Ray Terry Brown:  

IF YOUR COMPUTER IS UP ON ITS TECHNOLOGY I HAVE A TECH WEBPAGE WITH MORE ON WHAT I'VE BEEN UP TO SINCE SCHOOL. Life: an incredible on-going and eventful saga. I was born near Hollywood at Queen of Angels Hospital, August 16th in 1956. I have been in Los Angeles since that time. My town is the town for which everyone wanted to leave their mother country and mother state to live here. I am the only child of my parent's union. This is only a small representative sample of Heaven and Earth. My formative years were very eventful. Just on the heels of outright racism, there were presidents and civil rights leaders assassinated, Viet Nam and the Cold War, a host of serial killers, fascist cults, airline hijacking, hostage taking, 1930s style bank robbers, the Klu Klux Klan, the peace movement, civil rights movement, and many other major and minor, yet significant human events, one of which was the new advent of L.A. street gangs, The Crips and Bloods. I spent my youth playing sports, watching TV, and going to church. My half sister is a party animal, and I was here assignment while my parents worked. My dad was well off working for years in management, and he moonlighted as a chef at Hamburger Hamlet in Beverly Hills, my mother, a choir director and pianist at her church. So I spent a lot of my youth with them and their friends at parties, amusement parks, movies. I don't know enough about my parents. It must have been amazing for them to go from nothing to radio and color T.V., and for them so see the slow improvement and diminishing of outright racial and political threats. I think about this when I cannot seem to relate to them. Things change much and often in and around this family, and this neighborhood, which is probably a great contributor to the necessity for me to think on my feet. I'm not the smartest guy in the world, but considering the circumstances, living this long is a blessing. Lorenzo Music, the famous T.V. icon and cartoon voice of, and I believe the creator of the Cheshire cartoon character, 'Garfield', and his wife, Henrietta, were gracious enough share their lives with us during my transition to teenhood. My old band/school/neighbor mate, when he discovered this information about my acquaintance with the T.V. icon, talked me into presenting him with our demo tape in order to get a record deal , but this was years after they, the Musics, and my parents were dealing with the Music's three year old child, who was stricken with a very serious deformity. I didn't know the Music's were famous when the baby started living with us. The record deal attempt was years later. In my opinion, when I think about it, there is more than meets the eye regarding the particulars of their association regarding the baby's illness. Magic, religion, witchcraft, call it what you want. I won't label it because humans are insane, so I only recognize that they tried to put their strengths or weakness together for that child's sake, and I don't know that their construction of whichever craft they chose to apply may or may not have accomplished their idea of saving the child. However, their craft did work for their relative's ailing grandmother, who lived with us years prior to the child's arrival. I don't consider myself to be lucky in any way. I could never get away with anything, and my mischievous nature I tamed at an early age. I live free because freedom is what my forefathers wanted for me, not because I am not malicious. Nowadays, the word "freedom" can intend to mean free to be bad or evil, but not in my case. I ain't no fool, I went to school. No entity can change that regardless how much pretention or fear of my past, or fear weapons of mass destruction, or fear passive resistance, no matter how much they want me to deploy those weapons. I am pursuing mathematically sound fortitude and logical virtue as a favorite concept. So, what kind of world is Los Angeles, Heaven, and Earth, for my part? It is, for the most part, typical, but with many many event segments that can be beyond description and unbelievable for non-witnesses. For instance, ditching fifth grade for a week. My dad had to get a job at my junior high school and my mom at the highschool to keep an eye on me, and to keep me on edge. My parents would never spank me in public, but explaining some mischievious behavior, or getting busted by the folks, at school, that is very embarassing for a teenager. During my elementary and junior high school years my time was spent playing ball with the neighborhood kids, going to parties, dances, amusement parks, and mostly kid stuff. I rode horses a lot, and at Venice Beach since this time, where you can still catch up with me on the basketball courts. There were kid fights, and they weren't overly serious or overly bloody, and the opponents, whether it be between boys, girls, or different races, all became friends again the next day. I also remember how hard it was for me to understand those old grammar school SRA packs and instruction cards, particularly for math. Nowadays, I refer to calculus a lot. You've heard about L.A. students who suffer up to two-hour bus rides to and from school. I was fortunate enough to be part of the bussed integ...Expand for more