Anarchist to Abolitionist: A Bad Quaker's Journey

A New Life

Cindy and I had a wonderful honeymoon in the Sequoias. She forgot to pack shoes, so she only had the high heels she wore for the wedding. That limited the amount of hiking we could do, but we managed to plant about a pound of pot seeds anyway.

We talked a lot. Both of us wanted kids. Both of us wanted to be out of the drug-based life style. I was tired of always looking over my shoulder. I was tired of always expecting violence. Mostly, I was tired of the hierarchy of the drug world. Mostly, I was tired of the pseudo-state in the crime world. What is the point of being free of the State if you're always under the thumb of an organized crime syndicate? After all, the Mob is just a State in exile, or maybe a State without a geographic border. And what is a biker gang but a wanna-be State? All these people are authoritarians, little Napoleons, would-be Hitlers, Stalin without a Red Army. Authoritarians both in government and in the private world, are simply variations in opportunity from the worst people in history. Given the chance, they would all be Pol Pot on steroids.

I was done with all of them. I turned my back on every friend and every foe. I left without saying goodbye, and I didn't care if I never laid eyes on any of them again. It was Cindy and I against the world.

Death Valley Days

Cindy and I moved to Trona, California in the Searles Valley, the next valley west of Death Valley, where the International Chemical Workers Union was on strike at Kerr-McGee's Westend Chemical Plant. The manager of the contract labor company that was providing scab labor, asked me if I was a qualified machine mechanic. I would have told him I was a heart surgeon if it would have gotten me hired. But, as it turned out, working at Westend was far more than a job, it was an eight year long life changing experience.

Wikimedia

In Trona, we moved into one of the worst places we ever lived. Maybe the worst, or second worst if you consider Barstow in later years. It was a cheap motel that had been converted into cheap weekly rate apartments. It was clean, but cramped, and it had a pervert as an owner/manager. We started to notice that every time we went to town to grocery shop, things seemed different when we got home. We couldn't put our finger on it, but something seemed different each time we came home.

Here's where my love of film noir paid off. One day, as we prepared to go into town for shopping, I took tiny pieces of paper and placed them on select spots on doors, windows, drawers, in our closet, and other places. When we returned I checked them and I saw that someone had entered our apartment, looked through my wife's underwear drawer, and looked through both our dirty laundry basket and our closet. This person would had to have a key to have done this, as entry was made through the door which had a dead bolt that couldn't easily be slipped.

The next day, I saw the apartment owner in the parking area, and I moved fast to block him against the wall. I placed my face very close to his, as I shared with him a secret. I quietly explained that our apartment had been entered by a pervert and I told him my evidence, but I didn't accuse him. I presented the possibility that a former resident had made a copy of the key and was entering, so I required he change the locks right away. Then, I explained in detail exactly what I was capable of doing to a man who would come into my apartment and ruffle through my wife's things. I described in detail how I had given men beatings for far less infractions. I also informed him that Cindy not only carried a gun, but was far better of a shot than I was, and bested me every time we went shooting together, which was often. I assured him that I looked forward to catching the pervert before my wife shot him, as I would deeply enjoy giving that pervert a beating.

I love to mess with the minds of cowards. I'm pretty sure my dopamine levels surge when I terrify some pathetic creep like that guy. Morally, I don't feel good about that fact, but it's still true.

The landlord changed all the locks that day and our things were never bothered again.

The strike lasted a few months, and then ended. Kerr McGee hired me to work elbow-to-elbow with the union guys I had replaced during the strike. Things were tense at first, but I worked. I worked hard. I made sure I was always working hard enough to make the load lighter on the guy next to me. If the job was to shovel caustic lime, then I shoveled the most, and didn't brag about it. If the job was to produce sodium sulfate, I produced the most. I threw myself into my work, both in physical labor and in the learning of how the factory operated.

I entered a training program that was supposed to make an engineer out of me in four years. I finished it in less than one year. I became a stationary steam engineer, a water treatment specialist, and a lab analyst. I had job offers from nuclear power plants. After eight years at the Westend Chemical Plant, I could have gone most anywhere in the world where electricity is produced or where mining or manufacturing are done, and I would have a job.

I learned a lot more than engineering at Westend. The seeds of wisdom that my father, mother, and grandmother had planted in my brain began to be watered at Westend. I was in an ancient chemical factory that had been built in stages from 1920, when it was established by "Borax" Smith of Twenty Mule Team fame, to the 1970s, and it was largely run by old guys that had spent thirty to fifty years at that plant doing the same job. Yet, they all had their unique stories. I spent countless hours picking their brains and listening to them. Some of them were idiots, some of them were bigots, some of them were just old men with stories, and some of them were true heroes whose stories will never be told, but I listened and learned. Sometimes you can learn more from a fool than a professor.

Francis Marion "Borax" Smith. Wikipedia

One of the guys that I worked with at Westend was named Don Bagwell. He became a good friend and a great mentor. He was hard working, one of the few I have ever met that could keep up with me when I was in my prime. And Don was incredibly honest. I learned not to lie by working with Bagwell. I had preferred to be honest before I met him, but he was the guy who showed me by his own actions, that lies never produce a long term good. Don Bagwell helped me to be a better person, and I was honored to know him and work with him. I rank him among the finest humans I have ever encountered.

Hearing the Music in the Noise

One of my first assignments at Westend was in the quicklime (CaO) production area. Quicklime is a white, powdery caustic alkaline that is unstable and reacts violently with water, expanding and producing heat in the range of about 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Things like sweat will cause it to react and burn exposed skin. Remember, Westend is 50 miles from Death Valley, so you sweat. Also, quicklime easily mixes with soda ash (Na2CO3) to produce the nasty substance used in drain cleaners. And soda ash, like quicklime, is a white, powdery alkaline that was produced in large quantities at Westend at the time. Whenever the wind blew, and that was every afternoon, you had the potential of getting covered in drain cleaner, which was fine if you weren't sweating.

One of the buildings in the quicklime production area was called the hydrate building, as it was formerly used to convert quicklime into calcium hydroxide. This huge building was mostly no longer in use, however we still used its’ truck loading docks and equipment to move the quicklime from tunnels under the quicklime tanks up into hoppers over the truck loading docks.

In order to load the quicklime into the trucks you had to manually turn on seven separate sets of machines in the correct order, before you manually opened the quicklime shoot in a tunnel under the storage tanks. Then, when the truck was loaded, you had to close the shoot in the tunnel, and allow each machine to clear itself of all product before turning off each of the seven sets of machines in the reverse order that you turned them on. Any variance from this procedure would cause either a plug-up or an overflow, usually dumping several tons of quicklime in some very inconvenient location that would then have to be cleaned up by hand with a shovel.

Many areas of Westend were very loud due to the machines, so you pretty much wore hearing protection all the time. The hydrate building wasn't all that loud, but the hearing protection helped keep the quicklime off and out of your ears.

Early one morning, I was running the machines of the hydrate building to check them for potential maintenance needs, when I suddenly thought I was noticing something odd. I removed my hearing protecting to see what it was. There were so many sounds, as bucket elevators clattered, vibration hoppers hummed, chains rattled, metal against metal grinded and squeaked, and rotary hammers thumped. But then I heard it again. It sounded like a great orchestra tuning and warming up.

You see, there were so many different sounds being produced in this huge building, and the acoustics were amazing, so much so, that among the many sounds being produced, there was music. Sure, the out-of-pitch sounds were present, along with the out-of-rhythm sounds, and the squeaks, but if you concentrated and blocked the noise from your mind, you could hear the distinct sound of an orchestra tuning and warming up.

I wasn't pressed for time that morning so I just stood there feeling amazed at my discovery, for maybe as long as an hour.

You see, life is like the noise of the hydrate building. All around us are the constant shrieks, screams, moaning, bellowing, honking, grinding, and the misery of life. But what is it that we choose to hear? What do we focus our mind upon? That's not to say we should ignore the suffering around us and live in a happy (insane) world where everything is perfect in our eyes and we refuse to see reality. But if you don't focus your mind and find the music in the noise, then the noise will dominate your mind and you will never hear the beauty of life. That is the lesson of the hydrate building.

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