Scott Vansickel:  

Jean and Stanley Vansickel wanted to homestead in Alaska after high school. The bombing of Pearl Harbor sent Stanley to war and Jean gave birth to Mike. After the war Mike was five already and Vicki was born, then three years later I was born in Canton Ohio, winter of 52. Starting life in the isolation of a oxygen tent my first days were spent getting radiation treatments and added oxygen in the tent. From that isolation I became vigilant. The absence of love is something I feel most acutely. I study, and observe, to know, when love might be with held again. I know I'm not likely to return to that tent yet I'm hardwired to be absolutely as sure as I can be how things work, what words mean, what people are saying, what they might really mean, how do people think they way they do, and when they might resolve to isolate me again. I must have hated it the first time at birth. I see this within me yet I'm powerless to change it. I must understand love and how and why, and by whom it might be given or removed. As it turned out the family I found myself born to was to prove a very interesting study. < ~ > Dad drove to work and back and stayed home on week ends. We would see him after 5 on school days. Handsome humble and smart. Veteran of every major battle with Japan, there was no child left available in him to share with his kids. Mom, pretty and secretly smarter than Dad, wanted a close family with children that looked out for each other. She got three loners. So she turned her back on being Mom at home and went to work just like Dad. We could see her in the evenings and on week ends. I had lots of time to myself. In La Habra CA we had many miles of orange groves. I was always walking through groves and along railroad tracks. Ten miles, one way, some times. No water or food. No one knew where I was and didn't ask. Free to go as long as my school work didn't fail. C's were OK. Sent to bed at 7:30 each night. Expected to sit quietly at dinner and had to ask to be excused to leave the table. Children are to be seen and not heard was a phrase I remember being said half jokingly half serious. We were probably noisy just to make things poetic. Early on I was locked in my room each day for a long nap. Moms break. Then she got work and I got to go to a house to be babysat by boring uninterested people just trying to help my Mom out. Then preschool for two years, and finally I was in public school. Mom loved to work. Kids in school, no problems. We moved to Fullerton after 4th grade. Finally a school I could walk to. Rolling Hills was two or three blocks from home. Two 5th grade classes from Rolling Hills Elementary were bussed to Hermosa Drive School to ease overcrowding. I was on that bus. The children at Hermosa Drive were allowed to tease, taunt, and mistreat the visiting Rolling Hills children. Next year they did it again to the same kids. And then 7th grade.What was called Junior High School, 7th and 8th. Now I loved and needed the isolation, I was receiving, yet I was also very awkward, a misfit. Along came long hair, rock music, smoking, and new behaviors. It was a departure to become a Hippy and eliminated the need to go back and get all I had missed in my social upbringing. I played drums and began smoking, drinking beer, smoking, and having sex, playing the music collection, and smoking. The desire for this began in Junior High and really took shape during my High School years. I was married at 17 to Karla Hughes and a Dad to Cassandra Nicole by 18. Already looking for my senior discount it would be 4 years before I could legally buy beer. We moved from houses to apartments to duplexes. I worked as a crane operator in the Iron ship boiler makers union. About an hour north to long beach. I also worked as a rock drummer two hours south at Camp Pendelton Marine Base. Thursday Friday and Saturday nights. Lots of band rehearsals in between. Up at 4am Each week day to be working on the crane at 6am, off at 3:30pm and drive 3 hours to one of many cocktail lounges on the huge marine base. Play top 40 rock tunes until 2am stop for breakfast drive 2 hours home for a shower and drive 1 hour to work on the crane. 3:30 drive 3 hours back to the base for Friday nights rock entertainment. Off at 2 am, after two days straight of work and no sleep,I could finally get some sleep. Then drive back that night for Saturday nights show. I just remember how fun it was. An audience of marines is as real as it gets. Sunday through Wednesday after I got home from crane operating, we would, smoke,drink beer, play records, eat, smoke and rehearse. Finally a place I fit in. Playing live music is like meditation for me. ~~~~Then the constant river of change that brought me to that wonderful, magical, simple life continued to change everything. Life had never been so good and yet change has inertia. Change works day and night, on every level, from every angle, on everything no mater how perfect everything already is. The wind in your hair may feel perfect and there is no problem unless we try to keep the wind from changing. Change works on all things all the time. Friends changed, some new ones would come and old ones would go. One day the friend to go was Karla my wife and mother to Cassandra. They both left. How I wanted change to leave my family alone. I was against change that day. Even though I, myself, was an expression of change in the way I lived my life, and I knew the words; CHANGE IS THE ONLY CONSTANT IN THE UNIVERSE! ,yet I still wanted my family to survive the tide. A crushing wave of change left my dreams unobtainable and beyond reach. I was against change that day and so I, that idea of "I" was about to be annihilated by unstoppable change. Change would annihilate me. ~~~~~Soon there would be no me, only change. When I say soon, I mean, 35 years.~~~~~ Over 35 years I would have many girl friends and wives. And many jobs. Change was in all things. I could be very happy with my mates and jobs, yet changing economies, up swing, down turn, stagnant, and boom, would be causing jobs to grow and shrink. And people were also on the move. I was always learning a new gig. I became very good at learning new stuff to do in trade for money. I excel at constructing things, manufacturing things, and problem solving. I enjoy teaching, and really like most all people. Bullies being my least favorite character trait still has a use in my world. I love a good scrap. Or I d...Expand for more