About Before the Internet Age: Gratitude for Cell Phones and Ditch the Hitch-hiking.

My internet connection crashed yesterday afternoon, and I felt molested to the upmost degree about that. My partner and I were in the middle of what is to us doing important work---building a website to market art resources and supplies at Art Easels for the Artist. By the way I ask readers to do us a favor and check out our website and leave a comment---this will encourage the traffic that leads to higher ranking in the search engines.  
 

My partner Osnelly and I at Mall del Rio in Cuenca, Ecuador

Anyway, it´s late morning now and my web connection is still down, but a trusted and experienced internet systems engineer at damonbreeden@gmail.com  is going to come over at 3 pm to re-establish the connection. I am fully confident he will succeed.

Obviously my tranquility is associated with a reliable and fast moving internet connection. I am tied to the net. It is a part of me and I am a part of it. But I am old enough to well remember the days when no internet existed, and I have a story about what that was like. My six brothers and sisters and I were children, in the family station wagon, and dad was driving and mom was with dad in the front seat. We were traveling from San Francisco to Los Angeles and were about to ascend the mountains surrounding the approach to greater Los Angeles. That´s when our vehicle broke down due to mechanical mishap. Dad exited, stuck out his thumb, and started asking for a ride. He started hitch-hiking. He needed a tow to a gas station and he complained---for over an hour no one was stopping while it was plain to see he was a family man. This was circa 1964, well before the invention of cell phones. These problems and similar problems no longer exist because we have mobile phones.

Who would argue this advancement is not to our advantage?

 

The Osborne 1 computer (1981)

But I have a point to make that´s an offshoot angle or perspective about this. I myself did not grow up with the internet, computers and cellphones around in daily life. As a result their technology is always going to be somewhat foreign to me regardless of how many courses or studies of computers I may take. It´s like language. If someone´s native tongue is English he or she will never quite be able to speak an acquired, second language learned in adulthood with the same fluency as English.

The second language never gets ingrained like the mother tongue did. So it is with computer fluency for those who grew up before computers were part and parcel of daily life. They will never be as comfortable with the technology as are their sons and daughters, not to mention their grandchildren.

Something about it is a fascination to me. The internet has changed people´s capabilities---young people adapting to the world the way it is and becoming capable of guiding earth into a future which we would never have had absent the expansion of computer and internet expertise.
I live in what some term a third world country---Ecuador. But yesterday I noticed an Ecuadorian boy about five years old playing a digital game on his hand phone. He was moving his fingers around that keypad with ease---born of skill developed at a tender age. Be that as it may about Ecuador, it makes little difference. That boy will be painting the internet of the future with colors native to Ecuador.

Did Tears Fall for the Children of Palo Alto?

The night storm had vanished and I looked at broken black clouds over the city of Palo Alto. Rain had plummeted day after day, pelting the ground in a concert of constant deluge until at last dawn hours stirred. I viewed a wet street empty save for solitary cars directed east or west across a Caltrain railroad track. It was 2011.  
 

A stretch of Caltrain track in Palo Alto

 

One after another students from Palo Alto´s highly accredited high schools were awaiting death on the track in the path of oncoming trains. This epidemic of suicide had alerted the media. ABC and NBC news reporters appeared with cameramen to interview local officials.  

I guarded the tracks as a security officer. I witnessed how these calamities wounded the heart of this town in California´s wealthy Silicon Valley.

Downtown Palo Alto

This blond, slender 40-something woman always wearing blue jeans walked daily, across the track on the opposite side of the street. She´d pause, look both ways, then sprint over to hand to me a cold can of coke. Not once or twice mind you---she always did it. And every time she did she expressed in that action love for the lives of the children of Palo Alto.  

Late, late at night a car stops, the teen-age driver exits; he opens the trunk, grabs a beer and sets it down in the middle of the street, then without word said he drives away.

The Hispanic gardener in the truck with its lawnmower and rakes and ladder in the back---the driver waits for a train to pass. It´s scorching hot and the gardener hands over to me a cold bottle of water.  

Many times, indeed so many it was not uncommon, people would stop their cars on chilly nights or balmy days to exit and deliver to me a cup of coffee and donuts or cookies.
 

On one grey drizzly night a pretty Philippine woman arrives at my guard post and what she does is she chats with me. She keeps me company for almost an hour. I´m a 61 year old fat man with balding hair. I know the gift of her pleasant companionship was given less out of concern for me and more for love of Palo Alto´s youngsters.

A middle-aged man in a short sleeved white shirt would come during the day once a week to stand beside the tracks. He carried a bible and would read scriptural passages, then raising an arm skyward he´d pray. I saw this happen and I knew the reason. The man loved the young people of Palo Alto. Not infrequently I saw women make the sign of the cross as they drove over the tracks.

At the many intersections of street and track, volunteers with walky-talky radios and beaming searchlights would patrol the region at night until the last train run at 1 a.m.  A report might signal a teenager had been spotted hanging about the tracks at such and such a location, and it looked scary. A call to police would transpire and I knew these volunteers loved the children of their community. I know it now.

A Caltrain train

Blinking red lights and clanging bells warn of an approaching train about every twenty minutes, either on the track north to San Francisco or south to San Jose. Mechanical arms adjust down automatically to block passage across the tracks. The light on the face of the locomotive shines in the distance and I watch, and wait until the tracks clear, until the train speeds past with steel thunder and whooshing air. I did this job for a year.

 

 

    

 

My Most Personal Story: About Mom

My mom was an adept conversationalist, proper in dress and demeanor, and well read. In New Orleans where she grew up, she had been a high school radio announcer and member of the debate team. She knew me well enough to realize I had an irreversible condition even before I did, and she told me it was the only part about me that had ever really worried her. My mom had actually worried about me.

I’m going to tell this history in a non-judgmental way---as much as I can, I won’t allow emotion to muddy or cloud the telling of it. No matter how my mom had treated me in these particulars, I acknowledge the ways in which she operated against me were actuated by conflicts from which she herself suffered. They contorted her and attended to me via her in a vicious manner throughout the majority of my minor years.

The deepest root of the matter was that sensual and sexual feelings in me were enigma to my mom. They antagonized her. The innate desires that attracted me to girls horrified her and so as a child much of the time I was on high alert.

My parents when I was six and seven years old often monitored me in my bed at night for any slight, muffled signal that I was “touching myself.” Whether I was or wasn’t---if they thought I was--- I risked a spanking. I felt dread and associated pleasure with pain. I hid. I lied to escape bitter consequences of forthrightness.

I have always been enamored of women---as a kid I was--- and I am now as an adult. The feelings beg for satisfaction and expression. I always wanted to have fun with girls. I always wanted to hold hands with a girl I really liked. I wanted always to walk with a sweetheart in a park or on a beach.

But mom laid down rules. I was forbidden to deliberately walk with a girl home from school, i.e. seek out the girl to walk with her; walking home from school with a girl was permitted only if it should occur by chance.

Another rule forbade the entrance of girls I knew into the family home.

This next requires explanation. Every summer my parents sent me to San Francisco for a two or three week vacation at the house of my maternal grandmother. Before going one year, when I was eleven or twelve, mom issued an order forbidding me to enter the house of any girl while in San Francisco. I did anyway. This was reported to her by a sibling after the vacation, and Mom grounded me for the rest of the summer.
In 6^th grade a boys' and girls' party was held for members of the class. After the party separate slumber parties were planned for the girls and the boys. Mom refused permission to attend the mixed party but granted permission to go to the boys' slumber party.

At my grammar school in 7^th grade a sock hop was held in one of the classrooms and I attended contrary to the wishes of mom. A sibling reported the disobedience and I was reprimanded.

Mom forbade me to see the film “Westside Story.”

One afternoon--- a group of mothers who lived in the neighborhood and who had children, friends of mine, attending the grammar school I attended came to visit mom. They knocked on the door and mom let them into the house. I was watching and listened while perched up the staircase out of view. The women were asking mom to allow more freedom to me in regard to going to dances and mixing with girls in general. In short order mom curtly showed them to the door.

When I was 13 years old, our family went on a Catholic Church retreat to the desert. I met the most beautiful girl there I had ever seen, by far, and we clicked instantly. It was love at first sight and for two weeks I was living in heaven on earth laughing and enjoying companionship with this girl. Her eyes just sparkled. At the end of the retreat, we exchanged mailing addresses. A few weeks later, my folks called me into the living room. Mom was holding an open envelope and she had extracted and read the letter inside. She tore it to pieces in front of me and I realized then it had been a letter to me by that girl in the desert. On the inside I seethed at the insult and disregard to my privacy but didn't say a word.

When I was a junior in high school, I was on the phone with a cute blond and mom came with arms akimbo and stern face and stood inches away from me, making it impossible to have a private conversation.

These were all invasions against the heterosexual masculinity in me in a long standing war waged by mom.

When I reached 17 years of age I decided I had had enough. I began to devote myself to dissipation. I got high on drugs and stayed high on drugs as much as possible---I trashed the work ethic. My parents couldn't take it and kicked me out of the house and I joined the army. I took a discharge 16 months later and for the next nine years I lived on welfare in various northern California locations.

One day many years later, in another era, after I recovered and was leading a self-sustaining life, I was visiting my parents at their home in Los Angeles. Mom and I were sitting in the living room with other family across from one another. Our eyes met and mom’s body jerked erect. She stiffened. She didn't do the jerk; the jerk had been done to her. Then I saw a curl of what looked similar to black smoke rise above her, and felt that the demon---that tormenter---was revealing itself.

Last week, I was preparing to do the Essential Somatic Movements contained in the CD by Somatic Educator Martha Peterson.

I watched and listened to this gentle and caring woman explain how the movements eliminate pain. She encapsulated everything about the embodiment of the female gender that's especially wonderful. Innate wisdom, compassion, sincerity. And I couldn’t help myself. I started to cry--- deep sobs of tears because this Martha Peterson was in no way at all someone evil. She was good and kind and gentle and my mom for all those years had remonstrated against my feelings in favor of girls altogether as special and good. I cried for some minutes; until I didn’t have any more water. In my 65 years this was the first I felt not bitter or angry about the abuse but just hurt at the enormity of the crime done against me--- and my mom.

 

 

 

 

The Cigar Tree

When I was a kid, I liked my bikes’ looped, u-turn handle bar that set up or down.
I liked the bike’s thin tires and wire spokes. I liked getting two playing cards and clothes pins, then attaching the cards to each tire. The spokes slapped against the cards and my bike sounded like it had an engine!

I liked the shifter---I shifted the gears to select between ten speeds--- to pedal easier up a hill or go faster on flat ground. Actually---Sacramento just had flat ground; and I loved riding my bike.
Rolling over the streets, I felt I was a cowboy; riding my bike elevated me. It extended my range. I rode it to a grassy field one summer day where girls from school played baseball with us. I rode it to William Land Park to fish in the pond; but the pond was closed. I stood, blocked by a chain link fence on a sky blue day---so decided to climb over. I poked the fishing pole through the fence and pitched, but as it went through the hook penetrated my index finger and instead of climbing the fence, I went to a doctor.

I liked to ride with friends on my bike. One time, a group of us were pedaling fast, parallel to Curtis Park going north, our destination the Cigar Tree. Tottering tombstones visible by the Cigar Tree emanated foreboding in that place.  We zoomed in, dropped our bikes and scrambled up the tree. We were grabbing cigars as fast as possible.

These cigars grew about six inches and were thicker than cigarettes. They were withered and dry, and many dangled from the tree. We knew the Cigar Tree was in “other” kids’ territory---we didn’t know them, but raiding their tree was taking a risk, and the risk challenged. A band of yelling kids on foot suddenly attacked and we fled on our bikes fast--- furiously!  We rode ten blocks, past the tennis courts in Curtis Park, gradually feeling calmer the more distance we put between ourselves and our pursuers---until we stopped in a grove of redwood trees.

We climbed up thick, low branches which gradually thinned the higher we climbed. Careful to plant feet firm, we grabbed branch after branch, pulling ourselves aloft higher and higher until we found perches--- until we were so high we could see the distant white dome of the State Capitol.

Hidden in the Redwoods ---we lit our cigars and smoked and watched the smoke billow and ascend. We gazed at the Capitol and felt like kings.



     

Rico from Gate 5 in Sausalito---Part Three.

I barely could see my boat. Howling wind and driving rain churned the water into surging waves that bucked, pitched and rocked every boat in Gate 5. I was going to skull out and board my boat, but before doing that, Rico and I had talked. I had a World War 1 German Army rifle. Rico and I agreed on a signal. If I needed help, I would fire two shots to alert Rico. He said he would then come out to do a rescue.
I reached my cabin cruiser, the waves pitching my dinghy and cabin cruiser so much I had to wait until the right time; then I leaped aboard the boat and tied off my dinghy.

I felt the boat moving strangely and clambered to the deck and pulled on the anchor line until I see the rope torn in two. My weight had been enough to add sufficient strain to tear apart the rope. My cabin cruiser now with no anchor was being swept towards Tiburon in this major storm at night, and I went for my rifle.

I fired two shots into the sky. I remember my cabin cruiser passed a 30 foot steel hulled lifeboat. I was holding on to the anchor line and maybe I should have jumped. I could maybe have made it. But I hesitated and the moment passed.      
My cabin cruiser eventually lands on the beach at Tiburon. There are rocks around but none close by the boat. I stand on the beach and think I hear Rico screaming. I’m not sure. I don’t know what it is I hear except something human and agonized. I aim my rifle into the hillside and fire four or five more rounds.

The morning brings broken, grey clouds with its dawn. Everything is like steel metal and wet, the rain has stopped and I’m walking on the beach when I see Rico’s “canoe boat” on the sand. I stand at the water’s edge and watch and hear a Coast Guard helicopter hover not far above the water. So close the rotor wind frisks the water. The sound is noisy as it searches for Rico's body.

I later construct a stay for my boat because I want it even for sleeping and I might as well scrape the hull.

I want to stay on the beach for a while and be alone. One day I see a barefoot woman I know from the Heliport jogging towards me. I forget her name, but she was remarkably pretty, and she spoke only gibberish that never made sense. We were friendly anyway. I remember. She was wearing a red dress that went down to her ankles, and as she jogged towards me and my boat, her black hair bounced from side to side. And when she spoke, for a moment, she spoke words I understood.  

Rico from Gate 5 in Sausalito---Part Two.

Rico was readying to set sail for middle earth. I don’t remember what he called it, maybe Atlantis. I didn’t understand. He talked like there was a homeland at a set of coordinates under the ocean, at the center of the earth, and he was going to get there.

He said he needed a generator to take on the journey. I didn't know for what. But we went to a Marin County hill overlooking the entrance to San Francisco Bay. I saw an opening carved out of the hill that led to a large cave in the mountain. The whole structure was obviously built by the military. I don’t know if to protect San Francisco with cannon fire against Japanese ships during World War II, or to direct short range missiles during the Cold War. But inside, Rico pointed at a sizable, square steel machine with dials and switches over the face of it, and said that was his generator.

Rico claimed he was going to set sail for his destination in a Chinese Junk. I remember it was a sunny day.  Rico and I had motored from Sausalito to the water front at Bay View Hunter’s Point in San Francisco. We were walking in a parking lot and Rico pointed to a moored Chinese Junk so big its size astonished me. The hull was built of logs cut lengthwise.  It was as big as a small galleon, except Oriental. Rico said “that's the Junk” in which he was going to sail for “Atlantis.” It seemed out of nowhere, while talking, a stunningly beautiful red haired woman appeared walking towards us. Her green eyes sparkled. She plopped a black cat into Rico’s arms and walked away without saying a word.  Rico was taken aback, but then smiled and, petting the cat, said he’d finally found his familiar.

My memories about Rico have been rusting. He may have invited me to set sail with him. It seems he implied I had dark powers myself. All I knew was I wasn't going to have anything to do with magic myself.

I’m anchored out in Gate 5 water one day and see Rico rowing towards me. His boat bumps the stern of my cabin cruiser, and Rico starts talking. “Dolly left me” he says. He’s devastated. “I’m going to kill myself!” he laments. “Rico don’t talk like that,” I reply. “You don’t go killing yourself over a woman!” Somewhere in the dialogue, Rico also explains his coven has selected him to be its supreme warlock. He says rare is the man who long survives the bestowal of this position.

To be continued...

   

Rico from Gate 5 in Sausalito

Rico sported a mustache and goatee, and leaned towards the serious side. Actually he had somewhat of a menacing presence. At the least he exuded an air that warned people not to mess with him. He was little less than average height, with long hair to the neck, and had a packed, solid build. Rico was a generation older than most living in the Sausalito Houseboat Community circa 1971. He was building a wood boat when I knew him. It was a 30 foot double ended boat on stays off the swaying wood dock leading to his and Dolly’s flat bottom houseboat in Gate 5. I’d see Rico working and knew he was building a fine boat because I saw that for myself. Dolly had cascading red hair and alabaster skin. She was about 30 years younger than Rico and the love of his life.  

I lived anchored out on the water in my wood 25 foot cabin cruiser. I’d anchor out at different places at different times, maybe off the Heliport or Gate 3. Or maybe off Gate 6 or Gate 5. At any of these designations of waterfront location among the houseboat people, I’d anchor where ever I wanted. Nobody charged rent on the waterfront. I had paid $700 for the cabin cruiser with the anchor and chain thrown in for free.

I liked to move to one Gate for a time and then to another. I'd visit neighbors who anchored out, but I had friends who lived on docked houseboats to visit and a frequent need to land for food or to shower or do laundry. I’d skull my dinghy from my cabin cruiser to a dock and tie it up. Gate 3 was not as protected from the open sea as the other Gates. The Heliport, so named because it had a working heliport, along with Gates 5 and 6 generally had much calmer water. If there was a storm all bets were off and the wind and rain turned the water into a thrashing sea that amply demonstrated the power of nature. 

I anchored quite a bit off Gate 5, thus running fairly often into Rico working on his boat. I’d ask questions. Rico eventually felt he liked my company enough to invite me to his houseboat.

We probably smoked pot. We were talking, and at some point Rico claimed to be a Warlock. At that I instantly scoffed but he retorted “I could stop your heart now!" I shut up. I felt if he feels that way it might be true and I’d better just take him at his word. I didn't question his claim after that exchange. And we stayed on good terms.

Rico started to build a new boat. It was a long, slim boat that reminded me of a high end canoe. When it was painted and complete, I was impressed at how expert a craftsman Rico was. It was a splendidly built boat and Rico was justifiably proud of his work. But when he boarded it, I became aghast. The gunnels of the port and starboard sides lowered to hardly more than an inch above the water line. 

To be continued...       

The Bad Boys

The Bad Boys? What provoked the enmity between the brood of my siblings and The Bad Boys? It just had always existed. The conflict was about who would dominate the acre of weedy field separating our houses.

A staked wood fence divided our grass back yard from the field. The fence guarded our house and served as a last line of defense.

Kids against the Bad Boys

We won and lost in this kid conflict of the middle 1950s.  We built a fort in No Man’s Land. We set fire to the field. They shot BB guns at us. Rocks and dirt clods flew at moving targets. Both sides had metal and wood sling shots. I preferred wood sling shots because they were hefty and solid.

In the heart of a fight a Bad Boy twirls as the rock I throw hits his chest. They press against us. We’re forced behind the fence and when they start to clamber over,  my older brother asks to let him use my slingshot. I refuse but soon consent. Into the back yard out strides our eldest sibling demanding an end to the fight. The Bad Boys immediately run. They must have mistaken her for our mother.

One hazy early morning I notice a truck size pile of smooth throwing rocks dumped in No Man’s Land. The threat is apparent. Without a share of those rocks we’ll be at a pronounced disadvantage. A sister and I huddle to counter the threat.

We arise at early dawn and sneak to the rock pile. We place them into a pail one at a time because we want it kept quiet. It’s frustrating because we’re in a hurry. I don’t know to this day how the Bad Boys discovered we were there. It was a complete surprise because we didn't see them coming. Four rushed at us throwing a shower of rocks. I took one in the temple and stunned, managed to stay on my feet.  I yelled to my sister to scram and covered her by throwing rocks at the ambushing team as fast as I could. I then slammed out of there myself, our mission failing.
 

Siblings against the Bad Boys

It’s a quiet afternoon. The Bad Boys loll in their trench in front of their house on the far side of the field.  I ritually eat grasshopper legs for courage. My brother pats me on the shoulder. I sprint toward them with a fist full of dirt. Not directly, but around the side. They're caught off guard when I throw dirt and run full tilt back to our side. It’s symbolic. It’s important however to let the Bad Boys know we will provoke. We’re going to unsettle them too.                          

I remember one battle is unusually pitched. We don’t fist fight, but we mix it up hurling rocks back and forth with unusual intensity. The Bad Boys suddenly break and run.  The unexpected event strikes joy into us. We repeatedly leap and shout exultant yells. We not only win that day, we prove the Bad Boys can be as afraid of us as we are of them.