PADRIC O'ROURKE

Author of:
Salvage: When Salvation Fails

My fathers’ ancestors came over from Northern France because of religious persecution in 1741 and settled in the William Penn Land Grant. My fathers’ father was a logger and wildcatter. Grand Pappy had a simple philosophy, “Never use a dull axe”. My mothers’ ancestors were French and Irish Catholics who came over during the eighteen hundreds. Her fiery red-haired one-eyed peg-leg father retired from working on the railroads in the sixties. I was named after them and it was later that I legally took on my current nom de plume.

My own secular employment has included (among other things) sawmills, logging, quarryman, construction, carpenter, roofer, pipe-laying, heavy equipment operator, assembly of automated packaging systems, boat building and airplane manufacturing.

A late baby-boomer, religion has always played a role in my life. I was baptized Catholic as a baby and was considered a Catholic, sporadically attending Latin mass until I was seven years of age when my living circumstances changed and I began attending the Baptist Church. During this time I was a cub scout. Five years and four Vacation Bible Schools later, my life-circumstances changed again and on my own (free of any real parental guidance) I began occasionally attending the Methodist Church. For a couple of years I was also a boy scout.

At fourteen my father met and later married one of Jehovah’s Witnesses and as you can expect, I became one. I found it a hard row to hoe. But I had one consistent prayer in the following years, “Lord, Give me wisdom and let me know the truth” which is probably why the road was occasionally difficult. Learning life’s lessons while immersed in a literalistic religion can sometimes be painful.

I am my own dichotomy. I believe in God and faith but shy away from religion. I respect healthy atheism. I am caught in the fringe between blue collar and white collar. Not easily bored, I love knowledge and yet hated school. I would rather immerse myself in a subject that I choose until I have learned everything it has to offer, and then move on to the next interest. I occasionally dream of having been a Jesuit (among other things). So a past life hang-up is my current explanation for my formerly persistent religious interests. Besides, just saying “a past life” annoys the hell out of fundamentalists, so it’s a fun way to distance oneself from their fare.

With my employment background there is a certain irony in writing about the discrepancies of literalistic religion and those of the holy writ. The secular position I have held the longest (14 years) is as an operational test inspector which requires me to audit, test, investigate and logically document complex commercial aircraft systems discrepancies (what it is and what it should be.)

I hope my next writing project is as interesting as this one was.