The Atomic Priest I

The Atomic Priest I

About myself (in brief): Born March 18, 1970 in Manchester, Connecticut to Roy Neil George and Enid Rose Mitchell-George, I was named Richard Clark George after some relatives and, well, gosh, it just sounded fun to give me three first names. We lived in Boston, Massachusetts for a spell until my father transferred from the U.S. Navy into the U.S. Coast Guard and we moved to Tampa, Florida. From there we moved to Mobile, Alabama--my parents, me, and my two sisters: Marjorie Elizabeth George (born two years after me) and Julie Anna Christine George (born two years before me). My father left Coast Guard service and, in 1979, we all moved to northern California.

Now, two weeks before moving from the college community where my father had been attending business school in Mobile, Alabama my family was playing around with a Ouji Board. According to God, who spoke to us through the Ouji Board (apparently) our family had exactly fourteen days in which to pack up and move west. When we asked why, one-by-one the strings on my dad's string art sailing ship plucked from their prospective nails. We were convinced when, quite suddenly, the entire work of art fell from the wall, hitting the bare floor with such verocity that the quarter-inch glass covering the frame shattered.

We had our Buick gassed and packed less than two weeks later, a U-Haul hitched to the bumber, and little more than what money we made from our moving sale set aside for food, lodging, personal necessities, and emergencies. Needless to say, we left the Ouji Board behind.

The trip from Alabama to California in late-August/early-September 1979 was frought with the usual set-backs but, once we reached San Jose, California and rented a cheap motel room for the night, it became very obvious that our trip out west had not been in vain. The faith we had as a family back then kept us from enduring the single worst hurricane in Mobile, Alabama's recorded history, a monster of a storm that wiped out the little college community in which we lived. Totally. Absolutely.

The State of Alabama suffered its worst natural disaster in recorded history when Hurricane Frederic, whose winds blasted the coast and inland areas with sustained gusts up to and surpassing (in some cases) 130-mph, slammed onland. Since the hurricane smashed into our prior residence at night, it made evacuating far more difficult, claiming lives and causing innumerous injuries.

According to our previous neighbors, the home we had been renting in Mobile, Alabama was "a total loss" and we were assured that our lives would have "certainly been lost" if we had remained there.

Thanks to our faith in God and a silly Ouji Board, every member of my family is alive today and living right here in the Golden State.