Have you heard Dick Van Dyke's nickname?
My favorite story about Stan Laurel was told by Dick Van Dyke. He wanted to meet Stan. He found him in the phone book. Stan and his wife lived in a small cottage in Santa Monica. They were just simple unpretentious people.
Have you heard Dick Van Dyke's alternate name. He devised it so his friends would know it was him being referred to but salesmen or detectives would not know it was him. The alternate name comes from clever usage of "The Sexual Dictionary of the American English Language.
Sample: Dick van Dyke is referred to as Penis van Lesbian.
Carmelo, you know my whole trip is that I have an encyclopedic mind and I am awash in figures. You have a pretty good encyclopedic mind yourself! When I wrote, my first 5 pages of this thread in March I quickly obtained about 1900 hits and about 45 responses in less than 3 weeks and then the thread appeared to be dead. The responses completely stopped but the hits continued to grow to about 2200 and then they stopped. After participating on Vinaire's thread !Oh God!!, I saw how Vin got such high stats but his topics were much more encompassing than mine. I decided I needed to debrief not only my Apollo story but my CCLA story as well and I figured I could get raise my hits total up to 5,000 max with the reponses moving from 45 to maybe 90. Well the 5,000 Mark was reached in not much over a week. It was then that I decided that the topic of the old days at CCLA had "legs". It wasn't just the old timers who liked it but a lot of non Scientology researchers and a lot of young ESMB members were interested in reading about the old CC, the times, the people and the situations that arose. I believe there was some encompassment of the universal human condition being discussed here when an intelligent and sincere guy wanted nothing more than to donate his talents to this group and did everything in his power to be "honest and straight" and contribute to a group he was growing to love.
The Universal human trajedy appears and can be seen now for what it is: Joe Average, an unknown, almost a nobody except, for having more smarts than average, approaches a group who has helped him and wants to help them in return and gives up a well paying job and breaks his ass to contribute to this Organization he has come to love. What happens in return is a series of defeats, injustices, degradations and make wrongs. What is it about this group that makes it nearly impossible for good people to be allowed to help the group without being personally destroyed? Even Mother Teresa would have been unable to succeed here!!
Well, by page 11 of the thread, I had told my personal story and had told it well. I developed an already good writing technique and made it even better, much better. My story had been told and the hits were around 6200 and I announced that I was done for now. It was Sweetness and Light who wrote that I needed to continue writing my story, that I was not done yet. I tried starting another thread on Education and it was good, excellent posts from Ted, Olska and Roger B. among others and then it died out with about 1700 hits. I thought to myself, Sweetness and Light is right, I have more to say so let me say it on the Apollo 1973 site where the message is more universal and I already have a large base of readers. I set of goal of hitting 10,000 hits but did not think I had a chance of reaching that but thats were a lot of people came in and were doing most of the writing and I became more like a moderator for you other posters on the thread. Again things took off for a while but posts leveled off around 7900 or so. That is when I decided to add the best local eateries in the area. That idea was very popular and at about that time, you, Carmelo, became heavily involved and kind of expanded the restaurnat section and then added your posts on nostalgia. All I had to do was moderate as you and Ted and Blue Spirit and Terril did most of the posting. I would mainly comment on your posts and just throw a little something of my own in once in a while. You guys took it from there, especially you Carmelo and we hit 10,000 and beyond without breaking stride.
SUMMARY
1. I wanted to tell my personel story.
2. I wanted to tell people how CC got started and tell them who Yvonne was.
3. I wanted to show the bad side of Scn but also the good side
4. I wanted people to come to the conclusion that I could have been a valuable asset for C of S to have on staff and that they just threw me a way like a piece of garbage. I want people to realize it was not just me, but maybe there were 20,000 other potentially valuable assets that they just literally trashed. Imagine what C of S would be today with me and 20,000 others similar to me working flat out for them, doing good.
5. I want this thread to be the source to go to if anyone wants to find out anything about the CCLA of the 1970's
6. I want the thread to be portrayed as how the little guy with some talent is crushed, chewed up and spit out by Corporate Scientology.
IT IS A THEME WORTHY FOR AN ARTHUR MILLER PLAY AND BOOK SUCH AS DEATH OF A SALESMAN.
7. Now, I want the thread to be a good place to go as a travel guide as to nostalgic points of interest in the City of L.A.
8. I want people to see that
EVEN MOTHER TERESA WOULD HAVE BEEN RPFed IT SHE HAD JOINED!!
9. Finally, I want the thread to be known as honest and unbiased, where both good and bad things are equally emphasized and I want it to be thought of as a well written post very entertaining and enlightening to read.
With all those objectives and its universality, where it stopped being the story of one rank and file guy and emerged into something much bigger, it is interesting to see how we got to 10,000 hits starting with my story as an obscure guy on the Apollo some 36 years ago and expanding the thread to what it has become. I really thank Sweetness and Light for pushing me on to write more, saying I wasn't done with my story yet and that I, personally, soon to be 70 years old am still evolving, and Carmelo, for coming in more actively recently and verifying and correcting my accuracy and adding her personal touch, charm and knowledge into my mix.
As long as I have something valid to say and the thread is still growing and getting hits, I will stick around moderating it. If the thread peaks out, it can be inactive for a while and then be brought back in months or a year later and recycled through all the newer members as is being done with several of the major stories and threads right now.
Lakey