Jim's quiet musings . . .

(YAWN!)

I'm up, I'm up.....got a phone call from a friend at six-ten this morning. Did I say friend? Well, I should be getting up anyway. This weekend is going by at warp speed so I want to be able to enjoy at least a 'leeetle bit' of it. Good ole New Hampshire weather. It's the twenty-third of June, sixty degrees Fahrenheit (15.5 degrees Celsius to everybody else in the world) and overcast again. Yesterday it rained and rained and rained and rained. I woke up yesterday, looked out my bedroom window to a small puddle in my pond area and two hours later the damn thing was teeming full of water.

Now that I think about it, I need to tell all of you that my website is looking better and better! I have been paying it some mind, like I should, and have been working on it diligently, trying to get it up to speed again. Many of you have sent e-mails, telling me of missing or dead-end links and pages that will not open. I think I finally have those things fixed. I've also added some games and a link to my trip to the Philippines complete with pictures. Stay tuned and check it out if you have a chance. Please, please, please SIGN MY GUESTMAP located at the top of my welcome page. Thanks to those of you who have! Somehow, the dots on my map have a way of disappearing at will as the guestmap has a few bugs in it.

No Eve, I am not a urine drinker. I just thought it would peak someone's interest, the fact that somebody out there in cyberland would post something so disgusting. I suppose different strokes.......

I apologize ahead of time for not keeping up with my blogging duties but I honestly have been busy. I FINALLY completed my retched research project and turned the damn thing in after giving my presentation last week. Now, I'm taking the summer off from school. I'm planning on testing out of one of my courses for the Fall semester and will do an independent study for my last course. Then I will be edumakated and I will gradumakate myself. Work has me hopping too, as I am working with three Latino clients through an interpreter during this week. Very interesting undertaking.

So, time to catch up! Chris, aka Blacktelescope aka Zebulon Mysterioso aka Professor Bernard Quatermass, has got me thinking again. He says on my tagboard:

"I cut all my hair off a few months back and suddenly the world has stopped laughing at me. People just aren't educated to look beyond appearances, and it's a big shame."

Now this got me to thinking back.....remembering the old days, the golden rule days, the hazy-lazy-dazy days of summer......

I grew up with a mother who worked as a beautician aka hairdresser aka hair stylist. She was in charge of MY hair. As a kid, my hair was conservative to say the least. The style back then was short to buzz cut or "crew cut" in the military town of El Paso, Texas that housed the huge Army military base of Fort Bliss and Biggs Air Force Base.

When I entered sixth grade, at Rusk Elementary School, hair was starting to creep downwards with the gravity. This was 1968. The war was just getting started and by the time I was in Junior High at Bassett, "Hippy" was becoming a household term. Maynard G. Krebs became my secret idol. A "beatnik," they called him. I had actually met Bob Denver at an event in the Bassett Center Mall and had gotten the opportunity to shake his hand.

By the time I reached high school at Stephen F. Austin, the Vietnam War was grinding to a halt and the hair was getting longer. We had a "dress code" which forbid us to grow our hair beyond our collar and I got the double whammy of having a mother who was not only Conservative with a capital "C" but who was a hairdresser to boot.

In the early spring of 1971, a student from Burges High School in the northeastern section of El Paso, Texas, was expelled from school for failing to get his hair cut. His father was a bit liberal at the time and took the case to court. This started what we all remember in El Paso as the "Hell NO Let it Grow" movement. Somebody in the southern section of El Paso got an idea to stage a walk-out and a demonstration in protest of the conservative dress code and the whole thing grew in a snowball effect.

I remember it like it was yesterday. I was a freshman at Austin and was sitting in Mrs. Myers English class. Suddenly, through the open windows we all began to hear a far off chant: "Hell NO Let It Grow!" As the sound got louder we all went to the windows to see scores of cars, vans, motorcycles and trucks, filled with kids and slowly cruising by our high school chanting "Hell NO Let It Grow!" Suddenly, kids were leaving the vehicles and coming right up to the school, helping kids climb out of windows and continuing their loud protest.

Mrs. Myers reminded all of us that we would be expelled if we left........just as I was crawling out the first floor window. The entourage continued on to Irvin high school, Burges, and finally ended up at Coronado high at around six-thirty that evening.

Boy did I catch hell for that. We were never expelled and the court case by the Burges student and his father was won. Our school dress code was changed to say we could wear our hair as long as we wanted and we could wear jeans. We just had to be decent and clean. Hallelujah!

My hair started to creep down to my shoulders and eventually the middle of my back. My mother protested but by this time my father had died of alcoholism, I had begun to follow in his footsteps and some rather exotic drugs had entered the scene. My mother lost the battle miserably. My hair was long, my jeans were faded and my tee-shirts began to advertise various logos such as: RORER 714 - Kalifornia Koolaid - Archie Bunker for President - 'scuse me while I kiss the sky' and the like.

Without even trying I entered an exclusive peer group known only as, "The Freaks." Our thing was to ditch class, hang out on the "Freak" street corner and smoke various herbal remedies. I had found my calling. My hair was a statement of freedom and non-conformity. I continued to wear it long after leaving high school for five more years until the military cut it off. It didn't take much to figure out why the military cut all your hair off....they wanted everyone stripped of their identity. No beards, no hair, everybody wearing the same thing.

I lasted four years in the Navy and discovered that they can rob me of my hair but they can't take the personality. I got out in 1983 and began to grow my hair back. Long hair for me has always meant freedom and non-conformity. When I began work at the prison, I had to shave it all off again. I was also told to take my bumper sticker off that said, "Question Authority." Can't understand why. I thought I was okay until I was told that the red, fuzzy little creature decal I had on the back window, flipping the bird, had to go too. DAMN.

So, here I am. Stripped of that freedom and non-conformity. Didn't work though as my reputation both at work and at-large is as a non-conformist. I just don't have the freedom to grow my hair long and still work in the environment where I work. Chris says people have stopped laughing at him. Hell, nobody laughed at me when I had long hair, they just dragged their kids back inside their homes and looked down their noses at me. Long hair = drug using, pot smoking, fornicating criminal. Well, at least I don't use drugs, smoke dope or engage in criminal activity anymore.....

So, when corresponding with Chris, this song by the Five Man Electric Band came to mind:

And the sign says "long hair freaky people need not apply"
So I put my hair under my hat and I went in to ask him why
He said you look like a fine outstanding young man I think you'll do
So I took off my hat I said "Imagine that Huh Me working for you"

Signs Signs
Everywhere there's signs
Blocking up the scenery
Breaking up my mind
Do this, don't do that
Can't you read the sign

And the sign says "Anybody caught trespassing will be shot on sight"
So I jumped the fence and I yelled at the house, Hey! What gives you the right
To put up a fence And keep me out Or to keep Mother Nature in
If God was here He'd tell it to your face Man You're some kind of sinner

Signs Signs
Everywhere there's signs
Blocking up the scenery
Breaking up my mind
Do this, don't do that
Can't you read the sign

Oh Say now mister Can't you read
You got to have a shirt and tie to get a seat
You can't watch No You can't eat You ain't supposed to be here

And the sign says "You got to have a membership card to get inside" Huh

And the sign says "Everybody welcome Come in Kneel down and pray"
But then they passed around a plate at the end of it all
And I didn't have a penny to pay
So I got me a pen and paper And I made up my own little sign
I said Thank you Lord for thinking about me I'm alive and doing fine

Signs Signs
Everywhere there's signs
Blocking up the scenery
Breaking up my mind
Do this, don't do that
Can't you read the sign

Signs Signs
Everywhere there's signs
Blocking up the scenery
Breaking up my mind
Do this, don't do that
Can't you read the sign

I wish, with all the chaos in the world, we could accept one another for the person and not the appearance. This of course, is impossible because of the few long hairs, bikers, suits, people of color, nerds, yuppies, skin heads, gays, tattooed folk, punks, button downs, sports wearers, and the plethora of other descriptive terms to describe certain specialty groups, that act the asshole and spoil the pot, so-to-speak. No matter where you go, no matter who you come into contact with, there will always be an asshole. So, it's not about them as much as it is about me. ME. I am the only one who is affected or who allows myself to be affected. I hope I can manage to truly give others the benefit of the doubt and hey.....if they fuck it up, screw em! Their loss.

Well campers, it's almost time for me to go get dressed in time to meet Louie. Come rain or shine, we've got a restaurant review to do! I'm getting some rave reviews from around the world on the review and I'm getting a very nice little paunch in the process too! Jeez, I'm starving just thinking about it. Gotta get back in time to post the review and give my African princess a holler on Net2phone so she can laugh at my "accent" that she doesn't possess. Yeah, right....her and her Champagne and pittles. Love talking to her though and currently she's prepping me for my Yerba Mate experience.....maybe I can get a tee-shirt!

-Jeeem-