MARGARET RUNYAN

CASTANEDA

(1921-2011)

the Wanderling

"I interrupted him: 'If I were to tell you that I have discovered the fundamental
way of life, and I could explain to you exactly how to achieve it, it would be very
difficult for you to accept.' Byron nodded. Carlos nodded. And I continued, 'But if
I tell you what a mysterious teacher has revealed to me, who has initiated me into
some great mysteries, then it will seem more interesting. It's much easier to
accept.' Like The Razor's Edge, said Allen. Like Siddhartha, said Byron. Carlos
nodded as if understanding perfectly."

MARGARET RUNYAN CASTANEDA: A Magical Journey With Carlos Castaneda

In the Fall of 2005 I had the opportunity to meet with and interview Margaret Runyan Castaneda,
the former wife of the author Carlos Castaneda, near her home in Peoria, Arizona. The primary
intent of the meeting, at least for me personally, was to erase some doubts regarding a variety
of inconsistancies that continually crop up in or around almost any serious discussion related to
the Informant and Carlos Castaneda as well as Castaneda's 1960 Paper on Datura.

Even though I had met Carlos Castaneda prior to Don Juan Matus ever entering the picture, that
is, during the late 1950s and just into the 1960s, the same period of time Runyan met and then
married Castaneda, I had never seen or talked to her prior to our 2005 meeting --- and, as fate
or karma would have it, a totally unplanned meeting that came about initially through what
seemed no more than a long string of unrelated events --- and far as I know, her last interview
related to anything Castaneda.

In early August of 2005 a few wispy clouds, like thousands of others have over the millenniums,
slauntered off the west coast of Africa into the Atlantic developing into a low pressure system
that eventually formed into a tropical depression around Bermuda. From there it turned into a
hurricane that crossed over Florida into the Gulf of Mexico after having been given the name
Katrina. On the morning of Monday, August 29, 2005 the center of the eyewall of Katrina passed
a little bit east of 50 miles due south of New Orleans, Louisiana, crossing directly over the small
communities of Buras-Triumph on the western side of the Mississippi River.

Watching the storm-track as it raced across the Gulf aimed directly towards New Orleans, all the
while anticipating the enormous devastation and loss of lives that would eventually befall the city
and the surrounding area, I volunteered with the American Red Cross to join their relief efforts in
any way possible. After a medical OK, shots, fingerprints, interviews, and a couple of required,
albeit quickly done back-to-back courses, in a day or two I was deployed as a national level DSHR
worker in conjunction with Katrina. No sooner had I begun getting the swing of actual feet-on-
the-ground intricacies involved with deployment than Hurricane Rita hit. Because of the on-
rushing of Rita, already in place Katrina shelters in her potential path were evacuated and shut
down. A good portion of the shelter crews from the closed sites near the area I was deployed
were sent to Austin, then reassigned. Some went to the mega-shelters in Houston and Austin,
others like myself put into crews starting and running short term emergency shelters north of
Austin near Round Rock then, when they were no longer needed, on to new shelters being set up
in the hurricane's inland destruction path along the Texas side of the Texas-Louisiana border.

Eventually my original three week deployment was edging toward six. After working three
shelters putting in 18 hour plus days with no days off for Rita, I was about to be sent to Houston
when I was assigned to a Red Cross Service Center in Austin. I had just come out of shelter duty
from what the Red Cross calls a "primative area" because it had no running water, electricity,
phones, air conditioning, showers, or gasoline. When I told the person at the assignment desk in
Austin I could really make use of a laundrymat and a shower before I was reassinged, rather than
send me to the mega-shelter in Houston he assigned me to the Service Center --- I mean only
nine hour days with Sundays off! Talk about plush.[1]

Finally, as things began to wind down and return to as normal as they could considering the
situation, and people began regaining some manner of control over their lives, the Red Cross
began finding itself with a redundant amount of material, equipment, and personnel. Some of
that redundant equipment was what the Red Cross calls ERVs ---Emergency Response Vehicles.
Hundreds and hundreds of ERVs had been driven from cities and areas all around the U.S. to the
areas of devastation --- then, when the original crews had been rotated out with new crews made
up of volunteers from almost anyplace taking over, and over time eventually less and less ERVs
needed, without the original crews to return them to their homebase, hundreds of ERVs began to
stack up. So said, because those ERVs without original crews needed to be returned and the cost
of flying down hundreds of original drivers was way to expensive, the Red Cross began requesting
already inplace individuals that were scheduled to rotate out, and willing to drive an ERV rather
than fly, to do so. Since my deployment time had long since passed and driving an ERV across
country sounded like a potential adventure I headed down to Houston to see if I could bag one
off.

The person in charge of hooking drivers up with ERVs told me the last two ready-to-go ERVs
headed in the same direction I was had just been assigned. One just left for the San Diego area,
the other was leaving the next morning for northern California. He said it would be at least four,
possibly five days before another west coast ERV would be fully checked out and ready to go,
unless I was interested in going in some other direction, I would just have to hang out for a few
days.

Before I had a chance to mull over going in another direction, the driver of the ERV heading
toward northern California, overhearing my dilemma, suggested I go with him and share driving
responsibilities since the distance to the ERV homebase was nearly 2000 miles away. The only
thing, he said, I would have to make do sitting in the back until Kerrville, Texas, as he had
promised to drop off a fellow volunteer somewhere around there who had lost her ride --- telling
me in the process that she had promised him Kerrville was right on the way, somewhere up along
the I-10 north of San Antonio. Since I was actually assigned to Red Cross National in Austin and
not Houston, to make things uncomplicated, that night, after I happened upon two or three
volunteers hiding out amongst the ERVs waiting for their rides to come up and sharing a couple
of beers with them, I curled up the best I could inside an unlocked ERV and fell asleep. The next
morning early I was headed north on the I-10 out of Houston.

Volunteers returning ERVs for the Red Cross have gas, food, and lodging paid for by the agency.
There are a couple of hitches involved however, one being a few rules that they really don't
emphasize a whole lot before you sign up to deliver an ERV. Since I wasn't an official driver I
wasn't given the rules, but I was told they include such things as that you can only drive so many
miles a day and then only in daylight hours. You can't purchase gas just anywhere, you can only
use certain select station brands. Same with motels. If you expect the Red Cross to pick up the
tab you can only stay in certain approved chains, which means one of the chain motels has to be
where you end your day's travel, etc., etc., all of which requires a certain amount of planning and
timing, undercutting any idea of a pure breeze in your face king of the road approach.

Two-hundred-and-sixty miles west along I-10 from Houston, all the while following the rules as
layed out by the Red Cross, we arrived in Kerrville. After bidding adieu to the other volunteer I
moved into the much more comfortable passenger seat. About an hour out of Kerrville, after
mostly back and forth banter and small talk, the driver started telling me he had only just
graduated from a major California university in June, as did his girlfriend. She went on to graduate
school while he selected to go do Katrina and Rita stuff before moving on, he hoped, to a stint in
the Peace Corps. His girlfriend was attending the University of Arizona in Tucson, a city we would
be going through by staying on I-10. What he wanted to know was, hinting for whatever reason
he didn't think I was one much for rules, would I be willing to speed up the process to get into
Tucson early, stay a couple of days so he could see his girlfriend, then pick up speed on the
otherside afterwards so we could catch up to be on schedule.

Seeing no real problem with his plan I just kicked back and watched mile after mile of the Texas,
New Mexico, and Arizona countryside roll by. It had been well over 45 years since I had traveled
across all the same states by motor vehicle, only going east then rather than west, and long
before Interstate 10 was even started, let alone completed. It was the day after Thanksgiving
1958. I was riding in the cab on the passenger side of a race car transporter carrying Ferraris and
Maseratis to Nassau in the Bahamas for Speed Week. The driver of the transporter was none
other than the top race car mechanic Joe Landaker, as reported in Of Cobras, Scarabs, Maseratis
and Zen. Even though the roads and highways were nothing anywhere like the Interstates of
today, and the transporter was loaded with vehicles, tires, and tools, Landaker seldom ever let
the speedometer needle drop under 100 miles per hour for any length of time.

Although we traveled at nearly half the speed of Landaker on his way to Nassau, we still arrived
in Tucson well ahead of schedule. I was soon introduced to the driver's girlfriend and her
roommate, a longtime friend of the girlfriend that the driver knew as well. Before I had a chance
to beat a hasty departure the roommate's boyfriend showed up, who of which she had only just
met that September when she started graduate school. So, while the driver, his girlfriend and the
roommate dwelled on-and-on into oldtimes, the roommate's boyfriend and I were left to fend for
ourselves. Typically, I wouldn't care one way or the other, however when the boyfriend walked in
an interesting thing happened. As he tossed his backpack onto the couch a well-worn copy of
Carlos Castaneda's third book, Journey to Ixtlan, fell to the floor. When I asked him about the
book he told me he was a heavy duty Castaneda fan, and an anthropology major. When I told him
a onetime professor Edward H. Spicer, now deceased, and a longtime critic of Castaneda,
practically founded the Anthropology Department at the University of Arizona, he told me he
knew of Spicer and his works and that Spicer was one of the reasons he was doing his graduate
work there. He told me he was working on a term paper on Castaneda for one of his classes and
in the process of doing research discovered Castaneda's ex-wife, Margaret Runyan, lived a little
over 100 miles north in the outskirts of Phoenix. Not only that he said, he had talked to her on
the phone and had met her once AND was going to meet with her again in a couple of days. My
jaw fell open. The last I heard Runyan had basically disappeared from the public-light, living
somewhere in West Virginia. I told the boyfriend that I would very much like to go with him as
Runyan and I had mutual friends and I would at least like to say hello if possible.

The boyfriend shrugged his shoulders in a it really didn't matter to him sort of way and the driver
of the ERV said he had no problem staying an extra day, so on the day of the meeting I joined
the roommate's boyfriend on the trip north. We left Tucson early in the morning arriving around
10:30 AM, our destination being a stripmall Starbucks adjacent to a larger mall northwest of
Phoenix on W. Union Hills Drive near the 101 Freeway --- selected I was told because it was close
to where Runyan lived. Runyan had already arrived, sitting at a table alone. Glancing out across
the room as I walked in I didn't recognize her nor guess anybody to be her, but, since the
boyfriend had met with her before he walked right up to her table.

Where I had stayed the night before there was a crime drama on TV in which the lead detective
said a suspect's car was 30 years old. In my mind's eye I pictured something like a big black
1940s four-door Ford with big bulbous fenders and long running boards all along the sides.
Instead, the suspect's car turned out to be a 1975 Chevy. A similar, albeit reverse misconception
transpired when I first laid eyes on Runyan. While it is true years had passed since her heydays
with Castaneda in the early 1960s I was actually set aback realizing she was now 84 years old.

My feeling was she wasn't at Starbucks alone, that someone brought her and whoever it was,
was still there or lurking close by, although all the time we talked, which was a good part of the
day, nobody came up to the table nor did she look at her watch or seem to make eyecontact
with anybody else in the room as though she knew them.

After introductions the boyfriend went to get iced teas all around leaving Runyan and I at the
table alone for a brief time. I told her nothing of knowing Carlos Castaneda, only emphasizing
having known Louis L'Amour, who she had been engaged to for a year and a half between her
second marriage and her marriage to Castaneda, how L'Amour and I met and when I saw him last.
I also told her I had met Clement Meighan, the person Castaneda's foremost acknowledgment
went to in his first book. Just as I was to answer how Meighan and I met through a friend of my
uncle, movie actress Rochelle Hudson, the boyfriend returned with the iced teas ending the
conversation.

Runyan seemed to take me innocently enough from the very beginning and seemed most happy
to discuss openly and freely her views on things relative to Castaneda with a graduate student so
enthusiastically bent on writing a paper simply for a class. What cinched it though between the
two of us, knowing she was versed in Buddhism and known at one time to be able to converse
for hours on the subject, I told her I had studied under the noted Japanese Zen master Yasutani
Hakuun Roshi, without favorable results I ensured her, as well as doing hard time in a Zen
Monastery situated high up along the southern edge of the Qinghai-Tibet plateau --- with a
totally different set of results. With that she relaxed, seemingly as I looked at her, as though
years flowed from her face, suddenly radiating a youthful ambience and giving off a striking
demeanor totally undermining all of the years of her chronological age.

During the day or so period before going to see Runyan, without revealing any major connections
to Castaneda, all the while trying to exhibit nothing more than a casual curiosity on my part,
albeit spiking the drink, I briefed the boyfriend about a number of inconsistencies he never
thought of found in Castaneda's early works that would be interesting to see how Runyan would
resolve them. In the time that the two of us and Runyan talked, except for continuing
interjections or questions on my part culled from things she had said --- or didn't say --- in her
book during the regular flow of the conversation, the boyfriend did most of the work for me.
When we got back to Tucson he dropped me off at his apartment along with his notes and took
off to catch up with his girlfriend. That night, since I was crashing at his place sleeping on the
floor, I had the opportunity to go over and over his notes. The next morning the ERV driver
picked me up and we headed toward California and points north, never to see any of them,
including the driver after I was left off, again.

What I came away with from our meeting was that Runyan did not see herself as an author, in
the classical or otherwise. She was just a person caught up in events like most of us are, only in
her case Carlos Castaneda was a major part of those events --- and because it was Carlos
Castaneda she was caught up with, and there was so much disinformation about him she just
wanted to set the record straight.

How she told it to me was that over the years she had been approached many times, some
positively, some negatively, some for mere exploitation, to write a book on her association with
Castaneda, some offers with pretty good up-front fees attached. Turning them all down,
sometime in the early 1990s, using 8-1/2 x 14 lined yellow legal pads, she started writing stuff
down as she remembered them, eventually numbering the pads as she went along 1, 2, 3, etc.
As she was writing something in a higher number pad she would remember something that
should have been in a lower number pad, say number 1, so she started a 1-B, 2-B, etc. After a
year or two she had a whole stack of completely full pads, maybe 15 or 20, that only she could
make any sense of, so she began seriously thinking she should start putting the information into
actual book form. That was done by reading what she had written on the yellow pads out loud, in
order, one-by-one, while somebody else typed it, then going over and over it until it sounded
right.

The logistics of it all was all very interesting, but what I really wanted to know about was
Clement Meighan. Meighan died in 1997. Runyan's book was published in 1996. In Runyan's case,
as with almost everybody else who writes a book, there is usually a significant lead time between
the time a person starts writing a book and when it gets published. Since her book was published
in 1996, that would have put the main thrust of Runyan's lead time at the exact same time that
Meighan and I had our face-to-face discussions. Because of those discussions, the 1960s datura
information would have been right on the forefront on Meighan's thoughts --- fully resolved and
hacked out, where previously it had really never carried much weight. It is quite the coincidence
that the discussions Meighan and I had eventually showed up so strongly in her book AND, since
publication, so many people have run with it where previously the depth of the concept layed
fallow. If Runyan contacted or inteviewed Meighan regarding material prior to the publication of
her book, for her book, I wanted to know.[2]

Runyan told me she was living on the east coast with family members at the time she started her
book and still did so when she seriously began devoting herself to it. At the sametime Meighan
had since retired and living clear across the country in Oregon. With money short, traveling and
staying any length of time to conduct any sort of an interview was prohibitive so, in lieu of a
face-to-face interview, she wrote him. Although during our discussion neither of us had the full
and comprehensive quote below in it's entirety with us or quickly at our fingertips, the roomate,
using his laptop, either searched down or had loaded on his computer The Informant and Carlos
Castaneda, which according to archived sources had been online for public scrutiny easily since
before April of 2004. After seeing the partial quotes used in context found in that paper, she
was able to clarify for me in our discussion that the full paragraph below that she uses in quotes
in her book is from Meighan personally and was something he had written himself in a several
page response to her request for an interview:

"'His informant knew a great deal about Datura, which was a drug used in initiating
ceremonies in some California groups, but had been presumed by me and I think most other
anthropologists to have passed out of the picture forty or fifty years ago,' Meighan
recalls. 'So he found an informant who still actively knew something about this and still had
used it. He turned in a term paper which had alot of information in it that wouldn't have
been possible to get, unless you had an informant who was knowledgeable about this plant
and material. It was a very good paper and I encouraged him to continue his research. He
reported the fact that there was still an Indian who knew about the use and practice of
Datura as a power plant. A lot of this came about in his first book. He talked about the fact
that it is very important what part the root comes from. There's alot of symbolism and
fantasy about the male and the female plants and whether it is a deep root. I doubt
whether any of that had any pharmacological value whatsoever, although he investigated
that. He went around and talked to various people about their beliefs. But that business
 about Datura, so far as I know, wasn't published in literature anywhere. I read most of the
California stuff very carefully and that's where the resistance comes in, when you start
asking people about a whole set of beliefs and use of a drug, when you start dealing with
ceremonial knowledge and stuff that's hard to get and not supposed to be revealed. I was
very impressed with his paper. Obviously, he was getting information that anthropologists
had not gotten before.'"
THE INFORMANT AND CARLOS CASTANEDA

NOTE: Although the above quote is found only in a partial form in THE
INFORMANT AND CARLOS CASTANEDA, the original source in it's entirety,
that is, it's full and complete form as presented above, is from
Runyan's book A MAGICAL JOURNEY WITH CARLOS CASTANEDA as found in
Chapter 14 Beginnings. As related in the paragraph just prior to the
quote, Runyan, after seeing the partial quotes used in context as found
in the Informant, she was able to clarify for me in our discussion the
full paragraph as found in her book.

So, now I knew when and where her information came from ... Meighan himself ... and done so at
the sametime she was writing her book. As well, I felt much better recounting what she wrote in
my works because of being a recent acquisition rather than remembered and presented as if
verbatim from something she overheard thirty years before.

Notice the paragraph so presented as found in her book is in quotes, that is, she didn't just write
it out of whole cloth, it is quoted from somewhere or someone. That someone is Meighan. Notice
at the end of the first sentence she specifically states Meighan reccalls. Meighan recalls ... not
that she recalled it, or that Castaneda recalled it, or that somebody else recalled it, but that
Meighan recalled it. She doesn't say he SAID it or TOLD her either. For her to know he recalled it
and quote him she had to get the information from somewhere. That somewhere was his written
response to her request. If you read carefully what is presented in the quote it is fairly casual,
especially for a professor, or former professor as the case may have been. Notice the use of the
word "stuff" several times in a sort of shortcut way to get across what he is relating to Runyan.
There are run on sentences and the use of words using apostrophes and a few words later not
using them. It is written that way and then quoted that same way by Runyan because when
Meighan wrote it, it was being written as to a friend, not for publication in some scientific journal.

Over the years Runyan had taken a lot of heat for just being nothing else but the wife come ex-
wife of Carlos Castaneda, especially so after her book came out. So, over time ... and possibly
even learned from Castaneda himself ... she seemed to display a demeanor that I perceived as a
tendency to hold her cards close to her vest. Although she was quite open regarding
corresponding with Meighan up to a point she did so in such a fashion that she left you feeling
unclear as to if it was a rather lenghty correspondence or a just onetime happenstance. She also
hinted around, giving an air about but without directly saying it, that there was more than
written correspondence between the two regarding all issues Castaneda.

DON JUAN MATUS

 CASTANEDA AND DON JUAN MATUS
THE NOGALES BUS STATION MEETING

MAYA RUINS AND THE SPRING EQUINOX

A MAGICAL JOURNEY WITH CARLOS CASTANEDA

AS WRITTEN BYMARGARET RUNYAN CASTANEDA

TRAVELS IN THE YUCATAN

ASTEROIDS, SHAMANS, AND THE HIDDEN MAGIC OF MAYA TEMPLES

Fundamentally, our experience as experienced is not different from the Zen master's. Where
we differ is that we place a fog, a particular kind of conceptual overlay onto that experience
and then make an emotional investment in that overlay, taking it to be "real" in and of itself.

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As to the subject of donations, for those who may be so interested as it applies to the
gratefulness of my works, I invariably suggest any funds be directed toward THE
WOUNDED WARRIOR PROJECT and/or THE AMERICAN RED CROSS.
Footnote [1]

After having volunteered with the American Red Cross and being deployed for weeks-and-weeks-
and-weeks working four hurricanes (Katrina, Rita, Gustav, and Ike), because of an innate longing
for a distinct separation immersed in total quietude mixed in with a certain longing for a long lost
Terry and the Pirates milieu of the Asian atmosphere --- without concern by or for others with
my support system --- I did just that, returned after thirty years plus to re-participate in and
complete a 12 weeks meditation regimen I was unable to finish.

In Rangoon, Burma, now called Yangon, Myanmar, there is a place called the Mahasi Meditation
Center, a rather large complex squeezed neatly into twenty acre compound exclusively for the
participating in and for the learning of Vipassana Meditation, the same meditation method
developed, used, and taught by the Buddha in ancient times. Those who seek admission to the
center undergo full-time meditation regimen for six to twelve weeks which is considered an
appropriate period of retreat for one to gain a basic knowledge and experience into Vipassana
meditation.

Years ago as a young lad in my twenties I had attended meditation sessions at the center, but
because of a series of mitigating circumstances beyond my control as found in the Doing Hard
Time In A Zen Monastery link below and unrelated to the meditation center itself, I was unable to
reach completion of the full 12 week meditation regimen as offered by the center.

A few days before I was to complete my 12 weeks, and for all practical purposes, on a
countdown in hours to depart, one of the monks, in a highly unusual set of circumstances, came
to me and said an American woman had arrived at the office requesting to see me. In that only a
very small cadre of people actually knew where I was and what I was doing, thinking someone
seeking me must have some importance behind it, I agreed to go back with the monk. When I got
to the administrative area the woman was gone, leaving only a $100 dollar Desert Inn poker chip
to be given to me. The poker chip led straight to Chiang Mai and the jungles of Thailand. See:

PHYLLIS DAVIS
The following quote is from the above Phyllis Davis site and refers to Phyllis specifically and is
highly applicable, at least in a secondarily sort of way, in seeking me out:

"She knew that for Hurricane Rita with the Red Cross I had been deployed to and helped
reopen a previously evacuated Katrina shelter in Deweyville, Texas and from there had gone
down to her birth-town, the then completely evacuated city of Port Arthur and nearby
Nederland where she grew up searching for stragglers and fuel. If I interacted with any of
her family members or friends is not known, but she always liked the way I had gone down
into the Port Arthur, Nederland area to lend help in such a devastated area."

Amazingly enough, as far as the Mahasi Meditation Center is concerned, at least for those who
may be so interested, for foreign meditators, the entire period of their stay for study-practice at
the center --- six to twelve weeks --- is FREE, including both full boarding and lodging. (see)

For almost anything else you would ever want to know regarding staying at the Mahasi
Meditation Center, etc., please refer to the center's frequently asked questions section by
clicking HERE and HERE.

DOING HARD TIME IN A ZEN MONASTERY

Footnote [2]

In April of 1998, before the existence or content of Castaneda's 1960 Paper on Datura became
widely known, Castaneda died. Any knowledge thereof came about mostly through Runyan's
book. Until that time the contents and subject matter, or even that he wrote such a paper, was
not very high up on anyone's radar. Even those who were making a full time living shredding
every thought and word of Castaneda were not lambasting him with his paper.

Meighan retired in 1991 and died in 1997. Runyan's book did not come out until the very end of
the year, 1996. Well before then, and especially through his retirement years, Meighan had tired
of all the probing and questions regarding Castaneda and made it a point to avoid being sucked
in by the constant bombardment of questions by using canned responses or making himself
largely unavailable for comment anytime the topic came up. He did, however, make himself
available to me primarily for two main reasons, reasons I get into more thoroughly in the 1960
Paper on Datura, linked above. Briefly however, through me and our initial contact introduction he
discovered that the person who turned out to be the informant in The Informant and Carlos
Castaneda Meighan knew very well and had very fond memories of from the past. Secondly, it
was from that knowledge of the informant, my Uncle, that I was able to breach the subject of
two almost exact parallel near death experiences, one Meighan's and one mine, that inturn
opened up the doors for ME to become a confidant.
 FREE ONLINE PDF VERSION

If the link remains active, and it has for several years, below is a sort of odd link to a completely
free PDF online version of Margaret Runyan Castaneda's book A Magical Journey With Carlos
Castaneda. If you search PDF versions of her book on the internet they invariably lead to any
number of costs, sign ups, or gotcha-links. The one below actually just has her full 222 page
book available for your reading pleasure. However, you have to by-pass the all the ads and
download requests --- of which you DON'T have to do --- download anything, that is. Simply go to
the side scroll and scroll down a short way to the title page then must move the pages forward
as you read. As far as I have been able to determine, that's it.

A MAGICAL JOURNEY WITH CARLOS CASTANEDA

 SCENE FROM THE ORIGINAL TERRY AND THE PIRATES AS DRAWN BY MILTON CANIFF DATED JANUARY 27,
1935.

At the end of the summer of 1953, just as I was about to start the 10th grade or so, the August
- September #6 issue of the comic book Mad came out. Inside #6 was a story, drawn by my all
time favorite non-animator cartoonist Wallace Wood, that spoofed or satired big-time the long
running comic strip Terry and the Pirates, with Wood in his spoofing, calling it Teddy and the
Pirates.

Although I had followed Terry and the Pirates a good portion of my life, and knew how Milton
Caniff, the artist-cartoonist of the strip, presented Terry's world that he and his so-called Pirates
lived in, Wood's top-half opening drawing below, showing his version of an underbelly far east like
milieu, real or not, that exemplified the Asian atmosphere along with the rest of the story hit me
like a hammer, with me, the teenager that I was, sucking up his version as my version and as my
version, the real version. Ten years later, thanks to Uncle Sam and his friendly Selective Service,
found me in Rangoon, Saigon, and Chiang Mai, as well as other such places, even meeting
warlords. Those ten years after high school, especially in and where I traveled, having gone from
a teenager to an almost mid-twenties GI, my vision not only didn't wane, but was bolstered and
grew. Notice the tommy guns, stabbings, hand grenades and exotic women. So too in the second
panel, i.e., lower left hand corner, the two crashed P-40 Flying Tigers.

WANDERLING AND THE PIRATES

(please click image)
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