LEGACY BLOG: Robert Welton Remembers

I REMEMBER - STUCK ON THE MOUNTAIN...

2012-02-12T21:04:00.000-08:00

My son Nicholas (Nicholas Gerald when he was in trouble - Nick -now that he is in his mid-twenties...) has always been competitive. The middle son of three brothers, he didn't get to be the first and he didn't get the free pass like his little brother somehow always did. He figured out, early on, that since he couldn't be the baby and couldn't be the oldest, he would just try to be the best.

I remember a camping trip once at the north coast of California - Ft. Bragg area - where we all went down to the beach to play. All boys like to be climbers and my three were no different. They were climbing on everything, rocks, driftwood, etc. They tried their hand at climbing the mostly sheer face of a small hill, but they gave up about halfway up, as it looked pretty impossible.

We were putting out the blanket and picnic basket when I heard this tiny little pleading voice from off in the distance. "Dad, Dad......HELP!!" We looked everywhere and though we could hear Nick, we couldn't see him anywhere. That is, until we looked at the impossible-to-climb cliff and there he was...almost to the top...and stuck. He would have made it, but he wasn't tall enough to reach the next handhold and it was much too difficult to go back down.

Most parents have "saved their children's lives", multiple times, from fast car stops, choking on hot-dogs, to grabbing them before they ran into the street...etc.

This time was a bit more difficult. I had to dash over and start climbing the cliff to where he was....all the while telling him reassuringly that Dad was on the way.

When I got to where he was, I discovered the problem...hand holds are not necessarily footholds and going back down (let alone carrying somebody) was not a solution. Other than the worry of us both tumbling down a two or three story high rocky cliff, I had it under control. We had to finish climbing to the top.

The brave adventurer bravado was gone when I arrived where he was stuck. The all-trusting, 'my Dad is a super-hero' look took over from the 'deer in the headlights' look as I climbed up next to him. There wasn't any time and this wasn't the spot to lecture him about the danger he got himself (and me) in.

His answer to my "It looks like you got yourself stuck" was a proud "Look Dad, I got higher than my brothers." Which indeed he did...the classic half-full vs. half-empty observation shared by all my children. It wasn't a sobbing, "I'm gonna die!...it was "I almost got it Dad, but I can't reach the next rock..can you help me up?"

Since Nick is still here and I am telling the story, you can successfully surmise that we made it.

Still the adventurer, I am confident he will somehow, always find the next handhold to make it to the top.

rlw

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I REMEMBER - The Houseboat

2012-01-22T19:32:00.000-08:00

...Once Upon a Time, I lived on a houseboat. It was moored in Walnut Grove, California, a few miles south of Sacramento on the Sacramento River Delta. A friend of mine bought an old used rental houseboat and enlisted my help to remodel it. The were selling off the whole fleet and replacing them with newer boats. I bought my own.

The premise was to remodel them into the "everything redwood" 70's style and live happily ever after on the Delta. I have to say, it was pretty cool. I stripped all the tin siding off and recovered the 'apt on water' inside and out with redwood. Added a couple of skylights. New tile shower and kitchen counters. New carpet. Removed bunk beds and added double bed with caribou bedspread and skylight above. Very 70's. It was awesome.

As it is said, every silver lining has a cloud.

1st cloud: the roof was flat and because of the previous 10 years of college fraternity guys with kegs partying on the roof - it sagged a bit and leaked (hence being up for sale). First order of business was to cut the roof off and replace with an open beamed ceiling with a slope. What I didn't realize at the time was that ALL THE ELECTRICAL WIRING was strung through the existing roof beams. I naively removed the roof and discarded all the junk, discovering to my dismay that I had just devalued my new floating home by 50%, now with no working electrical system. Thank God for Sunset Magazine's How To... books. I became a plumber and an electrician quickly.

2nd Cloud: I was a working carpenter in Chico, California at the time, spending all my weekends on the boat remodeling it. About 250 miles round-trip. My table saw was in two pieces, the saw and the stand it sat on. I would dismantle it and carry it up the boat ramp every weekend to use on my job in Chico. Getting tired of unbolting the saw to the stand on a regular basis. I hit up on the idea of strong jawed clamps to secure it and then I could just squeeze and release the clamps when it was time to go. Sounded good.

I was sawing a long 2" x 8" cross beam on the front deck of my boat one Saturday when a speed boat went by pretty fast- ignoring the 5 mph wake rule in the marina. The rocking back and forth caused my wood to pry the saw from the stand on one side. I shut off the motor (thank God) and reached under the saw to grasp the clamp and tighten it down again. Note: like an iceberg, the big part is under the water. Eyes firmly on the 2" of the 10" blade still spinning (motor off) I promptly stuck my hand into the 8" portion spinning out of sight, under the table. The blade stopped when it stuck in my knuckle of my right forefinger. To the left of the blade was my right thumb and right forefinger. To the right were my other three fingers. Did I say 'Thank God' my saw was turned off, yet? I am not Three-fingered Jack.

Surprisingly,at first, there wasn't a lot of blood. It was a pretty deep cut from right beyond the base of my thumb to the right forefinger knuckle. I wrapped a decently clean dishtowel over my hand. I calmly walked over to my friend's boat, knocked on the window and asked him to run me up to the med clinic in town. We hastened over and walked inside. For the first time since the accident, we removed the towel to see the damage. Not so good. The towel was pretty well soaked through with blood. I thought to myself that this was like dissecting a frog, but more personal. Tendons, veins, flesh and lots of blood, etc. The young woman at the clinic rinsed it off, wrapped it up with gauze and said they could not handle anything so severe and I should go directly to the hospital in Stockton (40 or so miles away) and did I want to call an ambulance. My friend almost passed out...he did not realize the extent of the cut. We thought we could get there faster if he drove me, as we were way down on the bayou and the ambulance would have to come from Stockton and then take me back. There was a little two-lane road along the top of the levy and then a wild ride through rice fields to get to the main highway. I was more freaked out by my friend's wild panicked driving than I was by the injury. I had to tell him to slow down many times, as I knew we were unlikely to make it to the hospital alive otherwise.

We arrived at the emergency room and luckily, there was an extremely skilled surgeon there, waiting for a union rep that had gotten his finger caught in some machinery that was being flown in for the surgeon to work on. He agreed to fix my cut - 'to warm up'. before the other guy got there, NO CHARGE!

I don't remember much other than he whistled "Hitch Your Wagon to a Star" the whole time, it didn't cost me more than $50 for medical supplies and that there is a barely discernible scar today.

I eventually towed the houseboat to Chico and sold it for twice what I paid, so some silver did shine through.

rlw

I REMEMBER - 'Men only' - Fish Camp with Cousins & Uncles

2011-11-23T13:53:00.000-08:00

There are lots of good memories in our lives and for those that are blessed with large families, there are often even more. Interaction with different personalities that might doom a relationship outside your own family, but are preserved forever because they are “blood” relatives Blood is thicker than water.

Most of my relatives were in Oklahoma and when my Mom and sister and I moved to California, it was like Marco Polo sailing off to the edge of the known universe.

We went back a couple of times for a visit and family reunions. Being young, skinny wearing glasses, with all my 6’+ farm boy older cousins and Aunts and Uncles, I was often lost in the mix.

One of my favorite memories was a week-long, guy’s only, fish camp expedition. There were lots of trucks (one with a huge freezer in the bed), chicken guts, “Catfish Charley” stink bait, treble hooks for snagging catfish and trot-lines.

We stayed at a fish camp on the Arkansas River…little shanty cabins right on the river bank. We had big campfires at night and I drank lots of soda…I seem to recall my uncles and older cousins drinking something with the word “lightning” out of mason jars, getting louder and crazier as the night wore on. We had made a side trip to this little farm to pick up the mason jars. I waited in the truck.

We caught a couple of month’s worth of fish, mostly catfish and bass. We cleaned and gutted them and packed them in the freezer right there. We also had fish for breakfast, lunch and dinner (good to get home and have a hamburger).

I watched my older cousins catch catfish with their bare hands in little washed out recesses in the river banks. There were lots of yelling and new words for me to learn when they got spiked with fins.

My fondest memory after 50+ years was a nightmare at the time, which is often true with many good stories. Being the youngest (and most naïve) on this “man trip”, I got initiated into the “Chiles Clan” one night. We were sitting around the campfire and the mason jars were being passed around – not me.

One of my three uncles announced that it was time to check the trotlines and needed a volunteer. All my cousins volunteered me. It was pitch black and very late at night. I was terrified to even go much beyond the campfire area, but had to “man up” and not let it show that I was about to wet myself in fear.

I had to take one of the “Jonboats” off the shore and paddle out into the night following the rope tied from one tree to another across the river and check the dangling baited hooks to see (had a lantern) if we had any fish on them, pull them up, remove the fish – drop them in the bottom of the boat (club them in the head if they flopped too much), rebait the hooks and paddle back. No problem. I am thinking, I can do this.

I faced my fear of the dark and took off as calmly (on the outside) as I could and was about halfway out when the initiation happened. One of my older cousins slipped into the water behind me and quietly swam out to the boat and came up over the side behind me with a loud moan. I now knew the monster stories were true and I was soon to be a dead man (boy actually). Never one to go down without swinging (I had lost my fair share of playground fistfights) I first screamed at the top of my lungs then grabbed the paddle and wacked the “monster” over the head a couple of times.

The distant laughter from the camp that had started with my screaming at the top of my lungs, turned into several enlightening four letter words from my half-drowned cousin and my uncles on the shore – one of which had to swim out and help his dazed “monster” son back to shore…and then the laughter started up again back at the camp after confirming everyone was still alive. This time they were laughing at my soaking wet, gash-on-forehead cousin.

I was now officially in the clan…even offered a sip from the Mason jar (after they applied some to my cousin’s wound - man, did he ever yell even louder than me). Tasted very much like gasoline, but not as smooth…I think my eyes crossed several times from just enough to wet my flaming lips. I slept well.

The story was passed around at the next week’s family reunion. Me, swelling with pride, my cousin embarrassed and my Mom whacking her brothers (my uncles) for allowing such a thing.

My uncles were 6’3”+ - my mom was 5’1” – They were laughing so hard, I don’t think her punches were felt much.

Rlw

I REMEMBER - Thanksgiving Day and the largest car wreck in the U.S.

2011-11-22T20:13:00.000-08:00

It was Thanksgiving Day in about 1959. My mom (Grace Whitlock at the time), my sister Sharon and I were heading down Hwy 80 to San Francisco. We were traveling in a 1958 Chevy Biscayne (bright yellow) that my Mom disliked intensely. My dad had bought this car with money we didn't have and then left the family and headed out to parts unknown. We are in fairly dire straits financially, but Mom had decided to splurge a bit and take us to San Francisco to have Thanksgiving Day at Fisherman’s Wharf and trek through Chinatown.

We were living in Folsom (near Sacramento) and departed early in the morning, so we could make the day of it. It was a cold and crisp day, but sunny and cloudless. We knew we were going to have a fantastic day. We got dressed in our best Sunday-go-to-Meetin’ clothes and jumped in the car and off we went (note – there were no seat belts : The world's first seat belt law was put in place in 1970, in the state of Victoria, Australia, making the wearing of a seat belt compulsory for drivers and front-seat passengers/Wikipedia).

We started noticing fog. The closer we got to the Bay area, the foggier it got. By the time we reached the outskirts of Vallejo, the fog was so thick you could barely see a few feet in front of you. Traffic slowed to a crawl. We were mainly concerned about getting to San Francisco in a reasonable time, as this was supposed to be a day trip – down and back.

There was a new bridge in place at the Carquinez straits that had opened earlier that year, but there was still remnants of construction and lane widening about. We were going about 15 miles an hour, following the taillights of the car in front of us. Then he stopped. There was a lot of crashing and metal grinding noises from the other east-bound side of the freeway. Perhaps he thought he was on the shoulder, not in the slow lane. Apparently he stopped to see if he could help with the accident occurring across the divider from us, got out and ran over to “help”. Mom wanted to pull over and get off the freeway out of traffic, but we couldn’t see two feet in front of us. It was worse out the side windows, because there were no headlights to cut through it. We knew were close to the bridge, which meant close to the cliffs overlooking the Carquinez Straits (The Carquinez Bridge refers to parallel bridges spanning the Carquinez Strait, forming part of interstate 80 between Crockett and Vallejo, California. The name originally referred to a single cantilever bridge built in 1927, helping to form a direct route between San Francisco and Sacramento. A second parallel cantilever bridge was completed in 1958 to deal with the increased traffic – Wikipedia).

The car behind us stopped also and started honking his horn along with us to get the guy ahead of us to get going. That was about the time the first car hit the car behind us – shoving him into the rear of our car. I will never know why people drive so fast in bad weather, but they do. Then a pile-up started, one after another. Cars were spinning out and crashing into each other. It was an odd raucous symphony of tearing metal (cars weren’t plastic then – and gas was about 25 cents/ gallon) and blaring horns. We could also feel the constant reverberation, as the cars behind and to the side of us got hit also. We discovered later that one of the cars behind us had several bags of potatoes in their trunk and they flew out upon impact. Cars were skidding around in the potato-strewn freeway.

It seemed like it would never end. The repeated shocks of cars crashing into each other got fainter and fainter as the cars continued to stack up behind us. Soon, the fog lifted a bit where we were and we could see there was a huge turnout about ten feet away from us - enough to park all the cars involved in the accident. We just couldn’t see it. It could have been the edge of the cliff also. When it seemed safe to do so, Mom had us get out and run over to the turnout, to get out of the way of the automotive mayhem going on all around us.

Between the car pile-up opposite us and the car wreck behind us, there were over 100 cars involved (according to an article published later in Popular Science, it was the largest car wreck in the U.S. at the time). Miraculously, there were no fatalities. About the worst injury was a guy who got out of his car and tried to run across the freeway, slipped on the potatoes and had his legs run over by skidding car.

When it cleared and the police arrived, we were the only car able to drive away, as we hadn’t hit anyone and there was no damage to the front end of our car. Accordingly, it appeared to be our entire fault, for stopping on the freeway. Fortunately, there were witnesses that also saw the original car that had stopped, drive away as the accident started in the west bound lane. He had apparently been on the opposite side of the freeway, looking at the other accident and came running back when our side of the freeway started having collisions and drove away.

We did not go to San Francisco. We did not go to Fisherman’s Wharf or Chinatown. We did not have Thanksgiving the way we had planned in The City by the Bay. Instead we drove back to our little house in beautiful-weather Folsom. The grocery stores were closed for the holiday. We had not stocked the pantry for Thanksgiving. We became the Old Mother Hubbard poem:

Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To get her poor doggie a bone,
When she got there
The cupboard was bare
So the poor little doggie had none.

There was however, in the back of our cupboard, a large can of Yams and a half bag of dried up marshmallows. Note: dried marshmallows can be reconstituted and when baked on top of canned yams with butter…becomes a most delicious Thanksgiving meal.

We were safe, warm and healthy. A bit crunched in her rear-end, the poor old yellow Chevy could still drive. Fifty two years later, times are much better and we have much to be thankful for. It doesn’t have to be a big turkey on the table to be witness to the real bounty: family, health and friends. Happy Holidays.

Rlw

I REMEMBER…Rottweiler’s and the rolling gate.

2011-10-04T20:33:00.000-07:00

In the late 1990’s I was in charge of a major truck-trailer rental company. My territory was Northern California and Northern Nevada. I travelled a lot and often got home way after dark. I travelled from Vallejo to Redding and over to Tahoe, Carson City and Reno.

There were seventeen stores and about one-hundred independent dealers in that geographic area. The challenge was to keep the inventory of trailers and trucks at the location most likely to have customers that wanted to rent them. The reality was that the trucks they needed in Sacramento were often sitting on the lot in Redding or Reno, etc. We often had to make these ‘runs’ to pick up needed rental equipment and transport them to the new location before the weekend when demand was the highest.

There were several of my staff members with me on one such run and we arrived back in Sacramento late on a Friday night. It was a successful foray and we brought back the equipment needed. We pulled up to the rental center, opened the rolling gates, pulled the equipment in and parked them all in a neat row.

Everybody, but my assistant and I had headed home in the personal vehicles they left parked outside the gate. Our team was very efficient, as we had done this procedure many times. In and out….done…head home.

The last two of us were walking back towards the open gate when we heard the strangest sound. It was a very rapid clicking sound, accompanied by low growls. I was tired. It had been a long day. Finally my brain cells kicked in. Because we had been experiencing vandalism at this particular location, I had asked for the office staff to arrange for a security guard dog service. I thought I had made it clear that the service was to start tomorrow, as we were bringing trucks in tonight.

All I could hear was click, click, click, growl getting closer, as their nails scraped across the pavement, trying to get a good grip to pick up speed. As our feet picked up speed, I came to the sinking conclusion that the dog service had started a day early. A tried a quick glance over my shoulder, which, if you are not that girl in the Exorcist, was very hard to do at a full run. It was dark, but not so much that I missed two very large Rottweilers coming, full bore, right at us.

We were at far more than a full run now and salvation (the open gate) lay 20 yards ahead of us. They were gaining on us, but Lord Be With Us, we made it to the gate first. We grabbed the long rolling gate and pushed it along with all our might to get it closed before the dogs got us. We pushed until it stopped.

I had a big sense of relief as, a second later, the dogs hit that fence at full tilt. I didn’t get much of a chance to savor the victory of Man vs. Guard Dog, as I realized (a second before the dogs also realized it) that this was a twenty foot opening gate with two rolling ten foot sections. We had only closed one half of the gate.

My friend had already made it to the truck. I thought for about a half of a nano-second that I could run past the 10 foot open area to the other half of the gate and, by myself, roll it closed and lock the security chain before the dogs dashed through. Like a defensive feint in football or basketball, facing my two growling opponents through the chain link, as soon as I shifted my weight to my left foot to make the dash, these highly intelligent canines realized there was a ten foot chasm available to them as well.

After about two steps to the left I became aware that the dogs had already covered twice the distance and were rounding the half-closed gate and coming my way. Much like an inspired Olympic sprinter-high jumper, I crossed the distance between me and the waiting truck and leaped into the back of the pick-up truck, just as the dogs were on my heel.

My companion, safe inside the cab with the windows rolled up, and I, on top of the cab, inched slowly along the opening, with me pulling the gate along until we finally had it closed, chained and locked.

By now, the dogs had mysteriously disappeared into the night. Fortunately I had my cell phone in the truck. Now relegated to the museum of early portable phones (the phone was attached to a phone cord with a giant battery pack in a canvas bag, much like the type you see the ‘Radio guy” using in old war movies) it was still a convenient was to make a call under dire circumstances.

I called the dog protection services and left a message that his guard dogs had managed to escape and to come find them. All future truck runs left the vehicles on the street until daylight.

rlw

I REMEMBER - Filming of 'Death on the Nile'

2011-09-24T15:44:00.000-07:00

Death on the Nile a detective novel by Agatha Christie in 1938 was made into a movie in 1977 and hit the theaters in 1978.

So there I am, a worldly traveler in Luxor, Egypt checking out the temples and statues at Luxor temple. I was taking pictures like all the other tourists and I happened to observe that two women and two young children near me with one adult woman taking pictures of the children.

I was struck by how accommodating the children were when asked to hold still and pose for a picture as they did so cheerfully. As I was standing close by, I complemented the mom on how well-behaved the children were and how eager to have their pictures taken, quite unlike other children. She replied that they were very used to having their pictures taken.

Her voice sounded so familiar. Thousands of miles from California in the Egyptian desert, here I am asking this total stranger if we had ever met, as her voice sounded so familiar. She said she was an actress and that I had probably seen her in movies.

I embarrassingly asked who she was. She replied: Mia Farrow (Rosemary's Baby, Peyton Place, etc.) and that she was here in Egypt filming a mystery movie from a novel by Agatha Christie called "Death on the Nile."

Note for history...one of the two children with her that day way Soon Yi Previn (adopted daughter of Mia Farrow and Andre Previn) who eventually married Mia Farrow's future husband, Woody Allen)...some what complicated, but true.

Sooooooooooooooo, she said they were filming a scene nearby (she wasn't in that scene) in the adjacent Luxor Temple and that it was OK for me to watch. That I did and had a great thrill seeing so many famous movie stars, so close up (10 feet away).

This was Egypt, it was hot - I was wearing a tank top and was sweating. The actors were wearing Thirties elegant costumes (men in 3 piece suits with ties, women in full gowns). Check out the lighting/camera guy to the left...shorts and no shirt - that is how hot was...The actors really earned their money, as they filmed it over and over..even with the thrill of being in such close proximity to these famous people, I soon tired of seeing the same thing over and over.

I thought they did a marvelous job each time...but the director had them do it again and again. When the movie came out the following year- I watched for that part...maybe 30 seconds or so and I had watched them do it for hours.

Who was there...
* Bette Davis
* Olivia Hussey
* George Kennedy
* Mia Farrow
* Peter Ustinov
* Jane Birkin
* Angela Lansbury
* David Niven
* Maggie Smith
* Jack Warden

rlw

I REMEMBER...Traveling in Europe in the 70's

2011-06-12T12:59:00.000-07:00

...when I traveled in Europe many years ago, I had a self-imposed budget to keep me in bed and board for the six months I was traveling. It was patterned after Frommer’s – “Europe on $10 a Day” (seriously...only $10 and it could be done. There was even a $5 a Day earlier version).

I had a certain amount of money in my pocket. I had a finite number of days I wished to spend traveling. Pretty easy math. Number of dollars divided by number of days. There were no more dollars coming into the equation, so for the equation to work, I had to be careful with the amount I spent per day.

I carried a little blue spiral notebook with me and it was very much like a checkbook. On the first page I put the amount of money I had available and the amount I allotted myself to spend each day – all intended to arrive back home with zero dollars and zero days…mission complete.

I would track my expenses minutely, every penny, every day. If I spent less money on Tuesday, I could carry that over to spend on the following Wednesday or add it back into the total. I had three columns. The first was the total dollars available for the day ($10.00). The second was what I actually spent that day. The third was my plus or minus to carry over to the next day. Pretty simple accounting.

If I knew there was a day coming up that would require more money – I would miserly live a simpler life in the proceeding days to save up for the big spending day/week. When the spending opportunity caught me off guard and I went over my daily budget, I had to pay the piper in the following days until I was even again.

The person I was traveling with voted to spend it all in London on clothes and antiques. I voted to continue on by myself.

The unplanned cash expenditure of a one way ticket back to California (and eat the already-paid-for second return ticket) put a serious hamper in my budget. The travel deal I had landed to make the trip in the first place was based on coming home on a specific flight on a specific date from Paris, six months into the future. I had to make the money I had left for that specific number of days and I had just knocked a hole in that budget with about a month's equivalent of money pulled out unexpectedly.

My solution was to go to Crete - a little island off the coast of Greece and go"Off Grid" for a month until my remaining days matched up with my remaining money. Walked forever along the coastline until I was miles from civilization (probably multi-million dollar condos there now). I found a little abandoned bamboo hut - just in front of a large olive orchard and about ten feet from the Libyan Sea (a portion of the Mediterranean Sea) and actually had some of the best times of my six-month jaunt to Europe - doing absolutely nothing - no services - no people- no tourists - no museums. I would hike into town once a week - buy bread, wine, cheese. I eventually met the old man that owned the property - he had no problem with me staying there- I helped him in his orange orchard and olive orchard in exchange for the "free" rent. He had been a wild party man back in his day and now he said the only thing he drank anymore was a small glass of extra-virgin olive oil to "stay regular".

I still have the little blue book and a couple of photos. I noticed that I would write down the words I needed to know when going from one country to another (like: count to ten, bread, wine cheese, train station, etc.) phonetically, so I could pronounce them adequately..It did the job.

rlw

A upgrade from the $5/Day book - Europe travel doubled even then...

Cheap Is Still Better, Claims Travel Budgeteer Arthur Frommer, but Europe Costs $10 a Day Now August 02, 1976

Vol. 6

No. 5

That was then - this is now....

rlw

I REMEMBER: Dentists, Lincoln Logs & No Play-Dates on School Nights

2011-06-11T11:29:00.000-07:00

This isn’t the cheeriest of remembrances, but definitely one I am unable to forget and it is why I hate to go to the dentist.

It is 1954 and I am seven years old. We are living in McAllester, Oklahoma and I am in first or second grade. I didn’t have a fondness for going to the dentist like any other kid, but I liked candy, so I got to take the dental trip more often that I would have liked.

As it turned out, a good friend of mine in school was also the son of our family dentist. My friend Raymond had just gotten some new toys for his birthday, including Lincoln Logs , which was the best toy a kid could ask for in 1954 Oklahoma (with the exception of Lone Ranger Guns, mask and bandana.). His dad made a lot of money, so my friend got the first, biggest and best stuff when it came out and this wasn’t just a starter box, it was a deluxe Stage Coach Stop Kit with cowboys and horses to boot.

He invited me over to spend the night, so we could play with the new toys. It was, however, a mid-week night and was also a school night. His mom offered to bring me to school with Raymond the next morning, if I brought a change of clothes. It seemed like a super deal to me, but my Mom wouldn’t hear of it, as it was a school night. Mom was a school teacher and had a hard and inflexible rule about playing during the week. She wanted us to concentrate on homework, be rested and have our smarts on for school the next day. Play dates were exclusively for the weekends and there was no changing her mind. So, the moms made a plan for the following Saturday.

The next day at school, my friend Raymond was not in school. There was a lot of hushed whispering amongst the teachers, but when I asked if Raymond was out sick, my teacher just told me I should talk to my mom after school.

It turned out that Raymond’s Dad, our family dentist, had snapped the night I was supposed to stay over, killed the entire family with injections of poison, burned the house to the ground and committed suicide.

Dentists' odds of suicide "are 6.64 times greater than the rest of the working age population," writes researcher Steven Stack. "Dentists suffer from relatively low status within the medical profession and

have strained relationships with their clients—as few people enjoy going to the dentist."

That was almost 60 years ago and although I can’t tell you what I did last week, I still remember that time I was invited to be in Raymond’s house that night and my fear of dentists giving you an injection. For a very long time after, you needed three men and a mule to get me to the dentist or get a shot of any kind. With all the dental work, injections and blood work I have had in the past few years, I am managing much more calmly and mostly appear to be an adult about the whole process on the outside. The three men and the mule are on standby, however, in case of a relapse.

So, this week, I remembered that I have a root canal/crown replacement appointment at 9:01am this coming Monday. One and a half hours in my least favorite spot in the universe. I’m good. Just saying, it is interesting how the little memory pop-ups from our past still come many years down the road.

Note: Reruns of The Lone Ranger starring Clayton Moore were still being transmitted as of August 2010, sixty-one years after their initial broadcast.

Oh, and for my kids, that is probably the main reason you never, ever got a sleepover on a school night.

rlw

I REMEMBER - Fishing for Crawdads, Snake Day, Bats and my dog Suzie

2011-01-01T15:42:00.000-08:00

My Dad and me in front of our new house

Here are a couple of stories I remember from my childhood in McAlester, Oklahoma. We moved to McAlester into a brand new house in a new subdivision that was right across the school from a new elementary school.

All I had to do was walk out the front door of our home and walk across the street. When I was about six years old I received a new puppy. Suzie was what my parents called a ‘Heinz 57' (The name 'Heinz 57 ' is also sometimes used to describe a dog which is a mix of multiple breeds).

Suzie stuck with me like glue. When my mom needed to find me, she called Suzie. The dog wouldn’t leave without me and would tug on my pant leg to let me know it was time to go home. My mom had a big tin whistle hanging on a nail right outside the back screen door and would step outside, grab the whistle and give it a big tweet. I could hear it most of the time, but Suzie could always hear it. I thought the whistle was for me, but now I realize it really was for my dog to bring me home.

When I went to school, Suzie would go with me to the front door and then follow me on the outside of the school and wait for me under the window of my class room. She would always be there when I got out of school. At the end of my year in First Grade (Ms Billingsly) we all got our report cards on the last day of school. Suzie got one also that testified that she had perfect attendance and didn’t bark during class.

Summers, before I started school, were fun and the rule was that we could head out the door with just shorts on - no shirts/no shoes and if we took a butter and ketchup sandwich (my favorite) for lunch with us, we could be gone until dark.

When the street lights came on, it was time to come home, unless there was a good bug show going on - that would buy us an extra 10 minutes. Little bugs, moths, fireflies and mosquitoes would swarm around each street light. Then the bats would come out. They would dive into the swirling fog of bugs around the light for an aerial picnic. Very cool. Once a bat got into our house and I remember my mom chasing it out of the house with a broom.

The other memory I have about this new house was the ongoing construction of the neighborhood development, providing thrills for a small Okie boy with time on his hands (no TV, no Nintendo or Wi's, no internet...my God, how did a kid survive?)

There was a ditch across the street before they put in water lines for the expanding neighborhood. I used to go fishing for crawdads (tiny, freshwater cousins of lobsters) in that ditch until Snake Day. If you got a long stick, tied a length of kite string on one end and a strip of red cloth (a bloody band-aid would also suffice) on the other end, you were set. I would grab a coffee can, my 'fishing pole' and head to the creek. There were little holes along the edge of the muddy water, that provided hiding spots for the crawdads. If you dangled the wet red cloth up and down in the hole, you could catch quite a few crawdads (also called mud-bugs). They would use their pincers to grab the cloth and you could just pull them out. In retrospect, the cloth probably didn't have to be red, however, it seemed awfully important at the time.

I mentioned above that I got to do that until 'Snake Day'. On that fateful day, I was going from hole to hole in my little muddy ditch fishing spot, filling up my little bucket with crawdads (we never ate them, we used them for Bass fishing), when I discovered that snakes like crawdads too. I saw this little snake tail sticking out of one of the crawdad holes and rushed home to get a canning jar off the back porch and ran back to the ditch. Not appreciating that although I knew snakes could bite you, this was a actually a deadly, baby water moccasin. I pulled the snake out, popped it into the mason jar, screwed the lid down tight and ran home to show my mom my new prize. After freaking out and thoroughly checking me all over for snake bites (after all, all I had on was shorts), she scolded me forever (my mom always repeated the 'lesson' at least 5 times to make sure I 'got it'), forbid me to EVER go near the ditch again, and then hugged me and we had a big slice of watermelon.

All of these memories were before TV. I remember wanting a TV, because friends at school had one. One summer we were eating watermelon on the picnic table on our side yard. I kept throwing watermelon seeds on the roof. My mom asked me why I was doing that. My answer was that I was hoping the seeds would sprout and grow a vine that looked like a TV antennae and then every one would think we had a TV.

Those truly were the good old days.

rlw

I REMEMBER - Baseball, the Pain and the Triple Play

2010-12-12T23:28:00.000-08:00

I remember being an All-American kid growing up loving to play baseball. Mostly we played stick-ball in our yard, and in the good old days we only had a back fence in our neighborhood in McAlister, Okla. There were no side fences or front fences, and so our yard just ran through our neighbor's yard and their neighbor's yard--until you ran out of block. Kids could play football and have the whole 100 yards with their buddies and their neighbors' yards.

But baseball was the best. I loved it. I started playing catcher. I had my moves down to throw guys out trying to steal bases. This was sandlot ball with virtually no equipment. We had bats, balls and gloves (most of us) and that was about it. About a month into my career as a ball player, Timmy Johnson, big time slugger, failed to control his swing and after a mighty effort (he missed the ball), he kept coming around and connected quite solidly with my forehead. Laid me out like a cod. Knocked me out cold. Other than a slight concussion (my mom said a coconut was softer), I later had the pleasure of hearing that everyone thought Timmy had killed me and they ran to HIS mom's house (three houses down) and told his mom that Timmy had killed Bobby with a bat. Boy, did he ever get in big trouble. That was fitting payback, because just a month earlier, I had gotten into big-time trouble because I had killed Timmy with a dart. Sorta.

We were playing darts in his room (yes, real pub darts - no plastic electronic darts) and I was winning. He kept trying to pull the darts out of the board before I was through throwing and was pretending to jump in front of me to "throw" off my excellent game.

Well, this time he jumped in front of the dart board just as I had released the dart, winging its way to the bulls-eye, and the dart stuck him right square in the back of his head. The shock made him faint. He turned and looked at me with this funny expression. The pupils of his eyes just disappeared, and all I could see were the whites of his eyes before he landed on the floor flat on his face. I knew I had killed him. I did the honorable thing. I ran home and hid in my closet. His mom and my mom searched and tracked me down. I could have lived in that closet for a long time if my dog hadn't ratted me out. I figure Timmy's mom heard me blast out through the front screen door and went to Timmy's room to see what was up. She found him laid out, face down, on the floor with a dart sticking out of the back of his head. Although her screaming woke him up and there wasn't much blood, they felt an unexplainable obligation to go tell my mom and blah, blah, blah - this story isn't about darts anyway, it is about baseball. But that is why I got pleasure out of Timmy getting whacked for killing me.

But I never wanted to be catcher again. Go figure. I tried. You know, "Get back on the horse, triumph over fear," etc. But I couldn't catch the ball anymore. I kept watching the bat, not the ball, and ducking every time someone would swing.

So, I decided to switch positions to pitcher. I was pretty good, and once I got my glasses, I had a lot more control over getting the ball actually over the plate. I had one pitch. A fastball. I was very lucky, because nobody (except Timmy) could hit. I was now enjoying my re-found love of baseball, until Timmy got off lifetime restriction (a week without baseball) and he got to come back and play ball with us. When it was his turn at the plate, I got two balls past him. I thought I had ended his career as the neighborhood power slugger, when on the next pitch he drilled my fastball straight into my groin. I didn't see it coming. I threw the ball knowing it was going to be a called-three strikeout and I would be King of the Neighborhood. I had about one second to gloat and pump my fist into the air, and then I found myself on the ground clutching my crotch and crumpled up in the most agony a young man can feel. Just as we didn't have helmets and catcher's masks, we also didn't have protective cups. I could not breathe. The pain was excruciating. I knew I was doomed to a life of singing soprano in the boy's choir. I finally saw Timmy standing over me, and although it was hard to hear because everyone else was laughing so hard, I think he mouthed the word "Sorry." His grin, however, belied his sincerity. He had regained his 'King of the Neighborhood' crown on his first day off restriction.

I could not even get the ball over the plate after that. I would curl into a defensive crouch immediately upon releasing the ball. My pitching career was over. I then moved to right field.

What I loved most about playing the right field position was that you were very unlikely to get hit in the forehead with a baseball bat or in the crotch with a screaming line drive. You could actually see the ball coming from a long way off and get ready. The bad thing is that nobody could hit the ball that far and it was excruciatingly boring.

That month, my family was moving to Colorado, and they wanted to get there in August so my sister and I could start school on time and not miss any days. It was my last Saturday playing baseball with the guys. My team was skins and the other guys were shirts. It isn't any more complicated than that - no protective gear and no uniforms. So you could tell the teams apart, half the guys had to take their shirts off. We were always the skins and Timmy's team was always the shirts. We never won (except the week Timmy was on restriction). Today, we were ahead and it really looked like we would actually win on my last day as an Oklahoma skin. There was one guy on base and Timmy was at bat. Like it was ordained, he hit a high fly ball into right field. Right at me. Home runs were based on either the ball going over the outfielder's heads or them missing the ball altogether (nobody could catch, either), and the ball would roll forever as there were no fences. So, finally, something was coming my way, other than a butterfly or a bumblebee. I was startled because a fly ball had never reached me in my short career as a right fielder. The sun was right in my eyes. I put my glove hand up to shield my eyes from the sun and the ball landed right in it.

Game over. Skins win. Finally. I was King of the Neighborhood at last, and then we moved away to Colorado the following Monday. Just like a movie. Due to circumstances, I never played baseball again.

Fast forward: I am a Dad and the coach of my son's baseball team. This particular league was in between T-Ball (where there is a pipe on a mat sticking up about waist high - you put the ball on it and the batter takes a swing) and the age where you actually had a pitcher (makes my groin hurt just thinking about it). The team's coach was the pitcher for his own team.

My son, Nick, was a catcher (with a face-mask and protective gear), and also the team's best hitter (I am sure Timmy's kids hated baseball). So, as the team's coach and chief strategist, I told him to just swing hard, hit the ball high in the air and run, without stopping, around all the bases. Nobody could catch the ball in the air, and they still couldn't catch it if someone threw them the ball. He always got home runs. So here we are, last game of the season, the game on the line, the bases loaded (the other team), nobody out, and Nick is catching.

Anybody that loves baseball should live so long as to have the following moment unfold right in front of them. The batter pops the ball up. All the base runners start running on the pitch. Nick rips the mask off, catches the pop up (out number one) and tags the runner coming from third who runs right into him (out number two). The runners from first and second base reverse themselves and tried to get back to their original base. The kid that was on first was just rounding second when all this unfolded. He slammed on the brakes and was making a bee-line back to first base. Nick sees him coming and, as our first baseman was busy looking at butterflies, runs him down before he could get to the bag and tags him out (out number three. A unassisted triple play). (Wikipedia: The unassisted triple play, a triple play in which only one fielder handles the ball, is the least common type of triple play, and is arguably the rarest occurrence in baseball: it has happened only 15 times in the Modern Era.)

My personal childhood baseball demons were vanquished, albeit vicariously through my son, forever. I bet Timmy never had this moment.

I REMEMBER - The Dog, the Van & the Amish Road Trip

2010-12-11T23:32:00.000-08:00

It was the late 1970's and I had just finished my substitute teaching stint in Calaveras County, California. I had a great longing to travel to Europe and wanted to get to the East Coast to jump off for my European travels. A couple of teacher friends were enrolled in a cooking school in New Haven, Connecticut for the summer and were going to drive across county to the East Coast a couple of weeks before the school began. A seemingly innocuous drive across county turned into a road trip of high adventure and a story almost too bizarre to believe.

Driving north and then east through Canada, out little Volkswagen Van puttered along quite nicely. The scenery was beautiful in June and we camped at many stunning campgrounds along the way, always having to hustle to find a spot as the parks were almost always full.

We traveled along a long lonely stretch of road in Manitoba, Canada right above Montana. It was a bit before dusk and we pulled into a campground with no ranger in the little kiosk at the entrance. We thought that was odd, but the gate wasn't closed, so in we drove. There were beautiful camp spots everywhere and nice facilities, but no people. We picked the nicest spot, started a campfire and began to fix dinner. Then the invasion began. At first, there just a few small ones. Mosquitoes. Hundreds, then thousands and larger. A swarm. It was horrible. We built a large circle of green branches, set them on fire and stood in the middle of the smoke and it didn't matter. We all got into the van and covered up inside of our sleeping bags. It still didn't matter. The mosquitoes, somehow, got into the van with us and into our sleeping bags. It was hot, humid and miserable. Half of us were crying. The other half were cursing and crying. Finally, we threw all the gear into the van, started up and drove away. It was 3am. We were never so happy to leave a beautiful campground. We opened all the windows and drove out into the night at top speed until all the little winged kamikazes were gone. This is a quote from a Canadian travel blog : "The Sandilands is probably a good place for you to try camping. Beware in Manitoba we have MOSQUITO'S that can pick up a human being and carry them away."

Upon arrival in New Haven, I decided to postpone my trip to Europe until the following year and instead, I worked for the New Haven Boys club as a counselor for the summer. Working with a bunch of little East Coast, pre-teen, grand-theft-auto parolees was an experience in itself. More than once, I was offered the chance to hot-wire the camp van and go for a midnight ride. I passed.

The summer was finally over and it was time to head back to California. We took the northern US route this time because the newly ordained chefs wanted to shop for quilts and antiques in the Amish country of Pennsylvania. I had just picked up a new Labrador puppy in New Haven before we departed west, so the dog and I were relegated to the back of van, which was fine with us.

We arrived in the beautiful Pennsylvania countryside that contained many interesting Amish towns, some with memorable names. We stopped in Bird-in-Hand, Pa and the chefs bought a lot of quilts and an antique, painted rocking chair. We loaded up the van with the chair and the dog and me in the back.

Driving along we couldn't resist stopping in one more well-known Amish community: Intercourse, Pa. Rumored to have been renamed from the original name Cross Keys, because "the word 'intercourse' was commonly used to describe the 'fellowship' and 'social interaction and support' shared in the community of faith, which was much a part of a rural village like this one."[

So, we are walking around taking pictures of signs and marveling at the number of horse drawn carriages and non-motorized vehicles in daily use. When you have a lot of horse drawn vehicles, you also have a lot of horse "plops". I don't know what it is about dogs and their fascination with the excrement of other animals. But, true to form, my dog "Sabu" decided to roll in the little "used hay" piles and then, started eating them. It was totally gross. My fellow travelers would not let us back into the van until I found a hose alongside one of the buildings and washed and hosed the dog as best as I could.

The dog, finally acceptable-to-the-nose of my van mates, and I got back into the van and we all headed West. Apparently, my quickie wash job had not been the best or perhaps the horse-dookey-eating dog's breath didn't leave anything to the imagination, because the driver's complaints about the odor started to mount with each passing mile. I opened the back windows and told my dog not to breathe through his mouth, but to no avail.

To top it off, the old paint on the newly acquired antique rocker started to flake away and now it wasn't just the horse-poop dog-breath that was a perceived problem, but that my dog was also eating the chair. The dog and I both could see where this was headed. We were not too far away from thumbing our way back to California. We were just unwelcome passengers and we were feeling the heat.

Gross as it was, the coolest thing I have ever seen a dog do, happened. The driver had started a new rant about the dog, the paint, the odor, his breath, the fact that I had a s**t -eating dog, etc. It was almost unbearable to me, but the dog had surely reached the end of his canine patience.

When people and animals are going to throw up, they usually give warning and go through some "I think I am going to be sick" motions. Not on this day. My dog, who normally stayed away from the driver on this trip, as there was an obvious dislike for each other in the air, calmly proceeded to walk up to the front of the van and vomit hot horse crap down the back of the driver's neck.

A few minutes later, standing along the side of the road with my dog and pack, with my thumb out and a freshly made sign that said "California", I felt that I had the unique privilege of witnessing, perhaps the funniest thing I have ever seen in my life, before or since. I swear I saw that dog turn and look at me and smile, as expletives I hadn't since my sports days in the locker room, filled the inside of the now "freshly spewed upon" van.

The dog and I made a relatively event-less trip back home to California and entertained each driver thereafter, with easily the best tale they had ever heard. The dog shared with me later, that perhaps, he did nibble just a bit on the antique rocker.

I REMEMBER - Chico State College and the pigeons

2010-12-05T15:20:00.000-08:00

When I had first started thinking about college and where I should go, I set up a meeting with my high school career counselor. Being seventeen, I was seeking independence from home and my parents, as my top priority. Career, college, life...everything else was secondary.

When I met with my counselor, he asked "What do you want to do"? and 'had I thought about what college to attend'. I told him it had to be in California for in-state fees (my parent's criteria) and it had to be at least one hour away from Rancho Cordova (my criteria - not living at home anymore, close enough for me to get home when I wanted to and yet, too far away for my parents to just drop in anytime they wanted).

I applied at several colleges. My grades were good, my SAT's were good, so I got accepted at a few places and took them into my counselor's office to discuss. We narrowed it down to UC Davis, Cal State, San Luis Obispo, and Chico State College. We talked about the merits of each: UC Davis was a good university and close to home, so I could save money from dorm fees and live at home. San Luis Obispo was a good school, close to the beach and was only a few hours away. Chico State College was a good school, one hour away, rated the number one party school in America in Playboy magazine and had an enrollment of 3 to 1, women to men.

It was a tough decision, but at the end, I chose Chico State.

My first day enrolling for classes was easy and yet, traumatic. I had done my research on available classes, filled my schedule card early and was taking a break under one of the huge Valley Oak trees that is a hallmark of the Chico State campus. I was reading over the class descriptions when I was approached by a very friendly and attractive coed, with an arm full of books. She asked if she could sit down in the shade (early September in Chico - close to 100 degrees outside). I gladly invited her to share the shade and thought to myself: "This has to be the best school in the universe. Here it is - the first day of school and I might end up with a girlfriend". We talked about where we were from, blah, blah, blah and the whole time I am thinking how lucky I was and how great it was to be on top of the world, as I was, at that moment.

Then, the moment ended.

The challenge of sitting under the shade of a large tree, is that birds also like to sit on the limbs of shady trees. The young woman and I were hitting it off magnificently and had closed our personal space to about two feet, when a large pigeon pooped on my head, my nose and down the inside of my glasses. I was stunned. At first I thought it was rain - but at 100 degrees on a cloudless day, that couldn't be it. A second later, I realized my budding romantic moment had just been crapped on.

My new friend had maintained a respectful silence for that same long one second also. Then, unable to hold it in any longer, she burst out laughing, so hard she fell over.

I turned beet-red and tried to clean the bird doo off my nose, head and glasses with my shirt sleeve. It didn't work. It smeared and got worse. I am sure I looked like I had Indian war-paint on, in gooey black and white streaks, from my nose to my chin. I couldn't see because the inside of my glasses lenses were streaked with the same greasy pigeon droppings.

I thought my new friend was going to choke to death. She couldn't get her breath. Tears of laughter and big air-sucking sounds were bursting forth from her face. I took it somewhat personally, as I had not yet fully refined my now finely honed, self-depreciation skills.

I got angry.

She grabbed her books and ran away, laughing hysterically.

I had just lost my first college relationship in record time (from beginning to end in under seven minutes). I didn't even get her name. I was hoping she didn't remember mine, as I am sure I was the topic of conversation in her dorm that night or probably all week. That was 46 years ago. She is probably somewhere, writing a blog about it, right now.

The day wasn't totally crappy as I got a brand-new 3-ring binder out of the deal. She had dropped one as she ran away and didn't stop to retrieve it. I eventually gave the binder to my roommate. Too many memories.

I REMEMBER - The Champagne Toast

2010-11-28T19:30:00.000-08:00

...and visiting my sister and new brother-n-law, on a ski trip when they lived in Idaho many years ago. They weren't able to come back to California for Christmas and so my Mother bought me a plane ticket to go visit them for the Christmas Holidays and deliver family Christmas presents.

This was the first time I had met my new brother-in-law and we were both anxious to make good first impressions. This was 30 years ago. Before you get to end of the tale, you should know that we still speak today.

So, being a good host, my brother-in-law takes my sister and me to their favorite restaurant for dinner to celebrate the holiday season and New Year. We ordered dinner and also a bottle of champagne just for the occasion.

Having been an apprentice Wine Steward (busboy) at the Marine World, Marriott in California, I knew a thing or two about opening wine and champagne (mostly from watching).

The restaurant was so crowded you could barely make your way to your table. The champagne is delivered to the table and I tell the waiter that I wish to open it myself as I know what I am doing. More than one person is watching by now and I am enjoying the spotlight.

I proclaim to my entourage that the "trick" to opening champagne safely and professionally (meaning not in the locker room after you won the Super Bowl or on the racetrack after the Daytona 500) is to engage your customer (audience by now) in conversation as you place your hand firmly around the neck of the bottle and gripping tightly, rub your hand back and forth, thereby warming up the glass neck of the champagne bottle. This allows the cork to be released under less pressure and offers a nice "pop" instead of taking somebody's eye out across the room.

Things were going well, almost too well. I had great confidence, although I had never "actually" done this before. Sort of like reading a book about Olympic downhill skiing and the taking the Black Diamond run live on ESPN for your first try.

So, as you can guess, things deteriorated rapidly from my initial rush of fame. The cork was coming out. Fast. Far too fast. I could not hold it back. My Champagne bottle opening theory was turning out to be just that - theory. I realized that in a few short seconds I was going to have a fermented grape juice Vesuvius in my face.

Did I mention that the room was packed? Did I mention that my showmanship far exceeded my skill and I had a fairly large group of diners watching? The look of panic and impending doom on my face caused everyone near me to back up as far as they could in the crowded area. We all knew the Apocalypse was drawing near.

Being exposed as an obviously unskilled wine steward, I still had a grasp of my manly warrior honor and decided to throw myself on the grenade (figuratively). The cork would no longer be contained. It blew out despite my heroic efforts to stuff it back in. There was only a nanosecond to react.

I did the right thing. I plunged the open top of the exploding champagne bottle into my mouth and sacrificed myself for the good of the many. The screams around me turned to "Oh, my God" and groans.

I am not a chemist, but I did drink myself through college like most poor young students and so, was not unfamiliar with the techniques necessary to get buzzed on just a few beers, if you had no money. This moment far exceeded any of my prior drinking experiences. Approximately one half of the contents of the champagne bottle forced itself down my throat and into my stomach in about two seconds (probably some kind of undocumented record for power drinking).

For a fleeting moment, I once again had the favor of the awed crowd. It wasn't the way I had intended, but since I had saved the moment in a spectacularly showy way, I was pleased with the outcome. For a very fleeting moment.

I became aware of two sensations. One I was very drunk. Secondly I was going to throw up. Violently. If I thought the crowd around me wanted to get away when they thought they were going to get champagne sprayed on them, they were even more intent about fleeing with the possibility of spewing vomit. My stomach was distended like a cartoon character mouthing a bicycle pump.

I was reeling drunk, totally unstable on my feet (not one of my prouder moments). Eyes bulging, barely holding back the impending overflow, mumbling something about "I'm going to blow", I stumbled towards the front door. Or so I thought. Since, on a perfectly sober, clear day with all my wits about me, I have no sense of direction and thus foraged instead into the deep middle of the restaurant, where it was even more crowded.

I had this momentary vision that I was Charlton Heston and this was what it must have felt like to be Moses and part the Red Sea. People were scattering like crazy, as best as they could with nowhere to go.

Like the saying "That's it, there just isn't anymore", I reached the moment of no return. I flopped onto a dining table occupied by two horrified looking people wishing themselves off the face of the earth. Trying to express my sincere and deepest apology with my bloodshot eyes, I opened my mouth.

Oddly, I didn't throw up. The carbonation had turned my stomach into a giant gas balloon and a belch, equal to a rock band's loudest bass note, burst forth. Stunned, appalled, but relieved, the shocked couple ran from their table. I felt much better.

My sister grabbed me by the arm and guided me out the front door towards their car. Then I threw up. A lot. I mumbled something about we had not gotten our dinner yet. They threw me into the car. As I thankfully proceeded to pass out in the back seat of their speeding vehicle, I thought I heard my just-met-today new brother-n-law say something to the effective that they would never be able to go there for dinner ever again, and perhaps something derogatory about our family's ancestry.

They moved out of town soon after. Then they moved out of the state. I am sure it was just a coincidence. However, it was years before I got their new address.

I REMEMBER...INTERNATIONAL TOILETS

2010-11-28T15:02:00.000-08:00

...international toilets. Yep. I was sharing the story the other night with my daughter about the benefits of living in the United States; hot water, ice cubes, showers, washing machines, etc. including toilets.

Traveling in Mexico in the early 70's, I had an apartment in Guadalajara where the bathroom was really two rooms. The first room had just the sink and the second room had the toilet and the shower. It was a great way to save some time in the morning. You could sit on the toilet and take a shower at the same time. [Side Note: the light switch, as you walked into the room, was just two wires sticking out of the wall - each had a little loop at the end and you just hooked them together to get the light to come on. Very non-OSHA.] In the two story, two block square, Grande Mercado in downtown Guadalajara, there were public toilets up on the second level. The toilets were normal, but there wasn't any toilet paper. You had to buy it from a bathroom attendent that sat there and ripped out two pages from a magazine for you for a few pesos. If you were lucky, you didn't get the extra slick pages. [side note: best sandwich ever in the marketplace was a torta de cabra [sic]...goat sandwich [the most tender part was from the cheeks of the whole goat roasted over a spit] washed down by a Dos Equis beer.

I was traveling in Paris, France in the late 70's, and was dining in a small restaurant off the beaten path and had to use the bathroom. There were stalls, but when you opened the stall door, there was no toilet at all, just a hole in the floor. Yes, I checked the other stalls; they were all that way. There were two bricks attached to the floor on either side of the hole. The trick was to place your feet on the bricks as you attended to business. When you pulled the flush handle on the wall, the floor flooded with water into the hole...you just had to make sure you were still standing on the bricks...ha. [Side Note: In my hotel room, there was a bidet in the bathroom. I used it to keep my wine cold.]

I remember as a kid, growing up in the 1950's Oklahoma, we would visit our farming relatives during the summer. One time we went over the state line into Arkansas into the Ozark mountains to visit my Great Uncle Johnny. He had about a very old cabin on some acreage in the mountains - mostly unusable, but for a young boy, it was like a old time camping trip. There was no electricity, a pump with a handle in the kitchen and the toilet was an outhouse, out the back door and up the hill a bit. It was a one-holer as they say, and a very big hole to sit on to boot. My biggest fear was that I would fall in. Very scary with big spider webs and black widows. I tried to not go to the bathroom the whole time we were there. [Side Note: when the adults wanted to tell adult stories and wanted me to leave, Uncle Johnny would hand me a 22.cal rifle, a handful of shells and tell me to go squirrel hunting and come back in a couple of hours. You don't see that much anymore in suburban California.]

Last, but certainly not least, is my toilet story during my stay in Jamaica in the mid 70's. One of the places I stayed in was a room in a family's house in Negril at the north-west end of the island. Absolutely heaven on earth. The house was at the edge of town and the jungle came right up to the house. Fifteen feet from the house you would be lost in the jungle. The bathroom, like the Arkansas story, was outside, but with more class and fewer spiders. You went out the front door, up a little path, into the jungle. There was a small clearing where there were three cement walls about six feet high that semi-enclosed the toilet. When you walked around the wall to the open side, there, inside the 3/4 room, was the toilet. No ceiling, no fourth wall. Rather decadent feeling, sitting on the toilet, staring up into the sky and out into the jungle. It was beautiful, with colorful parrots, flowering vines and the jungle. When business was done, you scooped up a large coffee can full of rain water from the fifty-gallon drum next to the toilet and tossed it into the toilet to flush it.

[Side Note: I stayed with another Jamaican family just outside an area called Stawberry Fields (Forever, ala Beatles). They had a small house [hut] mostly constructed with driftwood and coca-cola signs. Right on the cliff, overlooking the ocean. A million dollar view. There was a hammock between two palm trees, overlooking the ocean, that quickly became my favorite place to hang out....and I have a picture to back it up].

By the way, the toilet was a dig-your-own in the banana orchard on the side of the hill.

I Remember...My famous relatives - the James Gang

2010-11-19T18:29:00.000-08:00

...stories told to me by my Oklahoma relatives one day when I shared with them that one of my classmates bragged they were related to someone famous. My Mom told me that we were related to famous people, too. She mentioned President Truman, one of the six soldier honor guards for President Lincoln (see below), and some others. However, the coolest famous relative (as a young boy) were Cole, John, Jim and Bob Younger. They were better known as the Younger brothers and even more well-known as the "Gang" in "The James Gang". The best part of the story is my grandmother telling me about watching from the top of the stairs as her mother (my great grandmother) chased (with a broom) Cole, Jesse and the gang out of their house. Her words were, "You're kin, so I won't say that you were here or where you're going, but I can't have you in my house".

Cole and Jim Younger came home from the Civil War (yes, I had relatives on both sides of the Civil War, both famous in a small footnote in history) to find their father murdered, farm burned, mother and family disbursed and family fortune gone. Looking for revenge and punishment through relieving "Yankee" banks of their cash, he decided to become the "Robin Hood" to post-war Missouri and Oklahoma. Cole actually started the gang that eventually made Jesse James famous. On March 19, 1868 Cole and his brother led a raid on a bank in Russellville, KY and brought along the James brothers, Jesse and Frank James.

Although they all had soldier backgrounds, all these men were basically farmers. Jesse and Frank James and Cole, Bob, John and Jim Younger kept up the bank and train robbing career. Jesse Jamesbecame the public face of the gang, appealing to the public in letters to the press (even press releases left behind at robberies), claiming to be the victim of vindictive Radical Republicans. Jesse became the gang's leader and the James and Younger brothers became a legend.

John Younger, as a youth, with his brother Bob, took his dying mother back to Missouri where he was repeatedly stabbed and hung four times by union soldiers and yet still survived. He and Bob then joined the James gang for revenge.

John was shot in the neck by a Pinkerton detective and died March 17, 1894.

Cole, Jim and Bob were captured after an ill-fated bank robbery and sentenced to prison in Stillwater, Minnesota.

Bob died of TB in prison on September 16, 1889.

Cole and Jim were paroled on July 10, 1901.

Jim committed suicide October 19, 1902 over an unrequited love.

Cole Younger and Frank James outlived them all and once again Cole was the leader as he lectured and toured the south with Frank in a Wild West show, The Cole Younger and Frank James Wild West Company in 1903.

Frank James died February 18, 1915. A year later, Cole Younger died March 21, 1916, in his home town of Lee's Summit, Missouri, and is buried in the Lee's Summit Historical Cemetery.

I REMEMBER...all Americans eat orange rinds.

2010-11-10T00:16:00.000-08:00

I have had the great fortune to travel extensively. It is great to learn about other cultures and dispel (or create) myths about Americans abroad.

It was about 1976 and I was in Ireland. The Killarney hotel I was staying in had access to various day trips throughout the region for tourists to savor the "feel" of rural Ireland. I signed up and off we went for a full day of exploring the Irish hills and countryside.

There were about 30 tourists from all over the world on this particular adventure. We had an early breakfast of kippers, potatoes, eggs, toast, tea and biscuits and were off a bit after sunrise. We were all quite tired as there had been an IRA bomb scare in the middle of the night. We spent a few hours standing in our sleepwear in the parking lot, while the bomb dogs sniffed their way through our rooms. Nevertheless, we were soon on our way (that strong Irish tea can kick some serious espresso butt) and we were definitively awake.

This particular adventure was to be a three-part journey. The first part was by Irish jaunting cart to the base of the foothills, a horse ride to the top of the hills, and then a boat ride back down the mountain through a series of canals and locks. The jaunting carts were rickety and jostled us back and forth until we were quite queasy. We were happy to get off the wooden plank seats and onto the horses, or should I say, "out of the frying pan and into the fire"? Butt weary, we finally arrived at the top of our little mountain and took a break for lunch.

Slight digression: Some twelve years before, I was a junior in High School and on the Cordova High School wrestling team. I loved the sport. Truly an individual athlete's opportunity to shine. Although you are on a team, you compete individually against a wrestler from another school. The down side is that if you do poorly, you can't blame it on anyone for not blocking, passing, defending, etc. Everyone just saw you out on the mat, by yourself, win or lose, it was all on you...which is also the upside. When you win , it is all you. After all- everyone just saw you out on the mat, by yourself, win or lose.

Sooooo...I was competing at the 112 lb category, which was about 15 lbs below my normal weight. The down side was that I was seriously thin and looked like a refugee from a concentration camp. The upside is that I was HUGE for my category, my opponents were much smaller, and I won a lot. Downside2 was that I constantly had to diet to maintain my weight category during the wrestling season. My daily diet for lunch (for two years) was a hard boiled egg, a cold minute-steak, an orange and water (1/2 liter bottles of water had not been invented yet...so it was a heavy stainless steel Thermos bottle of water.) I was so starved at the end of lunch, I would stare hungrily at my trash...a paper bag, wax-paper wrappers (baggies not invented yet), egg shells, and orange peels. Not enamored with the taste appeal of paper, wax or egg shells, I learned to eat (and enjoy!) orange peels and still maintain my diet.

Back to the original story. We are at the top of the mountain after a half-day of a kidney-jolting, open-air jaunting cart ride and a butt-blistering mountain pony ride to the top to connect with our afternoon downhill boat rides. There was a series of canal locks back to the base of the mountain (and then more jaunting cart rides back to the hotel). Here we are sitting on the precipice, lovely shades of green throughout the mountain and valley below, enjoying the hotel box lunch. A Guinness, fish and chips (Irish chips are potato fries; American "chips" are called crisps) and of course, an orange. So, there I was, in the company of thirty or so people from all over the world; I was the only American in our group. Gazing out over the countryside, enjoying my lunch, I finished the fish and chips, drank the Guinness and proceeded to eat the orange in its entirety, just like an apple. I had acquired a taste for orange peels from my high school athletic-diet days, and since I was gong to consume the orange peels anyway, I had learned to skip the peeling-the-skin-off part and just eat the whole thing.

It was quiet and peaceful...but I soon noticed, a bit too quiet. All conversation around me had ceased. I looked up and noticed that everyone was staring at me. I had no idea why. I asked what was wrong and someone ventured - "You are eating the whole orange, peel and all!" The only thing I could respond with was, "All Americans eat oranges this way, don't you?"

The pleasant boat ride through a series of locks winding back down the mountainside was comfortable, uneventful and extremely quiet, as everyone sat far away from me, taking furtive glances at me from time to time. I am sure my international traveling companions included me in many "American culture" post-vacation stories back home.

"Remember what Bilbo used to say: It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.” Lord of the Rings, J.R. Tolkien

I REMEMBER - the stick of confidence

2010-09-28T22:54:00.000-07:00

...I was about seven years old and living in McAlester, Oklahoma. I was skinny, shy and uncoordinated. I had just gotten glasses (four eyes - four eyes!!!!) and didn't have much self confidence. One summer day, I fell victim to the neighborhood kids who taunted me and pushed me around until I couldn't take it anymore and ran home crying. If it wasn't bad enough already, they chased me all the way home and up to my own front porch.

I ran inside crying to my mother. The kids stayed on my porch and taunted me through the screen door. This wasn't the first time this had happened, and it didn't seem there was a solution presenting itself.

Mom told me that if I didn't stand up for myself, no matter how old or big I got, there would always be someone bigger who would try to push me around and make my life hard. She told me never to start a fight, but there were times when you had to take a stand and not run away. The she told me, "today is that day."

She took an old broom handle out of the pantry, handed it to me and said "There are more of them than you---this should even it up a bit. Now go back out on the porch and tell them that the first kid that sets foot on your porch is going to get whacked."

I was shaking like a leaf when I stepped outside. The kids saw me and looked at the broom handle and backed off the porch. It probably looked like I was shaking the stick at them, when in reality I was trying to hold onto it and my hands were shaking like crazy.

Then a wondrous change occurred. I shook the stick and dared them to come up on my porch and mess with me. Of course the biggest and baddest kid took me up on it and stepped forward. I raised the stick and, although I couldn't hit a baseball (which started the "four-eyes" taunting in the first place), I figured that since his head was much larger than a baseball, I stood a good chance of making contact. As soon as he saw I was ready to whack him, he turned and ran away and all the other kids turned the taunt around and laughed at HIM as he ran down the street.

My life was changed forever. I felt good about myself. I never hit anybody with that stick, but I got new respect from the other kids on the block. They and I both knew the stick was just within reach, inside my front door. Soon, I learned I didn't need a "stick." Sometimes it is just a "look." We all have been on the receiving end of "the look" and have felt the power.

My new level of self-confidence grew considerably after that. It didn't, however, improve my baseball ability much, although I didn't always get picked last anymore either.

I REMEMBER-The Shoelace...

2010-07-21T15:02:00.000-07:00

…about 45 years ago, breaking my shoelace, and getting a great Zen lesson from my step-dad. John Wesley Welton was a basic, one-layer guy. No frills, no hidden meanings. He said what he meant and meant what he said. He married my Mom when I was fourteen and displaced me as “Man of the Family.” We rarely talked, and this remembrance moment is true to form.

He never asked me about my thoughts, and our “conversations” were mostly sound bites, uttered at me to determine their value and to grasp all their nuances in the fewest possible words. His response to “How are you doing?” was always, “Another Beautiful Day in Californay" (yes, pronounced with a nay at the end, and unfortunately most likely responsible for my infamous blog and same question response of “Another Day in Paradise”). Another of his favorites was, “A Little War is Good for Business, but a Big War is Great for Business.” This was a quick summary of his opinion of Roosevelt’s economic plan. His other great sound bite was “Just do the best you can with what you’ve got"...oddly, a play on Roosevelt’s classic: “Do what you can, with what you have, where you are.”

I was seventeen, it was 1965, and I was frustrated. I didn’t like being only seventeen, dependent, no money, living in Rancho Cordova, thinking I was way smarter than practically all adults in my world (after all, I had just read Kafka and Melville) , and anxious to get started building the story of my life. I was getting ready for a date and was running late, and I rushed into the family room to get the family car keys from my step-dad. John had been a Chief Warrant Officer in the U.S. Navy. From someone who had to live with one of those guys, he was the officer-in-charge, who inspected your bunk and uniform and denied you shore leave if everything wasn’t perfect. John gave me a one second glance, said “Your shoelace is untied” and went back to reading the paper.

In my increasing frustration, I yanked on my laces to tie the bow, a lace snapped, and I succeeded in punching myself in the face as hard as person can from that bent-over position. Uttering the favorite expletive of most 17-year old boys, I ripped off my wingtip and threw it against the wall.

John never looked up from the paper, but said: "Don’t replace just the broken one, change both of them or you will regret it. Shoe laces are in my Dopp Kit in my closet.”

Determined to not speak, I silently got the laces, ripped out the old ones, and started the laborious process of re-lacing my shoes. Without putting the paper down, John said: “I broke my shoelaces when I was seventeen, too. It was Sunday, December 7, 1941.”

I stopped messing with my shoes and sat down. My step-dad NEVER talked about being in the war. All I knew was that he was at Pearl Harbor on that infamous date in history, but he would never talk about it.

He continued: “I was seventeen, hated my life and wanted to do something big. I used a fake ID and joined the Navy to get into the Great War. I was stationed at Pearl Harbor and had the world by the tail. My two buddies and I were going to the mess hall that morning and I broke a shoelace getting dressed. I hated being late and they were giving me a hard time. My friend told me: ‘Don’t replace just the broken one, change both of them or you will regret it.’ As I was replacing the laces, one of my buddies yelled: ‘Look at this, some fool has his plane all painted up like a Jap Zero and is buzzing the airfield. He is really going to get his ass in a sling for this.’ Those were the last words he ever said, because the Zero was real and a spray of bullets cut them both down right there in the doorway, plus a bunch of other guys walking to the mess hall. If my shoelace hadn’t broken, I’d be dead with the rest of them and wouldn’t be here now. Sometimes, things that seem like a bad thing at the time, turn out not to be so bad after all.”

That was it. No more discussion. He had nothing more to say, so I snagged the car keys and because the date was more important and I was seventeen, the Zen was lost on me at the time. However, the older I get and the more experiences I have, the stronger that moment gets in my memory.

Here I am, 45 years later, and now I really “get it."

I have since experienced a lot of “Broken Shoelaces”...like losing a job and finding a better one as a result...like losing a relationship and finding a better one as a result...and like getting Cancer and having a better “finish” to my life as a result. “Sometimes, things that seem like a bad thing at the time turn out not to be so bad after all.”

By the way, I was really late for the date. It didn’t work out, and she liked my friend better, anyway.

I REMEMBER...the smells of the fish bait shop in Oklahoma

2010-07-11T20:12:00.000-07:00

...…the smells of the fish bait shop in Tishomingo, Oklahoma when I was a kid. I got to stay with my Grandmother Clara Whitlock and Grandfather Roy Whitlock in the summer time when I was between 5 and nine years old. My grandfather and I went fishing a lot (see post from April 23, 2009). My Grandfather was a cool guy. They say that if you are lucky, you will get your 15 minutes of fame in your lifetime. Some get more, some get less. My Grandfather, Roy Whitlock (my dad’s name was Roy George Whitlock) got five hours worth in 1928. He was a banker and was closing up one evening, got robbed, kidnapped, and was immortalized in this book about the notorious bank robberies in the twenties and thirties, as a means of income for the unemployed:

Page 103 from “Cabin in the Blackjacks – excerpts of Pretty Boy Floyd”:

…”Turn of the Stonewall First National Bank came the Following April, 1928. Three men found Roy Whitlock alone. They escaped in a roadster, taking Whitlock. They fled through the Allen oilfields and forded the Canadian River. When they stopped, Whitlock helped them divide the money, $691.70 in all. Each gave him $5.00, and they released him after dark to walk into Sasakwa. Before long the three were in the state prison.”

I remember the bait shop we stopped at before heading off to the fishing hold. That was a very long time ago (like 55 years or so), but I still have very vivid memories, complete with the sounds and smells of Lloyds Dry Goods & Bait Shop. We would drive there in a 1950 Plymouth. It had mohair seats and was incredibly itchy when you wore shorts (kid in the 50’s, summer time Oklahoma heat). We would walk through the main part of the store to the bait area in the back. You could smell it from the front screen door. It wasn’t a bad smell; it just had its own odors. For younger readers, think Disneyland’s ride - Pirates of the Caribbean, at the bottom of the lagoon where the boats launch...kind of damp, dank, musty and you are almost there. If you added dead crickets and crawdads, you would have it just right. There were two or three large concrete tubs (probably cattle water tanks) with aerators running constantly. You could hear the bubbling and motors running, smell the mixture of mossy fish tanks, crawdads, crickets, and earth worms as soon as you hit the front door. This was a great moment…it meant we were going FISHING!! I got a cardboard tub of red worms and my Grandfather got a dozen minnows. I got little hooks for bluegill & perch and he got big hooks for bass. I got a peppermint stick out of the big glass jar up front and he got a shot of something homemade from the back of the store. It was a man’s deal, I got the forbidden candy before dinner – he never mentioned it to Grandma and I never brought up his quick visit to the back of the store with Lloyd.

The afternoon was lazy, warm and forever etched in time down at the swinging bridge over Pennington Creek. It is good to have fond memories so deeply ingrained that the slighted sound or smell can instantly conjure up a 55 year old 15 minute experience.

"What we do for ourselves dies with us. What we do for others and the world remains and is immortal." Albert Pine

I REMEMBER...the Irish Pub Crawl

2010-04-22T22:14:00.001-07:00

…traveling to Europe in the early 70’s (a lot of my life stories strangely happened in the 70’s) and spending time in Ireland. The pubs were a particularly intriguing phenomenon I had an interest in. Warm, friendly, a local tavern for food, drink and fun.

I was somewhat lucky at darts and Irish pubs harbored dart boards much like American bars have pool tables. I won my fair share of pints, dazzling the locals (who admittedly drank faster and in larger quantities than me…perhaps that was my asset in the competition).

So having met some new found darts & drinking friends at a pub one evening (they were off-duty ambulance drivers- I hope they were off-duty…) we forged a deal. The public taverns closed rather early during the week (so the workers would actually show up to work the next day) – the only bars that stayed open late were the ones inside the nicer hotels for the hotel patrons. They offered to treat me to a “Pub Crawl” (which is a much more apt description than the Americanized “bar hopping”. I observed that there were definite tricks for a successful pub crawl that seemed to incorporate rugby/roller derby moves and teamwork. A good pub crawl needs at least two big, strong, rugby/roller-derby guys that are socially ambivalent to under-breath comments and glares, the money man and the rest of the drinking team. Note: all the best pubs in Dublin were packed and everyone seemed to be speed-drinking, so there is no “getting a drink and going back to your table” – that action is too lightweight to survive. Each bar was packed and several people deep. Alone, I never would have even made it to the bar and if I had and then left – I doubt if I could have made it back for a second beer (pint).

So, the game plan was to have all of us (about six) line up behind the two bruiser “breakers (literally). They would elbow and push their way through the throng until, at last, the biggest and strongest found the bar (zygote!!). He would plant himself there and the second team member would be right behind him fending off all other drinkers to maintain a strong line. We would string out behind the first two, foot to foot, with the money man at the end. This was our fire line- like a bucket brigade with volunteer firefighters (except these guys were medics/ambulance drivers). Money man passes money forward through the line to get to the main bar position holder, who secures the pints and passes them back down the line until we are all properly lubed. This pattern is repeated, to insure an uninterrupted and even flow of suds until a. the money runs out or b. the pub closes ( or in my case, after b. comes c. – the acquisition to your “line” of a tourist with a pass to the after-hours bar in an upscale hotel- good for a couple more hours of drinking).

Note: I have no idea what these guys were talking about that evening (probably beer, women, and tourists) as their brogue got thicker and my hearing got fuzzier as the evening wore on. I remember we laughed a lot, so it must have been humorous.

I pick up accents fairly quickly and when motivated by inhibition, fairly well also. My biggest compliment of the evening was being mistaken for a drunk from Scotland. Hoot, laddy, not so bloody bad, eh?

I REMEMBER...my motorcycle & the stuck throttle

2010-04-21T19:02:00.000-07:00

…when the throttle stuck on my motorcycle going through a small town in Northern California in the early 70’s. It was Easy Rider time and I had this beautiful BSA 650, chopped, dark chocolate teardrop tank, with chromed extended front forks and butterfly handlebars, banana seat and it weighed about twice as I did. I loved that bike, but I recall that I loved my perception of my image on that bike more. It was somewhat patterned after the bike Peter Fonda had in the movie, Easy Rider.

It was 1970. I had graduated from Chico State College and having fulfilled my promise to my parents to finish college, I launched on to the “go forth and seek the truth and find yourself” tour [that tour lasted about 15 years until I started my family and grew up]. Haight Ashbury San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Carmel, pretty much anywhere along Hwy 1 was a good ride. I had watched Easy Rider (Dennis Hopper, Peter Fonda, Jack Nicholson) multiple times and listened to the Steppenwolf album (yes, vinyl) until the grooves wore out. It indeed was a Magic Carpet Ride.

So, I have my hair down to my belt, full beard, sunglasses, a monster bike, way bigger than me (could barely hold it up when I came to a stop) and I am cruising through the back roads out of Chico, Ca. Just as I approached the main street of a small rural community, the throttle stuck wide open on the bike and I was catapulted forward, screaming down the road trying to brake, steer this flaming monster and not crash. Thinking I was a dead man driving, I did not notice immediately the flashing red lights and siren trailing right behind me until I got a few miles out of town, burned the bejesus out of my hand trying to hit the kill switch. I finally coasted over to the side of the road, awaiting my fate, as the police cruiser slammed to a stop behind me in a cloud of dust. The officer was highly agitated. 1970, rural cop, long-haired hippy biker, speeding through his beloved, but small, town blowing through both of the town’s stop signs – I could feel my life slipping away, locked in a dungeon, for years.

Kick-starting (a motorcycle term) my yet to be refined sales career, I apologized profusely, addressing him as “Officer, Sir”. I explained the problem with the stuck throttle. He was quiet for a bit and said: “Let me take this thing for a short ride to see if you are telling the truth.” He was bigger, in authority, and had a gun. I said “Sure.” He was gone almost an hour. Just me standing in the dirt next to the locked police cruiser.

When he cruised back to where I was, he smiled and said: “You were right about the throttle – but I fixed it. You know, I always wanted to have one of these.” He advised me to keep going north and not to come back through “his town” and drove away.

I drove north. I went about 60 miles out of my way to make it home a different way. Sold the bike and bought a new Volkswagen van for me and my black lab with a stubby tale and a red bandana.

I REMEMBER...my sister, onions, turkey and cooking drama

2010-02-28T18:52:00.000-08:00

my younger sister, Sharon, and her playful ways she would display her displeasure about me making simple, innocent, constructive suggestions about her kitchen habits.

The three times I recall of note are:

1- the time she and I were helping our Mom unload the groceries from the car. I had already brought in the onions and potatoes and Sharon (about two years old - I was about six) was putting them away in the bottom cupboard next to the refrigerator. On my second trip into the house I didn't see any potatoes or onions out so I asked her where she put them. She pointed at the cabinet and when I looked inside - as the poem says - the cupboard was bare. It is conceivable that she thought she heard a disparaging word (because the clouds were not cloudy all day) from me. Bereft of the proper words to cleverly hide the truth that she had just neatly poked them through a hole in the cupboard wall, dropping all the potatoes and onions to an impossible-to-get-to crawl space under the house, she just sunk her four teeth [two on top and two on the bottom, all in the front like a deranged beaver] into my shoulder blade and hung on until Mom heard my screaming and saved me. When a turtle does that you have to cut their head off to get them unhooked, but Mom wouldn't hear of it. It was just a suggestion.

2-We both survived and got a little older. We still had combined kitchen duties, possibly one of God's tests where what doesn't kill you, will make you stronger. It was Thanksgiving. We didn't have much money, so we were thankful for the turkey. Sharon was thankful for having an underachiever for a brother, so she could look really good compared to her sterling self. I was particularly thankful for the fact that I was the oldest child (by four years) and significantly bigger than my sterling sister.

Not being clever enough to avoid cleverly disguised, seemingly perfect set-ups (sibling harrassment opportunities), I came upon my sister, basting the family turkey, perched precariously on the open knee-high oven door in our 50's, bright turquoise, far-too-small, kitchen.

There was just enough room to squeeze behind her to pass through the kitchen. My sister had commandeered the opportunity to baste the turkey to a perfect golden brown and Mom had relegated me to taking the potato peels out to the trash. In retrospect, I probably could have gone around the kitchen, but the what-could-possibly-go-wrong temptation to casually, ever-so-lovingly, brush past her, took control of my body. As I squeezed behind her (I am absolutely confident I mumbled "excuse me") my "I am peeved with you showing me up to Mom all the time" knee reflexes must have jerked involuntarily and given her the the ever-so-slight shot to the back as I passed by.

This was 50 years ago. I was twelve and she was an evil, evil (did I say evil yet) eight years old. I have this painfully vivid memory of her involuntary Sarah Bernhart [Quote from Wikipedia: "Much of the uncertainty about Bernhardt's life arises because of her tendency to exaggerate and distort. Alexandre Dumas, described her as a notorious liar) acting skills kicking in. As I gave her the quite innocent knee-to-the-back love tap, she instinctively screamed loudly, fell backwards, flinging the turkey, the roasting pan, drippings, etc. across the floor, skidding to a greasy stop at my Mom's feet. No amount of protest on my part could properly explain the huge injustice I received as my clever little sister, writhed on the floor, in the turkey bastings, crying and screaming that I had viciously kicked her in the back. You are probably thinking, geez, it has been fifty years; get over it. You weren't there to see the Mona Lisa smile creep across her face as I was dragged off to the dungeons to be flogged. Note: We ate the turkey anyway. I ate mine standing up.

3. Somehow, we managed to bury the hatchet (just not in each other) and we lived on to another day later that year to combine our fine-tuned culinary skills to make a birthday cake for our Mom, while she took a nap. After all, Sharon had mastered pancakes and I had beaucoup (dj. Many; much: beaucoup money. n. pl. beau·coups also boo·coos or boo·koos. An abundance; a lot.) merit badges for cooking over an inverted coffee can in the wilderness.

We had the cake mix, we had a two part angel-food cake pan, but obviously, had no clear recipe to follow. We were practically valedictorian scholars, and so, boldly moved forth to surprise Mom with a homemade cake. Wrong mix. Wrong pan. No sense of time. After the pan suffered in the oven for about twenty minutes with the only heat coming from just the oven light-bulb, we realized our error. It was quite obvious what we had to do. If a person only had so much time to go from point A to point B and you had gone too slowly in the beginning - the obvious solution would be to go faster with the remaining time you had left, so you would arrive at point B at the right time. The same principal could surely be applied to cooking. Not noticing that half the batter had leaked out of the two-part pan onto the old style, non-self-cleaning oven bottom, we cranked the heat up to broil, to make up for lost time and proceded into the family room to watch "American Bandstand" - with forever young, Dick Clark.

Boy did Mom truly get a cake surprise for her birthday. This was before smoke detectors. I am still not sure if that was good or bad. When charred-cake black smoke
finally filled the house (except where we were in the lower-level family room with the sliding wood door closed) all Hell broke loose with Mom screaming for us to get out of the house, as it was on fire.

It, of course, wasn't. Just the cake - permanently baked and embedded into the pocked, porcelain interior of that poor oven -was a tad over done. I thought for sure my co-cook and I would share the blame on that one, but as I was the oldest (with a fire safety merit badge, no less) and the one that originated the cooking dilemma math formula, once again, I remember bearing the brunt of the responsibility.

My sister and I have lived long enough to fondly remember these childhood traumas with a bit of humor (and much Merlot). Sharon is one of my best friends now and may have slightly different, but deranged, versions of these stories. However, since this my blog, she will just have to start her own, and post her own version, won't she?

I REMEMBER...the Flaming Marshmallow

2010-02-14T08:52:00.000-08:00

...having a minor altercation with my sister, Sharon, when I was about twelve and she was about nine. It involves a flaming marshmallow.

But first......being the first born child, with all the inherent rights instilled in that position, I always had a tough time convincing my little sister of the level of reverence and respect that was due me. Maybe, after 50 years, I am beginning to see inklings that she might be coming around. She treats me very well.

In our youth (many light years ago) my little sister, Sharon, had this misconceived notion that she was also in charge and had equal, if not even greater, rights within the family. I fully believed that Mom loved me best. After all, I was the first child, first boy, only boy and my character was overflowing with admirable qualities [such as: I could make the perfectly believable sound of an alien spaceship taking off and landing without taking an extra breath and I had many merit badges in Boy Scouts for cooking on top of a coffee can, etc.]. Sharon also fully believed that Mom loved her best. After all, she was the girl that Mom "really" wanted, someone of the female persuasion Mom could confide in - in ways that boys and men would never appreciate or even know. She was smarter, prettier, cuter and always, without exception, willing to cheerfully help Mom with any project without resistance. Disgusting.

Whereas, my sister probably had some relatively decent qualities, there was an inherent evil that I just could not get my Mom to acknowledge. It was bad enough that Sharon was practically perfect in every way; she was still compelled to accent my occasional slips off the pedestal. I would be engaged in one of my Mom's dreaded "Death by Lecture" sessions for some totally misrepresented indiscretion when my sister would cheerfully (in a Shirley Temple kind of way) "just happen" to skip into the room and announce stuff like "Hi Mommy, I just wanted to tell you that I love you very much and that I just vacuumed the whole house, put my straight A's schoolwork on the refrigerator next to my award-winning artwork, fed Bobby's dog because he forgot to again....and wanted to see if there was anything else I could do to make your life easier, because you know I love you very much!"

Already in trouble for something (that is why I was getting the lecture), it did not enhance my innocence when I would uncontrollably lunge forward to wrap my hands around the neck of the cheerful little bluebird that was, once again, pointing out why Mom should love her best.

Mom couldn't see the tiniest of Mona Lisa smiles on Sharon's face as she skipped out of the room, knowing she had firmly placed yet another brick in the wall separating the good child from the bad child. Perhaps, if my Mom hadn't been busy physically restraining my thrashing, foaming-at-the-mouth, struggle to get to my sister, she could have noticed.

So what about the flaming marshmallow? This was perhaps my crowning moment in my endeavor to somehow "get even" with my sister. We had all gone camping in Yosemite National Park, back in the day, when they still had the Firefall - [this has nothing whatsoever to do with the story, but is a cool memory before environmental regulations - you should have been there, but then you had, of course, you would be old or dead, if you had really seen it - so click on the link for the next best thing].

We were enjoying (for a few fleeting moments) the traditional - go camping and roast marshmallows over the crackling fire. My sister always toasted her marshmallow perfectly - a delicious golden brown glow, spread perfectly over the entire morsel. I hated that.

My marshmallows were more like crusty little charcoal briquettes. I employed the young testosterone technique of roasting by jamming the entire marshmallow-on-a- stick deep into the coals, covering it in its entirety with hot ash and enjoying the ensuing moment when it would burst into flames.

Unfortunately, my sister Sharon picked that moment to, once again, point out to my Mom the difference between her perfectly golden creation and Bobby's "burning-black-thing-from-Hell-on-a-stick". My Mom wasn't fast enough to grab me this time when I leaped over the fire with my flaming sugar-bomb on a stick in front of me. I was a Lancer on a mission with the famous Alfred, Lord Tennyson's epic Charge of the Light Brigade.

That was the last straw. Seeing motive, intent, opportunity, and total disregard for the reprisal I would surely receive later, reflected in my blazing eyes, my sister jumped up [dropping her perfect gold marshmallow into the fire - a small side benefit, I relish to this day] and ran screaming into the dark forest.

Knowing I probably wouldn't catch her, and not being clear on what I would actually do if I did, I whipped my roasting stick in her direction out of frustration. Not planned, but ever so grateful for the result, the still flaming marshmallow slipped from the stick and flew through the darkness and stuck perfectly to the back of my sister's head.

A small hairless spot from the smoldering, melted sugar remained for quite awhile, before the hair grew back on Sharon's head. The endorphins [ The term endorphin rush has been adopted in popular speech to refer to feelings of exhilaration brought on by pain, danger, or other forms of stress, supposedly due to the influence of endorphins.....allowing humans to feel a sense of power and control over themselves...Wikipedia] released from the ecstasy of finally seeing Sharon get her just desserts ["Marshmallows Suzette"] allowed me to endure the resulting pain of the beating and lecture-until-you bleed-from-your-eyes that followed.

Even now, when I am having a down day, I can play that perfect moment mind-video again in my brain...with slow-mo and color...and it never fails to bring a smile to my face.

Epilogue: In the truest sense of Men-Mars/Women-Venus thinking, I have retold that story over and over, many times over the years. Men and boys think it is absolutely hilarious and beg me to retell it. Oddly, I have yet to find a woman that thinks the tale is funny. Mostly, they focus on why I couldn't take direction from my sister and just learn how to properly toast marshmallows and confront my inadequacies and anger-management issues.

After about 40 years, I am sure my sister has not let go of the memory. I fear she is gearing up for some kind of Ninja reprisal. She recently told me she was on vacation at an exclusive resort in Mexico, but I have included photo proof, that it was indeed a Ninja Training Camp for Women Harboring Issues From Their Childhood. I never would have been able to hit that target on the back of her head if she had employed a tree-top, zip-line escape.

I REMEMBER...Sharon and the face cream

2010-02-07T15:29:00.000-08:00

…treating my baby sister, Sharon, to her first exotic spa treatment. Well, not exactly. I do remember my mom telling me the story, which will have to be close enough. No one else was there to dispute the story. My mom is no longer with us, and my sister was about 1 year old and that was about 58 years ago, so we will have to go with this version.

If Sharon was about one, that would make me about four or five, as I was either three or four years older depending upon which half of the year we are talking about. The fact that I possibly, perhaps, may have harbored some unresolved issues about being eliminated as the only child and relegated to the status of just the only boy, may have some slight bearing on the story, but I only choose to remember the “caring big brother versions” of all family tales….flaming marshmallows while camping will be another story..banana peels in the toilet will not.

I have four children so I know this next statement to be true. When your kids are too quiet, something is probably wrong. As my mom told it, she was doing laundry, ironing and such and noticed that I wasn’t hanging around getting underfoot, as apparently was my custom. This was early 50’s, small town, Oklahoma. It would have not been uncommon for me to leave the house early and disappear for the day. Not that bad things probably didn’t happen back in the day, but the public just didn’t hear about it much. This was before TV (another story). I could ride bikes with my buddies, play ball, dig in the ditch across the street (yet another story about snakes coming soon), play “Ollie Ollie Oxen Free” with my friends and as long as I came home as soon as the street light came on, I was good to go.

Anyway, none of those things were happening. I was in the house and my mom knew it. My sister was still in a crib, so she was in the house too. My mom slowly became aware of a soft “cooing” sound from the rear of the house. As she approached the master bedroom, she heard the “cooing” sound more distinctly as “oooooh and ahhhhh”. Apparently, knowing that I could come to terms with any sibling rivalry issues, by just showing the love to my sister, there I was mimicking what I thought I had seen my mom do….kind of.

I had found the large jar of Vaseline, but the wrong end of the baby. I had successfully plastered my sister’s head with about a half-jar of sticky petroleum jelly. Her eyes were totally glued shut. Her small amount of hair was matted with globs of glop. Should there be a hue and cry from readers regarding what a terrible thing this might have appeared to be for a small baby…I must point out that she was absolutely loving it.

I am sure that 58 years later, this experience is probably not on her Facebook page (nor mine). She is now a confirmed worldwide adventurist, hiking mountain trails in Peru, ocean sailing, whitewater kayaking, etc. I suspect that she is strangely comforted, when crawling on her stomach in the dark caves of Costa Rica, and her head and face become matted with exotic bat guano, she has odd, but warm recollections of those halcyon days in the crib having her head slathered in Petroleum Jelly. Perhaps only when buried in the mud baths of Calistoga, with only her lips protruding from the volcanic ooze just far enough to reach the straw and little sippy cup of ice water, does she vaguely recall a similar comforting experience, a long, long time ago. If she is strangely concerned, I plead innocent. If she smiles, I will take all the credit.

There is an earlier story of me, BS (before Sharon), plastering my bedroom window sills shut in a similar fashion, but not with petroleum jelly. Sharon is lucky I matured into a more socially acceptable plaster artist.

I REMEMBER...my finger getting stuck in the kitchen table

2010-01-17T19:41:00.000-08:00

…getting my finger caught in the tube leg of my parent’s new aluminum/Formica table when I was six. We lived in McAlister, Oklahoma. My mom owned and taught a private kindergarten in our converted garage and my dad was a mailman on the railroad (approx 1953 – the mailmen were on the train in a special postal car and picked up mail along the stops and sorted it as they went along to deliver to the next city down the line).

Like all kids, I had my favorite foods and non-favorite foods. Remembering that this was ‘50’s Oklahoma, some of my favorites were fried catfish with ketchup, ketchup [ketchup went on most everything] and white bread sandwiches [there was only white bread – no choices as I recall), lard and sugar on white bread sandwiches [if you like eating the white stuff –lard and sugar-out of the middle of Oreo cookies – then you would have loved those sandwiches, corn on the cob, fried chicken and hot dogs. There were a multitude of things I didn’t like, as my Mom and Betty Crocker [1953] conspired to provide recipes for such God-Awful dishes like Liver and cream sauce, spinach and vinegar, cottage cheese [ok with lots of sugar and pineapple – but not so much with pepper like my Dad preferred] and of course, the ever popular: lima beans with shredded carrots in lime jello.

It was one of those nights when I was pushing food around in my plate, hoping it would evaporate. [Note: back in the day, kids that didn’t eat their food were told that there were starving kids in China that would love to have it and that you would a) sit there until you finished it or b) go to bed right now and it would still be sitting there when you came back to the table for the next meal]. I almost got out of it once when I suggested that since my Dad was a mailman – why we didn’t just mail the liver and onions to the starving kids in China. Since I hadn’t seen buttermilk (with pepper for my Dad) spew out of an adult’s nose before, I figured I had hit on a solution. It, however, was just a temporary reprieve, until my parents quit laughing and choking. So, there I was one night pushing food around and running my hand around under the brand new, bright yellow, aluminum and Formica dining table my parents had just purchased. [Note: this was when perfectly good imported English oak tables were tossed out to the dump to make way for the sleek new aluminum and Formica furniture – wow – what a wise decision that was] So, finding a little opening in the end of one of the aluminum table tubes, I tried to poke my finger into it. As I had been stirring the cream sauce on the liver with said finger, it slipped right in. Therein was the problem. The finger wouldn’t come out. The more that I struggled with it, the more my finger started to swell making it impossible to remove.

The moment finally arrived when I had to eat or go to my room to await another chance to eat the liver another day, but couldn’t get up. I didn’t want to say why, so I just kept getting deeper in trouble for not getting up. Just as my Dad grabbed me by the arm to jerk me up from the table, I was forced to scream out “My finger's caught in the table”. My Mom and Dad tried squeezing, pulling, 3-in-1 oil (like WD-40), butter, lard, and prayer. Nothing worked. The more we struggled, the more my finger swelled hurt, and the louder I cried. Eventually, my parents had no choice, but to call the fire department. A big red fire engine with lights flashing arrived, attracting all the neighbors. After the firemen quit laughing, they proceeded to try all the firemen tricks, but to no avail. After much discussion, it was decided (over my Mom’s protests) to use a hacksaw and cut the leg off the table. At the time, I thought my Mom’s anguish and protests were for her fear of me getting my finger cut off, but I suspect now that it was truly in anguish over losing her brand new modern aluminum table to a hacksaw.

So, they cut the leg off my Mom’s new table and threw the junked remains into the backyard. They jammed my hand with the six inch aluminum pipe stuck to it into a bucket full of ice for a half hour and voilla’: my finger popped right out. I got to ride on the fire engine with all my friends and was the hero of the neighborhood. My mom eventually retrieved another oak table and mourned the lost “modern” updated model for quite a long time, and oddly enough, never fixed liver and onions again. Our family did, however, endure many more “jello with mixed vegetables” dishes. I have yet to see a Formica/Aluminum table on Antiques Road Show.