Packaged People

 Packaging functions to create curiosity, to attract, to inform, to contain and protect its contents from outside contamination, to protect its contents from certain degrees of impact or from spillage. Some packaging is punctuated with bright, high contrast color. Some wears the colors associated with its ethnicity, the red white and blue, the white and green.  In almost all packaging, the list of ingredients is the most obscured by small print and cryptic chemical names.

Is it my imagination, or are people more likely to “package” themselves, their children, and even their pets these days…t-shirts with messages, clothes touting designers, eye-glass frames festooned with identity, MAGA caps…packaging, designed to let others know what’s inside, and what isn’t…”Stupid” and “<—I’m with Stupid.”

My guess is that humans, however dull are much more complex than any packaging could describe.  "Identity" is a form of packaging. Apparently individuals can change "identity" at will. Turns out it not something you're just stuck with from birth, decided by others.

My identity is that of a cranky old white guy who is disappointed at how "stupid" the world and its inhabitants have turned out.  For example, I had expected faith-based religion and its unreasoned superstitions to be pretty much gone by now.  Turns out church membership and participation is declining, but the noise being made by the shrinking group is even louder, as populist politicians appeal to its mindless capacity for emotion.

Lahaina, Maui

 In the Spring of 1964 my ship, USS Abnaki, left our home port of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii on the island of Oahu and sailed South East toward Maui. Along the way, we lobbed a few rounds from the ship’s main deck-gun at the island which had been reserved for gunnery practice by the fleet and its aircraft. I’ve forgotten its name.  We arrived in Lahaina and anchored out about a mile or so.  I don’t recall why we were there, or what the occasion was, but the command declared an open house, a condition usually reserved for friendly foreign ports such as Kagoshima, Japan and Kaohsiung, Taiwan.  Hawaii, in general, had a love-hate relationship with the US Navy…loved the money it brought, but hated the presence of rowdy, Haole sailors.  Lahaina was no exception. The story which follows is not told in the ship’s deck-logs.  

A community near Lahaina Town had decided to host a dance, and invite the ship’s crew and officers as guests.  It was a generous and risky invitation, which would predictably end badly.  I’m not defending bad behavior on anyone’s part, but sailors are known to be difficult “guests.”  They were known to be obscene, rowdy, intrusive, and inebriated.  This night was no exception.  According to local leadership, the sailors practiced all of their predictably bad social skills in spades, and disrespected several of the local “maidens” to boot.  Put simply, they were as a group terrible guests, and several of the young local men, who were friends and family of the disrespected young women were enraged enough to follow the bus, taking the sailors back to Lahaina at the end of the evening. The bus full of rowdy sailors, and several carloads of enraged local-boys arrived simultaneously and emptied out on the street right in front of the bar which this writer was about to exit for his short walk to the waterfront, and his ride back to the ship in the ship’s whale-boat.  Keep in mind, this writer had no clue as to what had gone on at the dance, because he, then and now, works hard to avoid dancing, dances, and the rituals generally recognized as courtship, or more often, seduction.

This writer's evening had started out at a local bar in one of Lahaina’s historical buildings, a white wooden building housing an Inn and several other businesses. I believe the bar was called “Whale’s Tale,” in memory of the village’s whaling history.  As I recall, I left the Whale’s Tale pleasantly buzzed and made my way to another watering hole at the end of the side street which passed by the now famous banyon tree and some municipal buildings. I seem to remember that my destination had some sort of hokey facade and a pirate theme, a forerunner of the persona that Lahaina would take on in earnest as it became a developed tourist attraction.  I settled in at that location, and stayed the evening, enjoying the now forgotten amenities of the establishment which was almost entirely devoid of sailors, who were all at the dance some miles away.

As I exited the bar onto the street in front, I was almost immediately engulfed by angry locals tumbling from several vehicles, already yelling, kicking, swinging…my reaction was to immediately go from defense to attack.  Usually, I would have had a beer bottle stored in my sock, undetectable due to the bell-bottom pants, but on this night I was weaponless, lured in by the peaceful streets of the almost village like town. So, I did what I know, which is every dirty trick in the book: throat punches, crotch kicks, hitting from behind, using any found “weapon” on the ground, and more.  I had just kicked a local boy in the balls and was briefly contemplating his prone figure on the pavement, wretching up the contents of his previous meal, when I heard and felt a “whoosh” followed by my lights going out. I woke up a brief second later, still standing, and saw a local-girl holding a carved leather Western style purse on a long shoulder strap.  She had swung the purse from its long strap which accounted for the swoosh, and had moved my nose, previously broken in a street fight, back toward its original location, where it remains to this day. I punched her in the throat, stepped over her gurgling form, and fought my way toward the liberty boat landing a block away. By this time, at least one officer from our ship and several others from the duty party were trying to herd the embattled liberty party back to the boat landing while admonishing the civilians to stand down and let them handle it.  Next morning at 07:30 Quarters the “mood” was somber. The Captain was not amused. The XO looked to him and mimicked his icy glare.  

I don’t recall that we foreshortened our stay, or that Liberty Call was cancelled for the new day.  But, once we got underway for home port, at Quarters the next day, we were informed that the balance of the crew’s party/picnic fund, made up of a 5-cent “tax” on each pack of our sea-store cigarette purchases, would be used for reimbursement of damages, mostly personal injuries to locals.  I don't recall, and the deck logs don't indicate, that there was any formal crew punishment. Aloha Lahaina.

Its not you, its me…

 You know that knowledge you suddenly have that the person you’ve known and been friends with for a long time and have been chatting with online, or emailing, would never again talk to you if you didn’t  initiate contact?  Yeah…that feeling. You search your last few contacts for an offense you’ve given, convinced automatically that its you.  After all its always you.  You check your sense that it’s always you who has to call. Check, it’s always me for some time now. You tell yourself, it’s probably not that they don’t like you. It’s more likely they’ve just moved on, and you’re more invested in your mutual past than they are. It never feels good to be the one who is over-invested, who cares more, in a lop-sided relationship.  And, after all they may be busier, they may have been sick, or traveling, or…or…or.  You make excuses for them because that’s who you are…the one who tries to not “take it personal.”  The one who avoids the accusation that you’re just being insecure, or worse yet “paranoid.”

You “test” your intuition by withholding contact, and, sure enough the days turn into weeks turn into months and maybe into years…nothing.  And, then one day your hear a chat ding, or receive an email, and there they are…as though no time has passed at all, and no acknowledgement of the time which has passed except for maybe a vague “…its been awhile since…”. And, what do you do?  Do you play the game, and pretend there was no lapse, or that the lapse was just inevitable, or mutual?  Do you not respond, wait them out?  I’ve done all of those responses at some time during my life, but I’m always left to wonder “What did I do (or not do) to make myself dispensable?”

A person I had worked with almost 10-years in the 1980’s, and remained active face-to-face friends with another 25 years, just suddenly stopped calling, or contacting.  If someone had asked who my best non-family friend was, I would have immediately said his name. Whenever I called or messaged him with an invitation to lunch on a particular future date, he was “busy that day” and said he would call me back when his scheduled settled down.  He didn’t. And, I would call or message again. We met for lunch a few more times.  He almost broached the unspoken subject of “Why?” a couple times, but then backed off when I asked what had changed.  “I don’t know…its me, not you.”  In 2015 I moved out of state, adding the complication of distance and even less opportunities for access.  When you go back to visit where you came from, it seems like all your friends and family who remain there want a piece of your calendar. He didn’t.  I let him know when we’d be there, and where, and it was never workable to my now retired friend.

About a year ago he suddenly died of a heart attack during a bout with pneumonia. We had chatted online about a year prior to that as he was approaching his October 2021 birthday.  Almost a year after that last chat had passed, when one day his wife messaged me that he had died suddenly from a brief illness the day before.  My friend was dead, and I would never know why our long friendship became distant, not only in miles, but in interest and contact. 

What is the lesson here? Is there a lesson here?  I know you can’t make someone love you. I know you can’t make someone tell you if it’s you, not them.  You already know that just sounds paranoid, and makes you seem needy.  One day it just starts with a sense that if you don’t call, or text, or message, or email, you may never hear from them again. And, the solemn fact is, you may never hear from them again.

A Hard Rain's a-gonna Fall!

Years before Eric Burdon penned the classic war protest song Sky Pilot, chronicling the part religion played in manipulating the acts and consciences of fighting men, and even longer before Creedence made it clear that they were not Fortunate Sons, there was a voice of protest, more subtle and abstract, its raspy, nasal twang almost as pleasant as finger-nails on a chalk board.  It was the voice, harmonica, and guitar of that lone troubadour and poet, Bob Dylan.  I had the good fortune to see him perform. At the time, the Vietnam conflict was, for the U.S., in its infancy, and I was a recent and future player in that conflict. For the French, the conflict was finished. For the people of South East Asia, the wars had been virtually continuous for a thousand years.

My ship-mate, one time sparring partner, and drinking cohort Ken Wetzler and I entered the Waikiki Shell through the general admission gate, then found a spot on the grassy slope facing the lighted stage that warm first night of August in 1965. Each of us carried a newly purchased bamboo mat snugly rolled around an unopened bottle of fortified wine. The ticket taker at the gate was not interested in what might be rolled up in the mats.  In center stage stood a lone chrome microphone stand with a high mike for the singer, and a waist high mike for his guitar, already leaning in its stand.  A tall stool stood next to a shorter, small square table.  Eventually, a lone coffee cup, contents unknown, would occupy the table, and provide sips to its owner between songs.  

The Shell was slowly filling with spectators. The "blue hairs" were occupying the spendy seats, actual chairs, up front. The great unwashed, including Ken and me, were settling in on bamboo mats,on the grass, well away from the stage, in the darkest part of the venue.  Our ship, the USS Abnaki, had recently returned to its home-port of Pearl Harbor from South East Asia, more specifically, Yankee Station off Vietnam where our ship spent months shadowing whichever Russian spy ship happened to be in the neighborhood, intent on messing with U.S. flight operations over North Vietnam.  

We had booked a hotel room nearby, though not near the beach. That would have been way beyond our financial means.  This expensive night in Waikiki was entirely dedicated to attending a Bob Dylan concert.  The irony of funding a concert mostly comprised of songs of peace and protest using our recently earned military hazardous duty (combat) pay was entirely lost on us at the time.  I was 21. Many of life's obvious ironies were lost on me then, and Ken was no "light" in the darkness either.  We were drawn to that evening by our common love of certain music, performers, and songs, among them Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, The Rolling Stones.

Back on the ship our shared record player and collection of LP vinyl was safely stowed in the Tech Shack…an area well below the main deck, accessed by round pull-down man-hatches and vertical latters, in a caged space where several Electronics Technicians labored at all hours.  Our Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Miles Davis, Dave Brubeck, and Rolling Stones vinyl never left the safe confines of the Tech Shack.  Add to that safe confine the fact that the space was well below the center of gravity of the rolling ship which made it less likely the stylus would skid across the vinyl when the ship rolled badly.  We who co-owned the simple record player had monetized our asset, renting it out to select listeners for a price, but only if it never left its safe harbor in the cage, and was not scheduled to be in use by any of its 5 or 6 co-owners.

So when Wetzler and I walked through the general admission gate and found adjacent spots on the grassy slope well back from the lights of the Shell venue, we had a sense of what to expect.  We were Dylan fans, though neither of us had attended a live concert of his before.  The police presence was fairly visible, and having some history with the HPD we knew there would be a sizable plainclothes presence as well, so we kept the wine out of sight until the lights turned down, and the spot light focused on the single 3-legged stool in center-stage.  

As the high-dollar seats filled up closest to the stage the police presence grew until there was a line of cops, arm’s length from each other, backs to the stage, facing the audience.  That blue-line seemed to emphasize the idea that this concert might be a celebration of protest, of resistance, of questioning authority, if not outright challenge to the powers that be, best represented by the fur-garbed, diamond studded blue-hairs now settling in facing the cops.

There was no opening act preceding Bob.  A deep male voice, invisible off stage, simply announced, “Ladies and Gentlemen…Bob Dylan” then this skinny, pale “kid” with an unruly mop of hair ambled onto the stage, a harmonica hanging in its fixture around his neck, and into the bright circle enveloping the chair, microphone, table, and acoustic guitar resting in its stand.  He pulled the top mike down to his level, and muttered a brief, unintelligible nasal greeting.  For the next 45-minutes he sang them all…all the album songs that had elevated him from a lone voice in NYC’s Village, to the poet laureate of the U.S. At the end of that set he wordlessly, and unceremoniously left the stage.

Maybe those in the spendy seats thought it was over, or maybe they just needed it to be.  As I remember the tourists in the real seats began abandoning the Shell in a stream, until there were few “blue hairs” remaining.  The disembodied male voice hurriedly announced that this was a brief intermission, but the concert would continue.  Virtually all the monied occupants of the stage side seats were long gone.  I’ve often wondered if most of them up front even knew who Bob Dylan was. Perhaps they were just at some random concert because they were lounging nearby at one of the beach hotels, and looking for a night out.  One thing was clear.  They were not Dylan’s fans.

Dylan took his time coming back for the 2nd set. But, when he did return he stepped out beyond the circle of the spot light, held his hand up to shade his eyes, and commented on the empty seats, remarking something to the effect that it felt like no one was there at all.  He could not see or hear those of us back in the darkness, on our bamboo mats, laying on the grass.  So, he grabbed the top mike, made a beckoning motion with one arm and said, “You guys back there...come on down!”  The cops immediately intervened with the early usurpers of the high priced seats, night-sticks in hand, banishing them back to the cheap seats.  Dylan futilely protested to the uniformed police, but when rebuffed simply refused to restart the show.  He put his guitar in the stand, picked up his coffee cup, and sat down silently on the stool. It seemed the show would end in stalemate.

From the darkness I watched as uniforms, tropical shirts, suits, white shirts and ties bustled back and forth, clumping up for brief inaudible desperate looking conversations, then separated to scurry to another assorted clump of responsibility, to talk and gesture in hushed animation.  Bob sat on his stool, sipping the contents of his cup as he looked on bemused, maybe puzzled or quizzical until a frazzled looking cop with lots of brass on his shoulders and gold on his hat motioned to the faceless darkness to come forward, then beat a retreat as the now energized crowd noisily claimed the the expensive seats in a wave of occupation.  Bob appeared to love it.  Revolution was in the air!  He waited for the noise to subside.  Wetzler and I stayed in the darkness on our mats, tending to our wine (now becoming less weighty in the bottles), savoring our buzz, and casually smoking our Marlboros. Smoking was banned in the expensive seats.  

Dylan’s 2nd set was made up of some old, and some new.  Dylan was one of the most prolific singer/song writers of that decade so he already had an abundance of recognizable and popular material.  That night he mixed in some I’d never heard.  They seemed almost experimental in nature, but many would become standard Dylan.  In one instance, he "stumbled" starting the song at least three times, apparently forgetting the words, before catching the momentum. The passage of time, and maybe the Mogan-David fortified wine, have conspired to wipe the names of that evening’s playlist from my old memory.  

But, I remember it as my first concert, and my first up close and personal view of the intelligent use of passive-resistance against authority…not exactly the stuff of Mahatma Gandhi in India 20-some years earlier against the British Empire, but impressive to me, a 21-year old U.S. Navy sailor freshly returned from Yankee Station, funding my evening with Vietnam combat pay, and quietly singing along in the darkness with songs of peace and protest, "...a hard rain's a- gonna fall..."  We were blissfully unaware of how hard that rain would be.  LBJ, who had been President for just under two years, was quietly building up troops in Vietnam in a reversal of Kennedy's plans which died with him in Dallas.  The war would soon grow from a disagreeable nightly news feature to a social cleaver which would brutally divide the nation, and set us out on a course of more, and more division.  

But, on this night a hard-rain was just a poetic, abstract threat. The "body counts" were still small. The economy was burgeoning. The nation was busy and distracted, doing what it did best, "making hay" before the storm came.

In the summer of 1955 Holbrook was a small Arizona town on the main East-West U.S. highway between Flagstaff, AZ and the Arizona border with New Mexico. Not much has changed.  The town is bordered by Navajo Nation reservation land, occupied by our country’s largest registered Indian tribe and is the largest reservation by square miles.  

God, ever mysterious in His ways and reasons, had ‘called’ my Dad to save the Navajo. When my Dad was called, as he often was, it meant that we all moved.  God never failed, but success could look like failure in human terms. As it turned out, God had neglected to inform the Navajo that help was coming, so we arrived unannounced, and mostly ignored by the Navajo people.  God had also failed to coordinate our mission with the local Catholic Church, the LDS, and the U.S. Society of Friends, those known affectionately as Mackerel Snappers, Mormons, and Quakers.  Those organizations had already claimed most of the spiritual turf on the Rez, and had no apparent interest in sharing the mission field  with a self-anointed, self-appointed, evangelical “voice crying in the wilderness.”

Our initial stay in town started, as all stays did back then, in one of the independently owned motels on the main business loop of the main highway, during which time we looked for cheaper, more permanent housing.  “Permanent” in my family was a vaguely defined term which meant between 6-weeks and two-years, though two-year stays were rare.  After two or three days in the motel we found a spartan rental on the edge of downtown, South of the Southern Pacific railroad tracks where freight and passenger trains rocketed through town without slowing.  Standing in what passed as our front door, one could see the State Route highway 77 overpass, and hear the traffic’s tires on its seams.  I don’t recall what the inside of the rental looked like.  I do recall the city police regularly visiting a sometimes noisy drunken Indian neighbor who was vigorously abusing his wife and at least one kid on a regular basis, and made a huge to-do whenever his lady locked him out.  It takes a majority practice, and minority exceptions to create a stereotype...in fairness, we would only look at individuals, instead of subsets within larger groups.

I pretty much had the run of the small downtown.  One favorite activity was to stand between the main rail line and the loading dock of an abandoned warehouse as the trains rushed by, their draft almost pulling me under the speeding cars.  But, mostly I just explored, in that aimless way that a rodent explores its surroundings.  I don’t recall that I ever did anything that should have caused trouble for me or anyone else. My motivation was just youthful curiosity, one event just leading to the next in an aimless fashion.

On a certain Sunday, as I remember soon after arriving in town, we left home and headed North in our dull green four-door 1949 Hudson, which we affectionately had named “The Tank.”  I remember seeing the spires of Monument Valley from my low vantage point of The Tank’s back-seat, but I think that is likely a false memory which has been mixed in to my Sunday memory in error from a different day.  Back then the trip out took much longer than the trip back, and I remember that the trip home after our morning was pretty quick. 

I don’t recall how we happened to be invited for a home church service in a traditional Navajo hogan.  I think adults assume that kids are paying attention to conversations and somehow glean information from what they hear, but I can assure you I was not one of those kids.  Adult-speak formed a low, rolling rumble of background noise in my presence, unless I was guilty of something and anxiously listening to find out if I had been discovered.  I was not listening to adults talking unless and until someone spoke my name.  So when we pulled up to a small wood and mud structure, a pickup truck parked beside it, I became vaguely interested because this had never before happened.  

Having heard us arrive, the occupants of the hogan streamed out to greet us, though in a quiet, almost dignified fashion, led by an adult male wearing what I now know to be an expensive “cowboy” hat.  The irony of an Indian wearing a cowboy hat was lost on me at the time. I don’t recall what the rest of the family looked like but I do remember that the family did not resemble the town Indians in appearance, except in skin color.  This family appeared to belong here, whereas the town Indians always seemed to me out of place. I don’t recall whether this was a three-generation family or not.

When we stepped through the low door, I was immediately amazed by the visual feast of colors and texture.  Every inch of walls and what was no doubt a dirt floor, was covered with weaving and tapestries. They were, as it turned out, the families heritage and endowment, handed down over the years to sons and daughters.  The hands of their ancestors had chosen the dyes to make these colors, indeed grown the sheep which produced the wool, and had woven this art from designs deeply embedded in the generations, and yet the weaver had left their individual marks while observing the traditions. This family on this day could tell the story of each piece of heritage which hung on their octagonal walls, or covered the desert-dirt floor.

As I look back now I know that this Sunday morning was my beginning of seeing Indians as individuals, not just a social "problem" and generality, not just as a source of guilt and anger for white society.  Had I been more astute I would have known that this place, this traditional home, this desert, and this history was why this family so clearly belonged here and now, not just to some vague time in the past.  All of that thought came later, most recently as a behavior therapist for an agency trying to improve the mental health of Tohono O’odham People, the nation’s 2nd largest tribe by membership and land-area.

The White man didn’t cause all of the issues and unproductive behavior of the Indians.  One of my native clients pointed out to me that the “noble savage” is just another mistaken white view of native reality.  As he put it, “There’s nothing more noble about Indians than anyone else!  We’re as fucked up as anyone, and we were enslaving and killing each other, beating our wives, and stealing from each other long before the white man showed up, illegally occupied and settled our land, and tried to wipe us out!”

But, on that Sunday in the Summer of 1955 a small fissure formed in one small developing brain, at that time in one life when that brain is forming, and all the dots are yet to be connected into almost irreversible values and beliefs.  And, on the ride back to Holbrook in the back-seat of The Tank something had shifted, only slightly, and that shift would allow the next possibility to become a question seeking an answer, instead of a conclusion, and simple answer for a couplex issue.  And, one day, far in the future an adult brain would ask in effect, “If we are wrong about that what else did we get wrong?” 

Maybe Custer did die for our sins.

By the Summer of 1971, Jennifer, Kim, and I had returned to University Place, Washington from Oaklawn, Illinois.  I had worked for Weyerhaeuser Company in Chicago’s “loop” district since being moved out there in February 1969.  Now that we were back in the PNW, I wanted to attend college, and perhaps even get a Master’s.  I was 28 years old, married with a child and a foster child named Wayne whose Mom was incarcerated at the Purdy Women’s Correctional Center near Gig Harbor.  Wayne deserves a story of his own, as does Nina our 2nd foster child.

The loss of job, and relocation move from Chicago back to Tacoma was a consequence of technological advances in high-speed data transmission which eliminated the need for me and my technical group to do what we did, and ultimately resulted in my transfer and demotion.  I vowed to never again be on the technological “dime.”  The fateful day I received the call from my boss on the West coast that our control center would be shut due to advances in AT&T data technology I felt stupid, naive, and more than a little duped.  I blamed myself…but, I will always believe my Manager Al Berry, who had by this time departed Weyerhaeuser, was aware of the temporary nature of the assignment even before Jennifer and I transferred from Tacoma to Chicago.  I believe I  simply failed to ask the right questions of him before accepting the move.  Al was smooth, not in the good sense of the word, an ex-AT&T manager who had come to Weyerhaeuser’s Information System Group in Tacoma, which meant he was joining one of AT&T’s larger customers.  By the time our Network Center was slated for closure, Al Berry would be replaced by Helmut Heim.  Helmut was a German with an accent, and, one of the most professional guys I ever worked for…a true leader who was committed to taking care of his crew.  No one had ever discussed an exit plan for those of us who moved out to Chicago…we just assumed we would be brought back home.  Fortunately, Helmut was willing to relocate us home though no written agreement to that effect existed.

I don’t remember what I said to Jennifer that night, after getting the call at work from Helmut, then taking the long train-ride home.  When I rode the Rock Island commuter train into town that morning, I had had a future…now?  In those days, I was still lodged somewhat in the cultural values that the husband was the head of the family, and ultimately made all the big decisions, after optionally listening to the opinions of others.  Clinging to this myth was part of my leftover Evangelical legacy…some would call it cultural.  I would have gladly shared my sense of failure at that time with another collaborator, or totally given it away.  I just felt I shoulda known, because I coulda known, and woulda never come to Chicago for anything less than a sure success for me and my family.  I don’t remember our homecoming in University Place being celebratory for me.  My sense was more that I had been almost buried by circumstances in a defeat, I was in retreat, and it was going to take a while to erase the loss…probably years.  I had the sense that everyone knew we had returned home in defeat.  It was my first first job-loss, but would not be my last.

Having accepted the company’s relocation package back to home base in Tacoma, I was also accepting the rotating shift position as an hourly Production Controller in the Computing and Telecommunications Operations Department, at a 40 percent wage reduction compared to Chicago’s wage.  From the company’s perspective, I had been terminated in one position, then hired into another position though there was no break in service. My direct manager in Tacoma, Scott Crozier who by then reported to Helmut Heim, was able to step-down my pay-rate over a period of time, I want to say equal reductions each two weeks for 3 months, so Jennifer and I could better manage the hit to our finances.  Jennifer learned quickly to be a world-class cash-manager.  It would be the first time we had to ask creditors to bear with us.  We were committed to paying, but if they all piled on we would go under.  There would be one more time, after a house sale fell through and we briefly owned two mortgages, when we would again seek forbearance from our creditors.  At that 2nd time, we would get even more practice at playing the float, and asking, ”Just don’t send us to collection and everyone will eventually get their money plus interest!” and again we paid something regularly, communicated often so as to never leave an open question, and did without everything but necessities.

As for my goal of returning to school, I could not attend college full-time and also work a 40-hour rotating shift which “dogged” backwards on the clock every 3-months.  No available University at that time had that level of flexibility in their on-campus offerings.  The sole solution which would satisfy all needs was that the shifts would have to be “frozen” vs. being rotated and dogged backwards on the clock every 3 months.   It took me almost a year to demonstrate to management that our staff’s array of skills could adequately cover 3-shifts, 24X7, with enough volunteers accepting a “permanent” day, swing, or graveyard shift assignment, with enough flexibility to accommodate job-turnover, vacations and sick-days. Sometime in March the following year I started my first college Freshman class at Tacoma Community College after demonstrating the staffing of all shifts, 24/7, with qualified volunteers who preferred an unchanging shift which would best accommodate their foreseeable lives.  Only the Data-Entry department stayed on their traditional Swing and Graveyard shifts because all the new data had to be entered after the close of business, and available for use by 7a.m. East Coast time each following business day.  

The next quarter I could enroll in at Tacoma Community College would start in March 1973.  Jennifer and I decided we would apply for Veteran’s educational benefits, a considerable amount of monthly income for a family of 3.  But, we would bank that VA money and use it in a year for a down payment on the house we were renting from a young couple at church who had been relocated to the East Coast.  We had committed in writing to either buy their house for an agreed on sum, or manage the selling of the house for an agreeable sum. With Jennifer’s cash-management skills, a bit of luck, and the kindness of friends and family, we would be able to pay the community college expenses out of pocket, until such time as I would be forced to go to Pacific Lutheran University…a private, expensive local University...and be approved for a student loan.  The collateral from owning a home would come in handy at that point a year and a half later.

At the time I enrolled for Spring Quarter 1973, all incoming Tacoma Community College freshmen were required to take an English aptitude test, get at least an 80% on it, and take a non-credit, “bone-head” English course when they failed, as most did.  Two of us, both recent military veterans, passed the test on our first attempts, out of a class of 30.  I would take all the transferable 100 and 200 level courses I could at TCC, before moving to PLU.  The student loan process went smoothlyI graduated college in the Summer of 1975 with a Bachelor’s from Pacific Lutheran University, and an acceptance letter to Graduate School at the same institution.  I had precisely enough credits to graduate…no expensive extras, no side trips, no retakes, .  My Bachelor’s GPA was 3.87…and a four-year degree in 3-calendar years while working 40-hour weeks and occasional overtime.  Not bad for a kid who had graduated 3rd from the bottom in his high school class of almost 600. However, there is a certain “pressure” in bringing home your grades to share with others who are sacrificing so one can attend college.  The entire grading spectrum is emotionally skewed.  By that I mean, a “C” feels like an “F” and a “B” feels like a “D.”  An “A” feels like the only truly acceptable result.  I would learn to do even better in graduate studies where I graduated with a 4.0.  As I crossed the stage to get my empty folder from the school’s President, I searched the audience to find the face of the person in the crowd to whom I owed my grades…that woman I never wanted to disappoint.

I never again lost a job due to technological advances. The “technologies” of training, management development, and human resource management would of course change over time, but the changes would be gradual enough to predict, and off-set, or to simply choose to go to a company which was “old school.” More often than not later on I would find myself “dodging” another human instead of technology, a CEO or Chairman of the Board, a VP of Sales or Marketing, who believed that his position had been achieved as a consequence of his own brilliance and his innate knowledge-of-everything, including better knowledge than my own specific areas of expertise. Crossing one of these blind-messiahs could result in damage every bit as fast and thorough as changing technology.  I was to learn this the hard way at least once, as a job loss, and more often as some senior manager simply shut the door on a discussion with the silent words, “Humor me! I’m your boss!” Beware the man who believes himself to be some sort of “renaissance man” for he is more likely a narcissist.

So, immediately after earning my Bachelor’s degree, at the start of the next semester, I began my graduate studies.  I took a full load every semester, including Winter semester and so finished in less than 2-calendar years.  This accelerated pace saved us at least $2,000 back when $2K was equivalent to $11,000 at present value.  Justin was born in the early hours of March 27, 1974 just as I was going through semester finals.  The final I left the hospital to go take on his birth morning was for a class wherein the professor had been very clear that the only valid reason for one’s absence was one’s own death.  This same “understanding” professor would one day soon continue to plague me as a member of my graduate committee.  

Looking back, the entire 5 1/2 years of school seemed hard on everyone, even after graduate studies started.  The graduate classes and clinical practicums allowed a longer leash, more flexibility, but one still had to do the work…including a Thesis or 3 thesis quality research studies, with APA quality papers. I opted for the “bite sized” efforts because it seemed somehow more manageable to spread the effort over the entire graduate phase.  By then, the full-time work had by become a day shift, salaried staff position which helped my boss handle the employee relations of our Operations group.  He had developed the job with me specifically in mind, and, the position would cease to be when I left the company in November 1978.  My boss, Scott Crozier, was destined to die that same December.The goal to keep me employed during 5 1/2 years of schooling had been achieved, and my mentor was now gone.  The world had changed, seemingly overnight, and for the first time in my life, at 35 years old, I sensed mortality’s beckoning in the tick of the clock, in the swoosh of the calendar pages.  Time seemed to become an actual asset, not simply an abstract, and I was “wasting” my time in pretense…trying to be that person I wasn’t, but which others thought I was, or should be.

It would take more than a year before I would “come out” so to speak.  As it occurred, gay people do not have the monopoly on “coming out.”  Starting Thanksgiving Weekend 1979 I would start reconciling my public life with my actual life by starting a life long effort to live my actual life publicly.  My actual life would be the sum things left out, things kept, and new things added.  Evangelical faith, would be the big reduction.  At the core of that reduction was the simple fact that I did not believe the Christian, or any other religious, myth.  Success has been difficult, and results have been mixed.  In trying to live entirely in the “light” I’ve learned it was easier to live in the shadows, and just tell important others what they wanted, expected, to hear, than it is to justify your deeds in a way that’s convincing for others.  So my latter life has been a process of “coming out” as opposed to an event, or even a series of events.

People from my early life knew me in the context of church, shared beliefs, common values, and even shared prejudices. Fundamentalism is a way of life, not just observing a written dogma. Fundamentalism has its own code, its “looks” and sideways glances which in the context of the moment pass shared meanings between believers.  Nothing new and different from any other belief.  Fundamentalism is a system, with inputs, processes, and results which are then reprocessed or adjusted to become part of the inputs. The system even has a way of getting rid of waste. I soon discovered that even in purely social events, I was a guest but no longer a member. I had become waste.  The people I number as friends from my evangelical times are all important to me.  That group is made up from friends and family, some who have known me as a friend since the 1950’s.  The responses to my changes have ranged from unquestioning acceptance to outright denial, “Why that’s ridiculous! Everyone believe in God!”  That sort of comment pretty much shuts the door on exploratory discussion.

Do I believe in a Creator? Yes. I believe the Universe evolves, creating-destroying-creating, as it winds down.  Who or what created the Universe in the first place? Who or what is responsible for the Void, the Matter, the Anti-Matter, the Energy, the Light, the Dark Stuff?  I don’t know…maybe it Is because it Is…maybe it came to Be just because It could…for me, that is easier to believe then believing in a Teddy Bear Deity which occupies Himself with my comfort and welfare, and gives me fair weather while wiping out Bangladesh with annual floods.

I have learned to be careful with the beliefs of others.  I have learned that sometimes they’re barely holding on, and belief is about all they have. I no longer need to destroy their beliefs in order to be at home with my lack of Faith.  Perhaps we create the Cosmos which we are most comfortable in.  I am not comfortable in a Reality where a fickle Deity pulls the strings, and favors this or that person over another. I don’t want to live in that world.  I want to live in a fair world…by fair, I mean a world where the probability, and possibilities are as near randomly distributed as possible in order to favor or disfavor no one.  I choose to not accept the favor or disfavor of a deity which would require his star worshipper to sacrifice his own son as proof of allegiance to the Deity.  I decline to believe any doctrine that requires me to become intellectually disabled, “like a child”, in order to tolerate its outrageous lack of coherent facts.  I refuse any belief which refuses to show the calculations which lead to its revealed claims.  Revealed “knowledge” is rumor, not reality.

My Sister Lois

Its hard to talk about Lois without first talking about our mother Goldie.  Goldie was born in Eminence, MO in May 1915 to King Isaac McKinnon (aka Ike) and Josephine (Josie) Davis McKinnon.  Goldie had 3 older sisters including Faye, Mabel, Hazel and at least one younger brother Theodore (Teddy).  I think its likely Teddy was gay, though no one ever said that in so many words.  

Josie died of Leukemia in 1930 when Goldie was 15.  After Josie’s death Ike became his own best customer for his illegal whiskey, and, shortly after that became “too interested” in his younger daughters, Hazel and Goldie.  Consequently Hazel and Goldie moved to St. Louis and lived with Faye and her husband Olan for awhile.  During this time Goldie and Hazel worked as cigarette packers at the Leggett-Mayer tobacco company in St. Louis. It was in St. Louis during  the early ‘30’s that “the girls” (Hazel and Goldie) met “the boys” (John and William). I want to say they were married in 1932.  This union would occur during the deepest days of the Great Depression.  William, had already been West, riding the rails, doing odd jobs, being arrested for vagrancy or trespassing in various towns, doing municipal convict work, so he had some knowledge about what awaited the four when they went West.  The couples also did jobs as they found them, including working the woods in New Mexico near Taos…the men working at falling and choker-setting, the women working in the kitchen and dining hall.  Part of their wage included food, and lodging in the rail-road “dormitory-cars” which were boxcars turned living quarters.  Later, William got a job painting structures at the Air Force Base which would become Davis Monthan AFB in Tucson.  I believe both couples moved on to Tucson together.

My sister Lois was born in Tucson, AZ in December 1935.  At that time my parents, Bill and Goldie, lived in Tucson with John and Hazel.  About 18-months after my sister was born Hazel and John Karns would produce a baby boy and name him Wayne.  Lois and Wayne would become life-long friends, and she would see Wayne for the last time in July 1991 on a trip to St. Louis in which Lois and I took Papa to visit his surviving sisters, a short while before he died. They, Wayne and Lois, were “double-Cousins.”  I know very little about the family between 1935 and 1943. I know my father had moved to look for work in the dryer climate of Southern Arizona due to his Tuberculosis, which later went into remission as do approximately 25% of cases. He claimed to have been healed on a specific night involving laying-on of hands at the Tucson Assembly of God, and, was simultaneously “called” to preach the gospel, which eventually led Bill, Goldie, and Lois to migrate North to Montana where Bill and Goldie would pastor a start-up Assembly of God church in Dillon.  I was born there in November 1943.  Lois was seven-years old, about to be eight.  John, Hazel, and Wayne had moved back to the mid-West where the little family broke up, Hazel became a lifelong victim, and John went off to find fresh flesh.  Wayne was embittered by the divorce, and felt abandoned and largely ignored by his father.

Lois and I often talked about the fact that each of us was an “only child.” She had 8-years of singular attention, and I had 8-years without a sibling after she and Leroy married in February 1954.  It should be noted that Goldie had a stillborn delivery somewhere between Lois’ and my births.  My earliest direct memories of Lois start in Kendrick, ID in 1946 or 1947.  Our father was pastoring another Assembly of God church there.  My earliest memory of Lois is hearing and seeing my mother become very upset when a neighbor with a telephone came rushing over to say that Lois had been taken from school to the doctor’s office because she had broken an arm on the “monkey-bars.”  In my 3 or 4 year old ignorance I envisioned a broken arm as similar to breaking a branch on a tree, her limb freely dangling. To my disappointment, when she got home she was wearing a plaster cast, and her arm was not dangling, and swinging freely.  As far as I know, this was the first time I had to consider that words were often vague and ambiguous.

I don’t know why we left Kendrick.  In fact, I never truly knew for sure why we left any of the 36 towns we would live in.  But, leave we did and by deduction I believe we went from Kendrick, to a wide spot in the road East of Spokane (Post Falls), then back to Tucson, where we lived in an itinerant cabin court at the intersection of Oracle Road and The Miracle Mile. This would have been 1948 and part of 1949.  The cabins were fashioned from cinder-block, on concrete slab foundations. They had running water, and hand-pumped device,  screened windows without glass, no heat or air conditioning, 1 bedroom with a door, an indoor toilet and tub, and an open living/diningroom/kitchen, where Lois and I shared a cot by the front door, or maybe it was folding ‘roll-away’ bed…unfortunately for her I regularly and copiously wet the bed.  I recall that many of the tenants worked in the citrus fields near Oracle Road, just North of our intersection.  We attended the Assembly of God church where my dad had been “healed” and where he had been “called.”  Reverend Gilmore and his “wing-nut” wife Fanny Mae Gilmore, were still the pastors.  My Dad was an unpaid assistant pastor, who was allowed to sit on the platform at Sunday services.  It was at this time in Tucson that Lois came out as my champion, though quite often she was the informer who got me whipped.

Several boys in the cabin court cornered me in a vacant part of the desert near the cabin court and sexually molested me.  I can still smell their cheesy crotches, and taste the slightly saline penises in my mouth.  In spite of the memory, I was not traumatized.  The memory seems mostly benign.  It wasn’t a violent assault. I simply just didn’t know what was happening, or even that it shouldn’t be happening.  

I casually told my sister about it. She had the common sense, as did my parents whom she told, to not come “unglued” in my presence.  Point being, for a while  it didn’t occur to me that anything important had happened.  However, a day or so after this event, at the school bus stop in front of the court’s convenience store, Lois encountered the “ring leader” of the group, picked him up (literally) off the ground by his hair and threw him repeatedly into the hot pavement of the parking lot, promising him certain and sudden death if he or they ever touched her brother again.  I saw her in a whole new light starting then.  Here was someone who was unapologetically, irrationally, unconditionally on my side.  That “thread” persisted until her death.  I knew Lois was on my side, and when Jennifer and I married, Jennifer was automatically included in the deal.  Jennifer and I have often talked of the times that Lois was there for us…a bridge-loan til payday, a borrowed car when ours broke down, a place for Kim to stay when the sitter fell through, or just a friendly, tolerant, non judging presence on the phone when I was scared and about to fly to the Philippines to board my first Navy ship, or our world had turned to shit for some other reason.  So the molestation event would have been 1949.  Lois would be married and gone in another 5 years.

I entered school the first time in the 1st grade in Lewiston, ID probably in 1950 when I was about to be 7 years old, making Lois 14.  We lived in a shotgun shack on Snake River Road, which was on the road which formed the levee for the Snake River flood plain on the outskirts of Lewiston. Lois and I walked up the hill behind our house to our respective schools.  When Lois left the house and walked up the hill there was a particular point at which she stopped, fished in her purse for a mirror and make-up and adorned herself for school. Makeup was verboten at that time, for her, in my family.  I doubt Goldie would have denied use to Lois if she (Goldie) was using it, so I’m assuming this was one of Papa’s “holiness” rules, one of many involving all the sins of “the world” real and imagined.  Lois would often encounter me at the end of the school day, and walk me home. When she didn’t, I considered it an opportunity to use my dubious discretion, which is a euphemism for ‘getting in trouble’.  For instance, one Christmas season I was stealing ornaments off the graves in a cemetery which was on our route home from school.  

From Lewiston, we moved to Thurston, Oregon in time to start the 2nd grade, which probably put Lois in Springfield High School as a 10th grader.  We lived in an itinerant cabin court near the boundary of East Springfield and Thurston, but left there during the school year for a house on D Street in Springfield nearer Lois’s highschool, and resulting in my changing schools.  It was here that Lois contracted rheumatic fever, and developed a heart murmur, starting the cardiac progression that likely ultimately cost her life.  I had just started Cub Scouts, but dropped out when our family and house were quarantined by the city’s health department.  Lois was my baby sitter after my school day ended, thereby assuring that she could not take part in after school activities.  Nana was working afternoons and nights at a nursing home across the bridge in Eugene to augment my Dad’s income from painting. This time in our history was our first contact with the Four Square organization.  We attended church less than two blocks from our house, where my dad assisted as invited.  This contact becomes important later in the story.

Writing this now reminds me of how little Lois and I talked about our family’s conditions, the ceaseless moving, and the consequent poverty which accompanied that lifestyle.  It was a given back then. Complaining would be as absurd as griping about Gravity, or sunrise.  But, I know our life was doubly tough on her, partly because she was a girl, and more social.  But, largely because she was an older girl, and a heavier burden of responsibility and accountability was placed on her.  She was often the glue that made things work.  She was early home from school so Goldie could be gone and making a few bucks as a housecleaner or attendant at a nursing home.  When other girls were practicing with the Cheer Club after school, Lois was hurrying home to intercept me when I got out of school.  That’s one example, but there were many. She was always the third adult that helped life function in the constant poverty, which I believe was created by the constant moving, and the constant search for the “center” of God’s will.  After Goldie died, Lois became more forthright about her own feelings regarding our lifestyle.  I felt that Goldie’s death allowed Lois permission, finally, to express her displeasure.  No need for a loyal, solid front any longer.

We left Springfield in 1953 for Cortez, CO.  Papa announced that, “This is where we’re going to stay!  We bought furniture on “credit” which was the first and only time I ever saw Papa allow the use of revolving credit.  But, a couple months into our stay, during a regular phone call home by Goldie to St. Louis, MO, we found that a member of my Dad’s family was terminal.  My father’s youngest brother Charles had Type I Diabetes and was terminal.  Medical technology had yet to develop ways to scrub toxins from the blood and urine, and patients like Charles could qualify for only limited units of blood replacement.  Charles, at 28 years old, was near losing his battle…so we we left the key under the mat, called the furniture store and told them where they could fetch their items, and went to be with Charles and his wife Edna, during his final months. 

My Dad and Mom were heartbroken.  Charles was not only the baby, he was (everyone agreed) the favorite son.. I joined the 3rd grade in progress, as I remember, which means Lois would have joined her 11th grade already in progress.  It was not the first school year that Lois and I would appear at a new school after the “clicks” had already formed and exclusion was the habit of the herd.  The teachers tried to help, but usually that resulted merely in undesirable attention by the ‘townies’.  Again, it was just a “given.”

When Charles died in 1953 we finished up school and headed for the West. Papa had been making excellent money working in a production spray booth shooting shellac onto large caliber artillery casings at the Small Arms factory.  Remember, the Korean War was in progress, and had been for some time, and America’s economy thrives during war; war in the U.S. raises the economies of even unskilled labor.  We left core family, both Karns and McKinnon, good paying jobs, a 4-plex on a sunny, tree lined Blair Avenue, and Lois’s teen employment at a  “five & dime” in a business district a few blocks away.  I think we went to Lander, WY. I’m not sure why, but we stayed there for only a few weeks, then set sail for (I think) Western Washington.

I don’t know how many moves occurred between 1949 in Tucson, and February 1954 when Lois and Leroy married and we all separated, but there were several different, short-stay towns.  One of the final moves involving Lois was to the Grays Harbor area, and specifically Aberdeen, WA. My Dad linked up with a Four-Square Church minister. We attended his church for a while, and in that congregation was a young man, discharged from the Marines not too long before, named Leroy Seeley.  As a child of maybe 8 or 9 I was awestruck by a large, burgundy colored birthmark on his face.  Lois never saw it.  To the day she died, I never heard her speak about it, and after a few weeks I never again perceived Leroy as having a birthmark.  The Pastor at Aberdeen helped get my Dad connected with church officials, who appointed him to pastor a “broken” church in Colville, WA.  It was a Four Square church with at least two warring families who would rather see the church disintegrate than give an inch to their church enemies.  As a child,  I was entirely unaware of the mutual attraction between Lois and Leroy, until we all began living together in Colville, WA. A few weeks after we moved from Aberdeen, Leroy showed up, got a job at the local Safeway, and became our boarder.  When the church ‘split’ then fired my Dad and we moved to Monterrey, CA Leroy, in his little Studebaker moved with us, and became a boarder at our next house.  The neighboring city, Pacific Grove, was where he and Lois would marry a few months later, in February 1954.

I believe Lois and Leroy stayed until Lois finished up her senior year at Pacific Grove High School.  After that school year ended, the two families went their own ways.  Lois and Leroy ultimately went to Los Angeles where Leroy worked as a photographer for Douglas Aircraft.  I seem to remember that Lois worked for Bell Telephone as a commercial account rep, and of course, the major event was that Jeanie was born.  The three of us, Papa, Nana, and me visited several times over the months and years including speeding toward LA, but still managing to be a little late for Jeanie’s birth.  We visited at other times as well.  By the time Nana, Papa, and I lived in Santa Barbara during 1959 we, or the three Seeley, made the 100 mile trip between Santa Barbara and LA.  I don’t recall the exact year, probably 1961, Lois, Leroy, and Jeanie stopped off for a one night stay at our house in Springfield, OR…they were moving from LA to UP/Tacoma.  I don’t recall if their immediate destination was the house on Olympic or if that came later.  I know they bought the Olympic property from an older couple in the UP church who helped “shoehorn” them into that wonderful house and location where they would spend their years until moving to Taylor Bay.

During the ‘60’s, I boarded with Lois, Leroy, Jeanie and eventually Davie.  I was home on Leave and met baby Judy during her brief stay on the big-ride…and, I know that her tragic death from a birth defect changed Lois forever, and probably Jeanie as well.  Lois blamed herself for the death…maybe not aloud, but in the silence and darkness when she awoke at night, she blamed herself…and, for the first time in my experience of Lois, “Satan” put in an appearance in her Cosmos.  She told me directly that sometime after Judy died, whether in a dream or what I don’t remember, Satan laughed and jeered at her for Judy’s death.  I didn’t know what to say. I hope I said nothing, because there’s no rational response to her claim.  I wrote it off to anguish and despair.  So, briefly, in 1962 between my high school graduation and Navy bootcamp I stayed with Lois, Leroy and Jeanie in UP.  Again, in July 1966 til probably May or June of 1967 I stayed with the Seeley’s, fully paying my way with room and board. I was working at Ft Lewis for the Department of the Army in a Classified Crypto/communications position at the Logistics Center.

Jennifer and I married in early 1968.  Lois accepted Jennifer as a sister, in every sense of the word…and to this day, Lois occupies a place of respect, gratitude, and grace in Jennifer’s memories.  Neither of us can come up with a complaint regarding Lois’s presence or actions in our life.  I personally think that somehow Goldie’s sense of “grace” was passed on to Lois.  They were different, but Lois’s spirit of tolerance and grace was very Goldie-like.

Lois and I were spiritually/emotionally close, even as we were comfortable with our physical and temporal distance. “I’ll see ya when I see ya” was our usual parting exchange.  We spoke on the phone, but not often.  We visited Taylor Bay infrequently over the years.  Its hard to explain how it was sufficient for each of us to just know the other was “out there.”  And, now she’s not out there.  I felt the loss tremendously, and have continued to experience the slow ache of absence.  I cherish her in my life, though I seem less able to express what she means to me, and what she meant to me at each remembered age we had together.  Gratitude. The over-arching emotion is quite simply Gratitude.