I joined the S.O. in June 1977. The previous year I had finished the St. Hill Special Briefing Course, which, as most know, involves listening to hundreds of LRH lectures given between 1961 and 1966. Every night for 3 hours it is just you and LRH and this goes on for months. When you finish the course it's a distinct letdown not having that comm line.

At any rate, I knew I was joining the SO to become an auditor under LRH. That was the recruitment pitch we were given.

The picture I had of LRH in my mind was from the photos we've all seen. I knew I was going to meet him one day and I figured he would just be LRH like we've all come to know him.

My second day at the La Quinta base, or Winter Headquarters as it was known, WHQ, I was going around the base with my wife, Sue, doing an orientation to the base. The previous day we had gotten a security briefing from Brian Roubinek, a GO guy, who made it sound like the most cloak and dagger operation imaginable. No uniforms, no Scn terms used outside or it was a Treason assignment, everyone had an alias, that kind of thing. The second day we were going from building to building getting oriented to the different spaces. WHQ was a conglomeration of buildings that were once part of a "fat farm" where corporate executives could chill out and lose some excess avoirdupois. The base was hard up against some jagged bare mountains and across the street was the La Quinta Country Club. Clusters of buildings were separated by a couple of date palm fields and the place was hotter than the hinges of hell for the first four months we were there.

Anyway, we are doing our orientation and we're walking up a wide cement road that ran in front of some stables when we spied a small group of people at the far end. As we got closer ... hey, could it be ... yes, there was LRH in the flesh. Pretty cool, our second day there and, damn, it's LRH himself.

We approached and he spotted us. We walked up and introduced ourselves and shook his hand, saying we were new Qual auditors. He welcomed us and we made small talk for a couple minutes. Mostly LRH talking because we were kind of in awe.

Like I said, we've all seen pictures of LRH, but his mockup during that period was nothing that I'd ever seen in a photograph. Out from under his Stetson flowed golden red hair down onto his shoulders. He had enormous white mutton chop sideburns and a gray and white goatee. The guy looked like freaking Wild Bill Hickock. He wore a bolo tie, a shirt and vest, gray/blue trousers and spiffy cowboy boots. I mean he looked really, really sharp. He was The Dude before the Coen brothers could even spell the word.

LRH made us feel totally at home. As we came to understand, this was his default tone level. He would slide all over the Tone Scale, but his default setting was a kind of serene cheerfulness. Others who worked with him for longer than me probably have other impressions, but that was my observation. At one point my wife was sort of just staring at him and he turned to a messenger and said, "She's in shock."

Sue piped up, "No, I'm not!" At which point he turned back to a messenger and said, "Quick, get in the protest button."

As we left, his parting words were, "If you find something around the place that's out, handle it. I don't want to hear about it," said with a hearty chuckle.

And off we went to continue our drill.

Written by Joe Howard, sitting on a beach in Sweden, 11:30 at night and there is still light in the western sky. Life connected to Source is grand.