The Spider Web II

Continuing

In September 1974 after being admitted to Tehnoton HS in Iași, my father drove me there.

At the end of school after the very last class, the physics/chemistry teacher, the sexy one with miniskirt, Mrs.Mezinu, asked me where i wanted to go after school and i said there was a professional school for phone techs in a nearby town. And she went,  "You, professional school? You should go to high school!" (i was second in class).

I was really submissive at the time and ready to do everything teachers or people with some authority were telling me. So was my father. Though there was a good HS in Câmpulung (called Dragoș Vodă, or Lord Dragoș, the supposed founder of Câmplung and Moldova) from where most grads were admitted to a college (again didn't know what that was at the time), i wanted to learn electronics.

My preference was to go to Bucharest, after what i saw during that filming at the National Television.

School and sometimes boarding (if you could catch room) were free of charge at all levels during communist period, but it was an 8 hours ride by train.

He went there (later he told me he also wanted to get me out of the influence of my mother) and when he came back he heard from a guy in the train about a new HS tied to the new company Tehnoton in Iași (yes they were lots of technical HS in Romania besides professional which were shorter, 3 years only all tied to companies in order to prepare workers.

Iași was at about 4 hours away only. So he went and filed my application. In late June i went for an exam and passed it. Can't remember what place i was on the list i was but not among last for sure. Though i did not have a real math teacher in grade. That teacher Popescu from Câmpulung proved to be wrong.

Tehnoton HS was about electronics and electrotechnics because Tehnoton firm was building radios. I will come later with details. They also had a 3 years only professional school but a (technical) HS also kept the door opened for college while a professional school was a dead end which i really did not care about at the time.

But unlike those guys at professional, i had to pay for the food at the self serve food court (they called them canteens).

But surprise. We got there late? and they had no more room in the dorms. Father had to scramble to do something. And he went to the nearby IPL (again, coincidence, wood processing plant), it was right in the back of the HS where, again coincidence, party secretary was a guy he knew from IPL Suceava.

To me, he looked again like Botnăraș (from memory and today's POV), this time in suit with gray hair.

Anyways. He arranged for me to stay free of charge in a building between the HS and the plant, the so called non familyist dwellings, in a room with a supervisor from the factory. They were small rooms in a concrete block building and it was right across the always stinking common restroom and showers.

He was a short guy and again he looked like a Japanese man. Titi Pancu was his name. In his 40s, he was always smiling and had this peculiar, penguin like, hypnotic walk. They were two beds but can't remember if there was a table for my homework.

I remember the first day of HS. The class master (diriginta), a very short woman with a very strong voice was in the backyard or inner side of the L shaped new building on the stairs with a list in her hand and was yelling each of our names and i said to my self, i'm screwed, she seemed very "severe". (First cut, the deepest).

When i was in Lake Oswego, many years after (2010 - 2015), i somehow ran across this video with the Romanian soprano (of Greek and Russian origin, by name), Marina Krilovici who at the time was officially "escaped from the regime" in Germany and i said must have been her, who in turn must have been Hungarian soprano Gabriella Zsigmond.

A very short woman with lots of energy, heavy smoker, Mrs. Ionică (a diminutive of my last name), her husband was an agronomic engineer working outside Iași and was missing a lot from home. And in the end she proved to be not severe at all, almost human during an inhuman regime, though she always kept a safe distance.

Enough to say in advance, during the years when she acted both as class master and Romanian language teacher (not a lot of lessons i recon, we were more like free talking in the class) she replaced (and taught us all) in conversations the title "tovarăș" (comrade) with domnul or doamna, (Mr, Mrs) usually when naming other teachers, and i think it might have spread from there in other places if not all of Romania.

And so the show at Tehnoton HS began.

One of my first memories there? One night i was in line at the canteen and they seemed to be opening late (or was i too early) and the line grew bigger and it was then when i met what was about to be my friend and mentor for the whole time, a guy named Gabriel Ringhilescu, from Ștefănești Botoșani.

Lately i started to suspect he was the actor Adrian Pintea, who was 6 years my senior.

I remember on top of the 3 steps of the stairs of the canteen door stood a guy who now by visual memory i think was a young version of Miscavige, though with black hair who was acting as the "pedagog" or the ruler of the dorm. So now i recon, if i was given a bed in that dorm, i would have been under his rule.

He kept us there long enough for me to start talking to Gaby. I remember that night we walked together on the street going all the way to Podu Roș, a nearby neighborhood in Iași, then each going to his place which to him was a newly built unfurnished empty apartment in the west of Iași and me the non familyst cramped room.

He was very friendly though i was really scared during those first days alone in Iași. I remember one thing he told me that night. His purpose there was to learn how a computer works which to me then was an enormous impossible task though over the years, i myself did achieve that goal which helps me a lot with my writings here.

I think he and possibly his protectors had a dual nature though. Officially he was sent there by some nationalist patriots nested in the Romanian Communist Party, maybe Ceaușescu himself or possibly Soviets who were crawling at the construction site of Stânca barrage near Ștefănești to teach me things i was lacking from my family, and the other was secret sabotage of the first.

Among other things, he was an expert in yoga, doing things like rolling his stomach up and down and sideways and had a sculpted body, but more in the style of ascetic monks than body builders.

He was reading good literature and gave me numerous books to read when i became his roommate in first trimester of the 2nd year. and started a passion for Romanian poets of which i translated a few poems (32) in this blog though laely it turned they were heavily influenced by occultism. Yeah who knows what would have become of me if it wasn't for him. But it all was a plan.

Was it in the second year also when we got a new teacher, of sociology, who came from a different HS to ours to teach one class a week. He once even told me, he came there especially for me (where did he know me from?). That guy, prof Manea, turned out to have been none other than the musician known to us all as Elton John and there is little doubt in my mind about it.

There are many (juicy) stories with both i will tell later, but since i am at knowing Gabriel i have to write this one now.

In the summer or fall we went together swimming in different areas of the town, sometimes joined by the guy who was also my roommate for one trimester and looked like Travolta. One glorious summer or early fall day we went at Ciric Lake and were doing turns as one would row and the other would swim behind the boat along the lake.

After that he took me to Manea's apartment in nearby Tătărași (Doi Băieți), one of the two ten stories towers there where he gave us to drink brandy and made a few sexual allusions. This is so from the beginning one would not make false ideas about who Gabi was.

But about Man_ea i was warned by the master teacher (diriginta) Ionică though i did not understand what she meant at the time. "He is crazy and he and Gabi and others want to make you crazy too" she said one day when we were alone on the street when she became emotional.

One more story about Ciric Lake. I went there with Angela after we got married and i was still a college student and again rented a boat (they were cheap to rent) and i was swimming near the boat and my wedding ring fell in the water but i caught it while it was going down, inches away from the surface (they were very expensive, like one month wages for one ring).

In the first days and weeks i was wearing a type of cheap uniform, made of the same material as for winter military clothing, though navy blue in color. It was a nasty material, irritating especially when  new and would wrinkle developing large ballooned knees and thin out in time, the kind i was wearing throughout grade school. I was the only one in class wearing that and diriginta told me to tell my father to buy the more expensive one, made of "tergal".

Yes i was very tall, almost the height and weight i've been through my whole life after until i got here and became overweight. I think it was the milk i grew with we were buying from our neighbors, the Erhan family (a Turkish name, left since Turkish rule of Moldova and Bukovina).

Soon after, i think in November 1974 ex two term post revolutionary (1989) President (of Romania) Ion Iliescu was officially moved through one of those shuffle like movements (rotația cadrelor) to be the Party General Secretary at Iași where he stayed until i finished HS (another coincidence).

I think in reality he was the famous Hungarian director György Illés who directed the whole political show in Romania starting with that time or possibly earlier, until he died, it is unclear when.

(to be continued, it will be part of a series of posts)

September 2nd

2:02 AM I heard a commercial on TV while moving my PC from bedroom back to living and did a search just to see if heard it right, cause i could not believe my ears and memory. So they found a way to put together the word Xfinity (X infinity or X finity) and force field.

9:45 They were two Angelas in my stories and lots of references about Germany. The meaning of this visit? No meaning, just the occult trying to dilute some of the shock of some readers. By the way, my memoirs could never be printed op paper, yes, because of the numerous links.

And as i was expecting, a myriad of articles in Romanian press and not only, with subtle or sometimes direct references to things in my post. Lechatch, Leipzig. Too many to mention, basically all of then in one way or another. 

Vast majority of the things i wrote so far in this first chapter covering first 14 years of my life were already written in my blog started in 2012 however they were bits and pieces, written in different styles and formats as i was advancing in English and writing skills, and most people could never see them as parts of a whole or see the connections.

Beware of their power to erase things from reality with their sophisticated media apparatus.

10:40 Harleys in the US were the transportation of choice of millions of veterans who returned from WWII. With them they terrorized the white collar wad dodging Cadillac driving middle upper class at home. Also because they could not afford a car (not right away anyways).

To this day it remained the same symbol, with more veterans added to the movement. I bet in the beginning the bikes were noisy because of tecnologic and prices limitation, but they stayed that way and it became a tradition.

But nowadays? I see on Harleys young unidentified guys that sometimes prove to be... Japanese when they remove their helmets. More of the veterans became quiteley integrated. Those generations are more and more gone and you cannot know who is doing it and for what purpose anymore.

Because of what i wrote here last night, the stories with the motorcycle (yes they never punish unprovoked), this morning, minutes after i awoke, one started with the pulsating sound way about 100 dB in the pressing silence that started at the complex after what i wrote last about Sciento. Within minutes i started to have a congested noise, because of dust and rage and then palpitations and chest discomfort. He repeated it 2 more times.

11:00 It started. Kinda early though but the rain is welcome because of raging fires. This is the weather in Oregon. When it rains, it pours but actually is more like a drizzle and rarely a proper rain. Small amounts of water spanned over months of fall, winter and spring where the Sun rarely shines.

I remember a pastor Swift's joke during a sermon before year 2000 at the Church (of the Nazarene, yes the church of the city). "In Oregon it rains from above but a lot of times sideways and i could swear sometimes it feels like it rains from underground".

After cooking ourselves in the last couple of months in scorching temperature sometimes over 100 degrees with a poor man's AC in the balcony door blowing cold air which was bad for my wound, now we get to see the dark for the months to come. It might help with dust outside, but inside the dust never leaves because it's coming from walls.

September 1st

10:55 PM Oculta, ramura Dinescu, mascota gibonul sinistru al evoluției, lovește din nou.

Motivul pentru care l-au scos la înaintare pe acest Pahonțu de care nu a auzit nimeni până acum este de a avea o caricatură nouă, neuzată, pe care s-o vânture la nevoie în fața ochilor dvs., "milioanele de prostiți". Și ăsta e doar un exemplu, e plină presa controlată de ei mereu de asemenea devieri subliminale.

Absolutely not funny. 

August 31

10:45 PM Just got home. All evening i thought i had a case against the Church of Scientology. What was i thinking.

First. Xenu is part of their mythology. Some web sites mention Xenu is imprisoned here on Earth. I thought they re-gained their tax exempt status simply by proving to IRS they were a religion. And since Xenu is thought to be here on Earth, IRS, FBI, CIA, name it, could have done some research to see if Xenu is really around.

I believe everybody on Earth would be interested to know if there was an alien here on our planet for 75 millions of years, imprisoned in a mountain, which means there should be also some guardians and staff to feed him. Held by a force field with the help of an eternal battery? There is no such thing as an eternal battery, this is a syntagm in the Sci Fi language of the 50s.

If there was we should all be interested to know. Free energy that is.

But by looking at their activities one can say they believe they know exactly where Xenu is or at least was imprisoned. On Mt.Sylvania of Portland area (Lake Oswego to be more precise) which also happens to be an (extinct) volcano. They tricked him into renting an apartment there with the help of Matt Latanzi, the ex husband of Olivia Newton John. He even had the freedom to move around but never leave, like in Eagles' song.

Anyways. Those who buy knowledge from the church should know. There should be people with insider knowledge to confirm that who could be subpoenaed to testify that. And if their doctrine contains that information and if they cannot prove there is a Xenu, then they will loose their religion status and had to pay IRS taxes and penalties since 1993.

But that is not the case. IRS gave up the case against them because of other "reasons". There is a very down to Earth reason why Hubbard could have not died in 1986. The case against the Church was based on an accusation it was an organization for his own profit. That accusation had no more basis if he was dead.

I personally believe he lived for a while (i think after 2006) at the apartment down stairs in Beaverton (BTW he had a car battery in the balcony all the time) and then he controlled the real estate agency, McNeely, who leased the apartment to us in Lake Oswego. That of course would make sense only if he declared to the Church i was Xenu who somehow escaped or transfered his Thetan from that prison on me and then of course he caught him again.

No reciprocity. A person or organization like IRS cannot fill a FOIA request with the Church of Scientology to get the information as were and who is XENU.

The Spider Web

www. Everybody knows what it is. World Wide Web.

I remember in HS i once read a quasi autobiographical book called just like that. The Spider Web (1938). Or maybe, On the Spider Thread of Memory (1977). One of the two. Written by the a Romanian author, Cella Serghi.

One of these days i thought. What if conscience does not reside inside our body but is the Universe itself by which our brain is linked through literal threads. Infinitesimally small but physical whirl like threads of AEther used to entangle particles, making up for our memories. Maybe created by the lightening of engrams. Shooting out of our brain, entangling with many others.

Interestingly, the name of the character of the first book was Diana, reminding of Dianetics.

Scientology also believes brain is not where our soul resides, but just an interface. To the individual Thetans.

The ancient Egyptians were discarding the brain during mumification. They said it was a useless organ (in the afterlife anyways). A burden to carry all our life? I remember the title of a poem written by Romanian poet Adrian Păunescu. The Unrepeatable Burden. Cause what is brain? Something that takes lots of precious resources of our body, for sure.

My father was born on December 16 1937 in a village called Sasca near Baia, a German colony which was the first capital of Moldova. During that time, the closest city was Fălticeni. Baia name could come from the silver mines nearby. I think he was the second of 4 brothers. His father was a carpenter and bees keeper and also had a small subsistence farm and more than 10 acres of land. Both his parents died in the epidemic of 1944 leaving the four brothers orphans.

I have conflicting memories for the fist name of my paternal grandfather, was either Ion or Costache and my grandmother's name was Ana.

They were moved to an orphanage in Brăila. The youngest, Mircea, who was 2 years old was adopted. My father ended in Mediaș, Sibiu county where he went to a professional school and became a carpenter like his father. After mandatory military stage in Calafat, he moved to Pojorâta, near Câmpulung where he worked in a shop for a guy named...

He was blackmailed into marrying my mother, who was 17. Two weeks before marriage they also forced him to change his name from Diaconescu to Ion (the most common first name in Romania, equivalent to John). One year later or in 1960 i was born.

For this reason they always treated us, mother and children as a temporary major inconvenience and he planned  his escape for about 23 years. He divorced my mother around the time i got married and went and married a widow woman from Sasca. I think he was happy for a while but had a health problem.

I was a few years old and he went to play football (soccer) at the local stadium and some guy hit his left calf intentionally and he told him it was for beating my mother, something he was doing. He developed a non healing wound (eschar) that kept growing until it encompassed his whole left leg all the way to hip.

When i went in Romania only and last time in 2004 he was in constant pain but was never willing to amputate his leg. I think he died in 2013, in the same year with my mother who developed a cancer stomach, after being tortured (smoked) in her condo by right extremists from Romania, for years.

My father was a workaholic, like his father. He worked non stop including Sundays and all holidays in the factory and after 2 PM in his shop at home. He had a stash of money and in 73 or 74 he unexpectedly sold his motorcycle and bought a second hand car. The only time he wasn't working was when he went fly fishing in the rivers around Câmulung, Moldova and Bistrița, durins some of the Sundays. He put a lot of km on that car only to go around fishing.

He sometimes took me with him especially during and after HS when i think he tried to keep me away from friends, bars and disco. He and mother asked me to work during vacations.

Also a perfectionist, he was moved to supervise from one department to another in that factory, because he was always setting things right (organizing, making them work). Though he was toughened by his early life, he had a compassionate though impulsive nature. He was always submissive to others and easy to manipulate. He wasn't drinking smoking or cursing except on rare occasions.

He had this life long friend Constantin Alistar also from Fălticeni also a supervisor at the factory. He influenced him a lot, especially into beating and divorcing my mother. When i was a college student one day i was at his place and they were partying with two women, kinda inviting me. But i didn't like their obscene music.

My mother had a very isolated and neglected childhood and i remember from the first years of my life, to her everything was new. My grand mother hated her cause she came in her life out of marriage and unwanted.

My father was neglecting and ignoring her and us children. Caught between cultures (6 different people lived historically together in Bukovina) there was lots of confusion in her mind and some people took advantage of her. But the vast majority of times my father was beating her for no reason because i knew all the circumstances. She made me some sort of confidant and i knew everything she did as she was dragging me around everywhere.

When i was at the age of 4 or 5 my father went for a trip to Soviet Union. Must have been nearby Moldova. He brought back a photo enlarger for my grandfather and I think a camera, and a tricycle for me (that was later converted to a bicycle). After i got bored of three wheels my father one day made it two only but it lacked a freewheel mechanism. Which means the pedals were always linked to the rear wheel.

One day maybe at my repeated requests my father took me to ride on the street that was paved with asphalt, he also on a (regular sized) bicycle. They were very few cars (for lack of cars in Romania at that time) maybe just a few a day. We went and climbed a long slope beyond the milk processing factory. Then when we got back, i took my feet off the pedals. The pedals started to turn so fast i could not put my feet back on.

At the base of the slope i think i had maybe 50 kmh (30 mph). A group of gypsies on a side of the road were gesticulating and yelling at me to keep focused and not give up which i think helped me a lot. I continued out of inertia for several hundred yards or until i could control that bike.

Was it in that year when one day he asked for that kerosene cooking lamp, he took it to his shop and made some tea. Then he left the cup in a place where i could reach it. My grandfather asked him what he wanted to do and he said he does not want to go to jail. I drank one sip from that tea, but it smelled like gasoline. Then my mother said i fell asleep for a few hours.

I was 5 or 6 years old. I went with my grandmother, Livia and my grandfather, Valerian Mitre (from Storojineț, today Ukraine) in Suceava, county residence, to visit with his sister, Miți. Tante (aunt) Miți was her name.
 
Believe it or not, this picture was taken by my sister Angela (coincidence of name) who was 3 or 4, during one of those days in Suceava.

Grandfather was not biological, he married my grandmother when my mother was a few years old. He was a many years war veteran, was a driver on a truck carrying other soldiers and a piece of artillery. I remember he also said something a mare he was riding. 6 years of war. I once asked him, when i was about 8, why people do go to war. He said "they were too many people".

Besides Romanian he spoke German (and he always said, Ukrainian and Russian). He spoke German with my grandfather when they wanted us not to understand (witch was drawing me crazy) but never wanted to teach us. He also played violin and was the motor behind me learning how to play the accordion from that blind teacher.

Here in this picture we were all smiling better said laughing because of the way my sister was holding the camera. The reason the picture came out crooked.

One night tante Miți drove me really mad. She said i was fat and my tits were big and kept giving me bras to try. Finally could go to sleep. I heard a very loud noise that briefly awoke me. In the morning i saw a big branch ot the tree (walnut maybe) in the courtyard was down. It was hit by lightening, they said.

I remember here a story my mother told me. When she was a kid they once went with the school to destroy mole mounds on one of the many hills around that part of the town. It started to rain and they came back dragging their hoes on the ground behind as the teacher taught them. And here came this lightning and hit the hoe of the kid right in front of her.

Was it that evening or the next when we went to visit other relatives or theirs. They were in a front yard some sort of flowers (queen of night they called them) that were making a smell so strong it was choking me.

I remember i was playing in a barrel with collected rain water (they did that a lot back then because the rain water had very few minerals and needed not carrying from a fountain) with a little boat that had an electrical motor in it.

They gave it to me to take home în Câmpulung (Suceava). I played a lot with it but in the end i took it apart (like i always did with everything i ever had, maybe it broke) and my father built with that motor a little metal propeller thrower. I remember later i made a drawing with a man on a backpack with a motor in the back and a propeller above him.

Because it took piano lessons between 5 and 7 with a teacher named Redlov(e) and had to write (copy) notes for homework, i kinda learned how to read and write before i went to school. But i remember the first thing i ever read was the word PHILOSOPHY (FILOZOFIA) on a cover of a HS book of my mother, who abandoned HS after about a year "because of headaches" my grandfather said. She later went to a medical assistant school, but never graduated because of the weird test she had for finals and she could not do it.

They later bought me a small accordion, with 32 bass buttons, but could not play with it mostly because i could only play by notes at that time. So my grandfather brought me an accordion teacher was was literally blind (was brought in by his daughter). In the end he taught me a few songs and after a few years i forgot about notes and was playing only by ear.

At some point i started to hate that accordion because the teacher asked me to bring it at school where i was playing so the other could dance traditional folk dances while rehearsing for the year end celebrations. So i was the only one who didn't get to dance with the girls and that was the reason i could not dance at the end of grade school, like others.

Also that year when we lived downtown and I went to another school they hired me to play at a kindergarten dance rehearsals and then Christmas celebration and I got paid with enough money to buy a couple of flashlights which I was fascinated with.

(Later i had a regular size accordion and while still in grade school i learned lots of stuff from a teacher, also by ear, at the House of Children and got pretty good at it). He was conducting there an ethno band (taraf) with oher children playing violins, bass, trumpet and drums. He was reading notes and thought us old folk songs from a collection book.

Together we once went to Bucharest and recorded a few songs that were aired on a Sunday morning for children broadcast on National television. Yes we were all wearing the local traditionals sleeveless jackets made of polecat fur (borrowed from generous neighbors).

At the age of seven i once cried all day until my father bought me a camera, 70 lei or one day's wages. Again my grandfather was probably behind it. He once told me that one of his sisters had a photo studio back in Storojineț and she taught him.

When i look at it now i even remember the smell, it was made with formaldehyde resin. Wide film covered with red and black paper with numbers on the back read through a little red window when advancing the film. Could make pictures with it in a darkroom directly with paper under, without an enlarger which my grandfather did. With it i did take some pictures before i broke it (was pretty brittle material).

I started school at 7 and i remember i was very excited about it but my mother warned me, it was not like kindergarten, the teacher gives you grades (it was from one to 10 in Romania back then) and that saddened me. I remember my first grade was a 9, at Romanian language. My 1-4 grade teacher, Valeria Mihalea, did look a lot like Italian actress Claudia Cardinale. Acting kinda b...y (they called her a severe teacher). But she had another side (funny, laughing) that was showed during a trip with the whole class to Bucharest.

I remember that day we were waiting a lot for the coach to come. The driver, who also looked like an Italian actor (dark skin, blue piercing eyes) had to fix the oil pan which got broken (by a rock?) or somebody tried to sabotage the trip? (Bus was most likely an Ikarus - 55).

Here is a pictures with my class mates in second grade (fall of 1968) at the age of 8. Probably done by my grandfather who became the photographer (weddings, funerals, colorized portraits, etc.) in that part of town after he got pensioned from his painter job in Sadova.

I am at the right of the teacher, bottom row (white collar). I was taller than anyone and now i suspect some of the kids were actually 1 or 2 years younger than me. Like this guy second right bottom. Three of  the girls were wearing same traditional polecat fur vests.

Ok so here i am with my next big memory at the age of 8. My father was at some sort of supervisors school again in Suceava (for the factory they were building in Câmplung across the street) and had a room in a condo there and my mother was with him and they were both working at the wood processing factory in Suceava. Again with my grandmother and grandfather we went to visit them.

He had a small transistor radio and because the regular AA batteries were expensive, he used a bigger, cheaper battery external to the radio and of course i started to play with it. Was attaching and detaching those wires kinda like i was sending morse code messages and my father asked me what i was doing and i told him i was trying to contact the aliens.

In that day i saw my father and grandparents looked scared. It was the day of the invasion of Czechoslovakia by Soviet Union and the famous Ceaușescu speech which opened for him the doors of west banks for borrowing money and building the industry that made so many things like condos and jobs for half Romanians.

Who quit those ancestral lands that were confiscated anyways by the pro Soviet regime and moved into cities.

Later i learned from my father it was also rumored that Ceaușescu had a secret weapon, built with the help of Coandă, Tesla's and Einstein's friend, with which they melted the Soviet tanks that were about to cross the border.

But in the end those loans ruined Romania, financially, leading to what historians have called "the 7 years of hunger by Ceaușescu".

But i believe that was triggered by the defecting of Pacepa and cut of low interest loans. Could the invasion, the speech have all been scripted, to allow Soviet Union to get some proxy access to western technology.

We moved for one year in downtown Câmpulung were my father had a job (and where he worked a lot to finish his graduating project for that school of supervisors). We were close to that repetitor in down town so we had a good signal for the TV to see the Apollo moon landing (and also heard about Apollo 13 accident). The TV was by the brand Orion, made in Hungary, and had a contact problem at the channel selector and was flickering all the time and needed tweaking and sometimes hitting, yelling and praying.

Then they finished the factory across street in west Câmplung and we moved back there. He became the head of a wood carving department where they were making medieval French style furniture for export i believe in Germany. He was making good money there.

BTW, we never knew what my father did with his money until he came home with that car. He always kept saying he did not have any, wasn't drinking or smoking and went to borrow from neighbors when my mother forced him. But now i think he was borrowing from himself.

We were always hungry, my mother was spending her salary in a few days (yes, on cakes, coffee and cigarettes), and we were eating at grandmas. I remember day 11 and 26 of the month was jubilation day, or when she was coming with a paper plate with the cakes.

Most of my neighbors inhabiting that town had traditional small subsistence farms including milking cows, pigs and sometimes sheep and didn't have to buy food like milk, potatoes and sometimes meat and also had a job in one of those factories, but we had to buy anything.

Climate there at 2000 ft did not allow growing crops like corn or grapes, which were abundant were my in laws lived, some 50 miles east from there.

Later after i got married and was visiting Câmpulung i noticed this peculiar thing. As soon as i was getting off the train, during summers, the whole valley was smelling like cow dung.

My in laws had also cow, sheep, pigs. 

In there they were organized in so called cooperatives, made with the confiscated land, where they did lots of manual labor and they were allowed to have like one acre so called "helping lot" where they were growing corn for animals and grapes for wine and they were also given some share, in the hundreds of pounds of wheat and sugar. But they had absolutely no money. Maybe for cigarettes and liquor. My father in law was using shoes i was throwing away for example.

Yes there was another factory across the street there, milk processing, built around year 1960 or the year of my birth, by the Swiss. They had these cisterns and were driving around that mountainous rural areas, gathering surplus milk from those farms. My mother worked there for a while. They had a siren that was going off three times a day, at 6 AM, 2 PM,  and10 PM for at least one minute each time. 

The furniture factory now is a mall, like so many others factories in Romania. Finished in 1968, it was there were all my family worked. I did so during HS vacations.

There is something i have to say today about it. They had these gigantic vacuums on top for cleaning saw dust and small debris from different machines and i don't know if they had any filters in place, thing is there was many times this super fine irritating wood dust in the air. Maybe that's why i started to love the rain.

There was an airfield behind both factories (now it's just a pasture or something) where i learned how to ride the motorcycle, around 10. I heard a story about my mother when she was a child being taken in a plane by one of the communist dignitaries (confirmed by her), maybe Dej or Botnăraș who was from Bucovina and had a villa în Câmpulung.

Today i suspect small planes could have landed and quickly taken off during the noise made by that siren, especially at 6 and 10 during shorter non summer days. To secretely bring in and out celebrities i will talk about later.

In 1972 i went to a summer camp in Hamburg, Germany. My grand grand father was in Germany, my grandmother wrote his address on the back of the suitcase lid, other boys in the dorm must have seen, the director of the camp (Klaus Meine from Scorpions) pushed me to call him, i think the plan was for me to stay there but the guys in charge at Bucharest Children's Palace scared me pretty bad before we left.

Yes it was the year of Munich terrorist attack that happened 2 months later.

Good thing i didn't stay, for the little time i spent i already saw some gay behaviour at the one of the boys from Germany (we were all 12 years old). And my gran gran father Andrei Lehaci (Andreas Lechatsch, not sure of the spelling, from Tübingen, then Stuttgart) was too old to take care of me anyways.

My grandma used to say after he divorced her mother, Rarița and them he fled with Anna and a bag of money in Germany. Because the Soviets did not like capitalists (he had a small shoemaking shop in Pojorâta, probably apprentices). She even told me he was member of the Liberal Party and was arrested after a demonstration down town so he could have been still there when the Soviets came.

He died in a hospice when i was in HS and his wife Anna also from Romania didn't like my grandma when she went to see him, i think in 69 when she came back loaded with cheap gifts (i was given a watch and a suite and a tumbling monkey). He had i think a boy with her who was working in South Africa at the time.

And she told my grandfather in Germany was called an Ausländer all of his life. Also because i think he was part Jew and part Gypsy with some Romanian in him (judging by name and a picture grandma brought from Germany.

In 1973 the teacher Mihalea forced me to go into a summer camp in Costinești, a resort for youth at the Black Sea and my father had to pay for it (360 lei i guess, about a week's wages). By that time i had a camera of my own he also brought from another trip to Soviet Union.

But i have to stop here and say about Mrs.Dranga, our physical education teacher. She looked a lot like Marta Karoly, the wife of Nadia's trainor. I remember she was trying to teach us basketball in a covered court near the train station downtown and my sister got pretty good at it. But i was a sleuth like creature, absolutely not muscular.

Life was really slow in Câmpulung but i was slower than anybody. And a bit fat. They never let me play soccer with them. Could that had anything to do with my father's soccer accident, which could had traumatized me?

Then i saw the movie Judo Saga. All of a sudden i developed a passion for judo. They were no instructors in Câmpulung and i guess a few in the whole of Romania at the time. But i found a book at the book shop downtown and soon started to throw myself to the ground, with other kids in the neighborhood.

Strangely enough there was a guy renting a room in one of the neighbor's houses, engineer fresh out of college working at the milk factory who said he knew judo. He also looked a lot like the actor in the movie. He showed us some real throws.

So i went to the camp and teacher Dranga and one of my neighbors was there too and we put a rope on the beach and were jumping over it. Some guy passing by asked us if we were from some gymnastics school.

But with the same train we reached Costinești came a bunch of kids from Vatra Dornei, the closest city west of Câmpulung. There was among them a remarkable girl named Nadia. I fell in love mostly with her... legs. And face.

One day i snuck with my camera in front of her sheet at the beach and took a picture. I was expecting her to yell and react but to my surprise she smiled in a very... provocative way. However, i was just an overgrown stupid kid, or my mother's confidant so i just ran away. I think i sent her a picture in Vatra Dornei, i am not sure.

But Mihai Nuțescu continued learning gymnastic during his mandatory military stage and when i saw  him after he showed me some impressive skills. I think he reminded me of Bart Conner.

But when i got back home i discovered my camera was ruined. It wasn't working anymore because it had sand everywhere, in the lens and all the mechanisms.

However my grandfather found a small screwdriver, took it all apart with the patience of a clock maker, cleaned it and put it back together, and even oiled it with special oil for fine mechanisms making it like new which impressed me a lot. He was also good with fixing bicycles and all kinda mechanisms (also because he was a driver and probably his own mechanic in the war).

I think it was at the end of 6 or 7 grade when they hired me to take pictures of a whole kindergarten. I think i did at least one film, but i remember handing them the pictures which were in a stack more than one cm stick. Can't remember what i have done with the money, most likely bought some more photo materials.

At the end of school i did pictures of everyone in the class and made a sort of a graduation panel which should still be somewhere at the school. I took a picture of it with a professional camera, on wide film and made big prints, i think A3 or double legal size or big enough for the faces and names to be recognizable (with the help of Mr. Mikitovici). And my father reproached me for not charging my colleagues money for that. But i was like my mother, money never stuck with me.

My grandfather was a very skilled person. He once built himself a set of drums (he called them "jazz") and he went and played with other buddies at weddings. Because violin was not on demand. He was part of the band who was playing on Sundays "hora" at the "Cultural House" downtown which was an ancestral traditional Sunday dance in Romania. He was very mad when they replaced the band with a tape recorder.

He told me they took him to be an extra in the movie about the Romanian composer Ciprian Porumbescu. I recently watched the movie, could not see him there in the band or maybe he was in the back somewhere or they put a moustache on him. And yes we sometimes played together, him at violin and me at accordion.

However he had leg problems, probably due to undiagnosed diabetes and his legs became purple and were hurting and he started to drink which usually lowers blood sugar by increasing kidney output.

I remember when he came from weddings, with cakes for us, sometimes with swells on his face, beaten by other guys, a good Bucovinean tradition. From him i got the passion to listen to radio "Free Europe". He was doing so every evening.

I remember the first time i saw him drunk was that day when they brought my mother home after some guy, a potential ex suitor found her on the rail road, trying to kill herself. I started to cry just by seeing him like that, sad and drunk.

He died while i was in HS from esophageal cancer, he was not able to eat for months. I remember in that day i was summer in summer vacation, i was in the back yard chiseling a marble tombstone, something we both did for an extra buck (it was 3 lei or a loaf of bread or a pack of Carpați cigarettes for one letter).

My father gave me the chisels that were done at the maintenance shop in the factory with steel from files. I remember i once did a plaque that was already installed in the cemetery behind one of the churches downtown and everybody could pass and see me from the nearby street towards farmers' market which i did not like a lot.

Early fall of 1972. After going many days in a row at the river, i fell ill. A headache like i never had before, though in every winter i was making at least one time some form of sever tonsilitis that needed intra-muscular penicillin injections (the norm in Romania back then) or once even a stay at the hospital.

My mother took me to the hospital and they did a spinal tap. Liquid came clear. I remember i had to stay for 2 hours on my tummy after. Then they put me in an isolation room and said i had viral meningitis. At least one other neighbor kid had it in the same time.

It was a one weak ordeal. Alone in a small room. I could not sleep at night due to a lamp street next to window. I had photo sensitivity. The treatment back then in Romania was intra-muscular Polidin. I know it's for bacterial infections but it generally boosts your immune system.

I made it after one week but father told me the doctor said no more motorcycle rides (because of air current to the head maybe?). My father got the car next year anyways and i started driving that one on the same airfield.

Exactly 6 months after that i made hepatitis for which i stayed for 3 weeks in hospital, but not total isolation. Must have gotten it from those Polidin injections because they were reusing needles and syringes back then, after supposedly boiling them for hours in alcohol. A mild form, did not have full body jaundice, only the white of my eyes (they said). Missing 3 weeks of school was pretty challenging this time, i missed some important math lessons.

And here i am at another one. Starting with 5 grade we had separate teachers for all disciplines. For math, drawing and counseling i had a teacher that was looking exactly like Liz Taylor. She was supposedly an acting teacher with no college degree, and was reading all lessons from a book.

I think i discovered at the end of grade school the real math teacher at that school, who was a guy named Popescu living nearby school. He was sort of retired (though he seemed not old enough to me). I heard of him as being a good teacher and went to him for a few lessons before HS admission exam though he said to another kid i had no chance.

I remember he showed me a pile of handwritten courses from college, saying, "today i just can't believe i once went through them all". He had a sort of a curtain in the hallway where he was giving the lessons, for privacy, and when he pulled that one for the first time he said "this is like theater here".

Don't know about IQ but i had a good memory during grade school. Probably due to my music background.

I could remember everything the teachers were saying in class though i was very lazy at doing homework. Every time the teacher asked something and the class went silent, out of boredom, i was raising hand and all of my colleagues hated me for that.

But i liked physics. Because of the teacher i guess (a very sexy young petite wearing short mini skirts).

One winter when i had a terrible cold and runny noise she sent me to the county physics "olympics". Kept pulling that handkerchief every minute or so during the test, there was not one single clean spot left, and i made 15 points out of 20, one point short of going to nationals.

One day in 5th or 6th grade during early fall at geography class the teacher told us about rains at the equator. She said it is sunny all day and then it rains every day at 2 PM. I was so envious of people living at the equator and wished a lot it would happened in there too.

Guess what. One whole week after that the pattern showed in our location. But at 2 PM precisely (had a watch, we were doing school in the afternoon those days due to lack of classes). I spoke with the physics teacher and told her that. She kinda freaked out and left me without a word. The pattern ended that day.

Now i recon it must have been a known local weather pattern during that time of the year and they took advantage of it to create a legend.

I was spending most afternoons (or mornings) at the Children (they called it Pioneers) House. They had workshops called "circles". I was at wood carving, carting, radio (electronics), photo, cineclub, taraf. There was a single one i haven't been to, and that was plane modeling. They were building there functional flying models resembling today's small plane like drones and even rockets.

I remember during 7 and 8 grade i was dragging that accordion to the bus station to go downtown at Pioneers' House at least one time a week.

In seventh grade we had to do 3 weeks of "practice" which meant learning skills like locksmithing. The director of the school, a guy who looked a lot like Karlheinz Böhm arranged for us to go to a brand new workshop with benches with vice grips and all tools at the local Silvic HS. The teacher there asked us to build in that time a square and a compass out of 5 mm laminated steel sheet. I almost finished it before i got to the hospital with hepatitis.

In the spring of 74. Mihai Erhan (3rd from left, upper), my neighbor and life long friend came with a new trick. We were grabbing the branch of a long pine tree that was in a slope and jumping towards the slope, goin around the tree and landing on the other side. That would give the sensation of flying way above ground, for a few seconds.

But soon that was not enough and Mihai came with a rope and he climbed the tree (he wa a good climber) and tighten the rope high above and we did the same thing with the rope, flying above the slope around tree.

But soon that was not enough either and i came with the idea of tying a stick with a knot perpendicular to the rope, creating a device like i saw at circus flyers, only they had a stick between two ropes. And guess what. The stick slid out of the knot while i was "flying" and i landed on the slope and would not have been a big problem, i tried to cushion the fall with my hand like at judo when i hit my elbow to a rock that was sticking out of the ground.

My hand swollen in a few minutes like a loaf of bread. Mihai kept telling me to try and move it. (We were both 14). I went home in pain and then at the hospital where they took an X-ray and the doctor gave me some pain killers and sent me to Iași (yes it was several months before i was admitted to Tehnoton and probably my escape from going to the Military High School in East Câmpulung when father persuaded me to go (to finally get rid of me i think).

At Iași Professor doctor Nae Niculescu said i needed surgery. Ok, no big deal, i said, i was in pain and waited for a relief. But he kept me about a week on pain killers saying the inflammation and swelling has to go down first. Health care was free for all during those years in Romania but there was this tradition and my parents of course gave him the usual gifts (bribe).

The Emergency Hospital for Children was built on a sort of hill, brand new and looked good inside which gave me much confidence. I remember i was sitting there, in some pain and watched through the window thousands of people moving like ants in a colony, back and forth around a number of buildings somewhere at a lower elevation and kept asking myself what was that. It was Tudor Vladimirescu campus, with more than ten thousands students, where i was to spend 5-6 years, some 5 years later.

One night a nurse came and gave me an enema (was standard procedure). In the morning they gave me an anti-anxiety pill and took me to the operating room but i still was not woried of anything. They started an IV, i think i heard the words sodium pentothal, and suddenly i awoke in the ICU unit, with a cast on my left hand covering my elbow, with some blood on it.

One of the most beautiful women i ever seen was there, attending. For a second i thought i was in heaven and she was an angel.

She gave me some tea from a jar (was that a sign) to clear the anaesthetic from my bloodstream. Then they sent me back to the saloon.

The doctor kept coming every morning (vizita as they call it in Romania) every time with a bunch of students and i think i heard him saying to the students the word "Re" while watching the new X-ray. 

One evening the whole procedure repeated, but this time i was a bit worried, mostly because i felt terrible because of side effects of the anaesthetic. When i woke up in the ICU, the same woman gave me another jar of diluted tea. But right after that they sent me home, i don't think they took another X-ray.

They said they installed a silver screw to reattach that piece of bone.

On the streets i had trouble walking but i made it to yet another sister of my grandpa (i think they were 10 siblings) whose husband was a lawyer (state prosecutor) in Iași.

Could not gather my thoughts together. Since that day i was never the sharp kid i was before.

But as that was not enough.

When i went back there to remove the cast, could not move my elbow articulation. And he decided i should do what they called a "mobilization". That is forcing the articulation under anestezia. This time they used Ether which has a terrible smell. I awoke with some mobility in my hand but that went away in a few  hours.

He did a total of 4 so called mobilizations, each time me having to go to Iași. But next one was with chloroform and since i did not like that one either i think he did the rest with pentotal.

My elbow gained some 60% mobility but i was turned basically in some sort of vegetable for the next few months and maybe years after those six general anesthesia done within a few months with things today obsolete. I heard them saying, every general anesthesia shortens your life with six months (or was it years).

I cannot straighten my left arm to more than 45 (135 degrees out of 180). It is visible when i walk and especially when i sit when i have a tendency to keep my left hand between my legs.

One day at the beginning of the VI grade (yes after Germany and meningitis) Mrs. MeZinu came to me  out of the blue during a break in the courtyard at school and introduced me to a guy one year older than me, Petrică (Peter) "Titi" Avram. He, his brother Ionel (Noni) and mother were living in a cottage right in front of the offices of the milk factory.

One room only, probably the only place there with no electricity.

He said he was the nephew of Emil Bodnăraș (uncle Mili he said) and there was a physical resemblance between them (on the Gypsy side). They said they just moved from Iacobeni, a remote place on Bistrița, a few tens of km away from Câmpulung.

He was writing with capital letters only like i did when i went to school (sign he didn't attend school) and one day he showed me the design of a vehicle, resembling a race car with a propeller and a smaller propeller that was supposed to power the bigger one. He was dreaming of making a transformer that would take electricity from the "radiofication system" (a central amplifier downtown with wires and speakers in homes all over the city) to power their cottage.

I started to hang out with them a lot, he taught me how to smoke. But when i left at Iași, i lost contact with him and when i came in a vacation he told me he went to jail for shoplifting and i think that was after the death of Botnăraș and that was after he sent me a letter at Iași, with capital letters and full of grammar mistakes, during the time i was Gabi's roommate and he saw it and i got very embarrassed.

When i saw him next i was working at xIMU Bacău and he said  he was fixing TVs in Pojorâta where his mother married to a guy (i think i was at their place once). Fixing TVs in those days meant swapping tubes, and he had a stash of those and kept swapping them from one TV to another.

I think it was in the summer of 78. Cause i remember what i've done in 79. In the summer of 80 i had two exams left and learned all summer. But those were easy cause it was known, in fall those teachers would not fail no one. Ok let' say it was 1980. Maybe i will remember later. So i was either in last year of HS or first year of college. Maybe i will remember later some detail that would help me date this one.

I met this girl with fair colored curly girl, but i don't think she was totally blonde, maybe a shade of red. She seemed very fragile, both physically and maybe emotionally. Probably at the disco. We went in a few dates, walking only in downtown Câmpulung. My father saw me once with her and tried to talk me out of it.

Then one day she told me she had a problem with the chemistry teacher. She was failed by Mr.Mezinu, by then teacher at the Dragoș Vodă HS, where her husband was director and was due for a correction in the fall. But she was afraid she would not pass that time either.

Since i knew Mrs.Mezinu i told her to buy a bouquet of flowers and went together to her house which was not far from ours. It was easy, conversation was very short, she agreed to pass her as a favor to me, now i remember vaguely, i think she did it because i was probably her first ever student to go to college.

Days after she invited me to her place where she was living with her parents, an apartment next to downtown Câmpulung. We were laying on the bed, dressed, when her "brother" came into the room. A guy taller then me i think. He seemed very tall anyways when i was seeing him from the that POV. I felt very embarrassed and left, and that was the end of it. No, can't remember her name.

I was in Lake Oswego in that apartment managed by McNeely (Hubbard) and was mad all the time due to the smoke coming from walls. I was out of control and today i am wondering how come nothing worse than getting diabetes happened to me during that time.

Yeah i remember at some time i got too many driving tickets in a short period (mostly if not all from not fully stopping when making a right turn on red at intersections with cameras) and i was put on a one month hardship permit by DMV.

One day i bought some summer sausage at WinCo in Tigard and was full of mustard grains that were irritating my stomach and went back with it, yelling at the employees. I remember this Asian guy who listened me without saying anything but went in the back and came with a woman, in her late 40s, dressed in a blue gown like uniform and she was trying to be nice to me. I calmed down and left.

It was a time when at WinCo i was seeing many celebrities including Princess Irina, Cătălina Ponor, the dead son of Travolta, etc.. Or was it before that.

She did not look underweight to me at that time or anything though the years could be seen on her face. Too many shows in Vegas, too much partying?

I think it was in the same year or later when i was kicked from that place and started to look for a new apartment. But why do i remember i was here at the current place and talking to her on the phone? Was i at the beginning trying to get out of here too?

Cause i met her again as a manage at the next complex from here, Meridian that BTW looks about the same as this one if not worse. She kept telling me she only wanted to help. But there was this younger guy in the office when i went there who seemed "protecting her" and not like me getting there.

Could had been her behind me finally escaping from there? Here at Rolling Hills there was not much difference, there was still smoke at least in the first years. Besides that, laundry vapor from the basement but at least no asphalt grains falling from the roof. BTW there is a lot of irritating insulation dust as i write here today. Wonder if would had been better if i moved to Meridian, having Celine d'Ion as manager.

But i think she was still the same fragile person, always manipulated by others. I always wondered. Was this song about me? Never seen the video before. There is a motorcycle and a bed. I remember in HS i had a long leather jacket with pockets like that i did not like because it was too large and i think my father wore it after.

I remember one day running with Mihai on the airport field with my fishing pole in one hand and was lightning all around. And at another time, again with him, riding some guy's motorcycle that had a very small engine but was modified and had lots of power and i accelerated a lot and then could not stop before a pile of logs that wasn't there previously and i veered left and leaned the motorcycle on the soft grassy soil and the motorcycle did not hit the logs or either of us gut hurt.

What is this, sex magic, alchemic manipulation of stollen memories? Could have never seen this video if it wasn't for writing this post.

Ok maybe it's time to write here about Mihai and i will begin with his resemblance with Mircea Baniciu.

During grade school, we were going afternoons still in the old building, must have been 4th or 5th grade, a music teacher came to us and did a selection for a choir. I remember her nick name, Pupa (which colloquially means kisser in Romania). I think she was an acquaintance of my mother.

Kinda Gypsy but cute. She listened to each of us, and when it came Mihai's turn, he could absolutely not catch the notes. He was tone deaf, we all thought. She did some rehearsals and then nothing happened. She left. But before that she thought a few of us how to do bass voice, but letting more air though the throat, cause she needed bass voices for the choir.

But one day i went to their place (next, big villa from hour modest house) and saw an accordion the same as mine with 32 bass buttons but different color. They seemed embarrassed and did not talk about.

Time have passed, i went to HS in Iași, but one day i came back home in a winter vacation and Mihai had two girls at home and lots of home made wine and a guitar. Back then there was this band Phoenix in Romania, i think they were trying to do hard rock that was never heard before in a country with lots of ethno music, and they were played on the radio all the time but i never seen them on Romanian television or in pictures back then.

So i sang one of their songs, with modified verses accompanied by guitar and Mihai was looking in disbelief with a strange smile on his face. Cause he didn't know i learned to play guitar by myself. Or he heard but never seen it.

Story is much longer and my blood sugar went low and my face hurts, but i will shortened this here for now.

Many years later, i think i was still in Lake Oswego when i saw Mihai's face on a picture of famous Mircea Baniciu, their main vocalist.

I called Erhans' place several times from Lake Oswego but every time it was only his brother or his mother picking the phone, saying Mihai was not home.

He was also over grown like me (same milk) and would have been 12 years old in this video.

The bassist, Kapl, the curly guy could have been another neighbor, the son of my godfather, also named Gigi (in Romanian is a diminutive of Gheorghe).

Yes this song is an ethno rock ballad. Officially the song is about an outlaw in southern Romania who were popular during communist era so they wouldn't have problems with censorship (taking from the rich, giving to the poor!).

However there are many references about Câmpulung in the song. Valea Seacă is an important neighborhood near downtown Câmpulung. Andrei was the name of my grand grand father. The song is sang in Bukovina style and accent. Mihai's father had a hunting gun with 3 barrels.