I was feeling inspired after reading others' stories...
Part II (Leading up to the Sea Org)
After our family left the Sea Org (my brother and I the Cadet Org) we went to stay with our maternal Grandmother in Menlo Park. Grandma was happy to see we were out, she never quite got over the fact that her only son had shot himself after being involved with CoS for a couple years. I remember plenty of times she and my Mom arguing the merits of Scientology.
Sometime in ’78 we moved into a large house on the corner of Geneva and Hoover in Los Angeles (just south of 3rd). It was a boarding house for Scientologists in the area. My Dad had struck a deal to be the live-in property manager. Along with us there were three other tenants a man and wife with a little girl named Molly, Don Toll a cool laid back surfer type with long blond hair and Wendell Dayton with his son Sky Dayton (yes, of later Earthlink fame).
My brother and I really gravitated to Don as he was into models, rock ‘n roll and explosives. We would often blow up our action figures in the backyard with black powder that he seemed to have a limitless supply of.
Having learned how to steal and manipulate adults from our stint in the Cadet Org (can’t say we didn’t learn anything). This was one of our most out-ethics times. If I wasn’t busy starting a fire then I was laying a sympathy trip on my teacher to score a free lunch, or increasing my baseball card collection courtesy of Thrifty Market.
Living so close to one’s basic survival needs I think really sharpens an individual’s cleverness and ability to manipulate people.
After a year or so we moved up to Grass Valley, CA to stay with our Uncle’s widow Carlynn and her sister Lucy who had also recently left the Sea Org, my cousin Liz was here as well (who to this day has completely repressed what happened in the Cadet Org).
I ended up missing half of the 4th grade and beginning of 5th in the transition so starting at the local school here was a bit rough, but I managed with the help of my Mom.
Carlynn’s husband had a workshop where he produced all the walnut enclosures for the MkV E-meter after helping to design it. My brother and I really looked up to him and for as long as I can remember referred to him as uncle.
We stayed here for about a year or so before moving to an even more rural area, Pollock Pines CA. This is where my Mom decided that she didn’t want us to come into contact with drugs etc… so started a ‘rogue’ home schooling program for my brother and I. It actually worked pretty well. We would go to the library once a week and check out all the basics + some history and geography, she would create checklists with daily goals. We could go out and play once we met our goal for the day, which was awesome.
My Father was mainly working in the city selling businesses (something like an escrow service) On a couple of deals he did independently, he ended up with the collateral from the transaction, a Computer in which my brother and I learned to program in Gwbasic and 40 acres of near worthless land in the Alturas CA area.
After a couple years in Pollock Pines my Dad brokered a deal in Sacramento in which he traded the 40 acres for a small doughnut shop in the southern part of the city.
So we moved to Sacramento wherein at 13-14 I became the Baker at night and the rest of the family worked the counter during the day. It was really hard work, about 10 hours a day, 7 days a week but I was very proud of what I could accomplish. People loved my doughnuts and the business grew so fast it handled all of our financial problems of which we had many over the years.
Another sort of bonus during this time was that I broke my hip and the insurance of the roller skating rink in which I broke it, paid for the operation to put the screws in. My Dad never paid the hospital so that extra $9,000.00 was pretty welcome.
It was at the Sacramento Org (maybe mission) that my Brother and I actually did our first ever Scn. Course, The Success Through Communication Course. It seemed this was a manual on how to manipulate conversations, which was great because it helped me justify all my past similar overts. Hell if there was a course on it, it must be ok to do. The course sup was an asian fellow named Vince Wong, I really liked him too.
After about a year of that my Dad sold the shop to some Cambodian emigrants due to pressure from my Mom who’s life goal was to be a nutritionist and felt peddling junk food was a huge overt.
Sacramento was pretty good to us overall, except that my Brother had started a pretty extensive collection of illegal assault weapons and we had both started smoking.
So it was off to Southern Oregon! Grants Pass to be exact. Where my parents both began to pursue the area of health and nutrition. After about a year of living on the residuals from the sale of the shop and the insurance settlement my parents decided that we needed to live closer to an urban area to mock up the business. So we moved to Sunset Bl. Between Hobart and Serrano in Los Angeles.
Shortly after moving to Los Angeles, my Dad enrolled my Brother and I onto the HQS course at CC. We were twinning on the course and doing the CCH co-audit portion when we ran into the Sea Org recruiters…
