E106-1 Lost and Wild Adventures

In was 1981.

At that time, America was suffering from the first of what would eventually become a sequence of many industrial contractions.  I entered the labor force at the same time as the (#1 employer in the nation) Steel Industry collapsed.

Collapsed isn’t the right word for it. Perhaps Armageddon, or maybe MOAB realignment would be better.

Industrial contractions are normal.  Yet, how it influences your life, depends on who is running the government at the time. But this wasn’t just closing a factory of two. It was the wholesale shuttering of an entire industry that employed hundreds of thousands of people.

Entire states were devastated. The “Industrial Heartland” was renamed “The Rust Belt”. And I, I was stuck straight down in the middle of it. Ouch!

Let me relate a little story.

This event took place about two centuries ago. It took place in France, which was at the time, one of the top developed nations on the planet. They possessed an enormous military, and was the center for art, culture and science.
To support this, they employed an enormous bureaucracy of high-paid clerks and analysts.

We discuss this later on in how the <redacted> cultivate this nursery.

Anyways, the point herein is that our government fails us, the people that it is suppose to protect, when there are industrial downswings of a significant nature. Do not buy-into the explanation that it is “normal”. It is not. It is a failure of the government. Nothing less.

With the collapse of the steel industry, the “backbone” of American labor was broken.  (It would take many years to recover.) At that time, no one worked. Unemployment was rife. People could not comprehend what was happening.

As until that point in time, most companies offered work FOR LIFE with generous pensions. In the larger companies, it was possible to retire in your middle 40’s, with retirement in your 50’s common-place.

Up until that time, work was everywhere, and people could obtain work as a High School drop-out. It was pretty much “known” that if you had a college degree, you were “set for life”. Meaning that you would always be employed, have a great income, and never have to worry about being unemployed. It was a different time. Only the most tardy and lazy would ever lose their jobs.

As such, being “laid off” was much harder at that time than it is today. You were looked upon with disdain. As such, and personally, it was a difficult time for me, indeed.

Let’s wind back the clock somewhat. Let’s review what happened… (It’s my method, don’t you know…)

I left the Navy and after a (short) period of several months, I eventually found work elsewhere.  I managed to obtain numerous interviews, and found a position back in (good old) Western Pennsylvania.  At that time, the steel industry was still big and powerful.

I obtained a “management slot” in a small but growing steel company. (Small is relative. At that time, Edgewater Steel employed 6,000 people.) As such, I worked as an engineer for a number of months in a steel factory in a suburb of Pittsburgh.
At that time, the nation was just beginning to feel the strain of International competition.  As such, many companies maintained their traditional industrial working models.

I went to work, did my job, and everything was pleasant.

A person works at a stable job.  You fall into routines.  Life becomes predictable.  However, I started to feel a strong urge to go to California.  It began maybe six months into my new job. As time continued, the urge became more and more demanding.

It became truly urgent.

It began to become an obsession.  I bought a road atlas and started to look at the maps of the roads leading to California.  California was where I wanted to go.  California was where I needed to go.  California was on my mind night and day.  I could not shake the thoughts away.
I had to find work in California.  As a result, I started to apply for work at jobs in California, and I started to outfit a van that I turned into a small camper so that I could go there and look for work. It had to be California.

California was the place for me.

Prior to my experience with the Navy, I would have never adopted such a personality.  I was stable.  I was boring.  I was a “work horse”.  I was the person who never quit; who never complained.  I was a great follower.  I was an even greater worker.
I would have made a great lemming.  Now things were quite different; I was the restless adventurer.  I could not be satisfied with anything short of the gnawing of my soul.  My mind would latch on to the idea and the concepts haunting me.  They would not stop.
They were relentless.  I had to go.  It had to be California.  I had to leave as soon as possible.

However, luck or life opened doors to make things happen.

At exactly one year, to the month, of my (entering MAJestic) and leaving the Navy my life changed.  I was given a “pink slip” at my job where I was working as an engineer.  As luck, or fate, would intervene, I was suddenly laid off from my job.

When you lose our job unexpectedly (As mine was. As the “low man on the totem pole”, I was the first to be “let go”.) it is a surprise.  You become very disoriented.  People around you do not understand, and are very confused.

They often blame you. (At that time, the term “lay off” was relatively new.  Up until the the late 1980’s it was very, very rare for a person to be “laid off”. If you lost your job it was because you were fired.
Exceptions abounded for “blue collar” workers, but “white collar” workers were never “laid off”.

So, when I was “laid off” early in my young career, I met a lot of misunderstanding and opposition. When mentioned to others the reaction was shock.  I just didn’t “look like” the kind of person who would be fired at his work.)

Today, getting “laid off” is very common.  That was not the case in the early 1980’s. At that time, people tended to work one job for their entire lives, then retire on a company pension. It was a different time indeed.

I worked hard to find new employment.

However, I was quite unlucky.  No one was hiring.

Unemployment was rampant, and every week mass layoff announcements were being made all throughout Ohio, and Western Pennsylvania. 500 here, 3000 there, and an announcement of another couple of thousand.
The work force was being shredded before our eyes, and all of us had to compete against each other for the few precious jobs available.

It was a nightmarish time.

The news media ignored the situation (as did our Congressional representatives and Senators).  Oh, eventually they managed to report on what happened…ten years later.

However, at the time, they concentrated with the news from Washington, D.C., Hollywood, and the new millionaire entrepreneurs out of California (Steve Jobs and Bill Gates for example.).

Then as now, the media were elitists.

They only reported on what THEY considered important. As such, they would always inject their own biases in their reporting. We, normal and “regular” people,  were shunned and avoided by the mainstream press.  We were considered unimportant. We were on our own.
Nobody gave a “rat’s ass” about us “common” working folk.

The only thing the local news would report on was the layoffs.  They seemed to ignore the causes and preventative measures. Instead they focused on a group of trapped whales up North in Barrow, Alaska.

They focused on attempts to rescue geese in Canada.

They focused on how Ronald Reagan was going to cause World War III by insisting that the Berlin wall be torn down.

Instead, they focused on how much better the nation was run under a Democrat President, you know, like Jimmy Carter. And lectured us (peons) on how now the roads won’t be fixed, and bridges won’t be built because President Reagan wanted to cut taxes on the middle class.

Yup. The infrastructure was going to collapse because no taxes would be collected. We must… must… MUST demand Americans pay taxes! They screamed into the airwaves, 24-7.

They screamed. They demanded. They ordered.

Stop taxing businesses. It is Americans that must be taxed! It is a fiscal necessity! They screamed on the airwaves.

They hated the president, and they would offer all kinds of reports on his slightest mistakes.  They would make fun of his little personality quirks, and would attack him relentlessly. They never were as sycophantic as they are today with President Obama.

Ah, nothing ever changes, does it?

My unemployment support was quickly running out. The bank (Mellon Bank) repossessed my motorcycle, and my car payments were going to be exhausted in a few months.

After nine months it would all be gone. There wasn’t any work in my “neck of the woods”, and I needed to find work or starve.  For, as all American men can attest, if you are over 21 years old and are “able bodied” you are EXPECTED to find work and make your way in society.

Not so today.

Today, I read many stories of children living with their parents until they hit their 40’s.  Not so with my generation.  You were physically evicted and “kicked out” from the home when you hit your 20’s.

Because of this necessity, I was forced to travel elsewhere to look for work.  Of course, I was obsessed with going to California (for some reason, heh… heh…).  To this end, I decided to travel there to locate work that would employ me.

Again, I must give pause to contemplative endeavors.  Was this coincidence?  Was this an artificially manufactured event that would discharge me?  Was this part of a bigger picture that involved whole masses of people, events and staged events?

In my story, over and over again, there would be coincidences.

These coincidences would often times, on their own merits, appear to be logical and normal events.  But on the whole, when taken together and viewed in contextual alignment, they all appear suspiciously suspect.  They appear to be indicative of a grand scheme of manipulation.
Indeed, this was a manipulation of great forces and powers far beyond the control of any one person or group of people.

There is, in truth, no such thing as a coincidence.

Everything in our lives is planned and scheduled by a very advanced system of control.  It involves multiple dimensions, powerful energy states that reach well into the quantum sphere, and a degree of timing that is “timeless”.
However, as I know this to be the case, I still often have trouble grasping with this truth.  I still want to believe that I had a degree of control in the decisions that I made, and the actions that I followed.
The reader will see evidence of this quandary in this blog, but please realize that I do know (as much as I do not want to accept it) that our lives are fated.

During this time, the economy in the United States was in shambles.

America was crushed and its’ industry collapsed. For many of us, it seemed that there was nothing special about the United States any longer.
The United States seemed like  just another nation-state, and, most unfortunately, one that’s become especially predatory toward its citizens.

At that time, the only thing that mattered was the lifestyle of the Congress-critters, the bankers, and the wealthy on their exclusive golf courses. How do I know? The media reinforced it to me daily.

Meanwhile, the Japanese had rebuilt their industries and were aggressively capturing American customers.  They offered cheaper prices, better quality and newer technology.  America couldn’t compete (though it made efforts to try.).

While there were many things that the American companies could do, the most common reaction was motivated by profit concerns.  Thus, for most of the American industry the reaction was not logical and planned, but was reactionary.
The American reaction was to reduce the size of its work force.

The buzz word at the time was “efficiency”.

Efforts were made to stop the industry practices of “keeping people on” (Retaining employees in the belief that their skills and abilities could be used at a later date, even though there was no work for them to do at the present.) as “overhead”.

Workers were “laid off” and their responsibilities given to others.

What began as occasional layoffs soon became a flood of firings.  Companies started to expect their workers to do the work of those laid off.  Efficiency sky rocked, but only to a point.  It was, unsustainable in the long run.
Millions were unemployed, and work was difficult to come by.  Since I too lost my job, I found myself in the same situation as thousands of other unemployed Americans.  We were all out of work, and out of luck.

I needed to find work, and I needed to do so quickly.

It did not take me long to decide what to do.  I decided to go to California.  For, to me, California was the place for me.

California.

California.

California.

To this end, I outfitted an old van that I had bought.  It was an old white 1976 Dodge Tradesman 100.  Purchased for $2000.  It was empty inside, but had a decent engine and frame. It was a mini-van and very popular at the time.

I insulated it, and installed wood panels made from old shipping crates.  I placed a bed inside and added a partition behind the drivers and passengers seats.  I fixed the engine and the drive train, and set off to find work.
It was a great place to sleep in, and to haul stuff in, but without a bathroom, kitchen or shower it was rather inconvenient. It was, to put it bluntly, a mobile hotel room without a bathroom.

I equipped it with a bed and some rudimentary storage and set off to find work.

I worked where I could find work.

I worked at many fast food restaurants.  These included McDonalds, Wendy’s, Hardees, Carl’s Junior, What-a-Burger, Burger King, etc.

I was not proud. If I could get paid, I did the work.

I also worked as a janitor.  I cleaned offices late at night, and places like the YMCA.  I also worked as a temp and performed tasks ranging from digging ditches, cleaning out industrial scraps at construction sites, washing windows, and moving boxes for a storage company.
When you are unemployed and hungry, you do what you need to do.  You don’t sit down and wait for something to come to you.

Sure, my stomach growled. But, when I worked fast food, I got a free meal on top of my pay. That helped a lot. I would save one half of my burger for my wife. I’d take it to the van after my shift. I would also get some of the packets of lemon juice in the condiments section.
We could add that to water with some sugar and make some cheap lemonade.

Of course, I traveled to California, but once I arrived there I didn’t know where to go.

I lived in the van (a mobile “camper” that I had created)  and worked low wage jobs to make ends meet.  (It was insulated with a bed, but no toilet and water.  Good for an overnight sleep, but not so great for living in.)

Precisely because I lived in this manner, it was difficult for anyone to locate me.  Obviously contacting me was extremely difficult.  I would work in a town, and save enough money to repair the camper, and get enough gas and food for the next couple of months.
Then, I would continue on my journey.  It was a cautious adventure.

Curiously, as I drove west I kept on driving towards a remote town in the middle of the desert west of Los Angeles.  The town was Ridgecrest and on numerous occasions I kept on finding myself driving towards it.  But I never stayed there to look for work.

Instead, I kept driving past towards more potentially promising places to be employed.  (The reader should recognize that while you might “feel” a “tug” or interest in a certain place, your mind will tell you to ignore those feelings.
Instead your mind will instruct you what to do based upon what you are exposed to (news typically) and reason.)

The mind is in constant battle AGAINST your feelings.

Yet, for me it seemed that all roads lead to this obscure town.  I would get lost and find myself in the middle of a flat desert plain, with nothing nearby.  But looking up I would see a sign pointing to the desert city of Ridgecrest.  It sure was spooky.

All in all, I traveled in circles trying to go to some point in California.  I felt “right” when I was driving in the direction to California, but I didn’t know where to go.  I had no set destination.

The mind is in constant battle AGAINST your feelings.

As such, I visited many of the cities and towns in the state, but none “felt” right.  While some were very beautiful (like Auburn, California) the urges would not let me rest.

The mind is in constant battle AGAINST your feelings.

It had been approximately two years since I had left the Navy.

The memories of what had truly happened there was completely erased from my mind.  I remembered joining the Navy, and leaving the Navy.  But I had no recall of what happened between me and the Commander at the base.
I had no active recollection of his words, nor did I have any active memories of the transportation portal.  It was all forgotten.

Like misplaced memories.

I had adopted a new life, and had accepted it.  Occasionally as I drove the camper, I would muse about what my life would have been where I to have stayed in the navy as a pilot, but my mind would always end up focusing on the issues directly at hand at the time.

The issues were always about existing.

The reader should understand that I moved into a van to leave an area of high unemployment (that would later become known as the “rust belt”) to an area where I could find work.

I was not “finding myself”, or “exploring the world” as a backpacker.

I was not a hippy, finding “free love” and adventures with a bong, and a box of contraceptives.

No. Not at all. I had a mission.  I had to find work in California. It was my one and only goal.

I could not afford to stay in hotels.

I did not have the money. I knew of very few people in the state, and thus had no connections to visit. I had no place to “crash at” while I was looking for work. Being low on money makes one creative.  I had to find a way to make it to California, and it had to be the cheapest way possible.  Short of being a hitchhiker, or hopping a freight train, the only thing that I could think of was driving there myself, and sleeping the car while I looked for work.

I did the “sleep in the car” bit a few times in the past.

It did not work out too well.  Cars are cramped, people can look into the windows, and you always wake up with a stiff neck and a sore back.  (Not to mention getting eaten alive by insects.) No, to travel, I would need a small van.  It did not need to be large.  It just needed to be big enough for a small mattress, and a place to store my clothes. It would need to have a good engine, and be insulated from the cold.  Aside from that, I could then be equipped with the necessities to find work in a place far, far away.

I did what I could on the basis of the little that I knew.  I was, after all, in my mid-20’s and still very young and “wet behind the ears”. My father insisted that I stay in Pittsburgh and try to find engineering work there. I disagreed. In this case, I was right. (Pittsburgh didn’t recover until around 2005, about twenty years later, and then it’s recovery required other talents instead of engineering.)

If I had stayed, like some of my classmates, I would be on a life path that was truly unlike anything that I had studied to be.

Later, as I began my journey, I discovered the importance of a small shower and bathroom.  I discovered the need for a small refrigerator and heater. I later bought myself a class “A” motor home about fifteen years later that possessed all these amenities. However, that is a story representative of another time.

I have strong opinions of people who do not work for a living.

This goes double for those who do not desire to contribute to society. Men NEED to work.  We need to contribute to society and we need to take care of our family.  It is a biological NEED. Rather than rant on, I prefer to let someone else rant on about this subject.

Here is a rant from a blogger in Thailand;

It was a fine rant.

However the point must be made clear.  When I moved into my van it was to look for employment.  I had a need, a desire, and an urge to find work.  I knew that I needed to find it in California, for at time all work was in California.
Isn’t that were Steve Jobs was making his fortunes?  Isn’t that were Bill Gates was raking in billions of dollars?  Isn’t that were Hollywood is, and Silicon Valley is? Isn’t that where all the military technology was that will defeat the Communist Menace in the Soviet Union?
California was a mecca for engineers.

It was where I should go.

While Wall Street was the place to go if you had an MBA in Finance, California was where you should go if you were an engineer. California was where young, bright engineers such as myself, belonged.

I was of the generation of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates.

I outfitted a van.  I set it up as a comfortable sleeping quarters, so that I did not have to pay for expensive hotels.  I took an unused bed mattress, and some scraps of old (living room) rug scraps and decorated the interior.

(left over carpet from my parent’s TV room.) I used the Styrofoam from cheap (Wal-Mart) ice coolers as insulation, and then paneled over it with old hardwood from decades-old wooden freight pallets (I paid $15 for the lot.) .

I put tinting on the interior windows, and installed a sunroof that I got for $5 from a local automobile junkyard.

I made sure that the motor and operation of the vehicle was perfect, and as such, I moved onward and outward.  I began my search for work with less than one hundred dollars to my name.

Obviously, I did not follow the typical career development of a Naval Aviator.   Instead I began, what I call, “The Big Adventure”.  It was my rite of passage.
While I “should” have been on a carrier flying high performance aircraft, like the rest of my classmates, I was a homeless, penniless, nomad wandering aimlessly in the hinterlands of America.

Some days would be great with extreme beauty and a fine proper meal.  While other days were spend starving and avoiding the hot sun inside a sweltering metal box that I called “the camper “or old “urge”.  True travel is not glamorous.  Not at all.

I had named my van after a story that I had read.  I named it after the name of a hippy van in a story that graced most of the pages in a book known as the “Last Whole Earth Catalog”.

Steve Jobs compared The Whole Earth Catalog to Internet search engine Google in his June 2005 Stanford University commencement speech.

Above is a page from the Last Whole Earth Catalog.  In the lower right corner, the reader can see a box with the image of an alligator or dragon and some words.  That is the hippy story where I obtained the name whereas I named my van “ol urge”.

An adventure consists of extremes.  You see the great beauty of life, and the depths of the abysmal.

After all of this, I became a “somewhat” normal person again. But, I (the truth) was anything but normal. Not only was I a highly trained, college educated, intellectual, but I was implanted with specialized probes; probes of unique abilities and secretive purposes.  I didn’t know why, but I suddenly found myself questioning everything around me.  I stared to ask questions about how humans lived in America and what my role was.

I wondered why I couldn’t qualify for all the “free” stuff that the government promised me.

That was my life…

So much for that little adventure…

One of the things that was constant during this period of time in my life were my night-time dreams. Once I fell asleep, my mind would rest, and after a while I would start to have these odd dreams. My consciousness sort of detached and I began to experience this “other” kind of existence.

It was really, really odd. Many of the “experiences” consisted of a kind of very…very…very…VERY vivid experience that communicated with my brain as an augmented dream. And they were always about going to school. I was always being taught things.
I was constantly involved in education, and all sorts of  weird things. Then when I woke up, I would look at the world around me and what I experienced quite differently…

I had a totally different point of view.

I started to wonder why real nasty people seemed to be so successful, and the softer nicer people all seemed to be destitute.

I became spiritual and in this train of thought, I moved upon faith and belief.

I became inspired within by an inner confidence… and upon that confidence; I embarked upon a new adventure… a greater adventure.  An adventure fueled on … faith…

I became very spiritual and everything seemed, to me, to be connected.

The weather to the earth, and the movement of people to the movement of the moon.  Things all seemed so interconnected to me.  I began to question everything.  Maybe it was living in the van, or maybe it was my experiences.  Maybe it was due to the probes.  I do not know why.

I often see inspirational pictures on the internet showing a map with some kind of words to inspire confidence to travel.

Yeah, it’s all good. But mostly, the people who do this sit comfy in their own rooms, and live their mundane day to day lives.  They dream about travel, and they Photoshop about travel.
They post articles about their travel dreams. They buy clothes that travelers wear, and expensive backpacks and gear.  They collect interesting books and read about travel.  But they don’t actually travel.

True and real travel is an adventure.

You leave your comfortable house with only $200 in your wallet, and you go. You just leave.  You go make friends, or you visit friends you just made. You don’t buy expensive or trendy backpacks and nice looking road maps.
That looks great in advertisements, but real travelers don’t use them.

Real travel is not only about the wilds of the forests, and the smell of nature.
It is also about the dark and grimy stained gravel of a train yard, the back alleys behind centuries-old factories, the frighteningly-quiet cookie-cutter suburban neighborhoods with people peering out behind curtains.

It is all of this and more.

It is the empty quietness of an outlet mall at sunrise, the smell of a fresh pot of coffee being made at “Waffle House” at 4 am in the morning, and waiting outside on a grassy knoll while a “grease monkey” fixes your brakes. Travel is an adventure, and it isn’t always beautiful.

Real travelers, well, (for one thing) they stink. Showers are a once a week event. Their clothes are bought at Wal-Mart, or if they are really poor, the Salvation Army. Their note book is a $3 plain wire-wound affair. Their money is spent on the adventure itself.
It is not spent on the trappings advertising the Dream-of-Adventure.

Today, like everything else, the “dream” has been packaged and marketed by corporate professionals.  Many of whom have never set a foot in a park let alone the far off wilds.

Ah.  The reader should not get confused. Backpacking serves a point if it is directed with set goals in mind.
You take a trip for “X” period of time, with the goal of obtaining “A”, and “B” with the strong possibility that unknown factor “C” will manifest. You do it with what you have and you make do.

At the time, our trip took far longer than we wanted. The period of time was longer than we ever expected, and the discomfort in the van was worsening each month.
Our goal of obtaining “engineering or career-related work” in California did not manifest, and the best we could do was low-end labor positions. This lasted for an extremely long time.
(Without getting into too much detail, I ended up getting married with a girl from my “home town” and we embarked on this adventure together.)

To my parents and my friends, they thought that I was just running around aimlessly.  Indeed, much the same way that I view many of these “backpackers” out and about today.

Ouch!

When in truth, I was being directed towards California by the probes in my skull.
Situations that permitted my ability to travel, and luck manifested at the proper time and place to make sure that my guided actions were truly manifest. On the physical, it appeared that I was an aimless wanderer. No one ever knows the true motives of others.
No one really knows the situations of others, and the powers and forces that compel them to behave in (what appear to be) odd ways.

In fact, to see what true reality is, take away all the “on the surface conformity” and peer into the mechanisms that control and motivate people.  If one does this, they will find and discover just how different we all are.
In fact, even though others (relative to ourselves) are but “quantum shadows” of the reality of other souls, even their quantum supposed motivations are alien to what we know (as real) and what we expect.

“Real” travelers don’t wait for perfection. They go when the “calling” occurs.  Often they are not socially, and financially ready to make the trip.

“Real” travelers drink coffee at McDonalds ($1.25/cup), and shun Starbucks ($8.50/cup).  They go into small family diners at the crack of dawn as the fog is just starting to burn away by the morning sun.

Real Travelers go to libraries to read the news, and relax.  (They dare not spend a quarter to buy the newspaper.
They read it at the library instead for free.) They visit parks, use the bathrooms in laundromats, look for bargain food in grocery stores, and forage for food in orchards.

They buy day-old bagels, or nearly expired fruits and vegetables from grocery stores.  In a pinch they “dumpster-dive” and forage for food outside in the back of fast food restaurants.

“Real” travelers live on the edge.

The entire time that I was traveling and looking for work, I avoided begging.

The closest that we (I was married at the time) ever came to begging was asking a church if we could park into their parking lot.  Sometimes, we would accept the support they gave us.  However, what I really wanted was work.
I would have been just glad to get $10 to mow a lawn, rake some leaves, change someone’s oil, or helped till a garden.

I was young, in my 20’s, and I was willing to do anything.

In fact, the truth is that during our travels there were many times where we were actually starving.  We had run out of money, and with no gas, and no income, and no work ANYWHERE we would find ourselves going without eating for weeks at a time.
I would say that the longest that we ever went without food was three weeks.

The wife didn’t have a problem with it.

She thought she looked “good”.  I on the other hand, well I needed to eat. Typically however, we might have to go without food from three to five days.  Eventually we could find work at a restaurant and get a free meal as part of our work.
If only I worked, I would save half the food in a napkin, and bring it home to my wife.

This should not be confused with some “adventurers” who backpack around the globe “on the cheap” and ask for handouts along the way to support their travels.  Those people disgust me.  They really do.  They are “aimless” and “ill prepared”.
They travel to a strange place to take pretty pictures, and meet a few people, so that they can have some “notch” in their belt of experience. They are not focused and directed with purpose.

During my travels, we never begged.  Sure, we would ask for help like a place to exist and park the van.  We would ask for some water.  Many would give us more, but they did not need to.  We just wanted to pay our way.  Those that helped us were fantastic people.

Nevertheless, we never needed to beg.

As opposed to (what is now known today as “backpackers”) begging, we were actually “boomers”.

The term comes from the idea that we would migrate to whatever area had work.  That area would be “booming” with jobs and opportunities.  Thus, we would move to that area, and thus became “boomers”.
(Not to be confused with the deadly submarines of the same name.) The term originates from the California Gold Rush Boom.  In the 1980’s it also pertained to the American Gulf Oil Rig Boom, and the Boom related to the need for Air Traffic Controllers.

We were “boomers”, and not “beggars”.

Here’s some photos of beggars in Thailand.  Why in the world are they begging?  The Thailand law clearly states that they must post enough money in a bank to buy a plane ticket out of Thailand. So they obviously have a means out.
Even if that money was swindled, there are other options available to them.  Yet they are not taking those options.

They are begging.

I know. Accidents happen.

People get swindled and tricked.  Situations occur where you lose everything.  I get it.  It has happened to me.  I know that it happens.
However, the only conclusion that I can come to, as someone who HAS been in a foreign land with absolutely no money, is that these people are NOT willing to work for money to survive on.

This disgusts me.

Look at the photos below. Why aren’t they doing something to earn money instead of begging? I understand that things can go wrong and you can actually need money in a state of emergency.  This happens, and is a realistic event.

But… but…

But, this is Thailand for goodness sakes!  Those gals could earn some quick money pulling a “short time” on their back (which is exactly what the local Thai people would think), and why the only ones giving them money were foreigners.

However, those girls should not need to even consider that, as those guys can work themselves. Indeed, they can dig ditches, and wash windows on the 34th floor of a downtown skyscraper.

I would do so, and have. I have done things that I did not want to do.  I did the ugly, disgusting and dangerous work.  I provided for my wife.  But these guys, what is their malfunction? Heck, they can sell their expensive cameras, and watches.

And I did.  This is not some one-line justification, I actually did things.

I crawled under a San Louis Obispo restaurant into a vat filled with kitchen grease and emptied it out with a ladle into a drum, I had to crawl over dead rats, with swarms of cockroaches crawling over my body.  I was covered in spider webs.
It was hot, dirty, greasy, foul and putrid, but I did do it.

Other examples included crawling out to the end of a boom tower on a broken drag-line to fix a snagged cable.  These are dangerous tasks, but you do what you need to do.

Begging should be a “last resort” activity.

We parked the van in highway rest stops, church parking lots, or state parks (and game-lands). Sometimes we parked in the parking lots of cemeteries.

In all cases, we needed to get permission to park and just “be”.

Sometimes, we were not wanted.  Neighbors or concerned citizens would call the police and they would come and “check out the situation”.  It might be a flashlight knock on the wall of the van at three in the morning, or a flashing light swarm around the van.
The police would come, handcuff us, and ask us some questions.  Sometimes they would escort us outside the town limits, other times they would drive us to a charity or church to help us.

The police were kind, for the most part, and respectful of us.

At that time, there were no cell phones or “smart” phones. If we wanted to communicate with others we needed to make a phone call (often from a phone booth), or write a letter.
When you write a letter, you need to purchase “stamps” that you would lick and stick on the top right side of the envelope. The contents of the letter was private.  No one could open the letter aside from the recipient.  If anyone did, they would risk severe federal penalties.
Of course, in those days, people actually cared about privacy. Letters were then mailed either in “mail boxes” or taken directly to the Post Office to mail out directly.

Then, just as now, theft of mail and opening mail that isn’t yours is a serious penalty.  I would have never thought that anyone would do such a thing.  However, as I was to soon discover, it is pretty common in the lower rungs of society.
Indeed, once you lose everything, or if you move to a new area where you know no one, you enter the ranks of the low and impoverished.

You are preyed upon.

Everyone has an angle.  Those with money see your weakness so that they can profit from it.  Maybe use you for labor, sex, or for bait for a larger scheme that they have in mind.  There are all kinds of people and we met some really despicable people.
They came in all sizes and shapes.  Some were obvious, like a slime ball who was waiting outside the Salvation Army and who had an interest in my wife (at the time). He wanted us to go into the alley in the back of the store to show us a used kitchen-stove he wanted to sell.

Some were not so obvious, like a church (Baptist) elder who offered to hire my wife to work in his office at night. You know, after working hours, to help “sort personal things out”. Some were just a group of rowdy college youths acting like a rabid pack of dogs.
Obviously they didn’t know the terror they were inflicting on others.

The world is filled with all sorts of people.

The best time to travel is before you are trapped.

That is to say, before you are trapped in a job, or a career, or in a life with children and their schooling.   Sure there are exceptions. For instance, people who sail the world and home-school their children on board, and those whom were born into a nomadic life.
But for the vast bulk of Americans, the concept of travel is just that, a concept.   Most Americans have never left the region where they were born in.  Most Americans have traveled very little, and only one in five holds a passport (a dated reference).
The world of true and real travel is one that most Americans do not participate in.

Of course, not every job can trap a person.

If the person is college educated; being unemployed for more than three months is often a career-terminating move.
Thus, most college-educated people tend to become trapped in their jobs, professions and careers simply due to the fact that any extended leave would, in all probability, terminate their career and standard of living.

Other jobs; non-skilled, hourly or skilled are not so fragile.  They can handle an extended leave of absence.

Start small and simple.

Save one week’s pay. Map out a journey 4 states away. Go there. Take a tent, live in hostels, and eat cheaply on outdoor grills. Plan on a travel duration of just under two weeks. Return. Then… when you return, plan your next adventure.
The idea is to go to a place that is strange and where you don’t know anyone. Then go there. The point is just to DO it.

We were often taken advantage of (Many people saw us as weak and tried to capitalize on that weakness.) , and had many (close) encounters that were often quite ugly (This includes everything from robbery, manipulation, misuse, abuse and even violence.). But that is life.
You just can’t hide away and expect happiness to come to you. You have to go out to it and get it.

For us, the 1980’s were an experience of life, lived as it were, through the eyes of young impressionable love. We saw both the good and the bad of life.  Not everyone who looks poor is poor.  Not everyone who looks rich is wealthy.
Not everyone who acts religious is spiritual, and you will find friends in the most unlikely places and enemies luring behind the kindest smiles.

Both the good and the bad confronts the traveler.  But most Americans that we met were good, and kind hearted.  But we did, actually, come across a number of exceptionally bad people.  That is always unavoidable.

We needed to find work, and in the process, our van took us on many adventures.  We slept under the stars and hid in wide expansive parking lots. We worked at whatever jobs we could find.  Sometimes it was manual labor, while at other times, we cooked in the kitchen.

We did whatever it took.

We would travel as far as the van could go. Then broke down, out of gas and money, we would find work. Then live off the money. Then, after a month or two, we would go again. We were always on the move. We were always living life.
Always grasping what came before us with an open heart. Though, often times the hearts of others lay closed to us…

I remember once…

Yes, I remember those days.

Fat, smug, bitch with a capital BITCH. She, were she still alive, would be a female social justice warrior trying to “protect” others by enforcing her ideas of perfection.

She tries to justify her existence though the control of others.  Especially those who, for one reason or the other, are unable to fight back.

While we traveled about, we led a dangerous life in a rather “care free” manner. As such, we would find ourselves presented with “luck”.

We acted on faith. We did everything on faith; that someday, somehow, everything would work out. Faith; that we would get food, showers, work, friends, and a hot meal. Faith; that there was a purpose to our wandering, and that our mutual love had direction.
We did this even though, to others, we appeared aimless and without direction. And in doing, on this faith we often received random blessings.

We discovered that life was a choice between two fundamental things.  You could either have true freedom, or you could have security.  It was always this.  It was always these two divergent choices.
You could work all the time and get money to buy what you don’t really need, but have a reasonable level of comfort.  Or you could have freedom to do what you want, but not really able to do anything that costs money.

Let’s face it; there is a price on everything in the USA.

Out of necessity, we traveled at will. We walked and explored many places that the average worker saved up months to be able to visit. We went everywhere in the USA (on the meandering path that continuously pointed us to California).

We saw ocean beaches, mountaintops, national forests, urban cities, and long forgotten historical monuments. We ate at local diners, and swam at (long forgotten) local water holes. We explored. We read a lot. We learned how to play musical instruments.

We learned how to paint, and just used the time to meditate and pray. It was a heady time for sure.

Was it a waste of our time? (My father certainly thought so.) Should I have better put the time to develop a career? (Like my university classmates? They were all working for big companies like IBM. And, at the time of this writing, are still there! Never laid off.

Image that!) Should we have spent the time to save for a house, and then get a lawnmower, and joined a local church? (In other words, get “roots” and “raise a family”.) Was traveling alone together, and experiencing life as we did worthwhile?

YES. Yes, it was worthwhile. Absolutely!

Later on in my writings, I discuss in detail the feelings I have about my entire involvement in this program.  I do have many feelings and emotions.  They are complex ones.
However, the memories that I treasure the most were those where I was poor, with nothing except my wife by my side.

I cannot show a nice mansion or great sports car to the reader.  I cannot justify my lack of wealth and material comforts, but I can tell the reader that my life was enriched during this period.  I can say that it was enriched in ways that I cannot vocalize upon.
I can say that I was made a better, more caring and more understanding person because of those experiences.

However, this being stated, aside from the physical manifestation that I experienced, the reader must understand that I HAD to experience “American Life” in a typical fashion for that period of time.  That was the ONLY way that I could be an effective “Dimensional Anchor”.

  I know that the reader (at this stage in the post and blog manuscript) has no idea what I am referring to, however what I experienced, and how I reacted to it, was an important part of my role in MAJestic.

But all adventures must end.

Or rather, take on a new dimension. As it was, we moved out of the van, and labored to become prosperous. In so doing, we experienced corporate life, and the gold chains that come with it.

Corporate life in the 1980’s through into the new century was a life of beige and light grey cubicles.  It was a fluorescent illuminated existence that combined the worst elements of greed with the stupefying aspects of social group behaviors.

The 1980’s while employed was much akin to dull grey cubicle farms, the worst of corporate life, and consumerism.

I will not dwell on that period too much. For me, it was a dull void. Scant vacations, great salary, but little to show for it except for the shiny babbles advertised on TV.

...

Life was simple.  Work all week, and look forward to Friday.  Beer and pizza at the local restaurant, and then come home and watch a movie.  Sleep in on Saturday, eat breakfast at a local diner, mow the grass and then go grocery shopping.
Go to church on Sunday, then take a drive and look at yard sales.  Go to sleep early because work started on Monday.

It’s not much of a life is it?  But that was my life.

OK, back to my story.

So, I am working in whatever capacity that I could find in California.  At that time, I was working various minimum-wage jobs. I worked as short order cooks, ditch diggers, roust-abouts, and janitors. It was unrewarding work, for little pay.  However, I was in California.

I “felt” that I was where I needed to be.

That all changed when I got a call from the Navy…

My stint from whenever I left my role as a Naval Aviator to when I went into “phase two” of my “training”. This was a confusing time. It was not easy. I was alternatively employed as an engineer, and laid off, trying to find work…hand to mouth.
It was a period of searching for work. Living hand to mouth. Opportunities that crop up and disappear, and the lucky employed taking advantage of the masses of unemployed.

As confusing as my story sounds, just imagine what it was like participating in it.

All adventures end, and this adventure came to a sudden end when the Navy tracked me down and put me back on track in my program. That part of my narrative is covered elsewhere.

This post was a rambling collection of memories of an extreme period in my life.

I had been implanted with strange probes for both MAJestic and our extraterrestrial benefactors, then I was left alone on my own prior to being trained on how to use them.

During that time, I was like a sheet in the wind during a hurricane.

My perceptions, exposure and understandings were all altered. My world-lines were constantly switching on and off, in and out, and through and backwards, and I adapted as best I could. I existed in a state of extreme 1980’s.
Most of that time switched between being employed in difficult working conditions, and poverty. There wasn’t any stability.

In the meantime, the MAJestic membership were trying to locate me, and complete my training. I was like Jason Bourne, with no memory or ability to control my skills, yet cognizant that I had skills, and purpose. I was the real life Jason Bourne.

Jason Bourne is a fictional character played by a talented actor. I was the real deal, and what I experienced did not look like anything that Hollywood could conceive.