I think I know where it started; it was a comment made on the spur of the moment, trying to look cool. I have never been part of a group; I have ADD, sleep apnea, and insomnia - these have been with me for as long as I can remember. Heck, even in high school I played football for 4 years (lettered 3 of them) but I was not a jock - a buddy and I stole a box of Mars Bars (specifically because of their soft interior), a bunch of chocolate flavored x-lax, some Chicklets and some Chicklet-like laxatives; we carefully opened the Mars Bars on one end and pushed 4 squares of x-lax into each, swapped out the chicklets for the gum laxatives and gave them to the rest of the football team. I swear the sewage system overloaded; with the entire football team sitting on the toilet all night. We only wished we could have seen it. Of course, the payback was painful - in practice, the team tackled us constantly (and I was the center, heh - Jim Strickerts my friend, was a halfback).
Anyway, by the time I got to college I was lost; ADD does odd things, like if someone is not in my face I forget about them (really, I lost some friends both male and female because if I did not see them or they did not call me, I would forget about them), I slept all the time and just sort of wandered around campus in a daze. My final GPA was .69 and it was that high because I got "A"s sports classes like karate, and stuff. Anyway, I was in the locker room when I hear someone around the corner say that he had some pot for sale. To sound cool, I said "hey, if you have any extra, let me know". Next thing you know, I got a call from the guy, saying he had a bag of pot for me. He sold me a lid for $10.00 (this is back in the old days - 1967 - when pot was cheap and sold by the lid, the match-box, or the joint. So I started smoking pot. Then I joined the Marine Corps, think about that for a moment - ADD, insomnia, sleep apnea and weapons, lots and lots of weapons. I got to shoot M79 grenade launchers, toss grenades, shoot m60 machine guns, shoot marksman+ at the firing range but I could fall asleep with a DI's hand on my throat screaming at me to wake up. A buddy and I rented a car and took a trip to Chicago on Route 66 - the car was a Carmen Ghia.
We got caught, put in the Great Lakes brig and flown back to San Diego, my buddy went back to our company,but since we were separated and I was put into Headquarters Battalion and Casual company made up of Marines who were their way out for in-service/pre-service use of drugs. The corporal sold me my first LSD, the gunny sold me some pot, and a couple jar-heads kept saying "it smells like pot", "who's smoking pot" as a joke because they were sure no one would be dumb enough to smoke pot in the common room. I had to go up to the guys and offer them a toke if they would shut up - they were stunned and apologized for being stupid. Later that night while I was like really, really stoned on acid, the MPs came crashing into the barracks; after a bunch of shouting and hollering, the Sargent said "Look if you are going to smoke pot in here, please warn the firewatch so they don't keep making fire reports! Can I get a toke?"
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Saturday, December 24, 2011
Some things still puzzle me.
Late one afternoon I walked near an area that was closed, bummed me out; when I turned around there were a couple black guys were standing there. One of them said "What are you doing here,N&&&r?" I looked behind me and around then looked back and said "You must be talking to someone else". They laughed, walking away saying "I didn't know white guys had a sense of humor". I never did figure out had happened.
I was sitting in the S.U.B. at Eastern Montana College (Billings, MT - now a University, used to a 'Normal' school meaning a teacher's college), when this black guy sat down with us and introduced himself. He chatted for a while; told us that he did tan by showing us the tan-line under his watch; then he went off to another table. This was the first time I had ever seen a black guy, let alone talked with one.
I was snorkeling about 200 yards off of Green Island on the Great Barrier Reef, taking pictures and generally being completely blown away by the colors, the fish, the whole 'abundance of life' thing going on. Something bothered me but I don't know what. I looked around but did not see anyone or anything around but I was really, really uncomfortable so I headed back to the beach - just in time get evacuated from the island due to Cyclone Muni. The boat-ride back to Australia was on a trimaran which made the 14 ft swells FUN! There were a bunch of us standing the front of the trimaran riding it like a roller-coaster - up to the top of a swell, then drop 14 feet to the trough; there was nothing like it (the fact that it was a trimaran kept all the motion up and down with very little side-to-side motion). Green Island was swept pretty clean by the cyclone.
I was playing with the fire in the fireplace at our cabin in the tobacco root mountains; this annoyed grandma (seems like everything annoyed her) and she told me to go outside to play. I grabbed a handful of kitchen matches and went out to play. Bored with the tiny flames from burning pine needles, I opened the valve on the 40 gallon gas tank and trickled some gas and the flames got pretty large. When the flames began to die, I opened the valve a little more so more gas would come out; hah, this produced even more flames in a wider pool. This eventually got boring so I wandered off to do something else. Nothing burned down and I did not start a fire; the only reason I can think of that I survived was the gasoline was too cold - it is the fumes that burn not the liquid.
I was sitting in the S.U.B. at Eastern Montana College (Billings, MT - now a University, used to a 'Normal' school meaning a teacher's college), when this black guy sat down with us and introduced himself. He chatted for a while; told us that he did tan by showing us the tan-line under his watch; then he went off to another table. This was the first time I had ever seen a black guy, let alone talked with one.
I was snorkeling about 200 yards off of Green Island on the Great Barrier Reef, taking pictures and generally being completely blown away by the colors, the fish, the whole 'abundance of life' thing going on. Something bothered me but I don't know what. I looked around but did not see anyone or anything around but I was really, really uncomfortable so I headed back to the beach - just in time get evacuated from the island due to Cyclone Muni. The boat-ride back to Australia was on a trimaran which made the 14 ft swells FUN! There were a bunch of us standing the front of the trimaran riding it like a roller-coaster - up to the top of a swell, then drop 14 feet to the trough; there was nothing like it (the fact that it was a trimaran kept all the motion up and down with very little side-to-side motion). Green Island was swept pretty clean by the cyclone.
I was playing with the fire in the fireplace at our cabin in the tobacco root mountains; this annoyed grandma (seems like everything annoyed her) and she told me to go outside to play. I grabbed a handful of kitchen matches and went out to play. Bored with the tiny flames from burning pine needles, I opened the valve on the 40 gallon gas tank and trickled some gas and the flames got pretty large. When the flames began to die, I opened the valve a little more so more gas would come out; hah, this produced even more flames in a wider pool. This eventually got boring so I wandered off to do something else. Nothing burned down and I did not start a fire; the only reason I can think of that I survived was the gasoline was too cold - it is the fumes that burn not the liquid.
Sunday, December 18, 2011
St. Mary's cont.
Most of the people I remember from my time at St. Mary's are from after we moved from 711 W Clark st. A friend name Guy is the only person I remember who lived in that area (sorry for telling everyone that guy in the dictionary meant 'a queer looking person' - at least you had Zorro). Across the street from us were the Prims - Marcia (in my class), Mark (a year behind), Mike - well, you see the pattern developing. All the kids had the initials M. P. and there were at least 5 of them. We were a pack and played all sorts of games; we had a raft on the 'lagoon' that was near the swimming pool (if you went swimming in the lagoon, they would not let you into the pool that day). There was a small woods on the other side of the lagoon where we would drag old christmas trees into a fort. On the street that lead down to the swimming pool was a dairy where we could get really fresh ice cream.
I remember playing British and Mau Mau as a kid; my brother and his friends were the British and us little ones were the Mau mau who were always slaughtered. Think about that for a moment - 1954, Livingston, MT the MauMau rebellion was the stuff of backyard cowboys and indians, cops and robbers play - I think the machine guns were what made them so popular; the "no Annie Oakley" rule did not apply to machine guns. Oh, yeah, the drive-in theatre was pretty close - I remember that we would sneak in under the fence and go to the front row and turn on all the speakers so we could lay out watch the movies. The owner would, at some whim, chase us away sometimes and sometimes not. His son was about our age so the only thing I can think of is that he was making sure we did not see certain types of movies.
The next house we moved to was up on the hill - I think I mentioned that we lived in the second house from the edge of civilization (so to speak). The walk from school to home now included crossing the railroad tracks. Livingston was some sort of rail town, I remember that we had to cross 4 or 5 sets of tracks. In the summers, we would open the ice carts and use the huge trident-like ice pick to break junks of ice off the blocks. We would put nickels, dimes, pennies and sometimes dimes on the tracks and they would get smushed out of shape. Once we put some oil on the tracks where there was a tiny hill on the way out of town. When the engines hit that spot, the driving wheels actually created enough friction heat to partially melt the track - never did that again. The Caseys lived just across the tracks on my way home but they lived on the base of the hill - they were railroad people. I remember running into one of the Casey boys at a train depot in Miles City about 10 years later.
I remember playing British and Mau Mau as a kid; my brother and his friends were the British and us little ones were the Mau mau who were always slaughtered. Think about that for a moment - 1954, Livingston, MT the MauMau rebellion was the stuff of backyard cowboys and indians, cops and robbers play - I think the machine guns were what made them so popular; the "no Annie Oakley" rule did not apply to machine guns. Oh, yeah, the drive-in theatre was pretty close - I remember that we would sneak in under the fence and go to the front row and turn on all the speakers so we could lay out watch the movies. The owner would, at some whim, chase us away sometimes and sometimes not. His son was about our age so the only thing I can think of is that he was making sure we did not see certain types of movies.
The next house we moved to was up on the hill - I think I mentioned that we lived in the second house from the edge of civilization (so to speak). The walk from school to home now included crossing the railroad tracks. Livingston was some sort of rail town, I remember that we had to cross 4 or 5 sets of tracks. In the summers, we would open the ice carts and use the huge trident-like ice pick to break junks of ice off the blocks. We would put nickels, dimes, pennies and sometimes dimes on the tracks and they would get smushed out of shape. Once we put some oil on the tracks where there was a tiny hill on the way out of town. When the engines hit that spot, the driving wheels actually created enough friction heat to partially melt the track - never did that again. The Caseys lived just across the tracks on my way home but they lived on the base of the hill - they were railroad people. I remember running into one of the Casey boys at a train depot in Miles City about 10 years later.
Saturday, December 3, 2011
strange triggers
It is cold season again and I have this 'post-nasal' drip thing going so I do that disgusting half snort inhale through my nose to clear it up and -wham- I think of my brother. I don't know why (or maybe I do) he comes to mind with that simple, private act. I miss him. He died over twenty years ago and had gone missing out of my life for 20 years before that. He and his second wife with her 2 daughters moved from Montana to Denver CO and cut the family off nearly completely. Though we were part of it; he said that if he could not have his kids, they weren't his, cutting my niece and nephew out of his life. I think he was upset that we kept his ex-wife as part of family and he sort of made us choose between him and his ex and we did not want to lose contact with his kids.
I would like to think that he was trying for rapprochement; we had some longish phone calls (listening to him talk was like listening to myself - we sounded so much alike; I remember going to the movies with him and one or the other of us laughing and someone from the crowd would shout "sounds like a Coghlan is in the house"). In the mid-1980s, I took the train to see my grandfather on his 90th birthday; I just assumed it would be a big deal with lots of people but it was just me, grandpa Rusher and his new wife. I spent a couple days with them, grandpa was still pretty sharp and we had some good conversations and he gave me some pictures of family.
Grandpa was a character; he was a worker with his own tools too old to go to war (WWII) so he traveled around the country working all sorts of jobs; a person with his own tools ruled. Grandpa was a j.o.a.t.- he bought up land with money his sons sent home from the war and started a farm for them near Roundup MT. He did a pretty good job for a chicago city boy. When the boys got home from the war, they were `pretty excited about ranching; my father met my mom in Paris, married her and brought her 'home' with him; my uncle had about 8 kids. They bought a Piper Cub plane and used it to get to town and back. The trick with the Piper Cub is that it can stay in the air at 50 mph - that is damn near a hover. Since 'the boys' had families (my brother and me on the way - I was a 'diaphragm' baby, and been lucky ever since), they made a vow to never fly together.
Long story short my father and uncle had an argument/fight/loud discussion and one drove into town the other flew into town; one for supplies the other for laundry. Sometime after the plane was prepped to return to the ranch - ranchers buy their fuel in bulk and pay no (or fewer) taxes on it so in prepping the plane for the return trip, it was prepped for one person. The brothers made up in town; it was getting late so they decided to leave the car in town and fly home. The neighbor heard them prepare to land but they were in the wrong field and pulled out of the landing; the engine spluttered, the plane stalled and there was no time to pull out of the stall. The engine crushed my uncle; grandpa says that my father survived the crash but webbing holding him in his seat failed and he fell and broke his neck. The neighbors were there withing minutes but too late.
After I was born, mom lost it - 2 boys, in a strange land, with almost no English. She moved back to Chatou just outside Paris to her parents little house on Rue de Landes.
But I digress - after celebrating grandpa's b-day I took the train to Denver and saw my brother in his home. We had some good talks.
I would like to think that he was trying for rapprochement; we had some longish phone calls (listening to him talk was like listening to myself - we sounded so much alike; I remember going to the movies with him and one or the other of us laughing and someone from the crowd would shout "sounds like a Coghlan is in the house"). In the mid-1980s, I took the train to see my grandfather on his 90th birthday; I just assumed it would be a big deal with lots of people but it was just me, grandpa Rusher and his new wife. I spent a couple days with them, grandpa was still pretty sharp and we had some good conversations and he gave me some pictures of family.
Grandpa was a character; he was a worker with his own tools too old to go to war (WWII) so he traveled around the country working all sorts of jobs; a person with his own tools ruled. Grandpa was a j.o.a.t.- he bought up land with money his sons sent home from the war and started a farm for them near Roundup MT. He did a pretty good job for a chicago city boy. When the boys got home from the war, they were `pretty excited about ranching; my father met my mom in Paris, married her and brought her 'home' with him; my uncle had about 8 kids. They bought a Piper Cub plane and used it to get to town and back. The trick with the Piper Cub is that it can stay in the air at 50 mph - that is damn near a hover. Since 'the boys' had families (my brother and me on the way - I was a 'diaphragm' baby, and been lucky ever since), they made a vow to never fly together.
Long story short my father and uncle had an argument/fight/loud discussion and one drove into town the other flew into town; one for supplies the other for laundry. Sometime after the plane was prepped to return to the ranch - ranchers buy their fuel in bulk and pay no (or fewer) taxes on it so in prepping the plane for the return trip, it was prepped for one person. The brothers made up in town; it was getting late so they decided to leave the car in town and fly home. The neighbor heard them prepare to land but they were in the wrong field and pulled out of the landing; the engine spluttered, the plane stalled and there was no time to pull out of the stall. The engine crushed my uncle; grandpa says that my father survived the crash but webbing holding him in his seat failed and he fell and broke his neck. The neighbors were there withing minutes but too late.
After I was born, mom lost it - 2 boys, in a strange land, with almost no English. She moved back to Chatou just outside Paris to her parents little house on Rue de Landes.
But I digress - after celebrating grandpa's b-day I took the train to Denver and saw my brother in his home. We had some good talks.
Saturday, November 19, 2011
Furlough over!!
I got the call on Thursday, they are bringing 20 seasonal workers back and I am one. I start on Monday the 21st on a strange shift 10:00 to 6:30 but we will go back to our normal shift of 9:30 to 6:00 on January 3rd. This has been a terrible furlough, I had problems with UI and extensions so I ended up having to take a loan from my credit card. I am going to have really knuckle down during this work period to get my debts paid off so I can be more comfortable during next years furlough - I especially need to be ready by the June 1st.
I hope to take some hot glass classes at Pratt next summer so I can get back into it. I have taken glass blowing classes, bench-work classes (mostly bead-working), and spent a lot of time watching glass blowers at work. I want to take the classes to learn what I can but what I really want is access to their equipment: the polishers, etchers, kilns and so on.
While DW (convention from savings advice to refer to family DW dear wife, DH, DD, et c) was getting her science PhD, we had access to a ceramics kiln that we used to do some hot glass work. We still have many of the items we made and this was about 20 years ago; what we did was mostly fusing mixed with slumping. Around that time I made some life casts of my face (with some help - Hi Kevin) and I want to some slumping projects based on the molds. I made both positive and negative molds and have been dragging them around with me. While in Tucson I found some 3 inch thick pieces of glass that must have been submarine porthole glass that I have some ideas for.
I hope to take some hot glass classes at Pratt next summer so I can get back into it. I have taken glass blowing classes, bench-work classes (mostly bead-working), and spent a lot of time watching glass blowers at work. I want to take the classes to learn what I can but what I really want is access to their equipment: the polishers, etchers, kilns and so on.
While DW (convention from savings advice to refer to family DW dear wife, DH, DD, et c) was getting her science PhD, we had access to a ceramics kiln that we used to do some hot glass work. We still have many of the items we made and this was about 20 years ago; what we did was mostly fusing mixed with slumping. Around that time I made some life casts of my face (with some help - Hi Kevin) and I want to some slumping projects based on the molds. I made both positive and negative molds and have been dragging them around with me. While in Tucson I found some 3 inch thick pieces of glass that must have been submarine porthole glass that I have some ideas for.
Friday, November 18, 2011
St. Mary's
St. Mary's was a primary school I attended up to 1960. The school had 4 classrooms; 2 on the first floor and 2 on the second floor. Now my memory is getting hazy - I know that on the first floor, entering from the main door, the room on the right was first and second grade; the door on the left was 3rd and 4th grades. Yep, one grade was on each side of the room and the nun would teach alternating classes. I do not remember how the time was split, but I do remember that we had recess. The school grounds were paved with 'big kid' playground equipment. Across the street was an overgrown field with not equipment; that is where the 'little kids' played. About this time weird cards came out with a compliment on one side turned into an insult on the other side (eg. Your teeth are like stars they come out at night - I tried this on one of the nuns and she asked me how I knew she had false teeth, I was stunned as I don't think I really understood until that moment what the joke was).
I remember Jody was a tomboy who always wanted to be a horse in whatever game we played and I remember one of the girls was brave enough to jump on one of the nuns - I was stunned that nuns were people who could be touched and interacted with. I just remembered the name of another of my classmates Pugliano - I remember his name because we teased him by calling him ugly piano (and he did not care because he played the piano; I thought that was unfair because we were trying to insult him, oh well) I lived at 711 W. Clark street at this time (yes, I have used google maps to check the house out). On the way home one day, I met a kid and went to his house to play - I forgot my catechism at his house and so got in trouble when I got home because my parents had to buy another one. I have no idea why I did not remember the kids house. His name, as I learned later, was Danny Gibson and he and his parents thought I might have been trying to convert him by leaving the catechism there - they laughed when they heard how much trouble I got in for losing it.
As you may noticed, a lot of things stunned me during this time.
When I got to play on the big kids playground, there was a merry-go-round - the standard round wooden platform with metal (round pipe-style) rails that radiated out from the center that was useful for spinning it and for hanging onto while riding it. We could get that thing going so fast that kids would fly off of it; often because we would try to stand in the exact middle or just stand up and not hold on. (Did I mention that this playground was paved?). There was a monkey-bar set - oddly, my memory tells me it was both the cubic boxy kind and the rounded kind, odd that. But the real killer (and I use the word on purpose - I believe this device was on every Catholic grade school playground) was a maypole-like swing set that involved chains hanging from the top of the pole on a pivot/bearing. Since the children playing on this were of differing heights the length of different chains were varied. The ends of the chains had solid steel ladder-like hand holds; the short ones that had only one cross bar to hold on to looked kind of like a stirrup. I think the longest had 3 crossbars. So the point of this 'toy' was to run in a circle fast enough to eventually start flying while hanging on. Most people would consider this just a large mace or morning star - think about a playground toy that involved solid steel metal bars swinging freely from a chain - part of the fun of toy was to try to grab one of the bars while it is already moving, essentially running at a tangent to the circle scribed by the swings, grab on and fly. Miss a grab or try for one of the shorter swings and you will be brained.
But if you were caught playing on the emergency fire escape slide (a round metal tube from the second floor to about 14 inches off the ground - I seem to remember it as about 45' angle that flattened to parallel for about the last 5 feet), you would be punished severely like spanked by priest or knuckle-rapped by the nuns. That thing got really hot in the Montana sun.
I remember Jody was a tomboy who always wanted to be a horse in whatever game we played and I remember one of the girls was brave enough to jump on one of the nuns - I was stunned that nuns were people who could be touched and interacted with. I just remembered the name of another of my classmates Pugliano - I remember his name because we teased him by calling him ugly piano (and he did not care because he played the piano; I thought that was unfair because we were trying to insult him, oh well) I lived at 711 W. Clark street at this time (yes, I have used google maps to check the house out). On the way home one day, I met a kid and went to his house to play - I forgot my catechism at his house and so got in trouble when I got home because my parents had to buy another one. I have no idea why I did not remember the kids house. His name, as I learned later, was Danny Gibson and he and his parents thought I might have been trying to convert him by leaving the catechism there - they laughed when they heard how much trouble I got in for losing it.
As you may noticed, a lot of things stunned me during this time.
When I got to play on the big kids playground, there was a merry-go-round - the standard round wooden platform with metal (round pipe-style) rails that radiated out from the center that was useful for spinning it and for hanging onto while riding it. We could get that thing going so fast that kids would fly off of it; often because we would try to stand in the exact middle or just stand up and not hold on. (Did I mention that this playground was paved?). There was a monkey-bar set - oddly, my memory tells me it was both the cubic boxy kind and the rounded kind, odd that. But the real killer (and I use the word on purpose - I believe this device was on every Catholic grade school playground) was a maypole-like swing set that involved chains hanging from the top of the pole on a pivot/bearing. Since the children playing on this were of differing heights the length of different chains were varied. The ends of the chains had solid steel ladder-like hand holds; the short ones that had only one cross bar to hold on to looked kind of like a stirrup. I think the longest had 3 crossbars. So the point of this 'toy' was to run in a circle fast enough to eventually start flying while hanging on. Most people would consider this just a large mace or morning star - think about a playground toy that involved solid steel metal bars swinging freely from a chain - part of the fun of toy was to try to grab one of the bars while it is already moving, essentially running at a tangent to the circle scribed by the swings, grab on and fly. Miss a grab or try for one of the shorter swings and you will be brained.
But if you were caught playing on the emergency fire escape slide (a round metal tube from the second floor to about 14 inches off the ground - I seem to remember it as about 45' angle that flattened to parallel for about the last 5 feet), you would be punished severely like spanked by priest or knuckle-rapped by the nuns. That thing got really hot in the Montana sun.
Friday, November 4, 2011
Livingston MT
Livingston was the big city for me - Roundup MT has a pop <2000 and Whitehall has a pop <2000 and Livingston has a pop >7500. I only have a couple of memories of from before Livingston. One was from Roundup (I actually have been back and seen the hill) from about age 3 0r 4; I was on a hill with my brother and another kid throwing rocks down on cars driving by. A cop car came by so we turned to run, I tumbled down the hill and onto the road; my memory (of a memory of a memory) is of a giant jumping over cars to scoop me up and take me to the hospital. The other was from Whitehall - there was/is a ditch that runs along the street in front of our house but on the other side. For some reason, rather than cross the ditch by bridge I jumped down into and up out the other side. I was using my hands to pull myself up the far bank when I cut my thumb on a tin can - man there was blood everywhere (I still have the scar on my left thumb and that was about 56 years ago).
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