The Other Band

Before I get into the story of the other band I played with in Escondido back in 1969, I wanted to mention that I was doing some organizing out in my shop over the holidays and found my sister's old year books from St. Louis and Philadelphia.

I was stunned to discover that the Villa Duchesne yearbooks listed the home address of every student. That includes Janet Musial (as in Stan's daughter) and Judy Switzer (as in Switzer Candy). Unbelievable!! But now know why I was confused about where Stan lived. For some reason I thought it was near Forest Park. But it was actually near Francis Park. That's where my dad taught Janet to play tennis...
Aside: Stan's house was the first place I saw termites. The pest control guy busted open the back door threshold and it was full of the critters. As near as I can tell (from online records) the house was only 5 years old at the time. That would explain why Mrs. Musial was so exasperated when she saw them... But that's totally irrelevant - which is why I remember it so well :-)
I also noticed that in various places in those yearbooks my sister's first name is written as Kathie, Kathy, Katharina, Catherine, Katarine and Katharine. As I mentioned in an earlier post, she was never quite happy with her name and was constantly tweaking it all through her childhood. She eventually settled on Karina...

And back to Escondido:

At some point in the summer of 1969 one of the guys at Finder's Music let me swap my Vox Phantom XII straight across for a 1953 (the year I was born) Fender Telecaster. It was an "off the books" transaction - the Telecaster had just been traded in and wasn't in their inventory yet. I think it was a reasonable exchange given that vintage guitars were not yet considered "collectible" at that time - they were just "old"... . I felt a bit bad about the fact that the Vox had never been fully paid for - but that wasn't exactly my fault... Aside: I eventually sold the Telecaster to a working musician around 1990...

The Telecaster was a bit awkward to play given that I'm a lefty and held it upside down (after swapping the strings and the nut) - but the neck had been narrowed and the action was vastly superior to the Vox (especially for my stubby little fingers). I spent a lot of time with it when I first got it and my technique improved immeasurably right away. That was also when I got obsessive compulsive about "palm muting" and spent countless hours experimenting. (It's kind of like pedal technique on a piano.)

And that was when I met another guitarist named Pete (last name was something like Mitchell or Marshall). He had a 1952 (the year he was born) Fender Strat and played lead guitar for a cover band that was looking for a second lead.

It was an unusual band (and not just because it didn't have a name): The drummer and keyboard/vocalist were slightly older and had day jobs so we very rarely practiced with them. For the most part, us two Petes and bass player Jack would get together at "other" Pete's house. And on the rare occasions when the entire band got together (at the drummers house) the music always seemed to come together effortlessly... There's probably a lesson there somewhere - I'm just not sure what it is :-)

Jack was a skinny dude who seemed to suffer from "short man syndrome". That's probably why he played bass... All I remember is that his shoes had really thick soles and he was perpetually angry about something or another :-)

The drummer was a dead ringer for Shaggy of Scooby-Doo fame. My most vivid memory of him is (of course) car related:
One evening we all showed up for practice at his place (he still lived with his parents) and he wasn't home. We were about to leave when he rolled up in a brand new "440-6 bbl" Roadrunner (B5 blue). That was a limited production model built only at the end of the 69 model year and was one of the quickest muscle cars ever made... It took a long time to convince him to show us the engine because the car had a fiberglass hood that was pinned down (no latches or hinges). So he had to find a blanket to set it down on after it was lifted off... It was quite an amazing car - only 10 miles on the odometer...

Then there was the keyboard/vocal guy... In addition to a holding down a regular job he had recently fathered a child (unplanned). He was still in his teens and doing his best to hold everything together but he was always on the edge... And (of course) his girlfriend did not want him playing in a band anymore - but for some guys that's like asking them not to breathe.
I also recall that he always kept one of those plastic lemon squeeze bottles on the corner of his keyboard. He claimed it was for his voice but I think he was just addicted to lemon juice :-)

Finally - there was other guitarist Pete: He was one of the coolest people I've ever met. His parents were Bohemian types of the Zen variety - totally laid back - never got upset about anything - and Pete was the same way. I had grown up on a steady diet of hysterics and drama, but his family didn't seem to experience any stress or conflict whatsoever. It was quite a revelation to me.
They had an old house near downtown Escondido and they were remodeling it... It was an incredibly neat place - beveled and leaded glass everywhere... It must have been quite the showplace back in the day.

And now that I've "painted the backdrop" I'll leave the rest of the story for the next post...

Out and About

This may be my most uninteresting post ever... It's mostly here for completeness :-)

I don't think I've mentioned this before, but my sister Karina didn't get a driver's license until she was in her early 20's. I was quite puzzled by that. I couldn't wait to get behind the wheel but I was perpetually stuck on the waiting list for driver's ed class... I think Karina felt she was just a bit too "unstable" to be driving - a conclusion she probably reached from riding with my mom :-)

The point of the above is that when mom was off at work during the summer of 1969 I was stuck without transportation. Of course, Karina had boyfriends to take her places and sometimes I'd tag along - but lets just say I wasn't always welcome :-) Some days I had band practice (and had to walk to drummer Gary's house) but most days I was plain bored - and some days getting drunk just wasn't entertaining enough :-)
BTW: I should probably point out that this was prior to the "fast food" explosion and I was stuck right in the middle of the baby boom. Hence it was almost impossible for teenagers to get a summer job (I tried). Most who did worked for parents or relatives...

Now - I had always been interested in cars. As I mentioned many posts ago, by the age of 6 or 7 I could identify the make, model and year of almost any vehicle on the road. And by 1969 cars seemed to have become my generation's central focus... It was pure luck that my high school years coincided with one of the most incredible eras in automotive history. Those years saw the introduction of the Firebird, Camaro, Road Runner, GTX, Charger, SuperBee, SS-396 Chevelle, 427 Vette, AMX, Cougar, Mach I and Boss 302 Mustangs, Shelby GT500, Torino Talladega, Dodge Daytona and Plymouth Superbird - not to mention the Mopar street Hemi engine. And the list goes on... The high school parking lots overflowed with muscle and pony cars... And immediately after I graduated the car makers put the brakes on performance... The passage of the Clean Air Act coupled with insanely high car insurance rates shifted Detroit's focus to other memorable models like the Pinto, Maverick, Vega, Chevette, Monza and Gremlin (AKA the dark ages)... I still shudder thinking about it... But I sort of digress :-)

That summer - out of sheer boredom - I often ventured out onto the streets of Escondido... The mall was right down the hill from our apartments but for some reason I didn't find it a compelling place to hang out... Most days I headed over to Finder's Music, grabbed a guitar and played around a bit. But they knew I wasn't going to buy anything so eventually they'd politely nudge me toward the door. I really don't blame them - otherwise the place would be full of teenagers with nothing else to do :-)

And that left the car dealerships... It took quite a while to hike to most of them and the summer temperatures were frequently in the 90s. But it was worth it to see all that Detroit muscle sitting on the showroom floors...
It should come as no surprise that the car dealerships were considerably less hospitable to teenagers than the music stores :-) They weren't really rude and they didn't mind you drooling over the cars for a few minutes - but if you stayed much longer they'd hit you with the standard "C'mon - we're trying to sell cars here - how about giving us a break?" plea. Luckily I was a sucker for sales brochures, posters and trinkets and it didn't take much of a bribe to get me to leave :-)

By the end of the summer I had a pretty impressive collection of muscle car sales collateral. In addition, my mom had snagged a bunch of the Big Three's "press packets" for me when she worked at the newspaper. (Those were really hard to come by - the newspaper didn't do automotive articles and were going to throw them out...) That collection would be worth a small fortune today. That is if I hadn't thrown it all out during one of my early "zen" phases :-)

So - I'm getting close to being done with Escondido... I've got one more band to talk about - some memories from the first part of my senior year - and let's not forget the Eric Burdon story... Then it's on to the strangest journey of my life...

The Diver

Another one of Karina's boyfriends in Escondido was a 30 year old divorced man named Richard who lived with his mother in an apartment across from ours at Fountain Estates. He had a 7 year old son who visited him every other weekend. I remember that because he never got tired of reminding me that I was closer to his son's age than his. I'm not sure what Richard's point was given that he was probably less mature than both of us :-)

Richard (I remember his last name but I won't disclose it) didn't have a regular job. I suspect that had something to do with avoiding alimony. But his stated profession was "abalone diver". And I seem to recall that he was also a diving instructor - that brought in a few extra bucks...
But Richard's true love was his trimaran (triple hull sailboat). He had designed and built it in Hawaii and sailed it (solo) back to the mainland. It was extremely small for an ocean-going vessel but it was light and could be made water-tight. He said it had survived storms with 30 foot swells - it just floated over the crests like a cork...

The trimaran was moored in one of the marinas in Oceanside and that's where he spent a good deal of his time... That's also one of the places he and Karina went to drop acid. (I always avoided hallucinogens but Karina never avoided much of anything.)
Apparently one night Karina had a "bad trip"... She told me that she was lying in the bunk trying to make it stop but the boat was bobbing up and down and the alarm clock wouldn't stop laughing at her... It went on for hours. I don't think she ever stopped having flashbacks.

BTW - that was not the only thing she never fully recovered from: While we were in La Jolla she was hypnotized by a friend and "regressed to a past life". She ended up in a state of absolute terror - screaming that she was being murdered - and the guy couldn't wake her up. When she finally came out of it she was really messed up. I witnessed the whole thing - and it was pretty darn frightening... Now - I have no idea what was really happening. I'm not sure I even believe in hypnosis let alone reincarnation. But I'm 100% sure she wasn't "acting"... It's just another one of those things I can't fully explain.

Aside - I guess this would be as good a time as any to say a few words about beliefs:
Early on I was raised to be a devout Catholic but as I entered my teen years my mom's belief system shifted to mysticism, reincarnation, numerology, astrology, UFOs, channeling and pretty much anything else that wasn't "mainstream". But the simple fact is that I have yet to encounter any explanation for our existence that holds water.
The only logical conclusion I can reach is that we do not exist - but I find that hard to accept given that I seem to be sitting here writing this :-) Truth be told - I suspect that our puny brains are just too limited to grasp the nature of our existence. And I think that's a good thing. (I suspect that's the whole point of the "snake and the apple" story.)

When I was growing up I found the whole "reason for our existence" topic puzzling and troubling. But at some point in my late teens I took a step back and asked: "Does it really matter how we got here?"... It seemed like the questions we should be asking are: "What should I do with my life?" and "How should I treat those around me?" And it occurred to me that if your beliefs about the origin of man affect how you behave then your personal belief system is deeply flawed... So the issue is moot: We're here - get over it :-)

Still - the though that man might be the ultimate intelligence in the universe does strike me as rather silly... I mean - that would make this one incredibly lame universe - right? ... But then I'm only human... So there ya go... And I totally digress...

Here's some home movie footage I shot of Richard and Karina by the pool at Fountain Estates. The newspaper headline puts the date of the clip around July 30th, 1969:



Note: Karina was constantly changing her hair back in those days... Sometimes it would turn orange or green so she'd bleach it and start over.
OK - I suppose I should admit that I used "Sun-in" on my hair that summer - trying to get some of those surfer-like highlights going... It didn't really help - but it's one of the few times I can recall paying any attention whatsoever to my appearance :-)

Richard and Karina had one of those love/hate relationships that seemed to drag on forever. It was fueled by alcohol and drugs and constant tension... And my problem was that Richard and I had become buddies. He had some obvious flaws but he was also really clever and had a wicked sense of humor. I enjoyed hanging out with him and Karina was putting him through hell... He never knew what she was going to do from one minute to the next. (I don't think she even knew.)

That put me in a really awkward spot when they had their final blow-up. There was hours of back and forth - screaming and door slamming - the mothers got into it too... I'm rather surprised nobody called the police... And (as usual) I was stuck in the middle - the "straight man" in the comedy sketch :-)

Yeah - I never did anything but try and interject a bit of sanity and everybody ended up mad at me. Go figure...

Bad Sensei

The first time I watched the movie "The Karate Kid" I had a flashback about one of my sister Karina's boyfriends in Escondido back in 1969. The main "villain" in that movie was a bad "sensei" (karate teacher) whose philosophy was "No Weakness, No Pain, No Mercy". And I could swear that character was based on Karina's boyfriend...

I no longer remember the guy's name, but he was a former marine hand to hand combat instructor who had won multiple martial arts championships in southern California (primarily Taekwondo). His specialty was the Kendo stick. He had a number of students (mostly high school aged) in Escondido.

I observed one of his classes once (he was trying to talk me into joining). Now, as you may recall, pain avoidance was one of my primary motivators (or demotivators) at the time. And from that perspective the class was rather frightening :-) His higher level "devotees" sparred full contact. Some of them went to Orange Glen High and I remember seeing them in casts from injuries suffered during practices... Like in the movie - fear and mercy were not permitted...

Aside: I did see him do something once that seemed impossible... One of his students tossed a bamboo pole into the air in front of him and he struck it (using his hand) with sufficient force to break it in half... I mean - bamboo is pretty flexible... It's one thing to break a pole with the ends solidly supported - but the speed and force required to break something like that in mid air is difficult to comprehend... On his first attempt the pole didn't break. The thing bounced off the side wall, the far wall and the ceiling of the gym - and made it almost all the way back to him before it landed... It was sheer luck that nobody was hurt...

OK - here's the thing: People are usually ambivalent toward me. They neither particularly like or dislike me, but they usually don't mind having me around because I can be moderately amusing when not being totally annoying :-) ... But this guy could not stand me.
And I don't think it was just the hygiene issues I was having at the time: He had a ridiculously over-developed sense of smell. Karina lived with him for a while and one morning I stopped by their apartment for 2 or 3 minutes while he was at work. He came home 6 hours later and instantly knew I had been there...
But I think it was my attitude, lack of motivation and fear of pain that really set him off. Every time he saw me he said if I had any balls I'd meet him in the park across the street with Kendo sticks... Yeah - he really wanted to beat the hell out of me :-) ... I know he passed his negative sentiments on to his students because at least one of them made nasty comments every time he saw me at school - and I didn't even know the kid...

The guy really didn't care about Karina. She was just "convenient" to have around... He actually had that conversation with one of his students one evening while they were giving me a ride somewhere. I couldn't believe they were saying all that crap with me sitting in the back seat... But then they weren't exactly afraid of me :-)

Karina did finally break up with him... Apparently he and a few of his students were walking through a park in their gi's one day when some guys pointed and laughed. Long story short - they beat the tar out of the guys and took off before the police got there... He could have inflicted much more serious injuries if he'd wanted to - but he was still a bit too proud of himself for Karina's taste...

He was not the only black belt Karina went out with over the years. I honestly don't know what she found attractive about some of those guys... But I had long since given up trying to figure her out. There was really no rhyme or reason to any of it...

Mom does it again

Up until the summer of 1969 mom had a nice secure job in the advertising department of a newspaper based in Oceanside, California. But early that summer she quit to go to work for a small "lifestyle" magazine based out of Escondido.

I honestly don't know what she was thinking... It wasn't until I started writing this blog that it suddenly became obvious that mom simply couldn't go more than a few months without totally disrupting our lives... She always told us that everything she did was "for us kids" - after all - she had sacrificed her opera career for us. And I think I actually believed it at the time... Yeah - applying logic to anything mom said or did was completely futile. You just learned to "go with the flow" :-)

And - surprise, surprise - two month later the magazine folded and mom was out of work again. I don't think she tried to get her old job back - I suspect she burned her bridges on the way out... Regardless - she was jobless for the rest of time we lived in Escondido.

Aside: During her brief tenure with that magazine mom was supposed to do an interview with Lawrence Welk at his "country club village" outside of Escondido. She arrived there at the scheduled time and Mr. Bubbles made her wait in the restaurant for almost an hour while he chatted with some buddies at the bar. When he finally got up to do the interview she told him that she had better things to do with her time and walked out... Apparently the expression on his face was priceless :-)

Of course, we were already behind on all of our payments before she lost her job. And it went downhill from there. Being late on the rent hadn't been a problem because mom had talked to the apartment complex owner and he had instructed the manager to let us slide a bit. But the old manager moved away that summer and the new one wasn't aware of the deal. So at the end of October 1969 we were asked to leave... At the time I wondered why mom didn't contact the owner about it - but in retrospect I think that she enjoyed the drama and welcomed the change.

OK - here's another one of those stories that's hard to believe:
When we moved into Fountain Estates we needed furniture so mom got a loan from a local bank for $500 (about $3000 adjusted for inflation) to cover it. Around the time we were facing eviction the bank threatened to repo our furniture because we were a month behind on the loan payments. That was a huge mistake on their part because it prompted mom to pay them a visit. Not only did she talk them out of repo-ing the furniture but she came out of there with another $300 unsecured loan.
I swear I'm not making that up! I don't know what story she told them - probably the "poor widow lost her job and being evicted but expecting a large inheritance" bit. Whatever - it must have been a truly amazing performance :-)

We used part of that $300 to move to a different apartment. (That was at the beginning of November). It was in an older complex and a bit run down and I don't remember exactly where it was - only that it was southeast of downtown. We were only there for about a month and a half before leaving Escondido... But I'm getting way ahead of myself.

The new manager of Fountain Estates had this zit-faced asshat of a son who also went to Orange Glen High. And every time that dillhole saw me at school he would announce loudly enough for everyone around to hear that my family was a bunch of deadbeats who had gotten evicted from "their" apartment complex... I suppose it should have bothered me but it was too much like being taunted by a 5 year old. He was just one of those people who are too stupid to realize how stupid they are - a true victim of the "Dunning-Kruger effect" :-)

But - like I said - I'm getting way too far ahead of myself... There's lots more Escondido stories to be told.

Karina Revisited

I've talked about my sister Karina in a number of my recent blog posts - and the stories reveal a bit about what she was like at the age of 19 back in 1969. But I don't think the picture is nearly complete.

It's hard to describe just how difficult and exhausting it was to be around her. There was no "filter" whatsoever on what she said or did - she left a trail of chaos wherever she went :-)

Here's something I had forgotten about until very recently:
Mom had been commiserating about Karina with an old family friend in L.A.
Aside: The friend was a former member of the Hungarian water polo team who had flown with my dad during WWII. His flying days ended when his ME109 was shot down and the ejection mechanism malfunctioned. He ended up pinned against the fuselage of his plane engulfed in flames as it plummeted to earth. He eventually managed to work himself free and open his chute, but not before suffering 3rd degree burns over 80% of his body. If he hadn't been a world class athlete there's no way he would have survived... But that's not the point of this story...
He had a couple of kids around Karina's age and thought she might benefit from having a bit more "structure" in her life. So he offered to let Karina stay with his family for a while - hoping that might help... He had no idea what he was getting into... Within a few weeks he had kicked Karina out - basically telling mom that she was "Satan incarnate" :-) So yeah - Karina could be "difficult"...

She had a number of other boyfriends in Escondido. I'll talk about some of them in future posts but I'll go ahead and mention "Phil Boles" now:
He was a DJ for KOWN - the local top 40 AM station. It was based in the Escondido Village Mall just down the hill from our apartment complex... (Karina had a thing for DJs.)
Another aside: There was a 24 hour grocery store at one end of the mall and it seemed like every time I went there in the middle of the night there were housewives doing their grocery shopping in bikinis... And it wasn't always the same ones... It was the weirdest thing (not that I'm complaining)... Almost as if there was a secret society of bikini-wearing women who only came out after dark. (Beach bunny vampires?) But I digress :-)
KOWN's broadcast booth was right in the mall - there was a big picture window so shoppers could watch the DJs at work... And Phil hated it. He used to go on frequent rants - telling stories about the crap people did to try and distract him... He was very much a "private person" - loved being a DJ but hated being recognized... It seems like a lot of DJs are like that.
Interesting: I did a little more poking around and apparently Phil changed his on-air name to "Phil Flowers" in 1970 and went on to have a quite a successful career as a radio personality... He passed away 7 years ago of a heart attack... Amazing what you can find out online these days :-)

When it comes right down to it Karina was pretty cruel to men. I honestly don't know if it was intentional or not. I don't think she knew if it was intentional or not...
I know that she never stopped being angry at my dad for "abandoning" her when she was 14. I suspect that had something to do with it... She was kind of like an evil fisherman. She'd hook one - play with it for a while - then reel it in, whack it on the head with a club and toss it back. It was painful to watch :-)

It was way past the point where I could (in good conscience) defend her behavior. Some of her ex's would ask me what the hell happened and I'd commiserate with them. That absolutely infuriated Karina - but she had me in an awkward position ... I was torn between my loyalty to her and my desire to "clean up" the damage that had been done... It was tough...

There have been times that I wished I saw the world in black and white instead of shades of gray. Then I would always "know the answer" instead of having to weigh and balance every thought and action - and second guess every decision... But I don't think I'd be happy in "absolute world"... I think I prefer it right where I am :-)

Don and John - part II

When I left off from my prior post Karina, John, Don and I were in a restaurant in Indio, Ca. It was during the evening rush and the poor waitress had just spent 10 minutes running back and forth to the kitchen to find out exactly how the "tuna melt" was made only to have Karina (without hesitation) order a turkey sandwich... Well - the waitress somehow managed to control her temper - we had our dinner - and Don and John left a really big tip :-)

As we were heading south out of town looking for a place to camp we spotted a grove of trees between the road and the train tracks so we pulled over to check it out. It looked like an ideal spot to spend the night - there was a fire pit and everything... But about 20 minutes after we got there a police car pulled up... We were like "Oh crap! What did we do now???"
The officer just wanted to make us aware that our "ideal camping spot" was frequented by transients in the middle of the night and we might get beaten and robbed if we stayed there. We thanked him profusely, packed up and headed south on Hwy 111 down the east shore of the Salton Sea. By that point it was totally dark so we pulled off on a side road and found another camping spot next to a rock face...
BTW - I'm pretty sure that rock face was the San Andreas Fault. I realized that when I checked a map after we got back... :-)
As we were pulling off the road John's Mustang (towing the dune buggy) got stuck. Don and I were pushing on the back of the car and it simply wouldn't budge - and every time the tires spun we got sand blasted. After a number of minutes I said "Screw this - I'm going to push on the back of trailer!" Don joined me and we were surprised to discover that a light push on the trailer was all it took to "unstick" the car (probably added downforce to the hitch). So I filed that datum away for future reference: "If car pulling trailer gets stuck - then push on trailer - not car". I don't recall ever needing that info again - but it's still there with all my other irreleventia :-)

We finally got settled in - drank a bunch more Red Mountain wine and conked out for the night. I know Karina and I slept in the back in the van - not sure about Don and John (I think they were in sleeping bags outside)...
When we woke up the next morning I had a raging hangover. Luckily there was still plenty of Red Mountain left - "hair of the dog" you know :-) It was freaking cold and my allergies were in overdrive. I blew my nose in a small towel repeatedly until it was totally polluted. I didn't know the sinuses could hold that much - the towel was unceremoniously disposed of :-)

I've grabbed some excerpts from the 8mm movie of the trip:
The guy at the beginning with the "6-pack abs" is John. I'm the one in the black dashiki and Don is in a t-shirt. I'm a bit embarrassed at how pasty white and out of shape I am later on.
A couple of other things to note:
The dune buggy was built by someone a lot shorter that Don. That's why he drives with one hand on the roll cage in front of him - so he doesn't whack his head on the crossbar (again). He modified it after this trip.
And that final shot is Karina - just having emerged from the van that morning wrapped in a blanket on account of the cold...



So after getting packed up we headed south down the shoreline and had brunch in Brawley (without incident) before heading west on hwy 78 to Ocotillo Wells (in the Anza-Borrego desert).

We untrailered the buggy and did a bit more environmental damage... Then some sort of weirdness ensued between Karina, John and Don... She ended up heading off to the van with one of them - I know longer remember who (maybe Don)? Frankly - I tried to not pay attention to her dalliances... It was just too damn confusing...
But at some point everyone but me ended up passed out in the van... So I sat outside for hours in the afternoon heat drinking Red Mountain waiting for signs of life from within... At one point the wind kicked up - there was sand blowing everywhere. It hurt quite a bit - but it did break up the monotony :-) Yeah - I was tired and ready to head home...

Sometime late in the afternoon I finally woke John up (he seemed like the most responsible one of the bunch) and told him it was probably time to get on the road.
So we finally got everyone awake, loaded up and headed up through Ramona back to Escondido... I rode with John in the Mustang on the way back. Like I said - he and Karina were usually "an item" but there was something weird going on with Don at that moment. I figured the less I knew the better :-)
I do distinctly recall how effortlessly the Mustang pulled the trailer up the 4000 ft. climb from the desert into the Cuyamaca Mountains. Quite impressive... And I remember talking about cars with John as we were driving through the mountains into the setting sun...

I'm not sure why I remember that particular trip so well... I guess it was just one of those "rite of passage" things... I was only 15 at the time but I was much more comfortable with people in their early 20's... And it was one of the first times I recall being treated more or less as an equal by people that age rather than a annoying kid...

But I was still happy to get home....

Don and John

While we were in Escondido we met a couple of young men named Don and John who had just gotten back from Vietnam. My sister Karina was involved with both of them - but mostly John. (That definitely put a strain on Don and John's friendship.)

Don and John both loved the desert. Or to be more precise - they loved tearing the heck out of it in 4 wheel vehicles :-) ... Keep in mind that this was 1969 and the concept of "communing with nature" was somewhat different than it is today. (See the original Woodstock documentary for examples of what I mean.) But more on that later... (Haha - I said moron...)

When John got back from Nam his mom bought him a gas station. I don't know if he asked her for it or if she just figured he could use it - but that was how he made his living. I'm pretty sure the station was on the NW corner of East Valley Parkway and North Rose but it's definitely not there anymore...

Aside: I'm actually quite proud of the fact that I haven't talked about cars very much in my first 179 blog posts... The truth is that I remember the make, year, model and color of the cars owned by almost everyone I've ever known... Yes - cars have been a lifelong obsession but I usually don't talk much about them because it makes people's eyes glaze over... But my blog has gotten to the point where I'm approaching "driving age" so the topic of cars is going to come up more and more often :-)
I should also mention that the only reason I didn't have a learner's permit at that age was because California required Driver's Ed and there was always a waiting list and I was never at one school long enough to get into the class... Of course, none of the other students knew how young I was so when people asked why I didn't have a license I'd tell them it got suspended for street racing or something :-)

But back to the story:

John drove a 1968 Mustang GT 390 fastback (highland green) with a 4-speed. (Almost brand new at the time.) It was "modified" and was pretty darn quick (and loud)... He also owned a "desert destroyer": A "sand rail" powered by a 394 Olds V8. It had two rear axles, both driving paddle tires. (You don't see many setups like that.) It would go really fast in a straight line - and it broke down a lot :-)

Don drove a 1964 Ford Econoline van with shag carpet in the back, and his desert "plaything" was one of the weirdest dune buggies I've ever seen. It was a home-built rig based on the remains of an old BMW Isetta (air cooled 2 cylinder engine). Not very fast but it would go almost anywhere...

So one day in the summer of 1969 John, Karina, Don and I set off on a 2 day road trip. John and Karina were in the Mustang (pulling Don's buggy on a trailer) and Don and I were in the van...
Our "provisions" consisted of some snacks, two coolers filled with beer and 5 gallons of Red Mountain wine ($1.37 a gallon at the time - I have no idea why I remember that)... So yes - we were spending 2 days in the desert with nothing but alcohol to drink :-)

Don had the obligatory 8-track player in his van and a vast collection of tapes. I specifically remember listening to The Stones (Beggars Banquet), Country Joe and the Fish, Steppenwolf and Credence Clearwater - all at max volume - as we drove along and talked about Nam and high school and being wasted. It was a good time :-)

We started out north through Temecula, over to Hemet and San Jacinto and up past Yucca Valley to Joshua Tree... We got there around noon and ate lunch in this greasy spoon diner out in the middle of nowhere... It was one of those places that made you ponder whether your immunizations were up to date - although it looked like it might have been pretty nice back in the 1940s...
And after lunch we headed off into the desert, unloaded the buggy and Don and John took turns tearing up the terrain with my sister or I riding shotgun... I have to admit I was a bit apprehensive... I mean - when I'm confronted with a 6 foot drop off my instinct is to turn back rather than just driving off of it :-) And if I'm heading along at the bottom of a gully and encounter an obstacle my first thought is not to run the left tires of the buggy up onto the gully wall (putting the buggy almost on its side) to get around it... But I managed to not totally freak out - mostly because I had a pretty good buzz going by then - thank you Red Mountain :-)

Eventually we got hot and tired so we packed everything up and headed to Indio for dinner... BTW: Did you know that Indio is below sea level? Freaky...

When we got to the restaurant Karina asked the waitress a question about how the "tuna melt" sandwich was made. She wanted to know whether the bread was toasted or grilled. The waitress didn't know, so Karina asked her to please go back to the kitchen and find out - which she did...
Then Karina asked her what kind of cheese they used. The waitress didn't know, so Karina asked her to please go back to the kitchen and find out - which she did...
Then Karina asked her whether they melted the cheese onto the tuna before or after they put it on the bread. The waitress didn't know, so Karina asked her to please go back to the kitchen and find out - which she did...
Then Karina asked her whether they grilled the sandwich using butter or oil when. The waitress didn't know, so Karina asked her to please go back to the kitchen and find out - which she did...

Finally - Karina said "OK ... I'll have a turkey on rye ..."

Now - I have no idea if Karina was just messing with the waitress or if she was really serious - we were all a bit soused at that point. But when she ordered that turkey sandwich John, Don and I totally lost it... Yeah - the three of us were doubled over laughing - Karina didn't even crack a smile - and the waitress looked as if she was contemplating a violent crime :-)

To Be Continued...

Another Blast From the Past

Back in March/2010 I wrote some blog posts about my year at Chatham Park Elementary school in Havertown, Pa. That was during the 6th grade and it was a tough time for me. My dad was out of work and I'd just been yanked out of Waldon (a private school) and thrust into a public school environment for the first time in 5 years. Not to mention that my parent's marriage was falling apart... Not a good time :-)
Now - in those posts I mentioned that there was a girl in another homeroom I had a crush on (red hair and freckles). I also made reference to girl in my class that I thought was really pretty... So yes - there were times when I had multiple crushes - lots of times - lots of crushes. But that's not the point :-)
This past weekend I posted a scan of my Chatham Park class picture on a Facebook group called "Growing Up in Havertown". Not sure why. I guess I was just curious if there was anybody out there... (Haha - Pink Floyd song.)
The first two people who commented on that picture were (... drumroll please ...) those 2 girls. Seriously! I am not making this up. You can't make this stuff up :-)
The red-haired girl was named Susie and the other girl was Ellen... Of course, neither one of them remembered me - no surprise there. Actually - based on their comments they didn't seem to remember themselves either :-) I guess most people aren't cursed with total recall...
Other classmates commented as well and it didn't take long before we had the entire class identified and tagged... It was quite a trip down memory lane...

It's not clear what I've learned from this recent excursion into the past... Other than some people spend way too much time on Facebook :-)
I guess the main point is that girls I remember as preteens now have gray hair... Yes ... That should have been obvious - and in a way it was. But you have to remember that until I was an adult I never saw anyone outside of my immediate family age. Everyone else was frozen in time... Just briefly glimpsed as I drifted past... Just memories...

I often wonder if I'd be a "different person" if I had spent my entire childhood in one place. Probably not, but I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be quite as badly in need of therapy :-)

Regardless - I played the hand I was dealt and ended up with a full house... How lucky can you get? :-)

A Quick Checkpoint

A lot happened during those 9 months we spent in Escondido back in 1969. (Or maybe I just remember too much.) It's going to be tough to explain it all...

Playing the guitar started out as just something to do. But by the end of that summer it became who I was... And I wasn't just playing in those 2 bands. We knew the owners of a small cafe in La Jolla (I no longer recall the name) and I spent some of my evenings there playing background music... Stuff like Classical Gas, Girl From Ipanema, Michelle, Ticket to Ride - even a bit of Bach (not the hard stuff) :-) It wasn't a paying gig but I didn't care - I would have paid to play...

Aside: Back then I rarely talked to strangers because of the anxiety thing - I still don't. But for some reason I was never really nervous playing in front of an audience. The guitar became my voice and I didn't particularly care if people liked it or not...
Yeah - The more I reflect on my formative years the clearer it becomes that the good times were the ones when my life revolved around music - those are the times I remember clearly - and the times when the chaos around me didn't seem to matter... So in a way it was my salvation...

When I wasn't playing I was drinking - a lot - mostly with my sister Karina. Yes. After a lifetime of being at each others throats we had set our differences aside and actually become drinking buddies...

And speaking of Karina:
She was continuing to shed her inhibitions. That was one of the teachings of a certain "religion" whose name I shall not mention but it sounds like Cyan-Tall-Oh-Gee :-)
She had roughly 5 boyfriends in Escondido. She was modeling - both local newspaper ads and the "artistic" variety (it paid better). She placed second in the Miss Escondido pageant. She was also heavily into hallucinogens. And she was writing (and performing) some of the most amazing music. Here's the opening verse of one her songs from that era:

It was on the morning of the second day
Something came to me ... and then it slipped away
Flowers grow on a hill
The morning air is very still...
Their graves ... will lie forgotten...

It was an anti-war piece and it sent chills down my spine when she sang it... I used to have a copy of one of her studio tapes but I gave it to her daughter many years ago. I need to see if I can track it down and digitize it...

BTW: For the record - I have never touched hallucinogens. My thoughts are quite bizarre enough without them, thank you! ... Plus I saw what it did to Karina. She was never the same after some of those trips...

But back to the story:

Of course - mom was still mom. She still lived in a reality all her own... We were (as usual) overextended financially - missing rent payments, car payments and every other kind of payment you can think of. But we had a good time :-)

I should mention that mom was definitely not OK with the things Karina and I were doing. Despite her flighty and whimsical nature she was quite conservative (and protective) when it came to us kids. She just didn't know what to do about it. She went on frequent rants but we just ignored them... Even her patented "I should have never been born!" routine had stopped having any effect by then :-)

OK - this is (sort of) funny: One Saturday night mom came home from a trip to San Diego and told us she had run off the shoulder of I-5 (almost wrecking the Mustang) because her lane had ended (construction zone) without any warning whatsoever...
So - we went down I-5 again the next morning... The first signs appeared five miles before the spot where the incident had occurred. And as we got closer we encountered every size, shape and manner of warning device - including flashing lights: Construction Ahead - Caution - Lane Ending - Merge Left... I counted about 20 of them... Mom insisted that they had all been put up in the middle of the night because none of them had been there the prior evening :-)
She could be so oblivious... The fact that she was only ever in one accident (minor one in 1962) is so statistically improbable that it is almost incontrovertible evidence of intervention by a higher power :-)

Here's another story from that time period in Escondido:
Mom was ticketed for stopping past the white line at a stop sign. After unsuccessfully trying to talk her way out of it she asked the officer what would happen if she didn't show up for court. He told her "Try it and you'll find out."
Long story short - she got a notice that her license was being suspended for "failure to appear". When she finally went in front of the judge she did a routine on how badly mispositioned the stop lines were (from a visibility standpoint) in downtown Escondido and if people stopped where they were supposed to the city would need a lot more ambulances and tow trucks... She also explained that the officer had instructed her to skip court if she wanted to know what would happen ... so she did :-)
The judge dismissed all the charges... Yeah -that Hungarian charm didn't always work - but it worked often enough :-)

So yeah -there are lots more stories to tell before the move to Tyler, Texas in December. And I'm going to do my best to tell them...

The Kite - continued

Sometime during the summer of '69 I ran into another lead player (also named Pete) in Escondido whose (working) band was looking for an additional guitarist. So I was doing double duty for a while - playing with both bands. And as the year progressed I slowly drifted away from "The Kite" - my tenure with them was about 6 months...

During that time we didn't play many gigs - just some parties and a "battle of the bands" at Palomar Junior College. That was a trip... All the other bands were fairly well established and had about 10 times as much money tied up in equipment ... And they were a lot older (our moms still had to drive us around). So we took last place - but it was still fun - you don't get many opportunities to play in front of an audience that size.

All-in-all playing with The Kite was a really good time... Bass player Bill and I hung out even when we weren't playing. He was quite the nerd - totally into math and science. Those were my worst subjects back then (ironic since I ended up as an engineer)...

Some random memories:
I recall that one of Bill's chores was brushing his mom's poodle's teeth. That dog was ridiculous - Bill had to keep an eye on it when it was outside so the neighbor's cat wouldn't tear it to shreds...
His mom banned us from practicing at his house after she heard us doing Steppenwolf's "The Pusher" (written by Hoyt Axton - brilliant song) . Yeah - she found the lyrics somewhat objectionable (if you're unfamiliar look it up - or check it out on YouTube)... She was a bit overbearing - but she did make the best grilled cheese sandwich I've ever tasted - "indescribably delicious" - so there ya go :-)

OK - I usually filter out the really random stuff. Yeah - my memory reminds me of YouTube - a massive collection of short clips - sometimes interesting or amusing - but mostly irrelevant. For example:
Bill's dad had a Chrysler Imperial (totally irrelevant) and one day when we were passing through the garage I noticed that there was a case of motor oil on the workbench... Now - I was familiar with the concept of "adding a quart" - I'd seen it done at service stations :-) But I had no idea that you could buy an entire case of motor oil - and no inkling why anybody would want to. So I asked Bill about it and he told me that his dad did his own oil changes. And I was thinking "Seriously??? You can do that???"... (It wasn't until a year later that I applied my OCD to working on cars.) Yeah - that 41 year old "memory clip" is a prime example of the junk my brain is full of... But I digress :-)

The last time I talked to Bill was about 15 years ago - his Dad gave me the number of the shelter in San Diego where he was staying. He had gone to college on an ROTC scholarship and spent 4 years as a Marine officer - but in his mid-30s he went paranoid delusional... Total bummer - he was quite bright and gifted... I've heard he's back in Escondido now living on SSI - I hope he's doing OK...

I recently tracked down drummer Gary on Facebook... He never stopped drumming. He goes by Gary Reed Johnson now and produced a Reggae album - "Music for a Better Planet" - in '99. There's been some rough times - especially recently - but he's been "keeping the faith" all these years - playing every gig that comes along - has almost 2000 Facebook friends :-)

I have to say I do miss it sometimes... Being on stage - watching people dance - the hours it takes to wind down afterward - ears ringing - head throbbing - adrenalin pumping - total sensory overload... It's a magnificent feeling. Way better than any "engineering achievement"... Of course - the latter does tend to pay better :-)

I certainly have no regrets about the way things turned out - I can't think of anyone I'd consider trading places with. But I'm still a bit mystified as to how I got to where I am now from where I was then: A laid back (often wasted) musician - with an aversion to responsibility - who sucked at science and math - who had no intention of ever going to college - or doing anything other than playing rock and blues... I guess it's like they say: "Sh*t happens :-)

The Kite - part 1

No - the title does not refer to a device that is flown in the wind at the end of a long string... The Kite was the name of one of the bands I was a member of during 1969 in Escondido... Now - the name "The Kite" was not my idea... Truthfully, I wasn't very fond of it... But since nobody else liked any of my suggestions I was stuck with it :-)

In addition to myself (on lead guitar) the group consisted of Bill Palashewski on bass, his neighbor Gary Johnson on drums and a keyboard player named Mike Carman. There was also a couple of "on and off" members - another guitarist named Richard and a vocalist named Richard Warila (I think).

Gary, Bill and Mike were freshmen when I arrived at Orange Glen High in the spring of 1969... I don't recall exactly how we met... It's possible I saw Bill at Finder's music and recognized him - or just overheard a conversation at school... But - long story short - I ended up playing with the group. At the ripe old age of 15 I was the "geriatric" member. All the others were 14 and under.

I had a lot of song ideas floating in my head at the time. And the amazingly cool thing was all I had to do was play the guitar part and the rest of the group jumped in and started doing really interesting things. Within a couple of hours we had the entire song arranged... We seemed to always be on the same page - at the time I had no idea just how rare that is...

So - during an all day session in the early summer of '69 I put a cassette recorder on the floor and captured some of our songs. I've extracted a few short samples to include in this blog entry...

Caveats:
Like I said - this was just a cassette recorder on the floor - and the tape was 40 years old when I converted it to digital. So it's about the worst possible representation of the actual music...
And I was still playing that 12 string Vox guitar upside down with half the strings removed. The neck was extra wide and that really hindered my playing. (I switched to a Fender Telecaster a month or 2 later - it was like night and day.)

Also - note that since Blogger won't let you attach sound clips I took some screen grabs from an 8mm movie of "The Kite" and put them together with the sound clips to create wmv files... There's no way I'm including the actual 8mm movie. I don't mind a little embarrassment - but that's just too much...

The first clip is a screen grab of bass player Bill Palashewski and the song is an original instrumental. It's one of those things we put together in a matter of hours. If you listen closely there's a lot of interesting interaction between the instruments.



At some point later in the song we shift from minor to major chords with the bass line walking up and down the scales. Changes the feel from "melancholy" to "triumphant"... Unfortunately, the keyboard missed the transition (minor and major don't sound so good together) - so I didn't include it in the clip :-)

The next clip is a screen grab of drummer Gary Johnson and the song is another of my originals... There were lyrics but our vocalist was on vacation in Montana so we only recorded the music... All I remember from the lyrics is: "Stop! Don't mess with my heart - you're going to break it".
Now - I may be seriously deluded, but I really like this song and honestly think with some polishing (and decent lyrics) it could have been a commercial success... And if you disagree ... Well - I don't want to hear about it :-)



The final clip is a screen grab of me... Yeah - laugh it up :-) ... I often wore a neckerchief when playing. (Hey - at least I wasn't wearing my Nehru jacket...) And I have no excuse for the hair - it's always been random when it gets long. It probably looked totally different the days before and after :-)
The song is a clip from a 6 minute jam - we just picked a key and played. Unfortunately, someone was banging away (rather badly) on some bongos near the cassette recorder... (There were a lot of people in the room at that point...)




BTW: Later that summer I switched to wearing a Dashiki on stage. Yeah - they sold them at K-Mart at the time :-) People used to laugh on account of me being a cracker and all - but it was honestly the most comfortable thing I've ever played in... And it went well with my "peace symbol" sandals :-)

The Discography of My Life - 1969

There were a handful of albums I bought in the spring of 1969 that had a huge impact on me and/or the music I played. It's going to be tough to keep this post concise because I tend to ramble on indefinitely on this topic.

I should start by noting that one of the first things we did when we moved to Escondido was to go down to Finder's Music (long defunct) in Escondido Square Shopping Center and get Karina a new acoustic guitar and me a new Fender amp. It was a Vibrolux Reverb - one of the early silverface models. (I hadn't had an amp since we left Winnipeg.)
BTW: I'm stunned to see how much Fender amps of that vintage go for on ebay these days. They weren't that great. Back in the day I compared the sound of mine side by side with a similar "pre-CBS buyout" brownface model, and the older amp sounded so much better... But I digress...

But the point is that I was playing guitar again - a lot... And we finally had enough money for me to start buying albums again. So here we go:

Wheels of Fire - Cream...
OK - I'm one of those purists who thinks Clapton was at his best with the Yardbirds and Mayall. Back then his playing was raw and unpolished and that really appealed to me. In that '63 to '65 time-frame he was so far ahead of his contemporaries (like George Harrison, Pete Townsend and Hilton Valentine) that it's easy to understand why people would spray-paint "Clapton is God" all over London...
Regardless - Cream was pure magic... I can't think of any other word to describe it... And "Wheels of Fire" was (IMHO) the pinnacle... I can't tell you how many hours I spent playing the solo from "Crossroads" over and over and over again - trying to get it just right.... Parts of it seemed so simple - yet they were so hard...
And there was "White Room" and "Born Under a Bad Sign". But my favorite song on the album (by far) was their rendition of Howlin Wolf's "Sitting on Top of the World"... I just never get tired of it. My only regret is that I was never able to convince any of the bands I played with to cover it - so I never performed it in front of an audience...

Aside: I can't get over the fact that in the early 1960's we Americans were sitting on the greatest treasure trove of contemporary music on the planet and we completely ignored it... Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker, Muddy Waters, Albert King, Howlin Wolf, Willie Dixon, etc... It was all right there, but (apparently) it was the wrong "color"... Then the British bands picked up on it and spent years dominating our record charts with our own freaking music... Yeah - I guess that's what you call irony...

White Album - The Beatles...
OK - I am not making this up... One of the local supermarkets stocked the White Album on the racks by the checkouts. Yes - it was such a commodity they kept it with the chewing gum, breath mints and tabloids... Seriously!
It's hard to figure out what to say about this gem... It was just such an amazing listen - there was so much there - but I really didn't learn that much from it - other than the fact that the Beatles were in a whole different league from everyone else... "Rocky Raccoon" was probably the only song on the album I played from beginning to end :-) But the White Album didn't impact me nearly as much as "Sergeant Pepper's" had a couple of years earlier - and I preferred the simplicity of the Beatles earlier work... Their whole catalog is amazing - but (in my opinion) "If I Fell" was the most underrated song they ever recorded...

Ball - Iron Butterfly...
Most people have never heard of this album and that's not surprising. There wasn't a single hit song on it - yet it still hit #1 on the Billboard album chart... That's because it was perfectly composed - a true work of art. It took you on a journey - told a story... It was all about about angst and longing - it went right to the heart of what I was experiencing at the time... The songs flowed together - the music was classically inspired and beautifully performed... If any of the band members had been able to sing worth a darn they might have been one of the greatest bands of all time :-)
Unfortunately, when it was re-released on CD by "Collector's Choice" in 1999 some ass-clown decided to add a couple of "bonus tracks"...Yeah - the last words of the final song on the original album are "Bye, bye" - then you get "bonus tracks"... Talk about painting a mustache on the Mona Lisa... Whoever did that either never listened to the original album or completely failed to understand it...
I swear - the U.S. music industry is so heavily populated with bozos it's a wonder that anything worthwhile ever sees the light of day :-)

Led Zepellin I...
Obviously a landmark album - truly impressive and ground breaking. The surprising thing is that the music is at its core pretty darn simple. They really had a way of coming up with interesting and catchy "hooks" for their songs... Of course - the performance was anything but simple... Jimmy Page was yet another of the incomparable guitarists that I tried (unsuccessfully) to emulate... I performed a number of those songs at one time or another - but "Good Times Bad Times" was definitely my favorite...

Electric Ladyland - Hendrix...
This album changed my life... I'm not even sure where to start... It's only when you discover how much creative control Hendrix had over that album that you realize the true extent of his musical genius...
The "Behind the Music" episode covering the creation of this album was quite informative... Hendix's manager got frustrated and left midway through the sessions... That explains why some of the songs are short, focused and suitable for radio play ("Crosstown Traffic", "All Along the Watchtower", "House Burning Down") while others are rambling experimentation ("1983")... Then when they got the first master back from Reprise Records they discovered that the "geniuses" had "fixed it" by remixing everything to their taste - and it was mislabeled "Electric Landlady"... (Thereby reinforcing my earlier comment about American record companies being populated by bozos.)
Now - there is nothing on that album that I don't absolutely love - I've listened to it well over a thousand times and it never gets old... I've performed a number of the songs - just not nearly as well as Hendrix :-) But my favorite is "Long Hot Summer Night" followed closely by "Voodoo Child" (both Hendrix originals).

And (of course) there is no greater proof of the "bozosity" of the American music industry than the fact that Hendrix had to go to England to be "discovered"... And when he came back he was booked as the opening act for The Monkees on tour... Doh!!! ... I wish I could say that the industry has improved in the intervening decades, but I certainly haven't seen any evidence of it :-)

Yeah - its hard to express what a privilege it was to have been around during that era... To have experienced all this music first hand in the context of the times... It truly was a "revolution"...

The Field Trip

When I was blogging about my days at Waldron Academy (near Philadelphia) back in the early 1960s I deliberately neglected to mention one of our field trips. But in retrospect I really should cover it, if for no other reason than it illustrates what a sick sense of humor nuns have :-)

So here goes:

One morning the sisters at Waldron informed us that we would be going on a field trip that day but they refused to tell us where... So we occupied ourselves with classwork until later that morning when we were led out to the front of the school. At that point it became clear that whatever this "field trip" was it involved the entire student body. Yeah - they'd rented a few buses and were taking the classes in shifts. And the ones who had already gotten back refused to tell us what it was about. All they would say is "You'll find out..."

So we piled onto a bus and let our imaginations run wild as we headed for downtown Philadelphia... We were still arguing about what it could possibly be when the bus pulled up in front of a mortuary... Yes - a mortuary...
As the bus came to a stop I recall that we were all looking desperately up and down the street trying to convince ourselves that this was not our destination... But it was...
Then one of our classmates reminded us that an elderly nun had just passed away... So that was it - they must have brought us down there to look at the dead nun... That explained why they wouldn't tell us where we were going - nobody would've gotten on the bus :-)

Then it got scarier... They led us into an empty room and told us to sit quietly on the floor and wait... I think we were there for at least a half hour. It might not have been that long, but sitting there whispering amongst ourselves (with the suspense building by the minute) it seemed like forever. I remember some of my classmates debating the consequences of heading for the door... But cooler heads prevailed and we all agreed to "ride it out"...

Eventually another group of students filed past our room from somewhere inside the mortuary - all looking very upset. That wasn't very comforting... Then it was our turn... Apprehension turned to dread as we were led single file down a narrow stairway into the basement of the mortuary (where no doubt all the really gross stuff took place).

And there - in front of us - was the most elaborate model train layout I had ever seen. It ran through a number of rooms. There were miniature towns and roads and neighborhoods - all in amazing detail. It was simply incredible!

BTW: I've searched online for any info on that train setup and there's nothing... You'd think there would be some mention of it (other than in this blog). But in the online universe nothing much existed before the 1980s... And nothing since has ever gone away... But I digress :-)

We spent quite a while admiring the train set, and as we were about to head back upstairs the nuns instructed us to not divulge what we had seen... Then it was our turn to file somberly past the "holding room" - pretending to be upset - while secretly enjoying the apprehension on the faces of the students waiting there :-)

So - if you've ever wondered what nuns do for fun ... this story pretty much covers it :-)

Flag Football

There were some interesting P.E. options at Orange Glen High School back in 1969... I started out in golf class - that only lasted for one day - then I switched to flag football...

Offering flag football was kind of "genius" on the school's part. It made life easy on the P.E. teachers - they would occasionally wander by to check on us but for the most part they left us on our own... And it allowed the varsity football players to keep active all year long... Now - not all of the guys who took flag football were on the school team and vice versa - but there was a lot of overlap...

I should take a step back here and mention that my father grew up in Hungary so it's not surprising that he didn't know much about American sports like baseball and football. He certainly taught me the basics, but most of the other kids my age seemed to have a significantly better understanding of what was going on than I did. I'm sure there was other factors involved (like my whole "pain avoidance" thing) - but the end result is that I got laughed at a lot and was usually among the last picked when sides were chosen... That wasn't really a big deal - it's something you got used :-)

Now I had played football (in full gear) before - back in the 4th and 5th grades at Waldron Academy we played against other schools - but I really had no clue what I was doing. And I played some intramural ball at St. Paul's up in Winnipeg - I made some great plays but blew my assignment more often than not :-)

And - back to Orange Glen:

I don't remember much about the rest of the guys who played flag football but I will never forget Henry Parades. He wasn't much taller than I was, but he was about 60 lbs heavier and it was all muscle. He could do one-armed push-ups all day long - by far the strongest guy on the varsity team - and he was one of the best centers and nose tackles in the conference... Now - flag football is played without protective gear. There's no tackling, but you still have to block just as if you were wearing pads... And nobody wanted to line up across from Henry. Not even the other varsity players.

Given my whole "pain avoidance" thing I have no idea what possessed my to agree to take Henry on. I think at first I had no idea what I was getting myself into - and then I just couldn't acknowledge defeat:-) But the upshot is that I ended up playing against the school's best varsity linemen - without protective gear - a few times a week for almost 6 months. Here are some of my fondest memory:
The first time I faced Henry was on defense. After the snap I raised up out of my stance... Henry got under me and launched me 15 feet onto my back... Literally... I'm not exaggerating! (He could bench press double my weight)... I tried to not make that mistake again :-)
One time I was running downfield to cover a kickoff... I thought I could put a fake on Henry and run around him... But he was a lot quicker than I thought. I ended up airborne for some distance and landed on top of the hurdles stacked next to the sideline... (That hurt.)
Another time he grabbed my bicep as he pushed himself past me. You could still see his hand print on my arm 3 weeks later.

Yeah - I was covered with bruises pretty much the whole time I was at Orange Glen... But it was still a heck of a lot of fun... Like the time we we decided to run a double reverse with me lined up as one of the receivers. The other receiver and I got our signals crossed - and we collided head-on in the backfield... I'm not sure I've ever laughed harder - despite the pain :-)

I'd like to say I eventually got to the point where I could completely stop Henry - yeah - nobody could... But every time he got past me I learned from it. As it turns out, you can neutralize weight and strength with technique - and playing against a really good lineman without protective gear is an excellent way to learn that... After many months I got to where I could routinely slow Henry down for a couple of seconds, and that was usually enough.

So - the flag football kept me in good shape - it earned me the respect of the guys I played with - and the real surprise came when one of coaches asked if I'd be interested in going out for varsity in the fall...

I politely declined - it sounded more like work than fun. But that whole experience was one of the few pleasant memories I have from that point in my life :-)

Drafting

At the start of my junior year Drafting was one of the few electives that was still open at Mission Bay High - so I ended up taking it for the entire year (and part of the next - but that's another story)...

BTW: There was always either one or two girls in every drafting class... Seriously - I remember that from each of the 4 schools where I took drafting... (Must have been some obscure law or something...) They were all blond - and didn't wear makeup... And could trade "off-color" remarks with the best of us :-) But I digress...

I actually enjoyed drafting. The two dimensional "engineering drawings" were horribly tedious - but since I had mild OCD that was kind of a bonus... However - adding a 3rd dimension was a revelation. The concept of perspectives and vanishing points was entirely new to me. I had spent my entire life seeing everything in perspective without ever actually noticing it... There was so much subtlety to it - you could move the perspective points up and down and left and right and every slight move changed the entire feel of a drawing... It was almost like doing art - but it required no real creativity - just a firm grasp of geometry :-)

Aside: That was when I first became aware that my mother's paintings reflected a total disregard for physics... There were subtle "Esheresque" aspects to them. Water sometimes flowed uphill. Shadows went different directions. Size and distance didn't correlate. The perspective lines were totally incoherent - they crossed randomly instead of focusing at a single point... I guess it was just how she saw the world... She used to get really annoyed whenever I pointed out all the impossibilities... Yeah - I know... It's art - not reality :-)

For one of the class assignments I had done a beautiful perspective drawing of our apartment building at Fountain Estates (those arches over the entryways were hard to get right in perspective). It was one of my most prized possessions... Then a few years later I decided to get rid of everything I had saved from high school. That included all of my drafting work (and that English paper Tami Weber had so harshly critiqued). So - it's all just a memory... Except - now I've gone and written about it... So I guess it's not really "just a memory" anymore. It's more of a "recorded recollection" from an evidentiary standpoint... Whatever :-)

I actually got a job that summer doing an enlargement of an architectural drawing for someone my mom knew... Yes - there was a time when you couldn't just scan it and hit the "enlarge" button... Of course, all of the drawing scales needed to be changed too... I don't recall what I got paid but it definitely wasn't worth it :-)

Now - this is embarrassing:

One day when Drafting class was almost over I realized that my slide rule was missing from my "pile-o-books"... Yeah - this was back in the days before calculators. Learning to use a slide rule was part of the Algebra II curriculum... The slide rule was issued by the school and was quite expensive - there was no way I could afford to pay for it...
I alerted the teacher - and told him that I was 100% certain I'd had the slide rule with me when I arrived. So he kept the entire class for something like 20 minutes after the period ended demanding that whoever took my slide rule give it back... He finally released them - and as a result everyone was late for their next class...
Later that day the drafting teacher checked with the math teacher - and my slide rule was found under the seat of my desk...

Aside: Why is it that the people with the worst memories seem to have the most confidence in them??? I'm thinking specifically of my mother here :-) But I digress...

I was stunned! I was so certain I had remembered correctly... And with good reason. At that age my mind was like a video recorder - I could play back pretty much anything. That's why I didn't have to study for tests :-)
But the brain is a tricky thing. It doesn't record as many details as you think. And if you try to recall something that you didn't actually notice it will happily fill in the blanks with random bits that happen to be lying around...
That's why so many people who were convicted based solely on eyewitness testimony have been exonerated by DNA evidence... Seriously - the whole emphasis on eyewitness testimony dates back to the days when communities were small and everyone know everyone. So if you said "I saw Joe do it" you were identifying someone you actually knew... But I digress...

The point is that I stopped trusting my memory so much after that experience....

Everyone was really mad at me about being late for their next classes... Luckily - the teacher didn't make a big deal of it - he probably figured I had enough problems already... And it all blew over in a couple of weeks.
And -no - that is not one of the things I've been beating myself up over ever since :-)

American History

If all of my teachers had been as unconventional and interesting as my American history teacher at Orange Glen High in the spring of 1969 I would have gone to school a lot more often...

For one thing - he seemed to be just as bewildered and amused by the French as I am... My sentiments came from my interactions with a French classmate at Aloisiuskolleg in Germany. His came from being a student of history:
He told us about Roland Garros (the WWI flying ace): The French had experimented with a mechanical gun interrupter (to prevent you from shooting off your own propeller) but it didn't work reliably... Yeah - in order to do that you have to have a gun that fires predictably - we're talking French engineering here :-) So Garros came up with the idea of also bolting metal plates on the backs of the propeller blades. Of course, you couldn't control where the ricocheting bullets went, but "C'est la guerre", right?
And he also told us about those early WWI battles when the French thought they could intimidate the Germans by running fixed bayonet charges at their entrenched machine gun positions while wearing bright red pants and shouting "Elan!"... The result was 140,000 French casualties in less than a week - but you had to admire their spirit :-)

He was also the first one of my teachers to dispute the textbook accounts of our "heroic" battles against the Native American population in the late 1800's... (Note that this was before the book "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee" was published...)
And his coverage of WWII was stunning... He never expressed any anti-war sentiments but he made sure we understood exactly what "war" meant... He showed us extremely graphic film clips of atrocities and carnage... Heads being blown apart - burning bodies. It was horrific - the kind of stuff that gives you nightmares... I don't think any high school teacher could get away with it these days. The parents would not be happy :-)

But it was the first time during my school days when I felt like I was being treated as an adult rather than being fed a load of crap - it was totally awesome... (Bitchen, righteous, tubular, gnarly??)

Of course - there's a "girl story" associated with this class too. (Not surprising, right?)
I sat near the left rear corner of the class - and sitting in the opposite rear corner was this petite blond girl whose name I no longer recall... She seemed to have the same general attitude towards school that I had - plus she was kind of cute and I kind of liked her...

One day as we were leaving class she came up beside me and said "Hi!"... And I totally ignored her... She tried to get my attention a couple of more times - did everything but grab me... And I continued to ignore her - she finally gave up...
At the time I had no idea what panic disorder was - let alone that I suffered from it... All I knew is that I was so terrified of saying the wrong thing that I couldn't force myself to say anything at all...

It wasn't until afterward that it occurred to me that she might have been afraid to approach me. That she was taking a risk - and I might have really hurt and embarrassed her... That thought made me absolutely sick to my stomach. Hardly a day went by that I didn't think about apologizing to her and trying to explain - but I just couldn't...

Yeah - it probably wasn't that big of a deal - she probably just decided I was a jerk - and forgot about it not long afterward... But I've been carrying the guilt around ever since... (Just like that Paulette vs cheeseburger thing.)
Most people seem to be able to easily "let go" of things like that... I can't - and I have mixed feelings about that. One one hand it sucks carrying around all that baggage. On the other hand I try really hard to avoid doing anything I might regret...

Still - sometimes you just can't avoid "stepping in it" :-)

Facebook and the Past

This is a rather short post.

I've been poking around on Facebook and I caught up with Raymond Sudheimer. He was the subject of my first blog post. And he assured me that there was no permanent damage to his eyesight from that errant toy dart...

I also found an interesting group called "Growing Up In Havertown". That's where I lived from 2/62 until 4/65. There were some familiar names among the members.

Apparently the girl who lived across the street from us on Bewley Road was named "Georgiana" - not "Georgette"... I think I got confused because Georgette was the name of the first girl who french kissed me. Of course - I didn't know her name at the time - and it was more like an attempted tonsillectomy than a kiss... But I can't say any more about that until I get to 1971 :-)

And Libby - of the "I accidentally groped her while wrestling" incident - recently celebrated her 40th wedding anniversary and has a number of kids and grandkids... (She was one of 10 siblings by the way - I never could keep track of all of them.) Her first "love interest" was one of our neighbors and he died when they were 15 - I knew him and his family well... I feel sick just thinking how traumatic that must have been for everyone...

Paulette - of "I compared her (unfavorably) to a cheeseburger" fame - turned out to be quite beautiful (so I was told) and married her high school sweetheart. Haven't learned anything beyond that...

Next - there was an incident in Havertown that I didn't blog about:
Let's just say that one of the neighborhood kids and I got into some "mischief". It was one of those idiotic things neither one of us would have done without the other... I lied my way out of it leaving him to take the blame. No criminal charges were filed - he just had to clean up the mess. I was afraid he'd still be mad at me - but as it turns out he doesn't even remember the incident... It was not my finest moment...

And apparently the people who bought the house on Bewley Road from my dad still live there...

So life (and death) went on in Havertown - even after I left :-)
And now I've gotten closure on some of it...

Junior Year English

This is just a small collection of memories from English class at Orange Glen High during my junior year in 1969...

I arrived there around March and - as I've alluded to many times - I was pretty far from OK... I mostly kept to myself and I liked it that way... Well - I didn't really like it - let's just say it was more comfortable that way...
That's why it was so important to react correctly when (a few days after I got there) the big obnoxious guy sitting next to me in English reached over and wrote an obscenity in my textbook... I feigned surprise and said something like "Hey! You know how to spell it! ... I bet your folks are so proud!". I apparently passed the test - he laughed it off and left me alone after that...

Then there were these 2 girls who sat in from of "obnoxious guy"... I'm not sure I've ever seen friends that close. It was like they shared a brain - they were so cute together - I actually envied them... But they could not stop talking. It was incessant - they were constantly getting into trouble for it... Is there a point? Not really. They were just fun to watch :-)

At one point we were studying the structure of poetry and the teacher was choosing students at random to read various examples. Almost all of them recited in a stumbling monotone while staring at the book. It was really painful to listen to... Then one day I was called on to read a love poem.
OK - in an earlier blog post I mentioned having taken Speech during my sophomore year. I was pretty darn good at it - unless my best friend was trying to distract me :-) So I had experience and training - plus I had learned to project my voice from my mom (who was an opera singer) - and I knew all about drama just from being around her...
The upshot is I absolutely nailed it - the timing, the inflections, the passion - everything. I even managed to maintain eye contact most of the time... When I finished you could hear a pin drop. I glanced around and everyone was (to say the least) surprised... So I sat down and crawled back into my shell :-)
Given how much I kept to myself I'm sure everyone expected me to just mumble quietly... And instead I gave them "shock and awe"... I found that incredibly gratifying. I'm just not sure why :-)

I'd like to preface my final topic with a description of one of my favorite movie scenes:
In "Back to School" Rodney Dangerfield's character gets an F on a report about Kurt Vonnegut because he obviously paid someone to write it for him... The professor (Sally Kellerman) says: "Whoever did write this doesn't know the first thing about Kurt Vonnegut!" In the next scene Dangerfield is on the phone saying "... and another thing, Vonnegut! I'm going to stop payment on the check!"

Yeah - by the time I reached high school I had concluded that scholarly analysis of literature is a bunch of crap... Apparently whoever wrote "Back to School" shared that sentiment :-)
Book reports are just another way of taking an activity (reading) that should be pure enjoyment and turning it into drudgery. Not only that, but there are apparently "right and wrong" interpretations of a particular work - a concept that probably mystifies the author as much as it does me...
So when the English teacher at Orange Glen stopped me after class and asked me why I didn't turn in my book report I told him that I didn't do book reports...

I wish I could describe the look on his face - apparently that was not one of the expected responses... He eventually recovered his composure enough to ask why - and I explained my reasoning... I added that I was totally OK with an F on the assignment but I was simply not going to do it. He was adamant that I write something - so we agreed that I could do a paper on my favorite topic instead... So I wrote 6 pages about me :-)

One more tidbit: He made us spend a full class period listening to a recording of Beowulf in the original "Olde English"... It might as well have been "War and Peace" in Russian... Yeah - that's 50 minutes of my life I'll never get back...

Algebra II

The last math class I took in High School was Algebra II. That was during my junior year... My final grade was a D... That's surprising when you consider that in college I got A's in Calculus, Predicate Calculus, Group Theory, Linear Algebra, Numerical Analysis, Discrete Mathematics, Advanced Statistical Analysis, Boolean Algebra and Mathematical Theory of Computation... OK - I have to admit that I got a B in Multivariate Calculus, but that was at Reed College - they grade a bit tougher there - and it was all proof based... Yeah - if I ever have to do another Epsilon-Delta proof I swear I'll scream :-)

It took me many years to figure out exactly why I did so poorly in high school Algebra - I finally realized that it was partly because nobody ever explained to me that math is totally bogus. (If it wasn't bogus there would be no such thing as imaginary numbers.)

Here's an example of what I mean:
During Algebra II at Orange Glen (spring of 1969) we were introduced to inequalities and we had to graph them on a "number line"... When I found out that the number line is defined as being continuous through zero it struck me as completely absurd... I mean - the positive axis represents real values, while the negative axis sort of represents real values, and zero represents the total absence of a value... So how can you have continuity from a value - through the absence of a value - to a value???
That was probably the only time during high school I was actually curious enough about something to ask a question :-) And the teacher had no clue how to answer it... After a number of minutes of back and forth I was told I was being disruptive and we moved on...

As it turns out it is the height of folly to think of mathematics in terms of reality. Mathematics is a collection of abstract concepts that are exactly what they are defined to be (no more and no less). Yes, math provides tools for solving real world problems - but that doesn't mean math itself has anything to do with reality... And that should have been the answer to my question :-)

Aside: That's why I get so irritated by the use of "manipulatives" to teach math in grade school... Yeah - it helps kids "visualize" math. But that only works for problems that can be visualized... It must come as a shock later on when they discover that there are a heck of a lot of problems that can't be represented in 3 dimensional space. And unless you've been taught to do math based purely on the definitions you're screwed... But I digress...

The reality issue wasn't the only reason for my low grade:
Our teacher was out sick for a few days and we had a substitute... The sub taught at a much quicker pace and (in my opinion) explained things much more clearly. I learned an incredible amount in those few days...
Then our regular teacher came back and all the other students in the class were like "We are so glad you are back! We couldn't understand a thing that other guy was saying!"
That was when I realized that the class was actually moving too slow for me... I was getting bored and drifting off...

Well, I suppose all those days I skipped might have had something to do with the low grade too :-)

One final story - just one of those things that stuck in my mind:
According to a recent study teenage boys think about sex roughly every 17 seconds. And from what I can remember that's about right :-) But at that age you don't have to be thinking about anything for your body to "betray" you...
One morning I was anxiously watching the clock waiting for Algebra class to end. Not a thought in my head other than wanting to get out of there :-) Then a girl in the next row reached up and brushed her hair away from her face... That was all it took - I was instantly at "full attention"...
I was like "You have got to be kidding me! I wasn't thinking a darn thing!!!" The class was ending 5 minutes and there was no way I could stand up without my "condition" being obvious.
I was in a state of absolute panic... I was thinking about sports statistics (that actually does seem to help) and roadkill and anything else I could come up with to put myself "at ease"... I ended up having to spend a couple of extra minutes in the room after class "organizing my notes" before I was finally able to head off...

Yeah - it's one of those things that happens to teenage boys... But it's really not our fault :-)