I don’t know how it is with you, but for me the older I get, life seems to get weirder.Maybe I just notice more in my older, more responsible age.
Ever since I was a child I was quiet and liked to watch and listen a lot. As a child I played by myself mostly and was completely content at it even though I was raised in a houseful of kids. I was also very much an animal lover.
To say my parents were strict is a understatement. I wasn’t allowed to have any friends or share our phone number or go to other kid’s homes. I don’t want to go into all that right now, for this is a different story…
When I moved away from home at age 17 I finished my senior year on my own. I worked in a print shop part time and I relished having my own place.
I started hanging out with a group of friends I had made down at the beach. We were all “hippieish”, even though this was 1972 to 1974. Life for all of us was a big swirl of patchouli oil, black light posters, tanned bodies playing volleyball on Hermosa Beach permeated with coconut butter and tequila, the Moody Blues and Yes concerts and Maui Wowwee.
I think the weirdness started about then. I had gone to a party one night at our big house we always partied at. All the usual faces and friends were there with a liberal sprinkling of new faces. I had wound my way through the living room and was half way through the kitchen when a total stranger, some lady I had never seen before started screeching “She’s evil! Look at her, she’s evil!” To my surprise she was pointing straight at me! She wouldn’t stop it, and after a few minutes some of my friends forced her to leave.
I was very upset. Any high I had gotten that night was long gone. Ask any of my friends, I was the mellowest, laid back person they’d ever known. I never saw her again but the memory of it has stayed with me to this day and I am 3 years short of 60.
I wasn’t raised with any religion, but I did believe in a God or higher power. My Dad was on the scientific side of belief and his passion was archeology, especially with an interest in American Native tribes, and they had all kinds of beliefs and traditions, so who’s to say who’s right? My stepmother and I both saw a ghost in the old house I grew up in on separate occasions.
In those early years I did waste my talents and my time partying. I did love the out of doors and went camping and back packing most of the holidays and weekends. This one time a good friend John and I went backpacking at the 3rd falls of Taquitz Falls, outside of Palm Springs, California .Back then it was on Indian reservation land and probably still is. I had never been there before but he had many times. We had a great time and I found that he was a great companion for having fun with because I didn’t need to worry about him sexually as he was gay and I disliked the awkwardness of THE QUESTION, when or how it was going to come up(excuse the pun!).
We hiked up the canyon to the 3rd falls and set up our small camp. We spent the day skinny dipping, getting sunburned, smoked a few joints and did a lot of talking and laughing. Later on we started a small fire and settled down to watch the coals and share small talk. That’s when he asked my if I could “See that?”, I looked and across the canyon I could see a red light. We watched as this small red light followed above the tree line on the opposite side of the canyon. It was bright glowing red and just floated slowly from left to right following the tree tops, slowly bobbing up and down, What was really weird was that there wasn’t any sound. We sat and watched this for at least a 15 minutes or more until it disappeared. This was in 1974. It was not a jet from the air force base, as we had seen and heard them all day, and they were fast and loud. It wasn’t flares as this light was moving horizontally and slowly along the tree line. It was just one of those things…I am still scratching my head…….
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