Anyway, in the early years it was home to my mother, her mother and father, and me. My father was in the USMC and we didn't see him for several years while he took an all expenses paid tour of the Pacific islands with the First Marine Division. Come to think of it, we didn't see much of him in the later years, either. He liked the first tour so much he volunteered for a second. Semper fi!
I began my education in a one-room school (there were two additional rooms, but they were also out back and not attached). The school was a couple of miles from home and there was no bus.
Well, that school is what got me interested in physics, particularly the ideas surrounding the theory of relativity. You see, it was there I learned some things could move faster than the speed of light. At least, that's what I thought. The teacher, I've forgotten her name (they tell me that's how the mind deals with traumatic events), wore a yardstick in her sash like a pirate in the movies.
That stick, I'm convinced, moved several times light speed. It would strike the back of your hand with such force that a molecular mixing of hickory and flesh would occur. It all happened so fast you never saw a thing, that is, nothing other than the back of your hand turning bright red.
Mom would get on my case whenever she caught me using her flashlight to read under the covers, but I knew she didn't mean it. Besides, batteries in those years didn't have the lasting power they have today, no bunny inside. After the flashlight stopped pushing photons and I was sure everyone else was asleep, I'd slip out the window with my telescope (she knew about that, too, but never said anything. Moms know everything, you know.). That was no easy chore because it was bigger than I was. I wish I hadn't sold it to some other kid later on, the thing is probably worth a small fortune by now!
You would think that with my passion for watching the sky, a drive that hasn't diminished one iota in all these years, I would have become an astronomer or something closely related, but I didn't. I started out my working life (1956 - at the age of 15) in the aerospace industry as a technical illustrator and writer. Later I was taken by another of my passions and became a naval architect in 1965, a field in which I worked until late 1993. Do I regret not having pursued astronomy or physics? In some ways, yes, but in general I do not. I studied them in my own way and in my own time, thus escaping the crushing weight of formal, imagination stifling education - not that there is anything wrong with formal education, mind you, I've had my share of it, but I have remained free to fly with unclipped wings and I like that.
Anyway, I "retired" to Mexico where I had been working under contract for a few years with a firm south of Cd. Jurez teaching their workers the art of fiberglass boatbuilding while they busied themselves teaching me every bad word there is to know in Spanish. There I became active in several organizations in the promotion and popularization of the sciences, lectured in several schools on NEOs, PHAs, Mars, possibilities of life in the universe, and general astronomy topics. It was a rewarding experience to say the least. I also was involved with the independent University of the City of Juarez and the Juarez Institute of Technology in forming a working commission with the city government aimed at bringing about some major reforms in environmental awareness.
Looking back up at the pictures taken during my childhood, I can't get over the fact that I was really a cute kid. I wonder how I got to be so ugly in my later years?
