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| Cosmos Garza |
When I came up with the idea for a Men's Liberation March during our annual spring picnic in the orange grove, Cosmos helped me make the signs. My other buddy, Dave Dameron whom we lost to CoVid last August helped me burn a pair of Fruit of the Looms on a pole. We had some very bossy girls that ran the place and the guys in the dorm were just about fed up with it. Cosmos, to his credit, instantly saw the value in the protest march as a way to harmlessly valve off some steam and was an enthusiastic participant.
In college, Cosmos took up a new cause of the same sort. Several heretical Adventist groups, most notably the Branch Davidians (formerly known as the Shepherd's Rods). They would show up for camp meetings, evangelistic meetings or anytime a bunch of Adventists gathered at the school. Cosmos made it his mission to collect every piece of literature he could lay hands on when the came up to proselytize for whatever goofy new doctrine they were peddling. He had a box in his dorm room that he called his "heretical literature library". It grew to quite a collection.
My last communication with Cosmos was about his escapades as an anti-offshoot guerrilla. I can still remember him and some friends including me hitting the Davidians at the doors and engaging them in deep theological discussions and distracting them from passing what they laughably called "literature". Cosmos could hold the best of them in thrall long enough for the congregation to get to their cars and drive away unmolested. It was brilliant strategy and the Davidians were suckers for it.
Here is the last post I ever got from Cosmos:
You know I just reread your last message (from Aug 9) about the Branch Davidians .. Well the main guy that was always there, was Perry Jones with his 5 or six (or 7) very young blond-haired kids. I'd spend time talking to them to find out what they actually taught (& read their literature later on).
Well one of Perry's daughters (Rachel, as a very young teen) ended up marrying Vernon Howell (David Koresh). Perry was the frontman and public relations man for the Branch Davidians. Well, Janet Reno had the ATF & FBI attack the New Mount Carmel Center. When they got a cease fire, Perry Jones came to the front door and was shot by federal agents. He refused to be taken in & taken to hospital. He died a few days later .. the 1st Branch Davidian member to be killed.
Years, years later (maybe 2002), returning from some Conference meeting, my son & I drove to the center, stopped & walked all over the place. NO BODY was there at the time we went. My son picked up a VHS tape from their chapel that had written "PRIVATE - FOR ELDERS ONLY" on it. (It was a Fritz Springmeier tape on the 13 Bloodlines of the Illuminati and also one about the TRANCE-Formation of America with Cathy O'Brien [a rescued whistleblower survivor of the CIA's secret mind control program "MK-Ultra"]. (The tape) "traces her path from child pornography and recruitment into the program to serving as a top-level intelligence agent and White House sex slave." https://trance-formation.com].
PS. When in Waco, we stopped at a convenience store & my son Jon started talking to these 2 Sheriff's Deputies. He asked them if they had known David Koresh. They said "Oh sure! We all knew him. He was in town every week and we'd talk with him when we'd see him." Jon asked "Did you ever have to go to the compound?" They said, "Oh sure!" Jon: "Were there problems?" "Not really. Sometimes we'd get calls about the gun shooting, but since they're in the country, they have a right to shoot." Jon: "So if he was in town often, didn't the ATF or FBI try to get him then?" They smirked and looked at each other and said, "Look, they had Koresh under surveillance. Koresh was in town the day before it all broke out. They could have apprehended him then." Jon: "So do you think they really wanted it to be the big show that happened?" They looked at us with a face of "Well yeah!' but answered, "We can't really say what they wanted."
People somehow would talk to Cosmos and tell him all kinds of secrets. Even with all that, Pastor Garza was a well-grounded guy and someone you could count on. Some of our stuffier SDA "leaders" had some difficulty understanding Carlos, but there is no doubt in my mind that he was a thoroughly decent and likeable guy. Of the guys in the VGA dorm, Cosmos was the closest to a kindred spirit I knew and I had some really good friends.
So far my Academy senior class has lost 6 members dead and one is confined to a nursing home. Several are missing and we can't find them. We're planning a Zoom meeting to celebrate 50 years since graduation this coming May. Jesus is clearly loading up the bus to come and get us very soon. Some of our best and brightest, He's given them a skip day and they will next wake to see Christ in the heavens. For the rest of us, the next years could be rough, but I keep ever in my mind the idea that folks like Cosmos, Dave, my friend Hansi, my grandpa, my brother, and my own son whom we lost in 2006 will be waiting up ahead for us to catch up.
Sometimes, I think Jesus is giving the best of us a pass; taking it easy on them because they don't need the tribulation to finish polishing them up. They're already pretty shiny and they've gone on ahead of us. I look forward to catching up with them.
Just sayin'.
Tom King
© 2022
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