Da Boys

PREFACE

 

This story is about a tribe of boys who grew up in the northern sector of Los Angeles County.

This area in L.A. was a sprawling labyrinth of mass suburbia connected to a network of right angled boulevards, avenues and meandering freeways.

As the post World War II American baby boomer population grew, this previous predominately agricultural area of Southern California became well known as, The Valley.

The era in which this story takes place was in the 60’s and 70’s and this tale provides some unique insights for how a tribe of boys transitioned from boys to men in just such an environment.

As the story portrays, their journey travels down the precarious pathways of sidewalks and alleys while navigating a “Zig-Zagged” course, in and out of harm’s way.

Often recollections of this era in Americana, fall short of truly explaining how socially engineered forces during these times helped to shape and contort the perceptions for an evolving society.

But, there were forces hard at work exerting great influence upon Americana’s evolving and modernizing psyche.

With the new age of television being invited into our living rooms, an exchange of the historical relevance of parental wisdom and knowledge was being baited and switched with the divisive sales slogans and the eye candy of delectable delights!
 
Many well rehearsed catchy tagline phrases on multiple programming channels tuned the next up and coming generation’s attention into such broadcasting efforts. And these slowly and methodically planted the seeds of subliminal promotions with great expectations for change!
 
As a result the deviant behaviors were virtually let out of the closet and given free rein on this evolving society of the times.
 
Thus, in the span of a single generation these efforts would come to slowly and methodically erode the foundational pillars that were once supporting the body of our American morality.
 
The corporate executives of programing were working diligently and intelligently behind the scenes as they lay awake in the early morning hours of their hillside enclaves. From those lofty perches that rose up off of the Valley’s floor they’d peer down from the hills at a faintly lit congested intersections in the distance.
 
From such a view, they’d be able to gain greater incite of the cause and effects that their decisions were having. They’d gain greater and greater appreciation for what kind of programming would best serve the collaborative hidden agenda.
 
Unknown to the general population, their clandestine agenda was self destruction through further decay of Americana’s moral compass.

These operatives would cause even the knees of the most steadfast advocates to buckle under the weight of temptation. Mankind’s known propensities for fallibility would be served up like a root-beer float topped with a generous portion of chocolate syrup.

As we can see now, the roof came toppling down before our very eyes. Yet in those times much of this influence went unnoticed and unrecognized as being orchestrated by a collaborative consensus.

This story is about the “cause and effects” that will be unveiled. As some of the first of many seeds of destruction were sown into the fertile soil of the baby booming populous during this time and these events.

These undermining tactics employed many efforts that ranged from promoting divorce in the parental examples to framing in the sociodynamics for how one’s playmate associations would appear.

These obtuse priming subliminal effects acted as a bullying and incrimination of what was recognized as morality thus exchanging our views for the differences between good for evil.

As we can see now, these successfully changed the role of both parenting and associations in American society for the worse. Perhaps, this story may allow some to see a little more clearly how we’ve gotten to where we are today!

For a small band of brothers, the initiation into the confluence of their tribal associations transcended the line in the sand at the moral meridian.

What could be acceptable in society for ethical and lawful behavior was a little too far north of the equator. And from such lessons for the rules, the heirs of this unspoken charter formed a comradery that enacted ritualistic practices only cogent to an inherited neanderthal mentality.

The era in which they evolved from childlike ways was a time when post WWII Americana’s cultural revolution of the sixties exposed them to the keepers of the societal iron gates.

The choices that were made in the confines of the brotherhood’s tightly woven fabric would either became a beacon for a new light of day at the end of a tunnel or an alternative destination in solitary confinement!

These experiences defined their characters, broke or polished their balls at each approach to the corner intersection of “Consequence” or “Reward”!

My hope in writing this book is to entertain my readership with the many narcissistic satirical antics that influenced the development of a small tribe of adolescent, delinquent males during this era.

My purpose, in the writing of this book was to provide another observation point, however individualized this may be. I believe by drawing upon the many parallels in our commonalities in thinking or exposing the uniqueness, it may provide some with a window of plausibility for an alternative way of thinking.

I offer this as only a view from such a window. Why? Well, I believe that our society has unwittingly locked up some ghost in the closet and of late these haunting enigmas have escaped and have begun to unbalance the teeter totter equilibrium for clear thinking.

In doing so, I offer you a vicarious opportunity to peer into the foggy mind of unmanageable calamities, hellish behaviors and failed attempts at death defying feats, that slapped the face and shaped the molds from clay. Each character’s unique personality is a little bit of someone we all know.

I introduce the opportunities that should exist in the “yin and yang” determinations, yet in some cases a character exchanges reason for choice and charts a different destiny.

Although this story in a fictional sense offers insight for the characters who are struggling to find the reflection of their own individualism in the mirror, it by no way implies a pathway to model citizenry.

I wish you to know that this story’s origins are from the basement of my mind’s “perceptions” for a tribal law that many will find to represent utter lawlessness.

Whether these efforts become recognized as talented or inferior in a literary sense, isn’t really up to me. What was up to me was to scribe the words and engage the world or allow these ideas, these thoughts to remain exclusively hidden in the folds of my individual mind.

However embellishing or fictional it’s characters, it is intended to be a guide for survival, an example of how risky it can be to navigate the torrent seas of exclusivity and self identity all alone, as gales howl and sails tack the moonless nighttime routings of our destiny.

We are not alone and we are not meant to be alone. As the works of English Writer John Donne’s “Devotions” touch upon in the phrase…>

No man is an Island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the Continent, a part of the main.

If we can as a society help others to find the intersection where one took the wrong turn, and delighted themselves in delegating authority to something as incomplete as just one, then maybe we can begin the long road back to communicating and re-connecting with something more than ourselves. In doing so, we may be able to find our way home.

This is a story of just such a journey for a few souls that were stumbling between the light of day and dark of night, all along while never knowing that anything existed outside the cave.

The progression or our process in these thoughtful actions taken are often referred to as a “train of thought” or interconnection within our brain, which reacts or coveys something as the interactions of our thought patterns.

These produce the initiations of response and interpretation for responses. They process the imagery for how we view that self portrait that is standing in front of the mirror every morning, as well as every other thought that runs through our brain.

The resulting interpretations will choose to harbor friend or incarcerate foe, love a brother or hate a neighbor, take action to engage or remain immobile, freeze in place or jump, and from these decisions we shape our lives from the view that peers out from the eyes of our obscure souls.

In engaging this story one should prepare to ask themselves, are you full of love or filled with hate?

Do you stumble in the darkness or walk in the light while balancing your footing and navigating the trail along your life’s journey.

For after all, are you just a physical interaction of nerves from which one thought reacts or is there a cosmic spark, an unknown frequency or something else?

What is it that initiates, influences or in some cases determines a heading for the actions we take, in our physical world?

Some people choose to believe that our thoughts are 100% exclusively our own, and as such we as individuals are therefore deemed to be responsible for 100% of the actions that we choose to take under such command.

Others may wish to abide by a precept that they are absent the freedom of choice, which would only allow them to explain away the action of their free choices, as compulsions!

Our legal system infers prosecution of an individual with equal responsibility being placed upon those who commit a crime, whether they are intoxicated or sober.

The duplicity in such convictions seems to be oblivious, but obscure to those in charge of the spinning wheels of justice.

Impairment of one’s ability to process thought is no excuse for irresponsible actions taken or poor judgment while impaired, regardless of one’s incapacity.

For after all, prior to initiating the action potential to induce intoxication one would have had the freedom of choice.

So……the indictment and resulting verdict, anchors determinations upon the assumption that one started out from a sound mind, absent further evaluation for why a healthy sober mind would choose to sedate or become impaired…hum? This story provides some insight as to how such thinking becomes corrupted.

Through my personal observations and many exposures while traversing the globe, I ask the questions and provide many explanations in this story.

In reading it, you will be exposed to my experiences, which will afford you insight into how Da Boy’s Americana tribal law was born. These experiences ask;

What causes one’s mind to rid them of sobriety and subordinate to impairment?

What rattles around and bounces off the internal walls of one’s mind in the process of fixing a stationary way-point for one’s perceptions and choosing to die on that hill?

Why is the potential of less clarity chosen over the potential for greater clarity?

These thought processes together with the sounding wall of our environmental sociology establishes our profiles. Our beliefs evolve into an internalized image of recognizable dynamics and what results become our perceptions of our world, our personality, our individualism and our responsibility.

When left to exclusivity, these can become self corrupting absent a communicative commonality, such as language. This is the decline of thought and the subordination of the human mind in such an environment only reduces our choices to rely on the impurities of instinct.

Some of these self involved souls in my story whom only rely upon the paradoxical absurdities that banter between isolated neurons, begin to question their own headings. Just as the prisoners cease to rely upon the liken shadows that were cast upon the walls of the cave.

Our limited understandings can also be obscured by the darkness in the abyss that we invite to our exclusivity. We ether choose to peel back the onion skins layers of obscurity or remain in the cave with the comfort of our limitations in the perceptions of our own reality.

Although the situational relevance of those times has a contribution to the theme of this book, it does not change the fact that boys will be boys and finding trouble is something that in itself is timeless in seeking the rite of passage to manhood.

I’d like to acknowledge my wife’s steadfast belief in my ability to meaningfully convey a story and be told such as this, for absent her unwavering support and prodding, I may have procrastinated until I’d expired the span of my lifetime.

I’d also like to acknowledge my father, for it was his advice that rang in my ears from time to time while writing;

Show me your friends and I’ll show you who you are

I would also like to acknowledge my many friends and few foes that I’ve came across throughout my lifetime, as each of these personalities has left its mark in indelible ink upon the folds of my memories.

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Writing with the Veiled…