The Old Blog in the Desert

They say opposites attract. I’m here to tell you that’s true, but only because two people who are the same are too busy irritating each other to get along.

Case in point, I recently met a man with the same attitude as mine. You’d think it’d be refreshing, like meeting a long-lost twin who finally “gets” you.

Nope. It was like looking into a mirror that not only shows your face but also plays back every snarky comment, stubborn streak, and questionable joke you’ve ever made.

Imagine arguing with yourself and losing. That’s what it felt like.

Now, I’m not saying I’m difficult, although my wife might. I’m particular.

I’ve got my ways of doing things, my little shortcuts, my sense of humor that not everyone appreciates. And this guy?

He had my playbook, the same dry wit, “common sense” solutions that sounded brilliant until you realized they were about two degrees left of practical. And the same habit of interrupting with “Well, here’s the thing…”

I nearly choked on my coffee the first time he did it.

“Well, actually, you can’t fix that with duct tape,” he told me.

Well, actually, sir, you can. And I’ve got a coffee table, a mailbox, and one pair of eyeglasses to prove it.

We didn’t so much have a conversation as we had dueling monologues. The fella’d start a story, and I’d jump in with mine.

I’d make a point, and he’d double down with the same point but louder. Somewhere in the middle, we both realized we weren’t listening—we were waiting for the other guy to stop talking so we could keep hearing ourselves.

And here’s the kicker, I found him irritating. Not just mildly, either.

I mean itch-you-can’t-scratch, sand-in-your-shoes, radio-static-during-your-favorite-song irritating. And if he was irritating, then by logic, I must be irritating, too.

That was a hard pill to swallow. Nobody thinks of themselves as irritating.

We all think of ourselves as charming, funny, maybe a little misunderstood. But it turns out my quirks in stereo are a lot to handle.

I had two choices. Write the man off as unbearable and keep pretending I’m easygoing, or admit I might need to sand down a few rough edges.

I would love to tell you I took the noble path of self-reflection immediately, but no, I first tried to out-irritate him. If he was telling a long story, I had a better tale to tell.

If he had a strong opinion, mine was stronger. At one point, I caught myself doing the same head tilt and eyebrow raise he did, and I thought, “Wait, oh no. I can’t live like this.”

That’s when it hit me that maybe God had sent this man as a reminder that the world doesn’t need two of me. One is enough, and two is punishment.

So, I did the only sensible thing I could: I started laughing. The dude asked what was funny, and I told him the truth: “You remind me so much of myself that I can hardly stand you.”

He stared at me, then burst out laughing too. Turns out he’d been thinking the same thing.

From then on, our conversations went smoother, not because we changed, but because we both realized what was happening. Every time one of us started to get under the other’s skin, we’d grin and say, “Yup, that’s me too.”

Now, I won’t say we became best friends. The world can’t handle that level of combined sarcasm.

But we did part ways with a handshake and a shared understanding. It’s easier to be patient with someone else’s flaws once you realize you’re carrying the same ones around.

And the funny thing is, I walked away feeling a little lighter, less defensive, more aware, and a little less irritating, too, or maybe that’s just what I like to think.

Either way, when you meet your mirror, don’t argue with it. Smile, laugh, and take the hint, because if two of you in the same room is too much, maybe it’s time to work on making the one you’ve got a little easier to be around.

My friend, Kathy Covey, lost her bestie today. I say lost, not like she misplaced him behind the barn or set him down on the kitchen counter and forgot where she put him.

No, she lost him in the sense that there was no other choice left but to let her horse go. His front legs had given up the bone and cartilage that had carried him faithfully all those years, and though horses come with more grit than most men I know, no amount of determination can outlast biology.

And so, Kathy did what every animal owner dreads. She called in a veterinarian and, with the dignity such a fine animal deserves, said goodbye.

If you’ve ever stood in that space, between loving a creature and letting it go, you know it’s not something you get used to. You can expect it, you can prepare for it, you can tell yourself you’ll be strong, but in that moment, it still feels like the world dropped from under you.

I couldn’t help but think of Honey when Kathy posted about her horse. Honey was ours, a big-hearted dog who made it her business to keep us company and keep the yard properly patrolled.

In July 2025, her heart grew so enlarged that it wouldn’t work right. On her last day, Honey struggled to breathe, her steps uneven, her body tired.

And yet, just before the veterinarian gave her that final shot, she wagged her tail. She smiled, or at least gave us the version of a smile that dogs save for their humans.

If you’ve seen it, you know the one. Ears back, eyes bright, corners of the mouth pulled up just enough to break your heart.

I imagine it was much the same for Kathy’s horse. A last flicker of joy at seeing her, a recognition of the bond they shared, and then, gone.

That’s the cruel little arrangement we sign up for when we let an animal into our lives. We know going in that we’ll probably outlive them.

Dogs, cats, horses, rabbits, and even goldfish have shorter life spans than humans. If you’re lucky enough to grow old with them, you’ll also grow old without them.

No loopholes, no exceptions. Still, we do it anyway.

Why? Because life with them is better than life without them.

Take Honey. She was no genius, she’d chase her tail into a fence post if you let her, but she had a knack for finding joy in the simplest things.

A patch of sunshine. A forgotten sandwich on the counter. A ride in the truck bed with the wind in her face.

She could turn an ordinary Tuesday afternoon into something worth smiling about. And isn’t that the whole point of being alive?

Kathy’s horse had that same gift. Big animals often do.

They aren’t subtle about it, either. A horse doesn’t hide its feelings.

If he’s glad to see you, he’ll prance, and if he’s cranky, he’ll swish his tail and stomp. If he trusts you, he’ll let you climb onto his back and carry you wherever you ask, and that’s no small thing.

So when one of these animals leaves us, it leaves a crater in the day-to-day rhythm. I know Kathy’s mornings are off.

Imagine her still walking out to the barn at the same time, coffee in hand, expecting to hear that welcoming nicker. Silence is a strange kind of cruelty.

I know the feeling. The first morning without Honey, I went to fill her food bowl.

My hand froze halfway through the scoop, kibble rattling back into the bag. The bowl sat empty, and so did I.

But here’s the other side of it. Those silences remind us of what we had. If there’s no grief, then there was no love, and if there was no love, what on earth were we doing with a horse or a dog in the first place?

Grief is the bill we pay for the joy. That sounds grim, but I don’t mean for it to.

In fact, it’s a bargain most of us would take every time. One wagging tail for ten years? Worth it.

One nicker at the barn door in exchange for a decade of rides and company? Sign me up.

Of course, people who’ve never had an animal might think we’re a little soft in the head. “It was just a dog,” they’ll say. “Just a horse.”

To which I’d like to reply, “It was just my best friend.”

Animals don’t ask us for much. A full belly, a safe place to sleep, a scratch behind the ears or along the withers.

In return, they give us more loyalty and patience than most humans ever manage. They forgive our bad moods.

They put up with our quirks. And when we stumble in the dark, they sit close enough to remind us we aren’t alone.

Kathy probably feels guilty, like she’d betrayed her horse by giving that final order. I would like her to know, and I’m sure she does, that the final act of love is a letting go before the pain outpaces the joy.

We don’t shorten their lives. We prevent their suffering from stretching on longer than it should. It’s not betrayal, but mercy, and if mercy breaks our own hearts in the process, well, that’s part of the deal too.

There’s a kind of humor in all of this, though it might take a little distance to see it. Honey, for example, had a habit of stealing my socks.

Not the clean ones, mind you, but the sweaty, end-of-the-day, peel-them-off-your-feet socks. Honey’d parade around the yard with them like she’d discovered buried treasure. Once, she dragged one into the neighbor’s yard and left it on their porch like a peace offering.

Kathy’s horse had its own quirks. He’d tilt his head sideways when she talked to him, as though he were deeply considering her words.

Probably, he was hoping for an extra handful of oats, but to Kathy, she’ll swear he understood every word. And maybe he did, because animals understand more than we give them credit for.

It’s those silly, ordinary details that keep them alive in us after they’re gone.

Those memories sit beside the grief, and eventually they start to outweigh it. I don’t know if we’ll ever figure out exactly why we humans love creatures that we know will leave us, but I suspect it’s because they remind us how to live.

Horses, dogs, cats, they don’t fret about next week’s bills or yesterday’s mistakes. They don’t worry about what someone said about them on the Internet, or care if they’ve put on a few pounds.

They’re too busy enjoying the sunbeam, the walk, the treat, the ride. And if we’re paying attention, they teach us to do the same.

So yes, Kathy lost her horse, her best friend. And yes, we lost Honey, too.

But in truth, we also gained something that doesn’t leave when the tail stops wagging or the barn goes quiet. We gained years of companionship, laughter, comfort, and lessons we probably couldn’t have learned any other way.

It hurts now. It will hurt tomorrow.

But one morning, Kathy will hear another nicker. Maybe it’ll come from a new horse, or just from the memory of her old one, but it’ll remind her that love doesn’t end when a life does.

And one day, when I find another sock missing from the laundry, I’ll smile instead of ache. Until then, we honor them the best way we know how, by remembering, by laughing, and by loving the next creature who trots into our lives.

Because the truth is simple, silence after loss is heavy, but the sound of a wagging tail, a horse’s nicker, or even the jingle of a food dish is worth carrying the weight of goodbye. That’s the deal, the gift.

And if you ask me, it’s a pretty fair trade.

Did I ever tell you, I once lived just a stone’s throw away from a family that all died of mysterious head injuries? Now, before you let your imagination run wild, let me assure you it wasn’t me. I may be many things, absent-minded, a little too fond of coffee, occasionally loud at the wrong times, but I am not in the business of lobbing rocks at neighbors.

Still, it made for one of those strange small-town stories. Everyone whispered about it, like the time Earl Johnson’s goat got into the post office and ate two letters and a stack of government forms. Nobody wanted to say it out loud, but everybody knew something wasn’t right.

Now, I lived just close enough to this family to hear the odd clatter on a roof, or the thunk of something against a shed wall. At first, I figured it was squirrels, or maybe kids tossing baseballs where they shouldn’t.

But then, the rumors started. “Mysterious head injuries,” they’d say, lowering their voices and raising their eyebrows like they were auditioning for a soap opera.

One morning, I asked my neighbor Ed, who knew everything before it was anybody’s business, “What’s this about the head injuries?”

Ed puffed on his pipe like he was conjuring wisdom, “Well,” he said, “either someone’s got terrible aim or the universe doesn’t like that family much.”

That was Ed’s way of being helpful, never clear, always quotable.

Now, common sense told me there was probably an ordinary explanation. Roof tiles falling loose, tree limbs breaking off in the wind, maybe even the occasional clumsy ladder accident.

Life has a way of throwing things at your head when you least expect it. But the town loved a good mystery, and this one was ripe for exaggeration. By the time the story reached Main Street, you’d think the family was getting chased by a Bigfoot wielding a slingshot.

It didn’t help that their house sat in that eerie in-between state, not quite falling apart or holding together. The screen door never shut properly, and the paint peeled as if it were shedding secrets. If a place could whisper, that house would’ve been mumbling all day.

The thing is, I never knew that family well. They kept to themselves, waved politely, but never stopped to chat. Sometimes that’s all it takes to become a legend in a small town: keep your distance and let the rest of us fill in the blanks with our own wild guesses.

After the last funeral, the house stood empty. Weeds crept up the walkway, shingles fell one by one, and the place began looking more like a cautionary tale than a home.

Kids dared each other to run up to the porch at night, like it was ghost-infested. I never did.

I don’t need to test my bravery against shadows and cobwebs. I already know what fear feels like. I’ve tried public speaking without my notes.

Looking back, I sometimes wonder if that family’s story was less about mystery and more about misfortune. Life has a way of stacking troubles like bricks until the wall topples over.

Maybe they just got a bad deal, one head bump after another. If that’s the case, well, I can only hope they’ve found peace where nothing more injurious than a feather ever falls.

And as for me? I moved a few years later, and every time I tell this story, people lean in closer, waiting for the twist, expecting I’ll confess something.

“Did you throw the stones?” they’ll ask with a grin.

I laugh and shake my head. I wouldn’t waste good rocks on something like that. Rocks are for skipping on water, building fire pits, and weighing the corners of a tarp in the wind, not for throwing at people.

Living a stone’s throw away from that family taught me something. Life will throw enough at your head all on its own.

And the best you can do is duck when you can, laugh when it misses, and be grateful for the days when the only thing falling is sunlight through the trees.

I went shopping today at Walmart, which is already risky enough without adding screaming children into the mix. You can’t so much as sneak in for a loaf of bread without tripping over a pallet of “seasonal must-haves” you didn’t know you needed.

But today wasn’t about me—it was about the show that unfolded in Aisle 7. I found myself behind a grandfather and his grandson.

Now, I’ve seen plenty of kids melt down in stores before—heck, I probably had a few public meltdowns of my own back when Kennedy was in office—but this boy was putting on an absolute Broadway-level performance.

He screamed for candy, cookies, soda, and anything with bright packaging, the whole works. The grandfather, though, was calm as an oak tree in a breeze.

“Easy, William, we won’t be long,” he said in this steady, measured voice.

You could almost imagine soft jazz playing behind his words. The kid escalated, shrieking as if the shelves of Oreos had personally offended him.

But granddad just kept going, “It’s okay, William. Just a couple more minutes and we’ll be out of here. Hang in there, boy.”

By the time we reached the checkout line, the little one had reached peak chaos—throwing items from the cart like a major-league pitcher warming up before the big game. Cans were rolling on the floor, a box of Cheerios made a daring escape, and I swear I saw a cashier silently praying for early retirement.

And still, the man never flinched, “William, William, relax, buddy, don’t get upset. We’ll be home in five minutes. Stay cool, William.”

I tell you, it floored me. My blood pressure goes up just standing in line behind a slow coupon clipper, and here’s this man dealing with a live tornado disguised as a child, and he sounds like he’s narrating a meditation app.

So naturally, when we all ended up in the parking lot, I couldn’t keep quiet.

As he was loading groceries and a still-wiggling boy into the car, I said, “Sir, it’s none of my business, but I just want to say—I was amazed by you in there. The patience, the calm, no matter how disruptive little William got, you stayed collected. He’s very lucky to have you as his granddad.”

The man smiled, shook his head, and said, “Thanks, but I’m William. The spoiled brat’s name is Kevin.”

I stood there blinking, then laughed so hard I nearly dropped my sack of coffee and dog food. The whole time, inspired by the grandfatherly patience, it turns out the man was talking himself down from the ledge.

And you know what? That might actually be the brightest trick I’ve ever seen.

We all need a “William” in our back pocket—some calm, imaginary version of ourselves we can talk to when life turns into a checkout-line circus. Kids or no kids, there are days when it feels like everything is loud and demanding and wants candy right now.

Maybe we should all take a breath and say, “Easy, William. Just a couple more minutes. Stay cool.”

Common sense tells me the world isn’t getting any less chaotic, but humor, tenderness, and a little self-talk might keep us sane, and if nothing else, it beats yelling at the Oreos.

So here’s to William—whoever he is for you. May he always keep you steady when Kevin shows up.

I was there when it happened. That’s a phrase nobody wants to earn, but I carry it just the same.

Two planes, two men, two masters of the sky touched wings where they shouldn’t have, and that was all she wrote. Chris Rushing and Nick Macy, gone in an instant.

The Reno Air Races had been roaring across Nevada skies since 1964. The kind of event where engines rattled your chest, kids wore earplugs too big for their heads, and ol’ men leaned against the fence line with the posture of boys.

That September afternoon in 2023, the sun had that late-summer glaze, making everything shimmer like a heat mirage. It was supposed to be the grand finale, Reno’s last hurrah before the races moved on.

Instead, the desert sky gave us a heartbreak we didn’t ask for.

Chris had just won the T-6 title, wringing every bit of speed out of Baron’s Revenge. Nick, chasing hard in Six-Cat, had crossed the line a heartbeat later, second place.

Both men were veterans—old pros who’d flown more hours than most of us have spent behind a steering wheel. But flying, even in the hands of experts, is a dance with margins.

The report came later, as reports do. Pages, and paragraphs dissecting angles and turns, tower clearances, sun glare, and human focus.

Chris became fixated on the runway while Nick swung wide, but the procedures in place were not clear enough to keep the two apart. Somewhere in those fine lines of analysis, two paths converged in the worst way, about 300 feet above the ground.

Now, if you’d never been to the Reno Races, let me tell you something: airplanes don’t just fly there, they thunder. They rip through the sky like a preacher tearing into sin.

They make you believe man is part bird, even if we still trip over our own shoelaces. That’s why the shock was so hard to swallow; watching two veterans collide wasn’t just tragic, it was unthinkable.

But here’s the thing about tragedy: it doesn’t erase joy. It seamlessly integrates into the story. Chris and Nick weren’t reckless hotshots.

They were men who loved the air more than most of us love solid ground. They knew the risks, accepted them, and lived for the chance to chase each other across blue horizons.

I think about that sometimes, especially when life tries to knock me down with its own collisions. Two things can be true at once: it’s a helluva way to go, and it’s also a life lived to the hilt.

Not everybody gets to die doing what they love. Most of us go out while arguing about who left the porch light on.

The Reno Races won’t roar through Stead Field again. The desert has fallen quiet.

But the races aren’t dead, they’re packing up, moving to Roswell, New Mexico. The sky there will learn what we knew when those engines spool up and the planes lean hard into the wind, it feels like eternity itself just shifted gears.

Chris Rushing and Nick Macy; their names aren’t just part of an accident report. They belong to the history of men who dared gravity to do its worst and often won.

They belong to the sound of children gasping as silver wings carve the sky. They are part of a community that expresses grief audibly and loves profoundly.

I was there when it happened. I wish I hadn’t been.

But I was also there every year when the engines sang and the crowd cheered and the horizon looked wide open. Maybe that’s what I’ll hold onto: the reminder that every ending, no matter how sudden or sharp, comes from something that was once worth living for.

The planes touched, the skies fell quiet, and yet, the race goes on.

Since I couldn’t sleep last night, I decided to wander outside with Buddy to see what all the fuss was about the so-called Super Moon.

Supposedly, it was going to be bigger and brighter than usual, though, to me, the moon has always looked plenty super. Still, I figured I might as well see it for myself, because sleep wasn’t coming anytime soon.

The air had that chilled, damp feeling that hangs around in early autumn, and the kind of stillness that makes you second-guess every little sound. Buddy trotted beside me, tail swishing like a metronome, happy to be part of any adventure that didn’t involve a bath or a visit to the vet.

For the first time in weeks, the sky was clear. No smoky haze, no high clouds to blur the view, just a dark canvas freckled with stars and the brilliant, round moon hanging like a lantern over the neighborhood.

I stood there, looking up at the Man in the Moon, half expecting him to wink back at me. The moonlight painted the yard in silver and shadow, the kind of light that makes ordinary things, like the garden hose and the barbecue grill, look like relics from another world.

Buddy, for his part, wasn’t as interested in astronomy. He stared at me like I’d lost my mind for standing motionless in the grass, head tilted back, mouth half open.

Dogs don’t understand celestial beauty. They appreciate food, play, and whether or not something might be hiding under the shed.

Then, from the darkness beyond the fence, came a sound so vile and unexpected it nearly stopped my heart.

If you’ve never heard a peacock scream, count yourself lucky. It’s not a dignified “caw” or a noble “cry.”

It’s a banshee’s wail trapped inside a tropical bird. It’s the sound of pure panic squeezed through a feathered throat.

Buddy yelped so loud he startled himself, then took off like a shot toward the back door. He didn’t even look back. His claws tore up a patch of grass, and his tail disappeared into the safety of the porch light before I could so much as whisper his name.

I was still laughing about it, just a chuckle, nothing mean, when the peacock screamed again.

Now, I’m not a man easily rattled, but something about that sound hit a nerve I didn’t know I had. It wasn’t just loud, it was personal, like the bird had looked directly into my soul and decided to scare the living daylights out of it.

My spine went cold. My knees twitched.

Then, before I knew what was happening, I was running too, legs pumping, slippers flying, the whole bit. I made it to the back door, slammed it shut, and twisted the lock like the Devil himself was on my heels.

Buddy sat there panting, eyes wide, as if to say, “You see what I’ve been telling you all these years? The outside is dangerous.”

For a minute, the two of us just stared at each other, breathing heavy, trying to figure out what had just happened. Then I started laughing again, full and hard this time. Buddy tilted his head, unsure whether to join in or call for backup.

“That,” I told him between gasps, “is one unholy bird.”

The peacock belonged to our neighbor, Mrs. Danner, a retired art teacher who collects stray animals the way some people collect salt shakers. Over the years, she’d taken in everything from feral cats to an injured goat. The peacock was her latest project, a rescue from a petting zoo that had gone out of business.

According to Mrs. Danner, his name was Percival, but according to me, it is Spawn of Chaos.

The next morning, I saw her out by the fence scattering feed. Percival strutted beside her, his tail feathers dragging like a royal train. The sunlight hit those feathers just right, and for a second, I almost forgave him for last night’s auditory assault.

“Morning, Tom!” she called out cheerfully. “Wasn’t that moon something?”

“Oh, it was,” I said. “Almost as impressive as your bird’s singing voice.”

She laughed like she’d heard that one before. “He does get a little vocal after dark. He doesn’t like the moon. I think he thinks it’s another peacock trying to outshine him.”

I stared at her, waiting for the punchline, but she just went on tossing grain like that was the most reasonable explanation in the world.

“Percival doesn’t like competition,” she added. “That moon last night probably set him off.”

I nodded slowly, pretending it made sense. “Well, you might let him know that he scared ten years off my life, and Buddy hasn’t left the couch since.”

Mrs. Danner apologized, a sparkle in her eye. She liked that bird, and I could tell she thought of Percival as some misunderstood genius of the poultry world.

This morning, after work, I sat out on the back porch again, Buddy beside me, the two of us watching the yard with quiet suspicion. When Percival started up again, it wasn’t nearly as jarring.

Maybe I was expecting it this time, or the absurdity of it had worn off. Either way, it just sounded like part of the night—like the crickets or the hum of the streetlight.

Buddy still didn’t like it. Every time the bird screamed, his ears went flat, and he’d glance at me as if asking, “Why don’t we move to the city?”

But I stayed put. Something about that wild, ridiculous sound, so full of attitude and life, seemed to fit my mood perfectly.

It reminded me that the world doesn’t always behave the way we expect it to. Sometimes, beauty comes with a shriek instead of a song.

Sometimes, the neighbor’s peacock sounds like an exorcism in progress. And sometimes, the only thing you can do is laugh, run for cover, and then come back outside anyway.

Buddy sighed and lay his head on my foot.

I thought about heading in, but I didn’t. Instead, I sat there, listening to the soft rustle of the trees, the quiet chirping of insects, and yes, the occasional infernal scream from Percival.

Some nights just aren’t meant for sleep. They’re for moonlight, laughter, and a reminder that life, even at its strangest, is still worth stepping outside for.

Buddy gave a little snore, the kind that sounds like a rusty hinge, and I smiled.

And somewhere over the fence, the devil bird screamed again, reminding us who was really in charge.

My friend Glenn recently shared one of those moral lessons online. You know the type. simple, wise, and meant to make us all nod and say, “Hmm, so true.” His point was that anger only hurts the one who clings to it.

Solid advice, but of course, being the smart aleck I am, I couldn’t just leave it alone. No, I had to wander into myth and medicine with a Caduceus in hand.

See, Glenn’s story was about a mighty snake that decided to wrap itself around a sharp sword. Naturally, it cut itself.

Instead of letting go, the snake got mad. Really mad.

So it squeezed tighter, slicing itself into neat little snake confetti. Moral achieved–anger hurts you more than it hurts the sword.

But then I thought of the snake’s twin siblings, you know, the ones entwined on the Caduceus, the symbol of medicine. Unlike their sword-hugging brother, they coiled politely around an olive branch.

All nice and peaceful at first, until, in true sibling fashion, they managed to strangle the very branch holding them up. And just like that, the whole healthcare system has been gasping for air ever since.

And just when you think three snakes are enough, along slithers a fourth, the one from the Garden of Eden. You remember him.

Smooth talker, shiny scales, big on fruit. He didn’t wrap himself around a sword or a branch.

He just whispered, “Go on, take a bite, what’s the worst that could happen?”

Next thing you know, humanity’s running around in fig leaves and arguing about whose fault it was.

So there you have it, the Trifecta of Trouble. One snake bleeds itself dry, another strangles the system, and the third gets us kicked out of paradise. And somehow, we humans looked at all that and said, “Yep, let’s use snakes as a symbol for healing.”

Brilliant.

So Glenn’s right, anger will cut you down, but I’d argue his story needs an appendix. Sometimes, even when you think you’re choosing peace, teamwork, and healing, or healthy eating, you can still end up choking the life out of the very thing you were trying to support.

Either way, snakes make lousy role models.

There’s a funny truth about small towns, front porches, and neighbors who never quite warm up to you–they don’t have to like you to make sure they know your business.

Now, I don’t mean “neighbors” in the biblical sense. I mean the ones who sit just far enough away to avoid ever saying hello, but somehow manage to know what time you leave the house, what you carried out to the trash, and whether your yard got watered on Tuesday instead of Wednesday.

Mary says it’s just human nature. Folks need entertainment, and if they’re not getting it from cable TV, they’ll get it from me trimming the hedge.

I figure she’s right. If you think about it, most people don’t dislike you enough to stop watching; they dislike you just enough to make popcorn while they peek from behind the curtains.

The other morning, I stepped out in my night shirt and sweat pants—yes, the ones with the drawstring that have lost all ambition. I didn’t even have to turn around to know I was getting observed.

You can feel eyes on your back the same way you can feel the sun on your neck. Sure enough, across the way, there was that ripple of blinds closing a half-second too late. Subtle as a foghorn.

The truth is, I don’t take offense. If someone who doesn’t care for me still invests the time to keep up with my comings and goings, well, that’s practically a compliment.

Watching a man mow his lawn isn’t high theater, but maybe it’s the only show in town. Of course, it works both ways.

I’ve noticed the same folks who don’t like me seem mighty concerned with whether my dog barks too much or how many bags of groceries I carry in. I never quite figured out if they’re hoping I’ll succeed or rooting for me to fail, but either way, I’m giving them something to do.

My dad used to say, “If people are talking about you, at least you’re still worth talking about.”

He was right. Folks don’t gossip about fence posts. They gossip about people living their lives.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Shouldn’t I get irritated? Shouldn’t I put up tall hedges or walk around with blinders on like a racehorse? Maybe.

But the way I see it, if somebody wants to spend their afternoon keeping track of when I drag the trash cans out, that’s their hobby. I won’t ruin their fun.

Besides, half the time I give them something to chew on. One day, I set a lawn chair in the driveway and ate a sandwich while reading a Louis L’Amour paperback. I didn’t need to be in the driveway, mind you—I just knew it’d spark a dozen whispered theories.

“Why’s he sitting out there? Did Mary kick him out? Is the power off? Maybe the refrigerator broke!”

Sometimes you have to feed the audience.

And here’s the kicker–the very people who never wave, never smile, never say good morning, will be the first ones to call 9-1-1 if they don’t see you out and about like usual. They may not like you, but they’ve appointed themselves your unofficial attendance officer.

If I disappeared tomorrow, they’d be the ones saying, “Well, I knew something was wrong—he didn’t take the garbage out at 4:35 sharp on Thursday morning.”

So I’ve come to accept it. Being watched means you’re still in the land of the living, and that’s nothing to complain about. Better to be the star of a free neighborhood drama than fade into total obscurity.

In fact, I’ll leave you with this thought–if they don’t like you but they’re still watching, you’ve got the upper hand. You get to live your life, while they spend theirs watching you live it.

Seems like a fair deal to me.

I heard the news this week that my high school friend, Tom Teseniar, passed away from a stroke. There are names from your youth that make you smile before you even realize it, and Tom’s was one of them.

We grew up together in a time when your summer job might involve pumping gas, washing windshields, and chatting up every local who drove a car unwashed since the Kennedy administration. You see, Tom was a “gas jockey,” back when gas stations were more like community hubs than self-service stalls.

It was before card readers, convenience store coffee, or anything resembling “pay at the pump.” You drove over that little black hose, a bell rang ding-ding, and out came a young man in a blue shirt with a red Chevron patch, ready to serve.

Tom wore that uniform with a kind of easy pride.

He had this half-grin that made you think he was always about three seconds away from a good laugh, and he usually was. I remember he’d whistle while he worked, some tune he made up on the spot, like he was narrating his own life through song.

One Saturday afternoon, Dad and I pulled into the Chevron north of Crescent City in our little golden Opel station wagon.

The sun was shining, seagulls were fighting over French fries in the parking lot, and Tom was wiping his hands on a rag, smiling like he had the best job in the world.

“Fill ‘er up?” he asked, leaning down to the window.

“Regular,” Dad said. “And check the oil.”

“Will do,” Tom replied.

Now, you have to understand, Tom was good at his job. Tom moved like a man who knew his way around a dipstick, and I don’t mean that as an insult.

He’d pop the hood, check the oil, clean the windshield, and chat all the while. It was a kind of performance art, really, service with rhythm.

Except that day, I threw off his rhythm.

See, we were sixteen, and like most sixteen-year-olds, we thought we were hilarious. I told Tom a funny story about our math teacher who wore bow ties, and Tom started laughing.

I mean, really laughing. The kind of laugh that makes your shoulders bounce and your mind lose track of whatever you were doing.

So there we were, two teenage clowns in the middle of a Chevron station, laughing our heads off. Tom poured in a quart of oil, closed the hood, took Dad’s money, and waved us off, still grinning.

We got about down the road to Klamath when the dashboard light blinked on, that little red oil can glaring like an angry genie. Dad pulled into the driveway, popped the hood, and I swear the engine bay looked like an oil slick.

“Didn’t he put the cap back on the oil spout?” Dad asked, his voice tight as piano wire.

“Uh, I don’t know,” I said.

“Well, where did it go?”

The engine had coughed all that fresh oil right out the top like a baby spitting up its milk. Dad wasn’t a man of many words, but he sure found a few that day, most of them not fit for polite company.

I don’t recall saying much.

We managed to get home, and in the next hour, I walked down to the gas station by Woodland Villa and bought four quarts of oil with my own money. That was my way of making peace with both the car, my conscience, and my dad.

Monday morning at school, I spotted Tom in the hallway. He looked up from his locker and grinned. “Hey, how’s it going?”

I couldn’t help it—I started laughing before I could even answer.

“You forgot the oil cap,” I said, still wheezing between chuckles.

His face went blank for a second, then he threw his head back and roared with laughter. “Oh no! You’re kidding. I was wondering where that oil cap came from.”

“Dad wasn’t happy, but the car’s fine. I bought more oil.”

Tom clapped me on the shoulder, “Guess that’s why they call it a learning curve. I’ll bring you the cap tomorrow.”

We laughed about that all day, and for years afterward whenever the story came up. Some friendships are formed through shared interests, while others get strengthened by going through experiences together.

Ours was a little bit of both.

After high school, life took us different directions, as it often does. Tom joined the Air Force, serving at Elmendorf AFB in Alaska. He was part of the 21st EMS Transient Alert—one of those units that kept the machinery of the Air Force humming while the rest of the world barely noticed. Later, he joined the Alaska Air National Guard at Kulis, where he eventually retired.

When I heard he was living in Alaska, I wasn’t surprised. He always had that pioneer spirit, the kind of man who’d rather fix a frozen fuel line at thirty below than sit still in the lower forty-eight.

He found his home in the North, like a lot of folks who value elbow room, quiet mornings, and the company of eagles instead of traffic lights. He married Kay, a woman as adventurous as he was.

Together, they made a life that most folks only dream about. When I picture them now, I see them on their boat, the Alaskan Sea-Duction, a name that always made me grin because it was the kind of wordplay Tom loved. They cruised the coastlines and lived aboard, chasing sunsets and salmon runs.

There’s something beautiful about a man who builds the kind of life that fits him like a favorite jacket. Tom did that. He was a husband, a father, a grandfather, and still the same smiling guy who once forgot to screw on an oil cap because he couldn’t stop laughing at a dumb joke.

When I got the call that he’d passed, I sat for a long time, letting the memories unspool. Funny how the smallest moments end up meaning the most.

You don’t realize it at the time. You think you’ll remember the life-changing events, the graduations, the weddings, the promotions, but it’s the ordinary days that stay sharp in my mind.

The laughter by the gas pump. The sound of a bell when a car rolls over the hose.

It made me think about how fragile everything is. Life isn’t measured in years, really, but in stories, and Tom left behind some good ones.

Like the time he tried to fix a riding lawnmower by “rebuilding” the carburetor using parts from a Chevelle. It didn’t work out, but it sure looked knarly. He was that kind of guy, always game, always up for a challenge, and never too proud to laugh at himself.

I once asked him what it was like living on the water. He said, “You learn patience real quick. You can’t rush the tide, and you can’t argue with the wind. You just adjust your sails.”

That’s the kind of wisdom you get from a life well-lived. Not the kind you find in books, but the kind you earn by tightening bolts, raising kids, loving one woman, and making peace with whatever the day brings.

Now that the shock has worn off, I find myself thinking about that old Chevron station, now a chain convenience store with pumps that don’t ring or talk back. No gas jockeys, no laughter echoing off the service bays, just the silence of card readers and the smell of old coffee.

I can almost hear that ding-ding, and see Tom come jogging out with his rag in hand and that grin on his face.

It’s funny what sticks in your heart. Tom likely forgot all about the oil cap that same week.

However, for me, it became a reminder, a symbol of youth, forgiveness, and friendship, and showed me how life can teach valuable lessons through spilled oil and shared laughter.

Dad eventually forgave us both, by the way.

Years later, Dad told me, “That’s the cheapest lesson you’ll ever learn about paying attention.”

And he was right.

When a friend passes, you start thinking about the last time you spoke. You wonder if you said enough.

The truth is, you never can. The best you can do is keep the stories alive, retell them, laugh about them, and let them keep teaching you things long after the telling is over.

If there’s a message in Tom’s life, it’s that joy doesn’t have to be complicated. You don’t need a big stage, just good friends and a reason to laugh. You don’t have to be famous to be remembered, just genuine enough that someone smiles every time they hear your name.

So here’s to Tom Teseniar, my friend who forgot the oil cap, the Airman who kept planes flying, the sailor who chased horizons, and the fella who could find humor in any storm. I’ll bet that if there’s a gas station in heaven, he’s out there right now, wiping down a windshield, telling jokes, and making the angels laugh so hard one of them forgets their halo.

And somewhere, I hope there’s still that ding-ding, calling for service, calling for a smile, calling for a memory that’ll never quite fade.

I’ve always had a soft spot for little scraps of history—the kind you don’t find in the polished textbooks, but in old newspapers, forgotten interviews, or overheard tales told by folks who were there. Northern Nevada is full of those tidbits, tucked away like sagebrush secrets.

One of my favorites comes from Clark Gable, in Dayton and the Black Rock Desert, while filming “The Misfits.” Now, imagine that—Hollywood royalty in dusty Dayton, eating the same grit the rest choke down when the wind blows wrong.

There he was, the “King of Hollywood,” squinting in that desert sun, saying things that sound like they came out of your Uncle Earl’s rocking chair musings.

“I’ve never played a part exactly like this fellow,” Gable said. “As I saw it, there’s not many of these fellows who refuse to conform to the group around. If The Misfits inspires youngsters sufficiently even to think about being themselves, it will help.”

That’s not just actor talk. That’s solid Nevada philosophy, right there.

You don’t move out to the desert to fit in. You move out here to breathe, stretch, and to live the way you want without somebody in a necktie checking your papers.

Gable also admitted, “A man my age has no conception of what is happening now. We are left out of society. These atom bombs–that’s another world–one we don’t understand. I grew up with the automobile. Now it’s as antique as the horse.”

That gets me, because I know the feeling. Every time some kid shows me how to pay for groceries with his phone, I feel like a horse trader at a Tesla dealership.

Society doesn’t send you a memo when it changes. You wake up one morning and discover you’re holding the reins to a mule nobody’s buying anymore.

Out here in Nevada, those old ways don’t disappear so quickly. Horses may be “antique,” but I’ve seen them win arguments with four-wheel drives on a muddy road.

And cars? My neighbor still fixes his ‘52 Chevy with a hammer, duct tape, and optimism.

That’s the beauty of Nevada—we’re misfits ourselves. Always have been.

It’s the place where miners, gamblers, hippies, pilots, loners, and dreamers all get thrown into the same dustpan and somehow make a life. You don’t conform, you adapt, like a lizard sunning on a rock, you keep still when you need to and dart like hell when the moment’s right.

I think that’s what Gable was getting at. He wasn’t just talking about his character in the movie.

He was talking about us, about Dayton and Gerlach. About the desert itself. You can’t force the Black Rock to be Central Park, and you sure can’t expect a Nevadan to be anything but what they are.

Now, The Misfits itself turned out to be a heavy movie, the last one for both Gable and Marilyn Monroe. There’s a kind of melancholy around it, like the desert wind sighing through a barbed-wire fence.

But tucked inside that sadness is this nugget of truth that says it’s okay to be different. In fact, it’s necessary.

The world doesn’t move forward because folks all march in the same direction, but because some stubborn soul says, “Nope, I’ll take the other trail.”

So when I hear Clark Gable, sitting in Dayton dust, saying, “If this picture inspires youngsters to be themselves, it will help,” I nod. Because Northern Nevada has been whispering that same message for generations.

Be yourself. Be a misfit. The desert will take you in just fine.

And if you ever doubt it, stand in the Black Rock at sunset, watch the light roll across miles of nothing, and try to tell me conformity built that beauty.