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My heartaches as I read from the Del Norte Triplicate about the passing of my friend Oscar Gensaw. He and I grew up a year apart in Klamath, attending grade school and high school together.

He was born July 3, 1959, at Seaside Hospital in Crescent City, and passed away November 8, 2012. He was a lifelong resident of Del Norte County having graduated from Del Norte High School in 1977.

As kids, we didn’t always get along. One time he punched me in the face for picking on another kid as we rode home on the bus from Crescent City to Klamath.

Outside of stuff like that, I always thought he was a pretty-good guy. I saw into his soul one Spring day in 1975, when every kid from Klamath gathered to lay Robert Pasche to rest; Oscar was brave enough to allow everyone to see how emotionally distraught he was over his classmates death.

I had never seen any of my male classmates cry like that before.

Now, with Oscar’s passing, it’s hard not to think long and hard about my morality and if anyone will carry me to my resting place when that day arrives.

My heart continues to ache.

Nevada has decided to repeal a state law that allows job discrimination against communists. A 12-member Legislative Commission agreed to introduce a bill at the 2013 session that would repeal a law passed in 1951 during the anti-communist fervor of the Cold War.

The law allows employers to reject job applications from communists and their sympathizers, and to fire any communists in their workforce. Staffers say the law has remained on the books, even though Congress repealed similar federal laws in 1971.

The law took effect as Communists were infiltrating all walks of American life, concerns that gained the national stage with hearings conducted by U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy of Wisconsin. Thousands of Americans, including entertainers, teachers, union activists and government employees were accused of being Communists or sympathizers.

Nevada’s U.S. Senator Patrick McCarran secured passage by Congress of a bill creating the federal Subversive Activities Control Board. The law required the registration of communist-front organizations with the U.S. attorney general, and paved the way for states to approve their own anti-communist laws.

No Nevada lawmakers who voted on the 61-year-old state law are alive today. It’s unknown whether the law has ever been enforced.

The Beaver’s moved into the old house at the end of the long dirt road as if overnight. The next day there were two more children in the neighborhood to play with.

Bridget and Brett Beaver were both blonde and slight in build. Bridget was the younger of the two and had difficulty breathing at times.She had her own personal tent to sleep in when her breath became noisy and quick.

For this reason Adam and I weren’t allowed to go inside the Beaver’s home. This seemed strange to us.

“We used to play in it all the time,” Adam said. “And that’s before anyone lived there.”

It was true. All of the kid’s that lived along the road that was Sander’s Court had played in the abandoned house. It was a castle one day and then a fort the next during a game of combat.

It had even been rumored to be haunted, but that was never proven.

Brett was always off in the woods with us boys, but Bridget usually stayed home so she could be near her breathing tent. Someday’s, she wouldn’t even leave the house to play at all.

About two-weeks after moving in, I decided to go around to the back of the house and visit with Bridget. I had convinced myself that she had to be pretty lonely with no one to talk to or play with all day.

Brett’s and Bridget’s room was in the lower southeast corner of the house. I quietly walked up to the window and peeked in.

I could see Bridget, with her head and chest inside the clear plastic tent, was asleep so I decided it was best not to disturb her.

Slowly, I backed away from the window — but that’s when I heard a small noise behind me. I spun around expecting John Paul Arnold or Chucky Yates to be there, ready to jump on top of me or something.

Instead, I found myself standing face to face with a black bear less than ten-feet away. I froze in my footsteps and sucking in my breath as I tried to think what to do next.

My mind reeled at what to do. My instinct said to run away as fast as I could.

Yet, I recalled what Dad had said to do if I ever ran into a bear, “The best thing to do is play dead.”

“Maw,” cried the bear as it pushed itself from standing on all fours to standing upright.

The blood drain from my face as I pitched myself face down into the dirt and leaves. I laid stone still and feared to even allow a breath to escape my lips, fearful the animal would realize I wasn’t really dead.

I could feel its cold, wet nose press against my clammy skin and the warm, misty breathes as the bear snuffed and smelled me.

Then it stepped over me. I tensed, fearing the worst, however instead of being bitten, the beast dropped his weight down on me.

It rolled over and over on me, yet I did not dare move. Instead I pressed my face into the earth to stifle the grunts I let out as the bear forced his heft against my smaller body.

“Maw!” came the bear again and again as he continued to roll over me. Then the animal grew still.

The bear had laid his entire body completely atop me and breathed deeply as if resting. I still refused to move.

I knew I dared not even twitch a muscle, for the bear couldn’t be allowed to know I was alive.

“Someone will come along and find me,” I remember thinking — or perhaps it was a prayer.

Then I felt a sense of panic wash over me as I heard voices coming nearer. They were coming from up above me, along the Old Ranger Road, which was jus’ a few feet away from where I lay under the now slumbering bear.

Yet I couldn’t shout or even whisper for help, afraid I wake the beast. And the result could end in something worse than being a rug for bear.

The underbrush moved. It was all that I could see, with my face pushed into the dirt. Then I saw a pair of black and white high-top sneakers appear from the bushes.

It was Brett. Once he saw what was happening, he yelled, “Yogi!”

With that the bear jerked with a start and rolled from me. I jumped to my feet and then fell down, then got back up, as my legs had grown numb after laying still for so long.

“Run,” I screamed at Brett as I raced around the corner of the house.

But Brett didn’t follow. Instead I discovered the boy hugging and scratching the bear neck and shoulders.

It was at that moment, I realized the bear was a pet. I sheepishly approached and asked Brett if I could also scratch the black bear who had made me into a human rug for a day.

It was the day after President Ronald Reagan ordered a strike against Libyan Dictator Muammar Gaddafi. I was working for KROI/KPLY in Sparks at a remote for a home and garden show inside the Conventions Center.

I was accompanied by the station’s program director.

As I was prepping to do another sixty-second cut-in on the air, I saw Harry Reid approaching our booth. He had not yet been elected to the U.S. Senate and was out and about shaking hands and kissing babies.

My topic suddenly took a turn from the home and garden show to the attack on the Libyan leader. He passed in front of our booth jus’ as the announcer on the air introduced me.

I didn’t hesitate, announcing I had the pleasure of talking with Mr. Reid, candidate for U.S. Senate.

The future senator didn’t hesitate to start talking to me about his candidacy. I let him talk for a half a minute, and then I asked him about the missile strike.

He started answering the question, but we were interrupted by the program director. He grabbed the microphone from me, introduced himself and sent me back to the booth.

He took over the interview I had started. He later the program director chewed on me for having asked Harry Reid such a question.

Later I found out he had asked several questions along the same line of the senatorial candidate. Needless to say my ego was severely bruised after he took the mic from me.

“Merry Christmas, Doc!” the gunnery sergeant barked as he spooned a heap of dressing on my tray.

“Same to you, Guns,” I replied half-heartedly.

Setting my tray at a the stand-up table where a few other Marines were wolfing down their Christmas Eve fare in the makeshift mess hall, I stared at my food not certain if I were really hungry or not. I pushed the two slices of turkey and re-hydrated green beans about my plate as my mind wandered.

Looking around at the decorations the cooks had put up, made the huge tent seem like a stateside Christmas. They’d spared no effort in preparing the meal, plus some of the officers and senior NCOs tried to lift spirits by manning the serving line.

But it wasn’t working — at least not on me.

Emptying my tray, I stepped outdoors. I walked around the base, eventually ambled toward the Enlisted Men’s Club.

The smell of beer turned my stomach, so I decided to have a soda instead. I sat at the end of the bar, and as I sipped my drink, I knew inside what was really bugging me.

In a flash of inspiration, I decided to call my mother.

Maybe talking to Mom would lift my spirits, and I needed to tell her and my sister’s Merry Christmas anyway. Amazingly, I found just a few Marines at the phone exchange.

The operator was able to patch me through to my mother’s home in Fortuna. This in itself was remarkable, since often it took longer. Even though it was early in the morning, Mom sounded excited when she answered the phone.

By the time I hung up the phone, I could feel the burning of the tears as they rolled down my face. Then I noticed the Christmas music playing over the tinny squawk-box as I veered toward the chapel.

Sitting alone under the chapel fly with its benches and an altar, I looked at the Bible in the pew. I remembered how the chaplain said reading it would help build me up for the storms of life that were sure to come.

Having read some of the New Testament they gave all recruits at the induction station, I recalled many of the passages caused me to see things I didn’t like in myself. Yet I remembered the verse in the Book of Matthew about personal troubles.

Here, now, it felt as if Christ were standing beside me, saying, “Come to me, all you who labor and are burdened, and I will give you rest.”

I felt for the first time in months the heaviness in my heart evaporate as I repeated the quote.

Then without warning, it was as if someone had smashed a hardball against my helmet. The blow sent me sprawling to the ground, where I found myself struggling to get back up.

Chaos was everywhere, as some Marines dove for cover and still others moved into fighting positions. The base erupted with gunfire; all of it out going and concentrated in one area.

Slowly I got to my feet and looked around, my ears weren’t ringing like they had been a few seconds ago. And I expected my head to hurt, but I didn’t feel dizzy anymore.

“Holy shit!” I exclaimed as the Gunny came rushing past me and towards the body of a man lying dead near where I had sat.

“Hell,” I said aloud, “I didn’t even know there was anybody there.”

“Corpsman up!” someone yelled, while others shouted, “Doc!” repeatedly.

Guys were looking all around for Doc even though I was standing right there. It left me confused

Then Guns rolled the dead Marine over onto his back, and someone said in disbelief, “Crap, it is Doc.”

I look around me, thinking, “No, it can’t be. I’m right here.”

Then from someplace behind me, I felt more than saw a faint glow. As I slowly turned to see what it was, it grew brighter, until I could no longer see anything but the light.

“Doc, you’ve been reassigned,” a voice called out to me, “We require your presence at Forward Operating Base Nine.”

I looked back at the body still lying on the ground and knew then what was happening.

Even though a storm left several inches of new fallen snow in the Sierra Mountain this last week, I decided to use one of my days off to get out and enjoy the winter weather with a hike at Donner Lake.  Once in the parking lot of the interpretive center, I found I couldn’t visit the bronze statue because of construction.

So I went inside, paid for my parking spot and then sat down and watched a 20 minute film about the Donner Party. From there I followed the trail south to one of the three cabin sites, so I could get a feel for the remoteness of the place.

In April 1846, a group of families left Missouri, bound for California. Their wagon train was seriously delayed when a “shortcut” was anything but.  An early and severe snowstorm prevented passage over the High Sierra forcing the ill-fated party to spend the winter near present-day Truckee.

Once their provisions were gone and the oxen consumed, the desperate emigrants resorted to cannibalizing their dead friends and relatives. Forty-two of the 89 would-be settlers perished.

But that was long ago, and today the sights along the trail are breathtaking, especially with a layer of snow on the ground and Donner Creek flowing through the grasslands. I am glad I had my camera in hand as I stopped several times to snap photos of the beauty.

As I approached the site of the Murphy cabin, a young brunette woman in her mid-20s named Ellie met me. Dressed in a period costume of dark brown, a dirty bodice and skirt with an apron that had at one time been white, she looked like she had stepped right off the Emigrant Trail.

She also wore raw-hide, square-toed boots, a dark-blue cotton “slat” bonnet. And round her shoulders was a tattered old blanket, folded in a triangle.

Not only was she dressed for the part, she played the part too. Ellie told me her  husband Will built the cabin, which housed 13 people, using a large granite boulder for its west wall, keeping the snow from collapsing the wooden frame.

Ellie’s authenticity and knowledge and the fact she was willing to brave the chill to teach visitors about this sad piece of history, left me impressed. I went to take her picture but my camera’s battery was dead.

After she told me about the cabin site, and the horrors that occurred there, we said goodbye and I wandered back towards my truck. But I stopped into the center first to look around some more and to pay a compliment to Ellie.

The two woman, staffing the center, looked at me as if I were out of my mind as one stated, “We don’t have anyone named Ellie working here.”

“What?” I asked.

Then the second chimed in,”And we don’t do tours.”

1996

Some claim the cowpoke’s insane,
For he rides in the snow and the rain.
He’ll curse his dumb luck,
Or a roan that won’t buck,
And frown if you call him John Wayne.

When I was in the U.S. Air Force, Strategic Air Command was still a part of the services’ culture. It disbanded in 1992, considered an outmoded form of defense.

What I recall from those days was Sac’s motto:  “Peace is Our Profession.” I’ve often thought about this and long ago realized it was true because peace comes through strength.

Once again, like during the Carter presidency and the Clinton presidency, we are seeing a downgrading of our military forces. President Obama and his ilk are bent on reducing our strength to the bare bones, if not farther.

This gives the signal to other world powers, like Russia, China and Iran the idea that this nation no longer has the will to fight for the rights of other countries who are being aggressed upon by rogue nations.  The threat has turned from a Cold-War mentality to a financial, geographical and theological warfare.

The only thing that deters rogue nations is our military strength. Ronald Reagan and Winston Churchill understood this, Bill Clinton and Neville Chamberlain didn’t.

Obviously, Barack Obama get’s it and is forcing it to happen because it fits in with his over-all plan to drag America in third-world status. The battle must start from within our nation.

The look on the deputies face was one of puzzlement, I thought. I recognized him as someone who I had attended high school with, though he was three years older than me.

“Yes, Darby,” I repeated to the deputy as we both stood in the glare emitted from the patrol car’s headlights.

I was holding the top of my head, a faint line of blood trickled its way from under my hand. I offered to show the deputy the injury.

After a quick look the deputy asked, “So where’d this happen?”

Both my girlfriend, Cathy and I pointed to the open field and the half-burned out wood framed shack.

“We saw somebody sneaking around it as we drove up the road,” Cathy offered.

“So how’d you get hit in the head?” the deputy asked as he turned back to look at me.

I looked down at my feet and then back up towards the deputy and replied, “I went over there to confront whoever was sneaking around the place.” I paused to gather my thoughts, then added, “I stepped around the backside of the building and that’s when I got smacked on top of the head.”

The deputy and his partner both turned and aimed their flashlights towards the derelict shack. Then the pair cautiously proceeded across the field to it.

After walking around the building and checked the field, the two wandered back to the patrol car. They explained to us that they couldn’t find any sign of an intruder and that had one been there, he or she were gone now.

“So are you sure you got hit in the head here?” the deputy asked.

“Yeah, I’m sure,” I answered, feeling a little on the indignant side.

Cathy and I glanced at one another, then she asked, “Why?”

She didn’t get an answer, instead her question was met with another, “Where were you coming from?”

“The football game,” I answered, adding, “Look, if you’re not gonna believe us then quit wasting our time, so I can get inside and get a rag to put on top of my head!”

After a few seconds of silence, the deputies partner responded, “Okay then — we can’t really do anymore here anyway.”

The pair then got back the cruiser and backed down the driveway a few yards, turned around and drove back to Lake Earl Drive. Their sudden departure left the night feeling darker than it had before their their arrival.

“What the fuck was that about?” Cathy asked me as we walked towards the main house.

I shook my head and answered, “I don’t know.”

The following day, Cathy got up and headed into work at KPOD. She called me a few minutes after arriving at the station and told me about the sewage treatment plant being destroyed the night before.

It was unusual for her to call me, jus’ to let me know something she knew I’d hear about on the radio as soon as I got around to turning it on. So I felt compelled to ask her, “Why are you telling me this?”

Cathy paused a couple of seconds, then replied, saying, “Your brother’s name has come up in connection with what the cops are calling an arson investigation.”

“Ah, shit!” I exclaimed.

Within hours the news about the arson fire was all over the news, and in the newspapers of Del Norte, Humboldt and Curry Counties. However, Adam’s name was never mentioned in any of the articles.

Yet, less than two-months later, Adam joined the U.S. Army and would never return to the county to live again. The rapid decision to suddenly enlist wasn’t lost on me either.

And while I can only speculate about what actually happened that night, I know the crime has remained officially unsolved since it occurred.

There is a difference between a great nation and a good nation. America is not only a great nation, but moreover, it is a good nation.

Russia is also a great nation. But this is simply in terms of military power and influence within the United Nations.

Likewise, China remains a great nation, in the same respect as Russia.  But we know neither nation is all that good.

A good nation is not defined by its greatness, rather it is judged by what it has done to help other nations throughout this world. Yes, mistakes have been made, but in the end, those errors are far outdone by the help we’ve rendered as a people, though our military and through the spreading of democracy.

In the end, I’ll take good over great any day.