Termite TV - Life Stories

The life story in five minutes of John Montiel Des Pacio, formerly other names, not the only name I’ve ever used. They relate. Born in Long Beach, California, 1932. Extremely troubled childhood, extremely. I was raised by a couple of barbarians whose character of violence knew no limit. I’ve been told by some that it’s amazing that I even made it to the ripe age of sixty-six. I can still get it up. My God, five minutes, how can I carry on? I thought I could’ve thought for days. Glendale, Califorinia - probably the most misbegotten tale of my life. If I could just have been raised an orphan, everything would have been okay. Glendale, California. Most of my time there, the last all white community in the state of California. My father put up eighteen hundred thousand, eighteen hundred dollars to help keep the first black man out of Glendale, California. Can you believe it? We had a colored maid in our house. She only worked on weekends; she had to be out of town. They had an operating sundown law in Glendale that said that in 1957 all blacks and Orientals had to be out of town by sundown. When my father, when the banquet was over my father would have me drive the maid to the last street car, and I had a note for the police and I had to stay with her until she was on the police car, on the street car. And if the police came by, they would stay there until…my God, we’re two minutes down the line and I haven’t even talked about prison in Costa Rica. Prison in Costa Rica - that was great. That was probably one of the greatest experiences of my life. I learned about music. I dealt drugs in the place, which I was there for a little problem that I had with my car. I had a little car trouble. They found a half a pound of contraband in the back seat underneath my suitcase. That led to an, that one experience led to, prior to that I was busted in 1964 - possession and cultivation - in Palm Springs, California. That changed my entire life. That one event changed my entire life. But anyway, I was offered a situation called _____ in Costa Rica where I’m out on the streets and allowed to get my affairs in order to come back in and serve the eighteen months sentence that they gave me. So I took the opportunity, jumped the border into Nicaragua, where I was busted for being a communist, and I did another four months in a prison there that made me wish I had stayed in Costa Rica and had done the eighteen months, believe me. Eventually I got out of Nicaragua. I got home. I was the most whipped little puppy you could believe. One morning I got up, my wife, my daughter, and my three sons went up the street to make a telephone call, and I never saw them again. That was 1967. I moved to Haight-Ashbury. From Haight-Ashbury was to Skid Row, Skid Row to Sonoma County, where I spent thirty years in the same house. Not being a sedentary guy, but there I am. I woke up thirty years later. Somebody gave me, put a book in my hand called Mark Twain’s “Life on the Mississippi”. I had a twelve foot boat. I ended up sailing the Mississippi River from St. Paul, Minnesota to New Orleans. Somehow or another my daughter ended up in Hawaii in a very high risk lifestyle. I came to Hawaii to rescue her and ended up settling her myself, which is where I am. I’m now living on a fourteen acre piece of jungle land down by Bohoa called “The New Jalapeno”, box number 1161. Drop by and see me if you want to sometime. Thanks, huh. Remember, perseverance of the intelligent will always overcome perseverance of the ignorant.