notes

[Anonymous]

earlier in this thread someone mentioned a night watchman with connections to white supremacists. i was at rma, '86, i believe. reading that post makes me think of a man who worked there, one of the maintanence workers who.

compared to alot of things in life, rma wasn't that bad, i even recall that some of them seemed like decent people, whenever i happened to talk to them in a non teacher/student scenario. in an earlier post someone mentioned about how christmas time was neat, well it actually was, made more so by the wooden building and the fireplace.

the whole emotional growth or whatever it was supposed to be was just plain dumb. like one of those ww2 broadcasts by 'tokyo rose' or some crazy  pamphlet by the 'american communist party for peace' or one of those 'doubletalk' speaches by an entrapped politician.

"your inner child is the result of the BAD things and the GOOD things will be revealed when you embrace the TRUE TRUTH of the WAY - are you GETTING THIS!!!"

I remember 'wendy', the arm wrestling champ, and the hill above the building where we would play 'manhunt' with pat stambuski. if anyone can think of a better way to spend an afternoon other than that, i just don't know what to say. sex and drugs and world peace excluded of course.

20 years later i can say there were some interesting, even fun experiences i had there, and i can also say that the place contributed nothing worthwhile to my life.

i split from rma, and got picked up, taken back by the sheriff, with whom i conversed about the place. he said to me that he and several others felt that rma was a dumping ground for rich parents who didn't want to take the time to raise their kids. 20 years later, i think, maybe that's okay, maybe that's a good thing. 20 years later i don't really care (about the inner feelings!) or remember too much about the place, but i like reading these posts!

the real reason i posted: anyone using google earth ? (http://earth.google.com/) to find rma, i can't locate an address for the place.

[try another castle]

Good to see another alum from around my time.

I liked Wendy. I didn't spend a whole lot of time in the kitchen, as I hated pots or having to work in there on Challenge crews, so I didn't really talk with her much, but I think she was a pretty cool person. I remember she beat some of the buffest guys in the school at arm wrestling, too.

I think she actually went through all the propheets and workshops. (I remember  hearing something to that effect.) Probably thought they were full of shit, though. I can't imagine that woman buying into that crap.

I think she and Lou went through them together. Lou was another guy who seemed to have his shit together. Kind of a sea of calm amidst all of the insanity. (Especially when it came to the craziness of my peer group working on the farm.)

I remember Pat, too. I especially remember when he broke R's arm. oops.

Somebody in another thread had the BCA/NWA google map up. (Since RMA was in Naples by the time it closed, so the campus you are looking for would be BCA/NWA. i.e. the cow creek property at route 1.) But I can't remember which thread it was.

[Anonymous]

i can only say i recall 'wendy' by sight, otherwise i think she kicked me out of the kitchen once when i was delivering wood for the stoves there. i mean, in winter, by the kitchen stoves was a nice place to hang out. other than that i recall stealing some grub from the kitchen in the middle of the night, before i split .. the first time ? or maybe it was the second time.

lou was the guy who ran the farm? i remember something about a work detail that involved straightening bent nails out. and if anyone was there at the time, the ground pounders/tamp bars/whatever, that were made with a piston from a chainsaw on the end...

as groucho marks said, i don't want to join any club that would have me as a member - and that's how i felt about rma. a bunch of FReaKS!, 20 years later, i have a different attitude about the place though, after typing thoughts here.

i went to washington dc a few years before i was sent to rma, got to see the vietnam memorial, lincoln memorial, arlington, visit the museums, etc. i went back there a few weeks ago, and thought about my life, and you know, at the time, maybe rma was all my parents could do with me. perhaps compared to someplace like provo utah it was a considerate choice on their part.

but you know, as bad as any politician is, or any political agenda, when i go to iraq i'll be fighting against the terrorists and people who would take this would back to a more backwards time. i'll be fighting for a future i believe in, whether or not i am right in thinking what i think or doing what i am going to be doing.

i sure as HELL won't be fighting for any of those rma fuckers. and some of them. well. don't go to iraq. i might not recognize you as an american.

[try another castle]

That's kind of how I feel about the place. It was fucked up, sure, but I could have been in worse places: Provo, WWASPS, Elan, a mental hospital, etc. Having perspective is important.

I've never really held it against my parents. They just didn't want me to try to kill myself again, and were trying desperately to find a place other than a hospital, where I could be in the woods, since I liked the woods, so they figured RMA would be perfect. They had no idea the kind of weird stuff that went on in terms of therapy. Sure, they had those parent workshops, but that never showed the fucked up shit. All they knew was that I wrote them letters that said I was fine, since I had bought into the program, and honestly didn't want to leave by that point, anyway.

When are you going to Iraq, and what branch of the service are you in? You're in your thirties, like me, so I'm assuming you've been in the service for a while, yes?