FORT WORTH MUSEUM OF MODERN ART. Love is the reason we Believe we will Survive. Love is the only way to preserve our freedom. Love will light our way through this darkness. Americans are Heroes. It is now our time to prove we are still patriots.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Lakers-Celtics, Father-Son,Jesus-G_d, and a young Christian man from Arlington, Texas, all met tonight at a Micro-Brewery named BJ's. In a whole lifetime, you and I will have many different experiences where the beauty of life and our love for each other will also entangle a mystery. I was riding on the ever-present mystery of "Why" things happen and just happened to collide with all the above mentioned characters at the intersection of Fantasy Street and Reality Lane.
I have just arrived at my home on the campus of the University of Texas Arlington and must tell my story as I think it is a mile-post on my Journey in This American's life.
I am now writing the post so I can get to bed as I am going to the hospital tomorrow to find out why I am bleeding out again and almost certainly will have another surgery, in my never ending lifetime, of being a medical miracle and a Shepard, for My Father who Created the Vines of the Earth and the Sun that Warms us All.
My Doctor, Raymond Westbrook, wanted me to go immediately, by ambulance, to Medical Center of Arlington and be admitted through the emergency room again.
I told him I could not do that as my son Aaron and I had to do something we have planned for one year. He knows that my commitments to my son and daughter and a select few others are the most important events in my life. Being with Aaron tonight was simply more important than being rushed to the hospital and finding out my fate. I find it odd that people believe that their lives are always the most significant ones. My life is important as I do look after His Flock quietly in the background and there are those who will worry about me that I must respect. It is very wrong to play with peoples emotions and disrespect their honest concern for me as a person. I consented to hospitalization this afternoon at 4:55 PM and I will arrive sometime tomorrow at his "Blasted Emergency Room" where no one will treat me like I am an emergency anyway. It is always a bit of a conundrum when I go through life and death type events. I have done this many many times in my life.
Since the age of 18 months, it has been a lifetime of Living on the Edge. At 18 months of age I one day became terrified of our neighbor Mrs. Perkins. She apparently liked to hold me when mom worked in the yard. I remember that day and one other day when I was on the lawn and some girls from the Catholic School down the street were in a circle on the lawn and calling me and I went from one to another as they giggled. It was wonderful fun that I have remembered from that day before someone threw the terror switch on and I struggled with intense fear, became sickly and was very thin. A German doctor who was from Berlin shortly after the war, gave me steroid injections every week. I had to walk to his office after school and his nurse who was also VERY German would sadistically stab me and smile as she gave the shot. One day I was too scared to go and disobeyed my mom and just walked home. My mom really whipped me good as she had to pay for the shot anyway. Wasting money was a death sentence at our house.
I of course was terrified as a child, when I had go to the hospital. They used to not treat kids like they would an adult. Lots of loneliness and neglect came with every visit and it was not until the Great Childhood Epidemics of the Fifties that children became a major area of concern.
The Great Polio Epidemics began in America almost immediately after the end of World War II. I remember that kids on our block were just not seen anymore and there were hospitals in L.A. that only had Polio patients. On Imperial Hwy there was a hospital and they took the mostly kids outside in rocking beds that forced air into their lungs and sometimes could see the Iron Lung machines rolled out so some poor child could feel the sun on their faces.
At age 4 I first noticed in Kindergarten that kids just never came back. I think I was six when the first nasty Measles epidemic hit school and lots of kids disappeared suddenly and you knew that someone was sick as they put a large notice on the door that said MEASLES! The Health Department my mom told me put up the signs to help contagion. In the fourth grade another epidemic came through and two of my friends were gone for a long time and one, Richard, came back with a huge hearing aid and Jerry was totally deaf but we still stayed friends until 3 years ago. He died from his exposure back in the fourth grade. Just took a long time.
Chicken Pox,the three day measles, Mumps and Pneumonia's were scary but were mostly just miserably long. I caught Pneumonia pretty often since I was three, and I had what they called Catastrophic Asthma. I had heard that word before and it was not good. I really feared death with asthma. I would usually go to sleep feeling OK and would wake up unable to breath. I could not easily get out of bed at those times and would just pray to G_d, "please God one more breath."
Please God one more breath is something my 12 year old granddaughter told me she says too. She has a much less severe asthma but the fear is the same and Doctors still fail to aggressively be proactive in mollifying the fear of a child. I am not there to tell her how we will keep her safe as we no longer live in familial communities. We are more sterile and distant with our children not to mention our selves as we are digital and don't need to touch to communicate. We can just text them. U R fine.
I thought suffocating or drowning was the worst types of death as my childish mind examined it all. Superman was caught in a set of walls that were made to crush him. As the walls came together I thought oh, no, squished like a bug
Before bed mom would pray with me. Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.
I was terrified saying that prayer. If I should die????? What???? I am trying to live. I am not going to die am I??? I finally was able to tell mom how much it scared me and she changed the words. Whew!
Mom grew up in an Orphanage in Estes Park Colorado. Her father was a silver miner and hit a very rich strike of silver. He went and got my mothers mom and took her to an insane asylum and paid to have her committed. This was evidently more practical than actually killing her. Women were property in the United States until 1920 when Woman's Suffrage was ratified with the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. Mom 4, Sister Edna 5, and brothers Miner 7, and Mark 8, were told their mom had died and took them to the Orphanage run by very strict Southern Baptist women.
Mom had it tough and I
My face was not shaped right for some reason and I had to have my jaw widened 2 inches by pressure. Dr. William O. Reiman DDS. also had too bring out my jaw 2 inches forward. He was a Professor at USC too. He also pulled my mandible (bone)less than an inch back and pulled the upper teeth back by applying pressure. I had constant treatments for seven years. My mom would ask me to come into our living room when her Social groups met at our house and she would just pull my mouth open and show the work. I felt like a cow or something..lol
Mom was proud of the success they were having rebuilding me and I was so scared of people I would learn to vanish.
I have just arrived at my home on the campus of the University of Texas Arlington and must tell my story as I think it is a mile-post on my Journey in This American's life.
I am now writing the post so I can get to bed as I am going to the hospital tomorrow to find out why I am bleeding out again and almost certainly will have another surgery, in my never ending lifetime, of being a medical miracle and a Shepard, for My Father who Created the Vines of the Earth and the Sun that Warms us All.
My Doctor, Raymond Westbrook, wanted me to go immediately, by ambulance, to Medical Center of Arlington and be admitted through the emergency room again.
I told him I could not do that as my son Aaron and I had to do something we have planned for one year. He knows that my commitments to my son and daughter and a select few others are the most important events in my life. Being with Aaron tonight was simply more important than being rushed to the hospital and finding out my fate. I find it odd that people believe that their lives are always the most significant ones. My life is important as I do look after His Flock quietly in the background and there are those who will worry about me that I must respect. It is very wrong to play with peoples emotions and disrespect their honest concern for me as a person. I consented to hospitalization this afternoon at 4:55 PM and I will arrive sometime tomorrow at his "Blasted Emergency Room" where no one will treat me like I am an emergency anyway. It is always a bit of a conundrum when I go through life and death type events. I have done this many many times in my life.
Since the age of 18 months, it has been a lifetime of Living on the Edge. At 18 months of age I one day became terrified of our neighbor Mrs. Perkins. She apparently liked to hold me when mom worked in the yard. I remember that day and one other day when I was on the lawn and some girls from the Catholic School down the street were in a circle on the lawn and calling me and I went from one to another as they giggled. It was wonderful fun that I have remembered from that day before someone threw the terror switch on and I struggled with intense fear, became sickly and was very thin. A German doctor who was from Berlin shortly after the war, gave me steroid injections every week. I had to walk to his office after school and his nurse who was also VERY German would sadistically stab me and smile as she gave the shot. One day I was too scared to go and disobeyed my mom and just walked home. My mom really whipped me good as she had to pay for the shot anyway. Wasting money was a death sentence at our house.
I of course was terrified as a child, when I had go to the hospital. They used to not treat kids like they would an adult. Lots of loneliness and neglect came with every visit and it was not until the Great Childhood Epidemics of the Fifties that children became a major area of concern.
The Great Polio Epidemics began in America almost immediately after the end of World War II. I remember that kids on our block were just not seen anymore and there were hospitals in L.A. that only had Polio patients. On Imperial Hwy there was a hospital and they took the mostly kids outside in rocking beds that forced air into their lungs and sometimes could see the Iron Lung machines rolled out so some poor child could feel the sun on their faces.
At age 4 I first noticed in Kindergarten that kids just never came back. I think I was six when the first nasty Measles epidemic hit school and lots of kids disappeared suddenly and you knew that someone was sick as they put a large notice on the door that said MEASLES! The Health Department my mom told me put up the signs to help contagion. In the fourth grade another epidemic came through and two of my friends were gone for a long time and one, Richard, came back with a huge hearing aid and Jerry was totally deaf but we still stayed friends until 3 years ago. He died from his exposure back in the fourth grade. Just took a long time.
Chicken Pox,the three day measles, Mumps and Pneumonia's were scary but were mostly just miserably long. I caught Pneumonia pretty often since I was three, and I had what they called Catastrophic Asthma. I had heard that word before and it was not good. I really feared death with asthma. I would usually go to sleep feeling OK and would wake up unable to breath. I could not easily get out of bed at those times and would just pray to G_d, "please God one more breath."
Please God one more breath is something my 12 year old granddaughter told me she says too. She has a much less severe asthma but the fear is the same and Doctors still fail to aggressively be proactive in mollifying the fear of a child. I am not there to tell her how we will keep her safe as we no longer live in familial communities. We are more sterile and distant with our children not to mention our selves as we are digital and don't need to touch to communicate. We can just text them. U R fine.
I thought suffocating or drowning was the worst types of death as my childish mind examined it all. Superman was caught in a set of walls that were made to crush him. As the walls came together I thought oh, no, squished like a bug
Before bed mom would pray with me. Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep. If I should die before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take. Amen.
I was terrified saying that prayer. If I should die????? What???? I am trying to live. I am not going to die am I??? I finally was able to tell mom how much it scared me and she changed the words. Whew!
Mom grew up in an Orphanage in Estes Park Colorado. Her father was a silver miner and hit a very rich strike of silver. He went and got my mothers mom and took her to an insane asylum and paid to have her committed. This was evidently more practical than actually killing her. Women were property in the United States until 1920 when Woman's Suffrage was ratified with the 19th Amendment to the Constitution. Mom 4, Sister Edna 5, and brothers Miner 7, and Mark 8, were told their mom had died and took them to the Orphanage run by very strict Southern Baptist women.
Mom had it tough and I
My face was not shaped right for some reason and I had to have my jaw widened 2 inches by pressure. Dr. William O. Reiman DDS. also had too bring out my jaw 2 inches forward. He was a Professor at USC too. He also pulled my mandible (bone)less than an inch back and pulled the upper teeth back by applying pressure. I had constant treatments for seven years. My mom would ask me to come into our living room when her Social groups met at our house and she would just pull my mouth open and show the work. I felt like a cow or something..lol
Mom was proud of the success they were having rebuilding me and I was so scared of people I would learn to vanish.
Saturday, June 12, 2010
In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.
John Kenneth Galbraith
The progressives have thankfully renamed themselves saving the great works that the Liberals did in the 50's.
Those Liberals just back from WW II knew just what mattered because they were tested beyond any previous generation.
Being Liberal meant generous. It meant hard work for a decent wage. It meant to reach into your own pockets to help those who could not help themselves. All the disabled from fighting in WW II were helped by such people as their government abandoned the Veterans. Just like today.
It meant volunteering to have your home as a percent location for voting, like my parents did. It meant not only going to PTA meetings it meant being part of the leadership.
It meant service to our country was the highest possible goal.
It meant many fine things but never meant free money to the undeserving, ever.
It meant your neighbors and your community worked together to insure your safety and well being.
Progressives....as far as I can tell have no real moral agenda anymore than conservatives do.
To take a slap at the name Liberal is showing your ignorance.
It is also taking a slap at my parents who like many others like them built this country to greatness.
A racist posting is Just that! Racist. It clearing is begging for comment. Mr. Free Tibet.
So quit, what do were care what you do. No need to post it, that is for certain.
Monies borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund must be paid back. Those are insurance premiums that were borrowed.
I can find no instance in history that a nation fell from having decent wages for private employees (non-government)
The majority owner of Berkshire-Hathaway has stated as recently as last year that he pays either no taxes or less that the average worker in the USA. He said this is wrong.
Cutting a little back from grandma's check so we can go to war is also wrong if the society as a whole is not giving up as much.
Fear and Greed of investors put us in this situation that was taken advantage by the warehouse lenders and the taxpayers were held up again for this clearly illegal action.
Taxpayers are the most abused citizens in the country. Some taxpayers like the above mentioned company are the freeloaders. They have more to do with how tax legislation is written than the minimum wage worker. Surely that must be obvious to a learned person such as your self. Here is a quote a well read person would know.
The days of the students of Ayn Rand are over. She is now seen for what she really was all along. A screen-writer. A story teller supreme. She made up a story to able to live her life as she pleased. Her best and brightest followers such as Allen Greenspan are now proven to be just what they always were...either fools, deluded or criminal.
In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Trying reading his sons work too James Kenneth Galbraith.
Let's go get Beitish
John Kenneth Galbraith
The progressives have thankfully renamed themselves saving the great works that the Liberals did in the 50's.
Those Liberals just back from WW II knew just what mattered because they were tested beyond any previous generation.
Being Liberal meant generous. It meant hard work for a decent wage. It meant to reach into your own pockets to help those who could not help themselves. All the disabled from fighting in WW II were helped by such people as their government abandoned the Veterans. Just like today.
It meant volunteering to have your home as a percent location for voting, like my parents did. It meant not only going to PTA meetings it meant being part of the leadership.
It meant service to our country was the highest possible goal.
It meant many fine things but never meant free money to the undeserving, ever.
It meant your neighbors and your community worked together to insure your safety and well being.
Progressives....as far as I can tell have no real moral agenda anymore than conservatives do.
To take a slap at the name Liberal is showing your ignorance.
It is also taking a slap at my parents who like many others like them built this country to greatness.
A racist posting is Just that! Racist. It clearing is begging for comment. Mr. Free Tibet.
So quit, what do were care what you do. No need to post it, that is for certain.
Monies borrowed from the Social Security Trust Fund must be paid back. Those are insurance premiums that were borrowed.
I can find no instance in history that a nation fell from having decent wages for private employees (non-government)
The majority owner of Berkshire-Hathaway has stated as recently as last year that he pays either no taxes or less that the average worker in the USA. He said this is wrong.
Cutting a little back from grandma's check so we can go to war is also wrong if the society as a whole is not giving up as much.
Fear and Greed of investors put us in this situation that was taken advantage by the warehouse lenders and the taxpayers were held up again for this clearly illegal action.
Taxpayers are the most abused citizens in the country. Some taxpayers like the above mentioned company are the freeloaders. They have more to do with how tax legislation is written than the minimum wage worker. Surely that must be obvious to a learned person such as your self. Here is a quote a well read person would know.
The days of the students of Ayn Rand are over. She is now seen for what she really was all along. A screen-writer. A story teller supreme. She made up a story to able to live her life as she pleased. Her best and brightest followers such as Allen Greenspan are now proven to be just what they always were...either fools, deluded or criminal.
In the United States, though power corrupts, the expectation of power paralyzes.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Trying reading his sons work too James Kenneth Galbraith.
Let's go get Beitish
To Loretta Jo
Welcome home,
Texas hasn't been the same with you.
I have few word but of respect.
Your the kind that makes the world go round.
And that ain't bad.
Texas hasn't been the same with you.
I have few word but of respect.
Your the kind that makes the world go round.
And that ain't bad.
Thursday, June 10, 2010
The Rolling Stones are bigger than life; yet, as comfortable as a good pair shoes.
As I listen to them play I think about their relationships and what makes them so special.
After years of searching for their musical center, I have recently found what has made them so special. It was just a funny little factoid that I never heard before. As school chums Mick and Keith toured around as an Everly Brothers gig. I can hear the harmonies in what they play today.
The Everly Brothers were BIG and Mick and Keith quickly learned the styles of harmonies so they too could achieve the oneness of a duo like The Everly Brothers.
It was a thrill for them to play as an opening act for the EB. Later the EB opened for them.
If I told someone that I can hear the beautiful harmonies of The Every Brothers in many Stones songs...they would say I am crazy. I don't really care as the music means even more now that I know what those two cut their teeth on.
Everything is a mystery to me and I am either very dumb or very smart, or some way of being both at once like harmonies.
Life seems a never ending river of excitement and I like it very much.
It is funny in a very odd way, that the American Government got completely full of incompetents all at once.
Just ask British Petroleum...bastards!
I worked for Texaco Oil for 10 years. From 20 to 29 years old. I worked as part of the 1500 man team of engineers, comptrollers, chemists, machinist and other maintenance staff, Unit Operators for the refining units, visionary leaders and the totally untrained and incapable Foremen, who were bosses but not very good as one.
It was all about keeping everything running as fast as possible without breaking anything or killing anyone. They did both regularly if you ask me, as more than twice was too much, yet more came.
I went to work for Texaco during the time of the greatest manpower loss since WW II. They were always short-handed and I worked 17 double shifts in a row once.
I remember stopping to get gas and had to call home to find out if I was coming home or going to work. Funny, going to work in a coal mine in the sky. A Delayed Coking Unit that made commercial Coke which is like cheap fast burning coal that we sold to Japan by the 1000 metric tons.
You have these 100' by 36' vessels (4) that are mounted high up on a platform from which you take the elevator to the top. close to 200' high. We also had four derricks over head that went up 140' with lights on top which we had to oil on a regular basis.
Someone heats the crude oil (San Ardo the most toxic crude in the world) to 905 degrees f. and then inject water into it. Yes, we had very strong lids on both ends with the largest bolts you will ever see.
The next day when the pressure drops below three pound and no more water is can be drained out we start taking the nuts off of the bolts. 48 on the top 3' lid and 144 nuts and bolts on the bottom with a lid so heavy you have to use a special lift to support it. Everything can go wrong right there and did.
One time a boss named Risley turned the draining water off and we looked down saw it had stopped and went down to unhead the drum.
It was still full of water and I held the controls a half deck higher for a safety margin (nice of them don't you think) when the head busted loose and sprayed super heated water on the three men on my team. I tried to lift it up and it wouldn't move. You could not yell loud enough to help them but they knew to run. The whole place was a mass of super hot steam and I was in the easiest place to get away. I grabbed the welded in ladder and slid down to the bottom and ran a direction I knew. Not the first time for running but the first time for this. The other time was poisonous gas, hydrogen-sulfide. Man it is invisible and I saw two guys just drop and then a third a little closer me and I ran and hit kill horn. Sometimes the Foremen world not let you shut anything down until they saw a problem and I had to point out the bodies and then they killed the unit.
It was always exciting and was not for the faint of heart. One time we were all smoking a dobbie as we had a couple of hours to kill when a tremendous explosion rocked us. That took power to shake us. We were all cement and steel. It was the Hydrogen Generating Unit or the Hydrogen Bomb Unit as we called it. I had to go as I was first take for the Fire Department so I got picked up in 3 minutes and went to the unit. There was no fire. Never is with Hydrogen. Just boom or one time I saw a leak in a flange (connector) at 1500 lbs of pressure and it was an invisible thirty foot lick of flame which someone would of really ate it if I hadn't seen it happen.
This time a guy I went through training with just evaporated. We only found a shoe. He closed a valve he shouldn't of and it was an instant hydrogen explosion. Now you see them and now you don't. That is the tough breaks that goes with all the money. I made huge wages for the time. I made around $40000 in 1969. I bought a new Camero in 1967 for $1700.00 about $2400.00 out the door with options. $97.00 a month for 3 years GMAC financing.
The refinery was so violent at times you needed you wits about you, stoned or not. Sometimes we would smoke pot or take Black Beauties to over-come good sense. No sane person would take the chances as we did for money.
So I went from the labor pool where you did something different every day, sometimes good, sometimes bad, to the Delayed Coking Unit the most dreaded place there. Then I got a bid on the boiler-house and started as a water tender making thousands and thousands of soft water for the 9 unlimited horsepower boilers that ran the place.
It was here that I had my first lung collapse and first experience with physical problems from toxic exposures. I was off two weeks and then I got wrote up for absenteeism and they gave me two weeks off for punishment but actually it was was pretty cool. The beach water was warm and the surf was coming in 4-7 swells at Rincon( not so warm but they had a great curl if you could pull out before you hit the cliffs.) Huntington Beach was gnarly too. A friend and I just took off for the two weeks and partied on the beach. What a great time it was. This was the last time I saw my friend Bryce as the Selective Service (draft) was really after him. I understand that he fought it out with the FBI and would of rather been dead than to have someone tell him to go kill people he didn't dislike. There is some comfort in that.
To be continued...
As I listen to them play I think about their relationships and what makes them so special.
After years of searching for their musical center, I have recently found what has made them so special. It was just a funny little factoid that I never heard before. As school chums Mick and Keith toured around as an Everly Brothers gig. I can hear the harmonies in what they play today.
The Everly Brothers were BIG and Mick and Keith quickly learned the styles of harmonies so they too could achieve the oneness of a duo like The Everly Brothers.
It was a thrill for them to play as an opening act for the EB. Later the EB opened for them.
If I told someone that I can hear the beautiful harmonies of The Every Brothers in many Stones songs...they would say I am crazy. I don't really care as the music means even more now that I know what those two cut their teeth on.
Everything is a mystery to me and I am either very dumb or very smart, or some way of being both at once like harmonies.
Life seems a never ending river of excitement and I like it very much.
It is funny in a very odd way, that the American Government got completely full of incompetents all at once.
Just ask British Petroleum...bastards!
I worked for Texaco Oil for 10 years. From 20 to 29 years old. I worked as part of the 1500 man team of engineers, comptrollers, chemists, machinist and other maintenance staff, Unit Operators for the refining units, visionary leaders and the totally untrained and incapable Foremen, who were bosses but not very good as one.
It was all about keeping everything running as fast as possible without breaking anything or killing anyone. They did both regularly if you ask me, as more than twice was too much, yet more came.
I went to work for Texaco during the time of the greatest manpower loss since WW II. They were always short-handed and I worked 17 double shifts in a row once.
I remember stopping to get gas and had to call home to find out if I was coming home or going to work. Funny, going to work in a coal mine in the sky. A Delayed Coking Unit that made commercial Coke which is like cheap fast burning coal that we sold to Japan by the 1000 metric tons.
You have these 100' by 36' vessels (4) that are mounted high up on a platform from which you take the elevator to the top. close to 200' high. We also had four derricks over head that went up 140' with lights on top which we had to oil on a regular basis.
Someone heats the crude oil (San Ardo the most toxic crude in the world) to 905 degrees f. and then inject water into it. Yes, we had very strong lids on both ends with the largest bolts you will ever see.
The next day when the pressure drops below three pound and no more water is can be drained out we start taking the nuts off of the bolts. 48 on the top 3' lid and 144 nuts and bolts on the bottom with a lid so heavy you have to use a special lift to support it. Everything can go wrong right there and did.
One time a boss named Risley turned the draining water off and we looked down saw it had stopped and went down to unhead the drum.
It was still full of water and I held the controls a half deck higher for a safety margin (nice of them don't you think) when the head busted loose and sprayed super heated water on the three men on my team. I tried to lift it up and it wouldn't move. You could not yell loud enough to help them but they knew to run. The whole place was a mass of super hot steam and I was in the easiest place to get away. I grabbed the welded in ladder and slid down to the bottom and ran a direction I knew. Not the first time for running but the first time for this. The other time was poisonous gas, hydrogen-sulfide. Man it is invisible and I saw two guys just drop and then a third a little closer me and I ran and hit kill horn. Sometimes the Foremen world not let you shut anything down until they saw a problem and I had to point out the bodies and then they killed the unit.
It was always exciting and was not for the faint of heart. One time we were all smoking a dobbie as we had a couple of hours to kill when a tremendous explosion rocked us. That took power to shake us. We were all cement and steel. It was the Hydrogen Generating Unit or the Hydrogen Bomb Unit as we called it. I had to go as I was first take for the Fire Department so I got picked up in 3 minutes and went to the unit. There was no fire. Never is with Hydrogen. Just boom or one time I saw a leak in a flange (connector) at 1500 lbs of pressure and it was an invisible thirty foot lick of flame which someone would of really ate it if I hadn't seen it happen.
This time a guy I went through training with just evaporated. We only found a shoe. He closed a valve he shouldn't of and it was an instant hydrogen explosion. Now you see them and now you don't. That is the tough breaks that goes with all the money. I made huge wages for the time. I made around $40000 in 1969. I bought a new Camero in 1967 for $1700.00 about $2400.00 out the door with options. $97.00 a month for 3 years GMAC financing.
The refinery was so violent at times you needed you wits about you, stoned or not. Sometimes we would smoke pot or take Black Beauties to over-come good sense. No sane person would take the chances as we did for money.
So I went from the labor pool where you did something different every day, sometimes good, sometimes bad, to the Delayed Coking Unit the most dreaded place there. Then I got a bid on the boiler-house and started as a water tender making thousands and thousands of soft water for the 9 unlimited horsepower boilers that ran the place.
It was here that I had my first lung collapse and first experience with physical problems from toxic exposures. I was off two weeks and then I got wrote up for absenteeism and they gave me two weeks off for punishment but actually it was was pretty cool. The beach water was warm and the surf was coming in 4-7 swells at Rincon( not so warm but they had a great curl if you could pull out before you hit the cliffs.) Huntington Beach was gnarly too. A friend and I just took off for the two weeks and partied on the beach. What a great time it was. This was the last time I saw my friend Bryce as the Selective Service (draft) was really after him. I understand that he fought it out with the FBI and would of rather been dead than to have someone tell him to go kill people he didn't dislike. There is some comfort in that.
To be continued...
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