Not only did Barney and Rat work in the same department, but the two Airmen were also housemates, living off base. Between the two of them, Barney had the only working car, a 1972 Nova.

After a 14 hour day, Barney was behind the wheel, pushing down the gas pedal, flying through the long loping curve. Ahead was a slight rise in the road before it straightened out the final three miles before home.

Barney fairly flew over the rise, but it was too late. The man, caught in the headlights, went careening over the top of the car with a heavy thump.

The tires squealed, and the car fish-tailed and bucked as Barney pumped the brakes before coasting it to the side of the road. Even before it had stopped, both were out and were looking back at where the man had been standing.

The night laid across the road and the grassy field to either side, so they could not see where the man might be. Rat ran back to the top of the rise as Barney made a quick U-turn in the two-lane road to get some light on the area.

As Rat walked up and down the side of the road, Barney drove beyond where he was sure he had hit the man. But neither one could find him.

After another pass, they drove to their trailer house to call 9-1-1. The dispatcher routed the call to the Sheriff’s Department.

“Can you meet the deputies there?” the dispatcher asked.

“Yes,” Barney answered. “We’ll be there in less than five minutes.”

Shortly after they arrived, two sheriff vehicles pulled onto the side of the road. The first order of business was to have Barney and Rat fill out an incident report as the deputies searched the roadway and the grassy gully on either side of the road.

“You sure it was a man and not a deer or something?” the older deputy asked.

“No,” Barney answered, “I looked him in eyes. It was a man.”

“Well,” the younger deputy said, “We can’t find anything.”

“Then how do you explain the damage to the car?” Rat asked.

“We can’t,” stated the older deputy.

He walked over to his unit and pulled the microphone to his mouth, and said, “We need more help out here, can you activate SAR?”

“10-4,” came the reply.

Within half-an-hour, the first of the search-and-rescue team arrived on the scene, bringing floodlights and dogs. Before long, they were trotting the K-9’s up and down the roadside.

To the west, they found a trail in the grass beyond the barbed-wire fence. The flattened grass led to some volcanic rocks, and it was there the dogs either refused to go any further or lost the scent of whatever they’d been tracking.

The search for the man continued for another two hours after sunrise before it was called off. However, nothing was found other than a patch of blood on the asphalt where the two men said it happened.

Still, in uniform, Barney and Rat returned to the base and to work.

It wouldn’t be until that weekend when the two were sitting outside their trailer, enjoying the sunshine and cold beer, that they would strike up a conversation with the elderly neighbor lady. She quietly listened to their tale.

“You know,” she started, “I’ve lived here all my life and not always so close to the city. Tell you this, there are more things in the wilderness than meet the eye.”

“What does that mean?” Rat asked her.

“It means you might have hit a man, but the Googliwooglie made off with the body, thinking it was fresh roadkill,” she said with a straight face.

“A Googli…” Barney started.

“…wooglie,” she interrupted. “Not an ‘a,’ but a ‘the.’ It’s a Bigfoot-like creature and he’s been seen many-a-time in the Buffalo Ridge area.”

Over time, and with no one reported missing or a body ever found, the incident was relegated to the cold case file.

that is me
a 6-year-old boy
riding the bicycle
with training wheels
staring at an old man
with white hair on his face
sitting alone in the cafe
i had never noticed before, and
having a profound feeling
of I don’t know what.

that is me
a 60-year old man
sitting alone in the cafe
staring at nothing in particular
suddenly overcome by a sense
of déjà vu as my eyes
lock with a boy on a bike, and
who looks eerily
like the schoolboy version
of me.

Time to put down some thoughts truths maybe not me not till later another zit I’m too old to be getting zits shake the mental cobwebs loose Internets slow again they’re choking it down neighbor has fired up his truck it’ll run for thirty minutes now the sheets are already dry I jus’ put them in shit make the beds-time I need a shower got do it before I can wash the towels coffee in the bathroom gonna have to heat it up again three times now I wish I’d never found that pimple wanna pick it this is Friday right paper is due out today glad I have a calendar this stupid-assed Internet I swear they’re choking it down so slow need a new keyboard is there one in storage still need to check gotta pull that old camera out too wanna show it off coffee that’s right bathroom shower time add ellipses run through Grammarly need to clip my nails must write two news articles today watching Grammarly will be fun reward myself with reading something not work-related phone calls to make need my list of chores no to ellipses that is sixty-seconds I’ll never get back coffee

One day, when my son was four or five years old, we were heading somewhere in town when we came up behind an enclosed cattle truck. Back then, there were no car seat laws or laws demanding that you keep your little one in the back seat of your vehicle.

I side-eyed him as he leaned forward to get a better look at the cows.

“That one looked at me!” he squealed.

I smiled because he was never much of a talker, so to hear that much come from him was a joy.

The truck went straight while we turned left. I never gave the cattle truck another thought.

However, he’d been thinking about it ever since we’d first seen it, asking, “Do we get hamburgers from cows?”

I gulped, wanting to lie my way out of the question, fearing it would upset him to know that we do slaughter cows for hamburger meat.

In the end, I said, “Yes, we do.”

“Seeing those cows made me hungry,” he grinned, “Can we go to McDonald’s?”

My Cousin Elmo says, “Lost the pizza slicer, so I’m using an old Bryan Adams CD. Cuts like a knife.”

I was trying to outrun myself.

Tooling along near the Arizona-New Mexico line on I-40, it was approaching nighttime, the sun setting behind me. And since I couldn’t find a music station, I had resigned myself to listening to a radio preacher sermonizing on John 21:17…

When they had finished eating, Jesus said to Simon Peter, “Simon son of John, do you love me more than these?”

“Yes, Lord,” he said, “you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my lambs.”

“Again Jesus said, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”

He answered, “Yes, Lord, you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Take care of my sheep.”

The third time he said to him, “Simon son of John, do you love me?”

Peter was hurt because Jesus asked him the third time, “Do you love me?”

He said, “Lord, you know all things; you know that I love you.”

Jesus said, “Feed my sheep.”

Feeling Peter’s pain, I pulled off the road and started crying. After I finally composed myself, I got back on the highway, sure that I should become a preacher.

Twenty years later — it has yet to happen and I’m still awaiting the third rebuke.

The eastbound Central Pacific passenger train pulled into Colfax, California, Sunday afternoon, July 27, 1873. Passengers disembarked, walking to the Wells Fargo Depot, where the stage ran twice a day except on Sundays.

Driver Bob Scott soon pulled up, and 13 passengers boarded. Wells Fargo Agent William B. Storey loaded more than $7,000 in gold coins into the strongbox.

Aboard the stagecoach, rode prominent passengers W.R. Tully, E. Black Ryan, Thomas Bard McFarland, newly elected U.S. Senator Aaron A. Sargent. Not so important was mail-ordered bride, 22-year-old Miss Eleanor Berry.

As the stage approached Sheets Ranch, five miles from Grass Valley, Scott jerked his team to a halt. Four armed men had stepped into the roadway, blocking their path.

With a floursack over each head, holes cut out for their eyes, gunnysack-cover boots, three of the bandits carried shotguns, the fourth a six-shooter.

“What do you want?” Scott called out, Ryan adding, “Yes, boys, what does this mean?”

“We want that treasure box,” came the reply.

“It’s on the other stage,” Scott lied.

“Well, we’ll keep you until the other stage comes up,” declared the leader.

His bluff called, Scott told the highwayman, “It’s no use fooling any longer, this is the only stage tonight.”

“That’s what we thought,” the robber replied. “Climb down from there and unhitch your team.”

As the passengers stood against a roadside fence and with the strongbox about to be blown open, Berry protested.

“Gentlemen!” she cried out. “My trunk, which is on the deck of the stage, will in all probability be blown to pieces. It contains all that I possess in this world, and while its destruction will not benefit you in the least, it will be an irreparable loss to me. I beg of you to take it down.”

“Certainly, miss, with the greatest pleasure,” the head robber said.

Berry then saw the scar on the back of his hand.

The blast ripped through the stage, exposing the cache of gold coins. Soon, the four highwaymen disappeared.

The explosion blew the strongbox lid through the stagecoaches roof, shattering the walls and floor, but the running gear survived. Soon Scott had his team hitched up, the passengers back aboard, and was en route to Grass Valley.

After alerting police to the robbery, Scott drove Berry to Nevada City and her destination, a small rented cottage. Earlier in the week, Lewis J. Dreibelbis had rented a room for her.

The landlady explained to Berry that Dreibelbis, the man she was to marry, had been called out of town but would soon return. Though still rattled, Berry remained determined to go forward with the wedding.

Soon Dreibelbis, her senior by 37 years, arrived at the cottage, where the pair were married. Berry believed his voice to be familiar as he recited his wedding vows.

Upon seeing his scar as he signed paperwork legalizing their marriage, she ran from the room. A few minutes later, Dreibelbis left the cottage.

Berry spent the night locked in her room. She only told the landlady, preacher, and a few neighbors that Dreibelbis was “not so well fixed” as she had expected.

The following day, she boarded the first stage, leaving Grass Valley without further explanation.

Meanwhile, local lawmen were busy hunting the robbers. A posse led by Nevada County Sheriff Joe Perrin pored over the robbery scene and began tracking them.

A half-mile-long trail led to a mask, giant powder and percussion caps, and two miners in a cabin, whom they arrested. Later that day, officers picked up two more suspects, including Ormstead Thurman (alias Charley Thompson, alias Bill Early.)

Sentenced to prison in 1865 for robbing a stage in Maricopa County, Thurman murdered another convict for foiling an escape plan. He had been released from San Quentin six weeks before the latest stage robbery and seen in the company of local one-armed saloon keeper Jim Myers.

The four men appeared before a Justice of the Peace on July 31. After giving their alibis, the judge released three of the suspects.

While Myers claimed Thurman had been drinking in his saloon when the holdup happened, Scott and one of the passengers identified Thurman. He was held over for trial.

Deputies searched for the other bandits for more than a week. Then, on Aug. 9, Wells Fargo Chief Detective James B. Hume got word that a man named Rob Walker in Colma was drinking heavily and spending freely.

Hume learned Walker had deposited $1,000 in gold coin and a bar of bullion with the hotelkeeper, claiming to be a former mining superintendent at Ophir in Placer County. But when Hume telegraphed Ophir, he found that no such man named Walker had ever worked there.

Traveling to Coloma, Hume examined the coins and gold bar, which matched those stolen in the robbery. Hume arrested Walker and took him to jail in Placerville.

“I told him I thought I had a strong case against him,” Hume later recalled, “That the condition of his coin clearly indicated the effects of the giant powder explosion of the Grass Valley treasure box.”

Walker finally broke, confessing to both the Grass Valley robbery and the June holdup of a stage near Downieville. He also admitted to being an ex-con and that his real name was Lewis J. Dreibelbis.

Saying he was tasked with ‘guarding the passengers,’ only. Hume soon matched the description of Dreibelbis to that of the leader.

He also learned that Dreibelbis had severely cut the back of his hand during the Dowmieville robbery. It was this scar that Berry had noticed after their abbreviated ceremony.

Dreibelbis eventually identified Ormstead Thurman, George Lester (aka George Lane), Nat Stover, and saloonkeeper Myers as the other gang members.

Hume and Perrin soon rounded up the rest of the bandits. They picked up Myers at his saloon and found Stover at a mining camp near Grass Valley.

Both confessed, and Myers led them to the spot where he had buried his share of the gold. Stover also led the officers to his cache, but a ‘soiled dove,’ named Nellie Gassaway made off with his loot.

All three were convicted, with Dreibelbis providing testimony against each of them. They each received long terms in San Quentin.

George Lane was indicted but managed to escape. Hume found him in Virginia City, Nev., the following year, returning him to California to stand trial and where he received a 15-year prison sentence.

For testifying against the others, the state dropped all charges against Dreibelbis. Hume bought him a one-way train ticket home to Iowa, where he lived quietly on his farm in Scotch Grove until his death on Dec. 12, 1888, aged 75.

Berry moved into the home of Gilroy pioneers John and Sophia Eigleberry, where she dared not reveal that she had married a highway robber. Instead, she explained that the mail-ordered groom had been a failure, yet rumors of her strange affair spread like wildfire.

With the truth out, and a month after the robbery, Berry survived an attempted suicide using chloroform. What became of her afterward is unknown.

The war vet lay on the park bench beneath his woolen blanket, half-frozen, half-asleep, and all in on a night terror. Above him in the bare branches of a tree, ink-black feathers reflecting the full moon’s shine roosted two-dozen crows.

“What should we do?” the veteran screamed as his mind drew him through some unimaginable imagined horror.

The largest crow looked down, “How’s about we commit us a murder?”

The surrounding crows cackled and cawed at the dark inside joke.

While putting on a shirt I hadn’t worn in a while, I found this ditty I wrote on my birthday in 2020. Each line is three syllables, so with 20-lines, it adds up to 60…

sixties child
turns sixty
dirt roads to
internet
gen-Tang drink
to moonshine
fat chance
to skinny tv
heroes gone
whiner near
Downey fresh
A Calgone
destress moat
regress, no
depress, go
in slow-mo
jus’ today
oh my how
life spreads
out so long

My Cousin Elmo says, “I still don’t understand how two-faced people sleep without suffocating.”