"Mid-evening on the night of the-unknown-to-anybody at the time up-coming crash I had gone to bed in the bunk in my compartment and as far as I knew had fallen fast asleep. Sometime during that period, between the time I fell asleep and the crash occurred, I found myself neither asleep nor in my bunk but outside of the train standing barefoot on the desert floor in the middle of the night in my PJs some distance off from a set of railroad tracks, my hand being held by an elderly Native American man."
WRECK OF THE NUMBER 19 SANTA FE CHIEF JULY 3, 1944.
(photo from Chris Baird Collection)
Standing with the elderly man I watched the locomotive coming off the tracks almost in slow motion, sliding on it's side in the dirt for hundreds of feet, with passenger cars following suit, becoming uncoupled, buckling in two and crashing all over. Two days later I ended up late at night camped along some river with the Native American spiritual elder when three men came into our camp:
"Wondering what we doing where we were and why, the elder told them he was trying to get me to my uncle and back home. The man who had been speaking in English said they too were trying to get home, that they were German submariners being held in a POW camp close by and around dinner time that day snuck out of an area where they had been being held. They wanted to know where they were and what we knew about the area. The elder told them we weren't from around there and just passing through, which seemed good enough for the three men. They finished their biscuits and left."
Two hours later one of the men had been shot dead, one had been wounded, and the other apprehended after initially escaping
The wreck of the Santa Fe Chief in Arizona in the middle of the night on July 3, 1944 has been presented by me in virtually the same manner and same form in any number of my other works. The reason it comes up at all is because, as presented in the quote at the top of the page, as a young boy, I was a passenger on that train when it crashed. What is different here now on this page is what I am presenting below that I have not presented previously in any of those other works. Up to this point I have either left unsaid or have not revealed two highly important incidents of the crash that circulate around the somewhat mysterious Native American tribal spiritual elder my Uncle arranged for me to be watched by until he, my uncle, was able to catch up with me.
It all started sometime around the very last day of June or so 1944, with me as a very young boy being put on a passenger train in Pennsylvania headed toward Chicago, traveling with who I do not know. If it was or was not the same couple described in The Last American Darshan who took me to India without approval of my family and then, upon their return to the U.S., just dumping me off in Pennsylvania has never been determined.
When the train from Pennsylvania I was on reached Chicago I transferred to the premier all Pullman first class passenger train to Los Angeles, the Number 19 Santa Fe Chief. Toward midnight of July 3, 1944, between Flagstaff, Arizona and Williams, on a high speed downhill run and behind schedule, the Chief's locomotive, a powerful Baldwin built 4-8-4 Northern with 80 inch drive wheels and clocking out at over 90 miles per hour, hit a marked 55 mph speed limit curve, with the locomotive, bearing the Santa Fe identification #3774, derailing and sliding in the dirt on it's side off the tracks for nearly the length of two football fields before coming to a stop. The rest of the 14 car train ended up in various stages of derailment and wreckage on and off the track, some cars remaining upright with two actually staying on the tracks undamaged. The fireman and three passengers were killed. 113 passengers along with 13 train employees injured, among them the severely injured engineer.
(please click graphic)
The adult or adults I was traveling with were among those injured. Apparently their injuries were such that they were either hospitalized and/or under strict enough doctor care that I was left without day-to-day adult supervision. To solve the supervision problem my uncle, the closest relative to my location, albeit still living some 300 miles away in Santa Fe, New Mexico, was contacted. Not able to make it to where I was quickly enough considering my situation, my uncle asked a Native American tribal spiritual elder he knew that lived close by to oversee me until he was able to personally intercede and safely get me to the Los Angeles Union Station and thus then, to my grandmother's home in California.
In the first of the two incidents that I haven't written about until now is that I recognized the spiritual elder the moment he walked into the hospital waiting area looking for me. The spiritual elder was quite obviously Native American and I was quite obviously not. A lot of the hospital staff and others in the lobby area seemed concerned about me, a very young boy, traveling or leaving with an Indian. Although apprehensive, probably most likely because of being products of their time and era, the staff and others could however easily see the spiritual elder and I knew each other.
About now most people reading this who are unfamiliar with my works or not totally familiar how things often unfold when it involves me, are saying to themselves, so what? The thing is, even though I had been taken to India, up to a certain swath of time just prior to that of the crash, in the normal flow of things involving the events and carrying me along with them, being in either Arizona or New Mexico or having any interactions with Native Americans thereof was never part of the equation until the time they actually happened. So said, even though it was quite clear to outside observers in the hospital that the spiritual elder and I "knew each other," and we did, what they didn't know was that we had NOT known each other over any length of time, but only hours, possibly minutes relative to the specific events leading up to and involving the crash. To wit:
Mid-evening on the night of the-unknown-to-anybody at the time up-coming crash I had gone to bed in the bunk in my compartment and as far as I knew had fallen fast asleep. Sometime during that period, between the time I fell asleep and the crash occurred, I found myself neither asleep nor in my bunk but outside of the train standing barefoot on the desert floor in the middle of the night in my PJs some distance off from a set of railroad tracks, my hand being held by an elderly Native American man.
No sooner had I been standing there than in the distance to the east I could see the headlight of a locomotive heading in our same direction. Within seconds the train was parallel to where I was standing and then, almost as though in slow motion the train began coming off the tracks with the engine barely moving on it's side pushing huge mounds of dirt in front of itself with cars slowly going everywhere and the headlight low to the ground glowing through the dust and piles of dirt, sand and rocks. The light dimmed in the minor maelstrom, then went completely out, leaving everything around engulfed in an incredible silence and darkness. The passage of time that seemed to be only creeping or limping along, slowly, then more so quickly, returned to normal.
The Native American, still holding my hand, walked me over close to the now stillness of the crumpled cars, which by then people were either being helped out of by other passengers or scrambling on their own away from the wreckage. He left me standing a safe distance from the milieu with a small gathering of others accessing their status and searching for loved ones. Turning away from me and the wreckage, he disappeared into the near full moon silver-light darkness of the desert. The next time I saw him was several hours later in the hospital waiting area when he came through the doors looking for me --- quite clearly one would think, only AFTER my uncle would have contacted him, as in theory it is not likely my uncle or anybody else would have had foreknowledge of the crash for the spiritual elder to have been there, either inside or outside of the train ahead of time.
The second of the two incidents involving myself and the spiritual elder, although just as complicated if kept on the conventional plane, seems to come across a bit more complicated, at least on the surface, especially so when it comes to the outside observer no matter what plane it is on. However, in the spiritual realms people such as the elder operates in, it is a much more of a day-to-day happenstance. One thing I've learned is once they set into motion whatever they are trying to accomplish, time and the natural flow of time means nothing.
DURING WWII, IN THE DISTANCE, WILLIAMS, AZ TRAIN STATION
While waiting for my uncle to pick me up at the depot, which took a day or two longer than expected, it is fair to say the spiritual elder sitting around inside of a train station in some white eyes Arizona civilization outpost with a bunch of people tramping in and out all day long between the occasional train wasn't exactly what I would call his particular forte'. At the end of the second day, the spiritual elder seemed to have had enough and decided he needed more open space around him. On the night of the train crash I had noticed that the moon, after having crossed the meridian, was just short of being in the full moon phase. Just after sundown of the second full day hanging around the station, with still a slight red glow left from the now gone sun along the western horizon we went outside and in doing so I remember seeing the now full moon, or nearly full moon, slowly rising just above the eastern mountains. We walked along the tracks toward the rising moon some distance then turned south into the desert as the slight red glow along the western horizon dissipated into complete darkness. Even though it was July, albeit early July, with the sun gone and the night upon us the air began to chill significantly. Somewhere along the way, with what I thought initially was my body attempting to adjust to the temperature, I was engulfed by a severe shuddering like a cold chill, a shuddering that shook my whole body to it's core and sending out from the main central section of that core a lightning-fast ever expanding flat-disc wall of thick, wavering condensed air like energy. It was not long after that cold chill that I recall the moon was no longer full, but in what appeared to be more of a first quarter phase.
We continued to walk through the desert until we came upon an area semi hewed out of the otherwise desert floor that seemed more agricultural in nature and of which we soon then came across a paved road cutting along the edges of the fields. Following the road south we came to a huge triple section steel girder bridge that spanned diagonally across a river. Leaving the road we went down-flow along the river's edge some distance until he found a spot, that to me in the dark looked like any other spot, except that he liked it.
RIO FELIX BRIDGE, NEW MEXICO. BUILT 1926 AND LONGEST OF IT'S TYPE IN THE STATE
We built a fire and the elder made a hot drink using iced water from the thin frozen ice-edged stream and some leaves from an indigenous plant he picked along the way by putting it in an old coffee can he found and placing the can directly into the fire. We shared some jerky-like stuff the elder had in his bag that looked and tasted like shoe leather --- and of which I spit out almost immediately --- turning instead to a fig bar thing I had with me from the train station. Soon I was getting drowsy, began closing my eyes, and was soon asleep. The next thing I knew and with me barely able to open my eyes, three men came into our camp with one man nearly tripping over me in the dark after stepping on my foot.
With a quick evaluation of each other the intruders must of felt that an old man and a young boy posed no threat, with one of the men saying in heavily accented English that they had seen our fire and wondered if we had any food we would be willing to share. The tribal spiritual elder on the other hand, still sitting, without changing his demeanor or facial expression and knowing full well his quill of retaliatory abilities if required could more than compensate for nearly any event, quickly sized up the situation also, then pointed to his sack laying on the ground near the fire. The man that had been doing the talking picked up the bag and searched around in it for a bit not finding anything. The elder reached for the bag and turning it inside out and upside down a half dozen hardtack biscuits fell to the ground which the three men picked up and immediately began eating.
Wondering what we doing in where we were and why, the elder told them he was trying to get me to my uncle and back home. The man who had been speaking in English said they too were trying to get home, that they were German submariners being held in a POW camp close by and around dinner time that day snuck out of an area where they had been being held. They wanted to know where they were and what we knew about the area. The elder told them we weren't from around there and just passing through, which seemed good enough for the three men. Sitting or squatting in front of the fire where I could clearly see their faces they finished their biscuits and left. Very early the next morning I woke up not far from the railroad station with the full moon just about ready to set in the west and nowhere near any river, triple section steel girder bridge or first quarter moon. When I asked the elder about the night before, the moon and the bridge and all, he just shrugged his shoulders and said one day, if need be, it would become clear.
Three years slipped by and me not yet being 10, but leaning heavily on the cusp of doing so, the summer of 1947 rolled around with the war long since over. That summer found me on a road trip traveling throughout the desert southwest with my uncle. After visiting Hoover Dam, Meteor Crater, and the Grand Canyon we were on our way to Fort Sumner, New Mexico to see the gravesite of Billy the Kid when passing through Williams, Arizona, we stopped at the site of the train wreck. There I took time to pay homage to those that died and to give thanks for my survival. After spending a good part of the day in the small New Mexico town of Corona because of the truck experiencing a broken or loose fan belt we ended up not getting to Fort Sumner until late in the day. Just as we were settling in for the night my uncle told me we were not far from a small town called Roswell and, in that he had some minor business to attend to there, we would be going to Roswell the next morning.[1]
After my uncle completed his business in Roswell and I was climbing back into the truck thinking we would be heading toward Fort Sumner he told me there was something somewhat south of town he wanted me to see, a somewhat that turned out to be like 20 miles.
In about a half hour we came upon a huge triple section steel girder bridge that spanned diagonally across a river. Just as we approached he pulled over to the side of the road and stopped, leaving me in jaw dropping utter amazement. I climbed out of the truck crossing the road looking downstream. Unbelievably the bridge and river was the exact same bridge and river I slept out near that night with the spiritual elder, the same night the three men came into came into our camp looking for food. I asked my uncle how it could be --- it took us days to drive the distance between the wreck site and Fort Sumner, then more hours to Roswell. Where we were, at the bridge, had to be at least 500 miles from the train station.
Mulling over every detail being with the elder that night that I was able to remember as my uncle and I traveled back toward Fort Sumner I came up with the only two things that didn't fit into the normal flow of things. One, the super cold chill that came over me making me shudder clear to my bones and two, the dramatic change in the phase of the moon from full to first quarter and back to full with not enough time to do so because of no real passage of time. At least for me and how I remember I sensed it that night.[2]
Thirty-eight long years later, on Monday, January 7, 1985, and on-and-off almost all of the next day, without getting into a whole lot of the logistics, I met a man named Johann Kremer in the Riverside Hotel and Casino located along the Colorado River in Laughlin, Nevada. Kremer was a World War II Kriegsmarine U-boat veteran and onetime crew member under the infamous U-boat captain, Jurgen Wattenberg. About six months before the end of the war, Kremer, along with Wattenberg and 60 others, escaped from the Papago Park POW camp in Arizona. I met with Kremer because the one time foreman of the one time ranch of my one time Stepmother had tasked me with returning a medal of some sort that had fallen into his hands. The former foreman had been in the Navy during World War II and through an unusual set of circumstances the medal, that actually belonged to Kremer, had ended up in his possession. A Navy veteran of World War II the former foreman had developed great respect for German submariners and knew the medal would be important to Kremer. For the former foreman, he being too sick to travel, I did his bidding.
Even though time and age had taken a semi-slight toll on both of us, me from a boy to a man, Kremer into his 60s from his early 20s, I still somehow knew him almost the instant I saw him, or at least so after a few minutes anyway. He was one of the three men that came into my camp that night along the river. Refreshing his memory he recalled one of his shipmates, in the dark, had inadvertently stepped on my leg or foot as they entered the camp. With absolute no knowledge of any events having been brought forth and put into place by potential Siddhi or spiritual-like aspects to any of the events along the river near the bridge that night in his mind, seeing everything on the conventional plane, he was absolutely astounded that I was that same young boy of so many years ago and that the fate or destiny of it all that happened put the two of us together not once, but twice. Even with me having knowledge of the other side of the equation I was impressed nearly as much as Kremer if not more so.[3]
Although Kremer was an escapee from the Papago Park POW camp in Arizona, that escape was his second, the first being from the Roswell camp the night he showed up where the elder and I were holing up along the river near the bridge. That first escape did not end well. Kremer told me not long after leaving our camp and our gracious sharing of what little food we had, he and his two companions came across a truck in a barn on a nearby ranch. Apparently in their attempt to start the vehicle, the noise they made along with the barking of dogs, woke up the ranch owner. When the rancher jumped them out of the dark in the barn the three POWs bolted. The rancher, who was carrying a rifle, shot and killed one of Kremer's crewmates and wounded the other before they could even clear the door. As his wounded buddy, who couldn't fully make his escape because of his injuries, waved Kremer off, he distracted the rancher by creating a big fuss and fight. In the milieu Kremer was able to slip away into the darkness and cover quite some distance by doubling back north. He said he thought if he reached our encampment he might be able to hide or blend in with us, but no matter how hard he searched along the river bank in the short time he had he was unable to locate our camp, us, or that we had ever been there. By the time he reached the bridge and road he said men with guns were waiting and that was the end of it.[4] [5] [6] [7] [8]
THE STRANGE ODYSSEY OF THE GERMAN U-BOAT U-196
GERMAN SUBMARINE ATTACK ON HOOVER DAM
RACING THE NO. 3774 LUDLOW TO BARSTOW
NAZI PLOT TO BLOW UP HOOVER DAM
SANTA FE LOCOMOTIVE #3774
INCIDENT AT SUPAI
A SHAMANIC JOURNEY OUTSIDE THE TRADITION
P-40 WARHAWK
PEARL HARBOR SURVIVOR
TRAVELS IN THE YUCATAN
ASTEROIDS, SHAMANS, AND THE HIDDEN MAGIC OF MAYA TEMPLES
WE DO NOT HAVE SHAMANS
The Case Against "Shamans" In the
North American Indigenous Cultures
RIDING THE CAB FORWARDS
TWO-MAN JAPANESE- MIDGET SUBMARINE MOUNTED
ADJACENT TO THE MOTHER SHIP'S CONNING TOWER
(please click image)MYSTIC AZTEC SUN GOD
TIME TRAVEL, THE CURANDERO, AND QUATU-ZACA
(please click image)
CLICK
HERE FOR
ENLIGHTENMENT
ON THE RAZOR'S
EDGE
THE WANDERLING
(please click)
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.
RACING THE #3774 FROM LUDLOW TO BARSTOW
If you recall from the main text above, my uncle more-or-less oversaw me in a guardianship position during a good portion of my childhood years. By the time I reached my junior high years and into to the beginning of my high school years as found in The Wanderling and His High School Chums he was basically gone from the picture being superseded in his role by either foster parents or my grandmother.
A month before I finished my first year of high school my uncle called out-of-the-blue saying he had an opportunity to participate in an "adventure of a lifetime just like in the old days" and wanted me to join him. Not even thinking about the possibility of school being in session, he suggested I hop a Greyhound bus immediatedly and meet him in Kingman, Arizona. When I ran the idea past my dad he blew his stack, with the following results, as found in the source so cited:
"(My dad) got on the phone and started yelling at my uncle that he was filling my mind with all kinds of 'weird and useless shit' and to stay away from me and keep his 'cock-and-bull stories' to himself. Needless to say that was the end of it and I didn't get to go. Instead, my dad sent me to spend the summer with my stepmother on her ranch in the Mojave Desert, or actually my ex-stepmother as she had become by then, and told the hard drinking every other word was a cuss word ranch foreman Leo, who had been at one time, a World War II Pacific Fleet Navy boxing champion, to not let me 'wander off.'"
(source)
Not even two months later, with my father out of the picture because of me being at my stepmother's and, even though my dad had told my uncle to keep his cock-and-bull stories to himself as well as the ranch foreman not to let me wander off, my uncle called again, only this time talking to my stepmother exclusively without anybody else's knowledge --- at least not until a couple of hours later when she brought it to my attention.
My stepmother and my uncle had a fabulous working relationship. It was she that put together the package that ensured my uncle was my guardian. It was she that picked up the tab on all of our adventures. And it was she that pulled all the strings getting us out of any misadventures we were always finding ourselves in. In any case, my uncle, who lived in Santa Fe, called my stepmother that July of 1953 to tell her he had been in Las Vegas, New Mexico, not far from Santa Fe, and a few hours before sunset saw the #3774 go through town headed west pulling a special Boy Scout train on its way to Santa Ana, California. He didn't know if it was going to be the motive power all the way through to the Los Angeles area or not, but even if not it should be going at least to Barstow and possibly down into the Cajon Pass sometime the next day --- or as my uncle said, roughly 15 hours or so from the time of his phone call. My stepmother, knowing the impact the #3774 had on my life immediately dispatched both the ranch foreman and me in a jeep out across the desert toward Barstow to try and catch it.
We reached Barstow before the train, so we headed out on Route 66 to try and intercept it as far east as we could and follow it back. Which we did. Cutting across the desert in the jeep from 66 to the AT&SF mainline, then trying to parallel the locomotive using the barely discernible rock strewn and no bridges service road into Barstow is a ride I'll never forget. The locomotive, just like my uncle said, was #3774. If it went any further west than Barstow is not clear, however, if we take Walker's word for it that no Class 3765s went through the Cajon Pass in 1953 at all, including on the Boy Scout specials, it seems that Barstow is as far as it got.
THE BOY AND HIS JEEP: ADVENTURES IN THE DESERT
(please click image)
The photo above showing several men dressed in khaki military-like garb sitting in a jeep in front of a Flying Tiger adorned P-40 is from an article published in Life Magazine dated March 30, 1942, Vol. 12, No. 13. I cite the same article and use the photo as the opening graphic at the top of the page for THE BOY AND HIS JEEP: Adventures In The Desert, linked above. It just so happens the man sitting on the shotgun side is one Jack Newkirk, known as Scarsdale Jack, a top ace for the American Volunteer Group, or the A.V.G. as the Flying Tigers were so officially designated. Newkirk was killed in action on March 24, 1942. Newkirk, while hitting targets of opportunity on a raid against the Japanese held Chiang Mai airfield, coming in low began strafing a column of Japanese armored vehicles and was hit by groundfire. His P-40, in a possible attempt at a hard landing hit the ground at a high rate of speed, ripping off a wing. All reports indicate he was killed instantly.
JACK NEWKIRK OF THE FLYING TIGERS
Footnote [1]
My uncle's so called business in the small New Mexico town of Roswell, of which he wasn't really sharing with me at the time and of which it would take many years later before the true specifics became clear, circulated around his long and deep connections with broad-breadth sections of indigenous people that inhabited large portions of the desert southwest. In so saying, it seems that a very important, albeit unknown to outsiders, Native American sacred site had been inadvertently stumbled upon and violated by a ragtag group of grave robbers or pothunters. In the process an artifact of possibly very little monetary value but of great significance to the Native American culture had been stolen. Below, in an almost synopsis of the exact nature of my uncle's business in Roswell and his involvement in the recovery of the stolen artifact is summed up in the following paragraph from the source so cited.
"Almost the exact instant it was discovered that the sacred site had been ransacked and the artifact removed than two Native American men from Arizona or New Mexico representing a larger group were dispatched to the studio of my Uncle in Los Angeles requesting his help in it's safe return. They needed a non-Indian, read: white-man, they knew and trusted, as well as being familiar with the existence of the object in question, to front for them. The only person in the world that could even remotely fit that bill was my uncle."
(source)
It had been several weeks since school was out and we left California, basically living in the backcountry, moving from site to site and camping along the way with very little contact with the outside world. In the process, except for roughly aiming toward being at the train wreck site as near as possible to the anniversary of the crash, we both had really lost track of day and date. As fate, destiny and karma would have it, because of my uncle's involvement in the above activities in Roswell, it put the two of us near Fort Sumner camping out when something of great significance happened, none of which was of our own making and pure happenstance as found below from the sources so cited:
"Late in the night of July 4, 1947 a mysterious object of an unknown nature and unknown origin came in out of the north-northwest sky over the desert flatlands of New Mexico traveling at an incredible high rate of speed. It streaked across the ink-like darkness in an ever descending trajectory all the while shedding bits and pieces of metal and foil only to end up slamming into the cold granite boulders along the lower north slope of the Capitan Mountains some fifty miles west of Roswell."
Of the same event, writing of myself, the following is presented at the source so cited:
"I was, however, fast asleep in my sleeping bag somewhere in the desert near Fort Sumner on the night of, it is thought, Friday, July 4, 1947, when around midnight my uncle, who had been sitting up pondering the stars and possibly his insignificance in the overall scheme of things, through a smattering of clouds, saw a brilliant meteor-like object streak across the night sky arcing downward to the Earth toward a fast moving lightning infested stormy horizon, all the while dissipating a string of quickly extinguishing small glowing hunks or particles dropping in it's wake."
AS A KID I ALWAYS PICTURED THE ROSWELL OBJECT LOOKING
LIKE FLASH GORDON'S ROCKETSHIP DISSIPATING A STRING OF
QUICKLY- EXTINGUISHING GLOWING PARTICLES IN- IT'S- WAKE.
(click image)
By clicking the above image a map of the overall general area circa 1947 comes up. The map clearly shows most if not all of the various sites spoken of in the main text above. Corona, where the fan belt came loose or broke is toward the upper left, Fort Sumner is just off the map on the upper right where Highway 60 runs off the map (you can just barely see the letter "F" and the two letters "Su" indicating Fort Sumner). The location of the triple section bridge is not far after where Highway 285 runs off the map at the bottom south of Roswell.
Footnote [2]
About three years after the Rio Felix incident, with me approaching the start of my tenth year or so if I hadn't crossed into it already, I was once again traveling in the desert southwest --- almost exclusively under the aegis of my uncle.
He had been called in by the eminent astronomer and meteorite hunter Dr. Lincoln La Paz to assist in determining the trajectory of a mysterious object said to have crashed in the Capitan Mountains near Roswell, New Mexico in early July, 1947. He had been chosen by La Paz not only because the two were friends but also because he was a well received and well accepted bio-searcher known throughout the desert southwest by certain large segments of the indigenous population for his wide ranging and intimate knowledge of the region and the region's flora and fauna.
The idea was to have my uncle determine if, when, and where any of the plant growth may have been moved, removed or replanted. It was a long and time consuming job but the length and width along with the direction of the gouge at the most well known site, the debris field, was roughly figured out.(see) Metal detectors were brought in to see if any parts or scraps made from metal or metal like material had been overlooked or possibley interred below the surface or in the surrounding area. Retracing several miles in both directions of the suspected trajectory, both in the air and on the ground, in an effort to confirm their conclusions, a previously unknown and unspoiled touchdown point five miles from the debris field was discovered where the sand had somehow been crystallized. The plants and scrub brush growing along the periphery of the glass-like sand and gravel was not so much burnt or scorched as they were more-or-less trying to return to a natural growth stage after being severely wilted, apparently from whatever crystallized the sand two months earlier. As well, the top portion of the sand and gravel in a definite north-south orientation in the major width between the scrub brush seems to give off a very slight, practically non-observable blue hue in the bright sunlight. The hue is caused by what appears to be a transparent turquoise-like patina, almost as though a fine veneer or micro-thin spray had fallen over the top surface of the sand
While I was busying myself looking for horn toads and lizards in the surrounding scrub brush and sandy terrain as well as breaking up rocks for the first time with a newly acquired prospector's pick given to me by an old timer desert-rat gadfly of an archaeologist named William Lawrence Campbell I came across a few pieces of some foil-like material. The military person in charge quickly gathered up the pieces and, in a rather harsh and abrupt fashion, ordered me and my uncle back to the vehicle we arrived in, placing us under guard with orders not to let us leave. When the military person returned to the truck he found the two of us gone and the guard assigned to watch us having no clue where we went or what happened to us. A search of the area showed no signs of either of us anywhere in the vicinity, as though we simply disappeared or vanished, the desert and the surrounding environment somehow swallowing us up without a trace.
Now, how is it I could just disappear with my uncle? That is where a great deal about Shamanism is missed by the non-Shaman. To the OUTSIDE OBSERVER both seemed to have just vanished, however for me everything was normal. Walking with my uncle I wasn't aware of any difference. My uncle may have been fully aware of the situation, but for me, the young boy that I was and not versed in such things I just went along with my uncle enveloped by the circumstances. The only difference, still recalled very vividly to this day, was that the distance we traveled by vehicle to the fused glass site was quite far and took quite a long time, however the trip walking back across the desert on foot took only a short time. As a young boy I never really thought much about the time-distance difference one way or the other, as a grown man it is another matter.
The wreck of the Santa Fe Chief in Arizona between Flagstaff and Williams occurred a few weeks into summer in the middle of the night, July 3, 1944. Kremer's escape from the Roswell POW Internment Camp in Orchard Park, New Mexico happened a year and a half earlier during the winter of 1943, around sundown January 15th, some 500 air miles east-southeast of the train station in Williams, Arizona.
Some say the experience the spiritual elder and I had is similar to a time-related phenomenon known as The Bootstrap Paradox, and of which, for those who may be so interested, is covered fairly well by going to the first link below, so too, the Time Pill Paradox:
TIME TRAVEL: MEETING YOURSELF
THE TIME PILL PARADOX
(please click image)
POWER OF THE SHAMAN
WHERE DOES IT COME FROM, HOW DOES IT WORK?
CLOUD SHAMANS
THE BEST OF
CARLOS CASTANEDA
<<< PREV ---- LIST ---- NEXT >>>
WE DO NOT HAVE SHAMANS
The Case Against "Shamans" In the
North American Indigenous Cultures
Footnote [3]
Sometime during the period of time the two of us were together in Laughlin a man stepped up to our table out of the crowd and speaking only German introduced himself to Kremer, to wit as found at the source so cited:
"The man made it clear that during the war he was never an internee or prisoner at the Papago Park POW camp, but instead had been a crew member on a submarine he identified as a Type IXD2 from the Monsun Gruppe 33rd Flotilla operating out of Penang, Malaysia, and without clarifying, or at least as Kremer excluded or related it to me, said he ended up in Mexico and that there was more gold where that came from."
(source)
There is a formidable war memorial in Germany dedicated to the memory of all U-boat officers and men who served and lost their lives at sea in the German Navies during World War I and II called the U-Boot-Ehrenmal Moltenort (Moltenort U-Boat Memorial) located in the seaside resort of Heikendor just off the Baltic Sea. The memorial has a high, large half-circle-wall with the open section of the half circle facing toward a central monument. On either side of the walls are a series of metal plates, one each for each U-boat and each plate containing the names of those who lost their lives in the line of duty in each of the so designated U-boats. One of the metal plates is dedicated to the U-196, a Type IXD2 from the Monsun Gruppe 33rd Flotilla operating out of Penang, Malaysia said to have shown up in Mexican waters off Sonora in the Sea of Cortez late in the year 1944. Both the name and the birthdate of the man that approached Kremer in Laughlin that day appears on the U-196 plate.
(please click image)
Footnote [4]
JOHANN KREMER
ROSWELL POW INTERNMENT CAMP, ORCHARD PARK, NEW MEXICO:
The Lincoln Star, Lincoln, Nebraska, January 15, 1943. Page 8
"ROSWELL, N. M., Jan. 15 (INS) An investigation continued today into the escape plot of three German prisoners of war at the federal interment camp at Roswell yesterday in which one fugitive was killed and another wounded as the men were captured. Col. Murray F. Gibbons, commander of the internment camp, said the three men were former German seamen who had escaped from the camp at 5 p. m. yesterday. The one killed was reported to be a 20-year-old youth named Walter Jager. Mark Fanning, a rancher and crack marksman, living near Artesia, N. M., was credited with the capture of the trio. Fanning told police that he was awakened by a noise during the night and found three men tampering with his car. Grabbing a rifle, he ordered them to throw up their hands and sent his wife to summon aid. As help arrived Fanning told authorities that the men suddenly made a break, and he fired killing one and wounding another. Both the wounded man and the third one were quickly found."
The photo below depicts a few of the German prisoners of war being held at the POW internment camp in Orchard Park, New Mexico near Roswell during the early stages of World War II. Kremer, one of the three POWs that entered the camp of the spiritual elder and myself that night along the Rio Felix is seen standing with the group third from the right.
PAPAGO PARK POW INTERNMENT CAMP, ARIZONA:
Before Kremer's initial capture and incarceration in the Roswell internment camp he had served on the U-162 under Commander Jurgen Wattenberg, a German submarine officer of some notoriety. On September 3, 1942, during a Caribbean patrol, 300 miles ESE of Puerto Rico off the island of Barbuda, the U-162 and all of her crew except for two who lost their lives, were captured with the officers and men being dispersed to a number of U.S. based POW camps (see link below). Kremer and Wattenberg were eventually reunited in the Papago POW camp. Of Wattenberg, Cecil Owen in an article titled The Arizona Prisoner of War Great Escape writes:
"Wattenberg was shuffled from one camp to another, for nobody wanted to keep him. He was considered a 'Super Nazi' because he caused trouble everywhere he was sent. Finally he was transferred to Papago Park prisoner of war camp, in the Arizona desert. This location was only 13 miles from the city of Phoenix, the capital of Arizona. The camp covered several thousand acres and was divided into two sections. (One section for German and Italian prisoners and one section for Japanese prisoners.)"
As soon as Wattenberg arrived at the camp he set about orchestrating an escape, personally asking Kremer, and giving him an out if he so chose in that he had already attempted one escape with two fellow crew members of which one was wounded and the other shot dead --- would he be willing to join in a second escape. Ever loyal to Wattenberg, he said yes. Immediately they and other trusted members of the camp began putting into place an elaborate scheme that included a 178 foot long tunnel reaching beyond the compound fences that ended right along a canal. By the time the tunnel was completed the escapees were ready to go with false IDs, civilian clothes, etc. On December 23, 1944, a total of 60 men including Wattenberg, with Kremer at his side, escaped (official records state 25 escapees, reliable sources have told me the number of POWs that escaped was more like 60).
Wattenberg was about mid-way on the list of teams leaving the camp. That way if early members were caught the escape could be aborted. If the last members leaving were caught the ones who left early could be long gone. The intent for Wattenberg's crew, after exiting the tunnel, was to slip into the waist-deep water of the Cross Cut Canal and using canoes, float down the canal to the Salt River, then to the Gila River and on to the Colorado River. Special canoes had been constructed which could be taken apart and carried through the tunnel in pieces. Whoever built them had blocked the drains in the shower and successfully tested the assembled canoes for water-tightness sufficiently enough for Wattenberg to be willing to use them. There is no evidence that Wattenberg ever uses or attempted to use the canoes. He was, however, the last of the known escapees caught. The following is found at the source so cited:
"After his escape, Wattenberg delayed heading south and explored the area. Kozur and Kremer even ventured into Phoenix one night, visiting a bowling alley and enjoying a few beers. The trio holed up in a shallow cave on a slope in the mountains north of the camp almost within view of Papago Park. From there Kremer pulled off the most bizarre caper of the entire escape. Every few days he joined up with one of the work details sent outside Papago Park. He exchanged places with a friend who spent the night in the cave while Kremer sauntered back into the camp with the work detail. There, he gathered news and food. He would then either join a work detail to get out of camp, or send food out with a member of the detail and remain in the barracks.
"On January 23, a month after the escape, a surprise inspection revealed Kremer's presence in the camp. The following evening, Kozur left the cave and made his way down to an abandoned car where friends on work details stashed provisions for the trio. Instead of food he found three American GIs with rifles pointed at his head. Only Wattenberg was still at large."
(source)
In the newspaper article below Kremer is 5th from the left, top row, Wattenberg is shown further down in the text of the article:
(for larger size click image then click again)
The photo below shows 14 of the main-core escapees and plot-planers gathered together after they were caught sometime later back in the camp. Wattenberg is the man in the center with his arms folded, Kremer is standing just to his physical left, albeit on your right in the photo:
U-162 SUNK BY PATHFINDER, VIMY AND QUENTIN 9-3-42
For those who have not done so please visit Footnote [5]
Footnote [5]
"The wreck of the Santa Fe Chief in Arizona between Flagstaff and Williams occurred a few weeks into summer in the middle of the night, July 3, 1944. Kremer's escape from the Roswell POW Internment Camp in Orchard Park, New Mexico happened a year and a half earlier during the winter of 1943, around sundown January 15th, some 500 air miles east-southeast of the train station in Williams, Arizona."
Footnote [2]
You may recall from the main text above the adult or adults I was traveling with were among those injured in the train wreck near midnight July 3, 1944. Their injuries were such they were either hospitalized and/or under enough medical supervision that they were unable to care for me, the little boy that I was. To solve the problem my uncle, the closest relative to my location, albeit still living some 300 miles away in Santa Fe was contacted. Unable to make it to where I was quickly enough considering the situation, my uncle contacted a Native American tribal spiritual elder he knew that lived close by to oversee me until he was able to personally intercede and safely get me to my grandmother's home in Southern California.
Sometime during the time period that elapsed between the January 15th 1943 POW escape so mentioned in the above quote from Footnote [2] and the wreck of the Santa Fe Chief in the middle of the night roughly a year and a half later on July 3rd, 1944 --- and totally unrelated to the wreck of the Chief or my plight in that the crash hadn't happened yet --- my uncle inadvertently stumbled upon some alarming fifth column activities and was shot in the back at close range by clandestine foreign operatives and left to die because of it. It wasn't until 1970 that he related to me how the events unfolded:
During the above years he was a civilian and for sure a non-combatant, actually falling more into a role of a conscientious objector type than anything else. He had long been established as an artist in the Santa Fe, Taos area, but he was as well what I call a biosearcher. Prior to his death in 1989 he had, as a biosearcher, more than a half dozen plant species named after him following years of trekking, searching, and discovering previously unknown and unnamed plants all over mostly remote and hidden areas and sections of the desert southwest. In 1943 he was biosearching alone in the then largely uninhabited mountainous and desert-like terrain in the central section of New Mexico between the New Mexico and Arizona border on the west and the north-to-south flowing Rio Grande on the east.
In the process of his biosearching he came across two men, and unusually so, both Asian. One of men was flat on his back all but unconscious and visibly quite ill after apparently having been bitten by a rattlesnake with the bite being left untreated. My uncle, after using the healing properties of indigenous plants he gathered up, soon found the man up and around. One of the men who had a rudimentary use of English told my uncle they were Japanese, were testing soil samples for radioactivity, and had been left off in Mexico by a submarine. By then my uncle was wanting to beat a hasty retreat but before he could one of the men shot him in the back. They took his truck and although they left him to bleed out he survived. In 1985 a book titled The Japanese Secret War authored by Robert K. Wilcox was published. In the book Wilcox writes about the two Japanese men my uncle encountered and the U-boat they arrived in, of which I turn around and write about as found in the sourced link below the quote so cited:
"Wilcox's book that, for the first time brought to the public's attention Japanese agents having been in the desert southwest during World War II specifically tasked with testing soil samples for radiation, was published in 1985. It was in 1970, fifteen years before Wilcox's book was published that my uncle told me about his 1943 encounter with Japanese spies soil testing deep into state of New Mexico and the fact that according to their own testimony, they had initially been brought to Mexico via German U-boat from Europe. "
THE JAPANESE SECRET WAR
JAPANESE MIDGET SUBMARINES
A-BOMBS, MIDGET SUBS, AND THE CALIFORNIA CHANNEL ISLANDS
For those who have not done so please visit Footnote [6]
Footnote [6]
Imbedded within one of the paragraphs in the main text as written by me the following sentence shows up:
"(Even) though it was quite clear to outside observers in the hospital that the spiritual elder and I 'knew each other,' and we did, what they didn't know was that we had NOT known each other over any length of time, but only hours, possibly minutes relative to the specific events leading up to and involving the crash."
By following the normal sequence of events as I have presented them in the main text, the above quote regarding me NOT having met the tribal spiritual elder over any length of time, meaning in essence at anytime prior to the crash, seems to fit in OK, and for all practical purposes, accurate.
However, when the events are reconfigured into a normal day-date-time chronological order as in the list below, notice where the Rio Felix bridge incident fits in --- second on the list. The bridge incident ends up not only months before the crash occurred and me on the way home from Pennsylvania, but also almost a full year before I ever even left for India.
- My parents throw a surprise birthday party in October 1942 for one of my brothers.
- Three months later, during mid-January 1943, three German submariners who escaped from a POW facility about 12 miles from where I was camping overnight with a tribal spiritual elder spot our camp fire. Seeking food and warmth they join us close to midnight along the Rio Felix in New Mexico after we left the train station in Williams, Arizona around sundown.
- Sometime later in 1943 my mother, because of the continued downward spiral of her health, is placed in a sanatorium-like care facility hospital in Santa Barbara. Prior to her being placed in Santa Barbara I am sent to live with the foster couple.
- Bracketed somewhere along the way during that same 1943 period my uncle goes biosearching alone in central New Mexico's remote desert terrain some distance west of the Rio Grande not far from Los Alamos when he comes across two Japanese operatives soil testing for nuclear radiation and is shot in the back because of it.
- In December 1943, a week or two before Christmas and unaware of any events involving my uncle, without my father's approval, I am taken to India by the foster couple.
- Six months later, sometime toward the end of June of 1944, I'm back in the United States where, unannounced, I'm left off by the couple at my grandmother's on my father's side in Pennsylvania. A short time later I am put on a train to Chicago.
- After reaching Chicago I board the Santa Fe Chief headed toward California that crashes near Williams, Arizona around midnight July 3, 1944, then to be met by the Native American spiritual elder contacted by my uncle.
- Just as the evening of the second day comes on, after waiting in the train station nearly two days with still no sign of my uncle showing up, the spiritual elder decides he's had enough and goes outside for a walk taking me with him. We end up camping overnight along the Rio Felix.
- Forty-one years later, the former POW I met in Laughlin, Nevada, recalled his fellow crewmate stepped on my leg or foot the night they entered our camp along the Rio Felix. He also remembered when leaving his crewmate gave me a pin, actually a U-boat 2d Flotilla cap hat pin as seen on the side of the Kriegsmarine crewmember cap below, in thanks for the food and warmth we provided as well as an expression of how sorry he was for having stepped on me.
The following paragraph, from the source so cited, sets the scene for the previous events:
"My mother died when I was quite young. However, even before her death, because of her illness my father continued to have to work more and more hours to pay for mounting medical expenses. Through it all he found it extremely difficult to care for my two brothers and myself and work the hours he did. At first he dealt with it with regular day-to-day babysitting, then overnight and weekends with my grandparents and neighbors. Along the way a couple that just happened to be visiting our next door neighbors for Thanksgiving dinner, and of which we were invited to, offered to help by taking one of us kids fulltime. A few days later I was selected and basically fostered out, moving away from my brothers and family even before my mother passed away."
In Footnote [8] I write that the last time I remember my immediate family together as a family, that is intact and healthy with my mother, father, two brothers and myself fully together as a functioning family unit, circulated around us living in my original childhood home in Redondo Beach, California and celebrating one of my brother's birthdays sometime on a weekend in October of 1942.
In the above quote I write that a couple visiting neighbors during Thanksgiving offered to take one of us boys in an effort to ease the burden on my father. He agreed and the couple selected me, in turn taking me to India without his approval.
What I am not privy to is what year Thanksgiving we are talking about, 1942 or 1943. If it was the Thanksgiving of 1943 I would have been with the couple only a month before going to India. If it was Thanksgiving of 1942 I could have been with them for as much to a year IF I went to live with them right away following Thanksgiving.
I do know that at some period in 1943 I traveled to Santa Barbara with my mom and dad at least for one day while he was looking into the possibility of a long term care facility for my mother, although in the end that doesn't amount to much of anything, as I could have easily been borrowed for a day or two. Re the following quote from the Wanderling and His Uncle site listed below:
"While we were there the three of us went down to the Santa Barbara pier, known as Stearns Wharf in those days. Somewhere along one edge of the pier was a crane-like boom that was in the process of pulling an airplane out of the water and placing it on a flatbed trailer. To me the plane was what I would call a seaplane. On its wings and behind the wings on both sides of the fuselage were clearly distinguishable bright red circular Japanese insignias. The plane was intact and showed no signs of visible damage that at the time I was aware of. Years later I would identify the plane being lifted onto the dock as a Yokosuka E14Y Floatplane, especially so in that the aircraft was fairly typical of the type plane carried by the long range Imperial Japanese Navy I-Class Type B-1 submarines. Even though I was the young boy that I was and may not have been able at the time to identify the plane per se', I still knew what the red meatball insignias meant. The enemy. I remember asking my dad how such a plane, that is, one that belonged to the bad guys, ended up being put onto a waiting flatbed trailer on the dock in Santa Barbara. With no verbal response he just quietly shook his head and shrugged his shoulders as having no clue."
The question thus remains for many then is, if I was with the foster couple or even with my own family for most if not all of the year 1943, how is it I was able to end up along the Rio Felix with the tribal spiritual elder when the German submariners came into camp? It is a known fact that the POWs escaped their camp in January of 1943 and were captured almost immediately afterwards, with one of their own even being shot and killed. The train wreck outside Williams, Arizona didn't occur until the night of July 3rd 1944. It was only because of the wreck, at least on the conventional plain, that the spiritual elder came into my life.(see)
The following two graphics are of Yokosuka E-14Y Floatplanes as found in THE WANDERLING AND HIS UNCLE: Their Life and Times Together, linked below, which gets into how a Japanese floatplane ended up on the pier in Santa Barbara, California:
WORLD WAR II COMES TO REDONDO
THE WANDERLING AND HIS UNCLE
THEIR LIFE AND TIMES TOGETHER
For those who have not done so please visit Footnote [7]
"(U)nknown to me, my mother was no longer at home, having become totally unable to care for herself, so much so my dad placed her into a full care sanatorium-like hospital in Santa Barbara, California on an around the clock basis. Before my dad had a chance to respond to the couple, the couple, knowing full well that my mother was in a sanatorium, without my father's grace, took me to India, simply sending him a note saying that in the end I had changed my mind about going. While I was gone my mother died. I missed the funeral and by the time I got back my family had disintegrated, my two brothers and myself all going separate ways, my dad disappearing into the countryside heavy into alcohol."
The above quote is from the source so cited. It cuts to the quick about my mother, the foster couple, me going to India, etc. It also brings to light the fact that while I was gone my mother died and I missed the funeral. The circle of events happened that way for me because of having left for India late in the year 1943 and not returning to the states until June of 1944, meaning by inference according to the quote, that it was during that six month time frame that my mother died. Taken to the extreme then, by inference it would also mean that my mother was alive at least right up to my departure and possibly sometime shortly after. The following is from the source so cited:
"I know that one month before Thanksgiving my mother was still at home because of what happened on the day after Halloween. Halloween, always on the 31st of October, is roughly a month before Thanksgiving. That year the treats my parents gave away for 'trick or treat' was actually roasted marshmallows. My father took a 55 gallon drum, made a fire in it using scrap lumber, put a metal grill on the top and everybody that came by could roast their own marshmallows over an open fire. The next morning my dad dumped what was left of the burnt wood and coals on the concrete driveway and spread them out a little with all intentions of taking the hose and water them down.
"A few days before Halloween my dad had built and installed a new set of double doors on the garage. The scrap lumber he used for the marshmallows was from the left over old doors. While he was getting the hose I spotted one of the old garage door hinges in the rubble and when I did I reached down to pick it up. It was scolding hot and burnt the shit out of my hand, especially so a couple fingers --- and of which I still have scars from to this day.
"I started screaming and running around like crazy. What I remember the most from the incident, other than the incident itself, was my mother running out of the house wearing an apron and wiping her hands with a towel, followed by all of her tenderness and care while dealing with the wound. That was the day after Halloween, Monday, November 1, 1943."
Even though I had been fostered out to the couple and even though nobody knows for sure, there is no reason to believe that right up to the time of my actual day of departure for India in December of 1943 that I wasn't any place else other than in the U.S. or on U.S. soil. As I have stated elsewhere I went to Santa Barbara with both of my real parents sometime in 1943. The question is, if I was with my parents or even the foster couple, how is it during the same 1943 period in the month of January I was able to hole up for the night along the Rio Felix in New Mexico with the spiritual elder waiting for my uncle to show up?
There had to be in existence two of me at the same time, albeit occupying separate spaces. One of me quite possibly knowing my mother died, the other still having a mother alive. Truth be told however, when I was traveling with the spiritual elder I had no clue it was not, not 1944. It was only years later that I discovered the incident along the Rio Felix involving the German POWs was 1943.
For those who have not done so please visit Footnote [7]
Footnote [7]
People are always jumping up and down about me writing about Kremer being in Laughlin, Nevada, intimating not only it is so much cow dung but pretty convenient for me, wanting to know what the heck was a German foreign national and former POW doing in Laughlin in 1985 in the first place? From the source so cited I write:
"Although I have rather solid and significant proof besides simply my remembrance of it, because it is so far out, Kremer, who lived in Germany, him being in Laughlin, a small little gambling town out in the middle of nowhere along the Colorado River, is just not one of those things anybody would make up out of whole cloth and expect people to believe if it wasn't so."
The rather solid and significant proof, although it is simple to provide, is a story reserved for another day. However, I do have a rather interesting follow-up story regarding the German POWs who came into the no-frills camp the spiritual elder and myself set up that night along the Rio Felix. I've mentioned elsewhere that just as I was about to fall asleep, one of the POWs accidently stepped on my leg or foot, most likely because where I was laying wasn't nearly as illuminated as it could have been in that I had moved back from the fire to sleep.
After giving them some food of what little we had and restoking the fire back to it's former lusterness my once drowsiness faded as my ears perked up at the thought of escaped German POWs being in our camp. I remember clearly they did not seem to present any sort of a threat, only needing a little food, a few safe minutes to rest, and information as to where they were specifically. I also remember the following quite clearly, as found at the source so cited:
"(A)s the three POWs entered our camp, one of the men, apparently not seeing me clearly in the dark, stepped on my foot. What I didn't mention at the source --- because I really didn't want to get into it at the time --- was that the same man, when they got up to leave, stopped to pin something on my jacket. Because it was so cold and he had no gloves or warm clothes on, he was shivering so much he was unable to pin whatever he was trying to pin on me, even dropping it a couple of times. The third attempt he just handed it to me, patted me on the head and left with his buddies. A few hours later one of the three was shot dead, two captured and one of the two wounded."
The Curandero and the Magic of the Mojave Desert Creosote Ring
The night before when I was in the train station a man came up and sat down next to me showing me a comic book that had what he said was a true story and that his son had participated in the actual events so depicted in the story. The following, from the source so cited, picks up as the man sits next to me that night while I was in the train station with the tribal spiritual elder waiting for my uncle to show up:
He came over and sat next to me and asked if my dad was in the war. I told him no that he worked in the shipyards. Asking if I liked comic books he opened his suitcase and pulled out one called Blue Bolt. All the while he was thumbing through the pages like he was looking for something he was telling me he had a son in the war and that his son was a pilot. After he reached a certain spot he folded open the pages and pointed to a story about a group of American pilots that shot down 77 German planes in one outing. Then, carefully reading the story page by page and pointing to the different pictures he told me that his son was one of the pilots. My uncle told me with that I took the book from the man's hands completely fascinated, so much so I read the story over and over without stopping or setting it down. The man, seeing how much I appreciated the comic and the story, said I could have it. After that my uncle said I continued to read it again and again all the way back to California and months afterwards."
What I haven't stated elsewhere is that in my new found enthusiasm regarding the story of the P-40s that in one outing shot down 77 German planes in the so-called Goose Shoot, is that I still had the comic book with me the next night when the POWs came into camp. With additional light from a restoked fire I got out the comic and began reading the story, all the while pointing out page after page of the graphic drawings of the event. Needless to say, even though they eventually were caught up in what I was showing them in that they had not received any substantial amount of news from anywhere let alone the battlefront, they just were not up to giving any truth or validity to the story, especially so coming from a kid and a comic book. As I got older I deciphered the attitude they displayed that night stemmed basically from a still strong or lingering belief in the infallibility of German superiority.
However, if you look at the timing of it all --- and truly unknown to me at the time until it dawned on me one day totally out of the blue years later --- the POWs did in a sense have "right" on their side, i.e., not giving any truth or validity to the story, especially so coming from a kid and a comic book, to wit the following:
- The POW escape is recorded as having transpired on January 14, 1943.
- The Goose Shoot happened in the skies over Tunisia, North Africa three months later on Sunday, April 18, 1943.
- The story I showed the POWs of the Goose Shoot was in BLUE BOLT, Issue Number 6, which wasn't even published until January, 1944, one full year after the POW escape --- even though I had the comic book with me at the time of their escape.
For those who have not done so please visit Footnote [8]
(please click image)
For those who have not done so please visit Footnote [8]
Footnote [8]
"Not everyone, primarily because of drawing conceptual construct inferences while being firmly implanted in the Samsaric side of any equation, are willing to do so (i.e., navigate my works). Once the seeker realizes what is going on, things change. The problem is that the Wanderling is not time-lineal. It is like throwing a rock into a still pond. The concentric rings radiate outward one after the other. The outer ring was once the inner ring and the inner ring will become the outer ring. For the Wanderling there is no difference, ring, rock, pond, first or last. All well and good for him, but what about us. It is like a joke. If you get it, it doesn't need to be explained. If it needs to be explained something is lost."
THE TEN FETTERS OF BUDDHISM, the Wanderling
A while back I received a fairly lengthy, very intellectual, very well composed, and very well written email that within it's contents asked a very simple yet astute question. The emailer, in what and how it was written, apparently it seems, has made an effort to read and go through much of my works in a very careful and in-depth manner. I only say so because in the end his question points to something that for the most part goes totally unnoticed by a vast majority of my readers.
Again, the question itself, which comes up at the end of this sentence, is quite simple and, although the solution comes across somewhat simple, the answer, if not grasped innately, is filled with an enormous complexity. The email writer wants to know, in that so much of what I write --- or don't write --- about the hows and whys of my meeting and having Darshan under the venerated Indian holy man the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi is immersed in a two year almost total amnesia-like memory loss that transpired under what I call mitigating circumstances, and to know about what happened depends almost entirely on outside sources filling in the blanks, HOW IS IT that I am so able to be so concise and clear in what I present in The Spiritual Elder and the Santa Fe Chief about what happened including full moons, triple section steel bridges, German POWs and even their names, etc., without similar or like substantiating outside sources?
The answer, to be credible, requires a certain level of of background understanding leading up to, surrounding, and imbedded in the events, to wit, the following that also shows up later in the text below:
"Everything that I knew and should have remembered about my mother's sickness, India, the time leading up to that moment in the garage, and being with my grandmother, either evaporated or was deeply covered over. Days, weeks, months, all gone. In closing that gap I remembered only up to one side, a side well before my mother ever got sick. A happy loving childhood with a mother and father and playing with my brothers and kids in the neighborhood. A house full of toys and my older brother learning to ride a bicycle. Then suddenly out of nowhere finding myself months later on the other side, getting out of a car clutching a tiny suitcase with nothing but a handful of crummy belongings and sack full of dirty underwear and not knowing how I got there. Standing on the sidewalk not much more than a simple beleaguered young boy with no mother and a father long gone, being taken by a stranger to live with a couple that owned a flower shop, a couple I was sure I had never seen or heard of in my life."
The last time I remember my immediate family together intact and healthy, that is, with my mother, father, two brothers and myself fully together as a functioning family unit, circulated around living in our original family home in Redondo Beach, California and one of my brother's birthdays. My brother's birthday fell on a weekend in October of 1942 and my parents --- the key words being here, "my parents" in the plural, that is, both of them --- decided to give him a surprise party. How do I know it was 1942? Because to pull off the surprise required my brothers and me to be out of the house while it was being decorated and guests, friends and kids secretly arrived --- so my dad took us down to the ocean to walk along the sand. No sooner had we reached the beach than we worked our way south of the pier to see a highly-muted town event, a two-man Japanese midget submarine that had washed up on shore. Even though the sub was roped off blocking any formal access from the front, to get to it my dad took us along a narrow strip between the Horseshoe Pier and the rocks, crossing under the pilings of the straight pier along the water line and onto the beach. When we reached the sub he lifted me up and I was able to look inside through an open hatch.
TWO-MAN JAPANESE- MIDGET SUBMARINE MOUNTED
ADJACENT TO THE MOTHER SHIP'S CONNING TOWER
(please click image)
A handful of well armed GIs, at least if not toting rifles carrying side arms, whose job it was to apparently guard the submarine in some fashion from incorrigibles or worse, had repositioned themselves some distance from the immediate vicinity of the sub to the somewhat more palatable sidewalk above the beach in order to interact with a few of the more viable members of the local female population. Eventually one of the GIs saw us climbing all over the sub and waved us off.
A few days before, within minutes of the sub being spotted some 500 yards off the pier, a half a dozen airplanes dropped bombs from her last known position to all along her suspected path of travel. Two days later the sub, although virtually undamaged, washed up on shore. The date of the event has been reported as being October 4, 1942 although it doesn't really matter much as the bombing occurred in October, 1942 and I personally saw the midget submarine within days of it washing up on the beach --- and I remember quite clearly seeing it with my dad --- and we were there that day because we had to be out of the house for my brother's birthday.
JAPANESE MIDGET SUBMARINES
A-BOMBS, MIDGET SUBS, AND THE CALIFORNIA CHANNEL ISLANDS
That October 1942 surprise party was before I started kindergarten and it was before I started kindergarten my mother's health began to deteriorate, eventually reaching a point that she was unable to care for herself let alone my two brothers and me. As her condition continued to spiral downhill, almost under pure necessity my father began placing my brothers and me more and more under the care of others. One day a childless husband and wife couple who were really good friends with the neighbors next door suggested to my father having one of us boys come live with them until things improved. After thinking it over my father agreed and for whatever reason the couple selected me.
No sooner had I moved in with them and started a new school than the two-week Christmas vacation, or winter recess or winter break as they call it now, rolled around and the couple took me, without my father's consent, to India, not returning until sometime around the start of summer --- in the interim missing the whole last half of the school year. They had gone to India at the very end of the year in order to attend a religious convention held December 26-31, 1943, in Adyar, located on the coast of the Indian Ocean near Madras, about 95 miles northeast of Tiruvannamalai. Tiruvannamalai is where they eventually ended up staying, residing at or near the ashram of the venerated Indian holy man the Bhagavan Sri Ramana Maharshi for maybe five months.
Between the time I left the train station in Williams, Arizona but before I went to live with a couple that owned a flower shop in Redondo Beach, I stayed with my grandmother on my mother's side for a while. She took me to see her only remaining child, my mother's younger sister. At the end of one of those days together, as recounted in the Last American Darshan, the following happened:
"One day, after going shopping all day long in town with my grandmother and her daughter and her two children, we returned and pulled up in front of the garage. I got out of the car and opened the two side-by-side wooden garage doors. There right in front of me on the floor of the garage only a few feet away in the glare of the headlights, in a slowly expanding pool of blood, was what was left of the husband of my mother's sister. The whole back of his head blown out from the blast of a double barrel shotgun he stuck in his mouth. His body laying there apparently falling off a still upright straight-back wooden chair with his once onetime skull full of brain now empty. Gone were all the synapses and neurons and everything that went with them, turned now into nothing but bloody silver-gray yellowish meat splattered all over the upper reaches of the nearby open-studded walls and exposed rafters."
As I mentioned above and in several other places in my works, for many years I was unable to clearly recall all of the events surrounding the couple and India because of mitigating circumstances --- my stumbling across the suicide as described above constitutes the bottom line of nearly all of those mitigating circumstances. There I was, a young boy not long returned from India, without a mother, having missed both her final days and her funeral as well, standing with my mouth open, staring down on what only minutes before was someone else dear to me, not just gone, but excruciatingly gone. My aunt, stunned into disbelief at what she saw, with the car still in gear and engine running let her foot slip from the clutch as she apparently tried to step out of the car and run toward her husband. The vehicle lurched forward in one huge leap, crashing into the swung open garage door knocking it and me down and rendering me unconscious. It took months and months and reasons unknown before I suddenly came out of a nearly amnesia-like walking coma --- and even then, not fully so until years later. Everything that I knew and should have remembered about my mother's sickness, India, the time leading up to that moment in the garage, and being with my grandmother, either evaporated or was deeply covered over.
My memory before my mother got sick was heavily laden with thoughts of a happy loving childhood with a mother and father and playing with my brothers and kids in the neighborhood and a house full of toys and my older brother learning to ride a bicycle, and for the most part those memories were not impacted. However, months later, I found myself getting out of a car clutching a tiny suitcase with nothing but a handful of crummy belongings and sack full of dirty underwear and not knowing how I got there. There I was, standing on the sidewalk not much more than a simple beleaguered young boy with no mother and a father long gone, being taken by a stranger to live with a couple that owned a flower shop, a couple I was sure I had never seen or heard of in my life --- followed by a period of time which encompassed the failure of me to stay with the couple for very long before running away --- on more than one occasion --- and because of same, ending up living with my grandmother and uncle, with everything else in-between those two moments of my short childhood gone, lost in the darkened abyss of the blackout period. For all practical purposes, except from outside sources and day, dates, and times provided by those outside sources, all of the Ramana stuff through the year 1944 and 1945 no longer existed in my conscious everyday thoughts.
Which brings us back to the email writer's question: considering I was in the train station with the spiritual elder after the wreck, but before leaving for the Rio Felix, and considering the mitigating circumstances so mentioned above not being put into place until AFTER I returned to California and my grandmother, HOW IS IT, in that it is quite clear when the train wreck happened and all of the Ramana stuff through the year 1944 and 1945 no longer existed in my conscious everyday thoughts, that I am able to be so concise and clear in what I present in The Spiritual Elder and the Santa Fe Chief about quarter moons, full moons, triple section steel bridges, German POWs and even their names, etc., along with everything else, without similar or like substantiating outside sources as found in other so related works?
The answer is quite simple. The couple left the U.S. in order to attend a religious convention held in India December 26-31, 1943, taking me with them. The events with the tribal spiritual elder involving myself and the German POWs along the Rio Felix in New Mexico happened in the month of January during the calendar year 1943, almost one full year BEFORE I left with the couple for India --- and even more so before the inducement of the blackout period. In other words, as described above, it happened during the early beginning of the year 1943 when I still had a viable happy loving childhood with a mother and father and playing with my brothers and kids in the neighborhood. A house full of toys and my older brother learning to ride a bicycle, a period of time I was able to remember quite well even after the onslaught of the blackout. The wreck of the Santa Fe Chief happened in the middle of the night July 3, 1944, eighteen months AFTER the Rio Felix incident.
WORLD WAR II COMES TO REDONDO
THE TIME PILL PARADOX
"Sivana is now back in the past! Therefore everything that happened in the future was wiped out of his memory, for those things had not yet happened! He has forgotten that there was a Captain Marvel! And he does not know why he came to the past!"
Is the "Time Pill Paradox" really a paradox? As presented in the Captain Marvel story when Sivana travels back to the past he begins to lose his memory because in the past the future hasn't happened yet. However, if the future hadn't happened yet how could he have been in it to have gone back to the past? For the person going to the past is it that the future once left decoheres? If such is the case then, would the future no longer exist to go back to, leaving the traveler forever in the past or until the present he is in catches up to the time he left. See:
THE TIME PILL PARADOX
