The Followers

In my last few posts I covered my drive home from Biloxi Mississippi to my mom's place in Coburg Oregon after completing Air Force tech training in 1973, leaving off just as I pulled into my mother's driveway. But before continuing I decided take a hiatus and dig out all the old letters I had gotten from my mother and sister during that time to refresh my memory... Not surprisingly, there were many odds and ends I had forgotten about, but the real surprise was that my sister Karina had already enlisted in the Army by then (but had not yet reported for basic)... I mean, I knew she enlisted at some point, but I thought it was many months later... And I'm getting ahead of myself... Back to the topic of this post:

As I've mentioned many times before, sometime around 1969 my mom started making extra money giving readings as an astrologer and psychic counselor... The astrology part was kind of funny because her math skills weren't good enough to construct an accurate chart (back in those days you had to be able to interpolate the tables in an ephemeris) but I honestly don't think it mattered because (assuming she wasn't actually psychic) she had an extraordinary ability to read people (it was beyond uncanny)... And because her "devotees" regarded her as a mystic being they'd follow her advice despite the fact that it was totally obvious (go figure). But unlike most "psychics", she didn't do it for the money. She simply needed to be surrounded by people who admired and adored her. (My sister and I left something to be desired in that regard.)

So, by the time December 1973 rolled around (and I rolled into the driveway) mom had been in the area for over a year and had assembled quite an entourage. And after I nursed the Barracuda to the closest gas station that was still open (this was during the gas crisis) we spent the next couple of weeks making the rounds of her followers.I don't really remember much about them - they were the usual assortment of people (from housewives to hippies to college professors) "looking for answers".

I recall spending an evening at one couple's house (the guy was an audiophile and had a high end reel-to-reel tape system) while a big holiday bash was going on across the street. The road where my car was parked was dimly lit and when we left for home I didn't notice anything amiss, but the next morning when I backed the car out of the garage I discovered a huge dent right behind the driver's door. The folks we had been visiting contacted their neighbors (who contacted their guests) and nobody would admit to having backed into my car (probably too drunk to notice)... Since I only carried liability coverage the repairs were going to have to come out of pocket and I was seriously pissed! (I never did fix the car before I sold it that summer. But I'm getting ahead of myself.)

I really wish I could remember more, but I don't think anything else significant happened during those couple of weeks. It was just nice to be back in the civilian world after 10 months of military training.

Karina and I didn't spend Christmas in Coburg because we had made arrangements to fly to Milwaukee to be with our father and stepmother for the holidays. Mom acted all stoic about it and I think she expected us to feel guilty, but we were so used to her "martyr" routine we didn't react as much as she would have liked...

I had booked a morning flight to Portland (for some reason Karina was already up there), but the Eugene airport was fogged in and the flight couldn't land so the airline hired cabs to shuttle all the passengers up to the Portland airport. (That wasn't a problem for me since my connecting flight didn't leave until mid-afternoon anyway)...
When I got there I (eventually) met up with Karina, and when we checked in for the flight to Milwaukee I learned that I had been upgraded to first class because of the earlier snafu in Eugene.

Aside: This was back in the days before air travel was deregulated. Flying was still something of a luxury and the airlines were quite profitable - they would attempt to compensate you for the slightest inconvenience (hard to imagine for those who didn't experience it)... Furthermore, stewardesses (that's what they called flight attendants) were invariably young and attractive and wore super short skirts... But, despite being quite memorable, that's not particularly relevant to the matter at hand :-)

Karina absolutely freaked out. She was adamant that I was not going to be up in first class while she was stuck in coach. It wasn't so much that she wanted company - she flew by herself all the time. She just felt it would be grossly unfair if I got to sit in first class and she didn't. (That's how my sister was wired - never an unselfish thought)...
Now, you'd think it would be easy to decline a first class upgrade, but the flight was overbooked and the only way I could stay in coach was if they moved someone else to first class and (for some reason) they were highly reluctant to do that... I still remember how puzzled the ticket agent was that someone was refusing an upgrade. Yeah - I couldn't believe it either...

Eventually the ticket agent got everything sorted out and I ended up in a middle seat between Karina (next to the window) and a very sweet, attractive (in a "girl next door" kind of way) young woman. It was clear that the young lady (who was in her late teens) had never flown before and (other than giving her some hints about the seat belt and air vents, etc) I didn't say a word to her the whole way... It's not that I didn't want to - I tried. It was just that I was too painfully shy to make any words come out. (I got the impression she was almost as shy as I was.) Yeah - given all the things I've forgotten in the 40 years since I mystified as to why I can still remember what the girl looked like (let alone that we were seated on the right side of the plane just in front of the wing)...

As I always say, the likelihood of me remembering something is inversely proportional to it's relevance :-)

Next up - Milwaukee and beyond.