Man! much tragedy in your family. My family has had quite a bit. Ruth's has it's share. I guess it's common. I'm glad not to consider the involvement of any meta-intelligence, don't want to get more pissed-off. Your born-again brother, don't know about such people, but if that's what they need to be nice, then better they have it, I 'spose. As much as it can be seen as innocent, on a personal level, for them to believe crazy things and follow whack authority, the cumulative effects of them following authority co-opted by elitist con-artists has brought major destruction on this country and the world. Refrences supporting this point of view are linked to in my post on p0ps blog As much as it's clearly the leaders' responsibility for the lies they tell and actions they advocate, I have to look at the followers who swallow those lies and take those actions.
Driving through Illinois? Must have been nice, even with the 100 degree heat. Thanks for correcting my spelling of my Dad's parents' hometown - Streater, Illinois. I didn't notice the "a". I think it was my Dad's parents who were born there, I think my Dad was born in Chicago. In any case, they all came to Los Angeles in 1926, my Dad at age 6. His Dad, Lee Hunter Harlow, my Grandfather, was an electrical engineer of some maverick sort.
My Dad thought his Dad was crazy. With my Dad having been locked up in a mental hospital for two years, I don't know if this is a case of "it takes one to know one" or if he's not one to say. All the other adults in my life had little patience for my Grandfather, but, for me, he was cool.
I remember him in his radio repair shop on Tweedy Boulevard, the main drag of South Gate. We always called his shop, his "radio shack".
My Grandfather entertained odd characters at the shack. Some were inventors, like my Grandfather, fabricators of small transistorized electronic devices, for lulling you to sleep with white noise, for scaring bad guys with loud noises, for running gophers out of gardens with screeches above human range, for notifying the police through radio signals and devices which would do terribly secret things they tried to sell to the Defense Department.
One regular winter visitor to Grandpa's radio shack was Ol' Yellowstone. A big, breaded man with a big dog, both lived together in a Ford Model A coupe, often parked there beside the shack.
Ol' Yellowstone was reputed to have never bathed nor brushed his teeth. For that reason alone he was a hero of my childhood self. He chrewed tobacco, his grey beard was stained yellow below his mouth where he spit. He was called Ol' Yellowstone because he earned his annual income each summer, up in Yellowstone National Park, selling postcards of Old Faithful.
One rainy day, I stopped into Grandpa's radio shack after elementary school. Ol' Yellowstone and the dog were inside. Grandpa was putting the finishing touches on a hand-held wire recorder. This was about 1953, I don't know what types of portable audio recorders were available at that time, I'm sure most recorded on tape, the recorders I remember were suitcase-sized. He held the battery powered recorder in one hand pointing it's embedded microphone towards Ol' Yellowstone and I, asking us to sing something. I was shy, denying that I knew any songs, when Ol' Yellowstone started up "It ain't gonna rain no mo, no mo..." I think I must have joined in on, "...ain't gonna rain no mo..." and we hit it big time with "how in the heck, am I gonna wash my neck, if it ain't gonna rain no mo?" Our performance came to a clashing finale when the dog joined in. Grandpa rewound the recorder, played it back, the tinny sound really touched off the dog who howled like one of Yellowstone's ghostdance wolves.
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