Youthful Recollections — Part Three
Rides and Hypnosis
I got my first car when I was around 15. It was a 1951 Chevy Powerglide. It wasn’t the hottest most desirable car, but I made the most of it. I decided that maybe I could add a little excitement to church attendance by inviting some friends along for what I called “a ride around the block” after the meetings.
I started experimenting with the car to see what it could do. I lived in Letha, Idaho at the time. I bragged that I made up 2% of the town’s population because it had about 50 people living there. The local church, however, drew from the farm community and a couple hundred attended each Sunday. Fortunately for me, we had no law enforcement in Letha as the nearest town of any size was Emmett, about 10 miles away.
In preparing for the ride around the block I greatly exceeded speed limits and normal safety procedures. One guy in particular, named Ashby, was greatly angered whenever I drove by his house rousing up a cloud of dust as I whizzed by. He owned the local gas station and whenever I got gas he told me the same thing.
“I called the Sheriff over in Emmett and told him to come out here and arrest you for speeding. He said he’s too busy to come this far for one speeder, but I’ll get him here sooner or later.”
For some reason this irritated me and made sure that from that point on I would drive even faster as I passed his house.
Then, whenever I got gas, he always made a point to let me know he was pestering the sheriff to come arrest me.
Anyway, after I got my ride around the block perfected, I decided to invite a few friends to participate after the next church meeting.
The next Sunday after church I asked some of the guys, “Would you like to go on a ride around the block?”
“What’s a ride around the block?” they asked.
“Hop in and I’ll show you.”
About six or seven crammed in the car and we took off in the direction of the school. Just before the school there was a wetlands area to the right of us with high vegetation we called “the toolies” and at a speed of about 70 miles an hour I suddenly drove off the road right into the toolies and who knows what.
The bunch screamed so loud they almost woke the dead.
What they did not know is that I had previously scoped out this spot where I drove off the road. It looked to them that we were headed toward certain death but I had pre-tested everything and knew I could maneuver our way to safety.
After getting back on the road I headed toward a dirt corner near Mr Ashby’s place. Unknown to the group I had practiced on this corner and hit the gravel just right so we went into a spin and it looked like we were going to wreck for sure. I pulled us out of it and we proceeded in one piece to the great relief of my friends. I then did the same thing with a couple other corners as I prepared for the final event – the Beet Dump.
The Beet Dump had some scales at the top of a ramp. On both sides of the scales were steel walls. Between the walls was just enough room for my car to pass with about two inches to spare. Now the funny part is this. As you drive up toward the scales at a speed of more than five miles an hour it looks like there will not be enough room for the car to pass through and even at a slow speed one would have to be careful. It looks like the metal walls will scrape both sides of the car.
Now if the speed is increased the illusion is created that the space to clear is less than the width of the car and it looks for sure like certain disaster awaits.
Out of the blue I took the kids toward the scales at 30-40 miles an hour and it even made me a little nervous as we approached. If I hadn’t practiced this, I would have sworn that there was not enough room to pass.
I thought I had scared then when I went through the toolies but this time they screamed like I has never heard guys scream before.
We cleared the scales and literally flew after clearing the scales like the general did in Dukes of Hazard.
After everyone calmed down I started driving back to the church. I remember thinking to myself that I had gone too far. These guys will never want to go with me again and will warn everyone to stay away from me.
After we got back to church everyone fell out of the car and somewhat dazed walked toward the church. They encountered another group of guys near the entrance. One of them asked where they had been.
The answer surprised me. One spoke up and said. “We’ve been on a ride around the block with Joe.”
“What’s a ride around the block?” they asked.
“It’s the most fantastic experience we’ve ever had,” they said.
“But what is it?”
“We can’t tell you,” was the reply. “There’s no words for it. You have to experience it for yourself. All we can say is there is nothing else like it.”
This second group of guys then started pestering me to give them a ride around the block. I was relieved that in the end the guys enjoyed the ride despite being scared to death but did not anticipate more demand for ride.
I gave the second group a similar ride around the block and when returning they agreed that it had to be experienced rather than explained.
Amazingly I never got called in by the Bishop for giving the rides as I guess no one wanted to spoil the fun by telling adults about it. Even so, the next little hobby of mine did attract some attention from authorities.
Around the age of sixteen I became interested in two subjects that was met with skepticism by religious and other authorities.
One day my sister brought home a book covering an assortment of subjects and I noticed that it had a section on handwriting analysis. I read it over and found it interesting. The next time I attended church I analyzed a couple friends. I’m sure I wasn’t very good as my knowledge was elementary but it did set off a chain reaction. From that point on I had all kinds of people coming to me wanting to be analyzed. I then decided that I should learn more on the subject and started buying all the books available on the subject. Then later on I took a course from the International Graphoanalysis Society.
Most people in and out of the church enjoyed getting analyzed and didn’t give me much grief. The only problem I had was a church publication had an article about handwriting analysis and pronounced it fraudulent. I had a number of people in the church give me a bad time over that, but most had not read the article.
Then about that same time period I became interested in hypnosis. I was always curious about it but there were not any books about the subject that I could find at the time.
Then one day my brother-in-law came to visit and he accidentally left a book on the subject. I studied it carefully and decided to give it a try. It wasn’t long before I was hypnotizing kids at church and school and had them do some silly and crazy, but harmless stuff. My interest was roused and I managed to find some more books on the subject and became pretty knowledgeable about it.
I soon ran amiss of the authorities at school and the church.
When school authorities demanded that I cease from hypnotizing kids I asked them if there was any law that I was breaking.
They had to admit that there was not.
I also asked if there was any school policy prohibiting it, and to this they admitted that there was not.
I then told them that since I was not breaking any rules, I would continue to practice the art.
The authorities were frustrated at this answer and somewhat angered, but there was nothing they could do.
Some church authorities were also upset and I believe it was the Bishop who called me in again. He told me that hypnosis was evil and I should cease doing it.
I asked him if there was anything in the scriptures that spoke of it and he admitted there was not. I then asked him if the Prophet had said anything about it being evil or something we should not do.
He couldn’t find anything from the Prophet on the subject.
I then replied that since I was not breaking any commandment of any kind that I would continue to do it.
The bishop was flabbergasted but he had no response.
There was about a year that I did a lot of hypnosis. Sometimes during the lunch break at school I had quite a crowd watching with interest as I put someone under and had them do something amazing or entertaining.
One time a student challenged me telling me that there was no way I could hypnotized him, so I invited him to give it a try. He went under quite easy to my delight. I can’t remember what I had him do but the audience was convinced I had him under. But after I woke him up, he said, “See I told you that you can’t hypnotize me!”
I was a little incredulous, but had an idea and said, “Let me try again.”
I put him under again and had him do a couple things but told him that he would not remember after I woke him up. Then I said I would give a signal such as snapping my fingers and he would instantly recall it all and he would then realize that he had been hypnotized.
It worked like a charm. When I woke him up he again insisted he had not been hypnotized, but when I snapped my fingers the memory came back and he admitted that he must have been.
On another occasion a student in the crowd told me that he heard that under hypnosis an onion can taste like a peach. I told him that was correct as I had recently had several subjects eat a piece of bread thinking it was a steak. He then said that he wanted me to try that out on him and I agreed.
I started putting him under when I learned a lesson in hypnosis that I hadn’t read in any book, and that is humor destroys the trance state.
Anyway, he seemed like a good subject and was going under well when someone in the audience cracked a joke. It made everyone laugh including the subject.
I continued putting him under and thought I had him deep enough despite the distraction of the joke.
We were just a couple blocks from a corner grocery store where we could purchase an onion, so about a dozen of us headed off in that direction. We all entered the store following the subject. The subject approached the clerk, who looked a little bewildered at such a group all coming in at once.
The subject looked at the clerk and said, “I’ll have one onion please.”
The clerk looked even more puzzled, but pointed to a barrel full of onions right next to our guy. He picked an onion off the top, lifted it to eye level and just stared at it for a minute. Then he forced himself to take a giant bite and chomped on it a couple times until he realized it surely did not taste like a peach, but 100% onion. He then spit it out on the floor in disgust.
The look on the clerk’s face was priceless as you could tell that he was indeed wondering what this crazy bunch of kids was up to.
This was a temporary setback for my credibility, but most understood the situation, and all but the subject with the taste of onion in his mouth had a good laugh.
On another occasion where things didn’t go as planned the laugh was on me.
As I was hypnotizing kids on the lawn during the lunch hour a good friend of mine approached and wanted me to put him under. This just happened to be Wayne, one of the characters in my Immortal books.
He seemed to be going under as normal when suddenly he fell back and his body started shaking and his eyes turned to the back of his head so you could only see the whites. He looked like he was possessed or something and I was quite terrified, thinking that perhaps I had destroyed my good friend’s brain.
I immediately went to his side to see if there was anything I could do when suddenly Wayne burst out laughing. As good friends sometimes do to each other, Wayne was playing a joke on me.
However, I was greatly received to find out it was a joke.
I had another friend who was a good subject and I hypnotized him regularly and noticed that he went under more deeply and quicker each time. Now all the books say that one cannot be hypnotized against his will but my friend was so sensitive that I decided to try it on him. To my surprise he went under even when I told him to try not to.
From this I concluded that repeated hypnosis interferes with the subject’s will and immediately stopped doing it except for some past life regression that I later got into. Later I bypassed regular hypnosis entirely and used harmless guided meditation techniques where the subject maintains full self-awareness.
June 22, 2008
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