David Sexton:
CLASS OF 1970
Polytechnic High SchoolClass of 1970
Riverside, CA
Texas A&M University - Law EnforcementClass of 2005
College station, TX
Norte Vista High SchoolClass of 1972
Riverside, CA
California Polytechnic State UniversityClass of 1972
San luis obispo, CA
Central Junior High SchoolClass of 1968
Riverside, CA
David's Story
Howdy. a hale & hearty greeting to my fellow POLY-nesians. Still suckin' air, I'm'a guessing. The interesting thing about places like this, if you never know who is and who isn't. I'm finding that many of my "then" friends, are not.
I am a blessed guy. I got to spend my of my semi-adult years working outside in the heat & cold and breathing the muck that SoCal calls "air" (a euphemism &/or misnomer, IMHO) But that was the GOOD stuff! Truthfully, there's somethng about working out of doors, embracing the endless vistas of the deserts & wilds that keeps the soul free. To borrrow from the moive "White Squall" ; "... Because there's something else out there. It beckons in the wind and sings in the shrouds. Voices. Whispering...They're voices of men. Calling. Men you don't even know. Men you can't even imagine. It's a seed, a wish, that part of you and I that aches to be alive, that was banished by everything we've ever been taught or told. It's a part of us that can only be found on mountain tops and deserts, in the deepest caverns, smoking battle fields and... across oceans. ....With that, he disappears below. Nobody moves. This is exactly the kind of man you want around when the shieet hits the fan.". "....mountain tops"---*Check. "...deserts----*Check. "...smoking battlefields*---*Check. "...across oceans"---*Check. "...deepest caverns---*Check. Life outside of the mundane teaches you to be "the kind of man you want around when th sheet hits the fan". . Lfe in a city bubble wears & eats at you like acid rain, etching away at your soul. And most don't even know they're being dissolved as it is all that they've known.
And what is left of me still gets to do so. Living where I now live, and my years living on the road, were & are like Bobby Troup's "Get your kick on Rt. 66" played backwards. Kingman, Seligman, Ash Fork, Flagstaff, Oak Creek Canyon, Sedona,Chino Valley, Jerome, Cottonwood, Prescott Valley, Prescott (we stayed in the 120 year old hotel across the Street from the courthouse park where the big fight scene in "Billy Jack" was filmed) then the whole gig flipped over 30 hours spent driving through the postcards of history And for those of you who spent your days playing "bump it up" in traffic, I salute you. Better you than I. (poor schlubs...)
I've been a lifetime warrior: A "Sheepdog", Per LTC David Grossman, from his "Killology" training. “and I’m a sheepdog. I live to protect the flock and confront the wolf.”. As an old buddy of mine named Pete (82nd Airborne, 2 tours in SE Asia in a resort called "Vietnam", including a stay of a number of weeks in a Vietcong tiger cage) would opine "It is what it is".
In this temporal world, This path was chosen for me. I would boldly presume that my maker decided to build me with the "right stuff" to perform in that role into which I was emplaced or I'd not be here writing away. Although I'll never be rich or famous, I've managed to assuage my lust for adventure & travel back when I had my health, time & money to do so. So again, "I was blessed". Events took me places that I never would have dreamed that I'd get to go, back when we were sitting it the 600 building listening to "whoever" who was trying to teach us needful things in the 60's & 1970. And I am a dropout. (I said the nasty word). Yeah, I could have stayed in school up at Cal Poly for several more years before going to work, but others' lives would have been forfeit had I not made the leap to where I was, doing what I did. And if your heart isn't in it, why go through the motions? I guess I hit my "bland" tolerance point at Poly. College in SLO just showed me that the world was waiting for me, beckoning me to immserse myself in it. Since then, I've mostly eschewed the mundane for the edgy, preferring the hot & cold of nature to the soulless, ever "fresh air" of air-free caves called offices. I've been a firefighter, fire officer, fire dispatcher, Marine Corps cop, reserve deputy, volunteer fireman & contract fire equipment operator. It cost me my lungs working fire in the days before BA's were available in sufficient numbers so that others didn't end up like me. My lungs were wrecked but not my spirit. When I was working, the average firefighter lived 2 years after retirement, to the ripe old age of 57. I beat the odds. It didn't kill me; yet. And when those days came to a close I switched directions to become the guy you cuss at on the highway because I have to obey speed limits and rules of gravity & inertia/momentum, a big rig driver. As such, I covered over a million miles of highways to keep you fed, housed, clothed & supplied, with much of my work done while you slept safely in your beds, not even aware that we were all out there keeping you replete in your existence. I've run Hi-rail trucks on live rails, sharing that "office" with trains passing closely enough that I could have reached out and touched them from the step of my rolling office. I've sailed tall ships on azure & indigo seas, followed a hurricane across a portion or the West Indies with green water coming over the coamings and wooden decks awash as we drove through 20' seas. I've stood at the wheel watching the phosphorescence of the bow wave sweeping along our smooth steel flanks under a billion stars on night passages, island to island. I almost let a job offer there sweep me into eternity. But maturity stepped in and took me back to the reality of the "real world" in California. Ugh!
I've been a USAF 911 dispatcher, & worked in Civil Engineering (CE) for the USAF in a mission-critical position subject to stand up 24/7/365. The operational standard to which we held was "If we don't work, the base doesn't work". And when your base is Edwards AFB, that simply wasn't an option. We had to be there even if the base roads & highways were closed. That took some creative commuting magic! The plus side to running on ice on closed highways is that traffic isn't a problem. Even the cops stayed off the roads. We were responsible for hundreds of facilities, hundreds of billions of dollar in materiel, aircraft & runways and over 200,000 acres in 3 counties, plus everything under our flight paths when things went south. There were 6 of us to handle all of that. You just had to know everything about everything all of the time. ;°) There aren't many jobs where you can be working an F-16 crash in Inyo County. scores of freeze-damaged buildings in L.A., San Berdoo & Inyo Counties & a USAF command-monitored exercise during a weather-triggered base closure at the same time and still get an "excellent" rating by command. All that it takes some fancy dancing & a grasp of things mechanical.
I had the honor of being in the pilot program for the DoD Police Dept. for the USMC worldwide: “The Few, The Proud” as they rightfully bill themselves. And Indeed they are! Finest bunch of warriors I've ever run into. As for "the few" that they claim in their trademark, in the USMC-DoD PD (they love acronyms) there were only 38 of us in the world. That's "few". The idea was that we'd hold down the bases so that the Marines could deploy for combat, as that IS the entire purpose of the USMC, one of the branches of the military that actually pre-dates our nation. (Nov. 10, 1775). And so it went. The DoD civilian police are at most bases these days, last time I checked. The pilot program worked so well that the other services adopted it as well (Job well done)
For 28 years, I've served my fellow man as a paralegal & civil rights advocate, taking up the swords against powers much greater than I until I could no longer afford to do so. Those "powers much greater that I" didn't like it when the media started paying attention. I found out that the grubberment has more money to spend on lawyers than I do. Now I fly below the radar on those efforts. Being effective when taking on grubberment corruption is about as "edgy" as it gets. Ask Seth Richards (dead), Donald Trump, Brian Kolfage or Gen. Michael Flynn.
In the wilder years, I was the builder & owner of a specialized tow company, based upon a "once upon a time" in which I needed such a service and it just didn't exist. I fixed that. We recovered the lost souls from th...Expand for more
e back country and often along with them, the more common tow trucks and their operators who found themselves in over their heads by attempting to do what we did as routine. I'm not critical of them. I admire BOLD. But sometimes the line between "bold" & "dumb" gets a little fuzzy. I'm living proof of that & I wear the scars as receipts. We worked from Barstow to the Mexican border, where I almost died by being crushed between two trucks. That work isn't for sissies. Doing the impossible got us the rep as "The tow truck from hell", And what we did ran along that continuing thread in my life of lives and property saved; a thread that started clear back in my teens & runs true through today. Ironically, when I was still in the fire service & at station 23 in Grand Terrace & laters, SBDNO-CDF HQ in Sane Bernardino, we had the rep as the "engine company from hell" because simply excelled at what we did. Get a few good men, train them well and acknowledge them for their exemplary work and they'll beat down the fire of hell for you. And we did. .
I've also been blessed to have had the opportunity to travel a chunk of the western hemisphere via trains, planes automobiles, trolleys, double-decked, big red buses, "tubes", big rigs & tall ships. Such adventures were had! Many of those adventures are no longer possible as the tall ships we drove through the warm, tropical seas are gone, moldering into obscurity or scrapped after serving so many for so long. 80-100 years is a long life for ships. And the countries to which I traveled have been overrun by the savages of the "other book", dragging some of the most civilized countries in Europe back 1400 years. Alas, that England is no more. And so went most of the other European nations of western thoughts & beliefs.
In 2015, my body finally hit the wall. I was told that I was no longer a viable candidate for full-time work. I'm worn out, burned out, bent, broken, folded, spindled & mutilated. I wear the scars of my history as badges of honor for a job mostly well done & a small life lived large. But "done", I am not. "Retired" in the common meaning, can only assure is a plodding demise as we make that last turn on the one way, Ice-slicked, downhill grade to oblivion. No turnouts, no stopping, no shoulders, no guardrails, no turn arounds, no off ramps, and closed rest areas. From a writer on whom we were force fed in our schooling years, "Tempus Fugit": Time is fleeting (thank you, William Shakespeare). As was written by yet another author, Thomas a' Kempis in 1418 AD " O quam cito transit gloria mundi". How quickly the glory of the world passes away. (waves "buh-byes...")
So, WWJWD? (What Would John Wayne Do?)
Saddle up, cowboys! Time isn't going to wait for us and every day that saddle will get a little heavier. Let's ride! Take that trip you've been putting off. Make that jump that has had your knees shaking. Climb that mountain that you've been looking at for years. Don't fear anymore. Tomorrow is promised to no one, especially at our age. I know a woman not much younger than us who has tried at least 5 times to summit, Mt. Whitney. She's not done yet. What's our excuse? I have an excuse to fall short of that though. I'm living in a broken shell. The spirt is willing but the bone-on-bone wrecked spine isn't, although it still tries.
To those who I have contacted in recent years, I wish you well. Too much was left unsaid & or undone at the time. But the time to make amends is growing shorter & the window of time, ever smaller. When you're young and immortal, there's always "tomorrow". Until there isn't. There will come a time when fixin' what needs fixin' will no longer be an option. I've lost several people whom I loved more than life without getting that closure before they left us. I don't want to do it anymore. You are were & important to me.
To those of what used to be considered "the fairer sex" (and you still are in my mind. Screw the feminazis & PC) I'm not looking for dates, marriage, love nor sex. (I don't have the $20: J/K) There are just things that I wish I'd said/done back in the day that weren't said or done as timidity &/or good sense held me back for better or for worse, probably mostly for the better. I could do enough Don Knotts imitations without taking that extra step. There were words left muted for decades when the winds of life took our ships to different seas & different shores, likely never to pass again were it not for the internet. If I contact you, you may be assured that my intentions are benevolent. It means that you were NOT just another face in the crowd. I am sorry that I let those tradewinds of our lives push us along to different shores. Without that over-the horizon comms now available through the W W W little absences became losses. Toll calls and the feckless USPS make for a tenuous connection as peoples' lives move them inexorably forward. I didn't know that these life changes would turn into disappearing acts or I'd have worked harder to prevent that. CM is a lighthouse beacon that we can share for navigating that vast gap that opened between us that wasn't there, then. And to those same friends, there was something in your spirit that radiated beyond the confines of your mortal being. Pretty faces exist by the millions. Pretty spirits do not.
To you "rough men who [stood] ready in the night to do violence on those who would harm us", you're of my tribe: fellow warriors who weren't afraid to put service above self. I admire that. As Poet/Fireman, Jack R. Tucker wrote "There were times when I faced eternity when I could have gathered my fears and run. But others would have paid the price". Like you, I too have "stood to". I ran to the bells, to the fires, to the guns as others ran away from them. It's what we were built to do & what the others just can't seem to do. It's not their fault. Perhaps we're the defective ones. Not all people can be sheepdogs for the flock. That's why God put us here, to protect the sheeple. I paid a price in my person and my psyche that I will wear to the grave. So did you, I'd opine; you warriors & sheepdogs. We're brothers in that spirit that drove us to & >>>through>>> events that would break other people. I hope that in spite of the events which transpired in your world, you can sleep in well-deserved peace at night in spite of those mind-wrecking situations. I often don't. Too many deaths, too much horror, too much second-guessing for too many years. It lurks like a big croc under the smooth, concealing water. And I'd go back and do it all again, for free.
What was, "was". What remains is a world both of & not of our making; of a different time & place & of people whose thinking is strange to me. We're a vanishing breed. But we still exist and our existence should be a shared thing.
Heraclitus (540BC-480BC) said, "You cannot step into the same river twice, for other waters are continually flowing on.". That, too I understand. But there will be friendships that rekindle and others where the ashes have been too long extinguished, or perhaps where the fires existed only in my mind, yet closure can be attained nonetheless. In any event, I wish you well.
I live in a small, high desert community in N.E. Arizona, still a free republic in spite of the draconian fascism growing under the dragon's claws buried into our nation like the plague given us by that same dragon. I travel & adventure with my copilot of 34 years, the backroads, small towns historical sites and back country of my adoptive state. I am still working with others to rescue and recover those who have ventured beyond the ends of their abilities, via somewhat organized off-road recovery groups. I can track those who've lost their ability to find their way out of the back country. I find the lost and bring them to safety. I still pay it forward.
Since CM seems to think that giving people your email is somehow unseemly, I had to remove it from here. But just ask. Then feel free to jump in & use it if you're feeling froggy. But I'll warn you; I'm not the kind of guy that you put on speakerphone. And I left out the juicy parts. You can't just share those with everybody, ya know?
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