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Please Like and Share These Memes... Just Right Click and Save Image as... Then Post on Facebook, Twitter or 12 OTHER Social Networks! Or Make Your Own! FUN! Let's Beat Them Like a Piñata. Just Get a Stick and SWING AWAY!

Ted Cruised to Mexico... Remember: Lying Does Not Change Reality - GOP=EVIL - Let's Beat Them Like a Piñata. Like and Share This Meme - more at gvan42

Ted Cruised to Mexico while Texans Froze...
Remember: Lying Does Not Change Reality
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Remember: Lying Does Not Change Reality - GOP=EVIL - Let's Beat Them Like a Piñata. Like and Share This Meme - more at gvan42.blogspot.com

LINK: http://gvan42.blogspot.com/2018/03/growing-up-in-los-gatos-california-in.html

On a Totally Different Subject... Here are a Few Paragraphs from My Autobiography... While Looking at some Family Photos Taken at Our Cabin in Tahoe I was Reminded That...

When I went to West Valley Junior College I Took a Class in Architectural Scale Model Building. Before It was Built, I took Blueprints of The Cabin on North Shore, Lake Tahoe and Built an Accurate Scale Model of it. Dad showed it to his friends and clients... Just to explain what he was having Built... Just Like a Real Architect Would DO! I still have that model because Dad liked it and made sure it never got accidentally damaged.

I did Learn How to Draw Mechanical Drawings Used to Make Computers There and Was Instantly Hired after One Year of Classes... at The Legendary System Industries... Owned by Dr. Edwin Zchau... Later He Became a Congressman in the US House of Representatives. On Family Day, Mom and Dad Took a Personal Guided Tour with Dr. Zchau... The Three of Them went Off and Looked at Everything... Including the Disc Drives That were About the Same Size as a Washing Machine... 1976

During the Free time I Had Between Classes I went to the Library and Drew Pictures, Cartoons, Designs... ART... while wearing Headphones... My Favorite Song was 'Whole Lotta Love" by Led Zeppelin... It's Astonishing on Headphones because there is a lot of Left-Right Ping Ponging and Phase-Shifter Effects on the Drums... Drawing White Listening to Music DOES Effect the Sketches... They End Up Being Much More Squiggly!

I remember buying a slice of Redwood Burl at That Store/Gallery on Highway 9 directly across the Street from San Lorenzo High School. My First Wife Jo Ann and I were taking a Stained Glass Window Making Class at West Valley Junior College Night School. I made a Red Rose Framed by that Burl... and it hung in the Window of my Father's House for decades... and... Every Time I Looked At It I noticed the ERROR I made in the construction of that window... and it bugged me for about 10 seconds... I also made a Clock from a slice of Burl... and It hung in the Living Room... The School was right next door to a drive in Movie Theater and at Night we could walk over and see the movies without paying. We Saw "Carrie" there... While Walking on the Railroad Tracks.

I have actually fired a gun. Really! At Camp Campbell [YMCA Summer Camp] in the Santa Cruz Mountains we learned how to shoot targets with a .22 rifle. I enjoyed it. Quite similar to playing Darts or Archery. Another time I fired a large pistol at cans. ONCE. My dad's lawyer owned the pistol. It had a "Helluva Kick" and was really loud and scary. I've never actually owned a gun or had one in the house... Thankfully... as on occasion I have had arguments with Wives and Girlfriends and none became fatal...

Camp Campbell also had a zip line. I got into a swing seat, jumped off the cliff and whoooooosh went down to the ground. At that time we were responsible for our own actions and staying safe. I suppose I could have fallen out of the zip line seat but I made sure I held on tight. BIG FUN.

My whole family rode bicycles on Highway 280 before it was opened for cars. Thousands of people rode in a one day celebration. We started near the Winchester Mystery House and rode towards downtown San Jose. I've always loved 280 as it was a fast and beautiful way to go visit San Francisco. We had friends (The Raas Family) that lived in "The City" and would go visit them often. Steve Raas took me to the Fillmore West in 1969 to go see a band called The Youngbloods and The Chicago Transit Authority. The big song of the night was "Get Together" a classic Hippie Anthem. There were light-shows on the walls of the concert hall. Squishy Water (like the album cover of Iron Butterfly's In a Gadda da Vida Album) and many movie loops and Strobe Slide Projectors. There were blacklights and people were painting each other's bodies with fluorescent paint. Big Fun.

We also went to The Exploratorium. That museum allowed the visitors to play with the exhibits. My favorite was the custom built musical jam session where a half a dozen people played synthesizers that were designed to never play a wrong note... with strangely shaped keyboards... that way visitors that had no musical training could experience the joy of playing without the pain of making a noise that was not pleasant. They also had a virtual reality experience where I was flying thru a tunnel and my spaceship traveled in the direction that I looked. It was a game where the goal was to crash into floating cubes that moved randomly. The cubes had people's faces on them and one was Jerry Garcia. This was long before VR games became available to the general public.

We visited the Winchester Mystery House when I was a child. I was not very impressed as I was expecting something more like Disneyland. In retrospect, I admire the giant house and appreciate the story of Sarah Winchester being haunted by the ghosts of all the men that died from gunshot wounds caused by her husband's rifle. She employed carpenters to work around the clock so that their sounds would keep the ghosts away. And if she did have any nightmares, she had strong men to protect her.

Mom, Dad and I went to the Vorpal Gallery in San Francisco to see the prints by MC ESCHER. It is a private gallery with a locked door. You buzzed the buzzer and they made a decision if you were worthy or not... We were allowed in and saw many actual prints including Metamorphose... That one is VERY wide and a lot more interesting in person than it is in a book. We did not buy any prints. OOPS, That would have been a good investment but... we missed that opportunity.

LINK: http://gvan42.blogspot.com/2018/03/growing-up-in-los-gatos-california-in.html

In 1971, a friend of mine went to San Francisco and went to a Rock Concert at the Fillmore West and came back to our high school and said... LET'S BUILD OUR OWN using the old mill in the center of town. We formed an organization called "Youth Unlimited" and got the Town to Sponsor Us with $1 per year rent for Forbes Mill.

That was the beginning of The Forbes Mill Teen Club in Los Gatos California... We had a light show and electric rock music every weekend... On Wednesday nights we performed folk music. I was the head of security and did advertising posters. I used the mimeograph machine at the High School to print the posters for upcoming shows...

"Youth Unlimited" first held a concert in the Rec Room of the Presbyterian Church next to Old Town on University Ave. There was a live rock band that featured a saxophone player with an electric sax. We also formed a drum circle outside with me playing harmonica and a couple of guitar players.

Since we had Town sponsorship of our "Teen Club" thru the organization Youth Unlimited, we had to make sure no laws were being broken at Forbes Mill or the police would shut us down. Certainly no drinking or illegal drug use or housing of runaways. My take on law enforcement was to direct potential lawbreakers to the nearby hole in the fence that lead to the wooded area next to the freeway. I admit that a lot of laws were broken on State of California property, but that was NOT MY CONCERN. I was responsible for making sure that OUR property was crime free.

The light show was created by using four slide projectors and two spinning wheels with variable speed motors that blocked the light from reaching the white wall behind the bandstand. Each cardboard wheel had holes cut into it so that the slides would be projected in a stroboscopic manner. Some slides were abstract art created by "crystal craze" paint and others were photographs.

We also owned a strobe light and I learned to not point it at the electric organ player because the blinking light made it impossible to see which keys were black and which were white...

"Youth Unlimited" also built a crisis center called Fre-Ba-ZAK House. It was in an old wooden home on North Santa Cruz Ave. The idea was to have a place for runaways to have a safe location to negotiate with their parents. Kids that had nowhere else to go could go there ... My friend Richard Bergholdt worked there as a counselor. I used to go there because it was a fun place to go talk with other classmates... I remember drinking coffee and discussing weighty subjects late at night. One time I went there because I couldn't go home. I had gone to the Ike and Tina Turner concert at the San Jose Convention Center and took a Large Dose of LSD. I had to wait until my parents went to sleep before going home. It was a great concert and I remember that MANY of the students at LGHS went. I also remember listening to the FM radio there. Talks by Alan Watts about Buddhism... and the story "The Cave" by Plato. There were some totally free radio stations then. They had the freedom of selecting what to play and when to play it. I heard "Space Hymn" by Lothar and the Hand People at Fre-Ba-ZAK House.

In the 1960s I made tie dyed shirts using rubber bands and boiling the dye... one color... RIT brand named dye... Mom sewed a shirt with bell sleeves and a Nehru collar... I wore it with a bell around my neck. Like, totally "mod" like the fashion that was popular with the teenagers in England...

LINK: http://gvan42.blogspot.com/2018/03/growing-up-in-los-gatos-california-in.html