Born March 19th, 1954, I moved to Los Gatos in 1960 and lived there until graduation from LGHS in 1972… an Ideal Childhood… Then I Went to West Valley Jr. College, learned electronics drafting and got a job at System Industries in Santa Clara… I feel blessed that not only did I grow up in a great location but I also grew up at a great time. I missed the Vietnam War by ONE Year.
Starting first grade in 1960 I experienced President Kennedy’s Challenge of putting a man on the moon by the end of the decade. We were trained in school to become astronauts or rocket scientists. At NASA and Lockheed. Eventually I did end up designing computers that were flew on USAF jets. So my early dreams were fulfilled. I always wanted to design Spaceships but USAF Jets is as close as I got…
…and… during the late part of the 1960’s I got to participate in Anti Vietnam War protests. We were successful as eventually the vast majority of the American People grasped the concept that the war was Pure Evil. Nixon ended the war AND ended the draft. Saving countless American lives, including Mine. Thank You! Richard Nixon,.. and Joan Baez, Jane Fonda, Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Daniel Ellsberg and millions of unsung heros…
…and… I had the opportunity to go to Grateful Dead Concerts High on LSD. THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT!
One peak experience in Los Gatos was attending the Tower of Power concert outdoors at the Chateau Liberte… In the Redwoods near Summit Road… I remember going with my friend Rich Field ( a trumpet player) to the Concert. We saw how The Tower achieved the flute to trumpet blending on the song “Diamonds Sparkling in the Sand”. One man walked towards his microphone while the other walked away… both were playing the same note… This amazed Rich as he was a jazz band member at school and this effect was a mystery to him until we saw it done… I also remember that the Hell’s Angels and The Gypsy Jokers Motorcycle clubs both arrived at the concert at the same time and I was concerned that there would be violence… so I walked to the other side of the concert as far as possible away from them…. Years later I learned that they OFTEN partied together at the Chateau and my fears were unjustified…
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I remember playing my harmonica at a school play with Barry Hill. It was called “Sneaky Fitch is Dead” and I had a great time performing… We also performed “Hippie from Olema” by the Youngbloods at a talent show in the high school gym. Rich Field and Nancy King and Rachael Ludlum were also in the band. Washtub Bass, Jug, Guitars and Washboard…
Many of the LGHS students performed as “Spearchuckers” and Slaves in the Opera “AIDA” at the San Jose Civic Auditorium. There was a touring opera company that filled the stage with locals from high school drama departments… They instructed us to move our mouths BUT DO NOT SING… They had a choir that did the singing and we would have just been annoying and off key. Since the big scene we were in was when the hero came back from the Middle East with the spoils of war (an elephant and a tiger). We had to cover our bodies with dark brown stage paint… We were supposed to be playing the part of black people but there were no Actual black students at LGHS… I had long blond hair but they just tucked that up under a hat… Big Fun… My girlfriend Liz Dunbar was in the Opera also…
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In 1972, a friend of mine went to San Francisco and went to the Fillmore West and came back to our high school and said… LET”S BUILD OUR OWN.
That was the beginning of Forbes Mill in Los Gatos California… We had a light show and electric rock music every weekend at an abandoned stone flour mill in the center of town… On Wednesday nights we performed folk music. My band performed… I was the head of security and did advertising posters.
Since we had Town sponsorship of our “Teen Club” thru the organization Youth Unlimited, we had to make sure no laws were being broken or the police would shut us down. Certainly no drinking or illegal drug use or housing of runaways. My take on law enforcement was to direct potential lawbreakers to the nearby hole in the fence that lead to the wooded area next to the freeway. I admit that a lot of laws were broken on State of California property, but that was NOT MY CONCERN. I was responsible for making sure that OUR property was crime free.
The light show was created by using four slide projectors and two spinning wheels with variable speed motors that blocked the light from reaching the white wall behind the bandstand. Each cardboard wheel had holes cut into it so that the slides would be projected in a stroboscopic manner. Some slides were abstract art created by “crystal craze” paint and others were photographs.
We also owned a strobe light and I learned to not point it at the electric organ player because the blinking light made it impossible to see which keys were black and which were white…
I remember going to a wonderful natural hot spring in Pfeiffer Big Sur State park. We hiked 12 miles into the Ventana Wilderness along the Big Sur River to get to “Sykes” Camp. The Park Rangers kept the Hot Spring maintained so that about 6 people could bathe at the same time. I went with my high school friend Joe Franck, his older sister Peggy and their cousin Katie. At our campsite a raccoon started to eat our food and Peggy went to shoo the raccoon away… The raccoon turned and hissed at her and bared it’s claws… She screamed really loud and in the end, we fasted for a couple of days… Wild animals win any fight… I also remember reading a Carlos Castaneda Book and tying a rope around my waist to act as a belt because I lost weight while fasting.
Another time in Big Sur I saw a cat that was about the size of a toy collie… I guess it was a Bobcat, not a mountain lion… There were also wild pigs that ran around at night… In my imagination, they were as big as “Wonder Warthog!”. On the Big Sur River close to the Pfeiffer Campground was a swimming hole with a waterfall at the upstream end. Very popular and private… perfect for skinny dipping. I sure hope that the hot springs are still being kept in good repair. It was Well worth the 12 mile hike in… I also went to the campground on the day that President Nixon resigned. I took LSD and had to go lie down in the woods when the hallucinations peaked so I missed the actual resignation. (oops, got stoned and I missed it.) There was great celebration at the campground that night.
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My family took a vacation every summer. Often we drove in the car and camped out. I remember great trout fishing in Manning Park, Canada. Another time we were in the tent in Canadian Glacier Park when a bear came into our campsite and broke open our Coleman Ice Chest. He just picked it up and threw it down on the ground until the latch failed. He ate the bacon and the butter but ignored the whipped honey. The Park Rangers had warned us in advance to lock all food in the trunk of the car… However we felt that leaving an Aluminum Ice Chest on the picnic table wouldn’t be a problem… OOPS! We also went to Banff Lake Louise and visited the giant Canadian Railroad Hotel there. Really Elegant. Actually, my first memory of my entire life was the sound of a steam whistle on a Ferryboat going from Seattle to Victoria. Really loud and scary. We visited Butchart Gardens and Had TEA at the Hotel. Every Business had a Picture of the Queen on their walls. The queen of ENGLAND!
One summer we flew to Hawaii. On Kawaii, dad rented me a surfboard from a guy on the beach. I rode the surfboard down a big wave. I did not stand up because there was a lot of coral underwater and I was too scared. However, it was really fun to slide down a big wave on my belly. On the island of Hawaii we went to a black sand beach in the Kona area. My brother and I swam out to a big underwater cliff and explored it with mask/snorkle. I saw a Moray Eel hiding in the cliff. There were Thousands of Tropical Fish. I could swim down as far as I wanted… and that was a long way… I experienced Bliss.
Years later Martin and I went snorkeling off Key Largo, Florida. We saw Hammerhead Sharks and Barracuda. We bought tickets on a boat and the Captain took us to a great place to Scuba Dive. He said that we were not to worry about the sharks because that seldom bothered divers… At the end of the day we watched the sunset into the ocean and I saw the Green Flash.
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My favorite beach in Santa Cruz was Manresa. It was about ten miles south of town and It always seemed to be sunnier and warmer. It’s a very long beach and you can walk far away from other families. No need to listen to their loud children… I also liked the Boardwalk. In the late 1960’s there was a Funhouse with wooden slides and a giant record player that threw the kids off due to centrifugal force. I also loved the Merry Go Round and the automatic music box. (Calliope)
My dad reached his limit when we rode the Wild Mouse. He swore that he would never go on another ride ever… and he never did. The Giant Dipper was a classic wooden roller coaster and vastly superior to the more modern ones that are made of steel (Like Great America). When we went to the beaches North of Santa Cruz we walked thru a Brussels sprout farm. We always ate the fresh sprouts but it was important to remember to wash off the poison in the ocean first. To this day I like Brussels sprouts and artichokes due to growing up near the farms. We grew Apricots at home (4 trees) and cut cots at a neighbors smokehouse. They let us use the sulfur smoker if we worked on their farm cutting cots. There were a lot of prune orchards in our neighborhood. The most famous was on Daves Ave and had the Billy Jones Railroad. We rode the train for a penny… just throw it into a jar… Later they moved the train to Vasona Park.
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I participated in “The Moratorium” anti-Vietnam War protest march in San Francisco. We had protest marches that day in every city in the USA. At my high school we chartered a bus and many students rode from Los Gatos, California to San Francisco. The march ended at the Polo Fields in Golden Gate Park.There was a vast sea of people and The Beatles song “Come Together” was playing on the public address system when I walked over the hill leading to the field. I felt a feeling of “Oneness” with the crowd. It’s emotionally valid to be in favor of good and opposed to evil. The Vietnam War was pure evil. We cut school to participate in this protest march but the principal of our High School did not assign any punishment for our missing class. He told us to figure out for ourselves the meaning of not getting assigned detention. (he was proud of us for risking punishment in support of
our beliefs.)
I participated in a Candlelight March down Main Street in Los Gatos with my parents. I also collected signatures on an Anti-War petition from passers-by in front of the Post Office in Los Gatos. One man who was in favor of the war gave my father a book for me. “You can Trust the Communists” was the title and it’s contents explained the justification for the war.
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Ecology became popular when I was growing up. I participated in the “Youth Walk for Survival” at UC Berkeley. It was a fundraising benefit for Ecology groups. We asked people to sponsor us for a few cents per mile walked. We started at the Football field on campus, walked around Lake Merritt in Oakland and then back to the football field. Then there was a concert and Malvina Reynolds sang “Boxes, little Boxes”. I also worked for the Sierra Club in the Action Clean Up project at the Little Kern River… We camped out for two months and picked up garbage, burnt it in a campfire and packed out the remaining waste to a big dumpster at the trailhead. I got a fine Peace of Mind living in the woods with some other kids for a couple of months. One night I was walking in the moonlight near the trailhead and a bear that was sleeping on the hood of a car jumped up and ran away… I’m sure glad that he ran away…
That summer I also worked for the Saratoga Drama Group painting sets and as a stagehand. We Performed “My Fair Lady”. Our family went to many stage musicals including some that were performed at an outdoor theater in the Oakland Hills. My brother Martin recommended that we go see the musical “Hair” that he had enjoyed on Broadway in New York City. Yes, it was epic.
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I went to visit Martin when he was at NYU. He lived in rural New Jersey in a student apartment building on a lake in the forest. He put me on the PATH train so I could visit Manhattan. I wandered around New York City on my own and admired the tall buildings.
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I’m glad that I never played football in High School. Many of my friends and co-workers have developed severe spinal pain due to old football injuries. I was on the team for one week in 7th grade but quit because David Morera and Brett Mannon hurt me every day. Not Fun.
I was a swimmer. We had an AAU team at The Swim and Racquet Club on Oka Road and then there was a the team at LGHS. I won sixth place in breaststroke at the “Far Westerns” held at Foothill Junior College. Anyone from West of the Mississippi could enter. My swimming career peaked at 12 years old and went down from there… sigh… The pool at the Swim and Racquet club was 100 feet long and that was slightly longer than the standard 25 yard pool. That gave us a slight advantage over other swimmers because we had the endurance to complete a long lap. Of course, swimmers that trained in an Olympic size pool, 50 Meters, REALLY had the advantage. I remember racing a 200 meter individual medley at Foothill and completing a lap of Butterfly was grueling…
We competed with other swim clubs and I remember that Almaden had a pool on a hill overlooking Santa Clara Valley. Years later I got to swim at the Santa Clara International Swim Center during long lunches when I worked at System Industries. Our Boss, Edwin Zschau, was studying the Japanese style of factory management and all of us were encouraged to exercise at lunch. On family day Mom and Dad got a personal factory tour lead by Ed. He later became a Congressman in the US House of Representatives in Washington DC. One secret to the success of our computer factory was Large Quantities of Immigrants. He recruited the best and the brightest from around the world. Mostly Orientals.
I also played basketball but was bad at it. Always sitting on the bench while the skilled players took the court. My Coach was Isidro Maytorena. My Idol in 8th grade.
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I went to Isla Vista, CA to visit my brother at UC Santa Barbara. I remember that there was tar on the beach and when we came back to the apartment there was a can of gasoline to be used to clean the bottom of our feet so we wouldn’t track the oil into the home and ruin the rug. There has been oil on those beaches since the dawn of time… Also, companies were drilling for oil offshore and it was leaking onto the beach. California outlawed offshore oil drilling to fix this problem. Now, in 2018 our President Trump wants to start drilling again off ALL the coasts of the USA… That would increase the chances of an ecological disaster like BP had in the Gulf of Mexico. Trump’s Policy often benefits the super rich at the expense of the American people… and at the expense of Animals and Fish.
We also went to a nightclub that had a color organ attached to the record player. The lights would flash in time to the music. Bass notes would trigger red lights, mid-range was green and high frequency sound was blue. By combining Red, Green and Blue equally you can create white light.
This machine blew my mind. Visual Music… Synesthesia… Seeing Sound…
During the years my brother was at UC Santa Barbara, the students burned down the Bank of America to protest the Vietnam War. My brother says he was not involved with this arson as being outdoors on the streets was way too dangerous. Too much possibility of having your head bashed in by a cop.
One time when we were hiking in the mountains behind Santa Barbara I saw a Condor. They are amazingly large birds… It impressed me.
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I really enjoyed riding a skateboard at Daves Ave Elementary School. They had concrete hallways that formed a circle and we kids would race. I was also really interested in baseball and marbles. The school was within walking distance of home so I always walked to school. President Kennedy was assassinated when I was in third grade… I didn’t really know who he was or why the teachers were upset.
All my friends really enjoyed riding bicycles around town. Los Gatos is small enough that we could go anywhere on a bike. Barry Hill and I raced down the hill from the Novitiate and I had a bicycle accident. I ran off the road at a sharp curve, plowed into a short stone wall, flipped over my handlebars and landed on my back in a bush. No real injury except for cuts and scrapes. Had to replace the front wheel but we were able to bend the forks back into shape. One time a bunch of us decided to ride all the way to Big Sur but I got tired and quit before I got to Summit Road. Going uphill all that way didn’t seem like a real fun trip after all. Years later I lived in Chico, CA and enjoyed bicycling everywhere for years… Especially in Bidwell Park.
One time I rode my bike all the way to the Rosicrucian Museum in San Jose. I always loved that museum with it’s Egyptian Pyramid displays. We could go down in a tunnel into King Tut’s Tomb… Across the street was a magical bookstore that also sold paintings by Joe Parker, a surrealist/psychedelic painter. He did mandala sunsets in magical landscapes. His paintings were also sold in a record store on North Santa Cruz ave.
My whole family rode bicycles on Highway 280 before it was opened for cars. Thousands of people rode in a one day celebration. We started near the Winchester Mystery House and rode towards downtown San Jose. I’ve always loved 280 as it was a fast and beautiful way to go visit San Francisco. We had friends that lived in “The City” and would go visit them often. One took me to the Fillmore West in 1969 to go see a band called The Youngbloods. The big song of the night was “Get Together” a classic Hippie Anthem. There were light-shows on the walls of the concert hall. Squishy Water (like the album cover of Iron Butterfly’s In a Gadda da Vida Album) and many movie loops. There were blacklights and people were painting each other’s bodies with fluorescent paint. Big Fun.
We also went to The Exploratorium. That museum allowed the visitors to play with the exhibits. My favorite was the custom built musical jam session where a half a dozen people plated synthesizers that were designed to never play a wrong note… with strangely shaped keyboards… that way visitors that had no musical training could experience the joy of playing without the pain of making noise that was not pleasant. They also had a virtual reality experience where I was flying thru a tunnel and my spaceship traveled in the direction that I looked. It was a game where the goal was to crash into floating cubes that moved randomly. The cubes had people’s faces on them and one was Jerry Garcia. This was long before VR games became available to the general public.
We visited the Winchester Mystery House when I was a child. I was not impressed as I was expecting something more like Disneyland. In retrospect, I am admire the giant house and appreciate the story of Sarah Winchester being haunted by the ghosts of all the men that died from gunshot wounds caused by her husbands rifle. She employed carpenters to work around the clock so that their sounds would keep the ghosts away. And if she did have any nightmares she had strong men to protect her.
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As a child I loved the Books by Jules Verne and H G Wells. Later my favorite author was Asimov. I’m surprized that Hollywood has never made a movie out of the Foundation Trilogy. It would be as epic as Lord of the Rings… An invention foretold in Foundation was the Encyclopedia Galactica. It now exists as Wikipedia… I still believe there is a possibility of predicting the future using computer modeling… (PsychoHisory)… Be sure to see the movie “Journey to the Center of the Earth” by Rick Wakeman and an Orchestra… They have a narrator reading the Jules Verne story and then the band plays a song about that chapter. Quite Remarkable. Yes, Rick plays two Moog synthesizers at the same time. Got two hands? Play two Moogs.
Everyone read “Cat’s Cradle” by Kurt Vonnegut. We practiced the transference of Our Souls thru the Soles of our feet… lying down on the High School Lawn in the Sunshine… Yes, we were goofy.
MAD Magazine was my favorite. They did satire including a silly poem called Jabberwacky… (On Dreaming, After Falling Asleep Watching TV) based on Lewis Carrol’s Book Alice in Wonderland and Thru the Looking Glass. “Twas Brillo and the GE Stoves did Proctor Gamble in the Glade. All Pillsbury were the Tastee Loaves and in a Minute Maid. Beware the Station Break My son…” etc. etc. etc.
I found some engineering plans in Mad Magazine that allowed us to turn off the sound of the TV during commercials. I took apart my parent’s TV and installed a switch on the end of a long wire. We had a “Mute” button long before remote controls were invented. Amazingly, I did not get electrocuted nor did I wreck my parent’s TV.
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I remember hiking in the Santa Cruz mountains behind The Novitiate. I often went with my dog, Prince, a toy collie on that trail that went all the way to Lexington Reservoir. I caught a terrible case of poison oak by petting the dog. However, one time made me immune forever. I collected sprouted buckeyes and planted them in the backyard of our home on Bruce Ave and one of them grew up to be a giant tree. For years we collected the buckeye seeds and burned them in our fireplace. They POP at random times and that’s fun when watching a fire. I also walked trails up and down Los Gatos creek from Campbell percolation ponds to Vasona to Lexington. It was fun to swim at Vasona. We would dive in from the dam and swim until the Park Ranger approached in his boat. It was illegal to swim there and so we had to keep an eye out for the law. Another good swimming hole was the Almaden Reservoir. That one was supposed to be so polluted with Mercury that it was dangerous to swim there… However, Both of my parents and I swam there with no ill effects… Go Figure…
My dad lived in Los Gatos as a Jr. High School and High School Student and Mom was from Willow Glen [near San Jose]. Dad moved to Los Gatos to cure his Tuberculosis at the Top of the Hill Sanitarium off Kennedy Road. When I went to my Dad’s Funeral at the Unitarian Church on Blossom Hill Road I could see the “Top of the Hill” from the deck out behind the church… I felt comforted in being able to see the beginning and the end of his Los Gatos residency. Dad and I became friends during his last few years of life. He came to visit me in Eureka and was happy that I was married, had a good job and had quit drinking and smoking dope.
In 1976 I went with my wife to Wine Tasting at the Novitiate. They were a major supplier of wine used in Communion Services. I remember that they had a cave used for aging the red wines that had a crack in the ceiling caused by the 1906 earthquake. They used giant redwood barrels that absorbed the wine and the outside of the barrels was wet. The air in that cave could make you drunk from breathing the alcohol. Los Gatos is famous for Almaden Wine and Saratoga has Paul Masson. One of my in-laws worked at Paul Masson and another worked at Sebastiani. When we went wine tasting at Sebastiani they brought out the “good stuff”, wines that were for family, not sold to the general public. Yes, it really was good quality. Especially the brandy.
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We had really High Quality Public Schools in Los Gatos. In Elementary School at Daves Ave we were taught the “New Math”. I don’t actually remember how that was different than the “Old Math” but at least they were trying to help us learn. They were trying to create rocket scientists to work at NASA… After all, The Russians were ahead of us in the “Space Race”. We also studied the Spanish Language all through school. I didn’t really get good at it until I was an Adult working at Radio Shack on Branham Lane. It’s a commissioned salesman job and many of my customers spoke Spanish as their primary language. Yes, I got good when my Paycheck depended on it. Hector Sianez was the store manager and people from all over the Bay Area would drive to our store because we had the advantage of being Bi-Lingual.
We were taught Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Math at LGHS. A college prep curriculum… After I graduated from LGHS I went to Chico State for two years and the West Valley JC (an outstanding school to learn Electronics Drafting). One class at West Valley was scale model building. I took blueprints of a cabin my Dad was having built at North Shore Lake Tahoe and built an accurate scale model. I still have that model because Dad liked it and made sure it never got accidentally damaged.
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I have actually fired a gun. Really! At Camp Campbell [YMCA Summer Camp] in the Santa Cruz Mountains we learned how to shoot targets with a .22 rifle. I enjoyed it. Quite similar to playing Darts or Archery. Another time I fired a large pistol at cans. ONCE. My dad’s lawyer owned the pistol. It had a “Helluva Kick” and was really loud and scary. I’ve never actually owned a gun or had one in the house… Thankfully… as on occasion I have had arguments and none became fatal…
Camp Campbell also had a zip line. I got into a swing seat, jumped off the cliff and whoooooosh went down to the ground. At that time we were responsible for our own actions and staying safe. I suppose I could have fallen out of the zip line seat but I made sure I held on tight. BIG FUN.
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After high school I went to Chico, California to attend college. My major was biology and I found out that I had no interest in studying that subject or ANY subject AT ALL… I spent a lot of time smoking marijuana, drinking and playing music with my friends. After two years I flunked out. However, I did get to experience swimming in Upper Bidwell Park where the Black Lava Flows from Mount Lassen are. I swam thru a Lava Tube at “Bear Hole”… That tube has been closed by the Park Rangers after a student drowning… I really enjoyed swimming at One Mile Pool, Day or Night. Not many Parks are open all night long but Bidwell is so long and thin that a fence is impractical. Plus, a fence is, like, totally opposite to the culture of the Chico-Freako! It was super fun to go swimming nude with my girlfriend… Last Year I read her Obituary on the internet… So Sad…
I remember Tubing on Butte Creek. During the Spring it was a wild ride due to melting snow coming down from Mt Lassen. During my second time living in Chico my wife and I swam at Oki Dam.
I remember riding my bicycle everywhere because Chico is a totally flat town and parking is difficult to find near campus. In general, automobiles were expensive and unnecessary too. However, some students DID own them and they were handy for visiting San Francisco (Like the time we went to hear Led Zeppelin at Kezar Stadium).
I got to go on a Magic Bus Ride with a many other students to go hear The Grateful Dead at UN Reno. My friend Jimmy played his guitar and I played the Harmonica while everyone else sang along… Then we stayed at a cabin on the North Shore of Lake Tahoe and the next day I ate some LSD and went to hear the legendary “Wall of Sound” at the University of Nevada football field. The Dead had a lot of trouble making that absurdly large public address system work but… we all had fun anyway… Especially playing slot machines after the show and driving down that street where they have giant sculptures of Showgirls.
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In the springtime Chico State has a week long celebration called “Pioneer Days”. My friends and I decided that the last place we wanted to be was in town when it was invaded by drunken strangers. We went camping at Yosemite, took LSD and climbed the trail to the top of Yosemite Falls. The higher we got in elevation the Higher We Got… By the time we arrived on top of the mountain it appeared to be moving wildly… as if the granite was dancing. I lay down on my belly and crawled to the edge… That’s a great view but really dangerous because it’s a tall cliff with no guard rail. We walked down to the valley floor and rode the double-decker bus around… sitting on the top, with no roof… bliss… we also walked to the base of Vernal Falls on the mist trail. I looked at my arm and it looked like a bear, with claws… I went fishing in the river and slapped a fish out onto the shore… just like a bear would. That evening we were playing guitars and my harmonica around the campfire when a ranger ran out of the darkness and tackled me… We were passing around a joint and I was holding it. He gave me a ticket for “Disturbing the Peace” and told us that we had to leave the park the next day or he’d change the charge to possession… In my humble opinion, The Ranger was the one “disturbing the peace” by tackling me…
The next Year we took a camping trip to Hetch-Hetchy reservoir. Another beautiful granite mountain near Yosemite. We took LSD and went free-climbing up a chimney and then hiked around above the tree line. I went down to the edge of the river to admire the bubbling water and accidentally slipped in. Could have died as there was a large waterfall downstream. The water out powered me and took me to the bottom of the pool. I gave up, accepted death and bubbled up to a place on the far shore where I climbed out. A cosmic near death experience… Hey Kids, Don’t Do This!
I lived in Chico in 1973 and 1974 and then for a few years in the late 1990s early 2000s. I Joined AA and quit drinking Alcohol. Chico has a big active AA community. Since Chico is Famous as a “Party Town” it makes perfect sense that it’s also Famous for being an AA Town too. Going to meetings at Campfire Council Ring behind Caper Acres, Bidwell Park is an experience I will always treasure. I spent one summer “Rent Free” camping outdoors at Picnic Area 37 in the grove of 13 Redwood Trees.
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And Then… After flunking out of Chico State I moved back into my parent’s house. Mom got me a Job at the San Jose Art, Paint and Wallpaper store in Valley Fair shopping center working as a stockboy and then as a clerk. Three Years… I met JoAnn at the KarmelKorn Shop next door where she worked.
One summer, JoAnn and I rode bicycles from New York City to Washington DC. It took 2 months and we camped at private campgrounds in rural New Jersey and Maryland. First, we had listened to the stories of a co worker about their fabulous bicycle trip all winter long and that inspired us to do a similar voyage. JoAnn sewed a tent and a sleeping bag for two on her sewing machine. We outfitted two ten speed bicycles with saddlebags, disassembled then and put them in cardboard boxes. Rode a Greyhound Bus for three days from Santa Clara to NYC. A friend of my brother’s picked us up and we stayed in his home and rested from the bus ride. After three days on a bus JoAnn’s feet were so swollen that she couldn’t put her shoes on. I assembled the bicycles (wrong) and we started out. The rear wheel on JoAnns bike rubbed against the brake pad… After an hour she convinced me that something was wrong and I fixed her bike. We rode from 20 to 50 miles a day and often stayed a few days at particularly excellent campgrounds. The owners of farms in rural New Jersey often had campgrounds with swimming pools on their farms in order to pick up some cash. They would make reservations with friends of theirs down the road and we enjoyed a guided tour… I remember that the road towards the Delaware River was downhill for 60 miles… Quite fun to zoom, zoom, zoom at a rapid speed… And then thee other side of the river was UPHILL for 60 miles… Grueling torture. We stayed a week near Washington DC and rode the bus downtown to visit the Smithsonian. Somehow we had enough money to survive without working for two months… I don’t remember how…
She recommended that I go to West Valley Junior College and study Electronic Drafting. After ONE year of school I was able to get a job in Silicon Valley. We got married on July 4th, 1976 in the Mission Santa Clara. JoAnn was a student at Santa Clara University and all students were allowed to get married in the Mission on Campus. We lived in Santa Clara and JoAnn worked graveyard shift at National Semiconductor and I worked days at System Industries.
When I was working at System Industries in Santa Clara, California (1976) the owner of the company (Dr. Edwin Zschau) went to Japan to learn how to run a business. The Japanese were doing very well in comparison to USA companies and there was a lot of interest in learning why. So we adopted many oriental concepts and implemented them in our business. One thing was that we had a company song. We had a birthday meeting every month and we would all sing the company song.
Lyrics:
“System, System Industries, Here we go, Hand in hand.
Solving Data Mysteries for the betterment of man.”
Another thing we did was take a two hour lunch so we could exercise. I swam at the Santa Clara International Swim center with my wife. She was working the Graveyard shift at National Semi-conductor so we met twice a day. Lunch and evenings.
We had many people from foreign countries working there. When Dr. Zschau went to Japan he hired many Japanese people. Immigrants made our company better. That was a universal fact of life about Silicon Valley… The brightest engineers worldwide came here for work. I had a neighbor from Nicaragua who came to work at IBM. And another Engineer I knew came from Germany at the end of WW2 to work at Lockheed. Very Common.
Another time in Santa Clara we partticipated in a “Car Rally”. Everyone would meet at a starting location then we were given a series of clues as to where to go next. One clue was “Go to a street named for a part time orchestra leader.” We were supposed to figure out the puzzle and navagate to checkpoints. The answer to that clue was “Semi-conductor Blvd”… semi meaning part time and conductor is the leader of an orchestra. This was all part of the California Car Culture.
JoAnn graduated with a degree in Spanish and got a job as a Russian Transcriber at the NSA, Fort Meade, Maryland. We moved to Columbia Md and I went to Howard Community College and studied Computer Programming. Columbia is a planned community halfway between Baltimore and Washington. In my humble opinion a Planned Community is vastly superior to an UN-Planned community like San Jose. Everything required for survival was within walking distance of our Apartment. VERY handy during snowstorms. After One year of college, we didn’t have enough money for me to continue school so I got a Job as an Electronics Draftsman.
During the year I went to Howard Community College in Columbia, Maryland I studied FORTRAN and COBOL. I punched cards that were fed into a HP-3000 mini-computer. My final project for FORTRAN was to simulate playing a million games of Roulette to see if any betting system would be advantageous to a gambler. The answer is NO. For example: A betting system would be to place a bet on RED or Black: if you won-keep the money, if you lost-double your bet and play again. That way if you lost the first time but won the second time, you would still be one dollar ahead… The plan is to keep on collecting dollars… It would work unless you lost MANY times in a row. Eventually, the player either exceeds the table limit on how much a player can bet OR the player loses all his money and can’t keep on playing. In general, this only happens if a player loses 7 or 8 times in a row… and in my simulation, I played a million games… and a losing streak always happened.
Then I took a couple of short term temp jobs thru an agency. One was working for an architechs office measuring old townhouses in downtown Baltimore and then drawing floorplans. We went out in groups of three. One man held one end of the tape measure and the other held the other end. The third watched the truck to make sure it wasn’t stolen. The abandoned townhouses were being sold by the City of Baltimore for $1.00 but the new owner had to promise to put a lot of money into reconstruction. We were drawing the floorplans so the builders could estimate how much material to buy. Often these abandoned townhouses were very elegant… built at a time when people had marble fireplaces… but over the years they had fallen into ruin.
Another temp job was at Ward Machinery in Towson. They built machines that created corrugated cardboard for boxes. Every installation was a custom job and so my task was to draw wiring diagrams from polaroid photographs of the machines after they were installed. One day The Nuclear Power Plant at Three Mile Island had an accident. We were about 50 miles from TMI and one of the engineers in my office was a Nuclear Engineer. He said there was nothing to worry about because the system was designedd to be safe unless 10 things went wrong all at once… He said that we were at about #8 and he left the office to drive to safety. As it turned out there was not a gigantic Nuclear Disaster. However, peeople close to the power plant did report tasting a metalic flavor when they breathed… sure sign of Uranium in the air.
I was driving to work from Columbia to Towson in the winter and it was very scary to go on the Baltimore Beltway during rush hour in icy conditions. I’m sure glad to come back to California where it does not snow.
My first long term job in Washington DC was at Analytics Communications Systems, a very small custom electronics design firm in McLean, Virginia. We built electronics devices for the Air Force and Banks. Our company was lead by Major Paul Jones, USAF retired. He bid on Pentagon contracts and we built them. There were 20 people total that worked there. We had no time clock and just did what was needed to get the job done. I worked as a draftsman/designer taping printed circuit card artwork and drawing sheet metal mechanical drawings for enclosures. When it came time to actually ship the products I also soldered together wiring on power supplies… Actually, everyone did whatever needed to be done when we were facing a deadline… and aftr it was done we had a party! I stayed there for six years. It require a confidential clearance from the Department of Defense. I became friends with another employee named Ken and we played music together at his townhouse in Manassas, Virginia. My wife JoAnn and I were living in a condo in Oxon Hill, Maryland. At first we lived in Columbia, Maryland in an apartment but then she had the “brilliant” idea that we should buy a “starter home”. She went shopping and selected the condo. It turned out to be an idiotic decision. 12 years later I could not sell the condo and simply gave it back to the mortgage company. Her plan was to buy real estate, live in it, sell it for a profit and get a single family home. OOPS! Then she decided to rent out the condo and buy a “Cape Cod” style home near Tysons Corners, Virginia. We rented out the condo to a woman on government subsidized housing and she stayed there until she had another child and she had to move to a larger place. At this time JoAnn and I got divorced, we sold the house for a profit, split the money and I moved back into the condo… and she moved to Korea to take a government job at a military base. She worked at the NSA for two years. One year as a student learning how to transcribe phone calls in the Russian Language and one year actually transcribing them. Transcribing was astonishingly annoying, boring and depressing. Most of the calls were civilians complaining about living conditions in Russia. Then she took classes at night at the Computer Learning Center and was able to get a better job as a computer operator with a Top Secret Clearance. The clearance itself was worth about $20,000 and so she was very employable…
At Analytics we played Hearts every day at lunch. It’s a card game sort of like bridge. Major Jones taught me to never sort my cards by suit in numerical order but to keep my cards in random order. If you sort your cards, the other players can guess what cards you have… For example: if you play the King of Hearts from the second position of your hand it is likely that the Ace is in the first position. I guess that he had a lot of time to play cards in the Air Force…
During my time at Analytics I ran my own business for one year as a consultant. I was working for a Job-Shop and I got paid seven dollars an hour but the shop charged the company ten dollars an hour. I made an arrangement with the company to pay me the entire ten dollars and hour by billing them directly. I had to pay my own Social Security payments, file quarterly income tax withholding and collect the money from the company. One month the company simply told me that I had to wait for my payment. They were having cash flow problems and owed money to INTEL and Me. They selected to pay INTEL. After running my own consulting business for a year I re-hired the job shop as they were entirely worth the $3 an hour. They were happy to re-hire me and said: “Oh, we knew you would be back. Everyone thinks they can do better as a consultant… Until they try it.”
Then I got a job offer at a higher rate of pay from Pulse Engineering of College Park. A salesman that visited Analytics also did business with Pulse and he made the contact. I took the job and we did custom electronic design for the NSA (National Security Agency). This was in a building with no windows and I got a Secret Clearance to work there. We made many things but I had no idea what they were. I was only told enough information to do my job and no more. We had a Faraday Cage in the factory. A room with grounded metal mesh walls. That room prevented any radio waves from leaving the room. Our work had to pass TEMPEST testing. That was a DoD standard that required electronic equipment NOT broadcast radio waves. The basic idea was that the Russians could use a custom Radio Receiver to spy on equipment… and be able to read what was printed on a computer’s display. One product that we made was an encrypted telephone in a briefcase. That allowed people to go to a remote location and talk securely with the home base. This was during the 1980’s and President Reagan was spending a lot of money in a cold war with the Russians. Eventually, I got fired from that job for not showing up. I was smoking a lot of Hashish at that time and I had gone to a Grateful Dead concert in Philadelphia and failed to come home and go to work on time. The owners came over to my house, found out that I was safe and then fired me. Then I took a five month vacation. Driving around the East Coast of the USA.
The next job was in the Engineering department of the United States Postal Service. I was hired to lead a team of CAD draftsmen who were redrawing the pencil and paper drawings into a computer system. Our goal was to incorporate new changes to the design of a stamp vending machine. It took six people about a year to complete that task. We used the software system called CADAM. Later I found out that computer system was only used at the USPS and Lockheed. A more popular system called AUTOCAD was used everywhere else. When I wen looking for a job as a CADAM designer, no one was interested. I never worked as a draftsman again.
I played music at the USPS Christmas Party. Richard Verril played piano and I played Guitar. I had created a book with all the lyrics and chord changes of my favorite songs. I remember that we played “Light my Fire” by the Doors and Richard knew all the notes for the organ solo. I was really impressed. He had played in a band in High School and they played all the block parties in Philadelphia.
Eventually I got fired from that Job for showing up late to work. The office was in Virginia and I lived in Maryland so I had to cross the Woodrow Wilson Bridge over the Potomac. Traffic Jams were unpredictable and so I got fired. Then I took an eight month vacation. I spent that time playing original music in my home recording studio. Synthesizers, guitars and drum machine.
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Other Grateful Dead Related Events:
When I was living in Washington DC I got an Invitation to a concert that was to be held deep in the woods near Quantico Marine Corps Base. Some people carried in a generator and about a quarter mile off the road they had a rock concert. The only people that attended were fellow Deadheads that were given invitations at the Grateful Dead concert at the Capitol Center. Quite fun.
A more formal event was held at Wilmer’s Park in Brandywine, Maryland. You needed a ticket for that one. Mr Wilmer has been holding barn dances and rock concerts since the 1950’s at his farm… Generally it was fiddle square dancing on weeknights and in the summer, local bands… Generations of people enjoyed this recreational facility. The band I saw was called “New Potato Caboose”. They played tribute songs and Bob Marley… In researching this webpage post, I wanted to spell Wilmer’s Park correctly and so I googled it… Mr Wilmer has passed away and It is under new management and they plan to build a big place there to play… marketing bands that are not popular enough for Basketball Arenas but too big for bars. They also say that in recent years, almost all of the groups were for a black audience… Go figure, once again Deadheads and Blacks partying in the same location… Just like The Spectrum and JFK Stadium in Philadelphia.
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The Rainbow Gathering in Pennsylvania in the 1980’s.
This event really started at the Spectrum Arena in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania at a three day Grateful Dead concert. It eventually turned out to be a five month vacation traveling from Florida to Canada looking for the best beach…
I drove up from Washington DC and camped out in the parking lot in my car. During the daytime, we were able to swim at a public pool across the street from the Spectrum. The local residents had the lifeguards pull a rope across the pool so we swam on one side of the pool and they enjoyed the other… sort of like segregation except the black people were the ones that wanted us over on the other side of the rope…
One afternoon I ran into a fellow from Manassas, Virginia that called himself “Lumpy the Biker”. He asked if he could rest by sitting in the front seat of my car. He had injured his leg in a motorcycle accident and had trouble standing. So we were relaxing in the car and he told me that he didn’t really LIKE the Grateful Dead and did not have a ticket. He was just here to have fun at the parking lot party and to score some acid for resale back home in Virginia. By this time I had already eaten a dose…
I decided to wander over to look at the railroad tracks and admire the trains. They were underneath of some freeways and reminded me of an Escher Drawing.
When I got back I found out that “Lumpy” had been dealing out of my car. He was selling bottles of Visine LSD: Each drops of water had one dose in it. Somehow, someone had started the rumor that since he was dealing out of my car, that I must be his supplier… Therefore, later that night at the concert, many people came up to me and thanked me for the excellent quality of the acid. Then they asked if I wanted any and I stuck out my hand, they squeezed a couple of drops and I licked my hand… many times…
this was a classic case of an unknown large dose…
I ended up dancing in the concourse area where the refreshments were sold. There were many flashing lights on the advertising billboards for the Atlantic City Casinos. Many other Deadheads encircled me to tell me stupid jokes because they were guaranteed that I would laugh… A friend wrote in the dirt on the back window of my car “Mush Brain”… I got his address and visited him in New jersey later that summer. He was a teenager that had built a shack way out in the woods for a party house. I have quite a bit of admiration for creative construction like that! At some time during those three days, someone gave me a card with an invitation to the Rainbow Gathering to be held at an undisclosed location somewhere in Pennsylvania July 4th. I put the card on the dashboard of my car and forgot about it…
As luck would have it, I got fired from my job that week for lack of attendance. I just did not show up for work and a couple of days later my boss knocked on my door and told me to not come in… He was not amused… So, there I was, time on my hands and money in the bank… I had been working steady for about six years and had been throwing my loose change in a dresser drawer for the whole time. So, I pulled the drawer out and put it in the trunk of my car and headed towards Florida. As I headed down the road, I picked up some hitchhikers and they informed me of the location of the Rainbow Gathering. I had no Idea what it was but from their description, it sounded like fun. I dropped them off and went to Epcot Center and Disney World.
I ended up staying there for five days. I found a campground and every day woke up early, went to EPCOT for a few hours, went back to the campground when it got hot and took a nap, then went back to EPCOT near sunset. The place is totally different at night. The most impressive spot is at a lake near the big sphere. They project LASER light that looks like the planet Earth… Outlines of the continents… and then animate the globe to give the impression that it is revolving… at the same time, they have fountains dancing in colored lights, fireworks and loud classical music. Specifically, the Russians: Tchaikovsky and Mussorgsky… Quite the sensory overload. Everyone had told me that the best ride was Space Mountain but it’s only good the first time when it has the element of surprise… So, for the first day at EPCOT, I took LSD and pretended that I was a secret agent with a goal of climbing space mountain… handy to remember that while tripping in public it’s a good idea to maintain one’s composure or the Munchkins would throw you out of the park! Space Mountain was excellent but standing in line for a half an hour was difficult while the faces of the people were distorting… Yes, it was an astounding ride.
Ialso rode the Monorail over to the hotel and went to the top roof and admired the fine view from 10 stories up of Florida… Remember that when tripping, it is not a good idea to wear a t-shirt with a physics joke on it… The “straights” won’t understand the joke and will ask you to explain… I made that mistake… I had a shirt with the picture of Einstein wearing a policeman’s hat with the saying “186,000 miles per hour, not just a good idea, IT’S THE LAW!”
I also liked the Kraft Foods singing and dancing fruits and vegetables show. They had a giant refrigerator onstage and food came out and did song and dance numbers… Just like in ZAP COMIX by Robert Crumb.
and the Carousel of Progress will stay with me my whole lifetime…
“Now is the time, now is the best time,
now is the best time of your life!
Right here and now, you’ve got it made…
The world’s forward marching and you’re in the parade!”
originally, the General Electric Display at the New York World’s Fair, it shows the same happy fimily and their technology thru time… A diorama shows them in the 1800’s using oil lamps, then we sing the song and the Audience rotates to view the next era… electric lights! The song was written by the same fellows that did “It’s a Small World” and most of the other Disney classics… The Sherman brothers:
My hitchhikers said the Gathering was at the intersection of 6 and 666 in Pennsylvania. I drove there by myself and was greeted by a man that said “Welcome Home, Brother”. I parked and walked in carrying a backpack and sleeping bag… no tent… so the entire time I was sleeping in random different locations… When I arrived at the main campfire circle I noticed that the Gathering was located on a creek and so I wandered downstream to find a nude swimming hole… There by the creekside was a sweat lodge and a group of bathers. I went swimming and waited for the opportunity to go into the lodge. By this time I had been approached by someone’s child who recommended that I not smoke tobacco during my time at the Gathering… I took that advice and soon was feeling the withdrawal symptoms from my addiction… A group left the sweat lodge and I went in… a person asked me to leave as there were two couples that wanted a private sweat and I was a fifth wheel… I got angry because I had no knowledge of a queue waiting for the sweat lodge… and I was freaking from the tobacco “JONES”… I left after arguing a bit and later got to sweat with many other men… The sweat was very therapeutic and helped with my nicotine anxiety. I wandered up to the main circle and met a fellow that manufactured plate glass xylophones and wooden marimbas. I borrowed one and played at the main circle. Then went over to a stage near the entrance and joined a group performing there. I was not wearing any clothes… It’s the one time in my entire life that I have performed on stage nude… We mostly played songs like “JINGO” by Santana… that classic beat…
And the song “Infinite Sun”
We are all one ‘neath the Infinite Sun,
forever, forever, forever…
I will never forsake you,
forever, forever, forever…
Later that day I met some women and retired to their blanketed campsite for a back rub… One was named Terri and we became friends… Traded phone numbers… She decided to leave the Gathering Early because she wanted to go to the Bob Dylan and The Dead concert at RFK Stadium in Washington DC.
I selected to not go because the Gathering was a better event… In my opinion…
On July 4th at the main circle I found a bowl of Peyote unattended… It had a sign saying Sacrament, Help Yourself… and I did… For the entire day I ate small bits of Peyote… Just a small amount and then wait a half an hour, then another small amount and wait… after about 12 hours I had eaten a LOT and truly got the Mescaline High without barfing. The flavor of Peyote is quite bitter and many people find it to be so bad that they barf… I prefer the slow, steady approach.
I wandered over to a stage made out of hay bales and enjoyed the music. There was a cable slide built into a tree and I rode that often. How it worked: there was a steel cable leading from a platform about 15 feet up in a tree streatched taughtly to a stake in the ground… A person sat in a leather seat that was attached to the cable by a freespinning wheel and chain… Jump off the platform and ride the cable to the ground… whee! swing the seat back up the cable for the next rider… That was an amazing ride, home made by Rainbow Gatherers just for our own amusement… Thanks!!!
Then I started dancing with a lady that had coarse brown hair… we became friends and were kissing on the ground when she suggested we go on stage and sing for the rest of the tribe. By this time I was very high on Peyote. She gave me a choice of three songs to perform… the names of the first two songs were incomprehensable so I selected Kumbayah, the third choice. We did go onto the stage and sang for the rest of the tribe… by that time she selected to go to her campsite and we parted ways… I located my sleeping bag and found that another lady was in it… I told her to not worry or leave and we slept together like spoons…
In my reading about the Native American Church, one of the things that happens is that a person high on peyote meets Mescalito and is taught their song… then they perform it for the tribe… My experience was similar… I felt as if the woman with the coarse brown hair was MescalitA and we did perform my song…
A couple of days later I drove home and went out on a date with Terry. We had a fine time and she and her girlfriend wanted a ride to an Ashram in rural Virginia. So the three of us went to visit Dar San Singh near an army base on the Potomac. We could hear the explosions of the warriors practicing with their weapons. The sound provided contrast for what was happening at the Ashram.
The Spiritual Study of Indian Religion.
I didn’t quite grasp the message of this GURU (mainly because I could not understand a word he said-heavy accent, talked quietly) so I and the Terry’s girlfriend came back to DC and I dropped her off at her house.
And THAT’s how I spent my summer vacation…
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I visited the John Lennon memorial in Central Park, New York City. I was walking along minding my own business when I noticed a dramatic shift in consciousness among the people… They all seemed to be moving slowly and had thoughtful expressions on their faces. Then I noticed a tile mosaic floor that said “Imagine” and I realized where I was.
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Everyone we knew either worked at The Agency (NSA) or Analytics. We had a lot of fun going to Discos in Baltimore. One had a flashing Light Floor just like the one in the Movie “Saturday Night Fever”. Most of the Women that worked at the Agency were looking for husbands and they had many parties where they invited the Engineering Department from Westinghouse Defense Systems near Baltimore… Since we were already married I often acted as a chaperone on visits to the Disco.
The actual work of Transcribing Russian Phone Calls is incredibly boring and depressing so many of JoAnn’s co-workers quit and went back home… I remember one time we were visiting a lady in NYC and she suggested that we go to the Top of the World Bar. When we got to the World Trade Center the Maitre-d insisted that men had to wear neckties. We had no neckties. There was NO dress code for women. SO, the ladies went up to the top while Bob and I waited on the ground level. An opportunity missed… Later, two airplanes flew into the buildings and they fell down. Now, no one can go get a drink at the Top of the World.
JoAnn and I took a whitewater rafting trip down the Shenandoah and Potomac rivers. It’s a long gentle ride with one waterfall/rapids. You go past Harpers Ferry where the Rivers meet. There is a museum of the rifle factory that was Very Significant to the Civil War. “Rifling” is the process of machining a spiral inside the gun barrel. That spins the bullet and allows it to travel farther. The Northern Soldiers could stand safely out of range of Southern Soldiers and shoot them. This invention probably won the war for the North.
Luray Caverns are in the Shenandoah Valley. We visited them and heard the Stalactite organ. Hammers hit Stalactites that have been trimmed to vibrate at the exact frequency of musical notes. They have a keyboard that controls the hammers. Creating Music. They have a player piano roll that automatically plays the song… Shenandoah… Often people get married there and have a musician play the wedding march etc.
Near the Shenandoah Valley there was a State Park that allowed people to go chainsaw fallen down logs for firewood. Often we would go there and fill up our Dodge Omni car with logs for our woodburning stove. Sometimes I would eat Heavenly Blue Morning Glory seeds (a legal psychedelic) before chainsawing. That’s an interesting experience…
We bought a Condo in Oxon Hill, Maryland and then a Cape Cod style house in Tysons Corners, Virginia. When we got divorced, we sold the house and I moved back into the Condo.
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I spent a total of 12 years total living near Washington DC. I often visited friends in Manassas, Virginia and we played music on Synthesizers and Guitars. Music Non Stop – TechnoPop. aka Outer Space Whoosh Whoosh Music like you hear in Science Fiction Movies…
I also visited the Smithsonian Museum countless times. It was on the way home from work and quite convenient to stop for a few hours and let the traffic jams dissipate. I really enjoyed the National Art Gallery. I posted xerox copies of psychedelic drawings I did on the walls of the museum when the guards were not looking. So, yes, my art has hung in the National Art Gallery.
My favorite painting at the National Art Gallery is “The Last Supper” by Salvadore Dali. It is located in a room by itself that is cool and dark. I found that when I was visiting the Smithsonian I often felt the desire to go look at that painting again. I noticed that many of the other visitors to that room were frequent viewers themselves… I kept on seeing the same people! I concluded that it was an unofficial Church and people found that prayer and meditation there was relaxing and healthful… A fine antidote to the high stress lifestyle of Washington DC.
One day I took an LSD trip to the Modern Art Gallery building and found to my surprise that “The Tragedy” by Piccasso was my favorite painting. It shows a thin man, woman and child standing on a cold beach. I felt the temperature in my own body go cold. I had expected that Roy Lichtenstein or Andy Warhol would be impressive on LSD but they just seemed trivial. Later that day We all went to a Tangerine Dream Concert at the Elegant Warner Theater. My friend bought ten tickets so everyone I knew went together. I was concerned during the show when the FOG spilled off of the stage and covered the audience. Stage Fog is made from CO2 and it seemed possible that we would not have enough O2 to breathe… FYI: Tangerine Dream plays German Techno Pop Music on Analog Synthesizers. Very MODAL and relentless rhythm played by computers.
A few months earlier I went to the Kraftwerk Concert at the Elegant Warner Theater. I read a review of their hit record “Autobahn” in the Washington Post Newspaper and was intrigued. I bought the record at Tower and Liked it. This was the “Computer World” tour. The Synthesizers were arranged on stage to resemble the bridge of a spaceship. In the audience there were many people from Germany… College students and diplomats children. Kraftwerk Invented the style of Music called Techn Pop. Music Synthesizers and Drummers playing machines. At the end of the show, they programmed their machines to continue playing and the musicians walked off the stage… We continued dancing to the computer music… At that time I did not know that such music was POSSIBLE. Programable Dance Beats…
We often went to a fancy movie theater called The Uptown. I saw Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” there and it really scared me. The theater had a giant screen and LOUD music. Rock concert levels of Distortion Free sound. We also saw “Koyaanisqatsi” there… Philip Glass music and a dialog free Ecology film with many slo-mo and time lapse scenes. A classic!
I went to anti-war protest marches near the White House. Played the drums and acoustic guitar often in Lafayette Park. I Met Daniel Ellsberg and Dick Gregory at a Protest against the war in Iraq by George Bush the Father. The idea was that we would play the drums so loud that it would interfere with his sleep…
There were some very interesting people that had permanent protests on the street in front of the White House. One was a Retired Nuclear Engineer protesting against Nuclear Power and Atomic Bombs. I met a man from Los Gatos High School that was living at the DC Homeless Shelter because he was being chased by the IRS. He ran a computer software company in San Jose but failed to pay withholding taxes for his employees… He owed the IRS $100,000 so he could not take a job because they would trace his location using his Social Security Number. SO, he worked for cash doing computer user training people who worked for Trade Associations… This happened before the invention of the Windows Operating System so there was a big demand for DOS training… I took him home with me, convinced him to make peace with the IRS and co-signed on a job driving a car to San Jose… Years later I found out that he was successful relocating to his mother’s house and did make an arrangement to pay off the IRS… And then he started another computer company… So, I did make a difference. I helped a homeless person regain his life.
I went to the Fourth of July Events in downtown DC. Some years over 500,000 people attended. The Beach Boys played at the Washington Monument while Henri Mancini played at the US Capitol. There is a certain Madness in large crowds. Especially at Large outdoor concerts by the Grateful Dead. In the Summer it was very Hot and Humid and at Sundown there would be an INTENSE Thunder and Lightning Storm that drenched the crowd and turned the lawn into mud. Yes, it was a lot of fun to dance in the mud… Once the power went out on stage and the concert became a drumming duet with Thunder accenting the fills…
Since we lived near Washington DC, we became host for all our families to visit the tourist attractions. This had the unexpected benefit of requiring me to guide my family to many shows that I had no knowledge of or interest in. It expanded my horizons. When Uncle Harry, Aunt Roberta and Mother in Law Helen came we visited the silent marching exhibition at the Marine Corps Headquarters. Normal marching has a soldier chanting commands to the men like “Hup, two three four” and “March Left”. This gives the soldiers clues as to when to turn, spin a rifle or stop marching. The beauty of THIS Marine Corps marching was that hey did it silently… and perfectly…
Then we went to the White House. Roberta sits in a wheel chair so we got a special tour. We were escorted to the front of the line of tourists waiting and saw elevators and back corridors that were not on the standard tour. We also went to Colonial Williamsburg. I never would have gone there on my own.
One time my brother in law came to DC for the anniversary of Martin Luther King’s March on Washington. There was a stage at the Lincoln Memorial and Jesse Jackson gave a speech. There were a series of public address speakers all along the reflecting pool towards the Washington Monument. These caused so many echoes that what words he was saying became impossible to understand however, the rhythm of the speech was inspiring.
There were many musical performances that were unique to Washington DC. The “Airmen of Note” and “The Marine Band” performed often for free. DC has a thriving local band scene. There were frequent free concerts at the Washington monument… and a number of Bars… I saw “Betty” at the washington Monument at a show with many other bands and after her performance Betty came out into the crowd and danced herself. She is a giant sexy black woman.
I got to hear John Cage perform an orchestral piece at the National Academy of Science. Their concert hall is shaped like an egg. The music was composed by drawing curved lines around round objects on music staff paper. Like tracing a coffee cup or dinner plate… It was performed on cellos and prepared piano.
One time I got to hear “Music for Unitards” at an art gallery. Abstract Synthesizer Music on Synclavier with cello and emotional punk poetry. You don’t see stuff like that every day. Avant Garde! Ballet Dancing in One piece Leotards (Unitards).
I went to a concert in the woods of Quantico Marine Corps Base. A bunch of hippies hauled a generator way off the road and performed in the dirt. Invitation only…
I continued working as a Draftsman/Designer and built computer equipment for the USAF, the NSA and Banks. I saved my money and took big vacations whenever I was laid off. Once I drove to Key West, Florida and then to Niagara Falls, Canada… looking for the best beach. I spent 5 days at EPCOT/Disney World. I took LSD the first day I was at EPCOT and rode the ride at Space Mountain. They had a show by Kraft Foods featuring dancing food… Like a Zap Comix Cartoon.
That Year I attended a Rainbow Gathering in Pennsylvania. It was a week long camping trip for hippies. About 10,000 people attended… I ate peyote, met a woman who asked me to sing a song on stage for the crowd… Just like the Native American Religious Ceremony. Supposedly, you meet “Mescalito” and he teaches you your song. Then you sing it for the tribe. We had a brief affair. We went to visit her Guru, Dar San Singh, in rural Virginia. I did not like the scene at the ashram so she stayed there and I came home. The Guru has such a thick accent that I couldn’t understand what he was Saying.
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Analog Synthesizer Tips and Tricks. Electrical Engineering FUNdamentals
SOLARWIND… Our Musical Group.
I was fascinated with playing electronic music and played with my friends (Ken, Mark and Leon) in Ken’s basement for 5 years on the weekends During the 1980’s. I also had a setup in my living room and would invite guests. This was at the time of analog synths and the beginning of midi. My favorite instrument was the Korg Polysix… It had the ability to make those really astonishing outer space sounds… Modulated resonant filter sweeping… like Steve Miller, Edgar Winter or Doctor Who… The pitch of the note could be defined by the control voltage input on the rear panel… well, I had a Radio Shack “100 in One experimenters kit” and a bag of capacitors, resistors and light emitting diodes that I hooked up to generate an oscillating circuit… Absolutely no one else on the planet was making the noises that I made… similar, true, but my noises were unique… Since it was created using wires and SPRING CLIPS to connect the components, the resistance of each connection varied according to stress on the wires… for example: if I blew at the circuit, the music would change due to the pressure of the wind…
Leon had a black box that allowed me to sing or talk into the synthesizer and the volume of my voice determined the sound of the synth… You can hear this particular technique on THE DOORS- STRANGE DAYS… Listen carefully and when Jim Morrison sings the words “Strange Days have found us…etc” there are squiggly noises that follow along with the vocals… (amplitude to control voltage converter, also pitch to control voltage)
I also had a display of 18 strands of Christmas tree lights that would blink on and off… they were hung in the corner of the room with a mylar mirror on each wall… That provided enough light to be able to see the controls and keys on the keyboards… Each strand of lights would be either on or off and they all had different timing cycles… this made the whole display appear to experience waves of rainbow colors… The keyboards were all interconnected to allow waves of sound to evolve over time as the modulated filters ebbed with tidal forces…
Fun, but all those analog synths are hard to find anymore… they were replaced with digital ones that were cheaper to produce and more reliable… somehow there was a move towards realistic instrument sounds instead of outer space whoosh whoosh… too bad…
I remember Emerson, Lake and Palmer in concert at the Winterland in San Francisco… Keith jumped off the stage and wandered around the dance floor “zapping” people with a ribbon controller that was making “ray-gun” sounds… A good example of the ribbon controller was on “Good Vibrations” by the Beach Boys… the part that goes oooWWWWEEEwooowooo… ooooWWWWEEEwooowooo…
Another beautiful synth was bought used at a yard sale for 75 dollars. It was a minikorg and had been thru severe abuse on the road. This marvel is most famous as the lead voice on Kitaro records… the breathy flute sound that he uses to play melody parts… The theme to Silk Road, etc… This was a monophonic synth that had ring modulator effects and white noise… this also had a switch for setting the pitch to an extremely low tone… as if you were playing notes on a piano that were way off the end of the left hand… this machine allowed me to create what I called the “Dawn of Time” sound… A growling bass note that needed about 10 seconds to play… A ring modulator lets each key have its own vibrato rate… for example” “C” might have a wow wow wow sound that shanged every half a second while “C#” would have a wow wow wow that changed 42 times a second… “D would be 6 times a second etc… this tonal quality creates many of the more avant garde (or teeth gratingly irritating) sounds of extremely early synth recordings…
I also became fascinated by the possibilities of echo and computer controlled music. Lucky for me, instruments started being built with a MIDI interface… this caused older instruments to go on sale at extremely cheap prices…
The Roland microcomposer was 8 1/2 by 11 inches and had a microcomputer in it. I stored sequences of pitches and durations of notes using the tiny keyboard… really, really tiny… It was designed to drive two SH101 Roland synths and could play two notes simultaneously… what a breakthrough… from ONE NOTE at a time to two… By typing in a series of bass notes each with a duration of 1/8 of a bar… and then running it thru an echo box that had a time set to 3/16th of a bar… and setting the voltage controlled filter so that some notes were silent, some notes were muted and some notes were loud… I was able to trick the system into composing by itself a never repeating bassline that was fun to improvise over… the computer selected which notes to play and when… cosmic…
This worked well for music that is called MODAL… In that style, there are no chord changes at all… the performers select a handfull of notes as the scale and just go to it… the most famous modal piece is “The Old Washer Woman” and The theme performed by Edith Bunker on the television show “All in the Family”… The music is played entirely on the BLACK NOTES of the piano… I think they called it “Those Were The Days”… “Didn’t need no welfare state, everybody pulled his weight, gee those old La Salles ran great… THOSE were the DAAAAAYYYYSSSS…. It is an extremely simple song. So simple that I was able to teach a computer to play in that style… Of course, my compositions were not at all like that whiny song… more robotoc and like German Technopop…
Music nonstop, technopop… Bleep, blonk… tchatchink…
I was fortunate to have read an article in the Washington Post about the upcoming Kraftwerk concert so I went out and bought the recommended album Autobahn and liked it… The basic style of music sounded interesting and so, I went to the beautiful Warner Theatre to see them. This was an elegant performance space that started out as an ART DECO theatre and then became a dance hall for rock music… oh how lucky we were… This was my first exposure to the technopop music and many of the people in the audience were Germans… I had no idea that such music was even possible. The tour was to promote their albums Computerworld and Man Machine… They had two fellows that beat with “knitting needles” on touch sensitive drum machines while the other two played keyboard synthesizers… The drummers were wild because every time a knitting needle contacted the machine, a loud percussive sound happened… not drum sounds but more like boink or ping or even pffffbtt… When they performed their song “pocket calculator” they walked to the front of the stage and had members of the audience play the notes… The lyrics state ” by pushing down a special key it plays a little melody” blink bonk…. katrronk…. Quite an effective piece of showmanship and audience participation… Then at the end of the show , all the people left the stage and let the computers play the song… for about ten minutes… wild dancing to actual robot performers… I was amazed… Their website has a toy on it that lets you play a drum machine… boing, boom, tchack, peng, zonk… http://www.kraftwerk.com/
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Much of the time when I played with my friends in the basement in Manassas, Virginia we had a home made laser lightshow going… My friend built this using an extremely slowly rotating mirror that had a little “house” built on it out of transparent “walls” and clear glue… The “house” was about 3/4 of an inch tall and caused interference patterns to be displayed on the ceiling… these took the appearance of galaxies or clouds that slowly changed. The speed was about One RPM. He had guests come over and bring their instruments… A trumpet player from the Redskins Football Team band was a memorable evening. In general, we played music that you would hear as a soundtrack for a motion picture… Incidental music or abstract jazz or “outer space whoosh whoosh”…..
We made a demo recording and had an agent in New York try to sell it to people making corporate videos… No sale, but it was fun trying… When we recorded the demo, I loaned a huge pile of my equipment to Leon and he set up a special studio in the basement of his grandpas home. His grandpa was a Retired General in the Army and had a mansion in McLean and another in Arizona. I never met the grandpa because were were not allowed to visit when he was in town nor were we allowed in many parts of the mansion due to breakable oriental antiques. These people live in a truly different world than us peasants.
I really got into samplers when I got a midi controlled 4 second monophonic machine. It could be controlled by the drum machine. My favorite sound was a pan pipe. I set up the sound so that the sampler could play it back very slowly giving a low pitch. It sounded as if a giant was blowing on a pan pipe 20 feet tall… I made a tape and gave it to my friend “Major” Tom (a Bowie fan). He was very happy with it because when it was played on the car stereo, it put his children to sleep… Unfortunetly, also on that tape were some doppler effect noises and he panicked because he thought it was a police car siren. A moment of fear but it was quickly resolved by erasing that song from the tape…
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When I was working at the Postal Service Engineering Department there were many immigrant employees that I became friends with. Since the USPS did not require a Secret Clearance from the Department of Defense, it was one of the few places that an immigrant draftsman could work in the Washington DC Area. One Friday night three of us went to New York City to attend a Hindu Wedding. I drove… We stayed at an apartment building in the Bronx. The entire multi-story building was filled with Hindus from around the world. They had a temple in the backyard. There was a lot of “Sacred” food to be eaten and supposedly we would be insulting our hosts and the Gods if we refused to eat it. I ended up eating much more than I wanted to. The Groom was coated in a yellow colored spice (Saffron). He had a bad allergic reaction to it… On the night before the Wedding we went to a Hindu Disco and danced. Some of the people my friend was related to lived on one apartment building and some lived in a different one. We had to walk the women from one building to another because the neighborhood was dangerous and they feared getting abducted… So whenever a woman wanted to go to the other building, we escorted her… At the wedding an old woman played the drums… My friend was from Guyana, South America… a former British Colony. His ancestors were imported slaves from India.
The third person in our adventure to NYC was a black American man. His mother lived in NYC and she was the owner of a Rastafarian Bar. We did not get to visit because the air conditioner in the bar was broken. Too bad… It would have been an interesting place to visit. Another draftsman at the USPS was a man my age from Vietnam. He said that when he was a child he watched the American Bombs exploding and he thought they were pretty. I’m not making this up.
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One time when I was laid off I was offered a Job at Domino’s Pizza as a delivery driver. I worked there for 5 years at a Parlor run by Black women. Met a woman named Betty-Lou and we lived together raising her daughter. Eventually I quit that job due to Murders of Delivery Drivers at work. I delivered in Fort Washington, Maryland. It’s a suburb that is populated by Black government workers and other Black professionals. After the first Murder I switched to delivering in Mount Vernon, Virginia and Fort Belvoir. Delivering to the Secret Army base was interesting. On sunny days they enforced security protocol and I was not allowed into certain buildings. However, if it was snowing, the guards just ignored security because it was cold outside… After the Second Murder I drove to California… Crack Cocaine caused insanity among the residents of Washington DC and there was a lot of Gun Violence. I abandoned the Condo and the Mortgage company foreclosed.
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I worked at Radio Shack in San Jose during the 1990’s. After I left Maryland I drove to my parent’s house and started working at the Shack. I was there for Six Years. I learned a LOT about electrical engineering and corporate marketing. It was a very social job and I was paid commission to sell electronic stuff. One technique for selling more stuff was to draw diagrams for the customers who wanted to set up cable TV systems. The local cable company had two wires entering the house… some channels were on cable “A” and others were on cable “B”. In order to distribute the cable TV signal to different rooms in a house was a rather complicated system. However, I knew how and could draw diagrams for the customer to follow… and… I just went around the store and collected everything they needed, took it to the cash register and rang it up. These people would tell their neighbors and friends to go see me and I got a lot of business that way. My years playing guitar and synthesizer music also lead to increased sales as I could recommend equipment that would allow customers to accomplish their dreams. It was fun to work there, sort of like an endless party. I drank a lot of booze during those years. A relaxed and friendly salesman sells more stuff.
We sold the most advanced personal computer at the time. It was called “The Sensation” and it had the first CD-Rom disk drive in a PC. I sold one system to a fellow that made computer games. He wanted to test drive his CD-Rom game product. Another self made millionaire to shop at our store bought a hundred magnets every year to give away at his lectures to third grade students. He hoped to give them a lasting remiinder of the wonders of science… hopefully to inspire future engineers. Another customer bought a Sensation Computer in order to write a product review for the Silicon Valley Computer Society Newsletter. That society originally was called The Home Brew Club and was started by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniac. This customer also created a talking dictionary on a CD-Rom. The first of it’s kind.
Wozniac built a museum in downtown San Jose and it was fun. Designed to appeal to elementary school students it had many interactive games and toys. One was a TV time travel device that randomly filmed the patrons of the museum and them merged those films into a kaleidoscopic show.
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In Chico during the late 1990s I camped out for an entire summer in Bidwell Park and rode a bicycle all over town… I ate at the “Jesus Center” a free meal and attended a couple of Alcoholics Anonymous meetings a DAY for about a year. I made a lot of friends in the program and Married One. She helped get me a job at the WREX plastic factory making injection molded parts and I held that job for a year.
During my second stay in Chico I enjoyed playing my guitar and singing on the streets and in the park downtown. Busking. Once I teamed up with a college girl and we performed on Main Street. We earned about $10.00 and I let her keep it. We performed “Witchy-Woman” by the Eagles and when she sang, I expected her head to spin around like Linda Blair did in The Exorcist. That song has a lot of lyrics that are simply… AAAAAOOOOOO!
I also performed at our AA meetings. While the meetings were in session I would be quiet but before and after the meetings I would lead group sing-a-longs. I had 3 spiral notebooks with the lyrics and chords to all my favorite songs and people would search thru them and make requests. Big Fun.
A friend from AA and I took lessons on how to play the drums from the Adult Education Department. We had classes in Paradise and a dozen students would play together. Some playing big drums, some playing small drums. We performed at a Farmers Market in Downtown Chico. After that performance the teacher wanted us to go pro and tour… The students had no interest in that so we disbanded.
We attended a 5 day Christian American Indian Tent Revival Meeting. It was called the 206 drum meeting because they had six Father Drums and 200 frame drums. I got to play the Father Drum (BOOM boom boom boom – repeat). Later on a song appeared in my head and I took my guitar out into a field at sunset and wrote it down. It’s very rare that I write a song but that meeting was inspirational. We got invited to this event because we became friends with a lot of Native Americans that were in our AA club. We also went to a Pow-Wow in Paradise and I got to dance. I had a set of sleigh bells that I strapped to my foot and “Danced those Bells” (infused the bells with spiritual power). Years later I used those bells to signal the end of the workday at my office job in Eureka. When I retired I gave the bells to a co-worker so she could ring them at 5 PM every day for the rest of time.
Once while performing “White Rabbit” on Main Street a lady showed me how to do a flamenco strum to simulate the Military rhythm of the drums on the Jefferson Airplane Record… Big Fun learning while Busking.
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In 2001, I started college at Humboldt State University in Arcata, California studying Computer Information Systems. I originally wanted to get a degree in Computer Science but that major required TWO semesters of Calculus and was designed to study Hardware and I felt more interest in Software. I was a senior returning student as I was 47 years old. Most students were in their 20’s but three of us had gotten into AA and changed our lives around and had decided to attend college. I asked an AA member I knew in Chico how to get college loans and she taught me the system of applying for FAFSA online at the public library’s computers. I quit my job at WREX plastics.
When I started College I voluntarily stopped smoking marijuana. It’s really easy to quit. I realized that it would be impossible to learn computer programming and get stoned at the same time. I decided that learning was more important. Parts of the schoolwork was incredibly difficult to understand. Especially Oracle’s Structured Query Language. I had to take that class twice in order to pass it. Calculus was very difficult also. I managed to pass that class but never understood why anyone would want to use calculus ever. As it turned out, I never used calculus in any class or in real life. Someone said that without calculus the atom bomb and atomic energy would have been impossible to design. So maybe calculus is not just difficult but actually evil…
My experience with smoking tobacco shows the difference between drugs that are actually addictive and drugs that are not. Tobacco is addictive and it’s really difficult to quit because I felt pain when I did not smoke. With marijuana, I just wished I was stoned… I have a great sympathy for the people that took the Doctor Drugs and got addicted to painkillers… I meet a lot of them at my NA meetings.
It was easy to avoid Marijuana as a student in Arcata, California because everyone I knew was a student in the computer science department. In general, nerds don’t smoke dope. Arcata is in the geographic center of the illegal marijuana farms of the Emerald Triangle. Some say that 90% of the weed in the USA is grown in the North west corner of California. Humboldt, Mendocino, Shasta, Siskiou, Trinity and Del Norte counties are famous worldwide for Marijuana farming. Southwestern Oregon too. It’s the same locations that Bigfoot is said to inhabit.
Now that marijuana is legal in California, the underground economy of Humboldt County is undergoing a crisis. It used to be that a vast amount of cash came into the county due to the illegal farms… Now, that business model has changed… The last few decades have been difficult for the economy there. First, logging stopped when all of the really profitable trees were cut down. Lumber mills closed in Fortuna, Carlotta and Arcata. MAXXAM went bankrupt. Then the fishing industry fell on hard times because many of the fish had already been caught in the ocean. No work for fishermen when the catch is small. Now, with legal marijuana it makes more economic sense to grow it in vast plantations in the central valley. More sunshine, black dirt… The only reason people grew weed in remote mountain farms was to avoid the police. I grew tomatoes in Chico and that central valley dirt yields bountiful harvests…
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My wife and I moved from Chico to Eureka and she got a job as a data entry person at a health care company. We had difficulty finding an Apartment and had to live in The Budget Motel on Highway 101 for three months with our three cats. Eventually we moved into a small apartment behind a log cabin in Cutten. This building was on the edge of a second growth redwood forest. There were paths through the forest creted by dirt bike riders and it was possible to hike all the way to the Freshwater Valley (5 miles away).
I drove a little white truck on the old road to Arcata every day to go to school. It was a Chevy LUV Mikado (Isuzu Pup) that we bought for $1,000 in Chico from “The Well” (a prisoner rehab organization designed to help ex-cons rejoin society). Eventually I painted a giant blue heart with rays of red and white exploding out of it on the Hood of the Truck. Everyone smiled when I drove by and some people saluted.
School taught computer programming in the language C++ and SQL. At every turn we were encouraged to help ourselves by using Google to find tutorials about how to accomplish whatever task we were doing. The fundamental idea was that after graduation we would have to solve our own problems at work. We also learned JAVA, Javascript and HTML. Older students were encouraged to teach younger classmates as the experience of teaching really enforces the lessons learned. We built an online store. My friend Tom showed me how to create an animated GIF that showed all sides of a coffee cup by spinning the product around. Later Tom was employed at The Welfare Office of the County of Humboldt and helped get me a Job there.
After graduating in 2005 many students took computer science jobs in Locations far away from Eureka but I did not want to move as this location is IDEAL. A Cool and Rainy climate that never gets so cold as to have snow and never too hot. Living behind the “Redwood Curtain” it was difficult to believe that the rest of the world even exists. I could read about difficulties and troubles the outside world was having but often I simply turned the page. There was 9/11 and wars and hurricanes and racial difficulties but we simply didn’t participate. Arcata is a town that was mainly influenced by Hippies who grew marijuana, fishermen, loggers and the University.
One remarkable teacher is Dr. Eugene Novotny. He taught my “World Music” overview class and was the leader of the Humboldt Calypso Band (Steel Drums) and the Samba Parade. They would play the drums and march around town leading Mardi Gras Dancers. I often took pictures of the musical events and published them on the internet. We had many anti-war protest marches against the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. At least one major march downtown on March 19th including a VERY LARGE protest BEFORE the Iraq War began. Actually, MILLIONS of people worldwide protested against that war before it started but Bush invaded anyway. History has shown that Bush was an Idiot and invaded the wrong country. Iraq had no ties to Al-Qaeda, No WMD and Nothing at all to do with 9/11. That was a Saudi-Arabian attack.
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I got a BS degree in Computer Information Systems and immediately got hired at the County of Humboldt in the Welfare Department as an Eligibility Worker. Safe, Clean Work in an Office Cubicle. I One thing I learned at School was how to USE a computer and that’s what I did at work. I interviewed people applying for Food Stamps, Medi-Cal and Welfare and the typed their information into a computer system to determine IF they were eligible and for How Much. Often teenagers would travel across the country to work Trimming Buds at the Illegal Marijuana Farms… When the harvest is over, they all are laid off… Since this is an Illegal Business, often they were let go without getting paid MONEY for their labor but being paid with a big bag of weed… So these kids from Tennessee or Alabama were wandering around town stoned and lost and hungry… We got them a Greyhound Bus Ride Home.
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After graduating from Humboldt State University I got a job at the Welfare Department of the County of Humboldt in the “General Relief” office. GR is cash payments to clients that do not have children. Families were served by a different department. GR is designed to help people that cannot help themselves. Typical clients included Veterans from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who were suffering from PTSD and found themselves homeless. We also served people recently released from prison. Some clients could not support themselves because they were disabled. We would help people pay rent and find a job.
Since I worked there for seven years I got to know many of the chronically homeless people in Humboldt County. A couple of my clients died. One man was always argumentative and annoying whenever he came into the office. He also had tattoos on his face. He was murdered a by knife wound to the stomach. What happened was that he was argumentative and annoying to a man who worked at a fish cannery and the man simply stuck him with his filet knife. Remember this, you can be an asshole at the Welfare office because we are being paid to serve the public but DO NOT try that lifestyle out there in the real world! The police solved the murder by watching all the surveillance cameras in Eureka at the time of the murder. Yes, my client was seen getting into a yellow Chevy at a gas station about ten minutes before he died. The police asked “Who drives a yellow Chevy?” and it turned out that a man that was already incarcerated at Humboldt County Jail on a different charge was the owner…
Another client died from overexposure to the weather. He was an old drunk who slept outdoors. A cool and rainy climate killed him.
A third client overdosed on Heroin. This fellow took advantage of our one way transportation program. Basically, if a client wanted to LEAVE Humboldt County and travel to ANYWHERE in the Continental United States where they had family or friends who would take them in… we would buy them a ONE WAY Bus ticket or gas for their car. It’s a very inexpensive solution to homelessness to simply ship a problem citizen somewhere else… and then that problem citizen is NOT OUR problem! Anyway, Robert was from The South and we gave him enough money to buy gas and food all the way from Eureka to Tennessee! So Robert drove to rural Humboldt County and bought enough Heroin to finally kill himself… He was supposed to drive all the way home but instead he just got high… and it was a ONE WAY ticket to the morgue.
We did have some successes. We were very good at sheltering battered women. We introduced our clients to employees of the State Employment Office. They would find jobs and help with transportation to interviews. We also made arrangements for people that had lost their Photo ID to get a CAL-ID card. An ID card is required for every job. If a person loses their wallet (for example: if they were mugged), they have great difficulty getting a new ID card because they have no money or proof of US Citizenship. We also assisted people that were applying for Social Security Disability. We would provide food and shelter during the LONG and involved process of getting SSDI. Usually it would take a client OVER a year to qualify. The federal government makes it extremely difficult to get paid in the hopes that applicants would simply give up…
Many of our clients couldn’t work due to mental illness. We had our own psychologist who could verify if the client was actually mentally ill or if they were just faking it in order to get Welfare Benefits. Our psychologist was a charming and sympathetic person and she was very helpful to me while my Father was dying… If a client couldn’t work due to physical health problems they were required to go visit a doctor and get verification. Most clients had Medi-Cal insurance paid fo by the State of California and Food Stamps paid for by the Federal Government. Often the task of attending a free doctor’s appointment was too much for my clients. That required a client to be aware of time and space. A doctor’s appointment is at a specific location at a specific time… and for people applying for Welfare… they just can’t do it. Lost in Time and Lost in Space… We did have social workers that rounded up clients that were in remote locations and would bring them to the office to attend appointments. Fundamentally, it was cheaper for the Taxpayers of the State of California for these people to receive General Relief than it was to Incarcerate them… And many clients spent large parts of their lives incarcerated.
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My dad took a bus ride with the senior center to visit me, The Bear River Casino and the Lolita Cheese Factory. It was one of the last visits we had. We met at the casino near Eureka (where I lived) and I drove him around in my Ford Windstar Van. It was a great visit and we had long chats by the fireplace at the Casino… A good ending to a long and involved life. He was proud that I was sober, employed, married and taking care of myself.
During the last few years of my working at the County of Humboldt, I really got into playing Farmville on the computer… My job was stressful and depressing and it was wonderful to go visit a totally artificial world… Actually, it reminded me of the legendary “Perky Pat Layouts” of the Philip K Dick Story “The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch”. Total Escape from my Bleak Life…
I kept that job for 7 years until my Dad died. Then I inherited money and a house in Eureka and did not have to work. I had my pension from the County, Social Security and a Trust Fund. I spent a lot of time driving around and visiting the western United States. Including a trip to Beautiful Utah for a Rainbow Gathering (10,000 hippies camping in the woods – big bonfires every night) and a Trip to Seattle Washington to eat the Cannabis Cookies, drink powerful coffee and ride the Monorail to the “Experience Music Pavilion” next to the The Space Needle. There were custom made musical instruments designed to be payed by visitors to the museum. An array of tubular bells that were whacked by a pool ball whenever a tourist wanted… random noise? or abstract soundscapes…
One thing I really wanted to do when I retired was to become free from time. Sleep when I was tired, awake when I’m rested. Do what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it… I’ve spent a lifetime under time slavery. Get to work ON TIME. Stay there until QUITTING TIME. Pay the rent ON TIME… etc etc etc… Well, as a retired person I found that the Internet was open 24 hours a day and Taco Bell was open 24 hours a day and WINCO foods was open 24 hours a day… So I totally lost track of time. When I looked out the window sometimes I didn’t know if it was Dawn or Sunset… I was really interested in doing art on the computer and blogging my opinions and travel pictures… I did notice that after midnight many people online were living in Europe and about dawn the Australians appeared. In the morning people from the East Coast of the United States joined the conversation… I did have one task a week. I had to take out the garbage every Thursday night so they could pick it up Friday Morning. The bins were located right in front of the house and I had to go up 5 steps to reach street level. No problem until the time I slipped and fell backwards and hit my head on the concrete. It was raining and I was holding onto the handrail as I pulled the bin up the stairs… After that I moved the location of the garbage bins to street level on the side of the house. Lucky Me… No Brain Damage!
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Then the State of Oregon legalized Marijuana and I spent 7 months VERY stoned. I Ended up at a Mental Hospital with Cannabis Psychosis and after 15 days got released to an Old Folks Home near Sacramento where I have lived for a year and a half. That’s where I am right now.
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I have experienced Cannabis Psychosis. I saw things that were not there but I believed that they really existed.
I experienced events that did not happen. That made it difficult to make smart decisions. Californians ought to be aware that it is possible to smoke too much dope. It took my smoking about a pound of Oregon Legal over a 7 month period for me to experience Psychosis. [I was also drinking coffee and smoking tobacco.] Yes, it’s FUN to see some things that are not there, Like a cat about the size of a German Shepard Dog. Meow! However… I neglected to file my income taxes… etc. etc. etc.
I stopped smoking when I went on a driving vacation and didn’t want to be in possession of an illegal substance while camping out in my van. I remained stoned for about a month due to having so much THC in my system. It was a great trip and I saw many beautiful parks and deserts in Southern California and Nevada. We were driving over “The Grapevine” and the highway patrol created a rolling roadblock to slow down the traffic. They actually forced us all to stop completely by driving back and forth across all the lanes of the freeway… I thought the CHP Car was dancing. Quite an interesting event to observe amplified by my THC enhanced brain… The combination of my being retired from work, having money in the bank and the Legalization of Marijuana in Oregon allowed me to simply take too much. Oregon was 100 miles from home and I bought an ounce a week… The stores rate and price their weed by quantity of THC per gram. I tended to buy the strongest stuff available… I went to the hospital to have an infected blister on my foot treated and they tested my blood and urine… I still tested positive for THC after not smoking for a month.
I started smoking marijuana in 1969 at age 14. I’ve smoked off and on my whole life. However I realized that I had to quit smoking while I was studying computer science at Humboldt State University. I believe that it would have been impossible to do my homework while stoned… So I quit for 4 years… In Arcata, the geographic center of illegal marijuana farming in Northern California. Marijuana is not addictive like tobacco is but it still has risks associated with it. One risk to be aware of is being arrested for driving a car while stoned.
I did a scientific study of playing chess while stoned on various drugs. I owned a chess computer that would allow me to play at different skill levels. I concluded that I played at a higher level when I drank coffee and a lower level on Marijuana and alcohol. On LSD I refused play at all as the entire test seemed absurd.
Cannabis does have entertainment value. Rock concerts are more enjoyable while stoned. One time I went to an Allman Brothers concert during a time when there was no marijuana available and the music seemed too loud and the guitar solos were pointless and too long. Sex is more pleasurable when stoned. Food tastes better. In general, all experiences are more fun. Reading a Science Fiction Book while stoned is astonishing as every page has a mind blowing revelation or plat twist. Of course, the author intentionally designed the book to twist your mind. Mission Accomplished!
Marijuana is not addictive in the sense that it does not cause pain when a person stopped using it like tobacco does. However, given a choice, I prefer to be stoned all day every day. Smoking at dawn and taking another puff whenever I feel like the effects are wearing off. During my 7 month smoke-a-thon with Oregon Legal I lost about 100 pounds of weight. Strange effect. I believe that the weight loss happened because during the first hour after smoking, I felt queasy and did not feel like eating. Since I was smoking at least once an hour, I did not experience the munchies. After I went to the mental hospital I stopped smoking marijuana and have gained all that weight back and more. Deep Sigh…
During the time I was smoking marijuana heavily, the number of visitors to my blog went up dramatically. Google provides statistics about how popular my words of wisdom are. I was writing what I call “Absurdist Fiction” and posting a lot of travel photographs/descriptions. I also figured out how to “GAME” the Google Search Engine Algorithm… My Blog uses keywords describing my posts individually. For Example: If I write a post about Traveling to Oregon, I write a dozen words that describe that blog post. I found a way to copy and paste ALL of those keywords into a single blog post. Therefore the content of that blog post would rate high on almost any Google Search.
That technique no longer works as Google probably fixed the search algorithm to ignore that “Hack”.
Anyway, I believed that the reason my blogs popularity had increased dramatically was that I was writing better when stoned. Just like The Beatles became Super Popular when the started recording records like Sargent Pepper… Yes, it’s true that I came up with more and better ideas while stoned.
BUT… the vast majority of my increase in visits was due to that one trick I played on Google.
After I got out of the mental hospital I quit smoking marijuana and have not had any great ideas since. SO, I have been writing my Autobiography instead. Typing what I did in the past instead of creating the future. By the way, I’m really glad that Marijuana has become legal in California because freedom of choice is great. It’s not the right drug for me but the last thing anyone needs is going to jail. We ought to legalize Marijuana Nationwide! Reduce spending on Law Enforcement while increasing VOLUNTARY taxes… AND… Release all the Cannabis Prisoners.
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I suffered an adverse reaction to Lithium when I was in a mental hospital. It increased my Paranoia and I became suspicious of my Doctor.
The chemical made my emotions more intense. For Example: A scary movie on TV became unendurable and I had to flee the room. I believed that the social workers were NOT on my side but were trying to keep me in the hospital (even though there was nothing wrong with me) just so they would have a large quantity of patients. As if they were commissioned salesmen paid by the head… That could be true but it’s unlikely. Yes, it is true that they justify their paychecks because they have enough patients to treat. Yes, it is true that there is no incentive to cure a patient. However, I have faith that mental health professionals in general are trying to help people. Under the influence of Lithium they all exhibited suspicious behavior. I felt that in order to be released from the hospital I ought to follow orders and do what I was told to do by the Doctors no matter what the side effects were. I imagined that they were all like Nurse Ratchet from “One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest”. After 15 days I was released because (surprise, surprise) I did not have any mental health problems.
If you find yourself being prescribed Lithium, I recommend that you question if it is appropriate for you. It’s unlikely that the Doctor will continue to prescribe a medicine that is causing damage to the patient. Yes, it is true that some Doctors are evil but I believe that the majority are attempting to do good.
Under the influence of Lithium every song on the radio seemed to be written for specifically for me and the lyrics showed unbelievable insight into my life. I would burst into tears over classic rock songs and get all choked up. Yes, it is true that some of those ballads ARE filled with meaning but… I felt like I was experiencing the same level of emotional revelations that one does reading Haiku on LSD. You know that AHA! feeling… Hey, maybe Lithium is good for you but… Think for Yourself and Question Authority…
The reason I was committed “5150” was that I was experiencing a Cannabis Psychosis. The effects of the marijuana wore off when I stopped smoking it. The entire trip to the hospital was an error. A member of my family thought it was a good idea to have me introduced to the Butte County Mental Health Department but it was not.
Word is out “on the street” that if you are having mental health problems, the LAST place you want to go is Butte County Mental Health in Chico, California.
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Starting in 1997 I have been creating websites to display my Words of Wisdom and original Art created on the computer. I started by visiting the San Jose public Library and using the free public computers. I built websites on Yahoo Geocities… Other patrons at the library taught me how to code…
to be continued, same Bat time, same Bat channel… but first I have to live some more life and have some more experiences to document!
eARThday Everyday 