Elected through Terror

Untitled Part 8

Since the salad bar poisoning didn't seem to be enough to keep voters from the polls the Rajneesh looked at poisoning The Dalles water system.

One of the things they considered was to 'place a beaver in a commercial blender, grind it up and then deposit the remains into The Dalles water system.' The Beavers can carry a germ called Giardiasis and it acts on the intestines much as salmonella does.

But the water system was well protected and they would not be able to get enough poison into the system to be dangerous - so they gave up on that idea.

They also smeared the poison on door knobs in the County Court House, but nothing came of it and we didn't know about it until much later.

Just when they decided on the next measure to sway the election and who the main engineer of the idea was I am not sure.

They put together a plan to bring several men and a few women that were homeless onto the ranch - allegedly as a humanitarian measure, but in truth they thought they could control them and convince them to vote as the Rajneesh directed in the upcoming election.

You HAVE to wonder what these people were thinking. They were not stupid people - as I write and re-write my stories I find I must enlarge my comments on them and will do so shortly - in all of that they were not stupid.

However, they didn't have much common sense; and they obviously didn't have much experience in working with people that they considered beneath their social status.

They were very naïve in many ways - thinking they could bring in busloads of homeless and give them direction was absolute idiocy. They had no clue what they were about to get into.

Most of the people they gathered - from many big cities in America - were street people because they refused to conform to society. There may have been a few that truly welcomed an opportunity to 'better' themselves and get off the street, but they were few, if any.

Many were mentally ill, some addicted to alcohol or other drugs while others were very independent. These people would no more be legally controlled by the Rajneesh then they were by the rest of society. All were either outcasts from society or chose to rebel against society.

As an example of the mentality and values of many street people back then (not all) I will relate a contact I had with some of the hobos that lived around the railroad tracks here in The Dalles:

This man was living in the Rail Road trailer park. It was a small travel trailer about 10 feet long from the late 40's or early 50's.

The wheels had been taken off and the trailer was on blocks. It was basically his bed and shelter from the weather. He lived his life outside in the small fenced in yard - about 50 to 60 square feet.

This is where this man fixed his meals, ate and entertained his guests - other hobos. No running water, he got it from a faucet down the road and no indoor plumbing, we will not discuss that.

His was one of four or five that were still around at that time. There had been others as well that had been set up by the Railroad to allow workers to sleep in between assignments for a day or two. They were not meant to be permanent housing, only a sleeping quarters.

Those remaining became houses for hobos, they paid about $20 a month to stay there.

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I am going to break into this story with another one. One of these men had been arrested for some misdemeanor within the city. He was brought before the Municipal Court judge for arraignment.

The young man that was sitting in as judge, that day, was actually a first year law student that was interning with an attorney who was the appointed judge. As a means to let the young man experience a court room, he was allowed to be a judge pro-tem.