Unknown
Warrant Officer
And
Angels
An Autobiography
i
Copyright And Published 2002-2012
By
Century Systems Publishing Company, Inc.
www.CenturySystemsPublishing.com
Book Cover Illustrations by Transphoto, Inc.
ISBN 0-9721630-0-X
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Unknown Warrant Officer & Angels Copyright 2002-2012
By James John Irwin. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
Inquires should be addressed to:
Century Systems Publishing Company
P.O. Box 396
Sweet Grass, Montana 59484
Formerly: DeBary, Florida
United States of America
Unknown Warrant Officer
And
Angels
Dedication
First to my Eternal Father.
Next to the Eternal Son.
Also to the Eternal Spirit.
And my master, creator, friend and brother Michael – Jesus, creator of this physical universe in which we move and have our being and provider of the Spirit Of Truth.
My dedication includes my friends and loves, my Guardian Angel and her associates, and their associates, whom have taught me and are continually invested in my welfare.
I would like to dedicate this work also to those beings that have taught and loved me from resources beyond the comprehension of the human mind.
These beings that have represented my Guardian Angel, her “charges”, the Cherubim and Sanobim and also her twin and her “charges” who have provided help and insights as we all evolve synergistically in our Father’s Kingdom.
To all my unseen friends that have taken an interest in this unworthy ““soul””, giving me insight and inspiration and I, not even knowing from whence it came.
To my puzzle piece, my love of life in this place, my wife, confidant, and best friend while I sojourned the last best years as a human. She, who gave me so much and taught me peace and I will await en’ mansion, after I’ve left this place.
To my family, in which I have had the privilege to be son, and brother, father, grandfather “Papa” and hopefully a friend. To my friends I’ve known in this life, who have taught me the human living and finite loving relationships. And to those fellow Marines of the United States Marine Corps and the experiences in that organization that enabled me to be aware of mankind’s terrible legacy of war and which propels it so that we who have experienced know the value of peace.
And to that one ““soul”” I continually seek.
“The Lord created me at the beginning of his work, the first of his acts of long ago. Ages ago I was set up, at the first before the beginning of the earth.”
Proverbs 8:22-23
Preface Introduction
I’ve attempted to remember as much as I could, and place in this document with as great a detail as possible. Yet many times my memory has eluded me and for that I do issue apologies to all those folks and various precise details I could not recall.
I’ve used as much of the colloquial language as I can remember and I’ve not ‘soften’ or made it less offensive, for life is raw and uncensored. Should it offend, then, I must say it was life and the living of it was as close as I could reiterate it for the impact would have not been as effective had I not done so. A word of caution, explicit language that may offend will begin to rear its ugly head in about chapter six and increase all though chapter thirteen and then tapers off and is sprinkled thereafter, but since it was the living and in the telling; forgive the crude language, but such is war and difficult situations that it brings it into being.
This autobiography is only a partial record, and while I can say it was a challenge to write some of it, and very difficult at times, it was a labor of love. It has ministered to me more than I ever thought possible and I do pray that it may have a positive effect upon you; the reader.
I believe that I’ve gained more from this write than I shall ever be able to give in the writing. I’ve attempted to find the frank honesty that enables one to view with proper contrast the horror that war brings and the subtle and wonderful opposite that is sublime. That wonderful sublime opposite is the true focus of this material, and the steps that brought me to seek out and find it. I would encourage you who read this to always keep that in mind. I’ve always attempted to be honest to the life expended and experienced.
No human, or creature of any kind of any reality will convince me that whereas that which I experienced did not happen, for it did, and I shall never deny the existence of that which I’ve experienced, to do so would be to deny my own existence and such I cannot conceive.
This record was primarily drafted by request of my wife for my grandchildren and has grown into that effort of love and appreciation for every whit of life and the experiences contained therein. My grandchildren are now four in number and are still young at the time of this draft, so since the language is very coarse it will be a few years before they will be old enough to read it’s pages.
This, then, has lead to creation of a small work into an entire book!
Perhaps in some small way I may bring some light to some ““soul”” that otherwise might not have had such and would remain in darkness. We are light beings, even if we are not aware that it is the case. To shed a pin-prick of light into another ““soul”” would be well indeed! This record has expanded in an attempt to foster ‘hope’ in the heart, love of life, and the knowledge that life goes on beyond our wildest dreams. But knowledge in and of itself only catapults the ““soul”” through experience to shape things unseen.
The knowledge I’ve acquired is open for any ““soul”” that seeks it, and is willing to challenge their conceived and perceived concepts of that which is; to an understanding that may be somewhat unnerving to the finite mind. Knowledge in the finite sense is only knowledge and when obtained, dispels equal amounts of faith.
An open mind will reap a reward within these pages and regardless of the belief system that reads these pages and may discover insights beyond this living and possibilities of and part of this organized plan of creation. I’ve reached into my life experience and attempted to extract both the horror and the sublime to give back to this place, this planet, this finite existence a measure of knowledge that may set some thought free from the shackles of prejudice and narrow thinking of creation and how it works. It has taken me fifty years of research and experience to peel back this onion a few layers and perhaps in revealing some of it will benefit that one ““soul”” I seek.
Humans live in the darkness of ignorance, not out of choice, but rather much due to circumstances and experience. …. Crystal knowledge enables the darkness to flee.
“Behold, for mine own part, I have reached the inner vision,
and through the spirit Thou hast placed within me, come to know Thee, my God.
I have heard Thy wondrous secret, nor heard it amiss. Through Thy Holy Spirit,
through Thy mystic insight, Thou hast caused a spring of knowledge to well up within me, a fountain of strength, pouring forth waters unstinted, a floodtide of loving-kindness and of all-consuming zeal. Thou hast put an end to my darkness, and the splendor of Thy glory has become unto me as a light everlasting.”
The book of HYMS – Dead Sea Scriptures
Table Of Contents
Dedication
Preface Introduction
CHAPTER 1 “The Womb”
CHAPTER 2 “ The Song”
CHAPTER 3 “Love is that …..”
CHAPTER 4 “Here, There, Everywhere”
CHAPTER 5 “Poor, Challenged and a Work”
CHAPTER 6 “Greetings”
CHAPTER 7 “What is that? …movement!”
CHAPTER 8 “Sand, Sand and STILL More…”
CHAPTER 9 “J.A.P. and the Tunnel Rat”
CHAPTER 10 “It don’t mean nothin’ at all!”
CHAPTER 11 “It’s a Spook and I don’t mean Casper!”
CHAPTER 12 “The Capture and Other ‘General Fun’!”
CHAPTER 13 “’202 and a wake up!’ And out of the green machine!”
CHAPTER 14 “Lucifer? Satan? The Devil; Jesus-Michael and Me!”
CHAPTER 15 “You Have All The Time You Need!”
CHAPTER 16 “The Confirmation N’ Proposal”
CHAPTER 17 “Jesus-Freak”
CHAPTER 18 “My Grandfather; My Son – My Loss”
CHAPTER 19 “Now In The World And A Part Of It”
CHAPTER 20 “Crooks, Mafia, And What Else Can Go Wrong?”
CHAPTER 21 “Testing by Fire, Drugs and Mayhem!”
CHAPTER 22 “We gotta’ get outta’ this place! Freedom! A Vision!”
CHAPTER 23 “IS THIS POSSIBLE?”
CHAPTER 24 “Life and Unrequited Love”
CHAPTER 25 “Dispair and a ‘“soul”ful’ Visit”
CHAPTER 26 “Aftermath!”
CHAPTER 27 “DEFEAT”
CHAPTER 28 “L-O-V-E is in the air … Or is it just static electricity??
CHAPTER 29 What else can go wrong? ’Discovery’ A Walk-About.
CHAPTER 30 “Bug Resurrection”
CHAPTER 31 “Is this Warranted?”
THE LAST CHAPTER …….“The Day The World Gasps,”
EPILOG “THOUGHTS”
CHAPTER 1
“The Womb”
Greetings both from me, but also from worlds and existence we have yet to understand. This is my story, perhaps minor in the schemes of things but I leave that judgment to you. As you read my story some of it will seem implausible, but I assure you it is all real and true.
Many times through my lifetime I have ask the question “why me” and yet knew instinctually that eventually I would understand that question. It is only now that I’ve reached the tender age of fifty-six and the many experiences of life, that I am able to elucidate what has happened with any clarity.
First, I must take you back in my time to a place that we all begin and in which we find comfort. This place is where we float and hear but muffled sounds. A place that is warm and sight is not but a dim illumination of light sensations.
A place that we test our five sensations and begin the first processing of experience using thought electrochemically. Oh to be sure, the thought is but reactive to the few stimuli around, but thought nonetheless. These thoughts, have attached emotional reaction, which are seared into our memories, even if most of us are unable to bring them to the surface.
This is where I remember the beginning of faint images and sensations that are still a part of my being today. Most of the folks I’ve spoken with over the years have no memory of this event in their lives. I found that most have remembering at about the age of two or three, but alas, few of the womb.
This is the womb experience, a foggy emotional set of disjointed images,
rambling, indiscriminately throughout my mind as flashes of insights.
This was not the only image that captured my self-realization; the baser emotional inner experience prior to the womb also has slowly become a reality of my being.
This is the moments of being emerged in liquid, ingesting or breathing that fluid as it were, and the curious feeling of a stranger in an equally strange place. Yet somehow comforted and with that reassurance of mood of well being that borders upon sublime peace knowing it is a natural outcome of choice. The experience is but a dream of the actual reality, in a physical existence, which is given action of purpose.
Life, now, exposed to still another in a new and different mode providing action of purpose. To say that we were all created equal is simply not true, other than the equal opportunity for expression.
I now know that “life” in all its nuances stems from a single thread. That thread is very fragile indeed!
We are beings that hail from a resource yet largely unknown to us yet all too familiar. But that indeed is the purpose of our flight, our destiny. Without the need to explore creation itself, life becomes a mundane task indeed!
Our physical beginning is not necessarily each of our beginnings. The womb is not the starting point for every person born on the planet. Some have existed prior to their birth here, but I would acknowledge that most of the human race, are, ‘beginners’. This is the planet of their nativity. This nativity or delivery of “life” is from our resource that many have named as God.
Our definition of God is only limited by our ability to perceive that resource. I believe that we hail from light as within the book of James in the Bible attests.
As light beings, the interjection into the womb is all the more significant when placed against the backdrop of an eternal round. But light must reside in a method; otherwise it is but a wave forever seeking expression and can never be satisfied.
The womb, and the physical living, provides for that expression as it is encapsulated in the eternal ““soul””. It is the ““soul”” that is always constant and survival is an extension of the living process.
We shall indeed come back to this concept later, but now let us move forward to another significant event in the moments strung like beads on the linear string of time.
I also have a vague memory of the birthing process in bits and pieces and the only good memory is being expelled and held and a sudden then; pain and cold.
My conclusion is, it was the upside down position that babies were held to initiate breathing by smacking them on the rump, back in 1946.
I suppose that incident has indeed formed my attitude these fifty-six years. I guess Freud was on the right track. Experiences in our childhood, apparently does mold much of our living as humans. That ‘back-slap’ certainly influenced mine, even if I wasn’t that aware of it throughout my life.
I guess I’m still a little ‘pissed off’ about that introduction into the human existence! Besides, whatever did I do to that doctor that he should inflict pain and beat upon me?
Now, I’m male, and the traditional circumcision was the next indignity and additional pain to suffer. I suppose to forgive is divine, so a little divinity was in order on my part, but since I don’t know which doctor did this cruel act, it is difficult to forgive. But back in those days the doctors didn’t think that babies had developed pain receptors and therefore this performance was justified. This came from the Jew do-Christian moors and traditions and thus sealed a baby’s fate on this device of dual usage.
So there you have it, I suppose I’ve held a grudge ever since birth, as doctors and I have never saw eye to eye on most issues.
Now I was ready to begin the adventure!
“If I take the wings of the morning and settle at the farthest limits of the sea, even there your hand shall lead me, and your right hand shall hold me fast.”
Psalm 139:9-10
CHAPTER 2
“The Song”
Most have significant events in their lives that perpetuate a destiny that within time is not fixed or completed. When I was five, my grandparents had a dirt farm in northern Michigan and my parents would travel from our southern Pontiac home in the summer months to that place.
One summer day my mother, grandmother, and siblings were down by a small creek that ran through the farm enjoying the day. We children were playing around the creek, and I remember vaguely the incident, but the moment is crystal clear. The reason the moment is crystal clear stems from a phrase of thought that, repeated and repeated over and over in my mind. And it wasn’t until seven years later when my mother handed me a piece of paper that the memory of that moment flooded back like an old friend.
I’ve recalled that moment in splendid detail, considering that my age at the time was but five years. As I said we were down by a creek that ran on the north side of the upper eighty-acre farm tract. The creek ran about a hundred yards or so from the tar papered roofed basement house. The day was one of those wonderful summer days that all things seemed to be perfect, lazy clouds drifting overhead with the sweet smell of freshly mowed hay drying in the fields. My brother, a seven year old, and myself, my younger sister of three, were down by the water’s edge. Now this creek was about ankle deep, to knee deep in spots and was profuse with frogs and other small creatures worth investigating.
I remember finding a small frog that captivated my imagination and was intent upon exploring its relationship of its hopping, to my insistence that to do so would be to do it while I held one of its feet. The frog in my mind didn’t seem to mind this arrangement, as it seemed that the creature simply didn’t understand why it’s hopping had been interrupted. Or at least that was the conclusion my young mind had drawn based upon my involvement in this young frogs life.
That moment brought into my mind a new startling thought, like a song being sung. We’ve all probably had this happen to us, at one time or another, when we simply cannot get a song out of our heads and it repeats and repeats. Even sometimes to be replaced by another one to repeat and repeat like an unending broken record.
This thought was written into my very being as this “song” being sung in my mind.
Today, I recognize, and I suppose that even at that time I knew that this “song” or thought concept was not my thought, but another’s. The “song was insistent, and constant, so much so that my concentration was broken in my investigation of the frog. This is remembering, as if it were yesterday, Umm, I guess it was a yesterday, when life was more than its worth of living.
This “song” kept its repetition in my mind, insistent, constant, and very distracting toward my intended objective to understand this frog and its hopping need.
However, I let go of the frog’s leg, much to the relief of the frog and decided to reveal this “song” to my mother. I did recognize several words of this lyrical concept that persisted in my mind.
I approached my mother as she was engaged in conversation with my Grandmother and I, of course began immediately to interrupt. And so it is with almost all five year olds. I repeated this “song” and at first she did not respond owing to the ramblings of a child. But as I continued to express my “song” over and over again she began to pay attention to what I was expressing.
I do not remember her words to me then, but seven years later she related them to me as she handed the paper she had written it on. She had said to me that she began to realize that what I was saying was extraordinary and as such ask me if I could repeat it after she returned. She then went to the basement house to retrieve paper and pencil and upon her return she asks me if I could repeat it once more.
Since the “song” continued to repeat in my mind it wasn’t very hard to repeat it once again.
I managed to blurt it out a few more times as she wrote the “song” down and upon completion I ask her what it meant.
As soon as she had fulfilled the task of entry on the paper she then told me that one day I would understand what they meant and immediately upon saying this I remembered that the “song” ceased and I went back to hunt for the frog and test the hopping theory once more. The “song” had not died, but only place in the recesses of my memories temporarily.
That sole event perpetuated a quest to know my destiny and search for it the remainder of my life. It is a thirst that never has been quenched. I’ve been compelled to discover, and I’m assuming that it began that summer day on the farm by that creek bed those fifty years ago.
When we are compelled to discover, that becomes the refining fire that we must go through to understand that which we always knew and yet need to ascertain once again in our finite conscience mind, we find a struggle indeed! Most human beings are not blessed with this gift of compulsion; rather they wait on time to be their teacher. Neither is better than the other, only different in the approach or quest to know God.
My “help” in providing me a “song” as a child is a little unusual I suppose, but when it happens it doesn’t seem unusual. My children think I’m a little strange today, but this experience has indeed help to shape me. We are the product of our experiences, which has culminated from action.
Each small ‘bit’ of life gather together like a giant jig-saw puzzle and this ‘bit’ was indeed to last me a lifetime.
““Soul”s” are very trusting when in a child’s body and know not the offense of much of life until it unfolds in the tapestry of experience.
This moment is forever suspended in time, for the eternal moment is written in the ““soul””.
Farm life, for those that have lived it in the fifties, as a young child is most ideal indeed! Baking clay marbles with my great-grandfather whom we called ‘Poppy’, pole walking in the forest with my brother Pen and my uncle John. ‘Smudge Pots’ created to keep mosquitoes away, “fire fly’s’ caught and imprisoned in a jar Pen later wrote a book about his relationship with our great-grandfather ‘Poppy’ (coincidentally he titled it “Poppy”) and many of these incidents are described.
Exploring the plowed fields, forest, picking wild blackberries and wild strawberries, and mushrooms when in season, these were also moments that helped shape what I am as a human. The freedom of imagination also expressed without judgment time to just experience a simple love of life, a rare gift indeed. I would that all would find the peace of lying on their back on a hill filled with the smell of wild strawberries and the fresh outdoors discerning shapes of things and animals in the clouds that lazily traverse the blue sky.
What could be as perfect as that for a child?
‘Jesus said, “I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and intelligent and have revealed them to infants.”
Matthew 11:25
CHAPTER 3
“Love is that….”
As I grew up I found myself in need to uncover the truth of mankind’s religious beliefs as it relates to God. This, that began a warm summers’ day and increased my desire to know grew geometrically as the years marched on to that eventful day that my mother gave me the paper inscribed with the “song” of my childhood.
The search for God begins long before our arrival in this place of time in space. Yet we only come to this realization much later in life. And my story is not much different, perhaps other than I began a little early. My desire grew as my maturity grew and because I was compelled, that desire drove me forward in my quest to know.
In the half a dozen years since the “song” was sung, I found myself exploring every religion that I could. Obsessively I must admit, and I was leaning toward Christianity, but I found many nuance in many of the other major religions, such as, Buddhism and Hinduism intriguing. My mother was very good at taking me, and on several occasions, my younger sister to various Christian denominations.
My mother, grandmother, grandfather and great-grandfather (who we knew as ‘Poppy’) were from a Christian based religion. The denomination was a splinter group from the Mormonism of the early 1800s. The organization was basically Christian with the addition of structure given to it by Joseph Smith. It was the religion of my ancestors back four generations. My older brother was the first of my siblings to become baptized into this religion of my mother and her parents at the age of fourteen.
I do know that from five to about eight we lived in Pontiac, Michigan, and attended mostly the religion of my mother, but on occasion she would take us to other Christian based churches. I suppose my mother was instrumental in attempting to widen our range of understanding and tolerance of, other religions.
She taught us on our level an appreciation of other religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism, which gave bases of learning more as we grew older. I found myself always intrigued by this new and different way of thinking. She, my mother, presented me with a Koran, at about eight, along with the Bible and Book Of Mormon and the church’s Doctrine and Covenants.
Thus I was engaged in snip-it readings of these four books and admittedly attempted to reconcile these alien theologies that had common roots. We then moved when I was about eight to Inglewood, California, because my father’s sister was a resident there. My Dad wanted to get out of the automotive factory work and start on a new trade of air conditioning and refrigeration and a new life.
My eldest brother remained in Michigan, on the farm with my grandparents. It was during this period that my brother was baptized into my mother’s religious beliefs and her family’s church. This event was unknown to me until a few years later and I’ve always wondered if it was pressure from my grandmother.
I must admit that the Koran fell into disuse the next few years, and my study of the Bible waned, but I did concentrate on the Doctrine and Covenants of my family church. While in Inglewood, I did not attend my mother’s church but did on occasion go to some other denominations, usually ones that were bike riding close. The summer church school’s were fun and provided some information that my young mind accepted.
After about a year in Inglewood I was unhappy to move once more, having recently acquired a paper route and started earning some money. My first real job, as it were, and it was promptly interrupted, when I had a spill with my bike loaded with newspapers and broke my left wrist. We moved to Topanga Canyon, foothills above the San Bernino Valley in California.
This was a little more isolated and as such curtailed my church roaming and investigation. The Canyon was a place of wonder for both my sister and myself. We wandered about the canyon unabated exploring the flora and fauna around us. We discovered the hills were filled with fossils in shale and could be exposed with a sturdy stick.
Sometimes a good sheet of shale would come down exposing a scorpion or two and enabled us to play with these creatures. We brought scissors and would cut their tails off. For a nine-year old boy this was pure ecstasy having adventure outdoors every day.
After a year and half my Dad decided to move to Van Nuys where he found a better resource for income in the refrigeration trade. Van Nuys was metropolitan city and provided for a different adventure. We made a trip to Michigan and the farm and retrieved my older brother, much to his chagrin.
Van Nuys was a place that afforded me some new explorations of different religious denominations once more. And it was because of my interest in these religions that my mother thought it was the time to hand me the piece of paper that she had written down, this “song” of seven years before. She told me that the time had come to return something to me that she had held since I was five.
The “song” written on that piece of paper, though not really immediately remembered, had a significant impact upon a young mind.
As the words were once again revealed as I read them, the memories like a faithful acquaintance returned to my conscience mind once more.
It was if I could relive the experience, and in a way I suppose I did. I recalled the incessant lyrics as they tumbled over and over in my mind.
“Love is that; which the essence of another is essential to your own existence”
There it was, once again, but even now at twelve, while the “song” and the event had meaning, this treasure was still mostly unknown to me.
Certainly I thought at twelve I understood what love was. But I do believe the “essence of another”, was a concept that was but a shadow of understanding in my young mind. How could this, be essential to my existence? My twelve-year-old mind, and the limited experience really did not grasp the significance of this concept, yet my mother did have an appreciation for this and was conscientious enough to save it for a half a dozen years.
Now, don’t get the idea that this was a unique attribute with my mother, no, my mother saved everything of her children’s productions. Mothers are that way you know, they think everything is special that their children should utter or express.
I do know that she knew the significance based upon the age of the conceptual revelation. It has taken me many, many years to just begin to understand a small portion this concept given me some fifty years ago.
I was taken by the method of delivery, now fifty years later. Such a wonderful gift from creation itself, in an unassuming way has always astounded me. As lyrical thought in a melody to capture the mind of a five year old it permeated my being. Through it, and the source that provided it, I became compelled to search for that source, more intently and to know from whence it came and for the reason that it was presented.
It did capture my imagination to say the least, but my framework reference was conventional in that the belief of my mother’s church reflected such things could, and do happen. To accept this as a message or concept from the unseen realm that we knew as God was natural.
And that a child would be the recipient of such a concept was also quite normal. My mother, her mother and father and her father’s father had belonged to the same church. That was my theological inheritance passed down from parent to child. Jesus was always the main thrust of that theology, and revelations (albeit was usually presented to the President of the church), was not unheard of in the congregations that made up the world wide church.
With treasure in hand I was more determined than ever to understand from whence it came.
“For even now my witness is in heaven, and he that vouches for me is on high, the interpreter of my thoughts to God.”
Job 16:19-20
CHAPTER 4
“Here, There, Everywhere.”
The next few years found California life very challenging and having your older brother around to harass as well as to do all the thing siblings find in relationships of that nature was challenging. We found a bond in those couple of years that I look back on fondly. Pennel (my brother) was two years older and smart as a whip. Since my mother had graduated from college by sixteen and was teaching when she was not yet eighteen I knew where Pennel got his mind from, and that was mom’s side of the family.
Just before I was thirteen I had a personal experience that indeed did change me in the years to come. Today, in 2001, this is quite common in our youth today. It is as a matter of course for those that are twelve, thirteen and fourteen, but in 1959 such was not the rule but the exception. I place it here because it did govern much of my teenage life. That incident was my first sexual encounter and intercourse. She was older, almost fifteen and I was just approaching thirteen. It’s not to say that I condone that activity today, but it did have an impact upon my relations with the female gender.
I remember it was all too brief, and the encounter was but the one time. I know my performance was as crude as one could get, but the taste of that snippet of sex was forever imprinted in my being.
I rather think a small amount of feelings were attached to the encounter, but only in regards to the hormones raging in my body. I can’t even remember her name, but that too is somewhat normal for the passage of time and males. It created in me a need to satisfy that carnal part of the human experience. I would not experience another such encounter until I was sixteen.
I had had a “love of my life” which the old folks call “puppy love” when I was about seven, with a girl of about the same age. It was true love…. Well maybe it was, and I never really got to find out having had that “puppy love” in Pontiac, Michigan, prior to moving to California. Her name was Pat, and I shall always remember her.
It was very significant, because we had a fight on the playground at the swing set (even after I had given her a set of three absolutely cheep perfumes).
It ended the relationship, but like many of our childhood playmates could have re-flowered had I remained in Pontiac.
Now at fourteen, in California, having both my older brother and two year younger sister (Linda) in the same nest as it were, was great fun. My mother would convince my Dad to go on adventures virtually every weekend. My uncle (my mother’s brother) was in the Navy at the time and was stationed in San Diego and once in awhile he would drive up for outings with us for the adventures in the foothills, or to Griffin State park.
My Dad had purchased a Volkswagen Beetle, an older vehicle, you know at that time the choice of many colors, such as black or perhaps black, or maybe even black. It was cheep on gasoline and would afford the five of us trips to virtually anywhere in the west. It expanded our boundaries to include not just California, but even other states.
One summer, in late July or August, my Dad thought it would be a great idea to go through Death Valley. Since we had not been there, we all hopped in the black beetle and on with the adventure. The point here is, sometimes the choices were not the best, but the experience (should one survive) added volumes to our memories. Of course, mom took the preverbal photos, even some movie film. Dad figured such a romp could be assisted, by placing a canvas bag of water on the front of the Beatle car (that was suppose to keep us cool) as we traversed the Death Valley desert. The Beatles’ engine is in the back and before we have driven an hour or so, the water bag had all but evaporated from the heat! We ‘kids’ were in the back (no windows in the back that came down) and the Beatle had no air conditioning (other than the hot breeze that happened to flow in from the front).
Camping on the desert, in the foothills and even in the mountains gave us, or at least me a sense of belonging to this creation thing. Much self-creating theology was developed within me as the many warm days of exploration of nature and the peaceful nights unfolded. The nights were most particular, as the canopy of stars showed the expansive nature of things.
We never had much materially, but when put up against these magical moments of nature, things; didn’t seem all that important. I must admit I wholly enjoyed this time and the many adventures that nature afforded the curious. And I was curious indeed. I do believe that had an impact upon my sister to a great extent, as today she’s a biologist. We are the sum of our experiences and will follow those that gave us the most pleasant emotional and “soul”-ful highs.
I would like to say that during this time I had some kind of epiphany, but such was not really the case. It was, a method by which I was falling in love with life itself and began recognizing it for what it truly was.
But as in all things, this wonderment of living was about to come to an end once more. Now, I must admit, this continual moving was very hard on the formal education for both my sister and me, but my elder brother, now in Jr. High School did not seem to be flustered. I look back on it now and know that stability is a fantastic gift. My brother had spent the last five years at our grandparent’s farm, and only two in California. That stability served him well indeed.
The reasons that my elder brother remained with our grandparents stemmed from his relationship my father. I really did not discover this relationship until much later in my life. I suppose it was a question of uhn…parenting. My Dad was in the army and the war was about over, and it simply was a question of being my brother’s parent. Now, since then we absolutely know that he was my fathers’ son, but back in those days the male could question and act accordingly with impunity.
This then kept both my brother and my Dad at arm’s length and distance was very desirable as viewed by my mother and her parents, my grandparents. Yet these two years that Pennel spent in California enabled us to bond as we had never before for two male siblings. Pennel taught me by example, and the lessons were good ones. I must admit I always felt inferior to him because of his maturity and intelligence.
I remember when we were in Pontiac and Pennel was about seven, he and I were in one of Dad’s old clunker cars, and having no seats in the back we were required to stand. Today, we cannot imagine a parent placing children in jeopardy but in the early fifties safety was not a high priority. As we were in the back, Dad started the car and placed it in first gear and began to go forward.
As the car lurched forward, we boys fell backward. Now, my Dad is a bit of a “pack rat” and still is), collecting bits of everything. I suppose it comes from living through the depression. In any event, the old car had no seats and had quite a bit of, what I would call trash, and part of that trash was an old, small, rusty oil can. This can was made of metal with a funnel top on the can. As you might guess, my brother attempted to brace his fall, and as he fell backward his palm of his hand met the funnel top of the oil can, impaling his hand on to the oil can. This incident was not an isolated one, as within that same year I had a bit of an accident.
Seems my Dad had gathered up a pile of logs for burning in the winter, and we children played on this log pile. Once again, in today’s society such play would not be allowed, but in 1951 such was not the attitude. In any event, as we played on the log pile, the pile began to shift, and down we all came tumbling. Unfortunately, at the bottom of the log pile my Dad had placed an old electric meat grinder. I was the ill-fated one that found the meat grinder with my head.
Not to be outdone, and certainly to round out a few of these memories my sister and I were riding in the front seat, she in the middle and I by the door. My Dad was driving, and took a wide turn left. Fortunately, he was only traveling at a slow speed, yet the centrifugal force and a very week door latch provided an unremitting departure from the vehicle. Being a young person, as I was caught up in the forces pulling from the vehicle, and reaching with my left had found a target. That target was my sister’s dress, thus pulling her with me as we bounced out on to the road rolling and becoming rather scraped up in the bargain. Linda (now she uses one of her middle names and goes by Lynn) still reminds me of that day these many years later.
Perhaps our survival was in question on a few occasions, but I firmly believe each of us have forces unknown to us that give us moments of security. These are examples of childhood accidents that are not exclusive to us but they too are part of our total experience. These leave lasting impressions and do govern our adult lives in ways we really cannot consciously comprehend. Just imagine if we were able to remember every life incident, how would we be responding to life?
Returning to California and now at the tender age of fourteen, we were about to move still once more, this time back to Michigan. My Dad and Mom decided that they wanted to start their own business “back home” since both had grown up in the north woods and farming.
The following year we returned to the farm at Afton, Michigan, and Dad and Mom set up housekeeping in the tarpaper basement house as Mom’s parents had moved into a trailer house. When we had been at the farm when I was younger (five and six years), everyone had gone outside and we had at that time a pot bellied stove, which sat on a dirt floor. While they were outside, I had discovered a bunch of spiders around the clawed feet of the stove. I found a stick and began playing with these creatures.
When my parents came in they found me playing with these spiders, and got very excided needless to say. I later found out that these were black-widow spiders. My Dad and my grandfather immediately found themselves in the town of Cheboygan and purchasing bags of cement. The floor soon established itself covered with a layer of cement.
So to return to the tar-papered covered basement and the farm was simply a continuation of the adventure that began when I was a child. The farm was nestled against state forest and I was looking forward to this new adventure.
I began to understand what a family with love and caring for each other is and with an extended family with grandparents. Linda and I would be attending the one room (which could be divided into two) schoolhouse and my older brother would attend the “big” school (Junior/Senior High) in Indian River about nine miles away to the west.
Dad started his refrigeration/air conditioning business in Onaway nine miles in the opposite direction (east) from the farm and also purchased a gasoline service station on the main road about a mile from the farm.
My grandfather still had a working dirt farm, but was beginning to par back his work and also worked as the janitor at our one room school along with mostly my cousins as student and Aunts as cooks at that school.
And so the next chapter in my life began to unfold and with it brought more impressions and memories to be stored in my being.
Afton and Indian River, Michigan, continues to be ‘home’ to me and was the one consistent place my young mind accepted as ‘home’.
I knew that Pen had found a wonderful gift in the stability of ‘home’. This certainly came to realization as we now returned to the place that had given me many days of peace and wonderment growing up.
I suppose to miss a place the experiences there touches us on an emotional level much akin to a mild love of sorts. It certainly resides within our being as our total experience that makes us up as humans. In a way I’ve always envied those that had a ‘home’ for a long time and the maturing to adulthood in one place.
‘Home’ indeed where the heart is!
“Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God; everyone who loves is born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love, does not know God, for God is LOVE.”
1 John 4:7-8
CHAPTER 5
“Poor, Challenged and a Work”
I know now that as young person reaching adolescence; I was going through the hormones that rage in uncontrolled random assault on my sensibilities.
Now as I found myself in my fifteenth year and the remembrance of a twelve-year-old sexual encounter which encouraged my pursuit of another.
I will acknowledge that school heretofore was not a high priority, but now it took on a new significance. It was this year that I discovered a teenage relationship, a love liaison. I was back on the farm that was familiar and it appeared to me that life was again stable and long-term associations might be possible.
Her name was Dorothy, and became the love of my life for this year and a bit. We had our first sexual encounter, and which I was not aware of her physical health at the time. It was her first, and my second. Yet this shaped my attitude of virgins thereafter. Dorothy and I started out as “going steady” and the events that forge life’s vicissitudes did not wait long before casting its long shadow.
Dorothy’s death was swift and sudden and utterly crushed me, but I was silent and did not expose our secret. Up until this time, I have never revealed our love and the expression of that love. I now knew the pain of loving and loss and it was excruciating. I had great difficulty reconciling this passing. She was such a part of me and I her. Dorothy was my second love, and first that I was able to fully express a love felt for another person in both emotional as well as physical. Pat was my first in a “puppy love”, Dorothy was a possible mate, and she framed much of how I would approach my future relationships.
The remainder of the year took me into hidden despair while chasing as many of the female gender as possible to somehow reconcile Dorothy’s death. I did not want a relationship that might bring affection, but rather just encounters, sexual if possible.
I studied how young ladies acted and reacted when approached for relationships. In other words now at sixteen it was time to play the field. I’ve thought about this period and I was, as many folks would, question why God would allow such a special person to die.
And when no answer was forth coming I sought solace in sexual relationships, without close affection. I suppose I got angry with God or at least my perception of what God was. Because of this situation and attitude of God, my “visiting his house” was much diminished. Whenever grandmother would ask if I’d like to go to church with her I would invariably decline. My ““soul”” was not up to the task and my heart was heavy to say the least, but this is a normal reaction when dealing with death in ignorance. And boy was I ignorant about this death process and living process as far as that goes.
These few years on the farm and the gasoline service station found both myself, and my older brother, helping run the gasoline service station and help work grandfather’s farm. Dad continued to attempt to stay in the refrigerator repair business, but that simply was not to be. The area just could not support a refrigeration repair business. The fall of this year my Dad went down to Florida to find work, finally resigned that the business in Onaway, Michigan, was a dud. When my mother and he got married they took their honeymoon in Florida back in the forties and that is what prompted his return.
The living in the tarpaper basement house was the poorest we had ever lived. I remember placing cardboard in the shoes in the winter to keep out the snow from the holes worn in the bottom. We simply did not have a ‘bucket to piss in or a window to throw it out’, kind of poor.
When Mom told us we would be following Dad the next summer. And as it approached, my brother began voicing his displeasure at leaving where he had more roots than his siblings. After much discussion my mother agreed as did my grandparents and Pennel (Pen) remained to finish Senior High school.
Mom drove me, and Linda to Florida that summer and we went to a little subdivision on the outer skirts of Fort Lauderdale. It was the first major bad experience because the neighborhood was not a peaceful one and friendships were hard to obtain, unless you had something to offer. It was a place that was populated with what we termed at that time as “Hoods”, or what would be called ‘Gang-Bangers’ today. I was now seventeen and I found a job as a bag boy for a grocery chain working nights and weekends (except Sunday), which enabled me to save some money.
My Dad was acting estranged and I noticed the strain on my mother. I was determined to find a way out of the subdivision that I had found myself. This job afforded me a little money and I obtained a drivers’ license and purchased a car. This automobile was an old 53 Chevy, which I managed to talk the owner down and being able to purchase it for fifty dollars. Most of the time it wouldn’t start, and I found very creative ways to park the vehicle on slopes or embankments that would allow me to coast for a few feet. I would place the car in neutral (it was a stick shift with three on the column) open the drivers side door push it to get it going, and then when the speed was adequate jump in and “pop” the gear shift into first. Usually this would be enough momentum and speed that the car would start.
The car was a projectile manned by someone that knew less than nothing about automobiles. I had seen my grandfather, uncle and Dad work on cars, but I simply did not pay much attention and hence, learned little. The car was independence, and usually got me to work and back. It also doubled for a bus when my friends wanted to go to the beach (the more the merrier, especially should the occasion arise that the vehicle needed a push to get it started … which was all the time).
I remember one incident when I had a full load in the car (eight of us packed into that sedan) and traveling down State Road seven, a two-lane road, with canals, filled with water on both sides of the road. Well, seems a good friend of mine had done some work on the engine (his nick name was “Stony”; he was the neighborhood ‘hood’) and neglected to replace the bolts that held down the hood. As we were traveling about fifty miles an hour (the car couldn’t go faster), a gust of wind as we were going down the road lifted up the hood and it sailed into a canal. We did not stop of course, and all of us had a good laugh, with the exception of the fellow driving the convertible behind us, his eyes were wide as saucers as the hood took flight. It was a sight to see, this hood vibrating and then sailing off gliding like a soaring bird into the canal.
Later I purchased an Indian motorcycle as a back up to the car to retain as much of my independence as possible. I managed to find a speed of well over a hundred and twenty-one mph while driving on that same road once. It scared the hell out of me and the next day I sold the ‘bike’. I guess I didn’t need THAT much independence.
A strange event occurred during my work day one Saturday afternoon at the Publix Supermarket on Federal Highway in Fort Lauderdale. I was gathering grocery baskets as usual from the parking lot when a woman whom I’d never seen before (or since) approached me with a book in her hand. I remembered her words, as it seemed an unusual incident in my life.
When she found herself in front of me she inquired if my name was James.
“James, James Irwin?” she flatly stated. I said, “yes and how might I help you”, as I thought she was a customer. She then said, “Emma Christiansen ask me to give you this book.” I blurted out “WHO” and she once again repeated “Emma”. “Do I know her?” was my response, but she gave no reply, only handing me the book, a BIG BLUE BOOK *(1)! I said, “Thank you, and it sure is a heavy, and a big one”. She abruptly turned around and began walking away.
I repeated “Emma Christiansen” over and over in my mind as I walked back inside to place the book in my locker. I grabbed a pencil from one of the cashiers as I walked in and quickly scribbled her name on the first page of the book and the date, ‘August 21, 1963’. I turned Emma’s name over in my mind but simply could not place her. Obviously she knew my name, so I just assumed that she had been one of the many customers that shopped at my Publix grocery store.
It wasn’t until many years later that I would fully appreciate this “gift of love, given unselfishly and with purpose”. It wasn’t until the next day late in the afternoon that I opened the book and began to read. I read, and read and read! I simply could not put the book down. I was compelled to read this work as I had never read any work before. It so captivated me that I barely ate, sleep little, and called in sick to work, to the exclusivity of every thing else, continued to read this book from cover to cover.
I’ve never read any book now or since then with as much urgency and need to satisfy something so very deep within me. It was a love affair of the highest order.
It brought about so many new questions, and so many new concepts that I had not considered before as the words poured off the pages into my very ““soul””.
I had read whatever I could get my hands on when it came to theology, but this work outshined them all. I was mesmerized by its cosmology, this insight that could not have been written by any one human or even a group of humans.
I was totally impressed with its renderings, that before the year was out, I had re-read the work two more times from cover to cover, these 4.2 million words.
I made notes, and wrote references within its margins, as my mind raced to correlate this work with all that I had learned up to this point in my life. The book was my treasure and many nights I would go to the beach and ponder their words, sometime reading the book as the waves crashed up onto the beach, by the dim light that cascaded from the hotel lights.
Serenity was achieved however so fleeting within those times of contemplation. Dorothy became a wonderful memory, something that could be relived over and over again at my will, reliving the wonder of a true first love. My despair over that death faded into the mist and memories that time heals and now my theological quest was renewed and the compulsion to know return with full force.
At that time homes in Fort Lauderdale were more available than the demand to acquire, hence one could put two hundred dollars down and purchase a house. My Dad had done exactly that prior to our arriving in Fort Lauderdale, having purchased and sold two other houses, but the house he moved us into was a rental.
After extensive looking, I found a house in Fort Lauderdale and suggested to my mother that I would be willing to give her a down payment on a house if she would just move. She was on the verge of divorcing, and in a conversation with her I discovered that she was pregnant. My Dad had begun his mid-life crises and it was becoming to be intolerable to continue living in the same house.