While being interviewed recently by a prospective employer, she asked a question that I’ve never been asked before: “Has there ever been a time when you misheard an instruction or something some told you and what happened and how did you deal with it?”  While I couldn’t think of this particular incident at the time, I do recall what happened back in 1979, as if it were yesterday.

“Anyone here going into the medical field?,” the Airman First Class asked, as we stood ‘butt-to-nut’ along the wall.

Reluctantly, I raised my hand. “Good!” he exclaimed, “You’re with me,” as called me out of line.

Trailing behind him, we entered the lab where others were working. He pointed to a large pile of undeveloped x-ray film and began telling me how I was to hand them out to my flight as they moved by the open window.

With his instructions firmly placed in my brain, he left for his coffee/cigarette break and I proceeded to handout the film. He returned as I was handing out the 37th one.

“What in the fuck have you done” he screamed, “you stupid asshole!”

Everyone in the lab stopped what they were doing and looked our way. I felt the blood rush into my face and my ear begin to burn as if they were on fire.

He grabbed me by the collar of my O.D. green fatigue blouse and jerked me from in front of the window. The act caused me to stumble back and fall on my ass.

The Airman First Class continued to cuss me up one side and down the other because I had failed to understand that each member of my flight had an assigned number from one to 52, and that they stood inline in random order. Evidently, I was to ask each man what his assigned number was and then to hand him the corresponding film.

Needless to say, the next time someone asked any of us what career field we were getting into, no one wanted to volunteer the information. To this day, I will swear on a stack of bible’s and my momma’s grave that I did not hear him tell me that each film had a corresponding number, and thus, to a singular individual.

After a particularly long week of pretending to be an adult, there is a part of me that wishes I could return to kidhood. How I long for the days of catching polly-wogs behind the Bizzard’s building or running through the Experimental Forest with friend’s like Goldie Arnold.

What a wonderful time of life. I’d even return for a day of being six again and of playing house with Goldie, in the little blue and white playhouse that sat in the Honeycutt’s front yard.

It was late afternoon one summer’s day when we decided to act like we were going to have dinner. Unfortunately for me Goldie made me be the ‘wife,’ and ‘cook her dinner,’ after getting home for working at the lumber mill.

“But, I don’t wanna be the wife,” I complained bitterly, “I’m no girl!”

She looked at me and with all the grand confidence of having won the argument before it had even begun, Goldie stated, “So? I have my daddy’s lunch box and you don’t!”

I served dirt burgers with a side of grass and water served in plastic teas cups.

By violently removing a paying passenger from one of its planes, United Airlines has exposed a danger that every member of the flying public should be aware of and that is Public Private Partnerships (PPP.) Anytime, your taxes pay for a facility like an airport or a sports stadium where a private business is going to be operation out of — it is a PPP.

O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, Illinois, is such a facility. Aside from subjecting an individual to physical assault, kidnapping and the blatant disregard for his civil liberties, both the carrier and the city, which operates the facility, engaged in ‘contract thuggery.’

Let’s take the same situation, but move it to a different venue, say a new grocery store, built using federal, state and local taxes. You go in a get the last loaf of bread on the shelf ahead of closing and pay for it.

You walk towards the exit only to be stopped by an employee who tells you that you cannot have the loaf because another employee needs it. Instead of surrendering the loaf, you make a fuss and the police are called.

Once they’re are on scene, they demand you hand it over — even though you paid for it — and when you don’t, you get hauled off to jail. If you are like me, you know this is wrong.

It’s unlawful for the City of Chicago to enforce United Airlines’ contract. Furthermore, the passenger who was forcibly removed from the plane, lost his right to due process since he held a valid contract for services being rendered between himself and the carrier.

This is where the danger comes in for anyone who uses such a facility: while this incident occurred in Illinois, by using City of Chicago employees to do its dirty work, United has established an example that gives other carriers and other governmental entities permission to uphold contract law through force for private corporations. This exposes PPP’s for what they are – a Soviet-style business plan.

While searching the online records regarding my sister Marcy’s many legal-actions against businesses and people who failed to comply with the American’s with Disabilities Act of 1990, I stumbled onto my Grandpa Bill Shaw’s name. His has led me down an avenue that had long been obscured from my family researches.

He was born William Harlan Leslie Shaw on December 27, 1897 in Mount Blanchard, Ohio to Frank L. Shaw and Nettie L. Musgrave. On August 26, 1918, at the age of 21, Grandpa Bill enlisted in the U.S. Army and was assigned to the 159th Depot Brigade, Company B, 46th Battalion at Camp Zachary Taylor, Kentucky.

The role of the Depot Brigade was to receive and organize recruits, provide them with uniforms, equipment and initial military training, then send them to France to fight on the front lines as well as receive returning soldiers at the end of the war and complete their out processing and discharges. According to records Grandpa Bill was there from November 1, 1918 until his honorable discharge as a Corporal on December 11, 1918, which makes no sense as he was supposedly gassed while in the trenches of France.

Following the war, Grandpa Bill got married in Biglick, Hancock County, Ohio, between 1920 and 1930 and by 1930 had become a widower. In 1932, he moved to California and by 1935 he was married and living in San Francisco with my grandmother Leola.

Five years later, Grandpa Bill was listed as both a prisoner in the Alameda County Jail in Oakland, California and divorced. However, Grandpa Bill’s 1972 obituary lists my Grandma as his wife and both are buried side-by-side at Sunrise Cemetery in Fortuna, California.

Grandpa Bill seemingly disappears from the records until he moved to Humboldt County, California in 1964. It is around this time that he his known to have been a member of the Elks Lodge Number 1689 in Crescent City, California and a dues paying member of a bartenders’ union.

And so the search continues…

This is hard, posting an obituary for my youngest sister, as it comes with a hurting heart. I can still recall how Mom’s water broke while in the kitchen the night Marcy was born.

Mom was squatting, looking for a certain pan under the counter. After her water broke (I thought she pee’d herself) I had to help her stand up and then call Dad at work to tell him to get home.

What made it even more memorable is that three days before, on April Fool’s Day, Mom tricked Dad into rushing to Crescent City claiming, “it’s time,” only to go to dinner and return home with a new alarm clock-radio combo she bought at Rexall Drugs. I’ve always said that Marcy got the last laugh in that situation.

She and I had not spoken since our mother’s passing in 2002. It was her choice, not mine.

Anyway, I lifted and edited much of what my sister Deirdre posted on Facebook about our youngest sister’s life and death, which is how I learned she had died. Deirdre also sent information to me regarding Marcy’s death via the U.S. Mail Service — but we know how that goes…

Marcy Jean Darby was born in Crescent City, California at Seaside Hospital on April 3, 1969, and grew up in Klamath, California, where she attended Margaret Keating School. She passed away in Shasta Lake, California at the House of Hope on March 26, 2017, at the age of 47.

After an accident left her partially paralyzed in 1981, and nearly a year of physical therapy, Marcy moved to Fortuna, California, with Mom and Deirdre, where she attended Fortuna High and then East High School. She later attended the College of the Redwoods, Fredericks and Charles Beauty College, both in Eureka, California, and Genesis Bible College of Santa Rosa, California.

She’s survived by her sons, Christopher Scot Key and Delmar-James Alexander Key, her sister Deirdre Peterson and family, all of Fortuna, and brother Tom Darby and his family of Spanish Springs, Nevada. Marcy’s preceded in death by brother Adam M. Darby and mother Margery Ann Olivera-Middleton and her father Thomas Junior Darby.

Some of my better prayers are asked and answered while I’m in the shower. It’s as if the echoing sound of the water rushing from the spray head acts as a masking agent for a soft voice that otherwise is a feeling and not heard.

This is where I was talking to God about a recurring dream event that includes the imagery of doors, both hidden and in the open. I have sought the Lord’s interpretation of this and if it has any real meaning.

“Father,” I asked stood under the water, “What is the meaning of ‘other door? Is it a new beginning, something I’m overlooking or does it mean absolutely nothing?”

As I asked this, I passed gas – a loud, long, sneaky squeaker that made me laugh so hard that I did it two more times involuntarily. Because I was laughing so hard, I breathed in a snoot-full of water, which caused me to gag and begin coughing.

My laughing fit, coupled to my coughing jag, was so intense that I dropped to my knees in the tub. That’s when I heard that quiet voice hidden within the soft patter falling from the shower nozzle whisper, “The back door?”

Laughing even harder, I cried out, “No, God – the other door – not the back door!”

Sometimes the answer we seek isn’t the answer we’re given and sometimes we learn that God has an unexpected sense of humor.

Last night as I laid in bed and failed to go to sleep, I decided to listen to some music from my nearby device. My taste in music covers nearly every genre available, so many times I end up hearing strange combinations of songs falling back-to-back.

Megadeth  pounding in to the mellifluous Platters, anyone?

Case in point, Harry Nilsson’s “Put the Lime in the Coconut,” played and was followed by the song “Amos Moses,” by Jerry Reed. What is so meaningful to me about this is that this isn’t the first time these two songs have played one after the other in my life.

It was mid-summer, 1971 and the family was visiting my cousin’s at their cabin along the Mad River in Trinity County. My older cousin’s Gary and Steve and my younger brother Adam and I were still awake listening to KATA 1340 AM blasting out of Arcata as we lay in the upper loft of the barn, which had been converted to a sleeping area, when the two songs came on.

Since it was an AM station, the signal came in like a powerhouse after dark, while fading to nothing more than static during the day.

The four of us sang as much of each song as we knew at the top of our lungs, laughing and giggling all along the way. We ended up getting so loud that Uncle Adam had to come out and remind us that we were supposed to be going to sleep and not engaging in horseplay.

“Turn off that radio and good night, guys” he called up to us. Steve reached over and the music came to an abrupt end for that night.

And I as I listened to last strains of ‘Amos Moses,’ fade from my device, I couldn’t help but marvel at the knowledge that I would one day spin records for that same radio station in the 1980’s.

Sue Skaggs was one of our many babysitters when me and my siblings were young. In fact, I was one of the only teenagers that I know of that had to have a babysitter because it was hard to trust me to not get in trouble.

While she smoked cigarettes like a chimney, Mom and Dad could trust her to discipline us when we got in trouble. Furthermore, if we were too out of hand she’s call her son, Vestal to come a set us straight – which if I recall only happened once — which was enough.

As a youngster of ten or 11, I was a chatterbox, even though I stuttered. Because of this, I drove Mrs. Skaggs crazy because I rarely finished a sentence without her feeling the need to complete it for me.

And no, I didn’t think of this as rude because it happened all the time – so if it didn’t happen, like in Mrs. Clauson’s speech rehabilitation class I got terribly frustrated and would shutdown. She would tick me off so badly at times that I would refuse to talk for a couple of days – mostly weekends since I saw her every Friday afternoon.

Finally frustrated with my constant jabbering and broken speech, when I was 13, Mrs. Skaggs told me that the little ‘dent under your nose,’ was a reminder to be quiet. I remember reaching up to feel it and realizing I had really never paid much attention to it before.

This caused me to slowdown and think about what I was going to say before saying it and is probably the reason I still have what radio commentator Paul Harvey referred to as ‘pregnant pauses,’ in my speech. Thus, I have never forgotten what she told me.

Three years later, as I studied for my Emergency Medical Technicians certificate, I learned that little dent below the nose and above the lip had a name: the philtrum or medial cleft. Medical science claims it is a hold over from an earlier time and serves no real purpose now days.

Jump ahead 23-years, as I was studying for my degree in theology, I learned where Mrs. Skaggs got the idea that the philtrum was a reminder to be quiet. Like most informant passed along by word of mouth the story changed in the telling.

In Jewish mythology, each child has an Angel teaching them all the wisdom in the world while they are in the womb. Once shared, the Angel lightly touches the infant’s upper lip to keep the them from telling them to the world and that this is the cause of our medial cleft.

Personally, I like the idea of keeping a secret better than I like keeping quiet.

In recent days it was suggested that I write about my experiences in the radio broadcast industry. This isn’t the first time such an idea has come up as a few years ago it was recommended and I took it so seriously that I even developed a title for a possible book, “Up All Night.”

Sadly, the title is a play on words. First, I spent much of my career doing swings shift and overnights; secondly, my career was also filled with a lot of debauchery, that I can honestly say is of immense embarrassment now.

So, needless to say, this tome would be filled with tell-all-sex romps, wild nights drinking and stuff that would cause my grandmother to disown me. Happily, all of that is behind me and I shutter at the thought of revisiting that part of my past.

Suffice it to say, I have done things no one should do. It has left me open to become the blame for things I didn’t do, and somethings I knew were being done – and that is damage that at this point seems irreparable to my earthly reputation.

Throughout my career, I have seen people who acted exactly as I did get promoted (one woman works for ABC News these days,) to better positions that came with better pay and other perks. I even know a guy who stole an entire sound/production board for which I got the blame of taking and he continues to prosper, making money hand-over-fist.

Between programmers, consultants and managers I’ve seen some real stupidity. In one case a lid of marijuana was found between the cushions of a couch in the station lounge and the General Manager decided to deal with the ‘drug issue’ by getting rid of the couch.

Sadly, the business is tough on some people. I’ve watched addiction get the better of people who showed real talent while others have taken their lives due to the heartache of a perceived failure.

No, I don’t wanna write such a tell all as I have no ax to grind with anyone in the business and I figure there has to be a better way to make ‘my bones,’ than grinding other people’s bones to dust.

The story I’m about to tell happened today and a part of me wishes it had not happened. It takes me back to a saying I heard once, “To love the world is easy – it’s the jerk down the road that’s the problem”

When I first saw him, he was at the far door, asking anyone who came out if they had any spare change. This man was what one may consider an aggressive panhandler, as I could hear him trying to shame people as he followed them to their vehicles in the parking lot.

Praying to myself, I hoped I wouldn’t have to deal with him. But true to God’s nature, he tasked me with exactly that the instant I opened my mouth and asked for deliverance.

My sense of humor is nowhere close to God’s and his idea of deliverance is a far cry from mine.

“Gotta quarter?” the panhandler said in a loud voice.

“Sorry,” I answered, trying to match his volume in both speech and character. “I don’t have any cash on me.”

Undeterred, he continued, “But you jus’ bought something – so you gotta have some money.”

“No,” I shot back as I readied my key to get in my truck with the idea of a quick escape.

“You’re a liar,” the guy declared.

Caught off guard by such an accusation, I glared at him and replied, “Tell ya what, I’ll give you one of my shoes – but only one.”

“What the hell do I want with a shoe?” he asked with great incredulity. “That don’t make no sense.”

I smiled, though I felt more like knocking his teeth out of his head, and stated, “I don’t know. It makes as much sense as calling a man a liar when he really doesn’t have money.”

There was a long pause before I added, “Like most folks, I only have a debit card. That’s all I carry.”

Angry with me, he snarled, “Fuck you, then!” He stomped off leaving me alone to get in my truck.

While I don’t know if my treatment of the panhandler was right or wrong, in the end his reaction did remind me of Proverbs 9:8, “Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.”