Introducing The Introduction (The Intro) (c)2005-Ron Wortham

PUBLISHING in this day and age has become instantaneous. _-Plant Your Seeds-_ is a perfect example of it. No printing (unless YOU just want to), no heavy production costs. Enhancements planned for the future include an audio narration (one of the things I do) chapter-by-chapter and possibly a continuous audio version for blind or vision-impaired persons.

Publishing costs before the evolution of the Internet and The Blog have been monstrous. Printing, marketing, shipping, shelf space and other overhead costs can devour 80% or more of the value of an author's work. A $20.00 shelf price for a book MIGHT net the author $2.00 for years of work. Usually less.

Yet somehow the author should be - congratulated if you would. At least that is what everyone is telling me and I assume that is true. Actually, I am quite honored to having been read in this way and thank you for allowing me to share this much of my life with you.

At some chapters you will note a donation button at the end of the chapter.

Practically speaking, very few of us get to read an entire book without interruptions. The buttons are there for your convenience. I will most humbly accept your donation.

Thank You

This is casual reading - something to do while you are waiting on life (or God) to bring you Something To Do. This is about what I did while I was waiting.

I started this for my kids. After my daughter died, it became something for me.... and my son and my wife, then it grew in scope to my friends and more recently due to urgings of other writers, schoolmates and to the listeners of Radio Free Phoenix http://radiofreephoenix.com/ it has become what you read here. I have made it as entertaining as I can.

I hope you enjoy it.



Ron Wortham

Dedication: "I thought I knew me yesterday - whoever sings this song"

Plant Your Seeds

(c) 2005

"I asked the ice, it would not say - but only cracked or moved away

I thought I knew me yesterday - whoever sings this song"

From "Ducks on a Pond"
Mike Heron & Robin Williamson - The Incredible String Band

England - 1968

Dedication

This journal touches briefly on my radio career and is something of a primer for those who wish to learn to be a disc-jockey/radio announcer. This journal is not for you if that is your only interest, even though it is a reflection in parts, of that and of several other careers I have enjoyed. Those careers have added to my life and at times, my life has added to them. The lesson more simply put;

Do not let what you do become who you are.

I wrote this journal initially for my children, as a chronicle of my life in most of its several facets. In its development into an autobiography I have come to feel it should be shared with others also. I have included in its chronology the phases, sections, beginnings, endings, pauses and wonders along with some observations that may be enlightening to some and disturbing to others.

Fear not. Rest assured that if this is not intended for you, you will fall asleep soon or become otherwise distracted. These very personal pages will be abandoned or be misplaced. You will have come to no harm from having begun to read it and stopped. Like leaving a theatre at intermission. Those of us in the spiritual world who will be reading over your shoulder, know when you should sleep. The sets must be changed for the next act, after all.........

It would seem to any who would know me well that I have lived several times in this lifespan, and been blessed with each experience. There are extremely few living or dead who can say they knew me well, including myself. None of us really have that much time.

So, I dedicate this work to my children; Summer Rose (deceased) who died with a life marvelously fulfilled at the age of 12. And to my surviving son Dustin, who like myself will make of himself a generational chameleon in a fantastic and constantly changing world. And to my son Ronald Micah Wortham (deceased) who waits and wonders at his brief 23-day visit. To my wife Debby also who has probably wondered from time to time, who I was before I became who I am now. To myself also - and to whom I shall become.

I am forever changing. As are we all.

We navigate by faith alone - who do not die.

-=Ron Wortham=-

"The answers are the questions, sir

The lady soothes the lion's fur -

Meek as a lamb he follows her -

Wherever angels are."

From "Ducks on a Pond"
Mike Heron & Robin Williamson - The Incredible String Band

England - 1968 (C) Elektra Records

CHAPTER 1 The View From The Pond

"Like a Bird on a Wire,

Like a Drunk in a Midnight Choir,

I have tried in my way to be free."

- Leonard Cohen -

In that very first experience of Deja' Vu, we have had our first taste of eternity. It is not just the feeling of having been somewhere before, it is the marvelous awareness of knowing. It is the realization of existence; that one exists -is alive - and is objective enough to know it. Being aware of BEING is our first touchstone of eternity. It is rather like having dreamed of reading this passage over someone's shoulder and coming to know that the shoulder is your own.

For me it began at about the age of 18 months. I was dressed in a little sailor suit strolling through the streets of some California town near San Diego, with my mother and father. We were playing hide and seek in a crowd of very tall people. I would try to get them to go into a toy store or some other interesting place and they would refuse to obey. To teach them obedience, I would run and hide from them. To show their rebellion against my authority, they would keep me just barely in sight. It was a wonderful game except for several minutes of panic when they could see me and I could not see them. It was 1944 and World War II was the national occupation. Our beginnings were in Berkeley, California at an apartment overlooking the campus. The view to the south from above the football field was a major part of my semi-awareness as an infant. My mother and I often sat on the lawns above the field, I am told. Several coincidental visits to that spot in my adult life have brought on huge waves of remembrance, despite that spot having been moved several times by earthquakes.

When I was just a toddler my mother and I moved inland and took up residence in a stately old mansion owned by the Putnam family. Mr. and Mrs. Putnam had been involved in their own war and had declared a domestic cease-fire some years back. They treated each other with the kind of respect that sea captains at war must give each other when both their ships are sinking. There was entirely too much dignity. My father was a cook in the Navy, serving food on troop trains. My mother and I were in charge of the kitchen at the Putnam Mansion and I assumed the additional responsibility of being involved in everything that happened in the yard. It was a few days after we arrived that I located the pond. It wasn't large at all but it was lovely. There were lily pads, goldfish, snails and cool grass all around. It was a miniature world of its own and it was just my size. It became my haven. It was there that I saw my first frog and it was there too, that I found the toy boat. It hadn't been there the first time I saw the pond, I was certain of that. It wasn't a new toy by any means but it was in fine shape even though it was much older than I. Everything and everyone in fact, was much older than I. There was a little paint left on it and it was slightly waterlogged, as though it had been in the water a day or so. It was made of wood and had a tiny red smoke stack.

My main interests in life at the Putnam Mansion were my pond and my mother. We ate in the kitchen where she worked and, sitting in the cabinet beneath the sink where she washed dishes, I pestered her endlessly for chewing gum. Since Juicy Fruit was at a premium, she would often tear off a piece she was chewing and share it with me. Ipana tooth paste was at a premium as well. I remember we had to brush our teeth with bar soap and baking powder at times. Mr. Putnam was a gruff old grouch. He had a rule forbidding happiness in the house and his wife duty bound, saw to it that he enforced that rule. Dinner conversations were continuations of previous arguments that usually ended in a huff as soon as both had eaten just enough to survive until the next meal. They casually despised each other and took it out on the household staff, my mother especially. As for myself, I kept discovering more and more wonderful things about the yard.

The marvelous toy boat had disappeared. One day I was playing with it, the next it was gone. Being just about two years, I knew nothing of mysteries. I began to stumble around the yard in search of the boat, or new diversions. With Mr. Putnam eyeing me carefully, I made my first contact with a ceramic frog. It was a yard decoration, used as a drain stopper in a bird bath. Such things are not for little boys and Mr. Putnam had not yet learned that I had no grasp of certain words such as "no-no". I was taught by several warnings and a swift pop on the bottom. There was no doubt about it. I had a new friend and like it or not, so did he. In the weeks that ensued I learned many things from my new friend, much of it having to do with yard work. Other things had to do with obedience to him and my own personal safety. How and why to stay out of the way of the lawn mower, for instance. In those days a lawn mower had no motor. You had to push it. Within was a whirling, shiny reel that made a scissors sound as it sliced against the blade bar like a paper cutter. It was dutiful hard work, since it was powered by the person who was pushing it. It was a kind of neighborhood status symbol to be SEEN while doing this kind of work, so most of it was always done in the hot sunshine. There were few motorized versions and the person pushing the mower was in complete control. It was my personal duty to run in front of the mower, snatch up a handful of turf and throw it at the reel. I sometimes jammed the mower with small twigs. My gruff, grouchy old friend would pretend he was going to cut my fingers off with the mower and after repeated warnings from him we began an unspoken test of wills. It became our last. It was extremely important to me to win because the winner of this personality clash would it seemed, claim ultimate domain over the yard. It was more of a duel actually, almost the kind of exchange that you see between a matador and a bull. Closer and closer I would come with my tiny tufts of grass, faster and faster would charge the mower. After too long a time of this, came The Moment of Truth. The mower stopped. I moved very close with my handful of grass and placed it fearlessly within an inch of the cutting edge of the reel. As the last bit of grass touched the ground, the mower charged. The pain was enormous. I had never felt anything like it and the feeling was amplified many times over by the fear and surprise. Mr.Putnam had gotten me just as he had threatened. I screamed with the passion of a two-year-old who had been betrayed for the first time in his life.

I extracted my hand from the inner workings of the machinery, I covered it with my other hand. I then did a tuck and roll on the ground howling, kicking, crying and screaming with the remains of my mangled digits held tight against my stomach. In those days there were no air conditioners. Windows were left open for the breezes and you could hear conversations several houses away. It was almost a minute later after my mother and members of the surrounding neighborhood had arrived, that I managed to pull my hand away and look at it. There was green stuff showing on one of the fingers and a tiny pinched spot. All the fingers were there. They all moved. There was not one drop of blood. Some of the neighborhood folk grumbled. Some chided Mr. Putnam. Some chuckled. A few laughed. They all left.

The days at the pond were spent in peace after that. There were some arguments in the house and sometimes I would hear my mother's voice in those arguments. I had finally made up my mind that I didn't want the toy boat after all. I felt a tremendous loss about it but I felt a personal strength in having made that decision as well. I was a very little boy who had had his first revelation about growing up.

The water at the pond was golden and shimmering in the afternoon sun and it had been a warm, glorious day. My mood was one of entrancement. I was in a state of mind which has no explanation, a state of mind that I have experienced many times since. Not quite Deja' Vu, not quite full awareness, a kind of daydream you might have while reading. It was in this reverie that I looked up. Outside the back fence and moving along the railroad track was a flock of sheep. They were the first that I had ever seen and I was filled with wonder. They were kicking up a cloud of dust that seemed to glitter. It shined golden in the afternoon sun. I ran to the back fence to get a better look. There was something very special about all this, it was as though it were a circus show being presented especially for me. I felt very honored.

The shepherd was a tall and friendly looking man with reddish-golden hair and a beard. There was a feeling all around him of happiness. The thought flashed in my mind that it might be Jesus but I had seen the pictures my mother had shared with me. It was definitely not him. This man didn't have dark hair. I had no idea what sheep were, so I asked him "What are those?" 'Sheep.' he replied. "Where are you going with them?" said I. 'Down the road' he said - and he smiled. Soon after that, we left the Putnam Mansion in a Model-A Ford. My father did all the driving as he and my mother sang "Sentimental Journey", "A Bushel and A Peck" and many other songs of the day. The Ford had no radio of course, and was a coupe equipped with what was called a rumble seat. It was a seat which opened up where a trunk would normally be on most cars. I was desperate to ride in that rumble seat. Unfortunately there was some kind of law that my father knew of against little boys riding in the rumble seat. I was forced to straddle the gearshift knob, perched uncomfortably on the drive shaft hump or in my mother's lap. Occasionally I sat in my father's lap and had a hand in steering the car on the long and empty desert roads. After two days of this, an amicable agreement to seating was worked out among the three of us. I happened to fit nicely in the package tray in front of the rear window. In spite of the oppressive desert heat, I slept most of the way across the western United States on our way to Texas. It was there where we were to start our new life.

We returned to the Putnam Mansion for a visit years later when I was a teenager. Other than the Putnam's both having passed on, little had changed. I wondered who died first and who was happiest about it. The old bird bath with its frog was still in its place. The spot where Mr. Putnam and I had had our lawn mower duel was overgrown with weeds. The remains of my pond were still visible but had long ago run dry. I saw a piece of aging, rotted wood that might have been a toy boat at one time. What I was most anxious to see though, were the railroad tracks behind the fence where the Shepherd and his sheep had gone by. Of all my memories of the Putnam place, it had impressed me the most.

Some states of mind have no explanation. There is no railroad track outside that back fence, nor has there ever been one. There is only a stone wall where I had seen the Shepherd guiding his flock. That wall has been there for many years. It is just a foot or so taller than a two-year-old child.

CHAPTER 2 All Cats Are Girls, All Dogs Are Boys

The Polytechnic area of Fort Worth, Texas was something of a cross between a university neighborhood and an army camp. It was laid out with streets marked simply by an alphabetical designation. There were Avenues G, H, I, J, K, L, M and N just south of Texas Wesleyan College. No one seems to know what happened to avenues A through F or avenues O through Z. I lived on Avenue J from the end of World War II to Korea. If you want to be more precise about the time frame, it was between"The Hucklebuck" by Tommy Dorsey and "Rock Around The Clock" by Bill Haley and The Comets. Or for another point ov view, it was about the time of "Hound Dog" by Elvis. Somewhere prior to that time period I discovered that "White Christmas" by Bing Crosby could make me cry uncontrollably. I played it over and over on our old Philco 78 rpm record player trying to figure out why. It didn't take me long to figure out the rest of the world, simply by its behavior. I came to the conclusion early on for instance, that all cats were girls and all dogs were boys. For myself, I was an alley rat - a trash picker. From the ages of five through twelve, I could not resist a tempting trash can. I knew the alley ways and could spot a "treasure can" just by walking by it. It astounded the other kids. I would often find very expensive toys or most anything of value to trade to the other kids for other trash or sometimes money. I would always bring the "good stuff" home to my mother. They ranged from silk ties, ornate dishes, costume jewelry and clothes hangers to an inventory of other necessities. I was a good provider in my way, but I almost never checked our own trash. The other kids did that. Cokes came in bottles for a nickle. It was two cents for the bottle deposit but you always drank it in the store. They would stash the cokes in a freezer so that when you opened the bottle it would have little slivers of ice in it. A loaf of bread was nineteen cents, as was a pack of any brand of cigarettes.

There was a little belt-making shop on Rosedale street about four blocks away where they threw away scraps of leather. It was called the Tandy Leather Company which merged years later, with some kind of electronics store called The Radio Shack. I could never figure out how a belt and leather company would want to partner up with an electronics store. I used to pick up leather scraps there for free, to make lanyards for my Boy Scout projects. The Army Surplus store a few blocks in the other direction had a fantastic world of gadgets and goodies for a few cents. I would often buy tank periscopes for a quarter and body tents for a dime. They were smelly, vertical shrouds that had a clear plastic top. They were supposed to protect you from mustard gas. They were also great in a summer shower and you could play Spaceman in them We knew about space men already and these things were round and domed - like flying saucers.

There were some glorious days there as in any child's life. My friend Raymon and I used to create wild fantasies and play them out. One of those fantasies had us digging for treasure. On that particular day I was in "that" state of mind - the reverie that has no explanation. We grabbed some digging tools and I headed straight for a corner of the back yard. It seemed I knew exactly where to dig and indeed, I may have. About two feet below the ground we found a coffee can that had been buried for years. It was so rusty that it barely held together. Inside was someone's hoard of costume jewelry. With the exception of possibly one ring, it was junk. Absolutely priceless to any child.

My years on Avenue J were an introduction to life. There was always music on the neighborhood radios. Somewhere in those early years I discovered the thrill of hearing two radios in different houses playing the same station at the same time. It was astounding. It was a sort of binaural sound long before stereo became commonly known, since stereo was in the early stages of invention. The disc-jockeys of the time were referred to as "announcers" and they always had something to sell. I had become used to radio programs and of course, all presentations were live as far as I was concerned, including the musical performances. These ethereal radio personalities served as Masters Of Ceremonies for some of the most astounding assortments of bands and solo artists imaginable. At most any time you could hear Bob Wills, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw and The Light Crust Doughboys performing one after another on what I imagined must have been the most grandiose sound stages in the world. It was during one of these non-stop performances that I was changing stations on the dial and heard the "This Old House" by Rosemary Clooney playing on two different stations at the same time. The song was the same on both stations but the lyrics and orchestration weren't even close to matching. It was impossible! She couldn't be in two places at once! With some considerable explanation from my mother, I realized I had been duped. These announcers were playing records and pretending!

There was another kind of song in the air as well. It was made up of neighborhood voices, birds and rustling leaves. There were barking dogs and the bell-like sound of emergency brake cables bouncing against the exhaust pipes of 1948 Buick sedans. The 1949 Mercury had the same problem occasionally, but the bell sound was deeper and usually accompanied by the clatter of universal joints that had been without grease too long. The sidewalk from my house to Vaughn Boulevard two blocks away was a straight line. The overhanging trees made it almost a pipeline for sound. From the service station on that far corner would come the punctuating clang of tire tools and wrenches being dropped to the concrete. The city bus line was a half-block in the other direction on Bishop Street and the diesel engines laid down a central background chord for this non-stop jam session of sounds. It was with this musical accompaniment that I learned about Reading Writing and Arithmetic.

Education in those days was based on what you knew, rather than how well you could learn. For instance you had to KNOW the multiplication tables, not just be able to know how to use a calculator. You had to KNOW your history, rather than know how to find the information in a database or encyclopedia. Education in those days was a form of concrete that it was hoped, would solidify in your head. Elementary school was at first, a looming prison building into which I would dissapear and be eaten by some monster. With the help of little Jan Jackson I got past my horror and fear. Right up into the third grade I did fine. There, I became fascinated with airplanes and spent most of my time in the back corner of the room drawing pictures of what I thought would be the planes of the future. That unexplainable reverie visited and completely enfolded me for several weeks. I would do whatever was necessary to deal with my class work and go right back to my drawings. Whatever was happening to me with those pictures in 1949 was irresistible. Images of fantastic aircraft would appear in my mind almost as if it were a movie. I was compeled to draw them quickly, before the images were replaced by the next ones. There were long, sleek aircraft with delta wings and drooped noses like the Concord. There were stubby, engineless craft that resembled the space shuttles of today. I drew constantly, like a fiend possessed with a secret. Then came the Big Bust.

Mrs. Bratton had a very big bust. Other than that, she was built like a football player that had developed a face like a bulldog. She grabbed my collection of drawings and moved me to the front of the class so I could see her big bust and hear her growling lecture better. Lovely. I still drew pictures of the fantastic airplanes in my mind. It took her a while to realize that I was paying no attention to her at all. A note to my parents caused me to be sent to an optometrist for glasses and another doctor for a hearing examination. I got to keep my ears but the vision that had given rise to my drawings was taken away by a pair of glasses. Now I could see Mrs. Bratton much better. I wondered what her dog was like.

I learned to play the trumpet by ear and developed a great set of chops by the fifth grade. I could play the trumpet solo from Perez Prado's "Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White" verbatim, complete with pitch changes exactly as it was played on the radio. I could also play any bugle call I could hear on record or piano. I was like an idot-savant and my band teacher was a tortured soul because of it. She desperately wanted me to solo
"Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White" in a concert for the parents, but knew I would find a way to screw it up. She was quite correct.

I was introduced to Bible Belt Christianity and was "saved" on my way to Sycamore Park one day. There was a Dangerous Looking Stranger in a Dangerous Looking Car parked under the Rosedale street overpass. It was known as a Very Dangerous Place in Poly. I was taking my time on my bicycle, enjoying the day. The man commanded me to come over and get in his car. I was scared out of my mind. I had heard the stories of boys being forced to do unspeakable things by strangers. Most of those stories were playing back in my mind. Being a good obedient kid, I complied. I was sure I would be chased, caught and really hurt if I didn't. Then too, the guy might know my parents and make up some kind of story about me. Some grown-ups did that. I feared and respected adults, but I had become street wise also. With my hand covering my open pocket knife, I approached his open door. He must have seen it. He asked a number of personal questions that no one has the right to ask a kid. He could tell I was ready to give him a lot of trouble. I was treated to a brief and very personal sermon. The dirty sonofabitch saw to it that I was in tears before he permitted me to go. I swore to myself never to be commanded like that again. More, I hated the fear that had brought the tears to my eyes. When I got to the pool, I swam sixteen laps non-stop. Only in exhaustion did I feel nearly innocent again, I never felt quite clean.

Our "parting shot" from elementary school at D. McRae required us graduating sixth-graders to make predictions about the future for our newsletter of 1954. The idea was to place the newsletter into a time capsule and come back later to find out how many of the student's predictions had come true. My two most memorable of those brought chuckles from the adults and ridicule from my peers. I predicted that the world would someday see electric pencil sharpeners. Further, I made the outrageous prediction that airplane-style seat belts would someday be in all cars. They were ridiculous ideas of course but I got a good grade on the project.

Directly across the street from the school was a little multi-purpose neighborhood store. It was the kind of place where beginning scholars could purchase Big Chief writing tablets or Fudgesicles for six cents depending on priorities. I was a frequenter of the ice cream freezer and penny-candy counter on many occasions. On one of my sorties into the school supply section a gentleman came up to ask if he could helpme find something. I must have seemed moonstruck because I recognized Dave Naugle immediately by his voice. He was one of the main announcers on KFJZ radio and a friend of the store owners. There was an illness in the family and he had come down to the store to help out. When I managed to speak, I explained to him that I needed a Big Chief tablet and a pencil but that if I bought the pencil I would only have four cents left over for a six-cent Fudgesicle. I also told him that I had recognized his voice from KFJZ. He smiled and told me that if I bought them both, he would give me a two-cent discount on the Fudgesicle. What a deal! I determined to never forget him for his favor. It was my first contact with the "other side" of radio. Many years later in 1983 I was blessed with the opportunity to remind him of the event.

My education in the methodology of every day living moved along considerably quicker than my courses in school. I became fascinated with mechanical things and often brought home discarded car parts for disassembly and inspection. The back yard was filled with fuel pumps, universal joints, radiator hoses and other junk. It was only allowed to stay long enough for me to figure out what it was and how it worked. I would do this using the same method of learning that a monkey uses. I was often covered with gasoline and grease.

I was introduced to Sunday School, Church, The Boy Scouts of America, street fighting, multiplication tables, cigarettes, dirty jokes and sex all at about the same time. I became acquainted if not proficient in them all, by the age of twelve.

King Harwell had a car. He was about five years older than I and was spoken of in awe on the streets of Poly. It was said he would fight at the drop a dime. His old tan Chevrolet sported Smitty mufflers and he wore his hair in greased-down duck-tails. In this day and age he would be regarded as "Bad". In that day and age he was even worse. It was during one of my own childhood street fights that we met. It was a passing amusement for him, it was a major event for me. One of the kids from my junior high school had insulted me as his bicycle passed mine on the way home. I decided to make a fight of it and we were drawing a crowd when "The King" drove up. He and his buddy watched the pokes and jabs for a while, then King stepped up to the circle. "Why don't you lay him out?" he asked me. I replied that I was doing what I could. He stepped over to the car and drew out a Bowie Knife about the size of a small baseball bat. "Here" he said. "Do it right". I replied that I didn't want to KILL the guy, just blacken his eye. King just kind of smiled, then he and his buddy left. End of fight.

William James Junior High School and I were having a bad influence on each other. I wore horseshoe taps on my shoes, a part of the orchid, pink and black uniforms of the day. I thrived on the stories from the bigger kids, about a local nightspot called The Cellar and stories about the Tenth Street Gang and the Seventh Street Gang. It was the era of the Beatnick which had arrived about the same time as the music of The Clovers, The Diamonds and Elvis. The Dirty Bop was known as the Poly Drag in that area. I figured I was about four years behind what was going on. Gasoline was 19.9 cents per gallon and the service stations would wash your windshield, check your tires and battery, fill your radiator and check the oil before they asked you how much gas you wanted. A cheeseburger, fries and malt were eighty nine cents. I spent most of my waking hours trying to figure out how to get a car, how to get a girl in that car, and how to get that girl to hold still for what I had in mind to do in that car.

In one of my lanky strolls down the halls of William James Junior High I encountered a young lady my own age that I regarded as particularly cute. It was the end of the school day and she was on her way out with a friend. I figured I was cool and experienced enough to at least make a pass, even though we had never been introduced. As we met in the hall I moved closer to her and extended my left hand to snap my fingers before her in the accepted Beatnick fashion. The idea was that she would respond immediately to her new master and follow me everywhere, like a puppy. I suppose all my physical grace must have been oriented to street fighting. I miscalculated ever so slightly and slipped on my horseshoe taps just far enough to touch her in a very private area when I snapped my fingers. No Master was I - the bounds of personal dignity had definitely been breached. There followed several long interrogations with the Vice Principal. They were not counseling sessions by any means.

I began to get into more fights on the streets and even at my Boy Scout meetings. A few neighborhood teen-agers on motorbikes would get their kicks by harassing our troop. It became a problem, and I became a hero at the encouragement of my father who was forced to watch an encounter between myself and Bill Burgess. Bill Burgess was a couple of years older than I and had a reputation. He knew King Harwell, for instance. My father was forced to watch us discuss the options of having a fight while Bill flipped pebbles off his arm in my general direction. It was the same as saying "Go ahead. Knock this chip off my shoulder". There was no fight, and the drive home was very quiet. After a time, my father made his disgust with me very clear. My understanding was that I would either fight or loose face. Plus, I was to experience considerable personal pain in an area of my body that was becoming used to it. The Big Fight came at the next week's Boy Scout meeting and it wasn't between myself and Bill Burgess. One of his bigger friends came by on his Simplex motorbike for some solo rock-throwing at the building. It was Wesley Hargrove, the guy who had just enlisted in the Navy. He was due to leave in just a few days. He was not a bad guy really, just in the wrong place at the wrong time for the wrong reasons. I won the fight but I couldn't help but wonder if I would dare to get into a fight like that with fifty hostile Boy Scouts standing around. He had guts.

Our scout troop was broken up a few weeks later due to a scandal. One of the new kids had gone with the troop for one of the weekend campouts that for some reason, I had decided not to attend. Eve you see, was introduced to another kind of Original Sin many times over on that trip. The kid was gay - "queer" was the word used in those days - and became the central point of entertainment for the rest of the boys for two consecutive nights. Circumstantial and real evidence about smoking and school problems began to pile up and create worry with my parents. When you are an only child, those problems seem much more important to parents than they really are. The entire series of incidents eventually concluded with an announcement from my father that we were moving and that I would be attending a new school soon. Very soon.

Forest Oaks Junior High was just what some doctor somewhere must have ordered. It was new, unsullied and boring. I was almost immediately the object of intimidation in the school. This time it was from a teacher, the coach. I was to go out for Football or be given a failing grade in Physical Education. It was persecution of the most direct kind and would have drawn a lawsuit in these days. I decided to try to make the best of it. I even tried to excel, and I succeeded. I was first off the line in practice. I hit harder, bounced further and became oblivious to pain. My efforts gained me a starting lineup position as Right Guard in a "T" formation even though without my glasses, I could see no further than my wrist. I could block well but any kind of movement beyond my range of vision was mostly a blur. I had won out over a very good team mate for the right guard position, but it cost me a few minutes of consciousness. He attempted to kill me by strangling me me with a towel in the shower room. He jumped me from behind while I was coming out of the shower, looped a towel around my neck and jerked down tight. I passed out almost immediately. There was no fight this time, I went out like a light. He apologized for his bad sportsmanship when I came back to life. I thought it was damn nice of him to apologize. I lettered for three consecutive years of Junior High football and during that time I made exactly one tackle. One.

CHAPTER 3 A Studebaker Is A Fine Lover

Bonnie Hooper walked into Eighth Grade Study Hall one day, a transfer student from another part of the city. She had just enrolled and this was her first class. She had not had an opportunity to meet anyone else. For me, the situation could not have been more perfect. Her hair was ridiculous but her eyes were brown and huge, offsetting a long and lovely face. Her body was incredible.

There was no question about it. There was an unmistakable "zing" when our eyes met - at least in mine. I went directly to her when study hall was over. Inside of two minutes we were going steady. We were lovers in less than two weeks, and it continued through several readings of "Peyton Place" for the greater part of High School. Whatever had prompted my father to buy me a car at my premature age of fifteen, it was the other lover in my life. The car was right off a used car lot and had originally been laquered in a deep maroon, then painted with a neutral shade of gray enamel. The previous owner of this bedraggled 1950 Studebaker Champion two-door coupe had been a woman. She must have been insane. The car had been painted a third time in a gross shade of sunshine yellow, and with a paintbrush yet. Worse, she had used indoor house paint. It stunk. It was seven years old.It also ran well and could be had for $125.00 cash. For $125.00 my father changed my destiny. He did that several other times also, at varying prices and rates of interest. I was becoming plainly spoiled.

Comedian George Carlin was a disc-jockey in those days at KXOL radio in Fort Worth. At nights and on weekends he spent his apprenticeship as a comedian at The Cellar. In most all of my spare time I could be found in the garage listening to his show and working on the Studebaker. He was hip in the extreme, there was no doubt about it. Short takes from his nightclub routines leaked out over the air and I was often in stitches over his quips. I began to wonder what it would be like to be a DJ and pretend that I was in the world of normal people. The Studebaker began to show the aspects of a diamond in the rough. George Carlin was undoubtedly made of similar, if not finer stuff. The Studebaker began to take on a personality of its own and I began to accept what had first appeared to be a very awkward design. She had a style about her that had been trashed up by Detroit. When I was finished with it a year later all the body seams had been filled and smoothed off. All the remaining chrome was gleaming and the dozen or so emblems, unnecessary trim and decorative garbage had been removed. She was porcelain white with a nice flame job around the bullet grille and headlights. She finally had the look that her designers had intended, that of a jet. I had removed the engine, overhauled it and hand-cleaned the entire block. It too, had been painted white with five gallons of lacquer. The engine was left absolutely stock and I dreamed of one day transplanting a Chevy engine into the car. There was just barely enough room in the back seat for one very determined couple to do anything they wanted.

There are times in any relationship or love affair where things do not go smoothly. In the first few weeks of eighth-grade passion between Bonnie and I, there was the emergence of a rival in the form of Danny Yancy. He was more of an obnoxious nuisance than a real danger, a master of pushing himself right to the line. He was after Bonnie or me, whichever he could provoke first. His style was part punk, part clown and part real challenger. There were a few schoolyard threats and it appeared as though the problem would continue to the point of confrontation, or indefinitely. Whenever it appeared as if I had had enough and was about to lay him out, he would back off. It continued tediously for two weeks. Enter an unexpected friend and hero by the name of Billy Telford. Billy was the team quarterback, All-American Good Fellow and knew when to butt in. I was prepared for my usual early morning pre-class meeting with Bonnie and the inevitable nasty presence of my quasi-rival, when a most amazing thing happened. Danny arrived on campus in his usual bop-slither-shuffle gait, walking in our general direction. I prepared for the usual half-boring, half-challenging annoyment, or something close to a fight.

Billy Telford with his usual entourage of buddies, suddenly assumed a "High Noon" stance directly in front of Danny about thirty yards away. He began to stalk purposely toward Danny with fire in his eyes. When they were approximately ten feet apart, Danny stopped uncertainly. What happened next was so unexpected that no one could have stopped it if they had believed it. Billy pulled out a pistol, cursed Danny and fired several shots at point-blank range. Reeling away to his right, Danny grasped wildly over his chest in several places with head thrown back, eyes wide - grimacing in horror. School yard assassinations are commonplace now but in 1956 it was unthinkable for something like this to happen. To die in a school ground shooting at the age of fifteen is not easy for anyone who has planned to someday turn twenty-one, regardless of the generation. In spite of the fact that he was such an asshole, I felt for Danny. My God, for him to die so young just wasn't fair!

Danny in spite of his wounds, continued to stand in place for what seemed like forever. The look on his face was a glazed bewilderment. It was the kind of expression that reflects what everyone must experience when they get the call from God to come Home. He stood. He continued to stand, even as stone-cold dead as he obviously was. People moved out of the way in the direction it appeared he was about to fall. His mindless grasping at his chest became an honest exploration. There was no blood, there were no holes. Danny had been shot five times with a track officials gun, the kind that has a plugged barrel and fires blank cartridges to start the runners at sprint races. The guffaws were long, loud and merciless. The prank served two purposes. It got Danny off my back, and it also signified to Danny that he had been accepted. He smiled proudly. It was on that day that Danny Yancy's behavior changed. He became downright likeable. A few weeks later, his family moved again and Danny was forced to transfer to another school. In the meantime his visits to the Vice Principal's office became far less frequent. His grades improved. I heard that just before he left Forest Oaks, he had found a girl. A year later though, I heard that he had been severely beaten at the Berry Street Bowling Alley. Someone had repeatedly smashed his head against a car bumper and a friend of his had been bludgeoned to death with a tire iron.

Forest Oaks Junior High became a school with a reputation quickly, and it was not all the fault of the student body. The Fort Worth Independent School District's Building Planning, Architectural and Construction Department in the 1950's must have been inhabited by people who were either without brains, common sense, or without sex. The Girl's locker room and Boy's locker room were placed handily within a few feet of each other, adjacent to the Gymnasium. If you happened to be standing in any of several certain positions in the hallway or Gym, you could see right into the dressing rooms and showers of either locker room. Like I said, whoever designed that must have been without brains, common sense, or without sex. It bears repeating. One of these ideal points of view was the water fountain in the hallway. There were several fountains INSIDE the dressing areas of course but once in the hall, innocents of both sexes suffered from the Thirst of The Damned. Among these was a small clique of young missies in the seventh grade whose behavior was like that of a flock of gossipy, thirsty birds. There were always sexual innuendos to be heard in their conversations and those innuendos were just a bit louder than the other girls. It was supposed to give the impression of worldliness. These virginal hypocrites were part of the fountain scenery at almost every bell.

There are boring times at any school. Unholy Boring Times when nothing is going on, times when something must be made to happen or none of us would remember having been alive. Those of us who are True Leaders come somehow to sense those times as they arrive and instinctively, we know what to do at those times. My shining moment of glory came one day at that fountain. Having learned to play pool, I had also discovered a dispenser in the bathroom at the pool hall. For twenty-five cents you could buy all the sophistication you could want in the form of a condom. Using my best Slight of Hand, I dropped a naked "rubber" into the water fountain. Behind me was the small cliquish flock of gossipy, virginal birds. I was most of the way down the hall when the screams began. They continued as I made my way to class. The Vice Principal was very understanding. I got two understanding licks with a paddle, and a third that wasn't even friendly.

CHAPTER 4 Why Do Fools Fall In Love?

The ninth grade gave way to summer and I gave way to algebra. Actually, it was an algebra teacher whom I suspected had very personal reasons for failing me in his course. I suspected jealousy of the relationship between Bonnie and I. We were both in his algebra class. His manne though foppish, was noticeably affectionate toward her. A sociologist with a viewpoint prejudiced in my favor would have observed a personality placed somewhere between Liberace and Joseph Stalin.

In any case, this particular authority figure determined that even though I was coming up with the correct answers to his algebraic equations, the methodology of my thought process was incorrect. I was condemned to summer school with additional tutoring (at a reasonable fee) by this same pompous ass whom I considered a fag. How fun. At home, things got bad. As punishment for being condemned to Summer School and sending my folks therefore to Social Hell, I was forced to learn to play the piano. This sort of discipline creates a noticeable tension in any atmosphere, and I began to have serious and violent differences of opinion with my father. To ease the stress, pay for gasoline and appear to be more of a responsible owner of an automobile, I took on a part time job at Houlihan's grocery and market. Bonnie and I saw less and less of each other but I thought of her at least twice a day when the muzak system played "Zing Went The Strings" by the Kirby Stone Four. What the hell, it would only be three months and summer school was only six weeks long.

The job at the grocery store paid minimum wage which at that time was about $1.15 per hour. Max, the owner and boss ordered me to personally clean the toilets to hospital standards. I did. I also insisted when we were alone, that he inspect them - especially up under the rim where I had used a chemical preparation of my own. You have to stick your head in the toilet to make that kind of inspection. The crappers were spotless, we both agreed. Max had made a deal of some kind for cabbage that sent all the store help buzzing. It didn't seem to me like it could be anything drastic until I heard that we were talking about cabbages by the multiple ton. Upon the arrival of the first ton of cabbage, the produce manager quit. I was given a nickel raise and made Produce Manager in full charge of the produce department. I learned to order stock, peel cabbage, mop the floors, peel cabbage, operate the cash registers, peel cabbage, work weekends and peel cabbage. I became aware that here at the store, I was being used and thoroughly put through the mill. God, how some older people must really hate the young.

In the space of a month I peeled and shelved three full tons of rotting cabbage that had probably been intended for hog fodder. It was delivered in several shipments from a garbage truck. The outside of the cabbage heads were either black and wilting or rotting and slimy. It was my job to peel off the outer layers and place the remaining "good" cabbage on the produce shelves. Max ran full-page ads selling the stuff at a penny a pound. His total investment for both truck loads was sixty bucks. We sold it all.

During my "training period" I learned how to clean mold from produce racks. I learned how to salvage and sell fruit and vegetables that were unfit to eat. I also learned that Max had a daughter that most men would kill for. I began to ask very complimentary questions about her and it became clear to Max that I was putting up a fight on his own turf. My gentlemanly "down and dirty" style brought on a new respect. Max and I saw eye to eye finally, and things began to lighten up. Through all this grinding character building and initiation into the Real World, Bonnie stayed with me. On the way she picked up a girl friend whom I recall only as "Mousie". Mousie was fun and cute and a nearby neighbor of Bonnie, living less than a block away. She had the kind of personality that was both complimentary and totally dependent. Mousie was not particularly well built or attractive, so finding her a ready boyfriend wasn't an option. She didn't seem to want that either. Her attachment to Bonnie became a visible thing. Our love life became jeopardized. It got to the point that we had little time alone and though Mousie could take a hint, it was always too late.

It was somewhere near the third ton of cabbage that I lapsed into that dream-like state of mind that has no explanation. My produce knife was long, thin and razor sharp. I could peel cabbage with my eyes closed and faster than the customers could carry it out. I resolved in this reverie that Bonnie and I would have a down-to-earth talk with Mousie and work something out. I discovered to my surprise, that Bonnie did not necessarily agree. The attachment had become too strong. The whole problem was resolved a short time later. Mousie and her family were forced by very unusual circumstances to move to a different part of town. A freak tornado came out of the sky during a Texas-style summer thunderstorm and totally devastated only one house and slightly damaged another, in a row of four on her block. It was Mousie's house that was nearly leveled. No one was at home when it happened. I had picked up a couple of friends of my own during my Junior High School days but they never interfered with Bonnie and I. They didn't need to. They were the Bobsie Twins, Katzenjammer Kids and two thirds of the Three Stooges all rolled into one. Doug was thin, wiry and lanky. He had a large Roman nose that appeared to have been placed on his face by someone who wondered what he would do with it. Larry Day was blonde, ruddy and pigeon-toed. Somehow he could throw his weight back and run with his legs splayed out as though he were bowlegged. He was fast enough to make the track team. We were all football players. Our friendship extended into high school and by rights, we should have all been jailed or killed. "I dare you" was never spoken amongst us three. It wasn't necessary. What one did, we all did. There was no question in any of our minds that we were all fools, it was a gentleman's agreement. The contest was to determine which of us was the biggest fool of the three. He who gained that honor would be The Loser. Until that was decided, we would be together.

Larry had access to his family car which was a 1949 Chevrolet two-door with a slant back trunk. Doug occasionally drove his sister's car but was more often seen in his mother's 1950 Chevy four-door with a "hump trunk". I had my Studebaker. All three cars were abused mercilessly. "Peeling Rubber" - the wanton squealing of tires on pavement, was a statement of personal freedom in those days as it is, still. That was the least of our hell-raising. There were hare-and-hound chases throughout Cobb Park, southeast Fort Worth and Poly that were simply insane. Weekends at the drag strip were a joy for us all. Any muddy road was a challenge and there were dozens of them. At times we would have two cars stuck at the same time. Somehow, we always made it home. Doug loved the roar and speed of racing but had no understanding of mechanics. You had to have an "ear" for your engine in a drag race. The idea was to shift gears just before reaching the RPM power curve peak. He was challenged by a Ford and asked me to ride with him. We won by about ten feet, with me telling him when to shift.

Cobb Park was a no-man's land of sorts, with winding dirt roads and many places for lovers to hide. All too often there were perverts as well. The cops rarely patrolled it. Larry's house was on a dead-end street that stopped on a steep hill, with Cobb Park below. It was a great spot to watch a sunset if you cared for that sort of thing. Past the curb was a slow, rolling hilltop covered in weeds. If you continued your descent, the trail became very steep. It was rough and stony all the way down to one of the winding park roads that had become our race track. A few motorcycles used it as a hill-climb. It was a full mile in either direction from there to any other exit from the park. Going down that hill in a car was a severe test of brakes, skill and nerves. Any mistake at all could flip a car over. Going UP that hill in a car was our version of Russian Roulette. It was Doug that wiped out after we had all three made the hill many times. He survived just fine. The car was banged up a little, but his folly brought our relationship as friends to a point of precipitation. He was courageous enough of course, but he had blown it by going alone. The fact that he was trying the hill often enough to wipe out meant that his contest had become a private and personal one. The wipe-out should have been while we were all three there to share in it.

We hung together for one full year of High School at Tech before Doug and Larry decided to transfer back to Poly. Our final parting of ways came when Larry confessed that he had experienced a homosexual relationship with a stranger in the park.

No one said goodbye. No one had to.

CHAPTER 5 In The Still Of The Night

The Technical High School Class of 1960 has never had a reunion that I was aware of, invited to, or was able to attend. I believed that most of us never cared to see each other again. Tech was a vocational school where you could start out life with a trade and maybe a job if you wanted one. There was little school spirit, just a lot of determined, self-oriented people bent on survival with a high school diploma and a few college credits.

Bonnie went to Tech because I did. I had decided that I would become an aircraft mechanic. Her family had moved near the school and lived just a block away. Her mom died in that house near the school. She and her dad moved around a couple of times and wound up in a house that was less than two blocks from my own in southeast Poly. Somewhere in our junior year there was something in our relationship that just gave way to changes. It was me. Perhaps I had grown tired of her. I was definitely attracted to other girls. Then too, I was becoming a possessive, jealous jerk. Whatever was between us was turning rancid. In any case there was something in me that just snapped and I stopped communicating with her completely. It was anticipated. It was cold. It was necessary.

I was a self-taught guitar player with a dream of having a band. During my senior year at Tech, I assembled a three-piece combo with another guitarist and a drummer. I dubbed us "The Solomons". I am not sure now nor was I then, if it was a name selected for the Solomon Islands or the Biblical king. We built a song list of about thirty tunes that we could play passingly well, all copied directly off the radio. Our show-stopper was "In The Still Of The Night" by the Five Satins. I sang lead as best I could by imitating Little Anthony. It worked. We played one successful gig at the Sycamore Recreation Hall between records spun by the recreation director. Shortly after that, I somehow made a connection for us to play a paying job at a Teen Canteen dance on the Northside. We bombed for thirty bucks and never played again.

I had put in almost three years of aircraft training and my interest in airplanes became contagious. My father worked for Bell Helicopter and decided that he wanted to learn to fly. So did I. It became a common ground for our adult father-son relationship. It was not as big a deal as it seemed, he got a heck of a good buy on a 1948 Taylorcraft BC12D. It was a lovely two seater fabric plane with a 65 horsepower Continental engine and a cruising speed of about 90 miles per hour. It was no more expensive than a good car. The Studebaker had gone through a front end job, brakes, several driveshafts and several odd-matched sets of tires. The engine was just fine, but one day she just gave up. I was pulling in the driveway at home when the right A-frame gave way and she crashed hard to the concrete on the right side. I was dumfounded. I turned off the engine and sat there in a dazed stupor for a full minute. I had just begun to wonder how the car must look tipped at a crazy angle like that, when the A-frame on the other side did exactly the same thing. The car had not moved an inch since it had stopped, other than crashing ignominiously to the ground. I was double dumfounded. I managed to drive the car grinding and scraping all the way, into my dad's parking spot. I wonder yet if the car had not been tampered with. Two blocks down my street and a block and a half toward the neighborhood store lived a friend about my age who also had a 1950 Studebaker. His was a black convertible with a blown engine. He was headed for the Navy. It took a couple of weeks of serious negotiations, but we worked out a deal on it. I traded my white-laquered engine over to the convertible which was otherwise in much better mechanical shape than my white jet. A little flame work around the headlights made the job complete, and I was back on the road again with fresh air all around.

I drove that car for the remainder of High School. I got my diploma in the spring of 1960 and was forced to miss the graduation party. I had to be at work for my new job the next morning at 7am. I had signed on as a mechanics helper at the small airport where our plane was hangered. Thatt was a mistake. I had begun to learn that some people don't like you when; (1) You areyoung, or (2) if they are supposed to be your boss. This was lesson number two. Something about me just didn't set right with my new boss and he took his time developing his hatred for me. I got along fine with everyone else. In spite of the obvious personality conflict, I made the best of the job. There were some fine adventures at Russell Field in my two month career there. Most mornings before work, I would arrive early and fly in the still morning air. It was wonderful. Then too, there was non-stop entertainment from the customers who would fly in to gas up their aircraft.

One of these was a crop duster pilot who was flying to Oklahoma City. He arrived in a brand-new Snow aircraft, one of the best crop dusting planes in the air. We were fogged in with visibility down to about fifty yards. How he found the airport, I'll never know. We gassed up his plane and filled a five gallon Jerry Can full of aviation fuel. He almost made it away from the pump when I spotted his Jerry Can spout on the rear stabilizer. He was about to fly off with an open can of gas in the spray hopper. He and the Snow would probably become a flying torch. Several of us called, hooted and raise hell. He thanked us for saving him from certain incineration and waved gallantly as he taxied down the strip, for take-off through the misty soup that was our air supply that morning. It was only fitting that he "buzz" the hanger on his way out and he did it in grand style, waving again. I motioned in frantic animation at the fifty-foot light pole in front of him just before he spotted it himself. The Snow almost broke in half when he heaved back on the stick. He missed the pole by less than five feet and almost stalled out about 100 feet up. We never saw him again.

The air gets very thin when it is hot. Overloaded aircraft have a rough time of it. We were paid a visit from an Air Force Colonel who with his wife, was traveling cross-country. He was flying a salvaged Grumman Beaver which had been used for reconnaissance during World War II. It must have flown for a million hours and appeared to be extremely tired. With a full load of fuel and four additional Jerry Cans of gasoline plus wife and baggage, it just refused to become airborne in the 103-degree heat. The Colonel made two takeoff attempts. The second was directly toward a set of powerlines. He had just barely enough airspeed to turn away from them and lost all that in the turn. Under full power, the Beaver settled to earth like a tired old dog. A new set of spark plugs and five gallons less fuel gave it just enough lift to get above the 20 foot "dead zone" of heated air just above the ground. He didn't even try to fly the takeoff pattern. He just set the compass on north and gained what altitude he could, flying just above downtown Fort Worth and just below the Carswell Air Force Base traffic. How he kept from being shot down must have been a matter for the radio.

My own antics were limited to kid stuff. I had a new girlfriend named Eileen who was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I guess I had a thing for brown eyes. She didn't care for me however and despite several dates and proclamations of passion, she broke it off between us. As a farewell salute, I called her to let her know I would be flying over her house. Being thus sure I would be observed, I dropped two harmless rolls of toilet paper out of the airplane at about 3,000 feet. Sure enough, I was spotted by a Civil Air Patrol plane. I got a warning, but no citation. On one beautifully smooth misty morning I crashed. I had been shooting landings that were extraordinary. Absolutely no bounce at all. I was enjoying myself immensely in what was the finest flying weather of my life. Over at the hanger was the boss, frantically waving me in. He had arrived early and was determined to spoil my fun. It was a full half-hour before I was supposed to be on the job. I made one last touch-and-go before coming around for the final landing and it was a sweet greaser. It was as though I had landed on water. The T-Craft simply kissed the ground. The boss was waving wildly in an unmistakable demand that I get to work NOW. I pulled off onto the taxi way faster than I should have. The landing gear simply gave way. What had made my landings so smooth was that the bungee cords - a kind of huge rubber band supporting the landing gear, had snapped. The plane dropped to the restraining safety cable and I immediately shut down the gas and ignition. The plane was still rolling dragging the left wingtip, when the restraining cable itself snapped. There was a shower of dirt and pieces of propeller in the air. Everything stopped. There was no fire, but every piece of fire and safety equipment on the field was on the scene in less than a minute. That consisted of a few old cars, a pickup with a fire extinguisher and a three-wheel Harley Davidson with a rumble seat. The real damage was limited to the prop. The plane was repaired inexpensively and re-certified for flight in less than a week. An inspection of the bungee cords revealed that they had either worn out or been cut. I flew several times after that but my confidence was gone. A few days later on the way home, the Studebaker engine locked up. It seemed to be as good a reason as any to quit my job.

Something at Russell Field and I did not belong together.

CHAPTER 6 Exodus-sudoxE

North Texas State College was my college of choice. It was big, beautiful and incomprehensible. The listing of available classes made no sense to me whatever. I had no academic plan and no counseling. The registration line convinced me that I was not ready for college. It was almost a quarter mile long and completely motionless. It would be weeks before I reached the head of that line. I could easily starve to death in that line. Worse, I was sure that I would have give up my place and go to the bathroom when I got to the head of the line. I wasn't ready for this. I could feel a rush of panic beginning to well up inside me. I turned away from my first opportunity for an advanced education, an opportunity to become a factory employee, to become a meaningful part of society, a financially protected worker ant with hospitalization insurance - I gave up all this glorious opportunity for the totally predictable, and went home. I was surprised that my family understood. There were no arguments, just questions. I made a few inquiries by phone and discovered that I could without tuition, return to Technical High for post-graduate work. Some of the courses were good for college credit at North Texas State College and other schools. I needed a semester of make up work to qualify for an examination as an A&P aircraft mechanic. I decided to go for it. I also enrolled for courses in Speech, English, Typing and Journalism. This voluntary fourth year of High School was the most enjoyable of them all. I had already graduated. I had nothing to loose.

Early morning English classes became an experiment in sociology. A.L. McElroy was a superb instructor with an appreciation for people. He pretended to be a tyrant in order to keep discipline, and we saw right through him. We became fans of "Mr. Mac" and would parade militarily up and down the hall to and from his class. These parades became the talk of the school and were eventually called to a halt when one of the kids brought in some Nazi arm band souvenirs from World War II. Mac loved my writing style and gave me an "A" for one six weeks period because of my choice of words in a single essay. The next six weeks I got an "F" for insubordination.

Marian Mobley was the Journalism instructor and in charge of the school newspaper, published once each six weeks. I was assigned in March as the editor of the April, 1961 issue of the Technical High School Bulldog. It was the height of Fidel Castro's revolution in Cuba. April Fool's day was calculated, instigated mayhem. This issue of the school newspaper featured Vice Principal A.B. O'Conner pictured holding a Havana Cigar, head wrapped in a turban and gesturing wildly under a headline that read; "Revolution at Tech - Veep Takes Over". There were bizarre stories of executions and a picture of an ROTC student stuffing a girl's decapitated head down a sink with a rifle butt. There was more horror. Much more. Stories of revolutionary takeovers permeated the school from the print shop to the gymnasium. Teachers had been asked to "sound off" in their interview for the stories and some of them did - with claws bared.

G.B. Trimble, the original Tech Bulldog and Principal of the school, burst through the door of the Journalism class on fire. He had a death grip on a copy of the April Fool's issue, attempting to strangle it with one hand. Marian Mobley stood her ground, saved her job - and my ass at the same time. She pointed out the disclaimer box on page two and finally got it across to G.B. that the whole thing was a joke. I was awed. I had never seen such a heated exchange between adults before. There were threats that I would never receive a diploma from that school and that there might be other ramifications. I smugly refrained from mentioning that my diploma - dated 1960, was resting comfortably on my closet shelf.

In the spring of 1961, I began to plan realistically for college at North Texas State College. The only thing I knew for sure was that it would take money. My parents would pay the tuition, room and board. I would somehow supply essentially all of my own spending money. I took a summertime job as a door-to-door encyclopedia salesman. It resulted in some of the most bizarre experiences of my youth. We went door-to-door conducting a "Nationwide Advertising Survey" and promise a full set of Collier's Encyclopedias for a mere $369.95 in printing costs, if we were allowed to come back later and do publicity on the happy family enriching their minds with the books. It worked well. I made a sale the first day out. My cut was $100.00, the boss got $100.00 and the company got the rest. It was four long weeks and much travel to many Texas towns before I made another sale.

Despair is a funny thing. It makes you take chances. I resolved to try something different in Marshall, Texas and it worked. I approached a young couple at their home and gave them the entire pitch pretending as if I were a handicapped, partially paralyzed paraplegic. I talked only with one side of my face. I used only one side of my body as though I were half-paralyzed. I faked the entire presentation that way. Lo and behold, they signed. I found myself gasping and even drooling a bit to keep from cracking up. That closed it. I hobbled away with the check and did not break into a normal walk until I was at least a full block away. I should have felt ashamed. Somehow I couldn't. I was crazy with success, forgetting that those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make insane.

I was totally alone on a dark semi-rural street in Marshall, Texas. I was beginning to chuckle hysterically, congratulating myself on having pulled such a magnificent con. I was strolling easily, enjoying my sin when I heard a rustling sound in the alley just about a half block ahead. To my horror, it was a pack of about eight large dogs who were running silently. There was no mistaking their dog-pack instinct or intent. It was night. There was no moon and very little light from the nearest street light. They were not focused yet, but they were running wild for a kill and they were headed straight for me. I tried to imagine what I would look like ripped to shreds on a dark curbless semi-rural side street in Marshall, Texas. I imagined what my mother's reaction would be when she got the news. I really don't understand what clicked inside me then but I hoisted my briefcase before me as a weapon, crouched down to dog height and snarled the most vicious sound I have ever heard myself make. It was terror, anger and sheer primal malice all rolled into one. The dogs moved away as if they were a school of fish. In one fluid motion, they ran by me as though I were a fence post. I stood shaking for a time and resolved never again to pretend to be a crippled person.

At age nineteen, I was beginning to learn things about myself that I had not even considered possible. Limitations began to disappear along with certain measures of common sense. My summer as an encyclopedia salesman became packed with these experiences.

My first beer was a warm Lone Star and cost me $16.50. It was about 2:00 A.M. and our encyclopedia sales crew was just pulling into Colorado City, Texas as I bravely downed the last few sour gulps. Beer cans in those days were made of fairly heavy steel. They had to be opened with a "Church Key", which left a triangular hole in the top... two holes if you are thirsty. Such a can makes a wondrous clanking sound when it is thrown. In cavalier fashion, I lofted the empty can over the roof of the car toward the other side of the street. The clanking of that beer can was the only thing to be heard in that sleepy little Texas town, besides the engine of the police car starting up. The can had landed directly in front of the only on-duty cop in town. I did not do well in Colorado City and had to borrow the $16.50 to pay the fine.

CHAPTER 7 Reflections On Having Met Another Me

Texas in the summer can be crazy. The humidity is a major factor and you find yourself (as well as others you come in contact with), going about routine business in an almost apologetic way. Facades, put-ons, egos and exaggerated personalities are almost impossible to maintain and young salesmen who use these ploys suffer dreadfully at the hands of honest people. Put more succinctly; in the summertime in Texas, it's too damn hot for bullshit.

Temple, Texas is no different from any town its size, except for the people. It was here that I came within a few minutes of base insanity, dealing with reality on its own terms. I am convinced you see, that there are times in life when God just "messes" with you purely for the fun of it. He must have liked the name of Temple, Texas and decided it would be a nice place to show me something new about life as a door-to-door salesman. I had developed an "eye" for potential business. Rather than canvassing an entire block of houses, I would place myself in "that" state of mind which has no explanation - and watch for clues that would lead me to a home that showed a potential for encyclopedias. Often there would be toys in the yard, a new car, lots of magazines in the mailbox or sometimes just a certain "feeling" about the place. Salesmen were my best customers. They wanted to hear the pitch to see if they could apply it to their own products and more often than not, they bought. I approached a large white frame house on a hill which had none of those outstanding features at all. Perhaps that was what made it stand out in my mind. It had "that feeling" all over it. The door was answered by a perfectly average woman in her perfectly average early forties. She had hazel eyes, chestnut hair laced with grey and a nice gardener's tan.

I was about to go into my introductory "Nationwide Advertising Survey" pitch when she brushed aside my comments and shooed me in the door. There was nothing rude in her manner, it was just "Come on in". I did. As we walked toward the living room she mumbled "... will be ready in just a minute" and gestured toward the couch. Bewildered, I sat. When she came back into the room, she asked if I would like a drink of water or tea and made another comment about my being "early". It was here that I decided to take command of the situation. "Ma'am, could I speak with you and your husband together?" I asked. "He's busy right now" she eyed me fishily. I knew something was wrong here. Something of possibly epic proportions. I started into my pitch and explained to her that I needed to show her a picture of a TV product, but that her husband had to be present also. She smiled slightly as if I were making a joke. "Sure" she replied and left the room. She returned in less than a minute with a pleasant-looking gentleman who extended a handshake as I stood up. "Hi" he said. "Amy will be ready in just a little bit, I think you're a little early." I ignored the statement but I was suddenly aware that I was not controlling the situation in the least. "Sir" I said as we shook hands, "I am making a nationwide advertising survey here in Temple and I would like to show you a picture of something and have you tell me if you have ever seen it on TV."

The look on his face was that of an adult who was being forced to play in a child's game. "Er, sure Robert. What do you have?" he said. I choked. My head began to swim. Robert. Who the hell was Robert? I hadn't introduced myself yet but he had called me Robert as clearly as though he had called me Robert a dozen times. I was on the defensive. So were they. We eyed each other warily as I began my sales pitch. I heard him say something to his wife about my having a new job, that Amy should be a part of this and was she ready yet? I decided to level. Quick. I introduced myself and explained to these kind folks that I was an encyclopedia salesman working out of Ft. Worth. "Sure Robert" they replied. "Amy should be out in just a minute." The mother left the room hurriedly and the conversation became clumsily, man-to-man. We went eye-to-eye in short order. I kept an eye on the exit door. I displayed my drivers license and other identification, expecting to be thrown out immediately. He was incredulous. I was incredulous. I had a date it seems, with his daughter Amy in less than a half hour and we were definitely on a first-name basis throughout the family. He was astounded. I was not to leave the room or the house. Just sit. I sat as though I were in a pot of water about to boil.

When Amy came into the room I could hardly stand. She was bubbly, bouncy and cute as hell. I figured this would solve the confusion and teach the parents a valuable lesson about being better acquainted with the company their daughter kept. Wrong. Amy was plainly crazy about me. My mind raced. Maybe she was blind. Maybe I had walked in on a blind date. Maybe we had been pen pals and had never met. Maybe she had only seen me in the dark. She was less than ten feet away and moving closer. I felt surely she would see that I was an impostor within an instant.

Wrong again. This lovely lass was about to embrace me, obviously believing me to be her steady boyfriend. I dizzily wished for a moment that I were. I fought the thought away to preserve my sanity. This could not be happening. She was not acting. This was not a joke. She bounced to within hugging range and moved in close for a kiss. I shrank away like a snail who had encountered a grain of salt. She was horrified. My coldness had come to her as a slap in the face. I too, was horrified too. I felt sick. For the space of a few seconds all motion and sound in the room stopped. She was hurt. Her dad was hurt for her. Her mom was hurt for both of them and suspicious of me. I was scared. With the possible exception of myself, there was no doubt in anyone's mind that Robert was acting damn weirdly today and was probably about to break up with Amy. What a sonofabitch this Robert was, somebody ought to beat the crap out of him for taking advantage of her. Amy gazed desperately into my eyes, searching for some explanation. I could see the betrayed look of a young girl who suspected her lover had been discovered drunk, in a house of prostitution.

Good God.

I spent the next few minutes in a cold sweat, explaining my identity to everyone in the room. Amy did not take it well at all. Her eyes grew huge and her mouth hung open. She sat down hard, head shaking. Her father must have been a religious man. His expression was one of enlightened wisdom - that of a person who had been witness to a miracle. God was showing them guys like Robert were a dime a dozen - or at least three for a dollar. Amy's mother became excited as they talked about my meeting Robert. She brought me iced tea and began to fuss over me. Amy kept staring at me and was very quiet. I wanted out of there. Now. As best I could tell, I was less than ten minutes away from meeting myself head-on in the form of Robert. I regret to this day not having done so, but at the age of nineteen I was not in the least prepared for such an experience. Amy's mother excitedly cajoled for me to remain. Her father was passively enthusiastic. Amy was passively not so sure. I was absolutely certain. Despite pleas from her mother for me to remain, I left the house as gracefully and quickly as I could. It felt like leaving home. I walked in a daze until I stopped trembling. The encyclopedia business was definitely taking something out of me.

When the Texas heat finally baked some warmth into me, I sat down on a street corner. I have no idea how long I sat there. I must have been praying, holding my head in my hands. "Are you OK son?" I looked up. It was a cop. He was concerned that I might be having a heat stroke. On any other day I could have handled the situation with no problem. On this particular day and at that particular moment, I couldn't have handled buying a Coke from a vending machine. Since I had no local door-to-door sales permit and was unable to carry on a normal conversation, I wasted most of the night as a guest of the City of Temple in one of their newly painted jail cells. I spent the time thinking about Amy and her family until our crew foreman came and bailed me out. I didn't even try to explain. He knew enough not to ask. I suspected that Temple, Texas had had a noticeable effect on the rest of the crew as well.

Sidewalk artist (right), self-portrait.

CHAPTER 8 Everything Money Can Buy

West Texas in 1961 was a wonderful place to live but you wouldn't want to visit there if you are a salesman. Big Springs, Midland, Oddessa and the outlying towns were openly hostile to anyone dressed in a suit and carrying a briefcase. They had a simple ordinance regarding purchase of door-to-door sales licenses. They bust you on sight. If you are slick, you carry a few copies of The Watchtower and claim to be a Jehova's Witness on a mission from God. If the cops search your briefcase and find insurance contracts, encyclopedias, a vacuum cleaner or aluminum siding, you are a monkey in a cage. You remain in that cage until you come up with enough cash to lecture on Famous American Presidents.

I spent a number of hours in a number of such cages in west Texas during my summer as a salesman. One of those jails was quite literally a cage. It was a ten foot cube of welded iron pipe held closed by a chain and padlock. I was in a slump and hadn't sold a single set of encyclopedias in three weeks. I was on "the draw" and the draw funds were running shallow. The color of my confidence was a very pale shade of gray and I began to seriously doubt my ability to make enough spending money to survive more than a week of college.

Encyclopedias are (or were in those days), an essential decorative accent to the Average American Home. They are an essential accessory to any address that subscribes to Better Homes And Gardens. There just aren't any better ways to insure that 2.3 children will assimilate enough knowledge to pass sixth-grade history. Any parent knows you can simply take a few pages of the encyclopedia and mix it into the potato salad with the new food processor. One way or another you get it into your kids. If not, at least the whole set just sits there making you look intelligent. The paradox of such a possession is in the choice between use and display. Encyclopedias showing signs of wear are simply unacceptable. They cost too damn much to have some kid with grubby hands smear peanut butter on the cover and wear out the bindings on a parquet floor. To properly care for encyclopedias, you must buy them when the children are less than six years old and forbid them to touch the books for ten years or, until they are old enough to begin serious studies of The Anatomy. It is at this point that you can discard Grandpa's National Geographic series on The Boobs of Bora-Bora. People who buy encyclopedias look upon encyclopedia salesmen as wondrous Miracles of Life and Human Culture. People who don't buy encyclopedias look upon encyclopedia salesmen as sub-human social failures. Encyclopedia salesmen look upon themselves as enterprising goal-oriented survivalists and horny, sub-human social failures. All these evaluations are correct. Our raids on these west Texas towns had been very successful for all but three of our crew. I and two other salesmen had batted zero, with myself and one other having occupied a jail cell in separate towns. He had elected to give up and borrow bus fare home. The rest of our twenty-odd swashbucklers had rented several large rooms at a motel.

It was late in the evening when my crew chief bailed me out of the local tank. As we drove to the motel, he tipped me off that something was up. I figured I was about to be given bus fare home. I hadn't made a sale in almost a month.
When we arrived at the motel I was ushered up to one of the larger suites. Inside was four beds placed side by side with about six naked men and one girl. She was young, naked, lovely, extraordinarily well built and of course, a prostitute. It was obvious that some of the guys had made a lot of money and were showing off. I felt sick. I had been without a lover for over a year but this had nothing to do with love. It was like wearing someone else's dirty underwear. The loudest, most obnoxious and successful of our crew chiefs was pimping. He offered me the girl for $125.00. Her fee was $100.00. I refused, citing the fact that I was totally broke. I made no mention of feeling like I was in a dog pack, gang-banging a bitch in heat. Mr. Obnoxious loudly offered to loan me the money as the girl rubbed her body against my side, stroking me through my pants. I felt sicker. I snapped a "No thanks" and left the room.

The next day I made a sale. I'm not sure it was because of my disgust with the motel scene, or my resolve to remain temporarily celibate and to not make a career of encyclopedia sales. I honestly didn't give a damn if I made a sale or not. It had an unexpected effect on my memorized sales pitch. I made two more sales the next day and averaged three sales a week from that point on. I began to be noticed at the bank, back in Ft. Worth. One of the tellers was Elaine Jackson whom I had known since grade school. My deposits had caught her attention. She had the biggest, most beautiful eyes imaginable and had grown into a delicious looking woman. For the first time ever, I found the courage to ask her for a date. For the first time ever, she was engaged.

What the hell I thought, I was about to start college. There would be dozens and dozens of available girls. Sure. Dozens.

CHAPTER 9 What I Did On My College Vacation

September 1961 marked the beginning of my college education. We newcomers were briefed at an assembly by the Dean of North Texas State College. He looked exactly like my high school principal. He proudly announced that he was now the Dean of North Texas State UNIVERSITY and that we were to become the first graduating class in 1965. The school had attained University Accreditation. He was proudly, a major part of that. Reading between the lines was the meaning; "You people had better not screw this up".

He ignored the fact that many of us who were not present were overseas getting our bodies disemboweled and dismembered in Vietnam. He didn't mention that most of us were extremely lucky pricks whose parents had enough bucks to keep us herded together and safely involved in draft exempt activities. Vietnam was like the clouds above us; out of sight, but always threatening rain. None of us spoke of the war. Vietnam was an obscene act taking place with a diseased whore in the next room. We were all too innocent to watch, or even understand it. I left after the speech and blew five bucks on the pinball machines at the drugstore across the street. I liked pinball. You couldn't win, just rack up a big number. Like Vietnam.

War - the Vietnam war at least, was something I despised. I felt terribly alone in that position. I had no idea others felt the same way. I began to realize that I was unable to escape it nonetheless, and that it was somehow harbored in that place of refuge in my mind usually reserved for prayer and nightmares. Being a Freshman at the new University was akin to being a prisoner. My residence was forcibly on campus at the men's dorm. The arrangements were inclusive of room and board with curfew. There were women's dorms and social activities on campus that us "fish" mostly never heard about. I went through several room mates quickly as we all adjusted to each other's personalities. I wound up with one other roomie in a three-bed room. We both delighted in the extra space.

Scott was several years older than I, a travelled ex-paratrooper and considerably worldly. I soon discovered that his considerable worldliness though, came through books perhaps, more than experience. He read voraciously and was an authority on any subject by virtue of his inexhaustible supply of information. There were huge stacks of science fiction and gun magazines in his personal library. I too, had been a sci-fi fan for many years. We became friends quickly and I made a mental note to remember his hometown - Temple, Texas. Weekend entertainment for freshmen living on campus was a simple challenge; get laid if you can, get drunk if you can't. Scott and I spent most of our weekends bombed on cheap Gallo wine. Above our door was the quote from Dante's Inferno; "Abandon hope all ye who enter in". Few did. Our dorm director simply didn't believe we existed, which gave us a kind of diplomatic immunity. The room became a haven for the most bizarre events on the floor, and most of our wing.

Wine for our weekend frivolities was provided by selling the empty coke bottles left around the Student Union Building. In those days, Cokes came in glass bottles that were worth five cents each at any off-campus store. Scott was a student employee of the school and looked at home picking up the place. The nearest liquor store was thirty miles away in Dallas. We made the trip back and forth on my little Lambretta motor scooter often. Gas and wine were cheap. The trips became routine. Scott's mind was a jam-packed reference library on bohemianism and he became my tutor. I rarely read. Through endless conversation I learned of Aldous Huxley, Martial Arts, Weaponry, Jazz, Meershaum pipes, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Edith Piaf, Aliester Crowley, Billie Holiday and Agnosticism. There were expansive philosophical overviews of world figures ranging from Lincoln to Marx to Jesus. Scott loved to share his knowledge, I loved to absorb it. I was happy with only passing grades in my academics. My real education was happening outside of class.

I became hooked on Miles Davis and Andre Previn. Stereo sound was something I had never experienced before. I spent many hours in the NTSU music room with the head phones on listening to Miles' "Kind of Blue" album. So many hours in fact were spent with the headphones on, that I began to experience serious ear infections. Interruptions in this personal regimen of culture were usually of a strange and domestic nature. Barry was our Jewish neighbor across the hall. He had the personality of a New York cockroach and was universally despised for his cursed obnoxiousness. He was not a person you could relate to, he was someone you dealt with. The description of this person declined over a period of weeks from "pest" to "asshole". Sadly, he never seemed to realize that he too - was another Jew born for persecution.

Exaggeration and outright lying was Barry's stock in trade. There were few boundaries to his outrageousness. He lived his life like a schizophrenic idiot with a treasure map. Sex for instance, was simple for him. He was his own voyeur. Barry returned from a date one night raving of the beauty he had been with, a girl from Texas Women's University across town. Stomping naked up and down the hall, he cradled his crotch in his hands and howled loudly about suffering from the legendary "stones". The "stones" we all knew, was a rare condition provoked by terminal horniness. The unfortunate victim could attain release only by having sex. Barry presumed that those around him should assist in some way, preferably by providing a girl. The act began to take on the proportions of a burlesque production, with people yelling "shut up!" all up and down the hall. It was after all, after midnight. The production was attended by an increasingly powerful distant thunderstorm. Flashes of thunder and lightning began punctuating the show.

Inevitably Barry worked his way into our room, ignoring the quote from Dante above the door. I listened attentively to his plight, nodding occasionally to the crowd who had gathered in the hall. When he reached the inevitable question of "What should I do?", I decided to help him in the only way I knew how. I went to my closet where I had a small collection of personal medicines. I drew out a bottle of Heet Liniment which was usually reserved for my obsessive trampoline workouts. Heet liniment was powerful stuff in those days. It contained a high dosage of Oil of Wintergreen, Clove Oil and other ingredients which was intended to do one thing - make your skin burn like fire.

The thunderstorm moved closer and a knowing look passed around the crowd in the hall. The Ritual Of Pain had begun and I serving as High Priest, could not reverse the inevitable course of events. I carefully instructed Barry to place "A VERY TINY AMOUNT" of the Heet liniment remedy on either side of his privates, and go to his bed. Lightning flashed. Thunder rattled. Barry soaked himself grossly, emphasizing the seriousness of his condition to anyone willing to listen. The crowd began to mysteriously disperse in a rush of whispers and giggles. My duty finished, I put the nearly empty bottle of liniment away and took note of an unusually long lull in the thunderstorm. It resumed shortly as a perfect concert of thunder and lightning and loud, long yells. Barry had become uncomfortable.

As I toweled up the excess spillage from the floor, I heard the shower being turned on. Oh My God. "Barry, No!" I yelled, "Don't go in there!". 'Fuck You!' he screamed. It was too late. He was damned.

Mixing water with Oil of Wintergreen is similar to pouring gasoline on a lit candle. The agony of Barry's experience was shared by us all as the lightning diminished. The dorm seemed to shake for some reason. It was days before he spoke to anyone. Helping Barry get in touch with his surroundings became one of our local Christian ministries, shared by all his neighbors. So much attention seemed to help him. He became quieter and much more involved with life around him. Pranks and practical jokes involving Barry were rampant for a while. The dorm took on the aspect of a summer camp. One night for instance, someone on our second floor "TP'd" the tree outside our restroom. "TP" meant Toilet Paper. Our entire supply had been wrapped around the tree turning it into a gigantic cotton ball. Barry found it hilarious. His guffaws could be heard a block away which is as close as any of the bootleggers dared to bring any liquor. Our dorm was too "hot" for them to deliver to anymore. Again, there was a thunderstorm approaching. Again, the inevitable happened. One of the neighbors dashed into the bathroom and threw one of Barry's fancy new shirts right past his face, out the window and into the tree. Cussing, Barry wasted no time in climbing out the window to retrieve his shirt. Modesty was not one of his strong suits; in fact he rarely wore anything at all. This time he was in his shorts and he looked like a monkey in a diaper, bouncing from limb to limb. Watching from our windows, we could see a figure lurking in the shadows below the tree. There was a brief flash of a cigarette lighter and the tree, covered entirely in toilet paper, burst into flame. There would be no real danger, just a brief, spectacular blaze similar to a fireworks show. Barry had no way of knowing that of course. Our laughter was loud but it was no contest for Barry's primal screams of terror. There was fire all around him but he remained unscathed. In the minute that it took for the tree to burn out, the lurking figure disappeared. Howling, Barry had made his way down the tree.

When he jumped to the ground he landed almost in the arms of the Dormitory Director.

CHAPTER 10 Graduate School

Perhaps I was overly ambitious, perhaps selling encyclopedias had done something to make me a little overly aggressive, perhaps I was just a little bit young and a whole lot stupid. I began to sense something different about myself. I had a hard time with girls. There were dates and cordial meetings, I even met one girl's parents. None were lovers though, and I began to become concerned about my unpacified sexuality. The phrase "Seriously Horny" is a much easier way to express it.

Scott had moved to an apartment and our friendship waned for a while, though I visited often. There were other diversions. I had become intrigued with Scott's dissertations on drugs. The education he had donated to me had been totally academic, objective and thorough. It had covered marijuana, heroin, hashish, peyote, psylocybin, LSD and synthetics of the amphetamine family. I was a pretty well educated fellow in the field of non-pharmaceutical organic psychedellics for the year of 1962. Peyote was one of the most interesting drugs to me, particularly the religious aspects relative to Mescalito, the demon/god/spirit that was supposedly linked to the plant. I had obtained enough peyote to persuade some sort of psychedellic experience. I decided to try it. One of the other residents decided to try it with me. Unfortunately for him, he was a little immature. Paranoia set in and the experience wasn't at all pleasant for him. Most likely, the taste of the Peyote intitiated that paranoia. Make no mistake about it - there is a REASON Peyote cactus needs no thorns.

I ground up six to eight green and dry buttons of the cactus and carefully removed the fuzzy part where it is said, a bit of natural (and sometimes man-made) strychnine resides. I choked the concoction down and my friend did the same, but with a smaller amount. Absolutely nothing happened for almost two hours. We had both decided that nothing WOULD occur, we just hadn't taken enough of it. My little friend began to get loose in the mouth and told off on us both to several of the others in the dorm. Naturally, their academic curiosity was piqued and they joined us for idle chit-chat, covering their careful scrutiny of our behavior. We were dope fiends now of course. They wanted to see how dope fiends behave - having read the propaganda.

I felt a change in the mood of the room where we were gathered. We were all being so COOL and NORMAL that attempts at real conversation was a farce. Suddenly, it was as though someone invisible had slipped into the room with us. I could sense something different and couldn't begin to define it. What happened next was subtle and dynamic at the same time. One of the guys threw a piece of crumpled paper toward the wastebasket with an overhand basketball toss. Directly in the wake of that wadded paper came a bright flash of orchid colored light and a loud "whoooosh" as the missile found the wastebasket. Bullseye. The effect could be compared to tossing a lit skyrocket, or watching a comet.

The guy who threw the paper ball shrank back in surprise, as did most of the fellows who had seen it. I had seen it too. Hell, we had ALL seen it! We had experienced a COLLECTIVE hallucination; a visit from Mescalito, or perhaps a close relative of his. Those with eyes to see had seen. Those with ears to hear had heard. That was everybody, and we all tried to pretend it hadn't happened. I remained perfectly still, trying to appear normal. The conversation jerked awkwardly to a halt and they all left. My stoned friend swore the peyote was having no effect and that he had seen and heard nothing. He apparently, was the only one who hadn't. We went directly to his room where he lay in his bed with an apparent death grip on what he considered to be reality. He determined that he was sick. I wished him well and suggested he go to sleep.

For the rest of the night I wandered alone through a kind of Wonderland. I was queasy at my stomach. It goes with the territory where Peyote is concerned. The rest of my world was punctuated with varying colors of pastels and gentle lights in places where there should be shadows. There were wonderful conversations with many of my neighbors as I toured Wonderland throughout the dorm. The simple opening of a door was accompanied with ethereal hallucinatory fanfares as I engaged new personalities in several rooms. I was suspiciously friendly.

This was definitely not heaven, though I had long believed in Angels. It was definitely not hell. It was that state of mind that has no explanation - the one I have shared with you before on these pages, but it lacked brevity. It had no ending. The invisible presence that had accompanied the whooshing ball of paper/fireworks in the trash can experience was all around me. Lying in the bed opposite to my friend in his room, I could see he was feigning sleep. His hands were knotted up and he was pale. Poor guy, he was scared as hell. He was having a "bad trip" though at the time there was no such name made up for it. We talked very gently for a time and I related what was happening to me. He listened with interest but claimed only illness. As I rested I realized I could clearly hear the hushed conversations of others not only many doors away, but on other floors. They were distinct. Some of the conversations were about us drug fiends, one of whom - me - was evesdropping, in a drug induced revelation. ALL my perceptions were awakened and I realized for the first time, my own psychic abilities. Thoughts from others wafted in and out of my mind like smoke. I could even identify who they were coming from. Texts from the great poets. Strings of thought and images of geometry from an engineering student. Musical cleffs and song structures from a music student. Lots and lots of personal concerns, most of them petty and meaningless.

We spend most of our lives learning NOT to see and hear the things we cannot immediately use. Babies have a tremendous amount of information thrust on them that takes years for them to sort and distinguish. In the years moving toward maturity, we learn to screen out the sights and sounds we cannot immediately use. If you need proof of this, go around blindfolded for a few minutes. Record in stereo, everything you hear for an hour and then listen to the tape. The sounds of birds, cars, air conditioning and other incidental noises will suddenly become audible to you; the pattering background noises of our lives. Our vision is similar. Shapes, levels of brightness and other aspects of vision suddenly seem enhanced when we take off our blinders. The information was always THERE, we have just programmed it out of our awareness. Psychedellics have a re-birthing effect on our senses. They simply crank up the volume to the max - like it was when we were babies. Peyote does that very thing with a "hallucenogenic" spin.

My senses had become so acute that I could hear almost anything within a hundred yards, indoors or out. I no longer needed my glasses. During the late hours of the night and the early hours of the morning, I put them away. During a two hour period of quiet meditation (there was nothing else to do), I couldn't help but sense that in some way I was evesdropping on the dreams of those sleeping around me. There were no sounds or pictures but instead, a constant mumble of mental energy. Adventure, love, sometimes mathematical logic emerged from these other minds and I perceived them in some very personal, psychic way. I felt as if I had been entrusted with something very sacred and as I traveled through these various dreamscapes, I avoided the areas that seemed very romantic or personal. I felt a little like a burglar, or a ghost.

At about 3 AM I felt as if the effects of the peyote had ended. I found myself becoming thirsty, hungry and bored. I decided to make another trip to the bathroom where I could be completely alone. It was there that I met The Cyclops. The effects of the mescaline were more prolonged and profound than I had imagined they would be. My reflection in the mirror had become subject to my own interpretation. I stood before it for a very long time, letting my mind run away with what it perceived. During that examination I realized I was searching for myself. The vision of a cyclops was what my mind was seeing and that vision and I stared at each other for a considerable time, sizing each other up. I finally decided that the creature I was seeing was not particularly attractive, but posed no threat. I could tolerate him. My own reflected image semingly having reached a similar conclusion, became more coherent and friendly. I was home, and at peace.

Just before dawn I stretched out on the bed again. My friend was definitely asleep. I had anticipated the peyote effects to wear off by morning and I was prepared for a glorious dawn. It came in a most glorious way. Having made friends with the night, I was ready to renew my friendship with the day. At first grey light I began to really relax. Sleep was out of the question but as the morning light became stronger, I looked forward to a clear blue sky. Most of an hour past and I felt I could perhaps doze if I wanted to. It was morning though, I was terribly hungry and the dorm kitchen would be open soon. The sky before me through the window was a light baby blue and deepening as the sun came up. I decided to just lay there and enjoy it. Minutes passed and the sky took on a deep, full blue color just like the clearest afternoon. I began to wonder where the moon might be. Or the sun. As I continued to stare out the window I was forced to blink again and again. The sky was bluer now than I had ever seen it. I gasped at it. It turned bluer still and suddenly seemed to call out to me; "Hey, you.... like the BLUE? Dig Me! I am BLUE just like you said - come on over and take a look at the BLUUUUE!". Blue? The sky had turned a deep indigo that was breath taking and indescribable. I got up to go look toward the eastern horizon and perhaps catch a glimpse of the sun. I staggered to the window ledge and stood there with my jaw dropped. I couldn't see five feet. We were completely socked in with fog.

The moment I realized we were fogged in, it was as though someone had turned off a slide show. All the blue disappeared and was replaced with a deep violet, then a lovely orchid, then grey. Grey. God, what a disappointing color for fog. With that, Mescalito kissed me goodby and I resumed my ordinary mundane existance. I showered, shaved, dressed in my best suit and tie (so as not to be conspicuous), and made my way toward breakfast. I realized just before I left the dormitory that while practicing the proper knot for my tie, I had forgotten to put on my shirt. I had to go back to my room and dress again.

I ate less than I thought I would.

CHAPTER 11 Graduate Thesis

However dramatic the peyote experience was, it was the first of many such turning points in my life. I gave a complete report on the peyote experience in my Psychology 101 class with drawings, gestures and innuendos. The report earned me some very strange looks, social ostracism, and the same grade of "C" that I had earned the previous six weeks by doing nothing at all. Such a negative reaction to my research was hard on my ego. I had expected an outburst of enthusiastic questions. What I got instead, convinced me of the power of the media. I had seen the same news reels and printed propaganda about drugs as the rest of the world. I had been enlightened; but enlightening others was obviously not my destiny. I was now a confessed dope fiend and the impropriety of exposing myself in the classroom had been frowned upon by peers and professor alike. Rather than becoming a confirmed bohemian and striking out blindly against society though, I began to actively plan my future and pursue it. In short, I hit the ground running.

I determined (or realized) that I was going to quit college at the end of the semester and become a radio announcer. Not just any announcer, a successful if not famous one. All the announcers I had ever heard played a part in that career decision, particularly Dave Naugle, George Carlin and one gawdawful local announcer in Denton, Texas. The man was so bad on the air that those who had better radios than mine would tune in anything else at all, so as not to listen to him. My radio however, was the victim of interference and the only station it would receive was - you guessed it. Scott and I collaborated on ideas for a radio station and cracked ourselves up creating the ideal call letters. University of North Texas was the paramount association and the ideal call letters would reflect that; K-U-N-T. I'm sure there were dozens of students before us and hundreds since who have enjoyed the joke. There were dreams and variations on dreams of our own radio station. Scott loved to dream. I loved to make them come true. We set up a fantasy broadcast company "KNTU" using Scott's apartment as the address. Those call letters actually exist now at the campus radio station at The University of North Texas.

We took the fantasy so far as to make a presentation to the Chamber of Commerce, in an effort to find funding for the radio station. The audience was limited to one person in the Chamber of Commerce who was the Executive Director. I played crudely produced "commercials" for the City of Denton and its future, predicting a gigantic central airport just south of town that would serve Dallas, Fort Worth and Denton. This and similar growth aspects for the community it was argued, justified the need for a new radio station. We were respectfully dismissed with a wry suggestion that we make the presentation to a bank. There are opportunities provided Youth that somehow elude those of us with common sense, experience, ability and wisdom. I wrote to Collins Radio to inquire about putting a radio station "KNTU" on the air. Lo and behold a week later, a representative from the company actually made an appearance at the apartment. I tried to apologize to the gentleman for the unnecessary inconvenience and the apology was immediately brushed aside. Before he left we had been made a proposal involving equipment and complete financing of the project. It was the occasion of one of our finer weekends of getting drunk.

Crazy Jerry was one of Scott's roommates in the apartment and also one of our several musician friends. He and I had been making a merry madcap night of wine and song (sorry, no women) which had reached its climax on the 50-yard line of the NTSU Eagles football stadium. This wild Yankee with a saxophone was also a wild man with a gun. Traveling on my motor scooter, Jerry and I had somehow found access to the football playing field. That's a great place to take a leak. While we both drenched the mid-field chalk marks, my Crazy Yankee friend pulled out a GI .45 caliber automatic pistol, let out a Texas "rebel yell" and fired one round straight up in the air. At 1AM in the morning with the hush of spring around, such a report can echo from bleacher to bleacher in a football stadium for what seems likeminutes. It can also make you wet your pants if you tuck in too quickly. It was my turn to get paranoid. I half hauled Jerry onto the motor scooter and we got the hell out of there with Jerry yelling like a bronc rider, waving the gun in the air. I headed straight for the dorm where I argued with Jerry for a full half hour to get him to lock the gun up in a closet. I finally threatened to punch him out and that was the end of our fun. With the gun safely put away, we headed back to the apartment.

The only traffic light on the campus turned red and the Campus Police pulled up right behind us. It was close to 2AM. Driving the scooter very smoothly for a drunk, I proceeded at a very legal pace off the campus. We were immediately tagged by a Denton Police cruiser. It was only two blocks to the apartment and still being very drunk, I was overcome with bravado and decided to try to outrun them. To that moment we were being perfectly behaved and the cops had no reason to be suspicious of us (except for being on a motor scooter at two in the morning). I tore down the street at almost 40 miles an hour and made the corner at a 30 degree angle, drifting like a real motorcycle racer. We made the half-block to the apartment and were about to skid into the parking lot when the cruiser's lights went on. The Denton jail was like most of the others I had visited. Jerry's state of inebriation was comical and I could hear the officers in the interrogation room roaring with laughter. I had no idea what he was saying. My brief interrogation was in the form of a fatherly lecture from the Sergeant on duty. I was made to promise to behave like a good citizen. I was fined for reckless driving and we were summarily dismissed. Kindly, we were driven back to the apartment in a patrol car.

Scott's departure from the dorm to the apartment had left a vacancy in my room. Actually, two vacancies were available since no one had dared take the only empty bed. No matter, it would have taken days to move all of Scott's junk off of it and out of the spare closet. I was approached for the room spaces by two musicians, both named Mike. One Mike had flaming red hair and freckles. He spent most of his time carving reeds for his bassoon. The other Mike was a trumpet player with a hormone problem and overdeveloped breasts whom we all called "Groovy". He had a habit of substituting that word "groovy" for "yes". Calling the redhead Mike and the other Groovy suited us all just fine. Things went well for about two weeks until I found myself for seemingly no reason, under attack. My roomies didn't like me. It seemed as though it was because I was almost never there. Groovy I think, really hated himself but took it out on everyone else. I was the natural victim of his hatred because of my absence. He would demonstrate his feelings in very obscene ways. They were petty little annoyances at first but after a time they began to take on a malevolent aspect. I came in early one evening to have a pipe and relax awhile. Pipes had become my source of tobacco since I couldn't afford cigarettes. I filled the bowl with my mixture of latakia and Cherry Blend and prepared to get in some study time. I gagged. I choked. The smoke tasted like piss. It was indeed, piss. Mike couldn't contain his laughter. Groovy couldn't hide his guilt. He had indeed, soaked the bowl of my favorite pipe in the bathroom. I vowed vengeance quietly to myself. Groovy would not relent. Every day there would be some petty personal item of mine broken, moved or messed up. Finally one day my temper snapped. Another something had been broken on purpose and it was just too much.

I sprang at Groovy with a bath towel in my hands. He was too startled to defend himself. I wrapped the towel around his neck and pulled down tight, fully intending to strangle him to death. Groovy was cool though. He struggled his fat, cherubic body to its feet and turned to face me. He made no effort to defend himself at all, he just stared at me as his face turned purple. That stopped me. I was doing for him exactly what he couldn't do for himself. I was killing him. I removed the towel and took two deep breaths as I controlled my rage. Neither of us spoke for the rest of the evening and as far as I know, neither of us told another soul about the incident. We maintained a respectful distance from each other after that.

My day of reckoning with Groovy came a few weeks later. There had been a Lab Band party at Lake Dallas. One of the musicians came in early to tell Mike and I that Groovy was playing drunk. He had had two beers and was acting like the Head Wino of Sleazy Street. Sure enough about a half hour later, he came stumbling through the door like he could barely stand. He of course, had driven almost thirty miles without an accident. It was time for the Truth. Mike engaged our slush bucket in conversation while I canvassed the entire wing of the dorm for donations of booze. My story convinced most of the fellows to part with their individual hoards of spirits and I was surprised at the amount of liquor in the place. Even our obnoxious friend Barry contributed by donating most of a bottle of Manishewitz wine. The entire collection consisted of Sloe Gin, wine, Southern Comfort, brandy, bourbon and a bit of cognac totaling almost two fifths of assorted liquors.

We sat. We drank. I called Groovy a lying S.O.B. to his face and told him that tonight he would get seriously drunk for the first time in his life. Mike left the room, grinning. I ordered Groovy to take his time and drink it all. Lo and behold in less than thirty minutes, he did. He never asked for mercy and got a little sick only once on the bourbon. There was only a little water for a chaser. He took his medicine like a man and made me swear that I would wake him up at six-thirty a.m. for his class in Physical Education at the gymnasium across the street.. I promised him in a fatherly way, that I would. At six-thirty Groovy's alarm went off. His eyes were half open but he was completely unconscious. Mike and I stood him up and got him dressed for gym class. He was able to open one eye and respond to his name. We finally got it into him that it was time for him to go to gym class and guided him into the hall. After he consumed a half gallon of water at the fountain, I had to walk him down the flight of stairs to the door. It was two days before we saw him again.

The story got back to us that Groovy had indeed, made it in for his morning workout. He appeared for calisthenics with his shirt only half on, his over developed breasts exposed. His gym shorts were on backwards and inside-out. He hadn't even tried to put on a jock strap. He had one shoe on one foot with no sock. The sock was on the other foot with no shoe. He had attempted one jumping jack and fallen on the spot. The coach had sent him home. He didn't know where that was.

Groovy was rescued by a kind-hearted soul who took him to his apartment for a 36-hour dryout. When he returned to us, he was an enlightened person. We eventually became friends.

CHAPTER 12 The Giant Rats Of Sumatra

I moved back in with my folks that spring of 1962 and began to plot my radio career in earnest. They were surprised at my decision but not overjoyed, having saved for many years for my college education. I was sure enough of my choice to advise my father that he should take the college savings and use it for travel, investment or whatever he valued most. He seemed to appreciate the idea. For my part breaking into the radio business was both easy as pie and hard as hell. My first opportunity was filing a phone report of a fatal accident. It was picked up by KFJZ and broadcast state-wide on the Texas State Network. It was easy as pie. Getting a real radio job was hard as hell. I spent the next three months on my motor scooter systematically canvassing every radio station in Dallas and Fort Worth for work. I had no resume' or any real background. "You gotta HAVE a job to GET a job" I was told over and over. Toward the end of the summer I was blessed. A tiny station in Grand Prairie between Dallas and Fort Worth had just traded hands and the manager had an opening. We discussed the idea thoroughly and I was given the opportunity of a hands-on training position. I would be allowed two weeks to make or break. I broke. My first production was over two and a half minutes. It was epic but was supposed to be 60 seconds, maximum. I was burdened with "mike fright", a fear of speaking on the air. I could run a barely adequate DJ show but when I opened the microphone to speak, I would choke up and stumble over my words. Operating the equipment was by direct instruction a few times, and good luck. It was like being asked to climb into an airplane and fly it, with no experience. We parted company at the end of the two week period and I was back on the streets again. At least I had a pay check.

Radio gets in your blood. Fortunately, I had been blessed with a very good voice and had spent weeks at college straightening out the kinks of my Texas accent. There is something magical about communicating with several thousand people (or at least more than ten) while being hidden away like the Wizard of Oz. I concentrated on landing a job at my hometown radio station, KFJZ. Something should be said here of the kindness of those people. I was an insistent pest, if friendly. The kindness and understanding of people like Porter Randall, Bob Barry, Brice Armstrong, Dick Mock and others deserve much more space here than this one paragraph. For weeks I spent hours on the phone with the announcers. I cajoled, pleaded, groveled and insisted until I was given a job on the FM station, KFJZ-FM. For almost four months I was a robot; changing records and playing commercials. I finally became bored enough to overcome my mike fright and let my confidence develop. I had mastered the mechanics of radio. The equipment and my voice had become my tools in trade. Boredom set in and while answering the Dallas request lines, I met Carol, the girl who was to become my first wife. Requests are always a hassle but this particular girl had a way about her. I teased and cajoled her to stop calling and finally we got into an argument. That led to dates, and you can figure it out from there.

The AM station KFJZ-AM was where the action really was. It was becoming a powerhouse rock'n roll station of the times. I was given a chance to work weekends and even though it meant a seven-day work week, I grabbed it. "Big Girls Don't Cry" by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons was my opening song as a real radio DJ and I sailed into the show forthwith for about fifteen minutes before the Hot Line rang. I had forgotten to read the log. We were supposed to be carrying a baseball game. One with big money attached. Ooops. I managed to "fake it" for several more weeks until someone in the accounting department noticed my time sheet had too many hours. A week or so later, I was let go.

KTER in Terrell, Texas was my next stop. It was about thirty miles east of Dallas and the site of the major insane asylum in the area. I almost joined them. I hired on as News Director and took the first apartment within my skimpy budget, in the back of a huge old house. I should have shopped. My youth and inexperience had led me into an old, shabby place that would depress anyone. It had the feel of a crypt but it was a place where I could eat, sleep and store my things. One dark and stormy night I was awakened about 2AM by loud, unintelligible voices in the room. Whatever was going on, I wasn't at all ready for it. Thunder crashed outside and lightning threw weird shadows from the old lace curtains on the windows. With each flash the room was bathed in an eerie green glow that made my stomach wrench in terror. The voices followed each flash of lightning and the glow became brighter, fading ever so slowly. The voices were chanting something in a language I had never heard. I pulled the covers over my head and broke into a cold sweat. I got a grasp on my fear and tried to reason the whole thing out. It took more than a half-hour while the storm raged outside. The voices stopped. The lightning and thunder faded. I finally pulled the covers down and looked around.

The green glow was coming from my FM radio tuner dial. With each flash of lightning it illuminated the room, far brighter than it was supposed to. I reached over to turn it off. It WAS off. I looked at the amplifier. It was plugged into the tuner and it too, was supposed to be off. I finally got a clue at the next flash of lightning. The voices had been coming from my headphones, hanging just above my pillow, on the headboard of the bed. Fists and teeth clenched, I sprang from the bed and turned on the light. I was ready to confront the possibility that I had died and gone to hell. Of course I was not all that far away from the biggest collection of crazy people in North Texas. Maybe they were out?

I was alone. As the storm began to move on, the lightning flashes had less effect on the FM radio. I unplugged it. Silence. I slept fitfully for the next few hours before dawn. The morning was glorious and clean. I threw open the doors and let the fresh air clean the room. My spirits thus reinforced, I plugged in the FM radio and turned it on. The lovely sound of KVIL-Dallas came into the room, giving me hope of a brighter day and an undamaged FM radio. I inspected the wiring carefully and discovered that the antenna wire which had given me such great reception was connected to what I had assumed to be an old "dead" circuit wire or ground. I followed its path through the ceiling and decided to step outside and see where it went. Up on the roof directly above my room, the wire followed a route that led to an old-fashioned lighting rod on the top of the house. It was complete with a huge old glass condenser that looked like a giant light bulb. What had apparently happened was that the contraption had served as both a ground and antenna for my FM system. Had I installed it with the power plug reversed, none of the terror of the previous night would have happened. The voices I had been hearing were partial voices - vocal modulation peaks of a conversation between airline pilots whose radio frequency was adjacent to the commercial FM band. The lightning rod condenser had been acting as a tuner for the FM. I accepted that as reality and resolved to put the incident in my past. I never forgot the lesson in wiring.

KTER was boring. We read obituaries as though they were headline stories. This radio station had one real claim to fame though, that had become legendary in the radio world several years before my arrival. There was an ethic of the time that was a holdover from World War II. It was even a part of the examination for a radio license and part of most radio station's work policy agreement. It stated that the announcer on duty was to NEVER leave the control room unattended, except to use the bathroom. It was the result of wartime fears of radio stations being taken over by spies or other invaders. It demonstrated common sense that applied to other situations as well. KTER at that time aired a popular religious transcription every Sunday morning. Transcriptions were gigantic records, about 18 inches across and they played for about a half-hour each. One of the announcers at the station (who later became a locally famous politician) had made it a habit to "cheat" and stroll over to the local cafe for coffee while the transcription played. During this time he could enjoy 25 minutes of coffee and conversation, returning to start the next transcription on the half hour.

One fine Sunday morning he was repeating this routine and had just left the front door when the record began skipping. He didn't hear it, but the rest of the town did - as one listener called another to have them tune in. The preacher on the record was establishing his sermon theme for the day, loudly exhorting his congregation and listeners to make the correct choices in life. "You CAN go to Heaven" he yelled, "or you can go to HELL!". Somehow there was an error on the transcription. It could have been a grain of dust, perhaps a small scratch or a speck where the Devil had directed a buzzing fly to deposit its eggs. Whatever it was, it sounded like a microphone switch being opened with an audible "click" when the record was played. Perfectly edited by Fate, the record sent the message on the air to many hundreds of regular Sunday morning listeners; "You can go to HELL!" (click) "You can go to HELL!" (click) "You can go to HELL!" (click) "You can go to HELL!" (click) "You can go to HELL!" (click) "You can go to HELL!" (click) ...and it continued for a full 25 minutes while the Announcer On Duty enjoyed his coffee. It is said that upon his return, he went through Hell.

After a couple of months of obituaries, club announcements and music that was far too mundane to enjoy, I was surprised with a wonderful diversion. Parked directly across the street was a marvelous old school bus that appeared to have escaped from a circus. Emblazoned on the side was a carnival sign; "DANGER! Giant Man-Eating Rats of Sumatra!". I was the first to take the tour for ten cents. In cages on either side of the center aisle of the bus were five or six rodents about the size of a opossum. They were well cared for but stunk nonetheless. They were almost tame but the carney who ran the operation made a big show of fighting back the monsters by banging a stick on the cages and yelling like a lion tamer. It was hilarious and he knew it. His wife poked her head out from the rear half of the bus which had been converted to living quarters. She couldn't help it, but she looked like a rat with long stringy grey hair and eyes that testified to the life she lived. This indeed, was the most frightening aspect of the bus containing The Giant Rats of Sumatra. The Carney and I exchanged glances. We shared twinkles in our respective eyes. I decided to do a news story.

Stretching a microphone cable from the remote system in my car, we did an epic tour of the bus with loud bangings and yells. He explained on the air how the rats sometimes bit the toes of sleeping soldiers stationed on the beaches of Sumatra and ate the bodies of those who had died. He showed me scars on his hands where supposedly, he had been attacked himself. He cautioned listeners to keep their hands away from the cages and advised us all to proceed with caution while on the bus. All this for ten cents. It made a heck of a story. It got me fired.

CHAPTER 13 The Lesson Of Roaches

The Giant Rats of Sumatra reinforced what I had already come to conclude in life; the World was not ready for change. I spent the next couple of months with my folks remodeling the bathroom in exchange for my room and board, and wondering what would happen next in my young life. Carol and I were still dating and at least that part of my life was making some sense. The relationship was healthy, though we both thought each other slightly strange. I guess that was the fascination. She was a tiny girl, just under five feet with big brown eyes and very dark hair. I was a strapping six-foot 240 pound giant beside her. There was an intimate style to her though, that could get to you. She got to me quite well and I, to her. However unlikely our romance was, it continued.

As far as my radio career was concerned, I heard far too much from my parents about abandoning my college education to go chase a meaningless life as a radio DJ. It continued past the point of boredom and on into a depressing drone of monotony at almost every meal. My remodeling job on the bathroom being finished, my usefulness at the house was coming into question and things began to become desperate. I confronted blunt hints from my mother of finding a "real" job like the other people on the street. I could sense the direction the mood was taking and things were beginning to turn ugly between my family and I. To make matters worse, I had resumed my friendship with Scott and there was no mistaking my mother's disapproval of him. To her and the rest of the world, Scott was an aloof bohemianistic Soldier of Fortune with a completely impractical sense of values and absolutely no future. Actually, she and the world were quite correct in that asessment, but he was my friend and chosen teacher. There was a sense of destiny between us and I felt obliged to help him however I could.

There are turning points in life that are like a completely new beginning. The very first thing you remember doesn't matter. That you remember anything at all, does. Scott needed help moving. His half-ton or more of science fiction magazines and gun books stored in Greenville, Texas were destined for his home in Temple, Texas. It was a town I recalled quite well. I was astounded. The half-ton or more of books, military equipment and other junk were about to join at least a full ton or more of the same thing in one entire corner of his family garage. Scott was voracious and thorough in his reading. I tried to imagine how many hours and even months he must have spent in that dusty garage poring over magazines. It was beyond my comprehension. In one dusty stack of magazines lay a lesson in survival. Once, several years ago, it had been a huge jar of Peter Pan peanut butter. Time had turned it into a completely enclosed eco-system that would have made a fascinating demonstration for Biology 101. A leak in the garage roof directly above the jar provided just enough water to keep the life forms inside alive. I marveled at it. It was full of roaches.

Once upon a time, Scott had made a peanut butter sandwich or two in this spot. Since neatness was not one of his strong points, the peanut butter jar had remained where it was left. The sides of the jar were absolutely clean. It was impossible for the roaches inside to climb out. Long ago, they had turned to cannibalism to survive, with one generation feeding upon the other. Had there ever been a real excess of rain, they would have all escaped or drowned. It would probably have scared the rest of the roaches in the neighborhood to have to associate with such savages. Maybe not. There were two or three really big ones in there and hundreds of smaller ones. I wondered who would eat who. Perhaps the big ones were raising their young for food. Perhaps the young ones were grooming the old ones as though they were cows. Almost anything would have upset the balance of that little self contained society. A bit of food added, too much or too little water, even the arrival of another roach from the outside could have wrecked that little world.

All the elements of Sin were present and fully developed in that jar. There was greed and rampant incest from one generation to the next, there was starvation and hunger, there was adultery, thievery, murder, slavery, caniballism, covetousness, vanity, and the lust for power. I stared at the jar for a very long time until I found myself in that state of mind that has no explanation; how very like our own world was this. I still believe in Angels. One day at the edge of one of those desperate family moods, the phone rang. It was Dillard Carrera the Program Director of KVIL-FM radio in Dallas, asking if I would consider an all-night shift at the station. I politely inquired as to when the job would begin. He informed me that it would start the following night if I could arrange it. I felt as if I had been released from prison.

God had had his chuckle.

CHAPTER 14 Dallas, 1963

KVIL-FM was a 119,000 watt powerhouse stereo station, one of the first in the nation of it's kind. It had a fantastic sliding-pot stereo control board with a number of gadgets to make it even more fun. Lost inside my stereophonic world, I began to hone my musical radio skills to perfection and after about a year, I reached my apex. I created long sweeping concertos, mixing three or four songs together. I would choose thematic sets of music recorded in the same key with similar tempos. It developed to the point where you couldn't tell where one song left off and the other began. I had no idea who was listening but I knew I was reaching someone, I could feel it. One night the phone rang and I found out about one of them. The stories you may have heard about disc-jockeys being sexual superpowers are absolutely true - from the DJ's point of view. We are as horny and normal as any factory worker or truck driver. Long hours alone late at night with nothing but a telephone to link you with the outside world can give rise to very erotic fantasies. The legends about DJ's being great make-out artists with women however, are generally a crock. It happened to me a few times but my first harrowing experience of that kind (aside from my relationship with Carol) made me extremely cautious for the rest of my radio career. My caller was quite mature, very seductive and slightly drunk. She sounded like Marilyn Monroe and Brigitte Bardot rolled into one. There was no mistaking her intent and we engaged in telephone foreplay for about three weeks before establishing a rendezvous. Each time she called, she was a bit more drunk than the time before. Objectively, I rationalized that an experience with an older woman would be good for me. There seemed to be no doubt that it would be good for her.

One of God's greatest jokes on mankind must be the obtuse sexual peaks of men and women. It happens for males about the age of eighteen, beginning around the age of twelve. For women it happens around the age of 35, beginning about the age of 24. There are variations to this of course. Sex and the urge to reproduce is the driving force for most of us who are not able to ignore our most basic desires or sublimate it into ambition and achievements. When you are very young it seems that sex is ALL there is. If you are one of those very young readers, hang on. Life gets better....... and funnier.

Since the departure from Eden we as males have come to praise and appreciate the blossoming of virginity, fully to the point of worship. Our Original Sin as men, has been to pick the fruit of that virginal beauty long before it is allowed to ripen. Virgins are like peaches. They look deliciously pink and juicy. Indeed they may be as juicy as they look, but when you really bite into such a lovely unripened fruit, the flesh is tough and the taste is bitter. We seem tangled by our worship of virginity and driven by our egos to crave younger and younger fruit until it reaches the point of madness. It is that maniacal stupidity that causes some of us to sadly, destroy the lives and personalities of very young women and even children. We do it in the name of manhood and demean our manhood in the very act of conquest. Green peaches can make you really sick.

Mature women conversely, would be most equally matched to much younger men than what our society allows. Somewhere between the two sexes, there has been a shift in the very fabric of time. Men and women are about one full generation - twelve years apart, in our respective optimal sex drives. Why this condition exists is either a perversion of our society or a curse of God. Perhaps both. Then again, it may represent a generation that is entirely missing. Perhaps the similarities between men and women are closer than we care to admit. A young man of eighteen matched with a woman twice his age would be regarded as a horrifying spectacle in public - at least in the 1960's. In private however, such a love match can be a most satisfying experience for both. Fulfillment is the keyword here, not conquest.

I have to remind myself that the advice you are reading here is like all other free advice. Free advice is worth exactly what you pay for it. Fools will pay no attention. The wise don't need it. Having paid the price of this story - or having it given to you, perhaps you can appreciate the intrinsic value of the advice. As for myself at the age of this adventure, I would be listed amongst the fools. There are exceptions to every rule and extremes to all moderation. I had just turned twenty-one. My would-be consort became insistent on the phone. It finally reached a point where she was pleading, and I couldn't stand it any more. I decided to meet her one morning after my shift.

Her address was in a fashionable North Dallas neighborhood. There was money here - lots of it. I was ushered into an elegant sitting room by an aging drunk dressed in a kimono. This indeed, was my Lady Faire and I, her Sweet Prince. The smell in the room was very personal, tainted by liquor and cigarettes. I was overcome with the same feeling I had experienced in Temple, Texas when I realized a mistake had been made involving a member of the opposite sex. I wanted to leave, and in a hurry. Trying to control the situation, I suggested we sit and talk. I was hoping for a graceful, dignified exit. As for the lady in question, it was Showtime. Suddenly there was Hawaian music on the stereo and my liaison was swaying in a crude hula before me. There were wrinkles where there had once been a lovely face. She was just my side of fifty and the years had written their story all over her while adding a few years she hadn't earned. Youth had slipped from her like a shadow in the night and she hadn't noticed its passing. An abandoned hag now, she was caught between her memories and her old age. I felt sick and wanted to cry - partly for myself, partly for her. I kept trying to make her stop her dance and at least talk to me but the alcohol in her had control. It was apparent that I was watching a dance that she had carefully rehearsed. It was most rude of me to interrupt and even more rude that I was not responding as she expected, at the appropriate points in her dance. I set my jaw and decided to tough it through. She pulled the kimono down to her waist. Once many years ago, it had been a lovely body. Not now. Not ever again.

I stood up to leave and reality came crashing in on her. She rushed over, begging me to stay. Within that movement, her demeanor changed from failing burlesque performer to one of a tired old dog that had been kicked around the yard many times. Nonetheless, there was a sudden dignity about her that revealed some of a personality inside. I asked her to raise her dress to cover herself and she complied. After a few tears and a cigarette, we managed to strike up a conversation. She was abandoned, not divorced or widowed. Her husband was in oil, in money, in another part of town - and in love with a much younger woman. He was granting her a place to live and enough money to stay drunk on, not much else. I was given a tour of the house and the pictures of her past. She had been a cute lady fifteen years ago, very cute indeed. Some of who she had been was still left in her face. The memories she shared with me lent grace to our meeting and we finally parted as strangers. We had met to say goodbye.

I had moved from one place to another until I finally settled on a tiny efficiency apartment about a mile from the station. There was no kitchen but it was perfect for my budget, if not my daysleeper habits. The French Quarter Apartments were right in the flight path to Love Field and just over a mile away from the end of the runway. There were huge jets passing overhead at less than 100 feet in altitude, about every eight minutes. I was a nervous wreck for the first month. The only comforts I found in life were my work, Carol and the zaniness of The Steve Allen Show. I became accustomed to the jets and managed to get in my eight hours of snooze time without interruption, despite the eight minute intervals when the walls and windows would shake.

Scott had taken a job at the Statler hotel and a girlfriend in the Oak Cliff section of Dallas, not too far from Carol's house. The four of us would occasionally party together and it almost always resulted in practical jokes or pranks played on the rest of the world. I was usually the instigator, being inspired by whatever resources were available. There were the clothing dump jokes, for instance. We would take a complete set of old clothes including shoes, socks, underwear, pants, shirt or sometimes a bra and skirt and arrange them as though they were a set of clothes that someone had just taken off. They were great to leave in elevators, deserted hallways and phone booths. Once, I managed to find a plastic foot that was a store model for men's stockings. Filling the hollow part with rocks and placing an old sock over it, I stuffed the end with pizza and sank it in the apartment swimming pool at Scott's place. It looked for all the world like an amputated foot. I was told there were screams later in the day. Life was fun.

Summer drifted by and the beginning of Autumn was announced by cool breezes. The sixties were just under way and there was a feeling of pleasant anticipation for the coming years. The Beatles sent us all themessage from England; "She loves you, yeah, yeah, yeah". I was grooving on my job at KVIL but wishing I could play some rock'n roll somewhere. It was not to be. I had become a Master of the KVIL format, complete with a singing-jingle stereo clock. I was almost ready to become an "important" DJ with a daytime shift.

The really significant events in history must most often be marked by silence. I woke early on a cool autumn afternoon with the sense that something was desperately wrong. It was very quiet, as though it were three A.M. There was an absolute hush around the apartment and the continuous sound of the coming and going of jets was nonexistent. There was no drowsiness to my awakening, I was completely alert and aware of a feeling of fear in the air.

The balcony at my front door gave an excellent view of the neighborhood around and it was completely silent. Out on Lemmon Avenue the major thoroughfare in the area, one single car seemed to slither hurriedly around a corner as though it didn't belong there and might be seen. There was no other traffic or sound. None at all. This giant city of Dallas and this bustling, busy Oaklawn neighborhood had suffered some kind of seizure. Death and the fear of death was in the air, as though we had been given a three minute warning of a nuclear attack. Across the courtyard at the Manager's office I heard a door being opened. It was the only sign of life nearby. The TV inside was far too loud and the sound was too distorted to understand. I made my way down the stairs to where the manager and his wife were standing dumbfounded before the television set.

It was November 22nd. John F. Kennedy had just been shot.

CHAPTER 15 The Fat Lady Sings

The enormity of the assasination never really settled in on me in those days. It has come in large, unexpected doses in the later years of my life, sometimes causing incredulity and sometimes tears. JFK was not just assasinated, he was sacrificed to the gods of an alien religion. All the entities that are corrupt, petty and insane were fed that day.

We live in this country even now, like a child who has awakened from a nightmare where a brother has been snatched from the bed beside us and devoured by some obscene monster lurking just above the bedcovers. We live in cold, horrified fear of that monster but haven't the courage to pull down the covers and look. We want it to go away. Maybe if we ignore it. Maybe if we convince ourselves that it doesn't exist, it won't. Maybe we can live every day next to something that is so huge it can't be seen. Maybe we can forget our fear if we don't try to understand it.

I called the radio station and asked my boss what I should do. Where should I place myself as a news feed? I was told to stay the hell put and not to go anywhere. Don't call anyone and don't call the station again. Stay by the phone and wait for instructions. I was quite content with that. I was on the edge of the biggest news story of the century, but I had no stomach for it. Off in the distance later, I heard a lone jet taking off. It seemed to not fly the regular takeoff pattern. It was Air Force One.

The killing of Lee Harvey Oswald was just as numbing. The grandstand play by Jack Ruby was like something rehearsed. What better way to distort the truth than to kill the only suspect? That the Dallas police - any police anywhere, could be so lax with security was just plain sinister. And what of the "Lady in red" who claimed many years later that she saw Jack Ruby running from the grassy knoll that day? What of that testimony? Who do we ignore? Why do we ignore them? I was told years later that my grandfather who was a laborer at Rose Hill Cemetary, had been a part of the crew that buried Lee Harvey Oswald in a hurried rush. Grandpa died in 1969. Whatever he had remembered of that event was never shared with me. That and the evidence shown in the Zapruder films was as close as I got to the events surrounding the assasination - except for one thing. I had become friends at KVIL with Tom Matts who was one of the finest newsmen in the country. He knew something about everything and a good deal more than most anyone had any idea of. Since I worked the night shift and he worked days, there were shift overlaps and other rare occasions when Tom and I could visit. I ran into him a month or so after the assasination at a bank near Lee Park, in fashionable Turtle Creek. I asked him point blank if he didn't think there was some kind of cover-up going on and his response was; "You ain't just a-shit'n there is". That's a definitive Texas slang response for "Yes" and probably originated in the days of the two-hole outhouse.

A month later Tom was dead. Heart attack, they said. High blood pressure. Those of us who knew Tom were saddened. This thin, wiry man of about 5'6" must have gotten really emotionally upset to have had a heart attack. Or perhaps, something disagreed with him. I didn't need to know about it all to understand. I was very aware of being in a world that did not belong to itself. Remain dumb. Stay alive. Off in the distance behind all this somewhere, was the dark cloud that was Vietnam. Newspaper pictures of Richard Nixon, J. Edgar Hoover and Lyndon B. Johnson somehow all seemed to be made by the same camera. They all had the same expression. It was desperation born of too much responsibility. I've seen the same looks on the faces of prisoners and unfortunate persons captured by their jobs or a bad marriage. I began to face the possibility that those faces may have plans for me.

Comedian Robin Williams made a terse statement about the 1960's twenty years after they passed; "If you remember the sixties, you weren't really there." It is one of the most profound summaries I have ever heard. I reflect occasionally about the nostalgia crazes surrounding the music and styles of the fifties and sixties. I would have enjoyed those years much more had I realized we were having so much fun.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~2006 UPDATE/REVISION
Over the last few years writing for a couple of news websites, I have garnred information that I will have to label here as "Rumor" or "Hear-Say"

Having a distant cousin Gus Wortham who is reported to have been the
money behind LBJ - and having posession of a picture called "The Wink" [which MAY have been Photoshoppes] and having been given information of over 16 defined bullet strikes in the limo, buildings and pavement at Dealy Plaza--- I have to conclude that Oswald was indeed a patsy. His antique italian rifle MIGHT have been fired once or twice or even three times but at that... maybe one hit. Definitely NOT the JFK kill shot,

I believe there wer SEVERAL guns used at Dealy Plaza, more than one of them fired perhaps from a train on the viaduct. ALL OF THEM USING SILENCERS. Except one. The kill shot and MAYBE Oswald's. The kill shot was a Dum-Dum. An explosive bullet used in African big game shooting. It enters the target, then explodes.

The players? LBJ. The Mafia. J. Edgar Hoover. George H.W. Bush. Richard Nixon. Many others.. Probably Gus Wortham. Members of The Federal Reserve Corporation, Rothschilds/Rockerfellers, etc. Did I leave anybody out? Oh, Possibly Marilyn Monroe. Not as a conspirator but as an unwilling, coerced accomplice.

CHAPTER 16 You Can Read The Letters But Not The Signs

I am hoping dear reader, that you will allow me some observations about the assasination that do not necessarily have to be accepted as reality. Please take these with a grain of salt, and remember - the thing that is hovering above you on the other side of the bedcovers, just ate your brother. You heard every bite.

I believe that Maryilyn Monroe right in the middle of Madison Square Garden, warned JFK in a most direct and unmistakable way that something was about to happen. We however (and probably he as well) believing that this sexpot was only good for one thing, chose to not listen. She sang "Happy Birthday" to him in a way that deserves at least the kind of attention and critique normally paid to an operatic performance. Listen to the performance when you have the opportunity. To a trained ear it was most definately a prediction in song; and yet we practiced rock critics who have analyzed the performances of The Beatles and Led Zepplin literally backwards and forwards have refused to pay attention to her artistic presentation. "Happy Birthday" in the context it was sung by Marilyn meant quite precisely a time of re-birth, a new life, regeneration in the cosmic format of time and reincarnation, a blooming flower, joy, light, darkness, all the wonders of life - preceded by death. Got it? BIRTH day. She knew something, probably quite a lot. Then there are those who only heard the sexy innuendo of being in one's birthday suit. (sigh).

The great thing about being a DJ is that nearly every new song represents some kind of current folk music. There is a story being told by all music of all times. You either HEAR it or you don't. Most folks and DJ's don't...... Not until much later. For example; "Jumping Jack Flash" by the Rolling Stones, a quick salute some of us think, to a favorite intoxicant, NO2/laughing gas. A street drug of the times and still a popular party drug, but follow the lyrics; "I was born in a cross-fire hurricane". Could that refer to the Dealy Plaza triangulation cross-fire theory? Try this; Jumping Jack Flash - Jack (Jack Ruby) makes a Flash (gunshot) from the grassy knoll. At least that's what the Lady In Red claims, then Jack (flash) Ruby appears again in the basement of the Dallas PD to pull the greatest cover shot ever. Flash. Pleased to meet you - hope you guess my name.

While this form of mental masturbation can become tedious, consider the trite and redundant cults of "Christian" cliche' artists who years later, caused a real stir about the playing backwards of lyrics from the Beatles and Led Zepplin tunes. In this pointless forest (thank you Harry Nillson), you hear what you want to hear and you see what you want to see. Poetically and mystically, the lyrics to Jumping Jack Flash can even interpret the death and release of the spirit of JFK that day. It can also poetically define should you choose to hear it, the underground assembly call for a new and powerful political movement. The lyrics to "Sympathy for the Devil" a few years later announced its size, scope and presence.

There are so many valid questions that have been raised, so many little clues that keep popping up in history, so many things we could not (or chose to not) see and interpret then. There are so many now. We were all far too close to the forest to be able to describe the individual trees. And here's the fun part - we are all getting older and further from the forest while the trees themselves are becoming skeletal. Secrecy matters less and less because after all if you are going to die soon what's the difference if you pass on quietly; or while screaming, are devoured whole by the same monster that ate your brother? And if it is at the cost of truth - which death IS the more dignified? Soon I predict, many aging 60's figures will speak out. When they do, we will be made aware of a conspiracy larger than our collective imaginations can conceive. One that even includes obscure deaths of enormously talented rock stars like Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin.

I cannot draw you a picture of God, or the Devil. I can only show you the way to where it is said, they abide. Go there if you dare. Tell Elvis I said hello. So, friend, behold our nation, our world and our situation: Seventy percent and more of all wealth is owned and controlled by less than 6% of the population. For the most part, we have no idea who the wealthy really are. The United States contains only about 5% of the world's population and yet we are brimming in wealth compared to most third world countries.

It is estimated that in Old Testament times, there may have been only about a million people on the planet. There are over 5 BILLION people in today's world and that number is growing steadily. What do these numbers mean? A full cup of salt contains a MILLION grains of salt. It takes a bathtub to contain a billion grains. Figure on six to eight bathtubs full of salt to equal the population of the earth.

With nearly 300 million Americans actively breathing free air, we are individually outnumbered in this world at a ratio of at least 20 to 1. In a world view that places you and I within the 10% of the most wealthy persons in the world. We are the outer fringes of that wealthy inner circle I have been describing. Of that 20 other persons in the world whom you are not, probably at least three would be very willing to kill one or more of the other 20 for the food you threw away today. How so very willing would they be to make you their victim in exchange for what you own - or even what you owe? Twenty to one can also be described as the odds against our survival as individuals and as a nation. The only protection we have, is that we are here and they are there.

We then, are an American citadel of strength and power........ or we are a small, juicy sweet meat to the Eyes of Night - depending on your point of view, appetite and the country (or countries) you live in. Within the ever-tightening circles of the wealthy American and international elite must exist a few thousand individuals who have inherited through fate or fanaticism, this vast boundary of responsibility and posession. Posession in this instance being what the world traditionally and stupidly still regards as synonymous with power. I am suggesting here that these few thousand super-wealthy individuals have become so wedded to their cause of power and control; so attuned to each other that the differences in their personalities and their need to communicate in conventional terms barely even exists. I am talking about telepathy here. Given that - can you help but regard them all as individual parts of a larger whole? There are those who would say the same is true of Angels.

These persons I believe, are without conscience as we know it and function I believe, at an incredibly high level of communication. They are dedicated to carrying out an ancient plan that has taken eons to develop and implement. It is a complete plan that exists only in one mind and spirit that is essentially eternal and yet is inhabited and is shared by, many persons. Please note that I have specifically omitted the use of the word "soul" in this description. These individuals then, are the hands and fingers of something that transcends death, has its own "collective memory", is much larger, more secret and far more malevolent than anything we as humans, have the capacity to comprehend. I can offer the conjecture that this represents an entity. Possibly emerging at the moment Christ died on the cross - being the sum of all sin, past present and future; the convergence of all forces united against the will of God, the other end of the cosmic see-saw. An entity constantly in search of an advantage that will somehow change its destiny... It - and they who are a part of It - quite probably suffer the pains of pure mental clarity coupled with the weariness of extreme age. A condition of sinister existance that is without rest. Something like a black hole in space. Hell as we might imagine it. It is my contention that somewhere near the center of that tightening circle of power and influence; somewhere inside that wealthy six, five or three percent, you will find - The Antichrist.

Please take this all with a grain of salt. Regard it as the casual meanderings of an aging writer, and remember. The thing that is hovering above you on the other side of the bedcovers just ate your brother. You heard every damned bite. Wake up. Scream if you can.

CHAPTER 17 Black Blues For White Folks

Let's back track just a bit and uncover something. Along with all the 50's rock that I used to listen to, there was some music that most of us kids in North Texas absolutely cherished. The blues. We never told each other or spoke about it except among our most intimate friends. For white folks, the blues was something nasty in those racially exact days, it was NOT white, NOT nice and NOT allowed. Those of us who listened to the blues listened in private, much as we would view pornography. It was most decidedly nasty. We loved it. Jimmy Reed, Little Walter, Muddy Waters, Lightnin' Hopkins, Howlin' Wolf, and many other gut-yanking masters were the musical backdrop of my life from about 1956 on. KNOK was the station where all this decidedly black nasty stuff was fermented and then later a WHITE guy named "Ol' Jim Lowe" came blasting out of Dallas on WRR at nights with the "Cats Caravan" radio show. Awesome. Of course there was the really weird stuff out of Mexico on XERF; Wolfman Jack, but who cared that it was wierd? And besides what could you DO with an autographed picture of Jesus Christ for just a buck?

The Blues were the lessons of life in song. How much to drink. What kinda woman to mess with - and stay away from. What it is like to be really poor, really sick, really blue. What it's like to miss the rent and be put on the street. The blues could make a human being out of much poorer quality stuff; which is usually the combination of ingredients that makes up mankind. It could help you find your preferences in life, it could help you find your soul. The blues could cry in a world where crying was not allowed. It was the Truth where truth must masquerade as something marketable. I believe even yet, that the blues were the catalyst that caused the social revolutions of the 1960's. It launched Jimi Hendrix, John Mayall, Jim Morrison, Janis Joplin Mick Jagger, The Beatles and much more. The music of the sixties were an echo of the blues. Sometimes as sad, often more pretty, and almost always nasty - if only by innuendo.

The blues were my invisible tattoo. I carried them from KVIL Dallas, to KLVI - Beaumont, Texas with my first wife Carol. There we sweltered in 100% humidity in a town that stunk day and night from fermenting wood pulp at the paper mill just a few miles away. Cutting through that odor was the smell of the refineries. Sulphur, asphalt and unidentifiable stinks were my strongest memories of the City of Beaumont in 1964. I racked up big numbers in the ratings on my morning show with daily repetitions of "Noah" by Bill Cosby. I worked with and ate chicken with, Ken Carter (later to gain regional fame in Dallas and Ft. Worth as "Hubcap"), and Joe Halstead. Both were news men at the station. Joe was a classic picture of a Texas Redneck and a fine newsman. He later went on to fame and fortune also, in Dallas/Ft.Worth. Ten miles away from Beaumont in Port Arthur, Janis Joplin was getting her own blues tattoos. I often wondered because of the stink in the air, if my next cigarette might not blow the place up. Then came the call. It was Jim Lowe (remember the white guy at WRR)? They had an opening. Would I like to move back to Dallas? At WRR? Could I finish eating my cigarettes before I answered?

WRR AM/FM were both owned by the City of Dallas, a major distinction for both stations in those days. WRR-FM involved itself exclusively and wisely with classical music. WRR 1310 AM was a grab-bag of block programming ranging from the "Cats Caravan" (later to become the Blues Caravan) to the Library of Laughs - a comedy block in the last quarter-hour of programming each hour. It featured Jonathan Winters, Shelly Berman, George Carlin (remember him?) and a host of other comedians doing their best schtick. It was enormously popular. For myself, I cut a niche with occasional stints on the Blues Caravan and developed my own Jazz show called Jazz Unlimited. It became a vehicle for me to meet some of the greats. I shook hands with and/or interviewed and/or emceed for; Louis Armstrong, Heb Alpert, Cannonball Adderly, Lou Rawls, Pete Fountain, Al Hirt, Nat Adderly, Roland Kirk and others. I became a correspondent for Downbeat magazine covering the Dallas jazz club scene.

My day job grew into an interview show that allowed me to connect with local lecture and interview circuit personnel ranging from authors both famous and not, to performers like Kreskin. My partner Brice Armstrong who had been my sidekick since helping me find my first job at KFJZ, shared some of the good times with me. We did well with the "Inner-View" show and did a round-the-clock Double Marathon during the State Fair of Texas. We broadcast live, with no sleep from noon Monday to Noon Wednesday. During that time we did most everything a couple of nutty friends could do on the radio, live. Using portable walkie-talkies and Marti transmitters, We rode most of the rides on The Midway at the fair. When things got dull late at night, we locked up the radio station and got into a golf cart with the portable transmitter to the studio being the only thing keeping the radio station on the air. In the pale moonlight, we drove the golf cart up and down the ramps of the Cotton Bowl, broadcasting inane conversational chatter to anyone as bored as we. There were thousands of us.

My interest in psychic phenomena and off-beat subjects began to grow and Brice and I parted ways as I had more and more hypnotists and oddballs on the air. My turnaround came when I met and shook hands with, Sonny Barger of the Oakland/San Fransisco Hells Angels. Here was a man who was a walking challenge. It was a heck of an insightful interview that Sonny did of me on WRR in 1967. That's right, he interviewed me. I turned out to be pretty evil stuff with a wife and at least one girlfriend. And the times, they were-a-changin'.
Vacations for Carol and I were dedicated to San Fransisco. It was the end of the Beat Generation and the arrival of the Flower Children. We were among the vanguard trumpeting their arrival; these sacrificial lambs who behaved like soldiers. My old friend Scott was among them.

On our first visit to San Fransisco, we walked in on Scott and his girlfriend Robin nude, in true Hippie style - and were welcomed with open arms. While Instant Orgy was not exactly our cup of tea, Carol and I managed to simulate some of the native expressions and attach ourselves; by ingesting large amounts of various smoking herbs, to the local hippie society. In that process, we began to grow apart. We ceased to seek each other in trying to find ourselves. My first acid trip with Scott polarized my identity problem. I would be myself. Carol - whoever she was, would have to do the same. The call of California was powerful. I landed a job at KMPX-FM strictly on the basis of a walk-in interview, and then declined it. I really wanted to come to California I knew, but I wanted to come to California alone, with Flowers In My Hair.

WRR and I had just about reached our limits with each other. My work was getting loose and shoddy while my mind pondered The Meaning Of Life; and then one day I found my catharsis. Led Zepplin had issued their first album and were essentially unknown in Dallas (or anywhere else). That is, right up to the moment that I auditioned "Dazed and Confused". That was it. I put almost half their album on the blues show that night, highlighting as many recognizable Willie Dixon songs as possible, which was two. "Dazed and Confused" stuck the knife in the program. It was so mad and wicked, I just couldn't hold back. For the thousands of Dallas and North Texas blues fans who were used to the Classic Blues approach of The Caravan show, Led Zepplin must have scared the willie shit out of them. These were WHITE kids doing blues but there was no DIGINITY in their music at all. Blues in the classic form always allowed some dignity, and required some respect of the listener. Blues can be bruised in that context of listening but it was not supposed to BLEED. Blues was a teacher. Not this. This was music made by insane, suicidal crazy people driven by demons, who were addicted to PAIN and God knows what else. It was Blues yes, but they didn't know when to STOP. It was the horrifying sound of dying people driven mad by love, mistakenly trying to get in to Hell.

I was told to not air the band again, but I conveniently forgot to pull the tape from rotation. When it aired again a month later, I was fired. I regard that to this day as a wise decision on the part of the station management. It was obvious to them that Led Zepplin (and I) didn't have a chance in these days and times. It was obvious to me that the times and I were-a-changin' and they weren't. I went to work as a cab driver.

Bill Compton - KVIL, 1968

CHAPTER 18 They Call It Mellow Yellow

I would not in a million years, have considered a career as a cab driver. You see, I had not completed my weaning from the dollar bill and still believed I was morally obligated to earn money. I was not yet a hippie. I was still attached to "real" life as a symbiant. Republic Bank and I shared co-dependent personalities.

Cab driving can teach you many things about people, especially one's self. I even learned something of my DJ self from one of the fares I picked up. I casually began talking about the Jazz Unlimited show on WRR with a black man who was my rider. He had listened often, he said. He didn't seem to recognize my voice. I asked him what he thought about the DJ on the show. "He ain't got no soul, man." was the only response. I took it literally. It hurt. It made me wonder about The Meaning Of Life. I wondered about it for several weeks while I learned about being a very good cab driver. I often again, found myself in that State Of Mind That Has No Explanation. I think it must be that Deja' Vu is really a form of prayer.

In Dallas in those days near the Market district, was a place called the Green Frog Cafe. It was rather like attending Mass to go there. It was expected of all cab drivers. For some reason I never dropped in but I often wondered if it were the same place mentioned in Jerry Jeff Walker's "Desperados Waiting For a Train". What a wonderful anthem that song was. Another Jerry Jeff Walker tune that got passed over (probably because Mr. Bojangles was such a hit) was "The Hulk" which was one of the most savage attacks on politics I had ever heard. Richard Nixon was nailed quite well in 1965, nearly ten years before his demise. What a song.

Coming off Dallas' Harwood Street south bound near the Southland Life building, one could time one's cab with the traffic lights so as to hit Commerce and Main safely, just under the yellow. It got to be a habit with me. I hit it night after night on my runs. Then one night, I got hit back. It was a new Cadillac gunning east bound out of the Statler-Hilton far too fast to be observing any kind of lights at all. The guy was definitely drunk although in those days, it didn't matter all that much. He plowed a Cadillac V-shaped dent right into the back right side of my cab where the radio was mounted. I took off for a couple of weeks and wondered how I would make the rent and buy food. Somewhere near the end of my rope, I was given more rope with a small check from the cab company. My case had proved out in court. They had been blessed by my work there, and I could come back if I wanted to. I passed. The checks were too small for the bet.

Amazingly, the phone rang again. It was Ron Chapman trying to assemble a staff for a Dallas radio station he and his group were buying - KVIL. It would be nice here to say "You know the rest", but this is not a Cinderella story. I did not become the Major Market Voice of the 1970's although it was certainly a perfect setup for it. I had shaken hands with Sonny Barger of the Hell's Angels - some of that lust for freedom had gotten into my blood. I could be a really great radio DJ, I knew that. I wanted something far most elusive and costly. I wanted freedom and sex and happiness and adventure - in any order at all.

During the next six months I was held on salaried retainer with literally nothing to do. The station's legal work was far from done and yet Chapman and his people wanted me to stay put. I got paid. I stayed. During that time I connected heavily with the man who would be the afternoon drive personalty; Bill Compton. Bill was one of those people with a great voice, incredible charisma and natural charm. We smoked a lot of stuff and dropped some other stuff and listened to a lot of stuff together. We drew closer and wiser with repeated playings of Jimi Hendrix' "Electric Ladyland", Dr. John's (known as the night-tripper) Gris-Gris voodoo album and the perfectly lovely Swingle Singers who had no soul whatever. It was a jamming of cultures and a turning of evolutionary generations. The times were heavy and we were so to speak, in DJ graduate school. Our Karma was becoming mixed as we searched the music to find the answers to the questions the music was talking about. In the process we changed each other's lives.

To add to the retainer pay, we were assigned a working vacation; Bill and I were to go to Las Vegas and develop a format for another station being taken over by Chapman's group. All expenses paid, food, hotel, whatever we needed except a car. We tried a small motorcycle for a while, but the taxi proved more reliable. We stayed for a month or so, shared a room and generally learned enough about each other to make our lives work in parallel lines. We had a near meeting with Mama Cass Elliot, marvelous experiences with Scientologists, psychic phenomena connected to Howard Hughes (who it was said, was languishing in a hotel room not far away), and had enjoyed mental extrapolations and fantasies that could only be experienced by the finest of friends, through enjoined brotherhoods. In short, Bill and I became soul mates.

I dropped the bomb on Carol that I wanted a divorce. She took it without blinking and signed the forms willingly when I presented them to her a few weeks later. There was no tumult, we both regarded it as inevitable and we were both quite civilized about it. I wanted my personal stuff, she could have everything else. While we waited for the documents to become formal, we remained friends. We even had Bill and other friends Hank and Peggy, move in with us in true, liberated hippie fashion.

Hank was a tall drink of water or whatever happened to be in the bottle. Peggy his wife, was a large and mischievous lady with fantastic long, black hair. Like me, she was a Scorpio. We were rather like brothers and sisters with some subdued flirtations. We were family. There were some fun times at the house. We were all mad with pot and "power". We were becoming what looked on the outside like a cult. In truth, we were just great friends trying to find ourselves and each other in the Great Groping Grotto of Greed that was our world in 1968. Hank and I were awakened one startled Sunday morning very early, after a night of partying. It was a surreal kind of experience, with both of us stumbling to the door at the same time. We were confronted by two young men in suits, carrying briefcases. We were incredulous, thinking it was some kind of religious assignment they were on. We were expecting to see a Bible or the Watchtower or other religious tract. Somehow we began to realize and deal with, what seemed a very unlikely situation. They were magazine salesmen. Unbelievable. Unforgivable.

We invited the young men inside and immediately began to intimidate them, controlling and manipulating the conversation at every turn. After all, WE were the professional mind fucks here, the men with the power, the communication skills, the energy to do almost ANYTHING. It was shameful for them to be disturbing people this early on a Sunday and we sat about making them pay for their transgression. It took about 15 minutes. When they left, they were carrying a large $2.00 souvenir plaster-of-paris vase from Mexico, and were poorer by $5.00. Cash. We chose not to buy any magazines. It was fair, all things considered.

KVIL, the divorce, and several other life-changing events all happened about the same time. We were on the air for about six weeks when the scene began to fall apart. Bill had a friend who had become involved with a flower child we called "Death Wish Nancy". She was lovely girl, but suicidal. Her dad was a retired Dallas cop - former FBI - who did not like us at all. It was a rock and roll hard place. Bill decided to split rather than have us all sacrificed to the gods of circumstance, I decided it was time to go also. Flatly, I could lose my wife, my job, my stuff... but not my friend.

You know, breaking up isn't really all that hard to do, it's the people around you who have to become comfortable with the empty box they've put you in. It is the friends, parents and other relatives that panic and freak out when the perfect world they perceive crumbles and leaves not even a picture of itself. I paid rent at my folk's house until I was almost broke. During that time I tuned up my recently overhauled 1954 Jaguar Mark VII Saloon for the trip to L.A. I figured that it would bring some real money in L.A. For company on the trip, I contacted one of Bill's old girlfriends and an old buddy of his as chaperon. A few miles west of Ft. Worth, I was overtaken by my dad in his 1960 Pontiac Ventura. It was a nice car and he wanted to see to it that I had good wheels for the L.A. trip and whatever my immediate future might be. We went back to Ft. Worth, traded cars and paperwork and crashed for the night. The next day Jim, Colleen and I headed west.

Professional mind-fuck, mad with power.

CHAPTER 19 Those Of You Coming To California, Please Arrive In Time For The Earthquake

El Paso had the feel of Something Inevitable About to Happen. We were very careful with our stash of pot. The car was spotless inside and out, having been vacuumed that very day. We carefully wrapped our half-lid of marijuana and placed in in a paper bag next to a fence a few blocks stateside of the border to Mexico. It looked like all the other litter. When we went across to Juarez, we were ready for some serious shopping and fun. Truly, we had a very good time, ate well, bought souvenirs and generally did the tourist thing. Coming back was a bust. More than one of us had long hair. That was enough for the border crossing guard who also liked Colleen's looks. Who wouldn't. She was a former beauty queen, a Miss Dallas. They made us unpack the car, spread our luggage and clothing out and submit to a personal search. What the hell, it was a slow night for them and we didn't look dangerous. After three searches of the car one officer squealed; "I found a seeeeeed!" Shit. After three searches? It was definately planted. The hassle continued until I got visibly angry and until the guards had had an eyefull of Colleen, then we were allowed to go. It made you wanna puke, then firebomb the place. El Paso/Juarez. Don't ever go there during 1968.

We drove the few blocks to the fence where we had hidden our pot. There in a paper bag amid all the other litter, was our stash. We smoked and enjoyed it openly while we found our way to the highway west. Jim drove for a few hours during the night while I snoozed. At about 4:00 AM somewhere in the middle of the desert, he woke me to tell me we were almost out of gas. Thanks, Jim. I drove another half-hour before we really did run out of gas. Thre was nothing for it but to hitch west to the nearest station. Since Jim had driven most of the night, It fell to me to find gas while he stayed with the car and protected Colleen. Thanks, Jim. Actually, it was Kismet for them. Jim and Colleen fell in love and married later. For them, it had been a wild and free experience with a drug-craze hippie friend. For me, it became almost a way of life for the next few years.

L.A. is never what you expect it to be. We were to hook up with Bill, Hank, Peggy and their entourage at Mike Baldwin's pad near Ventura Beach. Mike was a highbrow who had done well in Dallas. He had not done so well in L.A. Ventura Beach was quite intense, but it reminded me somehow of Beaumont, Texas. Somewhere in that stretch of real estate, Jim Morrison of the Doors had found a way to express what most of us were feeling. Mike had been a DJ during my other life in Dallas, doing a jazz show of his own at one of the Dallas stations. Mike was good, if a bit snooty on the air. He had soul, if it be tainted a little. He was more like a stoned Classical announcer. He couldn't drop the snobby stuff, but he sure grooved on the smoke. His choice of music was a bit commercialized. His lady Frannie could make the maddest DJ forget radio in a minute. She was a knockout.

Most everybody was broke and uptight. It had been hoped that I would arrive with the Jaguar and some cash and bail everyone out. There were some hard feelings and high energy conflicts. It finally worked out with Jim and Colleen going back to Dallas. Bill, Hank and Peggy would go east to Phoenix where it was heard that in Barry Goldwater's Promised Land, there was work. For me, Highway One would get me close enough to San Fransisco to find Scott and crash for a while. I had always wanted to go to San Fransisco alone and maybe even pick up that job at KMPX. I hadn't counted on feeling lonely. Haight - Ashbury in 1968 had a feel to it that was still clean and free. There were drugs and dog shit everywhere of course but the Seagull still had cheap and plentiful fish and chips and most everyone still smiled. I wore my cloak of loneliness honestly and noticed others doing the same. I even made a few friends in a period of a couple of weeks. One was a lonely guy like me who spent part of an hour eating my fish and chips and passing the time of day. I hadn't counted on him becoming attached. He wanted to be friends, almost desparately. He found out where I was staying at Scott's which was right across from the Hashbury Post Office, and would pound repeatedly on the downstairs door screaming that he needed to see me, that I was Jesus. He did that for a couple of days. It got to be embarrasing.

At nights the speed freaks in the next apartment downstairs would flush the toilet again and again, for hours on end. The only sane sound was Asia, Scott's little daughter, crying. Golden Gate Park was like an enclave being overrun by a guerilla army. The straight folks stayed on the sidewalks and were very high profile. Surrounding them were hundreds of troops totally invisible in the woods. From the air, it must have looked like Vietnam with two distinctly separate factions constantly in motion. Out in the park you had your pick of social phenomenae; hippies in the bushes doing dope and sex, the ever lovely Japanese Tea Garden or the very sophisticated and definately fashionable San Fransisco Elite strolling through the park talking to themselves in curious syncopated outbursts of orchestrated psychobable mania. The straight people were crazy as hell and it was a source of never-ending entertainment for the hippies. On Haight street you could be flashed by anything from genitalia to weapons, to food, to drugs, to badges. There was always the feeling that this could never last but God, wasn't it great right now?

Having me around all the time, Scott's old lady started getting the inevitable hots. It was the nature of the beast. It became my daily routine to try to make a quick exit right after Scott split for work, then come back about the time he arrived home or right after. Always, there would be the question in his eyes from him to her and each time her eyes responded the denial. It was getting too heavy for friends to stay friends. It occurred to me that we might be living under ancient Eskimo or contemporary hippie customs, where I was expected to please the lady or at least take advantage of her charms as part of the hospitality. I fought off my lustful instincts. Scott was like a brother. I would be The Better Man. No incest.

Mercifully, I got a letter from Phoenix one day. It was time to join up with Bill. I found a couple that wanted to head east. They would pay the gas, I would provide the car. Since we didn't have an extra $7.95 for a fan belt, we would have to drive without the power steering. That was OK, since most of the highway was a straight line.

CHAPTER 20 Little Willie Sunshine And The Harbinger Of Doom

My arrival in Phoemix was not met with the welcome I had expected. Socially, I was a misfit. Things had changed. The mood was somehow the same as it had been in L.A. even though the cordiality of my welcome was certainly gracious enough. I had the feeling that I had been spoken of to the people there and that I was expected to live up to a certain standard. I had no idea that I was The Wizard Who Could Make Clouds Dissapear.

Back in the late 1950's there was an article in Parade magazine about a man who could make clouds disappear just by concentrating on them. I tried doing the same thing that day in 1957 and surmised it really worked. It really does. It takes imagination and Faith. I have done it many times since. Some lazy afternoon when there is popcorn in the sky, try this; Fix your vision and concentration on only one of those clouds you see. Visualize it shrinking, slowly. The first thing you'll notice is that any time beyond two minutes dedicated to this will make you uncomfortable. Shortly after that, you'll realize you need to be more patient. Give it ten or fifteen minutes. "Give" is the key word here. Completely erase the concept of Time from your mind.

As the cloud goes away, you'll find yourself imbued with a whole new confidence. I shared this with Bill. He had shared it at least verbally, with his friends. They stared at me in awe and some suspicion on my arrival, I did not appear to be The Messiah. I wasn't.

Bill was an incredible hit on KRUX-AM radio in Glendale, just to the west of Phoenix. He was pulling an awesome 70% ratings share in afternoon drive, under the name "Little Willie Sunshine". That had to have been Peggy's idea. It translated to fat paychecks for everyone at the station. It was inevitable that I became the Encroaching Darkness. I was hired almost immediately by KOY as a night time newsman. The graveyard shift. For such a picayune job, the interview was indecently long and boring. So was the work. After a week or so, something snapped. I had to have a girlfriend. A cuddly teddy bear, a sweet young thing to play with. Someone cute, meaningless, transitory and sexual. Now.

I ended my shift at about 7 AM and walked outside to the car. Lo and behold, there she was standing by the bus stop at KOY. There wasn't a lot said. I just picked her up, took her home and made love to her. No harm done, we never saw each other again. Thanks, God. I needed that.

My little tryst along with all the other activity around the house had not gone unnoticed on very conservative and middle class Olive Avenue in north Phoenix/Peoria. Along with my uptight feelings about being a square peg in a place where there were no holes at all, we had occasional visits from Crazy Ted, Gone John and others. Ted was a social revolutionary who loved to walk into whatever conversation was going on in the room soaking wet, fresh out of the shower and naked. John was a raging paranoid who saw cop cars everywhere when he was stoned. He was stoned most of the time. They all through Bill, presented me with an absolutely perfect, fully mature, succulent Peyote cactus on my arrival. That and some Orange Sunshine LSD just about made my day. In fact, it just about made a week of them in the space of a 24-hour period.

We were getting "hot" in the neighborhood and our personal freedoms came into question; it was time to move it or lose it. We headed east to Scottsdale. I left KOY and joined Bill at KRUX. Hank was at KTAR, which was a local news station. We were all tuned in to each other through the radio while our nation was at war. So it seemed, would we be with one another, as well. I fit into the scenario like a third left shoe, and felt it.

Along the way Bill had been joined by an old friend from the past named June. He had also picked up a squishy little dumpling named Cindy from Gone John who had picked her up from Crazy Ted. She was delicious and almost unavoidable. It didn't help my "no incest" policy towards my adopted family. I had tagged (or been tagged by) a yummy if slightly tough brown-eyed redhead named Barbara. We were playmates, but not planning a future together. She lived at home with her mom and sister. The rest of us wound up in a four-bedroom house about a mile or so from Frank Lloyd Wright's Taliesen West masterpiece in the desert. The place was perfect for us and the times were quite intense. There were Rebirth (The local underground paper) concerts in the desert and there was magic in the air, carried by the music of the times. "Bad Moon Rising" by Creedence, "Voodoo Child" by Jimi Hendrix and almost anything by Jim Morrison and The Doors had special meaning for all of us at the Scottsdale house. So did "Why Don't We Do It In The Road" by the Beatles. Barbara and I did one night just for the hell of it, right on the hot asphalt, straddling the center stripe. The song after all, was a prophecy that needed fulfillment. Us too. Doing It In The Road or at least that particular road, would be a form of suicide now, but before Scottsdale became "Scottsdale, Arizona (with an upper-scale image separate and apart from Phoenix)", it was pure-dee desert, folks. Scottsdale Road was no more than a mile long with only two major intersections and one gas station anywhere near us. If you Did It in the road, you could be sure that was the only thing going on in that road for miles, at 2AM with the possible exception of scorpions and tarantulas crossing.

I had been fighting my own personal paranoia ever since I had arrived in Phoenix and I had been handling it quite well. Gone John came to regard me as a potential Guru it seemed and possible path to Nirvana. That attachment thing again. For me, a breaking point came on a very hot July night. I arrived at the house tired and frazzled from too much heat, too much pot, not enough sleep and one or two acid trips weeks earlier, that had never really reached a conclusion. They weren't bad trips, they were just inconclusive. Loose mental ends in a world where parts of your mind could snag on most anything.

It was just after sunset. I walked into an empty and completely quiet house. I stopped in the kitchen and called out. No answer. I could feel some kind of presence, as though someone were watching me. Someone unseen was in the room. I stepped back and balled my fists, I was ready for any kind of attack. I had a feeling the house had been busted and the narcs were ready to pounce on me.

Silence. More silence. Then I saw one of the kitchen drawers move ever so slightly. There was no one to be seen. Poltergeists! Shit. These guys had stupidly invoked some kind of spiritual monster from the desert which had probably eaten all of them and left the house haunted! I was not ready for this. I began to pray. The drawer came all the way open, then shut most of the way. Then another drawer came open on the opposite side. There were scuffling sounds, and I prepared myself to meet The Entity. There was not just one Entity though, there were two of them! They began to emerge into the kitchen floor. They were slithering dark, hairy slow-moving little wisps of evil that would very soon come to their full enormity. I could see myself being torn to shreds and devoured right there in the kitchen, my foolish Soul damned to hell.

The Entities stayed small. One of them mewed and wiped its face with a furry little paw. They were June's kittens playing in the back of the cupboard, just as any kitten would do. I decided I needed to live alone.

CHAPTER 21 If You Miss The Earthquake, Try to Get Here For The End Of The World

The place I picked to move to was cheap. It had to be. I was making next to nothing as a part-timer at KRUX. There was little left over for luxuries like food. I spent most of my time at my little one-room shack sitting in front of the air conditioner, trying to survive the furnace that was early summer in Phoenix. My major comforts were my music, Barbara and surprisingly, sympathetic visits from Gone John and others who had already endured the soul-scrubbing heat of a first summer in Phoenix. Two months of it were enough for me. Poverty was a wonderful character builder but I was almost to the stature of Gandhi in that department. I decided to call it quits and go back to San Fransisco. I don't know why I didn't think about going back to Texas, other than I didn't feel welcome there. Phoenix was a dead-end for me and I felt I should be honest about it. I loaded the car, turned in my keys and drove out to KRUX to say goodbye to Bill. Lo and behold, he had one more option for me. A pathetic little AM day-timer that was currently broadcasting in a spanish format was on the ropes and headed for bankruptcy. Bill arranged a meeting between myself and a loveable bug-eyed little guy named George, for that following evening for drinks. I crashed at Barbara's and confirmed the appointment for the next day. I liked George. He was the kind of man who was usually successful because he was usually honest and usually lucky. This was George's lucky day with KCAC.

Since I was without a roof and Hank and Peggy had found a place of their own too, Bill found digs that gave us both privacy. We wound up with two of four individual cabins at Starbright Ranch on the west end of South Mountain park at what was more or less "the end" of 35th Avenue. He had the south cabin, I had the north. Between us in the center cabin was a fine country family with a couple of fine young farmer's daughters. All in all, the ranch had all the charm and seclusion of a UFO base. I mean that figuratively and in the literal sense. There was an other-world feel to it that was indescribable.

In short order Bill and I were joined by another friend from KRUX, Ray. Ray was an incredible radio and sound engineer. He was also a music nut like us. It was a cordial and close alliance of very stoned and high-energy male egos. Egos in radio can become monstrous and uncontainable. The emotional stress was raw and intense. Stress in those days however, was something unheard of. The nearest comparitor was how much of life you could handle in one day. The ranch got too heavy at a psychic level, for ordinary people. However, it brought out the best in all of our extraordinary friends. "Strange Days" by The Doors had just come out.

The "Living Room" was a free-form construct of junk located about a quarter-mile from my cabin, south and east of Ray's place. It was the product of a very fertile mind inhabiting a lovely body that was Ray's sister, Betty. Betty was a true artist working in abstracts. A quite magical person, she was into mime and illusion. One of her creations called "Multiplications" was on display at the New York Museum of Modern Art. It was like a clear Rubick's cube that unfolded instead of turning. The Living Room was an old couch, a chair or two an old tractor tire and a bedframe that served as a coffee table. All that junk had been dumped at various places around the ranch. Betty had assembled the pieces into a retreat that was cordial and comfortable to all. It belonged to no one, had no earthly value and thus, was a holy place where we could all be ourselves no matter how stoned or crazy we happened to be at the time.

There had been several new girlfriends for me, one night stands at the ranch. Betty was one of those. Although there was no real attraction for either of us we went along with what the gods had planned for us and pretended we didn't know. Neither of us expected anything from the other. We drew closer, enjoying the fact that there was no reason for it. I became aware of having become something of a challenge to my friends. We were all such stinking individualists that Kerouak would have been hard pressed to describe it. What had been good between us all was so good that it needed to be propped up and talked to, long after having died. Vestiges of it remain to this day.

The pace of living moved to the fast lane both on the air and off. Our egos clashed dramatically and we found it difficult to hold a fulfilling conversation with mere words. The radio station became our philisophical sounding board and an underground cult hit of enormous proportions.

What Bill and I and the other KCAC DJ's were doing was was holding a kangaroo court against ourselves - and society in general - on the air, using the music as our basis of communication, our indictment of one another's philosophies. It was a kind of DJ street fight - a Poet's Brawl if you would - on the airwaves. I would sign on in the morning with whatever was in my heart and on my mind musically. Bill would come in on the afternoon shift with his musical reply. I would pick up from there the next day. We were literally battling out our egos and differing points of view with each other, sometimes with accompanying comments from other DJ's, in their own shows. Sometimes, DJ's on other radio stations would kick in on it. Really.

Time spent on the board was creative orgasm from signon to signoff. We listened to each other when not on the air and that pretty well took the whole day. Phoenix itself was trying to hug these crazy dinosaurs who were bent on destroying each other through musical collage. It was like two or more insane lawyers trying to prove in court that the other did not exist. Schizophrenia trying to commit suicide. Nothing like it had ever happened in Phoenix radio. The Spring that gave birth to our Summer Of Love 1969 saw and appreciated, war fought with music. The rating services (and other radio stations) were screaming; KCAC was pulling top numbers at night - hours after signoff.

You have to be a God or a Devil (thanks, Alvin Lee) to live at that pace indefinately. I was neither of those, I was just young. After a three day-and-night stretch of girls, pot and ego tripping on the radio, I was at the point where I needed to find out if I were one or the other. Five hours sleep out of 70 is not enough to remain a functional part of this world. Peggy, in one of her sweet (and seductive) moods, invited me over to the apartment after work. It was the story of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest (see Bob Dylan). I was feeling omnipotent at the time and accepted the compliment the way a puppy would accept being scratched on the tummy. You betcha. Driving up 19th street, a small group of fairies came and performed an ancient, lovely dance in front of my eyes. While watching, I sodomized the back end of a ten-wheel truck with the old Pontiac Ventura that my dad had traded me. The fairies left and I found I was neither a god nor a devil, I was just another fool who was lucky to be alive.

There was a girl in Phoenix at that time, that everyone called Crazy. John Stewart (formerly of the Kingston Trio) wrote a song about her on one of his albums, it was as beautiful as Crazy herself. She was indeed a beautiful lady. Right around Christmas, Crazy made and shared with us all, some of the damndest brownies I have ever had. Betty and I had a few one evening and the next morning, I woke up clear-headed and more crazy than I had been in a very long time.

Betty seemed to sense that I was caught in the doorway of being out of my mind, or in my right mind - or in a dimension in between. She took me for a walk to the crest of the nearest of the South Mountain foothills adjacent to Starbright ranch. There we strolled along the crest, not involving ourselves in meaningless conversation so as not to spoil this very clear day. Nearby was a lovely cloud - a white puff of popcorn in the sky. "Watch this" I said. It took only a minute of effort and the cloud was gone. It happened so fast that I heard Betty gasp. It surprised me, too. Darn nice brownies those had been. I got the recipe later but it is too lengthy and involved to print here. Suffice it to say, they were magic.

Interestingly, there were some pictures taken on that day out by the Living Room, that remain unexplainable. There were lights in various places on the hills in the background of some shots of Bill, that did not belong there. Patterns of lights. Lights that were not noticed, save by the camera. There were other oddities in other pictures of us as well. We were all different people now. None of us appeared to be ourselves.

Given that, it did not seem likely that any of us knew each other. Time had moved. We were catching up.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
SIDEBAR COMMENT FROM THE AUTHOR
I most humbly appreciate your attention to this particular chapter. The PayPal button has been modified so that your donation should you choose to do so, will be routed to Radio Free Phoenix. KCAC you see, had children and grandchildren. KDKB was one of those but there have been others as well. Since this was written at least four of the powerful personalities that made that radio station, have died. They are William Edward compton, Hank Cookenboo, Gary Kinsey (Toad Hall) and Dwight Tyndall... good friends, all.

Radio Free Phoenix - destined probably for satellite eventually - dances in the spirit of KCAC. Totally Free Form, for a whole new generation of growing and freely formed Creative Spirits that refuse to let a wall or a box define their existence.
In that respect, Radio Free Phoenix represents Hope and that too, represents Faith.

You are free to listen online right now -- http://radiofreephoenix.com/

Bill is gone, now. So is Toad. So is Hank and Dwight. Others have been eaten by the monster that is our society's Correctional System. So someday, shall I be gone also in some way or another.

I think I must have been left behind to show you where the spirit resides now, and invite you to join the dance....... A dance that is now, over 35 years old.

You are free also, to participate in a blog of surviving KCAC veterans and fans who as you might imagine, are fun to be around and to read and write to and even hear again. There is a growing collection of audio clips all over the blog, of old tapes of Bill particularly and others, that have been donated from the closets, cassettes and tape reels of many "old timers" like us. -- http://kcaclives.blogspot.com/

You are encouraged also, to add life via financial support, to this spontaneous movement of what I can only describe as the Spirit Of The Phoenix.

CHAPTER 22 Something Magic Happened Yesterday, I Cannot Remember It's Name

The back end of the old Pontiac had been loaded with a few of my personal posessions, one of which was my toolbox. It had been pawned several times and was a perfect place to carry about a pound of some of the finest pot I had ever been given. You see, an old Dallas friend of ours named David had gotten into dealing.

The day before the wreck, he had breezed through town with the FBI sniffing at his shoes, or so he said. Whatever. I wound up as caretaker for the weed, he hit the road, I hit the truck, the cops hit the toolbox and the shit hit the fan.

I was busted on the air. Like everything at the station, the bust was broadcast live - made public knowledge as it happened. Part of our Civic Duty was to report bad drugs on the street through an organization called Terros. Needless to say, that made us controversial. The establishment was not going to miss a chance to nail one of us and I was caught with my pants down. Somehow or another I came to be described in the newspapers as "Spokesman for the Phoenix Underground Hippie Culture". It was the Phoenix version of Alice's Restaurant.

The Spring that gave birth to the Summer Of Love (which had actually happened the yearn or two before) had other signifigant sidelights for me. One was an album by the Moody Blues; "Every Good Boy Deserves Favor". The music was wonderful of course but the album cover is what enchanted me. There was a picture of a beautiful young boy about five years old, with an old wizard. The boy was learning the magic of crystals and minerals. I found myself staring repeatedly at the picture. Almost every day I would pull the album out and look at it over and over through my morning air shift.

I could not have known it at the time but almost 20 years later and at the time of this writing, I have a son who was identical to that young boy. He could have been the model for that painting. Perhaps that is why some artworks are so enchanting to us. They allow us to see into the future. The album cover was one of a few of my favorite things that carried me through the very brief Phoenix winter.

I became obsessed with The Moody Blues. Amid the growling, howling anti-war songs, theirs was a positive message. One afternoon filling in for Bill, I decided to just break out with a collage of the Moody Blues non-stop. It went for almost two full hours. It was magic. The radio audience and I were in an unseen dance that was purely spiritual. We could FEEL each other. I got a call the next morning from a listener who had just turned on the radio station when she had left work. "I listened to the whole thing" she said, "from start to finish. And I want you to know that I wound up totally lost, about 50 miles out in the desert. It was wonderful. Thank you".

Wow.

There was a girl too, named Bonnie (yes - another Bonnie), with golden hair and brown eyes who later became a major part of my life. Her trademarks were a perfectly round face, perfectly round boobs and an expression "groovy", which was an all-encompassing response to most anything. She wasn't stupid by any means but she didn't mind if you thought so, especially if it made you feel better about her. The communication between us was sexual, complete and monosyllabic. I expressed a desire in conversation with her, to visit a ghost town in northern Arizona someday, called Jerome. I had heard a lot about it. Later, because of her, I would come to learn much more.

Survival in Phoenix had become chancy. I always have had great blessings and/or luck but I was definitely pushing it. I was in a little pain due to a neck injury in the wreck. More importantly, I could sense something afoot that future events would be out of my control. The pot bust for instance had gone to court and I had missed the court date due to a bad battery on the old '55 Chevy station wagon I had picked up. When I finally did get into town to the courthouse, my attorney (or someone)had managed to have the case dismissed. Not even any media hype. In the words of Chuck Berry, it was too much monkey business.

I didn't relish the idea of being regarded as a spokesman (or martyr) for anyone's hippie underground movement, but that's how I had been tagged by the papers. People like that often get spitted and broiled -tarred and feathered- run out of town on rails. Crucified in some cases. I could feel it coming. Spring was winding down and summer was coming on. Led Zepplin IV came out. "Ramble On" grabbed me by the heart and feet. Hard.

With all the girls, with all the fun I was having and with all the dues I felt I was about to pay unecessarily, I decided upon about my seventh playing of "Ramble On", to do just that. Here again was one of those major career choices where I had to decide to stay put, suffer and eventually get rich, or employ myself (Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death) in the quest of Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness. We had created a healthy monster with KCAC. I felt it could live, die, eat, drink and poop on its own - or not.

Betty in her artistic sensitivity and probably out of boredom, suggested we Ramble On together. We were both free, it seemed to fit. It took us only a week or so to locate an old Volkswagen pickup truck with tool boxes on the sides and a fiberboard camper on the back. I rebuilt the brakes, gave away most of my posessions and we were on the road west in short order. Betty had dressed the sides of the truck and camper with posters from the radio station. We looked like a circus wagon touting the Beatles Abbey Road album, The Grateful Dead and much more in our collage of rolling hippie art.

Inside the camper was a TV that had it's own battery, plus some books, groceries, a few tools and incidentals. One whole tool box area on the left opened up to a stove and food pantry. The other side was mostly clothing and camping gear.

We made it as far as San Diego without making each other suffer for our unique and individual personalities. There at 2:00 AM I was awakened to a magnificent comet in the sky. There was a San Diego cop banging on the door as well, practicing to become an asshole. "You're parked in a No Parking Zone". I was all of 8 inches into one. I got up and moved the truck while Betty vibrated annoyance from inside. The comet was an unexplainable surprise and absolutely magnificent. I wonder yet if it was a figment of my imagination. Maybe somebody just painted a picture of it up there. Comet Kohutek highly touted years later, and Haley's comet were mere jokes by comparison. This was spectacular - unless - it was a UFO.

The daytime awakenings were where Betty awakened to my lack of commitment toward her and lack of discretion regarding other females. Details are irellevant, I hurt her thoughtlessly. As we headed up the coast through L.A. the world was smoking. The hills were ablaze with grass fires and it gave our journey a most surreal feeling. By this point we had tacitly decided to part. We were literally living the lyrics to "L.A. Woman" by The Doors. We should have written it down and claimed a copyright. The album came out a year later. We parted at San Fransisco International Airport, where I watched her board a flight to New York.

INSERT: Son Dustin - b. 3/17/1986 - or was it 1969?

CHAPTER 23 Solitude and The Family Dog - Charly.

Solitude is a wonderful, healing thing. The problem with it is that you can never get quite enough. When you have come to appreciate it fully, there are those who will want you to share it with them, as though it were a new medicine or drug.

I connected with Scott and Robin again but this time I just popped in for showers. I wanted to be alone. They wanted that for me too. I took up residence in a parking space on The Point about 100 feet above sea level on the north end of the beach, just across from a tourist spot called the Cliff House. It was the kind of place you would want to explore. There were caves nearby on the beach and the ruins of an ancient public bath house that had been really grand in its time. A young girl, a Taurus, was dropped off for me from the back of a Harley-Davidson. I guess the Angels knew I was in town. We spent a pleasant night together in the camper having food, sex and pot. There was no need to talk. She was a Taurus, I was a Scorpio with my moon in Taurus. That was who we were and all we needed to know.

The Point for the months of June and July of 1969, was my center of the universe. From that vantage point I watched the entire Apollo moonshot on TV, cherishing the moment as if I were in the glory of God. I prayed the astronauts would make it. Me and God helped, but they would have made it without us. They were truly great. I kept noticing strange things, though - shadowa in places on the moon at amgles where there should be none. Fuzzy edges to the shadows in certain spots. Shouldn't the edges of the shadows on the moon be sharp?

The beach had public bathrooms that were my relief station, often visited by aging homosexuals on the prowl. The beach also had occasional sea shells and sand dollars that could be harvested by any patient and observant stroller. There were and still are, lots of patient and observant strollers on the beach. Don't bother them. They are a Pandora's Box of worries. Trust me. I was once one of them.

There were a number of adventures during my stay on the point, not the least of which were occasional crashers who slept on the floor of the VW camper after only a brief introduction. I was able to perform the miracle of Loaves and Fishes a number of times for the local starving hippies, most of whom seemed like helpless sheep.

They couldn't know it, but the meals were prepared from throwaways in the produce garbage cans and at the bakery a few miles away in the Market District. I concocted wildly exotic dishes of cucumbers and seasoned rice, almost from midair. People came from nowhere to eat and enjoy. It gave me deep satisfaction to share my meals with some of these lonely friends who were uncommonly appreciative. They would have gone very hungry without me sharing my garbage with them.

Drugs were plentiful and questionable in quality. I helped smoke a small amount of "Peyote tar" once and wondered why the guy even bothered with it. On the other hand I had a taste of the legendary Panama Red one day that was unquestionably as represented. That afternoon somehow seemed to combine with several other afternoons and at least a week of very pleasant afternoons went by in the space of a few hours. "Glass Onion" by the Beatles comes to mind.

Down the street was The Family Dog, a concert hall of considerable reputation in those days. It had brought forth the Grateful Dead, Frank Zappa, Country Joe, Janis Joplin and many others. I had my own moment in the sun one evening at a gathering of religious zealots.

There was a zen teacher named Steve Gaskin, holding regular sessions there once per week. I dropped in for enlightenment and found myself in the middle of a conversation between the zen master and a german shepherd dog. For some reason the pooch took to me. Without even a wag of it's tail, the dog came between me and the zen master. Then, each time the zen teacher would attempt to speak, the dog would bark at him as if to say "You don't get this one". It was embarrassing and funny at the same time. It kept on until I voluntarily left.

The Point had nickle-telescopes at the Cliff House. Battery Park on the hill adjacent to my little parking area, had me and twenty-odd other inhabitants. The feeling of Deja' Vu was strong. I found out later that my father had been stationed nearby during World War II.

Hippies camping in those days were like the homeless in these times. What appeared to be a pile of leaves and trash under a tree would quite often be someone's sleeping bag with a someone, or sometimes two someones, in it. Across the street in another parking area was a wild assortment of mobile living quarters similar to mine, ranging from Conestoga Wagons built on the back of flatbed trucks, to converted school buses. One friend I met had stripped the bed of his pickup to the frame and built a miniature house of shingles, complete with a kitchen and skylight.

With my camper and TV I was living in the lap of comparative luxury. It was lonely though, and I made several apologetic calls to New York.

Betty finally agreed to return to me. I went to the airport with several "Welcome Home" banners hanging inside the camper. Our reunion was pleasant but ill-fated. On the way to my camping spot at the Point, the engine blew a piston. We spent the night on the freeway in the camper, about two miles north of the airport. When I say we spent the night on the freeway, I am not talking about the service road. We were parked on the inside median of the north bound freeway with the metal barrier rail on our left and the fast lane on our right. You couldn't open the driver's door on the left, it was so close to the rail. To go from the right side to the camper in the back, you had to wait for a rare lull in the traffic. I understand this was the same stretch of freeway where musician Harry Chapin was killed years later. It was a tight squeeze. Gigantic 18-wheel trucks passed within two feet of us all night. The next morning I got the VW running enough to get Betty back to the airport. She was after all, a New Yorker.

Even though the money and pawnable items ran out, I managed to raise $34.00 which is how much the new piston cost. Single handed, over a period of several days, I pulled the engine on the VW and made the necessary repairs, parked and camping right on the street near the Haight-Ashbury post office. Thank God I hadn't pawned my tools.

I had decided that I had paid enough dues for my indiscretion in San Diego and more importantly, I was being unfairly saddled with the responsibility of someone else's vehicle and possessions. I called New York again and finally cajoled Betty to return once more. This time there was no pretense at living the hippie lifestyle in San Fransisco. I picked Betty up at the airport and steered the nose of the truck south. We didn't talk a lot.

Betty had friends living in a converted barn in Santa Barbara. That's where I gave her the keys to the VW and picked up my duffell bag. We parted amiably enough, with her and her people giving me a lift to the highway. I reached Arizona faster by hitch hiking than I ever would have by Greyhound. You never know how things are going to happen on the road. It is said that God takes care of children, drunks and crazy folks. Food, smoke and friends just seem to come along at the right time. Come to think of it, anytime is the right time when you're on the road. Fly if you can, drive if you must, hitch if you can do neither. Buses are a slow, maddening grind.

Bill had moved from Starbright Ranch to a very strange and dilapidated house on 27th Avenue at the foot of South Mountain. It was really only about a mile away from Starbright Ranch as the crow flies. I later found out that my friend and lover Bonnie had located the place for him. The place had been owned by a lady artist who was into working with plaster. The interior of the house was a product of her imagination. It was full of sculptures of plant life. There were tulip shapes containing lamps and flowing vine-like shapes around wall mirrors. It depended on how you viewed the works. There was nothing delicate or natural about it. All the work could easily double as something demonic. Large sculpted tulip shapes that held light bulbs for instance, could be easily interpreted as demonic faces. Vine-like sculptures could easily generate the hallucination of snakes. It depended on your view of the world, the art, and your frame of mind. It was not pleasant. Still, there was a powerful feeling about the place.

Bill's lady of the time was a girl named Jenny, a secretary at the radio station and a good friend of Bonnie. They made a good couple. During my absence, Bonnie had moved to Jerome. What possessed me to reclaim my old station wagon from Bill and trade it for a 4-wheel drive chevy truck, I will never know. It was an unfair inconvenience to him and it wasn't like me to attach myself to material things. After several fruitless days of visiting and numerous playings of "Ummagumma" by Pink Floyd on the stereo, I headed north. Bill and I were not only no longer in tune, we were in different worlds. Trying to make a point, he and Jenny took me to see "Charly", a film about an idot-savant turned to genius through drugs and a desire for higher self-esteem. He slowly fell apart from his elevated conciousness.

Gee. Neat. Charly.

The Beatles

CHAPTER 24 Brand New Pure, Recycled Deja' Vu

I guess Bonnie had read my mind in our brief conversation about Jerome, Arizona. I need to mention her last name here, although I have avoided last names in most of this story. Her last name was Slagle. It matters when it comes to Deja' Vu.

There was an incredibly spooky feeling about the place and not just because it was a ghost town. The feeling of having been there before was almost like coming home - or perhaps like having never left. Part of the feeling unquestionably, was Bonnie. We just somehow fit. We didn't need to talk. Another part of it was historical and I discovered later, perhaps a part of the collective memory that most of us it is said, carry around with us from earlier generations.

I knew little or nothing of my family history at the time. I discovered through family genealogy many years later, that in the nearby town of Cottonwood, my great-grandfather Benjamin Nathaniel on my father's side of the family, had lived and my grandfather Claud had been born. I was re-tracing the footsteps of my ancestry. I was delving my roots with no knowledge of the discoveries to come. The feeling was rather like rummaging through an old attic full of things that had once been your own.

I was also becoming more in touch with God, although you rarely realize things like that when they happen. I had always professed Christianity. I had no idea at the time that I was on something more than a prolonged acid trip.

Realizations come slowly, so as not to startle us. We marvel at the concept of Eternity while we busy ourselves with the concept of time. The celestial clocks given to us by God - the sun, moon and stars, are simply not enough for the mankind of modern times. We mark, measure, separate, weigh and market time in an effort to buy, sell and trade it as a commodity. We thus, become frantic idiots; slaves to the mathematics of an abstract concept that Time and Money are the same thing. Mammon is a monster - eating us all, alive.

Since the day in 1967 that our country was removed from the gold and silver standards, our money has taken on the value of that same abstract concept. It serves however - to keep the masses working and under control. As long as we can be kept busy and feeding ourselves, we remain that three or more celebrated meals this side of social revolution. In other words the financial elite who really run things have us well trained; to obey our calendars, clocks and watches - as well as our checkbooks and credit cards.

It is a most powerful magic spell, making slaves of us all.

In 1752 as a matter of fact, our methods of keeping track of time changed with the introduction of the Gregorian calendar. In 1752 we lost something like two months of time. In addition, we continue to manipulate and "play" with Daylight Savings and other time-keeping methods that can with just a few seconds of manipulation, make a massive change in the quantity of our Gross National Product. None of us really, knows what time or day it really is. Therefore dear friend if you feel your job is grinding you down into spiritless submission and that our economy is stripping you of your very soul, rejoice. You have reached an important realization. Our economy and our society in the guise of Patriotic Endeavor and/or Judeo-Christian Work Ethic, is doing exactly what it was intended to do in the first place - dominate and control you.

It is a Lie - the very biggest in these times of The Great Deception. We are almost all, slaves.

And what is really funny about Time; It is by definition immeasurable; for all our instruments of measurement, even our atomic clocks, shall be reduced to their own elements before the job of measurement is finished. The pyramids are testament. I submit to you that the only practical measurement of time is in the developing generations of mankind and the unfolding events of life according to the will and plan of God.

I don't mean to preach to you. I am assuming you are a younger person and that some of this at least, is new information to you. This is not a lesson to teach, it is a realization to share. The prophecies shall be fulfilled. Without them, we have no goals to live for. What I mean is, there are times when God just seems to say; "OK, now YOU do it". If you don't, you are stuck.. for at least a lifetime.

There are many references to the word "house" in the Bible... the "House of David", the "House of Solomon" and so on. We usually take the meaning to be shelter. The meaning can also be " Family, Place in time" or "Generation". Hebrew words often have several meanings. Us non-Jewish folks need several understandings.

With that in mind, consider this interpretation of the scripture John 14:2; "In my Father's house (domain/family/generation/place in time) are many mansions (families/generations). If it were not so, I would have told you". Consider here the word "mansions" in a generational context. The meaning can be interpreted as "many fine families". No doubt there is an allusion to quality here.

God among all his other roles, serves as our perfect DNA example from which we attempt to replicate perfection in our various human and sexual passions. It is our sin nature that we as humans must of course, screw it up in some way. We were given the freedom to do so. We continually stamp our genetic graffitti on every life that evolves from us. It is our nature to sin. Sin, of course represents our choice to disagree with God. Not because it is wise, but because he allows it.

Placed naked on a perfectly flat surface and confronted with a perfectly vertical wall, both surfaces unlimited in all directions and without blemish; we would create a graffitti. That is, we would find a way to do SOMETHING to those perfect surfaces that would mark our presence. That mark being the only distinction in all of infinity, would likely become the very spot where our descendants would worship. Inevitably of course, they would wind up worshiping the spot itself instead of God - the way we have learned to worship church buildings in many cases. And Time. And Money.

Mammon. It is the chosen God of mankind.

"In my father's house are many mansions" to my mind, is a theologically clear statement of the fact of time travel. Time travel requires truth and karmic innocence. Innocence requires one to have exorcised himself of lies - and thence, the fear of death.

Understand it is not death itself that we should fear but the fear of death - fear itself. Fear is the "hook" that ties us to our concept of guilt. Guilt devours innocence, and there you have a description of what I regard as Original Sin. Not only is that true just for Jesus, but for you and me too. Time travel. Me. You. Jesus. Rebirth, not reincarnation.

I don't presume to tell you how to wind your clock, I am only telling you the time. I am also suggesting that it may run in more than one and indeed, in many directions at once. Try this; "In my father's place in eternity, are many generations". The experience of Deja Vu' therefore, may be our contact with eternity. Deja Vu' is most likely our more natural concept of time.

Deja Vu' permeated every waking moment of my life in Jerome, Clarkdale,
Cottonwood, the Verde Valley and Prescott county jail. I was in other words in "that" state of mind, my lifelong occasional reverie, for most of my waking moments.

I arrived at Bonnie's house in "The Gulch" well after dark. The Gulch was a precipitous road running from the base of Mingus mountain at the city limits of Jerome, to rejoin the main highway a half-mile further and about 200 feet higher. Bonnie was taking a bath when I knocked. Never modest, I barely had time to say hello before we were on the floor, making love. Damn, it was good to be home.

It was here in Jerome that I first heard what I call the "Holy Hum".

Mingus mountain on which Jerome was built, is considerably hollowed out from years of copper mining. In spite of that if you listen on a very quiet morning on a very clear day, you may hear a very deep vibration that is at once almost audible and almost not. The vibration must be at about 25 cycles per second. You feel it in your mind and sense it in your soul long before you hear it in your ears if indeed, your ears hear it at all. It is the kind of sound or feeling that would be emitted by a monstrous electrical transformer the size of a mighty ship. Perhaps it could be described as the sound of a giant diesel locomotive many miles away, which never draws closer. For me, it accompanies tinnitus - ringing in the ears.

The Hopi indians it is said, were the most holy and spiritual of all the Native American tribes. Local stories have it that they were drawn to Mingus mountain in ancient times, for their holiest ceremonies. From there legend has it, they divided the world into four parts. Tribes of the Hopi went in all of those four directions and it is said, reunite spiritually every year on Mingus. Mingus mountain is in other words, the center of the Hopi universe. Having camped on the top of Mingus and lived near its rib cage, I can believe it. There is much more to that mountain than meets the normal senses.

Within thirty miles of Jerome is Prescott, Arizona located on the other side of Mingus to the southwest. Just below Jerome to the north is the Verde River which cuts through some of the most picturesque and inaccessible Indian cliff dwellings imaginable. Bows, arrows and other artifacts were still being discovered in those caves in the middle 1970's. Further up an old country road to the west is Parson Springs and a wilderness area known as Sycamore Canyon. Off to the east a few dozen miles are the spectacular rocks of Sedona (another of my Great Grandfather's stomping grounds). South and east of there are the deserted Verde Hot Springs where it is said, many a hippie has been carried off this earth by aliens in UFO's. It didn't happen to me even though I sent them a telepathic message daring them to take me.

There were other unmistakable servants of fate though, one of them was my friend, Ed Roland. Ed was a tall black man in his late 20's. He wore his hair in a natural afro style and was a devotee of exotic herbs and pure foods. This was a man to be reckoned with and to befriend. He was a wealth of information about folk remedies and there was not one stitch of superstition within him. No mojo jive or gris-gris voodoo in his array of curatives. His approach to health was simple and straight forward. You got a bad tummy? You drink gotu-cola tea with a little peppermint and golden seal. Maybe you should chew on some fennell or down some flax seed tea. It works. There's no need for witchcraft or bullshit. We became good friends in short order.

Deja Vu' - my taste of eternity, just about consumed me during the times that Ed and I would take nutritional sabbaticals at a farm along the Verde river. We would enjoy fresh vegetables such as corn on the cob, right in the field. It was raw, delicious and very satisfying. The Deja Vu' was unexplainable at the time but I came to learn later that BOTH sides of my family tree were represented in the local history. My great-great grandfather (another one) Alexander Strahan had owned a large stretch of land next to the Verde river where I was feasting and exploring. It was quite likely that he and I were fed from the same land, separated by several generations of genealogical ignorance on my part.

I never knew these things until some 25 years later, but I was standing on the ground where BOTH of my great-granfathers had lived and worked. The gulch house and most of the buildings in Jerome were quite probably visited by them in their times, more than 100 years before. The Strahan sons were into mining, it is told. The Phelps-Dodge mine was indeed, the driving force of the local economy until its closure in the 1950's. It is quite likely that my ancestors on both sides of the family, had worked there.

Deja Vu'? Did I mention Deja Vu'? My great-grandfather Alexander Strahan had in fact, donated the land for a local cemetery and a local school in Cottonwood where my grandfather Claud Wortham was born. The name of Alexander Strahan's wife? (go back a few pages and look quickly at the opening paragraph of this chapter). His wife was Melinda Slagle. Bonnie and I were quite likely distantly related. As are we all.

Good friends sometimes do crazy things together. Ed and I decided to go search out the legendary fields of marijuana in Kansas and Nebraska. Kansas City was Ed's hometown, so we decided he needed to visit his mother as well. Legendary fields of marijuana? Did I say legendary?

During the world wars, there was much need of rope for the Army, Navy and other services. Rope was mostly made from hemp in those days and grown abundantly throughout the plains states. You can't kill out all of such a crop and hemp, dear reader, is plain old Mary Jane. The male version was preferred for rope since it has a long, straight stem. We were in search of the female version with the lovely, illuminating flowers. I had a recipe for harvesting weed that I learned from my friend Scott.

Understand that I am not encouraging you to try this, I am simply sharing the knowledge so you will appreciate the dynamics. This is a job for experienced persons. Don't try this at home.

First, you dig a large ball of dirt up with the marijuana plant, saving as many
roots as possible. Gently wash the dirt away, leaving the root system exposed and as intact as possible. Tie several plants together to make a bundle and immerse the roots in a large pan of cold water which has been placed on a stove. Turn on the heat and s-l-o-w-l-y over a period of an hour or two, bring the pot to a slow simmer. As the sap rises from the roots and stem you will notice that the leaves of the plants have turned sticky with resin. That is the very resin that dark, block hashish is made of. The yellow, crumbly kind is made mostly from the pollen of the flowering plants and is the finest quality you can get. Colors in between the crumbly orange/yellow and the black tar-like version are a mix of the two substances.

What happens in the boiling process is that the water from the very warm pot is being sucked up by the roots, forcing the sap out onto the surface of the leaves. After the pot has boiled for at least an hour, strip the leaves from the stem and lay them on paper or plastic to dry. You may freeze them if you wish (for gourmet smokers who like to dry their own), but sooner or later they will need to be dried. Mary Jane makes a fine seasoning for stews, salads and
casseroles. I find it remarkable that so many people choose to smoke it. Ingested, it gives a very mellow glow to your sense of well being and lends itself to the control and cure of quite a few minor ailments. I was able for instance, to pass an eye test and obtain my commercial drivers license after months of gentle feasting of this sort.

For Ed and I both, the trip was a challenge and fun. The old truck I had traded for in Phoenix had been pieced together from an old 1952 chevy windowed panel truck body bolted on a 1948 chevy 4X4 army ambulance frame. The engine was a fine old 1953 GMC inline six cylinder with no flaws. The front wheel drive had developed a problem so I had removed the front axles and let it free-wheel. It was safe, just not a hill climber. The heater was out, so I converted a back seat air conditioner that I had cannibalized from an abandoned Cadillac. Itworked well enough to drive with all the windows open in decidedly cool weather.

In the back was a sleeping bag, a little food, a bowie knife that my friend Ray had given me and little else. Ed and I took turns driving to Kansas City. On the way we stopped and checked a few places for hemp, but found nothing. We only
stopped once to sleep in an open field. The trip was essentially uneventful. Kansas City was cordial and pleasant, Ed's mom was a sweet lady, and I was made very welcome.

On the way back to Jerome however, things became really strange. Ed was driving almost every time that we were stopped by the cops and it happened several times. I had to hand it to him though. He somehow smooth-talked his way out of every situation. We were only searched once. In one situation we were escorted to a police station where during questioning, he stated flatly that he was my brother (indicating that I might be a little retarded), and we had been to see his mother. He did that with a complete poker face. What's more, the cops let us go. They didn't even smile. Somehow, we made it back to Mingus mountain.

Funny, I didn't FEEL Black.

CHAPTER 25 Bonnie and/or Clyde

I became vaguely aware that outside of my relationship with Bonnie, I was not welcome in Jerome. In all fairness to her, my intentions had been to come and visit for a short time. I think that had become plain to the local gentry. Bonnie was the kind of girl you - or they, would want to protect, even if you were not that involved with her. I had not intended a permanent relationship, having maintained my bachelor status for some two or more years now. Truly, she was a fine lady and a fine match for anyone who would be ready for the long haul. At the time I didn't believe I was. She proved me wrong off and on, for almost ten years.

In the meantime there was a surprise visit and tete-a-tete with a girl named Susan from the KCAC days of Phoenix. A one night stand was nothing new to the old gulch house and its three stories and several rooms gave at least a passing chance for privacy. My indiscretions then and later there, as with Betty, took on the form of a statement of personal freedom. Bonnie was not happy about it but she gave me that freedom because I was courageous (or stupid) enough to exercise it and because we were after all, a part of the sixties sexual revolution.

Bonnie was a light dealer in natural soporific (marijuana, hashish) and organic psychedelics (peyote, psylocybin) and it became apparent that business was beginning to pick up. Organics were after all, good Karma. One fine day in Jerome, we had a visit from my old friend Bill. He was accompanied by a lady friend, none other than Crazy of the John Stewart song and the Magic Christmas Brownies from the Alice B. Toklas kitchen. I have no idea what had become of Jenny. Apparently she and Bill had broken up. At any rate the mood was very high energy and intense. The visit was brief and not all that friendly. It left me with the feeling of finally breaking off and washing up what had been a fine friendship.

After they left, Bonnie and I made our way in her old Chevy panel truck (remarkably similar to mine), up the hill to the Jerome post office. it was a ritual we performed daily. On this too-bright sunny afternoon though, we were surprised in the town square by three hefty cowboys looking to kick around some hippies. I arrived just in time to be chosen. There was no walking away from this fight. I shooed Bonnie off to the side as the three moved toward me.

I had become a hippie almost by default, partly because of my belief in political non-violence and in my personal stance against the Vietnam war. It was a stance that was often interpreted as cowardice. Cowboy redneck types often assume too, that stoned hippies have no energy or gumption for a fight, an assumption made by beer drinkers who have never had the taste of "gauge". They also assumed apparently, that hippies just sort of happened out of the clouds. It never occurs to them that some of us hippie types were once Good Ol' Boys before we began to think and develop opinions for ourselves.

What I noticed most about these guys were their clothes. The hats were brand-new and spotless. The jeans were barely broken in. These were "drugstore cowboys" who probably wore slacks and worked out at the gym during the week. Maybe they were cops or narcotics agents. Whatever, they were thugs and trouble makers. I chose off with the closest one who had the loudest mouth. It would be he and I. My energy was very high, my focus was clear and I was as cold as ice from head to foot. In a word, I was pissed and ready to kick ass.

The fight moved in frames almost like a movie. He threw a fast half-hearted punch that sort of whizzed by my nose. "See?" he said. I think he was letting me know that he could have hit me in the nose but chose not to. A rather odd thing to do in a street fight. I covered the short distance between us and delivered a quick karate chop to the right side of his neck. It stunned him. He didn't move but rather stood kind of rigidly as if he didn't want me to know he was in pain. Good machismo, hombre. I kicked him on the right leg just outside and behind the knee. Countering that move, he gave me a body toss and got me down on the ground.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw one of the other "cowboys" making a move to come kick my head in. There was a sudden blur beside him and he was out of the picture. I had my hands full with the fight, down on my back with cowboy #1 snarling "There! How do you like it?". That was it. There was a flash before my eyes of all the fights I'd had when I was a kid. All the times they held me down and laughed. I remembered what I did each time that had happened, the moves that let me win. In this unlikely street brawl as a fully grown adult at the age of almost thirty, I used those moves again.

I pushed him up away from, but not off me. I got my legs around his chest and crushed down with all my fury. It was all over. His eyes bugged out, his face turned purple and his lips made a silent "o". I relented, then crushed down again. "Say Uncle" I told him. "Say Uncle or I'll bust it" (his rib). The word was barely whispered, but at least it was sincere. He had become my nephew.

We stood up and shook off - with him inviting me for a beer. I replied that I didn't drink and checked around for Bonnie. The crowd itself was jammed together across the street. It seems I had been graced with an Angel. Cowboy #2 had indeed been ready to plant a boot in my head when he had been taken out by some long-haired hippie type who had just gotten back from a tour of Viet Nam. Cowboy #3 was nowhere to be seen.

A certain statement about the personal freedom of our lives had been made that day. Bonnie and I continued in hard-won liberty, our pursuit of happiness.

Jerome, Arizona 1969 - Pic retouched by Dustin

CHAPTER 26 Angels 3, Indians 2

It had become abundantly clear that the harassment in Jerome was not going to end and that any meaningful confrontation was not likely. The harrassment took on political tones with our being arrested or at times just myself, by the local cops. I found myself more than once, spending the night in the Prescott county jail.

On my first trip to the jail I had a booking session that left me shaken. There was a feeling to the old office that gave me an extra burst of Deja Vu'. The old sergeant was very cordial, in fact downright friendly. For whatever reason, we were alone together in the room. That is not smart police work when you have a desperate trespasser and former redneck amd obvious hippie on your hands.

Since I was more than a little unhappy about the procedure, my emotions were a little intense. The fingerprinting routine went normally but when we got to the mug shots, that intensity increased and built to a silent rage. I was a political toy, and something in me that was red, white and blue was beginning to object to this kind of treatment. I stood for the first mug shot which was a surprise to both of us. The flash didn't just flash, it kind of inundated the room. It was a big heavy-duty strobe that was intended for years of service. On this occasion however, it was like having the sun pass very close to the earth.

The sergeant kind of staggered as I did what I could, to stand still. The picture was a dud. Overexposed, completely white and no image at all. We tried again. This time the flash behaved normally. This time too, there was no image on the film, save for a vague outline. The third time was a charm, but the image that came out on the film was frightening. With some few similarities (two eyes, two ears, etc.) the picture was that of a large and very angry looking American Indian man.

Ya-Ta-Hey (hello in Navajo and several other tribal languages), dude.

The "hum" had become louder and more intense, reaching a level that was very plain to me. I didn't mention it to anyone except Bonnie. I often thought she must hear it too, but I figured I had made her life strange enough without "hearing things". The sub-audible sound became so intense at times, that it was omnipresent unless there were other sounds to block it out. Sleep was fitful. Thoughtful meditation or
prayer was impossible.

I made friends with little Brad McCulley who lived in the house on the hill, next level up. In a mining town like Jerome that means across the one-lane road, and about thirty feet higher up on the mountainside. Fun. Brad was four and had no one to play with. We were cowboys and indians for each other and I died several times in our playing. Once I died so well under the bed that my little friend ran for help.

Bonnie decided to move back to Phoenix. Bill had moved out of the house with the strange artwork and Bonnie rented it for us to live in. I found out later that she had found it and rented it for Bill and Jenny in the first place. Keeping in mind that the place had been abandoned now at least twice and even though Bill had left it decent, it was a mess - especially outdoors.

In Phoenix, boredom came crashing in on me like a wet cloud on a mountaintop. It seemed to delight in hovering about me, blinding me to all that was interesting. Listening to Bill on the air at KCAC became my major pastime. He knew it, I knew that he knew it, he knew that I knew that he knew. He hammered out some fine radio in those days and I longed to be able to respond, even though I really had nothing to say. The feeling was the same as for a musician who no longer has an instrument, but who just loves to jam.

I decided to try radio somewhere else. That turned out to be Tucson. There was a temporary part-time opening (aren't they all), at the underground rock station there. I somehow locked on to to a Triumph convertible with a bad transmission and headed south - without Bonnie.

Tucson was quite different than I had expected. There was a strong feeling of community there. I decided for the one and only time in my life, to use an alias - an "air name". I was to be known as Shadow. No first name, no last name, no offbeat spelling, just Shadow. The name was a hit. It turned out to be far more popular than I was prepared for. After my first two weeks on the air, people I had never met called me by that nickname, Shadow. It was like a community Welcome Wagon courtesy for someone to call out "Hi Shadow" when I was around. It soon got to the point that I was being favored socially. In the hippie world, that could mean almost anything. For whatever reason, I was being invited to meet and appear before "The Man" who had been listening to me on the radio.... whoever "The Man" might be.

An emmisary of this personage dropped in at the station to ask me to accompany him for that purpose. We took a long drive out to a remote location in the desert and I was invited to sit for "tea" - ganja. After a toke or two, there appeared a tall black man with a fine afro.

It was every bit of Ed Roland and he was every bit as startled as I. Either he WAS "The Man" or was there working for him. At any rate, my unlikely social climbing had reached its apex. Our reunion was cordial, and abruptly over. It was the last time I saw him.

I had been crashing in a frat house on the campus. Temporarily permanent. Needing a place to stay, I put out a call on the air for someone with a house who needed a roomie. A guy named Don responded. He said he had a house with a Harley Davidson part in every room. I could have the back porch if I wouldn't kick around the saddlebags or the dog. That was fine with me. We came to be friends even though we both regarded each other as strange ducks. True to his word, Don had a Harley part in every room. However, he was not a biker in the accepted sense. I was used to the idea of choppers, hair, sweat and loose chicks. His place was as neat as a pin, with Harley parts displayed prominently, as decorator pieces. He was more like a biker "wanna-be", buying and assembling his motorcycle piece by sterile piece. There was none of the usual litter you find in a biker home, not even beer cans. This guy was at least post office material if not military. At a couple of the local biker
parties I came to realize that he was not particularly well accepted. I on the other hand, must have been marked by the handshake of Sonny Barger. I felt at home most everywhere.

As for myself, life became wilder, looser and more fun. I got involved with "Hairy-Tea" (Harry-T), another jock at the radio station. He had friends in town with a leather shop and a couple of boa constrictors. Though we cordially regarded each other as assholes (and we were both quite correct), we got along. We even shared the same wife for a while. His. He didn't seem to mind, she didn't seem to mind and collectively, we set out to make a louder radio noise in Tucson.

It was not to last, however. I was trying to make a break from Bonnie and she didn't seem to see it that way. We spent too much time on the phone arguing about where I should live. After several of those calls and in an angry fit one day, I hung up the phone on the station owners' wife. I was playing "American Woman" by the Guess Who. She had been bugging everyone to play "The Point" by Harry Nillson. Heavy, man.

Needless to say, I was not long on the payroll there. I landed work at another station on the east side of town. I took the night shift and brought my own music, especially The James Gang, Shawn Phillips, The Doors and Derek and the Dominos. I didn't use the Shadow airname. The gig folded.

I had traded the Triumph convertible with the bad transmission for an old Renault sedan with a bad transmission. Neither one had a high gear but I felt the Renault was in better shape, overall.

Since moving away from Jerome that feeling of Deja Vu` had left me. Every so often I would drive out to the desert to smoke a joint and meditate. It was there that I became aware of a spiritual presence that I could not explain. I didn't care for the oppressed feeling that I got in those brief moments, but it was like someone was trying to talk to me. Someone very angry. There was one experience of an evening where the feeling grew to such intensity that I almost passed out. It was like an epileptic seizure. I struggled back to the car and to the house. I wondered if I were much closer to Bonnie than I had imagined.

Sometimes the real action in the desert is in the mornings. One bright and early day I was on my way to the radio station to pick up my paycheck when I was confronted by something that I simply could not explain. As I approached an intersection I noticed cars scattering away in all directions. That tipped me off to something unusual going on. As I approached the corner, I was astounded to see a very large - no, actually he was huge......... an American Indian dressed in a very contemporary sports coat and tie, standing in the intersection trying to direct traffic. Maybe he was a little drunk, maybe he was just a helluva lot angry. Whatever. He was almost seven feet tall, most of 400 pounds and the expression on his face was one of controled rage.

As I approached, he raised his hand and pointed at me to come to a full and complete stop right in front of him. I did. At that moment it occurred to me in very rapid succession, that he might be an Angel of the Lord spiritually placed there by the Holy Trinity, to talk some sense into me. Or perhaps he might be someone else who was trying to talk to me. Someone very angry.. Then again, he might be a drunk, crazy Indian who was about to tear the top of my car off. Conversely, he might be the very reason that the Lord caused me to trade off my convertible - so I wouldn't get my neck broken and head separated from my body that day. I hit the gas. If this guy wanted to be a traffic cop I felt, it should be at a truck stop where he could pick on some 18-wheelers his own size.

Things sort of fizzled out for me in Tucson after that. Don got his motorcycle running and moved into a smaller place. My job fizzled out and the Renault was worth $100 to anyone who wanted it. I still had the little Honda motorcycle and had managed to get it running.

I found myself with $90.00 in cash and having to take Bonnie - and Phoenix - more seriously. There are crossroads in life where any direction you go is going to be a hard road. This was going to be one of those.

CHAPTER 27 The Magic Blue Bus

I have often heard people say that you don't remember the good times, it is the bad times that ring in our memory and test the boundaries of our beings. We just naturally expect things to be OK. We recall those times bitterly or sweetly, when we have failed or triumphed under duress.

My re-arrival in Phoenix found Bonnie had moved. The old house that she and I had occupied had been rented to another couple. Lacking no confidence, I was a lost puppy finding its way home. I decided to attempt the impossible and respond to what was the strongest urge in my mind, survival. With help from Bonnie and seventy-four of the seventy-five dollars I had left, I bought an old school bus to live in. It had been stripped of its seats and had been paneled inside. It was spacious and livable. My remaining possessions were a waterbed mattress, a few odds and ends and what was left of the Honda 360. By now it needed cylinders because the piston pin had gouged a groove in the cylinder wall. It was exactly the problem I had just repaired. I towed the bus to a parking spot in the yard of the old house near the foot of South Mountain and parked it under a large cottonwood tree.

Whether it was the challenge of survival, heatstroke or base stupidity; I set about making a life for myself, and a home in the old bus. It had originally been a school bus in Page, Arizona far to the north and was built in 1946 by International Harvester. With the exception of the baby-blue paint job, it was almost identical to the Ken Keysey Magic Bus of Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test fame. It had an an engine that was mostly in pieces. There was about ten gallons of water that had been in the crankcase for a very long time. Getting it up and running was not going to be easy. On Bill's show on KCAC I was often treated to playings of "The End" by The Doors. Bill always had a fine sense of humor. My Blue Bus must have been the model for the one in that song.

Simple things became serious problems. I was allowed to use the bathroom at the house. The nearby irrigation canal became my bath and respite from the heat. Food became a serious problem and I was a smoker as well. The cheapest thing at the corner store was a bag of split peas. For a week or two they became my staple food item plus whatever Bonnie happened to bring on her visits. The heat of course, was intense. Temperatures of 115 degrees are not uncommon in the Phoenix afternoons. The bus was a solar oven. I was given the loan of a bicycle and, riding close to the safety of the canals and their cool respite from the heat, I made my way the six or so miles into town to apply for unemployment. I made that trip more than three times in as many weeks, before I finally received a check.

In the meantime without my knowledge, Bonnie began negotiating a return to the house. She wanted me to succeed in my quest for independence but she wanted to be there for me too, whether I flew or fell. I shall always be grateful for that aspect of our relationship. There is a certain compassion in the makeup of humanity that recognizes not the triumph or the failure of a fellow human being, but the struggle that person is embroiled in. In almost any endeavor throughout life, it is the struggle that people respond to, not the beginning or the end of an event. I sincerely believe that if a person attempts the impossible and is willing to give their all to that effort, sooner or later they will meet up with others of like mind. Assume you meet a person on the street who is attempting to move a large rock. They push, they sweat, they strain but most importantly, they persist. To help such a person is good luck and/or good karma, particularly if they are shouldering their own dignity like a cross. I became very good luck for a fellow who worked at the Honda parts house the day after I received my first meager unemployment check. He in turn, changed my life.

It was my fourth bicycle ride into town, this time to buy another cylinder for the Honda. The man behind the counter was about to tell me that he didn't have the part in stock when he suddenly changed the entire tack of the conversation; "You have an old Honda Dream? Wow. Would you be interested in selling it or trading it?". I replied I needed transportation of some kind. We left together to go to his place. It turned out he was married to an enormous woman who was easily all of 300 pounds. She was nice enough, but I could tell there was much more to the relationship between my friend and his woman than met the eye. Something about them was unassumingly Christian.

The deal he offered me was wonderful. For the Honda and my old waterbed mattress, plus a few albums, I was to receive a stunning baby blue 1959 Plymouth Phoenix convertible in excellent condition. I personally, was scorched brown from head to foot. I was dehydrated. I was like a cactus in the desert itself. That condition and my intact dignity was all that kept me from jumping for joy. The previous month had been agonizing. I was being set free then in a most gentle, respectful way from my own stubborn determination. It was not for the success or for the failure, it was for the struggle that I was being quietly rewarded. I cannot remember a time when a simple ride home in an automobile was more pleasant.

Wanted: handy man for warehouse. Arizona Industrial Sales, (etc.). It kind of jumped out of the newspaper at me and I was one of the first to apply. I got the job. It was a machinery sales company dealing in drill presses, bending breaks, lathes and other machine shop equipment. It was a disorganized, dusty mess as well. Most of the employees were informally on strike although it appeared they were working. The image I was supposed to fit was one of a man with a broom in one hand and a rag in another. After the lessons of the previous month, I found myself intensely motivated to not just do my job but to get my job done. Finished. Completed. I didn't want to be a handy man forever. I became therefore, the person described above who was pushing on a mighty rock. I was attempting the impossible and with the help of several incredulous co-workers, things and co-workers began to move. Equipment was dusted and sprayed with WD-40 to halt the rust. The place was swept and swept again. Unidentifiable trash was trashed. Doors were opened. Light and air was allowed in the building. Work became fun. Several of us would ride on the forklift to add weight in balancing "Big Bertha" a huge and ancient lathe, to it's natural place
against the wall. All the other lathes were arranged by size next to her.

Remarkably, things began to be easy to find and they began to sell. In a period of three months a bunch of sweaty, crazy, warehouse types brought a business back to life that had just about been declared dead, all because some fool had the tenacity to attempt the impossible. We even adopted the wearing of old neckties around our heads as head bands. It brought stares from the front office. We soon noticed the office guys would put their ties on the same way, when they had to come out to the warehouse. No one likes to see someone go insane alone. That's why we Americans are such great company for each other. In the fourth month, I was finished. It was time to move on. I had worked myself out of a job. Though I was welcome, the challenge had been met.

CHAPTER 28 The London Bus

Much of my time, money and energy was going into the engine of my blue bus. Parts were missing, broken or worn beyond use. The ten gallons of water I had found in the crankcase hadn't rusted a thing. The bottom end of the engine was just fine. The cylinders were all rusted however, and the pistons had to be literally hammered out. Fortunately the rust had done no serious damage. I got her running. On a very happy day, Gone John and I managed to move the old bus under it's own power from it's spot beneath the cottonwood tree to a more secluded (and level) position nearer the road. At about this same time I found another job.

A Phoenix real estate company had bought an old double-decker English bus for advertising and promotional purposes and it was truly a fine Old Lady. She was dubbed "The London Bus" due to her heritage. I was dubbed The London Bus driver due to my mechanical aptitude, plus the fact that I lived in a school bus. I also had a commercial drivers license with no restrictions. All that pot and hard work had paid off.

There were problems with the London Bus though. She stood 14 feet six inches tall. That was exactly one foot taller than what the law allows on the roadways of America without special routing and permits. It was a height guaranteed to cause collisions with traffic lights and lesser bureaucrats. I was in essence, handed a rather large Pink Elephant with a small if steady, paycheck attached. I could probably have retired, parked it for at least a year and simply waited by the phone for an assignment call. It was not to be. I felt challenged again.

The bus and I were moved to the downtown office where we would be less of an eyesore, and plans were made to introduce her on a shuttle route around the parking lots of the State Fair of Arizona. That was my first assignment. With a little parlaying of such favors to the State Fair, I was able to obtain waivers for the overheight status of the bus within the city limits.

I was assigned a young woman named Sandy as my female conductor on the back of the bus. At about that time a group called 10cc came out with a song called "I'm Not In Love". You couldn't tell it, but I was. Sandy was terminally sexy and cute and married all at the same time. I, on the other hand was living alone, tied up with obligations of friendship to Bonnie and developing a real emotional Gordian Knot.

Over a period of the next several months, I found myself working a very frustrating puzzle of personal feelings regarding Sandy, Bonnie and myself.

Other than the casual off-handed affair with Harry T's woman in Tucson, I had never considered adultery as a matter of personal morality. I have always been a sucker for anyone seeking Freedom though. I had always been true to my women up to the point of promise - divorce in the case of Carol. Though I admired many ladies, I had never had a craving or desire as such, for another man's woman. Sandy generated however, an entirely different set of values. She was an uncontrollable infatuation for me and became almost immediately the only love interest in my life. I had to slam that Pandora's Box shut tight many times every day just to try and stay sane. Just being around her was a marvelous and intensely personal torture for me.

The London Bus was becoming a success. I outfitted the bus with a complete indoor/outdoor public address system and intercom. It became a rolling sound stage with a tape player and other accessories. I created a little mailout flyer offering use of the bus to any non-profit organization for one day, anywhere in town. It worked. We were soon booked up with tours for orphaned kids, minority organizations, civic groups and political arms of Phoenix City Government.

Despite the fact that there was no air-conditioning on the bus, there was actually a City Council meeting held on the top deck, touring the slums of south Phoenix. It became a very prestigious way of carrying around the huge billboard advertising for Kachina Village of Flagstaff, one of the properties, on the side of the bus. Despite the lack of air conditioning, it was a hit.

The daily alliances and partnerships of working together with Sandy began to create a bonding that I simply could not bear. It was a friendship that cried out passionately for romance and within that cry was a silent scream of desire. To put it bluntly, I had the hots.

The whole thing boiled over for me right after the first annual Fiesta Bowl. The bus was in the parade. The exclusive use of the bus was extended as a courtesy to the Florida State team, their wives and families. They made full use of it for parties and transportation. We all had a great time with Rod Stewart's "Maggie May" as their theme song. "Maggie" (Margaret) you see, was the middle name for Peggy. Florida. That had been home for a while.

Bonnie and I got invovled in some very minor disagreement and it was much like the last straw. I know she had no way of understanding, but what I had was her and what I wanted was Sandy and it was tearing me apart, something like riding two mtorcycles at one time. In a rage that came over me rather unexpectedly, I finally blew my top.

Please forgive this very personal introspection into my private love life and feelings. I know you probably feel as though you have been ushered into someone's shower bath with no forewarning. Think of it as the custom of the land you are exploring and consider that something like it has happened to you or will, at some point in your own life. It is the kind of confusion that sin brings to a person, that causes one to do unexpected and unexplainable things. Try to be aware of it when (and if) it happens to you. You'll want to keep a notepad, a camera and a tape recorder nearby. A packed bag, extra cigarettes, matches and a few extra bucks wouldn't hurt. Passion is both a blessing and a curse. It seems to reside most intently, within the sanctity of sin.

I had traded off the Dodge convertible for a more practical VW convertible. I had had the engine rebuilt and had planned to tow it behind my own bus in future cross-country travels. It was in great mechanical shape. The rage and confusion that had come over me in my little disagreement with Bonnie had a hold on my soul. I felt that if I didn't get away, I would do her serious physical harm. I grabbed my guitar, a few clothes, some soap and other toilet articles and hit the street with tires squealing and with her throwing rocks at me.

There were a few pristine springs and water falls I knew of north of town in Paradise Valley. Remember, tjais was in the early 1970's. Paradise Valley where we used to hold jam sessions in the desert rocks is mostly concrete now. There once were giant Saguaro cactus' that looked like old men taking a leak. There were places where you could scream and smash rocks and not get arrested for it because there were no people for miles. Further north was Sedona with it's lovely Oak Creek
Canyon where just a few years before, as Betty and I had, you could camp out and sunbathe naked and never be bothered by anyone. Sedona had become infected with a Chamber of Commerce though, and is now infested with tourists.

Further north there were places along the rim of the Grand Canyon ranchlands where you could stand and cuss and swear at the Colorado river, miles below. Cows would stand and stare with complete understanding, much like the indians in some of the bars in Flagstaff. I was on my way to any of those places when a thumb was waved in front of me.

My rider was an old KCAC friend, Frank, who had invited me to DJ in a disco club one night. He had showed me the crow's nest and worked me into the sound system well enough that I could do a pretty good dance mix. I never got the groove of it then, though. I played "Takin Care of Business" by Bachman-Turner Overdrive far to often to suit the dancers in the club. My poetic music collages just didn't work. He was on his way north. I figured I owed him a favor and he had a few bucks, so we headed north.

Destination: Aspen, Colorado.

CHAPTER 29 Lost - Who Me?

My friend had an apartment in Aspen, where I was welcome to crash on the floor for one night. Thanks for the ride. After that, I was totally on my own with a half tank of gasoline, a few packs of cigarettes, no food and no money. That led me to explore the camping grounds towards Independence pass about four miles out of town.

The campground was essentially deserted. They must have heard I was coming. When one does desperate and stupid things though, God blesses one with desperate and stupid companions. You learn to share your resources with those folks as a reminder that peace of mind is truly a state of mind, and that God uses each of us to watch over us all. I had no thoughts at all of Bonnie or even of Sandy. In fact, I had no thoughts at all. It was a form of burn-out. I was on another kind of adventure and my rage was a de-fused and useless bomb that had not exploded. Thank God.

I picked a secluded spot well away from the main road and nestled in. I had spread a place for my sleeping bag and was working on a long afternoon nap when the pizza and wine were delivered.

I woke up to "that" trance-like feeling of Deja Vu' much like I have experienced and explained to you often here. I was on the edge of eternity again and about to experience something profound. A car arrived.

I was sure it was the cops. There was no one anywhere except this old and unmarked maroon chevy sedan that had pulled up ten feet away. It had Arizona license plates and at one time must have been a government vehicle. No identifiable stickers, marks, antenna or white walls. I climbed out of the sleeping bag slowly, keeping my hands in full view at all times. Behind the wheel was a smallish man in his mid-50's who was staring straight ahead. He had an expression on his face that made you think he had decided to drive off a cliff and had arrived at the brink. "You want some pizza?" he said. It sounded like he was about to take the biggest chance of his life. "Sure, thanks", I replied. My pizza delivery man had a bottle of wine as well and for some reason, I declined. The pizza was great though, from Pinnochio's in town. He seemed concerned that I had nothing to drink. I pointed out to him that we were less than fifty yards from an entire river full of some of the purest water in the world.

We had just begun to touch on the introductory overture of who we were when he slid out a nickel plated 45 caliber semi-automatic pistol. All the cheese in all the crust of all the pizza I had just eaten curdled in my stomach all at once. An entire river of the purest water in the world would not have washed away that sudden indigestion. I had my answer. He was a nut. I was a nut, and I was about to die for being one.

"I used to be pretty good with these things", he said. I wondered if I could make the six foot jump from me to him in time to jam the muzzle of the gun. I knew I couldn't. "I was a marksman in the Air Force. I retired a few months ago and then my wife died". I knew then he was on the edge of something akin to murder or suicide and a lot of what happened next depended on me and the wine. I knew that if I could at least push back on the muzzle of the 45 it would move the slide back far enough to prevent the firing pin from striking the bullet. I never knew if that was a safety feature or a design flaw. It didn't matter, I was helpless. I decided to ignore the gun. At that moment he raised the weapon in a two-handed marksman's grip and just before it leveled with my eyes, he turned it toward a nearby tree.

He decided to let the tree live and lowered the weapon. He just sort of sighed, and put it away. I knew now that he was armed and would probably love to get drunk and find someone to blame something on. He had made his point. I decided to convince him to try to keep on living. I knew it could help extend my own life expectancy as well.

I replaced my stomach into its usual alignment with my spine and we reduced our mutual state of emergency readiness from a nine to a three out of a possible state of ten. I had shown no fear. He had shown no anger.

The next day was a repeat of the day before. Warm sunshine was my companion in an early afternoon nap, until the maroon Chevy rolled up with another delivery of pizza. My friend had been staying in a motel. This time there was Coca-Cola along with the wine. There was a little bit of trust in his eyes that I was proud to return. The pizza was to share. The coke was for me.

The breakthrough came almost immediately. He needed help. He had been a career Air Force officer and for a man so well equipped, I had never met one so apparently helpless. He literally had everything one could want for camping. Everything was brand new, still in boxes and fresh from a Yellow Front store in Arizona. It had occurred to me that the equipment had been in his car for days. He had been trying to work up the nerve to go camping.

He was totally baffled as to how to use his wealth of camping gear. Geometry to him was straight lines; trajectory paths, from gun to target. Nothing with an angle, fastener, knot or unfamiliar mechanism made any sense to him at all. A lot of things made no sense to him at all. I had to show him everything. How to make a string tent from a plastic tarp, how to set up his own tent. How to assemble, fuel and use a camp lantern. He did well with the air mattress but in terms of practical technology, the little Coleman stove may have just as well been a satellite.

Without even so much as a day of relaxation, God was teaching me another lesson of life. Here I was trying to escape my passion for a woman who had no idea of how I felt, while at the same time being blessed with a woman (Bonnie) who felt quite exactly the same way about me. Placed in my charge was an older man who had no woman at all, for whom the death of his wife had left apparently, part of his entire universe missing. I began to think about returning to Arizona.

When we finally got his camp pitched next to mine, a kind of sadness came over me. It would have come over you, too. My guitar became our comfort, our mother. Late that night as it sang of Mexico or Texas or almost anywhere, it sang of lovers too. There was peace for these two frightened men who had found and learned to trust each other. I let the guitar sing its own song. It was a song for children who had become aging men with lost wives and lovers. The guitar worked its magic much better than did the wine.

It sang for itself - for it too, was lonely.

My lost friend was asleep.

CHAPTER 30 Back On The Bus Part II

That the London Bus should have a part II and that I should have had a job at all, was remarkable. My unannounced vacation to Colorado should have been enough to cancel out any kind of future with the real estate company. The original bus was retired with a blown engine, and the real estate company was going for a second shot with another bus in Sedona, Arizona. There I was again, unknowing, re-tracing my Great Grandfather's footsteps.

This bus was an open-top touring model that was guaranteed to decapitate anyone who stood up on it. You sat, or you died. We zoomed just under the trees, up and down the Oak Creek Canyon area of Sedona all during the summer of 1971, Neil Young, Cat Stevens, Seals and Crofts and others playing on the sound system. This bus too, was a local hit but not so my own blue monstrosity. I had driven my bus to Sedona and parked it on the back lot of one of the real estate executives, Jerry.

On the way up the mountains towards Sedona, I had managed to crack the head on the engine. It had been running beautifully before that point. My arrival was without grace - a smoking, clattering mess. While it was mostly out of sight of the community and near a handy outhouse, it (or I) did not seem to be welcome with the neighbors.

Seriously dangerous thunderstorms pounded the area. I was awakened several times with the bus rocking back and forth, thunder and lightning flashing all around. In the weeks of camping there, I had occasion to host a young lady from England at my camp site. She was assisting me as a hostess on the double-decker and it seemed a good idea for the promotional image of the bus to have an English hostess. God or something or someone else definitely did not like the idea of her and I being together, though. We were having a simple conversation as I was giving her the tour of my old bus. As we walked the few steps towards the kitchen in the front (having entered from the back door), there was an immediate, indescribable tension in the air. She seemed suddenly frightened, as though we had arrived at a haunted castle. I picked up on the feeling as well, wondering what I was experiencing. She stopped. I stopped.

I have never had a confrontation with a poltergiest before. I don't know for sure that one was present. I don't know what else to call it, based on what I have read of such things. Whatever, there was something there that was not a part of she or I. There was a loud hissing sound and an invisible movement of SOMETHING in and around the bus that neither of us could see. It was rather like being in the arms and in front of the mouth, of an awakening dragon. It was like being on the inside of giant onion and having the layers of that onion tear themselves apart. Something in layers. Perhaps the pages of a book would be a better analogy. It was something unseen that you could not help but see, something unfelt that you could not help but feel, something unheard that you could not help but hear. The other senses - taste, touch, smell, were not involved. Something unexpected, unexplainable and incredibly powerful had apparently been disturbed. It seemed to be tearing through the fabric of time and perceptible reality as it made its way onward. Audibly, there was a
HISSSSSSWWWWWWHHHHOOOOOOOOSSSSHHHH! As an author, I take comfort that the writers of Ezekiel, Revelations and other passages of The Bible had as difficult a time describing the indescribable as I am now.

Barbara (yes, she was another Barbara) staggered and sat down on the floor. I stood with adrenaline rushing and fists clenched, trying to figure out what it was that I should defend us against. There was simply nothing. It was as though we had awakened a ghost of some kind, whose leaving was as rude as its awakening. The experience was too stupefying for both of us to talk with each other about. She was frightened enough to leave without further conversation, except for a shaky "Goodbye" in hushed tones. I was shaken enough to spend the next few hours inspecting the kitchen area of my bus for electrical shorts, gas leaks or any kind of rational, physical explanation of what had happened. There simply was none.

Being human and with a definite ego, I would like to have you think of me as a courageous and brave person. I certainly have had my share of bizarre and dangerous experiences. Since you have been kind enough to join me on this journey as my reader though, I feel bound to share the intimate Truth of myself with you to the point of personal embarrassment. I must confess to you that I am not a brave person. I am a coward. I get cold and shaky from head to foot whenever I am confronted by the metaphysically unexplainable and even fights with ordinary men like myself. I do not like confrontation, I do not like to fight. I do not like pain. Similarly, I do not like dealing with things that I do not understand, particularly when I am scared by them.

What the world may seem to see in me as bravery and courage is something entirely different. It is Christian Faith. I have had other journeys with the Lord, and this story is only part of one of those. It is Christ that is my protector in these trips through what must be the Valley of the Shadow of Death, and I may seem too stupid and innocent and brave to fear any Evil of any kind. That's not the way it is. The way it really is, is that I know instinctively when I am in such situations and that I am to do nothing, save pray. Such prayers are an instant connection to my Faith and can often generate that feeling of Deja Vu' I have described. It works an instant link to the only thing that can save me. I personally, am usually helpless - on the edge of Eternity, as I confront the unknown. Don't mistake me as a brave man. I get scared, right down to the quick of my toenails.

Bonnie came up often to Sedona and we spent the night together several times. A few weeks later, I had a couple of visits from Sandy and her husband,
Mitch. I was delighted to see them, but there was that agonizing desire again and I found my lust for her almost uncontrollable. My old desire was unresolved. The trip to Colorado simply hadn't worked. Once again, it forced me to take another direction with my life. Considering my previous sins, I don't understand yet why I bothered to resist the temptation. Of course, there was no chance for privacy or seduction. Denial is such an exquisite torture where adultery is involved.

As Summer drifted by and the first cool days of Autumn closed in, I decided it was time for a change. I put gas and oil in the bus, made what repairs I could to the head on the leaking engine and headed the bus towards Phoenix. I told no one of my plans, save my hosts. The leaking engine overheated easily and used water at a rapid rate. Knowing I was going to have problems, I rigged a garden hose from the kitchen sink to the right of the drivers' seat, to the top of the radiator. When I felt things were becoming dangerously hot, I simply pulled over to the side of the road and poured water into the sink. I found myself stopping to fill my storage cans from puddles alongside the highway.

I pulled in to a truck stop at the north end of Phoenix and tried to decide what to do next. I didn't want to go back to Bonnie, I needed new directions in my life. I called an old girlfriend Candy, then an old friend Dan from KCAC, for a place to park the bus and crash. I had not paid much attention to the fact that over the years he had become bisexual, then gay. Any port in a storm. Any old storm at all.

Actual digital photo by webcam in empty room. HISSSSSSWWWWWWHHHHOOOOOOOOSSSSHHHH

CHAPTER 31 The Grand Escape

During the month or two that I rented a room from my old friend Dan, I overhauled one old Rambler that Bonnie had bought for me. Not happy with the sound of the engine and with admonishment about its reliability, I gave it to a couple who were obviously on the run. How they crossed paths with my life, I don't recall. I helped one of my roomies rebuild his VW and in the process, made a new friend. For some reason, I had lost interest in the old Blue Bus and sold it for a whopping $326.00. During my stay I carefully avoided any involvement with the gay residents, a fact they seemed to appreciate.

As a matter of fact, I was harkening back to my auto accident at KCAC and found myself wandering "what if" I had made the few extra blocks to Peggy's house that day. "What if" she and I had connected? There was a challenge
there that I still did not understand. It is quite possible she didn't understand it either. About a year earlier, we had had a circumstantial reunion at Starbright Ranch which was now occupied with a cowboy-type hippie friend. He had a horse that was anything but tame. Peggy challenged me to ride the horse and even as spirited as it was, I decided to give it a try. Our friend the owner, cautioned me about his love of running and advised me to be extra careful. I was no equestrian, but I have ridden a few mounts in my day. I heaved myself up in the saddle.

The stallion took off at a dead run. I had managed to get my feet in the stirrups first thing. It saved my butt. This horse was dead set on some serious play, heading for a couple of barbed-wire fences framing the dirt road into the ranch. I found his rhythm and dug in. Just before the fences, I gave him a kick he could feel. We flew over first the one fence and landed in the road for just a bound, then over the second fence. I was thrilled to pieces. I had never jumped a horse before. Just before he almost scraped me off on the branches of a mesquite tree, I hauled him about and kicked him again. This time he vaulted the fences with a certain respect that it had been my idea instead of his.

Back at what had been my house in earlier years, the gang was still hanging out on the front porch. They hadn't seen the ride. Peggy was determined to ride as well. With two of us begging her not to do it, she sniffed her condescension and let the horse have his way.

This was a prideful, stubborn lady that one does not argue with. We found her at the bottom row of barbed wire on the first fence row. That pretty well describes the relationship between Peggy and I. In spite of these lessons learned, we decided to stop being pen pals, and try to get together. That was my motivation to hitch hike from Arizona to Florida in December of 1972.

Thumbing a ride to anywhere is a mixture of boredom and adventure. I caught a ride with a trucker in an 18-wheeler, that danced gracefully on the ice for almost 100 miles near Amarillo. Just outside of Dallas I hooked up with a traveling salesman in a small sedan that got me past Arkansas. From there I caught a ride that carried me into Nashville and from there, things became surreal and entertaining. I was picked up by a carload of teen-age boys who were on an adventure of their own. I have no idea whose car it was, but their furtive glances and encrypted conversation made it clear that they thought I was a Very Important Person on a Very Important Mission - perhaps an undercover agent or spy, on a mission having to do with National Security. Good grief - what mad imaginations. Might be acid heads but definitely actors in a play of their own. It was like attending a performance by The Firesign Theatre.

I tried to straighten the kids out but they would hear nothing other than what their imaginations told them. They asked me where I was going and I told them. Florida. The phrase "without delay" was bndied about several times as they discussed it with each other. It wuld have been hilarious, were it not so strange. We arrived in Fort Perce early in the evening and I made it a point to walk the last mile or so to Peggy's apartment.

For the next two months we shared a life that was pleasant, occasionally fun and outstandingly unremarkable. There were occasional trips to the beach and other fun things to do, but other than a visit from some runaway kids, the whole experience was markedly mundane and workaday. I found a job within sight of the house at a small engine repair shop. She continued her clerical career at a nearby college. Finally, the whole thing just blew up in one of those spats that people sometimes have just to blow off steam. At the words "I would just as soon kill you as look at you", I left. I spent the night with a friend I had made at a local radio station, then went back the next day to visit with her just once more. I found myself temporarily at least, welcome and made the short trip to pick up some Kentucky Fried Chicken. When I got back, she had tea made.

I had an aunt once that displayed that kind of rage I had seen on the previous day. While her back was turned, I switched tea glasses - just in case. We enjoyed lunch and I kissed her goodbye.

The trip up the coast highway to Daytona Beach was made in two jumps, with one of my rides being a pair of young mothers with kids. Daytona itself was something of a haze. I remember a sleazy hotel and a lot of stares from people. When you are really unattached and traveling, you become much more interesting I guess. I made a phone call to Bonnie for bus fare to Phoenix. I should have thumbed it. For whatever reason, it became the Bus Ride From Hell. Rather than use all the Western Union money for a bus ticket to Phoenix, I purchased one as far as Dallas. That left me with a few bucks for meals and smokes.

CHAPTER 32 The Bus Ride From Hell

The moment before my foot touched the bottom step onto the Greyhound, there was an announcement on the bus station PA system; "Ladies and Gentlemen, President Lyndon Johnson has died". I felt a moment of hesitation, then made the jump to the next step and up into the aisle. As the long afternoon hummed into the evening, we threaded our way through Tallahassee. As I slept, we rolled north into Alabama - the heart of the deep South.

I awoke somewhere near Montgomery, Alabama realizing I may have missed my west bound connection. Perhaps it was the regular Greyhound route, but perhaps it was something more. I was completely surrounded with black men. I cast around with my eyes and mind trying to make a connection with someone, but they might as well have been pallbearers at my funeral. I was more than casually uncomfortable.

As we pulled into Montgomery, I got off the bus for a break. Walking into the terminal, I thumbed through a rack of paperback books full of civil rights manuscripts by Martin Luther King and others. I thought of "Black Like Me", the first book I had ever read dealing with racial inequality. I thought of some of the Blues songs the musicians like John Lee Hooker, Ledbelly and others had etched upon my undeniably white soul. I became suddenly aware of a policeman hovering within arms reach, who looked as though he was ready to bust me on a moment's notice. I nodded, he nodded solemn acknowledgement. I got the feeling that I was allowed to touch the books as long as I didn't READ one of them, and that they were not for sale. They were brown and dog-eared and had been touched a lot by travelers like me over the years. He was incidentally, a white man. There was a dreamlike quality to all of this, but I was not dreaming. I was traveling through a country that was in mourning for a dead President. It happened that this part of the country had experienced something very personal with him.

My dreamlike state of stress was causing me distinct color blindness. Rarely had I experienced that before. I wondered at the meaning of it. We headed toward Birmingham with stops at every small town along the way. It was part of the Greyhound service. White people got off the bus, black people got on. A few men around me made small talk, but I might just as well have been the driver. No one spoke to me. From Birmingham to Tuscaloosa and deep into the night, there was mumbled conversation and deep sleep. Somewhere near Meridian, Mississippi the cops caught up with us. They were obviously trying to round up someone who they thought might be on the bus. As they spoke with the driver, I wondered if it might be me they were after. My circle of black men and the black ladies on the bus closed even tighter around me. There was no question in my mind that I was being ushered or escorted, or being shown something. I must have stood out visually since at this point I was the only white person on the bus except the driver. I thought long and hard about the beatings and riots that had marked these very bus rides in these very bus stations less than ten years before. I wondered what was in store for me as the
feeling of tension increased. We pulled into Jackson, Mississippi and I stepped down from the bus where a police officer was waiting. I let off a big blowing breath as I stepped down, as though it were a sigh of enormous relief, like I was EXTREMELY glad to see him. He let me pass. Either he was after someone else, or my pretense at relief had worked. I stepped into the cafeteria.

It wasn't that I had ignored the "Colored" sign, I just did not expect it, therefore I did not see it. It was a segregated cafeteria and I simply followed the other people on the bus, into the line. Strangely at this point, I was almost completely color blind from fatigue. The food was just as colorless in flavor. I sat and ate in silence, beginning to notice the white people on the other side of the room. Some of them seemed about to choke on their food. I did not really enjoy mine, but I wasn't hungry any longer. I put away my tray and made my way back onto the bus. As a matter of habit when traveling, I position my duffel bag or baggage in the overhead rack, in a certain way to make sure they are not tampered with. I checked my bag when I got back on, to be sure no one had perhaps, planted drugs or anything else in it. The bag was OK. One black man sitting nearby made small talk. I made even less of it.

While trying to nod off to sleep, a strange glowing presence began to push it's way down from the ceiling, to just above my eye level. It was unquestionably, the strange fiery spider from my very early childhood. It was in other words, what must be in my own mind, the manifestation of my most inner fears. It hung there for several minutes, long enough for me to determine that it was entirely personal and not seen by anyone else. When I finally made that determination, I was able to confront it.

Perhaps it was part of an old family curse for after all, there had been a number of cases of insanity in our family in the past. Whatever it was there could be no question that one of us would be the master of the other. I am pleased to report to you here that after some considerable struggle internally, I am for the time being at least, the winner. When it left, all fear inside me left with it. I owe an odd debt to Jackson, Mississippi as well as Greyhound Bus Lines and the Civil Rights Movement. I no longer fear for myself. Now, I only fear for others.

CHAPTER 33 A Fear For Others (A brief and simple sermon)

In the genealogical research of my own family, I have turned up the fact that one of my ancestors William Henry Wortham, was kidnapped by a Spanish soldier and sold as a slave in America. He was a slave in this country, an indentured servant, until he reached the age of 21. This, years before the first black slaves were sold here from a Dutch ship.

Many of my relatives have enjoyed a semi-aristocracy, but most of us have worked and sweated just as hard as many of our black counterparts. It takes real effort to give birth to nation that may literally some day, save what really is a beautiful world. So with that as background information; I speak here then to our brothers, both black and white. Forgive my preachiness. The sermon will be brief. This may not be GOOD advice so there will be no collection takebn up at the end.

The hand of the Slave Masters have been pried open. It has been a measure of many lives and much bloodshed to accomplish your freedom. It has been a matter of brothers killing brothers to decide your equality. This too, at the cost of many birthrights. We have clasped hands in friendship and being misunderstood perhaps, the hand of friendship has been wrestled to the
ground.

We - You, have stopped seeking what is fair and forthright and our desire for wealth has caused the black man too - to WORSHIP Mammon. We are being devoured again consequently, by the beast of bigotry and greed. It's just above the bedcovers, it just ate your brother. You heard every bite.

In the struggles for equal civil rights, some have mistaken the moment of political agreement as a moment of weakness and capitulation. It is the most difficult task in the loosening of the chains of the children of slavery, to not try to place those same chains upon the hands of the children of the masters.

In the inevitable and deserved success of the black civil rights movement, it is a most profound mistake to assume that the sweet taste of revenge is not deadly
poisonous. It is. Consider then; it is a far more disastrous error to want to make the white man pay for the mistakes of his ancestors, than to acknowledge that he too, has been born into a strange world. Some demand that we sons of Slave Masters should pay for the sins of our forefathers. They seek unkowingly, to sell their souls in exchange for such reparations.

Mammon.

If that kind of money were available and it were part of the deal, would you en masse' return to your ancestral homeland of Africa? You should demand a better price for your American birthright. The temptation is to assume that the fight for equal Civil Rights should not have a conclusion, ending or at least a pause. The temptation is to set aside equality and strike while the sword is in hand; that might is right, that success means overthrow. The assumption is, that an open hand and bent knee means weakness. That the civil rights of others are not just as sacred as your own, that it is not important to stay the swing of the pendulumn and sword and to stop and learn something of forgiveness and temperance.... the lesson forgotten by the Masters.

The lesson is being taught all over the world as black man murders black man in the African nations, and in the streets of America's cities. God is trying to tell us something.

Mammon.

We cannot help but hear. We will be made to understand. Free men are the true Kings of this world. Those who are our friends, we draw closer to us to share our food, our wine, the things we love.

Those with whom we do not share our lives, we share money. Money is a
cold but sometimes necessary, replacement for a handshake or embrace.
Money really, is designed to keep us apart from the kind of lives we
might really prefer.

The most difficult task then, has just begun. It is not in winning freedom, but in recognizing it and cherishing it. It is in all of our birthrights. It is in our destiny as a nation.

The key to slavery (and freedom) is the desire for money and wealth at the expense of others.

Mammon.

This may also be the strongest argument for Socialism.

End of sermon.
I won't even pass the plate.

CHAPTER 34 The Long Way Home

I finally left Greyhound and my escort (still) of black folks, at Abilene, Texas. We no longer had need of each other, although they seemed dissapointed to see me leave. Nothing was said, it was the look on their faces. I wonder still, if they were not protecting me.

I caught a ride in a pickup truck with a man who looked remarkably like an uncle of mine, then snagged a lift from an eighteen-wheeler all the way to Phoenix. The reunion between Bonnie and I was pleasant, and within days we were pretty much back into our our old routine. I found a job at KRDS radio, a small but thriving country-western station in Tolleson, the far west side of Phoenix.

Have you ever had one of those experiences where you walk into a place and everyone leaves? That was me at KRDS. There were several very fine DJ's there doing talk and music shows. I knew next to nothing about country music and it showed. Suddenly, everyone left. Records, DJ's, production aids, everything but the equipment and a few part-time staff members. We were down to scratch. A handful of non-descript, non-hit records. Scratch. Just like KCAC. Across town at KDKB with
the staff that had been most of KCAC, I wondered if Bill knew what was going on and had any idea of the difference in the stations.

There was a difference in the relationship between Bonnie and I, as well. The difference was the incredible amount of pot that had been moving through the house. The floor of one room was literally carpeted with spilled marijuana. I was never enthusiastic about her dealing activities. I think most of our friends and acquaintences had regarded me as some kind of body guard for her in the past. It seemed to fit. This was just plain loose dealing though - almost inviting a bust, and I couldn't hide my displeasure of it. The bust came down a few weeks later. I could feel it, taste it and smell it days before it happened. We or I should say I - even got a warning call. The phone rang one afternoon while I was alone at the house; "Wake up..... one of those". Click. Thanks. I shared my feelings very pointedly with Bonnie but it seemed there was a missing link in our communication. I just could not get it through to her.

It was late of an evening when she came in, very disturbed at events that were obviously out of her control. Someone had pulled a gun and announced an arrest. She had bolted out of the place, as had one or two others. She was scared. So was I. Maybe it was a bust, maybe it was a ripoff, where the buying party stages a bust and steals all the marbles. The problem in that kind of situation is determining who are the good guys, and who are the bad guys. It goes one way or the other.
Fifty-fifty odds. If you make a bad bet, you are dead.

About 2 AM a car pulled up out on 27th Avenue and turned off its engine. This was it. I woke her up and got dressed myself. I didn't have to wait for the knock on the door. I calculated these were cops, coming to make our arrest, but it was quite possible that they were dealers coming to snuff a witness and/or witnesses. They had pulled up quietly, hoping for an element of surprise. There was no way of knowing if that element of surprise was for our protection, or theirs. We weren't safely out of the woods yet. I had no gun in the house but in case it was bad and went hand-to-hand, I shoved a long slim butcher knife in the back of my pants. I told Bonnie to stay put in the kitchen, lock the door behind me...... and wait.

There was no moon. It was as dark as a wool sweater outside, so I turned on the porch light and stepped out into the driveway. "Please identify yourself." I called out. "Who are you?" For a moment, there was silence. Off toward the bushes between the house and 27th Avenue, a space of some thirty yards, a voice called out; "Are you armed?" I replied; `Yes I am'. I counted at least five slides being worked on semi-automatic handguns ranging in size from .32 to .45 calibre. Maybe one shotgun. Shit. "We are Federal Agents. What sort of weapon do you have and where is it?" a voice said. `I have a butcher knife in the back of my pants', I replied. "Raise your hands and stand still, I am coming over". I did as I was told, and quietly breathed a sigh of relief that this was not some kind of Cartel Firing Squad.

They were very gentle with Bonnie, and quite respectful as they recited the Miranda to her. Apparently, they didn't have any idea that I even existed. There was no warrant for me, I was not wanted. In days to come the usual legal maneuverings freed her and imprisoned at least one other of her associates. I began to make a very serious re-evaluation of our relationship, with an eye to my personal survival.

I decided we would be friends and lovers for a long time to come, and live our lives separately and apart from one another.

Here I was again, starting from scratch.

CHAPTER 35 A Little To The Right, Please

Shortly after the bust, came the call from KRDS dismissing me. I couldn't blame old Charlie, he had worked hard to create the station. After a few days absence, I got a call from the owner. Charlie had been dismissed. I was Music Director. Let's go buy some records. I wish I could have told him it was simply, a bad move.

I could not pull it off. The people at the station were not with me, and no cohesive sound could be developed. I had to opt for a discharge. I placed myself on the unemployment rolls again, and shopped for a new path in life. I took a clerk's position at Circles Records which a few years before, had been the Honda House where I had met my benefactor with the Dodge Phoenix convertible. Deja' Vu.

They moved me to a T-shirt shop nearby, which folded (excuse the pun). After a few weeks, Bonnie found me a very nice looking Dodge Crew Cabpickup truck for a few hundred bucks. Why not. I went into debt with that phrase "Why not" on my mind. The truck was a gas hog and mostly worn out. I painted the words "Ecologistics" on the truck and my toolbox, in hopes that something businesslike would happen in the area of alternative energy. I experimented with methane and solar power.

Bill called from KDKB wondering if I would take the night shift. Hoping for some resurrection of our friendship and perhaps a return to the spirit of the KCAC days, I agreed. I lasted about four nights. Cocaine was resident in the radio station and I was provided with a "blow" by one of the staff, every night before my air shift. After the fourth night, I realized I was playing almost the same music every night and I simply could not bring myself to mess up such a fine artistic presentation with a commercial. Even one. I missed the commercials on the log every night. Don't ask me. Mahavishnu John McLaughlin and the other artists weren't THAT good, but I just simply couldn't commercialize the show, in any of the five hours of that shift.

I (and my Ego) were getting hooked on the cocaine. There was absolutely no doubt about it. Bill Cosby in later years did a rap on cocaine, interviewing an unseen friend who was a user of the drug; "Why do you do cocaine?" he asked. His friend responds `Well, it intensifies your personality!' Cosby's retort; "Well, what if you're an asshole?".

It was part of our job to write down the titles, artists and times of the records we played. I began to review the sheets and realized there was a pattern to what we were all doing. I scribbled "Behold, the path of the snake." across the bottom half of my last page for the night, scribbled a very brief resignation on another sheet of paper, posted it on the bulletin board, and left. Cocaine and I were arguing. One of us must become the master of the other.

Back at the house I loaded all my stuff in the truck and headed again, north. I pulled into a beautiful glade north of Flagstaff and headed for a wooded area where I would be secluded for a few days. I hoped to sleep it off. It took more than just a few nights. I seem to recall that this was a Labor Day weekend and I wondered if I would ever bother to be found again. It was beautiful. After several days I awakened to the sound of bulldozers nearby. It really shook me. I thought I was miles from anywhere. In a short time, I emerged from the camper to see a Forest Service truck pull up with a Ranger inside, Smokey The Bear hat and everything. I was asked to move. I was in the path of an expanding area of the Flagstaff City Landfill. I was camped at the edge of the city dump. I cranked up the truck and went looking for supplies, money or whatever God was going to show me next.

Radio has always been good to me, especially when I needed work the most. I had a couple of bucks, just enough to make some phone calls from a booth where Superman had probably changed clothes once in the 1930's. I connected with a little station KCYN in Williams, Arizona just a few miles west on highway 66. That's right, the famous Route 66. Been there. Done that. The owner of the station had just inherited it. His bag was TV in Kingman, some miles further west. He needed help, I needed a job and a place to live. The owner was able to trade out a room for me at the local Ramada Inn. I went from living in a truck to a hotel room with cable TV in one phone call. I settled down to doing the radio station and watching a new TV series, "Kung Fu".

We are curious puppets. Fate pulls funny strings. We dance funny dances. On the way out of the local post office, I ran into Crazy Ted, my old friend from Phoenix. The one who used to walk into the room naked from the shower. He had a shack up on the hill and a delicious, fiery lady named Sharon. Subdued though she was, there was a smoldering quality to her that gave her a slightly dangerous appeal. It was a reunion of old friends, a revival of old feelings brought over to new times. We grew, we shared. Bonnie visited often.

I changed the call letters of KCYN to KNYN and directed the format to tourism. It should have worked, had there been any promotion with national agencies. There wasn't time. One day the owner blew up in frustration. He simply wasn't happy with our doing the best we could with what we had to work with, which was next to nothing. Our production tape recorder for instance was an old Wollensak, which had been already old, some ten years before. At any rate, he began throwing things around, ruining some of the paneling we had so laboriously installed in our effort to revitalize what had once been the town jail. That was it. What did I need with the Ramada Inn, cable TV and one extra asshole in my life? I loaded up the truck and
headed up past the Grand Canyon.

Somewhere near Kayenta, I stopped and made a long distance call to the Program Director at KSPN-FM in Aspen, Colorado. "I'm coming up, I need a job if you have one." I said. `I don't have a thing right now, we're automated'. "I need to learn that - I'm coming up, job or no job." There was a pause. `I can give you a hundred and twenty five a week'. "I'll see you in a day or two". I said, and hung up.

I took a room at the motel where I had stayed in a dormitory on my previous visit to Aspen, some chapters back. This and a couple of other places were owned by Lou Willie and his wife, thinly disguised Christians. The deal was the same. Work a day, stay a week. I was still good with a welding torch, Lou was still building eagles and
horses from car bumpers. These were remarkably kind, generous people. Aspen was beginning to really thrive in those days, although it retained a sleepy, small town quality to it. Mark "Marco" Wadmond and I became friends and shared a few adventures while I let my beard grow to ZZ Topp length.

In the process of developing a steady, consistent, sophisticated morning air sound, I played a few cuts from "Buckingham Nicks" an album by Lindsey Buckingham and Stephanie Nicks. It turned out that Stephanie Nicks happened to be in town and I was treated to a phone call and subsequent live interview with her. Later, we attended a party that was an embarrassing disaster for both of us. One of the local art gallery operators had invited me to a whing-ding. I picked up Stephanie and we went. Another gay assemblage. No one there but gay males and Stephanie as the only lady. Oh, boy.

A few weeks later, Stephanie and I chanced to meet on the streets of Aspen. Finding a private place to live for myself had proved even less than unlikely. I had about burned out on the town and was ready for something new. As for herself; "I have an offer to join Fleetwood Mac. What do you think I should do?" I gasped. `Are you talking about "Oh, Well" Fleetwood Mac? "Bare Trees", Mick Fleetwood - Fleetwood Mac - THAT Fleetwood Mac?' She nodded yes. `Go for it. Don't hold back, do it, do it, do it.' I said. She smiled and we parted. I still wonder what she would have done if I had told her to drop the Fleetwood Mac offer.

Aspen ran out of room for me, shortly after the first snowfall. It was ski season. If I stayed, I could take a phone booth if I could kick someone else out of it. There were paying guests. It was time to find two other jobs to pay my way, or go elsewhere. I headed south for Phoenix again. I spent the winter and early spring at Bonnie's. Damn hot, it was.

Summer never really ends in Phoenix, it just has it's cool spells. It was around this time that I had a chance encounter with a delightful hippie family that fairly exuded mysticism. They had an enchanting young daughter named Summer. It was the first time I had ever heard the name. I told her I thought it was a perfectly lovely name and that I wished I had a daughter named Summer. There was a brief pause, a slight communion of eyes among them. "You will". She said. My daughter, Summer Rose was born about ten years later.

Without an income or a job, the truck had to be sold. I was back on the street more or less, at Bonnie's house again. I had to take a breath and again, start from scratch. This I did on a fine little Italian Bultaco motorcycle that had been in someone's garage too long. It was cheap, and ran well.

I moved up to an apartment in north Phoenix again, near the Sunnyslope area where I had lived in my first cottage during that first summer in Phoenix. It was a bit pricey for someone on unemployment but this time there was a swimming pool and life was a bit easier. Food was a real problem and I visited the irrigation canal once or twice for crawfish. Not lobster, but not bad if you are very patient with small portions.

After a few weeks and a brief encounter with a really wigged out girl who was a shameless tease and celibate, I moved again just a few blocks away. She was nice enough to come see me and apologize. I was nice enough to thank her. A nice man appeared in a nice suit and tie on my front porch a day or so later to let me know without saying so, that I was being watched. I was nice enough to thank him and wonder why he didn't perspire in the 107 degree heat and a fulo suit. Probably an alien, maybe even a lawyer.

This was not a fate worse than death, but Bonnie came to my rescue, anyway. There was an old frame house on south Central close to South Mountain Park, that could be had for $65.00 per month rent. I would even be able to eat on my meager unemployment stipend. I took it. I had the utilities turned on and the water from the kitchen faucet literally ran stinking, sewage black for the first hour. It had been stopped in the pipes for years.

9822 South Central Avenue no longer exists. The spot is marked though, with the shell of an experimental 30-foot yacht weighing probably 20 tons, that had been literally poured from concrete. A concrete boat. No kidding. That's not as strange as it sounds, several large ships were built of concrete by the U.S. Navy in World War II. This one never saw the water, though. It was hauled in by truck and placed there by a crane while I was living at the place, apparently by someone who knew what they were doing. It is the only thing that marks the location. The rest is desert except the old stone house next door. My nearest neighbors at the stone house was a black family with very definite African persuasions. They had me over for dinner a time or two and treated me to Elk. The way he said it though, it sounded like "Ilk" as in descendant(s) of.... The meat was lean, tender and suspiciously succulent. It was not the least bit gamey tasting though, and I wondered what I was eating. He had ducks, geese and turkeys in the back yard.

In those days of 1975 through 1978, my place was a clapboard frame house built probably around 1910, painted gangrene green and had a patchwork roof that somehow, did not leak. The motorcycle had self-destructed and I bought a tiny 90cc Honda from Bonnie's neighbor for trips to the store. I had to convert it to a battery ignition, since the ignition coil was blown. It ran. I drove it for most of a year, while I made repairs to the house and added a telephone that almost never rang. Jobs were non-existent, except for part-time work at a lawnmower shop where the boss was as uptight as a starter spring.

1975 was more or less uneventful and boring. I found a room mate, a wonderful, crazy on-again off-again friend of Bonnie's and mine, named Kevin Reedy Webb. Kevin had been part of the TERROS group in the KCAC days. We worked together for a short time driving a truck for a nearby thrift store, enjoying our down-and-out camaraderie. That ended though, when we just couldn't make ends meet. During the stay, he somehow picked up an old 1959 white Cadillac convertible. The man was definitely moving up, if back.

Thanksgiving day I woke up feeling very nostalgic and very lonely. The phone actually rang. I had forgotten it was there. It was an old friend who had been very much in the distance in years past. We really didn't know each other well at all, except that he may have been part of the sales staff at KCAC. I could recall rumors of Italian Mafia connections, but he seemed to be making a straight life of it, like myself. He was in town, unconnected, just passing through and saying hi. We decided to get together.

That day was one of the warmest connections I have enjoyed with a near-stranger. It was mid-morning when we met. By noon, we had rounded up corn on the cob, some tea, bread, dressing, cranberry sauce and two Rock Cornish Game Hens that were our substitute for turkeys. I gave the blessing, the first such shared prayer in years. It was totally spontaneous and soul satisfying for both of us. We have not seen each other since that very fine Thanksgiving Dinner.

Christmas for the first time in six years, was spent with my parents. They hosted me at a skiing trip in Colorado which was sponsored by their church. I hitched to Glenwood Springs and met my folks there. Barry McGuire ("Eve of Destruction" 1965) was the featured singer and teacher at the retreat. I was very surprised to find him working in Christian life and music. He was definitely turned away from the fame and glory that had just destroyed Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin. He had even divorced himself from any identity with his hit single. That was fine, I certainly understood. In my own way, I was doing something similar. I behaved my Christian Self at the ski resort and was given a lift by my folks to Albuquerque, as well as a bus ticket to Phoenix. I thought seriously of getting a refund on the ticket and hitching it, but decided to enjoy my relative comfort on the bus. Surprise.

A sweet young thing came cruising down the aisle looking for a seat. She sat down without being invited and with more than a little enthusiasm. From Albuquerque to Winslow we became friends. After dark near Flagstaff and almost all the way to Phoenix, we did everything any two young people can do on a Greyhound bus. What was really a gas about it was that the couple in front of us knew exactly what was going on. There was no way they could misinterpret the movements. They were Indians. Native Americans - the ones who were here before us. They had brought some of the blessed humanity with them from their heritage, they didn't mind if the couple in the next teepee were making love. Their conversation provided a wonderful cover for us.

On arrival in Phoenix, the girl split in one direction and I went the other, directly into the arms of Bonnie, whom my folks had alerted that I was arriving. Surprise.

The following year found me spending time and drinking beer with two of the most outrageous biker people that God has ever blessed me with. I was living in poverty as were they, in the toughest economic recession in many years. Bob and Susie were bikers of the old school. I mean boots, sweat, beer, sweat, no colors but who needs them when you're this ugly, sweat, grease and sweat. Nicknames; Rivers and Snooze. Their motto: "Keep a wet chain and dry rear wheel". It means Stay On Top Of It. A dry chain will burn out. A rear wheel wet from chain oil, will allow oil into the wheel through your spokes, thus eating the rubber of the inner tube of your motorcycle, causing a blowout or flat. You gotta keep the chain wet, you gotta keep the wheel dry.

Rivers was red-headed, Snooze was sweet and ugly. She had crossed eyes as an inherited birth defect and despite her sweetness, liked to cuss. These two people saved me from some of the most depressing times of my life. They never mentioned it, but they were visiting Christians, unchurched and unfunded - unlike the Consecrated Missionaries to Las Vegas and other needy Meccas. These were some of the finest and nastiest people I have ever known. It was through these friends that I learned to tube the Salt River and make love to ugly women.

I had made a deal through some gay friends of Dan's, on a 350 Honda with a half-running, poorly overhauled engine. I fixed the points, removed the mufflers and had a fully running motorcycle. I was in the process of starving myself to pay for it when wonder of wonders, I was offered another job. I was to be employed by the City of Phoenix (oh joy, a lucrative, secure position with a Major Municipality under the guidance of the Carter Administration) - on a garbage crew at South Mountain Park. Food. I took it. Thus began my celebration of our National Bicentennial Year of 1976.

God Bless America.

Bill Compton CA 1975

CHAPTER 36 A Little More To The Left

Collectively, some sociologist must have searched out all the borderline criminals they could find for this Economic Development Program. We could all have gone either way, and some already had.

The crews were run with clockwork precision for the first week or two,then spring moved into early summer and things got hot. Several guys dropped out, people stopped coming to the park and the work got much easier cleaning up after them. Our crew became highly tuned though and we began to find unusual things in the park. Gila Monsters, very old beer cans (one with beer still in it). Food, sometimes. Once on a day that I was sick with the flu, the crew found the body of a dead girl. Murdered. Unquestionably. This motley crew began to find or create fun, in almost everything we did. Grown men at play. Our truck was a 1 1/2 ton beige pickup with a steel sun shroud on the back. Our driver Al, was a young redneck who loved to chew sunflower seeds. One morning we found a child's BB gun at one of the ramadas. Further down the road, we found a muffler sleeve from a motorcycle that fit over the barrel of the BB gun perfectly. It took on the looks of a serious weapon. I and a friend stood on the tailgate of the truck with our helmets in full view, as we often did to catch the breeze. It was our habit to ride thus, leaning on the steel shroud. That's how we spotted loose garbage in the desert. We began to notice cars zooming out of the park when they came in sight of us. It appeared as if there were a dangerous criminal or animal loose in the park, with us in desperate pursuit. Hilarious, it made our work easier.

I made music a major part of our day. I created a musical lunch box. I built in a battery powered radio and then covered the thing with camouflage cloth. It was our connection to the outside world, and kept us working in rhythm when there was work to be done.

The Bicentennial Holy Day came - The Fourth of July, 1976. Roberto, my Mexican boss and "Red" one of the crew members, showed up at my door. It was time to party and celebrate our nation's 200th birthday. Red, who had a date, and in defiance of my faded bell bottoms, reached down and ripped them right up the side. I didn't hit him, so he ripped up the other side as well. I looked like a prostitute in a split skirt, wearing my most patriotic shirt. We all broke out laughing and hit the bars. By the time we reached 59th Avenue, we were blasted beyond recognition or salvation. Since Red had a girl, Roberto - my boss and I, paired off and commenced to shake things up. We laughed, we roared, we baptized one another with beer on the outside and Mescal and Tequila on the inside. In short, we became Amigos. Muchachos. Compadres. One of the musicians interrupted his singing to gawk in awe. "I can't believe this." he whispered into the microphone. The whole room hooted with laughter. I don't remember how many barmaids we kissed, but we left before the cops came. God Blessed our little part of the U.S.A. that night. Happy Birthday, America.

We returned to work as though nothing at all had happened. Finally, it grew too hot to work at all and the entire experiment deteriorated into a floating poker game. After a few weeks of that, I gave up. I was wasting time. Worse, I was bored. Worse yet, a mexican kid was snitching on all of us and I, the notorious "Huggy Bear" (the nickname I had picked up) was the worst offender of all. I decided to let him have my job and the fate that went with it.

During the next several months I "coasted", taking occasional jobs through Manpower. Most were mundane warehouse and delivery jobs, some were challenging. One was a very real challenge that I and two other men were invited to decline. They wouldn't even call us "chicken". There was a railroad car at a siding that was half-full of 75-pound bags of cat litter. Some stupid jerk had chosen to not put them on forklift palettes. They were all stacked one on the other and had to be unloaded by hand, to be placed on palettes and moved later by forklift. We were given a straight offer; "If you can move these onto palettes, we'll pay you for a whole day regardless of how long it takes you." It was easily 300 bags. At 75 pounds each and with three men doing the work, it meant each one of us would be lifting and moving 7,500 pounds. That is almost two full tons each. It was 10 AM. The temperature was over 102 degrees and climbing rapidly. We three strangers needed the work, and made a pact to finish or die. It took us just over an hour and a half, in a steady, even dance with only one break for water and rest. When we finished, it was 112 degrees.

By the winter and spring of 1977 I was hearing some fine radio, that I could really appreciate. The station was KBBC-FM in Phoenix, literally just up the street from me a couple of miles on Central. NORTH Central. I applied for a job and got one. The sound was hip rock, not at all hard, very listenable and smooth. I enjoyed it immensely and became good friends with the receptionist as well as a female announcer. The receptionist is the only black girlfriend I ever had and she was more than casually sexy. We never got sexually involved, though we rode the motorcycle out to the river several times. Funny, she had a thing about stealing stuff. She just had to have something either as a memento, or as a compulsion. I lost quite a few little things like an antique Zippo cigarette lighter and later a bathrobe, to her.

My announcer friend went by the name of Belle Starr (Jewish humor being what it is), and I found myself fascinated by her naive approach to life. Nonetheless we stayed friends and she introduced me to a few others during the course of the next several months. She also introduced me to several books of Kliban cartoons, immensely perceptive artwork that I cherish to this day.

Across town and for reasons that will never be clear to me, KDKB fired Bill Compton, right after the time I started at KBBC. I felt as though KBBC and Bill might be negotiating. I found out later that they were, indeed. Myself and another former KDKB announcer and mutual friend there Dennis McBroom, would have stepped aside to make room for him, if needed. That was not to be. William Edward Compton III, probably the most influential friend in my adult life, died on the day of the Summer Solstice, June 21st, 1977. "Little Willie Sunshine" was killed in a car wreck, on the longest day of the year.

I couldn't help but think about the time at the Scottsdale house when he had told me that if he had a choice, he would go in a fast car. He and his lady Kathy Radina had tried to dodge a bicyclist in their BMW and wound up head first at the bottom of a 30-foot drop in a dry irrigation canal. Kathy was badly banged up and unconscious for a considerable time.

Dennis and I both played commemorative music for our friend and breaking format, spoke openly of our friendships with Bill on the air. Flatly, the wind was taken out of the sails of our work on KBBC. I knew I would have to leave. I would never sound the same there again. The boss verified my feelings a week later. I interrupted his prepared and awkward "We're going to have to let you go" comments with a wave of my hand. I was unenthusiastic and blunt. `I know', I said.

I was simply stunned. I stayed that way for a couple of weeks. The event had been so unexpected that it removed itself from the concept of being inevitable. My own death is inevitable. So is yours. Bill was a great friend and truly, an icon. Icons are not supposed to die unexpectedly. Without dwelling morosely on Bill's and my own mutual interest in occult sciences, I will mention that I meditated at length at the dining table in my house on South Central. In one session on a flat sheet of paper in a script that was not my own - but from a pen that was held in my right hand, were written the words; "Greater Love". I folded the paper and sent it to The Lady, Jean Compton, Bill's mother.

William Edward Compton III

CHAPTER 37 Comic Relief, Part I

South Central Avenue became something of a homestead for me. The Chicanos (Mexicans) began building some really beautiful cars and calling them "Low-Riders". They were rolling works of art, which they took great pride in. They would often steal hydraulic lifts from large delivery trucks and add the mechanism to their suspension systems to make the low riders high enough temporarily, to traverse bumpy roads. As a show of novelty, they would use the hydraulic boosts to "hop" their cars up and down the street. Often on Saturday nights, they would line up in mile-long rows, completely blocking up at least one lane. Sometimes they would block both lanes, wreaking total havoc with the local traffic. We didn't have much to do with one another, but my motorcycle was modified with "tiller" handlebars, making the entire width of bike and rider, less than two feet. On rare occasions, I would find myself urged to "shoot the tube", driving between the two lines of cars. It was too dangerous but it would have been fun. You could never tell when a car door would open so someone could share a beer. In a real jam, I used the yellow line and even the sidewalk, to get from point A to point B. It bothered the Chicanos that I could "cheat" on their game. One day my musical lunchbox bounced out of the carrier on my motorcycle and one of the Chicanos took great pleasure in running over it. I let it be.

From time to time on South Mountain, I would ride to the top, stand up on the pegs of the motorcycle and coast down the mountain with the bike in third gear. I controlled the bike by leaning, with my arms spread and not touching the handlebars. It gave the feeling of flying and the illusion to oncoming traffic of someone standing up on a motorcycle and "surfing" the mountain. I heard years later of a few people being hurt and even killed attempting it. I find it amazing that a person can do a simple stunt for personal fun, Then have some of the rest of the world kill themselves over it. Jesus, what fools we are.

"Kathy" appeared, walking directly in front of my bike one hot afternoon at the park. I stopped, she climbed on, and we rode the mountain together. Later, I took her to my place for iced tea. A couple of weeks later, she appeared at my front door again, this time to demonstrate a very lovely dance called; "The Salute To The Sun". I had heard of a similar dance performed before cultist Aliester Crowley many years before, and that it was an irresistible turn-on. So it was. We retired to the bedroom. However, my interruption of her artistic presentation must have upset her. I visited her once in Tucson, and we never saw each other again.

My other friendship with a lady had begun the year before. Just out for a ride, there was a lovely little "island" in one of the citrus plantations near 19th Avenue where someone had planted grapefruit, oranges, figs and date palms in a small triangular patch of groundless than a hakf-acre, framed on all sides by small irrigation canals. It was a great place to cool off. One canal was small enough to ride through, which is where I met Sherry. Sherry was very nice looking, married, not necessarily happily. We became platonic friends and met there several times. Once or twice, she visited at my place. After a few months of this, she told me she was pregnant and going back home to L.A. to have the baby. She and her husband weren't getting along all that well. For about a year, I didn't see her again.

Then suddenly, one day she showed up. She had had the baby, it was with her mother-in-law, and she just wanted to visit. She must have wanted to visit a lot, because she kept showing up almost every other day. Something was strange about all this. I felt as though she was there to occupy my time and keep me busy while something else happened. I decided for the pure hell of it, to try to seduce her. To my own surprise, she seemed surprised at me for doing so. But heck, we were two seemingly ordinary people with ordinary urges and I could not see that she held any sanctity towards her marriage, husband or family. In short, we simply did it. She, with passive acceptance. Me, with unenthusiastic curiosity.

The next day her car pulled in the driveway again, a good deal faster than usual. The door slammed and I could tell it was not her doing the driving. I pulled on my boots just before a rather thin, wiry blonde-headed fireball burst in, asked my name and started pounding on my face with his fists. He looked to be about ten years younger than I, about 25 or so. He got in about four good hits before I could push him off me and stand myself up. I got him on the right side of his face with a backhand, then slapped him open-handed with my right hand as hard as I could. It was over. He tried to raise his right to strike again, but he could barely stand. I reached down to stay his hand from raising. He said "I'll be back - with a gun. Be gone". I couldn't help but wonder why he would want me to be gone if he were serious about coming back to use a gun on me.

Later, I called him at the trucking company where he worked, and apologized. Sherry called and apologized to my answering service. I told the answering service that it was OK, but not to call me again. The answering service beeped its obedient agreement. I wondered what the guy's face must have looked like, and if he was paying more attention to his wife now. That same week the landlord that I had been paying the rent to, popped in to ask me to move. He and his family needed the place. I asked him to help me negotiate a move to a place that I had always admired. The Hill House on 35th Avenue, near Starbright Ranch. It took a a little doing, but the couple that occupied the place were rarely there. The deal was done, and I moved almost right away.

The Hill House was once an old mining shack that had been poured out of concrete, tin cans and rocks. It was absolutely solid, built probably in the 1920's. The construction method was simple. Pour a slab. build the walls by separating two sheets of plywood with tin cans here and there. Wire the sheets of plywood together, gather up a bunch of rocks and fill the whole space between the plywood sheets with them. Pour in very wet cement. The tin cans made great access points later, for wiring and plumbing. However at the time the place was built, wiring and plumbing were not available or planned. The hill provided a wonderful view of Phoenix and anyone approaching for hundreds of yards in any direction.

I had not forgotten the beating I had gotten, and given in return. I had not forgotten the threat, nor had I forgotten that the very house I had chosen had been in very recent years, a haven for drug dealers and a popular party spot in the area. I could in other words, be biting off more than I could chew of my own problems, plus those of many others who had lived there before. I decided it was worth it. With that in mind, I created a couple of prison-style weapons to reinforce my safety. I could not afford a real gun. I call them fist pistols. They are made from a short length of 3/4" plumbing pipe with a 12-gauge shotgun shell shoved in one end. By drilling a small hole in the center of a pipe cap, you can position a small nail directly over the firing cap of the shotgun shell. With the cap screwed on, it is possible to slam the nail against a wall or piece of furniture, firing the shell. You have to hit it really quickly and had better damn well hope the other end is aimed directly at your target. It is a desperate weapon and you take the chance that the entire contraption might blow up in your hand. The same device can be fired electrically, by simply inserting a frayed wire into the side of the shotgun shell and plugging it in a wall socket or battery. I takes practice and some engineering skills. Good booby traps can be made that way.

I was awakened around 3 AM just a few nights after I had moved to the hill house, by footsteps at the bottom of the driveway. I had not heard a car at all, so I knew these people were trying to be very quiet. That was next to impossible on the caliche' gravel. I listened carefully, counting about eight to ten pairs of footsteps. From what I could hear they were light, wiry guys with small movements, all about 150 to 175 pounds or so. By the sound of their strides I got the impression they were all sort of short, like five-seven or five-eight, about the size of the guy who had beat me up on Central Avenue. Probably wearing cowboy boots. There was no talking. None. This was serious business. They definitely were not Federal Agents. They were getting closer.

I knew they would have to come in from the back. They would probably bust in through the back door just a few feet away, which I had not locked. Damn! Why didn't I lock it? I began to panic. I reached for two fist pistols and laid the third one on the bed on my right. I was propped against the wall and as ready as I could ever be. This was it. I hoped the weapons worked.

I listened carefully to the footsteps. Four of the guys stopped at the back door. Two were coming around the corner and I would be able to see them through the screened windows in just a moment. I figured they would start shooting as soon as they saw me. I had the advantage of the dark though. They were in bright moonlight and would have trouble spotting me through the screen. I took a slow, quiet breath and held my position. A split second before I could see my target - he stopped. Right at the damn corner, right where I couldn't get a shot, not even through the glass. This guy really knew his shit. Then, there were two more steps. He was right outside the window, less than two feet away. My mind screamed out a prayer for Jesus to come be by me for this.

I tried not to forget how vulnerable I was on my left side, from the back door. I had to chance leaving that area uncovered though, while I maneuvered myself to the edge of the window to see my closest target. My head pounded. My fists were trembling but with Ninja-like stealth, I moved myself within the realm of the shadows to the very edge of the window.

His left eye and my right eye met at the edge of the window, not four inches apart. We both held steady there eye-to-eye unflinching, for what seemed like forever.

As we tried to hypnotize one another, I wondered if I could get off a shot by banging the fist pistol against the side of the bed frame. If I missed, it would force his hand and I would be among the quick and the dead. If I got him first, the others would probably nail me from the side. I would have maybe three seconds after they flung the door open before they could see me well enough to shoot, depending on how they were armed. At least I could take one, maybe two with me.

I was about to make my move. I could see I had him in my power. I would be able to move first. He could not release his stare. It was the Moment Of Truth, and I had the element of surprise. I relished the feeling of control but I knew it could last for just a moment more. I marveled for just an instant at how really beautifully BIG his brown eye(s) were. How feminine the eyelash. How remarkably long his eyelashes were, how smooth and light his skin was........ and hairy?

It was a wild burro. One of several gathered outside my bedroom. I had just outstalked, faced off and almost killed........ an Arizona jackass.