Initial Living Conditions

Why Didn’t I Run

This post is in reference to the April 10, 2025 poll. Be sure you get your votes in on this week’s poll.

Going into Sea Org was more culture shock than just new working conditions. I had not lived in my parents home for five years by the time I joined Sea Org, so I was used to living on my own and taking care of myself. But not like this.

I lived in a dorm my first year in college. After that, I lived in off campus housing with roommates. That meant we each had our own room in a larger house. That was how I lived when I left college too until I could afford to pay for an apartment to rent by myself. It was a cute little one bedroom place. I decorated it up quite nicely.

Even when I was in Albuquerque doing preps before heading to Sea Org, I still maintained my autonomy. I always lived alone. I cooked my own meals. I shopped for myself. So the housing situation was a giant step down.

I was ushered into my new berthing in the Hollywood Inn at about 10:00 p.m. or so. It was an old fashioned motel room.

Initially known as the Christie Hotel, it was Hollywood”s first skyscraper, 8 stories tall. It was built in 1922 as a luxury motel for movie moguls with 100 luxury guest rooms. In 1933, the original builders were forced into bankruptcy. By the time Scientology bought it in 1974 for $1.25 million, Hollywood Inn had changed hands several times and had been called The Drake Hotel as well.

When I got there in 1975, the hotel was still in a derelict condition. The lobby looked frozen in the 1920s, which made it charming. I was to discover that wasn’t all that was still from the 1920s. The boiler, considered luxurious in the 1920s, which delivered steam heat to the rooms, was still in use. Well, when it worked. Which wasn’t very often.

The rooms may well have been the height of luxury in the 1920s. I honestly can’t say what my room actually looked like inside. We spent very little time in there. That was good. We had one cloudy light fixture in the ceiling which should have had several bulbs. Only one worked. That was not generally a problem.

No one spent more than the time they were asleep in the room anyway. And since we worked odd hours, someone was always asleep. Generally we would just tiptoe in and climbed into bed into bed.

And I do mean climb. Jammed into that windowless room were three triple decker metal bunk beds and a tall dresser. Each person got a bed, and 1/2 of a dresser drawer. We had a pillow which had seen its better days before we were born. Each of us got a set of cheap sheets. And an army surplus wool blanket. The bed I got had been vacated, apparently, by a girl who hadn’t come back to berthing that day.

That’s why they had to wait to put me in there. They wanted to see if she was going to show up. It was a Thursday. Libs were Saturday, which means I was put in a bed with dirty sheets which I didn’t get a chance to wash for 2 days! Welcome to Sea Org!

Thinking of this reminds me of my grandson one time saying “I got new sheeps!” and taking me into his bedroom to see them. We were reduced to lower than low. Cattle who didn’t even get clean surroundings. And yes, it stunk. But it smelled so much better than the 2D berthing (berthing for married couples and families). The dirty diaper smell at that place was so strong that you could smell it a block away.

When I first got into Sea Org, I wanted to be in that housing so I could share a motel room with just my family. The moment I smelled that place, I vowed to never marry as long as I was in Sea Org. It blows my mind thinking back at what I was willing to do because I believed I was “saving the world.”