A Little History

Whenever beginning a sojourn of any historical significance, it's important to remember where one's been. That said, I offer this quick look back at our dear friend George and how he became AWOL.

The four of us (George, Mike, Wayne and I) attended the same high school in Ojai, CA. For those of you not familiar with the area, it's a stone's throw from Los Angeles and an even shorter distance from Santa Barbara. Ojai is basically famous for three things:

1. Sprawling citrus orchards
2. The "Pink Moment"
3. Spiritual tree-huggers

With little entertainment to keep us busy in-city, we would often whittle away many hours driving around in Wayne's Isuzu I-Mark, slowly becoming brain-damaged from the poor exhaust system (thanks, Wayne!). Good times! After high school we scattered to different areas of the West Coast. Wayne in Berkley, Mike in Portland, OR, George in Santa Barbara and I stayed local.

As luck would have it after our first year away at college, Mike and myself were somehow coerced into moving with George up to Humboldt. Wayne was the smart one -- he stayed in Berkley. The three of us moved into a brand-spankin' new "manufactured home" in Humboldt (circa the summer of 1990), and thus hilarious hyjinx ensued. Living with two of your best friends can be taxing. Seriously. Don't try it. You'll end up with an old can of refried beans hidden somewhere in your room, complete with a seven-inch high plant growing out of it. Gross-buckets.

After about a year of this living arrangement, things kind of fell apart. I moved back to Southern California, Mike moved to Monterey and George, somehow, someway found a way to get married before any of us. This was an impressive feat considering George drove a Chevrolet Sprint that smelled like a combination of wet cats, rotting fast food and unwashed gym clothes.

A replica of the mighty Sprint that was George's car.

Wayne was the only one able to attend George's wedding and I'm sure he'd love to add the story of the post-nuptial activities including another friend (Dan Allen) and the local bridesmaids. Although Mike and I were respectively disappointed we couldn't make it, we thought the four of us would continue to remain close even though we had gone our separate ways.

After the wedding, that's when it happened. POOF! George disappeared off the face of the planet. No correspondence, no visits, nothing. It's one of the greatest disappearing acts of the last 15 years. Wayne did talk to him briefly in 1994 before Mike's wedding, but George was a little stand-offish, and we had a difficult time discerning why. We were all on great terms with George and his vanishing left us scratching our heads. For years after that the three of us would regale each other with stories from the past and a desire to one day locate and ambush George, if only for closure on our part. In fact, at our ten year high school reunion (which not-surprisingly George did not attend), we made it one of our life's ambitions to find this aberration, even if it did only rank somewhere around #78 on our list of things to do before we shuffle off this mortal coil.

Then came the technological boom of the Internet.

From time to time we would Google George's full name, only to come up with dead-ends or false leads which led to our new mantra of "maybe we'll try again in another six months". As Mike stated earlier, we WOULD NOT pay to find him. After all, we all work with technology in some form so it shouldn't be such a difficult task. Still, year after year our searches were rendered fruitless until a thorough Google search just a few weeks ago rendered a Website which contained the following image (note: contrary to popular belief, his face has been pixelized to protect our search-in-progress. He was NOT involved in some sort of horrible industrial accident involving acidic cleaning solvent and a belt sander. Just wanted to clear the air):

Could this be George?

Could this be the George we once new and wished would stop listening to creepy gothic music?

More to come later as the saga progresses.