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Learning to drive from my old man was difficult to say the least. He didn’t care that I was pretty skilled at steering Pa Sanders old tractor around in a field while making straight plow lines.

No!  He wanted me to learn to drive stick-shift and that was all there was to it.

Earlier I had bough an old 1963 Chevy Biscayne for 300-bucks. It was in good shape with a good engine, but it was also a three-on-the-tree.

For whatever reason, I was intimidated by the car’s clutch. I never seemed able to get the vehicle going without jerking myself and Dad half-to-pieces and it frustrated him to no-end.

In fact, he’d get to flustered by my lack of coordination between the clutch and the gas pedal, that he’d pop me in the back of the head when the car started to jerk. This made the situation worse.

I never did get the clutch down properly in that old Chevy because I sold it for a Dodge Charger with an automatic transmission.

It wasn’t until I was in the service that I finally got the interaction between the clutch and the gas pedal down. I have Dave Barber to thank for letting me tool around Cheyenne in his Nova as practice and later Nancy Jessop for driving clear across Nebraska in her brother’s truck.

Neither one slapped me in back of the head either.

It was the day following graduation from high school. The night before had been a fairly wild evening for me as we were sequestered in the Crescent City Elks Club until two in the morning.

First was the fact that I had even graduated. I never expected to complete my schooling on time as I had very little interest in many of the subjects offered and furthermore I skipped so many classes, it seemed I’d never get my diploma.

During the after-graduation party, one of our now-former classmates, Debbie Oscar had some sort of emergency. When I got down the stairs to help our chaperone, Joel Barneburg, she was on the floor writhing around.

I knew enough by then to know it was something much stronger than beer or wine that had caused her fit.

She had to be taken away via ambulance. I never saw Debbie again after that.

Afterwards, we were carted by the bus-load back to the high school where we were dropped off with the idea of having someone there to pick us up. My folks were supposed to come and get me and Ida Philips after the party ended, but they were late.

So Ida and I decided to entertain each other for the next two hours by making out. It was also a great way to stay warm since it was a normal chilly, foggy night along the coast.

We were nearly home when a huge glow could be seen coming from the direction of Sander’s Court. Both Mom and Dad were instantly concerned that Ma and Pa Sander’s home was ablaze.

Since Dad was the fire chief and I was an EMT with the Yurok Volunteer Fire Department, we naturally pulled in to help fight the fire. Fortunately, it wasn’t Ma and Pa’s home burning, but one of their rental properties directly across the narrow gravel road from their house.

And that was jus’ between the hours of 7 pm and 5 am.

 

Finally, the Little League Baseball season was over. It had been a tough three-months for me and I didn’t want to go through another one like it.

First I had caught a hardball in the crotch when the batter hit a line-drive at me during practice. It wasn’t you usual line-drive either.

For some reason Coach Gillespie put me on the pitcher’s mound. I knew I couldn’t throw the ball well enough to be a pitcher, but he had the idea of rotating everyone during practice to see what sort of hidden skill we had.

I threw the ball, a long, arching pitch right into the batters zone.

The ball came flying back at me and out of instinct I stepped back and off the mound. The ball struck the pitching rubber, a white strip of hard rubber that the pitcher has to be in contact with when throwing the ball.

It was a bad bounce and I knew it. I tried to get my mitt in front of it, but my reaction was far too slow.

Later in the season I was smacked with a fowl-tip as I was standing in the doorway of our dug-out. I reached down and picked up the ball that had knocked me on my butt and handed it to the catcher of the other team, whereupon the umpire called our batter out.

Finally, I was in right field, daydreaming because no one ever hit the ball in my direction, when the ball was hit in my direction. I saw it and had my glove up to catch it.

It seemed like it was taking forever for the baseball to arrive, so I moved my mitt to see where it was. The hard leather wrapped ball smashed into my left-eye, knocking me out momentarily.

When I came too, everyone was crowded around me. This gave me a start and along with the pain developing in my face, I took off at a dead-run, screaming and crying for home, jus’ up the hill from the ball field.

I don’t think Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio or Willie Mays ever had it so rough.

 

Andrew Jackson, often referred to as the “People’s President,” survived an assassination attempt on Friday, January 30, 1835, when Richard Lawrence attempted to shoot Jackson, but both of Lawrence’s pistols misfired.

At trial, Lawrence was found not guilty because of insanity and spent the remainder of his life in insane asylums.

Jackson vetoed a bill in 1832 that would have renewed the Second Bank of the United States’ charter. He opposed the institution and its influence on the nation’s financial system, viewing it as a tool of the wealthy elite and foreign interests.

The Second Bank of the United States was under the control and influence of the Rothschild Family.

Before he became a dairyman, Grandpa Bill claimed to be a lawman. Everyone doubted it though because Grandpa was also known for his stories.

For my eighth birthday Mom and Dad let me and Adam go for a visit to Grandpa and Grandma’s for a week. We were excited because we’d get to help take care of the cows with Grandpa and Grandma would let us collect the chicken eggs.

In the middle of the week Grandpa decided that he was going to take us for a train ride. On the drive to the train he told Adam and me stories about how he had hobo’d for a couple of months.

“I had to give it up because I found getting on and getting off to darned hard on my rear end and my head,” he told the boys.

Adam and I laughed as Grandpa rubbed the top of his bald head.

The train consisted of two flat cars with rails and benches and a steam engine. After a herd of folks got off, another bunch of folks got on; we were in the second bunch.

Once the train pulled away from the loading platform I stood up on the bench and tried to look over the car carrying the coal, catching a face full of smoke as the train belched and picked up steam.

Adam laughed at me as I sat there with tears streaming down my face and coughing.

About the time the tears started to dry up, the train began to slow down. It had come to a flat area. Grandpa pointed out the two men riding horses ahead of the train.

“The fools shouldn’t be gallopin’ in rough country like this,” Grandpa said.

One was tall and skinny while the other was shorter and just as skinny. They had neck scarves pulled up over their face and each had a six-shooter in their hand and they were robbing the train.

The taller one shouted, “This here’s a holt up! Give us your strong box and no one will get hurt!”

He pulled one of his guns and fired it into the air. Everyone jumped back, expecting to get shot at any moment. I covered my ears.

Grandpa was standing close to the tall train robber, when he grabbed the man’s gun. As he did that, he spun the robber around on the heels of his cowboy boots.

The bandit was so surprised that he let go of the gun and Grandpa hit him over the head with it.

Then Grandpa pointed the pistol at the other robber.

Jus’ as suddenly Grandpa busted the smaller robber along the side of his head. But he didn’t go down like the first one.

Instead he raised his fists and tried to punch Grandpa. His punch missed Grandpa completely.

Then the robber yelped out in pain. Adam had rushed forward and bit him squarely on the thigh.

The short bandit knew he was over matched and he tried to make a get away by quickly break for the side rail. Grandpa saw his move and took careful aim with the pistol.

Bang!

The sound the pistol made caused everyone to stop cheering and duck. The robbery had become serious.

Then the gun went click, click, click as Grandpa pulled the trigger. The short train robber jumped in the middle of his horse and disappeared into the woods.

Grandpa turned and looked at the first cowboy that he had laid out. It was his gun.

The train’s engineer was nursing the cut on top the robber’s head. Both of them were looking real mad at Grandpa.

The rest of the trip was uneventful for Grandpa and we two boys. Everyone made it back to the train station in one piece.

During the short ride back I kept looking at Grandpa as he sat there with the useless pistol in his hand. He looked dejected and he would sigh a heavy sigh every once in a while.

We were proud of Grandpa, though. He had caught one train robber by hitting him on top the head. The other one got away because the gun was empty.

We could hardly wait to tell Grandma all about what Grandpa had done.

When we got home, Grandpa headed out to his work shed. He was embarrassed that he had busted up a staged robbery on a tourist train.

Uncle Adam took my brother and wandered down the coulee to see if they could scare up an elk. Dad sat in the front seat of our Studebaker truck we called Buella.

He was eating from his silver-colored work pail. I had Dad’s thirty-odd-six and walked around to the front of Buella.

The old truck was parked about fifty feet from a slope that over looked Gold Bluff near the town of Orick. From there, Uncle Adam and Dad figured they’d be able to see any elk without having to walk very far.

The gun had a telescopic sight on it and I held it up and looked through it. I scanned back and forth looking through the tall grasses and into the shadows of the low-lying scrub. I saw nothing but the grass and trees.

Dad could be heard eating one of the sandwiches Mom had made for us the night before.

“It must be good!” I thought.

Then Dad’s lip smacking grew louder and louder. Then he grunted.

It was a strange-sounding grunt. I had never heard Dad make that kind of noise before.

It was low yet sharp like an animal. I turned and looked back at the truck and to where Dad was sitting.

My eyes were met with a surprise. Dad was sitting in the truck absolutely still.

His eyes were as wide a saucer plates. His cheeks were bulging like a chipmunk during acorn season and he was as pale as a winter moon at midnight.

In the seat next to Dad was huge brown ball of fur, which moved with great force, rocking the old Studebaker from side to side.

It took a moment for me to figure out what it was. It was a bear.

I stood there with my mouth wide open.

Dad just sat there with his eyes wide and un-blinking. The wild look on his face was a combination of panic and stupidity.

The bear on the other hand, continued to grunt and groan. He licked Dad’s face and stuck his nose against Dad’s head and took large noisy sniffs of him, then he’d return to licking Dad’s face.

The bear’s huge pink tongue was long and quick. It darted across Dad’s unblinking, unmoving face.

It suddenly occurred to me that I was holding Dad’s thirty-ought-six. I planted my left foot and slowly raised the rifle to my shoulder, pointing it more than aiming it towards the bear as it sniffing and licking Dad.

‘Click’ was the nearly inaudible sound of the safety being switched into the off position. I was getting ready to pull the trigger and I could see Dad’s eyes grow even larger at the thought of the rifle’s report.

‘Snap!’

Nothing happened as I quickly lowered it and drew back the bolt, sliding a shell into the chamber. The sound of all the clicking and clanking was enough to wake the dead.

It was so loud that the bear had heard it. He stopped nosing Dad and looked in the direction of the noise and me.

Again I raised the rifle and slipped my finger inside the guard. I held my breath and prepared to squeeze the trigger.

Suddenly Dad’s door popped open. And jus’ as sudden, Dad was laying on the ground, trying to kick the door shut. Dad had literally popped out of the truck with a shot.

He was flat and stiff like a piece of barn floor timber. He dropped to the earth with a thud.

Meanwhile, the bear jumped back with great surprise. In all of the commotion the door slapped shut behind him as Dad kicked the door in front of him closed.

He had no way of escaping.

“Maaw!” the bear cried as he continued to back up.

He quickly discovered he could no longer get out the way he came in and was trapped. His situation seemed to get worse as he continued to struggle to get turned around.

The inside of the truck was not meant for the largeness of a bear.

The bear had turned sideways in Buella. He was stuck and starting to panic.

The horn sounded adding to bears panic. His rear end got hung up on the gun rack and his face was mashed against the windshield.

Meanwhile Dad had made it to his feet and he ran to the rear of the truck. I stood still, pressing the rifle tightly against my shoulder and cheek, finger still touching the trigger.

The bear struggled wildly to get un-caught. He twisted his huge frame sideways in the truck. The old Studebaker rocked back and forth as the animal shifted his weight from side to side.

To me, the eyes of the bear seemed to bug out and his long nose flattened as it pressed into the windshield. His cries became more pitiful as he struggled violently against entrapment.

Dad came around and stood by me. I also became aware of the cold trickle of sweat tracing its way down my back and I shivered.

The muzzle of the rifle shook a little as I lowered it. I was shaking, but not nearly as hard as Dad was when we finally looked at each other.

Ka-pop!

The explosion of noise made us jump at the same time. I jerked the thirty-ought-six back up to my shoulder as Dad stepped back.

The sound of cracking glass echoed through the valley. The bear in his struggle had popped the windshield out of Buella and it crashed to the ground after sliding off the hood.

Within a breath the bear scrambled for his freedom, his claws raking at the green paint of the truck and then the green grass as he ran for his life.

Dad took the rifle from me. He slipped the bolt back gently and out jumped a bullet. He started to slip it into his pocket, but then he handed it to me.

Then he said, “For the one that got away, thank goodness.”

To say my senior year of high school was a difficult one, would be an understatement. Few things seemed to go well for me and worse yet, the stuff that went wrong seemed to be mostly of my doing.

One of those situations was to come out publicly against the track coaching staff, voicing my opposition to how they were treating another trackster. It all began after the Humboldt-Del Norte Conference finals.

Muneca Alcorn and Marcy Dennison were the best female distance runner in the conference. Their coach, Helen Caldwell had told them to “split the ticket,” meaning they were to divide the 440, the 880, the mile and two-mile

All went according to plan until the two-mile race. Marcy Dennison was having trouble maintaining pace and Muneca was doing her best to stay in second place as instructed.

In the end, Muneca beat Marcy by a wide margin and ended up with three first-place wins to Marcy’s one first-place. In response Muneca was told she was no longer on the team and to go sit on the bus for the duration of the meet.

Now, I knew that there was a strategy at work in the splitting of the races. But a dismissal from the team was in my estimation, unfair and I launched a stout protest to both Mrs. Caldwell and the boy’s coach, Brian Ferguson.

My protests, I believed, fell on deaf ears. So I decided to take it a step further.

If the coaches wouldn’t listen, maybe a little negative public attention would. I wrote a scathing letter to the editor of the Del Norte Triplicate.

As soon as it was published, I found myself kicked off the team as too. Mr. Ferguson only allowed me back on the team because our 440-relay had won a spot in the state championship finals, saying it wasn’t fair to punish my team mates because of my actions.

In the end, Muneca was reinstated and allowed to participate in the state championships as well.

Dad was a scout master while Mom was den mother. I was a cub scout and eventually a boy scout, though I didn’t stay with it for very long after that.

One of the many events was a large scout dinner at the old Grange Hall on Hunter Creek Road. The dinner was arranged as fund-raiser to help all the scouts in Klamath attend that years Jamboree at Miller-Rellim Lumber Yard.

Each of the dens were given the chore of coming up with a skit for the entertainment portion of the dinner. Our den worked out a play about Bigfoot and how he was accepted by the local Indians.

While I don’t recall much about the play itself, I do know Scott Bruhy was Bigfoot. It was a natural part for him as he was a good head taller than every other student at school.

The other thing I remember was how we danced around a campfire, like a bunch of wild men in a B-western movie. I was a part of that.

What few people know is that I got in a lot of trouble from Mom for my performance. I misunderstood her instructions, and instead of wearing a pair of shorts underneath my breech-cloth, I wore nothing.

Talk about realism.

It was the first and only time I saw Dad throw-up after working an accident scene. And I couldn’t blame him as it was one of the worst deadly wrecks I had ever responded too.

The little Volkswagen Rabbit was mangled beyond belief. And the same could be said for the lifeless male body inside the vehicle.

It was hard to tell who had hit who. There was debris spread out from one side of Highway 101 to the other side.

What was evident was how hard the VW and the large dump truck had collided. The engine of the dump truck was torn from its mounts and rested on the side of the road.

While the driver of the truck was injured, he would survive. There wasn’t much to do for Dad and me other than to help protect the scene until the California Highway Patrol released us from the detail.

We returned to the firehouse with jus’ enough time for me to get ready for high school. That’s when Dad went outback of the house and vomited.

Less than an hour later, I was on the school bus, passing by the accident scene I had been at earlier in the morning. While the male body had been removed from the VW, much of the scene remained as was before we left it.

Once at school, I noticed the hallways were extremely quiet. What noises there were came in the form of hushed whispers or tears.

Then someone told me: Cameron Allen had been killed in an early morning crash.

Marcy was six-years old when she announced to the family that Santa Claus wasn’t real. We were sitting at the supper table, preparing to eat.

Without thinking, Mom responded, “Jus’ like the Easter Bunny.”

Suddenly Marcy’s face drooped as her look of confidence shifted to shock. Her mouth hung open and tears welled-up in her eyes.

Then Deirdre replied, “Mom, I don’t think she knew that.”

Without warning, both Marcy and Mom started crying, each for slightly different reasons.