Will Blog for Food

"Bush on the Couch" and Andover

Justin Frank has written a book, "Bush on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President," in which he attempts to psychoanalyze  George W Bush. The problem with this book is that it's just guess work. He relies on secondary sources with no real personal exposure or experience with any phase or facet of Bush's life. He theorizes that Bush was severely scarred by the death of  his  little sister and the way his parents treated the event: no mourning, golf instead. Frank points out that while the senior Bush was a star athlete, succcessful businessman and war hero, George W was generally a failure at all these things.  But while Frank has no experience with any facet of George W's life, I do: his career at Andover, one of the most elite American prep schools. Phillips Academy Andover is the oldest continuously running incorporated boarding school in the United States, established in 1778 by Samuel Phillips, Jr. I didn't attend Andover when Bush was there; I was a few years ahead of him. But I don't think that much had changed by the time Bush got there. It was still an all male, almost military environment at which one had to wear a coat and tie to class, attend compulsory chapel every morning, and call the masters "sir". It didn't become co-ed until it merged in 1973 with neighboring Abbot Academy, hitherto an all girls' school.

When Frank points out that Bush is a man not in touch with his emotions and that he's psychologically stunted, he needn't have looked any farther than Andover. It was an environment devoid of any compassion or empathy, an environment in which to acknowledge a feeling was a sign of weakness, an emotional hell. The three years I spent there were hell compared to any years of the rest of my life before or since. Or stated a different way, the rest of my life has been an absolute heaven compared to the three years I spent at Andover. It was a "Lord of the Flies" environment devoid of the opposite sex, whether as students or teachers. There were no girls, no dating, no girlfriends. It was a closed, almost cult like culture, in which there were rocks (looked up to and admired) and flits (looked down upon and denigrated). Masculinity was everything and to be stunted emotionally was considered to be the hallmark of masculinity. To be rock-like was to have no feelings, no emotions, no weaknesses.

I was a scholarship student having won the prize for the highest marks on the entrance examinations.  You might say I was a professional student having been reared in a home with two educators as parents.  As Mr. Hawes, my housemaster at Williams Hall (actually I was in an out building called Stott Cottage), had written on a report to my parents, "Johnny knows what he's here for." Yeah, I was there to study, work my ass off seven days a week and get good grades. I had no other purpose or function in life. I was to do this in an environment devoid of family emotional support or any support I might have gotten from a normal adolescence which included the opposite sex. Actually for the first two years I achieved a considerable degree of success in my chosen vocation.  Every marking period or quarter they ranked all 180 members of the class from first to last in academic achievement and divided the top ranking students into both a first and a second honor roll. I was first in the class once, made the first honor roll three times and the second honor roll three times.

Even though I came from a poor background, not the rich upper class background that Bush and most of the others came from, life at Andover pretty much sucked for everybody, and I don't think it's too far-fetched to say that almost everyone was affected in a negative way by the cynical and cruel culture which any all male environment seems to degenerate into. Although the campus and facilities there would be the envy of most colleges, it was a dystopia in which the masters (teachers) demanded absolute respect and had little sympathy for their charges. Their goal was to whip them into shape, to make "Andover men" out of them. I was merely a child of 13, not yet having gone through puberty, when I started there. It  reminded me of a comic book I had read where this family made a deal with the devil that they would get to live in this house with every modern convenience. They wouldn't have to do a lick of work and an ATM would dispense $200. every week. (This was in the 1950s, remember.) There was only one catch: they could not ever leave the house. That was the way it was at Andover. Rich kids and kids whose families lived close by could get away for the weekend. I couldn't. I was stuck there in this abnormal environment with no contact with the outside "normal" world. My parents lived too far away. Long distance calling was out of the question in those days unless you were rich, and my Mom and I exchanged letters on a weekly basis, something that seems antiquated and quaint today. I only got to go home at Christmas, spring break and summer vacation. Thank God for that or I wouldn't have survived!

Getting back to "Bush  on the  Couch" - cruelty, cynicism, lack of sympathy and compassion, superciliousness, condescension - these were the characteristics  of Andover culture.  People who were soft in any way were considered suspect. People who excelled academically  were suspect - suspected of being fairies or flits. The word "gay" hadn't been invented yet. The word "flit," insofar as I can tell, was Andover's unique contribution to terms of derogation. I couldn't quite figure out the difference between a fairy and a flit, but it was all Andover mythology anyway, and it had more to do with hurling cruel, hurtful epithets at people as a form of bullying than anything else. In a closed, cult-like culture it took on terrifying implications which seem ridiculous today now that I live in an open culture and am relatively balanced and well informed.

The socially awkward and unsophisticated were suspect. Boys were terrified of being called names that signified that they were anything less than totally masculine and so had to project a hardened, rock-like exterior. Any sign of emotion was considered a sign of homosexuality, effeminacy and weakness. Any creativity or intellectuality was a sign of weakness and fairyhood. No wonder Bush comes across as a non-intellectual. To get by at Andover, one of the nation's elite schools, you had to pretend to be anti-intellectual if you were to get the respect of your peers. You did little work and got by with a "gentleman's" C although you would not like to be characterized as a gentleman but as a rock. You showed your disdain for those trying to achieve high grades to get into a good college because you knew that you family's wealth and your father's contributions to the Yale alumni fund would get you a "legacy" admission. This is the milieu that George W Bush existed in desperately trying to achieve a degree of popularity as a cheerleader, a role he continued to carry out as President of the United States.

It was difficult for me, going through adolescence with no girls available, coming to terms with my heterosexuality at a time when little information was available, largely ignorant of what a fairy or a flit was, wondering if masturbation made me one. With little or no knowledge or available information, I was left to imagine the worst about who or what I was. While excelling academically, I was going to hell in a handbasket emotionally and psychologically. Without a supportive family environment, my self esteem was evaporating on a daily basis. I had no one to talk to about these issues and had to hold it all inside with disastrous consequences.  My parents and teachers thought I must be in wonderful shape since I got good grades, but I was hurting inside and rapidly reaching the boiling point. While I continued to function at a high level, the part of me where I lived, my psychological interior, was becoming a wasteland. These experiences, I'm sure,  were not unique to me although not everyone felt them as severely. Andover, or rather the Andover culture, ruined many a life, scarred others, including me, for life, and sent many kids packing back to their homes and families because they couldn't cope with an environment in which there was no love or compassion or members of the opposite sex. These were the lucky ones. The unlucky ones, like Bush, stayed and graduated.

Let's consider, as Frank and others have done, what the psychological characteristics of the Bush  administration are: cruelty, cynicism, lack of compassion, disregard for the poor and powerless, sucking up to the rich and powerful, selfish pursuit of money and power, superciliousness, condescension - an almost perfect fit for the values of Andover culture circa 1950s and 60s. I hope these attitudes don't prevail at Andover today. Maybe the addition of co-eds was a deliberate change of policy in order to overcome the prevailing negativity at that time. Hopefully, they aren't continuing to turn out emotionally stunted, uncaring rich kids who then go on to the corrridors of power and operate in the same way that many CEOs and politicians do today.

By my third year there (I was what they called an upper middler), I was a sick puppy. I decided I wanted out, and wasn't going to play the game of high academic achiever any longer. What did it matter if I gained entrance to a venerable educational institution but lost my soul - to paraphrase a well-known source. I became a slacker: getting demerits, not wearing ties to class (under my sweater where they sometimes went unnoticed), spending my evenings playing pool. I was determined to become a rock. I made the JV basketball team, a not inconsiderable feat given the hotly contested competition for available slots, and much to the disappointment of some guys who had me pigeonholed as a flit and were openly hostile even tripping me and causing a sprained ankle on the basketball court.

I had always been into music and I formed a dixieland band along  with Jerry Bremer who later became the Viceroy of Iraq in the Bush Administration. Jerry was a good friend to me, one of the few I had there, so I won't be critical of the role he played in the Iraq debacle. I remember him saying he wanted to be an ambassador some day. I wish he hadn't gotten his wish. I played  trumpet; Jerry played drums. We played once in front of the assembled student body before the Saturday night movie. We had a guy named John Smith on clarinet, an easy enough name to remember. We had a Flip Somebody on piano, and I can't remember the other guys' names. Jerry had set up a gig for us in Rye, NY when school was out for the summer. I think it was for a tennis tournement, but the clarinet player's house burned down so we went to Rye and just partied, didn't play. It was fun especially sneaking out at night and underage drinking. Jerry wrote me a letter that summer trying to convince me to return to Andover for my senior year which I didn't answer. But it was a nice gesture, and I thank him retrospectively. I was happy to leave Andover behind me and go to "normal" high school from which I graduated in 1959. I had heard anecdotally about the kid who left Andover and was so unhappy about the place that he requested never to be sent any Andover alumni literature or communications of any kind. He never wanted to hear from or about the place again. Feeling likewise, I did the same thing and have had no contact in any form with them ever since. For many years I could not even bear the thought of or talk about or admit to anybody that I had even gone there.

The Military Industrial Complex - Part 1 - Picatinny Arsenal

I worked in the military industrial complex (MIC) for 15 years. I left there over 30 years ago so I can only report on what my experience was then although from all indications not much has changed. Basically, the MIC is a gigantic welfare scheme for middle class functionaries and salary men who sit on their asses all day, say nary a discouraging word and collect their adequate paychecks every two weeks. It's shrouded in secrecy not mainly to protect secrets from foreign enemies but so that the rest of America doesn't know what goes on there: practically nothing. In my view this fact alone makes it corrupt.

In my 15 year career I worked for Picatinny Arsenal in Dover, NJ, Lawrence Radiation Laboratory in Livermore, CA, General Dynamics Convair and Electronic Divisions in San Diego, General Dynamics Fort Worth (Texas), and Naval Electronics Laboratory in San Diego. Naval Electronics Laboratory changes its name periodically to protect the guilty so it has become at various times Naval Electronics Laboratory Center (NELC), Naval Ocean Systems Command (NOSC) and Naval Research and Development (NRAD). Can you believe guys get paid with taxpayer dollars just to sit around and come up with another name?

I was a senior in high school in 1959 when on "career day" someone from Picatinny Arsenal came around and told us abourt the "co-op" plan. It sounded pretty good to me. You worked for Picatinny Arsenal a quarter; then you went to college a quarter and so on. You had your choice of five colleges you could attend, one of them being Georgia Tech where I ended up going. The thing I liked about the co-op plan was that I got to live at home every other quarter and commute to work, and I earned enough to pay my college expenses so my college education didn't cost my parents anything. Also I never borrowed any money unlike the college kids today who are stuck with a mortgage sized debt by the time they get out of college. It took five years instead of four to get through college on the co-op plan, and the last year you went to school five straight quarters.

The summer after I graduated from high school was the first quarter I worked at Picatinny. I was in for a shock. They didn't  give me anything to do! Sure I collected a paycheck but I was bored out of my mind. This was my first introduction to the "world of work" or actually the world of middle class social welfare. I "worked" in a different group each quarter hoping to find something that would enable me to pass the time away doing something productive. One quarter I worked in a group that did drawings for machine tools and I ended up copying a lot of drawings. At least it was something to do. Finally, I ended up in this enormous office building with four desk clusters as far as the eye could see. There were no partitions, no cubicles. Guys used to test their eye sight by how many clocks they could see which hung from the ceiling every so many yards. The desks were all pushed together so that your desk was right up against two others and touching the corner of a third. The guy next to me smoked cigarettes all day, and there was a constant waft of smoke coming from his desk which seemed to aim itself right for my nose. This was in the pre-anti-smoking days when there were no restrictions on smoking. The guy had a lit cigarette going in his ash tray all day on which he puffed occasionally.

After coffee in the morning the guys would head on over to the "shop," a boondoggle for which somebody had been able to get money appropriated. It was outfitted with everything a home hobbyist could desire including drill presses, lathes etc. Here is where they did "home projects" ^i.e. they made stuff and carted it home. At Christmas time the shop was especially busy turning out Christmas presents. There was no supervision there. There was a story about one guy who had built a boat maybe not in this particular shop but in one like it. When the boat was finished, it was too big to get out the door so they tore down a wall to get it out, and then he took it home. When they weren't doing home projects, they were sitting around telling war stories. This went on till a little before lunch time when they gravitated back to the office building, looked busy for a bit and then ate  lunch. In the afternoon this process was repeated until a little before it was time to go home when they returned to the office and kibitzed until "quitting time". I heard one guy say, "I haven't done a lick of work in ten years, and, what's more, if I don't get that raise I'm after, I never will do any work here ever again." They had complete job security because in the civil service they couldn't fire you.

On the alternate quarters when I went to school, I had to perform. I had to work in order to get the grades I was accustomed to. There was no fooling around. At Georgia Tech all they cared about is that you had the right number in the right box on the tests. You got no points for almost getting it right or for having basically the right idea or having done some of the steps correctly.

I didn't enjoy at all having nothing to do at Picatinnny where there was such a lax work ethic. This was my introduction to the military-industrial complex where you had to have a security clearance to get in the gate mainly for the reason that they didn't want the outside world to know what really went on there: nothing. People were  literally paid to sit around and do nothing at taxpayers' expense. Only now since the "Republican Revolution" it's all money borrowed from the Chinese so it's not really taxpayers' expense any more. I thought that Picatinny must be exceptional, that surely this same thing, which I considered to be a form of corruption, could not be going on elsewhere, but in my journey through the MIC I found that this was quite typical. My only good work experience was at General Dynamics Convair for three years where the dynamic was somewhat but not completely different. But I'll get to that later.

Basically, how the MIC works is this. They work off of "cost plus" contracts they get from the Pentagon or sometimes they tap into pots of money directly controlled by congressmen. The essence of a cost plus contract is that the government (via Defense Department appropriations) awards (either competitively or non-competitively) contracts to various private industries (or civil service entities under direct government control) a contract to do something. In most cases these contracts are the result of direct lobbying by the industries or entities themselves for money to do some project they have dreamed up which may or may not have any relevance to actually defending the US. In most cases the cost is not defined. In other words the government pays whatever the project costs and then tacks on a certain percentage of the cost as profit, the "plus" in "cost plus." Therefore, the industry or government controlled entity such as civil service has the incentive to make the project as costly as possible. And when the contract ends, in many cases, there is nothing to show for it but a report that never gets read. There is no follow-on; nothing comes of it that becomes a part of the actual defense of the US or is ongoing even as an intellectual asset. There is no rhyme or reason.

The result is that, the more costly the project, the more profit will be realized. A good way of increasing the cost of a project is hiring more personnel. After all, money always ends up in human hands. So department heads, having obtained a "cost plus" project, immediately start hiring people even if there is no well defined role for them to play. That drives up the cost. A department head's status and salary is directly related to the number of personnel working (or not working) under him. In many cases the project or contract itself is a big boondoggle, something a congressman "delivers" to his home district so that his constituents will continue to reelect him for "bringing home the bacon." It sure helps the local economy, but it has turned the US into a national security state, a country that is primarily concerned with militarism as a means of keeping the economy going and as a platform for politicians to run on.

Now if the government has a project where it is vital that some serious work get done, they sub-contract it out to Jet Propulsion Lab which has a lot of PhDs from Cal Tech or Lincoln Labs which has PhDs from MIT. In fact most of these government entites like Picatinny simply sub-contract the hell out of a contract sometimes several times and then all they really are is contract monitors. In other words there are several levels of guys whose only job is to check on the work of the sub-contractor at the next level below them until you get down to the level where the only real work happens ^i.e. at the level of the PhDs from JPL or Lincoln Labs. The proliferation of personnel as contract monitors and the many layers of sub-contracting adds to the cost and hence to the profits as well as providing a home for the college educated middle class.

As someone said, in the old Soviet Union the employees pretended to work and the government pretended to pay them. In the good old US of A the employees in the MIC pretend to work and the government ACTUALLY does pay them! That was the difference between the USSR and the USA.

After two  years of "working" alternate quarters at Picatinny, where they had made artillery shells for World War II, I got so fed up and bored I decided to drop out of the co-op plan and go straight to school. There, at least, I felt like I was accomplishing something. I went eight straight quarters including summers and managed to graduate the summer quarter after I would have graduated if I had not been on the co-op plan in the first place. Then, having been accepted to graduate school at Stanford on a research assistantship, I went three more quarters there for a total of eleven consecutive quarters without a break. At least I wasn't bored!

The San Diego Free Press circa 1969

I used to work for the San Diego Free Press. It flourished for about two years from about 1968 to 1970. I guess there is a current version but it has nothing in common with the 1968-70 version except the name. It was an "underground" newspaper meaning that it was devoted to radical politics, alternative lifestyles, the counterculture in general. But mainly it was a political newspaper. I used to sell papers at the San Diego Zoo among other spots, one of the few people who actually went out and sold them on the street. Most of the staff just liked to put out the paper, do the art work, write the articles etc. I also wrote for the paper, took photos and was a reporter.

We all lived in a commune at Second and Thorn in Hillcrest. How we were able to rent this house I don't know because it's a really nice house. It's been totally refurbished and is in private hands. I wonder if the present owner knows the history of the house, how it housed a bunch of 60s era radicals. In a later homeless period I used to park my van and sleep just a block away from my old home at Second and Thorn.

There I had my own room on the second floor. Across from me was Jan Diepersloot the guy as much in charge as anyone. He wrote most of the editorials. In the masthead it says he's the policy coordinator. I don't even remember some of the people who worked on the paper, and some of the people who lived at the house didn't even really work on the paper. I remember Richard Blackburn, "Black Dick" they called him. I remember Herman Rumper. Most of these people were present or former UCSD students. Larry Gottlieb was a Physics major. I was a Computer Science major. We were the only two from the science and engineering type schools. All the rest were liberal arts majors, mainly Philosophy students. Matie Belle lived with us but I don't think she worked on the paper.

We also had a "retreat" out in Ramona where we could go to get away from it all. It was an old abandoned ranch with a little shack and a run down barn. One couple lived out there and grew marijuana. They got caught and hauled into court, but I don't remember whatever happened to them. Once their dog had about 16 cute little pups. They were country people and didn't like the city. Since I had a private pilot's license, they wanted me to fly marijuana over the border, but I chickened out. I remember two of our girls drove across with some. Luckily, they made it but they were shitting bricks and never did it again to my knowledge. That's how we paid our rent, I think. Anyway no one ever asked me to pay rent.

One time we ripped off a load of plywood from a building site at UCSD. We used it to floor in our attic so some people could sleep up there. The only problem was people were always stepping off the floored in area onto the lath and plaster and then they would fall through the ceiling directly over my bed. This happened two or three times. The UCSD operation was pretty sophisticated. We had look-outs with walkie-talkies. We used a converted schoolbus that belonged to this guy who stopped in from time to time and stayed with us for awhile. I think he was a friend of Jan's. He was wanted for arson up in northern California since the police had kicked him off some land he was homesteading and in retaliation he had burned down the police station. I don't think they ever caught him.

I had saved all the Free Presses and had them at the little duplex in Del Mar where I lived later after I'd gone my separate way. One day I threw them away which I later regretted. Some years later I searched for the San Diego Free Press and found them on microfiche at the UCSD library. I printed out some pages, mainly the ones on which I had written articles. I used to do a series on San Diego history. And then I did book reviews and a muckraking article on General Dynamics, a company with which I was still employed although on leave of abscence attending school although I was also on a leave of absence from school as well while I pursued revolutionary activities. Our main goal was to create a new society which would require a revolution. We never quite reached that goal. In fact we never even came close.

Following is an excerpt from a book review I did of "Who Rules America?" by G. William Domhoff, a sociology professor at the University of California, Santa Cruz:

This book contains a lot of well documented facts about the nature of the American political, economic and social power structure, referred to in some quarters as the Establishment. Domhoff, a sociologist at the University of Californla at Santa Cruz, draws heavily on the works of C. Wright Mills (The Power Elite), Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy (Monopoly Capital), AND E. Digby Baltzell (The Protestant Establishment). He shows conclusively that an American social upper class does exist and that this class owns a disproportionate amount of the country's wealth and makes a disproportionate number of America’s decisions; in short, that the American social upper class is the American governing class. His criteria for determining membership in the upper class are the following: 1) listed in the Social Register, 2) attendance at an exclusive private school such as Groton, Hotchkiss or St. Marks, 3) member of a very exclusive gentlemen’s club such as the Knickerbocker (New York), the Pacific Union (San Francisco), or the California (Los Angeles), 4) father was a millonaire entrepreneur or $100,000 corporation executive or corporatlon lawyer and either a) went to exclusive private school or b) belongs to an exclusive club, 5) marries a person under 1) - 4), 6) member of family chronicled by Amory in Who Killed Society! or The Proper Bostonians. Domhoff sets very stiff criteria for upper class membership so that the errors are on the side of exclusion rather than inclusion. Consequently, the statistics he gathers are always conservative.

I Started Out as a Child

I was born July 19, 1941 in Franklin, NJ, a pre-war baby by six months. Franklin is home to some of the richest zinc ore in the world, but it is pretty much mined out by now. There is also the Franklin Mineral Museum where they have local minerals such as Franklinite and Hardystonite not found anywhere else in the world. Hardyston is the township Franklin is located in. My parents were both teachers at Franklin High School; that's where they met. One day my Dad asked a student to deliver a note to Miss Clark which asked her if she wanted to have turkey with him and his parents. If it weren't for Franklin HS and an old dead turkey, I wouldn't be here today.

Shortly after I was born, we moved to Highland Park, NJ where my Dad taught at Highland Park HS. Many of his students left directly out of high school for World War II. My Dad was voted most popular teacher at Highland Park HS and he taught Problems of American Democracy. I guess at that time the main problem was World War II.

I remember one time when I was two my parents were having an outdoor party. I remember being bored and, anxious to see what was outside the confines of my little domain, took off down the sidewalk. I guess nobody noticed I was missing for a long time because I got pretty far away. I remember crossing city streets. Finally, my mother drove up in a police car and took me back into custody. I guess she was so relieved that she couldn't even punish me. My restless nature and quest for adventure were coming out at age two. Running away from home at age two is my first memory.

I think we lived in a duplex and next door lived my first girlfriend, Betty Jane Hughes. Our parents were friends. I remember visiting Betty Jane and her family when I was 10 or 11 when they lived in Phoenixville, PA. We used to walk to a soda fountain and get cherry sundaes. Our parents kept in touch for many years.

My Dad was an amateur photographer. He took all the pictures of me when I was little. He even did his own darkroom work. Here is a picture of me in a soldier suit that was given to me by one of Dad's students. It looks like I have a gun and everything ready to defend the Stars and Stripes. I don't remember much about Highland Park except running away from home, Betty Jane Hughes and the fact that it was close to New Brunswick.

Below is a picture of me and Betty Jane.

When I was two we moved from Highland Park to Wantage Township, NJ where my Dad took his first job as principal of Wantage Consolidated School. We rented a house on a dirt road in an area known as Possum Glen. Dirt roads weren't uncommon in those days. I remember Possum Glen was pretty boring as there were no kids to play with so one day I ran away from home again. This wasn't so scary since at least there were no city streets to cross. I ended up at a neighbor's house eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches until my mother came and got me.

One winter we had such a severe snow storm that the road was impassable for a long time. My Dad had to park his car in a near-by field, and we had to walk to the house. I had a little swing my Dad made for me hanging from a tree at the edge of the yard. One day I was swinging and then got the impulse to get out of the swing and run and jump up on a soda box that was sitting by the house. When I got up there and looked down, there was a snake lying there perfectly still and staring up at me. I was afraid to get off the box so I yelled for my Dad and he came and killed the snake with a shovel. I couldn't figure why that snake would just lie there like he was guarding me and would bite me if I came down off the box.

I remember once at Possum Glen my parents had a party and they were playing softball out in the yard. I was just getting over some childhood disease like the chicken pox or something and I wanted to go outside and be with all the people. My Mom, however, wouldn't let me go out. She thought I might still be contagious and give whatever I had to one of the guests. I threw a tantrum. I felt I was well and wanted to go out and be with the people the worst way. My Mom was adamant. Maybe she thought I would run away again. I was totally distraught! My Mom didn't have too much sympathy for me, but my Grandma Lawrence did. She comforted me. I remember that. She knew my feelings had been hurt. My Grandma played a big role in my life. She was much more the nurturing, comforting type than my Mom, much as I loved her, and as my life went on, for various reasons, I found myself being emotionally much closer to my Grandma than my Mom. She played a big role in caring for me!

I was close to my cousin Peggy who lived in Hainesville where my mother grew up and was a few months older than me. Peggy was a great person who, unfortunately, died from hepatitus when she was 16. I lost a true friend. Peggy and I used to play together a lot. We went blackberrying together and our Grandma Clark used to read us stories together when we spent time with her in Newton, NJ.

When I was four we moved from Possum Glen to Lewisburg Road where my parents lived the rest of their lives. My sister, Jeanne, was born either shortly before or shortly after we moved. Now commenced several family tragedies starting with my Mom getting TB. I was 4 and my sister was only 9 months when my Mom had to go to a sanitarium. She would be gone for almost 4 years during which time my Dad was essentially a single parent, and my Grandma Lawrence took over many of the aspects of raising us. I remember the scene when my Mom left. She was very stoic and told me to be strong. She didn't like emotional scenes ever. My Grandpa Clark came to get her and drive her to Glen Gardner where the sanitarium was, and I remember standing in the living room saying our goodbyes when suddenly I grabbed her and didn't want to let her go. It was too much to bear the thought of losing my Mom.

I remember having to worry about whether or not we were going to win the Second World War, and now I had to worry about my Mom and wonder if she would ever be back. It was not a foregone conclusion in those days. Many died of TB.

The next thing that happened is that my sister didn't develop normally. She didn't learn to walk. She didn't learn to talk. I remember their trying to teach her to walk on a thing they rigged up with pipes she could hold on over in Vernon at my grandparents house. It was no use. She looked normal, but she would never learn to talk and she walked haltingly for only a few years. She had had massive brain damage at birth due, undoubtedly, to lack of oxygen. I remember hearing the story about how the doctor wasnt' there, a Dr. Scott, I believe, the same doctor who had delivered me at Franklin Hospital. The nurses kept telling my Mom to hold the baby back till the doctor got there. My Mom dutifully did as she was told with disastrous results. As a kid I remember babysitting for my sister a lot. Maybe that is where my nurturing side came from. If so, it served me well when later I found myself in the role of a single parent raising my daughter from the age of 3. I never had any of the normal sibling rivalry that most famillies with normal children experience. Instead, I was thrust into the role of caregiver.

There was a lot of sickness in our family during that period. Everyone got sick from the water which came from a cistern. Some dead animal had fallen in. Then my Dad had a well drilled. My Dad came down with rheumatic fever and almost died. It weakened his heart, and later in life he had two heart attacks, the last one fatal. It was a difficult period for my parents and me. I remember seeing my Mom only once in the 4 years she was at "the san." They were afraid of her infecting me. That time I saw her she was up on a balcony, and I was down on the lawn. It was hard; it wasn't emotional, it was sort of cold. My Mom didn't like emotional displays. I  wanted my Mom to love me. She couldn't do that in her condition. I think she gave me a wallet or something.

When I was 4, I spent the year sitting in the back of a kindergarten class. I couldn't participate. It was the only way my Dad had of babysitting me. I wasn't old enough to be in that class. It was frustrating. The next year I got to start kindergarten again with my own class. Summers we spent with Grandma and Grandpa Lawrence. Dad hired a few housekeepers from time to time whom I detested.

Finally, in second grade my Mom came home, and we got to try to have a normal family again. Shortly before, they had invented streptomycin and that was all that saved my Mom's life. It cost my Dad $180. a month for my Mom's streptomycin shots, and that was at a time when he only made $225. Dad had to declare medical indigency although he never told me about that till years later. During that era he bonded with a lot of the local townspeople who cut him a lot of slack at a time when he needed a few friends. He dedicated his life to serving those people who had been so good to him in his time of need.

The Saga of John Kyte Clark

My grandfather, John Kyte Clark, whom I was named after,  was named after his grandfather, John C Kyte. He was born in 1883. I had heard a family story that my great grandfather, Eugene Clark, had left my great grandmother, Libbie, and gone off to the city to pursue a life of wine, women and song. I don’t know if that part was true or not but the 1900 census record shows that my great grandmother had moved back to the family farm with her father and mother along with her two sons, John K and Claud. She was 43 at the time. My grandfather was 16. His older brother was 20. I imagine that my great great grandfather, John C Kyte who was 78 needed all the help he could get on the farm as did my great great grandmother Sarah who was 78 also. This was also the farm where Libbie grew up according to the census of 1870 assuming that her parents farmed the same farm their entire life which was common in those days. People didn’t move around from farm to farm much. The 1870 census shows that Libbie was 14 and living with her father, mother and 7 siblings in the farm house pictured below (picture taken 2006).
      
       I had heard that my great grandfather, Eugene, came from Bucks County, PA. That was only partially true. My great great grandfather Aaron W Clark was born in Sandyston, NJ in 1831. The 1850 census record shows that Aaron W who was 19 was living in Sandyston Township where the Kytes resided. The 1860 census shows Aaron W living in Sandyston with Hannah and oldest son Isaiah. He later moved to Monroe County in PA since the 1870 census shows him living there with wife, Hannah, and sons, Isaiah, Eugene and another with an indecipherable name. So the families might have known each other before the move to PA. Besides the farm was only a mile or so from the border with PA so moves back and forth over the border were probably common.
      
       The 1880 census record shows that Eugene and Libbie were married and farming in Sandyston. Eugene was 19 and Libbie was 22 so my great grandmother was 3 or 4 years older than my great grandfather. They had a one year old child who must have been my grandfather’s older brother, Claud, so Eugene must have been 17 or 18 when they got married. Maybe that had something to do with why he left and went off to the big city. He had gotten involved with an older woman at a very young age. However, he must have stuck around at least till 1883 because that’s when my grandfather was born. Since the 1890 census records were burned, we can’t know whether my great grandfather left before or after 1890, but he had definitely left by 1900 because, according to the census, my great grandmother was living with her parents on the family farm in Hainesville, Sandyston, along with her two sons. That was the same farm where she grew up and where my mother was born and grew up. How many generations back that farm goes in the Kyte and Clark families is unclear, but it was at least 4, probably more.
      
       In 1907, my grandfather’s brother Claud died. I had heard that he had drowned in a swimming accident. He was 28 and must have been living at the farm in Hainesville. By 1910 according to the census record, my grandfather, who was 26, was the head of household which consisted of his mother, Libbie, 53, and his grandmother, Sarah, 80, his grandfather, John C, having died in 1902. So Grandpa lost his brother and grandfather within a 5 year period, and Libbie lost her father and son. Within a 10 year or so period, they had also lost for all intents and purposes their husband and father.
      

By the 1920 census, the picture on the Hainesville farm had changed quite a bit. Grandpa John K was married to Alice Rosenkrans and they had 3 children, Florence, 6, my mother, Winifred, 4, my aunt, and J Earl, 1. Sarah had died, but Libbie was still living. She was 62. My mother was born September 5, 1913. The census listed my grandfather’s birthplace as Pennsylvania which presents something of a mystery because, according to the 1880 census, Eugene and Libbie were married and living in Sandyston. Did they subsequently move back to Pennsylvania in which case the story about Grandpa being born in Bucks County, PA may be true? If so the family sure moved back and forth between NJ and PA a lot. Great grandma Libbie died in 1924, and my mother’s brother, J. Earl, died of pneumonia in 1928 when he was only 10.
      

I know from a letter my mother had saved that Libbie went through hell and high water to get title to the family farm in the early 1900s, probably after her mother died so that she and her son would have a place to live and a livelihood for my grandfather. I think I recall that the lot lines were somewhat ambiguous probably because the farm had never been surveyed since it had been in the same family for so long. And there were probably monetary considerations in order to buy out her siblings.
      
       Eugene had died in 1916 and is buried in the family plot along with Libbie so they must never have gotten divorced. What his subsequent relationship with his wife and my grandfather was after he left the family, I don’t know, but it must have been at least sufficient so that the family was notified when he died. Sadly, by 1928, my Grandpa had lost his father, mother, brother and son. Grandpa never talked about any of this and what little I know was passed down to me by my mother. Other than, that is, what I have been able to dig up from perusing the markers at the Hainesville Cemetery and from my genealogical research online.
      
My grandfather farmed the family farm until approximately 1945 after which he sold it, and he and my grandmother moved to Madison St in Newton. My grandfather worked as a handyman for a department store installing linoleum flooring and window shades in people’s houses. My grandmother crocheted doilies and hankies and sold them through the same store. My grandfather was a good carpenter and he had a full set of tools in his little garage. Now I wish I would have asked him to teach me something about carpentry. I think he would have been glad to do it, and I could have learned something. But I never showed any interest so it was one of those missed opportunities
      
Another story is that my mother and Aunt Winnie (picture left circa 1940) and a friend drove to CA in the 30s to visit a relative, George  Kyte, who was an optometrist in Santa Monica. They must have come over the original transcontinental highway, the Lincoln Highway. He was Libbie’s brother born about 1863. Therefore, he was my grandfather’s uncle. According to the 1920 census he was living in Santa Monica with his wife, Mary, and was an optometrist.  When he died, he left his estate to my grandfather. I don’t know how much money was involved, but it must have been considerable for those days. So my grandfather and grandmother had a nice retirement in Newton. My grandmother’s sister, Mabel, and her husband lived close by, and the two couples played pinochle once a week. They had a garden and chickens. My grandfather had a black 1952 Plymouth for the rest of his life. They were frugal and always had a neat house (pictured below). Even their basement was always neat and clean. My grandmother used to read stories to me and my cousin, Peggy Cole, who was about 6 months older than me, and, unfortunately, died when she was 15. I used to spend a week with my grandparents every summer and would go into work with my grandfather or ride my bicycle around Newton which was and still is a nice town.
      

My grandfather had a stroke when he was 75 or so and then was in a nursing home in Newton until he died in 1968. My grandmother, who never learned to drive, would walk the mile or so every day to see him. When I came home on vacations, my Mom and Dad would always take me to visit my grandfather in the nursing home usually right after I came home and right before I went back. I sort of didn’t want to go so much because the nursing home was depressing, but now I’m glad my parents insisted and that I did go.
      
       My grandfather never talked too much and never talked about his mother’s and his struggle to survive or how they came to live on the farm which had been in the family for generations. It was a small farm, and my grandparents were very self-sufficient. They were both very industrious and provided a lot of their everyday necessities by the work of their own hands as did many people in those days instead of buying everything at the store. The dairy farm provided them with a cash flow so that they did have money for the things they couldn’t provide for themselves. My grandfather never had a tractor on the farm. He used teams of horses to pull the hay wagon and the manure wagon right up to the time he sold the farm. I remember riding on top of the hay wagon once when I was about 4 years old.
      
       That farm is still in good shape today. It has gone through a series of owners, but it still has significance to me. My parents were married there in 1940.  Later when my mother got TB and had to go to a sanitarium, it was my grandfather who came and picked her up while my Dad stayed with my sister and me. We would have lost our house due to the fact that my Mom’s streptomycin shots were $180. a month and my Dad only made $250. in 1946 had it not been for the fact that my grandfather bought out their mortgage and didn’t require my parents to pay anything till my Mom got out of the sanitarium and they got back on their feet. Then I remember my Mom paying Grandpa $50.00 a month. When I was going to school, my grandfather always shook hands with me and there was a $10. bill in my hand when we let go. He was a kind, generous man.
      
       Going further back in the Kyte family Libbie’s father and mother John C and Sarah were born, respectively, in 1821 and 1829. They died in 1902 and 1913, respectively. John C’s father and mother were Jacob Hoornbeck Kyte and Mary Cortright born in 1775 and 1784, respectively. They died in 1858 and 1862, respectively. Both were born and died in Sandyston. Jacob H. Kyte’s parents were Thomas Kyte (1726-1816) and Lea Keator (1739-1827). Lea Keator’s ancestry can be easily traced back several more generations. Thomas Kyte was a dead-end for now as far as my research is concerned. Mary Cortright’s parents were Simon Cortright (1764-1824) and Catherine Ennes (1764-1848).
      
       In the Clark family, Eugene’s parents were Aaron W Clark b.1831 and Hannah. Aaron W’s parents were Samuel Clark b.1805 and Elizabeth b. 1806.

The picture on the left is Johnny Lawrence and Peggy Cole in 1942.

My cousin, Jennifer Peel, has a blog that links here.

The 60s, the New Left and Revolution

In the 60s we used to make a distinction between the New Left and the old left. The old left was still around. They were old men who had admired Marxist-Leninism in the 20s or who had considered themselves communists and admired the Societ Union before it was obvious what "Uncle Joe" Stalin was up to. They continued to hold the values of universal brotherhood, considered the working class to be mainly saints, and were antagonistic to the capitalist class. Their political aspirations were mainly the pipedreams that old men dream or regrets for what might have been.

The New Left was different. We were going to make it happen - revolution that is. Thousands of college kids were demonstrating against the war in Vietnam. A cultural and sexual revolution was under way. Someone told me, "Bellbottoms are revolutionary," and I better get rid of my straight-legged jeans. On the left everyone was a brother or sister even if you hadn't met them before. The Black Panthers were our heroes. Che Guevara was a hero. Country Joe and the Fish sang "And it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for? Don't ask me, I don't give a damn. Next stop is Vietnam." Mario Savio instigated the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley by using the F word liberally.

The father of the New Left, Herbert Marcuse, was teaching at the University of California San Diego where I was a graduate student. (By the way, Herbert and I share the same birthday.) Marcuse was a German Jew who had escaped Hitler, come to America, worked for the CIA and finally wound up in Academia. He was a philosopher who had written several up to then not very widely read books. Marcuse was a Freudian-Marxist, someone who combined the revolutionary ideas of Marx with the revolutionary ideas of Freud. In appearance he seemed rather grandfatherly, certainly professorial and a kindly old man. He was in his seventies when he lectured in German philosophy at UCSD. Hegel's dialectic was on the menu. I enjoyed every minute of his lectures so much I didn't want to miss anything so I never took notes. I wasn't taking the course for credit anyway.

I was a graduate student in the Applied Physics and Computer Science Department and wanted to do my thesis on voting systems and social choice theory as I thought, if you were going to replace all the institutions of society in one fell swoop by having a revolution, you should at least have some idea, some theoretical underpinning, of the kind of society you wanted to replace it with. As such I was an ambivalent revolutionary. The Applied Physics and Computer Science Department was eager to get rid of me as I was the only student in engineering that had radical views and thought that, instead of proceeding with business as usual, we all should be doing everything we could to bring the war to an end. Toward that end a meeting had been arranged between Marcuse and me to see if it might be a good idea for me to switch departments and become his student. When I told him about my interest in applying information theory to voting systems and conflict resolution, he said, "Don't give them a blueprint." Well, I thought the most I could do was to provide a road map, not a blueprint, but I did want to proceed with my technical aspirations for societal architecture rather than writing diatribes about the labor theory of value which I had done more or less as a hobby but which I didn't consider to have any lasting value.

Marcuse had written a book, "Eros and Civilization," which was my Bible along with Norman O. Brown's "Life Against Death," and Wilhelm Reich's "Mass Psychology of Fascism." Reich's book was actually banned in the US at that time so we considered it a revolutionary act to steal a copy out of a Canadian library and reprint a hundred copies which we gave away for free, of course, to anybody that was interested. Marcuse's basic oeuvre as a Freudian-Marxist was that repression of the instincts (primarily the sexual instinct) led to all sorts of right-wing impulses such as hate, greed and war. This was also the basic belief of Brown and Reich. Marcuse advocated in circumlocutory English (it was obvious he thought in German) the "liberation of the instincts." The general idea was that, if people were unrepressed and sexually fulfilled, this would lead to a world of brotherly love which would be filled with non-greedy people willing to share what they had with others. From this a society based on the principal "from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" would actually be possible and could actually be built.

Hence, the motto "Make Love, Not War" was seen as an admirable weltanschauung. The problem, which can now be seen with 20-20 hindsight, is that the Freudian-Marxist central tenet did not turn out to be correct. Liberation of the instincts (which was probably more due to Hugh Hefner than Herbert Marcuse since I'll wager more people read Playboy than "Eros and Civilization") certainly did take place. But it didn't reduce the amount of hate and greed in the world. In fact just the opposite. Hate and greed were liberated as well. This was borne out as the criminal population soon took advantage of all the free love and brotherly and sisterly trust. College girls hitchhiking down the coast to UCSD pretty soon started to be assaulted by those taking advantage of the love fest.

Charles Manson, more than anyone, put an end to the era of love and trust by killing a pregnant Sharon Tate. People started to get more conservative in their values. It was "the road to hell is paved with good intentions" all over again. The commercializers and predators moved in on the Summer of Love in San Francisco. Haight-Ashbury hippies started turning into street people still believing "Love is all you need" and that their brothers and sisters would be happy to share their spare change with them. In a massive counter-revolution, mainstrean America elected Nixon President in 1968. In the eighties Reagan led us all to believe that "greed is good." We needn't repress our urges to be greedy and selfish. Private property was good. Communal living was unAmerican. Sharing was bad.

In the final analysis liberation of the instincts did nothing to bring about a more just, equitable or loving society. People are certainly less repressed than they were, say, in the fifties - less repressed sexually and less repressed psychologically with respect to all the emotions especially anger, egotism and greed. So whether society is better or worse off, it is certainly a mixed bag. In some ways society is better off; in some ways, worse. However, liberation of the instincts did not lead to a change in the structure of society as envisioned by Marcuse et al. But Marcuse had an out, theoretically at least, something he called "repressive desublimation" which explained why liberation of the instincts might not lead to an ideal society. Irregardless of the theoretical fig leaf, I think that whatever changes there have been in societal structure or in the realm of politics have generally been in the opposite direction from the one Marcuse and the other Freudian- Marxists envisioned.

The Eponymous Clifton E Lawrence

According to the dictionary, you're eponymous if you have something named after you.  But also the thing that is named after you is also eponymous. Now it seems to me that it should be one or the other or there should be two separate words - one for the person who has something named after them and one for the thing that is named after someone. At any rate my father is eponymous because there is a school in northwest New Jersey that is named after him - the Clifton E Lawrence Elementary School.

My Dad was a special person. Before he came to Sussex, he had been voted the most popular teacher at Highland Park High School in the early years of World War II when most of his students were going to go directly from high school into the military. He taught "Problems of American Democracy." I wished I would have asked him what those problems were, but I never did. He was the principal of Wantage Consolidated school starting in 1943 and then the school system sort of grew underneath him to the point where he became superintendent of the Sussex-Wantage Regional school system. When he retired at age 62, he had been in the school business for 42 years having started as a teacher at the age of 20. Unfortunately, he died within a month of his retirement of a heart attack. He never collected one iota of his richly deserved pension. He still had a lot to give as he had just won the primary election for state assemblyman and probably would have won the general election as well. He was the ultimate civic-minded person!

But my Dad's professional accomplishments don't really tell you what kind of person he was. He was an extremely cheerful, optimistic person who brought out the best in everyone. He was a genius at human relations and he really genuinely liked people. His values were very mainstream, middle of the road American, and he kidded about being middle class. He had a great sense of humor and a lot of folksy sayings. He was intelligent, but his intelligence was infused with an emotional sense and he had excellent judgment and wise decision making abilities. He touched a lot of people's lives.

I remember as a kid his telling about this little girl in kindergarten or first grade. I guess she was a few years behind me in school because I don't remember her personally. But I remember her name  - Yvonne Petroliwicz - at least I think that's how you spell it. My Dad would say he felt sorry for that little girl because he didn't see how she was ever going to learn to spell her name! Well, fast forward about 50 years and I was in the Sussex Ben Franklin one day. I had taken in an old picture of the Wantage School (seen above) circa 1940 to get it framed. The person in the framing department looked at the picture and asked me if I had gone to school there. I said yes, did she? She said yes. Her name was Yvonne Petroliwicz. I told her that my Dad had been principal there, and she proceeded to tell me the story of how every year on the first day of school (or maybe it was the last) - I don't remember - she would bring my Dad some cupcakes. On the day she graduated my Dad presented her with a doll and she told me, "I was the only one he gave a doll to."

That was the kind of man my Dad was. He touched a lot of people's lives. He made it a point to know all the kids in his school by name even when there got to be several hundred of them. He carried a brief for his kids, looked out for their best interests. He fought for school additions when the kid population grew even though he made some enemies with the folks who didn't want their property taxes to go up. He seemed to know everyone in the county both children and adults.

I remember another time when Abie South died. Abie was about 14 at the time and lived with his mother and sister in Butler's alley, the "ghetto" of Sussex where the poorest people lived in ramshackle huts. Abie was in a coal car parked on a siding probably stealing coal to heat their house when suddenly a load of coal came down the shute positioned above and into the car smothering Abie. It was a tragedy for Abie's mother because she didn't have a husband and Abie was the "adult" male of the family. I remember my Dad driving up Butler's Alley - because I was with him - till he found Mrs. South to express his condolences. I remember her saying, "You don't know who your friends are till something like this happens." A lot of people wouldn't have bothered to contact Mrs. South. He cared about people whether they were high or low.

My Dad was very active in the community. He was President of the Board of the Alexander Linn Hospital for 20 years. He was active in the Masonic Lodge, and he was out a lot at night at meetings. One year he was secretary to the Grand Master of the Masonic Lodge, Adrian Hommell, and was out at some lodge meeting or other almost every night. I remember he used to say Abe drove 80 miles an hour with the heater on full blast, the radio on full blast, the windows rolled up and smoking a cigar! Abe was quite a character. Dad was an American history major in college and was active in all the historical events like the Bi-Centennial celebration in 1976. I remember my Mom saying that on their honeymoon they visited all the Civil War battle fields. Dad loved all the civic institutions - church, school, hospital, the Boy Scouts.

My sister had cerebral palsy. She must have had massive brain damage due to lack of oxygen when she was born. She looked normal, but she never learned to talk and walked only for a few years. Her balance was always precarious and she fell a lot. From her teen-age years on she was heavily sedated and not too active. My Dad was so good to her. He played with her and made her laugh. The only thing my sister had in life were our parents. She used to sit by the window all day waiting for them to come home and, when they pulled in the driveway, she let out a big cheer and clapped her hands. They were all she had, and they were so good to her.

My Dad was a very sociable, gregarious guy sort of the opposite of me. He was very balanced between introversion and extroversion, but he was mainly an extrovert, I think. He loved social occasions. Psychologically, he had his head on straight. It seemed like he was always "up", always in a good mood. I don't think I ever saw him lose his temper, ever saw him angry. I always wished I was more the outgoing type like him but I'm not. Even in the same family you can have seemingly opposite personality types. I'm more like my Grandfather who was very introverted, almost autistic. I've come to terms with the fact that my Dad and I are different types, and I'm glad I didn't try to follow some life path that required the social and psychological skills and abilities that he had because I just don't have them. I think everyone has to first find out who they are, and then follow the path best suited for them, not necessarily the path that their father or mother followed. Parents have to realize that their off-spring may or may not be like them. I think psychological predispositions are genetically  inherited and not just from parents but from grandparents, great grandparents - who knows how far back certain traits go - and there certainly is a diversity of personality types in any given family if you go back far enough.

When my Dad died, the Board of Education promised my Mom that, if they ever built another school, they would name it after my Dad. Well, about 10 years after my Dad died, as it turns out, they did build another school. However, the local paper announced that it was to be called the "Ryan Road" school because it was to be located on Ryan Road. When I was a kid, Timothy Ryan was the dog catcher in Wantage Township, and I guess he was the most prominent citizen living on that particular road at the time, which, if I recall, was a dirt road. So Timothy Ryan, through no fault of his own, was about to not only have a road named after him but a school as well. And the school would have been named after him had it not been for my Mom. She went into high gear writing letters to the editor, getting her high powered friends to write letters to the editor, and in general going on a campaign to make the Board of Education follow through on their promise to her to name the school after her late husband. After some initial resistance, the powers that were gave in and decided to honor their promise and name the school after my father after all. My mother was a relentless campaigner and there was no stopping her when she got on her high horse.

So that's how my father got to be eponymous. He had a great life. He enjoyed himself immensely, but not every minute. I remember him saying, "Some days I wouldn't give you a nickel for this job." He was a genuinely nice person. I don't think he had a mean bone in his body, and he seemed to have the milk of human kindness by the quart in every vein. He had a real sense of wonder about life, about the universe. My Dad was pretty down to earth and liked to joke around a lot. They used to like to have picnics in the summer time, and my Dad would say, "This tastes pretty good for an old dead cow." He also had a sense of his own mortality, and I heard him say numerous times, "But life goes on."

I Have a Job Americans Don't Want to Do. Heck, I Have a Job Not Even a Mexican Wants to Do. That's Why I'm Making Good Money!

I'm a window cleaner. At least that's my day job. My night job has varied from professional musician to information theorist to social choice theorist to web master to blogger. This is the first of a series of autobiographical posts that I call "Don't Throw Me in the Brier Patch" because most people probably would look at my life as the equivalent of their having been thrown in the brier patch. Like Brer Rabbit, the brier patch suits me just fine. I like my life. I chose it, and I like it.

It wasn't the life chosen for me by my parents or rather the life my parents steered me towards. I  was a professional student for 30 years. I'm an alumnus of Andover (where President Bush went to school), Georgia Tech, Stanford and UCSD. I worked in the industrial-military complex for 15 years. It was partly because I couldn't stand the philosophy and working conditions of the military-industrial complex and partly because I couldn't stand the sedentariness of the job that I left and became a window cleaner.

I started my own business with a capital investment of $20., no training, no apprenticeship, no certification, no credentials and no license. As an early adapter of the answering machine, I didn't need a secretary to take phone messages. Later a cell phone made it unnecessary to have a "physical" location in order to do business.

All of a sudden I was my own boss. I didn't have to ask permission to take a day off. I just didn't schedule any appointments for that day. I had my own system of "flexitime," never giving an exact appointment time, only a window. I was independent. I was free. It was how I really wanted to live although it was against everything my parents and the whole educational system stood for. The educational system is in the business of creating docile employees and complacent consumers - basically people who don't think for themselves and have a vested economic stake in going with the flow. People who, unfortunately, are vulnerable to advertising messages both commercial and political. If the educational system truly wanted to benefit its students, it would teach them to be resistant to advertising. As a window cleaner and proprietor of my own business, I had no boss, no union and no "benefits," and I had to do hard, physical work. I loved it. Most Americans wouldn't. That's why I say, "Don't throw me in the brier patch."

I could take holidays whenever I wanted to take them, not when all the lemmings took them on the same day crowding the freeways and beaches. I could take vacations during the "low rate" season, and not when everyone else took them. Just as in the movie, "1000 Clowns," I owned my days, and my nights were free from any daytime job baggage carryover. I didn't have to ask anyone's permission for anything. I worked outside in the sunlight and enjoyed the beautiful days instead of sitting in an office or in an underground, windowless bunker as in my last assignment in the M-I complex at Battery Ashburn on Point Loma, San Diego. That was a job for Naval Electonics Laboratory (NEL) which later changed its name to Naval Electronics Laboratory Center (NELC) which later changed its name to Naval Ocean Systems Command (NOSC) which later changed its name to Naval Research and Development (NRAD). People with nothing better to do kept changing the name to protect the guiIty.

As a self-employed window cleaner, I didn't have to put up with obnoxious co-workers or an obnoxious boss. Once in a while I would come across an obnoxious customer, but, if I didn't like them or they didn't like me, that would be our last encounter. I wouldn't have to not look forward to going to work every day and seeing them again. I could speak my mind and not fear losing my job. Maybe I would lose a particular customer, but so what. I wanted to cultivate a clientele of people that I liked and could get along with, not a clientele of enemies or people who treated me badly or who thought I was worth less than they were. As a result, I could look forward to going to work every day, meeting new and interesting people, doing something that was more physically rewarding than sitting behind a desk and doing something that left my mind free to think, to practice my music (you don't really have to have an instrument in your mouth to do that), or to listen to great literature or great music via my cassette (or later) CD player. When I was finished I had the instantaneous gratification of having the check in my hand, and then I was out of there. No worries. No stress. No problems.

So when my fellow alumnus, President Bush, speaks about all those jobs "Americans don't want to do,"  I wonder if this makes me unamerican for doing one of them and making good money to boot!