Redstar2000 Remembers....

Debora has asked me to write my memoirs, and the best I can do is a few bits and pieces here and there.

I do remember the end of WWII. in fact I used to have grief about watching the atom bomb, in fact used to have visions of it. Somehow to me it seemed to glisten as it tumbled down the fall. I remember black out curtains, everyone used to have blackout shades, it would keep the German bombers from finding Louisville Kentucky.

What I also remember was it was always cold. My father didnt make enough money to heat the apartment comfortably. He worked for the telephone company as did my mother. He went on strike in 1948 when there was a national telephone strike, but they were never willing to heat the apartment properly. They were always saving up to buy a house. That was the goal, for every working class family in those days, not to live in an apartment, but to own a home.

I remember going to school and shocking the kids by saying I didnt beleive in God, that he was a big scandal. The kids were afraid of me like I was the Devil. I didnt care. If they were stupid enough to believe that stuff, that was their problem, not mine. The teachers were even more shocked. They never had run into a kid that could not be intimatdated. They were always scheduling parent/ teacher conferences, to discuss why I didnt believe in God. It was all very strange. I immediately formed the impression that schools were Temples of Ignorance. This helped me alot in later years, I didnt take any of their crap very seriously. The American Patriarch mythology and the Anti-Communist mythology had little effect on me. I just assumed everything they said, they were just blowing smoke out their ass.

Once my parents did take me to a Baptist church where my father did have a job as a choral director. The preacher got up and screamed at people , and like most children, I didnt want to have anything to do with him or his God. He was a bully. It never occured to me for a single second, that anything this guy was saying could be true. He had a look of a liar.

The biggest mistake America made with me, was teaching me how to read. I read every science book written for kids, so I didnt need a God to explain how we came to exist, I knew the scientific explanation and could argue it well as I did with many teachers.