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My life is a poor excuse as I’ve allowed so much to pass by me without so much as a sideways glance. And that which I have lived out, is filled with fraud.

When I do reach for that fictitious brass-ring and dare to step outside the boundaries I’ve long since established, I find I do everything, every action, every thought incorrectly. At least this is how I see things.

The rules I live by no longer work. While they look good on paper and feel good to speak aloud, they carry no weight in this life I live.

And I’ve no idea why they seem so abstract now.

There is a serious doubt I carry in my heart and in my mind that says I’ll never find the life I once had. I thought I was a man of adventure, of action, yet I’ve discovered I am nothing more than a character in one of my many failed short-stories.

Marvena Lassle was born November 15, 1958. She passed away November 1, 2009, after a long battle with cancer.

The last time I saw Marvena was in August 2008. We were at out 30th high school class reunion.

She told me she felt like she didn’t have long to live, so she was happy to have made it to the party. I didn’t find the comment surprising as I could tell she wasn’t very healthy.

Marvena was always a sweet-girl in school, a gentle spirit and one with quirky sense of humor. I recall many times, especially on cross-country and track road trips; she’d say something that would leave me laughing.

She was jus’ short of turning 51 years old.

To my pards, with a raspy voice,
I said, “I’m jus’ a little hoarse.”
Well, my pards, they had no choice,
They knew what to do of course.

They roped and tied me down
And tossed a saddle on my back
I squealed and tossed all around,
Couldn’t throw the rider or the kack.

Sunfish, crow-hop, bound for the sky,
Back down to earth, starting over again,
Rider spurring me from ear to thigh
Till my roar faded to quiet little din.

The moral is one you really can hear,
You could be roped, saddled and broke
When horse is heard and hoarse is near
Be careful of words that can be mis-spoke.

There is a part of me that is proud of what Mom and Dad have decided to do and a part of me that is entirely embarrassed. About 3 weeks ago they were given a tax notice that said the color of our house would cost them a greater amount of money. Well they protested it to the Klamath Community Council and were told that the only colors that were not subject to taxation were black and white.

That’s exactly what my parents have done. We got up early this morning and started in on painting our house. It is now all white with black trim. Mr. Morgan down the block who is part of the council is about fit to be tied.

He has already been down here twice to yell at my parents, telling them that they can’t do what we have done.  Dad calls him Miss Earl and says he’s just fussing because its all written down in a letter that the council sent Mom and Dad and not Miss Earl can’t do a thing about it.

The funniest thing was to watch Mr. Morgan turn beat red and stomp away when Dad asked him to stop fussing and pick up a brush and join it since that’s all he did when he was in the Army. He didn’t come back after that.

I can say one thing about having a black and white house; there is no mistaking it for any other in the neighborhood. Besides that we uses to have a pink house and that was worse.

There was a time when I’d simply get up, shower, dress, have a bite to eat and then head outside for the day. Now, I stay inside as if waiting for something to happen, something that has never come.

As a kid I seemed to always have a notebook in hand, everyplace I went. Since I spent a lot of my time alone, I spent much of my time off in my mind, exploring my feelings and putting them on paper.

Many times this came out in the form of a free-verse poem. Slowly, I moved away from writing in verse, told wasn’t a masculine craft.

I went with this line of thought even though I knew soldiers and cowboys often communicated how they felt and saw their worlds in a poem.

It was nothing to put a couple of pencils and a note pad in a pack and head off to the woods. But that was in my younger days, a child and teen.

As I’ve aged, I’ve replaced those daily outings and adventures with work, worry and stagnation. And it is entirely my fault as I have done little to assuage the waste of precious daylight by remaining enclosed in a room in a house.

Nightly I talk with God, asking that He help me get outside, I tell Him I will do better at finding myself out in the air, wind rain, snow or sunshine. But daily – I fail to help myself.

Now the sun is waning, heading for the western horizon, and I sit in my living room and lament its passing. I have done nothing once again and I don’t know what it is in me that refuses to exercise my spirit even with a casual walk through my neighborhood.

Could it be my nagging fear of loneliness and how as an adult I misused it?

It fell to me to eulogize Dad after his passing. Aside from family that lived in Muskogee, none of his California family, other than me, came to Oklahoma for his funeral. 

The night before he was laid to rest, his wife and I sat up talking. Evidently Dad had not only invented an entirely new life for himself, but he did some creative redecorating when it came to his personal history.

In short he had done some lying and I was ashamed by this. It also made it doubly hard to talk him up as if he were a Saint, so I was forced to do what I do best in a bad situation, I improvised.

“You all know my Dad, he could spin a yarn with the best of them and he could talk you into doing jus’ about anything. There’s an old Irish saying: May you be dead and in heaven thirty minutes before the Devil knows you’re dead.”

“Well, I sure that’s what my Dad had in mind, but you know my Dad always had a hitch in his get-along and change in his plans. The way I figure it, Dad saw only one chance to talk with the Devil and he did.”

“So remember the next time you hear a distant thunderstorm, don’t worry—it’s jus’ the Devil complaining about the knot in his tail that Dad talked him into tying. And I thank you for being here today.”

It was the best I could do without having to tell a lie.

Brian Sandoval is quitting his lifetime appointment as a Federal Judge in order to run for the state’s governorship. Sandoval was Nevada attorney general before he quit to take over the bench and had been chairman of the Nevada Gaming Commission before he bailed from the job to become AG.

Simply put — Sandoval isn’t a real public servant. Instead he’s using ‘public-service,’ to climb the ladder to what he believes are ‘bigger and better positions.’

In fact, I’ll go out on a limb, predicting he’ll quit as Nevada governor to run for the U.S. Senate, if the opportunity arises.

 

Some say that the roads in town
Are really nothing but a joke.
Those hole’s will break an axle
And really rile up plain folk.

Beaurcrate’s will spend your bucks.
Act like they’re coverin’ the holes.
But to them, it ain’t really a problem,
Not quite like those opinion polls.

“But the first hole that need a fillin’,
One cowboy pard said to me,
“Is the one betwixt their ears.”
And I really must agree!

Tommy bid his step-mother Jere’ good-bye and turned his truck north out of Muskogee for the long journey home to Reno. He drove all day and deep into the night, finally stopping just after midnight about an hour beyond Cheyenne, Wyoming.

He pulled his truck off the highway and down the long dirt road into the Wedavoo Wilderness area. It was an area he was familiar with because he had been stationed to Warren Air Force Base several years before in Cheyenne and had spent as much of his free time hiking and riding his horse Hardtack out in the region as possible.

Tommy parked near a set of rocks that he recalled very well and pulled his sleeping bag from behind his seat. He fished out the fire starting kit he had tuck inside the center of the rolled up bag.

Then he got out of his truck and walked up the hillside to where he used to camp. To him it looked very much the same, just a bit more over grown. Within minutes he discovered an old burn pit.

“Perhaps,” he thought, “this is my old pit.”

However the ashes looked to be to new so he dismissed the idea. Within minutes he had established himself a small flame, nothing too extreme to be seen from great distances. It was just enough to light the immediate area and warm his hands.

He looked down the hill and could see his truck Tommy sat down, cross legged and let his mind wonder. He had been on the move for the last seven days and had just now thought of relaxing.

“Dear God,” he said as he looked up towards the sky full of stars,” please hear my prayers…”

He continued to pray for a great length of time unknown to him. Soon his little fire was nearly died out so Tommy decided to add more wood to it. It instantly jumped to life, thankful for the second chance.

Somewhere in the distance a wild cat screamed and it made Tommy stop cold. He concluded that he should add more wood to the fire.

Standing next to the flames, Tommy felt an urge to return to his long forgotten past. He had grown up around Indians people who were now called Native Americans and he had been to a number of pow-wows. Tommy’s grandmother had native blood herself as did Tommy’s uncle though Tommy never claimed it.

He raised his arms level with his shoulders and started chanting in a singsong voice, lifting one foot then the other in a shuffle. Soon he was lost in the moment spinning and twirling, hopping and diving, swooping and climbing as he sang while dancing around the burning campfire.

Before he realized it the sun was breaking to the east and Tommy was covered in sweat from his exertion. His fire had died out and he found he was exhausted, so he stumbled down the hill and pulled the sleeping bag from his truck and climbed into the back of his trucks bed and fell asleep.

As Tommy lay there sleeping he dreamed.

In his dream he saw a grizzly bear surrounded by seven flaming pyres. It had its leg trapped in a steel trap and as it struggled, the worse the flames got.

When Tommy woke up from the dream he found that the clear sky had clouded over and it was lightly drizzling. He and his sleeping bag were soaked clear through. He quickly climbed into the cab of his truck and continued to drive westward.

As he drove he thought very little about his dream.

“Just another weird one,” he told himself.

By midnight he had arrived in Reno and was able to sleep in a bed for the first time in over eight days.

Within a week Tommy found himself in the same emotional vessel he had been in before only this time it seemed worse to him as he did not have any one to talk too. He found he could not stay with Mary or with Kathi because of his mixed up feeling so he stayed at Janice’s where he was at least able to get some peace and quiet.

He rented a room from her for fifty bucks a week. One night as Tommy walked his rounds in the hotel of the Reno Hilton, Kathi somehow managed to find him.

She confronted him on the 14th floor. He was not prepared for her and what she was wearing or what she had to say. She had cut him to the bone then left.

Devastated and depressed the remainder of the night, Tommy realized that she was right. He decided to drink her off his mind and the end of his shift he headed straight for the gift shop and purchased a fifth of whiskey.

“I’ll go home and pass out after guzzling it,” he thought to himself.

He sat there on the edge of his bed letting the sadness he felt overwhelm him. He looked around the room. There was not much to his miserable life.

“I might as well end it,” he whispered.

Tommy got up and pulled out a plastic garment bag from the close. He knew Janice had several of these hanging up. He also knew he had some duct tape in the cardboard box under the bed. He dug that out as well.

He sat there and cried as he sipped a little whiskey.

“Are you okay?” It was Janice asking.

“I’m fine,” he answered,” just a little sad.” Then he thought to add, “Don’t worry.”

Suddenly Tommy wiped his face and turned the bottle upside down, chugging its content. He picked the piece of plastic up and wrapped it over his head and then wound the tape about his neck.

He felt the room spinning wildly as he forced himself to lay back. His stomach and throat burned he breathed as deep as he could. The air in the plastic cover was growing warmer and mistier and heavy with each breathe. Then there was blackness.

Tommy blinked three maybe four times before he could really begin to focus. The room was still spinning.

“It’s a different room,” he said to himself as he attempted to look around. Then he added, “Is this what hell looks like?”

Suddenly the door to his right opened up and a woman came in. “Oh good,” she said in a happy tone, “You’re awake.”

She felt Tommy’s head and held to his wrist for half a minute.

Tommy asked, “Where in Hell am I?”

“Still not quite with it, huh,” she answered which Tommy found to be no answer at all so he asked again.

This time the woman replied, “Well, you continue to rest until you’re fully yourself.”

She turned and left. Tommy laid his head down feeling frustrated and defeated. That’s when he realized he was restrained.

He looked down and saw that both his wrists were strapped down as was his right leg and there was a large leather belt buckled across his mid section. He suddenly felt panicked.

Tommy knew that he had committed suicide and that for the crime of killing oneself the punishment was hell. However he had no idea that his punishment is form of Hell would be eternity spent restrained to a gurney.

Tommy immediately started crying in great wails for God to forgive him. “I don’t want to go through eternity like this,” he pled aloud.

Tommy sobbed and sobbed until he was exhausted and slipped into sleep. As he lay there strapped to the table with wheels Tommy again dreamed of the grizzly bear. This time it was no longer struggling against the steel trap that held its leg. It sat looking upward at the stars, surrounded by only five burning pyres and one was slowly burning out.

He was awakened from the dream by the sound of the door to his room opening. In stepped a man wearing a long white jacket.

“I understand you are having a little difficulty understanding what’s happening,” he said.

Tommy frowned, “I killed myself and I’ve gone to Hell, right?”

The man chuckled, “Well, some might say that, especially employees.” Then he paused, “You’re not dead,” the man said, “You’re at the VA Hospital. You’re room mate found you and called 911.”

Tommy sighed with great relief. He realized his prayers had been answered.

“So do you think you’re ready to sit up?” the man answered.

Tommy looked at him and answered, “Yes, I am ready.”

Tommy never stopped asking questions. Tommy liked to ask them. In fact, he had made a game of asking questions in some instances.

For example, his seventh grade teacher could never resist a good question. He led the class in asking Mr. Brown questions about his life for an entire week before he figured out that Tommy was trying to avoid world history lessons.

The opportunity to attend Catholic school came later in that same year. The one great difference between religion sponsored education and public sponsored education is the separation of church and state. Otherwise it is nearly the same. Tommy excelled in asking questions at St. Joseph’s, especially during Catholic studies.

On one occasion, the class had a very special guess, the Arch Bishop of the Diocese. He came all the way from Santa Rosa. He engaged the students in an enlightening sermon about sin and eternal damnation.

The class sat there and quietly listened as the Bishop walk about the room and spoke. He even walked past Tommy and laid his hand on his shoulder. A bond had developed between them. Tommy knew he could ask the Bishop anything.

When the Bishop finished speaking, he asked for questions. He wanted to hear how well the class had been paying attention to him and their Catholic studies. Tommy already knew that he could ask him anything, so he raised his hand.

After standing up and clearing his throat, Tommy asked, “If Jesus spent three days in Hell for all the sins of the world and for all men not yet born, how long the average person could expect to be in Hell for living a life of sin for only eight years? The Archbishop of the Diocese, who came all the way from Santa Rosa, just stood there with his mouth wide open.

That must have been the “big” question.

Mother Superior had Tommy by the ear and down the hallway in less than thirty seconds and Father McKay was close on their heels. And for the next half hour Tommy sat in the nurse’s office. Soon afterwards Dad came to get him and by the next week he was back in public school.