24 EARLY YEARS EARLY YEARS which I naturally would have done anyway. The law had chased me for twenty miles across the hills and gullies of the desert and did not throw the book at me. They had as much fun as I did. A game warden was listening on the two-way radio and thought it was hysterical. He heard the cop saying that the antelope should take some lessons from Rudy and his hotrod Chevrolet. Nowadays, our uptight system, which is highly influenced by the media, ' -^uld have charged me with everything under the sun. During my father's u~y, the cops would have joined in by drinking beer at the party or by taking my grandfathers eighty miles an hour to the boxing match. It has taken just over fifty years for a "hidden force" that dictates the economy, media, and law, to control every aspect of our lives and to take away the free and fighting spirit that made the new nation of America great. These "hidden forces" are especially powerful within the world's food and meat markets. Plato, Mendelssohn, Nietzsche, all famous philosophers of their civilizations, laid the doctrines that the people would be led by the military class under the rM leadership of supermen? Who are the "hidden forces" or the supermen? I didn't find out until I was thirty-seven years old, and a threat to their power structure. The reader must not think however, that I was just a playboy during my school days. I was also an opportunist, and I was always thinking about the meat packing business and how my Dad could make the extra buck in his business. Also, for my efforts, I always had a hundred dollar bill in my pocket for working extra hours at the meat packing plant, as well as making a few deals on the side. During my teens, I worked for my father in every capacity. I lugged beef in the plant and learned the various cuts of meat, along with all the in-plant operations of making hot dogs and curing hams and bacons. I also learned how to identify a good piece of meat, and how to judge and to purchase livestock. While a lot of kids were swimming, being lifeguards, or getting suntans in the summer at Alcova Lake, I was out dealing with the plant's customers and making business decisions on the price of meat with buyers twenty to forty years older than myself; so very early in my life I was learning every phase of the meat packing business. To reinforce these skills, I became active in Deca, the distributive education program at the high school, winning the State Salesman and the Student of the Year Awards in my senior year, and a free train trip to Chicago. By the time I went to college, I had already a better education in making a living in the real world than any college graduate. I was probably the wildest rounder the University of Wyoming has ever seen. If you think Animal House was a crazy movie with lunatics who couldn't possibly exist in real life, you're mistaken. Along with Gunnars Hvaskos, Rob "the Roach" Snedden, Mouse Miller, whiskey-drinking Bear Butt McCarrol and some of my other buddies, we were the first to bring a horse up to the third floor of the dorm. It mysteriously died and had to be butchered by the dorm proctors with a hand saw when rigor mortis set in the next day. With my wrestling and boxing background, I was able to kick the. hell out of any football player who thought he was the toughest guy on campus. I had the right connections to locate any exam for the other students, who were my partymates for a slight fee~a case of beer. I especially enjoyed walking into a bar filled with half-drunk toughs and teasing them. If they were good-natured and took the kidding in the right way, we bought each other drinks; but sometimes it ended in more than an ordinary debate. Like my dad, I didn't lose any fights, and this included those where I took on as many as three and four at one time. One night while I was home for Christmas vacation, three black guys decided to jump me at Black's Chili joint. As I was running outside, the timing was just right. I turned around and the bastards were all in line, so with the straight right that my Dad taught me, in three punches I left all three lying on the ground. I always had plenty of expense money in college to finance my escapades. Working for Dad selling meat in the summer vacation months, I was able to make what a family man would. I was also a distributor for butcher knives, trout flies, buffalo skulls, and anything that would make a buck. Besides having a fullride wrestling scholarship, I threw an annual Polish May Feast that made a consistent $3000 a year. At this feast on Mother's Day, I would order forty kegs of beer and a ton of Polish sausage, and I would charge five dollars for a couple or three dollars for a stag. This was the biggest party Wyoming had ever seen, and it showed what an enterprising young American could do if he had ambition. On top of that, I was a consistent winner in dorm poker games. But in 1970, as I closed my senior year and received my degree in accounting, I left the fun behind and began a steady business career, utilizing all of the knowledge and experiences of my youth.