CCTX

I'm listening to Rush (click above) and thinking about a beach in Texas where the song was heard every two hours on the radio. The city I grew up in is right next to Padre Island, spring and summer the beach is full of people in cars that are playing the same classic rock station.
The amazing Rush song reminds me of the city I cam from and why I left it as a teenager.
I had to get out or die trying, the method turned out to be running away with the circus.

I love the natural environment on Padre Island like I love my mum...quite a bit...but the culture of the human population is just awful.
Every year they pave and drive over more and more beach. How can I tell a guy who pours his old motor oil out in his back yard all the time, that he should care about a giant sand lot.
By the time I was in 7th grade I had decided my own pagan nature religion, I had NO desire to go work on the offshore oil rigs like my peers were, the oil company has always been my enemy.
Teachers and students tortured me for being an environmentalist, at one point four sons of BIG GAME hunters cornered me in a locker room. The boys had seen my copy of the i-ching and decided I was a devil worshiper. They beat me so bad my thumb nail was torn clean off. The teacher (a hunting buddy of the boys dads) was pretending not to notice what had happened, he was chatting up a young girl. I politely asked him to be excused so I could get cleaned up and he said "Is your assignment done?"
I didn't say anything else to him ...ever again...I just got my revenge by walking over to his desk and letting the blood that was pouring out of my face and thumb drench all of his papers, HAHAHA! he noticed me then.
Back then I knew I had to leave or be killed by this unfortunate society.
A lot of people couldn't hang with the rap Corpus was laying down, it's a flawed system based on blind consumerism and an apocalypse cult. The guys that beat me were just as afraid as I was, maybe more...they have to inherit that world I was just an unwilling visitor.
I could have gone two ways in 1986, I could have gone Columbine style school massacre (I never liked guns but I did have a short spear)or I could join the circus, have adventures all over the United States, get a huge perspective in life and eventually go far north west and become a rock star.
I LOVE PORTLAND!!!!!!!!

Everywhere has good and bad people, it's all about "what your made out of" and "who you are made by" I found high school life to be a daily, systemic attack on my body mind spirit and heart, I was misrable friends Corpus Christi culture had huge blinders and a pride of ignorant machismo.
For some reason I never had to go to the army or prison like the other misfits but I did join a gang.
It was when I returned home after a few years in the Circus...it didn't take long for me to become one of the bosses of the gang. I was a real jerk but I did learn some leadership skills and I got some neato tattoos.
I sure didn't learn anything in school; the school's only purpose was to set up kids for the rat race or worse.

All that Texas stuff is so far in my past it seems like a movie or a faded cave drawing, I miss my family very much but don't want my kids too much in that culture.
I thank my lucky stars that Portland exists friends, I could have grown into a nightmare for all involved.
Love!