The College Problem 18.

My first novel, Thumbing Down A Star, was intended to accomplish several purposes. Since about age Nine, I’d been using the alias Joseph Parker from time to time. I wished to retire this name to an honorable place in the future and to no longer use it myself. I also wanted to try my hand at foreseeing the future as far ahead as I might have some chance of actually checking. Since I thought I could reasonably hope to live to an age of 90 or 91, I set the majority of the story in the summer of 2045, so I could take advantage of the 100^th anniversary of the A-bombings of Japan as a sub-sub-theme. Thirdly, I wanted to give rein to all of my current major interests and a host of minor ones.

Mom had recently told me when she was peeved because I had dared to continue with a writing project while guests were visiting of an evening, that she didn’t feel anything I would be writing at this point could be all that important. One presumably sprung from college, fully equipped and able to as Athena from the head of Zeus. Important of not, I had accomplished some fairly major tasks this year. One of them was a long story about the initiation rites and indoctrination of young people in a tribal society on another planet. The youths, male and female, learned the lore of their culture, were helped to choose their vocations and even at one point, exchanged genders so as to be more perceptive regarding the opposite sex.

I’d written a lengthy essay about the various forms future cities might take on earth, in the oceans, orbiting our planet or other globes, on the moon, Mars, the moons of Jupiter, floating in the clouds of Venus, traversing the surface of Mercury or flying between the stars. I’d written other stories, many letters and had output a steady stream of poetry. The time had come to take the next logical step.

The first half of the 21^st century had seen humanity establish permanent settlements on the moon, Mars, mercury, the atmosphere of Venus, Ganymede, Calisto and Titan. The still-burgeoning population of earth had colonized the ocean depths and scores of space stations from house-size to orbital cities circled the planet. Humanity had begun to look seriously starward as well. Two-way communications had been established with an intelligent race six light years distant and a robotic probe had been launched near the beginning of the century, to Alpha Centauri.

Into this adventurous time had been born Joseph Jonathan Alexius Parker; Scientist, Author, Engineer, Soldier Of Fortune. Parker was a physicist and rocket designer who had additionally studied self-replicating systems and had become interested in Chronological Physics, the mathematical means of predicting, within limits, the major events of the future.

Dr. Parker was a veteran of two minor urban wars and had been decorated for gallantry under fire. Due to the popularity of certain articles he had written for the Lunar Data Bank, to which the entire solar system subscribed, he had become quite wealthy. He had purchased a self-contained undersea dwelling and had a clone of himself taken and forced to maturity in the cloud colony of Venus. By shunting his brain pattern thither, he could step across to Earth’s sister planet without leaving home. He did leave home though and fairly often to cover lectures and scientific development for leading journals and to accomplish feats of rocket engineering.

The story opens with the Centaurian Probe sending back the first close-ups of planets in that stellar system. In Chapter 2, Parker and his close friend, Oliver Clausoff, (a sophomoric fake bi-line coined by an acquaintance to irritate Mr. Charland at school,) attend a sort of director’s meeting in Venus Cloud City. Mathematical models indicate that new information about interstellar real estate will spur greater out-migration from earth to nearer frontiers in the solar system. Venus is right now a very hot area of speculation. In 2008 a group of renegade scientists had seeded the Venusian upper atmosphere with blue-green algae, starting the planet upon a path of becoming someday, a second Earth. The enormous balloon-born cloud city, together with the techniques of clone growth and brain pattern transfer, make it possible for speculators to gain a toe-hold on Venus right now. Working assumptions in the story are that one can transfer consciousness to a clone or even borrow someone else’s brain and body for a short time, but ones original body must be put to sleep while the transfer is being effected. Try to stay awake in both places and not entirely understood, psycho-quantum effects occur to disrupt both the original and copy brain and psyche.

The major thrust of the story is to mount a human-dolphin expedition to one of the Centaurian planets, which is largely oceanic. But the earth is a strife-ridden place. Mass violence seems to flow across the landscape like weather. The evening news carries Riot Report, showing honest citizens where not to travel. There are several isolationist groups of politico-religious persons, not unlike the Moral Majority of the 1980s, in operation. They are violently opposed to star travel, cloning, communication with other intelligent races, (including dolphins,) just about everything Joe and his friends stand for. Pitched battles are often fought between isolationist and expansionist factions. Dueling has returned to popularity and most professionals go armed.

Joe’s closest friends besides Ollie, are members of an aristocratic Family, whose forebears hailed from Virginia but who have for three generations, been living in a private orbital fortress. Jacob Mccormac and his family are strong believers in Humanity’s manifest destiny to fly to the stars. They are well-educated, dynamic persons all. The youngest daughter, Cathleen, has a sort of romantic understanding with Joe.

Tragedy Strikes when Ollie is challenged to a duel over his recent appointment to head a project which will set a complete set of human DNA and brain patterns to Barnard’s Star, a sort of slow-motion teleportation. An honorable man, Ollie has his Venusian clone deactivated, making it possible for him to truly risk his life in the duel. His opponent, an isolationist radical, deprives Ollie of his life in a duel in free fall with charged blades. Joe bereft now of his best male friend, realizes he needs connectivity in his life and proposes to Cathleen.

The world government turns thumbs down on a crew-carrying starship to Alpha Centauri, opting instead for a larger probe. Since a large load of fuel must be placed in trajectory twenty years or more before the launching of a star mission, human interstellar flight will be circumvented by commitment of resources to a smaller, less-aggressive mode of exploration.

A late-breaking bulletin announces that the U.S. Army has developed and placed in orbit, a huge device that can fire a jet of extremely high-velocity hydrogen fuel at an accelerating spaceship. The problem of launching a low-velocity slow-down stage for a human-carrying starship has been simplified.

The Mccormac family decide that if a means of propulsion is at hand and a starship is wanted, they may as well contribute their orbital mansion which has been supporting human life for well over four decades. It also has numerous water passages and pools which can be reconditioned for dolphin habitation. The culmination of the story is a sort of military/free enterprise/plutocratic colonization effort with Ma and Pa Mccormac in suspended animation, Joe and Cathleen in hereditary ownership of the mansion-turned-starship and even Ollie returning. Without his knowledge, friends have taken a clone of Ollie’s tissue and by story’s end, an immature, version of his friend, about six years of age, appears at Joe’s elbow piping, "Hang onto your pants!" This has been Ollie’s tagline through out the book, whenever a warning, exhortation or exclamation is needed.

I found opportunity in Thumbing down a Star to explain or argue for everything I wished at the time to elucidate, even including temporary change of sex. Joe borrows a woman’s body for a short jaunt to Mars. The book never even reached second draft stage, but it was nice coming home from Math class every day about noon, and working on the seventeen chapters of the novel, finishing well before deadline.

In Geometry during my Junior year I pulled straight Cs. This was a bit of a letdown after A.s and B.s in Algebra, but it was understood that blind students tended to have trouble in Geometry. I think this had to do with the fact that it was the first really visual class any of us had taken. Diagrams in Geometry were more complex than those in and of the courses we’d had previously and the logical arguments were more rigorous than the rather soft argumentation employed in social science classes or in other math or science courses. I got Cs but did all of my own work. Marty Lancer raised a huge fuss and was provided with a tutor five hours per week. Marty’s mother insisted on top grades, whether he earned them or not.

Algebra-trig would be much more algebraic I was told. It had to do with lines and angles and drawing graphs from simple formulae. There weren’t so many proofs. I went over to Nathan Hale, the high school nearest our home, where my sister would be attending in a couple of years. Our teacher was Mr. Weller, who normally taught Latin. As sometimes happens, summer school was a good deal more laid back than regular term classes. I met some of the kids in my neighborhood but made no friendships that really lasted. I found the kids at Nathan Hale to be less sophisticated than those at my own school. Chris predictably found this opinion of mine to be offensive, but at Queen Anne I’d been often in the company of kids from families of Drs, Lawyers, engineers, professors. There is a fair amount of old money in the Queen Anne Hill area. Fortunately I was in touch with some of my Queen Anne friends over the summer. I began dating Cathy Zobel, a sweet girl from my journalism class who was a year behind me. I also kept in touch with June and Val on the phone as well as Marty, John and Chris Gray.

For the first time since Grade 1, I think, I made it to all of the initial three days of school. I’d found a route to school by city bus that didn’t require me to cross at major intersections. Within a few days, a schoolmate had shown me how to listen to parallel traffic to deduce when the light was changing in my favor. When on the following Monday, the special van was late, (never arrived actually,) I made a management decision to ride the city bus permanently. I fell into an informal camaraderie at the front of the 6:40 A.M. bus, which included Frank Falceni, the driver, about Dad’s age, whose own father made each Fall, 100 gallons of foot-stomped grape wine. There were also Erica, a twenty-something downtown office worker from someplace back East, Dr. Irene Gail, a Pedidontist at the U.W. Dental School, Bernie, an ex-baker who had lost an arm somehow and now operated a vending stand in The Courthouse and Bill a military guard at the Sandpoint Naval Air Station. We were a fun group, sharing stories, telling jokes discussing the news, criticizing one another’s tastes in reading.

Downtown I’d generally team up with John Zimmerman and a couple of girls from the Junior Class, Denise and Barb. Sometimes we’d go for cokes at the Bartelle’s lunch counter, where they served up about a tablespoonful of soft drink in a short juice glass, full of ice, all for a dime. I loved to wick off the ladies waiting counter there, by asking for a root beer or coke with no ice.

A couple of things happened near the beginning of school. Marcie Cardirola’s father died suddenly, drastically altering the near-future plans for her and her younger brother. The other thing that happened was my own dad’s arrest.

Dad had gone on a combined hunting-fishing trip by himself, about the time school started. We’d expected Dad back in two or three days but became concerned when it stretched to five. Mom started calling the State Patrol and within a few hours we had the news that Dad was in jail down in Chehalis. The charge was public drunkenness and indecent exposure. He was operating his vehicle while under the influence, but the thing that got him in trouble in those days back before MADD hit their stride, was when Dad took a pee in a parking lot where the Sheriff was sitting in his private vehicle with his wife and daughters. Dad didn’t call home, hoping to get himself out of the jamb before Mom or his employer found out. Mom predictably went through her usual litany. She didn’t want him back. He was a stupid drunk, etc. Dad had at one time promised to get help for his drinking problem but hadn’t followed through. Mom had been threatening to leave him since I couldn’t quite remember when, for years anyhow.

Mom stood in the kitchen, crying, after she’d gotten the news about Dad. I took her in my arms and told her she now had a chance to insist that Dad must go for treatment before he could return home. As usual, Mom did nothing very effectual. She and Lois drove down to Chehalis, with the granddaughters, to see Grandpa in jail.

Dad had a hearing and bail was arranged through a local bondsman. They drove home and a while after they arrived, Dad came over, kissed Mom and said thank you.

Mom said "I’ve got nothing to say to you Richard, until I talk with an attorney." He said okay. While Dad was gone, I’d dumped all of his beer down the toilet. Nothing was ever said, but more beer soon appeared.

Mom took Chris and they went somewhere camping, visiting, I don’t remember what. I stayed home against Mom’s wishes. She felt that Dad would perceive I was supporting him by hanging around the house. I didn’t give a damn. It was my home, a home in which I’d increasingly, as time went on, become the stable male presence and Mom’s confidante. Dad hardly ever missed a day of work and he worked very hard. Most evenings though, he sat behind the newspaper. I wasn’t going to be driven out of my home, not yet.

No lawyer was ever called. Mom returned and things went back to their dysfunctional usual.

On the first day of school I poured out my heart to Marcie, telling her I cared a great deal for her and that I felt very badly about her loss. She said I was very sweet but she just couldn’t get involved with anybody at this point. Marcie seemed to say things like that quite a lot, but usually seemed to be involved with somebody. We remained friends and had a fair amount of fun together in Writing Lab Class, but it was one of those relationships never really destined to be.

My two most significant classes, at least at first, were Advanced Physics and Beginning Chemistry. When I was planning my High School career, back in 10^th Grade, I’d talked things over with Mr. Hall, who’d told me Physics III. was available to Seniors who’d taken I and II and wished to pursue advanced topics. Another advanced science course I might pursue was Radiation Biology, Taught by Mr. Waite, head of the Biology Program. The course had to do with the effect of radiation of biological systems, but term projects about things like lasers and cyclotrons were sometimes allowable. I rather wish I’d taken the course. Mr. Waite was a demanding but very interesting teacher. I decided to take Chemistry along with advanced Physics. There were too many chemical reactions and formulae I was trying to comprehend.

Physics III. was basically a free-form sort of class. The idea was to had a small group of students working together to learn some experimental methods in class while everyone did a term project of some sort. Some past projects were quite fascinating. One student had done a paper on the total amount of energy due to heat at room temperature, electron movement and all other sources, contained in a single silver dime.

As always I had a full schedule and Sixth Period was the only one available for Physics which would have made me the only student in that class at that time. Mr. Hall said that I could get hurt working with some of the equipment by myself and if I couldn’t sign up during a different period, he didn’t want me to take the class. I’d been looking forward to Physics III. since early in my Sophomore year and the news that I might not be able to take it, was devastating, especially following, as it did, on the heels of Marcie’s rejecting my romantic overtures. I was determined to pull Something Good out of this day! I asked if I might do a theoretical project, on which I could base my term paper. Mr. Hall agreed and asked me to submit two or three proposals for topics. I did and he suggested that I should follow up on my Junior paper on cyclic patterns of conflicts through history.

Our Chemistry teacher, Mr. Severns, had a background in engineering, some of it from the military. He’d also worked as an undertaker at some time and seemed to have done a lot else in his fifty years or so. A lot of kids didn’t seem to like him, for reasons, which were unclear to me. I always got along with him though and I think we genuinely liked one another. I teamed up with a Junior named John Shibada, John did most of the actual chemical mixing but I was able to do the calculations and write-ups. Mr. Conroy had sent the Chemistry text to the Braillist for me the previous summer, so finally I had a book which could supply me with the technical information I needed to work on several ideas of current interest.

As promised the year before, I was given a column in the school paper. This gave me a lot of exposure with my schoolmates and was I think, the first time Mom, Lois and Bruce got the clear idea that I was a writer. It wasn’t as if I’d never shown them samples of my work, but this was something recognized by teachers and the school generally, making it something official rather than just something that I alone proposed. The Way I See It was fairly good. I used a lot of humor, yet strove to be informative. I showcased a lot of ideas and positions which otherwise have been neglected, making myself The Conservative Voice From The Back Page. A dozen years after graduating high school I could still read my old columns and enjoy them.

Though my Fall Contemporary Problems class started out as something not very significant, at least to me, I would later gain a lot of respect for Ms. Nickols, our rather left-of-center teacher. This was one of those classes everyone had to take, so she let everybody in! Nuff said? I did however, find myself sitting in front of Sharie Davis, who usually laughed at my jokes, a girl I felt to be rather like me, someone with a bit of a past, some dust-up with the law, I believe. Sharie was anti-drug, liked country music, was conservative in most of her beliefs. Quite early on, I invited her to one of the Country Western concerts at the Seattle Opera House, the first of numerous dates we’d have. We spent long hours on the phone sometimes, the longest phone conversations I’d had to date. Sharie’s Mom who seemed to have a rather ambitious alcohol problem as well as a history of hard times, including domestic abuse, thought I was the politest boy Sharie’d ever dated. She also went and got a gun when one of her boyfriends beat her up. I like women with guns!

Early in Senior Year I wrote letters to Princeton and Texas Tech. Universities. I got the applications from Princeton first. I laid the packet on top of my talking book machine, just inside my bedroom door. The door was not closed. Mom came home a while later, heard from Chris that something had come from Princeton. She had one of her screaming fits. My college plans were not something I was going to decide wholly on my own, that she and Dad were going to have to pay a great deal of my college expenses and no matter how many scholarships I got, I wasn’t going to hide college material in my room! I said I wasn’t hiding anything. I was merely keeping track of it so we could look at it together later, but of course that was no mitigation. A mad that good just couldn’t be wasted. It’s interesting to note that Mom and Dad never paid any significant amount of my college expenses and Mom’s hanging onto my application materials was a major cause of the haphazard manner in which my eventual college destination was selected for me.

There were a couple of problems about college. Everybody wanted the S.A.T. scores as part of the application information. I applied to take the November S.A.T. There was some sort of hold up and I believe I finally got to take it in February. I did pretty well, but this was awfully late for Princeton, which does its application business fairly early in the year.

The other problem went back a ways, about four and a half years, when my parents left Michigan. They had a bookkeeper to handle the books for their business as well as their personal finances. They tried to retrieve their records, needed for paying income taxes next year, but he evidently refused to turn loose of them. He said he had everything set down on ledgers and couldn’t release them at the moment. I asked at one point why my parents hadn’t taken legal action against the bookkeeper before leaving the state. He was evidently supposed to send the ledgers afterward and the folks were too intent on the extended vacation they were about to take, my mother especially on seeing Lois and the grandchildren again. The upshot was my parents just didn’t pay any taxes the following year, or the year after that.

When Dad went back to trucking, he started having withholding taken out of his checks again, but the missed taxes from ’67 and ’68 were yet unpaid in early ’72. The resultant was that they weren’t able to fill out a confidential financial statement for my scholarship applications. Dad made a lot of money so I’d not have been foremost in the list of prospective aid candidates for most schools, but Princeton was quite expensive and by their standards, we were fairly poor. I also had good grades so I had some possibility of qualifying for a merit scholarship.

All things considered, my other choice, Texas Tech. seemed a lot more doable financially. For Texas residents, classes cost $4.50 per semester credit. This put it on a par with community college in Washington State. The catch was, it took a year to establish Texas residency, so for the first year, the credits cost ten times as much. Still this wasn’t too bad compared to $4,970 per year at Princeton. If I could get through the first year, it would be comparatively cheap to finish my degree at Texas Tech. I’d considered just showing up in Lubbock and surviving any way I could the first year to qualify for Texas residency.

I’d checked with Lloyd Smart, the college program advisor for State Services for the Blind. He’d said even if I went out of state; I could still have the amount of money necessary to attend the University Of Washington. Mr. Conroy, whom I suspected was asked to do some in-school recruiting for the State Services summer program, had told Marty and me that State Services paid not only for tuition, books and readers, but also board and room, travel expenses plus $200 per quarter for spending money. This would add up to a fair amount of cash, probably sufficient to see me to Texas Tech. It turned out that most of the information I’d been given was incorrect and some of it was subject to change without notice, but I wouldn’t know that for a while.

One can certainly ask why I was so eager to go out of state when there was a perfectly good university right here in town, several in fact. There were a number of reasons, not the least of, which was a desire to get clear of my increasingly dysfunctional family. I’d also heard a lot of scuttlebutt; much of it inflated perhaps, about radical activity on the University Of Washington campus. Mrs. Steinhauser and some other teachers tended to magnify the importance of leftist activities at Queen Anne and the U.W. and the university seemed quite hostile to persons like me. Another issue had to do with my blindness. Ever since I’d been prodded by Mrs. Swanson to participate in the Friday Evening social group in Ninth Grade, it seemed I’d been approached every few months to take part in some blind activity. I was supposed to go down to Vancouver for a live-in workshop, go to handicapped admissions programs, take part in some political activity or other. Most blind students who went to college tended to end up at the University Of Washington and I feared that if I went there I’d be even more inundated with blind activism, possibly even put into a special living situation. Such things happened in some colleges. I thought if I entered an institution which was clearly labeled as a technical university, there’d be fewer blind students. I also assumed that Texans would be more rough and ready, less likely to make such a huge deal about my comparatively slight handicap.

At school my column was catching on with the student body. Kids often stopped me in the hall to talk about things I’d written, sometimes to suggest interesting topics I might use. Teachers often read my column aloud in class. One evening I got a call from Molly Casey, Jim Paynton’s girlfriend. Jim was now at the U.W. and Molly was a Senior at a South Seattle high school. Molly was also on the staff of her school’s newspaper. It was customary for Seattle schools to exchange papers and she said she’d been following my column and liked it a great deal. Molly said she was with a Junior Achievement company this year, which was putting out a newspaper. Could I possibly come down the following evening and help them plan the format and so forth? My head swelled about three times its normal size. I was very status conscious in those days. Molly and Jim gave me a ride down to the J.A. headquarters next evening and I suddenly found myself a member of Junior Achievement and V.P. of Production/editor of Seattle Seen, which was intended as a monthly newspaper/magazine. In fairly short order I learned, as Paul Harvey would say, The Rest of the Story. One group of students had expressed an interest in starting a newspaper. Junior Achievement had thought this a good idea and had procured two volunteer advisors from The Seattle Post Intelligencer, our morning paper. The group who wanted to do journalism however had somehow been scheduled for an evening not corresponding to the volunteer hours of the advisors. Instead of doing something to rectify this, Junior Achievement officials had told another group, not at all interested in newspaper work to put out the paper. The budding journalists were told to pick another topic.

As I’d learned a long time before, newspaper work is serious business, even at the junior amateur level. It’s not a game for people not motivated to play. By Christmas we had about five Active participants in our company. We put out our only issue in February, Ten-cents per copy. That was the end of Seattle Seen.

I’ve got a lot of respect for junior Achievement generally. I think it’s a good way for kids to pick up people skills, and learn some beginning business principles. It also can be a lot of fun. My own experience with J.A. however, was a disorganized, haphazard mess!

My school column was providing contacts of other varieties as well. One morning in Contemporary Problems class, I was berated by a substitute, a shrill young woman, for a piece I’d written on the revolt at the Attica Prison in New York. All I really said was I’d heard a lot of people at school sympathizing with the prisoners but hardly anyone seemed to care about the prison guards who’d been killed when the riot had been put down. Toni Adams had been very angry at what I’d written and seeing my name on her attendance roll, had let fly. That was okay. I was a journalist with an unpopular position. One girl had even called me a fascist, so I’d started signing notes Your Friendly Neighborhood Fascist Pig. I cut one of Toni’s classes when I learned she was again substituting for Miss Nichols. Toni confronted me in the hall, asking me if I wasn’t going to be in trouble for cutting her class. I hadn’t skipped any classes since the time I ran away in Tenth Grade, but I knew it wouldn’t be any big deal. Our school tended to pacify rather than punish. I told her as much.

The last time I saw Toni Adams was when she was again substituting for Miss Nichols. She walked into class and said, "I don’t care what you think about it. You’re taking this test on women’s lib." I disliked her antagonistic attitude of course, but took the survey. Even though I’d developed a hearty distaste for some of the inflammatory rhetoric of certain feminists, I generally supported most of their issues, if for no other reason on the basis of individual choice. I’m not wild about day cares and I dislike any effort to make everyone think identically with one another, or worse, a few leaders. As I recall, the quiz had more to do with individual choice and self-esteem than anything else, but it was clumsily conceived.

One question asked if you were shopping for a gift for your three-year-old daughter, would you give her a vacuum cleaner "(just like Mommy’s)" a nurse’s kit or a doctor’s kit? Of course, everybody knows that a Dr. kit would be better than a nurse kit. Another question asked if you’d let your 8-year-old daughter wear a training bra instead of an undershirt. I suspect Mom wouldn’t go for that. Chris was just getting her first bras the year before, but I’d been wearing feminine underclothes off and on since age nine, so what the hell? I wasn’t going to tell somebody what they shouldn’t wear.

You needed a score of 50 or higher to be counted as Liberated. I got 48. I’d have done better but for a question that asked what you’d tell your 14-year-old daughter to do if a truck driver whistled at her, appreciate it, -10 points, call him a dirty old man, 3 points, call him a sexist pig, 10 points? I said she should appreciate it and call him a dirty old man, net points for that question –7. Of course I knew how things would fall out. If not for this question though, I’d have been as liberated as most of the girls in our class.

Sharie read the quiz to me and helped me mark the responses. We got the point values for our answers after filling out the quiz. Toni made a particular point of scrutinizing my test, assuming it would have a negative score or something. When she saw 48 points she nearly had squeaky apoplexy.

I don’t recall what happened during the rest of that class but it must have been irritating. Toni was preaching again or something. We had not by the way, been studying feminism before Miss Nichols became ill. At about five minutes to the hour, eight boys got up and walked out as a group. I was one of them. This was the only class I ever left without permission or a medical emergency. I told Miss Nichols what I’d done and said I’d accept Es for the two days in question if she wanted to do that. She told me that she’d likely have done the same thing if she’s been as bored and insulted as I appeared to have been. Nowadays I’d likely be right up at the top of Toni’s survey scale but I’d still walk out of class and much sooner if she talked to us now in the same way she did then.

One day Julie Livingston, the KUAY Weekly Editor asked me if I’d have somebody help me look through the morning paper, see who’d won the primary elections the day previous and write a story on the winners. It was largely, though not entirely, a school board election. This was the time when mandatory bussing was an extremely hot issue. I felt bussing was a bad idea for several reasons. I’d been a victim of bussing most of my life and had very little opportunity for socializing after school or for doing activities such as sports. I’d intended to try out for the wrestling team but it looked as if I’d be lucky to make it home by Eight o’clock each evening. My sister and I had both experienced the benefits of multi-racial education.

While not inferring for a moment that Black k kids didn’t have problems too, Chris and I had certainly soaked up more mistreatment than we’d dished out. Neither or us were interested in transferring to a predominantly Black inner city school.

I interviewed candidates on both sides of the bussing issue and though I can’t say I strove for absolute balance, I did try to make the three articles which emerged, straightforward new pieces not mere opinion columns.

Early in the year I heard about a presentation by Jim Casterline of The Citizens’ Committee For The Right To Keep And Bear Arms. We often used class time to cover stories of all kinds so I asked Mr. Knox, our new Journalism teacher if I could go to the auditorium and see if it was worth an article. He agreed.

I never did write an article for The KUAY because I thought interest would be too limited or of the wrong sort. I did however find the talk very interesting. I introduced myself to Jim, a man in his mid-twenties and asked him a few questions before the program. I was sufficiently impressed by his answers that I asked if I could work with him at some level.

Jim began his talk with some history lessons from Axis Germany and Italy as well as the Soviet Union. Whenever a totalitarian government took over, he said, one of the first things they did was pick up all the guns from private citizens. Gun registration he felt was basically a preparation for confiscation, should the government decide to do that. Jim didn’t see the gun laws of Washington State or most Western states as being particularly unreasonable but politicians could work great change in a short time and the 2^nd Amendment, having been misinterpreted so many times, was in danger of being rendered without content.

I looked up the U.S. Constitution and made myself a wallet card with the 2^nd Amendment on it. It read

A well-ordered militia being essential to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Over the last few decades it has become fashionable to cite a Supreme Court decision that Militia refers to the National Guard. While the National Guard is a militia there would obviously be no point in writing a constitutional amendment guaranteeing the right of the Army or National Guard to keep and bear arms. Military is synonymous with Armed Force. Even in 1800 there were many ways of managing a militia besides relying upon privately-owned guns, many of which wouldn’t be adequate in any case to military service. What the Constitution says is the right of The People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed. Though it is probably appropriate to restrict to kinds of weapons available to the public, perhaps the number purchased by an individual, opponents of private gun ownership should work to repeal the Second Amendment and not resort to the sophistry of claiming it says what it clearly does not. I’ll have more to say on this subject in later chapters.

While I was having my own battles in the present, I continued to speculate about the battles of the past and the structure of causality. As the basis for my physical inquiry into the dynamics of history, I decided to become somewhat familiar with Werner Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, which appeared to limit our ability to predict the future no matter how much data we amassed. Mr. Hall gave me a chapter to study and I had it put on tape.

The Uncertainty Principle is basically the idea that whatever one does to investigate the position or motion of any object, a particle for example, will itself change the position or behavior of that particle to some extent. We can have a pretty good idea of where a car is and how fast it is going, though we will be exact to only so many decimal points. When we wish to investigate something much smaller, such as an atom for example, the light or x-rays we use to investigate it will significantly affect what the atom is doing. We must have some minimum uncertainty regarding each atom. So much for my original idea that we could compute future events from past data if we could start with the positions of all atoms in a body, setting or other system and had sufficiently powerful computers to deal with the massive data stream.

I returned to the macroscopic end of things, looking at history books, notably Battles that changed History by Fletcher Pratt. I picked up some other battles to add or subtract from Creasey’s original list of fifteen. Things started to fall into a different pattern.

While in my Junior Year, I’d detected a speeding up of events as one approached the present. More decisive battles per millenium say. Now it appeared there was a sort of wave pattern moving forward through history characterized by a period of relatively frequent decisive battles and societal change due to them, followed by a period of relative stability. Each cycle or wave, (one peak and one trough,) was shorter than that one preceding it chronologically.

The first wave appeared to start about 500 BC with the Greek states overcoming the Persian invaders. The Greek states fought among themselves for a while then the Macedonians, (Alexander The Great and that lot,) conquered the Greeks. Later Rome conquered the Greek/Macedonian amalgamation. There was a period of relative stability from about 100 Bc. till about 400 AD though relative stability doesn’t mean there wasn’t any fighting going on. It just meant that relatively little real estate changed hand. Relatively few despot lines were dethroned. By First Wave or cycle, I meant to say, this was the first wave I’d been able to investigate in any detail.

The second wave began around 400 and ended in the 11^th century. It saw the fall of the old Roman Empire, the rise of the European states, the rise of Islam and the establishment of relative equilibrium between Christian and Islamic powers.

Wave Three ended toward the end of the 15^th Century. It saw the resolution of the Viking onslaughts again France and Britain, the Norman conquest of England, the beginning of the expulsion of Islamic forces from Spain and Southern France, as well as the several Crusades, not all that decisive in and of themselves but strong indicators of Europe’s aggression against The East.

Wave Four began with the resolution of the 100 Years War, the total Ouster of Islamic forces from Spain, progressing to the turning back of Turks from Vienna. With in a few decades, Spain was pushed back from Holland and then from Britain with the defeat of the Armada. Simultaneously, South and Central America were being conquered by the Spanish while Protestant nations and states were being established in Scandinavia, Holland, Britain and parts of The German Principalities.

The Fifth Wave, after a rather boisterous but not that decisive trough period in the later 17^th Century, saw the rise of Russia and the German States. The consolidation of much of North America under British rule and later the rise of the 13 American Colonies, as well as the rise and fall of Napoleon.

Wave Six began around the middle of the 19^th century, saw the beginning of the break-up of the British Empire, the consolidation of Germany, the conquest of The North American Continent and the long struggle involving Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the United States, which we call World Wars I. and II. There had obviously been much fighting since World War II, but the West had remained relatively stable, as had the major powers of the East. It looked as if we could expect significant problems sometime between 1990 and 2020. There was so much variation in the length or duration of waves or the proportion of each comprising the active and stable phases that one could not make a very accurate prediction with any degree of confidence. I thought the ‘90s would likely be a period of fairly decisive military activity and it’s interesting to note that the Gulf War occurred in 1991 and George Bush II. initiated his war on terrorism in 2001.

In the original version of my Wave Theory I tried to include a pattern of numbers of decisive battle occurrences in the various waves. This was problematic, partly because it wasn’t always clear which battles should be included. The word Decisive is not a very specific term. A battle can be decisive at the time but not affect world history very much in the long run. Some people believe that the conquest of England by William of Normandy in 1066 changed English culture very little and had little impact on England’s military potential. I tend to disagree but would listen respectfully to both sides. Similarwise, I read about midway through my Senior year, A More Perfect Union, an alternate history novel by Robert Stapp, in which the American Civil War had never taken place. The United States and The Confederacy had gone into both world wars on the same side. Slavery had been abolished in The Confederacy in the 1870s, since it was a nonprofitable way of doing business and actually quite unpopular without Yankee abolitionists to antagonize southerners. How important could the Civil War have been?

Perhaps the star example of a decisive but useless conflict was The Battle of New Orleans, fought in early 1815, weeks after the War of 1812 was concluded.

It looked as if my early adulthood would be under the shadow of strife and I suspected much of the strife would be civil. There was a lot in print about the build-up of arms within organizations black and white, left and right. America had accomplished Gemini and Apollo during the Vietnam War and during the race riots of the late sixties. It still seemed appropriate for me to study Space Science and Technology instead of Police Science, but I read all I could find on weapons and riot control.

My Chemistry class further fuelled an interest conceived a couple of years before, of a system which derived both life support and propulsion from the same set of chemical ingredients. I’d known for a number of years about hydrogen and oxygen being used in fuel cells to furnish electricity and drinkable water. This was an excellent way to accomplish power production and a vital life support function in a single process. I was now very interested in chemicals which could break water apart and yield useful ingredients. One of these was fluorine, which combines energetically with the hydrogen in water and liberates oxygen. Perhaps adding fluorine to waste water could generate oxygen. The hydrofluoric acid resulting from the combination of fluorine with hydrogen could then perhaps be reacted with a metal, possibly from a lower rocket stage, to yield energy. The energy released by the reaction of hydrogen and oxygen, and then water and fluorine, then hydrogen fluoride and beryllium or aluminum of magnesium would provide energy sufficient to jettison molten fluoride or a solution at high exhaust speeds, providing thrust. There seemed significant chance of poisoning the crew with such a system, so I looked next at lithium.

Lithium is a light metal, which combines with water to yield a considerable amount of energy and free hydrogen. It can also be used in a battery to produce electricity.

To provide life support for a mammal in a closed environment such as a spacecraft, one must in addition to supplying air, water, food and sewage removal, remove carbon-dioxide and excess moisture from the cabin air as well as seeing to temperature control. There can be other issues, but these are the main ones. The idea was to react lithium metal in a battery to yield lithium oxide, use the lithium oxide to remove oxygen from the cabin air, yielding lithium hydroxide, then using the lithium hydroxide to scrub carbon-dioxide from the air to yield lithium bicarbonate, (rather like baking soda, but don’t swallow any.) Gray water and urine would be held in a storage tank and lithium carbonate would be added to it, making the mixture quite electrically conductive. A device called an MHDD rocket could vaporize this solution and eject it at high speeds afterward to propel the spacecraft. The point of all this was to design a deep space system, which could take advantage of the massive amount of material, needed to sustain a human crew on a months-long trip, as rocket propellant. If the hull could be kept quite light and a reasonably high exhaust velocity could be achieved by the electromagnetic rocket, it looked as if a fairly small ship, with a crew or perhaps six, could achieve orbit around Mars or make a journey into the Asteroids. I’d spend a lot of time in college investigating the possibilities of biodyne systems and the concept. Though my ideas have refined a good deal from high school, through university and to the present, I suspect the 3^rd or 4^th generations of my old biodyne idea would be the most reasonable way of reaching the moons of Mars of the asteroid belt.

In Len Ziska, our new mobility instructor, I had someone with whom to bounce around new ideas, whether on biodynes or sociodynamics or weapons or winemaking or politics. Len was from Minnesota and like Tom Specht, had been in the Army. He’d gone to college to study Physics but by his own testimony, had started goofing around about the end of the second year as well as developing a personality conflict with the departmental Chair. Len had started taking a lot of shop classes and ended up with a degree in Industrial Arts. He’d evidently rattled around a bit in various jobs before taking his Master’s in Orientation and Mobility. I still get in touch with Len every few years. Len had a great sense of humor and was a lot less uptight than Tom. He said "I don’t care how many times you mess up as long as you know how to get yourself out of it."

With Len I learned to negotiate department stores, take elevators and escalators, get through the grayhound station and train depot, we even had a lesson at the airport. It wasn’t hard to turn a lesson into a shopping excursion. Together we examined knives, swords, antique guns, men’s suits, electronics. His boss at Community Services for the Blind told Len,

"I want you to start wearing a white shirt and tie to work."

Len was the first person I ever heard tell someone "You can want it in one hand and shit in the other, see which gets full fastest."

There was one matter relating to mobility that I found quite irritating and still do in retrospect. Toward the end of Junior year, without prior warning from Tom, I was told to report to the C.S.B. socialworker. Betty Luttrell began asking me questions about my background, my experiences with mobility, and my attitudes about travelling by myself. "What do you do when you can’t find your way?"

"I swear a while then go in some different direction."

"So you take out your anger by swearing?"

I asked her what this was all about. I didn’t appreciate losing one of my lessons and liked it much less when I found that this was to be a weekly occurrence. Betty said that learning mobility tended to be a very stressful process and it had been decided that students should have access to a social worker with whom to discuss anxieties and other issues.

I complained to Mom over being sent to a social worker just because I was taking cane travel. I didn’t necessarily feel Mobility to be the most stressful part of my day, (when I had it!) Mom called C.S.B. talked probably to a clerk/receptionist asked if I really needed to spend my mobility time talking to a counselor? The woman said she supposed not. The summer began about that time and though I still had some mobility, the social work discontinued for the time being.

Of course Mom by now had turned poor Betty Lutrell into a psychiatrist instead of a social worker and also made her into a weapon. One summer afternoon I came home from a mobility lesson or from a class and had intended to spend the rest of the day reading Homer’s Iliad. It wasn’t as if I was all that stuck on Ancient Greek Epic poetry, but the book had been out for quite some time and I thought it was high time I finished it. While I was in class Mom had formulated a plan for the day, to go to Lois’s and spend the afternoon swimming with the grandchildren. There was a pool within walking distance of Lois’s house. Mom always had a very low heat tolerance and always wanted to "get away and sit by the water." I said I’d intended to read this afternoon. "Oh my God, David," Mom shouted. "What makes you think you don’t need a psychiatrist when all you want to do is hibernate in your room and listen to records. I completed the Iliad, then the Odyssey, along with 2001 a Space Odyssey; a project I’d assigned myself to compare Homer with Clarke. Sure I was bookish, but didn’t see sitting by the water as a cural for my evident psychosis.

I met Betty Lutrell again early on the next year, again at the expense of my day per week. I did enjoy getting to know her better and it was actually rather fun to have someone with behavioral and psychological training with whom to discuss things, though the talks never got all that deep. I brought Betty my columns and some of my poetry to read. Once I got her into a discussion of transvestitism. She told me about chorus lines in certain nightclubs that featured female impersonators and said it was interesting to speculate what these performers put in their bras. That conversation took place on a Friday I think, and I’d see Betty again on Sunday.

I’d been asked to MC at a Christmas party/recital, put on by C.S.B. and the parents of the blind kids. Two of the grade school boys had come up with a skit poking fun of the special bus service that year, in particular an elderly driver who’d evidently been losing her way with some regularity. Gary Maranin, to whom I’d given a bunch of my Current Science magazines, was going to portray a dotty old lady bus driver, while Gordon Murray, whose mom had asked me to MC, was going to be an angry dispatcher chewing her out. One of the mothers had suggested that Gary wear a dress or something so he could look like the lady bus driver. At first this seemed acceptable, but on the morning of the performance but on the morning of the performance, Gordon called me, quite distraught, saying that Gary’d wimped out and wasn’t coming to the party. Couldn’t I fill in for the grandma driver? I borrowed a dress and a sweater from Mom and filled in for Gary. Between announcing stints I ducked into a utility room behind stage and while Doug Mcclenahan was playing the Hall Of The Mountain King and the Wreck Of the Good Ruben James on the guitar, I whipped off my pants and put on the dress over my shirt, then the sweater. One of the ladies lent me a scarf to cover my hair that I wore then in an approximate crewcut.

I had a mustache then and quite hairy legs. I wore my cowboy boots under the dress and leant on my silver cane as I walked out on stage. I broke up the house, especially with my "the devil made me do it, Sonny," a swipe from Flip Wilson the female impersonating comedian. One of the dads presented me with one of the new Eisenhower silver dollars, which I kept for many years as the only pay I’ve ever received for doing a drag show.

After the performances, Santa came in to talk with the kids. There was a boy named Bert present, who was somewhat retarded, though my age, he tended to be treated like one of the younger kids. Bert asked if I was gong to go up and see Santa, because it seemed to him like a baby thing. I knew the parents would likely pressure Bert so I said sure, I was going up to see Santa too. We went up together and Santa, seeing that Bert was uncomfortable, tried to rush us through. But I said "Santa, you didn’t ask me what I wanted for Christmas."

Santa said, "Okay, what do you want for Christmas?"

"A dolly," I said, "about five-six, 125-130 pounds, Blonde hair, blue eyes..." The laugh that came out of old Santa Clause wasn’t even close to Ho ho, ho.

At our next meeting, I told Betty that the skit had been a spur of the moment thing. I hadn’t been meaning to telegraph something by talking about transvestitism with her on Friday then coming out on stage in a dress on Sunday. Betty laughed then asked if at Halloween or any other dressing up time, had I the opportunity before to play a woman’s role? I said I’d played around at home to some extent but had never done anything like that in public. The topic ended at that point but it was the first time I’d ever discussed issues like this, even tangentially with a mental health professional.

During the time we knew each other, Betty endeavored to make me understand that she wasn’t a psychologist "who listened to confessions," but worked with people to help them function within the social system. We developed a great degree of mutual respect and I was glad I’d come to know her, even though our visits cut into my mobility time which had already been cut to the bare minimum. Marty Lanser had used up his mobility time the year previous, being tutored in geometry, so his lessons had to be made up this year. Though I had a good deal left to do, since my own lessons hadn’t been a high priority the past year, due to the graduating Seniors, my lessons were far from adequate this year. That’s why I’d resented the social work. Here’s what I think was really going on.

Community Services for the Blind had a contract with the Seattle School System to provide mobility training for all blind students. One year the school system was going to cancel mobility in favor of a program in Afro-American dancing, on the grounds that the later program would serve more students. Somehow, an 11^th-hour decision saved the mobility program for us, but it was always being threatened. C.S.B. claimed that Len Ziska and before him, Tom Specht, was the only instructor available and the current individual must provide lessons. Of course, an instructor’s time was finite and he was responsible for many other clients than high school students. At the same time, C.S.B. had a staff social worker who was doubtless needed in some connection, but whose position was difficult to fund. Instead of dismissing Betty or hiring a part time social worker, C.S.B. elected to make social work sessions an integral part of the mobility program, and then they could charge Seattle Schools for Betty’s services. Two or three of the high school students in the program clearly needed ongoing counseling, but their problems were not necessarily mobility-related. I’ve seen this ploy of inflating programs for the blind with incidental services and charging as if they were essentials, quite a few times over the years.

In the late Fall of ’71, Joe Marshall, who recruited blind students for summer work and permanent employment, approached me to write an essay. Joe worked with a number of service organizations. One of them was Civitans International, which had originally been a group of veterans organized to help handicapped or disabled children abroad and at home. They were sponsoring an essay contest, with local, regional and national prizes, the topic being The Citizen’s Responsibility to the Community. At first the prospect looked a little dubious, but I thought it over and with some bugging from Joe, I started with Ancient Athens where the home guard was summoned by a bugle blast from the city walls. I worked my way through other concepts of civic responsibility over the centuries. I ended with my ideas on the things necessary for our form of civilization to continue and what an individual could do at home, at school, in the community.

Frankly I don’t recall a great deal of the specific content, but I do recall saying that Marxist

Communism was unworkable (it is,) and that family values were very important. There was a lot in there to please upper-middle class elders. There was in those days a high demand for articulate intelligent, patriotic young people to provide that the new generation was not entirely hell bound.

I happened to be all of those things and won the Seattle judging, receiving a gold-filled and an award luncheon at a local grade school cafeteria, to which Mom and Lois were also invited. A lady who owned a small local magazine heard of my essay and bought it for $20, which was the first time anything I’d written had actually been accepted for pay in a print publication. I learned from this experience that I could get a lot of exposure by presenting patriotic material to conservative organizations. No cheap stratagem this. I was sincere enough but realized I’d found a niche. I won the regional judging for Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Alaska and Hawaii, but fell short of the national and the scholarship prizes.

Some memories are difficult to disentangle from one another and one of my favorite books is inextricably bound up with an illness and with women’s self defense as well. I’d read a chapter on nonlethal weapons and had learned that The Chemical Mace was developed by a professor type, as a means of helping women defend themselves from muggers and rapists. The compound was so effective however, that law enforcement authorities had seen to it that true Mace was taken off the civilian market, being reserved for police use and of course for criminals as well, who were not concerned with obeying the law. I thought it would be nice if a person could mix up an effective Mace substitute in her own kitchen.

Women at one time were advised to buy a child’s squirt gun and fill it with household ammonia. This isn’t too effective though unless one can squirt the chemical directly into the assailant’s eyes. Mace was effective against the entire face because it contained a chemical, which broke down the oily protective layer of the face, allowing the pain-inducing ingredient, (essentially teargas,) to take maximum effect.

I’d bought some oil of wintergreen a while before, just because it sounded like something fun with which to experiment. I’d gotten the notion I wouldn’t want this stuff in my eyes or on sore skin. I’d also found that common vinegar could do a good job of breaking down the oily layer of the skin, and could be strengthened with a few tabs of vitamin C or some citric acid powder.

I mixed p a small batch of oil of wintergreen with vinegar and tried some, tentatively on my face. It seemed to do a good job of producing pain, especially where I’d shaved. I got some of the fumes in my lungs though, and they stayed with me for quite a while.

Sometime later I started to feel ill, not from the fumes but from a flu bug that I’d probably picked up at school. I felt well enough though, to go over to Lois’s and eat an excellent prime-rib dinner, after which I dozed on the couch, my sleep punctuated by the conversation of my youngest niece, who was in attention-seeking mode.

When it was time to get up, I went outside and as cold air hit me, I threw up. I felt badly about barfing up my sister’s good cooking and told her so, but it felt as if a hundred-pound weight had been lifted from me. I would be sick though for another couple of days.

The next morning I received a book I’d ordered from the library, Poul Anderson’s loosely connected anthology, Tales from the Flying Mountains. An asteroid starship is en route to Alpha Centauri and the trip will last forty years. A group of important persons meet in committee to decide what will comprise the learning curriculum for the young people aboard ship. Their discussions provide engaging interludes between seven stories tracing the start of True space development and the formation of The Asteroid Republic.

It all starts when one of your brilliant scientific nerd types who is also the nephew of a senator, gains the ear of the director of NASA. The director is talked into funding a project to develop what amounts to a reversible gravity-antigravity device based on a principle called Gyrogravitics. The unexpected success of the project leads not only to reactionless drives for spaceships, (engines which use to propellant or reaction mass,) but artificial gravity fields and portable fusion generators.

The story line is basically; bold freelance entrepreneurs spread through the solar system, mining the mineral wealth of asteroids and the atmosphere of Jupiter. Starving earth attempts to collectivize the private wealth and funnel it back earthward. Colonist rebels break away and build a nation, like America but even better. The asteroid Republic funds the building of a starship, which being an asteroid, is much like staying at home.

The major point of interest in the book, at least to me, wasn’t so much the asteroid starship itself. I’d thought of that idea a couple of years before, but that the major thrust of space development would not be aimed at the planets but at the much smaller and more accessible asteroids. Why battle heavy gravitational fields when you can mine rocks with essentially no gravity and minerals right for the picking at their surfaces?

The other thing about the book that was so engaging was the idea that developers could drill to the center of a large rock and install a gyrogravitic generator, giving the world any desired surface gravity. An atmosphere could be retained without needing to build a hulk around the asteroid. Water could be hauled in from the rings of Saturn to create lakes and streams. The sky is now dotted with tiny worlds with farms, parks, even newly sprouting forests.

Of course, I didn’t know how to build a gyrogravitic generator, but I caught the asteroid bug and became one of those people who long to build an asteroid federation. I began focussing on the innovations necessary to sustain life in a small space community or in an independent community on earth. It would be a number of years until I had anything very practical, but like the Biodyne, the Self-sustaining home unit would shape a good deal of what I thought read about and remembered from my college coursework.

College plans grumbled along. The Princeton App. really wasn’t happening. It was fairly involved and nobody had even bothered yet to read me the essay questions. I consoled myself that I was a conservative and didn’t need to go to a nest of Eastern Liberals as Princeton seemed to have become. The curriculum at Texas Tech. sounded fascinating and challenging. I decided I wanted a degree in Engineering Physics, with as much Journalism as I could fit into elective time.

Texas Tech. warned that acceptances might not be received until July. I got mine in April, about two weeks after I sent in my App. Furthermore, I was accepted to the Engineering College. It looked like I was going away to Texas. (Then I heard back from Princeton.)

One evening I received a call from Dr. Bradley, a Princeton graduate who practiced in Seattle. He wanted me to come in for a personal interview. I believe all applicants received one on one interviews. I told him I could come in after school the following day, if that would be convenient. I heard Mom hissing that I was So Stubborn! because I didn’t cut class and come in whenever the interviewer told me too. Obviously though a college interviewer would hardly direct a student to miss class, especially without prior permission.

I met Dr. Bradley in his office next day and he asked me if I wanted to go to Princeton. I said I was very interested in the school and I was set on going there for grad school, but with one thing and another, I’d assumed I was too late to apply this year. He seemed to think otherwise and told me what an excellent opportunity Princeton would be for me. We discussed my interests for a while, including my sociodynamic work. I hadn't spent a lot of time thinking over what I'd’ say to a Princeton rep. since I didn't think it was very probable I'd be going there right away. I mentioned to Dr. Bradley that I was quite conservative and felt I might fit in better at a Southern college such as Texas Tech. That didn't resonate all that well with him either and he advised me to at least complete my Princeton application. He said I shouldn’t even consider my blindness when applying since he was sure this wouldn’t be a factor in the selection process. This was nice to know since Mom had been making noises that she didn’t know if Princeton would allow a blind student to enroll. There was no such thing as the A.D.A. in those days.

So I went away thinking Okay, I’ll fill out my App. but no big rush about it. Mom certainly didn’t seem impressed either.

A few days later I got a phone call from my brother-in-law Bruce. He said he’d heard I had an opportunity to attend an Ivy League school. I told him there was some possibility but I hadn’t been accepted. He said to grab it, that a Princeton education would pretty much assure a job at two or three times the salary I could get with just a state university degree.

I’d been talking about Princeton for a year and a half now and scant attention had been paid me. Now that Bruce had said something, Princeton was suddenly a priority. The application was completed finally, and sent back by return mail. Too Late! Huge Surprise!

I still had Texas Tech.

My college applications did finally spur Mom and Dad to report their omissions to the IRS. A highly obnoxious field investigator came to our house and basically threatened my parents. He claimed his office had been aware of our lapses for some time and full restitution must be made. This, including interest and penalties totaled over $5000. At home or with friends, Mom and Dad didn’t usually act like people who took much crap off anyone. With that idiot however, they were both obviously frightened, kept calling him Sir and generally cow towing.

He told them they should sell one of our cars. I told him the cars didn’t work all of the time and the reason we had two was so one would be working. I currently work for a government agency and it bugs me when clients call me Sir. I tell them I’m just Dave and this is their agency as much as it is mine. Eventually the tax issue was resolved but it took a while to get entirely clear of it.

Several more matters of note would happen during the later part of my Senior year. Several of them related, in one way or another, to our Spring Semester Contemporary Problems Class which dealt with Washington State Government. Mr. Charles Gerald, a soft-spoken man who was near retirement now, taught our Class. For many years he had organized all of his classes into something called The Thunderbird Lounge. This was a kind of lodge, with elected officers, rituals, regalia, memorabilia and traditions. This is not to say that there was anything clandestine, subversive or cultish about it. The whole thing was very clean-cut and possibly a bit juvenile for the sophisticated teens of the early ‘70s, still, a good deal of fun.

Before class proper, we’d have a short meeting in which awards would be presented, activities planned, club history read or narrated. We were organized rather like a tribe with thunder Chiefs heading each class and Fire Chief status given for honorable deeds. Usually one of the girls was chosen as class secretary. She had a special footstool that would be placed for her by a male retainer.

I was made a Fire Chief with a laminated ID card for my services as Tribal Scribe. I reported Lounge activities in my column and sometimes gave talks to other classes about upcoming activities and events. Our major event was a trip to the Suquamish Reservation, The people of Chief Seattle, on Bainbridge Island. Our group contributed hotdogs and fixings while the Native youth group contributed clams. We had a weenie-roast/clambake on the beach, followed by native dancing in which I participated, as did Mr. Gerald, though most of our class did not.

One afternoon in Mr. Gerald’s class, a girl named Laurie Gregory, whom I’d not met before, asked me if I were a Gemini. I said this was so and asked how she guessed. Laurie said she’d observed that I was good with my hands. I Communicated well and I was intellectual. She said when pressed, that she deduced I would be good with my hands since I had long, artistic fingers. Soon I’d made Laurie a Braille alphabet which she learned quite quickly and borrowing my slate when I wasn’t using it, exchanged notes with me. I wrote her a poem in Braille and she responded with a perfume-drenched missive that said

Gemini

Love makes the world go round.

It is beautiful people like you that make it spin.

love Laurie Belle.

(She’d been nicknamed Laurie Belle by her sisters, because she was a dingaling.)

Laurie accepted my invitation to our Senior Cruise in late March or early April. This was aboard the Virginia V. that for many years has been a seagoing dance and party vessel for Seattle residents and their friends. She has often been chartered for large weddings, organizational gatherings and high school cruises.

This, according to the planning committee wasn’t supposed to be a couple’s only affair, but most of us saw it that way. Laurie and I danced below decks in the rather cramped dance floor space, taking our turn on the open deck when space allowed, kissing on the half-hour. At one point a guy asked if it was okay to dance one number with my girl. I said sure. The rest of the evening was without much incident. We had a good time. I pretty much assumed we were a couple.

An interesting footnote to the event, as mentioned in an earlier chapter, a girl had asked Laurie with whom was she going on the cruise. Laurie told her and the girl had said "Oh, that was the kid who ran away a couple years ago and took acid." As previously mentioned, I had not done drugs then or afterward.

A week or so after the cruise while riding with Laurie partway home of the bus; I asked her if she had thought of going to the Prom. She said that yes, she was going to the Prom with a young man, whose name she couldn’t quite recall at the moment, but he was the guy who’d asked me if he could dance with her on the cruise. I was quite stunned. I’d been trying to give Laurie some space while we got to know one another better, but I thought we had some kind of understanding.

I didn’t say anything much at the time, but I went home, lay on my bed and cried as long as tears would come, a half-hour or so. This was a Friday I think and I felt rotten most of the weekend. Mom noticed I was very subdued and asked if I could tell her what was wrong. When I told her, Mom said not unsympathetically, that sometimes you could wait too long to ask for a particular date. Laurie might have felt I’d had my chance to ask already and didn’t want to miss the prom. That didn’t help a whole lot, but did put things in some sort of perspective.

Saturday evening I went into my room and started rereading one of the Weapons Shops stories by A. E. Van Vogt. I thought it might take my mind off my romantic problems. It didn’t, but I got an idea. Looking at the situation honestly, I realized that I wasn’t so much upset that Laurie wasn’t going to the Prom with me, but that I wanted to go to the Prom. It was expected in my family that I’d go to my senior Prom. June Claflan and I had planned to go to the Junior Prom, as friends, but it had been canceled. I’d asked Sharie first about the Senior Prom and she’d said she just wasn’t interested in going. I later learned that a couple of other girls would have gone with me if I’d asked, but had accepted other dates while I was waiting for the time to be right with Laurie.

On Monday I got Sharie alone and told her what’d happened with Laurie. I told her I knew she wasn’t interested in going with me, but I didn’t want to just take anyone and I’d been looking forward to the Prom since I’d first contemplated dating. Could she reconsider?

Sharie said, "Okay, I’ll go," adding that she and her mom could finish a dress they’d been making. It wasn’t a formal so I’d not need to rent a tux. That was okay, since I’d never believed in renting clothes. I ran over and bought Prom tickets.

I was to have one more brush with violence before my high school years ended. It occurred between Fifth and Sixth Periods, as I was climbing the stairs to the fourth floor where Mr. Gerald’s class was held. I’d just reached the landing when I heard a bunch of black guys begin to shout and talk animatedly. I’d began to walk around the group to reach the next flight of stairs, when one guy called another student a clown. "Don’t call me a clown, man!" the addressee shouted. Bodies started slamming back and forth and I was on the floor with intense pain in my right wrist that I’d used reflexively to break my fall.

The incident happened so fast that I really had no time to tell whether I’d been caught at the periphery of a true fight or merely energetic hijinx. Either way, the voices sounded angry and I was knocked with force, to the tiled floor.

"He’s blind, you idiots!" It was the voice of Miss Nichols, our rather left-of-center Contemp. teacher from Fall. She asked me if I was okay and I said I thought so, and went up to class. Within about fifteen minutes though, I decided my wrist was getting worse, not better. I excused myself to go to the nurse, who had me lay down.

Soon a teacher, who worked a sort of faculty-student liaison and activity director, charged rather comically onto the scene and officiously demanded what had happened. He also interviewed the students on the landing and they said they were just talking and laughing and sort of swinging their arms around. Somehow one of their elbows must have brushed me and I’d fallen down. (It felt more like an entire body to me!)

Mr. Conroy drove me home that afternoon which he did sometimes since we lived fairly near to one another. He asked if I could tell whether the students who knocked me down were black or white. I said so far as I knew, they were all black. Mr. Conroy crowed "Ha Ha! we can sue the hell out of them!" Not to paint Mr. Conroy as too much of a villain I’d mention that there were quite a few teachers and students who felt black kids were getting away with an awful lot at Queen Anne. School authorities when questioned would produce reams of information of misunderstood minorities and racist whites. Some of that was so, but for a number of years now; there’d been a policy of hushing up incidents involving black students and a tendency to overlook threats, obscenities and liberties taken by black students against whites. I knew personally of at least two girls in my school who’d been raped by black males, who evidently went unpunished. (and to be fair white males raped also.) The word was out that any white student who got in a fight with a black schoolmate would be fair game for The Black Student Union membership at our school. Mr. Conroy and others saw my injury as a clear-cut case to call attention to the hushing-up policy and achieve a little vengeance. I’d never said that anyone had been trying to hurt me, merely that a fight had taken place on school grounds and within the building, which was in and of itself, grounds for expulsion.

The problem was, the facts of the case, as they existed, didn’t draw a strong enough indictment to suit my elders. I went to the Dr. that afternoon and he said I had a sprain and perhaps a bit of greenstick fracture, but nothing requiring a cast. Mom said, of course I’d need to stay home from school for a day or two. I said there was no reason for my missing school. Mom and Dad both made some comments about how no one would believe I’d truly been hurt unless I missed at least one day. Dad started in then about how he didn’t care if those blacks killed me. Nobody was going to do anything to help me, and on and on.

I was in a fair amount of pain, so in the end I took a day off and gave Mom the chance to talk with school officials, including Mr. Conroy, Mr. Faylor, our Vice-principal and Gary Little Attorney for the school system. She also talked with an attorney with whom she worked at All-state and who was now working as an independent accident and injury lawyer.

When I got back to school, Mr. Conroy told me it didn’t do any good being painfully honest about everything when the other side was always lying. He said he’d lose his job if he were to do or say anything publicly, but my parents and me could take on the school district. It was the position of the Seattle Public School District and their attorney, that they were not responsible for the safety of a student in one of their schools. It was the same as if I’d been sent into a grocery store or a theater. Since I was blind however, an exception might possibly be made in my case.

A sighted helper from Conroy’s room was assigned to me as An Escort so I wouldn’t fall down again. I’d been finding my way around school since the second week of Sophomore year, and had never fallen before, so when my hand felt better, I stopped using the guide. Mr. Faylor had me up to his office a couple of times to discuss matters and evinced surprise that I didn’t want an escort permanently. This was really an insult but I think Mr. Faylor being actually a pretty caring and responsible person, was placed in the position of defending a lot of institutional denial and foolishness.

I told Frank Faylor that I knew black people had been discriminated again to a great degree and had plenty of reason for harboring resentments. At the same time, white liberals were bending backward to redress old injustices and were overlooking the mischief some black people, in this case students, were committing. I said some black kids had picked up on this and were now getting some of their own back and in the interest of being very appropriate and nonracist, some school authorities were turning a blind eye. I’d still stand by that analysis of the situation at our school at that time. Mr. Faylor listened respectfully, not offering much response and told me if I ever wanted help getting around the school, he’d see that it was provided. Beyond that, there wasn’t much he could do.

Frank Faylor and I saw rather a lot of each other toward the end of the school year. I mentioned back in Chapter 13, how I was reported to the Vice-Principal for bad language when I’d responded to the question "Where are you going?" with "Hell, probably." At least I think that was what caused Frank to send a note about me down to Conroy’s room.

I went up to his office and told him I really didn’t know what I’d said which would qualify as Bad Language, requiring a note to a teacher. Frank said he’d get on it and find out what the problem was. I never heard anything more, so once when we were talking about something else, I mentioned the incident and asked if he’d ever found out what I’d said? I’d assumed my Hell comment had upset a student named Dennis Magirk, who’d yelled at me to watch my language and I’d basically ignored him. Mr. Faylor said he really didn’t recall the incident, but he got my school record and read the whole thing with me, including the material from Vancouver.

I’d been threatened for years that my relationship with Paul Cline was chronicled in my records from The State School. In actuality, there was not one word about Paul. My relationship with Ellen Flourie was mentioned but in a fairly positive way. Most interesting to me at the time, my Wexler I.Q. scores were also given, 137 and 146, about genius level. I came home with the news about my records. Mom was upset that Ellen was mentioned in my school folder and said she’d be interested in hearing what I thought about that relationship when I was 30. Regarding my I.Q. scores, she said "Nobody ever said you were stupid, David. Stubborn yes. Stupid no." But that’s what I should have expected.

By the time school was ending I had a pretty dim view of racial relations in America and was pretty sure we were heading for civil war. Even before Watergate, I didn’t trust Nixon. He reminded me of a used car salesman. I now think George McGovern is a very honest and honorable man who was much maligned by the Nixon propaganda machine, but I suspect he was not right for the ’72 presidency. With what looked like civil strife looming, George Wallace appeared to me to be the only candidate who was being honest and forthright about race problems in America. In the wake of his shooting, many young conservatives aligned with our dads in support of Governor Wallace or of John Schmidt, who followed Wallace on the American Independent ticket.

One incident more than any other I think, highlighted for me the schism which I felt to be widening between blacks and whites and in regard to my own feelings particularly. I was on the city bus one afternoon, crowded closely against a girl, judging from her perfume and the softness of her body. The ride was a fairly long one and frankly, I was enjoying the closeness. I was 17 and horny. I needed to know where we were so I’d be able to anticipate the correct stop, so I asked my seatmate. She told me and she was clearly a young, black woman. I thanked her politely, but all trace of excitement or attraction drained away immediately. I feel rather bad about this, even now and I’ve been attracted to black women since, but these were tense times.

Sharie and I sat together in Health Class, another mandatory class everybody had to take. I’d been waiting for two and a half years for the lecture on sex deviants. When we finally got there, Mr. Morris, the school Basketball Coach, who also taught Health, told us that transvestites believed they were reincarnated and had been women in the previous life, hence the desire to wear women’s clothes, even a feeling of obligation to do so. I’ve since found no evidence that this is true. There is an old theory about homosexual men who at one time were thought of as women trapped in men’s bodies, but if any significant number of transvestites profess a belief in reincarnation, it is probably that this is fertile soil for suggestion where others are concerned. I’ve heard of a lot of gender-crossing males claiming they were forced to wear girl’s clothing as children, hence the appropriateness of doing so now, but in this case also, I think the stories outnumber the realities.

This semester I also had a course called Senior Humanities from Mrs. Steinhauser. This was a college prep. Survey of Western Culture from the Classical period, (Greece and Rome), through the Middle ages, The Renaissance, the Age Of Reason, (17^th-18^th centuries,) The Romantic age of the 19^th Century, the Realists of the early 20^th and on to the present.

Our exam was one of the most interesting I’ve ever taken. It was a take home, handed out about a week and a half before school ended. Assignment; The scene is Heaven. Present are; Aristotle, St. Thomas Aquinas, Leonardo Da Vinci, Voltaire, Lord Byron and a person of your own choosing from the 20^th Century. (I chose myself.) In the form of a story, play, essay, poem, etc. allow the characters to interact, discussing the ages in which they lived. Describe and compare. I had a lot of fun with that paper, written rather as a series of monologues with some minor interactions from the rest of the cast. I did my class project on Ancient Greek Theatre. I got good grades on my assignments, the exam and in the course.

I graduated with a cumulative G.P.A. of 3.6, having earned 40 credits, and nearly 1.6 times as many as were needed to graduate. Twelve of the credits were in English. I was one of the first students to take Physics Four and Writing Lab Five. I’d maintained membership in the Honor Society and Quill and Scroll, the literary honor society. For a second time I won a cake for selling Pawprints.

Our Prom was held at the Olympic Hotel downtown. Lois had given me a gift certificate to a restaurant within walking distance of the dance. After some argumentation it was decided Dad would give me a ride to Sharie’s house and we’d get a cab from there. Mom predicted that it would cost me a hundred dollars round trip, but it didn’t. I showed up with a very nice and quite special corsage for my date. Bill Johnson had devoted an entire second greenhouse to orchid growing. He gave me three rare lavender-centered flowers. From the Johnson’s’ we went to the Magnuses’ where Bertha, Jim’s Mom who was skilled in such things, made me a lovely corsage from the two largest flowers. I happily gave Bertha the third in compensation for her work. Though I knew Sharie hadn’t really wanted to go to the Prom, I think her mom got rather a kick out of pinning on her orchids.

Sharie and I had steaks for dinner and I cut mine without incident! I’d been on formal dates before, with Val at Christmas time and again for the Spring Junior Achievement banquet, so I felt somewhat experienced.

Sharie and I mounted the little riser on the way into the ballroom, being announced as Miss Sharie Davis and her escort, Dave Plassman. We danced most of the three hours together, switching occasionally with one or another of a small group of friends. Toward closing time we hung out at a side table with Marty, Barry Durane and their dates.

Truth to tell, the prom was a bit of a flop. The band was marginal and I don’t think Sharie had much fun. I’ve never regretted going though. It was a coming-of-age thing I guess. At 1:00 A.M. Sharie and I caught a cab, stopping at her house first, where I got out with her and kissed her goodnight. I headed on home then, having a quite interesting conversation with our driver, Mack. He told me of the drunken woman passenger who’d flown into a sudden rage and struck him, fracturing his skull. Now Mack carried a .44-magnum under the cab seat.

Marty, Jane and me, who were the blind graduating seniors in the class of ’72, all attended commencement. The previous year most of the blind Seniors had not. As another chapter in the Don’t Make Anybody Feel Bad saga of our school, we wouldn’t have a Valedictorian this year. Instead, Norene Smith read a graduation message she’d composed certainly not her best effort. Dawn Robins, also of the writing Lab group, read a long rambling poem about descent and the folly of the establishment—or something.

Marty and I each got significant applause when in our turn, we mounted the stage to shake hand with the Principal and receive our diploma envelopes. They didn’t actually give us diplomas at this time, simply a certificate of graduation and a written assurance that the diploma would be following in a few days by mail. They’d told us at school that we couldn’t graduate without paying any outstanding library fines. Some boys were sniggering about how they hadn’t paid up and here they were graduating--. On returning from the March-through I was amused to hear the same boys muttering "Goddamnit!" on finding within their promissory envelope a note from the school librarian assuring them that as soon as the fines were paid, they could have their diplomas.

After the ceremony I stood outside with my parents, both sisters, Ruth and Bill Johnson, having my hand pumped all around and being kissed by girls, some of whom I didn’t even recognize. Later, the family repaired to Ruby Chou’s, Seattle’s foremost Cantonese restaurant.

I published three of my poems in Pawprints this year. One of them was a Sonnet. Another was an indictment of city life called the Hive, which was still quoted at least once in a while, years later.

Just before Mr. Gerald’s final last, my last class session at Queen Anne, three other guys and myself went down to a car parked over on the football field and passed around a fifth of 151-proof rum. After class a friend of mine in class, Diane, walked me to the bus. I told her it was a good thing she had, otherwise I’d likely have been walking this time next year!

By and large I’d enjoyed high school, had done most of the things I wanted to and some things I hadn’t. By our final year though, we Seniors seemed to have gotten awfully serious about ourselves and so much of that had seemed like empty pretense. I was glad enough to be moving on. I was heading for Texas.