I am Dr. Philo Ulysses Drummond, OverMan First Degree, of the Second Authorized MegaFisTemple Lodge of the Church of the SubGenius/Drummondian (St. Louis), the sole living OverMan on this plane, in this Time Slot, until 1998, when I will be joined by many new brothers and sisters in Xist modification. I knew J.R. "Bob" Dobbs before his Emaculation, and I still confer regularly with him to this day. This is my testimony.

"Bob" and I lived in the same neighborhood when I was between five and ten years old. He was not one of my regular playmates, but was an acquaintance. My father knew his parents, but spoke unfavorably of them; they were foreigners, and everybody said they were bohemians or cultists. (His mother, Jane, supposedly had suspicious male visitors during the daytime, or so the vicious town gossips claimed.) "Bob's" father, Xiuacha-Chi-Xan M. Dobbs, ran a pharmacy and knew most of his neighbors, but he and Jane never fit in with the more traditional families of this particular tract development.

In appearance, the child "Bob" was just another mischievous Po'bucker kid with a torn T-shirt and a crew-cut. Only the other kids seemed to know him as anything more than a normal, pesky neighborhood scamp; no adults ever believed us when we tried to tell them about him. Apparently, nobody knew of his fantastic income; he didn't even bother to tell his parents that he was playing the stock market by telephone, amassing fortunes and stashing them in foreign bank accounts. He never demonstrated any evidence of these assets; his family always lived in the same modest home, and he constantly bummed ice cream money from the rest of us at a time when, I later learned, he was worth well over $15 million. He didn't so much conceal his wealth, as that the subject never came up. He was, I must admit, lavish with spare change on his female peers, showing interest in them that the rest of us boys thought was unmanly.

I never got to know "Bob" well back then, but I did know of his reputation. I often saw him at the Haltom Movie Theater, and that was where I first heard rumors about "that weird Dobbs kid." He was known as one of the neighborhood toughs, but not in the manner of the stereotype white trash bully. He was instead that one smartass in every gang with an unbelievable mouth, who would say anything to anybody, be it teacher, parent, cop or preacher. His statements weren't the kind of things kids say to grown-ups. He was "beyond the scope of his days." So provocative was he in his speech that his friends and enemies continually had to keep him from blurting out things that would lead to beatings from their moms.

Some adults feared him, I am sure of it. One Haltom Theater usher was visibly terrified of him, and "Bob" always made a big showof getting free popcorn from the poor old wretch. Legend had it that whenever somebody angered him, they would drop over and die soon thereafter - at least, the lucky ones did. I once witnessed a bully pestering "Bob" in the movie theater. "Bob" just looked at him very intensely, a fixed grin on his face, and said, "You're gonna die on the railroad tracks, kid, only the train's just gonna cut your feet off and you're gonna have to crawl half the way back home before you bleed to death."

The local paper carried the story of the accident - but didn't mention the curse, the threat, the prophecy, or whatever you want to call it. You can bet we kids talked about it, though.

The paper also records several grisly deaths of district elementary school teachers during those years. It's surprising that no one ever noticed that all the victims had been teachers of the young Dobbs. It seemed as if everybody was scared of "Bob" - but they couldn't help but like him, too. One impatient teacher, I was told by his classmates, had somehow slighted Dobbs' (alleged) Mayan heritage - she made fun of his grandfather's religion or something - and he'd snapped at her, "I hope you get paper-cut to death." Dobbs stood in the corner with a dunce-cap on his head for the rest of the day.

But the next Saturday, there was a terrible accident at the local paper mill. "Bob's" teacher, while visiting her boyfriend there, slipped and fell into the paper-cutting machine, just when the 'Off' switch had shorted out. She was paper-cut to death, all right - cut into paper-thin, letter-sized sheets.

I must wonder if his parents didn't live in constant fear of their son. He must have loved them, however, for no ill fortune ever befell them - at least, not until the pharmacy explosion that killed his father. But I'm sure that was an accident. I don't want to give the impression that "Bob" was some evil, malignant devil-child. He was generally very friendly, and rarely got upset. He probably spent much less time hexing people than selling junk to them.

When I was about eight, my friends and I met "Bob" and his pals (half of whom, incidentally, were handicapped in some unusual way) at a riverside 'swimming hole.' I saw "Bob" poke several holes in the sand, then pull down his trousers, and, grinning fiendishly, lie down upon the holes, bucking his hips in a travesty of lovemaking. He kept hollering to us, "I'm marrying the earth! She's squeezing me back!" And he would grin and grin. The other kids egged him on, while "Bob" sang, in his child's falsetto, "OLD MAN RIVER..." Suddenly there was an earthquake - not a big one, but the ground definitely shuddered. Then the lifeguard came and yelled at him, and threatened to tell his parents, and made us leave. A week later, that lifeguard... well, I don't even want to talk about it.

My family moved to Houston, and that was the last I heard of "Bob" until our our paths crossed again at the state college.

One weekend, several friends and I got very drunk in the woods near campus. We found a big tractor in a vacant field. Showing off, I managed to start the tractor up by inserting my fish-scaling knife into the keyhole. It fit just as if it was a key made for that machine - I often wonder about that, now. We used the tractor to senselessly rip up the forest. It was lots of fun, but soon the police came. We all scattered and ran through the woods. I could hear my friends being caught and hauled off to jail... I hid behind an old abandoned-looking cottage, but the cops were closing in on me. Just then the door of the cottage opened, and a strange kid signaled me to come in and hide out. It was "Bob," and he bamboozled the cops, saving me from arrest. He was preparing the cottage for a secret meeting of The Knights of Pythagoras, an occult society of which he was the youngest Grand Master ever. "Bob" got me involved in his group, and we became drinking buddies.

I had been dating the beautiful Constance "Connie" Marsh, who was much later to become the primary Mrs. Dobbs. We had enjoyed a most satisfying relationship, as befitting her reputation, until I introduced her to "Bob" at a frat party... and suddenly she was his. But I harbor no grudge; I'm sure she must pay a price that none of us can imagine.

At the time, however, I was shattered. I got myself blind drunk, and sat in a bar near campus banging my head on the table, sobbing, cursing "Bob's" name, and plotting his murder. In the midst of my sodden, self-induced misery, I felt a strong hand on my shoulder. It was "Bob" himself, come to comfort me. He assured me that Connie was a heartless monster who cared for no man... I think he was being sincere, actually. Apparently she had already cheated on him. I ended up crying for his sake that night.

Not long after that, "Bob" disappeared from campus for some weeks. I missed the poker games with him, but assumed he was out west riding rodeo or something, which would have been typical. Alas, such was not the case. "Bob" had gone walking in the forest near campus, when a large rotten branch fell onto his head. He was rendered comatose, lying on his back in the bushes, far from the beaten trails, with his mouth gaping open, occasionally croaking softly. He survived because rainwater and dew gathered in his slackjawed mouth, and the birds of the forest that perched upon his cheeks to drink had disgorged the occasional worm into his mouth. He was found after a month and hospitalized; Connie and I helped nurse him back to health. For many years after that, stories persisted in that town about the "Wild Boy of the Woods" or "the Bird Man."

The next year, "Bob" moved off to another school, and Connie to another, and the war began, and we lost track of each other.5 "Bob" underwent his Emaculation under JHVH-1, and his sales career really took off. The Army got wind of his wild talents, and drafted him for intelligence work. That period is well documented in The Book of the SubGenius.

After the war, "Bob" and Connie remet, and married in Las Vegas in 1955. That same year, he suffered his Second Major PreVision under JHVH-1. This was followed by various fitful, often half-hearted attempts to found a new religion. Dobbs experimented with numerous cults and self-help formulas before finally settling on the basic structure of the Church of the SubGenius. However, he kept it mostly to himself in those days. The early Church boasted perhaps a couple of dozen members. Half of those were nobodies - people who'd washed "Bob's" car, for instance - but the others included such luminaries as Howard Hughes, Aristotle Onassis, Bruce Roberts (author of The Gemstone Files), and the young Henry Kissinger, fresh from his first romp in the redwood groves of the Bohemian Club.6

In 1956, "Bob" phoned unexpectedly from his BobCo branch office in Las Vegas to tell me how he had been tempted by the Devil. He had been camping in the desert, he said, and Satan had appeared in a three-piece suit, offering him not only riches, women, and political power, but the world itself - full OverLordship over the entire planet, in return for his soul. Dobbs didn't resist for even a second. The Devil was apparently very nonplussed that Dobbs was so willing - as if Dobbs didn't understand that at some juncture he was supposed to refuse. In his innocence, he didn't even get the point of the Devil's efforts. He happily accepted all offers, and in fact made Satan some kind of deal on his soul. Satan finally realized there was no point in trying to tempt "Bob," who was already getting everything he wanted, anyway. What "Bob" has never made clear is the specific nature of the "deals" that were made.

I thought he had lost his mind, but I was getting used to hearing this kind of thing from "Bob."

Go on to "The Gospel According to Philo Part 2"