I remember clear as a bell the day Dave first entered the program.
He looked like a Buffalo Bill/Stephen Stills hippy straight from the mudpits of Woodstock. I think he was 16, yet he had thick wooly sideburns that reached his jawline. I was fooled into thinking he had the IQ of a cigar butt, yet once his spirit broke, it blew my mind how fast the transformation into an intelligent teenager took over.
He was a newcomer of Mike Brunette, who's father was on the Board of Directors. I always thought highly of them all and still am torn to admit that I still do. Mikes younger brother Thomas was a damn good friend as well as Mike. They all were transported to where I lived when Patterson Horizons was turned into an Emergency Dropoff during the freak-out flood of May 8, 1979 when my dad made 3 trips in the trusty custom blue leather Ford Maverick that he drove through water that came up to the windows. We wound up with 27 Straightlings at our house as parents as far away as Lakeland made frantic phone calls to locate their children. The St. Petersburg area around Tyrone was under 8 feet of water in some places. This was the only time in my knowlege that Straight Inc. had to close down operations and evacuate. This was some serious shit and I think I was on 4th phase and finishing 11th grade at the time. It was a big moment in my program. At the risk of being started over, I took a Polaroid snapshot of about half of the 27 people that were at my house that day. Dave McAdams is in that photo and Mike Brunette got ahold of some vampire fangs he found while we were digging around for board games to pass the time. He slipped them on right before the picture was taken and it looked cool as hell in the finished photo. My dad might still have it tucked away somewhere. I'll have to ask him. If he does, I'll send a copy to those who want one.
Dave was a good guy, and so was Mike, who ended up marrying Nancy Ross, sister of Jeff Ross. While visiting Liz Cassidy/Gay about 2 years out of the program, she told me how Mike and Nancy had started drinking beer. She was really tore up about it at the time. Around this time quite a few of my friends from the program had started delving back into alcohol. Not long after I had my first "screw up beer" in Jacksonville Florida while being processed into the United States Army. This was early October 1982 and shortly after that, events led to the total meltdown of my family as I knew it and the stage was set for the horrible damage that came after that is still under reconstruction to this very day.
As far as George Ross is concerned, more power to him. At least he tried to make a difference. His RSA therapy was a little too cerebral in my opinion, to be laying on teenagers and adolecents, but what the hell, it really is a useful tool if used properly, sort of like Algebra I guess. George was one of the few things right about the program and like I said earlier, I feel torn writing about it, but goddammit people like him helped me to forget shit like sweat caked girls screaming at each other and calling each other whores and shit, while the guys who made them that way stood smugly on the sidelines leaning over and tugging my ear and telling me to "pay attention" like I was supposed to walk away with some valuable lesson from it all. I guess the best way to sum it up is that we all had to take the bad with the good, and compared to Ms. Pete, Doug Hemminger, Mike Murphy and his Jekyl and Hyde psycho act, total asshole bitches like Amy Wrong, Wanda Minton, Melinda Putnam and others, people like Dave and George helped keep me from breaking a chair over some motherfuckers head.
I better quit for now, but this thread really pushed some rusted shut buttons on me...................Later ::luck:: ::luck:: ::luck:: ::rocker:: ::rocker:: ::stab::
