Farblondjet

An Interactive Memoir
Jerry Ross, the Painter

T'ai Chi Ch'uan


I returned to Tucson with 75 cents in my pocket and made a bee-line to the front porch of my old Tucson (the med & law school student friends).  I resumed my previous anarchist activities.  I attempted to get some T’ai chi classes underway.  I started substitute teaching and after a few weeks was able to move to my own apartment.  Eventually Pamela decided to come out west and she showed up on my doorstep.  But whereas she wanted my undivided attention, I had already settled into a life style of beer drinking and dancing at night.  She wanted to stay home and brood.  Thinks were not working out from the get go.


We finally split up in the Grand Canyon and, with just a few dollars in my pocket, I set off for my return to Oregon.  Car-less, I had to hitch-hike up to Eugene, not knowing where to go.  I ended up back at the apartment 14th street.  I may have stayed at Mama’s Truck stop for a few weeks when I first arrived but was able to get back to 14th street after locating the U of O administrator who owned the house.  But unlike my original arrival, this time it was dark and rainy and it seemed like the rain would never stop.


I returned to my Tucson habits.  I was substitute teaching and also running several T’ai Chi Classes.  I founded the “Tao Te Ching Society” as an umbrella to talk about Taoism and tai chi.  I was slipping into true hippyism in Eugene, where they say “the sixties moved to.”   



Eugene Register Guard Sept 7, 1976


I began plastering my T’ai chi posters around town.  My preferred place to teach my classes was the Hayward track field.  This is where Pete Prefontaine the famed Olympic track star trained. 


Wong Ting Fong

My first encounter with Chinese Martial arts was during my first year of college when I started to study with Wong ting-Fong of the Golden Dragon King-Fu Society.  I had always been fascinated with things Chinese.  In high chool, I had read “The Way of Zen” by Alan Watts and was immediately convinced of the logical power and veracity of Zen and Taoist philosophy.  My later readings of Eric Fromm furthered my study of Buddhism through his references to Susuki.

 

I was among the very first students of Master Wong.  In fact, at that time he only had three or four students. He taught a form of Kung-Fu.  Most of the time we would study and practice the King-Fu forms and practice punching and kicking.  At one point my study under Master Wong was under surveillance by the FBI who actually interviewed the Master regarding my views of Mao Tse Tung.


FBI Notes on Master Wong


As usual, the FBI had it all wrong.  If there were any Maoist pamphets there at all they must have been ones I left there to show Master Wong.  Master Wong was apolitical.  He was simply in the martial arts business.


Getting back to my main story, my teaching T’ai chi in Eugene.  I had studied under a Chinese scientist from Eastman Kodak when still in Buffalo. I had mastered the entire yang form, all three sections  But when I was visiting my sister in London, as mentioned before, I studied briefly under Master Dr. Liu Hsiu Chi who taught the same Yang form I had learned in Buffalo, with slight modifications.  When I started teaching my own classes in Eugene, I was using this Yang form that was influenced by the two t’ai chi masters already mentioned.  I also taught some short forms I had learned from Master Wong.


My classes were very informal. They were always taught outside weather permitting. Class sizes varied between ten and twelve people.  When Pamela was in my life (when she decided to join me in Eugene, which happened periodically), she would participate.  In fact, our final final breakup, she ran off with one if my T’ai chi students, Dennis Mochary.  One of my best students was Diane Castel, who became a good friend of Ron Ford (who you will meet in a later chapter).


Dennis Mochary


At one point I attempted to offer a t’ai chi class through the City Park’s Division.  About 18 people had signed up.  During the first class, I had the entire class doing the first movement “Raise the power of Chi” when, all of a sudden, a fierce hail storm broke out lashing down on the students who all ran like hell.  Nobody ever returned for the second class!


At that time, 1976, there were only three  t’ai chi teachers in Eugene: Eddie Chang, David Liung, and myself.  Eddie and David both respected me. Probably because I was teaching classes and had a philosophical basis for my approach, namely the Tao Te Ching Society which I used to promote Taoism.  Every once in a while, I would conduct a marriage or a funeral.  The latter happened when Dewey, a student of mine, “Dewey”,  passed away as a result of a liver disease.  He had left a request that I perform the service which I did.  His relatives did not exactly appreciate my comments regarding reincarnation or the possibility thereof.


I would eat at Mamma’s Truck Stop and at “The Egg Snatcher” both near campus.  I had no idea that Angela, my second wife to be, was living and working at the Egg Snatcher.  This was a very hippy vegetarian restaurant on 14th street.  They had low tables so you had to recline on pillows to eat there, at least that is how I remember it.  They had a big sketchbook where clients could leave sketches and graffiti and poems, etc.  I would sign mine as “Jeremy”, a new name I had adopted more befitting my hippy persona. 


It was the both the best of times and the worst of times.  I was lonely except for brief periods of time when Pamela would stay with me, which typically didn’t last for long.  When I was alone I would occasionally pick up a girl in a bar for a one night stand.  Sometimes I would sleep with a Tai Chi student.  But nobody ever “clicked” for me and, for the most part, I remained living alone and despite the spirituality of Tai Chi, I was drinking too much.


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