www.DemocraticFundamentalism.org - About Chuck & Corruption

mytruth
About Me

Page 2

My Introduction To Oregon

In Jacksonville, we lived in a small house on an acre of land, one of many parcels of land just like it in the general area.

There was an old feed shed out back that we cleaned out for me to stay in. I was into putting black light posters all over the walls. It was sort of a collage of posters, and clippings from newspapers and magazines. It was great because I had my Fender tremelo reverb amp, a really nice Gibson acoustic with electric pickups, and I could play every Glen Campbell and Johhny Hartford song there was in cluding his version of Mason William's Classical Gas.

I would bring in the neighborhood kids and give them free guitar lessons. I was always the recreation director, teaching them how to make bows and arrows from small brush, all kinds of things I just made up as I went along. I always felt honored, because we'd have little contests after making these things, and I didn't have any prizes to give them. They always agreed that whatever one of the craft projects was that I made myself would be the prize. And so it was.

There was this one kid, though, who was always getting into my room and messing things up and breaking things, and one day I went in there and he was just about to light a poster on the wall on fire, and I was mad. I got him running out that door so fast, he knew he didn't dare stay. And, with him about 100 feet I way, I popped him in the butt with a pellet from my .177 caliber pellet gun. I'm a very good shot.

That was the second, and last time, I had to take a lesson about guns from my memories of my father. The first time, I shot a bird that didn't die, and then brought it home to nurse it back to health. He was furious. His rule: never point a gun at someone unless you intend to kill them, and if you do point a gun at someone, don't hesitate, pull the trigger. So, he made me shoot it point blank. I got the message. And I've only pointed a gun at one person since, though I've shot alot of guns. I relate to the boy in The Yearling, the one with the pet fawn, very much.

The real problem was that I was used to living somewhere where you didn't have to lock any doors. That's when I learned about keeping honest people honest, by locking the door. Why put a friendship in jeopardy with an otherwise good person by leaving it to temptation when I could so easily just lock the door?

Kind of like regulation and corporations.

Anyway, he and I made up, and continued to be friends.

I went to a school for a few months called McLaughlin Middle School. It was huge compared to what I was used to. I think Scotts Valley Elementary had maybe 500 kids in it. This was like 3000 or more. That didn't bother me, though, because I was very social.

I made alot of firends, and being from California, most of what they wanteed to teach was stuff I already knew. Even the electronics classes. I sensed they were trying very hard, but, like everyone who's ever tried, they found me pretty hard to pigeon hole. They decided to get me into math. To me, math was a useful concept, that, when needed, could easily be looked up in a book.

I always viewed books as an extenison of my mental database, not an external source. My job was to notice key words in publications and manuals, and then, whenever I needed them, I would remember approximately where to find it... sometimes I could even see the word as it was printed on the page... and then go to it. I always sensed a distinct difference between short term memory and long term memory, and noticed that you could go to a lecture or read a book, and not be able to recall it immediately after, but the next day, after sleeping, it could be recalled easily. I always figured that sleep allowed for the transfer of short term data to long term storage. It's like a dog with a behavioral problem who goes to sleep one night, has a bad dream, and the next day, suddenly doesn't have that problem anymore. It finally got transferred to the database.

So I developed a study habit of taking copious notes while reading the text, reviewing the notes 2 days before a major test, rereading briefly the day before the test, anything that seemed unclear, or important dates I knew I would be asked about. I wasn't a straight A student, but I did well. Especially on essays and verbal tests. They called me an under-achiever. I'm not sure,still, what they meant. I was satisfied with my grades, I didn't feel motivated to worry about impressing anyone, and I felt like I did a good job actually learning the concepts, and contextualing them into personal relevance.

And I developed methods to teach other people by planting little seeds that I knew would lead in a day or so to a new opportunity to give them another insight. At Scotts Valley School, I found out 2 years later, they called me the philosopher, though they never said it to my face. And I remember constantly having kids around me, asking questions about how to conduct themselves and about morals and ethics.... and I thought we were just talking all that time. In retrospect, I often think that I could have been a real positive influence on my firends had we not moved to Oregon.

So, math was not something I really cared about. And, 6 weeks of the Honk Kong flu very shortly afterward made it a moot point.

I'll always remember the day the principal of the school drove up in the driveway and saw me in the feed trough in front of the pasture, sitting there in the sun, and it felt good. It was only the second day I had been able to get out of bed.

He just looked at me and said "Guess you've decided you don't have to go to school anymore, eh Rehn?" I just looked at him and said "Nice to see you too."

He said, "I wanna take a look at where you live". So I walked him to the shed just a few feet away and I opened up the door, and he looked inside and saw all the cool black light posters and collages (I liked the Buffalo Sprngfield Poster the best, for what it's worth) and all he said was "Damn."

I'm sure he thought I was on drugs. I can understand why. But I wasn't. I had seen all the Sonny Bono movies showing how smoking marijuana would cause you to look in a mirror and go crazy and hallucinate and kill yourself... and I remembered all the stories from Santa Cruz, a place that had a huge mafia operated drug business importing most of the drugs from south of the border, and alot of people died and took acid and really hurt themselves and did crazy things, so I decided I wasn't going to go that route.

But, like most authoritarians, the rule is shoot first,ask questions later. I could never respect that.

One time when I was 8, I had a baseball coach who liked to yell and scream and cuss at the players. One day he decided to do it to me. Now, I was a good player, a good team player, and I'd do anything he'd ask. He said "Rehn, get your f-ing ass on the field." I just looked at him, and decided I would just sit there. He said it again. I just sat there. Finally, after ignoring me a few minutes, he came over and said "Rehn, what the hell is your problem?"

I looked at him straight in the eye and said "When you decide you're going to treat me with respect I'll be glad to take the field." He apologized, and never yelled at me again.

So, the principal said to me "Rehn, you're f-ing up." I said, "So are you".

That kind of stuff was hard for me to hear, because I had always had the sense that my teachers and parents treated me different than the other kids... I wasn't quite sure how. I think they knew I didn't have a malicious bone in my body, I always did my work, I was prompt, polite, what I think they called a Perfect Adaptive Child or something like that. So, it seemed like they pretty much let me do whatever I wanted to do, and mostly helped me get what I wanted and got out of my way. But mostly, I knew they trusted me, and I honored that trust because it meant freedom to me.

The principal marched to the front door and my mom answered the door and I heard a bunch of yelling and I only went to that school about 2 more weeks before we moved to a 20 acre parcel in White City, Oregon. It was on the corner of Peace and Justice Streets. There was a minister on the Justice side, and a Police Officer on the Peace side. I always thought that was interesting.

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