theSan Mateo County Clerk’s Office, as I was by then living at the Ananda Villagein the High Sierras, in the foothills several miles outside of Nevada City,California.
(See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Brotherhood_Coloniesand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swami_Kriyananda)
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I’ll only mention three moreunusual items about my marriage to Anya.And here I will talk about sex (for those young ears who need to turnaway now!) Anya liked sex. She especially loved to put her beautifulred-painted long fingers (she even sometimes asked me what color nail-polish tobuy, as to what color would ‘turn-me-on’) into my mouth and I loved it too, tobe sucking upon her fingers. Then shewould move her fingers, thusly also moving my head, to her breasts and thenremove her fingers, putting my mouth solidly upon her breast nipples, for me tosuck upon. After a while, she’d put herfingers in my mouth again and gently move my head down to her vagina, for me tocontinue sucking thereupon. After a fewclimaxes, when she’d had enough of my tongue and mouth, she’d again slip herfingers into my mouth, gently pulling me up and upon her, as her other hand putmy penis into her. Then she would wrapher long legs around me, pulling me inside of her. Then her very intelligent, European-trained, vaginal muscles wentto work, masturbating my penis inside of her.As her vagina pulled, I pushed.After a while, when she could tell that I was getting close, she’d againslip her beautiful fingers into my mouth for me to suck upon, until both of us,all of a sudden, ‘went-through-the-roof’ together, in one massive mutualorgasm! Yes, Anya loved sex and shejust loved ‘controlling me’ and ‘pushing-my-buttons’… and I loved her to do it!
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Also, apparently it wasstill old-world ‘tradition’ in the Eastern European nations such as Poland, butone day I just happened to find out a ‘family secret’, that was inadvertedly‘spilled’ by Peter. It seems that Anyawas sometimes yet breast-nursing Peter, a 7-year-old male. Whether that contributed to his ‘adversedemeanor’ or not, I can’t say, but he was the ‘terror-of-the-neighborhood’among his playmates and other school mates, even one time resulting in myselfbeing called at home (I had moved in with Anya when we married, although Istill had much of my yet-remaining ‘possessions’ in storage in the garage atRobert’s home) by the School Principal with concerns about Peter’s‘rowdiness’. Perhaps Peter was the‘reason’, somewhat, that Anya and I soon divorced.
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The other unusual thing about Anya was her ‘heritage’. She and her parents had fled from Polandduring the last years of World War II and came to America via Italy, finallysettling in California. But, back inPoland, she had a somewhat unusual childhood.Her Father was the Mayor, or ‘Burger-Meister’ (in German), of the smallPolish town of Oświęcim. Butduring her teen years, she spent much time in the nearby major metropolitancity of Cracow, Poland, a very cosmopolitan city not unlike Paris, with it’straditional European sidewalk cafes and such, so Anya was a very beautiful,sophisticated and cosmopolitan Eastern European young woman. Her favorite music was the Polish ClassicalPianist Chopin (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chopin) and she had learned to play the piano.(She tells the story of how she, as a young European teenager, already‘knowledgeable’ about sexuality, ‘did’ her piano teacher under the piano.) But during the war, the Germans took overher town, renamed it Auschwitz and constructed the Concentration Camp. Of course, Anya’s family was Catholic, notJewish, so they were not ‘inconvenienced’, but they eventually left and movedinto Cracow for a while before leaving for Italy. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracow. Also see: Oświęcim and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auschwitz_concentration_camp
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Being a ‘country-boy’myself, I got along much better with my first wife, Carol, who, regardless ofher Woodside ‘heritage’, was really a country-girl at heart, although asomewhat demure and feminine ‘country girl’.My first marriage ended because I was, contrary to my ‘Destiny’, being‘influenced’ by money and monetary things.On the other hand, Anya being a somewhat ‘city-gal’ and sophisticated in‘city-ways’, of course she was ‘traveling’, or wanted, a materialistic‘path’. But, by that time, a number ofyears had passed and I was quite on my way to ‘finding myself’ and therefore Iwas now ‘traveling’ a spiritual path, rather than a material path, and so Anyaand I were just too different.
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Actually, I’m going toreturn this discussion now to my first family with some pertinent comments thatI feel need to be noted. I’ve said thatCarol, as a teenager, has told of driving her drunken father home from thelocal ‘watering-holes’ a number of times.And yet she was not very expert at driving and maneuvering a car, inthat I remember spending time ‘teaching’ her how to drive and park a car,especially backing into a parking space between two other cars, although Idon’t remember why this was necessary.And yet I also remember, after we had bought our home in the BelmontHills, and she had, for some reason, signed up for some classes at the Collegeof San Mateo (perhaps for career advancement in her County of San Mateo jobposition), that she came home almost crying one time, because she had to, forsome reason, drive her father’s car to school one night and she was given aticket by a policeman because her father’s car had a loud muffler. (I usuallydrove her everywhere in the family car, so she actually did very littledriving.) I also got along fairly wellwith her son, Mark, although he quite often preferred his grandfather over me,except when his grandfather was drunk.I took Mark out driving a number of times and taught him how to ‘feel’the car and to park and back the car.It helped that the large parking lot on the top of Coyote Point Park (inSan Mateo) was still available (in front of the old, original Coyote Point Zooand Wild Animal Hospital) and we practiced there with no other cars tointerfere.
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But I especially rememberLori, Carol’s daughter, my step-daughter.Lori was about 12-13 by this time and quite often over the years, sincewe met when she was 7 years old, she ‘felt’ the need, of a young girl’s growingneed to sexually identify herself as a woman, as most young girls do so, to‘express’ themselves somewhat physically, in their normal and natural ‘love’,for the Man in their Life, their Father.Well, I was apparently Lori’s surrogate Father and quite often sheapproached me to ‘play’, in some kind of way and then we’d be laughing andsexually ‘playing’, rolling around on the living room floor, quite often inplain view of my wife, who was in the kitchen making dinner. Lori loved to ‘walk around’ on my back inher bare feet, as I lay on the floor.And quite often, she’d jump on me, knocking me to the floor, where shewould sit her young body on top of me, pinning me to the floor by holding thewrists of my out-stretched arms and hands, in a vise-grip with her hands, whichwere quite strong. I must say that whenshe did that, pinning me to the floor by holding both my wrists with her hands,it was somewhat sexually exciting for me as well. (My wife Carol sometimes did this too, when we were havingsex.) And she (Lori) obviously enjoyedit when, as we were rolling around, I’d put my arms around her body from theback (when I was behind her) and clench my hands over her breasts, holding hervery tight against my body, as I moved the hair away from her ear with my headand face and ‘grabbed’ her right earlobe with my mouth, laughingly shouting,“I’ve got an ear, to nibble on!” Icould tell that she loved it!Incidentally, Carol one time told me that by the time Lori was 11-12years old, that Lori already had breasts that were considerably bigger than mywife’s breasts.
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But I especially rememberanother ‘incident’ with Lori, my stepdaughter.We had been in our Belmont home for some time and we had been visited bymy own Mother, flying cross-country by plane from Pennsylvania, to visit us andto meet my new ‘family’. (I’ll talkmore about this ‘visit’ later herein.)Anyway, my Mother had given me $1000 when she left to go back toPennsylvania and it was with that money that I had bought my 1956 Packard for$750, from a local gentleman. (AlthoughI later, herein below this autobiography, somewhat dispute the herein justnoted ‘source’ of the funding for my Packard as well as the chronology thereofsaid ‘purchase’.) After a while, I feltthat I needed to extend the two-car garage of our home because the Packard wasso long in length that I could not close the garage door. So, after designing the plans for theconstruction and getting a building permit okayed by City Hall, there I was,doing both the woodwork and the concrete work, in extending both the garage andthe garage floor, as well as moving the existing fence alongside of thedriveway, making the driveway wider by putting the fence posts into a newconcrete foundation on top of the retaining wall that held up the drivewayitself on our hillside location.
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Anyway, I remember spendingone whole day, on a Saturday, laying this new concrete foundation into thewooden framework that I had constructed atop of the retaining wall, with longplanks all the way to the ground in the lower side-yard at the base of theretaining wall, to provide additional support to the wooden-concrete framing,when the full-weight of the liquid-not-yet-hardened concrete was being heldwithin those wooden frameworks. I wasmixing bags of concrete and water, in a steel concrete-mixing-tray, from earlymorning to late in the afternoon, one after another (I think there were 13 bagsof concrete), until the wooden framework was filled with concrete and the fenceposts were securely set in the concrete.By the time I was finished, I was exhausted. I staggered into the house, past my wife who was in the kitchen,and plopped myself down on the bed in our bedroom, with my cement-splatteredclothes still on. I was exhausted andcould hardly move.
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Apparently Lori, who washome all day and had obviously noted my Herculeanefforts-on-behalf-of-the-family-and-our-home, apparently was understandably‘grateful’ and also felt that I needed to be ‘rewarded’ at the same time, soshe decided to provide some personal ‘mothering’ to me. As I lay there on the bed in our masterbedroom, my back stretched out upon the comforter blanket on the bed, so as notto ‘dirty’ the sheets or blankets on the bed… all of a sudden I felt Lori, whohad come in the open bedroom door, crawl into the bed with me and lay her bodyright on top of my body on the bed. Mylegs were somewhat spread and she planted her vaginal area exactly right overmy penis, and even though my penis was under my pants, I could feel my penisbeing surrounded by her vagina, through the clothes that we were bothwearing. Even though I was dead tired,it was sexually stimulating and I definitely felt my penis becoming erect and hard,there within her vagina. And I couldtell that she felt it too, as I think she also placed her left hand around myneck, stroking the back of my head, while her breasts were firmly planted uponmy chest. Then, with her right hand,she covered my mouth. The soft skin ofher young hand upon my mouth was definitely further sexually exciting. We lay there together, not moving for a fewminutes, until I heard my wife’s voice in the kitchen, calling for Lori to helpher and then Lori slid off and left. Idefinitely remember that ‘incident’ and it, as well as all of Lori’s other‘sex-play’, has occasionally in the past, over the years, been cause for me tothink about Lori and to imagine what it might have been like, to actually havehad real sex with my step-daughter and the sexual ‘things’ that she obviouslymight have ‘done’ to me. Incidentally,I also remember that, one time when my wife and I were actually having sex lateone night, when Lori was supposedly asleep in her room, and I had been ‘going-down’on my wife (cunnilingus)… all of a sudden my wife yelled, because Lori had beenstanding there in the hallway outside of our bedroom door, with the bedroomdoor pushed slightly open, watching my ‘activities’ upon my wife. Later, when Lori was 17 years old (afterCarol and I had divorced), I understand from my wife’s telling, that she hadmarried the son of a famous Italian ‘green-grocer’ on local TV (whom I am toldwas 39 years old at the time, the green-grocer’s son) and was supposedly thenliving in a big mansion in the Napa Valley, with a bunch of her Italian‘bambinos’ running around the mansion!
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My Parents
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My Mother lived a few years more, rumbling around among allof the antiques-and-memories-of-a-Lifetime, in our home in Northampton,Pennsylvania. As noted already herein,one time she flew to California, to meet my new ‘family’, Carol and thekids. We ‘hosted’ my Mother at our homein the Belmont Hills, where we offered her Lori’s bedroom to sleep in, but sheinsisted on sleeping on the living-room couch-sofa, which was quite large andcomfortable. Carol told me that onetime, early in the morning, as Carol was in the bathroom getting ready to go towork at her job with San Mateo County(I guess that I had not yet gotten up myself, to drive both of us to ourdaily jobs), Carol apparently had the bathroom door open, as she was combingher long blond hair and ‘fixing-her-face’, she heard a slight sound and turnedto find my Mother there in the hallway outside of the bathroom, standing thereand ‘admiring’ Carol’s long, blonde ‘locks’.Apparently they conversed briefly, before I got up and had to use thebathroom myself. I remember that myMother also had very thick and long gray-hair, apparently the ‘accumulation’ ofmany years time. As I also remember,the kids somehow disliked my Mother but they were always friendly while she washere.
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I guess she stayed for about two weeks, during which, onetime, one evening we drove my Mother, myself and Carol (I don’t rememberwhether Mark and Lori went with us), across the Bay, to a home in CastroValley, where my Mother had already arranged (by telephone and previouscorrespondence) to meet a number of the relatives on my Father’s side of thefamily who lived there, my Father’s brother (my Uncle, I guess) and all of thechildren and grandchildren. I guess itwent well, that meeting of about 3 hours in that home’s living room, with abouta dozen people, although my Mother expressed some words that were somewhat‘insensitive’ to a few of the relatives in the room. One of my Uncle’s boys, who had served his military service inJapan, had married a Japanese girl and had brought her back to the UnitedStates. Somehow I remember seeing her,one time in Pennsylvania when we happened to visit my Uncle’s home and smallfarm in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Shewas sitting there in the living room of my Uncle’s house, fully attired in aJapanese kimono. Anyway, when wevisited the relatives here in California at that home in Castro Valley,apparently that son and his Japanese bride were not there, but their childrenwere, and my Mother made some kind of remark, when seeing the children, thatapparently was slightly ‘racist’, with regard to the Japanese. Graciously, our ‘hosts’ apparently ignoredit and let it pass, but I had noted it.
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Another time while my Mother was here, one weekend I decidedto take the whole family and ‘show’ my Mother some of the ‘landscape’ ofNorthern California and the Bay Area.At that time I still had my 1956 Plymouth Suburban Station Wagon, thecar that I had bought off a used-car-lot for only $150, when I first startedworking at Lenkurt. It had a brokenside window, which I soon repaired and it ran just fine for a V8, as well ashaving lots of room for carrying things, with fold-down rear seats. I drove that non-descript vehicle for anumber of years while working at Lenkurt, originally living in an apartmentbuilding in San Carlos (owned by Danny Thomas, the comedian and TV personality)and then moving to another apartment complex in Redwood City. It was while living in Redwood City that Ifirst met Carol and the kids. After we got married (in the Redwood CityUnitarian Fellowship, where Anne Mayhew, the daughter of Ansel Adams, was amember, as well as Donna Nation, the grand-daughter of the famous Prohibitionist,Carrie Nation), we moved into a rental house in Belmont, California, just ablock from where Carol had been living in a duplex-apartment with her kids, sothe kids could continue going to the same grade schools that they were alreadyattending. But some time later, afterCarol and I had married, we bought our home in the West Belmont Hills. Between both of us, we made a $5000 downpayment and the mortgage was only $170 a month, for our quite nice 3 bedroomhome, secluded among the trees in the Belmont Hills (one could almost not seethe house at all from the streets around our home, so secluded and surroundedby trees and ‘green growth’, was the property, which is one reason why I lovedthe property), yet within a short distance from the schools where the kids wereyet attending. Carol used her savingsto help with the down payment, and I sold the Triumph GT6 Sports Car that I hadordered while yet in Japan and which had finally been delivered to me in theU.S. I had only paid about $2000 forthe GT6 and I advertised it in the local classifieds for ‘Best Offer over$2000’, because, even though I had had it for two years, it was yet inexcellent condition. I had a few offersand I sort-of conducted an ‘auction’ among the offers. I remember a Hillsboroughteenager and his father coming by to look-and-test-drive the vehicle. Apparently they were quite impressed, as Ifinally sold it to the ‘highest bidder’, that father from Hillsborough, whobought it for his teen-age son… for $3,200!See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triumph_GT6
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Anyway, this last Bay Area ‘trip’ with my Mother, in thefamily’s Plymouth Suburban, found us one weekend, crossing the Bay and somehowtraveling the freeways in the East Bay through Walnut Creek/Concord (I think!),finally making our way to Interstate 5 and heading south on that freeway. Along the way, at some point, as we werejust casually ‘cruising along’, at the nominal speed limit of 65 mph, all of asudden I heard a somewhat funny noise in the engine of the car. But we were still going along okay, so wecontinued but I had noted it. But,intending to return to the Bay Area by returning over Pacheco Pass to San Jose,as the off-ramp to Pacheco Pass approached, I took it and started slowing thecar down. It was then that the enginestarted some banging noise and the car felt like it was ‘in trouble’. Slowing down and then heading west on thePacheco Road, the engine of my Plymouth was banging-away. In order to cross over Pacheco Pass, thefreeway rises up the mountain quite a bit and I somehow found that I couldslowly proceed with the car with a minimum banging of the engine and I was nowtraveling in the right-most lane of the highway, sometimes using the slow-truck-laneand thusly being sometimes passed by slow-moving trucks who were going somewhatfaster than I was. We made it to thetop of Pacheco Pass and pulled into the Rest Stop to inspect the engine. I opened up the hood but couldn’t determineanything. We finally all got back inthe car. When the engine started, itwas again ‘knocking’ quit bad. I pulledout of the Rest Stop, made it over the hill in the slow-lane and gratefullyoccupied the slow-lane all the way down the other side of the mountain, withbut minimal ‘knocking’ by the engine.Finally, along the highway at the bottom of the hill, I pulled into agas station, as I was also getting low on gas.I filled up the tank. When Istarted the engine again, it was really ‘knocking bad’, but I pulled out of thegas station, intending to somehow make it to Gilroy and a properservice-garage. But just a few milesdown the road, I don’t know what happened, but all of a sudden smoke startedpouring out from under the dash. Iimmediately pulled off the road and yelled, “Bail out!”, thinking that the carhad caught on fire. We were allstanding by the side of the road for a few minutes until I finally realizedthat the car was not on fire. But, thePlymouth was definitely disabled. Weall walked back to the gas station and I used the public telephone to call atow-truck service in Gilroy. We waitedabout an hour and the tow-truck finally arrived. We couldn’t all fit into the passenger seat of the tow-truck, andthe driver let myself and Carol ride in the passenger seat. However, the kids and my Mother were left tooccupy the seats in the now-disabled-and-up-in-air-being-towed Plymouth, beingtowed by the rear-end of the car, so the Plymouth’s passengers were now lookingout of the front of the car which was now, however, going-down-the-roadbackwards. Consequently, as I was toldby my Mother and the kids, it was somewhat unnerving, as we were going over thehills to Gilroy, for them to see big-rig trucks ‘coming-at-them’ from the rearof our tow-truck ‘assemblage’. We gotsafely to Gilroy and I turned the vehicle over to the nearby garage who, withina few short minutes, informed me that one of the cylinders in the engine had‘cracked’, which necessitated a major engine overhaul. I left the Plymouth, telling the garage thatI’d ‘be in touch’ and somehow we all found ourselves at the local Greyhound BusTerminal and it was a long bus ride back to Belmont, where my step-father (Ithink!) picked us up from the (at that time) local Greyhound Bus Stop on ElCamino Real. My Mother flew back toPennsylvania in the next day or so, and I called the garage in Gilroy. I was not about to pay the cost of an engineoverhaul at that time, so I sold the Plymouth to the garage for the salvagevalue and sent the garage the ownership papers. (Perhaps it was at this time that my Mother gave me the $1000,which I think I then used for a down payment on my Mazda. But that then brings up the question, that Ithusly already had my Packard by then, so why didn’t we drive my Mother toCastro Valley in the Packard? Thinkingabout, perhaps I did do just that, driving the Packard, rather than thePlymouth.)
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My Mother had a stroke; I think it was February, 1972. I flew back to Pennsylvania and visited herin the nursing home that she had been taken to by then. I was graciously allowed to stay with thedaughter (Ruth Wirth, nee Werkheiser) of my Mother’s sister, Beatrice (is thata Niece? Not sure.) and her family inHellertown. My Uncle Ellwood flew infrom Florida. Eventually it was decidedthat my Mother would be taken to live with my Brother Leon and his family inTampa, Florida.
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A short time later, I again flew to Pennsylvania. I again stayed with my Niece’s family aswell as at my now empty-of-habitation family home in Northampton. My Uncle again came from Florida, in that bynow he had been declared the co-Executor of my Mother’s Estate, along with myBrother Leon. It was decided to closethe house in Northampton and to sell it.I was given the privilege of emptying/removing all of thepossessions/artifacts/belongings in the house.I called my employer, Lenkurt, in California and requested another twoweeks extended funeral leave. Then Irented a big 24-foot U-Haul Truck and parked it in front of my childhood homein Northampton, by now prepared to ‘load up’ all of the ‘goodies’ (the antiquesand more, of my ‘inheritance’).
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My Mother passed away late in 1972, I think. She was about 72 years old. She had lived with my Brother’s family inTampa for some months but I understand that she did not get along well with thekids. Again there was a funeral inNorthampton, attended by the relatives, and she was buried next to my Father inHellertown. Perhaps it was this timethat I was instructed by my Uncle to empty my boyhood home in Northampton, as Ihad started to discuss in the just previous paragraph here.
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By the time I parked the U-Haul truck in front of the house,I had already begun to go through the home’s ‘treasures’ to determine exactlywhat there was and what I might take and what I might leave, for my Aunt’sdaughter (is that my Niece?) to then dispose of. (Her name was Ruth Wirth, nee Werkheiser, of Hellertown.) As it turned out, I fit most everything intothat U-Haul truck, leaving my Niece only a few things, which included somelarge furniture (several large glass-doored bookcases, the Living Room Sofa andthe large Pedestal Dining Room Table), as well as a whole bedroom full ofvintage 1800’s woman’s wear, dresses, bustiers, corsets and such.
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While I was there in the house, apparently the plumbing forthe second-floor bathroom had corroded or something. It was located just over the kitchen sink on the first floor, inthe more modern kitchen that had been constructed in the home quite a few yearsago, yet leaving the old, original but-much-smaller kitchen and sink yetintact. Anyway, I was taking a showerin the bath on the second floor, when the pipes burst (or something) and allthe water came down on the kitchen sink.I telephoned my Uncle and he called a friend in the Northampton area,who promised he would repair the water and building damages after I had left,in order that the house could be sold in a fully-operational condition.
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Actually, I guess I left my niece most of the furniture,beds and large items in the house. Iwent through the house, from cellar to the attic, picking out first the largeritems that I wanted and loading them into the truck first. However, most of the stuff was smaller itemsand lots of books and ‘knick-knacks’, as the expression goes. I piled it all into the truck, either inboxes or in drawers or somehow. Ipacked up all of my own childhood ‘possessions’, including the large, vintage000 gauge Lionel Train Set. My boyhoodham radio equipment had been sold years earlier for me by my parents, who hadcontacted a member of the Lehigh Valley Amateur Radio Club, W3OI, who had comeand taken it all away, including taking down my antennas from on top of thehouse. So there was some of my ownstuff but mostly, the antiques-of-the-family.And such was my ‘inheritance’.
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I left Northampton behind and soon found Interstate 80, allthe way cross-country to California, joining the ‘Big Boys’, in their big-rigtrucker-convoys on Interstate 80.(Since most heavily loaded trucks can only travel about the speed limiton highways, ‘convoys’ seem to naturally form with the overall aggregation ofsuch big-rigs, the cars and smaller vehicles quickly passing by these ‘convoys’in the faster lanes.) Anyway, I becamea ‘trucker’, stopping at the truck-stops along the way for gas, food, freeparking in the truck-lots and some sleep in the cab of the truck. Otherwise, I caught some sleep here andthere along the road, pulling off on some side-road for a while. Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa,Nebraska. I remember seeing wheatfields and cornfields as far as the eye could see. And then the ‘Big-Sky’ Country of Wyoming and crossing theRockies, stopping once or twice at a garage along the way, until I realizedthat my truck was not ‘in trouble’ but merely ‘out-of-breath’ and justnaturally losing power at such high altitudes, because the engine andcarburetor were set for lower altitude operation. As I finally got over the Rockies, my truck seemed to have itsold power back and everything was fine.I went through Salt Lake City and over the Salt Flats, into Nevada,skirting Reno. At the Californiaborder, I had to stop at a California Customs Inspection Station, where theagent just glanced at all the ‘stuff’ in the back of my U-Haul and quicklywaved me through. As I crossed theCalifornia Mountains, getting closer to the Bay Area, I began to ‘feel’emotional, as though I was ‘coming home’!Through Sacramento and I hit the Bay Area traffic, crossed the… (A pausehere, as I wipe the tears from my eyes a few times!) Crossing the Bay Bridge, down the Peninsula on 101 to Belmont andI soon pulled into my driveway.
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Carol and the kids were not home, but returned after awhile, looking in wonder at all the ‘stuff’ in the back of my truck andwondering what I intended to do with it all.Carol nor the kids, had ever been in a family situation, ‘culture’ ortradition, where there was such an ‘accumulation’ of ‘family treasures’ andantiques, so it was all new and somewhat disconcerting to all of them. Eventually, all of my ‘stuff’ came betweenus, as a family, and somewhat contributed to our divorce. Anyway, over the next few days, I unloadedthe truck, storing ‘stuff’ in the garage and under the house, with a few items,such as a large color TV, finding its ‘place’ in the living room. Then I turned-in the truck to the localU-Haul dealer and paid the rental fees.(Don’t remember how much it was.)
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Our Family Vacation(s)
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Anyway, I had just bought the Packard, accompanied by Markand his grandfather, Frank, who concurred that the Packard was in goodshape! But, at that same time, I guesswe had already decided to go on vacation, in an RV Travel-Trailer, for twoweeks, to ‘see’ California, North to South and return to the Bay Area. Frank was yet working as a gardener at thelocal Twin Pines Psychiatric Hospital in Belmont, and he came home one night(he was living in an attached in-law room behind the garage of our rental home)with two steel sort-of ‘plates’. Bythat time, I had decided to rent the vacation travel-trailer and to pull itbehind the Plymouth by using a hitch-post attached to the rear bumper of thePlymouth. Somehow, I guess I wassomewhat worried that the rear bumper would be strong enough to handle thetow-weight of a travel-trailer. I guessthat is when Frank had his ‘brilliant idea’.We took his steel ‘plates’ and spent the entire evening, installingthose two plates, from the rear frame of the Plymouth to the rear bumper,physically ‘strengthening’ the rear bumper’s abilities to hold the weight ofthe travel trailer attached to the tow-hitch.A day or so later I rented the travel trailer from a couple and the nextday we left on vacation. The traveltrailer only had sleeping accommodations for 4 people, but I had gratefullyinvited Frank to accompany us on our vacation-trip, and he offered to sleep inthe Plymouth. We had ‘stocked up’ thetravel trailer with food items and anything else that we thought might be needed.
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We left Belmont, crossed the Bay Bridge and headed north upInterstate 80. The travel-trailer had aslight tendency to ‘buck’ but I soon got used to pulling the rig behind thePlymouth and keeping it within the car-lane behind the Plymouth. Past Vacaville, I took the ‘cut-off’ toInterstate 5, picked up Interstate 5 and continued North toward Red Bluff,Redding and Mount Shasta. Before Mt.Shasta, pulling up the mountains, the Plymouth was overheating quite a bit,pulling the weight of the rig. We stoppedseveral times, luckily having jugs of water with us and refilled the radiatoreach time. I guess the overheating wasgood for the Plymouth and was apparently ‘cleaning out’ the radiator, as wesoon took a cut-off before the town of Mt. Shasta and I could tell that thePlymouth was running easier and holding the engine temperature just fine. The cut-off headed east and by nightfall, wehad checked in at a local KOA (Kampsites of America) campsite, where we parkedthe rig and prepared to enjoy the evening and the nice, cool mountain air. The sun went down and the sky ‘lit up’, withbillions-upon-billions of stars and galaxies.For the family, and myself, it was a sight-to-see and most wonderful,seeing that heavenly ‘spectacle’, there in the clear skies of the NorthernCalifornia Mountains. (Pause here… to wipe the tears from my eyes! Such things make me ‘emotional’!) Leaving the ‘rig’ at the KOA site, we tookthe Plymouth the next day and drove to the local town of McCloud, which was therail-head of the famous Mt. Shasta Steam Train. We booked passage on the train and soon we were off, in thevintage rail cars with the big steam engine blowing its steam whistle, as wecircled the slopes of Mt. Shasta.(Once, when the train stopped for a few minutes at a scenic-spot on theslopes of Mt. Shasta, I jumped off the train for a few minutes and picked up avery weathered and almost white-in-color, tree branch that was just lying therealongside the tracks. That piece ofweathered tree-branch from the slopes-of-Mt. Shasta, became our family‘souvenir’ of Mt. Shasta, to eventually occupy an ‘honored-spot’, on thefireplace-mantle of our home in Belmont.)The train stopped at the town of Mt. Shasta and then continued back tothe railhead. It was a wonderful tripand a wonderful day. Back at the KOAcamp, we again enjoyed the night skies.
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The next day we hitched up the rig and pulled out, headingeast through the Shasta National Forest on State Route 89. We stopped for a while at Burney Falls StatePark and then continued on toward Mount Lassen. In the Lassen National Park, we picked up State Route 44 and weclimbed the foothills of Mt. Lassen, until the roadway was surrounded bysnowdrifts at the side of the road (in June!)Continuing on, we headed for Susanville, and soon picked up Interstate395 heading south. (Yes, my oldfamiliar 395, which I had driven in my Triumph Spitfire, before leaving forJapan!) We were heading for Reno but Iknew that we would soon be heading down the Eastern slopes of the Sierras on395. We stopped in Reno but briefly andthen headed south again on 395. (Ithink we visited Harrah’s Automobile Collection in Reno.)
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South through Carson City, we followed 395 toward the InyoNational Forest and Mammoth Lakes.(There was some other spot along the way that we had considered seeing,but it turned out to be too much of a climb up the mountains to getthere.) At Mammoth Lakes, we took StateRoute 203 west into the town of Mammoth Lakes, continuing on 203 out of town tothe top of the hill, just past Mammoth Mountain Ski Resort, which was empty atthis time of the year. (There was aMammoth Mountain Earthquake Fault located here somewhere, that we visited whilewe were here, and I remember walking a narrow trail that actually descendedabout a hundred feet or so, into the ‘crack-in-the-surface’ that was theMammoth Fault-line.) At that time, of1968 (I think it was!), the paved road (of State Route 203) ended at the top ofthe hill and it was but a dirt road that continued on. We had registered for a campsite at DevilsPostpile National Monument, so I had no choice but to continue on. As the sun went down, the dirt road and thesurrounding Inyo National Forest was getting darker and darker. I soon had to put on the Plymouth’sheadlights, all the while navigating the rig behind the Plymouth over or aroundthe bumps and holes in the dirt road.Several times, the headlights went out for a few seconds, as the bumpsjolted a loose connection somewhere in the electrical wiring to theheadlights. We made it to the bottom ofa valley and even though the dirt road continued on, a sign indicated that theDevils Postpile was on the left turn road.Making the left turn in the darkness of those mountains, I drove severalmore miles on that dirt road until I finally saw a few campsites along theroad. Stopping, I was soon approachedby other campers who directed us to a vacant campsite, where we parked the rigand prepared to go to sleep.
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Waking up the next morning was a wonderful experience. We were parked right by the tumblingmountain waters of the headwaters of the Sacramento River. Other campers said that the fishing wasterrific and that there were plenty of mountain trout to be had. (As well as lots of mountain-rivermosquitoes!) Frank had gotten up andout of the Plymouth early in order to make a cup of coffee and almost had toshare his coffee and campfire with a bear.The kids were up early too and my wife and I soon ‘rolled out’. The crisp and cold mountain air was wonderfuland intoxicating. Carol made breakfastin the trailer and soon, later in the morning, we all headed down the dirtroad, walking along past the several campsites and across a wonderful mountainmeadow, through which the headwaters of the Sacramento River wound through andprovided, as a friendly Forest Ranger showed us, the natural pumice thatabounded in the area. Pumice is a lightglass-stone that is the result of volcanic lava flow, the very thing that hadgeologically created the very rocks of the Devils Postpile Monument. Continuing on, we soon found ourselves atthe base of the Devils Postpile. Welooked at that volcanic formation, even crawling to the top of it and thoroughlyenjoyed the day.
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The next day, later in the morning, Carol and Lori and Idecided that we would go into town for some groceries, supposedly only anhour’s drive up and over the mountain, into the town of Mammoth Lakes. Taking the Plymouth and leaving Mark andFrank to explore the Postpile further, we started up the dirt road over thehill. All of a sudden, the Plymouthdied and I couldn’t get it started again.Several cars came by over the next hour and one said that they wouldsend a tow truck out for us. We waitedover another hour and the tow truck finally arrived. He towed us to his garage in Mammoth Lakes, checked the engineand informed me that my fuel pump had quit, in this high elevationterritory. He looked, but did not havethe proper replacement fuel pump for a 1956 Plymouth. But he had a bright idea, taking about another two hours, he tookmy old fuel pump and a brand-new fuel pump for a different make of vehicle,taking the diaphragm out of the new pump and putting it into my old pump,effectively rebuilding my old fuel pump.While all of this was going on, it was getting to be late in theafternoon and Carol and Lori walked down the street to the local grocery storeand bought the groceries that we had come for.By the time they returned, the mechanic-owner of the shop had rebuilt mypump, installed it, fired up the Plymouth’s engine and everything wasfine. I think I not only used my AAAMembership Card for his tow truck services, but I generously paid and tippedhim for his creative ingenuity in solving my problem. We all got into the Plymouth and drove back over the hill to thecampsite, where Mark and Frank had been wondering where we were.
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The next day we packed up and left the Devils Postpile. I had intended to visit my properties inCalifornia City and that is where we headed for. All the way down the Owens Valley on 395 to the Mojave Desert andCalifornia City, with no more problems from the Plymouth, which was runningjust fine, enjoying the ‘romp’ that we were putting it through, in pulling thetrailer. Along the way, I turned on awater-filled ‘air conditioner’, as we approached the Mojave and the outsidetemperature was getting hot. But thething just was not enough to cool the inside of the Plymouth in that outsideheat and I finally gave up on it and told everyone to just open the windowswide, for as much air as we could get to flow through the vehicle in the heat.
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Arriving at California City, we found but a small town ofactual inhabitants, but streets laid out all over the desert everywhere. I was told that the City Limits of CaliforniaCity, spread out across the Mojave Desert, made it the largest City in theUnited States, even though it was but a small town. At night time, they even had a main paved road that made its wayacross the desert and was illuminated every 100 feet by a street lamp, makingquite a sight to see… a lighted street across the desert, with no buildingsanywhere alongside it. I had my ‘streetmap’ of California City and we set out, down the dirt road ‘streets’, until I finallyfound my two side-by-side real estate ‘properties’. I could tell that any local development was a long way off, as toanyone building homes and more there, in that part of California City. But, my two ‘properties’ were located rightalongside of a dirt road that crossed the desert here, which turned out to bethe famous Twenty-Mule Team Borax Trail.As noted earlier, it was here that I let Lori drive, actually steer, thePlymouth, as we drove down the famous Twenty Mule Team Borax Trail.
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But, we had actually intended to camp here in the desert andI understood that California City had an RV Camp Site. We soon found the campsite, which wasoccupied by a few more campers and we settled in, parking the rig and preparingto spend a few days ‘in the warm California sun’ and clear, healthy air, of theMojave Desert. The campsite had a smallVisitor Center (don’t remember what was there, except perhaps some historicalinfo and displays about the surrounding areas of the Mojave Desert)) and theyhad a corral of a few donkeys to ride, which I think the kids did.
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But, late one evening, we had the most memorable‘experience’ of our stay there in the Mojave.We were sitting around our trailer and camp site on folding chairs,enjoying the usual crisp-and-cool evening desert breezes, somewhat listening tothe soft muted rock-music sounds of a radio in a nearby camper. All of a sudden, off in the distance acrossthe desert to the East, we saw what looked like a large reddish-orange aircraftin the desert sky, that was somewhat circular and which seemed to have severalsmaller reddish-orange ‘orbs’ hovering near by. (This ‘spectacle’ may have been off-across-the-desert in thevicinity of the famous Area 51!)Anyway, for some unknown reason, I got up out of my chair and startedslowly walking across the desert toward this ‘phenomena’. It was but a few minutes, but then Frank andthe kids caught up with me, grabbed my arm and I stopped, yet watching the‘orbs’ in the distance. Then, all of asudden, they were gone! At that verysecond, two jet aircraft from Edwards Air Force Base, rushed over our heads,heading in the very direction of the now-gone ‘flying saucers’. I laughed and said to Frank and the kids,pointing at the now-vanishing-in-that-direction aircraft, “Too late, guys! They’re gone!” That ‘spectacle’, of possibly seeing ‘flying saucers’ that nightin the Mojave, was the ‘highlight’ of our stay in California City. As to my properties, some years later, Ieventually sold them, when a number of other property-owner-investors sued theCalifornia City developers in a class-action lawsuit and I received a smallaward as a member of the lawsuit. Wedrove back to the Bay Area and our ‘vacation-trip’ was over, but we had somenever-to-be-forgotten ‘memories’ thereof.
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Our second ‘memorable’ vacation-trip, was a year or solater. We were now living in our WestBelmont Hills home, my Mother had visited and gone, the Plymouth was also goneand I had bought a brand-new Mazda RX-2 Rotary Engine Car. We decided to go to Disneyland for twoweeks. At the appointed time, we droveto Southern California, down 101 and then over to Interstate 5, over the‘Grapevine’, onto the LA freeways and to Anaheim and Disneyland. (I’m quite sure we didn’t visit Edwardsalong the way, but I might have driven through Edwards on our earlier trip withthe Plymouth, as I think that Edwards was still ‘open-to-visitors’ yet at thattime, contrary to the secured-and-secluded situation today.)
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At Disneyland, we didn’t stay at the Disneyland Hotel(although we did visit it one day, taking the Monorail there and back, havinglunch at the Hotel while we were there), but checked in at a nearby motel. Each day, we drove to and parked in theDisneyland parking lot, catching the Parking Lot Tram-Shuttle to the MainEntrance. Purchasing the tickets forthe day, I doled them out to the kids, telling them to enjoy themselves, but toalso ‘plan ahead’, by planning to visit each section of Disneyland and itsrides, on separate days, as we intended to be there for at least a week. Evenings we all got together for dinner atone of the famous Disneyland ‘eateries’.I remember spending one evening, all of us eating dinner at afamily-of-four table, on the Patio of the ‘Blue Lagoon’ Restaurant (not sure ifthat was the name, perhaps it was some New Orleans or French name), in thesubdued purple lighting of that large indoor Patio eating area, which wassurrounded by the canal-waters of the ‘Pirates-of-the-Caribbean’ DisneylandRide, with the Ride-passengers-in-Pirate’s ‘skiffs’, slowing passing by us onthe perimeter of the Patio.
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Another evening, we ate dinner at one of the severalopen-air restaurants surrounding what I think Disneyland called the Plaza. What was nice and famous about The Plaza, isthat it was also a Family-oriented Night Club, with a large stage andlive-music entertainment later in the evening.We came back there several times, for the music and the dancing. One night it was the Ted Beneke Orchestraand The Modernaires. The next night itwas the Benny Goodman Orchestra and the next night it was the Glenn MillerOrchestra. Wonderful, wonderful, notonly were my wife and myself dancing, but the kids were too! We rode all of the Disneyland rides, fromthe Magic Mountain to the Submarine and everything else. It was also wonderful (on one of the‘rides’) to stand there in the crowd of people and to watch as that 360°airplane-view of America surrounded usand rushed by our view. Visitingthe famous Sleeping Beauty’s Cinderella Castle and watching the night timeElectrical Parade wind its way down Main Street. Visiting the Main Street Shops and taking the Mini-Rail Trainaround Disneyland. It was all wonderfuland we all enjoyed it!
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Speaking of the Big Bands, I remember another ‘memorable’evening, that Carol and I spent at the Grand Ballroom of The Thunderbolt Hotel,Millbrae Avenue and Bayshore Freeway/101, which I think is now the ClarionHotel, Millbrae. At that time, everyNew Year’s Eve, Stan Kenton and his famous Big Band Orchestra would play theGrand Ballroom of the Thunderbolt Hotel.One year, we got tickets and Carol and I spent the entire eveninglistening and dancing to the Sounds of Stan Kenton and his Orchestra. (I had all of his LP albums, for our homestereo.) I would just go-to-Heaven whenall 30-some of his horns would stand up and play. Carol and I had a front-row table on the right side of the DanceFloor right next to the stage. AtIntermission, Stan himself stopped by our table to say “Hi!” and I think I gothis autograph on a napkin.Incidentally, at some time in my Life, I think I figured it out, as towhy I love Big Bands and their horns so much, when I hear such music. Supposedly my ancestors, back when, on myFather’s side of the family, were Czechoslovakian, from the Province/State ofMoravia, and were probably members of the Moravian Church and Religion. As I understand it, the church ‘services’ inthe Moravian Church were always ‘celebrated’ with the blowing of horns, as partof the religious ‘ritual’. I think that‘heritage’ has been passed down to me.Plus, it also somewhat ‘helps’, that the Moravian College/University, ofBethlehem, Pennsylvania, also holds their Annual Bach Music Festival everyyear, again replete with full orchestral accompaniment and horns.
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I’ve already mentioned several of the other ‘good times’that my first family and I had together, including all the steam train ridesand more, already noted hereinabove in my links to my Yelp Reviews. A few other ‘good times’ were had one nite,when I took Carol and the kids to the Nightclub at the Hyatt Burlingame to seethe famous Danny Marona Show. See:
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Another time I remember taking all of us to a movie-theatreshowing of the movie “Easy Rider”, starring Peter Fonda. I remember after the show, Mark bought alarge photo, in the movie-theatre lobby, of Captain America (Peter Fonda) andhis motorcycle, which Mark then took home and pinned to the wall of hisbedroom.
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And then I actually got to use those yellow fog lights,instead of merely ‘for show’, in a real-life ‘situation. I invited Carol and the kids to go with meto Lake Tahoe, in the GT6. Lori wassmall enough yet that she could sit in Carol’s lap in the passenger seat andMark could sort-of lay himself in the large package-compartment behind the twoseats, all the way to the rear of the vehicle, under and accessible by, theglass window rear-hatch of the GT6. Wedrove to Tahoe and everyone was comfortable enough in the GT6. However, when we got there, I don’t know ifI had known about it ahead of time, but there was still snow at Tahoe. I think we stayed in a room at Squaw Valley(coming out in the morning to find the GT6 covered in snow) and even rode the SquawValley Tram (not the ski lift) all the way to the top of Squaw Valley. But the‘memorable’ moments of the Tahoe trip were, first of all, for some reason wehad been out and about all day. It was becoming dark and it was snowing fairlyhard. The GT6 still had road traction though, in the snow on the roadway and Iwas having no problem driving through the snow (using my oldin-the-snows-of-Pennsylvania driving ‘expertise’). But the snow was also reflecting back at me, the white light ofmy headlights, so I decided to try the fog lights. The yellow fog lights cut through the snow better, providingimproved visibility in that snow storm and I could then see better where I wasdriving.
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The other ‘good time’ at Tahoe was actually at NorthTahoe. We had driven through the snowduring the daytime, to North Tahoe and up Mt. Rose, to the Mt. Rose SkiResort. (Perhaps I had a diners club‘coupon’ for lunch in the restaurant at Mt. Rose.) Perhaps we ate a meal and then looked around the Mt. Rose SkiResort, which was not too busy. Anyway,the kids found an excellent area of somewhat deep snow near the Mt. Rosebuildings and both Mark and Lori were having quite some ‘fun’ in the snow,there at Mt. Rose. I remember thatCarol took a snapshot of Lori in the snow, almost up to her waist.
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I think I’ve already said earlier herein, that I eventuallysold the Triumph GT6 to a young Hillsborough lad for $3,200. Some time later, with my family (in my newMazda), using a coupon (I think), we drove down to the Big Sur area south ofCarmel…
See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Sur
and had a late breakfast at the Highlands Inn…
with a brief tour of the Highlands Inn Visitors Center,looking out of the huge front windows of the Center, at the rugged and beautifulBig Sur Coastline, for which the Big Sur and the Highlands Inn are known for.
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I’ll mention this here, although I don’t know exactly whenit occurred. At some time, perhapsagain with a coupon, we found ourselves again on the Big Sur Coastline, thistime having lunch at the famous Big Sur Restaurant that was featured in theHollywood Movie, “The Sandpiper” (1965), starring Elizabeth Taylor and RichardBurton, called The Nepenthe Restaurant… See the previous link here for Big Sur,which has details of the Nepenthe.
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Anyway, after breakfast at the Carmel Highlands Inn, we wentto the nearby Laguna Seca Racetrack, where there was a major Formula-type raceoccurring that day, featuring Ferraris-in-full-roar and such, a‘memorable-event’ for the kids, Carol and myself. As we were parking my Mazda in the field that was theparking-lot-of-the-day there at Laguna Seca, lo-and-behold, all of a sudden wecame upon, parked there in that field also, my old Triumph GT6, looking just asbrand-new and as good as when I sold it sometime earlier. I didn’t see the owner, who had alreadyparked and left for the racetrack-seating.He was apparently a racing-fan also, although I don’t know if it hadanything to do with the several Car Badges that I had installed on the carmyself and were all still evident and in place upon the vehicle, being my TokyoSports Car Club badge on the front of the car and my three badges for theFunabashi Grand Prix Circuit, the Fujiyama Grand Prix Circuit and my FIA(Fédération Internationale de l’Automobile) badge. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FIA
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Speaking of said ‘Dining Club’ coupons, such is probably whywe went to Mt. Rose and Squaw Valley in the first place. I had purchased, from a ‘Dining MembershipClub’ that was popular at the time (I don’t know if it still exists), aMembership that provided Members with several booklets of discount tickets, forrestaurants (2 meals for the price of one), rides, admissions and places-to-go,all over Northern California. Such ishow I found out about some of these places and I’d use the coupons whenever wewent ‘out’ as a family, stopping at restaurants, coffee shops and such, alongthe wayside of our ‘travels’. Here area few of the ‘places’ that we found, using these coupons: The Nut Tree Restaurant and Shop,alongside of Interstate 80, on the way to Sacramento; the Roaring Camp andBig Trees Steam Train ride, at Felton, California; the Brookdale Lodge,in Brookdale, California, where there is a wonderful ‘dining room’ within aEuropean Bavarian-style Chateau with a glass-window-paneled roof, that has amountain stream running right through the ‘dining room’, and the individualtables are placed on small individual landscaped ‘shelves’ alongside of thestream; the Trout Farm Restaurant at Ben Lomond, where you can pick yourmeal from the fresh trout that are raised in the waters of the stream justoutside the restaurant; the Shadowbrook Restaurant in Soquel, California(already mentioned hereinabove, as one of my limousine ‘gigs’), where Carol andI descended down a cliff on a Cable Car to the restaurant on the banks of theSoquel River, where we had a delicious dinner of Chateaubriand Steak; the CarnelianRoom in San Francisco, on the top floor of the Bank of AmericaTower-Building, where the kids were looking out of the big dining-room windowsand looking down on the top of the Transamerica Pyramid; a Swedish HofbrauRestaurant somewhere on one of the downtown San Francisco streets, where mostof the help-yourself buffet was Swedish-style cold-fish dishes and delicacies;and lots more, that I have forgotten.
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I also remember taking my family to a few more outdoor parklocations around the Bay Area. In theSouth Bay, to Mt. Madonna County Park, Pinnacles National Monument Park, southof Hollister, and also visiting the famous old Mission San Juan Bautista, theCarmel Mission and the Mission San Jose, as well as a winery in the area.
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On the Peninsula, Huddert Park in Woodside and MemorialCounty Park south of La Honda, as well as visiting San Gregorio Beach and afriend-of-the-family who had a small farm and home in San Gregorio, and the oldSan Gregorio General Store. AlsoHalf-Moon Bay and the Pillar Point Harbor, where we stopped at a restaurant fora lunch of crab legs. Also MontaraState Beach, where the kids could crawl over the rocks and tide-pools of thebeach, finding all kinds of starfish and other small tide-pool animals.
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In the North Bay, we visited the Marin Headlands and KirbyCove State Park, across the entrance to San Francisco Bay, where there is, atalmost sea-level, an old large-caliber-gun-emplacement fort, numerous smallerhillside gun-emplacements (all vintage 1800’s, when the Port and Bay of SanFrancisco needed to be ‘protected’ from Pirate-Ships), as well as a wonderfulbeach almost under the Golden Gate Bridge.The road above Kirby Cove runs along top of the Marin Headlands and hasa magnificent scenic view of San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge, fromwhich road many movies and pictures have been made and taken. At the far end of this road, at the PacificOcean end of the Marin Headlands, is the famous Point Bonita Lighthouse, madefamous in many movies. North of theLighthouse is Rockaway Beach and the Marin Headlands Marine Mammal Center. All which were also reached by driving downthe Marin Headlands Military Reservation Road, from the Ft. Baker Tunnel, underHighway 101, from the Sausalito Off Ramp to Sausalito. Yes, we also visited many places inSausalito, already noted in the Yelp Reviews pages already noted hereinabove.
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San Francisco… Fort Point, under the Golden Gate. Crissy Field and the annual Fourth of JulyFireworks, the Presidio and much, much more!
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As I have already noted, I didn’t really do much of anythingwith my second family some years later and Anya and I were only married for ayear before we divorced. However, I dohave a Review on Yelp where I did have an interesting ‘experience’ with mysecond family.
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But my most ‘memorable’ experience as a FashionModel-Character Actor, was my Barbizon Graduation ‘Show’, held in the largeBallroom of The Dons, in the famous Fairmont Hotel on Nob Hill in SanFrancisco. There was a long elevated‘runway’, extending from the center of the stage at the front of the room, downthe center of the Ballroom, with audience seating on both sides of the runway. My personal Graduation ‘skit’ was to look likeJames Dean and I had my James Dean Texan-look suit (a vintage light tan RobertHall suit, one of the very first suits that I had in my teenage years back inPennsylvania and which I could still fit into easily, as skinny as I was then,at over 40 years of age), bowtie and cowboy hat. My ‘skit’ was to walk on stage from the wings and then slowlywalk down the runway with a Texas ‘gait’, as a bevy of good-looking girls‘chased’ me down the runway, yelling “Jimmy Dean! Jimmy Dean! Jimmy Dean!” Somewhere along the line, I think I almostfell off the side of the runway, but I made it to the exit steps at the end ofthe runway and exited the Ballroom.Somehow I was frustrated with it all, having just ‘performed-the-show-of-my-Life’,but not having anyone there to personally ‘share’ my ‘experience’ with me. I changed into my street clothes, wentdownstairs to one of the Fairmont’s famous Restaurants and ‘stuffed’ myselfwith food! Then I drove home to Belmontand an empty house.
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I thought that I would live in my home for many years,although I had no idea as to how it was to be paid for, as my businesses werenot generating any income to speak of.At the time of our divorce, I was still working for Lenkurt (I worked therefor 12½ years.) It was then that I didsome ‘improvements’ to the house, laying in drain-pipes throughout the frontyard, a dry-well next to the front foundation under the house and a drain-pipefrom the bottom of that dry-well, down hill and out through the back foundationof the house, continuing down hill to drain off-the-property at the lowestlevel of the property, into the woods and grass-covered slopes downhill fromthe property. The reason for all thisdrain-piping is that somehow, during wet weather, water would somehow ‘seep’under the front foundation of the house, causing me to have concern for thestability of the front foundation being kept dry in wet times. I installed the 6 foot deep dry-well, filledit with drain rock and topped it with a layer of compacted soil and located itapproximately where the water was seeping under the front foundation. I figured that if the drain-pipes in thefront yard didn’t stop the water from seeping under the front foundation, thenat least the dry well would pick up, or ‘absorb’, any remaining seepage, andprevent that water from running downhill any further under the house, helpingkeep the ground within the foundations under the house dry at all times. After I installed the drain-piping and thedry-well, I never saw any more water under the house.
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I also did some ‘construction’ on the house, closing-in andattempting to finish, the room-under-the-kitchen that had been merely anopen-air floor when we moved into the house.Carol’s Father, Frank, had been living in the In-Law room behind thegarage at the previously rented house in downtown Belmont and when we moved tothis house in the West Belmont Hills, Frank agreed that this open-aired floorunder the kitchen would be sufficient for his bed, chair, table and hispersonal things. However, in order toaccess the underside of the house anywhere, one would exit the small door atthe side of the garage, go down a lengthy flight of stairs to the rear of thehouse, where there was a wooden ‘landing’, to a door somewhat toward the centerof the rear of the house. Going throughthat lower door at the rear of the house, one was immediately in Frank’s ‘room’under the kitchen. Then one would haveto walk through Frank’s room and down two wooden steps, to then be standingupon the dry ground under the house within the foundations. So, Frank really had no privacy in his‘room’, although I tried to give him ‘consideration’ while he still livedthere. Of course, the kids would godown to ‘visit’ him at any time. Afterthe divorce, he had moved out and it was then that I tried to finish theconstruction of the room.
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Approximately about the same time, I built a ‘work shop’under the garage, next to the room, where I had a small work-table and kept mytools and construction books and such.This workshop occupied but about a half of the width of the garage, yetthe full-length of the garage, running to the foundation wall under thegarage-door at the beginning of the driveway.There were three support-posts on concrete piers under the garage floor,holding up the garage floor. (Thegarage also had foundation walls under all sides of the garage.) I put large concrete ‘sheathing’ containersaround those three existing concrete piers and poured more concrete into thosesheathing-containers, in order to strengthen those piers that were supportingthe garage floor. (The Packard wasparked in the garage above by then, so I figured the additional support for theweight of the Packard and anything else, would be helpful.) The height of the new concrete piers wassomewhat flat and I then built a wood-plank shelf, for storage, under thatwhole half-side of the garage, with the shelf resting upon the existingfoundation on the uphill side of the garage, yet open to and easily accessiblefrom my workshop under the other half of the garage. I wound up storing many of the boxes of my ‘inheritance’ on this‘shelf’ under the garage.
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I also installed quite a bit of new electrical wiring in andunder the house. As I have said, I wasstill working at Lenkurt and it was easy to put a 100 foot roll of #12 or #14electrical wire (black, white or green, in conformance with the ResidentialBuilding Electrical Codes, in the Code Handbook that I had bought), from theelectric-wire supplies of the Lenkurt Systems-Assembly Section and then walkout the Lenkurt Gate at the end of the work-day with the entire roll of wire inmy lunchbox. I also installed a quitelarge, industrial telecommunications 24 volt system power supply under the house,providing DC power to several areas of the house. Again, I obtained the power supply unit from Lenkurt. I obtained a permit from my DepartmentManager, to bring my personal stereo receiver-amplifier to work one day, inorder to repair a problem with it during my lunch-break. However, when I walked through the Gate thenext day with the plainly-labelled ‘Stereo-Amplifier’ cardboard box andpresented the Permit to the Guard for his ‘clearance’ and Sign-In, the box(which was not opened by the Guard), did not actually contain anything but somedead weight trash items. However, atthe end of the work-day, when I again exited through the Gate and againpresented my Permit to the then-on-duty Guard, by then the ‘Stereo-Amplifier’box did contain the 24 volt power supply, which was actually in ‘excess’accountability and just happened to be the exact same size and dimensions as my‘Stereo-Amplifier’. Okay, yes, I guessI did ‘steal it’ from Lenkurt, but I had been assured that it was ‘excess’ andno longer needed. I installed that DCpower supply under the house and then ran DC wiring from it to severallocations, in the garage and under the room-under-the-kitchen, as well as to my‘work-shop’.
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Anyway, returning to my specially-installed electricalwiring circuitry… The special electrical circuitry, along with the car batteryand a huge electrical capacitor that I had obtained from Lenkurt, provided anelectrical system by which the capacitor was slowly ‘charged’ by the batteryall night long, to effectively reach ‘full-charge’ by daybreak. At that time, the solar-operated system ofthe house would turn-off/turn-on (whichever) and the full-charge of thecapacitor would instantaneously be applied, via the wires through the vent-meshof the foundation wall, to the dog-run gate at the side of the house, wherethere was a DC-operated car-door-solenoid which, when the capacitor-charge was‘felt’ across that door-solenoid, pulled in its magnet assembly, pulling on thewire-chain to the gate-latch of the dog-run, effectively and mechanicallyreleasing that latch and thusly the spring-loaded gate would swing open,releasing the dogs from their dog-run area.This would occur every morning when the sun came up and turned off theover-night power-on circuit.
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I also installed a security circuit, by which I could openthe door at the front-walkway side of the garage, when I had arrived home andhad parked in the driveway. It wasopened by a small magnetic device that I carried in my pocket, much like akey. I merely slid the device down aslot in the wooden garage siding at the right side of the doorway, at a certainlocation, and the magnet operated a magnetic switch mounting just inside thesiding, opening the door.
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I also had another security circuit within the house. After Carol and I divorced and Mark and Lorihad moved out of their rooms, I used the small bedroom that was Mark’s room formy office, moving my old fold-down desk (that was mine when I was a kid) andall valuable items, into the room. Thehouse had been broken into by burglars one day when I was at work. They had used a glass-cutting-blade to cutthe glass of one of the living room windows, then removed the cut-glass-circle,reached through the cut-glass-circle and unlatched the window from theinside. They didn’t find any jewelry orvaluables, only a money-market checkbook which they couldn’t do anything with,so nothing was stolen, but I still had to call a window-man to replace thedamaged window. But it was cause enoughfor me to secure my papers and such, in the room that became my office. I installed an electric latch on the door tothe room, which was controlled by an electronic circuitry box installed underthe floor, just under the door. Wiringran up and down from the door latch, down to the control box under the floor, andup into the attic of the house, to the electric box above the hallway light andalso to the electric box for the light switch inside the door of the frontbedroom, to another magnetic switch mounted within the wall alongside thebedroom light switch. In order to openthe latch on my office door, three things were required. Turn on the hallway light, then wait 15seconds, during which time to walk into the front bedroom at the front end ofthe hallway and then pass my special magnetic key-device over the wall at theside of the light switch for the front bedroom light. Performing all three operations in sequence, then activated thelatch on my office door.
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During my time yet in the house, I did some gardening on theproperty, although the property was not well suited for growing vegetables. That is because the entire house andperimeters of the property, were already planted/occupied by numerous trees andbushes. The house was literallysurrounded by huge, evergreen trees, front, back and sides. In fact, the evergreen trees at the rear of thehouse were so tall and full, that most of the year, the trees just outside ofthe rear dining room window of the house, were hanging full with largewhitish-colored pinecones. This was abeautiful sight to see, so I installed two floodlights just outside of thedining room windows, which shone on the trees and their pinecones at night,presenting that beautiful sight just outside of the dining room window allnight long. Of course, the electriccircuit for these floodlights was also connected to the electric circuit thatswitched on when the sun went down. So,with the drapes inside of the dining room window always open (it was a 40 footdrop to the ground outside of the dining room window), the floodlights shiningon the pinecones and the oil paintings over the fireplace in the living roomilluminated at night time as well, it was always a beautiful sight to walkthrough both the dining room and the living room at night time.
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Besides the pine trees (I think there were three kinds ofconifers, including Monterey Pines), there was a huge oak tree in the front ofthe house alongside the street in front of the house, where there was alsoanother pine, a large acacia tree and several bottle-brush bushes, as well asnumerous smaller plantings. All of suchplantings enclosed a front yard that was further enclosed by a woodenpost-and-plank wall, about 3 foot high, which held back the ground andtrees/bushes that were planted uphill, above the front yard and next to thestreet-level above the property. Therewas a set of concrete stairs, down the embankment through the trees, from thestreet-level above the house and front yard, to the front yard, a brick patioin front of the house and the entrance to the house, via a porch that alsoswept across the front of the house, to meet the brick-paved walkway from thedriveway, that passed alongside of the garage that was attached to thedriveway-side-of-the-house, as an integral part of the house. (The house was located at a hillsideintersection of two streets, so there was a street above the property as wellas another street running downhill at the side of the property, this downhillstreet providing access to the driveway to the garage.) At the rear of the house, downhill from thehouse, besides the huge pine trees, there were also a few loquat trees, thatprovided some small but delicious loquat fruits in season and several almondtrees, that also provided almonds in season.
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When I dug up the front yard to install the drain-piping toprevent water-seepage under the front foundation of the house, I had removedthe small plantings that had originally been planted in the half of the frontyard that was not paved patio. So whenI put the ground back over the pipes, I now had several areas suitable to beplanted. So I put in some vegetables,in that half of the front yard. I doremember getting some snow peas, but I don’t remember much success withanything else, except one thing. I hadalso planted some egg plants but for some reason I had to enclose theseplantings within a clear plastic sheeting supported by a wire mesh and somepoles, perhaps because egg plants needed more heat than my front yard normallyhad. But these egg plantings were adisaster. Enclosed in plastic as theywere, there was always condensed-water covering the inside of the plastic,which attracted slugs, which fed on the plants inside the plastic. My one and only front yard success wascorn. Yes, I had obtained a complimentaryenvelope of giant corn kernels, from the company in Oakland that makes thepackages of giant corn snack-food, salted-and-baked giant corn kernels. Of course, the complimentary package was,for some reason, just raw corn kernels, which was fine. I think there were only six kernels but Iplanted all 6 in my front yard. Thosesix kernels sprouted and grew into corn stalks that were over 20 foot high,higher than the roof of the house and they bore a small number of corncobs ofcorn with giant kernels.
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The opposite side of the house from the driveway had a smallhillside planting area that sloped downhill and was sort-of ‘sandwiched’between my house and the house and property next door, providing about a 10foot wide planting area that had full sunlight, but only for several hours inthe middle of the day. Plus, I had to installseveral short wooden retaining walls across the downward-sloping hillside, toprovide several horizontal step-terraces where I could plant myvegetables. However, nothing came ofthese plantings, as the kids did not ‘look after’ this garden while I was awayto Pennsylvania one time for my parent’s funeral and when I returned, the dailywater-sprinkler had washed all these hillside plantings down-the-hill.
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My only other gardening effort never really materialized…Well, I guess part of it did. AfterCarol and I divorced and the family was gone, I was yet left with the animals,Pedro and Bandito, the cocker-spaniel dogs, living in their dog-run/dog-houseareas, at the rear of the house and the side of the house with the driveway tothe garage. There was also Kimmie andMicky, the two cats that lived inside the house. Since they were baby kittens, the family had agreed to never letthem out of the house, so they would not get run over by a car or anythingelse, as a neighbor’s cat had been. So,they lived in the house all their lives.I had built a passageway inside of the wall of the upper floor, with acat-door on one side of the hallway, by which door and passageway, they could findtheir way to an opening in the floor that allowed them to step down onto aseries of catwalks under the floor and thence be able to access the entire areaunder the house. This was theirplay-area and, at the lower-most end of the under-the-house hillside, I hadpoured several bags of kitty-litter, so it was also their bathroom. And when no one was in the house, theupstairs cat-door was locked and they were confined to the underside of thehouse, so they would not ‘get into any mischief’ with the furniture (like‘scratching’ their claws) or anything else, when the family was gone.Unfortunately, after our divorce and the family was gone, I was still workingat Lenkurt and thusly I too was gone all day.I tried to devote some time in the evenings and on weekends to both thedogs and the cats, but it was not enough.They needed people in their lives and I wasn’t enough. Also, with the dogs confined to theirdog-run areas outside of the house and the cats confined to their cat-run areasunder the house, the entire property had become infested with fleas, which werenot only outside and under the house, but also in the carpets, the furniture,as well as my bedding and clothes throughout the house. I had to twice have a pest-control guy spraythe entire house and property and it was expensive. Eventually, with tears in my eyes, I had to leave them at theHumane Society.
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Of course, it was a nice moonlit night and I could seeperfectly in the dark, and lit-by-the-moon, were the baylands that I was to betraversing. When I got to the dirt-roadentrance to the levee-road, I stopped the truck and reached down to the fusebox under the dash and removed all the fuses for all the brake lights and otherlights on the truck. Then, with thetruck completely ‘blacked-out’, I drove a few miles down the access road, overa bay-lands hill and then upon the dirt road atop the levees themselves, withwaters of the San Francisco Bay lapping one side of the levees. I knew where I wanted to go and I drove somedistance on top of the levees. I lookedback one time and saw the headlights of a car, perhaps a local police carpatrolling the area, which passed over the hill that I had crossed and thendisappeared over the hill. But hedidn’t see my ‘blacked-out’ truck, sitting out there, on top of the levee. Then it was time to go to work. At the exact point where I knew the insideslope of the levee was ‘accommodating’, I drove the truck over-the-side anddown onto the dry-pond bed. Driving towhere the planks were, in the moonlight, I loaded about 20 to 30 of these20-foot long planks, onto the long bed of my truck. (They were a bit heavy, as well as somewhat encrusted with themud and grasses within which they were residing.) But, I got the job done.I fired up the truck, drove to the bank of the levee, got a runningstart on my ascent and it was up-and-over the side of the levee, finding myselfnow on the top of the levee. Followingthe dirt-road (the moon was setting, so it was getting darker), I almost‘missed’ a curve in the levee at a dike-gate location and I felt one wheel ofthe truck temporarily suspended off the road and over the waters of the SanFrancisco Bay. But the other threewheels kept moving and I was quickly back on the solid dirt-road. I made it to the levee-road entrance,re-installed the lighting-fuses and made it onto the freeway, and a few milesmore and I was backing the truck into my driveway, just as the sun was comingup! I went to sleep for a few hours andlater in the day I unloaded the truck, gently lowering my long planks over thefence at the side of the driveway, one-by-one, into the lower side-yard at theside of the house. Then I returned thetruck to the rental office.‘Midnight-requisition’ complete!
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‘Back-at-the-Ranch’, I painted those planks with creosoteoil (some already had termite infestations) and then cut them to fit. I intended to construct an 8 foot high‘greenhouse’, covered over with glass panels on a wooden framework andside-walls, supported by 10 foot high 4 inch square posts set into theside-yard concrete floor. I neverfinished this ‘greenhouse’, with walls and glass panels but I did install the10-foot high posts, which were the corner-posts of the 3 foot-high greenhouse‘beds’ that I made with the planks. The‘beds’ were about 30 inches wide, constructed into a U-shape, with a narrowwalkway down the center of the greenhouse, between opposing ‘beds’. I filled the ‘beds’ with soil and anunderlying mulch, but I never grew anything in these ‘beds’, that I remember.
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However, at the end of the ‘bed’ closest to thedriveway-retaining-wall (there was about 3 foot of space between this ‘bed’ andthe concrete retaining wall), I built a smaller rectangular ‘bed’ that wasabout 3 foot wide by 2 foot deep (again, 3 foot high), that was located rightup against the base of the concrete driveway-retaining wall. I filled this smaller bed with soil andinstalled a daily automatic sprinkler outlet, to water the bed every day. Then I drove to the South Bay, to a Nursery,and bought two Kiwi plants, a male and a female. I planted them both in this smaller ‘bed’, side-by-side, forproper ‘fertilization’ of the female and up against the retaining wall. I then drilled into the concrete retainingwall with a concrete drill, installing three ‘runs’ of wire mounted on 12 inchlag-bolts, set into the holes in the concrete retaining wall that I haddrilled. I now had a nice wire‘trellis’, of three ‘runs’, along the entire length of the driveway retainingwall, from the small Kiwi ‘bed’, almost to the street at the end of thedriveway, not quite to the street however, because there was a wood-plankretaining wall and a large pine tree, planted at the street-end of this lowerside-yard. But I had a south-facing,sun-lit trellis, backed by the sun-heat of the concrete retaining wall, onwhich my kiwis could grow. I plantedthe male on the left side and only let its vines go up to the overhead drivewayfence. However, the vines of the femaleKiwi, I meticulously ‘trained’, every day, to expand out upon the three ‘runs’of trellis-wire, which they did. Afterproviding some nice white flowers along the length of the vines, I eventuallyhad my own sun-ripened kiwis! That wasone of my few gardening ‘successes’ in that home!
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Eventually, however, this lower side-yard, became theparking spot for 5 of the Hondas that I had brought back from Canada. Three of them just fit along the side-yardfence and the other two were side-by-side across the street-end of theside-yard and over where my compost-pile had been. Oh, yes, while I was yet ‘gardening’, I had a large‘compost-pile’, of mulch, grass and ‘cuttings’ from around the house, with a‘chimney-stack-pipe’ up the center of the compost-pile, to ‘vent’ excess heat.
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Tenants
As I have said, all of this was preliminary to my bankruptcy,which was officially granted by the San Francisco Bankruptcy Court, sometimeafter March 23rd , 1982.Before my bankruptcy, while I was still living in the house, I beganrenting-out the three rooms in the house, on an individual basis, and I had movedmy bed and personal things into the rooms under the house, which were securedby the lock on the lower-door entrance to the underside-of-the-house, via thelower ‘landing’ at the rear of the house.
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At an earlier time, when I was placing an additionalmortgage on the property (not sure for what reason), the mortgage agent had thehouse inspected for termites and it was determined that a small portion of therear of the house, under the ‘landing’, required repair. I hired a handyman friend, who not onlyrepaired the rear wall segment under the landing, but also completely rebuiltthe landing, with stronger wood-construction and concrete piers.
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I might here note some financial facts. We bought the house and property, I think itwas late1968. The assessed value of theentire property may have been, at that time, only about $150,000, and mymonthly mortgage payment was $170. But,as the facts do record, the home value increases, here on the San FranciscoPeninsula during this period of the ‘70’s and ‘80’s, reached as much as 30% ayear increase in asset value! So, afterbut a few years, the value of the property was getting to be overhalf-a-million dollars. When Carol and Idivorced, I still had a property that was worth more than $500,000! So it was not too difficult, to obtainadditional mortgages upon the property.Eventually, I had 3 or 4 mortgages on the property.
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As I started to say, I began renting out the three rooms onthe upper floor of the house. Mark’sroom, which had become my office, until I moved all my stuff downstairs, Irented to a young gentleman for $150 a month.Steve was a nice, conservative Catholic boy from Boston, who was aPhys-Ed Teacher in the local schools.He and I got along fine and he even helped me out when I was ‘going-down-the-drain’,as well as sharing some ’social-activities’ with me. We ‘went-out-on-the-town’ numerous times, with myself ‘showing’Steve the ‘night life’ here in the Bay Area, such as the Disco Nite Club inBurlingame, across Bayshore Boulevard from the Hyatt Coffee Shop, where therewas always (at the Club) a live-band and a large crowd of disco-danceaficionados every night, with lots of beautiful girls for young Steve to‘address’ himself to. (I don’t rememberever doing much good with the ‘girls’ myself, except as Steve’s ‘side-kick’!)
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But the ‘highlight’ of our social ‘adventures’, was theHalloween Night that we spent ‘doing-the-town’ in San Francisco. I had drivento the Union Street area of San Francisco, where I knew there were several ‘hot-spots’that Steve might enjoy. I remember a‘Yuppie-bar’ on Union Street called Perry’s, another ‘elite’ bar called theBalboa Station (I think), another place right next to it, and another rightacross the street from it, all three either on Webster, Laguna or Fillmore,just off of Lombard. But, the absolute‘highlight’ of the evening, was a Club on Union Street (don’t remember thename… maybe the ‘Last Chance Saloon’), which had live-music almost every night,usually a virtuoso 12-string guitar entertainer, who could play all of thepopular tunes of-the-day. Steve and Ihad been walking up and down Union Street and the adjacent streets all eveninglong, both of dressed in our Halloween costumes, Steve in his ‘Rocky’, theboxer, outfit, from the currently-popular ‘Rocky’ movies, and I was dressed asa Mafia hit man, in my gray-colored Robert Hall suit, under laid with a blackshirt and black tie and carrying a black-plastic Mafia-style automaticrifle-gun under my coat-jacket, that was stuffed into the inside pocket of thejacket. Walking up and down thestreets, we met lots of other ‘revelers’, dressed also in various Halloweencostumes and we were having a good time enjoying it all.
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Finally we went into the Club that I just mentionedhereinabove. The entertainment did its‘gig’ and then called Intermission. Anannouncer come out on the stage and announced that there was going to be aContest, to see who was wearing the Most Popular Costume of the Evening. Various people in the audience were beingnominated, to come up on the stage and to be applauded and judged. Somehow, someone had nominated both Steveand myself and we soon found ourselves up on the stage. After the ‘judging’ by the audience (I don’tremember how many ‘nominees’ were standing there on the stage), the Resultswere finally announced. Steve had wonFirst Place and I had won Second Place!Everyone was clapping and shouting, and of course, Steve ‘put-up’ hisboxer-gloves and did his ‘Rocky’ imitation and I sort-of ‘growled’ like a MafiaHit Man (wearing my black shades over my eyes), pulled out my ‘gun’ andthreatened to ‘wipe-out’ somebody! Wehad a few drinks, enjoyed talking with a few gals and thoroughly enjoyedourselves. On the way back home to thePeninsula after a while, we stopped at our favorite Disco Club in Burlingame,did our ‘character-imitations’ a few times more for the assembled disco-crowd,and finally, about 2AM in the morning, adjourned to the Hyatt Coffee Shopacross the street, had a late-night/early-morning breakfast, of Joe’s Eggs, andgot home to Belmont sometime later.
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I said that Steve also helped me out. When I finally lost the house and had tomove everything out that I still had… I was still ‘holding on’, to possessionsand supposed-monetarily-valuable-assets (like my by-now-dwindling ‘inheritance’items), that I would eventually either lose or give away! Steve looked over the available rentals inSan Francisco and finally decided that a five-room home on Mount Davis in SanFrancisco would be suitable for both of us, and that we could sub-let the otherthree rooms. I gave him $1000 (I thinkI just barely made it) for the required deposit and he made the deal, on mybehalf. (I guess I wrote a check forthe deposit.) In the next few days,using one of the Collector cars that I still owned and was driving, a 1958Oldsmobile Station Wagon, that had lots of carrying capacity, I wentback-and-forth between Belmont and Mount Davis, until everything was out of thehouse that I could move and still wanted.(I think I left the large color TV and all of the furniture in thehouse.) I guess Steve and I lived therefor several months, until I was arrested by the San Francisco Police. (That ‘story’ to follow!)
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Whoa! Back up here,to Belmont. Anyway, while I was stillin my home in Belmont, Steve rented the small bedroom. (He was driving an old 1963 Buick StationWagon, that quit running one time on the freeway and he just parked it on theside of the freeway and walked away from it, as he knew that he could notafford to have it repaired.) Lori’sbedroom, the next larger bedroom in the home, I rented to another young fellowwho had a 5 year-old young boy named Jesse.The father occasionally smoked pot, but was otherwise somewhatreliable. I remember one time taking along walk around the roads of the hillsides of my West Belmont Hillsneighborhood, it taking about an hour or more just to ‘go around theblock’. It was getting to be earlyevening and Jesse and I slowly walked along the roadways through the hills. (Jesse’s father had given his okay for me totake Jesse for a ‘walk’!) However,after about an hour or more, he came looking for us. Jesse and I had stopped several times, as I was talking with him,about such things as the planes flying overhead and other ‘things’ about Life,and we had sat down several times on the side of the road. At one time, letting Jesse go wherever hewanted to go, Jesse walked up the walkway to someone’s home and was looking inthe front window. I don’t remember ifhe rang the doorbell, but in a few minutes a nice Lady opened the door and wastalking to Jesse. At that time I wascalling to Jesse from the street and was telling him that it was time to gohome. I never went up the walkway andthe nice Lady finally persuaded Jesse to go out to his Father (she thought) andgo home. On the way home, Jesse’sFather met us.
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Another thing about Jesse and his Father, I think his Fatherwas trying to do construction work but his old pickup truck had finally ‘givenup the ghost’. Somehow, my ‘heart’ waspersuaded to ‘help out’ and we wound up going to the used-truck dealer in theSouth Bay, whom I had bought my big-rig from earlier, who was now re-located tothe rear premises of my Friend Jack’s Santa Clara Flea Market. Anyway, I bought a used Chevy pickup truckfor Jesse’s father that I think I paid $750 for. I remember him (Jesse’s father) doing some repair-work on theengine of the truck, parked in my garage and I was helping him understand theelectrical wiring system of the engine.Eventually, Jesse and his father had to leave, as I moved out of thehouse and I never heard from them again.
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The front bedroom of the house, the Master Bedroom, I rentedto a young girl who had a cat, which she left in the bedroom when she was gonefrom the house and the cat peed on the shag-rug carpeting of the bedroom. She didn’t have many possessions and slepton a blanket on the floor. We soonmoved out of the house, so she didn’t rent that front bedroom for very long.
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In hindsight, at this time of my Life, although I had been‘playing-the-money-game’, although not too successfully, I guess I was alsobecoming disillusioned with the money-game and by now, if only sub-consciously,I ‘wanted-out’ and Lorraine was one of the opportunities that were ‘presented’in my Life, to ‘extricate’ myself and to somehow ‘start over’. Of course, I yet had no idea whatsoever asto how such a thing might occur. Inother words, I was ‘flying-by-the-seat-of-my-pants’, my inner ‘compass’ was asyet ‘unsure’ of myself… and I was yet ‘hanging on’, to the money-game. So, in reality, I already knew enough totrust-in-myself… but ‘myself’ as yet, had no idea where it was ‘going’!
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I pulled out onto the uphill grade of the main road and wewent a short distance before we were in trouble again. I was yet again in the lowest gear that Icould find but again the 6-cylinder power of the truck was barely sufficientfor the uphill pull that we were trying to accomplish. I shifted into that lowest gear, but theclutch whined as the engine tried to pull the load up that grade. With the clutch whining, I decided toride-it-out, leaving the clutch engaged (and whining) and with my foot fully onthe gas, we rode it out.Second-by-second, I could hear and feel less whining by the clutch,until the whining finally eased out and we were progressing uphill with ourload. We made it all the way uphill tothe desired turnoff without having to stop for a traffic light or any otherreason, turned off, made another turn around the local Fire Station and then itwas downhill all the rest of the way to the house, around several hillsidecurves, eventually arriving on the street in front of the house. Then I carefully backed the Oldsmobile intothe downhill sloping side street of the house, turning the Oldsmobile into thedriveway of the house, which was on that downhill street. Finally parking the Oldsmobile at the sideof the driveway in front of the garage door, Lorraine and I had accomplishedher mission. Lorraine thanked me andeither she or I left. I don’t think sheever told her brother about the strain that we had put on his truck’s clutch.
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While I’m talking here about Lorraine, even though I waseventually unable to repay her mortgage (although she did get a real propertyworth almost a $½Mil or more), as long as I knew her and her husband, they werealways congenial and pleasant to me, even inviting me to dinner a few times attheir home in Menlo Park. In fact, at oneother time, she again asked me to ‘help’ her out. She was being visited by, I think, a niece from back in NewJersey, a young mother who had a young 5 year old son, and for some reason,Lorraine felt that I could provide her niece with a ‘guided tour’ of the BayArea that she, nor her husband, could provide, being the elderly citizens thatthey were. (I have no idea why theniece was visiting, but she had no car or transportation otherwise, but thatwhich would have to be paid for.) So, Iwas ‘elected’, to provide a ‘sociable-tour’ for this young mother and her son.
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Well, I will say that she nor her son, were ever entirely‘comfortable’, with my ‘guided tour’ and the scenic Bay Area spots that wevisited that Saturday in my Mazda. Ofcourse, most of my ‘guided tour’ was about the South Bay and I think we didvisit a large shopping mall, but mostly I remember visiting the scenic-spots ofthe Santa Cruz Mountains and the shoreline.We stopped at Brookdale Lodge, to have lunch and for them to see the insideof that beautiful Bavarian Chateaurestaurant-with-living-mountain-stream-running-through-it… but, for somereason, it was closed. We sat on somewooden benches in a wooded area in front of the Chateau, but there were somebees in the air that were making them both extremely nervous. I kept telling her to just ignore the beesand that they would not bite unless they were swatted at or attacked, but thatdid not calm them at all. We soon leftin the Mazda, to continue on. By now, Iwas beginning to realize that this mother and her son, were not onlycity-born-and-bred ‘city-philes’, but were also somewhat ‘flaky’, however suchmight be defined. My lastspot-to-visit, was the Elephant Seal beaches of the Pacific Oceanshoreline. I parked in the parking lotat one of the known elephant seal beaches (perhaps Anu Nueva itself). But the mother refused to get out of thecar. However, she did let her son gowith me to the beach. I don’t rememberif we saw and elephant seals. I tookthe mother and her son back to Lorraine and my ‘guided tour’, howeverunpleasant for everyone, was over. Idon’t know if there was any underlying ‘agenda’ as to this ‘event’ by Lorraine(I think perhaps the mother-and-son had just been divorced), but if there was,I did not fulfill Lorraine’s wishes for her niece and son. Nor do I remember the mother beingexceptionally good-looking and anything other than flaky.
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All the ‘house-mates’ got together only once or twice, butwe ‘ran-into’ each other quite often during the days we lived there. I was only there a few months before I wasarrested by the San Francisco Police, for selling some of my inherited‘knick-knacks’, at a side-walk ‘flea-market’ on the sidewalks ofHaight-Ashbury. From the PoliceStation, I called Steve who came down to the Haight-Ashbury Police Station andgot my car-keys, to drive my Mazda to our house on Mt. Davis. However, I think he had to bring one of thegirls with him, to drive the Mazda, as it was a stick-shift and Steve had neverlearned how to drive a stick-shift.Actually, I was really arrested for, in effect, ‘evasion-of-bankruptcy’. I had used my credit cards down to ‘the lastdrop’ and had purchased my last purchase of groceries at a local grocery storein Belmont by writing a check with my Check Cashing Card. However, the check, for about $300 worth ofgroceries, bounced and was uncollectable, so the grocery store filed fraud chargeswith the police and when I was stopped by the Police in Haight-Ashbury, therewas a Warrant out for my arrest.
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The Belmont Police eventually picked me up from theHaight-Ashbury Police and I was ‘processed’ to the County Jail in RedwoodCity. I spent over 30 days in jail,most of the time in a communal jail cell with about a dozen other inmates, andspent most of my days reading soft-cover books that the jail provided. I only got into an ‘incident’ once, with aHispanic guy who was somewhat muscular and macho, but I hit him in the mouth(while I was naked and in the shower, where someone was, somehow, doingsomething to perturb me, so I ‘lashed out’ from inside the shower, not evenknowing who it was that was outside the shower). Since I was naked and in the shower, he did not retaliate, but hesince then gave me a bit more respect and soon became somewhat of afriend. I finally‘had-my-day-in-court’, but the grocery chain had not supplied a witness to my‘fraud’ (the grocery clerk was on vacation) and the 30-dayStature-of-Limitations, to have an official legal case rendered against me, hadexpired and the Judge, accordingly, released me. I made my way back to San Francisco where, in the meanwhile, Ihad instructed Steve to sell more of my ‘stuff’, to help out with my share ofthe costs of the house. Steve had put afree ad in the San Francisco newspaper for a ‘house-sale’ on a Saturday. He had a number of people stop by and hesold a few items, including my cable-rolls patio furniture. But it was getting difficult for Steve and Ito maintain our residence in the house.Steve was only working as a part-time Phys-Ed coach in the San FranciscoSchools, so he was not making much money.We finally decided to give the lease on the house to the young executivein the master bedroom, who agreed to take over the lease and re-sublet theother rooms of the house to new tenants.By that time, Steve was ready to ‘move on’. He had applied to a Theological School back in Boston and hadbeen accepted, so when I last saw Steve, I drove him to the San FranciscoAirport in the Mazda and he was off to Boston to become a Catholic Priest. One of the girls stayed in the house and theother girl was arrested by the Police, supposedly for some kind of bank fraud,at the bank where she had been working.
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Incidentally, while I lived in the Mt. Davis house, I quiteoften used the San Francisco MUNI to get around town, walking up and down thelocal Mt. Davis residential streets to ‘catch’ two separate bus-routes that rannear Mt. Davis, including one that was accessed via a steep downhilltrail-pathway, from an upper-level street to the lower-level street on whichthe bus ran. But also, quite often, Irode my bicycle, which I still had. Irode that bike all over San Francisco, not only up and down hills, but theDowntown, Market Street, Mission, the Embarcadero, Fisherman’s Wharf, theMarina, the Golden Gate Bridge, the Presidio, the Castro, Noe Valley, theRichmond, Potrero, Candlestick Park, the Cow Palace… everywhere. I soon knew everywhere there was to ‘know’about San Francisco, from the Top of the Mark on Nob Hill, to the Lower Missionand more! That knowledge was to becomequite valuable to me!
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I think it was about this time, after I had moved out of thehouse in San Francisco on Mt. Davis, that I returned to the city in my Mazda,in order to continue searching for ‘employment’ in somereasonably-executive-capacity, somewhere in the City. But I was now also homeless, and I remember ‘staying’ in at leasttwo very distinctive ‘hotels’. Thefirst one was located about Mission and Seventh Street and it was but a smallroom with the bathroom-for-all-the-tenants located at the end of thesecond-floor hallway. I think I paid$12 a night.
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The second place was even more ‘notable’. It was a ‘flea-bag’ hotel on ValenciaStreet, a few blocks south of Van Ness into the Lower Mission. It was again aone-small-bedroom-with-bathroom-at-the-end-of-the-hallway, for some lowprice. But it had ‘addedbenefits’. The rooms were infested withcockroaches! Apparently, a number ofthe other tenants were low-income welfare-recipients who would cook sometimesin their rooms on a hotplate. Ofcourse, the ‘presence’ of cheaply-bought (and surelyinfested-with-cock-roach-larvae) food, in boxes or otherwise, made sure thatthere were cock-roaches all over the place.In my room, I’d see them on the walls, the ceiling and they’d fall onthe bed. The only thing that the hotelmanagement did about the ‘situation’ was to provide, upon request, ahand-pump-sprayer of insecticide that could be sprayed about the room. I remember going to sleep at night,wondering if I was ‘sharing’ the bed with not only bed bugs but cockroaches aswell
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When I moved my ‘stuff’ out of the San Francisco house on Mt.Davis (that ‘stuff’ that I still had left, after Steve had sold some of mythings), I borrowed a large van from my friend, Jack, at the Santa Clara FleaMarket, where I had been working on weekends, in the sun, heat and winds of theSouth Bay, as an employee of the Flea Market for $5 a day, dressed infull-cowboy ‘garb’ and cowboy hat, helping Jack (who was a real ‘cowboy’) ‘run’the Flea Market, returning to the house in San Francisco (in my Mazda), only tofind Mt. Davis usually ‘socked-in’ with fog!It was quite a change from the South Bay weather.
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I had already earlier rented a large U-Haul (my credit card,that I still had, couldn’t ‘afford’ more than one day of truck-rental, andsomehow it wasn’t denied when I used it to pay for the truck rental… On theother hand, perhaps by this time, all of my credit cards had been ‘voided’ andwere no good, and I possibly only rented the truck for one day, because I wasusing cash and one day’s rental was all I could afford!) and moved most of my‘stuff’ in one truckload, out of the Mt. Davis house, and put the truck-load of‘stuff’ (mostly already-packed boxes) into a small storage-container on theFlea Market premises, which Jack let me use at no cost. (He had many more, of all sizes of theseSea-Land Shipping containers, that Jack had available for rent to Flea Marketpatrons.)
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Anyway, Jack let me use his trash-van, which was usuallyused to ‘clean-up’ the trash on-the-grounds of the Flea Market, after eachweekend was over. I had to hose-it-outa bit, to make it clean enough to bear my stuff. There was no rear-gate on the open-rear-end of the van, and Ithink I lost a box of books on the freeway, that probably fell out the rear, asI was returning to the Flea Market with the last of my stuff from San Francisco. I had no problem with the van until I got toSan Francisco. Somehow, one of thetires on the van had a problem. It mayhave ‘blown out’, because I just made it to a gas station at the south sidebottom of Mt. Davis and I think I was told that the tire could not be fixed buthad to be replaced. But it was a large17-inch truck tire and the gas station/garage didn’t have such. They had to get one from a local truck garage. Of course, I needed to pay for all this, butI didn’t have such necessary amount of funds on me. I finally called Jack on the phone and told him that the vanneeded a new tire. I knew that Jack hadall kinds of tires at the Flea Market, but his van was in San Francisco, so hegave the garage his credit card info over the phone and the garage arranged toinstall a brand new 17-inch tire. Ifinally made it up the hill to the Mt. Davis house, loaded up the rest of mystuff and drove down the freeway to the Flea Market.
Steve and I had lived in San Francisco maybe a year (notsure). Now I had almost all of my stuffin storage with Jack in Santa Clara, including all of the vehicles that I stillhad left, the 60-foot truck-trailer big-rig, the Marlin, the Packard, theBuick, the two Cadillacs and the six Hondas.I eventually wound up selling the Buick and the two Cadillacs to Jackfor $150, while I was still in San Francisco and need $150 for rent. Later, I even wound up giving all the Hondasto Jack for free. (Jack, the damn goodmechanic that he was, got the drivable Honda temporarily running again, but itwas not synchronized enough to be operational on the road.)
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In the meanwhile, I was again homeless, this time living inmy Honda, on-the-road, when I was not working for Jack on the weekends. I had ‘given’ my home in Belmont toLorraine. Some time had passed, howmany months I don’t know. I had filedfor bankruptcy, and since I no longer owned any real estate, the bankruptcyfiling was relatively simple. But Istill had to type up the papers. Iremember doing so (typing up the papers) in a mostunusual-and-pleasant-location. I had myold, original Underwood Manual Typewriter, from my childhood in Pennsylvaniathat was yet originally my Father’s typewriter, which he used when he was inSchool in the early 1900’s. It wasquite heavy, as manual typewriters were in those days, and it only had onestyle of type font, pica. As heavy asit was, it just fit into a large, sturdy wooden box, which I had it in, andthat box was on the floor of the rear seat of my Mazda. I also had a sturdy 4’ by 2’ folding tablethat I had in the trunk of the Mazda, much like a surfboard.
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Anyway, I remember driving up the King’s Mountain Road inWoodside, a quite narrow and twisty road, that went from the old WoodsideGeneral Store at the bottom of the hill, to the Skyline Drive highway at thetop of King’s Mountain. Part way up theroad, I knew there was a curve in the road and a wide-enough parking space atthe side of the road, just around the bend of the curve. The curve existed because there was a smallarroyo, or valley, or natural drainage-culvert, cutting through the hillside atthe location of that curve in the mountain road. And I knew, from having explored up the reaches of that naturalarroyo, that there was a nice park-like ‘place’, somewhat up the arroyo about ahundred feet. I took my folding tableand my briefcase, with the paperwork and other essentials, and climbed up thatarroyo, over the stones and hillside, along what may have just been adeer-track, to that nice park-like spot that I knew of. I deposited the table and briefcase on theground and then went back to my car for the heavy typewriter box. Lugging the heavy box, I made it back to thehillside ‘park’, set up the table and typewriter next to a good-sized rock thatwas large enough to be my ‘chair’.Then, there in that quiet and peaceful, idyllic ‘setting’, I typed up mybankruptcy papers, with the mechanical sound of the typewriter, the only soundin that wonderfully quiet place. And Iremember that, since I had already given the house in Belmont to Lorraine, thatthe info required on the Bankruptcy Filing papers was quite simple, becausethere was no Real Estate involved in my bankruptcy. I remember that my actual ‘day-in-Court’ was quite brief. I received a Court-certified BankruptcyDocument, that voided all my credit card and other debts and I was now‘solvent’. (Since the house in Belmontwas not included in the bankruptcy, I now had no obligation for the existing 1st,3rd and 4th mortgages on the property. As the 4th mortgage holder,Lorraine now took over payments on the other two mortgages. The 2nd mortgage, as I think Ihave already said, was re-financed and was now the 3rd mortgage.)
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After Bankruptcy
Since I was now ‘living-on-the-road’, in my Mazda, I boughta car-storage-container that I fastened onto the roof of the Mazda, to storagesome of the necessities that was carrying around with me. And I was traveling all over the Bay Area,in search of a job, from Gilroy to the Napa Valley. I remember applying for a local Water Service position inNapa. I don’t remember how many placesI went to, looking for a job. In themorning, I might have been in the South Bay, in the North Bay by afternoon andback to the South Bay by evening.
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Years earlier, while I was still in Belmont, when I was yettrying to ‘socialize’, I had joined the Great Expectations Video Dating Servicein Mountain View. I had a video made,was listed in their files and attended a number of their ‘social’ dances andother functions. Of course, the costwas about $1000. Nothing ever came ofthis membership, and I had always had some ‘reservations, about the very nameof the organization itself, in that the concept of ‘expectations’ with regardto anything, was already somewhat anathemic to me and my consciousness.
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But now, living-on-the-road, one of the possibilities of‘employment’, was with another ‘Social Service’, as a commissionedrepresentation thereof said ‘service’.Commissioned meant no-pay until I actually had made a sale, so there Iwas, again on-the-road, traveling all over the Bay Area, to pre-established‘contacts’, that wanted to be ‘interviewed’ for the ‘service’. The ‘service’ was actually an executivematch-making service, for executive-level applicants, who had already filledout a ‘qualifying’ form and answered a large number of relationship questionsand had returned such papers to the ‘service’ by mail. The ‘service’ then sent out their‘representatives’, such as myself, who had taken a 6-week orientation class onrelationship ‘counseling’, to verbally ‘sell’ the client, to answer anyquestions the client might have, and to thusly ‘close the-deal’ by getting theclient’s signature on a contract. Icalled in by phone to the ‘service’ (located in Santa Clara), got my contactsand their addresses and promised-time-to-be-there (appointments). I was, as I said, traveling all over the BayArea. I remember going to meet a‘client’ in Livermore, but missing the appointment because I took the wrongroad and wound up somewhere in the East Bay boon-docks before I realized thatthis was not the road to Livermore.Then I missed another appointment, because I had to get back to thePeninsula from Livermore, to an appointment in Palo Alto. I sold neither of these clients. I guess I only had one ‘legal’ sale, buteven that one backed out of the ‘deal’ eventually. (There was a ‘grace period’ to cancel the contract.) I met that ‘client’ at his home in CastroValley. He was a President of KaiserIndustries and he did not want to be ‘dating’ or involved with any of the womenwho worked for him, as he was afraid that any such employee might just be a‘gold-digger’. He wanted a woman whowas non-affiliated and only interested in him for himself, not what he‘was’. Well, I persuaded him that the‘service’ could help him in his ‘quest’ and he signed the contract. But, as I say, he then cancelled it.
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I think I already mentioned earlier, that whileliving-on-the-road, I worked temporarily for the County of San Mateo for about6 months, but I eventually quit.
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What was ‘nice’ about living-on-the-road, was to actually beliving a somewhat ‘cowboy’ life, like the famous song by Willie Nelson, “On theRoad, Again”. I visited, quite often,the several South Bay ‘honky-tonk’ cowboy nite-clubs, like Cowtown and theSaddle Rack in San Jose. I enjoyed theSaddle Rack, as it was a large nite-club (I think that billed itself as thelargest ‘honky-tonk’ on the West Coast), with a ‘bucking-bull’ area, numerousbars, three different dance floors and a main stage for the live-band everyevening of the week. The famousCalifornia Cowboys were the ‘House Band’ at the Saddle Rack, and the crowdsjust loved their music, which included not only the popular Country-Rocktunes-of-the-Day, but also traditional Texas Two-Step and the more ‘formal’Western ‘line dancing’, with tunes such as the “Electric Slide”. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_wall_line_dance There was always a large crowd at theSaddle Rack on any night, with people of all ages as well as those‘aficionadoes’ of Texas and Line Dancing, usually dressed in their very BestWestern garb. Of course, there weremany ‘gals’ also, dressed ‘Country-Gal’ or more casual. I danced-the-night-away many times, as thewaiting-lines about the dance-floors were just ‘bulging’ with women, ‘cruising’the crowd, for a dance and more! Afterthe Saddle Rack closed at 2AM, I could buy a Texas-size hot dog from a hot-dogvendor at the front entrance and then retire to my car in the crowded parkinglot and go to sleep until morning.Unless some ‘gal’ took me home for the night!
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But my absolute favorite Country Saloon, was the PioneerSaloon in Woodside, California. It was(and yet is, I understand), just a small ‘Dive-Bar’, on the corner of the firstfloor of the old Pioneer Hotel, next to a Wells Fargo Branch. It opened daily about 3PM and had its‘regulars’, who somewhat daily ‘patronized’ the small bar. It was a place that had no ‘pretensions’ andpeople could come in dressed in their ‘work-duds’, wearing their work-bootswith cow-or-horse ‘poop’ encrusted under the heels or on top of the boots, andno one would care. It welcomed the not-so-famousas well as the famous. People like49’ers, Giants (Joe Montana, Steve Young), musicians like Neil Young and JoanBaez (Joan lives just down-the-road from the Pioneer) and other ‘notables’,like Madonna, and others, would stop by.One Tuesday evening, after they had finished their ‘gig’ at the CircleStar Theatre in San Carlos, the famous Irish-Rock-Band U2 stopped by thePioneer and was sitting at the tables in front of the stage, just ‘sitting-in’on Billy Band, one of the very best Country-Rock Bands there is (or was). I have a Yelp Review about the PioneerSaloon at: http://www.yelp.com/biz/pioneer-saloon-woodside#hrid:YjtMld9rlNKpzlY_oTGMTg/src:self
Many times I was standing there at the front of the smalldance-floor, ‘stomping’ my cowboy boots and ‘howd-yodeling’ (a typical cowboy‘yell’, at certain musical segments) and generally cheering on the music andthe crowd. And after 2AM, I’d close upthe place, go out back to my Mazda in the parking lot and go to sleep untilmorning.
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There were a couple of other places where I would sleep onthe road. Along the 280 Freeway, atsome rest stops, exit ramps, local road intersects and ride-share parkinglots. But I also sometimes would driveover the Skyline Drive, on one of the narrow west-of-Skyline local roadsthrough the west-of-Skyline mountains, down into the several valleys in theregion. One of the roads came to an endat a locked gate, with a dirt road beyond the gate. More often, I found myself driving maybe 40 miles, down intoanother valley, where there was a spot alongside the dirt road, where I couldpull off the road and back up to a tree, raising the rear end of the car, sothat my driver’s seat-bed was almost horizontal.
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However, my most convenient parking place, easily accessibleafter I had ‘closed’ the Pioneer Saloon, was to drive up Canada Road from thePioneer, to an on-ramp just before Edgewood Road, then take the Edgewood Roadoff-ramp, go under the Freeway and then take the 280 on-ramp going south. Driving but a short distance south fromEdgewood Road, I’d then pull to the side of the Freeway at a certain spot, turnof my car lights and then turn off the freeway, onto a dirt-track that wentthrough the grassy off-the-freeway slopes, up and over a slight hill, and downinto a wooded area on the side of the freeway.There was an area that I could turn uphill and then back the car downhill, into a secluded and tree-enclosed parking area, in the trees there alongsideof the freeway, but completely unseen from the freeway. I even had a large green camouflage ‘cover’that I would then put over the top of the car, further making the car‘invisible’ among the trees. However,one day I woke up to discover that it had rained that night and the car tirescould not get enough traction in the wet leaves and surface of my parkingsite. No matter how much I tried, mycar could not get traction, in that wet woods.I finally walked through the woods, down to Canada Road and then underthe freeway and south on Canada Road until I reached the Hitch Rack Saloon,where there was a public telephone on the front porch of the building. I called a tow service and told the driverto meet me at the intersection of Canada Road and Edgewood Road. Then I walked back Canada Road to wait forthe tow truck. He finally arrived,picked me up and I directed him back onto the freeway going south, to where thedirt-track access to my parking spot was.Directing the tow truck over the hill and almost down into the parkingarea under the trees, I showed him where the car was and why I couldn’t get outof the spot. Because of the wetsurface, he turned the tow truck around while yet on top of the hill. Then, from the winch on the rear end of thetow truck, he had me to pull the long steel winch cable into my parking spotwhile he reeled it out from the truck.I hooked the winch cable’s hook onto the front frame hook of the Mazdaunder the front bumper. Then, gettinginto the car to navigate the car by the steering wheel, the tow truck operatorslowly winched my Mazda out of that parking place and up onto the tractablesurface on the top of the hill. I thinkthat cost me $100 in cash. After that,I would only park there when I absolutely felt that it was not going to rain.
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Incidentally, I also had a Most Wonderful ‘experience’ atthat very location, in that secluded sport off the 280 Freeway. One night at the Pioneer, I met a quitegood-looking gal who was visiting the Bay Area and the Pioneer from Seattle,where she was an Executive Vice-president of some firm in the Seattlearea. We were dancing-the-night-awayand enjoying ourselves to the Pioneer ‘experience’. At closing time, at about 2PM, she didn’t want to part companywith me. She was staying with somefriends and couldn’t ‘take me home’. SoI told her my ‘situation’, as to ‘living-in-my-car’ and asked whether she’d bewilling to ‘try’ my ‘home’, in a nice secluded off-the-freeway location. That sounded appealing to her and so shepiled into my Mazda. We drove to myoff-the-280 Freeway location, backing the Mazda into my secluded parking sitein the woods. (It was a completelynice, moonlit, warm summer night, with no rain in sight. After parking the car and letting her out ofthe driver’s door (the passenger door was now blocked by a large tree), Ipulled out a large blanket that I had in the car and told her to followme. I went up the hillside, to a nicegrassy field-area on the side of the hillside, in view of the traffic on thefreeway, but which (said traffic) could not see us there in the dark at theside of the freeway. I spread theblanket out on the grassy slope and we ‘made-love-all-night-long’! Before sunrise, removing most of the pricklyweeds that had stuck to the blanket and our clothing, we got back into theMazda, exited from my parking spot and I soon had her back to her car, stillparked in the Pioneer parking lot. Sheflew back to Seattle and we exchanged a few letters by mail, but we never saweach other again. But she had said thatshe thoroughly ‘enjoyed’ that wonderful and not-to-be-forgotten ‘experience’,under-the-stars and the moonlight, on that warm, summer night, there by theside of the Junipero Serra Freeway, on the San Francisco Peninsula!
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Jack and Bonnie
I guess I somewhat ‘burned-out’ again,living-in-my-car-on-the-road and the cost of a traveling ‘home’ was alsobecoming expensive. So, one day, when Iwas working for Jack and Bonnie at the Santa Clara Flea Market, Jack asked meto stay in the small apartment behind a Mexican Restaurant on the Flea Marketgrounds, where I already had my two large bookcases and some other of my‘stuff’ in storage. One of the twobedrooms in the apartment was already used for storage for some of Jack’sstuff, but he said he could put his stuff in the other room. I didn’t really need the bedroom, as theliving room, where my own ‘stuff’ was stored, had plenty of room for my bed, aswell as access to a small bathroom and a small kitchen. Since the apartment was located behind aMexican Restaurant, which was usually operational during the daytime (butmostly on weekends only), the entire building was also ‘home’ to roof-rats, wholived in the ventilation-and-air-conditioning spaces over the ceilings of therooms and under the roof. I heard themoccasionally and they had eaten holes into both the bathroom and the kitchenwalls, so I didn’t keep any food in the kitchen, except in the yet-operationalsmall refrigerator.
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Anyway, Jack let me move into the apartment and I was nowthere at the Flea Market every day, helping Jack do whatever needed to bedone. He didn’t pay me and I didn’t payhim. I became like a son to Jack andBonnie, quite often having me eat dinner with them and even one time (for whatreason I don’t remember), letting me sleep in an extra room in their ‘home’,which was actually the offices of the company that existed at that locationbefore Jack and his Brother leased the property and created the Santa ClaraFlea Market, but which ‘offices’ Jack and Bonnie made into their ‘home’.
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Incidentally, the Santa Clara Flea Market was located at5500 North Lafayette Street in Santa Clara, at the junction of Lafayette Streetand the South Bay 237 Freeway, at the entrance road to the small South Bay cityof Alviso. In recent years, this verylocation has been ‘touted’ as the Future Home of the San Francisco Giants,where the proposed new Giants Stadium was to be built. But in the olden days, before Jack and hisBrother leased it to become the Santa Clara Flea Market, the entire grounds andmany buildings on the premises, had been the South Bay location of a DoleFruits and Vegetables Processing Plant, that produced many of the Dole Brand ofcanned foods that we used to buy in the grocery stores.
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Big Red
I helped Jack every day with the ‘chores’ on weekdays andwith managing the Flea Market on weekends, at the end of each day on weekends,collecting the State Revenue Sales Taxes from each vendor as they left for theday, that each vendor was required to ‘declare-and-pay’ on all merchandise thatthe vendor had sold that day. Duringthe week, Jack spent quite some time in his workshop in one of the buildings,where he had quite an array of machinery and work tools, including blowtorchesand welding gear, which I subsequently learned to use.
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The reason for the use of all this heavy, industrial tools,blowtorches and welding equipment… was ‘Big Red’. I helped Jack build ‘Big Red’, which, when finished, was agiant-size, flat-bed truck, capable of hauling the largest Sea-Land Containersthat Jack had on the property as well as anything else. We started with the engine and chassis of anold Fire Engine that Jack had bought at-sale because it had been damaged. We removed the cab and the rest of theremaining body sections. The engine andtransmission were perfectly operational and required little repair work. The engine was a huge double-V8 engine, of16 cylinders total, with lots of torque and power and a multi-geared heavy-dutytransmission. Jack had also bought atruck cab, from another destroyed truck, as well as a large, heavy steelflatbed, from another disabled truck.He also had hydraulic pumps and piping that needed to be custominstalled on the rig, in order to raise and lower the truck bed. Using the blowtorch, welder and everythingelse that Jack had available, we put all those pieces together and constructed‘Big Red’, piece-by-piece and finished the job by having ‘Big Red’professionally painted by a paint shop that Jack knew… in the color Bright Red,of course! I especially helped with theelectrical wiring all over the ‘rig’, identifying the old fire engine chassiswiring and integrating that wiring with the needed lights, side-lamps and otherelectrical circuits that ‘Big Red’ needed.
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Closing the Flea Market
Before Jack asked me to move in with him and Bonnie at theFlea Market, I was still living-on-the-road and working for Jack on theweekends. (Most of my remaining ‘stuff’was already in storage at the Flea Market.)Many times I’d arrive at the Flea Market front gate late in the eveningor in the middle of the night or early morning, when the Flea Market gate wasclosed and locked. The AMTRAK train andrailroad tracks ran smack-dab by and alongside of the Flea Market perimeterfencing on the Lafayette Street side of the Flea Market, between LafayetteStreet itself and the Flea Market fence.Near the intersection of Lafayette Street and the 237 Freeway, at thatcorner of the Flea Market property, is where the Main Entrance Gate to the FleaMarket was located. There was astandard Rail Xing gate-bars that lowered automatically when the AMTRAK trainwas approaching and this rail-xing gate was right in front of the Flea Marketgate. But there was also a shortdriveway, from Lafayette Street to the AMTRAK tracks and gate, long enough fora short ‘line’ of Flea Market vendor vehicles to ‘form-up’ early every weekendmorning, waiting for the Flea Market gate to be unlocked about 6AM. It was in this short driveway that I wouldpark my Mazda on weekend mornings, waiting for the gate to be unlocked. Sometimes I got there quite early, like 3 or4 AM, when no vendors had yet arrived.One of these early mornings, a local Santa Clara Police Cruiser pull edin behind me and asked why I was parked there.I told him that I worked at the Flea Market and that I was just earlyfor work. He left and didn’t give me aticket or anything. But I told Jackabout it. Soon thereafter, Jack gave mea key to the front gate, so that I could drive in and then lock the gate behindme, and then park in the Flea Market parking lot.
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So, I was still on-the-road, but in order to conserve bothgas and money, I was now more so confining my ‘travels’ to the South Bay, notgetting to San Francisco, East Bay or North Bay much at all, and onlyoccasionally getting up the Peninsula to the Pioneer Saloon. Mostly I was ‘patronizing’ the Saddle Rackand if I didn’t sleep in my car in the Saddle Rack parking lot, then I made theshort drive to the Flea Market and slept in my car in the Flea Market parkinglot.
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But after a while I was even ‘burning-out’ on the SaddleRack and, of course, I wasn’t finding any day time ‘employment’, except for theshort ‘gig’ already noted hereinabove, as a City of Sunnyvale Garbage TruckDriver/Refuse Collector. So I started‘hanging out’ with Jack every day of the week, helping him do whatever neededto be done at the Flea Market, like ‘cleaning up’ the grounds (although healready had a paid ‘clean-up’ crew) and, as noted herein, helping Jack ‘build’Big Red!
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‘Big Red’ would soon come in handy. There came a day when Jack was notified thatthe Flea Market’s 10-year lease would not be renewed and Jack had but one yearleft to close down the Flea Market and notify all the vendors to remove theirmerchandise and leave the property. (AsI think I have already said in the hereinabove discussions, this Santa ClaraFlea Market property is possibly ‘destined’ to become the future Home Stadiumof the San Francisco Giants Baseball Team.Then, I could truly say, the Giants would be ‘playing’, where I used tolive!)
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I guess it was about this time that Jack offered to let mestay in the small apartment behind the Mexican Restaurant (already discussedhereinabove). I was glad to help Jackout every day and every day was an ‘experience’, working for Jack, always withsomething different to do. Once ortwice, after Big Red was finished, I even drove Big Red a few times, on theFlea Market grounds, picking up large furniture items, boxes and such, thatwere more than the daily ‘trash’, that Jack’s trash-crew would nominally‘pick-up’ with Jack’s trash-van.
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But, back to Big Red.Jack and Bonnie had bought some hillside property with a small cabin,located in the San Lorenzo Valley, on the other side of Skyline/Summit Drive,at the top of the Santa Cruz Mountains.However, access to Jack and Bonnie’s property, was to go a shortdistance down the Bear Creek Road, from Skyline/Summit Drive, and turn off ontoa quite steep and winding downhill dirt road, that eventually made its way totheir not-quite-down-in-the-valley property.(There was a small mountain stream running across the lower ‘reaches’ oftheir property.)
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So, Jack certainly did need Big Red, in order to transportall of his accumulated lumber and other construction materials (Jack intendedto build a house on the property) to his property in the San Lorenzo Valley, aswell as one or more of the Flea Market’s giant Sea-Land Containers. And he needed Big Red to beperfect-in-operation, including especially the hydraulic brakes on the rig,which Jack would most certainly need in slowly navigating the many steep anddownhill curves on that dirt road, with tremendous weights contained on the bedof Big Red. One of the downhill curveson that dirt road was most precarious, because if Big Red was unable to makethe turn, it would be a hundred foot or more down a cliff off the side of thatcurve. As it was, the day that Jack didnegotiate that curve with the heaviest and largest Sea-Land Container on BigRed, he found that he couldn’t make the turn without backing up a bit. But backing up meant backing up the steepdirt roadway he had just traveled. Itwas a dangerous maneuver, using all of Big Red’s braking systems as well as theheavy-duty transmission. But Jack andBig Red did it! (Jack had me get offthe truck and be his ‘guide’ on the roadway, telling him exactly where Big Redwas and where Big Red needed to go.) Wemade the curve and then just barely ‘sneaked-by’ a protruding roadside treetrunk and finally made it to Jack’s property, where he carefully backed Big Redinto a designated roadside resting-spot for the Sea-Land Container, raised thehydraulically-operated bed, and the Sea-Land Container neatly slid off the backof the truck-bed, into its desired spot alongside the dirt road leading toJack’s cabin. Needless to say, in orderfor Big Red to be able to execute such ‘maneuvers’, the braking systems had tobe perfect. After Big Red was built andfinished, Jack took Big Red to an expert truck garage and had them toabsolutely test and certify that the brake’s hydraulic systems were perfect.
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But, back to the Flea Market. All the vendors were notified and given no more than 9 months to‘terminate’ their leases with the Flea Market and move out. A few were stubborn about it and refused toleave, but somehow they eventually did.I became sort-of a Disposal Sales-Agent, as all of the buildings on theproperty were also required to either be sold-and-removed or else demolished. I remember taking interested Real EstateAgents and Prospective Buyers, through the buildings, some of which weregigantic in size, as either a warehouse or else just a very largeindustrial-size corrugated-wall building.One of the large buildings was bought by a large Northern CaliforniaTrucking Company. They sent a crew ofmen and flatbed trucks, with blowtorches and all kinds of necessary tools andthey took that corrugated-wall and steel-frame apart, frame-by-frame andcorrugated-sheet by sheet, neatly loading the whole building onto their flatbedtrucks, to be put back together piece-by-piece, on their company property inNorthern California. Some vendors justabandoned their remaining merchandise and that is when I was slowly driving BigRed around the Flea Market grounds, picking up these abandoned merchandiseitems, to be taken to a refuse dump and disposed of. Ah, Yes. I have been aDisposal Agent-and-Expert, in my day!
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(The following might have been my personal businesscard/flyer:)
Real PropertyDisposal Agent
Multi-story/floor Office Buildings, Industrial Buildings,Warehouses, Residences
and all kinds ofsmall to medium-size structures…
If you have a need for such and have found or are seeking analready-existing structure
that fulfills your needs and you are willing to disassemblethe structure
and re-locate it toyour own property…
Contact me! I may beable to help you fulfill your needs!
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As such, for whatever reasons, I was also, on occasion, aheavy-equipment operator, of several kinds of heavy-equipment that Jack had,including a big, industrial-size bulldozer, withcaterpillar-crawler-steel-tracks (like a military tank) and hydraulic-geartransmission and front-and-rear clam-shell-loaders. Also Jack had several backhoes, of various sizes, as well as severallarge to small forklifts, all of which I had occasion to operate. I remember several times, with a bigforklift load of lumber planks, having to raise the forklift high enough in theair, in order to navigate the forklift and its load over an 8 foot-high fenceon the property, through which a driveway passed to the parking lot, where Ithen stacked the lumber, to eventually be loaded upon Big Red.
I was still living in my small back-of-the-restaurantapartment with the roof-rats. Therewere still some weeks ahead for all the vendors to try to sell-off theirmerchandise on both weekdays and weekends and patrons still arrived at the FleaMarket seeking bargains or whatever they could find.
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I still had quite a few boxes of my ‘inheritance’, whichwere yet stored at the Flea Market.(Almost all my vehicles were gone, either sold-for-pennies or just givenaway.) I had unpacked most of the boxesof my ‘inheritance’ and had re-located the items that I absolutely wanted tokeep (encyclopedia sets mostly) to the smaller storage area that I had in theliving room of my small apartment. Therest of the items, large stuff such as the king-size bed and mattress that Istill had from my Belmont home, and lots of books and magazines, I laid out inrows stacked upon newspapers on the ground in front of my apartment,‘on-display’ and for sale to any-and-all-interested-buyers, weekdays andweekends, during regular Flea Market operating hours. I sold my complete set of Automobile Quarterly (from the firstissue). Same with my complete set ofNational Geographic, from the first issue of 1888, along with 2 Indexestherefor. Same with my complete set ofcustom-hard-bound (in 6 monthly issues of beautiful leather-clad hard binders,embossed with the Playboy logo and Rabbit on the binders) of my PlayboyMagazines, again from the very first issue of December, 1953. I sold my many-issue ‘collections’ of manyother magazines and newsletters: Fortune; Psychology Today; Sexuality Today; BerkeleyWellness Letter; Kiplinger Magazine; Changing Times; Prevention; OrganicGardening; Farm and Home Journal (Yes!Once upon a time, I used to listen to the weekly ‘Farm and Home Hour’,on radio!); Home Improvement Magazine; Special Interest Vehicles; CQ; QST; HamRadio; Popular Science; Popular Mechanics; Electronics; Radio & TV News;and, of course, the several weekly news magazines (of many years accumulation,at 54 issues per year): Newsweek; Time; U.S. News & World Report andmore! I remember having one entire rowof Newsweek and some young folks came looking for that one special issue ofNewsweek that had Marilyn Monroe on the cover.They searched for over an hour and finally found it. I sold it to them for 10cents.
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But especially, I had numerous antique paper ‘collectibles’:the first newspaper printed in Philadelphia of the American Colonies (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Bradford); the famous Chicago Tribune issue of Election Day 1948, proclaiming “DeweyDefeats Truman!”; a newspaper proclaiming, “Pearl HarborAttacked!”; another newspaper telling of “Elisabeth BecomesQueen!”, and many more such ‘collectibles’. Today, such historic newspapers have been valued at auction from$3000 to over $50,000 and more! I hadlots more of such ‘collectible paper’ items, including the very popular (inthose days) ‘patterns’ of all kinds, the paper ‘designs’ by whichwomen-of-yesteryear, actually created-and-sewed-together, their dresses andother clothing items. This alsoincluded the popular women’s-and-family magazines of the day, such as LadiesHome Journal; Coronet; Liberty; Look; Saturday Evening Post; Life; Ideals (aglossy Christmas publication); Cosmopolitan; Woman’s Day; Hubert’s Stories ofthe Bible; Reader’s Digest; several vintage Hubbard’s Readers, from the 1800’s;Redbook; Family Circle; Better Homes and Gardens; McCall’s; Parade; The BobbseyTwins; Treasure Island; Pageant; various cookbooks; sheet music (not onlyclassical sheet music from the 17-1800’s, but also three vintage musicalinstruments: a Zither, a Dulcimer and an Auto-Guitar of 12-strings, all encasedin individual wooden lacquered-walnut-paint ‘sounding-cases’) and more! I wound up calling a Paper CollectiblesDealer in Sacramento, who came out and bought all my paper collectibles for$200.
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Incidentally, while the Flea Market was still operating,Jack yet had his husband-and-wife clean-up crew, who used Jack’s largetrash-van, to empty the trashcans all over the premises and pickup the trash. Apparently they found something quite‘interesting’ in one of the trashcans they were emptying one day and they leftthe ‘item’ with Jack, in the Flea Market Office. Later in the day, Jack asked me about it. It seems that the ‘item’ was re-covered fromthe trashcan just outside of the door to my apartment, where I had thrown it,along with other stuff that I was throwing away. Jack gave it to me. Itwas a big stack of credit cards, all bundled together and secured with rubberbands. They were all no-good anymoreand it was time to get rid of them: several Mastercards;, several Visa cards;American Express; Diners Club; Carte Blanche; Sears; Montgomery Wards; severalmore department stores; several home improvement/hardware stores; grocerystores; almost all the gasoline cards and more! About 30 in all! Jackgave them to me and threw them back in the nearest trashcan.
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But there finally came a day when Jack had to close the FleaMarket gates for the last time. Sometime after that, the City of Santa Clara shut-off the water and power serviceto the Flea Market. About that time, Iguess I had already rented the second bedroom in Robert’s house (through theH.I.P. ‘roommate rental’ service), as well as the garage. Well, maybe the garage came a bit later,when I had to finally move my last reduced-amount of ‘stuff’ (Yeah!I was still ‘holding-on’ to some of my ‘stuff’, for as long as I could!)out of my apartment at the Flea Market.No! I guess when I rented theroom at Robert’s, I moved all my remaining ‘stuff’ into both the room and thestorage-area shelf under the roof of Robert’s garage.
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Anyway, I drove out the gate of the Flea Market for the lasttime. I would occasionally see Jack andBonnie a few times at their home in the Santa Cruz Mountains, where Jack wasbuilding his hillside house. But theFlea Market was no more. I’m not surewhether I lived-in-my-car again for a while, traveling primarily around theSouth Bay looking for employment, but I vaguely remember having two privatemail-boxes in the South Bay, one on North First Street, San Jose and the otherone in a shopping center in Cupertino.I think it was about this time or later, that I got my temporary jobwith the County of San Mateo. However,I also seem to remember being with Jack at the Flea Market after working forthe County of San Mateo, so perhaps that temporary job was while I was yetliving-in-my car the first time, before I moved in with Jack and Bonnie at theFlea Market. Perhaps that was thecorrect chronological order, because it now also comes to mind that, when Ifinally left my temporary job with the County of San Mateo, not long after thatI had applied for the same kind of position with the County of SantaClara. I seem to vaguely rememberactually working for the County of Santa Clara, perhaps for only a few days,and then leaving that job.
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Robert was an elderly senior citizen who was mentallydisabled. He was living in hischildhood home in north San Mateo and his parents were long deceased. He never said anything about his mother andI know nothing about her. His fatherwas an Engineer on the Southern Pacific trains that went by his home all daylong, in that his home was located alongside the Southern Pacific tracksthrough his North San Mateo neighborhood.Apparently he had himself worked for Southern Pacific in his late teensand early twenties, at the SP Railyard in South San Francisco and had knownmany other railroad workers and engineers.As a consequence, Robert knew the train schedules by heart, as to whenany train would be passing by his home in San Mateo. He would stand in his backyard, in view of the passing train, andwave a white hankerchief (the equivalent of a Signalman’s Flag), when the passingEngineer blew the train’s whistle at him.After a while, though, all of the old Engineers had retired or passedon, and the trains no longer blew their whistles for Robert. He finally quit waiting in the back yard forthe train whistle.
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Robert’s mental disability was apparently due to a hit onthe head sometime in his early twenties when he was participating in localNational Guard exercises with his Unit of the San Mateo Armory, which was atthat time apparently an Artillery Unit.I tried to help Robert out financially, by trying to find out why he wasnot receiving any Disability Payments from the Military for his injury. I eventually discovered that there was norecord of Robert’s ‘service’ with the National Guard, because in those days(perhaps the 1920’s), the California National Guard was considered a ‘VolunteerService’ and not a Regular Army Service, and therefore participants in theNational Guard were not covered by any of the Regular Army ‘benefits’,including medical care and disability benefits. Robert may have received some medical treatment at the time, butafter a number of years it was discontinued and Robert himself had no record ofanything as such. But in his mind, hestill affiliated himself with both his early railroad years and his ‘militaryservice’ years, even though the U.S. nor California Military had no record ofhim. Sometimes though, his mind got his‘military service’ mixed up, and he thought he had been in Hitler’s Gestapo.
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Apparently Robert’s Father passed away sometime in the latesixties and some one had apparently helped him out to a certain extent for awhile, but eventually Robert was left on his own. However, somehow he had been told about the daily morning‘gathering’ of neighborhood seniors and others, for Lunch every day, at the SanMateo MLK (King) Rec Center, about 12 blocks from Robert’s North San Mateohome. Robert never walked or went downany street, that he was not ‘programmed’ to ‘travel’, but the several blockwalk to the King Center was one of his ‘programmed’ dailyroutes-of-travel. At the King Center,he knew several old ‘cronies’ of his, who apparently ‘helped him out’sometimes, such as telling him what-to-do when he received a mailing forpayment-due of such things as the water, PG&E, home fire insurance, etc. He had both a checking and savings accountwith Bank of America (apparently somehow with no monthly fees, helpfullynegotiated by someone for him), that he had learned to use but never usedunless necessary. However, as I foundout, his home and property official Deed, were still in his Father’s name, buteventually someone helped him put such in his name. It may have been ‘Josie’, the ‘owner/founder’ of the HumanInvestment Project (HIP) in San Mateo, who came to Robert’s home (as I havesaid, Robert never went anywhere, except for his routine daily ‘walks’ in theneighborhood, on streets and routes which were ‘programmed’ into his mind to‘walk’ at the precisely ‘programmed’ times-of-the-day, with no otherroute-of-travel allowed!) to sign-him-up for the HIP ‘housemate-room-rental-program’,which enabled Robert to rent-out the second bedroom in his home. (I think Ipaid $150/month rent for the first several years that I lived there.) Such ‘room rent’ was Robert’s only income! (Which is why I tried to help Robert, as towhy he was not receiving any ‘benefits’ from the military.) Every Saturday morning, at 8AM on the dot,he would walk several blocks to the local Safeway store, where he would spendno more than $20, for cheap TV dinners for a week. He ‘religiously’ refrained fromspending-what-money-he-did-not-have-on-anything-he-did-not-need. He had one exception, however. When he took his daily 3PM ‘constitutional’(walk), he always stopped by a local corner deli-liquor-store, where he boughtone bottle of 99cent beer. Then hewould return home, turn on his small AM radio in the kitchen, tune in the localClassical-music AM Radio Station in San Mateo, pour some beer into a glass andthen sit in his favorite chair in the living room, listening to his favoriteClassical music tunes and very slowly sipping on his beer. At about 4PM he’d put a TV dinner in theold, vintage gas oven in the kitchen and twenty minutes later (always 20minutes, as he never read the TV dinner labels), he’d eat his meal. Returning to the living room with the finalglass of beer for the day, he’d sit there again, as the sun went down. At 6PM promptly, he’d go to bed, by now withsomewhat of a ‘stew-on’, in that it took but one bottle of beer to get himdrunk.
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When I first moved in with Robert (I had also ‘signed-up’with HIP, who sent me out to ‘interview’ with Robert one day and he immediatelyaccepted me, with very little conversation between us. Apparently he had had only one or two otherinterviews and the other people did not find Robert nor his room to theirliking!), he had a somewhat rare, vintage car in his one-car garage, a 1950Nash Hollywood Convertible, that had been his Father’s car. The Nash Hollywood was a small family-sizeconvertible that achieved the ‘convertible-function’ via a ‘roll-top’heavy-cloth-top that actually rolled along a track above the side doors of thecar, from the windshield to the back window area of the car. The car had not run in many years and Robertdid not drive, so I finally persuaded that his Father’s car would be better‘saved’ in-the-bank. I called a SanMateo area car collector who had advertised in the local free-weeklynewspaper. He came and looked at thecar, and in a few days he hauled it away and gave Robert a check for $600. After about a week, though, Robert ‘gave in’to his ‘memories’, that the Nash was part of his home and needed to forever be‘enshrined’ in its ‘spot’ in the garage.The car collected refused to return the car to Robert and Robert finallygave up on the matter. However, everything else in the home was yet ‘as-it-was-supposed-to-be’, in the ‘museum’ ofRobert’s ‘memories’ and nothing was ever moved-out-of-place. The old, vintage early 50’s consoleblack&white TV, AM radio and 78rpm record player, in the living room, whichno longer worked, was still ‘there’, in its ‘designated-spot’, with years ofdust accumulated thereupon. Likewiseeverything else in Robert’s home.Everything was ‘in-its-place’, never to be moved, never to bedusted/cleaned, just like everything also that was a part of Robert’s‘memories’.
The furniture, carpets and such, were never cleaned. The single large wall-to-wall carpet in theliving room, was so old and decrepit, that if anyone were ever to attempt toclean that carpet, it would just disintegrate into dust! Robert’s home was truly the ‘museum’ of his‘memories’! He had nothing else in hisLife!
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I became Robert’s friend.He knew that I could ‘take care’ of anything and he came to me aboutbills-in-the-mail, plumbing, electrical and mechanical ‘emergencies’ andmore. Robert’s bungalow-home had noattic nor cellar, like my childhood home in Pennsylvania had. It was merely mounted on a concretefoundation and concrete-block ‘posts’, that left but a mere 24 inches of‘crawl-space’ under the house, accessible via a small access-door at one cornerof the outside of the house. I rememberone time, that the bathtub drain had somehow gotten plugged-up. After trying chemical drain-openers, Ifinally had to crawl under the house, physically disassemble the drainpipesunder the tub (luckily I had big pipe-wrenches in my toolbox), remove the‘gunk’ that was blocking the drain, and then reassemble the pipes. Another time the kitchen drain was cloggedup. I had to use one of the several‘snakes’ that Robert’s Father had in the workshop, to ‘snake-out’ the blockagein the kitchen drain pipes. There was asmall but wonderful shed and workshop located behind Robert’s home, which hadbeen Robert’s Father’s workshop. Aquite large solid-heavy-wood work-bench, with several large wooden drawers,filled with all kinds of vintage tools, as well as more larger tools andaccessories, were all to be found in that workshop.
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One reason for the workshop was that Robert’s Father haddone a quite remarkable job with the somewhat medium-size backyard that wasthere behind Robert’s home. Robert’sproperty had several kinds of wonderful, fruit-bearing (in season) mature treesand bushes. Starting with a giganticpersimmon tree that bore large size persimmons in the Fall of every year, whichI would pick (using Robert’s medium-length wooden ladder), winding up with over50 grocery bags of persimmons, some of which Robert and I gave to neighbors andsome of Robert’s old friends. Persimmonsare only found in grocery stores for but a few weeks every year. (A Point-of-Interest here: It is a scientific fact, that the maximumnumber and kinds of fresh fruits and vegetables, that are usually found in anytypical American grocery store produce section, and thusly available to and forthe consumption of the general population… is but 2% of the total known ediblefruits and vegetables of our world!)Persimmons are quite delicate, in their ripening and consumptionthereof. When persimmons have matured,they have turned from a green color to a nice yellowish-orange color, of quitelarge and heavy weight-size (perhaps one pound or more). And yet, at this stage, they are yetabsolutely hard and firm, and not yet ripe.Picked persimmons need to be placed individually, on their removed-stem-ends,on shelves or somewhere protected from the rain, where the persimmons will then‘ripen’ over the following weeks. Everyindividual persimmon is on-its-own-schedule.One persimmon may turn soft-and-red-in-color (which is the state of aripe persimmon), while the next persimmon may be hard yet for a week ormore. But when a persimmon turns ripe,it is then edible for but a few days, before which it will then start to rotinto a soggy mess. But during thissmall ‘window’ of edibility, the taste of a ripe persimmon is sweet andwonderful. However, I learned a quitewonderful ‘trick’ with the edibility of persimmons. If, when a persimmon is ripe (checking your persimmon ‘stores’every day!), you use a knife and cut out the remaining core-of-the-stem (aquick, circular cut of the knife) and them put that ripe persimmon into afreezer… that delicious persimmon can be removed, frozen, from the freezer atany future time, and sliced into frozen slices of delicious taste as a dessert. (Do not let a frozen persimmon thaw out, asit will just turn into a brown-colored sugary mess!)
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Besides the persimmon tree, there was a custom-created appletree, which had been ‘created’ by Robert’s Father. He had spliced, onto a single apple trunk, four different kindsof apple branches, or ‘twigs’, which grew out horizontally from the trunk for afew inches and then vertically for the rest of their lives, making afour-trunked apple tree, which bore four kinds of apples. In later years, however, all of theseapple-trunk-trees had become infested with apple moths, the larvae of which isdeposited in the apple blossoms early in the growing season, such that when theapples begin to mature/grow, they are already infested with the apple-mothlarvae and thusly not edible.
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All the other fruit trees and bushes on the property didproduce edible fruit though. Threekinds of cherry trees: Bing, Black and Queen Anne cherries. Apricots.Pears. Italian plums. Lemons.Meyer lemons. Strawberryguava. Tangelos (like nectarines). Pomegranates. Blackberries (lots of sharp needles). And probably more that I don’t remember.
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But the piéce d résistance of Robert’s rear-yard property,is that Robert’s Father had built a large aviary, consisting of a 20 foot by 20foot ‘bird-house’on-a-concrete-slab-floor, replete with two ‘nesting-cages’with wooden ‘perches’, divided by a small work-area, accessed by a small 6 foothigh door. Both of the ‘nesting cages’were open to the outside, a large 50x100 foot ‘aviary’, enclosed by wire mesh,from top to the ground. However, by thetime I came to know Robert, the wire-mesh outside aviary portion had come down,the birds were gone and only the 20x20 foot aviary-shed was left. Well, there was also a very small work-shed,roughly constructed with a corrugated roof and some glass-windowed walls,located under the persimmon tree, which had a small narrow work-bench and a few‘breeding-cages’ for birds. Bags offertilizer and other garden tools were in there too.
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Robert’s Father had laid runs of ½ and ¾ inch water pipingthroughout the back yard, with water faucets located at several places,convenient for watering the property.All of the rear-yard water piping connected to the main cold waterpiping of the house via a short, brass, flexible-length of piping, from toinput-connector at ground-level, to a standard water-faucet bib on the rearwall of the house below the kitchen window.
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In the first years that I knew Robert and rented the room inhis home, I had by that time applied for employment and was now working atHarris-Farinon in San Carlos, where I eventually became the Director of QualityAssurance for Harris-Farinon Telecommunications Division. (Detailed hereinabove earlier.) I was living at Robert’s place in San Mateoand driving my Mazda daily to San Carlos.
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Eventually, at some time while living with Robert, the Mazdafinally ‘gave out’ on me and I finally bought a used car that was listed by theowner in the classifieds of the local free weekly newspaper. That car was a Buick-Opel Station Wagon, asmall European-built Buick product. Bythen I had contacted Jack at his home in the San Cruz Mountains, or elseactually visited him and Bonnie in my new Opel. Jack was interested in the Mazda’s Wankel-Rotary Engine and I thinkhe gave me $100 for the car. I told himI thought the car needed a new computer, as it was the computer that actually‘ran’ the engine (like most of today’s vehicles), but in those days, a newMazda computer was expensive. The Mazdawas parked in front of Robert’s home and one day while I was at work, Jack anda friend came by to pick up the car. Ileft the keys with Robert and Jack hitched the Mazda to the rear of his Dodgepickup truck and they were off. Jacklater told me that when they got to his downhill dirt-road in the Santa CruzMountains, he actually started the engine while rolling the car downhill (amoving-engine ‘start’, by getting the engine’s ’innards’ turning by thetransmission and wheels of the moving vehicle).
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While I was working at Farinon and living at Robert’s place,I met Anne/Anya. I had ‘gone-out’ but afew times on weekends, but there were few places to go in San Mateo other thanbars, which I did not like at all because I did not drink nor did I like thetypical ‘drinking people’ who patronized bars.I would have liked to visit the Pioneer Saloon, but it was just too farfrom San Mateo to Woodside for me in my by-that-time limitedcircumstances. (As ayet-homeless-person, I considered by current ‘situation’, as to both living andworking circumstances, to be somewhat-less than the usual-situation that anyusual woman was searching for in a ‘mate, therefore I never really tried to‘connect’ with any woman who was obviously looking for much more than I couldprovide.) Until I met Anya.
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I had gone to the monthly (at that time) Live-Band SinglesDance, at the Burlingame Recreation Center (dressed somewhat casual, as Iremember, in jeans), paid my $5 entrance fee and was enjoying thePopular-and-Rock Music of the Band, while walking about the edges of theBallroom and Dance Floor, ‘checking out’ the ‘gals’. Somehow, I ‘connected’ with Anya and we‘danced-the-night-away’. She was aquite beautiful Polish ‘gal’ and I think I had, in all honesty, implied to herthat I was not-much-of-anything, but I did have a job. She ‘accepted’ that and I ‘accepted’ her, asto what she told me. I was to latermeet his kids and extended family, but having already been married to Carol andstep-children earlier, such a ‘situation’ didn’t bother either myself norAnya. After the Dance, we drove to theVilla Hotel in San Mateo, where there was also a Live Band in the Villa’sNight-Club-Lounge, where we danced some more, met a few of Anya’s girlfriendsand then, I think, finally closed the evening with an early-morning breakfastin the Villa Coffee Shop. We startedseeing each other regularly… and having wonderful sex!
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In fact, as it does now come to mind, when my Mazda quitrunning and it was parked in front of Robert’s place for a while, until Jackcame and towed it away, I guess I was getting to work for some time by ridingthe bus to San Carlos. I seem toremember that I did not as yet really have any money, for discretionaryspending or otherwise, and therefore I could not yet purchase the Buick Opel,that I have already mentioned hereinabove.Also, when I went to the Burlingame Recreation Center Singles Dance andmet Anya, I think I had walked to the Dance, a couple of blocks from my ‘home’in San Mateo. And later, after theDance, apparently I had by then told Anya that I also did not have a car andtherefore when we went to the Villa Hotel after the Dance was over, she droveme in her car to the Villa and then, later, dropped me off at Robert’s place.
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(Caution: The following commentaryis X-rated.)
So, every day I would ride the bus from San Mateo to SanCarlos and back to San Mateo. Andalmost every day, I would visit Anya. Idid so by riding my bike. I’d come hometo Robert’s place, take a quick shower and eat, and then get on my bicycle andride cross-town and across the freeway, about a half-hour ride, to Anya’s homein Southeast San Mateo. I’d usuallyarrive there about 9PM. By then Anyahad put both the kids to bed, or at least to their rooms upstairs (each one ofthe kid’s rooms had a TV). I rememberthat I was so in love with Anya (rather ‘infatuated’ with her sexuality), thatseveral times I rode my bike in pouring-down rain, all the way to Anya’s, justto be with her. Every evening, she’dlet me in her door about 9PM. Very soon,we were both almost undressed and on the sofa in her completely dark livingroom. (The kids were upstairs, andsomehow they knew that when Mom was downstairs ‘in the dark’, they were not tocome down the stairs to the living room!)She’s soon put her beautiful, red-painted fingers in my mouth (by thenshe knew exactly what to do to me, in order to ‘push my buttons’ and have her‘way’ with me!) She’d gently ‘direct’my head-and-mouth to wherever she wanted me to be ‘sucking’ thereupon (herbreasts and more!) Eventually, my mouthwas ‘placed’ upon her vulva and clitoris and I then performed cunnilingus uponher for as long as she could stand it, as she had numerous orgasms. Finally, she put her fingers into my mouthagain, ‘drawing’ me up, upon, and into her, as she used her other hand to placemy erect penis inside of her and then ‘locked’ me firmly ‘inside of her’ bywrapping her legs around me. There Iwas, on top of her, and inside of her!Then her very intelligent Eastern European-trained vaginal muscles wouldstart to masturbate my penis. She hadme totally under her ‘control’! Soon,when she could tell that I was ‘ready’, she’d again slip her beautiful fingersinto my mouth, for me to suck upon, and in a few seconds, I’d ‘explode’ insideof her! Afterward, she’d keep me‘locked’ inside of her, as her fingernails gently ran themselves over my backand her hands and fingers caressed my head, neck, face, eyes and mouth, untilshe could tell that I was once again ‘hard’ inside of her. Then again, she would masturbate my penis,until I was once again ‘ready’, when she’d again slip her fingers in my mouth,and I’d once again ‘explode’ inside of her!And she loved it… and so did I.After about two ‘explosions’, she had to take a few minutes, to goupstairs to the bathroom and wash herself out.In a few minutes she returned, pulled me once again on top of her, andit all resumed. She made me ‘explode’about 3-4 times an evening, and it was wonderful! I was all hers! I was‘addicted’ to her. I had to just lether ‘take me’ and do whatever she wanted me to do to her. Usually, it was all over by 11PM and I left,riding my bike back to Robert’s place, all the way home feeling as though I had‘super-energy’ and I felt-damn-good!
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Incidentally, thinking about being with Anya, always‘turned-me-on’, until a while later in our relationship and marriage, whenPeter, her son and the ‘realities’ of her extended family and of her‘desires-for-myself’, as to money, wealth and more, for her and the family, finally‘hit home’ with me and, regardless of the sex, the entire relationship withher… fizzled. Also, by then, sometimes,when I was remembering the wonderful sex that Anya and I would engage in… Isometimes ‘replaced’ Anya in my ‘memories’, with my step-daughter Lori, from myfirst marriage, who did certain sexual things to me (as detailed previously inthe hereinabove discussions) and that I would then think of Lori as the one whowas ‘doing’ those sexual things-to-me that Anya had done!
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As an aside here, the point of the just-previous discussion,Sex and Love, has also been the cause celebre of my latest Qualia document onmy ‘QUFD Textbook’ website, at: https://www.angelfire.com/ca/sanmateoissues/Qualia106.html
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I guess I worked at Harris-Farinon for about three years,during which time I was married to Anya for about one year. She filed for our divorce with the CountyClerk of San Mateo County and I eventually received the divorce papers while Iwas at Ananda. At some point, as Ithink I have already said, I realized that Anya and I were on two differentpaths-of-Life, hers a desire for ‘materiality’ and mine a desire for‘spirituality’, and so we parted. Thesame was also somewhat the reason for my leaving Harris-Farinon. I was no longer the ‘executive-type’,although my job at Farinon was as an ‘executive’. I could no longer ‘put up’ with the realities of thecorporate-world or the System. But Iwasn’t sure as yet exactly what I was to do.I guess it was not long after I moved out of Anya’s home, where I hadlived since we were married, although I yet had some of my ‘stuff’ in storageat Robert’s place. (After I had movedout of Robert’s second bedroom, and he still needed the monthly rent from theroom, Josie from HIP once again came out to Robert’s place, listed him againwith HIP’s roommate-service, and he soon had a 70-year-old Italian gentleman,renting the room that I had moved out of.)When I moved out of Anya’s place, I rented a very small room in PaloAlto for a while, which was cheap (only $350, which was still expensive for me)for Palo Alto.
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Palo Alto
The room was actually a former laundry-room at the rear of ahome not too far from Downtown Palo Alto.The large bookcase, my stereo, books and stuff, that I had in Robert’sroom, I moved into this small room in Palo Alto. At that time, I had not yet quit Farinon, so I was commutingdaily to Farinon with my Buick-Opel.Evenings and weekends, I had but to walk a few blocks and I was onUniversity Avenue in Palo Alto, one of Palo Alto’s Downtown areas, with acosmopolitan and university day-and-night-life.
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Of course, Stanford University was just across El CaminoReal from Palo Alto. I guess I hadthought that I might find myself at Stanford somehow, teaching something. I vaguely remember applying for a teachingposition at the Stanford faculty employment office. But somehow, I didn’t make the ‘cut’, as to Stanford’srequirements. I don’t think I lived inthat Palo Alto room for more than a year, during which time I re-acquaintedmyself with the East-West Bookstore in Menlo Park and the AnandaFellowship. (I had ‘worked’, for free,at the East-West Bookstore, when I was earlier living-in-my-car, when the Bookstorehad just gotten their first business-operation-computer and I worked for themfor a time, placing all of their holdings of books and manuscripts on theircomputer-system.) The East-WestBookstore was operated by the Ananda Fellowship and Church, of SwamiKriyananda, a former disciple of the famous Yogananda and many of the localAnanda people lived communally in the big house that was once Kriyananda’shome-and-estate in Menlo Park, where they also conducted their Church‘services’ and meditations. I attendedthose ‘services’ and came to know a number of the key Ananda ‘ministers’. And I also helped them move their Church‘furniture-and-equipment’, into the new location that they had obtained, inSouth Palo Alto. I remember that theextra-long-and-wide wooden table-altar, could not be ‘negotiated’ up the narrowstairwell of the building to their new second floor ‘suite’, until I finallydecided to manually, with the assistance of a few more helping-hands, actuallyturn the altar upright, on it’s end, at the stairwell’s half-way‘landing’. Thusly, we were able to thenmaneuver the altar up-the-stairs backwards, by then lowering the altar from the‘landing’ onto the remaining flight of up-stairs, and then taking it into thelarge ‘worship-room’.
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When I left Farinon, I had decided to stay for a while atthe Ananda Village in the Sierra Mountain foothills of Nevada City,California. By that time, Robert hadrented the second bedroom to the 70-year-old Italian gentleman. However, there was still space in Robert’sgarage, so I rented the garage for $10 a month. When I moved out of my Palo Alto rental, I put most of the stuffthat I had with me in Palo Alto, into Robert’s garage, including my bigbookcase and my stereo-and-speakers set.The bookcase was 8 foot high by about 8 foot wide by 2 foot deep. It was made out of composite-material thathad been compressed together into a somewhat hard material, not quite as hard awood, but it had almost as much strength as wood. I strapped it to the roof of my Buick Opel Station Wagon andsomewhat slowly made my way up the freeway, from Palo Alto to Robert’s place inSan Mateo. I put it in Robert’s garage,along with my stereo and speakers.
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I had bought an enclosed luggage-carrier for the roof of myOpel and I had mounted this carrier on the roof of the Opel. I put a minimum of necessary ‘camping-out’things in the Opel and left the Bay Area, driving to the Sierras and AnandaVillage. I was several days early whenI arrived in the Sierra Foothills, as my previously-made ‘reservation’ was fora few days to come.
On my way to Nevada City and the Ananda Village, I passedthrough the Malakoff Diggings State Historical Park, the site of one of EarlyCalifornia’s Gold Mining site’s, where, in this case, rather than digging amine into the ground, instead the miners merely ‘flushed’ the gold out of theground by using hydraulic streams of water to ‘devastate’ the surface of thetopography and thusly expose the gold veins under the surface. It was quite a devastated sight to see!
(See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydraulic_miningand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malakoff_Diggins_State_Historic_Park)
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So, I drove through Nevada City, picked up a few maps of thelocal foothill areas, and made my way out of town. (I couldn’t afford to stay in a motel.) I drove to a foothill campsite that was listed on one of themaps, but the owner told me that they were not open. So, I drove through the foothills further. I noticed a dirt-road leaving the paved roadand thought I’d see where it went.After about a hundred feet down the dirt road, I noticed a clearing offto the side of the dirt road. Althoughthere was no roadway, I drove into the clearing. I drove to the far side of the clearing, where I then saw asomewhat downhill opening-in-the-forest and what seemed to be an old bulldozer‘track’. After ‘exploring’ downhill onthis ‘track’ for a couple hundred feet, I decided to ‘move in’. I turned the Opel around and slowly backeddown the track until I came to a spot that looked nice to camp at. That is where I parked. Over the next few days, I was totally alonethere in the wilderness, although I did occasionally hear the sounds oflumberman chain-saws off-in-the-distance, sawing-down-trees somewhere. It was nice and quiet and I slept, meditatedand ‘lived’ at that campsite for the next few days. The only ‘problem’ with the campsite was mosquitoes. They would swarm at the end of eachafternoon and I had to get into the car and keep the windows shut. But otherwise it was nice. Several days later, I fired up the Opel anddrove out of the campsite and made my way to Ananda.
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Ananda
(See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Brotherhood_Coloniesand http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swami_Kriyananda)
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But my most enjoyable ‘experience’ at Ananda, was the daythat one of the Ananda instructors, decided to take his ‘class’ of communants,on a ‘field-trip’ into the Northern California hills and mountains. He was also a somewhat renowned-and-already-publishedWildlife and Nature Photographer and he knew the hills, valleys, mountains andbyways of Northern California. Oursmall class of about 6 or 8 persons, packed into the two cars that we weretaking, one the instructor’s car and the other one a visitor’s car. I took a backpack with a few things, put onmy hiking boots and, most importantly (and evidently to the notice of everyoneelse), slung a portable folding toilet-seat over the top of my backpack. (I didn’t know what to expect and I didoccasionally have allergic diarrhea! Inever used the ‘seat’, but one of the other people borrowed it once when wewere ascending a steep mountainside and took it into the woods for a fewminutes.)
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We drove numerous dirt roads from Ananda Village, until wefinally arrived at a woodsy area alongside a dirt road where there was aparking spot. Following our instructoron a footpath-track, he led us into the woods, across a mountain stream and wesoon came to a mountain rift, of huge rocks and steep crevasses, where thestream tumbled downward over and around the huge rocks, forming pools of clear,pure (and cold!) mountain water, here-and-there among the rocks. It was cool and crisp in the mountainsideair that day, but here in this rift, with the beating down on the bare rocks,it was somewhat warm. A few of the‘congregants’ removed shirts and pants (even the women) and we stretched-out inthe sun for about an hour, a few daring souls even daring to immerse themselvesin the cold waters of a mountain pool.Of course, our Photographer-Instructor took a few pictures.
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After a while, we made our way back to the cars. Following the Instructor, after a while wefound ourselves in the little crossroads town of Downieville, on State Route 49in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Continuingon Route 49 through Sierra City, we eventually turned off Route 49 on anarrowly paved road through the foothills.We made our way uphill until the paved road ended in a dirt-surfacedparking lot. From there, a dirt-roadcontinued uphill. Parking the cars, weset out on foot, the dirt road evolving into a mere two-track dirt-trail andgetting progressively uphill steeper as we climbed that track. It was becoming obvious that only aheavy-duty 4-wheel drive vehicle could make it up this steep terrain, which wasbecoming a deep-breathing-exercise for all of our lungs. But I found it exhilarating and enjoyablychallenging. We all came to a spotwhere I could see that some of the few of us that were ahead on the trail, hadrounded a steep uphill curve in the track and were now almost directly abovethe rest of us. It was then that I sawa short-cut and decided to take it. Itwas a ‘rock-fall’, from the uphill track-location, down to the track-locationwhere we were standing. In other words,nothing but piled-upon-each-other-rocks, of all sizes and shapes, as one bigrock-cliff. I started up thatrock-cliff, from one rock to another, until I finally got to the top of thatrock-cliff and got back on the dirt-track with the rest of our group. Soon the dirt-track crossed over a ‘field’of snow and continued upward. Finally,the dirt-track ended at the very base of a cliff, which had a steel ladderascending the cliff. We all climbed theladder and found ourselves at the very peak of Sierra Buttes Summit, wherethere was a small Forest Service Lookout, surrounded by a steel mesh walkwaywith a steel fence-and-guard-rail.However, at one spot of the walkway, there actually was an opening,through which a ‘hardy-soulled-person’, could step out upon the rock peakitself and then, if one was brave enough, step across a two foot crevice, tothe other flat-rock top of the second ‘butte’, for which the ‘buttes’ werenamed. Standing upon either of thesetwo ‘buttes’, which provided only about 3-4 feet of standing space, totallyunprotected by any railing or protection of any sort, one could then look downfrom such a height (if one was not subject to vertigo!). Looking down (from an elevation of 8591 feet), I could see some clouds belowus, with a valley and some lakes (Sardine Lakes, I think) showing through theclouds. For a more recent ‘exploration’of Sierra Buttes, see:
http://kevingong.com/Hiking/SierraButtes.html
After ascending to the summit of Sierra Buttes via the 4WDroad, on our way down we took the more leisurely descent by taking the PacificCrest Trail (mentioned in the link given herein above), a footpath along top ofnumerous ridges, overlooking the lakes in the valley below (one blue lake andone green lake, according to the link above).It was somehow a quite pleasant and interesting ‘experience’, hikingthat section of the Pacific Crest Trail, and coming upon all the interestingplants, vegetation, small animals and topography that I found along theway. We eventually made it to the pavedroad and the two drivers, who had taken another trail back to the parking lot,soon came and picked us up.
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We stopped at a small general store on the main road forsome snacks and then made our way to a nearby dam and lake with a smalllakeside village. Sitting lakeside bythe dam, however, no one felt like swimming.We discussed it briefly, until we all agreed to press on toward a hotsprings location. Taking the Gold LakeHighway road through the Plumas National Forest, we eventually came out into anice valley near Graeagle, California and the Middle Fork of the Feather Riverand headed south on State Route 89.Somewhere south of Clio, California, possibly near Valley Ranch,California, where the valley was quite wide, we turned off the main road andfollowed a privately paved road for a short distance across the flat fields ofthe valley, to what appeared to be a vintage ‘60’s Holistic Resort site, wherethe valley gave way to the sloping foothills of the Plumas NationalForest. In the Main Lodge of theResort, we signed-in, paid a small day-use fee and picked up some largetowels. Following our Instructor, heled us to a gently-uphill-sloping gravel trail into the woods alongside thevalley fields, until we arrived at several wooden tubs that had beenconstructed alongside the gravel road, with views looking out over the valleyfields. On wooden walkways to the tubs,we doffed our clothes down to our undershorts (panties and bras for the women)and lowered ourselves into the warm waters of the hot tub, supplied from somepiping that flowed into the hot tubs.After a few minutes though, our Instructor led us back down the gravel roadabout a 100 foot (in our towels, carrying our clothes), to a small adobebuilding, where the hot springs originated in several rock-enclosed ‘tubs’,where the water temperatures were quite hotter. Gently lowering ourselves into the noticeably warmer waters, webecame accustomed to the warmer (hotter) temperatures. As it was, yet we stayed in those hot tubs awhile longer. Eventually, as the sunwas beginning to set over the valley peaks to the west, we got dressed and madeour way to our cars. Taking Route 89south, it was dark by the time we reached Truckee, California and Interstate80. Stopping for an early eveningdinner at a restaurant in Truckee (I just barely had enough cash with me forthe cheapest meal on the menu), we took Interstate 80 south, turning off andfinding our way back to Nevada City and Ananda Village.
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Such was my wonderful ‘experience’ while at AnandaVillage. I think I stayed threemonths. Eventually I realized that,even though the communal ‘experience’ and living was nice, it was really a bittoo ‘religious’ an environment for me.Although I did appreciate such a communitarian ‘experience’, somehow theAnanda ‘experience’ was not what I was ‘seeking’. I already knew of Professor Amitai Etzioni and his version ofIdeological Communitarianism and although I didn’t necessarily agree with allof his thought, I did find his philosophies outstanding in comparison to otherphilosophies. And I had also heard ofthe many communitarian towns and communities, already extant on the EuropeanContinent and elsewhere in the world, where people were living together inIntentional Communities, somewhat like the Ananda people of the AnandaVillage. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amitai_Etzioni
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communitarianism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_community
So, my ‘experience’ of Ananda was not the ‘ideal’ that I wasyet seeking. I packed up the Opel andreturned to the Bay Area.
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My Garden Cottage
Upon returning to Robert’s place, Robert had already rentedhis second bedroom to the 70 year-old Italian gentleman. I think I found out somehow that Robert’sheritage was Portuguese, although Robert never was one to say much of anythingwhatsoever, but over a period of time, I did hear him make certain‘statements-of-fact’ about himself.Another thing about Robert was, that he could never tell a lie or somethingthat he knew to be untrue. Such was his‘simplistic’ reality, in that limited ‘mindset’ that he had, after beingmentally disabled by his National Guard ‘participation’ when he was in hisearly ‘20’s, which I have already discussed earlier hereinabove. Also, in the many years that I knew Robert(perhaps 15 or more), he never once mentioned that he had any relatives and noone ever came to visit him. But, as Ifound out after his death, all of his ‘relatives’ (two cousins and 13second-cousins), ‘came-out-of-the-woodwork’, to claim his ‘estate’.
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However, it ‘came’ to me, that the Aviary ‘structure’ inRobert’s back yard was ‘available’. Iasked Robert if I could ‘use’ it and he readily agreed, probably because heknew that I could be trusted and relied upon to look after himself and his‘welfare’ and he wanted me back with him.
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So, over the next few days, I cleaned out the aviary,removed the bird-cages, bird-perches, the wooden posts and supports of thesmall work-area and all of the wire mesh everywhere, and made it a clean, openand habitable space. Robert kept an eyeon my ‘activities’ and he seemed to always admire any and everything that I wasdoing. I think he compared my ‘workethic’ and ‘activity’ to that which his Father used to do and which he wastherefore glad to see again being ‘done’ on his premises.
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The aviary gradually became my Garden Cottage. I could no longer afford to drive the Opelso I sold it, for the $600 price that I had paid for it. (It was yet in very good condition.) But before I sold it, I remember going to aplace several blocks from Robert’s place, to a fellow who had advertised in thelocal free newspaper classifieds, that he had all kinds of household stuff forfree. By that time I was thinking ofwhat I needed to put in my ‘garden cottage’.Apparently the City of San Mateo had condemned his property, because hehad built several ‘rooms’ at the rear of his house, into a ‘complex’ (actuallya ‘warren’) and slip-shod-construction structure, for housing several Hispanicillegal immigrants. The City found outabout it and now he had to have it all removed from his premises. There was lots of ‘materials’ that I coulduse, from foam-wall-insulation, pieces of wood siding, a plastic-walled shower(with piping), several toilet commodes (Yes!Needing to be cleaned!), three electric heaters, a porcelain bathroomsink and much more. (I didn’t take any of the refrigerators, in that I alreadyhad a small full-size 24x30x60 inch refrigerator that I had bought cheaply atthe Salvation Army Thrift Store and which fit nicely into the rear of my OpelStation Wagon.) I loaded everythingthat I thought I could use, into several loads in the Opel, and deposited itall in Robert’s back yard. (Luckily,City Inspectors were never there to ask me where all the ‘stuff’ wasgoing. Because I never ever thoughtabout applying to the city for a Building Permit, the very thing that was thecause of this gentleman having to demolish everything that he had constructedon his property!)
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Over time, I kept constructing and making improvements to myGarden Cottage. And Robert eyed it allapprovingly, knowing that the more I ‘invested’ in his property, the moreinclined to stay I would be. After Isold the Opel, I remember still needing to transport pieces of lumber, pipingand other building materials, from lumber and hardware stores and doing so byusing my bicycle. I remember pedalingmy bicycle home with 6 foot long pieces of siding, ‘standing upright’ on therear package-shelf of my bicycle, the bottom ends of the lumber pieces in awooden box that was secured to the bike’s package-shelf, and the middle of thelumber pieces ‘secured’ to my body, with a length of stretchable-cord aroundthe lumber and myself. I guess I hadalready gotten several pieces of 4 inch thick plastic drain piping from the‘distressed’ gentleman but I guess I somehow purchased some more piping, theglue and other plumbing necessities that I needed. (I guess I was using the proceeds from the sale of the Opel.)
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I built a wall on the previously-open side of the GardenCottage, with lumber pieces that I had salvaged from Robert’s aviary, from the‘distress’ situation and a few pieces that I had to purchase. I used foam-wall-insulation on the inside ofthe walls of my Garden Cottage, between the wall-supporting 4x4’s and thencovered the insides of the 4x4’s with sheets of ¼ inch thick panels. After the 1989 Loma Prieta Earthquake, Idoubly re-inforced all the corners and supporting 4x4’s of the structure withdouble-thickness 4x4’s, two 4x4’s nailed together.
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I used plumbing piping, mostly lengths of copper tubing thatI had either salvaged or had found in Robert’s Father’s workshop, inside of myGarden Cottage, in installing the plumbing for the sink, the shower, and thetoilet, all connected to the original water-pipe ‘fixture’ in theconcrete-floor of the aviary, by which Robert’s Father had provided water forhis birds, and which was connected to the network of underground pipes in theback yard that connected to the faucet-bib at the rear wall of Robert’shouse. Thusly, I got water to both myGarden Cottage and to the ‘gardens-of-vegetables’ that I was to eventuallygrow, there in Robert’s back yard. Ibuilt a raised platform in one corner area of the structure, where my bathroomwas to be, this ‘raised platform’ only a few inches high. But it was high enough to installsewage-drain piping under this ‘platform’ and I then installed one of thetoilets over a suitable round hole in this platform, with the drain-pipe exitingthe structure through an appropriate hole in the wall and going down intoground outside the structure, to an underground septic system that I also putin the ground under Robert’s back yard.I installed the bathroom sink and the cleaned-up plastic shower walls,shower floor enclosure and shower top that I had salvaged. Somewhere I had obtained a small 20 gallon(?) heavy-plastic hot water tank with an electrical hot-water heating elementinside of it. I installed electricity,cold water input lines and hot water output lines, from this hot watertank. Using the copper tubing that Ihad, I installed copper tubing hot and cold water piping to the shower and thesink, and a cold-water run to the toilet.Outside the new front wall of my ‘residence’, alongside my new frontdoor (which I bought at a San Francisco salvage yard that specialized indoors-removed-from-homes-all-over-the-Bay Area, where I searched until Ifinally found a door of the exact width that I needed. I guess I still had the Opel yet, to bringthis door home.), was both a manually-operated faucet, located at a convenientwater-bucket height and another water-bib ‘connection’ to all of theunder-the-yard cold-water gardening pipes that I would need.
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From Robert’s Father’s workshop shed at the rear of thegarage, I ran a hundred-foot length of #14 outside electrical cable (somehow#12 cable was not convenient and I felt that #14 would be enough for thelimited electrical current that I my small cottage would draw) across the backyard, about 8 foot above the rear yard concrete walkway, looking much like aheavy length of wash-line, through the trees, to the front of my cottage,securely wrapped through and supported by electrical insulators at severalpoints along the 8-foot high ‘run’. Inthe workshop, I tapped into the electric wires coming to the shed from the rearoutside wall of the garage. Inside thehouse, I eventually changed the fuse for that particular circuit, from a 15 ampfuse to a 20 amp fuse. At the cottageend of this ‘run’, I brought the line into the cottage and from there, all ofthe needed electrical circuits inside the cottage fanned-out to the necessary‘outlets’, mounted where they were needed.
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Inside of my cottage, I had laid down a padding and rug(from my salvaging) on the bare concrete floor where I would be walking. However, it wasn’t big enough to carpeteverywhere, so there was bare concrete under my bed. My bed, a low-to-the-floor full-size metal frame, on which I puta matching size 5/8th inch thick plywood sheet and then my equalsized foam mattress, was across one end of the cottage. At the foot of my bed was a green clothcurtain, through which was the but 4 foot wide remainder of that end of thecottage, under the low eaves of the roof at the front of the cottage. Into this 4 foot by about 8 foot long space,about only 6-7 foot high, which constituted about half of the entire front ofthe cottage (the other half of the front of the cottage was occupied by thebathroom and the entranceway from the door, which was about in the middle ofthe front wall that I had built. Theentire front of the original aviary was open, only closed in with wire mesh.),I put my clothes rack, a pipe-assembly clothes rack about 8 foot long by 5 foothigh, that just fit into its designated space.On top of the clothes rack, an inch or so above the horizontal pipe, asso provided by several strategically placed wooden blocks, I had a foot wideshelf, on which to store small clothing essentials. The remainder of this 4 foot wide space at the foot of my bed,was equipped with a piece of shag rug carpeting and a small cushionedbench-seat, that I could sit on while dressing. The rest of this 4 foot wide space ran behind my refrigerator,located in the center of the cottage and on the front side of my ‘living room’and here I could store some vertical items, behind the refrigerator, as well asletting the refrigerator’s cooling-mesh-coil radiator, mounted on the rear ofthe refrigerator, release it’s heat accumulation from within the refrigerator,into the small enclosed dressing-room space behind the refrigerator. Under the clothes rack was space for shoesand more.
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The living room was also my library, my kitchen, my diningroom and my office, about 16 feet long (the remaining 4 feet, of the 20 footlength of the structure, was already occupied by my bedroom) by 8 foot in widthby about 10-12 foot high, to the peak of the overhead roof beams of thestructure. On the front side of my livingroom, toward the front wall of the structure, and the 4 foot wide spacinginside of that front wall and doorway (which 4 foot spacing was under thedownward sloping and lowered expanse of the corrugated roof, the higher-peakedsection of the roof only extant over my living room), was my refrigerator andmy huge 8 foot wide bookcase, between both, at the center of the living room,was the entrance to the living room from the short entranceway (the 4 footspace) from the front door of the structure.Behind the bookcase, the rear of the bookcase made the inner wall of mybathroom, where the raised-platform and the toilet were located. (The plastic-walled shower and sink werelocated just inside the front wall, just under the lowest-sloping portion of theeaves of the corrugated roof.) Accessto the bathroom was via another door built into the side of the short 4 footentranceway hall. The entranceway andthe walls thereof were fitted with thick, insulating blankets (walls) andcarpeting (floorway), inside of the front door.
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My living room was, as I have said, a library. My huge 8 foot high by 8 foot widecompressed wood-fiber bookcase, covered the entire front half of the livingroom, leaving only a small space, alongside the entranceway, for my folding 4foot by 2 foot wooden table, which I used as my kitchen table and more, the 4foot length of the table extending out into the center of the living room. On top of the table, I had the electricalhot plate on which I did my cooking and under this table was the electricheater that I sometimes used. Theremaining open space of the table was used as a work table, when needed, forcooking, drawing, office work or anything.
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The bookcase contained about 6 or 7 shelves, each about 12inches deep by over 12 inches high (in space), where my largest 12x12 books andencyclopedia sets could be stored. Andon top of the bookcase was additional storage space. The bookcase, in effect, constituted the front wall of the libraryend of my living room. The absoluteopposite end of my living room, at the other end of the 20 foot length of thestructure, was a solid wooden wall, of wood siding nailed to 2 inch studs onthe outside and nothing but the exposed studs on the inside. I put some foam insulation between thestuds, but nothing else to cover the inside of this wall. On these studs, I mounted L-shapedsteel-metal book-shelf supports, extending out from each stud about afoot. On these shelf-supports, fromalmost floor-level to about 8 foot high level, I merely laid ½ thick by 12 inchwide boards, which made up the shelving across this entire end of the livingroom. (Perhaps the shelving did notextend all the way to the living room floor, and there was space under theshelving for other items.)
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This same type of shelving and metal shelf supports was alsoapplied to the entire expanse of the rear wall of the living room, which againwas mere wood siding on the outside with 2 inch studs on the inside. Again I covered some of these spaces betweenthe studs with foam insulation. Theshelving extended across the 16 foot width of the living room, all the way tomy bedroom in the remaining 4 foot of the structure, from the 8 foot leveldown. However, the lower 4 feet wereoccupied by my vintage childhood fold-down-desktop work desk, next to thebedroom area. There was a small spacebetween my bed and desk for a small metal cabinet of 3 inner shelves behind ametal front door, on top of which stood my alarm clock. Over this cabinet, mounted to the rear wall,was my bed-night light. The desk wasabout 30 inches wide and when the sloping desktop was folded down intooperating position, the floor space under the folded-down desktop just nicelycontained the roll-around workchair with arm-rests, that I used when seated atmy work desk. Within the remaining 4foot lower height across the 16 foot of expanse of the rear wall, were threevariously wide wooden cabinets with large pull-out drawers, in which variousthings were stored. (As I remember, thelower drawer in one of the cabinets, was my tool drawer, where all kinds ofvarious small tools were stored.) Ontop of the cabinet nearest to my desk, was my stereo radio-amplifier and on topof it, was my record-player turntable and covering clear-plastic dust cover. Somewhere in the room, were all of my long-playstereo albums and records, convenient to the stereo-record player. (We’re talking the ‘olden days’ here,people, when the ‘ultimate’ in music recordings, were the 33 1/3rdLong Play Disks!) Over the 6 inch longadjustable lamp that was mounted on the top of my work desk, was a space underthe lowest shelf that was just the exact size of an old Echophone RadioReceiver that I had somehow obtained along the way. I repaired the power supply and gave this radio a rough tune-up,and then mounted the metal cabinet of the radio to the underside of the lowestshelf. I ran a piece of wire, for anantenna, from the antenna terminal on the rear of the cabinet, through the rearwall and up along the rear wall and then to a tree branch. The receiver needed a good ground foroperation, so I ran another wire from the receiver’s ground post, through therear wall and down to a steel ‘ground-rod’, buried into the ground behind therear wall of the structure. On thisEchophone, I could ‘tune’ the Ham and Short-Wave Bands (although not with theprecision and excellence of a really good Short Wave Receiver) and I rememberlistening to such as Radio Moscow and other stations.
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Such was my living room, kitchen, library, office, bedroom,dressing room, bathroom and entrance hallway… my Garden Cottage!
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I’ve said that I grew vegetables and such. I did so in the open areas of Robert’s backyard, which were clear of any trees, bushes or other growth. After I had used up and/or eliminated all ofthe salvage materials that I had deposited in the backyard, I cleared thoseareas and, using lengths of wooden boards (that I obtained from somewhere), Iplaced these boards upright on their sides, making several 8 inch high ‘raisedplanting beds’, suitable for French Intensive Gardening. Using the bags of fertilizer that I found inRobert’s Father’s small gardening shed and in his workshop, I blended thefertilizers with the tilled soils of the backyard and loaded thisfertilizer-soil mixture into the raised planting beds. I had three long planting beds, each oneabout 20 foot long by 2 foot wide, with more of the same short board piecesused as 8 inch wide walkways between the beds.
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Calculating the proper planting times, length of eachgrowing season and more, in the beds I planted the seeds (cheap 5 cent seedpackets that I obtained either from local hardware/garden stores or by mailfrom a specialty seed nursery in Redwood City), ‘tucking them in’ specificallyas individually needed. FrenchIntensive Gardening allows all the plants to grow as close as possible to eachother, sharing not only soil and nutrients and water, but also the very growingspaces both above and below ground.Each kind of plant has one of three kinds of root systems: roots that gostraight down; or roots that spread under the surface; or roots that are‘bushy’, existing between the two extremes of straight down orjust-below-the-surface. Each kind ofplant also has one of three kinds of growth above ground: straight up (like acorn stalk); spreading-out-upon-the-surface (like squash); and the in-between‘bushy’ kind of growth. Thusly, Iplanted each kind of planting accordingly (as best as I could), also takinginto consideration the totality of the planting-bed size and spaceavailable. My on-paper designs anddrawings of the gardening areas and their requirements, almost constituted themany pages of a book.
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Of course, one of the necessary requirements (besides thedaily sunlight), was water. On one ofthe faucet-bibs coming up out of the ground on a short length of pipe (whichRobert’s Father had built into the backyard at several locations for wateringpurposes), I installed an electrically-operated water valve, which turned thewater-flow on and off daily from a timer located in my cottage entranceway andconnected to the water-valve by an electrical wire across the garden to thewater-valve location. From the outputof the water-valve, I ran a network of small ½ inch thick polypropylene-plasticdrip-insulation ‘piping’, to all the necessary watering-locations within eachplanting bed, running the piping underground as necessary between beds andunder walkways and the wooden sides of the raised beds. The timer was set to water the entirebackyard garden areas every morning for about 15-20 minutes. Individual short lengths of small-sizetubing, extended from the main network ‘runs’, to the actual ‘emitters’, whichwere emitters specifically selected (and bought) for each kind of plant, as tovery slow, slow, moderate or regular ‘drip’ operation. Such were my planting beds. Besides the raised beds, I also hadvariously-sized and located beds at ground level as well. And on the perimeters of each planting area,I sunk into the ground several inches, short lengths of ½ inch thick steelre-bars, on which I mounted, at 6 and 12 inches above ground level, electricalinsulators. On these insulators, strungalong the perimeters of each bed, I ran a bare-wire network of electrical wire,which was all connected to an electric fence transformers, also installed justinside my cottage entranceway. I knewthere were raccoons and other animals in the area and I now had an electricfence protecting my garden. (Yes! I saw ‘coon tracks!) It was quite an elaborate gardeningoperation, but it produced worthwhile results.
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As to the various kinds of plants that I grew, let me try toremember: pumpkins; hubbard squash; acorn squash; spaghetti squash; whitecrook-neck summer squash; patty-pan yellow summer squash; arugula; chives;green onions; red Aztec corn; red Aztec spinach; lima beans; kidney beans;green bell peppers; large French St. Pierre tomatoes; potatoes; leeks; favabeans; cabbage; Brussel sprouts; Hungarian celeriac; asparagus; Swiss chard;kohlrabi; broccoli; zucchini; radishes; carrots; fennel; parsnips; cauliflower;dandelion; nasturtium; Crenshaw melon… can’t remember any more!
The Giant Hubbard and Acorn squash grew up wire-meshtrellises that I provided, to eventually cover a good portion of the roof of mycottage. The Spaghetti squash dangledfrom a 6 foot high trellis. The Azteccorn and Aztec spinach stalks grew straight up, to almost 20 feet high. The French tomatoes were very large andtender. I regularly gave such as thetomatoes and winter squash to Robert and the Italian gentleman. (Speaking of Joe, the Italian gentleman, Iquite often helped him out too, with figuring out bills, finances, SocialSecurity/Veterans benefits, the TV in his room, problems with his car and otherthings.)
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I got various yields from all my plantings. My garden did require quite a bit of timeand effort (and a small amount of money).But, I finally realized that the actual yields, even though appreciatedand welcome, were not really enough for the relatively small gardening spacethat I actually had available in Robert’s back yard, as well as the time andefforts required. If I had been‘grading’ the entire gardening-effort on a financial basis, I might have saidthat it was not cost-effective. Inorder to reliably provide the regular quantities of vegetables that I desiredfor my meals all year long, it would have required a much largergardening-operation and space, more so on the level of an actual farm. I quit gardening! (Actually, the circumstances of my Life, also helped to change myLife, which I will discuss shortly.)
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Sam House
During all the years that I lived at Robert’s place and eventhereafter, when I was homeless on-the-streets and staying-overnight in BigAl’s Junkyard (discussed hereinfollowing), I was still, all this time, workingat the Samaritan House Dining Room, as both a volunteer and Dining RoomSupervisor, every day of the week serving hot meals, produce and more, to thehomeless and low/no income people of our San Mateo neighborhoods. Almost daily, while I was at Robert’s, he andI would leave home in the late afternoon and walk the several blocks to thesite of the Sam House Dining Room. (TheDining Room was located, over the years, first in the gymnasium of the BaysideElementary/Secondary School in North San Mateo, then in the Dining/Meeting Roomof the Martin Luther King, Jr. Recreation Center, and finally, unto today, inthe basement of the Westside Church of Christ, 603 Monte Diablo Ave., SanMateo, next to the King Center.) The DiningRoom had several Samaritan House Managers during the years that I both workedand ate there, but I was always a Volunteer Supervisor. (Not ‘supervising’ the other volunteers,which was done by the Manager, but merely ‘supervising’ the daily operations,as to the Clients/Diners/Patrons who showed up and what was ‘provided’ forthem, in concert with the Dining Room Manager.) I also would help unload the delivery van every day, of the traysof hot meals and all other foods, that had been provided by/from the SamaritanHouse Kitchen, at 401 North Humboldt Ave., San Mateo, across the street fromthe San Mateo Armory (where Robert served in his early 20’s with the NationalGuard and where I stayed overnight a few times, during the winter days of myhomelessness, when Sam House had provided a Winter Shelter for the homeless inthe area). Inside the Dining Room, Iwould help prepare the food serving tables and lay out paper dishes of slicesof desserts, produce and second-hand prepared-and-packaged foods, for theselection of the Dining Room’s ‘clientele’, as well as supervising theoperation of the Dining Room. (Dailychurch-sponsored volunteers usually arrived to do the actual foodserving.) The entire daily Dining Roomoperation was managed by one or two on-site Sam House employees, as to the foodservice, the volunteers (including myself) and the clientele. I worked there, at the Sam House DiningRoom, for over 14 years.
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Incidentally, in the early years of my volunteer servicewith the Sam House Dining Room, when it was daily located at the BaysideElementary/Secondary School, most every day by 5PM there were quite long linesof clientele waiting for the door to open.Many of these people were families and the elderly immigrants from theEastern European nations, who had just recently arrived in America and wereused to waiting in long lines for foods.At that time, the daily Dining Room fare included day-oldnot-quite-fresh produce and boxes of vegetables and it was these edibles thatthe Eastern Europeans rushed to snap up when the door opened, not bothering atall to avail themselves of the hot meal that Sam House had provided. Then they were gone, with their dailyproduce ‘finds’. Somehow, while waitingin line myself at first (before becoming a Volunteer), I made the acquaintanceof an elderly gentleman from the Ukraine, who was there every day with hisfamily. I didn’t speak his nativelanguage and he didn’t speak English, but we both spoke German, although minewas a bit rusty, having learned but only rudimentary German when I was in HighSchool. He learned German, of course,when Hitler and his armies invaded the Ukraine during World War II. But, with the help of some English-speakingmembers of his family, including a young girl who was attending the localschool in San Mateo, both he and I daily had about 15-20 minutes of enjoyablebanter.
See: http://www.yelp.com/biz/samaritan-house-san-mateo-4#hrid:i1FauP4Xu-iGblYrwvFHcQ/src:self
Also see: https://www.angelfire.com/ca/sanmateoissues/page17.html
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Robert’s Demise
Somewhere along the way, Robert wound up in the Hospital onetime. It may have been a result of hisdaily alcohol drinking. But before hewas released from the Medical people, he was referred to Aging & AdultServices and he apparently was ‘persuaded’ to become a ‘Client’ of Aging &Adult Services. In agreeing to such‘Care’, he was somehow ‘persuaded’ to go before an Attorney and ‘Consent’ tobecoming a ‘Ward’ of Aging & Adult Services, under an LTP provision of theLaw, whereby he and his entire Estate, are placed in ‘Conservatorship’, inorder to ‘Care’ for the ‘Aging Individual’.In effect, Robert had ‘signed’ his Life away and he didn’t know it. He was now a ‘Ward’, of Aging & AdultServices.
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Before he was released from Medical Care, he was remanded tothe Psychiatric Ward of the County Facilities on Tower Road in Belmont, forPsychiatric Observation and Evaluation, especially in regard to his obviousmental deficiencies. He was ‘confined’(locked-up) to that Tower Road Facility for two months, I think. During the time he was there, I regularlyvisited Robert, riding my bicycle to Tower Road. Once, when I was there, the Resident Psychiatrist, asked me, as aRoommate and Friend of Robert’s, to ‘assist’ in their ‘evaluation’ ofRobert. Not knowing exactly what wasreally ‘going on’, I consented and one day was scheduled to meet with Robert’sPsychiatrist. He was probably alsoevaluating myself and my ‘relationship’ with Robert. We talked and I responded as honestly as I could, telling himthat I always helped Robert in any way that he needed and that I was alwaysconcerned for Robert’s welfare, but that I knew that Robert always preferred todo whatever he could do for himself and that he only came to me when it wassomething that he could not do. After 2weeks, Robert was released and they brought him home. (OR, question-mark, was Robert ‘confined’ for two months? I’m not sure.)
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Anyway, after Robert’s return home, he was then visitedalmost daily by Aging & Adult Services personnel and contract-servicespeople, from his Case Manager, various social workers, nurses, other medicalpeople, and weekly ‘In-Home Support Services’ personnel. The Visiting Nurse’s Association arrangedfor a Domestic Services Assistant to visit Robert every week to ‘give him abath’, but really was just a ‘supervised-bath’, with the person there merely to‘supervise’ Robert in taking-his-own-bath.(Robert by then, was of the ‘old-school’, in that he believed that everyone should absolutely take a bath every Saturday evening… whether the bath wasreally needed or not!) I was ‘accepted’as Robert’s ‘In-Home’ Support Person (not a relative) and I quite often foundmyself calling someone at Aging & Adult Services or the Visiting NurseAssociation. The Visiting Nurseregularly visited, to ‘fill-up’ the medications-pill-box, containing the manymedications that they now had Robert ‘on’, and that he was required to takeseveral times a day. Sometimesmedications got mixed up and Robert got confused about it all. As I have often stated in my writings, alsofrom my own studies of Medicine and Nutrition over the years, all medicationshave ‘side-effects’ that are toxic and linger-in-the-body-and-cells for years,accumulating in the body and causing eventual damage and deterioration ofnormal organs and bodily functions.Such was the case with Robert.He slowly seemed to have less ‘vitality’ that when I first knew him andother things. Of course, he was about68 years old by now.
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Aging & Adult Services would regularly providetransportation for Robert to his regular Doctor’s appointments, but the driverusually just let Robert go in to the appointment by himself. Accordingly, Robert being mentally deficient(as well as ‘secretive’ about such things as his use-of-alcohol), he neverreally had a ‘talkative’ relationship with his Doctor. Somehow, once or twice, I was asked toaccompany Robert to his Doctor’s appointment and I found myself having to,somewhat surreptiously, ‘telling’ the Doctor what he needed to know, but in away that, with Robert sitting right there, obviously gave Robert theconfidence, in what he (Robert) was hearing, was that I was‘acting-on-Robert’s-behalf’, as to anything that I said, and therefore my‘somewhat-veiled-references’ and details of Robert’s ‘behaviors’ (drinking) andsuch, ‘went-over-Robert’s-head’ and he (Robert) actually then felt quiteconfident about my ‘interactions’ with Robert’s Doctor, even though I hadreally told the Doctor the truth about Robert.
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One day, however, my Life withRobert came tumbling down. I called ita ‘mistake-on-my-part’, but in retrospect, it changed my Life for the better inthe long run. The ‘mistake’ was withregard to the septic-system that was being used for my Garden Cottage. Apparently my septic-system was too smalland inadequate, to even process the quite small ‘loads’ of water and sewagethat I was imposing upon it. I think Ihad put one or two applications of Rid-X (septic system enzyme treatments) intothe septic system, but I guess it was still overloaded. One day, I noticed a nasty smell coming frommy toilet. Without really thinkingabout, I was concerned that the fumes might be toxic to my health. Then, again without really thinking aboutit, I called 911 and told the operator that I thought I might have toxic fumesin my ‘home’. The San Mateo Fire Departmentcame out and I showed the Fire Captain the fumes that I was concerned about,mentioning that there was a septic system under the back yard. The next day, the nice Fire Captain calledme and assured me that he had called some Toxic-Fume Department in Washington,D.C. and that I didn’t need to worry about the fumes being toxic. I thought that everything was okay.
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But, the very next day, I wasvisited by an Inspector from the City of San Mateo Building Department, whowanted to see what I was ‘building’ and what this was about a ‘septic system’,which he informed me was illegal in the city of San Mateo. He looked around the back yard and inspectedmy Garden Cottage, and I told him that I had been living there for 7years. He said it was an illegal structureand there was no City Permit for such a structure. The next day several people from the Building Department visitedme to see what I was ‘building’. Theywere amazed to see a completed and fully-habitable, already-builtstructure. Then they told me that I hadto legally ‘vacate’ the premises and that it would be ‘demolished’. I had no legal recourse. But, they gave me time to do so. Over the few weeks, I packed up all my booksand everything that was contained in my cottage, leaving only the bare insidewalls, including my huge bookcase, refrigerator, toilet, shower, sink (whichwas left to the consequences), moving everything that I could yet keep, intoRobert’s garage and storing it all in the storage space over the garage, aswell as most of the garage floor space.I was now ‘evicted’ from my Garden Cottage and everything that I yetpossessed was in Robert’s garage… including myself, sleeping each night on afolding cot-bed on the garage floor. Istill had my old vintage desk and work chair, located in Robert’s garage. I was‘living’ there, in Robert’s garage, for some time (I don’t know how long). Quite often, during the day, Robert would‘check-on-me’, to assure himself that I was still ‘there’, in his garage, andavailable to help him as needed. Hewould open the kitchen door to the garage, to see me sitting at my desk,writing or reading or working at something.(I would regularly visit the San Mateo Library during all the years thatI lived in Robert’s back yard and the garage, so I had numerous copies ofresearch documents, magazines and books that I had ‘signed-out’ of the Libraryand that I was researching.)
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Eventually a ‘demolition team’ wassent out to render the former aviary non-habitable. Actually, only the inner ‘facilities’, the entire bathroom,utilities and pipes and my refrigerator, were ‘salvaged’, quickly. My bookcase was left intact, as an innerwall of the structure and the structure itself yet remained. Even though I was ‘living’ in the garage,where all my remaining ‘stuff’ was, I would nonetheless sometimes go out to myformer Garden Cottage and just sit quietly, on a small chair from the garage,in the quietness of my former cottage-home.Each end of the aviary, on the upper reaches of the wall at that end ofthe structure, just under the peak-ridge of the roof, had a small rectangularglass-framed window, that provided high-up daylight into the structure,swathing the now-empty building and vacant floor, with some beams of sunlightand otherwise shadowed light, into the structure. It was in this surreal-lighted venue, that I sometimes sat. I could distinctly hear everything outsideof the structure, from trains passing by, to birds, kids playing in nearbyyards and other sounds. In thatsurreal-setting, of quiet, lighting and muffled sounds, it was somehow‘enchanting’, regardless of exactly how it had come to be!
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Robert’s Passing
Aging & Adult Services had ‘registered’ Robert for a‘service’ that was provided to elderly people of the San Mateo Community where,on one specific weekend, a large number of volunteers, from a ‘sponsoringorganization’ (in Robert’s case, it was over 100 ‘volunteers’ from MillsHospital, San Mateo), would spend the entire weekend ‘re-habilitating’ anelderly person’s home and premises, in order to, supposedly, give that person,a ‘new-lease-on-Life’, in their ‘restored’ and now beautiful home.
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In Robert’s case, it was decided that Robert’s home needed afew new appliances and more. I hadalready obtained, some time back, a large screen color TV for Robert’s livingroom, so that TV stayed. But Robert’stwo old, inoperative Black&White TV’s, including the vintage ‘50’sTV-Radio-Record Player Console, went out the door. No new wall-to-wall carpeting was installed, but Robert’s oldliving room wall-to-wall carpeting fell apart in pieces as it was removed,leaving a beautiful hardwood floor, on which a new (used) sofa and living-roomchair were placed. A newlybuilt-and-constructed (especially for Robert) wooden-plank bed, box spring andmattress, with new linens and blankets, were placed in Robert’s bedroom. The kitchen floor was re-tiled and a newrefrigerator and stove were installed.(Old Italian Joe’s room in the house was not disturbed.) All that was done by experts before the weekendeven arrived.
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On the weekend, the 100-some volunteers arrived early. A large dump-bin was deposited on the streetin front of the house and all the old ‘stuff’, trash, bushes and cut-plantingsfrom the back yard, were piled into the trash-dumpster. The small garden shed in Robert’s back yardwas demolished and tossed in the dumpster.(My old Garden Cottage and Robert’s Father’s Workshop survived, but theworkshop was given a new coat of paint.)And all the volunteers painted the entire house, inside and out, with afresh coat of paint. The oldplank-wood-and-post fence at the rear of the property, next to the railroadtracks, was torn up and deposited in the dumpster, supposedly to be replaced bya brand new property-boundary fence.
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As it was ‘going on’, Robert had been provided with acomfortable chair on the sidewalk in front of his home and that is where hesat, watching it all. With all of thepeople and materials around him and in his driveway, I was somewhat surprisedwhen I happened to glance at Robert. (Iwas ‘helping’ out, too!) When I lookedat Robert, he had sort-of a glum look on his face. I didn’t think too much of it, though, as I knew Robert to besomewhat ‘strange-looking’ at times. Bythe end of the weekend, Robert had a ‘brand-new’ home, although yet the vintagebungalow-style that it was, but it at least looked ‘brand-new’. That night, I was with Robert in his ‘new’bedroom, where I was unpacking Robert’s possessions from some boxes, andputting them back into their original places on the several cabinets andbookcases that were yet in Robert’s bedroom.One of the boxes had a number of vintage small WWI model airplanes, thatRobert had apparently built and glued together when he was a child, and whichhad been displayed in-their-places all these years in Robert’s bedroom. I was not quite sure how they were to beplaced, so I asked Robert where I should put them. He was sitting on the bed and he looked at the model airplanesand other things that I was about to place on Robert’s bedroom furniture. He surprised me with his answer. Very curtly and abruptly he said, “Oh, throw them out! Everything else is gone as well!”
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But I put them in place anyway and retired to the garage, toleave Robert alone. The next morning, Inoticed that Robert was not yet up at his regular waking-hour. I happened to use the bathroom, in thehallway outside of Robert’s bedroom and when I came out of the bathroom, Iglanced into the open doorway of Robert’s bedroom. He was lying there motionless in his bed. I walked in and looked closer. Robert was dead. It was the very next day after he had ‘received’ a brand-newhome… and he couldn’t ‘take it’! He hadlost everything! The‘museum-of-his-memories’ was gone!Nothing remained that was his! He, his Mind and Body, had ‘opted out’!
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I told Joe and soon called the Coroner, who called 911. The Emergency Paramedics arrived, but it wastoo late for Robert. Over the nextseveral days, Joe and I were visited by Robert’s Case Worker and we were toldthat we’d have to soon move out. Joewas stressed and it was some days before he could arrange to move in with somerelatives in San Jose. I called thelocal Public Storage and in a day or so, a large portage wooden storagecontainer was deposited in the driveway.I bought a lock-bolt and keys for the large doors of the container andstarted loading up what I had left of my possessions. I had no where to go but ‘on-the-streets’ and therefore I decidedto get rid of all my clothes, including my expensive suits and coats. A black Cashmere Doeskin suit, two Worstedsuits, a brown Sharkskin and silver Sharkskin suits, a pure 100% Cashmerefull-length Top Coat, and Italian Black Leather Car-coat. I had numerous other suits, as well as allmy shirts, ties, pants and regular clothes, including my two vintage RobertHall suits that I had worn as a Fashion Model years earlier. I also had about 6 very heavy Great Coats,vintage coats from extreme-cold-weather regions such as Russia that had beensome of my ‘inheritance’ from my Parents.But I couldn’t keep any of it and I had no more space in thestorage-container. I did put most of mypersonal records and documents, including such as my Birth Certificates, in thecontainer. I also fit into thecontainer all of my stereo record ‘collection’, as well as the small‘collection’ that Robert had, of vintage Classical Music Recordings on large LPDisks, in hard-binder albums.Everything else, of mine (all the suits, coats and clothing and more)and Robert’s, was deposited onto the Living Room floor, to be hauled away toProbate Auction, by representatives of Aging & Adult Services. They even went into Robert’s Father’sWorkshop behind the garage and confiscated all of the tools that they foundthere, including my personal toolbox that was still there. The next day I ‘screamed’ loud enough and mytoolbox was returned, but I think I was still missing some tools. Anyway, all my ‘stuff’ was loaded into thestorage container and I could just barely close the two doors and lockthem. The next day the flatbed truckand forklift arrived to haul the container away to storage. (I had paid for the first few months.) However, my container was so heavy that theforklift almost tipped over trying to pick it up. He adjusted his forks and weights and tried it again,successfully loading it onto the bed of the truck where it was secured. That night I walked away from Robert’splace, now officially ‘living-on-the-streets’ of San Mateo, with but a few ofmy things loaded onto the back of my bicycle!
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Roger and Camron
Roger and Camron were long-time friends of myself, whohelped each other out many times, as well as ‘helping’ Robert too. All of us, every day, would gather in theLiving Room of Robert’s home, for about half-an-hour of ‘banter’ with Robert(as much as he might, considering that he was usually butminimally-talkative. But Roger seemedto loosen-up Robert and he obviously enjoyed the various banter-of-the-daybetween Roger and myself. SometimesCamron joined us in Robert’s Living Room, but usually Camron appeared in thewaiting-line at the entrance to the Dining Room, having just gotten off a localbus from his home in a West San Mateo neighborhood. Roger, Camron, myself and several other ‘regulars’ would ‘banter’while we were eating dinner. Once theentrance door was opened, my ‘preparation-duties’ were finished, except forsometimes ‘maintaining order’, so I usually sat down to eat and ‘banter’ withmy friends. Camron would always waituntil the Dining Room closed up, and then walk back through the neighborhoodseveral blocks with Roger and myself, where both Roger and Camron would catch abus home about a block from Robert’s place.Robert always walked to the Dining Room with us, but he was usuallyquiet and left early, to return home, finish his daily beer and go to bed. But I could tell that he appreciated thefriendship of both Roger and Camron.And both Roger and Camron, for some unexplained but otherwise obviousreason… appreciated myself and our friendships and I did too!
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Camron was a disabled young fellow, who could barely walkdown the street with a stulted-zombie-like walk, due to his arms and legs beingsomehow affected by his ‘affliction’.Not sure if it was genetic, hereditary, due to a childhood accident, orwhat… I don’t remember. But, he wasactually strong as a horse and could really ‘jolt’ his way down the streetquite fast, energetically and walk most anywhere. He lived with his Mother (he was in his 30’s-early 40’s), who hadto feed him and take care of him somewhat, as his hand-movements were toouncoordinated to be able to eat and drink.At the Dining Room, he never ate, but only had perhaps a donut and aglass of milk. He ‘stabbed’ at thedonut until it was in crumbs and somehow got the crumbs to his mouth. The milk he just used a straw to drink. Camron had money, financial investments andwas well-off, both his Mother and himself, and although he had lots of‘friends’, they were just casual ‘friends’ that didn’t really enjoy ‘being with’such a disabled-person. On the otherhand, Roger, myself, and even Robert, were not bothered at all by Camron andhis ‘peculiarities’. After all, I wasreally a ‘homeless-nobody’, Roger was an old, fat, good-natured ‘slob’ andRobert, as a mentally deficient person himself, didn’t mind Camron at all, but‘valued’ his friendship, just like the rest of us. On holidays, such as Christmas, Camron always gave each of us aPresent. One year he gave me a nice,warm cold-weather jacket. The onlything about Camron that somewhat ‘bothered’ both Roger and myself (and once ortwice almost got Camron ‘thrown-out’ of the Dining Room) was Camron’s‘horniness’ (he was, because of his disability, perenniallysexually-deprived). He had a propensityto be ‘attracted’ to very young girls, of the early teen years and younger, andhe tended to, given the opportunity, to ‘hover-about’ and try to ‘touch’ suchgirls, sometimes to the obvious dismay of their Mothers. Regardless of my own personal sexuality andinclinations (Yes! Of course, I alwaysfound beautiful young females to be ‘attractive’!), Camron, on the other hand,insisted on ‘public-displays’ of his sexuality, which was not acceptable inpublic to anyone, certainly not the Mothers of such young girls. Anyway, Roger, myself, Robert and others,generally ‘tolerated’ Camron and he was a quite enjoyable friend! Camron’s Father was unable to ‘tolerate’Camron’s ‘affliction’ and divorced Camron’s Mother early in Camron’s Life tomarry another woman, although he occasionally called Camron by long distancetelephone and Camron said that he always enjoyed hearing from his Father,although he obviously considered it a disappointing ‘situation’! In later years, Camron’s Father passed awayand eventually so too did his Mother.Both Parents had left Camron ‘well off’, with financial ‘advisors’ tohandle Camron’s financial affairs and I think he was able to afford‘assistance’ for his daily needs and he continued to ‘seek out’ relationshipsin his Life, although gradually no more at the Samaritan House Dining Room,where he no longer had any friends.(The ‘clientele’ of the Dining Room had quite significantly changed overthe years and the previous homeless and lo/no income peoples of theneighborhood, rarely showed up any more.Instead, the majority of the daily ‘clientele’ came to be the area’sillegal Hispanic immigrants, who only spoke Spanish or Latin American and whomCamron could find no ‘affiliation’ therewith.)
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Roger was an elderly, usually jovial, fat gentleman, who wasa slob who always wore a shirt with food spilled all over the front of it. In some respect, he was simple-minded yetquite intelligent. He’d ride the busesevery day from either Palo Alto or Redwood City, to a bus stop about a blockfrom Robert’s place, then ring Robert’s doorbell and jovially come in and sitdown in a large corner chair in the Living Room. Robert would come out to my Garden Cottage and tell me that Rogerwas here, then go back inside, to ‘suffer’ (but he really enjoyed it!) some‘light banter’ from Roger, as Robert sat on the sofa in the Living Room withhis usual daily glass of beer, that he would be sipping upon. In a few minutes, I’d come into the houseand Roger was always delighted and enlivened, telling me of the latest mostridiculous ‘happening’, either locally, nationally or in the world. It was always enjoyable repartee. Then we would depart for the Dining Room,walking about 12 blocks across the North San Mateo neighborhoods, to the DiningRoom.
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Roger was a disabled veteran, receiving veteran’s disabilitypension, for his obeseness and a gimpy leg.When he had initially been approved for his pension, he had alsoreceived a back payment of a number of months, for the months of delay in theapproval of his pension, which back payment amounted to several thousanddollars. Roger had spent the money andhad bought the very latest computer and software that was available at thattime, which included software of all of the Classical Music that he loved andhe would daily have his Classical Music playing when he was ‘at home’.
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Initially, when I knew Roger, he was renting a small room atthe rear of an elderly couple’s home in South Palo Alto and he was commuting upand down the El Camino Real by bus. Ivisited Robert’s redoubt in Palo Alto once or twice and he enjoyed showing methe wonders of his beloved computer.After a while, for some reason, Roger moved to the Redwood CityMarina. He made a deal with his PaloAlto landlord, who owned a sailboat/motorboat that the elderly gentleman nolonger used and agreed to sell to Roger, with monthly payments about the sameas Roger’s rent had been. There weremany ‘boat-people’ living on their boats in the Marina, and Roger became one ofthem, moving himself, his computer and but only a few other things that wereRoger’s sole possessions-in-life, into the small, cramped quarters of that boatin the Redwood City Marina. The boathad a somewhat open-air but enclosed deck, with a table and bench-seatingaround the table, and a small below-deck ‘living-area’ with one bed (under theforward deck of the boat, much like the quite enclosed sleeping-quarters overthe driver’s cab of an RV camper vehicle), a small built-in table and benches,a useable small kitchen and very little storage space. But, Roger had made it his home!
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I visited Roger’s home-in-the-Marina a number of times,riding my bicycle from San Mateo to Redwood City, crossing over the 101Bayshore Freeway on the Whipple Avenue overpass and then riding my bike on atrail on top of the levee along the Bay slough just east of the freewayalongside the San Francisco Bay, until I reached the Marina. I’d park my bike in a bike rack just outsidethe locked gate to the section of the Marina where Roger’s boat was tied up andthen just swing myself around the edge of the gate-and-fence, where there wasan obvious footpath around the locked gate.Then I’d just walk down the Marina deck-causeway to Roger’s boat andboard the boat, saying “Hello!” to Roger as I arrived. On the landside of the locked gate, down awell-used and paved footpath, were the communal rest rooms and several showersthat were used by all of the Marina residents.
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As I’ve already mentioned, Roger and I helped each outseveral times. Roger came to me severaltimes for financial advice and more, as I will shortly detail further. Roger helped me by letting me use hiscomputer. (At this time, I think I wasalready using the computers of the San Mateo Library but, for some reason, Iguess Roger’s computer provided something that I was unable to do with theLibrary computers. Specifically, Iremember that I was applying for another position with San Mateo County, thistime as Director of County-wide Telecommunications, an Executive StaffPosition, for which I thought I was most qualified, with regard to the statedrequirements and qualifications-for-the-position, as ‘announced’ in the FormalPosition Opening Announcement issued by the County’s Personnel Department,which I happened to see on a County Bulletin Board. Anyway, I wrote an updated Professional Resume andPosition-Application Letter (conveniently, however, leaving out the fact of myhomelessness and my earlier temporary work with the County CommunicationsShop). Then, I needed to type-up thisprepared Resume-Letter, more professionally than my old, Pica-font UnderwoodManual Typewriter might accomplish and so Roger offered me the use of hiscomputer. For several days, each day Iwould ride my bike the several miles to Roger’s place in the Redwood City Marinaand type the pages on Roger’s computer.When it finally looked ‘professional’, Roger printed it out for me onhis printer. I don’t remember whether Iwas actually invited to Interview for the Position (which paid an Annual Salaryof $70,000 plus benefits). Eventually Iwas notified that I had not been considered for the Position.
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Roger’s boat had an engine that was supposed to be run everyonce in a while, to keep it operational, but Roger was not too ‘observant’about this requirement. (He never intendedfor the boat to leave dock anyway!) Asa consequence, eventually the battery ran down and the engine wasunstartable. At some time also, Rogerhad visited his Doctor at the VA Hospital Palo Alto and was diagnosed with someincurable disease. Soon after he washospitalized, but then he was released to a VA Outpatient Facility ‘Hostel’(for low-income Patients such as himself), which had a Resident On-Call Doctorand daily Nursing Staff, where he was mostly confined to his bed. Both Camron and myself visited Roger a fewtimes. He was concerned that the boatwas slowly ‘leaking water’, or water ‘seeping’ into the boat’s below-desksuperstructure. He had ‘bailed-out’ theaccumulated water from the floor of his below-deck quarters while he was stillliving on the boat. He asked me tocheck on the situation and ‘bail-out’ the water as necessary. He gave me a few dollars and I bought asmall sump pump. One weekend I went tohis boat, connected the electric power line to an outlet on his boat, and ranthe sump pump for several hours, draining what I could see of the water on thebelow-deck floor. Apparently, however,by now the entire under floor structure of the boat was waterlogged. I left the sump pump for Roger to use whenhe returned to the boat.
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But Roger did not return to his boat. He finally decided that he was no longercapable of residing on his boat, that he could no longer pay his Landlord forthe boat, nor pay the monthly ‘dockage fees’ to the Marina for the boat. He decided to just walk away from it and toabandon it. Camron and his Mothervisited the boat and retrieved Roger’s computer and his possessions. Soon thereafter, the Marina had the boat‘hauled away’ to a Salvage Docking. Notlong after, Roger was transferred to a VA Facility in Livermore,California. I never heard from Rogeragain.
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Internet Allen
I’m going to mention Internet Allen, as Camron, Roger,Robert and myself called him. We firstmet Internet Allen at the Sam House Dining Room, as another ‘Client’ of thefacility. We called him Internet Allenbecause he was apparently quite knowledgeable about computers and the Internet,which we talked about. He was a quiteportly middle-aged gentleman, who drove an old, somewhat less-than-new looking,large car, perhaps an Oldsmobile 2-Door Sedan.He’d avail himself of all of the ‘offerings’ each day of the DiningRoom, even to (just as Roger and I did, too) waiting until closing time, inorder to ‘scoop up’ the remaining daily hot-food ‘offerings’ (that were aboutto be thrown out in the garbage), in quart-size plastic containers(used-and-recycled Yogurt and Cottage Cheese containers, usually), that wecould take home, put in our refrigerators, to be a ‘meal’ in followingdays. On weekends, Internet Allen wouldpick me up about 11AM in front of the Library and we’d drive to the Sam HouseKitchen, at the rear of the Sam House Building, where Volunteerson-the-weekends, would hand out free paper-plates of freshly made hot spaghettiand other lunch items, off-the-Receiving-Dock at the rear of the Kitchen, tothose homeless who might show up for this free meal. Sometimes, if Allen felt not to ‘fulfilled’ by the Kitchen’s‘offerings’, he’d take me with him and ‘treat me’, to a fully-paid restaurantmeal, at a restaurant of his choosing (and price!) I remember us going to a little-known but popular localBurlingame restaurant, located in a residential neighborhood of Burlingame justoff the Bayshore Freeway. Allen orderedhamburgers, fries and milkshakes for the both of us, as we sat at a table on anice, open-air Patio at the rear of the restaurant. I enjoyed the pleasant surprise, after the waitress had deliveredour orders, when she, with some repartee-and-a-dramatic-flair, grabbed hold ofmy beard (at that time, a bushy white beard, which is today, however, a long,white beard), running her fingers through it and gently ‘tugging’ on it! Being a homeless person, I was certainly notused to such ‘attentions-by-the-Ladies’, which normally never happened, but Idid enjoy her ‘attentions’ that day, however inconsequential they might havebeen! (I never asked for a ‘date’ andshe never offered!)
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Another time, Internet Allen drove to Millbrae, to a ChineseRestaurant that he apparently wanted to ‘check out’. (Apparently, his ‘finances’ were yet sufficient enough… orperhaps it was just his yet-sufficient credit-status… that he always paid forthese ‘culinary-adventures’ with his credit card!) Anyway, this Chinese Restaurant had a waiting-line, even forLunch. When we were finally seated, itturned out that the ‘modus operandi’ of the establishment, was to have thewaiters pass through the Dining Room with trays of Chinese ‘dishes’ and if wewere to accept a ‘dish’ from a passing-server, then that Server would merelyplace an ink-stamp on our ‘Bill’. Atthe end of our Meal, however many Stamps/Meals we had accepted, would betotaled up and that was then the amount due for the Meal. I don’t remember what Allen paid but it wasprobably somewhat expensive.
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I visited Allen one time in his apartment in the block nextto the Library, where he let me take a shower.His apartment was positively a ‘mess’, totally with trash and whatevereverywhere, almost (I would have said) not ‘livable’! But that is where he lived.He usually seemed to be casually dressed well and not ‘messily’, whichtotally belied his apparent reality as a ‘slob’. (Today, as an old, fat and ugly (OFU) homeless person, I am the‘slob’!)
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However, Allen finally obtained a quite responsible positionwith Hewlett-Packard as an MIS-computer professional, and he was apparentlymaking ‘good money’, driving down the 280 Freeway every day to the Cupertinooffices of Hewlett-Packard. I heard himsay once that he was receiving a promotion and being transferred to another department. Then, due to my own ‘circumstances’, I neversaw nor heard from Internet Allen again.
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Living on the streets
(I’m finding all of these ‘memories’, of people, places,events and circumstances, of these years of Living-on-the-Streets, somewhat ‘tiring’and ‘stressful’, but I shall persevere here.)
I lived on the streets of San Mateo (after Robert passedaway and I was evicted from my Garden Cottage), for about 5 years. With all of the ‘necessities’ that I hadpiled on both the front and the rear of my bicycle, I could no longer ride thebicycle myself, as my added weight on the wheels was too much for the wheelsand axle to bear (I had to quite often, almost daily, fix the bicyclesomehow). I now merely walked thebicycle and it’s load, along the sidewalks and streets of San Mateo. My primary daily ‘hang-out’ was the SanMateo Main Library (where I used the computers), from opening time in themorning until it closed at night. I’d‘take a break’ in the late morning and walk a few blocks to the Saint Vincentde Paul Homeless
Center Daily Free Bag Lunch Programfor the homeless, where there was always a long waiting line for ‘services’(which included free use of the telephone and the provision of a Mail-ReceivingAddress for a homeless person).
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In the mornings, no matter where Ihad slept the night before, I always had to ‘move-on’ quite early in themorning, and therefore I usually wound up in San Mateo’s Central Park, where Iused the Park’s rest rooms when they were unlocked in the morning. (There was a Portable-Potty located on theedge of the Park, for late evening and middle-of-the-night ‘emergencies’, whichI occasionally made use of, always ‘being aware’ of any other homeless ormalevolent person that might also be in the vicinity at night time!) I’d sit at one of the Park’s picnic tables,with my bike parked alongside, writing my daily ‘papers’, ofrelevance-and-consciousness, that had ‘come-to-me’ the night before or justthen, in a ‘stream-of-consciousness and thought’. Quite often, Park ‘regulars’ would stop by and engage me inconversation, on their usual Park early-morning ‘exercise routines’ about thePark. (“Hi, Mary!” and others!) About 10AM, I’d go to the Library, parkingmy bike in the bike-rack area at the rear of the Library. The Library closed at 9PM on weekdays and5PM on Fridays and weekends. For awhile, I was able to just leave my bike in the bike rack area at the rear ofthe Library and, after Library personnel had left, just spread my sleeping bagand blanket out on the concrete floor of the bike rack, until morning. However, a few times my snoringin-the-middle-of-the-night, awoke a neighbor in an apartment behind theLibrary, who yelled out his window at me to “Shut Up!”
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At other times, for variousreasons, I sometimes slept in the Park, usually sitting up on a Parkbench. However, early one morning(about 2AM), I was sitting on my favorite Park bench, covered on a yellowrubber poncho, because it was pouring-down rain. The San Mateo Police decided to patrol-the-Park that night(in-the-rain!) and they found me sleeping in the Park. In that the Park’s premises were supposedly‘Off Limits’ after Park Closing Time, I was merely warned to pack-up and removemyself from the Park and then the Officers left. For some reason, I was ‘discombobulated’, standing there in therain on the edge of the Park. I pickedup a Public Telephone and called 911, telling the Operator that this was thehomeless guy that Officers had just evicted from the Park and that I was goingto return to the Park and go back to sleep!Then I hung up and went back to my bench in the Park, in the rain. After a short while, the Officers returnedwith guns drawn. I was arrested andhandcuffed. It took a while, but theycalled a Police Van, loaded my bicycle and all my stuff into it and we were offto San Mateo Police Headquarters.
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The San Mateo Police took me to theRedwood City County Jail, where I was booked in. I spent a few days in jail, telling the Judge that I had beenarrested for sleeping-in-the-Park. Iwas soon released, but not before being placed on-hold for release, because my‘booking’ had been on a Psychiatric-Booking, with the ‘assumption’ that I was a‘psychiatric-case’, for not leaving the Park’s ‘premises’ when told-to-do-so bythe San Mateo Police. However, itworked out just fine. Usually, aprisoner is released at 2AM in the morning, in Redwood City, and I would havehad to ride a bus in the middle of the night back to San Mateo. Instead, because of my ‘psychiatric-status’,I was put in a Police Van and taken to the County’s Psychiatric Facility at theSan Mateo General Hospital in San Mateo, to be ‘evaluated’ in the morning by aPsychiatrist. They gave me a nice,comfortable bed and private room in the Facility (in a Lock-Up section,though). Late in the morning, they gaveme a nice hot breakfast of eggs, bacon and more. Then a Psychiatrist came in and talked to me for about 15minutes. I told him what happened andabout half-an-hour later I was released.From the Hospital, I walked to the Police Station, to find out where mybicycle and belongings were. It was all‘in storage’ in a back room and I was soon given all my ‘stuff’. They said that I had to remove myself and mybelongings from their premises. SomehowI lugged the several plastic bags of my ‘stuff’ and my bike, down the streetabout a block, to a shopping center parking lot wall, where I carefully sortedthrough the bags and then carefully re-packed it all on my bicycle. Then I made my way back to Central Park… inthe middle of the day, and from there to the Library. Later I ate dinner at the Sam House Dining Room. Where I slept that night, I don’t remember,but I did surreptiously sleep-in-the-Park a few more times, hiding my bike and‘stuff’ and myself, in the darkened ‘shadows’ and recesses of the Park, untilmorning, without being seen by the Police.Which, incidentally, reminds me of earlier years, when I was alreadyhomeless but living-in-my-car, my Mazda.I remember once or twice, parking my Mazda in a dark corner of theCounty Parking Lot, of the Santa Clara County Headquarters Building in SanJose, and then going to sleep in my car.I also remember hearing noises-in-the-bushes alongside the Parking Lot,where, apparently, other homeless persons were actually‘sleeping-in-the-bushes’!
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As I have said, for a while I wouldsleep behind the Library. At othertimes, just to be legal, on a bench on a sidewalk at the perimeter of thePark. However, a few times I did sleepon a narrow stretch of concrete between two structures in the Park, but it wasnot convenient. I never slept in theusual places that were ‘habituated’ by the homeless. See:
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My most convenient sleeping spot,for the longest amount of time, however, was right out in the open, right underthe street lights, on a bench in a small street corner plaza, at a bank parkinglot, in downtown San Mateo. It was thesafest place, too, because (1) it was right out in the open and under thestreet lights, and (2) there was a bronze plaque fastened into the sidewalk ofthat small street-corner plaza, that said (in effect), “This is Bank Property,and is subject to Authorization by the Bank as to the Right to Passhereon/herein.” I only had to point tothat plaque but once, when an unknowing Police Officer ‘suggested’ that I leavehis ‘Public Sidewalk’, whereupon I said, “What public sidewalk?” and pointed tothe plaque. He acquiesced andleft. All other San Mateo Officers, whoever drove by or walked by, usually greeted me, “Hi! Nelson!” In fact, a few times, for whatever reasons,I had to walk across the street, to a public telephone on the other side of mystreet corner, and call 911, like someone had a problem or the alarm was goingoff at the jewelry store across the street or?
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However, one night, just after thelocal bars were closing about 2AM, a car of young guys drove slowly by mycorner, eyeing myself and my parked bike loaded with my ‘stuff’. I could tell they were drunk and looking for‘trouble’. One guy yelled some obscenityout the window and they sped off. Irolled over on my bench and went to sleep, covered by my blanket (it wassomewhat cold that night). Sometimelater (perhaps a half hour), all of a sudden I was awakened under a pelting ofeggs, raining down on myself, my blanket, my bike and my street corner. I caught a glance of the same guys and carspeeding off.
Broken raw eggs were everywhere, including on me, butluckily only a few, as they had missed me mostly, my sleeping bench having beenquite far from the street itself and the ‘throwing arm’ of whoever the guy wasthrowing the eggs. I immediately wentto the public telephone and called 911, telling the Operator that I had justbeen assaulted with eggs. An Officercame out in a few minutes, took stock of the situation and took my story of theincident. He couldn’t guarantee thatthe ‘perpetrators’ would be caught, but he suggested that I move for a while,so the street corner could be cleaned.He then went to a City Employee who was just down the street, steam-cleaningthe sidewalks, who shortly also steam-cleaned my street corner, while I‘recuperated’ on a sidewalk bench down the street for a few hours. I cleaned myself, my blanket and bike asbest I could. I think that morning, Iwent to St. Vincent de Paul and they paid to let me wash my blanket in theLaundromat across the street from the St. Vincent de Paul Homeless Office.
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Usually, however, all the people that I ever met at mystreet corner, were always nice and friendly.In fact, one day, in the afternoon, two quite good-looking young ladies,‘took up residence’ for about an hour, on the brick-enclosed planter-box on thecorner of my street corner plaza. Theydidn’t come over to my plaza bench and talk to me nor did I attempt to talk tothem, over the several feet of space dividing us. But we were just ‘looking’ at each other. I first spotted them as they sat down andconversed with each other, ever so furtively glancing at me. Of course, that made me even more so justlook at them. Then, they ‘put on theirshow’. Moving ever so slowly, andrearranging themselves and their seating positions on top of the brickesplanade that enclosed a planting of flowers, they assumed ever so slowly,various provocative ‘poses’ and seatings, usually showing their bodies andtheir legs, always with coy glances in my direction. Well, what was I to do?The only thing I could do! I satthere for over an hour, enjoying ‘the show’.I don’t think I smiled or responded in any way with my facialexpression, but I think I was plainly in ‘a stupor’ of delight, howevernon-evident (or perhaps, self-evident, by my ‘studied’ state at theperformers). After all, I was homelessand I had nothing to ‘offer’ such ‘femininity’, so I was merely ‘enjoying’ theshow! After about an hour or so, theyleft.
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Mostly, however, friends and nice passers-by stopped by,often to leave me a bite-to-eat or, if it was a homeless friend, to sometimepick up a bite to eat from me. One ofthe usually daily stoppers-by, was a nice Oriental gal from an Oriental TeaShop just across the street (I think she was the Owner). At the end of each day, she would come byfor a few minutes of friendly repartee and leave me a bag of plastic-wrappedsandwiches that had been left unsold at the end-of-the-day. I perhaps ate or kept one or two of thesandwiches, but later in the evening, as a few of my fellow homeless might stopby, I gave the rest of the sandwiches away to my homeless friends.
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Otherwise, people came by to leave food items formyself. A Radio-TV Repair shop ownerjust down the street, left me some kind of meat-and-potato dish. Many times, people going by would leavetheir ‘doggie-bags’ from the nearby restaurant where they had just eaten. Many times, I was the recipient of theremains of a pizza. I remember wakingup one early morning on my bench and seeing a box of food sitting there on theconcrete of the sidewalk by my bench.When I got up and opened the box, I found it to be crammed full ofdelicious Mahi Mahi steaks.
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My street corner plaza bench became a social ‘hang-out’ formyself and I enjoyed the repartee and being-of-assistance to those who stoppedby. One evening, I remember having two‘guests’ at my ‘abode’. I don’t thinkthey were traveling together, but they just happened to be at my place at thesame time. A young Oriental gentleman(or was he Hispanic?), who didn’t speak much English, but could understand meanyway. He was just passing through andwould be on-his-way come morning. Theother ‘guest’ was a congenial young Black gentleman, also just passing through,on-his-way to Los Angeles. He didn’thave any money so he was walking-to-LA.We had some lengthy repartee, usually somewhat philosophical on my part,as I always saw the behind-the-scenes-action behind anything and quite often‘voiced’ my perspectives-of-reality with regard to whatever thetopic-of-conversation might be. Thatnight, my ‘guest’ readily joined-in, likewise ‘voicing’ his ‘perspectives’thereof whatever it was that we spent hours discussing and we had someenjoyable conversation. He eventuallynodded-off on another bench in that street corner plaza. He also left in the morning and I never sawhim again.
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Then there were the ‘regulars’, who quite regularly stoppedby my corner. If anything, they allremind me of a website that I once found on the Internet and copied onto my ownwebsite.
See: https://www.angelfire.com/ca/sanmateoissues/Moneyless.html
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There was Cowboy, a rough-shodcowboy-construction-worker, always dressed in cowboy shirt, levis, boots andcowboy hat. He was soft-spoken with acowboy drawl and usually didn’t have much to say but always said it anyway.
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Chuck and Pat were a street-couple that I knew for quitea while. They’d ‘lived’ at quite a fewplaces on-the-streets and had both been in jail any number of times, usuallyfor drunkenness or ‘assaulting-an-Officer-when-drunk’. They were both friendly and convivial,although definitely not philosophical as to their ‘perspectives’ aboutanything.
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Zeke, on the other hand, was quite intelligent andphilosophical and although he could sometimes instantly ‘fly-into-a-conniption’about something, he genuinely liked me generally and we got along fine.
See: https://www.angelfire.com/ca/sanmateoissues/Sherman.html
And there were probably a few more that I no longerremember.
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My Life at that time, for thisperiod of my homeless ‘existence’, became somewhat of a Triangle, between CentralPark in the mornings, then to the Library (with a brief daily earlynoontime visit to the St. Vincent de Paul Homeless Bag Lunch Office) and laterin the afternoon, to my daily ‘job’ at the Sam House Dining Room, from 4PM to6PM, and then to my Downtown San Mateo street corner plaza bench, untilmorning. I became a ‘fixture’ at allthree locations, as well as at ‘St. Vinnie’ and at the Dining Room.
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Big Al
Big Al was a later Manager of theSam House Dining Room, when it had already been in the basement of the WestsideChurch of Christ for a while. Dave, theearlier Manager at both of the previous Dining Room locations (already notedabove), had had some kind of altercation with someone and had ‘moved on’ withhis Big Harley Motorbike. For a shortwhile, Dave’s girlfriend Barbara managed the Dining Room, but, as I remember,there was an ‘altercation’ with a Black Barbara and Dave’s Barbara was soongone. Big Al, an official Sam HouseVolunteer (just slightly ‘compensated’ for his managerial ‘services’), tookover as Manager of the Dining Room. BigAl was a somewhat sturdily-built gentleman who could be convivial and friendlywith anyone, but would not take any ‘crap’ from anyone… just what the DiningRoom needed! Plus, Big Al had been aresident and somewhat involved with the local ‘wheeler-dealers’ of the localneighborhoods for long enough, that he knew most of the people in the area, aswell as the ‘movers-and-shakers’ (and the ‘wanna-be’ youngsters also),primarily as a consequence of his business as a Tow-Truck Operator, such thathe knew who, of the possible clients of the Dining Room, was ‘trouble’ and whowas not ‘trouble’!
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Big Al was also a weekendgun-toting official Duck/Game Hunter, primarily the big Canadian Geese‘Honkers’ and he and some of his friends (including some local Police Officers)would retire to their Bird-Hunting ‘Sanctuary’ in Northern California on someweekends.
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Otherwise, every weekday andsometimes on weekends, he was the primary Owner and Operator of a local SanMateo Auto Tow Service and Salvage (Junk) Yard, right by the side of the 101Bayshore Freeway. Big Al had severalemployee-drivers, and three tow trucks, two smaller ones and one large flatbedtruck. For a while, as my co-operatorof the daily Sam House Dining Room, Big Al also graciously offered his‘facilities’ to me, in which for me to sleep at night. At first, Big Al took me to his Office andshowed me a disabled car parked on the street in front of the front door to hisJunk Yard, the door of which was unlocked and which I could get into, reclinethe seat back and sleep in until morning, parking my bike and my ‘stuff’ in adark entrance-alcove of the Junk Yard Garage Entrance. After a few days though, Big Al gave me myown key to the front door to the Junk Yard, inviting me to park my bike insidethe Garage, to spread my sleeping bag in a corner of the Garage and even to sitin the Junk Yard Office and watch the Office TV, when no one was there (or, atleast, sit in a corner chair of the Office, when one of the Tow-Drivers had touse the Office to conduct ‘business’ with ‘Customers’, who might arrive toclaim their towed vehicles). There alsowas a big Motor Home in storage at the rear of the Junk Yard and sometimes I’dsleep in that motor home.
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Big Al’s Junk Yard was not actuallya Junk Yard, in the sense of a real junk yard where there might be acres ofold, decrepit vehicles, waiting to be purloined of parts thereof, to ‘fix’ ayet-operational car of the same make.Instead, Big Al merely ran a ‘processing-operation’, wherein cars thatwere not claimed (and were not themselves saleable) or had been voluntarily‘salvaged’ by their owners, were ‘stripped’ of their ‘valuables’ (gas tank,carburetor, radiator, exhaust pipes, catalyst-valve and anything more thatmight be saleable and of salvage ‘value’) and then ‘stacked’ on top of several‘stacks’ of such ‘stripped’ vehicles in the Yard, by the huge Fork Lift thatdominated the Yard’s premises. Once ortwice a week, a ‘stack’ of such ‘stripped’ vehicles, was loaded onto Big Al’sflat-bed truck, securely tied to the truck with chains and driven to the localSalvage Yard in Redwood City, where the weight of the ‘salvage’ wasmeasured-and-paid (or credited to Big Al’s account) and then each vehicle wasoff-loaded by the Salvage Yard’s giant Clam-Teeth ‘Pick-up’ Machine, depositedinto a Crusher (to be crushed to about a few inches) or else ‘tossed’ into aGiant ‘Mawler’, whose teeth instantly ripped an entire vehicle into tinypieces, which were then automatically ‘sorted’, by composition, type-of-materialand such, to then be expelled from the Mawler, into big containers of suchspecific types of ‘materials’, around the perimeter of the Mawler.
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One day, Al had positioned a carinto a space in his Yard between one of the ‘stacks’ and the perimeterfence. He told me that I could use thecar as my ‘bedroom’ for a while. Thedriver’s seat folded down nicely and was quite comfortable. That became my ‘bedroom’ for a while.
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Actually, Big Al had an ulteriorreason for ‘accommodating’ me, which was, however, sincerely humane andhumanitarian, as far as he was concerned for me. Big Al had had a German Shepard, a dog who had lived in the Yardand was the Yard’s Official Guard-Dog.But the German Shepard had died.So, in effect, I was the German Shepard’s replacement. I became the Yard’s ‘Guard-Dog’!
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Every morning, when Big Al‘recapped’ the previous-day’s business-operations with his employees and YardManager, in the Yard’s Office, when Big Al arrived, he would always bring me acup of coffee and a sweet roll, that Big Al had picked up also for himself, onthe way to work each morning at a local coffee-donut shop. I’d sit in a corner chair of the Office, ina corner in front of Big Al’s Office Desk, and just ‘sit-in’ on the dailybusiness discussions.
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Big Al’s Yard Manager was acordial-but-not-entirely-friendly fellow (to myself), who was obviouslysomewhat ‘threatened’ when Big Al allowed myself, an unpaid and unqualifiedperson, to sometimes answer the Office phones and to ‘perform’ other ‘light-duties’around the Yard. The Manager was also aSalvage Yard Expert and Big Al’s Office had a secondary phone line that was aSalvage Line, where people (and other automotive businesses) could call as towhere they might find specific salvage items. The Yard Manager was expert in answering such questions, and eventhough, if I answered that phone line and told the caller to‘hold-for-our-salvage-expert’ and then immediately went out into the Yard(where he was probably removing some salvageable item from the carcass of somecar) to tell him someone was on the phone for him, yet somehow even thisattempt on my part to be-of-assistance to him, was not appreciated. This Yard Manager fellow was also one of BigAl’s fellow ‘duck-hunters’ on some weekends, so Big Al was always trying to becordial with him. However, somethinghappened one time with the business operations of the Yard (not having anythingto do with myself) and the Manager and Big Al had a ‘falling out’. The Manager quit and left.
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One weekend, as I was sitting inthe Office, at Big Al’s desk, working on some of my own ‘writings’, I heardsomeone trying to open the front door to the building, however just notproperly operating the door-lock. Ithought someone was trying to break in and I immediately called 911 for Policeassistance. While I was yet on thephone to the 911 Operator, all of a sudden a Police Officer appeared at BigAl’s Office doorway. It was one of BigAl’s ‘duck-hunting’ friends, coming by to pick up something that Big Al hadsaved for him. He was not a San MateoPolice Officer, but instead was a Burlingame Police Officer. He took the phone and identified himself tothe 911 Operator and assured her that all was just fine.
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Another time, Big Al had to takeone of his tow trucks on a weekend and go to a pick-up in the North Bay. He was expecting a customer to come by theOffice to claim a towed car and he told me exactly what to do to perform the‘transaction’. The young fellowarrived, we completed the paperwork, he gave me the $140 towing-fee and I ledhim to the Gate to the Yard, inside of which his car was stored. I opened the Gate and went in the Yard todrive his car out to him. He said,“Wait a minute! Let me get my bicycle.”(He had ridden a bicycle, which he had parked inside the Garage, just outsideof the Office door). He didn’t,however, immediately return. Then ithit me. I ran back into the Office, towhere I had just put his $140 cash into the drawer of Big Al’s officedesk. The drawer was slightly open andwhen I opened the drawer, the money was gone.I had been ripped off! But Istill had the keys to the guy’s car. Hecame in the Office, wanting his car keys.I told him I wanted the money back.He said he had already paid. Weargued for a few seconds more and then I went out and locked the Gate to theYard. Then I went back in the Officeand called 911. The guy left. In a few minutes, the Police arrived, withthe guy in tow, who was on-the-street in front of the Yard. I told the Police what had happened and thefellow denied it, saying he wanted his car.The Police already knew the fellow to be a local con artist, but therewas no evidence of his apparent thievery.The Police decided to let the matter stand, pending furtherinvestigation. The car was still in theYard and I had the keys. When Big Alreturned and I told him what happened, he was not happy but decided to see whathappens. The guy and his older brotherreturned a while later and tried to persuade Big Al to release the car (bothBig Al and the investigating Police Officer knew both brothers as‘not-trustworthy-persons’), but Big Al would not do so until $140 had been putinto his hands. A while later, thebrothers returned, telling Big Al that it was their Mother’s car and paid BigAl the $140 and Big Al released the car.
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Every once in a while I had torepair my bike and it was convenient to work on my bike in Big Al’s Garage,even using his tools sometimes (although I already had the necessary bike,wheel and wheel-spoke tuning-adjustment tools myself). Once Big Al, seeing me ‘tuning’ my spokes,offered to do it for me, as it was a procedure that he had done quite oftenhimself when he was younger and had his own bike, or else had done for hisyoung daughter at times. However, Ishowed him the quite complex ‘spoke-tuning-procedure’ that I was using, havingcompletely removed the spokes from one wheel and was-in-process of installingthose spokes on another wheel, and which I had written down on a piece ofpaper, detailing the Right-Left, Up-Down of each and every spoke-location onthe wheel, and Big Al was totally confused, having never before actually doneall of the spokes on a wheel, but only just ‘tuned’ a few of them by‘sight’. So he left me to what I wasdoing. (My work was a success!)
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Once, when Big Al stopped by hisOffice on a weekend (bringing me coffee and donuts) and I had been engaged inmy ‘writings’ while working at his office desk, I tried to show Big Al thephilosophical ‘musings’ that I was writing about. But, it apparently ‘went-over-his-head’ and he didn’t understandanything. But, we were still friendsand ‘buddies’! In fact, one time mybike broke down (a wheel went bad somehow) as I was riding my bike on a streetin a nearby town. I couldn’t fix mybike there on the street. It was themiddle of the day and I knew that Big Al would be in his Office (actually,probably out in his Yard, ‘salvaging’ some carcass-of-a-car). I saw a nearby public telephone. I called Big Al, telling him I was in trouble. He stopped what he was working on, jumped inone of his trucks that was available, and in a few minutes he came and pickedme up, throwing my bike and my ‘stuff’ on the back of the truck and in thepassenger’s seat of the truck cab. Herushed back to the Yard, as ‘business’ was ‘pending’, but he had come andgotten me, and I appreciated it! Backat the Yard, I unloaded my bike and ‘stuff’ from his truck (which may have beenneeded for a tow-job), and fixed my bike ‘problem’ in the Garage.
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Some time later, one of Big Al’s young employee-driversdecided to buy the business from Big Al, allowing Big Al to retire. (He’d been in the tow-truck business by thenfor many years.) Soon thereafter, Igave Big Al his key back. It was thenthat I was completely ‘on-the-streets’, living in my daily‘Triangle-of-Existence’, which I just previously hereinabove have alreadydiscussed. (At the end of the previous‘Living on the Streets’ section.)
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As far as I know, Big Al retired and was yet for a whileliving in his North San Mateo home. Buthis teenage daughter soon went off, to school or to live on her own (I don’tknow which). He and his wife, as I wastold, sold their home and moved to a small town somewhere in NorthernCalifornia, presumably near his duck hunting preserve. I never saw Big Al again.
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San Mateo Library and my Web Works
As I have already previously noted,the San Mateo Library was my ‘home’, my daily ‘refuge’, a place ofcontemplation and study, as well as my ‘access’ to the Internet. The Reference Librarians and other LibraryStaff, from the Head Librarian down to the Janitorial Staff, were alwaysaffable and helpful. ReferenceLibrarians many times led me to books, magazines and other Library Resource materials,in answer to my forever ‘probing’ questions and searches for exactly the‘right’ answers that, somehow, my intuition, consciousness and ‘knowing’, knewthat I was searching for. And manytimes Library personnel, from the Head Librarian down, would comment, as theyhappened to pass by the library work table where I had all of my papers andwork spread out, quite often commenting on my very small printed ‘writing’, onsheets of legal-size yellow writing pads, as was my penchant at those times,before I had the reliable access to my own computer and MS Word software, thatI have today. (I also used to useWordPerfect, before the demise of that software program.) In those days, not only at the Library everyday, but also on picnic tables in the Park (especially during my years of‘living-on-the-streets’) and wherever I could (including on my childhoodfold-down-top study desk, in Robert’s house, in Robert’s garage and in myGarden Cottage)… I was always writing, putting down on paper and later oncomputer, my every day thoughts, musings and ‘insights’, as they would come tome. I had pages and pages, of finelyprinted writing, on legal-size yellow-pad writing paper. I can’t explain why, but I have never been ableto ‘write’ in a cursive-script fashion, but I have always ‘printed’, each andevery individual letter and word that I wrote.I carried all these yellow papers around in my backpack, to work onwhenever I could. I was oftenre-reading and editing my words, until my writing was as it needed to be. Then finally, using the free-access computerprograms of the Library (and elsewhere, including at the Transitions HomelessShelter when I was finally admitted there), I would put my words into digitalformats that I could carry with me on computer disks. (I’ve used vintage 6” disks, 3” disks, 1¼ “ disks and Zip-Drivedisks.) Many of my early Works weredone in plain and simple early DOS Edit, not even a true word-processingprogram, but merely a computer line-editing Editor. In fact, when I first learned to create early HTML documents forthe Internet, I used DOS Editor and much of my current online Works werecreated in early versions of HTML using DOS Edit.
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When I had created a Web Documenton a Library computer that was available only for word processing work(reservable by the hour), then, using other Library computers that were online,I would upload my documents to the websites that I was creating, starting about1991. My first websites were somewhatrudimentary, but they were always documents and concerns about the ‘HumanCondition’ in some way… from my early days of various forms of homelessnessuntil today. (I’ve always said that Ihave been homeless ever since I gave my home in Belmont to Lorraine, I think onmy Birthday, March 23rd, 1982.)
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Books versus Knowing
Over the years, my ‘tastes’ in the perception of knowledgehave changed. In the olden days, untilI lost everything, my tastes were relatively mundane but perhaps eclectic,reading a subscription list of over 150 publications and books on a regulardaily, weekly and monthly basis. AfterI lost everything, I was yet doing some reading in the Library and in Libraryperiodicals and resources. But after awhile, my ‘reading’, of the effluvia-of-such-forms-of-Mankind’s-knowledge,ceased to amaze me and the ‘reading’ thereof became but a sometimes necessary‘stench’, to be born as necessary but no more.I was learning to ‘trust’ my Intuition and that ‘Knowing’ that I was‘receiving’ in my Mind and Consciousness.Oh, many times, I would actually ‘read’ a book or a magazine or someprinted or online document, but only because I had been ‘led to’ that printed‘resource’, by my Inner Self! In otherwords, I ‘knew’ what I wanted and needed and somehow I was being ‘told’ whereand how to ‘find’ that which I needed to know!
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My Birthday of March 23rd, 1982, I also considerto be ‘significant’ in two ways. It wason that day, I think I remember, that I gave my actual home to Lorraine andbecame homeless. But, it was also onthat very same day, later that evening, under certain ‘circumstances’, that Iwas Confirmed, in my Membership in ‘The Most Ancient Order’ and I have been aMember ever since. Accordingly, my‘visions’ and ‘knowing’, of both Reality and ‘Reality’, beyond the ‘norm’ of HumanKnowing, became the ‘stuff’ of my Life!I became ‘aware’ of myself, of Who and What I Am (although such is yetan In-Process operation), of my relationships to Society and others, as well asthe very Basics and Fundamentals of Life, Existence and Reality… as such doesso impact and ‘infuse/suffuse’ One and All, and Our relationships to the‘System’! Thusly, it became even moreeasier to write about that which I knew!
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‘Being There’… In Disaster
Just in passinghere, I might note that I have had ‘Flashes-of-Consciousness’: ‘Being there’,in the jungles and on the dirt-roads and swamps of Vietnam and in fire-fightstaking place there (even though I’ve never been there); ‘Being there’, in theTwin Towers, on September 11th, 2001, as the building began to fallon me (again, I’ve never been there), or ‘Being’ one of the NYFD Firemen, in aStairwell or in the Main Floor Lobby, as the building started to come down, and‘seeing’ bodies impacting on the concrete outside the Lobby windows, of peoplewho had leaped from many floors above to their deaths, to escape the horrors ofthe flames and disintegration that was happening above. Of course, just like other ‘visions’ that Ihave occasionally had (as has been ‘shown’ to me and which I have alreadymentioned hereinabove when I have discussed ‘The Collective’), such were merelymy occasional ‘accesses’ into ‘The Collective’, as I now understand such tohave been, as was originally ‘introduced’ to me by my Eminent Mentor, Dr. JuneSinger, the Student and Protégé of the famous Swiss Psychologist Carl Jung, whooriginally wrote about (and ‘explored’) the Collective Consciousness ofHumanity!
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Transitions
I lived-on-the-streets of San Mateo for 5 years, during myhomelessness of almost 28 years, including unto today. Eventually, in Consultation with the SanMateo Homeless Outreach Team, I was finally accepted and admitted into theTransitions Homeless Shelter Program at the VA Campus in Menlo Park,California. I entered Transitions onSeptember 11th, 2001.
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Transitions is one of 5 separate homeless-shelter programson the VA Menlo Park Campus. Four ofthe programs are Non-Profit Programs, for Veterans, for daily Homeless Persons(overnight accommodations only) and two programs for Homeless Families. Transitions is a Profit-Making facilityoperated by a national Homeless Shelter organization of homeless shelters. It provides 24/7 ‘care’ and operation forits Clients, in a communal setting, a building of many rooms (male and female‘dorms’), mostly with two beds to a room, communal rest rooms/showers in eachof several hallways, a TV Lounge and Dining Room, kitchens for the Men and theWomen, outside Patios, a Facility Office and round-the-clock Staff. Community clients maintain the premises, onclean-up ‘details’ each day. CommunityMeetings occur once or twice a week, to discuss Community ‘issues’ and makeannouncements. It is a Communal livingsituation where, however, clients can leave the premises to go tojobs/employment, recreation, outings/trips (sign-out required) and whatever,always having a 24/7 ‘home/shelter’ to return to. I lived there for about a year, continuing my daily Work andWritings, almost daily riding the local bus transportation to the San MateoLibrary, where I continued to use the Library’s computers until I finallypersuaded the Transitions Director to purchase and install 4 online computerterminals for his clients, in order to further enable job searches andeverything else that is possible online.Of course, I used those computers to ‘access’ my own websites and to‘create’ more webpages (using MS Word now), which I uploaded to the Web. However, before those computers wereinstalled, I was still doing my daily ‘writings’ on my favorite yellowlegal-pad writing paper. I remember oneday, one of the Transitions clients, a fellow that I considered somewhat of afriend, stopped by my work-table on a Patio, to see what I was writing everyday. I let him read some of the pages,of very small printed letters and words, of course about deeply philosophical,worldly and cosmic ‘matters’. He lookedover but one or two pages and finally gave up, admitting that he didn’tunderstand any of it!
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My personal homeless shelter
I was there on the VA Menlo Park Campus for about ayear. I had signed-up for a TransitionsProgram that provided Clients with their own personal homelessshelter/apartment and it was finally granted.By then, I had been approved for Disability Status under SDI, whicheventually became only VA Disability Pension, when I was finally approved forthat, which then supplanted and replaced my SDI benefits. As a consequence of both SDI and my VAPension, I was able to close my account with the Transitions Bookkeeper, whohad been keeping a monthly ‘tally’ of my monthly ‘rent’ due for the Transitionsfacilities.
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I met with a San Mateo County Housing Officer, under theprovisions of the special Transitions Out-Client Housing Program. I had applied for and thence received,Federal Section 8 Housing Assistance approval and the San Mateo Housing Officerhanded me my Official Section 8 Voucher Certificate, as well as a Listing ofcurrently available Apartment Units under the Program. However, the following day, I took the busto San Mateo and went to the Housing/Room-Share Office of the Human InvestmentProgram (known as HIP), gave them a copy of my Section 8 Voucher and filled outthe necessary paperwork for my own personal apartment/single-occupancy homelessshelter, under the provisions of the Program.The very next day I received a call from HIP, telling me that anapartment was available for me. It wasnewly available and was not yet even on the Official Listing!
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I signed the Lease and Contract for the apartment and Imoved in. It may have yet been my ownpersonal Homeless Shelter, but it was also a full-and-complete one-bedroom withkitchen/living/dining room and bath… and it was now my ‘home’, although it wasa homeless shelter, in that I was yet a homeless person/Client, under theTransitions Program. It was aboutSeptember of 2002 when I moved in.
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The first few days of my occupancy in my single-personhomeless shelter were somewhat unique.I had almost nothing but the clothes on my back and my ‘writings’, in mybackpack. For those first few days, Islept on the floor. I got a skin rash,from the dust mites in the carpeting.(After I got my bed, the rash went away.) I needed to sit in my apartment, even though there was nothingelse there. I went out and walked aboutthe nearby stores of Downtown San Mateo, looking for a cheap chair. The St. Vincent de Paul Thrift Store was buta block away, but somehow I didn’t think of it. I found a store that had a chair sitting on the sidewalk in frontof the store, with a discounted sale price of $70. I bought it. For a fewdays, it was the only piece of furniture in my apartment.
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As part of the Program, I had been taken to the Menlo ParkWarehouse that was the Free-Furniture Warehouse. I was given half-an-hour to go through the Warehouse and to pickout as many items of furniture as I needed.A few days later, a truck arrived at my apartment with my furnitureitems from the Warehouse. A friend ortwo also contributed a few items, such as a bookcase and one of the otherclients at Transitions gave me his old Win98 PC computer, which I am stillusing to this day. I purchased online abrand new 4-in-One LexMark Printer/Copier/Scanner/Fax machine, which stillworks today, however with some manual ‘assistance’ sometimes, for paper-feedgear functions that no longer work. Ofcourse, over the years, I have had to many times ‘fix’ my computer and itssoftware programs (it’s a Windows ‘product’, so of course, it will have‘problems’, as a currently running-on-TV commercial for MacIntosh pointsout!) But, not having much money butonly my monthly Pension from the VA (which leaves me but less than $400/monthfor all monthly expenses), I cannot afford to buy a new computer nor even aused one. But my computer knowledge andskills have kept my vintage Win98 machine operational. For example, if the computer boots-up okay,goes through all the program-openings okay, but then ‘freezes-up’ when you goto log-in to the Internet… or ‘freezes-up’ at any other time, it probably meansthat the Win98 machine has ‘booted’ itself on a 0-zero boot-up digit, insteadof a 1-one boot-up digit. When youfirst turn your computer on and the Master ICU starts to function, it can starton either a 1 or a 0. Not allsubsequent functions and software programs will easily ‘accommodate’ a 0-zeroboot-up operating-machine. But noproblem. If the computer refuses towork and ‘freezes up’… just re-boot, or start over. Turn the computer off and then back on again after a minute orso. When your computer ‘boots’ thesecond time, the Master ICU computer ‘Timer’, will then generally re-boot on a1-one, and your computer will work fine!Of course, the foregoing bit of ‘qualification’ assumes that you havenot been careless in your online ‘transactions’ (as to your ‘selection’ ofonline websites to visit) and thusly might have acquired a computer ‘virus’ orsome other malware (malicious software), which has intentionally ‘infected’your computer and thusly might be causing any kind of operating ‘problem’. I’ve found that, even though sometimes a bitslow, the good-old-and-cheap Dial-Up connection-to-the-Internet, can usuallyprevent such automatic ‘infection’ of your computer, as long as you are alsocareful at all times as to what you ‘access’.Of course, it helps that my ‘access’ to the Internet, only costs me$2.89 a month!
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I might mention here another ‘reality’ of the Internet,which actually is a Reality. Withmodern DSL, Wi-Fi, 3G/4G wideband browsers, Blackberry’s and such, there existsa Reality about any person’s computer or cell-phone device, that the owner thereofmay not be aware of. It is a Realitythat does not impact or interfere, in any way, with you personal operation anduse of your Internet device. TheReality is, that your computer device… is also a Server! A Server totally unknown of by yourself andtotally operational, completely, NOT by you, but instead, by some other webuser or organization somewhere on the Web, legal or illegal! In other words, unknown to you and totallyunauthorized by you, your computer device has become a Remotely-Operated-and-Controlled,sub-set-computer, of a main computer operation somewhere. In fact, your cell-phone, Blackberry, laptopor desk computer, may be ‘serving’ several unknown ‘users’, all unknown toyou! And the Content, of what is being‘provided-and-sent-out’ from your own personal device, unknown to you, may beanything whatsoever! And all of this,as a Remote-Operation of everyone’s personal computer-device, totally unknownto the Owner thereof… is totally LEGAL!Almost everyone who has a personal computer device, everywhere, is partof this entirely surreptious ‘network’, or networks, which are ‘using’ yourpersonal device… unbeknownst to you!Usually, the only way to prevent such unauthorized, yet entirely legal,‘access’ and usage of your personal computer device, is to ‘access’ theInternet only by Dial-Up, in that such unauthorized ‘operations’ on yourpersonal device, by others than yourself, needs such wide-band and 24/7‘access’ as that provided by DSL and such more advanced technologies. Yes, such ‘operations’ cannot ‘operate’,when your computer is turned off, but the minute you ‘power-up’, such‘operations’ automatically and immediately resume! But, the ‘Reality’ is, that your computer device, isautomatically sending/providing, whatever kind of ‘Content’, to other users onthe Internet! It receives and sendsthat ‘Content’, totally automatically, as long as it is powered-up. You cannot see the receiving/download toyour device and you cannot see the re-sending of that ‘Content’ from yourdevice. It is all automatic and notknown to you!
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Okay, back to myself and my ‘Story’ herewith. The free bed/mattress/box-spring that I gotfrom the Free-Furniture Warehouse was less-than-satisfactory, with a lumpymattress and more. But, I had alsoreceived a one-time Lump Back-Payment of my benefits, of over $1200, so I soonwent online to a bed-store and bought a brand-new (but the cheapest available)king-size bed with a king-size foam mattress and two sturdy supportingtwin-beds underneath. (I needed room to‘stretch-out’ at nighttime!) I boughtking-size linens, sheets and pillows/pillowcases, from a nearby discountstore. I bought a cheap Walgreens 21”Color TV and DVD and a few other minor items, as well as three large sizes ofcheap colored-pattern cloth squares, all of which were of the same dark greenfloral pattern. With one size, Icovered the small two-person sofa/love-seat that I had been provided for myLiving Room, but which had an absolutely hideous vague pattern of coveringmaterial. The second sized square ofmaterial, I thumbtacked to the Living Room wall behind the sofa, almostcovering the expanse of the wall behind the sofa. The largest size square I tacked to the wall of my bedroom, atthe foot of my bed and dividing my bedroom from the adjacent apartment nextdoor. (I knew that I snored when Islept, and this ‘covering’, as well as a second plain-cloth ‘sheeting’underneath, formed sort-of a noise/sound ‘barrier’ in my bedroom, so that theLady next door would not hear my snoring!)All together, all three ‘squares’ constituted the Interior Decorating ofmy apartment, into a pleasant dark-green floral pattern, over the Living Roomfurniture and Bedroom.
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Flotsam and Detritus of Society
But my apartment was still a homeless shelter, I was still aClient of a Homeless Shelter and I was still a Homeless Person. In other words, I was yet but one of theflotsam and detritus of Society. Myapproximately $400/month of ‘spending money’ got me mostly daily food, ofcourse as cheaply as possible, including the McDonalds and Jack-In-The-BoxDollar Menus. (Jack-In-The-Box BigCheeseburgers for $1, and the McDonalds Dollar Menu.) By that time, I was no longer volunteering at the Sam HouseDining Room (after 14 years), no longer eating there nor bringing homecontainers of daily leftover hot-food entrees and other food items. In fact, I was no longer even going to theDining Room, which was now across-town from my apartment and not convenient forme to walk to, because of my now disabled physical condition.
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As both a result of my homelessness andliving-on-the-streets, as well as the food served at the Menlo Park TransitionsShelter (every day at 5PM, a meal of spaghetti, lasagna or some kind of pastaor otherwise, of Stouffer’s Lean Cuisine variety, with ‘seconds’, of course!),I was getting not only fat but also had a case of Chronic Edema of the legs,feet and body, which was the diagnosis of my disability condition. The edema actually was a ‘result’ ofsleeping sitting-up on Park benches, where my feet and legs would ‘swell-up’over-night. (Laying down anywhere in aPublic Place was subject to arrest, because anyone found ‘lying down’ inPublic, was assumed to be drunk/intoxicated, which was illegal in Public andtherefore subject to arrest!)
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I remember one night, when I was sitting-sleeping on mycorner plaza bench and I woke up because I had to urinate. The closest Porta-Potty was at the edge ofCentral Park, two blocks away. I got upand headed for that Porta-Potty. But myfeet and legs were so swollen that it took me almost 20 minutes to walk thosetwo blocks. But I made it just in time,without ‘wetting’ myself. Then, as Iwas walking back to my corner-bench, about half way back, I had to urinateagain. I just barely made it back tothe Porta-Potty. I was disgusted and instress. When I had to go to thebathroom, I almost couldn’t make it. Iwas desperate! While I was yet there atthe edge of the Park, I went to the nearby Public Telephone and I called911. I told the Operator that I was adisabled person who was in physical trouble.In a few minutes, the 911 Fire Truck and Ambulance showed up. I was loaded into the Ambulance and taken tothe Emergency Room at San Mateo General Hospital. I don’t remember what happened there or why I did what I did, butfor some reason, after sitting (or laying), on an Emergency Room TreatmentGurney for some time (I don’t know how long it was), without receiving any‘treatment’, I just got up and walked out of the rear door of the EmergencyRoom. I very slowly walked out of theHospital, down the street to El Camino Real.It was the middle of the night and there were almost no cars on thestreet and certainly no buses. Iwalked, very slowly, with my swollen feet and legs hurting all the way, fromthe Hospital to my Downtown San Mateo plaza corner. It took several hours, the rest of the night, and the sun wasjust coming up, as I arrived back at my corner, where my bike and all of my‘belongings’, were still parked and undisturbed. I don’t remember any more about this ‘incident’.
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Today
But now I was in my apartment/homeless shelter. But, as a consequence of my homelessness andmy personal ‘situation’, I had no one… not one ‘caring’ person, in myLife! I was all alone, and I waslonely, for a Friend, someone to talk with, someone to ‘be with’ and muchmore! And since I had no money, foranything but the merest ‘essentials’ of food (my ‘rent’, utilities and such,were being paid automatically, by both the Program and from my monthly VA Pensionbenefits), I could not afford to try to ‘engage’ myself into anythingwhatsoever in the local Community, all of which required a minimum of monetary‘investment’. I tried several areaChurches, but I couldn’t get past the ‘Offering Plate’ nor the individualreligious perspectives of those churches.I considered the local Recreation Centers, but all the programs requiredmoney. I considered the local SeniorCenters, but again minimum monetary-fees were required, plus what was beingoffered for Seniors, was totally where-I-was-Not, in my Life! I didn’t need programs or advice onretirement, investments, insurance, family, children/grandchildren, home andhome improvement… I’d ‘Been There, Done That’ and I was no longer ‘there’!
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I searched on the Internet for ‘commonality’ with myself butfound nothing. I signed up with severalonline ‘free’ dating services but they all wanted money to continue theservices or even to receive e-mails from other members. And the members were, again, like theseniors at the senior centers, plus all of the ‘expectations’ and realities ofthe younger generations. EvenCraigslist was a dead-end, even though it was free. There, again, ‘expectations’ were completely different than myrealities, as well as ‘running into’ the typical obnoxious people that also frequentCraigslist. I finally gave up, onexpecting to find anything on the Internet!
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I had ‘dropped out’… of Society and of ‘participation’, inthe Real World. I was no longer‘acceptable’ to ordinary people, nor were they ‘acceptable’ to myself! Oh, Yes!There were definitely yet Wonderful People in the World… somewhere! But I didn’t know them and they didn’t knowme! Such was my Personal Life… alone,forlorn and lonely.
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However, on the other hand, my Professional Life was quite asuccesss! Throughout all of my‘trials-and-tribulations’, I was yet writing, my Words and my Research, as suchdid ‘come-to-me’, from My Good Friend Upstairs, via my ‘excursions’ into myMind and Consciousness! Even though noone really knew me nor knew of me, as a Person… yet I was ‘acceptable’ as aProfessional! In this case, as aTeacher, Professor, Scientist, Researcher and more, as someone for Humanity to‘learn from’, about those ‘things’ that Mankind was, and always has been,‘Questing’ to know! Such was ProfessionalLife. I received a small number of‘congratulary’ e-mails and questions about my Words/Works, which were usuallyanswerable by referring the person to other webpages of my online Works whichthe questioner had not as yet found. Asto the ‘congratulations’, I once received an e-mail from some students in Ürümqi, Xinjiang, China, thankingme for my Words on the Internet, which they were apparently just then studyingin their English classes. Another time,I remember receiving an e-mail from the Library of Congress, advising me thatmy online Works would be Listed in the Catalog of the Library of Congress as acompletely new, previously unknown, ‘Body of Human Knowledge’ (whatever suchmight imply!) Another time, I justhappened to find my ISP’s ‘Details-of-Service’ pages, with the ‘statistics’ ofmy website services over the past year (or years, if selected), which I hadnever seen before nor even was of a mind to see. However, I found one particular ‘statistic’ quiteinteresting. Apparently, according tomy ISP’s statistics, over 8.3 million Internet Users, had somehow found (quiteeasily though, in fact, in that Google lists over 3000+ of my webpages, easilyaccessible as the result of most any Google Search for those kinds of ‘answers’that many folks are ‘Questing-to-Know’!) my online latest E-Book and other ofmy Works over the past year and had read or downloaded my Book or such otherwebpages! Another time, I received ane-mail advising me that my free online Book, had already been hard-copy printedin three (3) Chinese dialects, as well as in Denmark, Israel andTajikistan! Since it is both a Free anda Copyright-Free online publication, that anyone could freely re-print orpublish (as long as the Author thereof was credited), there is no official ISBNBook Registration therefor and
thusly such ‘printings’ could notbe confirmed but in situ. (I hadalready, numerous times over the years, contacted or sent my Words to officialPublishers, Literary Agents, both popular/trade and scientific Publications,and even the John Templeton Foundation for Scientific Research… but I receivednothing from any of them, so I eventually gave-up my ‘search’ to be officially‘published’ by the ‘Establishment’.Apparently, my Words/Works, were just too far ‘out there’, forconsideration!
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In other words, I was a ‘success’, as someone whom the Worldwanted to ‘hear from’, as to the reading and consideration, of the Words that Ihad already ‘put forth’ online! Butthese ‘questing’ Souls were, apparently, merely the Sum-of-the-Masses ofHumanity, who wanted-to-Know that which they did not Know! These were not people or organizations,ready-and-willing to Inquire further, as to anything beyond their immediateneed-to-know-for-their-own-personal-reasons!No actual Publisher came forth, to officially spread my Words further toHumanity or anything else. As I havejust said hereinabove, apparently my Words/Works, were just too far ‘outthere’, for consideration! Mankindwanted to Know about the Unknown and about Incorporeality… but they did notwant to know the Teacher, especially when such a ‘Teacher’ was someone who hadalmost totally rejected the Life, Existence and Realities of the Known World,as most everyone Knows such today!Mankind could ‘accept’ the ‘Realities’ of the Unknown (at least some ofMankind!), but they could not yet ‘release’ themselves from the Realities oftheir daily, mundane-and-corrupt Existence!
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So, even though I was somewhat ‘renown’ online, in reality,I was yet No One and Nobody as a Person… and no one cared about myself, otherthan professionally, and certainly not personally. I was but a lonely and homeless individual, who was yet ‘ServingMankind’, as Best as I might, via my Words online. Such a Reality thusly has sustained me, although I do certainlywish that there were others and ‘someone’ in my Life!
I just saw the recent movie “Love Happens” (Yes, I canafford to occasionally get to the movies!), starring Aaron Eckhart and JenniferAniston and surprisingly, it had a story-plot that somewhat reverberated withmy own Life. The protagonist is abest-selling author and Life guru, who teaches seminars on coping with loss inone’s Life but who, in reality and in truth, hasn’t really gotten over thedeath and loss of his own wife. Inother words, he has put both his personal Life and his sorrows on hold, whilesuccessfully pursuing his professional Life.Until he accidentally meets Jennifer Aniston, who helps him realize hisloss and to thence resume his personal Life.A nice ‘story’, about Life, Existence and Reality.
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In a way, such has somewhat been the ‘story’ of myLife. Although I have quiteconscientiously pursued my professional Life, of “Doing Unto Others…”, thatwhich I have been Created to Do and to Be… On the other hand, my personal Lifehas suffered accordingly. Well, notnecessarily, in that much of my personal Life has been a ‘disaster’ influencedby Lucifer, who apparently has been trying to subvert and terminate myprofessional Life (Yes! I may have aheart attack any day now!), of exposing him and his nefarious ‘activities’ hereon Earth and within both the nuances and realities of Mankind, as so revealedin my Writings/Works. Thoseaforementioned ‘disasters’ have been so noted (as best as I can remember)herein this autobiography.
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The point of this ‘reflection’ is that, much of my personalLife has so proceeded similar to the story line of the ‘Hero’ in the movie“Love Happens”, which has also been the ‘story’ for other successfulentrepreneurs throughout American and World History. The Hero suffers for many long years, while pursuing hisprofessional career and Life, to finally (perhaps) realize a modicum of‘relief’ in his/her personal Life, at the time of some later denouement, whenhis personal Life ‘returns-to-normal’, and (perhaps, if such is the case) thatperson returns to ‘Society’ and a normal social Life. In my specific case, although the denouement has not yetoccurred, I can see that there were, and are, two specific mitigating ‘factors’involved herewith this personal Life and it’s personal ‘drama’.
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To Wit… First of all, many of such similarly led other Livesand ‘disasters’, are ‘endured’ in order to ‘pursue-the-Dream’ of the Hero,whatever-it-might-be. Well, in my case,it more so relates to my Obligation-to-Serve-Others and to Do Unto Others, asBest as I might, and so it has been.Although along the way, Lucifer’s influences upon me, have at times ledme to pursue ‘actions’ and supposed-realities, that were not really of my Lifeand Reality and therefore should not have been engaged in. But I did, and thereby suffered theconsequences. (For more details ofthis, see the following Excerpt from my online webpage, at: https://www.angelfire.com/ca/sanmateoissues/Qualia98.html)
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(Excerpt follows)
Personal:
<![if !supportLists]>1.<![endif]>I'm going to relate something here that pertains to myselfalone, but it just might also, perhaps, pertain to many other people in thisworld, IF they would but choose to 'Let it Be', as the famous Beatles song doesso advise... and IF such were to be so, this world would be a heck-of-a-lotbetter off!
- What I am talking about here, in relation to myself now, is that, as a Member-Initiate of The Most Ancient Order, not only have I taken a Vow of Poverty, but I have also taken a Vow to "Do Unto Others...", which means Doing Unto Others... NOT myself! What this further means, is something that has come quite hard to me, and even yet still does, at times, when I am quite often attempting to do things to either improve my situation or to benefit myself in some way! And, incidentally, this also pertains to myself as a 'drug-addict', who is 'addicted' to food... just like many other drug-addicted 'foodaholics' in this Society of ours!
- And why I say that it 'comes hard to me', is that I was, once upon a time, just like much of humanity, 'addicted' to money! And possessions, antiques, cars, homes, things... any thing to 'show off', to embellish-my-personal-status and which, of course had, and related thereto, money and monetary value!
- Well, as I have honestly written and admitted thereto, I went bankrupt, both personally and professionally, and lost everything! But, there I yet was, trying to 'hold on to things', to the very last moment! "And WHAT, exactly, was that 'very last moment'?"
- Well, that was when, I finally realized that 'Someone Upstairs', was trying to tell me something! Which was... "Let Go, and Let It Be!" (Just like the Beatles song!) And not only that, but to absolutely make sure that I definitely 'got the message', He, the Guy Upstairs, did something that was to the ultimate benefit for this guy, myself, who was yet just 'trying to hold on', to any and everything that I could! "And WHAT did He do?" He took it all away from me! Everything! I lost it all, down to the very clothes on my back!
- So now, today, my actual Reality is, that I cannot do anything whatsoever, intentionally, that might benefit myself in any way! I cannot "Do Unto Myself". I can ONLY Do Unto Others! And what this further means, is that I can have nothing-in-my-Life, unless it 'comes-to-me' (serendipity), is given-to-me, or is somehow a Reality-in-my-Life, as the consequence of the actions and Doing of Others! I cannot DO unto myself... in any way!
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But further here, not only have I suffered the consequencesof numerous ‘disasters’, but on-top-of-it-all, there has been thedenial-and-removal of basic ‘realities’ and substance-of-Life, necessary forthe living of a nominal personal Life, such as the malady of homelessness. When one becomes homeless and is homeless(as well as penniless, penurious, and in poverty… see: The MoneylessMan), the nominal ‘Amenities-of-Society-and-of-Life’, are either removedfrom one’s reality or are just not available thereto. Plus, no one, nominally, of ‘safe-and-sane’ mind and temperament,normally wants anything to do with a homeless, penurious person. So, although I may have ‘given-up-everything’,in order to ‘Find’ myself and to ‘Be’ and to ‘Do’, That Which I AM… itsconsequences have been tremendously tragic personally! And I have ‘suffered’ through it all, with atypical British ‘resolve’, of “Carry On, Old Chap!”, even though I am notBritish!
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So, although everything in my Life has been taken away fromme, I ‘carried-on’, in the Hope and Understanding, that such has been‘Ordained’ to Be My Life, for whatever Reason.(In and of this ‘Reality’, I was ‘Confirmed’, as an Ancient-and-Extantpreviously Ordained-Member of The Most Ancient Order, on my birthday,3/23/1982!) But, contrary to themore-common denouement accorded to most others, where the person finallyrealizes his/her denouement as a consequence of possible Success and Merit (andpossibly Love!), with respect to that person’s Efforts (and Life!) withinCorporeality, the Corporeal World and it’s Realities… My personal ‘case’ hasbeen otherwise!
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Because I have, in effect, totally ‘removed’ myself, fromCorporeality and Corporeal Reality! Inother words, I’ve been ‘hiding out’, undercover, below-the-radar, and certainlynot a participant, either in Society nor of its Realities. As of today, it has been almost 30 years,since I have been a part of anything of American Culture, Civility andReality! (Daily do I see all of the TVcommercials, for everything that one might buy, but of which I have boughtnothing, other than cheap food!) AlthoughI now, in the last 8 years, of living on a very small veterans disability pension(I have no Social Security, nor any kind of Welfare, nor other financial means,other than my small veterans pension, before which, for almost 20 years, I hadnothing, but whatever was given-to-me!), have a very small amount of money, itprovides me almost no more than an ability to buy a daily meal, of usually nomore than three dollars, although quite often that ‘daily budget’ isabused! (Whereby Lucifer, in allowingme the negativity-of-money, does thusly cause me to abuse my use of it!) Because, other than food, I have boughtalmost nothing, in the many years time of my ‘solitude-and-incarceration’, inmy personal ‘prison’! The furniture inmy homeless-shelter apartment, my clothes, everything that I have… was ‘given’to me, as a homeless person. I havenothing-that-is-mine! (Another‘sorrow’, that I generally try to ignore and forget about!)
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And as a consequence of being Nobody and Nothing, as well asHomeless… I have accordingly become an ‘addict’! Actually, not only ‘addicted’ to one substance, but in reality, adouble-addict. Since I am a homelessNobody and Nothing, with, accordingly, No One and Nobody in my Life… no Love,no Sex, no Companionship, no Relationships, no Family, no Relatives, no Associates…not one person, in my personal Reality, for almost 30 years (although there aresome minimal ‘relationships’ in my Professional Life, but none that alsotranspire into my personal Life)… I have, as I have said, become ‘addicted’.
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First, to Sex… in effect, Love, Companionship, another Person…which I do not have! Thusly, the second‘addiction’… to Food! Here in the Good‘Ole U.S. of A., American Society most graciously, does ‘provide-for-its-own’,when there is money and a ‘dollar’ (and more!) to be made! Here in America, when one has no one intheir Life, and is ‘hungry’ for someone-in-their-Life… American Society cansurely ‘fulfill-that-hunger’! “When youare hungry… Eat! Eat, eat, eat, untilyou eat yourself to death!” And so Foodbecomes the next ‘addiction’, in substitution for that which one does not have,the First Addiction! (See: http://www.fiwd.org/Just_like_Paris_Hilton.htm)
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And so today, I do not have any kind of Doctor-Physician,Health Insurance or Health Care, or for that matter, any money to pay for anyHealth Services, or to go anywhere or do anything! Even though, of personal intent, I have been trying to stopeating, in order to eliminate the bloating, edema and swollen-up feet-legs andbody, which do so constitute the primary affliction of my disabling condition…I have done so in the past, over 30 years ago, fasting for up to two weeks,‘cleaning-out’ and detoxifying my body, to successful results and great energy! But, in recent times, the best I have beenable to do, a few months back, was 5 days, whereby my feet and legs had almostreturned to normal and the swelling had gone!But, on that fifth day, I put food into my mouth! Almost immediately, within a few shorthours, I was all ‘blown-up’ again! Ithas been my ‘intent’, for many days, months and years now, to quit eating fortwo weeks, which is the Recommendation of The National Institutes of Health(NIH), for someone in my ‘condition’!(John and Yoko once fasted for 40 days, according to a track on John’s“Imagine” album.) But today, as I waswriting this autobiography… I ‘felt’ the ‘need-to-eat’! I was ‘hungry’! Not really for food, but just for someone to talk to! So, I quit this autobiography, turned off mycomputer, got dressed… and slowly walked a few blocks, to my localJack-in-the-Box. (I walked slowly,because my feet were so swollen, that I could not even buckle the straps on thefront of my open-strap sandals!) At theJack-in-the-Box, I had two Jumbo Jack burgers, a medium fries, a sausagebreakfast burrito, and a pomegranate berry smoothie drink. Last night, I went to my local Walgreensstore and bought two Chicken Lean Cuisine TV dinners, and four 5 oz. boxes ofFrench Fries, intending to have one Lean Cuisine and two boxes of French Fries,each night for the next two days. Ofcourse, when I got home, I was so ravenously hungry for someone to talk to…that I ate all of the food that I had just bought… at one sitting! And earlier in the day yesterday, I went tothe movies at my local movie theatre, again not intending to eat anything. But I first went to Walgreens and bought two5 oz sandwiches, for later in the day, during the second and third movies. (I was seeing three movies in a row, allday, at a discounted senior admission price!)But then I ate both sandwiches, as the first feature was starting. Between the first and second features, Ibought a medium drink, a medium popcorn and a hot dog, at the theatre’sconcession stand! And then thatevening, as I have already noted herein above, I went to Walgreens for TVdinners and fries! I can’t stopeating! I’m hungry all the time! And I may have a heart attack at any time!
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So, is it all worth it?The tragedy and the suffering, in my personal Life… in order to Do whatI Do, in my professional Life? (Otherthan any food that I might consume due to my ‘addictions’, I am yet alivebecause every morning, I very religiously take my daily vitamins and a self-madehealth-food-breakfast, which has kept me alive all this time!) Well, one has nothing whatsoever to do withthe other! My professional Life is WhatIt Is and I Carry-On, that which My Good Friend Upstairs does yet allow me toDo and to Be! But my personal Life, isunder Lucifer’s control, that Damn Guy Downstairs, and no matter how much Itry, I can’t do anything about it, neither my ‘addictions’ nor my disabilities,as long as I am alone, all by myself, with no one else in my Life, to CareAbout It All… and Me!
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Also, somewhat like the Hero of the movie “Love Happens”, heand I both have ‘fears’, in our personal Lives. In my case, my personal psyche has, apparently, a number of‘fears’, that are not only Luciferian-induced realities, but also circumstantialand existential ‘realities’, as a result of much of the ‘disasters’ in my Life.
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First, I live in my own personally-created ‘jail’ (or‘Cage’, as I have so written on numerous of my webpages, in referring to All ofHumanity, where we all ‘create’ the ‘Cages’ of our Existence and Reality, tellingourselves that “There is nothing outside of this Cage of my Creation… andtherefore I am Happy, as long as I stay-in-my-Cage!”), such being so because Ican no longer ‘accept’ the existential ‘realities’ that existoutside-of-my-jail and throughout Society.I would love to be able to walk/hike down some nice, green wooded hikingtrail every day (my edema certainly needs the walking/exercise!)… but there isnothing but concrete ‘jungle’, in the downtown city-area outside of my abode,and I am not able to travel to such riparian and wooded ‘goodness’. When I leave my front door, I am immediatelysurrounded by a downtown commerce-area, in which there is an average of 17eating-places in every block of this downtown, which ‘temptations’ I do notneed. This area, of NorthernCalifornia, the San Francisco Peninsula and the Bay Area… is totally ‘familiar’to me, which I have known and seen quite intimately since 1958… and I’m boredwith it! I don’t want to see it! Plus, it is here, where many of my ‘disasters’,failures and such, have occurred… and I don’t want to see all of such‘reminders’! And, when Igo-out-my-door, inevitably, within 5 minutes, I’ll meet anotherhomeless-person, whom I’ve ‘known’ while ‘living-on-the-streets’ or otherwise,and he/she will probably ‘panhandle’ me for money… and I just don’t want to‘put-up-with-it’ anymore! And finally,I live in my own personally-created ‘jail’, because… the whole World ‘outthere’, is Going-to-Hell-in-a-Handbasket!Worldly, societal, human, existential and environmental ‘conditions’…are getting worse! Floods, storms,drive-by shootings, murders, graft, corruption, health-care-system failures,political failures and so much more! Icould be shot, just going-out-my-door!(I know, and occasionally see, another homeless guy, who was encampedone night with several other homeless persons, when another homeless guy kickedyet another homeless person-to-death.)Whatever happened to the relatively peaceful-and-tranquil World that Iremember from the 1950’s? Or was thatjust a figment-of-my-imagination?Everything seems to be Changing… and not necessarily For TheBetter! But, professionally at least, Ihave to try, to Hope For The Best! Butpersonally… Yes! I’m afraid!
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Incidentally, it might be said that, in my professionalLife, I am ‘living’ a modern version of St. Francis of Assisi, “Doing UntoOthers”, as best as I can (via the Internet), however under difficult personalcircumstances.
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But again, is it all worth it? I think so! Because MyGood Friend Upstairs, while enabling/allowing me to almost totally ‘divorce’myself from this World and its Realities, has truly, in effect, ‘shown me’exactly what it is really ‘all about’!(Also of interest today, as I write this, there are TV commercial-promotions,for a soon-to-be-released new Documentary-Movie by Michael Moore, thecontroversial Filmmaker, who writes-produces Documentaries, about theNegativities of Life and Society. Itlooks like he has now produced a new Movie about the Negativities of Money,Corporate and Financial Greed and other maledictions-of-Money! Of course, I will certainly have to seeit!) As I have so reproduced, on one ofmy webpages, a quote by Neo, in the Matrix (movie) Triologies:
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“I know you’re out there! I can feel you now! Iknow that you’re afraid, you’re afraid of us!You’re afraid of change! I don’tknow the future! I didn’t come here totell you how this is going to end, but to tell you how this is going tobegin! I’m going to hang up this phone,and then I’m going to show these people what you don’t want them to see! I’m going to show them a World withoutYou! A World without Rules andControls; without Borders or Boundaries!A World… Where Anything is Possible!Where We go from there… is a Choice that I leave to You!”
Neo, in the movie, “TheMatrix”
At the end of “The Matrix Trilogy”, when Peace hasfinally been secured for Mankind, the Oracle is asked the question, “Did youalways know (that Peace would come)?”“Oh No,” she said. “But I alwaysbelieved!”
From the movie, “The Matrix: Revolutions”
And thusly I have, instead of myself yet-being-immersedwithin the ‘corruptions’ of Corporeal Reality, found myself instead,‘exploring’ new ‘Realities’, new Worlds and Dimensions, of the Mind,Consciousness, Incorporeality, the Cosmos, Life, Existence, Reality… and thevery Mind of God! AndTelling-the-World, about all that I have ‘discovered’! All Thanks to my ‘situation’, as both Nobodyand Nothing… and My Good Friend Upstairs!I’ll let you Good Folks, decide whether it has All been ‘Worth It’!
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I’ll just note here something further. A Dear Professional Person that I know andher Friend, have given me cause to further analyze my ‘situation’ and both theRealities and ‘Realities’ that I write about.Such ‘instigation’ has accordingly led me to see all of such from a new‘perspective’, the ‘perspective’ of Cause and Effect, which is really at the‘heart’ of exactly that which I write about, but which I have never reallygiven ‘Name’ thereto! Here is my‘analysis’ of said ‘perspective’, with regard to Hollywood and the‘possibility’ of my Words finally being ‘Published’… on the Big Screen! I’ve already written this in the substanceof an e-mail to My Dear Friends, so rather than write it all again, here is aCopy of that e-mail:
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(Copy follows)
Okay,upon further reflection and analysis, I think that I can honestly say thatthere are two (2) stories here, as to everything that I write about (my Works).There is the 'story' about the Cause; then there is the story about the Effect,or Results. Story 1 is Cause. Story 2 is Effect/Results.Story 2 is also about Reality, corporeal/physical/material Reality, of time andspace, of visible reality, which is, however, merely illusion, thatwhichwe thinkwe have thusly created as such a Reality. On the otherhand, Story 1 is theTRUE 'Reality', theincorporeal/non-physical/non-material/invisible 'reality', of no time/no space,but of Spirit, which is NOT illusion, but is the actual and 'Real' Cause, ofany Effect/Results.
Hollywood,Mankind, History and the World, have forever concocted stories, about theillusions of Reality, as to how Mankind's History, Psychology, Society andsuch, might explain, and so present, a story thereof such realities, suchillusions. But, as I say, Hollywood and Mankind, have always been dealingalways and forever... with only the Results, the Effect, of anything.
WhatI have done is to tell about and scientifically detail... the actual and'real', non-illusory, non-Time, non-Space, non-physical, non-material, butIncorporeal... Cause, which some people might call Spirit, some folks mightcall God, and any number of other names and identities. I prefer to leaveall religion out of the question, in that all Religion is but merely Man'sinterpretation of Reality, which is nothing but Illusion!
Iexplain and scientifically detail, both God and Lucifer, which are both ancientand quantum 'realities', not of Time and Space or of any corporeal and/orManmade construct, but are really of the Oneness, Unity and Wholeness, as sodefined by Albert Einstein and many other scientists-of-the-Ages, who, however,were merely trying to explain it all from the Corporeal side of the Fence, withouthaving really 'stepped over' the Fence to actually 'see' what was really there,because in order to have done such a thing, and actually have 'seen Reality',they/one had/has to 'go into' the Mind-and-Consciousness, which is what existson the 'other side' of the Fence! Scientists have never done that... gone'into' the Mind, because they cannot go anywhere that their Mathematics mightnot take them, which however is only within the illusory corporeality of theReal World (Einstein's Differentiated Relativity), where everything is unique,individual and different, and can thusly be explained by Mathematics.But, Cause... and Incorporeality, are One, Whole and Unitary, the 'other side'of the Fence (between the Known and the Unknown), where Mathematics cannot gobecause Mathematics cannot deal with or explain Einstein's UndifferentiatedRelativity, of Oneness and Unity of anything and everything. Such was thecase with the Hollywood Documentary "#@$%What theBleep$#@",wherescientists attempted to explain the Mind, Consciousness, Cause and more, butfailed to really do so, other than through myth and legend, because they couldnot actually 'step over the Fence', into the actual 'Reality', ofIncorporeality, of Infinite Consciousness... God, Lucifer and... Cause!
Incorporeality...Einstein's ultimate Unity, Oneness and 'Reality', can actually be quite simplyexplained and detailed, as to all of the many details, operations, 'dynamics'(Quantum Unitary Field Dynamics, QUFD) thereof, using Science and Philosophy...and plain, old ordinary English, with no Mathematics or anything complicated,except the many complexities of Incorporeality itself! Yes, there aremany complexities, levels, orders (of Order versus Chaos), dimensions, worlds(the famous 'Other Worlds', of Hollywood Myth and Legend), 'realities' andmore... of CAUSE, of Incorporeality, of that purely scientific 'Reality', whichhas been known as... God! NO religion here, of any sort, because allReligion has merely been Mankind's attempt to explain the Unknown!
Well,I have explained in detail, including details of the many Dimensions, Worldsand more, of Incorporeality, exactly how Cause ACTUALLY 'creates' each andevery Effect and Result, of the illusory World of Reality that we live in... Corporeality,which is what Hollywood (and Mankind) have always written about. No onehas ever written about, nor detailed, Cause, other than by religious, psychicor whatever, Myth and Legend... which have been created by Mankind in the firstplace, usually with more than a little help from that Other 'Cause' WithinMan's Minds... Lucifer!
Again,it is Cause that I write about, both God and Lucifer, the 'Cause' within Man'sMinds, which have both 'created' the Effects, Results and Realities, of ourvery Life, Existence and Reality!
Onething more that I write about, which is really at the very basis of all TheGreatest Stories Ever Told... the Human Quest, to Overcome Evil (i.e., Luciferwithin-our-Minds); for Identity (with the Positivity-of-God); for Fulfillment;for Community; for Unity of Purpose; and so much more, but ultimately for...Love! I also have written about That Ultimate Challenge, which God hasGiven Unto Humanity. Oh, Yes! Mankind actually hasthreeChallenges! First,to Find both the Reality and 'Reality', of Eachand Every individual One of Humanity!Secondly, as well, toFindboth the Reality and 'Reality', of Humanity itself. But then,the third Challenge, the Ultimate Challenge from God, which has been Given ToMankind, is that once We have Found Ourselves and Reunited Ourselves, inOneness and Unity of Purpose and Existence... THEN, our Good Friend Upstairs,would Like Us to Reunite...our very own Universe! To BringTogether, once again, both God and Lucifer, into the OriginalReality-of-the-Cosmos, the beneficial-and-benign Yin-Yang, of the OriginalUniverse! Such 'Reality' does yet exist throughout the Cosmos(Incorporeality), which does enable everything that exists-in-the-Cosmos, byproviding the underlying Ground Floor (or Ground State) of the Cosmos, whichenables all 'reality' throughout the Cosmos and Incorporeality!
Buthere, in our individual Universe (only but one of theinfinities-of-universes-within-the-Cosmos), Lucifer has split from God, andeven though he yet contributes a necessary Chaos and Negativity, to God's Orderand Positivity everywhere in the Cosmos, he has also established himself as'Prince-of-this-World' (this Universe of ours!) and thusly hisNegativities-within-our-Minds, are the 'Cause' of much of Mankind'sproblems. But God has left it up to us, to eliminate Lucifer's manynegativities from our World, because only by the elimination of all Negativityeverywhere, will Mankind have finally rid our Minds of Lucifer and his'influences' within-our-Minds and thereby 'opened' our Minds and Consciousness,to becoming the Mature Human Minds that each and every one of us has beenBorn-to-Be! With Maturity of the Human Mind (every one of us, all ofHumanity, is currently possessed of an Immature Human Mind!), every one of uswill then be able to Know Ourselves, to Know our Individual-and-Immortal Souls,and thusly then be able to 'access', beyond our individual Local Minds, theinfinities of the Incorporeal Worlds and Dimensions of the Cosmos! Mylong-ago Mentor, Dr. June Singer, the eminent Student and Protégé of the famousSwiss Psychologist Carl Jung, put it this way, in astatement-of-her-tentative-understanding at that time:
Dr.Singer's interpretation of the Collective Consciousness is this:
"The collective unconscious is better conceived as an extension ofthe personal unconscious to its wider and broader base, encompassing contentswhich are held in common by the family, by the social group, by tribe andnation, by race, and eventually by all of humanity. Each succeeding level ofthe unconscious may be thought of as going deeper and becoming more collectivein its nature. The wonder of the collective unconscious is that it is allthere, all the legend and history of the human race, with its unexorciseddemons and its gentle saints, its mysteries and its wisdom, ALL within each oneof us - a microcosm within the macrocosm. The exploration of this world is morechallenging than exploration of the solar system; and the journey to innerspace is NOT necessarily an easy OR a safe trip."
(Theforegoing quote is excerpted from one of my Lectures, in the online 'QUFDTextbook', at: https://www.angelfire.com/ca/sanmateoissues/lecture3.html)
Devo/Liz...such is what I write about! That which has never been done before... Cause,in all its ramifications and details! With a little bit of Effect/Results'thrown in', to give substance and Reality (however illusory), to everythingthat 'goes on'... within Incorporeality! In other words, Life, Existenceand Reality... the Basics, the Fundamentals! IF Mankind can hopefully'understand' the Basics, the Fundamentals... then there isHOPE, thatMankind will somehow Find-the-Courage-and-Willpower, to Eliminate ALL ofLucifer's negativities from within the Human Mind and Consciousness (includingthe Negativity of Competition!) and through Worldwide COOPERATION... thuslycreate a Better World For All of Us, with Love, Joy and Happiness, and Opportunityand much more, for each and every one of us!
Suchis what this radical Theologian-of-Reality and Quantum Physics has writtenabout! Does this 'mess' make any sense to you?
Incidentally,I am homeless by both Choice and Circumstance, at the Behest of My Good FriendUpstairs, who, in the Trials-and-Tribulations along the Way of My Life, didfinally Take-it-All-Away-From-Me, until I finally 'got-the-Message', of exactlyWhat I was to Do in My Life... which was to "Let It Be!" And sotoday, it might be said that I am living a modern version of the Life of St.Francis of Assisi, 'Doing Unto Others' (via my online Works), and living onalmost nothing, but the mere entrails-of-Society! I am detailing all ofthis in my Autobiography, still in progress!
Aum,Peace, Amen
Jerome/Nelson
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So, Story 1 isCause, of anything! Story 2 isEffect, of anything! As to myself, Story3 is this Autobiography, the ‘Effect’ of my Life! Story 4, is the ‘Cause’, of myLife-to-Come... which is yet to Happen, yet to ‘Be Created’, yet ‘ToBe’!
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Aum, Peace, Amen
Jerome/Nelson
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