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 :-)

The Cat and the Earthquake

Regardless of what the title may imply there is absolutely no connection between the cat and the earthquake. (At least I don't think so - unless cats cause earthquakes...) It's just that each topic is too short for its own blog post so I figured I'd combine them. :-)

When we lived at Fountain Estates in Escondido in the spring of 1969 we acquired a cat - I no longer recall where it came from or what it's name was...
One day I was standing by the sliding door of our ground floor apartment, looking out - when our cat came flying off the upstairs balcony and landed on the side of the slope just past our terrace. It was completely unharmed - but I couldn't figure out how it got up on the balcony in the first place... So the next time I saw our upstairs neighbors I asked them if they knew anything about it. It went something like this:
Me: "Hey - I saw our cat jump off of your balcony the other day."
Them: "Oh... Is that your cat? Yeah - we feed her sometimes..."
Me: "So, does it come to your door and you put it out on the balcony?"
Them: "No - it climbs up the wall..."
Me: "Seriously???"
Them: "Seriously!"
Sure as heck - one day I finally saw the cat do it. It flattened its belly against the (stucco) wall with its legs straight out - and shinnied right up the side of the building... Looked just like a lizard... It was one of the weirdest things I've ever seen... What a cat won't do for a free meal :-)

Next: I've mentioned how seriously prissy my sister was about bodily functions (it made farting in her presence so gratifying). Yeah - she was a obsessive compulsive about cleanliness - maybe that's why she wouldn't touch my laundry :-)

One day the cat was pestering me - acting all needy. I wasn't in the mood so I told it to get lost... Karina felt sorry for the thing (it was her cat anyway) so she called it over, picked it up and started comforting it... And the cat rewarded her by crapping on her thigh - yeah, apparently it was having tummy troubles :-)
Now - unless you knew Karina it's hard to appreciate just how freaking funny that was. The look on her face when the crap appeared on her leg was priceless... She started hyperventilating and yelling at me to bring her a paper towel... But I was rolling on the floor in convulsions - there was no way I could get up... And the more Karina insisted that it wasn't the least bit funny the harder I laughed. She was mad at me for a really long time after that :-)

Next topic:

In the years leading up to 1969 a number of psychics and religious groups had predicted that at the end of April that year there was going to be a major earthquake causing everything west of the San Andreas fault to drop into the ocean. The predictions were so widespread that the New York Times even published a article about it: "Warning! California will fall into the ocean in April."
As I've mentioned before, we were into the whole "psychic" scene back then - my mom even made her living as a psychic later on... So we were a bit concerned about that whole falling into ocean business - just not concerned enough to pack up and leave like a bunch of other "believers" had done.

So it came to pass that on the afternoon of April 28th of 1969 I was sitting on a bar stool at the kitchen counter in our apartment looking out across the valley when I saw waves coming... And no - it wasn't the "water" kind... As it turns out, you can actually see shock waves traveling on land - the trees were swishing back and forth as they passed... Now - I'd had quite a few beers at that point so I wasn't completely sure I was actually seeing what I was seeing - until my bar stool started swaying and everything in the apartment started rattling... Then I remembered all those predictions and I was like "Oh crap!!! Here we go!"
But it wasn't the "big one"... It was just a 5.8 centered about 30 miles away along the San Jacinto fault...

And that was scary enough to make me glad I've never been in a serious quake...

French 3

When I got to Orange Glen my schedule consisted of the same subjects I had been taking my entire junior year: American History, English, Algebra II, Drafting, French 3 and P.E...

I barely recall attending those classes at Mission Bay High. And my memories from La Jolla High are even hazier - I'm totally blank on Algebra II and French 3 there... In contrast, my recollections from my junior year at Orange Glen are quite clear... I'm really not sure why - I spent roughly the same amount of time (3 months) at each of those schools during the 68/69 school year...

I'll get around to talking about all those classes eventually, but I'm going to start with the one I remember the best - French 3. That's because of Debbie Nielson...

Debbie sat 2 rows to the right and one seat up from me. Fortunately, that was between me and the windows so if she caught me staring I only had to change my focus slightly to have "plausible deniability" :-)

Now - she was way out of my league - I had absolutely no illusions about that. In addition to the obvious reasons, she was a graduating senior and I was a 15 year old junior... Still, I loved everything about her.

Here's her senior picture. It's from a yearbook I found online - it really doesn't do her justice:


She was quite pretty - didn't wear much makeup - didn't need to.

Her wardrobe was classically feminine... Blouses with frills and ruffles and chiffon sleeves - skirts not too long and not too short. Everything subtly sexy - ever so slightly suggestive - but never revealing... Always elegant...

She had long blond hair that she wore in a variety of styles - sometimes braided, sometimes plain. But my favorite was when she pulled back the locks from her temples and tied them together in the back. It fit her perfectly. (To this day I cannot see that hairstyle on a blond woman without smiling...)

But her appearance was not the only reason why I had such a huge crush on her.

A lot of pretty girls suffer from a personality disorder that rhymes with "witch". Debbie was quite the opposite.

Aside: There was a girls who rhymed with "witch" in that French class. She sat behind me... I suppose some guys might have considered her cute - she certainly thought she was. She was kind of pudgy and wore a lot of makeup. She was a bit small on top and a bit large on the bottom with no discernible waist in between. Still - she wore dresses that were way too short and way too tight. Probably compensating for the "attractiveness deficit" with a bit of extra "sluttiness"... I suspect she was from a well-to-do family since she drove a new Mercedes to school - but that's not what made her a "witch":
During class she would sometimes amuse herself by rubbing the back of my leg with her foot, or touching my hair. If I reacted, she and her friends would laugh. And if I didn't react, well - she and her friends would laugh... So yeah - she obviously thought it was funny - I just thought it was not nice...

Another aside: As I've mentioned - I was seriously depressed at the time and my attitude wasn't the only thing that was affected. Some of my fellow students complained that my personal hygiene was also lacking...
Actually - it was more of a clothing odor than a body odor problem (I did shower). Nobody did my laundry regularly and I didn't care enough to do it myself... So every morning I'd just grab something off the floor I hadn't worn recently. (Note that I had given up underwear by then - I didn't even own any...) I suffered from severe allergies and couldn't smell a darn thing so odor was not part of the selection criteria :-) And since I walked almost everywhere my clothes developed a bit of "personality" over time. Yeah - not a pretty picture - but back to the story:

Debbie Nielson didn't seem to care about any of that - she was always genuinely nice to me...

One day a student was being attacked out by the parking lot... I don't know what led up to the incident, but he was in the fetal position against the back wall of the gym while a couple of other guys were yelling obscenities, calling him a "narc" and kicking him. A crowd had gathered - and I have to admit that I was experiencing a certain level of "schadenfreude" - I was just so relieved it wasn't me...
Debbie happened across the scene and was deeply dismayed. I remember her glancing around the crowd trying to figure out why nobody was doing anything. Finally she couldn't take it anymore and jumped in to try and get the attackers to leave the kid alone... It was a risky thing to do - I don't think she even knew the kid who was being attacked... But at that moment she was thinking more about him than herself... Such a rare quality - and one of the reasons I've never forgotten her...

Another time in French class the teacher was working with a small group of senior students (including Debbie) and had them place their desks in a circle. Debbie ended up with her desk directly facing me... And no - this is not another short skirt story :-)

I was having a particularly bad day - I looked and felt like hell... I was supposed to be studying but ended up just staring at my desk with my head in my hands.
At some point I sneaked a glance between my fingers and was stunned to discover that Debbie was staring at me... Quite intently at that... She looked very concerned - I think she sensed I was not OK and was trying to figure out if there was anything she could do to help... Then it was her turn to read and she had absolutely no idea where they were in the book. I felt really bad for inadvertently distracting her :-)
She never did approach me... But just knowing that there were people (like her) who genuinely cared about others helped me get through those rough days...

So yeah - she was a special lady...

My wife sometimes gets a little "weirded out" when I talk about the girls I had crushes on back in the day... She just can't believe how detailed my descriptions are... She once asked if I feel like I "missed out" somehow. Definitely not... It must have been the hormones that caused those memories to be so vivid :-)

I really do regret having paid so much attention to appearance back then... But, in retrospect, there was always more than just good looks to the girls I was attracted to... As a matter of fact, the things that I found most attractive about Debbie Nielson were exactly the same things that attracted me to my wife. Kindness and caring - determination and work ethic - unpretentiousness... They have a lot in common... Except my wife can get ready to go out to dinner in about 5 minutes flat. Yeah - she gets major bonus points for being so incomprehensibly low maintenance... I have not seen her equal :-)

And there's an epilogue:

Near the end of the school year my mom, sis and I went out to dinner at a nearby restaurant on East Valley Parkway. I think it was a Sizzler, but I'm not 100% sure (it's not there anymore). And, as fate would have it, Debbie Nielson was our waitress. (I had no idea she worked there...)
I didn't dare tell mom I had a huge crush on her because of the high probability mom would say something... So I just sat there hoping that (just this once) mom wouldn't cause a scene... Yeah - not a chance:

There's an interesting green iridescence that sometimes appears on sliced deli meats. It involves the lighting, the moisture content and the direction of the cut relative to the muscle fibers. It's perfectly normal and there's absolutely nothing wrong with the meat...
Long story short - mom ordered a roast beef sandwich and noticed a bit of iridescence. Result: A huge scene...
Now - mom's life was one big "drama fest". She caused scenes all the time - it was like she couldn't go out in public without performing :-) And I usually ended up embarrassed... But I can't recall ever being more embarrassed than I was that evening... Mortified would be more like it... Enough said :-)

So that was French 3 at Orange Glen High in the spring of 1969...

Orange Glen High Intro

Before I start talking about Orange Glen High School I left out a short (but strange) La Jolla story:

One evening when I was trying to go to sleep there was a loud crash in my room... I turned on the light and discovered that the "cookie tin" full of change that I kept on my dresser was now on the floor...
I was way beyond freaked out... I suppose I might have shoved some stuff around on my dresser earlier in the day and pushed the tin almost off the edge (without noticing) - and then a tremor (also unnoticed) knocked it to the floor... But still... I was so not OK with stuff spontaneously falling off my furniture :-) You know - all that business about objects at rest remaining at rest unless acted upon by a net force - at least that's what Newton's First Law claims... So I spent hours lying there wondering where the h*ll the net force came from... I'm certain there was a rational explanation - but I'm still not quite sure what it was :-)

Enough of that - on to Orange Glen:

I remember my first day at Orange Glen pretty well... The first thing they did was spring an IQ test on me... Now - if I'd had any inkling that was going to happen I would have skipped the morning shot of gin :-) But I scored a 138 anyway... I didn't quite hit the genius mark (140) but that was totally cool... It seems like having an IQ much higher than that is more of a curse than a blessing anyway... I've often thanked my lucky stars that I was born the "dumb one" in the family :-)
BTW: I should point out that the counselor didn't tell me my score - that would have been against policy... My paperwork was on her desk. Back then I had 20/10 vision and I've always been able to read upside down just as well as right side up - so yeah - I figured it out :-)

OK - now this is funny: The first thing the counselor did was look at the IQ score and immediately launch into her spiel about the school's honors program... As she flipped through my records she talked about what a great program it was - I was really going to enjoy it - homework was optional, etc, etc... Then she saw my GPA - stopped - and said "But none of that applies in your case..." I couldn't help but laugh - I'd been sitting there just waiting for it - the suspense had been killing me :-)
She spent a couple of minutes trying to get a handle on the disparity between the IQ and the GPA... I recall mentioning that (in my opinion) the point of grades is to measure conformance rather than performance - plus I didn't really feel the need to prove anything to anyone... She didn't even freak out - I was quite impressed by that ... And she actually acknowledged that there was some validity to my position... As my sister used to say: "She was making obliging noises" :-)

Aside: I used to catch all kinds of crap from teachers and counselors about not applying myself or living up to my potential... They'd invariably say "I don't get it." And I'd be like "Yeah - that's because I'm smarter than you..." OK - I never said it out loud - but I really wanted to. I'm such an arrogant @ss... But I really did enjoy playing the "underachiever" - and I digress - sort of :-)

Next - they had one of the "brown-nosers" (you know - the students who help out in the office) give me a tour of the campus... I probably would have thought she was cute except her hair was too short (think "Carol Brady") and she was just so dreadfully normal...
I made the mistake of asking her about the "weed" situation at the school. She was visibly shocked so I quickly told her that I didn't smoke (true at the time) - I was just concerned because it had just been so common at the schools in San Diego... She assured me that Orange Glen was not that kind of school... I pretended to be relieved :-)

Yeah - the whole process had come as something of a pleasant surprise. If I hadn't been so arrogant I might have even appreciated it... At both Mission Bay and La Jolla they had just tossed a schedule together, handed me a map and told me to get lost - which I promptly did...

I spent almost an entire school year at OG... There were certainly some jerks there - I'll get around to them eventually - but most of the students at least tried to be nice and (on the whole) my time there was quite tolerable...

Unfortunately - I was still in a really dark place when we first got there - just barely hanging on... But it did get better for a while - before getting worse again :-)

Moving Again

I guess it's no surprise that I don't remember much about La Jolla High. We only lived there for 3 months and that included the winter holidays. When you subtract my "skip" days I really didn't spend much time there...

Then sometime after Christmas my mom got a job in the advertising department for a newspaper up the coast in Oceanside - so we started looking for someplace closer to live. I remember scoping out rentals in Oceanside, Carlsbad and San Marcos before settling on Escondido... I'm not sure exactly why - I seem to recall that it just "felt right". So - around the beginning of March 1969 we left La Jolla and moved into a brand new apartment in Escondido...

Now - believe it or not - we actually paid our rent in La Jolla. I remember it specifically because it was so uncharacteristic :-) I think mom liked the people we were renting from and wanted to part on good terms...

Aside: We usually rented furnished units. That made moving so much easier: We'd just go around the rooms and toss everything (clothes, etc) onto the beds - then wrap the bedding into a bundle (with everything in it) and carry it out to the car... Took less than 10 minutes :-) The kitchen was a bit more work - we usually needed boxes for that - but we could still vacate a place in less than an hour when we had to :-)

Our new home was in the Fountain Estates apartments on East Grand in Escondido. It was a brand new complex at the time and it was quite nice. The apartment was, however, unfurnished - so mom ran down to the bank and got a loan to buy a new set of furniture... No matter how bad our credit was mom could always talk somebody into loaning us money... Yeah - but back then loan officers actually had the authority to approve loans :-)

And - of course - another move meant yet another school... Orange Glen High in Escondido was my 4th in 10 months - I was seriously not OK with that... I continued to follow the routine I established on that first day at Mission Bay High - rode the bus to school - didn't eat lunch - didn't ask for a locker (carried all my books) - and walked home (a little over a mile)... Like I said - I'm a creature of habit :-)

The population of Escondido is close to 150,000 now. I doubt I'd recognize it... Back in 1969 it was a sleepy little community of ~30,000 - quiet, conservative and very white :-) The Lawrence Welk village/resort was nearby so there was a high concentration of retirees in the area... BTW: The old bubblemeister still lived there back then - but that story is yet to come :-)

And there were orange groves everywhere... There was a small one just a few feet from our terrace... I had grown up in St. Louis with honeysuckle surrounding my bedroom window and I thought that was the most heavenly scent there could ever be... But it was nothing compared to orange blossoms in the spring... Simply amazing :-)

So - I will probably have quite a bit to say about the 9 months we spent in Escondido... Lots of memories... Mostly good :-)

Conformity

If you watch all the film clips of the late 60's it's very easy to get the wrong idea about what America was like at the time. The clips all show hippies and protests and riots - plus that "age of Aquarius" stuff... Yeah - all that was happening - but people were for the most part still pretty darn conventional.

At least that was my experience. Even though all the polls reflected significant opposition to the war in Vietnam you wouldn't have known it if you were in high school back then. We were being taught the "domino theory" - if Vietnam falls to communism the rest of the world will follow - and most of my classmates sure seemed to buy it. Yeah - history argues otherwise :-)
We were the first generation to be raised by the boob tube - educated by Captain Kangaroo and Buffalo Bob... Oh - and you can't forget all those lovely "public service" clips instructing us in what to think and how to behave... We were own little insular society. We shared a common background and beliefs - and short attention spans :-)

By late 1968 I began to detect an undercurrent of fatalism among my peers. Our older friends were getting killed in Nam - and we were next... The people we admired most had been assassinated - there were fires and riots in the major cities... The "experts" were predicting that we would run of oil by 1980 - which was about the same time the environment would become uninhabitable...
So we listened to loud music, got drunk or stoned and drove high-powered cars way too fast with nary a thought about the potential consequences... But there's nothing radical - or even non-conformist - about that. It the same old stuff teenagers have always done - in one form or another...

BTW: I lost 3 acquaintances in separate high speed accidents between '68 and '70... How I managed to survive repeatedly going 130 MPH in my 66 Charger with bald tires and a loose steering box is beyond me... Yet - here I am... And I'm getting ahead of myself again :-)

Yeah - we were a generation of conformists. Especially the hippies. They all looked alike and sounded alike... Not an original thinker among them... They were the ultimate conformists..
BTW: I did have long hair during most of that time so the "straights" all called me a hippie... But the "real" hippies wouldn't accept me because I didn't dress and sound exactly like them... So they were no different than any other clique... And yes - it did piss me off :-)

Aside: A former Beatle wrote a song in which he describes a world where there is nothing to believe in and nothing to strive for. In other words - a life lacking anything to make it worthwhile... How utterly pointless... In my opinion he should have called it "Hell" because that's exactly what it describes... But I digress :-)

I have to acknowledge that a lot of cool stuff has it's origins in the late 1960's... The music (and cars) are still in vogue today... And a lot of worthwhile movements gained traction during that era - environmentalism, women's lib, civil rights - but that was mostly people grabbing existing ideas and running with them...

This is kind of a rambling post and I don't think it makes the point I'm trying to make:
I saw very little evidence of original thought amongst the baby boomers... To the contrary - it was impossible to grow up in the U.S. during the 1950s and 1960s without being heavy indoctrinated into the cult of conformity. Yes - people held differing beliefs - but those beliefs were (for the most part) "accepted" because of what the rest of the "group" believed rather than as a result of personal reflection...

Don't agree with me?? Just think about our current political and financial leaders... Yeah - those are the best and brightest of the boomers... The conclusion should be obvious :-)