Luck
"Some folks got fortune, some got eyes of blue
What you got will always see you through, you're a lucky man!"
-- Bruce Springsteen
The dictionary describes Luck as:
"Success or failure apparently brought by chance rather than through one's own actions."
Some say it does not exist. There are thousands of motivational books and speeches that suggest luck is a figment of our imagination. They say to depend on luck is a losers mentality. There is certainly some truth to that. The proof is that the lottery has millions and millions more losers than winners. So if luck actually exists, it is elusive, at best. But some things have an enormous impact on our lives, even though they cannot be proven to exist. One would be a little thing called faith.
There are others, too.
We all live with the effects of gravity, but we have no way of capturing it in a bottle. In fact, unless you have been in space, you cannot escape gravity. Even space is subject to gravity. Black holes in space excerpt so much gravity they suck in light. But you and I can't touch, see, or smell a black hole in space. Nor can we touch or see gravity, but it most certainly exists.
As luck would have it, Earth has just the right amount of gravity so we humans can walk on its surface. The Moon is at the exact spot in relation to the Earth that it prevents our oceans from overrunning the land. The Sun is just the right distance from us that we can live without burning up. The Earth has just enough of a magnetic shield circulating around it to keep radiation from destroying all life. Earth's atmosphere contains precisely the correct amount of hydroxyl radical (HO), a chemical that plays a central role in the ability of Earth’s atmosphere to cleanse itself of pollutants, to keep our weather relatively stable.
Planet Earth is, so far, the only place in a universe of trillions of planets, that sustains life. I'd call that lucky for us. I didn't have anything to do with that, but I sure do benefit from it.
What about love? We know it when we see it, right? Or maybe not, but we celebrate it. Some build families around it, kill others for withholding it, or commit suicide when they lose it. Love is really powerful, but unexplainable and elusive. Some would say you have to be lucky to fall into it.
Luck is controversial because it seems to be present or absent in extremes. Humans tend to overlook subtle things like luck, love and faith. We tend to take them for granted, just like we take gravity for granted. We only notice them when they work against us, like when we trip and fall down, or fall out of love. Or when our luck runs out…
Truth is, a lot of luck has rubbed off on me. I have never felt rich, to where I didn't have to sweat making credit card or mortgage payments. I can occasionally splurge on dinner out or go to a ball game. I used to go skiing often, and we shared our rooms, our equipment and travel expenses. But we had enough to buy gas for the boat, or ski lift tickets. Truth is, I live paycheck to paycheck.
But a lot of people say I live in Fantasyland.
As insulting as that may sound, I don't disagree. I am a direct descendent of Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse Club, his daytime programming on late 50's television, and the inspiration his imagination had on my ability to visualize and imagine my future. I have always said Walt Disney had more influence on my life than any other person. He gave me an imagination, which I believe to be my most valuable asset. It's another one of those things you can't quantify or touch. Some people have one, some don't. For some their overactive imagination can lead to trouble or great wealth.
Walt Disney's amusement park proved to me that anything you could imagine could come true. So, yes, I do live in fantasyland. I dream, I plan, and I imagine what comes next? Then I ask, why not?
One of the first experiences I can remember as a kid was visiting Disneyland shortly after it opened in July 1955. Fantasyland, Adventureland, Frontierland, Tomorrowland, I literally ran from one attraction to the next! Each new area represented a different and exciting world of imagination. It truly was a Magic Kingdom! I remember that day like it was yesterday, when they put me in my own Autopia Car, and set me out on my own! I was 5 years old and that was, without a doubt, the most exciting day of my life!
As a very young male, I was obsessed with Davy Crockett (played by Fess Parker) in the Disney mini-series about The Alamo (see my eBook f'd: For Your Own Good) I idolized him because he was referred to as "King of the Wild Frontier" and as a hero. I had little knowledge of his history as a representative of Tennessee in the US House of Representatives. I just liked his Coonskin Hat and the fact that he was an expert rifleman. I spent most of my playtime running around the neighborhood pretending to be King of the Wild Frontier, The Lone Ranger, or The Rifleman. We all had playguns and we took turns being the Cowboys or the Indians. I loved killing Indians, and I expected my friends, when shot with imaginary bullets, to "act realistic' when they fell. I would demonstrate what I expected when it was my turn to be the victim. Maybe I was destined to be a film director.
In the end, however, like Davy Crockett, we all tried to be "Good Guys" and protect the women and children and even show empathy when we defeated the Indians. Today some people suggest that it was that sort of activity that taught me to hate people of color.
You know who I really loved? Tonto! He was the Lone Ranger's beloved Native American companion, scout, and advisor! He was very special to me because he exhibited a keen knowledge of the environment, of using the natural resources to survive and an undeniable sense of loyalty to those he trusted and loved.
Our family used the Sunday night Disneyland television program as a bonding device. It was almost a religious commitment for everyone to sit in front of our little 10" RCA TV after dinner. Walt Disney had a remarkable resemblance to my dad, Hugh. Both in look and demeanor, and my dad also had an uncanny ability to draw and design. Using pencil and paper he invented stuff all the time. Both men had a very very steady, reassuring appearance and voice, and both effused enthusiasm and authority.
As a little kid I appreciated Walt more than my dad because he was bringing us creative ideas and stories every week. My dad, on the other hand, was busy working on airplane wing and engine cowling designs. Nothing personal, but kids want fantasy, right? Of course my dad did play catch with me almost every day, and he was the one who engineered our neighborhood rolling backstop, so we could play over-the-line in the street.
My dad was the Walt Disney of our neighborhood in Altadena, California.
For many of my most developmental years, Walt Disney and his films and television productions dominated my entertainment menu.
In 1956 I had my first crush on Annette Funicello (I married her 'twin sister' 28 years later), and when I was just seven, I made a deal with my dad to purchase a corner of our property. I was always digging in the dirt and making a mess of the landscaping so my dad suggested I properly "develop" the land just like Walt Disney had done in Anaheim. We made a deal: I would become part owner of the land so I could do with it what I wanted, and someday, when he sold the house and moved, he would share in the equity he obtained from the increased value of the land. I had no idea what he was talking about but at least I could proceed with my plans to build a miniature Disneyland in our backyard.
Little did I know it at that time, but my Disneyland-inspired backyard development got me involved in my first real estate transaction. A few years later when our family left Altadena, my dad started a savings account for my college education, funded with the proceeds from our equity sharing deal.
Here's The Rub: That ownership arrangement was instrumental in the success of my first home purchase many years later. For me at the time, it was just a place to play with my toys in the dirt. More on that later…
In 1960, my family relocated to Palos Verdes Estates, an emerging community along the southwest coastline, just outside of Los Angeles. That Christmas, I got my wish, a brand new Schwinn Stingray bicycle. Every kid in the neighborhood had a Stingray, and before long a few of us formed a bike club. I named our group ECCO, which was defined at the time as "Here We Are!" We fashioned ourselves as little Hell's Angels on Stingrays.
I attended one of the most beautiful school campuses in the world, Malaga Cove Intermediate School. It sits on the cliffs above Torrance Beach and the Palos Verdes Swim Club. Next to the campus is the PV Little League Fields, where I played for the Giants. When I look back on that I realize I really did grow up in La La Land.
In our neighborhood, near the top of "The Hill '' as the Palos Verdes peninsula is known, was a large tract of undeveloped land, which just happened to be owned by the dad of one of my ECCO bike club members. His family owned a chain of dental clinics, and they had plans to eventually build homes there, so they had the roads put in, but held off on the houses. So we had what we called "The Ranch'' all to ourselves. Once again, inspired by Disney, I suggested we build our own amusement park!
So we gradually constructed an off road bicycle obstacle course. Complete with ramps, jumps, zigzag paths and water features. Our little ECCO Bike Club became a sort of athletic team, challenging other neighborhood kids to compete and learn new bike tricks. In hindsight, our dirt biking enterprise was years ahead of its time.
Eventually we built other amusement attractions, like a Three Level Tree House (inspired by Frontierland), a War Zone (similar to a paint-gun park except we used water balloons) featuring Hunting Blinds and Secret Underground Tunnels to avoid detection after we water balloon-bombed passing cars at night (OK, we got a little carried away). The property had an old abandoned barn, so we turned that into an indoor basketball court and roller skating rink where we staged fake Roller Derby contests.
By the time I turned 15 the Disney-Mystique had worn off. It was considered childish to still be playing with Coonskin Hats and fake rifles, or riding Stingray bicycles. So we graduated to 4 stroke single cylinder, 6 1/2 hp minibikes, smoking cigarettes and listening to the Beatles, Stones and Beach Boys.
I started fantasizing about being a rock and roll disc jockey. I fell in love with music and became a student of the LA pop radio industry. There were three competing stations in LA battling for the attention of the growing market for teen ears. We were buying records, attending concerts, buying clothing influenced by the San Francisco Psychedelic music scene, by Motown and the British Invasion bands. There was KFWB, the strongest signal, promoting some of the nation's most notable DJ's like Bill Balance, B. Mitchell Reid and Ted Quillan. They were smooth, fast and furious. KRLA was a Pasadena station featuring Humble Harve, Emperor Hudson and Dave "Hullabaloo" Hull. Then there was Boss Radio KHJ, with The Real Don Steele, Gene Weed and Robert W. Morgan.
Many famous personalities emerged from that era, including Wink Martindale, later becoming a well known TV game show host; Bob Eubanks who up until just a few years ago became the voice of the Pasadena Rose Parade. And the iconic Casey Kasem, perhaps the most iconic voice-over in radio and television history. Radio in those days was the premier source of entertainment because it was ubiquitous and free.
I am a genuine flower child...a white male raised by a two parent household, with a Methodist background and a father who worked in the booming aerospace industry. My mom was a stay-at-home mother who cooked dinner for our family almost every night. We sat at the dinner table and shared our daily experiences and supported each other. We were a true nuclear family.
Pure luck?
In high school I was somewhat of a loner. I wasn't crazy enough to hang with the bad guys and never good enough to be a letterman or a student leader. I was told I was a gifted student, which qualified me to be a teacher's assistant to lighten their load. For that I felt used and sometimes ashamed because it separated me from my classmates. I didn't want to be considered "Special".
I had a hard time deciding which social group I belonged to. There were the athletes and the nerds and the surfers. I wasn't a star baseball player, and I was never a serious surfer. The surfboard was too big and cumbersome, and since there were no leashes at the time, I was too lazy to swim into the shore every time I fell off the board. I stuck with bodysurfing. And of course, I was still spending many weekends with my folks, snow and water skiing, and visiting Yosemite and other national parks. My folks owned a classic Ford Country Squire Station Wagon, and we wore it out traveling the West.
I actually liked attending class, and I was always engaged, but I was often distracted by cute girls and opportunities to sneak off campus to smoke cigarettes. I resented boring lessons about stuff that had no impact on my life, so I got 'C's and 'B's and a rare 'A' but nothing notable. I was creative and interested in art and literature.
I had a hard time figuring out how to dress, where to go to find people with similar values and interests. Eventually, I started identifying with hippies and popular music. I really enjoyed records, radio, and love-ins. I spent the majority of my free time attending gatherings in parks and listening to local rock and folk bands. My neighbor formed a band and practiced often in his garage, dreaming about the future of becoming rock stars.
Marijuana created an underground social network. Since it was illegal we all had to operate in a secret society, careful to vet anyone we socialized with. It was a special bond we all had. "Do you smoke?" was the way we uncovered people with similar values. It was like a fraternity, we shared a secret, a puff, and a lot of laughs.
In the 60's, love was all we needed. And a few joints. Beyond that we shared friendship, music, and philosophy. We spent a lot of time discussing universal questions about the origins and purposes of life. We played frisbee, watched sports and read books! Yes, we read a lot!
I read Truman Capote, Norman Mailer, Joseph Heller, Dalton Trumbo, J.D. Salinger, William S. Burrows, Kurt Vonnegut, Eldridge Cleaver, Allen Ginsberg and Ray Bradbury. I analyzed song lyrics by Bob Dylan, The Doors and dozens of others. I fantasized about Lady Chatterley's Lover, Candy and Lolita.
By the time I left home to live on campus at Cal State University at Long Beach in 1969, I was an unequivocal leftist. I was anti-war, anti-military, anti-Nixon, and anti-establishment. Oh, I guess we already established that.
Or was I?
The college administration placed me in the brand new student dorm. The first one to be built on the huge campus. It was a 4-story building with four units per floor. We shared a common shower/restroom on each floor (32 students).
The admissions office placed me with a Vietnamese exchange student who was impossible to understand, so I requested a reassignment. I got a guy from Redlands with hair to his shoulders and a full beard. Danny looked like Willy Nelson, and he fashioned himself as a surfer dude though he came from the Inland Empire. I had a problem with him because all he wanted to do was get high and party. He had no intention of actually graduating. He was just there to stay out of jail. His parents were willing to foot the bill and he was willing to play it out as long as they were. I had to constantly avoid him and his friends, who were mostly giggly, immature surfer wannabes looking to get laid.
I immediately gravitated towards the Radio/TV department and social studies. I started writing and debating, and had a few run-ins with teachers, mostly over war, gender and race issues. I just couldn't buy into the moral relativism theories and practices. As the son of an engineer, I was a pragmatist. And gradually becoming a conservative.
I clung to the closeness of my family, even when I was over-indulging in pot, avoiding responsibility for my lackadaisical grades and lack of direction. Fortunately, my folks always believed in me, and so did I. My dad's willingness to give me a second chance was a major turning point in my life.
My arrest for possession was closely followed by my first experience with racism. I was offered a chance to do a student exchange with the social studies department at University of Southern California. I had some heated exchanges with one of my professors and I guess she thought I might learn a lesson by going across town to a more urban and sophisticated campus of advanced learning.
It was just a one day event scheduled to last from 9 AM till 3 PM. I was escorted to a conference room on campus and introduced to five USC students. I assumed something similar was happening back home on my campus. There were three guys and two gals. We started by introducing ourselves and giving a brief personal background and current field of study bio. I learned that the guys were all involved in groups like Students For A Democratic Society, and the Black Panthers. I knew enough about those organizations to know they were far-left, semi-Marxist, anti-Capitalist groups that supported Peace and Freedom activists like Eldridge Cleaver and other militants like the Weather Underground. One of the girls announced she was part of the La Raza Chicano Movement, a militant Mexican-American organization with the goal of reclaiming parts of California/Arizona/Texas to its "rightful owners".
I was excited because I was well versed in the narrative of the anti-war left, and Black civil rights activists. I had just finished reading Eldridge Cleaver's highly acclaimed Soul On Ice.
I immediately knew I was in for a dreadful exercise in prisoner of war-style debriefing, indoctrination and intimidation! From very early in the session I was ridiculed and mocked as a white, privileged, racist male who discriminates against minorities and women. That I had been raised by systemically racist parents and taught to hate people of color. Though I dressed like them, I had the afro hair and the beard, and I even wore a beaded necklace! It didn't matter to them because I was a white male.
I sat in the middle of the room as my "captors" circled around like a pack of wolves, each taking pieces of my flesh as they systematically performed perspecticide on my identity.
After 4 hours of relentless persecution and grilling, I was too exhausted to defend myself anymore. Like any captive, after a while you just want the terrorization to end. So I began to agree with them. I adopted the premises of their contempt. I promised to redeem myself, to practice proper progressive politics and to become active in my community to support the goals of the Students For A Democratic Society and the Peace and Freedom Party platform.
This was my introduction to the indoctrination process called perspecticide, or gaslighting. I was, although I didn't realize it at the time, experiencing a propaganda campaign, a reeducation program for me, and an instructional program for future leaders in a worldwide Progressive Jihad that would eventually become the ubiquitous assault on the Conservative Movement in America.
What happened in that room on that May afternoon on the campus of USC was a foreshadowing of how the combined forces of modern media, our union-run public school systems and the Democratic parties entire organizational apparatus, would lead America down a path of fear and intimidation, of vacuous racial intellectualism and morally depraved relativism that was designed to undermine the moral foundations of the American Dream.
The Rub? In 1972 I was witness to the birth of what we now call The Woke Movement. I review this transformational moment in my life because it truly was a lifeboat in disguise. The cynicism, hatred and arrogance of those political predators rubbed me the wrong way.
I went back to campus a different political animal than when I left that morning. I wasn't a child of the sixties anymore, as luck would have it, I was becoming a young adult at the dawn of the 70's, and feeling strong patriotic stirrings for the first time in my young life.
Every one of us have encountered people or events that have made deep impressions on our soul, and that have shaped our character. I would argue that more than schooling, more than friends, the transformational moments, as I call them, occur every so often, just by happenstance.
In fact, many times we don't notice them, or don't recognize their significance until much later in our lives. Their impact on us is what I refer to as The Rub. Because the significance and the influences they have may be immediate, gradual, or long term. They may be subtle or overwhelming or somewhere in between.
I am writing this book because I think it is important to occasionally take stock of them, to try to recognize and to some degree, at least, understand what they mean to our lives and to the lives of those we love. When I look back on that 'Cultural Immersion' exercise at USC, I wonder if the professor that sent me was hoping I would become more progressive or more conservative. I really don't know…
It is too easy, in this fast paced information age, to overlook The Rub. To let it sail right by and forever ignore those people and events, which is like wearing the same clothes day after day, year after year. It would be easier, cheaper and simpler, but it suppresses your identity. So I will share some of my incidents, and let you see into my heart and soul. If you so desire…maybe it will stir memories of some incidents that rubbed off on you.
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