Featuring teenage life in the 1960s

Today is the 18th time in a row of spending my birthday alone. This is not a voluntary state of monkhood. I like intelligent women! Nevertheless, I figured that since my brain is certainly not decrepit, plus I can still effortlessly pick up a hundred pound rock, I am allowed to be publicly narcissistic . . . at least on my 75th birthday.

Consider yourself to be invited to a virtual reality birthday party. All unmarried women are allowed to virtually spend the day and evening with me at Blueberry Hill Cottage. The good news is that despite the best efforts of some, I am still very much a man.

by Richard L. Thornton, Architect & City Planner

How weird has my life been during the past 24 years?

In October, November and December 2022, virtually all my living college room-mates, friends and girl friends were contacted by Georgia law enforcement and told that I was bisexual . . . had burned a woman alive and was the prime suspect for dozens of murders of gay men and lesbian women over the past two decades or longer. The recipients of this slanderous message included two girlfriends from high school, who are also TAR subscribers. My friends were asked for their assistance to put me behind bars. The only trouble about this lie was that I had no connection to the poor woman and her death had been ruled a suicide!

You should understand that for thirty years local, state or federal law enforcement have tapped my phone and internet illegally. As long as I was living in Bell South service areas, Bell South Security would pull the plugs on the illegal taps.

The Director of BS Security, who had formerly headed the DEA in South Florida, came out to my house one time and explained that extracurricular wire tapping of professionals, conceived as being “libruls,” was a huge problem in northern Georgia. Many, he said are pretending to be “macho,” but actually are sexual deviates themselves . . . knowing full well that they are unlikely to get arrested for such activities, if wearing a badge.

YET

In 2002, a college accounting instructor was put into my life temporarily to tell me that if I joined the Republican Party, I would be elected governor of Georgia in 2010. Also, a woman had been picked out by the college instructor’s handlers to be my new wife.

I went on one date with her. She was a former Miss America runner-up and the ex-wife of a Lockheed-Aircraft executive . . . a real trophy wife for somebody, but not me. Living in a huge McMansion on a tiny lot in the most political extreme section of Cobb County, GA would have been living hell for me.

During the first decade of this century, state or local law enforcement officers called any woman I dated, who was not a rightwing extremist, to tell them that I was either a serial killer, rapist or child molester. I now know that the Susan Karlson, my secret girlfriend of 15 years, ghosted me in June 2006, not because she was killed in action overseas as I thought, but because Georgia cops had posted videos of us in my bedroom on a pay-for-view porno website.

Yet, from 2010 to the present, White North Georgia and state law enforcement officers have desperately tried to prove that I was a gay and serial killer of gay men! The obvious proof was that I did not believe that Mein Kampf was sacred scripture sent to man by God.

I now know that the reason that powers that be in Pickens County, GA got away with a illegal foreclosure of my home and giving me three days notice to be evicted on Christmas Eve was belief that I would choose to be gay rather than starve while homeless. Then the Brotherhood could legitimately murder me for the crime of being gay.

No one expected me to have everything I needed for a year’s survival in the wilderness,already stored in waterproof plastic containers. I rebuffed all propositions from wealthy gay men, while homeless in North Carolina. I also repelled all night time attacks from church vigilante groups in North Carolina, Tennessee and Georgia. Law enforcement had told THEM that I was a child molester.

Such lies have caused the already delusional Trumpites here in Habersham County and adjacent White County to go off the deep end. Just in the past three weeks, the dog of a man living near me brought in a calf leg bone. He decided that it was from one of the gay male lovers that I had murdered.

Immediately, vigilantes from local Southern Baptist churches, PLUS a gay male decoy, employed by White County, GA Sheriff’s Dept. (where I never lived) began driving back and worth in front of my house. Black clad law enforcement ninja nerds stalked my property at night, thinking that I couldn’t see them. At some point, someone, somewhere pointed out that the leg bone was from an animal.

So, what sort of evil childhood would require hundreds of thousands of dollars of taxpayers money be spent over a three decade period by Georgia law enforcement? You will find out during this birthday party.

Spoiler Alert: There have been many people murdered in Southern National Forests, because a clandestine organization of law enforcement officers, called “The Brotherhood,” thought that they looked like gays or lesbians.

By age six, I was paddling a piro, a flat-bottomed Creek canoe, into an estuary of the Okefenokee Swamp near our house. Now, I can’t believe that I was so foolish to do so alone. One day, a large water moccasin dropped from a limb into the canoe. I cut the snake’s head off with a butcher knife that I brought along for protection.

ROOTS

Throughout childhood and adolescence, some of my happiest memories were the times with my maternal grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. We celebrated the Green Corn Festival each year with a family reunion. My Uncle Hal and some of my great-uncles taught me a few “Creek” words and even showed me ancient Native American town sites along the Savannah and Broad Rivers. Much later in life, I would learn that the “Creek” words I learned were Itsate (Hitchiti), not Muskogee. Our closest kin were the Miccosukee People in South Florida, who originally lived where I live now.

Born in the Okefenokee Swamp

I was born in Waycross, GA. For the first four years, we lived in the garage apartment in Williams Heights on the estate of Congressman Jack Williams, who developed about 40% of Waycross, during the mid-twentieth century. We then moved to a new house at 1305 Suwanee Drive.

I was born in the same maternity ward, where the famous Creek actor, Pernell Roberts was born in 1928. His family also were members of Trinity Methodist Church and periodically would eat Sunday lunch at the famous Green Frog Restaurant with my parents. His father delivered soft drinks to my official father’s restaurant. When I was six months old, his father intentionally dropped me head first on the concrete floor of the restaurant. I always thought that was strange.

I now know that Pernell was on an advisory board of the Muscogee-Creek Nation. In 2004, Pernell played a major role in me being hired for five years by the MCN to research our architectural heritage. In 2007, Pernell became the first person to ask to subscribe to my new email newsletter, “The People of One Fire.” He called himself “Gator Joe” and only told me that he had formerly lived in Georgia. From time to time, his foundation would send me modest checks to purchase reference books and gasoline.

I did not know that “proberts@aol.com” was THE Pernell Roberts until after he died. A law firm in San Francisco sent me a scrapbook that either he or his wife or secretary had put together, which consisted of photocopied newspaper articles, letters written by Pernell and newspaper clippings. It was only then that I realized that until age 18, our lives were almost identical. We both were stars on championship football teams. We both were also members of the high school band and rock bands. We both loved to dance with the girls, but are remembered by former girlfriends as always being both respectful and sincerely affectionate. Pernell played the drums in the US Marine Corps band. I played the drums in a Navy Reserve Officers band.

At age 18 we both went off to Georgia Tech to become architects. Pernell flunked out his first year. I did pretty well for myself. However, this is the reason that in the Bonanza TV series, Pernell played an architect, who returned to the Ponderosa Ranch after his mother died.

Boy Scout Troop 26 from Gainesville, GA . . . hiking the Appalachian Trail

The Highlands

We moved to Gainesville, GA when I was eight. When I saw the Blue Ridge Mountains for the first time, I thought I gone to heaven. A few months later, I saw snow for the first time. I quickly learned how to build igloos and sled. Back then, the Georgia Highlands received several serious snows a winter.

Our next-door neighbors were the Superintendent of the Chattahoochee National Forest and Ed Dodd, creator of the Mark Trail newspaper comic strip. Mark Trail is about the adventures of a ranger in the Chattahoochee National Forest, who nowadays is frequently sent to other national forests to solve problems.

Ed Dodd, like me, was an architecture graduate from Georgia Tech. Mark Trail began as a sideline-hobby that quickly became much more lucrative than practicing architecture.

Boy Scouting was the major interest of my life in Gainesville. My fondest memories of that era were on a two week long hike that a ‘select group from my Troop 26 took on the Appalachian Trail. While on the hike, I earned enough merit badges to become one of the youngest Eagle Scouts ever.

My counselor for the forestry, camping and hiking merit badges was the Superintendent of the Chattahoochee National Forest. My counselor for the architecture, history and art merit badges was Ed Dodd. My counselor for the journalism merit badge was Sylvan Meyer, Editor of the Gainesville Daily Times and a Pulitzer Prize winner.

Hot-lanta

We moved to the College Park suburbs of Metro Atlanta, while I was in the middle of my first football season with Gainesville Junior High. I didn’t like the move and despised the split-level house on a tiny lot. Our former house in Gainesville was on a large lot with a big garden. In that era, the north and south Atlanta suburbs were more equally balanced economically. There was a clique of snobby airline pilot kids in College Park.

Even though I was an Eagle Scout and the only Native American in the troop, the snobby clique in the new Boy Scout troop repeatedly blocked me from being inducted into the Order of the Arrow. I eventually dropped out, when the Scoutmaster was arrested for running a sex cult, composed of his two sons and the snobby Order of the Arrow clique.

Mary Jane Parker and Jo Evelyn Kelly at age 16 – working on the decorations for the Junior-Senior Prom. They were my two dearest neighborhood friends. One is a subscriber to The Americas Revealed.

Once I entered brand new Lakeshore High School, my attitude changed. It was a new section of College Park recently settled by folks from about everywhere. Everybody was middle class and very friendly. Actually, this website has several subscribers, who were alumni of Lakeshore, neighborhood friends or even puppy love girlfriends of mine. I am sure that they will agree that we had the nicest group of classmates, one could ever have.

Lakeshore was indeed a special school. We unknowingly took social attitude tests in advance of racial integration. Lakeshore was chosen to be the first high school to be integrated in the Fulton County School System, because of the tolerant, friendly attitude that pervaded the student body. Yep, the first African-American girl to attend Lakeshore was immediately voted to serve on the Student Council . . . the next year, she was Vice President of the council.

Like Pernell Roberts, I thrived on a life oriented around weekend sock hops, girls, football, girls, track, girls and playing the drums in a rock band. I also wrote a teen column for the newspaper, which got me in free to all the rock concerts. I studied enough to have no trouble getting into Georgia Tech, but that sort of thing played second fiddle.

During the five years at Lakeshore, I never played in a losing football game. By the time that I was a senior, Lakeshore was the number one public academic high school in Georgia. We also had the Star Student for the State of Georgia, Lisa Blackstone. She scored a perfect 1600 on the SAT.

My official father was neither athletic, outdoorsy nor creative. As the years went by he became increasingly inclined to go into inexplicable rages.

At our 20 year class reunion, our guidance counselor told me that my official father had blocked me getting several academic scholarships, including a special full academic scholarship to Georgia Tech from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution newspaper, because I had the highest grades of any first string high school football player in the Atlanta Metro Area and had the highest score ever in deductive reasoning on a cognitive reasoning test given to college bound Atlanta-Fulton County students. The counselor, Mr., Baggett, said that my father’s excuse was that he couldn’t control me, if I didn’t have to pay tuition. H-m-m

Fortunately, my Methodist minister, Rev. Paul Harwell was part Creek, as were several other youth in the church. He took on the role of surrogate father or uncle for me. Paul took his daughters and we other Creeks on hikes, plus excursions to Native American archaeological sites and museums. Paul encouraged me to embrace my Native heritage, rather than conceal it. He told me that some day in the future, that Creek heritage would become important.

Now we will take you back in time to the 1960s. This is a “scrapbook” video created by one of my classmates at Lakeshore. Everyone of my classmates, who subscribe to The Americas Revealed are in here, but I won’t point them out. Where have the years gone?