I'm in Massachusetts now with an unlisted telephone number. Those who know me in the Greater Springfield area will see me from time to time, though I'm not talking much to anybody right now. As for the job I had at the donut shop in Memphis, it was the second time I worked for that company. Working a second time for any outfit has not worked very well for me yet. This ended without my ever getting used to it. Actually, I really can't work with other people at all. My kind never can. I pretty much found that out 20 years ago when the pizza place inside a mall in Hadley, Massachusetts I used to work for back then stopped allowing anybody to work alone there late at night or early in the morning.

More info can be gathered about me (if either is willing to divulge it) from Howard, who is on the Board of Directors at Camp Arrowhead, and/or his ex-wife, Melanie, who right now is the Program Officer at Community Without Walls or something like that, and is now married to Floyd Owings, who is in charge of an insurance company.

Well, Howard's email doesn't seem to be working, but I know Melanie can certainly be contacted.  Anyway, I can divulge this much information:

I first met them when I started at Maplewood Private School in Amherst; ran by Howard and Melanie Edmonds.  I first went there thinking I was a dog.  Instead of knocking on the door each morning I would bark like a dog.  I was almost 13 then, and was speaking dog better than I could speak English, so English was not my first language.  I didn't last long at the regular junior high school, there was this one woman teacher teaching Social Studies who treated me so mean I became convinced I was a dog.  I also spent a lot of time in the Guidance Councelor's office where I was switching things between the inbox and the outbox.  This drove him crazy.

After starting at Maplewood, I was soon committed to the Northampton State Hospital because of what had to be shocked out of me; I hated all women, saying they should be drafted into military service the way men are, and I thought I was a dog.  Those were the things that had to be shocked out of me.  I was there for two weeks.

Upon return to Maplewood, I was at least a human being again, but there I was at the age of 13 and I didn't know how to ride a bike and also didn't know how to swim.  What I had was a resistance to learning just about any and everything.  Howard thought I was afraid to learn and that I looked at learning like it was a lion. However, I learned to ride a bike that year; Howard taught me how even though I was ready to bet heavily against it.  

What's more, I was still highly neurotic and had a horrible sounding scream, and still prone to playing some nasty pranks.  I know this is getting into the subject of bodily functions, but one time I urinated in a glass that was in the bathroom there and just left it there.  The next day, Howard asked me if I saw a glass in the bathroom.  I told him I didn't.  He soon got another glass that looked just like it and offered me some juice.  I said "That's the glass that was in the bathroom, I'll get sick as a dog.  I'll get rabies!!"  Then he said "Richard, don't you EVER tinkle in a glass again."

Then at a later time, I came with dirty jagged finger nails which Howard said looked like dewclaws.  He told me his wife, Melanie, would die if she saw those.  He got some clippers and cut my nails.  I was dewclawed.  I think that word woke up an old memory, maybe even from a previous life, when almost asleep I heard a German voice shout in German what can probably be translated as "Your ass is mine, you clod!!"  Now you can probably guess what's German for "you clod."  What's more, I also remembered very early in life taking an instant dislike to certain places -- these places had buildings that looked German or maybe Dutch.

The motto at Maplewood was "Come clean," but during that time I lived in the part of Amherst called Cushman -- the slum of Amherst. I was in a feud with another kid there and we wrote stuff about each other on an abandoned clambake shack in the conservation area. I adopted the "come clean" motto for that shack but added to it "go out filthy." I also used to fart at him trying to keep him away from me. I used to swallow air and force it through my digestive system so that I would have the same weapon that a skunk has. It was also there where I tried to sing opera the way the cartoon character, Yakky Doodle sings it. Everybody in Cushman thought I was mental, but at least then I wasn't  doing anything worse than sticking gum on parking meters.

I went to Camp Arrowhead for several summers.  I learned to swim there.  Howard had been a camper there in his youth and was later on the Board of Directors there. He showed me an easy swimming stroke in order to make me less afraid of the water -- the dogpaddle.  Swimming instructors at the camp were able to take it from there. 

During the second summer I was there, I met someone there who made an everlasting impression on me. Since 1963, I was pretty sure that somebody was putting evil spells on me. I became convinced it was him when he stuck a pin in my behind -- the same pin that the Waterfront Director's daughter stuck in his behind after he made a pass on her. He got it off on me using voodoo. He also would pretend he was in other people's bodies and I learned how to do that when I saw what he was doing. I recently googled his name on the Web. He had become a movie star and was living in Beverly Hills. His name is Jason Cabana Tanner and not one of the ones you hear much about. I can't be absolutely sure it's the same Jay Tanner I met back in '66. I couldn't find any connection to Camp Arrowhead on the Web involving him, but if it is him and if a movie were to be made about any of this, he might well be able to play the part of himself as he was then -- someone with a lot of perverted ideas which were like viruses that infect the human mind.

It was during during the third summer at Arrowhead, which was after moving to a more respectable neighborhood in Amherst, when I heard that Jay Tanner was barred from ever returning to camp.  But it was during that season when there were several times during meals when others noticed I was only eating what I liked and said I was like a little kid, although they did get me to drink milk, but I would gulp it down like it was poison.  I also always thought that dry cereal is not dry with milk on it -- that makes it wet cereal and spoils the flavor.

They had me drink milk because of someone that year who asked me if I have a girlfriend.  When I said I didn't, he asked why and I said I was too thin.  So he and others told me if I drink milk I wouldn't be "so damn skinny."  Some also started calling me "Richard the queer" or "meatbeater."  In response to that, I started dumping on Chinese people, especially those living in Red China, calling them "chinuts."  I said things like "chinuts cut dicks off and eat them" and everybody got mighty sick of hearing things like that and told me that people will soon think I am one.  One person there did in fact call me the "chinut kid."  Still another just said "Richard walks around like he's in a trance."

After the camp season was over and school started, I kept up talking like that until Howard and Melanie both excoriated me for that, telling me that there are 7 Chinese people for every one American and asked me how I'd like being outnumbered 7 to 1.  Then I heard "now get this through your thick skull....." and so forth.

Later that same year, some forty years ago, one of my classmates had a tirade of his own, saying "I know how to solve the problem with the riots, just give me a machine gun and.........", and on and on he went and about eight guys wanted to punch him out.  Howard and Melanie had to protect him. His name is Rene Bernasconi and here's a link to  the terrible situation he's presently in. There was one time when I was at his house when I said behind Melanie's back that she ought to be a fullback on a football team. It got back to her and I was in tons of trouble. This was not long before my high school graduation.

Incidently, twenty years later, I saw Rene once again. It was at a pizza place where I worked at the time. He lasted three days there and just couldn't seem to catch on to anything.