“There is no agony like bearing an untold story inside of you.”
– Maya Angelou

Nobody but the three of us and the drone of a foghorn. We made our two-mile hump from Harold’s Place with the rucksacks of gear, cutting through sleepy side streets and dark alleyways, finally reaching the tall chain link fence that stood between us and the entrance to the tunnels under Los Angeles. Greamer’s tunnels.

Pete looked at his watch. 2AM on the nose.

“This is it. Thirty-second street portal.”

Mick’s rucksack landed on the other side of the rusted fence with the deadened clatter of a pillowcase full of spoons. He stuck his thick fingers through the chain link fence and shook it.

“Let’s hop it.”

Pete swung his heavy rucksack off his shoulder and tossed it over the deteriorated barbed wire along the top edge. He walked me a few meters to the corner of the fence, just off the sidewalk.

“You first, little soldier,” Pete said. “Get a wiggle on.”

Pete pulled back on a small inconspicuous portion of the fence that he’d cut years before, holding it open as I squeezed through.

Mick grabbed the top of the fence and pulled himself up like a heavy gymnast, heaving his body over the ineffective barbed wire and into the brush. He picked up his rucksack.

“How much time we got, brother?”

Pete wriggled through our opening in the fence and got to his feet. Pulling out a flashlight, he swung his rucksack over his shoulder and flipped the switch.

“It’s already two, man. Follow the dog. What kind of name is Spiri, anyway?”

I took point, marching us through the same dark fields we’d explored many, many times in the daylight. I knew the area like the back of my paw. The brush began getting taller as we hiked, with overgrown weeds taller than the tops of my ears.

“Under the battery, little soldier,” Pete told me. “Take us.”

We humped through the brushy gopher-infested fields to the clearing at the top edge of Battery Barlow-Saxton, a large concrete firing pit nearly the size of a football field. Barred openings and steel doors lined the pit’s concrete walls beneath layers of graffiti, with bridges and stairways descending down to the concrete floor.

Mick stood at the steep edge of the pit’s urban ruins, his bloodshot eyes adjusting in the moonlight.

“What’s this place for, brother?”

“Kicking ass.”

Before war planes, the battleships of the sea were built with extremely thick sides in order to withstand horizontal fire from enemy ships. Ship decks were therefore compromised, made paper thin, as there was no concern about downward fire from the sky. From our firing pit here at the back of the base, the United States Army could defend the shores of Los Angeles from any angle, blasting arced rounds into the sky, hitting ships with downward mortar fire. If our guys got the math right, they could sink an enemy ship eleven miles offshore.

Pete took his cell phone from his pocket and read the text on the display.

“Another one. The bastard–”

“From Rip? What’s it say?”

Pete shoved his phone back in his pocket. “Something about stopping to smell the roses.”

I kept us moving with Pete’s light shining behind me, descended the concrete stairs into the pit. Reaching the floor, I scouted out the edges and corners of the hard perimeter, taking a quick inventory with my nose. Nothing unusual.

“Over here,” Pete said.

Mick followed us across the pit to a barred gate in front of a doorway leading into the thick concrete wall. Pete pushed his way effortlessly through the loose gate, its hinges already broken.

“Took care of this the other day. Get your light out.”

I led us through the broken gate and down a tight concrete stairway descending underneath the battery into pitch darkness. Rusted doors lined the corridor, welded shut, corroded from lifetimes of dank ocean air. Metal piping ran across the low-hanging flaked concrete ceiling.

Pete glanced at his watch as we descended the black concrete stairwell.

“The window will be starting soon.”

The cascading narrow passage opened into a cold hard room, its floor littered with dust-covered office papers. Boxes remained stacked on shelves against one wall, desks and chairs still sat where they’d been abandoned many decades prior. The room was only one in a complex maze of offices connected by open doorways, with square glassless windows revealing adjacent rooms and halls through the concrete walls.

“Which window?” asked Mick.

“Window of time.”

Pete scanned the room with his flashlight.

“There are two possible portals,” Pete explained. “I’ve been to both a million times. Just never at this hour.”

The whole place smelled like wet newspaper with traces of skunk.

“The window starts at two twenty-five,” Pete continued, walking around the edge of the room, shining his light through the windows. “For about fifty minutes, we can get in. And out.”

Mick shined his flashlight on the top shelf against the wall. Square rotting tiles hung partially stuck to the ceiling, dripping with moisture and age. He set his light down and pulled boxes off the shelves, sifting through their contents and identifying them out loud.

“Medical supplies, brother. Bandages, even gas masks–”

“Leave ‘em.”

Pete stood at the edge of the room, shining his flashlight through the doorway into a black void.

“We need to find that door. Go, little soldier.”

The guys followed me with their flashlights down a dark corridor and into a machinery room. Loose cut wires dangled from sheet metal boxes mounted on white enamel-covered brick walls. Conduits ran up from the floors and across the ceiling above a giant machine of valves, cylinders, and iron chambers. Buttons, switches, and levers painted red collected dust on steel cabinet doors.

“Keep going, little soldier. Keep going.”

I took us through the machine room and along a curved passage of the underground complex toward the smell of gunpowder, entering a long hall full of empty metal canisters and other debris. One wall was made of unpainted cinder blocks.

“Aw, man,” Mick said from the rear. “Check this out, brother.”

Mick stood shining his flashlight down into a gaping hole in the floor exposing a crawl space of twisted metal, cobwebs, and a dead cat. Cats are far less interesting when they’re not moving.

“His tenth time down here,” Pete said, falling back to the rear and looking at his watch. “Ten minutes. It’s already a quarter after. Follow the dog–”

Mick followed my tail as I zig-zagged deeper through the halls and rooms of the complex, taking a shortcut through an old latrine. Wash basins with rotting hardware lined a mirrored wall. Passing through the latrine, Mick and I hung a left under an arched doorway and down a long narrow corridor.

“Right behind you, lucky thirteen,” Mick huffed. “Right behind you.”

Pete stood alone in the latrine behind us, frozen, facing the cracked mirror. He held his flashlight up toward his face, staring at a stranger.

“Boo!”

The mirror grinned.

“Hey, brother!” Mick shouted, his voice rolling through the cold halls to nowhere. “Lucky thirteen found something–”

Pete ran out of the latrine and followed Mick’s voice, finding us standing deep in a twisted passage blocked by a heavy steel door. It was either locked from behind or welded shut at the seams, with a sliding lever and latch that seemed to have melded into the door itself. Mick muscled the lever and kicked the door to no avail.

“Stuck, brother–”

Pete shined his flashlight on the door and looked at his watch.

“Sixty more seconds. Look out–”

Pete pulled the sliding lever. Nothing. He backed off and dropped his rucksack to the filthy floor.

“It’s about time,” Pete said. “This door stays shut, only opening at two twenty-five AM. It’ll open in a minute.”

“What’s on the other side?”

For a moment I thought Pete was going to slam Mick upside the head with his flashlight.

“Oh, right,” Mick said. “Rip’s tunnels. Sorry.”

Pete took a few slow breaths and looked at his watch, counting down to himself in silence. Nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two…

Pete pulled the lever. It didn’t budge. He pulled it again.

“Fuck me.”

“You sure this is it, brother?”

“Has to be. Only other place it could be is out in the chute. But I’m ninety percent sure this is the one. Chute’s a decoy. ”

Pete pulled the lever.

“I’ll be damned. Fuck.”

“Is your watch right?”

Pete pulled the lever again and kicked the door. Nothing.

“Fuck, fuck, fuck!”

Pete looked at his watch. 2:26 AM. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his cell phone, reading the display.

“Shit, are you kidding me?”

“What is it?”

“Wrong door. I had the wrong door the whole time and Greamer knew it–”

“What’d he say?”

Pete picked up his rucksack and shouted with an angry urgency, his barking orders echoing through the underground complex.

“Out, little soldier, out! Now! Go, go, go!–”

I turned and began to quickly retrace our steps through the gnarled complex, sniffing our way back to the entrance. Pete and Mick followed closely behind.

“Move it!”

To be continued…

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Vive trying to have his way with a tree swing.

Generally, phrases connected by of sound most natural when they are intact. The company completed the conversion to electricity of its heating system is not nearly so smooth as The company completed the conversion of its heating system to electricity. Also: died of a heart attack yesterday, not died yesterday of a heart attack.

Drop the of in constructions like this: She uses the name of Chris. The of suggests that she is using someone else’s actual name. Similarly, replace of with a comma in his hometown of Cocoa.

Source: The New York Times Manual of Style and Usage, 1999, by The New York Times Company.

With Kona and Vive, Rancho Palos Verdes CA.

“In a world filled with hate, we must still dare to hope. In a world filled with anger, we must still dare to comfort. In a world filled with despair, we must still dare to dream. And in a world filled with distrust, we must still dare to believe.”
– Michael Joseph Jackson, 08.29.1958 - 06.25.2009

“God gave women intuition and femininity. Used properly, the combination easily jumbles the brain of any man I’ve ever met.”
– Farrah Leni Fawcett, 02.02.1947 - 06.25.2009

In case it’s not clear to you, the Nerf hat this woman is wearing is actually her hair. One big shaped dreadlock.

Taken just now on Sixth Street in San Pedro between Norman’s and Union War Surplus. The WB crew tells me it’s for Cats and Dogs Part II.

Rule Breaker: Never Split an Infinitive(?)

You split a banana with ice cream, fudge sauce, and whipped cream. You split an infinitive by inserting a modifier–an adverb, usually–between the to and the verb, as in “I want you to carefully read over these instructions.” The notion that this incision is grammatically unsound was first set forth in the mid-1800s, and it finds its basis in Latin, a language in which the infinitive is a one-word verb form.

Keeping infinitives intact is actually a sensible idea. Otherwise you run the risk of writing sentences that sound like this:

• We wanted to, because we felt it was important, talk to you today about our water ski catalog.

Still, no grammarian today sees any value in having an official sanction against splitting infinitives, and everyone agrees that it was a silly rule to adopt in the first place. Even if the rule didn’t exist, split infinitives would rarely occur; that’s because we rarely split them in conversation.

On the other hand, there are certain situations in which splitting the infinitive produces precisely the effect you want to produce, which is to put less emphasis on the action conveyed in the infinitive and more on the modifier.

Example:

• I would now like you to slowly and precisely tell me what happened and how it happened. (Splitting the infinitive positions the adverbs slowly and precisely immediately before the verb tell and puts the emphasis on these two words.)

Source: Grammar for Smart People, by Barry Tarshis.

Hollywood CA, Summer 2009

Taking five on the Pirate Trail, Rancho Palos Verdes CA

“At age 47, Rolling Stones bassist Bill Wyman began dating 13-year old model Mandy Smith, with her mother’s consent. Six years later, Bill and Mandy married. Following their divorce a year later, Bill’s 30-year-old son Stephen married Mandy’s mother, 46, making Stephen a stepfather to his former stepmother.”

My father’s name was Dash. Black and tan and just over fifty pounds, he wasn’t the biggest dog Pete had ever trained, but he was the best, paws down. Recognized for his valiant service to our nation in time of war, Dad was declared a K-9 Veteran of World War II and buried in our cemetery with the highest of honors.

Pete and Dad awoke on the dark drizzly hillside, keeping each other warm between two canvas tarps. Pete rubbed the thick glass face of his watch, reading it under the sky’s black glow. 23:00 on the dot. 11PM.

“Rise and shine, soldier. Time to head back.”

It was two or three years before I was born. Pete and Dad were assigned to each other in the K-9 Command Unit at Fort MacArthur, spending every hour of their shifts together, training Dad for combat situations. It wasn’t an easy program, and only the very best of us had what it took to graduate. And, luckily for me, they didn’t fix the good ones.

Like all K-9 man-dog teams, Dad and Pete were put on rigorous 24-hour shifts, from midnight to midnight, occasionally stringing two or even three shifts together one after another for extra conditioning. This demanding schedule, designed to mimic the unpredictable and unforgiving conditions of war, made it impossible to sync up with the sun and settle into a regular sleep routine. So catching a nap whenever and wherever you could was a necessary skill.

The job of these two-soul teams here at home was to patrol the coastal perimeter of the Los Angeles Harbor area at night, on foot, with important combat training exercises during the day. Pete’s job was to prepare Dad for the worst, and they both took their job very seriously. Once they were done working together and said their goodbyes, Dad had to be ready for anything. Our boys over there weren’t playing games.

Pete stood to his feet on the damp hillside and shook out the top tarp.

“Dammit–”

Pete’s arm flailed, shaking an earthworm clinging to the cuff of his sleeve. Pete could handle almost any pest: rats, spiders, roaches, ants, even snakes. But when it came to worms, or larvae, or any kind of subterranean life form, he became like a queasy little girl. The concept alone turned his stomach.

“Son of a bitch–”

Pete rolled up the two damp tarps and strapped them to his rucksack. Taking a knee with his canteen, he gave Dad a swig of water in his cupped hand and they embarked on the misty two-mile night prowl back to the base. Making their way down the muddy hillside, they reached the paved coastline road and walked in a disciplined straight line.

“Bea’s a great girl, Dash. As good as they get–”

Dad walked at Pete’s left in heel position, patiently listening to the same story for the hundredth time that day. Spending dozens of consecutive hours together creates a bond between a man and a dog that can’t be fully explained in words. Pete would tell Dad things that he’d never tell anybody. Not even Beatrice.

“I’m going to ask her to marry me…”

My Dad was a German Shepherd, but our troops came to the fort from various families including Doberman Pinschers, Rottweilers, retrievers, Chow mixes, Schnauzers, various terriers, Cocker Spaniels, and bulldog half-breeds. At the onset of World War II and immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor, hundreds of us would be volunteered for war duty by Los Angeles citizens in response to radio calls and newspaper announcements.

Some of us that were trained at Fort Mac throughout the years had been smart enough to get out of war duty, finding fame in Hollywood. Terry, a female Cairn terrier, was recruited to play Toto in the movie The Wizard of Oz. Another one of us, Buck, was used as one of the dogs in Jack London’s The Call of the Wild. And a German Shepherd named Rin, the grandson of Rin-Tin-Tin, was one of the smartest to ever come out of our camp.

With the rocky coastal bluffs just a few hundred yards away, Pete and Dad entered the unlit upper reservation and walked across the slick courtyard, ducking into the entrance of a large concrete military facility dug into a hillside called a battery. Our batteries were equipped with heavy artillery to protect our beaches from intruders.

“Let’s get you tucked in, Dash.”

Fort Mac was typically pretty quiet by midnight, with most of the activity occurring during the daytime hours. But on this night, the halls smelled like freshly brewed coffee, with loud arguing adult voices coming from a brightly lit office just inside the battery entrance.

“What do you suppose is going on in there, soldier?”

Pete and Dad passed by the office door, walking to the end of the battery’s hall to the K-9 barracks where they’d kennel us in between shifts. Nodding to the boyish kennel guard, Pete opened latch to the gate of Dad’s kennel containing a modest cot, an empty metal bowl for tomorrow morning’s hearty meal, and a large metal bucket of fresh water that never went empty. Pete dropped his rucksack to the floor and hung the leash.

“Rest up, Dash. I’ll see you at zero hundred–”

Pete closed the latch of Dad’s kennel as another trainer’s voice echoed from down the hall.

“Jackson, vamanos mi primo–”

It was Vasquez, suited up in a dry uniform and carrying a rucksack. On his left walked his partner Jackson, another German Shepherd. Vasquez and Jackson — K-9 Command Unit 61– were just about to begin their 24-hour shift, taking over where Pete and Dad left off.

“Nobody gets through on our watch,” Vasquez said. “Not through sesenta y uno–”

Jackson was another one of the best. He and Dad both entered the war dog platoon the same summer, immediately placed in the training unit of aggressive dog soldiers to be used as weapons of war. The job demanded that they were physically fit, responsive to voice commands, not gun-shy, and able to stand their ground against assailants without cowering. Dogs that made the K-9 unit were the elite, like royalty, and treated with the highest priority. If Pete and Dad were out in the hills and Pete got bitten by a rattlesnake, they’d drive him to the hospital. If Dad got bitten, they’d fly in a helicopter.

“Durante,” Vasquez said. “Did you hear?”

Vasquez and Pete slapped hands up high.

“Hear what?” Pete asked.

“Shit just hit the fan today. Hitler’s invaded Poland.”

“Fuck–”

Our world had become a scary, unpredictable place, with threats of evil gradually making themselves known all around the globe. How exactly the United States was to fit into things was not yet clear.

“Is that what’s going on in Briefing Quarters?” Pete asked. “There must be half a dozen people in there. I saw civilians too.”

“We got a message from the Brits,” Vasquez said. “Intercepted from the Nazis. It’s encrypted.”

“The voices I heard were American.”

“Brits wired it this morning,” Vasquez said. “Parallel intel’s looking at it now.”

We would soon learn that there were some very bad people in Europe, led by a tyrant with plans to systematically execute a certain group of people. Entire families were being torn apart, their dogs left on the streets to starve. Men, women, and children were being being disposed of in ovens, the fillings from their teeth removed, their skin used for lampshades, all for something these bad people considered the final solution to a problem. It’s a problem I’ll never understand.

“Is Naylor in there?” Pete asked.

“He was earlier.”

Vasquez looked at his watch.

“We’re on, Jackson. Time to protect the world, mi primo.”

Pete walked with Vasquez and Jackson down the hard hall, stopping outside the lit office as the two headed out in to the wet night.

“Go get ‘em,” Pete said. “See you on the other side.” And look out for worms.

Pete stood at the office door. Voices still shouted, involved in some sort of collaborative debate.

“I still think it’s U.S. something,” a voice said. “U.S dog line den. Or God line den–”

“U.S. long denied,” another voice interrupted.

“Sledged union,” said another. “It’s the Soviets.”

“Dungeon slide,” said another.

What in the world? Curious, Pete stepped into the doorway and looked inside. His commanding officer Naylor stood with six people, all men and one woman, some with notepads. They were all studying two words written boldly in chalk on a blackboard:

SLEDGED UNIÖN

A baggy-eyed bald man in a plain white shirt and slacks chewed the eraser off the end of a pencil, looking down at his notepad. “Dodge sun line. It’ll be something at night. I also have delousing den–”

Pete coughed.

“Excuse me,” Pete said, stepping into the doorway. “Sergeant Durante, K-nine fifty-three, just dropping off Dash. Saw the light on–”

“Pete, hey–” Naylor turned and and pulled Pete into the office, closing the door.

“Lunged on side,” an elderly man in a plaid flannel shirt said, not noticing Pete. “Or sudden legion. I still see sudden legion. Timing–”

Naylor whispered to Pete as the rest of the people studied the board in mumbling silence, scratching down notes.

“Axis message.”

“Who are all these guys?” Pete asked, keeping his voice low.

“Cryptography experts,” Naylor whispered. “Black Chamber ordered them here from other parts of the city. Shit, I should’ve kept that door closed. My ass could get slung–”

Pete gazed at the two words on the board.

SLEDGED UNIÖN

Naylor continued, pointing to the blackboard. “They think it’s a code with the letters rearranged.”

“An anagram,” Pete said.

Naylor nodded. “Sledged union.”

“What makes you think it’s in English?”

Naylor shrugged.

Pete turned to the people and spoke up, pointing to the blackboard.

“Pardon me, but why are you looking for English words? I don’t mean to interfere.”

Stares stuck to him like magnets.

“Dungeon slide,” Pete continued, repeating the words he’d heard. “Sudden legion, dodge sun line. Those are all English words you’re coming up with–”

Pete walked to the board and tapped his fingernail against the two chalked words.

SLEDGED UNIÖN

He pointed to the two dots above the Ö.

“All your words have an O in them,” Pete said. “Legion, dungeon, union. But this here has an umlaut.”

Silence.

“It ain’t an English O,” Pete explained. “The answer probably ain’t even in English. I doubt it has anything to do with dungeons and legions.”

“That’s what I was saying,” said the woman in the corner. “I suspect it’s Germanic. Perhaps even Icelandic or Swedish.”

Pete nodded. “The umlaut gives it away. These words were intercepted from Nazi intelligence, correct? Your answer’s probably in German.”

Pete stood at the blackboard like an instructor in front of a stumped class. A man in a beige suit broke the awkward silence, holding a slip of paper.

“Sergeant…?”

“Durante,” Pete finished.

“Sergeant Durante,” the beige-suited man continued. “Do you speak German, sir?”

“A little.” Pete’s grandfather had been a first-generation American, teaching the young Pete some German during their weekends of chess and puzzle solving. “I know what it looks like written down. The two dots over a vowel indicate a mutated vowel sound.”

The suited man pointed to the blackboard.

SLEDGED UNIÖN

“Can you make anything of that? We suspect it’s an anagrammatic code of some sort. Do you know what an anagram is?”

Pete nodded, looking at the two words on the board. Letting his mind fly, he recalled the thousands of blitz chess matches and crossword puzzle contests his grandfather would make him play as a boy. If there was one thing his grandfather taught him, it was to think clearly when the pressure was on. “Stress can be harnessed,” his grandfather would say. “When correctly channeled, it empowers the intellect.”

SLEDGED UNIÖN

Pete rearranged the letters in his head, paying close attention to the Ö.

“The first thing I see is die,” Pete said, staring at the board. “D-I-E.” German for ‘the’. “Die something–”

SLEDGED UNIÖN. Pete looked at the shapes of the letters, fantasizing, shifting them upside-down and sideways in his mind. He flipped them over each other, stacking them, rolling them back and forth, shuffling them, picking them up in his hands, shaking them, tossing them in the air to let them fall where they may, looking at the results. What probably should’ve been difficult to see became obvious to him, zooming from the board into his consciousness.

“Endlösung.”

The word spilled from Pete’s mouth, pronounced with an authentically learned accent.

“Die endlösung. Sledged union is an anagram for die endlösung.”

The room fell silent.

Pete grabbed a piece of chalk and wrote two words in all caps on the available empty space of the board:

DIE ENDLÖSUNG

Pete stepped back from the board and read it to himself.

SLEDGED UNIÖN

DIE ENDLÖSUNG

“Solution,” Pete said out loud. “The final solution.”

Pete wrote three English words on the available space of the board.

THE FINAL SOLUTION

“The final solution,” Pete repeated, stepping back. “Die endlösung is German for the final solution. Does that mean anything to anybody? The final solution?”

Blank stares. The beige-suited man walked to the blackboard, taking the chalk from Pete’s hand.

“Sergeant Durante, I take it you’re stationed here?”

“K-nine fifty-three. I work with the dogs.”

The beige-suited man nodded, looking around the room of fatigued eyes.

“Are you familiar with encryption, Sergeant?”

“A little,” Pete said. “Just from puzzles and such. But it’s been a long time–”

“Have you ever worked with machines?”

“Machines?”

“Encryption machines.”

“Just pen and paper ciphers as a kid.”

The beige-suited man put his hand on Pete’s shoulder.

“Sergeant Durante, we have a special project for you.”

To be continued…

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With TA Jr. at the Tony Adams Sr. memorial service, Royal Palms State Beach, San Pedro CA, 06.14.2009.

RIP TA Sr.

The Big Bad Wolf, he learned the rules:
Ya gotta get hot to play real cool!

Finally, we can now sit at the bar.

The other night I had another one of those “meant to be” craigslist moments, finding these four guys. They’re 31″ tall, and the black leather tops swivel. The fourth one’s behind the bar right now.

I spent what ended up being nearly a year thinking about what kind of barstools to get before pulling the trigger. There were a few ideas that could’ve worked with the mid-century vintage of the bar itself, from minimalist atomic designs to the whole shabby chic thing. One thing I decided was that, given the smaller size of the bar, the accompanying stools should not have backs. And they’ve GOTTA swivel.

Height was something I needed to figure out, as I’ve sat at bars that felt too high. My bar is about 42″, and I didn’t want end up with stools that felt too short. A few months ago I saw some cool retro orange stools, but I was concerned they’d be a bit short at 28″. Quickly googled an article on how to do the math when matching stools to a bar, and I’ve been aiming for 30″ or taller ever since.

Mission accomplished. Now it’s time to squeeze more lemons and start flowing the Collinses.

There is a Buddhist story about a poor farmer whose one horse ran away. All his neighbors came to him in sympathy, saying “What bad luck!”

“Maybe,” he responded.

The next day the horse returned with several other wild horses. “What great luck!” his neighbors exclaimed.

“Maybe,” he responded.

A few days later the farmer’s son was trying to tame one of the wild horses when he was thrown off and broke his leg. “What terrible luck!” his neighbors said.

“Maybe,” he responded.

A week later the army came through the village to draft all the young men but seeing the broken leg of the farmer’s son, they left him in peace. “What wonderful luck!” the neighbors said.

“Maybe,” the farmer responded. And so it goes.

Hermosa Beach, 05.30.2009

“This is your life, and it’s ending one minute at a time.”
– Fight Club