A Brief history of Gene
You
need to know a little bit about me, I've debated whether to put this
part at the beginning or the end, because the truth is this story isn't
completely told. But I decided that I'd introduce myself,
here at the beginning to tell you a little about me, then let
you read about a handful of events in my life that have been quite,
unusual, to say the least. I've looked for years for others with
similar experiences to no avail. So, then, the question, I might
be asking, were I you, reading this, is why? Why is he here doing
this now? That question, fortunately, I have the answer to.
I'm here to tell you all the truth. Of us. That
"this" life we are living is NOT all that is. That what we see
here around us does not begin to touch the truth of who we are.
I have had three
experiences no one else on this planet has ever had. Believe me, I'm
sure, for a variety of reasons, which I'll detail in other
stories, but for now, I'll simply say that I've been looking for a very long
time, and am now convinced that if anyone else had seen what I have, felt what I did in the
presence of the lights I'm going to tell you about, well, we'd all know
it. The story can't be contained. It WOULD be out there on the Internet in some form and
it is not.
So with that, let me introduce myself, more properly and more fully.
My name's gene, I was born 9/7/49, I live in Minnesota. I was born in
a small town in mid-central Minnesota, where I grew up on a farm as the
oldest of three children. I knew from a very early age that I
wasn't going to stay on the farm. How I knew, well, that is sort
of in the first light story, and sort of just in me. I wasn't
"like" the rest of my family. I always knew that. I always
felt as if I had been born out of place and time.
I yearned, all of my childhood, for something else, but I never
knew exactly for what. I was, in my early years, a very shy
child. I've always given that over to being the oldest grandchild
and during my first years, before school began, my
playmates were adults. Farm life is not like city life,
there aren't other kids
a few feet away. And we lived a sort of nomadic existence anyway.
My first few years, we moved around a lot, we spent some time in
far northern Minnesota, where my Dad's family was centered, we moved
around a couple of northern towns, they are only dimly in my
memory, (this was really "pre-gene's memory"), while my dad worked
at various places, driving heavy machinery, I
guess, which he had been taught while serving in the Navy Sea
Bee's, during World War II. We moved back down to the small
town where I was born, Braham, where my mother's family, on both sides,
lived, farmers all sometime before my 3rd birthday. My dad worked
as a hired hand at at least two
farms that I remember, one of them had a separate house in which we
lived, the other had a second house attached to it, like a double
bungalow, in which we lived. It was from that place that we moved
in April 1956, when I was 5, to a farm that my parents bought, which
adjoined the farm my maternal grandparents owned.
Our house was not much. It had no running water, no central
heating, no
insulation for that matter, and no indoor plumbing of any kind.
Heat
came from a big old wood stove in the living room. We spent our
winters huddled around that stove, winter coats on because, it was COLD
in there. The land itself wasn't much good, a small
farm with very little usable acreage for farm production. So Dad
could never make a living sufficient to support all 5 of us off
that land alone. Though, for the first few years there, he tried
hard. We had milk cows, but they couldn't produce enough to
handle the
mortgage alone, so he worked other jobs. Those early years there
had him traveling around Minnesota, operating heavy machinery as the
first real paved road construction occurred in Minnesota, transforming
the rutted, dirt roads into modern paved roads. Not all of them,
by any means, only the "major" arteries that led from town to
town. He was
gone a lot, of course, so mostly what I remember from those years is
Mom and my brother and sister and I back there, a mile and a half off
the paved road, alone on that farm.
It was just a half mile across the
woods to my maternal grandparents so I saw them a lot, nearly every day during
those early year's in the 50's, as I grew up. There's a lot more
to all that, of course, but it isn't relevant for what I am doing here.
My brother and sister were play-in-the-dirt kids, I was not, I
was bookish, I read very early, and spent a large part of my childhood,
hiding from the two of them, reading and so transporting myself from where I
was to, well, any other place did just fine. Like a lot of
readers, when I read, I AM where the story is taking place.
We
were as poor as it was possible to be in what is usually remembered in this
country as a time of prosperity and peace. The 1950's, in
most memories, were a time when the United States really was the "good
old days". That isn't quite how I remember it. We'll go
into that in the blog, and more in the other stories in which I'll tell
you a bit more about me and my peculiar journey.
I joined the Army in March of 1968, 9 months after my high school
graduation. I'd had no luck finding any sort of work during the
previous summer, for most decent paying jobs you had to be 18 and I
didn't turn 18 until the summer was over in September. I spent three years in
the Army, well, 5 months under three years, which I'll explain in
another of these vignettes. I got married three months after
getting out of the service,
in January 1971, and have been divorced since October 1978.
We had
two sons, both now gone, Evan, who died at 36, and our youngest, Brandon,
who committed
suicide on 2/11/97, just over a month past his 21st birthday.
This "background" is important, really, only so that
you understand that I wasn't then, nor am I now, anything "special",
any different from you. That my life has been most common, a
little under the middle class life, but still, ordinary in most every
way, except for the Brandon part, thankfully, that experience is
not the norm for most families. Still the ordinariness of my
life is what makes the events I'm going to tell
you about here, all the more extraordinary. That doesn't give me
any special insight into them, nor any real understanding of WHY they
happened. But happen they did. Through time, and guidance
from
within, I've come to understand what it is about them that is
important, and that is what I'm going to share with you here and talk
to you about through my blog. Bear with me. I get wordy,
but I think what I have to say is worth hearing. And fair
warning, there is quite a lot to say. :^) gene