I grew up mostly in Los Angeles County from age 8 to 21 and a lot of what happens in a city tends to make you crazy I found. (like the Watts riots in 1965 in Los Angeles). At this point I could from Glendale See watts burning from my parents 2nd story deck in the direction of Los Angeles from Glendale then. It was pretty crazy and I feared for all the white and black people and people of every race there during the burning (by the way 34 people 'that we know of' died during these riots.) I was 17 years old and a Junior at Glendale High School then.
Then white people with their rifles went up onto the hills in Glendale (illegally then) to targer practice shooting any black people who came into Glendale because Glendale then was pretty white at least at that point 1965.
So, incidents like this and many more made me want to leave Los Angeles and live somewhere else. One of the places I loved was Mt. Shasta. the other place I loved at 17 was Yosemite National Park. However, I found there were many less people in Mt. Shasta than live just outside of Yosemite Nation park so by 1969 especially during the summers I started to spend more and more time there camping out and rock climbing and climbing Mt. Shasta to the top in 1970. I wanted to move there but knew it would be hard to make a living there unless you were a Truck driver or something like this (long haul).
So, after I studied to be a computer programmer and operator and made a lot of money in the field I realized that I couldn't fully do what I wanted until 50 to 75 years into the future (like now) because computer chips were only at NASA then in 1966 when I graduated High school and the chips were pretty big at that point too and only for the astronauts.
So, getting out o the city was my goal. My first opportunity to leave was when my parents moved to San Diego because my father wanted to work through the IBEW there because he could make a lot more money there than working as an electrical contractor he said.
At first, I was young and got a job working as an electrician in Venice California. But, Venice then was a lot like Haight Ashbury was in the 1960 then in 1969 and too crazy for me to stay there. So, eventually after about 3 months of the craziness in Venice, California I moved to San Diego to my parents place so I could go back to college and eventually to become a psychologist. However, in the meantime I got with a girl I wanted to marry because she was amazing and I was 25 years old and she was 21 then and she got pregnant so we got married and I dropped out of school to become a psychologist then to support us. (the three of us.
Eventually we moved first to Hawaii after trying Mt. Shasta where I got heat prostration planting trees in the forests under contract to the Forest Service. So, I returned to San Diego because of heat prostration because I couldn't work for awhile and then we moved to Hawaii to Hilo on the big island where friends of ours lived and where my wife had lived when she graduated Berkeley High school in Berkeley, California.
So, then I got injured when I stepped on a piece of glass in our yard of the house we were renting and needed 10 stitches in my right big toe. So, then I couldn't work because if I stood on this foot all my blood would run out of me. So, I had to put my foot on a table so my blood didn't all run out of me then.So, after 3 months in Hawaii we moved back to the mainland and I became a working partner in my families mining business where Gold had gone from 32 dollars an ounce in 1930s to 300 dollars an ounce within a week or so. So, my uncle who was a gold bullion dealer needed a tax rightoff so my extended family started this mining business as a potential profit making venture and also it could be a tax right off too at the same time for my uncle and cousin. (my cousin was a lawyer). (He's still alive now just retired from his business).
So, we did this for a couple of years until my father and I wanted out for a variety of reasons and sold our interest in this business.
At this point my father bought a house with the money from his selling is part of the business and eventually my wife and I lived in this really nice house near where I had gone to college. But, eventually Mt. Shasta called us after my wife inherited some money from her mother who had passed away.
So, we moved to Mt. Shasta and bought for cash what was then called a Datsun Truck which is now bought by Nissan by the way (the company).So, we owned our Datsun blue long bed truck (a 1976) then outright which was good because no payments necessary. I also still owned my 1968 Camaro I bought new with money I made as a computer programmer and operator sometimes working then midnight to noon 7 days a week to get into that field but the money was good. However, one guy my age (20) had had to get married at 16 because his girlfriend was pregnant said to me at age 20. "What the Hell are you doing working 7 days a week 12 hours a day? I do it only because I'm married and supporting several people. You need to have some fun. I can't because I'm a working slave now!"
This was a shock ot me at the time because I really didn't think this way at all but he was right.
So, at 20 I eventually stoped working 7 days a week 12 hours a day and moved to Venice and got a job as an electrician building an apartment building and part of the pay was a free apartment to live in on Venice Beach. But, to show you just how middle class and square i was I had no idea at all how corrupting to a young person Venice could be. So, because in the end I'm a very practical person I left there and went back to San Diego where my parents moved to and went back to college this time to become a psychologist not a computer programmer or computer science like before.
So, when I met my first wife after trying Mt. Shasta with her and our baby son first in May of 1974 or june after he was born, we then moved back to san diego then I sold my VW Bug and Grand piano to move to where she wanted to go which was where she lived after Graduating Berkeley high school in the SF Bay area. then we came back and I worked as a partner in the mining business until 1976 when we moved to Mt. Shasta when she inherited enough money to pay cash for a truck and many other things and get situated in Mt. Shasta once again.
This Gravitation to mt. Shasta eventually led to my buying land for Cash with my 2nd wife in 1980 and at this point is where I finally was able to slow my life down enough to where I could really move towards enlightenment on many different levels which I did (including going to India and Nepal and Thailand and Japan with my 2nd wife and my son from my first marriage and her two children from December of 1985 to April of 1986.
So, I refused to give up the path to enlightenment because besides being a father and husband it was always what made the most sense to me. GETTING ENLIGHTENED!
I BELIEVED THAT THIS IS HOW I COULD MOST EFFECTIVELY HELP MYSELF AND EVERYONE ELSE IN MY LIFE ONGOING.
AND I WAS RIGHT!
BY GOD'S GRACE
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