Hayfork High School, Class of 1991 "Class Clown"-"Most Spirited"

"Pirir gyda talyn tawdd,

dw i FFordd Sidan Cas-tawdd

o Mari o Dinas Mawdd?"

I was told that I was born in Northern California. My earliest childhood will always be a mystery, and the rest of my existence, though highlighted with moments of merriment (love, even) is not a happy one.

Around age three Cass Jr. kicked me off a porch while wearing combat boots and beat my mother badly. Mom said he hid when Grandpa Davidson went down to the mining claim with a logging chain. About age four I stepped on a broken glass bottle hidden in the mud of a swimming hole. Ma's friend Bob Choate packed the wound with mud, and I still want to scream when I remember the cruel Doctor scrubbing it out with a stiff bristled brush. A brutal head injury was inflicted upon myself by a cocaine runner at age ten during our family's first trip to the Pacific Ocean, and I have lived with conditions and psychological troubles ever since. Luckily mother had moved us into the mountains of Trinity County, and extreme physical conditioning saved my life. The first winters in Trinity were spent living in a tee-pee, completely off the grid without running water or modern heating. Mom, my brother and I hiked through two feet of snow into the Shasta-Trinity National Forest to backpack fire wood out (uphill both ways, if you have ever hiked through frozen snow). I developed an interest in the martial arts around this time, and received a Tai Chi Chuan lesson from "Pyramid" Michael Walden. I read every Gung Fu magazine I could find, and learned about Master Bruce Lee's Jeet Kun Do and the "Way of No Way." A classmate's father instructed White Tiger Kenpo, but all I ever learned was that I am my own worst enemy (Sifu Bashaw also taught me the correct swing of a carpenter's hammer when he was a Scout Leader for Hayfork's Cub Scout Pack #24). Childhood influences were two comic book characters: Southern renegade J. Hex (the earlier editions) and a motorcycle-bound spirit of vengeance. Harold Robin's The Adventurers properly introduced me to Hispanic culture, and the series by C.S. Lewis opened my eyes to other worlds and religious symbolism.

My step-father "Maingy" Mike soon landed a job in Hyampom, CA., helping to construct a hydro-electric power plant. I loved living on the river and spent many hours there. While my education lacked, involvement in theatre did not. I was cast as Santa in "The North Pole Goes Rock and Roll" and had another leading role as a schoolteacher. This was around seventh grade. I don't know how I survived the rest of Junior High, but I did with only a few minor assaults and minimal amounts of vigilante victimization.

High school made a classic over achiever out of me. Active in Drama, Future Farmer of America, Gifted and Talented Education with a center in the Arts, Academic Decathalon, Vice-President of the Senior Class and a five star varsity athlete with letters in wrestling, track, baseball, basketball and football. Advanced psychology lessons courtesy of Dr. Ruth Westheimer. I helped the Class of 1991 with our yearbook as a photographer and was selected to attend Boys' State, a leadership conference held in Sacramento that I unfortunately missed because I was working for the Youth Conservation Core, a summer work program that the U.S. Forest Service had in place at the time when there was still timber money available in the area. I really enjoyed being in the woods helping with erosion control and forestry, and was hired for a short while helping to build a module for the Forest Service in Hayfork.

Two months after graduation saw me in the local lumber mill on the clean-up crew, shoveling oily sawdust and keeping the mill's machinery free of mill-ends and broken lumber. Soon promoted to the Planer chain as a "chain-puller," I spent two and a half years there. Poor decision making and drugs saw me out of there just in time for the mill to relocate, and I picked up work as a tire jockey, helicopter crash rescue and fire camp support, a logger and road brusher, pyrotechnician and some security work. Choker setter behind a Cat and under a yarder, ecosystem technician trainee, and road builder were other means of seasonal income in an area now funded by medical pot grows. Somehow I earned some college credits and did a stint at Old Faithful Lodge (thank you, Bureau of Indian Affairs Higher Ed. program for the six hundred bucks after the semester was over) before doing some more logging and getting into the Culinary Arts course at Shasta College. I earned my Certificate of Completion, received the Jon-Arla Vocational scholarship and ended up wrecking my motorcycle just a few weeks after the course was over. I worked at Irenes cafe, a local greasy spoon with a captains plate (ribeye and shrimp) and the owner put me on my way. Cass Jr. croaked and I went to Yellowstone National Park to be a line cook. Five thousand New York steaks later and a three year silver bear pin for being a returning survivor and I was off to Crater Lake National Park to be breakfast cook. I almost survived the whole season but ended up with a trail of upset locals instead. At that point I tired of employers and started the process for my SSDI, and ended up getting just ripped off by the shady system.

In and out of the homeless shelters and the mission system with eight different houses visited including the latest one near Bangor (Maine), I dream in vain of visiting my European heritage but a dirty conviction from a corrupted court insures my American Dregness will be long lasting. So I research the great things my blood lines have accomplished and when I get down I visit Dangerosa Bouchard and her courts filled with the unjustly servitude-bound of Barbary and the odor of lingering magicks. ______________________________________________________________________________________

My apologies to those who have to endure improper sourcing techniques and Oxford (that fantastic, distant and unreachable realm of knowledge and societal preservation where those who are thrown from windows are celebrated). A great deal of my entries are being placed with a simple mobile device, as public computer access has become aggravating and even hostile at times. I fear obtaining more advanced means of technology because of the probability of theft or evidence planting (and they harbor bugs of all kinds). Even so, writing is easier with a touchpad than struggling with a quill and inkpot like the scribes and historians of old.

The next entry is my first try writing an englyn:

"Cymraeg? Casimer dw i, (Welsh? Casimer am I)

Casimer Russak Sais i, (Casimer Russak to the English)

Kazimierz yn Polski." (who I am in Pagan-Slavic)

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