Completely
Gone
Reform only yourself.
Montaigne
In the comic strip "Bringing Up Father," which is now venerated as early Americana, Maggie married Jiggs to reform him. It didn't work. It never does. Sandra MacIntosh could love Michael passionately, but she could not move him. After the ceremony he continued to be a sandpiper, wandering on the beach. He was of course totally unprepared for the shocks that followed marriage. Daily deliveries flooded the little post office on Balboa Island, and the rented cottage began to burgeon with silver trays, candelabra, and all manner of expensive wedding gifts from the east. Boxes were shipped in direct from Philco and Corningware. And the more that came in, the more the thought of eventually meeting Sandra's father intimidated Michael.
But the young man's shocks were nothing to the reaction of the senior Riddets. They were under the impression that their only daughter was already involved with someone else. The more they found out about the bizarre episode in Las Vegas, the harder time they had believing it. But as conscientious and loving parents they
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determined to make the best of it, and in a short time they arrived in California, loaded with more gifts for the bride and bridegroom. After all, they reasoned, Sandra was their daughter, and she had a good head on her shoulders. She must have known what she was doing.
Wilfrid Riddet discerned right away that Michael was a strange young man and something was wrong. Michael lied and told him he was a stable person and was planning to return to the University of Oregon, but Riddet saw through it all. After a couple of months Sandra quit her job and they drove a secondhand Volkswagen bus back to Philadelphia for a visit. As soon as Michael got a look at the Riddets' impressive home with its white pillars and virgin forest behind, his heart sank. He knew there was no way he could relate to these people. The house had a little apartment in the basement; and one day when Sandra (at her husband's urging) was out job-hunting and he was just hanging around, Mrs. Riddet came downstairs and blew up at him.
"What's the matter with you, Mike?" she demanded. "Why aren't you out working? How do you expect to support our daughter? What do you intend to do?"
Michael told her he guessed he would have a talk with her husband. Anything to get her off his back! That night he and Mr. Riddet sat down together in the beautifully furnished living room.
"What do you want to do with your life, Mike?" his father-in-law inquired in a kindly tone.
Michael had to think of something. "I've always wanted to be an airline pilot," he said finally.
"Well! There's an airfield right near here. Why don't you sign up for flying lessons?"
Michael did apply at the local field and took lessons. Eventually he even made his first solo flight. But meanwhile he and Sandra both got jobs at a Jewish summer
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day camp. Weeks passed, and it became clear to all parties that things weren't working out too well. The newlyweds needed to be on their own. So Michael and Sandra drove their VW bus back to the West Coast, found a little apartment above a garage in Newport Beach, acquired two kittens and three dogs, and tried again.
This time Michael found a job. He applied at a steel foundry and talked to the owner's daughter who, after sizing him up, told him, "I think you're a little too sharp to be working in a foundry. We're looking for a young man to train as our buyer. Would you be interested?"
"Well, I guess so," said Michael. But office work turned out to be a bore. They assigned him to different departments and he caught on quickly — usually too quickly. In the accounting department he found a sixty-eight-thousand-dollar error the first day and brought it to a superior's attention. It was covered up. In inventory control he suggested ways to improve the record-keeping, which were not appreciated. He asked for a raise and it was refused, so he quit.
The next job was with an electronics firm in Anaheim. Michael was to be an expediter. The Vietnam War was on, and the United States government was the chief customer. Michael soon discovered that some orders had been placed six months earlier and had not been filled. As an expediter, he did what was expected of him. He called people and told them, "Hey, you're not getting the stuff out. What's wrong? Let's move it!"
As a result, one of his bosses got very upset with him. Michael didn't understand why at first, but then he concluded that the people there were underworked and were trying to hang onto their jobs. The man told Michael, "We need more time, more money, and more people." And he warned him not to bother the other employees any more. Michael tried to be helpful and fit in, but once again he
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found himself upsetting the status quo. Rivalries developed, and he chose to depart.
Next Michael answered a newspaper advertisement for a car salesman, and this time he found himself in his element. In his first week he sold five cars and seemed to have tapped a natural talent. He had never sold cars before, but he possessed a gift of gab and seemed to tell the right stories. He would inform the customers, "It's cute, it fits your personality, you need it for your image, and it's only two hundred more than the other one." If it was a used car, he could come up with excellent reasons why it didn't run right. But he soon decided the dealer was taking advantage of him and not paying him what he should, so Michael switched jobs and started working at another car lot.
Here he did better; in his first year he won an award from Fiat for being a top salesman. His name was painted on the window of the agency, and he was presented with a pin that had a ruby in it They also gave him the best demonstrator car to drive; but he got more enjoyment out of a motorcycle he had picked up. His shaggy dog, Arnold, a cross between a golden retriever and a standard poodle, would sit on the gas tank and put his paws on the handle-bars; and they would go tooling through the neighborhood. Obviously Michael was not ready to join the establishment. He had used no LSD during his visit to Philadelphia, but he had been reading Timothy Leary on controlled psychedelic experience, and when they returned to the coast he resumed his experimenting. The Riddets, happy that their son-in-law was working at last, purchased a lovely new three-bedroom home for them in Irvine's exclusive University Park, but it only heightened the tension. Everything is being given to me, Michael thought bitterly. I don't have to earn a thing. He went
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back to Timothy Leary and found that his book was actually a Western version of the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which was intended to prepare people for death. He listened to the new Beatles album, "Revolver," and when John Lennon sang about turning off one's mind, relaxing, and floating down the stream, Michael recognized that the words were taken from Leary's book. He now had a link between the Beatles and LSD and began taking the drug once a week.
After he became a car salesman, he discovered that all the other salesmen drank, and he began to join them. Soon he was into his old drinking habits. Sandra had quickly become aware that her husband was involved in drugs, and when they moved into the new home she noticed a change for the worse.
It became extremely difficult for Sandra to carry on a serious discussion with Michael. If they had any disagreement, he would become defensive and leave the house. Two or three days later he would come back, usually at 2:30 or 3:00 in the morning, after the bars had closed. Drugs like LSD were still fairly new at that time, and Sandra didn't realize how dangerous they were.
In addition to liquor and hallucinatory drugs, he had now begun to dabble in TM (transcendental meditation), which was appealing to thousands of Americans. Its widespread following was due almost entirely to one guru, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who was founding hundreds of meditation centers in dozens of countries. The Maharishi was proving highly attractive, especially to young people. He seemed almost like a messiah, and Michael felt a need to have contact with something spiritual. These were the sixties, and the whole country was trying new things. Michael managed to get Sandra interested in it, mainly because it didn't have anything to do with drugs. They
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went to the training sessions and read the autobiography of Paramahansa Yogananda, the founder of the Self-Realization Fellowship. But Sandra's interest in it was short-lived, and she soon concluded it was a hoax. So they disagreed over that, too, and Michael took off again.
In spite of all the turmoil caused by Michael's habits and lifestyle, there are some tender memories of those days that both cherish. They were so young and full of life. The separations would be followed by tearful and loving reunions. Then God blessed them with a child, and a new and marvelous bond was established between them. By the time little Melinda was born (August 28, 1967), they had moved into the charming stucco house the Riddets had bought them, a kind and quality of house Michael had never lived in since he was born.
A year or so later during one of their reunions (which were becoming less frequent), Sandra became pregnant again. This discovery made her determined to see if she could salvage their marriage. Divorce was totally opposed to her view of life, and she hoped that with an all-out effort on her part some way could be found to work things out. She telephoned Michael in Laguna Beach, where he was staying with friends, and asked him to come over. She tried to have a sensible conversation with him, but there was no dealing with him. She finally said to him, "Here I am carrying your child and taking care of your home. Don't you love me at all?"
He looked at her with glazed eyes and said, "I just love everybody."
Sandra couldn't handle it. She put her furniture in storage, rented the house, and left in four days for Philadelphia, taking Mindi with her. But before leaving for the airport, she took a teary, hysterical telephone call from Michael. "Please, this is the biggest mistake of my life. I
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can't live without you!" But Sandra looked at her little girl and her own swelling body and thought, I just can't go through it again.
Once settled in Philadelphia, and resuming the even tenor of family life she had always known, Sandra began to realize how odd and erratic the whole adventure had been. Obviously the marriage was a shocking mistake, an aberration doomed to disaster. To confirm her judgment, Michael wrote her a rambling letter saying he had just met the Beatles. He add a little note to his daughter Mindi, telling her that he and John Lennon had just written her a lullaby.
When David James MacIntosh made his appearance on February 28, 1969, in Philadelphia, the Riddets promptly telephoned their lawyer son in Santa Ana, California, with the news. By coincidence on that same day Michael walked into his brother-in-law's office carrying a briefcase.
Jim Riddet greeted him with, "Today you're a father, you know, Mike. Sandy had a baby. You have a son named David."
"Wow," said Michael vacantly. "Thank you." He then proceeded to unravel his latest hallucinatory fantasy. He had been out on the desert, he said, working with the CIA on some flying saucers that had been sighted there. He had brought Riddet a lot of important documents so that if anything happened to him, Jim was to contact the CIA or the FBI and they would have a pension plan for Sandy and take care of her!
Riddet was flabbergasted. "What are you talking about?" he demanded. With that Michael opened his briefcase on the desk and dumped out a lot of papers. They included an old insurance policy, a dog license, a validated parking ticket, an expired passport, and some other papers of equal value.
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"This will take care of it," said Michael. "I'll be going now."
But Jim Riddet wouldn't let him go. He took him to dinner and talked to him at some length. That night Jim called his parents in Philadelphia and told them, "Mike's gone. He's just completely gone!"
