by me, Kerry Burgess, 07/18/2025 12:18 AM
That's me, circa 05/11/1984
I would declare the date of the photograph is 05/11/1984 but it's the hat that's throwing me off
Looking at the photo tonight, I am thinking about that hat
Someone gave it to me a day or more earlier
Confusing for several details
That is my high-school graduation robe. Attached to the hat is the tassel that was for my graduation hat for the graduation robe
See, I would have sworn I got that hat when I was at the river in the hours *after* high-school graduation for a beer-keg party, of which I was completely unprepared for, beer-legs, and didn't take much for me to pass out drunk in my truck, waking up to find a fellow graduate driving it into the river and then backing out, as I was puking out the passenger-side door
I can remember wearing that hat on the Saturday after graduation, because I drove to Texarkana for some reason to speak to staff at the US Navy recruiters office. I was back there again a couple days later, on Monday 05/14/1984, when they shipped me for Orlando, Florida, to begin formal induction as enlisted (non-commissioned) US Navy. I left Texarkana on 05/14/1984 for Orlando and my application for enlistment had been accepted practically one year earlier, on 05/21/1983
I am looking at this photo tonight because it illustrates a detail I am thinking of tonight
The photographer is standing with back to front door of that house we moved to in year 1981 on Hicks Road
We lived there when I went to Camp Couchdale that summer of 1981.
BACKSTORY 002: "Fast Times at Ridgemont High"
Standing there, the front door of the house was in front of me, that was the dining-room the photographer stood in to capture that image
I am leaving the small bathroom of that house
The house was old when they purchased a mortgage on it, Thedia and her husband.
At some point, years earlier obviously, it had construction to extend it with additional rooms
We did some refurbishment of it and the surrounding yard and I liked living out there in the country-side, miles from the town where I graduated high-school in southwest Arkansas
Standing there in that photo, as I was walking out of the bathroom, there is visible the door to the bathroom
What you don't see in that photo is another doorway to my right-hand side
It was a doorway with no door on the frame
So, if you entered the bathroom through that door, as seen in the photo, then would see the bathroom in front of you, which was behind me in the photo. Visible behind me is the window overlooking the backyard, above the bathtub
To my right, there is an open door, you can see it only by walking through the bathroom door
A normal size door frame, it is the entrance to Melissa's bedroom when we lived in that house
So, there was no door separated her bedroom from the bathroom and the bathroom door
There was only that curtain I remember
Open the bathroom door, a curtain covers the actual bathroom area. Melissa's room was completely open. She could enter her bedroom only by opening the bathroom door
You could close the door from the rest of the house to the bathroom but her room was always open, although there was no line-of-sight between either rooms, except for the doorway into her room and the curtain block view of the small bathroom
Annoyed the hell out of me having to use that bathroom when she was in her room
See, Thedia would have known all that time she was a surrogate.
My working theory is THEY selected her, for various symbolic factors, paid her $50, and then left her to her own dim-wit devices
I guess further she was pointed to Wayne Burgess in 1965 and she tricked him into thinking he got her pregnant just after the surrogate experiment succeeded
He dumped her a few years later, leaving Oklahoma for Arkansas, and she had to get a real job, a menial-labor job beneath her and her 10th-grade public-school education
So she bitched about it for the next 35 years to anyone would listen
UNTIL my excursion to the VA hospital and that's when she finally shut up bitching about it, because she knew people now other than her dim-wits friends were listening
Not sure - of anything - but especially - about when Thomas Reagan found out about it
Feel certain Doogie had nothing to do with it
Until he found out - and the reasons why it happened - and began to assert control
Hours later and I still do not recall where I got that hat.
That's unusual. Usually, if I try to remember a trivial detail that is not immediately obvious to me, it will eventually surface in my conscious-mind. For instance, every time I see that photo of me in the US Navy dress-blue uniform shirt, I immediately recall that it was smock they used for that photo. A trivial detail I still remember all this time.
I think of that hat every time I see the 1994 "The Stand". Ralph Brenter of Oklahoma doesn't remind me of anyone but the hat does. In 1984, the second vehicle I had owned resembles his pickup truck, which I hated, after that red 1967 Ford pickup truck I regretted selling off instead of making a minor repair. Ralph Brenter gives his hat to retard Tom Cullen before Cullen sets off to clandestinely infiltrate Randall Flagg's base
Over 20 years (and counting) now of isolation, I have found a tremendous, overwhelming source of corroborating details, and this is another to throw on that pile
https://www.cia.gov/resources/csi/static/psychology-of-espionage.pdf
The Twilight Zone
Quotes
Rod Serling - Narrator: You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead - your next stop, the Twilight Zone!
https://papersofprinceton.princeton.edu/princetonperiodicals/?a=d&d=Princetonian20010219-01.1.1&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------
From 8/13/1982 ( premiere USA film "Fast Times At Ridgemont High" ) To 2/19/2001 ( ) is 6765 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 5/11/1984 ( as Kerry Burgess my Ashdown Arkansas High School Class of 1984 graduation ceremony ) is 6765 days
From 7/21/1979 ( my biological brother Thomas Reagan and my sister-in-law Phoebe Cates are lawfully married in the state of Vermont ) To 2/19/2001 ( ) is 7884 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 6/4/1987 ( as Kerry Burgess my official enlisted US Navy documents includes: participated in the MARCH 87 E-5 Navy-wide Advancement Examination, selected for advancement to Fire Controlman Petty Officer Second Class (FC2), guided-missiles weapons-systems control occupation for US Navy enlisted ) is 7884 days
From 7/13/1984 ( premiere USA film "The Last Starfighter" ) To 2/19/2001 ( ) is 6065 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 6/11/1982 ( premiere USA film "E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial" ) is 6065 days
From 6/8/1993 ( commencement, Princeton University Class of 1993 ) To 2/19/2001 ( ) is 2813 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 7/16/1973 ( the Richard Nixon Watergate tapes revealed ) is 2813 days
From 5/16/1992 ( the landing of the first flight of the United States space shuttle Endeavour orbiter vehicle mission STS-49 includes me Kerry Wayne Burgess the United States Marine Corps commissioned-officer and United States STS-49 pilot astronaut and my 1st official United States of America National Aeronautics and Space Administration orbital flight of 4 overall ) To 2/19/2001 ( ) is 3201 days
From 11/2/1965 ( my known birth date in Antlers, Oklahoma, USA, as Kerry Wayne Burgess ) To 8/8/1974 ( Richard Nixon, 37th President of USA: Address to the Nation Announcing Decision To Resign the Office of President of the United States ) is 3201 days
https://papersofprinceton.princeton.edu/princetonperiodicals/?a=d&d=Princetonian20010219-01.1.1&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------
Princeton University
Daily Princetonian, Volume 125, Number 11, 19 February 2001
Making the Grade
By Silla Brush
Princetonian Staff Writer
Star Trek - "Metamorphosis" - tv series Season 2 Episode 9 - 11/10/1967
(from internet transcript)
NANCY: Small thanks to the Starfleet.
MCCOY: Now really, Commissioner, you can't blame the Starfleet.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0087597/releaseinfo
IMDb
The Last Starfighter (1984)
Release Info
USA 13 July 1984
Full Cast & Crew
Lance Guest ... Alex Rogan / Beta Alex
IMDb
The Last Starfighter (1984)
Quotes
Alex Rogan: Listen, Centauri, I'm not any of those guys. I'm a kid from a trailer park.
Centauri: If that's what you think, then that's all you'll ever be!
- by me, Kerry Wayne Burgess, posted by me: 12:16 AM Pacific-timezone USA Monday 07/21/2025
