"Big Fish in a Small Pond" Part Nine of My Month Long Autobiographical Series - Countdown to 60

I'm a shooting star leaping through the skies

Like a tiger defying the laws of gravity

I'm a racing car passing by like Lady Godiva

I'm gonna go go go

There's no stopping me

I'm burning through the sky yeah!

Two hundred degrees

That's why they call me Mister Fahrenheit

I'm trav'ling at the speed of light

I wanna make a supersonic man out of you

Don't stop me now

I'm having such a good time

I'm having a ball

Don't stop me now

If you wanna have a good time

Just give me a call

- Don’t Stop Me Now by Queen

There I was on top of the world. The big fish in the little pond. I was in my early twenties handsome healthy and in a career I loved and was good at. Social occasions were second nature to me. Especially those that involved alcohol. I had friends and lovers galore and not a care in the world. It felt like unbridled joy was my new lot in life. Mom was hundreds of miles and years away. Step mom was a nuisance but she too lived far away. Big brother was back after several years in Finland and he now boasted a Finnish wife of great charm and intelligence.

In the Chico of the late Seventies I was something of a celebrity. My byline dominated the pages of the nascent Chico News & Review. I had even been the answer to a popular local radio show’s quiz. I was sportswriter extraordinaire but also a fearless news reporter likening myself to Woodward and Bernstein who through their exposure of Watergate and subsequent book and the film starring Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford (All the President’s Men) were heroes to all fledging reporters.

My attire was carefully planned each day to look as cool and cute and yet professional as possible. Long blonde locks kissed my shoulders and I generally wore a sly smile. Ever present was a natty jacket with big pockets. In one I kept my ever handy spiral notebook in another a pint of whiskey. In an inside pocket was a pack of smokes. My diet consisted mostly of coffee booze and cigarettes with occasional big meals thrown in. Sleep was not indulged in except for prolonged weekend hibernations to catch up. Any form of exercise was now eschewed though I did not hesitate to boast of my past athletic accomplishments complete with exaggerations.

There was never any problem finding dates. I was also part of a social whirl which included eligible women in my age group. I had no inclination to settle on one in particular. If you said I was a cad I’d not argue. But to most I was a wit and dazzling conversationalist. (It was at this time that I met the woman who nine years later I would marry. But that relationship shall not be discussed here. Suffice to say however that it -- along with the children resulting from it -- are the great joys of my life.)

The fact is that I was a damn good reporter being diligent persistent clever and unafraid. If nothing else it fed my enormous ego to write a good story and receive the subsequent encomiums. A particular talent was interviews. I knew how to charm or cajole or probe as the subject and person required. I was fair and balanced long before an entire network pretended to be. No one was better aware of my talents than I. Depending on how one looks at it I was at my best/worst. I certainly had a high opinion of myself which in some respects wasn’t the worst possible circumstance I could place myself in. But I had no sense of balance no perspective and not an ounce of humility. One looks back at such a lad and sees him headed for a rather dramatic fall. What a surprise then that -- as will be recounted in the next installment -- the fall was so slow, self inflicted and strange and utterly lacking in drama.

Meanwhile the newspaper was a vibrant part of an energetic town. I thought I was living in the center of the universe. Previously Berkeley had been the coolest place in the world but now it was Chico. Everything about my circumstances in the first few months of 1979 were perfect. I was even trying to quit smoking. So why did I leave this eden?

“Finland Redux Romance and a Possible Career” Part Eight of My Month Long Autobiographical Series - Countdown to 60

Big brother and I in Finland 1973

I still don't know what I was waiting for
And my time was running wild
A million dead-end streets
Every time I thought I'd got it made
It seemed the taste 
was not so sweet
So I turned myself to face me
But I've never caught a glimpse
Of how the others must see the faker
I'm much too fast to take that test

- David Bowie Changes

Back to Finland where I met “an older woman” (June). I was 19 and she 23. That’s a helluva gap when the 19 year old has a certain naiveté about matters of the heart and genitalia and the 23 year old is quite worldly in both. My chance encounter with this British hussy was to have enormous consequences in my life. There was the whirlwind romance which was as much an exploitation of me as anything else. Then her departure for the states and my wanderlust which saw me off to the UK. There I stayed with friends in Bournemouth and June’s family in Wales and nobody in London. I pub crawled with a reckless passion and lived off fish and chips and went to soccer matches (Arsenal!). But I also longed for June who was staying in the Bay Area. She had her hooks in me but good. Eventually I ended my travels in pursuit of her. Stupid. Entirely on me. I can badmouth her in retrospect but I was just an idiot.

So I was stuck back home with crazy mother. Dad had finally wised up and divorced but then married the first bimbo who came along. Step mother made dad fairly happy for the rest of his days but boy could he have done better. She was a non stop smoker and talker who despite yakking constantly never said a damn thing. She also drank like the proverbial fish though she spent her later years in one long dry drunk. The family was never impressed but dad was so whatever.

June had little use for me and was trolling the area for other men who she could take greater advantage of. Given her sultry good looks and let us say charms that was no problem.

I was miserable. Aunt and Uncle made the mistake of inviting mom over to Thanksgiving because dad was in Tahoe with his new flame. It was all good for awhile but I knew what was coming and drank accordingly. Sure enough mom went off fueled by her own alcohol consumption, screaming at one and all. I have vague awful memories. Worst day of my life and may its horror never be exceeded.

Back to Chico I went to seriously pursue a degree and girls my own age and of course bacchanalia. The latter was particularly easy to find.

Keggers were parties where there was -- depending upon the anticipated size of the gathering -- one or two or more kegs of beer. Usually you just kicked in a couple of bucks (if that) and chugged away. They were usually indoor/outdoor affairs and in Chico typicallu drew a nice balance of males and females. The bigger ones even had live bands. They were a great way to meet people which is to say pick up chicks. I always drank until I had the courage to talk to girls and of course if I drank too much I ended up slurring to them. Somehow hangovers were not overly dramatic in those days largely owing to sticking to plain ole beer.

I did manage to mix scholastic pursuits into my life but this was of secondary importance. It was all about fun and the future was not to be considered. Dreams and fantasies about future days could and would be indulged but any sort of plans and goals were so much a bother introducing as they did strong doses of reality -- something I’d had bad experiences with.

Somehow I managed to settle on a major in journalism and this led inevitably to a place on the school newspaper. Not only was I good reporter but I loved having a byline and quickly achieving a modicum of notoriety. There is also an element of power and influence attached to being a journalist even -- maybe especially -- on a small college town school rag. I was on to something and had something to hang my hat on. Dad was proud of me as he started receiving copies of the paper with his son’s name in it.

My skirt chasing inevitably led to a few romances. While I was skilled at finding dates and lovers I was none to keen on keeping them around for very long and totally inept at the art of the break up. I did not have the attention span to stay with a relationship for very long and couldn’t be bothered letting a girl down easily or for that matter at all. Then I met Becky. There was something about her that was quite different. Here was a girl who I could profess love to and seek a commitment with. We’d barely met before we moved in together. Thirty Nine years later I scratch my head about this one. Becky was of modest intelligence lacking intellectual curiosity and not possessive of any great talents save perhaps sexually. In any case I fell madly in love with the notion of being madly in love and proposed marriage. It was Becky who saw that we were mismatched and after nearly a year moved out and left me alone and miserable.

I got over it. It took awhile but meeting other women and drinking and of course the news beat were all pleasant distractions. After a few months I felt relieved that I’d gotten out of the relationship before I made a very big mistake or before we created a bouncing one.

Meanwhile the newspaper was constantly rankling the school administration and we had become too good to be merely a school newspaper. The Wildcat was going to become the Chico News & Review an independent newspaper and I was to be a co founder. Shit was about to get real.

"Heroics Travel and College" Part Seven of My Month Long Autobiographical Series - Countdown to 60

Nor Cal champs. That's me holding the game ball.

No one knows what it's like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes...

But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be

I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
That's never free......

But my dreams
They aren't as empty
As my conscience seems to be

The Who - Behind Blue Eyes

I finally went to Finland in the Summer of 1970.  Dad sent me on my own at age 16 for six weeks. He trusted his boys. A week previous my soccer team flew to Los Angeles where we won the California State Championship. We won in overtime. I scored the winning goal. I was a hero. I was going to Finland on my own. I was a experienced with drugs and alcohol and girls liked me and I had made out and knew it was only a matter of time before I went all the way. Mom’s insanity was no longer a secret and as awful as it still was at least I wasn’t carrying it alone. I had a lot of friends of various description and my grades were good -- not that I cared all that much. I was an unstoppable force of of wonder and splendor. Soaring the lengths and depths of eternal opaque hugging happy perfection.

In Finland I marveled at the deep blues of all the lakes and the deep greens of all the trees. The place was clean the people were polite and quiet and very white and they spoke the same language I’d been hearing at family gatherings all my life except now it was all over. In the streets on trains and in cafes.  I took the train north to meet my paternal grandmother in the small town of Nivala where dad had been born and raised.

I was picked up at the train station by one of dad’s four sisters and her husband. We drove to the house. My grandmother emerged. It was like seeing Abraham Lincoln. Someone I’d heard about all my life and she was real. And she was colorful and funny (perhaps the genetic source for my wonderful sense of humor). I was in awe of this little woman. All five feet no inches of her.

Subsequently I met two more of my aunts and one of my dad’s brothers (the other had moved to California before I was born and was as grand an uncle as anyone ever had). I also met a dozen or so cousins some younger than me others my age and still others adults with children. All told my grandmother had 18 grandchildren. Not a bad haul.

Much of the trip I spent on my own traveling throughout Finland. Never lost. Never lonely. Never afraid. Never anything less than very happy.

The next 12 months were -- in retrospect -- anti-climatic but I was too happy with life to notice. The most momentous decision I made was which college I would attend. I picked Chico State because at the time it had one of the four top soccer programs in the state -- I was disinclined to leave California. The other three colleges were USF, UCLA and San Jose State. Two in the Bay Area and one in LA. Not interested. So sight unseen I enrolled in this school three hours north of Berkeley in the relatively small town of Chico. I did not realize that at the time that I was also going to one of the top party schools in the country. A well earned reputation that wouldn't start to fade until after I’d been part of that party scene for a few years.

I arrived in Chico for soccer tryouts and it was over 100 degrees. I was from Berkeley were hot was 75. This was fucking nuts and we were supposed to play soccer in it. But we did and I would sweat gallons but made the team and had a helluva time adjusting to not being the star.

Freshman year in college is freedom. Away from home no one to report to and once the soccer season was over it was like look out. Parties. Girls. Beer. Hanging out with the boys. Really discovering that whole male bonding process and trying to be an equal and showing your tough and macho and a little smart but not too much. There were so many rules to be a guy among guys and I was coming from Berkeley in the Sixties which was a different world and I was having to become a different person but I already thought I was special and better because like I said I was from Berkeley which was special transitive property I was special. An athlete and smarter than anyone and hipper and my better-than-thou didn’t go over well with everyone. Cocky son of a bitch.

I drank too much. Way too. I was too good for this bullshit man.  Classes were a bore. The parties were great my friends just fine but there had to be more. Much. Got grandma’s inheritance and after sophomore year split for Europe. No idea what I was doing. Living in the moment I guess.

"You Say You Want a Revolution..." Part Six of My Month Long Autobiographical Series - Countdown to 60

Call out the instigator
Because there's something in the air
We've got to get together sooner or later
Because the revolution's here
And you know it's right
And you know that it's right
- From ‘Something in the Air’ by Thunderclap Newman

I really didn’t know what I was doing or why I was there or who I was politically or what it was all about. I knew that it was the cool thing to do the right thing to do -- somehow I was sure -- and we were good and they were wrong and power to the people right on. Then from a helicopter flying above us came the tear gas. Clouds of it. On us. From above. Courtesy of the government.

I knew at the moment that I would never forget this as long as I lived. So far I was right.

There were gasps of disbelief incredulity shock and wonder and anger and fear and so we ran and ran.

Now I knew. Now I fucking well knew what I was doing and why I was there and who I was politically and what it was all about. I was a radical protesting US involvement in Vietnam and that the draft was wrong and that I had a duty as a citizen to protest though I hardly would ever again think of myself as an American. My supposed government had attacked me and others as we congregated on the University of California, Berkeley campus to protest the war and the ongoing ROTC program.

It was neither the first nor last time I would cut high school to join in protests on the Cal campus. But from now on I would have a greater sense of purpose. I’d followed the news closely since the Kennedy assassination via both Walter Cronkite on CBS and the newspapers. This was a time when there were lots of newspapers and they were thick and rich with information and cost little. TV didn’t dominate the news they just provided the moving pictures and summaries. There was no internet to provide even more figurative noise.

There was a lot to follow in the Sixties what with Vietnam and Civil Rights and then Black Power and the emerging women’s movement along with events in Europe and Africa and other parts of the Far East and the whole cold war and a new breed of politicians and politics sneaking into movies TV and especially music. Oh yeah the music. All these anthems to what we were doing and how we were feeling. It was being voiced by diverse styles from groups and people like Hendrix and the Buffalo Springfield and Neil Young and the Stones and Joan Baez and the Doors and of course The Beatles. Always The Beatles. The music confirmed the rightness of our vision and the importance of our mission and how it was all wrapped up in the cool of culture and the colorful. This was no black and white Eisenhower dark suited America. This was a tie dye spirited righteous hip Amerika. Right on!

Once I walked towards Sproul Plaza on the Cal campus for a demonstration and on the path saw Blue Meanies actually trying to hide behind little bushes. The Blue Meanies were what we called the tac squad officers who were bright blue uniforms. I also saw dozens of police at the track stadium evidently coordinating for the days activities. I later ran as the police charged us and saw a tear gas canister hurtling down in front of me. It was as if I was the wide receiver going out for a deep pass and the canister was the ball that was being thrown just out of my reach. It landed a few feet in front of me and I got a good full dosage in the face. I stumbled to the ground by Strawberry Creek and kneeled there. Someone came from behind me and pulled me up by the scruff of the neck. Fortunately it was not a cop. Whoever it was said “come on man you gotta keep going.” I did and eventually my vision came back. As I fled the campus that day there were cops spread out every twenty feet or so and they were grabbing protestors as they ran by. I waited until two had just nabbed someone and ran through the breach and didn’t stop until I was back in my afternoon class at Berkeley High.

I saw the national guard on street corners. I saw the national guard bivouacked at the park across the street from my high school. I saw people throwing rocks at cops. I saw people getting clubbed by night sticks.

I saw the best minds of my generation....

A spirit of rebellion and I was all about it. We were going to change the world for the better bringing peace love and justice. We represented the oppressed everywhere. Our enemies were the rich and powerful. Whether the police in riot gear or the dark suited short haired guys wearing sun glasses who were taking our pictures. Nixon symbolized the enemy perfectly as the squarest man in Amerika with his stupid short hair cut and awkwardness. Ronald Reagan then the governor of California was another hated enemy. He spoke his animus towards us in no uncertain terms the slimy greasy haired crypto fascist. We had heroes like the musicians and Mario Savio and Angela Davis and Jerry Rubin and other hip smart progressives. We were cool.

I believed in our cause. It was about youth and hair love and peace. Make love not war. Meanwhile I was getting stoned and playing soccer and following sports and watching stupid sit coms and arguing with dad about how long I could grow my hair. Oh yeah and I was also taking a real strong interest in girls. They were soft and pretty and had nice smiles and cute voices and their bodies moved in different ways when they walked. I was ridiculously shy especially because -- maybe -- some girls told me how cute I was and that felt really good but scared me and the first time I made out with a girl it was like a trip to the moon. Swoon.

"Psychedelic Shack That's Where It's At" Part Five of My Month Long Autobiographical Series - Countdown to 60

Follow your inner moonlight; don't hide the madness. - Allen Ginsberg

With other jocks I was the hippie. With hippies I was the jock. With squares I was a stoner with stoners I was a square. How did you want me? I’d be the opposite. But I was never confused I was always true to my inner whirling dervish of a brain all its high dives and pratfalls and whopping contradictions. I just wanted to be oppositional. And I was.

Mom finally came out. I guess she couldn’t contain it anymore. She moved from dad’s room and treated everyone to her own raging raving madness. Big brother came home one weekend from college and got the full dose. I heard him cry that night. I never had the luxury. Mom had always just been that way it had been my reality. Poor Dad. Figuratively a two by four had bashed him in the head. No sense to be of made of it. They had -- as he said to me years later -- "a good thing going." He was living the American dream. Now it was a nightmare. There was his loving wife screaming utter nonsense at him. At me. At the air. Well welcome to my world everyone. My misery at last had company.

For as long as I could remember I had hid in my imagination. Creating entire worlds. In some of them dwelled great athletes performing amazing exploits (like the imaginary basketball star Horatio Kumquat.) Others took place on European battlefields during World War II where I -- hopelessly outnumbered -- killed or captured dozens of Nazis. In still others I was a James Bond like super spy. My vivid imagination took me on some wild trips. Now some more serious if artificial trips were to come. Whippee!

The terrifying sounds of my own life pounding desperately against my ear drums from inside. The sense that my life force was ebbing away from my  body and heading to the stratosphere. The sheer terror of being. Of being a being. Of living. Alive felt like pure horror. Depression would have seemed bliss in comparison. The room felt a quarter of the size and there could not be any stopping the walls from growing ever closer until they consumed my being. It felt like nothingness would follow. A void that I’d live through fully aware.  Taunted by the spacial reality of my own hell. You see the LSD had turned on me. It was twisting me inside out.

What a good friend it had started out to be.

Was Mooney and Norman who encouraged me. They’d tripped a couple of times. Surely this must be the next logical step for me in my progression. My raising awareness. Taking consciousness to a new height. Discovery of self and answers to age old questions about the nature of the universe. I was on my way to great times and answers. Enlightenment.

I was 16 years old.

Trippin.

It was less than a year since I’d first gotten drunk. I hadn’t yet gotten stoned. I was a virgin. I was a junior in high school. I was about to have my mind blown for the cost of one hit of acid -- $1. One dollar to expand my brain. I would never be the same.

The three of us went up to Tilden Park atop and among the Berkeley Hills. A wooded area would be ideal, or so I was told.

Dropped the acid. It would take about an hour for it to “come on.”

Where was a I first where was I last how do you conquer a brain so fast. Rolling hills rolling trees  moving flowers and stationary bees. Suddenly I was watching myself from a far. As if. Gone then back. This was trippin’. Whole new concept to perception. Wild weird and wonderful mix with whole grain natural adolescent confusion. A profusion of thought coming from deeper recesses of my mind. Loss of control. It had been given to the drug which told me where to go. Freedom from the conventional thinking slavery to the Lysergic Acid Diethylamide. But I did not care.

The world of my dad’s Oldsmobile little league record players grandma’s peanut butter cookies cub scouts Gomer Pyle and even on out of whack mother seemed decadent silly arcane and so fucking square. I was in the world of understanding I had left common Earth bound thinking and was in another universe. Floating through the thoughts and ideas and conceptions only accessible to mind expanders.

And it was fun.

Oh I was having fun. Rolling down a grassy hill, tumbling and squealing was the most -- the -- most fun. Fun. Wow. I’d ever. Had. Wonderful this was all of it and

I walked and talked we said so much that was so profound as we watched the colors and experienced this man. We walked through a picnic site where a family was picnicking. “I’m back” I said with amazement. For my brain had gone elsewhere for a bit and had returned just as I passed by these people. They stared at me in wonder as I continued: “I was gone but now I’m back.”

Squares! Straight people who didn’t trip who weren’t so cool as we were. We were the coolest people on Earth. Est. Most. Superlatives. Now I teach them now to my foreign students. Comparatives and superlatives and how I lived them then. Comparing always myself with the norm and being the superlative most. LSD was making me even more fucking arrogant because I was no smarter and cooler than the rest of the world. So far out.

So really really really really really really really really really far. Far fucking out. Man.

The trip was a pure joy and Mooney and Norman and I were kings of our worlds. And when I came down it was a gentle peaceful landing. Thank you tour guides thank you for taking me on this trip. My first. Memorable like you wouldn’t understand the word memorable ever again because you had a new way of looking at the world. Zowie. High!

Now it all made sense. We were part of something bigger. This huge collective consciousness that was all intertwined and wrapped up in one huge psychedelic sense of otherness. We were beyond the squares the Nixons the suits the dead enders and business people. We were really on to something special. Had access, the key to really understanding things like what that monolith was in 2001. We were riding high. Young and in love with life and for peace and rock music and ending all war. The world didn’t have to be black and white (Leave it to Beaver -- you’re out!) there were colors man. So many and they could dance and swirl and so could we. Dropping acid was the way to get out by getting inside our own brains and seeing how they related to the universe...or some shit like that.

Man we were going to have fun.

And the truth of course was that I had no fucking idea what was going on just that I wanted to be part of it and be able to keep doing what I wanted to especially if it meant not really having to work hard at things except maybe playing soccer which I was really so good at and dug doing because of that and I was going to be a superstar and it was cool to play soccer because it wasn’t a sport for the squares or the Nixons or the suits but a European South American kind of thing that the squares didn’t really dig but it was so much cooler than baseball and football and basketball (which by the way I still dug but that was a separate issue although I’m not sure how I couldn’t think of all that shit at once you know plus there was still a bunch of that shit on TV that I liked to watch though I’d admit to few that I did). So I was part of something but my own person who’d do his own thing high. High. Hi.

Bleeding orange and rapid fire raspberry and digging the tools of the decadent likeness of the sapphire wonderings of later people and dances of rebellion and sticking those purple guitar notes into the darkness and creating the light and the bright and the out of the sight and I could and would and should and there was wood and carpet and larger and lime and fuck the slime of the establishment and no war in Vietnam or any place and me me me me me me I was the one. Let’s all have fun and if you don’t follow our grooviness then you’re part of the problem and the enemy unless you’re like my Dad or another Finn or a soccer player or one of my favorite athletes but not if you’re like a conservative. Blasting the rhymes and stopping the crimes against us. Privilege. Wap! Smash and grab the perfection of this wonderful being of beingness and I understand it all or at least how to get there. Another hit of acid. Okay?

And I did. Next time it was still good but not as. Next next time there was a hard landing coming down and I did not dig. Eventually I got to the point where the landings started early and they were horrific crashes in which misery was multiplied by like a thousand and I needed to take thorazine which Mooney had to keep from flipping out completely. Maybe booze and coke and weed would do for me. This trip pin' stuff was too fucking much if you fell.

"The Beatles Change Everything" Part Four of My Month Long Autobiographical Series - Countdown to 60

“The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.”  - from 'On the Road' by Jack Kerouac 

I was the first person at my school to learn of President Kennedy's assassination.  I always walked to grandma's for lunch as noted previously. Usually I sat down to eat and watch The Donna Reed show but this one Friday there was no Donna Reed. Instead some guys in suits were talking about the president being dead. I thought that John F. Kennedy had to be the greatest guy on the planet at least the smartest and most important -- hey, I was nine years old. After eating I caught up with my friends at the school playground and told them the news. They didn't believe me. Why should they? We returned to class after the bell rang but Ms. Phillips -- our teacher who seemed to be about 100 years old -- wasn't waiting for us. A minute or so later she walked in with a few tears on her cheeks and told us the president had been killed. (It made quite an impression on my classmates that I had been telling the truth and that they had heard it from me first.) We got to go home. Like a lot of Americans we spent a most of the weekend in front of our TV sets. Dumbstruck. However I was in stupid Sunday school when Oswald was killed by Ruby. You better believe the president's assassination had a profound affect on me. For one thing I took it for granted that those rare public figures who we trusted or admired could be taken away. When four years later Dr. King and RFK were killed well I had very little faith in ....much of anything.  Jaded at an early age. Helluva way to go through life. First mom was a loony now the president killed. What the hell could you count on? (I later spent a lot of time research the JFK assassination and have become convinced that he was killed as the result of a conspiracy that the government had covered up. So add cynicism to the mix.) I was nine so I kept on keeping on my primary focus was on being a kid.  But it felt like there was permanent overcast until....

Everything changed a few weeks before my 10th birthday. There was this rock group called The Beatles that appeared on The Ed Sullivan. I was curious. I watched. I was stunned. The world opened up in ways I hadn’t imagined. There was music and hair and girls and this feeling this really very different feeling. Like there was a world aside from games and school and parents and it existed as much within me -- if I let it -- as it did outside of me. But it was this all encompassing thing that was beautiful and had....

Rhythm.

That was it. There was a beat. And there was excitement beyond touchdowns and home runs. There were dreams and reality mixed together in this wonderful collage like I had new blood. Wow.

(I had to grow my hair out.)

I had to think about being...cool. Cool became like a thing in my life. A style a way a separateness from the ordinary and I knew then if I didn’t already that I was different. I was special beyond just being like a unique person and all I was part of this difference this new thing this cool and this rhythm and this beat. Excitement. Yeah know I could fly. I didn’t have these words for it yet but soon The Who would say it: talkin’ bout my generation.

And ya know what else? Fuck the traffic patrol -- that was for squares. That was for them. Ya see at Jefferson if you were in the 5th and 6th grades you could be in the traffic patrol and get a special hat and sweater and carry the big sign on the street corners before and after school and you’d get out of class a couple times a week to drill. No no not me. I was eligible all right which made it all the sweeter to say no thanks and that thanks was not emphasized but sort of out of the corner of the mouth. So while the “good kids” had drills and the girls went to home ec I was left with the bad boys and damned if I didn’t find some kindred spirits. It was The Beatles for them and being different and knowing we were special. On we go.

So yeah my cockiness came out early. Helped along by my abilities in sports. I wouldn’t know true stardom until I started excelling in soccer in my teens but I was pretty good at everything despite being short.

I tried my had at music but had no affinity for it. That was okay I’d someday be famous for other things like writing a novel. I was on my way and The Beatles would provide the soundtrack.

"Paralysis by Analysis" Part Three of My Month Long Autobiographical Series - Countdown to 60

I have a friend
I've never seen
He hides his head
inside a dream
Someone should call him
and see if he can come out.
Try to lose
the down that he's found.

                   --  Neil Young from Only Love Can Break Your Heart

Yeah like I was saying I was a fun loving lad surrounded by love and brimming with good health and energy. But....

Imagine the terrified little boy cowering in a corner of the house desperately wishing it weren’t so pretending it wasn’t so gamely trying to block it all out. It was too horrible to fathom let alone contemplate. There was no making sense of it so my very young mind had to pretend. Pretend it wasn’t there. Thus developed an acute sensitivity to unpleasant noises and a furtive oft employed imagination. I knew from blocking out the horrors that reality could provide.

You see it was mom. Dear old mom. The person who gave birth to me at whom’s breast I suckled. It was my mother. She was a raving lunatic. At times that is. Like times when we were alone in the house together (and presumably when she was by herself). When big brother or dad came home, mom returned to normal. Goddamned what a cruel joke to pull on a small child. Adding this confusion to the mix of angry ravings at absent or imaginary figures emanating from mother dear.

The notion of telling a sole what I was exposed to never occurred to me and I never did it. She had to -- and eventually years later did -- “come out” as a loonie herself. I’d be damned if I’d tell dad or anyone else: “say you know when you’re not around mom cusses and yells and has imaginary conversations and it scares me really badly.” I could barely admit the truth to myself. And hell they might not even believe me. What five year old outs mother to father as a crazy person?

So there it was. Stark insanity. And there I was. Innocent youth. Time heals all wounds but can leave permanent scars. I’ve shared this story with people ever since leaving home. Mostly of course with a string of psychiatrists. Mostly strict Freudians with furrowed brows and stoic faces betraying no emotion. Offering no comments though sometimes admitting to some skepticism. Once when I was 19 years old a novice shrink brought to a room full of experienced colleagues to relate my peculiar story. There was a large oval table with half a dozen analysts staring at me as I entered. Their cold eyes considered me as I said “hi.” No one responded. I felt awkward. But I told my story. They regarded me with interest. The woman among them seemed to frown at one point but whether it was out of sympathy or disapproval of me was unclear. The consequence of this sharing was...well nothing that I know of. I’m sure that my novice shrink consulted with his wise veteran colleagues but he never shared any of it with me. Not a thing. And I asked. I only got him to talk when I announced I was going to quit therapy as I found it unproductive. He protested vehemently but was unable to give a compelling reason for why I should continue baring my soul to a person who might as well have been sound asleep.

This was just one in a series of seeming deaf mutes I was to recount my childhood to. There were two who managed to say more than: our time is up. One was not a psychiatrist at all but a therapist. She was a young woman about my age at the time and she actually expressed thoughts and suggestions and was -- dare I say it -- thus helpful. The second was the most recent head shrinker I saw. Yeah he spoke too but mostly in an effort to talk about our mutual interests in the Giants and Cal sports. On my dime he wanted to talk about these things! When I was having financial concerns he suggested I touch my father for some of my inheritance. Even back when I was in my most drug addled states I wouldn’t have contemplated such a course.

Suffice to say I have quite mixed feelings on psychiatry. The worst damage they do is an insistence on prescribing medication for the slightest cause. The last bloke tried to get to take pills because street noises bothered me.

Well that was a helluva digression.

Point is that my childhood wasn’t all peaches and cream. But I was a Cub Scout, played organized football soccer baseball and basketball, went to Summer camps rode my bike, played hide and seek and watched endless hours of moronic sitcoms and smiled constantly. People can be pretty fucking resilient.

"Just Call me Rip" Part Two of My Month Long Autobiographical Series - Countdown to 60

That's me on dad's lap. Mom next to us then grandparents and big brother far right front.

Genius is the recovery of childhood at will. -
Arthur Rimbaud

I was really really good at being a child. I knew playing. I knew imagination. I knew games. I did not know in my youth brooding or prolonged sulks or pouts I was an unabashed lover of fun and pursued it with precocious zeal bordering on mania. I loved to run and be chased and to throw and kick and laugh and giggle. I loved attention but not affection -- no never that. Love was to be unspoken and not displayed just sensed. I -- this wild bundle of cute -- received love unconditionally from family and friends.

My parents and big brother and a few other relatives called me Rip. There’s no one around anymore to ask about the origins of the nickname but I like to assume it had something to do with the manner in which I tore through my existence.

Trees. I loved to climb them and once at about five I fell from one and landed head first. A rather nasty cut opened up and blood poured. (I remember this from my own memory not from being told about it.) My dad took me the mirror and showed me my bleeding head and said that as a man I needn’t cry. So I stopped then and there and that may well have been the last time I cried until I was an adult. He took me to the doctor for stitches. The doctor expressed amazement at my bravery. I knew how to impress my old man.

You would think that I bought hook line and sinker into the whole macho lifestyle but that wasn’t  the case. I did use hook line and sinker a few times to fish but it never became a passion. My hunting days ended before they started. I had a bee bee gun with which I shot a bird from quite a distance. I remember watching the dead bird fall from it’s branch to the ground and feeling sickly sad even as dad came over to congratulate my marksmanship. I never wanted to kill an animal again.

My earliest memories are of the duplex we lived in until I was four but they are vague and doubtless influenced by what elders subsequently told me. I do remember our move to 1426 Grove Street where I was to spend the next 13 years. It was the classic middle American house to grow up in with a big backyard and trees and lots of dirt and even a shack where dad kept his tools. Later dad would build me a treehouse right there in our redwood tree.

Berkeley in the early 1960s seemed less the hotbed of radical protests and hippies it was to become than a bucolic small town straight out of Leave it to Beaver. Just like the Beaver I had a wiser taller older brother. Picket fences and corner market and burger joint with a jukebox where teens hung out helped round out our neighborhood scene. A few blocks away was an empty lot rich in blackberry bushes that I used to go to with big brother for fruit feasts that would stain our sweatshirts. That lot has since housed a bank an apartment building and a store.

In my childhood Berkeley still had traditional parades down main street that wouldn’t have seemed out of place in Anytown USA. The mayor was a Republican. My parents were Democrats as were about 99% of all Finnish-Americans and my mother was a poll worker on the day of the contentious 1960 election. Political rancor was not so acerbic then what with the absence of cable TV and the internet. My early memories are of an idyllic life featuring the greatest dad in the world a cool big brother fun cousins and friends and loving grandparents. There was a dark cloud amidst all this however....

I started school almost a full year earlier than I should have and consequently I was invariably the youngest of any given group I was in for many years to come. This has helped make me feel like the kid in any group I'm in no matter that I'm years older than anyone else.

I want to Jefferson Elementary School which was just a block away from my grandparents' house so like my big brother before me I went to Grandma's house everyday for lunch through the sixth grade where I was joined by a golden retriever named Sisu (a Finnish word for courage that has special significance to my people). And I walked to and from school despite a distance of about seven blocks. Children were allowed to walk the streets unsupervised back then. There was infinitely less paranoia. The idea of play dates would have seemed ludicrous. We managed to find people to play with on our own. One of my first friends and my best for many years was Mark who himself had some Finnish ancestry. He would go on to take LSD an ungodly number of times and do severe damage to his brain as a consequence. But as a child he shared my zeal for play and the pursuit of it with what can only be called reckless abandon.

"I Become" Part One of My Month Long Autobiographical Series - Countdown to 60

That's a very young me with my dad.

"These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call,
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo

The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation

That's dying in a corner of the sky,
These are the days of miracle and wonder

And don't cry baby don't cry
Don't cry" - - From Boy in the Bubble by Paul Simon 

On the final day of this month I will turn the ripe old age of 60. That’s six decades. Three score. Three fifths of a century. It seems impossible that I should hit this milestone given that it was seemingly yesterday that I entered kindergarten. It was in fact in 1959 when Eisenhower was president and the Civil Rights battle was just heating up and The Beatles were years away from world wide fame and there were only 16 major league baseball teams. I do not feel old. Not a bit of it. Not only am I in tip top physical health, but I still reckon myself as a kid. There is at long last a certain maturity to me but not the slightest bit of fossilization. I have a few old fogie tendencies along the lines of “back when I was young we never...” but I have no illusions about the good old days being better. For one thing when I grew up people smoked everywhere. Sports venues, busses, movie theaters, offices and homes. No one smoked in our house but we had ashtrays about for smoking visitors and I never remember anyone forbidding smoking in their residence.  Also “back in the day” African Americans were colored or negro if not worse and the idea that one could be president was not seriously presented. All Asians were Orientals unless a man was known to be from China in which case he was a Chinaman. Gays were queers and simply not mentioned. The idea of gay marriage in the early 1960’s would have been greeted as a very silly joke indeed. Anyway this digression serves merely to point out that I’m perfectly happy to be living in 2014 despite the fact that being here carries with it the knowledge that my time on this planet is likely well over half done. If not much more. Intellectually I know death awaits but I feel like the proverbial spring chicken.

My ambitious goal here is to countdown during this month with reminiscences from my first 60 years. While I intend to do so chronologically that may not prove feasible. I had originally planned on a post a day but for the love of god I’ve got other things to do. After all I’m not getting paid for my these blog posts (would that I were) and I’ve got a few other responsibilities in my life -- chief of which is gainful employment in a job that keeps me very very busy (albeit quite happy). 

I hope this series -- such as it is or will be -- is in some way illuminating for anyone who might choose to read it. I flatter myself that it might and am confident that it will -- if nothing else -- help me put into perspective what I’ve done and failed to do since that day in late Winter 1954  when -- to paraphrase Shakespeare -- I shuffled onto this mortal coil.

(Please note that future editions of this chronicle will be absent a lengthy preamble and thus a much quicker read.)

I herewith begin at the beginning.

My parents were Aimo Hourula born in Nivala Finland in 1916 and Gertrude Kurki born of Finnish parents in San Francisco in 1920. They met in New York in 1945 were married in Baltimore that year and subsequently moved to Berkeley where my mother spent most of her childhood and her undergraduate university years. in 1947 they had a son Robert and my arrival was on February 28 1954. Dad was a carpenter and a damn good one. There was a building boom in the Bay Area that lasted my father’s entire career and that -- coupled with his sterling reputation -- kept him employed regularly. A family could live on one good salary back then and afford a house and two cars and plenty of food and vacations. We never wanted for anything that I can recall. Dad had
a colorful past to entertain us with. He fought in the Finno-Russian Winter War then joined the merchants marines just as World War II was getting underway. Two of his ships were strafed by German planes and a third was sunk by a Japanese submarine in the Arabian Sea with dad at the helm. He’d pointed out the periscope to the first mate who scoffed saying that it wasn’t really a periscope. Later on a lifeboat dad refrained from administering an I told you so.

Mom had grown up bilingual in Finnish and English as I was to do. She excelled in school and went to Cal then to Colombia University in New York with a detour to join the WACs during the war. She was a bright chatty pretty woman who tragically was struck by mental illness in her thirties as will be detailed here later.

I was born into a happy home with lots of extended family including my mother’s parents and childless sister and one of my dad’s younger brothers his wife and brood and two of dad’s cousins and many others from the old country. There were Finns everywhere so I was to grow up quite happily in two cultures.

McCarthyism was on the wane but the fear of communism would persist well into the '60s. The space race was a few years away and it would be another decade before the cultural revolution symbolized by The Beatles and drugs and free love and long hair and protests would begin. The historic Supreme Court decision of Brown v. Broad of Education would be handed down a few months after I was born. The Montgomery Bus Boycott would soon follow and with it the remarkable period of Dr. King and the Civil Rights Movement. Eight months after I was born the baseball Giants -- still playing in New York -- would win the World Series and not do so again until 2010. They would come to San Francisco when I was four. Cal football was in the dying days of their last serious heyday. We're still waiting for the next. Elizabeth II was queen of England and so something things never change. Jack Kerouac had but one published novel to his name and it wasn't On the Road. Allen Ginsberg's reading of Howl was a few years away. Films still suffered from censorship and were thus unable to use profanity or depict sex or violence or many real social issues. Unions were strong and workers respected and liberal wasn't a dirty word. Finns were moving in steady numbers to the US many to the Bay Area.

My life was to be shaped by many of the events happening and in the offing. The Beatles, drugs, protests, Cal, the Giants, the Beats, the Hippies, the modern film era. I was a healthy baby and by all accounts a happy one. I was ready to face the world, always ready, forever ready ready ready ready.