J. Richard Jacobs was born 15 November 1940 in Santa Monica, California. It was, for the residents of this upscale little town sandwiched between Brentwood and the Pacific Ocean, a travesty in serious need of fixing. The solution was simple. They ran the Jacobs family out of town and settled back to their comfortable, upscale, small, beachfront town lives. The family sought a place where their little cretin could grow in anonymity. They believed they had found such a place in the high desert village of Victorville, California, but they were woefully mistaken. News of the rotten beast's arrival spread like fire on the wind in the tinder dry brush around town and, once again, the family was forced to flee.
This time luck was with them and they found what they were looking for in the hills east of Salem, Oregon. Their nearest neighbor lived two miles away and the closest thing to a town nestled quietly more than ten miles to the east, its population unaware of the thing growing at the edge of the town limits. There the Jacobs family settled and the rest, as they say in cheap productions and tabloids, is history.
Is all of that true? Well, not exactly, but it was fun. The real story is a bit boring. The parts about being born in 1940 in Santa Monica, CA, moving to Victorville, CA, and eventually settling on a farm in rural Oregon were true. The rest was ... well ... embellishment and a little, okay, a lot of misdirection. What follows is the real thing:
It all began in a minuscule four-room house in rural Oregon. There was a fifth room, a two-holer, but it was out back and not attached. Anyway, in the early years, that tiny house was home to my mother, her mother and father, and lovable little me. My father was in the USMC. We didn't see him for several years while he took an all expenses paid tour of the Pacific islands with the First Marine Division. Come to think of it, we didn't see much of him in the later years, either. He liked the first tour so much he volunteered for a second. Semper fi and apple pie!
I began my education in a one-room school (there were two additional rooms, but they were also out back and not attached). The school was a couple of miles from home and there was no bus, so, I'm one of the few who can honestly say, "What're you complainin' about, huh? When I was your age I had to walk two miles forth and back in the snow and rain, ya lazy punk, ya!" The rain was the worst, you know, because of the red clay that would get slicker than baby snot and as sticky as the best of contact cements when the rain fell, which, in Oregon, is almost daily -- except when it's snowing. By the time I got to school, my feet would be so heavy I could hardly move them.
Well, that school is what got me interested in physics, particularly the ideas surrounding the theory of relativity. You see, it was there I learned things could move faster than the speed of light. At least, that's what I thought. The teacher, I've forgotten her name (they tell me that's how the mind deals with traumatic events), wore a yardstick in her sash like a pirate in the movies. That stick, I'm convinced, moved several times light speed. It would strike the back of my hand with such force that a molecular mixing of hickory and flesh would occur, and it all happened so fast I never saw a thing.
My interest in the Universe around us was significantly increased when one of my uncles gave me a beautiful brass and bronze telescope he smuggled out of Germany. It was my seventh and most important birthday. I know that because it's the only one I can still remember. With my well-honed habit of reading everything I could get my hands on, the burden of infernal homework thrust upon me by sadistic teachers, and that mesmerizing telescope, I discovered one could survive nicely without sleep.
Mom would get on my case whenever she caught me using her flashlight to read under the covers, but I knew she didn't mean it. Besides, batteries in those years didn't have the lasting power they have today, there was no drum-thumping bunny inside. Aha! Maybe it was the cost of the batteries that bugged her so much. After the flashlight stopped popping photons off the bulb's filament and I was sure everyone else was asleep, I'd slip out the window with my telescope (she knew about that, too, but never said anything. Moms know everything, you know.). That was no easy chore because the telescope was bigger than I was. In hindsight, I wish I hadn't sold it to some other kid later on, the thing is probably worth a small fortune by now!
You would think that with my passion for watching the sky, a drive that hasn't diminished one iota in all these years, I would have become an astronomer or something closely related, but I didn't. I started out my working life (1956 - at the age of 15) in the aerospace industry as a technical illustrator and writer. My stepdad was a songwriter in Hollywood and I engaged in that end of the writing world as well. Also did copywriter work in ad agencies and such. Later, I was taken by another of my passions and became a naval architect in 1965, a field in which I worked until late 1993. Do I regret not having pursued astronomy or physics? In some ways, yes, but in general I do not. I studied them, or course. I used the education, too, but only in small ways.
Anyway, I "retired" to Mexico where I had been working under contract for a few years with a firm south of Cd. Juárez teaching their workers the art of boatbuilding while they busied themselves with teaching me every bad word there is in Spanish. I am fluent in Spanish profanity and an expert in vulgarisms.
There, I became active in several organizations in the promotion and popularization of the sciences, and lectured in several schools on NEOs (Near Earth Objects), PHAs (Potentially Hazardous Asteroids), Mars, the possibilities of life in the Universe, and general astronomy topics. It was a rewarding experience. I was also involved with the independent University of the City of Juárez and the Juárez Institute of Technology in forming a working commission with city and state governments aimed at bringing about some major reforms in environmental awareness and science education in the lower grades.
I returned to the States in 2001 and worked as a lowly substitute teacher in a small school district, teaching mainly science and mathematics, but also English, journalism and history at the local high school. Failing health forced me to leave that and I now write science fiction novels and short stories, along with other weird stuff. I continue watching the dark sky (at night of course) and wander around the desert in search of meteorites (another of my passions), an activity usually done during the day so I can see the rocks. Makes sense, doesn't it?
