Ravenland

STATUS - HEALTH - MINE - 120628

2012-06-28T16:53:00.000-07:00

Thank you,Chief Justice Roberts.
As with ObamaCare, rumors of my death have been slightly exaggerated.
Put your fireworks away.

Molestation Preview 07 - Cannon

2012-05-01T16:46:00.000-07:00

MILITARY SCHOOL

“I’ve always resented anyone suggesting that I experimented with drugs. I have occasionally exposed myself to drugs (mostly marijuana) to gain the confidence of those who did experiment. I never expected to gain spiritual or other pleasure from it. The closest thing to psychological experimentation I could consider would be Buddhism. The only drug experimentation I really seek concerns the alleviation of my asthma, Parkinson’s, osteoarthritis, or lethargy--such as Red Bull. That having been said, not everyone caught in a compromising position arrived there through planning or experimentation. For some it is in their genes, for some in their karma, and for some in their disenfranchisement from the American Dream.”

--the author

7 - Cannon

When Francis entered Cannon Military Academy, he knew his life was over, as he had known it.

He was happy to be free of constantly reading the Bible. Golda had broadened his horizons. He knew there was more than the Nazarene Church. There was a whole, big world out there and he wanted to learn.

Nevertheless, he wondered how much he could learn in the confines of these drab gray walls.

His mother had told him, “If you can’t be a Christian, then you’re next best service to God is to learn the military. You’re going to pay for your fascination with Yiddish skirts. I don’t want you getting a girl in trouble anyway. You’re a man and men are no good. Men should find their happiness with men, so that they don’t bring unhappiness to women. A man can’t do any good for a woman. If you grow up to fight in a war, maybe I can be proud of you again. I would rather you died with your lover by your side in a foxhole than that you lived to get young girls pregnant and fat.”

Francis did not want to learn how to fight. He did not want to be isolated with all men and boys. Nevertheless, his mother had handed him a script to live and he had seldom purposely gone against her.

He was shown to his room. He had to sleep in a room with seven other boys stacked in bunk beds. There were four desks in the room and two boys shared each desk. One worked on his homework in the morning and his partner worked on his homework in the afternoon. The middle of the day was spent learning the rigors of military discipline, military code of conduct, respect for authorities, and military skills.

☼

Every morning, they had to show up for inspection, in front of the general assembly hall. They had to be there at 7 am. They had to be clean-showered and shampooed. Their teeth had to be brushed. Their shoes had to be spit shined. Their long-sleeved shirts and long-legged pants had to be pressed, with sharp and perfect creases, and had to be lint free. Their belt buckles had to be polished. Their shirt pockets had to be sewn into two compartments--a narrow one, and a wide one. The wide compartment had a tablet of paper that just fit. The narrow compartment had a short pencil with no eraser and a sharp point. Their regulation hats had to be one index finger width above where the right ear met the skull and two finger widths above their left eyebrow.

If any of these conditions were not met, the punishment was severe and at the whim of the squad leader. Sometimes the squad leader would turn over the discipline of his man to Major General Wayne Brautigan--but this was frowned on as a sign of weakness and inability to make decisions under pressure. To do so, was to risk never being promoted again and having a negative remark entered on his record.

The punishments varied.

There was the Authority. The Authority was a stick of resilient and hard wood. It had lightning holes drilled in it and was administered to the buttocks with all the ferocity the squad leader could muster.

The Gauntlet was chosen by squad leaders, who were less eager to administer all of the punishment by themselves. Nevertheless, it was admired by the General Staff as a method of showing that when one man went astray it hurt the entire squad. The entire squad lined up with their legs spread. The errant soldier was made to crawl on his hands and knees from the front to the back of the line of waiting squad members--between their legs. As he past beneath each member, that member would hit him as hard as he could with his bare hands.

Demerits were given to each squad for each member that required discipline.

☼

The squads then formed up and demonstrated their marching skills one at a time. They marched in order that was determined by the number of demerits they had accumulated that morning. The squad with the least demerits went first. In case of a tie, order was determined by the accumulated demerits of that squad for the week, month, or year.

Left oblique march, right oblique march, counter march, about face, left flank march, ad nauseam. If there was a marching command that ever had been invented, these squadrons tried to learn it. Demerits were given for every misstep or failure to follow a command. At the end, they all lined up in front of the Major General for his approval. If there had been no gross errors in the conduct of their field maneuvers, they were allowed to enter the mess hall.

There were always eight squadrons. The boys or, as the Major General called them, men were assigned as equally as possible to the various squads.

☼

When the eight squads entered the mess hall, they sat at one of eight numbered tables, in the order they entered. The first squad to enter sat at table one, etc.

Table One had pancakes with marmalade, eggs sunny side up, smoke links, milk, orange juice, and a biscuit at each setting.

Table Two had standard pancakes, scrambled eggs, bacon, milk, orange juice, and a biscuit.

Table Three had hash browns, scrambled eggs, bacon, orange juice, and a biscuit.

Table Four had hash browns, boiled eggs, bacon, grapefruit juice, and a biscuit.

Table Five had hash browns, boiled eggs, Canadian bacon, and grapefruit juice.

Table Six had granola with milk, orange juice, and a glass of milk.

Table Seven had oatmeal with milk and orange juice.

Table Eight had hominy grits and milk.

Suffice to say that dinner and supper were served along the same lines with substitutions made for the time of day.

Although tastes differ, it was agreed that there was great competition to sit at tables one through three and to avoid tables six through eight.

A man may prefer hominy grits, but was it worth it to try for them and get stuck with oatmeal, or vice versa?

☼

The ‘men’ seemed to have no self-direction. They were there to please the Major General and he was there to see that they did. Francis asked them about various things in the world and they looked at him vacantly. He could see it in their eyes, “And so what does that have to do with who sits at table one?”

His first morning, he ate hominy grits. He had had no pencil in his pocket nor was it even sewn up. There was dust on his cap. He had skipped showering because of the cold and because he was not used to showering with a bunch of other boys. Showering was embarrassing. Some of the older boys would dance in the showers with their penis standing up until something came out. Francis did not dare ask what it was, or how they got themselves to stand up.

During the field drill, the order left flank oblique march left him all by himself heading left while everyone else marched obliquely. The man behind him bumped into him and the both fell down and became dusty.

Molestation preview 06 - Golda

2012-04-14T11:18:00.000-07:00

6 - Golda

As Francis grew a little older, he Lily allowed him to go as far as a block away from home, as long as he was with the neighborhood kids--but only very rarely.

One day, he went around the block with two of his hoodlum friends, Bob and Barry McMeans. They met some girls who had a tree house. There must have been six or eight neighbor kids gathered in the tree house and they all took turns playing doctor and nurse. When it was Francis’ turn to play patient he was apprehensive. When they pulled his pants down all the kids laughed because his peewee was so small.

Francis went home all red in the face. Lily asked what the problem was, but Francis was too embarrassed to say. She called Mrs. McMeans and asked her. Mrs. McMeans said Bob and Barry had come home thinking they were alone and laughing their heads off about the size of Francis’ peewee. She had cornered them and they had admitted to playing doctor and nurse.

Lily just did not know how to handle a growing boy all by herself. She threatened him with military school if he did not behave. Francis did not know what he did wrong. He was just playing with the other kids. It had been their game.

“You’re better than those heathens. They’ll drag you down.”

☼

Two weeks later, Lily found Francis on the bed with the church secretary’s son. They each had the other’s genitals in their hands. She opened the door when she heard Francis say, “Go ahead, and then I’ll do it to you.” She could only imagine what that meant.

☼

Steve was Golda’s brother. Golda liked Francis--a lot. She did not believe he was gay.

Steve had begun to spend more time doing guy things in hopes that he could shake the ‘faggot’ label.

☼

Golda, meanwhile, would wait for Francis and walk him home. Lily let them play together with wagons and tricycles where she could watch them. Sometimes the families visited and the children did coloring books or discussed Jesus together.

Golda did not believe in Jesus. Lily could talk about little else but Jesus.

Golda said Jesus was just some prophet that Christians tried to deify. Francis did not even know what deify meant. He hoped it was not something bad.

Francis tried to explain to Golda that the Jews had murdered Jesus.

Golda, “I’ll bet you even believe that Mary was a virgin.”

Francis said he guessed he did, since he did not even know what a virgin was.

Golda tried to explain to him what virginity was. She took him in the bedroom and showed him that she had no peewee.

Francis, “Then how do you go pee pee?”

“Through this little hole silly. Here show me what you have.”

He pulled down his pants and she laughed. “Not much, but you got more than my brother. Anyway, if you stick you’re pee pee in my pee pee when your pee pee is hard and break my cherry, then I won’t be a virgin anymore.”

“I don’t get hard.”

“You will. Give it time.”

Francis and Golda had a real serious relationship for their young ages. Golda explained all about Judaism and Francis taught her all about the Nazarene Church.

She explained to him what girls want and how they feel about things. Francis was not sure what other boys thought because he had not been allowed to play with them much, but he told her how he felt.

☼

They were getting older and their parents were not watching so closely, so they decided to take matters in their own little hands. They set up a lemonade stand and used the proceeds to go to the movies.

Francis found the movies very liberating. He came to realize that his mother did not own the rights to all truths. Golda liked the movies because there were so many Jewish actors and directors.

Golda decided to bake pastries and sell them along with the lemonade. She could make more money with pastries. Then she started making and selling jewelry.

Francis, not to be out done, took up leatherwork. He could sell a good belt for three dollars.

Golda made the most beautiful Star of David pendants and sold them strung on a chain. She could sell them for four dollars. Understanding that she was only making half as much money as she could, she started to make crucifixes. She could sell them for five dollars. Christians did not understand the value of a dollar bill.

Francis started tooling belts with a Star of David Pattern and other belts with fish. The fishermen liked to buy his fish belts, even the Jewish fishermen not realizing that it was meant to be a Christian sign. Farmers bought his Star of David belts. They thought he had been tooling cowboy belts with sheriff badges on them.

It was not until he started making candelabras that his mother noticed something was wrong. Why were there so many candles? Nobody would buy candelabras, with so many candles.

Nevertheless, they sold.

Francis decided to embellish them so he could sell more. He started putting a Star of David in the center.

☼

One day Lily came into Francis’ workshop to see what he was doing and started shrieking. “Child of Satan! Blasphemer! Let me see your forehead! If my eyes were better, I could see the ‘666’ on your forehead.”

Francis, “Golda and I are just making things sell to people at our street table. We have a good business going.”

“You’re selling out to Satan! You’re no son of mine! You’re just like your father--whoring around with another woman.”

“We were just making some money to go to the movies.”

“I thought you were spending your idle time studying the Bible.”

“I do study the Bible Ma! Jews are in the Bible.”

“Remember, I told you if you did not learn the gospel and behave yourself I would have to send you away?”

“What’s wrong with me doing something to make money with Golda?”

“What’s wrong? She’s Jewish for Christ’s sake!”

“I thought you liked her.”

“Jesus wants us to love our Hebrew brothers. It is not their fault that their ancestors murdered Christ. Christ forgives them, but we shouldn’t be going to bed with them.”

☼

When Francis was ten years, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.

Molestation preview 05 - Penitentiary Justice

2012-04-10T10:54:00.000-07:00

5 - Penitentiary Justice

One day the teacher called everyone in from recess. She did a head count. She was two or three short. She did not have to recount because she recognized at least one missing face.

She went to the door and looked outside. There were no children to be seen. She was afraid there had been a kidnapping. She decided to close the door to prevent the escape of any more children and to notify the principle. She reached back to unlatch the door, so it would close; and there was Francis embracing little Steven Goldstein. They were both enjoying a, for that age, passionate and long kiss. They were oblivious to the teacher standing there.

“Ahem! Are you boys finished? The rest of the class is inside waiting to sing.”

Lily was quite disturbed when the principal called her in to tell her what had happened.

“I wouldn’t worry about it Mrs. Noir. Children that age--they like to experiment. I wouldn’t be alarmed unless it continues.”

Steven Goldstein lived across the street from the Noir residence. Francis had spent many days longing to cross the street to play with Steven. Lily had not allowed Francis to cross the street--and now this. She would have to watch him more carefully now.

She watched everything. She yelled at him when he was in the bathroom gliding airfoils of toilet paper across the room. She insisted that she inspect his toilet before he flushed it and screamed at him if he accidentally flushed. She yelled at him not to spend too much time playing alone in the bathtub.

She took to not letting him play with other boys on the block, even when they promised not to let him cross the street.

☼

After a few years with no incidents, she allowed him to go to the movies with the boys in the neighborhood.

Her natural instincts got the better of her and she reverted to treating him as though he were a normal boy, after all, he was her child. She treated him as she thought she should. She drummed into his head to leave little girls skirts alone. She had reverted to her fear of men and how they treated women. She seemed to forget about her recent fear that he would not leave little boys pants alone.

☼

She received word from the penitentiary that Theodore had died. The inmates had found him alone and strangled him. They had tied him upside down to cell bars and cut off his penis. They had written in blood on his belly ‘MOLESTER.’

Lily tried to keep the fate of Theodore from Francis. Especially, Lily never told Francis what the prison mates had done with Theodore’s penis.

☼

One day his friends cornered him at school.

“You’re father’s a molester.”

“No!”

“You’re father’s a molester.”

“No!”

“You’re father’s a molester and we can prove it.” They showed him a newspaper with a picture of his father and read him the story about how he died.

“No! It’s not true!”

“Is this or is this not you’re father’s picture?”

“Alright! Alright! Alright! Alright! He’s my father.”

He went to the grove of trees behind the school and cried and cried.

Steven came to see him, “I’m sorry Frannie. I tried to tell them not to do it.” He looked back at the boys who were making faces. “They said I was a faggot.”

“Maybe we are.”

☼

Alright! Three days later the principal found Francis hanging naked from his feet, which he had tied to the jungle gym bars. He was uncomfortable but alive and more embarrassed than ever.

Molestation preview 04 - Francis Assis Noir

2012-04-01T14:41:00.000-07:00

4 - Francis Assis Noir -- 1931-1937

Francis was almost mistaken for a girl at birth. His penis had not popped righteously out, as a self-respecting penis should, and neither of his testicles had properly descended.

Eventually his penis did pop out and his testicles did descend. Until they did, Lily dressed him in girl’s dresses, and Theodore refused to brag about his ‘son.’

As Francis grew older, he tended to hang around with little girls. He showed no interest in little boy activities. This lasted for about three years.

Theodore was always scolding him and Francis hung onto his mother’s skirts.

Lily, having had one child, felt that she had paid her dues to the Lord. She no longer had a biblical need to have sex. She hated herself for the passions she felt and she began taking it out on Theodore. Not only did she blame him for awakening the devil in her, but she also threatened to cut him off from sex completely.

Francis could feel a move of the power center in his house from his father to his mother. Although he loved his mother, he felt threatened by the feminine seizure of authority.

Theodore struggled with his lust for a long time. He spent countless hours praying to God for strength to resist his own impulses, but his penis would not lie flaccid anymore, having tasted of the fruit of the vine. Tempers flared when they were alone and away from the congregation. Theodore implored Lily that it was the will of God that such devoted servants be fruitful and multiply.

☼

One day, Theodore's lust got the best of him. Lily caught him having sex with the neighbor’s daughter while the girl’s parents were at work.

This was all Lily needed, to finally cut him off for good. Not only did he get no sex; he had to cook his own meals, wash and iron his own clothes, and sleep by himself. Theodore’s lust was not to be repressed. It had become clear to him that the Lord was not so interested in the multiplication of the seed of Lily’s womb as he was in the multiplication of the seed of Theodore’s loins.

☼

Theodore gave up his post at the church. The church seemed to be defiling itself by following his wife’s skirts. He took off in the middle of the night with the fifteen-year old girl. Not only did he find his lust rising regularly but also the fifteen-year old found her buttocks frequently heaving. They traveled to the south--to the sultry climes.

Three months later North Carolina sheriffs found Theodore and the young girl in squalor in a semi-abandoned house. They had made it as far as Luck, North Carolina--a small town in the Bald Mountains, not far from Asheville. They had run out of money and the girl was obviously five months pregnant. Her belly was as big as a weather balloon. Since she was too pregnant to turn tricks, and since Theodore did not seem to know how to do anything anymore but preach; they had resorted to stealing jewelry from vacant mountain homes of the wealthy and stealing hogs and greens from the hillbillies. The newspaper account of the arrest said that Theodore was wearing nothing but a smile on his face when caught with his young girl.

☼

Francis knew his father had done something bad with his penis and a little girl. He did not really understand what he had done, but from that day on Francis had trouble sleeping. Little girls had appeared in his dreams in the past. Now it was more and more little boys.

The Barnstable congregation rallied behind Lily, who became the main minister of the church. She began to rail against the evils of men, sex, lipstick, and latchkey children.

She never failed to intimidate young Francis and remind him that he was a man boy. She constantly warned him of the evils that men do to women. She frequently reminded him that his penis was the root of manly sin. He was not allowed to flush the toilet without her having checked the bowl. She said she was looking for worms in his stool, but she took her greatest interest the day that Theodore accidentally squirted a load of Jergen’s hand lotion into the bowl. Her fears were totally unfounded, as he was not old enough to even have an erection.

☼

One day,Lily found Francis at the foot of a young peach tree sapling in a tangle of rope. He had climbed a short ladder and tied a rope around a tree limb. He had tied the other end around his throat. When he had jumped from the ladder, the tree limb had snapped off.

Lily tried not to ride Francis so much. She did not want to lose him. In time, he began to smile and play again. Francis rode a tricycle and played in his sandbox. He swung in his swing and played with his blocks.

He entered the Helen Hall grammar school and seemed to love kindergarten. He learned how to play jacks with the girls. It became an obsession with him.

☼

This was the same year that Germany seized the Rhineland and formed an allegiance with Italy.

Molestation preview 03 - Lily and Theodore Noir

2012-03-23T11:40:00.000-07:00

3 - Lily and Theodore Noir

On October 20 of 1931, the day Hitler addressed a Nazi Party rally in Bad Harzburg, Germany and demanded the resignation of the government--that same day, in Barnstable, Massachusetts, Francis Assis Noir was born to a Nazarene family.

☼

His mother, Lily, had come from the Côte d’Azur--Cannes on the French Riviera. She had come with his father to the states after being nauseated watching the young ladies at Cannes bare their God given beauties on the beach.

His father, Theodore, was from Lyon. He had been disgusted by the Catholics in his neighborhood, who had fornicated on Saturday and confessed on Sunday. Since he had early onset arthritis, he had moved to Cannes for the warm weather.

They had met at a meeting of citizens who had gathered to close down a neighborhood brothel. Their efforts had failed. The French, after all, had loved their brothels.

Nevertheless, Theodore and Lilly had fallen in love. Before long, they had heard of a religion in the New World that felt as they did about sinners, Jews, and Catholics--Nazarene. Soon after, they had been married by the minister of a local Pentecostal church and had boarded a ship bound for New York.

☼

Some said they should have just stayed around Cannes for a few years. They might have liked Vichy

France

☼

They arrived in New York in time for the Great Depression. They had sold everything they had in

France

before leaving. Theodore had insisted on carrying only gold coins plus pocket money. So, they were much better off than most when they landed.

Totally appalled, by the crudeness of New York, they had headed for Massachusetts. Barnstable had not been a traditional witch-burning town like Salem, but it had had a Nazarene church and Theodore had found a sign in the window of a woodworking shop, advertising for a craftsman. Theodore had applied and had been hired, and the Noir’s had joined the community of Barnstable.

The Nazarene’s had been a small segment of the community and, even though Massachusetts had had a history of radical religious groups that hated each other, the Noirs were considered black sheep. Massachusetts had grown up by the late 1920’s and Catholics and Baptists had often spent their leisure time together at picnics and neighborhood ballgames.

☼

One day, Theodore came across a Congregationalist minister expounding on the possibility of the miracles of Jesus being psychological, rather than physical, miracles. Theodore punched the minister in the incisors and proclaimed that God had ordained him to dispense physical miracles upon sinners.

When the Presbyterian, next door, came home with a Christmas tree Theodore was aghast. The neighbors had cut the string that held the tree to the car roof and had laid the tree on the ground and then gone inside to make room for it. Theodore took a spare can of gas out of his garage, poured it on the tree, and lit a match.

The neighbors came out of their house screaming at him.

Theodore stared them down. “God is speaking to you from a burning bush.”

Theodore and Lily had made few friends in the community and Lily had to frequently bail him out of jail for expressing himself using his two ‘physical miracles.’

Lily had had her own problems. She had refused to buy a newspaper from the legless newspaperman downtown. She told him God would not have allowed him to be maimed if he had not been getting the European girls pregnant during World War I.

The legless man had never been with a woman in his life. He had been a chaplain in the corps. He had lost his legs while he was administering the last rights to a pair of little girls, who he had found dead by the side of the road. When he had turned them over, so they would not have their faces in the mud while he administered the rights--the grenade had gone off. They had been booby-trapped and left for the Americans to discover.

While they had earned the scorn of the general community, the Nazarenes had applauded their fight for God’s Laws. The church had been a little embarrassed by their tactics. Nevertheless, a collection had been taken up, one Sunday when they had both been in jail.

A deacon from the church went down to the jail to bail them out. He drove them to an ice cream shop and bought them both vanilla ice cream sodas. “The church admires your adherence to the Lord’s word. We need two young swords of the Lord. What would you think of an offer from the church to pay all your expenses to go to seminary school and become formally charged with the Lord’s work?”

The Noir’s agreed. They thrilled that a group of people recognized them for their devotion and unwavering adherence to God’s principles.

☼

Seminary school was a challenge. They got into several squabbles with the teachers over the intent of biblical verses. They almost were kicked out for insubordination. The deacon from Barnstable made a pilgrimage to the college to argue in their behalf. Eventually, a meeting was held and the Noir’s agreed that they would behave themselves. They needed church recognition to continue their campaign.

They fit in better than one might imagine. There were no dances. No music was allowed. There was no liquor. Young ladies and young men were required not only to bunk in separate dorms but also to attend separate classes. There were no ballgames.

Yes, they fit in rather well. It was as close to they would ever get to living in what they considered a perfect world.

A month before they graduated, the Barnstable church offered them positions of minister and associate minister. It had seemed that the main minister had died of the croup and the associate minister had left without a word, upon hearing the news of his minister’s death. There were two vacancies to fill. This would keep the Noirs together.

Stories had circulated for a coon’s age about the previous ministers, as to whether or not they had been homosexuals.

As soon as the Noirs became installed, Lily and Theodore set out to deprive the ex-associate minister of his ability to preach in another church, because of his alleged homosexuality.

Surprisingly, there were enough calm heads in the church hierarchy to stop the motion and it had died stillborn.

☼

Despite their best efforts to deny it, eventually Theodore and Lily had to admit that they had sexual designs on each other. They rationalized it had been God’s will to continue the new line of faithful servants.

The congregation never knew it, but Lily became pregnant one night on a church retreat. Just after admonishing their parishioners to go to their rooms and concentrate chastely on God’s Plan for their lives, the two zealots found themselves alone in the chapel. Lust overtook them and, for the first time since they had met two years earlier, they made wanton sex--right up there in front of all of the pews.

It was the first time that they ever had sex, and Lily had been surprised by its effect upon her. She had never ever called out to the Lord so often in her life before. Theodore came away with a thirst for the flesh he had never known existed.

They both covered themselves and slunk sinfully off to their quarters before anyone could discover the deed.

Voice Crying in the Wilderness - Passwords

2012-03-20T11:57:00.000-07:00

I know the labor market sucks. Don't sell your soul to the company store!
They already have enough 'information' on us all to make Mother Theresa look like a whore.
RESIST!
Let them have your online IDs if they ask.
DO NOT LET THEM HAVE YOUR PASSWORDS!
FACEBOOK, TWEET, GOOGLE, YAHOO -- don't let the horse out of the barn!
They will only ask you to work long hours for free as an intern.

Molestation preview 02 - Helmut and Ernst Schweich

2012-03-17T16:44:00.000-07:00

2 - Helmut and Ernst Schweich -- 1912-1933

In 1910, daughters of certain immigrant families, known as ‘chippies,’ were known to be ‘easy.' Before the advent of refrigeration, many lonely housewives asserted their sexuality when the iceman came.

In 1918, H. L. Mencken railed in ‘In Defense of Women’ against the sexual ‘double standard’--“What these virtuous beldames actually desire, is not that the male be reduced to chemical purity, but that the franchise of dalliance be extended to themselves.”

☼

Dietrich Schweich was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Marge was born in Munich, Germany. They met in Hamburg, while attending an engineering convention. In 1912, after a whirlwind romance, Marge steamed to America and they were married in the Lutheran church.

With the outbreak of World War I, the family could sense suspicious eyes trained upon them when they traveled to more Anglican districts. Suspicions turned to public ridicule, when the body bags returned from the frontline trenches. Dietrich was not allowed to travel overseas.

☼

At 1:24 pm, on October 29 of 1920, Marge Schweich almost choked to death suppressing her orgasmic scream as Al the iceman exploded into her, almost cracking the entry door that he pressed her against.

Marge, “Oh Got! I vish Dietrich should explode like zat. Not since Herman, my lifeguard lover in Antwerp--ten years! Where do use find such power?”

Al, “It’s secret. I love my job. I sit on blocks of ice all day. When my balls sense the heat of a needy woman, I go mad with lusty drive.”

Marge, “You come so forcefully, I fear I get baby.”

“Not to worry. We always do it stand up. Gravity protects us.”

☼

In Germantown, Pennsylvania, on July 31, 1921, Marge gave Dietrich a son, Ernst.

Al had been relocated to Erie.

Dietrich had no idea that he was sterile. He adored his son. He said he could see that his son engendered German superiority, from his large cranium to his square shoulders. Marge never told Dietrich the truth.

☼

At the conclusion of World War I, the family moved to Philadelphia, where Dietrich had landed a profitable position with the large engineering firm of Pennwerks, International. Dietrich continued to make frequent voyages to European industrial centers--often returning to Germany, where he found a mistress, Fraulein Eva Benz.

☼

Meanwhile, Ernst was now exposed to a more diverse education. While Marge and the German school indoctrinated him into the German high culture, they could not escape the fact that they were living in the birthplace of the democracy of the United States. Even the German school offered field trips to see the Liberty Bell, Congress in session, and the Lincoln Memorial.

Ernst developed strong identification with both the United States and Germany.

☼

When Post-World War I resentments had cooled, Uncle Helmut emigrated from Berlin. Helmut had recently been asked to step down as dean of the university department of philosophy. The family never talked about why Helmut had lost his post.

Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays Helmut instructed Ernst on his wrathful and vengeful God. Tuesdays and Thursdays the lectures were on such Greek philosophers as Aristotle and Plato.

☼

Dietrich spent more and more time in Germany and Helmut assumed the role of father figure to Ernst.

☼

When the stock market crashed, Marge sold whatever she could. Helmut, who owned a large amount of gold bullion, in an effort to ‘make amends’ for his mysterious former life in Germany, vowed to look after his younger brother’s family. He moved the family to Chicago.

Dietrich elected to remain in Berlin: he had worked summers, in Norway, to raise the money for his tuition.

☼

Helmut spun yarns about copper mining near Bodö, and yarns about sardine fishing for several days at a time in the Norwegian Sea. It was easy for him to capture the young boy’s attention. Ernst was always asking Helmut about northern native handicrafts and oil paintings of Norway that decorated Helmut’s room.

☼

The Crash polarized the nation. Democratic capitalism lay prone on the altar of history. Various Fascist, Communist, and Christian movements vied for the honor of dealing the deathblow.

☼

On October 20 of 1931, Hitler addressed a Nazi Party rally in Bad Harzburg, Germany. He demanded the resignation of the government.

☼

Helmut joined the local German American Bund--a propaganda machine for the Nazis.

☼

When Franklin Delano Roosevelt took the oath of office, March 4, 1933, the stock market had begun gradual recovery destined to last until 1937. Although the masses were still broke, the Schweich family had reason to rejoice. Marge had become accustomed to living with Helmut, who never made an improper advance to her. Helmut dominated Ernst’s paternal life. Helmut began to invest--ELECTRIC BOND AND SHARE, RADIO CORPORATION OF AMERICA, REMINGTON RAND, and UNITED STATES STEEL. He also speculated in wheat and corn futures.

Helmut’s spirits rose with his profits.

☼

Roosevelt created the Civilian Conservation Corps as a device to keep unemployed men from turning to subversive organizations.

☼

On January 31 of 1933, Hitler was installed as chancellor of Germany.

Helmut listened to the news on his RCA radio.

Helmut’s mood became unexplainably giddy.

☼

March 3, while chinning himself on the galvanized shower curtain rod, Ernstdie experienced his first ejaculation. One minute he was rising to the bar--his entire body quivering. The next he was shooting a white stream through the air.

Marge was downtown, but Helmut was home reading his favorite zeitung.

It was a mess to clean--all sticky and smelly. Ernstdie had to take a shower and change his shorts.

Helmut heard the noise. When Ernst finally came out of the bathroom with a sheepish look, Helmut went in to inspect and detected his favorite scent.

☼

The next time Marge went downtown, Helmut took Ernst aside. “I know vat you deed in zee bat room. Eat’s alright. Eat’s normal. Eat’s part of growing up. Vee had dat problem a lot on zee fishing boats and at zee copper mines.”

Ernst, “How can I deal with it?”

“I vill help.”

At that, Helmut unzipped Ernstdie’s pants and mouthed the boy to an erection. Ernstdie could not stop him because it felt so good and he did not know it was wrong.

“Now you do me!”

Ernst reciprocated.

Helmut smiled, “Any time Momma goes away vee can do it again, but vee must not tell her!”

☼

That evening at dinner, Marge asked about Ernstdie’s mood change.

Helmut dismissed her. “Ach! He ease yust growing up fraulein.”

Molestation preview 01 - Allen Baxter

2012-03-10T10:42:00.000-08:00

BEGINNINGS

But Jesus said:

“Suffer Little Children, and forbid them not, to come to me:

for of such is the kingdom of heaven.”

And he laid his hands on them, and departed thence

King James Bible, Mathew 18:14-15

1 - Allen Baxter -- 1873-1940

In Greek mythology the god Hermes was considered a subtle schemer. Called Mercurius (Mercury) by the Romans, he was the son of Zeus and Maia, daughter of Atlas. When he was only a few hours old he escaped from his cradle and went out in search of adventures. He stretched cords across a tortoise shell, inventing the lyre.

. . . That evening he stole the oxen of Apollo, god of the sun, hid them in a cave, and killed two of the oxen. When Apollo discovered what had happened, Hermes charmed him by playing on the lyre, and Apollo allowed him to go unpunished. Hermes gave his lyre to Apollo. In return Apollo gave Hermes a magic wand, called the caduceus, which bestowed wealth and prosperity and turned everything it touched into gold. (See also Apollo.)

. . . Hermes was the messenger of the gods, and one of his duties was to conduct the ghosts of the dead to the lower world. Among men he became the patron of merchants and the god of eloquence, good fortune, and prudence, as well as cunning, fraud, and theft. He was also the god of the roads and the protector of travelers. Pillars topped with his image were used as guideposts along roadways. Hermes was often represented as a slender youth, wearing winged sandals, a broad-brimmed hat adorned with two small wings, and holding the caduceus. [1]

☼

In a Canadian political scandal of 1873, Prime Minister J. Macdonald was charged with awarding the construction contract for the Canadian Pacific Railway to a syndicate headed by Sir Adolf Krautz in return for campaign contributions by Krautz. The scandal caused the downfall of Macdonald s Conservative administration.

Adolf lost a vast fortune in the fallout, but retained ownership of his lumber company in British Columbia. Eventually, even the lumber company went bankrupt. This was too much for Adolf, who hung himself from a crane hook.

☼

The company was purchased by Sir Hugh Baxter. Hugh also adopted Adolf’s son, Angus. Angus took the Baxter family name.

Angus married a French-Canadian, from Nova Scotia, who bore him a son, named Tom.

Angus moved to San Diego, telling his son, Tom, that he could follow and rejoin the family, if he could pay his own way south. No one else in the family had been given such instruction.

☼

Angus founded the Ku Klux Klan in San Diego. In those days, the Ku Klux Klan in San Diego was not so violent towards blacks. Tom said his grandfather quit when they became more militant.

☼

Tom eventually moved down to San Diego as a baseball player. The Baxter family has maintained a presence in San Diego ever since.

Angus, who was determined to have his son come up through the ranks, gave Tom a job as a lumberjack.

Tom fought his way to the top of the heap, sometimes unscrupulously. Challenges to his authority were nipped in the bud with draconian measures. When Tom became a crew chief, he was challenged by a large black who felt he had unjustly passed over. Tom promptly struck the black man with a pickaxe in the head and killed him.

☼

Tom married his doctor’s troubled daughter, Jane.

Jane bore Tom a son, Allen, February 26, 1926.

☼

Jane came from English proper stock and did not fit in well with the Scottish folks. Tom’s mother was cold and his wife was too hot.

☼

Tom became real estate developer in San Diego. Wherever Tom went, a cortege of businessmen followed him. The only time he was not in real estate was after the crash of the market in 1929. He lost his fortune and his business in the great depression of 1929. He moved to Witch Creek, where he bought acreage with trees.

He was a resilient man and would not remain a failure. He was determined to start all over. He cut down the trees on the land and trucked them to the San Diego sawmills for sale. Thusly, he arose from his ashes. Soon he acquired enough money to return to real estate, specializing in land speculation.

☼

Allen lived in San Diego until the age of four, raised by black nannies.

Jane, who liked to flit around from man to man, took up with Michael, an officer of a San Diego bank. They were married and that man became Allen’s stepfather. The family owned a great deal of land including a country house in Witch Creek. When Michael died, he left the summer home to Allen. It had the best view of any in Witch Creek with a commanding view of the valley.

Allen’s father and mother had been together until he was fourteen years old, which would have been around 1940.

Allen’s parents placed him in a boy’s school in San Francisco, until his parents were divorced and then he was passed back and forth between the homes of the two parents on a time-sharing basis.

☼

In later years, Tom’s son Allen would often wonder why his father had had to pay his way from British Columbia to San Diego and other family members had had their way paid.

☼

Allen had once remarked that his mother was a tramp who had gone after any man who would give her a good time. His inability to accept women as worthy human beings stemmed from his low regard for his mother.

For her part, Jane suffered from multiple personalities.

☼

Allen came from a family of capitalists--mostly agnostic. What religion he started with, came from his grandparents in Tennessee. No! They were not Pentecostal, Baptist, or Nazarene. It may have been his maternal grandmother, who had passed on the Anglican faith.

☼

Allen’s sexuality was an enigma to most people who met him, because he seemed to have been obviously sexual and asexual at the same time.

He said his mother was a tramp and it is easy to understand how a boy with a loose mother would grow up with little regard for women. Do not read the words. Picture the lifestyle instead. If you have ever known a situation like that, you will understand.

That he was very sexual, cannot be denied. That he was very much into maleness, cannot be denied. The obvious options were that he was heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual.

The real problem is not only to portray his sexuality, but to illustrate the degree of his sexuality.

Let us use a globe and say moving left and down is homosexual, right and down is bisexual, and up is heterosexual. Let us make these three curved rays of travel 120° apart, for simplicity.

Let us suppose, that by moving around to the far side of the globe, a heterosexual becomes so confident in his sexuality that he feels free to picture the world as a homosexual or bisexual. The only easy distinction between the three on the other side of the globe is the roots from which they originated.

Let us add one level of complication, distance from the center of the globe. Let’s say that persons near the center, regardless of their sexual preference, are so shallowly committed to it that it represents a small influence in their life. Let us say that a person far away from the center of the globe has intense feelings of his sexuality and needs to assert his or her sexuality.

With this scheme, assuming that it reflects reality, it could be demonstrated that a more extreme homosexual with only a mild interest in his sexuality could appear to be more normal than a very moderate heterosexual whose life was consumed by his heterosexuality.

It appears that Allen was an extreme heterosexual--so extreme that his views seemed to be in keeping with those of both homosexuals and bisexuals. However, the dominance of his sexuality over his life appeared to be extreme. Everything he did exuded how he felt about his penile superior sexuality.

Paradise preview 01 - Gila Bend

2012-03-07T10:50:00.000-08:00

A large Bounder motor home sped east on I-10. The Cruise Control kept it at a steady 55. Edgar knew he was running old tires and figured he could handle a blowout below 60. He did not want to buy tires because their money was running out. The stock market had been lousy since George W. gained the presidency--something about M2 or M3 money. Then came 911 and the market did not even open for days.

Kermit curled sleeping on Edgar’s lap. Edgar had just enough space left to turn the wheel and operate the pedals.

The cassette player played a tape of the Crusaders, just loud enough to override the hissing air conditioner. Edgar welcomed the cool Texas jazz. He had waited for Natasha to fall asleep to swap it for her favorite Bruce Springsteen tape.

A dirty smudge grew on the horizon indicating a large concentration of humanity congregated into a desert metropolis up ahead.

Natasha had drunk too much Vodka to swing out the sun visor side-flap to block the sun.

☼

Two nights ago, they had slept in Hope, Arizona--a good place for aging desert rats.

The night before that, they had laid over in a Yermo trailer park run by a spiky-haired lesbian. Actually, she had moved on, but Edgar felt like kissing the ground she had walked on. After 911 they had elected to layover an extra month in snow country rather than travel through paranoid country. The sultry Mojave air had been a breath of heaven. That morning they had pulled up stakes in Minden, Nevada, sniffling in 18-degree weather. Snow had fallen and still covered the surrounding hills. Coyotes had howled all night long. Edgar had been sick with the flu for a few days and had known he had to reach the desert quickly. One long day’s haul, down 395 to Spike’s, had brought relief.

This morning, they had dropped down to Parker to cross the Colorado. Edgar wanted space between their crossing and Boulder Dam. Who knew what Al Qaeda would blow up next? The feds had even banned motor homes from crossing over Boulder Dam.

☼

A sign came into view--Palo Verde Exit ½ Mile. Edgar peered off to the south, out Natasha’s window. He could not see the largest nuclear reactor in the U.S. Still he knew it was there. Boulder Dam and Palo Verde Power Plant--two prime targets for terrorists--stood out like milestones on their trek.

A sign came into view--85 South Exit to Gila Bend ½ Mile. Edgar pumped off Cruise Control and allowed the behemoth to slow to exit speed. Last year he had gotten lost, pulling through Phoenix out of Wickenburg. He hated Phoenix and had vowed to give it a wide berth by traveling south on paved state highway 85 to I-8.

Less traveled and more remote, State 85 followed a lonely route. Midway across 85, they passed through the Maricopa Mountains. A midday breeze picked up and rocked the vehicle. Something felt strange.

Edgar pulled to the side of the road. The motor home leaned too much for the slope of the dirt.

Natasha woke up. “What’s wrong Daddy?”

Edgar, “Shit! I don’t know! The tires feel funny. I wanta take a look.”

Natasha, “Shit!”

Edgar stepped down off the automatic steps. His driving moccasins scrunched the desert soil. He slammed the door and walked around. Everything looked okay. He hunkered down on his hands and knees between the left rear lights and the left Honda headlight and sighted through the left double tires. Okay! He walked around to the right side.

Natasha slid a bedroom window open. “It’s getting hot in here can we go?”

“I’m almost done! Hold your britches. Better, why don’t you go pee before you wet yourself?”

When Edgar sighted through the right rear tires, he saw the problem. It was the inside tire. “Damn!”

He pulled out on the road. The air conditioner kicked in.

Natasha took a swig of straight vodka. “You look depressed.”

Edgar took a hit of cool Coors. “It’s a tire.”

“Now what are we going to do?”

“It’s the inside right tire--right behind where I loaded the safe. It’s going flat fast. It’s bulging against the outside tire. It has to be fixed.”

“We don’t have any money for a tire.”

“I know! I know! I’m 60 years old. My eyes are failing. Nobody will give me a job. I couldn’t work at MacDonald’s, ‘cause I couldn’t find the key on the cash register with the French fry picture. And besides, my sinuses would drip into their colas. I tried to get a job at the Nevada Department of Transportation.”

“You shoulda kissed more ass at your old job!”

“I got tired of those CIA creeps and they didn’t want me around after I told them about my Mao Tse Tung dream.”

“That was stupid!”

“They had hosed me for seven years.” He crushed the Coors can. “Maybe the stock market will go back up. I think I’ll see if I can find a job when we get settled.”

“Where you gonna find a tire that size out here?”

“I don’t know. What’s worse is we have to slow down so the outer tire doesn’t go too!”

“We’re screwed! I should have married a Republican!”

“Maybe we can find a tire shop before the other one goes.”

☼

The last seven months in Minden had given them little solace. They had made friends with a Mexican family who worked as servants in Incline Village. Several people in the campground had worked in Incline Village. Next thing they knew, one of their major credit cards had an Incline Village address and new charges at Harvey’s in Lake Tahoe.

One of the neighbors had tried to recruit Edgar to be responsible for the computer support of a secret redneck invasion of China. “We’ll get our cargo planes landed in China with heavy armaments by bribing the Chinese radar operators.”

The bump on Natasha’s arm had grown as big as a cherry while their health insurance had almost run out. Only seven months earlier she had had surgery to remove a growth on her eyelid.

One morning, as Edgar had watched MSNBC, the market had begun to tumble. Then the television had shown one of World Trade Center towers on fire. Natasha and Edgar had looked on mesmerized, as the second plane had hit. The market had closed before Edgar could find his slippers. He had sent an e-mail to a friend about the symmetry of the buildings collapse, comparing it to a banana being peeled. At the time, his friend had thought the remark to be traitorous. More recently, callers have expressed the same feelings on Coast to Coast radio; using the symmetry as a basis for their conspiracy plot that the government had set off pre-positioned charges in the buildings.

Edgar had predicted such an event, but had hoped it would not happen in his lifetime. Now, he was looking for signs that his second dire prediction might be in the offing--a major epidemic of gargantuan proportions.

They had acquired Blue Cross health insurance at $700 per month.

Things had gone crazy in the camp with pickups carrying banners about killing the frigging rag heads.

☼

The first thing Natasha saw as they approached I-8 was a giant ‘TIRES’ sign.

The mechanic had to call out to have the tire delivered. He jacked up the rear end and removed the outer tire. Grease streaked the inside tire in a radial pattern. “You’re losing your bearings.”

Edgar, “You can say that again. Can you fix it?”

“$65 for one Michelin radial! Nothing fancy! $85 and leave it overnight for bearings on this end of this axle!”

“We can’t leave it! We can’t afford the bearing.”

“You ain’t gonna go far.”

“Quail Canyon Trailer Trails! Between Phoenix and Casa Grande! Over by Gila Bend Indian Reservation.”

“You got enough bearing for there and back for the bearings. You’re lucky they deliver propane to your motor home in Arizona. Drive Slowly.”

TOC formatting secrets for Word 2007

2012-02-24T16:15:00.000-08:00

Anyone who's tried to read one of my four books, has probably been put off by my tables of contents. Last night I experienced a Eureka moment.
CHANGE THE MAN
Choose to manually insert a TOC. Word presents a form with a TOC header and two sets of blank TOC1, TOC2, and TOC3. Select the target of your changes and edit (make changes to TOC header, or first set of blanks). save all changes as you go by changing the TOCx style to reflect your changes.
FONTS
Apparently, only the ugly Courier TOC header font can be changed--I chose Times New Roman 12, not to be a rebel nor a conforms, but for its practicality--it's a good font. 12 is a bit larger than the standard 10, but some of us geriatrics need 12 if we don't want t wear glasses for the TOC. I use this font for almost everything, except the title page, the copyright, H1 and H2. Word selects the fonts for level 1, 2, and 3 entries. Try not to use one of these for the TOC header. Word seems to replicate the font size you choose for your TOC header in its TOC 1, 2, and 3 entry typefaces. You should not need to use TOC3 in a work of fiction. DO NOT FILL IN THE TOC FORM!
PARAGRAPHS
Select the text area of TOC1, 2, or 3. change from first line indent to hanging. Choose justified text alignment. Choose widow and orphan control. Select no spaces between lines and maybe 6 points after paragraph.
Now select insert one of the automatic TOCs. You may get a message like "a TOC already exists (or does not exist). Continue?"
The main confusion about TOC styles is that there really is only one set of TOC styles per document:
TOC TOC title "(Table of) Contents" could be "Ducks in the Water;"
TOC1 H1 Header Level 1 Chapter;
TOC2 H2 Header Level 2 Sub-Chapter;
TOC3 H3 Header Level 3 Sub-Sub-Chapter.

I hope this helps. Comments and corrections are welcome.

U2 Spy Plane ride-along with BBC America

2012-02-11T11:07:00.000-08:00

Click the URL below to experience flight in U2 spy plane.

http://www.wimp.com/breathtakingfootage/

BLUEGRASS Published

2012-02-09T14:03:00.000-08:00

BLUEGRASS, code named Honored Dishonored, is available from AMAZON.

Select label BUY BOOKS HERE to find links to my books in Amazon!

Charlie's Books For Sale on Amazon

2012-01-27T14:18:00.000-08:00

Find ALL books published
by
Charlie
Taber
Jackson
through
Amazon.com

Click "Read More", or URL, near a book cover of interest.

http://www.amazon.com/Pfeiffer-California-Politics-Business-ebook/dp/B004IZL6WY/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1327702039&sr=1-1-fkmr0

http://www.amazon.com/Ishi-Pishi-Misfits-Sasquatch-ebook/dp/B0044DF46E/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1328207113&sr=8-2

http://www.amazon.com/Shepherd-Comb-Rape-Murder-ebook/dp/B003VD1EIA

http://www.amazon.com/BLUEGRASS-A-Hero-Returns-ebook/dp/B00776T4UC/ref=sr_1_9?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1328816316&sr=1-9

BLUEGRASS - Preface

2012-01-19T09:22:00.000-08:00

Preface

Welcome reader. I guess I will have to learn to write prefaces and now is a good time. People say, “Write what you know.” In the near future, I plan to publish a novel about child abuse, child abusers, and abused children--a subject I know all too well. I was sexually abused as a child. Child molesters, not the ‘straight community’, were the first to welcome me to Mexico. I never had to search for ‘kiddy porn’ on the internet. I just opened my door and in walked my subjects. That story will certainly need a preface. I digress.

This story is an equal opportunity offender, so I may end up with a negative number of readers. It offends Born-Again Christians, women, men, the military, soldiers, the YMCA, skid rows, bigots, drug pushers, military contractors, sex addicts, information agents, crackers, heroes, Louisianans, homosexuals, neo-hippies, drug addicts, Catholics, Jack Mormons, Mexico, et al. Then, it seems to find redemption when something beautiful blossoms in a heart of darkness.

At first glance, the story superficially appears centered around the Onizuka Air Base. It is what I know, having supported it for three decades. It does not help, that the first ten per cent of the story, which is all that Amazon allows me to give away free on my blog (charlietaberjackson.blogspot.com (Ravenland)), does center around the air base, back when the mostly empty egg carton was named the Air Force Satellite Test Center. I hope that the FBI can cope with my new middle name, Taber. It is a real inconvenience for a person with a common name to come up with a unique id (joeblowsmith666). I also assign GPS coordinates to any blog post, within reason. I found that all I needed was to give Google ‘onizuka air’ to get an x-ray view of the compound. I clicked on coordinates that were true a few score years ago. The uppermost cover photograph is of the NASA/Ames/Lockheed/Moffett complex, taken with my long Celestron lens from a levee out in the bay. I never took a photograph of the ‘Blue Cube’ because I love my liberty and freedom. Besides, it is not very photogenic.

This story is really about ‘Earnest,’ a construct of the personalities of half a dozen people, including myself. I had to construct him, because nobody really knew the person who inspired him. He appeared with his medals. He vanished into thin air. Some said he appeared again. Almost all anybody knew of him are contained in those three sentences. And yet, he changed my life completely. So, I had to write about him.

I find that most people lead tediously boring lives. Some writers might give such a creature a cape and superhuman powers, and write a graphic novel. I take his perceived characteristics, such as zealousness, and swap them out for the known characteristics of an extremist, such as super zealousness, and I have a person who throws his Bible on the floor of the YMCA kitchen when his best friend tries to explain to him the blasphemous story, ‘It’s a Wonderful Life.’ I repeated this process with good and bad characteristics until I created a conflicted person--a person seen through dream filters, asking to be both loved and hated. It worked for me. I began writing about a demon. I ended writing about a prince.

Nevertheless, this story was a joy to write. Within the constraints that he had to appear, vanish and reappear (kind of like Jesus); he was a blank slate. Since he was fiction, I could subject him to all kinds of situations--building on my experience of building a novel out of a hitchhiker’s twenty-minute tale, in ‘Pfeiffer.’ I let the story write itself, editing it in subsequent drafts. My muse named my subject Earnest. I trusted it until this afternoon, not being a thesaurus geek. I am surprised. Spelling it with an ‘a’ disassociated him from any real or imagined person and linked him intuitively to the adjectives my conscious mind was too stupid to apply: serious, sincere, solemn, heartfelt, grave, deep, sober, intense, strong, and definitely not frivolous. These qualities I applied liberally to an otherwise simple, Bible thumping, country bumpkin. So, he had strength to endure kidnapping, drug induced nightmares, and bisexual encounters--enough to drive a lesser born-again to contemplate suicide. But, this marine had survived Viet Nam and returned in a catatonic state as a presumed hero. He was up to it. I questioned the irreverent sadistic trials that I put this loyal marine through. Nevertheless, this battle-built warrior would never have missed work unless he were betrayed by a friend, drugged, abducted, and dumped in stupor in a public place in a state worse than naked.

There is a story within this story. I thoroughly enjoyed writing, let’s call it, ‘Independents,’ because it deals with the confluence of the FBI, drug running, Mexico, the Federales, the Zapatistas, chupacabras and surprising gun battles. FBI agents Harvey, a Scott with a Sean Connery lisp, and Melvin, a skeptical Jew, finally track down Earnest in Golden Gate Park. To reward them, the FBI puts them on a one-year, unpaid. leave of absence, to get straight or find new employment. It seems that they had developed a lack of respect for The Establishment, become addicted to pot, and acquired certain STDs while hobnobbing with the gay and neo-hippy communities. They decide to go over to the other side. They had neglected to turn over the dozier they had developed on Tom, El Cid’s drug trafficker. They dummy some IDs and grab a bus to Nogales. From Nogales, they enter the world of Los Moches, las chupacabras, La Ciudad, las señoritas, Catholics, volcanoes, hurricanes, Federales and Zapatistas. I would like to emphasize that, except for landmarks, state and city names, all people, places, and events in this sub-story are fiction and for your entertainment.

Each story in this novel contains at least one love story.

Amongst my plans for the future are to publish expanded versions of this Mexican sequence and the Labor Day sequence from ‘Ishi Pishi’ in my first book of short stories.

The characters in this story are exaggerated composites of eccentrics. By and large, the preponderance of people in the Blue Cube are boringly normal. The same should be said of all social segments portrayed here, including the good residents of Lake County and the YMCA. Nevertheless, that wouldn’t be much fun, would it?

☼

The Russians are hoping that I’ll spill the beans. The CIA is afraid that I already have. They just don’t know what I stole. My ex-boss ‘knows’ I stole a case of glue sticks. Even if I had, it fails to compare to the homemade, $2,200 computer and printer that I smuggled in from home so that I could at least pretend to do my job. Somebody must have seen me throw the oversized printer in the dumpster when the contract ran out. I took two glue sticks from supply, one for my desk drawer and one for my briefcase. Years later, I threw away both sticks--dried up and unused.

They hired an unattractive, middle-aged Mexican woman for receptionist. Since I like Mexicans, I greeted her with “bien venido.” She accused me of bigotry. She was not a Mexican! I have since learned that this is a typical Filipina response. She setup her desk, proudly displaying a set of books on how to get ahead by screwing your coworkers. She repeatedly called in our market-timing 401(k) requests days late. She accused me of sexual harassment when I sent her e-mails confirming my presence at the prime contractor’s office. In Spanish, I wrote, “the ugly stick is across the street,” which apparently translates into slum dog Filipina as, “the ugly penis is waiting in the bushes to rape you.”

Anyway, after pleading guilty to stealing ‘paperclips,’ they still mistrusted me. So, I blew off the CIA by recounting a recurrent dream from decades past.

“One day in Tijuana, I remember observing several groups of pretty, young Chinese-Mexican girls ascending stairs from the street. I followed them into a great hall. I sampled the many dishes of sumptuous food. Looking about to discover the reason for the banquet, I discerned a giant portrait of Mao Tse Tung.”

I told them that I had difficulty discerning whether it was a dream or really happened, in the mist of time. Of course, I knew it was a dream. I was 59 years old and seven years into a personal work slowdown to protest the lack of raises and the destruction of benefits that we all suffered from. I knew I was going to be let go. So, I wanted to have fun with it.

My ‘son’ says I’m a liar. He says I can’t tell the same story twice. I am guilty. I enjoy telling stories. As an agnostic, relativist, evolutionist, secular humanist, and pragmatic socialist, I see reality through many views--I don’t just run in circles muttering, “What would Jesus do?” When I write on a subject, many factors are considered.

Who is my intended audience? If my son asks me, how come I left his mother, the only true answer is that I did not. I can choose to elaborate. She left me, repeatedly! The last time, she drained our bank account, kidnapped my 3-year old daughter. When she wrote to me three months later expecting child support and announcing the expected delivery of ‘my’ son in six months, I served her with divorce papers. She can elaborate, on why she left me, but she cannot say I abandoned my family.

What is the subject? When asked if I use, or ever have used, marijuana, I say that I never have. Sure, I might have had a few ounces, but it was used to gain access to characters, whom I hoped someday to write about. In the same manner, I ‘used’ methyl ethyl ketone to clean large steel aircraft assemblies at the Downey North American Aviation plant, which is the probable triggering mechanism for my Parkinson’s, so that I could retain employment and work on the Apollo spacecraft ablative heat shield. I object to the wholesale references to marijuana exposure as using, recreating, or experimenting. I interpret the question as, “Tell us if there is any reasonable doubt that you may have drug problems at some future point in time.” I am about as clean as a person gets, but I could point fingers at people working in highly secure environments. I know better than to come forward. Once, I revealed to an egocentric boss that his people were plotting against him. He thought I was lying, passed me up on promotions, and became closer to ‘his’ people. His wife even accused me of trying to sabotage his career. So much for trusting authority.

What was my point of view at the time? I have, since researching my 10,000-entry genealogy, become highly introspective and self-critical. Rear-vision is 20-20. I now understand, looking back on my timeline, how I gave up on the church. Born and christened an Episcopalian, I don’t recall attending church until I was about ten years old. That’s when my mother joined the Presbyterian church so she could attend services with her friend, who was married to a Lebanese Jew. When Mother died, I went to live in Morningside Park with my first foster family. I joined the Evangelical and Reformed Church. There, an assistant pastor revealed that Christ’s physical miracles might have really been psychological miracles. Nevertheless, looking back on the ‘50s events from the time-compressing distance of the 2010s, one thing becomes clear. The ‘40s stole the magic from my life when Father died. The ‘60s broke my heart when I had to walk away from my true love, Virginia, due to joblessness, her brother-in-law, the Pope, and my own failure to properly prepare myself in high school. The ‘50s blindsided me, as if I were t-boned by a speeding locomotive. I entered the decade with a questioning mind and raging hormones--holding good grades. Before long, I became the class clown, running around campus with a stupid grin and dropping one-liners. I had been assaulted by the old man in the one place I was vulnerable. My church had come forward with a foster home that harbored a child molester. For years after, I broke into rages, whenever I was left alone, shrieking “Why me God! Why me!” I quit the church. I quit believing.

In what predicament did I find myself? It was prom night. The door opened. Anne was beautiful. She was Scholarship Society. She did not need this. Seconds stretched to infinities. Suddenly, everyone realize--I had no orchid. I had not forgotten. Gas and cigarettes were cheap. I had given up shoplifting when I lived with my uncle. I thought I could save my weekly allowance. There was not enough time. Corsages had to be ordered in advance, with a deposit. Nothing would do but the truth.

☼

Incidentally, while I have your attention, I would like to comment on these exciting times, as I prepare to publish. CNN just announced this that this Thanksgiving week is the worst Thanksgiving week for the stock market since 1932. Chinese industrialists are liquidating their industrial plants. Italy is teetering on bankruptcy. Downgraded U.S. bonds are selling because they are the only game in town, except for gold. Actually, corporate profits grow at the cost of chronic unemployment. The nation is so divided, that there is a new ‘Donut Hole,’ the chasm between the most liberal Republicans and the most conservative Democrats. As the Tea Party holds armed rallies and the Occupiers occupy the financial centers, can ‘revolution’ be far off?

What does all this divisiveness have to do with my writing? Just this! Literary power brokers to hitchhikers, ask about my genre and audience.

The Ninety-Nine Per Cent are my target audience. I want those who question authority; those who suffer elder, spousal, institutional, mental, physical, sexual, or child abuse; the disenfranchised; the impoverished; the sick, lame, or dying; and those falsely accused or imprisoned.

I like those few who reach across the class chasm to tell the truth, such as the rich conservative ‘Oracle of Omaha,’ Warren Buffett, and the, grounded in socialism and become popular futurist, Alvin Toffler. American society stands at a crucial point of history. We can turn right and return to sweat shops. Republicans are already asking for the repeal of child labor laws and abandonment of the crippled and needy who depend on Social Security (“Just let them die!”). Already, the people are marching in the streets bearing the standards of Communism, Nazism, racism, and anarchism.

It only takes ten per cent to stage a revolution. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a wealthy man, offered the American people, the New Deal, not to promote socialism, but to protect the Union. He realized that the Great Depression was exacting extreme grief on the workers of the nation. Rather than say “Let them eat cake!” and inciting a destructive revolution; he offered to help them find food, work, and the hope of participating in the American Dream. It’s time to save the masses, again; and in doing so, save the Union. As we go forward, let us be cautious to prevent our ushering in a more tyrannical oligarchy than we already have. Let’s not forget how Hitler and Stalin rode into power on the fears of the masses. Our democracy needs a few tweaks, not a sledgehammer. We need to evolve, not revolt.

In the course of time, technology is backing us into an age of mass unemployment. We need smart social designers to reshape how we think about our roles in society.

As for genre, as a nonconformist, I object. If you can check out a non-genre expressionist narrative from a major movie discounter, how come it has to be searched for as general fiction in book format. Genre books have tight formulaic rules. The worst offenders are ‘romance’ novels. First of all, they should not be called romance novels. Romantic might be more appropriate, as this genre focuses entirely on love passion. It fails to include stories on the romance of the old west or the romance of the clipper ship. Look it up in your Funk and Google. Secondly, most romance novels are no larger than a novella. Then the romance writer has to write to a specific sub-genre. Romantic sub-genre guidelines strictly dictate the contents allowed: flirtation, handholding, embraces, stolen kisses, disrobing, coitus, teen sex, premarital sex, adultery, prostitution, ad nauseum.

Only children’s books require more discipline. You have to write to a certain age, a certain educational level, a certain vocabulary, and politically correct. Meeting all these conditions only allows you to make pennies on the dollars you could make for a novel. Further, you’ll probably only publish in a monthly and they will probably want illustrations.

☼

Now, if you’re still there, here’s hoping you enjoy my little story.

Charlie Jackson

January 18, 2012

Road Chronicles 000606 - BOBCAT

2012-01-14T12:00:00.000-08:00

Las Vegas to Ryndon,

via Leeds and Ely

Late May and Early June 2000

Dear David,

We arrived Monday afternoon and I (belatedly) received your e-mail Tuesday night on my new notebook. I've never figured out the difference between a notebook and a laptop.

It sounds like you are where you want to be. I think you loved the part of your youth where you lived in Marana the most. It is very pretty there and much better than living in Tucson. Although, I have never met such nice people as in Tucson, unless it was in the shrimp fishing towns of the Texas Gulf Coast.

People in Nevada are not that friendly. They're friendly but not like Arizonans and Texans. And they're weird. It's like, in California they encourage and promote all kinds of alternative life styles and woe be to you if you talk bad of any of them. In Nevada everyone does anything they want and it's nobody's business but their's. Nevada seems to be more liberated in the sense that nobody presumes to care what anybody else does. But in Nevada they might back it up with a Saturday Night Special instead of a New York Educated Lawyer. Jack Mormons seem alright. It's funny how they seem to be willing to say much worse things about the regular Mormons than even I would. But the real Mormans seem to be much

cleaner and harder working than the Jacks.

I wouldn't call any of us redneck trailer trash. Although, you are what you want to be. I'm sorry that you are also living in 'movable housing.' I think, if it persisted for two or more generations that would be a different matter. You tend to pick up mannerisms of those you are around. I have a problem with talking. If I live on the Kansas-Missouri line for four days and then pass through Arizona, the Arizonan will think I was born in Kansas or Missouri. I've been in Nevada growing on three months so I'm afraid if I showed up in San Francisco they would think I was country. Oh well, thinking positively, it will help me to pass as a local.

Mobile homes have the advantage sometimes of being more spacious and having more conventional fixtures than motorhomes and trailers. But having lived around them for a few years I have noticed that people never really move their movable houses anywhere. They tend to live in them till they die and then the homes go to the dump. They are almost impossible to resell.

We both had the good sense to buy used equipment so that we would not pay full dollar. That way they serve the purpose of reducing housing costs over a period of years. But in order to really be effective some of the money saved needs to really be saved and not spent.

I don't think any movable housing is good for keeping out the heat or keeping in the warmth. And you always have to worry about the roof. Don't walk on it or it will develop dents that collect rain water and leak. I really hope that this is just a passing phase for both of us.

I'm sure you know that one of the best things you can do is mist the rat dust with a fine spray of water so that it doesn't blow in the wind (hanta).

I'm glad you like gardening. It gives a certain pleasure to make things grow. We have a sort of blue-green tree giving us shade right now. But I don't think its a Palo Verde.

Glad to hear about Miss Daisy. She seems like a very special cat. Very much like our Baby Boppy which I found in the garden, so small it could not even hardly step over the blades of grass. I have tried not to talk about pets, because it reminds me of Pancho. He's dead. He could have been with us still. I loved Pancho. I don't want to talk about what happened to him. Baby Bop has learned on this last trip to ride on my lap while I'm driving the motorhome and even look out the window for a while. There was a dangerous time when he passed from laying on the floor under the driver's seat to laying under the brake peddle to laying on my lap. Most cats don't like water except for drinking. But then Daisy doesn't go into the shower till you're out.

I think I do have some investment savy and would call my self more of a fortnight trader than a day trader. I want to keep anything I buy forever. But in response to the violent swings caused by the day-traders I am forced to trade frequently to protect myself. The day I read your letter I just had one transaction and the next day two. But yesterday when the bulls came out, I lost my cool and went from a positive $10,000 in the margin account to having borrowed $ 5,000 on margin to buy like crazy. But I buy lots of Treasury bonds, Utilities, Foreign bonds, Municipal Bonds, and boring things like GE, News Corporation, Harley Davidson and Safeway.

I just got slammed in

China

. One stock lost 50% the day after I bought it. They dealt exclusively with the Chinese and the Chinese said they didn't want them. I own or have owned stock in China, Canada, Chile, Norway, Sweden, Finland, South Korea, Japan, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil, Cayman Islands, and mutual funds that specialized in Europe, Asia, Latin America.

I try to get into various industries and so forth so hat any one thing won't kill me. Foreign countries are hard to get into. It sometimes takes several tries before you find 2 or three stocks you can hold all at once. I was heavy into Latin America a while back and am just getting back into

Brazil

. But I am definitely in Europe and fairly well into

China

, Nokia, Ericcson, Smedvig, Huanang Electric, Sina.com, ADC Telecommunications, Motorola.

We spent Saturday traveling to Leeds, Utah. I wasted time in Las Vegas. My old landlord told me to join Sams Club. But when I handed the a check for $1,000 for a cheap laptop they said sorry no checks that size from a first time customer. So I gave them a piece of my mind and drove around till I found Comp

USA

. There I bought a Sony VAIO Notebook for $800 more (PCG-F420, Pentium III).

I wanted to stop at Casa Blanca for Rita, but she took advantage of me when I left the cab to swill down a ton of vodka, so she only saw Casa Blanca from the highway. There was a really neat canyon drive somewhere near the Virgin River. Leeds was very clean and attractive. Sunday we drove up through Pioche and stopped there to see the town. Then we drove up to Ely. Monday, Memorial Day, the motorhome wouldn't start and we were late leaving. It finally started and we drove through some really beautiful country along the Ruby Mountains (a long chain of shear peaks all covered with snow. I think it was that day that I saw a Bobcat cross the road in front of me.

We were told in Scott's Valley, California that the Banks Exhaust System was melting the starter solinoid. They said it was not an emergency but should be fixed soon. I crawled under and looked at it yesterday and the plastic housing where the wires feed into the solenoid is melted and the wires feel like they are damaged. I will try to contact a mechanic to fix it and maybe build a heatshield between it and the Banks Exhaust next week. Don't know how many times it will start without being fixed.

I have to go now. Will try to respond to the rest of your letter tomorrow. I will try to include a picture of your girl friend. It's tricky and I am clumsy at sending attachments in non-corporate e-mail. Here goes.

Charles

Road Chronicles 000325 - ROADRUNNER TAILS

2012-01-05T09:46:00.000-08:00

From the Shadow of Mount Chuck

March 25, 2000

Bakersfield was flooded, but Yermo was nice. We didn't stay in Beatty because all they offered us was a dried up grassy lot.

After visiting in Scott's Valley, Bakersfield, Yermo, and Beatty, we are currently residing in Pahrump, Nevada.

A road runner ran past our door this morning and the horses are laying down from the heat.

We clearly see snow capped Mount Charleston from our 'living room.'

We went to the Venetian in Las Vegas a few nights ago.

We will move fairly suddenly if the scalding heat from the Colorado River gets to be too much. I hope we can be here to see the wild flowers in Death Valley before moving on.

Here we have mesquite trees and tall cottonwood trees for some shade. There's an Albertson's Market and Radio Shack in town. It is very rural and everything is paved with gravel. Cowboys are everywhere, although most of them seem to be all hat and no cattle.

Road Chronicles 000320 - STUCK IN LODI AGAIN

2012-01-02T11:25:00.000-08:00

Bakersfield Lake

March 20, 2000

David,

Well, here we are in the middle of Bakersfield Lake.

It sounded better in the brochure. Palm Trees and Resort Style Living materialized as Monsoons and Sunken RV Sites.

When I was sorting through things to keep and throw away, I am glad I saved my galoshes. And when deciding how to best outfit the Motorhome, I'm glad I spent $3,000 for hydraulic jacks. Otherwise I would have had to lay down on my back in 6 inches of water to place scissor jacks and been electricuted plugging into 110v while standing in 6" of water. Well, maybe it's 3 inches.

These Hills are alive with the swish of fresh white snow. Needing to mail some bill payments last night, I asked a cowpoke or drill rig worker where the mail boxes were and he said, "We don't have any f___ing mail boxes around here."

Negatives:

Leaving San Jose, I drove out of the slot with my 110 connected. Rita's on the warpath. We spent most of last business week sleeping on the rack at the RV dealer--while they mounted jacks.

The cruise control and signal lights went out on South-Bound 99.

This place sucks.

Von's Grocery Store doesn't realize that someone with a Schwab One Check book is probably good for the bill.

Positives:

All Financial Metrics continue to be positive. We made several times more money while sleeping on the rack at the RV place than we paid for the new equipment.

Rita has been sober for a month.

I've started working on taxes.

I fixed the damage to the 110v service with a phillips, some toothe picks, and Elmer's Glue. I fixed the signal lights, and next time I will be able to pull over on the side of the freeway, fix them, and be on my way in 5 minutes. The fix for the signal lights may have also fixed cruise control, I won't know till I am back on the road.

Concerns:

Vanguard still reports that my 401(k) is in place and making a little money--so I don't know how long it will take for the lump sum pay out--I could use it to pay taxes on all of the money I made.

Plans:

To stay swimming in this lake until taxes are at least almost done or for about 3 weeks, depending on how I feel, then to head out over the Tehachapis through the, then snow melted pass, on the way to Nevada.

Pains in the Ass:

I had trouble with FLASHNET and had to open an AOL account in order to get online and spent most of the weekend working on the computer, trying to update to AOL 5.0/MSIE 5.0, till I realized that all I needed was AOL 4.0 with my trusty old Netscape and encryption.

Rita just took a walk out through the 'lake,' so I will have to get dressed and see what she's up to.

I like not working, even though it's scary.

Charlie Raven

Digression - Butterfly causes Typhoon

2011-12-28T10:47:00.000-08:00

An example of a trivial pursuit causing serendipitous results.
When I began writing 'Honored Dishonored' (pre-publication title), I needed some 'magic wand' to deliver catatonic Earnest out of Cong territory in Cambodia. I'm trending away from fantasy, so I used plausible reality. I wrote about him being discovered by a special forces unit. With the FBI/CIA likely to be nervous about my story starting at the Blue Cube, I did not want to use SEALS. Never having served in the armed forces, nor taken other than a political interest in Viet Nam, I chose to have him rescued by a top secret Spanish Special Ops unit, partly because I know some Spanish, partly because the reader would accept a Spanish group as never having been heard of.
I up-linked a photo of a crucifix statue (Los Altos Hills/Cupertino CA) to Google Earth years later.
Months later. Joan of Arc (Spain) commented favorably on my crucifix photo.
Weeks later, Google photo group 'Friends of Spanish Legion' issued me an invitation to join with my crucifix. I went their group site--all combat photos. Where did I fit in?
I searched the web and found http://discovermilitary.com/special-forces/spanish-legion/ with plenty of sex toy ads. (thank God my blog attracts travel and outdoor adventure ads) The text on this site is very difficult to read--dark charcoal letters on black background. I did learn that the Spanish Legion is based on the French Foreign Legion, but only accepts Spanish citizens. Before leaving, I watched a combat video from Afghanistan.

So, I'm going to change the manuscript to read 'Spanish Legion' vice 'Spanish Especialistas'. Yes Virginia, Spain has special ops.

Now, I'll probably be accused of leaking Spanish secrets and visiting a porn site!

Road Chronicles 000304 - HITTING THE ROAD

2011-12-25T11:16:00.000-08:00

Disconnecting from the Power Grid February 2000

The weekend after my last workday Rita fell and punctured her jaw. She had low potassium levels and had to be taken to the hospital emergency ward and pumped up with intravenous potassium. We spent the rest of February putting wheelbarrow loads of “spare” stuff in the gurney so that we would “fit” into the motorhome; Putting the finishing touches on the towing rig; arranging personal affairs (including) mail forwarding, and arranging to get hold of the rest of my 401(k).

On the last day of the month we almost pulled up stakes and headed out. Well it was raining a monsoon by the time we were ready to hook up and Rita was hollering at me instead of helping. If she would have helped we would have hooked before the monsoon hit. As it was I got completely drenched and sidetracked by her yelling and the great deluge, I forgot to pull the plug (30-amp that is). I stopped just out of the stall and was extremely depressed, what with emergency hospital bills too. I straightened the prongs with my pliers and hoped for the best. We headed for our first monsoonal drive thru the mountains on the way to Scott’s Valley.

Santa Cruz to Bakersfield

Early March 2000

In Scott’s Valley they decided that the electric cord was still good (this electric cord problem was to give us much trouble downstream, until we got to Minden). We spent about 3 days watching the stock market and the soaps in the RV Shop’s lobby and sleeping up on the rack (well sort of) by the garage. They checked the wheels and also found nothing wrong. They still groan when we pull off the freeway and negotiate city streets at 15-miles per hour. They did 'rotate' the front tires to see if it improved the problem. The big reason we went there was for power jacks. I was not about to go on the road manually jacking the rig every time we stopped. Of course the market was plunging all of the time we were there.

When they finished we headed down the Coast Highway to Pajaro River and then along the river to the junction with Interstate 5. We had thought of stopping once we got to the Central Valley but everything was going so well we decided to press on to Bakersfield.

We stopped just before the freeway onramp. I guess I had the emergency blinkers on and a bunch of other stuff and may have overloaded a circuit, because halfway down the valley I realized we had no lights and no cruise control. We had head and tail but no signal lights. So that was my first experience handling an almost 60-foot train of vehicles down major freeways in heavy traffic in failing daylight and no way to signal to other drivers what my intentions were.

By merging slowly we managed to just piss off half the commuters, but the scary part was at the end of the freeway off-ramp in Buttonwillow, where we had to make a left turn in heavy traffic with only headlights.

It was probably during the drive down the Central Valley that Rita discovered it was more fun to ride up front with me and watch the scenery than to lie in bed in the back and scream bloody murder. She also learned to use the cell phone to call ahead and assure that we had a place to stay at night.

We stayed at a trailer park advertised as a RESORT. Well it had a swimming pool and a hot tub but it was no resort. The spaces were gravel with the only two nice features: a good utility post and a slab of concrete with a redwood table. I found the fuse that controlled the cruise control and signal lights and if it blows again I will pull to the side and be back on the road in about 5 minutes.
This is the first file I have written on my new computer with one of those little robots watching. The dog is wagging his tail and sniffing. I should give him something to do, but I’m too busy.

Plugging in at this campground tested my bravery. Luckily when I threw out everything I saved my galoshes and I knew where they were. So the first thing was to don my galoshes and stand in about 3 inches of water while plugging into the shoreline.

It rained and rained and we waited for a clearing and warming before heading over Tehachapi.

Bakersfield was our first clue that we were leaving civilization for red-neck country. I guess they have a country western museum there and it has a story with it that I am sure you know better than I care about. I also found out that lots of red-neck communities don’t have mailboxes and you have to look for the post-office, even at midnight. There were also lots of red-necks living in crumbling trailers and a drug pusher who drove around in an old laundry truck delivering his wares. The red-necks in East Bakersfield also had a roof decoration we were to become used to--old tires on the roof, thrown up there to keep the plastic sheeting water-proofing in place. We have been told that the Okies in West Bakersfield call a roofer instead.

Bakersfield to Mojave

Mid March 2000

Sometime around the middle of March we headed out. I got to listen to my favorite Western radio station that I always listen to when climbing out of Bakersfield to Tehachapi. That’s about the only place I listen to country music because it is a good station and it lends itself to the enjoyment of the mountain road.

I had wanted to have lunch in the quaint little town of Tehachapi with Rita. I was amazed to see that the quaint little town now had an Albertson’s, McDonalds, Burger King, ad nauseum. Well it was not quaint any more. Disgusted by the march of the cookie cutter we turned around and left hungry.

It was fun listening to the old Los Angeles radio stations while driving through the Mojave to Yermo where we spent the night at a KOA run by a spikey-haired lesbian. It was a nice park and a welcome relief from the Bakersfield ghetto park.

The next day, we drove to Baker and then through Shoshone to the Amargosa Valley, which the internet had implied contained a nice park with trees by a river (later determined to be the radioactive Amargosa River). But Amargosa Valley looked pretty desolate and we drove to 95 where we found Fort Amargosa. This is a trailer park that is near no shopping centers or stores -- the RV equivalent to a company town. We had read about Pahrump but imagined it to be nothing more than 3 casinos, 3 golf courses, and 9,000 RV dwellers, all clustered in a valley of wineries (which was close to the truth).

So we headed north, to known territory of Beatty. Beatty doesn’t look the same in an RV in the afternoon when you have to spend the night as it does from a car on a days tour from Death Valley. We stayed the night under some nice trees in a nice park. But Beatteites profess to buy their groceries in Pahrump. Whore houses are all over the place and you have to be reminded of them constantly. And the only place we could stay with an internet hookup was on a little triangular patch of dry grass between a trailer with loud rock music and another with a mean dog. So we Headed south again to Pahrump.

Leaving the highway (95) there was little promise of anything more than mesquite widely scattered and sand dunes. But as we broached the pass the Pahrump Valley spread marvelously before us and we knew we had found a sort of refuge from the wind whipped wasteland called Nevada.

Baby-Boppy

Our cat has always been terrified on Motorhome runs for propane. He would either hide in a corner under the bed or under the driver’s seat. It was probably on the run from Scott’s Valley to Pahrump that he decided to examine the foot petals. Being in open country with no pending stops I used gentle persuasion to discourage him. Eventually he decided to ride on my lap. Now soon after a departure he generally spends most of the trip on my lap, forgoing trips to the food or water dishes and the litter box and sometimes fascinated by the scenery going by. Most of the time he sleeps. In camp when the door opens he runs the other way. There is at least no danger of him running away. At night he snuggles between us, especially on cold nights.

Pahrump

It seems that a newcomer to Pahrump once asked “Does the wind always blow this way” and the response was “No, sometimes it blows the other way.”

Well Pahrump is the biggest place I have ever seen where it looks like the majority of the population lives in Motorhomes, Trailers, Mobilehomes, or Gringohomes (my nickname for one of the other three homes which has beed modified with cinderblock and plywood additions.

It has Bloomberg and Money Magazine, a movie house with 3 movies, reasonably good computer paper (which you have to buy at the grocery store), pizza parlors, a winery, an Albertsons, a Blockbuster, 2 (now) hardware stores, several nurseries, an RV parts and repair shop, and a snow-capped Mount Chuck (named after me). It has lots of Ravens (my totem). One of the better features of Pahrump is its bird life: we enjoyed watching the roadrunners, magpies, ravens, and California Quail; although we felt that the latter were traitors for having crossed the California border. Pahrump had an excellent Italian restaurant, but I guess the Bavarian owner-chef screwed the books and now it is an empty shell.

In springtime, the wind howls like hell and at least 2 cottonwoods fell over, one on the nice pullout trailer of a neighbor. Radioactive and caustic dust devils range the valley filling your car and home with alkaline and radioactive dust. There are days when the sun replaces the wind and you wonder why you hated the wind. The park we stay at is The Cottonwoods. It is an old place populated mostly by red-neck roustabouts.

It’s virtue is, that it is too far for Rita to walk to the casinos for free drinks, although we have visited Sam’s, a cowpoke bar where I took my life in my hands by too loudly screaming that Doctor Laura Schlessingbottom the talk show pseudo-psychologist was a Yiddish bitch (actually I may be more Yiddish than I think--see Minden). I guess I got away with it because dudes not bitches rule in cow country and there aren’t too many Yiddish cowboys.

Rita and I had lots of arguments in Pahrump during this stay (always about alcohol) and I took to frequently walking the streets at night. These streets have no lights and almost no dwellings. And it is not so pleasant to walk down a pitch dark country road on a moonless night with the wind howling and blowing dust everywhere. You can hear coyotes (they may or may not have been coyotls) howling occasionally (although I did not know what one sounded like then). Every now and then, a cowpoke from a local bar, or some teenagers on the way to a score, would whiz by about 80 miles per hour with blinding headlights and I hoped they wouldn’t run into me or shoot me. Then I would be blind again while my eyes adjust to the dark.

The RV park managers are Jack-Mormons and friendly and easy to get along with. Looking back they have been our best landlords over the year. Although, I have no great love for Mormons, it seems that Jack Mormons are pretty regular folk.

I do like Pahrump BUT: the stupid Nye county government wants to bring in water from the nuclear test site and that is a shame because the valley is naturally protected from the radioactive water by a circle of mountains; almost everyone you meet lives in a movable house; the town is booming too fast and will soon be much larger than I want; everybody is depressed; and then there’s the wind and heat. But there is probably a lot of money to be made here.

We registered the Saturn as a Nevada vehicle and registered to vote and even though the Nevadans said we could vote again in the primary, we passed it up, knowing that we had already absentee-balloted in San Jose and didn’t want to cheat. We ate at the Italian restaurant, the BBQ pit, and the casinos where we gambled.

The IRS got our payment and the 401(k) came in (minus a hunk of money held out to pay for the fire-fighting in Idaho). We checked the mail late in the afternoon and when we saw the check we high-tailed it to Lost Wages and I entered the Schwab door 15 seconds before they closed for the day. All that without quite red-lining the water. Remember Saturns are cheap cars, not performance cars, so they are much better in flat steadily moving traffic than in traffic jams or coming over the hill from Pahrump.

Although not particularly dressed for the occasion, we decided to take in some of the Night Life and visited the Venetian. Rita Gambled a little and then we went “UP?” to the Grand Canal. I have to admit for Disneyland it was pretty nice. No sewage in the canal and at first I thought the sky was real. After a few seconds I remembered that it was an overcast day outside and realized that they only had a few scattered clouds “outside.” And then I saw God’s trap doors and fire extinguishers screwed into the sky.

We ate at the Chicano restaurant run by TGIF and I complained that the Venetian had an image problem, because all of the Venetians were Ffillippinnoss (mis-spelling attributed to the way the islanders seem to have trouble with spelling consistencies).

When we arrived in Pahrump there was still a lot of snow on Mount Chuck and the nights were cold; but, as I worked on the 1040 forms, the snow dwindled and the days became hotter and hotter. The Choice to leave was based on HEAT, SUN, and WIND; although the wind probably let up by the time we got to Utah.

The Thursday before Easter, we took a drive up the Pahrump side of Mount Chuck. Topo and AAA maps were unclear as to whether the road connected to the West side or not. AAA needs to add a LOCKED GATE symbol to their map.

On the Talus slope we had a close encounter of the third kind with a troop of Bible Shakers. I told Rita they were probably Snake Shakers, but subsequent investigation in town seemed to indicate that they just were reveling in God’s Natural Splendor before the holy event.

Higher on the talus slope, we came across a strange canyon carved right out of the talus slope which though deep seems to begin and end on the talus slope with no obvious connections to either the higher canyons nor the valley. It has a name and people recreate there, but I forget the name.

Up high we ran into the last vestiges of snow and a few other travelers. People leave dead bodies up there. I looked at Rita and then thought of the guy in prison that would value me as a sex object and decided she would not be another statistic.

At the “top” of the road was a locked gate. I am sure that if I was in the mood to trespass I could have followed the road on the other side and found the lodge. But I am getting too old for such foolishness without having a significant purpose, so we turned around. Rita watered the piñons while I stood guard. It could be pondered how I can spend so much time in Pahrump and visit Las Vegas and not see my daughter Lisa and her Area-51 husband. The … <<<EXPLITIVES AND WAISTED WORDS DELETED – WHAT’S THE USE???>>> …

Leaving Las Vegas

May 2000

On Mother’s Day, we dined at the Pahrump Winery. Some people say I should buy stock in the winery, but I am a Californian and the winery did not impress me that much--a local phenomenon, but no earth shaker.

On May 27^th,we drove to Las Vegas and picked up a SONY VAIO PCG-F420 notebook. My tower computer has been on the fritz pretty good due to a combination of repeated brownouts, electrical storms, and severe desert heat. The heat sensor that I inserted into the Pentium cooler fins goes off on any hot day with the sun just on the other side of the engine firewall (only inches away). After paying $35 to Sam’s Club to join, I was told they would not accept my $1,000 check for a computer and had to get lost driving through Vegas in a motorhome looking for another computer store. The one I was looking for turned out to be next to COMPUSA.

We drove up past Mesquite. I had wanted to stop at Play it Again Sam’s er I mean Casablanca with Rita, but she overindulged in the sauce while I was buying the Computer so she had to do without. We drove through a Virgin River chasm on the way to Cedar City, but since it was dark we could not see it--too bad.

That night, we stayed in Leeds, Utah, and I was impressed by the boring cleanliness of the Mormons. The park was very nice with lots trees, but no pool nor hot tub. It had so many trees that I scraped off some of the paint pulling into the slot at 9 o’clock at night.

Road Chronicles 000201 - OLD AND ROLLED

2011-12-24T11:00:00.000-08:00

Pair of Dice Lost

February 1, 2000

Dave,

"Well I entered your address in my address book and sent you an email, but I don't see the mail and I don't see the address, so I screwed up again. If you got the big email let me know--it was bit long. To suffice:

I lost my job.

I have a month to move.

I plan to become a Nevada citizen and live in

Mexico

I have a lot to do in 30 days.

Rita is puking and has the flu.

It's raining like hell.

You can reach me at 555 555-5988 ground line for 30 days.

555 555-4567 Nokia Cell--will monitor irregularly after 20 days don't leave a message.

555 555-1234 3-watt Motorola Mobile--to be monitored on the road.

Tomorrow I get my radio and fan off my desk and ask the mob what it is that I am not supposed to remember so that I will understand what it is that I have forgotten that they are worried about. Hope the men in black didn't bother you.

Maybe you can give me advice as to how to set up a Nevada residency, a mail forwarding account, Nevada vehicle registrations, etc.

You'll be hearing from me as emergencies allow

Sorry the other note was much longer and I don't have time to repeat it all today as I am pushing daylight.

Cimarron Charlie

(charles and rita jac)

A Passing Thought

February 27, 2000

Charles:

I hope you will print this out for RITA. Thank you and good luck. When you guys settle down if you want to find me I will always be at whoami666@hotmail.com or at martinscamkars@yahoo.com.

"Mr. Washington was a HARD-CORE LAWN freak. His yard and my yard blended together in an ambiguous fashion. Every year he was seized by a kind of herbicidal mania. He started fondling his weed-eater and mixing up vile potions in vats in his garage. It usually added up to trouble. Sure enough, one morning I caught him over in my yard spraying dandelions.

"Didn't really think you'd mind." says he, righteously.

"Mind, mind!----you just killed my flowers." says I, with guarded contempt.

"Flowers?" he ripostes. "Those are weeds!" He points at my dandelions with utter disdain.

"Weeds," says I, "are plants growing where people don't want them. In other words," says I, "weeds are in the eye of the beholder. And as far as I am concerned, dandelions are not weeds-----they are flowers!"

"Horse manure," says he, and stomps off home to avoid any taint of lunacy.

Now I happen to like dandelions a lot. They cover my yard each spring with fine yellow flowers, with no help from me at all. They mind their business and I mind mine. The young leaves make a spicy salad. The flowers add fine flavor and elegant color to a classic light wine. Toast the roots, grind and brew, and you have a palatable coffee. The tenderest shoots make a tonic tea. The dried mature leaves are high in iron, vitamins A and C, and make a good laxative. Bees favor dandelions, and the cooperative result is high-class honey.

Dandelions have been around for about thirty-million years; there are fossils. The nearest relatives are lettuce and chicory. Formally classed as perennial herbs of the genus Taraxacum of the family asteraceae. The name comes from the French for lion's tooth, dent-de-lion.

Distributed all over Europe, Asia, and North America, they got there on their own. Resistant to disease, bugs, heat, cold, wind, rain, and human beings.

If dandelions were rare and fragile, people would knock themselves out to pay $14.95 a plant, raise them in greenhouses, and form dandelion societies and all that. But they are everywhere and don't need us and kind of do what they please. So we call them "weeds," and murder them at every opportunity.

Well, I say they are flowers, by God, and pretty damn fine flowers at that. And I am honored to have them in my yard, where i want them.

Besides, in addition to every other good thing about them, they are magic. When the flower turns to seed, you can blow them off the stem, and if you blow just right and all those little helicopters fly away, you get your wish. Magic! Or if you are a lover, they twine nicely into a wreath for your friend's hair.

I defy my neighbor to show me anything in his yard that compares with dandelions. And if all that isn't enough, consider this: Dandelions are free. Nobody ever complains about your picking them. You can have all you can carry away. Some weed!”

by Robert Fulghum 1989

Martins

Hole in the Jaw

March 1, 2000

The weekend after my last workday, Rita fell and punctured her jaw. She had low potassium levels and had to be taken to the hospital emergency ward and pumped up with intravenous potassium.

We spent the rest of February putting wheelbarrow loads of 'spare' stuff in the gurney so that we would 'fit' into the motorhome; Putting the finishing touches on the towing rig; arranging personal affairs (including) mail forwarding, and arranging to get hold of the rest of my 401(k).

On the last day of the month we almost pulled up stakes and headed out. Well it was raining a monsoon by the time we were ready to hook up and Rita was hollering at me instead of helping. If she would have helped, we would have hooked before the monsoon hit. As it was, I got completely drenched and sidetracked by her yelling and the great deluge, I forgot to pull the plug (30-amp that is). I stopped just out of the stall and was extremely depressed, what with emergency hospital bills too. I straightened the prongs with my pliers and hoped for the best. We headed for our first monsoonal drive thru the mountains on the way to Scott’s Valley.

Fire and Ice preview 7 - Sardine Lakes

2011-12-17T13:26:00.000-08:00

Climbing higher, Scott could see grassy knolls where the footpath led. Mounting the first of these knolls, he caught first sight of Lower Sardine Lake. Impassable scree hemmed in the lake on two sides. The lake seemed to have been created when a retreating glacier dropped its rock burden, as it melted, damming the waters above to form a lake type known as a cirque lake.

Scott lay down his daypack and walked back down the trail to capture the explosion of water from the rock wall with his wide-angle lens. He walked a little farther down and caught an exposure of the cascades falling off Mount Lewis. He captured the surrounding elevations. He shot a picture of the rim of the lake and Great Basin, as it spread all the way past Salt Lake City. He found the prettiest flowers growing out from a clump of rocks.

Scott thought of the biker he had met in Big Oak Flat, as he tied a hook on his spinning rod with a single pea for bait. He was now grateful for having bought bottled peas rather than cans. He could reseal them. He cast his line. He hoped to relax for a while and regain his strength. Before he could say “Robinson Jeffers and John Muir” he felt a bite. Boy! This was a hell of a lot better than fishing down at the lake. He brought in a beautiful Golden Trout. God, if only Sean had been there. They both could have been proud.

Scot reconsidered. Sean would not have liked this. He would have stopped at Walker Lake and scorned his father for being such a pussy that he would climb a mountain in order to catch naïve fish. He would have stopped at the first lake that gave him a bite and would never have been curious about what the trail could lead to. If he got as far as this lake, he never would have wondered about Upper Sardine Lake. That was a basic difference. Scott had always been curious. What’s around the bend? What’s at the end of a highway?

Sean only liked McDonald’s hamburgers. Once, Scott had taken him to a Wendy’s. Sean had behaved as though Scott had taken him inside a satanic church. Scott liked Wendy’s. He even liked sushi, though he could seldom afford it.

Scott now knew he could catch food. This knowledge gave him the gumption to push on farther.

The trail to Upper Sardine Lake proved short. When Scott arrived he checked the altimeter again--almost 10,000 feet. He had never climbed so high before. He looked out from the brim of the lake. Lower Sardine Lake rippled below. Mono Lake glittered below like a small gem, unbelievably far down.

A sheer rock wall formed the south side of Upper Sardine Lake. A, sort of, tiny tropical jungle grew thick below the west wall. The very tropical looking plants grew in the shade cast in the afternoon by Mount Gibbs. Scott wondered how such tropical appearing plants could grow at such great altitude. Of course, they were not really tropical. He wondered why they looked tropical.

The way up led to the northwest, up a narrow glacier-blocked passage. The glacier made the climb higher problematic.

He continued to fish as he pondered the glacier. He could use the protein. He caught two more golden trout with such ease that the sport seemed unfair for the fish.

Scott strolled away from the lake and found some thick grass growing nearby. He had gardened as a youth. These shoots looked just like onions. Curiosity overcame him. He tore some of the blades out of the soil. He chewed on them one at a time. He took care not to eat too much at once. No doubt remained in his mind. He had found wild onions. So besides the granola bars and other snacks, he now knew he could eat fresh trout and wild onions up here.

He knew the pass was close by. Even God was close. With God shining on him so favorably, he had to try. He looked at the sky. Clouds screamed by so close that they seemed as close enough to touch. Maybe he did. The breeze had picked up to downright blustery.

He hid his fishing gear from passers by and set out.

Scott owned an ice axe, which he had never used. It hung on his wall at home to create atmosphere. This was the atmosphere that the ice axe had been created for. Still there might be a way. He followed the trail to the glacier. As he got closer, he could see that the glacier had melted away from the eastern sunny wall, leaving a crevasse that swallowed him up to his thighs. He could brace the pointed end of his walking stick in the slippery icy surface and wedge one foot, and then the next, higher. Sometimes he braced with his hips or his arms against the edge of the glacier or the rock wall. When he did so, he felt the cold locked up in the ice.

The heat of the day was ebbing. The glacier responded by creaking and groaning. Scott was excited. It was the first time he had heard a glacier talk. How mystical!

The surface of the glacier was uneven--shaped like scooped out little hollows known as sun cups. The sun cups indicated that the glacier had been there for a long time, melting and freezing on the surface as the weather dictated. Scott would have time enough to build and furnish a house, waiting for this glacier to melt away.

He looked back. What he saw surprised him as to how far he had climbed above Upper Sardine Lake. The glacier was not that long, maybe a few hundred horizontal feet.

The early afternoon shade from Mount Gibbs protected it from melting away.

At last, he reached the top of the glacier.

He found himself in a sort of dry cirque that was full of large chunks of rock rubble.

Fire and Ice preview 6 - Bloody Canyon

2011-12-10T09:50:00.001-08:00

Scott hiked west along the lakeside trail. It began as a walk in the park. Quaking aspens lined the shore. They waved at him on with their friendly leaves. The forest remained his steady companion on his left, offering cool shade. He listened to the lake lap the shore as he walked. As he neared the west end of the lake, the trail left the lake and traversed the perimeter of a bog, with marsh plants growing by the edge of the lake. Towards the farthest distance from the lake, he found a beautiful, pastel-colored Tough-Leaved Iris, requiring a portrait in Ektachrome.

The trail turned back towards the lake and began to climb. Water gurgled, teasing stones.

The trail followed the southern stream bank.

A fast hiker from Berkeley, California, startled Scott. The hiker only had time to say he was in a hurry to make it to Tuolumne Meadows before a lightning storm moved in from the south.

Scott passed a sign that announced Ansel Adams Wilderness. Now he knew he was in God's Country. Nothing could go wrong. He tried to imagine how it had looked on the first day Ansel Adams had seen it.

A group of three hikers passed. Scott asked them about the weather. They said they had not heard of any bad weather other than maybe a cold front moving in from the north. They did not have much to say. They were from Germany and spoke relatively little English. Scott pondered how much German he would be able to speak if confronted by hikers on a trail in the German Alps--not much, he had to admit. They wore little lederhosen and funny little hats. They seemed to have much greater lung capacity than Scott. The stream cascaded white off rocks below the, now, very steep trail.

The trail crossed the river by way of heavy rocks. If the trail would end on this side, as his topographic map showed, Scott would just as soon cross as low as possible, before the rock grew steeper and less stable. He balanced himself with his walking stick, occasionally planting it in the upstream riverbed to keep from falling in. The trail on the north side of the creek became more rigorous than that on the south side. He soon came to regret the crossing. To the north of the creek, he found himself walking more and more across rock scree, with no protection from the hot sun and rising wind.

Scott had to slow his pace, to recover his breath. This side of the canyon had some advantages. He could now see across Bloody Canyon to the south side, and scant vegetation permitted him to see the stream. As the distance to the river increased, so did his thirst. He found himself drinking more and more of the water he was carrying. He hoped to find potable water higher up.

The trail mellowed to a steady, but strenuous, climb. He remembered his hiker’s altimeter in his daypack. He took it out and read it. He had climbed to 9,500 feet. Not bad for an asthmatic, even if he did need to pace himself.

The trail became a little less barren and a little more like an alpine path. Flowers grew here and there amongst the broken rocks. Clouds had moved in from the North Pacific to modify the heat. There was a God.

Scott rounded a bend. Up ahead appeared what looked like a rock wall with water shooting from it as if from a fire hydrant. The white fountain, charged with air, shot out almost twenty feet from the rock wall, before plummeting headlong to the streambed far below. As the trail passed near the side of the fountain, he heard a mighty hissing, as from a large liquid snake, as the undulating fluid rushed full force through the sharp granite rocks that served as its spout.

Climbing higher, he saw that the fall originated from an extremely narrow micro chasm that it had carved in the rock.

Fire and Ice preview 5 - Walker

2011-12-03T13:19:00.001-08:00

Scott gave up fishing for the day. He made himself as comfortable as he could for the night, and sat enjoying the wilderness. He had hiked in from Sawmill Canyon over a low ridge. Another low ridge lay to the North, between Walker Lake and Bohler Canyon. The eastern end of the lake could not be seen from his campsite because of a ridge that jutted out on his right. If he looked hard, he could see 11,500-foot Mount Louis. When he looked due west; he had a clear view of Mount Gibbs at a mighty 12,764 feet. Bloody Canyon crested at a lower ridge between Mount Louis and Mount Gibbs. He wished he could go up there. What must it be like up there above 10,000 feet? That was where he would find Waylan’s Sardine Lakes. Maybe, if he felt better during the next two days, he might try it.

The sun set early on the lake, with Mount Gibbs towering almost vertically above. The blue sky continued to glow. He wished he had caught a fish.

Scott found some freeze-dried lasagna and some pudding in his pack. He set about preparing dinner--not much. He longed for a Wendy’s burger and a king-sized Coca-Cola with small cubes of ice floating in it. He could swear that as the sky darkened he heard a loon out on the lake. He did not sleep well. A down bag and a tent did not compare favorably to an apartment in Silicon Valley. He continually heard things--bears or pigs maybe. He nervously shut his tent flap and keep out the wild animals.

He slept fitfully, anxious for daylight. He lay awake, while the first dim glow appeared in the east and grew. Soon Mount Gibbs burst into flame with the first sunlight to touch earth within sight. His down bag had kept his body warm and his tent had kept the night breeze off his head. Nevertheless, he suffered from a cold induced headache. His bed in Sunnyvale had never held such an appeal as now.

A purring noise grew out on the lake. A small aluminum outboard appeared from the east. Scott knew the ridge hid a dam to the east with an access road. Scott saw a man in a green fishing vest and a sky blue baseball cap through his field glasses. The man propelled his boat with a very small Evinrude motor.

Scott forced himself out of the sleeping bag. He fixed freeze-dried bacon and freeze-dried eggs. He followed this with some Cappuccino coffee out of a can full of Cappuccino powder. He longed to be cooking bacon and eggs in his kitchen back home. His back ached from leaning over the cook fire. Now, the ridge extending south from Mount Gibbs had become a bright wall.

The meal helped to warm him up. He checked the thermometer--35 degrees and the sun had been up for a while.

While he ate, the fisherman disappeared.

Scott still felt weak from the altitude, exposure to the wind, and the climb in.

He decided to do a little macro photography. He mounted his macro lens on his 3x macro extender. He rigged up his flash on a special arm that would bring it close to the subject. He attached a homemade wire frame, which he had made from a wire clothes hanger. He could pre-focus for the frame and then he could be sure that anything in the frame was in focus. He tried this for several flying insects.

Following insects around with the cumbersome frame proved exhausting. He removed the frame and got down on his hands and knees. He found many insects, black ants, black flies, vinegar flies, and damselflies. Somehow, it never seemed so backbreaking and knee-scraping to shoot butterflies back home.

He walked into the trees above camp for a healthy bowel movement. Although nobody could see him, he still felt the need to hide behind a tree.

He tried fishing for the rest of the day, but caught nothing.

Scott’s evening meal featured freeze-dried veal cutlets and powdered mashed potatoes.

The fisherman never returned and Scott saw nobody else all day long.

The night was colder than the previous night.

In the morning, Scott checked his mini-maxi thermometer and found the temperature had fallen to 28 degrees.

Scott ate the same boring breakfast as the day before. No fishermen appeared. He had the lake to himself, whether he wanted solitude or not.

Nevertheless, he felt up to climbing, just to see how far he could get. He was fairly confident nobody would disturb his campsite.

Scott hung his food from a branch in a plastic bag, concealed his camp the best he could, and prepared to leave. He had a small daypack, which he had packed inside the regular pack. In it, he put three boxes of raisins, three granola bars, dry flies and small bait hooks, three rolls of film, and a sweater and a jacket in case it got cold. He chose his best camera body, a 100 mm lens, a 35 mm lens, and a macro/tele-extender. He placed most of these things in his pack, including two plastic canteens of water, his ultra light Daiwa fishing pole, and a first aid kit. He hung his favorite camera around his neck, ready for a shoot. On the other side, he hung his bota bag full of water. He wore his felt backpacker hat. He began hiking with his L.L. Bean walking stick with a pointed metal tip. He had an optional screw on rubber tip in his pants pockets with a hunting knife. The walking stick served another role as a camera monopod with a screw mount.

Fire and Ice preview 4 - Hiking In

2011-11-27T08:55:00.001-08:00

At times like these, Scott resented his father, Douglas. Douglas had smoked Camels. He had been so cheap that he had chain-smoked them to the nub with a toothpick, like doobies. Scott did not waste time with negative thoughts of Douglas. After all Douglas, born in 1900, had spent his best years in the Great Depression. Fortunately, Douglas had died when Scott was only six years old. Otherwise, instead of taking asthma medicine, Scott might have lived life in an iron lung.

Scott had begun to wheeze badly on the last upslope. The trail now tilted down. He could see through the trees to the other side of the canyon. Thank God, the trail kept going down. Scott paced himself. In another ten minutes, he began to catch glimpses of sunlight glinting off the water through the trees. The lake was close.

As he pushed on, he could see larger expanses of the lake through the trees. He slowed his pace so that he would not be noticeably gasping for breath. He did not want to appear weak if he ran into another human being. There could even be a bear waiting for him and he might have to run.

Soon he could see the near shoreline. The trail leveled off. He stood in the woods gauging the length and breadth of the lake. There was nobody in sight. There was no sign of anybody at all--no smoke--no music--no nothing.

He could hear the water lapping the shore in the breeze. Young aspens lined the shore, shaking their leaves in the gusty breeze. A duck drifted on the lake. A fish jumped out of the water about forty feet offshore.

He had the whole place to himself. His fear of finding inhospitable campers abated. He suddenly felt a need for other people. Strange things sometimes happened when there was no one around to observe, like the tree that falls silently because there are no ears to hear. He decided to camp in a shady glen, a little ways from the foot trail in case some aberrant people showed up.

Scott chose a good place for his tent, on level soil; but not in a gully; not in the sun, and not too visible. He wished there were a camp table. He hated eating off the ground. There were no boulders around where he could sit either. He could get by without a place to spread out his topographic maps. That would provide him with a deeper wilderness experience. He had wanted to lose himself in the wilderness experience. That was before he had become so tired on the trail.

Scott had packed an ultra-light folding chair. He unfolded it and sat down. At least he had a back support and his butt was raised off the ground. A Tedral tablet and some water helped the wheezing to subside. He could tell it would be a cold night. The wind suppressed the daytime temperature and the clear sky would provide no celestial blanket after dark. Autumn loomed just around the corner. Snow came in the high sierras. He broke out his ultra-light spinning rod. He fished for three hours--not a bite. He could see the fish, but he could not catch them. Scott had chosen to come here to fish, based upon Sean’s love for fishing and his own inability to hike long distances. Scott was not a good fisherman. He had hoped he could learn from Sean.