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Chapter 1: The Beginning
Defining moments occur in every life. Moments when a thought, an experience, a word from a friend, or some other event precipitates a change of such deep internal significance that your life is never the same from that moment on. Such a moment occurred in my life in the summer of 1972.
It wasn't the untimely death of my father in an automobile accident, or selling the family business, or my marriage to Sharlene Mowrer, or graduating from UCLA with a degree in music, although these events were certainly shaping my life, but, rather, it was the impact of a single phrase in a book that I was reading by James Michener called “The Drifters.” In the book, set in the 1960s, a middle-aged, conservative insurance company investment troubleshooter named George Fairbanks of World Mutual befriends a group of young adults who he encounters in various settings around the world as their paths cross from time to time. The young people are all coming of age and dealing with the Vietnam War, the drug scene, higher education, materialism, the establishment, and more, as they drift around Europe and Africa in a Volkswagen bus trying to discover the meaning of life and where they each fit in to the grand scheme of things.
Michener on the other hand, I believe he wrote himself into the book as the Mr. Fairbanks, bails the kids out of jams and conflicts, acts as parent to them from time to time, and throughout the book waxes eloquent with his philosophy about the generation of young adults he is encountering and making social comment on the state of the world generally.
While in Torremolinos, Spain, on the Mediterranean Gold Coast, Fairbanks discovers a bar called THE ALAMO where he again meets up with the young people. At one point he accompanies them to a party attended by a group of middle aged societal drop-outs from various parts of Europe. As he viewed the group slowly progress into drunken stupor, he reflected about the awful state of the “drop-outs” of the world. The excerpt that created the defining moment for me went like this:
... as I [Mr. Fairbanks] watched them gliding gracefully toward oblivion, continuing to drink when they had no further need or desire for alcohol, I reflected that every age produces its drop-outs, every nation. The percentage remains constant; it is only the manifestation that varies.
The people around Paxton Fell had dropped out of normal competition as surely as the most bearded young man from Oklahoma who despised Tulsa and believed that he had found a superior alternative in Haight-Ashbury. . . But it was not only this conspicuous group of expatriates that I compared with the drop-outs of the younger generation; it was also those sturdy, cautious types I had known as a boy in Indiana. Of a hundred average young people I had grown up with, a good forty had dripped out from all reasonable competition by the time they were twenty-five. Some, of course, had become town drunks or obvious wastrels; a few had stolen money and gone to jail; one or two of the girls had become prostitutes of a more genteel type, . . . It was not these inevitable drop-outs that I referred to in my estimate of forty percent; it was, rather, that constant group of Americans who avoid difficult tasks and grab onto the first job offered, clinging to it like frightened leeches for the remainder of their unproductive lives. It was the girls who marry the first man who asks them, building families without meaning or inspiration, producing the next cycle of drop-outs. It was the adults who surrender young and make a virtue of their unproductivity, the miserable teachers who learn one book and recite it for the next forty years, the pathetic ministers who build a lifetime of futility on one moment of inspiration entertained at the age of nineteen. These were the drop-outs that concerned me most. Paxton Fell's group, now amiably incapacitated and waiting the dawn, did little harm to themselves or society, . . .; it was the great silent minority that aspired to nothing and achieved less that worried me. There must have been, that night when the guests were falling asleep around the table, a hundred thousand or more young college students throughout the United States who were gradually dropping out from any meaningful role in their society.
Wow! There it was, “grab onto the first job offered, clinging to it like frightened leeches for the remainder of their unproductive lives.” That was about to be my fate. My dad had been killed in an auto accident at age 44 leaving a turmoiled and nearly bankrupt family plastics business. My intended music career as a professional trumpet player had faded into obscurity in the face of needed family leadership to deal with the business. My classes at UCLA had gravitated to accounting and business. I had married Sharlene against the subtle protest of my mother who viewed me as the new father figure in the family and this marriage thing was an out and out betrayal of my responsibility to make her life easy and happy. Now I was trapped into a job with the plastics company that seemed to hold no promise for me yet provided some level of badly needed security in the face of the absence of my father who I had always depended on to be there for help and assistance - my security blanket of a sort.
Those words of Michener exploded off the page and struck me in the solar plexis with such agonizing force that I staggered in my emotions and gasped for breath for many minutes. I just couldn't let this happen. O God, I cried, this is all wrong, this is not me, I am trapped and floundering and panicked that I may not be able to get out. All of the forces playing on my mind and emotions were unknown at that time. Only time and experience have helped me to now sort out deep emotional wounds, scars and needs that contributed to the amazing visceral impact of the concepts on those few pages of the book.
A journey of a lifetime begins with one step and that day I took the first baby step that would forever change my life. I determined with all of the will I possessed that I would not fade into the night of obscurity and societal drop-out without a fight.
This obsession to live life outside the bounds of mediocrity found a cooperative soul-mate in my wife Sharlene. She was raised on a turkey ranch in Turlock, a small Swedish town in central California. With a working mom and dad absent from the home most of the time, Sharlene learned early to be a loner and self-sufficient. The demands of an operating ranch caused both she and her two older brothers to grow up with unlimited work to be done. At a very early age, the American work ethic was solidly woven into the fabric of her personality and she become industrious almost to an obsession. School, sports and work were the only activities she knew until after high school. She had been a travel nut since the age of 16 when she left a harsh and somewhat tyrannical home hoping to find her true self in Europe. She lived with a family in Austria for a summer, made friends with a family in Sweden and forever sealed her fate as an obsessed world traveler. The emotional explosion of our two compulsions made for volcanic results.
Never have two people possessed a dream with such intensity and conviction. The dream of traveling around the world in a VW Camper began in the heart and mind of Sharlene as an extended camping trip to Europe. While visiting the RV trade show at Anaheim convention Center in Southern California one weekday evening in early spring 1972, Sharlene happened onto a slender, bearded, thirtyish man sitting in a VW conversion identified as an Adventure Camper. Ed Andersen would become a dear friend and would unknowingly serve as a catalyst to propel the dream forward into reality.
“What is this camper all about, I sorta like Volkswagens,” Sharlene inquired in her best bright, friendly, smiling airline hostess manner. She had become expert at making instant friends with her social graces and upbeat personality. A shapely body, blue eyes and a blond hair never hurt these instant bondings with the opposite sex either, although she would discount that such things mattered much.
“My name's Ed, Ed Andersen, and I own the company that makes these VW conversions. Are you interested in travel?”
“Interested,” Sharlene said aggressively, “Travel is my middle name.”
Ed was a gem of a man. He was quiet, thoughtful and an anthropological and socialogical intellectual of his own making. A voracious reader, he would not think of having a television set in his house and, at that time, had a rustic house on several acres of land in San Fernando Valley where nature was allowed to have free reign and nothing was improperly manicured for landscaping refinement. Ed was a naturalist, an adventurer and a world traveler. His tales informal tales of his experiences would inflame Sharlene's already smoldering travel dreams into a full scale inferno of desire and conviction. After a few chit-chat pleasantries about Swedish and Norwegian pedigrees, Ed recounted his own European odyssey where he had envisioned and created the first ever stand-up roof on the VW camper bus.
“I knew that it would work to cut a hole in the roof of the VW camper and permanently build it up about fourteen inches so that an average man or woman could stand up in the camper at any time. The German VW engineers had created the Westfalia pop-top which was quite popular, but I thought it would be so much better to have a permanent top designed into the structure of the vehicle so that canvas sides were replaced with permanent fiberglass. Jeri and I decided to go to Europe, buy a VW bus and do the conversion ourselves, just to see what would happen.”
“Just the two of your went? For how long? Did you have kids then? Where did you go? How long did you stay? How much did it cost?” The questions spilled out fast and furious, Sharlene's interest and enthusiasm were obvious.
“We made the first one from plywood. We cut the hole in the center of the VW bus in between the two ribbed sections which makes up the primary safety framing of the vehicle. By leaving the rain bead around the entire top and cutting the metal just inside the seam where the roof meets the main body of the bus, the original strength and integrity of the body frame was kept intact. We used plywood to make the raised section in the middle where the roof was cut away, and then we used a long full length plywood sheet to lay over the raised section. The long roof extended in the front and back of the raised section so that it nearly covered the entire length of the roof, from bumper to bumper. It looked sort of like an airplane wing turned sideways. This was to create an air pocket between the plywood and the metal roof to keep the interior of the camper cooler. With no direct sun hitting the roof and a fourteen inch space open on three sides so that cool wind was constantly blowing over the roof, the laws of thermal dynamics would keep the temperature inside the camper at six to ten degrees cooler.”
Ed always had a way of talking that made you feel like he had numerous engineering degrees from MIT or somewhere. Carefully chosen words and details beyond anything that any normal person would care a hoot about was his trademark. As Ed further detailed the internal cabinetry, the bed which utilized the existing VW bench seat in such a way that the double springs of the bottom seat and folded down back of the seat would be in the perfect spot to support the hips and thighs for the greatest comfort, and the stove, refrigerator, sink and internal water tank, Sharlene was already drifting off into a fantasy world of a whole month or maybe even two months driving throughout Europe.
She dreamed of quaint villages, cozy restaurants, clean European campgrounds with amenities quite different from those found in the US. She dreamed of the solitude and beauty of the German Black Forest, the green fields and endless wild flowers up and down the Romantic Road from Northern Germany to Bavaria. Castles, fondue, hikes in the Swiss Alps, leisure strolls down the Champs Elysee or to the book stalls and lover's hideaways along the front of Notre Dame. The enchantment and simplicity of life in Europe was captivating to her. And, anyone who shared a similar longing was a dear friend, no matter that they had met just forty-five minutes earlier.
Ed was continuing his scientific mechanics lesson, “And now we make the whole top from a fiberglass mold with a shape that blends into the existing side of the VW body to take advantage of the aerodynamics of the overall shape which will cut down the effects of cross wind. Every feature has been carefully designed to make use of every square inch of space and to make the whole vehicle the safest possible.” Beaming with pride Ed continued, “Well, what do you think? Would you like to own one of these beauties?”
Sharlene was suddenly jerked back to reality with the directness of the question. ‘Well, er, um, I'll have to talk to my husband Randy about it but it sure sounds great. How long is this show going to continue, anyway?”
“I think we are here through the weekend,” Ed replied with a look of consternation as his mind went searching for the exact correct facts, without which he would become slightly frustrated and distracted.
“That's great,” replied Sharlene. “I'll be back with Randy. I hope you will still be here to talk with him about all that technical stuff. See you soon. Bye.” And she was off, bouncing joyously toward the glass swinging door with a flood of new delight in the prospects of European travel for two whole months.
The little blue FIAT Spyder pulled into its normal spot right next to my orange FIAT coupe. The two story apartment on Schaffer street in Orange, California had become home for us, newly weds of only a year. It was a great find and really unique. With only four two-story apartments side by side in the building, it felt more like a condo than an apartment. With a winding staircase to the second floor bedroom and bath and a real fireplace in one corner of the small living room at ground floor, the place had everything. When she bounded through the front door I was slouched on the couch watching the TV.
“Where have you been,” I inquired.
“You won't believe it,” Sharlene bubbled as she leaped over the back of the couch and landed on the cushions next to me. “I just met this guy who made a VW van conversion over in Europe and he and his wife traveled all over Europe and North Africa for six months. You've just got to hear his story, it's incredible.” Her enthusiasm was contagious, but I suspected I was in for something quite out of the ordinary. So, my natural analytical mind reacted with caution.
“Oh yeah?” I responded with a casual tone. “Where did you meet this VW traveler?”
“His name is Ed Andersen and his ancestors are from Norway. His name ends in “en” which makes him Norwegian rather than Swedish, like us. Anyway, his wife's name is Jeri and he has two young children. He owns this company that makes VW conversion camper vans and he has a display over at the RV show at Anaheim Convention Center. Can we go over and talk to him? I really want you to meet him and see the VW camper that he makes.”
She rubbed my leg enticingly and moved in close for the kill. Who could resist that yellow cotton candy blond hair and those deep blue eyes. “Randy,” she whispered, now her breath was warm on my face and smelled sweet from a breath mint. She went on, “What would you think of going to Europe and traveling for a couple of months?”
The question came out innocently enough, but I wasn't prepared to realistically entertain such a fantasy. “Sounds great to me. Can we leave in the morning?” I said mockingly.
My thoughts drifted off into an analysis of my current station in life, a station I was not particularly pleased with. I was on the treadmill of the American dream for early baby boomers. UCLA grad, deceased father, family plastics business - it was like part of the script from the classic movie, “The Graduate.” The plastic facade business man takes Dustin Hoffman, the disillusioned about life college grad, aside and says, “I have just one word for you Benjamin. Plastics. Plastics is the up and coming industry and you could do very well by yourself in plastics. Just keep it in mind.” Then the man goes back to his plastic relationships, his plastic martini and plastic empty chatter with the other plastic GI generation socialites.
Like a fish out of water, I was in the turmoil of circumstances foisted upon me by no wish of my own. I was aesthetic, artistic by nature, very feeling and emotional - nearly all right brain affective stuff. Here I was, like a fish out of water, flopping wildly and helplessly on the dock of business deals, hard nosed salesmen, and cut throat business of an infantile and struggling plastics industry in Southern California. I was suffocating.
My dad was an alcoholic but a bright guy. He and my mom had carried on a 23 year war that they called marriage, but I called totally dysfunctional. Cleaning out his desk some weeks after his untimely death from a drunk-driving, middle of the night, fall asleep and hit a parked dump truck accident, I discovered a bright pink, fuzzy-balled negligee tucked away in a bottom drawer. That just about said it all. His unfaithfulness to my mom was legend. Her self-centered, selfish, tongue that could cut up the hardest city ruffian, glamour girl, totally narcissistic personality certainly assisted in driving him to drink and carouse. They would lash out at each other endlessly, and with a few glasses of wine the war would escalate into physical abuse. He would threaten to break her fingers as she screamed mercilessly in the middle of the night from the locked bedroom, and the next day she would counter-attack with a frying pan to the head while my dad sat at the kitchen table oblivious to the domestic guerilla warfare sneaking up behind him.
July 20, 1969 was the day that Neil Armstrong first walked on the moon. “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” That morning at about 2 am my father went to meet his maker. He had always been a good provider for his family, but was never emotionally vulnerable. He was clever, smart, a man's man, successful in business and striving to get all the toys he could. He had maneuvered himself into the entrepreneurial owner and head of a million dollar plastics company in Gardena, California neatly named MELRU PLASTICS COMPANY. MELRU was a contraction of Melvin and Ruth, my mom and dad's names. He really did try to pay respect to his wife in small ways, somewhat of a blackmail payment for her toleration of his lifestyle.
The company made plastic tote boxes, clear plastic meat trays, some of the first ever plastic speakers for the Mattel talking dolls which were all the rave and the very first plastic mini-tub for soft margarine. We made millions of those little white tubs with a yellow snap on lid. I think my dad was the very first to invent and manufacture the containers. Even with all of the imaginative innovation, the company wasn't doing too good. We seemed to fall victim to the old adage, “we lose a little money on every part but we make up the difference in volume.” It didn't help that his business drinking cronies would smooth talk him into running their jobs, which were real losers, in place of more profitable business that would get delayed and often canceled. It was those same drinking buddies who failed to keep him at their house on that fateful night like a true friend should have, instead, letting him drive away in no condition to drive and ultimately kill himself.
With his death, I was thrust into a whirlwind of activity. Being the responsible one, albeit along with my older sister of two years who had always been mother hen to her younger siblings, I was categorized as the bright student, the brainy one, the problem solver and thus it fell naturally to me as the 20 year old college student to be drafted into the role of new male head of the family. I charged in with a vengeance, giving full license to my co-dependent tendencies. I violated everything that was true about myself and my affective personhood and became a business, legal, salesman and manager of the family business along with my mom.
Ultimately, the business was sold to a conglomerate and I was hired back as a sales manager while I attempted to finish school. My mom was well set up financially from the proceeds of the sale and my direction in life and professional character were forever pushed off course. Now I was taking business, accounting and legal classes rather than the music, art and psychology that I had loved. Now I was striving, working feverishly, intent on finding security and success in things foreign to me but the safe track to help replace the fear and abandonment that I was unconsciously feeling from the loss of my father, the abandonment of my parents to their own dysfunctional agenda, and the loneliness I experienced from my earliest remembrances as a child. My insecurities were immense, but rarely showed. In my fight for emotional survival I had learned to use my mind as a problem solver to come up with answers to the chaos swarming around me and to bring order to my broken world. The need, some would call obsession, for control over my life and circumstances ran a close second to my insecurity, as a guiding influence in my life. All of the inner turmoil would be impacted by and play a significant role in the adventure that was before us.
I escaped for a short period of time on a Continental Singers summer music missionary trip that traveled around the world in the summer of 1970. I returned in love with a beautiful blue-eyed blond and became increasingly uncomfortable in the role of savior son for a damaged family. Sharlene and I were married in May 1971 and I continued the rat race of the plastics business while finishing my degree at UCLA. I liked being married but I didn't like what I was doing every day. I was going nowhere and had little aptitude for the business world.
When Sharlene asked me on that cool Thursday evening if I wanted to go travel in Europe for two months, there was a tinge of desire but by that time I was caught in the debilitating web of grabbing onto the first job offered and clinging to it like a frightened leech for what looked like the remainder of my unproductive life. I was scared, with no dad to fall back on and my survival skills were winning the war over my deeper instincts which said to run away from this tangled mess of emotion and circumstance and start over. I had learned to give a cool, controlled, successful air to my being which convinced everyone that I was in exactly the right place and headed for great success in business. In fact, I was ripening for a dramatic change. |
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