Back to the Formative Years...

The Glory Box

 

What would be needed for the journey? A cardboard carton that once held bottles of liquid Glory floor polish was about all I could find in the house, and it now held what I would use for the next week as I left Phoenix and wandered towards the dreams of California.

It's a fine fall Arizona day in 1969 and I've spent almost a year doing the sixties thing, the only thing I seemed able to do after four years in the service. Two nights ago my roommate got me into the Janis Joplin concert through contacts with a local hip rag. By the time the helicopter brought Janis into the open-air stadium, the acid was coming on strong and I found a corner of someone's blanket to use. Two hours of lights and sounds, and Ted came looking for me. The local concert promoters were putting on a reception for Janis in Cavecreek, 30 miles into the incomparable rock and sky of the Arizona desert. She never showed, but we were happy to be there anyhow. Since I'm only surprised by a good turn of events, I was quiet and pensive as Ted drove us back home in his primitive VW dune buggy.

The next day, yesterday, as my mind struggled to clear itself of psychoactive chemicals, I also struggled. I'm not an ambitious person, but I do understand my debt to those people who developed the technology and machines which bring me food, entertainment, and modern conveniences every day, those who educated me, those who have brought all of us this far. So yesterday I stood up and told myself I'll never be able to pay this debt without leaving behind my few dear friends. They've treated me as a brother, and I know we can go on this way. In ten years we'll all be doing the same things we're doing now if I remain. If I leave, in ten years I may be paying my debts and others may be in debt to me, continuing the progress of humanity. If I can be an example, that may help them form and realize dreams. If they decide to remain, then the world is big enough and strong enough to carry them along anyhow. No matter how it turns out, I've started with Glory under my arm.

The middle-aged driver takes pity on me and pulls off to the side of the road and tells me he's going as far as Wickenburg. His trip includes a couple of stops at small stores to check on his clients. Why is he leaving his keys in the ignition and me in the front seat as he goes in? This man with a haircut can't know me, so why is he gambling this way? Maybe I should warn him that the next long hair may not be so trustworthy? No. We're finally to where he needs to head back home and I have been too timid to bring up his trust in me. "Drive carefully," I wave, and I'm resting my rectangular companion on the ground, wondering where we'll be spending the night.

Sitting in the back seating and leaning forward talking to the other hitchhiker and the driver, I am amazed by the night scene in front of me. We are cresting a hill and starting down into the Los Angeles valley, and in front of us are two continuous strings of lights, one red and one white.

This last year since my discharge from the Air Force has been quiet in some ways. During the first couple of months I stayed with my friend Gene. He was living with his girl friend Susan Marie in a one-room shack on the outskirts of Phoenix. We used the desert floor or the restrooms of a gas station about a half mile away for taking care of those things we normally associate with a home's bathroom. I tried to stay out of their way, though I'm certain she was never too appreciative of my presence. Then I found various places to sleep and various ways to eat. Friends came and went leaving behind ideas and visions if they had nothing else.

 

One of the neighbors while at the Barnes 14^th Street house were Mr. and Mrs. Glen Young. He owned a Jeep pickup of a type which still grabs my attention if I see one, though only in print these days. He had a garage for doing various things like working on his cars and even doing wood lathe work. He had a lot of small jars attached to the ceiling of the garage by their lids and he kept his various screws and bolts in these. She usually had candy in bowls at Christmas time.

There was an area in our back yard (1418 E Taylor St) where we could dig freely. I remember thinking at a very young age that I could dig a hole to China. While messing around with my brother one day, he dove into one of our holes as I was letting go with an attack at the dirt with a shovel and it cut his head pretty bad. I sometimes thought about building an aboveground fallout shelter there; it was part of the U.S. fear of attack from the evil, godless Russians.

I remember eating dog treats and especially liking the black charcoal ones.

One Halloween night my brother and I went trick-or-treating by ourselves, and as we rounded the corner and only a couple of houses from our house, some “bad” kids started chasing us and we lost most of our treats, but did get home.

I had an area in the backyard yard which was my sanctuary where I erected a something like a piece of canvas. I was able to escape other people add achieved a certain level of privacy. The neighboring yard had some grapevines growing along the wire fence, and I remember trying to smoke them in my tent. I also played around with my chemistry set and successfully trimmed back my ingrown toenail there.

I recall setting a fire accidentally with a magnifying glass in the vacant lot across from our house. Someone called a fire engine, but no one figured out it was I.

There was a large cedar tree nearby which I could climb in and achieve a certain feeling of peace.

Once I watched as another “bad” kid beat and tortured a kitten. I finally got myself together enough to run home and tell my mother, but by the time we got back it was too late. I believe he got in trouble for that, but I also believe he ended up in a lot of trouble later in his life, with this incident an early sign of his future.

Lost my Collie; my mother came to school to pick me up to tell me; found a piece of his bone where he had been hit.

• Shooting bird with a pin-tipped arrow
• Playing in the water in the street after a rain
• Erector set
• Catching grasshoppers
• Plans for making a telephone with a friend down the street between our houses
• Stepfather built sixth-grade science project
• My one-tube radio kit
• Dreams of radio-controlled plane and reading the Allied (?) catalogs
• Grandma Pretter came to stay one year
• Pulling on the wagon handle and having it hit my head when my mother let go
• Broken ankle
• Falling from the fire escape and hitting the back of my head; was in the hospital for almost a week
• Doughnut boy; paper boy

Saw a “color” TV for the first time through a screen door at age 12 and was amazed. Dismayed at it not being what I thought it would be; in fact, it was not what I thought it was, but just a filter that they would sell people to make their BW TV’s look like color TV’s.

• Boy Scouts; two summer camps; outings; Scoutmaster Jimmie James
• Buttons
• St. Mary’s, Garfield, Edison schools
• Cornell DeRonde
• Robert Eugene Dozier

 

(Notes from Yan: Robert did not finish his memoir. The dotted items were items he planned to write but never finished.)