Dealin' Cards with the Old Men in the Club Car

From what I’ve been able to gather over the years, our class in high school was remarkably unique. Most high schools are very “cliquey.” You have the popular people and the druggo people and the geeks and the sports folks and they keep away from each other and hate each other.

Not in our class.

We had one of the most un-cliquey and unified classes I’ve ever heard of. We seemed to understand that each group had strengths and weaknesses and we organized and worked together to cause massive mayhem in our high school. We discovered early it was MUCH more fun to torture the teachers and administration as a unit than waste time screwing each other over. I am convinced that the teachers and administration had a huge party and celebrated when we graduated and they were able to get rid of us.

This meant that we had a lot of friends and connections and, years later, when we began having reunions, we all got together and had a great time. No cliques forming around the sides of the hall. Everyone just moving around and visiting and reliving great old stories. It went on for hours and everyone had a great time. It also means that we all have a lot of connections across a myriad of professions. Auto mechanics, teachers, lawyers, artists, doctors and other professionals all came out of our class and we all know each other. Good networking.

When our class was having elections for class officers, we had a friend who was pretty much just a rebel and we decided we wanted to make him President. Since our class was pretty wild, the idea of having this guy as President was pretty appealing and he had a wide support base. However, the Administration was completely against this idea. They wanted some “young republican” type to be the class President, not some freakin’ hippy with long hair. To just aggravate the administrators more, we started a button campaign with the slogan “Put Some Life Into This Joint.” The buttons had fake “joints” on them. With our unified class, EVERYONE helped make and distribute the buttons. This really enraged the administration. They didn’t think drugs were anything to joke about and hated the buttons. They accused us of poor taste. Ha … fooled them …. We didn’t have poor taste ….. we had no taste at all. To make sure we had the widest possible coverage, we deliberately started a rumor that every 100th joint was real. Well …… you couldn’t keep them on the shelves after that. The school was buried in the buttons and the administration was ticked off beyond words. The final blow was that our candidate won by a landslide. We heard that the administration had a special meeting and considered nullifying the election for a number of reasons but, in the end, they gritted their teeth and took it on the chin.

The Quiet Sound of a Whistle, Far in the Distance

I plan on relating stories as they come to me, not in a chronological fashion. Live with it.

During this holiday season, I’d like to relate a little story. In high school, the “downstairs cellar gang” had a very strong feeling that Christmas had become way to commercial and greedy. We
felt that we needed to do something, as a group, to reject that commercialism and bring us back
to reality.

One Christmas Eve, we decided to take a night walk from our homes, to a state park about 25 miles away. The weather had been fairly bad for the week before, but, the evening that we
started the walk, it was cold, but clear with little wind and it was not snowing. We started in the evening and walked to the park. It was incredible.

When you drive a route, your mind sets up a timeline. This, then this in a minute, then this in
two minutes. Plus, because you are watching the road, you never look back and have a visual reference of what things look like behind you.

When we walked, we could see the distances between the intersections. We could look back to see where we’d been. Since it was Christmas Eve, the traffic was fairly light so most of the walk was quiet. The road to the park went mostly through country areas, not city, so it was dark and pleasant. You could hear trains and other sounds very far into the distance because of the quiet.
We went through one small town where the town center was a small park. The sidewalks around it were lined with the candles in paper bags (I forget the name for them) glowing in the silence. It was really very nice and very peaceful.

Yet, as a reminder of the intrusion of Man on the peace, at 2 am, when the bars closed, there was about 30 minutes of relatively high traffice flow as the drunks headed home. The activity surprised us, and, when we thought about what was causing the activity, it just made us sad.

When we got to the park, we spent a couple of hours hiking around and enjoying the peace far, far from the “commercial” world. Finally, at a pre-determined time, Joe’s brother Larry drove to the park to take us home. It took many quiet hours, full of surprises and new vistas to get to the park. It took less than a half-hour to zoom home back in the convieniences of modernality.

I will always remember that walk. It was a bold reminder of the peace and the lives that our ancestors would have had on this special day. It broke the modern mold of rushing, driving, and buying. It restored the soul. And I have thought of it every Christmas since, whenever the pace gets too quick and the demands a bit heavy. It always brings back to me the real reason for the season.

All Aboard

It’s been a while since I’ve written. Been busy.

In junior high, Don and I joined the school newspaper. This was the mid-to-late 60’s and we were very politically aware of the Vietnam War, environmental issues, etc. We joined the newspaper thinking we might get a chance to do some good articles on some of this stuff. That we might be able to spread a little of the information to help keep others aware. Alas, what a pipe dream. The school newspaper was about as boring and rigidly controlled as you could get. Articles were standard fare about school functions, teacher bios, sports teams, etc. We asked about doing more worthwhile articles and were told, in no uncertain terms, that that was not going to happen. Therefore, there was only one alternative ……… we went underground and started our own paper. THE VOICE.

At first we did it as a lark, figuring no one would really care. Boy were we wrong! As soon as the word got out that we were doing our own paper, and doing socially relevant and timely articles, we were swamped by people who wanted to contribute to it and read it. We soon realized that this was not something Don and I were interested in, it was something everyone was interested in.

We got our first paper together and, in a stroke of luck, one of the other contributors’ parents thought our idea was great and supplied the paper and facilities to print about a hundred copies. The kicker was that the photocopies of our paper were better looking and more professional than the mimeographed school papers. The VOICE disappeared. Seriously. We brought them to school and in less than half an hour we were empty-handed. People asked us all day for more copies. We had another 50 printed that evening and brought them to school the next day. To our surprise, we were quickly called into the principal’s office, with the editor of the school paper, and grilled on what we were doing. We explained our situation and then were told that we were not allowed to distribute the papers on school grounds. They confiscated what was left of the second printing.

Those Nazi tactics pissed us off and the school populace was enraged when they found out. We decided to continue with the paper, even if it got us into trouble. We began work on issue 2. About a month later we had the next issue and brought 250 of them to school. However, we found out where the school property ended and set up a table near the front of the school about three feet from the property line. The papers went like hotcakes.

Less than an hour later we were back in the principal’s office. He told us we were not supposed to distribute the papers on school property. We pointed out that we didn’t. He said he didn’t want the papers in the school. We told him we were not responsible for what people did with the papers after they got them from us. He told us not to do it again and we told him he had no right to stop us from doing something that was not done on or within school grounds or using any school resources.

Two days later the school paper came out and, in an incredible show of support from the student body, the stacks of newspapers sat and rotted. No one wanted them and no one took them. They distributed them in home room and everyone walked out and left them sitting on the desks.

This scenario happened two more times with the same results. We were told to stop, and we continued. They printed, and no one read. We also found out that students were leaving anonymous notes in the principal’s mailbox and the teacher/editor’s room demanding they stop harassing us and let THE VOICE on school property.

We won.

The administration finally caved in and told us we could join the school paper and they would allow us to print socially relevant articles, but, that they would have the ability to censor or edit if they thought we were going to far for a public junior high school. We accepted and made sure we were careful with what we wrote, but, didn’t hold back any facts. We were challenged about facts a couple of times but, as long as we could produce the source, and it was legit, they went forward with almost no editing. I think the administration was astounded that kids that young would be so socially aware. They really didn’t understand the effect of growing up with the cold war and Vietnam on our TV screens had.

It was a great victory for the kids and Don and I got reputations as “anti-establishment rebels.” I liked that. When we graduated eighth grade, there was a tradition where the teachers got together and did a story about where the graduates would be in 10 years. In the story, several of the kids in class were lawyers, and their primary occupation revolved around getting me out of jail because I was in college starting campus riots. It was GREAT !!!!! To this day I have retained my social awareness and consider it my job to make sure I remind others around me of their social and moral responsibilities when I think they are losing that focus. It hasn’t always made me popular, but, I detest popular anyway. Time to move on to the next station.

Pile Up the Kindling

I have never been a social butterfly with hundreds of friends passing through my door constantly. I live in small groups of close friends that I hold on to tightly for support. In junior high this was primarily myself and Don. We turned into high-profile collaborators who had a great time taking on whatever we could. I also had a great friendship with Vicki. I was pretty shy around girls and Vicki was the first girl I felt comfortable enough to just talk to. She was always special to me. I like to think we could have been boyfriend/girlfriend in high school, and maybe further, if I hadn’t moved away. Don and I eventually lost touch over the years as we moved. I lost touch with Vicki for a while too but decided I wanted to try to track her down and see what she was doing. Surprisingly, it turned out to be easy over the internet because she was looking for me too. We reconnected and renewed our friendship and have kept up to this day. She lives on the other side of the country now, but, we have met and talked a few times when she comes home to visit her parents.

In high school I was accepted into the Brotherhood of Joe’s Basement. It was a small group of friends consisting of Joe, Randy, Elwood, and occasionally Joe’s brother Larry. We were all interested in travel, photography, music and astronomy and the gravity just pulled us together. Although we are all still friends, separated by distance, Joe and I were particularly close and I consider him my brother and his family and home were my surrogate family. He, Randy and I still keep in touch via email and phone. We get to see each other occasionally which is really nice.

I miss these groups terribly. I have several “friends” via my workplace now, but they are acquaintance friends, not brother friends. We talk a lot and we go golfing and stuff, but, I really miss my old “families.” I am very close to my wife’s family. Her sisters are mine and we all love each other very much as a family. My own family was not warm and affectionate so, although they are my biological family, my real family(s), the people I really learned caring from, are all families that have allowed me to join from the outside.

There was an auxiliary group of friends in high school that also continued on afterwards. These were the motocrossers. We all rode dirt bikes and that commonality kept us together for quite some time. That group, eventually known as the “Husky Brothers,” consisted of Randy (same one), Mark, myself, and Dave. Again, we have kinda kept up with each other over the years, but, it was not the close brotherly group the other one was and the loyalties were not there.

The “downstairs cellar gang” also had a connection to another character named Dale. Dale was a genius level person, highly interested in science, photography, and astronomy, who found school to be a total bore. It was all too easy for him with his intelligence level. We were friends for a while, even combined resources to build a couple of great darkrooms for photography, but he always scared me a little because he was very unpredictable and violent. His family was a disaster and he was just on his own. We will save the stories of the 80 molar hydrochloric acid, smokeless gunpowder, playing “army” with M100s, trying to destroy his neighbors house, “ha ha to you too sideburns,” and throwing his brother out of a second story window for another day. He eventually got hooked up with some bad characters who got him into drugs and he spent many years in and out of jail rather than in college improving his mind. Years later he finally met a good woman, turned himself around by becoming a religious zealot (now he scares me more), and is now a working family man. I applaud the turnaround, but mourn the loss of a potentially great scientist who never reached where he should have.

At the end of high school, and afterwards for several years, I was close friends with Craig. He lived near me and we shared a love of travel and the environment. We went out West several times together. He eventually married a girl from Tennessee and moved there. We lost touch as we both became “family men.” Craig’s big issue was always that he took everything very personally. Because we lost touch for several years, he apparently considered that a personal rebuff, and later, when I tried to reconnect with him, he just cut me off cold. A real shame as his oldest daughter, Rachel, was a chip off the old block and I know she is doing some nice things in environmental work. Her name is easy to find on the internet. It would have been nice to reconnect and catch up on how the families are doing.

All of these will be characters in the stories I will relate on these pages. Just wanted you to have a little background.

World of Death

I was accosted at work recently by a Vegan who took exception to my wife and I going out for a great steak dinner on our birthdays. She preached about how superior she was over us because she had become a Vegan. She said she no longer had to kill to survive. Nor was she supporting an industry of cruelty and death. After I laughed at her, which seemed to annoy her for some reason, I asked her when she had become Vegan. She said about a year ago. I then told her if she had survived for a year after her miraculous conversion then she was still killing to survive. All she had done was substitute one form of killing for another and one form of industrial food packaging for another. She decided to only kill plants and bacteria to survive, rather than macro-visual sized animals. That got me thinking.

This is a world of death.

It's not a political statement or a religious threat, it's just fact. Life and death are inextricably entwined. No creature in this world can survive and live without the deliberate killing of others. Not one. Anyone who thinks they have beaten this system simply because they have stopped eating macro-visual meat products is simply deluding themselves in order to place themselves above others and exert their perceived "superiority." There are millions of species of animals, plant, molds, bacteria, etc on this planet and they are all living things. In order to survive you must kill, or pay someone else to kill, something. Vegetarians and Vegans simply substitute killing plants, molds, and bacteria for killing large animals. The superiority they feel over those of us who still eat as nature intended is in their own mind.

Some people have gone to vegetarian diets because of allergic or digestive issues with meats. That's fine. That's a medical reason, not a mental reason. My beef (pun intended) is with the hypocritical morons who make the choice simply so they can hold themselves in high esteem among others. Arrogant fools, all. There is even a Hindu sect that uses soft brooms to sweep in front of themselves so they don't step on or kill any insects. They believe they are superior because they don't kill anything. Then they cut down some wood and build a fire and kill more plants for nourishment.

Life is not "sacred." If life was preserved for all, all would die.

The natural cycle of this world is that you must kill to live. Natural selection. The weak, old and sick are prey for the strong, young, and healthy. It's how the good genes propagate and species survive. The arrogant presumption of most people is that, as individuals, they are important and "special" and their lives are supposed to have meaning. Again, nothing but selfishness. Nature doesn't care about you as an individual. Groups live and survive because they cull other groups for sustinence.

Humans have hidden this killing behind industrial processes so they can feel "clean" about it, and have invented strange moral codes where they are supposed to try to preserve every human life regardless of the quality of that life or the effects on the lives of others. That code was simply created by people who used it to exert power and superiority over others. It is not the way the world works. Nature does not support that code nor subscribe to it.

We'll discuss the facism, arrogance, and danger of organized religion at another time.
Vegetarians and Vegans .......... get over yourselves .......... go have a good steak.

Eccentric Gears

My family moved just before I started high school so I didn't know anyone when classes started. However, I soon discovered a small group of close friends via the class-clown method. They were class clowns and oddballs which, just so happens, matched the exact type of friends I was looking for. Remarkably enough, they had the same types of interests I had too. Photography, astronomy, hiking, travelling, motocross, etc. We became friends then and are still close friends today even though our jobs have taken us physically distant from each other. As a matter of fact, my friend Joe is more than just a friend to me. He is really like a brother. We all used to hang out at his house and his parents were like surrogates to me. I loved his Mom and, since my Dad died when I was nine years old, his Dad was my surrogate. He'd probably be happy to know that I stole some of his mannerisms and used them when I became a parent ...... and they still worked !!! Anyway, together we tortured teachers and administration in school, had many great adventures, and travelled far and wide. It was nice to find another group of close friends. In junior high there was a group of us that were also close friends. We also tortured teachers and administration (stories to follow at some point). We started an underground newspaper to compete with the sanitized school paper, and, as we prepared to graduate eighth grade and move on to high school, the teachers got together and voted on which students would be doctors or lawyers, which would be married or have careers, etc.
I was voted most likely to be arrested for starting campus riots. I liked the ring of that.
Of course, it was all done as a joke and we all loved it. We presented one teacher
with a jar of 'Perlmutter Peanut Butter," another with a booklet entitled "The Fairmont West Virginia Reader," and just generally had fun with several others. Now, teachers can't do anything without being sued. I just read about some whiner kid and his family who were "deeply hurt" and "wounded" when the teachers at his school voted him to be something goofy. Dorks. We used to have fun teasing our teachers and they teased us. Now, if a teacher says anything that is not white bread pure and respectable, some moron will sue them and the school system. This is all fallout from the self absorbed, selfish, "I'm more important than anything in the World," protected jackasses that currently make up most of our country. I'll be ranting about those jerks later because I am digressing badly from the story. So .... I had a wonderful time in junior high and the last part of elementary school because of my close knit group of friends and it was nice to be accepted into a new group just as close in high school.
Thanks my friends. I owe you much more than you know.

On the Siding

Strange as it may seem by the name, I am also a strong supporter of martial arts.  I am webmaster and actually host several sites for local schools. I have been a student of both Tae Kwan Do - Tang Soo Do and Shotokan Karate.  I like the basic philosophy, the respect and discipline, and the great physical exercise.  I have a deep respect and friendship with several of my Sensei and consider those some great lifelong friendships. However, I will say to all of the martial arts organizations out there that I am very disappointed by the fragmentation of martial arts.  Just like in the old warrior days, every school, every organization, every teacher seems to consider his/her little fiefdom as some sacred domain.  If one is a member of one organization you can't be recognized by another.  If I practice one style I will be admonished if I go somewhere else to practice another.  Yet, martial arts schools complain about not having enough people to pay the bills.  When will all the martial arts organizations realize that it is to their advantage, and a boon to the students, to combine their efforts and end the petty bickering over kingdoms. Just because the orientals did it 150 years ago doesn't mean it is a good thing, or a relevant thing, in today's world.  Remember, they used to kill each other over this crap. You may be just killing yourselves. Why don't you get together and do something to help all of the martial arts students, and potential students, instead of stroking your own egos? I bow and leave.

What's the Moniker Mean

I am an avid traveler and enjoy meeting many interesting people. This post is named "The Hobo's Ramblings" because I was appointed to be a Grand Duke of Hoboes for life by one of the greatest Kings of the Hoboes ever, Steamtrain Maury Graham. I became a friend of Maury's in the 1980's and, although we had lost touch with each other, I still considered him a good friend and a wonderful personality. I was very saddened last year when he died. I was officially dubbed "Black River Blondie" in Britt, Iowa by my hobo friends. I've pretty much shortened it to "Black River" though, particularly as the blonde turns much more grey. My friend Joe and I read about the "King of the Hoboes" in an old Reader's Digest article and decided we HAD to meet this dude. We packed up our stuff, went out to the Catoctin Colorfest in Maryland and tracked him down. Met him, talked, hit it off right away. He invited us to come out to Britt for the annual Hobo Convention and, that August, we made our first trek. A great experience. Went back several more times and got to stay in the "jungle" with my friends and learn a lot about the "good old days" and the "bad old days" on the steamtrains. I'll never forget it. We were even filmed and interviewed for the TV show "Real People" (that dates me doesn't it) but the interviews were cut from the final show .... damn ... there goes my 15 minutes of fame. We are visible in the background though and it was fun to see ourselves on TV. But that's what the name means to me and why I chose it. I'll try to use that as the theme to many of the ramblings.

Hoppin' the Freight

I question why I'm doing this.  Mine is an ordinary life and I've always thought it is fairly self-centered for all of these people to be out on the internet chronicling every second of their dull lives. I don't intend to do that here.  I'm not going to whine about doing yardwork or report how I feel every 15 minutes.  This blog will be added to randomly.  I've had some interesting experiences in my life, and known some interesting people, and I'd like to relate those stories and talk about those people here.  Also, I am fairly opinionated about the current level of stupidity and arrogance in the US at this time and I plan to speak my mind as the spirit moves me.  If I review this at some point and think, "What an ass I am," that will be the end of it.  If I think I'm leaving something someone may enjoy, other than a minute by minute account of the last time I took a crap, I'll continue and leave it.  We'll see.