The sharp edge of a razor is difficult to pass over;
the the wise say the path to Salvation is hard.
Katha Upanishad----------------------------------
"Nothing that happens is without effect. If you throw a stone in a pond the universe isn't quite the same as it was before. It may be that if I lead the life I've planned for myself it may affect others; the effect may be no greater than a ripple caused by a stone thrown in a pond, but one ripple causes another, and that one a third; it's just possible that a few people will see that my way of life offers happiness and peace, and the they in turn will teach what they have learnt to others."
the Wanderling
As things are presently constituted, at least according to all that has come down to me as well as from those who are regarded to know about such things, I was born at a specific time at a specific place, all duly recorded and witnessed by any number of people including my mother, of whence I came. So too, there at the place where I was born were other members of my family, along with a variety of officials such as doctors and nurses and a couple of trash truck workers who drove my mother and grandmother to the hospital in their garbage truck just as my mother's water broke, arriving in time for me to be born under somewhat more sanitary conditions.
None of it, time, place, or people in attendance, was done with any consultation or approval by me ahead of time or on my part, hence ending up being not much more that a stooge or pawn between pre-existing, to be existing, or already in place existing circumstances. In other words, the block of time I was allotted to live and die in, in that which is, was done somehow other than through my own making --- at least as it has come across thus far through the process of the normal flow of time as experienced on the conventional plain.
To have been born twenty years earlier or twenty years later would have put me into a time frame reference that wouldn't allow most to have happened to have happened. Same with anybody or anything I came in contact with or interacted with. Hence, interceded in my life because of the time I was born and grew up in one finds references to World War II, the Vietnam War, my favorite World War II fighter plane, the P-40 Warhawk, radio premium and box top offers from my childhood, people from the era like Einstein and Allan Ginsberg who may or may not have been thrown into the mix at the same time I was. The timing of my mother dying and the foster couple being at the right place, time and age as well as for me to be taken to India, for example. Born at any other time I wouldn't have been any part of it. The thing is, it happens to all of us.
Well before I started kindergarten my mother became very ill, eventually dying some months later. During the months leading up to her death my father, because of having to work so many hours to help cover medical expenses, made arrangements for me to live with a foster couple. No sooner had I been placed under their care than they left on an extended trip to India, taking me with them. In the process I ended up staying several months at or near the ashram of the venerated Indian holy man, the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi in Tiruvannamalai, south India. Prior to our departure the foster couple allowed me to select one, and one only, small easy to carry toy to take with me. I picked my hands-down all time favorite, my Photo-Matic Code-O-Graph that at the time, just like when I got it new, still had a picture of Captain Midnight mounted in it --- and was still in it when I arrived at the ashram.
Considering the time, distance and complexity of it all, for me to be born, raised and be at the right place at the right time during the right era for me to be a right age young boy in the right environment, to have come into contact with Captain Midnight Code-O-Graphs, their raw materials, like me and everything else, having filtered into the spreadout downstream outflow from the Big Bang, only to come back together at a particular given moment to make both me and a Code-O-Graph, is practically beyond the realm of reality. So too, vice versa. Before I was even born, somebody somewhere not knowing me or knowing I even existed or would ever exist, had to dig the metal out of the Earth aptly sunk into the ore by some long ago unnamed star explosion or super nova, then have it dumped into a gondola car on some train somewhere and haul to some foundry to refine it into the brass or bronze it would become so one day sometime it could be stamped into a part for a car, sink faucet, or a Code-O-Graph. At nearly the same time someone somewhere else had to be designing the decoder in such a fashion it would be economically feasible and designed in such a manner it would be easy to operate and packageable enough to ship to kids around the world. Then, just at the right time, place, and age, it had to fall into my hands and be of interest enough that I would be drawn to it and have within my presence developed the curiosity, mental agility, and acumen to deal with it.
SENSITIVE DEPENDENCE ON INITIAL CONDITIONS
Generally, as a promotional item, Code-O-Graphs had been designed to be replaced one after the other year after year to keep the user buying Ovaltine. However, the advent of World War II had an impact on the Code-O-Graph availability. At the time that Code-O-Graphs first came out they were made out of brass. The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, which propelled the United States into World War II, caused the U.S. Government to impose restrictions on a variety of manufacturing materials. Copper and brass, considered critical materials, were part of those restrictions, so most if not all of those materials were diverted to the war effort, in turn precluding brass being used to manufacture novelties such as radio premiums.
The Photo-Matic version of the Code-O-Graphs, although not distributed until 1942, had all been manufactured prior to any of the governmental restrictions. Also, because of the popularity of the first model, powers that be had increased the number of individual units manufactured, thus having more completed Photo-Matics available for distribution. As well, although not all Captain Midnight decoders were badges, the Photo-Matic Code-O-Graph was because it had a pin that went through a little hook on the back so it could be pinned on and worn like a badge.
According to the manual the Photo-Matic was designed to be a personalized identification badge similar to those used in defense plants of the era. The idea was for the owner to remove the photo of Captain Midnight that came with the decoder and replace it with a photo of themselves. The new picture would be fixed permanently by pushing down the four metal tabs at the picture corners so that it couldn't be removed.
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(please click either image)
So too, unlike later models that had year-dates stamped into them as part of their raison d'etre, Photo-Matics were undated, so instead of having the need of being replaced by a new one within a year, their use could be and was extended throughout the entire duration of the war, nearly three years, making it the Code-O-Graph with the longest service life. Which is the second reason why Photo-Matic Code-O-Graphs were different than all others, at least as far as I was concerned. Just at the time I came along to be impacted by them, for most of my childhood growing-up Code-O-Graph life, as fate or karma would have it, I just needed to own, learn, and use only one single type --- something I became very, very adept at.
The badge from my childhood that had gone missing only to be found in a box by my uncle upon the death of his mother, my grandmother, then sent to me and inturn I had been carrying with me for so many months as a grown up in the Army after my brother re-sent it to me, did not have a picture of Captain Midnight in it like it came with new, but instead a picture of me as a young boy for as long back as I could remember --- and continued to have that same picture of me as a young boy when I, as an adult, arrived at the ashram of the venerated Indian holy man the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi. Such was not the case by the time I left the ashram, however.
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A year or so before I was born my family moved from the southern California mountain resorts to the then small coast community of Redondo Beach. In the house next door was a girl named Mary Lou who used to babysit my brothers and me. She lived with her parents along with her curmudgeon old grandfather, and it was through her babysitting duties the grandfather and I came to know each other. He was a sort of Rube Goldberg inventor type guy that seemed like he could fix or build anything. As I look back now I would say he reminded me more of Doc Brown from the Back To The Future movies than anything. He had set up a junk filled workshop in the detached dirt floor single-car garage on the back of their property collecting, working on, and making stuff he said was to thwart the "impending invasion," meaning of course in those early post Pearl Harbor days by saying he was inhibiting "bad actors" as he called them before World War II Comes To Redondo in real life, something that happened anyway. The beach was just a few blocks from my house. Off that same beach ships were being torpedoed and sunk. Just up the coast oil refineries were being fired upon while just down the street, after being bombed just off shore, a two-man Japanese Midget Submarine washed up on the beach just south of the Redondo Beach pier.
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One day I was snooping around his shop going through his junk, the little guy that I was, when I came across a small rectangular piece of wood that looked all the same as having been a mousetrap at onetime, but instead had coiled wires and other electrical stuff mounted on it with printed words identifying it as a Dot 'N Dash Electric Telegraph Set. The old man told me it was one half of a two part set that when hooked together with wires and a battery could, by using a series of dots and dashes, send messages back and forth between two or more people over long distances --- something he said the two of us could do if I was ever able to locate the other half. In the meantime the old man hooked the half of the set I had up to a battery and buzzer device allowing me, even though it wasn't connected to another set, to at least practice making Morse code sounds, in the process driving everybody crazy. I did however, learn code, at least on the sending side. When the old man saw I was actually getting pretty good at it and I continued to stick with it he showed me how to build my own telegraph key, which I did. With the homemade key the old man hooked it up to the Dot N' Dash set and I was on my way.
I never did find the missing second half, but while continuing my searching around the shop I came across a much better example of basically the same thing in what was called a Tom Mix Straight Shooters Telegraph Set. The Dot 'N Dash set was made four-to-six years before and sold through the Johnson Smith Company. The Tom Mix set was new, being originally a free box top offer promoted by the Ralston Wheat Cereal Company one or possibly two years before the war. One box top and .10 cents in coin or free with two box tops. Ralston had tried the telegraph gig once before but that product-offer was never designed to actually send and receive, being more of a practice set. The old man, a cereal box top sort of guy, had long since sent for two of the kind that worked, but never got around to hooking them up. In that he had a matched set, as soon as I was able to convince him to do so we wired the two of them together between each of our places.
It wasn't long after that we were sending and receiving code, although I have to admit the old man, who was really good with Morse code and me just learning, sort of tired of it quickly. Eventually he just gave the whole set to me. After that anytime I was able to catch somebody to participate in Morse code with me I did, although pickings were slim. Most of the kids on the block near or around my same age didn't have the letter and number comprehension I had so most of time it was my mom humoring me. She could read and write classic Greek or Latin or some such thing, having even kept a daily diary writing long sections in Latin, so for her, picking up dots and dashes to and from letters was easy. The extent of most of my older brother's interaction was cutting the wires and stealing the batteries. What ever happened to the Tom Mix Straight Shooters Telegraph Set I have no idea. By the time I reached high school and still interested in sending and receiving Morse code I jumped to what was called a Western Union Standard Radio Telegraph Set.
U.S. ARMY SOUTHEASTERN SIGNAL CORPS SCHOOL, FT GORDON GEORGIA
Almost on the first day of Morse code training after arrival at the Army's signal corps school, unlike most of my fellow fledging GI telegraphers floundering around at 10 words a minute even after two weeks, than I was sending and receiving 20 words a minute headed toward 90 within a few days, and was noticed for doing so by the instructor. The instructor, who was a civilian, had worked for Western Union as a telegraph operator for thirty years or more and could himself easily send and receive upwards of 200 words a minute. When he asked if I was a Ham operator I told him no but had for years sent and received code using a Western Union Standard Radio Telegraph Signal Set. Rubbing his chin a little and looking up toward the ceiling, the civilian instructor, always looking for alternative ways for recruits training under him to learn Morse code, asked if it would be possible for him to see the signal set. Kissing ass as much as wanting to score points and most especially so, make my life easier while at Fort Gordon, I contacted my brother who had all my stuff in storage to locate the set and send it to me. Which he did. The thing is when my brother finally found the box the signal set was in, packed away in the bottom of the same box when I put it in storage was a Captain Midnight Code-O-Graph, more specifically, the Photo-matic Code-O-Graph. My brother, not sure why the decoder was in the box, after looking it over, just left it there along with the signal set when he mailed it to me.
As you can tell the Code-O-Graphs that played a major role during my childhood, as odd as it may seem, continued to play a major role throughout my life right on into adulthood. It is my belief, and a belief I still hold to this day, that my early childhood interest and use of the Captain Midnight Code-O-Graphs instilled in me an almost innate ability with codes including an early expertise in sending and receiving Morse code, in turn setting the scene for my MOS assignments in the military. Then, even within the military setting, they continued to impact my life --- especially so after my brother inadvertently sent the Photo-Matic Code-O-Graph I owned as a kid to me while I was in the Army.
dancer [ dan-ser, dahn- ]
noun
DANCER: In military jargon a Morse code sender/receiver, i.e., telegrapher, operator, who is extremely light or nimble in their Morse code sending abilities. From the phrase "trip the light fantastic" meaning a dancer whose abilities are graceful and light on their feet, that glides smoothly through a dance routine as though a prima ballerina assoluta. Typically applied to a telegrapher whose skills are almost savant in nature. More specifically, an operator with a rare ability to accurately duplicate or counterfeit almost any Morse code operator's "fist" to such a point that what is sent by the counterfeiter is totally indistinguishable for virtually anyone to differentiate between messages sent and the person being imitated.
Like nearly everybody else in the world it seems like my life is filled with a never ending set of coincidences. Most are fairly minor. Some however, unlike everybody else, seem touched by cosmic proportions. An example of the cosmic proportions type, at least as I see it, relates to the photograph below showing one of Santa Fe Railroad's diesel locomotives, No. 19L, hanging wheels out, 20 feet above the street after having gone through a dead-end barrier and concrete wall at the Los Angeles Union Station.
The incident occurred January 25, 1948. At the time I was a not quite yet 10 year old boy living in Los Angeles with my dad and Stepmother, albeit under the daily overview and guardianship of my Uncle, my dad's brother. Originally he lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, but when my mother died and my father slipped into a deep alcohol abyss before just disappearing altogether, my grandmother called my uncle in to help, an arrangement my stepmother continued after my dad straightened out and they got married.
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No sooner had the year 1948 come upon us, and before January even waned, my uncle had returned to the desert for a few weeks, only this time on his own and without me --- because of school --- leaving me to my own vices. He had gone to the desert to biosearch a plant called Sacred Datura, a plant that was of major importance to many members of the Native American population for ritual and medicinal purposes. The plant bloomed and was the strongest during the phases of the full moon and on January 26, 1948, one month after the winter equinox, the moon, at the full phase went through one of the closest passes to earth in known history, a closeness in distance that won't be surpassed until November 2034 --- then by only 12 miles. So said, my uncle wanted to be in the field when it happened.
I recall the full moon date and my uncle being gone specifically because the day before the full moon, on January 25, 1948, was the exact same date when the Santa Fe locomotive crashed through the station wall, and the next day, the full moon day, with my uncle gone, my stepmother took me to see it. That wasn't the only time the No. 19 Santa Fe Chief had impacted my life either, and one of the reasons my stepmother took me by L.A.'s Union Station to see it.
WRECK OF THE NUMBER 19 SANTA FE CHIEF JULY 3RD, 1944
AROUND MIDNIGHT NEAR WILLIAMS, AZ, WITH ME ONBOARD
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However eventful or uneventful things were going, unknown to me at the time, 1948 and beyond was being set up to be much different. Behind the scenes the winds of change were beginning to stir from a slight breeze into a fullblown gale. That slight breeze started gaining strength toward the gale it would eventually become when, on May 19, 1948, a woman by the name of Brenda Allen was arrested. A few years later, sometime in early 1950, because of Allen's arrest, my dad and stepmother went on an extended trip to Mexico and South America for a couple of years because of what my stepmother viewed as an increasingly unfriendly business environment, and it was their departure and the length of their stay away that brought about the demise of MY times with my uncle.
When I reached age of eleven or twelve years old or so I spent two summers living lightly on the land like a forest monk on the east side of the High Sierras under the auspices of my uncle. During one of those summers, on return to our main camp after having being gone several days and driving up to Whitney Portal followed by a climb to the summit, my uncle and I stopped at the compound of a man of deep spiritual Attainment that my uncle knew by the name of Franklin Merrell-Wolff --- an introduction that I woefully admit meant nothing to me at the time or for years to come. As the slow series of events unfolded I had no surface understanding that the meeting was actually almost a mirror image of an earlier encounter under completely different yet still similar circumstances --- opening a window to things to come through a door from the past.[1]
As for my uncle and the moon having one of it's closest passes to earth in known history, a distance that won't be surpassed until November 2034, then by only 12 miles, is a bit on the wild side, especially if it is serendipitously associated back from the Big Bang to some physical activity of my earthbound uncle and a full moon blooming plant. However, there is still something known as a "Once in a Blue Moon."
"The term 'Once in a Blue Moon' refers to the time when two full moons occur during one monthly period. The opposite of that, and unnamed to me, is when two new moons occur in a one month period. To most people neither occurrence means much, but to the occult, voodoo and such types it can carry some significance. It means POWER in the hands to those who can so channel it, COSMIC POWER. Any event perpetrated during such a narrow band or limited time period carries a destiny with it that similar events at another time won't or can't. During the year 1978 a two new moon occurrence transpired and it just so happened to occur in October, the second of the new moons on, of all things, Halloween night, October 31st, a major convergence of conditions and coincidences."
During the last, or second of the two new moon phases of the two new moon occurrence as written about in the above quote, that is, the same day, date, time, and year, midnight Halloween Night, October 31st, 1978, found me absconded over a mile high above the Caribbean Sea in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica. I was about six months into age 40 and living in Jamaica having been deployed there after joining the Peace Corps. One day a young girl from a small village not far from where I lived was hit by a car, the driver and vehicle taking off leaving her unconscious and unresponsive face down in a goat dung reeking muddy ditch beside the road. The girl's parents, like most of the locals, were poor, and not being able to afford regular medical care, opted for a less expensive, local solution. That solution included me and another village member making a sling hammock suspended between two poles and carrying her high into the mountains in search of a nearly hermit man of spells, a root doctor said by many to practice the dark arts, called an Obeahman.
Incredibly, years before the above Jamaica incident, a similar second of a two new moon night during October, with the second of the new moon nights falling on Halloween night October 31st occurred, happening instead a full nineteen years earlier, in 1959.
In 1959, and unlike me being age 40 in Jamaica, I was just into my 20's by about a year or so. That year, 1959, the grandmother of a girl I was dating became seriously ill, so much so the girl's mother decided she best go see her, a trip that required a 1500 mile one way drive from Southern California to the small town of Miller in central South Dakota. The girl's mother asked her go along and she in turn, asked me to join them. At the last minute, just as we were leaving something came up that impacted the girl from going. She pleaded with me to accompany her mother on the road trip promising to join us later. The mother spent most of her time with her ailing mother and with my friend not there I ended up with a lot of free time. Earlier I had phoned my uncle telling him I was going to South Dakota and since it was unusual for me to be there he made arrangements for me contact someone who could possibly set me up to see a few interesting to me (as he saw it) sights. The contact person was a Native American friend of my uncle who taught at the University of South Dakota. The two of us had met previously so I wasn't a total unknown quanity. As a teenager I had worked with him as an assistant for two summers helping him with slik screen prints of Navajo art he was creating at my uncle's studio in Santa Fe. Although I had been wavering, it was partially through seeing what he had become along with his urging that I eventually came back and eared a degree in art. When the professor heard I was going to be in Miller, in response to my uncle's request he set me up with a spiritual elder from the Crow Creek Indian Reservation.
It just so happened the Crow Creek spiritual elder just was in the process of setting up a visit to perform a ritual at an ancient site not that far from Miller, and because I had been highly recommended by the professor and my uncle, as well as having been introduced by my Navajo name given me at a young age, he was receptive to the idea of picking me up. We went directly to a Native American rock ring, known as a Medicine Wheel, located some ways west from the traditional eastern edge of the Great Plains.
It was just at the end of the month, when the waning crescent moon was nothing but a thin curved sliver of sliver in the east just before dawn the elder picked me up, staying at the rock ring a few nights until a slight thin curved sliver of crescent moon appeared just above the western horizon at sunset. In between those two crescent moon phases was the new moon and why we were there. Of all the new moons in a year, this specific new moon was chosen because of something known as the cross quarter alignment. Cross quarter alignments occur four times a year, marking the halfway point between the the solstices and equinoxes. Starting from the one between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, which is considered the start of new growth, they move on through the fourth and last, falling halfway between the Autumnal Equinox and Winter Solstice, the time when plants and animals begin shutting down. So, to cut to the quick, the spiritual elder, for his ritual to be successful, required the use of the closest new moon phase that fell nearest the last cross quarter alingment only a few days away. That new moon phase just so happening to fall on the second of two new moons in the month of October 1959 on Halloween eve. Halfway in the passage of time between the last of the lunar month waning crescent moon as seen in the east just at dawn or shortly thereafter and first crescent as sighted in west just after sunset marks the point the moon reaches it's halfway point traveling through the underworld. The ritual the spiritual elder performed was to ensure the moon would exit the underworld unscathed and return to it's rightful place in the heavens.
The fact I ended up at a Native American rock ring during that two new moon Halloween period because of a friend's sick or ill grandmother, a friend I never saw again and a grandmother I didn't even know, is one thing, but nineteen years later after having joined the Peace Corps only to be impacted by the same phenomenon a second time after having met a man of spells high in the mountains of Jamaica, is another thing.
If I were to live to be 100 years old, starting from the very day I was born to the very day I died, the same above two new moon months with the second of the new moons falling on Halloween night October 31st would happen only four times, two of which being the 1959 and 1978 occurrences already cited and the last one not until October 31st, 2035 AD, three years short of me being 100. If you haven't done so yet, please see Footnote [1]
A FEW MORE UNBELIEVABLE COINCIDENCES:
During the summers of both 1949 and 1950 I spent living off the land like a forest monk in the High Sierras with my brothers and a number of other kids under the auspices of my uncle and godfather. Somewhere along the way during or between the last of those two summers, for reasons left unclear, my father and stepmother departed for South America for a two-year stint, effectively ending any semblance of our family as a unit, and for sure the childhood living situation I had become accustomed to under my uncle's largely bohemian-like guardianship floated by my stepmother's guiding hand and bags full of money. By the time my dad and stepmother returned, as I learned later, their marriage had deteriorated to such a point it disintegrated beyond repair, pretty much ending for me any return to how it had been.
Although we returned to the Sierras for the summer of 1950, halfway into the school year and the start of the fall school year, with our dad, stepmother and uncle gone, my younger brother and I had gone to live with a new to us foster couple in Gardena, California, all of which I've summarized elsewhere but covered more thoroughly in Normandie Club. The couple, who had tried for some time to have children with no results really wanted my younger brother to raise as their own. Getting me in the bargain, older and with history, was something they never warmed towards and something the woman of the couple, in both words and actions, never ceased to remind me. Two years later, in 1952, during the summer that fell between my 8th and 9th grades, filled with enough of her reminders and things not working out so well, running away to find my stepmother began to appear more and more as my only viable option.
As soon as school was out for the summer and I had raised enough cash for a bus ticket and some spending money I ran away from the home in search of my stepmother. My dad had told me she was living on a brand new ranch she just bought located somewhere in the high desert of Southern California, he just didn't know where. In the process of that search I ended up taking a ride with some cowboy who said he could get me to her place after he delivered a couple of horses out across the desert he was hauling around in a trailer hooked to his pick-up.
I had met the cowboy, who said he recognized me, outside of a bar earlier in the day where he had been drinking, and, much to me chagrin, continued to do so while he drove. Late in the night after stopping at a few more bars, basically out in the middle of nowhere he lost control of the truck and we crashed. A couple of Native Americans, actually three in two different vehicles, happened upon the scene with one of the Indians taking the unconscious driver to the hospital and the other two and I holing up for the rest of the night with the horses until the sun came up, after which we went in search of my stepmother.
The wreck occurred during the night of the morning of the new moon day, Monday, July 21, 1952, the same night as the infamous Tehachapi quake, the most powerful earthquake to hit Southern California in the 20th century --- and the largest in the nation since San Francisco's in 1906. Where the two Native Americans and I had holed up for the night was probably less than 30 miles from the epicenter. That same Monday, July 21, 1952 was exactly one full lunar month to the day BEFORE my new moon meeting with Albert Einstein, that day and date being Wednesday, August 20, 1952. Now, having set the scene, I present the following about a man named Truman Bethurum from the source so cited:
"The Native Americans, after reuniting me with my stepmother were unwilling to accept any compensation from her for having done so other than lunch. When we were done eating and heading toward our respective vehicles and saying goodbye, one of the Indians, more-or-less the leader of the group, putting his hand on my shoulder, asked my stepmother if I could either continue to stay with them through to the following week or join them somehow later in the week for a few days as they were planning some sort of ritual or participation in something of 'monumental proportions' and wanted me to join them. Although they were cryptic as to what they were going to do or what their plans were it seemed that what they were talking about for them was somehow 'foretold,' mentioning to my stepmother it would require staying a few nights in a very remote area called Mormon Mesa north of Las Vegas, Nevada above the Colorado River. Although disappointed in my polite refusal they understood and we all parted friends."
In the above paragraph as presented at the source so cited take note of the day and date mentioned in the above, Monday, July 21, 1952, as well the location mentioned by the Native Americans. The same week that the Native Americans asked me to join them would have been the same week that July 27 1952 fell, the same date Bethurum said he was at Mormon Mesa and that the Indians described to a "T" as to where they were going to participate in something of "monumental proportions." If you agree with Bethurum and his opinions or not isn't here-nor-there with me one way or the other, what I'm making reference to is the coincidence of it all. I'm closer aligned with what my uncle and what he had to say as found on the Bethurum page than anything else.
Eleven people were killed in and around the Tehachapi area as a result of the quake. One of those killed was a young girl my same age named Florence Ann Fillmore. At the time of the quake she was asleep in a guest house along with several others on an over 700 acre ranch 12 miles from Tehachapi owned by a man by the name of Paul H. Owsley. She was crushed to death when the roof fell on her. Florence Ann Fillmore's half-sister, by having the same mother albeit a different father, was a woman who before marrying Owsley was named Olga Greenlaw --- and of whom was a friend of my stepmother.
Greenlaw, who was at the Owsley ranch that night, had written a book published in 1943 about the Flying Tigers or more properly, the American Volunteer Group or A.V.G. As the wife of the Tiger's second in command Greenlaw had been with them from day one, and her book, The Lady and the Tigers, covered the Group's history from just before they were formed clear through to being disbanded and shortly thereafter. Mostly because of my stepmother along with the use by the Tigers of the venerable World War II fighting machine, the Curtiss P-40 and any existence thereof, the book and the downstream outflow from it all, even to this day, continues to play a prominent roll in my life.[2]
Drafted just at the start of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Army sent me to McCoy AFB, Florida, joining "B" Company of my home military unit right after basic, the 121st Signal Battalion, the 121st at the time totally off the record for being in Florida, and still unrecognized by the government for having done so. Because of my security clearance and ability with Morse code and somewhat by request, I was assigned as a radio operator for a clandestine paramilitary unit operating out of a small hidden base secluded at a place called Point Mary on Key Largo, one of the Florida keys. The base, on an acre or so I was told, was built after clearing back just enough of a thick mangrove forest, but still leaving enough as camouflage, to make room for a few sheds and a couple of habitable structures, as well fueling facilities and a floating dock anchored to a coral reef. The unit, using twin V-bottom double-hulled aluminum high speed powerboats, was said to be making midnight raids to the northern coast of Cuba, offloading U.S. trained anti-Castro Cuban commandos and weapons.[3]
My radio operator duties were carried out using an AN/GRC-26 van, which was, except for the power unit, a fully self contained portable radio rig, with all the radio stuff inside what was sometimes called a "hootch," the hootch being mounted on the back of a duce and a half truck with the power unit in a trailer attached to and pulled by the truck. So said, the radio equipment could be operated if need be while in transit. The site C.O., Colonel Rawlston, asked for two things, first the hootch taken off the truck and permanently mounted on the ground, and secondly some kind of air defense. The C.O. felt he had access from the beach covered, but for low flying planes his site was defenseless. The Army said no to the first one, the radio rig had to remain portable and completely within Army control. On the second request they said absolutely no surface to air missiles, but might consider alternatives, especially if manned by other than U.S. troops or regular Army personnel.
This was when something amazing happened. Around the same time we are talking about here a man named Charles Alan Roberts rejoined the Army becoming an officer and deployed to Germany before returning to the states and being re-stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas. While at Bliss, because of his history with radar controlled anti-aircraft artillery he was sent TDY to Raco Army Airfield in Michigan for reasons thought to be related to downsizing or the base closing and his knowledge of Raco's Skysweeper anti aircraft weapons system. Later, Roberts was transferred to Homestead AFB in Florida just a few miles north up the road from the Florida Key I was stationed and while there sent to the Point Mary site to look over the possibilities of installing a Skysweeper weapons system.(see)
It was while Roberts was at Point Mary that I met him. While there the two of us had easy going conversations over beers a few of times. He told me he had served a couple years as an enlisted man before being commissioned an officer. He also said he didn't like what we were doing as it reeked with, as he called it, a certain sense of illegality about it. As for anti-aircraft guns, except for the air raid that erupted over portions of my hometown during World War II known as the Battle of Los Angeles that caused shells to be unleashed all over the city, with some landing only a few blocks from my home, the only thing I knew about them was the ack ack guns seen firing off the sides of aircraft carriers in old World War II movies. About Raco Army Airfield I knew nothing, although I did know about the nearby Sault Ste. Marie canal because as a kid one day during an oral quiz in grade school I called it "Salt" Saint Marie and didn't hear the end of it for weeks. Roberts told me there was a legend surrounding the base that during World War II a huge camouflaged six engined bomber type plane with German markings came into Raco field late one night from Canada and refueled by a team of commandos that took over a section of the base before heading out towards New York. He also told me when he went TDY from Fort Bliss to Raco he took some R&R and drove because he wanted to see the Kensington Rune Stone in Alexandria, Minnesota. On his return trip from Raco Roberts drove through Appleton, Wisconsion. Appleton just happened to have two of Thomas Edison's earliest electricity generation sites, the Vulcan Street Power Plant and the Hearthstone House, with a lot of the original wiring, light bulbs, and generating equipment still around, in place, or close by. Having recently graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering Roberts wanted to see some of the historical aspects of it all, so Appleton was not only a perfect place to start, it was convenient.
How am I able to recall any of Roberts passing remarks and little Innuendos from our small chit chat conversations over beers in my radio van so long ago, especially since none of them carried any amount of weight, nor too, were they expected to be eventually connected to future events. Well, while it is true I might not have any reason to recall the city of Appleton, I did know who Thomas Edison was, so remembering "about" his earliest electricity generation site wasn't that hard. So too, it just so happened that when I was around ten years old my uncle had taken me to see the Kensington Stone. At the time it was on exhibit at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC., being shown there starting February 17, 1948 through to February 25, 1949, after which it was going to be returned to its owners in Minnesota. My uncle was concerned that it might not be put back on public display where it could be seen in real life after being returned. Hence, because my uncle thought it was important for me to see it in real life, he arranged for our trip to Washington D.C. Several years before as an even younger boy waiting late one night in a train station, a man who's son was a P-40 pilot, gave me a comic book with an illustrated story called the P-40 Goose Shoot. It was a true story about a small number of P-40 pilots shooting down close to a hundred German transport planes trying to escape following their disastrous North Africa campaign. It was one of my favorite P-40 stories and I carried the book with me for years. It just so happened my uncle knew the artist, Harry Ramsey, who drew the illustrations for the story, so when we were on our trip to D.C. my uncle introduced me to him. The interesting part was that Ramsey drew all of the German transport planes as having six engines, something that was either unknown or top secret at the time he drew them and the comic book published. Ramsey told me one day at lunch or over coffee or drinks, and still struggling with his dilemma to complete the story, he mentioned his bomber problem to a fellow artist who just happened to be a cartoonist drawing comics day-to-day for the same publishing company.
The next day his fellow artist went through his morgue and came up with a series of three or four pencil sketches he drew dated August 1943 of a huge six engine plane with a German insignia on the fuselage he saw flying by his high perch window one day in the sky over New York. Since nobody was excessively over interested in drawings done by some low level cartoonist, he just stuck them away in his morgue. With a few minor changes Ramsey used the same low level cartoonist's drawings for his own bomber inspiration.
During our time together my uncle and Ramsey did most of the talking while I basically just listened. Some of it was interesting, some of it was boring. One of the things that came up was Ramsey's Red Cross service during the war. My uncle knowing there were a number of artists and writers that served with the Red Cross during World War I, he asked Ramsey if he knew any of the Literary Ambulance Drivers of the day. Although at the time I was just a kid I do remember they had a tendency to go on-and-on about Ernest Hemingway and Gertrude Stein. If they ever mentioned William Somerset Maugham, who was also an ambulance driver and whose main character in his book The Razor's Edge played such a major role in my life, I don't recall.
AND FINALLY THIS:
When I met Roberts at the Point Mary site I had no clue of, or any way of knowing, Roberts was one and the same as my uncle's infamous Chukka Bob. or the even more infamous 1953 Kingman UFO. Although things did come up in general conversation, nothing specifically Kingman or UFO related did. Even if it would have I wouldn't have had the wherewithal to put it all together. When I was doing Point Mary stuff with Rawlston, whose real name was Johnny Roselli, it was late 1962 early 1963. I didn't learn about Chukka Bob from my uncle for another ten years. Roberts driving home from Raco through Appleton meant nothing to me either. Appleton turned out to be, at least during the time Roberts' was there, the exact same stomping grounds of another major played in Kingman lore Judith Anne Woolcott.
There are several Roswell UFO sites under my auspices mainly because on the night of the alleged crash my uncle and I just happened to be sleeping overnight on the desert floor not far from Roswell on our way to visit the grave site of Billy the Kid in Ft. Sumner. However, big time coincidence or not, my uncle and I were in the the general region in the first place for other reasons.
The Roswell UFO crash, both historically and traditionally, is always said to have happened on the Fourth of July weekend in 1947. It just so happens exactly three years before that critical 1947 date, around midnight of July 3, 1944, between Flagstaff, Arizona and Williams, I was a passenger on the all first class Santa Fe Chief being pulled by a powerful Baldwin built 4-8-4 Northern bearing the Santa Fe ID #3774 that derailed and crashed, the locomotive sliding on it's side for over the two lengths of a football field, killing the fireman and three passengers outright. 113 passengers along with 13 train employees injured, among them the severely injured engineer. I escaped unharmed. In July 1947, on the first available time following the accident to come up, my uncle had taken me to the train's crash site for me to pay reverence to the dead and injured and my survival. During the trip what is known as The Long Walk involving the Navajos and Apaches came up and my uncle decided to take me to see where and how it happened. Billy the Kid's grave was close by so my uncle included that in our itinerary. It is because of the intertwining of events between my uncle and my trip related to The Long Walk and the grave site of Billy the Kid on the same weekend as the Roswell incident that five years later, in 1953, he contacted me about the Kingman UFO crash and because of that contact, et al, I have a page on the net about Kingman.
Fundamentally, our experience as experienced is not different from the Zen master's. Where
we differ is that we place a fog, a particular kind of conceptual overlay onto that experience
and then make an emotional investment in that overlay, taking it to be "real" in and of itself.
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As to the subject of donations, for those of you who may be interested in doing so as it applies to the gratefulness of my works, I invariably suggest any funds be directed toward THE WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT and/or THE AMERICAN RED CROSS.
------- My meeting with Franklin Merrell-Wolff has been elusive for me as I have really been unable to pinpoint which of the two summers, 1949 or 1950, that we met at his compound in the High Sierras. True, since the meeting I have learned he was a man of deep spiritual Attainment, something I was woefully ignorant of at the time, and I can easily remember two other important things that happened during those summers. However, I am unable to tie one or the other or both of those events back to the specific summer he and I met.
The first of those events circulates around the Captain Midnight radio show. Even though the radio broadcasts didn't come in clearly or not at all in the part of the Sierras we camped, I still had my 1949 Captain Midnight Code-O-Graph with me, the one that to operate required a little key. Of course, almost immediately upon arrival and setting up the camp the key was lost, in turn requiring me to sift through tons of dirt to find. My uncle made a sifter-box using one of those net-type bags oranges or onions sometimes come in, then marked off a bunch of four-foot square plots like some archaeology site. After several days, while the other kids and my brothers were off playing, swimming, fishing or hiking, sifting in the hot sun I collected quite a number of arrowheads, a couple of which were made from obsidian, their edges still just as sharp as the day they were hewn out of the volcanic glass they came from. Next thing I knew everybody had a sifter box searching for arrowheads and in the process the Code-O-Graph key was eventually found. As for Code-O-Graphs themselves, let alone in having initially lost the key to the 1949 version wasn't bad enough --- of which without, virtually rendered it useless --- I had long been upset over having lost my most important childhood decoder, the Photo-Matic that I had carried with me faithfully throughout most of my life. Little did I know the 1949 version as well as all the other Code-O-Graphs in the series would fade away while the lost Photo-Matic would return in an earthshaking role of it's own in my future.(see)
As it was, at the end of the year 1949 the Captain Midnight radio program ended their decades long run and went off the air rendering Code-O-Graphs basically useless. But, in that I wasn't able to receive the program anyway and it wasn't on the next summer, being on or not really didn't help narrowing down either summer relative to Merrell-Wolff. I must say though, looking back on it now, it must have been the first summer that I had the Code-O-Graph with me and lost the key because having it the second summer after the program was cancelled doesn't make a whole lot of sense in that there would not have been any Secret Squadron messages to decipher no matter where I was.
The second event that may help determining which of the two summers was the summer I met Merrell-Wolff is that during one of the summers my uncle made it possible for me to see the planet Venus in the sky well into daylight hours. Apparently he had tracked it since sunrise and knew where to look. He had me lay down on the ground in a tall strand of pine trees that blocked everything in a 360 degree circle around me except the open blue sky directly above. There in the sky right above me in the middle of the day was Venus.
In an article by P.S. Watson titled Planets for 1949 found in "Popular Astronomy" Volume 57, Page 23, Watson wrote, referring to the northern hemisphere and more specifically the U.S. at 40 degrees latitude, that at the beginning the year 1949 Venus would be a morning star rising shortly before dawn, but would soon move towards the Sun to reappear as an evening star during the latter part of April and would remain an evening star for the rest of the year --- pretty much eliminating Venus being seen during the daylight hours during the summer of 1949. However, a year later in Volume 58 of "Popular Astronomy," Page 22, Planets for 1950, again by P.S. Watson, it is a different story. For Venus during the year 1950 Watson wrote:
"Venus will be an evening star for the first months of the year but will move towards the Sun to pass inferior conjunction on January 30. After this date it becomes a morning star remaining until the middle of November. Greatest brilliancy occurs on March 7 and greatest elongation on April 11. This will not be a favorable elongation, however, as the planet will not rise during most of this time until the beginning of morning twilight."
What can be extrapolated from the above quote is that after April 11th, going into the summer months of the year 1950 Venus would have been absolutely perfect for viewing during daylight hours if you knew where to look. However, it doesn't bring me any closer to which of the two summers I met Merrell-Wolff.
If I had to guess I would tend to suspect the first summer for having met Merrell-Wolff with the second summer being the summer my uncle and I went to see the bristlecone pines. I say so for two reasons. The first summer was probably the time for exploration being there for the first time. So too, as seems to be hinted at in a sister page to the Wolff page titled The Tree, the summer of 1949 we had the full backing of my father and stepmother, both financially and otherwise, with both of them even visiting our camp. By the next summer, the summer of 1950, they were gone to South America and our defacto family unit began to deteriorate as did the funding. I'm not even sure if we were in the Sierras the full summer even. There is a good chance both my younger brother and I were with a new foster couple by the first half of 1950, returning to the Sierras for the summer, then being back with the couple by the start of the school year in September as covered more thoroughly near the end of the main part of the text above.
When I was just a kid, and I mean just a kid as my mother was still alive, the grandfather of the girl next door who used to babysit me and my two brothers, gave me to use, of which I apparently kept, a radio premium offer he had obtained several years before called a Little Orphan Annie Miracle Compass Sun-Watch. I say I must of kept it as I specifically remember having it several years later. I even write having it when I was traveling with my uncle in the desert as a young boy saying that in a small side pouch I used to carry on my canteen belt, I had all kinds of stuff like a stainless steel pocket knife with a fold-out fork and spoon, compass, and waterproof matches. Then I go on to say:
"Always in the pouch as well was one of my most prized possessions, a pocket-sized sun dial gizmo called a Little Orphan Annie Miracle Compass Sun-Watch."
When the time came around for me to spend the summers in the High Sierras, for as young as I was, I had become a fairly seasoned back country traveler be it in the desert or the mountains. Although a lot of the skills were cross-transferable no matter where you were in the back country, there is a huge geographical and weather related environmental differences. In the desert water is the upmost priority. The mountains, especially the High Sierras, not so much. Meaning of course, that my canteen pistol belt I wore or had close at hand wherever I went in the desert, sometimes with two canteens attached, wasn't so much of a priority. Plus we were foraging out from the main camp no more that two days and returning, so again what we carried with us was much less and with several of us we didn't have to duplicate things such as our own coffee pot for example. I was in the High Sierras that I had switched from an army surplus pistol belt to a more-or-less Indiana Jones shoulder bag, thus changing what I did or didn't carry with me.
By the time the summers in the High Sierras came about I no longer had or carried with me the Little Orphan Annie Miracle Compass Sun-Watch, but instead, carried an item of similar use, but overall not as good, called a Frank Buck Explorer's Sun Watch Compass, without ever really knowing what happened to the Orphan Annie one. I remember the Frank Buck one specifically because I used it the morning of the Venus sighting. Notice at the bottom of the advertisement, below right, there is a mail in form that says orders must be postmarked by September 1, 1948. That ad first appeared in the No. 83 issue of Captain Marvel in April 1948, and very few if any comic books before then. The dates indicating I most likely would not have had the Sun Watch by the summer of 1948, but 1949 most likely and 1950 for sure.
With the summer over, my dad and stepmother out of the country, my uncle returning to Santa Fe and my younger brother and I being placed with the foster couple, most of my stuff was lost in the shuffle. Among the stuff that was lost or misplaced was the Frank Buck sun watch, of which I had only a short time. However, thanks to comic books I was soon able to come across a fairly good replacement item. Just about the time everything went missing and I was settling in with the couple lo and behold comic books started advertising what was called a TelZall Sun Watch as shown below. It had a secret little ball point pen and the Morse code stamped into the metal back which also served as a signaling mirror. As an aside, for those who may be so interested, I am almost certain the dial face and compass used by the TelZall watch was the exact same glow-in-the-dark dial face and compass as used by the Orphan Annie sun watch.
WASHINGTON MERRY-GO-ROUND, by Jack Anderson
THE WASHINGTON POST: Tuesday, February 23, 1971, Page B-11
Roselli made midnight dashes to CASTRO STALKER WORKED FOR CIA LATE 1940s ACME CINE VUE FILM VIEWER A lot of you have read about my travels and adventures with my uncle, like for example, me walking the fresh debris field related to the Roswell Incident and stuff like that, and think "WOW." However, I was just a kid like all kids, except that I had an extraordinary uncle that took me with him doing all kinds of things and going all kinds of places that a typical kid wouldn't usually be confronted with. I stretched from wild-eyed excitement about any and everything to full-on out-and-out boredom. To wit, below is something I wrote that shows up at the source so cited:
Philosophically speaking I suppose sitting and watching windmills off in the distance is far more quixotic and better than exploring the inside of grungy old coffee cups. There was lots of downtime and being away from home without other kids or siblings to play with. So, like other kids in a similar or like situation I did lots of things to entertain myself and occupy my mind. During the night I might learn about the stars searching down M-31, the Andromeda Galaxy, and during the day I might be found digging up or searching for fossils of the twenty-five foot wignspan Teratorn. Other times, during down time I would gather up small pebbles or rocks and make little campfire rings with tiny little "Y" forked sticks with another stick across it as though it could hold a tiny little hanging pot. I would even put little logs in the rock ring. At the hay shelter on the hill above and behind the debris field I even made and buried a "time capsule" thinking I would come back one day in the future and dig it up.
The graphic of the G.I. canteen in the footnote that brought you here shows, along with the canteen, a pouch hooked to the pistol belt. I had a couple of those "Carlisle" first aid pouches and I used to carry all kinds of stuff in them. Stainless steel pocket knife with a fold-out fork and spoon. Compass. Waterproof matches. When I was at the debris field I had a handheld toy red-and-black plastic-bakelite film strip viewer with me as seen above. My uncle told me one time if the Earth ever blew-up and formed an asteroid belt around the sun like the one between Mars and Jupiter some far-in-the-future space explorer would still be able to find pieces of plastic imbedded in the rock-chunks --- because plastic junk lasts forever. Well, I didn't want to part with my pocketknife, compass or matches, so for my time capsule I buried the plastic film viewer. With that I took a gas station paper towel I had in my back pocket and using my most favored gift from my stepmother, a Reynolds Rocket ballpoint pen that could write underwater or out in space, which I wish I still had, and made a treasure map. Years passed and I forgot all about it. One day I was moving stuff around and ran across my pebble grained faux-leather high school graduation certificate holder. Inside with the diploma was the folded up treasure map.
The next time I went to my visit my uncle in Santa Fe I took the map along. When I showed him the map and expressed the idea of the two of us going to look for the "treasure," i.e., the time capsule, he put his hand out in an open-palm "halt" fashion and told me to wait. A few minutes later he was opening a cardboard box he had pulled from the attic and started rummaging around in it. He pulled out a bag and dumped the contents on the table. There in front of me was what was left of a broken to pieces red-and-black plastic film strip viewer. My uncle told me about ten years after we had been there, sometime in 1957 or so he went back. He walked the old debris field as well as the hill we had observed from. He also tried to find the hay shelter and water trough we used to hide behind, but to no avail. Walking the area where he thought it should be he spotted pieces of red plastic in the dirt. Looking more carefully he was eventually able to find most of the viewer, including parts of the film strip. Apparently what happened, and it was just speculation on my uncle's part for the lack or any other explanation, it looked like a disc harrow may have been pulled through the area and one of the discs must have ran right over where I had buried the viewer, scattering it into pieces along a straight line over several feet.
My idea to make a time capsule did not spring from whole cloth. Somehow I got the idea from my uncle, mimicking his actions. That is, somewhere near or around where we were, my uncle made his own time capsule, burying something OR some-things, pieces and parts he found out out on the debris field. I have reason to guess that was the case because there would be no need to bury anything he already had with him that would be worth leaving then come back for. Apparently that is just what he did, come back for whatever he buried. Other than the fact that he showed me he had pieces of my film viewer that he came across in the hills up and beyond the debris field years after the crash I would never have known he went back. According to the suggestion he offered in The Roswell Ray Gun all indications are that the something buried in 1947 and he recovered in 1957 turned out to be a device similar to a hand-held weapom, almost pistol-like, albeit said by some, from an advanced alien culture. There are also strong rumors to the effect that an 'extraterrestrial' breathing apparatus of some type may have been found and subjected to reverse engineering as well. I never saw anything like any of it.
Take notice of the circular design, look, shape, and similarities between the circular Precession of the Equinox image on the left and the Code-O-Graph on the right. There just happens to be 26 one-thousand year increments on the precession image while the Code-O-Graph has 26 increments, one each for each of the 26 letters of the alphabet. Having read this far you have no doubt grasped, figured out, become confused, or possibly totally discounted any level of an actual formal relationship established between the two. The thing is, it doesn't matter the initial intent of either or all from the Big Bang to now, what matters is the predominant and intertwined goings on of events as they unfolded in relation to both the Precession of the Equinox and the Code-O-Graphs that led me to, then find myself whisked half a world away from an ancient Himalayan monastery beyond the reach of time to the center of a Mojave desert creosote ring said to be the world's oldest living thing.
The half a world away that found me in the middle of a huge ancient creosote ring located on the desert floor was some distance down and beyond the base of the mountains where Big Bear Lake resides in the cool pine forest. The two, only a few air miles apart, the creosote ring lay in the burning California Mojave Desert and thousands and thousands of miles away from the monastery, with me all alone in the ring sitting in the Buddhist Bhumi-sparsha Mudra fashion, the earth-touching gesture.
Vega was the northern pole star around 12,000 BC and will be so again around the year 13,727. The creosote ring is dated as being over 11,700 years old, which for all practical purposes is 12,000 years, making it's very inception on earth beginning during the exact same period of time Vega was the north star. During my meditation periods on the monastery grounds outside and in front of the doors prior to any passing through into the monastery, the nighttime sky north star was Polaris, indicating a present day time frame reference. After passing through the monastery doors and exiting outside and around to the front, the nighttime north star was Vega, indicating a time frame reference around 12,000 BC, just at the end of the ice age ... OR in the future as stated above 13,727 AD, making for the creosote ring (and just as important) one full 26,000 year circumnavigation of the precession of the equinox.
THE BEST OF THE MAUGHAM BIOGRAPHIES:
SPIRITUAL GUIDES, GURUS, AND TEACHERS INFLUENTIAL IN THE RAZOR'S EDGE:
FOOTNOTE [1]
1949 KEY-O-MATIC CODE-O-GRAPH
VIEW OF MID-AFTERNOON VENUS AS SEEN FROM CALIFORNIA
(please click image)
FRANK BUCK EXPLORER'S SUN WATCH
(please click image)
-----
----
VIEWING VENUS IN BROAD DAYLIGHT
FOOTNOTE [2]
Florence A Fillmore - 1952 Victim of Quake 22 Jul 1952, Tue The Los Angeles Times (Los Angeles, California) Newspapers.com
Footnote [3]
Cuba with his hired assassins in
twin powerboats. Once a Cuban
patrol ship turned its guns on
the darkened boat, tore a hole
in the bottom and sank the boat.
Roselli was fished out of the
water by the other boat, which
escaped into the shadows.
------------------(original source for the above quote)
"I was raised on Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers and experienced the giant UFO Over Los Angeles, so rocketships or objects from outer space or other planets just didn't seem all that unusual to me. I spent a good part of my time out in the cab of the truck reading comic books, sitting around in waiting rooms or narrow halls of places that looked like doctors offices or hospitals. Even more time was spent hanging out in dirty little rooms stuck back in the corners of hot, dusty hanger type buildings stacked to the ceiling with falling over old newspapers, out of date World War II Mil-Spec operator handbooks and training manuals, as well as grungy old coffee cups all over the place with spoons and dead bugs stuck in the bottom of thin layer of some sort of a dried-up brown, tar-like residue --- presumably it is guessed, being at onetime, coffee." (source)
CARLISLE FIRST AID PISTOL BELT POUCH FROM WORLD WAR II
(please click image)
THE ROSWELL INCIDENT
THE ROSWELL RAY GUN
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PRECESSION OF THE EQUINOX
FROM THE BIG BANG TO THE PHOTO-MATIC CODE-O-GRAPH
THE CURANDERO: MAGIC OF THE DESERT CREOSOTE RING
DOING HARD TIME IN A ZEN MONASTERY
RETURN TO THE MONASTERY
INCIDENT AT SUPAI
HUMANS IN NORTH AMERICA 130,000 YEARS AGO
(please click image)
THE RAZOR'S EDGE: TRUE OR FALSE?
Good biography. Lots of Maugham graphics, from early childhood to late adult.
Everybody knows Hemingway drove an ambulance during WWI, nobody knows Maugham did.
Includes a section on the missing years of the Razor's Edge
THE HOLY MAN, LARRY DARRELL, AND THE RAZOR'S EDGE
MAUGHAM'S FEMALE CONFIDANT