Category: random

The idea of getting on a horse’s from behind is stuff seen only in movies; planting both hands on the animal’s rump, spring up and into the saddle. It’s the favorite horse mounting technique of folks like Tom Mix, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers.

Having enjoyed their movies throughout the years, and having had access to horses and saddles as a kid, I had learned how to do this sort of mount. I called it, “Hollywood Style.”

I ended up promising a display of my skill once back at the stables.

Once there, I dismounted, backed up a few feet, then raced forward. I placed both hands firmly on the horse’s backside and leaped up and forward.

Unfortunately, the horse put his head down to take a bite of hay, changing the arch of its back. I sailed right over the saddle, right over the horse’s shoulders, right over its neck and right over the head.

My legs were splayed out from side-to-side and there was no way to recover. I landed with an awful thud, hard on my butt.

They say it’s not bragging–if you can do it.

It was hard to hear, as the judge rapped his gavel on his bench as sentenced Adam to state prison. He had been found guilty of shooting a man so he and another guy to harvest his pot field.

We knew he was going to have to serve time since being arrested for this late the year before. However Adam was reticent to share the details of what had happened and instead chose to hide his fear of the big-house behind a macho bluff.

As we gather inside the courtroom, we found out why he didn’t want to tell us what had happened. While he didn’t pull the trigger, he was an accessory to the crime and that made it jus’ as bad as if he were the killer.

We realized that the man, Michael Clawson, who had died, was shot in the back as he was trying to get away from my brother and the man he was with by the name of Scott Nelson. I remember my stomach churning in a sickening grind as it dawned on me that this was a cold-blooded murder.

Adam was instructed to make arrangements to turn himself in. Once there, he was given a month to get his affairs in order before he was to enter lock-up.

By this time the rest of the family had started up the coast towards home, including my bride and Adam’s then-wife, Sonja. This left Adam and I alone as we travelled back to Hydesville, where he lived.

It was a frustrating drive for me as I had to listen to Adam tell me how tough he was and how nobody really knew the “real him.” I understood that it was all a bluff on his part to mask his fear, shame and anger.

As it would turn out, Adam wouldn’t end up being incarcerated at San Quentin as he was first told. It was decided that due to over crowding he’d do his time in a Mendocino County jail cell.

Adam really thought he was going to get rich by raiding this pot field. Unfortunately Adam’s greed proved also to be his downfall.

It was the final weekend of the summer and Billy and Paul pointed their BMX bicycles westward down the old dirt road and the best place to do some high jumps and hard landings in the area. They pedaled to the abandoned Toano rock quarry in an effort to forget school was to start the coming Monday.The two 12-year olds slipped through the cyclone fencing which had been pried loose by a group of teenaged boys the summer before in search of a place to drink stolen bottles of beer. The chain links had been turned upward and hooked to the upper edge of the fence. It was a hole just large enough to allow a BMX bike through as long as the rider wasn’t on it.Down inside the quarry, the boys raced over huge piles of gravel. They leaped their bikes as high as possible and landed with enough control to continue racing around the site.

“Up there,” Billy pointed. “That where I wanna go,” he said to Paul.

They rode up to the crest of the quarry and looked down into the gapping pit, searching for what they called “a good line,” to ride down.

Each boy moved back and forth looking over the high edge for a possible trail to the bottom. Neither one wanted to make the lengthy trip around the lip of the quarry and admit defeat at not finding a more direct path down to the bottom.

“Well, do you wanna try it?” Paul asked.

Billy looked down the proposed “line,” and shrugged, “As long as we go slowly the first time.”

He was worried about the possibility of falling down the side of the quarry and landing in the jagged rocks below. They pushed their bikes out onto the embankment and faced them down hill.

Billy was in the lead. He had only gone a few feet when his front wheel knocked an object loose from the earth. Paul saw it roll down the face of the cliff and he stopped to look at it was, because it didn’t appear to be a normal looking stone.

As he inched his way closer to the ledge and looked over, he was horrified to see a human skull with vacant eye sockets peering straight back at him. He quickly scrambled away for the edge of the rock face and yelled for Billy.

“Stop!” Paul nearly screamed.

Billy skidded his bike to a stop and turned around in the seat to look back at his friend. He saw Paul sitting on the ground with his back against the stony face and he had a look of fear on his face.

“What is it?” Billy asked in an impatient tone of voice.

Paul looked at him and answered, “I think it’s a skull of a dead person.”

The sun was starting to fade and the teams of Elko County deputies and Nevada state troopers were still searching for remains along the wall of the rock quarry. It was estimated that they had discovered 22 unmarked graves in a quarter acre patch of ground.

Detective Leach was on a cell-phone talking, “Each body is in a wooden casket.”

A voice on the other end of the cell-phone asked, “Are they buried at various depths?”

Leach responded, “Yeah, some a couple feet down others deeper.”

“It sounds like an old cemetery, maybe a forgotten family plot,” the voice said. It belonged to Nevada state archeologist Walt Franco. He was the states leading authority on all matters regarding historical artifacts.

Then Franco added, “I’m on my way.”

By sun up, Franco had led the two teams to the remainder of three more caskets. They each had been photographed and a detailed map had been drawn showing each body’s exact location.

“Look at this Walt,” one of the state troopers said.

When Franco viewed what the trooper had found it left the scholar puzzled. There was no getting around the fact that the body in the old wooden box had been moved after death.

The box lid had the letters “SH,” and the number “54” written on it. They were formed by using brass tacks; however it wasn’t the only casket to be marked in such a way. What made it so unusual was the fact that both thigh bones had been laid out to create an “X” over the chest of the body and the skull was replaced in an upside down position.

Each body was removed and taken to the state lab in Reno for further study. Meanwhile Franco went to Carson City to search the state achieves. He needed to do some research and it didn’t take him long to find what he had been looking for.

He picked up the telephone in his office and dialed. A few seconds later a woman answered.

“Hello,” she said.

“Good morning, Sandra,” he replied.

Sandra Goodall glanced at the clock on top of her bed stand. It wasn’t even 8 o’clock yet.

She asked, “Do you know this is Sunday?”

Franco said that he did. Then he told her what had been unearthed at the abandoned rock quarry. Goodall was suddenly awake and the fact that it was the latter part of the weekend no longer mattered.

She hurriedly dressed after hanging up with Franco. She could hardly wait to get to the state lab and start her examinations. She realized that this case could be the thesis she had been wishing for in her lengthy process for a PhD.

Franco flipped through the yellow leafs of paper. It was a land registration book that had been buried in an estate sale and he had purchased for the sum of one-dollar. The leather-bound book had been a solid source for Franco on a number of occasions.

He ran his finger down page 92 and found what he had been looking for: Hardy. It was the name of the family who had first settled the area prior to the year 1850. The last name fit with the “H” on the coffin.

Franco turned on his computer. After waiting for it to come to life, he typed in the name, Hardy.” Much to his surprise he found a list of names including a “Samuel,” who was listed as having been “put to death by hanging” in 1871.

While, Franco believed he has resolved who the family plot belong too and the possible identity of “SH,” he still had no answers as to why “SH” had been defiled they way that he had been.

It was early Monday morning when Franco drove into Toano. He was there to see if he could find any records on the Hardy family. Within and hour he had an answer to his puzzle.

Franco found a cracked, red leather bound book in the counties library that contained hand written notes from the Toano’s town meetings. As he read it, he tried to imagine the scene.

It was 1883 and Samuel Hardy’s eldest son, Eli was asked to appear before the towns elders. It seemed that they had a strange request to ask of him.

“We’d like permission to open you’re fathers grave and stake his body to the ground,” one of the men said.

Another piped in, “We want this to above board.”

“Why do you want to do this?” Eli asked.

The group of elders looked about at one another, and then someone answered, “We have reason to believe your father, Samuel Hardy is a vampire.”

Eli was silent as he reflected on the fact that his father had been hanged for murder. It was not a pleasant thought. He was nearly 17 years old when his father was found visiting the decaying body of a young woman he had killed nearly three-weeks before.

It took less than a day for a jury to find him guilty and sentence him to death by hanging. Eli still heard the endless whispers about his family and had on more than one occasion thought of leaving Nevada for land out west of the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

He also thought about the rumors about hundreds of sheep, cows and horses found dead. He also knew that several young women had been attacked in the 12 years his father had been executed; some had even been killed.

Eli himself had told his wife Sarah on more than one occasion that he had felt his father’s presence. Fearing that he might be accused of being in league with a murderer or worse, a vampire, Eli Hardy quickly consented.

“You have my permission,” he said.

That same day a small group of men went out to the Hardy family cemetery and located Samuel’s grave. Four men set about the task of digging up the casket. Also present was one of Toano’s priests, its medical doctor and a mysterious figure from Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Once the earth was pulled away, one of the four men digging used the edge of his spade to pry off the top of the box. Inside they found only the bones of the deceased Samuel Hardy. There was nothing left to stake the body to the ground.

However the mysterious stranger recommended a course of action to prevent even the bones of Samuel Hardy from rising again. Quickly, they did as was recommended then returned the body back to the earth.

That was nearly 135 years ago. Now the body of Samuel Hardy was lying on a chrome steel table in the state medical lab. Sandra Goodall was completing the final examination of the man’s skull.

She had been working on what had been dubbed by the local press as the “Hardy Project” for the last eight months. Goodall had compiled hundreds of pages of notes and felt certain that she was nearly done with the 25 bodies. Soon they would all be returned to Toano for reburial in one the local cemetery.

“SH,” or Sam as he was affectionately known, was the last body that she documented. Goodall had found that he had lived the hard life of a farmer, possibly raising sheep or cattle for a living.

Sam had died at the age of 54. At the time of his death, he had an open wound on his lower right leg that probably caused him to limp. Goodall had also discovered a trace of white growth attached to the outer tips of the Sam’s rib cage.

She concluded that Sam had the consumption. Today it was known as tuberculosis. Goodall theorized that it had been a fairly slow process and agonizingly painful for Sam. She also noted that two vertebrae in his neck had been crushed.

Goodall had painstakingly glue the shattered bones back together. She wanted a clear idea of what had killed Sam. She deducted that he had probably choked to death before his vertebrae gave way under the weight of his body.

Her conclusions were backed up by historical facts that Franco had found in the same months he spent investigating the small family plot. He discovered that Toano had been plagued by a severe case of consumption in the late 1800’s. He also had the record of Samuel Hardy’s execution and the later defilement of the single grave from the red-leather book.

Franco also found a rare instance where a 19-year-old woman named Mercy Brown of Exeter, Rhode Island was exhumed after it was suspected she was a vampire and feeding on her brother Edwin.

Rhode Island archivists Anne Paulo told Franco, “Mercy’s heart was removed, burnt and the ashes were fed to Edwin as a remedy.”

The rearranging of the bone was a harder puzzle to solve for Franco. He had to look over seas for his answers. And it was in Ireland and Egypt that he found it. Both countries had historical references to “decapitating bodies,” and used the skull and cross bone symbol to denote the possibility of the “walking dead.”

Sandra Goodall placed the skull of Samuel Hardy at the top of the body. It was the first time in about 125 years that his body had actually been assembled in its proper form. She sighed as she looked at the old man’s bones. Goodall decided she would deal with his remains on Monday.

“It’s the weekend and you can wait a couple more days, Sam” she said aloud as she turned to switch off the lab’s lights and lock the door.

It wasn’t until Monday morning that the bones were discovered to have been stolen. The state police investigated and concluded that someone had been hiding inside the building when Goodall was locking up.

“She never had a chance,” the detective said. Then he added, “He attacked her from behind, but I think she got a piece of him.”

“What makes you say that?” asked another investigator.

“Look at the blood trail,” he answered, “whoever did this was dragging his right leg slightly.”

It was jus’ another overnight shift at country radio station KIIQ, but that quickly changed. I answered the studio line and was told by the male voice on the other end that he had me in his sights at that moment.

Being a smart-aleck, I asked, “What sort of weapon is your sight affixed too?”

Chillingly, he answered, “A 30-06 rifle.”

Our on-air studio, located on in a secured business office on Neil Road, had a large glass window that overlooked a parking lot. Since it was dark, I couldn’t see anything beyond my own reflection in the glass.

My reaction was to drop to the floor and crawl out of the control room, into the production room next door. Once there I called Reno police, who told me that they were sending a unit over right away.

Next I called the program director, Tony Thomas. He talked me through the steps I needed to take in order to switch our operations from the control room to the production room.

Several police officers arrived and started looking around the outside of the building for anyone they thought looked suspicious. One officer took my statement, but told me there wasn’t much they could do unless the caller actually did something to me.

It was very long morning and I was happy to have my replacement show up, A Sparks police officer, (whose name escapes me at the moment.)  He had me transfer the on-air operations back to the studio as he started work.

As I did this, he placed his .357 magnum service revolver on the counter next to him. Then he looked at me with a mischievous grin.

I waited for the sun to throw some light on the ground before I headed out to my car to drive home.

It’s obvious I bit off more than I could chew emotionally. My day started with a little research project by looking through a box of old letters from 1979 to mid-1980.

What I found there left me hurt. I think it’s safe to share this as anyone who knew me when I was 19-20 years old will attest to what I’m about to say about myself.

I was immature, self-centered, and ignorant of others feelings. Ouch!

The letters I read, I had not picked up since I first found the majority tossed in the trash when my parents split the bed-sheet. Others were letters that I had saved since they were sent to me.

Through a period of a year and a half, I can read the painfully honest thoughts my mother was laying down about how life was changing for her, my siblings and my father. I didn’t grasp the seriousness and hurt she was expressing to me.

She was worrying about her children, (me in the service) her marriage falling apart and the possible loss of the house. My response was to whine, bitch and complain about how rough I was having it. 

In yet another set of letters from the same period, I discovered how shallow my ability to communicate was at the time. My friend, Nancy Jessop (now Williams) tried to point out how shut-down I was towards her and everyone else around me.

She also told me to learn to tell my own stories, not my fathers. I didn’t realize I had been doing that until she put it in my ear.

So how did I respond? I shutdown and I shut her out, like I appear to have done to many people over the years.

About 9-years ago I had a crisis that opened nearly every wound I had in my emotionally scarred frame. Since that time I’ve been a work-in-progress, which is what I should have been all along.

That’s why I felt hurt after I re-read all those letters. Fortunately, old dogs can learn new tricks and I’m able now to share how depressing it is to learn that I’m really not perfect and that I never will be.

It was jus’ before the concert in our parking lot was scheduled to start. I was working for country music station KHIT.

My request line flashed in the studio. And as I had always done, I pushed record on the reel-to-reel tape machine as I answered the telephone.

On the phone was a voice I recognized right away: Clint Black. I was excited that he had decided to call the station as let us know he was in town to attend the concert we were holding.

The conversation continued for a couple more minutes when suddenly the voice changed. It was at that moment I knew I had been taken in on a practical joke.

Instead of Clint Black, it was our headliner Neal McCoy. I could hear several radio station staffers laughing in the background.

I was a little embarrassed over it but as soon as I got past that, I decided it would make good radio.

So I edited the tape, to make the call move quicker and a little smoother and played it back on air. Every once in a while I’ll be out somewhere and somebody will ask: “Do you remember the time you thought you were talking to Clint Black?”

Thanks to Neal McCoy’s sense of humor, I’ll always have that great radio memory.

Not even two-minutes into my shift and I got one of those telephone calls every reporter has to weary about. It was a man claiming he had been at an accident, trying and save a life, but was unsuccessful.

His information seemed credible enough. He said he was on his way from Burning Man and was on Pyramid Highway when a speeding driver attempted to pass him and four or five other of vehicles at one time, lost control and rolled his car.

The driver’s arms were traumatically amputated as his body was half in and out of the car as it flipped. He said the man died at the scene after bleeding to death.

After hanging up with him, I called the Nevada Highway Patrol. They had no record of a vehicle fatality on Pyramid Highway, however it was suggested I call the Washoe County Sheriff’s office.

I did and ended up with the same results — no fatal vehicle roll-overs listed in their fives.

On a hunch I decided to “google,” moon-phases. We have a waning moon overhead and not a full-moon, so I don’t know where the weirdness comes from in this case.

We had been in our new home a little more than a year and I felt it was becoming cluttered and in need of some mid-Fall cleaning. I decided to start in the back bedroom that we used as a sort of office.

After filling two garbage cans and a large plastic bag, I felt I was making a dent in the mess. I was on a roll and in search of getting rid of more stuff.

Without really putting it to reason, I decided to toss out a box marked, “Journals.” It was jus’ sitting in one of the corners collecting dust and it seemed reasonable at the time to throw out the fifty composite-style books.

The following day was garbage collection day for the neighborhood and I set everything out near the sidewalk for pickup. I went to bed that night feeling better for having done some something about the perceived junk in the backroom.

A couple of days after the garbage had been collected, I found myself feeling remorseful over having tossed out all my personal journals. For the life of me, I couldn’t think why I would have done such a thing.

The next garbage collection day I was trying to do anything possible not to hear the garbage truck pull up out front of the house. I didn’t want to be reminded of my stupidity.

Suddenly there was a knock at the door. When I answered, I found our garbage man standing on the porch hold.

“Here,” he said, “I think you might have thrown these away by accident.”

It was all of my journals. He got a nice Christmas bonus that year.

What is it that our pit bull terrier has against me? In the time that we’ve had her, she has chewed on or swallowed or destroyed several items of mine.

The latest in this long line is my favorite hat; a gray Stetson Tuscarora felt topper. I left it sitting on my old kack, jus’ as I have for years.

My love for my “Tusky” caused me to place a hat-stretcher in it every time I took it off my head. Hat-stretchers help good covers like an expensive Stetson retain their shape.

After being gone for a few hours, I came home and found the wooden hat-stretcher on the floor at the foot of the saddle, where the hat had been positioned. It was a moment of volcanic-anger as I rushed out back of the house.

There it was, completely torn to pieces. I’d say more like shredded, but that doesn’t even begin to fully describe what Roxy had done to the hat.

She’s so affectionate towards me. She even lies at my feet as I sit and write, but she has what appears to be a terrible grudge against my belongings.

Thank goodness it’s jus’ stuff—but G-D dog anyway!

Yesterday didn’t end until I laid my head on my pillow at eight this morning. In fact I had jus’ laid down when the telephone rang.

I’ve learned that when the phone sounds off in the earliest hours of the morning, it’s never some guy saying he’s trying to find my home because he has a million-dollar check for me.

Instead, it was the alarm company for the bride. They had an alarm signal saying our building interior perimeter had been violate, meaning it could or could not be a burglary or simply a mouse.

Since the bride was scheduled to get up in half-an-hour, I told her I’d go down to the store and have a look-see. That way she could get ready for work and maybe even have a small breakfast before leaving the house.

When I got down to the store on First Street in Reno, I saw we had neither a mouse nor a burglar. Instead, someone had either shot out one of the windows or thrown something through it.

The bride arrived about 45 minutes later and we started cleaning up the scattered glass inside the store. I also set about with the help of another employee to secure the busted out window.

With that done, I headed to the computer system so I could review our security. It took me a while but I actually saw the man walk by the window carrying a white plastic  grocery bag, then return about seven seconds later to smash a baseball sized rock through the glass.

Unfortunately for me and lucky for him, I couldn’t get a clear picture of his face. Had I been able to see his face, I’d spent a couple early morning hours hanging around corner of First and Roff Way looking for him.

He’d end up with that rock in a place certain to cause a severe bowl obstruction.