Musical Saturday Morning

It was 1976, I worked for UNIVAC creating their first digit computer and created a "feels the same as IMS" database management system for them.   Then went on to write operating systems for Honeywell mainframes that year.  I was learning my trade, considered "hot" in the industry, a total nerd by everyone, drove a car everyone wanted to out run but couldn't - and I was completely dead on the inside.  My God had abandoned me.  I had been fired the year before as a youth pastor of my church, for believing in the Holy Spirit.  My fiancee had abandoned me because I was no longer a pastor.  I was thrown out of my church for giving the elders "attitude".  I was for all intents and purposes dead.  I had lost everyone and everyone in my life.  I moved to the opposite side of the world.

The little church I was attending, in a college town that fall, called me to do a Bible study for local college students.  Because I am not normal, neither were  my studies, soon I had science majors coming to take on the guy whom believed in the literal interpretation of the Bible.  It was great fun and most of them continued with the study until I was forced to stop due to a professional offer I could not afford to pass up.

It was because of that Bible study I was to meet my best friend for most of my life, Gaelic Girl.  She was a scientist wanna-be, 19,  gorgeous beyond belief and so completely damaged on the inside that it proved the unfairness of God.  First, I already hated every gorgeous girl ever created - I had already seen their vanity and shallowness upfront with my unfaithful bride.  So, GG deserved no more than a "Hi, and Bye.", from me.  Until, God forced me to move in her life and literally rescue her from horrors of it, I shipped her off to the University of Washington for their geology program.

Why bring her up?  Because a few months after we met, she saved up and bought me an ELO album, actually my very first gift from a girl!  I loved the Blue Oyster Cult and ELO, okay, Al Stewart too.  How I longed to be able to grow a set of mutton chops but alas my mother's native American blood ran too thickly in my veins.  It would only be in my dreams or on Halloween ...



By the way, the guy on the right looks almost exactly like Dutchman back then, only he is 6'2"!  Well my thoughts on God have changed greatly, thanks to Him, but my music is still a piece of ELO, BOC, Alice Cooper, Love Song and the 1980's.  Yup, done growed up.  Dutchman is still with me and GG has just started talking to me again, after very many years.