Yosemite 1963

When I was 15 years old my best friend Mike who I met at 10 when I was assigned to give him my newspaper route by the Glendale New Press. I had had my first night time seizure and so my parents made me give up my job delivering newspapers because we didn't know if I was going to be alive much longer or not. We also didn't know what was causing my seizures so my parents were very scared and I was young enough to be ignorant of even having had a seizure at this time. My mother shielded me from it by saying "Honey. You just had a bad dream", when I woke up on the floor next to my bed with my head in her hands.

So, when I moved to the nicer area where no poor people lived which was then to the north of Colorado Blvd. but could be different now 60 or more years later than then to go to a Junior High School without any gangs in it my new friend I had met giving him and training him on my Newspaper route and we became fast friends. I didn't know why we got along but later realized it was because both of us had almost died from childhood diseases. He had almost died from polio and I had almost died from whooping cough and now night time Blunt Trauma childhood epilepsy until I was 15 years old when the seizures finally stopped for good because my cranium had grown and released the pressure of the concussion on my brain.

So, when I was invited to Yosemite with my friend Mike and his mother and sister we loaded up his Ford Stationwagon and headed up Interstate 5 and the old 99 towards Yosemite National Park.

I had never been there before so this was a really big deal for me. I had been going for 1 to 6 weeks a summer to Shasta Springs in Mt. Shasta with my parents thought since I was 5 and had been blessed at two months of age by the head of our religion there in Mt. Shasta in a place where my 1st wife and I eventually rented an apartment around 1974 in in that 1 acre area in Mt. Shasta city.

So, as we traveled north most people didn't have air conditioning and it was likely August and very hot so as we traveled it was around 95 to 105 as we traveled there. But, then most people were used to suffering a little when they traveled anywhere so suffering from the heat and getting a headache was just a part of traveling as I grew up as a boy traveling across Arizona and New Mexico and Nevada and Southern California with my parents. IN Fact, even Redding and Red Bluff often get over 110 degrees in summers and Sacramento too. But, it isn't usually like this in San Francisco. But, Los Angeles and San Diego all get above 100 degrees and sometimes above 110 degrees Fahrenheit in the summers especially in July, August, September and sometimes October. Fires then were usually from about June to November and many people Mike and I knew lost their homes in Glendale who were the richer people who lived up in the hills around Glendale to fires then. This was sort of normal almost every year from fires then.

I remember stopping and they wanting to buy me a hamburger because I had never eaten one because I had been raised from birth a lacto ovo vegetarian. My father had been a vegetarian since he was 18 because he was a genius and had researched foods to see the best way to stay healthy and studied with Paul Bragg who was Jack Lalane's teacher too who got people starting going to Gymns to work out and jogging in the 1950s. I think Jack Lalane lived until 96 years of age.

So, as I tried to eat this hamburger I really didn't like it and I think they bought me a hot dog too but I liked the taste of a hot dog.

But then Mikes' sister and mother got ptomaine poisoning that night as we camped in Yosemite. But, luckily an Air Force Core man (Medical specialist) told us to go play and hike and he would care for them so they didn't have to go to the hospital or die. He was in the adjoining campsite. People took care of each other more like this then. In some ways no one was a stranger if they looked enough like you then. This is just how people were then. The two ladies got ptomaine poisoning because they ate tuna fish sandwiches that got too warm so the tuna fish and mayonnaise must have gone bad in the heat even though they were stored in an ice chest I believe. Since traveling was only once or so a year for most people back then often they made mistakes like weekend pilots in airplanes when they end of dead and crashed somewhere.

So, this meant that for a week at least we had no supervision and the Air Force core man realized we were basically good boys who wouldn't get into much trouble and wouldn't be useful to Mike's mother and sister very much except in a life or death emergency and he was at least 7 years older than us at about 23 to 25 years of age there with his wife I believe camping.

So, we hiked up to Vernal Falls and California Nevada Falls and Yosemite Falls and swam in the river and floated down on inner tubes and all that then because it was still legal to do then. Then at night around 9 pm they had the fire falls off of Glacier Point where they light cedar bark and push it off there and everyone watches this fire fall that looks like a waterfall that looks like a fiery waterfall coming down off of Glacier Point thousands of feet above us in the campgrounds near what was called Camp Curry then but I think they have changed the names now.

So, my experience with Mike was the first time either of us had been "Turned Loose" without any real supervision for a week or more anywhere in our lives. So, being 15 we were basically adults. In fact, I think Mike was a year older than I and already had own his own car a few years that we had worked on and driven some. He had owned a 1940 ford Coupe and a 1953 Mercury that he and I had rebuilt the automatic transmission on it. So, in some ways we were very adult in our own minds then. But, others didn't see us as much that way. But, I had friends who married at age 16 already so the world as you can see was very different then than now.

The other thing that happened is I found "The Natural God" in Yosemite. People from all over the world tend to find God in Yosemite who are in every religion or no religion. This is just the effect Yosemite has on people from around the world. It is indeed a very very special place in this way. Another place that one experiences God often is Yellowstone National Park and the Grand Canyon and places like Mt. Shasta which is a spiritual mecca for people from all over the world.

But, at 15 I found "The Natural God" that week and the wilderness and the out of doors became where I have worshipped God the rest of my life ever since. So, if you see me walking along a beach or climbing a mountain or walking through a forest I am worshipping God wherever I am on earth, especially if I am in a wilderness area.