Leveraged Intelligence

The Wildest Thing I Did in My Youth

Gotta tell ya – when gaelikaa came up with this, my main problem was choosing what to say … and deciding what was appropriate to say … so I decided to just say it! I can’t wait to see what the other characters came up with, so be sure to peruse their takes on this, all published more or less simultaneously.  You can find links to all their sites on the left.  And, now, let the recounting begin:

It was the summer of 1977 when my best friend and I decided to take advantage of Greyhound’s offer of travel to anywhere in America for $50.  I had been teaching all year and while working nine months, I was paid on a twelve-month basis.  When you are young that seems like free money.

So, we got on the bus in Topeka, Kansas and headed for California!  Let me recount for you, chronologically, all the things that happened.  Cross my heart, all of them are true:

• On the way to Denver, the guys behind us were smoking pot.  The bus driver kept thinking it was us, probably because we had hair down to there.  I was getting ready to give the driver what for when my friend informed me that he was “holding,” the term for having a drug or two in his possession, and that we should just let it go.  So we did.  And we were summarily kicked off the bus at the Denver Depot.  At midnight.
• In the bus depot, the manager told us that if we wanted to go to the bathroom, it was best to go together, since a guy had been murdered in the bathroom overnight a couple of weeks before.So, a guy came in and we smoked some really good pot with him out back.  We had to do something with our time.
• We decided that we should make even better use of our time, so we decided to get train tickets across the Rockies to our friends’ house in Grand Junction.  We were on the train by 6:00 – and if you’ve never taken a train across the Rockies, let me highly recommend it!  We would stand between the cars and hang out in the fresh air, taking in the gorgeous views.  Then we settled in a car that seemed really nice – only to find that it was really nice because it was the crew’s car.  But, they liked us and told us we could hang with them.  In return, we got them stoned in Grand Junction.
• In Grand Junction, we got back on the bus with the ticket from the original $50, if you can believe that.  We went to Salt Lake City, where I met a lovely lady with whom I made out all the way to San Francisco.  You need to do something on a bus to pass the time.
• She put us up in North Beach in San Francisco for a couple of days and I really think she and I could have made a go of it – except that I was moving on, she had her boyfriend returning to town and, unbeknownst to me, my future mate was only 25 miles away.  Anyway, that was when I fell in love with San Francisco!
• Traveled on the bus to Southern California.  Met up with my buddy’s distant cousins.  Did our laundry.  Spent some time with them.  They tried to convert us to their brand of Christianity.  So, we exchanged pleasantries, explained how tight our schedule was – of which there was actually nothing, of course – and moved on.
• Took the local bus with no destination in mind.  Decided totally on impulse – because, and I mean this sincerely, when we did that, something a whole lot greater than us guided with uncanny precision, a concept a bit foreign to my buddy’s relatives – to get off at a hole we saw in the fence.  Went through the hole to the beach below.  Found out it was named Capistrano Beach, put down our sleeping bags … and found out later that this was a contested stretch of beach and thus was the only beach in Southern California you could sleep on without fear of reprisal.  Thank you, GREATER POWER!
• While we are staying on the beach, learning to harvest grunion, and partying in general (we were very popular, because we brought no expectations and just joined in), we sleep through a woman having a domestic argument, being shot, trying to run away and being hit by a train that ran by the beach.  She was OK after some patching up in the morning, because people who sleep on the beach seem to be pretty damn hardy, and my buddy and I helped her patch it up with her husband the next day.  We were very good at listening.
• Deciding to take a bus for a quick jaunt, we find a movie we’ve never heard of, go to the first Star Wars movie.  Walked up just in time to be in the front of the line … of course.  The Force was definitely with us and the movie made a crapload of sense.  Dude, we lived like that!
• Take another bus trip to the LA area and miss a connection.  No problem, because even the screw-ups workout for the two of us.  We notice that we are across the street from Disneyland (I’ll be damned!) so, my buddy, who always seems to have an endless supply of something, wheels out some mushrooms to munch and we go get tickets.  Wow!  It really IS the magic kingdom!
• Near the end of the day, out of the blue we meet up with a girl we know from Kansas.  This is a girl whose parents  have decided I am bad for her and that she is not to see me anymore.  We REALLY like each other.  Neither of us had any idea that the other was going to California, let alone anything else.  So, we go back to the Whalers Inn to talk and make out.
• Time to meet up with my buddy’s brother in Tucson.  We head back, find that Hell is actually cooler, but somehow find a place that we can stay for a bit.  I sleep in the basement the first night – and … the wall opens up for me with no chemical assistance whatsoever and I see things that Moses could relate to.  Next morning, I tell my mates that I am not sleeping down there again!
• Head to Durango, have adventures in mountains a bit, sleep on a mountainside – you know, regular stuff.
• Well, it is time to head home.  Now, we split into different groups and I am with my buddy’s brother, definitely one of my best friends in the universe these days, a guy I will be calling Saturday.  But, he and I can’t get a ride hitchhiking for anything.  However, we are picked up by a forest firefighter who is having all his animals and his wife shelling out new little beings.  This guy is magical!  He puts us up in a bedroom to sleep in paper firefighter sleeping bags on a floor that goes right out the window to a patio that he built on a second story into the trees.  Wow!
• We can’t get a ride together for anything.  So, we split up and decide that might help.  It does, but I get caught at the end of a day in Limon, Colorado in a rain storm and sleep overnight under a park bench.  I’m really starting to feel ridden hard and put away wet at this point, but I haven’t been put away quite yet.  Sheesh!  Cop wakes me up, makes me move on.  Later, I find that Mom had to pay a $12 fine for me sleeping there.
• Finally get the remainder of the rides home that I need.  Or, at least close enough that my folks can pick me up.  I have … and this is no exaggeration … 4 cents in my pocket!

That is the wildest adventure of my youth!  But, I still have a few others to relate to you.  Uh … quite a few!

Collections

Part of the continuing Blogger’s Consortium series with simultaneous posts on the topic being done by Ashok, gaelikaa, Grannymar, Helen, Judy, Magpie 11, Maria, Marianna and Ramana – in alphabetical order.  Notice that we have grown by leaps and bounds!  Not only did gaelikaa come on board last week, but this week Helen and Judy jump in.  For good reason, too, because they have marvelous blogs.  Go see for yourself!

Our Silver Fox, Maria, came up with this week’s Consortium topic, Collections.  I immediately started gathering up all kinds of things that I have collected and started taking my pictures.  I had stuff from when I was a kid, stuff from the recent President’s Cup, stuff from the kitchen, stuff from the garage,.  It would have been pretty cool, because I’ve gathered all kinds of STUFF that I have found cool from time to time.  Carly and I have even gathered all the State Quarters!

Then Magpie had to go and mention that he thought he knew what my post would be on, what collection.  He was referring to the collection of writers that now compose the Loose Bloggers Consortium – and I was sorely tempted.  Until …

I watched something on TV last night that tugged at my conscience, so let me reel it back a bit and tell you why it mattered to me.

In California, water is and has been a very precious commodity.  As we drove through the Central Valley in August taking Carly back to school in San Diego, 500 miles from here (translates to two million kilometers for those of you using the metric system)  and it was impossible to miss signs all up and down the valley:

I know you can’t read it in this picture, but the sign beside the road says, “Congress Created Dust Bowl.”  You see, we are in the midst of a three-year drought and, in California, a politician knows that popularity usually rides on good rain and snow in Northern California and a good economy.  So, as you can see from this picture and what you have read about our economy, our politicians are EXTREMELY unpopular with only a 13% approval rating!  The Central Valley is our agriculture area and you can’t grow much out there without irrigation.

Now, we have the California Aqueduct which runs much of the length of the State, so the Central Valley gets its water sent in from the North.  When times are wet, this is no problem, because there is plenty to go around.  But, in times like these, the Central Valley battles the fishermen in the North, because the rivers are the spawning grounds for the Salmon and we don’t even have a Salmon season here right now because the population is too low.  They need water to maintain their populations.

So, we have a contentious battle going on over this precious resource.  And now I’ve laid the ground – mostly – for the source of my guilt.  You see, here in Hayward we have some of the absolutely best drinking water in the world.  I kid you not.  We can bottle it straight from the tap.  My brother-in-law has a device that measures particle presence in water and mountain stream water runs on the average 50 parts per million.  Urban tap water usually runs 200 to 400 parts per million.  Our water straight from the tap, unfiltered has only 18 parts per million particulate matter!!  Distilled water usually has around 6 parts per million, after all.

So, I should be delighted and I am!  No offense, Rhonda, but San Diego’s water is … how should I put this? … bad.  Why are we so blessed?  Because our water comes from the Hetch-Hetchy Reservoir:

Beautiful, isn’t it?  You could even say gorgeous, stunning.  You should say that, because before they turned it into a reservoir, this part of the Yosemite National Park was said to be just as beautiful as the Yosemite Valley.  And the Yosemite Valley is flat out one of the most beautiful places on this planet!  I’ll do a post on it one of these days that will do it justice.

Yosemite is about a couple of hours straight East of here.  This is where the guilt comes in.  After the 1906 Earthquake and Fire in San Francisco, politicians came up with the convenient story, quite untrue, that the City would have not burned down if they had the Hetch-Hetchy Valley dammed off and used as a reservoir to supply water needs.  John Muir fought it tooth and nail, because to him it was a Cathedral.  The battle over it is what probably finally killed the old man.  Ultimately, one of the City’s politicians ended up in the Administration of Wilson in Washington and they dammed this gorgeous valley off.  And then it filled with this incredibly pure water and pipes bring it all the way to San Francisco.  Somehow, along the way, it goes to Hayward, too, the total exception in the East Bay.

We collect water in this Sacred Cathedral so that people like me can drink it and, what is worse, water my lawn with it.  And wash my dishes with it and shower with it and …. so that politicians can gather votes.

The deed is done.  The water is fantastic.  But, with beauty like that, I really wish we had collected it someplace else.

The California Challenge

So, citizens of America and of the World, you may have noticed that California is in fiscal and social crisis.  In fact, today is just another budget deadline unmet.  Put America on steroids and give it breast augmentation, boil it in the legendary melting pot, then pour it into one bordered area called a state and Voila! – California.

This is the view expressed by the San Francisco Bay Guardian on the left.  Which is appropriate, because we are so often referred to as the Left Coast, due to the whole center of the nation thinking we are this left-wing stronghold.

But, look at that map more closely.  We are actually “America’s America” as Bill Clinton referred to us.  You can’t refer to the land that produced Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon, among others, as being just “Left.”

Now, I’m by no means a California expert, but let me describe these different regions so you will have some idea why the legislature is so bad.  And, boy are they bad, but I’ll get to that in just a bit.  Also recognize the broad brush these regions are painted with.  For example, you would find fry-your-butt Redding – where the summers get to 6 million degrees – in Greenland.  You see what I mean, but in my descriptions, I will follow the fantasy that these are actually totally homogeneous regions, because that really does help describe the governing problem.

Greenland: This is the area where the giant redwoods live.  Stunning countryside.  A world of its own that you have to experience to know what it is like.  Kind of like the Grand Canyon in that sense.  Sorry, but a movie or a picture can’t do it justice.  And, oh the sweet air and the serenity…and you better take care of ancient forest groves – unless you work at a lumber mill and are unemployed.  Or, unless you are a spotted owl.

Sierrastan: Kind of akin to Greenland.  GOOD mountains!  Lake Tahoe, mountain cabins, Yosemite Valley, ski resorts.  And mountain people with their own hard edged views of the universe and their own priorities!  Environment first.  And, we are armed if you want to trash it any!

Coastland: Santa Cruz, Monterey, Big Sur, San Luis Obispo, Santa Barbara.  The ocean is everything!  Don’t mess with the Coast!  Environment is big there.  Whales are big there.  Surfing is big there.

Notaxistan: This is the conservative Central Valley.  This is the heartland transplanted.  Really.  This is Kansas.  Don’t tax ‘em.  And don’t bring any of your fancy liberal ideas out here, either.  Oh, yeah, and send us all the water you can!!

Palm Sprawl: Palm Springs, Death Valley, Mojave Desert.  This is where the people of Hell go when they need a little more warmth.  I have seen days when the low in Truckee (which is in Sierrastan) is over 100 degrees cooler than the high in Death Valley.  In the same day!  I’m not sure where they stand on stuff.  But, wherever it is, it’s HOT!

North Mexico: San Diego area.  There is a whole lot of Mexican immigration happening here.  And, some of it is legal.  It is one of the few places where the highways have signs warning you to watch out for families running across the highway!  Really!  But, go there and you have to fall in love with it.  And, the Mexican influences really are a net positive.  Have you noticed any Hispanic influence on the names you see here?  It’s almost like we took it from them!  They are a rapidly growing political force.  Some want it back!

Disney: I suppose you could name it that, but I have a friend on the CNN Chat site that knows it more truly for what it is, “Behind the Orange Curtain!”  Orange County is THE bastion of conservative political clout.  That’s where the Reagans and Nixons sprout from.  It is also a huge source of American image making, for better or worse.  Hollywood, Disney and a whole lot of industry.   World is writ BIG there.  It’s the LA area, after all.  Need I say more?  Poverty mixed with BIG BUCKS!

Pinkostan: Last but hardly least, this is where I live!  San Francisco, the Bay, myths abounding across the nation that EVERYONE is gay.  The home of Nancy Pelosi.  Also the home of some of the finest halls of higher learning that you can find anywhere, Berkeley and Stanford.  I will go out on a limb and say it is slightly liberal.  Well, a lot.  But, nowhere near like the myth.  It is kind of like you transplanted a European city and called it San Francisco and that has become the entire myth.  But, don’t forget, we also have Silicon Valley, the Napa Valley and we are the original home of Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Visa, Google, Apple and the first radio broadcasting and the invention of television and on and on.  Charlie Chaplin even started here.  So, don’t give me your simplified stereotypes!

So, those are the parts of a state that tipped over would reach 1/3 of the way across the North American Continent.  One in ten Americans live here.  I think Hollywood developed here because we have every possible look and terrain you could ever want for filming.  It is the eighth largest economy in the entire world (used to be sixth, but, you know) and when it gets its act back together, LOOK OUT!

So why can’t it get its act together?  Well, it’s like the story of the blind men and the elephant.  The first blind man grabs the trunk and says it is very much like a snake.  The second grabs a leg and says it is very much like a tree.  The third, the tail and says it is very like a rope.  You get the idea.  Each has a different idea of what is good for this creature.

In the same manner, each area of California has its own idea of what is good for the state.  Unfortunately, pushed and elected by their parochial constituents, most legislators are blind and have a different idea of what is good for the elephant.  No one sees the elephant as a whole creature and so no one can ride and guide it.  The Governator would love to, but we have gone for glitz rather than experience.  He’s a smart enough guy, really, but being an actor may not be as helpful in learning about governing as…well…as governing is!  To put frosting on the cake, it takes a 2/3 majority to pass the budget, so a minority view can hold the body as a whole hostage.

Somebody will come along that can ride this thing and can herd all the blind cats in the legislature.  And, when they do, oh baby what a ride!!!

What do I think?  I think we should quit electing actors and Lilly-livered varmints.  I’m sure somebody will turn that into a proposition for us to vote on, too!

The New Look of United Nations Headquarters

California is quite diverse.  That is an understatement.  We would be quite diverse were we an entire nation.  Across the Bay from us in the city of San Francisco is the largest collection of Chinese people anywhere in the world outside China.  The city directly to our south, Fremont, has more Afghanis than any other location in the world outside Afghanistan.  San Jose at the south end of the Bay has a very large district called Little Saigon.  Our Filipino population is very large.  We have many South Pacific Islanders.  And all of that is just because we are the East Coast of the Pacific.  Believe me, we could go on for quite a while here, with large black populations, Hispanic peoples from all over regions south, Portuguese enclaves, etc., etc.

In this very diverse state, the high school that my wife and both of my children graduated from is the most diverse high school in California.  Our school district in a city of 140,000 has 54 different languages spoken as the primary language at home.  This presents our school system with HUGE challenges that we meet with varying degrees of success.  A lot of our funding goes to teaching immigrant children to speak English so we can educationally mainstream them.

We live on a one-block long court with a cul-de-sac at the end.  Going around the court, the ancestry of the homeowners – with the number of generations in America in parentheses – is Anglo(3), Mexican(2), Anglo(?), Filipino(1), Nicaraguan(1), Anglo(4), Anglo(4), Lebanese(1), Japanese(2), Chinese(2), Anglo(?), Fijian(1), Armenian(1),Anglo(?), Anglo(?), Korean(?), Nicaraguan(1), Mexican(1).

We get along great in our neighborhood.  Why?  There is very little strain when there are mixed ethnicities in a homogeneous economic stratum in a neighborhood, at least that is my experience.  We have very much the same goals, regardless of superficial differences.  The difficulties arise at boundaries between different economic strata, just as there are storms at the boundaries of high and low pressure, cold and hot regions of the atmosphere.  I’m not saying that is the only factor – the young in particular have turf battles – nor am I saying that the rest of the world is ruled by the same forces.  But, in America, that is my experience.

Our everyday experience is really very benign.  But, the mix makes for a very experientially rich environment!  “Interesting” breaks out in the least expected places.  It’s kind of “UN interesting” you might say.

What is it like where you live?