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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 sixteen 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 webmaster does not necessarily endorse all of the book's ideas, but does 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 uninitated, they appear to be glazed ceramic cubes about one centimeter on a side.

The students obtained two barrels 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 students 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, and trains. 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

To learn more about Pinel School, visit our alumni web portal, operated by my good friend David Wilson.

Learn more about Ecotopia

Some cuebon trivia:

There is a small but growing number of Spanish language web posts that contain the word 'cuebon.' Seems it's a regional dialect, or perhaps a slang word. The word does not appear in Spanish dictionaries or online translation services, and I have no idea what it means.

According to the Web, there once lived an astronomer named A.G.W. Cuebon. There is at least one research paper on line, first published in the 1970s, that cites his-or-her work. I'm not sure about the person's nationality (possibly Mexican), or how the name is pronounced. (The link is to a PDF document.)

There was a Taylor and Francis business article on line that refers to a source named Cuebon. It concerns "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. Guess it didn't catch on. Oh, well . . .

(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, thirty-five years ago we young Pinellians had no idea about any of this. If you can shed some light on these three references, please do let us know.

Just FYI, the Pokemon character is spelled cubone. No relation.

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