Richard Felix

A short biography of a high school dropout

As you may or may not remember, I left dear old JHS with a semester left for the year of exchange in Australia and never got around to transferring credits., hence no diploma.

 I graduated  from CU with a major in, surprise, history.   During my senior year, I got married to a lady from Iowa.  It turned out that she wanted  a nice house in the suburbs and I wanted to hitchhike to Afghanistan.  Even a flexible, accommodating fellow such as myself couldn’t find an acceptable compromise, so we came to an amicable parting of the ways.   I went to San Diego for a year and then the paradise of Maui for twenty eight.  I have now lived in the San Bernardino Mountains  of Southern California for about ten years

I had worked my way through college as a waiter, and being the course of least resistance,  continued in that job for more years than I’d like to admit.  Aside from that, I’ve had a very eclectic work history .  I’ve earned my bread with everything from being a hod carrier and mass murderer (bug killer) to branch manager of a S&L and restaurant  manager.    I was lucky, in my final few years of working, to be able to scam my way into being a mortgage contractor.  They work on short term contracts wherever in the US they were needed, re-underwriting mortgage loans.  Pay was good and I was able to see a lot of the US I wouldn’t have been to otherwise.

I never had the pitter patter of little feet, so unfortunately missed all the joys and pains of that movie.  

Instead, I’ve spent a lot of time and energy traveling.  I’ve been to 75 or 80 countries.  On my long trip, I went 2 years on $2000, including surviving in Calcutta for six weeks on a dime a day.  I never live very high on the hog when on the road, but have become much less hard core as I get older, softer and have a few more dollars.  I’ve had some interesting adventures along the way.  I met, and went to the British  Parliament, as the personal guest of then prime minister, Harold MacMillan;  I briefly owned 1/3 of 4 donkeys  in Afghanistan; I hitched what became known, after the first gulf war, as the highway of death, between Kuwait City and Basra Iraq; and rode a bicycle down the real highway of death in Bolivia; I discovered the mother lode of puka shells in the Philippines  and was briefly the prince of pukas..    

I consider myself in good health , even though I’ve had four major surgeries and am missing a kidney, stomach and testicle.  Thanks to modern medicine and a strong constitution I was able to get by these  minor inconveniences. 

I think we are the luckiest generation in the history of mankind.  We lived through the golden age of civilization.