Leaving hotel calafornix

Written, Justin Thyme, John Lawrence Kanazawa Jolley

Edited, ToNY Perpitas (Frances) Decomis, of the Komistadores

An autobiographic historical expose,

for Life.

Introit
I’m John Lawrence Kanazawa Jolley. Currently life on the planet is having a stroke, diagnosed from a human’s anatomy point of view, severe blockage of its flow ways so to speak. From life’s point of view humans are dam, pyramid building (with no water collection), ditch digging, drain the well dry, devil’s GMO food of the god’s, monocultural, sewage pumpers. This is the case. If we do anything well it is container transportation. I have a degree in Environmental Horticulture, University of Florida.  I am a trapper, gardener, carpenter, fisherperson, and teacher.  Drainage is the most important idea to consider when gardening.  I paddled a canoe across North America, and then some.  I am the foremost gardener in the world, the point spokesman for life, the man himself, HOle puncher, obstacle remover, or the pencil man, Christ allmighty. Call me what you want, but I insist upon at least the recognition of the fact.  I’m actually a specialist, designed specifically to solve the currentless dam problem. The timeliest, most intellegent, aggressive, offensive, desperate character ever created, for a reason.

The health of life on the planet is in severe question.  The oceans are turning blood red.  The timely flow of naturally fertile water to the sea has been stopped by the dams on life’s rivers.  Modern agriculture is sending fertilizer laden water down to the sea in late summer and early fall instead of when the snow melts and the rain falls.  The fish and other organisms that eat the algae and move this energy up the food chain have been overfished and even if they hadn’t they wouldn’t be waiting for the unnaturally timed discharges.  As a result the “Red Tide” algae bloom “rots” absorbing all the oxygen and killing everything alive in the affected area which is getting larger every year.  The carbon dioxide from the fossil fuels that we are burning, the largest part from the energy required to control the flow of fluids, is being absorbed by the ocean.  This lowers the pH and “burns” the life in the sea. We are dependent upon the health of the ocean for humans continued existence on this surface. Plus, we’ve got have a product (the genetic info within the chromosomes) to put in the container to transport. The solution to the problem, the Infinity Project, is an idea that goes the furthest for the longest time.

This summer around the world we had some floods.  In the past this was good as the flood water deposited its fertile sediment load on the flood plains.  Foolishly, we decided to build our cities in some of the most fertile areas, dam the rivers, submerging the rest of the most fertile areas, and control the waters flow to grow food in the desert. The sediment load the river once carried is filling up the reservoirs behind the dams.  This will reduce the ability of us to control the floods.  Eventually, if the present dam scheme was maintained the reservoirs and canals supporting the agriculture would completely fill with sediment, the water would flow over the dams, and they’d fall like dominoes. Of course without diesel fuel our ability to maintain the dammed shiddy system will collapse. Realistically, it looks like the whole system is likely to collapse before either of these scenarios pans out.

The foundation of the development scheme installed over the last several thousand years, certainly the last hundred, is the dams and their associated dikes, weirs, piers, ditches, and levies. This is what imperials life, the most, of all the dumb stuff we do. To do anything to fix the problem without solving the particular foundation of the problem amounts to a repair of the façade. Any repair one does to the structure of humans civilization without first fixing the foundation would be wasted effort as the repair would be “lost” when the foundation is eventually repaired. Any “fine tuning”, “green fix”, or basically anything that prolongs the currentless stranglehold on life is worse than having humans “exit stage left” ASAP. Really, there is absolutely nothing “good” to do on the surface of this planet except undam it first.

I call this The Suicide Mud Staircase Cemetery Project/Last Carp Locust Farm.   Humans express this currentless dam situation in many ways but the expression “6 one way a half dozen the other pretty much says it. “Damned if you do and damned if you don’t”, or “Come hell or high water” is another way to look at it (I’d take high water if given the choice, which I have). In large part, this is the history of the rise and fall of past civilizations.  Humans in the past would usually have an exodus and move to the next valley and start the process over, but now practically all the rivers have been dammed and there is nowhere to run to.

In the spring of 2008 in the United States we had some floods.  In the pictures shown in the Wall Street Journal we saw President Bush appearing to do nothing (this might have been the best thing to do).  Presidential hopeful Senator McCain was seen organizing and directing the National Guard to help stop the rising waters.  Considering the situation, I think it would have shown more foresight if he had directed the Guard to assist the people in moving their houses to higher ground.  Soon to be President Obama was shown shoveling sand into sandbags.  To the average person this might appear to be a “get the job done” type of action.  I looked up the word “sandbagger” in the dictionary.  A sandbagger is a very large powerful force. Apparently, President Obama likes to “roll up his sleeves, and get the job done”. Son, the sleeves protect your wrists while working, plus they’re an agricultural product which should be treasured and used for its designed purpose, not wasted. As far as trying to get the Dam Dike Job done… Obviously, they all should have been putting forth the infinity project idea (it’s not like I didn’t send em’ all a copy, Crimeania, an old copy of thE manuel would suffice).

Supposedly, Chicago is a word that means “smelly onion”. The Indians, when asked what they called the place said, “Chicago” referring to the onion like plant that grew along the river the city now occupies.  When I traveled across the United States Rivers by canoe I was told Chicago meant “frozen locked up water”.  When viewed from space or when examined on a map one can see that this is what “Chicago” truly represents as it is the biggest city on what amounts to the greatest amount of locked up fresh water.  MOB means “Men of Organized Business”.  The words “Chicago Mob” refers to the frozen locked up water men of organized business. Ober Rivers (the little dike boy meets Jim Jones’s water control cult of doom) is a German complete control type of idea and it’s centered in Chicago. Obama’s “mum” is of German descent, as his #2 man, Biden. I’m Scotch soled, French underground, Dutch mafia.

As our new President Obama moves into the White House he has decided to get a dog.  The Wall Street Journal reported that he was considering one of two types, a Labradoodle or a Belgian Water Hound.  A Labradoodle is one-half Labrador, a dog with an affinity for water and one-half Poodle a security dog. The Belgian Water Hound looks like a Labradoodle. Also the First Lady was shown “going green”, planting arugula with school kids. A RUE (regretful sin) GALA, this is what continuing on with the dam ages is, a regretful party and to encourage children with a “green wash” is redickulouse. Why not just teach them the dam trueth and present possible solutions? The children may have some good ideas that might work great. 

Currently, President Obama and Vice-President Biden are pushing legislature that will force automakers to produce more efficient cars.  The average person would probably think this was a step in the right direction towards reducing fuel consumption and solving global warming.  From what I’ve seen of human’s behavior it seems more likely that they would just drive more and further meaning we would need more roads.  Essentially roads are dams, canals, or both that stop the free flow of water.  Also humans would likely trade in one of their less efficient cars and buy a new one.  In addition to the energy burned to manufacture these new cars, cars are made out of metal which is mined from the ground.  This mining would further deteriorate the water quality going downhill.

Is this the change that we can believe in?  I’ve learned in my life that once one is fully committed to a belief one stops thinking.  Thinking is better than believing because it allows for learning.  Plus, who would want to be fully committed to any idea except a dam free planet?  After all, it’s nice to have options, beside doom, then one can make a choice.  Being free to choose is nice. Although we (YOU) have no choice until it’s at least dam free.

Change that rises up from the bottom can be problematic, there are very powerful forces at the top.  Strong powerful leaders need to lead and set a good example for the meek (not to be confused with the silent lambs).  In order to fluidify the dams and reestablish free flow one must consider an option to the monocultural agriculture machine that these monolithic dams enable.  Turn lawnmower man into fruit, vegetable and herb man. The purest easily accessible source of natural water is that which falls from the sky.  It would be super to capture it as it falls off ones roof.  Former President Bush captured his with clay tiles that fed into an underground cistern below his ranch house in Texas. It might be nice to have a container just below the drip line.  One should probably consider another option to freshy aluminum as it is extracted from bauxite using an energy intensive process powered mostly by hydroelectric turbines in the dams.  Bamboo gutters would probably send the best message (perhaps not).  The ideal material solution looks like the same stuff as the trash on the side of the dam road. So while we dammed life on the planet for the last several thousand years or “walked on water” (I suspect he and Peter were actually walking on a low head dam, kicking the stones out), water being a metaphor for life, we came up with or produced the solution to our water collection, container, transportation problem. We’re just witnessing life producing or enabling technology used detrimentally.

After undamming the surface, you’re ready to plan and plant or proseed hencthforth.  Most characters apparently aren’t able to think their way out of the currentless dammed shitty situation. Fortunately, we’re not all like this. I would imagine for long term security purposes your White House super already collects water, if not start here as thirst is certain. A temporary solution is to take the government supplied trash can, remove the wheels, plug the holes with two sticks and slide it under the downspout of the gutter drain pipe. The most important thing to do is to plant site specific native plants collected from seed (let the birds and squirrels plant some, too).  This will ensure that you’ll have plenty of pollinating insects for your fruit, vegetables, herbs, roots, nuts and funguses.  Also, it will provide sustainable timber products to repair your structure.  It’s good entertainment for children, too. I think now is a great time to plant fruit trees in Washington and cherry trees could be appropriate. Apples might be nice, too.  Some fruit trees from seed would send a strong message. Don’t forget to plant nuts. 

Diversity is the spice of life.  Vegetables and herbs will have to wait until spring of course and heirlooms are your strongest message sender.  Get rid of most the lawn and don’t mow it incessantly. The rabbits will have some shelter.  I’d perhaps have a putting green sized lawn that doubles as a clothes drying picnic spot. After all, if you abort the seeds of the grass before they mature the birds will have nothing to eat and they will starve and then if we have an exodus the righteous/lefteous ones will not be delivered there flock.  A clothes line is a big message sender, it saves lots of energy, and plus the U.V. rays break down bacteria and other harmful stuff. You could even plant future cloth drying bushes and small trees.  I think a solar water heater would look good and you might want to reuse former President Jimmy Carter’s solar cells.  Whatever you do don’t turn up the heat on the White House as some fellows or entities might take that figuratively.  Put on a sweater or two instead, I recommend 6 to 8 layers.

“The third” thing one does to solve the problem after undamming the rivers and superdriplinewatercollect or the #2 problem solution: restroom/bano/sitting room remodeling. Make sure it’s a urine separating composting, NO FLUSH less toilet, with a squirt gun. ThE manuel fertilizer machine, John Lawrence Joliet or the Kanazawa. If one considers this an odoor problem, eat less meat, smoke indoors (Marlboro Lights?), myrhh, frankincense, get out of the stinkin city…. Without the flush toilet we won’t need to dam the rivers to insure toilet water flow or bury the creek in a concrete sewer pipe to insure it keeps going downhill. With a squirt gun one won’t need toilet paper or even to touch oneself to achieve a satisfactory, environmentally friendly, hygienic state. If you do anything to the sink, add a soul (foot) valve to easily conserve water while allowing for hands free use. Plus, you won’t need to wash your hands with soap or even wash them, and you can drink the water instead. Use the “night soil” to fertilize food grown as close to your table as possible.

Encourage new construction to focus on productive domiciles, water collection, no battery solar cells, fertilizer production, beehive or fish tank walls, and the garden around them.  The best way to solve this whole carbon dioxide problem is to first of all quit damming the rivers and maintaining them, digging ditches and pumping water and sewage all over creation and get the food and water close to the domestic structures. Levy a very heavy tax on fossil fuels (remember business 101?) this should reduce demand or embargo the planet, produce 10% of current fossil fuel, charge 10 times as much, make the same amount of money every year for 10 times as many years.  The fossil fuel burning enterprises could get smart and instead of being extorted by the politrickons, raise the price, reduce demand, just sell less product for longer, and still make more money.

Give out coupons redeemable for locally grown (from water collected with the surfaces) organic fresh fruit, vegetables, nuts, and herbs. Think of this idea, instead of having police officers and cops cruising around loaded for bear, get rid of most of the cruisers and guns. Sheriff Andy could still keep a piece in his drawers and rifles and shotguns for “hunting”. We could still park the SSwat Team somewhere. We’ll have Barney put a single bullet in his pocket and make it gold with crushed enamel instead of lead. We’ll use the lead for shields on the spaceship reactors instead. Ya know? We’ll have the officers, who are wearing hard hats (to protect themselves from the present crumbling façade), carrying bubble gum scrapers and a signal device dispense fruit, vegetable and herb coupons and a ticket with a stiff fine to obese persons (perhaps), eating the “Devil’s Food” (junk food) and throwing the plastic or any container in the waterway (the dam road). If an officer “catches” a cooperative citizen (perhaps a child) picking up trash (or potential product) and planting snow peas maybe they give em’ an ice cream card, pastry coupon, fruit, vegetable and herb certificate and no ticket. The sky’s the limit no longer.

Once the dams are removed and the fences rolled back we’ll have a change we can think about with a smile on our faces.  Oh yeah, and let’s at least decriminalize the good lords herbs, end the drug wars, and cripple the prison industrial complex.  We’ve figured out the farms are bad for life and the oceans, now let’s put the pharmoresuetokill industry under the microscope. Currently, I am in pursuit of the President see?, myself and if elected won’t get a dog until I solve the dam problem cause it’s, typically, illegal to collect water with a super (roof) in town and grow food. If I got a dog in today’s world I would be, in effect, demanding that “they” cut down a few more acres of rain forest to grow dam and ditch GMO rice, corn, and soybeans to feed it. The dogs don’t enjoy eating the stuff anyway.

Still wonderen’ how this is best accomplished? Have the U.S. Navy (the organization currently outfitted with the proper tools to solve the problem) fluidify the dams. If it’s led by a new Chinese carrier “command ship” who cares? Considering the situation, this is the most environmentally friendly, “best”, quickest way to expedite the situation. Send those nations “caught holding the dam bag” a bill for the good work done and refuse to pay this nations “bill” or multi-trillion dollar debt, until the U.S. Treasury gets paid for our good work. Or call it even, redeal, and save the world at the same time. Give noncooperative dam nations a larger bill than cooperative ones. Enforce a surface wide U.S. Navy “Coast Guard” led fossil fuel, etc…Cuban style blockado. The U.N. might be able to take it from there, who knows, we’ll find out.

I often tell people in addition to container transportation we’re good at setting up systems and canceling them and doing something else. Like when we set up the Pony Express and got all the routes laid out, the stables built, the oats coming in... its working fine. Cancel it, set up the telegraph, cut the trees down, mine the metal, run the wires. Cancel it, install the telephone… marvelous. Cancel it, set up the cell towers… We’re naturals at this. Cancel the dam project, proceed with the Infinity Project. If one doesn’t like and force this dam free idea, do life and yourself a favor, tie a miller’s dam stone (not the millstone) or a chunk of dam concrete around thy neck and jump in the river. See if you can catch a fish before bottom, or I and life, or one of my associates or crew, will hand ya a pink slip, and I’ll cancel your door pass (your soul yanked from the gene pool, forever). I’ve determined that if the dames were to “man up”, become conscious of the dam, shed everything that falls from the heavens and flush toilet abortion of life and demand the correct change the men would just about have the problem solved in the length of a menstrual cycle, a month. What’s taking place on this surface is pure lunacy.

It’s been written that I’d show up at this time. Often I tell people, that before Immanuel (Emanuel) was killed and nicknamed “Jesus” by those who murdered him the guys he “rolled with”, the disciples, the apostles asked him, “Boss, you didn’t fix the dam shiddy problem this time. When are you gonna come back and fix the dam shiddy problem?” He referred them to Daniel 9:27, 11:31, 12:11. When those hateful structures that destroy are built on the temples (the temple is the river). When those obamanations of desolation that destroy are where they shall not be. The dams on the rivers. Low and behold, Obama runs the nation, the dams are all built and they’re running around smoking Christill. Oh, the Whoresmin (riders of the apocalypse)? Likely 4 different kinds of space aliens fighting over the meat lined waterin hole. Looks like we got a 5^th kind that’s an ally and me, John Laurence Kanazawa Joliet, the 6^th kind, Hetero sapien sapiens.

Perhaps one believes (takes for granted) they were forgiven or something. You’re forgiven for falling short of perfection in your attempt to be the man himself (whether male or female). You’re not forgiven for a perfect abortion (ecocide) attempt. You’ll pay for that. I’m here to collect that which is due, heavens bill for the damages. I redesigned or remastered what’s inside the door. Hotel Calafornix, FOuR RUEms. Hell’s closed. It’s open on the surface (or in your space ship). The heavens were emptied out on the surface. Heaven is closed until its open on the surface. Now delivering response as demanded, promised, told and written.

John Lawrence Jolley

515 Sunset Rd.

Boynton Beach, Fl 33435

http://infinityproject.wordpress.com

ronjikato@gmail.com

Forewarning

LEAVING HOTEL CALAFORNIX

“A witty saying proves nothing” – Voltaire

Bearashit. My parents met in Trinidad, my father was born in New Orleans and my mother in Miami. They rented a small place near the beach and I was born at Bethesda Memorial hospital in Boynton Beach Florida the panhandle of the U.S.A, “closest fishing to the Gulf Stream”, the biggest river in the ocean. Shortly thereafter my dad threw me in the ocean and said, “Swim”, I did. My parents had a VW bus and we traveled around the country before I was a year old. My mom says I was convinced there was an alligator underneath the bath mat in the tub. I had a fantastic imagination and didn’t like the bathroom.

My first memory is shitting in my pants while some fellows poured a concrete step just outside our front door. Apparently, I was supposed to have learned not to do this and my parents took me into the back yard and hosed me down. The next thing I remember is sticking a paper clip in the electrical outlet. My dad watched me do this, by the way, and kicked me off when I got locked on to the current. I never did this again. There was a picture of my great uncle just outside my bedroom door, he was an electrician until he was electrocuted on a roof. This was a constant reminder to me. We had a pet raccoon, and my dad kept bees all over the county (orange groves). Practically the whole backyard was a garden. We grew corn, beans, squash, collards, peppers and herbs. I spent my time playing in it and the pile of cow manure my dad used for fertilizer. When I was four my sister was born and we got in the VW and drove around the country again. We had a chicken coop, too.

The first school I went to was Galaxy Elementary. I kept getting sent to the principle for refusing to stand for the pledge of allegiance. I’d already decided I wasn’t gonna stand for any of the dam fool shit I’d seen. My mom was a teacher at Unity Montessori where I next went to school. She had a glass bee house in her classroom, aquariums and all kinds of stuff. My second school aged memory is of the kids pinning me to a bench while a French girl kissed me. For some reason I couldn’t stand this. I walked to school with a Scottish girl named Shona Dick who gave me my first nickname, “the happy toilet”, as if she knew something.

My friend Michael Collins and I were “reading” in the back of a VW bug when he said, “Why don’t you read to yourself?” What do you mean? “Don’t say the words just think them.” I didn’t even know this could be done. I’d learned how to do something new. Keep in mind though, if Michael and I had both read a book on the way to… and listened to each other, we both could have claimed to have read two books, doubling our information gathering in theory. I was extremely fortunate in that my second and third grade teachers, Mrs. Liebler and Mrs. Stein were the best reading teachers one could ask for. They read “Pooh” and “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”. I would get up early and watch Batman in the morning and Dr. Who in the afternoon. I liked to read “Rin Tin Tin” and “Star Wars” the movie completely blew me away.

The local grocery store had a color in the circus poster contest and every year I won. I liked the circus, especially the age/weight guesser. I always beat this guy, I was extremely “slick” at a young age and could narrow my shoulders “scrunch down” and appear small or stand up straight and inhale a lung full of air and operate large. Plus, it’s difficult to tell how old I am. Later in life he would actually refuse to try and guess my weight, saying it was a losing proposition. When I got old enough my dad explained to me that there was no “free trip to the circus”, it was scam to get you in the gate where you’d spend your money. It was about this time I also learned there was no Santa Clause. I started to wonder what else was not true.

At my parents’ house we had a record player with three LP’s, “Queen”, the “Stars Wars” soundtrack, and “Victory at Sea”. I didn’t really watch that much T.V. as a kid. My parents were the last I knew to invest in a color set. One day I was watching Tom and Jerry and got to thinking that the show would be much better if Tweety were included. A moment later a yellow tannish bird alighted on the bush outside the open window next to my chair and started chirping. Hmmm, I thought. What if we added Sylvester? My black and white cat entered in through the “dog door” into the porch. This was nuts, I thought as I grabbed my fire truck and went to play with the Chinese (Muscovy) ducks, on the cow manure pile next to the vegetable garden.

My dad showed me one of the simplest ways to trap an animal, remember humans are animals. Put some food under a box, prop the box up with a stick tied to a string, take the end of the string and stand back. When the animal, in this case a bird, goes in the box to get the food, pull the string, the stick propping up the box comes out, the box falls and the animal is trapped in the container.

When I played little league baseball left fielder, I figured out the pitchers couldn’t throw strikes. So I stopped swinging and just stood there with my bat on my shoulder, I didn’t care what the catcher said, I knew I was going to walk to first. I had the worst batting average but scored a lot of points. Somehow though nobody respected this, it wasn’t how the game was supposed to be played. I’d stand up there at the plate, getting booed at 7 years old. The umpire was like “Ain’t you ever going to swing kid”? Nope, I’m walking to first, I’ll see you around. It was at this age I figured out it seemed as though I could “shark” the pitcher, get inside his head and make a bad pitch even more likely, of course this was after thoroughly working over the catcher. I learned how to fake sliding into second and resume sprinting just before the second baseman received the ball, diverting his attention and likely getting to third or even home plate with this move because often this caused a subsequent bad throw (in frustration) to third, the whole thing just “snowballed”.

My friend Michael and I created our own game, adventure. We would start at one end of the block and run through everyone’s back yard, jumping fences, clambering through arecae palms, outrunning dogs, chatting with nude sunbathing girls and avoiding the neighbors. First one to the street wins. Down the street from me lived a family with a vanity plate that said JC4ET. We lived in a neighborhood that said Chapel Hill on the concrete sign up front but Mission Hill on the legal paper deed.

By the time I was 9 years old my father, the Jacques Cousteau of Florida, had taught me how to hold my breath for at least 2 minutes. In order to do this one must be able to go inside themselves and turn their heart rate down. This is the “Harry Houdini”. A block south of Patrick A.F.B. my grandparents Kelsie and Nancy Lawrence had a pool. My dad explained to me how hard it is to swim with clothes and particular shoes on. He told me I needed to experience this so I would know for real. He told me to jump in. I thought about it and jumped in, sank to the bottom and pushed off with my feet. I got back to the surface and could barely tread water. I thought I was successful. My dad pointed out that it could be a lot deeper than that and I should have grabbed the side of the pool (or boat) as I went over the side. He also explained that if I relaxed and didn’t panic I might be able to take my shoes off and maybe even my pants and make it back to the surface. Whatever you do don’t exhale the very important full lungs of air screaming HELLp! as your last word.

I learned how to scuba dive. My dad used to come get me from school, and we’d play “hooky” and go get lobsters and fish. This was before GPS and he showed me how to “triangulate”. When the coconut palm lined up with the third a/c unit on top of the condo with the green skylight we were on a line. We stayed on this line until the north wall of the yellow trimmed condo lined up with the water tower behind it. “Throw the anchor”, which I would do. I’d pull it up too, and become proficient at line work young. Of course, one had to make a diagram of all the objects involved in the triangles for all the “spots” and my dad had these in his legend. The ability to keep track of one’s position, heading, and course, on this surface is huge especially if one considers how it applies to time in relation to the old axiom location, location, location.

Thirty feet below the anchored Boston whaler was the reef. He knew every hole on the reef and could approach a ledge packed with lobsters and pull them out one at a time in such a way as the “bugs” were not disturbed into hiding deep in the hole. He made it seem effortless, and I just went around the ledge, found the back door and opened up my bag and the escapees swam in. I had bad allergies, and really didn’t like to dive as it gave me a sinus headache. I like skin diving though.
I spent my youth with a snot rag in my pocket and I sneezed all day long. It seemed like I was allergic to this world, more likely the structures. I was getting allergy shots for this condition, administered by a retired nurse named Vada Underwood. My dad traded lobsters for this service. He traded lobsters for everything. After about a year of this treatment, I figured out that the shot was followed by flue like symptoms. I ordered this to stop. I had other problems, too. One flat foot, one arched, I had scoliosis, and my teeth were crooked. I refused the Forest Gump braces, and had the ones on my teeth removed before the job was finished. I didn’t want to get straightened out.

I was on the Delray Beach Allstars soccer team, center midfielder, #13. My teammates thought I would get bad luck for this but I explained to them it was bad luck for the opposing player, if only cause it sublimanaly “siked em out” cause they were superstitious. The only thing I could do extremely well was the slide tackle, which I accomplished by running up to the opposing player screaming as loud as I could “!BANZIA!” and sliding into the player and ideally separating him from the ball. However, this technique often left me on the ground out of play. Fortunately, the guy behind me, Jimmy Scalisi, the sweeper, whose father ran a produce delivery operation, would come in and clean up the mess. We won the gold coast championship beating Miami Killian. We even had a girl on the team, Carolyn Lanza, and this was classic cause not only was she skillful but when we won we always chided the other team about how we even had a girl on the team and they still couldn’t beat us. I grew tired of the productless competition and quit the game.

It did teach me how to play with a team and the coaches taught us “proper form” how to exercise correctly without getting hurt. Life is of upmost interest to me, communication being key. The character most likely to pass me the ball was the right mid fielder, Scott Gimmey. I’d look his way and yell “Gimmey”, and he would pass it to me. The guy we had up front middle was Marsh, a really big coordinated kid, and this is a winning formula in conflict, get the enemy to run through a marsh just before the engagement, with me, it slows them down and gets their feet wet, behind Scalisi was Abbruzzie and he would elbow ya (like Macaronni), and if all that failed we had a Crowley (transportation containerization) guarding the goal. I insisted my teammates call me “Mud”, I was usually the dirties kid on the team after a game, plus it was the opposite of dumb. I earned this nickname from my Granny Nancy Nye (Henderson) Lawrence. She gave it to me down in the Florida Keys for my appearance I got while collecting vegetables in a septic sewage outfall field. There’s a Beastie Boy’s song titled “Like a Mudslide, Never Doing No Time” and these men, obviously, know there’s only one way to avoid “doing the time”, the dams gotta go down like a mudslide.

I was into the study of the history of war, in particular the target(s). This became more obvious with the advent of bombing runs. On May 17, the same month and day of my birth in 1942, British RAF Bombers from the 617 “Ares Moi Le Deluge” squadron bombed the Mohne, Eder and Sorpe Dams of the Ruhr River industrial area. They hit the targets with a bouncing bomb or river skipper, a bomb specifically designed to skip on the water surface and impact into the dam. This was probably one of the only “good” bombing runs and a very small number of bombers flooded the valley and knocked out the industry for a while. The Allies could have struck the dams again and caused a bigger longer lasting problem. It is interesting that they didn’t do this more often, especially considering how effective it was. Its if as if it was against the rules, inhumane (even though casualties were low) or something. The Allies continued bombing other targets such as firebombing a bunch of artists and gypsies at Dresden. Perhaps there were a few German beer drinkers amidst the Allies. The mission seemed plagued with bad luck, but with bomber pilots with names such as Rice and Hopgood flying the planes…

I discovered if I put my finger at Delray and Boynton on the surface of a globe of the Earth and put my other finger on the other side of the globe on Christmas Island I had an axis I could spin the globe around. This fascinated me. Unity elementary ended at fifth grade and I was given the option to attend St. Joe’s or public school. I decided I wanted to see the real world. In Delray Beach Carver Middle was the real world. George Washington Carver recommended feeding acorns to livestock. This guy was a genius, he just couldn’t figure out how to pick the acorns. Eating squirrels and deer is the real deal. There weren’t any black people at my private school, Carver was 50/50 and this was new for me. On the bus ride into Carver I saw a pitbull eating a cat, it was 1/3 of the way through its meal and the cat was still alive. Boy I thought, this is a tough neighborhood.

The first week in gym class a guy threw a pair of dirty underwear at me and it landed on my head. Everyone was laughing at me and I removed the foul and threw it back at the guy. I hit him in the face with the drawers and everyone laughed at him. I was ten years old. The state of Florida allowed for students to 21 years of age. This guy was most likely an adult and had already served some time. He punched me in the chin after class and I started laughing. He didn’t hit me again. The next week he beat up my buddy, Adam pretty good. My buddy didn’t laugh.

There was a guy who lived next to me in Chapel Hill, Darryl. Darryl was three years older than me and played the trumpet. He convinced me to do the same and I joined the middle school band under Mr. Wesley. Mr. Wesley was an expert on brass. As much as I wanted to be an average student in middle school, my mom wanted me to be above average and had me tested for the gifted program. I entered this testing trying to fail. I figured if I gave a bunch of crazy answers to the inkblot test, they’d surely see I was not gifted. Boy was I wrong, I was identified as a gifted person.

The gifted program was taught by Dr. Harris, who we called Mr. McGoo, because he had coke bottle glasses. This guy taught us that “Yours was not to reason why, yours was but to do or die”. He was not kidding at all. This was funny, or least ironic, because I really wanted to know why at the time. Also, he taught me to carry my passport in my pocket at all times. I didn’t have one at the time of course, but later when I got one, I did follow his recommendation. You never know, might want to get out of here fast. As individuals we were required to put on a play, I did an act from Norman Mailer’s “Death of a Salesman”, poor Willy Lowman, the insurance salesman.

One of the most intense things I ever learned was when a fellow from IBM (the company in charge of counting things in Germany during WWII that also happened to have their headquarters in Boca Raton, a Jewish enclave) taught us how a computer worked. It was simply a bunch of on and off switches, a lot of them. I didn’t get how a bunch of on and off switches could perform so much and said so. Dr. Harris and the IBM guy just could not understand how I could be such a slow learner. They both grabbed my hand and basically dragged me to the wall switch and with both of their hands on mine turned the lights in the classroom on and off a half dozen times. Repeating on, off, on, off… With tears in my eyes I accepted the terrible idea. Somehow it felt as though I’d learned a lot more than I’d wanted to. Dr. Harris also taught me that I couldn’t “Pull the wool over his eyes”, which was funny to me cause his name was Dr. Harris and he had big bushy eyebrows. After a year and a half I dropped out of the gifted program and went back to the advanced classes.

I had a tree fort in my back yard. I was climbing around up their one day when I realized the guy who lived behind us and owned the local strip joint, Moray’s Lounge had a bunch of woman sunbathing in his backyard. A blonde, a brunette, and a redhead, I couldn’t believe my luck. Man, I was just climbing Seagrape trees.

I was a collector of comic books. My favorites were “Sgt. Rock” (history, lingo), “Groo the Wanderer”, “Spiderman” (spidey sense, Mary Jane), and “MAD” magazine. My favorite character, the only one worth emulating I thought, was the Beyonder from Marvel’s “Secrete Wars”. He fixed or set up the whole super hero war and was omnipotent and omnipresent (all powerful, everywhere, all the time).

It was about this time that I started my own lawn service. This was a no brainier decision, south Florida is lawn Mecca. I quickly gathered several accounts nearby, and made some money. About half my customers were easy to please, they just wanted me to mow the St. Augustine grass. St. Augustine was associated with a feast, and the Spanish landed in Florida on that day. Ironically this grass has no seed, no fruit. The other half of my customers were up to something. Typically, the latter were not from around here, and didn’t like things that were alive outside. It was my job to kill that stuff, which I refused to do. I liked snakes and bugs and tried to educate the customer on the circle of life to no avail.

The women in particular were terrified of the stuff, especially the snakes which I was great at identifying and capturing. I would demonstrate how harmless the serpent was, sometimes they thought this was hysterical. I also did an “Edward Scissorhand” type of thing here, and trimmed bushes into squares and other shapes, this made them happy. There were only a few kinds of bushes and they were all exotic. The ficus tree, which the people had trimmed into a “hedge”, made the most money. It’s basically the same tree that has overgrown Angor Wat. Between the bushes and the St. Augustine lawn was a dirt bed. They hadn’t “invented” mulch (dead crushed up trees) yet and it was my job to pull the weeds out. We used a variety of tools to remove the weeds, including chemicals. The herbicide glyphosate or Roundup was “new” and the chemical of choice. I didn’t understand why the customer wanted such a clean dirt bed.

At my parent’s dinner table we had quite the conversations at times, which we backed up with my dad’s “Gray’s Anatomy” book, the rest of his biological and history leaning library, the dictionary and my encyclopedia set. I’d ask why the early European settlers in N. America shot and killed most all the buffalo (bison). “Because they’d destroy town, imagine a hundred thousand buffalo running through town. One runs through your fence, another jumps through the window and the next thing you know hundreds are stampeding through the living room.” Of course there’s more to it than that. The fields where the townfolk grew their food would be destroyed and don’t forget the townsfolk’s “gunmen” basically just left the bison carcass to rot, wasting the whole creature. Sometimes they’d eat the tongue (the best and easiest part to eat) and take the hide, but usually they just shot them, sometimes from a train window and left them their unused, wasting the product. After further research and putting 2 and 2 together I came to the conclusion that the real reason they did it for was to get rid of the Indians food supply. Tatanka (bison) basically means “god” in the Indians language. The settlers killed the Indian’s god, their way of life, and, took control of the food supply, there by subjugating or making the Indians dependent on “town food” to live. This for all practical purposes ended the Indians resistance. The bison at this time is basically the greatest resource or product of N. America. It gathers up the largely indigestible to humans’ plant matter and converts it to an easy to assimilate amino acid protein that we can digest and turn into muscle and other tissue for ourselves.

On another night I might ask my dad a nutrition related question. If one wanted to stay healthy what’s the best thing to eat? “Well, a man could live practically on steak (bovine flesh) and an orange (citrus). The meats got everything your body needs except for vitamin C.” Why is beef steak the best? “Because the protein is most similar to yours which makes it the best to convert to human tissue.” What’s the next best meat to eat? “Probably pork.” Then what chicken and seafood? “Probably.” Well, by that reckoning or reasoning monkeys would be more nutritious for people to eat because the meat is more like us than cows. “Yep.” So, actually human meat is the best meat for humans to eat. Of course this gets a raised eyebrow and a pause in the ingestion of “surf and turf” but he agreed with this surmation, “Yep, might have to make sure it’s cooked (prepared) properly cause one could run into disease transfer pretty easy this way.” Kinda like that whole pork/trichinosis and chicken/salmonella thing, huh? “Yep.”

I began smoking Cannabis sativa in Middle School. I don’t necessarily recommend people smoke anything, especially youth whose lungs haven’t fully developed. If one smokes too much there is a chance of lung cancer, but you’ll definitely get emphysema and if your lungs lose their elasticity and harden up you won’t be efficient manually. Also different herbs and mind altering substances work differently on different people. For instance while me and my buddies were experimenting with smoking ganja, Todd Bajar earned the nickname “the one hit nit wit”. He was intelligent though and was aware enough to know he’d be a fool if he smoked it, so he didn’t. You couldn’t outdrink the guy though and he matured very early and had a full beard by the time he was 13, thus he could just walk in any ole store and by a case of beer or a bottle of booze. We bought the cigarettes at the hospital vending machine.

One evening I was by myself and took a big lungful of sativa and held it in. I blew the smoke out through the screen of my bedroom window in which the glass was open at 45 degrees. I looked up in the sky and there was what one might call a UFO except it wasn’t cause I identified it as a flying saucer and it even had blinking lights on it like from the film “Close Encounter”. It appeared like it was a couple miles away and what really “sold it” for me was that it was hovering in midair and then accelerated exponentially and within seconds was gone, outasight. Wow, I thought you gotta be kiddin me. Now as a reader one might think, “Yeah but if you were gonna “see stars” or some such thing, letting out a big toke is about when you’d see it”. But I’m telling ya I’ve been smoking my whole life and this the only such occasion. I also understand that I was looking through a screen and a 45 degree plate of glass, but…

I know how to identify things in the night sky. The twinkling lights are stars. The steady lights that travel in the same arc are planets. Galaxies kinda look something between the two but they don’t travel on the same arc as the planets. The blinking lights are airplanes or helicopters. The satellites (not the moon) don’t blink or really twinkle. Meteors could look like satellites but their light intensity changes even if they travel across the entire viewing area. This was a space ship MF. There was no other known explanation. I didn’t tell anyone for about two weeks, because I knew they would tease me, “Oh he thinks he saw a UFO!”, or dismiss it. But I’ve been telling people about this sighting my entire life (when I felt it was appropriate). You know what I found? Some people have seen similar sights, and some of them I trusted, they were knowledgeable too, and had no reason to fabricate a story. It was the only such thing I ever saw though and I know it doesn’t prove there are spaceships or space aliens.

I was really interested in the Everglades, and was aware of its deteriorating condition, spending time paddling my canoe out that way. I really liked cane, had a sweet tooth, and grew vegetables with a hoe. The Seahawk was my favorite bird. Mancini’s “Peter Gun” our marching band’s piece de resistance was the call of the Osprey, or the sea hawk Chicago train song. I didn’t really like raiders. The thing that really got me thinking about the meaning of this song, its environmental implications, and in particular how it related to me, was that my girlfriend’s name was Heidi Hostetler and her nickname was “Heidi Ho”. So while the Police Chief, Mr. Mitchell, and sometimes even “Rerun” were on stage singing about the river, and seemingly my girlfriend “Heidi Ho”, I learned about an environmental disaster wrapped around a dame, overpopulation, a dam and a ditch and a hoe. In addition, sometimes Mr. Mitchell would sing “We’re gonna get them Raiders”, or “We’re gonna beat them Raiders”. Also the subtlety of “Heidi, Heidi, Hide the Hoe”. Eventually I would use this introductory lesson of how to speak in tongues in order to get an important message across to others. Thank you, Mr. Mitchell, “Rerun”, Mr. Skinner, and of course, Heidi Hostetler for the idea.

I quit the band when my fellow trumpet playing friend, Jorge Mayorga, stomped on my trumpet damaging it, in a fit designed to encourage me to practice more. I moved out of my parent’s home when I was 15. I couldn’t follow the rules. Me and my buddies got a place and became “independent”. I mowed grass and trimmed bushes into squares after school, and bussed tables and parked cars at night. I was a valet before I even had a driver’s license. In the 50′s when parking cars was invented the tip was a dollar, during the trickle down 80′s it was still a dollar. The women always said I looked like Tom Cruise. It was easy not to let this go to my head because as I filled up a ladies glass of water and she went on about how handsome I was and how much I looked like Tom Cruise just like the last dozen tables, my buddy would walk up and say, “Hey, Tom, clean up table four.” I guess it was fortunate to grow up in a Hollywood culture and look like the number one star. The “Risky Business” character was a gold mine for me.

The first restaurant I worked in, actually my first job with taxes and what not (I think) was in West Delray, the Birds Nest Tree. I came here specifically because I liked Chinese food and Asian women. The waitresses, a few years older than me, were very attractive I thought. It seemed like the couple who ran the place had the woman running the dining room and the man running the kitchen. I didn’t have too much of a relationship with him, I was a busboy. He taught me never to sweep a Chinese persons feet with a broom. She on the other hand, I worked closely with. Nearly every day I came to work she would talk about she thought I was Claire Lee Chennault, The commander of the Flying Tigers in China during WWII, he worked for Soong May-ling the Chinese leaders wife. This was very interesting to me. I still go see her occasionally, perhaps bringing a girlfriend for dinner or even just stopping by and delivering her the latest update with some fish or mangoes.

I was growing cannabis sativa in a patch of wood. The plants started to disappear and a sheriff left a note tied to the bush. I decided to relocate the remainder of the operation, and enlisted my buddy who lived next to the patch of woods. He had a Mercury Grand Marquis and we stuffed it full of 4’ cannabis plants taking them back to our pad. We pulled in the driveway and quickly unloaded our stash into the front door of the duplex. As soon as we got the last plant in and closed the door four or five police cruisers came sliding sideways into the yard, some from the back alley. You got to be kidding me.

We looked outside and the officers were piling out of their cruisers into the still settling dust and drawing out their side arms and scrambling around the place. My buddies flipped out and started to hide the plants in the closet, and in the refrigerator, McNulty chucked one in the oven and turned it on. I casually stepped outside. Can I help you officer? Turns out they were looking for someone else. We played poker with the catholic schoolgirls. One night I walked out of the bathroom after a shower with a towel wrapped around my waist. I went into the walk in closet and while dripping wet reached up and pulled the chain to the light. The towel fell off as I shook around, buck naked getting zapped. I had an audience and they thought this was funny, eventually the chain broke.

I moved into a place closer to campus my junior year. I was like “Ferris Bueler” in that I hung out with the surfers, the jocks, the greasers, the slicks, the nerds, the dropouts, the private school girls … they all love him. The kids all wanted a place to hang out and drink beer, so I’d organize a 4 keg party after the football game. These bashes eventually got so big the neighborhood became a parking lot. This actually was funny cause once the party got that big the cops couldn’t get to the house. When they did they were always looking for John Jolley. “Have you seen John Jolley?” they would ask me. I think he’s around back officer. I dated a girl named Holly in December, “Have a Holly Jolly Christmas” the kids thought this was hilarious, so did I, she didn’t