TO THIS VERY DAY

TURPENTINE MEADOWS
SALISBURY DAY
LEFT AT THE CROSSROADS
WITH NOTHING TO SAY
WHO CAN I TURN TO
WHAT CAN I DO
ALL I REMEMBER
ARE MOMENTS WITH YOU

COBBLESTONE DREAMS
OF YESTERDAY'S HEART
LIKE VINCENT ALONE
IN A ROOM FULL OF ART
BRUSH STROKES OF FEELINGS
COLOR THE PAST
THE FIRST TIME I SAW YOU
WOULD BE THE LAST


Bobby Jameson Dec, 2011

(part 265) THE STORE...1987 AND BEYOND

Me in the store

By 1987 I had saved about $5,000 to go back to L.A. This was accomplished by filing for unemployment, as a result of having worked for Pacific Freight in Southern CA. a couple of years earlier, selling tools on the telephone. I filed for it in 85 and saved most of it. I then had a decision to make that would alter the direction of my life again.

I recall being in Santa Maria with my brother Bill, another small town about forty miles south of where we lived. I had taken him with me to the Harley Davidson dealership to look at a Sportster. I told Bill that I had enough money to buy the bike or go back to L.A. for another shot at the music business.

"Whatta ya think?" I asked.

He said, "If I were you I'd buy the bike Bob, because if you go back to L.A. it might kill you!"

I stared at him and then laughed. "Yeah, I know what you mean," I replied, "I think you're right!"

The outcome was that I bought the bike and stayed in the Five Cities area of Central CA. It was a decision that once again changed things. I was clean and sober, and though I had encountered many obstacles and difficulties in Grover City, CA., I had been free from the meat-grinder of the music business. I knew that if I went back to L.A. it was going to be more of the same, or at least that is what I believed, so I opted to pass on it.

In 1987 my mother owned and ran an antique store, something she'd done a lot of in her life. It was called "The Browse Around," and was located in Grover City on the main drag. It sold a lot of different kinds of things, such as jewelry, art, knick-knacks and collectibles of various kinds, and antiques. I started finding things to put into the store to sell and worked there as a salesman.

Eventually I took over the entire business when my mother decided to take a break from it. Rather than just closing it down altogether I told her I'd run it and pay her for things she left in it when they sold. She was happy to do it, because it meant she didn't have to pack it all up and put it in storage. The store quickly took on a new personality, and was frowned on by local law enforcement, but in reality The Browse Around became an immediate hit in the area because a lot of the locals liked the way I ran the place.

My brother Bill, me in the back, and my mother in the store

I began selling things like electronics, tools, motorcycle leathers, knives, and continued with the jewelry, antiques, collectibles, and art. Eventually I started selling firearms, and became a Federally licensed gun dealer, much to the dismay of the various police departments in the area. To some extent it was me pushing back against a community that had gone out of its way to rid itself of my presence, but at the same time it was me searching for a new identity.

I had always known, at least in my own mind, who I was, or who I thought I was, but my move to the Central Coast of California had left me in a quandary about that subject, so I kept trying to re-identify myself in some new capacity. Harley Davidson motorcycles, guns, and knives were part of that search to find a new version of myself, one that I could commit to. The Browse Around, and it's distinctive personality and merchandise became, for me, the way I chose to interpret myself at the time.

In part, it was that I'd been condemned as an outlaw before I really was one, so my response was to become the outlaw I'd been portrayed as, with an in-your-face decision to accept the judgement and wear it with pride. Not only did I consciously choose this route, I made the decision to shove it down the throat of any and all who objected to it, which initially was the city council, the police, and various citizens.

I am not trying to convince you that what I did was a good thing or a bad thing. It is just what I did with my life at the time. I can always look back at my decisions and question them, and I do, but I cannot change them. The best I can hope for is to attempt to explain them and report what happened in the past.

SPECIAL INSERT POST..from Oct 27, 2011 by McClaughry's Blog

This is a post which relates directly to things I've written on my blog about Camarillo State Hospital and my experience there in the 70's...click on Camarillo State Hospital in red.

(part 264) MODERATORS OF DECENCY AND PROGRESS

In 1987 I was no longer The person I had been in L.A., London, New York City, or even Nashville. Almost no one on the central coast knew anything about my past in the music business. That shield was gone, and I was, for the first time since 1963, just another person in a town of run of the mill persons. I became acutely aware of what it is like to be average. Whereas once I had been a somebody of sorts I was now just a full-fledged nobody, and if you think I'm overstating it, you ought to try it sometime.

The average-joe syndrome is a mighty leveler in small-town USA. My past had been riddled with small-town thinking from back in my Arizona days, when I was scoffed at by friends for believing I had something to give to the world of music. In Grover City, CA., I was reunited, in spades, with the any-town USA sledge hammer of nationalistic yahooism and religious zealotry as it was spoon fed to me with a shovel.

It would be difficult at best for some to understand the absolute shock to the system that this was, unless they were clear on where my past had actually taken me. But for those who insist that I was always a nobody, they, I'm sure, will frame what I am talking about here as no more than me being forced to grow up and admit the truth to myself.

The history of a person, any person, is their history. It cannot be altered simply because others don't want to believe it. Collectively, people can rob a person of that history publicly to some degree, but the reality is, a person's history will always belong to them. The altering, and/or rewriting of an individual's experiences, is a technique devised and used by some to steal a person's identity and recreate that person in an image preferable to the thieves.

Threats of physical violence and incarceration, along with collective community shunning of a group or individual, are techniques designed for the purpose of ridding and/or controlling a different group or individual by those who fancy themselves in authority over others. This is what I encountered, and still do, on the central coast of California. It is a tactic of dismissing and rebuking those looked down on, or disagreed with, and a practice as old as the country itself. It has been used repeatedly, since our inception, to relegate some into obscurity, for the benefit of others. It is our history as a nation, and cannot be altered as our history, by simply sugar coating it, lying about it, dismissing it, or rewriting it.

I am who I am, not because I say so, but because of what my life experiences have been in reality. I endeavor to put forth the facts as they actually exist, irrespective of what they paint, good or bad, as a portrait of the human person known as Bobby Jameson. It matters not a whit to me, whether some are bothered by what I say here, because what I say here is my attempt to be as forthcoming as I possibly can. No one is completely clean or completely unclean. No one escapes the truth, whatever it is, in the long run. We are all subject to failures and successes in our lifetimes.

My encounters with human beings are my encounters, not yours. My decisions and consequences are mine whether you like them, believe them, or agree with them. What I did, and do, has nothing to do with you, other than I am here sharing it with you. For individuals to become so involved with my work here that it causes them to make contact with me and demean or threaten me is exemplary as a model of what I'm talking about.

In short, I am saying that there are people in this country who will use any and all means to make their little communities splendid, but only splendid for the chosen ones, and it is the chosen ones who decide that they are chosen. They proclaim their own righteousness, while having little, and abuse the system to their own benefit. What I say here is going on all over the country, as well as the rest of the world. People, fed up with the authoritarian ass-whipping handed out by the so-called moderators of decency and progress. There is nothing decent or progressive about it, and the tide is shifting...

(part 263) WITH PREJUDICE

Writing about myself and the things that I did and the reactions to them by others, are at times painful to expose in public. But having embarked on this part of my story, after much reluctance, I find myself having to provide details that I would just as soon not give you, but for the fact that they are specific to the choices I made because of them.

Much of what happened to me was brought on by what I myself did or didn't do at any given time. It is obvious that many of my choices and actions caused me difficulty, that goes without saying, but on the other hand I was confronted by the reactions of many around me, which at times bordered on overt harassment.

As I tried to portray in the previous post, the overkill was palpable, and placed me in a flee or fight dilemma that had to be reconciled one way or another. Strangely, my decision was to stay and fight back as hard as I could, I assume because I was tired of leaving places when things got truly difficult. I became, for lack of a better description, a Jessie James/Billy The Kid like character who knew I was guilty of some things, but never as guilty as those around me tried to make out.

I was represented by a public defender, Kevin McReynolds, at trial, and convicted of a misdemeanor. Following that, I borrowed money to mount an appeal to overturn the conviction. During that process, I became aware that my attorney, James Murphy, was involved in a back room decision with the prosecutor, David Pomeroy, to shut out the possibility of an appeal with prejudice. That simply means he made a deal with the prosecutor, without my knowledge or permission, to kill my right to appeal forever. Upon learning of this, I stormed into my attorney's office and confronted him on the issue, which he sheepishly admitted he had no right to do.

So this was the atmosphere I was faced with. An outsider trying to deal with insiders who all knew each other. I was the odd man out and expendable from every angle by all concerned. The fly in the ointment became the fact that I was not only aware of what was going on, but told each of them to their face that I knew, while continuing to stand my ground. Later, I made friends with the primary police officer involved. He apologized to me in a Circle-K parking-lot, from his squad car window, saying he regretted being part of it.

I fulfilled each obligation placed on me as a result of this episode, until completed. At that point, I both publicly and frequently voiced my opinion about what I thought of each of the parties involved: the Grover City Court, the attorneys, the jury, and the judge. I knew that I'd lost in part, but in the long run had won over some of my harshest adversaries.

(part 262) HOW FAR WERE THEY WILLING TO GO

In posting the mercy church section 261, I thought it a good example of an attitude exhibited by some in this community. For me, it is a stark reminder of the ever-growing and cumulative effect of evangelical christianity being woven into the fabric of the social, business, and governmental environment of San Luis Obispo County.

Almost immediately after posting this, I was besieged by members of other local christian churches saying that mercy church is a cult, to which I responded, "No shit!" But to me it is like the pot calling the kettle a cult, much like the Baptist pastor saying that Mormonism is a cult.

This is about people who have chosen a belief system that in their mind allows, if not demands, that they judge anything and everything by their own personal take on acceptability and unacceptability according to their church and its doctrine. It is this kind of logic, or lack thereof, that creates a hostile atmosphere for those whose names are not present on the evangelical rosters of local officialdom.

For all of the time I have lived on the central coast, from 1985 until now, I have rarely felt like I belonged here or was welcome here. It has been more like standing firm against the enemy than enjoying my life in paradise. In 1987, I was surrounded at gunpoint in the middle of Grand Ave. in Grover City by six police cars. To the onlooker it appeared that the local cops had snagged a major criminal in broad daylight on the streets of their fair city. In truth I was stopped and jailed for the misdemeanor crime of indecent exposure within the confines of my own house, which I was later convicted of by a jury of my so-called peers, and where my mother, who was a key witness, was not allowed to testify in my behalf.

The line drawn in the sand by this event is more than an indication of the "in your face" willingness by the locals to make use of all that they had at their disposal, to clarify their will in the minds of undesirables such as myself. Rather than "put me in my place," this event signaled to me the necessity for careful calculation in appraising exactly what I was up against.

I was warned repeatedly, at my home, by uniformed officers, that their desire was to see me put in CMC, a major California prison located in San Luis Obispo. This was not a vague threat, it was said to me directly in the driveway of my home after I refused to move out of my house at their request. In furtherance of their overt harassment, they took to parking a police car out in front of my house on multiple occasions. When I finally had had it with their blatant attempts to intimidate me, I called the police station and angrily demanded that they come over and arrest me, or "move that fucking police car away from my house!" It was a game of who's gonna blink first.

CMC The California Men's Colony in San Luis Obispo, CA.

I knew I was in a war of wills, but I also knew they had nothing they could charge me with. If they wanted to arrest me for yelling at them on the phone, so be it. If they wanted to make something up, go ahead. It was a standoff of sorts, and they knew it. They learned that I was not going to buckle, no matter what they did. To get rid of me was going to take an invention of a crime, and the question became, "Just how far were they willing to go?"