SUNSETTER, MOONRISER: The Tragic & Explosive Death of Dean Rainard, Instalment III

Instalment 3: History

Eel River Athapaskan Highschool is located in Olympia, California, a small town outside of Fortuna, about three miles from the Eel River which flows northwest into the Pacific Ocean. Eel River Athapaskan High School is the only high school in Olympia. It is connected to the only middle school in Olympia, Eel River Athapaskan Middle School, which is connected to the only Elementary School in Olympia, Eel River Athapaskan Grammar School. Dean Rainard had lived in Olympia most of his life. Only briefly had he lived in Fortuna while attending college at Fortuna Community College where he double majored in Art History and Early Hungarian Literature. He had always been very interested in, and connected with both of these subjects. His grandfather was Lazlo Farkas, an immigrant from Hungary and a leader in the art movement known as Futurism. Lazlo Farkas, being Jewish, came over to America during the rise of the Nazi party in Europe. He, like many others of his time, could smell the trouble brewing in Europe and decided it would be far better to be a Jew in Anti-Semitic America than in a Jew in the hands of the Nazis. Farkas was twenty-three when he came to America. On arrival in America, he changed his name to Lazlo Franks. In his first week of being in America, he met the love of his life, Julia Johnson, a full blooded American who instantly fell in love with Lazlo Franks’ exotic accent. Lazlo and Julia married and begot three children, all girls, Juliette, Carol, and Elizabeth (Little Betty). Little Betty Franks grew up and ran away with Larry Rainard to California. It was in Olympia, California where they got married and had one single child, Dean Rainard. Dean Rainard had never been to Hungary, the land of his ancestory. He had never been to Europe. He had never been out of California. He had never experienced anyone calling a bathroom a toilet. The only reason that he knew that Europeans called bathrooms toilets was because of a Humanities class he took when he was in tenth grade at Eel River Athapaskan High School. His teacher was Dr. Winslow Stephens. Dr. Winslow Stephens was subject of the Queen of Britain.
Every semester, during Dr. Winslow Stephens’ famed lecture on the history of the toilet, he would say, “Did you know that in Europe they don’t even call it a bathroom? The call it a toilet! They don’t try to sugarcoat it. The call it how it is! A PLACE FOR SHITTING!” At this all the students of Dr. Winslow Stephens’ tenth grade Humanities class would erupt with laughter. They loved Dr. Stephens’ because he would cuss. Dean Rainard loved him. He wanted to be him when he grew up. Dean Rainard cussed in his class and the class cried. Dean Rainard had grown up and was nothing like the beloved Dr. Winslow Stephens. He was his antithesis. Where Dr. Stephens had a loving wife and two loving children, Dean Rainard had threw away his only chance at love when he left his first and only love, Denise Wright, whom he was engaged to marry. Where Dr. Stephens was well educated in many areas, and at Oxford I might add, Dean Rainard only knew a whole lot about Art History and Hungarian literature. Where Dr. Stephens had come to love art even more by teaching it to his students, Dean Rainard had come to hate it. But all of this was partly due to the fact that he was a crazy person.