About Me

I was going to call it Travels With Charlie, but it's been taken, and I really don't like being called Charlie.

PREFACE

I've had a very unusual life.  I've experienced a lot.  And from a very early age, I just accepted it, because after all, it was just an opportunity to learn.  I'll explain all of that very soon.

What I'm going to describe to you most certainly will have many think I'm totally nuts.  In fact, I'm so objective, I could actually argue the case for you.  On the other hand, I can also prove to you that, despite my cynicism, I am incredibly lucid, extremely moral, incredibly human, described as a genius by many (who then use their description to embarrass me when it serves them) and, self-admittedly, kind of not very street-wise at all.  That's the part that's made me nice, and allowed me to get into trouble.  A good deal of why I did this web site is because I knew that if I didn't, in my mind, I would be giving in and acquiescing to the very forces I swore I would never be like. I refuse to become personally corrupted.

I'm a combination of Lou Dobbs, Phil Donahue, Bill Clinton, Richard Brautigan, Neil Diamond and Wayne Dyer... and Jerry Lewis  AND The Nutty Professor, or was that the Absent Minded Professor?   I call myself a boy scout, but I was so straight as a kid, I couldn't even get into the   boy scouts.  I kid you not. And I laugh at myself alot.  Always remember that.

I was raised to believe you could trust most people, not all.   But, I lived way back in the hills of Santa Cruz, Scotts Valley to be exact, I raised horses and fed 20-50 rabbits for food, chickens, ducks, a huge garden, we even had an out house.  Now, you might think that sounds bleak.  I thought it was wonderful.

Now, with all this diatribe about me, you might think this is all about me. This story is all about the distortion of social values, the trends that lead us to adopt values and shape our opinions,  the political and corporate struggles that teach us to divide and disrespect each other's rights and value systems, the way family values are destroyed, role models in a society where families are most often divided by divorce than remain united theough the understanding of the word commitment. 

Finally, it's about words themselves, how they become so twisted that, in fact, it's often impossible to really be sure what people are saying, because of the ambiguities and then the research that tells people with evil intent how to manipulate you, and cause you to do things you wouldn't ever imagine doing. Even the financial pressures cause people to do things they wouldn't do... which is all part of the reason so many people end up in prison... all the pressures and manipulations, and frustrations that manifest themselves in criminal or violent ways, or, in a very few cases, motivates people to take on seemingly insurmountable challenges to right the wrong that's been done.

And you might think that this is to get you to like me or approve... it's not.  I require a little, but very little external validation.  I judge my own actions based upon  my own belief system and my personal relationship to God.  A very profound relationship indeed.  And even if I was burned at the stake tomorrow for some conviluted crime, I'd have to say I am proud of myself as a person, as a citizen, and as a person who has given all I can to my fellow humans and beings and forests of this planet.

Finally, there are some people who may believe that some of the things I'm going to say are critical, are opinionated, wrong, right, whatever.   That's not what's important.  What I really want to do is present my view, and encourage other people to speak out and share their views so we have a basis for the conversation of "what do we have to understand to make it all work for everybody".  I have every faith in the ideal that it's actually possible.   Even the terrorists have something to say, and if anyone had bothered to listen to them and tend to their complaints in the first place, they likely would not have become terrorists.  And I don't condone their actions.

So, I am everyone's ally, and no one's.  I want to re-affirm what Jess Ventura did when he exposed himself to admit his victories and his improprieties.  He wanted people to understandf the layers and textures of what caused him to come to the conclusions he did.  He wanted to expose that part in each of us that thinks about things we would never admit in public... even if we don't do those things.  It's just all a part of being human, and embracing it makes us all a little more open to the spirituality we all share, and the dignity we all deserve.

In political parties, because the political positioning has gone on for so long, we have all been trained to be like lawyers arguing a side of an issue that we don't even agree with, using speaking points carefully positioned to train us from our leaders and broadcasters. So, we become aligned with groups of people we don't know at all, arguing points we don't understand, and we divide ourselves from our communities, and break all the rules of conduct we say we dearly love.  And most people don't even know it.  They're just "going along".

So that's what this is really all about.  I'm going to mention things pointing to criminality of other people, and I'm not particularly interested in the prosecution of the crimes.  These are all just observations, examples of everything that brings me to saying everything I say.

Not because I think I am right. But because trusting the people means putting your ideas forward, and allowing the people to choose what ideas they will adopt and support.  And those that resonate will be supported.  And other people will most assuredly have brilliant ideas much better than mine.  And I will immediately adopt those as my own, and give them the credit they deserve.  Because it makes sense.  What makes sense.  That's what this is about.

If the only thing I accomplish in this is to cause people to question the difference between what we're told, what we do and the manipulations and divisory tactics used to do it, and to cause a public conversation about our values and what the people want, what the people want... not what the leaders decide for us and convince us to accept. Not the lesser of two evils.

This is truly not a criticism.  This is an intellectually honest examination of what it means to be human, what it means to be an American, what Democracy is, and what freedom means to me. So, here we go.  Every little story I tell you is true. They are relevant to the final parts of the story. And afterward, I'll tell you what I think about key issues... especially the part about abortion, which will shock all sides, given that I say I am a fundamentalist Christian.  And if you disagree with   me about any of the things I say, I'll be glad.  That will mean you're thinking, and we'll have some interesting discussions.  See, I'm one of those guys who doesn't really care about winning.  I care about having things work.

Like von Hayek's wife said of him, "He'll never be rich, but it'll never be boring".

With all the strange things that have happened to me, I don't feel sorry for myself at all, and I don't want anyone else to either.  Think of me as a composite, though what I'm going to tell you is true, and that will help de-personalize it for you.

Chapter I

One night around 1 am I was driving on Highway 17 from San Jose to Santa Cruz, and when I got to the summit of the pass, it was snowing.  I hadn't really experienced snow much, and normally avoided driving in it because I know I don't know how to drive in it well. 

But on this one night, there it was. And it was very light, and the flakes were very big.  I was driving slowly, and it was very dark outside, and to me, it seemed like I was being shown a movie.  As if  life was like a movie playing in front of me, going on all around me, I love to watch people at airports... and as involved as I was in this grand show, what I was most was an observer, and every once in a while, when I thought it would do some good or saw some advantage that wouldn't hurt other people, I could re-write the tiniest part of the script and cause the outcome of that act of the movie to come out totally differently than it otherwise would.  

I took it seriously, and I thought it was interesting and fun. Covertly empowering other people, rarely getting credit for things, but causing little outcomes everywhere I go.  And rarely do I do it on purpose.  It's just what I do. 

We moved to the hills of Santa Cruz, when I was five. It was at the end of a fire road, that bordered on open land for hundreds, if not thousands of acres.   To get to my nearest friend's house meant riding down some very steep hills for about 5 miles on my bicycle.  That was not an impairment to me. It was just what I needed to do.

In the house down the hill below us lived an abstract artist named Robert Vestal, a fairly well-known artist in the San Francisco Bay Area. His house was originally my grandparents house.  A few hundred feet away, was my great grand-parents' old house. Long ago, they owned the whole mountain.

Bob always had an easel and a set of paints for me, taught me to use various brushes, and how to use textures.  He had one brilliant painting of John Kennedy that we would sit and look at for an hour at a time.  Until one day, he said, watch this.... and he began to paint over it, using the textures of the face of Kennedy to bring the new painting to life with rich textures and colors... he told me to always look at things to see what they will cause, or what they will allow, instead of worrying about what you know it can do and limiting your possibilities.

Bob was, in many ways, my second father.  The artistic one.   My own father was a big believer in the arts, and liked it very much that Bob was teaching me these things.  I don't think they ever talked.

At one point, Bob, who liked to bodysurf, got run over by a surf board at Twin Lakes Beach, just next to the Yacht Harbor in Santa Cruz.  So, for about 3 months, on my way home from school each day, I would stop by his house, fix him a simple dinner followed by his daily Manhattan, and then read books to him.  I can't remember what they were.  Stuff about JFK, Catholicism, Hawaii.. all kinds of cool stuff I had never imagined.

In the second  grade, I was tested and declared a genius. I didn't know what that meant, and didn't really care. My teacher told me that one day I would be a scientist, and invent something that would be of significance to the world. This explained why the bathroom smelled every time after I used it, having mixed various combinations of whatever was in the medicine cabinet to see what could possibly happen.   My biggest challenge was to figure out how to disolve this brown stuff that was sometimes in the wash basin.  It was impoosible.  Years later, I found out it was denture adhesive.

They wanted to put me in the 5th grade, but my sister who was 1 year older than me stopped by a neighbor's house one day and got drunk on her way home from school..  From that point on, I was assigned the task of making sure she got home.   And, my parents believed it would be bad for my sister psychologically if I was advanced beyond her.  It didn't matter to me... I didn't even know at the time.

By the third grade, teaching other kids math and reading, leading hour long Beatles song fests on the playground, I had a good time.

I was writing poetry, in the 4th grade I began playing violin, and wrote my first song.  And I wrote more and more and more.   My older sister Alma, later to become Miss Soquel-O-Rama and an entrant in the   Miss Santa Cruz contest, was supposed to be a virtuoso violinist, and, up to that point at least, considered the most intelligent and favorite of my father.  That seems to be very important to my siblings.

I would stand outside her bedroom while she practiced, and when she stopped, I would play back whatever she had played.  Drove her nuts.  I was just playing music.

My first copyrighted lyrics were for the song "Love is Blue" although they were not used.  I copyrighted numerous songs through a company in Philadelphia called Betty's Music Makers which supposedly was destroyed in a flood.(Years later, one of the choruses of a song I wrote ended up in an Elvis Presly song. I was shocked, flattered, and merely took it as an indication that there was more to know before I got into the music business.)

I was in a band.  I couldn't play the guitar, though they taught me a few chords so I could hold it while I performed lead vocals.  My real function was in rehearsals, where they'd start playing a melody and turn a tape recorder on, and I would make up the lyrics as we went along.

We played Cream, the Beatles, the Doors, all that stuff. It was the time of Fillmore West, and a building just a couple hundred feet away was called The Barn, and was a mini-Fillmore, mostly where artists came and hung out and did drugs and jammed.   Alot of artists actually came from the Santa Cruz mountains... the Doobies, CSN&Y... alot.  Anyway, one night at one of the dances, Cream and the Doors showed up.  I didn't know at the time, but the extra guitarist with them was Hendrix.   What a dance.

There was this other guy who wanted in the band... and thought for some reason that meant getting someone out of it, and that someone was me.  Noone in the school knew the songs were mine. This guy spread it around that I didn't really know how to play the guitar.  And I was kicked out of the group.  But my songs were popular, and they kept playing them. I was furious.

Still, when they realized their lead singer, songwriter and tambourine player was part of what made the sound of the band, they let me back in, and the guy who got me kicked out... the next election, I didn't have to do a thing.  He actually got every single person in the class, including my opponent, to sign the petition to put me in the election. I didn't dare ask how.

I have a history of that.  The supposed "hard cases" liking me.  I think it's because I treat them respect, and listen when they talk.   I think the lack of that is what caused them to be the tough guys.  Any time anyone ever picked on me, one of these hard guys would notice, and beat them up.  I swear I never asked anyone to defend me.

I continued on the violin, until my parents decided that to allow me to play better, they would take me to a doctor to have my crooked little fingers straightened...I declined, and requested a guitar.  Shortly after they had made a deal with some guy from Poland to smuggle an authentic Stratavarius  into the US (for what reason I don't know), and, to get it through customs, they replaced it with my violin. Just an interesting side note.

It's fun to note that I also had a very bad lateral lisp.  I was not allowed to tell my dog to sit in front of other people, because instead of sit, it sounded like I said s_it. :}  I had speech therapy for years. As long as I was at that school, I had a lisp.  Later, when we moved away, and I went to a new school and had new friends who didn't know I had a lisp, the lisp went away.  Truth is, I just didn't want people to notice the change and make a fuss over it.

In that same time period, my family began to go to church a lot.   My mothere originally Catholic, who, later in life converted to a very fundamentalist charismatic faith.  My father claimed to be an athiest. Our Southern Baptist teacher told us dad wasn't an athiest, he actually believed a great deal, but was too much of a scientist for his own good.  If you want to know more about my father and his unusual life, check out Memory of a Child in the editorial section.  Just be prepared to have an open mind.

I didn't like being forced to go to church, but I loved to go to church.  I loved Sunday School, the parables, the good Samaritan, we had to memorize 1 Bible verse per week, I usually did 10 or 20 if only because of its beautiful poetry and powerful messages.  I loved hearing the Reverend Glennon Culwell speak... his oratory would stand up with the best of them... I was, like the girls in the family, often a soloist at this age, our church had  an incredible choir, and a man who was a professional opera singer who would sing for us once a month.

About this same time, I began being involved in student councils. In short, I was president of my class every year until my junior and senior years, which I will explain later.

It was during that summer that I went to church camp, and had a great time.  One day, I went back to my bunk to get my baseball glove (I was also an athlete, played all sports pretty well) and he was there, and said he saw I had a serious look on my face, and asked if I was considering surrendering my life to Jesus.

Now, the truth was, I had already made that decision long before, and I had witnessed to other people, and watched others praying with people who had just accepted the Lord, so we said all the words, every one of them said sincerely.  And finally, I got to go play baseball. 

See, my mom  said my face gives away everything I feel.  So I figured he saw my intensity about finding my baseball glove.  And. like I said, I was already a Christian. I knew he was a good man, and I didn't want him to be disappointed, and I wanted him to be encouraged to keep doing good work, so as much as I wanted to play baseball, I stayed with him and prayed with him, and we created a new relationship, better than we had before, and it was good, based on sharing ideals and values that we agreed on and could count on.  That was worth something to me.   Because I truly love people. That's kind of been my whole life.

A few weeks later, it was time for vacation Bible School, and I decided I wanted to win the prize of the 3 foot Look candy bar (I always wanted to see a 3 foot candy bar), and so, being a popular kid, I brought in 150 kids over the next 2 weeks.   I was disappointed that the candy bar was actually a bunch of them taped together.   But, we slammed them hard against the cement, broke them into little pieces, and sort of had a party in the church that afternoon.  A lot of those kids grew up to be leaders in that church.

Now, this is one of the things I've only admitted to one other person before.  It'll test YOUR faith.  So, on that last day, we were sitting there in church, the Reverend speaking some words about making this a point of demarcation in our lives, to take a stand for Jesus and to be strong people in the face of temptation, and I kind of went off into a bit of a daze, and for the briefest moment, I saw a picture of myself, from the back, in a black leather coat, in front of 50,000 people, or some sort of large stadium.  I have no idea what I was supposedly doing there.  And in a moment, it was gone.

I thought, that's weird.  Guess I'm going to replace Billy Graham.  Maybe I'll be president.  Or maybe I'll be a rock 'n roll star.   And then I thought, this is too weird.  Maybe I'll just try to stay focused on the reverend... who had already stopped speaking.

But I always wondered about it.  For a long time I searched for an answer.  One day, I just said, alright God, I don't know what you have in mind, but I'm willing.  Teach me whatever I need to know, and take me where I need to go.   And, from that day on, I just kept my eyes and ears open, questioning and learning everything I could experience.  Not recklessly, just, like an observer.

From that day on, every time I thought something like, I don't understand why.... whatever I was thinking about happened to me.  It was like having a genie in a bottle, you had to be careful what you asked for, and every time, whatever happened, it was incredibly inciteful.  It was only just the other day that I wondered what would happen if I wondered what it would be like to be wealthy.  Ya never know.

Now, remember, I was just a kid. Being a ham, I started doing a ventriloquist act.  I performed at parties, school assemblies or just in class when the teacher was bored... if I didn't have my stuffed monkey Joey with the slit in the back with me, I would play like I was My Favorite Martian, with antennas on my head like a radio, and he would talk to the class through me. (remember, I was very young)

5th grade, my father died. They had asked me to speak to a school assembly for 10 minutes about how Americans celebrated Christmas, and the religious ideas behind it.  I had to cancel.

About 6 months later, my mother sold the "ranch", and we moved into the city of Scotts Valley.  I had to give up my horse, which I had raised since 3 months.  He was orignally named Stupid by the breeder.  He said all appaloosa's were slow at first.  I renamed him Stormy. He was an appaloosa Welsh Mix which was just a hand too small to be called a horse. He wasn't neutered, so it was illegal for me to ride him around mares because I was too young.

He kept jumping over the fence and running around the neighborhood.   The worst part was, he wouldn't come to anyone but me.  We sold him, and he became a championship harness racer.  He really could fly.

2 weeks later, good old Walter decided to do his after-Christmas vacation show and tell how his father, the mortician, had prepared my father's body for burial.  He had a paper that his father had used to  provide an explanation on the procedures and chemicals they used, and how cremation was done.  He even had pictures.  Walter's father didn't know I was in the class. And the teacher just let him proceed. I was stunned.

I was in the x class in school - which meant, they told us at the beginning of the quarters what the work was, and we could do it at our own speed.  It would take me about 2 weeks per quarter to complete the curriculum.. The rest of the time I was in the art room... painting a 4' x 8' abstract mural,  creating tin foil and paper mache dolphins (our school mascot), all kinds of interesting little projects.

Other people, I found out later, were there because it was the source of free glue to sniff.  We were the class of 69, and we lived up to the number (so to speak).  Years later, I found out that some of the girls I had a crush on, who acted like they liked me but wouldn't "be a girlfriend" were turning tricks in the bushes at recess.  We had the highest pregnancy and drug use rate in the state, and I was oblivious to it. Maybe they knew I was an innocent, maybe it was because I was the school politician/leader. I just never knew.

The next year, they took me out of the x class, because they were concerned I couldn't handle it emotionally after my father's death.  I never did understand that.  I didn't think I had done anything wrong.  And it was difficult to be in class with people who didn't want to learn. And of course, there was no more time for art, because I had to be in class everyday.

I didn't really mind.  But I was bored.  And I wasn't into throwing spitballs and paper airplanes.

So I got myself a little radio with an earphone, and listened to basketball and baseball and football all day long.  It was only a problem during the world series, when I would tap out a code to the rest of the class when one team would score, or make my desk squeak for the other.  The teacher said I was driving him nuts.  But he always asked me the scores.

A few months later, my mother went out to a bar one night, and brought back a man.  He seemed like a nice guy. George was not like my father at all.   He was from Texarkana.  He was relatively uneducated, but clever and good at his work. When he wasn't drinking, he was highly sought after at dairies, logging camps and lumber yards.  He would somehow increase productivity everywhere he worked.

The problem was, since he caught his previous wife in bed with his father, who then carried his father's chile, he drank 90% of the time.  George had had a tough life.  He had a heart as big as the Grand Canyon, and a thirst that could consume an ocean.

Within a week, we had an incident where he took my father's Savage 300 magnum rifle, a very powerful weapon, and was going to shoot us all and himself.   I don't even know why.

We called my brother in law, who was still recovering from several   massive gunshot wounds he got in his 3rd tour of duty in the Vietnam War.   Sgt. Rock they called him.  His father was a career General.

He was wounded just after Westmoreland had more fully taken over control of the war.  He said he had never lost a man under his command, until that one day when a lieutenant, just having come "in country" was put in charge of a number of squads (despite his protests) and lead them into a Viet Cong ambush.  Sarge said he got hit the first time, and took out the lieutenant in anger, and as he did, took three more bullets in his legs and arms.

Sarge wrestled the weapon away from George. I grabbed it and all the ammunition I could find, and buried it in a deep hole I dug with my hands, concerned that someone else might come along and be injured by it.

When I got back, Sarge was gone, and George was asleep.  It was an ominous beginning.  I never really questioned it much.  I just knew something was off.

A few weeks later, we moved to Jacksonville, Oregon.

Now before I move onto that, there are a few important side notes.

Our school was like many schools, implementing JFK's fitness program.   Being from the hills, with all the chores - wood chopping, caring for animals, training horse, digging ditches, having to walk 10 miles a day to get to and from the bus to school... I was short and husky... but my friends bodies were developing differently than mine.  They knew it too, and my friends even sort of sheltered me from embarrassment.  They were truly good friends.

I was also aware of a family trait in men in my mother's side of the family to have something called Kallman's syndrome.  My older brother had it, and had received treatment for it.  It's a petuitary defect, that causes the body to produce too few male and female hormones, causes me to not be able to smell, causes you not to go through puberty, and ultimately, as I was experiencing, made me unable to build muscle mass.  I'm not talking about being muscular.  Just the ability to gain weight and add mass.  This is important, because it caused me to experience my teen and early adult years much differently than most people.

In baseball, i was a pitcher, and could throw every junk pitch in the book.  I had a kiler curve ball and a fast ball that would do all the dips and jumps just like Drysdale and Marichal.  I was a football quarterback, a basketball player who could hit any 3 pointer 90% of the time, I was never serious about track, but because of my work in the hills, I would run 4-1/2 minute miles backwards while cheering my friends to coach them to win the races they were entered in.  Just more stuff I had fun with, and didn't take too seriously. 

This was all by the beginning of the 8th grade. Anyway, we moved to Jacksonville, Oregeon.

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