The Old Blog in the Desert

HOMETOWN

Tommy’s junior-year civics class teacher was a gentleman by the name of Jules. They called him Mr. Legier. One guy, two unusual names in a school full of Bob’s, Bill’s, and Tom’s. But it’s not his name that Tommy remembers him for. He remembers him because he was a “real” teacher. He was animated when he taught. He brought good citizenship and the meaning of the Constitution to life during class. Tommy wondered if Mr. Legier was the same way at home.

The one other thing that stuck in Tommy’s mind was the single rainy day when Mr. Legier chastised the entire class for not being able to spell the name of their hometown. Their county high school was in the tiny town of Crescent City. Some of Mr. Legier’s students were having difficulty with the proper name of the town.

On this particular rainy day, Mr. Legier scratched out the words “CRESCENT CITY’ on the chalkboard behind his desk. As soon as the class was seated, he launched into his talk about how they lived in Crescent City and that they should know how to spell it correctly. He couldn’t understand why his students couldn’t get this right.

This didn’t make any sense to Tommy either, because he knew how to write out the name of his hometown. Mr. Legier then scribbled out the words ‘CRESENT CITY’ The word “Crescent” was misspelled and he pointed at it several times as he continued his lecture.

At some point in his lecture, Tommy was lucky to have heard him at all.

Mr. Legier looked at Tommy and ordered him up to the chalkboard, assigning him the task of spelling the name of his hometown correctly. Mr. Legier erased the correct and incorrect spellings of “Crescent City”, then handed Tommy the chalk. Like a good student, Tommy obeyed him and promptly wrote down the correct spelling.

The class snickered in unison as Mr. Legier turned red. He had forgotten where Tommy lived. However, Tommy hadn’t. He lived twenty miles south of Crescent City. On the chalkboard in white-yellow letters was the name “KLAMATH’ and it was spelled correctly too!

 

HOT ASHES

Mary and Russ Thompson had been visiting the area for years. They came to spend their summertime fishing for salmon and always parked their travel trailer in space right behind our home at Camp Marigold.

We came to know them a few years earlier, and when they were in town, we often invited them over for dinner. And though they were elderly, they climbed over our backyard fence just like we kids would.

After dinner one night, we were standing on the front porch chatting, when Mrs. Thompson asked, “Is there supposed to be a fire burning out there?”

She was looking through our rumpus room window and out the back door window. We all looked in the direction she was looking and we could see flames dancing up through the pane of glass.

Mom answered, “No.”

A sudden panic swept through all of us. We scattered, rushing to get to the fire before it caught the side of the house ablaze.

It was a plastic garbage can that Mom had placed a bag of ashes from the fireplace. The bag of ashes had been sitting on the porch in a metal bucket for the past two days, so she believed them to be safe to throw away.

While Dad grabbed the garden hose, I got the fire extinguisher from the tool bench. He was already spraying the fire down when I aimed the extinguisher at the flame.

The garbage can melted, and some paint near the backdoor blistered, but nothing else was damaged. It was our good fortune that the Thompsons had come over for a visit that evening.

Unfortunately, the fire extinguisher failed to work when I squeezed the trigger. That’s because years before, Adam and I had been playing with it when we should not have been.

Yeah, we got in trouble for it, too.

Like a Sailor, Like a Logger

One of my part-time jobs was working as a summer school teacher. The position turned out to require more interpersonal skills than I had at the time.

One afternoon, I watched as a kid on a motorcycle raced around the playground while students were outside playing. I stopped him and told him he couldn’t be on the school grounds while other children were there.

The next day, he returned, and I confiscated the motorcycle. I locked it up in the school’s office and called my supervisor Paul Rosenthal and the Del Norte County Sheriff’s Office.

Minutes after hanging up, I found myself confronted by a very angry mother. Mrs. Teri Fisher was demanding that I give her son’s motorbike back, which I did.

She was mad as all got out at me and cussed me up one side and down the other as if she were a sailor. I returned the favor.

Later that evening, her husband came to our home and confronted me. He read me the riot act in a language one usually only heard out in the woods where the loggers worked.

In essence, he let me know it was not polite to use foul language in the presence of a woman. Being a smart aleck, I asked, “What woman?”

I was certain he was going to kick my butt right there on our porch.

First Photo

One of the first photographs I ever took was of the stop sign and telephone pole where Redwood Drive intersects with U.S. 101 in Klamath. I grew up in a home on Redwood Drive, and anytime we went anywhere, we had to use that singular intersection to leave our neighborhood.

My parents bought me a Kodak 126 Instamatic, the cheapest camera available at the time, and instead of regular film, they got slide film by accident. I used it anyway.

The class was taught by Mr. Siegel. He was the new 8th grade teacher at Margaret Keating, replacing Mr. Wofford, who had retired the year before.
I liked Mr. Siegel because he was the first teacher who taught something I was truly interested in photography.

Mr. Siegel was younger than most teachers at MKS. The girls thought he was cute, the boy thought he was cool, and Mr. Fizer thought he was a hippy.

He gave us a basic course on composition, lighting, color, and subject. There was no singing, penmanship, math, or memorization in his class.

Instead, he allowed us — he allowed me — to express myself through picture-taking. I had never experienced such freedom before and I enjoyed it so much that I’ve yet to stop taking pictures.

Unfortunately, he taught at MKS for only one year.

Got It

Mom and Dad had spent three months paneling the living room and hallway. They also put squares of gold-veined mirrors up in the front room hoping to make the area look bigger.

One of the extra things they did was to mount into the wall an old piece of ship’s timber that acted as a resting place for our telephone. It was about five feet long, two-and-half feet wide, three inches thick, and about four feet off the ground.

One of the things that occurred every time the phone rang was a mad dash for the hallway. It was during one of these mad-dashes, we discovered how much Marcy had grown.

She flew out of the bedroom she shared with our sister Deirdre, yelling, “I got it!”

However, we soon realized she didn’t “got it.” Instead, we heard a large thump followed by an even louder thud.

Marcy had made the corner but failed to duck out of the way of the ship’s timber. She caught the massive piece of wood with her forehead.

Kids being kids — we failed to offer her any help as we were all laughing too hard.

Zane Grey Slept Here

For three months, I worked at the Requa Inn. I was filling in for my brother Adam after he broke his arm in a bicycle accident.

At first, Adam tried to blame Dad for breaking his arm. That’s because Dad grabbed it after Adam attempted to stab me with a dinner fork.

Dr. Kasper said it was already broken by the time Dad stopped Adam. Unfortunately, Dad helped the fracture along, and he felt bad about it for a long time afterward.

Because I was just filling in, I busted my hump trying to do a better job than my kid-brother had ever thought of doing. Not only did I wash dishes, I bused tables, took out the trash, and even found time to do a little fooling around.

The waitress and I slipped upstairs one evening to spend several minutes in the room, legendary Western novel and sports writer Zane Grey always slept in. However, I had no idea about this piece of trivia at the time.

As we were leaving the room, she said in a matter-of-fact whisper, “You know, Zane Grey slept here.”

I remember thinking, “I wonder if he’d mind?”

Almost Skated

Mom and Dad were gone for the day. They left Adam and me with Ma and Pa Sanders.

We were forbidden to return to our home for any reason. However, we disobeyed, because we wanted to play with our new roller skates.

The two of us roller skated up and down Redwood Drive and in the huge parking lot of the old Bizzards building, now owned by Simpson Timber Company, all day long. We were pretty worn out by the time daylight started to fade.

Having to get back to Ma and Pa’s before the street lamps came on, we pulled the skates from our feet. Adam picked them up and went inside our home.

A few seconds later he came back and we rushed over to Ma and Pa’s home, a couple of fence lines away.

When Dad came to pick us up, I could tell we were in trouble. Once inside the truck, we found out why.

Adam didn’t put the skates back in our closet like he was supposed to. Instead, frightened of being in our house alone, he set them just inside the front door.

That’s where Mom tripped over them.

Red Dress

Mom and Dad were going to a function at the airbase. For the event, Mom went out and purchased a bright red dress.

They left the house at around six that evening and returned before just 11 o’clock that night. Both looked nice as they left for the evening.

Dad was first through the door. He headed for his favorite chair, picking up the local newspaper to start reading.

Mom however went into the kitchen to see if all of the chores were completed as instructed. From there, she walked into the hallway.

And at the end of the hallway hung a large mirror.

Mom suddenly screamed, rushing towards her bedroom. She slammed and locked the door behind herself.

She must have seen what we all saw. Her bright red dress was turned inside out.

One Big Step

When we went to visit our Aunt and Uncle, we also stopped at Don and Evelyn Chisum’s home. It was a post-Victorian building with three bedrooms, a full bathroom upstairs, and a master bedroom, another full bathroom, kitchen, dining, and living room on the bottom floor.

During one visit, Dad went upstairs to use the bathroom as the one downstairs was occupied. He reappeared a couple of minutes later. He came to the top of the stairs and stepped out into nothingness.

Dad spilled out of the bottom of the staircase with an awful thud and jus’ laid where he had fallen. I couldn’t believe what I had just witnessed.

Within seconds, everyone in the house was in the living room to see if he was okay. It took Dad a minute, but he finally rolled over onto his back and worked his way to his feet.

He said he wanted to take a moment to make sure nothing was broken on his body, then he got up and brushed himself off. As soon as it was apparent he was going to be okay, the question, “What happened?” was asked.

Without hesitating, Dad yanked his two-day-old and first set of bifocal glasses off his face, answering, “These g-d damned glasses are going to be the death of me!”

 

Cover Up

Sillymander

License to Fly

By Line

Citizenship

Record Gift Giving

Marriage Encounter Save My Life

High Point

Rescuing Grandpa’s

Family Hike

New Years Blaze

Big Mac Attack

Guessing Game

Purposeful Beating

Yeast Infection

One Hairy Tale

I have carried a fascination with Bigfoot for most of my life, which is not the sort of confession a man usually makes unless he has already accepted a certain amount of skepticism from the crowd.

The trouble started when I was a young kid listening to stories from fellows like Sandy Sanderson of the Yurok Tribe. Sandy could tell a tale that would make the hair rise on the back of your neck, and once a boy hears a few stories like that, the woods never quite look the same again.

I spent a good deal of my childhood alone in those woods. I don’t know why exactly—it was just the way things worked out. In those days, it wasn’t unusual for a kid to disappear into the forest for an afternoon with nothing more than a pocketknife and an imagination.

One day I was wandering around south of High Prairie Creek, just east of the trailer park with the same name. Off in the distance, I could hear the steady rush of traffic moving along U.S. 101, though it felt a long way away.

I was doing what boys do—exploring, poking at sticks, and fiddling with that pocketknife of mine—when suddenly the cows across the creek took off running like something had set fire under their tails.

A moment later, the horses in the same pasture followed suit, tearing across the field in a full panic.

That got my attention.

I stopped and looked around to see what had spooked them.

That was when I saw him.

He was moving along the edge of the woods near the old barn, walking quickly through the tall yellow grass. He wasn’t running, just striding along with purpose.

Then he turned his head and looked straight at me.

I felt a bolt of fear so strong it nearly stopped my breathing.

He never said a word and never slowed down. He just kept moving, silent as a shadow, crossing the open ground until he slipped into the brush beyond the barn.

The whole thing couldn’t have lasted more than half a minute.

The moment he disappeared, I took off running as those cows had earlier. I headed straight for the trailer park because, at that moment, civilization sounded like a fine idea.

That night, I told Mom what I had seen.

She washed my mouth out with soap for telling lies.

To this day, I maintain I told the truth.

 

Out Fishing Cousin Billy

My cousin Billy from Washington State had a habit of announcing his intentions well in advance. Three weeks before his visit, he informed me he planned to outfish me while he was staying with us.

Billy was six years older than I was and had the confidence of a man who believed experience outweighed cunning.

I decided not to argue with him. Instead, I went to work.

Every day before he arrived, I carried a can of corn down to the old sawmill pond. It was a murky little lagoon where trout liked to gather along the west side.

Each afternoon, I would scatter generous handfuls of yellow kernels into the water. The trout seemed to appreciate the effort.

By the time Billy arrived, those fish were probably expecting supper at the same hour every day.

Billy could hardly wait to get started. The afternoon he arrived, we packed lunches, dug up some worms, and hurried down to the pond.

When we reached the water’s edge, I announced I wanted to try something new I had heard about.

Instead of a worm, I pinched off a tiny ball of Velveeta cheese and pushed it onto my hook.

Billy snorted.

“Worms have always worked for me,” he said. “I’ll stick with them.”

Within minutes, my pole bent over.

I pulled in a trout.

Billy called it dumb luck.

Ten minutes later, I caught another.

Then another.

And another.

By the end of the afternoon, I had twelve trout in my basket. Billy had three.

He grumbled the entire walk home, thoroughly disgusted that he had been outfished by a kid six years younger than him.

I considered explaining about the corn.

But I also knew Billy well enough to understand the likely consequences. He would have pinned me to the ground and administered purple-nerples until I confessed to every crime since the invention of fishing.

So I kept quiet.

Sometimes the price of cleverness is silence.

 

Losing Face

Secret Santa

Playing with Mom’s Stuff

HEELING MOM

It was Thanksgiving Day and Tommy’s Dad was still in Vietnam. Dad was going to miss another holiday with his family but the Tommy’s Uncle would pick up the slack. Uncle would have his family and Dad’s family all together for the holiday.

And as usual, Uncle got Tommy a surprise and the new throwing rope was right where he said it would be, in the cab on the front seat of his truck. Tommy pulled it out.

“Thank you, Uncle,” he shouted towards the barn as he built a loop in the rope and started twisting it over his head. Tommy had long been practicing with Grandpa how to throw a lasso at the horns of a cow and knew it was called “heading.” He had also practiced heeling, tossing the rope to catch the hind legs of a cow. At that, Tommy wasn’t very good.

But he was happy to have the new rope just the same.

All morning long, Tommy punched holes in the rope and tossed it off at anything that moved. The dogs had long since discovered the rope and had disappeared after being caught once. The cats had made themselves scarce as well once the loop had dropped over them and Tommy took his dallies.

Even Tommy’s younger brother Adam had decided he didn’t want to play anymore. He was inside coloring.

The chickens made interesting targets. He dropped a loop on each of them and they still kept coming back. It was the food that Tommy had baited them with that held their interest. They were hard to rope. They flew into the air as the rope fell over top of them. Many times he missed, as he would jerk his rope quickly and as tightly as possible. Often there was nothing left for his troubles but a scattering of feathers floating in the breeze.

Then there were the geese. Tommy flipped his lariat over the top of the big male. And he honked loudly, biting at Tommy as he tried to get the coil off of the white bird’s orange foot.

A couple more tosses and all the geese were after Tommy. They chased him into the back door and the kitchen where his mom was busy with his Auntie and Grandma cooking Thanksgiving supper.

He could smell the turkey as it roasted in one of the ovens. Tommy knew the three women were busy baking apple and pumpkin pies. He had just seen his mother carrying an empty pie tin over to the counter to fill it. She was getting ready to take it over to the oven. It was full of fresh pumpkin filling.

Tommy punched a hole in his rope and built himself a good round loop. He twisted it gently over his head, sizing up his intended target, and let it fly.

He dropped it just in front of his mom’s feet. She avoided stepping in the lasso by jumping over it.

At that moment Tommy jerked the rope back, catching both of her feet. She crashed to the ground face forward.

Tommy dropped the rope, deciding it was a good idea to make himself scarce, too.

 

Sandy Hand

Cloud Burst

Wolf Whistle

Blue Light

In Memory of Patti Tigard

Duck!

Physics of Tobacco Chew

Charlie’s Angel

Fishing for God

Leaving My Mark

Idiot Box

Frisbee Alone

Across from our home was a large open field. It was the perfect place to toss a Frisbee back and forth.

But no one wanted to play, so I had to toss it and chase it down by myself. Eventually, I realized I could throw the plastic disc and by running as fast as possible, I could catch it before it hit the ground.

It didn’t occur to me until years later that there was a reason no one wanted to play. I had caused so much trouble, that area kids did their best to avoid me.

Somewhere in my mind, I can hear my Grandma Lola’s voice: Too late we get too smart. As a kid, I didn’t understand what she meant by this folksy comment.

But I get it now.

Lima Beans

Every Springtime, I would be asked by Pa Sanders to help him with his vegetable garden, as he put it. The funny thing is — his idea of a garden was a couple of acres larger than most people’s plots of land on which their homes were built.

I naturally jumped at the chance to get out and get filthy dirty, something Mom was generally against.

My job for the first six years was to ride on the platform Pa dragged behind his John Popper and pick up the rocks and clumps of weeds that refused to turn properly. However, when I was 12 years old, Pa put me in the tractor seat, saying I was tall enough now to operate the yellow monster.

That meant I got the job of running the tiller into the earth, turning the weeds that had overtaken the land since the end of the summer before. Once I finished this to Pa’s liking, he’d take over, and I go back to where I had first begun by pulling rocks and clumps.

Then we’d plant crops: peas, green beans, corn, and Lima beans. Then as spring slipped into summer, I’d end up heading south a few miles to help Grandpa Bill and Uncle Adam on their dairy ranch. By the time the summer came to a close, I was back home and in time to help Ma and Pa Sanders harvest what had been planted.

More than a few times, I made myself sick as a dog after eating too many peas and pods or snapped green beans. The worst though, was the day I ate a pound or more of raw Lima beans.

By the end of the day, I could hardly stand up as my gut and bowels were in an uproar. It took me a day and a half to get over the back-door trots.

Lima beans, I learned are better served cooked and with lots of real butter.

Display Cased

Senior Hall of Del Norte High School ran from the main entrance to the doorways leading outside, just past the girl’s locker rooms and gymnasium. Midway down the hall and in between the entrances into the boy’s gym was a large glass trophy case, mounted to the wall. P.E. for me was my very first period.

I had just entered the locker room when I was grabbed up by several “jocks,” stripped down to my bare essentials and carried out into Senior Hall.

Without fanfare, I was shoved inside the glass display case and it was locked. Minutes later the bell rang and the hallway filled up with kids going from one class to another.

While I did my best to hide my face, several people stopped to look at me. Some laughed, and some, mostly the girls, were completely horrified at the sight of me locked in the case.

Then the second bell rang and the hallway emptied. It wasn’t too soon afterward when the school’s assistant vice-principle Mr. Raleigh and our custodian, Mr. Cassidy came rushing down the corridor with keys to the case.

The words “humiliation,” and “humility,” are so close in nature.

Loop Hole

It was a conversation between Dad and Mom. They were angry at the fact that a neighborhood committee had given them a list of approved colors they could paint the house and that each color had a fee of some sort attached to it.

As I recall the main complaint was that this group dared to tell my folks what color they could or couldn’t paint their home. Worse yet, it would cost them to select a color scheme from the chart they’d been given.

Then my parents found a loophole in the committee’s planning. Two colors weren’t regulated.

One was on the list but considered so outlandish that it was believed no one would use it. The other was so common, it wasn’t given a price.

That’s how our home came to be painted white with black trim.

Bad Art

My guard was up as I had been ambushed once and locked in the display case along Del Norte High School’s Senior Hall. I didn’t want it to happen again.

However, my vigilance didn’t pay off.

Without warning, I was jumped and dragged out of the locker room where I had just stripped down, preparing to shower. This time, I found my eyes and mouth covered with tape.

I could neither see who was doing this to me nor could I yell for help.
Within seconds I was back out in the main hallway, but instead of taking me to the right, I was carried to the left.

It occurred to me that I was about to get tossed in the girl’s locker room naked, so I started to struggle for all I was worth. Turns out I was wrong.

It never occurred to me that I’d be hoisted off the ground and duct taped in place against the wall, leading out of the girl’s gymnasium. I had tape covering my arms from my bicep to my wrist and my legs, thigh to ankle.

There were also several straps of tape across my stomach and even more holding my head in place. I was trussed up with no possible way of escaping.

The bell rang, and I heard girls streaming past me. Some gasped, some giggled, others touched, and still others, I’m certain, though I couldn’t see them, averted their eyes.

As I hung there, I remember thinking I was a bad piece of art, left unattended.

One person later told me that when she saw me, she thought I was some sort of screwed-up representation of the Crucifixion. Great!

Before the next bell rang, I was removed from the wall, quickly covered, and hustled into the boy’s locker room. There, Mr. Dowling worked for nearly two classroom periods, removing the tape from my body.

I recall screaming more than “Ouch!” and Mr. Dowling allowing me to get away with it.

Bad Things

As difficult as it is to admit, bad things of no fault of our own sometimes happened to us kids as we were growing up. One of those bad things was having been raped by a mentally ill man as I was delivering newspapers.

I will not name the family of this man, as I don’t want anyone to think I feel vindictiveness towards them. What happened was beyond their control, and how they dealt with it afterward became a point of grace in my life.

It started one late afternoon when I missed the front porch of a residence. I stepped into the brushes to retrieve the newspaper and was attacked and forcefully raped from behind.

When I woke up, it was very late in the day and I realized I’d be in trouble if I didn’t hurry and complete my route. I pulled up my pants, jumped on my bicycle, and rode for all I could to get the job done.

That night I decided to take a shower, something I normally did in the morning before school. I was a bloody mess in my skivvies and ended up using one of Mom’s sanitary napkins to stem the flow of blood.

Two days later, I was still bleeding and I needed to tell someone what had happened. As scared as I was of his reaction, I told Dad, fearful that what happened would be the gossip of Klamath.

He did neither. Instead, he took me to the base infirmary and had me checked out.

He kept the entire situation quiet. Furthermore, Dad quietly went to the family of the man and told them what had happened.

The family took immediate action and had their son placed in a mental health facility in Napa. And while my physical injuries healed, I had some emotional wounds that no one could see.

And looking back, I know this caused me to act out in some very weird and embarrassing ways. As I said, it was no one’s fault and I hold nobody responsible.

I just wish I could have talked about it back then.

Alcoa Can’t-Wait

Rabbit Hole

Adam and I were playing in the woods around a cluster of Redwood trees, we had named, “Darby’s Castle.” It was a play off the old song, our last name, and the fact that the trees created a natural fort if you knew how to get inside.

It was situated on the right side of the old logging road that led deep into the National Park’s “Experimental Forest.” While that’s what the sign read at the park’s entrance, we had no idea what it meant.

Anyway one late Sunday afternoon, the two of us were exploring the area, when I fell through a hole near a large fallen tree. I grabbed the end of a tree branch to keep from falling to the bottom.

As I screamed for Adam to help me, my mind raced and pictured all sorts of horrible things that could be waiting for me if I couldn’t hold on. It could have been a bear den or held some other wild animal or have pointed sticks to fall on or worse — be bottomless.

Adam struggled to pull me out. But I was too heavy for him to lift.
So he ran all the way home to get help. It felt like forever, but soon Dad rumbled up in his old Studebaker truck to rescue me.

He yanked me out of the hole and made sure I was okay. Then he grabbed the large flashlight he normally wore with his service uniform and peered down the hole.

He looked up at me in disgust. He also complained about being pulled away from the last minutes of a football game he was watching.
I figured I was in deep trouble, but he laughed, letting me off the hook.

Looking down the hole, I could see it ended about half a foot from where my feet had been dangling.

Tommy Garbage

Over the years, I’ve been called by several nicknames: Tommy, Little Tee, T.J., etc. Two of the worst involved being tongue-tied, and the other was about a television show called “Kung Fu.”

But it can all be traced back to one singular event.

It was the day I introduced myself to my next-door neighbor, a blonde-haired and blue-eyed girl named Goldie Arnold. We were the same age and became immediate friends since we shared the same duplex near the end of Sander’s Court.

Unfortunately, I was horrified when I discovered she was introducing me as Tommy Garbage.

Ambidextrous

As a child, I had a problem that plagued most kids who were first learning to write. I was ambidextrous.

My first-grade teacher, Mrs. Helen Puls thought it was a problem, and she set out to find out which hand I was more prone to use. Her plan was simple but very effective.

Mrs. Puls had me slide like a baseball player into the corner behind her desk. The leg I led with would ultimately decide which hand I would learn to use when it came to writing.

Today, I’m right-handed, and at times I still like to put my left hand behind my back when I’m writing, exactly like Mrs. Puls instructed me to do.

I’m also a better writer than I am a ball player.

Coffee and Blisters

Dad sent me into the kitchen to get him a cup of coffee. He would have done it himself, however, he had my sister Deirdre sitting in his lap.

As I returned with the hot liquid, Dad twisted in his swivel easy chair, and the back of the seat struck the cup, knocking it out of my hand. The cup flipped over, and it landed in Deirdre’s lap.

She screamed from the pain of the hot coffee. Furthermore, she was wearing tights, and the coffee was trapped against her skin.

Within seconds, Dad had her tights stripped from her legs. But by that time, the damage was already done.

He rushed Deirdre to the bathroom and placed her in the shower, where he turned on the water to cool off her blistered legs. Shortly thereafter, Dad and Mom decided to rush her to Seaside Hospital in Crescent City for emergency treatment.

I locked myself in my closet and cried until I was so exhausted I fell asleep.

Barnstorm

We were snooping through the two old barns my Grandpa Bill had on his property. In the second one, we found an old Jenny two-seater biplane.

My friend, Jimmy, and I dragged it out from under the canvas tarp that covered it and rolled it out of the barn. It took us a while, but we finally got the Jenny’s engine to start.

Then we decided to try and get it off the ground. Several times I pulled back on the stick, hoping to clear the ground, but all we would get was a hop.

Then, I saw the slight rise alongside the dirt road. We hit the rise at full speed, and the biplane jumped into the air.

Much to our surprise, we were sailing over Grandpa’s cornfield. As we whooped and shouted at our success, the nose of the plane dipped, and we found ourselves mowing through the corn.

The plane finally came to a jarring halt with its tail in the air. All that was left for us to do was walk back home and tell Grandpa what we had done.
We had trespassed, taken his property, crashed the plane, and damaged his crops.

At the gate, Grandpa asked, “What have you two boys been up too?”

Jimmy looked at me and without a word took off running for home, leaving me to suffer the coming wrath. But instead of trouble, Grandpa couldn’t wait to see where we’d crashed.

It had been a long-time dream of his to get the Jenny air born. And while his dream never came true, he was pleased as punch to know his grandson had tried.

But for obvious reasons, I’m glad we never got the Jenny to fly.

One Last Time

At first, I didn’t recognize the feeble old man, as he stumbled by the window of the school district’s multimedia facility. He was near El Dorado Drive when it dawned on who I had just seen: my fourth-grade teacher — Robert Kirby.

Mr. Kirby first made himself known to me when I was in kindergarten. He had seen me walking along U.S. 101 to the bus stop when he stopped and made me get in his car because, as he later explained to my folks, “he was walking on the white line at the side of the road like a tight-rope walker.”

I wasn’t, but that’s my take on the incident.

Anyway, I rushed out of the building and caught up with the now fragile and former grade school teacher. I said hello to him, but he didn’t have a clue who I was.

When I told him my name, his demeanor changed, and his body stiffened a little. I continued to walk alongside him.

Mr. Kirby was using a cane, so I moved to his left side, figuring was his weaker side, and offered him my arm to lean on. I could tell he was leery of my offer since we had never gotten along from the time I was first enrolled until I graduated from Margaret Keating School.

After another offer from me and another stumble on his part, he slipped his left arm in and over my right arm, and we continued east on El Dorado.
About 20 minutes later, he pointed out the house he now lived in, and I walked up the steps to the door with him.

He stepped inside and started to close the door when he turned, looked at me, and said, “Good to see you, Tommy. I think you’ve become a fine young man.”

It would be the last time I’d ever see him. Mr. Kirby passed away in March 1982.

Simply Thank You

My job delivering the Eureka Times-Standard had me out every day of the week. Five of my customers were within the National Park boundaries.

After my last delivery and on my way back to Highway 101, I stopped to talk with Karlene Rose. As we stood there chatting, we watched her younger brother Kurt riding his skateboard down the hill towards the highway.

Suddenly, she noticed he was picking up speed and unable to stop. She yelled at him to jump off the skateboard, however, he appeared locked in fright.

Without thinking about it, I tossed off my paper bag, dropped my bicycle, and sprinted down the hill to intercept Kurt before he reached the highway. I reached him within 20 feet or so of the road.

To keep from running out into the road, I aimed my body at the bus stop near the roadside. I twisted slightly and slammed into the heavy plywood building.

Kurt’s skateboard continued out into Highway 101. It was demolished by a fully loaded chip truck as it slipped into the drive lane.

Karlene came rushing to us as we lay heaped beside the bus stop. She was shaking and crying, and she grabbed her brother and hugged him for dear life.

She hugged me and thanked me for keeping Kurt from going on the highway. Nothing more was said about the incident, that is, until my senior year of high school when I asked Karlene to sign my annual.

When I got it back, she had written, “Dear Tommy, Thank you for saving my brother. Love, Karlene.”

Never Saw It Coming

Grandpa Bill didn’t mean for it to happen. And I never saw it coming.

We were in his workshop, where he did minor horseshoe repairs and other odds and ends. I was fascinated by the clanging of the hammer on the anvil and the heat and steam that poured off the furnace and water tank.

Grandpa Bill pointed out a rubber mallet that he said I could use to strike the anvil while he was heating a shoe in the fire. Happily, I picked it up and swung it as hard as I could.

The rubber hammer caught the edge of the anvil, and it rifled back at me. And, like I said, I never saw it coming.

Black Sock Confession

It was the afternoon of the Senior Prom. It was also the day I created a real nuisance of myself with one of my best high school friends.

It happened at Jeri’s home after I asked if I could use one of the back rooms to get dressed. Being the nice girl she is, she said yes.

It also included taking a shower. Had Jeri known this was my idea of getting ready, I’m sure she’d have backed out of the request in a hot second.

As I recall, I was coming out of the bathroom, with puffs of steam floating over my head, when at the front door walked Jeri’s mother. The look on her face told me pretty much everything I needed to know about what sort of trouble I was in.

Jeri raced to my rescue, explaining that I was there getting ready for the Prom. Her mother stopped, took a breath, and relaxed. Personally, I think Jeri saved my life that day.

Later on, Jeri’s mom noted I was wearing white socks instead of the black ones, forgotten on the end of my bed at home in Klamath. She asked, “Are you trying to corrupt my two girls by wearing white socks with a formal suit?”

I didn’t have an answer, and every sound from my mouth sounded like a stutter.

Jeri’s mother let me off the hook with a laugh. At the risk of embarrassing myself, Jeri let me borrow a pair of her black socks to resolve the problem.

So, yes, I wore a pair of girlie socks to my Senior Prom.

Jeri was straightening the Slade-blue bow tie I had on when she said, “You know, after all the trouble you’ve caused today, you should be taking me to the Prom.”

While I can’t do anything about not taking Jeri to the Prom that year, I do have a drawer full of black socks. And rarely have I put a pair on that I haven’t thought about that afternoon so long ago.

Scareborne

We were doing what we were not supposed to be doing: playing on the roof of our home. But since Mom and Dad were at work, we figured we could get away with it.

Dad had already warned Adam and me about climbing around on the roof. He found out we were playing on the roof after I had jumped from the house top to the redwood picnic table below, collapsing it.

One would have thought the butt-blistering I got that day would have taught me a lesson. Nope.

As I walked back and forth along the edge of the roof, I could hear Adam calling me. He was standing on one end of the teeter-totter Dad had built a couple of years earlier.

Adam wanted me to jump on the end with the hope of landing on the roof. I told him it wouldn’t work, but he insisted.

He was a very good insister.

Adam shot straight up 30 feet or more, then in the blink of an eye, tumbled head-over-heels into the ground. The sound of his body hitting the earth was like a plastic basket of wet clothes.

He just laid there, unmoving.

My first thought was that I had killed Adam — my second thought was Mom and Dad were going to kill me. In response, I ran from the backyard and to the field across from our house.

I hid in the trees, thinking Adam was dead.

Then I saw him in front of the house. Adam was drinking a soda as if nothing had ever happened.

Black Water

The building at Redwood Drive and Highway 101, next to the former Yurok Volunteer Fire Department, was originally used by Judge Hopper. But the good Judge had retired a few years earlier, so the building was left unused for a while.

After a couple of years, it became the business office for Bob White Realty.

However, in the interim, it was the community center for the small neighborhood. The center had a pool table, two or three pinball machines, and a jukebox with all the current music in it.

My friend, Robin Kohse, and I used to cop a few coins from my Dad’s cuss jar and go down the street to the center to play pool and listen to tunes. Robin had even figured out how to turn the jukebox up so we could enjoy the sound.

One late afternoon, the two of us were shooting a few rounds of pool and playing 45s from the jukebox. One of those 45’s was “Black Water,” by The Doobie Brothers.

It was one of my favorite songs and the only time I was able to hear “rock music,” besides at school or on the school bus. My parents only allowed two kinds of music in the house: country and western.

When the song came on, the game of pool stopped, and Robin and I started using our pool cues as guitars. As we strummed and sang the song at the top of our lungs, we started dancing around the pool table.

We were so caught up in the music that we didn’t notice the figure standing in the doorway of the center. However, as the music started to fade, I looked over to see Deputy Walt Woodstock watching us.

He had his arms folded across his chest, trying hard to look tough.
Walt couldn’t hold himself back from smiling though, as he started laughing.

Then without a word, he turned and walked back to his patrol car. Robin and I stood there watching out the windows of the center as Walt drove away.

Then we looked at each other and started laughing until we couldn’t laugh anymore. We didn’t have sense enough to be embarrassed about getting caught dancing around and playing air guitar.

Trading Up

My sisters, Deirdre in 1967 and Marcy two years later, were born at Seaside Hospital in Crescent City. To pay for their births and Mom’s hospital stay afterward, Dad paid Dr. Kasper a whole cow for each child he traded for with my Grandpa and Uncle.

What did our dad trade my Uncle and Grandpa for the two cows? Child labor — in the form of my brother and me.

Hard Head

The sun had dropped behind the Sages Riddles by the time I came to the last deliveries in my paper route. They were down a steep, gravel road 100 yards south of Redwood Drive.

Once finished and knowing I had to climb back uphill, I shifted to the lowest gear on my 10-speed. Then I stood up on my pedals and pumped as hard as I could.

A few seconds after reaching 101 and turning up the hill, a speeding pickup truck came over the rise. Leaning from the truck’s bed was a large cream-colored dog.

The dog and I had just enough time to make eye contact before our heads clacked together. The dog yelped, my jaw clicked shut, and over the side of the hill, I rolled.

My eyes were black, my nose bloodied, my lips like hamburger, and my ears ringing. It took me a while to retrieve my bike and limp home.

And after explaining what happened and why I was later than normal, Mom responded, “Good thing you have a hard head.”

Getting the Point

Mom had just purchased six lugs of apples from the traveling fruits and vegetables salesman. They were neatly stacked in what had been our garage but renovated into a family rumpus room.

Both Mom and Dad were gone to Eureka as it was a few weeks before Christmas. They left Adam and me alone while they were gone.

It was a mistake. We were bored as it was raining and we weren’t allowed to go out —even though we did

So, looking for something fun to do, we decided to take a green tomato stake and some fishing line and make ourselves a bow. The remaining stakes became our arrows.

Next, we needed to find ourselves a suitable target. It turned out to be easier than we thought it would be.

When our folks got home and saw how badly we had shot up the apple boxes, we got one butt-whipping each. Then, we spent most of the night peeling apples for Mom to turn into pies and sauce.

Word Played

It started in the early fall of the previous year, the television ads for the mini-series, “Roots,” written by Alex Haley. As the TV event neared, my dad announced that he wanted to get a colored TV.

Excited, we kids couldn’t have agreed more with the idea of a colored TV set. We had an old black and white console set that had been new long before moving to the coast.

Its label was so worn out that we couldn’t even figure out its brand name.
Within a couple of days, our parents drove the 60 miles south to Arcata and bought an MGA color television set.

It was a pricey purchase, something my folks could hardly afford, but they did it anyway.

It made us kids feel like the richest people in the neighborhood. We didn’t know other families already had colored TVs in their homes—-maybe even more than one in some cases.

The six of us sat in front of our new colored TV and watched the historically-based mini-series from start to finish. I think it was the first and perhaps the last time we all agreed on what to watch as a family.

Mom reminded me about the events that caused her and Dad to purchase the colored TV a few months before she passed away. She thought wanting to watch one TV show wasn’t worth the price of that new colored television set.

Looking back, it wasn’t about the television set or the mini-series. It was about a slightly twisted sense of humor and some purposeful wordplay: Dad wanted to see “Roots,” on a “colored TV.”

Fort Knocks

Adam and I were in the pasture picking blackberries when we discovered a square-shaped hole dug into the ground. It was about 3 feet by 3 feet at the opening and around five feet deep.

It was located near the left field fence of the old baseball diamond, partially covered by brambles and other brush. We quickly turned it into our secret hiding place, dragging a piece of discarded plywood over to create a lean-to roof.

All the rest of the summer, we played combat and cowboy and Indians using the hole as a fort or fighting hole. Later, we found a stack of old bricks and painted them gold to make them look like gold bars.
We stashed them in an old metal box at the bottom of our hiding place.

Because of this, we started calling our hide-out “Fort Knocks.”

Then one day, as summer was fading, an older neighbor boy named Steve Wolcott found us playing there. He ruined our fun by informing us what the hole was, and if we cleared back the rest of the brush behind the hole, we’d know he was telling the truth.

After poking through the tangle of blackberry vines, tall weeds, and grass, we found what he was talking about. In the vegetation, lying on its side, were the weathered and broken remains of an old outhouse.

Days of the Schotzhelm

Losing My Marbles

The week before, I had been out of school, sick, so I didn’t know that playing marbles was no longer allowed since it was considered a form of gambling. However, I still had a large bag of marbles in my desk when I returned to school the following week.

Designed into the bottom of our desks at the time was a quarter-sized hole. It was there to help clean the desk out as tiny pieces of paper, broken pencil lead, staples, and other garbage accumulated in the bottom of the desk.

As I was digging in my desk for a book, I moved the bag of marbles from one side to the other. I picked the bag up wrong and the little glass balls started falling out of the bag, into the bottom of my desk, and through the hole, bouncing off the floor.

It was a complete disruption of the class and Mr. Kirby decided that I should go to the principal’s office after I picked the marbles up off the floor. He felt that I had disobeyed the new ruling that no one was to have marbles at school.

As was the rule, he called down to tell Mrs. Zwierlein I was on my way. That prompted Mr. Fizer to meet me in the hallway, just outside our classroom door.

It was obvious that Mr. Fizer was angry. He yelled at me for disobeying him.

And as I started to respond that I had been out sick and didn’t know he had changed the rules, he grabbed me by the neck and shook me violently. It was so rough that it caused the window by the classroom door to vibrate.

Mr. Fizer let go of me just in time for me to see Jon Larson peering over the built-in screen on the window to see what was going on. He was standing on a chair, demonstrating to the class what the principal had done to me.

By the time I was seated in the office, Mrs. Zwierlein had called Dad. She told me that he was on his way and that she had explained to him what had happened.

A few minutes later, he came into the school and asked to see Mr. Fizer. However, Mr. Fizer refused to see Dad.

Dad yelled, “Bob, open the door now — or I’ll kick it in!”

Mr. Fizer still refused to answer, so Dad kicked the door as hard as he could. The blow caused the door to not only open, it popped the thing off its hinges, and it crashed to the floor.

This frightened me so badly that ran out to the car. A few minutes later Dad came out to the car, and he took me home for the day.

Fixing His Wagon

It didn’t happen very often that I can recall, but Dad came home having had one too many. Worse yet, he drove home like this.

He had called Mom to let her know he was at the Three-7’s NCO Club at Requa Air Station, drinking with the guys. This caused Mom to get her mad on, and she set about finding a way to “fix his wagon.”

By the time Dad pulled into the driveway, she had a stew dinner prepared for him. She was calm, so calm I was afraid to be in the kitchen near her, even though I had the chore of loading the dishwasher.

Dad sat down to his hot meal and ended up eating two entire bowlfuls.
When he got up from the table, I took his bowl to the dishwasher to load it.

It was at this time that I noticed the empty cans of Alpo Dog Food in the bottom of the kitchen garbage can.

Fire on Paine Road

The phone rang during the early morning hours, and Dad answered. It was a fire, and the two of us rushed down to the Yurok Volunteer Fire Department at the head of our street.

Dad started up the white rescue rig as I went to the chalkboard and wrote down the information we had on the blaze. It was a home fire at the end of Paine Road, where at least three families lived: The Bruhy’s, the Brown’s, and the Paine’s.

We set up in front of Mrs. Paine’s home. We could hear other fire engines coming with their sirens blaring.

Just as I started for the door, I heard a swoosh from overhead. It was followed by a smashing sound behind me, which happened over and over again in rapid secession.

As I pushed open the door, out of the smoke came a couple of sheep, several chickens, several cats, and a horse. It was very surreal.

Then Dad yelled, saying he saw someone in the window above me. I raced up the stairs and through the smoke to find Mrs. Paine tossing stuff out of the window.

She refused to leave until I had helped her lift and throw three extremely large and heavy suitcases to the ground below. Later, I would find out the suitcases were stuffed with thousands of paper dollars, while the jars held coins.

I still don’t know what to think of her living arrangements or banking habits.

Mystery Scooter

North of Redwood Drive is the Trees of Mystery. Mom worked there for many years, in both the gift shop and in the ticket booth at the entrance of the trail.

At the time my best friend was Diana Webster. Her mom was married to Bill Thompson, the son of Trees owner Mary Lee Thompson.

I used to venture up the highway to Diana’s house so we could play together.

She and I used to ride horses in the clearing just south of the Blue Ox Café, which was next to the Trees Motel. Other times we ran around the woods just being kids.

One day I went over to her house and discovered that she and her sister Sharon had a new toy; a light blue mini-scooter. They were racing along the road from their home to the end of the street around the caretaker’s house and back to their house.

They let me have a turn at it, even though I had never ridden one in my entire life. It kept it at a slow pace the first few times as I was worried I’d crash or something as I made the corners.

Soon we were each taking turns zooming down the road and back again. However, I was still going the slowest as I was still unsure of myself.
That’s when Diana called me a sissy for “putt-putting” around the corners like I did. I couldn’t let her get away with that.

So my next turn, I revved up the scooter and took off. I flew down the road for all that little bike would go.

As I came into the first corner, I realized I was traveling way too fast. So I cut back on the power and tried to brake.

It wasn’t enough as the rear wheel hit the edge of the asphalt and dropped into the grass edge of the caretaker’s yard. The shift in the back end of the scooter caused me to juice the gas and I took off straight, completely missing the second corner.

Next thing I knew, I was flying through the bushes and tumbling down the hill, over the flowers that spelled out the first “s” in Trees of Mystery. Behind me was the scooter.

Both the scooter and I landed in a heap at the bottom of the hill near the bumper of a car. While we were both okay, Mrs. Thompson forbade me from riding the scooter anymore as she was afraid I get myself killed.

Out Running Johnny Law

Vestal Skaggs lived across Highway 101 from us when I was a kid. He used to come over and help fix our cars and trucks.

Once, I hired him to fix my 1968 Dodge Charger and paid him with a keg of beer. I don’t think you can find guys like that anywhere anymore.

He got that old car running so well that I out-ran a California Highway Patrol one night as I raced from Crescent City to Klamath. It was so fast with the new 383 under the hood and a 440 Interceptor that I was parked in the driveway by the time Officer Johnny Jones zipped by Redwood Drive.

Yeah, it was bad of me and dangerous too, but Vestel gave me a high-five when I told him about it. Though it’s a strange memory, I’ll always cherish the excitement he felt for my stupidity.

Hound Dog

It was nearing the end of the day for my students and the summer school class I was teaching for Del Norte County Parks and Recreation. During the last half hour of school, I usually allowed my students to do whatever they would like, barring destruction or death.

This afternoon, they elected to have an informal dance. We had a radio in the room, and it was tuned to KPOD broadcasting out of Crescent City, 20 miles away.

The disc jockey spinning the tunes that afternoon was Dave Angell.

The song, “Hound Dog,” came on the radio, and the kids danced like crazy people suffering from electrostatic shock therapy. It was funny to watch this group of kids ham it up like they did.

When the song ended, Dave came on, and said, “News out of Memphis, Tennessee—-the King is dead. Elvis Presley has died…”

While I don’t remember the rest of what Dave read from the news wire, I do know you could have heard a pin drop in that small classroom at Margaret Keating School. Our joy had turned to sadness within seconds.

I’m certain now it wasn’t pins dropping on the floor but rather tears.

Foul Ball

The foul ball came flying at me so quickly that I didn’t have time to duck out of the way. I was standing in the doorway of my team’s dugout when it struck me in the chest and knocked me down.

The ball dropped between my legs as I plopped on my backside. I picked it up and handed it to the other team’s catcher as he rushed to recover the foul tip.

Suddenly, I heard the umpire behind the home plate yell, “Out!”

He was pointing at our batter, who had hit the foul ball toward our dugout. This is how I found out that a foul ball still in play and touched by a player of the batter who hit the ball causes that batter to be called out.

It would turn out to be one of many rules about baseball that nobody bothered to explain yet expected me to know. I learned most of them the hard way, and this was just Little League.

No Refunds

We had only one local market north of town, the Woodland Villa. It was owned by Kathy and Doug DeVol’s parents.

Mom and Dad sent me nearly every other day for one thing or another. This included milk, eggs, and cigarettes.

It was one of my favorite things to do because it also gave me a chance to look at comic books. Once a week, I’d buy a comic book and a Royal-Crown cola using the money I had earned delivering newspapers.

One day I saw a couple of the neighborhood boys taking a couple of soda bottles from the crates behind the store. I thought nothing of it until I realized they were returning the already-returned bottles for five cents.

Sad to say, I didn’t tell on them.

Flickered

We were just sitting down to dinner at six in the evening when all the lights of the home flickered. About three minutes later our telephone rang; there was an emergency.

Dad and I headed towards Yurok Volunteer Fire Department, which was just down the street from our house. Within minutes we were racing with lights and sirens south on Highway 101.

We were en route to a possible plane crash. The aircraft had struck a power line and was underwater in the Klamath River near what remained of the Douglas Memorial Bridge.

Dad decided the old washed-out bridge was the best vantage point to get to the downed craft as it was closer to that side of the river. I told Dad I could get to the plane while he secured ropes and tethers.

Pulling off my shirt and shoes, I jumped into the water, which was a 30-foot plunge. I dove down to see if I could get into the plane or get a door open in the event someone was still alive inside.

On my third return to the surface, Dad shouted for me to grab the line he was tossing and tie it to the aircraft. I did as instructed.

Exertion and the cold were taking a toll on my body, and I found myself struggling to get to the bank and out of the water. Dad dropped me a rope, which I secured around my waist, and as he hoisted, I climbed up to where he was positioned.

It wouldn’t be until 10 that night that the plane would be hauled to the north side of the river. And it wouldn’t be until the next day that Jim Long and Jim Haddad were identified as having died in the crash.

Both were big Del Norte High School Booster supporters. And their deaths had a huge effect on a lot of athletes the next morning.

Volunteered

DEER SLAYER

A tree is the equal to an office building downtown. Only a tree is much simpler in design and far prettier. The forest is full of these office buildings, and Adam and Tommy knew almost everyone.

Adam could climb through their tangled branches with great ease. Tommy could only sometimes watch. At other times, Tommy could make it to the first branch, and then he would have to back down because he feared falling more than the teasing he would get from his younger brother.

On the other hand, Tommy’s kid brother Adam had discovered a way to make his talent pay. He collected moss and sold it by the pound to the burl shop at the Trees of Mystery. The finer the moss, the better the price, and the higher Adam had to climb.

Usually, Adam ventured out alone to collect his moss. However, this one day, his older brother tagged along. With Tommy around, he could toss down his booty and have him stuff it into the burlap sack.

After filling up the five sacks they had with them, Adam invited Tommy up into a tree he had dubbed “The Lookout Tree.” Tommy reluctantly climbed up the tree to the level Adam was perched at.

It was higher than the old barn, and Tommy felt dizzy as he looked down on the trail below them. Adam was spread out on a fat limb, much like their gray house cat spreads herself out on the windowsill. Adam just lay there sipping water from his canteen. Tommy clung on for his life.

From the tree, they could see across the pasture and beyond High Prairie Creek. They could see the cattle grazing there and Highway 101, with its steady hum of passing cars.

They could also see the old logging road, where tourists sometimes walked and sometimes became targets of pranksters. Below them stretched the old cow trail which was used by the cows to get to the creek for a refreshing drink of cold water.

Game animals also used the old cow trail, like deer. Both Tommy and Adam had seen their markings in the boggy ground.

Just off the trail was a marsh. It was only one to three feet deep. Just deep enough that if someone stepped into it, it would steal the shoe right off his or her foot. If that happened to either of the brothers, they would get a trip to the shed and a chance at being grounded. They had to be very careful.

Going around the marsh would take too long, so to cross if they had to make “Bog Shoes.” A “Bog Shoe” was built out of an old piece of plywood. A shoe was about one foot wide by two feet long. They tied them to their feet by punching holes in the board and lacing them up with bailing wire. So just like a snowshoe, they could walk over the top of the bog and not sink so far into it.

The sky was overcast but bright. The kind of bright a person could expect with the coming of a nighttime rain. And the woods were peaceful. An occasional Blue Jay would cry. Leaves floated in the breeze, settling to the ground. And the creek behind them bubbled away with its rhythm.

Adam, the house cat was relaxed looking down at the trail and Tommy was praying that the limb he was on would not break under his weight when they heard a different sound. It was not a natural sound to their ears.

At first, it was distant but it kept growing louder as each “snap” was heard. They both stopped breathing. Adam hung his canteen on a nearby limb and put his finger to his lips. It could be a human visitor.

Could it be just a person lost or exploring the woods? Or could it be someone trying to discover Adam’s secret moss-gathering place? Either way, they would see the burlap sacks stuffed full of moss as they picked their way along the trail. Still, they did not want to take any chances. So Adam and Tommy lay still, cradled in the arms of the tree.

Adam saw it first, a huge buck. Snap-snap-snap; its hooves were breaking the twigs that had fallen from the tree. It paused to sniff the air and then the ground. It could smell the two humans above it. Its instincts told it to be careful. It paused again, right below the two brothers.

Its horns were decorated with a soft velvet that somehow made them stronger. The buck flared his nostrils. He could smell the humans and he was feeling uneasy. His back rippled several times starting from his upper shoulders down to his hindquarters. His nerves were dancing throughout his body, yet he stood perfectly still.

Adam had his long knife in his hand by now. He kept it attached to his wrist by way of a chord made from an old leather boot tie. Adam had a mischievous grin on his face.

He looked at Tommy and smiled. The smile sent a shiver up and down Tommy’s back. Tommy had never seen that look on his brothers’ face before. It was the smile of one who goes screaming through the woods at night. One who bangs on the side of homes, scaring the God-fearing people inside. One who is arrested and taken to the hospital to dry out.

Adam gripped his knife so tight that his knuckles turned white. He had the blade turned down. Suddenly and silently Adam rolled off the limb. He was spread-eagle and at any moment Tommy expected him to fly like one.

And in a moment it was over; between the hunted and the hunter. Tommy scrambled down from his lofty perch because he knew his brother would need his help.

The struggle was hard and Tommy knew it could only have a single outcome. So Tommy pulled his younger brother out of the marshy bog in which he lay trapped face down. The buck had long since disappeared and so had both of Adam’s shoes.

Babysitter

Every time Mom and Dad turned around, Adam and I were in trouble. We were either picking a fight with one another, our sisters, or some kid in the neighborhood.

So when most kids were allowed to look after themselves, we were under the care of a babysitter. It was embarrassing and we were teased by neighborhood kids, but it was our fault.

Usually, our parents would call Sue Skaggs, who lived across the highway from us to come look after us. She was a strong-handed woman, who didn’t let us get away with crap.

She was also a chain smoker, whose cigarette smoke filled the house every time she sat us. Dad was trying to quit smoking at the time, so my folks decided to find someone else to watch us troublemakers for the summer.

They hired an Air Force brat, a girl a few years older than me. Her name was Nadine Redd.

At first, Adam and I were apprehensive about Nadine. We had no idea what sort of sitter she’d be.

As it turned out, she was one of the best. Her rule was that as long as we didn’t break anything in the house or cause one another to bleed severely, she was cool with our behavior.

Too bad her father was transferred the following year.

CROW HOP

The summer wind blew its hot breath on Tommy’s face as he stepped off the back porch. The breeze felt good to him and he could hardly wait to get to the barn.

Freckles would be waiting there for him. Together they were going riding.

“Tommy, “Grandpa called out, “check the melons, would you?” Tommy turned and could see his Grandpa behind the screen door.

Tommy yelled back, “Yes, sir.” Grandpa waved at him and then disappeared.

He continued to the barn, where he unhooked the strand of bailing wire that held the door to the frame and pushed on the heavy door. The wheels that the door sat on squeaked in protest as they gave way to the weight. Tommy pushed the door shut just as he had opened it.

Next, he picked up his saddle and tack and then proceeded out the back end of the barn. The barn was no more than a shed, yet it was home to Freckles and a few pigeons. The real barn was still half an acre away. That’s where Grandpa kept the cows, the milking equipment, and old John Popper, his tractor.

Freckles had heard the barn door open and close. He nickered as he came in through the low overhang of his stall. Both of his ears were set forward as Tommy clicked his tongue at the horse. Freckles whinnied in response.

In no time Freckles was set to be ridden. He stood there patiently as Tommy fit the halter over his head and then straightened out the saddle blanket, finally flipping the old saddle across the horse’s back.

Once the cinch was in place and properly tightened, Freckles started stamping the earthen floor of his stall. He wanted to feel the familiar weight of the kid rider on his back.

So Tommy led him outside, past the low overhang and near the rail gate. He climbed aboard as the saddle’s creaking voiced its opposition to being used. He leaned over and popped the wire that held the gate to the fence post, letting it swing open. Freckles went through it and turned as he had done so many times before so Tommy could lean over again and close the gate.

The breeze that had been there as Tommy started for the barn was no longer in the air. The sun blazed down on him and the horse as they trotted across the open fields towards Grandpa’s cornrows.

Grandpa had long established the habit of growing his prized watermelons in the middle of his cornfields. The evening before Grandpa had spoken about how his watermelons ought to be coming ripe enough to eat. Tommy looked forward to Grandpa’s watermelons and a large bowl of ice cream.

The only problem Tommy could foresee was that with twenty acres of cornrows, where would the watermelons be? He knew that he would have to search for them if he did not get lucky right away.

Freckles entered the cornrows with uneasiness; his ears twitched back and forth at each step. The horse was uncomfortable with the gentle rustling of the corn stalks.

Tommy gently pulled back on the reins and Freckles came to a stop. He patted the horse on the side of the neck and Freckles jumped straight up, landing again then settled down. It was a small jump commonly called a crow-hop and did not happen often with horses outside the rodeo circuit.

“It’s okay boy,” Tommy said as he attempted to reassure the animal. Grandpa had long ago taught him to watch his horse’s ears, saying that a horse can tell its rider where danger was and how the horse felt about it. Tommy continued to pat the horse on the neck and speak softly to him.

Then Tommy decided to stand up in his stirrups to see where they were. He discovered he couldn’t see anything be the silky green tops of the cornrows. He patted Freckles again as he sat down.

Tommy popped his boots out of his stirrups and climbed up onto the saddle. He draped the reins over the saddle horn and stood erect to see over the corn stalks. He discovered that still, he could see nothing.

Then somewhere to the off nearside came a loud cawing of a black crow. Tommy felt Freckles stiffen up underneath him. The next ‘caw’ from the crow caused Freckles to crow-hop again. The third ‘caw’ was more than the nerves of the poor horse could stand as he bolted straight down the row of corn.

Tommy had attempted to grab the rein the moment he felt Freckles tighten up; however, the bouncing little jump that the horse took left him kicking in the air. Tommy landed on his back with a thud. He lay there for a few seconds trying to reclaim his lost breath. By that time Freckles was long gone.

Once Tommy was able to sit up he could only hear two things, the cawing of the crow and the distant pounding of Freckle’s hooves growing fainter by the second. He knew it would be a long walk home.

THE CHURCH DOORKNOB

The keys were jingling as Dad tried to insert one into the church’s doorknob. It went in easily but now he could not get them to turn in the lock and he could not pull it out.

“Well, I was afraid of that,” Dad said as he looked down at Tommy. He gave the set of keys one more tug then he let out a heavy sigh.

Dad had carried his toolbox to the door with him. He was prepared for the lock to give him problems. Father Charles had called Dad, saying there was difficulty getting into the church the Sunday before. That was nearly a week ago. It was important to get the lock fixed as church would be the following day and Father Charles would not want to hold Mass outside.

The first tool Dad pulled out was his Philips screwdriver. He started removing the faceplate behind the knob. “They should have put in a separate lock from the knob,” he said to his young son. Then he added, “It would be more secure that way.”

Tommy had never seen a doorknob removed from a door and he was keenly interested in what was about to occur. “I’ll hand you the tool you need, Dad. Ask me. Let me help,” he said nearly begging.

It sounded so exotic to Tommy. “Flathead screwdriver,” Tommy repeated. He looked down into the old beat-up gray chest full of tools. “Which one is that?” he asked.

Dad looked at the tools and then pointed, “That one.” Tommy picked it up and handed it to him.

He started to pry the faceplate away from the wood of the door. It would not budge. Dad shifted his position. Still, the faceplate would not loosen. “Give me the hammer,” he commanded.

Tommy grabbed it immediately and handed it to him. He struck the yellow handle of the flathead screwdriver a couple of times. Still, it did not come loose.

Dad changed positions again. Then he turned the keys, which were still stuck in the lock. The knobbed turned free and the door opened up.

“Well, I’ll be darned,” Dad, said out loud. Tommy was smiling because Dad had gotten the door unlocked. He had fixed it. Then Dad discovered that the keys still would not come out of the lock

“At least we got the door to open,” he commented to Tommy as he swung the door wide to look at the other side of the knob.

Dad examined the inside doorknob for a moment. He made several thoughtful, “Hmm’s” as he looked and wiggled the knob back and forth.

Tommy reached up and pulled at the keys. They were stuck. “Don’t,” Dad half shouted at the boy. Tommy pulled his hands back and held them behind his back.

Dad then picked up the Phillip screwdriver and proceeded to undo the faceplate on the inside of the door. Tommy had seen this part done before and nothing interesting had happened because of it. So he wandered into the church. There was the altar and the many rows of pews. Plus the two marble statues, one of the Virgin Mary and the other of Jesus. But the most interesting item to him was the life-like cross with the body of Christ on it, as he was dying.

“Dang it!” Dad said loudly.

Tommy walked back as quickly as he could to see what the problem was. Tommy thought that perhaps wandering off might have caused Dad some problems.

“Can I help?” Tommy offered.

“Nope,” Dad said as he shook his head back and forth. “I can’t get the knob off,” he added with a sigh.

Tommy was standing inside the church and Dad was outside examining the situation. The boy reached up and grabbed the knob on his side of the door. He pulled it straight towards himself. Suddenly Tommy heard the metallic ring of the knob on the other side as it bounced off the cement steps. In his hand was the inside doorknob.

“What in the world did you do?” asked Dad. Tommy could tell his Dad was frustrated but he was even more surprised.

Tommy held the small brass globe out to him, “I—I—I just pulled back on it,” he stuttered.

Dad reached down and took the knob from him. “Well, I’ll be a son of a gun,” he said. He shook his head and then dropped the knob into his toolbox.

The two spent the next half hour or so replacing the old knob and lock. Later Tommy heard Dad tell Mom, “I spent an hour beating on the darn thing and he walks up and it comes off in his hand.”

“Now, Tom,” Mom said, “You know that if he hadn’t done that, you’d still be there cussing at that doorknob.”

Dad laughed out loud at the thought.

 

U-Turned

It didn’t snow very often, however when it did, it caused lots of driving problems. The situation was no different the day the five of us piled into the bus for the trip home.

On the bus were Peggy Gensaw, Debbie Wolcott, Vicki Billy, Shirley Baldwin (our driver), and myself.

We were climbing up the hill towards Klamath when we found ourselves in a heavy, wet snowfall. The road was slippery, so we were unable to continue.

We were just south of the first big corner before coming to what the locals called the 30 mile-turn. The 30-mile turn was a sharp curve with a sign warning drivers to reduce their speed to a recommended 30 miles per hour, especially when wet.

It was also one of the most accident-prone spots between Klamath and Crescent City. It was at this point that California Highway Patrol Officer Johnny Jones instructed Shirley to turn the little yellow van around and head back to Crescent City.

As she turned the vehicle, a Ford F-150, coming from the opposite direction, appeared from around the 30-mile corner. The driver saw the mini-bus as it straddled the roadway, but it was too late.

The truck slammed headlong into the school bus. Shirley’s door popped open, and for a second, I thought she was going to get tossed out of the vehicle.

However, she had her seatbelt on, and that kept her inside the van. The three girls in the back seats were bounced from where they sat.

One girl, Debbie Wolcott, sailed towards the front of the van. It dawned on me that she could strike the windshield if she wasn’t stopped. So I put my hands out as if I were going to catch her.

However, the top of her head slammed into my face. I felt my nose pop and could see blood on my shirt as the vehicle finally came to a rest in the ditch in a semi-upright position.

Other than a few scrapes, bumps, bruises, and one bloody nose, we were all okay. The people in the pick-up truck were unhurt.

I spent the night with my friend Danny Ross.

The next day, Dad came and picked me up. That’s when he learned that the brand-new glasses I had just gotten the day before had been broken during the accident.

It would be nearly two weeks before I’d get a replacement pair.

 

Spiked

Both Mom and Dad had warned me to be careful as I sprinted around my Aunt and Uncle’s home on Cecil Avenue. I was wearing a brand new pair of spiked shoes, my first pair ever.

I felt like I was flying as I zipped around one corner of the home to

However, my euphoria was short-lived as Marcy walked into my path. We nearly collided, but because I was so quick, I managed to sidestep her before we made full contact.

As I headed for the next corner, I heard her scream. The pitch in her young voice caused me to stop and trot back to where she was now sitting.

She was holding her foot, and traces of blood appeared around her fingers. I nearly fell racing across the cement patio to get help.
Dad was the first to get to Marcy.

He looked at her foot and declared that I must have stepped on her and driven a spike through her skin. He and Mom loaded Marcy up and took her over to Doc Gobles so he could stitch up the puncture wounds.

They were gone a little over an hour. By the time they arrived, I was back in my regular tennis shoes and had placed the spiked racing shoes back in their box.

I put them in the back of our station wagon.

When they returned I told my parents that I didn’t want the shoes anymore, that I didn’t deserve them. It took a week for me to stop moping and finally put them on again.

 

Jerry’s Kids

 

The Raft

High Prairie Creek was swollen nearly beyond its limits. It was the start of the spring thaw, and the snow was melting high in the mountains far beyond where Adam or I could see it.

The water rushed by, sounding like a thousand sticks being beaten on a rock. The creek was giving us a challenge, and we were accepting it.

Adam pounded the last nail in. It was bent over and rammed down flat with a hand-sized rock. Most of the nails, that we had driven into the raft that cloudy morning, were that way.

How a nail had been driven did not matter. How crooked the boards were cut did not matter, either.

What was important was whether the raft would float or not. A piece of rope that I had scrounged was not enough to build the raft. Besides, it had failed to hold even two lengths of timber together as we dragged them to the creek’s edge.

Nails, it was decided would do for this job. Finally, we set our tools aside to look at what we had made. The hull of their raft was built out of old planking that we had dragged down from the old barn.

The planks were laid side-by-side and nailed together at either end with more planking. Together, the raft was heavy. It was almost too heavy to lift, but that also told us it was a sturdy raft.

We were pleased with our craftsmanship. Now, all that was left to do was get the raft into the water.

In school, I learned the Egyptians had moved the giant stone blocks used to build the Pyramids over logs. Every time a log was rolled over and it came out from underneath the stone, it would be rushed up to the front to make another pass under the stone.

So we set ourselves to work looking for as many small logs as we could carry. This came to nine or ten. They were all different in size, but they worked.

Finally, at the creek edge, we made one final push to get the raft into the water. With a mighty splash, it was in the swift-moving current.

It was at that moment I figured out a use for the rope, but by then all we could do was stand there and watch our raft disappear.

Real Trouble

Just outside our kitchen door, we had an upright freezer. It had been in the spot in the rumpus room since we first moved to the house.

Tommy Smith and I were playing around the neighborhood, and I was going to show him a stash of girly magazines I had hidden in the attic. The opening to the attic, more a crawl space than anything, was directly above the freezer.

As kids, we had a method for getting into the attic and it involved the freezer. First, we’d climb up on the bookshelf next to the freezer, climb on top of the freezer, and then slip into the square hole to the crawl space.

However, on this one day, I went to climb up into the attic, and I stepped on the door of the freezer. It popped open, and I found myself doing the splits.

However, there was only so far my legs would spread, and I ended up flopping on the ground with a loud thwap-like sound. I hit with such force that it knocked the breath out of me.

Mom heard me hit the concrete floor and quickly stepped outside. All she could see was me lying on the ground and Tommy ducking around the corner, laughing.

She asked, “What happened? Did he hit you?”

It took me a while to explain that I fell off the freezer while trying to get into the crawl space. Then, I had to explain why I was going up there.

That’s where the real trouble started.

The Rundown

It was deer hunting season, and Uncle Ron, Dad, and I were scouring the hillside for any sign of the animals. We had returned to the truck and had plans to head home when Ron decided to walk over to a nearby ravine and have a quick look.

Dad and I sat in the truck as Ron stood at the ravine’s edge, looking the area over through the scope of his hunting rifle. Suddenly, he jumped and turned quickly to his left.

As he did, he lowered his rifle as if he were planning to shoot something. But he was too late in squeezing the trigger, and the shot went high.

Within a second or two, Ron was lying on his back, near the bottom of the ravine. I was racing to help him while Dad stood guard over us with his rifle at the ready.

Fortunately, Uncle Ron got up on his own, and he was unhurt. However, it was the first and only time he was attacked by a yearling.

Much to Uncle Ron’s discomfort, we laughed about it all the way home.

Reality Claus

Marcy was six years old when she announced to the family that Santa Claus wasn’t real. We were sitting at the supper table, preparing to eat.

Without thinking, Mom responded, “Jus’ like the Easter Bunny.”

Suddenly, Marcy’s face drooped as her look of confidence shifted to shock. Her mouth hung open, and tears welled up in her eyes.

Then Deirdre replied, “Mom, I don’t think she knew that.”

Without warning, Marcy and Mom started crying, each for slightly different reasons.

 

Keeping Quiet

It was the first and only time I saw Dad throw up after working an accident scene. And I couldn’t blame him as it was one of the worst deadly wrecks I had ever responded to.

The little Volkswagen Rabbit was mangled beyond belief. And the same could be said for the lifeless male body inside the vehicle.

It was hard to tell who had hit who. There was debris spread out from one side of Highway 101 to the other side.

What was evident was how hard the VW and the large dump truck had collided. The engine of the dump truck was torn from its mounts and rested on the side of the road.

While the driver of the truck was injured, he would survive. There wasn’t much to do for Dad and me other than to help protect the scene until the California Highway Patrol released us from the detail.

We returned to the firehouse with just enough time for me to get ready for high school. That’s when Dad went out back of the house and vomited.

Less than an hour later, I was on the school bus, passing the accident scene I had been at earlier in the morning. While the male body had been removed from the VW, much of the scene remained as was before we left it.

Once at school, I noticed the hallways were extremely quiet. What noises there were came in the form of hushed whispers or tears.

Then someone told me that Cameron Allen had been killed in an early morning crash.

 

For Reals

Dad was a scout master while Mom was a den mother. I was a cub scout and eventually a boy scout, though I didn’t stay with it for long after that.

One of the many events was a large scout dinner at the old Grange Hall on Hunter Creek Road. The dinner was arranged as a fund-raiser to help all the scouts in Klamath attend that year’s Jamboree at Miller-Rellim Lumber Yard.

Each of the dens was given the chore of coming up with a skit for the entertainment portion of the dinner. Our den worked out a play about Bigfoot and how he was accepted by the local Indians.

While I don’t recall much about the play itself, I know Scott Bruhy was Bigfoot. It was a natural part for him as he was a good head taller than every other student at school.

The other thing I remember was how we danced around a campfire, like a bunch of wild men in a B-western movie. I was a part of that.

What few people know is that I got in a lot of trouble with Mom for my performance. I misunderstood her instructions, and instead of wearing a pair of shorts underneath my breech cloth, I wore nothing.

Talk about realism.

 

A Track Fix

To say my senior year of high school was difficult would be an understatement. Few things seemed to go well for me, and worse yet, the stuff that went wrong seemed mostly of my doing.

One of those situations was to come out publicly against the track coaching staff, voicing my opposition to how they were treating another trackster. It all began after the Humboldt-Del Norte Conference finals.

Muneca Alcorn and Marcy Dennison were the best female distance runner in the conference. Their coach, Helen Caldwell, had told them to “split the ticket,” meaning they were to divide the 440, the 880, the mile and two-mile

All went according to plan until the two-mile race. Marcy Dennison was having trouble maintaining pace, and Muneca was doing her best to stay in second place as instructed.

In the end, Muneca beat Marcy by a wide margin and ended up with three first-place wins to Marcy’s one first-place. In response, Muneca was told she was no longer on the team and to sit on the bus for the duration of the meet.

Now, I knew there was a strategy at work in the splitting of the races. But a dismissal from the team was, in my estimation, unfair, and I launched a stout protest to Mrs. Caldwell and the boy’s coach, Brian Ferguson.
My protests, I believed, fell on deaf ears. So, I decided to take it a step further.

If the coaches wouldn’t listen, maybe a little negative public attention would. I wrote a scathing letter to the editor of the Del Norte Triplicate.

As soon as it was published, I found myself kicked off the team, too. Mr. Ferguson only allowed me back on the team because our 440 relay had won a spot in the state championship finals, saying it wasn’t fair to punish my teammates because of my actions.

In the end, Muneca was reinstated and allowed to participate in the state championships.

 

A BEAR FOR LUNCH

Uncle Adam took his nephew Adam and wandered down the coulee to see if they could scare up an elk. Dad sat in the front seat of Buella. He was eating from his silver-colored work pail.

Tommy took Dad’s thirty-odd-six and walked around to the front of Buella. The old truck was parked about fifty feet from a slope that overlooked Gold Bluff near the town of Orick. From there Uncle Adam and Dad figured they’d be able to see any elk without having to walk very far.

The gun had a telescoping sight on it and Tommy held it up and looked through it. He scanned back and forth looking through the tall grasses and into the shadows of the low-lying scrub. He saw nothing but the grass and trees.

He could hear Dad’s lips smacking together behind him. Dad was eating one of the sandwiches Mom had made for the foursome the night before. “It must be good!” Tommy thought to himself as Dad’s lip-smacking grew louder and louder. Then Dad grunted.

It was a strange-sounding grunt. Tommy had never heard his Dad make that kind of noise before. It was low yet sharp like an animal. Tommy turned and looked back at the truck and to where Dad was sitting.

Tommy’s eyes were met with a surprise. Dad was sitting in the truck still. His eyes were as wide as saucer plates. His cheeks were bulging like a chipmunk during acorn season. Dad was as pale as a winter moon at midnight.

In the seat next to Dad was a huge brown ball of fur. It moved with great force, rocking the old Studebaker from side to side. It took a moment for Tommy to figure out what it was.

It was a bear. Tommy stood there with his mouth wide open. That was all he could think to do.

The moments seemed to hang in the air and turn into years. Dad just sat there with his eyes wide and unblinking. The wild look on his face was a combination of panic and stupidity.

The bear, on the other hand, continued to grunt and groan. He licked Dad’s face, and stuck his nose against Dad’s head, and took large noisy sniffs of him. Then he’d return to licking his face.

The bear’s pink tongue was long and quick. It darted across Dad’s unblinking, unmoving face.

It suddenly occurred to Tommy that he was holding Dad’s thirty-odd-six. Tommy planted his left foot and slowly raised the gun to his shoulder. He pointed it more than aimed it towards the bear, sniffing and licking at Dad.

‘Click’ was the nearly inaudible sound of the safety being switched into the off position. Tommy was getting ready to pull the trigger. He could see Dad’s eyes grow even larger at the thought of the rifle’s report.

‘Snap!’ Nothing happened as Tommy quickly lowered it and drew back the bolt, sliding a shell into the chamber.

The sound of all the clicking and clunking was loud. It was so loud that the bear had heard it. He stopped nosing a Dad and looked in the direction of the noise and Tommy.

Tommy raised the rifle again and slipped his finger inside the guard. He held his breath and prepared to squeeze the trigger. Suddenly Dad’s door popped open. Just as suddenly, Dad was lying on the ground. He was trying to kick the door shut.

Dad popped out of the truck with a shot. He was flat and stiff like a barn floor timber. He dropped to the earth with a thud. He looked like a gigantic redwood tree hitting the end of a water flume, and then dropping without grace into the Klamath River.

Meanwhile, the bear jumped back with great surprise. In all of the commotion the door slapped shut behind him and Dad kicked the door in front of him closed. He had no way of escaping.

“Maaw!” The bear cried out as he continued to back up. He quickly discovered he could no longer get out the way he came in. He was trapped.

His situation seemed to get worse as he continued to struggle to get turned around. The inside of the truck is not meant for the largeness of a bear. He was stuck and starting to panic.

The bear had turned sideways in Buella. The horn sounded adding to the bear’s panic. His rear end got hung up on the gun rack. His face was mashed against the windshield.

Meanwhile, Dad had made it to his feet and he ran to the rear of the truck. Tommy stood still, pressing the rifle tightly against his shoulder. His finger was still touching the trigger.

The bear struggled wildly to get uncaught. He twisted his huge frame sideways in the truck. He cried out “Maaw! Maaw! Maaw!” The truck rocked back and forth as he shifted his weight from side to side.

To Tommy, the eyes of the bear seemed to bug out and his long nose flattened as it pressed into the windshield. His cries became more pitiful as he struggled violently against entrapment.

Dad came around and stood by Tommy. Tommy could hear Dad’s heavy winded breath as he stood next to him. He also became aware of the cold trickle of seat tracing its way down his own back. Tommy shivered.

The muzzle of the rifle shook a little as Tommy lowered it with his trembling hands. He was shaking, but not nearly as hard as Dad was when they finally looked at each other.

Ka-pop!

The explosion of noise made them both jump at the same time. Tommy jerked the thirty-odd-six back up to his shoulder. Dad stepped back. The bear cried out again.

The sound of cracking glass echoed through the valley. The bear cried out again

The sound of cracking glass echoed through the valley. The bear in his struggle had popped the windshield out of Buella. The glass crashed to the ground after bouncing off the hood.

Within a breath, the bear scrambled for the fresh air and his freedom. The bear’s claws raked at the green paint of the truck and then the green grass as he ran for his life. The bear did not look back.

Dad took the rifle from Tommy. He slipped the bolt back gently and out jumped a bullet. He slipped it into his Jean pocket, and then he pulled it out and handed it to Tommy. Then he said to him, “For the one that got away, thank goodness.”

THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY

Before he became a teamster and then bought the Bridgeville-Ruth Overland Stage Company, Grandpa claimed to be a lawman. Everyone doubted it though because Grandpa was also known for his long windy’s.

For Tommy’s eighth birthday, Mom and Dad let him and Adam go for a visit to Grandpa and Grandma for a week. They were excited because they would get to help take care of the cows with Grandpa and Grandma would let them collect the chicken eggs. It was fun stuff for the brothers, even though it wasn’t much different than being at home.

In the middle of the week, Grandpa decided that he was going to take his two Grandsons’ for a train ride. On the drive to the train, he told the boys stories about how he had hobo’d for a couple of months.

“I had to give it up because I found getting on and getting off to darned hard on my rear end and my head,” he told the boys. Tommy and Adam laughed as Grandpa rubbed the top of his bald head.

The train pulled into the station. The train consisted of two flat cars with rails and benches and a steam engine. After a herd of folks got off, another herd of folks got on. Adam, Tommy, and Grandpa were in the second herd.

Once the train had pulled away from the loading platform Tommy stood up on the bench and tried to look over the car carrying the coal. He caught a face full of smoke as the train belched and picked up steam. Adam laughed at Tommy as he sat there with tears streaming down his face and coughing.

About the time the tears started to dry up, the train began to slow down. It had come to a flat area. Grandpa pointed out the two men riding horses ahead of the train. “The fools shouldn’t be galloping’ in rough country like this,” Grandpa said out loud.

They had neck scarves pulled up over their face and each had a six-shooter in their hand. One was tall and skinny. The other one was shorter and just as skinny. They were robbing the train.

The taller one shouted, “This here’s a holt up! Give us your strong box and no one will get hurt!” He pulled one of his guns and fired it into the air. Everyone jumped back, expecting to get shot at any moment. Tommy covered his ears.

Grandpa was standing close to the tall train robber when he grabbed the man’s gun. As he did that, he spun the robber around on the heels of his cowboy boots. The bandit was so surprised that he let go of the gun and Grandpa bopped him over the head with it. Then Grandpa pointed the pistol at the other robber.

Just as suddenly Grandpa busted the smaller robber along the side of his head. But he didn’t go down like the first one. Instead, he raised his fists and tried to punch Grandpa. His punch missed Grandpa completely. Then the robber yelped out in pain and surprise as Adam rushed forward and bit him squarely on the thigh.

Everyone on the train was cheering and clapping.

The short bandit knew he was overmatched and he tried to make a getaway by quickly breaking for the side rail. Grandpa saw his move and took careful aim with the pistol. Bang! The sound the pistol made caused everyone to stop cheering and duck. The robbery had become serious. Then the gun went click, click, click as Grandpa pulled the trigger. It was empty. The short train robber jumped in the middle of his horse and disappeared into the woods.

Grandpa turned and looked at the first waddie that he had laid out. It was his gun. The train’s engineer was nursing the cut on top of the robber’s head. Both of them were looking mad at Grandpa.

The rest of the trip was uneventful for Grandpa and the two boys. Everyone made it back to the train station in one piece. During the short ride back Tommy kept looking at Grandpa as he sat there with the useless pistol in his hand. He looked dejected and he would sigh a heavy sigh every once in a while.

Tommy and Adam were proud of Grandpa. He had caught one train robber by hitting him on top of the head. The other one got away because the gun was nearly empty. They could hardly wait to tell Grandma all about their train ride with Grandpa.

Grandpa headed out to his work shed next to the house when they got home. He was too embarrassed to admit that he had busted up a staged robbery on a tourist train.

 

Commercial Effect

The six of us had just finished one of Mom’s fantastic spaghetti meals. And we were all sitting around the table contemplating what sort of desert Mom might surprise us with.

Without warning Marcy, our youngest sister, started rubbing her belly as if she were so full she couldn’t dare think of eating anything else. Her gesture was so animated that we stopped talking long enough to watch her.

Then, as if she were part of the once-famous commercial advertising Alka-Seltzer, she grinned and announced, “I can’t believe I ate the whole thing!”

We all just busted up laughing.

 

Golden Jock Strap Award

It was a surprise the Del Norte High School boys track team had voted on and appointed me to complete. The surprise was an award for our head coach, Brian Ferguson.

Called “The Golden Jock Strap Award,” it took me a few days to figure out how to shape and stiffen an actual jock-strap. I ruined a pillow and a couple of hand towels as I applied several layers of plaster to the course fabric.

It took just over 24 hours for the “sculpture,” to dry completely before I could spray the first coat of gold paint on it. This was followed by designing a base for the award and having a metal tag etched.

The hardest part was rigging the contraption to the wooden base to keep it from falling over or collapsing under its weight. But somehow, I managed to find the perfect point of balance without a whole lot of fuss.

The night of the school’s sports banquet, I kept Mr. Ferguson’s award hidden in my locker. I also arranged with Mr. Raleigh, our athletics director, to give the award as the final offering of the evening.

When the time came, I carried it to the podium, covered by a large cloth. I called Mr. Ferguson up to the stage and read a statement I had prepared for the event.

Then I handed it to him, still covered. When he pulled the cloth off the bronzed strap, he turned bright red and did his best to laugh through his embarrassment.

Worst of all, a photographer from the Del Norte Triplicate took his picture, and it was published in that Saturday edition.

 

The Long Season

Finally, the Little League Baseball season was over. It had been a tough three months for me, and I didn’t want to go through another one like it.
First I had caught a hardball in the crotch when the batter hit a line drive at me during practice.

It wasn’t your usual line drive, either.

For some reason, Coach Gillespie put me on the pitcher’s mound. He knew I couldn’t throw the ball well enough to be a pitcher, but he had the idea of rotating everyone during practice to see what sort of hidden skill we had.

I threw the ball, a long, arching pitch right into the batter’s zone.

The ball came flying back at me, and out of instinct I stepped back and off the mound. The ball struck the pitching rubber, a white strip of hard rubber that the pitcher has to be in contact with when throwing the ball.

It was a bad bounce, and I knew it. I tried to get my mitt in front of it, but my reaction was far too slow.

Later in the season, I was smacked with a fowl tip as I was standing in the doorway of our dugout. I reached down and picked up the ball that had knocked me on my butt and handed it to the catcher of the other team, whereupon the umpire called our batter out.

Finally, I was in right field, daydreaming because no one ever hit the ball in my direction, when the ball was hit in my direction. I saw it and had my glove up to catch it.

It seemed like it was taking forever for the baseball to arrive, so I moved my mitt to see where it was. The hard leather-wrapped ball smashed into my left eye, knocking me out momentarily.

When I came too, everyone was crowded around me. This gave me a start, and along with the pain developing in my face, I took off at a dead run, screaming and crying for home, just up the hill from the ball field.

I don’t think Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, or Willie Mays ever had it so rough.

 

Graduation Night

It was the day following graduation from high school. The night before had been a fairly wild evening for me as we were sequestered in the Crescent City Elks Club until two in the morning.

First was the fact that I had even graduated. I never expected to complete my schooling on time as I had very little interest in many of the subjects offered, and I skipped so many classes it seemed I’d never get my diploma.

During the after-graduation party, one of our now-former classmates, Debbie Oscar had some sort of emergency. When I got down the stairs to help our chaperone, Joel Barneburg, she was on the floor writhing around.

I knew enough by then to know it was something much stronger than beer or wine that had caused her fit.

She had to be taken away via ambulance. I never saw Debbie again after that.

Afterward, we were carted by the bus load back to the high school, where we were dropped off, with the idea of having someone there to pick us up. My folks were supposed to come and get me and Ida Philips after the party ended, but they were late.

So Ida and I decided to entertain each other for the next two hours by making out. It was also a great way to stay warm since it was a normal chilly, foggy night along the coast.

We were nearly home when a huge glow could be seen coming from the direction of Sander’s Court. Mom and Dad were instantly concerned that Ma and Pa Sander’s home was ablaze.

Since Dad was the fire chief and I was an EMT with the Yurok Volunteer Fire Department, we naturally pulled in to help fight the fire. Fortunately, it wasn’t Ma and Pa’s home burning, but one of their rental properties directly across the narrow gravel road from their house.

And that was just between the hours of 7 p.m. and 5 a.m.

 

Driving Lessons

Learning to drive from my old man was difficult, to say the least. He didn’t care that I was skilled at steering Pa Sanders’ old tractor around in a field while making straight plow lines.

No! He wanted me to learn to drive stick-shift, and that was all there was to it.

Earlier, I had bought an old 1963 Chevy Biscayne for 300 bucks. It was in good shape with a good engine, but it was a three-on-the-tree, also.

For whatever reason, I was intimidated by the car’s clutch. I never seemed able to get the vehicle going without jerking myself and Dad half-to-pieces.

It frustrated him to no end. He’d get so flustered by my lack of coordination between the clutch and the gas pedal that he’d pop me in the back of the head when the car started to jerk, making the situation worse.

I never did get the clutch down properly in that old Chevy because I sold it for a Dodge Charger with an automatic transmission.

It wasn’t until I was in the service that I finally got the interaction between the clutch and the gas pedal down. I have Dave Barber to thank for letting me tool around Cheyenne in his Nova as practice, and later Nancy Jessop for allowing me to drive clear across Nebraska in her brother’s truck.

Neither one slapped me in the back of the head, either.

 

Misidentification

It was somewhere around two in the morning when the telephone rang. There was a traffic accident just south of the Del Norte County line, and it would take us less time to get there than the closest unit out of Arcata.

Dad and I rolled up to see one body lying in the roadway. The person was alive and thrashing about.

We were told by a bystander who had come upon the accident that there was a car in the thick brush over the embankment with a couple of people still inside. There was a large burnt spot on a giant redwood tree, that was still smoldering.

It was obvious that the vehicle had been traveling at a high rate of speed when it left the roadway and slammed into the tree. The person in the roadway was ejected from the car upon impact.

Dad directed me to start first aid on the person on the road. It turned out to be a teenage female.

Both of her feet were nearly amputated at the ankles. And while her bleeding was minimal, she was in severe pain and would not hold still.

The most I could do for her was to immobilize her ankles and get her off the cold asphalt. She also said she was pregnant and was worrying about her baby.

After splinting her ankles and feet, a woman passerby offered to stay with her so I could help Dad down the hill. In a rural setting like the one we were in, any help is usually welcome.

Once in the car, I could see a male body in the front passenger side of the vehicle. It was obvious that from his injuries he was already dead.

In the back seat though, was another male. Dad was trying to get the injured man to hold still, but he was having a difficult time.

He was alive and talking, but what he was saying made no sense. When asked how many people were in the car, he gave conflicting amounts.

He had a severe head injury and needed medical attention quickly. This cost us several minutes searching for others that may have been tossed from the car.

We didn’t find anyone else, fortunately.

Shortly thereafter, an ambulance from Crescent City arrived. The two-person, crew along with Dad and me, were able to secure the injured man, and with some effort get him up the hill and onto the highway.

With everyone but the dead man accounted for, we hurried to get the injured teen and the man loaded and en route to Seaside Hospital. That left the removal of the dead guy to Dad and me.

When we finally got him up and in an ambulance, I took a look at his face. He had no identification — but I knew I knew him.

A California Highway Patrol officer asked me if I knew who the dead man was. I answered, “A kid I go to school with by the name of Alan Wilson.”

However, my identification would soon prove to be wrong, as officers in Crescent City located Alan. Thankfully, he was alive and well.

The following day, an identification was made, and it turned out to be Lesley McCovy. He had graduated the year before and was dating Kim McKail.

Years later, I was working at a one-hour photo lab in Crescent City when Alan came in. He recalled the night the cops came to his parent’s door.

Luckily, Alan took what had happened as an everyday part of life. As for me, I never again made an on-the-scene identification of anyone, even if I knew darned well who it was.

 

Interference

I met Debbie Lohman in our second year of high school during my first Friday night high school dance.

We connected instantly, and I could hardly wait to see her again that following Monday at school. We became a couple shortly thereafter and remained together for nearly two years.

However, Dad was not happy with the idea that I was going steady, saying I shouldn’t get myself tied down. For nearly two years, I struggled against his push to have me break up with Debbie.

Near the end of our junior year, I finally succumbed to his wishes and ended our relationship. I still feel like a creep for allowing myself to hurt Debbie like I did.

 

Like a Basketball

The team was getting ready for a road trip to Eureka for a track meet. And that’s why I was hanging around the gym entrance in the first place.

Students were coming and going as it was the start of class the following lunchtime. One of those students was a freshman by the name of Bobby Doerner.

He was a pretty good-sized guy compared to me. But then, I was fairly small in stature, so almost everyone looked bigger to me.

For whatever reason, Bobby decided he was going to pick on me. Without warning he grabbed me around my midsection, picked me up, and tossed me across the gym floor.

I hit the wooden floor, sliding on my belly, and ending up with raspberries on my knees and elbows.

Instantly, I was angry. I mean, how could a Freshman think he could do what he had just done to a Senior and think he could get away with it?

Before he could react, I was all over him, punching and kicking. I was finally restrained by several of my teammates.

The funny thing is Bobby thought I was another freshman like himself. At the time, it felt like pouring salt into a wound.

Years later, Bobby and I ended up talking about that day. He apologized, I apologized, and we had ourselves a pretty good laugh at our own expense.

 

Old Smoky

It was an all-day excursion into the redwood forest. We were going to picnic, hike, and enjoy the great outdoors.

It started as a pleasant day until someone stole Christine Meteor’s lunch. And even though I shared my lunch with her, she wouldn’t stop crying.

She finally wore me out, so I decided to go for a hike along the banks of Mill Creek. That’s where I discovered several girls skinny-dipping.

Naturally, I stopped to watch for a couple of minutes. That’s when I was surprised by Lori Stobert as she was also walking along the creek bank.

She alerted the girls, who scrambled to cover themselves. I was busted, and I had no place to go.

Within seconds, another girl from my class, Patricia Bilderback, climbed up on the bank and started dragging me towards the water. I managed to struggle free and run for my life.

I spent the rest of my time trying to avoid every one of my classmates because I didn’t want to be teased for having been caught staring and then running away from a girl.

Later on, I was seated across the school bus aisle from Christine, who was still very upset and still crying about her stolen lunch. As embarrassing as it was, I decided to sing “On Top of Old Smoky,” to her, hoping to settle her down.

And what do you know, it worked. Also, I decided that day that I like being in the woods alone, and not with a whole bunch of people.

 

Two of Three

It was our eighth-grade graduation. I was excited because it meant I’d be going to high school, and getting away from Mr. Fizer.

We were a fairly small class, 25 students total. Of that, there were only eight boys, so there was a pretty good chance I’d walk alongside one of the girls.

I was right, and it was Theresa Bostwick with whom I walked that night.

When it came to confirmation into the Catholic Church, earlier that year we had decided between ourselves that we’d walk down together. Besides, we were the only two Klamath kids in the group taking final lessons toward confirmation at the time.

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to walk down the aisle at our high school graduation together. That’s because school administrators had the ceremony set up alphabetically and “B’s” didn’t mix with “D’s.”

THE CATCH

The sun beat down hot on Tommy as he stood there in the lonely post of right field. Beads of sweat dribbled from him. They dropped to the earth in large fat beads.

The heat and the boredom were getting to Tommy’s brain. Nothing ever happened in the right field. The other team always hit the center fielder or the left fielder. Right field was the lowest a player could go. Tommy was there because he wasn’t a very good ball player.

His entertainment had become attempting to hit an ant hole with his rivulets of perspiration as it broke from his forehead, gathered speed between his eyebrows, and screamed off the end of his nose. “Plop,” the sweat would say as it struck the ground. The ants would scurry to the left or the right of it.

“Pilot to bombardier…” Tommy heard in his head. “Another pass, we have then on the run,” he added. Plop-plop-plop.

Crack! Tommy heard it as the batter connected with the stitched-up piece of rawhide.

“Where is it?” Tommy questioned himself.

The bombing mission would have to wait. An enemy bandit was closing in quickly somewhere near twelve o’clock high. Tommy’s every muscle had to be fixed on it. He had trained for the kill.

Suddenly he saw it. The ball was high overhead and sailing towards him. At first, Tommy just stood there, motionless. He was trying to figure out where the ball was going.

“Back pedal, back pedal!” his mind raced as his feet began to move. Tommy’s eyes were fixed upon that sphere as it flew directly overhead. Tommy kept backpedaling. He had one hand up, reaching for the ball. The other hand was outstretched behind him, searching for the fence that he knew must be close by. The ball was just out of reach as he leaped into the air to meet it.

Thud! Tommy heard himself hit the fence more than he felt it. His body seemed to propel itself higher and higher. Then he realized he was halfway over the fence.

Slap! Tommy’s mind reeled in the amazement at both the sound and the feeling in his glove. The ball had landed squarely in his mitt. His glove had never felt so bulky or so heavy before. But he had just made a spectacular catch.

“Tommy? Tommy?” a soft voice came to him. It had a familiar ring to it. He knew that voice well. “Tommy?” It was Mom calling him. A muffled click and a bright light overhead pierced the darkness as Mom called out to him again.

Tommy opened his eyes and looked around. Mom was bending over him. He was wrapped in a tangle of blankets and bed sheets.

“Get up, Tommy,” Mom said, “you fell out of bed.”

Tommy blinked a couple of times and obeyed Mom, as any nine-year-old would do. He climbed back up into the top bunk of the beds, and Mom pulled the covers up around him. Then Tommy drifted off into sleep again.

Mom turned off the light and looked back at Tommy. He was smiling because he knew he had made the catch.

FISH IN A BARREL

Tommy and Adam used to get into trouble sometimes just for fun. But nothing prepared them for the day they rolled their younger sister Deirdre down Mrs. Damm’s hill.

Deirdre was nine years younger than her brother Tommy and only six years
younger than Adam. Yet she was every bit as rough and tumble as either of them. To say the least, she was a tomboy.

That certain day, the three of them had discovered a new metal oil drum in the lower pasture. They decided that it would be great fun to ride around in it. After a couple of rolls in it each, the three decided to run home and get all of the pillows they could find.

They collected seven pillows. Three came from each of their beds. Two came from Mom and Dad’s bedroom and the last two were the new ones Mom had bought for the guest room.

They stuffed all seven pillows into the barrel. Riding around in the barrel became more fun and much softer with the addition of the pillows. That’s when they figured out that it was too much work pushing that barrel around. So they decided to go to the highest hill they could get to and that was Mrs. Damm’s hill. It was named after her because she owned it.

Deirdre was the first to go down the hill. Her brothers laughed so hard that they fell on the ground when she crawled out of the pillow-packed barrel, walking like she was drunk. She finally fell flat on her back and lay there, sprawled out under the hot afternoon sun.

Next, it was Adam’s turn to take a ride in the barrel, so the threesome pushed it back up the hill. Adam climbed in and made certain that the pillows were packed around him. Then his brother and sister pushed the barrel over the edge of the hill. Adam screamed down the hill.

Near the bottom of the hill, the barrel hit a small rock. The barrel bounced into the air and when it landed, it spit Adam out like he was a shot from cannon. He rolled about twenty feet before he came to a stop. Adam got up and smiled. He tried to walk, but he walked like a drunken man too. He tried to walk over to the barrel but fell instead, crawling the rest of the way. Tommy and Deirdre laughed down the hill.

Tommy could hardly wait for the ride. After getting the barrel back up the hill again, he carefully loaded himself in, and away he went. He let out a scream as the barrel picked up speed. When the barrel stopped rolling, he got out and started to walk. Tommy also walked like a drunken man.

The only problem the three agreed on was the rough bumps at the bottom of the hill. So it was decided that they’d roll the barrel off the other side of the hill.

Once they got back up the hill, Deirdre got in the barrel and situated the pillows around her. Then the two brothers rolled her as hard as they could over the side of the hill. They ran after her.

But the barrel never made it to the bottom of the hill. The barrel with their sister in it had become wedged between two large rocks.

At first, it seemed funny, but as time wore on the funniness of the situation waned. Neither Tommy nor Adam could get Deirdre unstuck. Finally, Tommy sent Adam to fetch Mom.

Once Mom saw the situation she knew that she was going to be unable to get the barrel unstuck. She needed Dad and John Popper. Mom sent Tommy to get him.

By the time Tommy returned with Dad, panic had set in with Deirdre. She was crying and she said was thirsty and could barely breathe.

Dad hooked up the chain to John Popper and then to the barrel. The chain was used in calving but it also proved to be useful for pulling small children out of bad situations.

Needless to say, Deirdre got out fine. There was also some hide tanning in the woodshed later that afternoon. The three children did not get whippings for getting stuck because Dad knew that accidents Tommy happen. They got the strap because they took all the pillows in the house without asking.

 

WATERMELON LESSONS

Tommy and Adam visited Grandpa every year when it was time to gather the hay. The summer was no exception. Except that, they got in an awful lot of trouble that summer. They had lots of help from each other.

Adam talked Tommy into doing the darnedest thing. He talked him into sneaking into Mr. Breedon’s watermelon patch…in broad daylight! Adam offered Tommy a bit of his wisdom “Nobody would ever think we’d be crazy enough to steal watermelons in the middle of the day.” Tommy took the bait, hook, line, and sinker.
‘
They crept and sneaked and belly-crawled their way into the patch. They found the biggest, sweetest watermelon they had ever laid their eyes on. It was so big that, it took both of them to pick it up. Then they started to sneak out.

Click! Click!

Adam took off at a dead run. He left Tommy standing there, balancing that big old eye-popping watermelon in his arms. Tommy was hanging onto it for dear life.

Bang! Bang!

Later that evening, after Grandpa cleaned the rock salt out of Tommy’s hide and tanned Adams, they sat down to dessert and a quiet conversation. “Well, boys, guess you learned a thing or two today.” Grandpa said. It was a statement more than a question.

“Yes, sir,” they responded together. Neither boy could find the courage to look Grandpa in the eye, because each knew that they had done a bad thing. Stealing was wrong.

Grandpa cleared his throat and said, “Never under estimate the number of nobody’s in the world, boys. Nobody can suddenly become somebody especially if you’re making off with his prize melon. Understand?”

The boys replied, “Yes. Sir”

“Also, don’t ever expect your brother to bail you out of trouble that you got yourself into. He could end up leaving you holding that melon. Correct?” Grandpa continued.

“Yes, Grandpa,” they said in one voice.

Grandpa chuckled out loud and then concluded, “Finally, Tommy, you should have ducked when you heard the ‘click-click’ while stealing that melon. Now, pass your Grandpa another piece, Tommy would you?”

 

KING ME

Grandpa looked very dapper in his newly steamed and cleaned Stetson cowboy hat. He was standing before his dresser mirror, adjusting his brand-new red bow tie. He was getting ready to go to his first meeting as a new member of the ‘32nd and Denison Cattle and Land Club.’

His grandson Tommy could see that he was pretty excited, “I think you look sharp, Grandpa.” The old man smiled back at the 13-year-old boy in his mirror.

Tommy thought back to how this entire evening had come about, realizing it had been a two-month process. It had started when Grandpa said, “I’d sure like to be a member of that new club one day.”

“What new club?” Tommy asked as they rumbled down the main street towards Route 64.

He pointed towards a plain-looking two-story building. “That club,” he said as they rolled by. Tommy turned in the truck seat and studied the structure. He couldn’t see anything special about the place and he turned back to his Grandpa and made a wry face at the old man.

“I don’t get it,” Tommy replied.

“It’s called the ‘32nd and Denison Cattle and Land Club,’ he said to the young boy sitting next to him, “and I wanna be a member of it.” He paused then added, “But I don’t wanna ask them myself.”

That gave Tommy an idea. He decided he would do his best to get someone from that Club to ask his Grandpa to be a member.

It was the following day that Tommy went down to the hardware store and then to the feedlot out back where most of the retired ranchers and farmers sat, playing checkers. He loitered about, watching the games and listening to the old men as they talked and accused one another of moving when it wasn’t their turn.

Soon one of them asked him if he was interested in taking him on. Tommy jumped at the chance. That day he played about ten games and lost everyone, but because he was a good sport, he was invited back.

For the next month and a half, Tommy returned to the feedlot and played game after game of checkers. Often he would return home, finish his chores, have supper, and then head for bed, mentally exhausted. He was getting better at checkers, winning more than half the time, and even dreaming about playing the game in his sleep.

Then the day came that the subject of the Club came up. Tommy listened for an opportunity to say something about his Grandpa. He started by asking innocently, “What’s the Club all about?”

After the explanation, Tommy asked another question, “How can my Grandpa become a member?”

“Well son,” one of the older gentlemen started, “You let me handle that.”

Tommy responded, “Yes, sir.”

That night Tommy could hardly sleep. He was so excited by the prospect of his Grandpa getting an invitation to become a member of the 32nd and Denison Cattle and Land Club.

The following morning, shortly after chores and while they were eating breakfast, Grandpa’s telephone rang. He picked it up just after the third ring. “Speaking,” he said. There was a pause. “This Friday night at 8 o’clock, okie-dokey.” He hung up the phone and came back to the breakfast table. He was smiling.

After a few more bites of eggs and bacon, he finally spoke, “That was the President of the 32nd and Denison Cattle and Land Club.” The retired rancher smiled widely then added, “And he has invited me to join their Club.”

Tommy wanted to whoop for happiness because he knew that that was what his Grandpa wanted. He tried hard not to hurry through his breakfast as he sat there. He still had to wash up the dishes before heading to the feedlot.

The next ten days were more relaxing for Tommy, knowing that he had succeeded in getting the invite for his Grandpa. His skill at checkers was improving as he was starting to win nearly seven out of ten games he played. Plus he enjoyed listening to the old men and all the stories of the ‘good old days.’

“Well, I’m off Tommy, you need anything call your Aunt Bev,” Grandpa said as he stepped out the door. A minute later the old Dodge pick-up could be heard starting up and the tires crunching on the gravel as he pulled out of the driveway.

Tommy reached under the couch found the boot horn and slipped off his cowboy boots. He wandered out into the kitchen in his stocking feet to raid the refrigerator for a piece of fried chicken and a soda pop. He turned on the radio and leaned against the counter.

He finished the drumstick and tossed it in the garbage can and then sat down at the table. An old Bob Wills song was playing and Tommy was trying hard to remember the name of the tune. He sipped at the soda bottle as a set of headlights flashed through the nearly dark living room. It was the sound of Grandpa’s truck.

Tommy looked over at the clock, “He’s only been gone 15-minutes,” he said to himself. He got up and started towards the front door.

Grandpa stepped through the doorway and closed the door with a solid thump behind him. It was obvious to Tommy that he was angry about something. The first thought the young boy had was, “Did he find out?”

“That dirty rotten old son of a…” his Grandpa started but did not finish. He stood there, fingering the edge of his hat. Then he sat down on the edge of the couch and finished, “They said I could be a member but they don’t allow ties in their Club.”

Tommy could see his Grandpa was getting frustrated again. The old man paused and when he got a hold of his temper said, “But before I could get it off, that old fart Pickens cut it off.”

That’s when Tommy realized that the ends of Grandpa’s tie were missing just below the knot. The youngster walked back into the kitchen fetched a beer from the fridge and gave it to his Grandpa. “Thanks,” he said, then he added, “I don’t want to be a member of their Club anyway.”

Tommy had to turn his back to his Grandpa so the old man couldn’t see the hurt as it washed over his face. Then his Grandpa said, “Anytime you want to play checker, I’m pretty fair myself.”

He turned and looked at his Grandpa. There was a twinkle in the old man’s eye that told Tommy that he had known all along what his Grandson was up to and that he appreciated it.

 

THE COMPASSES DIRECTION

When Tommy was seven years old I had an accident that changed his life. He was playing with a paper towel tube. It was in his mouth and his tongue was inside the tube. The kids were playing “freeze tag”, a game where if touched by the person who was “it” you had to “freeze” until someone who wasn’t “it” touched you and set you free. They also had a “base.” That was the wall. And that’s where Tommy had his accident. He ran into the wall; face first, with the paper towel tube still in his mouth. He severed his tongue.

The accident left Tommy unable to use his tongue. And because he couldn’t use his tongue, talking was nearly impossible. However to communicate he made clicking noises and other unintelligible sounds for nearly six weeks while he healed.

As a result, Tommy lisped and stuttered a lot. He also drooled excessively. And since children will be children, Tommy was teased. They called him names like “Baby Drool,” “Clicker,” and “Slobber Boy.” But the worst nickname was “Tongue-Tied Tommy.” That name stuck with him through grade school and part of high school, even though he had overcome being tongue-tied by the time he was a teenager. There were even times when he would fight at the drop of a hat over this nickname. But soon Tommy came to ignore it. And although it bothered him inside, he refused to let it show

Early in his sixth-grade year, a new girl arrived. Her name was Christine. She wore different clothes, said odd things, and had glasses that were quite thick. The kids teased and tormented her until she would start crying. Tommy disliked her too. Not because she was different, but rather because he could see himself in her. And he hated himself for it.

One day, after someone had put gum in Christine’s hair, she nearly had to have it completely cut off. So she wore a silly-looking hat to hide her lack of hair. While in the classroom she had to remove it and someone stole it. She cried for most of the day and Tommy felt sad for her as they continued to torment her. But Tommy was secretly happy for himself because they weren’t picking on him.

Near the end of the school year, Tommy’s class went on a field trip. It was more like a picnic. Each kid had a sack lunch and Tommy had brought along his new compass. And this was going to be his first opportunity to use it. So he could hardly wait.

The first thing everyone would have to do was hike to the picnic area. It was only a mile or so long, but to sixth graders, it was as exciting as climbing Mt. Everest. Along the way, a couple of kids stole Christine’s lunch and refused to give it back.

Once there the two culprits divided it out among themselves. They planned to eat it. That’s when Tommy had an unusual idea. He would trade his compass for her lunch because one of the two was interested in it earlier that morning.

They jumped at the idea and the exchange was made. Christine had her lunch back. They had Tommy’s compass. And Tommy was empty-handed.

Fortunately, Tommy had witnessed the entire transaction and she was able to retrieve his prized compass for him. Suddenly Christine had her lunch. Tommy had his compass and they had trouble.

A STRANGER IN THE HOUSE

Marcy had a fever that Sunday morning. So Mom decided it would be okay for the three-year-old to stay home. Grandpa said he was going to stay home too. He would watch over his youngest granddaughter.

Grandpa had lived with the family since before Helen had been born five years earlier. And Marcy knew Grandpa with his long graying beard.

Usually, the entire family would pile into the oldest station wagon in the world and they would all go to church. But Grandpa said he didn’t want to go. “Don’t feel like visiting’ with the Lord at home, today.” He told Dad.

After everyone had gone, except for Marcy, Grandpa set out to chop off his long gray beard. He had been toying with the idea ever since Widow Farmer said he would look younger without it. Grandpa was a widower and he had taken a shine to Widow Farmer.

Anyway, he chopped off his beard. Then he soaped up his face with its course stubble and took the straight edge to it.

The first two swipes went fairly well. The third made him flinch a little though. Grandpa was not used to shaving. He hadn’t done anything to his beard in the last nine years but comb it. He figured that once a man learned how to shave he would never forget.

After the last stroke was passed over his face

Grandpa stepped back from the reflecting glass and saw a new man. Widow Farmer was right. He did look younger.

He heard Marcy stirring in the room next to the bathroom as he wiped his face clean. He opened the adjoining door and stepped out into the hallway. There he came face to face with Marcy.

Marcy screamed, turned, and ran around the corner and down the stairs. Grandpa just about jumped out of his skin from the fright Marcy had given him. He could hear her screaming still as he took off after her.

Grandpa finally caught her. She struggled hard against his ever-tightening grip. Marcy could not get loose from him. Then like a wild wolf pup, she turned on Grandpa and bit him on his forearm.

Grandpa jerked his arm back in reaction and then yelped out in pain. Marcy was off and running again. As she ran from Grandpa she screamed like she was being murdered.

It went like this all morning long. Marcy screamed and ran throughout the house as Grandpa tried to catch her. Soon Grandpa was tuckered out. He sat down in his rocker to rest.

While he sat there in his chair, he thought about his granddaughter. He wondered why she was acting so strange. “Could it be the fever?” He asked himself. Then it occurred to him that without his beard, Marcy had no earthly idea who the stranger was chasing her through the house.

THE BIG QUESTION

There are times when you’re growing up that you need to ask fundamental questions about the mysteries of life like: How come is the sky is blue; the grass is green; water clear?

Tommy never stopped asking questions. Tommy liked to ask them. He had made a game of asking questions in some instances. For example, his seventh-grade teacher could never resist a good question. He led the class in asking Mr. Brown questions about his life for an entire week before he figured out that Tommy was trying to avoid world history lessons.

The opportunity to attend Catholic school came later that same year. The one great difference between religion-sponsored education and public-sponsored education is the separation of church and state. Otherwise, it is nearly the same. Tommy excelled in asking questions at St. Joseph’s, especially during Catholic studies.

On one occasion, the class had a very special guest, the Arch Bishop of the Diocese. He came from Santa Rosa. He engaged the students in an enlightening sermon about sin and eternal damnation.

The class sat there and quietly listened as the Bishop walked about the room and spoke. He even walked past Tommy and laid his hand on his shoulder. A bond had developed between them. Tommy knew he could ask the Bishop anything.

When the Bishop finished speaking, he asked for questions. He wanted to hear how well the class had been paying attention to him and their Catholic studies. Tommy already knew that he could ask him anything, so he raised his hand.

After standing up and clearing his throat, Tommy asked, “If Jesus spent three days in Hell for all the sins of the world and for all men not yet born, how long the average person could expect to be in Hell for living a life of sin for only eight years? The Archbishop of the Diocese, who came from Santa Rosa, just stood there with his mouth wide open.

That must have been the “big” question. Mother Superior had Tommy by the ear and down the hallway in less than thirty seconds and Father McKay was close on their heels. And for the next half hour, Tommy sat in the nurse’s office. Soon afterward Dad came to get him and by the next week, he was back in public school.

 

TO LIVE ON THE EDGE

Uncle shook his head sideways and asked, “Any idea where the hell they could be?” Then he clucked his tongue and his young gelding moved forward onto the trail.

Tommy followed along behind him and said nothing. He had long come to realize that his Uncle was asking himself more than anyone else a question. The way Tommy figured it, talking aloud and asking questions was one of Uncle’s many ways of thinking.

They had been in the saddle before sunup

having passed under the shadow of Irish Mountain of the South Fork Range. It was spring roundup and the hunt for the final few beeves in the redwoods and surrounding hills was on.

Tommy was tickled and slightly afraid when his Uncle looked directly and said “Saddle Cracker up. You’re coming with me.” They were moving south through their uncle’s grazing rights. The fine grass showed its tender shoots as they paused to give their horses a breather just beyond Lemonade Springs.

“I got a feeling they cut across the Mad on us,” Uncle commented. “There isn’t a sign to cut anywhere over here.” Tommy said nothing while lying stretched out beneath the shade of a madrone tree.

A few later minutes they were back in the saddle, cutting west towards the Mad River. “Best get set to cross,” Uncle ordered.

Both riders paused long enough to pull off their boots and tie them around their necks using their bandanas. As they continued toward the river Tommy loosened his pistol belt and pulled it off. He draped it over his neck as well making certain to double-check the thumb loop.

The rush of the Mad River could be heard long before it could be seen. The creaking of saddle leather and horse hooves in the soft earth mixed with the activity of the mountain stream made Tommy’s’ heart race with anticipation.

River crossing had always been a dangerous part of the range hands occupation. No cowboy ever wanted to cross a swollen, fast-moving, deep, and cold river.

“Remember to hang on,” Uncle shouted back as he urged his mount into the brisk waters.

Tommy reached back and grabbed a handful of Cracker’s tail hair. The old mare’s ears laid down momentarily as if she realized what she was about to be asked to do.

Uncle had explained once that Oklahoma and Texas cowboys always grabbed onto their horses’ tails as they crossed a river. That way if the rider became unseated from the ‘hurricane deck’, the horse would drag him to the bank. And if the unthinkable happened and the horse should drown, then the cowhand would have a ready-made flotation device because horses never sink directly.

Neither event occurred as both horse and rider climbed the river bank further north than where they started. Uncle stopped to put his boots on and so did Tommy. If Uncle were cold, he certainly didn’t show it and Tommy knew he best not say anything either though his body shivered involuntarily and violently.

It was a little before noon and the midday sun soon dried both range-riders. They stopped at Cherry Glade Creek to stretch, eat, and rest the horses. They were determined to ride until after sundown if necessary.

The coffee was strong and hot as Tommy lifted it to his lips. It warmed him and gave him energy. He swallowed the last of the cold biscuits and honey then downed the last bit of coffee.

“We ought to get a move on, Uncle,” Tommy said without realizing. He felt his heart sink into his stomach because it sounded as if he had just given his Uncle a command.

Uncle looked up and smiled then chuckled a little bit. “Okay, buckaroo, let’s get saddled up.” Uncle laughed aloud once again.

They turned their mounts in a northwesterly direction, riding for half an hour. That was when Uncle stopped and leaned way over to look at the ground. Tommy moved closer to have a look. He could see very little, other than where the ground was chewed up.

“At least five of them,” Uncle said. Then he pointed up into the hills, “This way.”

Leaving the banks of the Mad River behind them, they pushed their horses deeper and deeper into the woods. This was dangerous for both man and beast as this is where people tended to live on the edge of civility.

A good saddle horse could easily be mistaken for a mule deer and its rider as a jumper onto a mining claim or trespasser into a marijuana field. For this reason, both riders pulled out their bright red wild rags, and tied them loosely around their necks, to make certain they could be seen.

The tracks led deeper and higher into the hills. Many of the trails were dim as Tommy’s Grandpa was fond of saying. In more than one case, they had to make their path up a grassy or moss-covered slope.

Uncle leaned over and followed the tracks as the two pushed on. The tracks led into a small stand of timber.

There in a clearing stood a man and a woman. They had built a makeshift corral and had rounded up seven strays. They were also working on field dressing one of the steers.

The woman saw them first as they rode into the clearing. She looked frightened as she pointed at the man with a bloodied arm and said, “It was his idea.” The man looked up and stepped straight for his rifle.

Tommy saw his action and already had his pistol in hand. The double click of the hammer caused the man to pause in his reach. Uncle rode up and picked the riffle up from the fence post and proceeded to empty the shells from its chamber. He flung the brass cartridges as far away as he could.

“Son of a…” the man said in a barely audible voice.

Then Uncle spoke, “I’d jus’ stand right there, both of ya or my young Ramrod will punch holes in both your souls.” Neither one moved.

Tommy was momentarily distracted by the term ‘Ramrod.’ That meant ‘Boss’ and that his Uncle viewed him as an equal in this ugly affair.

The man looked up at Uncle and stated, “I didn’t think anybody would be up here looking for these cows.”

“Well, you thought wrong,” Uncle replied. Then he said, “Now, ma’am if you’d be kind enough to open that gate and light a shuck under them cattle, I’d much appreciate it.”

She did as she was asked. Then she moved quickly over to a wad of blankets that appeared to be tossed on the ground. Tommy trained his pistol on her until she pulled out a baby that began to cry. He holstered his gun, feeling ashamed of himself.

Uncle raised his right hand to the brim of his hat and said, “Ma’am” as he nodded his head. Then he looked at the man then the half-butchered cow and the nearly starved cow still tied to the far side of the makeshift corral, “Keep the darn thing and that one too. It seems you need it more than me.”

Then taking no chances, he tosses the once-loaded rifle into the brush, beyond the corral. Without another word he clicked his tongue and dashed off into the woods the way he had come, his young Ramrod hard at his side.

3 O’CLOCK FIGHT

Tommy was sitting in the bleachers enjoying what was left of the basketball game when Mr. Ferguson climbed up the seats and sat down beside him. It was unusual for the track coach to do such a thing and Tommy knew it. It couldn’t mean good news.

“I got to ask,” the coach started, “did you give out any free tickets tonight?” He was talking about the fact that Tommy had been part of the group that had worked the ticket window collecting ticket receipts for tonight’s varsity basketball game.

Tommy frowned at the older man and answered, “No!”

“Okay then, did you accidentally on purpose put any money in your pockets?” Mr. Ferguson asked.

Again Tommy answered him, “No!” Then he asked, “Why, is money missing?”

“Yes,” responded Mr. Ferguson, “About two hundred dollars.” With that, the coach got up and left the bleachers. He walked out of the stands, never looking back at Tommy. The young man looked over at his girlfriend, Debbie who shook her head sideways.

The following Monday, word had spread throughout Del Norte High that Tommy had stolen money from the sales of the basketball tickets. This made him a sudden target of every athlete in the school. It was a constant barrage of words that soon escalated into a pushing match in Senior Hall.

This was between Tommy and Steve who had confronted Tommy in the locker room just before lunchtime. The war of words continued until it grew into an all-out argument. Finally, the argument became a shoving match in the hallway just as the lunch bell rang.

“You’re a thief,” Steve said.

“Prove it,” replied Tommy, “I wasn’t the only one working the booth and there were two teachers there too.”

Steve stood there for a few seconds. It was obvious to Tommy that he hadn’t thought of that and the revelation that a teacher could be just as guilty as a student was even more provoking. Steve put his fists up as if he were prepared to fight. “My girlfriend was in that booth last night,” he finally said, “are you saying she’s a thief.”

Tommy smiled, “You should go ask her yourself.” Suddenly he found himself sidestepping a fist. Steve was bigger and he telegraphed his punches. Tommy just pushed him onto the ground and stepped away. Then he said, “You don’t want to do this, Steve.”

Steve slowly got to his feet. He looked at Tommy and ordered, “Yeah, after school behind the dugout.” With that he walked away, an entire group of kids following behind him.

It was at that moment that Tommy felt very alone. He knew that he couldn’t go to any of the school administrators or teachers. He felt certain that they too must all think he stole the money as well. And he found he didn’t have anyone backing him up in the way of students or friends as they seemed to have disappeared.

The clock moved slower than ever from lunchtime until school let out. Tommy walked down to the locker room and changed into his gym clothes. “No sense in trashing my regular clothes,” he told himself. Then he walked down to the dugout.

He was surprised to see the number of people milling about, waiting to see if the two contestants would show up and if they did, would they fight. Tommy was there just seconds ahead of Steve. They met in the middle of a circle formed by a crowd of onlookers.

The two combatants moved slowly around, sizing the other up. Steve had a taste of what Tommy was capable of and did not want to fall victim to another embarrassing event such as the one in the hallway. He waited for Tommy to stop and then he would strike.

Tommy halted intending to pivot. He discovered that he had miscalculated

Steve’s reach when he found himself sprawled on the ground with a bloody nose. He scrambled to get to his feet but his head was hazy and he found his body heavy. Steve was on him, kicking and stomping him without mercy.

Tommy rolled away from him as far as the crowd would allow him. He was able to get to his feet, but just barely as Steve rushed him with both fists. They slammed into his head and face with brutal force nearly knocking him off his feet again.

These blows though were not half as bad as the first one, which laid him flat on his back and caused his nose to bleed. He had regained his composure amid the hail of punches enough to start blocking and then counter-punching. His first shot surprised Steve so much that the senior had to back up 3 or 4 steps from the freshman.

Tommy moved forward and sideways, throwing punches at the older kid’s body. They landed solidly and they were causing pain as Steve let out gasps for air each time he was struck. Then without warning, Tommy decided it was time to use his secret weapon.

He spun around from his right to his left, unleashing a back-fist punch that struck Steve on the side of his head so hard that even the crowd heard his jaw snap shut. Tommy continued to attack the stunned fighter. He struck with a swift kick to the other side of Steve’s head.

This blow sent him crashing to the ground. Tommy jumped on him and struck the older boy in the face with both fists several times until his eyes were swollen, his nose bled and his lips were cut open. Only then did Tommy stop beating on him.

Steve lay on the ground unmoving as Tommy rose and backed away. The crowd that had gathered around to see the fight had become quiet. Tommy remained still, waiting for Steve to move and get up.

It was only a few seconds, but Steve did sit up. He looked around and then at Tommy. Tommy had his fists raised. “Do you want more?” he asked.

Steve mumbled through his swelled-up lips, “No.”

“Good.” Tommy turned and started to walk back towards the school. He paused and added, “And by the way Steve, I didn’t steal anything!” He said it loud enough so everyone could hear him.

The following day of school as Tommy was walking down the hallway, Steve stepped in front of him. He had a large group of kids with him and Tommy figured there was a good chance that he was about to get jumped. Instead, Steve handed him two one-hundred-dollar bills. “It was my girlfriend,” he said.

Tommy handed them back. “I don’t want them,” he said, “take them to the office.” With that Tommy continued walking down the hallway, turning into the library. It was the last he ever wanted to hear about the money and he never volunteered to work the ticket booth again.

GRANDPA’S RODENT PROBLEM

Grandpa had a rodent problem; namely, gophers everywhere in his yard. He was so proud of his yard, but the gophers did not know this. If they had, they would have stayed away.

Now Grandpa was getting pretty upset with the gophers and he set about trying to chase, catch, or kill them anyway he could. He tried putting golf balls in their holes. He tried placing rattraps in them at night.

Those never did work except for the time one caught Grandpa’s black lab, Barney on the nose. Grandpa just about woke the entire neighborhood chasing him around. Barney sure looked funny with that rattrap on the end of his nose. Barney was never quite right after that. If Grandpa snapped a toothpick in half, Barney would head for the high country.

The traps did not work and plugging up their holes did not work either. Grandpa was just about to give up when the next-door neighbor, Mr. Breedon gave him a great idea. Mr. Breedon had read about a way to get rid of gophers back when he was twenty.

The instructions were simple. Mr. Breedon told Grandpa to get a pint of gasoline and a gallon of water, then pour the water down the gopher hole and let it soak in a little. After that Grandpa was told to pour the gasoline down the same hole. All that needed to be done after that was to light the gopher hole on fire. “The gasoline is going to go further down the hole since gas and water don’t mix, Greg.” Mr. Breedon finished.

Grandpa understood. He was going to burn the gophers out.

Grandpa grabbed his walking stick and left the gate for the gas station down the road. He returned home with a borrowed five-gallon can full of gasoline. Then he went straight to work pulling his garden hose out running it down a gopher hole and then turned on the water. He could hear the water gushing down deep inside the ground.

Then Grandpa went inside to have his lunch.

After lunch, Grandpa went out to his tool shed and rummaged around until he found the funnel he used for filling John Popper. John Popper was his old yellow and red tractor that sat in the dairy barn in the pasture.

Grandpa turned off the water and pulled the hose out of the gopher hole. He replaced it with the funnel. Then he slowly poured the gasoline down the hole. The smell of gas was everywhere.

Then he reached deep down into the pocket of his bibbers and pulled out his pipe matches. Grandpa lit it and dropped it into the hole. Nothing happened as Grandpa stood there with both hands in his pockets. He stared at the gopher hole. Still, nothing happened.

Grandpa sighed muttered a couple of cuss words to himself and walked over to the first step of the porch. Barney sat next to him. The dog cocked his head and looked at Grandpa then back at the hole wondering what his master was up to.

Suddenly, Barney’s ears perked up and his eyes grew wide. Then he bolted as a sharp whining noise started. It turned into a shrill whistle and Barney could be heard howling as he headed for the high country.

Ka-pow! Ka-pow! Ka-pow! Three gopher holes erupted into flame, spitting debris everywhere; fiery chunks of old corncobs, twigs, and rock came pouring out of the ground.

There was more whistling and whining. Grandpa thought about following Barney to the high country. But he couldn’t because his beautiful yard was exploding with hot gopher gatherings and burning gopher holes.

Grandpa stomped on one patch of fire after another. He ran from one popping gopher hole to the next. He cussed a blue streak as each new hole spewed forth more fire, smoke, and rubble.

Then as suddenly as it started, it stopped. Grandpa was exhausted and confused. Barney was clear to Oregon by then and the yard was a green and brown patch quilt mess.

Then the bone-chilling whine started in again. Ka-pow!

Grandpa was off and stomping. He had never seen a rose explode before; its red petals scattering in the smoky air and landing only to be blown into the air again. This went on from the afternoon until early evening.

That night Grandpa sat on the top step of his porch and watched the sunset. He looked over at Barney, who sat very nervously by his side, sighed heavily, and shook his head. He wasn’t upset over destroying his yard. He was disgusted that he didn’t have a single gopher to show for all his trouble.

The following day Grandpa left early. He wandered over to Mr. Breedon’s ranch. He wanted to tell him about what happened, but as he entered the gate Grandpa noticed a gopher hole…

MOURNING OLD JOE

“Don’t know how I done it,” the Coosie said out loud to no one in particular. He shook his head and let out a long sigh.

“Its okay Slim,” one of the young buckaroos commented. They had all heard it before and they didn’t want to hear it again. They all sat around the campfire or near the chuck wagon eating the beans and warm biscuits that the Coosie had served.

“I know it’s only been a couple of days since we ain’t seen Old Joe,” said the Coosie. “But it sure seems longer,” he added. He poked a long branch into the fire, stirring up the orange ambers. The firelight danced yellow and red in his nearly white beard.

He was the

oldest man there. That was no doubt. And he proved it. He could remember things about the lay of the land that some of the young ones never knew. He could read nearly three hundred different brands without pause and he could make a mean son-of-a-gun-stew. He had been the outfits’ cook for the last eighteen years.

Now old age seemed to be creeping up on him. And he didn’t like it one little bit. His memory seemed to be failing him and the hands knew it. Worse yet, so did the jigger-boss. The Coosie had been seeing it in Reds’ eyes for the last couple of days.

The Coosie rose off his haunches grabbed a few more pieces of wood and tossed them on top of the fire. The flames danced back to greater life. The Coosie sighed again.

He turned and looked south. “Where in the devil is that Houlihan?” he asked. He’d sent Smitty back by hoss the moment he realized that Old Joe was missing. The way the Coosie figured it, the button should have been back by now.

The night wranglers could be heard catching up their mounts and saddling them. They had a two-hour watch ahead. The Coosie was certain that they missed Old Joe’s company by now. He breathed another sigh and shook his head. He felt full of grief over the loss of Old Joe.

There was work still needing to be done, so the Coosie set about doing it. He moved the wagon-tongue around till it pointed to the North Star. Then he set about washing up the tinware in the bucket. He hoped as he worked that the young Houlihan would be back before the camp pulled freight. Everyone was miserable without Old Joe.

The Coosie could imagine the aroma of Old Joe as he poured the piping hot liquid into a cup. “Want another cup of Joe?” a voice asked inside his head.

The room was silent as the old man finished up his story. Then came a little voice, “Is that true?” one of the nine grandchildren asked Grandpa Smith.

He pulled a couple of times on his pipe and then answered, “Yep.” He blew out a thick cloud of blue smoke and then added, “I know it to be true as I was the young Houlihan that rode all day and night to fetch the missing bag of coffee beans.”

“Okay,” a woman’s voice came. “It’s time for bed.”

“Ahhh,” responded all nine grandchildren at once.

THE HABIT

“Now I’m trusting you two with this chore,” he said to the boys. “Don’t let me down.” With that, he climbed into the cab of his pick-up and drove off. He was nothing but a trail of dust before either boy moved.

They looked at each other and then around at the camp with its little line shack and barn. They could hardly believe their luck. Their uncle and father had left them in charge of the small spread for the next two weeks. It was only a couple of acres, but it felt like all of Texas to them.

“Yippee!” cried out Tommy as he flung his cowboy hat into the air. His Uncle had just left him and his cousin Stevie to their own devices for the next fourteen days. It was like summer camp without the adults. He knew that they had chores to do like feed and wash the eight mules. He also knew that they had to muck out the stalls and exercise each animal, but that was nothing compared to being left on their own.

“Let’s grab our fishing’ poles,” Stevie called out as he headed for the line shack.

After a couple of hours of teasing the fish with drowned worms, the two boys set about completing their nightly chores. Each mucked out their half of the barn. Then they worked together to grain and hay each animal’s stall. Lastly, they threw back the doors to the barn, and in came the mules by themselves. “See, no herding,” Stevie said. Then he added, “Just open the doors and add the mules. Easy.”

This went on for three days. The routine was quickly becoming monotonous and they started looking for other ways to entertain themselves.

That’s when Stevie came up with the idea. He climbed up on the doorframe with a pitchfork. And as each of the eight mules entered the barn he would lightly poke it in the rump. Both boys laughed as the mules scurried after the tines touched them.

The fourth day was more of the same routine. A little fishing, mucking, and graining followed by the delight of poking the mules in the rear end. Stevie and Tommy laughed at it over their supper of trout that evening.

The sixth day was more of the same. However, Stevie had grown bored with getting on the doorframe and lightly touching the stubborn, flop-eared beasts in the buttock. Then they roared with laughter.

“Did ya see that?” Tommy said. Stevie was too busy laughing at the sight. Each mule lowered itself down so that its belly nearly touched the ground. Each one was avoiding being poked in the backside. They did this without being prompted.

The same thing happened the next day and the next much to the delight of the two young men.

“You know,” Stevie stated, “my Dad’s going to beat us to death when he sees this.” It was a sobering thought that neither one had bothered to think of the last couple of days.

Before they knew it, the two weeks of running the line camp were up. They could see the stream of dust lifting high into the air as the pick-up approached. It was early in the morning and all eight mules were out in the holding pen being run through their paces as the truck pulled to a stop.

Uncle got out of the truck and greeted both boys. “How’s it going’?” He asked. “Great,” was the resounding response. With that, he headed for the shack.

He seemed pleasantly surprised at the general upkeep that the two young men had performed. The loose slat on the outhouse was nailed down and the barbwire fence was re-hung and there was even a mess of fish in the cooler waiting for a nighttime meal.

“You boys done alright by yourselves.” Uncle finally said. This made both boys smile widely. They still had yet to tell him about the mules and the doorway. They agreed that they would wait until later when they put the mules in the barn to say anything. Besides Stevie had already concocted a story for when the time came.

Without any warning, Uncle walked over to the barn and threw back both doors. The mules responded to this by turning and marching single file towards the door. That’s when Stevie spoke up, “Dad, there was an old owl in the barn about a week ago…” His voice trailed off.

His father wasn’t listening anyway. He was too busy standing near the barn door watching with his mouth agape as each mule belly-crawled its way into the barn. “What in the world did ya do to my mules?” Uncle exploded.

“Nothing,” replied Tommy.

Stevie continued with his concoction, “We think it was an old hoot owl that got them spooked and ducking down like that.”

Meanwhile, his father stood there with a very puzzled expression on his face, wiping his forehead with a blue bandana. “I’ve never seen anything like that,” he said mostly to himself. Tommy and Stevie just looked at each other.

It was very quiet that evening during supper. Uncle was busy worrying about how to break the mules of their newfound habit and the two boys were busy worrying that the older man would find out what they had done to cause it.

DARK SHADOWS

“That danged washer is broke down again,” Mom said over the phone to Dad. He was working at the Requa Air Force Station. Earlier that year he had been able to get permission from the Base Commander to use the station’s laundry facilities.

A few minutes later Dad called back. Mom lifted the receiver from its cradle and answered. “Sorry,” Dad started, “the laundry facilities are out of order up here as well.” After a few more minutes of conversation, they hung up one from the other.

“Tommy, Adam,” Mom yelled out. Both of the boys were in their bedroom when she called. They rushed to her immediately. “I’m going to need your help with the laundry.” She picked up the telephone and called Camp Marigold to see if they could use their washing machines.

Camp Marigold was just over the fence in the backyard. It was an RV park during the summer and not much of anything else during the winter. It was long past summer and using their laundry room would prove to be no problem.

The plan was to take the laundry over and wash it. Then they would haul it back over the fence and dry it. Their dryer was still working. After a week with four children and two adults, there were fourteen piles of dirty clothes laid out in masses on the floor.

Adam looked at Tommy and said, “There goes our day.” They both sighed because each knew the younger brother was right.

There were only two washers available in the campground’s laundry room. And each took nearly twice the time to wash as their washer did at home. The going was slow and the coins in their pockets burned even slower. However, they continued to climb back and forth over the fence, each with a load of laundry in tow.

They were down to their last three loads of laundry at sunset. The summertime day had grown into a winter-like evening. Finally, the back porch light was turned on.

The yellow glow from the single bulb cast long shadows towards the fence. There were two fences. Theirs was set higher by two feet with a foot-and-a-half gap to the lower fence built by the owner of Camp Marigold.

All that day Adam and Tommy had climbed over their fence and down to theirs and finally to the ground. Then they climbed up the camp’s fence and then higher yet over theirs then down into their backyard.

After dark there was very little lighting on the Camp’s side of the fence. And from behind the top of the higher fence to about ten feet out on the Camp’s side, there was no light at all. It was pitch dark.

Having noticed this, Tommy set about with a devious plan. He would wait for Adam to start climbing the fence and then he would scare him. Tommy chuckled to himself, for the very thought caused an image in his brain. He saw himself reaching out into the pitch-blackness and touching his younger brother on the shoulder.

And even though he knew he would not be able to see his brother’s face, he imagined the frightened wideness of his eyes. He imagined his inability to scream as panic choked off any sound he would have started to make. Meanwhile, he could see Adam running in place from fear.

He crouched down in the darkness, between the light of the porch and the shadow of the fence. Tommy sat and waited.

Suddenly Adam appeared from the corner of the old building they sat near. He approached the fence. He set the basket full of wet, clean laundry on the top rail of the Camp’s fence and proceeded to climb up it.

That’s when his older brother reached out and grabbed his shoulder and in his scariest voice, half whisper and half growled, “Little boy!” Adam’s body stiffened at the touch and unleashed at the sound of the voice.

The older brother could see nothing of the scared brother’s face or body. The darkness blanketed everything, including the lightning-swift right fist Adam hurled at the sound of the voice. Adam was on target and Tommy never saw it coming. He had punched him squarely in the nose.

Tommy fell backward as Adam clamored over the fence. The basket of wet, clean clothes toppled from the fence rail and landed in the mid-section of the wounded boy. He gasped for air and could only breathe through his mouth.

He lay there for a few seconds in the dew-heavy grass, beneath the apple tree, next to the old building, by the fence. Tommy awakened to the stabbing pain of a beam of light shining in his eyes. He tried to lift himself, however, he could only raise on his elbow, his head heavy and swimming with confusion.

Dad had a flashlight. He was looking down at Tommy from the top of the fence. He quickly climbed over and down to be next to the boy as he lay on the ground. Tommy leaned back, hoping that Dad would pity him and the sorrowful state he was in.

“Cripes! I think you broke his nose, Adam!” Dad yelled up towards the fence. Adam’s silhouette rose slowly from beyond the fence at that moment.

“Well, he shouldn’t have scared me like that,” he said in his defense. Then he added, “I didn’t know it was Tommy.”

Dad helped Tommy sit up and then eventually stand up. He felt sick to his stomach and his legs were weak. “The only reason I don’t give you a whipping’ is ‘because your brother already done it for me,” Dad said.

Tommy thought to himself, “I wish I could have taken a trip to the wood shed.” He would have preferred that over being beaten to the ground with a single punch to the face from his kid brother.

His mother was less sympathetic. After cleaning him up, she sent him back out to finish the wash by himself. That included re-washing the wet, clean load of laundry that had fallen on top of him. The load he managed to bleed all over.

AN EGG FOR AN EGG

Tommy and Adam watched as the cruiser turned off Highway 101 and rounded the corner at Azalea Lane. It was Sheriff Deputy Joel Barneburg. They were lying in wait for his appearance.

Quickly they picked up the boxes they had between them. As the cruiser made the corner and disappeared behind Mrs. Keating’s home the two boys dashed across the road and into a stand of pine trees.

Concealed in the pines, they felt safe. The sun had set a beautiful summer evening and Redwood Drive was lit by the glow of a single mercury vapor lamp on the far side of the street next to the Wallace’s’ home. Only the fleeting shadows of bats cut through the light as they hunted their dinner. The only other light was the one cut into the darkness by Deputy Barneburg’s patrol car. Its two single beams of yellowed light cast themselves down on the darkness of the asphalt of the subdivision.

They sat and watched him as he rounded the corner near the Josten’s. Then drove passed Judge Hoppers’ home and next to the Myers. He finally drove past the porch light of Mr. And Mrs. Champion’s home. He stopped momentarily at the corner near the Morgan’s.

Deputy Barneburg turned right and drove into the parking lot of the Methodist Church with its darkened stained glass windows. His spotlight searched for lurking danger along the red metal doors of the long-since closed Bazards’ Store and former post office. Then he turned back onto Redwood Drive and towards the two concealed boys.

Hidden in their hiding spot was a secret weapon. Tommy and Adam had worked on it until it was perfect. It was a catapult capable of delivering thirty-six eggs in one launch.

The brothers’ first victim was Deputy Joel Barneburg. When he drove his vehicle within range, Adam let the catapult go. Thirty-six eggs were airborne and headed towards his cruiser.

The accuracy astonished them. His car was plastered with raw egg from the hood to the back door. Quickly they reloaded for a second shot.

By this time Joel was standing halfway out of his car. He was trying to figure out where all the eggs had come from and so quickly.

The second launch was set to go and they released them. Again Tommy and Adam scored a direct hit. This time it included the deputy himself.

“You little son of a …” he called out as he ducked back into his cruiser and slammed the door behind him. The lights on top of his car came on and he sped away. Tommy and Adam laughed out loud.

The two brothers grabbed their handmade catapult and the remaining eggs and crouched low. They ran to Mrs. Keating’s fence and trotted their way along it and back to Redwood Drive. Peeking over the fence they made certain the coast was clear and then dashed across the street and to the safety of their backyard.

About two months later, long after Tommy and Adam had put the egging of Deputy Barneburg behind us, they were playing one game or another in the vacant field next to the Wallaces. It was another beautiful summer evening. The sun had set and only the stars shone along with that single mercury vapor lamp.

Tommy and Adam were searching for blackberries, long overripe and perfect for eating when the attack commenced. Before they knew it each of them was covered in a sticky slime that smelled of putrid rot. They were the victims of a rotten egg attack.

They tried to run but all retreat was cut off. On one side and behind them were the thickened blackberry brambles. In front, was their attacker who threw eggs with pinpoint accuracy and laughed at each direct hit.

When it was over Tommy and Adam just stood there. They were stunned to discover that their attacker was none other than Sheriff Deputy Joel Barneburg. He marched the two errant boys home and he laughed all the way.

The ultimate humiliation of their defeat was having to strip down to their skivvies to be hosed off. Deputy Barneburg lectured them as he gleefully drenched the brothers from head to toe for nearly half an hour.

AN ARRESTING SITUATION

Click, click! Was the sound that the handcuff made as it dropped across his wrist. The man who was being cuffed did not mind. He was not paying attention to the child with the cuff. The man was in the middle of a telephone conversation.

Tommy had found the handcuffs on his father’s nightstand. They were in the little black pouch made of leather webbing. To the three year old they look bright and shiny and just like toys.

He tried them on his own hands. Yet they were too small. They would fall off and land on the bed next to wait.

He wandered outside and onto the carport. He made the cuffs click some more as he pushed the movable part through the locking part.

He played that way for nearly a quarter-hour. Click, click, click. He also banged them off the smooth, gray concrete.

Meanwhile, Mom continued to cook and Dad continued to talk. Finally, Tommy could not stand it anymore. He had to make the handcuffs work. He looked around to see what he could find.

That’s when he discovered that the handcuffs would not come off once in place. He felt scared. He knew Dad would be mad at him for playing with the things he needed for work.

He also remembered that there was a small silver thing that Dad used to get them apart. They were put into the holes on the flat side of the cuff and turned. That would cause them to open.

The little boy went back inside through the screen door. He walked through the kitchen with its black linoleum tile with the cream and green specks in it. Mom continued to cook dinner.

He continued through the living room. He reached up and ran his hand along the brown chair that Dad always sat in as he made his way past it. He walked into Mom and Dad’s bedroom on his left.

Tommy picked up the black leather case and opened it up. He looked inside it and shook it upside down; nothing. He looked inside it again. The small silver thing was nowhere to be found. He looked at the bed where the cuffs first fell as he attempted to put them on. The small silver thing was not there.

Tommy turned and went back outside. He had to tell Dad about what he had done. So he rolled the tricycle into the kitchen and then into the living room where he parked it next to Dad and the big brown chair.

He tapped Dad on the arm and Dad kept talking on the telephone. Tommy tapped his arm again! “Tommy, I’m on the phone! Go play!” he said.

Tommy just sat there on the seat of his red and white three-wheeler. He had to tell Dad. Yet he had grown bored with waiting his turn.

As he sat there and sat there he started to notice the wrist of his Dad’s. It was hanging from the edge of the armrest. It was just one handcuff away.

Tommy reached over and picked up the silver cuff and slipped it around his father’s wrist. Click, click! Was the sound that the handcuff made as it dropped across his wrist. The telephone conversation ended there.

Suddenly the search was on to find the key. It was nowhere to be found. Dad took the tricycle apart after he called a couple of people.

Years later Tommy would find out that the handcuffs had to be removed down at the police station. And that after all the searching was over, the key, or the small silver thing as he remembered it was actually in his father’s watch pocket. No one ever thought to look there.

SHOOTING THE MOON

The early morning sunlight was bright and a slight breeze blew across the track as Tommy stepped on it. The rubbery surface felt good as his spikes dug in. “This is the big day,” Tommy thought to himself.

He had spent the last three summers working towards this day; an Olympic tryout.

Today he would run the one-hundred-yard dash against the fastest men in the world. He was one of them. At sixteen he was also the youngest.

“Well, open it up,” Dee Sullivan urged him. Tommy just stood there looking at the envelope with the five interlinked rings on it. Dee was taking great pride in her second star pupil. “Open it up, Tom,” she said again.

That snapped him out of his trance-like state and he pulled at the glued-down flap. Once the envelope was discarded the letter inside was revealed. Tom fumbled nervously to unfold it.

The letter was an invitation to participate in the open one-hundred-meter dash. Again Tommy just stood there, this time with his eyes wide and mouth hanging open.

Mrs. Sullivan smiled. She knew what it was all along. For the past two summers, she had pushed and trained him to levels he never thought he could achieve.

Suddenly he let out a scream and a whoop that caused everyone on the little high school field to stop what they were doing and look. What they saw was Tommy jumping up and down in long strides around the track. He looked as if he had springs attached as bound high in the air.

He laughed and he hollered as he continued to bounce around the other tracksters on Thuen Field.

“What’s going on,” someone asked. Dee smiled again, “Tommy just got his invite to Oregon State this summer.” “Isn’t that where they’re holding.” the person started to ask. She cut them off, “Yup.”

Training intensified. Tommy worked harder than ever. This was the most important meet of his life.

Every day he would run twenty-five wind sprints on the sands of Pebble Beach. Then he would set up the starting blocks and do twenty-five starts. He worked hard at putting his knees high and keeping his head low.

Tommy ran when it rained and against the gale winds that blew off of Whalers Rock. Then he would do more wind sprints.

Twice a week Dee Sullivan would take him up Highway 199 and along the Smith River to run a longer distance at a higher altitude in the Six River National Forest. Some days she would drop him off at Gasquet or Hiouchi. Other days it would be Patrick’s Creek or Washington Flat. Then she would drive ahead and Tommy would have to catch up to her.

Dee would eventually be found sitting in her Thunderbird reading a novel as Tommy came trotting in.

Finally, the big day came. The evening

before he left he spent one last evening at the Sullivan’s home. “This is it, Tommy,” she said as he got ready for bed. “I can’t do any more for you. It’s all up to you.” With that, Tommy crawled into bed and fell asleep. And just as planned Dad stopped by at six am for the trip to Eugene.

He and Dad talked very little about the track meet. They spoke more about hunting and fishing as well as the number of times they had traveled this same road as a family to visit Mom’s Dad in Salem. They spent a fitful night sleeping at a hotel. Tommy was ready first. He wanted to get down to the track.

“Runners, remove your sweats, “the starter said. Tommy was on the far outside lane in number eight. He was fighting off the nervousness he felt in his stomach. The crowds were more than Tommy had ever seen. The buzz they made from their constant talking was like nothing Tommy had ever prepared for. The runners moved forward to remove their sweats. Tommy did likewise and a burst of laughter came from behind him. His sweats were at his knees when he suddenly realized what had happened. Tommy dropped to the ground and lay on his side as he struggled to pull his sweats up.

Later that afternoon he and his Dad stopped in to a diner for a late lunch. The waitress came over and took their order.

As she brought it to them she asked, ”Ain’t you the one who shot the moon in Eugene?”

Blushing a deep red, Tommy answered, “Yes.”

“Don’t worry, honey, could a happened to anyone,” she said,” Besides you have a cute butt, anyway.”

THE NOTE

At the urging of Mom, Tommy took the job that was being offered to him. He had protested that he didn’t want to pull weeds for Mr. Champion. But he got up early that Saturday morning trudged his way across the open fields and knocked on the old man’s door.

Mrs. Champion opened the door to the home. “Come in Tommy,” she said with a smile. He did as he was directed after he wiped his feet on the mat. “Andrew, uh… Mr. Champion, will be out in a moment,” she continued.

Tommy stood there saying nothing. He felt uncomfortable and did not want to be there. He was going over what he planned to say to Mr. Champion the moment he saw him. He was going to tell him that he did not want to do any yard work for him, he was only there because his Dad had volunteered his time. Tommy knew in his heart he would much rather go up into the woods to scout around.

Mr. Champion appeared from the hallway. He was straightening his right suspender onto his shoulder. H looked down at the small-framed boy and said, “You ready to work, son?”

“Yes Sir,” Tommy replied. He wanted to kick himself because he had forgotten what he most wanted to say in that instant. Tommy followed the man through the kitchen past their yellow-topped dining table, down the three back steps, just outside the big sliding glass door, and into the backyard. It was a nice backyard. The grass was thick, full, and green. Along one edge was a fence with a row of roses next to it. On the other side was an open field big enough to play baseball in.

“Here’s what I want ya to do,” Mr. Champion started. “I want ya to pull up all the dandelions you can find. Get the roots and all. Here’s a butter knife.” Then he bent down and demonstrated to Tommy what he wanted done. “When you get finished with that just knock on this here door,” he concluded as he pointed at the sliding door. Tommy looked up at him and said, “Yes Sir.” As soon as Mr. Champion walked away he sighed heavily. “This is going to take me all day,” Tommy said to himself.

Three hours later, Tommy knocked on the back door. Mr. Champion came outside and looked around at his yard. “Not as good as I hoped, but it’s a fair start.” Tommy was stunned, to say the least. He just stood there looking at the old man.

Mr. Champion had both hands on his hips when he turned back to Tommy. “Now I want you to weed the flower bed over there.” He was pointing towards the fence and its massive wall of roses. “That shouldn’t take ya but half an hour,” he said, “If ya get on it.” Then he disappeared inside the sliding glass doorway.

Tommy sighed again. Nearly an hour later, Mr. Champion walked over to Tommy who was on his knees at the farthest end of the garden from the house. “What’s taken you so long, son?”

“There’re more weeds here than you thought,” was Tommy’s answer. Then he added, “Just about finished up with them.”

“Good,” was all the reply Mr. Champion made. He had turned around and was headed back to the house. Within minutes he returned with an old push mower. He shoved it along with his right hand and on his left he carried a fan rake. Tommy instantly felt a pit form in his stomach. He knew that his Saturday was ruined, as he would be spending the rest of it wrestling with the push mower and rake.

Mr. Champion stopped the mower next to where Tommy sat kneeling near the flowerbed. Tommy was still working in the weeds. Mr. Champion looked up and down the row of roses. “This is a fine job, Tommy, a fine job.” He smiled at the boy, then added, “The Mrs. has a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for ya once you get washed up.”

Tommy looked at the sliding glass door and then back at Mr. Champion. “No thank you. I’m not hungry,” Tommy heard himself saying. “Okay, suit yourself,” Mr. Champion said as he turned and walked inside.

By now it was nearly noon. Tommy could hear the other children in the neighborhood playing and yelling and having fun. Tommy wanted to be there with them, but instead, he was busy doing the work Mr. Champion did not want to do for himself.

Back and forth, Tommy pushed the mower all afternoon. He worked at lining the fresh-cut areas up with the uncut patches, making certain he had cut everything. Soon it became sort of a game, matching the uncut with the fresh cut.

He made a game of racking the clipping up as well. He started with six piles of cut grass and was working it into one pile. Mr. Champion had come outside to see the progress once or twice, but he had not come to Tommy with any more work needing to be done.

The sun was just touching the tall redwood trees of the Sage’s Riddles when Tommy brought the last smaller pile of clippings together with the large pile in the middle of the yard. He stopped and looked around at the entire expanse and thought, “I got it all done.”

He grabbed the mower and dragged it and the rake over to the back door. Tommy walked to the side door of the garage and saw the large garbage can. He picked it up and carried it over to the pile.

Mr. Champion met him halfway there. “Naw, I’ll get it tomorrow. That’ll go in the compost.” He nodded his head at the pile of grass. Then he grabbed the garbage can by the handle and said, “Go get washed up, it’s about time for supper and you got to get home.”

Tommy smiled at the thought of going home. He was hungry and he was tired. Plus he wanted to hear what Mom and Dad would have to say about how he spent this Saturday.

After he had finished washing himself off with the garden hose, he knocked on the back door. Mr. Champion came outside and stood on the bottom step. Tommy noticed how the old man didn’t seem so tall after all. He also was suddenly aware that Mr. Champion was much older than he thought.

Mr. Champion handed him an envelope. It was sealed. Then he held out his hand and Tommy grasped it and they shook. “You did a fine job, Tommy. Thank you.” Mr. Champion turned and went inside closing the sliding glass door.

Tommy walked back the way he came. He was tired and excited at the same time. He could not wait to open the envelope and see how much he had made. Rip! Inside were two one-dollar bills. Tommy grew angry. Two dollars for a whole day’s work! He cursed at the old man for being so cheap.

Then he noticed the piece of folded paper still tucked up inside the nearly crumpled envelope. Tommy pulled it out and unfolded it. It read: “Dear Tommy, Sorry I don’t have more for you. You were a real hard worker and I did not hear you complain once. My Mrs. has cancer and by you doing the yard work today, I had a chance to spend the day with her. Your friend, Dorsey Champion.”

The awful pit in Tommy’s stomach suddenly became a swollen lump in his throat. Suddenly Tommy felt ashamed of himself and he ran home the rest of the way, crying.

THE COP AND THE CUPCAKE

Mom had been busy in the kitchen all morning long. She was like that when it came to Thanksgiving dinner.

Dad lounged in front of the new color television set with Deputy Walt Woodstock as the kids ran around outside playing. Tommy sat on the swing set.

He was feeling a little melancholy as he had come to realize that this would be his last Thanksgiving at home before heading off for the service. He watched his father and the Deputy through the large sliding glass window as they discussed the football game on the TV.

The Deputy had come into their lives by way of the fact that Dad had been a police officer himself and knew that the Deputy was separated from his family. It was over 2,000 miles of loneliness that Dad saw in the deputy’s face and so he offered him a warm meal every night and a family to be around.

“Suppertime!” Mom called out the front door.

Abruptly the noise stopped and the sound of padded feet could be heard rushing up the walkway and into the house. Tommy followed suit. He was right behind Dad and the Deputy.

They all sat down at the table. Grace was offered and the platters of food passed around. Soon everyone was stuffed with turkey and potatoes with gravy. Each person had eaten more than their portion of stuffing and cranberry sauce and yams.

“That was delicious, ma’am,” the Deputy said to Mom.

She blushed and responded, “Why thank you, Walt.” Then she added, “Does anyone want dessert?”

It was as if nobody had eaten anything all day the way all six people at the table jumped at the idea of pumpkin pie and the other sweets

soon to be offered.

The excitement was interrupted though by Deputy Woodstock’s radio. It suddenly made a hideous tone that alerted him that he was needed by the department. He stood up, trying to politely excuse himself from the table.

“Would you like to take a plate with you?” Mom offered.

“Naw,” he said as he picked up his hat. “But I’ll take a couple of those cupcakes.”

He grabbed two and unwrapped one, shoving the entire cake into his mouth. He opened the door and headed towards his cruiser. The four children gathered around to watch him leave hoping to hear the siren and see the lights of the cruiser.

Without warning he stumbled and fell to his knees. He was there for only a second or two then got up. But it was long enough for the second to the oldest child, Adam to shout, “Walt’s fallen!”

Dad raced out to help him up and to make sure he was okay. Tommy was already there.

Walt looked at them and said, “I got to remember not to stuff my face like that.” He smiled got in his car and took off.

Dad and Tommy returned to the house to find Mom standing in the middle of the kitchen. She was as white as a sheet.

“What’s wrong, Hon?” Dad asked.

She held up one of the cupcakes and produced from it a bicentennial quarter. “I put one in each cupcake,” she said.

THE DECISION

Dad sat reading the evening paper. “The Eureka Times–Standard”. It only came in the evening. Mom was absorbed in her Agatha Christy novel. The two girls and Adam were outside playing. Tommy came walking down the hallway and sat down on the edge of the couch. He let a big sigh escape as he did so. Neither parent took notice. They both sat there busily reading to themselves.

Outside Tommy could hear the kids at play. He wished to himself that he was younger and could go out and play too. But he had already graduated from high school and his job as Paul Bunyan’s voice at the Trees of Mystery had closed for the winter months. “Besides,” Tommy thought to himself, “I don’t want to do that for the rest of my life.” Tommy sighed again. Still, Mom and Dad did not look up or give Tommy any attention.

Tommy stared out the large sliding glass door into the backyard. His thoughts drifted back to another time. He was just a little boy when his family moved into this house. That was back before there were four children. It was just Justin and himself then.

He looked at the Alaskan daisies that he had spent a week after school planting. They were all white with brilliant green stems that stood out against the dull gray redwood fence he helped build less than seven years ago.

There was the swing set with its rusted green legs and crossbar that he could not recall ever having been without. It had saved his life once by providing plenty of entertainment the one summer he was grounded to the backyard all three months.

Just over the fence was the old apple tree that was shaded from the afternoon sun for the summer months. He spent last summer with Linda. She was gone now, back to Southern California.

Tommy’s parents continued to read as he sat there with his thoughts. They were mostly memories, more than thoughts. “Thoughts collect dust, memories live on,” Dad had once said. Tommy was trying to make a decision — an important one. At first, the decision seemed to be easy, but the more he looked around, the less thought he had and the greater the memories he found.

Until this time, Tommy thought of memories as something old men passed back and forth in front of the hardware store. Tommy knew he wasn’t an old man, yet the flood of memories weighed him down until his heart felt like that of an old man. Tommy pushed himself upright and squared his shoulders. He took a deep breath and cleared his throat. It was a loud and long noise.

Both his Mom and Dad stopped what they were doing and looked at him. Tommy took another breath. This one was longer and deeper than the previous one and said, “I’ve decided to join the Air Force.”

For a moment, nothing happened. Both parents sat there in stunned silence. Then Mom started to cry as Dad stood up to shake his grown son’s hand.

RULE NUMBER THREE

“Can I g out and play with my new B-B gun?” Tommy asked.

His Uncle looked over at the nine-year-old boy and replied, “It’s a gun and it ain’t for playing.” He went back to reading the Humboldt Beacon.

“I could use some help clearing off the table, Tommy,” came his aunt’s voice from the kitchen, then she added, “Then you can go out and shoot yer gun.”

Tommy rushed to stack the plates atop each other and quickly get them to the kitchen sink. He did the same with the silverware and glasses. He even cleared the table of the leftover breakfast of scrambled eggs and fried potatoes. There wasn’t very much left in any of the bowls and Tommy knew that what was left would be fed to the hogs later on. He knew it because it was his chore to slop them.

He stayed in the kitchen waiting for his aunt to excuse him. He had made the mistake of going outside when there were still chores left undone and his rear end still stung the next morning from the lesson learned.

“Go play,” his Aunt smiled.

As fast as a lightning bolt Tommy was out of the house. He stopped long enough at his uncle’s gun cabinet to carefully remove his brand new lever action B-B gun.

For weeks he had looked forward to the day that he and his Uncle would drive down to the hardware store and he would leave the place the proud owner of his very own B-B gun. “Soon, I’ll be able to go hunting jus’ like the other boys do,” he said to himself. He was referring to his three older cousins.

His Uncle made certain that Tommy was properly schooled in the importance of gun safety. “Never put you finger on the trigger unless you’re aiming to shoot something” he warned. Then he went on to tell how a boy had accidentally shot a friend in the eye because he had his finger on the trigger.

That led his Uncle to rule number two. He said,” Watch where you point the barrel.” Uncle made sure that Tommy remembered that he kept the gun’s barrel pointed toward the sky. “If it accidentally goes off while it is pointed at the ground the bullet could bounce back and hit you!” he warned.

Then there was the day that Tommy decided to rest his arms across the opening of the barrel. His uncle grabbed the gun away from him and put it away. Tommy thought he had lost his B-B gun for good. The next day he got it back, but his Uncle sternly commented, “Don’t ever let me catch ya leaning on it again,” then he added, “You ain’t Daniel Boone.” He smiled at Tommy because he knew that’s where the young boy had seen that done.

His Uncle’s third and final rule was this: “Never aim your gun at anything you don’t intend to eat.” Tommy shuttered at the thought of having to eat a barnyard dog if he ever shot one.

For days Tommy hurried to finish up his chores. He wanted to be outside and begin the barn shooting at the paper plate he had designed with black rings for bull eyes. Even his older cousins joined in the fun of the target-shooting

Every evening it would be a slight struggle for Tommy to come in after the sun had made the targets disappear into the dimming nighttime. And all through his nighttime dreams, Tommy would dream about shooting his B-B gun

Even his Uncle would quietly slip out of the house and down to the barn to secretly watch his nephew and his three sons shoot for the sheer pleasure that was in it.

Daily Tommy would gather up the B-B’s that had fallen to the ground after having been shot. And daily his Uncle would return home from the sawmill with a fresh canister of B-B’s for him to use.

Summer vacation was slowly coming to an end. Soon Tommy would head home and back to school. He had enjoyed his stay with his cousins and his Aunt and Uncle.

One late afternoon after all the chores were done and supper had not yet been served. The four boys headed down to the barn with Tommy’s B-B gun. It would be the last time they would get to shoot together as school would start in two days.

Tommy and Stevie set up the paper plates while Danny and Gary squabbled over who would get to load the gun and who would get to shoot it first. The paper plates were pinned against a bail of hay stacked on another bail of hay. It was the perfect height to shoot.

Once the two boys were safely behind the older boy with the gun the target shooting began. Each took two shots and passed the gun to the next. Since he was the youngest Tommy always shot last.

He fired once and started to sight in for his second shot. Just then a red-breasted robin landed on the bail of hay right above the target. Without lifting his head or moving his finger from the trigger he squeezed off a shot.

Suddenly the robin jumped in the air. It just as suddenly fell to earth, thrashing wildly. Then it lay still.

Great cheers and hollers went up from the boys. The revelry was cut short by the stern presence of their father and uncle. He had been standing in the shadows of the barn’s interior. He had seen it all. And now there was going to be a price for all four boys to pay as he reached down and took the B-B gun away from Danny. He picked up the now dead, red-breasted Robin and walked briskly towards the house. The boys could hear him as he spoke softly to himself.

It was later at supper that Uncle made the four boys live up to Rule Number Three.

A FLOOD FOR CHRISTMAS

It was just before Christmas and the tree was standing, decorated, looking like a perfect little tree. The presents were wrapped in their brightly colored Christmas wear. They were patiently waiting for Christmas morning.

Tommy and Adam shared a bedroom. Tommy was older and that is why he got the top bed of the wooden framed bunk bed, their dad had built. Adam got the lower one. On rainy days it doubled as a fort. And lately, it always seemed to be raining.

Every morning Tommy would get up and look out the window of their bedroom to see what the weather was like. He had to climb up on a stool and then onto the top of his dresser which he also shared with Adam.

Tommy knew that he was not supposed to do that. He knew that Mom would get mad at him and that when Dad got home he would have to go out to the shed for a whipping.

But he did it anyway. Tommy could not wait. He had to know if it was still raining or if he would get to go outside with his brother and play. Tommy wanted to go outside very badly.

Tommy moved the stool over to the dresser where he could climb up on it. He looked out. It was cloudy and still raining. He had just stood up fully on the top of the dresser when Mom walked into their bedroom. Tommy was in big trouble.

“How many times have you been told not to climb on the furniture?” Mom asked. Then she added without hesitation, “Get down now!” She shook her head at Tommy. He knew what that meant. Mom was going to tell his dad what he had done.

Tommy also knew that it was not polite to argue back with Mom, so he jumped down from the dresser top and stood there with his hand behind his back and his head down as if he were looking at the toes of his boot. Passing Mom would only make matters worse.

Adam did not pay any attention to what had happened. He was busy looking for his other boot that was lost somewhere underneath their bed. Dad had always told Tommy that he must behave and set a good example for his younger brother. Tommy was not doing a very good job of that.

After breakfast, Adam and Tommy set about doing their chores. One chore was feeding King. He was their big German shepherd dog. He liked to wag his tail and lick Adam and Tommy’s face. King would also play fetch with anyone who picked up a stick and tossed it. But the best thing King did was protect his family from everything that came out of the forest at night.

With the sky still cloudy and rain still coming down, Tommy and Adam started building a fort. They tucked in an old Army blanket that Mom had given them and let it hang over the side of the bunk bed. With one side protected by the bedroom wall, it was the perfect fort. The top bunk was the lookout.

All day long Adam and Tommy played in their fort. They fought off one Indian attack after another. They also caught bank robbers and rode their stick ponies around their room.

Their ponies were old mops with the handles sawed short. The string of the mop head made the pony’s mane and an old flour sack stuffed with chicken feathers made the head. They were perfect ponies. Dad had added leather reins to the ponies by cutting an old belt in half and tacking it to the handle.

With all the fun they were having, they did not notice that King was barking wildly. He had been barking for quite some time.

Suddenly Mom burst into their fort. She had her coat and rain hat on and she had Adam and Tommy’s coats and hats with her. She grabbed Adam by the hand and said, “Come on, we have to get out of the house. Let’s go!”

Once they were outside Tommy was surprised to see the river’s water flowing right by the front porch. All of the rain had caused the river to overflow its banks and flow to the township of Klamath.

The river was coming up fast and it was still raining. Mom reached down and unhooked King’s chain from the side of the house. He took off at a full run for the backside of the home.

Tommy was running as fast as he could, while Mom carried Adam in her arms. She followed King. He seemed to know exactly what to do. They were rushing towards Simpson’s Timber Mill, where Dad was working.

Tommy stopped and turned around. He was only yards from their house. He could see his bedroom window. He could also see that the river was quickly surrounding their house until the muddy, brown water was all around it.

Suddenly Mom called out, “Tommy! Come here!” Her voice sounded strangely different. He had never heard her sound like that before and it scared him. So he turned and ran to where his mom was. She took him by the hand and started half-walking and half-running up the mud-slick hillside.

Tommy looked over his shoulder just in time to see his home turn sideways and slip into the chocolate-colored water of the river. And as he blinked, the house was gone. Just the top of the house could be seen floating away through the water-swollen streets of the little town.

Tommy was crying. He was scared. He wanted to stop and rest but Mom had him by the hand and she was still running up the hillside. When Mom finally stopped running, she turned to see what was happening. All of Klamath was underwater. Just the tops of chimneys could be seen marking the places where homes had once stood. Everywhere there was debris floating rapidly toward Terwer. Only Vern’s Tackle Shop was left standing as water flowed freely through its shattered storefront.

King could be heard barking off in the distance. Mom turned back and started walking again towards his voice. King had saved them. He was a good dog.

They were heading towards Simpson’s. But before they reached the lumberyard they would end up going past the Catholic Church. Everything looked so different to Tommy even though he had been to the little church just last Sunday. Adam was crying and Mom was trying to comfort him with her soft singing, but he would have none of it. Tommy was quiet because he was nearly out of breath. He was running as fast as his short legs would carry him. He was trying to focus on Kings barking, off in the distance.

King’s barking was growing closer and closer. They must be near him, but Tommy didn’t care. He wanted to stop and sit down. He wanted to rest, but Mom would not let him. And every time Tommy looked back the river seemed to have edged ever closer. Tommy felt scared.

When they finally reached the top of the hill they were met by King. He was wet and muddy and shivering from the rain. Yet he was wagging his tail and he licked Tommy in the face.

Mom put Adam down and for the first time since they had to run away from their home. Adam did not cry. Mom held his hand as King licked him all over his face, too. Adam loved King and King loved Adam.

It was about that time that Tommy realized where he was. It was a great big place with a high steeple and a big bell. There were lots of other people there too. They had all run up the hillside to get away from the river as it rushed through Klamath. There were people there that Tommy did not know. Everyone looked confused and scared. Some people were crying.

The one person that Tommy did recognize was Father Heinz. He was a very tall man. He was taller than Dad and Tommy knew Dad was a giant. Father Heinz was very skinny too. He wore a black suit with a large white collar.

Tommy wanted to ask Father Heinz why he wore a white collar that looked like a dog’s collar. But Tommy knew that he must not. Father Heinz was a very important man and should not be disturbed by such a foolish question. That would be wrong.

Mom said, “We’re flooded out, the house is gone.” Father Heinz replied, “I know. It happened so quickly. I’ve called for help.” Mom started to cry and Father Heinz put his long, lanky arm across her shoulders and walked her and the two children up to the large staircase of the church.

Father Heinz opened the church door and Adam and Tommy ran inside and into the large room that echoed every time someone talked. Tommy liked that and Adam did too. They completely forgot their manners and about being soaking wet.

Mom appeared in the large echoing room and said, “Come on boys, let’s get dried off.” Her voice echoed throughout the room. Adam raced off toward her but Tommy was naughty and waited a few seconds longer as he called out “Who-who” like an owl. Mom changed the tone of her voice and sounded more demanding, “Now, Tommy!” This time Tommy did not hesitate. He ran to his mom with delight as he heard the echoing of his boots on the wooden floor.

After they were out of their wet clothing and dried off, Adam was laid down for a nap. Tommy was too, but he did not want to sleep. He lay there in the big wooden pew and listened to the rain as it fell. He thought about seeing his home wash away with the river and about how much fun it was to shout ”who-who” and have it echo all around the church room. Next thing Tommy knew Mom and Dad were getting him and Adam up.

Their clothes were all dry and smelled clean. And the church smelled like bread baking. Tommy loved to play Big Helper in the kitchen when Mom was baking bread. He always got a hot, fresh piece with butter melting on it before anyone else did. Sometimes the bread would be so hot that Mom would tell Tommy to wait and let it cool off. But Tommy couldn’t wait that long and he’d burn his lips and tongue. Then Mom would scold him, “I told you to wait, silly boy.”

Tommy was in Dad’s arms and he felt safe. “Tom, you’re welcome to stay here as long as you need to,” Father Heinz said. “Thanks just the same, Father, but were heading over to Ma and Pa’s,” came Dad’s reply.

Dad carried Tommy and Adam out to the old pickup truck they called ‘Buella.’ Buella was a green Studebaker with a rounded nose and roof. She made Tommy think of a hippo when he looked at her.

Sometimes Dad would let Tommy ride in the back of Buella. They would not go very far and Tommy had to stay close to the cab, but it was still great fun. The feeling of the wind rushing through his blonde hair made Tommy wonder if that was what a bird felt when he was flying. To ride in the back of Buella was exciting.

But no one would be riding in the back today, except King. The rain was still falling and it beat hard on the roof and it ricocheted off making a horrible racket. Mom climbed in on the passenger side. Dad closed the door for her. He ordered King into the bed of the truck and chained him to the railing. Then he climbed into Buella.

A few miles north on U.S. Highway 101 was Sanders Court. That is where Ma and Pa Sanders lived. They were from Oklahoma just like Dad. They were going to stay with them. Ma and Pa had a few cabins nestled back in the woods. Pa once said, “This is God’s country.” And Tommy felt lucky to be going to live where God lived too. “One day,” Tommy thought, “I want to visit his ranch.

Along the way, Tommy was surprised to see so many people camping out. There were tents everywhere. Tommy grew excited. He saw the tents and thought he might get to go camping as well. But Dad kept driving up the road.

It was dark by the time Dad pulled Buella into Ma and Pa’s long, muddy driveway. Adam was asleep. The radio was on, but it was a lot of talking and no country western music came from it.

The sun poked his face through the clouds for the first time in weeks and it smiled on everything. Tommy could smell the good smell of bacon as it cooked and hear the voices of Mom and Ma in the kitchen. Adam was next to him and still sleeping, when Tommy slipped out from under the patchwork quilt.

The hard wooden floor felt cold on his bare feet, but the air was warm. Tommy looked for his socks and pulled them on. Then he grabbed at his blue jeans, which lay across the foot of the big feather bed, and yanked them over his legs.

The soft clatter of china met him as he opened the bedroom door. Tommy was hungry and his stomach growled over and over. He walked through the living room and into the kitchen where Mom and Ma were working. Ma smiled at him and said, “Good morning’ sleepy-head.” Tommy blinked away a sleeper and said, “Good morning, Ma.” Then he went over and got a hug from Mom. She kissed him on the forehead.

“Go get Adam up, please.” Mom requested. Tommy darted off and back around the corner and back into the darkness of the bedroom. Adam was already sitting up in bed, rubbing his eyes. He smiled a sleepy smile at Tommy and Tommy said, “Get up and get dressed. It’s almost breakfast time.”

Adam scrambled out of the covers. He still had his socks on, so all he needed to do was pull on his jeans that also lay across the end of the bed. Together they rushed out into the living room and then into the kitchen. MA was just spooning up some fried potatoes onto two small plates set off on the counter of what was called the nook.

Mom picked Adam up and seated him on one of the big chairs as Tommy climbed up into the one by its side. They were just finishing up their prayers when Ma stepped out the back door and started ringing the bell.

The bell wasn’t a bell. It was a metal triangle bar that hung on a chain. Ma made it ring by hitting it with another metal bar. She could go fast and strike all three sides and make a sound that went ding-ding-ding over and over again.

Pa and Dad came in the back door, their boots making clump-clump-clump sounds as they stomped the porch trying to shake off the mud that clung to them. Then Tommy heard the scratching noise of the boot brush as they ran their boots through it.

The boot brush was three coarse straw brushes, nailed to a wooden cradle. One brush was on the bottom with the brush side up. The other two brushes were nailed into the sides of the cradle with the brush sides out. A person stood in front of it and dragged their boot through it one at a time.

“Take them off fellas!” Ma scolded. “You’re not tracking mud through my kitchen.” Dad and Pa obeyed by sitting down at the front door and unlacing their boots.

Things seemed perfect in the early morning with the sunshine starting to shine. Tommy felt safe warm and dry. And it looked as if most of the flooding was over.

Pa said, “Tom and me rode on over to the town site.” He paused to take another bite of scrambled egg. “Nearly everything is gone. Margie, it’s a good thing you grabbed them youngsters when you did.” There was a long pause at the breakfast table. The thought of what could have happened did not need to be talked about.

“Too bad it’s so close to Christmas,” Ma said. Then she stopped, but it was too late. Tommy stopped eating. He had not thought about that.

Tommy knew that it was naught to speak at the breakfast table unless he was spoken to first, but he could not help himself. “How is Santa going to know where to find us, Mom?” he blurted out.

Pa answered him, “When I was a youngster, not much older than you, we moved all the time it seemed, but Santa always found me.” He smiled at Tommy. Pa must be right and Tommy knew it, so he went back to eating his breakfast. Tommy did not get in trouble for being naughty and acting impolite. It was an important question and it needed to be answered.

Besides Ma and Pa had a Christmas tree and wherever there was a Christmas tree, Santa Claus would have to visit there. So Adam and Tommy did not have to worry, because Santa would find them.

For the next few days, Pa and Dad were gone for long hours. Tommy enjoyed it when Dad came home. He always had stories to tell of what he had seen from the flood and what he had done that day. When Dad came home at night and after they had all sat down and ate supper, Tommy and Adam would climb up on his knee and ask him to tell them a story.

Dad told about how their home had washed down the river and had gotten stuck under the Douglas Bridge. Several other homes were smashed up against the bridge as well. Finally, the bridge washed out. It cracked in several places across where the cars and trucks used to drive. Then it fell over. Everything that had piled up against it or had gotten stuck under the bridge had floated out to sea.

Then Dad went on to tell the boys about how some of the roofs of some of the houses were still floating around in the Pacific Ocean. Adam interrupted, “Did you see our roof, Daddy?” Dad shook his head and answered, “Nope, I sure didn’t.”

Dad continued with his stories. He told how some fishermen had managed to rescue a young bull that had become trapped on an old barn roof, floating in the middle of the ocean. The bull’s name was Captain Courageous. “Minutes after they pulled him from the roof, it sank outta sight,” Dad said as he finished his story.

Tommy and Adam were absorbed in Dad’s tales. They enjoyed them so much that they were fussy when Mom said it was time for them to get ready for bed. “There’ll be plenty of time for more stories later,” she said.

Christmas morning was on them before either Adam or Tommy knew it. Adam was still too young to understand what Christmas meant and Tommy was just old enough to know it was a day that he would get presents from Santa Claus.

Tommy was very excited when he woke up. It was still dark outside so Tommy lay in the bed listening to the noises that the cows were making outside. Clank-clank-clank went the cows’ bell. She was leading them to the barn for milking. Afterward, the morning was quiet except for an occasional “moo.”

Soon the screen door squeaked and then it banged shut. Tommy could hear the heavy boots of Dad and Pa as they came into the house through the back door. It was time to get up.

After quickly getting himself dressed, Tommy quietly opened the door to his bedroom and peeked out into the living room, where the Christmas tree stood shining.

Over the fireplace were two socks. They were bulging full of goodies and that made Tommy grow even more excited. Santa Claus had found Tommy and his brother after all. Pa was right

Soon everyone was up, Mom and Ma and Adam too. There was excitement everywhere. Under the tree, Santa had left one great big present for Tommy and Adam, plus a smaller one for each of them.

They ripped off the wrappings and pulled from each box a bow and arrow set. The bow was painted white with red, yellow, and blue stripes at either end. The arrows all had rubber tips. Also in the box was a colorful headdress just like the one in Pa’s picture book.

Tommy put his headdress on jumped up and gave out a loud “whoop.” He was going to go hunting just like the Indian boy named Little Two Feathers. Dad had told Tommy and Adam that story many times as they fell off to sleep.

Dad would start, “Little Two Feathers lived deep in the forest. He lived with his family in a village near a lake. One day his father, who was a great chief, gave Little Two Feathers a bow and a quiver of arrows.

“Little Two Feathers learned to shoot his arrows straight. He was so good at shooting his arrows that he could hit whatever he was shooting at.

“One day Little Two Feathers saw a man like none other he had ever seen before. The man walked so loudly that he scared off the animals of the forest.

Little Two Feathers told his father about the strange, noisy man. His father told Little Two Feathers that the man he had seen was a white man. He told Little Two Feathers that he and many others like him were soon going to be everywhere.

“Little Two Feathers thought long and hard about what his father had said. It was then that Little Two Feathers decided that he must move far away so that he could always hunt and not have to worry about the white man scaring off all of the animals of the forest.

“So Little Two Feathers walked and walked and walked so long into the night that he had to light a torch to find his way. Then he walked so far that he walked right up into the sky.

“And he can still be seen in the night time sky. All one has to do is look for

the brightest star in the sky and that Tommy be Little Two Feathers.”

Adam put on his headdress he stood up and let out a “whoop” too. Then together they tore off the paper of the big box that had both of their names on it. Inside the box was a bunch of sticks and a white piece of canvas with moons, stars, horses, and birds on it. It was a teepee.

Both Adam and Tommy were so excited that they had forgotten about the socks hanging along the mantle. They wanted to go outside on the front porch and set up the teepee and play.

Ma and Mom went to the kitchen and started making breakfast. Pa and Dad went outside with the teepee and started setting it up for Adam and Tommy. But before they could get it all set up it was time for breakfast.

It was very hard for Tommy to eat slowly. He wanted to be bad and eat like King sometimes did. But he knew that was rude so he forced himself to go slowly. And just to make sure he had taken plenty of time he even waited to ask to be excused. When he did, he ran outside onto the front porch and put his headdress on.

Soon Mom and Dad and Ma and Pa and Adam were out on the front porch. Tommy climbed up on the railing. He was pretending that it was a cliff. When he looked down he squealed with surprise.

In the yard in front of the house were two sleigh marks and several hoof prints. Santa Claus had been right outside Adam and Tommy’s room. He had landed in the yard instead of the roof. Tommy screamed with delight. Adam was excited too and he ran down the steps and around the side of the house to see if Santa Claus was still there.

It was just after dinner when Adam remembered the stockings. They were full of candy canes and hard candy. Tommy licked at his candy cane slowly and until it was pointed. Adam bit into him with a loud crunch.

The day was one of the best that Tommy could ever remember. He had gotten a bow and arrow set and had seen Santa Claus sleight marks. Tommy knew he was going to be a great tracker. He had proved that by reading the reindeer hoof marks in the yard near his bedroom window.