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.