A Traveler, A Policeman, A Church and a Holy Book...

  There are some religion and philosophy books in my book collection.  I have a standard issue Christian Bible, you know, the kind with the Old and New Testaments.  I have a copy of the Muslim Koran that I found for $1 at a yard sale here in town, a well-written tome titled “A Course in Miracles,” a copy of the Tao Te Ching…a book from ancient China with such pithy thoughts as, “Do you have the patience to wait ‘til your mud settles and the water is clear?” 

  And then there is a small copy of the Christian New Testament.  It was handed to me in Roswell, New Mexico in 1991.

  Who handed me this copy?  Ah, therein lies the tale….

  I was volunteering with a group that was having a Saturday meeting at a Roswell church.  There were probably 20 of us in the church’s meeting hall. 

  And then this guy showed up at the meeting hall door.  The man needed a shave, his clothes were wrinkly.

  “I was hoping to talk to the preacher, hoping he could give me some money so I could get a place to stay tonight,” said the man.  “I hitchhiked from the VA hospital in San Antonio, I was hoping to see my brother, to stay at his place but he and his wife are out of town.”

  “Well the preacher’s not here,” said Mona, leader of our group.  “You need to go somewhere else.”

  The man turned and went back out the door.

  “Couldn’t we call the preacher?” I asked.

  “We don’t want to bother the preacher,” said Mona.  “He’s not here, end of story.  The guy probably just wants money for booze.”

  “I didn’t think so,” I said, “He seemed sincere.”

  “Trust me Grant,” said Mona, “You’re in the minority here on that.”

  We got back to the business at hand.

  A few minutes later one of our group joined us late.

  “Who’s the dude sitting out front?” asked the tardy one.

  “Some guy?” asked Mona, “Looks kind of rough?”

  “Yeah,” said the latecomer.

  “That’s it,” said Mona, “I’m calling the cops.”

  “Come on, Mona, call the preacher,” I said.  I had no idea who the preacher was, this was just a church where our volunteer group held its meetings.

  “I’m NOT calling the preacher, not bothering him with this,” said Mona.  “That guy out there is a nuisance.”

  “Really,” I said.  “He’s a stranger in a strange land so he comes to a church for some help and you call the cops on him.  Nice.”

  I turned and went outside to talk with the man.

  He was off to the side of the door sitting on a sidewalk.  I sat down next to him.  We got to shootin’ the breeze.  He stuck to his story that he had hitchhiked to Roswell from San Antonio VA hospital.

  “I ain’t been the same since ‘Nam,” he said.  “Trouble holding a job, trouble keeping money.  I understand people are suspicious of me.”

  “Yeah,” I said, “They think that you just came here to hit the preacher up for booze money.”

  He laughed and looked at the ground.

  “Yeah,” he said, “Like I said, people are suspicious of me.”

  About that time there was a big shadow over the both of us.

  I looked up.

  It was a policeman.  His partner was behind him.

  “We have a problem here?” asked the cop.

  “No sir,” I said.  “I think there’s been a misunderstanding.”

  “Well, we got a call,” said the policeman.

  “Yeah,” I said, “That was from my friends inside.  This man came in from San Antonio to see his brother, his brother is out of town until tomorrow and he just needs a place to stay for the night.  He came this church to see if he could get some help in staying at a motel for the night.  My friends think he just wants booze money.”

  “Can I see some ID?” asked the cop.

  I showed him mine, the stranger showed him his.  Mr. Policeman jotted some notes on a pad.  He handed our IDs back.

  “Y’all have a nice day,” said the cop.  He and his partner turned and left.

  “Hang on bud,” I said.

  I got up and walked back into the church.

  “REALLY?” I shouted the one word question as I walked in the room.  I interrupted the meeting.  I had all eyes in the room.  “A man comes to a church for help and you call the cops on him?”

  Silence.

  “I tell you what,” I said, reaching for my wallet.  I held it up, opened it up and a $10 bill fluttered to the ground.  I reached down and picked it up.  “This $10 bill is all I have in my wallet.  I challenge all of you to contribute toward a motel room for the night for this guy.”

  “Not me,” said one guy.

  “It’s okay buck-o,” I said.  “I really don’t care, it’s your Karma.”

  “He’s just gonna buy booze or drugs,” he went on.

  “Whatever,” I said.

  Mona forked over a $20 bill.

  I looked her in the eyes.

  “Thank you,” I said.  “That really ought to do it.”

  “But,” said Mona.  “You and I are going to follow him after he leaves here.  He’s gonna blow that $30 on booze.”

  “Deal,” I said.  “I say he’s gonna make a beeline for a motel on Second Street.”

  I walked outside and handed the guy the $30.

  “Wow,” he said.  “Thank you.”

  “Good fortune you you, hermano,” I said.

  He reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out a little black book.

  “Here,” he said, “I want you to have this.”

  I was so wound up by the whole situation I just smiled, took the book and put it in my back pocket.

  I watched the guy turn and walk down the street toward Second Street.

  I turned and there was Mona standing there.

  “Let’s go, Jesus,” said Mona.

  Mona and I got in my car and pulled out on the street.  I drove slowly and pulled over every now and then to keep a good distance between the man and us.

  In a matter of time the fellow was at Second Street.

  He crossed and walked into a motel office.

  Mona and I watched as he spent a couple of minutes in the office.  Then he left, walked by a number of rooms, stopped, opened the door, went in then he closed the door.

  “O fu*#ing kay,” said Mona, “So I was wrong.”

  I didn’t say anything as I drove back to the church.

  I pulled up in front and left the engine running.

  I waited for Mona to get out.

  “You’re not coming back in?” asked Mona.

  “No,” I said.  “Y’all are fu*#ked up.  Have a nice life, Mona.”

  Mona got out and I drove back to my house.

  When I got home I went to the fridge, got a beer then went and plopped down in my recliner.

  I felt the thing the guy gave me in my back pocket.

  I reached around and looked at it.

  I had first thought the guy had given me a notebook, something to jot my thoughts in.

  Nope.

  It was a small leather bound New Testament.

  I thumbed through the pages.

  Mindlessly.

  Because I wasn’t really thinking about the little book or what was in it.

  I was more preoccupied with why he gave it to me.

  I looked down and saw that the book had fallen open to the first book of Corinthians.  I’d actually never read anything from that section of The Bible before. 

  I was looking at chapter 10.  Verse 13 caught my attention…

  “No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.”

  I thought about those words.

  I smiled.

  Those words came in handy for me, they fit right in at that time of my life.

  In a holy book given to me by a man who just wanted a little help.

-30-

CHEAP WINE, BEER AND A FAKE I.D.

  An incident at a high school in Indiana made the national news the other day.  Some kid took a whizz on an electrical outlet.  This made a lot of smoke.  Some teacher ran in with a fire extinguisher, the fire department came to the school sirens a-screamin’…

  I think about some of the stuff I did back in high school.  If I did any of that stuff here in the future I’m sure some of it would probably make the national news.

  Like the time I made black powder and set it off at school (just a lot of smoke).

  Or how I used to buy booze for me and my pals with a fake ID.

  But I didn’t get in trouble….this was back in the 1970’s, and back then this stuff was just a rite of passage, part of life.

  My first attempt at buying booze was a complete failure.

  It was during a sleepover at my buddy Dax’s* house the summer between 6^th and 7^th grades.  It was me, Dax and Leroy camped out on Dax’s front porch.

  “It’d be great if we had some wine!” proclaimed Leroy.

  “You drink wine?” I asked Leroy.  I was all wide-eyed.  Beer was one thing…Cousin Bill’s daddy let him drink from his beer can, then Cousin Bill would go outside, get on his tricycle, ride around in circles on the driveway and sing "She'll Be Comin’ ‘Round the Mountain.” 

  But wine?  Wine seemed to be a drink from another place than beer.

  “Sure I drink wine,” said Leroy with all the bravado a 12 year old could muster, “My parents never notice it’s gone.”

  “Well we should get some wine!” I said.

  “How?” asked Dax.

  “I’ll just go down to the 7-11 and buy some,” I said.

  “You can’t do that, dumbass,” said Dax, “You have to be old.  It ain’t the hotel.”

  Dax was talking about the summer after 5^th grade that he and Leroy and Catfish came over to hang at my place one Saturday morning.  My dad had this job at a hotel so we lived there.  Leroy wondered about ordering beer from room service and so I did, no problem.

  “How old you gotta be?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Dax, “old.”

  “I have a plan,” I said.

  Soon I was walking into the convenience store while Dax and Leroy waited outside around the corner.

  I grabbed a loaf of bread, a pack of cheese, a bag of potato chips and two bottles of Ripple wine, a kind of fortified rotgut wine that Gallo winery stopped making back in 1984.

  I took all the stuff up front and put it on the counter.

  The clerk picked up one of the bottles and looked me square in the eye.

  “Boy…what do you think you’re doing?” asked the clerk.

  “Getting some groceries,” I said, looking her square in the eyes.

  “You can’t buy wine,” she said.

  “Oh,” I said.  I turned to walk out.

  “Boy,” the clerk called out, “What about your other things?”

  “Oh,” I went back to the counter and paid for my bread, cheese and potato chips.

  I went outside and around the corner.

  “Well?” asked Dax.

  I held out the bag.  Dax looked inside.

  “No wine,” he said.  “What are we going to do with this shit?”

  “Let’s eat!” I said.

   I was a Junior in high school when I discovered the joys of a fake ID.

  It was one of those things I learned from a cousin.  I can’t remember why he thought it was an important thing to share with me but share he did.  But he had showed me how to disconnect the odometer so my dad wouldn’t know how many miles I’d burned up cruising the main drag of town.  Of course I haven’t told you whether I actually DID what he showed me.

  Anyway, about the fake I.D., Cuz said I was to go through magazines that might hold a subscription coupon to a particular magazine.  The thing was designed in such a way that if one typed it up, slapped an official-looking, passport-like black and white photo in the corner and laminated it, BAM!  Fake ID.

  I couldn’t tell you when I first used the thing…must’ve been at some store ‘cos I first bought some Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill wine.  I presented the ID which noted I was from Jamaica and just visiting in the USA.

  I took the wine on my first date with Wanda June Anderson* and a good time was had.  Wanda June and I only went out twice.  After that whenever I ran into her new boyfriend in his souped up ’72 Nova he’d call out to me, “Hey McGee, buy me some wine.  MAH-GEEEEEE, pleeeeeez buy me some wine.”  Then he would flip me the middle finger.  I reckon Wanda June told him about our date.

  The big test was could I pull off getting hard liquor at the state ABC store.

  Surely you’ve been in one of those states where you can buy beer, wine at the supermarket but hard booze is sold out of a state run store.

  These aren’t just clerks behind the counters, these are clerks in uniforms with BADGES.  So there is a bit of intimidation involved.

  Did I have a death wish?  Would I present my fake ID, its bogusness realized, guns drawn from under cash registers and I would be shot down in the liquor store, shot down for being under 21 and trying to buy booze?  Or would the clerks gang up on me, shoving their badges in my face, cuff me, put me in a black helicopter and whisk me away to prison?

  No.

  I picked up a bottle of Mr. Boston Rock and Rye, went to the counter, pulled out my cash and presented my fake ID.

  “Jamaica,” said the guy with the blue officer’s shirt and badge, “I was there once.  Kingston.”

  “Ah, you visited our capitol city,” I said.

  The clerk and I locked eyeballs for a few seconds.

  “I had a good time,” he said, handing my ID back, wrapping up my booze in a brown paper bag, handing me back my change.  “Have a nice day.”

  I walked out in the sun smiling…feeling a kind of freedom, a kind of euphoria…I had pulled one over on “The Man.”

  I mean, I never really bought a lot of beer, wine or booze.

  But I know my fake ID is why Chuck Biscuits kept me around in his little rock ‘n’ roll clique. 

  Chuck was a year behind me in school but we were in Art class together.  He and I started hanging around.  Chuck and some of his pals from over the hill from my house had a rock ‘n’ roll band, Hombre, that practiced a lot and I was often invited to come on over…Chuck on guitar, Dale on keyboards, Bobby Painter on bass and Jordy on drums.

  “And hey,” said Chuck on some practice nights, handing me a 5 dollar bill, “Pick up a couple of sixes of Bud on the way over.”

  I didn’t drink beer then, I liked sweet wines and liquors.

  So Chuck and the guys would swill the beers and I would kick back.  One night I wondered why the guys didn’t do “We’re An American Band” by Grand Funk, a Top 40 hit back in the day.

  “You come up and sing it,” said Chuck.

  And so I did, pitchy and off-key.

  I mean I didn’t know I was pitchy and off key and Chuck didn’t tell me I was pitchy and off key the only way I knew anything was wrong was Dale would wince, screw up his face when I hit the high notes in the tune.

  My role as singer for “Hombre” may have been tenuous but my role as beer buyer for the band was secure.

  Then it was the summer between my junior and senior year and it was time to party.  Me, my buddy Catfish, Chuck and the band and some other guys piled in my car and Chuck’s and headed into the mountains with two cases of Budweiser and three bottles of Boone's Farm Strawberry Hill wine.

  They’re called “fire trails,” dirt roads that run through the National Forest so firefighters could get around in the woods.  Our “rolling party” was probably 5 miles up in the mountains.

  We drank, we listened to the rock ‘n’ roll AM station, we shot the shit and I got drunk.

  One bottle was gone, I was working on a second one when the gang decided it was time to go back to town.

  My pals wouldn’t let me drive my own car.

  And that’s the last thing I remember.

  I woke up the next morning…late…to hear a mockingbird singing outside my bedroom window and the sun shining in.

  I was still in my clothes.

  I was really thirsty.

  I got up and walked downstairs to the kitchen.

  I opened the door at the bottom of the stairs to find my grandmother holding her coffee cup in one hand, a filterless Raleigh cigarette in the other.  Her sister, my Aunt Maude, was sitting at the kitchen table.

  “Well here’s Mister Man, ready to take on a new day at 10 a.m.,” announced Aunt Maude.

  My grandmother turned around and started laughing.

  I was living with my grandmother and grandfather while my mom and dad got set up with a new job and new digs in Michigan.  Aunt Maude was visiting from New York City.

  I went over to the sink, got a glass from the cabinet, got a big, cool glass of tap water and drank it all down.

  “Do you have anything you want to say to me, boy?” Aunt Maude said loudly.

  Grandma laughed again.

  “Did I do something wrong?” I asked, looking back and forth from Grandma to Aunt Maude and back to Grandma.

  “Well,” said Grandma, “Me and your Aunt Maude were watching “Hee-Haw” last night when there was a knock…so I got up, opened the door and you practically fell into the living room.”

  “Oh,” I said, I could feel myself blush.”

  “Then you stumbled in and I said, ‘What’s wrong with you, boy?’” said Grandma.  “Then Maude says, ‘The boy is drunk’ and you turned to Maude and said, ‘SHUT UP YOU OLD BITTY.’”

  Grandma laughed some more.

  “Oh,” I said.  “I suppose you told my dad.”

  “I ain’t gonna tell your daddy anything,” said Grandma.  “I know stories about him that he doesn’t want told.”

  I turned to Aunt Maude.  I looked her in the eyes.

  “I apologize, Aunt Maude,” I said.  “I’m sorry.”

  Aunt Maude had a sip of her coffee.

  “It’s okay, boy,” she said.  Then she smiled and winked.

  Then I had a start.

  “Where’s my car?” I asked.

  “It’s outside, boy,” said Grandma.

  I went into the living room and looked out the bay window.  There was my car.

  I went outside to check it out.

  Everything looked okay, then I walked around to the passenger side.

  There was a stain, a mark, a big one that looked like some liquid had been poured out over the side of the car while it was heading down the road.

  I looked closer.

  There was a faint smell, there were food bits.

  It was vomit.

  I stood up and laughed to myself.

  I went inside the house and called my buddy Dax.

  “Mr. Strawberry Hill,” said Dax laughing when he answered the phone.

  “Man,” I said.  “What happened last night?”

  “Well,” said Dax, “We all decided that you were NOT driving your car anywhere so I drove off the mountain.”

  This would not be the last time Dax would commandeer my treasured ’64 Ford “Falcoon.”  In college he asked to borrow it to take his cheerleader girlfriend on a date.  Days later he told me that the two of them had “done it” in my car.  I was not amused.  Hell, I hadn’t even “done it” in my car.

  “So,” Dax went on, “We get back on the main road, and that’s when Painter about shoved you out the passenger side door.”

  “What was that about?”

  Painter was rather striking to see because he had this long bright red hair that went down to his shoulders and covered most of his face.

  “You kept grabbing his hair,” said Dax, “and kept yelling at him ‘YOU KNOW WHAT MY OLD MAN WOULD SAY ABOUT YOUR HAIR?  ‘BOY, YOU NEED A HAIRCUT.’”

  Dax laughed over the phone.

  “Man, you kept doing that until you really pissed Painter off.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Then you had to take a whizz so I pulled over by this field and Chuck pulled up behind us,” said Dax, “Then you ran out into this field.  We were standing around shootin’ the shit when Chuck says, ‘Hey, where’s McGee?’  We didn’t see you anywhere.”

  “Oh man,” I said.

  “So we go out in the field looking for you in this tall grass and Chuck finds you passed out on the ground.”

  “We get you back in the car,” said Dax, “We’re headed down the highway and you go ‘Uh oh’ then you lean out the window and puke.”

  “Well,” I said, “That explains the vomit on the side of the car.”

  “So then we get to your house and me and Painter practically carry you to your door, propped you up, knocked on the door, ran and got in Chuck’s car and got the hell out of there.”

  Dax laughed some more.

  “I’ll catch ya later, man,” I said to Dax.

  “Later Mr. Strawberry Hill.”

 

E P I L O G U E

  That wouldn’t be the last misadventure I’d have with my fake ID and booze.

  Actually about the only time I came close to getting into trouble was the next spring when I bought Dax a bottle of Everclear, the straight grain alcohol, which he mixed into a bottle of cheap wine that he took on a double date.  The girls got big time sick and he and Navy Jeff (called that ‘cos a year later he joined the Navy) took the girls over to Mr. B’s.  Mr. B was the cool high school English teacher.  They figured he’d know how to sober up the girls.  Dax knew the girls’ daddy (they were sisters) would whip Dax and Navy Jeff’s asses if they brought them home as drunk and sick as they were.

  And if anything happened I’m sure even in 1970-something they would’ve gone looking for whoever got the Everclear for Dax.

  The only time my fake ID was rejected was at the Windego Club, a seedy bar on the city’s north side.  The dude at the bar threw my ID back at me when I asked for a six-pack of Bud for Chuck and the gang.

  “I’ve seen better, kid,” he said.  “Show me your driver’s license.”

  It seems like not much time passed at all before I was really 21 and didn’t need my fake ID anymore.  I celebrated that birthday by going into the liquor store and buying a fifth of Jack Daniels and flashing my driver’s license.

  Yep, a bottle of Jack.

  Not Strawberry Hill.

  I never could drink that shit ever again.

-30-

*All names changed… ‘cept mine…

Storytellers...

  Are you a storyteller?

  Do you have the storyteller gene?

  Are you nurturing your storytelling skill?

  What is a storyteller?  I think the first requirement is you need to remember stuff.  You remember things most folks have forgotten.  Of course, when you venture into things other folks have forgotten they may think your stories are apocryphal, a twenty-five-dollar-word that simply means they think you’re full of shit, your stories can’t be verified, they’re pulled from the mists of time, pulled from a time that few remember.  That’s the risk a storyteller runs. 
  I couldn't tell you why I like to tell tales.  Maybe there's a part of me that wants to tell someone a tale so they'll beware of certain pitfalls in life, that "thar be dragons" out there on the primrose-lined path of life.  Maybe I just want to entertain.  Maybe it's telling a tale of an interesting tid-bit of family history.

  My brother has questioned a number of my tales of family life through the years.  My brother is not a storyteller.  Many times after I told a tale of life when I lived with our grandparents and such he’d say, “Oh I don’t believe that.”

  “Are you calling me a liar, bro?” I asked him one time.

  He paused.

  “No,” he said, “I’ve just never heard this stuff before.

  Veracity is the realm of the researcher, reporter, historian and teacher.  The telling of the tale, ah, that’s the realm of storytellers.

  I think I got the “storytelling gene” from my grandmother, my father’s mother…I lived with her and my grandfather my last years in high school.  My grandmother would sit in her easy chair, a filterless Raleigh cigarette in her right hand, as she told story after story of life in the mountains of western Virginia.

  My oldest daughter has the storyteller gene too.

  I have no research to back this up but I believe the best storytellers mostly come from out here in "The Golden West" or the American South. 

  That’s where Coach Bob* was from.

  Bob’s gone now, but he’s one of those folks I’ll remember all my life.  When I saw the movie “Big Fish” I thought of Bob, the teller of tall tales, tales you couldn’t really verify, they were believable but you weren’t quite sure if they were possible.

  Like his tale of running the bar at the non-com club on Okinawa during the Korean War.

  “Yeah, I had this monkey at the bar,” Bob said, “and if I needed to cut someone off, I’d have the monkey go over and piss in the guy’s drink.” 

  There was the story of how Bob ended up in Roswell.

  “Yeah, me and the family were headed west and we broke down out there on the Caprock east of Roswell.  I hitched a ride into town, asked if they needed a coach.  They did.  I had a job in a couple of hours, then me and the players went back to the family, hooked up the car and came back to town.”

  I found out sometime later Bob had the job lined up, the family just broke down just before they got to Roswell.  For years I believed Bob had landed the coach’s job just like he said.

  In his life Coach Bob had fought in the Korean War, sold houses, had his own country music show and more.  He told lots of stories, lots of jokes. 

  And he remembered.

  Coach Bob had a mind like a steel trap, as they say.

  One day in 1996, sitting in his home in Roswell he told me a poem he called “The Water Cure.”  It was so good I wrote it down.

  “Sometime when you’re feeling important, sometime when your ego’s in bloom; sometime when you take it for granted you’re the best qualified in the room; sometime when you feel that your going would leave an unfillable hole;  just follow these simple instructions and see how they humble your soul.

  “Take a bucket and fill it with water, put your hand in it up to the wrist; pull it out, and the hole that’s remaining, is a measure of how you’ll be missed.

  “You can splash all you wish when you enter, you may stir up the water galore;
but stop and you’ll find that in no time it looks quite the same as before.

  “The moral of this quaint example, is do just the best that you can.  Be proud of yourself but remember, there’s no indispensable man.”

  “I memorized that for my players,” Bob said.  “When you have a team of young’uns, you have a few that come through who think they’re the end-all to beat-all.  I’d make them listen to me recite those words.”

  For years I thought it was something Coach Bob made up.  Then when The Great and Powerful Internet was in full flower I did a little poking around and found out the poem was first published in 1959, written by Saxon White Kessinger and titled “The Indispensable Man.”  What struck me as I saw the familiar words on a website was I had it written in my journal just as Coach Bob had recited it, he knew that poem word for word after so many years.

Coach Bob was a storyteller, and a good one at that.  He may have embellished the truth a bit, but so what?

So if you’re a storyteller, tell those tales.

They help us all remember, make us smile.

And make us think.

-30-

*Name changed

Tales Of Rifles, Shotguns and Pistols...

  The great Texas singer Steve Fromholz died back in 2014.  I only found out recently how he died…he was putting a loaded rifle in a pickup truck, going out on his central Texas ranch to hunt feral hogs that were killing his baby goats.

The rifle slipped and a bullet went flying.  The bullet hit Fromholz and he died on the way to the hospital.

  Fromholz wrote and sang good stuff, back in 2007 he was named Texas’ “Poet Laureate.”

  Helluva way to go…in a rifle accident. 

  It got me to thinking about rifles, shotguns, pistols and such.           

  There aren’t any firearms at my house.

  It’s not a big deal.  I don’t preach about my position.  It’s kinda like politics and religion…once upon a time it wasn’t polite to talk about either amongst friends lest arguing ensue.  Once upon a time that was a rule of etiquette.

  But having said that, I never understood folks who have to have a bunch of weapons in their home.  I understand some folks having a rifle, shotgun or two.  But an arsenal?

  I come from a time when if The National Rifle Association crossed my mind I thought, “Oh yeah, the guys who come to our Boy Scout meetings to teach us gun safety.”

  There were no firearms in my mom and dad’s home.

  If I ever wanted to do some shootin’ I knew folks who had a rifle or a shotgun and they’d let me shoot.

  I don’t know why Dad didn’t have a pistol, rifle or shotgun…it never came up in conversation.  There was never any big statement, no political stance, nothing.  There just wasn’t a rifle, pistol or shotgun in “the old home place.”  I mean the closest thing that WAS there was an old .22 rifle from around 1900 or so.  It didn’t work.

  Now my dad did have a BB pistol under his socks in his top drawer but that’s about it.  Then it turned up in the glove compartment of the family car. 

  One time, when I was about 12, my mom and sister left me in the car while they went shopping.  I played with the radio for a bit, then I opened the glove box and there it was...the BB pistol I was forbidden to touch. 

  I got it out of the glove box, turned it around in my hands, admired it, then I pulled the hammer back.  I wondered what would I do with it now. 

  If I fired it in the car it might ricochet around and hit me.  So I put my thumb back on the hammer and eased it back into a safe position.  But the hammer slipped, then a BB flew and smacked against the windshield leaving a small nick.  My dad had quite the temper so I never said a word, but he couldn’t figure out why the car’s windshield was nicked from the inside.

  It seems I’ve had some close calls with firearms.

  Shotguns were always around when I went camping in the Boy Scouts.  I belonged to what some have termed a “rogue” troop, meaning it wasn’t like any Boy Scout troop I’ve ever heard about.  I assure you, 99 percent of America’s Boy Scout troops are unlike this one…it’s seed-bed of many tales that I may make into a book someday. 

  One of the guys in the troop, Woody*, seemed to always have a shotgun or rifle of one type or another when we went camping.  One camp-out he might have a .410, another time a .20 gauge and then there was that time he brought his 30.06 rifle, won a big box of candy with a busty “nekkid” lady on the cover and got into some mischief with a stick of dynamite.  

  One camp out night inside the troop’s big three sided shelter back in the mountains, after the younger scouts had hit the hay, some of us older scouts and the adult leaders were kicking back. Woody produced his .20 gauge inside the shelter.  While I sat nearby, Scoutmaster Pete and Woody proceeded to get into a terse discussion about the weapon’s safety being on.

  “Sure it’s on,” Woody said.

  Suddenly there was this loud “BLAM” and little pinging noises all over the place.  The shotgun had gone off.  And the cabin had a new little skylight about 4 inches across.  We were still finding shotgun pellets inside the place for the next few months.

  In high school I had a friend, Monty, who was always going dove hunting.  I was invited on one “big hunt.”  I even went out and bought some shotgun shells at the local Sears store.   

  I arrived at Monty’s house unaware that he and my buddy Catfish raided the fridge at Monty’s and enjoyed a few of his daddy’s “brewskis” therein.

  Out into the fields we went on our merry hunt.  Suddenly a covey of quail took to the sky.  Catfish was behind me, over my right shoulder.  There was an explosion in my right ear.  Catfish had fired on the quail, the muzzle of his shotgun just inches from my right ear.  I didn’t hear well out of that ear for a few days.

  In my late 20’s I decided it was time to have a pistol.  I couldn’t think of a good reason why I shouldn’t have one but then I really didn’t have a good reason why I should have one.  I went to a gun shop and bought a classic .22 revolver.

  And it sat in my home.

  I took it camping in the West Virginia mountains one time.  I would take it out and look at it and wonder where I was going to shoot it.  I remembered stories of people being hit by stray bullets in the forest.  I put on my holster and walked boldly through the campground.  I had become “The Great Outdoorsman,” exercising his “right to bear arms,” going off to find an embankment to shoot into.  I found such a place deep in the woods away from the campground.  I fired a few rounds, knocked off a few pine cones.  Then I sat there, wondering why I had this thing.  The pistol was holstered and The Great Outdoorsman marched back to his campsite. 

  Later that evening while I was grilling up some sausages, peppers and onions a guy moseyed into my campsite.  He was younger than me, slender, beard.  Hell, if we had been suddenly transported 30 years into the future I would have called him a “Millenial.”

  “Hi there,” I said.  “Somethin’ I can do for you?”

  “Yeah, ummm,” he paused.  “Me and my friends were wondering if you might not walk through the campground with your pistol strapped on.  It’s pretty intimidating.”

  I locked eyes with the guy and smiled.

  “Hell, buddy,” I said, “It’s just a .22 peashooter.”

  “Well, okay,” he said, “But we’re just visiting here and it’s pretty intimidating.”

  “Where y’all visiting from?” I asked.

  “Northern Virginia,” he said.

  “Ah, D.C.,” I said. 

  “Well, that IS where we all work,” said the visitor.

  “Well welcome to ‘Wild, Wonderful West Virginia,” I said, laughing.

  He smiled.

  “Okay, buck-o, you got it,” I said.  “Ain’t nothin’ that says I’ve GOT to wear my pistol around the campground.

  “Thank you, sir,” he said.  The visitor turned and walked away.

  Like I said, I didn’t know why I had the thing.

  I had a girlfriend back then who used to get “spells” where she’d fly into rages.  It was with her in mind that I stored the pistol in one place and its cylinder, you know…the spinny-thingy that holds the bullets…in another.

  One afternoon, an afternoon that featured one of those “spells” I mentioned, I woke up from a nap to find her standing over me, the pistol pointed at my head…the pistol minus the cylinder.

  And she was pulling the trigger over and over again.

  CLICK * CLICK * CLICK *

  I kept the girlfriend for a bit longer figuring all she needed in life was a heavy dose of good times.

  Months later I found out I was wrong, another story…one I may or may not tell someday.

  But I got rid of the revolver right away.

  I took the pistol back to the gun shop where the owner bought it back.

  I lived in a remote place one time so I bought an air pistol.

  “What good will that do you against a burglar,” a friend asked.

  “I figure if I shoot the guy with a pellet gun it will hurt and he’ll run away.”

  “That’ll just make the guy mad.”

  I did like the way a friend handled an intruder in the Hondo Valley west of Roswell some years ago.  He was awakened by the sound of someone in his ranch house.  My friend grabbed his shotgun and went out in the hall where he found the burglar down the corridor a ways.

  He did the pump action thing on the weapon, racking a shell into the chamber.

  He kept staring at the intruder down the hall.

  “You see what I got here,” said my pal, shouldering the shotgun, aiming it at the burglar.  “Now if you turn around and get the hell out of here we can both forget this happened.”

  The intruder turned and ran.  After that my friend started locking doors…he hadn’t before.

  Truth be told I DO have a rifle in the house…an air rifle.

  It’s a nice, solid thing…wood stock, steel barrel and workings.

  I haven’t fired it since the day I bought it, a dozen or so years ago.

  I bought it because I had one just like it years ago.

  The guy at the store where I bought it said it was a Chinese import that recruits in the Chinese Army practiced with for starters.  I have no way to check on the truth of that.

  But it’s got a wee bit of kick to it.

  Truth be told if someone broke into my home I probably would break out my air rifle…except…I’d be more inclined to use the butt end as a weapon ‘cos I’d be pissed someone was messing around in my home.

  I suppose there are all kinds of reasons to have a pistol, rifle or shotgun.  But you know, aside from the safety questions, you really have to take care of them with cleaning and oiling and such and I’m kinda lazy.

  Then too, I remember the lyrics from a Waylon Jennings song “The Devil’s Right Hand.”  The guy in the song gets his first pistol, “but I soon found out, it’ll get you into trouble but it can’t get you out.”

                                                            -30-

*Names changed as a CYA maneuver on my part.  I reckon the proper acronym should be “CMA maneuver.”

What To Do With the Body

  News story…. 

  It seems a family had donated a loved one’s body “to science” upon the loved one’s death.  I didn’t get all the details but there was a big dust-up because the family found out that the medical facility that received the body sold off some of the dead person’s body parts.

  It’s a perfectly legal thing to do here in New Mexico.  For instance as part of the report a TV station covering the story ordered a real human foot for just over $300. 

  Lots of folks get weird when you talk about death and “final arrangements” and stuff.

  It’s hard for some people to grasp that it’s part of the deal of coming here to Planet Earth…you’re born, you die.

  Death opens up a huge discussion amongst folks.  The bottom line is, though, the spiritual deal is an individual thing…you know, where you go, who you see, what happens next.  The fact is, once a person is called off the Great Stage of Life the survivors must decide what to do with the leftover biomechanical suit.

  Funerals…people coming and going to view the body, services and such…are one thing, what to actually factually do with the remains are another.

  But now there are more options than there used to be.

  For instance, imagine my amazement when a few years ago I found out that a person can be made into a diamond after they die.

  This opens up a whole world of new possibilities and weirdness.

   I found this out after reading people are requesting when they die and are cremated, their ashes be mixed in with concrete to be made part of artificial reefs off the Pacific coast.  In the course of the article it mentioned the diamond thing.

  It turns out that once you’re cremated your ashes may be sent off to this company that will put those ashes through a process that will result in a diamond.  We are, after all, a carbon-based being so our ashes (I’m guessing here) are carbon ash.  Diamonds are nothing more than highly compressed carbon. 

  It was only after watching an old episode of “CSI Miami” I learned the process for making diamonds exists.

  Once the cremated remains are put through the process the result is a rough diamond.  The jewelers at the “we-make-a-diamond-out-of-your-ashes” company then send your loved ones a very nice cut diamond.  The price is roughly $13,000 per carat.  The smallest job they’ll do costs around $2,000.

  I’m finding out more and more folks are opting for cremation.  Ashes can be made into glass ornaments, jewelry, stuff like that.

  Of course there’s always the same old thing of simply disposing of the ashes.

 My mom always talked about cremation for herself.  When I was a kid she wanted her ashes left on a high point along the Appalachian Trail.  Then she wanted them taken out into the Atlantic Ocean.  She didn’t want a funeral, she wanted to simply be remembered. 

  The original plan was that sometime after she passed he, my sister and I would ride out in his boat into the Atlantic.  Each of us will say a few words then put my mom’s ashes out to sea.

  In the end half of her ashes were put by my dad’s grave in Virginia, the other half went to Waikiki Beach in Hawai’I, a place she dearly loved and where we lived once upon a time.

  Me?  The Lady of the House says she’d like to make a funeral pyre for me in the back yard, shovel up the ashes and mix it in with the dirt in her tomato patch.

  What we do with people is one thing, pets are another.  Many years ago I discovered people freeze dried their dead pets.  I suppose having beloved cats and dogs stuffed has been going on for years.  Those who have it done say freeze drying gives the late animal a more “life-like” appearance.

  I had read where people are taking the ashes of cremated pets and mixing the stuff with resin.  The resulting paste (I guess that’s what it’s called) is then formed into shapes and squiggles around a photo of the pet in a frame.

  I once proposed the same thing be done with people, except using the resin pressed into a form to make an actual picture frame that would hold a photo of the deceased.

  My idea was greeted with derision by my pals.

  “What if you could see the actual bone fragments?”

  “Well if that bothers someone I suppose before you made the resin you could grind it up into a finer powder,” I replied.

  People still did not think this was a good idea.

  It’s kinda sorta like my idea of making a used hearse into a camper.

  “Dead people have been back there.”

  “But they’re not there now,” I would say.  “Look, those things are nice and roomy.  Besides, the great musician Neil Young used to drive one around Hollywood in the 1960’s.”

  Folks would then remind me I was on The High Plains and it was no longer the 1960’s.

  I think turning me into a diamond after I die sounds like a neat idea.

  “I could wear you around my neck,” said The Lady of the House.  “You could be watching over me while I date new guys.”

  Maybe I should think about it some more.

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