I noticed that the only date listed in your story was 2009. I went to Tampa in 2009 because my wife was looking to get a specialty back operation at a clinic there. We flew and rented a car down there and were staying at a hotel in Tampa. It turned out that she wasn't a good candidate for the surgery, but we had a day to spend down there as a vacation day before heading back to St. Louis, so, one of the things that I HAD to do was drive into Clearwater and see the Flagging Clam Base.
Mainly, IT WAS ABOUT AS DEAD AS A BAG OF HAMMERS. It seemed that there wasn't much of anything going on. There were occaisional busses with clams, and a few sea ogres walking around. The wife got upset when I was, in her mind, staring at this one gal in a sea ogre outfit ... no jacket, no cap, but obviously a uniform, with a light blue shirt. I guess the gal was too young with boobs too perky or something ... but no, it was more just trying to take in what was going on there. This was AFTER the famous series in the then SP times, now the Tampa Bay times.
Anyways, bottom line ... as far as what I observed, the main things that stood out were the lack of activity and the unfinished building that is supposed to be for soooper power. I imagine that things have only gotten worse down there from the clam point of view ... fewer people, less activity. As far as those who actually made it to Flag ... on the one hand, I admire the ability to stick with the program no matter what to chase that elusive goal of oatee. Relatively early on in the game it was simply too much bullshit to put up with. I started in late summer 74 at the SanFran org, was onlines for 6 months, went out of the area due to having orders to go to Idaho for training (Navy nuke program), came back for 3 expensives of auditing, and went to Groton CT. Was in and out of port constantly, time was limited ... but even after my first trip to ethics for an ass chewing in late 77 at the Connecticut missions, I was somewhat ARC broken. It was horseshit, but, I knew better than to argue since the c**t who did the ethics there ALWAYS got the last word, so why make it worse. 78 was a year of mainly being out to sea including a deployment, and I was out of the area for 6 months in 79. By the time that I got back to Groton, things had changed, I really had no desire to be at the mission and was just going thru motions. I say all of that just to say that I really didn't spend all that much time actually doing Scientology before I was disenchanted. So again, I admire the persistence of those who were willing to endure all manner of hardships to chase the Scilon dream.
ON THE OTHER HAND ... I am amazed that anyone would stay for any length of time, especially since the internet started coming into its own, which I would put at, say, 2001 or thereabouts when broadband started becoming more common, people started leaving in droves, the Xenu story became widely known, and, of course, Anonymous. And those who are still in now are generally not those recently recruited because there virtually is no such thing these days. So those who are still in would have had to either ignore or buy into the ever changing alibi stories for every new flap, every new re-release of the same old horseshit, etc.
Pete
, she was wearing Winne the Pooh socks. She was told that she was not to wear them again whilst on the base as they were not suitable for a trainee auditor to be wearing. She was telling me about this the day it happened to her so I pulled up my trousers and showed her my Halloween socks and at first her jaw dropped open and nearly hit the floor, but then both of us were
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