Living in Utica, NY.  As I was finishing a degree in engineering, I became disabled with congestive heart failure and dropped out of school.  Returned a few years later, finished my degree and promptly retired (due to my health/age).  Central New York is a lot like Wisconsin: Green in the summer, cold as hell in the winter.  So, I'm right at home.  Try to get to Waukesha for the reunions.  Amazing how Waukesha has changed.  Looking forward to our 50th Reunion.  See ya then!

Glad to answer your question, Ron, concerning my surname ‘Khalsa.’ 

Got divorced in 1967.  Moved to Milwaukee and lived in Ken Stair house in North Milwaukee.  Jerry Cloughley, Ken, and a couple of others inhabited Ken’s 2-story house.  Ken, Jerry and I worked for an appliance repair company.  I worked about 32 hours a week and took 14 credits at Milwaukee School of Engineering.  Lived there for about a year and a half.    
 
After two and a half years of MSOE, I became a college dropout as I entered an interesting period in my life.  Let my hair grow long (now I barely have any) and grew a beard, etc.  Became a ‘hippie.’  One very cold winter day, a couple who I was living with decided to hitchhike to a warmer area.  We ended up in Tampa, Florida.  I worked as a cook in a local Bar-B-Que restaurant and did a lot of what hippies did in those days.  After about a year of cutting up rounds of beef and cooking on a log fire, I became a vegetarian.  Still am.  Guess I OD’ed on muscle tissue.  Oops, another story.  Realizing, at the age of 32, that my life wasn’t going in any special direction, I decided on a career change.  I’d taken karate lessons in Milwaukee while going to school.  Taught classes for a year before moving to Tampa.  Thought I’d continue in this area and eventually open my own school.  There was a lot a martial arts schools in Tampa and I had no problem finding one that served my purpose.  Stopped working full-time and became a part-time cook at the same restaurant, cooking just on weekends.  This left me time to go to ‘school’ full time in martial arts.  Noon and evening classes consisted of tae kwon do and aikido.  One evening, our school had a guest black belt give a lecture/demonstration.  Very impressive demo.  Talked to him after the class.  He told me that in order to be accomplished at martial arts it was necessary to become involved in yoga and meditation.  My aikido instructor taught hatha yoga, and worked with me over the next year.  The University of South Florida had non-credit classes in kundalini yoga, which supplemented the yoga classes I was already taking.  These classes also involved some powerful meditations.  After a year of this unorthodox lifestyle, I injured my back in a fall in the aikido class.  Was laid up for several weeks.  During this time I came to the conclusion that I might not be able to take the physical stress of martial arts.
The kundalini yoga instructor came down from Orlando where he lived in a yoga ashram.  Beard, turban, guy looked like a genie.  One of my high school friend's jokingly says I was in a ‘cult’, something she knows nothing about except for what she's seen on TV.  
Was an unusual lifestyle, and Highly disiplined.  Something that I like about martial arts.  I visited the ashram a number of times during my life in the martial arts mode.  3HO and Sikh Dharma are internet clues to their identity.  Some of the internet coverage is not gentle as ‘ragheads’ and ‘towelheads’ are very unpopular at this time in history.  By the way, these people have nothing to do with Islam, Bin Ladin, etc.  I converted after I moved in the ashram in 1974 at the age or 33.
 
Sikhism is a religion from Northern India.  Very militant as they have been persecuted by Islamic forces for centuries. Many of the ashram people had studied/practiced martial arts.  One girl was a black belt in karate. Up at 4:30 every morning (yeah, 7 days a week), a cold shower, and then 2 1/2 hours of yoga, breathing exercises, and meditation, followed by a vegetarian breakfast and then off to work.   I lived in 5 different ashrams around the country.  Some members worked at businesses owned by the ashram, some worked outside jobs (I drove truck for Florshiem (sp) Shoes when I lived in the Milwaukee ashram, some were students and paid rent with their student financial aid).  Again, my sensitivity to the ‘cult’ claim:  Cults have “brainwashing” techniques; don’t allow any kind of freedoms, etc.  I’ve done some studies and research with such groups.  Have had experiences with Divine Light Mission (the 15 y/o ‘boy-guru’), the Unification Church (the Moonies), Hare Krishna and several other organizations.  Anyway, I was always free to come and go, and did so over a period of six years.  My ashrams were in or near Orland, FL; Milwaukee, WI; Madison, WI (taught yoga classes at UW); Los Angeles, CA and Espanola, NM. 
 
Got married in LA while living in the ashram.  Worked in a factory partly owned by members of both the Sikh religion and members of the Los Angeles community.  During this time I went to renew my driver’s license at Dept. of Motor Vehicles.  There was a space on the form for ‘name change’.  Three options were available:  one for ‘marriage’, one for ‘religion’, and the last one for ‘illegal alien’ (just kidding…unsure of the third one).  As I was taking certain religious studies and vows, I opted to change my official/legal name.   An attorney friend told me that I needed to inform the IRS and Social Security Administration.  My given ‘Sikh’ name was Gurravi Khalsa.  Khalsa was given when certain vows were taken, as I was about to be ordained as a minister of Sikhism.  Khalsa means ‘Pure One’, something I never was able to live up to. 

The factory experience was very stressful.   I started out at the bottom and worked up to becoming the operations manager in less that three years.  Ulcers and colitis (Crone’s Disease) were the outcome for my ambitious ‘rise to success.’  Moved to the ashram in Espanola, NM to convalesce.  Worked as an electrician.  A friend and I were working on setting up a hydroponics business while I was there.  Decided that I would make my relocation a permanent situation, as 8,800 feet up in the mountains of beautiful New Mexico was a lot easier to take than the ‘fast lane’ of Los Angeles.  My wife wouldn’t move there, though, as her pottery business in LA was just taking off.  That was the beginning of the end of our marriage.
 
Still sick and disappointed, I decided to vacation in upstate New York to visit a friend who was part Native American.  His Mohican tribe (yeah, the Last of the Mohicans) was from the area near Albany and he was doing research on his tribe. I’d lived on his reservation in northern Wisconsin during the time between the Milwaukee and the Madison ashrams.  During my visit I decided to stay in NY.  Divorce came soon. My friend still lives near Albany and is about to get his doctorate in Ethnic Anthropology. 
 
When I moved to New York State, my only identification was in the name of Gurravi Khalsa.  Would have changed it back to Gary Ericson except it costs $500-$600 to do so.  Seems California is much more liberal than New York.  So, now friends know me as Gary Khalsa. I'm known as Gurravi Khalsa to my creditors, and probably other names to a select few.  

The name Gary Ericson-Khalsa is a mystery now solved.  Thanks for asking.  Always enjoy telling stories.  Some of them , like this one, are True.  Wow.

 

‘ONE OF MANY OF MY MOST EMBARRASSING MOMENTS’

Might have been eighth grade.  Miss Tompitch (sp) was our math teacher.  For those who didn’t know or remember her I’ll give a brief description:  She was about 4’ tall.  Yeah, I swear.  Seemed that way, anyway.  Miss Tompitch was really a great teacher. She was serious about our learning and was certainly patient with us unruly young students, as I was soon to find out.

When she taught, she’d stand up in front of the class and stare off into space as she spoke.  In later years, I learned this was typical of someone who was very ‘visual’.  She was actually ‘seeing’ the numbers that she was lecturing about.

Sometimes, she got so visual that she’d close her eyes as she spoke.  That was the trigger for many of us pimply young boys to gain recognition for who could throw the most spitwads before she re-opened her eyes. No one wanted to get caught, so we ‘stocked up’ on our wad supply and waited for her eyes to close. Then the fury began.

Well, that soon got boring, as being the Spitwad Champ didn’t carry much fame after a while.

To continue our adventurous ways we soon found a whole new method of recreation.  It was the introduction of the miniature squirt-gun.  Small enough to be concealed in the palm of our hand, this new technology quickly replaced the archaic spitwad.  And, it was more health oriented.

Imagine when Miss Tompitch got involved in an exciting math problem. Years later, when I visited Niagara Falls, it brought back memories of 8^th grade math class.

One autumn day we went on an exotic ‘field trip’ to Cutler Park.  Miss Tompitch was going to introduce us to the exciting field of trigonometry. We took our protractors and tape measures and marched down, platoon style, through the halls of Lincoln Jr. High.  All us guys made sure we had a fully loaded squirt-gun.  Arriving at Cutler Park, we began to measure flagpole shadows and calculate various angles. Thirty of us milling around gave us a greater challenge than the boring seats in our classroom. Squirting a moving target is certainly more gratifying.

And so, there was Bonnie Birk right square in my sights.  An easy shot, and she didn’t even see me move in close. Piece of cake. Just as I pulled the trigger, she looked up and quickly stepped aside. Guess who was standing behind her with her eyes Wide Open?  Remember my saying something about patience?  Well, some virtues seem to have diminishing limits. You can count on it.

So, what was the outcome ofunloading a squirt-gun all over Miss Tompitch?  Have no idea.  Totally blanked it out.  Must have been an early form of PTSD.  Great to be a trend-setter.