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.
We instantly clashed. We were always
getting into tussles at recess and always played four square or
tether ball together. We touched and pushed each other a lot and
hurled insults back and forth. She particularly gave it to me hard
over my last name. If I had known the meaning of the word “crone”
in those days, I would have given it to her as equally hard. We were
in love and hate. Go back to your elementary days. There was always
someone like that for everyone.
There was never a furtive kiss. There
was, once, one furtive look between us. I think we both knew anything
else was taboo.
After grade school, formal and public
socialization between Follower and non-Follower children permanently
ended. The lines of separation became clear in junior high. Boys
could not approach Kisser girls. Girls could not approach Kisser
boys. Many years later, a friend of mine who attended another junior
high in Oregon City in the 70s told me she once flirted with a Kisser
boy at school. It took all of one day for three Kisser girls to
confront her after school and threaten to beat her up if she ever
messed with the boy again. She didn’t.
There was no mixing and no little Romeo
and Juliet scenarios ever unfolded that I knew about, but that didn’t
mean I didn’t worship the Kisser girls from afar. I wasn’t the only
one. They were otherworldly beautiful but totally unapproachable, let
alone obtainable. What a strange feeling it was to walk among them in
the hallways or sit next to them in classrooms and know any
interaction with them was impossible, even academic interaction.
In junior high and high school, the
girls prepped for being a wife and mother. They took as many home ec
classes as were offered and took them over and over again. The boys
prepped to be working class men. They took all the shop classes and
took them over and over again. Neither the boys or girls went out for
sports or rally or anything like that. They moved together as one
throwback social unit that was practically invisible to outsiders
except for matters pertaining to dress or speech.
Besides Gina, I have many vivid
recollections of Kissers in my youth, but two stand out. They involve
sports and muscle cars.
Kisser boys were the greatest natural
athletes in Oregon City history. How do I know that? I watched them
play. Had they gone out for football, basketball and track and field,
Oregon City would have built the greatest high school sports dynasty
in state history. It would still be going on!
But of course they didn’t go out for
sports because they wouldn’t see a doctor to obtain the physical
clearance the state required for participation.
None of them were ever coached. They
never came to the high school games. Today, I wonder if they ever
talked about how much better they were than the star players.
I saw them play basketball in junior
and high school PE classes and during lunchtime ratball sessions. I
will never forget Kisser boys dunking in ratball and knowing most
members of the varsity team couldn’t even touch the rim. They weren’t
all that accomplished as long-range shooters and rarely shot
intermediate jumpers. They wanted to drive hard to the hoop and
challenge. The only defense they played was in the air, at the rim.
They played football on Saturday
afternoons at Rivercrest Park—rain on shine—almost year round. I
was there watching many times. These were full on, full field, full
speed, 11-on-11 (sometimes more) tackle affairs and displayed some of
the most brutal headhunting I have ever seen in football, in person
or in cinema, straight out of the Jack Tatum/Oakland Raiders
playbook, circa 1977. They perfected the clothesline and didn’t help
each other off the ground.
I never saw a single player injured,
nor a fight break out.
The tackling was vicious, but in
contrast, I also witnessed the most skillful and artful pickup
football I have ever seen played: long bombs, double and triple
reverses, laterals. I remember crazy leg kickoff returns, stiff arms
made from steel, and athletes who could have played at the then Pac-8
level.
Kisser girls never played any sports
that I ever observed. PE was segregated by gender in those days so I
never saw them participate. I might have lost my mind had they been
running around me playing floor hockey, badminton or dodge ball. And
what about hackey sack? Oh to have seen that!
The girls liked to watch the boys play
football. They would sit inside or on the hoods of their boyfriends’
muscle cars, smoking, listening to rock and roll on the radio, and
raise a cheer or two. They were sort of early period Bruce
Springsteen characters in that way. They were, however, not born to
run. They never left Clackamas County.
It was immediately after those Saturday
gridiron sessions, when the muscle cars were leaving the park, that
my friends and I would scream “Kissers!” as loud as we could and
then run. The cars would rip, roar and burn out toward our general
direction and the chase was on.
They never caught us. I don’t think
they ever tried.
I never saw a Kisser girl drive a
muscle car. Oh to have seen that!
A long while back, after hearing that
Gina had passed away, I went to the Carus Cemetery in hope of
revisiting her, and perhaps myself when I was a kid. I really had no
idea if she was interred there, but most of the Followers are,
including all the babies with no first names who were buried in
secrecy until one day it wasn’t a secret anymore.
I found her. She had died in her late
40s, prematurely, no doubt from some disease caused by genetic
abnormalities associated with interbreeding. A half century of
interbreeding in Oregon City led to this. It’s still going on. The
Kissers are going extinct and writing their story as a biological and
religious extinction sounds almost like writing a science fiction
novel. In a way, the Kissers were science fiction, but not in the
future, the past.
We were born in 1964. I sat down next
to Gina’s grave and tried to remember her face, voice and movements
from 45 years ago.
It was easy.
I’ll never forget the last time I
talked to Gina. After grade school, she went to a different junior
high and I didn’t see her again until high school, my sophomore year,
a three-year absence. I was sitting outside, on a bench, eating my
lunch alone as usual. She suddenly appeared and sat down next to me.
She greeted me and smiled. I think we even shook hands.
She looked almost exactly the same as
that final day of sixth grade.
We talked but I don’t recall what
about. We didn’t have a class together so there was nothing to
compare. We obviously never ran in the same circles. We didn’t have
any mutual interests—except liking and disliking each other
intensely in grade school—and that was a million years ago.
Still, the bond was there. I can still
feel it.
The bell rang and she stood up to
leave.
Then she said the only thing I remember
from our conversation.
“You turned out different.”
“I guess I did,” I said, not really
understanding how I was different.
If I don’t write the Story, I
would dishonor that unique moment in my life, her keen intuition
about me, and Gina would just be buried in a disheveled rural
cemetery and just another Follower, Kisser, an obscure (somewhat)
unwitting victim of modern religious superstition, unknown to a wider
world that should have got to know her feisty spirit. She was
different, too, but never had a chance to be different.
Gina said goodbye and I never saw her
again. I have no idea if she ever graduated. I guess I could dig out
my yearbook from senior year, wherever that is. Part of me doesn’t
want to know.
Speaking of graduation, I remember
mine. I think I sat next to a Kisser boy. He had the short hair,
lean, blue collar, classic look of them. He had rough hands. We were
a class of 400 or so and I had never seen him before. He had never
seen me before. We laughed about that It was the only time I ever
remember seeing a Kisser laugh.
