My Senior Year - Part 1

I spent the first three months of my senior year of high school at Orange Glen in Escondido. This was in the fall of 1969 and I've already talked about some of the things that were going on at the time:
- Mom lost her job (again).
- We got evicted and moving to a ratty little apartment.
- There was the jerk at school who was telling everyone we'd been evicted.
- My unnamed band played that gig at the YMCA.
- I went to the Eric Burdon concert.

And then there was school...

For some reason I don't remember those months particularly well - I must have skipped a lot :-) But I do recall taking English, Pre-calculus, Astronomy, Drafting, Economics, French 4 and PE (flag football)... And here's some of the memories (in no particular order):

Plymouth's "Rapid Transit" tour stopped at Orange Glen High early in the fall. They put on a show in the auditorium with singing and dancing (ostensibly to promote safe driving) and brought along a collection of brand new 1970 muscle cars for us to gawk at... I specifically remember the B5 (blue) Plymouth Superbird, a brand new 'Cuda (with shaker hood), and a GTX. At least one of the cars had a "pistol grip" Hurst shifter (which had just been introduced with the 1970 model year) and I seem to recall that the Hemi and 440 6-bbl engines were represented... Yeah - the cars made an impression on me :-)

Next - I vaguely recall that one guy got sent home for wearing chartreuse bellbottoms with multi-colored flowers on them... I thought them were cool but the vice principal claimed they were creating a "disturbance"...

Some students tried doing one of those "smash an old car with a sledgehammer" fundraisers. The event was held in the main quad and it got out of control when a bunch of students stormed the car and rolled it over. That's when they found out the gas tank was still full... The car and a bunch of students got drenched. Yeah - they were just a stray spark away from one heck of a newspaper headline...

And on to English class:
I was really excited when the teacher told us we were going to spend an entire month studying comedy. I mean - how can that not be fun??? ... Well - I found out... Apparently there is no subject that cannot be reduced to tedium and drudgery by our educational system... Yes - nothing takes the fun out of funny like having to explain why... Don't know why - don't care why :-)
Another memory from that class involved this kid named Russ who always wore a pith helmet with red, white and blue stripes on it. He spent most of English class (first period) spinning the pith helmet on the tip of a pen and muttering about the colors... The spinning helmet looked cool - but not that cool... So one day I asked him why he was so fascinated by it and he told me that he dropped a quarter tab of acid before leaving for school every morning. That was apparently just the right amount to make things "interesting" :-)

Astronomy class:
The teacher told us that he'd give us a C just for showing up... So I got a C :-)

Economics:
I'm not 100% sure the class was called economics. It might have been a "life skills" kind of class. But one of the things we did was pretend to invest $1000 in various stocks. I ended up turning a pretend profit of $200. My primary investments were White Motors (trucking was expanding at the time) and Flying Tiger (contractor flying supplies into and around Vietnam). It was interesting, but I certainly didn't catch the investing "bug". I've never liked risk...
Then one day this girl in the front row got the giggles. I don't know what set her off but she could not stop. They teacher got really mad and no matter what he said or did the giggles just got worse. He finally told her that if she didn't stop immediately he'd send her to the vice principal's office... That really got her going - and she got sent to the office...
I felt really bad for her because that's not something you can always control... Heck - I almost got kicked out of LaMaze class once because I couldn't stop giggling - but that's not until 1976 :-)

Pre-calculus:
The only thing I remember about pre-calc is when somebody dropped a cherry bomb in a toilet in the girl's room. Our classroom's chalkboard was right across the wall from the toilet and the teacher was writing on it (the chalkboard - not the toilet) when it exploded (the toilet - not the chalkboard).
The wall flexed out about 4 inches when the thing went off - it scared the heck out of all of us... Yeah - this was back when messing with explosives was regarded as a juvenile prank rather than a federal crime...

Not much to say about drafting class and flag football... They were pretty much the same as they had been during my junior year...

And I think I'll leave French 4 to my next post... It's another one of those "short skirt" stories and I still haven't decided how much I should say about it :-)

The Eric Burdon Story

Before I get around to telling the Eric Burdon story I recently remembered another one of my mom's inexplicable white lies that caused me some grief. Here's what happened:

When I was in the 1st grade at Reavis Elementary School in Affton Missouri (1959) there were a couple of classmates who lived in the same neighborhood (Lakeshire).
One day my mom arranged for me to spend the afternoon at a kid's house. I don't remember his name - I really didn't know him that well. But before she dropped me off she told me that the boy's father had died so I mustn't under any circumstances say anything about it.
I was really upset by that... I was incredibly sensitive at that age and the whole "death" thing made me sick to my stomach... A close family friend had recently died in a head-on collision. She'd been driving a station wagon full of girls scouts and only her daughter survived - it was all so random and unfair - one of my worst fears... BTW - I do remember the make, model and color of the station wagon... But that's not particularly relevant...

So I'm at the boy's house - and we play for a while - then he mentions that he's going to visit his father the following weekend... ???!!! ... And I say "Isn't your father dead?" And he says "No - my parent's are divorced."
I have no idea why my mom felt like she had to lie about that. Maybe she thought I didn't know about divorce and she didn't want to have to explain... But I already knew all about it - kids talk... And it's not like the concept of "dad doesn't live here anymore" is rocket science :-) Yeah - she put me through a bunch of anxiety for nothing...

Now - on to the Eric Burdon story:

During the fall of 1969 Karina briefly went out with a promoter who had just arranged a concert by Eric Burdon and War at Palomar Junior College in San Marcos (just west of Escondido). This was only the group's second public performance - nobody had heard of them at that point - this was many months before they recorded anything.

Now - I had always been curious about the "mechanics" of staging a live show so on the day of the concert the boyfriend was nice enough to sneak me in early and let me tag along with him for a bit. And it came to pass that I was standing in a circle of about 10 people - roadies and such - going over all the sound and lighting details. After about 5 minutes of discussion one of the roadies turned to the guy next to me and said "So Eric, what do you think?".

It took me a surprisingly long time to connect the dots... But I finally realized that I'd been standing next to Eric Burdon (one of my idols) for over 5 minutes and had not noticed...

Of course, I was totally cool and didn't react... It was just hard for me to believe that someone who had that much presence onstage could be that invisible offstage...
And it wasn't just me who failed to notice him... Shortly before the show started I was up in the bleachers at the side of the auditorium when I spotted Eric enter through the back of the hall. It was open seating and the aisles were packed. And as he slowly worked his way toward the stage a number of people looked right at him and nobody recognized him... As a matter of fact most of them were irritated at him for pushing past them... He seemed quite amused by the whole thing - apparently he had stepped out the back door and gotten locked out :-)

It was an amazing concert... They did a bit of Animals material - albeit in a rather different style. But most of it was new unrecorded stuff... That whole rock, funk, reggae, latin fusion vibe was quite innovative at the time... The percussion was stunningly good...

And of course - Eric Burdon was a "force of nature" - when he was onstage...

Sledding

No - I didn't do any sledding in Escondido - wrong climate for that. I'm (once again) bringing up some of those memories from Havertown in the early 1960s.

My favorite sledding hill was over by my friend Robert's house. It wasn't a very long run but it was quite steep at the top and you could get a lot of speed going. If you didn't stop or turn quickly enough when you reached the bottom you ended up waist deep in a creek :-) But there's one event in particular that has stuck in my mind all these years:
I had agreed to be the seventh (and last) sled in a "train". The train was formed by having each sledder hook his feet into the sled behind him. Of course - I had no idea that when the lead sled swerved back and forth it was like playing "crack the whip" - you really didn't want to be at the end... Now - in theory you could yell "Let go" and the guy in front of you was supposed to unhook but as I found out nobody could hear much of anything once you started down hill... Within seconds my sled was flying and bouncing from side to side - often landing upside down. And all the while I was screaming "Let Go!". (Don't know why I didn't just bail off the sled.) The ride finally ended when the last few sleds sideswiped a fir tree near the bottom of the hill. After the crash everyone else was lying there laughing ... I wasn't. I couldn't believe nobody had warned me why nobody else wanted to be at the end of the train :-)

The other incident happened much closer to home - when I was 8 or 9 years old. I was sledding down the sidewalk on Llandillo Road right around the corner from our house and I was dragging my left leg to turn when my knee slammed into something under the snow... To this day I have no idea what it was, but I hit it really hard - it hurt like hell!
I sledded a bit more before heading home - and before going into the house I stopped to brush the snow off of my clothes. That's when I noticed that my jeans were a darker color below my left knee. I was puzzled at first - it looked wet - but I hadn't been near any water. And that's when I realized it was blood...

There was a puncture wound right below my kneecap and it had been bleeding profusely. Mom cleaned it up a bit and put a bandage on it. It should have started healing within a few days but that didn't happen. The stupid thing just wouldn't scab over - it just kept seeping blood.
That went on for weeks and I was afraid it would never stop... The pain level eventually dropped to where I could touch it and it felt like there was something in there - something hard right below the surface... I showed it to mom but she kept insisting it was just trying to heal and I needed to stop messing with it.
I tried really hard to leave it alone. After all - mom knows best - right? ... Finally, about 3 weeks later I was taking a bath and noticed that if I pushed right next to the wound something hard would protrude slightly out of it. I was still really afraid of "disrupting" the healing process but I couldn't help myself. I gritted my teeth and pushed like hell on both sides of the wound - and a piece of glass almost a half inch long popped out... It was crescent shaped with a triangular profile - as if it had been part of something decorative (jewelry?)...

I still don't understand what the piece of glass had to do with what I hit my knee on - and how it ended up getting jammed through my jeans into the area below my kneecap... After it popped out it actually took me a few minutes to convince myself that it wasn't something weird my body had created to fill the wound... But it was a huge relief to have it out of there - even though it started bleeding like hell again :-) I don't think I ever showed it to mom. I was afraid she'd yell at me for messing with the wound after she told me not to :-) But it healed quickly after that...

I remember it so well because of all the mental and emotional turmoil I went through. There were so many aspects: Not understanding how the body works when healing... Wanting very much to trust the adult... Suspecting that the adult was wrong - but not being able to face the implications... Wanting very much to do as I was told but not being able to help myself... Fearing that if I messed with the wound it might never heal...

Yeah - maybe I should have just asked for a second opinion :-)

Ghost Writing

During the time we lived in Escondido Mom used to do something we called "ghost writing". I'll explain that in a minute - but first - here's my senior yearbook picture. This image is from a scan someone was kind enough to send me:


The picture was taken during the summer of 1969 at a professional studio in town. I recall that there were a number of photographers on the school's "approved" list and we just picked one... When I got the proofs I was rather dismayed to discover that I had been given a haircut. Yes - the "ducktail" that is barely showing behind my ear should be down past my collar. And yes - photographers did image manipulation before Photoshop - it was just a little trickier... But it didn't matter because we couldn't afford to have prints made anyway.... Heck - I only found out I was in the yearbook a few years ago. That was cool because if you're not in the yearbook and nobody remembers you, you weren't really there, right? :-)

And on to the ghost writing story:

It all started out with a Ouija board Karina had gotten. Mom would go into a trance, Karina and I would ask questions and mom would move the planchette around while we copied down the letters. That process was rather cumbersome so one day mom got out the typewriter (almost everybody had one back in the day) and just typed the answers... It was quite interesting to watch. When ghostwriting she typed much faster than usual and her language usage seemed to change as well. Now - I don't really believe that she was channeling any "spirits". I suspect it was all a creation of her subconscious mind - but it was fascinating nonetheless :-)

OK - here's a a bit of historical trivia for those too young to remember:
In October of 1969 there was a rumor going around that Paul McCartney had died in 1966 and was replaced with a guy who won a lookalike contest. The rumor was repeated by all the top 40 radio stations and Paul eventually had to hold a news conference to assert that he was (indeed) still alive.
Of course, when mom was doing her "ghost writing" Paul's spirit was one of the "entities" that she channeled :-) I no longer recall how he explained his death but at the time I tended to believe the rumor for one simple reason: I had a profile shot of Paul's face from the sheet music for "Michelle" (1965) and a more recent profile shot of him and it really didn't look like the same person... Everyone I showed those pictures to was amazed at the difference.
However, it didn't take too long for me to conclude that Paul was still alive. The music was just too consistently good and I couldn't attribute that to John... I could never quite forgive John for breaking up the Beatles to be with one of the ugliest and least talented women on the planet... Yes - I know she brought him happiness and that's what really matters... But - damn! ... If any part of me had touched her I'd be inclined to cut it off...
But regarding the profile shots of Paul - I wouldn't be surprised if the Beatles kept lookalikes around just to mess with the media. I don't know how else to explain it... And I digress :-)

As one might expect, a lot of the questions Karina and I asked were about our future - relationships and jobs and such. And the only prediction I remember is that I would become a "builder of bridges". That is (of course) an incredibly vague statement but it's also a very powerful metaphor:
As a software engineer I build bridges that connect people with technology... As a lawyer I build bridges to help resolve conflicts... As a parent I do my best to build bridges that allow my children to grow, become self-sufficient and attain their dreams... And the list goes on...

It's obvious that the idea of building bridges has stuck in my mind ever since and it's something I've frequently reflected on... So yes - there was indeed usefulness to be extracted from all the weirdness that was my childhood :-)

The Other Band - part2

Here's a couple of stories about that nameless band I played with in Escondido back in 1969.

First: We were over at other Pete's house practicing one evening - just the bass player and the 2 guitars... It was getting dark so we lit some candles... Now - as I mentioned in my last post Pete's house had beveled and leaded glass everywhere. And we were in a room that had a couple of "glassed" double doors, a bay window and mirrors on some of the walls - so the candlelight was reflecting all around us.
We had our amps turned down low and were playing Cream's "Strange Brew" (much slower than the recording) and singing along softly: "She's a witch of trouble in electric blue. In her own mad mind she's in love with you"... (I love those lyrics.) And everything melted away but the music and the candlelight... I was completely absorbed by it - at one with it - it was awesome :-)

I guess it should come as no surprise that this is among my most vivid memories. Making music by firelight is as old as humanity itself - it goes to the very core of our being. It's only very recently that anyone would think of themselves as "not good enough" to make music... And what a shame that is... Music is so magical...

The second story is actually a couple of stories about the same gig - a dance at the Escondido YMCA in the fall of 1969. It was an excellent gig for 2 reasons: There was actual money involved - and a lot of people showed up for it (more on that later).

OK... This was shortly after Santana had recently released their first album - and I really didn't understand the immense popularity... I'm not saying it wasn't good music or Carlos wasn't a good guitarist. His playing (in my opinion) was just a bit trite in comparison to Clapton, Hendrix and Page.
So - when the band decided to add "Jingo" to the play list I said I'd just sit it out... I mean - it had a cool beat and all, but the music wasn't any more complicated than the lyrics (which consisted of the words Jingo, Lo and Ba)... But since Jack and Pete seemed to really get off on playing it I figured whatever...
They launched into Jingo midway through the gig... Everyone stopped dancing and gathered around the stage hollering and clapping in time to the music... By the end of the song the crowd was screaming and cheering... And I'm sitting there thinking "You have got to be kidding me!" It was the high point of the evening - and I was totally mystified :-)

Next - I should mention that at that point in my life I had stopped telling people I played in a band. That's because it doesn't really convey any specific skill like (for example) bench pressing 300 lbs or dunking a basketball... I mean - the worst garage hack on the planet plays in a band just as much as Paul McCartney does... So I figured I'd just leave it to fate. Eventually one of my classmates would spot me at a gig, word would get around and fame and fortune would follow :-)

A bit more background: Sometime during that summer I made myself a 30 ft guitar cord. That gave me enough slack to hop down and get "personal" with the young ladies who were dancing close to the stage. I really enjoyed that and it didn't even seem to piss off their boyfriends :-)
BTW: I always played barefoot. I think I did that more to stay relaxed than anything else. I really was a completely different person when "performing". But I'm slightly digressing :-)

At some point during the gig I got down off the riser and was doing a guitar solo when I realized that the guy standing right by me (staring intently at my hands) sat next to me in English class... Now - I'm sure there were other classmates there - it's not like there was anything else to do in Escondido back in the day - but he was one of the few I ever talked to...

We had English class first thing Monday morning after the gig and here's how the conversation went with the guy next to me:

Me: So - what did you think?
Him: About what?
Me: The band.
Him: What band???
Me: At the YMCA? Saturday night?
Him: Oh ...Yeah - they were great! ... So - were you there? I didn't see you...

And that was the last gig I ever played in Escondido.