Autobiography: I remember that we did not have air conditioning in elementary school. When it got hot we folded up paper to make a fan. We also folded a sheet of newspaper to make a HAT... and a four sided thing to tell the future... sort of like a Magic Eight Ball.

 I also knew how to fold a CUBE... I have forgotten everything I ever knew about paper folding... 

I remember Board Games. Risk, Chess, Monopoly, Parcheesi... and then years later when I got married we played Master Mind and my wife always won. 

I owned a Blacklight. And a Lot of Blacklight Paint... I painted the blades of a fan different colors and when the fan was spinning it created unusual colors due to persistence of vision... 

I remember owning a Transistor Radio. I listened to Giants Baseball Games. I was not the only kid who was a Giant Fan... as a Matter of fact, John Fogerty of Creedence Clearwater Revival tells the story of how he wrote the Song "Centerfield" about his Childhood Hero Willie Mays... He also listened to Games on His Transistor Radio... 

I remember owning a Brownie Camera. It used Film and If you "forgot" to wind it between pictures you could force the camera to take double exposures... a very "Trippy" Effect... 


Then decades Later I took B&W Photography at Humboldt State University and we did the developing in a Darkroom. That's a wonderful experience because you do all that physical manipulation of film and holders and chemicals in total darkness while looking at swirling rainbow hallucinations... Even when I am not "ON DRUGS" I see a lot of checkerboard style patterns in the dark that dance. Then the same teacher taught us Photoshop the next semester... EPIC CLASSES...  That was the only time I used an Apple Computer. I knew I was "home" when it asked me if I was trying to upload a series of photographs in order to create an animated GIF... that was EXACTLY  what I was trying to do and It offered to upload all the pictures for me Automatically! For homework we had to design a WEB Based Store... and The specific Task was to show a product (A Coffee Cup) spinning around so the customer could see all sides... We worked in teams to do our projects and an Older student taught me how to create an animated GIF... That was a big Idea that our teacher had... We should teach ourselves Computer Science because after we graduate we were not allowed to ask the teacher questions... We should research the answers ourselves... 

Read More of My Autobiography at:
http://gvan42.blogspot.com/2018/03/growing-up-in-los-gatos-california-in.html