Not Quite Right

War

2009-05-07T21:57:00.005-05:00

The following was found while digging through some of Bob Church's belongings. It is a short writing Bob did on a napkin while at a restaurant during one of his travels at least 10 years ago (possibly while staying at a hotel in St. Joe). Louise Church would like to share it with you all here. And no, this isn't Bob haunting you all through his blog so don't rush to the phone to call your local paranormal society headquarters :)

Politicians in this world
Are really uptight

They get us in wars

They get us in fights
They say it's the economy
That brings it about
But then there are us
Who have found out
Don't get me wrong
I'm not afraid to fight
But in my own mind
I know it's not right
It's really strange
The position we'll be in
Because after the dead is counted
Neither will win
The dead will be dead
The lame will be lame
But the politician
Will still be the same

To All My Wonderful Readers

2008-11-19T11:55:00.002-06:00

The time has come for me to call it a day. I am now pretty much bed bound and have lost my capabilities of getting online. My soon to be son-in-law Dave the Genius is typing this for me.

I want all of you to know what a great ride it's been. Without the support and ongoing of input from all of you it would have been an exercise in frustration. Here's wishing you and your families all the good things in life. God bless you all.

Love,

Bob

Last Rose of Autumn

2008-10-08T12:19:00.000-05:00

Last rose of autumn,
Poised, self-assured, demanding my attention;
October’s glisten bolsters you,
Readies you for what must come.

Final crimson-tipped cream, satiny-smooth,
Regal semi-gloss realization of all we hold dear,
Standing tall where once, in earlier times,
Your sisters begged for fleeting glance or passing touch.

Scant blend of pastel, subtle-rounded glory passing once
Before our doubting eyes; forcing us to behold—one last time
Daring us to futilely search for peers of beauty.

Darker edges frame you— I’m complete with or without you,
Mocking me... why didn’t I notice you sooner?
You’ll leave me or I’ll leave you, sure as snow will cover us.

Daring me to pick your bloom, forcing me to settle
For one last breath of scented glory,
One last look at ruby-glittered perfection,
A final feathery-soft touch before you go.

I’ll not touch you now, nor impudently sully your grace,
No hand but mine has come so close, no eye yet witnessed—
So forever shall you persevere in my heart,
Unblemished, unstained, complete.

Bob Church © 10/4/03

Shim Shimminy, Shim Shimminy, Shim, Shim Sheree...

2008-09-30T07:42:00.003-05:00

My answer to Jo's Wordcatalyst challenge:

The hailstones leaped from the pavement, like maggots when you fry them in hot grease. The storm currently ravaging the exterior of The Oyster House promised to be pretty much like quite a number of other storms we’d had this fall, except for the fact that the precipitation, although being a shade of white that approximated snow, was actually quite a bit harder and more apt to raise a welt if it hit you on the head, which it shouldn’t if you’re smart enough to come inside. Most Boighers knew of the savagery Pittsburgh weather is capable of, so as I waited for something to happen, I put my feet up on the seat on the other side of the table and set my mind free like one of those flowers, the Wandering Jew. The irony didn’t escape me either, me being a catholic and all. I stared at the red brick wall that lined the entire back of the restaurant, the one the color of a brick-red Crayola crayon.

She walked into my ‘office’ like a centipede with ninety-eight missing legs, and caught my eye quicker than one of those pointy hook latches that used to dangle from screen doors and would fly up whenever you banged the door open again.

Her face was a perfect oval, like a circle that had its two opposite sides gently compressed by a Thigh Master, and her eyes were limpid pools, only they had forgotten to put in any of that chemical pH-adjuster. I knew she was trouble. When she looked back at me, my thoughts tumbled in my head, making and breaking alliances like underpants in a dryer without Cling Free. I struggled to keep my composure, but I knew it was no use. I was about to fall for her like a mob informant falls into the Monongahela River, except that, hopefully, I wouldn’t splash when my blanket-wrapped cadaver hit the water. ”Can I help you?” I asked. I know… it was inane. Whenever I’m tense, I mutter the first thing that comes to mind. Thankfully, it was after lunch, so I wasn’t subconsciously led to ‘Would you like that super-sized?’

”Maybe…” She spoke with the wisdom that can only come from experience, like a guy who went blind because he looked at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it and now goes around the country speaking at high schools about the dangers of looking at a solar eclipse without one of those boxes with a pinhole in it. Her raven hair glistened like nose hair after a sneeze. “Are you Shim Shimmick?”

After she spoke, a thunderclap broke the silence; an ominous sound, much like that of a thin sheet of metal being shaken backstage during the storm scene in an off-Broadway play that can’t afford a special-effects machine. The whole room had an eerie, surreal quality, like when you're on vacation in another city and Jeopardy comes on at 5:00 p.m. instead of 5:30, and our conversation seemed forced as the dialogue during the interview portion. Is that Alex Trebek a weenie, or what?

“Look, sister, I’m a busy guy…” I tried to sell her cool… with all the effectiveness of a little boat gently drifting across a pond in the exact same way a bowling ball wouldn't.

“Oh?” Her eyes were like two brown circles with big black dots in the center. She leaned against the desk, scooting her butt onto one corner as she crossed her legs, forcing my eyes to the pink flesh the same way a rancher forces a calf into a chute before he pokes it with a Hot-Shot. “I have a message for you. Remember your buddy, Hackstraw?”

I wasn’t about to fall for this old ruse… “I have lots of buddies,” I scoffed. “And don’t call me Hackstraw! But, to answer your question, I’m Shimmick, what of it? I know a guy named Hackstraw, though.” That ought to let her know she’s not dealing with a pinhead. I have a mind like a steel trap, and not one that has been left out in the weather so long it’s rusted shut, either.

Now, she looked as perplexed as a hacker who means to access P:thur.quim102.comaaa/ch@ung but gets P:thur.quimaaa/ch@ung bymistake. . In her long fingers, she held a tapered white cylinder that looked as long as one of those cigarettes you might see Bette Davis or Joan Crawford smoking, only without the holder. Her artistic sense was obviously exquisitely refined, like someone who can tell butter from I Can't Believe It's Not Butter.

Her voice was so husky it could have pulled a dogsled, and she possessed a deep, throaty, genuine laugh-- like that sound a dog makes just before it throws up. She reached into her bag and pulled out a dagger, holding it up in front of her. A blind man could see it was as sharp as the tone used by Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee(D-TX) in her first several points of parliamentary procedure made to Rep. Henry Hyde (R-Ill.) in the House Judiciary Committee hearings on the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton.

“I pulled this out of him when I found him laying behind my building. Hackstraw fell 12 stories, hitting the pavement like a Hefty bag filled with alphabet soup.“ Her vocabulary was as bad as, like… well, like whatever, know what I mean?

She stood up and walked closer to me, looking very much like someone I had never seen before. I hadn’t noticed her height, but she was as tall as a five-foot-ten-inch tree. This woman was some package, all right… one of those that UPS leaves at your door that you don’t have to sign for.

Even then, I knew we were destined to be one; long separated by cruel fate, I envisioned us as star-crossed lovers racing across a grassy field toward each other like two freight trains, one having left Youngstown at 6:36 p.m. traveling at 55 mph, the other from South Bend at 4:19 p.m. at a speed of 35 mph.

In my muddled state, the pistol she now brandished had gone unnoticed, like the period after the Dr. on a Dr Pepper can, but it was big enough to give me a bad case of barrel envy. She had a hungry look, the kind you get from not eating for a while. Was that lust in her eyes or was she simply crazy as the wacko who gets locked up for killing a whole bunch of people? Her grin took on the dimensions of Tanya Harding watching re-runs of Jeff Gillooly crushing Nancy Kerrigan’s knee.

We’d never met, but there we were… just like two hummingbirds who had also never met. Now, I was lame as a duck. Not the metaphorical lame duck, either, mind you, but a real duck that was actually lame… maybe from accidentally stepping on an extremely sharp pebble or a land mine or something.

Shots rang out, as shots are wont to do. "Oh, Jason, take me!" she panted, her breasts heaving like a college freshman on Dollar-A-Beer Night. At that moment, I almost wished my name was Jason. Dropping the pistol, she wrapped her arms around me, a ballerina gracefully standing en pointe and extending one slender leg behind her like a dog at a fire hydrant.

Silently, for a moment we swayed like an oscillating electric fan set on medium. She was growing on me like E. coli on room-temperature ground round. It was becoming more and more apparent that she was as easy as a TV Guide crossword. When she sat down on my lap, I thought I heard bells, as if she were a garbage truck backing up.

Sweet nothings wafted into my willing ears. Her voice had that tense, grating quality, like a first-generation thermal paper fax machine that needed a band adjusted.

But, she wouldn’t make a sucker out of me. She was just a little too slick, a little too accomplished. For her, this was as much a tradition as a father chasing his kids around the back yard with a chainsaw… No, no! I wouldn’t be her patsy!

Suddenly, I was filled with revulsion as I looked at her and saw my ex-wife’s face. The revelation that our marriage of twenty years had disintegrated because of her infidelity came as a rude shock, like a surcharge at a formerly surcharge-free ATM. It hurt the way your tongue hurts after you accidentally staple it to the wall… I hate it when that happens. But, it was still night-time and this was still Pittsboigh, so who knew what the future held?

What did this broad want?

My Soiree

2008-09-28T07:18:00.007-05:00

Top: The crooners (Harry Furness and my son, Blake) perform.

Jo, Karen and Shirley, during a quiet moment on my bridge.

The WordCatalyst Crew: Back Row from left, Harry Furness, JO Janoski, Dan Beams, Karen Heywood and Nan Jacobs. Front row, Shirley Allard, myself and Mrs. Bubba, the lovely and talented Weezie

Well, it's time I took my thumb out of my butt and put something up. It's been another week or so and I promised you pic's of my big soiree, so I guess it's put-up-or-shut-up time.

The occasion was the 61st anniversary of my birth and my desire to try to get together with some of those who make my life complete. I had no idea how complete my life is. I invited practically everyone I knew, not once thinking that folks might be inclined to actually accept (such has been my experience on more than one occasion), and I got the shock of my life-- nearly every single person I invited showed up. Now, let me be fair when I tell you that many of the people were relatives and relatives of relatives whom I'd not yet had the pleasure of meeting, but there were also those very special few composed of some of the writers on the staff of Word Catalyst Magazine, an intrepid bunch willing to brave airports, rental cars with crazy Pennsylvania drivers intent on photographing the St. Louis Arch from every angle known to man, motel rooms, the vaguaries of cuisine known only as 'down-home cooking', as well as countless other indignities heaped upon the traveling public in 21st Century America, for the pleasure of what exactly?

I can only imagine the look Shirley Allard got from her hubby when she said, "Jim, pack a bag we're going to Missouri" followed by Big Jim's stony New England stare and decision to comply despite his opinion that his beloved may have taken leave of her senses.

Now, the decision for Harry Furness may have taken on different tones as he sat on his couch in Delaware and suddenly realizing that if he could get on an airplane and ride for a couple of hours without his legs falling off, he'd be afforded the opportunity to get down with his unholy harps to the favor of an adoring group of on-lookers, so where's the decision? He packed a bag.

Jo Janoski, Karen Heywood, Nan Jacobs and Dan Beams also made the decision to leave their homes and join us, all with varying degrees of difficulty and tribulation.

The two-day party contained practically every form debauchery that could be expected of otherwise-sensible people of a certain age (ahem!), without violating any known societally-accepted norms of behavior and with an absence of any recognized nudity.

And I saw a spirit of love take over a group of people whose numbers, at times, exceeded fifty without a single crass word. I am so blessed to know such people, and for the remainder of my days I shall keep you all in my heart. Thank you for the most wonderful occasion a person could ever hope for. Bless you all and thank you from the bottom of my heart!

A Reconsideration of Position

2008-09-17T16:25:00.000-05:00

After much consternation and gnashing of teeth, at the request of a reader who means something to me, I’ve decided to come out of turtle mode and stick my head back out into the world for the scrutiny of all who might happen upon my little island here in cyberspace.

Frankly, I am (and have been for quite some time) battling with myself over the concept of ‘worth’ as it refers to compensation for services rendered. I guess I’ve concerned myself with the concept my entire life. I’ve always felt that if someone spends time, money or effort in the pursuit of any quest, be it entertainment, goods or whatever, they deserve at least a modicum of fulfillment for their efforts. I take that very personally, because I’ve always worked hard and know the feelings I’ve felt after being ‘ripped off’.

The same concept prevails in my writing. It is my desire that whomsoever might spend their time reading my prose come away with some sort of compensation be it in the form of a smile, a wistful look, or even a spark of disagreement lustful enough to provoke a comment.

Perhaps I’ve been selfish in this platform. Maybe I should allot a period of time each day to sit and clack about trivialities that may or may not mean much to me, but which may spark an interest on behalf of the reader.

I’ve always thought of writing as art, with the words converted to vibrant and/or subtle hues of contrast giving life to a concept, disdainful of pragmatism and free to be kaleidoscopically whirled and twirled so as to catch the light, offering fire and brilliance as they’re read.

Trust me when I tell you chemotherapy inhibits my ability to bring the fire, but I shall try to honor your requests and offer up something.

And as always, thank you for your support. You folks are way too good to me.

Last Gig at Lookout Point

2008-09-13T08:11:00.002-05:00

Last Gig at Lookout Point

Crystal Brodnax felt her heart beat in her ears with each foot placed in front of the other, the park’s running course kicking her ass this afternoon. But, if advancing years were to be kept at bay, she must keep running—if indeed her current pace could really be construed to be ‘running’. She recalled two little boys on skateboards who had passed her with no problem whatsoever, the little bastards barely slowing down to give her a sideways glance, as though she were but another park statue without the benefit of pigeon shit or cascading fountain to establish her presence. The breeze, still too warm to reward her rapid exhalations with the prominence of vapor, nevertheless foretold the rapidly approaching autumnal season with a bite that seared her lungs a little. Soon, she would need to replace her silk warm-up jacket with more suitable woolen attire if she were to continue her early evening regimens, but with dusk fast approaching, her immediate goal included only getting back to Woodshire Boulevard without getting raped and/or murdered.

Like any large urban park in the northeast, the expanses of trees, hills and undergrowth of Lookout Point Park held ample opportunities for mayhem, should the unwary runner fail to exercise due vigilance, especially when the sun wasn’t shining brightly. Crystal’s daily ritual included the full four-mile course that required her to negotiate several laborious uphill sections of twists and turns in the path that led to the park’s namesake, Lookout Point. Fortunately, several years back an anonymous benefactor had bequeathed the funding necessary to erect emergency telephone call boxes every half mile and pave the path, thus rendering the surface smooth and nearly free of unseen bumps or holes that could turn an ankle and leave a runner at the mercy of the elements… or whatever else might lurk under the veneer of the surrounding glade. It was a nice enough place, she figured, and her safety was not in question so long as she didn’t wander off the course. Three years had come and gone since she’d first set foot on the Lookout Point Park Running Path, and Crystal Broadnax’s experiences on the course had all been positive, sore muscles notwithstanding or hours spent recuperating from the debilitating effects of coming down from the so-called ‘runner’s high’. Yes, she did feel the euphoria of endorphins cascading into her bloodstream, but like the concept of orgasms, which she’d never experienced, any pleasure derived was likely of short duration and intensity. Plus, she didn’t enjoy the sweating or the rash produced by her abundant thighs, the female equivalent of jock itch, or so she supposed.

But, run she did, if for no other reason than habit demanded it. Crystal Broadnax, full-time EMT and part-time theater arts student, displayed all the anal retentive characteristics that as an undergraduate earned her the nickname, Sphincter. If it’s worth doing, it’s worth doing right… every time. Her reputation as a ball buster earned her a good deal of time alone, which was fine with her. Most of the men she knew were gay, married or both, and the few guys for whom she felt any attraction whatsoever were either unsophisticated, cheap-feel skirt chasers or self-indulged narcissists. It wasn’t that she didn’t like men, it was just that she had neither time nor inclination to raise any of the juveniles she’d experienced in her social life. In Crystal’s opinion, if you get close enough to any man to lead him to believe you’re willing to spend more than one night at his apartment, and he’ll have you doing his laundry before the week is out. So she ran… and she ran… and she ran some more, even if she could be timed with a sundial.

Stoner’s Ridge marked the start of the ascent up to the Point. Not so much a promontory as a line of demarcation, it served to define the beginning of a constant uphill journey, the point of no return for slackers where many stopped and turned around or simply paused to watch the sun set over the hills in the background. Tempted as she might be to stop, Crystal pressed on past her inadequacies, intent on her objective, the summit. Certainly, the area had earned its name, the glens offering easy access to teenagers hoping for enough privacy to light up a joint or cop a feel… or both. The line of trees at the juncture of the two adjoining side hills formed a notch accentuated by a rock outcropping at the bottom, an area that looked out of place with its neighbors, as though someone had merely placed the boulders there to give the runners something to distract their view from the path—and the dopers in the woods. The picnic table atop the ridge sat alone today, its gray top and benches lusterless and uninviting, the perfect place for a quick pit stop to pull her socks up and catch her breath.

A thin sliver of sun peeked over the hilltop, its refractory powers painting the sky an orangeish-purple and causing Crystal Brodnax to sit down on the bench as she reflected upon the scene with what little romance she still harbored for nature’s majesty. She would not allow herself the luxury of recognizing the romance of the colors or lamenting her perpetual single status, as hard as her subconscious might try. Ethan had used her ‘til he used her up, she figured, and no amount of sentimentality could alter her reality, so why give in to maudlin bullshit and let someone see her cry? Still, that sky was gorgeous and she felt the urge to—what the hell? At the base of the boulders in the notch of the valley, Crystal saw him.

The man’s figure rested between two large round rocks, his head and lower legs visible but torso obscured by the boulders on either side, as though he’d crawled into the crevice and couldn’t get out. The man appeared to be youngish, with a full head of brown hair, but she couldn’t see his clothing. A quick scan of the area around him gave no clues as to his situation. He wasn’t looking at her. In fact, he didn’t appear to be looking at anything in particular, if indeed his eyes were open at all. Only one thing was sure, he appeared to be in trouble, and Crystal’s inner EMT compelled her to investigate. Reaching inside her left jacket pocket, she took her whistle out and looped the cord around her neck. Then, discovering the aerosol can of pepper spray in its usual spot in the right pocket, she walked down the hill. Near the bottom, she jumped up on the rocks above the man’s head and looked down at him. Surprisingly, he didn’t move or acknowledge her presence. Truly, he was stuck there, although she couldn’t understand how he could have possibly arranged himself in that position, unless— there she stopped, noticing the blood stain on the rocks on either side. Someone had stuffed him in there, just a little more garbage to dispose of in the woods.

“Are you okay?”

The words seemed to revive him a little, and he craned his neck in his unsuccessful attempt to look up at her. Then, resuming his stare straight ahead, he muttered, “Oh, yea… what could possibly be wrong?”

His voice sounded resolute to Crystal… perky, even, as though absolutely nothing was peculiar about his dilemma. High? Demented? Crystal’s internal computer accessed memory banks of retained knowledge gained from twenty years of dealing with emergency situations in every conceivable scenario and decided to investigate further before deciding on a course of action for his rescue.

Jumping down from the rocks, she assumed a position where she could make direct eye contact with him, although the girth of the boulders prevented her from getting within three feet of his head. His arms still weren’t visible, although she could see the soles of his brown boots sticking out from between the two hunks of granite. Quickly, she tried to move the boulders, even jackknifing her body between them and trying to force them off him, all to no avail. Whoever put him here must have thought he was already dead.

“Listen, I’m going to get you out, I’m a paramedic. What’s your name?”

The question seemed to perplex him a bit. “Will my name have an effect on your efforts? Would you approach the task differently if my name were Alfonzo than you would if it were Jeremiah?”

“What?” The question made Crystal angry, although she didn’t know why. Why do I always get the drunks?

“Do you need me to repeat the question? Oh, wait… maybe English isn’t your language of choice. Sprechen sie Deutsch? Parlez vous Francais? Habla Espan—“

“You don’t need to mock me, dude. I’m just trying to help you.” Crystal snapped.

This caused the head to close its eyes and try to laugh, ending in a coughing, hacking expression of dismay. “You want to help me… how nice. Where were you when I needed help in Toledo or Scranton? Where were you when things got ugly during my second set in Springfield and the broad in the third row kept calling me a Communist? Now you want to help me? Well, there’s no helping me, lady, get used to it.” Again, a few haggard coughs escaped, causing his eyes to bulge.

“Bull!” Crystal roared at him. “I’ll call and have ten paramedics swarming this place in fifteen minutes.”

“Honey, you can get a thousand paramedics out here and a hundred doctors, too… but there ain’t a damn thing that can be done for me, except humor me for a few minutes. How about turning on your best Clara Barton charm and show me that bedside manner you folks have become so famous for. I could use a friendly audience as much as anything right now,” and his voice trailed off, as though he were finishing an insignificant thought.

“Be quiet for a second,” she cooed, all the fight gone from her voice. Reaching over the boulder, Crystal gently pressed the tips of her fingers to his neck, feeling for a carotid pulse, and was rewarded for her effort with a slow, thready beat. I need to get him flat on the ground as soon as possible. “Let’s start over, Sweetie, what would you like for me to call you?” Not waiting for his answer, she crawled down and started to examine his feet, pulling off one boot and revealing a nightmarish blood-soaked sock. Slipping it off carefully, she revealed a cold purple foot. Obviously, he had an injury to his leg that had cut off all circulation. Crystal slid her hand under the boot as far as she could, noticing that the earth gave way underneath, and the soil felt wet… he’d lost a lot of blood.

“Call me… Ishmael.” Then the man started to laugh; a natural, unforced chortle that caused his lips to quiver. His eyes opened and he looked for her. “Sorry, I couldn’t resist. I figured you’d enjoy the Melville reference. You are a woman of letters, are you not?”

Maybe if she could dig out from under his legs, she could force his release by pulling him out the bottom if his upper body wasn’t stuck. Since she couldn’t see his arms, there was no need in even trying to pull him out the top. Hurrying now, she began to scoop the dirt out from under his legs, sickened as she was by the red, sodden debris sticking to her hands.

In the waning light, a passerby might have confused her for a large dog digging for a bone as dirt flew behind her from between her legs. As her digging progressed further and further toward his butt, the dirt became firmer and harder to scoop, but the area directly under him stayed open, and she realized his upper body was lodged. Crystal reached around his leg from underneath and tried to pull down with all her might, hoping that she could feel some movement or some reaction from him. Nothing.

For the first time in her adult life, Crystal Broadnax felt totally out of control. Breathing deeply to keep panic from overtaking her, she stood up and looked at his face. Incredibly, a pale pinkness remained and his expression held no question. He seemed quite comfortable. “Who did this to you?” Crystal asked him.

Ignoring her question, he continued. “See? I told you there’s nothing you can do. If you’d listened, who knows what level of understanding we could already have reached, what plane of existence we could even now be sharing. It’s not as if we have a lot of time, you know. Would you answer a question for me?” His eyes were open again, and they implored her not to look away.

“Sure…” she allowed, “ask away.”

“Which Stooge do you think I most resemble?”

A meaningful pause ensued, then, with snot flying out her nose, Crystal gasped and put her hands over her face, laughter engulfing her. After a few seconds, she looked up and he was smiling, too. “Larry,” she offered, “definitely Larry.” Then, she turned her head away, feeling tears starting to well. He’s going to die, and I’m powerless to stop it… and he’s trying to make me feel better. I can’t let him see me cry.

With a few quick steps, Crystal scaled the boulder and placed her head close to his, staring directly into his eyes. “But, I think you’re much more handsome than Larry, and obviously better educated.”

He rolled his eyes. “Oh, sure, butter up the guy who can’t move. Roll these boulders off me and I’ll show you just how mistaken first impressions can be. When the time comes, would you please be sure to tell the coroner that I’m leaving my body to science fiction?” Both sides of his mouth moved slowly upward into a small, sickly grin.

Smiling back at him, she drew her legs up underneath her and sat Indian-style in an area where she knew he could see her. It’s my turn to talk now. “Who are you? Please tell me. If you do die here tonight, I need to be able to tell someone who you are. Don’t you want your family to know what’s become of you?”

The question seemed to confuse him momentarily. “Ah, yes… who am I… the eternal question, isn’t it? Who is any one of us, really? We come, we go, and if we’re lucky, we have a little fun in the interim. Let’s talk about you, anyone who’d bother to stop for a stranded comic enjoying his last non-paying gig has to be much more interesting, and probably funnier. Besides, I don’t have any family.”

“Okay, have it your way, but I warn you, I’m high-maintenance.” Noticing that his eyes were now only about half-open, she gently stroked his cheek with the back of her hand.
“My name is Crystal Broadnax. I’m originally from Parkersburg, West Virginia, I’m a 41-year-old paramedic and I’ve never had an orgasm.”

“Jesus, Mary and Joseph… you’re beginning to sound like every woman I’ve ever known, not that the list is lengthy. I think I liked you better when you were threatening me with paramedics. But, since you’ve taken the time and effort to stop by my clinic, I suppose you’d like to hear some psychobabble about human sexual response—but I’m required by law to warn you, any reproduction of the details, pictures and accounts of this game without the expressed written consent of the National Football League is strictly prohibited.”

Crystal grinned at him. “Is there a man on the face of the earth who doesn’t have that damned disclaimer memorized?”

“Yea, there are a few. In fact, one of them probably cuts your hair, but I doubt he’d be too interested in your little problem. Let’s press on, shall we?”

“Hey, pallie, I never said it was a problem— it was more a statement of fact. You know, a little tidbit of information about me that I thought might interest you, might make you more likely to relate to me on a closer basis.”

This caused the man to think for a few seconds before responding. “Oh, I see… you want to get close to me, I should have realized that. What lady jogger who comes across a gut-shot comic while she’s taking her afternoon run, doesn’t automatically start spilling her guts to the poor bastard? You start by telling me that you’ve never had an orgasm, then I tell you that I’d spend three weeks of non-stop foreplay with you trying to make it happen, then you tell me that you’d like to but you don’t know me that well, then I’d explain that the chemistry that we would have would just make not knowing each other all the more exciting. Then, you’d look into my eyes and say that, indeed, we could probably make all that happen… if only you knew my name, address, blood type, any chronic diseases and last, but not least, the location of my next-of-kin, then I’d tell you that my name doesn’t make the slightest bit of difference to anyone, and we’d be right back at square one staring at each other, with you still trying to find a way to make it all better.”

Now the smiles disappeared.

“Is it such a terrible thing that I’d like to help you?”

The man shook his head a little. “No, it isn’t. I’m sorry… but there’s nothing you can do, Crystal. Do you mind if I call you Crystal? You’re the last person I’ll ever talk to, and I don’t want to argue. My vision is starting to fade, but I do want to let you know that I consider you very pretty. I’d also like you to know that if I had more time, I’d make a serious run at you. Honestly, I can’t understand how any man who’s ever seen you would ever let you run by yourself.”

Overwhelmed by the honesty and nearly overcome by her own emotion, Crystal summoned all the courage she could muster. Stroking his hair, she softly cooed, “If I’d found you, I wouldn’t be running at all.”

The man tilted his head toward her, obviously enjoying her tenderness. “My name is Chuck, but you can call me…” He blinked his eyes and turned his head to the side, making eye contact with her one last time. “…Larry.”

Crystal once again checked his carotid artery for a pulse. Finding none, she jumped down from the rocks and walked up the path to find a call box. By now, darkness had overtaken the landscape and her mood. Isn’t this just my luck? Finally I find someone I think I might be compatible with and the bastard dies on me. Irony, thy name is Larry.

Suddenly feeling tired and old, Crystal Broadnax sat down on a rock to wait for the coroner; and she longed for the days when she was but a simple Sphincter, who neither knew nor cared about orgasms… or sad, dying comics. Then, she wept.

Granite, Gravity and Grace

2008-09-11T18:37:00.003-05:00

Granite, Gravity and Grace

There, upon the rock, facing the stream, Ricky sat. Knees scrunched up against his chest, arms wrapped across his shins with interlaced fingers securing and giving him balance against the northerly breeze, head perched neatly on top of his knees with eyes focused on nothing but the eternal passage of the swift current, he waited and contemplated. Somewhere, birds called to their mates and taxis beeped warnings to impeding traffic, Serbian women chattered in a complicated Croatian dialect while hanging wet laundry on the line, yet not a single sound nor extraneous thought penetrated his realm as it existed today; not rushing water, not thunder, not Elijah trumpeting his clarion call throughout the world.

The rock, huge and round and placed precisely on a promontory he’d selected and designated his own, felt soft and cool to his touch. No outcroppings or imperfections of any sort offended his fingers as they lightly traced the water-and-wind-burnished surface. How many birds, lizards, squirrels, chipmunks, snakes or other humans had shared his window into eternity? Had they correspondingly shared his quiet awe of this majestic place? Why did the water rush by, seemingly ignoring the upper majority in support of the much smaller and less visually acute base? Do water secrets exist down there, protected from prying eyes by fathoms of froth and algae and legions of water plants? Maybe one day he’d dive into the icy race and try to hold on long enough to investigate, to ply his strength against the current, to search for any handhold, to feel his lungs threaten to burst against the pressures of the depth and to know the exhilaration of impending doom.

Maybe one day… but not today. Today, Ricky claimed his satisfaction just sitting and wondering if his rock loved him as much. After all, it’s hard to really know the emotions of a ten-ton hunk of granite eroded by eons of wind and water. Had he sufficient intellect to claim comprehension of such complexities, perhaps he wouldn’t be here at all.

Salutations, etc. etc.

2008-09-11T11:17:00.002-05:00

Well... it seems I've found my way, once again, to the land of communicative discourse.

I know, I know...

Myriad events have happened since we last met, none of which I consider interesting to anyone outside the medical professions, and therein lies the problem. I'm uncomfortable wasting your time with explanations regarding my health problems and, honestly, they're the mainstream of my concentration these days. With scant inspiration and diminished capability of penning anything worthy of your consideration, I've taken the noble road and shut the operation down until such time as some spark might return, much as it pains me to have to do so.

All of your comments, kind thoughts and prayers have been greedily sucked up and processed, each with a smile and 'thank you'. You're wonderful people, each and every one of you, and I'm better for having met you. Rest assured that when, and if, something I consider to be of any value whatsoever may return, so shall I.

If anyone would like to see some re-runs of my stories, I'm willing to put some up, but I don't want to be boorish, so let me know if you're interested.

My thanks and blessings to all,
Bubba

"Hello, my name is Simon... and I love to do drawer-ings"

2008-08-17T20:32:00.002-05:00

I wish there were something quite philosophical I could say about this, unfortunately the occasion seems to be one of 'what you see is what you get'. While doing a number problem in a crossword puzzle book this morning, I got bored and began to doodle.

Mistake.

Graphic artists and designers (not to mention mathematicians and English teachers capable of spelling the word correctly without the benefit of Spell-Check) worldwide are, as we speak, laughing their proverbial asses off, knowing of my existence and the omnipresent threat I pose to their livelihoods.

My mother would be so disappointed.

Is that you, Aunt Gussie?

2008-08-08T08:13:00.006-05:00

The Thought For The Day:

The whole idea of civil war escapes me, frankly... doesn't being civil rather defeat the purpose?

Ah, yes, the calendar reminds me that it is once again August, the official start of the family reunion season. I've been informed by my significant other that we'll be hosting the Annual Church Family Reunion this year. Given the attendant circumstances with my health, I am scarcely capable of containing my glee. Oh, joy, thy eternal countenance fills me with blather only circumspectly containable.

The prospect of providing a venue for such an event is... well, it's terrifying, actually. If past experiences are a reliable indicator of future actions, it will be necessary for me to devise a battle plan capable of anticipating most anything, and carrying out a formatted scenario of plausible deniability.

Since I have to do it anyway, I thought I might as well share my list of necessities for such a gathering. That way, if any of you are faced with the same task, you can't write and say, 'Bubba, why didn't you warn me?'. Consider this my contribution to the betterment of family relations throughout the country.

Tips For Organizing Your Family Reunion

Start early. There is no substitute for good planning. It's been my experience that about 30 years is sufficient.

Go shopping downtown and pick up a few books, CD-ROM's, planning guides or practically anything that will put off actually starting on your task. The whole process sucks, actually. Changing the date of the reunion at the last minute is acceptable only if the channel cat's are really, really biting well down at Jones' Pond or if you haven't seen that particular edition of Seinfeld. If you totally can't figure out how to work the VCR (and how many of us can actually say we can?), have the wife call everyone... folks tend to get a little surly when they've scheduled their vacation around the reunion and spent a couple of grand on non-refundable airfare.

There's really no point in giving out a fake address, especially if you live in a town of under 10,000 population... all it'll do is give them the opportunity to build up a good snit and a healthy buzz before they show up inclined to want to fight.

If you know more than one family is coming in from out of town, be sure to book some rooms at hotels nowhere close to each other.

Prepare a list of "Family Scandals We Just Don't Talk About" and send a copy to everyone who'll be attending. Also, laminate a hundred copies of the list and post them in conspicuous places throughout the reunion area.

If possible, try to schedule the event at a local lake. This way, accidental drownings will take on an air of legitimacy.

If family members wish to bring fiances or 'special friends' of other ethnicities or sexual preference, be considerate of their wishes. Then, lose their invitations on the way to the mail box. Trust me when I tell you that you're doing them a favor.

Ask every family attending to contribute $50 to help defray the costs of the extras such as fireworks, ammunition, bail bondsmen, etc. Once everyone's money has been collected, take it down to the track and bet it on a horse you think has a chance of winning or use it for a couple of lap dances at Horny Hooters. You're entitled to one last celebration before you lose everything.

It would probably be best to have some food available as well as beer.

Getting yourself arrested should only be considered as a last-ditch effort to avoid attending. Remember, the wife knows when you're asleep and has access to the key to your gun cabinet.

Well, that's all I can think of at the moment. Good luck with it... remember, one reunion properly planned will keep you from ever having to do it again.

Poison, Politics and An Offer Too Good To Pass Up

2008-08-04T19:07:00.009-05:00

Well, another ten blissful hours spent at the Harry S. Truman VA Hospital today, having various miracles of medical science introduced intravenously, and, I must admit, administered painlessly and professionally. While there, and within earshot of three other compatriots enduring similar regimens, I co-mingled the ethos of at least two different racial components, three different regional backgrounds, and, apparently, three different political party affiliations.

I learned (not necessarily from the same proponent) that John McCain is the absolute right man for the best interests of our country because he's the only candidate who'll back our military, that John McCain is obviously the wrong man for our country because a vote for him is a vote for eight more years of Bush diplomacy, that Barack Obama has a lot of great ideas but shouldn't be elected because he's black and can't be trusted, that Barack Obama is obviously the only person in America who'll look after the working man and he's only half-black and besides, he was raised by his white mother, and that neither John McCain or Barack Obama should be trusted, and that we should write in Ross Perot (if, indeed, he's still alive, which became a discussion that caused the nurses to ask us to quiet down).

Note to Bob: A Veteran's Administration Hospital is probably not the right place to discuss politics, especially if all the proponents are strapped to IV's.

I found a card in a 1998 copy of Stars & Stripes that I filled out and sent in. It was good for $25,000 of term life insurance for only $2.95 per month, with an option for up to four times that value for only $11.80 per month; so at some point in the future, my wife will be $100,000 richer. In my mind, it's a bargain, so I joined the AARP. I can honestly say that I'd be proud to join an organization like the American Association of Retarded People. I'm sure there'll be no problems with my application... I know I'll qualify with flying colors!

I'll tell you what, folks, I'm feeling so good that I'm going to try to go back to work tomorrow. I've been laying around feeling sorry for myself for long enough. The shock has come and gone and I need to feel useful again. Consider me open for business-- thank you and God bless!

Bubba

PS-- On a different note entirely, I'd like to pass along this information that I experienced a little earlier today:

TICK WARNING!

I hate it when people forward bogus warnings, and I have even done it myself a couple times unintentionally. .. but this one is real, and it's important. So please send this warning to everyone on your e- mail list.

If someone comes to your front door saying he or she is from the Health Department and checking for ticks due to the warm weather and asks you to take your clothes off and dance around with your arms up, DO NOT DO IT!! THIS IS A SCAM!!

They only want to see you naked. I wish I'd gotten this yesterday.

I feel so stupid...

Detritus In My Junk Drawer

2008-08-01T08:21:00.002-05:00

Well, kids, I thought that since I'm not writing anything new, I'd give you something to chew on a little...

Detritus In My Junk Drawer

“Did you know that a human head weighs eight pounds?”

The woman in the pale yellow dress lowered her copy of McCall’s and stared at me as I sat across the waiting room from her. “What?” she asked, as much in astonishment as truly questioning.

“I asked if you knew that a human head weighs eight pounds”, I replied, holding up the copy of AMA Journal.

“That’s what I thought you said,” yellow dress replied and raised the magazine to its original position. Moving slightly sideways in her chair, she demurely re-crossed her legs, staring daggers at me, making sure that I didn’t mistake her adjustment to be a come-on.

“That’s about three-and-a-half kilograms in Canada or Great Britain,” I continued, a grin now starting to emerge.

Again, the magazine lowered. “Well, isn’t that fascinating? A man who can do arithmetic conversions in his head and then spout them indiscriminately as though anyone in the whole wide world might give a damn. I think I’m going to swoon…”

Before I could respond, the attendant opened the sliding glass door and spoke. “Mr. Church, the doctor will see you now.”

“Well, duty calls…” I quipped, tossing the magazine back onto the pile. “Listen, I’d love to stay and chat, but you know how it is when you’re crazy… just know that I’ll always cherish our little unconsummated seduction…” Getting up, I leaned forward, took her hand in mine and tried to kiss it, causing her to yank it away in disgust. Feigning astonishment, I then walked to the door and turned the handle. Glancing back and seeing that the woman still insisted upon frying me in the oil of her eyes, I blew her a kiss and half-whispered, half-spoke, “I’ll still respect you in the morning…” and disappeared into the inner sanctum.

Eat shit and die, creep, Teresa Terwilliger thought to herself as she raised the third finger on her right hand towards the door, just eat a whole bag of fucking shit and die of a fucking shit-hemorrhage. Teresa’s unconscious tic even now caused her to sneer and shake… her anger management session promised to be challenging, if she made it that long without tearing up the waiting room and running out the door, screaming like a banshee.

The therapist’s room more closely resembled a law library. Not a single sink blemished the décor, and had there not been a posh leather sofa next to the desk with the prominently displayed plaque announcing Doctor James Wyrick, MD, one might not have been able to distinguish the psychiatrist’s office from the member’s lounge at any first-rate country club.

James Wyrick, a large gaunt man wearing a brown herringbone tweed jacket and silk bow tie, bounded to the door, right hand extended, to meet me. “Hello, Bob”, he said, pumping my hand like the handle on a poorly responding pump handle on a cold winter’s day. “It’s good to see you again. Please make yourself comfortable.”

Sitting down in the large captain’s chair behind his desk, Dr. Wyrick put his bifocals on and turned a page on his yellow legal pad. Glancing at his watch and writing the time in the upper left-hand corner, he asked, “How can I help you today?”

“Jesus, Doc, you sound like the clerk at Home Depot. ‘Uh, let’s see… I’ll take a sack of eight-penny nails and one of those nifty five-pound sledges’.” I stopped and held my hand up. “Wait, you don’t need to write that down, do you?”

Doctor Wyrick fished a tamper out of his pants pocket and began cleaning the bowl of his pipe. “Bob, your attempts at wit aren’t impressing me at the moment. How much time do you figure we’ve spent dancing around the issues? Let me re-phrase my question, hopefully in a form that will impress you enough to allow you to get on with it. Is there a particular condition or occurrence that you don’t understand and would like to discuss?”

He didn’t light the pipe, but puffed on it as if he had, his attention once again focusing on one particular spot on my forehead, invisible rings of nether-smoke mingling with the thoughts, the perfect antiphony to conversation yet to come… hopefully.

“Make it go away.” I responded.

“Pardon me? Make what go away?”

“The undertoad. Make the fucking undertoad leave me alone and go bother someone else.”

“I see… the undertoad…” James Wyrick coughed, stalling for recognition yet to come.

Silence rushed into the room, collecting everything into its mouth and holding it inside, huge eyes of wonder staring at the world.

“You don’t know what I mean, do you?” I said.

“Haven’t the foggiest notion”, Dr. James Wyrick admitted.

A snort emerged from my mouth as he nodded his head, “Yea, that’s what I thought. I must admit, though, it’s nice to hear a medical professional admit that he doesn’t know everything.”

“You’re an intelligent, intuitive man, Bob, I’ve long known and acknowledged that much. Why don’t you try to explain it to me.”

“Well, James, have you ever read The World According to Garp?”

The doctor took off his spectacles and reached for the handkerchief in the lapel pocket of his jacket. “No, I’m afraid that I haven’t… and please, don’t refer to me as ‘James’; you’re my patient, and I prefer to keep our relationship professional.”

“Okay, then you call me ‘Mr. Church’, then. I prefer to think of you as a pompous dickbreath who doesn’t give a flying fuck about anything except the $400-per-50-minute-hour fee that he steals from people who mistakenly and laughingly expect to get something for their money. Only my friends call me ‘Bob’.”

“Go with that, please… why are you so antagonistic toward authority?”

Grinning, I shook my index finger at the doctor. “Oh, I’d almost forgotten—you’re good. I’m going to have to watch out for you. Anyway, the undertoad, according to John Irving, is a concept of perceived anxiety, I think, towards some unseen force that threatens to take over someone’s life. In the book, a five-year-old boy living near the ocean was warned by his parents to be careful of the water’s undertow, which would pull him under the water and out to sea, and he would never again see his family. Being five, he conceived of a giant, green, amphibian beast living underwater with huge frog’s eyes and mouth capable of swallowing a small boy in a single gulp. Thus, the undertoad was born.”

“Very interesting… please tell me more.”

“I need you to kill the motherfucker—or at least make him get off my back and go play with someone else.” My arms were now on my knees as I sat forward on the sofa, wringing my hands as I spoke.

“Why do you feel the need to curse?”

“Why? Does it offend your virgin ears? Why don’t you curse? How can you listen to problems all day long and not curse? Honestly, doc, I think you ought to be seeing somebody about that.” After pausing, I looked directly at the man sitting across the desk from me and replied, “Shee-it.”

“Mr. Church, whatever my psychological problems may be, they have little to do with helping you. Could we stay focused on you, please? As you so eloquently pointed out, you’re paying for my assistance.”

“Touché… my bad.”

Leaning back on the sofa, I extended my right leg and reached into my pants pocket, pulling out a pack of Marlboros. Tapping the bottom of the unopened pack several times with my finger, I adroitly spun it around and removed the cellophane wrapper and tore off a small section of the foil. Again turning the pack upside down, I tapped it, allowing one cigarette to protrude from the end. Taking it into my mouth, I suddenly noticed no ashtrays visible. Worse, the doctor merely stared at me disapprovingly, reinforcing my hatred for society’s prohibition of smoking. Putting the cigarette back into the pack, I sat back on the sofa and folded my hands in my lap.

“Thank you, Bo—er, Mr. Church, I very much appreciate your help in my never-ending crusade to avoid any reoccurrences, on my part, of a habit that I now find repugnant.”

“Sure thing, doc, anything to help a guy out.”

“Let’s talk about the smoking a bit, shall we? How much and how often do you smoke?”

“Well, given the fact that damned near everyplace forbids it, not nearly as much as I’d like, that’s for sure.”

“Do you hold out any hope of quitting?”

“Well, about the same hope as I have of playing pick-up-sticks with my butt cheeks or watching a one-legged ballerina at the Bolshoi dancing to Swan Lake.”

“Do you see any possibility that smoking may be your undertoad?” The doctor didn’t look up from his pad as he wrote.

“Actually, I think the undertoad makes me smoke, so he can kill me faster.”

“I see… tell me more of this undertoad. You seem as fascinated by his presence as you seem afraid. Could it be that you’re substituting nicotine as a curative for some undefined pessimism or angst?”

“Is it really pessimism if it comes to live with you and refuses to move out, if it takes over every reality in your life and leaves your refrigerator empty, never once paying for any groceries? If, in a jealous rage it strangles any joy that might happen to knock on your door, dragging it into the basement and throwing it into a dungeon where it butt-fucks that joy every day while it cries out in pain and agony, is it still undefined?” No emotion accompanied my words, causing Doctor James Wyrick to stop writing and stare at his patient.

“Why do you think I have the power to kill him? Don’t you think that’s your job?”

I sighed. “I guess it’s a little like hiring a hit man. I’d love to kill it myself, if I could, but it’s too tough for me. That’s why I’ve hired you.”

“Talk to me about joy, Mr. Church. Give me your definition of the concept.”

“Joy… for me, joy is the feeling you get upon hearing that somebody you hate just died… preferably prematurely and after a prolonged period of unendurable pain and suffering.”

“Okay, now define ‘contentment’, please.”

“Oh, that’s easy, doc… that’s when you find out through the grapevine that the good-looking girl who won’t go out with you has never had an orgasm and can’t afford a good shrink, so she decides to become a nun.”

“Would you say you’re a relatively happy guy?”

“Who, me? Of course I am! I’m only here because I have way more money than I’ll ever need and while walking by this morning, I noticed that your Mercedes needs new tires.” I no longer looked at the doctor. Picking up James Wyrick’s letter opener, I leaned back and cleaned my fingernails, outwardly contemptuous of all I surveyed.

“Mr. Church, I can’t help you until you at least acknowledge you have a problem. It is not enough for you to walk in here, time and time again, and berate or belittle me and everyone else you contact. You express the desire to lose your anxieties but you don’t seem to understand the causal relationship between your attitude and your appearance to the world. Or, if you do, you choose to ignore it. Frankly, I consider you far too intelligent to continue your self-destructive habits without full knowledge of what you’re doing.”

The pad and pen, apparently useless and returned to their place on the desktop, functioned as a pretend ashtray as James Wyrick, MD, dumped a shadowy pile of ashes from his pipe. “You’re at war with the world, Mr. Church, and since you insist upon being a one-man army who doesn’t listen to the generals you’ve commissioned, it is my opinion that you’re headed for defeat. Your enemy is both vast and powerful, and is using weapons you’ve provided. No one could ever dislike you nearly as much as you dislike yourself. Once I treated a woman who felt she was undesirable and unattractive, so she took very small doses of rat poison on a daily basis, in hopes that she’d eventually just fail to wake up. Meanwhile, she receded further and further into her own little world and eventually ended up in a long-term care facility, suffering from irreversible coma.

You seem intent upon committing suicide one day at a time, but instead of taking the poison yourself, you’re trying to feed it to a rat-resistant public. Once they get a taste of it, they reject the provider. Could they point it out to you? Yes, they could and probably do, but after awhile, they just assume that you don’t intend to stop, so they just shut the door and ignore your presence. You see, Mr. Church, most people will meet you half way on many issues, but you can’t punish them for it.”

“So you’re suggesting that I invented the undertoad and I’m feeding him and providing him a place to sleep?”

“No, I’m not saying that you invented him, but does it matter? He’s real and he’s got you convinced that joy and contentment can only be accomplished as the result of other people’s misery. You’re feeding his insatiable need for power, and until you either kill him or find a cell to confine him, he’ll continue to ruin your life and the lives of those closest to you. I can’t help you, Bob, but I can show you how to help yourself.”

“Oh, yea? You can kick him out?”

“No, you have to do that… but I can show you how to drain the swamp.”

“Okay… it sounds feasible, I guess, but if it doesn’t work, do I get my money back?”

Shaking his head in despair, he sighed and threw both arms on his desk. Without looking up, he pointed at the door. “That’s all for today… and please try to avoid speaking to Mrs. Terwilliger as you depart. I’d consider it a personal favor.”

Some people are so touchy…

Week 1 Update

2008-07-31T17:31:00.003-05:00

Hiya, kiddies...

Well, I guess it's about time I checked in for an update. My little vacation here at the Chateau de la Chemo is over-rated, at best. It's my own fault, though, I suppose I should have read the brochures a little closer before trading my time-share in Boca for it. heh heh heh

Anyway, everyone is knocking themselves out trying to make me comfortable, and I'm grateful for their efforts. I'd also like to thank all of you who've continued to correspond with me even though I've offered little in return. After this first round is over, hopefully everything will stabilize and I'll bounce back with something approaching my life as it existed before this all started.

Hope all of you are conducting yourselves in a manner that speaks well of your parents. (I have no idea why I just said that... blame it on the cocktail.)

Cheers!

Bubba

Phylox, The Wonder-Spatula (Part 2)

2008-07-27T06:56:00.007-05:00

Removing my only form of self-protection from my belt loops, I laid it upon the stump and began to assess my situation. The afternoon, in its current weakened position, couldn’t last much longer, certainly, and soon it would give way to the fullness of the jungle night, complete with soporific influences of natural and, yes, even supernatural origin. Already, I felt a weariness borne of the stresses of travel and uncertainty, the same sort of fatigue a soldier might experience after a long march deep behind enemy lines— without the bloodshed, of course. Of course, having never actually been a soldier, this, too, is mere speculation based on some very vivid dreams I’ve experienced while attempting to shrug off the effects of LSD, magic mushrooms, peyote and/or copious amounts of Budweiser. Maybe I should just say I’m freakin' tired and leave it at that. Consider it done… I was tired, okay? Jesus, everybody’s a critic, these days.

At any rate, I decided that if I were to make it through the night, with only a generously sized protective cup (certainly much larger than the average guy might require, I assure you… maybe not exactly John Holmes-sized, but worthy of the run-of-the-mill porn star) and a fair-sized wooden spatula with a good-sized spoon going for it, I would need to employ all my wits in defending myself and maybe even finding something to eat. In the back of my mind, I briefly entertained the thought of a fire, but dismissed it summarily, realizing I had neither tinder nor matches, much less flint. I suppose I could have tried smashing one of the shells and striking it against a rock until enough sparks were generated to light some tinder (if I could find any dry enough). No, any dinner the forest provided would no doubt be comprised of invertebrates incapable of withstanding or hiding from the vicious swipe of a rounded surface kitchen appurtenance, and if it rained, well, all bets were off. Suddenly, I questioned the wisdom of my decision to go for a long walk in the rain forest. In my defense, however, I must tell you, it seemed like a good idea at the time. Such is the history of my decisions, especially those that start out seeming inconsequential.

In waning light, even the most well pronounced of features can seem distorted, so at first glance, the presence sitting before me offered a wispy contradiction in terms. It emanated from the glyph-stump yet its shimmering essence left me with the impression that it attempted separation from its sarcophagus. Now, armed with only the vaguest of knowledge regarding the inner-workings of the supernatural, i.e., I once saw a being on a bus who was either an alien or an incredibly skinny man with the largest head and eyes in the known world, and a spatula, I decided to make contact. I’m not brave, but I have been known to push the envelope on occasion, especially when common sense might have dictated a different tack. Call me impetuous…

As I sat stock-still, my hand wrapped around my spatula with a grip I can only describe as vice-like, I watched the apparition (if, indeed, that’s what it was) disengage itself completely from the stump and stand before me, its vaguely- reptilian eyes questioning but not threatening—at least they didn’t seem threatening, it’s often difficult to discern such complexities at first glance.

“Phylox”, it said, extending a forelimb in my direction.

I must tell you, at this point, that it was much more impressive as a glyph than as a jungle presence. It stood roughly five and a half feet tall (and I’m being generous) and its squat, over-weight body tended to make it look more like Mr. Potato Head than any conception I might have of a god.

Without any notice whatsoever, and with a dexterity I could never have anticipated even if given a ten-year head start and a mind so open that virtually nothing would remain inconceivable, it grabbed that spatula from my hand and turned its back.

Gyration. Back still turned to me, but I swear the thing was gyrating. Then, my spatula placed to its mouth, it spun around and instantaneously I heard music… and not just any music, either, it was honky-tonk piano, bass, drums and saxophone doing a magnificently-conceived rendition of a 12-bar blues riff, only with the tempo speeded up to a frenetic pace.

“Good golly miss Molly, sure like to ball,

Good golly miss Molly, sure like to ball,

A-when you're rockin' and a rollin',
Can't hear your mama call.”

The little guy didn’t miss a move. Dude was a dancin' fool! I doubt Little Richard himself could have done greater justice to the performance. I felt my head begin to nod in rhythm with the music and I had to stop myself from grabbing my cup and pretending it was a microphone. I was getting into it…

“Goin' to the corner gonna buy a diamond ring,

When she hugs me and kiss me make me ting-a-ling-a-ling

Good golly miss Molly, sure like to ball,

A-When you're rockin' and a rollin', can't hear your mama call.”

Phylox, indeed.

Phylox, the Wonder-Spatula

2008-07-26T14:15:00.003-05:00

It’s spooky in the woods, especially when you’re not wearing underwear, at least not underwear in the strictest sense of the word. I suppose that a cup is not really underwear, and honestly, it’s not all that easy to keep in place as I walk. I have to hold onto it with my hand, and this keeps me from brachiating properly, even though I switch hands fairly often, dependant on terrain. If I’m crossing a fallen tree trunk, for example… I have to look over it to see if landfall on the other side is lower on the right or left side, and then I hold onto my cup with the opposite hand. I suppose I could have worn shorts under my jeans if I’d had any clean ones available, and if they were the ‘jockey’ style, but planning is not my long suit. Boxers are technically more comfortable, but they have no containing structure for a cup. I tried scooping up a very large amount of leaves and putting them down the front of my pants, situating them such that their bulk, in theory, might form a support structure that would prohibit my cup from moving. However, gravity tends to have the same effect on leaves that it has on cups, unfortunately, so within a half-mile or so, not even the massive bulk of my boys could keep it in place without assistance from my fingers.

That’s why I envision myself looking a bit like a chimpanzee as I make my way through the underbrush and branches. Chimps don’t brachiate like humans when they walk. Their arms tend to hang rather than swing opposite the leg that’s being advanced, and since I can’t swing both arms, my stride might appear as much simian as human. It’s a little demeaning, but I don’t worry as much about it now as I might have when I first left the trail. Decorum becomes much less important when outside the range of other human eyes.

Damn… it’s beginning to look like my choice of a sidearm might not have been the best, either. Although in retrospect I recall my mother using the very same weapon as an effective deterrent against a little boy’s hands that assaulted the rack of cookies cooling on the window sill, an ordinary wooden kitchen spatula might not provide the sort of firepower capable of convincing a marauding leopard that he’d committed a serious logistical mistake by choosing me as his prey. How much pleading on my part would be necessary to dissuade a two-hundred-pound growling, biting, flesh-rending killing machine with razor-sharp claws and jaws capable of crushing the skull of a deer fawn, even if I am slamming his head with the business end of a wooden spoon? I suppose that if all else fails I might try to smother him with my cup. I know that would work if I were that jaguar… but Bubba doesn’t play that game, that’s just nasty. Ain’t no part of a cup getting anywhere close to my face. Just the stank alone would be enough to make me run off into the woods.

Okay, so let's assume, just for the sake of argument, that I'm not dead now. Maybe the jaguar had a change of heart and decided that the cup had already skunked his prey and I wasn't fit to eat. I mean, even jungle cats won't eat just anything, will they? His cousin who lives with me is pretty picky about what she eats, so there's a possibility that I'm still sucking oxygen... I'm just sayin'...

Honestly, I’m really starting to think that the author of my Outdoor Survival Guide might be full of crap. I should have known better, though… it’s really all my fault. With a name like Betty Crocker, how good a survivalist could she be? Possum flambé, indeed…

I am not a pearl hunter of any repute whatsoever, a fact whose sudden realization troubles me greatly. Vines, lianas of all types, certainly… recognition of their presence would not have seemed out of place at all. I can locate them at any time by merely extending my arms and they project a thousand years in any direction; the soulless appurtenances are omnipresent. So if I had envisioned a crudely fashioned ladder climbing intrepid to the forest canopy, I’d have merely shrugged and started climbing. Nevertheless, the vision of all manner of shells appeared before me; pukas, cowries, conch, abalone, spirals, starfish, you name it… piled alongside a strange flattop wooden stump decorated with the carvings of strange and elegant glyphs, some form of quasi-Byzantine or perhaps Maori tribute, no doubt. It is at times like this that I wish I had not dropped Cultural Anthropology 217 in college… Dumbfounded is a state of being that visits me more often than I’m comfortable admitting, so I shall refrain from emphasis upon the condition’s presence except to modestly and circumspectly (did I include casually?) mention it. I could see no path leading in any direction, no wood shavings to identify a carver’s influence or any other indication of a human presence. Yet there they were—graphic representations of intelligent origin, apparently created by carbon based beings of corporal substance.

I sat down upon the glyph-stump, hoping I wasn’t committing some undefined sacrilege against the spirits of the forest, and paused to take stock. Yes, I was lost; yes, I couldn’t be sure of east from west, inside from out… but now I knew I was not alone.

(Editor’s note** The author has concluded the ‘story’ at this point, citing his desire to do a bit more research on ‘glyph-stumps’, but he promises to re-visit the tale at the appropriate time, sending along his sincere apologies to anyone foolish enough to read this far in search of something making sense.)

Baptism by Fiber

2008-07-25T10:26:00.004-05:00

Your Thought For Today:

Surprisingly enough, the end of your life will include 20 minutes of credits, copyright information and a rather sad, zither-based closing theme.

Before long, you’ll be able to call me Dr. Bubba. After many years of diligence, hard work and attention to detail, I have finally perfected my new wonder-product, SoulSoles® shoe inserts, my miracle in foot-soothing technology that incorporates a minimum of four areas of pseudoscience with a revolutionary new concept in transcendental awareness.

For years, I’ve researched the regimens and protocols of the world’s greatest philosophers, from Gandhi to the Maharishi Marakesh Yogi to the Dali Lama of Tibet. I’ve delved into the psyches of Freud and Jung, studied the habits of Aristotle, Socrates, Karl Marx, Jimmy Swaggert, Dr. Phil and St. Thomas Aquinas, and discovered a common thread that runs through each individual:

They all had feet.

Several world religious movements promote the concept of total-body wellness. Could it be that we’re paying too much attention to our heads at the cost of ignoring the real center of the soul, the sole? I came upon the hypothesis some years back, when after a particularly-intense bout with the Budweiser Brown-Bottle Flu, my neurological system seemed to ignore most all stimuli save those applied to the soles of my feet by that little bastard, Clarence Simmons—my wife’s nine-year-old nephew. Besieged by morning-after misery brought on by a New Year’s Eve party, I tried every form of miracle cure known to mankind, with no success. Then, after an hour or so of chasing Clarence away from my bed (and my feet) with his chosen implement of torture, GI Joe®, I asked the little woman to rub my ankles and feet a little. Immediately, I realized that my head throbbed less with each tender touch she administered... and an idea was born.

However, SoulSoles® are not just a mere shoe insert. They are a total body-rejuvenation system. The difference is the way they harness the power of magnetism to properly align the bio-magnetic field around your foot. Its (soon-to-be) patented FaithGrid® design, which features more than 200 isometrically-aligned contour points, actually soothes while it heals, restoring the foot's natural bio-flow.

I have written scientific-sounding literature trumpeting my new insoles, paying particular attention to the Contour Points™ that take advantage of the semi-plausible medical technique known as reflexology. Practiced in the Orient for many years, reflexology establishes a correspondence between every point on the human foot and another part of the body, enabling your soles to heal your entire body as you walk.

Now, you may say, ‘But, Bubba, any insole can do that!’... and you would be wrong. While other insoles have used magnets and reflexology as keys to their appearance of usefulness, SoulSoles® go several steps further by utilizing the healing power of crystals to re-stimulate dead foot cells with vibrational biofeedback... a process similar to that by which medicine makes people better. You’ll just have to trust me on this one, the explanation is so technical it’d probably be over your head. Only great scientists like me can really get a handle on it.

In addition, SoulSoles® employ a brand-new, cutting-edge form of pseudoscience known as Bubbometry, developed specially by one of our country's most-esteemed pseudoscientists, moi.
The principles of Bubbometry state that the earth resonates on a very precise frequency, which it imparts to the surfaces it touches. If the frequency of your feet are out of alignment with the Earth, the entire body suffers. Highly-sensitive (not to mention hideously expensive) resonator nodules implanted at key spots in SoulSoles® convert the wearer's own energy to match the Earth's natural vibrational rate (47.09054 nanobubbas). The resultant harmonic energy field rearranges the foot's naturally occurring atoms, converting the pain-nuclei into pleasing comfortrons.

I’d like to add this testimonial from Mr. Ezra Franken of Spiveyville, Alabama (who is no relation to me, although it is rumored that his daddy may somehow be kin to Louise’s side of the family) who agreed to be a guinea pig for SoulSoles®:

“I recently jumped off the roof of Jimmy Ray Eckert’s barn. The reasons aren’t important, but I broke both femurs in multiple places. I thought I should go to the doctor, but Dr. Bubba convinced me that he’d take care of everything, so I agreed to give him a chance. For the last 27 weeks I’ve undergone intense therapy with SoulSoles®, and with any luck at all, within a few months I should be able to walk to the bathroom by myself, even if I do need a walker.”

Excuse me... I need to get a hanky. That story always makes me cry. By the way, just so you’ll know, I didn’t charge Jimmy Ray a dime for his SoulSoles®. That’s just the kind of guy I am.

I’d better stop before I give too much away and you steal my idea. I may be philanthropic, but I ain’t stupid. Write to me and we’ll negotiate a price for my little miracles. You need ‘em, trust me.

One Man's Trash

2008-07-21T09:59:00.007-05:00

A Short Word From The Boss

I cannot begin to convey the effect your many, many kind expressions of concern and support have had. It is simply overwhelming… so, I’ll merely say that from the bottom of my heart, in that special place that not even I am allowed to visit routinely, I cherish every word. I couldn’t ask for better friends. On behalf of my family, I wish you all the good things life has to offer.

Bob

(A little smattering of my history)

If you find yourself wandering around in Casper, Wyoming, especially if it’s 1977, you’d be well advised to take plenty of money or lots of plastic with a lofty credit limit. A steak at The Glory Hole will cost you $30 a la carte. You see, my friend, you’re in a boomtown, the richest little city in North America. There are more millionaires here, per capita, than any town in the country. If you’re a young mud engineer fresh out of college, assigned to live and work there by IMCO Services of Halliburton, the largest well-service organization in the world, you’ll be looking for a pull-behind camper trailer to rent, from one of the entrepreneurs who’ve sprung up on the outskirts of town. The KOA Campgrounds facilities, once the Hilton of vacationing families seeking the splendor of the Rocky Mountains, are now filled with the oil field equivalent of affordable housing for roustabouts, tool-pushers, and auxiliary rig hands of all sorts. A dinky room in one of these little beauties will run you from $700-1000 per month, depending on availability. That’s why, in the summer at least, you’ll find many men living in their pick-ups. Of course, this isn’t a real problem, because, by the time they get tired enough to want to sleep, most will be so drunk that it won’t matter whether it’s a bed, a seat or a gurney. So long as they’re able to get back out to the rig by the time his next tour starts, few rules apply in Casper.

Thirty-one revolutions around the sun have past, countless global incidences of natural and human disaster and triumph have come and gone, and I can still feel it. When I first drove northwest out of Casper—looking for the small signposts indicating that even though I had no idea where I was heading, I knew I was on the right trail— I finally pulled onto the lease and stepped out of my truck. Through my brandy-ass new steel-toed boots, I felt the ground unite with that rig to form a living, breathing creature whose life force emanated as an audible buzz of droning low frequency, its pulse the steady micro-bursts of energy produced by some unseen heart. Stepping onto the drilling platform of Cardinal #UH-874, it enveloped me, sniffing at me and checking me out—looking for my soul and determining my worthiness for acceptance.

The rig was a jackknife, small by Overthrust Belt standards, designed to dig shallower total depth wells. Hauled to the site by a flatbed semi, it could easily be tethered, the derrick pulled into place by hydraulic means and stabilized to practically any semi-flat terrain. The degassers, silt shakers, mud pits, prime mover and doghouse were all brought in modules and connected to the drilling platform. Fluid and air lines were matched to accompanying receptacles and electricity from the massive auxiliary generators soon coursed through equipment designed for precisely one purpose—make a hole in the earth ten thousand feet deep and see what happens next.

There was a saying in the ‘oil patch’. Once you’re oilfield trash, you remain oilfield trash forever. To a man, the sentiment was worn as a badge of honor. Of course, my perspective, given my recent foray onto the scene, still contained a certain ‘wait and see’ reservation. I didn’t totally buy into the prospect of never again being accepted or wanting to be accepted by society. Sure, even at twenty-eight years of age, I’d already proven to be a maverick. After four-year stints in the Marine Corps and college, I headed down the road to perdition willingly, but I couldn’t claim to be a professional malcontent or recluse. I did care what the world thought of me, at least as far as a casual observer might be concerned. Yes, I’d been through a war and had some invisible wounds and scars that I wanted to hide, but I’d not yet chosen to fold up the tent and jump off the mountain.

Still, the bad reputation that my compatriots held within the community at large appealed to me on some level just below the surface. There’d been lots of experiences in the Marines (mainly in the Far East) that had titillated my ‘dark side’ and allowed me to experience the rawness of emotions unencumbered by conscience. So I understood the looks I got from Californians when I first returned to the U.S. in 1969. In my khaki dress uniform, I represented all the atrocities they’d watched on the evening news and read about in the Los Angeles Times. I’d also heard that if it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it must be a duck, so early on I abandoned any altruistic campaigns designed to change peoples’ attitudes and impressions. However, although I retained the right to be a duck, I chose not to jump into every pond I saw. This gave me the ability to travel in both circles, a chameleon that could show you whatever spots you wanted to see. That particular talent allowed me to travel under the radar and entitled me to acceptance with the bad boys as well as the good. Plus, at that time, I think there was a choir boy or Boy Scout still bunking somewhere inside my psyche, an apolitical, perpetual adolescent who knew right from wrong, even if he chose to look past it on occasion. After all, if my Catechism could be believed, my deceased mother saw every move I made, and I didn’t want to disappoint her... too often. In the oil patches of northwestern Wyoming in 1976, it became the best of all possible worlds.

Rig hierarchy varied, depending on the company. Cardinal was a turnkey operation, a type of financing arrangement for the drilling of a well that places considerable risk and potential reward on the drilling contractor (Cardinal). Under such an arrangement, the drilling contractor assumes full responsibility for the well to some predetermined milestone such as the successful running of logs at the end of the well, the successful cementing of casing in the well or even the completion of the well. Of course, this meant that the boss, the company man, was responsible for providing labor under a contract to an outside firm. Casper was full of “temp-agencies” who provided just such labor. When a man hired on as a roustabout (unskilled or semi-skilled labor) he worked for the temp-agency, but answered to a boss called the tool-pusher. Every rig hand aspired to someday be a tool-pusher, because he was like a First Sergeant; he was responsible for making sure that no matter what formation was being drilled, no matter what weather conditions prevailed, no matter how many rig hands were killed on a tour (shift), he would make sure that a pre-designated number of feet of bit penetration occurred. And when a tour ended, it was generally the tool-pusher who decided what bar the crew would attack.

I was a mud engineer. My job dealt with the annulus (hole) that the drill bit made. Drilling mud, simply put, fulfills much the same function as the internal organs of a human being. Its composition varies with depth of the hole, geologic strata, and many more conditions that need not be described, but it is essential to remove the cuttings from the well bore and cool the bit. The mud circulates continuously and forms a cake on the side of the hole during drilling to ensure that the hole doesn’t cave in and cause stuck pipe. A tool-pusher doesn’t like stuck pipe because it keeps him from attaining his quota for depth. In the oil patch, time is money. Since I’m hired by the company man and don’t work for the tool-pusher, he’s not required to consider my safety. If, in his opinion, my mud causes him to lose circulation in the well, he’s probably going to come looking for me with fire in his eyes. Ask any roustabout… that’s not a desirable position to find one’s self in. With this in mind, I tried to always make sure I found out where the crew was headed after the tour concluded. A few rounds of drinks, dinner and a hooker or two went a long way towards consideration, if not forgiveness, if a well went sour. I certainly didn’t want to find myself tied upside down by the feet, dangling at the outer end of the monkey boards (upper derrick catwalk). Halliburton offered me a very liberal expense account, because if we brought the well in successfully, I’d be a big hit with the company man, and it was likely he’d hire us for more wells to be drilled. Dropping a couple of hundred dollars a night on booze and hookers was both accepted by my employer and expected by the crew. My biggest problem became getting reimbursed for my expenses. I had a $5,000 limit on the two cards I’d been provided. Many months, I had to call my district manager and get it extended so that I could live until I had time to do the paperwork, a task that would become considerably more onerous if I had a broken leg or two.

Even my company had to draw the line on expenses somewhere, so I was not allowed to use my credit cards to make bail for either my cohorts or myself, a condition that was called into question on several occasions. The good citizenry of Casper loved the standard of living supplied by the oilfield workers if not the workers themselves. ‘Come, spend your money, have a good time, then get the hell out’ seemed to be the prevailing attitude for most of the townies. Certainly, they didn’t want their daughters becoming involved with these yahoos. However, young people being young people, the chasm separating roughnecks from debutantes was breached with impunity and swiftness approaching the speed of sound. The mix of hormones and liquor provided whatever impetus was necessary for nature to insure the prolongation of the species, no matter what a young lady’s parents might forbid. Many a truck backseat was filled with bodies engaged in ‘doin’ the wild thing’ without the benefit of protection. Ninety days later, sheriff’s deputies combed the trailers and doghouses of rigs scattered throughout a three-county area, looking for a roustabout with ‘a tattoo of Satan on his belly’ or ‘long, blonde hair cut in a mullet’. Within twelve hours of the first visit, tattoo parlor artists would tattoo Satan on at least five people and every barber in town would find blonde hair all over his floor. Never in the history of mankind have hairstyles and body art varied so radically and rapidly.

Unfortunately, booze and drugs were also very often blended in the witches’ brew of oilfield society, or more correctly, dearth of society. As is commonly the case in any group known to man, that is when things got out of hand. Pool, cards, dice and dominoes also found their way into any bar from Jeffrey City to Douglas, Rock Springs to Gillette. Wages in the oil patch were very good because the hours were long and the work was dangerous. A certain type of man is usually attracted to the oil patch. He’s probably under-educated and over-medicated, oversexed and under-loved, quick on his feet and good with his hands, and has a heightened sense that the world is out to screw him if he gives it a chance. Combine that with an over-active sense of immediacy resulting from putting his life on the line most every day and you have a walking billboard for Alcoholics Anonymous who will do most anything to keep from looking like a coward when his buddies challenge him to do something stupid. By any means available, keep firearms well out of his reach.

I never tired of watching the interaction of the crew. My job allowed me that luxury from time to time as I waited for a water test to run the seconds off a timer or a rheometer to compute the viscosity of the mud. Every move on the drilling platform was choreographed as surely as a dancer waiting for his cue to move onstage. The drilling itself was accomplished by turning the bit in the earth, and chains wrapped around the ‘kelly’, the connection between the strand of pipe and the rig. Depending on the layer being drilled, the rate of penetration varied. The tool-pusher had the responsibility to see to it that the prime movers (power plant that turned the chain) were set to the proper RPM’s to optimize the penetration rate of the drill bit. If it went too fast, he risked collapsing the hole or burning up the bit. If it went too slow, he didn’t make his quota of penetration for the tour. So, it became very important that when a piece of drill pipe had reached a point where it needed to be coupled with the next, the crew lose no time in making the connection and restoring the drilling process. This required that the chain be removed and replaced on the next strand. This was known as ‘throwing chain’, an extremely dangerous procedure that could cost a roughneck his finger or hand in the blink of an eye, if he was careless or unobservant. One worker would place the threads of the new strand over the coupling of the old, slosh on some pipe dope to keep the threads from leaking and facilitate the joint seal, while the other whipped the chain around the new joint and attached it to the prime mover, causing it to turn rapidly and begin the process anew. The drilling platform itself was always wet, icy or totally frozen dependent upon weather, and footing was often treacherous. The men working together had total confidence in each other and most of the time, were closer than brothers. In fact, on many occasions, they were brothers. The oilfield was passed down, father to son, for generations.

On every rig, the least experienced man had to ‘walk the monkey boards’, a job that almost everyone hated. The upper derrick catwalk, a platform at the extreme top of the derrick, is used to store pipe during a ‘trip’. A trip is the temporary cessation of the drilling process in which all pipe is removed from the annulus. This can occur when the crew has to change a bit, set casing, or if they get stuck pipe. Obviously, the pipe must be stored somewhere, and the top of the derrick is the perfect place. During a trip, the pipe is hoisted to the monkey boards, where it is stacked in neat rows, suspended above the ground. Then, when the repairs are completed, the pipe is brought back, hooked piece by piece to the kelly, and the drilling process starts over again. The man positioned atop the monkey boards must guide the pipe into the storage holders and unhook it from the hoist chain. Depending on the season, he is almost constantly bombarded with rain, snow or sleet. In Wyoming, there are few days when the wind doesn’t blow and gust, so footing is always treacherous. Throw in the fact that the monkey board workers are seventy feet above ground for twelve hours at a time, and it doesn’t require a lot of imagination to understand why everyone hates the job.

With all the kidding and horseplay that crews inflict upon one another off the rig, there is seldom any levity present during working hours, at least not on the drilling platform and certainly not during the final stages of the drilling operation, when the drillers approach total depth. Before a well is ever spudded in, geologists have determined, through various sonic tests, that an oil-producing formation exists at a pre-determined depth. Not all of these formations contain the select conditions necessary to produce crude oil, but if a geologist signs off on a study, it can be pretty well assumed that the probability is high. Of course, the predicted depth can only be estimated within a given range. When this range of depth is entered by the drill pipe, at any time the bit could pierce the salt dome directly atop the formation and send a high-pressure surge of natural gas up through the annulus. Directly under every drilling platform, there are large hydraulic rams that must shut and close around the drill pipe, securing it against the pressure, thereby diverting the gas flow under the rig. This is called ‘taking a kick’. If the tool-pusher (or whoever has been designated) doesn’t immediately get the rams shut, the pipe will come back up the annulus along with the gas and knock the derrick over, likely killing everyone on the rig. Reaction time and attention to detail are extremely important during this critical time, so it isn’t hard to understand that nerves tend to get frayed during the final stages of the drilling process. It is the one time that crews tend to take it easy on the booze. Some carry their abstinence so far as to actually go home during their time off between tours. It’s a drastic step, assuredly, but a price that must be paid. Besides, if the well is completed, there’ll be a fat bonus check accompanying the shutdown process and plenty of time to go to the bar and really do it up right.

On an oilrig, preachers and teetotalers are endangered species. Oilfield trash is, if nothing else, honest and forthcoming. A roughneck lives as though each day could be his last; the threat of impending death is never far from his thoughts. He’ll give, or forgive his crewmates nearly anything as long as they don’t violate the code. It’s very simple: Your brothers on your crew are your family. Their problems are your problems, their joys your joys and their lives, your life. Like in any family, troubles may arise, but they are handled in whatever manner is dictated at the time; his brothers unequivocally support decisions made by a member until such time as the code is violated. Pick a fight with one member of that family, and you have picked a fight with the entire crew. I wish you luck, because you’re going to need it. It has happened that entire crews had to be bailed out of jail for a breech of accepted town ordinances. Brash, bawdy, ornery, loud, unabashed, vulgar, lewd, rude… all valid descriptions of oilfield trash; but if you leave out ‘loyal’, you’ve omitted the very essence of the lifestyle.

I moved on from Casper when I was re-assigned to Beaumont, Texas, then Haynesville, Louisiana. The weather was as different as the people. Instead of the cold, harsh winds and people of northwestern Wyoming, I was treated to the steamy warmth of the deep South, with all the amenities naturally offered by the nice people I met down there. I wouldn’t be surprised to find out that the Latin derivation of ‘Louisiana’ is ‘place of hospitable people’. Then, in 1982, the end came. OPEC broke the American oil market and destroyed one of the greatest American industries. I was forced to scramble, and found a place treating industrial water systems. Suddenly, I was transmogrified from engineer to businessman, and I remain so to this day. And I’m poorer for it. They’re gone, but not forgotten. Come to think of it, if you substitute ‘Marine’ for ‘oilfield trash’ the above-stated qualities (I stop short of calling them virtues) are just as valid. Maybe that’s why I love them so much…

Mugged By The Muffin Monster

2008-07-15T07:04:00.004-05:00

The Thought For The Day:

It's okay to tell a girl you like the way she walks, as long as you do it politely, and she's not an amputee who uses those clip-on metal arm canes.

The candy store is closed, ladies and gentlemen, maybe never to reopen. Somehow, my sweet tooth has decayed and rotted in my mouth, the victim of too much righteousness. Every day now, when the news comes on, I run screaming for the remote like a child from the boogeyman... Make it stop, Momma, make it stop. If it isn't Islamic extremists using American skyscrapers as a backstop or Catholic priests buggering kids, it's the daily insane dance between the Jews and Palestinians fighting over a forsaken strip of desert somewhere in the eastern quadrant of Hell. The Muslims and Hindus are about thirty seconds from annihilating half of the India/Pakistani borders, and as we speak, ethnic cleansing is purging the Balkans and Ireland of all the undesirables in the holy game of My God Is Better Than Your God.

Every year during Holy Week or Passover or Ramadan or whatever Buddhists celebrate, we recall and glorify the Lord's murder of innocent children in Egypt to illustrate His Divine Power and the assassination of a certain Nazarene mystic so that we could start a new calendar. But what this will do for the overall plight of humanity, nobody can seem to figure out! Oh, there are lots of thou-shalt-not's to guide us all, because, after all, we're right and they're wrong, but the truth is, we're merely creating more boundaries and ways to be different and justify our 'right' to be better than someone else.

One thing I'm starting to realize is that whenever more than two people get together in the name of God, there damn well better not be any guns, numchucks, clubs, bombs, knives or other sharp instruments within arm’s reach. We conquer and invent and label things with the dogma of the week, and we socialize and hoard and pursue that money! It's good to be rich, especially when we can put labels on it like color and gender and God... After all, it's God's will that our toys be kept safe from their toys. Frankly, all that talk about what God wants and what God told those other strange people... well, it just seems a little silly right now. Hell, it's starting to sound crazy, truthfully.

Most of us seem to know what God wants. It's hard to believe that millions of those other people don't even have a God. No wonder they're so screwed up. They're blinded with scientific method and skepticism and (((shudder))) intellect, and they tend to blot out the truth with common sense. So, to fight against them, we resort to the basics; drugs, alcohol, power and greed.

As a recovering Catholic, I'd like to simply point out that at some point all of the self-serving bullshit has to stop! But, we all know that it won't. Not as long as there are coffers to be filled. So, we'll continue to bury our heads in the sand and we'll keep on trying to explain to our kids why that nice, quiet, dignified white-haired man with the robes and white collar tries to touch him in the bad places when they go into the sacristy. Of course, after our kids are grown (we don't want to embarrass anyone) and spending half of their life on some shrink's couch, we'll report it to the bishop, who will move the bad man somewhere he hasn't had a chance to work his miracles yet.

Finally, the Good Guys will get their chance to finally put the knife in those cheesy mackeral-snappers, and force the Cardinals into court. But don't expect any of these obese gas-bags to cough up a lung over it. By this time, they can't seem to remember any of the details of who or why or how it all happened, and the dance goes on. Meanwhile, we're all wearing the knees out of our Levis while we put the envelope into the basket. Pray and pay, dude… pray and pay. Just don't expect anything to change, because it just ain't profitable to get any wild-eyed notions about priests getting married, or a woman holding up the wafer to get all transubstantiated or whatever... what are you, some kind of freak?

Meanwhile, that train will just keep right on a rollin'... But, don't forget one thing-- all these big-business hypocrites know where the answers lie. They have a blueprint buried somewhere, in a place where the martyrs are buried, some stinking hole deep in a cavern in Israel or Palestine. They know what occurs when the cycle of ignorance is broken... after all, every day they look up at a lifeless image of an assassinated Jew hanging on a cross, reminding them that the beat must go on.

Don't forget that train...

Update

2008-07-12T16:05:00.002-05:00

Well, I'm home from the horsepartial. After two nurses quit and a phlebotomist complained so vehemently that if he were to have to go back into Room 640, he would tender his resignation at once, the VA administration decided that they could do without my presence any longer. Just because I may have accidently questioned one or another's professional abilities, manlihood, or parentage, the individuals in question decided that enough was enough. Some people are so touchy...

Anyway, I've been home for nearly an hour and my wife has already decided she 'needs to go to the store', which is Weezie for 'I'd rather not kill you this afternoon'.

The good news is that I'm sore from the laporoscopy but otherwise unscathed. The bad news is that I've been diagnosed with colon cancer and will have to go through another round of chemotherapy starting some time within the next several weeks. There's talk of a vena cava filter and a 'auto-cath' which, as I understand it, is a subcutaneous catheter that will allow them to stick me and suck out bodily fluids (or add various poisons) to my blood stream without having to stick me thousands of times. Of course, this is alright by me because I'm basically a wuss.

But, after four days without eating, the food they bestowed upon me in my two meals today tasted wonderful. They had all the food groups represented in their attempts at a balanced diet; something from the yellow group, a green, a baby-shit brown, and several from the not-quite-red-but-certainly-not-rose-or-crimson variety. Of course, it all tasted pretty much the same since it was cooked in a pressure cooker until any semblance of texture was gone, but I expected that so it didn't surprise me. I know the VA's budget is decreasing, so I guess they had to make cuts somewhere. They certainly haven't cut their ability to give good care. The doctors, nurses and technicians who put up with me went out of their way to make sure that I was as comfortable as possible, that I understood each step that was undertaken and why (at least to the level that my pusilanimously-puny ability to understand would allow), and I'd rate my care right up there with the most expensive private hospitals anywhere in the world. So, if you want to bitch about the VA, you better take it somewhere else, because if you say it to me, I guarantee you, we're gonna fight.

I do want to thank you all for your many phone calls, comments, e-mails, and other expressions of support, and I can't tell you how much they helped me. I'm looking forward to the fight to come and I want you all to know that I may lose, but I won't go without a fight. You're all in my prayers, as I hope I'm in yours.

Bob

To my friends...

2008-07-06T18:58:00.001-05:00

Hi, folks. I just wanted to let everyone know that I'm going to be pretty scarce for awhile. I'm having some surgery and it may require me to lay low. So, if you don't see any posts or if I don't come visit you, it's just that I'm on Injured Reserve status and won't be in the line-up.

Either that or you've really pissed me off and I'm boycotting you forever.

Just kidding...

I heard it through the grapevine

2008-07-03T07:02:00.003-05:00

Your Thought For The Day:

My doctor refused to write me a prescription for Viagra. He said it would be like putting a new flagpole on a condemned building.

Salutations, fellow commoners. I trust the new day brings you the super-sized cup of glad tidings... diet, of course.

Have you ever wondered what would happen if ninjas had their own post office and a disgruntled worker chose to take out his frustrations with management and the world in general?

I can picture the broadcast on CNN as the helicopter view shows police swat teams swarming the facility in Honshu Province. The talking-head would tell us that Kymazu Honimaki was reportedly despondent during the mandatory three-hour morning prayer vigil, refusing to jibber-jabber with the rest of his peers or receive the sacramental incense. At approximately 11:47 a.m., Mr. Honimaki donned his ceremonial black gi along with his co-workers and began his job of cancelling arriving mail, but without his customary 'crouching-dragon' flair and accompanying side-kicks.

"Not single time within next hour, did most honorable Honimaki bow to ancestors," said shift supervisor Hirimatsu Shazai through her appointed interpreter, "velly selious!"

Providently, the situation ended without further incident when Honimaki promised to raid an enemy village without pay and forfeit the two bowls of rice he'd accrued in his retirement and profit-sharing account. Police forced open his locker and found only the customary cache of razor-sharp throwing stars, numchucks and black satin ceremonial garb, so no arrests are expected. Are you paying attention, Secretary Gates?

Gotta go... I'm still hungry and it's almost time to go to work. Those little mushrooms I found out back are tasty, maybe I'll eat a few more of the little beauties...

The Shop

2008-06-28T10:59:00.005-05:00

Note: This piece is my response to a challenge issued by Scot Young at Be Not Inhospitable To Strangers . The challenge was to interpret Charles Bukowski's poem The Bluebird in either poem or prose. If you'll visit Be Not Inhospitable To Strangers starting Sunday, you'll be graced with all the responses to the challenge... as well as a whole lot of other good poetry.

The Shop

The shop, tucked neatly between a haberdasher and a candle maker, nearly escaped my attention as I walked by. This particular neighborhood seemed foreign somehow, even for San Francisco, an eclectic blend of old and new, foreign and domestic. Even the modest sign, crafted from poster board and scripted in a simple blend of India ink and water colors with a sprinkling of glitter for effect, offered only the vaguest reference to the business: Woolgatherer’s Emporium.

Briefly, I considered the name, nearly walking past, figuring it to be just another head shop run by aging hippies hoping to network with yet another medical-marijuana user intent upon obtaining a quick score. However, seeing no bongs, rolling paper ads or psychedelic drug paraphernalia of any sort in the window, I allowed my curiosity to overcome common sense and pressed the weathered brass thumb latch holding the door in place. The heavy oak door yielded immediately, offering me a glimpse inside.

Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves covered every inch of available wall space and the tiny enclosed floor space within held only a small table covered with a brocaded linen tablecloth. Sitting placidly atop the silk, a bi-fold sign boasted “Sale Today!” I assessed the sign as well as I could, given my present state of confusion. Nowhere did I see a cash register, attendant or even a sales counter. The books appeared dusty and unkempt, with nary a single book jacket protecting the contents within. Used book store… Carefully, I put my index finger on a handsome leather-bound edition, tipped it toward me and tried to slide it off the shelf. A shadowy image appeared before me, a woman’s face that I’d seen before, although I couldn’t identify her. She mouthed some words that I could not hear, her eyes imploring me to listen. The book remained in its original position, unfettered by my advances.

As I looked around the room, the shelves seemed to blur slightly in the low light, as if someone even now turned down a rheostat. Presently, a woman of indeterminate age stepped from behind a shelf and timidly asked me, “Do you see something you like?”

Rather an exotic-looking woman, she wore a loose-fitting garment that chastely covered all visible surfaces of her body save her arms and face, but she emanated an air of attractiveness in her stately countenance. Were I to speculate, I’d guess the fabric to be silk, but I know little of such things. It could just as well be satin or some lesser form of knock-off for all I knew, and I’d be none the wiser. Frankly, I didn’t care one way or the other; if she felt the necessity to convey an image so important that she was willing to perpetrate a visual fraud upon my retinas, so much the better, I could respect her for that… first impressions are important to some folks. But that color— a lustrous shade I could only describe as purple—shimmered haughtily, emanating its own vague light source and compelling my gaze.

“I’m just looking, thank you. What do you sell here?” Given the surroundings, the question immediately sounded stupid and I wished I hadn’t asked it.

“That depends…” she shot back, her eyes fascinating as they not quite engaged me head on, “what are you looking for?”

“I see books… are they for sale?”

Judging from the spirit in her voice, this amused her. “You see books because you choose to see books. You see, everything is for sale, my darling, it’s all a matter of cost, isn’t it… and the ability to assess if the price is fair?”

I said nothing momentarily as my mind raced to decipher her meaning. “You don’t sell books?”

“Do you want me to sell you a book?”

Well, she had me there. Did I sense a certain peevishness in her voice? “No, I don’t believe I’d like to buy a book today. But since all you seem to possess is books, I guess I should be going and stop wasting your time.”

Turning away, she thrust her arm into the air, dismissing me with a passionate flourish. “Well, if books are all you see here, be gone. Time is the master we all serve.” And she glided as much as walked toward the back, assimilating with the bookshelves.

Ordinarily, I’d have merely walked out the front door, but as I stood there stupidly scratching my balls and wondering what I failed to understand, a voice said, “She’s right, you know.”

I blinked and the books, along with their shelves, disappeared. In their place, a verdant meadow unfolded as far as I could see. The shop no longer existed… gone, right before my eyes. Presto. Poof. Vanished.

Now, I guess I should tell you, at this point, that I’m not particularly a ‘meadow’ kind of guy, be they verdant or otherwise. I live in San Francisco for a reason… I like the order provided, I think. Oh, I don’t mind the occasional day trip to Muir’s Woods if the breeze off the ocean doesn’t remind me that I’m about to have to run for cover and I’ve been known to sit and feed the pigeons in Golden Gate Park… hell, I even took the ferry out to Angel Island once. But, given the choice, I’d rather spend my time at The Swig or The Hemlock or any one of a number of little watering holes in North Beach. At least there, I don’t have to worry about anything being verdant, with the possible exception of the urinals, and I’ve personally witnessed quite a few that qualify, if color and that certain methane-rich barnyard odor are the standards of comparison.

And the only voices I hear come from Twila, the loud-mouthed whore who hangs out at Clancy’s, or the assemblage of pseudo-poets and/or junkies who wile away their fog-beset hours begging someone to listen to their crap. I don’t spend a lot of time with verbalizing my wants and needs, either. Give me the back booth anywhere on Geary Street, I’ll even settle for the Edinburgh, and I’ll be content. Just don’t invade my space uninvited unless you bring a tumbler of Weller’s, preferably with a splash although I’m not picky, or I guarantee you’ll hear my voice as someone extracts my boot from your ass.

I spread my hands out in front of me to make sure I wasn’t getting the DT’s. Steady as a rock. There was no particular reason for them not to be, the only place I’d been this morning was the bank. I didn’t even stop in to see Jaime the Spic this morning, so no reason existed for me to be hallucinating.

Then, it happened. I felt a flutter of wings on my shoulder and the sharp prick of bird feet trying to gain a foothold. Instinctively I reached my hand to grab it, but I was no match for the creature’s agility. Again fluttering, it came to rest before me, sitting on top of the table I’d previously identified, collapsing the bi-fold “Sale Today!” placard. Eyes much too large for his bird-skull stared at me… blood-shot eyes, at that.

“Okay”, I shouted in a voice much louder than some might have thought necessary, “I think this little farce has proceeded just about far enough. Frankly, it’s mid-morning and I’m beginning to teeter on the brink of withdrawal, so if you’ll kindly return me from The Twilight Zone, I’ll be on my way. I’ve a powerful thirst and three days’ pay!”

“Go if you like, it’s up to you… there’s no anchor on your ass,” the bird said, in a voice that I can only describe as annoyingly similar to my own, “I’ll catch up with you later on.”

“That’s enough. Later, asshole!” I turned to walk away, but meadow extended as far as I could see, with no shop, no door, no San Francisco anywhere. Panic forced its way to my forefront. Stopping abruptly, I closed my eyes and put my hands on my knees, hoping my little mirage might fade. It did not.

Now, a padded booth replaced the table and the bird (a bluebird, I think, although I’d never be confused for an ornithologist) sat contentedly atop, body covering feet as though nesting. “Care to sit? Perhaps we could chat a little, maybe understand one another a bit.”

“You want to understand me.”

“And you, me”, he replied, his answer a bit smug, in my estimation.

This called for considerably more consideration as I felt his intimidation drizzle under my skin and come to rest somewhere between my conscious and my subconscious. “What if I just grab you and wring your scrawny neck, right where you sit? How would that be?”

“Your threats are nothing new to me. I’ve dealt with them for more years than I’d care to think about. Take your best shot, but why don’t you have a drink first? I wouldn’t want it to be said that you made a decision without your medication.”

Admittedly, the bottle of Weller’s and glass looked inviting, but I didn’t like his tone. “Who are you and what do you want?”

He didn’t speak right away, so after deciding that one little shot wouldn’t hurt and would, in all likelihood, snap me out of this delirium, I poured a shot into the glass.

After a time, he stated “I want only what is rightfully mine.”

“And I’ve got it?”

“You’ve always had it. You’ve even written about it… perhaps not eloquently, but I’m not here to judge you.”

“Let’s review, just so I don’t miss your point. You’re a bird, and you’ve come to claim that which I’ve withheld from you… for my entire life?”

“Now you’re making sense.”

The second shot cleared my head and made my nostrils bulge a bit, but I was now on a roll. “Boogity… so help a veteran out, would you? What, exactly, is this precious gift I have to give you?”

The bird looked at me once again with those big, cow eyes with intensity that threatened to penetrate me and impale my soul. “I want you to recognize me, and admit I exist.”

The voice, soft and dewy, was little more than a whisper, yet the words hit my brain like a blow from a lumberjack’s maul. I felt rage rise from my stomach and proceed to fill my lungs. “Recognize you? Who the fuck are you?” My fists pounded the table and I felt my chest heaving with each breath.

He didn’t move. “Charles, I am only a part of you, apparently the part you’d like to pretend doesn’t exist, as though acknowledging you have a bluebird in your heart would make you less of a man. Then, you’d be like them and who’d buy you drinks while you warn the world of sentimental whores and alley fights and knives at your throat. So you deny my existence. Well, no more. I now recognize that you don’t need me, so I’m now dead not only to you, but to myself. Now whom will you bully?”

Bluebird of my heart? Yea, I vaguely remember, from back in the days when a person could afford such extravagances. The little bastard left and took the bottle with him. Well, good riddance, I say, I don’t need him or his sugar tit. I’ll be drunk before midnight or my name isn’t Charles Bukowski!

Damn, look at the time… if I don’t get to Clancy’s I’m going to miss Happy Hour… bluebird, indeed.

Bob Church©6/26/08

The author is not much to write home about. In fact, his existence is an anomaly of nature, proof that God has a sense of humor. It is recommended that you ignore him at every turn.

"Oh, alright then... but just this once"

2008-06-28T09:20:00.007-05:00

Feeling pretty secure about your life? Is everything swimming along at a constant pace? Trust me when I tell you, you're the exception to the rule.

Anyone who has read more than one of my rants knows that I live an existence filled with constant amazement regarding my specie's refusal to die out despite exhaustive evidence that extinction should be the consequence. I'm convinced that sheer numbers alone ensures our survival-- 'cuz it damn sure has nothing to do with intelligence.

Dateline Switzerland:

A Swiss man died when he fell from a hotel balcony during a spitting match with a friend, a Swiss newspaper has reported.

The daily Blick said the 29-year-old man took a run-up from inside the room so he could spit further, but lost his balance and plummeted 6.4m to the street below.

He died in hospital.

The man had suggested the contest when he and two friends returned from a disco to their hotel in Cadempino in Switzerland's Italian-speaking Ticino canton in the early hours.

One of the men went to sleep, but the two others decided to see who could spit furthest from the balcony of their room.

Dateline London:

A Polish building contractor working at London's Great Ormond Street Children's Hospital was given his marching orders after a security guard caught him having sex with a Hoover vacuum cleaner, the Sun reports.

The Hoover's unnamed assailant was supposed to be locking up the site, at hospital administrative offices, but was instead discovered in the staff canteen "naked and on his knees with the smiling vacuum cleaner".

The "horrified" guard told the chap to "clean himself and the Hoover", then ejected him from the premises. The unnamed vacuum-molestor later told his bosses he was actually cleaning his underwear, describing this habit as "a common practice in Poland".

His employer, HG Construction, was having none of it. The company said: "That behavior is not acceptable, though it gave a few people a laugh."

Imagine that... The Hoover declined comment, although a follow-up test revealed no discernible performance anxiety.

Dateline Germany:

One man's extraordinary effort to eradicate a mole from his property resulted in a victory for the mole. The metal rods he pounded into the ground and connected to a high-voltage power line, electrified the very ground the man stood upon. He was found extremely dead at his holiday property on the Baltic Sea. Police had to trip the main circuit breaker before venturing onto the property.

And finally, one from a little closer to home.

Dateline Texas: (The 2007 Darwin Award winner for improving the human genome by accidentally removing themselves from it.)

Michael was an alcoholic. And not an ordinary alcoholic, but an alcoholic who liked to take his liquor... well, rectally.

His wife said he was "addicted to enemas" and often used alcohol in this manner. The result was the same: inebriation. And tonight, Michael was in for one hell of a party. Three 1.5 litre bottles of sherry, more than 100 fluid ounces, right up the old address!

When the rest of us have had enough, we either stop drinking or pass out. When Michael had had enough (and subsequently passed out) the alcohol remaining in his rectal cavity continued to be absorbed. The next morning, Michael was dead.

The 58-year-old did a pretty good job of embalming himself. Toxicology reports measured his blood alcohol level as 0.47%.

(In order to qualify for a Darwin Award, a person must remove himself from the gene pool via an "astounding misapplication of judgment." Three litres of sherry up the butt can only be described as astounding. Unsurprisingly, his neighbors said they were surprised to learn of the incident.)

Anecdotal, you say? Maybe... but the next time you see some guy hooking up the ends of battery cables to his nipple piercings, just remember... dead is forever.

"Excuse Me, Ma'am, Are You Using Those Cranberries?”

2008-06-27T12:04:00.003-05:00

Seahorses are creatures I know very little about. I do know they seem to stay alive longer when constantly immersed in an aqueous solution other than pickle brine, Coors beer or gasoline.

Don't ask...

It is my understanding that they are normally captured in the ocean, hence, the name seahorses, rather than pondhorses or the generic form, waterhorses. While I can't actually prove that seahorses aren't native to smaller bodies of water such as beaver ponds, reservoirs, etc., I think they prefer salt water, primarily. The reasons for this are unknown to me, but if I had to venture a guess, I'd say it would most likely have something to do with chemistry or possibly biology.

In junior high, we didn't study seahorses much, maybe because I grew up in the Rocky Mountains. We had a lot of beaver ponds, but no real oceans to speak of, unless you include that gravel pit over by Lochbuie, which I always thought tasted kind of salty when I swallowed some. Myles Nuttall and I snuck in there often to swim. Myles was a year older than me and knew almost everything, since his father was in the Air Force. He assured me that if we got caught, we wouldn’t go to jail, although the same couldn't be said for our fathers.

I remember thinking that might be neat.

I dove down to see if I could touch the bottom, and I think I may have seen a waterhorse once, but it may have been just a piece of glass or duckweed or something, I'm not sure, the water was pretty murky. Plus, I had to concentrate on avoiding all those sunken barrels. Our parents tried to discourage us from swimming in there, since so many kids had drowned. That eight-foot fence around it was hard to climb, too, but that's another story. Personally, I think the warning signs they put up were just to keep us kids from having fun.

What exactly is hazardous waste, anyway?

Brother, We Hardly Knew Ye

2008-06-23T07:30:00.003-05:00

We lost another legend on Sunday. Dead, at age 71, is George Carlin, clown prince of my generation and comedian to the masses. George was a cultural renegade. His irreverent potshots at religion and politics, his open admission of his use of drugs, and the edgier, more biting comedy he developed cemented him as the “comic voice of the counterculture”. But we didn’t think of him as counterculture at all… he was us.

Who among the group commonly referred to as ‘boomers’ can ever forget the revolution George started with concepts such as the Hippy-Dippy Weatherman, Sister Mary Elephant and the Twelve Words You Can’t Say On Television? His affection for language and never-ending search for truth earned him the love and respect of an entire generation.

The penultimate stand-up comic, George stood on any stage that would have him, right to the end. And every performance yielded the master’s touch, leaving audiences wiping their eyes and holding their stomachs.

Many will eulogize him and rightly so, all more eloquently than me. I just wanted my readers to know how much I admire him and how much I’ll miss his humor and humanity.

At The Root Of The Matter

2008-06-21T12:34:00.002-05:00

Prentiss Calder Biff. The name held refined dignity. Certainly Prentiss' parents took great care in selection, given their abrupt surname. Biff didn't have the euphonic flow of McVicker, mother's maiden name.

Prentiss’ father died in a freak accident during the harvest prior to Prentiss’ birth. Apparently a combine with stuck blades shouldn’t be hammered with a crowbar—especially not by an inebriated driver.

After her husband's untimely demise, Freda McVicker Biff, by necessity, moved in with her inlaws. Her insistence on re-assuming her maiden name, along with her dogged resolve that the boy be called the formal 'Prentiss Calder' caused division within the family- there was a riff at the Biff's.

The controversy raged, until one day Prentiss ran in from playing in the fields, covered head to toe in cockleburs and screaming in pain. The boy suffered mightily each time his mother extracted a bur from his blotchy red body.

After supper that evening (and several liters of elderberry wine), the boy's uncles decided that Prentiss Calder Biff was not a name for a lad who could withstand an attack of killer nettles. In a ceremony worthy of an apprentice knight, he was christened Sticker McVicker.

Cosmic kismet had spoken and the subject was not mentioned again. What goes around comes around… a sense of humor is a lethal weapon.

And we had such high hopes...

2008-06-17T07:49:00.006-05:00

Where did it all go wrong?

Golden Corn For The Old And Worn

2008-06-16T07:36:00.002-05:00

Of course, I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me, time’s undaunted and merciless passage spawns memories of innocuous boyhood deeds and misdeeds more often than actual earth-shaking events that others might presume to be important. For example, I can’t remember a single detail about my high school graduation ceremony (I assume I was there, there are photos of me in cap and gown), yet I can still tell you every turn necessary to get from 23rd and Florence to 4th and Chester, while navigating the storm sewer running beneath Aurora, Colorado. Thinking back on it now, with the editorial distance reserved for old people, those adventures might explain some of the mysterious illnesses that three eleven-year-old boys from the same neighborhood contracted in the summer of 1958. Then, by extension, I suppose I owe our neighbor across the street, Mrs. Weaver, an apology for telling the doctor that her dog had licked my face. Yes, they euthanized the poor thing, but it shook most of the time anyway… Sorry, Mrs. Weaver.

Did the house that you grew up in have a basement? Mine did, and metal window wells formed a semi-circle around the basement windows, serving as a boundary against the yard. Not only were these window wells a great place to hide during a twilight game of hide-and-seek, but the rocks dumped at the base to keep the well in place served as a ready source of ammunition, should the urge to toss a few suddenly strike a guy. As I recall, Mrs. Weaver had a few choice words for my father, too, when a stone roughly the size and shape of those sitting at the bottom of our window wells found its way into her yard and took out the undercarriage of her mower when she ran over it. In fact, when he presented me the small sack of rocks she’d removed from her front lawn, no amount of temporary memory loss on my part could have saved me the ass-whipping that I remember to this day.

I suppose it goes without saying that those same basement windows provided a prime location for easy home invasion, too. The details are sketchy, but I seem to recall one such late night excursion into Mrs. Weaver's basement, as well-- after FiFi received her eternal reward, of course. We didn't take anything, that would have been wrong... but I recall seeing equipment that remained unidentified until ten years later when I sat in a crowded room with a dozen or so frat guys and watched an S/M movie from Singapore. No matter, it’s all water under the bridge at this point… or perhaps running through a storm sewer.

Bridge of Sighs

2008-06-09T14:17:00.002-05:00

Bridge of Sighs

My search for understanding could be properly compared to Peru—mysterious, varied in its landscape, inaccessible as Machu Picchu, and politically volatile as the neo-socialist government of Alberto Fujimori. One minute I’m reacting to the latest nonsensical act of an American administration dedicated to destruction and the next I’m concerning myself with a particular brick set slightly askew in a building whose appearance hasn’t changed one whit in the last eighty years, its voice calling out, ‘someone please fix me’ every time I walk past. The fact that I’m the only one who can hear it is not lost on me, either. Honestly, the brick is at least a quarter-inch low on one end… why it doesn’t offend others’ aesthetic sense is beyond my comprehension. Secretly, I long to buy the building and pay a real bricklayer to fix it. Of course, if I bought it, I’d be compelled to put it to some use and this would be a task too onerous to contemplate, not to mention the risk of forever altering the building’s acquired chi. So I shall continue to saunter past it from time to time, trying in vain not to look at its grotesque anomaly in architectural malformation. Some things, apparently, are just meant to be and I must acknowledge their inevitability.

Exactly how does a Japanese man become a Peruvian? Or, more to the point, how do Peruvians look at a ballot with a Japanese man listed as one of the choices for President and put an ‘x’ beside his name? Not that there’s anything wrong with that, particularly, but the mindset of such a voter must be one of quiet desperation resulting from viewing the other choices. Actually, I guess it’s no different from a Californian choosing an Austrian actor as governor. Oh, what the hell… he can’t screw it up any worse than these other idiots.

As I said, it was probably inevitable, only a matter of time. With a Republican married to a Kennedy now residing in the Sacramento Governor’s Mansion, can it be very long before an Al Qaeda member runs for congress in the U.S. Congressional district serving San Francisco? As-salaam alaykum, Osama, how was school today? I hope your bomb-making grades are coming up, young man, or there’ll be no martyrdom for you in the Jihad next week!

Today, as I crossed the Golden Gate Bridge bound for Sausalito, I saw a flash of a dark-shrouded figure out of the corner of my eye. It appeared on the bay side of the bridge, just below the pedestrian path where I walked. A jumper, perhaps? Truth be told, the mist obscured my vision to the point I’m not completely sure if I saw or just imagined it. However, it became my misshapen brick.

Upon clearing the bridge, I parked in the accommodations provided sightseers by the Sausalito Chamber of Commerce and commenced the short walk back up the bridge to the point where my specter presented itself. The ever-present pelicans and sea gulls accompanied me, presumably in anticipation of an easy meal. Every fifty feet, I’d stop and hang my head over the side, checking the rust/orange iron structure for an unwelcome presence. Approaching an area I considered to be near where I first saw it, I became impatient, as is my nature. Just like you, putz… you just can’t help yourself, can you? Just another red herring you managed to waste time upon. Scowling over the side one last time before calling the adventure to a close, again I saw a wisp of black appear from an under-hanging support beam. It looked like cloth… and if it was, under cursory examination I could still pass for sane. Look! There it is again… this time with a hand sticking out the end.

Clint Eastwood is sleeping soundly this morning, secure in the knowledge that I am considering an assault on his throne, but I could not keep myself on the safe side of that railing. Some inaudible, invisible force willed me down the outside of the bridge before I had time to think about it and suddenly I gazed into a cauldron of blue-black foam-covered eternity. Instantaneously, terror gripped me as I struggled to move along the girder. I saw welded handholds interspersed along the vertical steel and the irony didn’t escape me. Mustn’t make it too difficult for the jumpers to find the ideal spot.

Then, I saw her. Braced between two cross-members stood a small woman dressed in a nun’s habit, her hood being blown by the wind. She stared at me with vacant eyes that made me wonder if she acknowledged my presence.

“You know, sister, you might want to watch what you rub up against, I read it’s getting very difficult to wash sea gull poop out of those new space-age fabrics…” Brilliant… that’ll keep her from jumping… appeal to her feminine sense of good grooming. Why didn’t you just bring a stick and poke her a few times, moron.

Now-focused eyes peered back at me and a glimmer of a smirk crossed her lips. “Really? I hadn’t heard that, but we don’t get many dry cleaners’ employees down here at St. Lucifer’s…” She looked away.

“Yea, well, I have some experience in these matters. I had a little problem with an ex-wife some years back and part of my penance I worked out with Father Monelli is to rescue wayward women of the cloth… even those whose orders originate in less-than-Heavenly locales.” She’s cute… a little bulky for my tastes, perhaps, but it’s easy to be critical. Get a grip, man, she’s a nun!

She waited momentarily before speaking, staring at me, apparently studying me. “Who says I need rescuing?”

“Well, I assume—“

“That’s your first mistake, cowboy, never assume… for all you know, I may be up here doing research on that same bird poop you’re so worried about.”

Her voice trailed off and she turned her back. Cowboy? Well, at least she’s talking. “Good point… frankly, I hadn’t considered that. Please accept my apologies, Professor.”

Without turning around, she raised her arm and gestured The Sign of The Cross in midair. After a short pause, she turned, facing me once again. “You’re up here to rescue me so that I’ll be grateful and allow you to have your way with me, aren’t you?”

“What??”

“Why do you feign surprise? It’s totally natural, after all… a virile young man who’d risk life and limb climbing onto the outside of the largest suspension bridge in the world either has a messianic complex or he’s desperately trying to appease some sinister appetite involving defaming a member of the clergy. Somehow you don’t look like an angel to me, Clint.”

The words ripped huge hunks of flesh from my psyche. “Sister, are all nuns cynics or are you singularly blessed? I don’t mean to be crass at a time like this, but that sort of clairvoyance doesn’t seem to be a useful tool for someone married to Jesus, or if your previous statement can be believed, Satan.”

A titter emerged from a gasp and continued as she started to clap her hands, applauding my words. “Bravo! Bravo, Mr. Eastwood! Tell me… why are you here? Do you really know, or am I merely the logical conclusion of your curiosity? Suppose you’d found me perched on the very edge of the beam, clutching my rosary, summoning the courage to step off into oblivion… would you have hurdled through the air, snaring my arm as I stepped off, your free hand clutching the girders in desperation as you attempted to pull yourself, and me, back onto this support structure? Would you really have done that? Are you willing to die for me?”

Ashen… all the humor and most of the blood drained from her face as she continued to stare at me. I now realized I was in over my head, but I had to say something. “Actually, I envisioned a different scenario. I thought I could use my bodacious charm and powers of persuasion to, perhaps, talk you out of jumping.” I put both hands out in front of me, palms up, in a gesture of supplication. “Silly me, huh?”

Folding her arms across her chest, she frowned. “Is that it? So little commitment? I’m a crazy woman standing on a ledge and you want to talk me down by asking me politely? ‘Pretty please, sister, be a nice little nun and make me feel like a hero?’ Where’s the romance in that? You’re a stud, remember? Okay, start talking or maybe I pull a MAC-10 out from underneath my habit and you get to feed our toothsome friends, Carcharodon carcharias.”

I couldn’t help myself. I scrunched my eyes, grit my teeth and pounded my fist on my forehead. “HA!” Now it was my turn to snort. “You’re going to shoot me because I tried to save you? Honey, you’re something out of a bad Stanley Kubrick movie! Either jump or walk towards me, either way I get a little closure. Who knows… if you jump I may even be able to sell your story to the Enquirer. Oh, and, by the way, I know that Carcharodon Whatever-you-called-it is the great white shark.”

“I knew you’d make this about you… I need to satisfy you. I need to viagrize your limp little willie by coalescing to your demands. You invade the sanctity of my death and demand that I walk towards you? Get a grip, Dirty Harry, you’re starting to come unhinged! Who the hell do you think you are? You have no control here… you’re bupkus! Get it?? And it’s carcharodon carcharias, dumbbell.”

I have to admit, that slowed me up a good bit. Soon, as I felt a salty taste in my mouth, I realized that I’d bitten my lip. “So much for small talks, eh, Kemosabe? Okay, you feel the need to tweak the primordial bonds between life and whatever, go ahead. Forget all the theology you’ve ever learned regarding the sanctity of life and the mortal sin attached to suicide. You have your audience, drama queen, go for the gusto… but, as you’ve no doubt already figured out, the first step is the toughest. It isn’t the bullet that gets you, it’s the hole, right? Just one short step, one semi-athletic pirouette and you’re no more than one of nature’s vagaries, a question for the ages, isn’t that right?”

Without a word, she turned to the side and edged closer to the edge.

Do something! “Okay, okay, okay… you’re in control, for God’s sake, please don’t jump… let’s cut the crap, okay? I admit I’m a fraud. My machismo forced me to jump down here for no other reason other than to con you into believing I cared. I couldn’t give one fat rat’s ass less about your welfare, I’m only in it for the recognition… You win, okay? But please… don’t jump, please? Somewhere in my wretched makeup, I actually would love to have the pleasure of pulling that habit off and ravishing you. The only reason I’m standing here is because I can’t get laid anywhere else. Making it with a nun has always been a fantasy of mine and I figured that you might take pity on me and give me a sympathy hump for talking you out of jumping. Please… make my fantasy come true and walk off this bridge with me. Even if you tell me to piss up a rope afterwards, it won’t really matter, I’ll get off just knowing that I talked you down. Consider me somewhat of a sick mutant Messianist/alpha male.”

The look she shot me was indescribable, but she stepped further back. “Sir, what do you know of Holy Orders?”

She caught me off guard there. I’d been an altar boy as in my formative years, but the thought of becoming a priest was foreign in every practical way. “Well, nuns, priests and deacons take them when they’re ordained… that’s about the extent of it, I guess.” What the hell kind of question is that?

This appeared to appease her. “Aha! A very good answer, all in all. So… you are a Catholic. I had my doubts, honestly.”

Well, of course! You’re worried about being saved by someone so reprehensible as to not have the decency to be a Catholic… “What, the potato face had you fooled? I’m not swarthy enough to be Catholic? Did it ever occur to you that the Church, in its infinite wisdom, chose to invade Eastern Europe, too? I’ll tell you what, Sister, I’ll go see if Sylvester Stallone is in town… I’m sure he has nothing better to do than come stand under the Golden Gate Bridge and talk to ungrateful masquerading twits threatening to commit an abomination to God and spend the better part of eternity in Purgatory… or worse.”

Again, she showed me that freakin’ smile… then, as she exhaled, her head dropped in true recognition of whatever special capabilities she held near. “You’re a strange one,” she replied, “but you do know how to turn a lady’s head. Can you recite the Beatitudes?”

I got your Beatitudes right here… “Sister, I haven’t seen the inside of a church since 1984. Wait here and I’ll go see if I can get the Bishop to come rescue you… he probably isn’t doing anything, it isn’t Wednesday afternoon. Chances are, he’ll be able to play Twenty Questions with you… hell, for that matter, the two of you can do it in Latin if you want. If I recall correctly, I think one of them says something about being clean of spirit or something… or was it a reference to being blessed when you mourn? You want Beatitudes? Ask your hubby, He invented the damn things during his sabbatical to the Sermon on the Mount!”

“You didn’t listen… I merely asked if you could recite them, I didn’t actually ask you to. You really need to learn to listen. Actually, you’re correct about two of the eight and I’m proud of you. I have students who can’t recite two the morning after having them assigned as homework the previous evening. I think your faith is more deeply ingrained in you than you care to admit.”

“Oh, well, pardon me, Mrs. Christ, in the future when I’m fifty stories up and straddling a beam, I’ll try to be sure I pay closer attention to Dr. Lecturing Penguin. Madam, you’re a throwback… it’s a pity you were born so recently, you’d have made an excellent Inquisitor.”

“ENOUGH!! I’ll not be humiliated by the likes of you!” And she sat down, her legs dangling high over the Pacific. Our impasse provided the opportunity for us to go to our neutral corners and prepare for the next round as the steady drone of vehicles passing over us became the only focus of sound. Finally, looking up at me, she gestured for me to sit next to her. It was not so much a request as a demand. Pausing to assess, I slowly walked over and lowered myself onto the beam leaving a couple of feet of space between us; if she decided to grab me and pull me off with her, I’d have a fighting chance to resist.

For the first time I got a good look at her face. Her eyes held the strength only years of concentration could bring, tiny crows’ feet emerging at the outer edges. I took her to be around forty, tops, certainly too young to bridge such a monstrous gap of faith. What demons could possibly bring her to this?

“Will you tell me your name?” Her soft voice cracked slightly and I had difficulty hearing her over the wind rushing through the steel. The temperature was dropping and for the first time I felt her anguish. Somehow the chill seemed to accompany despair.

“If I do, will you walk with me back to Sausalito?” My words surprised me.

“My name is... Gwyneth.”

“Sure it is… and mine is Lancelot.” I decided to tease her a bit more, hoping to buy a little time. “Persephone?”

“Care to try again? Third time’s the charm…”

Rubbing her face with her hands, the woman cocked her head to one side and gave me a closed-mouth grin. “My given name is Stephanie Marie, but the name I took is Mary Timothy. Now, will you tell me yours, or must I keep calling you Clint?”

“You didn’t answer my question.”

“The answer is no.”

“Then, I fail to see what difference the knowledge would bring.”

“And you also fail to realize a good many other things, too, gentle sir. If I were dying and thirsty, would you deny me a drink of water because I refused to stop dying?”

“Maybe… if I thought it would force you to take action on your own behalf.”

“I… can’t.”

Eternity can exist in a trice. If not, Einstein should have taken up gardening. Time, as I know it, suspended. “My name is Brent Carlson. You can’t… or you won’t?”

She pulled back her sleeve and glanced at her wristwatch before once again struggling to her feet. “Nice name, Mr. Carlson… strong, yet not arrogant. Your parents did well. Go learn The Beatitudes and I promise they’ll provide you all the strength you need. Now it is time for you to go. If you don’t, you’ll die with me.”

With those words, she lifted her habit over her head, allowing it to drop into the sea, exposing a display of circuitry and a countdown timer with rows of C-5 plastic explosive strapped to her chest, a chain extending down from her breast bone between her legs and padlocked to a hasp on her back. “You see, Mr. Carlson, I have less than five minutes left to decide whether this bridge comes down or whether an entire school packed with children blows up. Were I in your position, I think I would be high-tailing it for shore. But, then… I’m not Clint Eastwood.”

Media accounts of the Golden Gate Bridge bombing featured the assumption of Al Qaeda’s involvement, and a few motorists reported seeing a nun walking on the bridge. For another twenty-four hours, until a man with an incredible story came forward, I was the only person in the world who knew that Sister Mary Timothy Beatty traded her life for those of the children at St. Dominic’s Academy.

Pet Tricks - Dog Popping Balloons on Jay Leno

2008-06-09T06:27:00.001-05:00

Ya know... sometimes you have to put something up because it's cute as hell. This little Jack Russell terrier's performance is just such a time. Enjoy!

I Think I Win

2008-06-08T09:17:00.003-05:00

“Oh, yea? Well, did you ever get bit by a bull shark snorkeling off Isla Morada Key? I did, and it hurts, by God. Luckily, I think he just wanted to taste me to see if I was a seal.”

“Sorry, Harley, but I’m calling bullshit on that one. In the first place, I happen to know that there are no seals anywhere near Isla Morada Key. Secondly, how do you know you don’t taste just like seal? They’re mammals, too, even if they don’t have hands like chimps. I don’t think that would have anything to do with the taste. Buffalo aren’t cows but they taste similar. I’ll bet if I cooked you up a buffalo steak and fed it to you along with a round steak, you couldn’t tell the difference… especially if I put barbecue sauce on it. I just ain’t buying the ‘taste me to see if I was a seal’ bit. Let’s see the scar. Oh, wait, he probably bit you on the dick—never mind… at least the wound would be so small it wouldn’t take any stitches. And last but not least, why was a shark snorkeling off Isla Morada Key? I think they’re pretty much good to go without any artificial help.”

“Yea, well, I don’t think sharks have barbecue sauce to dull their taste buds like one particular stupid candy-ass I know who shall remain nameless but whose initials are S-T-I-N-K M-A-X-W-E-L-L— and the bite was just a small nip, it barely pierced my wetsuit, if you must know.”

“Oh, I’m the candy-ass? Why did you have a wetsuit on, Harley? I happen to know you went to Florida in July, when the water temperature was probably close to eighty degrees. That leads me to my next question. How do you know it was a bull shark and not a mako or tiger or freaking great white, for that matter? Are you a marine biologist, too, besides being an authority on every subject who spends forty adventure-packed hours a week driving a cement truck?”

“I may drive a cement truck, asshole, but at least my wife doesn’t spend every evening wearing knee pads in the parking lot of the truck stop on I-70. Maybe if her husband had a real job instead of spending his time ripping up losing tickets at Hialeah Race Track, your poor wife wouldn’t have to spend eight hours a night burping trucker spooge!”

“Oh, really, Harley? Well, if she's not at the truck stop, where does your wife turn her tricks, then? Do you allow her to use your guest bedroom?”

Harley Leathers and Stink Maxwell stared each other down with precision perfected by years of concerted effort in the practice thereof. Conversations in the barroom continued uninterrupted, yet neither heard anything but the beating of his heart as minds selectively filtered all unnecessary sound. All movement in either man’s peripheral vision took on the appearance of a protracted slow-mo scene in some violent B-movie.

In the fullness of time as defined by the duration of the Allman Brothers rendition of “Whipping Post”, Harley Leathers blinked. It wasn’t a full blink, more a semi-blink offered in response to an external stimulus such as a fly landing on the eyeball itself or an unexpected breeze slamming into his face, but it was still a blink, and could only be ignored if unseen. The sudden grin on Stink Maxwell’s face revealed that no such ignorance would be possible.

“Busted! You lose, that’ll be one Budweiser longneck, if you please, cold and frosty and best of all, free to me. You know, Harley, you’re getting easier and easier to beat. Maybe you need a little time off to practice before you come around fuckin’ with the King. Everything okay at home?”

For his part, Harley Leathers stared into the opaque amber bottle cradled in both his hand. Without looking up, he said, “Stink, if you could do anything you wanted, what would you do?”

“I’d turn you upside down, shake you ‘til your wallet dropped onto the ground, and take out enough to buy the Budweiser I have coming, but that’s just me. Harley, you don’t really give a goddamn what I’d do, you want to tell me what you’d like to do, so why don’t you spill it. I won’t promise that I won’t laugh my ass off, but at least you won’t be carrying it around like a lost puppy and maybe we can get down to some serious drinking.”

This caused Harley to look up at the large ironworker named Stink Maxwell. “Well, thank you, Doctor Phil!” he snarled. Standing up slowly, he pulled on the chain looped around a belt loop and attached to his wallet, causing it to rise from the rear pocket of his Levis. Reaching inside, he extracted a ten-dollar bill and laid it on the bar. Pushing it toward Stink, he continued, “Here, Stink… I hope the brew is never-ending and you choke on every sip.”

As Harley turned to depart, he felt a hand grab his upper arm. “Come on, Harley, sit back down and let’s drink another beer. You know I’m just—”

Stink Maxwell probably didn’t hear the sound or feel the impact, but the small hole in his forehead and the missing section in the back of his skull ably demonstrated the knockdown power of a 9-millimeter Glock when fired mere inches from a man’s head.

As the overly muscled ironworker’s body collapsed onto the bar, Harley Leathers put his face very close to Stink’s and whispered “I want to fly to Tahiti and carve a life-size replica of Ronald McDonald… out of teak.”

Seventeen patrons of Muldoon’s Public House, along with one wide-eyed bartender, listened to a Harley-Davidson starting up in the parking lot. Stink Maxwell could no longer hear anything at all.

Do you take these... er, I mean, this...

2008-06-08T07:46:00.002-05:00

Some people have no class whatsoever.

Take this guy's tie, for example... it is so yesterday!

The Thought For The Day (Part 1)

2008-06-06T19:18:00.003-05:00

Someone asked for some of my past The Thought For The Day. Your wish is my command (up to a point):

The fairness of destiny isn't ours to judge, but if you feed hot sauce to a Rottweiler, you deserve everything you get.
******

Everyone tells me that I have my grandfather's hands. So what? Grandpa's dead -- it's not like he needs them anymore, and sitting there on the fireplace mantle, they tend to dress up the room.
******

I sent away for a mail-order course that made me a minister. I haven't married any people yet, but I did practice on some pigeons in the park. Now God's gonna kill me for sure...
******

My mouth is dry, I can't feel my tongue, I've got blurred vision, my hands and legs are numb, I just peed my pants and now I'm seeing lightning bolts coming out of the buttons on my shirt... no wonder Mama warned me not to drink furniture polish.
******

Whenever my teenage daughter comes down the stairs dressed like a tramp for her date, I think to myself, 'Damn... why won't her mother wear something like that?'
******

If you want to save money on candy this Halloween, do what I do: Save your dirty Q-Tips throughout the year and tell the kids they're "Caramel Sticks." Hey, kids don't know any better...
******

There are two sure-fire ways to get a woman into bed. The problem is, I don't know either of them.
******

Life is just one long Yoko Ono album... no rhyme, no reason-- just a lot of incoherent shrieks and then it's over.
******

The problem with Americans is, we're just not consistent... if we were, eleven would be "one-ty-one".
******

I hate sex in the movies. Tried it once... the seat folded up, spilled our drinks, and that ICE -- well, it really chilled her mood.
******

If there's one thing I've learned, it's best to never ask a woman if she's pregnant. But if you decide to risk it, for God's sake never follow it up with, "Are you sure?"
******

I was taken aback when the waitress brought me a plate of tobacco leaves covered in whiskey, but I guess since I was at a sports bar, I should have known better than to order the Ty Cobb salad.
******

Since I can't afford to drive a bright yellow Hummer, I'm going to put a big flashing sign on my car that says,"I'm in serious need of some attention!"
******

I never forget a face, but in your case I'll be glad to make an exception. (Groucho Marx)

******

"Bubba bought me a mood ring the other day. When I'm in a good mood, it turns green. When I'm in a bad mood, it leaves a big frickin' red mark in the middle of his forehead." (Mrs. Bubba)

******

If the IRS wanted to put something really useful on their website, how about a list of countries that don't have an extradition treaty with the U.S.?

******

I fully support the legalization of marijuana. It's a natural substance, not unlike cyanide... and it has a similar effect on man's ability to compete with me for jobs and women.

******

Morris and Esther

2008-06-05T20:04:00.003-05:00

Morris and Esther Sharing a Light Moment

Morris and his wife Esther went to the state fair every year, and every year Morris would say, ''Esther,I'd like to ride in that helicopter.''

Esther always replied, ''I know Morris, but that helicopter ride is fifty dollars, and fifty dollars is fifty dollars.''

One year Esther and Morris went to the fair, and Morris said, ''Esther, I'm 85 years old. If I don't ride that helicopter, I might never get another chance.''

To this, Esther replied, ''Morris that helicopter ride is fifty dollars, and fifty dollars is fifty dollars.''

The pilot overheard the couple and said, ''Folks I'll make you a deal. I'll take the both of you for a ride. If you can stay quiet for the entire ride and not say a word, I won't charge you! But if you say one word, it's fifty dollars.''

Morris and Esther agreed and up they went. The pilot did all kinds of fancy maneuvers, but not a word was heard. He did his daredevil tricks over and over again, but still not a word.

When they landed, the pilot turned to Morris and said, ''By golly, I did everything I could to get you to yell out, but you didn't. I'm impressed!''

Morris replied, ''Well, to tell you the truth, I almost said something when Esther fell out, but you know, fifty dollars is fifty dollars!''

(Before you ask, no, I didn't write it.)

Something's Rotten in Denmark...

2008-06-03T09:25:00.003-05:00

Your Thought For The Day:

DID YOU KNOW? Despite the obvious perils associated with such an endeavor, on a 20-degree night, an outdoor hot tub filled to capacity with five inebriated adult revelers is capable of producing enough steam to provide electricity for a family of six. This phenomenon, when coupled with the grace of God, is responsible for the fact that we all escaped relatively unscathed with not so much as a trace of frostbite.

Not a whole lot of news to report today. Yesterday was pretty much a typical Moberly day all in all, complete with shopping at Wal-Mart. The next check-out position over from where we waited in line is the Express Line. We had just finished paying for our groceries when suddenly Sheriff Brill and a SWAT team burst through the front door and arrested Fud Crumpacker for violation of Ordinance 27-B Subsection A; knowingly, with malice and forethought, attempting to bring more than 14 items into a posted Express Line.

Smiling and reading a prepared statement for the Eyewitness News 57 team, an effulgent Sheriff Brill proclaimed that surveillance teams had been in place for nearly three hours, waiting for Mr. Crumpacker "to perpetrate his heinous acts upon the good citizens of Randolph County". Apparently, it is Mr. Crumpacker's third offense of the same charge, and "the Sheriff's Department is up to the job of providing due diligence to its mission statement, the professed 'courteous but firm' administration of equal justice under the law for all citizens, for all offenses no matter how slight".

However, the statement goes on to say that the county will not be asking for the implementation of the death penalty under the "three strikes and you're out" clause, because "that boy is not hopeless... I'll rehabilitate this reckless scofflaw if it takes me twenty years".

I hate election years.

On the way home, I did something I rarely do. I picked up a family of blue-green algae who were hitch-hiking on Route 74. The wife wasn't too happy about it, but she went along with it under the condition that they stay in the back seat, and off the groceries.

The spokes-algae identified himself as Gak the Anabena. He was actually quite pleasant, if a tad malodorous. So deep was his gratitude, he said, that he would be willing to put down roots, with his multi-billion numbered family, in my back yard.

"You wouldn't happen to own livestock, would you?" he inquired hopefully.

I was forced to admit that I did not, although a healthy number of critters of different species inhabited the back acreage of my place.

"Splendid! You know, Mr. Church, blue-green algae has a history of steady nitrogen production, as well as a very strong relationship with fungi, an environmental power player with whom it produces many common lichens. We could keep your meadow green and nitrogenous for many years to come."

I looked him right in the nucleus and said, "Gak, if I allow you to stay, will you promise to stay out of my hottub? I've seen what algae can do to the most scrupulously treated vessels, and I'll not allow you to give my friends jock-itch!"

At this point, I think I heard what would pass for murmuring amongst the multitudes before Gak waved his Golgi Complex calling for silence. "Mr. Church-- may I call you Bubba?-- you see, I think you're laboring under a false presumption. You see, sir, we are really not algae at all, but cyanobacteria. We are associated with those nasty nemotodes only because of our color, not because of our environmental effects. Certainly you're not some bigot who would lump us all together because of our color, are you?"

Well, what could I do, at that point? If I didn't allow them to stay, I would be casting them to the whims of Sheriff Brill's anti-bacterial stereotypes. I simply couldn't live with myself if I did. But, I wasn't about to let them think that I was an easy touch. "Okay, pal, you and your clan can stay, but I don't intend to allow you to send for your relatives. If I see one sign of E. Coli or your fruit-fly cohorts, Drosophila melanogaster, it's Malathion for the bunch of you! Got it?"

I can only hope I was convincing.

A Hooker’s Heart

2008-06-02T07:27:00.009-05:00

The available light from the bedside wall sconce bathed the cheap motel room in the glow of anticipation, as he closed the door and latched the privacy hook.

“Honestly, I must tell you, you are the first one-legged prostitute I’ve ever met.” He sat on the bed, but at a point as far from her as possible.

She didn’t mind his admission. In fact, his words bolstered her. His naiveté added a little sweetness to his demeanor, a commodity in short supply for most of her johns. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen, judging from the peach fuzz masquerading as a moustache above his upper lip.

“Well, when you think about it, my job performance skills are little affected by the absence of a leg. So, if you can get your mind around my body as a whole, the aesthetic values aside, I think you’ll find the experience worth your time—and investment. I’m willing to bet you double or nothing that I’m the only hooker you’ve ever met. Am I right?”

“Huh? Oh, p—pshaw… no… I’ve been with lots of hookers. I’ve hooked it with ladies lots of times, even with some who weren’t prostitutes. In fact, most of ‘em weren’t…” His voice trailed off as if realizing he wasn’t very convincing.

“Oh, you’ve ‘hooked’ it before, eh? Yea… okay.” She walked over to the bed and pulled her skirt up, revealing her prosthesis. Sitting back down, she began to unbutton her blouse. “So, Mr. World Traveler, what services will you be requiring of me this evening?”

The boy said nothing, as if he didn’t understand the question. Slowly, he extended his arms as he began to speak. “Oh, you know… just the usual stuff.”

“Oooooohhhh…” she said, shaking her head affirmatively and smiling at him, “the ‘usual’ stuff, is it?” Tracing his crotch lightly with her fingers, she whispered in his ear, "I see someone else is happy to see me, too." Slowly and sensually, she un-strapped her prosthesis and stood it upright against the wall, a silent sentinel of the proceedings.

Folding his arms across his chest, he grinned back, suddenly pleased with her understanding of his great worldliness.

“Well, then, how much of ‘the usual stuff’ would you like?” Pulling one arm out of her blouse, she allowed him to view her exposed right breast before playfully sliding the fabric back over it. “How much fun are we going to be having during our little party tonight?”

“Well, ma’am,” he stammered, “I don’t know about you, but I intend to have a shit load!” Suddenly realizing that he’d just sworn, he covered his mouth momentarily before continuing. “I’m sorry… pardon my French.”

“Pardon your French? Honey, I’d welcome some of your French.”

His stupid, lop-sided grin spoke volumes in his silence as panic turned his ears bright red, looking for an avenue of escape.

“Okay, Pierre…” she replied, her tone dipped in exasperation, “how do you want to fuck me and for how long? See, that determines how much you pay.”

The demeanor didn’t change. The lights were on, but apparently nobody was home.

“You do want some pussy, right?”

Now he uncrossed his arms and put his hands on the bed, his eyes staring at one corner of the ceiling away from her gaze. “Well…” he said, his voice timid and barely audible, “if that’s how you want to put it, yes. I guess that’s what I came here to do.”

Obvious, also, to the one-legged prostitute known as Tish, was the absolute lead-pipe cinch that this boy was a virgin. Crossing her arms against her chest, she grinned innocently at him and intoned, “But…” elongating the word to make it last three or four seconds before once again turning the room silent.

“Well, I guess I’ve just never heard a lady use those words before”, he admitted, lowering his eyes as though ashamed of his innocence.

Now she had to turn her head and bite her hand to keep from laughing out loud. Slowly, Tish, the one-legged prostitute, buttoned her blouse and reattached her leg before sitting close to him on the bed.

“Listen carefully,” she began, putting one hand behind his head and the other flat onto his chest, “as much as I’d like to take your money tonight, after looking at that bulge in your levis, I think you’re too much man for me… I’m afraid I just wouldn’t be able to handle manhood like you possess. How about if we just call this whole thing off and I walk out that door? I promise I’ll tell tales of your skill and expertise to all your friends. Meanwhile, you’ll have some time to think about this evening and how one look at your package intimidated a hooker, and maybe even spend a little time just impressing some of the local girls in town. Then, when you’re ready, you come back and I’ll try to find a way to accommodate your massive man-meat. I won’t even charge you. How’s that sound? Would that be all right?”

Relief poured out of every pore of the boy’s skin. Shaking his head ‘yes’, he managed a faint grin.

Bringing her face very close to his, she stared into his eyes before kissing him softly on the lips. “But next time you come back, be warned. Real women aren’t afraid to let you know what they want—in terms you may find shocking. The world’s changing, my young friend, and sometimes a woman just needs a good fu--" Lowering her head, she paused before continuing, "Well, you know... when you can handle it, come back. I promise you’ll leave very happy.”

Then, blowing him a soft kiss, Tish, the one-legged prostitute walked out of the room, leaving one very relieved minister’s son to collect his thoughts and re-evaluate his place in the world.

Extreme Bubbacity

2008-06-01T10:43:00.004-05:00

I learned a valuable life lesson yesterday when a homeless street urchin burst out from between two parked cars, grabbed my jacket lapels and informed me that when joining two independent clauses, I should “be goddamned sure to use a comma followed by a conjunction, a semicolon alone, or a semicolon followed by a freakin’ sentence modifier!”

***

Like so many aspects of life, art is a mystery to me… I know very little about it, but I do know what I like. In fact, I’ve become so adept at identifying such work, I’ve recently been appointed Curator of the Midwest Museum of Art That I Like.

***

Quit telling me that everything you like is illegal, immoral or fattening. All that says to me is that you’re a sanctimonious Puritan with no glands.

***

I’m not being judgmental— only God can do that— but I have to tell you, He’s been appearing to me and a lot of your friends, telling us what an a-hole you are.

***

Most of the time I don’t pay a lot of attention to abandoned offshore drilling platforms. I can’t remember even once mentioning the subject. So why is it that lately, everyone keeps reminding me how perfect one might be for me to take up permanent residence?

***

There is most certainly a purpose and meaning to the universe, even if it is far too complex and beyond my ability to understand. I take solace in the fact that for one fleeting second right before I die, I might gain a minute spark of insight.

***

My joy is beyond verbalization. Today, Federal Express delivered my Medieval Catapult Kit! At first, a couple of my neighbors were a tad nervous, but I put their fears to rest by explaining that I couldn’t possibly hit anything that close.

***

Life in rural America can be complex. Virgil Peebie’s mother stopped by today and spent a half-hour explaining to me all about how the new love in Virgil’s life kept making him ‘misty-eyed’ all the time. Turns out that he mistook passion for the onset of glaucoma. As I explained to his mama, I tried to tell him that little ewe wasn’t right for him, I don’t care how attractive he found her to be.

***

While walking by an antique shop recently, an odd, irregularly shaped glass sculpture caught my attention. When I walked in and asked to see it, the proprietor seemed a bit hesitant to show it to me. After holding it and examining it closer, I noticed that he started to sweat when I asked him the price, and out of the corner of my eye, I saw a woman whom I perceived to be his wife, peeking out from behind a hanging tapestry.

Hands visibly shaking, the little man put his finger to his mouth and peered deeply into my eyes, undoubtedly testing my resolve. “I couldn’t take a penny under $200, mister”, he replied, his brow steeled to his work.

Once again, I rolled the strange object of my affection in my hands, its smooth surfaces warming my hands and heart. Sure, that was a lot of money, but for this stunning beauty to grace my mantel— I would have paid twice that amount. I ignored the little voice in the back of my mind trying to tell me to put it down, and casting caution to the wind, I blurted out “SOLD!”

Receipt in hand, I closed the shop’s front door behind me and stepped on the sidewalk. As I turned to walk away, an older lady grabbed my arm and smiled. “I see you’ve been to The Dollar Store, too… I bought seven, myself. At $1.98, I couldn’t pass them up. They’ll make lovely stocking-stuffers this Christmas.”

Somewhere behind me, from inside the antique shop, I heard raucous laughter.
***

June Word Catalyst is up!

2008-05-30T17:46:00.006-05:00

Hi, everyone... I've been out of town since Wednesday and haven't been able to keep up with any of your blogs. Sorry... I'll try to catch up this weekend. Just wanted to let everyone know that the June edition of Word Catalyst Magazine is up! There are lots of good poems, some nice artwork, photography, and one of my stories, "Seasons Beckoned Unto Night" is featured. You may have heard me telling you that I wrote it a year or so after my father passed... and I brought his ghost back for a visit. If you have a few minutes, I hope you'll take a look... thanks!

The artwork above is the cover for our upcoming chapbook of selected works from Word Catalyst.

My Boy, Gal

2008-05-28T08:19:00.002-05:00

Have you ever questioned your parents' motivation in naming you?

My Boy, Gal

“Oh, it’s not a common name, no, but I think it holds a certain elegance in its tone, wouldn’t you agree?” Eleanor Gimble continued to stir the cookie batter with a large wooden spoon, pausing to tap it on the side of the bowl before offering the spoon for her son to lick. Her son’s question, while not totally unexpected at some point, nevertheless took her unawares. The ten-year-old, normally not given to inquiry on any subjects that didn’t relate directly to his favorite team or players, had recently started to ask questions about many subjects; some harmless enough, Eleanor figured, and others more troublesome. “Why do you ask?”

Taking the spoon from his mother, the boy stared at it closely before putting it into his mouth. “Mom, is cookie batter supposed to move in the spoon?”

Eleanor Gimble grabbed the spoon from her son, carrying it to the kitchen sink. With a finger, she flicked at the batter, grumbling under her voice, “Damn ants.” Handing the spoon back to him, she continued, “Honey, is everything okay at school?”

Still looking at the spoon, he pointed at a speck and held the ladle out to his mother. “Is this ant poop?”

Taking the spoon, she grabbed her reading glasses off the counter and put them on the end of her nose. Pretending to inspect the spoon, she licked the spoon with a long lap of her tongue and muttered, “Hmmmm… Eeee-ooouuuu… I do believe it is!” Then, she put her free arm around her son’s shoulders and mockingly tried to force the spoon back into his mouth. “Here, help me get rid of it before the health inspector gets here!”

Arms flailing and chairs falling over, the ensuing wrestling match lasted only seconds, with mother and child laughing hysterically and hugging each other. A few seconds later, Eleanor Gimble set a chair back on its four legs and stared at her son. “Tell me what’s wrong, pretty please?”

Bashfully, the boy avoided eye contact. “I—, I— oh, Mom, I don’t like my name!”

“What’s wrong with your name? It’s a perfectly good name. Most boys would be proud to have such a wonderful name. Galileo discovered… um… well, he discovered something pretty scientific, I’m sure. He was a great thinker. Don’t you want to be a great thinker someday?”

“Galileo, Mom? You think ‘Galileo’ is a wonderful name? Why not Copernicus or Von Leeuwenhoek? When was the last time you were in the fourth grade, for Christ’s sake?”

Grabbing both of the boy’s arms, her fingers dug into his flesh. “Galileo Gimble, you apologize immediately! I’ll not have you taking the Lord’s name in vain in this house, do you understand me?”

“Yes, ma’am… I’m sorry”, he answered, contrition steeped into his tone.

“I accept your apology, but see that it doesn’t happen again. If your father hears you talking like that, you’ll be losing some privileges. How about a nickname? What about ‘Leo’?”

Galileo gazed at his mother with a look that could only be called incredulous. “Leo… you think ‘Leo’ is a good nickname? Tell you what, Mom, why don’t you just start calling me ‘Gal’? I’ll be the class homo in about two seconds… if I’m not already! Tell me, how did you and dad come up with that name? Were you stoned or what?”

Immediately Galileo Gimble understood that he’d crossed the line. His mother’s face, now frozen in a ghastly, open-mouthed mask, left no doubt that she considered the question/allegation beyond the scope of any conversation a ten-year-old boy ought to be having with his mother. She said nothing, but her wide-eyed stare caused young Galileo to slowly start backing away from her, his prelude to the upcoming sprint he’d need to escape her grasp. Her accompanying gasp and scream burst the bubble of intrigue and brought him to full gallop as he ran out of the kitchen, hoping the back screen door wasn’t latched. If he could make it out the door, she wouldn’t chase him past the back yard.

With the speed and agility God seemed to grant to all pre-teen smartasses, Galileo successfully negotiated the twenty feet from the kitchen table to the back door, his mother nipping at his heels, still screaming and cursing at him to stop immediately— an instruction that she may just as well have issued to the table or the toaster, because by the time she reached the back screen door, it slammed shut and she was treated with the view of Galileo’s form jumping their back fence.

Dabbing at her face with the dishtowel still draped over her shoulder, Eleanor Gimble took the time to compose herself before taking another step. I’m gonna beat that boy like a rented mule. Then, after taking a few steps back toward the kitchen, a smile sneaked out and by the time she reached the table and pulled out a chair, she had to cover her face in case the little bastard had sneaked back onto the porch, and she laughed like she hadn’t laughed in the last ten years. Stoned, indeed.

In The Best of Worlds

2008-05-26T09:37:00.002-05:00

In The Best of Worlds

Constant in the darkness, I hear you call
and if I could, I’m sure I would,
I’d re-create it all

Blank canvas, you and I, primed for lust,
I’d paint it all in passion’s hues
and Devil claim the just.

Your sumptuous lips, red as holy wine,
parted, wait in heavenly bliss
to share their spice with mine.

Then, when feather touch yields its providence
to acts so bold they lose their blush,
we’ll be one in every sense.

Final Stand At Fort Surrender

2008-05-24T08:48:00.004-05:00

Jacob's Ladder-- Henry Blake

The Thought For Today:

About the most originality that any writer can hope to achieve honestly is to steal with good judgment. -- Henry Wheeler Shaw (Josh Billings)

The little woman is starting to worry me. Oh, her physical health is fine as far as I can ascertain, but her mental state seems to be exhibiting some signs that the train might just be starting to slip the track.

This morning I got up when the alarm went off, just like I do every morning, but today Louise wasn't in bed. Well, there are certainly reasons why she might have already gotten up, but she hadn't mentioned anything before retiring the previous evening so I was a bit taken aback.

I checked the bathroom and she wasn't in there, so I proceeded out into the living room. No lights were on, but I got the feeling that someone was in there, so I softly called out, "Weezie, where are you?"

"I'm out here... " The voice came from the direction of the kitchen, but it too was darker than the pits of Hades. I flicked the light switch and the kitchen was suddenly bathed in the yellow glow of 75 watts of incandescence, but still no sight of Louise. I proceeded out into the laundry room and found her sitting on top of the clothes dryer, both her hands wrapped around a mug of hot chocolate and staring out the small window of our back door.

"What's up?"

She stared at my face as though trying to assess its suitability for some future project, her eyes questioning and piercing. "Bob, I died in my dream last night."

Oh, Lord... here we go...

"Dang, honey, I wouldn't pay too much attention to that, I die in my dreams at least a couple of times every week and I still wake up every morning just like you did. If it means anything at all, I think it just means we could stand to lay off the Twinkies right before bed."

She sipped her cocoa and looked up at me again. "Well, I'm not worrying about the dying part... it was the rest of the dream."

Now it was my turn to stare. "I know that very shortly I'm going to hate myself for asking, but what happened?"

The woman got a strange, dreamy look on her face, as though she were actually revisiting the scene. "I was standing at the Pearly Gates and St. Peter met me and led me down a golden street, just as I had always been taught, but then he took me to a large field of beautiful flowers. In the middle of the field, there was a ladder extending as far as the eye could see into the sky. Handing me a piece of chalk, he explained that I must write one of my life's sins on each rung and continue to climb to Paradise."

I have to give her some credit... she has one great imagination. "Well, I'm sure that you must have had a few small sins that you could record, didn't you?"

"Yea, but that's where the strange part started, Bob... I was standing on the second rung examining my conscience, when I looked up and saw you crawling back down!"

I scratched my chin at this point, not really wanting to know, but unable to stop myself from asking, "I was coming back down? What for, pray tell?"

Thats when she got that look in her eyes. "That's what I asked you, Bubba. You said you needed to come back down and grab another box of chalk."

Then she started to laugh; not a polite chuckle or a garden-variety titter, either. Oh, no... this was the full-out, 50-megaton, batten-down-the-hatches horse laugh! She damn near fell off the dryer she was laughing so hard.

It wasn't necessary to say anything else, not that it would have been possible to actually speak to her at that point. By the time I'd finished my shower and gotten dressed, she'd calmed down some, but she avoided eye contact with me, and evidently the act of waving good-bye at the front door is now enough to re-create the entire scene, because as I closed the door I heard sounds that I'd never before heard coming from my wife!

I still trying to decide whether to be relieved or offended.

How To Spot A Gay Iraqi

2008-05-23T16:27:00.007-05:00

I don't even know why I'm surprised. Given my particular psychological make-up, a reasonable person might suspect that nothing would shock me. I don't know whether it's the free-flowing peek-a-boo thoub or the matching white short shorts worn in defiance of the Koran or the blue suede pumps with four-inch heels or the designer gutrah emblazoned so jauntily on his head or the eleven gold bands on his wrist or the matching kidskin purse or the designer Pierre Cardin shades he wears with such obvious defiance to all things traditionally Arab, but this cat rocks the boat.

I realize it's probably heresy to mention it, but this dude has real chutzpah! I don't know where the photo was taken, but I can't imagine that it's Baghdad or anywhere in Yemen. For that matter, even in someplace as civilized as Paris, I can't envision a scenario where his jaunt lasted more than a couple of blocks before some slightly-irritable Jihadist sent him to Allah with a well-placed volley from a hand-held rocket launcher.

But, I guess some must suffer in the name of self-expression.

In Consideration of Lascaux

2008-05-23T08:40:00.003-05:00

The Thought For The Day:
You can lead a horticulture but you can't make her think.
(I know... it's lame, but at least it's original. I can honestly say I thought it up. Whoppee. It's amazing what will pass for entertainment when you're really, really bored.)

Have you ever thought about why we do some of the things we do? I want to know who the first guy was who, after wandering around looking for something to eat for days on end, sees the first cow that man has ever laid eyes on. How long does he have to stare at this gargantuan four-legged bovine creature with the massive horns and big sac of nipples hanging underneath before he says, "Gee... I think I'll pull on those and drink whatever comes out"?

I mean, really... this is before cattle were domesticated, so he doesn't know a cow from a sabre-toothed tiger at this point, does he? Even if he makes the comparison between his own mate's and the cow's hangy-down thingies, how does he know that the stuff isn't poison to humans? I don't recall hearing about any hungry calves that attacked lactating women while looking for a quick, nutritious meal.

Common sense tells me that this is the same guy who ate the first mushroom. "Hmmm... that's an interesting looking thing growing out of that pile of manure, maybe I should pop it into my mouth-- Hey... why is the forest starting to spin?"

Somehow I suspect that once word got out, Mushroom Guy was the most popular dude in the tribe. All hours of the night, some guy would be pounding on the entrance to his cave. "Pssstt... hey, Blarg... you awake? Got any more of those poop-buttons? No, man, it's me, Kwang, I ain't a narc..."

Next thing you know, the whole damn tribe's sitting next to the fire, giggling and writing on the walls of the cave. "Wow, man... that's a cool-looking eohippus! Bitchin'! I've never seen one before with all four legs on one side. Hey, dude, pass me the bota bag... I need another hit of milk!"

The Quality of Mercy

2008-05-22T05:49:00.003-05:00

The Thought For The Day:
I don't do drugs anymore... I find I get the same effect just standing up fast.

I received a letter I'd like to share with you:

Dear Bubba,

I’m writing to you as a last resort. I am an enigma, a formula to be more precise, and I’ve enticed and enchanted mathematical theorists for centuries. You have the most wonderful readership known to man, and I’m hoping there’s someone among them capable of understanding me. I guess I really shouldn’t complain, I’ve gotten lots and lots of attention over the years, but sometimes it seems that no one understands me, at least not in a deep and abiding way.

I’m the equation xn + yn = zn, where n represents a whole number greater than two. That’s it... as theorems go, I’m really pretty simple, but I have no solution. That’s me in a nutshell, but for some reason, men are fascinated by me and no one, no matter how hard they might try, can come up with my solution. It’s depressing...

Like any beautiful woman, I attracted some men who only wanted to fool around with me a little before moving on. They manipulated me in un-Godly ways and forced me to commit perverse acts of atrocity just so they could chart my curves and revel in my many provocative undulations on or about the x-y axis. Take that bastard, Yarosh, for example, who went out of his way to prove me for n=2. Do you have any idea how that made me feel? It was so incredibly degrading. Would you want to be proven for just n=2 and nothing else?

At first, I thought Euler was different from all the others. He spent every waking moment thinking only of me... and I held such great hopes for the future. But, alas, it was not to be; he failed to understand me like all the others.

And don't bring up that tired old argument about Andrew Wiles, either. He’s the worst of them all. Sure, in 1994, he proved me, like that’s the end-all of end-alls... he walks in, manipulates me and gets lucky. Slam, bam, thank you, ma’am... but that's not the same thing as understanding me, as truly knowing what makes me tick. Did he once, in his 20-year obsession, ask me what kind of music I liked? Or inquire as to my favorite scent? No.

In the final analysis, he used that easy Taniyama-Shimura conjecture to get to me—I was reduced to becoming the product of an Oriental gang-bang! That hurt. It reduced a big part of me to a semi-stable case and I thought I had, for all time, lost my identity. In all his years of fondling me (and never to completion), the only time he ever spoke directly to me was late at night when he'd been working too hard, and he was depressed and embarrassed by allowing his Japanese buddies to share me.

Screw Andrew Wiles and everyone who looks like him! I haven’t heard from him for nearly ten years now, and I hope I never do again. More than likely, he’s off solving three-body problems using only odd numbers, if you get my gist... he’s into that sort of group thing.

Bubba, if people care about you, they don’t need proof. They can find out all about you by merely trusting their feelings and communicating. I have lots and lots of experience with mathematicians, and late at night, when I’m really most vulnerable, is when they are at their worst. They’ll tell you anything. They say they want to understand you, but it’s really only the thrill of the hunt... the conquest. They never stop to ask me HOW I can be understood. It’s then I want to scream at them, “Hey! Put down that calculator and just talk to me! I’ll tell you anything you want to know if only you’ll think about ME for a change!”

Maybe that’s how they all are. They use their fanciful explanations, always dancing around the true essence, but they never really get to know you. Okay, I admit, I’m not the easiest theorem in the world. There... I said it, are you happy now? But I hardly think I’m impossible! At one time, no one could prove the Pythagorean Theorem, either... nowadays, nine-year-olds understand his entire essence. Maybe it’s our age difference, I don’t know... he’s a very old theorem.

I just know I can't give up hope. However, I also know I can't rely on imaginary numbers to make me complete, either. That's just not the kind of theorem I am. Deep down, I have some really complex variables. There may be no solution for me for whole numbers greater than two, but I've learned to live with that. All I need is one, just one person who truly understands me, and I'll finally consider myself a complete, happy, balanced equation.

Bubba, do you know anyone who can complete me? I’m not asking that he be rich or good-looking, or even smart, for that matter... I just want to find a quiet, unassuming mathematician (please, no engineers) who holds the key to my future happiness. I’m begging you, please help me.

Waiting,

Fermat’s Last Theorem

Folks, I don't ask for much... could one of you please answer this cry for help? You could possibly save a life this morning. Honestly, I think she's desperate. Look into your heart and sharpen your pencil... you can do it, I know you can.

I'm sure this won't piss anyone off...

2008-05-21T17:42:00.002-05:00

This cartoonist is really cool.

Wrinkles in the Wainscoting

2008-05-21T06:29:00.004-05:00

When I bought my house a few years back, I moved in with the expectant anticipation of converting the domicile into our dream home, just the sort of self-contained paradise that mature Americans shape in hopes of someday morphing into a life of dignified retirement.

Nothing could have prepared me for the secret the dwelling harbors—it is haunted. Now, I know what you’re thinking, Bob has flipped his trolley. Honestly, at first I might have agreed with you. Throughout my life, I have practiced a form of pragmatism that tends to discard outlandish reports of anything that couldn’t be proven scientifically.

Be that as it may, we have a ghost, a spirit, a spooky wraith. And if that isn’t bad enough, he’s one of the most boring individuals I’ve ever encountered. He doesn’t really do very much; once in a while we come home to find the dog’s dish turned upside down or junk mail spread out all over the dining room table or the refrigerator door slightly ajar.

Recently, I found out that he rips coupons out of the stack of old newspapers we keep stacked in the basement. I went downstairs to check the furnace filter and found coupons for mushroom soup and air freshener lying on top of the water heater. Every single one of the coupons had expired, so either he can’t read the fine print or he has no concept of time. Just once I’d like to go down there and find that he’d selected a coupon for a quart of Johnny Walker or a two-for-one advertisement for Trojan condoms.

We first knew that we had a haunt last winter when we couldn’t keep the temperature in the house above 64 degrees Fahrenheit. We’d set the thermostat for 72 and come back an hour later, after feeling a chill, and find the dial back on 64. After this went on five or six times, we just left it and my wife started wearing a heavy sweater or coat inside the house. I’m as green as the next guy, but 64? In January?

Convinced that we were losing our minds, we decided to hold a séance. We bought a Ouija board at the Dollar Store and lit some candles on the dining room table one evening. Spooky as hell… the dog wouldn’t even come into the room. We’d been advised to ask yes or no questions, so we constructed all our inquiries in that fashion, but invariably, when we made contact he’d blather on and on about the declining quality of the lunch buffet at Golden Dragon or the virtue of paper rather than plastic or how kids don’t really need recess. After twenty minutes or so, I think he lost interest because he stopped answering our questions. In the den we heard the TV come on and the channel change to The Food Network, with Chef Emeril Lagasse detailing his latest culinary creation, Butter Bean Ragoût.

I wish that just once he’d leave us a cryptic message on a steamed-up bathroom mirror or offer up a plaintive moan capable of scaring the bejesus out of the kids during Halloween trick-or-treat activities. Instead, we get an improperly recoiled garden hose or the cap being left off the toothpaste or my hand tools taken off their hooks in the garage and strewn on my workshop countertop.

It’s embarrassing, really… I haven’t even called a psychic for help. I’m afraid any self-respecting parapsychologist would laugh at us.

So, up until now, I’ve just kept my trap shut about him. Do me a favor and keep this to yourself, if you don’t mind. I wouldn’t want anyone to think me strange.

The Hell Only Tuesday Can Bring

2008-05-20T05:49:00.004-05:00

As most of you already know, I'm an aspiring screenplay writer. While it's true that I couldn't find a home for "Gunther Spooge" or "Nighttime for Giardia" or "Ass-Crack Lament", I have high hopes for "Park Bench", the psychological drama featuring the relationship between several unique and aging layers of enamel and latex paint forced to deal with their feelings of hopelessness as they endure the weathering and cold of the Midwest winter. The premise relies on the audience's ability to project their own emotions upon inanimate objects while aging causes the layers to chip and peel, revealing the underlayer's desire to once again re-live a life of exposure to the elements.

I think the draft could use a good punch-up, particularly with DuPont 4653 Off-White Satin Latex, who is still having problems getting the other layers to relate to her, and the second act falls a little flat when Benjamin Moore Aliphatic Urethane Gloss #CM74-00 becomes hopelessly infatuated with the physically and emotionally inaccessible black Shop-Kote metal primer. If I can raise the stakes to a white-hot blaze with the smoldering sexual tension created by the intimacy of their polyacrylic bonding, I think my little masterpiece will be bound for Broadway!

If not, I guess I'll just have to keep on sniffing glue until something else comes along.

Word Catalyst Time!

2008-05-19T20:12:00.002-05:00

Hey kids, it's time again for submission to the June edition of Word Catalyst Magazine . If you have a short story, poem or piece of artwork that you created, send it along to me and I'll take a look at it or see to it that it gets to the appropriate editor. I make the decisions on prose, so if you've got a story you're proud of, please send it to me along with a short biography to go along with it. The cutoff date is May 23, so there isn't much time remaining.

You can send it to broncobob4755 (at) sbcglobal.net . Thanks!

Forest of Dreams-- A Cautionary Tale

2008-05-18T16:46:00.002-05:00

Forest of Dreams-- A Cautionary Tale

A rather somber day for May even in Thanatopsea, with a morose pall hanging from the low and ever-present clouds forecasting a coming blow, breezes of change even now forged their way across the landscape. A Barnaby squirrel nonetheless braved the harbingers of inclemency in search of whatever adventure might come his way, as well as a few morsels of vegetative sustenance. The trail he followed from his tree-base, normally well marked and situated in such a way as to invoke the recollections of countless other such trips, today held no distinguishing characteristics. It was as though he’d fallen out of his refuge in the canopy into a world he’d never seen. Oh, the ground cover was similar enough, but with none of the telltale trail forks and distinguishable assemblages of natural flotsam to which he’d become accustomed. Still, it was pleasant enough, all in all, with no lashes of cold to worry about and little danger of getting too much sun, a perfect day to explore.

Making his way through the shoots and roots, the squirrel soon realized that a clearing lay dead ahead, a crossroad of sorts, with its meadow grass and occasional wildflower. Surveying its breadth, our hero’s gaze quickly centered upon the creature lazing happily atop a soft mat of grass at the far side, at a point where the trail funneled past the river. If he was to proceed without the stealth provided by shrubs and fens he would need to be wary, for if his eyes could be trusted, the creature was a wolf, and a rather large one at that. The squirrel knew of wolves only by reputation, having never actually encountered one, but the size disparity alone heightened his senses as he crept closer and closer. Perhaps if he retained a posture as close to the ground as possible, the wolf wouldn’t see him at all and he could resume his journey once the danger had passed. Squirrel stealth ranks high amongst that of other forest denizens, a statistic that further emboldened his advance. Once within a few yards of the wolf and having noticed no perceptible movement on the part of the apex predator, the intrepid adventurer decided to up the ante and see if he could elicit a reaction.

“Chitter-chitter-chippity” he squeaked, his senses now heightened, his awareness piqued.

For his part, the wolf didn’t move except to twitch one ear ever so slightly, specifically the down-wind ear closest to the squirrel. In fact, a lesser species, a rabbit or chipmunk perhaps, might not have noticed the movement at all. But to a squirrel, the spasm screamed Danger at the top of his lungs.

Then, sitting up abruptly and facing the squirrel, the wolf chuffed and stared at the squirrel. “Do you mind if we speak in English? Your dialect taxes my vocal cords and I find your language, with its distinct lack of predicates, to be difficult. Besides, the narrator isn’t smart enough to tell this story without dialogue, so if it is to progress as anything more than a tired cliché of a parable, we need to be able to converse. What do you say, feel like giving it a shot?”

Rising onto his back legs (confident of his ability to outrun the wolf to safety should he show signs of aggression) with sangfroid aplenty, the squirrel countered (in English), “If I engage you in conversation, do you promise not to try to eat me?”

This caused the wolf to pull his lips back, baring his teeth. He meant it as a smile, of course, although an interested observer of less than two percent his mass surely might have mistaken it for an outward display of aggressive intent. Unfortunately, wolves’ anatomical limitations and habits leave their actions open to misinterpretation. “You want guarantees… from the most feared creature in the forest? Surely this must be your first adventure out of your mother’s earshot. If I were to promise, would you believe it?”

“Well,” the squirrel quipped, now trying to sound authoritative, “in my part of the forest, all the creatures are true to their word, even the wolves. Oh, they’ll eat a squirrel, certainly, if hunger dictates, but they don’t cloak their intentions in subterfuge and they’d never purposefully lie, especially when asked a question that would present a moral dilemma. So, I guess my answer would be ‘yes’.”

“You guess?” The wolf now sported a pair of Foster Grant sunglasses, making him resemble Ray Charles in a distinctly canine way.

“Well, with about 80 percent certainty, I’d say.”

“80 percent, huh? Well, now I know that I’m not talking to a total idiot, at least.” Cool as the other side of the pillow, the wolf struck a match and lit a cigarette. After a long, slow draw, he removed the cigarette from between his lips, grasping a loose piece of tobacco from his tongue, and asked, “Tell me, then, oh one of such belief in his fellow creatures, where do you think you are?”

“Who taught you to grasp something as small as a sliver of tobacco with your paw? I don’t think I’ve ever seen a member of your species who could accomplish that. You’re very talented.”

With a certain slyness, a look attributed exclusively to his species, the wolf cocked his head slightly and narrowed his eyes as he stared at his tiny inquisitor. “Yea… so I’ve been told. Now, could you kindly answer my question? You’re starting to try my patience, and trust me when I tell you that you don’t want to piss me off.”

“Sorry,” the squirrel offered, a new sense of danger reminding him that he was conversing with a wolf. “I’ve not ventured into this part of the forest on previous occasion, so I’d most appreciate it if you could enlighten me.”

Extending his chin, the cigarette dangling precariously, the wolf scratched himself absent-mindedly with his paw, giving the impression that his answer should be known to anyone with an IQ higher than a slug. “That’s a little more like it… you’re in the land of dreams.”

“The land of dreams, huh?” the squirrel chattered, “How very… useful.”

Taking several steps toward the wolf, the newly created tyrannosaur grabbed the stunned animal with his mouth, ignoring the yelps and screams of a creature being ripped asunder by teeth capable of disemboweling a grizzly bear. Flipping his head back, the thunder lizard tossed the hide onto the ground and swallowed his meal.

Then, crouching against Mr. Wolf’s tree, the extinct freak of nature licked his lips and belched… the gas leaving an ambience of wolf to pierce his olfactory senses. The thought occurred to him that perhaps an after-dinner cigarette might be nice. Soon, it would be time to proceed back into the forest.

Moral: Don’t be afraid to live your dream, just make sure you don’t get caught up in someone else’s.

Bob Church©5/18/08

The Hard Seven

2008-05-17T19:07:00.003-05:00

Just imagine… you’ve spent five years at MIT doing post-doctoral work in particle physics and advanced computer science, another two in training at NASA’s astronaut training program and three years in learning every circuit, every module and every button contained in the cockpit of the nation’s newest and most advanced space shuttle. You’ve shunned your family, friends and all activities that don’t directly pertain to your upcoming Jupiter launch.

Then, after the exhilaration of being strapped into a puny little cabin, you’re launched with a rocket on your ass the size of Rhode Island until you suddenly find yourself whizzing through space at half the speed of light. Hey, what the hell was that—Mars??

For another three years you pass through deep space, pissing in a sack and distilling the contents to form the water you’ll drink tomorrow, noting that after awhile it begins to taste a little like Sierra Mist®. Finally you pass Saturn’s outer rings and start the final leg of your journey, the express route to Jupiter!

Then, you become the first person in history to discover the meaning of all life. Just inside Jupiter’s atmosphere you encounter a 100,000-mile-long crap table and a slot machine the size of earth’s moon, it’s dial spinning and occasionally landing on two cherries, causing coin-shaped meteorites marked exactly like American quarters to be launched into space.

The accumulation of all mankind’s discoveries put together fall short of the significance of your singular determination, a discovery that will prohibit you from ever again getting a good night's sleep:

God has a gambling jones…

Do you take this man to be your... ummm... your...

2008-05-16T07:02:00.004-05:00

Good morning, world citizens, I heartily wish something sweet and squishy for every last one of you. I’m in a good mood this morning, a departure from my prevailing demeanor during the last few days. Yea, yea, I know, you don’t have to say it…

Anyway, be that as it may, I think the reason for my euphoria has something to do with the California Supreme Court ruling yesterday that same sex marriage is, indeed, a concept to be sanctioned, if not overtly embraced by my friends sitting on the right side of the aisle.

Think about it... couples possessing two penises (or no penises whatsoever) can now enjoy the same privileges, responsibilities, disappointments, expenses and divorce rates as the rest of us. Could it be that Almighty wrath might be delayed long enough for our society to realize its possibilities or will the timing of The Apocalypse and subsequent Second Coming be brought forward to coincide with the huge lean to the left of our nation’s upcoming election? Yea… yea, I know… you don’t have to remind me.

I am not now, nor have I ever been a gay American. I’m not sure I even know any gay Americans. But, I do know that I have five grown children and three of them are not married. If one of them were to suddenly announce that he or she was in love with a person of the same sex, I’d want them to be able to enjoy a life with all the complexities that I enjoy, but without the burden of being branded as a deviate. Isn’t that what it all really reduces down to? We all want to be accepted for what we are, not what others think we should be? This is about what the Constitution supposedly provides for all Americans, isn't it? Isn't that the bigger issue?

And don’t try to give me that sanctimonious crap about sexual deviancy (sexual predators and child molesters) being the hallmark of homosexuality. While I don’t pretend to have the latest statistical data, it is my gut feeling that there are plenty of sexual deviants on both sides of the homo/heterosexual Mendoza Line.

For a few months, at least, this country can boast of at least one state that holds its head a little higher this morning in terms of recognizing human rights and dignity. However, lest you think me Pollyanna, I also realize that every effort will be made by certain governmental factions during the next session to push through legislation negating the advances brought forth by the Supreme Court, I would suspect nothing less.

But, for today, if today alone, I choose to smile.

Untitled and unfinished...

2008-05-14T16:12:00.002-05:00

...and depending on your comments, may stay that way:

Insane jealousy, a natural (if unfortunate and ill-advised) corollary of passionate love, yields none of its power to reason or recognition. In fact, often it is strengthened by the light, usually to the long-term benefit of neither faction directly involved with events occurring immediately after discovery.

“Why, that dirty bastard!” Rage flew from Joan Underwood’s mouth like energy from a broken steam line, invisible but none-the-less lethal. Now standing with her hands on the table, Joan stared at her sister, her grotesquely contorted face and suddenly wild and dilated eyes signaling her threat to attack anything that moved.

Chance Marie Calder diverted her eyes to the utensils on the table long enough to see if Joan intended to grab one. Their history, though loving, contained enough drama and strife to warrant caution. “Joan, you need to sit down. Please… you’re making a scene. Do you want the whole damn town to know your business?”

For her part, Joan continued to seethe, teeth clenched and her body beginning to shake in mini-convulsions that started in her face and radiated throughout her torso. Moving her head across the table to within inches of her sister’s, and taking long, slow breaths through her nose deep enough to cause her breasts to heave, she glared and spat, in a voice barely audible, “Who is she?”

“Joan…” Chance said, her voice still calm and resolute, “sit… down. I refuse to be party to a meltdown. If you can’t control yourself, get the hell out of here. I’m not your keeper or your whipping boy.”

Einstein would have been proud. The dining area, now only a quarter the size it’d been before relativity took over less than two minutes ago, now contained tables and booths filled with diners whose ears had increased in size the four-fold inverse of the room’s diminution. As Chance looked around and moved her head signaling Joan to do likewise, she silently sent the signal Salvador Dali would feel right at home here. Now, how do you want to proceed with this freak show?

Movement, as reported by any measure of visual acuity, momentarily halted. All eyes now focused on Joan Underwood, virtually expecting all hell to break loose in the vicinity of the booth in the back corner, Server Station A1. Joan closed her eyes and held her breath, hoping to slow her heartbeat and respiration. Pursing her lips, she rapidly expelled all the air her lungs contained and sat down, brandishing a sheepish mea culpa expression and cheeks stained with unwanted tears.

When the inertial protraction refused to die, Chance shouted at no one in particular, “Hey! Eat your damn dinner, show’s over! I guess none of you have any problems?” Instantly, forks tinkled against plates, conversations spontaneously generated and servers hustled coffee pots and dinner checks to waiting diners. At Server Station A1, Chance Calder walked around the table and aided her sister’s re-seating and resultant decompression, her arm hugging Joan’s shoulder and shielding her from prying eyes while she wept.

“Listen to me, Joanie, you’ve lived through worse than this. Do you recall the events surrounding your fiasco with Dutch? At least this time, you weren’t a punching bag.”

Joan raised her head and wiped tears from her cheeks. “Is that supposed to be re-assuring? The son of a bitch didn’t hit me so I’m supposed to filled with gratitude?”

“Of course not! You know damned good and well that’s not what I meant. I’m just happy that he didn’t…” The sentence needed no ending. “Come on, what do you say we go back to my place and drown our sorrows? I’ve got a half-gallon of Captain Morgan that’s begging for a little abuse.”

“Chance, I gave him $25,000 less than a week ago.”

Now it was Chance Calder’s turn to lower her head. “Oh my God…” was all she could muster. Only one thing was certain at this point—she needed to get her sister out of here…quickly.

Without speaking, she reached into her purse and fumbled with her wallet. Producing a ten-dollar bill, she placed it on the table and tugged at the shoulder of Joan’s coat. “Come on, let’s go.”

“But, we need to—“ Before she could finish the statement, two zombies stood up from the booth and walked toward the exit, totally disregarding the disdain created in their wake.

******

Sunlight is the natural enemy of nightmares, beasties, bleached blondes and things that go bump in the night; it is simultaneously the sworn foe of those who spend their nocturnal hours imbibing strong spirits instead of sleeping. Joan Underwood’s eyes opened momentarily before closing, her sister’s hands firm upon the bed covers that had, until seconds ago, shielded them against the invading sunbeams. “Goddamn it, Chance, get the hell out of here and let me be!” Reaching for the blanket, she lunged both arms forward, grabbing only air as Chance Calder stepped deftly backwards.

“Get up.”

“Kiss my ass.”

“We have things to do.”

“I only have one thing to do, and if you’ll give me back my blanket, I intend to do it!”

Without another word, Chance walked to the bedroom window, blanket in tow. Once there, she raised the window, calmly gathered the blanket into a window-sized wad and tossed it. After watching it drop, she folded her arms across her chest and stared back at Joan, her face suddenly transformed into the visage of their mother. “If you don’t want to be next, I suggest you get up and head for the shower. I’m just about done puttin’ up with your bullshit.”

Joan, the older of the two by several minutes give or take, tittered audibly and turned her back to her twin, raising the middle finger of her left hand in defiance. “When you walk down to pick up my blanket, try to avoid stepping in any do—”

Before she could react, Joan felt herself being pulled to her feet by her hair. Screaming at the top of her lungs, she struggled unsuccessfully against her sister’s onslaught, as the ungainly, snarling, two-headed creature began its journey toward the bathroom, where even now the shower awaited, its cold water faucet happily offering a morning tonic to the battle’s loser.

Alfred Hitchcock, in 40 years of producing psychological thrillers never once filmed a scene so chock full of blood-curdling terror as that created by Chance Calder while she held the glass shower door shut amidst her sister’s screams, kicks and fists pounding against the glass. Happily, the unfortunate Joan managed to find the hot water faucet within a few seconds and soon the caterwauling magically transformed into a litany of cursing interspersed with blubbering and the occasional terrorist threat.

Chance closed the toilet lid and sat down. This promised to be a very long day.

******

"Hey...You... Stay Offa' That Roof..."

2008-05-12T22:27:00.004-05:00

When I was a kid, my parents didn’t allow me to climb up on the roof, and that really pissed me off, because there wasn’t any reason for it, frankly. It was just another of their stupid rules designed to keep me from enjoying my childhood. It’s not like we lived in a three-story mansion with peaked dormers and lots of interesting architecture that I could have explored around on… it was a nearly-flat one-story bungalow that was a straight shot from one end to the other. Hell’s bells, I could have run from one end to the other, jumped off, did a double somersault and landed in the hollyhock bush and jumped out without a scratch, so what’s the big deal? I had more of a chance of getting hurt by falling off the monkey bars or the top of the slide at school, for Christ’s sake!

There’s nothing up there I could hurt except for the TV antenna and the wind had already pretty much blown it down anyway. We didn’t even have a chimney. It’s true that the electrical and telephone lines did extend from the power pole to the roof, but after the Nuttall kid got electrocuted, I knew better than to touch the power lines.

Truth is they didn’t have a single valid reason for forbidding me to go onto the roof. I’d already heard my fair share of lectures regarding what the neighbors might think and the cost of emergency room visits and how sad it’d be if I broke my leg and couldn’t play baseball and even how fragile the roof shingles were if walked upon. I guess that’s why they only last forty years, huh?

I could have retrieved a few of the roughly twenty or thirty balls I’d thrown up there just to see if they’d roll all the way through and down the downspouts—they didn’t—and I would have had a great vantage point for finding out when Joyce Nuttall (the college student who lived two doors down) was wearing her bikini while getting a suntan so that my dad could find an excuse to go down there and help her fix something.

In fact, climbing on the roof wasn’t really all that dangerous when compared to other statistics like getting bit by a rabid dog or accidentally eating rat poison or having one’s skull crushed by a submerged rock while diving off the cliffs into the water at one end of the rock quarry pond, and we did that stuff practically every week with little more than an ass-beating if our parents found out.

But, I wasn’t allowed on the roof, no matter how hard I pleaded. Maybe that’s why I wrote ‘fuck’ on the shingles of our house and dug up the asphalt at the edge of the driveway and threw about half of the rocks out of the window wells and put dog crap in the mailbox and left the lid open on the freezer chest in the garage and…

Wheel of Outrageous Fortune

2008-05-12T06:52:00.003-05:00

I can now happily say that life has finally come full circle, and the defining event occured at the exact right time. I've long wandered through life wondering why I'd never realized any of my goals, why life seemed to confound me at every turn. Homeless, jobless and without hope, despair became my constant companion.

And then it happened... karma aligned with kismet and fate spoke to me.

I am now the full-time operator of the very same Ferris Wheel on which I was conceived. Sometimes, things just sorta work out.

Dum spiro, spero

2008-05-07T21:57:00.002-05:00

I recently returned from a joyous experience in a nether zone interspersed precariously between heaven and earth. During this time of reflection with family and dear friends, I re-learned my basic tenets of life and realized, once again, that all joy must be balanced against heartache, all revelry countered by piety, all beauty placed on our mantles be reflective of our understanding of the basest of human reality. No sooner had I started to sort my memories and categorize my blessings than a phone call reminded me that a friend now faced the grief of losing a loved one. In a flash, my perspective shifted and the halo I'd surrounded my family with suddenly seemed weak and penetrable as I groped for words of comfort.

Every day, every hour we teeter between nirvana and ruin, and no matter how smart, how accomplished, how esteemed our position or how deep our stores of wealth, we cannot escape our humanity. We can deny it, forestall it, or for a blessed few actually understand it, but we cannot prevail against it. All we can do is interpret it and enjoy it, whatever challenges it presents. It's called life and those of us who still claim it should give as much of it as possible to others, because only by doing so will we ever hope to receive a richer version of it in return. It's as close to immortality as any of us can ever hope to get.

Go kiss your loved ones... let them know you understand.

He's Ba-a-a-ck!

2008-05-05T06:32:00.007-05:00

Basic to the art of human communications, I think, is the premise of collegial harmony; that implicit knowledge that all partners to a conversation will be allotted equitable shares of time to relate interesting or otherwise noteworthy information to a group. Also basic is the understanding that this will never happen, especially when long-time friends meet after a long period apart and feel the necessity to humiliate a single member of the group (me) with a disturbingly enthusiastic fervor. (Plus, although I can't prove it to a judicial certainty, I think one of them tried to poison me with a piece of dead cow so horribly burnt that little remained except chunks of charcoal clinging to the plate.)

In the course of a three-day meeting (well, fishing trip, technically) organized by yours truly (with no small effort on my behalf, I might add), these five Philistines and/or Neanderthals tore me apart with the delight of jackals fighting over fresh-killed prey. And if I should happen to come up with a snappy retort capable of leveling the playing field slightly (and it didn’t happen often due to my innate shyness and desire not to lower myself to their level), I was shouted down at every turn as they laughed, toasted each other’s wittiness with drink strong enough to knock down the average bull rhino and forced me to share their libations before withdrawing even further into my own inner sanctum.

Yet, through it all, I remained strong, overlooking their childish remonstrations and remembering that there must be a reason why I’ve put up with their abuse for such an interminable period of time. Then I remembered the reason… they all owe me vast sums of money.

I’m home, I’m safe (relatively) and now I can begin to lick my many wounds. I’m sure I’ll get over the horrors of the experience in due time, but I wouldn’t repeat the experience again, driving the 470 miles each way to such a horrible, God-forsaken place until… well, actually, I’d leave this afternoon if I can get some better company, or even the same ungrateful wretches if they’ll go, because that’s just how I roll. I’ll give them a second chance… I’m the bigger man.

Seriously, folks, I had a great time. We had a rough spot of weather that cost us a day of fishing (tornados killed 8 people within fifty miles of us), but Mountain Harbor Spa and Resort at Lake Ouachita, Arkansas, is about as good as it gets-- and it's affordable. They offer amenities too numerous to mention, the area is absolutely gorgeous and the accommodations are world-class. We hired a guide service to put us on some nice striper fishing (which they did, a tip of the hat to Mike Cogburn (501) 627-2212... call him!) and I highly recommend it to anyone.

Chapter 4 “Car 153, do you have a copy?”

2008-04-29T07:49:00.003-05:00

Hi, folks... just wanted to let you know that there won't be any more posts until at least Monday next. I'm going fishing... gettin' the hell out of Dodge! Please make me proud in my absense... and that means no fighting! If I hear that any of you taunts, teases, berates, or in any way causes trouble for his brothers and sisters, there will be Hell to pay when I get back.

Peace...
Bubba

Everyone makes mistakes. No matter how well prepared we may be, life can, and often does, jump right up and bite us on our collective fannies. It happens to the best of us. In school, I usually scored among the highest in the standardized tests and my teachers continually carped at me for ‘not applying myself’ and for ‘failing to challenge my intellect’. The implication, of course, was that I was a lazy little bastard and would never amount to a hill of beans if I didn’t mend my ways. I, on the other hand, regarded a C+ average to be quite sufficient. I was capable of learning 83% of the assigned material without cracking a book, thereby staying eligible for sports while allowing sufficient time for back-seat tonsil hockey and mastering the art of one-handed bra removal.

What can I say? I’m a dedicated under-achiever. Therefore, my career choices fell a bit short of those my mother might have wished for me. No sooner had she gotten over the fact that I was never going to be the world’s finest accordion player, than I once again dashed her hopes for my success by being accepted into the Colorado State Police Academy. I can only imagine the sobbing and caterwauling taking place in my parents’ bedroom in the immediate aftermath of my decision… and I’m just talking about my father. I do seem to recall that Dad refused to talk to me for several months. I think he regarded my decision in the same light as if I’d notified him I’d decided to join the Gestapo or the KGB. I’d shown the disloyalty to ‘side with the enemy’.

But, all in all, my three-year soiree into the world of rural law enforcement was not without its share of entertainment. A good many folks crossed my path and a few found their way into my heart. Julie Weathers, the bride of Tom Weathers, the town marshal in the berg I was assigned to live in, Granby, Colorado, was one such person. She was a nice-enough lady, but she was a scofflaw. Since her husband was the marshal, she felt she needed to be accorded the same privileges that all law enforcement officers offer each other from time to time. Of course, this didn’t sit too well with some of the other ladies in town and they tended to regard her with a good bit of indignation. Let’s just say she may not have won first place in a popularity contest without stuffing the ballot box (which she most certainly would have done, if the occasion should arise). From the outset of our relationship, I knew that we would eventually butt heads.

Colorado Highway 40 contains a long, straight stretch approximately six miles in duration, immediately before coming into Granby. Given its 55 MPH speed limit, it was a good place to sit and track vehicles with my radar. Now, before you go calling it a speed trap, you should know I was never allowed to hide my cruiser and in the three years I lived up there, I wrote exactly three tickets on that stretch of highway, only one of which was for speeding. The other two were for a burned-out headlight (after the third warning) and failure to keep valid registration in the car, a heinous offense that required the perpetrator to appear at the Grand County Clerk’s office and produce said paperwork in lieu of fine or penalty.

Julie’s family lived in Denver, and she spent a fair amount of time traveling the ninety miles back and forth between the Mile High City and Granby, weather and road conditions permitting. Many times I had occasion to witness her distinctive, powder blue Mustang convertible motoring past me, the car always lurching forward as she attempted to slow down, having seen my cruiser. Julie’s accelerator foot was molded from pure lead. The other officers in the county spoke of her sometimes when we got together, alluding to her predisposition towards speed, and her lousy attitude if one of them stopped her. All of us were concerned, because the roads in our area were very curvy and in foul weather, treacherous. In deference to Tom, who was very well liked and respected, none of us had ever written her a ticket.

On a crisp October Saturday afternoon, I had occasion to deliver a summons to a rancher whose property was contiguous to Highway 40. I didn’t particularly like that aspect of my job, but it was part of the job description, so I made the best of it. Upon leaving, I was approaching the junction of the highway, so I turned on my radar unit in preparation. As I reached the entrance, a powder blue streak zoomed past and I glanced down at the red LCD numbers on my radar unit… 75!

Gotcha! A slight smirk came over my face as my fingers hit the button that flicked on my red lights. Before I had an opportunity to even hit full power, I saw her brake lights flash. She had picked me up in her rear view mirror, but it was too late. I had all the evidence I needed. By the time I drove up behind her, she had already pulled over and was getting out of her car. I put my hands out and motioned for her to stay in her car. Of course, she ignored me, continuing to run towards me.

I’ll never forget the look on her face as she began to speak. “Oh, Bob, I’m so glad it’s you. The reason I was speeding is because I’m trying to get to the Husky station…” her eyes dropped down and she wrung her hands a little… “you see… I have diarrhea.”

Well… I’m a duly authorized officer of the court, but I’m certainly not some unfeeling monster who would deny a lady during her hour of need, so I told her to get back into her car and proceed to the Husky station… safely!

By the time she walked out of the ladies’ room, I’d already started writing her ticket for violation of Colorado Revised Statute Number 1216, Subsection 1A, Speed Exceeding Posted Limit, expressly 65 MPH in a posted 55 MPH zone. When she saw my car parked behind hers, she was able to put two and two together and walked over to the driver’s side window of my cruiser.

“Officer, I thought you understood why I was speeding.”

“Yes, Ma’am, I certainly do.”

“Bob, it’s me… Julie Weathers… you know…. Tom Weathers’ wife…” There was something about her tone that just didn’t appeal to me at that point.

“Uh, yes, Ma’am… I know who you are, but I need the number off your driver’s license and I also need to see your registration. If you’d like to have a seat in your car, I think that might be a good idea. I’d hate to have anything happen to you while I write your ticket.”

“Look here, you little piss ant, if you think I’m going to sign a ticket from you, you’re sadly mis—"

A shadow appeared from behind her and she was suddenly looking up into the blue eyes of one Tom Weathers, Granby Town Marshal.

“Afternoon, Bob… is there a problem here?”

Tom was removing his sunglasses now and I saw a glint in his eye.

“Oh, no, Marshal, nothing serious. I just wrote Mrs. Weathers a little speeding ticket for 65 in a 55 out on Highway 40, and I think she took a little exception. I think she felt she was going a little faster than that, and she thought it should be more like 75 in a 55… Ain’t that right, Mrs. Weathers, you just didn’t want me to give you a break because you’re the marshal’s wife?”

Julie Weathers was looking a mite peaked at that very moment. I’m sure it must have something to do with her gastric distress. Nevertheless, she reached for the ticket book and said, “Where do I sign?”

As I handed the woman her copy of the summons, Tom gave me the ‘I owe you one’ grin. He nodded at me and I nodded back. I’ll never forget the look in her eyes when she made eye contact with her husband. As I picked up my microphone to report to the dispatcher I’d be back in service, I heard tires squealing and smelled rubber burning as a powder blue package of righteous indignation roared past me towards points unknown. Somehow, as Tom walked away, I foresaw his immediate future— sleeping in their guest room.

God, I loved that job. Yes, the weather was either wonderful or miserable with very little deviation towards ‘okay’, but I met a few people who defied the laws of natural selection by their very existence. Once such man stood above all others for his quirkiness.

I never saw the skinny little man when he wasn't wearing his black leather motorcycle jacket. I honestly don't know if he wore a shirt underneath. If he opened the top buttons of his jacket, a brillo pad of gray chest hair pushed its way to freedom, grateful for the chance to soak up some much-needed oxygen. It matched the hair on his head, at least the part we could see. A red bandana covered his dome, but I'd bet a week's pay he wasn't bald. Guys like him don't lose their hair. I always figured it was God's compensation for taking away most everything else.

Years broadcast across “Basket” Billy Neville’s face in a network of deep furrows, gouging a path in his skin from his forehead to the point of his chin, giving refuge to an accumulation of dirt that I took to be the permafrost of his being. All seven of his teeth showed whenever he grinned and a tattooed pair of red lipstick imprints emblazoned the area just below his left ear, his tribute to womanhood. Chronological age was never an issue, in Billy’s estimation, but certainly he was past sixty. I watched, listened and silently wondered if there were ever a time when he wasn't old or didn't have all the answers.

When one of the curious cadre of on-lookers asked him a question, like as not he'd pause and stare at the inquisitor. His ever-present black wrap-around shades hid his eyes, but an invisible laser still pierced through, burrowing directly into the victim's psyche until such time as Billy felt the suffering sufficient to warrant a response. I was never able to gauge if he was being contemptuous or if he was just the best damn actor I ever saw, but at some point, he'd give a gesture of recognition and begin to speak. Half sage and half bullshit artist, his words were pure magic. I liked him, and from all indications, the feelings were mutual, although he wouldn’t have uttered the words under penalty of death.

According to Billy, his life started on his sixteenth birthday, when he could legally ride his beloved Harley Panhead on the streets. He hadn't yet been crowned King of the Screw-Ups at such a tender age. This self-proclaimed honor would come later, commencing concurrently with the third revocation of the motorcycle endorsement on his driver’s license. The man was branded by society as that most onerous of ne'er-do-wells, Scooter Trash. His ordination as BasketBilly was the result of numerous hospital visits. The man simply could not keep a motorcycle shiny side up for more than a month without feeling the need to inflict damage on both his bike and himself. Oh, he could ride well enough under ordinary conditions, but in times of crisis, in that split second when common sense needs to kick ‘I’m goin’ for it’ in the pants, Billy could never seem to get the job done, and someone would find him laying in the barrow pit a few yards off the big curve on Route 40 or in the willow bushes going into Byers Canyon.

One hot summer night, I happened upon him in a saloon called The Scorecard. I lived in Granby, a small mountain town in the Middle Park area of Colorado. Granby was typical of many burgs in the area, a veritable boneyard in the winter and rife with camera-toting adventure-seekers when the snow wasn't flying. There was usually enough going on to pique the curiosity of most locals and this night was no exception. I found Billy relaxing in a secluded alcove near the back of the room, but I almost didn't see him. Immediately, I knew something was amiss. Under normal circumstances, by this time of evening he'd have been dancing or giving us his rendition of Joe Cocker’s song "You Know You Got Me Goin' Out Of My Head" along with the jukebox.

Normally, Billy was a world-class air guitar player, but not tonight. Tonight he looked more like Joe Cocker Spaniel.

Against my better judgement, I decided to ease my way back there and see if I could do something to lift his spirits a bit. I swear I could feel his gaze as I proceeded back to his table. I didn't sit down uninvited, Billy might have misconstrued my intentions. Instead, I waved my pitcher of Budweiser at him, offering him a refill. After his signature stare-down, he gestured for me to sit and pushed his glass across the table.

“Up to a little company, Billy?”

"Free country... sed'down."

"You okay?"

"Well, I guess that all depends on what you mean by 'okay', junior."
I wasn't about to bite on that one. He loved to make me the butt of his pranks. Once, he gave me a $20 bill and sent me to a bike shop in Denver owned by one of his cronies, for a chrome reflex assembly. Imagine my mood when the now-hysterical clerk with the words “Harley Davidson Forever” emblazoned on his forehead informed me that quite possibly Billy was yanking my proverbial crank. The ninety-mile drive back to Granby was uneventful except for the trail of expletives streaming from my mouth.

Tonight, my radar was seeing bogeys plastered all across the screen. I noticed he was using his left hand exclusively, preferring to leave his right on the seat, under the tabletop, making me wonder if it were injured.

"You're not left-handed are you, Basket?"

"Nope...why?"

Immediately, I was sorry I'd brought it up, but darned if I wasn't curious.

"Oh, no big deal, I just noticed that you haven't moved your right arm at all."

Again the stare. He picked the unfiltered Camel out of the ashtray and clumsily managed to get it to his lips and take a long drag off it, his sunglasses staring off into the distance.

"Aw, hell, you'll hear it soon enough.... I broke my hand and wrist."

Well, this certainly was no epiphany, he’d spent half his life in one medical facility or another.

"Fall off your bike again?"

I could see the end of his pink tongue as he reached to his mouth to extract a small piece of tobacco, and his head was shaking animatedly in the negative.

"No, I got involved in a little... 'skirmish'."

I saw the slightest flash of a grin and dropped my defenses a little. Bolstered, I felt brave enough to continue.

"Let me sign your cast."

"Can't."

"Why not?"

"Ain't got one."

This didn’t surprise me at all. I knew Billy didn't have a lot of cash. He worked at the cemetery, mowing lawns and pulling weeds, and what little money he had was usually dedicated to the essentials, beer and motorcycle parts. I also knew it would do absolutely no good to try to reason with him, so I tried to change the subject.

"Yea... well, how’s your bike running?"

"I smacked a priest."

For the next thirty seconds I couldn't breathe. There was no air in the room. I took my glasses off and put my hands to my face in an unsuccessful attempt to get my heart started by massaging it through my eyeballs. No matter how hard I rubbed, when I looked back, he was still there. I had to say something!

"Bill, I don't know if..."

"Weren’t my fault… he hit me first!”

The sound of his braying laugh brought a hush to the room. He was now up on his feet, dancing around, clapping his hands and whistling like the madman that he was, and half the people in the bar were pointing and laughing at me. Coughing and spitting beer out my nose and mouth, I grabbed the tabletop for support. Tears in my eyes, I spent the next few minutes trying to regain my composure as Trudy did her best to clean up the mess. Once again, I'd been had by the master. Suddenly, he was transformed into a dancing fisherman, as he went through the motions of reeling me in with his invisible fishing rod. Merciful sportsman that he was, he released me to sit and decide which way I'd bail out if the fool decided to hop over the table and kiss me on the lips... again.

Billy is gone now. His exploits are legends told wherever any of his brothers gather to share the camaraderie of the road. I was a young state trooper, expected to avoid “his type”. He knew what I did for a living and treated me no differently from the rest of his friends-- like a steaming pile of dog poop.

And they say there’s no God…

******

There is an accepted principle of thermodynamics that precludes the possibility of operating an internal combustion engine on any liquid void of hydrocarbon constituents. Therefore, water and urine are not acceptable substitutes for gasoline when one is confronted with an empty fuel tank. Running out of gas is embarrassing enough for any citizen, much less a trained officer whose motor vehicle is designed to function as a tool of protection for the motoring public.
Sadly, I was forced by circumstances, on one occasion, to try the ill-advised urine technique. The action itself was highly demeaning, even though the sun had set. To this day, I swear that little Mopar-Hemi engine gave it a noble effort on my behalf, and even ran for a few feet, in defiance of physics, before coming to rest in much the same position as it started.

For reasons I’ve never fully understood, I tended to be remiss regarding my reliance upon the tiny needle situated on the gas gauge. I always seemed to think that my cruiser’s fuel consumption was less than it was, so I overestimated the amount of time between fuel stops.
The Colorado State Patrol hired me to assume my post as promptly as possible after the designated time of my shift. Never was I late, and never was I out of uniform. Why should I be ostracized for a couple of little failures such as running out of gas while twenty-seven miles from the closest gas station? Admittedly, three times in one month might have pushed the envelope of believability a bit, but no one is perfect, and I always paid the delivery charges myself, even being sure to tip that loud-mouthed snot, Terry Swerdlow, a tidy sum in return for his silence. Of course, my monetary sacrifice had little effect except to possibly allow me to beat the little bastard back to Granby to tell my side of the story before the whole town heard about it. People are so judgmental!

Soon, I was branded as a screw-up. As a habitual slacker, I was forced to confront my inadequacies with extraordinary measures. Early on, I failed miserably in my attempts at memory enhancement. Strings wrapped around my finger had little effect except to cut off the flow of blood to the tips and post-a-notes located on my clipboard stating the obvious, "HEY, STUPID! STOP FOR GAS!”, were noticed only after the vehicle was sputtering and coughing along some lonely roadside in the most remote section of Muddy Pass.

In desperation I shared my misery with my brother officer, Dick Whelan, a legend in the western section of our district for the better part of twenty-five years. Dick was widely accepted in the state as the least productive officer ever hired by the Patrol, a status which he proudly acknowledged. He was totally dedicated to sloth, and once he took me under his wing, I, too, became almost totally unacceptable to my superiors. In some circles, I became known as Little Dick, a moniker that didn’t exactly thrill me, but I was powerless to stop it.

Dick suggested an entirely different approach. His method stated that if I could learn to associate the chore of petrol pumping with an activity that I enjoyed, I could learn to incorporate both activities into my daily routine, or do them simultaneously. After a short period of contemplation, ultimately culminating in my inability to think of anything suitable, Dick asked me to meet him in Kremmling the next day and warned me to come prepared to learn; that is, if I could manage to keep enough gas in the tank to drive the thirty-four miles. Then, after shaking his head sadly at me and muttering something about ‘rookies’ under his breath, he walked away.

Of course, the next day I totally forgot to check the fuel, but as luck would have it, I was able to make it to Dave’s Husky where Dick kept his patrol car. Dick, in keeping with his reputation, was fashionably late. As he stepped out of his car, he motioned for me to follow him. Instead of going into the garage bay where car #157 was housed, we continued to walk back to Dave’s mobile home located near the back of the property. After failing to either knock or even wipe our feet (there was no mat), we entered and Dick motioned for me to sit at the kitchen table as he routinely proceeded into the kitchen area and opened a cupboard door, producing a bottle of Jim Beam and two shot glasses.

He filled both glasses with the caramel-colored liquid. Staring intently at me, he picked up one of the glasses, threw his head back and swallowed the contents with one easy gulp. Then, he picked up the other and positioned it in front of my face.

“Little Dick, are you ever going to forget to put gas in your friggin’ car again?”

The gaze of his blue eyes stared through me with dogged insistence. I meekly reached for the glass, replying in my best John Wayne voice, “Hell, no!”

“Good! See that you don’t, I can’t afford to have people thinking you’re an idiot. If you’re going to be a member of this little fraternity, we can’t have you thumbing rides to town because you’re too stupid to fill your car up with gas. I’ve spent too many years building my reputation in these parts, and I’ll be damned if some little weasel from Denver is going to screw it up!” Then, he put the second glass to his lips and quickly sucked down that one as well, grabbing his hat as he walked out the front door.

I sat in the dim light for a couple of minutes and watched as he got into his patrol car and drove off. I never ran out of gas again, and I never once required a shot of Jim Beam, although I would never have admitted it. After all…now I had a reputation to maintain.

******

Under normal circumstances, discussion of a person’s physical abnormalities is, and rightly should be, considered tacky. But, when a certain characteristic is the hallmark of a particular persona, it can be difficult to avoid a blatant stare… or comment.

During the mid-1970’s, Kremmling, Colorado was about as close to being an old-west cow town as the citizenry would allow anywhere in the American West. Climax Molybdenum Company had several mines in the area, and there were numerous cattle ranches dotting the countryside. Miners and cowboys are the human equivalent of oil and water, a fact that was borne out every Friday and Saturday night.

Entrusted with public health and safety, the Kremmling town marshal, of necessity, resorted to some unique techniques in his efforts to keep the peace. But, that was in character for Dick Lemmon, for he was a unique man. Invariably he was up to the task, even if the ramifications of his actions sometimes fell outside the expectations that tavern-owners considered collateral damage. Once, when Dick received a phone call from the owner of The Hoof and Horn (the tavern the locals all called The Hide and Guts), stating that a massive brawl had broken out, Dick didn’t panic. He merely walked out to his garage, picked up several small vials of skunk scent (don’t ask how he got it), and walked across the town square to the establishment. Stepping inside the front door, Dick proceeded to hurl the glass vials at the concrete back wall. Within seconds, the place was empty and order was restored as Dick rounded up several coughing, gasping revelers and placed them under arrest. Of course, Shank Huxley, the proprietor, was forced to fumigate and stay closed for nearly a week, so he requested that Dick try more conventional means in the future. Dick merely smiled and looked God-Knows-Where.

Dick was tall and lanky, and the first time I met him, I immediately thought of two famous Hollywood deputies. Dick’s overall stature made me think of Dennis Weaver, the actor who played Festus on Gunsmoke, while his facial features resembled Jack Elam, the unshaven sidekick with the eyes that looked two directions at once. I had countless conversations with Dick, and I could never figure out which eye he was looking at me with! Of course, his blue jeans, long-sleeved cowboy shirt and haggard Stetson completed the repertoire, right down to the west-Texas twang he’d so carefully nurtured. Truthfully, I doubt the man ever stepped foot outside Grand County.

Dick’s choice of sidearm was a .44 caliber Ruger Blackhawk with an eight-inch barrel. Given the weapon’s ability to penetrate ¼” steel plating (not to mention its huge dimensions), it might not have been the choice of most law enforcement officials in this or any other jurisdiction. But, Dick loved that damn pistol more than any other single possession he had. He even made a special holster for it that incorporated a swivel, so that he could tie it to his leg and quick-draw without having to draw the weapon from the holster. I’m sure he had a perfectly well thought out reason for this modification, too. Truthfully, I was afraid to ask him, fearing that he’d actually tell me. Some things, a man is just better off not knowing.

We had a mild winter in ‘72, and one December evening, I was working west car (U.S. Highway 40 from Muddy Pass eastward to Granby) and I received a call on TACH-2 asking for me to 10-7 (go out of service) in Kremmling and meet him at the County gravel pit. I immediately knew why he wanted to meet with me. I had a stopwatch in my car, and he wanted to practice his quick-draw.

When I drove up, we shook hands and he immediately engaged me in conversation, as I unsuccessfully tried to figure out which eye to concentrate on.

“Bob, I got me a new holster, and I’m getting’ DAMN good!”

“Uh-huh…. Well, I don’t—“

“Oh, come on, just for a few minutes… I just need to hear some numbers… I think I’m quicker than Lucas Whitby, and if so, I’m going to the Quick-Draw Nationals next year!” Suddenly, he was grinning and shaking his head… the man was totally disarming.

Rather than spend the next twenty minutes trying to get out of it, I opened my glove compartment and pulled out the watch. “Okay, Dick, you’ve got six shots in that hog-leg… make ‘em count! You know the drill, same as always. I’ll say go and start the watch, and when I hear you fire, I’ll stop it. Ready?”

I purposely didn’t watch him to keep from laughing. I’d witnessed this performance before, and the way he stood with his hands to his sides, he resembled a b-movie extra Central Casting hired to stand-in for the star.

He’d be mad as hell if he caught me giggling.

“Go!” BOOM!

“1.2…”

“Let me try again, my hand slipped a little…”

“Okay…here we go…. Ready? GO!” BOOM!

“Well, a little better, Dick, .9 seconds that time.”

Dick let out a stream of expletives about how I wasn’t shutting the clock off soon enough, and how I had the reflexes of his 90-year-old grandfather. We tried it several more times, with the times being pretty similar, until he had one bullet left in his pistol.

“Okay, Bob, last try… I’ll betcha’ dinner that I’m under a half-second this time. Are you in?”

Let it be said at this point, that I was taught never to allow a fool to keep his money. The idiot was betting against my reflexes as well as his own. “Go for it.”, I replied, a slight hint of a smile sneaking out.

“Ready… BOOM! Go!”

I looked down at the watch, realizing, of course, that I hadn’t been offered the opportunity to actually click it on before he fired. Now, I fought to keep from rolling on the ground in laughter, my sides hurt from trying to keep it in!

“Jeezuz H. Kee-rist on a silver crutch, Dick, that is, by far, your best effort! I actually owe you two-tenths of a second.”

Dick didn’t move, so I walked over to him. As I approached, he looked somewhere in the vicinity of my face and said, “Get me to Doc Marino’s clinic… I just shot myself in the foot.”

I spent the next two hours helping Doc get Dick’s boot and sock off, then helped hold him down while he stitched up the tissue between his big toe and the next. The bullet missed the bones, but Dick was going to be pretty sore for the next couple weeks or so.

When we were finished, Doc walked me out to the front door and asked me what happened. I asked him whether he wanted the truth. He shot me a look I’ve never seen before and walked off. After about three steps, he turned, looked back over his shoulder and said, “For your sake and mine, I never saw you today.”

The last I heard, Dick was still keeping the streets of Kremmling free from scofflaws of all sorts, and I don’t think he minded the limp he’d acquired. I’m sure that if he’d owned a uniform, it would be emblazoned with a Purple Heart.

Sometimes I think we put too much emphasis on the facts. As any judge will tell you, everything is open to interpretation. Sure, truth is freedom, but the quest for truth can take some off-course junkets into a world that not everyone can visit. To those who can, I doff my cap in recognition of your special skills… I’m sure you’re having a whole lot more fun than some of us.

Why did I quit the Colorado State Patrol? A difficult question to answer, I assure you. I loved being an officer. I enjoyed the solitude of winter patrols complete with the majesty of the Rockies and the feelings of insignificance when dropped into the duality man shares with nature, buffered against an opportunity to serve in a meaningful way. Not a day went by that I didn’t assist a trucker out of a barrow pit, help an unprepared motorist put on a set of tire chains, or stop a motorist to remind him or her of the potential consequences of unsafe driving. I also liked getting calls from the Grand County Sheriff’s department asking for assistance; they reminded me of my brotherhood in blue. For a ‘thrill junkie’ such as myself, the excitement or potential for excitement made a difficult job easier when the adrenalin freely flowed.

Then, in August of 1972, two events occurred that conspired with a third to change the course of my life. Allow me to preface the account with a short explanation. Life as a police officer requires strong family bonds. It is shift work, pure and simple, and the shifts changed on a monthly basis, with very few weekends or holidays off. I worked two weeks of days, two weeks of ‘mids’ and two weeks of ‘third shift’. Plus, if I had a case in court, I was required to be there, regardless of whether it was scheduled during my shift or a day off. If you don’t have the unqualified support of a spouse, it is extremely difficult, if not impossible. My family life, at that time, started to fall apart.

Then, around sunset on August 12 (my wife’s birthday), a young man in a green Porsche decided that he’d rather kill me than accept a ticket for speeding on Berthoud Pass. He put three bullet holes in the windshield of my patrol car and sped off. I was unable to give chase because the safety glass of my windshield looked like a kaleidoscope and vision became obscured. They eventually caught him after he tried to run a roadblock set up on I-70, about fifteen miles from Georgetown. He rolled the car, got out and ran into the woods. He wasn’t seen again for two days until he tried to buy a bus ticket in Idaho Springs and the FBI picked him up.

A few days later, I lost a case in Hideaway Park that involved a drunk who killed a little girl on a bicycle. Eyewitnesses at the scene identified the car (complete with the number on his license plates), so I knew exactly who I was looking for. The driver owned several businesses in the area and held an appointed position with the Grand County Commissioners. He also drank lunch and dinner most days. So, I drove right to his house and found him closing his garage door. I arrested him, advised him of his Miranda rights and immediately took him to the Hideaway Clinic where I forced him to submit to a blood test for alcohol determination. He was quite combative and agitated, but I didn’t care because I had both physical evidence (blood and paint on the front bumper of his vehicle) and eyewitness testimony that he drove the car. I charged him with causing death while under the influence, reckless driving and vehicular manslaughter. Dick Doucette, the Grand County District Attorney, told me it would be a very easy case to prove.

When the case finally came to trial, all charges were dismissed when the judge (who happened to be a golf partner of the defendant’s) ruled that since he was too inebriated to understand the charges being brought against him, I violated his Constitutional rights by forcibly taking his blood, against his wishes, for alcohol analysis.

I didn’t take the ruling well. As soon as the judge completed the ruling, I unpinned the badge from my uniform shirt, walked up to the bench, and threw my badge at the judge. He was not pleased… he charged me with contempt of court and ordered the bailiff, Huck Henderson, to take me into custody. Huck was a friend of mine, but he did his duty.

Ten minutes later, Sgt. Crews, my boss, was allowed into my cell. He asked me to apologize to the judge and I refused. Without another word, he turned and walked out. Within thirty minutes, he brought the paperwork to me, and I resigned my commission as a Colorado State Patrolman. I figured that if that’s the way all cases are adjudicated, I wanted no part of it. Why should I get shot at, work every holiday, and watch my family life disintegrate around me for $660 a month? Bus drivers in Denver made more than that.

Within 30 days, my wife filed for divorce and my life, as I had known it, ceased to exist. By January, I lived in Phoenix, Arizona and enrolled at Arizona State University, using the G.I. Bill to help finance my education. It promised to be a long and arduous road.

Monday's Zen

2008-04-28T08:42:00.003-05:00

Cloris Johnson, having established herself as a true genre-specific
artist, someday hopes to have a booth in the Capitol Rotunda.

(Photo stolen from http://wherearethedogshumping.com/ )

Chapter 3 “Pla-toon…Ten-Hut!”

2008-04-27T10:27:00.003-05:00

Chapter 3 “Pla-toon…Ten-Hut!”

I was drafted in the only draft that the U. S. Marine Corps conducted after World War II. Since my girlfriend and I were planning on marriage anyway, we went ahead and tied the knot in September of 1966. She was a quiet girl whose family background featured a divorced mother who’d remarried a younger man. He and I got along great, even though I always felt uncomfortable around her mother. Their house featured French provincial furniture, wall hangings, carpet, rugs, blinds, pictures, lights and anything else that could be deemed to be French provincial. I didn’t really care what it was, but it did piss me off that I had to take my shoes off every time I walked through the back door (we weren’t allowed to use the front… it was for company). Also, if we sat down on the furniture, we had to first check our clothes to make sure no dirt clung to our pants. Once I farted while sitting next to my wife on her mother’s Louis XIV loveseat, and judging from my wife’s reaction, you’d have thought I just dropped my pants and took a dump. She jumped up, pulled me to my feet, and searched the upholstery for signs of leakage. Despite finding none, she admonished me to never do that again and proceeded to go get a wipe cloth and some fabric cleaner, which she rubbed into the cloth with all the vigor expected of her. I glanced at her step-father, Lee, and he shrugged his shoulders in his best Welcome to the family, you poor bastard expression. I think that was the first time I realized I’d made a terrible mistake.

But, I did love the girl, at least in the context that I thought of love. We were very different people, though, perhaps too different, ultimately. Our biggest sin was getting married without ever really getting to know one another first. In those days, sex before marriage was considered blasphemous, especially given the fact that her grandfather was a Methodist minister, and he’d be performing the matrimonial ceremony. So, instead of pressing the issue and demanding carnal knowledge of her, I honored her principles and wishes to be a virgin at her wedding. My father tried to give me some advice, for perhaps the first time since my baseball disappointment.

“Son,” he told me while setting his hand on my shoulder, “ask yourself one question. Would you ever think of buying a pair of shoes without trying them on first?” However, I didn’t listen. The wedding was already planned, dresses were being ordered and the church was on reserve… if I backed out now, I risked being vanquished from two families. At the time, I honestly didn’t think either mother could have withstood the embarrassment of becoming jilted mothers-in-law. Somehow I forgot that from time to time we’d be doing something other than having sex; that an occasion might possibly arise requiring us to actually have a conversation, which, of course, we were incapable. Plus, since I was probably going to be killed in Vietnam, I needed to have a bun in the oven before I left. We’d come too far… there needed to be a wedding. Blake was born in September of 1967, exactly one week after our first anniversary. Kimberly followed in June of 1969. Two years after that, not having yet found the wherewithal or desire to purchase any French provincial furnishings, I was given my walking papers. We were a No Fault test case in Colorado in 1971, the divorce procedure that requires only one ground—irreconcilable differences. Truth be told, she wanted the divorce, I didn’t. That fact had no bearing on the proceedings. Wait just a minute here, I can be sued for divorce, lose my children and everything I have without having committed adultery, without beating her or abandoning her to the whims of an uncaring world? Apparently so, because I received papers in the mail declaring that my estranged spouse had obtained a judgment against me requiring me to pay child support and other expenses for the welfare of my children. Well, let’s see if I have this right: I lose everything I love and she loses only what she doesn’t want (me). She keeps the house, the car, all the furnishings and I get a picture of each of the kids and a pillow. Sounds fair to me… I sought the advice of counsel and he told me that I would waste my money by hiring him. The courts were obliged to pretty much give the wife whatever she wanted. Son, you are screwed, blued and tattooed.

Sorry, I jumped ahead a little. My Marine Corps years are pretty much a blur. Honestly, I think that’s a defense mechanism my brain uses to keep from recalling events that hurt too much to think about. I will tell you, this; I went in, did what I had to do to stay alive, and honorably served my country in the best way I knew how before getting out. Along the way, I learned how to fly helicopters and airplanes, how to keep my mouth shut until spoken to, and I learned a whole lot about myself. I’m proud to say I’m a former Marine.

I’d heard a lot about the reputation of the Marine Corps, about their devotion to duty, their ability to kick anyone’s ass at any time, anywhere. Some of it was true and some wasn’t. Boot camp was all everyone said it would be. San Diego in February of 1966 was balmy even though it was nearly ten o’clock in the evening. As I stepped off the airliner and walked down the ramp along with eighty other men, an oriental man dressed entirely in khaki and wearing a wide-brimmed ‘Smokey Bear’ hat barked orders and slapped the cigarettes out of the mouths of several bewildered recruits. We were told to shut up and were herded onto a pull-behind ‘bus’ we came to affectionately call ‘cattle cars’. Stacked like cordwood and forbidden from sitting down, the driver drove us to Marine Corps Recruit Depot (MCRD) while in the front of the car, the same oriental man told us that ‘the first maggot who opens his mouth will have it filled with my fist’. No one tested him.

After a short ride, I recall passing a small guard shack where a Marine in dress blue uniform stood guard with his M-14 rifle, offering a salute as we passed. When the doors to the cattle car opened, two more Smokey Bear hats joined the oriental and the real harassment started. Eighty men were told to stand at attention, look directly to the front and not to move a muscle. A Hispanic man about twenty-five years old or so stood in front of me and the conversation went something like this:

“What are you lookin’ at, maggot?”

“Nothing!”

“You’re saying I’m nothing, maggot?”

“No, I—“

“Shut the fuck up, you civilian piece of shit! If I every catch you looking me in the eye again, you’ll wish to Hell you were dead! Do you understand me, faggot?”

“Yes, I—“

“That’s ‘Yes, SIR, shit-for-brains… do you underSTAND me?”

“Yes, sir!”

“What? I can’t hear you!”

“YES, SIR!”

Immediately he turned away from me and started to berate another man a little farther down the line. I’d met my first drill instructor, Staff Sergeant Zavala. I don’t think he had a first name, and even if he did, no one would have dared use it. At that time, I remember thinking that the Jews must have felt a little like this when they were taken to the gas chambers. I honestly didn’t think I’d live to see the sun rise. But the best was yet to come.

We were made to stand on yellow footprints painted on the tarmac. Once there, we were again threatened innumerable times with punishments worse than death, while we were read the entire Uniform Code of Military Justice. I’m not really sure how long it took, but I’d make a conservative estimate of three hours. What in the hell have I gotten myself into? This was the first time I remember hearing jets landing at San Diego International, somewhere off into the night. Palm trees stood as sentinels at the edge of this huge tarmac that I would soon come to know as the parade grounds or ‘grinder’. In the background I could see neat two-story adobe-colored buildings with red Spanish tile roofs and lavish porticos. If this were anywhere else other than Hell, maybe I’d be standing in front of my accommodations at a villa in Puerto Vallarta. However, of course, I was in Hell and things had not yet begun to get interesting.

Next, we were herded into a building where we stood in line to watch everyone have every bit of hair sheared from his head. As we came out of the barber’s chair, we were expected to sprint across the grinder, other drill instructors posted every fifty yards or so, into another building where we removed our clothes and a man with a hose sprayed cold water on us. Four or five men shared one bar of soap and the entire process, thankfully, was completed in about five minutes. There, we stood, naked as the day we were born, shivering and listening to our Platoon Commander, Gunnery Sergeant Freed, explain to us how insignificant we were and how he wished he’d been killed in Vietnam rather than come back to a slimy, disgusting, filthy sack of human garbage like us. Puerto Vallarta? No, I doubt it.

Next came Marine Green, our first uniform. Of course, we weren’t fit to wear it, but we should be thankful the government thought enough of us to overlook our slimy civilian background and provide us with clothing that would become, if we were lucky, the uniform of real men—Marines! One by one, we held our arms out while a man with stripes on his uniform threw underwear, socks, tee-shirts, trousers, a web belt, a duffel bag and one pair of boots into our arms. Moments later, I was directed to a table where I laid my new belongings. Without waiting to be told, I began to get dressed. Suddenly, I felt a hand grab me by the back of the neck and turn me around to face him. I looked directly into the oriental eyes of Sergeant Ho.

“Who tell you to put you fat, civilian body into this beautiful clothes?”

I said nothing.

“You fucking deaf, ass-ho?”

“NO, SIR!”
“Wait until told!”

“YES, SIR!”

Then he screamed so that everyone could hear, “From this point on, any time you address a drill instructor, the first and last words out of your mouth will be ‘Sir’! Do you understand me?”

Eighty men called out, more or less in unison, “Sir, yes, sir!”

“I can’t hear you!”

“SIR, YES, SIR!”

He stared at me some more then spat and muttered, “Pussy…” before hurrying off to berate another recruit. After everyone was finally allowed to dress, we were put in lines of four and joined arms with the person to the side. In this manner, we shuffled out of that building back onto the tarmac. I say ‘shuffled’ because we had no laces for our boots and it was difficult to keep the boots on if you raised your foot off the ground more than a quarter-inch or so.

“I want to hear from you cattle! Come on, ladies, let’s hear you moo…”

Now, there were twenty ranks of four men, arms locked together, shuffling across the grinder, lowing like the cattle we’d just become.

“That’s right, you reeking piles of crap, sing it out!” The crescendo of moos suddenly increased until Gunnery Sergeant Freed waved his swagger stick (a short decorative ceremonial baton carried by a few higher-grade non-commissioned officers and officers). In unison, the other drill instructors yelled in unison, “Platoon, HALT!”

By now, I was sweating and the ‘shower’ had lost any effectiveness it might have had, but I wasn’t alone. The guy to my right was a full head taller than me and his black, sweat-soaked skin shone in the moonlight. Now, Sergeant Zavala stood where he could be seen by eighty terrified young men and said, “Give that pussy you’re holdin’ hands with a great big kiss! On the cheeks, please, ladies, you haven’t been properly introduced and I wouldn’t want any of you rutting in ranks!” Then, they passed through the ranks until each of us had gone through the motions of kissing the man to his right and/or left.

Hours passed before they took us to our ‘hooches’, small, tin hovels with rounded roofs, just big enough to house four men in two sets of two bunks stacked on top of each other. There, we found our racks (beds) with a pile of blankets, sheets and mattress covers stacked on the end. Each of us was given an olive drab footlocker with a lock and some toiletries and miscellaneous supplies contained inside a small leather pouch. We were home.

Over the next sixteen weeks, we were alternately berated and encouraged, put down and brought back up, the Marine Corp way. We learned military bearing and Corps history, infantry tactics, weaponry of all types and the art of functioning as one man… one Corps of Marines, but never were we allowed to refer to ourselves as such. That would be the reward for perseverance. And persevere we did, too… at least, most of us. I dislocated my shoulder during bayonet training during my sixth week, and the platoon voted whether to let me stay or make me go to a platoon where I would convalesce until the doctors deemed me fit for active duty. Luckily, my platoon voted to keep me. If I had been forced to start over, I don’t know if I could have stood it. All of us teetered on the brink from time to time under the best of situations. The outer perimeter of MCRD was a chain-link fence about twelve feet tall. I remember watching planes land in the evening and wishing I had the balls to jump that fence. But, I was convinced that snipers with automatic weapons kept them trained on that fence twenty-four hours a day, and would not hesitate to shoot some maggot turd who lacked the stones to gut it out.

We progressed through the rifle-training segment, two weeks at Edson Range, Camp Pendleton, probably the best two weeks of Boot Camp. There, the harassment was drastically toned down because it was so important that each of us become intimately familiar with our weapon, the M-14. Even now, nearly forty years later, I still remember the nomenclature of the weapon and could repeat it in my sleep. If you were to put one in front of me today, I could disassemble and re-assemble it completely in under five minutes. I learned how to use the sling as a weapon, how to configure it as a tourniquet, and how to fashion it to facilitate every firing position from prone to kneeling to offhand. I also learned to hit whatever target I aimed at within a range of 500 yards. On Qualification Day, I earned the distinction of becoming one of seven men in Platoon 153 who scored high enough to receive an Expert badge for marksmanship. I didn’t know it yet, but it also got me promoted to Private First Class.

Graduation Day was one of the proudest days of my life, even though no one came to see me. I really didn’t mind, because after the thirty-day Infantry Training Regiment at Camp Pendleton, I would earn thirty days of leave, during which time I would get to leave San Diego and be reunited with my family. Then, it would be off to Naval Air Station Memphis in Millington, Tennessee, where I would attend Fire Control Avionics School. However, I had no reason to suspect what else would transpire. Soon thereafter, having been promoted twice more to the rank of corporal, I took a test that would change my life. The Marine Corps offered me the opportunity to take a college equivalency test as a prelude to attending Officer’s Leadership School. I really had little interest in becoming an officer, but they told me that if I successfully passed the equivalency test and completed the Leadership School at Quantico, Virginia, I would be allowed to become a Naval aviator. This was beyond my wildest dreams. Nevertheless, I took and passed both the qualifying test in NAS Memphis and, after completion of Platoon Leaders School at Quantico, I was commissioned a second lieutenant and assigned to duty at Whiting Field, Pensacola, Florida where I would attend both ground school and flight training. Thirteen months later, in November of 1967, I completed my flight training and was promoted to first lieutenant. I’d now been in the Marine Corps for nineteen months, promoted five times, and accepted orders for Fleet Marine Force Pacific. Soon, I would be assigned to a duty station in the Republic of Vietnam.

If you’ve come here in quest of tales of daring-do and battlefield heroics, you’ve wasted your time in reading any of this. First, they’d be fiction, and I owe it to a lot of very good people to tell the truth. Second, even if such stories did exist, I couldn’t do them justice because I’m not a good enough storyteller to astro-project any of you into ‘the bush’. I simply won’t insult the memory of good men who died for people who sent them into hell with neither the intelligence necessary to properly execute their missions nor the blessings of the people for whom they served. And, that, my friends, is a tragedy. So, I did my job to the best of my ability and crossed the days off my calendar, in hopes that I’d one day leave southeast Asia upright.

Nineteen months later, I disappeared in the summer of 1969, having completed two tours of duty overseas. It was a sunny day in August, and Los Angeles International Airport became the perfect venue. The Continental Airlines flight from Danang offered hours to reflect on my experiences since I’d last touched down on U.S. shores almost nineteen months previous. I suppose I did reflect some, but mostly I drank. Some Marines opted for flights to Sydney or Honolulu, choosing to spend a little time in paradise, a buffer zone between the horrors of combat and the rigors of trying to explain the unexplainable to family and friends. I’d heard the stories of vets who’d gone to Australia on R&R and never returned. I think I chose to go home because I knew that if I didn’t go home now, I might find an excuse not to ever return. I wanted to see my family, but Lord knows I didn’t look forward to the questions I knew would come. People don’t seem to understand that each inquiry about the war is a wire brush digging scabs off wounds that are only now beginning to heal.

I’ll never forget the anticipation I felt as I waited for the Captain to attain the proper altitude and assigned flight coordinates for the trip. I sat in the crew cabin of my first Boeing 707. I say ‘mine’ because I honestly felt I was a part of this glorious bird, not that I’d have had any idea how to start it up, much less fly it. I’m convinced that 123 other passengers also felt the same way. I was allowed to sit in the crew cabin because I was a transport pilot, holding the rank of captain. What’s the old saying? Rank hath its privileges? Truthfully, the invitation came as a result of a camaraderie extended one pilot by another, not because of any particular rank or career status I held. I was twenty-seven days short of my twenty-second birthday and because of the kindness offered me by these guys, the war suddenly became a little less of a reality. Anything short of being shot down because the crew got drunk and flew us into Russian air space, in a few short hours I would make it home.

Home… the very word carried a heavy burden. The concept, until the last few hours when I picked up my orders, seemed unattainable. If they’d have given me a set of orders to Mars I wouldn’t have been any more dumbfounded. After awhile, it become cliché to even suggest it, as if by uttering the word, you would jinx your chances. Short-timers refused to speak of it, lest disaster would befall them. How many times had I heard the word in the last nineteen months? Certainly it had to be thousands. Every crewman, every squad leader, every artilleryman, every corpsman, every grunt carried the word as a holy grail. Home… that magical place that existed as nowhere else. For fifty-eight thousand Americans, it took on entirely different meaning as it existed only in the religious sense of being ‘carried home’ to meet with ones departed loved ones. Even so, I doubt there was a single man killed there who didn’t have home on his mind when he took his last breath.

But, there I was, strapped into a leather-detailed crew seat, a set of headphones over my ears, listening to the ICS as three veteran jet jockeys monitored instruments, scanned gauges and set course headings for a voyage I honestly didn’t think I’d ever get to take. Something would go wrong, inevitably. Nervously I ticked off the seconds in my mind, counting ‘wheels-up’ time, the amount of ‘roll’ an aircraft requires to lift off the runway. Twenty-one seconds… I had no idea if that was the correct amount of time or not and it mattered little, but I filed it away for extraction at some future take-off when I was so nervous that if I didn’t count seconds, I’d pass out from the sheer terror of anticipation. As many take-offs and landings as I’d completed, I never got used to it. Giving control to another pilot seemed foreign… and dangerous. Even as I felt the thrust of the four huge Boeing turbines force me back into my seat, I suspected that we’d lose two engines on takeoff and fall into the ocean in a spectacular orange fireball or blow a tire upon landing, causing us to skid off the end of the runway at San Francisco International and drown in the shallow waters off the coast, scant yards from home— fulfilling life’s ultimate irony.

Once we attained our 30,000 feet of elevation over the South China Sea, the bar would be open, the smoking lamp would be lit and so would every passenger on that aircraft. It had been a long time since most of us had experienced American liquor… too long, in our estimation. Even a guy who received the occasional warm San Miguel beer while ‘in country’ could build up a thirst for decent booze. I didn’t drink too much in Vietnam, not because I felt any sort of moral restriction against it, but because I simply couldn’t afford to take the chance. Many of my missions were unscheduled, and I needed to be as alert as possible. It was easy enough to die under the best of combat conditions without adding insobriety to the equation. Too many Marines counted on us for rations, medical assistance and close air support. A drunk pilot was a stupid pilot and if I was going to die in that God-forsaken cesspool, it was damn sure not going to be because I didn’t have command of my faculties. In fact, if I suspected one of my crew was under the influence of alcohol or drugs, I’d have grounded him in a heartbeat. They all knew how I felt and, as far as I know, always respected my wishes. Esprit de corps has long been talked about in reference to Marines. I like to think that it went deeper than a few recruiting poster slogans. I always considered it to be the simple respect and care offered a family member. To me, it was esprit de crew. Yes, we’re Marines, and that’s interesting… but we’re also a team, and that’s important.

Listen, I don’t mean to make my job sound like drudgery… far from it. Every mission I ever made promised a high unlike anything ever experienced on any drug. Moving the collective and feeling the pure power jerk us off the ground, listening to the radio crackle into my headphones, feeling the inverters turn electricity into power enough to launch a strange green capsule (complete with door gunner) skyward, and realizing I held the future of at least four other Marines in my hand, was a thrill unlike anything else I’d ever experienced. And that was just the start. Depending on whether we were flying into an unsecured landing zone or not, my adrenalin levels went off the charts, especially if the accompanying zing of enemy rounds trying to pierce my aircraft’s shell added to the commotion in the cockpit. But mostly, it was the satisfaction derived from returning safely, knowing that someone might have gotten to go home because we were able to get him to a field hospital, or that a few grunts would live to fight another day because we got them the extra ordinance they needed to do their jobs. No, it wasn’t the danger that made me love it, it was the expectation that I could do it that made me love it.

By the time the stewardess (the girls were still light years away from flight attendant status) poured me off the airplane, I imagine I probably drank a case of Budweiser… cold Budweiser. The brew took on epic proportions as it slid down. Seldom stopping to swallow, I just opened up my throat and poured. No Viking ever drank better mead after battle. After two or three bottles, I felt warmth in the pit of my stomach and a feeling I can only describe as glorious. In hindsight, perhaps I was merely licking my wounds.

We arrived in San Francisco in mid-afternoon. I proceeded to a telephone and called my family to let them know I’d arrived safely and I’d be home as soon as I could make a connecting flight. In those days, military people were offered half-price fares if they didn’t mind flying ‘stand-by’. This meant that if there were cancellations or if a flight wasn’t fully booked, I could get on the airplane. The next available flight was early the next morning, so I called my friend, Mike McCrory, who lived in Los Gatos, a town south of San Francisco, closer to San Jose. We chatted for a few minutes and he told me to hang tight and he’d pick me up. I went to the bar and had a couple more bourbon and cokes. Maybe I lost track of time, but everything taking place around me fascinated me so much, I couldn’t get enough of it. People came and went as they pleased, apparently no one to answer to, no agendas to fulfill. At that moment, I realized that I wanted to be a civilian again. I loved the idea of being a Marine, but the actuality of it paled by comparison. While everyone around me wore nice clothes and sported long hair, I had on my yellow Marine Corps sweatshirt and Levis… and almost no hair at all. I stood out like a nun standing in a crowd of Buddhist monks.

“Thay, Thally… buy a drink for a lonely thailor?” The voice was sugary sweet and effeminate. I turned and looked up at a grinning Mike McCrory. His hair was much longer than I remembered, but there was no mistaking that grin. Mike and I had been close friends in high school. He was about 6’4” and weighed in excess of 240 lbs. He’d told me that he intended to move to San Francisco after high school. His folks had some money and his sister was some kind of attorney.

“Shoo, faggot… I got no time for fairies. Go bugger one of those Army creeps, they’d probably love the attention.”

Mike grabbed me with both arms and squeezed me hard enough to make my ribs hurt. Then, he kissed me hard on the side of my cheek and said, “Welcome home, Bob.”

We talked for a while, paying exorbitant airport prices for the booze. Mike drank Johnny Walker Black scotch while I stuck to Jim Beam, chased by the occasional Coors beer. I tried to pay for a round or two, but Mike would hear none of it. “Save your money, pal, I have plenty for both of us.”

Mike explained to me that his sister, Carol, had made millions in the lucrative San Francisco market. She sold a few houses, but her prime source of income involved downtown property that she controlled for wealthy investors. Evidently, she had just closed a big deal and was celebrating it with a black tie party tonight at the Trans-America building. Three hours later, Mike and I stepped out of a cab into a funny-looking building located in downtown San Francisco. Standing at its base, I looked up and saw lights in windows that seemed to point to the stars. In the lobby, so outlandish was our attire we were confronted by security guards. Mike took point, explaining to the gentlemen that we were invited guests. A phone call confirmed our status and we were whisked in a private elevator to the 27th floor, where we found men in tuxedos and ladies in chic dresses. The two of us couldn’t possibly have looked more out of place were we nude and singing the National Anthem at the top of our lungs in the key of F.

“Relax…” Mike whispered to me. “Just mingle and have a good time. I’ll go find Carol.”

Sure… just go mingle. I had so much in common with everyone here. One guy asked me if I could bring him a plate of hors de oeuvres. Not inclined to get into a fight my first night back, I merely walked away. At some point, I noticed the glass door leading to the balcony. Mike was nowhere to be found, so I sauntered out onto the balcony, beholding the lights of the city currently offering illumination to the dark and identifying silhouettes of some other buildings. In the clear night sky I observed the stars, wondering if they would look the same to the guys looking up at them, still hunkered down in bunkers on Hill 881 or the Rock Pile.

From behind me, a voice asked, “Looking for inspiration out there?”

I turned and looked at a very thin man about 40 or so, his fingers tugging at his bow tie, a lit cigarette perched between two fingers, perilously close to his neck. I couldn’t tell whether the question mocked me or not, but I sensed that the guy was pretty drunk.

“And if I am?”

Quickly, the man finished removing the tie and flicked the ashes from his cigarette. Raising his hand to chest level, he waved it back and forth. “Don’t take offense. I was merely making small talk; I am so rarely confronted with our nation’s fighting elite.”

“No offense taken…” I lied, turning my head back to view. “If there was, I’d have already ripped your throat out and stuffed that cigarette up your ass.” The words surprised me as much as they did him, in all likelihood. I hadn’t intended to be confrontational when I walked out here, but something about this guy’s smugness pissed me off.

The light from the room backlit his silhouette and he resembled Peter O’Toole at first glance. “Well… I guess that would provide an opportunity to quit smoking.” When he started to laugh, I laughed right along with him. Motioning me to sit down with him, he opened the sliding glass door and barked out an order for someone to bring us some more drinks.

Small talk filled the air, mostly concerning my contributions to the war effort. I’d been told that many people, especially Californians, were either pacifists or non-supportive of Nixon and his dirty little soirée into Southeast Asia. Eventually, I guess he became bored with my company, because he stood up, shook my hand, and offered me a few words upon leaving. “I hope you live to be an ex-Marine.” Then, he walked back into the party.

I said nothing in return, but now my thoughts were back in Vietnam.

By the way, there are no “ex-Marines”. If someone tells you he’s an “ex-Marine”, don’t believe a single word he says from that point on, because he’s lying to you. Once you’re a Marine, you’re a Marine forever. Forever… it doesn’t end at death. Every Marine learns that thousands of good men gave their lives for the privilege of wearing that uniform. In every case, the uniform is earned, never given. Three words guide every Marine’s journey through his duty: Courage, Honor, and Commitment. No matter where your journeys take you, if you have all three, I promise you that you’ll be successful in whatever you do.

Shortly after my Marine Corps career ended, I took my wife, Pat, and our two children, Blake and Kimberly (that could be Mom or Pop to some of you) back to Denver to start a new life, not knowing that even now (as she informed me during the proceedings) she was considering divorce. I’d been accepted to the Colorado State Police Academy at Camp George West in Golden. It was now 1970, and I held the world by the tail. Sixteen weeks later, I emerged from the Blue Cocoon (as it was called by staff) as a fledgling rookie officer. My first duty station was Granby, Colorado, located in the north central Rocky Mountains. I enjoyed most of my duties as a police officer and, if circumstances had permitted, would probably have spent the remainder of my career as a cop.

On June 28, 1971, Mom died, and a big part of me died with her. Mom was my emotional fortress. I knew I could always count on her because she never gave up on me. It was like I suddenly had a gaping hole in my heart that no one could fill. She was only forty-seven years old. It was all very sudden and very final. She went into Presbyterian Hospital for a lung biopsy, a simple procedure that can be done in a doctor’s office, and never came out. Life is cruel, I guess. As she lay in a coma for seventeen days, I tried to make deals with God to let her live. I guess He figured she’d suffered enough.

Not a day passes that I don’t think about her or miss her. I know that all of you would have loved her as much as I do. She was fun to be around, especially if you were a kid. Mom had high standards for all of us, but she made it fun to behave, because if we did, we knew we’d be rewarded in some fashion. My biggest failing in this life was not getting high enough grades in school. I know she was disappointed in me; she felt I should have been class valedictorian. I blame my teachers for that, because they incessantly told her that I wasn’t working up to my potential. In an adult retrospective, I now realize that they may have been right, but I was a kid. Later on, when I went to college, I got nearly straight A’s, due in part to my desire to make Mom proud of me, even if she could only look down and smile a little. After her funeral, Dave Fisher took me to his place and fed me whiskey while I cried for hours and hours. The next day, I went back to work. It’s just what you do… that’s what Mom would have done.

Chapter 2 Enter The Jock

2008-04-25T18:32:00.003-05:00

Chapter 2 Enter The Jock

Sports, as I started to tell you back a ways, became an entirely different experience for me. I couldn’t get enough of whatever sport was in season. I don’t know whether I was too stupid and simple to grasp the nuance of chess club, astronomy, crafts, etc., or if I just liked getting the opportunity to legally beat the hell out of someone. In the long run, I guess it doesn’t matter what the reasons were. The fact is, I was addicted to athletics. I loved baseball, softball, basketball, football, kickball, tennis, golf, bowling, pool— if it had anything remotely to do with a ball, I wanted to do it, and I wasn’t satisfied until I had the skills to do it better than the other kids. I practiced from dawn to dark, then I went inside and oiled my baseball glove or went out to the garage and punched the bag I made out of an old canvas laundry bag, stuffed with sand and rags and suspended in mid-air with a rope I tied to a roof joist. It was so heavy that I needed a friend to help me hoist it into place. For hours, I hit it, tackled it, pretended it was an opposing lineman and barked out signals before launching myself from a 3-point stance to block it. Whenever I needed to work out a few frustrations, I mentally affixed the face of my rivals on that bag, and beat the damned thing senseless. In the 7th grade, Ron Poulan gave me a set of boxing gloves and my world changed. Over a period of a year or so, a rush of self-confidence came over me as my body started to morph. I gained a little weight, I started to build some muscle mass and I no longer feared anyone. On the athletic fields, kids who’d been unbeatable rivals in previous years now seemed manageable. The more events I won, the more I wanted to win. Feats of skill became tastes of honey; tidbits of liquor so delicious I craved it to feed my unquenchable need… my ego. It was no longer enough to merely win; I needed to crush my opponent. Little by little, the joy of victory became a vehicle of appeasement. Such considerations as how the game was played no longer mattered. Just win, baby. And the die was cast. For the remainder of my boyhood and for much of my adulthood, I was officially a jock.

Originally, the designation seemed to be a desirable one. Society tended to treat us differently. After all, the honor of the school was in our hands. On a weekly basis, we ventured onto the noble field of battle, entrusted to bring home that trophy or be carried off on our shields. We became the symbolic warriors of the cause and the good of all mankind hinged on our performances. Forget the fact that most of us were incapable of spelling ‘performance’ or any other multi-syllabic words not directly pertaining to our quest for ego-gratification. But, little by little, I began to hear the snickers behind my back and I started to sense that I was different, but of course, I’d been indoctrinated to believe that all their wisecracks were mere jealousy, that our way was the only way, and if others didn’t keep quiet, they’d be next. The pack would have their way, the alpha-males spreading their genetic seed regardless of whatever societal attitudes prevailed. We were entitled, after all.

Although my talents (and size) predisposed me to play baseball, my real love was football. For most of my youth, I was pretty little. Most of the kids outweighed me by at least ten pounds and were three or four inches taller. It didn’t matter, because I had The Bag. My house (or more correctly, my garage) was one of the more popular places to spend time after school, because all my friends loved to come over and work out with me. We didn’t know it, of course, but even then we were becoming soldiers. The regimens involved in committing to weightlifting and scheduled workouts became the precursors for discipline and military bearing. Leadership skills found their origins in that garage, both for me and for all the kids who entered.

Baseball was king in my part of town, especially during the middle school years, grades 7-9. We called it “junior high school” in those days; we didn’t realize we were being ‘developmentally subjugated’. This was before the days when every district had a psychologist on staff. The vice-principal gave us all the psychology we needed: Mind your manners and don’t be an asshole, or I’ll beat the hell out of you and tell your parents to come get you. Then, when you get home, you’ll get it again. We weren’t smart enough to know that we were being abused, I guess. We just knew that if we screwed up, there’s a price to pay, so we learned the art of deceit. Vice-Principal Sharkey’s paddle had at least three holes in it and the man was born to wield it. Nothing gave him greater pleasure. So, once having tasted its fury across the fleshier regions of the gluteus maximus (that’s your ass for those of you who're biologically challenged), it didn’t take Albert Einstein to know that you didn’t need it again.

But, I was talking about baseball. Sorry, I tend to drift in and out of coherency like that. I’ll start off telling you about the time I threw a no-hitter against our biggest rival and before you know it, I’ve described, in detail so vivid that it makes you want to rip your eyeballs out for having been foolish enough to sit still and read it, the machinery used to put the white chalk lines on the baseball field. I don’t know why, either, it’s just how my mind works. Maybe if we’d had a school psychologist, someone could have diagnosed the reasons and put a stop to it. In those days, only crazy people were forced to go to psychologists or psychiatrists. If you were a nut case, everyone knew it and chances are very good that if you were, you were already in the loony bin. I can only remember one kid who ever slipped through the cracks. I won’t give you his real name because I don’t want to get sued, but ‘Johnny’ was the oldest of three brothers living with their parents on the next block down from us. All three boys were pretty good athletes and loved the competition—both with each other and with the world. They fought every day, with each other if they couldn’t find anyone else to beat up. They were of Eastern European ancestry and their last name ended with “-ski”. Although I think they were actually Lithuanian, they became the neighborhood ‘pollocks’. Their parents were highly religious and discipline in their family surpassed anyone else’s. Those kids got the tar beat out of them at least a couple of times a week—with the belt. So, you might say they had ‘an attitude’ with the rest of us. But, ‘Johnny’ and I were the same age (he was the oldest of the three brothers), and we became pretty good friends. Early on, maybe around the age of 12 or so, I knew that ‘Johnny’ was different. All he talked about was girls, but during the summer, when all the kids played outside under the streetlight (in ‘Johnny’s’ front yard, by the way), ‘Johnny’ seemed to vacillate towards the girls, but not in a sexual way. It was if he had more in common with them, than with us. It wasn’t anything in particular, just an observation. I didn’t have the chance to interact with ‘Johnny’ during school because he and his brothers went to St. Pius, the local Catholic school, while the rest of us heathens went to public school. Yes, most of us them were Catholic, too, but, their parents didn’t have the cash to “kiss the Pope’s ass”, as my dad put it, but that’s another story. But around the ninth grade, ‘Johnny’ went away. Another Catholic family lived two doors down from them and had a daughter I shall call ‘Susie’, who was the love of my life from the first second I knew what a girl was. One night, they came home to find ‘Johnny’ in their basement, wearing ‘Susie’s’ bra, panties and Girl Scout uniform. It might have worked for him except for the fact that ‘Susie’ was very petite and he was nearly six feet tall and weight 170 pounds. Plus, if you can trust the story as told to me by my father, he had the panties draped over his face—all three pairs. Needless to say, we gave ‘Johnny’s’ family a little wider berth after that. In my father’s words, “You need to stay away from them crazy-ass pollocks… they’re nothin’ but white niggers.”

Shocked? Well, I understand that. Remember, though, we’re talking about the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. This was before Dr. Martin Luther King made his famous “I have a dream…” speech and most of us woke up—at least a little. Aurora, Colorado of the Fifties and early Sixties was a reasonably well-designed little community on the east side of Denver. During this time, the growth of the city and the phenomenon of suburban sprawl were in full bloom. World War II veterans were becoming established in their neighborhoods, most were working, and, in general, times were pretty good. Of course, with the rapid growth came the inevitable launch of the social experiment called America.

In those days, Aurora was still lily-white. Thinking back upon it, I really think it was better that way. The introduction of minorities into our neighborhoods would have had the effect of watering down our dysfunction. Their unfortunate tendencies towards tight-knit families and loyal associations among friends would have ruined everything. It would have irreparably brightened our outlook on the world. If we had someone around who tried to make sense, we could never have achieved the high levels of disillusionment so proudly exhibited by all my friends. I was a senior in high school before I ever met a black person. Oh, we played against blacks in sports, but until I met Cliff Arrington, the only thing I knew about black people was that ‘a nigger is a nigger is a nigger’. My father was raised in Kentucky, during the Great Depression and they took their identity from the deep South. Whites and blacks did not even talk to each other unless the black person was serving the white in some fashion. Remember, this was only about seventy years after Abraham Lincoln freed the slaves. The great social pendulum had not yet swung back towards the middle and although black people were no longer forced to work for white people, they still had very little entrance into white society and were economically forced to take positions as ‘second-class’ citizens. Who wouldn’t be pissed about that? I can think of no one.

So, with attitudes being what they were, under a constant state of distrust and separation, my father felt no compunction whatsoever about putting labels on people. He had been raised on the streets, too; no one lived well during the 1920’s and 1930’s. His path crossed that of blacks as they competed for bread and practically everything else. Times were so bad that often he had to steal to buy food. In those dark days before World War II, the boy who became my father would walk miles and miles on the railroad track hoping to find coal that had fallen off the trains that headed from Appalachia to points north. If he had a good day, they had heat for the house that night. If not… well, they did the best they could. But being the oldest boy in a family of nine children with no father, he bore the burden of being a man when he was eight years old. He left school in the second grade. So, I understand why he harbored a deep-seated animosity for an entire race of people, but I think it went much further. I honestly think his hatred was a symptom of his own self-loathing, his belief that he’d been cheated out of the opportunity to ever attain one tenet of the American dream, the pursuit of happiness. Plus, he didn’t have the benefit of even an elementary education. Blacks and other minorities were merely the most convenient focal point for his misplaced sense of retribution. Even if I can’t admire it, at least I understand it.

Deep down, my father was a kind, caring man, but I think he felt that he had to show the world a guy who wouldn’t allow anyone to take advantage of him. He loved hard and he hated hard, and sometimes it was difficult for a kid to discern which emotion was present at any particular time. Until I was about ten years old, I thought my first name was Damn-It Bob, because whenever he spoke to me, the first words out of his mouth were “Damn it, Bob, why didn’t you mow the lawn?” or “Damn it, Bob, why did you get such a lousy grade in Math? Is Herbert hiding his paper again?” He fussed and fumed at me so much that I came to expect it all the time. Then, when we were around his friends, I’d hear him telling them of my feats of bravado in baseball or football and I had to listen more intently, because I thought he was talking about someone else. Does my father have an illegitimate son somewhere? From day one, my father and I had a love/hate relationship. He just couldn’t offer me praise directly, and it hurt me. It wasn’t until I had my own kids that I understood—he honestly felt that if he showed me too much love, he’d make me soft and effeminate. No son of his would turn out to be a queer. Oh, and just in case you’re wondering, he got his wish. I’m 100% straight, which I consider to be a blessing. I’m not nearly tough enough to accept the abuse gay people endure in this society on an ongoing basis. I’d be doing time for murder the first time some asshole called me a faggot.

*Sigh* See? One thing you need to understand about old people (I refuse to allow myself the moniker ‘senior citizen’, it entails just the sort of smarmy political correctness that I detest) is that we understand mortality, at least in the sense of its immediacy. Therefore, since we know that we are ‘on the clock’ so to speak, if we desire to do something, we need to get cracking, because that clock is ticking. I admit that I understand little about the technical aspects of Einstein’s Theory of Relativity, and I don’t recall reading a part of it postulating that time passes faster when a person eclipses the age of fifty, but I swear it’s the case. I won’t bore you further with it; just realize that may be why this story is such a jumbled mess. I have to get it out while I’m thinking of it, because I may not have the opportunity to go back and do the editing and re-writes necessary to meet the standards of the publishing industry. Remember, this is my gift to you and like any gift you receive, you’re required to accept it in the spirit which it’s given. Then, after much fawning over it when in my presence, complete with the mandatory expressions of delight in having received it and your audible recognition of its overwhelming power and value in acting as your ultimate moral compass, I authorize you to lovingly place it amongst the great classics of literature you keep on your bookshelf. Either that or put the pages through a paper shredder and use it as a gerbil nest—your call.

Screw it, I’m not going to talk about baseball. As a spectator sport, it’s a passé snooze of a game, short bursts of athletic excellence wrapped in three hours of inertia. The brand of baseball being played in the Major Leagues these days relies on the ability of gargantuan batters being able to drive the ball over the back fence, thereby proving their manhood and exhibiting their peacock prowess as they do their ‘home-run trot’ around the bases. It’s become the symbol of all that’s wrong with professional sports. Spoiled, vain, arrogant, filled with contempt for the very fans that ultimately pay their salaries… what’s to admire about them? Yet, we flock to watch them in greater numbers than ever before. Has entertainment become so hard to come by that we’re forced to support a game played by millionaires to make more money for billionaires? I think I know why we do it, though. We’re trying to re-capture our youth. Admittedly, there’s something special about a ballpark. Hot dogs taste better there, the sun is a little warmer… even the loudmouth sitting behind you becomes your newest, best friend when your team scores or puts down a rally from the opponent. Baseball is life in microcosm. Sometimes it’s slow and boring, sometimes it happens so fast, it’s over before you realize anything’s taking place. The full gamut of human emotions is run every time we watch or play the game. In simpler times, baseball was our national pastime. Its nine-inning passion play once held the nation hostage to its result. Now, a few geeks check the box scores to see if their fantasy teams won them any money, and none but the most hard-core of purists understand anything about the game at all. All things must pass. I’m glad I chose not to talk about the game that took up probably sixty percent of all my hours on earth between the ages of six and eighteen. It’s a pleasure not to tell you that I played on three straight high school state championship baseball teams, that I received a scholarship to play baseball at the University of Colorado and that the Philadelphia Phillies drafted me. It’s all pretty boring… I’m glad I didn’t mention it.

******

Football is another story entirely. I was known as a ‘tweener’. I wasn’t fast enough to play running back, accurate enough to play quarterback, or big enough to play the line. But I loved to hit and was a ferocious tackler, so they kept a roster spot open for me. I knew that I’d never be big enough to get a scholarship, but the prospect of suiting up on Friday nights in front of those big crowds was like an opiate. The rush I got from listening to the cheers was nearly inexpressible. Lining up across from an enemy lineman gave me a thrill on every play, especially when it was cold and you could see his breath. I loved to talk to my opposition, too, a habit that resulted in being ejected for fighting on several occasions. It seems some guys get a little irritated when you insinuate that you’ve been screwing their sister... or mother. I used to read the newspaper obituaries in hopes that I’d get lucky and a member of the opposing team might have just lost a loved one. That’s always good for fireworks if you happen to mention to the unfortunate guy that you have a thing for corpses and would he mind if you snuck a quick peek at good ol’ mom.

Even in the Sixties, football was serious business. The stands were filled with fathers whose scions were out there on the gridirons of America, getting the crap kicked out of them, so daddy could vicariously score the touchdown that he never quite accomplished in high school. This, of course, is because good-ol’ dad was in chess club. The closest he ever got to a football field was when he recalled his glorious heroics to that cute blonde at the Boom-Boom Club.

I have loved football since I was old enough to know what it is. After my first football practice (third grade as I recall), I remember thinking, ‘Hey… this is great! I get to beat the hell out of that butt-hook, Gary Bishop, and not get kicked out of school!’ In junior high school there were two kids I tried to convince to come out for football for precisely that reason!

As it turned out, neither guy would accommodate me and I ended up getting kicked out of school, anyway. But, that wasn’t until basketball season, and I sucked at basketball, so it didn’t matter. Why would anyone waste his time playing a sport that involved activities that didn’t involve physically assaulting the other team?

I always liked to fight. I don’t know why, I just did. All you psychologists out there, eat your hearts out, I made it all the way to manhood (arguably) without ever once polishing the leather on your couch. I owe it all to football. Coach Roman Gabler was the only shrink any of us ever needed. The man took motivation training from the Marquis de Sade, his pre-game speeches inspired by Mein Kampf and Knute Rockne.

Of course, in the Sixties, everyone’s favorite football team was the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. Never mind the fact that most of the guys on the team were either of Italian or Polish descent, in God’s eyes, all football players are Irish.

I’d heard all the stories regarding the exploits and heroics of Johnny Lujack, Paul Hornung and all the rest. And before Coach Gabler stepped onto a bench and began his inspiration, exhorting us to become mad dogs of hatred as we stormed out of the locker room shouting and cursing, we received the inspiration of one Father Armand Dresser.

Father Dresser, our team spiritual advisor, was the pastor at Our Lady of Victory Parish. His nose was as red as a ripe maraschino cherry. Almost every kid on the team had served as an altar boy at one time or another, so we thought of him as something other than inspirational. In fact, there wasn’t a single one of us who hadn’t taken his turn unloading the liquor truck as it pulled up to the back of the rectory. In hindsight, I’m sure the Bishop would have liked to know about that, too, but it’s all holy water under the bridge at this point. Honestly, a couple of liters of altar wine per day is probably necessary to keep a man sedated enough to listen to the confessions of a faithful flock. How many adulterous affairs is a man capable of keeping quiet about before he runs screaming into the streets?

Also, while I’m on the subject, I want to know something. If he couldn’t see us when we were in the confessionals, why did he always know our name as he handed down our penance? Every Saturday, as I awaited my turn to go in, I’d sit and think up ‘sins’ that would be right on the edge of the mortal/venial threshold, just to see if I could push the envelope and receive something other than five Hail Mary’s and ten Our Father’s. Once I managed an “Examine your conscience, my son”, too. As I recall, that one involved looking in neighbor’s windows, the cute little Frontier Airlines stewardess. I felt like I was finally starting to make some progress down that road to Hell.

As was his custom on Game Day, Father Dresser always wore his black floor-length tunic that made him look and walk like a penguin. Of course, his uniform wouldn’t have been complete without that little black hat. Coach Gabler called him “Dress”… “Come on up here, Dress, and give us our Lord’s blessing…we’d hate to have any of those assholes crippled for life!”

Then, we’d mill about while a couple of assistant coaches helped “Dress” onto a bench. “In the name of the Father, and of the Son and the Holy Spirit, let us pray…” Then, he’d commence his litany of the saints, progression of Beatitudes and adoration of Mary, all in Latin, of course, stopping only to catch his breath or burp. We’d all look at each other out of the corners of our eyes, shake our heads and grin, patiently waiting for Jim Worthington (our huge All-Conference right tackle) to fart and crack up the whole team! Some of the guys took bets on whether Father would fall off the bench from a combination of inebriation and vertigo from keeping his eyes closed that long.

I remember getting a letter from my mother years later, while I was in the Marines, telling me that Father Dresser had left the parish. Evidently, the Bishop had sent him on special assignment to a monastery somewhere, the purpose of his mission to ‘examine his conscience’. It seems that Father Dresser might have more appropriately been called Father Cross-Dresser, but that’s a story for another time.

*******

I managed to graduate from high school on time, thanks, in no small part, to Herbert and his magic paper. Teachers, counselors (and my mother) remained eternally vexed and confused by my lack of performance. The standardized tests I took showed my IQ to be remarkably high, yet my grades were only slightly above average. From day one I was told that if I studied very hard, I could become an above-average craftsman or teacher. You see, very few kids were encouraged to attend medical or law schools unless their parents were doctors or lawyers. One mustn’t rock the boat. The counselors’ attempts at ‘profiling’ led to diminished expectations even for the kids who did study hard and finish at the tops of their class. In those days, only the top ten to fifteen percent of the kids attended college, unless they received athletic scholarships. Probably an equal number enrolled in trade schools, and the rest either joined the military or went to work. I graduated in 1965, and even then, the specter of Vietnam loomed over our heads. Even as a junior, I remember guys joining up, trying to avoid the draft. The word around town had it that if you enlisted before being drafted, you had a better chance of going to a military trade school, thereby prolonging a trip to Vietnam. One guy who did this stands out in my mind because he was the class clown. Light on intellectual creativity and prospects for higher education, Tony Smucker realized that as soon as he graduated, he would be drafted, so he enlisted during spring semester. This was a boy who would do anything for a laugh. During his senior year, he cut the tip off one of his fingers while in Wood Shop. He missed one afternoon of school and showed up the next day with that fingertip in a small jar of formaldehyde. The entire morning, he took bets with all comers as to the prospect of his consumption of said fingertip. If he’d had one of those little green eyeshades, you’d have sworn that he was a Las Vegas bookmaker. Kids would give Bob Shaughnessy the money while Tony wrote down his or her name on a legal pad. By the time lunch hour rolled around, Tony sat at the head of a table with only that little jar sitting in front of him, amputated phalanx floating independently within, and a huge throng of kids forming a crush around the table, each wishing to get a glimpse of the act. Cheers, jeers and catcalls of many forms accompanied the scene as Tony sat grinning at the crowd, hoping to entice some late money into the bet. Then, when he felt the time was right, he turned the lid off the bottle and picked up a fork. Screams immediately found air in the room, causing Lee Rosa, the wrestling coach and 1957 Mr. Colorado, to push his way through the crowd and confiscate the severed appendage just before it entered Tony’s mouth. It’s rumored that in turn for not being suspended (thereby not graduating) and all the kids’ names on the betting list not being sent to Mr. Sharkey’s office for the corporal punishment he so loved to dish out, Tony would give the money (all $470) to the March of Dimes campaign against birth defects. We lost Tony in the spring of 1965, the victim of a Viet Cong ambush in a fire fight in the Ashau Valley of Vietnam. It was announced over the loudspeaker in homeroom. That morning, reality drove into my psyche and parked in my garage, never again to relinquish the space. That day, my childhood ended.

The middle 1960’s were, arguably, the greatest time of social upheaval in American history, fueled mainly by the Vietnam Conflict. Most of us then between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one were the progeny of World War II veterans, the generation that is now called the Baby-Boomers. Right after high school, young men were forced to register for the Draft, the government’s process of rounding up every male who had reached his eighteenth birthday. They were placed in a cattle pen called The Selective Service Bureau and left to graze until the government felt it was time to slaughter them. Then, they were herded into military vehicles and sent to training centers with names like Camp LeJeune, Camp Pendleton, Fort Bliss or MCRD (Marine Corps Recruit Depot) San Diego, dressed in green for a few weeks and sent to Southeast Asia, never once being allowed to question the process. Of course, a process this drastic never escapes the scrutiny of the public, and a counter-culture in direct defiance of the war was born. They were called Hippies or the Peace Generation. These people spent their time reading the political works of Lenin, Marx, Malcolm X, Ché Guevara, and formed cells of resistance called The Weather Underground, Students for a Democratic Society, The Black Panthers, the Yippies, and many more; their entire reason for existence being the cessation of military action in Southeast Asia and/or the overthrow of the U.S. government.

In those days, the government and society alike vilified these people. But, their influence on literature, music and mores of society could not be denied. They were starting to have enough impact that other ‘minority’ groups saw the opportunity to make a splash onto the American political scene. A woman named Betty Friedan became the foremost spokesperson for women’s rights in the world with the publication of her book, The Feminine Mystique in 1963. Ms. Friedan was instrumental in the foundation of the National Organization for Women (NOW), and is recognized as the preeminent catalyst for the women’s movement. Suddenly, life as we knew it in the United States took a new tack. Women, empowered by their new-found political clout, began the revolutionary activity that would change the world. No longer were women content to be stay-at-home mothers. They lobbied to have the ‘glass ceiling’ lifted from salaries paid to women. Soon, faculties at universities were being filled with women professors and seats in medical and law schools were occupied, in greater numbers than ever before, by female students as the Equal Rights Amendment legislation was enacted. Much of the societal circumstance we see today found its infancy during the Vietnam Era.

So what does all that have to do with me? Everything and nothing… The Marine Corps drafted me in February of 1966, while sitting in the dugout of the Philadelphia Phillies training facility in Clearwater, Florida, nine days after I’d arrived for spring training. I mention this because on that day, my dream of becoming a professional baseball player died. All the hours and days of preparation, all the missed family gatherings spent at this practice or that out-of-town ball game… just to have the dream die right before my very eyes as I was about to find out whether or not I had what it took. Maybe I wouldn’t have made it, but that’s the problem. I’ll go to my grave without knowing. Honestly, I’ve had a good life in spite of it, but in the back of my mind, there’ll always be that nagging question that has no answer. Okay, write this down: Don’t let your dreams die. It’s actually just that simple. If you love something enough to consider it your ‘dream’, then it’s important enough to devote your life to it. Never give someone the power to steal your dream. If I had it all to do over again, I’d have ignored that notice-of-induction telegram entirely and finished spring training. At that point, I would, at the very least, have been told whether they would pick up their option on my contract and offer me assignment somewhere in their farm system. Then, I probably would have honored my commitment as an American citizen; complete with the knowledge of what could have been, had it not been for the war. The dream, to me, was more important than the actual eventuality of it happening. Then I wouldn’t have felt cheated. Don’t let anyone cheat you out of your dreams. That way, when you write your memoirs fifty years from now, you won’t be pissing and moaning about what a raw deal you got from life, like your grampy is now.