Left Handed, Four Eyed, Small Town & Catholic - and they call me Lucky???

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Part III.

If you were me how would you feel about having the four strikes against you at birth?  As you can see, my life was not just the four strikes against me but the fascinating DNA issues and the myriad of other factors dumped on me at birth and for a long time to come after.

I was born with a bulls eye on my back.

Before my mouth even opened confusion and torment already threatened my existence.  Back when I was still in the womb I'm sure I sensed the foreboding and when I was jerked out into the world the first thing I saw was a women doctor, quite uncommon back in those post war days.

And then there was my religion.  Of course I already mentioned I was really a misplaced Rothschild kid due to the screw up back at HQ.  That made me Jewish.

In my reality show family, remember the little discussion about my non-Catholic father's English family helping to drive my Catholic mother's family from their birthright, titles, castles and money in Scotland?

Now fast forward to my birth.  My father was a recent convert to Catholicism and when it comes to embracing religion there is nothing like a new convert for enthusiasm and a bad case of religious fervor.

That meant instead of going to church once a week for Sunday services, my fanatical father decided he needed to go to church every day, probably to make up for all those years he hadn't seen the light.  So he drug us kids along for the ride.

Sure don't know what he expected with the hyper-Catholic activity but it didn't seem to get us any more in God's favor.  No matter how hard I prayed I was never going to hit the game winning home run or score a date with the beautiful rich girl.

Unfortunately, my dad's family never got over the traitor, my dad, who would forgo the eternal security of being non-Catholic to switch sides and join the dreaded mackerel snappers.

When we would visit the rest of the Putnam family I always searched around for any signs of cross burning or voodoo dolls, knowing the deep seated conflict between these surrogate families for the English and Scottish/Irish causes.

Oddly, both sides of the family accepted me, perhaps because I reminded them often of my true Jewish heritage, which thus made me much less of a card carrying Catholic threat.

Now the fact they seemed to accept me thus cast suspicion on my motives by my mother's Campbell side of the family who seemed to think I had been spiritually hijacked by those dastardly Putnam's and was probably already indoctrinated into the Masonic 50th degree secret society.

I did nothing to discourage the rampant rumors and innuendo, choosing to remain silent.  I'm a great believer in the Tip O'Neill philosophy about saying little, "it is better people don't know what you know, than to know what you don't know."

On the other hand,  I could always strike terror into the hearts of those Putnam's by threatening to join their Moose Club Lodge or Masonic Order, also secret societies I suspected of having a rather negative view of Catholics.  They never had the heart to tell me I was ineligible.

Throughout my life I was a most curious person about everything, which was another of my many demonic virtues according to my mother, and especially according to those priests and nuns.

 Speaking of which, in spite of the Putnam pressure against it I actually joined a Catholic secret society, the Knights of the Alter.  God's army for Pete's sake.  Okay, okay, so it was just an alter boy, but I was armed to the teeth with bells and smoke bombs, oh yeah incense.

It was during my early Dark Ages, when the memory of my true Rothschild heritage was beginning to slip away in the chaos of growing up.  It was in the latter part of grade school.  At the time I actually harbored the thought of becoming a priest, which I soon rejected based on observing those of the faith I personally experienced.

Then I figured I should not waste all those pious years of training to be a priest and I decided to be a religious brother, but there were far too many rules for such a simple life.  My idea of saving the world was not learning how to weed a garden.  I was thinking of being more like Thomas Aquinas or St. Augustine, theologians, not gardeners.

So my last grasp at retaining a link to all that Catholic education and training was to become a religious hermit because by this time having a conversation with myself in a cave would be far more intellectually stimulating than remaining in my environment.

What ever happened to those glorious dreams of thinking I could save the world?

I was drawn to a world of classical literature, Greek mythology, empires and kingdoms, warlords and dragons.  What I got were brothers who hated to read and abhorred the very thought of writing.  Intellectual stimulation was sticking your finger in a light socket.

By now I had experienced the mysterious Catholic world of Baptism, First Communion, Confirmation and Exorcism, I was ready to try something new.  It was time to experience rowing, croquet and polo instead of kick the can, cowboys and Indians.

By the time I reached the end of grade school it was obvious I had greatly miscalculated my potential and possibilities.  I needed a fresh start.

 In my 8th grade year I was playing football without a helmet in the big game against the 9th grade high school kids.  We were barely ahead but the 9th graders were driving for the goal line in the last seconds for the win.

The archangel was on their team.  Great incentive.  So when the big fullback came blasting toward the goal line and I was the only thing that stood between him and the score and thus win, I did what anyone would do, if they were crazy like me.

I threw my head toward the giant's legs and my head met his knee at full speed.  The two bodies were fused from the collision and rose in the air, hanging there for what seemed like eternity, then slowly we toppled over away from the goal line.

Victory was preserved.  A new legend had been discovered and a new hero had been born.  I remember being carried around the field, to the cheers of all the kids watching the spectacle.

Then everyone started leaving to go home.  I stood in the middle of the now empty field with no where to go.  To my astonishment, I had no idea who I was or where I lived.

A brain concussion is a most complex thing.  It can leave you knocked out cold or without any memory, but if you are still conscious as I was you can remember what happened to you during the time you lost your memory.

How odd.

I remembered nothing of my Hayseed life in Iowa or real life in Rothschild's London.  Someone led me home, I finally drifted off into a coma, and about three days later came back.

High school would bring better days.  For one, I was going to learn more about my Jewish culture.  After 9 years in Catholic schools I'd about given up finding out much about my Jewish people.  It was time I met a real life Jewish person to teach me the ancient ways.

So I grabbed my kippah and Torah and set out in search of a Jewish family to meet in the farm towns of Iowa.

It was a steel slide guitar incident that miraculously morphed into meeting my first real Jew in the summer of 1960.

Let me explain.

Once I discovered Elvis and Buddy Holly in the late 1950's moral decay and deterioration immediately set in from the cosmic exposure to rock and roll, the demon's tool of fatal addiction for the innocent and gullible minds of all those Christian virgins.

 Suddenly I discovered a replacement for all those stupid Spike Jones drum sets I used to get for Christmas that were always smashed to pieces by New Years.  Come to think of it, when you look at the drum it was a pretty demonic image to give a kid whose life was already filled with enough darkness.

Anyway, I wanted a rock and roll guitar like Elvis and Buddy.  My parents were more the Hit Parade types having been raised in the days of swing bands and hot jazz.  Oh they were into music big time, but the wrong kind for my rebellious nature.

While I listened to Teddy Bear and Peggy Sue they listened to all kinds of stuff like Hank Williams and the Andrews Sisters.  In fact my dad could never stop singing "Your Cheating Heart" which should have triggered all kinds of warning signs in terms of the family stability.

Still, they decided to give me a guitar, but a steel slide guitar like Hank used in his songs.  I didn't care what the Hell kind it was as long as I could learn rock and roll on it.

After a handful of lessons from a country purist who thought my learning style was some kind of punishment for his years of booze and women, and bloody fingers from picking those steel strings, I'd had it.

So I took the guitar back to the little shop where Santa had bought it, just outside the main downtown area along the railroad tracks.  Lo and behold, before me stood my long sought Jewish connection, Bernstein's Music Store.  I nearly burst into tears of joy.

Exploding through the doors of that old store I broke out in dazzling version of the "Hora", the traditional Jewish wedding dance, to the absolute astonishment of my new friend Mr. Bernstein, proprietor of the most important shop in Iowa.

The store was not nearly as big as I thought as I went careening off the counters along the narrow aisle nearly wiping out a full orchestra of instruments to the laughter of Mr. Bernstein.

When I told him I was there to trade in my stupid steel guitar and learn about my Jewish faith and culture he laughed so hard he had to go get a drink of water and dry his eyes.  It was the beginning of a long and trusting bond between me and my first Jewish mentor.

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Left Handed, Four Eyed, Small Town & Catholic - and they call me Lucky???

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Part II.

Okay, we survived Part I which was somewhat unusual but I do feel the DNA coding, which we do indeed inherit, is an important element in the story of the wayward Iowa Hayseed.

Think about it.  DNA just might be the direct link to God since most of us blame Him or Her for giving it to us in the first place.

In fact there are any number of critical life elements that we don't control like inheriting the DNA.  There is the family you join, the country, state, town or village and your family status in your town that have major impacts on your life and you don't control.

Then there are the race, cultural, religion, language and a host of other major issues in your life and again you have no control.

Wait a minute.  What about the most significant influences on your life?  Start with Survival 101 - your parents, Survival 102 - your grandparents  and Survival 103 - the elementary. secondary and higher education teachers you didn't choose.

Add to that the millions of variables that make up your life for instance how many siblings, their gender and their attitudes.  Toss a few dozen relatives and priests, ministers, mullahs or rabbis into the mix and you've got yourself one powerful cocktail.

What do these amazingly varied and seemingly unrelated components of your life all have in common?

In spite of the fact your day of atonement and moment of judgment will come from whoever your divine God might be, you are being judged on a whole bunch of factors and standards you did not control!

You did not create!

You did not choose!

Yet are the measuring sticks for your judgment.

Don't know about you but I feel I have just made a powerful case against the use of "free will" as a determining factor for judgment day.

There is nothing "free" about those varied components of our lives and it is about time we not be held responsible for all those impediments to the exercise of genuine "free will" on our part.

They are all someone else's "will" being unfairly imposed on our life.

That compelling argument and consequential attitude should get me off the hook on a whole lot of stuff when I stand before St. Peter awaiting judgment at the gate.

You see there is no other logical explanation on why this Iowa Hayseed set out on his Quixote-like adventure reflected in this story.  In an early life aptitude test from grade school I was asked what I wanted to do in life.

My unacceptable response was , " I just want to learn about everything and I just want to experience everything".  Needless to say, my parents and siblings could never understand me, and the nuns and priests could never quite get their hands around that attitude.

As for me, I created my own world full of the people, characters, places and things I liked, wanted to know, or wished I had experienced, co-mingling at will the real, the imagined and the fantasized in a most demanding world.

In truth I was my own best inspiration and worst enemy from before I can even remember.

It did not take long in life to realize other people were clueless about me and my ways and they would never be in a position to fairly judge me because of that.  If I was to survive life it would be up to me to create and enforce my education and understanding and therefore achieve the knowledge I hoped to get from life.

As a result, I was the judge, jury and executioner over what I achieved in life and let me tell you I was no slacker when it came to evaluating my performance.  No one was more demanding on me nor could they be because only I knew my real potential.

In the end, experiences built my life, not education and opportunity.  I found ways to compensate for all the opportunities I would never know.

When you think of it, just how much should you expect from an Iowa Hayseed?  I wanted to be judged not on my knowledge of the art of composting cow manure but on the ancient Greek teachings of Plato, Socrates and Aristotle.

One might say I was truly out of my element.

As for the sibling stuff, well that was some form of prepenance, like being found guilty in confession before I even knew the sins.

Like many post-war families in the era of the baby boomer, I was born the very first year of the baby boomers, in 1946.  Yes, the first post World War II babies born under the cloud of the atomic bomb radiation still circling the earth waiting to catch a ride in the rain.

Of course one like me could never be the FIRST child.  That one, born 13 months earlier just before the bombs were dropped, was appropriately called Michael, as in the Archangel Michael, God's greatest defender.

Me, I was just plain Jim and at times my Mother was pretty convinced I was sent by demons to terrorize her precious Archangel Michael.  Why not!  When you're a one syllable afterthought what other purpose is there to serve?

Anyway the Archangel got that name only because Jesus had already been taken here on earth.  Either one was an adequate indication of Archangel Michael's potential as savior of the universe in the eyes of his Mother.

One time she was talking about the Immaculate Conception and almost said his birth was about the same magnitude though I compared it to more like an 8.4 earthquake on the Richter scale.

Exactly 13 months after my birth along came Robert, (I called him Bosco), the real demon as Mother would have known had she paid attention to anyone but the Archangel.

That left me on my own and Bosco under my tutelage as far as surviving our youth and that was fine with us since we had the advantage of being outside observers to the care and proper raising of an Archangel.

I always wondered if my Mother ever thought those two demons she had might have had more to do with her Catholic intolerance for birth control than being the object of some supernatural plague out to get her Archangel.

You would think a Mother who scored the Archangel Michael her first try would stop trying to improve on the original with more kids just destined to be in the way of the Holy One.

The Archangel was born in a three piece suit and always wore a proper hat.  The poor soul could not stand being dirty, abhorred getting dirt or mud on his hands or clothes, and always expected his underwear to be ironed and his shoes to be shined, by someone else.

Parental brainwashing assured he expected to be the leader of the pack and it was the responsibility of the pack to demonstrate loyalty by paying dues to be in his presence.

Needless to say, my younger brother and I did not share in his world view nor desire to be part of his fascist kid's club.

I had a couple of advantages over my brothers to offset the many disadvantages and most important was my obsessive compulsion to read and write, something they found overly demanding with little downside reward.

Thus I was the gatekeeper for all the knowledge of the universe found in books and I could communicate what I learned to others through the ability to write.

For quite different reasons they both settled on me being rather odd although Bosco did find my adventures far more interesting and challenging than those of the Archangel.  In my fantasy world getting dirty was normal, getting in trouble was noteworthy and getting someone mad was worth a merit badge.

For the most part our childhood memories consisted of the Biblical life style of the Archangel and the chaos and confusion of the afterthoughts.

Except for the scripted interaction from the parents in which the Archangel was to bestow on us his favor, we lived separate lives.  So separate that neither we nor the Archangel has any memories of the three of us being buddies or hanging out throughout childhood.

I did with my brothers what was required by the laws of God and nature but that was the extent of it.  Beyond that I created a new world of boundless creative endeavors, the aggressive pursuit of knowledge, and the ability to instantly leap into the Land of Oz, Wonderland, Camelot or even the Alamo and still escape.

By kindergarten my path was set when I joined the Public Library Book Reading Club and won many honors for reading the most books each month.  It was the first of my activities intended to separate me from my siblings as neither would be caught dead in a library book club.

Because of my pursuit of information I soon learned what the kids in Russia, China and Europe learned long ago, that we should not overlook the potential of our grandparents as a source of information and knowledge.

Interestingly, my grandparents on both the Putnam and Campbell sides found my curiosity to be charming and spent a lot of time sharing their knowledge with me and I shall forever be grateful.  I was far more comfortable in the company of adults than kids.

By the time I was in third grade I found kids to be quite naive as they knew nothing about world affairs, politics or history.  Yet every weekend Grandfather Campbell would test me on current events that week expecting me to have read Time and Life magazines before I saw him for Sunday brunch.  Of course he didn't know I also read Popular Science, National Geographic and Boys Life.

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Left Handed, Four Eyed, Small Town & Catholic - and they call me Lucky???

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Part I.

As of today we have seven weeks until the election and thirteen weeks until the End of Time according to the Mayan calendar.  What a contrast?  Seven like the seven sacred days of creation, or the light.  Or thirteen like the superstitious and foreboding number of the dark.

So I am going to tell you about my newest book that is a work in progress in hopes it gives you something new to consider while distracting you from the lies and deception in everyday life which none of us needs.

By the way, don't bother trying to buy it yet because I can't finish it until we survive the End Times in 13 weeks.  I'm really quite tired of sequels.

Youth truly is wasted on the young.  If only we could have waited until we piled up all those experiences, feelings, joys, failures, loves found and lost loves before we lost our innocence, our ability to dream and our faith in the unknown.

Instead we spend a lifetime getting beaten down, educated I guess they call it, tricked, fooled, disappointed and occasionally, well, we might even find a moment to get happy.

That is not to say everyone is that way but now that I am much older and wiser I have noticed there are fewer and fewer happy people.

But who am I to talk?  The title of this article, "Left Handed, Four Eyed, Small Town & Catholic - and they call me Lucky???" is actually the title of my latest book, unfinished, which is my somewhat cavalier attempt at an autobiography.

Most autobiographies are about famous people so I certainly don't expect this book to ever be on the New York Times best seller list.  I mean I'm just a Hayseed from Iowa.

How many people do you know that start life with four strikes against them?  You see, I would have been most fortunate if those were the only strikes against me in life.  But no, my role as entertainer to the gods or archangels or whatever celestial beings needed comic relief was far more endowed with strikes against me than being merely left handed, four eyed, small town and Catholic.

My maternal side of the family, the Campbell clan, left me with a legacy of the fantastic and mysterious ways of the Dark Irish, a familiarity with the little people from Fairies to Leprechauns, an unsought awareness of the ancient Druid wizards and high priests, healers and storytellers, and a whole bunch of other weird, mystical and metaphysical stuff.

One might say I was genetically manufactured with the best and worst of Scotland, Ireland and the Celtic Campbell clan.  The ultimate hybrid DNA.

Then there was the paternal side, the Putnam clan, mostly English aristocrats with a touch of German engineering and inventiveness, and pretty much at odds with everything from the whimsical and magical world of my mother's ancestors.  They were the aristocratic ancestry leading to various figures of nobility I dare not mention lest I sully their memories in the history books we read.

Why my father's non-Catholic ancestors even had their own big church near London shortly after the English drove the Catholics out of Britain, meaning back when my father's side in jolly old England drove my mother's side from their ancient homes in the Scottish Highlands to Ireland and eventually to land here in America.

I don't know a lot about DNA and genetic coding but if we are the product of our parents and ancestors combined DNA then I must have lived in a constant state of revolution and never known who I could trust from my own family.

However, I cannot afford to believe in the children inheriting the sins of their fathers or mothers or ancestors.  From the little genealogy I have dared to research about my family the burden of sins like those are of such tremendous magnitude that us siblings haven't got a chance in Hell of living normal lives.

That sucks...

When I get to the Pearly Gates and confront St. Peter I expect he will not find my name on the invitation list.  And based on the sins of my families my judgment was a foregone conclusion long before I even died.

Still I am a writer and storyteller by birthright, ancestry and intuitive expectation and I am an occasional believer, when it suits my purpose, that we can create our own reality so don't be surprised that at the moment of my birth I had the dreadful realization that a very serious mistake had been made.

It was a dread that would haunt me through my life.  You see, I just knew there was a serious mix up at God's baby processing facility in Heaven and some absent-minded angel had sent me to the wrong family on earth.

Over time it was to become obvious.

I was supposed to be born a Rothschild in the legendary House of Rothschild in London, home of one of the most mysterious and powerful families in history.  Of course there is no single House of Rothschild but castles all over Europe and the world.

My real family owned nations, kings, diamonds, gold, banks and politicians.  Though my palate back in Iowa called for lobster, caviar, sconces and tea, I was stuck with pork, corn, hamburgers and hot dogs.

I did the best I could in a world without soufflé.

Of course, there were serious sacrifices.   I expected armies of servants, limos and trillions of dollars, but I had to settle for an apartment in small town Iowa, parents who were just college students themselves, and a family history of bizarre tragedies and wild magic.

So very reluctantly I was forced to accept the cards I had been dealt in life and rest assured it was the last time I ever trusted a card dealer.

However, I never let go of the hope that one day when the baby factory in Heaven was audited they would find and rectify the fatal mistake that made a potential Rothschild prodigy into a cursed Campbell-Putnam ancestor.

I really don't like all that "sins of the father" talk, it hits far too close to home.

Go back to the 1600's, just after the age of my favorite Queen of England, Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen.   During her reign she did her best to prevent her father's (Henry the VIII no less her mother having been beheaded by old Henry) orders to persecute the Catholics by forcing them to renounce their Catholic faith or drive them from Britain.

It just so happens that one of the most powerful Catholic clans in Scotland was the Campbell clan, my folks.  For decades, maybe centuries they had ruled in the desolate but beautiful Scottish Highlands and fought against the imperial English rule.

Of course it was the same English rule that the non-Catholic Putnam family in London was advocating.  After Elizabeth's death at the turn of the 17th century the rule was finally enforced and the Campbell clan was given a choice, denounce your Catholic faith or go to Ireland.

What a choice.  Give up all ancestral religion, rights, titles and property under Great Britain or go to Ireland.   They made it sound as if Ireland was a far worse fate than losing everything.

Well my family had been Irish more recently than we were English so we knew the deceitful Brits were lying about Ireland.  They just hated the place because the Irish kept rejecting English rule.

Needless to say my ancestors held to their conviction and were thus banished from their homeland, estates and titles.  After a few generations in Ireland the Campbell family then migrated to America.  They were victims of one side of the family curse.

Once the Putnam's got the Campbell and other Catholics out of England they then migrated to America as well, arriving sometime earlier than the Campbell clan in the mid sixteen hundreds.

Specifically the Putnam's arrived in New England and some chose to settle in a Puritan place called Salem, Massachusetts,  just in time for the Salem Witch trials.  Thus set in motion the other half of the family curse.

Here it gets quite complicated.  Just take a look at the court transcripts of that fateful and tragic trial in the 1690's.

You see, there was a Puritan Putnam family who spent years creating a safe and isolated haven to protect the "witches" from harm by the village church fanatics.

Then into the story comes a young Putnam girl named Anne, but not from the Putnam family creating the safe haven, rather she was the minister's daughter from town.  She told her preacher father she had been possessed by the witches and made to do things against her will.

A bunch of other local kids joined the chorus and all those witches being protected by one Putnam family were arrested and tried for practicing Black Magic on those poor innocent children of the villagers by the other Putnam family.

You probably heard the rest.  A couple of dozen witches were burned or hanged to death, later the kids admitted they made up the story, and thus began the curse of the Salem witches cast upon the immediate and all future Putnam descendants until the blood line was wiped out.

It was as good a curse as any ancient Egyptian curse (King Tut) or Medieval curse from the Spanish Inquisition.

At any rate I would not have thought much about the curse except one day I was reading about Amelia Earnhardt, the world famous airplane pilot, and I realized that Amelia married a certain George Putnam of the New England Putnam family when she was 33 years old, and six years later she disappeared off the face of the earth.

Well, so goes the story of my ancestry as passed down from generations of Celtic and thus Irish storytellers.  My Irish grandfather on the Campbell side used to tell me one should only half believe any good story told.

But I can tell you this.  Where I was born, Iowa City, Iowa, was home to the University of Iowa Scottish Highlanders Marching band, one of the most famous bagpipe bands in the world.  Why were they also found far from the magical land of the Loch Ness monster in the same town where I lived in Iowa? 

Here are the Highlanders performing as I used to see them when I went to the stadium to watch them practice.

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Note from the Publisher:

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There are over 960 articles published in the Coltons Point Times that are archived and accessible to you through the years and months displayed in the index.  They represent a pretty fair representation of the way things still are today.

Another index of some of the most popular articles appears just above my publisher photo on the left.  Just click and it gives you choices.

A lot of interesting things are covered and a lot of ideas have been presented in the CPT on our problems and how to fix them.  With so little progress being made toward this by our politicians, however, the articles will be timely for some time to come.

Many articles attempt to clarify the truth in what we are being fed by the media since so much of the media no longer consider truth and objectivity to be viable and these articles are also worth perusing.

However, I am taking my own advice when I said earlier the most important thing we can do between now and the presidential election was to turn off television and stop listening or reading the news until it was over.  I did quit writing articles.

As of today we have seven weeks until the election and thirteen weeks until the End of Time according to the Mayan calendar.  What a contrast?  Seven like the seven sacred days of creation, or the light.  Or thirteen like the superstitious and foreboding number of the dark.

Through it all I will continue to ignore the nonsense and silliness of politicians and their election campaigns.

Instead I am going to tell you about my newest book that is a work in progress in hopes it gives you something new to consider while distracting you from the lies and deception in everyday life which none of us needs.

By the way, don't bother trying to buy it yet because I can't finish it until we survive the End Times in 13 weeks.

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Memorial Day - Honoring our Heroes

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