Cuebons and Pinel
Wondering where the name 'cuebon' comes from? You won't find it in any dictionary!
It all stems from a rather extraordinary alternative school called Pinel, which operated for about seventeen years (1962 - 78), mostly on a rural parcel outside Martinez, California, east of Berkeley.
You can read about a fictional version of Pinel School in Ernest Callenbach's seminal counterculture novel Ecotopia. He calls it the Crick School. There's a specific reference to "gangs of kids with underground hide-outs," which described us to a tee. (Your friendly webmaster confirmed this with Mr. Callenbach, and others who were there in those days. I don't necessarily endorse all of the book's ideas, but do find it interesting and informative.)
Cuebons are real! These mysterious objects were involved in a semi-fiendish
plot to do something noticable -- if not drastic -- to the entire world. To the uninitiated, they appear to be glazed ceramic cubes about one centimeter on a side. We students obtained two oil drums full of cuebons, which in real
life are used to tumble polish metal aircraft parts. You can hit them with a hammer -- and dent the hammer! This impressed even the adults.
We then decided they were actually high-tech 'seeds' which, at a designated time,
would activate and carry out their programming. Just exactly what they were programmed
to do was left to each person's imagination. To facilitate this plot, we determined to spread cuebons worldwide. By numerous means, this was accomplished. Hundreds were
spread around during school trips and summer vacations. Many were secreted aboard
cars, trucks, trains, and even airline passengers. (This was long before 9-11 or security checkpoints.) Some were mailed to other countries, with instructions.
We kept a master list of these locations, on punch cards, via Berkeley High School's
mainframe computer.
Sincerely, Paul Carlson
What do cuebons look like?
Click and see.
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To learn more about Pinel School, visit our alumni web portal, operated by my good friend David Wilson.
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Learn more about Ecotopia
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Some cuebon trivia:
A small number of Spanish language web posts contain the word 'cuebon.' It's a regional dialect, as the word does not appear in most Spanish dictionaries or online translation services. I'm told it means "lazy," which is interesting though unrelated to the usage here.
According to the Internet, there once lived an astronomer named A.G.W. Cuebon. There is at least one research paper that cites his-or-her work. The link is to a PDF document, and it seems, a better OCR scan has now rendered the name as 'Cameron.'
There was a Taylor and Francis business article on line that refers to a source named Cuebon. It concerned "pradhu shipping during the interwar period," in the seas around Indonesia. (In that culture, many people have only one name.)
I found an official 1900 census record from Lincoln County, Arkansas that lists a boy named Cuebon Randolph. Guess it didn't catch on. Oh, well . . .
Apparently there's one Facebook user who has Cuebon for part of his screen name. I think he's in the Philippines, and it's probably a coincidence.
Years ago there was a Black Cuebon on MySpace, however that account is long gone.
Several years ago, someone in Germany took on Cuebon as a name for a Deviant Art account, to present some of their graphic arts work. That account hasn't been very active, though.
(The word also appears in some bizarre search engine results, and this domain name once got 'faked' by email spammers, so please ignore all that garbage.)
Needless to say, all those years ago we young Pinellians had no idea about any of this. If you can shed some light on these several references, please do let us know.
Just FYI, the Pokemon character is spelled cubone. No relation.
I first got a CUEBON license plate in August of 2017. Even with almost 40 million people in California, nobody else had one, and indeed, few people are using the word in any capacity.
I carried those vanity plates over to a new car. Then in 2021, in moving to Kansas, we retired those plates. Now I have a new Kansas version.
Email Paul Carlson via cuebon /at/ aol \dot\ com and please make your subject line distinct.
