My unique relationship to the Followers began in grade school, at Mt Pleasant. They were some of my classmates, including one, Gina Crone, my first crush. I think it was second or third grade when I first met Gina. She had long, straight, brown hair and wore nothing but homemade dresses. She was a whirling dervish at recess and very, very outspoken, almost brash.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We instantly clashed. We were always\ngetting into tussles at recess and always played four square or\ntether ball together. We touched and pushed each other a lot and\nhurled insults back and forth. She particularly gave it to me hard\nover my last name. If I had known the meaning of the word \u201ccrone\u201d\nin those days, I would have given it to her as equally hard. We were\nin love and hate. Go back to your elementary days. There was always\nsomeone like that for everyone. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was never a furtive kiss. There\nwas, once, one furtive look between us. I think we both knew anything\nelse was taboo. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
After grade school, formal and public\nsocialization between Follower and non-Follower children permanently\nended. The lines of separation became clear in junior high. Boys\ncould not approach Kisser girls. Girls could not approach Kisser\nboys. Many years later, a friend of mine who attended another junior\nhigh in Oregon City in the 70s told me she once flirted with a Kisser\nboy at school. It took all of one day for three Kisser girls to\nconfront her after school and threaten to beat her up if she ever\nmessed with the boy again. She didn’t. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was no mixing and no little Romeo\nand Juliet scenarios ever unfolded that I knew about, but that didn’t\nmean I didn’t worship the Kisser girls from afar. I wasn’t the only\none. They were otherworldly beautiful but totally unapproachable, let\nalone obtainable. What a strange feeling it was to walk among them in\nthe hallways or sit next to them in classrooms and know any\ninteraction with them was impossible, even academic interaction. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In junior high and high school, the\ngirls prepped for being a wife and mother. They took as many home ec\nclasses as were offered and took them over and over again. The boys\nprepped to be working class men. They took all the shop classes and\ntook them over and over again. Neither the boys or girls went out for\nsports or rally or anything like that. They moved together as one\nthrowback social unit that was practically invisible to outsiders\nexcept for matters pertaining to dress or speech. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Besides Gina, I have many vivid\nrecollections of Kissers in my youth, but two stand out. They involve\nsports and muscle cars. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kisser boys were the greatest natural\nathletes in Oregon City history. How do I know that? I watched them\nplay. Had they gone out for football, basketball and track and field,\nOregon City would have built the greatest high school sports dynasty\nin state history. It would still be going on!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But of course they didn’t go out for\nsports because they wouldn’t see a doctor to obtain the physical\nclearance the state required for participation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
None of them were ever coached. They\nnever came to the high school games. Today, I wonder if they ever\ntalked about how much better they were than the star players. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I saw them play basketball in junior\nand high school PE classes and during lunchtime ratball sessions. I\nwill never forget Kisser boys dunking in ratball and knowing most\nmembers of the varsity team couldn’t even touch the rim. They weren’t\nall that accomplished as long-range shooters and rarely shot\nintermediate jumpers. They wanted to drive hard to the hoop and\nchallenge. The only defense they played was in the air, at the rim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They played football on Saturday\nafternoons at Rivercrest Park\u2014rain on shine\u2014almost year round. I\nwas there watching many times. These were full on, full field, full\nspeed, 11-on-11 (sometimes more) tackle affairs and displayed some of\nthe most brutal headhunting I have ever seen in football, in person\nor in cinema, straight out of the Jack Tatum\/Oakland Raiders\nplaybook, circa 1977. They perfected the clothesline and didn’t help\neach other off the ground. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I never saw a single player injured,\nnor a fight break out. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The tackling was vicious, but in\ncontrast, I also witnessed the most skillful and artful pickup\nfootball I have ever seen played: long bombs, double and triple\nreverses, laterals. I remember crazy leg kickoff returns, stiff arms\nmade from steel, and athletes who could have played at the then Pac-8\nlevel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Kisser girls never played any sports\nthat I ever observed. PE was segregated by gender in those days so I\nnever saw them participate. I might have lost my mind had they been\nrunning around me playing floor hockey, badminton or dodge ball. And\nwhat about hackey sack? Oh to have seen that! \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The girls liked to watch the boys play\nfootball. They would sit inside or on the hoods of their boyfriends’\nmuscle cars, smoking, listening to rock and roll on the radio, and\nraise a cheer or two. They were sort of early period Bruce\nSpringsteen characters in that way. They were, however, not born to\nrun. They never left Clackamas County. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was immediately after those Saturday\ngridiron sessions, when the muscle cars were leaving the park, that\nmy friends and I would scream \u201cKissers!\u201d as loud as we could and\nthen run. The cars would rip, roar and burn out toward our general\ndirection and the chase was on. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They never caught us. I don’t think\nthey ever tried. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I never saw a Kisser girl drive a\nmuscle car. Oh to have seen that!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A long while back, after hearing that\nGina had passed away, I went to the Carus Cemetery in hope of\nrevisiting her, and perhaps myself when I was a kid. I really had no\nidea if she was interred there, but most of the Followers are,\nincluding all the babies with no first names who were buried in\nsecrecy until one day it wasn’t a secret anymore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I found her. She had died in her late\n40s, prematurely, no doubt from some disease caused by genetic\nabnormalities associated with interbreeding. A half century of\ninterbreeding in Oregon City led to this. It’s still going on. The\nKissers are going extinct and writing their story as a biological and\nreligious extinction sounds almost like writing a science fiction\nnovel. In a way, the Kissers were science fiction, but not in the\nfuture, the past. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We were born in 1964. I sat down next\nto Gina’s grave and tried to remember her face, voice and movements\nfrom 45 years ago.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It was easy. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I’ll never forget the last time I\ntalked to Gina. After grade school, she went to a different junior\nhigh and I didn’t see her again until high school, my sophomore year,\na three-year absence. I was sitting outside, on a bench, eating my\nlunch alone as usual. She suddenly appeared and sat down next to me.\nShe greeted me and smiled. I think we even shook hands.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
She looked almost exactly the same as\nthat final day of sixth grade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
We talked but I don’t recall what\nabout. We didn’t have a class together so there was nothing to\ncompare. We obviously never ran in the same circles. We didn’t have\nany mutual interests\u2014except liking and disliking each other\nintensely in grade school\u2014and that was a million years ago. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Still, the bond was there. I can still\nfeel it. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The bell rang and she stood up to\nleave. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then she said the only thing I remember\nfrom our conversation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou turned out different.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI guess I did,\u201d I said, not really\nunderstanding how I was different.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If I don’t write the Story<\/em>, I\nwould dishonor that unique moment in my life, her keen intuition\nabout me, and Gina would just be buried in a disheveled rural\ncemetery and just another Follower, Kisser, an obscure (somewhat)\nunwitting victim of modern religious superstition, unknown to a wider\nworld that should have got to know her feisty spirit. She was\ndifferent, too, but never had a chance to be different. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Gina said goodbye and I never saw her\nagain. I have no idea if she ever graduated. I guess I could dig out\nmy yearbook from senior year, wherever that is. Part of me doesn’t\nwant to know. \n<\/p>\n\n\n\n Speaking of graduation, I remember\nmine. I think I sat next to a Kisser boy. He had the short hair,\nlean, blue collar, classic look of them. He had rough hands. We were\na class of 400 or so and I had never seen him before. He had never\nseen me before. We laughed about that It was the only time I ever\nremember seeing a Kisser laugh. \n<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My unique relationship to the Followers began in grade school, at Mt Pleasant. They were some of my classmates, including one, Gina Crone, my first crush. I think it was second or third grade when I first met Gina. She had long, straight, brown hair and wore nothing but homemade dresses. She was a whirling […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5849,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,942],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5945","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-meditations","category-oregon-city","has-post-title","has-post-date","has-post-category","has-post-tag","has-post-comment","has-post-author",""],"builder_content":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5945"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5947,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5945\/revisions\/5947"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5849"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5945"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5945"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nestuccaspitpress.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5945"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}